Summary/Abstract
The European State of the Climate (ESOTC) 2021 is the fifth in a series of annual ESOTC reports, typically released in April each year. It is one of the products in the C3S portfolio of climate monitoring services, alongside the monthly Climate Bulletins and the C3S Climate Indicators, which all cover the globe, Europe and the polar regions, but with varying emphasis.
The ESOTC 2021 report includes a short overview of the global context during the year, a more comprehensive overview of conditions in Europe, and a focus on the Arctic. It provides a detailed analysis, with descriptions of climate conditions and events, and explores the associated variations in key climate variables from across all parts of the Earth system. The key findings for each section can be found in the ESOTC Summary. In addition to summarising the ESOTC sections, the Summary also outlines the latest updates of the C3S Climate Indicators.
The ESOTC 2021 relies largely on datasets provided operationally and in near real-time by the Copernicus Services, to give an overview of 2021 in the long-term context. Data and reports from other monitoring activities are also included, when this has been considered informative and complementary. The operational data are freely accessible via data catalogues, mainly via the C3S Climate Data Store (CDS), but also via other repositories, such as the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Atmosphere Data Store (ADS). These operational data services build on extensive research and development undertaken by institutions across Europe and the rest of the world.
The Summary and full ESOTC are aimed at non-specialist audiences interested in the climate events of the past year and longer-term climate change. The Summary is available as an interactive and downloadable PDF, while the full ESOTC is a web-based report.