Mid March U.S. Temperature And Record Scoreboard Update
Monday March 11th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
The last year of the 2010s has certainly gotten off to a cold start across most of the U.S. looking at temperature data. Record wise, at least through 3/8, March 2019 has the highest ratio of daily record lows to highs since April 1997, another “bold” month with a ratio of more than 10 to 1. We will see if this ratio holds up through March 31st. I can tell Midwesterners buried in snow and who have been facing record cold at times this winter that global warming certainly has not ended. Residents of the Midwest just had the bad luck of being on the receiving end of a one-two punch of a persistent storm track combined with extensions of the polar vortex diving southward through the Great Lakes. For today’s main topic we will look at more numbers, which I have plugged into the “Record Scoreboard.” We have been doing this during the middle of each month. Here is what we see after the 3/8/19 NCEI update:
For this data set all monthly ratios of > 10 to 1 DHMX to DLMN or > 10 to 1 DLMN to DHMX are in bold type. The rankings are for the lower 48 states with the warmest ranking since 1895 of average temperatures being 125 and 1 being the coldest as of 2019. Blue colors represent cold months and red warm. Those months with counts close to a 1 to 1 ratio of highs to lows are colored black. Boldly colored months, such as May 2018, have ratios of more than 10 to 1 daily record highs to lows or lows to highs, and are either historically hot or cold. February 2018 had a near 1 to 1 ratio of record DHMX to DLMN individual counts, so the color I used for this month was black.
NCEI has processed February data across the country, determining that the lower 48 had its 37th coldest month since 1895, also added to the chart. The number 37 falls lower than the lower range of three categories (1-41, 52-72, 73-124), so it is colored blue.
Unless there is a remarkable warmup during the second half of the month March 2019 will certainly get ranked as a colder than average “blue” month. Since October 2018 we have started to see many more black and blue months after the torrid period during the middle of this decade when we had a near record warm El Nino influencing the atmosphere. I have a hunch, though, looking at global temperature trends this “cold spell” won’t last too much longer. We will see.
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Here is some more climate and weather news from Monday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
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The Climate Guy