Global warming is relentlessly worsening. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information scientists, 2021 was the sixth warmest year on record. These records go back to 1880. The earth and ocean surface temperature worldwide increased to 1.51 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average.
The United Nations recently reported that the worst effects of global warming can only be stopped if the future increase stays below 2.7 degrees. Among the most dangerous effects, if the rise in temperatures is not arrested, is more dangerous and powerful hurricanes, drought, more frequent lightning, flooding and heat that will make some parts of the earth uninhabitable. Increases also will drive the number of extinct species higher, according to Live Science. Its experts recently wrote: “Warmer temperatures will also expand the range of many disease-causing pathogens that were once confined to tropical and subtropical areas, killing off plant and animal species that formerly were protected from disease.”
The Guardian recently provided an analysis of warming in the United States with the headline “A third of Americans are already facing above-average warming.” It used NOAA data and analyzed county-level warming. Brian Brettschneider, an Alaska-based climate scientist who collated the county temperature data from the NOAA, commented: “The warming isn’t distributed evenly.”
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The increase nationwide above before the “pre-industrial” period (1895) was 1.8 degrees. The analysis reviewed two periods by country. One was from 1895 until 2021, and the other covered 1970 to 2021.
Over the longer-term period, the county with the largest increase was Ventura, California, with an increase of 4.72 degrees. It is just north of Los Angeles. Among the 10 counties with the largest increases, two were in California, two were in Minnesota and four were in Colorado. Mark Jackson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, commented about Ventura: “[T]he county’s temperature increase is a remarkable number, it’s a scary number when you consider the pace we are looking at.”
Temperatures have risen the fastest since 1895 in these 10 American counties:
- Ventura, California (4.72°)
- Grand, Utah (4.63°)
- Roseau, Minnesota (4.58°)
- Kittson, Minnesota (4.56°)
- Montrose, Colorado (4.51°)
- Mesa, Colorado (4.43°)
- Santa Barbara, California (4.38°)
- Rio Blanco, Colorado (4.38°)
- Benzie, Michigan (4.37°)
- Ouray, Colorado (4.35°)
Click here to read about the most devastating natural disasters in America in 2021.
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