WASHINGTON – June 7 - So far, 2012 has been the warmest year the United States has ever seen, with the warmest spring and the second-warmest May since record-keeping began in 1895, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Thursday.
Temperatures
for the past 12 months and the year-to-date have been the warmest on record for
the contiguous United States, NOAA said.
The
average temperature for the contiguous 48 states for meteorological spring,
which runs from March through May, was 57.1 degrees F (13.9 C), 5.2 degrees
(2.9 C) above the 20th century long-term average and 2 degrees F (1.1 C) warmer
than the previous warmest spring in 1910.
Record
warmth and near-record warmth blanketed the eastern two-thirds of the country
from this spring, with 31 states reporting record warmth for the season and 11
more with spring temperatures among their 10 warmest.
"The
Midwest and the upper Midwest were the epicenters for this vast warmth,"
Deke Arndt of NOAA's Climatic Data Center said in an online video. That meant
farming started earlier in the year, and so did pests and weeds, bringing
higher costs earlier in the growing season, Arndt said.
"This
warmth is an example of what we would expect to see more often in a warming
world," Arndt said.
More
long-lasting heat waves, record-high daytime temperatures and record-high
overnight low temperatures are to be expected in a warming world, said Jake
Crouch of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.
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