The borehole temperature record of climate warming in the mid-continent of North America

Abstract

Ground-surface temperature (GST) histories, determined from a carefully selected set of twenty-nine borehole temperature profiles, show a warming trend over the last century that increases systematically with latitude in the mid-continent of North America. Except one site in north Texas, the borehole locations lie within a 500 × 1000 km transect that extends from the Kansas-Nebraska border into southern Manitoba. Ground-surface warming during the last century increases from +0.4°C at 41.1°N to + 2.0°C at 49.6°N. Surface air temperature (SAT) warming in the transect, determined from Historical Climatology Network stations, increases from + 0.5°C per century at 40°C per century at 48.8°N. These warming trends agree with the regional warming pattern predicted by GCM simulations of global warming. However, the magnitudes of warming determined from the GST and the SAT data agree in regions where seasonal ground freezing does not occur but differ significantly where seasonal ground freezing does occur. Analysis of ground and air temperature coupling suggests that the greater warming observed in the GST histories in seasonally frozen ground is due to a secular increase in soil moisture that corresponds with increased precipitation during the past 50 years.