Six weeks of climate data: Northern Polar Region #11, 60° to 30° West

Region 11 of the Arctic Circle contains the most land mass by far of the twelve equal sized slices, the bulk of Greenland. This does not equate to the most weather stations or readings with only 2,160, barely one sixth of the number of readings over the same time period in Arctic Scandinavia, a lot less land but a lot more people.

As often happens in these regions, the bulk of the weather stations and readings are in the south, far from the North Pole. There are gaps in the readings in the mid-northeast, obviously a not very accessible area.

In some ways, Greenland is like the Antarctic. Lots of land and almost no people.

In most regions, the stories of the climate data have been remarkably similar, either strong evidence of consistent warming from time interval to time interval or maybe a cooling trend noticed in the 1975-1988 era.

Greenland is completely different. The 1988-1999 was very cold and the rest of the intervals were fairly similar to one another, notably in the record warm Winters and the median.

The story in the Spring follows much the same pattern.

While the Winter and Spring trends are fairly static except for the 1988-1999 cold anomaly, the record high trend and the median would make the argument that Summers in Greenland have gotten cooler over the 56 year time period.

The Fall data is all over the place. The record lows say warming, the median and record highs say static or cooling slightly with the one low anomaly.

There were a total of 48 readings, 12 in each season. Intervals can finish 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th, and ties are possible.

Most warmest readings: 1999-2010 with a 7, 1955-1975 with 5.
Most 2nd warmest readings: 1955-1975 with 6.
Most 3nd warmest readings: 1975-1988 with 7.
Most coldest readings: 1988-1999 with 8.

Is this region warming from interval to interval? No. It would have been rated a cooling region if the data from this century had not been included.

Is the rate of warming increasing? The rate definitely jumps at the turn of the century, but that just brings 1999-2010 back to about level with the 1955 to 1988 readings.

A region like Greenland is a strong case against the phrase "global warming". It is definitely an anomaly in the Arctic, but it would be wrong to ignore it.

Later today, the last slice of the Arctic Circle.