GENEVA, 14 December (WMO) – The global mean surface temperature in 2006 is currently estimated to be + 0.42°C above the 1961-1990 annual average (14°C/57.2°F), according to the records maintained by Members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The year 2006 is currently estimated to be the sixth warmest year on record. Final figures will not be released until March 2007.
Averaged separately for both hemispheres, 2006 surface temperatures for the northern hemisphere (0.58°C above 30-year mean of 14.6°C/58.28°F) are likely to be the fourth warmest and for the southern hemisphere (0.26°C above 30-year mean of 13.4°C/56.12°F), the seventh warmest in the instrumental record from 1861 to the present.
Since the start of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen approximately 0.7°C. But this rise has not been continuous. Since 1976, the global average temperature has risen sharply, at 0.18°C per decade. In the northern and southern hemispheres, the period 1997-2006 averaged 0.53°C and 0.27°C above the 1961-1990 mean, respectively.
Regional temperature anomalies
The beginning of 2006 was unusually mild in large parts of North America and the western European Arctic islands, though there were harsh winter conditions in Asia, the Russian Federation and parts of eastern Europe. Canada experienced its mildest winter and spring on record, the USA its warmest January-September on record and the monthly temperatures in the Arctic island of Spitsbergen (Svalbard Lufthavn) for January and April included new highs with anomalies of +12.6°C and +12.2°C, respectively.
Persistent extreme heat affected much of eastern Australia from late December 2005 until early March with many records being set (e.g. second hottest day on record in Sydney with 44.2°C/111.6°F on 1 January). Spring 2006 (September-November) was Australia’s warmest since seasonal records were first compiled in 1950. Heat waves were also registered in Brazil from January until March (e.g. 44.6°C/112.3°F in Bom Jesus on 31 January – one of the highest temperatures ever recorded in Brazil).
Several parts of Europe and the USA experienced heat waves with record temperatures in July and August. Air temperatures in many parts of the USA reached 40°C/104°F or more. The July European-average land-surface air temperature was the warmest on record at 2.7°C above the climatological normal.
Autumn 2006 (September-November) was exceptional in large parts of Europe at more than 3°C warmer than the climatological normal from the north side of the Alps to southern Norway. In many countries it was the warmest autumn since official measurements began: records in central England go back to 1659 (1706 in The Netherlands and 1768 in Denmark).
Prolonged drought in some regions
Long-term drought continued in parts of the Greater Horn of Africa including parts of Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and the United Republic of Tanzania. At least 11 million people were affected by food shortages; Somalia was hit by the worst drought in a decade.
For many areas in Australia, the lack of adequate rainfall in 2006 added to significant longer-term dry conditions, with large regions having experienced little recovery from the droughts of 2002-2003 and 1997-1998. Dry conditions have now persisted for 5 to 10 years in some areas and in south-west Western Australia for around 30 years.
Across the USA, moderate-to-exceptional drought persisted throughout parts of the south-west desert and eastward through the southern plains, also developing in areas west of the Great Lakes. Drought and anomalous warmth contributed to a record wildfire season for the USA, with more than 3.8 million hectares burned through early December. Drought in the south of Brazil caused significant damage to agriculture in the early part of the year with losses of about 11 per cent estimated for the soybean crop yield alone.
Severe drought conditions also affected China. Millions of hectares of crops were damaged in Sichuan province during summer and in eastern China in autumn. Significant economic losses as well as severe shortages in drinking water were other consequences.
Heavy precipitation and flooding
As the 2005/2006 rainy season was ending, most countries in southern Africa were experiencing satisfactory rainfall during the first quarter of 2006. In northern Africa, floods were recorded in Morocco and Algeria during 2006 causing infrastructure damage and some casualties. Rare heavy rainfall in the Sahara Desert region of Tindouf produced severe flooding in February damaging 70 per cent of food production and displacing 60 000 people. In Bilma, Niger, the highest rainfall since 1923 affected nearly 50 000 people throughout August. In the same month, the most extensive precipitation in 50 years brought significant agricultural losses to the region of Zinder, Niger. Heavy rain also caused devastating floods in Ethiopia in August, claiming more than 600 lives. Some of the worst floods occurred in Dire Dawa and along the swollen Omo River. Again in October and November, the Great Horn of Africa countries experienced heavy rainfall associated with severe flooding. The worst hit areas were in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Somalia is undergoing its worst flooding in recent history; some places have received more than six times their average monthly rainfall and hundreds of thousands of people have been affected. This year’s floods are said to be the worst in 50 years in the Great Horn of Africa region. The heavy rains followed a period of long-lasting drought and the dry ground was unable to soak up large amounts of rainfall.
Heavy rainfall in Bolivia and Equador in the first months of the year caused severe floods and landslides with tens of thousands of people affected. Torrential rainfall in Suriname during early May produced the country’s worst disaster in recent times.
After 500 mm of torrential rainfall during a five-day period in February, a large-scale landslide occurred in Leyte Island, the Philippines with more than 1 000 casualties. Although close to average in total rainfall, the Indian monsoon season brought many heavy rainfall events with the highest rainfall in 24-hours ever recorded in several locations.
Only months after the destructive summer flooding in eastern Europe in 2005, heavy rainfall and snowmelt produced extensive flooding along the River Danube in April and the river reached its highest level in more than a century. Areas of Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Serbia were the hardest hit with hundreds of thousands of hectares inundated and tens of thousands of people affected.
Persistent and heavy rainfall during 10-15 May brought historic flooding to New England (USA), described as the worst in 70 years in some areas. Across the US mid-Atlantic and north-east, exceptionally heavy rainfall occurred in June. Numerous daily and monthly records were set and the rainfall caused widespread flooding which forced the evacuation of some 200 000 people. Vancouver in Canada experienced its wettest month ever in November with 351 mm, nearly twice the average monthly accumulation.
Development of moderate El Niño in late 2006
Conditions in the equatorial Pacific from December 2005 until the first quarter of 2006 showed some patterns typically associated with La Niña events. These however, did not lead to a basin-wide La Niña and, during April, even weak La Niña conditions dissipated. Over the second quarter of 2006, the majority of atmospheric and oceanic indicators reflected neutral conditions but, in August, conditions in the central and western equatorial Pacific started resembling typical early stages of an El Niño event (see WMO Press Release 765). By the end of the year, positive sea-surface temperature anomalies were established across the tropical Pacific basin. The El Niño event is expected by global consensus to continue at least into the first quarter of 2007.
Deadly typhoons in south-east Asia
In the north-west Pacific, 22 tropical cyclones developed (average 27), 14 of which classified as typhoons. Typhoons Chanchu, Prapiroon, Kaemi, Saomai, Xangsane, Cimaron and tropical storm Bilis brought deaths, casualties and severe damage to the region. Landed tropical cyclones caused more than 1 000 fatalities and economic losses of US $ 10 billion in China, which made 2006 the severest year in a decade. Typhoon Durian affected some 1.5 million people in the Philippines in November/December 2006, claiming more than 500 lives with hundreds still missing.
During the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, nine named tropical storms developed (average: ten). Five of the named storms were hurricanes (average six) and two of those were “major” hurricanes (category three or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale). In the eastern North Pacific 19 named storms developed, which is well above the average of 16; eleven reached hurricane strength of which six attained “major” status.
Twelve tropical cyclones developed in the Australian Basin, two more than the long-term average. Tropical cyclone Larry was the most intense at landfall in Queensland since 1918, destroying 80-90 per cent of the Australian banana crop.
Ozone depletion in the Antarctic and Arctic
On 25 September, the maximum area of the 2006 ozone hole over the Antarctic was recorded at 29.5 million km², slightly larger than the previous record area of 29.4 million km² reached in September 2000. These values are so similar that the ozone holes of these two years could be judged of equal size. The size and persistence of the 2006 ozone hole area with its ozone mass deficit of 40.8 megatonnes (also a record) can be explained by the continuing presence of near-peak levels of ozone-depleting substances in combination with a particularly cold stratospheric winter. Low temperatures in the first part of January prompted a 20 per cent loss in the ozone layer over the Arctic in 2006 (see WMO Press Release 760). Milder temperatures from late January precluded the large ozone loss seen in 2005.
Arctic sea-ice decline continues
The year 2006 continues the pattern of sharply decreasing Arctic sea ice. The average sea-ice extent for the entire month of September was 5.9 million km², the second lowest on record missing the 2005 record by 340 000 km². Including 2006, the September rate of sea ice decline is now approximately -8.59% per decade, or 60 421 km² per year.
Information sources
This preliminary information for 2006 is based on observations up to the end of November from networks of land-based weather stations, ships and buoys. The data are collected and disseminated on a continuing basis by the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services of WMO Members. However, the declining state of some observational platforms in some parts of the world is of concern.
It should be noted that, following established practice, WMO’s global temperature analyses are based on two different datasets. One is the combined dataset maintained by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK. The other is maintained by the US Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Results from these two datasets are comparable: both indicate that 2006 is likely to be the sixth warmest year globally.
More extensive updated information will be made available in the annual WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2006, to be published in early March 2007.
This is a joint Press Release issued in collaboration with the Hadley Centre of the Met Office, UK, the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK and in the USA: NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre, National Environmental Satellite and Data Information Service and NOAA’s National Weather Service. Other contributors are WMO Member countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, India, Ireland, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Mauritius, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland. The African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) also contributed.
WMO is the United Nations’ authoritative voice on weather, climate and water
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Just filing this here.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1812173.htm
In fact if you look at rainfall for Australia at the BOM website, if anything it is getting wetter (overall)in Australia!
Yes Jennifer, good point, overall it is getting wetter in Australia. I also hear that – on average – a human being has one testicle.
Steve,
Are you suggesting that we should ignore northern Australia, because you and many commentators happen to live in Sydney?
Either it is getting wetter, drier or the long term trend is flat.
The BOM data suggests to me it is getting wetter.
What does it look like to you?
What is the ABC saying?
Why doesn’t John Williams explain that it is getting wetter in the north?
I’m not suggesting we ignore northern Australia, but talking about an Australian-wide trend is not really useful information, especially when trend maps are available on the BOM website that show regional trends.
Its getting wetter in the north west, and while there is no strong 100 year trend, there is a 50 year drying trend around Perth, in the south, and in in the east.
John Williams and the media in general probably focus on the dryness because its dry where the vast proportion of all the people and agricultural production are in Australia, and because farmers in drought has a strong effect on the Australian psyche.
It makes sense that there should be less coverage of less populated areas, or rather – areas where there is currently less of a =social= crisis due to the climate.
Which isn’t to say that they should or do get no coverage. The theme of farmers moving north where the rain is to adapt to changing conditions is a theme the media in Australia has picked up on quite a few times recently. The recent tropical cyclones up north got huge coverage.
I like this bit;
“Rare heavy rainfall in the Sahara Desert region of Tindouf produced severe flooding in February damaging 70 per cent of food production and displacing 60 000 people. In Bilma, Niger, the highest rainfall since 1923 affected nearly 50 000 people throughout August. In the same month, the most extensive precipitation in 50 years brought significant agricultural losses to the region of Zinder, Niger. Heavy rain also caused devastating floods in Ethiopia in August, claiming more than 600 lives”.
What they conspicuously did not mention was the fact that the people of the Tindouf region of the Sahara Desert went on to have one of their best seasons ever with production far in excess of the meagre losses during the flood.
What they conspicuously did not mention was that from Bilma to Zinder in Niger, and in Ethiopia, they had a really good season from September on, with full soil moisture profiles for the rest of the growing season.
This may sound like a silly question but could someone explain, exactly, how these global mean temperatures are calculated? We all assume we know how a mean is calculated but it is time we nailed it down for all to see.
Hi Ian,
I was interested to find out more about the food production and soil moisture profiles etc in the Tindouf region and in Niger and Ethiopia. Could you help me out with a good link or two to sources of info on this?
Steve
Apparently the global mean is calculated by the a research unit attached to the UK Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/obsdata/globaltemperature.html
Further to Jen’s remarks:
While it is important to look at recent weather patterns over Australia as a whole, most people live ‘down here’ and not ‘up there’, so the focus should be on why SE Australia has been so hot and dry. In many parts of NSW the past 6 years have been especially dry. Some places have not recorded a single year of above average rain over the same period. Over a 100 year time frame, 6 consecutive years of such low rainfall is very unusual. In the central tablelands west of Sydney, the eastern fall of which feeds Lake Burragorang (Sydney’s water supply), the rainfall deficit is so bad that I wonder how long it will be before some of the large Mountain Gums start dying. It is possible that the dry we have in SE Australia is related to the SOI staying negative most of the time for the last 5 years (for example SOI was negative for 63% of months from Jan 2001 to July 2006, compared to 49% of months over all years 1876-2006), but the big concern is that these changes in weather patterns are for the long haul.
I’m a bit disappointed, despite our very best efforts 2006 was only the 6th hottest on record.
If 2006 was the 6th warmest on record when were the others?
Only Steve would need a web link to confirm that regions that suffer a flood in August will have a full soil moisture profile in September. And only Steve would need a web link to confirm that a full moisture profile in September in the southern hemisphere will lead to a very good spring growing season.
And only Steve would need a web link to tell him that a flood in August will produce an abundance of fodder in range lands that will last well into summer.
It is what happens after floods, Steve, and then all the little piggies go to market.
Well how did you determine that the Tindouf people had the best season ever?
Could you give me a reference, I’m interested to find out. Or perhaps you could tell me the logic behind this conclusion, if it is your own deduction.
The WMO are great ‘cherry pickers’; all in the cause of promoting AGW. Their bias is breathtaking.
From their above missive…
Para.5. They do not mention Aus. extreme cold and record low temps. thr’out country such as in May June& Nov. this year.
P.6. No mention of record snowfall and low temps. last winter throughout much of europe. No mention of death toll from building collapses from weight of snow, and from people just freezing to death, ditto China, ditto Japan etc.
P.8.Just like other great and greater dry periods recorded in Aust. history.
P.11. No mention of extreme cold this past winter spring in southern Africa.
P.14. Here they actually mention snowmelt in relation to the Danube flooding!! However no comment about the near record and in some places ,record, snowfalls in the catchment of the Danube which were a prime cause of the flooding.
P.17. No mention of the quiet, and below average US hurricane season.(After all the nonsense about Katrina)
P.20. ‘On record.’ What record? What’s the data?
P.21. Ditto ‘arctic sea ice decline’. During the MWP, there was no sea ice, in the 15 cent. a chinese naval squadron sailed across the North Pole. In March, 1959, the USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole, in very thin ice. Here are some interesting pics of that event. .Navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm
The Skate is now de-commissioned.
The WMO should be de-commissioned.
Seems African harvest was generally above average
http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/j8123e/j8123e05.htm
When you say the Chinese sailed across the north pole in the MWP, are you referring to claims made in Gavin Menzies book “1421”?
See here if so:
http://www.1421exposed.com/
Maybe Sid was referring to other Chinese that Skated on thin ice, there are so many of them and they all look the same!
No, I have not read Menzies work. In 2000, about October, I think it was, there was an extensive write up of a report by The History of Discoveries Society in Washington DC. detailing known facts about early voyages of discovery. The Society was quite thorough with research, and did seem to give credence to this possible voyage. At issue was a Chinese map with a ship, which seemed to be authentic, although attempts to prove it otherwise, were being undertaken at the time. (am trying to find a copy of the report which I have filed away!)
Steve, I did not say the people of the Tindauf region had their best season ever. What I said was they had “one of their best seasons ever”. And the basis for this deduction is that they had a flood, and according to WMO, a rare one, at the beginning of spring, the growing season.
And most seven year old farm kids would have no trouble grasping the high probability of a very good season because of it. But if you have a brain that is only capable of processing downloads then I guess you will just have to wait until they set up “Google Common Sense”.
So Ian you have no proof?
Nice try at a bit of casuistry, Simon C and Steve. I have no proof that parts of Africa benefited from floods that were listed as adverse impacts of climate change, in the same way that the original listing has no proof that the original flooding was uniformly bad.
But reasonable men and women with a basic understanding of southern hemisphere seasonal cycles and semi-arid zone agriculture would conclude that significant ecological and economic benefits were produced by flooding in August.
I regret to observe that you two appear to have trouble retaining the conclusions of reasonable men and women. But that’s your problem, not mine or the Nigerians.
Ian, the Tindouf region (in Algeria) is in the northern hemisphere, and was flooded in February, not August. Nigeria is also north of the equator.
Fairly close to the equator though – south of the tropic of cancer. Using my obviously limited common sense on this matter, I’d wager that while there are no doubt big similarities with Australian agriculture south of the tropics, there are most likely plenty of differences still between tindouf climate and agriculture and Australian, not to mention the range of other factors (such as availability of seed, and ability to cope with a humanitarian crisis brought on by flooding) that would make agricultural performance in the region different from here.
Thanks for the suggestion on “Google Common Sense.” However, I’m still waiting on “Google BS filter”.
Certainly the Somalis are “enjoying” their recent flood (not).
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/world/africa/12flood.html?ex=1323579600&en=394b76ef15bf2386&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://members.tripod.com/~sepado/floods.html
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6181566.stm
Again, so Ian you have no proof?
You’re just saying ‘it’s commonsense’ OK. Fine, but just don’t say it’s a fact. It’s not. Just because you think it should be fact doesn’t make it one.
Roger Pielke Sr’s view:
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/12/20/wmo-statement-on-the-status-of-the-global-climate-in-2006-a-comment-by-climate-science/
The two data sets that are referred to, however, are NOT different and are NOT independent assessments of temperature anomalies. As we report in the Pielke et al. paper,
“The raw surface temperature data from which all of the different global surface temperature trend analyses are derived are essentially the same. The best estimate that has been reported is that 90-95% of the raw data in each of the analyses is the same [Phil Jones, personal communication]. That the analyses produce similar trends should, therefore, come as no surprise.”
Thus the WMO Statement that there are two data sets is misleading, and provides a reader of the Statement with an inaccurate assumption on the robustness of the assessment of the surface temperature trends.
The preparation of the WMO Statement, therefore, is not a balanced presentation of climate system heat content changes (e.g. “global warming”), or climate, in general, in 2006. What should be of concern to everyone is that peer-reviewed issues that have been reported in the scientific literature concerning the robustness of the land surface temperature data to assess multi-decadal trends and anomalies to tenths of a degree are being ignored. Moreover, there is a clear emphasis on warm events rather than also including the colder than average episodes that occurred during the year. It is encouraging, however, that the WMO Statement had a regional focus in part of their Statement, as has been urged by Climate Science.
For their Final Statement for 2006, all of us should encourage the WMO to prepare a summary of the climate which includes each of the major regional temperature anomaly events, even if they conflict with the multi-decadal global climate models predictions.