USA On Historic Streak Of High-Temperature Records
The US has been on a historic streak of record-high temperatures for the last 29 months in a row — with April 2017 marking the 29th month in a row in the US where record highs outpaced record lows (generally by quite a lot).
This 29 month streak is now 10 months longer than the previous record streak, which was set 2011–2012.
To put the current historic streak in slightly different terms than before, every single month of 2015 and 2016 so far has seen more record highs than record lows across the US.
As noted before, the ratio has as of late often been quite lopsided — the ratio of new record-high temperatures compared to new record-low temperatures in the US during February 2017, for instance, was 49-to-1.
Climate Central provides more: “The monthly record stretch belies a larger trend where the ratio of record highs to lows has been growing disproportionately with each passing decade. That’s due largely to rising background temperatures driven by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“Of the five longest stretches of record highs beating record lows, 4 of the top 5 have come since 1998 (the outlier was a tie for 13 months in a row of heat set in 1980-81 and 1920-21, with the latter having comparatively few reports). Since 2000, the average year has had 9 months with more record highs.
“In comparison, the longest run of months with more lows than highs was only 13 months and came over a period in 1968-69, according to Guy Walton, a meteorologist who meticulously tracks records.”
We can probability expect this trend to continuing intensifying for the rest of our lives, and also for the rest of the lives of the children of those reading this.
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