Anomaly (natural sciences)

In the natural sciences, especially in atmospheric and Earth sciences involving applied statistics, an anomaly is the deviation in a quantity from its expected value, e.g., the difference between a measurement and a mean or a model prediction. Similarly, a standardized anomaly equals an anomaly divided by a standard deviation. A group of anomalies can be analyzed spatially, as a map, or temporally, as a time series. There are examples in atmospheric sciences and in geophysics.