The Bane of Summer

Now that the heat wave is behind us…

Until like most areas in mid-latitudes, the solar forcing on Interior Alaska temperatures is dominant enough to keep August from ever being the warmest month of the summer. The histogram at the left shows that the warmest Augusts are warmer than the coolest Junes and Julys, but it turns out that warm Augusts tend to follow warm Julys (1930-2009 correlation of 0.46). This is quite different than in winter, when there is no statistically significant month to month temperature correlation.