cold

A record warm January

March 4, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Americans experienced unusually cold and wintery weather in January. Places like southern Louisiana and Florida saw appreciable amounts of snow. For those who experienced January’s Arctic blast, it was a cold January. But despite that, January was the world’s warmest on record, extending a run of extraordinary heat in which 18 out of the last 19 months saw an average global temperature more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. In fact, the global average temperature in January was 1.75 degrees above the pre-industrial average.

The exceptional warmth was surprising to climate researchers. It happened despite the emergence of La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which tend to lower global temperatures, at least for a while.

Researchers are investigating whether there is something beyond the effects of greenhouse gas emissions that is boosting temperatures to an unexpected degree. It is true that emissions, associated with the burning of coal, gas, and oil, reached record levels in both 2023 and 2024. But January’s warmth was still something of a surprise.

One prevalent theory is that cutting dangerous pollution is playing a role in causing global warming to accelerate. As regulators have curbed sulfate pollution to protect people’s lungs, the cooling effect of these particles that help form more and brighter clouds has diminished.

January demonstrates that the global climate system is complex and the weather in any particular region does not necessarily reflect what is happening to the planet as a whole.

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Global Temperatures Shattered Records in January

Photo, posted December 22, 2013, courtesy of SD Anderson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Cold spells and global warming

February 10, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

January saw some major bouts of subfreezing temperatures across much of North America and significant snowfall in places like Pensacola, Florida and New Orleans. This spate of frigid weather undoubtedly prompted many people to question whether global warming is really happening. But such cold spells quite likely are not happening in spite of global warming, but actually as a result of it.

The polar jet stream is a slim band of westerly winds that circles the Arctic. It is formed where cold air from the north meets warmer air to the south. As the planet warms, the Arctic has been heating up nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, which narrows the difference in temperature between the northern air and southern air. The result is that the jet stream is weaker and more meandering, which allows frigid air to reach further south.

The polar vortex is a whirling mass of cold air that extends across the Arctic. It is stronger in the winter when the Northern Hemisphere leans away from the sun. The polar jet stream normally holds on to the vortex and keeps it far to the north. But when the jet stream gets wobbly, this mass of cold air can break out and travel south, even to places like Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.

The planet as a whole is warming, and the Arctic is warming even faster. But there will still be plenty of ice, snow, and frigid air in the Arctic winter for decades to come. As the behavior of the polar jet stream gets increasingly erratic, there may well be more frequent episodes of plunging temperatures in areas unaccustomed to them.

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Severe Cold Spells May Persist Because of Warming, Not in Spite of It

Photo, posted January 5, 2025, courtesy of Dermot O’Halloran via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Self-heating concrete

April 24, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

States in the colder parts of the country spend an estimated $2.3 billion a year on snow and ice removal as well as untold millions on repairing roadways damaged by winter weather. Researchers at Drexel University have been researching a way to extend the service life of concrete surfaces like roadways and to help them maintain a surface temperature above freezing during the winter.

Preventing freezing and thawing as temperatures go up and down and reducing the amount of plowing and salting is a desirable goal. The Drexel team has developed a cold-weather-resilient concrete mix that is capable of melting snow on its own using only the thermal energy in the environment and not requiring salt, shoveling, or heating systems.

The system uses low-temperature liquid paraffin that turns from its room-temperature liquid state into a solid when temperatures go down. Incorporating the liquid paraffin into concrete triggers heating when temperatures drop due to the energy released by the phase change.

Tests on slabs of the concrete on the Drexel campus over the past two years recorded 32 freeze-thaw events. The special slabs maintained a surface temperature between 42 and 55 degrees for up to 10 hours when air temperatures dipped below freezing.

The heating is enough to melt a couple of inches of snow at a rate of a quarter inch an hour. It’s not enough to melt a heavy snow event before plows are needed, but it can help deice road surfaces and increase transportation safety. And simply preventing the surface from freezing, thawing, and refreezing can go a long way towards preventing deterioration. It is promising research toward reducing an ongoing problem in colder climates.

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Drexel’s Self-Heating Concrete Is One Step Closer to Clearing Sidewalks Without Shoveling or Salting

Photo, posted March 16, 2024, courtesy of Ajay Suresh via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Adirondack lakes becoming inhospitable for trout

February 15, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A combination of the warming climate and the phenomenon of lake browning are making the bottom of most lakes in New York’s Adirondack Mountains unlivable for cold water fish – such as trout, salmon, and whitefish – in the summer.

Lake browning occurs when dissolved organic matter from forests turns the water tea-brown. Browning is the legacy of a century of acid rain and subsequently the fact that forest soils have suffered reduced capacity to absorb weak organic acids, leading to more dissolved plant matter flowing into lakes. Climate change has increased the frequency of extreme precipitation events and the length of growing seasons, leading to more runoff of organic matter.

Browner water traps more of the sun’s heat at the top of the lake and blocks the sun’s rays from reaching deeper. The result of the browning is lakes that are either too warm or too deoxygenated to support trout populations.

A study of 1,467 Adirondack lakes by Cornell University researchers found that only about 5% of them may continue to maintain water that is cold and oxygenated enough to support cold-water fish.

Deeper lakes fare much better because they have so much water that their oxygen is hard to deplete, but only 1% of all Adirondack lakes are deeper than 30 meters. Another 4% are very clear because the influx of cold water outpaces the expansion of low-oxygen zones and limits the effects of browning.

The study urges the protection of as many lakes as possible from species invasions, nutrient and salt pollution, and other forms of environmental degradation.

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Most Adirondack lakes will likely become unsuitable for trout

Photo, posted July 17, 2011, courtesy of Lida via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The end of a supergiant iceberg

November 16, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In 2017, a supergiant iceberg known as A-68 calved from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. In 2020, it drifted close to South Georgia, a British island in the South Atlantic Ocean, and then began to break up. This iceberg was enormous – nearly the size of Delaware. When it started to break up, it released huge quantities of fresh, cold meltwater in a relatively small region.

Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Sheffield have studied how the melting iceberg has affected the temperature and the salinity of the ocean surface in the area. They found that the water near the surface was 8 degrees Fahrenheit colder than normal and the water only had about two-thirds of its normal saltiness.

The effects from the melted iceberg eventually extended well beyond South Georgia as the colder, less-salty water was carried by ocean currents to form a long plume that stretched more than 600 miles across the South Atlantic. It also took several months to disappear.

The calving of this massive iceberg provided a unique opportunity for scientists to study the impact of iceberg melting on surface ocean conditions. A-68 was one of the largest and most studied of all icebergs. The study has shown that each individual melting giant iceberg can have widespread and long-lasting impacts on ocean conditions, which has consequences for the plant and animal life that lives there.

Climate change is likely to lead to more giant iceberg calving in the future. It is important to monitor these events to assess their future impacts on ocean circulation, biology, and even seafloor geology.

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Supergiant iceberg makes surrounding ocean surface colder and less salty

Photo, posted October 24, 2018, courtesy of Jefferson Beck / NASA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Summers are getting hotter

November 7, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate scientists have warned for decades that a seemingly small change in the global average temperature can lead to large changes in extreme heat. So far, the world has warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius (or 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and that has been enough to cause big changes in summer heat.

This past summer was the hottest on record. The heat fueled deadly wildfires across the Mediterranean. Record highs caused Chinese cities to suspend outdoor work. Weeks of triple-digit temperatures in the U.S. southwest led to heat-related hospitalizations and deaths.

But not every recent summer has been hotter everywhere. Even this summer saw average or even colder than average temperatures in some places. But the distribution of summer temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere has shifted dramatically in recent decades.

Less than 1% of summers in the middle of the 20th century were extremely hot for their location. Over the past decade, more than a quarter of summers were extremely hot for their location.

Between 1950 and 1980, about a third of summers across the hemisphere were near average in temperature; a third were considered cold; a third were hot. Only a few summers in a few places were either extremely cold or extremely hot. Over the past decade, the vast majority of summers have either been hot or extremely hot.

We experience summer weather in the location where we spend our time, and it is entirely possible that our own experience may have been unremarkable. We may even have had a cool, rainy summer. But on a global scale, summers are getting hotter and hotter and making it harder to ignore what is happening to our planet.

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It’s Not Your Imagination. Summers Are Getting Hotter.

Photo, posted August 21, 2022, courtesy of Bonnie Moreland via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Cryopreserving Corals | Earth Wise

October 3, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Recent climate models estimate that if the effects of climate change are not mitigated soon enough, 95% of the world’s corals could die by the mid 2030s. Given the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, this is an increasingly likely outcome. Coral reefs are estimated to have a $10 trillion economic value apart from their essential role in marine ecosystems.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have demonstrated a successful technique for cryopreserving entire coral fragments; in other words, preserving coral using cold temperatures and successfully reviving them.

Existing coral cryopreservation techniques rely on freezing sperm and larvae, which can only be collected during spawning events, which occur only a few days each year for coral species. This makes it logistically very challenging for researchers and conservationists.

The Hawaiian researchers focused on a process called isochoric vitrification, which is a method of freezing with liquid nitrogen that prevents the formation of ice crystals. They tested the technique with thumbnail-sized fragments of coral, freezing them in small aluminum chambers which restrict the growth of ice crystals that would otherwise damage delicate polyp tissues. Once the chambers were warmed, the fragments were transferred to seawater and allowed to recover. They found that the revived corals behaved the same as those that were never cooled.

The process holds great promise to conserve the biodiversity and genetic diversity of coral. If the process can be scaled up, it may be possible to preserve as many species of coral as possible by 2030, when it may no longer be viable for them to survive in the warming and acidifying oceans.

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Cryopreservation breakthrough could save coral reefs

Photo, posted June 2, 2023, courtesy of USFWS – Pacific Region via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Arctic Warming And Weather At Mid-Latitudes | Earth Wise

May 18, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Some of the most striking images of climate change are those of melting glaciers in the Arctic and polar bears stranded on shrinking sea ice. The Arctic has been warming at a rate twice as fast as the global average. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the Arctic’s role in driving extreme weather events in other parts of the world.

Winters in the midlatitude regions have seen more extreme weather events. The past winter saw record-breaking cold temperatures and snowfall in Japan, China, and Korea. Many parts of Eurasia and North America experienced severe cold snaps, with heavy snowfall and prolonged periods of subzero temperature. On the other hand, Europe saw its second warmest winter on record with record high temperatures in many places, much drier than normal conditions, and the closure of many ski resorts.

A study published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science by scientists from South Korea and the U.S. looked at various climate projection models as well as historic climate data to assess what is likely to happen to weather in the mid-latitudes as the Arctic continues to warm. Warmer Arctic Sea temperatures usually result in lower winter temperatures in East Asia and North America as ocean currents and the jet streams are altered.

The study shows that Arctic warming-triggered cold waves in the mid-latitudes are likely to persist in a warmer future, but that such events will become more difficult to predict. The study highlights the importance of continued efforts to better understand the interactions between Arctic warming and the climate of the midlatitudes. There need to be better ways to predict the extreme weather events that are likely to come.

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Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Researchers Correlate Arctic Warming to Extreme Winter Weather in Midlatitude and Its Future

Photo, posted August 31, 2006, courtesy of Hillebrand / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Antarctic Heatwave | Earth Wise

May 13, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Concordia Research station atop Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau is generally considered to be the coldest place on earth. In mid-March, the normal high temperature for the day is around -56 degrees Fahrenheit. But on March 18, the high for the day was 11.3 degrees, nearly 70 degrees warmer than normal.

The World Meteorological Organization doesn’t formally track the metric of largest temperature excess above normal, but if it did, this would probably have set a world record. Consider a place like Washington, DC. Its normal high temperature on March 18 is 61 degrees. Imagine if it got up to 131 degrees!

The 11-degree reading at the Concordia Research Station was not only the record for the month of March. It was actually the record for any month.

The Russian Vostok research station, which is another candidate for being the coldest place on earth based on its average high temperature, also saw some record high temperatures. Vostok reported a high temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit, which is 63 degrees above its average for the date. It broke the station’s previous record by almost 27 degrees.

This record warming was the result of a unique combination of meteorological events that included a moist inflow of an atmospheric river as well as a rare infusion of hot air into the Antarctic plateau. The arrival of the moisture in the atmospheric river trapped the hot air, allowing temperatures to shoot up.

The extreme warmth in Antarctica raises concerns about the long-term effects on the ice there. A single short heatwave is not going to have a major effect, but if such events become more common, it could be real problem.

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Extraordinary Antarctica heatwave, 70 degrees above normal, would likely set a world record

Photo, posted October 15, 2016, courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

January Climate Report Card | Earth Wise

March 9, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The global climate is a complicated thing. While overall trends are relatively straightforward to understand, the details can seem confusing.

January was the sixth-warmest January in the 143 years of global climate record keeping. The global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average.

Meanwhile, the United States had its coolest January since 2014, although the month still ranked nearly a degree above the long-term average across the nation. This January was also the driest January in eight years and was one of the top- 15 driest Januarys on record. That being said, there was the so-called Bomb Cyclone late in the month that dumped 1-2 feet of snow and brought blizzard conditions along the eastern seaboard and set a one-day snowfall record in Boston.

Global conditions and regional and local conditions can be very different. In the big picture, January was the 46th consecutive January and the 445th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th century average.

And while the US had a fairly cool January, South America saw its second-warmest January on record, Asia had its fourth warmest, and Oceania had its seventh warmest.

Apart from temperatures, Antarctic sea ice coverage was the second smallest January extent in 44 years. Arctic ice was 208,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average, although it was the largest since 2009.

Even as the global climate warms, local and regional climate conditions will continue to have unique and variable characteristics over the course of time. Every time there’s a bout of cold weather, it isn’t time to stop being concerned about climate change.

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January 2022 was Earth’s 6th warmest on record

Photo, posted January 6, 2013, courtesy of Christopher Michel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Tropical Species Moving North | Earth Wise

April 19, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate change is leading to warmer winter weather throughout the southern U.S., providing opportunities for many tropical plants and animals to move north. A new study by scientists at UC Berkeley looked at the changing distribution of tropical species driven by the warming climate.

Some species are appreciated in their new locations, such as sea turtles and the Florida manatee, which are gradually moving northward along the Atlantic Coast. Others, like the invasive Burmese python are not so welcome. That goes double for many insects, such as the mosquitoes that carry diseases like the West Nile virus, Zika, dengue, and yellow fever, as well as beetles that destroy native trees.

The transition zone, northward of which experiences freezes every winter, has always been a barrier to species native to more temperate places. For most organisms in such places, if they freeze, they die. Cold snaps like the recent one in Texas usually don’t happen for decades and are now likely to be less and less frequent. In the meantime, tropical species can get more and more of a foothold and maybe even develop populations that can tolerate more cold extremes in the future.

The warming climate is leading many plant species to expand their ranges, in some cases pushing out native species. The general story is that the species that do really well are the more generalist species whose host plants or food sources are quite varied or widely distributed and can tolerate a wide range of conditions. By definition, they tend to be the pest species.

We need to prepare for widespread shifts in the distribution of biodiversity as climate, including winter climate, changes.

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Tropical species are moving northward as winters warm

Photo, posted May 7, 2010, courtesy of Jim Reid / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Can We Tow Icebergs To Use Their Water? | Earth Wise

February 23, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

At any given time, there are thousands of icebergs adrift in Antarctica that are hundreds or even thousands of feet across. For at least fifty years, there has been speculation about whether such icebergs could be towed from the Antarctic to places experiencing freshwater shortages. The feasibility of such a scheme is still the subject of studies that nowadays include sophisticated computer modeling.

Places like the Persian Gulf, Cape Town, South Africa, and Perth, Australia all experience water shortages and could benefit tremendously from having a large iceberg towed to their waters.

How big an iceberg would it take to quench the thirst of a city like Cape Town? Computer models show that an iceberg 2,000 feet long and 650 feet thick could produce enough water to supply the city for more than a year. However, with water temperatures in the 60s in the area, even such a large iceberg would melt away within weeks. So, to get enough water for a year, it would require a much larger iceberg – one at least a couple of miles long.

Daunting problems include figuring out how many and what sort of ships would be required. An alternative to such giant icebergs would be finding a way to insulate the icebergs so they don’t melt as quickly, thereby allowing much smaller and more towable icebergs to be harvested.

Beyond these issues, there are the ecological issues of the effects of huge amounts of very cold fresh water affecting local marine ecosystems.

Despite a wide range of challenges, there is continued interest in the idea of using icebergs as a source of very pure fresh water. In an increasingly thirsty world, it might someday actually happen.

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Can icebergs be towed to water-starved cities?

Photo, posted November 1, 2007, courtesy of M A Felton via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Even The Deep Sea Is Warming | Earth Wise

November 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Approximately 75% of the area covered by ocean is deep, dark, and cold. This is known as the deep sea. But even in these remote regions of the planet things are heating up.

According to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers analyzed a decade of hourly temperature readings at four depths in the Atlantic Ocean’s Argentine Basin, off the coast of Uruguay. The research team selected recording depths that would best represent the average depth of the ocean, which is just over 12,000 feet.

The researchers found that deep sea temperatures fluctuate more than was previously known. They also detected a warming trend at the bottom of the ocean. In fact, all recordings indicated a warming trend of 0.02 to 0.04 degrees Celsius per decade between 2009 and 2019. This is a significant warming trend in the deep sea because temperature fluctuations are typically measured in thousandths of a degree.

Researchers say this increase is consistent with warming trends in the shallow ocean associated with anthropogenic climate change. However, they say more research is needed to better understand what is driving the warming temperatures in the deep sea.

A better understanding of what is driving these changes could have far-reaching implications. Since oceans absorb a significant amount of the world’s heat, learning about the oceans’ temperature trends could help researchers better understand temperature fluctuations in the atmosphere as well.

The researchers hope their findings will demonstrate the need to survey deep ocean temperatures annually in order to better identify the long-term trends.

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The deep sea is slowly warming

Photo, posted July 1, 2018, courtesy of NOAA Ocean Exploration and Research via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Scandinavian Wine

December 20, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The warming climate is creating some unexpected entrepreneurial opportunities. Many places that have traditionally dominated the wine industry are starting to be worried that the local climates that made them ideal for vineyards are changing and becoming much less ideal. On the other hand, places where wine-making was regarded as a losing proposition are becoming much more hospitable. A prime example is Scandinavia.

Nordic vintners are increasingly convinced that they can develop thriving commercial operations in what used to be places that are too cold for successful wine-making.

Denmark now has 90 commercial vineyards, up from just two 15 years ago. Forty vineyards have sprung up in Sweden. About a dozen vineyards are now operating as far north as Norway.

Many of these Nordic vineyards are in the startup stage and are tiny compared with the established wineries of Europe. Europe has 10 million acres of vineyards, which is enough to cover almost the entire country of Denmark. At the moment, there are only about 1,000 acres of vineyards in Denmark and Sweden.

But, looking forward, Scandinavia’s climate is forecast to be more like northern France, as regional temperatures climb as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Over the past decade, warming has produced milder winters, a longer growing season, and even a small but rising number of award-winning Scandinavian wines.

Meanwhile, traditional wine-growing regions are also dealing with climate change. Winemakers in France, for example, are experimenting with grapes from warmer countries like Tunisia to see if they can retain the tastes and yields that are the basis of a multibillion-dollar wine industry. Spanish and Italian winemakers are planting grapes higher up on mountainsides or on shaded north-facing slopes to preserve the quality of their wine.

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Scandinavian Wine? A Warming Climate Tempts Entrepreneurs

Photo, posted August 24, 2019, courtesy of Ron Reiring via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Europe Is Warming Faster Than Predicted

October 9, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study has found that Europe is warming faster than even climate models projected. The number of summer days with extreme heat in Europe has tripled since the 1950s, while the number of days with extreme cold has decreased by factors of two or three depending on the region.

According to climate scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the climate trends are much larger than what would come from natural variability and are a clear signal of climate change. Extremely hot days in Europe have become hotter by an average of more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit while extremely cold days have warmed by more than 5 degrees. The research examined data from weather stations across Europe from 1950 to 2018. Over 90% of the stations recorded increasing temperatures over time, a percentage much too high to be purely from natural climate variability. The results also showed that the region was warming even faster than climate models projected.

The research results come after an extremely hot summer in Europe. Southern France hit 114.8 degrees, a new record, in June. Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium all recorded all-time national temperature highs. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently announced that July was the hottest month ever recorded.

European summers and winters will only grow hotter in the coming years as climate change accelerates. The rapidly increasing temperatures will impact cities and people that are unprepared for them and pose real risks for residents in the coming decades. Extreme heat is dangerous because it stresses the human body, potentially leading to heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

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Europe warming faster than expected due to climate change

Photo, posted July 30, 2011, courtesy of Marcel de Jong via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

More Antarctic Warming

April 23, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

East Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth. It makes up two-thirds of the continent, is home to the South Pole, and has vast ice sheets that have been around for tens of millions of years and are nearly three miles thick in places. Temperatures there hover around 67 degrees below zero. In 2010, a few spots on East Antarctica’s polar plateau reached a record-breaking 144 degrees below zero.

But almost unbelievably, parts of the East Antarctic seem to be melting.

Scientists are seeing worrying signs of ice loss in the East Antarctic. Glaciers are starting to move more quickly and are dumping their ice into the Southern Ocean. Satellite images show the fast-moving ice. The biggest glacier – the Totten Glacier – alone contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by over 12 feet.

The Antarctic as a whole contains about 90% of the planet’s ice. In theory, if it all melted, it would raise global sea levels by an average of 200 feet.

The growing concerns about eastern Antarctica are not that its interior plateau will soon start to melt. It is still extremely cold there and should stay that way for a long time. But its edges, which are in contact with warming ocean waters, are the real worry. As the region’s ice shelves, which float atop the Southern Ocean, erode, the vast glaciers behind them could rapidly accelerate their slide into the sea.

Today, satellites show huge glaciers moving rapidly toward the coast, with wide rivers of ice sometimes moving several miles a year. In the face of rapid change and limited data, it is difficult to predict what the Antarctic will do in the future. But it doesn’t look good.

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Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting to Melt

Photo, posted January 3, 2013, courtesy of Christopher Michel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

2018 Was A Wet Year

March 20, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Recent news reports noted that 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record. But the changing climate is not just about temperature. 2018 was also the third-wettest year since 1895, when steady record-keeping began.

Overall, the U.S. recorded 4.68 inches more precipitation in 2018 than the 20th century average. But all that rain and snow was nothing like evenly distributed. The eastern half of the country – especially in places like North Carolina and Virginia – saw record amounts of precipitation, while most of the West remained stuck in drought.

The warming climate leads to precipitation extremes at both ends, meaning that wet places are likely to get wetter and dry places drier. There has been a marked upward trend in short-duration extreme events. For example, Cyclone Mekunu dumped almost 13 inches of rain on Salalah, Oman in 36 hours, more than double its annual average rainfall.

In the southeast and eastern U.S., the trend toward stronger storm events is mostly driven by strong warming of the oceans that fringe their shores. Warm oceans evaporate more water into the air and warm air holds more water than cooler air. Warmer, moisture-laden air acts like a blanket over the land, keeping heat trapped near the ground. Many of the states that had their wettest-ever years also set records for high minimum temperatures – their coldest temperatures were less cold than in the past.

Air temperatures are projected to warm up even further in the coming years and, as a result, many scientists are anticipating that extreme precipitation events will only get more extreme. The pattern of drought in the west and wetness in the east is likely to stay.

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2018 was the U.S.’s third-wettest year on record—here’s why

Photo, posted August 18, 2018, courtesy of Jim Lukach via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The New Normal Weather

March 13, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We often hear about how the weather is getting stranger all the time, but do most of us really think so? What kinds of weather do we really find remarkable and has that been changing?

A study led by the University of California, Davis used some very modern tools to examine the question of what people might consider to be “normal” weather. To reach their conclusions, they quantified the timeless pastime of talking about the weather by analyzing Twitter posts. They sampled over 2 billion geolocated tweets to determine what kind of events generated the most posts about the weather.

Unsurprisingly, they found that people most often tweet when temperatures are unusual for a particular place and time of year. However, if the same weather persisted year after year, it generated less comment on Twitter, indicating that people began to view it as normal in a relatively short amount of time.

The study indicates that people have short memories when it comes to what they consider normal weather. On average, most people base their idea of normal weather on what has happened in just the past two up to maybe eight years. This disconnect with the historical climate record may obscure the public’s perception of climate change.

After repeat exposures to historically-extreme temperatures, people talk less about the weather, even though particularly hot or cold weather conditions make them unhappy and grumpy. Even though we are experiencing conditions that are historically extreme, we might not consider them to be particularly unusual if we tend to forget what happened more than a few years ago. Things may be getting worse, but they apparently are just the new normal.

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