National Climatic Data Center
Global Climate Monitoring

Annual State of the Climate

Guide for Authors

Overview and Purpose:
For the past several years, the Climate Monitoring Branch at NOAA's NCDC has taken the editorial and authorship lead of the annual "State of the Climate" report that appears in the June issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). Based upon input and feedback from both editors and contributing authors to this document, the editorial team at NCDC has decided to develop this Authors Guide. Our intent is to help the contributing authors by providing basic guidelines for preparing submissions, as well as to improve the editorial and graphical preparation phases of the article. The overall goal is to produce a higher-quality article, while also streamlining the process for the editorial staff.

Scope of the document:
The annual report on the State of the Climate is an effort to accurately and comprehensively describe the climate conditions of the preceding calendar year. To that end, the document is divided into seven sections:

1. Introduction
2. Global Climate
3. The Oceans
4. The Tropics
5. The Poles
6. Regional Climates
7. Seasonal Summary

In each section, the primary components of the climate system are described for the preceding year, and their values and statistics placed into historical context. In addition, any notable events or anomalies are noted. From the author(s) of a particular section or sub-section, the editors are seeking a concise summary of the average and extreme conditions of climatic variables of importance to the context of the section, how those statistics relate to the historical climate record, and how those statistics may have varied over the region of interest. In addition, if there were any important weather events in the region, these too should be noted and briefly described.

For example, the author(s) of a regional section (e.g., Central America), might divide their discussion into three parts: (1) Temperature, (2) Precipitation, and (3) Notable events. In the first section, they might describe the average temperature over the region, how it ranks relative to the historical record, the spatial pattern of temperatures over the region (e.g., warmer than normal in the north, cooler than normal in the south), and any notable temperature anomalies (e.g., record warmest in Guatemala). A similar discussion would be done for precipitation. The notable events section might describe the climatological impacts of a severe storm (e.g., Hurricane Stan of 2005), or other highly unusual weather event (e.g., snow to sea level in Victoria, Australia).

Alternatively, the author(s) of a section on a particular variable (e.g., sea ice) might divide their discussion into temporal and spatial behavior of the variable throughout the year, and a comparison of the average conditions with the historical record. In some cases, a variable may either not have a sufficient historical record, or the data for the preceding year may not be immediately available. In such cases, it is advisable to discuss the most recently available data (assuming it was not covered by an earlier State of the Climate report), or to report on the "State of the Knowledge" - that is, what is the latest from the peer-reviewed literature on the subject, and what are the plans for improving data collection, interpretation and access.

Contribution Length:
Please refer to the previous year's State of the Climate article for general guidelines on length for your section or sub-section. The Adobe Acrobat PDF files for the past five articles (2000-2004) are available at the top of this page. Despite the need to reduce the length of the article, at this time we are not establishing a text length limit or a restriction on the number of figures. However, it is imperative to summarize concisely and not submit extraneous materials. For the 2005 State of the Climate, the editors were advising authors to attempt to keep any particular section (e.g., Ocean carbon, Southern Africa, Indian Ocean Tropical Cyclones) to between 800-1000 words, and between 2 and 4 figures. Where the author(s) is(are) responsible for a larger section with multiple sub-sections, it is recommended that each primary sub-section be limited to around 750 words and one to two figures.

Content and Quality:
The objective of the annual State of the Climate article is to present globally and regionally significant climatic events and trends, and to put these into historical perspective. Here are the primary issues to keep in mind when preparing your submission:

• Please write something "fresh" and do not submit a climate summary originally written for your agency or office. The best approach is a concise summary of the relevant climatic information written specifically for this article.

• Please include information from the relevant year (i.e. 2005), and put the analysis of that year into historical perspective. Regional subsections should, at a minimum, include a discussion of the temperature and precipitation pattern and trends during the year.

• Please use consistent base periods (as much as possible) when presenting means or anomalies, and include this information in the text, figure captions, and tables where appropriate. Some suggestions for base periods are:

  • 1961-1990
  • 1971-2000
  • 1901-2000
  • Period of record
  
  

  If the record is less than 30 years, use of the full period of record is recommended, unless data quality issues preclude it.

• Define any climatic indices presented, and appropriately reference each index.

• Topics should be of global or regional interest, such as significant events and trends. Include only those impacts that were widely significant and can be documented through references to sources and previous studies wherever appropriate.

• Please include appropriate references in the text and in a list at the end of your submission. Please do not cite any peer-review reference that has not yet been submitted (i.e., one you are planning to submit to a journal but are still working on), or any "gray" literature that has not yet been published. Submitted works are acceptible to cite, however, it is the author's responsibility to notify the editors as soon as a publishing decision has been made.

Text formatting:
All contributions should be submitted electronically. The following file formats are acceptable for the text portion of a contribution:

• Microsoft Word (.doc) - preferred
• Word Perfect (.wpd)
• ASCII (.txt)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)

If you would like to submit your document in another format, please check with the editors before sending your file. Formatting of the text should be kept to a minimum (however, please include super- and sub-script text formatting where appropriate). Here is some basic information on formatting your text:

• Please follow the AMS guidelines for authors (There is both a brief and a complete version of the guidelines at this link).

• Text should be double-spaced and in Times New Roman 12-pt font.

• Include appropriate figure captions at the end of your text file.

• Include a complete reference list at the end of the file (after the figure captions) - any citations without an accompanying reference will be deleted.

Figures formatting:
All figures should be submitted electronically. The following file formats are acceptable for figures:

• Postscript (.ps) - preferred
• Encapsulated Postscript (.eps)
• Uncompressed Tagged Image File Format (.tif) - 300 dpi resolution minimum
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpeg, .jpg) - 300 dpi resolution minimum

For clarity, you may include lower-resolution copies of your figures in your word processing document. However, we are NOT able to use ANY figures in that format. Only figures sent in the above formats will be considered.

Figures should follow some basic guidelines:

• Information on the figure should be readable when the figure is reduced to 3" x 3" (7.5 cm x 7.5 cm)
• Please use Arial font for any text, numbers and labels
• Please do not include a figure title on the figure
• Give the figure file an explanatory file name (e.g., UK_temp_anomaly_map2005.eps)
• Please avoid colors or color schemes that do not reproduce well in gray-scale
• Please avoid the combination of red and green on a figure (for colorblindness)
• Green-to-Tan (wet-to-dry) color ramp is preferred for precipitation figures
• Red-to-blue (hot-to-cold) color ramp is preferred for temperature figures
• Bold colors are preferred for time series plots
• Place legends off to the side if possible
• Please use SI units on figure axes
• Please use negative exponents to describe something "per" something (e.g., m s^-1 instead of m/s or meters per second)

Language, Style, and Reference Considerations:
The working language of this report is English and all contributions must be in English. For authors for whom English presents some difficulty, the editors advise those authors to request an initial review of their submission from an English-speaking colleague. Alternatively, those authors may submit their draft submission to the editors at least one month before the deadline, to allow time for review and revision.

It is important that you write in a scientific style, and avoid colloquial wording in your text. However, please make an attempt to avoid undefined "jargon". Also, please define ANY acronyms upon their first use [e.g., "... in BAMS (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society) ..."].

Proper references in the AMS style must be included in the text (e.g., Doe and Doe 2005). All submissions must also include a reference list at the end of the submitted text in the AMS style format. Please see the AMS guidelines for authors for complete information.

Example reference (journal article):
Doe, J. J., and J. M. Doe, 2005: Insanity among climatologists: heredity or environment?. J. Imaginary Research, 27, 34-42.

Where a journal article has been submitted, but not yet accepted for publication the author should cite the work as (Doe and Doe 2006, submitted to Imaginary Res.). It will not yet have a corresponding reference.

Submission Instructions:
A special editor's e-mail address (EditorSOC.NCDC@noaa.gov) has been established for the purpose of communication between editors and authors. This E-mail should be used to submit materials or when contacting us with questions or problems. If there is a problem with submitting material this way, please contact us at the address below for alternate options.

Deadlines and Timeline:

• Mid-October - Lead author has sent (via e-mail) invitation to participate to authors.

• late-November - Deadline for author responses and commitment to participate e-mail.

• December 15th - Short abstract or summary (1 paragraph) that describes the intended submission, including a page length and figure estimate, sent to editors by authors.

• January 15th - Reminder that submissions are due in 3 weeks.

• February 10th - Deadline for all submissions (figures and text) to the article. After this date, only certain changes may be made by authors.

• March 31st - Document sent to AMS for printing.

• June - Document appears with the June issue of BAMS.

NOTE: If you cannot comply with these guidelines and deadlines the editors would appreciate if you would suggest other experts in your region or area of expertise who may be interested in contributing material for the State of the Climate article. Thank you.

Adobe PDF Files: To read the State of the Climate reports on this web site, you will need to have, installed on your computer, Adobe Acrobat Reader or other software capable of reading PDF format files.  To install Adobe's freeware Acrobat Reader on your computer, please follow: Link to install Acrobat Reader
(Link will open in a new window / tab).

For further information on the State of the Climate reports, contact:

For all climate questions other than questions concerning this report, please contact the National Climatic Data Center's Climate Services Division: