June 2012 Climate Digest

Each month, we will provide information regarding the previous month’s climate. Overall, preliminary data analysis suggests that June 2012 was the 4th warmest June on record (since 1880).  Major stories include a warm contiguous United States, cool Australia, and continued neutral conditions for El Niño and La Niña. More detailed information follows.

June 2012 Weather & Climate Highlights • Animation not work? Try here.

• This dataset shows some of the major June climate highlights from the National Climatic Data Center’s (NCDC) monthly global climate analysis. The events are noted below with more information.
• El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO): Neutral (not El Niño or La Niña) conditions prevailed in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean dissipated during April, giving way to neutral ENSO conditions. Click here for more information about ENSO and how it may impact the climate outlook for the coming months.
• Hurricane Carlotta: (June 13th-16th) With maximum winds of 165 km/hr, Carlotta brought heavy rain and damaging winds to southern Mexico.
• Christchurch, New Zealand: Experienced its coolest daily maximum temperatures in over 130 years.
• Australia: Below average temperatures throughout June
• Typhoon Mawar: (May 31st – June 6th) With maximum winds of 185 km/hr, Mawar brought heavy rains to parts of the Philippines, triggering flash floods and landslides.
• China: 5 million people were evacuated when heavy rain fell throughout much of the month, also flooding around 50,000 hectares of farmland.
• Bangladesh: Monsoonal rains impacted southern Bangladesh, triggering flash floods and landslides. These led to over 90 fatalities.
• Austria: Sixth warmest June since national records began (1767).
• Finland: Coolest June since 2004
• United Kingdom: Wettest June since national records began (1910).
• Spain: Fourth warmest June since 1960.
• Tropical Storm Debby: (June 23rd – 27th) With maximum winds of 95 km/hr, Debby brought heavy rains to Florida, setting a new June statewide precipitation record.
• Contiguous United States: Following several warm months, extremely warm temperatures affected much of the U.S., leading to the warmest 12-month period since national records began (1895).

June 2012 SST Anomalies • Click image for Full-Earth image

• The real-time sea surface temperature anomaly dataset is a great way to visualize moderating water temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific ocean. This helps show the warmer waters, indicating the loss of La Niña and transition to a neutral period.
• Remember that the blues indicate cooler than average temperatures and reds indicate warmer than average temperatures (white: average).

June 2012 Global Temperature Anomalies • Animation not work? Try here.

• Using the real-time Monthly Temperature Anomalies dataset is a great way to convey where some of the warmer and cooler than average areas were in June.
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2012 was the 4th warmest on record at 16.13˚C (61.03˚F), which is 0.63˚C (1.13˚F) above the 20^th century average.
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January–June 2012 was the 11^th warmest on record.
• Please see the “June 2012 Second Warmest on Record” post for more information.

June 2012 Snow & Ice • Click image for Full-Earth image

• Aside from helping to illustrate seasonal changes, the real-time Snow and Ice Cover dataset is a great way to convey sea ice change through time, including discussing how the current sea ice extent compares to other noteworthy years.
• The Arctic sea ice extent in June was second smallest on record. The extent was 9.8% below the 1979-2000 average.
• In Antarctica, the June sea ice extent was the 10th largest on record, at 2.5% above the 1979-2000 average.

Where do I find the datasets?

• First, check your SOS system to make sure they are not already in the EarthNow category. There is also an earthnow.sos playlist file that includes a playlist with all of these datasets.
• If not, you can download the datasets and playlist files from this FTP Site.

Helpful Resources for More Information

• http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)
• http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/enso/enso-tech.php About ENSO (El Niño/La Niña)
• http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ NCDC’s Global Climate Report

References:

NOAA National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for June 2012, published online July 2012, retrieved on July 16, 2012 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/.