On Friday, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) released a study showing that climate warming patterns vary across 48 U.S. states.
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The research shows that 41 states are warming, but each in a different way. States along the West Coast are experiencing increases in their highest annual temperatures, while many northern states are warming at the lower end of the temperature range.
Climate change “is a global phenomenon, but it also has a very clear regional component,” said Lola Gadea, one of the researchers and a professor of applied economics at the University of Zaragoza.
“Recently, more attention has been paid to heterogeneity, but most studies treat climate as something global. However, it is also necessary to think from a broad regional perspective, because it can have different effects across regions. Taking those differences into account can be important when designing public policies for adaptation and mitigation,” she said.
Until now, most studies have focused only on analyzing what happens to average temperature, but it is also important to observe the entire distribution.
The text reads, “A new study published in PLOS Climate and led by UC3M and UNIZAR reveals that global warming in the U.S. depends on the region… and on politics!”
“It is like trying to understand a country’s economic inequality by looking only at GDP per capita: you miss what is happening to the richest and the poorest. It is not the same for the highest temperatures to rise sharply as for the lowest ones to do so, because the consequences can be different,” explained economist Jesus Gonzalo.
The Spanish researchers used the PRISM temperature database for the period 1950 to 2021, which combines more than 26,000 daily observations per state, from which the full range of local temperatures can be obtained.
To compare warming across regions, they developed the concept of “warming dominance,” a tool that analyzes the full distribution of temperatures — not just the average — revealing hidden patterns of climate change.
Consistent with previous research, the results show that only 27 states have experienced an increase in average temperatures, but 41 states show an increase in some part of their temperature range.
In the West, in states such as California, Oregon and Nevada, warming is mainly driven by high temperatures rising faster than low ones. By contrast, in the Dakotas and Minnesota, minimum temperatures are rising faster than maximum temperatures, “as if the difference between winter and summer were being smoothed out,” Gadea said.
This reveals strong regional inequalities in how climate change is experienced across the United States, a result that can be extrapolated to other regions of the world. This new way of measuring climate change is not just a theoretical exercise.
“Detecting whether a region is warming because its summers are becoming more infernal or because its winters are disappearing is crucial for designing effective adaptation policies,” the researchers wrote.
Regional differences in the U.S. are likely to have varying impacts on factors such as agriculture and public health, as well as on public perception and engagement with climate action. The research points to a correlation between areas experiencing stronger warming and political orientation.
States with stronger “warming dominance” — mainly along the Northeast and West coasts — largely coincide with Democratic voting patterns, while areas where warming is statistically less evident — the South and parts of the interior — tend to be Republican.
