Tuesday, 8 February 2022 - Annual Climate Summary for Remote Islands and Antarctica - Product code IDCKGC5RR0

Remote Islands and Antarctica in 2021

Jump to a map of the areas covered in this summary

Australia's Indian Ocean islands

  • Rainfall in 2021 was above average at both Christmas Island Aero and Cocos Island Airport; which received 35% and 21% above annual average rainfall respectively.
  • Mean maximum and mean minimum temperatures for the year were warmer than average at both locations.
  • For Australia's Indian Ocean Islands, the highest temperature recorded was 32.1 °C at Cocos Island Airport on 22 February 2021 and the lowest was 20.2 °C at Christmas Island Aero on 11 February 2021.

Australia's Pacific Ocean islands

  • Rainfall at Lord Howe Island Aero was close to average, but it was a drier than average year at Norfolk Island Aero.
  • Both daytime and night-time temperatures for 2021 were warmer than average at Norfolk Island Aero, while mean annual temperatures at Lord Howe Island Aero were generally close to average.
  • For Australia's Pacific Ocean Islands, the highest and lowest temperatures in 2021 were both recorded at Lord Howe Island Aero and were 27.9 °C on 2 March and 7.4 °C on 13 July respectively.

Australia's Antarctic and sub-Antarctic territories

  • The strongest wind gust at Australian Antarctic stations during the year was 207 km/h recorded in both May and October at Casey station.
  • Temperatures for the year were above average at Davis and Mawson, with both sites around half a degree warmer than their long-term annual averages.
  • Mean maximum and minimum temperatures were generally close to average at Casey.
  • For Australia's Antarctic stations, the highest and lowest temperatures during the year were both recorded at Davis station and were 8.9 °C on 19 December and −33.8 °C on 30 June respectively.
  • Both daytime and night-time temperatures for 2021 were warmer than average at Macquarie Island.
  • Macquarie Island recorded 1153.3 mm of precipitation during the year, which was 16% above the annual average, and continues a run of at least 10 consecutive years of above average precipitation at the site.

Further information

Media
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Records Summaries Important notes the top



Summary statistics for 2021
Maximum temperatures
(°C)		 Minimum temperatures
(°C)		 Precipitation
(millimetres)
Mean
for
2021		 Diff
from
average		 Highest
for
2021		 Mean
for
2021		 Diff
from
average		 Lowest
for
2021		 Total
for
2021		 Average
annual
total		 Rank
of
2021		 Fraction
of annual
average
Offshore Islands (district 200)
Christmas Island Aero 27.6 +0.3 30.3 9 Jan 23.3 +0.4 20.2 11 Feb 2987.8 2211.2 high 135%
Cocos Island Airport 29.4 +0.3 32.1 22 Feb 25.3 +0.7 22.0 20 Jul 2400.4 1981.5 high 121%
Lord Howe Island Aero 22.5 +0.3 27.9 2 Mar 17.3 +0.1 7.4 13 Jul 1416.6 1467.2 average 97%
Norfolk Island Aero 22.0 +0.5 27.3 16 Feb 17.2 +0.8 11.1 13 Aug 1034.0 1282.4 low 81%
Antarctica and Macquarie Is. (district 300)
Casey -5.8 +0.1 6.0 18 Dec -12.4 +0.2 -30.8 3 Jul 233.7 219.0 average 107%
Davis -6.8 +0.5 8.9 19 Dec -12.6 +0.5 -33.8 30 Jun
Macquarie Island 7.1 +0.5 11.2 1 Mar 3.5 +0.4 -5.0 6 Jul 1153.3 997.2 high 116%
Mawson -7.7 +0.6 6.8 19 Dec -13.8 +0.4 -27.8 29 Jun
Note: Precipitation values from Casey and Davis should be used with caution.

Records Summaries Important notes the top

Map of the areas covered by this summary

Notes

The Annual climate summary lists the main features of the weather in Remote Islands and Antarctica using the most timely and accurate information available on the date of publication; it will generally not be updated. More extensive discussion of significant weather events, along with later information and data that has had greater opportunity for quality control, will be presented in the Monthly Weather Review.

This statement has been prepared based on information available at 5 pm on Monday 7 February 2022. Some checks have been made on the data, but it is possible that results will change as new information becomes available.

In some situations, some or all of the precipitation is in the form of hail or snow. In these cases the totals given are for the water equivalent: the depth of liquid water that results from melting any frozen precipitation. There can be significant 'undercatch' of snow in strong winds, meaning the true precipitation can be higher than that reported.

Averages for individual sites are long-term means based on observations from all available years of record, which vary widely from site to site. They are not shown for sites with less than 10 years of record, as they cannot then be calculated reliably.
The median is sometimes more representative than the mean of long-term average precipitation.

The Rank indicates how precipitation this time compares with the climate record for the site, based on the decile ranking (very low precipitation is in decile 1, low in decile 2 or 3, average in decile 4 to 7, high in decile 8 or 9 and very high is in decile 10).
The Fraction of average shows how much precipitation has fallen this time as a percentage of the long-term mean.

Where temperature area averages are mentioned, they are derived from the ACORN-SAT dataset.

Further information

Media
(03) 9669 4057

Climate