June 2024 Was the 13th Consecutive Month to Set a New Average Temperature Record:  What This Means for All Living Beings, Including Us.  

1.  Since the start of the industrial era, human activities - mostly burning fossil fuels - have warmed the planet by about 2.2 degrees F, with the past 13 months registering even more heat, at 2.7 degrees F above preindustrial levels.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the highest levels of greenhouse gas concentrations in the last 3 million years have shifted the climate in a way that makes hot weather more likely to arrive earlier and last longer.  These changes also make every disaster that does occur, such as hurricanes that are 14% wetter because the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, more intense.  Storm surges due to ocean levels in some places that are more than a foot higher than they were half a century ago are able to reach heights never seen before.  Scientists at NOAA warn that CO2 is rising faster and faster in the atmosphere, putting us in uncharted territory as we try to protect our land-based and water-based ecosystems.  

2.  Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas act to trap heat within the atmosphere, preventing it from escaping into space.  This past year's El Niño climate pattern - when warmer-than-average waters pool along the equator in the central and eastern Pacific and transfer heat and moisture into the atmosphere to trigger extreme heat waves, floods and droughts around the world - has finally ended, but the rise in global temperatures continues. Data on global temperature records come from 1) direct observations from ground sensors dating back nearly two centuries, 2) satellite observations in the past few decades, and 3) evidence from historical records and geologic analyses that go further back in time.  The planet has not experienced such rapid and sustained warming since the end of the last ice age about 125,000 years ago, leading to a June meeting in Italy of the Group of Seven - the world's wealthiest democracies - to discuss the usual matters of war and global trade, but with urgent attention paid to the accelerating climate crisis.

3.  Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (the European climate monitor) showed that as of the end of July, global average temperature edged out the record set in 2023.  The data is the average of thousands of data points taken from the Arctic to the South Pole, in places experiencing winter as well as those in the midst of summer.  Scientists have estimated Earth's average temperature based on observations dating back to 1850, and now measured by pulling data from more than 20,000 land-based stations, as well as readings from ships and buoys around the globe.  Humanity now faces conditions unlike anything we've known before, with the frequency and severity of summer storms (hail, flooding, high winds) causing the Minnesota home insurance industry to lose money in six of the past seven years, according to state meteorologist Paul Douglas.  Last year, a record 28 billion-dollar disasters hit the U.S., including a billion-dollar hailstorm in Minneapolis.  Let your representatives know that we expect them to address the climate change that is threatening all of us.

4.  Minnesota experiences wet weather when moist air from the Gulf of Mexico comes up through the Mississippi River Valley, so when the air temperature increases as a result of human-caused climate change, it can also hold more water, giving a passing weather system the ability to produce precipitation with more volume, greater intensity, or longer aerial coverage, according to the Minnesota State Climatology Office.  Swings of extreme dry and wet periods are more common, even as Minnesota gets wetter, because larger volumes and more intensity of rainfall will occur in shorter periods of time.  The Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership recently launched the Minnesota Climate Mapping and Analysis Tool, which visualizes climate change projections for the state's temperature, precipitation and other factors of various carbon emissions scenarios.  This data can be used when considering infrastructure projects, for example, because it can address the needs produced as we have more frequent and longer-lasting periods of extreme dryness and extreme wet years.