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With less than three months left this year, it's looking increasingly likely that 2012 will go down as the warmest year on record in the continental United States.
January-September was already the warmest first nine months, according to temperature data released Tuesday by the National Climatic Data Center.
Moreover, six of eight scenarios charted by the center have 2012 ending warmer than any other year in records that go back to 1895. The only scenarios where that would not happen are if the last quarter is among the 10 coldest on record.
Last month was the 23rd warmest September on record and, more significantly, marked "the 16th consecutive month with above-average temperatures for the Lower 48," the center said in its monthly State of the Climate Report.
January-September temperatures averaged 59.8 degrees Fahrenheit -- 3.8 degrees F above the 20th-century average.
This year has already seen the warmest March and July on record, and, except for September, every other month was in the top 20 warmest, weather.com noted.
Looking ahead, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center last month posted its three-month outlook, citing "enhanced chances for above normal temperatures from the Southwest through the Great Plains to the Northeast."
Weather.com meteorologist Nick Wiltgen noted that only eight of the past 117 years have had an October-December cold enough to drag the U.S. average in 2012 below the "warmest year" record now shared by 2006 and 1998.
In September, Wiltgen calculated that through August "the odds of not surpassing the warmest year on record are about 13 percent."
Now, he tweeted on Tuesday, those odds are about 7 percent.
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Hold on to your wallets! This is all the ammunition the left needs to tax you more. Why? Because they believe that is all they have to do to solve Global Warming. It is the magic rainbow sugar unicorn fairy dust idea that taxes will stop Global Warming. Of course, they will only tax us here in the USA> China can burn all the coal and oil they want. Their output of particulates and Greenhouse gasses magically don't effect Global Warming at all. Just our gasses and carbon output.
IMO Romney wins by 7% and nothing but jobs and the economy will be on the agenda. Sorry kids....
Right Tina, all will be well,
Women will continue to be paid their measly amount. The GOP would love women not to have birth control or abortions and go back to the 50's so they can stay home and be pregnant. Then their men can get the higher paying jobs that women have achieved in the last 20 years. Woman give your head a shake.
Leon Cooperman, David Siegel, Romney and others see how the worm has turned. And they want their premier positions back, but too bad they have not encouraged their sons to do better. Young men today, in England, the US, Canada, many other countries are being outpaced by females all through high school, more females than males are applying to and being accepted at top colleges. In England, one of the papers encapsulated it perfectly - "Young men, unmotivated, uneducated, unemployable, and unmarriageable." Even, the once staunch premier college of the US - Harvard - has had more female applicants and accept more females than males. So ladies, please sit at home this election, don't worry about global climate change, or a job. The men know how to run this country beautifully, especially our great shapeshifter candidate, with a club in one hand and a vaginal probe in the other.
I have three degrees, pay high taxes, own my own country, and have two children doing well in univeristy, because we worked with the schools to get them off on a great track. I didn't go through the feminism movement, to see a bunch of shrivled white men, who know nothing of science, women's rights, etc. try to take away the opportunities for my daughter, and future daughter-in-law. Women WTFU
oops, "own my own company" Wish I owned a country, but I'm sure many of the 1% can find small countries to own....
So this year is/was warmer than the year Yellowstone exploded last? Or the year before that? Doubtful.