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European State of the Climate 2018

The full European State of the Climate 2018 gives a general description of the year as a whole, including a view of the European sector of the Arctic. It illustrates in further detail three longer events in 2018 where there were persistent weather conditions over several months, and explores associated variations in sunshine duration, vegetation and soil moisture, river discharge, wildfires, glaciers and sea ice. Finally, a number of key indicators for climate change are highlighted, placing the events and their impacts into a longer-term global context.

European State of the Climate 2018
Image: https://climate.copernicus.eu/ESOTC

The European State of the Climate 2018 comprises three main sections (General, Events and Spotlights), and summarises the latest update of the annual Climate Indicators. The key findings for each section can be found in the European State of the Climate 2018 Summary. The summary and main sections themselves are aimed at a non-expert audience interested in the climate events of the past year and longer-term climate change.

A large part of the report is based on data that are, or will be, available via the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store and Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) catalogue. However, the analysis includes other datasets, mainly from other Copernicus services, when this has been considered informative and complementary.

The content of the General and Events sections build upon and extend the C3S monthly climate bulletins, which are based on reanalysis - a combination of computer modelling and multiple historic data sources - (ERA-Interim/ERA5) and in situ ‘field’ data (E-OBS). The Spotlights broaden the scope, by including key climate variables from several sources, mainly satellite-based measurements and model-derived estimates.

The last section of the European State of the Climate 2018 focuses on a number of key climate indicators for long-term regional and global climate change. These indicators follow those suggested by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) for communicating global change. They build on datasets available from the Climate Data Store (note: not all datasets have yet been included in the CDS) and the CAMS catalogue. The indicators are updated as new data are released, so the European State of the Climate Summary is based on the version of the indicator at the time of publication.

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