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[Jordan Tucker]

LeBron James could finally exhale after the Miami Heat defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2012 Finals to claim his first NBA championship and lift the weight of doubt off his shoulders. James and the Heat could now turn their focus to trying to repeat during the 2012-13 season.

The Heat came out firing on all cylinders. Behind James, who shot an astounding 56.5% from the floor and cruised to his fourth MVP award, the Heat won 66 games. That mark included the second-longest win streak in NBA history, a 27-game run that began Jan. 30 vs. Brooklyn and ended March 27 vs. Chicago.

Back East, the Heat and Pacers eventually met in the conference finals for a seven-game series. Miami vanquished Indiana in Game 7 to earn a third straight Finals berth. Out West, the Grizzlies were no match for the San Antonio Spurs, who ousted them in four quick games.

The 2013 Finals went down as one of the best in league history, despite the fact that the winner of Games 2 through 5 won by ten-plus points each game. But in Game 6, with the Spurs seconds away from a championship, the unthinkable happened.

With 20 seconds left and the Spurs up by three, James missed a 3-pointer taken early in the shot clock. Chris Bosh snagged the offensive rebound and dished to Ray Allen, who drained a corner 3 to tie the game and completely swing the series momentum to the Heat. Miami held on to win Game 6 in overtime and went on to survive Game 7 in Miami to capture their second championship in a row.

Climate updates provide data and information about significant events, and often climate extremes, that are still in progress and about which there is media or public interest. More detailed accounts of events are captured in Special Climate Statements and other reports.

It was also the hottest summer on record for Australian sea-surface temperatures. Sea surface temperatures in February were the hottest ever recorded in the region, while January was the warmest on record for that month.

Temperatures reached record highs for this time of year in many areas, particularly northern Victoria and southern inland New South Wales. A new record was also set for the highest spring temperature in Victoria.

The start of autumn was marked by a third major heatwave event. This was especially pronounced in the southeastern states where numerous cities and towns including Melbourne, Mt Gambier and Launceston set records for consecutive hot days and warm nights (see Special climate statement 45).

Australia started 2013 with a record-breaking heatwave that lasted more than two weeks across many parts of the country. Temperatures were regularly above 48C, with the highest recorded maximum of 49.6C at Moomba in South Australia. The extreme conditions were associated with a delayed onset of the Australian monsoon, and slow moving weather systems over the continent.

The record heatwave in January was analysed using both the Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) and ACORN-SAT datasets. This means that two datasets were used to verify the record independently. Because the datasets are prepared in entirely different ways and use different underlying networks, their comparison provides an important validation of daily records.

As noted in the material above, perhaps the most notable feature of January 2013 event was the duration for which continent-wide extreme temperatures persisted. In this case, consistency in the duration records was again found across both operational datasets maintained by the Bureau.

The record heatwave in January was analysed using both the AWAP and ACORN-SAT data. This means that both datasets were used to independently verify the record. Because the datasets are prepared in entirely different ways, and use different underlying networks, comparison of the two datasets provides an important validation of daily records.

The ranks for record-breaking daily-averaged temperature for the January heatwave are consistent across AWAP and ACORN-SAT datasets. Ranks for the hottest three days on record are from the same events in both analyses.

The satellite based Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) temperature record provides recent estimates of temperatures over Australia, with records starting in the late-1970s. Satellite data has one advantage over surface-based observations in that it has total coverage over the Australian continent.

A major source of potential inconsistency in the satellite record comes from the splicing together of data from multiple satellite missions over time. These satellite missions have different instrumentation. All types of thermometers that ever existed, for example, could be said to belong to a 'family of instruments'. Missions may have different orbital characteristics, and slight changes in the orbits of satellites over time have been shown to introduce inconsistencies in the data. The satellite record is complimentary to all other temperature data, and the Bureau and climate scientists compare these records routinely. The Bureau's surface temperature measurements for Australia compare well with the remotely sensed satellite record in terms of area-averaged variability and warming trends. These have been published in the papers found on the ACORN-SAT website.

Globally, the satellite data are warming at the same rate as the surface observations and show remarkable agreement. This is also the case over Australia, where warming trends since 1979 are very similar for satellite and surface data.

Some differences between the satellite record and the surface thermometers are understood and to be expected. This is particularly true over Australia during El Nio events or particularly dry and hot periods, such as the recent summer.

These differences were documented many years ago. For example see Drosdowsky, W., and M. Williams, 1991: The Southern Oscillation in the Australian region. I: Anomalies at the extremes of the oscillation. J. Climate, 4, 619-638.

On a month-by-month basis, 2012 was characterized by large areas of dry and, earlier in the year, large areas of wet weather. Eight months (all except January, February, October, and December) had ten percent or more of the country experiencing very dry (at the tenth percentile of the historical record or drier) precipitation anomalies, with five months (May, June, August, September, and November) having more than a fifth (20 percent) of the country very dry. June and November had a third of the country very dry. The percent area very wet (monthly precipitation totals at the 90th percentile of the historical record or wetter) stayed under ten percent for all but one of the months in the year, with March having the largest percent area very wet (16%). When averaged together, the wet and dry anomalies resulted in the 20th driest February, 23rd driest May, 10th driest June, 22nd driest July, and 8th driest November, nationally, in the 1895-2012 record. Large areas of the country also experienced unusually warm conditions. Ten percent or more of the contiguous U.S. was very warm (monthly temperatures at the 90th percentile of the historical record or warmer) during every month except October. More than a fourth (25%) was very warm during eight months, with July (60%) and March (75%) having more than half of the country very warm. This persistent and anomalous heat resulted in the warmest month ever (July 2012), ranked 2012 as the warmest year on record, and (especially during the growing season) increased evaporation and intensified local drought conditions.

An important feature of the weather conditions in 2012 was the persistence of the areas of dryness and warm temperatures, the magnitude of the extremes, and the large area they encompassed. Dry weather affected parts of the West almost every month, especially the Intermountain Basin during April-July, the Southwest during April-June and October-November, and the Rockies during March-November. The Central Great Plains were plagued by dryness much of the year (especially March-November), with dryness especially acute during the summer across the Plains (June-August). Dry weather dominated across the Central Plains to Midwest agricultural areas during the critical May-July growing season, but the dryness lasted longer in parts of this region (for example, the Midwest during February-July). August-September saw very dry weather from the Pacific Northwest, across the Northern Rockies and Central to Northern Plains, and into the western Great Lakes. Dry weather afflicted the eastern U.S. early in the year, with the Southeast dry during January-April and the Northeast during February-April. Large areas of the country were very dry during May-June (from the West Coast to the Ohio and Tennessee valleys), August-September (from the Pacific Northwest to the western Great Lakes), and November (from the Southwest and Southern Plains to the Northeast and Southeast).

The hot temperatures exacerbated the impact of the dry weather. When maps of the dryness (Standardized Precipitation Index [SPI]) are compared to maps of the Palmer Z Index (which incorporates the effects of both dryness and heat), larger areas of monthly drought are evident on the Z Index maps for March (SPI, Z Index), April (SPI, Z Index), May (SPI, Z Index), July (SPI, Z Index), and November (SPI, Z Index).

The percent area* of the contiguous U.S. experiencing moderate to extreme drought (based on the Palmer Drought Index) started the year at about 22.9 percent, grew steadily to a peak of about 61.8 percent during the summer, then contracted slightly during the fall, ending the year at about 51.8 percent. The Palmer Drought Index data go back 113 years.

The dry weather (which lowered moisture supplies), coupled with intense spring and summer heat (which increased evapotranspiration and, thus, moisture demand), depleted soil moisture, lowered streamflow (May, June, July, August), reservoir and stock pond levels, and ravaged crops and livestock. By year's end, low river levels threatened commerce on the vital Mississippi River shipping lanes.

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