Description of the climate change metrics
Standardized local anomalies
The standardized anomalies metric, also referred to as normalized anomalies, measures the magnitude of climate change, locally at the pixel level, by quantifying the distance, measured in standard units, between a data value at a location (pixel) and its respective mean. The metric can be calculated by dividing anomalies (the deviation from an average or baseline; t2 - t1) by the standard deviation of the interannual variability of the baseline (t1) (Williams et al., 2007). The Standardized local anomalies metric measures the degree of similarity and dissimilarity between two distinct time periods (e.g., between a baseline and future or past period) using the Standardized Euclidean Distance (SED) equation (Equation 1), wheret1 and t2 refer to the average of climate variables over the first (baseline) and second time periods, respectively, and St1 is the standard deviation of the interannual variability of climate variables during the baseline (t1).
The standardized local anomalies equally weight all variables, and emphasizes more on the baseline (t1) trends that are larger relative to the second time slice (t2) interannual variability. Higher SED scores correlate with more significant local climate change, and incorporate alterations across all considered variables (e.g., temperature and precipitation).