The average temperature in the contiguous United States reached 55.5 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) in 2024, approximately 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 20th-century average. These levels represented a record since measurements started in ****. Monthly average temperatures in the U.S. were also indicative of this trend. Temperatures and emissions are on the rise The rise in temperatures since 1975 is similar to the increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. Although CO₂ emissions in recent years were lower than when they peaked in 2007, they were still generally higher than levels recorded before 1990. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and is the main driver of climate change. Extreme weather Scientists worldwide have found links between the rise in temperatures and changing weather patterns. Extreme weather in the U.S. has resulted in natural disasters such as hurricanes and extreme heat waves becoming more likely. Economic damage caused by extreme temperatures in the U.S. has amounted to hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars over the past few decades.

In March 2015, data for thirteen Alaskan climate divisions were added to the NClimDiv data set. Data for the new Alaskan climate divisions begin in 1925 through the present and are included in all monthly updates. Alaskan climate data include the following elements for divisional and statewide coverage: average temperature, maximum temperature (highs), minimum temperature (lows), and precipitation. The Alaska NClimDiv data were created and updated using similar methodology as that for the CONUS, but with a different approach to establishing the underlying climatology. The Alaska data are built upon the 1971-2000 PRISM averages whereas the CONUS values utilize a base climatology derived from the NClimGrid data set. In January 2025, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) began summarizing the State of the Climate for Hawaii. This was made possible through a collaboration between NCEI and the University of Hawaii/Hawaii Climate Data Portal and completes a long-standing gap in NCEI's ability to characterize the State of the Climate for all 50 states. NCEI maintains monthly statewide, divisional, and gridded average temperature, maximum temperatures (highs), minimum temperature (lows) and precipitation data for Hawaii over the period 1991-2025. As of November 2018, NClimDiv includes county data and additional inventory files In March 2015, data for thirteen Alaskan climate divisions were added to the NClimDiv data set. Data for the new Alaskan climate divisions begin in 1925 through the present and are included in all monthly updates. Alaskan climate data include the following elements for divisional and statewide coverage: average temperature, maximum temperature (highs), minimum temperature (lows), and precipitation. The Alaska NClimDiv data were created and updated using similar methodology as that for the CONUS, but with a different approach to establishing the underlying climatology. The Alaska data are built upon the 1971-2000 PRISM averages whereas the CONUS values utilize a base climatology derived from the NClimGrid data set.

As of November 2018, NClimDiv includes county data and additional inventory files.

This dataset replaces the previous Time Bias Corrected Divisional Temperature-Precipitation Drought Index. The new divisional data set (NClimDiv) is based on the Global Historical Climatological Network-Daily (GHCN-D) and makes use of several improvements to the previous data set. For the input data, improvements include additional station networks, quality assurance reviews and temperature bias adjustments. Perhaps the most extensive improvement is to the computational approach, which now employs climatologically aided interpolation. This 5km grid based calculation nCLIMGRID helps to address topographic and network variability. This data set is primarily used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) to issue State of the Climate Reports on a monthly basis. These reports summarize recent temperature and precipitation conditions and long-term trends at a variety of spatial scales, the smallest being the climate division level. Data at the climate division level are aggregated to compute statewide, regional and national snapshots of climate conditions. For CONUS, the period of record is from 1895-present. Derived quantities such as Standardized precipitation Index (SPI), Palmer Drought Indices (PDSI, PHDI, PMDI, and ZNDX) and degree days are also available for the CONUS sites. In March 2015, data for thirteen Alaskan climate divisions were added to the NClimDiv data set. Data for the new Alaskan climate divisions begin in 1925 through the present and are included in all monthly updates. Alaskan climate data include the following elements for divisional and statewide coverage: average temperature, maximum temperature (highs), minimum temperature (lows), and precipitation. The Alaska NClimDiv data were created and updated using similar methodology as that for the CONUS, but with a different approach to establishing the underlying climatology. The Alaska data are built upon the 1971-2000 PRISM averages whereas the CONUS values utilize a base climatology derived from the NClimGrid data set. As of November 2018, NClimDiv includes county data and additional inventory files.

The NOAA Monthly U.S. Climate Gridded Dataset (NClimGrid) consists of four climate variables derived from the GHCN-D dataset: maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature and precipitation. Each file provides monthly values in a 5x5 lat/lon grid for the Continental United States. Data is available from 1895 to the present. In March 2015, new Alaska data was included in the nClimDiv dataset. The Alaska nClimDiv data were created and updated using similar methodology as that for the CONUS. It includes maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature and precipitation. In January 2025, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) began summarizing the State of the Climate for Hawaii. This was made possible through a collaboration between NCEI and the University of Hawaii/Hawaii Climate Data Portal and completes a long-standing gap in NCEI's ability to characterize the State of the Climate for all 50 states. NCEI maintains monthly statewide, divisional, and gridded average temperature, maximum temperatures (highs), minimum temperature (lows) and precipitation data for Hawaii over the period 1991-2025.

The average temperature in December 2024 was 38.25 degrees Fahrenheit in the United States, the fourth-largest country in the world. The country has extremely diverse climates across its expansive landmass. Temperatures in the United States On the continental U.S., the southern regions face warm to extremely hot temperatures all year round, the Pacific Northwest tends to deal with rainy weather, the Mid-Atlantic sees all four seasons, and New England experiences the coldest winters in the country. The North American country has experienced an increase in the daily minimum temperatures since 1970. Consequently, the average annual temperature in the United States has seen a spike in recent years. Climate Change The entire world has seen changes in its average temperature as a result of climate change. Climate change occurs due to increased levels of greenhouse gases which act to trap heat in the atmosphere, preventing it from leaving the Earth. Greenhouse gases are emitted from various sectors but most prominently from burning fossil fuels. Climate change has significantly affected the average temperature across countries worldwide. In the United States, an increasing number of people have stated that they have personally experienced the effects of climate change. Not only are there environmental consequences due to climate change, but also economic ones. In 2022, for instance, extreme temperatures in the United States caused over 5.5 million U.S. dollars in economic damage. These economic ramifications occur for several reasons, which include higher temperatures, changes in regional precipitation, and rising sea levels.

Local Climatological Data (LCD) are summaries of climatological conditions from airport and other prominent weather stations managed by NWS, FAA, and DOD. The product includes hourly observations and associated remarks, and a record of hourly precipitation for the entire month. Also included are daily summaries summarizing temperature extremes, degree days, precipitation amounts and winds. The tabulated monthly summaries in the product include maximum, minimum, and average temperature, temperature departure from normal, dew point temperature, average station pressure, ceiling, visibility, weather type, wet bulb temperature, relative humidity, degree days (heating and cooling), daily precipitation, average wind speed, fastest wind speed/direction, sky cover, and occurrences of sunshine, snowfall and snow depth. The source data is global hourly (DSI 3505) which includes a number of quality control checks.

Historical changes of annual temperature and precipitation indices at selected 210 U.S. cities

This dataset provide:

Annual average temperature, total precipitation, and temperature and precipitation extremes calculations for 210 U.S. cities.

Historical rates of changes in annual temperature, precipitation, and the selected temperature and precipitation extreme indices in the 210 U.S. cities.

Estimated thresholds (reference levels) for the calculations of annual extreme indices including warm and cold days, warm and cold nights, and precipitation amount from very wet days in the 210 cities.

Annual average of daily mean temperature, Tmax, and Tmin are included for annual average temperature calculations. Calculations were based on the compiled daily temperature and precipitation records at individual cities.

Temperature and precipitation extreme indices include: warmest daily Tmax and Tmin, coldest daily Tmax and Tmin , warm days and nights, cold days and nights, maximum 1-day precipitation, maximum consecutive 5-day precipitation, precipitation amounts from very wet days.

Number of missing daily Tmax, Tmin, and precipitation values are included for each city.

Rates of change were calculated using linear regression, with some climate indices applied with the Box-Cox transformation prior to the linear regression.

The historical observations from ACIS belong to Global Historical Climatological Network - daily (GHCN-D) datasets. The included stations were based on NRCC’s “ThreadEx” project, which combined daily temperature and precipitation extremes at 255 NOAA Local Climatological Locations, representing all large and medium size cities in U.S. (See Owen et al. (2006) Accessing NOAA Daily Temperature and Precipitation Extremes Based on Combined/Threaded Station Records).

Resources:

See included README file for more information.

Additional technical details and analyses can be found in: Lai, Y., & Dzombak, D. A. (2019). Use of historical data to assess regional climate change. Journal of climate, 32(14), 4299-4320. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0630.1

Other datasets from the same project can be accessed at: https://kilthub.cmu.edu/projects/Use_of_historical_data_to_assess_regional_climate_change/61538

ACIS database for historical observations: http://scacis.rcc-acis.org/

GHCN-D datasets can also be accessed at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/global-historical-climatology-network-daily/

Station information for each city can be accessed at: http://threadex.rcc-acis.org/

• 2024 August updated -

  Annual calculations for 2022 and 2023 were added.

  Linear regression results and thresholds for extremes were updated because of the addition of 2022 and 2023 data.

  Note that future updates may be infrequent.

• 2022 January updated -

  Annual calculations for 2021 were added.

  Linear regression results and thresholds for extremes were updated because of the addition of 2021 data.

• 2021 January updated -

  Annual calculations for 2020 were added.

  Linear regression results and thresholds for extremes were updated because of the addition of 2020 data.

• 2020 January updated -

  Annual calculations for 2019 were added.

  Linear regression results and thresholds for extremes were updated because of the addition of 2019 data.

  Thresholds for all 210 cities were combined into one single file – Thresholds.csv.

• 2019 June updated -

  Baltimore was updated with the 2018 data (previously version shows NA for 2018) and new ID to reflect the GCHN ID of Baltimore-Washington International AP. city_info file was updated accordingly.

  README file was updated to reflect the use of "wet days" index in this study. The 95% thresholds for calculation of wet days utilized all daily precipitation data from the reference period and can be different from the same index from some other studies, where only days with at least 1 mm of precipitation were utilized to calculate the thresholds. Thus the thresholds in this study can be lower than the ones that would've be calculated from the 95% percentiles from wet days (i.e., with at least 1 mm of precipitation).

These daily weather records were compiled from a subset of stations in the Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN)-Daily dataset. A weather record is considered broken if the value exceeds the maximum (or minimum) value recorded for an eligible station. A weather record is considered tied if the value is the same as the maximum (or minimum) value recorded for an eligible station. Daily weather parameters include Highest Min/Max Temperature, Lowest Min/Max Temperature, Highest Precipitation, Highest Snowfall and Highest Snow Depth. All stations meet defined eligibility criteria. For this application, a station is defined as the complete daily weather records at a particular location, having a unique identifier in the GHCN-Daily dataset. For a station to be considered for any weather parameter, it must have a minimum of 30 years of data with more than 182 days complete in each year. This is effectively a 30-year record of service requirement, but allows for inclusion of some stations which routinely shut down during certain seasons. Small station moves, such as a move from one property to an adjacent property, may occur within a station history. However, larger moves, such as a station moving from downtown to the city airport, generally result in the commissioning of a new station identifier. This tool treats each of these histories as a different station. In this way, it does not thread the separate histories into one record for a city. Records Timescales are characterized in three ways. In order of increasing noteworthiness, they are Daily Records, Monthly Records and All Time Records. For a given station, Daily Records refers to the specific calendar day: (e.g., the value recorded on March 7th compared to every other March 7th). Monthly Records exceed all values observed within the specified month (e.g., the value recorded on March 7th compared to all values recorded in every March). All-Time Records exceed the record of all observations, for any date, in a station's period of record. The Date Range and Location features are used to define the time and location ranges which are of interest to the user. For example, selecting a date range of March 1, 2012 through March 15, 2012 will return a list of records broken or tied on those 15 days. The Location Category and Country menus allow the user to define the geographic extent of the records of interest. For example, selecting Oklahoma will narrow the returned list of records to those that occurred in the state of Oklahoma, USA. The number of records broken for several recent periods is summarized in the table and updated daily. Due to late-arriving data, the number of recent records is likely underrepresented in all categories, but the ratio of records (warm to cold, for example) should be a fairly strong estimate of a final outcome. There are many more precipitation stations than temperature stations, so the raw number of precipitation records will likely exceed the number of temperature records in most climatic situations.

The monthly average temperature in the United States between 2020 and 2025 shows distinct seasonal variation, following similar patterns. For instance, in August 2025, the average temperature across the North American country stood at 22.98 degrees Celsius. Rising temperatures Globally, 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2024 were some of the warmest years ever recorded since 1880. Overall, there has been a dramatic increase in the annual temperature since 1895. Within the U.S. annual temperatures show a great deal of variation depending on region. For instance, Florida tends to record the highest maximum temperatures across the North American country, while Wyoming recorded the lowest minimum average temperature in recent years. Carbon dioxide emissions Carbon dioxide is a known driver of climate change, which impacts average temperatures. Global historical carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have been on the rise since the industrial revolution. In recent years, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes reached over 37 billion metric tons. Among all countries globally, China was the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2023.

The U.S. Daily Climate Normals for 1981 to 2010 are 30-year averages of meteorological parameters for thousands of U.S. stations located across the 50 states, as well as U.S. territories, commonwealths, the Compact of Free Association nations, and one station in Canada. NOAA Climate Normals are a large suite of data products that provide users with many tools to understand typical climate conditions for thousands of locations across the United States. As many NWS stations as possible are used, including those from the NWS Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) Network as well as some additional stations that have a Weather Bureau Army-Navy (WBAN) station identification number, including stations from the Climate Reference Network (CRN). The comprehensive U.S. Climate Normals dataset includes various derived products including daily air temperature normals (including maximum and minimum temperature normal, heating and cooling degree day normal, and others), precipitation normals (including snowfall and snow depth, percentiles, frequencies and other), and hourly normals (all normal derived from hourly data including temperature, dew point, heat index, wind chill, wind, cloudiness, heating and cooling degree hours, pressure normals). Users can access the data either by product or by station. Included in the dataset is extensive documentation to describe station metadata, filename descriptions, and methodology of producing the data. All data utilized in the computation of the 1981-2010 Climate Normals were taken from the ISD Lite (a subset of derived Integrated Surface Data), the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily dataset, and standardized monthly temperature data (COOP). These source datasets (including intermediate datasets used in the computation of products) are also archived at the NOAA NCDC.

The United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) is a high-quality data set of daily and monthly records of basic meteorological variables from 1218 observing stations across the 48 contiguous United States. Daily data include observations of maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation amount, snowfall amount, and snow depth; monthly data consist of monthly-averaged maximum, minimum, and mean temperature and total monthly precipitation. Most of these stations are U.S. Cooperative Observing Network stations located generally in rural locations, while some are National Weather Service First-Order stations that are often located in more urbanized environments. The USHCN has been developed over the years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) to assist in the detection of regional climate change. Furthermore, it has been widely used in analyzing U.S. climte. The period of record varies for each station. USHCN stations were chosen using a number of criteria including length of record, percent of missing data, number of station moves and other station changes that may affect data homogeneity, and resulting network spatial coverage. Collaboration between NCDC and CDIAC on the USHCN project dates to the 1980s (Quinlan et al. 1987). At that time, in response to the need for an accurate, unbiased, modern historical climate record for the United States, the Global Change Research Program of the U.S. Department of Energy and NCDC chose a network of 1219 stations in the contiguous United States that would become a key baseline data set for monitoring U.S. climate. This initial USHCN data set contained monthly data and was made available free of charge from CDIAC. Since then it has been comprehensively updated several times [e.g., Karl et al. (1990) and Easterling et al. (1996)]. The initial USHCN daily data set was made available through CDIAC via Hughes et al. (1992) and contained a 138-station subset of the USHCN. This product was updated by Easterling et al. (1999) and expanded to include 1062 stations. In 2009 the daily USHCN dataset was expanded to include all 1218 stations in the USHCN.

Monthly U.S. minimum and maximum temperatures in whole degrees Fahrenheit and reported and estimated precipitation amounts in hundredths of inches(ex 100 is 1.00 inches) generated from the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) metar(hourly) and synoptic(6-hourly)observations

The National Forest Climate Change Maps project was developed by the Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) and the Office of Sustainability and Climate to meet the needs of national forest managers for information on projected climate changes at a scale relevant to decision making processes, including forest plans. The maps use state-of-the-art science and are available for every national forest in the contiguous United States with relevant data coverage. Currently, the map sets include variables related to precipitation, air temperature, snow (including snow residence time and April 1 snow water equivalent), and stream flow.

Historical (1975-2005) and future (2071-2090) precipitation and temperature data for the contiguous United States are ensemble mean values across 20 global climate models from the CMIP5 experiment (https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00094.1), downscaled to a 4 km grid. For more information on the downscaling method and to access the data, please see Abatzoglou and Brown, 2012 (https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/joc.2312) and the Northwest Knowledge Network (https://climate.northwestknowledge.net/MACA/). We used the MACAv2- Metdata monthly dataset; average temperature values were calculated as the mean of monthly minimum and maximum air temperature values (degrees C), averaged over the season of interest (annual, winter, or summer). Absolute change was then calculated between the historical and future time periods.

Raster data are also available for download from RMRS site (https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/boise/AWAE/projects/NFS-regional-climate-change-maps/categories/us-raster-layers.html), along with pdf maps and detailed metadata (https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/boise/AWAE/projects/NFS-regional-climate-change-maps/downloads/NationalForestClimateChangeMapsMetadata.pdf).

Some say climate change is the biggest threat of our age while others say it’s a myth based on dodgy science. We are turning some of the data over to you so you can form your own view.

Even more than with other data sets that Kaggle has featured, there’s a huge amount of data cleaning and preparation that goes into putting together a long-time study of climate trends. Early data was collected by technicians using mercury thermometers, where any variation in the visit time impacted measurements. In the 1940s, the construction of airports caused many weather stations to be moved. In the 1980s, there was a move to electronic thermometers that are said to have a cooling bias.

Given this complexity, there are a range of organizations that collate climate trends data. The three most cited land and ocean temperature data sets are NOAA’s MLOST, NASA’s GISTEMP and the UK’s HadCrut.

We have repackaged the data from a newer compilation put together by the Berkeley Earth, which is affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study combines 1.6 billion temperature reports from 16 pre-existing archives. It is nicely packaged and allows for slicing into interesting subsets (for example by country). They publish the source data and the code for the transformations they applied. They also use methods that allow weather observations from shorter time series to be included, meaning fewer observations need to be thrown away.

In this dataset, we have include several files:

Global Land and Ocean-and-Land Temperatures (GlobalTemperatures.csv):

• Date: starts in 1750 for average land temperature and 1850 for max and min land temperatures and global ocean and land temperatures
• LandAverageTemperature: global average land temperature in celsius
• LandAverageTemperatureUncertainty: the 95% confidence interval around the average
• LandMaxTemperature: global average maximum land temperature in celsius
• LandMaxTemperatureUncertainty: the 95% confidence interval around the maximum land temperature
• LandMinTemperature: global average minimum land temperature in celsius
• LandMinTemperatureUncertainty: the 95% confidence interval around the minimum land temperature
• LandAndOceanAverageTemperature: global average land and ocean temperature in celsius
• LandAndOceanAverageTemperatureUncertainty: the 95% confidence interval around the global average land and ocean temperature

Other files include:

• Global Average Land Temperature by Country (GlobalLandTemperaturesByCountry.csv)
• Global Average Land Temperature by State (GlobalLandTemperaturesByState.csv)
• Global Land Temperatures By Major City (GlobalLandTemperaturesByMajorCity.csv)
• Global Land Temperatures By City (GlobalLandTemperaturesByCity.csv)

The raw data comes from the Berkeley Earth data page.

This statistic shows cities in the United States with the highest average annual temperatures. Data is based on recordings from 1981 to 2010. In San Antonio, Texas the average temperature is 80.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Some cities that have the hottest maximum summer temperatures will not be included in this list due to their extreme temperature variance.

The U.S. Historical Climatology Network Monthly Data, Version 2.5 consists of precipitation and temperature data "corrected" for changes in station location, instrumentation, and observing practices. The vast majority of stations are from the NOAA Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) Network. Stations have been selected according to coverage, length of data record and completeness, and historical stability. Data includes sets of Maximum, Minimum and Average Temperature and Precipitation data that are either (1) raw (non-adjusted though flagged for possible quality issues), (2) adjusted due to time of observation bias (TOB) or (3) put through the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA). The data also is archived with station information and source code for reading the data.

Daily U.S. minimum and maximum temperatures in whole degrees Fahrenheit and reported and estimated precipitation amounts in hundredths of inches(ex 100 is 1.00 inches) generated from the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) metar(hourly) and synoptic(6-hourly) observations.

This data has been superseded by a newer version of the dataset. Please refer to NOAA's Climate Divisional Database for more information. The U.S. Climate Divisional Dataset provides data access to current U.S. temperature, precipitation and drought indeces. Divisional indices included are: Precipitation Index, Palmer Drought Severity Index, Palmer Hydrological Drought Index, Modified Palmer Drought Severity Index, Temperature, Palmer Z Index, Cooling Degree Days, Heating Degree Days, 1-Month Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), 2-Month (SPI), 3-Month (SPI), 6-Month (SPI),12-Month (SPI) and the 24-Month (SPI). All of these Indices, except for the SPI, are available for Regional, State and National views as well. There are 344 climate divisions in the CONUS. For each climate division, monthly station temperature and precipitation values are computed from the daily observations. The divisional values are weighted by area to compute statewide values and the statewide values are weighted by area to compute regional values. The indices were computed using daily station data from 1895 to present.

The U.S. daily temperature analyses are maps depicting various temperature quantities utilizing daily maximum and minimum temperature data across the US. Maps are available for the daily maximum and minimum temperatures and anomalies, mean temperatures, and mean temperature anomalies averaged over various time scales (daily, 5-day, 7-day, 30-day, 90-day, and current month-to-date). Each of these quantities are available in terms of degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit. The graphics are updated daily and the graphics reflect the updated analyses including the latest daily data available. Archived graphics are rotated every year, making the previous and current year (to present) graphics available.

The Air, Water, and Aquatic Environments (AWAE) research program is one of eight Science Program areas within the Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS). Our science develops core knowledge, methods, and technologies that enable effective watershed management in forests and grasslands, sustain biodiversity, and maintain healthy watershed conditions.