Beyond the Data Blog

In the monitoring branch, our temperature analyses garner a lot of attention. We are asked big questions such as: What was the warmest year on record? How fast are global temperatures changing? These are important questions that we work to answer, but our regional-scale data and services also have immense benefits. Someone smarter than me once said, “No one ever died under a global temperature time series.” This is a great way to say that we can report on global average temperatures all we want, but it is the local impacts of change and variability that matter for the average person. At the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), we work tirelessly to translate our treasure…   Read article

  Two weeks ago, I wrote about 2015’s chances of dethroning 2014 as the warmest year on record and how the maturing El Niño increases those odds. This week, going Beyond the Data, we’ll unpack what that first-place ranking really means. In the big picture, the actual rank of an individual year isn’t that important. In fact, using ranks can really over-emphasize their importance. So why do we use them? The Power of Context Let’s start with something light, like some [really amateur] comparative psychology. As animals, we use real-time information to identify threats. This keeps us (and bears) from walking into fires. As humans, we seek patterns. It’s what we do. We thrive…   Read article

Earlier this spring, our (older) sister blog announced that El Niño is here. That has significant ramifications for parts of the world, because El Niño changes their odds of certain seasonal outcomes (wet, dry, warm, cool), especially if it maintains its strength, or strengthens further, and if it persists beyond our summer. That’s all detailed over at The ENSO Blog. But why are climate scorekeepers like me interested in El Niño?  Well, beyond the immediate influences on regional outcomes, it turns out that El Niño can push the needle on global temperature as well. The arrival of El Niño raises the chances of setting a new record-warmest global temperature for any time period. Just i…   Read article

Hi, and welcome to Beyond the Data: A blog by the nation’s official climate record keepers. As our fancy tagline suggests, the authors of this blog are charged—with our wonderful colleagues—to keep the records of the nation’s and the world’s climate system. In the way of introductions, here’s a little more about each of us: Dr. Jessica Blunden authors NOAA’s monthly global climate reports. A North Carolina native, she’s a graduate of Appalachian State University and earned her doctorate at North Carolina State University, where she focused on atmospheric chemistry and air quality. She’s served five consecutive years as the lead editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorologi…   Read article