New York – No surprise for Northeast residents sweating out the summer after a winter barely touching their snow shovels: this is the hottest year on record in the region so far.
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The Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University reported Tuesday that the average temperature in the 12-state region was 49.9 degrees from January through July. That’s the warmest seven-month period since 1895, the year systematic record keeping began.
The second-warmest comparable period was 1921, when the seven-month average was 49.2 degrees.
“We’ve had a long stretch of warm,” said Kathy Vreeland, a climatologist for the center.
The data comes as the Northeast endured a sweltering July with record-breaking temperatures around the region. Syracuse hit 101 on July 17 and Washington’s Reagan National Airport recorded 105 degrees on July 7.
On a single day, July 18, LaGuardia Airport in New York City hit 101 degrees, Baltimore and Newark, N.J., recorded 104 degrees and Philadelphia 100 degrees, according to the climate center.
Areas around the United States this summer have suffered through blistering heat waves, wildfires and droughts — the sorts of extreme weather events that experts have predicted will come with climate change. But Vreeland cautioned against reading too much into a small set of data covering a single region.
“It could be global climate change. It could be an anomalous year, or anomalous run of years,” she said.
Breaking the warm spell down by state, it was the warmest first seven months of the year in the six New England states, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. It was the second warmest such period in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
It also was the warmest 12-month period in the Northeast through July.
I don’t mean to discount the general conclusion of the report, but using temperature readings from airport weather stations skews the data because:
1] of all the tarmac and asphalt at airports open to the direct sun;
2] the airports mentioned didn’t exist in ANY form until the 1930’s, and not in their current form until well after WWII.
It would have been more useful to compare data from single weather stations, such as NYC Central Park (NOAA NWS KNYC), that have existed during the entire interval, and that haven’t had such artificial and changing local conditions.
But the year before we had snow blizzard after snow blizzard.
So are we back to Global warming or is it still Global Change?
#2 ,
No one ever said that global warming makes warm winters.
Global warming heats up the gulf stream which brings very cold winters and very hot summers.
This is real.
There are islands that have been swallowed up by the oceans…
Shorelines receding….
Glaciers melting….
This is about to reach the tipping point.
so its not the hottest SUMMER on record, its the hottest 7 months period from jan. Till jul. Which inc. Half winter and half summer
Maybe it’s a sign that we all need to do Tushva. Rosh Hashana is just around the corned. Let’s do tushuva now and reach the final goal of Moshiach’s coming already. It’s not about liberals or conservative, it’s about getting to the Geula. Let’s not forget our priorities and get sucked up into the political bs of our times. Certainly when they mention liberals and conservative, they don’t have the Jews in mind, so be careful my friends, stick to your principles and remember that all political parties, whether “liberal” or “conservative” have one goal in minds and that is to increase their power base and if they can use you or influence public opinion in order to do that, trust me will. But don’t expect any return favors as they are all out for themselves, so, BEWARE!