The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service releases its annual findings which show that globally 2021 was among the seven warmest on record. Europe experienced a summer of extremes with severe heatwaves in the Mediterranean and floods in central Europe. Meanwhile, global concentrations of carbon dioxide and – very substantially – methane continued to increase.
Today, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission with funding from the European Union, releases new data showing that the last seven years globally were the seven warmest on record by a clear margin.
Within these seven years, 2021 ranks among the cooler years, alongside 2015 and 2018. Meanwhile, Europe experienced its warmest summer on record, though close to previous warmest summers in 2010 and 2018. In conjunction with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), C3S also reports that preliminary analysis of satellite measurements confirm that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continued to rise during 2021, with carbon dioxide (CO2) levels reaching an annual global column-averaged record of approximately 414 ppm, and methane (CH4) an annual record of approximately 1876 ppb. Carbon emissions from wildfires worldwide amounted overall to 1850 megatonnes, especially fuelled by fires in Siberia. This was slightly higher than last year (1750 megatonnes of carbon emissions), although, the trend since 2003 is declining.
Several high-impact extreme events happened during summer 2021 in Europe. July saw a very heavy rainfall event in western central Europe in a region with soils close to saturation, leading to severe floods in several countries, with the most heavily impacted including Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The Mediterranean region experienced a heatwave during July and part of August, with high temperatures particularly affecting Greece, Spain and Italy. The European record for maximum temperature was broken in Sicily, where 48.8°C was reported, 0.8°C above the previous high, though this new record is still to be officially confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Hot and dry conditions preceded intense and prolonged wildfires, particularly in the eastern and central Mediterranean with Turkey being one of the most impacted countries, in addition to Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania, North Macedonia, Algeria and Tunisia.
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