"2012: Hottest Year on Record for Continental U.S."

Photograph by Steven Senne, AP

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Written By:

Ker Than

for National Geographic News

Published January 9, 2013

"Temperatures across the continental United States soared in 2012 to an all-time high, making last year the warmest year on record for the country by a wide margin, scientists say."

"2012 marks the warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S., with the year consisting of a record warm spring, the second warmest summer, the fourth warmest winter, and a warmer than average autumn," Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at the National Climatic Data Center at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said in a press conference on Tuesday.
According to a recent NOAA report, the average temperature for the lower 48 states was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is higher than the previous 1998 record by one degree Fahrenheit.
A single degree doesn't seem like much, but scientists say that it is an unusually large margin. Annual temperature records typically differ only by tenths of a degree Fahrenheit.

From 1917, the coldest year on record, to 1998, the entire range of temperature increase was just 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit. 2012 is now more than one degree above, and was also the 15th driest  year for the nation. "It is abundantly clear that we are seeing [human-caused] climate change in action," Trenberth, who did not participate in the NOAA report, said in an email. "These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate."

Warming is and has been a topic of much concern for several years, and statistics are all it takes to spark that concern. Of course, warming does not seem to be a short term problem but as time goes on and generations pass, it may be harder for humans to survive, and I won't even mention all of other species that will be affected, or even eradicated, due to our continuing behavior. The least we can do right now is to just keep our eyes open aas well as our minds.
- Andrew