Global Surface Temp Rise Has Stalled…Stagnant Over The Past Decade

How was April 2022?

The Copernicus program provides monthly updates, including for April 2022.

Parts of Europe and North America were colder than the 1990-2020 average.

Northeast Africa and Central Asia were warmer.

An extensive region of much-above-average temperatures stretched from northeastern Africa across the Middle East to central and southern Asia.

Pre-monsoon temperatures were exceptionally high over Pakistan and northern India, following record highs in March; the heatwave led to critical water and power shortages as well as damage to crops.

Heatwave conditions were also experienced in Egypt and Sudan. High spring temperatures were reported in the Central Asian Republics. Temperatures were also much higher than average over Greenland, easternmost Russia, and the Ross and Weddell sectors of Antarctica.

Other regions of above-average temperature include the southern and southwestern USA, Mexico, parts of the Far East, and northern Australia.

April 2022 was much colder than average over central and western Canada and much of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean.

Temperatures were also below the 1991-2020 average over several other land regions, including northwestern Africa, South East Asia, southernmost Africa, southwestern Australia, and East Antarctica.

Air temperatures were substantially above average over parts of all the major ocean basins. Below-average marine air temperatures were located in the tropical and southern subtropical eastern Pacific, indicative of continuing La Niña conditions.

Globally, April 2022 was:

• 0.28°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average for April
• the sixth warmest April on record, though only marginally colder than April 2018
• more than 0.2°C cooler than the warmest Aprils, which were in 2016 and 2020
• marginally warmer than April 2010, the warmest April prior to April 2016.

It is certainly also interesting to look at the last 12 months. Here, subtle shades of red dominate, which according to the legend corresponds to a slight warming.

Temperatures averaged over the last twelve-month period were:

• above average over most land areas and the majority of the ocean surface
• markedly above the 1991-2020 average in a region stretching from northern Arabia to western Siberia, and over northern Siberia, central North America, north-western and central Africa,  East Antarctica, and the Weddell Sea
• close to average over much of Europe, but above average in the east of the continent, and to a lesser extent over a band eastward from Ireland to southern Scandinavia
• below average over some land areas, including parts of northern Canada and Alaska, north-eastern South America, southern Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica
• below average over the eastern equatorial Pacific, where the La Niña event that peaked in late 2020 reintensified later in 2021 and continued into 2022
• also below average over the Chukchi Sea, parts of the eastern North Pacific, and several oceanic areas in the southern hemisphere.

The end of the report offers some interesting points:

There is general agreement among datasets that the period from 2015 to 2020 is much warmer globally than any previous such period. There is also agreement that the global temperature has risen at an average rate of close to 0.2°C per decade since the late 1970s.

There is nevertheless still some spread between the datasets for recent years, such as for 2020, and the annual average temperature anomalies for these years from ERA5 are generally higher than those from the five other datasets considered.

The differences range from 0.02 to 0.08°C from 2016 to 2020. The range is 0.00 to 0.07°C if air temperature over the sea is replaced by sea-surface temperature for ERA5 and the other dataset for which sea-surface temperature was not used by design.

The remaining differences depend partly on the extent to which datasets represent the relatively warm conditions that have predominated over the Arctic and Antarctic during these years. Differences elsewhere in estimates of sea-surface temperature and surface air temperature over land have been further factors.

The average surface air temperature analysis homepage explains more about the production and reliability of the values presented here but has yet to be updated to include the new information on the dataset spread mentioned above.

By Die kalte Sonne
(Translated by P. Gosselin)

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