04.11.2023
WMO published a global update of climate datasets
Following two years of work and processing of the collected information by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the US National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) staff, new integrated climate datasets have been released.
This information from over 140 countries and thousands of locations is the climate equivalent of a population census. It is of vital importance for monitoring changes in weather patterns.
To assess whether a particular day, week, month or year is warmer or wetter than average, WMO uses 30-year baselines known as climatological standardized normals or CLINO. These are climatological data averaged over a 30-year period. It is important to use a long-term average because of the natural variability of our climate.
So, the US National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has already issued new WMO climatological standard norms for 1991-2020, replacing the previous 1981-2010 baseline.
"Today's increasingly powerful computers and climate data management systems make it much easier to conduct more frequent updates that involve analyzing vast amounts of climate data. The other advantage of decadal updates is that they allow data from newly established weather stations to be incorporated more quickly into the norms. However, for developing countries, which have significant gaps in their capacity to collect and process data, this presents a real challenge," said Peer Hechler, a WMO expert scientist involved in the norms update.
Additional member countries are expected to submit CLINO updates in the coming months, and WMO will publish a full update in 2024.
Unsplash / NASA / Chris Liverani
Other news
.jpg)
.jpg)
Comments