2012 goes on record as hottest U.S. year
WASHINGTON — Last year was the hottest on record for the continental United States, shattering the previous mark set in 1998 by a wide margin, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday.
The average temperature was 55.3 degrees, 1 degree above the previous record and 3.2 degrees more than the 20thcentury average. Temperatures were above normal in every month between June 2011 and September 2012, a 16-month stretch that hasn’t occurred since the government began keeping such records in 1895.
Federal scientists said that the data were compelling evidence that climate change is affecting weather in the United States and suggest that the nation’s weather is likely to be hotter, drier and potentially more extreme than it would have been without the warmer temperatures.
Last year’s record temperature is “clearly symptomatic of a changing climate,” said Thomas Karl, who directs the agency’s National Climatic Data Center. Americans can now see the sustained warmth over the course of their own lifetimes — “something we haven’t seen before.” He added, “That doesn’t mean every season and every year is going to be breaking all-time records, but you’re going to see this with increasing frequency.”
Alaska and the Pacific Northwest didn’t experience record-setting heat last year; a cool-weather pattern over the Pacific Ocean kept temperatures lower.
Although the new analysis focuses on the United States, it has triggered an intense debate over whether global temperatures will reach dangerous levels by the century’s end. In 2009, the world’s leaders pledged to keep global temperatures from rising above preindustrial levels by 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Now many academics and policymakers say that goal may be out of reach.
“We have to begin the conversation about cruising past 2 degrees, because we’re on course for that,” said John Podesta, who leads the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. “It’s hard to contemplate and scary to contemplate, but it has to be addressed at this point.”
Vanderbilt Law School professor Michael Vandenbergh said today’s leaders will be judged harshly by future generations for not focusing on climate change.
“A hundred years from now, they’re not going to be talking about health care or the fiscal cliff,” he said. “But they will ask, ‘What did you do when we knew we were going to have serious climate change?’”
John Christy, who directs the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said some researchers are exaggerating the severity of the threat.
He said that the right climate target is “in the mind of the beholder,” given that rising energy demand is a sign that many poor people are struggling “to be lifted out of their current condition.”
“No one in Washington can stop that,” he said. “And, right now, carbon is the most accessible and affordable way to supply that energy — so CO2 emissions will continue to rise because of the undeniable benefit carbon energy brings to human life.”
Last year, the United States experienced several weather events — including extreme storms, a historic drought and wildfires — that many scientists say can be exacerbated by climate change.
Some scientists, however, think it is premature to blame droughts or hurricanes on human-caused warming.
Georgia Institute of Technology atmospheric scientist Judith Curry said in an e-mail that the global average temperature for 2012 will not set a record — last year will probably be the ninth warmest.
“Natural variability continues to dominate the occurrence of extreme weather events,” she said.
Nonetheless, many scientists are worried about rising emissions.
The International Energy Agency estimated last month that coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world’s top energy source in 2017, when an additional 1.3 billion tons will be burned annually.
In late November, the World Resources Institute reported there are nearly 1,200 proposed coal plants around the globe, three-quarters of which are planned for China and India.
By Jan. 1 of this year, the Kyoto Protocol was supposed to have cut the world’s greenhouse gas output by 5 percent compared with 1990 levels. While the signatories as a whole are likely to meet that target, in part because of the shutdown of Eastern European factories during the 1990s, global carbon emissions overall rose 54 percent during that same period, according to the Global Carbon Project.