El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Normals 2020 (NCEI Accession 0248650)

ENSO Normals 2020 is a new high-resolution set of climate normals for the contiguous United States that are conditioned for various phase categories of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO): Strong La Niña, Weak La Niña, Neutral, Weak El Niño, and Strong El Niño. In addition, the optimal climate normal (OCN) – a 15-yr running average instead of the traditional 30-year normal – is utilized to better reflect the impacts of climate change. The spatial domain is a 1/24 degree grid over the contiguous United States (CONUS). Monthly normals are provided for daily maximum temperature (tmax; °C), daily minimum temperature (tmin; °C), and liquid-equivalent precipitation (prcp; mm) and are produced for each of the five phase categories. The ENSO normals are the sum of these composites with the OCN for a given month. The result is five sets of normals, one for each phase category, which users may consult with respect to anticipated ENSO outcomes.