For those of you who haven't been outside or live someplace other than North America, South America, and Europe, this has been a cold year and a very cold July. The northern tier of North America has been in a prolonged global warming pause and it shows in the statistics.
For the month of July, temperatures were about 6°F below normal. In fact, there were only 2 days during the month where the average temperature was just slightly above normal, versus 29 days below normal and some average temperatures below the normal low temperature. The month of July was colder than a normal June. In other words, Michigan is still stuck in Spring.
A longer-term look shows this [the dark red line shows actual average temperatures and the gold line shows the trend of those averages versus the heavy black line which is normal]:
Another way to look at that is this which shows a heavy concentration of variation below normal.
When the number of below normal days versus above normal days is tracked on a cumulative basis during this time, the following shows that there have been 148 more days below normal than above... 63.5% of the days below normal with a variation of minus 2.67°F for the entire year and one-half period.
While some plants that grow most in cooler weather are thriving, there are some food crops that are in danger as a result of the prolonged spring weather.
Sure, we can live without cucumbers and onions and lots of other crops. But the point is that for those who constantly harp about the dangers of global warming... which appears to be on leave... there are also consequences in global cooling.
The problem is there is no political advantage to be gained if special interests admit to the cooling. More thoughts on our cool future here.
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