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The Southeast, South and Central regions experienced their second, fifth and seventh warmest June on record, respectively.

Record-warm June temperatures were observed in Delaware, New Jersey and North Carolina (tied), where each had average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees F above the long-term mean. Many other states ranked in their top ten based on 116 years of data.

Midway through 2010, four New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island) have experienced their warmest January-June period on record. Eight other states in the Northeast and Great Lakes areas had a top-ten warm such period.

Persistent warmth made the year's second quarter (April-June) much warmer than normal for every state east of the Mississippi River, and several to its west. Louisiana and ten Atlantic Seaboard states (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut [tied], New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina) had a record-warm second quarter. In all, twenty states had their warmest or second-warmest such period on record. The warmth in these areas contributed to both the Northeast and Southeast climate regions' warmest April-June period.

Scientists see a fingerprint of climate change in the denuded branches, and a pattern of things to come. The effects of climate change, they say, are unlikely to be gradual or predictable. Warming winters will throw into confusion old orders of species, nurturing unexpected predators and weakening age-old relationships that helped form forests.

"They were gross," recalled Barbara Hoffman, 53, with a visible shudder. "You could hear them munching. I said spray 'em." Most trees recovered in the first year; fewer survived the second. But as the bugs struck again in late 2007, an accomplice drought hit the weakened trees, leaving the island now with swaths of stark, barren and lifeless branches.

The islanders fought through clouds of drifting filaments with brooms, brushed off the showers of excrement after they walked under trees, and tiptoed through a maze of half-inch worms on the sidewalks. The local newspapers ran pictures of building sides covered with caterpillars, looking like horror-movie outtakes.

"You can get unexpected dynamics in nature as we generate new combinations with climate change," said David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest, who heads a research group financed by the National Science Foundation to study the Martha's Vineyard die-off

In New England, the majestic hemlocks that were grist for Longfellow and Frost are doomed by the steady advance of a pest in warmer winters. "To see hundreds of acres of dead forest like this in New England is remarkable," said Foster.

Farther north and west in Massachusetts, Foster and others are studying the devastation of the stately hemlocks.  An insect brought from Japan, called the hemlock woolly adelgid, is moving steadily northward into New England. It already has infested much of the US South, bringing what forestry officials call "an ecological disaster" to the iconic Great Smokey Mountains and Blue Ridge Parkway. With warmer temperatures in New England-some studies put the average winter increase at 4 degrees in 40 years-the pest is advancing. "The northward spread is being kept in check by cold winters. As winters warm, which is what is projected, that all falls apart," said Wyatt Oswald, an assistant professor of science at Emerson college who is studying the hemlocks. "At some point, climate change will allow all these hemlock to be wiped out."

Certainly the residents here were perplexed at the caterpillar outbreaks from 2004 to 2007. Although several insects were at work, the prime culprit was eventually identified as a fall cankerworm, a long-time resident of the island that no one recalled having done more than minimal damage. This outbreak was a full-fledged invasion.

"It was disgusting," said Jason Gale, 39. He recalls glancing back at the island from his lobster boat, and being shocked by the stretches of dead trees.

Scattered power outages affected customers up and down the coast and usage approached record

levels. In the Washington, D.C., area, nearly 1,000 customers were without power Wednesday, while New Jersey's largest utility, Public Service Electric & Gas, reported about 6,300 customers without power. Consolidated Edison in New York said it was working to restore power to about 6,300 customers, down from outages to 18,700 customers Tuesday.

The heat also forced nursing homes with power problems to evacuate and buckled highways near Albany and in the Philadelphia area. On New York's Long Island, a radio station was distributing free bottled water to day laborers, while human services workers in Pittsburgh were doing the same for the homeless there.

Transportation officials cut the speed of commuter trains in suburban Washington, D.C., and New York when the tracks got too hot. Extreme heat can cause welded rails to bend under pressure. Some New Jersey trains were canceled and rail-riders were advised to expect delays.

In Park Ridge, N.J., police evacuated a nursing home and rehabilitation center after an electrical line burned out Tuesday evening. In Maryland, health officials moved all 150 residents out of a Baltimore nursing home whose operators didn't report a broken air conditioner. The state learned of the home's troubles when a resident called 911 Tuesday

Residents of two Rhode Island beach towns, Narragansett and South Kingstown, were hit with an added layer of inconvenience: They were banned from using water outdoors and were asked to boil and cool their water before using it. The high temperatures combined with the busy holiday weekend for tourists created higher-than-expected demand, causing water pressure to drop and increasing the chance of contamination.

With people cranking up their air conditioners Wednesday, Valley Forge, Pa.-based PJM Interconnection — which operates the largest electrical grid in the U.S. — urged users to conserve electricity as much as possible, especially in the peak afternoon hours. PJM's grid covers about 51 million people in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Meteorologists in some places began calling the current hot stretch a heat wave, defined in the Northeast as three consecutive days of temperatures of 90 or above.

The vineyard also escaped the effects of the long, cold winter, he said: “We’ve been very lucky in this corner of the country. With the frosts in April and early May we got down to minus two very close to the buds being frosted off the vines. But not quite.” Now, Mr Barnes said he was hoping the weather stayed dry for the harvest at the end of September. Apples growers have also enjoyed the hot, sunny weather, but said the recent downpours were welcome. Sarah Calcutt, business development manager at Norman Collett, which markets English fruit from its base in Paddock Wood, said the extra light and warmth had been great for Rubens, a new variety of apples. “I’ve been out looking at orchards today with the National Fruit Show president and we’ve been particularly looking at Rubens. “We do not know if it will be a bumper crop yet because they won’t be picked until to September, but from an apple’s perspective the heat and sunshine in particular are great. “Photosynthesis is better with good light because it seeds the tree really well and gives it good energy for feeding themselves next year. A lot of day light hours are wonderful. “We’ve just had rain in time. One of the farmers who has no irrigation system said this bit we’ve just had came just in time for his young trees, which were starting to look a bit stressed. So the recent downpours have been fantastic.” However, organic fruit farmer Mrs Martin said that it had been a bad year for some fruits. “Raspberries are not looking very good this year. It was too hot for them and they were cooking on the plants,” she said. “But a little rain does everything good.” Dr Chris Atkinson, head of science at East Malling Research Centre, which has been collecting climate data since 1913, said the climate was a big determinate when growing fruit because temperature and rainfall had a big impact on crops. The climate data shows that the seasons have been getting longer and the winters are getting milder. “We can even answer sceptics about climate change – no one can argue that climatic data shows it is changing,” he said.

The centre has recorded increasingly milder winters and longer seasons. Dr Atkinson said the changing temperature should be used as an opportunity to explore new crops and spoke about someone who had successfully grown a banana outside in Cornwall.

“Apricots and nectarines on a commercial scale we believe will achieve economic gain in the UK rather than just surviving.” The centre is currently trialling hardy kiwis to see whether they can be grown as a crop.

Speaking about his own cherry trees in his garden, he said that this year they had produced more fruit than over the last 15.

The storms even afflict patrol officers. The DPS spent $3,800 on goggles for officers because of the stinging sand; some reported workplace injuries from irritated contact lenses, said DPS Sgt. Gary Phelps, who has patrolled northern Arizona for most of his 23-year career. "This is a new phenomenon. We have never had these conditions," Phelps said. "As far as visibility, this is the worst I've ever seen. I've been in blowing snow, but I'd take a snowstorm over a dust storm any day. It's awful."

Drivers must sit in 10-mile backups in both directions, the DPS and ADOT report. Many get frustrated and try to make sometimes dangerous U-turns across the freeway median. Some tourists rely on GPS systems to navigate detours. Often, they get stuck in the same brown cloud, lost on an unfamiliar rural road. Some dust storms can be 20 miles wide.

From 2000 through 2008, the state Department of Public Safety logged no dust-related collisions between Milepost 215, east of Flagstaff, and Milepost 260, just east of Winslow. Last year, Highway Patrol cars responded to 11 such accidents, and so far this year, five. Unlike the sudden, short dust storms that strike Interstate 10 south of the Valley, the recent I-40 closures typically last five hours and have dragged on for eight.

ADOT says that, before spring 2009, it had never closed I-40 because of dust storms. At the beginning of that particularly windy season, officials had to close the stretch of interstate between Flagstaff and Winslow because of a bad accident caused by blinding dust. That's when authorities began to close the highway as a precaution. They watched the weather forecast for high winds and sent spotters into the dust to gauge visibility.

From 1997 to 2008, the area recorded winds of more than 35 mph an average 12 times from March through May, Weather Service forecaster Ken Daniel said. Last year, that happened 14 times, and so far this year, 15 times. Winds above 45 mph had occurred an average 1.5 days during those spring months, but last year, they happened six times, and this year, four. "The springs of 2009 and 2010 have been windier than normal, but these winds we have been recently experiencing are not unprecedented," Daniel said.

Theories vary as to why the winds are thick with dust: Historical flooding of the nearby Little Colorado River left a lake bed that steadily dried out into fine sand. The nearby area has been overgrazed. A decade of drought has dried the soil into dust. "It could be global warming, for all I know," said Phelps, of the DPS.

ADOT says I-40 is the most heavily trucked highway in Arizona. Most are taking freight between Los Angeles and the Midwest. "Any time you have to disrupt the schedule of a delivery, it's not just a financial cost, it disrupts the entire supply chain," said Karen Rasmussen, president of the Arizona Trucking Association. "A truck has to arrive within a specific time slot for delivery." If the schedule is missed, manufacturers may have to shut down a plant because they don't have enough inventory. Grocers may not have enough produce, or perishables may start going bad. Trucks usually have return deliveries to make, and those get delayed. Northern Arizona's dust storms have become a national concern for the trucking industry, Rasmussen said.

"Climate change is happening at a much greater and accelerated pace than we ever expected 30 years ago," said Richard Leopold, director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Huge floods in 2008, which left the state's second-biggest city, Cedar Rapids, with massive downtown destruction, intensified the debate, with a new set of recommendations coming from a state panel by the end of the year. "If we decide as a state to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a hurry, we can actually do it," said Sen. Rob Hogg, a Democrat from Cedar Rapids. "There are a lot of things we can do for no cost, and others we can do for very little cost."

Summer storms already can be more intense, and the Midwest has fought to avoid major flooding this year.

The records Takle analysed showed Iowa averages five more frost-free days a year than in 1950. But that doesn't mean more time to grow crops, because of changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. Generally, Iowa now has warmer winters, but fewer extremely hot summer days. Overall, the Midwest is expected to warm through the middle of the century, but not as much as other parts of the country.

Yesterday’s temperature in Moscow was the highest since Russia began keeping records 130 years ago, according to the website of the Hydrometeorological Monitoring Service. The previous high was 36.8 degrees in July 1920, during the Civil War. The temperature may rise to 38 degrees on July 29, according to Gidromettsentr, the state weather service. Russia, the world’s third-biggest wheat exporter, will harvest about 80 million metric tons of grain this season, 17 percent less than last year, according to Moscow-based researcher SovEcon. Grain prices rose as much as 33 percent last week on drought concerns, SovEcon said on its website. Drought is likely to have a bigger impact on prices in Russia than in other countries, Orlova said. Food accounts for 38 percent of the consumer price index in Russia, compared with 15 percent in the U.S. and 32 percent in China, Alfa estimates.

"Frankly, I was expecting that we'd see large temperature increases later this century with higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming," Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, who headed up the research, said in a prepared statement. "I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades."

It also was the warmest spring in Philadelphia

But as museum budgets shrink, energy costs spiral, and gradual climate changes make the traditional HVAC system more costly to maintain, conservators and other museum experts are rethinking this model. Should museums add to global warming by continuing to rely so heavily on such systems in the first place? And what happens if unforeseen events put them and other protective measures out of commission? As a first step some are pushing for new scientific research while considering updated versions of old solutions.

global warming has only recently allowed beetles to flourish in high-elevation whitebark pine forests, where the trees have not evolved strong defenses. Until recently, harsh winters have kept mountain pine beetles (which are the size of a grain of rice) at bay. Warmer temperatures have dramatically increased the beetles’ numbers and allowed them to move upwards to attack the whitebark pines, a number of which have been made more susceptible due to weakening by blister rust. The result is the loss of more than half of historical whitebark stands across their range, with far worse numbers in some areas. In the eastern portion of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, for example, whitebark pine forests have been already functionally lost.

Whitebark pine forests have been hit particularly hard in the Northern Rockies. NRDC and the US Forest Service helped fund an unprecedented aerial survey of the entire 20 million acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to investigate mortality levels of whitebark pine throughout the region. A groundbreaking pairing of airplane overflights with GIS and field-based evaluation techniques have given a new and more detailed understanding of the impact being felt by the region’s whitebark population. The data was brought together by prominent academics leading the research team, to map out the beetle carnage and evaluate the pattern of tree mortality in the region. Released today, the report shows 82% of the Greater Yellowstone whitebark pine forests of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana dead or dying (high to medium mortality rates). The mundane title, Using the Landscape Assessment System (LAS) to Assess Mountain Pine Beetle-Caused Mortality of Whitebark Pine, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 2009 belies the explosive results, which imply that the problem is far worse than had been previously known. The study was written by prominent experts Wally Macfarlane, Dr. Jesse Logan and Willie Kern. Based on these data, and considering the rapid changes, the report authors believe it is likely that whitebark pine will be functionally extinct in the ecosystem within the next 4-7 years.

Many fishermen switched to lobster as winter flounder, a cold-water fish once abundant in fishing boat holds, declined. But lobster stocks are stressed in some areas now. Biologists on a multi-state Fisheries Commission committee have found that warmer waters, disease and fishing have depleted lobster stocks, and they recently recommended a five-year ban on lobstering from Cape Cod to Virginia.

"One of the grim realities of global warming is that it is bringing change to fisheries. There are going to be regime changes in the oceans and management is going to have to adapt to that,"

Greg Walinski believes he has seen first-hand the workings of warmer waters on fish stock. The 53-year-old Cape Cod fisherman used to hunt for large bluefin tuna. "In the '80s and '90s we would get 60 to 80 giant bluefin in a season," he said. "But we started to see less and less. It got to a point where it wasn't even worth going out. Most of the big fish are up in Canada," he said. "We get the little bluefin that used to be further south."

He switched to cod, but in what seems to be a repeat of the pattern, Walinski said he finds himself chasing the fish further and further out. He now travels 120 miles in a 35-foot boat - an arduous and somewhat dangerous commute - to reach Georges Bank for codfish.

regulators say they have seen little evidence of a similar rebound in cod on the George's Bank, and some other cold-water species, like winter flounder and pollock, remain low.

When temperatures rise, the insects that spread disease mature faster and produce more offspring, the report says.

"To me, it doesn't make a difference how we call it, but that we have had a higher temperature over the last 20, 30 years, which is documented," said Dr Volker ter Meulen, EASAC chairman."These higher temperatures provide for the vectors and the viruses to grow faster and produce more," he added. "More vectors, more virus, and this will cause more disease."For example, rising temperatures in Europe would provide new habitats for a mosquito that transmits yellow fever, West Nile virus, dengue fever and encephalitis, ter Meulen said.The same mosquito has been linked to over 200 European cases of chikungunya, a virus that causes fever and destruction of the joints.