2014: An Epic Year for Climate Change and Other Weather-Related Disasters

Stick your hand over a lit stove and you can get a feel for 2014's overall climatic situation: scorching heat. For months, experts have been predicting this will be the hottest year in recorded history, and while in the end it might not quite achieve that ignoble record, it will be way up there (perhaps at No. 3).

The thermostat could've seemed low in your neck of the woods—meaning America's East Coast and Midwest and the Falkland Islands—but temperatures were sweltering in the rest of the planet. Take a look at these abnormally high and record-hot readings, which represent a 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit deviation above the historical average. Notes the National Climatic Data Center: "This was the warmest January-November in the 1880-2014 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.02°F."