The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last week that temperature data recorded at the Pittsburgh International Airport has shown that the first nine months of 2012 in Pittsburgh were the hottest in 65 years.
The article reported that other cities in the region that also experienced warmest ever first nine months of the year, including Erie (87 years), Harrisburg (65 years), Scranton (63 years), Allentown (65 years), and Philadelphia (65 years) in Pennsylvania; Buffalo, N.Y. (74 years), and Cincinnati (65 years), Cleveland (74 years) and Columbus (65 years) in Ohio.
M. Granger Morgan, who heads Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy, said NOAA’s temperature numbers are another example of how mounting data continues to support the probability that climate change is occurring.
“What has happened is that scientists are looking at extreme heat and extreme precipitation and extreme events and looking at the probability that the events could occur by chance,” Mr. Morgan said. “But the odds are continuing to shrink that this is not just variability, and that all of these events are related to climate change.”