Don't let these temperatures fool you: The extreme winters of the past are gone

[marmar]

Don’t let these temperatures fool you: The extreme winters of the past are gone | Opinion

Richard B. Rood
Op-ed contributor


(Detroit Free Press) A cold snap has hold of the eastern and southeastern parts of the U.S. In fact, the month of January is predicted to be colder than normal, and colder than any January we’ve experienced in years.

It is winter, and even in a warming climate, we expect cold weather. In Michigan and the eastern U.S., our coldest air is transported in from the Arctic. Because it's fully dark in the Arctic, in winter we can still get very cold air.

But our sense of “normal” is changing — and it is important to understand that despite temperatures in the teens and 20s this week in metro Detroit, our planet is, in fact, still warming.

....(snip)....

When it come to weather, a standard definition for a science-based “normal” is a 30-year average of temperature and precipitation, recalculated at the end of every decade. Our current norms are based on data collected from 1991-2020. For the 10 years prior to 2021, “normal” was based on data from 1981-2010, and so on.

Since the earth is getting warmer, each successive 30-year period is a little bit warmer than the previous period. So a high of 16 degrees Fahrenheit in southeast Michigan looks quite different, depending on what you're comparing it to: 16 F is about 8.5 degrees colder than the 1981-2010 average. But, because the planet continues to warm, 16 F is about 10 degrees colder than the warmer 1991-2020 average. In other words, a report that 16 F is unusually cold isn't a sign of lower temps, but a warmer baseline. .................(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2025/01/08/michigan-cold-snap-climate-change-global-warming-detroit-winter/77489142007/

[MiHale]

1. He sounds like a guy that has an inside job...

16 degrees is 16 degrees it’s cold…now add in wind chill…it’s colder. I’ve worked outdoors most of my life all seasons. Compare temperatures against the ‘normal’ all you want, there’s no argument about the warming trend overall. I believe it’s getting windier, all seasons.
When you have a 16 degree day with the wind constantly blowing at 10 mph. that’s the real temperature not the quiescent version. I’ve seen no one that takes that into account.

[Think. Again.]

3. Climate scientists do actually take the increased/decreased winds....

...that are caused by all sorts of feedback loops, into account.

But yes, you've hit on one of the most difficult aspects of trying to gauge or predict what we're doing to ourselves, and that is the complexity of the all the millions of varying and inter-acting systems that make up our ecosphere that are being affected by the covering of CO2 that we are creating over the atmosphere. Those changing wind patterns are just one consideration, and it is realistically impossible to consider how all of the millions of changing systems will influence each other.

[Think. Again.]

2. Thank you for posting this...

...the article barely touches on the feeback loops that amplify the effects of our thickening CO2 covering when the author speaks about the effects on air temperature of the warming Great Lakes waters, but it does try to explain the difficulty in clearly recognizing the changes we are experiencing over longer-than-a-lifetime spans.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. Last year was a 5 alarm shocking Winter

We basically didn't have a Winter, we got 1 week of really heavy snow, but that was about it.

I am a shoveler, I will never own a snowblower as long as I am still able to shovel. It's good exercise that I need in the Winter. Last year I had 1 week of good exercise from shoveling and a couple other small days of shoveling. This year there's been a little bit to do here or there, but it's melted fully a few times too, so there are no snow piles.

And most Michiganders you talk to are thankful for the milder Winters, but that's not the whole story. There are all kinds of unobvious effects of global warming that can be destructive. Lake Michigan regulates our weather in many ways. Less ice on the lake is bad for a number of reasons, it makes for warmer Summer waters which don't regulate storms as well as cold water does. I think the windstorms we get several times a year now are much more frequent than the 70s or 80s. I don't remember big tree limbs coming down in my neighborhood several times a year when I was younger. Now it happens a couple times a Spring, a few times a Summer and again a couple times in the Fall. The cold water isn't sucking the energy out of storms that come across the lake as much anymore. And the ice also provides a shield that helps prevent Winter erosion along the lake shore when the wurf can be quite violent and destructive, there's almost no ice right now.

Beyond that, there are many other effects that are less obvious. The soil here relies on deep freeze and thaw cycles that aerate it an make it more fertile. Crops do better with severe Winters that kill off crop eating pests like insects and deer. Ground water needs snow melt to replenish. There's all sorts of things that are effected by global warming we don't think about. So the idea of, "Oh, warmer Winters in MI, awesome!" might not be true. For all we know, Michigan will be the first place that become uninhabitable due to global warming, probably unlikely, but still possible.

We just don't know.