NOAA – Page 2 – Desdemona Despair

U.S. billion-dollar climate disaster events, 1980-2022. Storms, floods, wildfires and droughts caused a total of $165 billion in damages in the US last year, $10 billion more than the 2021 total and the third most costly year since records of major losses began in 1980, according to new US government data. With 18 disasters costing at least $1 billion in damages, 2022 was only marginally behind 2020 and 2021 in terms of the number of severe events. A total of 474 people died last year from these major calamities. Graphic: NCEI / NOAA

January 10, 2023

Extreme weather left 474 people dead and cost $165 billion in the U.S. in 2022 – “It does not seem likely that these trends will reverse. Perhaps we need to be more prepared for a future that has rapidly become our present.”

By Oliver Milman 10 January 2023 (The Guardian) – The US endured a particularly painful year as communities wrestled with the growing impacts of the climate crisis, with 18 major disasters wreaking havoc across the country as planet-heating emissions continued to climb. Storms, floods, wildfires and droughts caused a total of $165 billion in damages […]

Arctic annual air surface temperatures from October 2021 to September 2022 were the sixth warmest dating back to 1900. The image on the left depicts the departure from the average near-surface temperature across the Arctic during this period, with redder colors showing areas of greater than average warmth. The graphic on the right shows how the rate of Arctic air temperature warming has outpaced the rate of global warming. Data: ERA5 and NASA. Graphic: NOAA / Climate.gov

December 17, 2022

NOAA: Human-caused climate change fuels warmer, wetter, stormier Arctic

13 December 2022 (NOAA) – A typhoon, smoke from wildfires, and increasing rain are not what most imagine when thinking of the Arctic. Yet these are some of the climate-driven events included in NOAA’s 2022 Arctic Report Card, which provides a detailed picture of how warming is reshaping the once reliably frozen, snow-covered region which […]

Annual temperatures for Alaska, 1900-2018. Alaska’s ten coldest years on record (blue dots) all occurred before 1980. Meanwhile, nine of its ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1980. Data: NASA GISS and UAF / Brian Brettschneider. Graphic: Rick Thoman / Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy

October 21, 2022

Warming waters causing mass die-off of Alaska snow crabs – Total numbers down 84 percent since 2018 – “The cold-water habitat they need was virtually absent, which suggests that temperature is really the key culprit in this population decline”

20 October 2022 (CBS News) – Climate change is a prime suspect in a mass die-off of Alaska’s snow crabs, experts say, after the state took the unprecedented step of canceling their harvest this season to save the species. According to an annual survey of the Bering Sea floor carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, […]

Sea surface temperature anomaly for the Atlantic Ocean, 5 August 2022. Graphic: Scott Duncan

September 18, 2022

An intense marine heat wave is setting ocean temperature records in the North Atlantic – “Every marine heat wave is going to be warmer than the last because of rises in greenhouse gases”

By Denise Chow 7 September 2022 (NBC News) – It’s not just land seeing record heat waves. Ocean waters in the Northern Hemisphere have been unusually warm in recent weeks, with parts of the North Atlantic and northern Pacific undergoing particularly intense marine heat waves. Sea surface temperatures in these regions hit record levels this […]

Changes in global average sea level (background map) and local sea level (dots) between 1993 and 2021. In the global ocean, sea level has risen nearly everywhere (blue). Coastal areas where sea level has fallen (brown) are places where the land is rising as it rebounds from being compressed by ice sheets and glaciers during the last ice age. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from University of Hawaii Sea Level Center. Graphic: NOAA

September 4, 2022

American Meteorological Society report: Record-high greenhouse gases and sea levels in 2021 – Ocean heat content highest on record

31 August 2022 (NOAA) – Greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea levels and ocean heat content reached record highs in 2021, according to the 32nd annual State of the Climate report. The international annual review of the world’s climate, led by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and published by the Bulletin of the […]

Departure of temperature from average for July 2022, the sixth-warmest July for the globe since record-keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA. Record-warmest areas included parts of southern Europe and northern Africa, southern and eastern Asia, Brazil, Oceania, and southern Texas/northern Mexico. No large areas experienced record cold. Graphic: NOAA/NCEI

August 14, 2022

July 2022: Earth’s 6th warmest July on record

By Jeff Masters and Bob Henson 12 August 2022 (Yale Climate Connections) – July 2022 was Earth’s sixth warmest July on record since global record-keeping began in 1880, 0.87 degrees Celsius (1.57°F) above the 20th-century average, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, NCEI, reported on August 12. NASA rated the month as tied for the third warmest […]

Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), 1700-2021. For 2021, the AGGI was a record high 1.49, representing an increase in total direct radiative forcing of 49 percent since 1990. The atmospheric abundance of CO2 has increased by an average of 1.88 ppm per year over the past 42 years (1979-2021). This increase in CO2 is accelerating — while it averaged about 1.6 ppm per year in the 1980s and 1.5 ppm per year in the 1990s, the growth rate increased to 2.4 ppm per year during the last decade (2011-2021). The annual CO2 increase from 1 January 2021 to 1 January 2022 was 2.60 ± 0.08 ppm. Graphic: Montzka, 2022 / NOAA

May 25, 2022

Greenhouse gas pollution trapped record 49 percent more heat in 2021 than in 1990 – Methane increase in 2021 largest since 1982 – “The primary gases responsible for climate change continue rising rapidly”

23 May 2022 (NOAA) – Greenhouse gas pollution caused by human activities trapped 49 percent more heat in the atmosphere in 2021 than they did in 1990, according to NOAA scientists. NOAA’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, known as the AGGI, tracks increases in the warming influence of human emissions of heat-trapping gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, […]

Global daily atmospheric CO2, 2012-2022. The figure shows daily averaged CO2 from four GML Atmospheric Baseline observatories; Barrow, Alaska (in blue), Mauna Loa, Hawaii (in red), American Samoa (in green), and South Pole, Antarctica (in yellow). The thick black lines represent the average of the smoothed seasonal curves and the smoothed, de-seasonalized curves for each of the records. These lines are a very good estimate of the global average levels of CO2. Data for 2022 are through 7 May 2022. Graphic: NOAA

May 8, 2022

Earth’s atmospheric CO2 hits highest recorded level in human history – Unprecedented level comes as greenhouse gas emissions continue around the world

By Ethan Freedman 6 May 2022 NEW YORK (The Independent) – Monthly average carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have reached above 420 parts per million (ppm) for the first time on record. The new data, from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, were released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Atmospheric CO2, driven higher in large part […]

Drought has reduced the water level in Lake Mead so much that Southern Nevada Water Authority's original water intake valve in Lake Mead -- in service since 1971 -- was visible above the water line in April 2022. The original intake is no longer in use since it cannot draw water. Photo: Southern Nevada Water Authority

May 7, 2022

Lake Mead plummets to record low, exposing original 1971 water intake valve – Dead man found in barrel at lake bottom, authorities say more bodies likely to turn up – “This is a crisis. This is unprecedented.”

By Stephanie Elam 29 April 2022 (CNN) – The U.S. West is in the grips of a climate change-fueled megadrought, and Lake Mead — the largest manmade reservoir in the country and a source of water for millions of people — has fallen to an unprecedented low. The lake’s plummeting water level has exposed one of the reservoir’s original water […]

Monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance, 1983-2021. The globally-averaged, monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance is determined from marine surface sites. Values for 2021 are preliminary. Graphic: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

April 14, 2022

Increase in atmospheric methane set another record during 2021 – Carbon dioxide levels also record a big jump – “The evidence is consistent, alarming, and undeniable”

7 April 2022 (NOAA) – For the second year in a row, NOAA scientists observed a record annual increase in atmospheric levels of methane, a powerful, heat-trapping greenhouse gas that’s the second biggest contributor to human-caused global warming after carbon dioxide. NOAA’s preliminary analysis showed the annual increase in atmospheric methane during 2021 was 17 […]