DULUTH — Last year was the warmest year on record in Duluth, according to 150 years of monthly and annual average temperatures tracked by the National Weather Service.

With an average temperature of 44.6 degrees, 2024 beat both 1878 and 1931 by a tenth of a degree. It was also the warmest year in the Twin Cities and St. Cloud,
the Weather Service reported.

Kenny Blumenfeld, a senior climatologist at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said 1878 and 1931 were both strong El Nino years.

Gary Meader / Duluth Media Group

While 2024 also experienced El Nino — a naturally occurring climate pattern when above-average Pacific Ocean surface temperatures influence weather across North America — it wasn’t particularly strong, Blumenfeld said.

It did, however, punctuate a decades-long trend of rising temperatures thanks to human-caused climate change.

“It is a little easier to break records than it used to be, because our baseline conditions are warmer now,” Blumenfeld said. “We have more heat available, there’s generally less cold air available and so it is easier to break those warm records in particular.”

Humans have driven climate change by burning fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. The gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet.

In Minnesota, winter is warming the most (Duluth has seen
winter temperatures rise 6.4 degrees between 1970 and 2020
), with fall in second place as average fall temperatures went up 4.4 degrees between 1970 and 2023, according to
Climate Central.

That’s why 2024 can set a record, even without extremely high summer temperatures.

“It wasn’t an abnormally hot summer in terms of sweltering heat, but we did have this extension of summer that was abnormally late going way into September and even October,” Blumenfeld said. “And that definitely affected some of these temperature records.”

Nate Meyer, associate director of the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership, said several factors, including climate change, will continue to influence the region’s weather, meaning year-to-year variations in winter and summer temperatures, precipitation and extreme weather events.

“However, the latest generation of climate models we have for Minnesota project that our temperatures will continue warming,” Meyer said. “This means that we can expect the kinds of record-breaking weather that we experienced in the last year to become more commonplace in the coming years.”

Gary Meader / Duluth Media Group

The Climate Adaptation Partnership recently launched
the Minnesota Climate Mapping and Analysis Tool,
which visualizes climate change projections for the state’s temperature, precipitation and other factors.

The model projects that the annual daily average temperature in Northeast Minnesota could increase between
3.7 degrees
and
4.4 degrees
by mid-century or
6.6 degrees
and
11.6 degrees
by the end of the century, depending on the amount of emissions released.

Meyer noted climate models project average low winter temperatures to increase, leading to between 20 and 23 fewer days below freezing every year and less snow cover.

Gary Meader / Duluth Media Group

“The number of days per year with at least 1 inch of snow cover is expected to decline by 15 to 17 days. Later in the century or around 2060-2079, some of our iconic natural spaces like Tettegouche State Park could see a decrease of 40-55 days in the annual number of days with snow depth over 6 inches,” Meyer said.

Rain events are also expected to become more intense, with longer dry periods in between, Meyer noted.

While the effects of climate change can often lead to a feeling of doom and gloom, Meyer said experiencing a year like 2024 can help people prepare for the future.

He noted that last year’s American Birkebeiner cross-country ski race in Cable, Wisconsin managed
to adjust
and that
a $1.8 million grant award last year
will help communities on Lake Superior plan and prepare for climate change.

“Experiencing years like the past year gives us a good sense of what we need to prepare for,” Meyer said. “The good news is that we have time, interest, ingenuity, and plenty of tools in our toolkit to manage the impacts of our changing climate.”