Mean annual temperature and total annual precipitation trends at Canadian biosphere reserves

This article examines instrumental climate records from a variety of stations associated with the following Biosphere Reserves across Canada: (i) Waterton Lakes, (ii) Riding Mountain, (iii) Niagara Escarpment, (iv) Long Point, and (v) Kejimkujik (Candidate Biosphere Reserve). Annual series are generated from daily temperature and precipitation values. In addition, homogeneous data are used from other stations and regional records to supplement the records from the local biosphere stations. Long term trends are identified over the period of the instrumental record. In general, data from the interval 1900 to 1998 show cooler temperatures in the 1920's, warming from the early 1940's into the early 1950's, cooling into the 1970's, and subsequent warming. At many stations, 1998 is the warmest in the instrumental record. Comparisons with the regional data sets show good agreements between the temperature series. The 20th century warming is approximately 1.0 degreesC in the Riding Mountain area and 0.6 degreesC in the Long Point, Niagara Escarpment, and Waterton Lakes areas. There has been slight cooling in the Kejimkujik area over the past half century. Precipitation data show increasing trends in the Kejimkujik, Long Point, Niagara Escarpment, and Waterton Lakes areas with no long term trend in the Riding Mountain area. This work is part of the Canadian Biosphere Reserves Association (CBRA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI), designed to present climate change information to Biosphere Reserve communities to allow local organizations to understand climate change and adapt to potential impacts.