Autumn 2011 mean anomaly
From the Bureau of Meteorology (Weather Isn’t Climate Except When We Say It Is Department):
Australia has experienced its coldest autumn since at least 1950 for mean temperatures (average of maximum and minimum temperatures across the nation) with an Australian average of 20.9oC. This was 1.15oC below the historical average, and 0.2oC below the previous coolest autumn in 1960. It was also the coldest autumn since at least 1950 for Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Large parts of the country recorded temperatures more than 2oC below the autumn average (figure 1) with about half the country ranking in the coldest 10% of years (figure 2 – pictured right). The season was marked by consistent below-normal temperatures in most areas, with only a few individual areas recording their coldest autumn on record. These areas were in northern and central Australia including the east Kimberley, the central Northern Territory and small parts of northern Queensland.
The cool conditions experienced in autumn 2011 are largely a result of the strong 2010/11 La Niña event which brought heavy rainfall and cool daytime temperatures to Australia, before decaying in late autumn. Of particular significance was March 2011 – Australia’s coldest and wettest March on record for maximum temperatures and third wettest month on record (for any calendar month).
Read it here (PDF).
(h/t Hockey Schtick)
Australian Climate Madness 
Sorry to rain on your parade Simon – but yes, global warming is responsible for cold winters too according to alarmists like Al Gore … and lets no forget making mountains grow or volcanic eruptions or maybe sexual dysfunction.
Matter of fact you can blame just about anything on global warming!
I agree. I reckon Bob Brown wouldn’t be around today if it wasn’t for global warming.
Baldrick, Your comment reminds me of this:
Global warming is a misnomer. In fact our green house gas emissions are causing Climate Change. Climate Change means that overall there will be changes in temperature that allow for regional cooling that we are now seeing in some isolated areas of the globe.
This does not change the trend of temperatures and it does not change the scientific fact that we are to blame. In fact more frequent and intense storms and weather have been predicted so to be seeing extreme cold does not debunk the robustness of the case for human caused climate change.
Time is running out and our children will remember us for how we delt with this impending climate catastrophe. The time for action is now.
If you read through that and still held your lunch, you get a gold star! I cooked up that little manifesto a while ago and some other friends online got a kick out of it once they realized it I was putting them on (as one of them said, “your’re lucky I read that all the way through”). Its a joke, but for alarmists, they really believe that snow storms and cold snaps = global warming.
Mate – I’m a REAL alarmist. I saw Joe Baker http://www.amsa.asn.au/about/councillor_profiles/baker_joe.php give a presentation on brain coral samples (they fluoresce and there’s a correlation between the light and rainfall) and it suggested that there were climate variations well in excess of what has been experienced since European settlers came to Australia. My alarm bells say we should think a bit more about drought and flood mitigation, especially drought, and build more dams – but that would no doubt impact the habitat of some species we don’t hardly know, and require money that we’d rather spend on people that don’t care to work. Enough!
Can anyone tell me how we had the Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period without the benefit of anthropogenic CO2?
correct, darwin had its coldest autumn since about this time, no link sorry, it was on the ch 10 news a while back. still cold events are just weather events…apparently…
canberra was at -8 this morning…coldest morning in 17 years. but still, cold events are just weather events…