It’s official: 2012 marked the warmest year on record for the USA, scientists from the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., announced Tuesday. The past year smashed the previous record for the warmest year, which was 1998.

The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3 degrees, 3.2 degrees above the 20th-century average, and 1 degree above 1998.

U.S. weather records date to 1895.

‘We had the warmest spring on record, the warmest July on record, and the third-warmest summer on record,’ said Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the climate center, late last year.

Every state had a warmer-than-average year. A total of 19 states, stretching from Utah to Massachusetts, had record warmth in 2012 and an additional 26 states had a Top 10 warm year.

‘These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate,’ said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. ‘And they are costing many billions of dollars.’

‘What was truly astonishing,’ added Weather Underground weather historian Christopher Burt, ‘was the ratio of heat records vs. cold records that were established over the course of the year.’ Burt says that in 2012, there were 362 all-time record-high temperatures set […]