Last 12 months in U.S. fry hot-weather records

March's heat boosts fears of climatologists

In Atlanta, March's warmth brought out loungers and frolicking children. Scientists say global warming, helped by a La Nina weather pattern, helped the first quarter of 2012 break the record by 1.4 degrees.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sam Newcombe, right, and Cody Norton enjoyed the unusually warm weather in Temperance in March. The month set temperature records nationwide.

WASHINGTON -- It has been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records were not just broken, they were deep-fried.

Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That far exceeds the old records.

The magnitude of how unusual the year has been in the United States has alarmed some meteorologists who have warned about global warming.

One climate scientist said it is the weather equivalent of a baseball player on steroids, with old records obliterated.

"Everybody has this uneasy feeling. This is weird. This is not good," said Jerry Meehl, a climate scientist who specializes in extreme weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Toledo also reached records for its unusual winter weather.

Last month, the city had the warmest March in history, with a monthly average mean temperature of 50.9 degrees. That broke the old record, 47.7, set in 1945.

The monthly record was aided by a two-week spell of exceedingly warm weather.

For 15 straight days starting March 11, the high temperature in Toledo exceeded 60 degrees; the old local record for consecutive 60-degree days was eight, also set in 1945.

The nine consecutive 70-degree days starting on the 15th also set a record, as did the four 80-plus days that began on the 19th.

On March 21, Toledo had the warmest March day in its history when it reached 85 degrees -- breaking an 83-degree high set on March 24, 1910 -- and it tied the new record the next day.

In Atlanta, March's warmth brought out loungers and frolicking children. Scientists say global warming, helped by a La Nina weather pattern, helped the first quarter of 2012 break the record by 1.4 degrees.

The warm weather was not just in March.

"It's been ongoing for several months," said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

The Toledo area lacked major snowfall all winter.

During the entire winter season just past, the National Weather Service reported that just 16.8 inches of snow fell at Toledo Express Airport.

In contrast, the city received 25 inches of snow during just one month in 2011 -- February -- according to the National Weather Service.

Meteorologists say an unusual confluence of several weather patterns, including La Nina, was the direct cause of the warm start to 2012.

While individual events cannot be blamed on global warming, Mr. Crouch said this is like the extremes that are supposed to get more frequent because of man-made climate change brought on by greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

It is important to note that this unusual winter heat is mostly a North American phenomenon. Much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has been cold, said NOAA meteorologist Martin Hoerling.

The first quarter of 2012 broke the January-March record by 1.4 degrees. Usually records are broken by just 0.1 or 0.2 of a degree.

U.S. temperature records date from 1895.

The atypical heat goes back even further. The U.S. winter of 2010-11 was slightly cooler than normal and one of the snowiest in recent years, but after that things started heating up.

The summer of 2011 was the second warmest summer on record.

The winter that just ended, which in some places was called the year without winter, was the fourth warmest on record. Since last April, it has been the hottest 12-month stretch on record, Mr. Crouch said.

But the month where the warmth turned especially weird in the United States was March.

Normally, March averages 42.5 degrees across the country.

This year, the average was 51.1, which is closer to the average for April. Only one other time, in January, 2006, was the country as a whole that much hotter than normal for an entire month.

The "icebox of America," International Falls, Minn., had temperatures in the 70s for five days in March and there were only three days of below zero temperatures all month.

In March, at least 7,775 weather stations across the nation broke daily high temperature records and another 7,517 broke records for night-time heat.

Combined, that is the most high-temperature records broken in one month ever, Mr. Crouch said.

"When you look at what's happened in March this year, it's beyond unbelievable," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver.

NOAA climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi compared the increase in weather extremes to baseball players on steroids: You can't say an individual homer is because of steroids, but they are hit more often and the long-held records for home runs fall.

They seem to be falling far more often because of global warming, said NASA top climate scientist James Hansen.

In a paper he submitted to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and posted on a physics research archive, Mr. Hansen shows that heat extremes aren't just increasing but happening far more often than scientists thought.

What used to be a 1-in-400 hot temperature record is now a 1 in 10 occurrence, Mr. Hansen said. The warmth in March is an ideal illustration of this, said Mr. Hansen, who also has become an activist in fighting fossil fuels.

Mr. Weaver reviewed the Hansen paper and called it "one of the most stunning examples of evidence of global warming."