How hot is it?

With temperatures slated to shoot up again next week, how hot has it been?

According to federal climate scientists, the first half of this year has been Pittsburgh's warmest on record. Moreover, the National Climatic Data Center announced in their "State of the Climate” report:

The last 12-month period on the mainland United States, it notes, were the warmest on record. What’s notable, however, is that every single one of the last 13 months were in the top third for their historical distribution–i.e., April 2012 was in the top third for warmest Aprils, etc.

The odds of this being a random fluke -- and not due to climate change -- is about 1 in 100,000. Or as Jerry Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research put it, “This is what global warming is like. And we’ll see more of this as we go into the future.”

Swell!