Northwest Arkansas' summer night temps creep higher
Power couple Olivia Newton John and John Travolta likely weren't thinking of climate change when they sang about " Summer Nights" in the '70s. But those evenings have been getting warmer across Northwest Arkansas and much of the U.S. for 50 years amid climate change, a new analysis shows.
Why it matters: Higher overnight temperatures can have health consequences for vulnerable groups, as well as increased demand for air conditioning.
That, in turn, can strain electrical grids and increase energy demand, fueling a vicious cycle with more greenhouse gas emissions.
Driving the news: Average summer nighttime temperatures increased between 1970 and 2024 in 96% of 241 locations analyzed in a new report from Climate Central, a research and communications group.
Among cities with an increase, temperatures rose by 3.1°F on average.
Zoom in: Northwest Arkansas' minimum temperature rose 2°F on average.
It's 3.2°F in Little Rock and 1.8°F in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Zoom out: Reno, Nevada (+17.7°F), Las Vegas (+10°F), El Paso, Texas (+8.9°F) and Salt Lake City (+8.2°F) saw the biggest increases.
What they're saying:"There's a lot of work ahead of us, and we don't have all the answers," Brian Beffort, sustainability manager for Reno's Washoe County, recently told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"I'm focused on trees because they check the most number of boxes: They clean the air. They prevent stormwater. They cool things off ... There's a lot of planning that we need to do. But that's not the only intervention that we need."
Between the lines: Hundreds of U.S. cities are experiencing more frequent warmer-than-average summer nights "with a strong climate change fingerprint," Climate Central says.
That's based on the group's "Climate Shift Index" — a method for measuring the impact of climate change on local daily temperatures — and the 1991-2020 climate normals.
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