Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Let’s talk about droughts. Unfortunately, to do that, we’d have to understand what droughts are. And that understanding doesn’t come easy.
“Drought is a complex phenomenon which is difficult to monitor and define. Depending on the variables used to characterize it and the systems or sectors being impacted, drought may be classified in different types such as meteorological (precipitation deficits), agricultural (e.g. crop yield reductions or crop failure, related to soil moisture deficits), ecological (related to plant water stress that causes e.g. tree mortality) or hydrological droughts (e.g. water shortage in streams or storages such as reservoirs, lakes, lagoons and groundwater).” Alimonti (2022) (currently threatened with retraction due to unscientific pressure from the Climate Crisis Gang)
Or, according to the National Geographic: “Drought is a complicated phenomenon, and can be hard to define. One difficulty is that drought means different things in different regions. A drought is defined depending on the average amount of precipitation that an area is accustomed to receiving.”… “A drought in Atlanta could be a very wet period in Phoenix, Arizona!” (National Geographic isn’t threatened with retraction…though many of its entertainment articles – masquerading as ‘science’ — should be. NatGeo is owned by the entertainment arm of Disney Corporation.)
There are at least 11 types of droughts mentioned at aginfo.in.
The end result of this situation is that there is no single metric capable of determining or representing the presence or absence of drought. Thus, measuring or quantifying something as vague as “number of droughts globally” or “percentage of the world under drought” becomes almost impossible.
Just to give a taste of the sources of possible confusion about droughts, the WestWide Drought Trackercurrently offers the following drought images for the western Unites States, all for July 2023:
The maps all seem to agree that it has been or is droughty in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Northern Idaho) but there is little agreement elsewhere.
So, when we want to write about “The Drought” in California? Which of these should we use? Which of these did your local newspaper or weather broadcaster use? How and why did he chose that particular one?
It is possible to dig in and find out what each different image is telling us but it is not easy.
The two maps are pretty similar, the upper one has the state boundaries and the lower has areas by Drought Intensity and Drought Impacts.
However, it is difficult to find even one of the WestWide Drought Tracker views that look like either of the U.S. Drought Monitor views. Yet they are for the same period (WestWide charts are only a week later than the end of July). How can this be?
“When you think about drought, you probably think about water—or the lack of it. Precipitation plays a major role in the creation of the Drought Monitor, but the map’s authors consider many data sources. Some of the numeric inputs include precipitation, streamflow, reservoir levels, temperature and evaporative demand, soil moisture and vegetation health. No single piece of evidence tells the full story, and neither do strictly physical indicators. That’s why the USDM isn’t a statistical model; it’s a blend of these physical indicators with drought impacts, field observations and local insight from a network of more than 450 experts. Using many different types of data and reconciling them with expert interpretation is what makes the USDM unique. We call it a convergence of evidence approach.”
Let’s be clear: There are some numerical inputs (things that have been measured). There are many subjective inputs: vegetative health, field observations, local insight. Apparently, there are some indicators that are not “strictly physical” that are considered. (What these could possibly be, regarding drought, is a mystery to me…maybe emotional indicators?) All that is then subjected to “expert interpretation” producing “a convergence of evidence”. I don’t mean this as a criticism – I’m simply telling you what the USDM says their maps represent. Maybe this is in response to the problems and confusion caused by the 12 images using differing indices changing over time periods from WestWide? Is it better to have one-drought-image-to-rule-them-all? I don’t know.
And what is the WestWide Drought Tracker? It is brought to us by the University of Idaho, the Western Regional Climate Center, and the Desert Research Institute. They offer many standardized drought indices, each of which is explained on their Overview page. Their site offers:
What products are available on WWDT? (via this page)
Drought Indices (links below are to additional explainers for each)
Temperature Data and Anomaly (from 1981-2010 normals)
Temperature Percentiles
Precipitation Data and Anomaly (from 1981-2010 normals)
Precipitation Percentiles
All these are involved with the idea of drought. All of them have caveats, for instance: They note that for the Palmer Indices, particularly PDSI, “Snow and its effects are not represented.” NCAR says the PDSI “Does not account for snow or ice (delayed runoff); assumes precipitation is immediately available”. We must remember, they are indicies, each one is an index. All of the indices are calculations, various models, with multiple inputs, many of which are not measurements but parameters.
“What is index in a research project? An index is a composite measure of variables, or a way of measuring a construct….using more than one data item. An index is an accumulation of scores from a variety of individual items.”[source] Or “An index is a type of measure that contains several indicators and is used to summarize some more general concept.” [source]
In other words, an index is a numerical scaling created by combining various factors believed to be integral to the concept – in this case: drought.
NCAR claims that “Maps of the monthly self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index (SCPDSI) have been calculated for the period 1901–2002 for the contiguous United States (20°–50°N and 130°–60°W) and Europe (35°–70°N, 10°W–60°E) with a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5°”. The procedure for calculating the SCPDSI (sometimes sc-PDSI) for any location is given in this paper (see section 2, second paragraph). Count the number of assumed values, parameters, non-measured factors. Raise your hand if you think that climatic records accurate enough for this procedure have been carefully and continuously kept at a spatial resolution of5° for the entire United States since 1901. How about for the entire world?
In the present day, we are being told “Human-induced climate change has contributed to increases in agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions due to evapotranspiration increases (medium confidence).” IPCC AR6 Chapter 11
With our present confusion in measuring of drought and droughts, it is no surprise that the IPCC has only medium confidence in the above statement and limits its cause to evapotranspiration increases and to some regions. (Is medium confidence a “maybe”, a “might be” or a “probably”?)
So, I have my doubts about droughts. I have doubts that we can accurately ‘measure’ them on any scale other than locally. We can tell when an entire region is in a desperate drought – like the Horn of Africa has currently causing famine or the Southwest U.S. which has been experiencing various levels of drought on a long-term scale but even there, in the desert, some of our indices (SPIs) show a lack of drought. For example, in Arizona.
But there is no line solidly enough drawn – no strict definition — no single dependable scientific metric — that we can use to allow us to determine if there are more or fewer droughts or wider areas of drought – the definitions and even the indices are far too ambiguous for use in any real scientific manner. Mapping and analyzing various indices cannot tell us very much about the world. We can say this or that index is trending up or down but the indices are not real world conditions, the indices are not droughts — they can tell us something, but cannot answer a question such as: Are there more droughts globally now than in the past?
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
The same issue affects a lot climate research and data sets. We see graphs and charts of things that are not “real”, not physical — they are like the drought indices, blends of some measurements, some maths, some statistics and some expert interpretations. I am sorry but these are not truly proper fodder for scientific study. Strict science requires actually measuring the thing of interest…not something “sort of like it”.
And we see vast, huge, enormous amounts of time spent analyzing these data sets, many of which cannot possibly be accurate representations of what they are claimed to be. This is as simple as a single weather station’s Daily Average Temperature – it is not the average of the day’s temperature readings at all but the median of the instantaneous high and low. This erroneous data is blended into regional and/or national data bases which then are further averaged, krigged, etc. into even more synthetic data which is also not what it claims to be. On and on….
The moral of the story: keep your eyes open and make sure you ask exactly what has been measured, if it was measured at all, and make sure that you know the implications of the answers those questions.
IMAGE: WHITEBARK PINES GROWING IN COLD, HIGH ELEVATION REGIONS GREW MORE DURING DROUGHTS, WHICH LENGTHENED THEIR GROWING SEASON.view more CREDIT: JOAN DUDNEY
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Droughts can be good for trees. Certain trees, that is.
Contrary to expectation, sometimes a record-breaking drought can increase tree growth. Why and where this happens is the subject of a new paper in Global Change Biology.
A team of scientists led by Joan Dudney at UC Santa Barbara examined the drought response of endangered whitebark pine over the past century. They found that in cold, harsh environments — often at high altitudes and latitudes — drought can actually benefit the trees by extending the growing season. This research provides insights into where the threats from extreme drought will be greatest, and how different species and ecosystems will respond to climate change.
Many factors can constrain tree growth, including temperature, sunlight and the availability of water and nutrients. The threshold between energy-limited and water-limited systems turns out to be particularly significant. Trees that try to grow in excessively cold temperatures — often energy-limited systems — can freeze to death. On the other hand, too little water can also kill a tree, particularly in water-limited systems. Over time, many tree species have adapted to these extreme conditions, and their responses are broadly similar. They often reduce growth-related activities, including photosynthesis and nutrient uptake, to protect themselves until the weather improves.
“Interestingly, the transition from energy- to water-limited growth can produce highly unexpected responses,” explained Dudney, an assistant professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Program. “In cold, energy-limited environments, extreme drought can actually increase growth and productivity, even in California.”
Dudney and her colleagues extracted 800 tree cores from whitebark pine across the Sierra Nevada, comparing the tree rings to historical records of climate conditions. This climate data spanned 1900 to 2018, and included three extreme droughts: 1959–61, 1976–77, and 2012–15. They recorded where tree growth and temperature showed a positive relationship, and where the relationship was negative.
The authors found a pronounced shift in growth during times of drought when the average maximum temperature was roughly 8.4° Celsius (47.1° Fahrenheit) between October and May. Above this threshold, extreme drought reduced growth and photosynthesis. Below this temperature, trees grew more in response to drought.
“It’s basically, ‘how long is the growing season?’” Dudney said. Colder winters and higher snowpack often lead to shorter growing seasons that constrain tree growth. Even during an extreme drought, many of the trees growing in these extreme environments did not experience high water stress. This surprised the team of scientists, many of whom had observed and measured the unprecedented tree mortality that occurred at slightly lower elevations in the Sierra Nevada.
Dudney was curious whether drought impacts growth in just the main trunk, or the whole tree. Without more data, the trends they saw could be a result of disparate processes all responding to the drought differently, she explained. Fortunately, whitebark pine retains its needles for roughly eight years. This provided additional data that could address this question.
The researchers shifted their attention from dendrology to chemistry. Atoms of the same element can have different weights, or isotopes, thanks to the number of neutrons they contain. Several aspects of a plant’s metabolism can influence the relative abundance of heavy, carbon-13 and light, carbon-12 in tissues such as their leaves and needles. These changes provide a rough guide to the amount of water stress a tree experienced during drought. This was a boon for the researchers, because isotopic data from the pine needles spanned drought and non-drought years.
Analyzing needle growth, carbon and nitrogen isotopes revealed that the whole tree was affected by the threshold between water-limited and energy-limited systems. Trunk growth, needle growth, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling responded in opposite directions to drought above and below the threshold between energy- and water-limited systems.
The future of whitebark pine is highly uncertain. The species — recently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — faces many threats, including disease, pine beetle infestation and impacts from altered fire regimes. It’s clear from this research that drought and warming will likely exacerbate these threats in water-limited regions, but warming may be beneficial for growth in energy-limited environments. “This research can help develop more targeted conservation strategies,” said Dudney, “to help restore this historically widespread tree species.” Indeed, the pine’s range encompasses a diverse region, stretching from California to British Columbia, and east to Wyoming.
The findings also have implications more broadly. Approximately 21% of forests are considered energy limited, and an even higher percentage can be classified as water limited. So transitions between these two climatic regimes likely occur around the globe. What’s more, the transition seems to have an effect on nitrogen cycling. Trees in water-limited environments appeared to rely less on symbiotic fungi for nitrogen, which is critical for tree growth in harsh, energy-limited environments.
“Droughts are leading to widespread tree mortality across the globe,” Dudney said, “which can accelerate global warming.”
Deciphering the many ways trees respond to drought will help us better predict where ecosystems are vulnerable to climate change and how to develop more targeted strategies to protect our forests.
On the contrary, there is nothing to suggest that the world’s climate is any different to what it has been for the last few decades.
ANTARCTICA – UNDATED:***EXCLUSIVE*** An iceberg floating off the Western Antarctic peninsula, Antarctica, Southern Ocean. Humans may have spent thousands of year perfecting art and architecture but these incredible photographs of spectacular icebergs show they are no match for nature’s grand designs. Captured off the Western Antarctic peninsula the colossal ice carvings have been whittled away by biting polar winds, water, and chilling sub-zero temperatures to form incredible mega structures that take the breath away. In the vast array of jaw-dropping shapes some icebergs feature towering pillars of ice while others appear to have had bridges and tunnels masterfully bored into their huge floating masses. Some even take on the form of gigantic frosty bridges of ice and snow with intricate ‘arches’ carved out by the harsh Antarctic conditions. Photogrpaher Steven Kazlowski, 40, witnessed the amazing sights as he toured the world’s most southerly continent on a 62-foot engined sailing boat. Against the jaw-dropping Antarctic background each paints a magnificent picture – and even caught the eyes of passing Gentoo penguins and humpback whales. (Photo by Steven Kazlowski / Barcroft Media / Getty Images)
I was away when this was published, so I won’t do a full analysis. There are, however, a few items I wish to highlight:
Drought in India:
As far as global food production is concerned, cereal production hit an all time record in 2021, as it did in Asia and Africa. Whether 2.3 billion are facing food insecurity or not, it has nothing to do either with climate change or the weather:
Secondly, they claim that crop yields in India suffered because of the drought in spring last year. The reality is that weather is never perfect, and sometimes it is too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry. To cherry pick a couple of months weather and call it climate change is fraudulent.
In any event, drought or no drought, both cereal and horticulture products set record high outputs in the July 2021 to June 2022 period.
Despite the claim of record low sea ice, the WMO fail to point out that the long term trend is flat, and that Antarctic sea ice extent reached record highs just a few years ago. Was that due to global warming as well?
It is clear from the data that there are often wild swings in sea ice extent form year to year, so plainly there are natural factors at work here.
Climate Change Continues To Advance
According to the WMO:
From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022,
On the contrary, there is nothing to suggest that the world’s climate is any different to what it has been for the last few decades.
From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022, … Droughts, floods and heatwaves affected … every continent … Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent .. melting … European glaciers …
From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022, … Droughts, floods and heatwaves affected … every continent … Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent .. melting … European glaciers …
WMO annual report highlights continuous advance of climate change
Climate Publicado 21 April 2023 Press Release Number: 21042023
Geneva, 21 April 2023 (WMO) – From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022, according to the annual report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Droughts, floods and heatwaves affected communities on every continent and cost many billions of dollars. Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts.
The State of the Global Climate 2022 shows the planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere caused by record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. For global temperature, the years 2015-2022 were the eight warmest on record despite the cooling impact of a La Niña event for the past three years. Melting of glaciers and sea level rise – which again reached record levels in 2022 – will continue to up to thousands of years.
“While greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate continues to change, populations worldwide continue to be gravely impacted by extreme weather and climate events. For example, in 2022, continuous drought in East Africa, record breaking rainfall in Pakistan and record-breaking heatwaves in China and Europe affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
“However, collaboration amongst UN agencies has proven to be very effective in addressing humanitarian impacts induced by extreme weather and climate events, especially in reducing associated mortality and economic losses. The UN Early Warnings for All Initiative aims to fill the existing capacity gap to ensure that every person on earth is covered by early warning services. At the moment about one hundred countries do not have adequate weather services in place. Achieving this ambitious task requires improvement of observation networks, investments in early warning, hydrological and climate service capacities,” he said.
The new WMO report is accompanied by a story map, which provides information for policy makers on how the climate change indicators are playing out, and which also shows how improved technology makes the transition to renewable energy cheaper and more accessible than ever.
In addition to climate indicators, the report focuses on impacts. Rising undernourishment has been exacerbated by the compounded effects of hydrometeorological hazards and COVID-19, as well as of protracted conflicts and violence.
Throughout the year, hazardous climate and weather-related events drove new population displacement and worsened conditions for many of the 95 million people already living in displacement at the beginning of the year, according to the report.
The report also puts a spotlight on ecosystems and the environment and shows how climate change is affecting recurring events in nature, such as when trees blossom, or birds migrate.
The WMO State of the Global Climate report was released ahead of Earth Day 2023. Its key findings echo the message of UN Secretary-General António Guterres for Earth Day.
“We have the tools, the knowledge, and the solutions. But we must pick up the pace. We need accelerated climate action with deeper, faster emissions cuts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius. We also need massively scaled-up investments in adaptation and resilience, particularly for the most vulnerable countries and communities who have done the least to cause the crisis,” said Mr Guterres.
The WMO report follows the release of the State of the Climate in Europe report by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. It complements the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report, which includes data up to 2020.
Dozens of experts contribute to the report, including National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and Global Data and Analysis Centers, as well as Regional Climate Centres, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), the Global Cryosphere Watch and Copernicus Climate Change Service operated by ECMWF.
United Nations partners include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC), International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
Global mean temperature in 2022 was 1.15 [1.02 to 1.28] °C above the 1850-1900 average. The years 2015 to 2022 were the eight warmest in the instrumental record back to 1850. 2022 was the 5th or 6th warmest year. This was despite three consecutive years of a cooling La Niña – such a “triple-dip” La Niña has happened only three times in the past 50 years.
Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – reached record observed highs in 2021, the latest year for which consolidated global values are available (1984-2021). The annual increase in methane concentration from 2020 to 2021 was the highest on record. Real-time data from specific locations show levels of the three greenhouse gases continued to increase in 2022.
Reference glaciers for which we have long-term observations experienced an average thickness change of over −1.3 metres between October 2021 and October 2022. This loss is much larger than the average of the last decade. Six of the ten most negative mass balance years on record (1950-2022) occurred since 2015. The cumulative thickness loss since 1970 amounts to almost 30 m.
The European Alps smashed records for glacier melt due to a combination of little winter snow, an intrusion of Saharan dust in March 2022 and heatwaves between May and early September.
In Switzerland, 6% of the glacier ice volume was lost between 2021 and 2022 – and one third between 2001 and 2022.For the first time in history, no snow survived the summer melt season even at the very highest measurement sites and thus no accumulation of fresh ice occurred. A Swiss weather balloon recorded 0 C at a height of 5 184 m on 25 July, the highest recorded zero-degree line in the 69-year record and only the second time that the height of the zero-degree line had exceeded 5 000 m (16 404 feet). New record temperatures were reported from the summit of Mont Blanc.
Measurements on glaciers in High Mountain Asia, western North America, South America and parts of the Arctic also reveal substantial glacier mass losses. There were some mass gains in Iceland and Northern Norway associated with higher-than-average precipitation and a relatively cool summer.
According to the IPCC, globally the glaciers lost more than 6000 Gt of ice over the period 1993-2019. This represents an equivalent water volume of 75 lakes the size of Lac Leman (also known as Lake Geneva), the largest lake in Western Europe.
The Greenland Ice Sheet ended with a negative total mass balance for the 26th year in a row.
Sea ice in Antarctica dropped to 1.92 million km2 on February 25, 2022, the lowest level on record and almost 1 million km2 below the long-term (1991-2020) mean. For the rest of the year, it was continuously below average, with record lows in June and July.
Arctic sea ice in September at the end of the summer melt tied for the 11th lowest monthly minimum ice extent in the satellite record.
Ocean heat content reached a new observed record high in 2022. Around 90% of the energy trapped in the climate system by greenhouse gases goes into the ocean, somewhat ameliorating even higher temperature increases but posing risks to marine ecosystems. Ocean warming rates have been particularly high in the past two decades. Despite continuing La Niña conditions, 58% of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave during 2022.
Global mean sea level (GMSL) continued to rise in 2022, reaching a new record high for the satellite altimeter record (1993-2022). The rate of global mean sea level rise has doubled between the first decade of the satellite record (1993-2002, 2.27 mm∙yr–) and the last (2013-2022, 4.62 mm∙yr).
For the period 2005-2019, total land ice loss from glaciers, Greenland, and Antarctica contributed 36% to the GMSL rise, and ocean warming (through thermal expansion) contributed 55%. Variations in land water storage contributed less than 10%.
Ocean acidification: CO2 reacts with seawater resulting in a decrease of pH referred to as ‘ocean acidification’. Ocean acidification threatens organisms and ecosystem services. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report concluded that “There is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26 [thousand years] and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.
Drought gripped East Africa. Rainfall has been below-average in five consecutive wet seasons, the longest such sequence in 40 years. As of January 2023, it was estimated that over 20 million people faced acute food insecurity across the region, under the effects of the drought and other shocks.
Record breaking rain in July and August led to extensive flooding in Pakistan. There were over 1 700 deaths, and 33 million people were affected, while almost 8 million people were displaced. Total damage and economic losses were assessed at US$ 30 billion. July (181% above normal) and August (243% above normal) were each the wettest on record nationally.
Record breaking heatwaves affected Europe during the summer. In some areas, extreme heat was coupled with exceptionally dry conditions. Excess deaths associated with the heat in Europe exceeded 15 000 in total across Spain, Germany, the UK, France, and Portugal.
China had its most extensive and long-lasting heatwave since national records began, extending from mid-June to the end of August and resulting in the hottest summer on record by a margin of more than 0.5 °C. It was also the second-driest summer on record.
Food insecurity: As of 2021, 2.3 billion people faced food insecurity, of which 924 million people faced severe food insecurity. Projections estimated 767.9 million people facing undernourishment in 2021, 9.8% of the global population. Half of these are in Asia and one third in Africa.
Heatwaves in the 2022 pre-monsoon season in India and Pakistan caused a decline in crop yields. This, combined with the banning of wheat exports and restrictions on rice exports in India after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, threatened the availability, access, and stability of staple foods within international food markets and posed high risks to countries already affected by shortages of staple foods.
Displacement: In Somalia, almost 1.2 million people became internally displaced by the catastrophic impacts of drought on pastoral and farming livelihoods and hunger during the year, of whom more than 60 000 people crossed into Ethiopia and Kenya during the same period. Concurrently, Somalia was hosting almost 35 000 refugees and asylum seekers in drought-affected areas. A further 512 000 internal displacements associated with drought were recorded in Ethiopia.
The flooding in Pakistan affected some 33 million people, including about 800 000 Afghan refugees hosted in affected districts. By October, around 8 million people have been internally displaced by the floods with some 585 000 sheltering in relief sites.
Environment: Climate change has important consequences for ecosystems and the environment. For example, a recent assessment focusing on the unique high-elevation area around the Tibetan Plateau, the largest storehouse of snow and ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic, found that global warming is causing the temperate zone to expand.
Climate change is also affecting recurring events in nature, such as when trees blossom, or birds migrate. For example, flowering of cherry blossom in Japan has been documented since AD 801 and has shifted to earlier dates since the late nineteenth century due to the effects of climate change and urban development. In 2021, the full flowering date was 26 March, the earliest recorded in over 1200 years. In 2022, the flowering date was 1 April.
Not all species in an ecosystem respond to the same climate influences or at the same rates. For example, spring arrival times of 117 European migratory bird species over five decades show increasing levels of mismatch to other spring events, such as leaf out and insect flight, which are important for bird survival. Such mismatches are likely to have contributed to population decline in some migrant species, particularly those wintering in sub-Saharan Africa.
Notes for Editors
Information used in this report is sourced from a large number of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and associated institutions, as well as Regional Climate Centres, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), the Global Cryosphere Watch and the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change services. United Nations partners include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC), International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
WMO extends its gratitude for all the dedicated hard work from WMO’s network of experts which makes this report an authoritative source of information on the state of the climate and on climate impacts. We are especially grateful to John Kennedy, who acted as lead author of this report.
Where possible the WMO climatological standard normal, 1991-2020, is used as a base period for consistent reporting. For some indicators however, it is not possible to use this baseline due to a lack of measurement during the whole period or because a longer period is needed to calculate representative statistics.
For global mean temperature, a baseline of 1850-1900 is used. This is the baseline used in recent IPCC reports as a stand in for pre-industrial temperatures and is relevant for understanding progress relative to the aims of the Paris Agreement.
WMO uses six international datasets for temperatures HadCRUT.5.0.1.0 (UK Met Office), NOAAGlobalTemp v5 (USA), NASA GISTEMP v4 (USA), Berkeley Earth (USA), ERA5 (ECMWF), JRA-55 (Japan).
The World Meteorological Organization is the United Nations System’s authoritative voice on Weather, Climate and Water
We do have other sea temperature data, mostly surface temperature measurements of varying quality. Ocean surface temperature actually fell between 1940 and 1980. Did global warming take a holiday during these 40 years? Or is ocean heat content and heat flows yet another large and poorly understood climate system, which displays significant independence from the alleged driver of global warming?
HADSST3 Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly. Source WoodForTrees.
Global mean sea level (GMSL) continued to rise in 2022 … 4.62mm / year. So what? I once had a house which was low laying enough to be at risk from tidal flooding. The next owner elevated the floor by 30cm. At 4.62mm / year sea level rise, that’s good for 65 years of additional protection, until the risk of flooding returns to the level I accepted. Even if sea level rise was to accelerate to 6mm, how long do houses normally last a without major renovation? The sea level rise rate snow and for the foreseeable future can easily be accommodated by regular maintenance of homes and urban infrastructure like roads and sea walls.
There is nothing new about adapting to changes in sea level. The title of my home actually to 3ft depth under water, because the original title was granted in the 12th century by King John, brother of King Richard the Lionheart, King John who is the main villain in the story of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood. Since the 12th century, through 800 years of land subsidence, much of the original land title is now permanently submerged. Yet the house I lived in for a time was dry and mostly flood free. All those centuries, through 800 years during which the sea gradually encroached on the land, successive owners adapted and kept their home dry, staying ahead of those changes in sea level, just as we and our descendants will adapt to any future changes in sea level.
Record breaking heatwaves in Europe – like the European Megadrought of 1531-1540? A period of mass starvation, crop failures, searing heat, melting glaciers? I wonder how the 1500s Europeans hid all their fossil fuel use from today’s historians?
The claim the Pakistan drought is climate related is also absurd.
… Droughts in Pakistan region are mainly due to various kinds of failures of rains from southwest monsoon. Also there seems to be some association between El Nino and La Nina events and weak monsoons. Pakistan frequently experiences several droughts. The Punjab province experienced the worst droughts in 1899, 1920 and 1935. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) experienced the worst droughts in 1902 and 1951, while Sindh had its worst droughts in 1871, 1881,1899,1931,1947 and 1999. Over more than hundred year’s period between 1871-1988, 11 out of 21 drought years were El Nino years. The El Nino phase of the Southern Oscillations (ENSO) has direct impact on drought in Pakistan as it poses mainly negative impact on summer monsoon. …Read more: Pakistan Government / Drought bulletin of Pakistan, 2013
The Pakistan Government bulletin also mentioned climate change is making the extremes more extreme, but strangely doesn’t give any additional context beyond a single bland statement, in stark contrast to the rest of the document which strives to provide a detailed explanation of Pakistan’s rain and drought cycles – almost like the climate claim was tacked on later, by someone other than the original authors.
What about food insecurity? Food insecurity is rising – absolutely. The price of fertiliser and agricultural chemicals has gone through the roof. Why are these chemicals becoming so expensive? Because the cost of production is related to the cost of energy. Manufacturing fertiliser especially requires a great deal of heat and pressure, which has to be supplied via energy intensive mechanical processes. Add the disruption of the Ukraine war to world food availability, and the Western war on agriculture, and it is not difficult to understand why a lot of people are having trouble getting enough to eat in today’s world.
Fertiliser price vs fertiliser input price. Source World Bank, Fair Use, Low Resolution Image to Identify the Subject.
Displacement in Somalia? If I lived in a nightmare terrorist run hellhole like Somalia, I’d probably want to be “displaced” as well.
Japanese cherry blossoms blooming early? So what? Might help offset some of that food insecurity caused by the Western energy policy and fertiliser availability catastrophe.
In my opinion the WMO has produced a big load of empty hype. They made no effort to present and discuss the merits of obvious alternative explanations for their claims in the press release, though the report is a little more measured in its explanations.
The biggest problem the WMO hilighted, food insecurity, is fixable. If the problems with food production were resolved, such as a cessation of the European, Canadian and New Zealand wars on agriculture and energy affordability, and if there was a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine, so Ukraine and Russia can get back to unfettered production and export of food, food prices would rapidly return to affordable levels.
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