Since weather has become the most crucial factor in forecasting economic growth, we thought it crucial to the future of central bank policy to note that Summer 2014 was officially the hottest one ever, according to NOAA. This of course means there is "pent-up" cold weather, which may explain the collapse in global growth expectations. However, this chatter about heat may surprise Americans (aside from those that live in the Western States) as the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast U.S. were running cooler than normal (thus concerns about growth). According to NOAA’s records, this is the 38th consecutive August and 354th consecutive month with a global average temperature above the 20th century average. As The Washington Post reports, It was the warmest summer on Earth since records began in 1880, according to a monthly climate report by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. In addition, August 2014 was the warmest August on record for the globe, according to all three major organizations that track the earth’s temperature. Over land and ocean, NOAA reports that August ended 0.75 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average, while the summer months, June through August, were 0.71 degrees warmer than normal. Which explains this... (as meteoreconomists downgrade growth expectations on the basis that hot summer means cold winter in the Keynesian mean-reverting world of weather prognostication) Global GDP growth plunged to cycle lows as the "hot" summer swept across the world. But... Over land, the high latitudes were incredibly warm compared to normal, in Siberia in particular. The sizzling heat in the western U.S. and Mexico drove up the temperature for the JMA analysis, while the eastern U.S. was cooler than average in all three analyses. The summer and August records may come as a surprise to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast U.S., which were running cooler (and wetter) than normal according to both NASA and NOAA. According to NOAA’s records, this is the 38th consecutive August and 354th consecutive month with a global average temperature above the 20th century average. * * *So prepare yourself for Q3 earnings excuses that it was not Goldilocks... in fact it was too hot to shop/spend/invest in capex in the West and too cold to buy iPhones in the East...