Storm chasers

Valid: Tue 21 Jan 2020 06:00 to Wed 22 Jan 2020 06:00 UTC
Issued: Mon 20 Jan 2020 19:24
Forecaster: DAFIS

• A level 2 was issued for Spain for excessive precipitation, large hail, and tornadoes.

Synopsis

The record-breaking high-pressure system in NW Europe is weakening but the cut-off low that has formed over the Iberian Peninsula is still active. Embedded short-wave troughs in this cold drop will continue to create favorable conditions for severe weather in eastern Spain.

Another cut-off low is found in the extreme East Mediterranean and an intensifying trough in Scandinavia is about to move SE, bringing cold air masses in eastern Europe later during the week.

Discussion

Spain

A strong easterly flow from the Mediterranean brings unstable air masses onshore, where apart from the large-scale lift, the local orographic lift will result in numerous storms in East Spain.

Coastal areas and the Balearic Islands will experience a high threat of large hail given the steep mid-level lapse rates and a few hundreds of J/kg CAPE. DLS will range between 10-20 m/s and LLS will locally exceed 10 m/s with veering winds, increasing the threat of tornadogenesis.

The soil is already saturated due to the torrential rainfall on Monday 20/01, so the heavy rainfall that is expected on Tuesday 21/01 within the level 1 and 2 areas, will deteriorate the conditions for flash floods and landslides.

https://www.windy.com/-Rain-thunder-rain?rain,36.049,-8.657,5,internal

Dit is een Nederlandse vertaling van het artikel "Windy Tutorial: How to add your webcam to Windy". Klik hier om het originele artikel in het Engels te lezen. Vertaald door @Bluesbirdy.

Het checken van een outdoor-webcam is een noodzakelijk onderdeel van elk avontuur

En wij, bij Windy, verplichten ons ertoe om een steeds betere service aan te bieden aan mensen zoals ik. Voor piloten, kiters, avonturiers, bergbeklimmers en iedereen die liever buiten is dan in een winkelcentrum.

Maar niet alleen dat. Wij, bij Windy, geloven dat het checken van een outdoor-webcam voorafgaand aan uw avontuur, bv. voor uw vlucht met een klein vliegtuig, het veiligheidsniveau aanzienlijk kan verhogen. —Ivo

Word lid van de Windy-community en maak uw webcam beschikbaar voor een wereldwijd publiek. U kunt uw webcam aanmelden door enkele eenvoudige vragen te beantwoorden via dit formulier (klik HIER).

Windy zal uw aanvraag beoordelen en zodra uw webcam is goedgekeurd, wordt u op de hoogte gesteld van een geslaagde aanmelding. Uw webcam zal live gaan.

Als u overweegt een webcam te kopen of bezig bent een webcam te kopen, bekijk dan de lijst met ondersteunde hardware hieronder.

Dingen waarmee u rekening moet houden voordat u de webcam aanmeldt bij Windy

• Uw webcam-server moet onze externe IP-adressen op de witte lijst hebben staan, omdat we vaak problemen ondervinden met servers die onze IP-adressen standaard blokkeren
• We zullen uw webcam testen dmv. het downloaden van data op een dagelijkse basis, daarom is het belangrijk om ons te voorzien van de juiste afbeeldings-URL
• We slaan alleen afbeeldingen op die openbaar beschikbaar zijn op onze website via timelapse-diavoorstellingen
• De webcam zelf kan verschillende weergaven hebben, maar wat er op het webcambeeld wordt getoond bepaalt welke categorie en titel er aan elke webcam wordt toegewezen

[ Meld uw webcam aan ]

De lijst met ondersteunde hardware

Fabrikanten uit Duitsland, Oostenrijk, Zwitserland en Frankrijk

• RoundShot (Switzerland)
• Fotowebcam (Austria)
• PanoCloud (Austria)
• SIETEC engineering (Switzerland)
• WLAN Netzerktechnik (Austria)
• Repro Schicker (Switzerland)
• Cre@Weather (France)
• Vision-environment (France)

Aanbevolen merken

• Axix Communications (Sweden)
• Mobotix (Germany)

Streaming software en apps

• Restreamer
• PixWebcam

Volgende stap: Voeg uw webcam toe aan favorieten

Onder de stream van de webcam kunt u deze favoriet maken, zodat deze snel toegankelijk is (bij de webcams op de belangrijke locaties).

The local impacts of the Australian bushfires have been devastating to property and life in Australia while producing extreme air quality impacts throughout the region.

As smoke from the massive fires has interacted with the global weather, the transport of smoke plumes around the global have accelerated through deep vertical transport into the upper troposphere and even the lowermost stratosphere, leading to long-range transport around the globe.

The smoke from these bushfires will travel across the Southern Ocean completing a global circumnavigation back around to Australia and is particularly pronounced across the southern Pacific Ocean out to South America.

https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,-35.568,130.869,4,internal

Earth’s long-term warming trend can be seen in this visualization of NASA’s global temperature record, which shows how the planet’s temperatures are changing over time, compared to a baseline average from 1951 to 1980. The record is shown as a running five-year average.

According to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earth's global surface temperatures in 2019 were the second warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.

Globally, 2019 temperatures were second only to those of 2016 and continued the planet's long-term warming trend: the past five years have been the warmest of the last 140 years.

This past year, they were 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (0.98 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”

Since the 1880s, the average global surface temperature has risen and the average temperature is now more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (a bit more than 1 degree Celsius) above that of the late 19th century. For reference, the last Ice Age was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than pre-industrial temperatures.

This plot shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2019, with respect to the 1951-1980 mean, as recorded by NASA, NOAA, the Berkeley Earth research group, the Met Office Hadley Centre (UK), and the Cowtan and Way analysis. Though there are minor variations from year to year, all five temperature records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades, and all show the past decade has been the warmest.

Using climate models and statistical analysis of global temperature data, scientists have concluded that this increase mostly has been driven by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by human activities.

“We crossed over into more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back. This shows that what’s happening is persistent, not a fluke due to some weather phenomenon: we know that the long-term trends are being driven by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Schmidt said.

Because weather station locations and measurement practices change over time, the interpretation of specific year-to-year global mean temperature differences has some uncertainties. Taking this into account, NASA estimates that 2019’s global mean change is accurate to within 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit, with a 95% certainty level.

Weather dynamics often affect regional temperatures, so not every region on Earth experienced similar amounts of warming. NOAA found the 2019 annual mean temperature for the contiguous 48 United States was the 34th warmest on record, giving it a “warmer than average” classification. The Arctic region has warmed slightly more than three times faster than the rest of the world since 1970.

Rising temperatures in the atmosphere and ocean are contributing to the continued mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica and to increases in some extreme events, such as heat waves, wildfires, intense precipitation.

NASA’s temperature analyses incorporate surface temperature measurements from more than 20,000 weather stations, ship- and buoy-based observations of sea surface temperatures, and temperature measurements from Antarctic research stations.

These in situ measurements are analyzed using an algorithm that considers the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and urban heat island effects that could skew the conclusions. These calculations produce the global average temperature deviations from the baseline period of 1951 to 1980.

NOAA scientists used much of the same raw temperature data, but with a different interpolation into the Earth’s polar and other data-poor regions. NOAA’s analysis found 2019 global temperatures were 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.95 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average.

NASA’s full 2019 surface temperature data set and the complete methodology used for the temperature calculation and its uncertainties are available at data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp

GISS is a laboratory within the Earth Sciences Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The laboratory is affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and School of Engineering and Applied Science in New York.

NASA uses the unique vantage point of space to better understand Earth as an interconnected system. The agency also uses airborne and ground-based measurements, and develops new ways to observe and study Earth with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. NASA shares this knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.

For more information about NASA’s Earth science activities, visit www.nasa.gov/earth.

The slides for the Jan. 15 news conference are available at NOAA/NCDC website (PDF).

NOAA’s Global Report is available at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201913

Related report from Copernicus

• Copernicus Report: 2019 was the second warmest year and the last five years were the warmest on record

https://www.windy.com/-Temperature-temp?temp,14.520,-48.516,3,internal

Tropical Storm Claudia is battling wind shear as it continues moving away from Western Australia and through the Southern Indian Ocean. NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite provided forecasters with an image of the storm on January 13.

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite provided forecasters with a visible image of Tropical Storm Claudia on Jan. 13 as it continued moving in a westerly direction in the Southern Indian Ocean.

Visible imagery from NASA satellites help forecasters understand if a storm is organizing or weakening. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image of Claudia that showed the storm appeared elongated.

The shape of a tropical cyclone provides forecasters with an idea of its organization and strength, and NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of the landfall of the storm to forecasters. The storm appeared elongated from west to east. The imagery shows that Claudia is under strong vertical wind shear from the northwest to southeast. The low-level center now appears to the east of the main convection (rising air that creates the thunderstorms that make up the tropical cyclone).

In general, wind shear is a measure of how the speed and direction of winds change with altitude.

Tropical cyclones are like rotating cylinders of winds. Each level needs to be stacked on top each other vertically in order for the storm to maintain strength or intensify. Wind shear occurs when winds at different levels of the atmosphere push against the rotating cylinder of winds, weakening the rotation by pushing it apart at different levels.

At 7:43 a.m. EST (8:43 pm WST) on Monday, January 13, 2020 the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) noted that “Severe Tropical Cyclone Claudia (Category 3) was located latitude 17.3 degrees south and longitude 114.1 east, about 298 miles (480 km) northwest of Karratha and 320 miles (515 km) north of Exmouth. Claudia is moving west-southwest at 18 miles (29 kilometers) per hour. Maximum sustained winds were near 80 knots (92 mph/148 kph).”

Claudia is expected to continue to track towards the west-southwest and remain over open waters, well north of the Pilbara.

Tropical cyclones/hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA’s expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

Rob Gutro
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,-21.043,103.206,5,internal

While weather instruments to measure the upper atmosphere have changed over the decades, the use of balloons to carry them aloft continues today.

Ever find a white box with a parachute and shreds of a balloon attached to it? The National Weather Service has been utilizing balloons for decades to the measure the upper atmosphere. Where it returns to Earth is up to Mother Nature.

Depending on season, it may land a few miles away from its launch location, or a few hundred miles away. The equipment remains may not be discovered for weeks or months, especially if it lands in farm fields.

The Weather Bureau began its upper atmosphere observations in 1894, utilizing kites tethered by piano wire. The downsides of this method were the limited distance kites could ascend (less than 2 miles), the inability to use them if the wind was too light or too strong, and potential for the kites to break away.

While manned balloons had previously been used in Europe, this was also a dangerous method. The kites gave way to airplanes in the 1930s, which also had weather and height limits.

The concept of using balloons to launch weather equipment has not changed in several decades.

Testing of unmanned balloons to carry the weather instruments began around 1906 at the Weather Bureau's Mount Weather facility in Virginia. The balloons, similar to the kites, were tethered, but were reaching heights over 20,000 feet. By 1909, work began in portions of the central U.S. in testing the use of free-rising balloons. Heights of 14-15 miles were reached near Indianapolis and Omaha.

These balloons were tracked from the ground to determine winds aloft, but any other data was not available until the equipment was retrieved; this led to the development of radio-meteographs (or "radiosondes") that sent the data back to the launch site. Crude radiosondes were tested in the 1920's and saw widespread deployment in the 1930's.

Several models of radiosondes have been used over the years, but the concept of using a balloon to carry the weather equipment has persisted to the present day. Twice a day, at 92 stations, the NWS launches these balloons.

They are filled with hydrogen or helium, and once launched, the balloon will typically ascend to an altitude of at least 100,000 feet before rupturing. When released, the balloon is about 5 feet in diameter, but will expand to 20-25 feet in diameter before rupturing in the thin air. A parachute is usually attached to slow the equipment's descent back to the surface.

While the number of employees involved in upper air launches has decreased over the years, launches still require someone to inflate and release the balloon. However, even this is changing. Recent efforts in Alaska have focused on testing automated launch systems.

An "autolauncher" can release 24 balloons before needing to be restocked. The technology has been deployed to all 13 balloon launching stations across Alaska, where weather and staffing can make it difficult to conduct manual launches on schedule.

For more information, check out the following links: A Brief History of Upper-Air Observations (NWS Headquarters), NOAA news release on the autolaunchers (May 2018). Also, you can watch a balloon launch on our YouTube channel.

Chris Geelhart (chris.geelhart@noaa.gov)

https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,internal

Tropical cyclone Blake made landfall in the Kimberley coast of Western Australia and NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite provided an image that showed its center inland with the storm extending to the southern part of the state where fires raged.

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Blake covering a good portion of Western Australia on January 8, 2020 although its center is just inland from the Kimberley coast. The red spots at the southern extent of the state indicate wildfires. The brown stream extending over the Southern Indian Ocean and into the Great Australian Bight is the smoke generated from the fires.

On January 8, 2020, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image of Blake that showed its center was just inland from the Kimberley coast. Bands of thunderstorms stretched far south all the way to the southern coast, where fires are raging. In the VIIRS image, red spots at the southern extent of the state indicate the heat signature of wildfires burning. A brown stream extending over the Southern Indian Ocean and into the Great Australian Bight is the smoke generated from the fires.

At 10 p.m. EST on January 7 (0300 UTC on January 8) the Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii issued their final warning on the system. At that time, Blake was centered near latitude 20.7 degrees south and longitude 119.7 degrees east, about 66 nautical miles east-southeast of Port Hedland, Australia. Blake was moving to the southwest and had maximum sustained winds near 35 knots (40 mph).

By January 8 at 10 a.m. EST, radar from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s station in Kalgoorlie showed some showers in the area.

According to the website Emergency WA (Western Australia) there were fires burning south of Kalgoorlie in the Dundas Nature Reserve on January 7 at 11 p.m. EST. That fire is affecting Salmon Gums including the southern part of the Dundas Nature Reserve, Norseman, Higginsville, Widgiemooltha, Londonderry, Burra Rock, Victoria Rock and North Cascade in the Shires of Coolgardie, Dundas, Esperance and Widgiemooltha.

Blake is dissipating inland over the northwestern part of Western Australia, but generating rain that extends to the south.

Tropical cyclones and hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA’s expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

Rob Gutro
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,-34.886,114.961,4,internal

Data released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) show that 2019 was the second warmest year in a series of exceptionally warm years across the globe, as CO2 concentrations continue to rise.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announces today that 2019 was the fifth in a series of exceptionally warm years and the second warmest year globally ever recorded.

Meanwhile, Europe saw its warmest year on record by a small margin. Together with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), C3S also reports that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have continued to rise. Their data provide the first complete, global picture of 2019 temperatures and CO2 levels.

The results are in line with previous projections from WMO and the Global Carbon Project (GCP) for 2019. The WMO estimated that 2019 was likely to be the 2nd or 3rd warmest year on record, while both WMO and the GCP indicated that atmospheric CO2 concentrations had continued to increase.

C3S and CAMS are both implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Union. The services provide quality-assured data on 2019 temperatures and CO2 concentrations, among many other climate variables. This helps policy makers, organisations, and individuals make informed choices about climate change mitigation and the quality of the air we breathe.

The temperature dataset provided by C3S shows that the global average surface air temperature was 0.04 °C lower than in 2016, the warmest year on record.

The data also show that:

The five warmest years on record have all occurred in the last 5 years, with 2019 coming in as the second warmest and 2010-2019 being the warmest decade on record.

• 2019 was almost 0.6 °C warmer than the 1981-2010 average
• The average temperature of the last 5 years was between 1.1 and 1.2 °C higher than the pre-industrial level defined by the IPCC
• Europe saw its warmest calendar year on record, marginally ahead of 2014, 2015 and 2018

Furthermore, according to satellite measurements of global atmospheric CO2 concentrations:

• CO2 continued to rise in 2019, increasing by 2.3 ± 0.8 ppm

The most pronounced warming compared to the 1981-2010 average occurred in Alaska and over other large parts of the Arctic. Most land areas were warmer than average, especially eastern and southern Europe, southern Africa and Australia. In contrast, central and south-eastern Canada experienced below average annual temperatures.

In Europe all seasons were warmer than usual, with the summer and autumn being the fourth warmest on record. None of the seasons was record-breaking in terms of average temperature, but Europe nevertheless saw its warmest calendar year on record, marginally ahead of 2014, 2015 and 2018. A more detailed analysis of the climate in Europe will be presented by Copernicus in its European State of the Climate 2019, which is set to be released in April.

Running 60-month averages of global air temperature at a height of two metres (left-hand axis) and estimated change since the pre-industrial period (right-hand axis) according to different datasets: ERA5 (ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service, C3S); GISTEMPv4 (NASA); HadCRUT4 (Met Office Hadley Centre); NOAAGlobalTempv5 (NOAA), JRA-55 (JMA); and Berkeley Earth.

“2019 has been another exceptionally warm year, in fact the second warmest globally in our dataset, with many of the individual months breaking records”, says Carlo Buontempo, Head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). “The C3S temperature dataset for 2019 is the first complete set to be published including annual anomalies and globally averaged fields. This is possible because we are an operational programme, processing millions of land, marine, airborne and satellite observations daily. A state-of-the-art computer model is used to bring all these observations together, in a similar way to how weather forecasting is carried out.”

Jean-Noël Thépaut, Director of ECMWF Copernicus comments: “The past five years have been the five warmest on record; the last decade has been the warmest on record: These are unquestionably alarming signs. Seeing one or more months much warmer than the recent reference period can be disconcerting but does not as such represent a climate trend, as monthly temperature deviations vary, and some regions may show below average conditions for a while. We produce data with full global coverage of temperature every day and publish monthly and annual summaries based on this dataset that currently goes back to 1979. For determining possible long-term trends related to climate change, observations dating long into the past are invaluable. Therefore, we also compare our data with climate data dating back to the pre-industrial era to ascertain these long-term climate trends.”

Using the advantages of reanalysis

To produce its quality-assured data, C3S and CAMS use reanalysis, a scientific method which aims to estimate weather conditions and atmospheric composition for each and every day over the past few decades as accurately as possible, based on a multitude of observations.

These observations come from a variety of platforms or instruments, from weather stations to weather balloons and satellites. Taken by themselves, they provide an incomplete view of the atmosphere, as each type of observation only measures one particular aspect of the weather or atmospheric composition, such as temperature, wind or humidity etc. Also, the observations are unevenly distributed around the globe and their number tends to decrease as we go back in time.

The process of reanalysis then combines all distinct observations available on a given day and creates a complete 3D picture of conditions all around the world, for each hour of the day. Once stitched together, these pictures of global weather conditions and atmospheric composition provide a comprehensive historical record of the Earth’s climate that can be used to monitor how fast it is changing.

CO2 concentrations continue to increase

The analysis of satellite data indicates that carbon dioxide concentrations have continued to rise in recent years, including in 2019. Satellite-derived CO2 concentrations are representative of the column-averaged CO2 mixing ratio, also denoted XCO2. The dataset is a combination of two datasets that were generated for C3S and CAMS.

The estimated annual mean XCO2 growth rate for 2019 is 2.3 ± 0.8 ppm/year. This is larger than the growth rate in 2018, which was 2.1 ± 0.5 ppm/year, but less than the 2.9 ± 0.3 ppm/year in 2015. 2015 was a year with a strong El Niño climate event, which resulted in a larger atmospheric growth rate due to a weaker than normal uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the terrestrial vegetation, and large CO2 emissions from wildfires, for example in Indonesia.

Monthly global CO2 concentrations from satellites, column-averaged CO2 (XCO2), for 2003-2019. The listed numerical values in red indicate annual averages. Based on the C3S/Obs4MIPs(v4.1) consolidated (2003-2018) and CAMS preliminary near-real time data (2019) records. Source: University of Bremen for Copernicus Climate Change Service(C3S) and Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) implemented by ECMWF

Regular climate monitoring

Every year, C3S provides a detailed look at the climate of our continent in its European State of the Climate report. In the report, more climate variables and specific climate events of the past year will be analysed. The European State of the Climate 2019 will be announced in spring 2020.

In addition to the annual temperature values, C3S routinely publishes climate bulletins at the beginning of each month, reporting on anomalies in surface air temperature, sea ice cover and hydrological variables. The latest climate bulletin for the month of December is now available, with the following findings for surface air temperature.

December 2019 surface air temperature:

• Global temperatures were on a par with December 2015, making these two months jointly the warmest Decembers in the data record
• December 2019 was more than 0.7°C warmer than the December average for 1981-2010
• The average temperature over Europe was 3.2°C warmer than that of the standard reference period (1981-2010), making it the warmest December on record for Europe by a narrow margin

More information and high-resolution graphics for December 2019 can be downloaded here: climate.copernicus.eu/climate-bulletins

About the data - Temperatures

The map and quoted data values are from ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service’s ERA5 dataset. Area averages for temperature over the European region are for land only with the following longitude/latitude bounds: 25W-40E, 34N-72N.

The graph is based on ERA5 and five other datasets: JRA-55 produced by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), GISTEMP (version4) produced by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), HadCRUT4 produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, NOAAGlobalTemp (version5) produced by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Berkeley Earth’s “recommended” version of their monthly land + ocean temperature dataset.

The ERA5 and JRA-55 datasets run to the end of 2019; the other datasets are currently available only to the end of November 2019. The data have been accessed and processed largely as described in a peer-reviewed publication (doi: 10.1002/qj.2949).

Each dataset shown in the graph is aligned to have the same average temperature for 1981–2010 as ERA5. For JRA-55 this entails a temperature reduction of 0.1°C. The other datasets are originally defined only as values relative to reference periods. HadCRUT4 is an ensemble of 100 possible realisations.

The median and range of the ensemble are plotted. The ensemble does not sample the uncertainty associated with limited geographical coverage, which is substantial for the earliest decades.

1981–2010 is the latest 30-year reference period defined by the WMO for calculating climatological averages. It is the first such period for which satellite observations of key variables including sea-surface temperature and sea-ice cover are available to support globally complete meteorological reanalyses such as ERA5.

The climatological average temperature for the pre-industrial period is taken to be 0.63°C lower than the average for 1981–2010. This follows what is suggested in the IPCC ‘Global warming of 1.5°C’ report, which estimates the increase from the pre-industrial (defined as 1850-1900) to the 20-year period 1986-2005 to be “0.63°C (±0.06°C 5–95% range based on observational uncertainties alone)”.

The annual mean temperature difference between the periods 1981-2010 and 1986-2005 is non-significant for all datasets presented here (-0.009°C to +0.004°C).

There is good general agreement among datasets concerning the substantial increase in global temperatures over the last four decades, and more uncertainty concerning changes over earlier, less well observed decades.

The spread in the global averages from the various datasets has also been relatively large over the past three years. During this period twelve-month-average temperatures relative to 1981-2010 from ERA5 are generally higher than those from the five other datasets, by between 0.03°C and 0.14°C for the latest twelve months (to November 2019) for which comparisons can be made.

This is due partly to differences in the extent to which datasets represent the relatively warm conditions that have predominated over the Arctic and the seas around Antarctica, but differences in estimates both of sea-surface temperature elsewhere and of temperature over land outside the Arctic have been further factors.

The ERA5 dataset differs from other datasets in that it has a cooling trend to the north and north-east of Greenland. This trend is associated with positive (warm) wintertime temperature anomalies in the first ten or so years of the 1981-2010 reference period, which are not seen in other estimates for this region.

These anomalous temperatures may be linked with questionably low values of the fractional sea-ice cover specified in ERA5 at that time. As a result, negative (cold) anomalies in the annual average over this region must be viewed with caution.

About the data - Carbon dioxide concentrations

We present a timeseries of monthly global averages of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) derived from satellite sensors. Satellite-derived CO2 concentrations are representative of the column-averaged CO2 mixing ratio, also denoted XCO2.

The annual averages given in the graph are derived by computing the average of the monthly values.

Because higher atmospheric layers, such as the stratosphere, typically contain less CO2, the XCO2 values are usually somewhat lower than CO2 concentrations measured near the Earth’s surface. This is why satellite XCO2 values are similar, but not exactly identical to estimates based on surface observations, which are the basis of reporting by WMO and the Global Carbon Project (GCP).

The data for 2003-2018 is the consolidated product of “C3S XCO2 data derived from satellite sensors”, produced by the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The high quality C3S climate data record has been generated by merging an ensemble of individual satellite datasets from the satellite instruments SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT, TANSO-FTS/GOSAT and NASA’s OCO-2 mission, using products generated by C3S and ESA GHG-CCI in Europe, NASA in the USA and NIES in Japan.

This merged product, which is in the Obs4MIPs format (see Obs4MIPs website), is extended each year by one additional year and year 2019 data will be available end of 2020. For details see Reuter et al., 2019.

The data for 2019 is the near-real time preliminary product of “CAMS XCO2 data derived from satellite sensors”, produced by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. This data product has been generated from TANSO-FTS/GOSAT. For details see Heymann et al., 2015.

The XCO2 growth rates have been computed using the method of Buchwitz et al., 2018.

https://www.windy.com/-Temperature-temp?temp,31.803,-53.350,3,internal

Update: Ex-Tropical Cyclone Blake has moved over land in the far southwest Kimberley and weakened. Significant rainfall still anticipated through the east Pilbara today. DAMAGING WINDS with gusts to 100 kilometres per hour are possible near ex-Tropical Cyclone Blake as it moves through the east Pilbara today. HEAVY RAINFALL associated with the system is expected in the eastern Pilbara and far southwestern Kimberley during Wednesday. Persistent monsoonal rain and thunderstorm activity is also expected to continue in the northwest Kimberley with heavy falls possible a considerable distance away from the system centre. Although the Tropical Cyclone Warning has now been cancelled, refer to severe weather warning. Flood Watches and Warnings are current, please refer to http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/warnings/ for further details.

Tropical Cyclone Blake located just off the west Kimberley coast is moving south and is expected to make landfall near Wallal Downs early Wednesday morning.

Areas Affected

• Warning Zone: Bidyadanga to De Grey, extending inland to Shay Gap
• Watch Zone: None
• Cancelled Zone: None

Details of Tropical Cyclone Blake at 8:00 pm AWST

Intensity: Category 1, sustained winds near the centre of 75 kilometres per hour with wind gusts to 100 kilometres per hour.

Location: within 45 kilometres of 19.1 degrees South 121.0 degrees East, estimated to be 85 kilometres north northeast of Wallal Downs and 95 kilometres west southwest of Bidyadanga.

Movement: south at 6 kilometres per hour.

Tropical Cyclone Blake lies just offshore west southwest of Bidyadanga. It is likely to track close to the west Kimberley coast this evening and cross the coast along Eighty Mile Beach near Wallal Downs early Wednesday morning as a category 1 tropical cyclone.

There is a chance the system may take a more southwest track early Wednesday morning close to the coast. If this occurs, it may stay just far enough off the coast to intensify slightly further before making landfall later Wednesday morning between Wallal Downs and Pardoo Roadhouse.

Hazards

GALES may be occurring along coastal parts between Bidyadanga and Sandfire. GALES could extend to Wallal Downs during this evening. There is a slight risk of GALES extending further along the Pilbara coast as far as De Grey and to inland parts of the eastern Pilbara as far inland as Shay Gap late Tuesday and into early Wednesday morning.

Heavy rainfall associated with the system is expected in the eastern Pilbara and far southwest Kimberley during the remainder of today and Wednesday. Persistent monsoonal rain and thunderstorm activity is also expected to continue in the northwest Kimberley with heavy falls possible a considerable distance away from the system centre.

Flood Watches and Warnings are current, please refer to http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/warnings/ for further details.

Recommended Action

DFES advises of the following community alerts:

YELLOW ALERT: People in or near communities from Bidyadanga to Wallal, including Wallal, need to take action and get ready to shelter from a cyclone.

BLUE ALERT: People in or near communities from Wallal to De Grey, extending inland to include Shay Gap, need to prepare for cyclonic weather and organise an emergency kit including first aid kit, torch, portable radio, spare batteries, food and water.

Tropical cyclone Blake Advice number 23, issued by Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology at 8:45 pm WST on Tuesday 7 January 2020

Next Advice

The next advice will be issued by 12:00 am AWST Wednesday 08 January.

Cyclone advices and DFES Alerts are available by dialling 13 DFES (13 3337)

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This is the part 3 of the Some of the most beautiful and interesting satellite images of 2019 I processed recap post by Pierre Markuse, republished from his blog. Here's the part 1 and here's the part 2.

Typhoon Lekima and Typhoon Krosa, West Pacific

Typhoon Lekima and Typhoon Krosa, West Pacific – August 8th and 9th, 2019. Flickr link here and here and here.

Wildfire in the Sakha Republic at about 71°N, Siberia, Russia – August 12th

One of the many arctic wildfires this year, a wildfire in the Sakha Republic at about 71°N, Siberia, Russia – August 12th. Flickr link.

Wildfire on Gran Canaria, Spain – August 19th, 2019

Wildfire on Gran Canaria, Spain – August 19th, 2019. Flickr link.

Hurricane Dorian East of the Bahamas and Florida, USA – August 30th, 2019

Hurricane Dorian East of the Bahamas and Florida, USA – August 30th, 2019. Flickr link.

Hurricane Dorian reaching the Bahamas on its track to Florida, USA – September 1st, 2019. Flickr link.

Grand Bahama Island before and after Hurricane Dorian – August 5th, 2019 and Grand Bahama Island after Hurricane Dorian – September 4th, 2019

Grand Bahama Island before and after Hurricane Dorian – August 5th, 2019 and Grand Bahama Island after Hurricane Dorian – September 4th, 2019. Flickr link here and here.

Bushfire in the north of New South Wales about 180 kilometers SSW of Brisbane, Australia – September 7th, 2019

One of the many bushfires in New South Wales in this bushfire season. Located about 180 kilometers SSW of Brisbane, Australia – September 7th, 2019. Flickr link.

Metis Shoal Volcano eruption, Tonga – October 15th, 2019

Metis Shoal Volcano eruption, Tonga – October 15th, 2019. Flickr link.

Metis Shoal Volcano eruption, Tonga, with added IR overlay – October 20th, 2019. Flickr link.

Mount Etna Volcano, Sicily, Italy – October 22nd, 2019

A little activity of the Mount Etna Volcano in Sicily, Italy – October 22nd, 2019. Flickr link.

Parts of the Sabiti oil tanker oil spill NW of Jeddah, Saudi-Arabia, with ships crossing the spill area – October 22nd, 2019

A SAR image of parts of the Sabiti oil tanker oil spill NW of Jeddah, Saudi-Arabia, with ships crossing the spill area – October 22nd, 2019. Flickr link.

Kincade Fire, Sonoma County, California, USA – October 27th, 2019

The Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, California, USA – October 27th, 2019. Flickr link.

Image 55 – Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica – November 4th, 2019

The Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica; still hanging on in this image. – November 4th, 2019. Flickr link.

Typhoon Halong, Pacific Ocean – November 4th, 2019

Typhoon Halong, Pacific Ocean – November 4th, 2019. Flickr link.

Mount Erebus Volcano, Antarctica – November 9th, 2019

Two beautiful images of the Mount Erebus Volcano, Antarctica – November 9th, 2019. Flickr link here and here.

Bushfire NW of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia – November 13th, 2019

Bushfire NW of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia – November 13th, 2019. Flickr link.

Mount Shishaldin Volcano lava flow, Alaska, USA – December 26th, 2019

Mount Shishaldin Volcano lava flow, Alaska, USA – December 26th, 2019. Flickr link.

Mount Etna Volcano 3D rotation showing lava flows, based on a Sentinel-2 image from July 27th, 2019

(click to view the 3D rotation video on Flickr)

A few more words

In case you would like to see even more images, you can find them here on my Flickr. I would also like to thank all of you who shared my satellite images on Twitter (Not yet following me on Twitter? Change it here) or other social media in 2019 and those who gave me ideas, advice, or feedback.

Pierre Markuse

Have you seen the previous images? Here's the part 1 and here's the part 2

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