All summer long, it was clear that we were breaking heat records left and right. We could all feel the punishing heat when we walked outside. But now that it’s winter, and it’s a lovely near 70-degrees outside, it can be easy to forget that it’s actually way hotter than it usually is this time of year.
December was the hottest in Phoenix history. And that trend looks likely to continue through January. On top of all of this, we are also in a long period of dry weather — we haven’t gotten any measurable rain in the Valley since August.
Shel Winkley, a meteorologist on Climate Central's Climate Matters team, joined The Show to discuss, and said this warm winter is what scientists have been warning about.
Full conversation
SHEL WINKLEY: This is just a continuation of what we saw throughout the summertime months, really throughout all of 2024. I was looking at some of the stats for Christmas in Phoenix, and it didn't really feel like Christmas.
We have this thing called attribution signs where we can basically tell you on any given day the temperature you're experiencing, if that's something that is more likely because of climate change. And I, you know, Christmas was like two to three times more likely. So meaning, that the warmth you felt this past Christmas is two to three times more likely in this warming world that we have.
It's a, it's an Arizona problem, it's a Phoenix problem, but really it's a global problem because 2024 on the whole, is virtually locked in. We'll get the data soon, but it's virtually locked in to be Earth's hottest year of record.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, so we're not the only ones experiencing this, but it does feel like Phoenix has been the epicenter of this. And of course it's a bigger deal and more dangerous in the summer, which we saw those record heat numbers come in all summer long, but it's really just continuing into the winter here.
WINKLEY: It is, and and it's taking a winter that we know. Winter is really becoming the shortest season, so the fastest shrinking season due to climate change. Summer was just a bang up, and yet you feel it more. You understand that extreme heat, that dangerous heat, and what it really means when you walk outside. When it comes to winter, yes, it's, it's warmer than what you would expect, but It's kind of comfortable.
So it's hard to to wrap your mind around the urgency of of the reason that we're seeing this warming when it's not quite as life threatening and dangerous to step out to.
GILGER: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously this is about climate change, but it's also been incredibly dry this winter, like drier than the desert normally is. We know we didn't have much of a monsoon season this summer, but it sounds like the La Niña kind of weather pattern we're heading into or are already in is also making it even drier than it might have been otherwise.
WINKLEY: Right, and so that's where the compounding concerns come together, right? So you had this really hot, the hottest summer of record, the hottest year of record for the city of Phoenix, the year for the first time. So every single high temperature from January 1 to December 31, this is the first time on record that Phoenix has an average high above 90 degrees. It's pretty substantial. And part of that is, it's climate change, it's the urban heat island effect, and it's the lack of rain like you mentioned.
In a warming climate, the atmosphere is thirstier, so that evaporation for a little bit of moisture that you have in the desert gets sucked up faster. And then you don't have a lot of rain to go along with it, then that dry ground also helps to create more heat. So it's a vicious feedback loop there.
GILGER: Interesting. So the last couple of winters in Phoenix, the last two at least that I can remember, were really wet. We got lucky. We had these El Niño patterns, right? We saw a lot of rain, the drought conditions eased. It seemed like it wasn't going to be that dire. It sounds like this year coming up here and this La Niña pattern will probably be very telling.
WINKLEY: Yeah, exactly. So you're, you're already in a hole. You're already in the drought that you're in. La Niña, it, it's kind of a gamble there in Arizona. Like you have a chance of getting an average rainfall, but more likely, you're going to see a below average rainfall. So you take the drought from this year, and then you maybe pile that onto a dry spring and another very hot and dry summer. And that's where the concern is for the ecosystem, the plants that you do have. We all saw the pictures from the impact of the heat to the cacti there. You have that plus the most important part of it, which is our drinking water, our water supply. That's a concern as well.
GILGER: Yeah. So you mentioned the urban heat island effect. We hear a lot about that in Phoenix as well. Tell us how big of an impact that makes on this kind of heat that we're experiencing. It's different here than it even was in Tucson, right?
WINKLEY: Right. Yeah. So, you know, looking at Phoenix compared to Tucson, granted, Tucson more rain over 2024 than Phoenix did by quite a bit, almost double the amount of rainfall. And really, when it comes to the urban heat island effect, we know that, especially in the city of Phoenix, that can add as much as 9 to 10 degrees on top of what the temperature would be.
So we talk about this human-caused aspect of climate change, that's one of our human-caused aspects. That's a thing that we've done. We've taken away the natural vegetation and the natural landscape, and we've put down concrete and buildings and Brought the temperature up.
But that is just a little extra warming. Think about it as like the very top layer if you're looking at a cake, right? Climate change is going to be the base of the cake. Everything that you're eating. And then that urban heat island effect is going to be the frosting on top. So it's not as much. It's a little extra warming that we're adding on top of everything else that we're doing to the atmosphere by burning oil and coal and natural gas.
GILGER: OK, so another layer there. Are there air quality concerns that come with that as well? Like we're seeing, you know, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality issue kind of warning after warning over this winter break, sort of saying the air quality is really bad, especially for people who have respiratory issues, things like that. Is that going to continue to be a concern because of these trends?
WINKLEY: Yeah, you know, the warmer temperatures, especially when you get stuck under these big massive high pressure systems, which again, that's weather, that's normal for the desert, especially in the summertime. But when you add all this heat in there, all of our pollution gets trapped towards the ground. And again, when we take away that natural vegetation that can suck up some of that extra CO2, it just makes it worse.
So we're making things hotter for us, and we're also making things more unhealthy for ourselves, for our children. Just to get out and about, even in these nicer months when we don't have to hole up inside in the air conditioning.
GILGER: Right, right, and we all look forward to those months so much here. It feels like such a big problem. I want to end this hopefully on some sort of optimistic note. It's the beginning of a new year, right?
I mean, like, is there anything we can do like at the small level, at our community level in our neighborhoods and our yards to help this?
WINKLEY: Absolutely. And I think this is one of the things I gleaned from the holiday season just everybody I talked to, my family and then friends who talked to their family, climate change seemed to come up. And it was a lot of the questions of, is there anything we can even do about it? And the answer is yes. Even as one person, one family, you can do things like adding a little more natural vegetation back to your yard.
Maybe it's a community garden in your neighborhood, just those little actions, even if it's just a conversation with your neighbors about how you can help to bring down your overall carbon footprint. Or then maybe growing that conversation with a city council or, you know, city officials to what we can do for the city.
And so these little actions like community gardens or adding a little bit of green canopy over your neighborhood might spark the next neighborhood over to say, “hey, that's cool, and that helps us not feel the heat quite as much.” And then they do it as well.
And then these compounding things, the same way we've compounded the heat, we have the chance to have compounding actions that can eventually bring down the temperature. But all in all, the thing we need to do is stop emitting the carbon pollution into the atmosphere so that we can bring temperatures back down to what we used to experience, right?
GILGER: What we used to experience, we're all thinking longing we have now, right? We will leave it there.
