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STATE OF THE CLIMATE IN 2021

  • State of the climate
  • NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory
  • The Met Office
  • North Carolina State University
  • NOAA/NESDIS National Centers for Environmental Information
  • European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
  • University of Maryland
  • University of Reading
  • Hampton University
  • Universit́é Savoie Mont Blanc
  • Osaka Prefecture University
  • Universität Bremen
  • Atmosphere and Ocean Laboratory (Climatoc-Lab)
  • Universidad de Valparaíso
  • University of East Anglia
  • York University
  • European Commission
  • GloH2O
  • Newcastle University
  • Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
  • NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
  • Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
  • University of the Virgin Islands
  • University of Alabama in Huntsville
  • Universität Hamburg
  • University of Colorado
  • University Centre in Svalbard
  • IBS Center for Climate Physics
  • University of Vienna
  • Environmental Science and Engineering
  • California Institute of Technology
  • Environment and Climate Change Canada

Research output: Contribution to journal › Special issue › peer-review

48   Link opens in a new tab Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

In 2021, both social and economic activities began to return towards the levels preceding the COVID-19 pandemic for some parts of the globe, with others still experiencing restrictions. Meanwhile, the climate has continued to respond to the ongoing increase in greenhouse gases and resulting warming. La Nia, a phenomenon which tends to depress global temperatures while changing rainfall patterns in many regions, prevailed for all but two months of the year. Despite this, 2021 was one of the six-warmest years on record as measured by global mean surface temperature with an anomaly of between +0.21 and +0.28C above the 19912020 climatology.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)S1-S465
Number of pages471
JournalBulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Volume103
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 Aug 2022

Funding

Data from the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE) were provided by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) at http://www.promice.dk. Twila Moon was supported by the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Marco Tedesco was supported by National Science Foundation ANS #1713072, National Science Foundation PLR1-603331, NASA MAP #80NSSC17K0351, NASA #NN1X 7AH04G, and the Heising-Simons foundation. Thomas Mote was supported by National Science Foundation #1900324. Sentinel3-SICE data processing via PolarView.org is made possible by the European Space Agency (ESA) Network of Resources. Summit Station is owned and operated by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs with permission from the Government of Greenland. Data from land-based weather stations in Greenland were provided by the Danish Meteorological Institute, and Summit Station data provided by NOAA GEOSummit. • Sandra Bigley provided invaluable editorial support for Chapter 3. Internal reviewers, external reviews, and report editors all provided comments that helped to improve the chapter. • Argo data used in the chapter were collected and made freely available by the International Argo Pro-gram and the national programs that contribute to it. (https://argo.ucsd.edu, https://www.ocean-ops . org). The Argo Program is part of the Global Ocean Observing System. Many authors of the chapter are supported by NOAA Research, the NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program, or the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program. • L. Cheng is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (42076202) and Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB42040402). • R. E. Killick is supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS and Defra. PMEL contribution numbers 5214, 5215, 5216, 5217, and 5247. • We would like to acknowledge the national and/or hydrometeorological services/bureaus of Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Senegal (National Aviation and Meteorology Agency), Nigeria, South Africa, Madagascar, Seychelles, Comoros Mayotte (France), Reunion (France), and Mauritius. • We acknowledge support by the NOAA-CPC International Desk. Global datasets from NCEP/NCAR and GPCP are acknowledged. • Samson Hagos and Zhe Feng are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research as part of the Atmospheric Systems Research (ASR) Program. Germar Bernhard and coauthors acknowledge the support of Biospherical Instruments, San Diego; the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, proej ct number 223268/F50; the Academy of Finland for supporting UV measurements through the FARPOCC, SAARA, and CHAMPS (grant no. 329225) proej cts; the European Space Agency for supporting the DACES proej ct; the Norwegian Environment Agency for funding UV measurements at Andøya and Ny-Ålesund; and the European Union for supporting e-shape. The authors also would like to thank Bodeker Scientific, funded by the New Zealand Deep South National Science Challenge, for providing the combined NIWA-BS total column ozone database; the Microwave Limb Sounder team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for data-processing and analysis support; the European Centre for medium-range weather forecasts for providing reanalysis data; and Juha M. Karhu, Tomi Karppinen, and Markku Ahponen from the Finnish Meteorological Institute for operating the Brewer UV spectroradiometer at Sodankylä • N. M. Freeman was supported by the NASA Ocean Vector Winds Science Team (NASA award 80NS-SC19K0059). • R. L. Fogt acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation grant OPP1-744998. • M. A. Lazzara, L. M. Keller, and T. Norton were supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grant OPP1-924730. • K. R. Clem acknowledges support from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund grant MFP-VUW2010. • J. D. Wille acknowledges support from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche proej cts ANR2-0-CE01-0013 (ARCA). • R. T. Datta acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation, Award No. 1952199 • E. Wilson acknowledges support from Caltech’s Terrestrial Hazard Observations and Reporting (THOR) Center. • A. F. Thompson acknowledges support from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Internal Research and Development program, Earth 2050. • G. A. MacGilchrist and M. Mazloff acknowledge support from NSF’s Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) Proej ct under NSF Award PLR1-425989, with additional support from NOAA and NASA. Logistical support for SOCCOM in the Antarctic was provided by the U.S. NSF through the U.S. Antarctic Program. • Work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, was done under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Support was also provided by the NASA Modeling and Analysis Program. We are indebted to the many NOAA Corps Officers and GML technical personnel who spend the winters at South Pole Station to obtain the ongoing balloon and ground-based data sets. We also acknowledge the logistics support in Antarctica provided by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. • Section 6h: © 2022. All rights reserved. • P. Reid and J. Lieser were supported through the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and R. Massom by the Australian Antarctic Division. The work of P. Reid and R. Massom also contributes to the Australian Government’s Australian Antarctic Partnership Program (AAPP). For R. Massom, this work was also sup-ported by the Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (Proej ct Number SR200100008). • S. Stammerjohn was supported under NSF PLR 1440435; she also thanks the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, both at the University of Colorado Boulder, for institutional and data support. • S. Barreira was supported by the Argentine Naval Hydrographic Service. • T. Scambos was supported under NASA grants NN1X 4AM54G and 80NSSC21K0750, the Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis proej ct and NSF ANT 1738992, and the NSF-NERC International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration TARSAN project. The work of M. Flü lekrug was sponsored by the Royal Society (UK) grant NMG/R1/180252 and the Natural Environment Research Council (UK) under grants NE/L012669/1 and NE/H024921/1. E. Williams is supported for studies on global circuit response to climate change from the Physical and Dynamic Meteorology Program at the National Science Foundation on grant no. 6942679. C. Price was supported in his lightning research by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) grant 2701/17 and the Ministry of Energy grant no. 2201-7-002. S. Goodman was supported by NASA Grant 80NSSC21K0923 and NASA Contract 80GSFC20C044. K. Virts is supported in part by the GOES-R Series Science, Demonstration, and Cal/Val Program at Marshall Space Flight Center. D. Buechler is supported by the NASA MSFC/UAH Cooperative Agreement NNM11AA01A. The authors wish to thank Peter Thorne at Maynooth University in Ireland and at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) for suggesting and initiating this work and for recommending that lightning be made an essential climate variable. The data used to generate Fig. SB2.1 are available from the NASA Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center DAAC, Huntsville, Alabama. The data used to generate Fig. SB.2.2 are provided by WWLLN to GHRC as part of GLM cal/val activities.

FundersFunder number
Argentine Naval Hydrographic Service80NSSC21K0750, NN1X 4AM54G, ANT 1738992
Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic SciencePLR 1440435, SR200100008
Caltech’s
Finnish Meteorological Institute
GOES-R Series Science
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research
Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme
NASA Ocean Vector Winds Science Team
NOAA-CPC
NSF-NERC
New Zealand Deep South National Science Challenge
University of Colorado
National Science Foundation1713072, OPP1-744998, OPP1-924730, 6942679, PLR1-603331
National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs
National Aeronautics and Space Administration1X 7AH04G, 80NS-SC19K0059, 80NSSC21K0923, 80GSFC20C044, 80NSSC17K0351
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA/Marshall Space Flight CenterNNM11AA01A
NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center
University of St Andrews
University of Colorado
Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, India2201-7-002
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, India
Heising-Simons Foundation1900324
Heising-Simons Foundation
Natural Environment Research CouncilNE/L012669/1, NE/H024921/1
Natural Environment Research Council
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Royal SocietyNMG/R1/180252
Royal Society
European Commission
European Space Agency
Australian Research Council
French National Research AgencyANR2-0-CE01-0013, 1952199
French National Research Agency
National Natural Science Foundation of China42076202
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Academy of Finland329225
Academy of Finland
Chinese Academy of Sciences XDB42040402
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Israel Science Foundation2701/17
Israel Science Foundation
Norges Forskningsråd223268/F50
Norges Forskningsråd
Miljødirektoratet
Marsden FundMFP-VUW2010
Marsden Fund
Neurosciences FoundationPLR1-425989
Neurosciences Foundation

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

  1. SDG 13 - Climate Action
    SDG 13 Climate Action

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Atmospheric Science

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