Chief meteorologist Mateescu says 2019 warmest year since 2000

Director of the National Meteorological Administration (ANM) Elena Mateescu told AGERPRES on Tuesday that 2019 was the warmest year in the history of meteorological measurements since 1900, adding that the trend will be rising throughput the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue.

"Since 2000 until now, the warmest years in the history of weather measurements have occurred worldwide, and from 2015, every the record set the previous year would be scattered. 2019 was the warmest year in the history of meteorological measurements, namely from 1900 to date. Worldwide, 2019 was the second year in the last 140 years since the meteorological services included in the global weather watch system have provided such measurements. Romania is no exception, because since 2000 it has reported its 19 warmest years. The same thing can be translated by a higher frequency of extreme weather phenomena both nationally and locally," said Mateescu.

For example, according to her, if in 2011, the ANM issued an average of 1,744 severe weather nowcasting messages, in 2019, 4,774 were issued, of which 79 were code red warnings. For the first time in 2019 ten red severe weather phenomena nowcasting warnings were issued in May, a spring month, and five more in November.

And because the extreme phenomena take place regardless of season, in the last month of winter 2019/2020, in January, both a code red general warning for blizzards was issued for the south-east parts of Romania, as well as five code red warnings for severe immediate phenomena.

"The cause is an increase of greenhouse gases, the main culprit for climate change, together with a warmer atmosphere, coupled with a greater quantity of water vapour that generates more and more extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent even more intense, regardless of the season we are in," said Mateescu.

She added that autumn 2019 was the hottest in the history of meteorological measurements, and so were the first two months of winter: December - with a positive thermal deviation of 3.1 degrees Celsius, and January, although climatologically the coldest month of the year and winter in Romania, ended on a 1.4 degrees Celsius thermal deviation and only 10.4 l/ sq.m. average precipitation nationwide.

"In conclusion, the Earth is warming up. The future scenarios also give the same signal, of course depending on the greenhouse gas emissions, the same trend, namely an increase on average of 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius in 2021- 2050 and even higher values towards the end of the century, 2071-2100, from 3.5 to 5.5 degrees especially during the summer months," concluded Mateescu.