Human handprint marks Australia's hottest year

Despite the Australian prime minister’s climate science scepticism, research funded by taxpayers has unanimously found man-made climate change guilty of causing the country’s record-breaking temperatures last year.

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, October 3, 2014

LONDON − Scientists are fond of saying that it is difficult to pin the blame for any one climate event onto climate change. But they have just made an exception by reporting that many things that happened in Australia in 2013 bore the signature of man-made climate change.

In that one year, Australia recorded its hottest day ever, its hottest month in the history books, its hottest summer, its hottest spring, and its hottest year overall.

Extreme events

And in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, examining extreme events around the world during 2013, a series of papers home in on the Australian heat waves, and identify a human influence.

“We often talk about the fingerprint of human-caused climate change when we look at extreme weather patterns,” said David Karoly, professor of meteorology at the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences. “This research across four different papers goes well beyond that.

“If we were climate detectives, then Australia’s hottest year on records in 2013 wasn’t just a smudged fingerprint at the scene of the crime, it was a clear and unequivocal handprint showing the impact of human-caused global warming.”

In general, the world’s meteorologists have found nothing unequivocal to suggest that global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion caused, for example, the Californian drought, extreme snow in the Spanish Pyrenees or an October blizzard in South Dakota in the US.

But they did find that global warming doubled the chance of severe heat waves in Australia − making extreme summer temperatures five times more likely, increasing the chance of drought conditions sevenfold, and making hot temperatures in spring 30 times more probable.

And they reckoned that the record hot year of 2013 would have been virtually impossible without global warming. At a conservative calculation, the science showed that the heat of 2013 was made 2,000 times more likely by global warming.

Different picture

Paradoxically, Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, was one of the world leaders who pointedly stayed away from the recent United Nations climate change summit in New York, and in the past has taken a sceptical stance on climate science. Yet research funded by Australian taxpayers has consistently painted a different picture.

“When it comes to what helped cause our hottest year on record, human-caused climate change is no longer a prime suspect − it is the guilty party,” said Dr Sophie Lewis, a paleoecologist at the Australian National University.

And her colleague, Sarah Perkins, a climate scientist at the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, warned that 2013 was only the beginning.

She said: “If we continue to put carbon into our atmosphere at the currently accelerating rate, years like 2013 will quickly be considered normal, and the impacts of future extremes will be well beyond anything modern society has experienced.” 

March Was 4th Warmest on Record Globally

by Andrea Thompson, Climate Central, April 14, 2014

March 2014 was the fourth-warmest March on record globally, according to recently released NASA data, making it the 349th month — more than 29 years — in which global temperatures were above the historic average.

The amounts that temperatures around the world differed from the historic average. Credit: NOAA

The planet’s average March temperature was 57.9 °F or 0.7 °C (or 1.2 °F) above the average temperature from 1951-1980 — behind only the March of 2002, 2010 and 1990, in that order. Data is still coming in that could change the temperature deviation from this March, but likely only a few hundredths of a degree in either direction, said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which compiles the temperature data.

This warm March follows on the heels of the announcements that this winter was the eighth warmest globally and that 2013 was anywhere from the 4th to 7th warmest year on record, depending on which data set is used.

RELATED	March was Coldest in U.S. Since 2002 2013 Is 6th Warmest Year; Climate Change Contributes A Cold U.S. Winter for Sure, but 8th Warmest Globally 2013 Climate By the Numbers

The warm winter period may surprise those in the U.S. who suffered through the effects of a wobbling polar vortex, but the months of December through February were 1.57 °F above the 20th century average, according to the National Climatic Data Center.  Scandinavia and the Russian Far East saw extremely warm winters, and the period is actually summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia saw another summer of intense heat waves, though they didn’t reach the extents seen in 2013, Australia’s warmest year on record.

NASA ranked 2013 as the seventh-warmest year on record, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranked it fourth, though the differences between the ranking amount to less than a couple tenths of a degree. The exact rankings matter less than the clear picture of a warming world the temperature records paint, Michael Mann, a climate scientists at Penn State, previously told Climate Central.

Temperature records show that 13 of the 14 warmest years on record have been in the 21st century.

How 2014 plays out in terms of warmest year rankings is uncertain, though projections of an El Nino developing this summer or fall could bump up the average temperature, and could likely do the same for 2015, experts, including Mann, have said.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/march-was-fourth-warmest-on-record-globally-17304

Andrew Freedman: It's Been Exactly 29 Years Since Earth Had a Colder-Than-Average Month

A man clears snow from his vehicle on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, March 17, 2014. IMAGE: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

by Andrew Freedman, Mashable, March 19, 2014

It's been exactly 29 years — or 348 consecutive months — since the last cooler-than-average month on this planet, according to new data released on Wednesday morning. The data, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), reflects the warming trend seen around the world during the past century, which scientists blame largely on the increasing amounts of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The last cooler-than-average month (based on a 1961 to 1990 average) on a global level was February of 1985, the year the first version of Microsoft Windows was released and the first Back to the Future film hit theaters.

NOAA announced that February of 2014, however, was not as unusually mild, globally-speaking, as other recent months, coming in as the 21st-warmest February since records began in 1880. When looking only at land surface temperatures, it was the coolest February since 1994, NOAA said.

SEE ALSO: This Winter Wasn't Nearly as Cold as You Think, Feds Say

The majority of the world experienced warmer-than-average monthly temperatures, and parts of the Arctic Ocean, western North Atlantic, and northeastern Pacific Ocean, among other areas, were record warm. Two areas that are normally frigid in February, Far East Russia and northern Scandinavia, had average temperatures of greater than 9 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the month.

Surface temperature anomalies for February 2014.

IMAGE: NOAA.

Parts of Finland, for example, saw February temperatures that averaged up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, and Germany had its sixth-warmest February on record.

Meanwhile, parts of Central and North America, including portions of thecontinental U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains, along with western Asia had monthly average temperatures that were more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit below their February average, NOAA said.

For meteorological winter, which runs from December through February, the global average temperature was the eighth highest on record, at more than 1 degree Fahrenheit above the 20th century average.

Austria, where records extend back 247 years, had its second-warmest winter on record, and Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark had winters that ranked in their top 5 warmest on record, NOAA said.

The U.S., however, had its 34th coldest winter on record, with a split personality featuring above average temperatures across the West, and much below average temperatures from the Midwest to the East. While there were many winter storms that criss-crossed the U.S. this winter, the country saw nothing like what hit the UK, where 12 major storms struck between December and the end of February, breaking rainfall records and causing extensive damage.

Northern Hemisphere snow cover was above average for the winter, and the 17th largest for February since such records began 48 years ago. North America had its ninth largest February snow cover extent on record, while Eurasia had its 21st largest, NOAA said.

According to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the average February Arctic sea ice extent was 5.58 million square miles, which was 350,000 square miles, or 5.9%, below the 1981 to 2010 average of 5.93 million square miles. At times, Arctic sea ice extent flirted with record low levels for February, and the overall February extent was the fourth lowest February Arctic ice extent since satellite records began in 1979.

In contrast, Antarctic sea ice, which covers a smaller area than Arctic sea ice, was well above average, at the fourth largest February ice extent on record.

Climate scientists have found that manmade climate change is very likely causing a decline in Arctic sea ice extent, but that the picture for the South Pole sea ice is more complicated, due to natural climate variability, the loss of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, and other causes.

While climate skeptics have seized on the growing Antarctic sea ice extent as evidence that global warming is not, in fact, melting global sea ice, most climate scientists say the sea ice trends are consistent with what is expected from manmade global warming.

http://mashable.com/2014/03/19/29-years-cooler-than-average/

Australian climate report reveals more hot days

by Peter Hannam, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 4, 2014

The rise in the number of extremely hot days is underlined in a new report that finds there were more in 2013 than in the entire 1910-40 period combined.

The State of the Climate report by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO finds Australia is being hit by more extreme heat and high-fire danger, and southern regions are drying out - trends that may accelerate as the planet heats up.

The biennial survey found mean temperatures nationwide had risen 0.9 degrees since 1910 and will be another 0.6-1.5 degrees warmer by 2030, compared with the 1980-99 average.

Below-average temperatures absent in past 12 months. Photo: BoM

By 2050, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow at the pace of the past decade, temperatures will rise between 2.2 and 5 degrees above the 1980-99 average, the agencies said.

Karl Braganza, head of climate monitoring at the bureau, said the rising tally of very hot days in the top 1 per cent of mean temperatures was significant.

Last year, Australia's hottest, recorded 28 such days - more than for the entire 1900-40 period. ''We're more frequently seeing that heat widespread across the whole continent. It's not just dominated by one region,'' Dr Braganza said.

Penny Whetton, a climate projection expert at CSIRO, said: ''We expect there to be a continuation of [the] warming and probably an acceleration … in the decades to come.''

Since 2001, record warm night-time temperatures have been five times as likely as cool ones, while there have been three times the number of record day-time maximums compared with cold ones.

Half of the extreme heat days over the past century have been registered in the past 20 years.

''That does pose a risk for fire danger and indeed the work we've done has indicated an increase in the fire weather conditions in the future in southern Australia,'' Dr Whetton said.

The report was released after the Abbott government's bid to axe the Climate Change Authority was blocked in the Senate on Monday, ensuring the body that offers advice on climate policy and targets would survive until at least July 1. Environment Minister Greg Hunt last week said the authority was not needed because the bureau and CSIRO provided ''comprehensive and independent advice'' on climate change.

The State of the Climate report makes for grim reading for farmers reliant on cool season rains. Since the mid-1990s, rainfall in the south-east has fallen 25% in April and May and 15% in the late-autumn, early-winter period.

The findings come less than a week after the Abbott government unveiled a $320 million drought package to aid farms mostly in Queensland and northern NSW.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-climate-report-reveals-more-hot-days-20140303-340k7.html

RealClimate: Hottest years rankings: (1) 2010, (2) 2005, (3) 2007/1998, (4) 2013/2009/2003/2002, (5) 2013/2006/2003/1998

by Stefan Rahmstorf, RealClimate, January 27, 2014

The global temperature data for 2013 are now published. 2010 and 2005 remain the warmest years since records began in the 19th century. 1998 ranks third in two records, and in the analysis of Cowtan and Way, which interpolates the data-poor region in the Arctic with a better method, 2013 is warmer than 1998 (even though 1998 was a record El Nino year, and 2013 was neutral).

The end of January, when the temperature measurements of the previous year are in, is always the time to take a look at the global temperature trend. (And, as the Guardian noted aptly, also the time where the “climate science denialists feverishly yell [...] that global warming stopped in 1998.”) Here is the ranking of the warmest years in the four available data sets of the global near-surface temperatures (1):

Rank	NASA GISS	NOAA NCDC	HadCRUT4	Cowtan & Way
1	2010	2010	2010	2010
2	2005	2005	2005	2005
3	2007	1998	1998	2007
4	2002	2013	2003	2009
5	1998	2003	2006	2013

New this year: for the first time there is a careful analysis of geographical data gaps – especially in the Arctic there’s a gaping hole – and their interpolation for the HadCRUT4 data. Thus there are now two surface temperature data sets with global coverage (the GISTEMP data from NASA have always filled gaps by interpolation). In these two data series 2007 is ranked 3rd. Their direct comparison is shown in the figure below.

Figure 1 Global temperature (annual values) in the data from NASA GISS (orange) and from Cowtan & Way (blue), i.e., HadCRUT4 with interpolated data gaps.

One can clearly see the extreme year 1998, which (thanks to the record-El Niño) stands out above the long-term trend like no other year. But even taking this outlier year as starting point, the linear trend 1998-2013 in all four data sets is positive. Also clearly visible is 2010 as the warmest year since records began, and the minima in the years 2008 and 2011/2012. But just like the peaks are getting higher, these minima are less and less deep.

In these data curves I cannot see a particularly striking or significant current “warming pause”, even though the warming trend from 1998 is of course less than the long-term trend. Even in Nature, there was recently a (journalistic) contribution that in its introduction strongly overstated this alleged “hiatus”. It makes a good story that perhaps some cannot resist. (“Warming trend is somewhat reduced, but within the usual range of variation” simply does not make good headline.)

The role of El Niño and La Niña

The recent slower warming is mainly explained by the fact that in recent years the La Niña state in the tropical Pacific prevailed, in which the eastern Pacific is cold and the ocean stores more heat (2). This is due to an increase in the trade winds that push water westward across the tropical Pacific, while in the east cold water from the depths comes to the surface (see last graph here). In addition, radiative forcing has recently increased more slowly (more on this in the analysis of Hansen et al. – definitely worth a read).

NASA shows the following graphic, where you can see that the warmer years tend to be those with an El Niño in the tropical Pacific (red years), while the particularly cool years are those with La Niña (blue years).

Figure 2. The GISS data, with El Niño and La Niña conditions highlighted. Neutral years like 2013 are gray. Source: NASA.

Quality of the interpolation

How good is the interpolation into regions not regularly covered by weather stations? In any case, of course, better than simply ignoring the gaps, as the HadCRUT and NOAA data have done so far.  The truly global average is important, since only it is directly related to the energy balance of our planet and thus the radiative forcing by greenhouse gases. An average over just part of the globe is not.  The Arctic has been warming disproportionately in the last ten to fifteen years.

But how well the interpolation works we know only since the important work of Cowtan and Way. These colleagues have gone to the trouble of carefully validating their method. Although there are no permanent weather stations in the Arctic, there is intermittent data from buoys and and from weather model reanalyses with which they could test their method. For the last few decades and Cowtan and Way also make use of satellite data (more on this in our article on underestimated warming). I therefore assume that the data from Cowtan and Way is the methodologically best estimate of the global mean temperature which we currently have. This correction is naturally small (less than a tenth of a degree) and hardly changes the long-term trend of global warming – but if you look deeper into  shorter periods of time, it can make a noticeable difference. The comparison with the uncorrected HadCRUT4 data is shown in the figure below.

Figure 3. Comparison of interpolated and non-interpolated HadCRUT4 data, as moving averages over 12 months. Source: Kevin Cowtan, University of York.

And here’s a look at the last years in detail:

Figure 4. The interpolated HadCRUT4 data (annual average) from 1970. Source: Kevin Cowtan, University of York.

Following this analysis, 2013 was thus even warmer than the record El-Niño-year 1998.

Conclusion

• In all four data series of the global near-surface air temperature, the linear trend even from the extreme El Niño year 1998 is positive, i.e. shows continued warming, despite the choice of a warm outlier as the initial year.
• In all four data series of the global near-surface air temperature, 2010 was the warmest year on record, followed by 2005.
• The year 1998 is, at best, rank 3 – in the currently best data set of Cowtan & Way, 1998 is actually only ranked 7th. Even 2013 is – without El Niño – warmer there than 1998.

The German news site Spiegel Online presents these facts under the headline Warming of the air paused for 16 years (my translation). The headline of the NASA news release, NASA Finds 2013 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming trend, is thus completely turned on its head.

This will not surprise anyone who has followed climate reporting of Der Spiegel in recent years. To the contrary – colleagues express their surprise publicly when a sensible article on the subject appears there. For years, Der Spiegel has acted as a gateway for dubious “climate skeptics” claims into the German media whilst trying to discredit top climate scientists (we’ve covered at least one example here).

Do Der Spiegel readers know more (as their advertising goes) – more than NASA, NOAA, Hadley Centre and the World Meteorological Organization WMO together? Or are they simply being taken for a ride for political reasons?

Footnotes

(1) In addition to the data of the near-surface temperatures, which are composed of measurements from weather stations and sea surface temperatures, there is also the microwave data from satellites, which can be used to estimate air temperatures in the troposphere in a few kilometers altitude. In the long-term climate trend since the beginning of satellite measurements in 1979, the tropospheric temperatures show a similar warming as the surface temperatures, but the short-term fluctuations in the troposphere are significantly different from those near the surface. For example, the El Niño peak in 1998 is about twice as high as in the surface data in the troposphere, see Foster and Rahmstorf 2011. In their trend from 1998 , the two satellite series contradict each other: UAH shows +0.05 °C per decade (a bit more than HadCRUT4), RSS shows -0.05 °C per decade.

(2) Another graphic (Figure 5) illustrates the change between El Niño and La Niña: the Oceanic Niño Index ONI, the standard index of NOAA to describe the seesaw in the tropical Pacific.

Figure 5. The ONI index. The arrows added by me point to some of the globally warm or cool years (compare Figure 1 or 4). Source: NOAA.

Weblinks

The global temperature jigsaw (an overview over the “pause” debate)
What ocean heating reveals about global warming

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/01/global-temperature-2013/

James Hansen et al: Global Temperature Update Through 2013

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140121_Temperature2013.pdf

Summary. Global surface temperature in 2013 was +0.6 °C (~1.1 °F) warmer than the 1951-1980 base period average, thus the seventh warmest year in the GISS analysis. The rate of global warming is slower in the past decade than in the prior three decades. Slower growth of net climate forcings and cooling in the tropical Pacific Ocean both contribute to the slower warming rate, with the latter probably the more important effect. The tropical Pacific cooling is probably unforced variability, at least in large part. The trend toward an increased frequency of extreme hot summer anomalies over land areas has continued despite the Pacific Ocean cooling. The “bell curves” for observed temperature anomalies show that, because of larger unforced variability in winter, it is more difficult in winter than in summer to recognize the effect of global warming on the occurrence of extreme warm or cold seasons. It appears that there is substantial likelihood of an El Niño beginning in 2014, and as a result a probable record global temperature in 2014 or 2015. 

The update through 2013 of the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) global temperature analysis[1]  (Fig. 1), available in detail on the GISS web site (www.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp), reveals 2013 as slightly warmer than the preceding two years and nominally the 7th warmest year in the GISS analysis. 

Although there are several sources of error in the estimated temperature, the biggest error in comparing global temperature for nearby years is from the incomplete spatial coverage of data. Uncertainty between nearby years is a few hundredths of a degree Celsius[1]. Thus, accounting for this uncertainty, we say that 2005 and 2010 tie for warmest year, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2013 tie as the 3rd through 9th warmest, and 2012 is the 10th warmest. The 14 warmest years all occurred since 1998 (including 1998). Large year-to-year temperature fluctuations in Fig. 1are caused mainly by natural oscillations of 
tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures as summarized by the Niño index (lower part of Fig. 1), which we illustrate with higher resolution in a later figure.

[Please see the rest at the link above.]

NOAA: 2013 global temperature ties as fourth warmest on record since 1880

Editor's note: NOAA & NASA will hold a teleconference for media today at 1:30 p.m. EST to discuss 2013 global climate conditions. Click here for details.

Contacts:  Katy Vincent, Katy.Vincent@noaa.gov, 828-257-3136 Brady Phillips, Brady.Phillips@noaa.gov, 202-407-1298

NOAA, January 21, 2014

The globally-averaged temperature for 2013 tied as the fourth warmest year since record keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA scientists. It also marked the 37th consecutive year with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average annual temperature was 1976. Including 2013, all 13 years of the 21st century (2001-2013) rank among the 15 warmest in the 134-year period of record. The three warmest years on record are 2010, 2005, and 1998. Most areas of the world experienced above-average annual temperatures. Over land, parts of central Asia, western Ethiopia, eastern Tanzania, and much of southern and western Australia were record warm, as were sections of the Arctic Ocean, a large swath of the southwestern Pacific Ocean, parts of the central Pacific, and an area of the central Indian Ocean. Only part of the central United States was cooler than average over land. Small regions scattered across the eastern Pacific Ocean and a region of the Southern Ocean south of South America were cooler than average. No region of the globe was record cold during 2013. This analysis (summary, full report) from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC, is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions. Map of 2013 global temperature percentiles as compared to the long-term history.  See more. (Credit:  NOAA/NCDC)     2013 global temperature highlights The globally-averaged annual combined land and ocean surface temperature was 1.12 °F (0.62 °C) above the 20th century average of 57.0 °F (13.9 °C). Numerically, this temperature departure for 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth warmest year since records began in 1880. Even when considering a margin of error of +/- 0.16 °F (0.09 °C), 2013 is still more likely than not to be among the top five warmest years on record. The global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.11 °F (0.06 °C) per decade from 1880 to 2013 and at an average rate of 0.27 °F (0.15 °C) per decade during the past 50 years (1964-2013). The 2013 worldwide land surface temperature was 1.78 °F (0.99 °C) above the 20th century average, making it the fourth warmest such period on record. The margin of error is +/- 0.34 °F (0.19 °C). The Arctic Oscillation was a major driver of weather patterns over land during early 2013 across the Northern Hemisphere, bringing cooler-than-average spring temperatures to much of Europe, the southeastern United States, northwestern Russia, and parts of Japan. In contrast, the Arctic region was considerably warmer than average during this period. Australia observed its warmest year in the country's 104-year period of record, with a nationally-averaged temperature that was 2.16 °F (1.20 °C) above the 1961-1990 average, easily surpassing the previous record set in 2005 by 0.31 °F (0.17 °C). Much of this warmth can be attributed to the record-warm summer (December 2012-February 2013) and spring (September-November 2013), with September having the largest temperature departure from average of any month since records began in 1910, at +4.95 °F (+2.75 °C). The warmth was also notable because it was widespread across the country, with every state and the Northern Territory ranking among their four warmest years on record. Finland had its sixth highest annual temperature since records began in 1847, with much of the country 1.8-3.6 °F (1-2 °C) above the 1981-2010 average. The 2013 global average ocean temperature was 0.86 °F (0.48 °C) above the 20th century average of 60.9 °F (16.1 °C), tying with 2006 as the eighth warmest year on record. ENSO-neutral conditions emerged in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean during the second half of 2012 and prevailed during all of 2013. 2013 precipitation highlights 2013 saw near average precipitation on balance for land-based rain gauges around the globe, at just 0.01 inch (0.31 mm) above the 1961-1990 average of 40.7 inches (1,033 mm). However, precipitation varied greatly across regions. In early 2013, much-below-average rainfall was recorded in northeastern Brazil, where parts of the region were experiencing their worst drought in the past half century. In December, many states in southeastern Brazil observed record high rainfall. At least seven cities in the region set new single monthly precipitation records. In southern Africa, Botswana and Namibia experienced their worst droughts in 30 years during 2013. The Southwest Asian monsoon season had an early onset of June 16 over all of India and contributed to the worst flooding and devastation in the past half century to regions near the India-Nepal border. The monsoon arrived 15 days early in Uttarakhand, with constant rain during June 15−18. Northwest India received nearly double its average June rainfall. The flooding occurred during the peak tourist and pilgrimage season, killing thousands of people. From the end of July to mid-August 2013, unusually heavy rain fell near the Amur River, which marks the border between China and Russia. The river reached a record 100.56 m, surpassing the previous record set in 1984, as heavy flooding hit parts of the region. The Songhuajiang and Liaohe River Basins in northeast China saw their heaviest floods since 1998. In eastern Russia, more than 140 towns were affected by their worst flooding in 120 years. 2013 snow and polar ice highlights For all of 2013, Arctic sea ice extent was below average, while Antarctic sea ice extent was above average. When examining both the Arctic and the Antarctic sea ice extents combined, the global sea ice extent was above average for eight of the 12 months of 2013. The December global sea ice extent was the fifth largest on record. On March 15, Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent at 5.84 million square miles, which is 197,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average maximum extent. The 2013 annual maximum extent was the sixth smallest on record. The 10 smallest maximum extents have occurred in the last 10 years, between 2004 and 2013. On September 13, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent. The annual minimum extent was 1.97 million square miles, marking the sixth smallest annual minimum extent on record. The 2013 minimum was 653,000 square miles larger than the record minimum extent that occurred on September 16, 2012 and about 432,000 square miles smaller than the 1981-2010 average. On September 22, the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its annual maximum. The annual maximum extent was 7.52 million square miles, marking the largest annual maximum extent on record. The 2013 maximum was about 11,600 square miles larger than the previous record large Antarctic annual maximum sea ice extent, which occurred in 2012, and 3.6% higher than the 1981-2010 average. The Antarctic sea ice extent set new records for largest monthly extents for each of the four months between August and November. The Northern Hemisphere winter (December 2012-February 2013) snow cover extent was 18.3 million square miles, which was 0.9 million square miles above the 1981-2010 average of 17.4 million square miles and the fourth largest seasonal snow cover extent for the hemisphere. Both North America and Eurasia had above-average winter snow cover extents. The winter seasons of 1977/78, 2009/10, and 2010/11 had larger Northern Hemisphere snow cover extents. Winter Northern Hemisphere snow cover has expanded at an approximate rate of 0.4% per decade. The Northern Hemisphere spring (March-May) snow cover extent was 11.64 million square miles, which was 151,000 square miles above the 1981-2010 average of 11.49 million square miles. This was the 23rd largest (25th smallest) spring snow cover extent on record for the Northern Hemisphere. North America had its 10th largest spring snow cover extent, while Eurasia had its 14th smallest spring snow cover extent. Spring Northern Hemisphere snow cover has shrunk at an approximate rate of 1.9 percent per decade. Global temperature highlights: December The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for December was the third highest on record for the month at 55.15 °F (12.84 °C), or 1.15 °F (0.64 °C), above the 20th century average. Numerically, this temperature departure was third highest on record. The margin of error associated with this temperature is +/- 0.14 °F (0.08 °C). The global land temperature was 2.02 °F (1.12 °C) above the 20th century average of 38.7 °F (3.7 °C), tying with 1998 as the 5th warmest December on record. This is much higher than December 2012, which was the 49th warmest December on record. The Southern Hemisphere observed its 2nd highest annually-averaged temperature over land during the month; the two warmest Decembers over land in this hemisphere are currently 2012 (record warmest) and 2013. The Northern Hemisphere had its 7th highest December temperature in the 134-year period of record. For the ocean, the December global sea surface temperature was 0.83 °F (0.46 °C), above the 20th century average of 60.4 °F (15.7 °C), tying with 2004 as the 7th highest for December on record. NOAA and NASA independently produce global temperature estimates, using data sets compiled by NOAA from US and other countries data. To view NASA's 2013 global temperature summary, visit http://t.co/K8Gco8gxiY Additional information can be found on the following web sites: NOAA 2013 global climate analysis http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/13    NOAA December global climate analysis  http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/12 NOAA Climate Portal  http://www.climate.gov/   NASA 2013 global temperature summary  http://www.giss.nasa.gov/     National Snow and Ice Data Center  http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

NOAA's mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and our other social media channels. Visit our news release archive.

Australia swelters after record hot 2013; farmers slaughter cattle, bushfire warning

by Matt Siegel and Colin Packham, Reuters, January 3, 2014

SYDNEY, Jan 3 (Reuters) - A searing heatwave is baking central and northern Australia, piling more misery on drought-hit cattle farmers who have been slaughtering livestock as Australia sweltered through the hottest year on record in 2013.

Temperatures have topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in large parts of Australia's key agricultural regions for most of the past week, with the mercury topping 48 degrees Celsius in the central west Queensland town of Birdsville.

The heatwave is moving east across Australia, prompting health warnings on Friday in some of the country's biggest cities and firefighters were already battling bushfires.

But it is in the outback that soaring temperatures have had the most devastating impact, especially on cattle farmers in Queensland, which accounts for about 50 percent on the national herd.

"Water supplies are fast diminishing and whatever feed supplies that were left are cooking off to the point where there won't be any left," said Charles Burke, a beef farmer and chief executive of Agforce, a Queensland cattle industry group.

"This drought is shaping to be an absolute disaster."

Monsoon rains in Australia's north failed last summer and the entire continent endured its hottest year since records began in 1910, the Bureau of Meteorology said on Friday.

Average temperatures were 1.2 degree Celsius above the long-term average of 21.8 degree Celsius, breaking the previous record set in 2005.

"The new record high calendar year temperature averaged across Australia is remarkable because it occurred not in an El Niño year, but a normal year," David Karoly, a climate scientist from the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, said in an emailed statement.

The El Nino weather pattern is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific and usually brings hot, dry, and often drought conditions to Australia.

FRIED EGGS AND THIRSTY FLIES

In the remote town of Marree, 700 kms (435 miles) north of Adelaide in South Australia, one resident tested the folklore that you can fry an egg on the road during an outback heatwave.

"You hear stories of people frying an egg on a shovel, so we set up a shovel this morning out the front and sure enough we've got an egg there that's slowly frying away," publican Phil Turner told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"So yep, we fried an egg on a shovel."

Faced with such tough conditions, farmers are being forced to slaughter more cattle in the current 2013/14 season.

Australia's cattle herd will fall to 25 million head during the 2013/14 season, the lowest since the 2009/10 season, due to increased slaughtering, the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Sciences said.

"Even the flies are sticking close to the house ... thanks to the air-conditioner coming out the windows," said Jo Fogarty from Lucy Creek cattle station in the Northern Territory.

"(We are) leaving sprinklers on for the dogs and birds at the moment. We are quite lucky we have got a good supply of water at the homestead," Fogarty told local media.

Australia is the world's third largest beef exporter, with sales during the 2013/14 season tipped to reach A$5.4 billion ($4.82 billion).

Should Australian farmers continue to send cattle to slaughter due to the heatwave, future exports could fall as farmers eventually rebuild stocks when conditions improve.

The soaring temperatures have also renewed focus on climate change policy in Australia under the new government.

While Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said he accepts the reality of climate change, he abolished the country's Climate Change Commission in September, and rejected any link that global warming was responsible for a series of bushfires across New South Wales state in October.

One of Abbott's major policies is to overturn the previous government's carbon tax, which was aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to tackle climate change.

"On the science perspective, which is the basis for taking action, you're getting very very mixed messages from this government," Will Steffen, an adjunct professor at The Australian National University, said in an interview.

"I think the first challenge needs to be absolutely clear and consistent messaging from this new government that they understand the science, they accept the science, they accept the risk and they accept the lead to take vigorous and decisive action in getting emissions down."

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