A while back, I saw a comment on a blog that doubted the existance of global warming (not surprising, there are lots of those). This person did claimed that the temperature trends around the world had been nil, and wanted to see temperature trends in one location that showed that the temperature had risen in the last century.

Using data from the National Climate Data Center, I’ve plotted the average daily temperature in Tucson for the last 60 years. The dark magenta points are the daily values, and the light magenta line is the best linear fit to the data. It’s a little hard to tell from the image, but the average temperature in Tucson is increasing. Over the last 60 years, it has increased by about 0.5 F/decade (0.28 C/decade).

Is this proof of global warming? Of course not. But it does show a couple of things. The temperature change from winter to summer is large. The graph doesn’t show it, but the temperature change from day to night is large as well, although obviously not as large as summer to winter. If you just look at the summer temperatures (those at the top), you can see an obvious decadal signal. Even with these diurnal, seasonal, and decadal signals, there is still an increasing linear trend in the average daily temperature.

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