FAIRBANKS (AP) — It wasn’t quite warm enough to hang up the parkas, but 2014 was the warmest year on record for Alaska, according to the National Weather Service.
Based on information from the National Climatic Data Center, the National Weather Service Alaska said 2014 was warmer than 1926, the previous warmest year on record, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. The agency made the announcement last week on its Facebook page.
The National Climatic Data Center stores, monitors and assesses historical weather data from across the country. Climate data for Alaska has been kept since 1918.
To figure out the warmest year, the center places temperatures from its Alaska monitoring stations and computes the statewide departure from the long-term average. The baseline for the long-term average is climate data from 1971 to 2000.
The center ranks each year based on how the temperatures compared with temperatures throughout the entire historical record. Further information on average temperatures was not immediately available from the weather service.
Nearly 200 weather monitoring stations gather data from Alaska locations. Most are operated by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Nome, McGrath, Kotzebue, Bethel, Cold Bay, King Salmon and Homer experienced their warmest years on record in 2014.
Fairbanks’ 2014 was its fourth warmest year on record with an average temperature of 31.2 degrees.
Anchorage for the first time since temperature monitoring did not see a temperature below zero.
The statewide perspective was helped by exceptionally mild temperatures in January, May, November and December.
