According to The Washington Post’s analysis of NOAA’s and NASA’s temperature databases, the winter will eventually fade away. In the United States, Alaska is the number one state for the fast rise in the average temperature and New Jersey is following right behind.
An average of 2 degrees celsius has been observed during the winter season in New Jersey over the span of over 120 years. Although the number two might not seem like a big deal, the impact that this temperature rise has been huge. A popular attraction for tourists and locals in NJ is Lake Hopatcong both during summer and winter. However, since the temperature in the winter has been higher than the freezing point the lake has not frozen thickly which has put a halt to all the winter festivities and ice harvesting. Ice fishing and festivities that included heavy snowmobiles on the lake have ended as the ice is no longer safe to stand on. During the summer, the lake was shut down due to the blooming of toxic blue-green algae that developed from the warmest spring of the century. Other environmental changes included the unnatural and excess growth of aquatic weeds that would normally have died in the winter season.
The rise of temperature has many impacts on the environment other than lakes not freezing. Accordion to David A. Robinson, a New Jersey State Climatologist, and Professor at Rutgers University’s Department of geography, the freezing point is the most critical temperature out of all the temperature points. The time from December to February which is supposed to be the coldest in NJ being above that on average has caused snow to melt faster than they are supposed to which causes some insects and pests such as mosquitos to have a longer life span than they are meant to. However, the Earth is not heating evenly which means that the rise in global temperature is actually lower than that of New Jersey.
Along with environmental changes, there are also economic changes that have to be sustained. When the lake had to be shut down of all water activities due to the toxic bacteria many businesses that rent it and offered other services in the area suffered a loss from lack of tourism. Cleaning the lake to get rid of the access aquatic weeds was also an additional cost that was added to the NJ Department of Environmental protection. Many homeowners on the Shore also have physically moved their homes due to the increasing coastline. If action is not taken to collectively lower the temperature of the Earth then by 2100 there will be catastrophic changes.
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