The Climdex indices can help us understand patterns in temperature and precipitation extremes: how they change from year to year or from place to place.
The Climdex indices can help us understand patterns in temperature and precipitation extremes: how they change from year to year or from place to place.
The indices calculated by Climdex are annual statistics of weather. They answer questions like:
As well as being calculated over the full year, many indices are available for a given month—the hottest day each January, for example.
Climdex offers a range of indices, all derived from daily temperature and precipitation data. These indices are a standardised set originally recommended by the CCl/WCRP/JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) which have been expanded upon by other World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) projects.
The Climdex indices can be calculated from any source of daily weather data—from weather station observations, from gridded reanalysis datasets, or even from climate models. We've already calculated the indices for several datasets, and we provide software to help you calculate the indices for your own weather data.