The Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University reported Tuesday that this is the hottest year on record in the region since record keeping started.
The regional Climate Center reports that the average temperature in the 12-state northeast region was 49.9 degrees from January through July, the warmest seven-month period since 1895, when systematic record keeping began. NOAA Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University Climatologist Kathryn Vreeland notes that the data is strictly temperature measurements from land based observations.
Vreeland says unusually warm temperatures in March may have skewed this year’s temperatures.
University at Albany Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences Assistant Professor Ryan Torn says it is hard to attribute any one event to climate change.
Farmers watch the subtleties of weather as they work the fields and care for livestock. Vermont Farm Bureau President Clark Hinsdale says farmers have been noting changes.
The temperatures are recorded by a network of land based cooperative weather observers and first order stations. The Northeast Regional Climate Center also reports that all states in the region excluding Maine continue to have abnormally dry conditions.
