Hottest Spring on Record in U.S. but not Worldwide

Spring 2000 was the hottest on record for the United States.

The National Climatic Data Center reported Friday that meteorological spring--March through May--averaged 55.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the United States. That’s 0.4 degrees warmer than the previous record, set in 1910.

The agency also noted that the United States experienced the hottest January-May in 106 years of record-keeping, a report sure to stir the debate over the potential threat of global warming.

But the same findings didn’t hold true for the rest of the world. Colder than normal waters in tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean are holding down readings so that the globally averaged temperature was 0.07 degrees below normal for spring.

Climatologist Jay Lawrimore of the data center said he is reluctant to blame global warming directly for the unusual heat in the United States.

“But for the United States to be this warm, and for Europe to be warm as well, it’s consistent with what we would expect from global warming rearing its head,” said climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

The pace of warming has been accelerating, Lawrimore said. For most of the last century, average temperatures were increasing at a rate of about one degree every hundred years. But for the last quarter-century, the rate has climbed to three degrees per 100 years, he noted.

The agency said that every state in the continental United States was warmer than normal during spring, with Texas experiencing its hottest spring on record.

It was the second-warmest spring in New Mexico, and more than 20 additional states had one of their top 10 warmest spring seasons on record. California had its 13th-warmest spring of the last 105 years.

It’s unusual to have every state above normal for a season, Lawrimore said, noting that ordinarily some states are above normal, some near normal and some below.

More information is available on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov.