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Last year’s 72.1 average beat the drought year of 2011 by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit. That makes 2012 the hottest year on record in Houston. 1962 comes in second with 71.9 degrees.
David brown is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southern Region office in Forth Worth.
He says it wasn’t so much a hot summer that was responsible for the warm year.
“The summer of 2012 was nothing like the summer of 2011, which broke records across Texas and across the southern plains. Really it was more in the spring and in the late fall where we saw the warmer than normal temperatures and those conditions really carried us to the overall record of 2012 in the city of Houston.”
Brown says last year will most likely go down in history as one of the top three warmest years in Texas and as the warmest ever in the United States. And he doesn’t expect it to get cooler any time soon.
“It’s clear that we’re seeing a global warming signal for the last several decades. We’re seeing that here in the United States and in the southern plains as well, including states like Texas and New Mexico, Oklahoma, all of which have had record-setting temperature conditions the last few years. I would say it’s more likely than not that in the years and decades ahead we will continue to see these kinds of warmer than normal conditions prevailing across the region.”
Records of daily temperatures in Houston are available dating back to 1892. Since 1969, official Houston temperatures have been measured at Bush Intercontinental Airport.