Trend and Periodicity of Temperature Time Series in Ontario

Syed Imran Ahmed^1*, Ramesh Rudra¹, Trevor Dickinson², Motahir Ahmed²

¹School of Engineering, Thornborough Building, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada.
²Engineer, Manitoba Government, Winnipeg, Canada.

DOI: 10.4236/ajcc.2014.33026                

Abstract

The trends and periodicities in the annual and seasonal temperature time series at fifteen weather stations within Ontario Great Lakes Basins have been analyzed, for the period 1941-2005, using the statistical analyses (Fourier series analysis, t-test, and Mann-Kendall test). The stations were spatially divided into three regions: northwest (NW), southwest (SW), and southeast (SE) to evaluate spatial variability in temperature. The results of the study reveal that the annual maximum mean temperature showed increasing trend for NW, and mixed trends for SW and SE regions. The variability was found to be more for northern stations as compared to southern stations for annual extreme minimum temperature. In addition, the trend slope per 100 years for the average annual extreme minimum temperature increased within the range of -0.8°C (Stratford) to 15°C (Porcupine). The seasonal analysis demonstrated that extreme maximum temperature has an increasing trend and maximum mean temperature has a decreasing trend during summer and winter. The extreme minimum temperature for winter illustrated an increasing trend (90%) with 22% statistically significant for NW region. For the SW region, the trend is also increasing (80%) for most of the temperature variables and 25% of temperature data were significantly increased in the SW region. The SE region stations showed overall very clear increasing trends (95%) for all the temperature variables. The data also showed that 47% of data were statistically significant in the SE region. The analysis of variance accounted for by trend, significant periodicities, and random component show that the pattern is similar for the percent of variance accounted for periodicities, and random component contribute dominantly for the four temperature variables and frost free days (FFD) for all three regions. Overall, the study reveals that the extreme minimum temperature is increasing annually and seasonally, with statistically significant at many stations.

Keywords

Time Series, Trend, Periodicity, Mann-Kendall Test, t-Test, Frost Free Days

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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