TMax index: spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism

To evaluate how the spatial heterogeneity of climate change affects the public’s willingness to accept scientific results that the climate is changing, we propose an index that accurately measures local changes in climate based on the number of days per year for which the year of the record high temperature is more recent than the year of the record low temperature. TMax index is calculated using the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) dataset. Please refer to the PNAS paper for details on how the index is calculated.