How do we know temperatures are changing?  What data set do you use?  What time period do you analyze?  How do you make sense of trends with so much year to year variability?

If you’ve asked yourself these questions, you will be interested in this story about one analysis of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay temperatures and how they were analyzed by different people to get conflicting results.  BU.com (Boston University) published this article as part of their series on communicating climate change research.  Many of these same questions come up when you discuss long-term trends in air temperature over the US or the globe.

Source: NOAA via Commons Wikimedia
Source: NOAA via Commons Wikimedia
Source: Doc Searles, Commons Wikimedia
Source: Doc Searles, Commons Wikimedia