May’s record temperatures portend a new hotter normal
Following a May that tied for the hottest on record, the United States is heading into a potentially blistering summer, with hotter than normal temperatures expected across almost the entire country into September, government researchers said Thursday.
Dan Collins, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center, said that for July, August and September across almost the entire United States “the average temperatures are likely to be above normal,” especially in the West and
Northeast.
The trends are clear. Each decade since the 1960s has been warmer than the one before, and the five hottest years occurred in the second half of the last decade.
High temperatures were likeliest in the mid-Atlantic states, Northeast and New England, and across much of the West, Rocky Mountains and Southwest.
That warmth will likely mean that drought conditions, currently experienced by nearly one-fourth of the country, will persist through the summer, NOAA scientists said.
It is now virtually certain that globally, 2020 will be one of the five hottest years on record, she said. But it is less likely that 2020 will eclipse 2016 as the hottest ever. NOAA now estimates there is about a 50 percent chance that 2020 will be a record breaker, down from about 75 percent a month ago.
Gavin Schmidt, director the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, said that the new information is in line with what is known about climate change.
“There is a long-term trend in temperatures driven by human activity that is going to lead to more and more records being broken,” he said. “Not every month, not every year — but this will keep happening as long as we continue to emit carbon dioxide.”