Challenging ‘Climate Crisis’ Claims On Texas Extreme Heat, Hurricanes And Tornadoes
Texas has warmed by nearly 1.5 degrees since 1900, yet the state has not recorded a sustained rise in the number of days reaching 100 degrees or higher across that same span, according to a new assessment of Texas weather records.
The Texas State Climate Assessment, released Sept. 29 by The Heartland Institute’s Climate at a Glance project, draws upon data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other government sources.
Heartland, an Illinois-based free-market research and policy organization, presents its findings as a challenge to coverage that describes a hot season, a drought, or a destructive storm as evidence that Texas is already experiencing a climate crisis.
The report finds no sustained increase in extremely hot days, no upward trend in Texas hurricane or tornado frequency, and no rise in either the number of wildfires or the acreage burned during the period covered by the available statewide fire data.
It also documents substantial long-term gains in cotton and corn yields.
Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, said recent conditions must be compared with the full historical record before they can be described as exceptional.
Climate is evaluated over 30-year periods, Burnett told Katy Christian Magazine. A few unusually hot or dry years can attract extensive coverage while revealing little about whether the underlying pattern has changed.
“To know whether human greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change, much less dangerous climate change, one must compare whether similar conditions occurred in the past when emissions and temperatures were lower,” Burnett said.
A Look at What More Than a Century of Texas Heat Records Shows
The assessment’s temperature analysis begins by examining a finding contained in NOAA’s own 2022 Texas State Climate Summary: Texas temperatures have risen by almost 1.5 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century, while the number of extremely hot days has shown no overall trend.
NOAA defines an extremely hot day in this dataset as one with a maximum temperature of at least 100 degrees. The chart draws on 24 long-running weather stations and covers 1900 through 2020.
Five-year averages were generally above the century-long norm from 1910 through the early 1960s. Since then, they have remained near or below it, except during 2010-14.
The extraordinary summer of 2011 produced roughly 67 days at or above 100 degrees, more than 20 days above any other year in the series.
“With the exception of a single year, an outlier, there has been no sustained increase in triple-digit days,” Burnett said.
He also pointed to the state’s highest recorded temperature. Texas reached 120 degrees at Seymour on Aug. 12, 1936, then tied that record near Monahans on June 28, 1994, according to NOAA’s State Climate Extremes Committee.
NOAA’s Texas summary includes another finding often overlooked in discussions about daytime heat: Very warm nights became considerably more common during the 2010s.
The Heartland assessment argues that this pattern, together with the lack of a corresponding rise in extreme daytime highs, points toward urban development as an important part of Texas’ measured warming.
The historical trend does not make an individual heat wave harmless. Temperatures above 100 degrees can cause heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and death, particularly when people work outside or lack reliable air conditioning.
Katy Christian Magazine’s guide to staying safe during the summer heat offers practical precautions for dangerous days. Burnett’s argument concerns the long-term frequency of those days rather than the immediate risk created by any one event.
NOAA’s summary also projects more extreme heat later this century under its modeled emissions scenarios. The Heartland report concentrates on the observed record and argues that recent conditions should be described from measurements rather than treated as confirmation of a future projection.
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