At a Glance

The Lower 48 had its warmest average low temperature for any summer since 1895, NOAA announces.Every state in the contiguous U.S. had above-average minimum temperatures from June through August.It's part of a long-term trend where average lows are warming much faster than average highs.

Low temperatures in the contiguous United States were the warmest on record for any summer since 1895, according to new findings from NOAA.

by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, the report found the Lower 48's average minimum temperature for meteorological summer – June through August – was 60.9 degrees Fahrenheit, one-tenth of a degree warmer than the previous record, set in 2016. It's the warmest average low temperature for the nation in 124 years of record-keeping, and 2.5 degrees warmer than average.

Theoverall average summer temperature for the Lower 48 was 73.5 degrees, tied for the fourth-hottest on record. Through eight months, 2018 is the 10th-warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S., with an average temperature of 55.7 degrees so far.

This summer was the continuation of a trend in which low temperatures are warming almost twice as fast as highs, according to NOAA.

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Furthermore, this record wasn't set by one or two regions of the country exceeding average nighttime temperatures – every state in the Lower 48 had an above-average summer minimum temperature, and five states had theirwarmest average low temperature on record for the summer, the report also said.

"A record like this, just two years after the old record, reinforces what global models have been telling us for a long time: climate change will bring us more warming at night than during the day," said , weather and climate blogger for Weather Underground.

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Because the nighttime is when most of us give our bodies time to recover, these warmer temperatures ,University of New South Wales Ph.D. student James Goldie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in July.

"When nighttime temperatures continue to be hot, when that heat just runs all the way through the night and onto the next day, we don't get that recovery, and that's when heat stress really starts to build up," said Goldie, who is studying the effects of warmer temperatures on ourhealth.