The global temperature estimates made by the ECMWFECMWFThe European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data. in the ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). series show that October 2024 was the second warmest in the short series back to 1948. I’m quite glad about that, because my DIYDIYDo It Yourself reanalysis series which I maintain showed the same thing. What is more astounding about October’s temperatures though, is that a 30 year linear trend on the ERA5 data shows a whopping 0.313°C decadal rise in global temperatures. If this were typical for all months of the year you can forget about limiting the increase in warming to only 1.5°C, it would be more like 3°C.😮
June 2024 was the 13th consecutive record warm month globally, in the ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). series that started in 1979. It was well above the record anomaly that it set in June 2023, but having said that global temperatures are now starting to slide as El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific starts to kick in in the central Pacific. Daily anomalies have already fallen below the magic +1.5°C mark, and 2024 might have well have a job keeping up with records set up only last summer. I would like to confidently predict that June 2024 will be the last record breaking month, but I’ve done that before, and have already lost any street cred that I may have had. 😉
Daily Anomalies
A rolling 365 day moving average of anomalies since pre-industrial times have been above 1.5ºC for all of this year. It’s currently at +1.64ºC and in its third peak since 2015. A 30 year linear trend shows that the average could reach the 1.5°C mark by late 2030.
There’s been a lot of talk about how climate change is resulting in wetter seasonal rainfall across the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.. You’ve all heard the mantra “A warmer atmosphere is capable of holding more water vapour”, almost as cliched, but not quite as elegant as the definition of a jet stream being “A fast moving ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere”. Here are a few graphs of UK and regional 30 year moving averages that I’ve drawn from the UKMOUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial StrategyUKPUKPUKP is a gridded datasets of UK regional precipitation. gridded climate data to illustrate what’s been going on since 1836.
I’ve added two linear trends to the annual UK precipitation graph, one for the 1865-1993 period and the second for the last 30 years from 1994 to 2023. You’ll immediately notice a dramatic increase in UK annual precipitation since 1980. You could argue that we’ve seen upticks like this before (1860-1885 and 1915-1930), and this is one is just the result of the natural variability of the climate as they were. I don’t think so though because this increase has been going on for over 40 years and shows no sign of running out of energy and linked with increases in global temperatures during the same period can’t be coincidental. The size of the linear trend suggests that annually the UK is getting wetter at the rate of almost exactly 1″ per decade, not a lot, but it’s the change in the rate that’s more important.
Winter [DJFDJFMeteorological Winter comprising the months of December, January & February] precipitation shows a similar increase from around 1995.
Summer [JJAJJAMeteorological Summer comprising the months June, July & August] rainfall is more dramatic still, with a steady decline in rainfall suddenly being reversed in the last 20 years.
Finally here’s a grid of monthly averages and trends for the UK. As you can see not all months are getting dramatically wetter. Some regions are showing little sign of getting wetter than they have been in the years up until 1993, January, April, November and December for example, whilst March and September have become a little drier in the last 30 years. I’ll leave you to make your minds up about the underlying reason for it. 😉
My DIYDIYDo It Yourself global temperature series was wrong once again in April. It predicted a tie in global temperatures with April 2016, but shock horror, ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). reports an anomaly of +0.67°C, which is well above the +0.529°C of 2016 making it the eleventh consecutive warmest month. 😲 Below is a graph of 12 month moving average global temperature anomalies since April 1994 from seven of the world’s leading global temperature series. None of them are as quick of the mark at reporting their results like the ECMWFECMWFThe European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data., but all show the recent surge that started at the beginning of 2023. The 30 year linear trend on the ERA5 series shows an increase of +0.24°C per decade over that time, and the warming trend that started in 1970 is starting to accelerate.
Here’s a graph of the latest 12 month moving averages of estimated global temperature anomalies since 1994 from seven Met services around the world. All seven series show the 12 month average for February at all time record levels, as usual the JMAJMAThe Japan Meteorological Agency (気象庁, Kishō-chō), abbreviated JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. and CRUTEM5 data is running one month behind the rest. The Era5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). series from Copernicus continues to lead the way as far as the rate of warming is concerned, with a linear trend over the last 30 years of +0.238°C per decade. The overlaid blue and pink bands are La NinaLa NiñaLa Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." and El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific events.
I have added some extra functionality to my ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). application so that I can download and access latest the ERAERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). 5 daily SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures anomalies, as well as the daily 2m temperature data. SST data starts in 1979 but there’s enough of it to draw a scatter graph and see what correlation there exists between the two if you couldn’t already guess that there would be anything other than a very strong one. As you can see from the chart above my guess was correct 😜. I’ve coloured the series red for all dates after the 1 January 2023 to highlight the surge in SST in the last year or so. I will calculate and add the correlation coefficient at a later date, or as the say in this part of the world I’ll do that directly.
I’ve added a chart of 7 and a 365 day moving averages to view the sudden explosive rise in SST over the last 12 months. I would say that most charts I see bandied about regarding this rise in SST use data that is not strictly “global”, extending as the ER5 data does from 60N to 60S. I would have thought that it might be better if the global value would be more accurate if it were calculated for all oceans, regardless of sea ice. It might not be particularly scientific but why couldn’t they use a value of zero for any grid point that had sea ice present?
Now that the Copernicus program has made real-time daily global temperature data available, as well as producing daily graphs I can now also produce monthly, seasonal and annual charts by summing up the daily data. The chart above is of mean February temperatures from 1940 to 2024. The chart below is of February anomalies using the 1851-1900 baseline offset for the pre-industrial era, and shows that as well as being the warmest February on record, it also had a mean anomaly of 1.77°C above that baseline.
There’s been a steady decline in the number of air frosts occuring in Winter [DJFDJFMeteorological Winter comprising the months of December, January & February] across the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. since 1960. In the southeast of England the decline in the last 64 years has been at the rate of 1.8 days per decade or 11.3 days. In the north of Scotland the decline has been somewhat slower at the rate of 1.4 days per decade or 8.6 days overall.
The climate record for air frosts only extends back to 1960 in the gridded form. I’m quite sure it could easily be extended back to at least 1884 by the UKMOUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but they obviously don’t seem to find the time or enthusiasm to get around to it. You would think that the work would be trivial, since they must already have gridded daily night time minimum data, perhaps they’re hoping for a crowd sourced group of volunteers to step in and do it for them.
The mean global temperature for February 2024 was pipped into second place by February 2016. This brings to an end the incredible eight month consecutive run of record high mean temperatures. The estimates are from my DIY series that I calculate from 6 hourly NCEPNCEPThe United States National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) delivers national and global weather, water, climate and space weather guidance, forecasts, warnings and analyses to its Partners and External User Communities. gridded data. The daily means since the 12th of February took a bit of a nose dive (see image below) and allowed 2016 with a mean of 9.36°C to just nip ahead of 2024 with 9.34°C. I think my maverick calculations are unlikely to be duplicated when Copernicus publish their result in the coming week, but it will be a close run thing.
Now that I finally have some quality real-time global temperature data to work with, courtesy of the ECMWFECMWFThe European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data., I thought that I would construct a couple of graphs you wouldn’t find in their Climate Pulse web application. The first graph that occurred to me to construct was one that plotted daily anomalies using the 1850-1900 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. as a baseline for the pre-industrial era, and overlay a 365 day moving average on it. I then overlay a 30 year linear trend over that and extrapolate a linear trend until it meets the y axis at 1.5°C. This gives a date of the 15th April 2031 when 1.5°C is reached. The IPCCIPCCThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations responsible for advancing knowledge on human-induced climate change.
It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, and later endorsed by United Nations General Assembly. in contrast estimate global temperatures will exceed 1.5°C around 2040. This is what they say In their report:-
Human-induced warming has already reached about 1°C above pre-industrial levels at the time of writing of this Special Report. By the decade 2006–2015, human activity had warmed the world by 0.87°C (±0.12°C) compared to pre-industrial times (1850–1900). If the current warming rate continues, the world would reach human-induced global warming of 1.5°C around 2040.
IPCC Report
To explore the difference I have added another viewer to my application that displays a rolling 10 year mean anomaly, and then do the same as I did in the first graph, that is add a 30 year linear tend and then extrapolate it forward. This gives a date of the 8th February 2040 when 1.5°C is realised and in line with the IPCC estimate.
In light of the significant increases in SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures in all the world’s oceans in the last year, and the resulting surge in global temperatures it may be that 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels will occur much earlier than the IPCC expected last year. As you can see using the latest global data for the 29th of February 2024 using a linear trend on a 365 day moving average 1.5°C will be reached on the 15th of April 2031, almost seven years earlier than 2040. I think using a 365 day average is much more sensitive and accurate than one based on a longer 10 year rolling average. Thanks to El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific and the surge in SST over the last 12 months, daily global temperatures have already been above the 1.5°C threshold for much of that time. A La NinaLa NiñaLa Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." event is expected later this year, this should help reduce global SST and air temperatures a little you would think, but even if and when this happens global temperatures still won’t be too far off the 1.5°C mark.
Despite the launch of the excellent Climate Pulse web application by the ECMWFECMWFThe European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data., never daunted, I’ve now adjusted my own application global temperature program to download daily global data directly from their site as a CSVCSVA data file using Comma Separated Variable format. file, and you can see the results in the graph above. Although global temps are now lower than they were in early February, they are still well above the +1.5°C IPCCIPCCThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations responsible for advancing knowledge on human-induced climate change.
It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, and later endorsed by United Nations General Assembly. threshold. In fact they’ve been above +1.5°C for most of the last year, and on a number of days they’ve even exceeded +2°C.
So why do we hear so little news about it in the media?
Nothing has really changed at the start of 2024, and the acceleration in global warming that we’ve seen since the start of 2023 continues apace in the latest 12 month moving average. The simple linear trend from 2020 to 2023 on the new NOAANOAANOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather. version 6 series now stands at 0.23°C per decade.
The daily Central England Temperature series is running a little hot at the moment. As of the 18th, this February is currently the warmest back to 1772 with an anomaly of +4.64°C, this meteorological winter [DJFDJFMeteorological Winter comprising the months of December, January & February 2023-24] is the 5th warmest to date with an anomaly of +2.61°C, and this year is the 9th warmest with an anomaly of +2.5°C all with respect to the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. There’s a good chance that February will be the warmest on record possibly since 1659 when the series started, the winter record looks unlikely to be broken, but who knows about 2024 which is already off to a flying start.
Another day another application. This time a viewer to display ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). daily global temperature data from Copernicus. So much talk at the moment about how the daily temperatures have been exceeding the 1.5°C threshold a goal that was set in the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping warming “well below” 2C and aiming to limit it to 1.5C“. As you can see that hasn’t been happening much in the last year, to say the least. The ERA5 data only extends back to 1940, so finding, or more correctly guessing at what the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. was for the series between 1850 and 1900 was vital to get an accurate anomaly from the pre-industrial age. Reading between the lines of an article I found on the on the Copernicus website I came up with the figure of 0.9°C. That’s the difference between the 1851-1900 and the 1991-2020 LTA and the offset I’ve applied to the first and the third graph in this article. It’s not specified anywhere that I can find that this is what it is, but it’s my best guess.
As you can see the 365 day (leading) running mean has now also exceeded 1.5°C.
The program can also display daily data from the Arctic and Antarctic, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, and the Tropics. Still some work to do on it and some new ways to display the data but that’ll have to do for now.
Again I would like to thank Professor Eliot Jacobson for giving me the link to the raw data on the Climate Reanalyzer web site, and of course to ECMWFECMWFThe European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data. and Copernicus for generating these global estimates from their reanalysis data in the first place.
All but the usual UKMOUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and JMAJMAThe Japan Meteorological Agency (気象庁, Kishō-chō), abbreviated JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Met Services have now published their December 2023 estimates. Despite the missing series, I thought I would generate my 12 month moving mean anomalies for the last 30 years for the leading seven data series anyway. It’s plain to see that in 2023 thay have all shot up, almost exponentially😮. The previous warmest 12 months set in 2016 is now just a distant memory. The 30 year linear trend for the NOAANOAANOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather. series is showing a rise of 0.216°C per decade, the ERAERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). series is even higher than that at 0.236°C! All very alarming.
In my DIYDIYDo It Yourself Global Temperature series I can now reveal the worst kept secret of 2023 has finally proven to be correct in that 2023 has finally overtaken 2016 to become the warmest calendar year on record. I make the mean temperature in 2023 to be 10.21°C, which is 0.36°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. That makes it fractionally warmer than the 10.16°C of 2016, the previous warmest year. The last seven months of 2023 all set new records so the fact that it would be the warmest year was a bit of an inevitability. The latest 30 year annual linear trend shows a warming of 0.15°C/decade.
December 2023 became the seventh consecutive month to set a new highest monthly record. Again it did it by another large margin in my DIYDIYDo It Yourself Global temperature series. The December mean 0f 0.53°C was 0.16°C higher than the previous warmest December in 2015. The question I wonder about is what happens to the meteoric rise when it comes full circle this June? Currently the latest daily global mean I’ve calculated for the 31st of December is still out on it’s own in record breaking territory.
The mean temperature in 2023 just quite couldn’t overtake 2022 as the warmest year on record. Still the mean anomaly since pre-industrial times, which I calculate using a 1772-1850 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. baseline, is just a smidgeon under +2°C and warming at a rate of 0.18°C/decade.
Two bits of bad news about CO2CO2Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO2) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. levels as measured at Mauna Loa. First up, they still continue to inexorably rise as they’ve done every since they were first monitored back in 1958. Second up, after the rate of change slowed from 3 ppmppmParts Per Million per annum to ~2 ppm in Autumn 2022, it’s now started to increase again, and the 12 month average stands at 2.41 ppm as of November 2023. I wonder if they’ll ever come a day in what’s left of my lifetime when they’ll start to fall, I very much doubt it 😥
Global monthly temperature anomalies have exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels nine times or so in individual months in the HadCRUTv5 series since 2016. I’ve adjusted the baseline of the chart above by the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. for the 1850-1900 period to calculate the increase in temperature since the start of the pre-industrial age. Some global series don’t extend as far back as 1850, GISTempGISTemp v4The GISS Surface Temperature Analysis version 4 is an estimate of global surface temperature change using data from NOAA GHCN v4 (land stations) and ERSST v5 (ocean areas). 4 for example, so I imagine they can’t use this value and the LTA must be reduced to 20 years. I’ve added a 3 year linear trend (warming at the rate of +1.094°C/decade) to the chart above, and extrapolated it forward to find when 12 month average global anomalies will reach +1.5°C if temperatures remain at their record levels for the next nine months or so. The 12 month moving average could achieves this by November 2024, until six months ago I wouldn’t have believed this were possible, but with six consecutive record warmth months, I now beleive it’s perfectly possible. If you take a more measured approach, and use a linear trend over the last 30 years (warming at the rate of +0.213°C/decade), then the 1.5°C won’t be reached for another 10 years, that’s in January 2034. So when will it be? My money’s on 2024, but I could be wrong. 😉
The scores-are-in, and it’s a ten-from-Len, as the world produces a sixth consecutive record warmest month for November, which is a record in it’s own right. I make the daily mean for November 9.81°C which is 0.22°C higher than the previous warmest in 2015. It’s not quite as impressive as in previous months, but nonetheless it’s still quite remarkable. The Daily values from my DIYDIYDo It Yourself series are no less impressive as you can see in the graph below. This year started setting daily records at the beginning of June and it’s been #1 daily warmest for much of the six months since then. Remember you heard it first here even if it was a racing cert 😉
For the fourth month in a row global temperatures have set another new monthly record for warmth. September is perhaps the most remarkable of the four in my DIYDIYDo It Yourself global temperatures series, exceeding the previous highest in 2016 by a massive, in global temperature terms that is, of 0.24°C. The question that immediately springs to mind is when will this run of new extremes come to an end? Maybe when it comes full cycle in June of 2024, or who knows if the El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific is still running it will just continue.
Currently, on the 30th of September, the daily mean global temperature is in open water on the graph above way higher than in any of the previous daily temperatures since 1948. What’s driving the sharp rise in global temperatures are the higher than average SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean. The La NinaLa NiñaLa Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." event which had been keeping a check on global temperatures until earlier this year has gone, replaced by a strengthening El Nino.
I wrote code to display this graph that extrapolated a 30 year linear trend that predicted when global temperatures would reached the much vaunted value of +1.5°C above pre-industrial levels around 10 years ago now. That prediction of 2035 hasn’t seemed to change too much each time I run the code if my memory serves. I thought that I would post the results to just keep a record of how right or wrong I was. That does presuppose of course that this blog and I will still be around in 2035 of course, and if the month of July is correct, just celebrated my 81st birthday. I would have been much happier in my dotage if global warming and been global cooling but that’s life.
It seems to me that even allowing for the rise in temperature due to global warming, there’s been an additional surge in temperatures across Iberia and northwest Africa in recent years. That’s particularly noticeable in summer, but can also be seen in the rest of the year too. The latest plume event is ongoing at the moment (27 April 2023), but has had a limited northward extent so far. I decided to look back at the last 40 years of daily maximum temperatures at Cordoba to see what I could find by plotting a scatter graph and adding a trend line.
As you can see I’m using the 1981-2010 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., which is courtesy of Wikipedia, and not the latest, but the linear trend at Cordoba does show a warming trend of well over a degree a decade. I can’t say if these results are just local to Cordoba, or if they’re occurring more widely across the rest of Iberia and Northwest Africa, but it does go a long way to explain the media hype about the present heatwave. I’m sure some more detailed research would find that there’s been an increase in Spanish plumes events in all seasons of the year, and that their effects aren’t just limited to the Iberian peninsula.
