Eastern North America

This is part of the Regional Summary series at www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming

There are many stations in eastern North America, but relatively few rural long-term stations.

The following figures show average temperature anomalies for 1880 – 2006 (from the GHCN database) and then superimposed on the IPCC model plot (from AR4 Fig 9.12) (pink= models with CO2, blue= models without CO2, black= observed). Note that the observed trend line is within the band of climate modeling without CO2 more often than not. Only one year has been warmer than the 1930’s. The most recent temperatures are below those predicted by the CO2 based models.

There is a major intra-regional difference: the northeast US (below, left) shows long-term warming, the southeast US (below, right) only short-term warming. Eastern Canada also shows no long-term warming.

Northeast Southeast

The following are from a selection of stations in the GISS database that have long-term data:

Urban:

Rural:

As a further example of regional differences within Eastern North America, consider St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada. The following figures show the temperature trend since 1880 (with black line for data from Gander Newfoundland) and the sea level change for the last decade (yearly means from Fisheries and Oceans Canada [http://www.meds-sdmm.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/meds/Databases/TWL/Products/Monthly_Means_b.htm]. (The decade average sea level of 0.83 is down from 0.84 – the average of all historical years). Newfoundland - no warming, no sea level rise.

The following figure shows the sea surface temperature anomalies (SST) for the Atlantic just southeast of Newfoundland for 1900 – 1996 showing the lack of long-term warming in the area (from Woods Hole Oceanic Institute [http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=7971&aid=2342].)