REGIONAL PATTERNS OF TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION FOR NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR DURING THE PAST CENTURY

• Published in: The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien
• Main Authors: BANFIELD, COLIN E., JACOBS, JOHN D.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1998
• Subjects: Baffin Island; Belle Isle; Canada; Newfoundland; Baffin; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation; Northwest Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.1998.tb01351.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1541-0064.1998.tb01351.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1541-0064.1998.tb01351.x

We have analyzed the mid‐to‐late 20th century instrumental record of winter and summer temperatures and precipitation for six stations representative of Newfoundland subregions and of central and coastal Labrador. In addition, these modern records have been extended into the 1800s by using portions of records from Belle Isle and the city of St. John's. For these two lengthier records, several ‘epochs' of alternating relatively high or low characteristic temperatures are distinguished, particularly for the winter season. The modern (post‐1940) temperature records show that the mid‐century warm period has been succeeded by a significant shift to predominantly colder winters over this entire region since about 1972. A concurrent decline in summer temperatures is restricted to Labrador and north‐central parts of the island. With respect to other studies of recent climatic trends over northeastern Canada and the northwest Atlantic, our results demonstrate a significant correlation, at most of our study locations, between mean winter temperature and seasonally averaged values of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Baffin Island‐West Atlantic Index (BWI). Comparative examination of the precipitation record for these stations also reveals subregional scale contrasts in the degree of variability and trend for annual and seasonal totals. For St. John's, representative series of total precipitation spanning the past century are analyzed for winter and summer; these series lack significant lengthy trends, although short‐term precipitation variability is to some degree associated with the mean temperatures of the defined epochs. Since the 1940s, significant upward trends in total amounts and frequencies characterize the southwestern coast of the island for both winter and summer, and eastern Labrador in summer. The increased winter snowfall observed on the southwest coast during the past three decades is considered to be linked to a greater frequency of onshore synoptic airflow patterns accompanying the trend to ...