Title: Century-long changing climate of Texas: the spatial-temporal variability and trends of temperature and precipitation

Authors: Yanan Li

Addresses: Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA

Abstract: As a geographically diverse region, Texas has a wide variety of local and regional climatic conditions, which may not commensurate with the global warming. In this study, the parameter-elevation relationships on independent slopes model (PRISM) historical dataset was used to examine the spatial and temporal variations in temperature and precipitation of Texas. Mann-Kendall and Sen's slope statistics were performed to identify trends for the periods of 1895-2019 and 1990-2019. Results show no significant trends in the past century but significant cooling and wetting in the recent decades. Gridded trend maps revealed the spatial and seasonal heterogeneity, which exhibits cooling in summer and winter for most areas and increasing precipitation in western, south central and southern areas. The northern area has become hotter and drier. The high spatial resolution and long-term coverage captured features not discovered before, providing a fundamental step toward understanding climate impacts on people and environment.

Keywords: climate change; temperature; precipitation; Texas.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2022.122798

International Journal of Global Warming, 2022 Vol.27 No.1, pp.102 - 122

Received: 16 Jul 2021
Accepted: 16 Oct 2021
Published online: 11 May 2022 *

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