In the last 100 years, the continental United States has warmed about 1.3°F overall. But not every state has been affected the same way. Some have been warming much faster than others. A new report from Climate Central takes a finer-grained look at some of the variations.
Here’s a map of state-by-state temperature increases since the 1970s — a period when the pace of warming began accelerating dramatically. (The average for the lower 48 states was 0.435°F per decade, with some states experiencing more warming than that and some states less.)
As the report notes, this post-1970s period coincides “with the time when the effect of greenhouse gases began to overwhelm the other natural and human influences on climate at the global and continental scales.” But there are still some lesser factors that may explain differences between states. “Natural variability explains some of the differences,” the report notes, “and air pollution with fine aerosols screening incoming solar radiation could also be a factor.”
Here are the 10 fastest-warming states since 1970:
Note that there doesn’t appear to be a strong relationship between the pace of warming and a state’s willingness to tackle carbon emissions. California has the most extensive climate law on the books — it’s even setting up a cap-and-trade system — but Californians have also experienced less warming in recent decades than states like Texas or Arizona that do not.
Isn't it true that part of the reason why the State of Arizona is heating up faster than any of the other States in the Nation is because of the urban heat island in a few of its cities there??
"And I've said it before, you want to know what Joseph Smith looked like in Nauvoo, just look at Trump." - Fence Sitter
Analytics wrote:The [Greenland] ice sheet has about 110,000 layers and is two miles deep at its thickest point. Thus, we see that the last time it was green in the summer was right around 108,000 B.C.
No, Virginia. Greenland was not recently a verdant place.
Let's see. What did Erik the Red himself, the founder of Greenland, say about the naming?
Þat sumar fór Eiríkr at byggja land þat, er hann hafði fundit ok hann kallaði Grænland, því at hann kvað menn þat mjök mundu fýsa þangat, ef landit héti vel.
Translation: In the summer Eirik went to live in the land which he had discovered, and which he called Greenland, "Because," said he, "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name."
"The DNA of fictional populations appears to be the most susceptible to extinction." - Simon Southerton
Has global warming stopped? No - it’s just on pause, insist scientists, and it's down to the oceans
Temperatures still expected to reach predicted 2015 levels with only a five-year delay after 12 of the 14 hottest years on record
Huge amounts of heat – equivalent to the power of 150 billion electric kettles – are being continuously absorbed by the deep ocean, which could explain why global warming has “paused” over the past 10 to 15 years, scientists have concluded in a series of reports to explain why the Earth’s rate of warming has slowed down.
Global average temperatures are higher now than they have ever been since modern records began. However, after a period of rapid temperature increases during the 1980s and 1990s there has been a significant slow-down since the turn of the century, leading some sceptics to claim that global warming has stopped.
A scientific assessment of the planet’s heat balance has found that the most likely explanation for the recent hiatus in global warming is the continual absorption of thermal energy by the huge “heat sink” of the deep ocean many hundreds of metres below the sea surface, according to scientists from the Met Office.
Senior climate scientists said that they had always expected periods when the rate of increase in temperatures would level off for a few years and emphasised that the last decade was still warmer than any previous decade, with 12 of the 14 hottest years on record occurring since 2000.
Professor Rowan Sutton, a climate scientist at Reading University, said the temperatures have levelled off in the past, the latest example being in the 1940s and 1950s when sulphate pollutants from the post-war boom in industrial production may have acted as a shield against incoming solar radiation.
“Some people call it a slow-down, some call it a hiatus, some people call it a pause. The global average surface temperature has not increased substantially over the last 10 to 15 years,” Professor Sutton said.
“Climate scientists absolutely expect variations in the rate at which surface temperature will rise….but that is not to say we understand all the details of the last 10 to 15 years,” Professor Sutton said.
The problem for the Met Office is to explain why the rate of increase in global temperatures has declined in recent years while concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have continued to accelerate. Sceptics claim that this shows there is not a strong link between the two, whereas climate scientists insist that rising carbon dioxide concentrations are largely responsible for the rise in global temperatures.
Professor Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said that a pause in the rate of increase in global temperatures lasting this long is unusual but not exceptional, with similar pauses of about 10 years expected on average twice every century.
The most likely explanation for the current pause is that excess heat trapped by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is being transferred from the atmosphere to the oceans where it is being transported down to deeper layers that cannot be monitored by satellites, Professor Belcher said.
“It looks like the Earth is continuing to accumulate energy but it looks like it is being re-arranged and hidden from view,” he said.
However, measurements from hundreds of ocean floats released over the last decade, which descend and drift to depths of up to 2,000 metres, show that huge amounts of heat from the sea surface is now being transferred to the deep ocean, with unknown consequences for the environment, the scientists said.
“In summary, observations of ocean heat content and of sea-level rise suggest that the Earth system has continued to absorb heat energy over the past 15 years, and that this additional heat has been absorbed in the ocean,” says the Met Office report.
"And I've said it before, you want to know what Joseph Smith looked like in Nauvoo, just look at Trump." - Fence Sitter
