Temperature trends through urbanization in Metropolitan Washington,D.C., 1945–1979

Summary Annual and seasonal changes of the urban heat island magnitude in Washington, D.C. and a close-in suburb were analyzed for the period of 1945 through 1979. Monthly and annual mean temperature data, corrected for elevation, from three stations (National Airport, D.C.—downtown, Silver Spring, MD—suburban, and Beltsville, MD—rural) were evaluated by testing the statistical significance of temperature differences between the different data sets.The analysis indicated that the absolute heat island magnitudes have increased at the rate of 0.020 and 0.019 C/yr at Washington National Airport and Silver Spring, respectively during the study period. The differences between these two rates were not statistically significant at the 0.95 confidence level. However, the increase of the heat island magnitude from 1945 to 1979 at the suburban station was 20% greater than that at the downtown station. Those results indicate that as urbanization progresses, the suburban site, Silver Spring, has become incorporated into the Washington, D.C. urban heat island. The data also indicate that the magnitude of the heat island near the city center has continued to increase despite a significant population decrease since 1950.With 5 Figures