ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Earth was record warm in January for the eighth month in a row, according to the European climate agency. That was evident in the northern United States, where nearly 1,000 people played golf in snow-covered Minneapolis last month during what the state calls the “Lost Winter of 2023-24.”
According to Copernicus, global temperatures exceeded the internationally accepted warming threshold for the first time over a 12-month period; From February 2023 to January 2024, it was 2.74 degrees Fahrenheit (1.52 degrees Celsius) warmer than pre-industrial levels. European Space Agency Climate Change Service. This is the highest 12-month global temperature average in history, Copernicus reported.
The Earth has broken temperature records every month since last June.
January 2024 broke the record for the warmest first month of 2020 by 0.22 degrees Fahrenheit (0.12 degrees Celsius), and was 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.66 degrees Celsius) warmer than the late 1800s, the baseline for temperatures before the burning of fossil fuels. . Although January was a record hot month, the level above normal was lower than the previous six months, according to Copernicus data.
Climate scientists blame a combination of human-induced warming from the burning of fossil fuels and natural but temporary El Niño warming in parts of the Pacific, and say greenhouse gases have a much larger role than nature. Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler said this is the period when El Nino warming often peaks.
“This is both disturbing and not disturbing. After all, if you stick your finger into an electrical outlet and get shocked, that’s bad news, of course, but what did you expect? said Dessler.
Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, one of the authors of the United Nations science report on the harms of climate change, said scientists did not mean that what they meant by reaching the 1.5-degree warming limit was that the world exceeded the 1.5-degree warming threshold for 12 months. More than 1.5 degrees. The 1.5 degree limit accepted in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement is mostly related to 30-year averages.
“These are much more than numbers, ranks and records; they mean the real impacts of unprecedented temperatures, changing growing seasons and rising sea levels on our farms, families and communities,” said North Carolina State Climatologist Kathie Dello.
International Falls, the Minnesota city on the Canadian border that proudly bills itself as the “nation’s icebox,” recorded its first 50-degree high on Jan. 31, when temperatures reached 53 degrees Fahrenheit (11.7 Celsius). Minneapolis has already broken the record for the number of 50-degree days in the winter.
About 70 percent of Minnesota currently has bare ground, with much of the state receiving less than 25 percent of normal snowfall so far.
Authorities rescued and transported dozens of fishermen from normally intact northern Minnesota lakes after ice floes broke. The Art Shanty Projects festival held at Lake Harriet in Minneapolis in January had to be cut short due to open water and unsafe ice.
Located about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of Minneapolis, Montgomery National Golf Club must be covered in a thick layer of snow this time of year. Instead, it’s running a thriving business.
“We did it in January with about a thousand golfers. “If we had just one golfer, it would have been a record,” he said. “After today we will have about a thousand golfers for February, which is unheard of.”
McKush said it reopened two Saturdays ago and thinks it can stay open all winter long if temperatures reach at least the 40s.
“It looks like the grass is trying to turn green,” he said, “and most of the frost has come off the ground.” Many golfers tell him conditions are “better than expected.”
In Wisconsin, which ranks fourth in the U.S. in maple syrup production, mild winter weather caused many farms in the state’s northern and central regions to begin cutting their trees in mid-January, up to two months earlier than normal, depending on the region. Theresa Baroun is executive director of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association.
“There are already many states that make sherbet and prepare syrup. This is very unusual. “This is one of the most abnormal weather conditions we have seen at the beginning of the maple season,” he said. “For maple trees to work, they need to be frozen at night and above freezing during the day. “And this weather was perfect for the maple trees to run.”
Baroun, whose family has about 1,200 maple trees at Maple Sweet Dairy in De Pere, Wisconsin, just south of Green Bay, said the farm started juicing this week, the earliest his family can remember since production began in 1964.
The February sturgeon season on Michigan’s Black Lake has been canceled for the first time due to a lack of ice for safe fishing.
At Isle Royal National Park, an island in Lake Superior between Michigan, Minnesota and Canada, scientists couldn’t conduct annual wolf and elk counts because the ice was so weak they couldn’t land ski planes on it to get there.
One of the strange results was the early appearance of ticks. The Metropolitan Mosquito Control District in Minnesota reported its first deer tick of 2024 on Monday. Chilling photo on social media Image of a tick in a bottle on a calendar on the background of February 5th. District officials said they have not yet found any mosquito larvae, but this is not due to lack of research.
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Karnowski, St. Paul reported from Minnesota and Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland. Ed White contributed from Detroit and Rick Callahan contributed from Indianapolis.
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