Global climate change has important effects on agricultural production.� Local climatic trends are difficult to predict, but short-term changes can affect livelihoods of agricultural producers and consumers.� The objective of this study was to predict short-term changes in air temperature and rainfall in a 233,000 km² area of the south-central USA (portions of Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas).� Maximum, minimum, and average air temperatures, and total precipitation, were computed annually (1948-2001) from daily records of 17 locations and analyzed by regression.� Air temperature variables exhibited quadratic, concave-shaped responses across years (P ≤ 0.06).� Highest predicted temperatures tended to occur in 1948 or 2001, and lowest predicted temperatures occurred about 1975 to 1980.� Mean air temperature in 2001 was about 0.1 ^oC cooler than in 1948.� There was a linear (P = 0.06) increase in predicted rainfall across years, from 1005 mm in 1948 to 1158 mm in 2001.� The model had considerable uncontrolled variation (R² ≤ 0.19) regardless of variable.� There was little evidence from these variables of adverse short-term climate trends for this region of the USA.� However, the study did not evaluate intermittent, severe climatic events, a by-product of global climate change, which can have locally-significant effects on agricultural production.