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

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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.

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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/