Hot days and nights
December raw anomaly data (orange)
December 2017 had hot days and hot nights, but the subsoil remained cold. Rainfall was low, while other measures of moisture were near normal.
Fully smoothed data (red)
The latest fully-smoothed data point is for June 2017. By that time, all variables were within the normal range except for dew point. Even dew point was in the centre of the range of low values that has become “normal” since 2010. Three variables were static: daily maximum temperature, subsoil temperature, and rainfall. Cloudiness, dew point, and daily temperature range. were moving towards aridity. Daily minimum temperature was falling.
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.