With Americans seeking all manner of ways to cool down from record temperatures, Summer 2024 has baked its way into the history books as the fourth hottest on record for the US, per a NOAA report.
That was a remarkable 1.4-degree above the record average for the meteorological summer - June to August - for the contiguous US, at an average of 23.2 degrees Celsius. Many cities broke their all-time temperature records in the scorching heat, creating a striking image of a warming climate, Xinhua news agency reported.
"Arizona, California, Florida, Maine and New Hampshire all sizzled through their warmest summer on record," NOAA reported Tuesday. That translated into especially sweltering urban centers: this summer, Phoenix and the state of Arizona averaged a temperature of 37.2 degrees Celsius.
But the sizzling heat didn't stop at the lower 48. In one of those astonishing incidents, on August 6, Deadhorse Airport in Alaska reported a temperature of 31.7 degrees Celsius, beating the previous all-time high back in July 2016. This reading also marked the highest temperature in Alaska north of 70 degrees latitude.
While some areas suffered from intense heat, other areas faced extreme weather conditions.
No less than three tropical systems crossed the US in August alone: Hurricane Debby which crossed Florida and South Carolina; Tropical Storm Ernesto brought intense flooding and power outages to Puerto Rico.
The implications of this hot summer have gone beyond the season itself. According to NOAA data, the first eight months of 2024 ranked as the second-warmest year-to-date in the 130-year climate record. The average US temperature for the period January-August was 13.8 degrees Celsius, 1.7 degrees above the 20th-century average.
In fact, as communities across the nation continue with life according to these changing climate patterns, this summer's data simply serves as a serious reminder that global warming impacts are still afoot. With several months to go before the year comes to an end, 2024 is poised very well to be one of the hottest years on record for the US.
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