Vermont Forest Indicators Dashboard

Climate Extremes

Score for 2016:
--/5
Long-Term Trend:
Scores are 
Changes in the proportion, extent, and severity of extreme weather events are an indication of a volatile and changing climate. Not only are extreme events stressful to forests, but they can cause significant problems for our infrastructure and health as well. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) computes a regional Climate Extremes Index (CEI) based on a set of indicators: (1) monthly maximum and minimum temperature, (2) daily precipitation, and (3) monthly Palmer Drought Severity Index1. The CEI is a combination of the proportion of the year and the area in the region that has experienced an extreme event for these three indices. Accordingly, a value of 0% for the CEI indicates that no portion of the year was subject to any of the extremes considered in the index. In contrast, a value of 100% indicates that the entire northeast region had extreme conditions throughout the year for each of the indicators. The long-term variation or change in the CEI represents the tendency for extremes of climate to either decrease, increase, or remain the same1. Here, we set the target for the dataset as the long-term mean with the understanding that climate extremes are a natural phenomenon, but that changes away from this baseline may pose threats to both forests and humans. Annual scores were computed as the deviation from the data target, scaled from 0-1.
1NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. 2018. Climate Extremes Index. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/