2025 was Australia’s fourth warmest year on record as surface water storage levels continue to fall, the Bureau of Meteorology says.
The bureau (or BoM) just published a preliminary key summary of the country’s temperature, rainfall and water resources for last year.
The summary is broken into three distinct areas:
2025 TEMPERATURES
Climatology Specialist Nadine D’Argent says the summary data shows temperatures were 1.23 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1961-90 average.
“This follows Australia’s second-warmest year in 2024,” she points out.
“South Australia and Western Australia both recorded their third-warmest years.
“Between January and March, and October to December, large parts of Australia experienced heatwave conditions, reaching extreme severity at times.”
D’Argent says Australia’s warmest year was in 2019 when the national annual temperature was 1.51°C above average.
The bureau’s State of the Climate 2024 found that Australia’s climate warmed by an average of about 1.51°C since national record keeping began in 1910.
The warming is consistent with global trends with the degree of warming similar to the overall average across the world’s land areas, the bureau says.
The summary also found that the national maximum temperature was 1.48°C above the 1961–90 average (equal fourth-warmest on record) while the average minimum temperature was 0.97 °C above average, the eighth-warmest on record.
The 2025 January, February, March and October temperatures were among the top five warmest on record for their respective months.
“Queensland had its wettest year since 2011 with rainfall 31% above average while Tasmania had its driest year since 2017 and South Australia its driest since 2019.” Climatology Specialist Nadine D’Argent
RAINFALL
“Last year, the national average annual rainfall was 7.8% above the 1961–1990 average at 502.2 mm,” D’Argent says.
“Rainfall was below average for most of Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia, southern and inland areas of New South Wales and large parts of Western Australia.”
She says rainfall was “above average” for much of Queensland, northern and eastern parts of the Northern Territory, coastal areas of New South Wales and northern and southern areas of Western Australia.
“Queensland had its wettest year since 2011 with rainfall 31% above average while Tasmania had its driest year since 2017 and South Australia its driest since 2019,” she says.
Reduced rainfall since February 2024 continues to hit agricultural production in South Australia, large areas of Victoria and into southern NSW and parts of Tasmania, the bureau says.
WATER RESOURCES
“Annual average soil moisture was above the 1911–2025 average across some northern and eastern parts of the country but below the annual average for large parts of southern Australia,” D’Argent says.
She says dry conditions and low inflows reduced most of the country’s surface water storages but storage levels increased in northern NSW and Menindee Lakes after “above average” rain in large parts of Queensland and coastal NSW.
By the end of 2025, Australia’s total surface water storage stood at 68.2% compared to 73% at the end of 2024, the bureau says.
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