Parametric plots of smoothed climate variables at Manilla

“In drought”

In November, the anomaly of daily maximum temperature (which had paused near zero for five months) suddenly rose to +3°. Daily minimum temperature and subsoil temperature also rose, but moisture variables (including daily temperature range) retreated from values typical of extreme drought. November was hotter, but not quite so dry.

Fully-smoothed data (in red) now include all of autumn (March-April-May) 2012. During autumn, all smoothed variables showed a steady advance towards the top right corner of the graphs (“droughts”). However, four variables were still on the “flooding rains” side of neutral: maximum temperature, rainfall, cloud, and minimum temperature. Two variables were already on the “drought” side: dew point and subsoil temperature. Temperature range was neutral.
The May 2012 value of smoothed dew point anomaly (-2.30°) is a new record low for smoothed data, beating the record of the previous month (-2.00°). Following months will be even more arid.

Note: Fully smoothed data – Gaussian smoothing with half-width 6 months – are plotted in red, partly smoothed data uncoloured, and raw data for the last data point in orange. January data points are marked by squares. Blue diamonds and the dashed blue rectangle show the extreme values in the fully smoothed data record since September 1999.