Welcome to the 2nd edition of our “Climate Figure of the Day” series! Every day, I’ll be sharing a climate or climate change related figure. It might be a graph, a map, or another visual. It might be my own creation or sourced elsewhere. The figures will be posted on Twitter/X.com too, under the hashtag #ClimateFigureOfTheDay. While Twitter gives you a snapshot, here on my website, I’ll every now and then delve a bit deeper into the details. Want to stay updated? Be sure to follow me on Twitter/X.com here.
27 September
September 2023 is not just poised to be an unusually warm month globally; it’s set to shatter previous records by an extraordinary margin.
26 September
25 September
Today’s #ClimateFigureOfTheDay is just a reminder of the fact that the global temperature is much higher than ever recorded, for this time of year.
24 September
Climate change is not something of the future anymore. It is here, now. And it will get worse. How much worse, depends on our choices and actions.
23 September
Unlike most other places on earth, Svalbard – one of the fastests warming places on earth – is currently rather cool.
Wednesday (September 20th), Svalbard Airport in Longyearbyen measured it’s first -5°C of the season. In the current climate, the first -5°C comes rather early. Nowadays, it’s more common for the first -5°C to occur only in October. However, in the past, the first -5°C was generally measured in the 2nd half of September.
20 September
The current global sea surface temperature reaches levels far outside anything we have ever measured before. Remember that a volume unit of water stores about 3500 times the amount of energy compared to that of a volume unit of air. There is much more energy accumulating in the earth system and as a consequence, our planet is warming rapidly.
17 September
Unlike the first frost, the first ice day (maximum temperature <0°C), is rather early, specifically compared to recent years.
15 September
The first frost in Longyearbyen (Svalbard) is notably late this year:
14 September
July and August mean temperature marks 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
13 September
2023 has a good chance of becoming the warmest year on record. This year is now the warmest year on record and given the current (and upcoming) warm months, the average global temperature for this year will only increase.
12 September
Relatively early snowfall in Longyearbyen, Svalbard this year.
11 September
10 September
Summers in Svalbard warmed with approximately 0.6°C/decade since the availibility of seasonal records starting in 1976.
9 September
September has warmed with about 0.15°C/decade since the start of the measurements in The Netherlands.
8 September
The Northern Hemisphere summer of 2023 was the warmest on record globally.
6 September
August 2023 was by far the warmest august on record.
5 September
The main reason the summer in The Netherlands was relatively warm in general is due to the fact that minimum temperatures were relatively high. If we look at the average daily minimum temperature last summer, it was the warmest on record.
4 September
The previous summer, despite being experienced as ‘cold’ by many, was the 6th warmest on record. It fits in the warming trend that summer temperatures are experiencing.
More about this warm summer in the next Climate Figure Of The Day.
3 September
2 September
Today’s ClimateFigureOfTheDay shows the top ten warmest summer months in Longyearbyen (Svalbard, in the Arctic). Monthly temperture records are available all the way back to late 19th century. Yet, the overwhelming majority of years in those top 10’s are from this century. Current year 2023 is in each of those top 10’s, even being warmest on record for July and August. More about the Records Shattering summer in the Arctic Archipelago here.
Climate Figure of The Day, 1 September 2023
Just like in the first edition of this #ClimateFigureOfTheDay series, we start this series with a figure about Svalbard. The airport in Longyearbyen measured its warmest August on record, breaking the previous temperature with almost a full degree. Even though it fits in a rapidly warming month (about 0.5°C per decade since the 1970’s) in a rapidly warming region, it’s still a shattering of the previous record.
It’s not the only record that Svalbard broke this year. More about Shattering Records in the Arctic Archipelago here.
