2023 is #1 (and what that actually means)

It's getting down to the wire, but on December 27th, 2023 moved past 1981 to become Edmonton's warmest year on record. 

2023's overall average temperature is 3.2°C warmer than the 20th century average.

2023's average High of 11.8°C is 2.7°C warmer than the 20th century average, and #3 warmest on record. The average Low of 1.4°C is 3.5°C warmer, and #1 warmest.

And together they rank as #1. 

That 3.2°C is what gets used to determine the Climatestripes, and it makes 2023 the reddest red so far.

2023 got to #1 with:

• the warmest May on record
• 3rd warmest June & December
• top-10 August & September
• March was the only month colder than the 20th century average

Here each pie slice represents a month, and 2023 has just a single blue piece for March. 

Our other warmest years (1981, 1987, 2016 & 2015) also didn't have many cool months. 

On the other hand, while 2021 had its extreme heatdome summer, it also had a cool February & December.

One thing to note is that our temperature range is much larger during the winter than the summer. And because of that it's much more common to be 10°C above average in January (5°C) than in July (34°C).

So the yearly average is affected more by a warm winter than by a hot summer.

Here's the daily breakdown of how far above/below average 2023 was. 

2023 was warm for most, but even with the record-breaking May and warm summer, 2023 got a lot of its "points" during the warm January, February, November & December.

And our other warmest years also got there thanks to warm months during the winter.

Ranking years based on the daily High & Low temperatures is a pretty broad way to do it. Hourly temperatures would be more precise, but our hourly temperature data only begins in 1953, which would miss 70 years of history. So daily data is the best that we've got.