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Mean annual temperatures in Kentucky have not demonstrated a statistically significant trend with regard to time-the vast bulk of anthropogenic CO2 emissions that have been emitted into the atmosphere since 1950 have had little impact on Kentucky temperature and precipitation
By Craig D. Idso of Cato.
"Air temperature and precipitation, in the words of Chattopadhyay
and Edwards (2016), are “two of the most important variables in the
fields of climate sciences and hydrology.” Understanding how and why
they change has long been the subject of research, and reliable
detection and characterization of trends in these variables is
necessary, especially at the scale of a political decision-making entity
such as a state. Chattopadhyay and Edwards evaluated trends in
precipitation and air temperature for the Commonwealth of Kentucky in
the hopes that their analysis would “serve as a necessary input to
forecasting, decision-making and planning processes to mitigate any
adverse consequences of changing climate.”
Data used in their study originated from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and consisted of time series of daily
precipitation and maximum and minimum air temperatures for each Kentucky
county. The two researchers focused on the 61-year period from
1950-2010 to maximize standardization among stations and to ensure
acceptable record length. In all, a total of 84 stations met their
initial criteria. Next, Chattopadhyay and Edwards subjected the
individual station records to a series of statistical analyses to test
for homogeneity, which reduced the number of stations analyzed for
precipitation and temperature trends to 60 and 42, respectively.
Thereafter, these remaining station records were subjected to
non-parametric Mann-Kendall testing to assess the presence of
significant trends and the Theil-Sen approach to quantify the
significance of any linear trends in the time series. What did these
procedures reveal?
For precipitation, Chattopadhyay and Edwards report only two
of the 60 stations exhibited a significant trend in precipitation,
leading the two University of Kentucky researchers to state “the
findings clearly indicate that, according to the dataset and methods
used in this study, annual rainfall depths in Kentucky generally exhibit
no statistically significant trends with respect to time. With respect
to temperature, a similar result was found. Only three of the 42
stations examined had a significant trend. Once again, Chattopadhyay and
Edwards conclude the data analyzed in their study “indicate that,
broadly speaking, mean annual temperatures in Kentucky have not
demonstrated a statistically significant trend with regard to time.”
Given such findings, it would seem that the vast bulk of
anthropogenic CO2 emissions that have been emitted into the atmosphere
since 1950 have had little impact on Kentucky temperature and
precipitation, because there have been no systematic trends in either
variable.
Reference
Chattopadhyay, S. and Edwards, D.R. 2016. Long-term trend analysis of
precipitation and air temperature for Kentucky, United States. Climate 4: 10; doi:10.3390/cli4010010."
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