2020 will be one of the three warmest in the world, in Latvia

Climate change will continue its relentless course in 2020, which is expected to become one of the three warmest years in the history of observations, reports the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center, referring to the World Meteorological Organization (WCO).

The WCO’s preliminary report on the state of the global climate states that in January-October 2020, the average air temperature was 1.2 degrees above the pre-industrial average. According to the WCO, the last decade – 2011-2020 – is the warmest decade, and since 2015, all six years have been the warmest in the history of observations.

Carbon dioxide levels exceeded 410 parts per million in 2019, and despite the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to rise this year.

Ocean water temperatures are at record highs this year, adversely affecting marine ecosystems, which have already suffered from ocean acidification due to carbon sequestration.

Since the mid-1980s, the Arctic has warmed at least twice as fast as the rest of the world on average, exacerbating the melting of Arctic glaciers. In September 2020, when the Arctic traditionally had the lowest level of sea ice per year, it reached its second lowest level since satellite observations began. In July and October, the record for the smallest amount of sea ice this month was broken.

The report focuses on the effects of weather and climate on human health, food security, migration and ecosystems, especially underwater ecosystems. The full report on the climate situation in 2020 will be published in early 2021.

In Latvia, the average air temperature in January-November 2020 was +9.5 degrees or 2.3 degrees above the norm, exceeding the first 11 months of 2019 by 0.8 degrees. This year in Latvia is likely to become the warmest observation in history, as the cold in December is not forecast to be so great that the average air temperature in 2020 will fall to last year’s level.

This year, Latvia has experienced the warmest winter and the warmest autumn in the history of observations, and spring and summer were also slightly warmer than normal. Half of the months of this year were among the warmest observations in history. January and November were the warmest, February, June and October the second warmest, and September the third warmest since the beginning of the observations in 1924.

By December, 394 daily maximum air temperature records and only 14 daily minimum air temperature records had been broken in Latvia. The number of broken heat records is higher this year than in previous years, but the number of fallen cold records is one of the lowest.

The total amount of precipitation from January to November 2020 in Latvia was 613 millimeters on average – four percent below the norm. The largest deviation from many years of average rainfall was in February, which became the fourth wetest observation in history.

It has already been reported that the average air temperature in Latvia this autumn was +9.9 degrees or 3.2 degrees above the norm and 0.2 degrees above the previous warmest – 1934 – autumn record.

The average summer air temperature in Latvia was +17.2 degrees or one degree above normal. The average air temperature in spring was +6.0 degrees or 0.4 degrees above the indicator of 1981-2010, while the average air temperature in the calendar winter of 2019-2020 was +2.7 degrees – even 5.7 degrees above normal. . The previous warmest winter record was immediately broken by 1.7 degrees.

Even if the average air temperature in December drops to -3 degrees, this year’s temperature in Latvia will be +8.5 degrees, beating last year’s record by three tenths of a degree. The previous warmest was 2015 with an average air temperature of +7.8 degrees.

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