CHICAGO (CN) — Residents of the Great Lakes and upper Midwest have experienced unseasonably high temperatures this week with a false spring that has matched or broken multiple February heat records across the region.
"We had the warmest day in February ever yesterday, recorded at a number of stations," Kenny Blumenfeld, a climatologist for Minnesota, said on Tuesday.
"It's 30 degrees above normal," agreed David King, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Chicago area.
The record February high for Chicagoland, King added, was 75 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded at O'Hare International Airport in 1976. By noon on Tuesday, it was already 71 degrees at the O'Hare NWS station, with temperatures likely to climb before nightfall.
"We've got a little more to go, but that record is definitely in play," King said, though clarifying that the NWS wouldn't be able to confirm if the 1976 record was broken until later Tuesday evening.
There was also a possibility, King said, that this could be the warmest February ever recorded in the Windy City. The current record for highest average temperatures in February was set in 1882 at 39 degrees Fahrenheit.
"If our forecast holds ... we may end up at like 39.4 degrees," King said.
The unseasonable weather prompted unseasonable behavior in Chicagoans. People walked down streets in summer clothes or with coats tucked under their arms, and those not on the clock gathered at the outdoor patios restaurants and bars had quickly set up to take advantage of the spring-like conditions. In Chicago's Lincoln Square, a mock-up small town main street, buskers played for tips from passerby and patrons of a nearby pub called Jerry's.
"We're usually not this busy until April," said a bartender going by Pauly, on shift at Jerry's on Tuesday afternoon.
"The weather's two months ahead of schedule, our business is two months ahead of schedule," Pauly said. "I don't like hot weather, but I definitely like the business we're getting."
But while the high temperatures may bring short-term relief from the winter doldrums, Blumenfeld warned that the heat wave implied significant long-term changes to the regional climate.
"We have a record going back 200 years and we've never had a winter like this," he said.
If the heat wave were a "one-off," Blumenfeld explained, there might be some short-term effects on local ecosystems and infrastructure. But average temperatures have been increasing steadily for decades, with winter days in the upper Midwest now three to four degrees warmer Fahrenheit on average than they were 50 years ago. In some parts of northern Minnesota and into Canada, winter days are becoming seven to eight degrees warmer than they were in the 1970s.
Such a drastic temperature swing in such a relatively short amount of time presents significant challenges for local ecosystems, economy and culture.
For example, warmer winters and earlier springs could threaten for the region's agriculture and forest health, especially as increased temperatures lead to more extreme weather and the spread of invasive species.
"It can change the range of where things grow; the range of species is moving northward, sometimes by up to 200 miles," Blumenfeld said.
He also noted the increased trend in temperatures threatened wintry sports like skiing, ice skating and outdoor ice hockey that upper Midwesterners have traditionally enjoyed, along with the industries that have emerged around them.
"It's a part of our identity, and I don't know what's going to happen there," he said.
Last month, NASA scientists announced 2023 was the warmest year ever recorded, driven in small part by an an El Niño system in the Pacific but more significantly by man-made climate change. The space agency in January 2023 also warned there was a 50/50 chance that by 2030, the world would blow past the global warming mitigation goals set down in the 2015 Paris Accords. Those goals sought to limit global warming to 2, ideally 1.5, degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages.
On individual days, Blumenfeld said, the planet has already exceeded those limits. And there is no easy way to reverse course.
"The only real way to reset the climate system absent a technological or policy change would be an astronomical, geophysical or geopolitical event," he said, listing off sky-darkening catastrophe situations like volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts and the fallout of global nuclear war.
"Those are not good options. We don't want any of those," he said.
Even if the climate were somehow reversed, Blumenfeld also opined that as entire generations have now grown up in a warmer climate, society may have difficulty adjusting to cooler, pre-industrial temperature averages. His assessment deflates the assertions of tech-optimists who place faith in unproven climate-reversal techniques such as carbon capture or geo-engineering, instead arguing for policy changes to stabilize the climate first and foremost.
"There's no hope of something magic coming along that we missed that will reset the climate system," he said.
And even with the increased temperatures, winter isn't going away entirely. There will still be years with cold months and heavy snowfall, even on a warmer planet.
"We will definitely see, so long as we're in the middle of the continent ... the return of winter," Blumenfeld said.
His point was backed up by the NWS' own forecast, which showed that the record high temperatures in Chicago on Tuesday were set to plummet below freezing by Wednesday.
"It's not unusual to see these false springs, warmer weather followed by cold snaps, late in winter," King said. "What makes this so unique is we're going to see temperature swings of 50 to 60 degrees."
Follow @djbyrnes1
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
California unemployment rate holds steady in March April 19, 2024