Are the Chesapeake Bay waters warming up

Abstract

1. Apparently significant trends within moderately long (50-year) series of meteorological or hydrological data should be regarded with suspicion until justified on the basis of much longer term information. 2. Extra efforts should be directed toward securing the continuance of routine observations at stations where long data histories are already available and where the termination of such records might be regretted at some future time. 3. Mean annual air and water temperatures at different sites may be quite highly correlated even when the points of measurement are very widely separated. 4. The annual average water temperature at one station close to the Chesapeake Bay appears to be normally distributed with a standard deviation of 0.7°C about a stationary overall mean value of 14.6°C. Its 1000-year departure is ±2.2°C.