Publication Date

7-1991

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Michael Trapasso, Conrad Moore, Stuart Foster,

Degree Program

Department of Geography and Geology

Degree Type

Master of Science

Abstract

The temperature trends and variations of the contiguous United States as a whole and ten designated regions were investigated from 1935 to 1986. To obtain reliable results, 263 stations of the Historical Climate Network (HCN) were used. The HCN stations are corrected for many non-climatic factors which may bias the data. The data for the contiguous United States reveals that the annual, summer, and winter temperatures are free of clear positive or negative trends. Unlike the annual and summer data, winter temperatures exhibit relatively strong variations.

Each region was then studyed individually. The summer temperatures for all the ten regions were free of significant trends except Region 2 (Central East Region), which exhibited a significant negative trend. The winter temperatures of the ten regions also lack a statistical significance except for Region 3 (Southeast Region) which shows a significant negative trend. The annual temperatures for the ten regions were also significant except for Regions 2 and 5 (Central East Region and Southern Plains Region). These two regions exhibited significant negative trends.

The annual temperature trends for nine of the ten regions were negative while the annual temperatures for the United States as a whole show a positive trend. None of these trends were significant except for Regions 2 and 5. To examine whether or not the differences between the trends of the contiguous United States as a whole and those of the ten regions represents a significant departure from each other, the Expansion Method was used. Applying this method on the annual, summer and winter trends indicated that these differences did not represent a significant departure from those of the contiguous United States.

By studying the annual spatial temperature variations of the ten regions it was found that in more than 80% of the years, when the region with the highest positive deviation is in the western United States, the region with the highest negative deviation is in the eastern United States and visa versa.

Disciplines

Environmental Sciences | Geography | Nature and Society Relations | Other Environmental Sciences

Download

Share

COinS