State of the Climate in 2003

Abstract

Abstract The earth's climate was influenced by a moderate El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean at the beginning of 2003. This ENSO warm event developed during October–November of 2002, and eventually dissipated during March–April 2003, giving way to near-neutral ENSO conditions for the remainder of the year. Despite the cessation of El Nino during the boreal spring, the ENSO warm event affected regional precipitation anomalies over a broad area of the Pacific basin, including wet anomalies along the west coast of South America, and dry anomalies in eastern Australia, the southwest Pacific, and Hawaii. The global mean surface temperature in 2003 was within the highest three annual values observed during the period of regular instrumental records (beginning in approximately 1880), but below the 1998 record-high value. Global surface temperatures in 2003 were 0.46°C (0.83°F) above the 1961–90 mean, according to one U.K. record, which ranked as third highest in this archive. In the U.S. temperature archive, ...