Say what you will about global warming, the past summer has been hotter than most summers. Indeed, the month of July was the hottest month on record for the continental United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Globally, the month of July ranked as the fourth warmest July since people began keeping records in 1880.
“The Northern Hemisphere land surface temperature for July 2012 was the all-time warmest July on record, at 2.14°F above average . . .the fourth month in a row that the Northern Hemisphere has set a new monthly land temperature record,” according to the National Climatic Data Center.
The map above shows temperature anomalies for July 2012 – i.e., how much warmer or cooler each area was in July 2012 compared with the average for the month from 1951 to 1980 based on publicly available data from 6,300 meteorological stations located around the world. The darkest reds are as much as 7° Fahrenheit above the historical norm for the month; white is normal; the darkest blues are 7° Fahrenheit below normal, according to an analysis by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.