Hythergraphs

Richard richrd@nas.com
Fri, 20 Jul 2012 20:54:01 PDT

On Jul 20, 2012, at 7:26 PM, Rodger Whitlock wrote:

> I propose to generate hythergraphs


I would be interested to see what you are producing. 

I'm not a climate scientist but as a native plant seed collector in and around Washington, Oregon and Idaho over the past 25 years there have been profound changes in plant responses. Success in seed set has changed in some native shrub species and the date of ripening has moved to earlier dates. In Northwestern Washington where I have the best data, ripening date of vine maple has moved from September 7 to 15 to August 23 to September 3. Yet even though we talk about climate zone upgrades the latitude effects are still there. Four years ago we had winter cold spell in single digits (F).

As a matter of curiosity I went into climate archives available online at Bellingham and Ellensberg Washington. These two cities are on opposite sides of the cascade mountain range and have oceanic and continental climates respectively. Both places have continuous temperature records since 1920's and I looked at and compared maximum/minimum temperatures only from winter and summer selected periods. My data and the analysis are buried in a 12 yo computer archive but the results are memorable. My coastal analysis of winter/summer max/min showed stability in max/min but the interior climate of Ellensberg has changed dramatically. In winter, where this place now normally has rain at times and moderate temperatures' literally unheard of prior to 1950's where subzero was normal. Summer extreme temperatures are now trending even warmer and 100 + degree days now the norm. If you take the trend line of summer maximums in this interior site and extrapolate forward we will reach summer 
 temperature extremes that will make this place uninhabitable. Following a trend line is not a valid predictor but a warning shot considering what is occurring in central North America currently. 

Best wishes 

Rich Haard
Bellingham





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