Every year of the last ten years is among the top 15 warmest years on record. The other years are ’00 ‘99, 98’, ‘97 and ’95. It seems very likely 2011 will be in the top 10, there is of course variation but you’d be crazy to expect a normal distribution. “Historically hot summer” is somewhat ambiguous but I’d say >.5 2011 is a top 5 warmest year (I don’t have summer data- we might presume more variability there). ~10% for the hottest year on record doesn’t sound crazy to me.
Every year of the last ten years is among the top 15 warmest years on record. The other years are ’00 ‘99, 98’, ‘97 and ’95. It seems very likely 2011 will be in the top 10, there is of course variation but you’d be crazy to expect a normal distribution. “Historically hot summer” is somewhat ambiguous but I’d say >.5 2011 is a top 5 warmest year (I don’t have summer data- we might presume more variability there). ~10% for the hottest year on record doesn’t sound crazy to me.
Okay, forget everything I just said; that probability does seem reasonable after seeing that data.