Please send comments about our Global Climate Highlights & Anomalies to:
Thomas.Heddinghaus@noaa.gov

Note: This product has been discontinued. However, both the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) provide information on global anomalies.

Please consider the following websites and pages for global analyses and data:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/regional_monitoring/ http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/precipitation/global_precip_accum.html http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/temperature/global_temp_accum.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/monitoring.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/hazards/index.html

The Weekly Global Climate Highlights (WGCH) provides a quick, but not necessarily comprehensive, look at current climate anomalies and episodic events. The product is designed to alert the user to significant situations that warrant further examination or study.

Typically, wet and dry anomalies are characterized by 4-week precipitation totals which fall in the highest or lowest 10% of a gamma distribution, which is bounded by zero. The 4-week period was selected because of the high variability of precipitation totals over space and time.

In contrast, mean temperatures, which are more continuous (or smooth), are calculated for 2-week periods (to eliminate large-scale synoptic features) and then compared against the highest and lowest 10% of a normal distribution.

Episodic events are severe weather conditions (tornadoes, hurricanes, flash floods, blizzards, etc.) that have a significant impact on human activities.

Weekly

• Special: 2000 Global Climate Highlights & Episodic Events
• 1999 Global Climate Highlights & Episodic Events
• 2002 Global Climate Highlights Archive
• 2001 Global Climate Highlights Archive
• 2000 Global Climate Highlights Archive
• 1999 Global Climate Highlights Archive