30 Year US Summer Temperature Trend

[REWahoo]

Lots of news of late about blistering high temperatures, especially out west. Thought this was an interesting article and map from the Associated Press showing average summer temp changes over the past 30 years.

Audrey1, who knew you lived in the "coolest" part of the US?

The West is getting roasted by hotter summer days while the East Coast is getting swamped by hotter and stickier summer nights, an analysis of decades of U.S. summer weather data by The Associated Press shows.

Summer swelter trend: West gets hotter days, East hot nights

 

[stepford]

Are we even allowed to say the words "climate change" on this forum? Good thing we're old and won't have to see the worst of it.

 

[audreyh1]

Lots of news of late about blistering high temperatures, especially out west. Thought this was an interesting article and map from the Associated Press showing average summer temp changes over the past 30 years.

Audrey1, who knew you lived in the "coolest" part of the US?



Summer swelter trend: West gets hotter days, East hot nights

How about that!

But our personal experience is that we’ve seen some way hotter summer days in the past few years than 10 years ago.

 

[Gumby]

Audrey1, who knew you lived in the "coolest" part of the US?

It's like water, once it hits boiling, it just can't get any hotter.

 

[braumeister]

The tough part is that, at least where I live, the weekly and monthly variability is much greater than it used to be.

Every region gets occasional extreme temperatures, but those extremes (especially high but also low) seem to be more frequent these days.

 

[NW-Bound]

It's like water, once it hits boiling, it just can't get any hotter.

What I have seen is that while there may not be new record highs set, the summer heat starts earlier in the year, and lasts longer into fall. That brings up the average temperature.

In addition, the lows at night are also getting higher. This gives you no reprieve, even in the dark night.

We are all doomed. You can choose to be dry roasted in the West, or steamed in the South and the Eastern Seaboard. Just different forms of misery.

 

[Dtail]

Long lived residents of FLA state one could set their watch at 4pm for the pm summer rain.
Not true since I retired here 4 years ago.

 

[Markola]

Midwestern states aren’t on either list but it is a crazy hot summer for us, too. 96F in Minnesota today and we’ve already had several weeks in the 90s, thanks to our own heat dome earlier.

Our temps are something to keep in mind before everyone else starts eyeballing the Great Lakes, several large rivers and tens of thousands of lakes up here. As they say out West, whiskey is for drinking but water is for fighting. ️

 

[travelover]

Here in greater Portlandia, the leaves were literally burned on the trees. I've never seen anything like it.

 

[Teacher Terry]

We never used to get really hot until July. June this year was awful.

 

[aja8888]

Houston, TX area has been pretty normal except for the freeze we had in March. It was in the 80's today and humid as usual.

 

[martyp]

People tend to view data like this in terms of whether they have an uncomfortably hot day. The real impact will become evident in agriculture when the aggregate temperature patterns affect the ability to to farm and make money.

 

[Montecfo]

Very nice 4th of July weather here in Nova.

 

[Car-Guy]

No big deal to us who have lived in Texas all our lives... It gets hot here in the summer every year. No exceptions that I recall and anyway, I can't tell much difference been 100 and 102 but that's normal here in July and August. I will say it does seem to be a bit milder this year... Lot's of rain the past few months and I don't think we have hit 100 yet around here this year... Maybe the big freeze we had some months ago is still having an effect.


One thing I'm sure of, if the temps double again in the next ~30 years (as in the OP's map), I won't notice.

 

[NW-Bound]

Our temps are something to keep in mind before everyone else starts eyeballing the Great Lakes, several large rivers and tens of thousands of lakes up here. As they say out West, whiskey is for drinking but water is for fighting. ️

Cue for

Do It Again by Steely Dan

In the mornin' you go gunnin' for the man who stole your water
And you fire 'til he is done in but they catch you at the border
And the mourners are all singin' as they drag you by your feet
But the hangman isn't hangin' and they put you on the street​

The movie Chinatown is an excellent movie about dirty dealings involving water rights in the West. And the setting of the movie was 1937!

The city of LA started to divert all the water from the Owens River in 1913. By 1941, LA already extended the LA Aqueduct to the Mono Basin, and dried out Mono Lake.

In my RV trips, I once passed through the Owens Valley when exiting Death Valley, and saw the devastation of the land when all of its water was taken away.

 

[Markola]

^^^^^Nice references. Periodically, our state government fends off proposals to build pipelines from Lake Superior to the desert SW. All the states and provinces on the Great Lakes have now banned together to greatly restrict any water leaving the basins of the Lakes. Even towns just over the ridges from the watersheds struggle to get enough water, which means the rules are serious. Good thing, as the climate-induced fight for water is likely just beginning.

 

[NW-Bound]

Eh, don't you have too much water sometimes? You've got to get rid of some. Maybe we can make a trade by sending you some solar power.

 

[REWahoo]

One thing I'm sure of, if the temps double again in the next ~30 years (as in the OP's map), I won't notice.

I think you are misinterpreting what that map says.

 

[Car-Guy]

I think you are misinterpreting what that map says.

Could be, just glanced at it. But it was 100 to 102 for lot's of days every summer around here when I was a kid... Still is... If I didn't read and hear this "stuff", all the time, I wouldn't know/notice the difference "around here". And again, no matter what the avg temps turn out to be here in 30 years, I won't notice.

 

[yhoomajor]

Amount of water on earth remains constant. No matter how cold or warm it is.

When it is too cold (ice age), water levels recede overall because more water gets converted to ice form.
When it's too warm, water level generally increase. Leading to more evaporation, thus more rain overall.

So any great lake states that are hoarding water because of global warming? Seems like logic of inversion and narrow minded thinking.

 

[NW-Bound]

Amount of water on earth remains constant. No matter how cold or warm it is.

When it is too cold (ice age), water levels recede overall because more water gets converted to ice form.

When it's too warm, water level generally increase. Leading to more evaporation, thus more rain overall.

True. But it may be available in places that's far from me. And all this inaccessible water does me no good.

So any great lake states that are hoarding water because of global warming? Seems like logic of inversion and narrow minded thinking.

If and when people have too much water, they will want or even pay to get rid of some. Until then, nobody wants to give away something they may need later.

 

[NW-Bound]

Maybe California will have to finish the desalination plants that it kept building in the past, then mothballing them when the drought stopped.

For a landlocked state like Arizona, there's not even a body of saltwater nearby to desalinate.

I just looked this up: it takes between 3 to 10 kWh of energy to desalinate 1 cubic meter of salt water. That's 264 gallons, for a price of up to 27c/gal, just for operating costs. The water is expensive, but at least you will not die of thirst if you are willing to put up some solar panels.

The problem is that you cannot afford that expensive water for farming. And California still grows a lot of food for the US consumption.


PS. Just 6 solar panels will get me 10 kWh/day in the summer. Now, how do I get some sea water? The nearest beach is 300 mi away.

 

[W2R]

Maybe California will have to finish the desalination plants that it kept building in the past, then mothballing them when the drought stopped.

For a landlocked state like Arizona, there's not even a body of saltwater nearby to desalinate.
[...]

I could never understand why so many people were crammed into these states that don't have enough resources to support them in the first place. Why do people want to live in an area where there isn't enough water, and that experiences periodic water shortages? I am thinking that if the laws of supply and demand were working properly in this regard, then water would be so expensive that fewer people would want to live there. Many would voluntarily move away until there remained only enough people to match the availability of water. Poof! Population decreases, problem solved.

Maybe it's because I don't live there, but I don't see that happening. So something must be wrong with my supply-and-demand model. (sigh) Maybe it's too much of a multivariate problem for such a simplistic approach.

 

[Montecfo]

I think it is just like government spending and solvency. Politicians lack the courage to deal with these issues until it is a crisis, meaning government can't pay it's bills or people turn on the faucet and nothing comes out.

Meantime look at the reduced water levels in western lakes.

Trouble ahead for sure.

 

[NW-Bound]

I could never understand why so many people were crammed into these states that don't have enough resources to support them in the first place. Why do people want to live in an area where there isn't enough water, and that experiences periodic water shortages? I am thinking that if the laws of supply and demand were working properly in this regard, then water would be so expensive that fewer people would want to live there. Many would voluntarily move away until there remained only enough people to match the availability of water. Poof! Population decreases, problem solved.

Maybe it's because I don't live there, but I don't see that happening. So something must be wrong with my supply-and-demand model. (sigh) Maybe it's too much of a multivariate problem for such a simplistic approach.

People also live in places with snowstorms, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, etc... While some places do not have enough water, others have way too much. Not everyone chooses the same poison.