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Thesis
Observations on the Annual Timing of the Last Winter Temperature Occurrence During Spring/summer Across Florida, 1948-2021
University of West Florida Libraries
Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida
2023
Abstract
It is widely accepted that Earth’s climate is changing. One notable change is in the winter-to-spring transition. Many locations experienced progressively less cold (more hot) weather during the last century, leading to generalizations about season length. However, much of the Southeast, and specifically Florida, has not been examined for changes in, for example, the timing of the seasonal transition from winter temperatures to spring/summer temperatures. My objective is to focus on five Florida locations: Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, Pensacola, and Tampa, representing northwest/panhandle, northeast, central, west-central, and southern Florida, respectively. I evaluated the time series of latest winter temperature dates for trends using linear regression and the Mann-Kendall rank statistic test. Overall, Florida is not consistent in either positive or negative trends, varying by location. While Tampa and Jacksonville have positive trendlines for linear regression, indicating that winter has increased in length on average, Orlando and Miami have negative trendlines for linear regression, indicating that winter has decreased in length on average. Meanwhile, Pensacola has virtually no change. Miami is the only location with significant results in both Mann-Kendall tests and linear regression. This information narrows the knowledge gap on how Florida’s winter-to-spring transition has changed since the mid-20th century, and may be valuable for both tourism and agricultural interests.
Details
- Title
- Observations on the Annual Timing of the Last Winter Temperature Occurrence During Spring/summer Across Florida, 1948-2021
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Contributors
- Jason Ortegren (Advisor)Phillip Schmutz (Committee Member)Kwame Owusu-Daaku (Committee Member)
- Publisher
- University of West Florida Libraries
- Format
- pdf
- Number of pages
- 33
- Copyright
- © 2022 Jessica Joy Smith
- Identifiers
- 99380178796906600
- Academic Unit
- Earth and Environmental Sciences
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Science (MS)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida