Ask a Climatologist: 32 degrees doesn’t sound warm, but still broke records

Graphic Courtesy of the National Weather Service

The forecast for much of Alaska is for extreme cold next week, but the state just recorded its warmest year on record.

Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist in Anchorage who closely tracks Alaska climate data and trends. Alaska’s Energy Desk is checking in with him regularly as part of the segment, Ask a Climatologist.

“It doesn’t matter what geographic area you’re looking at,” Brettschneider said. “Whether you’re talking the globe, Alaska, the United States…everyone had their warmest year on record.”

So, how warm was it? Well, it was freezing. The average temperature for the year was 32 degrees.

“That may not sound very warm,” Brettschneider said, “but when you consider the second warmest year was 30.2 degrees and normal is just over 27 that’s a huge step up.”

2014 had been the previous record holder at 30.2 degrees.

“We busted that by almost two whole degrees,” he said.

Everywhere was warm, from north to south, east to west.

“Anchorage, Nome, Juneau all the way up to the North Slope,” he said. “Everyone except for Fairbanks. They were, I think, the third warmest, but pretty much no matter where you look in the state it was their warmest year on record.”

Places like Utqiagvik and Deadhorse on the North Slope stood out to Bretthschneider for how much they exceeded normal temperatures.

“They were the only places in all of North America that were more than seven degrees above normal for the year. And they broke their annual records by about two whole degrees,” he said. “So that was really the core of where the anomalous warmth was.”

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