Rev. Vernon Walker (STH’16) on Climate Change in Boston Globe
This article was originally published on The Boston Globe, by Dharna Noor on January 11, 2022.
In the US, 2021 was chock full of climate extremes. Last year, the country experienced its fourth-warmest year on record and saw its second-highest number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters on record, new federal data shows. It’s our latest evidence that the climate crisis isn’t just waiting for us in some distant future, it’s here right now.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual State of the Climate report, released Monday, found that average temperature for the contiguous United States last year was 54.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 2.5 degrees above the average for the twentieth century.
The year was capped off by the hottest December the nation has seen since record keeping began in 1875. That month, the average temperature in the Lower 48 was 39.3 degrees, 6.7 degrees above average.
In New England, temperatures soared to even more abnormal heights. Maine and New Hampshire both saw their second-warmest year on record. A separate study also found that it was the third warmest year on record for Massachusetts, and that the state saw its warmest June and second warmest summer on record.
Though the year was marked by above-average temperatures, cold weather broke records, too. In February 2021, the US saw its costliest winter storm on record as a cold snap sent the Texas electricity grid into disarray. The storm carried a $24 billion economic toll. That’s more than double the cost of the previous record-bearer, the Storm of the Century in March 1993.
Other extreme weather bore even larger price tags. Hurricane Ida was the most costly event of the year, exacting a toll of $75 billion.
2021 also brought record-smashing wildfires to the West, destructive December tornadoes to Kentucky, and an array of other extreme weather events. 20 of these events cost the nation over a billion dollars in damage, which is the second-highest number on record.
“The science is clear, climate change is happening at an accelerated pace and we are seeing the effects manifest in the form of more extreme weather events.”
Reverend Vernon K. Walker, senior program manager at the Massachusetts-based group Communities Responding to Extreme Weather, said…
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