When Was The Hottest Summer? A State Climatologist Struggles for an Answer

Abstract

To answer this very common though surprisingly difficult question, a technique was developed to reconstruct a local temperature time series of summer average maximum temperatures in northcentral Alabama since 1893. The results show that the warmest summer was 1925 at 34.9° ±0.4°C but that 5 other years are statistically so close they could not be eliminated as contenders. (The trend is -0.13°C decade-1.) Our insistence that this ambiguity be recognizedby the inquirer, usually the media, causes confusion and reduces their interest level because they desire anabsolute answer to, in their view, a very simple question.