Local Climate Change: Surface Temperature Trend Analysis over Baltimore, MD

It has now become evident that Climate change poses one of the greatest existential threats to humanity. According to the Maryland Commission on Climate Change, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, that trap the suns energy from radiating back into space have dramatically increased since pre-industrial times. To address some of the climate change issues, Morgan State University (MSU), an urban research institution in Baltimore city has installed a Weather Station on campus to collect and analyze weather related data such as temperature, precipitation, barometric pressure, sky cover, wind speed and direction, and relative humidity. This initiative has led to a partnership with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) where MSU and DNR interns participate in internships on climate change and other related research topics. A recent project called Climate Change and Air Quality, enabled us to explore how to extract, process and analyze environmental data from ground instruments and satellite data observations to understand the impact of climate change on our local environment. This effort is aimed at contributing to the scientific understanding of the local environment, identifying case studies and working towards developing communications on the environmental impact of climate change to multiple audiences. The goal of the project is to analyze weather datasets from 1979 to 2019 to identify some key information such as: the hottest and coldest seasons on record, the hottest and coldest year on record, the hottest and coldest 5-year on record, and the hottest and coldest decade on record.