HKO have recently added historical weather data going back to the year 1885 to their website.
I thought I would try to see if any weather changes are evident from the data - and was surprised to find how much it has changed.
This graph shows the average annual temperature in deg C at HKO in Kowloon from 1885 to 2015
The trend line (called Linear in the above graph) shows that average temperatures have increased at a fairly constant rate over this time, with a total change of about 1.5 degrees over the 130 years.
I discussed this with CY Lam and he suggested this increase was about 50% due to urbanisation (growth of the city of Hong Kong) and about 50% global warming.
But the change is not the same for each month in the year. Although every month shows an increase, a higher increase occurs between February and July, with a peak in March - see here, the average for March and October over the same period
Rainfall has also increased, by about 15%, although the change is not as consistent as with temperature. The increase has occurred mostly in the summer months June to August.
I've commented elsewhere that I think our spring migration period for birds in HK is getting shorter.
It's a reasonable assumption that global warming is contributing to this.
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Last edited by wgeoff at 17/01/2016 09:50 ]
