Seattle's spring is getting warmer
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Spring is getting warmer overall and featuring more unusually hot days in most U.S. cities, including the Seattle metropolitan area, a new analysis finds.
Why it matters: Warmer springs can cause early snowmelt, which can imperil summer water resources and heighten wildfire risks.
The big picture: Nonprofit climate research and communications organization Climate Central examined 55 years of U.S. temperature data for 241 cities and found that the meteorological spring season of March through May has warmed by a national average of 2.4°.
- In an analysis released last week, the group found that 97% of the 241 cities analyzed saw a warming trend for the season.
- Four out of every five cities now see at least one more week of warmer-than-average spring days compared to the 1970s.
The intrigue: As spring temperatures have increased, the average number of days with above-average temperatures has also gone up in 98% of the locations analyzed.
Zoom in: Between 1970 and 2024, spring in the Seattle-Tacoma region warmed by 1.8°, per the analysis.
- The region also sees an average of 12 more days with hotter-than-normal spring temperatures, Climate Central found.
Zoom out: The cities that have warmed the most since 1970 are Reno, Nevada, which has seen average spring temperatures spike by 6.8°; El Paso, Texas, at 6.4°; and Las Vegas, at 6.1°.
Between the lines: The spring warming in the U.S. is taking place in tandem with increasing temperatures around the world due to human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.