State of the Climate 2010

Special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 92, No. 6, June 2011

The primary goal of the annual State of the Climate collection of articles is to document the weather and climate events of the most recent calendar year and put them into accurate historical perspective, with a particular focus on unusual or anomalous events.

This report states that year 2010 was notable for its globally-averaged warmth and for the far-reaching impacts related to significant behavior of several modes of climate variability. These modes have unique influences and impacts throughout the climate system. Indeed, each chapter in this document contains special mention of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), or the various hemispheric indices such as the Arctic Oscillation or Southern Annular Mode.

41 climate indicators are tracked in this report, four more than in 2009, including temperature of the lower and upper atmosphere, precipitation, greenhouse gases, humidity, cloud cover, ocean temperature and salinity, sea ice, glaciers, and snow cover. Each indicator includes thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets that allow scientists to identify overall trends.