DETROIT – You know it was a hot summer, and now the statistics bear that out: 2012 tied with 2005 as Detroit's hottest summer on record.
Interestingly, four of our five hottest summers have occurred since 1995.Our highest temperature this summer was 102 degrees, which occurred twice in July.
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Looking at the period from January through August in Detroit, 2012 ranked as the hottest, far eclipsing the previous record set in 1998. Most notably was our record-breaking month of March, in which we set twenty-three different warm temperature records on ten different days. That warmth may have felt good at the time, but it also brought out our fruit blossoms early, which were then killed by an ensuing frost.
Nationally, twenty-three states had top-ten hottest summers according to Climate Central. Adding insult to injury, it was also the eighteenth driest summer on record for the nation, which further stressed crops. During the eight-month period from January to August, thirty-three states were record warm, and an additional twelve states were top ten warm. Only Washington state had temperatures near average for the period.
A number of people have asked me if our March and summer heat waves were caused by global warming. Let me be perfectly clear about this: global warming does not cause heat waves...natural variability causes heat waves. However, global warming increases the frequency of heat waves and makes them worse, and we have seen increasingly severe heat waves all around the world over the past decade.
Two weeks ago, I spent ninety minutes moderating a question and answer session between broadcast meteorologists and three eminent climate scientists, and the climate scientists made it very clear that they are confident about heat waves like this becoming more and more common in the decades ahead.
