This August is a warm month in the Northwest. But how warm? How unusual? And how unusual are the temperatures in other parts of the world in August? Is everyone warmer than usual?
Let me start by showing you a map of the temperature difference from normal (August climatological anomaly) based on satellite observations for about the lowest 26,000 feet of ozone.
Yes… one can get the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere from space by measuring how much infrared radiation reaches a satellite. The same technology is used to determine your forehead temperature during a COVID temperature check.
Note that some places are warmer and some are colder than usual, with large swaths of land close to normal. Much of this temperature change is due to atmospheric waves, especially in the intervening periods.
You’ll notice a warmer-than-usual hub in southwestern Canada…and we get part of that! Cooler than usual in the southeastern United States and warmer in northern Europe.
But what about near the surface? The National Weather Service uses all weather observations, combined with their modeling system, to diagnose temperature differences from normal at very close to the surface (1000 hPa pressure, see below).
Let’s now telescope to the US using the August temperature difference from normal from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center. Yes… The Northwest is the nation’s hotspot… especially eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and northern Idaho/western Montana.
Looking for cooler temperatures than usual? Go to Arizona.
The key point I want to emphasize is that the difference in temperature from normal is NOT uniform across the globe or even in the US Some areas are warmer than normal and some are cooler than normal. Over the past 50 years or so, global warming caused by increasing amounts of CO2 has been warming the planet slowly but not significantly altering spatial variability, as illustrated above.
Finally, how is August normally, let’s look at some typical stations of the Northwest?
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