New Jersey sets record in 2012 for warmest year

Superstorm Sandy was the biggest weather story in New Jersey this year, but there’s another story worth paying attention to: 2012 was the warmest year on record.

 November 2012 was the only time in 22 months that temperatures in the Garden State were not above the long-term average.

State Climatologist Dave Robinson of Rutgers says it was one of the top ten warmest years globally because of the so-called greenhouse effect.

“Some of this is natural variability, but what we’re doing to the environment, we meaning humans, is amplifying things a bit, making the warm warmest, maybe changing weather patterns, that’s something still under active investigation,” said Robinson.

Robinson says the jet stream also stayed to the north, helping push up temperatures.

“Last winter it stayed up along the Canadian-U.S. border and didnt allow much cold air in,” said Robinson. “Over the summer when the jet normally stays to the north it didn¹t have hardly any chance of sneaking down here to give us a breath of cooler aid so we had yet another very warm summer.”

He anticipates the warm weather pattern will continue in 2013, although not every month may have higher than normal temperatures.