Dear Editor:

No headlines, no breathless lead story on TV news, no film crew on location, but Maine’s high temperature record of 105°F, set in North Bridgton on July 10, 1911, is now one hundred and twelve years old. Twelve Maine towns and cities have high temperature records of 100 degrees and above. Six of the records were set in 1975, the remaining six were set in 1897, 1911, 1911, 1935, 1955, and 1988. Until recently the Maine.gov website stated the “record hottest year in Maine” was 1913 and the “record coldest year in Maine” was 1904. Although that inconvenient fact has been purged from the Maine website, it is still true.

The U.S. data is like Maine’s. Three states set an all-time-record-high in the 1800s. In the following three decades ending in 1929, another ten states set their record. In the 1930s, by far the hottest decade, twenty-three states were added. In the following three decades ending in 1969 three more states were added. In the three decades ending in 1999, another eight states were added. Only Colorado and Washington have set new high records in this century, three have tied old records. To put it into perspective 37 states (74%) have records well over 80 years old. Texas, a state currently in the headlines, set its high of 120°F in 1936 in a heatwave that was credited for killing 5000 people across the US.

The temperature record of Planet Earth also does not show a dramatic trend. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), divides the world into 11 regions for recording “highest temperature.”  The following is a list of the dates of those records; 1931, 2017, 1905, 1913, 1960, 1942, 1977, 1982, 2020, 1989, and 2020. Five of these records are older than 50 years.

Looking at this data with records set many decades ago and, in some cases over a century old, a reasonable conclusion could be made that the world temperature is quite stable even as CO2 has increased. WMO and NOOA data were used as sources for this article.  

Joe Grant

Wiscasset