85% Of U.S. Temperature Records Set In 2016 Were For Record Highs; Greatest Imbalance On Record

[hatrack]

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It was the hottest year on record globally. While the world is still waiting for confirmation of just how high the record was, there’s a lot of data to digest from the U.S. Nearly every square inch of the country was dramatically warmer than normal. The blistering pace of record-high temperatures across the country is the clearest sign of 2016’s extreme heat. Record-daily highs outpaced record-daily lows by 5.7-to-1 in 2016, according to preliminary data from the National Centers for Environmental Information. That’s the largest ratio in 95 years of record keeping. Put another way, 85 percent of extreme temperature records set in 2016 were of the hot variety.

That fits with the fact that 2016 will be the second-hottest year on record for the U.S. during which 98 percent of weather stations had a warmer-than-normal year.

Each month had more record highs than lows, in many cases by a large margin. November saw an incredible 48 record highs for every record low and February, March and October weren’t that far behind. Even December ended up just being kind of cold and still finished the month with more record highs than lows, despite some headlines trumpeting a cold snap the likes of which was unseen in decades.

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That includes a stretch of 25 months in a row where record highs outpaced lows. According to Guy Walton, a meteorologist who tracks the NCEI numbers, it’s the longest such stretch since accurate record keeping of daily weather stats began in 1920.

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/daily-record-highs-2016-21019

[Dustlawyer]

1. And the oil companies will kill us trying to sell every last gallon they can!