The year 2021 is mercifully here and one of the things climate folks are looking forward to this year is an updated climate normals dataset covering the 1991 to 2020 period, which will become the new official climatology. This standard 30 year climate period is updated every 10 years by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI, formerly NCDC). This updated period will replace our current reference climate normals covering the 1981 to 2010 period. The featured chart presents a glimpse into what has changed over these two periods with the frequency distribution of daily high temperatures for Des Moines plotted for the month of January. The plot effectively becomes a comparison between the 2010s and 1980s, since the other two decades are constant for the plot. The bottom panel attempts to tease out the differences between the two distributions. So this plot shows a shifting of some days in the 30s to colder levels in the 20s and warmer into the 40s.

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Tags:   climate