Parametric plots of smoothed climate variables at Manilla
“February 2016: suddenly dry”

February raw anomaly data (orange)

In February 2016, raw values for anomalies moved completely across the graphs, from cool and moist in January, generally to hot and dry in February. As in a desert, days became very hot, skies very sunny, and the daily temperature range extreme. Rainfall and dew point were only moderately low, while daily minimum temperature abruptly fell very low, and subsoil temperature remained very low.

 Fully smoothed data (red)

With data for August 2015, fully smoothed data is complete for winter 2015. Most anomalies for the season were quite small, but were moving away from cool and moist.

Trend lines on the graphs

Manilla’s climate often oscillates along the blue trend lines from bottom left (cool, moist) to top right (hot, dry) on the graphs. The climate can also vary along other axes.
In this time-frame the sub-soil temperature anomaly (bottom right graph) is leading the daily maximum temperature anomaly by several months. That produces a clockwise looping pattern. The daily minimum temperature anomaly (bottom left graph) sometimes moves with the daily maximum temperature anomaly, and sometimes moves against it. When against it, as from July 2013 to October 2014, the climate swings between Continental, with hot days and cool nights (as October 2013), and Maritime, with cool days and warm nights (as May 2014). Current raw data for January and February 2016 show a large swing from Maritime to Continental.

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.

Normal values are based on averages for the decade from March 1999.* They appear on these graphs as a turquoise (turquoise) circle at the origin (0,0). A range of anomalies called “normal” is shown by a dashed rectangle in aqua (aqua). For values in degrees, the assigned normal range is +/-0.7°; for cloudiness, +/-7%; for monthly rainfall, +/-14 mm.

 * Normal values for rainfall are based on averages for the 125 years beginning 1883.