A Spatiotemporal Analysis of U.s. Station Temperature Trends over the Last Century

The Open University's repository of research publications and other research outputs A spatiotemporal analysis of U.S. station temperature trends over the last century Journal Article (2013). A spatiotemporal analysis of U.S. station temperature trends over the last century. Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. [1] This study presents a nonlinear spatiotemporal analysis of 1167 station temperature records from the United States Historical Climatology Network covering the period from 1898 through 2008. We use the empirical mode decomposition method to extract the generally nonlinear trends of each station. The statistical significance of each trend is assessed against three null models of the background climate variability, represented by stochastic processes of increasing temporal correlation length. We find strong evidence that more than 50% of all stations experienced a significant trend over the last century with respect to all three null models. A spatiotemporal analysis reveals a significant cooling trend in the SouthEast and significant warming trends in the rest of the contiguous U.S. It also shows that the warming trend appears to have migrated equatorward. This shows the complex spatiotemporal evolution of climate change at local scales. (2013), A spatiotemporal analysis of U.S. station temperature trends over the last century,