While average annual temperatures across the country have risen by about 2.5 degrees since 1970, annual temperatures in New Jersey have risen by about 3.5 degrees, said Lauren Casey, a meteorologist at Climate Central, the nonprofit organization that compiles the temperature data. has collected.
New Jersey is the third fastest-warming state in the country, according to the group’s findings.
A spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Protection, which published a report in 2020 that also noted rapidly rising temperatures in the state, said the state is warming faster than its neighbors because it is located at the southern end of the northeastern region and because of its built cities. “Importantly,” he said, “land use patterns and development density in the state are creating conditions that create an urban heat island effect.”
The heat island phenomenon describes how cities, with all their concrete and asphalt, absorb heat, making them several degrees warmer than surrounding areas. For example, Newark, the most populous city in New Jersey, can reach 40 degrees Celsius in the summer, while other places in the state stay in the 90s.
Delaware, New Jersey’s mid-Atlantic neighbor, ranks second in Climate Central’s rankings of the fastest-warming states, with an increase of 3.6 degrees between 1970 and last year. And Alaska, which extends into the Arctic, an area where snow and sea ice are being lost rapidly, comes first, with an increase of more than 4 degrees.
The Northeast has the fastest-warming cluster of states in the country, Climate Central data shows. In addition to New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine all made the top 10 list (New York comes in at No. 11). All have experienced a temperature increase of more than 3 degrees and are warming faster than sweltering places like Arizona and Texas.
