NOAA's State Climate Summaries for the National Climate Assessment: State-Level Trends in Temperature and Precipitation

Time series of temperature and precipitation were analyzed at the state level as a component of NOAA’s State Climate Summaries for the National Climate Assessment. These analyses, using NCEI’s Climate Divisional Dataset, include extremes metrics such as threshold exceedances, as well as annual and seasonal temperature and precipitation.

These Climate Summaries, produced for all 50 U.S. states, were created in response to a growing demand for state-level information as part of the National Climate Assessment Sustained Assessment. Core climate data and simulations used to produce these summaries have been previously published, and have been analyzed in this context to represent a targeted synthesis of climatological conditions for each U.S. state. Each state’s Climate Summary includes temperature and precipitation time series, alongside additional climatological variables pertinent to that state. Future climate scenarios are also briefly discussed, using well-known and consistent sets of climate model simulations based on two possible futures of greenhouse gas emissions.

The summaries were produced by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the North Carolina State University Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites – NC (CICS–NC) with additional input provided by climate experts, including the NOAA Regional Climate Centers and State Climatologists. Each summary document also underwent a comprehensive and anonymous peer review prior to release.

Noteworthy figures from select states will be presented alongside a description of trends in state-level temperature and precipitation.