Global average temperature is a computed value without much direct influence on the local environment. In order to determine its effect on Connecticut, data was obtained from The National Climatic Center and updated to 2014.

The first figure compares the global temperature computed by NASA GISS with the annual temperatures at Bridgeport-Strafford Airport and at Bradley International Airport from 1950 to 2014. It is seen that Bradley (BDL) is increasing at a rate 50% higher than the global rate. The Bridgeport (BGT) location adjoins Long Island Sound and is heavily influenced by the water and averages 2°F warmer than Bradley Airport near the Massachusetts border.   Since 1970, the temperature of Long Island Sound near Millstone in Niantic increased about 2 °F. The temperature increased about 6°F in between the coldest period in the late 1950s and the warmest year in 2012.

The climate of Connecticut consists of a growing season and a cold winter period. Therefore the analysis was extended to maximum and minimum temperature that are used to compute the average for each season

The winter temperatures, particularly the minimum temperatures, increased from the late 1950s increasing 2.25°F during the period. A further analysis showed that the largest temperature increase occurred on the 10% of the coldest days. The minimum temperature in the summer increased at a smaller rate than the winter.

The summer maximum shows no warming since the 1960s. Several times the maximum averages were near 85°F and failed to exceed the value. The year to year variations are much larger than the total change over 65 years.

The temperature at Bridgeport for February is shown in the next figure. While trend lines are presented in the graphs, their correlation is very low and is near .01. Thus they have little predictable capability. For example, the record cold of 2015 with temperature of 11.0 and 29.1 were not able to be predicted by the chart.   And if they were included on the chart, the trends would result in cooling trends for Connecticut.

Looking in more detail, the following impacts over the past 65 years can be summarized:

• The year to year variations are larger than the total change in the past 65 years
• No warming has occurred in the summer in Connecticut since 1960
• The days greater than 80 F increased about 2-4 days since 1950
• There were no changes in the number of days exceeding 100 F over the past 50 years at Bradley International.
• The number of days below 32°F decreased by about 15 in New England.
• The growing season increased about 15 days. However, two of the 4 latest starts to the growing season occurred in 2002 and 2005 in mid May.