The warm season dip in diurnal temperature range over the eastern United States

Abstract

In light of numerous studies documenting a decline in the diurnal temperature range (DTR) over much of the globe, some authors have in recent years examined the annual march of the DTR in an effort to understand better the factors that influence the DTR's seasonal variations. These papers show that, over the southern two-thirds of the eastern United States, the DTR's climatology features peaks in spring and autumn and minima in winter and mid-to-late summer. However, the factors responsible for these characteristics remain uncertain. In this study, the DTR climatology of the eastern United States is analyzed in detail using daily surface and 850-mb data, with emphasis on possible relationships to seasonal changes in vegetation. It is shown that the warm season dip in the DTR deepens and widens from north to south across the study area, in accordance with a lengthening of the growing season. Furthermore, the dip is particularly prominent in the annual march of the DTR on mostly sunny days, indicating that seasonal variations in cloudiness are not responsible for this feature. The climatologies of daily maximum and daily minimum temperatures are found to be very different from each other: the former flattens out after the springtime peak in the DTR whereas the latter exhibits a pronounced mid-to-late summer maximum. These findings suggest that, by inhibiting daytime surface heating, evapotranspiration from vegetation contributes significantly to the dip in the DTR during the warm season in the eastern United States.