The year 2012 is set to be the warmest in recorded U.S. history, according to the latest National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

Veteran science writer Michael D. Lemonick analyzes the update as follows on Climate Central:

Although September of 2012 by itself was only 23rd warmest on record (tied with 1980), the unusual warmth from January through August virtually guarantees that 2012 as a whole will be the warmest since modern recordkeeping began. It would take a truly unusual cold spell for the remaining three months of the year to avoid that — so unusual that the probability of such a thing happening, according to new calculations by The Weather Channel, is a mere 1.7 percent.

Canada too has experienced unusually warm weather in 2012. Its winter this year, read a Maclean's magazine story, "[was] the third warmest and the second driest in 65 years."

“So in many ways,” senior Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips told the magazine, “this has truly been the year that winter was cancelled.”

The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson argues Canada, of all countries, should be taking aggressive action against climate change.

"Few places on Earth are experiencing more clear evidence of climate change than Canada – the loss of Arctic ice, permafrost changes, mountain pine beetle infestations, extreme weather, a warmer climate – and yet the government seldom, if ever, speaks about the issue," he wrote this summer.

Geoff Dembicki reports on energy and climate change for The Tyee.