Spatial analysis of secular temperature fluctuations

Abstract

Abstract The identification of global trends in secular temperature has resulted in various theories explaining temporal climatic fluctuations. Few investigators have attempted to regionalize these trends as derived from climatic statistics. This study attempts to: (1) review methodological problems inherent in the study of climatic fluctuations; (2) suggest a methodology to overcome some of the difficulties; and (3) develop discrete regions of temperature variation. The results presented in this study significantly complement the information derived by depicting large areal units by climatic summary statistics. Nine discrete regions of temperature trend are developed for the United States, and the contiguity of the resulting regions suggests that climatic fluctuations display distinct spatial patterns.