If you felt like this year was extra toasty in the 2-1-0, you’d be right — 2023 was San Antonio’s warmest year on record.
San Antonio experienced 75 triple-digit days this year, beating out the 59 it saw in 2022 to make this year the city’s hottest since meteorological record-keeping began in the late 1800s.
And conditions aren’t expected to improve much in 2024, or into the near future at all for that matter; an updated climate report by Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon shows the expected average temperature across Texas in 2036 will be about 3 degrees warmer than the average over the last half-century.
“For June, July and August 2024, [the Climate Prediction Center] has us as basically leaning toward being above normal [temperatures] again,” said Brandon Gale, a National Weather Service meteorologist based out of New Braunfels. “It says there’s a 40% to 50% chance of being above normal this next year.”
Texans should also expect increased drought severity, more triple-digit days, a significant increase in urban flooding, more intense hurricanes and larger storm surges over the next three decades, according to the updated report, which was funded by the bipartisan policy-focused nonprofit Texas 2036.
Nielsen-Gammon’s original report, published in 2020, noted that Texas is more likely to see more severe droughts, floods, increased temperatures and more wildfires over the next half a century as climate change affects the state.
“The number of triple-digit days was large in 2022 and even larger in 2023,” Nielsen-Gammon said. “As a result of this, the long-term trends in the number of triple-digit days are sharply upward. The 2021 update to the report noted that triple-digit days had doubled in frequency since the 1970s. As of now, the average number of triple-digit days has actually tripled.”
More extremes on the horizon
Texans can expect another dry, hot year in 2024, according to the latest projections from the Climate Prediction Center.
While San Antonio may see some wetter spring months, climatologists are now predicting a more neutral year with rising temperatures, Gale said.
Drought begets drought, he explained, noting that 2023 was dry for San Antonio at just 20 inches of rainfall recorded at the San Antonio International Airport — 31 inches is about average for the city per year.
“With the three back-to-back drier years … there’s just not really a lot of moisture to help cool things down,” Gale said. “In general, the year-over-year trend has been for temperatures to be warming anyway, and there’s also the background factor of climate change in there — but a lot of it has to do with the drought conditions that we’ve seen recently.”
The updated report by Nielsen-Gammon shows Texas’ weather pattern is indeed trending toward “worsening extremes.” This means the state will be more likely to see more intense heat, drought, cold, flood, storms, hurricanes, wildfires and coastal erosion, the study finds.
Triple-digit days are becoming more widespread across Texas, it also found; in almost all regions of the state, it’s now common to have at least 10 triple-digit days each year whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, that high number of triple-digit days was rare.
Texas coastal regions, which used to rarely see multiple triple-digit days each summer, can now expect to see multiple weeks’ worth of triple-digit days in the summertime.
In 2023, the average Texas summer’s hottest temperature came in at 106 degrees, surpassing the previous record set in 2011. Meanwhile, milder winters are being offset by increasingly hot summers. Excess heat is causing increased evaporation, which is allowing drought to develop more rapidly, the report finds.
“If you were to put a trend line over the temperature observations since the beginning of the 20th century, it’s been steadily increasing up until now,” Gale said. “A lot of the climate models that climatologists use show similar projections into the future as well; we at least have been warming pretty steadily over the last 50 to 100 years, and that’s what’s in the forecast to continue.”
A driver on state policy
Poll results from a survey administered by Texas 2036 also reveal that voting Texans are noticing how the changes to Texas’ weather are affecting their quality of life and their pocketbooks.
The nonprofit’s latest Texas Voter Poll found that 78% of Texas voters think Texas’ climate has changed over the past 10 years, with 41% of respondents saying those changes have been dramatic. Roughly 87% of voters said they were concerned about how weather-related events in Texas like wildfires, floods, drought and hurricanes may increase what they pay for property insurance.
“The data confirms our previous finding that Texas’ weather patterns are becoming
more extreme,” said Texas 2036 Senior Policy Advisor Jeremy Mazur. “This opens the door for policy discussions on what can be done to adapt to these changes or, where possible, mitigate their effects on Texas communities.”
The results of the poll show a need for increased consideration at the state level when it comes to policy that will help address climate change and how its effects affect Texans, Nielsen-Gammon said. State policymakers will need to consider how climate change will affect water security, drought response, flood control, wildfire mitigation, and more, the report notes.
