Climbers gather each January in the canyon shadows of the San Juan Mountains to test their skills on giant columns of ice. The towers in the Ouray Ice Park are created by feeding water to the canyon walls, but the cold is natural. It’s not as cold in Ouray County as it used to be, though. A data set assembled by The Washington Post shows Ouray as one of the places with the most rapid rise in temperatures in the lower 48 states since the late 19th century. Average temperatures have increased 2.3 degrees Celsius, or 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Other counties in western Colorado and eastern Utah have warmed significantly. Utah’s Grand County, where Moab is located, increased 2.5 degrees C. Colorado’s San Miguel County, home to Telluride—a short distance from Ouray—had a 2.2-degree C rise.
The Washington Post drew on statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Division Database between the years 1895 and 1918. It found uneven warming across the United States, with some areas of the South actually cooling a bit. Rhode Island and New Jersey stand out for their heating, as did Los Angeles. The biggest blob of red and burgundy on the Washington Post’s map was in the mountains and deserts of western Colorado and eastern Utah. The newspaper noted that the area altogether has exceeded the 2-degree C threshold that policy makers, based on the advice of scientists, have identified as critical threshold for global warming. The newspaper’s work echoes that of a 2014 report, “Climate Change in Colorado,” which also called out spiked warming in western Colorado through 2012. Every year since then with the exception of 2013 has been much warmer than the 20th century average. Russ Schumacher, Colorado’s state climatologist, says he’s not sure why that portion of Colorado has been warming disproportionately. “We could definitely quibble about some of the details on their maps, but the overall picture is nicely represented,” he says. To view the full article visit Mountain Town News.