New York warming faster than rest of country, planet

Climate change group: New York warming faster than rest of country, planet

April 22, 2014, Glenn Coin syracuse.com

Washington, D.C. -- New York state is getting warmer faster than the rest of the United States, according to a new study relying on federal data.

New York is about 1.7 degrees warmer now than it was on the first Earth Day in 1970, said Climate Central, a collection of scientists and journalists working on climate change.

Climate Central's new report, based on data from the National Climatic Data Center, says the average annual temperature across the country has risen by 0.48 degrees per decade. New York's increase has been 0.64 degrees -- 33 percent faster than the United States as a whole and more than double the global rate.

"Average temperatures across most of the continental U.S. have been rising gradually for more than a century, at a rate of about 0.127 degrees Farenheit per decade between 1910-2012," the report says. "That trend parallels an overall increase in average global temperatures, which is largely the result of human greenhouse gas emissions."

Here are the 10 states with the strongest warming trends, and degrees per decade of increase:

1. Delaware: 0.67
1. Wisconsin: 0.67
3. Vermont 0.66
4. New Jersey 0.65
4. Michigan: 0.65
6. New York: 0.64
7. New Mexico: 0.63
8. Maine: 0.61
8. Massachusetts: 0.61
8. Minnesota: 0.61