Fluctuations in the length of the growing season in Minnesota

Abstract

Fluctuations in growing season length and in the dates of the last spring freeze and first fall freeze between 1899 and 1982 were studied for five rural Minnesota stations with long, high quality records. A general increase in growing season length was found, but there was substantial variation in the pattern of fluctuations among the stations. The increase in growing season length is not clearly and uniformly related to changes in the dates of first and last freezes. The interannual variability of growing season duration is on the order of the increase in duration so that the change would not be readily apparent to a casual observer. Our results do not correspond well with certain other studies of growing season length nor with fluctuations in hemispheric mean temperature. We conclude that extreme care must be used in extrapolating results of growing season length studies in space and in relating them to mean temperature fluctuations.