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With the Autumn Equinox being today, let’s look back at the Summer of 2020, the hottest ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.
June through August of 2020, the three months that mark meteorological summer, was 2.11 degrees above average in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, the summer of 2020 ended up as the hottest since weather records began 141 years ago. Prior to this year, both 2016 and 2019 had broken the charts with the hottest summers on record. In addition, the five hottest meteorological summers in the Northern Hemisphere have occurred since 2015.
As the Northern Hemisphere baked, Arctic sea ice had another year of huge losses. In August, Arctic sea ice was 29.4 percent below the 1981-2010 climatological average, making it the third smallest sea ice extent on record.
Besides sea ice loss, natural disasters were plentiful in August alone. The leading story for August 2020 was Category 4 Hurricane Laura, striking southwest Louisiana as the strongest hurricane on record that area has ever experienced. Not to be outdone, record-breaking wildfires broke out in California and Oregon.
Record-setting temperatures were not only felt across the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of Australia and South America also had their warmest June through August period on record. The most above-average temperatures for June through August came across northern areas of the globe, with temperatures more than 3.6 degrees above average in parts of the Northeast and Southwest U.S., eastern Canada, northern Russia and the North Pacific Ocean.
Looking forward to the remainder of 2020, National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) scientists expect the year to rank as one of the five hottest on record for Earth. It is evident that in the past several years, Earth has been breaking records as it becomes a warmer planet.
Sources: ncei.noaa.gov, noaa.gov
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Story Image: The Golden Gate Bridge is barely visible through smoke from wildfires on Wednesday morning, Sept. 9, 2020 (AP Photo/Eric Risberg).