2021 Was World's Sixth Hottest; United States' Fourth Warmest Year On Record

The only part of the world that was cooler than average was
an area of the eastern Pacific Ocean, due to La Nina, a
natural cycle in that area of oceans. 

The world experienced its sixth hottest year on record in 2021, say NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information.

Last year had a La Nina weather pattern. Such a pattern which involves a notable cooling off the waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the west coasts of South and Central America. 

This phenomenon tends to bring down global temperatures a bit.  Which means that 2021 scoring within the top ten warmest was quite a feat.  

Hmm. Makes you think climate change is continuing on, unabated. 

The data that just came in means that each of the last nine years is somewhere in the top 10 of warmest years in Earth's recorded history.  Also, if you're under the age of 45, you've never experienced a year that on a global basis that was cooler than the 20th century average.

The following little factoid from the Centers for Environmental Information might help explain why the past decade has been so hot:

"The annual global surface temperature has increased at an average rate of +0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1880; however, since 1981 the average rate of increase is more than twice that rate (+0.32 degrees Fahrenheit)."

NOAA had another stat that alarmed me: 

"The upper ocean heat content, (OHC) which addresses the amount of heat stored in the 0-2,000 meters depth of the ocean, was record high in 2021, surpassing the previous record set in 2020. The seven highest OHC have all occurred in the last seven years."

The oceans act as storage for added global heating in the future.  Also, the La Nina pattern that supposedly cools the world will at some point revert to the opposite, known as El Nino.  That tends to warm the world, as a little extra of that stored heat content in the oceans is released into the atmosphere, giving a boost to global air temperatures. 

As I just wrote recently, climate change in many cases likely worsened weather disasters in 2021.  A very warm El Nino year could potentially really accelerate these weather extremes. 

By the way, December, being the fifth hottest on record, contributed to the hot 2021 globally. In December, the only land areas that were cooler than average were western Canada and a corner of northwestern Europe.   

 UNITED STATES

All of the United States averaged warmer than normal in
2021, except for the scattered white areas in the South,
which were near normal. 

Climatologists have been crunching the numbers and have just come up with this stat: The United States experienced its fourth warmest year in 2021.

The six warmest years on record in the United States have all occurred since 2012.  They've been keeping track of annual temperatures for 127 years.  

The 2021 heat was widespread.  No state had their warmest year on record, though New Hampshire and Maine had their second hottest year on record. 

Nineteen states, including Vermont, had one of their top five hottest years in this data set. Only 13 states in the Lower 48 did not have one of their top ten warmest years. 

Almost all of the Lower 48 had warmer than normal temperatures for the year. The only exceptions were a handful of places in the Southeast between Texas and Georgia, which were near normal. 

Most of those areas were ground zero for intense February cold snap that brought the coldest weather in 30 years to these areas.  That spell helped bring down the year's average a bit.  

Last Year Was One Big Disaster. In The Weather Department, Too

Hurricane Ida was the costliest of 20 weather and climate
disasters the United States suffered, each of which cost
at least $1 billion. Ida cost $75 billion.
Photo by Michael DeMocker 

Anyone who reads this here blog thingy knows there were lots of huge weather and climate disasters last year. Now we have the receipts. 

Last year, there were 20 United States weather/climate disasters. Only the previous year - 2020 - had more billion dollar disasters. Also, last year's billion plus dollar calamities killed 688 people, the most in a single year since 2011, according to NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information.

The disasters included eight episodes of severe thunderstorms, four tropical cyclones, three tornado outbreaks, two big floods, a drought/heat wave and a wildfire outbreak.   

This was the seventh year in a row in which the United States had ten or more weather disasters, each costing $1 billion or more. 

Hurricane Ida was the costliest natural disaster of the year, with losses of $75 billion.  It is among the top five most expensive hurricanes on record.

The huge Arctic blast and winter storm that affected much of the nation's middle, especially Texas, was the nation's most expensive winter storm on record, with losses of $24 billion.  This is more than double the previous winter storm record holder, which was the Superstorm of March, 1993, in inflation adjusted dollars. 

The global insurer Munich RE said natural disasters (though many of them were made worse by climate change) caused $280 billion in losses, of which just $120 billion was insured. Last year was roughly tied with 2005 and 2011 as the second worst year in insured losses (inflation adjusted) due to these disasters.  The year 2017 was the worst in insured losses, amounting to $146 billion, mostly caused by a string of hurricanes.  

It wasn't just the United States. Summer floods in and near
Germany cost an estimated $54 billion.

In Europe, massive flash flooding in 2021 caused $54 billion in losses. However, the bulk of the 2021 disasters were in the United States. 

Munich Re had this to say regarding the relationship between the 2021 disasters and climate change:

"The 2021 disaster statistics are striking because some of the extreme weather events are of the kind that are likely to become more frequent or more severe as a result of climate change. Among those are severe storms in the USA, including the winter half-year, or heavy rain followed by floods in Europe.  

For hurricanes, scientists anticipate that the proportion of severe storms and of storms with extreme rainfall will increase because of climate change. Even though events cannot automatically be attributed to climate change, analysis of the changes over decades provides plausible indications of a connection with the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans. Adapting to increasing risks due to climate change will be a challenge."

If you want a translation of the above away from PR speak from an insurer's perspective, it's this: "We're screwed."

The year 2022 is barely two weeks old, and I certainly don't think there's been any billion dollar disasters yet. But costs are already mounting, and will continue to mount this month with some slightly smaller scale disasters.

Those include winters storms and flooding last week in Washington State. Another winter storm caused many millions in damage in the Mid-Atlantic States at the start of the year. On top of that, a large new winter storm is forecast to cause havoc and damage over the next several days from across the south from Louisiana to Georgia, then on up the East Coast all the way to New England.    

Warm December Finishes Up Second Warm Year On Record In Vermont

Springlike conditions amid record high temperatures in
the low 60s on December 16 in St. Albans, Vermont. A
warm December contributed to making 2021 tie as
the second warmest year on record. 

If you thought there was a lot of warm weather in Vermont during 2021 you were right.

The year ended with a flourish - a warm December. That helped make Burlington, Vermont create a tie for the second hottest year on record.  That's out of about 140 years of records. 

In Burlington, the average temperature for the year was 49.4 degrees, which ties with last year as being the second warmest year on record. The warmest was 49.9 degrees in 2012.

There's quite a warm year trend going here. 

All but one year in the top ten warmest list in Burlington has been since 2006. The other outlying year, 1998, is still pretty damn recent. Each of the past six years, except 2019, have been in the top seven warmest.  The year 2019 was warmer than average, but missed being in the top 10.

Vermont is in good company with having one of the hottest years on record.  I'm sure I'll discover in the coming days dozens upon dozens of U.S. cities that had their warmest years, if not the warmest. 

In New England, Providence had its warmest year on record (54.0 degrees) beating the old record set just last year. Boston also had its warmest year at 54.4 besting 2012 by 0.2 degrees. Hartford and Worcester had their fifth warmest years. 

Newark, New Jersey had its warmest year on record, too.  New York City scored in the top five. State College, Pennsylvania had its warmest year on record. It goes on and on.  At least nine cities in the eastern United States had their hottest year on record and several dozen scored in the Top 10.

Back here in Vermont December certainly contributed to the year's warmth. The mean temperature came out to 31.8 degrees, which makes it the fourth warmest on record. Montpelier and St. Johnsbury were also well above average

It was another dry month in a relatively dry year. Burlington was almost three quarters of an inch on the dry side in December. Montpelier was about 1.3 inches short. 

For the year, Burlington had 35.15 inches of rain, which was 2.38 inches below normal.

The hottest day of the year was June 7, when it got to 97 degrees. That's unusual, since the hottest day of the year is usually in July or August. 

There were 19 days with thunderstorms, 86 days with snow and 137 with rain, reports the National Weather Service in South Burlington 

I'll have a review of the top Vermont weather events of 2021 in an upcoming post. 

United States Weird Weather Of 2021: Things Really Got Out Of Hand

Middlebury, Vermont made the cut in the Weather Channel's
list of weirdest national weather of 2021. A tornado
struck the town on March 26, severely damaging this
home. It's the only known March tornado to have
occurred in Vermont 

The Weather Channel in one of their year end reviews, highlights a list of what they view were the weirdest weather events of the year.

They had plenty to pick from this year, with the weather so often off the rails, due largely to climate change.

Most of the weird list includes odd warm and hot spells and strange storms in places that aren't used to such things. 

 Vermont made the Weather Channel's list of weird weather. They highlighted that tornado that struck Middlebury in March.  Tornadoes are rare in Vermont and they're completely unheard of in March in the Green Mountain State. At least until now, I guess. 

Speaking of tornadoes, New Jersey seems to be the nation's new Tornado Alley. Thirteen tornadoes have been confirmed in New Jersey this year, as opposed to the annual average of one or two.

Wildfires loomed large in the headlines during 2021. Among the weirdest moments was a photo of a snow making machine going full blast at a ski resort called Sierra at Tahoe resort in August. They were not trying to get an early jump on the ski season.

It was a desperate attempt to wet the ground and increase the humidity in the air as a huge wildfire approached the resort.  Between the snow making machines, firefighter efforts and luck, the resort survived the fire.  

In other smoky news, a huge area of Siberia was on fire this summer, something that has become increasingly common.  But for maybe the first time in recorded history, smoke from the fires went right over the North Pole in August.  

Snowmaking equipment was pressed into service this 
summer at a Nevada ski resort to battle huge wildfires in
the region.  Photo by Josh Edelson/AFP via 
Getty Images.

NASA scientists can't absolutely confirm this is the first time it happened, it does seem to be the first time this has been caught on satellite imagery. 

The Weather Channel says another wildfire in British Columbia generated an enormous thunderstorm the size of Georgia

The updrafts from the intense heat and smoke of wildfires sometimes generate clouds known as pyrocumulonimbus, which is a thunderstorm generated by those updrafts. These are dangerous because they produce erratic winds that spread the wildfire beneath it. The lightning spitting out of these pyro-clouds start new fires.

This one was arguably the worst fire-generated thunderstorm on record. It yielded 113,000 cloud to lighting bolts, which is 5 percent of Canada's normal yearly total. That's impressive, as thousands of thunderstorms form in the vast landscape of Canada each year.

There was also strange heat in places we wouldn't expect. We know about British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest in June. But how about this? It was100 degrees in North Dakota. At the end of September. 

It does sometimes get to 100 degrees in that northern state in the middle of summer. But it certainly has never happened on September 28. Until this year. It got up to 100 degrees in Dickenson and Watford.

The other odd heat wasn't that hot, but certainly bizarre for the location.  The top of Greenland's ice sheet is more than 10,000 feet above sea level and is always frigid.  

Ice core data indicates it had never been above freezing at Summit from at least the late 1800s to 1995, when it briefly got above freezing. Other brief thaws happened in 2012 and 2019. But rain had never been seen there.

Until August 14, when it rained at Summit Station and stayed above freezing for nine hours.  If all that isn't a disconcerting  sign of climate change I don't know what is. 

In other warm weather news, cherry blossoms in Kyoto, Japan bloomed the earliest in the season in at least 1,200 years. 

And one final small weird moment: Near Madison, Wisconsin in September, small hail that resembled donuts or more accurately Cheerios turned up. 

Photos: Vermont Year In Review - Weather And Nature

At the end of every December,  I like to put together a YouTube slide show of some of my favorite weather and nature photographs from the year.  

This year is no exception. Like the year before, I didn't get out quite as much as I would have liked, due to a busy schedule and some restrictions due to Covid. 

Many of the photos were shot right on my St. Albans, Vermont property.

Having a good view and plenty of flower gardens does help. 

Although we had our extremes here in Vermont, mostly on the heat side, the weather year in the Green Mountain State wasn't nearly as off the rails and as dangerous as it was in many parts of the world. 

Which of course is great, and I hope our luck continues in 2022. 

Weather off the rails can make for some great photographs. The snow in spring photos in my slide show are a small example of that. 

That said, I'm not exactly into death and destruction weather, so here's hoping my photos for the upcoming new year feature mostly pretty clouds, flowers and trees as they did this year. 

As always, mobile uses might not be able to see the video on this screen, so click on this hyperlink to view.

Or if you see the video image below, click on the arrow and the the YouTube logo for best viewing 

Here ya go! 

Yes, Vermont Has Had A Humid, Icky Summer. Especially Nights

Flowers in my St. Albans, Vermont garden on a humid

morning this past July. It's been a VERY humid

summer in Vermont. 

If you think this summer in Vermont has been more humid Florida than refreshing cool Green Mountain State,  you're right.  

The normal spells of cool, dry air have been hard to come by this summer and August has been particularly terrible in that regard. 

One way to judge the humidity of a particular summer is to look at whether there's been a lot of warm nights. The temperatures stays up on muggy nights  compared to evenings when the humidity is low.

 If you get a night in Vermont that stays at 70 or above, it's stuffy, no matter how you look at it. 

To prove my point that this summer has been a humid one around here, the following paragraphs might have more than a few numbers. But it's pretty illustrative. 

So far this year, there have been 18 days in Burlington, Vermont that failed to get under 70 degrees for an overnight low. 

I haven't been able to check all years, but the number of days that failed to get below 70 in Burlington  seems iclose to a record.  Last year is considered the hottest summer on record in Burlington, but there were only 10 days that never got below 70 degrees. 

The year 1949, which had the most 90s on record, had only 14 days that stayed above 70.   This year so far we've had twelve 90 degree days, definitely well above normal but not close to the record of 26 such days. 

The year 2018  is so far barely beating out this year for stuffy nights .  There was 19 days at or above 70 that year. The year 2018 was the third hottest summer on record. It looks like this summer will come in fourth of fifth on that list.  

The bouts of stuffy nights this summer have been long lasting, We had four consecutive nights in late June in which that temperature stayed at or above 70 degrees.

July was regarded as relatively "cool" but that's because we had so many clouds that daytime temperatures were suppressed. We still had two 70 degree nights in July and many overnight "lows" that month were in the mid and upper 60s.    

Burlington had five consecutive days that stayed at or above 70 degrees from August 9-13, the longest stretch since 1901. We just endured a full week in which the low temperature was 69 or higher, with five of those seven nights staying at or above 70 degrees.

The more consecutive nights in which it is uncomfortable for sleeping, the more dangerous it gets. Many houses in Vermont have no air conditioning.  The longer a period of icky humid weather lasts, the more it can wear a person down.  That gets risky for people with underlying health conditions.  That's why we're always told to get people into cool spots like air conditioned rooms to give them and their bodies a break.

This morning in Burlington spelled slight "relief" as it was 66 degrees for  a low. But we have more Florida like weather to endure the next two days or so. 

All this mugginess and these uncomfortable nights in Vermont are consistent with climate change.  The world is getting hotter, so you it stands to reason that it would get hotter. Hotter air in general can hold more moisture, so it stands to reason that we'd get more humid weather, especially if the air flow is off the tropical Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, which is frequent in the summer.

In the short term, relief is on the way. It's the end of August, so cold fronts are starting to have a little more oomph than they did midsummer.

A cold front is coming through Thursday night, and you are going to LOVE Friday.  The sun will be out, daytime temperatures will be only in the low 70s. More importantly, dew points will be in the 50s.  Dew points temperatures are a good measure of how uncomfortable it is out there.  

If the dew point is near 70, which it has been most of the time in the past week. If dew points are in the 50s, it's very comfortable.

We stand the risk of having more bouts of humidity as we go into September, but those periods will get shorter and shorter and weaker and weaker as we head into autumn.  It looks like it might get quite sticky again early next week, but that spell shouldn't last nearly as long as the one we are enduring now. 

This Year's Spring Weather Made Vermont's Annual Maple Sugar Harvest Suck

A truck collects maple sap gathered in St. Albans, Vermont
this past March 21.  The sugaring season was lackluster
due mostly to early bouts of unseasonably warm weather.

The recent bout of winter weather in Vermont notwithstanding, a very warm, very early spring really screwed up our all-important maple sugaring season. 

Most maple producers only made 40 to 70 percent of their average crop during this year's season, according to the Associated Press, sourcing from the Burlington Free Press

A much-too-premature bout of 70 degree weather in March plus low sugar content in the maple sap are to blame for the lackluster yield.   

Vermont's maple sugar harvest usually runs from late February into April. Record warmth from March 23 to 26 brought a premature ending to season, especially for producers in the warmer valleys of the Green Mountain State. 

In northeastern Vermont and in some higher elevations, where the sugaring season often lasts well into April, a long spell of more record and near record warmth between April 8 and 14 put the kibosh on the season. 

Though yields were down this year, it doesn't look like there will be a maple supply shortage. The Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association says one off year won't mess up supplies.  If we have several bad years in a row, then it becomes a problem.

Vermont is by far the nation's leading maple producer.  We normally produce about 2 million gallons of syrup, which makes up more than half of all U.S. production. 

Climate change is disrupting and altering Vermont's famed sugaring season. The Proctor Maple Research Center says sugaring season starts 8.3 days earlier and ends 11.6 days earlier than it did five decades ago. 

The season also tends to end earlier than it once did.  Though there have been some great maple yields in recent years, there have been a disturbing recent few years, like this one, in which erratic weather disrupted the season.