Survey says...!

Today the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a provisional statement on the status of global climate in 2011.  At this point it seems appropriate to point out that we have been here before and heard the same things stated over and over again.

Based on data collected from the WMO around the world, they are concluding that despite the fact that 2011 was a La Niña year, it is currently tied as the 10th warmest year on record globally. As you can see on the graph above during La Niña events global temperatures typically cool. The data also shows that the average temperatures seen during La Niña events is trending upwards as well meaning the cool years are getting a lot less cool. 



The WMO data also echoed the recent IPCC report in that "due to the high GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, extreme high temperatures will occur more often and it is likely that the frequency of days with extreme high temperatures will increse by a factor of ten in most regions of the world."  Their decadal data to be released next year indicates "no single country has reported has reported 2001-2010 colder than their national long-term average from 1961-1990". "Of those countries 95% had their warmest decade in 2001-2010 and 40% had their national records broken for warm temps".

"More and more parts of the world are experiencing these temperatures"and existing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 are consistent with warming from 2.0-2.4 degrees Celsius.  If we turned off all additional emissions of GHG into the atmosphere we are still looking at an increase in global mean temperatures upwards of 2.0 degrees C.