About the data
The mean values reported in this data set for New York were computed by averaging historic
annual mean temperature values from 40 weather stations interspersed throughout the state. The plot of New
York's mean winter temperature values over the years 1900 to 1999 clearly shows great variability from year to
year. The linear regression model has an R2 value of 0.0483, indicating that there is a weak linear
trend in the data. Nonetheless, we do observe a slight increase over time in mean temperatures. The linear model
has a slope of 0.0234 which indicates that, according to the linear model, winter mean temperatures are increasing
0.0234 degrees Fahrenheit per year. This is equivalent to 2.34 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1.3 degrees Celsius) per
century. These trendline numbers cannot be taken as proof that atmospheric warming is happening either statewide
or globally, but they are of the same order of magnitude as current predictions made by climate warming experts.
We obtained data sets for New York and the other lower 48 states from the United States Historical
Climate Network (USHCN), part of NOAA's National Climate Data Center. The USHCN has historical records for 1221
weather station in the lower 48 states, of which 1182 are currently operational. The first weather
station in New York listed by USHCN began operation in 1854 in the vicinity of Cooperstown. By 1936 the number
of stations increased to 59, which is the number operational today. For this data set, we selected the weather
stations that had continuous winter mean values from 1900 to 1999; there were 40 in all. The location names
of these stations are: Auburn, Bath, Binghamton, Brockport, Buffalo, Canton, Chazy, Cooperstown, Cortland,
Elmira, Fredonia, Geneva, Gloversville, Hemlock, Indian Lake, Ithaca, Lake Placid, Little Falls, Lockport, Lowville,
Maryland, Mohonk Lake, New York Central Park, Ogdensburg, Oswego, Penn Yan, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie, Rochester,
Setauket Strong, Syracuse, Troy Lock & Dam, Tupper Lake, Utica, Watertown, West Point, and Yorktown Heights.
At the USHCN website one can download historical data sets that have varying amounts of editing.
We obtained the most edited version of the data, referred to as the Urban Heat Adjusted Mean Monthly Temperature
data, which (1) has removed outliers more that 3 standard deviations from the period mean (2) has been adjusted
to remove time of observation bias, the Maximum/Minimum Temperature System (MMTS) bias, station moves/changes bias,
urbanization (heat island) bias, and (3) contains estimated values for missing/outlier data.
The Urban Heat Adjusted Mean Monthly Temperature data come in one gigantic file, a 17MB file
with over 130,000 lines of values. In addition, there is one gigantic file of weather station information (referred
to as the Station Inventory file), with details about station location, history, measuring devices, personnel,
reliability, etc. To assist students and teachers who want to investigate historical temperatures and not be encumbered
with such monstrous files, we divided the temperature and weather station information by state. We also edited
the weather station information by deleting all but latitude, longitude, and elevation data for the latest location
of each station. To download state-by-state files, go to DataSet#050.
Those wishing to obtain a single national or unedited file should go to the USHCN website.
Data source: United States Historical Climate Network (USHCN)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
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