New this year, the interactive map also ranks all 50 states for the percentage of weather stations reporting at least one monthly heat record broken in 2012.

Click here to view the map.

The ten states showing the highest percentage with new heat records are: Tennessee (36 percent), Wisconsin (31 percent), Minnesota (30 percent), Illinois (29 percent), Indiana (28 percent), Nevada (27 percent), West Virginia (26 percent), Maine (26 percent), Colorado (25 percent) and Maryland (24 percent).

Especially hard-hit regions include the Upper Midwest, Northeast, northern Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states.

“2012’s unparalleled record-setting heat demonstrates what climate change looks like,” said Kim Knowlton, NRDC senior scientist.

Because these monthly weather records compete against prior records set over at least the last 30 years at each location, the 3,527 monthly records-broken highlight notable patterns of extreme weather in the U.S.

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And in fact, from 1980 through 2011, the frequency of weather-related extreme events in North America nearly quintupled, rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the world, according to international insurance giant MunichRe.

In 2012, Americans experienced the hottest March on record in the contiguous U.S., and July was the hottest single month ever recorded in the lower 48 states.

As a whole, 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded in the U.S., according to a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) State of the Climate report. NOAA has also estimated that 2012 will surpass 2011 in aggregate costs for U.S. annual billion-dollar disasters, and MunichRe also recently revealed that in 2012, more than 90 percent of the world’s insured disaster costs occurred in the U.S.

Some of 2012’s most significant weather disasters include:

  • The summer of 2012 was the worst drought in 50 years across the nation’s breadbasket, with over 1,300 U.S. counties in 29 states declared drought disaster areas.
  • Wildfires burned over 9.2 million acres in the U.S. and destroyed hundreds of homes. The average size of the fires set an all-time record of 165 acres per fire, exceeding the prior decade’s 2001-2010 average of approximately 90 acres per fire.
  • Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge height, 13.88 feet, broke the all-time record in New York Harbor and ravaged communities across New Jersey and New York with floodwaters and winds. The cost of Sandy reached an estimated $79 billion with at least 131 deaths reported.  FG

—From Natural Resources Defense Council news release