Similar to wind tunnels, linear features on the topography allow cooler and warmer air to be transported much easier than a clustered city without a geographic plan (imagine the winds use the highways like cars do). This idea of air advection was used to create Boston's Green Necklace, NYC's grid's directions, and other city spaces that allow polluted air to travel out of the city faster and easier by way of linear green space features.

As a geologist who has studied climatology on local and global scales I'm here to say that New England maybe be getting cooler on a small time scale but is still warming rapidly on a larger time scale. Atmospheric levels of CO2 have reached above 400 parts per million; you can be sure that this cooling effect that you're seeing is a result of large scale warming elsewhere in the region. High and low pressure fronts convect air through the atmosphere much easier now that the greenhouse effect has stored increasingly more energy in the air. This means greater variation in weather -- to extremes -- much colder winters and much hotter summers. But we're still warming.

We've been warming for about a decade now, by the way. The sad part is that due to the melting of white ice and the increase in dark sea water globally, the albedo of the Earth is approaching a 'run-away' situation where the planet literally cannot expel enough of the sun's energy back to space to prevent further warming.

Here is a link that might be useful: info about climate due to CO2 rise.

Maybe the title should not have been for "New England" but no matter how you slice it, it is getting colder for his gardens even if it is in the short term.

Since I will be dead in 10 years, I really no longer care what is happening for the rest of the world. In my time, I put in a lot of effort getting Earth Day established, I did major studies on Acid Rain/CO2, Ozone, and mercury in fish.

As far as I am concerned, a lot of your talk is but airy persiflage. 400K people at the demonstration in NYC might have some affect on the world's outlook on all this but I doubt it is going to change anything in my life time.

Granted, it would be interesting to see the degree days over 30 years and if anyone has such information I am sure the the OP would appreciate it if those sources were posted here.

Do you have such information? Are you willing to support your theory with evidence in GDD?

I understand that you're busting my balls so to speak.

Here's a page that was written in 1998: http://www.co2science.org/about/position/globalwarming.php

Here's some research from NASA updated in 2014: http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators/ which goes in some depth about the links between rising CO2 and global temps over a hundred year time scale.

Cooling degree days are not useful in discussing climate change, unless you're starting out with a point of view and want to support that conclusion. The widely-accepted markers are land surface air temperature, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, tropospheric temperature, ocean heat content and specific humidity.

Cooling degree days are absolutely helpful for me as I come to realize that my tomatoes do very well if I set them out when the Forsythia approaches full bloom (774 gdd) not unlike that old phrase to plant corn when the dogwood blooms. (166 gdd)

That peculiar saying of planting tomatoes on Memorial Day here in CT is borscht because I would never be able to pick by the 4th of July if I followed that gibberish.

It is time to spray plum trees when GDD is 1000 as that is when the bugs return to the trees.

With some accuracy, I can predict when the locust (1447 gdd) will sing, when the peepers (794 gdd) will be heard, when the crickets (1478 gdd) start to keep me awake at night not to mention the Katydids (1929 gdd).

When I compared by tracking of first color of a plant, when full bloom happens and when the plant is done blooming then compared it with my mother's hand written notes from the 60s and 70s, I can see that they are in fact blooming later in the year.

After four years of tracking GDD, I can start to guess see all this in numbers. Granted, there will be some variance of a few dozen GDD but it can be tracked. The longer I do,the more accurate it gets. I believe that these numbers are independent of zone or location if these plants and insects are present.

If I filter my list by GDD, I can see which plants will bloom together so I can plant them with each other for special splashed of color at times throughout the year.

Jack will be preaching from his pulpit on 749 gdd.
Start looking for fireflies at 724 gdd.

After all, isn't that what it is all about?