IEM Daily Feature
Tuesday, 03 March 2020

Time above Daily Average

Posted: 03 Mar 2020 05:35 AM

The featured chart is perhaps a neither here nor there climatology of how much time is spent each day with the air temperature above the same given day's simple average based on the high and low temperature. If the daily heating and cooling rates were equal, we would expect to spend 12 hours total on each side of average. Actual weather, time of year, and surface cover often dictates otherwise. The chart partitions the data by month of the year and presents it in a "violin" type plot which provides a comparable density estimate. The white dots are the monthly means. There are a number of interesting climatological aspects to the chart including increased frequency above 12 hours for most months except August, September, and October. The reason perhaps being asymmetric heating vs cooling rates with ever shortening daylight hours.

Voting:
Good = 9
Bad = 1
Abstain = 2

Tags:   1minute   highs