Climate change has made Michigan warmer and wetter

I've been so busy with the pandemic and protests against the police with breaks for holidays and elections that I've posted very little about the climate this month. Then I saw WDIV/Click On Detroit's Detroit climate warming: Average summer temperature up 3 degrees since 1970. Time to examine how climate change is affecting Michigan.

Meteorologist Paul Gross shares scientific climate data showing a warming trend in Detroit.

The video does a good job of explaining how the local climate has gotten warmer even though I haven't written about record warmth in the Great Lakes State since Warmest February on record in seven Michigan cities as well as major cities across U.S. more than three years ago. The daily lows getting warmer faster than the daily highs is a good way to hide a warming climate from casual scrutiny, as record daily highs get much more attention. After all, it's been four years since I posted Detroit just had its warmest summer on record. Even then, the trend was apparent.

Detroit had a week fewer of days over 90 degrees Fahrenheit this summer than in 2012 and more than two weeks fewer than the record-setting summer of 1988, which I just missed when I moved here. In addition, the Detroit News reported that there was never a day over 100 degrees all summer. Instead, the nights were consistently warm, which fits my recollection of them being muggy and not fun to sleep in without air conditioning.

I mentioned another trend the last time I wrote about the local climate in last month's Michigan flooded while Trump tweeted then refused to wear a mask on camera.

I observed a trend in Detroit flooding one year later five years ago.

It fit a pattern that's emerged since I began keeping this blog.

[C]limate change...[is] expressing itself as increased precipitation, including 2013 being the wettest year in Michigan history, 2013-2014 being the snowiest year in Detroit's history, or 2011 being the rainiest year in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Toledo.

In addition, this month's flood resulted from the second highest single-day rainfall in Detroit history. Welcome to four precipitation records in four years.

Since then, another precipitation record has been set, as I mentioned in Snowfall of the century for Detroit on Groundhog Day.

The third-biggest snowstorm in metro Detroit's recorded history has plows humming among tall snow piles on roadways across southeastern Michigan this morning.
...
With 16.7 inches of snow since the storm arrived early Sunday, it's the most to fall since Dec. 1 and 2 in 1974, when 19.3 inches fell, as recorded at Detroit Metro Airport. The snowiest was April 6, 1886, when 24.5 inches were reported...

Add the snowiest month in Detroit history and that's now six precipitation records in four years. As I wrote in the first entry I wrote about the storm, welcome to weather weirding in the 400 ppm world.

I haven't been keeping as close track of Michigan precipitation records since then, as this blog has become more national and international in its focus, but it wouldn't surprise me if the state has racked up more in the past five years.

It isn't just me. ABC 13 in Grand Rapids reported the same trend in How climate change is impacting Michigan last year.


WNEM 5 in Flint showed even more effects of the increased precipitation in Senator Stabenow details how climate change is affecting Michigan.

Climate change has already affected the Great Lakes state. Research shows that the average temperatures in all of Michigan's counties are higher today compared to 30 years ago.

I'm glad that the report also included Senator Debbie Stabenow to deliver some good news about the climate. We could use it.