Projecting “Normals” in a Nonstationary Climate

Abstract

AbstractClimate “normals” are statistical estimates of present and/or near-future climate means for such quantities as seasonal temperature or precipitation. In a changing climate, simply averaging a large number of previous years of data may not be the best method for estimating normals. Here eight formulations for climate normals, including the recently proposed “hinge” function, are compared in artificial- and real-data settings. Although the hinge function is attractive conceptually for representing accelerating climate changes simply, its use is in general not yet justified for divisional U.S. seasonal temperature or precipitation. Averages of the most recent 15 and 30 yr have performed better during the recent past for U.S. divisional seasonal temperature and precipitation, respectively; these averaging windows are longer than those currently employed for this purpose at the U.S. Climate Prediction Center.