The physical climate defines a significant portion of the habitats in which biological communities and species reside. It is important to quantify these environmental conditions, and how they have changed, as this will inform future efforts to study many natural systems. We present the results of a statistical summary of the variability in sea surface temperature (SST) time-series data for the waters surrounding Australia, from 1993 to 2013. We partition variation in the SST series into annual trends, inter-annual trends, and a number of components of random variation. We utilise satellite data and validate the statistical summary from these data to summaries of data from long-term monitoringstations and from the global drifter program. The spatially dense results show clear trends that associate with oceanographic features. Noteworthy oceanographic features include: average warming was greatest off southern West Australia and off eastern Tasmania where the warming was around 0.6 C per decade for a twenty year study period, and; insubstantial warming in areas dominated by the East Australian Current but this area did exhibit high levels of inter-annual variability (long-term trend increases and decreases but does not increase on average). The results of the analyses can be directly incorporated into (biogeographic) models that explain variation in biological data where both biological and environmental data are on a fine scale.