Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Last month was second warmest April on record, but U.S. temperatures remained cooler than normal

Last month was the second warmest April on record, and marked the 350th consecutive month that the world experienced above average temperatures "largely caused by the buildup of manmade greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere," Andrea Thompson reports for Climate Central. The planet's average temperature in April was 58.5 degrees, 1.3 degrees above the average from 1951 to 1980, according to data released by NASA.

However, recent temperatures in the U.S. have been been cooler than normal, with the first four months of the year "the coldest such period in the country since 1993," with an average temperature in the contiguous U.S. of 38.7 degrees, 0.4 degrees below the 20th Century average, Thompson reports. Above-average temperatures occurred in the West Coast and Southwest, while the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains had cooler-than-normal conditions. (Read more) (National Climatic Data Center map shows rank by climatological areas)

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