January will go down as a legit below normal month for a rare change, but just how cold is it?
So far, it appears as though January 2022 will go down about -6° F below the normal (normal is defined by the 1991-2020 average to give a baseline for the 'modern, generational' climate, which of course is MUCH warmer than the historic average).
Climate change is a big reason why I’ve completely 180 degrees, changed my attitude toward winter from dread to embrace… people who’ve known me a while are still shocked …
January has warmed as much as 5 degrees from the historical/pioneer days. Winter in Minnesota is our fastest warming season. The reason, is very much linked to the reasons that the arctic is warming faster than almost anywhere else: declining ice, sea ice and the runaway effect. A warming arctic directly affects us since it dominates our winter patterns.
Was this kind of cold more common in the past and have we become accustomed to milder winters so much we have lost sight of what should be? Yes.
Without diving too deep into statistics, when you shift a pile of data over just a little, the overall, middle values don’t seem too different (what’s really the difference between 45 degrees and 47? That’s how much we’ve warmed our annual average temperature). When you have a pile of normalized data (of which 148 years of temperatures is), a subtle shift of the pile exponentially affects the extremes. Warm extremes become multiple times more likely suddenly and cold extremes become suddenly less likely.
An example of this is below, using our annual average temperature:
In other words, 2021 was our 5th hottest year ever recorded, but where it would have been a once in a generation kind of year, now it's become once a decade sort of warmth.
2021 gave us many great examples of this, and so far 2022 is too, but in different ways.
This January used to be a once in every two or three year occurrence, almost normal. If we look at the last one to three decades, this has become a once in a decade occurrence. Sure enough, the last time we had a January this cold was eight years ago in 2014. By warming temperatures just a couple degrees, we’ve made a January that was once much more commonplace, FOUR times LESS likely to occur. This January is a great example of the ups & downs of weather that will still occur in a warmer world: just those ‘downs’ become less cold and much less frequent, spelling doom for critters that depend on it.
June of 2021 was out second hottest ever, and the summer narrowly became the hottest summer ever overall. Both of these were made many times more likely with just a 2 degree shift, possibly 7 times more frequent. This past hot summer isn’t the ‘new normal’ yet, but on the track we’re on it could be. If we follow a ‘do nothing’ track, this past June/Summer would become the ‘new normal’ by the end of this century and a January like 2022 will become virtually extinct.
So I know it sounds odd, but a cold (infrequent) January this year is actually another example of climate change, because what we're measuring is its statical significance, or change in its frequency/probability.
The increasingly rare cold, to me, is a reason to celebrate, and embrace something that we’re losing. Even though we’re losing it, I look at it as some little victory against the trend. Would I prefer a Minnesota lake on a July day to -16 degrees? Yeah of course, but I also want to keep everything that makes Minnesota unique & beautiful : our 10,000 lakes, our largest animal, the moose, and much more. The only way those things stay intact is with four distinct seasons that everything here has evolved to.
To be sure, our flora & fauna is VERY hardy and adaptable to EXTREME scenarios, but evolution and adaptation does not occur on the timescale we’ve created by warming the planet at a fast pace.
What seems like a small shift in the dial, has big consequences.
Keep Minnesota cold!
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