The EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by ECMWF, has provided new tools to make it easier for users to explore how the climate has been changing and how it could change in the future.
They include the Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas, which enables data from a variety of sources and over various timeframes to be visualised, and Climate Pulse, a tool for climate change images intended mainly for the media.
The updates come at a time of unprecedented global temperatures over the last year according to C3S data: the last twelve months have been the world’s warmest on record, and they include the warmest month on record.
C3S aims to provide policy-makers, businesses and the general public with climate change information that is useful to them. The next milestone in its development will be the introduction of a new higher-resolution climate reanalysis, ERA6, which is expected to replace ERA5 in 2027.
On 21 March 2024, C3S will mark World Meteorological Day, which this year is devoted to climate action.
Interactive Climate Atlas
The Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas is a new tool that enables the visualisation and exploration of a variety of past, present and future climate data. It builds on the Interactive Atlas of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-IA).
The tool includes data from a variety of sources, such as ECMWF’s ERA5 climate reanalysis and ORAS5 global ocean reanalysis, the World Climate Research Programme’s CMIP5 and CMIP6 datasets, and others.
As well as visualising global data, users can choose which regions to call up for information, and they can study data for different periods.
There are also visualisations for dozens of variables to look at, including for example mean temperature, frost days, sea-ice area, mean wind speed and cloud cover.
“This Atlas is an interface to access the data we have. It can be used by national meteorological services and climate centres as well as policy-makers, businesses and the general public,” says Carlo Buontempo, the Director of C3S.
More information on the Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas is available on the C3S website.
Climate Pulse
C3S has also developed a download and visualisation tool for current and historical data, intended mainly for the media. Called Climate Pulse, it enables journalists and others to easily download the latest information for air temperature and sea temperature.
ERA5 data are made available for different timeframes and in different visualisations. “This interactive web application is currently in its beta release, and C3S is keen to further improve it,” Carlo says.
More information on Climate Pulse is available on the C3S website.
Unprecedented heat
The Atlas and Climate Pulse updates come at a time when C3S has found global surface air temperatures to be the warmest on record over the last twelve months.
The global-average temperature from March 2023 to February 2024 was 0.68°C above the 1991–2020 average and 1.56°C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial average. July 2023 was the warmest month on record.
February 2024 was the warmest February on record, and the daily global temperature reached 2°C above 1850–1900 levels on four consecutive days (8–11 February).
More details on these findings can be found on the C3S website.
What next for C3S?
C3S aims to continuously develop its products to provide the best possible service. This includes the development of a new climate reanalysis, ERA6, which is expected to replace ERA5 in 2027.
ERA6 will approximately halve the grid spacing of ERA5, from close to 30 km to close to 15 km. It will also be more directly coupled with the ocean than ERA5. “We know that this is important for a large class of phenomena, such as tropical cyclones and ocean heatwaves,” says Carlo.
ERA6 will be using the latest advances in Earth system modelling and data assimilation made by ECMWF. It will also benefit from efforts to make more observations available. “C3S has worked with EUMETSAT and other organisations to reprocess old data and to rescue data that would otherwise be lost,” Carlo says. “This will enable ERA6 to rely on an array of historical data that is as wide as possible.”
This article was first published on 19 March by ECMWF.
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