I had such high hopes for global warming, but when the first week in March was just as cold as February, I felt disappointed. Betrayed, even. I thought the planet was heating up. All my plans for a northern NY citrus and banana orchard, out the window.
Turns out it’s easy to mix up climate and weather, two very different things. There’s a saying in the Adirondacks (and elsewhere, I’m sure) that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. That’s weather: what we experience in a given day, week, season or year.
Climate, on the other hand, refers to long-term trends in weather patterns over decades and centuries. When you have a hundred years of weather records in hand (which we do, and then some) you can begin to look for patterns in climate.
Climate patterns over time can be like riding a bicycle from Long Lake, elevation 1,900 feet, to the Hudson River at Albany, just about at sea level. Even if you’re not in shape it’s no sweat because the trip is all downhill, right? You should be able to coast the whole way. Actually you do want to be in good condition for that trek. While the general trend is downhill, there are many steep uphill climbs along the way as well. Or consider average life expectancy in the US. We know it has steadily risen for the past couple centuries, and is now roughly 79 years. Yet we all know people who, sadly, have died at a much younger age. While unfortunate, this doesn’t reflect the long-term trend.
Long-term climate trends going back thousands of years can be gleaned from air trapped in ice cores and pollen trapped in lake sediment cores. Of course you have to take scientists’ word on that sort of thing, and rumor has it some of them favor progressive politics.
It’s unlikely that thermometers have a secret political agenda, though, and reliable temperature records date back to about 1850. The consensus of these impartial instruments is that the average temperature of our planet has definitely risen over the last century.
The term ‘global’ can make climate change seem distant. Climate researcher Dr. Curt Stager of Paul Smith’s College points out a number of effects close to home. For example, local records document that our region is about two degrees warmer than it was just fifty years ago.
Lake Champlain ice data, which reach back more than 200 years, indicate in the 19th century there were only three years in which the lake didn’t freeze over. But in the 20th century the lake failed to freeze in twenty-eight winters, mostly since 1950.
This warming has wrought other changes. We now get three more inches of precipitation per year than in 1970, resulting in water level rises in lakes and ponds whose outflows are not artificially controlled. Lake Champlain has risen a whole foot in the past forty-five years.
Many people are asking where all the heat is this winter, a fair question. The coldest air in the northern hemisphere is usually found—no surprise—near the North Pole. Dubbed a “polar vortex” in the 1950s, a large Frisbee of frigid air normally hovers over the Arctic quite reliably. On occasion this bitter cold beanie gets whacked by the jet stream and slips down the face of the planet, bringing the Arctic to us.
While we’re colder than usual, many places have been hotter. In late February, most of Alaska was between fifteen and thirty-six degrees above normal. Ditto for a big splash of northeastern Russia, and another chunk in the Russian northwest. All of the Arctic has been at least five, and as much as fifteen, degrees above normal. Planet-wide, it still averages out to a warming trend. Unfortunately the math hasn’t been in our favor lately.
It’s not that our winter has been cold—it’s just that somebody else had ours, and we experienced theirs. Anyone want to help me invest in a pineapple plantation in Anchorage?
Illustration: Global mean land-ocean temperature change from 1880 to 2014, relative to the 1951–1980 mean. The black line is the annual mean and the red line is the 5-year running mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates. Source: NASA GISS