Central America [in State of the Climate in 2023]

Abstract

For this region, nine stations from five countries were analyzed . The station distribution is representative of the relevant seasonal and intraseasonal regimes of precipitation (Amador 1998; Magaña et al. 1999; Amador et al. 2016a,b), wind (Amador 2008), and temperature (Hidalgo et al. 2019) on the Caribbean and Pacific slopes of Central America (CA). Precipitation, temperature, and regional wind data for the stations analyzed were provided either by CA National Weather Services (CA-NWS), NOAA, or the University of Costa Rica; in some cases, missing daily precipitation data were filled with the nearest grid point data from the Climate Hazards and Infrared Precipitation with Stations dataset (CHIRPS; Funk et al. 2015). Anomalies are reported using a 1991–2020 base period and were calculated from data provided by CA-NWS. The precise methodologies used for all variables are described by Amador et al. (2011). The Puerto San José station in Guatemala, used in past reports, was substituted with the nearby Montufar station due to lack of data in 2023.