Losing Sleep Over Climate Change? It's Not All the Worry, It Could Be The Actual Temperature

We ended up installing a bedroom air conditioner at our
house a few years ago as nights in Vermont get hotter
and more oppressive. A study suggests people
globally are losing sleep due to hotter nights. 

 We've got an early season heat wave under way in Vermont, so it might take you awhile to get comfortable for sleeping if your house isn't air conditioned. 

Luckily, it's not that humid, so nights will cool off fairly reasonably. Still, we're not used to it, and even a sort of warm night can feel stuffy by our standards. 

Get used to it, summer's coming, even if extended forecasts call for a coolish early and mid June after this heat wave passes.

Another reason to get used to it:   Climate change is making nights generally hotter than they used to be almost everywhere on Earth. And that is messing up with the sleep for billions of people. 

As the Washington Post reports, Nick Obradovich, the principal investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development looked at climate change and sleep. WaPo tells us:

In his study looking at 47,000 adults in 68 countries, Obradovich and his colleagues found a notable change in sleep duration when nighttime temperatures rose above 50 degrees. On nights above 86 degrees, people slept about 14 minutes less on average.

The decline in sleep over 50 degrees surprises me, as that strikes me as an incredibly comfortable summer sleeping low temperature. But I can see where people get in trouble when it's in the 60s, 70sk or gawd forbid 80s or 90s overnight. 

Obradovich was inspired to look into this issue when he was studying for his PhD in political scientist at the University of California, San Diego back in October, 2015. The city is usually cool and dry, but on one particular week that month, San Diego endured its three warmest nights on record. 

The condo where he lived had no air conditioning, and by the end of the week he was tired, crabby and unable to concentrate due to lack of sleep.

So he decided to look into whether this is a problem for everybody. Here's more of his results, as reported by the Washington Post: 

 "Over longer chunks if time, the loss is stark: They estimate people are already losing an average of 44 hours of sleep per year - and as the warming continues, people will be hard-pressed to find a good night's rest."

WaPO continues:

"Projections show global warming....will have the biggest sleep loss in the Middle East, southeast Asia and Australia. By the end of the 21st century, people in the warmest regions are expected to lose an additional three nights of sleep per year due to higher nighttime temperatures."

 Nights have warmed faster than daytime temperatures in many places around the globe. By 2100, individuals worldwide could lose about 50 to 58 hours of sleep per year. 

Lack of sleep can make us groggy, of course, but it can cause a many much worse problems, like mental health issues, obesity, heart problems and  premature death. 

The ideal temperature at which to sleep for most people is between 63 and 69 degrees (I personally prefer it to be around 60 to 62). The lower bedroom temperatures make our body core temperature decrease, which increases drowsiness and helps us stay asleep. 

A solution to the problem, for those who can afford it, is air conditioning. Of course, poorer regions have little access to the air conditioning, and some of those are the hottest places on Earth. 

Also, the more air conditioning you have, the more energy you need to run them.  Some of that energy comes from fossil fuel consumption, which is the main driver of climate change. 

Even here in Vermont, where we are pretty safe from much dangerously hot weather, we're having hotter and more uncomfortable nights, and more reliance on air conditioning. 

I was once one of those smug Vermonters who'd always say we don't need air conditioning. It's not hot enough for that here. 

Over the past decade or two, summer nights have started to get more oppressive. During a 2018 heat wave, which brought us the warmest low temperature of any night on record in Burlington - 80 - degrees, plus a heat exhaustion scare involving my husband, we installed a bedroom air conditioner. 

Now, we can't live without. Part of  it is we're wimps, and part of it is climate change is slowly altering our habits and the way we live. 

 

On Paper, Vermont March Weather Was "Normal". But It Was Weird

Vermont experienced one of its most even-tempered Marches on 
record this year, a huge mid-month snowstorm 
notwithstanding. Here, a pleasant sunset in
St. Albans, Vermont on March 9

 Given all the weather going on all over the place Saturday, I didn't get a chance to review the previous month's weather on the first of the month, like I usually do.

So, today, it's time to delve in March. 

It was a simultaneously sort of average and a really strange month. 

The basic numbers tell a "normal" story. 

In Burlington, the average temperature for March was 33.2 degrees, just a little under a degree warmer than normal.  

Of course, as I always remind  you, this is the "new" normal, based on the average of the past 30 years. The past 30  years were warmer than the overall 20th century average.

Precipitation in Burlington was 2.7 inches, which is on the wet side by 0.86 inches. Snowfall was above normal, too, with 22.9 inches. That's 5.4 inches above normal.

None of these figures from March, 2023 came close to breaking any record. 

Dig deeper, though, and the numbers begin to look wonky. 

WARMISH NIGHTS, COOL DAYS

Completed dig out on March 15 in St. Albans, Vermont
after a foot of heavy, wet snow. 

If it didn't seem like a warm-ish March to you, like the basic numbers indicate,  you can be forgiven.  Daytime highs were near normal, or even a little on the cool side.

Daily low temperatures, which mostly happened when you were probably sleeping, were well above normal.  

For instance, the average high temperature in Burlington in March, 2023 was 40 degrees, which was almost a degree cooler than normal. The average low was 26.3 degrees, which was 2.7 degrees above normal. 

You could see this trend across Vermont. In Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, Rutland and Bennington, high temperatures this March were right about normal. Low temperatures were quite a bit on the warm side, somewhere close to three degrees above average.

STRANGELY EVEN-TEMPERED

The other thing that made March, 2023 weird was its temperance. March is usually the wildest month of the year, with all kinds of abrupt swings from deep winter cold to late spring warmth and back to winter again. 

Oh, sure, March had a couple snowstorms to make things interesting. But as far as temperatures go, the goofy, capricious personality of March was missing in 2023.

Thawing creates patterns in the snow cover on March 18

The warmest it got in Burlington this March was 52 degrees, and the lowest 15 degrees. That's only a spread of 37 degrees. 

We occasionally have single days in March with that range. Heck, just yesterday, April 1, the spread between high and low temperature was 33 degrees, which was pretty close to the entire month of March. 

 I looked back through Burlington's weather records to at least 1930, and I found only one March - 1956 - that had a smaller range between high and low temperature than this year.

 In 1956, the range was 35 degrees. By contrast, 1938 had a high of 73 and a low of minus 24 for an incredible range of 97 degrees! 

BAD FORECAST

March helped prove why I don't love long range forecasts. In late February, much was made about something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming would lead to a frigid, wintry March.  That didn't happen. 

Yes, we had some extra snow, including an immense winter storm on March 14-15 that dumped up to 40 inches of snow on southern Vermont and caused widespread power outages. But the frigid month certainly didn't come to pass. 

Spring will not be denied! Daffodil shoots poke
up through the snow on March 23.

One good contrast I'm seeing this year to many recent springs is we're heading into the growing season with enough moisture around. March precipitation was above normal. Not by much, but good enough. Groundwater levels seem good, and there was plenty of snow to melt into the soil.

Drought could always develop, of course, but right now, we're in great shape for spring planting. 

As much as I hate long range forecasts, we can look ahead to this April's weather, and conclude.....not much. 

April is almost as unpredictable as March.  It's beginning to look like this month will be in character.  Expect warm days, cold days, or cold weather and warm weather in the same day. 

Snowfall in April can range from a trace to a foot and a half or more. So far, little snow is in the forecast. But for the past two years, we've had snowstorms in the third week of April.  I'm kind of hoping we don't have a three-peat. 

But we're into spring now. Those little hints of green you're starting to see in sunny areas protected from the wind and cold are going to spread a LOT during this month. It'll be lovely.