With more snow headed our way and frigid temperatures to follow, hot weather isn't exactly on the minds of North Jersey residents . But New Jersey had its third-warmest year on record in 2023, continuing a trend of rising temperatures in the Garden State and around the globe, a new report shows.
The statewide average of 55.3 degrees last year was 3.4 degrees above the annual average going back to 1895, said a report released Saturday by David Robinson, the state climatologist and a veteran Rutgers professor.
The report came just days after governmentagencies declared that 2023 was Earth's hottest year in recorded history in what NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called a "climate crisis."
“From extreme heat to wildfires to rising sea levels, we can see our Earth is changing," Nelson said.
The majority of scientists, peer-reviewed studies and government agencies have shown that the planet is warming due in large part to human activity. Burning fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and gasoline has increased the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, preventing heat from escaping into space.
The 10 warmest years in 129 years of record-keeping in New Jersey have all come since 1998, with eight of the 10 since 2010, records show.
Trends due to warmer weather
New Jersey's temperature has increased by about 3 degrees in the last 100 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Warming has caused certain marine species such as shad and lobster that were once abundant in New Jersey's coastal waters to migrate north. Sea level rise in New Jersey has been double the global rate due to sinking coastlines coping with melting glaciers and the expansionof warmer water.
While no single weather event can be tied directly toclimatechange, rising ocean temperatures are creating more intensestorms that can dump ever-increasing amounts of rain, scientists say. New Jersey had five very wet months and seven very dry months in 2023 that still added up to an average annual precipitation of 50.2 inches, which is 2.7 inches above the 1991-to-2020 normal, the report says. December 2023 was the wettest December on record, and parts of North Jersey just experienced two significant floods within a month.
Although temperatures in the region are expected to stay at or below freezing for at least a week, winter in the northern half of the U.S. is forecast to be warmer than normal, says a long-range outlook from the National Weather Service.
That has held true so far. New Jersey had its third-warmest December on record, with an average temperature of 41.2 degrees — 4.6 degrees above normal, Robinson's report says.
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Record warmth
Below is a list of the warmest years in New Jersey in more than 125 years of record-keeping.
- 2012: 55.9 degrees
- 2020: 55.5
- 2023: 55.3
- 1998 55.2
- 2021 55.1
- 2016: 55
- 2006 55
- 2011 54.9
- 2010 54.7
- 2017 54.6
