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REPORT: No Warming Trend At Three-Quarters Of Canada’s Long-Term Weather Stations

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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  • Most long-term Canadian weather stations show no statistically significant warming or cooling trend, a new report found.
  • Overall, Canada has warmed at a rate of 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade over 130 years.
  • Shorter-term temperature records show more warming, including more warming in the Arctic.

Most Canadian weather stations with records going back 100 years show no statistically significant warming or cooling trend, according to a temperature data report.

Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph and seasoned climate researcher, assembled data from hundreds of weather stations across Canada, including those with data going back to 1888.

What McKitrick found is average daytime high temperature warmed about 1 degree Celsius per century, or 0.1 degrees per decade over the last 130 years. However, McKitrick also found that many weather stations showed no statistically significant warming or cooling trend over the last century.

“There are 133 stations with data extending back to 1918, of which 72 percent exhibited no statistically significant warming or cooling trend,” McKitrick told The Daily Caller News Foundation via email.

For those stations, McKitrick also found that “warming has been stronger in winter than summer or fall,” according to his report, and that “October has cooled slightly” while daytime highs increased about 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade.

Nearly three-quarters of “stations did not exhibit statistically significant warming or cooling,” he wrote. McKitrick also noted that “there has been virtually no change in the median July and August daytime highs across Canada, and October has cooled slightly” since 1939.

But what’s most interesting is the lack of Arctic amplification, increased warming at higher latitudes, in long-term records. (RELATED: A Top-Line Claim In The Newest US Climate Report Relies On Research Tied To Major Democratic Donors)

“Over long samples there is little polar amplification (increased warming with latitude) but it does appear in fall and winter months in more recent subsamples,” McKitrick wrote, noting later that higher latitudes show considerably more warming in post-1978 data.

McKitrick released his temperature report amid a media frenzy surrounding the latest National Climate Assessment, which the U.S. government released Friday.

The NCA’s dire warnings sparked alarming media coverage, including a CNN article claiming “it will be harder to breathe” and that “more of us will die” from future global warming.

However, alarming predictions such as those CNN highlighted stem from the NCA’s heavy reliance on an extreme global warming scenario, called RCP 8.5, that’s been increasingly called into question by experts.

Two University of British Columbia scientists published a study in 2017 arguing “RCP8.5 and other ‘business-as-usual scenarios’ consistent with high CO2 forcing from vast future coal combustion are exceptionally unlikely.”

U.S. President Trump gestures during a Make America Great Again rally in Biloxi

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a Make America Great Again rally in Biloxi, Mississippi, U.S., November 26, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

President Donald Trump disagreed with the report’s claim that global warming could significantly damage the economy.

“I don’t believe it,” Trump told reporters Monday. “Right now, we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been, and that’s very important to me. But if we’re clean but every other place on Earth on is dirty, that’s not so good.”

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