What you need to know about the current climate reports – News Knowledge: Nature

Where’s the snow It’s been a question in Germany for weeks, at least in the lowlands. Then you look at the climate reports that have just appeared and think: All right.

On Wednesday the space agency NASA published its analysis of the past decade together with the US weather agency NOAA. At the same time, the World Weather Organization (WMO) new data out. Both confirmed the numbers of the earth observation program Copernicus the EU from last week. We summarize the five key findings of the three major reports:

1. We have just had the warmest decade since records started

All authorities come to this conclusion. Exceptionally warm temperatures were measured, especially in the second half of the decade. According to NASA, the past five years have all been the warmest since records began in 1880. “We have reached a new level,” says NOAA researcher Deke Arndt. Since the 1960s, every decade has been warmer than the previous one – and that clearly.

2019 was the second warmest year in the world and just barely missed the 2016 record. According to NASA, the temperature was around 0.95 degrees above the average of the 20th century, The WMO analyzes showed 1.1 degrees above the norm 1850-1900,

2. 2019 was the hottest year in Europe

Europe even experienced the highest temperatures since the start of weather records last year. They were according to Copernicus data 1.24 degrees above the long-term average 1981-2010, A similarly high value has only been measured three times. From the past 20 years were 19 over the average.

According to the evaluations, the climate-damaging carbon dioxide concentrations (CO₂) rose in the atmosphere. The Copernicus researchers speak of “undoubtedly terrifying alarm signals”.

3. It was colder than usual in parts of the United States and Canada

There were even regions in 2019 where temperatures were below average throughout the year. However, many are somewhere in the ocean. Exceptions are the central part of Canada and the “Great Planes” in the north of the USA, where an “arctic front” caused minus records towards the end of the year.

Large parts of the world were above average warm, some even extreme. Australia, for example, where large-scale fires have been raging for months, recorded the hottest and driest year since weather records began in 2019. It was particularly warm in southern Africa, in Brazil and in Central and Eastern Europe.

4. Switzerland also had an extreme year

The national weather service Meteo Switzerland 2019 registered the fifth warmest year since the start of measurement in 1864. Ten months were warmer than the norm 1981-2010, three of which reached values ​​in the extreme range.

All the years that Meteo Switzerland calls “extreme” fall in the decade that has just ended. In addition to 2019, these were 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2018. Thanks to the very sunny summer, 2019 on the north side of the Alps is regionally among the five sunniest since the start of the measurement. Extremely warm summers have become the standard in Switzerland, writes Meteo Switzerland. Last year, however, an exceptionally mild winter was added.

5. The current year will also break records

2020 started, as it ended in 2019: with disasters that are strongly related to the climate and weather. Australia is struggling with unprecedented bushfires and record rainfall has caused severe flooding in the region around the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

This year is also due to the record amounts of climate-damaging CO₂that there is extreme weather in the atmosphere, says WMO General Secretary Petteri Taalas. “If this continues, we have to expect a temperature increase of 3 to 5 degrees by the end of the century.”

Created: 1/16/2020, 6:36 PM

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