STATE OF THE CLIMATE IN 2011 Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 93, No. 7, July 2012

• Published in: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
• Main Authors: Cretaux, Jean-Francois, Sweet, William, Crouch, Jake, Takahashi, Taro, Cunningham, Stuart A., Taylor, Michael A., de Jeu, Richard A. M., Tedesco, Marco, Demircan, M., Thepaut, Jean-Noel, Derksen, C., Thiaw, Wassila M., Diamond, Howard J., Thompson, Philip, Dlugokencky, Ed J., Thorne, Peter W., Dohan, Kathleen, Timmermans, M. L., Dolman, A. Johannes, Tobin, Skie, Dorigo, Wouter A., Toole, J., Drozdov, D. S., Trachte, Katja, Duguay, Claude, Trewin, Blair C., Dutton, Ellsworth, Trigo, Ricardo M., Dutton, Geoff S., Trotman, Adrian, Elkins, James W., Tucker, C. J., Epstein, H. E., Ulupinar, Yusuf, Famiglietti, James S., Wal, Roderik S. W., Fanton d'Andon, Odile Hembise, Werf, G. R., Feely, Richard A., Vautard, Robert, Fekete, Balazs M., Votaw, Gary, Fenimore, Chris, Wagner, Wolfgang W., Fernandez-Prieto, D., Wahr, John, Fields, Erik, Walker, D. A., Fioletov, Vitali, Walsh, J.
• Other Authors: Laboratoire d'études en Géophysique et océanographie spatiales (LEGOS), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (OMP), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Météo-France -Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Météo-France -Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), Columbia University New York, Space Technology Center, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Climate Research Division Toronto, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Earth and Space Research Institute Seattle (ESR), Department of Hydrology and Geo-Environmental Sciences Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam (VU), Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Instituto Dom Luiz, Universidade de Lisboa = University of Lisbon (ULISBOA), NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder -National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Earth System Science Irvine (ESS), University of California Irvine (UC Irvine), University of California (UC)-University of California (UC), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA-California Institute of Technology (CALTECH), University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling Irvine (UCCHM), NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory Seattle (PMEL), Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement Gif-sur-Yvette (LSCE), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Extrèmes : Statistiques, Impacts et Régionalisation (ESTIMR), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Department of Physics Boulder, University of Colorado Boulder, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare Pisa (INFN), Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), University at Albany SUNY, State University of New York (SUNY), Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), University of Wisconsin-Madison-NASA-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Peking University Beijing, National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOC), University of Southampton, NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Institut für Umweltphysik Bremen (IUP), Universität Bremen, Department of Meteorology, University of Nairobi (UoN), Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2012
• Subjects: [SDU.STU.OC]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Oceanography; Antarctic; Arctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03502662; https://hal.science/hal-03502662/document; https://hal.science/hal-03502662/file/2012bamsstateoftheclimate.1.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1175/2012BAMSStateoftheClimate.1

International audience Large-scale climate patterns influenced temperature and weather patterns around the globe in 2011. In particular, a moderate-to-strong La Nina at the beginning of the year dissipated during boreal spring but reemerged during fall. The phenomenon contributed to historical droughts in East Africa, the southern United States, and northern Mexico, as well the wettest two-year period (2010-11) on record for Australia, particularly remarkable as this follows a decade-long dry period. Precipitation patterns in South America were also influenced by La Nina. Heavy rain in Rio de Janeiro in January triggered the country's worst floods and landslides in Brazil's history. The 2011 combined average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was the coolest since 2008, but was also among the 15 warmest years on record and above the 1981-2010 average. The global sea surface temperature cooled by 0.1 degrees C from 2010 to 2011, associated with cooling influences of La Nina. Global integrals of upper ocean heat content for 2011 were higher than for all prior years, demonstrating the Earth's dominant role of the oceans in the Earth's energy budget. In the upper atmosphere, tropical stratospheric temperatures were anomalously warm, while polar temperatures were anomalously cold. This led to large springtime stratospheric ozone reductions in polar latitudes in both hemispheres. Ozone concentrations in the Arctic stratosphere during March were the lowest for that period since satellite records began in 1979. An extensive, deep, and persistent ozone hole over the Antarctic in September indicates that the recovery to pre-1980 conditions is proceeding very slowly. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 2.10 ppm in 2011, and exceeded 390 ppm for the first time since instrumental records began. Other greenhouse gases also continued to rise in concentration and the combined effect now represents a 30% increase in radiative forcing over a 1990 baseline. Most ozone depleting substances ...