2012 ends up as hottest year...(1-9-13)
The numbers came in yesterday from the National Climatic Data Center for 2012 and it is official: It was the warmest year in the United States since 1895.This map really drives home the record warmth. It gives a state by state rank of the heat. 118 means it was the hottest year for the state and 1 would be the coldest.
18 states, including New York, had their warmest year on record. Of the rest, only Washington (29th) and Oregon (11th) were not in the top ten of warmest years. Still, those two states were also quite a bit above normal.This is a graph that we’ve shown several times over the last few months and highlights just how far above normal 2012 was as well as how far ahead of even the other warmest years we were.
We took the lead at the end of one of the warmest winters on record and never looked back. It is a little hard to see the other hot years on the graph so here is a list of top ten warmest years on record and how far above normal the temperatures were those years. There are actually 11 years since there is a tie in tenth spot.| Year | Temperature Anomaly |
| 2012 | +3.3 F |
| 1998 | +2.3 F |
| 2006 | +2.2 F |
| 1934 | +2.1 F |
| 1999 | +1.9 F |
| 1921 | +1.7 F |
| 2005 | +1.6 F |
| 2001 | +1.6 F |
| 2007 | +1.6 F |
| 1931 | +1.5 F |
| 1990 | +1.5 F |
I know some will comment “There was hot weather in the 1930s, look at 1934 and 1931” This is true, there are 2 years from the ‘30s on the list and if you go back before 1895 (before records) there were very likely other hot years but look at the recent trends. Five of the top ten have occurred in the last dozen years. Expand the time frame just a bit more and 8 out of the last 23 years make the list. That’s not interpretation, that’s the numbers.There are plenty of other numbers on NCDCs web site for 2012. If you have time you might want to check it out.
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