Abstract:
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Global warming has caused the average temperature in the US to rise by about two degrees Fahrenheit since 1970 according to the US National Climatic Center (USNCC). This increase is small relative to temperature variability hence clouding the signal to noise ratio. This combined with the fact that the reported average US average temperature is an average of the high and low temperature at each weather stations across the US (the mid-range), standard statistical tests for the mean cannot be used to confirm a systematic temperature increase in the US. This study uses National Data Climatic Center Version 2 data in over 1200 US weather stations that have been carefully adjusted for urbanization, and being moved over the last 120 years that the data has been collected from them by the USNCC. This paper demonstrates using a binomial test that although the US has experienced statistically significant temperature increases (Type I error was less than 0.01) as a nation since 1960, that the more surprising result is the temperature variability that different regions in the US have experienced during this 70-year period. These results are also statistically significant.
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