Rhode Island was the first state in the lower 48 whose average annual temperature warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius since 1895. Then New Jersey hit that threshold, which global leaders aim to keep the planet’s warming from exceeding. Next was Connecticut, then Maine and Massachusetts. But why is the Northeastern United States warming faster than the rest of the country? Climate scientists don’t fully understand this trend, but they offer an array of explanations.
Abby Weiss reports for Inside Climate News
As a kid growing up in Watertown, Connecticut, Daniel Esty would create his own backyard ice skating rink and flood it with a garden hose. Now, when Esty tries to create an ice rink with his own children in their backyard in nearby Cheshire, the water rarely freezes.
Only a few days in recent winters have been cold enough to produce ice adequate for skating, said Esty, a Yale University environmental law professor. Having lived in Connecticut his whole life, he has witnessed the growing impact of global warming in the Northeast.
“I think all of us who’ve been living in New England see changes that suggest that we’re in a warming cycle, and that of course, is worrisome,” said Esty, who served as commissioner of the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014.
Connecticut is one of the fastest-warming states, in the fastest warming region, in the contiguous United States. An analysis last year by The Washington Post found that neighboring Rhode Island was the first state among the lower 48 whose average annual temperature had warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius since 1895. New Jersey was second, the Post found, followed by Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts.
The Post analysis also found that the New York City area, including Long Island and suburban counties in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, was among about half a dozen hot spots nationally where warming has already exceeded 2 degrees. The others are the greater Los Angeles area, the high desert in Oregon, the Western Rocky Mountains, an area from Montana to Minnesota along the Canadian border and the Northeast Shore of Lake Michigan.
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Climate scientists don’t fully understand why Connecticut and the other Northeast states have warmed so dramatically, but they offer an array of explanations, from warm winters that produce less snow and ice (and thus reflect less heat back into space) to warming ocean temperatures and changes in both the jet stream and the Gulf Stream.
Two degrees Celsius serves as a prominent threshold for international leaders, who in the 2015 Paris Agreement committed to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius…,recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported that even a 1.5 degree increase in the global average temperature will result in the death of coral reefs, severe droughts, dangerous heat waves and massive sea level rise.
The perilous warming trend in the Northeast continued this spring, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information’s climate report for May, which found warmer than normal temperatures for all 12 Northeastern states. Spring temperatures were 0.1 degrees Celsius above normal in Connecticut, the report said. The state’s nearly 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise since 1895 is double the average for the Lower 48 states.
Across the planet, temperatures have warmed 1 degree Celsius since the late 19th century. But globally, warming has been far from uniform. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and Alaska is the fastest warming state in the U.S.
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Across the country, the Post found that 71 of 3,107 counties have already surpassed 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Fairfield County and much of southwestern Connecticut are among that group.
New York, New Jersey and New England are not typically associated with the dramatic signs of a warming planet, such as raging wildfires or catastrophic flooding. But the Northeast is warming faster than the rest of the contiguous U.S.
“If you look at the spatial pattern of warming, then what you find is that you see much higher warming in the coastal areas in New England,” said Ambarish Karmalkar, a postdoctoral fellow with the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.
The climate patterns Connecticut exhibits are similar to the rest of the Northeastern states. If current trends continue, by 2035, the average temperature of the entire Northeast region will have risen 2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment.
