This past March been the warmest since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration started keeping records in 1895. Though because I live in Florida, I can’t really tell whether it is too hot anymore. It almost always feels like it is too hot.
In addition to the last month, the three-month period of January, February and March was the warmest first quarter ever recorded in the Lower 48 states. The average was 42 degrees Fahrenheit, 6 degrees above the long-term average.
A staggering 15,292 warm temperature records were broken, (7,755 record highs and 7,517 record high overnight lows), according to Chris Vaccaro, the spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “That’s tremendously excessive. The scope and the scale of warmth was really unprecedented, said Vaccaro.
This persistent weather pattern during the month of March led to 25 states east of the Rockies having their warmest March on record, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That same pattern was responsible for cooler-than-average conditions in the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon and California, they said.
The warm temperatures also contributed to conditions that increased the number of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. There were 223 preliminary tornado reports during March, a month that averages 80 tornadoes, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center. The majority of these tornadoes occurred during a severe weather outbreak across the Ohio River Valley and Southeast in early March. The outbreak caused 40 deaths and total losses of $1.5 billion, making it the first billion-dollar disaster of 2012.
These could be indicators of climate change, or as many people put it global warming. Climate change is preferred because it accounts for severe changes in either direction. This past quarter it was unseasonably cold in Europe, so referring to it as global warming tends to be misleading. It leads people to say things like, “If global warming is real, why was it so cold this week?”
The warm temperatures also contributed to conditions that were favorable for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. There were 223 preliminary tornado reports during March, a month that averages 80 tornadoes, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center. The majority of these tornadoes occurred during a severe weather outbreak across the Ohio River Valley and Southeast in early March. The outbreak caused 40 deaths and total losses of $1.5 billion, making it the first billion-dollar disaster of 2012.
Short-term weather patterns such as the one that affected the United States are poor indicators of global climate trends, however. Parts of the world, most notably Eastern Europe, experienced below-average to extreme cold temperatures this winter.