Climate.gov has a great new entry on their “Beyond the Data” blog.  Deke Arndt of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information writes on the value and the problems that come with ranking data year by year.  You can read it at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/second-place-really-first-loser.  Here’s the cartoon that goes with it:

Source: NOAA Climate.gov cartoon by Emily Greenhalgh
Source: NOAA Climate.gov cartoon by Emily Greenhalgh