365 Days of Climate Awareness 131 – State of the World Climate, 1999

1999 World Climate Data

Global CO₂ concentration, 367.8 ppm, +2.1 over 1998

Average global temperature anomaly, +0.79°C over 20^th c. ave, 25^th warmest 1894-2021

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1999 featured a persistent La Niña state in the Pacific Ocean, leading to a lower average global sea surface temperature, though air temperatures remained elevated. The run of well-above-average air temperatures continued from its start in 1977, though the decade of the 1990’s established a new, consistently higher departure from the century mean. In 1998 began a phase where global air temperatures did not continue rising at the same continual pace of the previous decade. It was to last through 2013 and was cynically, and very inaccurately, called a “pause”. In fact global air temperature continued to rise, albeit more slowly, while ocean temperatures rose considerably. In effect, global temperature rise was simply shifting gears, where heat uptake occurred in a different part of the system.

 La Niña helped produce lower temperatures throughout the tropics, while both northern and southern extratropics (>23.5° N/S), including Eurasia, northern and southern Africa (outside of the tropics) were 1°C or more hotter than average. Precipitation, consistently with other La Niña years, was higher than normal in Indonesia, the tropical Indian, western, and south central Pacific Oceans. Central China, the Amazon basin and northern South America, and northern Australia.

The rains in China produced catastrophic floods in the Yangtze river valley which displaced more than 2 million people. Deadly floods also occurred in Venezuela, and an historically strong cyclone in the Bay of Bengal caused a storm surge in Bangladesh which killed more than 10,000. Heavy rains in Vietnam displaced 1 million and killed 700.

Tomorrow: 2000 state of the climate, US and Europe.

Be brave, and be well.