Baltimore’s temperatures have risen slightly over the past eight years, part of a warming trend environmental advocates say is wreaking havoc on the region’s health.
“A small rise in temperatures can have a big effect,” Shannon Darrow, field director for advocacy group Environment Maryland, said at a news conference at the Bond Street Wharf in Baltimore.
Last year, Baltimore’s average temperature was 2 degrees above the historical average of the past 30 years, according to a report from the group’s parent organization Environment America.
In Maryland, temperatures hit at least 90 degrees 45 days last year, which is 15 more days than the average, the report states.
Between 2000 and 2007 in Maryland, the average temperature was 1.3 degrees above the average.
There was also little relief from the heat at night, advocates found, when Maryland’s average temperatures were 2 degrees above normal.
“Heat waves kill people,” said Dr. Cindy Parker, an instructor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and chairwoman of the Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility.
“Those heat waves are getting more frequent. They are lasting longer with higher temperatures.”
Higher temperatures can cause heat stroke, exhaustion and even death, particularly in the most vulnerable populations of elderly and youth, Parker said.
For the report, “Feeling the Heat: Global Warming and Rising Temperatures in the United States,” Environment America researchers analyzed government data from 2000 to 2007 collected at 255 weather stations in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
Last year’s average temperature in the United States was at least 0.5 degrees above the 30-year average at 84 percent of the weather stations, according to the report.
Advocates pointed to the burning of fossil fuels to power cars, homes and industry as the culprit, calling on state and federal officials to invest in alternative energy sources such as wind and solar.
Darrow said Congress should pass the Safe Climate Act, aims to cut greenhouse gas emission levels by 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050.
Maryland House Majority Leader Del. Kumar Barve, D-Montgomery, who co-sponsored a measure to reduce greenhouse gasses, said state government should take the lead to set limits and reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions.
“If Maryland takes the lead,” he said at the news conference, “we can derive the economic benefits of being one of the first state to get into renewable energy.”
