How warm was it? '06 a U.S. record

Another sign of climate change, experts say

WASHINGTON — Here's one convenient truth for anyone worried about heating bills: 2006 was the warmest ever recorded in the United States.

The oddly balmy December pushed the year to a new heat record, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

That's good news for homeowners, who saw their energy needs cut by 13.5 percent, the center said.

But it's bad news for people who worry about global warming, like Al Gore. The former vice president's movie "An Inconvenient Truth," released last year, warns that the poles are melting, rainfall is being disrupted and hurricanes are increasing.

"This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world," Britain's Meteorological Office said.

The center's preliminary data, reported Tuesday, listed the average temperature for the 48 states last year as 55 degrees. That's 2.2 degrees warmer than average and 0.07 degrees warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record.

"There's no denying that climate change is occurring, and warmer winters and warmer years are more common for that reason,'' said Jay Lawrimore, monitoring chief for the U.S. climate data center, which keeps the nation's weather records. "What we're seeing (in 2006) is just becoming so much more common.''

Worldwide, the agency said, it was the sixth warmest year on record.

The center said it is not clear how much of the warming is a result of greenhouse-gas induced climate change and how much resulted from the current El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The average U.S. and global temperatures are both about 1 degree warmer than at the start of the 20th century, a change many scientists attribute to gases released into the atmosphere by industry.

President Bush, however, has called the source of global warming — man-made or natural — a "fundamental debate."

AP, Gannett News Service

• World's six warmest years since 1890s (starting with warmest): 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006

• Chicago's 10 warmest years (starting with warmest): 1921, 1931, 1998, 1953, 1954, 1973, 1938, 1955, 1922, 2006

• Total warming since mid-1970s: about 1 degree

• Total warming in last 100 years: about 1.4 degrees

Highest temperature ever recorded in world: 136 degrees in El Azizia, Libya, in 1922

Highest temperature ever recorded in U.S.: 134 degrees in Death Valley, Calif., in 1913

Sources: NASA, National Climatic Data Center