Record heat hit the northeastern United States in 2010 amid a global trend of climate change, according to a new study published Friday.
Many cities in the region endured their own all-time hottest year since records began being kept, said the findings posted on LiveScience.com.
For the study, researchers at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University analyzed temperature data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at various sites in cities across the northeastern United States.
The yearly number for each city is the average of daily temperatures, which themselves are an average of the day's minimum and maximum temperatures.
Then the researchers compared each number with the historical record based on similar thermometer readings from those stations, according to the report.
The findings showed that 23 of the 35 cities monitored saw the average temperature for 2010 rank among the 10 hottest years on record.
Among them, five cities broke their own record of all-time hottest year in 2010.
For Boston, 2010 had the highest average temperature since records began being kept in 1872, when The Great Fire almost wiped the city off the map. The other four cities were: Providence, Rhode Island; Hartford,Connecticut; Concord, New Hampshire; and Caribou, Maine.
None of the cities monitored set a record low average temperature in 2010.
At John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, 2010 was the second- hottest year since records began being kept a half-century ago. And temperatures along the boardwalk at Atlantic City, New Jersey, hit their second-highest mark in more than 130 years of record-keeping.
Several atmospheric patterns may have contributed to the trend toward warming temperatures, study researcher Art DeGaetano, a climatologist at Cornell, told LiveScience.
"It's also likely to be the trend toward warmer temperatures that most people attribute to global warming," he said.
The northeast United States may be reflecting a global trend, he said.
"If you look at some of the preliminary data that has come out for the globe it looks like 2010 will be, if not the warmest, one of the warmest years globally."