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For U.S., 2012 Was Hottest Year on Record: NCDC

Terrell Johnson Published: Aug 6, 2013, 3:31 PM EDT weather.com

Last year was the nation's hottest since temperature records began in 1895, surpassing the previous record set in 2006, according to the latest State of the Climate report issued today by the National Climatic Data Center and a host of other agencies around the world.

Across the 48 contiguous U.S. states, the average annual temperature was about 55.4 Fahrenheit degrees, which is just over 3.2 degrees above the 1901-2000 average and about one degree above the previous record warm year of 2006.

Warming trends also continued around the world, as 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record globally, the report adds. The sea ice that covers the Arctic also reached its lowest extent on record, while the temperatures of the world's oceans remained near record highs and global sea levels reached a new high.

NCDC

This preliminary map, released in January by the National Climatic Data Center, shows significant weather and climate events across the U.S. in 2012.

SOURCE: NCDC

The August State of the Climate report, which is the NCDC's 23rd annual and follows a preliminary report issued in January, draws on the expertise of more than 380 climate scientists from more than 50 countries around the world and features detailed updates on global and regional climate indicators (collected "on land, sea, ice and sky") as well as notable weather events from 2012.

Highlights from the report include:

Warming temperatures across Earth's surface. Worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record, ranking either 8th or 9th depending on the dataset used. Both the U.S. and Argentina experienced their warmest years on record.

Australia Well On Its Way To Hottest Year Ever

By Joanna M. Foster on December 7, 2013 at 1:32 pm


"Australia Well On Its Way To Hottest Year Ever"

Average temperatures in Australian during the month of September were 2.75°C above average

CREDIT: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

2013 is well on its way to becoming the warmest calendar year on record in Australia. The country has just set a new record for the warmest spring ever.

Mean temperatures for Australia’s spring (which occurs during the U.S.’s fall) were 1.57°C above the 1961-1990 average. September was especially hot, with an average temperature of 2.75°C or nearly 5°F above normal. October came in at 1.43°C above average, while November came closer to normal, at 0.52C above average. And in addition to being unusually warm, spring also came early. On August 31, the last day of winter, average temperatures reached 85.9°F. It was the warmest last day of winter recorded since Australia started collecting temperature data 104 years ago.

To date, the year is 1.23°C above average and 0.18°C above the previous record year, 2005.

Australia’s record-breaking spring follows a generally wet winter and a summer that was also the country’s hottest on record. Temperatures soared so high in January that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology added new colors to its temperature maps. Deep purple now represents temperatures in excess of 50°C, or 122°F. The new high end of the scale tops out at 129 °F.

Thanks to the wet winter that helped vegetation flourish, followed by a hot spring that sucked out all the moisture, the east and west coasts of Australia may have to contend with another above-normal bushfire season this summer. Bushfire season in Australia has already gotten off to an early start as four major fires ravaged western Sydney and the surrounding Blue Mountains area of New South Wales in September.

The newest record broken in Australia comes just as the Australian Senate is debating the repeal of its carbon tax. Australia’s newly elected Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who ran on an anti-climate agenda, has been making good on his campaign promises, much to the dismay of the climate conscious at home and abroad. He is hard at work dismantling the country’s carbon emissions scheme, and publicly shunned the recent UN climate talks in Warsaw by declining to send a senior elected member of his government. Abbott has also confirmed that his government has no intentions of reducing Australia’s emissions by more than five percent below 2000 levels by 2020 and has cut funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Funding for ARENA over the next two years will be about one fifth of current levels.