As 190 countries attend the 20th Conference of Parties (COP 20) in Lima, Peru, this week to agree the path to a global treaty on climate change in Paris 2015, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) publishes its provisional statement on the status of the global climate in 2014.
The WMO’s statement indicates that the year 2014 is on track to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest, on record, according to preliminary estimates, meaning that 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century. This is largely due to record high global sea-surface temperatures, which will very likely remain above normal until the end of the year. High sea temperatures, together with other factors, contributed to exceptionally heavy rainfall and floods in many countries and extreme drought in others.
The statement highlights that the global average air temperature over land and sea surface for January to October was about 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the average of 14.00°C (57.2°F) for the 1961–1990 reference period, and 0.09°C (0.16°F) above the average for the past ten years (2004–2013).
The WMO global temperature analysis is principally based on three complementary datasets.[1] Global average temperatures are also estimated using reanalysis systems, which use a weather forecasting system to combine many sources of data to provide a more complete picture of global temperatures. The WMO uses data from the reanalysis produced by ECMWF. Professor Erland Källén, Director of Research at ECMWF, stresses the importance of understanding how the atmosphere and oceans interact:
“Despite the continued increase in ocean heat uptake, we are now seeing signs of increased atmospheric warming and the warming hiatus may have come to an end. To understand and predict this variability, we need to improve our knowledge of ocean–atmosphere interactions and a key aspect is the development of coupled reanalyses. This is a focus of reanalysis research at ECMWF.”
ECMWF Reanalysis programme, which covers over a century of weather observations also plays a key role in the Copernicus Climate Change Service that ECMWF has just started operating for the European Commission. It builds upon and complements capabilities existing at national level and is being developed through a number of climate-change research initiatives. It is planned to become a major contribution from the European Union to the WMO Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) and its Climate Monitoring Architecture.
“The WMO statement illustrates yet again the increasingly crucial need for improved climate information and services,” said Jean-Noël Thépaut, currently coordinating the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “Mitigation and adaptation policies must rely on the most accurate information to help citizens and nations become more resilient to adverse environmental changes. The Copernicus Climate Change Service will deliver just that for Europe.”
More information
The WMO’s provisional statement is being released at the 20th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, taking place 1–12 December in Lima, Peru. Final updates and figures for 2014 will be published in March 2015.
Copernicus Climate Change Service
[1] Maintained by the Hadley Centre of the UK’s Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom (combined); the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Centre; and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).