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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- Climate change is a hot topic right now. Reports continue to come in suggesting strong warming in some parts of the planet. New data has arrived and is forcing a recalculation of climate data.

Nolan Doeskan is the Colorado State climatologist. He has been studying Colorado's climate since the 1970s. He recognizes a pattern of warming, or lack of cold.

"When we look back on our longterm data," he said, "we haven't been as cold in the last 20 years. We still get cold waves. In fact, for the northern and central mountains in particular, we had [in 2011] back to back cold waves that did bring 'old-fashioned' cold weather. We hadn't seen that in 20 years, but that used to be fairly common."

The strongest warming was noticed in winter temperatures. Polar air was not nearly as prevalent and generally modified too much before it brought the coldest air into the state. While summertime highs did not see the increase that the winter did, overnight lows were noticeably warmer through the summer months.

Precipitation trends are a bit tougher to gauge. Doeskan said there will be dry years, and there will be warm years. Nothing recently has been unusual enough to attribute to an overall climate trend.

Weather data are compared to climactic averages or normals. The National Weather Service uses 30-year climate normals, or averages based on 30 years of recent data. The 'normals' are recalculated every ten years to give new 30-year climate normals. Every single reporting station in the country reported an increase of some magnitude to the climate normals when updating from 1971-2000 normals to 1981-2010 normals.

The strongest increase in overall daily high temperature normals in the United States occured in Colorado.

But Doeskan reminds us, "variability has and will dominate. Every year is going to be different. Any given year will not make or break a long-term trend." He warns that year to year variations can sometimes mask a gradual change or trend in climate.

More information is available at the Climate Resources page, NOAA's 'normal' calculations, and NOAA's latest climate page.