Temperature and precipitation trends in Canada during the 20 th century. Atmosphere-Ocean 38: 3

• Main Authors: Xuebin Zhang, Lucie A. Vincent, W. D. Hogg, Ain Niitsoo
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.178.8187; http://www.cmos.ca/Ao/articles/v380301.pdf

abstract Trends in Canadian temperature and precipitation during the 20th century are analyzed using recently updated and adjusted station data. Six elements, maximum, minimum and mean temperatures along with diurnal temperature range (DTR), precipitation totals and ratio of snowfall to total precipitation are investigated. Anomalies from the 1961–1990 reference period were first obtained at individual stations, and were then used to generate gridded datasets for subsequent trend analyses. Trends were computed for 1900–1998 for southern Canada (south of 608N), and separately for 1950–1998 for the entire country, due to insufficient data in the high arctic prior to the 1950s. From 1900–1998, the annual mean temperature has increased between 0.5 and 1.58C in the south. The warming is greater in minimum temperature than in maximum temperature in the first half of the century, resulting in a decrease of DTR. The greatest warming occurred in the west, with statistically significant increases mostly seen during spring and summer periods. Annual precipitation has also increased from 5 % to 35 % in southern Canada over the same period. In general, the ratio of snowfall to total precipitation has been increasing due mostly to the increase in winter precipitation which generally falls as snow and an increase of ratio