Studying historical hourly weather data – and the amount of time that temperatures remain above or below certain thresholds – reveals several impacts of U.S. regional climate change trends.
Studying historical hourly weather data – and the amount of time that temperatures remain above or below certain thresholds – reveals several impacts of U.S. regional climate change trends. In a new study, researchers from North Carolina State University found that over the past four and a half decades, areas in the northeastern U.S. have lost almost 1 1/2 weeks of temperatures below freezing, while portions of some states in the Gulf and Southwest have gained almost 1 1/2 weeks of temperatures that cause heat stress. The data can be used to inform climate adaptation planning.
“One of the challenges when talking about and planning for climate change is that the average change seems too small to be significant,” says Sandra Yuter, Distinguished Professor of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at NC State and corresponding author of the study. “Two or three degrees doesn’t make much difference if your average daily temperature is 65 degrees Fahrenheit. But it can make a huge difference if your typical temperature was 30 F and that increases to 33 F.”
The research team looked at hourly weather station data obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Information’s Integrated Surface Database Lite – which contains data from 340 weather stations in the contiguous U.S. and southern Canada – from 1978 to 2023. For each station, they computed decadal trends in hours below the freezing point (0 degrees Celsius, 32 F) and hours above the threshold for heat stress in animals and plants (30 C, 86 F).
Read more at: North Carolina State University
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