Report: Southern New Mexico congressional district one of the fastest-warming

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New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District tied for second in a newly released analysis of which districts across the United States are warming the fastest.

The district, which covers the southern half of the state, stretching from Albuquerque to Sunland Park, warmed 4.8 degrees between 1970 and 2025, according to analysis released Wednesday by the national program Climate Matters. The district is warming faster than 431 other congressional districts.

The analysis was deliberately released ahead of the midterm elections in November, said California-based applied climate scientist Kaitlyn Trudeau, who worked on the project.

“We wanted to give people data that they could use to just better understand where they lived,” Trudeau said.

The 2nd Congressional District, represented by Democrat Gabe Vasquez, is widely considered New Mexico’s most competitive congressional seat. Though the district has remained Democratic since redistricting efforts in 2021, it had leaned conservative for years.

A recent Albuquerque Journal poll placed Vasquez four percentage points ahead of retired police detective and Republican candidate Greg Cunningham.

Spokespeople for Vasquez’s and Cunningham’s campaigns did not respond to requests for comment on the Climate Matters analysis.

The data

Climate Matters, a resource created by the nonpartisan nonprofit Climate Central, noted in its analysis all 435 U.S. congressional districts have warmed since 1970, by an average of 2.8 degrees. The fastest-warming districts are mostly scattered across the U.S. Southwest, with southeast Arizona’s 6th District taking the top spot.

New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District, which covers the northern half of the state plus an eastern swath down to Lovington, warmed 4 degrees between 1970 and 2025, according to the analysis. The state’s 1st Congressional District, which stretches from Rio Rancho to Ruidoso, warmed 4.1 degrees.

The state also saw its hottest-ever summer this year, while cities repeatedly shattered high-temperature records.

Climate Matters also mapped out the difference between the perceived and measured impacts of climate change in each district using data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Between 40% and 60% of New Mexicans say they have experienced the effects of a warming planet, but between 60% and 80% of the warming the state has seen is due to human-caused climate change, according to the analysis.

Similar disconnects — to varying degrees — exist across the country, the maps show. Trudeau described it as mind-boggling.

“It’s like everyone has been impacted, but it’s interesting that people don’t feel like they have been personally impacted by climate change,” Trudeau said. “I think that was more of a shock to me than just the analysis itself.”

She said there are several potential reasons for the disconnect between what people report experiencing and what is actually being measured: Some people avoid talking about climate change or ignore it, and there is widespread misinformation and disinformation on the topic.

“I feel like we’ve been talking a lot about the physical impact of climate change — the trends and the extremes and the records,” Trudeau said. “But I think what we talk a lot less about is how people perceive that happened to them, and I think that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on how to communicate this to people in a way that is both informative but doesn’t make them feel hopeless.”

Lily Alexander is a state accountability reporter for The New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico, focusing on equity and transparency. Her position is part of the New Mexican Public Service Journalism Fund, and her stories are available to all readers without a paywall.

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