For sophomores Bailey Lindner and Garrett West, natives of Jacksonville, Fla., the winter weather in Hillsdale, Mich., last year was painful.
“Back home, my cold weather attire is a hoodie over a T-shirt; it’s normally warm enough to shed the hoodie in the afternoons. So, I wasn’t prepared at all,” West said.
While the low winter temperatures were overwhelming for Floridian visitors, for Michiganders, overall, the year 2012 was an extremely warm one.
Michigan experienced 160 extreme weather records last year, according to the National Resources Defense Council, including 139 heat records in 44 counties.
The National Weather Service in White Lake County deemed it the hottest year in Metro Detroit’s history (since temperature records were first recorded in 1870), according to reporting by The Detroit News.
These high Michigan temperatures reflect a national and even global trend, as record-breaking extreme events occurred in each of the 50 states in 2012, according to the NRDC.
“We saw the hottest March on record in the contiguous U.S., and July was the hottest single month ever recorded in those lower 48 states,” the council’s website stated.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 is most likely the warmest year overall ever recorded in the U.S.
The borehole model, which began recording temperatures in the 1970s, has found a dramatic increase in temperature rates since the earliest data collected in the 1500s.
The borehole method tracks previous centuries’ temperatures by drilling a 300-meter hole into the ground to measure heat flow through the soil, according to Ken Hayes, professor of physics. There are thousands of boreholes all over the world.
“Measuring heat flow through soil, it’s physics, and so it appealed to me. It’s using temperatures to determine temperature history,” Hayes said. “I found this graph in spring 2009. It’s clear to see the planet, as a whole, is heating.”
Hayes said that the rate of global warming is increasing as the rate of carbon dioxide emissions increases. Since the late 1950s, there’s been an almost 25 percent increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere according to NOAA, which Hayes attributes to an increase in coal and oil burning.
Hayes explained that the carbon dioxide emissions create a blanket over the earth that traps heat and warms the planet.
The recent increase in temperatures and extreme weather conditions are made prevalent in the Great Lakes and Grand Traverse Bay, bodies of water associated with the landscape and setting of Michigan.
A study recorded the number of years out of each decade Grand Traverse Bay froze from 1851 to 2003. After remaining at a consistent 7-10 out of 10 years from 1851-1980, the rate decreased dramatically. In the 2000s, the Bay only froze one year out of 10.
Hayes said that increases in global temperatures lead to increases in ocean levels, as water expands when it is heated. He said that oceans absorb the increased amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, which is detrimental to ocean life. Droughts occur when temperatures rise, as the heat causes evaporation of the moisture in soil, Hayes said.
Meanwhile, the rise in average temperatures offers little comfort to Hillsdale College students from warmer climates.
“I was expecting it to be really cold, but I didn’t know what that felt like until I came here,” Lindner said. “Now when people from back home complain about a ‘cold’ day when it’s 50 degrees, I want to send them to Michigan on a ‘warm’ day.”
