4 ms·

from the same site: The US has gone $days since a record high temperature https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/ https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/

by nope96 4y ago

lisper 4y ago
Would be interesting to have the same info for a record low.
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  Or for record high lows ("the low has never been this warm").
- subroutine 4y ago
  Indeed, this would be both interesting and an important control metric.
- shagie 4y ago
  I can pull up some summary data (e.g. averaged across a month) at sites like https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/7cities/madison.html#Daily https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/7cities/madison.h... Graphs such as https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-TS-ANN-T.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-... show the average high, mean, and low temperature. This is even more pronounced if you look at the summer (June, July, August) temperatures - https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-TS-JJA-T.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-... You can also look and, while it isn't the daily records, you can see the daily temperatures - https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-tts-2022.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-... for this year so far.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
Given you have 400 samples a day, what is the baseline expected days since record high temperature just based on statistical variation?
- derbOac 4y ago
  Presumably, if this is stationary, wouldn't record highs decrease in frequency over time?
  - inkeddeveloper 4y ago
    No, that’s the problem. Record highs in single locations are being set quite often.
  - jgeada 4y ago
    Yes, if climate was static. It is pretty obvious that it is not and the earth is warming.
    - derbOac 4y ago
      I sort of wonder if there's some cognitive bias in perception of record highs. I'm not sure people understand what to expect with them if climate were constant. Athletic records keep happening, for example, so I could see people expecting something similar, or at least happening at a constant rate.
      - nonameiguess 4y ago
        Athletes are actually getting better. That isn't random fluctuations in a stationary distribution. The minimum qualifying time for the 100m in the 2020 Olympics would have been a world record as late as the 1960s.
        derbOac 4y ago
        Right, but if people are used to those sorts of records, it might distort their perception of other things?
    - ars 4y ago
      And if you had enough data. There are 365 days in a year, but only 100 or so years of temperature records. So there are plenty of days that have not had their "chance" as it were to set a record for that date. (For example in my city today's high was set over 130 years ago.) It also ignores heat islands as cities get larger.
metacritic12 4y ago
Wait there are tiny cities here. Isn't it the case that as geographies get smaller, the count of them gets higher, and you'll always get on square inch of the US that's breaking the time-of-year temperature record right this second! I'm all for data, but the statistics here seem selected to drive towards the conclusion "global warming is a huge problem". Climate change is so real that we don't need to resort to this sort of trickery -- it harms rather than hurts the message.
- jedberg 4y ago
  No, that shouldn't be the case. Unless the planet is warming, we shouldn't constantly be setting new highs. I'm not sure what the trickery is here.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    It's not the case because temperatures are correlated; If <random suburb of $BIG_CITY> sets a high, it's likely that $BIG_CITY will as well. However, we should be somewhat regularly setting new highs just because we have on the order of just 200 years of data (so just 200 data points for each daily high); if the planet were not warming, and the high for any given day will be normally distributed around some average for that day, then as time marches on the odds of getting an extreme outlier increases. Some cities on some days will have a high that is very improbable, while others will not have gotten "lucky" yet.
  - handmodel 4y ago
    The planet clearly is warming but I also agree this method is useless by itself. For Los Angeles (my city) the data goes back 145 days a year. If temperature has not been increasing (and therefore each individual day follows an identical distribution) that would still mean that 1/145 days we'd see a record high in Los Angeles - so about two highs a year. Highs in Los Angeles are obviously going to be correlated to highs in San Diego - but not exactly because of cloud cover and stuff so its reasonable to think that even if we were in a boring unchanging climate we'd still see hundreds if not thousands of records set every day across the country.
irrational 4y ago
How has Ohio (or is that Iowa? I can never keep the two straight) gone 560 days while all of the surrounding states have not?
- _jal 4y ago
  That's Ohio. But Youngstown (close to the Pennsylvania border) had a record high 79 days ago.
- Wohlf 4y ago
  You have to zoom in to see but that's for Zanesville not all of Ohio. My guess is it's due to topology, like being in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
This is not to fault the site creator(s) at all, but wow this a good example of how using third party viz libraries can be misleading. At default zoom on my device, this shows the all-time high near Portland, OR (Vancouver, WA) registered 330 days ago, while the nearest visible data for Seattle shows 40 years(!) despite the fact that Seattle’s all-time record was broken the same day. I have to zoom in knowing that fact to get accurate data. Limiting data points on a zoomable map is a great reasonable default, but it degrades pretty terribly when it matters.

from the same site: The US has gone $days since a record high temperature https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/ https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/

by nope96 4y ago

from the same site: The US has gone $days since a record high temperature https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/ https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/

lisper 4y ago

Would be interesting to have the same info for a record low.

tomjakubowski 4y ago
Or for record high lows ("the low has never been this warm").
subroutine 4y ago
Indeed, this would be both interesting and an important control metric.
shagie 4y ago
I can pull up some summary data (e.g. averaged across a month) at sites like https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/7cities/madison.html#Daily https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/7cities/madison.h... Graphs such as https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-TS-ANN-T.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-... show the average high, mean, and low temperature. This is even more pronounced if you look at the summer (June, July, August) temperatures - https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-TS-JJA-T.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-... You can also look and, while it isn't the daily records, you can see the daily temperatures - https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-tts-2022.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-... for this year so far.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

Given you have 400 samples a day, what is the baseline expected days since record high temperature just based on statistical variation?

derbOac 4y ago
Presumably, if this is stationary, wouldn't record highs decrease in frequency over time?
- inkeddeveloper 4y ago
  No, that’s the problem. Record highs in single locations are being set quite often.
- jgeada 4y ago
  Yes, if climate was static. It is pretty obvious that it is not and the earth is warming.
  - derbOac 4y ago
    I sort of wonder if there's some cognitive bias in perception of record highs. I'm not sure people understand what to expect with them if climate were constant. Athletic records keep happening, for example, so I could see people expecting something similar, or at least happening at a constant rate.
    - nonameiguess 4y ago
      Athletes are actually getting better. That isn't random fluctuations in a stationary distribution. The minimum qualifying time for the 100m in the 2020 Olympics would have been a world record as late as the 1960s.
      - derbOac 4y ago
        Right, but if people are used to those sorts of records, it might distort their perception of other things?
  - ars 4y ago
    And if you had enough data. There are 365 days in a year, but only 100 or so years of temperature records. So there are plenty of days that have not had their "chance" as it were to set a record for that date. (For example in my city today's high was set over 130 years ago.) It also ignores heat islands as cities get larger.

metacritic12 4y ago

Wait there are tiny cities here. Isn't it the case that as geographies get smaller, the count of them gets higher, and you'll always get on square inch of the US that's breaking the time-of-year temperature record right this second! I'm all for data, but the statistics here seem selected to drive towards the conclusion "global warming is a huge problem". Climate change is so real that we don't need to resort to this sort of trickery -- it harms rather than hurts the message.

jedberg 4y ago
No, that shouldn't be the case. Unless the planet is warming, we shouldn't constantly be setting new highs. I'm not sure what the trickery is here.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  It's not the case because temperatures are correlated; If <random suburb of $BIG_CITY> sets a high, it's likely that $BIG_CITY will as well. However, we should be somewhat regularly setting new highs just because we have on the order of just 200 years of data (so just 200 data points for each daily high); if the planet were not warming, and the high for any given day will be normally distributed around some average for that day, then as time marches on the odds of getting an extreme outlier increases. Some cities on some days will have a high that is very improbable, while others will not have gotten "lucky" yet.
- handmodel 4y ago
  The planet clearly is warming but I also agree this method is useless by itself. For Los Angeles (my city) the data goes back 145 days a year. If temperature has not been increasing (and therefore each individual day follows an identical distribution) that would still mean that 1/145 days we'd see a record high in Los Angeles - so about two highs a year. Highs in Los Angeles are obviously going to be correlated to highs in San Diego - but not exactly because of cloud cover and stuff so its reasonable to think that even if we were in a boring unchanging climate we'd still see hundreds if not thousands of records set every day across the country.

irrational 4y ago

How has Ohio (or is that Iowa? I can never keep the two straight) gone 560 days while all of the surrounding states have not?

_jal 4y ago
That's Ohio. But Youngstown (close to the Pennsylvania border) had a record high 79 days ago.
Wohlf 4y ago
You have to zoom in to see but that's for Zanesville not all of Ohio. My guess is it's due to topology, like being in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

This is not to fault the site creator(s) at all, but wow this a good example of how using third party viz libraries can be misleading. At default zoom on my device, this shows the all-time high near Portland, OR (Vancouver, WA) registered 330 days ago, while the nearest visible data for Seattle shows 40 years(!) despite the fact that Seattle’s all-time record was broken the same day. I have to zoom in knowing that fact to get accurate data. Limiting data points on a zoomable map is a great reasonable default, but it degrades pretty terribly when it matters.