The year 2014: hotter than normal, except North America, world body says

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization issued its summary of global weather for 2014 Dec. 3 saying this year is on course to being the warmest on record mainly due to higher than normal surface ocean teamperatures. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS PHOTO)

The year 2014 may shape up to be the hottest on record, and we’re not talking about celebrity fashion or MP3 sales.

The World Meteorological Organization issued a weather summary Dec. 3 entitled Status of Global Climate in 2014 and it contains increasingly troubling language and dire warnings about what is to become of planetary weather in the decades to come.

If November and December continue the warm and stormy trend of the first 10 months of 2014, then this year will surpass three other recent hot years: 2010, 2005 and 1998.

“The provisional information for 2014 means that fourteen of the fifteen warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century,” WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud said in a news release issued with the weather summary document.

“There is no standstill in global warming.”

Hot temperatures are largely due to record high global sea surface temperatures, the WMO says. Those warm seas, along with other factors, contributed to heavy rainfall and flooding in parts of the world, and extreme drought in others.

“What we saw in 2014 is consistent with what we expect from a changing climate. Record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods destroyed livelhoods and ruined lives,” the WMO release says.

“What is particularly unusual and alarming this year are the high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface, including in the northern hemisphere.”

Unchecked greenhouse gas emissions and “associated atmospheric concentrations are committing the planet to a much more uncertain and inhospitable future,” the release says.

Measured in Celsius, the global average temperature in 2014 was one half to one full degree warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average of 14 C.

Sea surface temperatures globally for January to October 2014 were about a half degree Celsius warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, “warmer than any previous year in the record.”

Those surface temperatures were particularly high, the WMO says, in the northern hemisphere from June to October.

“The majority of the energy that accumulates in the climate system is taken up by the oceans,” the summary document explains. “Therefore, the heat content of the ocean is a key measure for understanding the climate system.”

According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre, the maximum daily Arctic ice extent of 14.91 million square kilometres, recorded on March 21, was the sixth lowest on record.

The monthly average extent of Arctic ice in September — which is the month Arctic ice shrinks to its smallest size — was also the sixth lowest average. It measured 1.65 million square kilometres above the record-low extent recorded of September 2012.

While Africa, Australia and South America experienced a number of heat waves this year, eastern North America was actually cooler than normal.

Nearly all portions of the Great Lakes were frozen in March, the second largest ice cover in more than 40 years. Western North America, however, from Alaska down to California, was much warmer than average, the WMO reports.

The same weather pattern that made it cold in most of North America this year lead to warmer than average weather in Europe, according to the WMO.

France had the warmest January since 1900 with Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Sweden also experiencing unusually warm winter and spring months.

You can find the news release, and click on the full WMO weather summary, here.