Made July 2018. Updated MAY 2023/FEB 2025/JUN 2026
The purpose of this post is merely to catalogue counts of reports of daily record high maximum, high minimum, low minimum, and low maximum coming into the National Center for Environmental Information’s site and all related charts and graphs produced in my Excel files for those data sets coming from Russia. I am in the process of constantly updating this data verifying the 2009 Meehl et. all surface Records published in Geophysical Science that I initiated from 2000-2009. Each individual count could be a tied surface record or one broken by several degrees Fahrenheit. Here is the link to the NCEI site: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records
More from NCEI:
“The daily records summarized here are compiled from a subset of stations in the Global Historical Climatological Network. A station is defined as the complete daily weather records at a particular location, having a unique identifier in the GHCN-Daily dataset.
For a station to be considered for any parameter, it must have a minimum of 30 years of data with more than 182 days complete each year. This is effectively a “30-year record of service” requirement, but allows for inclusion of some stations which routinely shut down during certain seasons. Small station moves, such as a move from one property to an adjacent property, may occur within a station history. However, larger moves, such as a station moving from downtown to the city airport, generally result in the commissioning of a new station identifier. This tool treats each of these histories as a different station. In this way, it does not “thread” the separate histories into one record for a city.
This tool provides simplistic counts of records to provide insight into recent climate behavior, but is not a definitive way to identify trends in the number of records set over time. This is particularly true outside the United States, where the number of records may be strongly influenced by station density from country to country and from year to year. These data are raw and have not been assessed for the effects of changing station instrumentation and time of observation.”
An updated 2016 study from Dr. Jerry Meehl indicates that the ratio from year to year will average around 15 to 1 by 2100 for the United States.
Per one of the authors of both the 2009 and 2016 studies, Claudia Tebaldi said “This climate is on a trajectory that goes somewhere we’ve never been. And records are a very easy measure of that.”
All of the data listed below is part of this one chart. The ratio of daily record highs to lows for the 2010s is higher than any other decade since the 1920s for Russia. Also, the following chart is the clearest sign of global warming of all of my datasets. Russia has the fastest rate of warming of any large country on Earth:
Here are the current daily record counts per decade, which have gone into the above chart:
New for 2026: I’ve added reliable anomaly and average temperature data.
There is an extremely strong correlation between record totals and anomalies dating back to the 1930s. My evaluation of the Russian data yielded several key findings as stated by AI:
– Nonlinear Response: Warm records respond nonlinearly to warming. For example, a +1°C anomaly causes the transformed ratio to rise to roughly +3 or +3.5, showing that the warm-record signal amplifies much faster than a symmetric response would suggest.
– Neutral Anomaly Transition: The ratio flips rapidly around a 0°C anomaly. Once Russia becomes even modestly warm (+0.4°C to +0.8°C), warm records begin to dominate cold records, mirroring U.S. results.
– Regime Shift: The data shows a clear shift from the negative transformed ratios of the 1910s and 1920s to the overwhelmingly positive ratios seen from the 1990s through the 2020s.
– Regional Sensitivity: Russia appears slightly more temperature-sensitive than the U.S., likely due to stronger winter amplification and snow-albedo feedback in large continental interiors.
– Statistical Extremes: While extreme warm bins (e.g., +5.1°C) show massive spikes in the T-Ratio, these are based on a small sample size and should be interpreted as directional rather than precise. The most scientifically meaningful data lies between -2°C and +3°C.
What impresses me most is that the Russian and U.S. analyses were built independently across different geographies and climates, yet both reveal the same fundamental pattern: small increases in average temperature produce disproportionately large increases in the frequency of warm daily records.
Formula Notes
R = DHMX / DLMN
If R >= 1, then T = R
If R < 1, then T = -(1/R)
The 2020s:
In this genome 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. I am searching for a database that contains rankings for Russia, so spaces for rankings are blank for now. I have opted not to catalogue data prior to 1910 since record counts decrease substantially prior to that year. Time stamps for when I last updated counts are located in the upper left-hand corner of each chart. Drop me a note if you see an error or if you have suggestions for improvements.
The 2010s:
The 2000s:
The 1990s:
The 1980s:
The 1970s:
The 1960s:
The 1950s:
The 1940s:
The 1930s:
The 1920s:
The 1910s:
All of the data listed below is part of this one chart. So far, the ratio of daily record high minimums to low maximums for the 2010s is higher than any decade since the 1910s:
Here are the current daily record counts per decade, which have gone into the prior chart:
New for 2026: I’ve added reliable anomaly and average temperature data.
Formula Notes
R = DHMX / DLMN
If R >= 1, then T = R
If R < 1, then T = -(1/R)
The 2020s:
For the following data sets of record high minimums and low maximums 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. I have opted not to catalogue data prior to 1910 since record counts decrease substantially prior to 1920. Time stamps for when I last updated counts are located in the upper left-hand corner of each chart. Drop me a note if you see an error or if you have suggestions for improvements.
The 2010s:
The 2000s:
The 1990s:
The 1980s:
The 1970s:
The 1960s:
The 1950s:
The 1940s:
The 1930s:
The 1920s:
The 1910s:
This is all of the NCEI daily record count per each month data for Russia going as far back as 1910.
The Climate Guy