2016 Was Second Hottest Year For US In More Than 120 Years of Record Keeping (climatecentral.org)

Last year was the second hottest year for the United States in more than 120 years of record keeping, according to the National Climatic Data Center, marking 20 above-average years in a row. While Georgia and Alaska recorded their hottest year, every state had a temperature ranking at least in the top seven. Climate Central reports: The announcement comes a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the U.S. data, and NASA are expected to announce that 2016 set the record for the hottest year globally. Both the global record and the U.S. near-record are largely attributable to greenhouse gas-driven warming of the planet. In addition to the pervasive warmth over the last year, the U.S. also had to deal with 15 weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damage. Together, they totaled more than $46 billion in losses and included several disastrous rain-driven flooding events. These events, along with continued drought, lay bare the challenge for the country to learn how to cope with and prepare for a changing climate, said Deke Arndt, the climate monitoring chief of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. The temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average for 2016, displacing 2015 and ranking only behind 2012, when searing heat waves hit the middle of the country. More notable than the back-to-back second place years, Arndt said, was that 2016 was the 20th consecutive warmer-than-normal year for the U.S. and that the five hottest years for the country have all happened since 1998. Those streaks mirror global trends, with 15 of the 16 hottest years on record occurring in the 21st century and no record cold year globally since 1911.

Comments

Re:It is Inevitable

[Barsteward]

"-- Cowardly Slashdot Editors and Moderators Everywhere" - says the Anonymous Coward

Re:Statistically insignificant difference to 1998.

[Fragnet]

One of us is a shill and I'm pretty sure it's not me.

Re:Stop already with tying every disaster to GW

[meta-monkey]

But we can look at the trend and say "gee, there's 20x more events now than there used to be".

About 10 years ago 5 hurricanes hit the southeast in one year and everyone screamed "it's global warming!!!! This is going to happen all the time now!!!" And then pretty much no major hurricanes have hit since.