![]() ![]() There are limitations to what the new report can tell us about climate change, the impacts of which are too varied to encapsulate in a single article.Ī reduction in precipitation, for example, can leave less moisture in the ground and increase the risk of wildfires. But over time, across the globe – the internal body temperature in Henning’s analogy – a few degrees can make all the difference. The difference of a few degrees in the temperature is negligible from day to day. But if their internal body temperature were to drop by the same amount, they’d be in serious peril. In the cold weather, the skin of a person’s hands can easily drop several degrees. Henning often points to the difference between a person’s surface temperature and their internal temperature. Still, it’s difficult to convey the importance of a few degrees in the global temperature. is cooler than it was during the 20th century, and much of the West and Northeast are one to two degrees warmer.”Ī person born after 1976 has never lived through a year in which the global average temperature was below the 1951-80 average. “If we compare the 1991-2020 annual temperature normals to the 20th-century average, we see warming everywhere across the map,” a NOAA explainer states. To track long-term climate change, NOAA leans on the last century of data. ![]() “That’s especially been the case of late we’ve had some really dry summers in the last three or four years,” said Jeremy Wolf, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane.ĭespite a near-record dry March and April this year, Spokane’s spring season has actually trended wetter, while the average temperatures in those months have barely moved.įrom the national perspective, the new normals show the eastern half of the continental United States receiving more precipitation, while the west – particularly the southwest – is drying out. Just as importantly, the summers have gotten drier. In the summer months, the warming effect was even more pronounced.Ĭompared to the last report, the average temperature is 1.2 degrees warmer in July, 1 degree warmer in August, and 0.9 degrees warmer in September. In Spokane, the average annual temperature increased 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit compared to the report issued a decade ago. A drier normal means it will take an even drier period to enter drought status. To simplify the concept, when a meteorologist tells television viewers it’s five degrees hotter than normal, this is the “normal” to which they are referring.įor example, the “normal” precipitation amount is one factor considered in gauging whether a region is experiencing a drought. The new normals can reframe how we talk about the weather and climate. The new 30-year normal drops the 1980s and incorporates the 2010s. The report catalogs climate data over the past 30 years and is updated every decade. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its new U.S. “This report plainly and clearly establishes that we’ve been feeling these impacts for some time.” The data “This is simply putting a fine point on what we’ve actually understood for a while, which is that the climate is changing,” said Jerry White Jr., executive director of Spokane Riverkeeper. But local experts described a future in which crops in Eastern Washington struggle to grow, wildfires are more likely and the Spokane River’s ecosystem is upset by low flows and high temperatures. Spokane might not suffer from a one-degree increase in summer temperatures as severely as Southern California, for example. ![]() While the data is not apocalyptic for Spokane, it portends serious consequences, even if the domino effect is tricky to predict with precision. Is that catastrophic for us in this area? No, no, it’s not,” said Brian Henning, director of Gonzaga University’s Center for Climate, Society and the Environment. ![]() “If you’re starting to find that much warming in a decade, that’s a pretty significant number. A new report released last week documents that, over the last three decades, average temperatures in Spokane have increased by 1.2 degrees in July compared to the previous report released a decade ago.Īnd while the trend is hardly a surprise to climate observers, the data serves as another reminder we live on a warming planet. It doesn’t take a climate science degree to sense that Spokane summers are getting hotter and drier, but science has indeed confirmed that intuition. On any given July afternoon, a difference in one degree Fahrenheit barely registers.īut an increase of one degree in the average temperature over the span of 30 years is worth pausing to consider. ![]()
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