IEM Daily Feature
Wednesday, 05 May 2021
Wednesday, 05 May 2021
New Climate Averages
Posted: 05 May 2021 08:35 PM
To great fanfare, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) released its updated
climate averages dataset yesterday. This dataset is refreshed every ten years summarizing the
weather over the past 30 years. This dataset has many components to it, but the common one folks
want to know is the average daily high and low temperature. The featured chart presents a
comparison of the last three versions of the NCEI daily climatology for Des Moines during May along
with an IEM computed simple daily average over the current 1991-2020 period. The NCEI
climatology is more involved than a simple daily average and has various smoothing functions
applied along with more rigorous quality control. The 1971-2000 dataset only had values in whole
degree Fahrenheit, which is why it appears more choppy than the other values shown. Anyway, you
will find various IEM apps now using this updated dataset and the NWS as well now uses it to
express what today's averages are.
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