South America

This is part of the Regional Summary series at www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming

South America does not follow the CO2 theory of greater warming towards the poles. Northern South America exhibits some warming since the 1950’s, whereas Southern South America does not. Part of the problem here is the averages – they include all available stations – but the stations with long-term data in Southern South America show no warming.

There are very few stations in South America with long-term data.

The following figures show average temperature anomalies for 1900 – 2006 (from the GHCN database) and then superimposed on the IPCC model plots (from AR4 Fig 9.12) for Amazon and Southern South America (pink= models with CO2, blue= models without CO2, black= observed). The third pair is similar but for all of South America (with IPCC plot from AR4 Fig SPM-4) .

The following figure shows average temperature anomalies for 1900 – 2006 (from the GHCN database) for four regions within South America (note different scales on the temperature plots).

The following temperature trends are observed for the period of 1950 – 2006:

Northern South America	Warming of about 0.5 degree
Amazon	Warming of about 0.5 degree
Southern South America	Slight warming
West Coast / Cordillera	Slight cooling

Northern South America:

Urban:

Rural: There are no long-term rural stations in northern South America.

Amazon:

Urban:

Rural: There are no long-term rural stations in the Amazon. There is only one long-term rural station near the Amazon (southeast of the mouth of the Amazon river):

Southern South America:

Urban:

Rural:

Western South America / Cordillera

Urban:

Rural:

For further examples of urban versus rural comparisons in South America see: http://www.metsul.com/secoes/visualiza.php?cod_subsecao=33&cod_texto=557 (in Portuguese).

Steve McIntyre of ClimateAudit.org plotted the monthly temperature data for a couple of stations in Bolivia. The NASA / GISS and NOAA / GHCN monthly data sets end in the 1980s for many stations, but the daily databases actually continue closer to the present. The following two figures show stations in Bolivia where the GHCN monthly data is no longer calculated after 1987. The black lines show monthly data from the NASA GISS data, the red lines show monthly data calculated from the daily data by Steve McIntyre, and the blue line shows the NASA GISS annual temperature data. In both cases the warming that started to appear in the 1980s disappeared in the more recent data.