This report documents the 2008 monthly and annual climate summaries and climatic extremes for weather stations located within park units of the Northern Colorado Plateau Inventory and Monitor-ing Network (NCPN) and three stations located near park boundaries. In 2008, mean annual maxi-mum and minimum temperatures tended to be below average throughout much of the NCPN region, while snowfall was notably above long-term averages. Diff erences between long-term means and this year's measures of average minimum and maximum ...
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This report documents the 2008 monthly and annual climate summaries and climatic extremes for weather stations located within park units of the Northern Colorado Plateau Inventory and Monitor-ing Network (NCPN) and three stations located near park boundaries. In 2008, mean annual maxi-mum and minimum temperatures tended to be below average throughout much of the NCPN region, while snowfall was notably above long-term averages. Diff erences between long-term means and this year's measures of average minimum and maximum temperature and total precipitation (and snow-fall) were not related to the elevation gradient of stations. A general increase over the past 25-50 years in the 4-year composite, moving mean for mean annual minimum temperature is evident for most of the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer (Coop) stations in the NCPN. Conversely, there is evidence for a declining trend in snowfall over the past 20-25 years. Historical records for NCPN Coop stations indicate that annual precipitation has been highly variable, and that a strong unidirec-tional trend over the observation periods (18-81 years) is not readily evident.
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