How did your state or county fare last year, weather-wise? A new interactive map, released Jan. 15 by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, uses government data to provide the data in a 50-state interactive map. / NRDC
If you think 2012 was a tough year for weather in the United States, you're right - it was.
Thousands of monthly weather records were broken - and now you can see where, on an interactive 50-state map released Tuesday by an environmental group.
Last year, 3,527 such records were broken for heat, rain and snow, up from 3,251 in 2011, according to U.S. government data. Some of the records had stood for 30 years or more. That reflects serious climate change, says the Natural Resources Defense Council, which created the map.
Last week, the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., confirmed that 2012 was the warmest year on record for the USA, where weather records date to 1895. The average temperature was 55.3 degrees, 3.2 degrees above the 20th-century average, and 1 degree above 1998, the prior record-setting year.
Yet the NRDC map captures other weather events, too, presenting them state by state and even county by county. It considers them record-breaking if they exceed the monthly maximum for the past 30 years. It links them to climate change, citing a 2012 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that found at least a 66% chance that human activities - primarily the burning of fossil fuels - have worsened extreme temperatures and coastal extreme high water.
Which states were affected the most last year? The top 10, listed in alphabetical order, are: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Weather records show Superstorm Sandy's storm surge height, 13.88 feet, broke the all-time record in the New York Harbor and last summer's drought was the worst in 50 years while wildfires burned more than 9.2 million acres.
A draft of the third Climate Assessment Report, prepared by a federal advisory committee and released Friday, says climate change is already affecting how Americans live and work. It says the average U.S. temperature has increased by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, and more than 80% of that occurred since 1980. It projects a further increase of 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the next few decades.
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Read the original story: 50-state map tracks climate-related 2012 weather records