Australia's Year in Review: Hottest, Hottest, Hottest…

2013 has been a year filled with temperature extremes in Australia.

• In January as an “unprecedented” heatwave gripped Australia, the country’s Bureau of Meteorology had to add a new color to show areas that exceeded all-time heat records.
   
• January 7 marked the country’s hottest day on record.
   
• Summer 2012–13 was the warmest on record for Australia.
   
• 2013 also saw the hottest spring on record.
   
• The year saw the warmest September on record.
   
• November was 16th consecutive warmer-than-average month.
   
• Australia broke its record twice for the warmest 12-month period on record.
   
• It also appears that 2013 is on track to be Australia’s hottest calendar year on record.

“We’re smashing the records,” Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of NSW, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We’re not tinkering away at them, they’re being absolutely blitzed.”