You'd think that climate change wasn't a thing anymore, given how little I talk about it. That's the problem when you have a long-term but urgent crisis vs. many short-term crises.
So for today, here are a couple of data maps that I just saw, showing some 60-year data. These are from the Twitter feed of meteorologist Brian Brettschneider.
First, temperature change in the 50 U.S. states between 1961 and 2020:
My only argument with this map is the color key: white represents the largest temperature change, rather than the usual no data. (Maybe Hawaii has no data? It looks like Canada and Mexico.) So Alaska and those parts of the Southwest have the greatest change (+3.5°F), while the darkest red areas are next-most at 3–3.5°, etc.
My home areas—the Twin Cities and central Upstate New York—are in the 2.5–3.0° range.
And then there's precipitation change in those states:
Again, both of my home places are in the upper range, this time 115–125% more precipitation.
Other areas of the country, though, are getting dryer (yellow, and especially orange). Our local climatologists always remind us that Minnesota is becoming warmer and wetter, and then describe what that means for various aspects of life (humans, animals, and plants) and our economy.
As Brettschneider summarized the data in the conclusion to his thread,
On this map (the first map shown here), 3,084 counties are warming at a statistically significant level, 0 are cooling at a statistically significant level, and the remaining 31 are warming but do not meet the 95% statistical significance threshold.
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