After a warm (wet and windy) day yesterday, the chill is back today and it’ll be here through the weekend. That’s been the trend of December so far… chilly! Right now, December is only our second month of the year running cooler than normal. So don’t let this recent cool snap cloud your perspective on 2024, because 2024 is on pace to be THE hottest year for both Boston and the planet.
As I mentioned, 2024 is on pace to be the warmest year for both Boston and the entire planet. But equally remarkable, perhaps more remarkable than just one record, is how many recent years make up the top five warmest years for Boston. Temperature records for Boston go back to 1872, so out of 152 years of data, the top five warmest years have all occurred since 2010 with 3 of the last 4 years making the list. Obviously there’s a trend here… our planet is warming.
Going forward, I’ve only used data since 1936 because that’s when weather records moved out to Logan Airport and it ensures the most consistency. That said, if we used records back to 1872 not only would the trend still hold, it would be even more dramatic. But for the sake of consistency, the following is all from 1936 to 2024. The black line is the trend line and it shows just that… the trend is up. And pretty significantly. If you look closely at the data, in the last several years what is seemingly a “cold” year is still warmer than what once was considered a “warm” year at the beginning of the graph.
From there I looked at the top 25% of warmest years since 1936. Do the math and that ends up being 22 years (88 total years from 1936 to 2024). I then took the years of data and divided them into decade (technically 11 year) increments and counted how many times each decade block had a year that fell in the top 22. As you can see, the trend is undeniable. The last decade-ish (ends up being 12 years) had 8 of the top 22 warmest years and 13 of the top 22 (over half) occurring since 2000.
