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).