Four weeks of climate data: Northern Tropics Region #6

 The last slice of the Northern Tropics is dominated by the Atlantic, with a small corner of South America in the far southwest and a larger corner of Africa is the east.

 Besides the South American coast, the region includes some Caribbean islands with steady weather stations reporting.

There is a nearly three degree centigrade difference between the highest and lowest temperatures of Winters. With a lot of the tropics the readings have been less than two degrees apart.

After 1975 everything looks to be warming, though the rate of warming is not getting greater.

Here's the Spring readings, the highs and lows less than two degrees apart. Again signs of warming, but no signs of steady increase.

Very convincing warming trend, but not speeding up and the highs and lows are barely a degree apart.

Signs of warming, some signs of increasing warming and highs and lows about a degree and a half apart.

Confidence of the region warming: 99.9%
Confidence of increasing rate: 79.8%
Change in median temperature from the 1955-1975 interval to the 1999-2010 interval: 0.48° C

We can definitely show a warming trend overall, but it is less than a half degree and the rate is getting can't be said to be increasing.


Warming regions outnumber non-warming regions 5-1, but no region shows an increasing rate and two give us at least 95% confidence of a decreasing rate. If we give each region equal weight, the average increase over the entire Northern Tropics is about a half degree Celsius in 56 years, a little less than the world average. The one region that shows nearly a degree jump is dominated by Saharan Africa, though it includes parts of Arabia and sub-Saharan Africa as well.

Tomorrow, we start looking at the tropics on the other side of the Equator.