The US National Climate Assessment 5 (NCA5) was released yesterday. It summarizes climate change risks, impacts, and responses. There is a dedicated chapter for the Midwest and figure 24-3 highlights the change in last spring date of sub-29°F over the region. While much of the region is shown to be having an earlier-in-spring date of last sub-29°F temperature, a good chunk of Iowa is shown to be having later dates. An example of such is Cedar Rapids as shown by the featured chart. The NCA5 denotes that large variability exists and a confident trend isn't necessarily found over the region. This featured chart certainly affirms that with a correlation coefficient of the simple and linear long term trend close to nil. But a visual inspection of recent years for this site shows the vast majority of them having a later date than the long term average of 13 April. Will hopefully crank out a few more features comparing NCA5 figures with what you can generate on the IEM website.

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Tags:   nca5