Blog: Climate Lottery: Ranking for September 2012
The lottery pick (or overall National Climatic Data Center Ranking) number for September 2012 came up as 96, the 23rd warmest ranking on record for the lower 48 states for any September since 1895. A ranking of 1 would have been the coldest possible ranking. The National Climatic Data Center has been ranking months, seasons and years from 1 to 118 since 1895 with 1 being the coldest possible temperature average ranking and 118 being the warmest possible temperature average. In the Climate Lottery game, I've defined each individual lottery number as rankings for each month for the lower 48 states, Power Ball numbers as those for each season, and Mega Ball numbers as those for each year. As we keep seeing over and over again the Climate Lottery game is rigged towards those higher number rankings due to global warming. So far, for the contest of fall 2012 Mike Bettes had the closest pick for September, which was 99...good going, Mike!
In September the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 96 (out of 118):
The jet stream was oriented such that very warm weather persisted in the West with cooler than average temperatures occurring in the Midwest. Nevertheless the overall raking for the U.S. came up as 96...well above the average of 59 and very much in the red as far as rankings go. Looking at the map you can pick out each individual state ranking. Again the overall ranking of 96 is not an average of the 48 individual state rankings; rather the ranking is a comparison of temperature averages for the lower 48 states for September since 1895.
Again, I am getting all of my ranking numbers from the National Climatic Data Center.
The link for the National Climatic Data Center's Climate at a Glance Site where the rankings are archived is: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html
I'm keeping the format on all of my charts the same as on my previous posts. The average ranking for 2012 is
59 since the coldest ranking would be 1 and the hottest would be 118. I have color coded all rankings for this post at or below 38 blue and all those at or above 79 red with rankings + or -- 19 from the median value of 59 black.
Something very interesting, statistically, is happening this year. Notice that all of the rankings for each individual month have been above 100, so far, except for the month of September in 2012. The probability of eight months in a row being ranked above 100 is extremely small and has never happened before since 1895. We finally had a ranking below 100 for one month of this year, which was in September.
For a more in depth look at temperature statistics see Jon Erdman's article at:
http://www.weather.com/news/drought/record-warm-year-us-september-20121009
For a reference to my last "Climate Dice" post see:
http://www.weather.com/news/climate-dice-sixth-roll-20120912
October 2012 has started out on the cool side. We'll see if this trend continues for the rest of the fall or if the overall warmth of this year continues.
Guy Walton...."That Climate Guy"
Lead Forecaster, the Weather Channel
