The method involved the selection of stations on the basis of record completeness and data quality as well as the computation of the various statistics from data records that were frequently not complete. The parameters calculated included climatological averages of monthly, seasonal, and annual precipitation (hereinafter PRCP) and snowfall (hereinafter SNOW) totals medians and quartiles of monthly PRCP and SNOW and average frequencies of occurrence for various PRCP, SNOW, and snow-depth (hereinafter SNWD) events. The purpose of this paper is to document the procedures used to produce the monthly, seasonal, and annual precipitation- and snow-related statistics in the product, to quantify some uncertainties associated with these procedures, to present updates to some of the most familiar climatological patterns of amounts and frequencies, and to compare some of these patterns with those for the previous normals period of 1971–2000. As in the recent past, it includes stations located in the United States as well as various U.S.-operated sites in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean ( Arguez et al. The latest update covers the period 1981–2010. The purpose of each release is to update the climatological statistics such that they represent the most recent three complete decades, to account for changes in the station network, and to take advantage of the latest datasets and computational techniques. They are used by industry, government agencies, and the general public for a wide range of purposes, such as water resources management, the determination of insurance and utility rates, the scheduling of street-repair projects, the allocation of resources for snow removal, and the planning of trips and weddings, to name a few. These products typically consist of climatological measures of central tendency, variability, and frequency of occurrence for temperature, precipitation, and other variables that were measured at stations operated by NOAA. Climate Normals” (e.g., Heim 1996 Owen and Whitehurst 2002 Arguez et al. These differences are a reflection of the removal of the 1970s and the addition of the 2000s to the 30-yr-normals period as part of this latest revision of the normals.Įvery decade, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) releases a suite of climatological statistics that are collectively referred to as the “U.S. When compared with the same calculations for 1971–2000, the later period is characterized by a smaller number of days with snow on the ground and less total annual snowfall across much of the contiguous United States wetter conditions over much of the Great Plains, Midwest, and northern California and drier conditions over much of the Southeast and Pacific Northwest. The 1981–2010 statistics exhibit the familiar climatological patterns across the contiguous United States. Snowfall and snow-depth statistics are provided for approximately 5300 of those stations, as compared with several hundred stations in the 1971–2000 normals. In the resulting product, average precipitation totals are available at approximately 9300 stations across the United States and parts of the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean islands. All parameters were calculated from a single, state-of-the-art dataset of daily observations, taking care to produce normals that were as representative as possible of the full 1981–2010 period, even when the underlying data records were incomplete. This paper describes the procedures used to calculate the average totals, frequencies of occurrence, and percentiles that constitute these normals. Climate Normals” released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center include a suite of monthly, seasonal, and annual statistics that are based on precipitation, snowfall, and snow-depth measurements.
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