For people throughout the eastern United States who spent January slipping, sliding and shivering, here is a counterintuitive fact: For the Earth as a whole, it was the fourth-warmest January on record.
It was, in fact, the 347th consecutive month with temperatures higher than the 20th-century average, the government reported Thursday.
But on a map of January temperatures released Thursday by government weather analysts, the eastern U.S. stood out as one of the coldest areas on the planet, compared with seasonal norms.
That is no surprise to anybody living east of the Mississippi River, of course – certainly not to the Atlantans who were caught up in two memorable ice storms that shut down the city, or the New Yorkers who are still picking their way through mounds of dirty snow.
But this might be another surprise: Despite all the weather drama, it was not a January for the record books.
By the time analysts averaged the heat in the West and the cold in the East, the national temperature for the month fell only one-tenth of a degree lower than the 20th-century average for January. January 2011, a mere three years ago, was colder.
No state set a monthly record for January cold. Alabama, also walloped by the ice storms, came closest, with the fourth-coldest January on its record books.
The United States covers only 2 percent of the surface of the globe, and so temperatures in this country do not have much influence on overall global temperatures.
Brazil, much of southern Africa, most of Europe, large parts of China and most of Australia were unseasonably warm in January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday. That continues a pattern of global warming believed to be a consequence of human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases.
More than a third of the U.S. is in drought of varying intensity, raising the likelihood of severe wildfires.