Heatwaves in Queensland

This paper describes the performance of the Bureau of Meteorology’s heatwave forecasting service in Queensland, Australia. A heatwave climatology for Queensland in terms of the excess heat factor (EHF) is presented across a 1958-2011 base period that was used in the construction of the EHF dataset. This climatology is compared with a recent period, 1986- 2015, revealing higher rates of heatwave occurrence and severity in the later period.

This shift in heatwave climatology correlates with an increase in demand for heatwave services over the last decade. This has culminated in the release of the Heatwave Response Plan by Queensland Health that uses the Bureau of Meteorology Heatwave Service. Significant Queensland heatwaves of recent decades are described followed by an assessment of the performance of the heatwave forecast service over the past three warm seasons (November to March in 2013-16).

Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Volume 32, No. 1, January 2017. Article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).