TRANSCRIPT 

NOAA Monthly U.S./Global Climate Media Telecon 

December 19, 2024, at 11:00 am EDT via AT&T Teleconference

Hosted by NOAA NESDIS Public Affairs 

Media advisory about briefing: 
https://www.noaa.gov/media-advisory/noaa-monthly-us-global-climate-report-call-december-19

Gregg (Operator):
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NOAA Monthly Climate Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode, and later we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star, then zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, John Bateman. Please go ahead.
John Bateman:
All right, thanks so much, Gregg. Good morning and thank you for joining this monthly climate update call, part of the suite of climate services that NOAA provides, the government, business, academia, the media, and the public, to support informed decision-making. I'm John Bateman with NOAA Communications, and I'll be facilitating the call today. If you have additional questions after the conclusion of today's call, I can be reached by email at and I will spell it, nesdis.pa@noaa.gov. That's nesdis.pa, as in public affairs, at noaa.gov. Today's update will feature three short presentations, followed by an operator assisted question and answer session at the end. A copy of the presentation our speakers will follow can be downloaded from the link in the media advisory. And with that, I will introduce our speakers speaker.
Our first presenter is Karin Gleason, Monitoring Section Chief of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, who will provide a summary of the November 2024 US and Global Climate Report, as well as the latest drought monitor update. Our second presenter is Matt Rosencrans, with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center who will review the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season that ended on November 30th. And our last presenter will be Scott Handel, also with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, who will provide the latest El Niño, La Niña update, as well as the US seasonal outlooks for temperature, precipitation, and drought for January, February and March. We will kick off this media briefing with Karin from NOAA NCEI.
Karin Gleason:
Thank you, John and thanks everyone for joining the call this morning. Let's begin by looking at slide number two and our global temperature data for November 2024. We see that the global surface temperature anomaly was 1.34 degrees Celsius or 2.41 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 20th century average. Making this the second warmest November on record. This departure value was 1/800ths of a degree Celsius cooler than the November record set last year. Global ocean temperatures in November were also second warmest with a departure value of 0.91 degrees Celsius. And looking at land only, we see that the 2.31 degrees Celsius positive departure value is also second warmest on record for the month. Looking at the temperature departure map on the left and the percentiles map on the right, we see warm departures and above average to record warm temperatures in shades of red, and cooler than average departures and cooler than average to record cold temperatures in shades of blue.
For November, large areas of above average and record warm temperatures were concentrated across large parts of Northwest Africa and far Western Europe. Much of Southwest Asia eastward through Northern China, Eastern Mongolia, Korea and Japan. Parts of the Western Arctic, Eastern Canada, the US deep South and Mexico also were record warm for November. Cooler than average temperatures covered much of the Antarctic, the southern half of Greenland, the western US, parts of western Canada, and Southern Alaska, Central Africa, and parts of Southeast Europe. Looking at continental averages, we see that Asia was warmest on record with South America and Oceania coming in at second warmest. North America was third warmest, Africa eighth warmest, and Europe was 13th warmest for November. Record warm temperatures, which can be seen in the dark red areas in the map on the right, covered nearly 11% of the world's surface, which is the highest percentage for November, exceeding last November's extent by only 0.8%.
Looking at slide number three now, we see the global temperature departure from average and percentile maps for the most recent three-month period, Northern Hemisphere's autumn season and Southern Hemisphere's spring. The September to November 2024, global surface temperature was 1.31 degrees Celsius or 2.36 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 20th century average. This ranks as second warmest September, November period in the 175-year record, and is 1/10th of a degree Celsius below the record set just last year. The past 11 September through November periods have been the 11 warmest such periods on record.
Looking at the maps, we can see that record warm temperatures occurred across portions of Northern and Eastern Canada, the Caribbean, Southern South America, parts of Northern Europe, Asia, and the Northern Indian Ocean. Near to cooler than average temperatures can be seen across parts of Southern Greenland, Central Africa, and across parts of Antarctica. The continents of North America and Oceania were warmest on record, South America and Asia ranked second warmest. Europe third warmest, and Africa seventh warmest for the season.
All right, so shifting now our attention to slide number four. We see that the global temperature percentile map for the January to November period, and the 2024 year-to-date temperature comparison to the 10 warmest years on record. The January to November global surface temperature was 1.28 degrees Celsius or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average, and this is the warmest of January to November in the 175-year record. Looking at the map on the left, we see more large-scale record warmth can be seen across areas from the Southern US to Central South America, across much of the central Atlantic Ocean, Europe, multiple areas across Africa, much of the Northern Indian Ocean, and central and Southeast Asia. A few areas below average temperatures can be seen in parts of Greenland, Eastern Antarctica, and the southern tip of South America and the adjacent Southern Ocean. All continents except for Asia were warmest on record for the first 11 months of this year with Asia ranking second warmest.
Looking at the time series on the right, we see that as we get closer to the end of 2024 at the year-to-date anomaly, value has been relatively stable, maintaining the lead each month during 2024. And according to NCEI's temperature ranking outlook statistical analysis, it is virtually certain with one month remaining in the year, that 2024 will be the warmest year on record.
Moving on now to slide number five and a little closer to home. We see that November temperatures averaged 45.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term mean. This translates to a ranking of sixth warmest November on record. Looking at the temperature ranks map on the left, we see that in general temperatures were above average across the eastern half of the contiguous US while near average and below average temperatures were observed across the west. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Maine, each ranked warmest on record for the month with 25 additional states ranking in the top 10. Precipitation for the month averaged 2.98 inches, which was 3/4 of an inch above average. That translates to a ranking of 17th wettest. Looking at the precipitation map on the right, precipitation was above average along parts of the west coast and from the Southern Plains to the Great Lakes. Oklahoma ranked wettest on record, with Kansas ranking second wettest.
Looking now at slide number six, and we see temperature and precipitation ranks for the fall season, September to November. Temperatures averaged 57.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit above average, which is the warmest autumn on record. The ranks map on the left shows that each of the lower 48 states who were above average, much above average, or record warm for this three-month period. Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Maine ranked warmest with an additional 18 states ranking among their warmest three fall seasons on record.
Precipitation totals for the fall season averaged 6.23 inches, which was 0.65 inch below the long-term mean, which translates to a lower tercile or below average ranking. The rank map on the right shows precipitation was below average across many states, with New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maine ranking driest on record. The entire Northeast in fact, had a very dry fall season, as well as parts of the Great Lakes and parts of the Southwest. Above average precipitation occurred in portions of the west, central and Southern Rockies, Central Plains, the mid-Mississippi Valley, and parts of the Southeast.
All right, now looking at slide number seven. We see the year-to-date temperatures for the contiguous US averaged 57.1 degrees Fahrenheit or 3.3 degrees above average. This is the warmest such year-to-date period on record. The map on the left shows that temperature ranks for the first 11 months. We had much above average to record warm temperatures across the entire lower 48, with 22 states, mostly in the eastern half of the US ranking warmest on record. Precipitation for this year-to-date period was 29.15 inches or 1.57 inches above average, and this translates to an above average period. The rank map on the right shows wetter-than-average conditions along portions of the west coast, central Rockies, Southern Plains, and across many states in the eastern half of the US. Dry conditions prevailed in parts of the Northern Rockies and Plains, the Southeast, Central Appalachia and the Mid-Atlantic.
Hearing our attention now to the latest US drought monitor map released just this morning on slide number eight. We see that approximately 38.9% of the contiguous US is currently in drought. This is down by about 13% when compared with early November. We see that drought conditions during this time contracted and/or diminished in intensity across the Central Appalachians, most of the Plains, the Gulf Coast states, the Great Lakes, Northern Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest. Drought intensified and/or expanded across parts of the Southwest and in portions of the Northeast. Outside of the contiguous US, drought coverage expanded across the Hawaiian Islands. And with that, I'll turn the presentation over to Matt.
Matt Rosencrans:
Thanks, Karin. So, moving on to slide nine, just to talk about the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Just overall, we had 18 named storms, 11 hurricanes, five of which became major hurricanes which are a category three, four or five storms with winds of at least 111 miles per hour or greater. We did have 166% of normal for our accumulated cyclone energy, and that is calculated by taking the wind speed of the storm and every advisory from the National Hurricane Center, do some math on that, squaring them, adding them up, and over the entire season. Normal for that value is 96.7, and we were at 166% of that value.
So, what's interesting too about this year is that while we had five major hurricanes and 11 hurricanes, we also had five hurricane landfalls. So that's a very active year for landfalls, normally we're at about two, between two and three depending on the exact time and you do those averages. During busy seasons, we increase those odds along the Gulf Coast, which this case this year, all five hurricane landfalls in the US were in the Gulf Coast. There were no East Coast hurricane landfalls. The East Coast is typically where you see the biggest changes, but this year we had a lot of storms that formed towards the western part of the basin and you can see that in the track map on the slide as well.
The map to the right is the preliminary National Hurricane Center track map that has all the storms this year. That map will be finalized as the team at the hurricane center does the analysis over the winter to finalize all of the exact positions of these storms at all locations, and do what they call the best track data. Sometimes when you're doing things in operations and you have to get an advisory out the door every six hours, data comes to you a little bit later so you can adjust. There are small adjustments made to some of the track information.
But we can see that there was a large cluster around the kind of Western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, and then a large cluster out in the Eastern Atlantic in the main development region. There was only one storm that made its way kind of close to the Virgin Islands in Puerto Rico, and then kind of curved up towards Bermuda. So there's kind of a lull geographically in the middle of the basin, whereas more activity is kind of split to the west half and to the east half, which isn't always the case. When you look at these patterns. There are some years where we have a big clustering of storms that kind of move along Puerto Rico and impact Haiti and then the Bahamas, and then the East Coast of US. So you'll have some years where there's a big cluster there. So that spatial clustering is something we'll look at with respect to the circulation pattern this year as well.
So, moving on to slide 10, after talking about the spatial component, the temporal component. This year started fast, and then had a quiet period, and then finished with record numbers. We had Hurricane Beryl, that was the kind of indications of a busy season early in the year. It was the earliest category five hurricane on record and became the strongest June or July hurricane on record in the basin. And it was early by about two weeks earlier than the prior earliest category five in the Atlantic Basin. Also on slide 10 on the right-hand side, we can see from Beryl, it had a long track, it was formed deep in the tropics, moved across the Caribbean, and then made landfall in Texas. And that long track contributed to a lot of that accumulated cyclone energy. So Beryl contributed about 20% of the entire season's cyclone energy in one storm. That's how intense and long that Beryl was in time.
And then after Beryl we kind of went into a quiet period. There are reasons and thoughts and explorations that we're doing and hypotheses why the quiet period happened, and we will work with scientists in NOAA and the science will work with partners to figure that out. It was unprecedented, in 50 years to have that quiet period that lasted up until September 9th when Hurricane Francine formed, and then that made landfall on September 11th in Louisiana. Hurricane Helene then formed on September 24th, and then that kind of really kicked off a very busy period where after Hurricane Helene, then we had Hurricane Kirk, Leslie, Milton. We had three simultaneous hurricanes in October. That's the first time that that's ever happened on record. Normally the simultaneous hurricanes happened in October.
So then going to slide 11, just want to talk about some of the factors that go into this. We had very warm ocean conditions. You can see on the left-hand figure here that the ocean conditions, they were very warm. You had temperatures at least a degree above normal across most of the main development region.
We also had those same kind of temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, with the entire Gulf of Mexico being above normal temperatures. I know this slide here also shows one of the sea surface temperatures, but when you look at this at depth, we also had warm water in the western part of the Atlantic, that was down at depth as well. So while a storm like hurricane Milton, when it developed, it can scour the energy from the top of the ocean, and that energy to top ocean is able to be replaced by warmer water at depth. And that is really something critical in these storms, it's something we're going to look to be forecasting in the future, or use in the forecast in the future, is the depth of the warm water because that can really give us indication of [inaudible 00:40:06] storms or even forecasted storms, indicate more intense storms.
Something else on the right-hand plot here, we were at 0.55 degrees centigrade above normal and this is according to the ERSSC version five data, and thank you to our colleagues at SEI. It was the third warmest for the main development region. We want subtract that away from the global tropics. So it was the third warmest since 1950, with 2010 and 1955 being the... 1955 being the other warmest year. We can see that we are still in this sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic being above normal and being even warm relative to the global tropics, we're still in a period of that. And that is very indicative of the high activity, warm, high activity era for tropical storms that we're in now, and the warm ocean conditions that are very supportive of that. I will note also, in the figure there is a bit of cool water, relatively cooler water just off the west coast of Africa. And that'll come back in a minute when I talk about why, potential reason we have that low in the season.
But moving on slide 12, the other thing I want to talk about is the sea surface temperatures, that's source of energy to these storms. The atmospheric conditions, the wind shear can kind of set up not just be the energy but can the storms live and survive, and then potentially tap into all that energy in the ocean. And if there's high wind shear, those storms they typically cannot, because you'll build a small thunderstorm near the ocean surface and as it goes up in the atmosphere it'll get pushed away because the winds are in different directions as you go up. But that's a high shear environment.
In a low shear, where wind shear is low, that storm forms over the ocean builds straight up and that storm can then reinforce and build on itself. So you'll get a development of the system and that's how tropical storms turn into hurricanes and hurricanes into major hurricanes, where they are in a favorable environment with warm sea surface temperatures and low wind shear. They can kind of feed on the energy and kind of be a self-development cycle.
So, the plot here shows that the wind shear, the left-hand plot here was in the orange shading is very low wind shear. And those are the wind shear over the main development region, Atlantic, indicated by the green box on slide 12, was the lowest that we observed for August, September, October, the lowest observed since 1950. So that means that we had a very favorable environment to develop tropical storms on average for the August, September, October period. Remember, we had that low in most of August and early September. So that really tells me also that the later part of September and October were extremely favorable and had very low wind shear.
And when I actually plot up, I don't have it plotted here but when I look at wind shear for just October, if I use the same ways of looking at it as used for August, September, October, most years the wind shear in October is so high it's off the top of the plot. This year it's actually in the plot without changing the axis, which tells me that not only was August, September, October record low, but that October wind shear was record low and record low by a large margin for October. And that's kind of what made October so kind of prolific where we had the busiest season on record from September 24th onwards. That was our busiest period. And then in any September 24th onwards goes back to the record back to the 1850s, the entire [inaudible 00:44:01] database.
So, we had that busy end, we had a busy beginning, but what about the low? Well, we're looking into that. Slide 13 shows some of the potential causes, why we think we had some of that low. Left-hand side kind of a busy plot, but the key is to figure out, look in the blue line there at 2024 temperatures. Those 2024 temperatures for August, September, and October in the upper level were quite warm compared to their normal temperatures, which is the black line. When you have warm air aloft, so this is also warm air up at about 35,000 feet, when you have warm air aloft, that can counteract the warmth from sea surface temperatures. So you kind of put the warm cap on top of things. And then if you look in there when you get towards October, the blue line kind of comes back into within the realm of years that we've seen in the past since 1980. So you start to get back towards conditions that are more closer to normal.
But when you look in late August or September, the blue line was the warmest temperatures in the upper level that we have on record, even warmer than last year. There are some research that points to that's related to El Niño, and the residual El Niño from last winter. We can end up with very warm temperatures in the upper atmosphere. Why those warm temperatures in the upper atmosphere? They were there starting in March and April and May. Why, those kind of hung on for so long? That's something that we've got to look into.
Also, going back to the wind shear. I have September plotted on the top right here and October on the bottom left. I told you that October was very busy or very low wind shear before. Well September, if we look in the upper right spots, there are a lot of high shear values into the Gulf of Mexico and down to the Caribbean. And a lot of the high shear values are in spots where we didn't have those storms develop or where I said we didn't have the storms. We had storms in the Gulf and we had storms in the Eastern Atlantic, but I'm seeing a lot of high shear here during September when we should be forming a lot of storms potentially in the Caribbean and into the western part of the main development region, potentially in the Puerto Rico and Haiti [inaudible 00:46:21]. Very high wind shear there. So, that's another potential reason why we think we didn't have as much activity in September.
Slide 14 also points to another factor, which is the West African monsoon. The blue areas on the left-hand plots indicate that the rainfall in Western Africa was well above normal. And a strong monsoon is normally associated with better seeds for more tropical storms because the waves that off Africa are the seeds. This year we saw a West African monsoon that may have been so strong that it pulled the waves further north and they were exiting the West Coast of Africa, over some of those relatively cooler waters.
We do have an indication that the eastern portion of the front in the area where the waves move along was dramatically farther north and even as far north as 20 degrees north, where the normal position is about 16 degrees north. It only sounds like it's four degrees and it's a couple of hundred miles, but it's enough where these waves don't have their source of moisture and don't have their source of temperature gradient so that they're not able to fully realize and fully develop. When they came off the West Coast of Africa, they were just weak and they weren't able to develop in the swamps. And that kind of came back somewhat back to normal as towards the end of September, and then we were able to get a burst of tropical storms and hurricane formations in the Eastern Atlantic with Hurricane Kirk out there as one of the storms.
We also do look at the Madden-Julian Oscillation and that's something that kind of varies on 30 to 60 days, kind of monthly scale changes. And during the early part of September, that was a very unfavorable phase for tropical storm formation in Atlantic. It's very favorable in the west pacific but the Atlantic, it's a very unfavorable phase. So we're thinking there's not only warm waters but a very active monsoon, high wind shear, and the climate enforcement from the Madden-Julian Oscillation, those all came together to really make that first September record low activity.
And then just also something else to highlight, NOAA's outlook [inaudible 00:48:40] the East Pacific, and it was we had 12 main storms, five hurricanes, and three major hurricanes, for a total of 75% of their cumulative energy, and a below normal season with only one hurricane landfall in East Pacific. So with that I'll turn it over to Scott.
Scott Handel:
Thank you Matt, and good morning everyone. This is Scott Handel, meteorologist from the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center. And I'm going to start you off by bringing your attention to slide 17 of the presentation, with the current observations and forecast for the El Niño Southern Oscillation.
The figure on the left shows the average sea surface temperature anomalies for the tropical Pacific that were observed during the last month. The horizontal black line in the center represents the equator and the vertical black line represents the international dateline. The blue shading represents areas where the sea surface temperatures were below normal, and the orange and red areas correspond to areas where the sea surface temperatures were above normal. As you can see, there's a lot of blue near the center of the map, indicating that on average here, sea surface temperatures during the past month were below normal in much of the Eastern and Central tropical Pacific. The light shading of the blue indicates that these anomalies were weak and less than 0.5 degrees Celsius below normal in many areas. These weak departures reflect neutral conditions, which in other words don't qualify as either a La Niño or El Niño. However, you do see some pockets of darker blue on the map, which indicate areas where sea surface temperatures were more than 0.5 degrees below normal.
And in fact, in a recent development, the latest weekly sea surface temperatures and what's called the Niño 3.4 region of the Tropical Pacific, was roughly 0.6 degrees Celsius below normal, which technically crosses the La Niña threshold. So we could say at this time, we're knocking on the door of a weak La Niña. For this reason, a La Nina watch remains in effect. Therefore, looking into the future, an emergence of La Niña is the most likely scenario as we head into the winter. The chart on the right indicates that there's a greater than a 70% chance of La Niña occurring during the December, January, February period. However, chances of a strong La Niña are exceedingly small, with a near zero chance of occurrence this winter. Moreover, as we progress into the spring, a return to neutral conditions is the most likely scenario.
Now moving from the tropics to North America, I would like to draw your attention to slide 18, which represents NOAA's monthly outlooks for the month of January. These outlooks represent the probability that the mean temperature or total precipitation for the month will be below, near, or above normal. So the red and orange shading on the map to the left indicates areas where above normal temperatures are the most likely outcome, while the blue shading indicates areas where below normal temperatures are most likely. Looking at the map on the left, the above normal temperatures are favored across the southern tier of the lower 48 states, as well as the eastern seaboard and northern and western parts of Alaska during the month of January. This is especially true for Southern Texas where there's a greater than a 50% chance of above normal temperatures.
This anticipated warrant is due to a variety of factors such as trends, model guidance, influences from the Madden-Julian Oscillation. It should be noted that guidance is indicating the potential for a variable weather pattern and large temperature swings for parts of the country, leading to a lower confidence forecast than usual. Therefore, a large area of equal chances of above, below, and near normal temperatures are indicated by the white areas of the map, which encompasses much of the Central and Northwestern United States, as well as Southeastern Alaska.
Looking at precipitation, the areas of green on the map to the right indicate regions where the total precipitation is favored to be above normal for January. And the brown areas represent regions where below normal precipitation is the most likely scenario. Below normal monthly total precipitation amounts are favored for much of the southern tier of the lower 48 states, extending from parts of the Southwest through the Southern Plains Gulf Coast and Southeast. The greatest chance of drier than normal weather is indicated for the Rio Grande Valley, the Florida peninsula, and Southeastern Georgia, where probabilities of dry exceed 50%. Above normal precipitation is favored for the Northern Central Rockies, High Plains, as well as the Great Lakes region, extending southward and westward to include the Ohio Valley and much of the middle and upper Mississippi Valley. Further to the north above normal precipitation is favored across much of Northern and Western Alaska. But below normal precipitation is favored for parts of the South Coast. Dynamical model guidance recent trends and the Madden-Julian Oscillation contribute to this outlook.
Now looking further ahead to the three-month period from January, February and March, I'd like to bring your attention to slide 19. During this period, the potential impacts from the anticipated weak La Niña become more apparent, but generally warmer and drier than normal weather favored across most of the southern part of the country. Farther to the north, increased chances for warmer than normal conditions extend north across the eastern quarter of the contiguous United States.
Consistent with recent trends, similar to the January monthly outlook, increased chances of above normal precipitation amounts are indicated for the Northwestern contiguous United States during January, February, March season, as well as the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, parts of the middle and upper Mississippi Valley, and the interior Northeast. Colder than normal weather is favored to accompany this above normal precipitation across the northwestern contiguous United States and extend eastward to the Northern Plains. These areas are generally consistent with the anticipated La Niña-based state, with support from dynamic model guidance. Additionally, La Niña tends to favor cold for parts of Alaska, particularly across Southeastern Alaska where enhanced probabilities of below normal temperatures are indicated. Dryer than normal weather is slightly favored to accompany this cold over parts of the South Coast of Alaska. On the flip side, milder than normal weather and above normal precipitation are favored for northwestern parts of the state, consistent with recent trends and supported by model guidance.
Now wrapping things up with the drought look, I'd like to bring your attention to slide 20. The brown areas on the map indicate where drought is currently ongoing and expected to continue. This includes much of the North, Central, and Southern tier of the contiguous United States, and parts of the southern half of the Eastern Seaboard. Additionally, with the dry pattern favored in much of the southern tier, drought expansion is likely for the areas represented in yellow shading. This includes parts of the Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast. On the flip side, drought improvement or removal is likely for the Northern Rockies, parts of the Tennessee and lower Mississippi Valley, the Northeast, and parts of the mid-Atlantic states, and much of Hawaii as well. That's it from the Client Prediction Center. Back to you, John.
John Bateman:
Thank you, Scott. We will now take specific questions from the call participants. Please be sure to identify who you'd like to answer the question, if possible. And Gregg, could you please remind the call participants how they can ask a question, and then cue up the first question?
Gregg (Operator):
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press one then zero on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the one zero command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press one then zero at this time. And one moment please for your first question.
Your first question comes from the line of James Dinneen from New Scientist. Please go ahead.
James Dinneen:
Hi, thanks so much for taking my question. My question is for Karin. The chart you showed of 2024 year-to-date temperature anomalies shows that it stayed really flat even after El Niño's faded down to neutral earlier this year. And it struck me that that looks very different from 2016, which also saw an El Niño fade. Can we assume that that difference is due to the sluggish development of La Niña in the Pacific?
Karin Gleason:
Yes, this is Karin Gleason at NCEI. Very good question. I haven't looked at the comparison, but I followed your question and kind of understand what you're asking. I do think that, sort of. I do believe that there's at least a part of that that is true. The slow onset of this La Niña, which was anticipated, we haven't quite gotten there yet, but as Scott indicated, we're right on the edge at this point near the end of the year. The oceans in particular were slow, as you would expect, slow to cool from the record warmth that happened and developed from mid to late 2023. And so everything has been just slowly cooling, but not really very quickly. Some of those individual months weren't nearly as dramatic, but the year-to-date maps continued to still have lots of record warmth present, including on slide number four when you take a look at the percentiles map. There's quite a bit of the central two thirds of the globe that's still remain in record warm.
And so unlike with last year where things were heating up rapidly from mid-year towards the end of the year and sort of accelerating, this year it's just been kind of simmering and kind of maintaining. But there has been overall I would say the areas of the record warmth have definitely been cooling, but we really haven't seen a tremendous decline in those overall composite year-to date-temperatures throughout the year. So yeah, it's been an interesting year and the comparison of 2016 that we expected there to be some similarities, but I think the La Niña not forming as quickly as maybe has been anticipated may be part of that reason for it not cooling off quite so much. Thank you.
Gregg (Operator):
Your next question comes from the line of Doyle Rice from USA Today. Please go ahead.
Doyle Rice:
Oh yes, good morning. Thanks for doing this. I had a question about the US temperature for the year. And I see that you say that from January to November it's considered the warmest, but I wonder, could a cold December knock it down to second warmest? I just wonder how close we are to the US being the warmest on record for the entire year.
Karin Gleason:
Yes, Doyle. Hi, Karin Gleason here. Interesting that you asked this question, it's almost as if I had anticipated this. I was taking a look after last month just knowing that we were maintaining second warmest for a while and then with this particular year-to-date period, it bumped up to warmest. So, I kind of did a back-of-the-envelope calculation just looking at historical data as a proxy, and then kind of creating sort of scenarios with different end-of-year results.
And if we were to have a warmest December, clearly we'll end up with warmest year. If we have a top 10 December, so among the warmest 10 years, we remain warmest. And then somewhere after that, between top 10 and warmest third, is where we would eclipse from warmest to second warmest. So, I think your most likely scenarios, and just looking at some anomaly maps for the first half of December, it kind of looks like we're split. Sort of the western part of the US has been warmer than average, eastern, slightly near average to slightly below average. So it might be a little bit on the warm side as of right now. So we still have a little bit less than a half a month to go. So warmest is probably not something we're looking at, but so I would say it's very reasonable, certainly top three, but likely top two for the year. We'll just have to see how the rest of this month plays out, but very good question.
Doyle Rice:
Okay, thank you.
Gregg (Operator):
If there are any additional questions, please press one then zero.
And you have a follow-up from James Dinneen. Please go ahead.
James Dinneen:
Thanks so much. Yeah, just to follow on Karin to your answer, if we were to see an El Niño in 2025 to 2026, would the sort of short space between El Niños lead to a greater boost in global average temperatures? I'm just thinking of all the discussion around this last El Niño following the triple dip La Niña, this discussion around that triple dip enabled the oceans to take up more heat and then released it all at once. So, can you speak to that?
Karin Gleason:
Yeah, another great question. So we're not in the habit of speculating too much, but what I can say about where we're at and where we've been. Regardless of whether we're in an El Niño, La Niño, or neutral phase, the background temperatures when you average everything together have continued to climb, even if subtly there is that sort of background increase. So we would anticipate that to continue. And so if we were to enter into say, a stronger El Niño, we would expect to perhaps... It's entirely possible to be in a new neighborhood, a new set of records, just because if for no other reason, because we have that background warming happening, regardless of what phase we're in, those phases tend to enhance what's happening in the background. So an El Niño will kind of boost things and a La Niña will kind of slow that, appear to slow that warmth down. But that background warming is still happening regardless of phase. So, it is entirely possible that if there were to be something strong that were to develop, we could see something that exceeded what happened in 2023 and 2024.
James Dinneen:
Thanks very much.
Gregg (Operator):
And at this time, there are no further questions.
John Bateman:
All right, thanks so much, Gregg. Then I will wrap up the call. First, I would like to thank all of our speakers for their time and everyone else for participating in this conference call.
I will end by reminding you to mark your calendar for a few upcoming events. The release of the 2024 US Climate Report is scheduled for January 9th, 2025 at 11 AM Eastern time. The release of the 2024 Global Climate Report is scheduled for January 10th, 2025 at 11 AM Eastern time. And the media briefing webinar to discuss the global climate of 2024 will be held at 12:00 PM Eastern time on January 10th. So, one hour after the global analysis is released, we will host our media briefing webinar. We will have a media advisory issued and posted online about one week ahead of the event, letting everyone know the details.
And then lastly, an audio file of this call will be posted on the noaa.gov media advisory site later today. And if you have any further informational needs, please feel free to email me, John Bateman. My contact information is available at the top of the media advisory. Thanks so much.
Gregg (Operator):
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T teleconference. You may now disconnect.
Speaker 8:
We're sorry, your conference is ending now. Please hang up.