On this Earth Day, the Copernicus organization publishes its climate report for the year 2021. At the planetary level as at the European level, the rise in temperatures is undeniable and continues.
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Through a compilation of satellite data and station observations weather reportthe service that studies the climate change within Copernicus, provides a global and regional panorama of the climate in 2021. At the planetary level, the report confirms that the last seven years have been the hottest recorded since the start of weather records: the year 2021 ranks either fifth or seventh (depending on meteorological sources) of the warmest years. The global ocean temperature ranks sixth or seventh of the warmest waters observed since 1850. Temperatures over earthand at sea, have clearly increased very markedly since the Industrial Revolution, with an increase of +1.1 to +1.2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. Concerning the greenhouse gasthe concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide continued to increase in 2021, in particular methane, which experienced a record increase.
Record heat and extreme weather events in Europe
The year 2021 was very mixed in Europe: the spring was generally cooler than normal, but the summer was marked by a heat record with +1°C higher than the 1991-2020 average. While most European and Mediterranean countries experienced intense heat waves (in Greece in particular, with historic fires), France is an exception Europe with a fairly gloomy and humid summer 2021. Elsewhere in Europe, many temperature records have been broken: 47°C in Spain and 48.8°C in Italy, for example. In July and August, the water temperature was abnormally high in some areas of the Baltic Sea, up to +5°C above normal. On an annual level, temperatures in the Baltic Sea and the eastern Mediterranean Sea were the highest since observations began in 1992.
Apart from these anomalies temperatures, the most significant event is undoubtedly that which occurred in mid-July in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The passage of a series of cold drops had brought torrential rains for several days, resulting in historic floods in villages built on riverbeds. 279 people died in this disaster, the majority in Germany. Another particularity of this year 2021, a weakening of the winds in Western Europe and Central Europe: in 2021, the average annual winds are indeed the weakest since the beginning of the surveys in 1979, bad news for the wind energy.
In the Arctic, concern for the Greenland Sea
the Copernicus report also mentions the situation in Arctic : the emissions of carbon linked to forest fires, mainly to eastern siberiawere the fourth highest since records began in 2003. However, they fell below the record carbon emissions recorded in 2020. The Arctic glacial minimum (reached in summer) was the twelfth lowest recorded since the first satellite data in 1979. The extent of the ice in the Greenland Sea, on the other hand, was the lowest recorded since the beginning of the records.
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