Last Year Wasn’t Just Hot – It Was a Habanero

[GliderGuider]

To say that 2012 was hot is an understatement. The average temperature in the contiguous U.S. last year was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.2 degrees hotter than the 20th century average and 1 degree hotter than the previous record.

One degree may not sound sound like much, but the chart above, by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, shows just what a big deal it really is. Each line displays year-to-date temperature anomalies, going back to 1895. Significant deviations from the average temperature are rare; a small fraction of a degree separates each year. Just 0.2 degree separates the previous record average temperature holder -- 54.3 degrees in 1998 -- from the one before that, 1934.

Last year’s departure from the normal temperature exceeded the previous record's by 29 percent. It’s as if a baseball player smashed Barry Bonds’s juiced-up 73 home-run record with 102 homers in a single season. It’s as if Exxon Mobil’s $45.2 billion profit in 2008 were surpassed by a company raking in $63.3 billion. If last year’s weather were edible, it would make habanero peppers taste mild.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-09/last-year-wasn-t-just-hot-it-was-an-habanero-chart.html

[Fumesucker]

1. Holy Mother of Murphy spare us now

Well if that ain't a clue by four up side the ol' cranium.

[marions ghost]

2. Mississippi River shut down

Shippers carry about $7 billion in goods including crude oil and grain on the Mississippi in December and January. Tugboat and barge operators have warned that thousands of jobs in Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana and other states in the country’s midsection were at risk if the river shuts down, and they’ve asked Washington to find ways to increase the flow.

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[Speck Tater]

3. That's pretty significant.

I follow this stuff pretty closely, but before I saw that graph I didn't realize just how anomalous the year was.

[GliderGuider]

4. That really drives the point home, doesn't it?

I didn't realize it either till I saw the graph.