File:Temperatures New Normal is Not Normal.jpg

NOAA's "new normal" climate report is anything but normal

By Jeff Berardelli

May 8, 2021 / 7:11 AM / CBS News

• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-new-normal-temperature-noaa/

U.S. Climate Normals

The U.S. Climate Normals are a large suite of data products that provide information about typical climate conditions for thousands of locations across the United States. Normals act both as a ruler to compare today’s weather and tomorrow’s forecast, and as a predictor of conditions in the near future. The official normals are calculated for a uniform 30 year period, and consist of annual/seasonal, monthly, daily, and hourly averages and statistics of temperature, precipitation, and other climatological variables from almost 15,000 U.S. weather stations.

National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) generates the official U.S. normals every 10 years in keeping with the needs of our user community and the requirements of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and National Weather Service (NWS). The 1991–2020 U.S. Climate Normals are the latest in a series of decadal normals first produced in the 1950s. These data allow travelers to pack the right clothes, farmers to plant the best crop varieties, and utilities to plan for seasonal energy usage. Many other important economic decisions that are made beyond the predictive range of standard weather forecasts are either based on or influenced by climate normals.

• https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/us-climate-normals

• https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/about

○