climate record

For the first time in a while, the monthly report on the US climate did not feature record-setting heat. The average January temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 1.6 degrees above the average, but that only ranked it in the middle third of the climate record. The diminishing El Niño probably helped. On the other hand, the global average temperature in January was again the warmest on record – the 8^th consecutive record-setting month.

But January still managed to be atypical weatherwise in the U.S. in that the nation’s average precipitation across the country was 3.18 inches – nearly an inch above average – which made it the 10th wettest January in NOAA’s 130-year climate record. Thirteen states experienced top-ten rainfall amounts. In late January, record rainfall and flooding hit the southern plains, especially in parts of Texas and Louisiana. Meanwhile, early February brought historic rainfall and mountain snow to California with a second round later in the month.

All of the rainfall in January has made some difference to drought conditions across the country. On January 30th, about 23.5% of the contiguous U.S. was In drought, which was 9.5% lower than the beginning of the month. However, drought conditions expanded or intensified across northern parts of the Rockies and Plains among a few other places.

Outside of the lower-48, Alaska continued to experience historic snowfall conditions. Between October and the end of January, Anchorage had over 100 inches of snow.

We are living in an era of weather extremes.

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The nation just saw its 10th-wettest January on record

Photo, posted February 8, 2017, courtesy of Paxson Woelber via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

We often hear about how the weather is getting stranger all the time, but do most of us really think so? What kinds of weather do we really find remarkable and has that been changing?

A study led by the University of California, Davis used some very modern tools to examine the question of what people might consider to be “normal” weather. To reach their conclusions, they quantified the timeless pastime of talking about the weather by analyzing Twitter posts. They sampled over 2 billion geolocated tweets to determine what kind of events generated the most posts about the weather.

Unsurprisingly, they found that people most often tweet when temperatures are unusual for a particular place and time of year. However, if the same weather persisted year after year, it generated less comment on Twitter, indicating that people began to view it as normal in a relatively short amount of time.

The study indicates that people have short memories when it comes to what they consider normal weather. On average, most people base their idea of normal weather on what has happened in just the past two up to maybe eight years. This disconnect with the historical climate record may obscure the public’s perception of climate change.

After repeat exposures to historically-extreme temperatures, people talk less about the weather, even though particularly hot or cold weather conditions make them unhappy and grumpy. Even though we are experiencing conditions that are historically extreme, we might not consider them to be particularly unusual if we tend to forget what happened more than a few years ago. Things may be getting worse, but they apparently are just the new normal.

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Tweets tell scientists how quickly we normalize unusual weather

Photo, posted March 11, 2013, courtesy of Adedotun Ajibade via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A wet January

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The New Normal Weather

We often hear about how the weather is getting stranger all the time, but do most of us really think so? What kinds of weather do we really find remarkable and has that been changing?

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