NOAA announces Summer 2014 was warmest ever on Earth

2014 has been officially announced as the warmest summer on Earth, since records began in 1880. The newest climate report published by the National Climate Data Center at NOAA released the information today as well as other in-depth information from around the world for this summer and its individual months. In addition to the summer as a whole being the warmest on record, August 2014 was also the warmest August ever recorded on Earth, finishing 0.75 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average.

While the summer in our area was relatively average, if not cool, the ocean waters throughout the globe and different land areas worldwide led to the wildly above-average temperatures. The summer as a whole finished 0.71 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. The ocean temperatures set a record high anomaly for all months.

Noticeable on almost all graphs and data is the fact that the Eastern United States featured normal to slightly below normal temperatures, while surrounded on all sides by temperatures which were well above average. So no, your impression that this summer was not very hot in our area isn’t a fallacy — it just so happens that the rest of the globe didn’t follow suit.

Climate summary from August 2014 (NOAA).

Possibly the most impressive statistic of all? According to NOAA this is the 38th consecutive August and 354th consecutive month with a global average temperature above the average from the 20th century.