Taste of summer
It finally feels like summer across Minnesota.
Unfamiliar warm colors paint the weather maps over the Upper Midwest.
May 2017: Slightly cool, mostly cloudy, and very wet
As I've reported in this space recently, May was the first cooler than average month since August 2015 at MSP Airport. May barely made the cut, coming in just 0.6F cooler than the current 30-year average.
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Here are the numbers for May via the Twin Cities NWS.
The data begs the question, would this May have been warmer than average compared to 40 or 50 years ago? The current practice of using 30 year climate averages presents a moving target these days. Maybe a more accurate picture of how unusual a month is compared to historical climate would be to use data from the mid 20th century?
Climatic food for thought.
Warm meteorological spring
Over all meteorological spring (Mar-May) was +1.2 degrees warmer than average in the Twin Cities.
More like summer
The weather maps look much more like summer the next few days. Highs in the 80s bloom eastward into Minnesota. Watch the warmer temps pulse over the Upper Midwest as we toward the weekend.
Spotty thundershowers
A few scattered storms will bubble up Friday and Saturday. Coverage should be low, around 10% to 20% at any given time. NOAA's NAM 3 km model paints the picture.
Taste of July?
I can see some upper 80s, even 90 degrees popping up Friday and Saturday afternoon. Cooler by the lake.
Temps hit another speed bump Sunday, but only into the 70s. My kind of cool front.
Reaction to U.S. withdrawal from Paris Accord
President Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord is very significant in some ways, and more symbolic in others.
The decision effectively cedes U.S. leadership on climate and renewable energy to China and other countries.
Since the Paris accords are voluntary, U.S. business was not under any obligation to comply with emissions targets. In the short term, it’s not going to have a major atmospheric impact because short term emissions won’t change dramatically. But in the longer term the effects will be dramatic and potentially catastrophic.
It is a big deal if the U.S. loses ground to China and other countries on renewable energy. Renewable energy jobs are booming. Solar jobs in the U.S. grew 25% last year. 1 in 5 new jobs created in 2016 was in solar energy.
Climate change solutions now are really about economics. There are billions to trillion of dollars in economic opportunity in renewable energy in the decades ahead.
The question is, who will be the world’s next clean technology superpower? I and many climate watchers believe it will be the countries that embrace the renewable energy boom. The U.S. appears to have taken a major step backward today in that effort.
More reaction from twitter