The Quiet Disappearance of Winter

Australia’s winter didn’t disappear in one spectacular heatwave. The cold simply didn’t arrive.

In Sydney this winter, not one day failed to reach at least 15 degrees - the first winter since observations began in 1859 without a day below 15°C. Canberra had just one day below 10°C. Brisbane had only two below 20°C. These weren’t isolated bursts of unseasonable heat. They were the disappearance of the cold days that once defined the season.

Nationally, winter 2026 was Australia’s equal-third-warmest since records began in 1910. But that national ranking conceals something more disturbing. New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania all experienced their warmest winter on record. Queensland had its third-warmest. Western Australia had its fourth-warmest.

Bureau of Meteorology data also shows the loss of cold wasn’t confined to the daytime. The average national minimum was 1.53°C above average, and New South Wales and Victoria both set records for their average minimums. The nights, the early mornings and the hours before dawn - the places where winter cold once gathered were unusually warm too.

This matters because climate change is often seen as an event: a burning town, a flooded street, a cyclone tearing roofs from houses. But it also arrives as an absence. It’s the frost that doesn’t form, the cold front that doesn’t arrive, the snow that falls as rain and the winter coat that stays in the cupboard. Nothing dramatic appears to have happened, but something familiar quietly goes missing.

Sydney’s average winter temperature was the highest in its 167-year record. Its average maximum and minimum temperatures also set records. In June, Sydney had 15 consecutive days reaching at least 20°C, smashing the previous June record of nine days established in 1919. Across Greater Sydney, every one of the 16 stations with at least 20 years of observations recorded its highest-ever June average maximum or its highest in at least two decades.

Melbourne’s winter average was about 12.2°C, making it the warmest in its long record. Canberra recorded its warmest winter, with an average maximum of 14.7°C. Its coldest day reached 9.5°C - about three degrees warmer than Canberra’s typical coldest winter day.

And the comparisons between cities are unsettling. Sydney’s winter was only fractionally cooler than Brisbane’s historical winter climate. Hobart’s winter resembled the old Melbourne winter, while Melbourne came close to Sydney’s historical average. The cities have not literally moved north, but their climates are.

In the Alps, the loss was even more visible. Mount Hotham reached 12°C in July, compared with a normal July daytime maximum close to zero. It broke its temperature record three times. Falls Creek reached 13°C against a July average maximum of just 1.2°C. Thredbo, Cabramurra, Mount William and all broke temperature records.

For Aboriginal people, seasons have never been merely boxes on a calendar. Seasons are read through Country: in flowering and fruiting, animal movement, water, winds, insects and the arrival and departure of birds. Temperature isn’t an abstract number. It’s part of a web of relationships. When winter no longer behaves like winter, Country receives the message, even when people choose not to.

There were immediate meteorological reasons for the warmth. Persistent high pressure and blocking around the Tasman Sea reduced the number and strength of Southern Ocean cold outbreaks reaching the south-east. Northerly and north-westerly winds repeatedly carried warm air south. A strongly positive Southern Annular Mode during June pushed many cold fronts further towards Antarctica. El Niño contributed to clearer skies and warmer days in the south-east, and warm seas and humid north-west cloud bands kept nights mild.

But these are not an alternative explanation to climate change. They are part of it. The same weather patterns now produce higher temperatures than they did previously. Australia’s land temperature has risen by about 1.59°C since 1910, 14 of our 15 warmest years have occurred since 2000, and eight of the ten warmest winters in the national record have occurred this century. Climate change has intensified the warmth, made the records much more likely to fall and helped turn unusual weather patterns into historic loss of winter cold.

It might be tempting to describe winter 2026 as pleasant. Many people enjoyed the sunshine. Heating bills may have been lower. Cafés were busy and lunchtime walks were comfortable. But “pleasant” is a dangerous way to describe a season moving outside the climate in which our cities, farms, forests, rivers and wildlife evolved.

We should allow ourselves to recognise this as loss. We’re losing snow seasons, frosts, cold nights and the reliable seasonal signals upon which ecosystems depend. We are losing part of the rhythm of Country. We’re also losing memories that once seemed permanent: frozen birdbaths and school ovals in Canberra, breath hanging in the morning air, heavy coats in Sydney and dependable snow across the high country.

We’re not losing winter in one dramatic blow. We’re losing it incrementally: a few fewer cold fronts, a few degrees of warmth, a shorter snow season, a record that falls and then falls again. That’s one of the cruellest features of climate breakdown. Each individual change can be rationalised until the accumulated loss becomes impossible to ignore.

Yet Australia’s political response remains dominated by denial, delay, distraction and the pretence that we can keep expanding coal and gas while protecting the climate these fossil fuels are destroying. We can’t celebrate another gas project and mourn the loss of winter as though the two things are unrelated. The atmosphere doesn’t negotiate, accept dodgy offsets or care which country ultimately burns the carbon. It responds to physics.

Winter isn’t yet entirely gone. But winter 2026 showed us how it can be diminished - thinned out, pushed towards the margins, and stripped of the cold that gives it meaning. It showed us a future in which our kids may only know a real Australian winter through photographs, family stories and records describing how the seasons used to feel.

The tragedy isn’t that this change has arrived without warning. Scientists have warned us for decades. The tragedy is that while we’ve been watching winter’s disappearance, we’ve chosen to keep digging.

Photo: ABC News.