
There have been several very recent articles in the scientific literature that have examined various aspects of climate variability in and around Utah over the past 50 to 100 years. These new papers shed interesting light on variability and trends in temperature and precipitation and serve to further underscore what we understand about the climate of Utah and the American Southwest—it is primarily hot and dry. Any influence on these general characteristics from anthropogenic global warming appears minor, if even possible to discern at all.
First of all a little background on the climate history of Utah, as compiled and maintained by the U. S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
The record of temperature and precipitation for Utah stretches back to 1895. Since that time (and through the end of the year 2009), there has been an overall warming trend of about 0.22°F/decade or a total change in statewide average temperature over the past 115 years of about 2.5°F. As can be seen in Figure 1, the first several decades of the 20th century were generally cooler than average, the decades in the mid-20th century were near-average, while the past two decades have generally been warmer than the long-term average.
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