Thursday October 31st… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below at the very end of this daily blog. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Halloween and Warming October Nights from Climate Central
Happy Halloween everyone! Have a good time at parties and stay safe out there with the trick or treaters. It’s good to get off the main topic of California fires, which, Dear Diary, have been so depressing. We will, however, include more news on current blazes in my news section below today’s main topic. Speaking of a new topic, Climate Central has completed research on temperature changes during All Hallows Eve. The most horrible and real life spooky fact is that our climate is changing, and although these Climate Central warming trends for Halloween are not life threatening at all, they do show another symptom that planet Earth has a dangerous fever. Check this out:
https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/halloween-and-october-nights
Halloween and October Nights
Oct 30, 2019
In this week’s climate spooktacular, Climate Central looks at Halloween weather extremes and how October nights have warmed.
This fall’s weather has been downright scary, and it’s not over yet. September tied for the 2nd hottest on record (both nationally and globally), and the southeastern United States experienced a flash drought while areas in Montana saw record snowfall. With wildfires and power outages in the western U.S., 30-inch downpours in Texas, and coastal flooding in the East, some might say that the often wild and changeable character of fall weather has taken on a new meaning.
Loopable Halloween Background MP4
The effects of climate change are most often seen in extreme events, as seemingly small increases in average temperature can disproportionately lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather. In recent analyses we found that average fall temperatures in the United States have increased by 2.5°F over the past half century. While this increase has contributed to many daytime record high temperatures recently, it is actually overnight low temperatures that are warming fastest.
This week, we examine this trend by updating our analysis of warming fall nights, this time focusing just on the month of October. Of the 242 cities analyzed, 78% (188) have warmed by more than 1°F in the past half-century, while only 3% (7) have cooled more than 1oF. The West and Gulf Coast have seen the most warming—Reno, Nev., topped the list with 12.3°F of warming, followed by Las Vegas (9.3°F), El Paso, Texas (8.9°F), Panama City, Fla. (7.6°F), and New Orleans (7.1°F).
Fall low temperatures act as an environmental cue for plants to prepare for the harshness of winter. As these low temperatures increase, they encourage plants to use their resources for continued growth instead of storing them —a notable example being the delay of fall foliage emergence. Such an extension of the growing season also means that ragweed pollen creeps further into the fall season—scary news for the nearly 20 million American adults who suffer from pollen allergies.
METHODOLOGY: Individual city temperature trends and records are calculated using data from the Applied Climate Information System. Temperature trends are since 1970; records include the entire period of record. Displayed trend lines are based on a mathematical linear regression.
Climate Central’s local analyses include 244 stations. However, for data summaries based on linear trends, only 242 stations are included due to large data gaps in St. Johnsbury, Vermont and Wheeling, West Virginia.
Click on Climate Central’s widget to take a look at temperature trends in your area.
Here is more climate and weather news from Thursday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”