If it felt like you didn’t have much of a winter at the end of last year, it’s because you didn’t. Apparently the same was true for the beginning of 2006 because NOAA (the federal weather agency) recently stated that “average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record and nearly identical to the record set in 1998.”
NOAA stated:
> Seven months in 2006 were “much warmer than average, including December, which ended as the fourth-warmest December since records began in 1895.”
> “Based on preliminary data, the 2006 annual average temperature was 55 degrees F – 2.2 degrees F above the 20th Century mean, and 0.07 degrees F warmer than 1998.
> Five states had their warmest December on record – Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire – and no state was colder than average in December.
Why? “The unusually warm start to this winter reflected the rarity of Arctic outbreaks across the country as an El Niño episode continued in the equatorial Pacific,” the agency stated. “A contributing factor to the unusually warm temperatures throughout 2006 also is the long-term warming trend, which has been linked to increases in greenhouse gases.
“It is unclear how much of the recent anomalous warmth was due to greenhouse-gas-induced warming and how much was due to the El Niño-related circulation pattern. It is known that El Niño is playing a major role in this winter’s short-term warm period.”
More on the whole global warming thing:
> “U.S. and global annual temperatures are now approximately 1.0 degrees F warmer than at the start of the 20th century, and the rate of warming has accelerated over the past 30 years, increasing globally since the mid-1970s at a rate approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.”
> “The past 9 years have all been among the 25 warmest years on record for the contiguous U.S., a streak which is unprecedented in the historical record.”
