Adjusting to Another “New Normal”
Climate Normals reset next month.
Fun fact: When your local TV meteorologist tells you that today’s temperature is “above normal” that’s not just an average temperature for the last forever-number of years. It’s actually based on a thirty-year average from…
wait for it…
If you aren’t surprised by that, you are a bigger weather geek than my spouse. And he watches TV weather and checks the forecast on his phone more often than a nervous parent checks a newborn. We’re talking geeek.
But I digress.
What are Climate Normals?
It turns out that climatologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA NCEI) are currently compiling the most recent 30 years of weather and climate data from across the U.S. to create the next batch of 30-year Climate Normals, which will cover 1991–2020. These numbers are scheduled to be released in May. Then we’ll use that data for another 10 years.
The 30-year average isn’t a magic formula. In 1935, the International Meteorological Organization (now known as the World Meteorological Organization) set a standard for member nations to calculate climate Normals beginning…
