Extreme Temperature Diary- January 8th, 2019/ Topic: European Copernicus Keeps Producing Climate Reports While U.S. NOAA Is Mired In Government Shutdown

guyonclimate_mi5tor

Tuesday January 8th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials)😊. 

European Copernicus Keeps Producing Climate Reports While U.S. NOAA Is Mired In Government Shutdown

Many climatologists, meteorologists and environmentalists are becoming perturbed that reliable climate reports are not being issued by the United State’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and likewise data sets are not being updated due to a political government shutdown. Yours truly can’t add surface record counts to my data sets, for example, since the site that I am getting information from is shut down.

What’s disturbing is that many dealing with the climate issue can’t ATTM access measured chunks of data so that we can communicate how warm the U.S. was in 2018. What’s worse is that scientists in association with NOAA are barred via regulation from presenting findings at such conventions as the American Meteorological Society Conference in Phoenix until the government reopens. Our eyes have been blinded, hopefully just temporarily.

This post is just a quick communique letting all know that Copernicus is still open for business processing global reports for all to see and judge.

Here is some of what Copernicus has determined for 2018 and the month of December:

Here is a reprint of the Copernicus article linked in the last two tweets:

Surface air temperature for December 2018

Globally, temperatures were just under 0.5°C above the average December for 1981-2010. Canada, the Atlantic sector of the Arctic and northern Russia saw much above average temperatures. Large parts of southern Russia, central Asia and China saw much below average temperatures. Australia experienced exceptionally hot and dry conditions. In Europe, temperatures were generally above average, but the southern Balkans and Greece saw below average temperatures.

Surface air temperature anomaly for December 2018 relative to the December average for the period 1981-2010
Surface air temperature anomaly for December 2018 relative to the December average for the period 1981-2010. Source: ERA-Interim. (Credit: ECMWF, Copernicus Climate Change Service)
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December 2018 was warmer than the 1981-2010 average over much of Europe. Temperatures were most above average over the Arctic islands in the far north of the continent, over the neighboring ice-free Barents Sea and Kara Sea, and extending into the northern Russian mainland. Temperatures were a little below average over parts of the east and south-east of Europe.

Temperatures elsewhere in the northern hemisphere were considerably above average over much of Canada and southern Greenland, and well above average over the Middle East and south-east Asia. In the southern hemisphere, summertime temperatures were exceptionally high over Australia . Heatwave conditions were also experienced in Namibia and South Africa. Temperatures were also quite substantially above average over parts of Antarctica.

Particularly cold temperatures were experienced over central Siberia and Mongolia, and over the far northeast of Siberia. Temperatures were a little below average over several other regions.

Although regions of below-average temperature occurred over all major oceans, particularly at southern latitudes, marine air temperatures were predominantly higher than average. Relatively warm conditions over the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean indicate the early stage of an El Niño event, as indicated by the multi-model C3S seasonal forecasts issued in recent months.

Surface air temperature anomaly for January 2018 to December 2018 relative to the average for 1981-2010.
Surface air temperature anomaly for January 2018 to December 2018 relative to the average for 1981-2010. Source: ERA-Interim. (Credit: ECMWF, Copernicus Climate Change Service)
DOWNLOAD THE ORIGINAL IMAGE

Average temperatures for 2018 were:

.much above the 1981-2010 average in the Arctic, peaking north of Svalbard and over the Bering and Chukchi seas;

.above average over almost all of Europe;

.predominantly above average over other areas of land and ocean, especially so over the Middle East;

.below average over several land and oceanic areas, including much of Canada and southern Greenland, parts of Kazakhstan and southern Russia, and parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic.

Monthly global-mean and European-mean surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1981-2010, from January 1979 to December 2018
Monthly global-mean and European-mean surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1981-2010, from January 1979 to December 2018. The darker coloured bars denote the December values. Source: ERA-Interim. (Credit: ECMWF, Copernicus Climate Change Service)
ACCESS TO DATA  |  DOWNLOAD THE ORIGINAL IMAGE

The global temperature was well above average in December 2018. The month was:

.about 0.47°C warmer than the average December from 1981-2010;

.more than 0.2°C cooler than the warmest December, which occurred in 2015, but less than 0.1°C cooler than December 2017, the second warmest December;

.only slightly cooler (by an insignificant 0.03°C) than December 2016, the third warmest December.

.The warmest and second-warmest instances of each month of the year occurred between October 2015 and June 2018.

The largest anomalies in European-average temperatures occur in wintertime, when values can vary substantially from month to month. December 2018 had a European-average temperature about 1.2°C above normal, continuing a run of relatively warm temperatures that began in April. Several other Decembers have been warmer, however.

Running twelve-month averages of global-mean and European-mean surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1981-2010, based on monthly values from January 1979 to December 2018
Running twelve-month averages of global-mean and European-mean surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1981-2010, based on monthly values from January 1979 to November 2018. The darker coloured bars are the averages for each of the calendar years from 1979 to 2017. Source: ERA-Interim. (Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF)
ACCESS TO DATA  |  DOWNLOAD THE ORIGINAL IMAGE

Averaging over twelve-month periods smooths out the shorter-term variations. Globally, the calendar year 2018 was 0.43°C warmer than the 1981-2010 average. The warmest twelve-month period was from October 2015 to September 2016, with a temperature 0.64°C above average. 2016 is the warmest calendar year on record, with a global temperature 0.62°C above that for 1981-2010. The second warmest calendar year, 2017, had a temperature 0.53°C above average. The third warmest year, 2015, was warmer than 2018 by an insignificant margin: its temperature, like that of 2018, rounds to 0.43°C above the 1981-2010 average.

To relate recent global temperatures to the pre-industrial level as defined in the IPCC Special Report on “Global Warming of 1.5°C”, 0.63°C should be added to these values. Monthly temperatures in 2018 have been mostly in the range from 1.0 to 1.1°C above this pre-industrial level, down from a peak 12-month average of almost 1.3°C.

The spread in the global averages from various temperature datasets has been unusually large over the past two years or so. During this period the twelve-month average values presented here are higher than those from several independent datasets, by between 0.05°C and 0.15°C for the twelve months for which spread is largest. This is due partly to differences in the extent to which datasets represent the relatively warm conditions that have predominated over the Arctic and the seas around Antarctica. Differences in estimates both of sea-surface temperature elsewhere and of temperatures over land outside the Arctic have been further factors. Spread is also large for the years 2005 and 2006, for which the relatively high values shown here will be reduced when an updated dataset is fully available. Nevertheless, there is general agreement between datasets regarding:

.the exceptional warmth of 2016, and to a lesser extent 2015, 2017 and 2018;

.the overall rate of warming since the late 1970s;

.the sustained period of above-average temperatures from 2001 onwards.

There is more variability in average European temperatures, but values are less uncertain because observational coverage of the continent is relatively dense. Twelve-month averages for Europe were at a high level from 2014 to 2016. They then fell, but remained 0.5°C or more above the 1981-2010 average. Twelve-month averages have risen since then, and the latest average, for calendar year 2018, is close to 1.2°C above the 1981-2010 norm, only slightly lower (by well under 0.1°C) than the averages for 2014 and 2015, the warmest calendar years on record. The warmest twelve-month period occurred from July 2006 to June 2007, when the average temperature was about 1.5°C above that for 1981-2010.

The average surface air temperature analysis homepage explains more about the production and reliability of the values presented here.

I’ll let all know when NOAA is back up and running. In the meantime Copernicus and a few other sources will continue to process climate data, so we aren’t totally blinded.

Here is Monday’s mostly mild maxes:

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Here is more climate and weather news from Tuesday:  

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have  put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity.)

 

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The Climate Guy

 

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