Zeitschrift für Geowissenschaften und Klimawandel

Abstrakt

Climate Trends in the Great Lakes Region and Surrounding Area over the Past 40 Years

Huaiping Zhu, Ziwang Deng, Jinliang Liu

In this study, 38 climate indices for the Great Lakes region and surrounding areas are calculated using the newly released ERA5-land data. Four of the Mann Kendall (MK) trend test methods, with different consideration of serial autocorrelation, are applied to time series of these indices. The results show that the annual temperature in most parts of the Great Lake region shows a significant upward trend with a high confidence. Precipitation increased in the past 40 years. However, the trend is not significant over major parts. Only Quebec shows a significant increase trend. Extreme minimum temperatures (e.g. TNn, TXn) have a significant increase trend over the majority of the study area. As a result, extreme cold events such TX10p, TN10p, HDD18C and CSDI, have a significant decrease trend over the majority of the study area. The extreme maximum temperatures (e.g. TXx, TNx) increase over the past years. The trend is significant in some scattered areas. The significant trends have already and will continue to affect all related fields of our society in the future.