Local Warming

Local Warming

Using 55 years of daily average temperatures from a local weather station, I made a least-absolute-deviations regression model that accounts for three effects: seasonal variations, the 11-year solar cycle, and a linear trend. The solution correctly identifies the period and phase of the solar cycle. It also indicates that temperatures have gone up by about 2 ◦F over the 55 years covered by the ...

Local warming: daily temperature change influences belief in global warming.

Although people are quite aware of global warming, their beliefs about it may be malleable; specifically, their beliefs may be constructed in response to questions about global warming. Beliefs may reflect irrelevant but salient information, such as the current day's temperature. This replacement of a more complex, less easily accessed judgment with a simple, more accessible one is known as att...

Emerging local warming signals in observational data

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. [1] The global average temperature of the Earth has increased, but year-to-year variability in local climates imped...

Climate warming drives local extinction: Evidence from observation and experimentation

Despite increasing concern about elevated extinction risk as global temperatures rise, it is difficult to confirm causal links between climate change and extinction. By coupling 25 years of in situ climate manipulation with experimental seed introductions and both historical and current plant surveys, we identify causal, mechanistic links between climate change and the local extinction of a wid...

Urbanization and global environmental change: local effects of urban warming