Temperatures have risen over past seven
years, researchers find.
By DOUGLAS B. BRILL,
The Express-Times
A new report on global warming says the Lehigh Valley is getting hotter.
And the region isn't alone.
Temperatures "are well above the historical average in major cities
across Pennsylvania," including Allentown, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and
Harrisburg, according to PennEnvironment, a citizen-based environmental
advocacy organization.
PennEnvironment on Wednesday released "Feeling the Heat: Global Warming
and Rising Temperatures in the United States."
The report compared temperature readings in 255 U.S. cities between 1971
and 2000 with temperature readings between 2000 and 2007. The report
found 89 percent of the cities were at least half a degree hotter in the
more recent period.
PennEnvironment studied seven cities and regions in Pennsylvania and
determined all of them have become hotter.
Readings from the Lehigh Valley International Airport showed the Lehigh
Valley was 1.6 degrees hotter than normal last year and 1.4 degrees
hotter over the past seven years.
"This report shows that global warming is occurring right here in
Pennsylvania," said Nathan Willcox, an energy and clean air advocate for
PennEnvironment.
The report is only the latest to show rising temperatures in
Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
On Oct. 1, the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass., an
environmental and safety advocacy group, released a study on climate
change in Pennsylvania.
The report says warming could mean more dangerously hot days, stunted
agriculture and the loss of tree and wildlife species.
Dork Sahagian, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Lehigh
University, said the temperature changes found by PennEnvironment aren't
as worrying as other changes the temperatures point to.
Higher temperatures, Sahagian said, yield dryer summers and wetter
winters, meaning Pennsylvania's agriculture could suffer because of less
rain while flooding worsens because of more snow melt.
Higher temperatures could also make for stronger hurricanes and the
migration of insects and diseases to areas that were previously too cold
for them.
"It's not about the temperature. People can't feel a half a degree,"
Sahagian said. "Global warming is just kind of the handle for a much
larger set of environmental changes, changes we can feel.
"Once people in Washington get malaria," he said, "they'll notice."
Willcox also pointed to possible effects of warming.
"Just as any parent with a sick child knows," he said, "even a small
rise in temperature can have a big effect."
The PennEnvironment report found more high temperatures, more low
temperatures and more days over 90 degrees in most of the cities and
regions it studied, including the Lehigh Valley.
It also said temperatures are up globally, with 2007 the hottest year on
record since 1895, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
