Every Summer Is Hot Now in Vermont, Pretty Much

A refreshing, cool summer day on Lake Champlain in
Shelburne a few years ago. Such nice weather
is geting rare in our increasingly hot
Vermont summers

It looks like we're experiencing another hot summer here in Vermont.

After a big heat wave in late June, followed by not as hot, but still muggy weather in the past week, foreasts call for another long hot spell in the upcoming week. We're in for more 90 degree weather, folks.

I guess we should be used to it now.   I checked records from the National Weather Service office in South Burlington this morning. Turns out, the last cooler than average summer in Burlington was way back in 2009 - eleven years ago. That summer wasn't all that cool, either: It was just 0.9 degrees south of the average

In those eleven years since 2009, some summers were only a little warmer than average while others were much  hotter. Four of the top ten hottest summers in Burlington have happened since 2005.

Two years ago, 2018, we had our second hottest summer with a mean temperature of 72.1 degrees. That's just 0.1 degrees off the all time record set in 1949.

We're talking climatological summer, by the way. That's the period from June 1 through August 31.

The last time we had a cooler than average summer month was in June, 2015, which was close to one degree cooler than average. The rest of that summer was definitely on the warm side, so that kept the hot summer streak going.

There is a caveat here.  I didn't get a chance to take a look at some other towns and cities in Vermont. Burlington seems to run  hotter than other towns.  Summers that were only slightly warm in Burlington, like 2017, might actually have been marginally cooler than average in places like Montpelier and St. Johnsbury.  I'll have to check.

The number of 90-degree days in Burlington seems to be on the upswing, too. So far this year, we've had ten such days, double the average for an entire year.

There were eight such days in 2019; sixteen of them in 2018;  eight in 2017 and twelve of them in 2016, for instance.

For those of you wondering if this increased Vermont heat is caused by climate change, I would say global warming has a hand in it.  It's possible natural cycles were involved too, but in all likelihood climate change gave this increased tendency toward heat an extra boost.

The bottom line here is that Vermont's reputation as a nice cool summertime retreat has taken a bit of a hit.  It's still a lot more refreshing here, than say, Miami. However, the Green Mountain State is not quite as naturally air conditioned as it once was.

July Was World's Hottest Month On Record, NOAA Says. Others Say It Was Close

Seeing red again. Most of the world was warmer than normal
in July, 2019, says NOAA. The agency says the
month was the world's hottest on record.

Much of the world endured some pretty big heat waves during July and now the official word is in from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information: July was the world's hottest month on record.

In keeping with climate change, this is part of a trend. All of the hottest Julys on record happened in the past five years, and nine out of the 10 hottest happened since 2005, says NOAA. This July was 1.71 degrees warmer than the 20th century average.

July is normally the warmest month of the year for Earth, despite it being winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Given that this July was so warm globally, that made the seventh month of 2019 the hottest.

The places that seemed to be the hottest this July were Alaska, central Europe, sections of southern Asia and southern Africa and parts of eastern North America. (Here in Vermont, in eastern North America, Burlington had its third hottest July on record. A couple New England cities had their hottest July.)

The only cool spots, at least relative to average were in parts of northeastern Europe, a bit of northeastern Siberia and central Canada.

NOAA says so far in 2019, we're tied with 2017 as the second hottest year on record out of the past 140.

Global July temperatures since around 1880. Notice a trend?

Oh, and by the way, sea ice extent in the Arctic was at a record low level in July, 2019, as NOAA continued to share this bad climate news.

Different climatalogical and meteorological organizations measure global temperatures slightly differently.

The Category 6 blog notes:

"The Japan Meteorological Agency rated July 2019 in a tie with July, 2016 for warmest month on record and NASA found that July 2019 was in a virtual tie with August, 2016.

"Minor differences in rankings between NASA, NOAA and JMA can arise because of how they handle data-sparse regions such as the Arctic, where few surface weather stations exist."

El Nino patterns tend to make the world a bit warmer, on top of the underlying global warming. In July a weak El Nino was fading into oblivion. I'm not sure if the dead/dying El Nino will have a noticeable effect on global temperatures for the remainder of the year.

Globally, January Was Second Hottest On Record

Hot times were had by almost all around the world in January, 2015.  

The trend line in global January temperatures
since about the 1880s. From NCDC.  

The third in a series of global climate assessments came out today. The closely-watched National Climatic Data Center report on January, 2015 shows the month was the second hottest on record for the Earth as a whole.

Yes, yes, I know it was chilly in New England in January and even more brutally cold in parts of the United States in February, but we're not talking about a tiny corner of the world here. We're talking about the whole thing.

The data center said January, 2015 was the second hottest on record, at least since the 1880s. Only January, 2007 was warmer. 

Says the NCDC:

"During January, 2015, record warmth was observed in parts of the Gulf of Alaska, the eastern Pacific off the coastal United States, regions of the equatorial western Pacific and the Pacific waters to the east of Australia, large areas of the western Atlantic and some isolated regions of the eastern Atlantic near the southwestern African coast."

As I noted earlier this week, NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency figured January, 2015 was the first or second hottest on record for the globe.

Also as I said earlier this week, there's no reason to think February, 2015 is going to be chilly for the Earth as a whole, despite the worst cold wave in decades now hitting the eastern half of the United States.   

Temperatures across the globe
relative to normal on Thursday. Eastern U.S and part of
southern Canada is very cold most of the rest
of the world quite warm.  

As you can see on the map, part of the United States is indeed extremely cold relative to average this week, but vast parts of the world are warmer than normal, more than making up for the U.S. chill. 

Click on the map to make it bigger and easier to read.

Note the extreme warmth near Mongolia in the central North Atlantic Ocean, parts of eastern Europe, northwestern Canada and the southwestern United States. 

The, um, climate expert Donald Trump Tweeted today that it was 25 below in parts of the U.S. and New England is buried in snow, so

therefore global warming ain't happening. 

The smart aleck in me wishes he was remote parts of Mongolia, enjoying the record heat over there.