Beyond the Data Blog

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has released the final 2020 update to its Billion-dollar disaster report (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions), officially confirming what communities across the nation experienced first-hand: 2020 was a historic year of extremes. There were 22 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, shattering the previous annual record of 16 events, which occurred in 2017 and 2011. The billion-dollar events of 2020 included a record 7 disasters linked to tropical cyclones, 13 to severe storms, 1 to drought, and 1 to wildfires. The 22 events cost the nation a combined $95 billion in damages.  Adding the 20…   Read article

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) tracks U.S. weather and climate events that have great economic and societal impacts (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions). Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 258* weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index, as of January 2020). The cumulative cost for these 258 events exceeds $1.75 trillion. During 2019, the U.S. experienced a very active year of weather and climate disasters. In total, the U.S. was impacted by 14 separate billion-dollar disasters including: 3 major inland floods, 8 severe storms, 2 tropical cyclones (Dorian an…   Read article

The climate system we share is big and complex. Assessments like the State of the Climate depend on expertise from around the world and around the sciences. This year's "Meet the Author" profile features two contributors to the African section of the "Regional Climates" chapter. Their leadership and perspective make the report stronger. Both are involved in international work, often with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), that brings their expertise to the regional and global arena. Fatou Sima is the Principal Meteorologist overseeing the Meteorological Division and Climatological unit in The Gambia's Department of Water Resources. She received h…   Read article

Raining on your parade NOAA’s National Weather Service will soon be issuing forecasts for Independence Day (find your local forecast), but here’s a look at the historical probability that your Fourth of July picnic will be rained on, based on observations from 1981-2010.  Percent chance of at least 0.1 inch of rain on the Fourth of July, based on past weather. Double click to zoom, then single click for individual station info. Click and hold to drag. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on U.S. Climate Normals data for 1981-2010, provided by Deke Arndt, National Centers for Environmental Information. Full screen | Static map If all we had to go on was history, this …   Read article

A few weeks ago, NCEI updated its U.S. climate trends maps with the data from 2018. Most months and places are getting warmer over time, especially over the very long (century scale) term. But some regions and seasons are not changing in lock-step with the big picture. For January, considering all 124 years spanning 1895 through 2018, much of the South and Mid-South has cooled slightly. That regional/seasonal exception to the rule is a feature of and testament to the complexity of the climate system. We’re going to look at January trends to tease out some nuances with how these trends are computed. Let’s go Beyond the Data. Linear trends: the duct tape of st…   Read article

Borrowing one of meteorology’s great euphemisms, this spring has been “an active one” in much of the country. The Plains and Upper Midwest experienced huge events in back-to-back months. March brought an explosive winter storm to much of the region, and a cascade of events that led to historic flooding from Nebraska to Wisconsin. April gave us a more canonical blizzard, a winter storm with snowfall measured in feet. So what happened? How does this fit into history? How does April bring the huge storms? Some answers follow. Let’s go Beyond the Data. The March Cyclone and Floods Understanding what happened in March requires going back several weeks in time …   Read article

As Adam Smith wrote about in his recent billion-dollar disasters post, 2018 saw an unusual number of amazing—and deadly—weather events. Some had national coverage, especially Hurricanes Florence and Michael and their impacts on the eastern U.S., and the drought and heat triggering record fires in California and other parts of the western U.S. Many networks across the U.S. collect air temperature and precipitation observations we use to characterize these events. As the nation’s official climate scorekeepers, scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA NCEI) receive, quality control, store, and make these data accessible to the publ…   Read article

The record cold temperatures in the Midwestern United States in late-January led to over 20 fatalities and economic impacts likely to exceed $1 billion, according to one insurance industry estimate. Just how common are these cold records, and how do they compare to occurrences of warm records? What can these records tell us about climate change? Fleeting—but record-setting—cold One way we can answer these questions is to look at daily high and low temperature data from the Global Historical Climatology Network – Daily database. For this analysis, we only included stations from the Global Climate Observing System Surface Network that are at least 80% complete from …   Read article

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) tracks U.S. weather and climate events that have great economic and societal impacts. Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 241 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index, as of January 2019). The cumulative cost for these 241 events exceeds $1.6 trillion. During 2018, the U.S. experienced a very active year of weather and climate disasters. In total, the U.S. was impacted by 14 separate billion-dollar disaster events: two tropical cyclones, eight severe storms, two winter storms, drought, and wildfires. The past three yea…   Read article

Daytime highs were in the negative teens in parts of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes at the end of January, and the chill extended across much of the East. By the first week of February, temperatures in parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast had plowed right past spring and into summer-like warmth. If the weather whiplash has left you wondering how U.S. winters are changing over time, the maps below tell the story.  (Apologies Alaska, your statewide historical record doesn’t go far enough back to be included in these analyses). The large map at left shows average temperature change during winter (December-February) from 1895-2017. The smaller column of maps at right shows indi…   Read article