Resistant to global warming? These U.S. areas aren’t seeing hotter-than-normal summers

Summers on average are 1.6 degrees warmer than they were over a hundred years ago in the Lower 48 of the United States. However, there are certain portions of the nation that have actually seen temperatures decrease compared to the historical average, known to scientists as ‘warming holes’.

While still not fully understood, these anomalies have been used to criticize projections of future warming, calling them “exaggerated.” But others say that these ‘climate change havens’ are just experiencing a spell of good luck and that the conditions that produce them could evaporate reversing their fortune.

What is producing the warming holes?

These warming holes are known to scientists but the reason behind them isn’t completely clear. In the United States they are located generally portions of the Plains, Midwest and South.

It’s reckoned that in places like Iowa, it could be the result of ‘corn sweat’, the evaporation from corn crops putting more moisture in the air that in turn falls as rain, which cools the air. On the other hand, in the Southeast, where unproductive farms were left idle, reforestation has occurred and the trees not only provide shade, but also put more moisture into the air creating a cooling effect felt over large areas.

The warming hole in Oklahoma is perhaps an anomaly in itself and the result of the earlier average being skewed due to the excessively hot temperatures experienced in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl period. The difference in average temperatures from 1901 to 1960 are only minimally higher, 0.3 degrees, than from 1995 to 2024.

Additionally, these warming holes do not mean that temperatures within them aren’t rising during the rest of the year. The cooling effects are only noticed during the summer months. Increased cloud cover and precipitation, typically coming in the afternoon, help dampen the warming effects of the summer sun.

Climate scientist with Climate Central Zachary Labe told CNN that “more rain or cloudier conditions have limited daytime temperatures from rising across a large part of the region.” In research that he and his colleagues did found that nights were warming up in these regions as expected, just the daytime temperatures were being kept down.

Should the climate in these areas become drier, their good fortunes could easily reverse. Once touted as a climate change haven itself, Ashville, North Carolina, found out with Hurricane Helene that nowhere is safe from the effects of climate change.

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