1. It’s that time of the year. The WMO State of the Climate Update was released today(ish), taking momentary stock of where the climate is. So, some climate nuggets. 🧵
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It is going to be an issue that we cannot have the same numbers for the global water cycle : total precipitation, water discharge from the continents, total water mass, ... Our observing system is not to the level needed for these variables which are so critical for managing our resources!
thanks, if my rough calculations are correct, in the charted time period n2o increased by 10.5ppm carbon equivalents, methane 8.5ppm and co2 by 75ppm is that right? maybe land use and agronomic practice changes may have an even bigger effect for n2o than methane and co2.
hadn't seen the zonally averaged increases in the polar regions. supports https://cprclimate.org argument that GHGs released aren't "legacy" emissions, reg status uncertain rather "continuing" disposals, they migrate N and S with greater effects & dissolve acidifing the oceans, thanks v useful
2. Concentrations of the three key greenhouse gases - CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O - reached record highs in 2023 (the last full year of data). Again. CO₂ reached 420±0.1ppm, 151% of pre-industrial levels. Look at them all going up. We did that.
3 Greenhouse gases trap energy in the climate system. In the past five decades, around 90% of that energy has gone into the ocean. Ocean heat content shown here from 1960 has risen particularly fast in the past two decades. 2023 was the highest heat content on record.
4 Where else does the energy go? About 6% warms the land, 1% warms the atmosphere and 4% melted the icy bits. We’ll come back to the icy bits, but much of that once-frozen water is now in the ocean. Awesome paper link: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/
5 Some of that ice was in glaciers. Mass balance from a quasi-global set of reference glaciers monitored by the WGMS shows a cumulative loss of 26m since 1970. The mass loss in 2023 was an annual record at 1.2m water equivalent.
7 It’s not all one way though. In the past couple of years, Antarctica has gained and lost mass. How much exactly is uncertain. The green and blue lines here are both based on GRACE data with different processing.
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https://gaw.kishou.go.jp/publications/global_mean_mole_fractions