Introduction
This website is dedicated to presenting climate trends in Denver Colorado. It is well established that we are currently in a warming trend globally.
I started this website because I was curious about what amount (if any) of global warming was evident in the climate history of the place I live. It seems like the summers are hotter, with many new record highs reported over the past few years, but I wanted to see some easy to read plots that showed the actual trends.
I found that the more accessible web pages with colorful, easy to read plots were about current weather or future weather. So, I did some investigation on the NWS web-site and the Meso-West web site and put together a few of my own plots that the layperson can use to quickly see trends.
Temperature Trends in Denver
Average yearly temperatures in Denver over the past several decades:
As you can see, this shows an increase in average temperatures as expected. The average temperature for the year does bounce around a bit but, you can visually tell that there is a slight upward trend. In fact, superimposed on this plot is the linear fit for all the years in our dataset and the exact temperature trend in degrees/year. The values may seem small but if it continues at this rate, in 100 years Denver will have record highs well above 110 degrees!
Precipitation Trends in Denver
Total yearly precipitation in Denver over the past several decades:
The yearly precipitation totals show considerable variation from year to year, which is typical for Denver's semi-arid climate. While temperature shows a clear warming trend, precipitation patterns are more complex. Some years experience significantly above-normal precipitation, while others fall well below the average. This variability highlights the importance of monitoring both long-term trends and year-to-year fluctuations in Denver's climate patterns.