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Maple Syrup Industry Woes
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  To tap or not to tap, that is the quandry. Maple sugar producers are facing lower output because of the region's increasingly warm winters. Sugar producer and president of The New Hampshire Maple Sugar Producers Bill Eva and natural resources professor Barry Rock of the University of New Hampshire will provide a look at the sugar industry's dilemma. We'll also talk with chief meteorologist Tim Markle of the Mt. Washington Observatory about the effects and rarity of rain on Mt. Washington, in February.
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In follow up to the interview with Observatory Meteorologist Tim Markle, we would like to provide further information about the summit temperature record. The Mount Washington Observatory recently published an analysis of the summit temperature record from 1935 to 2003 in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate. The results from this study indicate that over this period the annual average temperature has increased by ~0.3 ºC (~0.6 ºF). The winter and spring warming rates over this period are more than twice the annual warming rate. Recent data from 2004 and 2005 was not included in this analysis. Here is the abstract of the paper that was published in the Journal of Climate. If you would like a PDF copy of the paper, please email Observatory Chief Scientist Alex Pszenny (apszenny@mountwashington.org) or Observatory Staff Scientist Emily Fischer (efischer@mountwashington.org).
Grant, A.N., A.A.P. Pszenny, and E.V. Fischer (2005), The 1935-2003 Air Temperature Record from the Summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, Journal of Climate, 18, 21, 4445-4453.
Meteorological observations have been taken continuously at the summit of Mount Washington since 1932. Results of an analysis of the air temperature record over the 1935-2003 period show a statistically significant increase in mean temperature of ~0.3ºC, while the diurnal temperature range has decreased by ~0.15 ºC. The decadal structure evident in the record reveals that, in contrast to North American trends, the summit experienced relatively cool temperatures in the 1940s. The late 1980s and early 1990s were relatively warm on the summit, in agreement with North American trends. The times of daily maximum and minimum temperatures show that the summit climate is dominantly influenced by boundary layer processes 30% of the time and free air circulation 50% of the time. No evidence of a “weekend effect†was found.