Climate Prediction Center (CPC) 6 to 10 Day Probabilistic Temperature Outlook for the Contiguous United States and Alaska
Published By National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce
Issued about 9 years ago
Summary
Description
The Climate Prediction Center (CPC) issues 6 to 10 day probabilistic temperature outlooks for the United States. The 6-10 day Outlook gives the confidence that a forecaster has, given as a probability, that the observed temperature, averaged over upcoming days 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 will be in the range of one of three possible categories below (B), normal (N), or above (A). For any calendar 5-day period, these categories can be defined by separating the 30 years of the climatology period, 1981-2010 (30 years), into the coldest 10 years, the middle 10 years, and the warmest 10 years. Because each of these categories occurs 1/3 of the time (10 times) during 1981-2010, for any particular calendar 5-day period, the probability of any category being selected at random from the 1981-2010 set of 30 observations is one in three (1/3), or 33.33%. This is also called the climatological probability. The sum of the climatological probabilities of the three categories is 100%.