The Docket | Emerging Science

The Wrong Thermometer

The Warming Hole — What It Means When the Thermometer Says Your State Is Fine

By Ivy Marlowe— April 7, 2026

Feature image for article: The Warming Hole — What It Means When the Thermometer Says Your State Is Fine

In 2023, more than 300 Texans died from heat, the most since the state began tracking. The grid that nearly collapsed during Winter Storm Uri was patched but not reimagined. Houston is still reshaping its floodplain after Harvey. Climate disruption in Texas is so routine it barely registers as news.

So here's the thing I can't stop turning over. A major new study tested every U.S. state for warming across its full temperature distribution and found a signal in 84 percent of them. Texas wasn't among them. No warming detected. Anywhere. I keep thinking about the people living inside that gap.

The Wrong Thermometer

The Warming Hole — What It Means When the Thermometer Says Your State Is Fine

In 2023, more than 300 Texans died from heat, the most since the state began tracking. The grid that nearly collapsed during Winter Storm Uri was patched but not reimagined. Houston is still reshaping its floodplain after Harvey. Climate disruption in Texas is so routine it barely registers as news.

So here's the thing I can't stop turning over. A major new study tested every U.S. state for warming across its full temperature distribution and found a signal in 84 percent of them. Texas wasn't among them. No warming detected. Anywhere. I keep thinking about the people living inside that gap.

Ivy Marlowe

Cultural writer who investigates why we believe what we believe about living in a changing world. Asks uncomfortable questions about whose interests are served by climate narratives and invites readers into genuine exploration.

State By State

A PLOS Climate study examined daily temperatures across all 48 contiguous states from 1950 to 2021 and found that warming looks nothing like a uniform signal. Some states are getting hotter at the extremes. Others are quietly losing their coldest days. Eight states show no temperature trend at all, which creates its own dangerous planning problem.

The method is what matters. By analyzing the full spread of daily temperatures rather than collapsing everything into averages, the researchers detected warming in 84% of states. Traditional analysis catches 56%.

Five reference cards from the study's key regional findings. Each one: the pattern, the states, and one implication.

State By State

A PLOS Climate study examined daily temperatures across all 48 contiguous states from 1950 to 2021 and found that warming looks nothing like a uniform signal. Some states are getting hotter at the extremes. Others are quietly losing their coldest days. Eight states show no temperature trend at all, which creates its own dangerous planning problem.

The method is what matters. By analyzing the full spread of daily temperatures rather than collapsing everything into averages, the researchers detected warming in 84% of states. Traditional analysis catches 56%.

Five reference cards from the study's key regional findings. Each one: the pattern, the states, and one implication.

Hot Extremes

The West Is Warming at the Top

Arizona and California lead a cluster of western states where warming concentrates in the hottest days. The study labels this "Type W3," upper-end intensification. Peak cooling loads follow peak temperatures, not averages. Utilities planning around gradual mean shifts are undersizing for the demand spikes that actually crash grids.

Disappearing Cold

Northern States Are Losing Winter, Not Gaining Summer

Across many northern states, warming shows up almost entirely in the coldest days getting milder. The study's "Type W2" classification. Fewer hard freezes let pine beetles and ticks push north, compress ski seasons, and rewrite planting calendars. Summer-focused climate tracking misses all of it.

Warming Hole

Eight States Register No Temperature Trend Whatsoever

Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas show no statistically significant warming at any point in the temperature distribution from 1950 to 2021. Statistically invisible does not mean unaffected. These states already face worsening floods, humidity-driven heat stress, and extreme precipitation, all hazards that temperature averages don't capture.

Warming Leaders

Five States Top the Full-Distribution Warming Ranking

Rhode Island, Arizona, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California. The study's "warming dominance" ranking examines the entire temperature distribution, not just the mean. That method detects warming in 84% of states, compared to 56% using averages alone. Different distribution shapes require fundamentally different adaptation spending.

Political Map

Warming Visibility Tracks With Voting Patterns

States ranking highest in warming dominance show roughly 78% correlation with Democratic presidential voting. The researchers flagged the overlap but claimed no causation. Geography, climate zone, and economic structure all co-vary. Worth noting: where warming is least statistically visible, political appetite for adaptation spending may be weakest.

Reading The Distribution

Regional Heterogeneity and Warming Dominance in the United States

Researchers applied quantile-based trend analysis to 26,000+ daily temperature readings per state (1950–2021), ranking all 48 contiguous states by "warming dominance," a composite score measuring how consistently warming appears across the full distribution of temperatures, not just the average. Forty-one states showed significant warming at some quantile. Eight Southern states registered no detectable signal at any point in the distribution.

What does "warming dominance" actually measure?

How uniformly a state is warming across its entire temperature distribution, from coldest days to hottest, scored and ranked.

Why not just use averages?

Because averages showed no warming trend in 14 states where quantile analysis found significant shifts at the extremes. That's a measurement blind spot with real planning consequences.

Climate Change Heterogeneity: A New Quantitative Approach

The methodological foundation for the U.S. study. This 2025 paper formalized the quantile-based framework, converting temperature quantiles into time series objects to classify warming types: hot-end warming, cold-end warming, full-range warming, or no signal. First applied globally and to Spain before the state-level U.S. analysis followed.

What's the core innovation?

Treating each temperature quantile as its own time series, enabling formal classification of how and where within the distribution a region warms.

Where could this go next?

The authors explicitly flag extensibility to precipitation and sea-level data, positioning the framework as a reusable diagnostic tool, not a single study.

Reading The Distribution

Regional Heterogeneity and Warming Dominance in the United States

Researchers applied quantile-based trend analysis to 26,000+ daily temperature readings per state (1950–2021), ranking all 48 contiguous states by "warming dominance," a composite score measuring how consistently warming appears across the full distribution of temperatures, not just the average. Forty-one states showed significant warming at some quantile. Eight Southern states registered no detectable signal at any point in the distribution.

What does "warming dominance" actually measure?

How uniformly a state is warming across its entire temperature distribution, from coldest days to hottest, scored and ranked.

Why not just use averages?

Because averages showed no warming trend in 14 states where quantile analysis found significant shifts at the extremes. That's a measurement blind spot with real planning consequences.

Reading The Distribution

Climate Change Heterogeneity: A New Quantitative Approach

The methodological foundation for the U.S. study. This 2025 paper formalized the quantile-based framework, converting temperature quantiles into time series objects to classify warming types: hot-end warming, cold-end warming, full-range warming, or no signal. First applied globally and to Spain before the state-level U.S. analysis followed.

What's the core innovation?

Treating each temperature quantile as its own time series, enabling formal classification of how and where within the distribution a region warms.

Where could this go next?

The authors explicitly flag extensibility to precipitation and sea-level data, positioning the framework as a reusable diagnostic tool, not a single study.

Losing Winter

Vermont Is Losing Its Winter

A February 2026 PLOS Climate study found that in northern states, warming concentrates on the cold end of the temperature range. Burlington's winters have warmed 7°F since 1970, the largest increase among U.S. cities Climate Central examined. Hot days haven't budged. The deep cold is just leaving.

Willis Wood, who runs a 4,000-tap sugaring operation in Weathersfield, told Vermont Public this March, with temperatures running 20 to 25 degrees above normal: "It's so delightfully warm and sunny and warm at night that I think it's great to be alive, but it's a wretched time to be making syrup."

That sentence holds the whole problem. Disappearing cold doesn't feel like crisis. It feels like relief, a milder February, an earlier spring, until the economy and identity built around deep winter no longer have a floor beneath them.

Losing Winter

Vermont Is Losing Its Winter

A February 2026 PLOS Climate study found that in northern states, warming concentrates on the cold end of the temperature range. Burlington's winters have warmed 7°F since 1970, the largest increase among U.S. cities Climate Central examined. Hot days haven't budged. The deep cold is just leaving.

Willis Wood, who runs a 4,000-tap sugaring operation in Weathersfield, told Vermont Public this March, with temperatures running 20 to 25 degrees above normal: "It's so delightfully warm and sunny and warm at night that I think it's great to be alive, but it's a wretched time to be making syrup."

That sentence holds the whole problem. Disappearing cold doesn't feel like crisis. It feels like relief, a milder February, an earlier spring, until the economy and identity built around deep winter no longer have a floor beneath them.

Frozen lake:

Lake Champlain failed to freeze three times in the 1800s. Since 2000, it hasn't frozen in 16 of 24 winters.

Zone shift:

Vermont's coldest USDA planting zone, 3b, no longer exists on the 2023 federal map. Zone 6a appears for the first time.

Ski economics:

Vermont skiing brings $1.6 billion annually. Snowmaking buys time, but sub-zero nights are vanishing at three fewer per decade since 1991.

Maple mask:

Production has climbed to near-record levels as technology compensates for shrinking seasons, hiding the structural stress underneath.

Acceleration:

Vermont's freeze-free period is expanding at 9 days per decade since 1991, more than five times the century-long average rate.