Hot USA In 2023 As Last Year's Final Climate Change Figures Keep Trickling In

National ranking by state of 2023 temperatures
compared to the past 129 years. Red states had their
hottest year on record in 2023. Dark orange states 
were much warmer than normal. 

The number crunchers are still working through the climate data for the hot year of 2023 - widely expected to be the world's hottest on record.  

One of the latest batches came out Tuesday, when we learned that the Lower 48 of the United States had its fifth hottest year on record. 

Six states - Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi,  New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Texas - had their warmest years on record. 

Vermont was among five states that had their second warmest year, though as reported earlier, the National Weather Service office in South Burlington had its hottest year on record in 2023. 

No states had a cooler than average 2023. Only one state, that being Nevada, had a near normal temperature year. The rest of the Lower 48 was on the warm side. 

The 2023 national overall heat was given a year end boost when the Lower 48 had its warmest December on record. 

Seven states all in or adjacent to the Northern Plains, had their hottest December on record. Twelve states, including Vermont, had their second warmest December. All states were warmer than average. In the rankings of the past 129 years, Florida had the "coolest" ranking. It was only the 88th warmest out of 129 years in the Sunshine State. 

The nation as a whole had a near-normal amount of precipitation in December. The Rockies and parts of the Gulf Coast and Mid-South were on the dry side, but the Upper Midwest and especially the East Coast were sodden in December. 

Minnesota, New Jersey and Delaware had their wettest December.  Here in Vermont we had our fifth wettest December. 

This is just a little bit of data. More important information on how the whole world did in 2023 is coming in - a new batch just arrived Friday.  I will of course update this as soon as we can. (Wind storm news is putting me a little behind schedule, but oh well)

Report: Vermont Among U.S. Places With Cleanest Air

A blue sky day with very clean air in St. Albans, Vermont
last summer. Vermont had some of the least 
polluted air in the nation, according to a recent report
from the American Lung Association.

 Breathe free, my fellow Vermonters. 

The American Lung Association says that at least in 2020, the Burlington, Vermont metropolitan area was among the five cities with the least air pollution. 

This from a report  from the American Lung Association's annual national air quality report card called "State Of The Air."

The report looks at trends in air pollution nationally, and drills down to look at where pollution is at its worst, and where the air is relatively clean. 

The Association says it uses the most recent air pollution data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency for the two most widespread types of pollution -- ozone and particle pollution.  Ozone is basically smog and particle pollution is basically tiny bits of soot floating around in the air. 

Data from air quality monitors is a big part of what goes into this report. 

The top five metro areas in the United States for clean air were listed alphabetically, not by rank. They are Burlington/South Burlington, Vermont, Charlottesville, Virginia, Elmira/Corning, New York, Honolulu, Hawaii and Wilmington, North Carolina. 

My guess is Vermont is lightly populated, so there's not a lot of cars and factories to belch stuff into the air. The wind often comes from the direction of Hudson Bay or thereabouts, and the air up in central Canada tends to be clean.  And Vermont generally has pretty good pollution regulations. 

That's not to say we don't have pollution.  Especially in the winter, particulates get stuck under inversions in valleys, causing some bouts of bad air. 

According to State of the Air, most of the worst cities for ozone and particulate pollution were in California. 

Some other takeaways from the report:

More than 40 percent of Americans or over 135 million people live in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution.

People of color are more than three times as likely as others to be living in places with polluted air. 

One bit of good news is 14.8 million people lived in areas with heavy air pollution in 2020 than the year before. Most of that was due to a decrease in ozone pollution. My speculation is that the pandemic caused less driving due to all those lockdowns. Vehicles cause the bulk of ozone pollution so this makes sense to me. 

More info from the report:

"Los Angeles remains the city with the worst ozone pollution in the nation, as it has for all but one of the 22 years tracked by the "State of the Air" report.  Fairbanks, Alaska earned the unfortunate distinction of being the metropolitan area with the worst short-term particle pollution for the first time. And Bakersfield, California returned to the most polluted slot for year-round particle pollution for the second year in a row."

Now that the economy is recovering, and the pandemic will hopefully wane later this year, I'm guessing there will be a lot more vehicle traffic on the roads.  That will probably increase ozone pollution this year. 

I also wonder if wildfire smoke has increased particulate pollution in recent years.  There's an intensifying drought in much of the West, which experts say could well lead to a very bad wildfire season this summer and fall.

Time will tell.