  We report the first observation of a 27 day period component in daily maximum
temperature recorded at widely spaced locations in Australia. The 27 day
component, extracted by band pass filtering, is correlated with the variation
of daily solar radio flux during years close to solar minimum. We demonstrate
that the correlation is related to the emergence of regions of solar activity
on the Sun separated, temporally, from the emergence of other active regions.
In this situation, which occurs only near solar minimum, the observed 27 day
variation of temperature can be in phase or out of phase with the 27 day
variation of solar activity. During solar maximum correlation of temperature
and solar activity is much less defined. The amplitude of the 27 day
temperature response to solar activity is large, at times as high as 6 degrees
C, and much larger than the well documented temperature response to the 11 year
cycle of solar activity. We demonstrate that the 27 day temperature response is
localised to the Australian continent and increases towards the centre of the
continent. Several aspects of the 27 day temperature response are consistent
with a 27 day period solar input to the Earth continents generating large scale
planetary waves.
