Inside Climate News : “It’s reasonable to expect that the whole year may end up with the warmest surface temperatures ever recorded.”  

“A new report, State of the Climate in 2013, issued by the American Meteorological Society on July 17, introduces an analysis of temperature extremes since 1950. Like the vast majority of climate measurements explored in this report, the data on temperature extremes confirm the general trend of a warming planet.”  

“Extremes in recorded temperatures can be a more significant measurement than averages, the annual checkup explains, since ‘societal impacts are more often related to extreme events than changes in the mean climate.’”  

“Globally, 2013 had the sixth-highest number of warm days on record, and the eighth-lowest number of cool nights.”  

“Examining warm days and nights and cool days and nights on global and regional scales exposes more starkly ‘a general long-term tendency towards warmer conditions, as indicated by increasing numbers of warm extremes…and decreasing numbers of cool extremes.’”