What does USCRN tell us?
Even some climate crisis deniers seem to put some faith in U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) data as a more reliable source of information than other temperature measurements, such as USHCN data.
The USCRN is a systematic and sustained network of climate monitoring stations with sites across the conterminous U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii. These stations use high-quality instruments to measure temperature, precipitation, wind speed, soil conditions, and more.
You can find out more about USCRN here.
So, what does USCRN tell us about warming in the US?
What the USCRN data shows
The chart shows USCRN monthly temperature anomalies.
The source of the data is this page. You can download the data yourself and plot the chart using MS Excel (for example) if you want the most up-to-date data.
Given the seasonal nature of temperature data, many see the chart and think it does not show warming.
But it does.
The USCRN average temperature data shows a warming trend in the US
Fitting a least squares trend line shows warming of about 0.6F per decade.
Is there a warming trend in the US?
To test for an increasing trend in a time series we can use the Mann-Kendall Test (which is non-parametric, i.e. we make no assumptions about how temps may be increasing, e.g. linear, exponential,...).
Using the annual average (to avoid seasonality issues) max temp for years 2005-2023 we find that there is a 92% confidence level that max temperatures are increasing.
USCRN is not a good option for climate crisis deniers to use to support their denial.