Publication Date January 1, 2018 | HuffPost

States Across U.S. See Record-Cold New Year's Day As Rest Of The World Boils

United States
The frigid cold across much of the continental United States appears to be American Exceptionalism. Image: University of Maine, Climate Change Institute
The frigid cold across much of the continental United States appears to be American Exceptionalism. Image: University of Maine, Climate Change Institute

As morning temperatures across the U.S. broke records Monday ― residents of Watertown, New York, woke up to minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit and temperatures plunged to minus 19 degrees in Des Moines, Iowa ― many other parts of the world were warmer than usual. 

Huge sections of the Arctic were among the areas that saw temperatures well above average, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, which compares daily temperature anomalies to a baseline of data from between 1979 and 2000.

Temperatures around the globe were nearly one full degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, above average on Monday. The Northern Hemisphere, which is currently experiencing winter, was 1.6 degrees F (0.9 degrees Celsius) warmer than usual. In Antarctica, where a Delaware-sized iceberg broke off last summer, temperatures were 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees C) higher than normal. And the Arctic, which is warming about twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet, started 2018 with temperatures 6.8 degrees F (3.4 degrees C) warmer than average. 

A peer-reviewed report released last month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that the Arctic is warming faster than at any point in the past 1,500 years, with 2017 its hottest year on record.