Global Surface Air & Sea Temperatures: Current Conditions and Future Prospects

[The PIT]

On 22/08/2023 at 15:58, Methuselah said:

And, red herrings aside, shouldn't we be listening to science rather than economics? 

 

Yup can't see us losing capitalism any time soon. However would we need to if the population was steady.

[alexisj9]

11 hours ago, pinball wizard said:

Some interesting ideas and points made there. One part in particular that I agree with is what you say about China/USA. China is in no way going to compromise it's economic growth plans to save the world and the USA is not going to renounce its economic and political strength.

Maybe in 30 or 50 years time when CC tech is more efficient and cheaper and the costs of GW really begin to bite in their respective countries they'll change their ways.

Until then we must hope that human scientific ingenuity can help mitigate the stupidity of political and economic decision making.

 

It's already started to bite both of them though, but they just don't understand exactly why the weather just talking this year, has been so weird. They see the heat of course, but they also see the cold anomalies happening to, and think, politically wise it proves against climate change. Scientist are therefore ignored.

[matty40s]

 

[OverThere]

Hi all,

Firstly just to state I do believe in man made climate change so I am not one of the sceptics. My question is have there been any studies on the effects the increase in water vapour in the atmosphere from the Tonga volcano has had on the weather this year? Coupled with an El Nino has this had a greater effect on SSTs and air temps than expected?

[jonboy]

Just now, OverThere said:

Hi all,

Firstly just to state I do believe in man made climate change so I am not one of the sceptics. My question is have there been any studies on the effects the increase in water vapour in the atmosphere from the Tonga volcano has had on the weather this year? Coupled with an El Nino has this had a greater effect on SSTs and air temps than expected?

Cite as: Martin Jucker, Chris Lucas, Deepashree Dutta. Long-term surface impact of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai-like stratospheric water vapor injection. ESS Open Archive . August 04, 2023.
DOI: 10.22541/essoar.169111653.36341315/v1

[matty40s]

 

[matty40s]

 

[Geordiesnow]

You just need to look at the 850hpa temperatures on wetterzentrale and it's like we are a month behind constantly since Autumn began and no wonder when you see how warm the SSTS are and how warm it has been this year. I mean we are in October and we not even reaching the -15hpa yet.

It's a sign of things to come I'm afraid though, it's only going to get worse sadly.

[reef]

1 hour ago, Geordiesnow said:

You just need to look at the 850hpa temperatures on wetterzentrale and it's like we are a month behind constantly since Autumn began and no wonder when you see how warm the SSTS are and how warm it has been this year. I mean we are in October and we not even reaching the -15hpa yet.

It's a sign of things to come I'm afraid though, it's only going to get worse sadly.

A month behind indeed, I was thinking similar. We've already had a 17C September. I would not be surprised to see a 13-14C October and a 10C November. The warmest Autumn on record looks possible already as there's not much cold to tap into.

[alexisj9]

14 hours ago, richie3846 said:

Interpreting extreme weather statistics.

IRRATIONALFEAR.SUBSTACK.COM

---

Why scientists must use caution when interpreting statistical outlier events in the weather and attributing them to anthropogenic climate change.

I've been following this thread for some time, and enjoying learning about the extreme events occurring worldwide. I found this article an interesting counterbalance to the focus on the events. Sometimes when we focus on things, it can skew our perception, as we are not focused on the rest of the weather around the world, which, for the most part, is bland and normal when compared with our datasets. 

 

 

As in anomalous cold, and anomalous wet. We have been looking at more than just anomalous heat. Something has been weird this year the question is what.

[Don]

2 minutes ago, alexisj9 said:

As in anomalous cold, and anomalous wet. We have been looking at more than just anomalous heat. Something has been weird this year the question is what.

I think it's simply all part of climate change?

[alexisj9]

1 minute ago, Don said:

I think it's simply all part of climate change?

I do to, just wondering what richie thinks

[richie3846]

13 minutes ago, alexisj9 said:

As in anomalous cold, and anomalous wet. We have been looking at more than just anomalous heat. Something has been weird this year the question is what.

Yes I think it's all part of the changing climate also. What we can't know, is how much the weather this year, would be different from previous years and decades, without human influences. It's unfortunately impossible to separate out the human influence, from natural changes that may take place anyway. 

It was only around 9000 years ago that Doggerland was wiped off the map, because of climate change and local events. That was nothing to do with emissions. This is what worries me with hyper focus on extremes. We could be turning ourselves into climate martyrs, based on strong evidence within the context of what we know, but potentially rather weak evidence, as we simply don't have the full facts from a longer time period. The further we look back, the weaker the evidence becomes, so we end up basing all our decisions on a very narrow timeframe of evidence. I'm uncomfortable with this, uncomfortable because we could potentially throw ourselves into the gutter and ruin our prosperity and peace, just for the sake of climate change, which we don't fully understand. 

I'm all for cleaning up our act and looking after the planet as a general principle, including reducing pollutants in the air and on the surface. I just want to make that clear. I'm not prepared to become a climate change martyr though, I don't think it's fair for a single generation of people to take this burden onto their shoulders and make themselves mentally ill and poorer. I became concerned when I read some of the recent posts where people are seriously worried about the events reported in this thread. I think it's too much for an individual to take onto their shoulders. Our priorities should be firstly, our families and immediate environment. That's where we really matter, and beyond that maybe too much for us to worry about as individuals. 

[WYorksWeather]

The following chart by Berkeley Earth is broadly illustrative of what is going on:

Essentially, you have a number of different factors meaning that this year is particularly anomalous. The global warming trend due to GHGs over the last 10 years is estimated at about 0.2C, then the El Nino impact, and smaller impacts from the solar cycle, Hunga Tonga, and aerosol emission reductions.

What you'd expect to see is that next year will be warmer still, due to the El Nino lag effect, and then afterwards the cycle starts again - we go back to neutral or La Nina and anomalies drop slightly, some of the less reputable commentators start to proclaim 'no warming for X years!', and then the natural cycles turn positive again, we set new records, and the cycle repeats.

[alexisj9]

16 minutes ago, richie3846 said:

Yes I think it's all part of the changing climate also. What we can't know, is how much the weather this year, would be different from previous years and decades, without human influences. It's unfortunately impossible to separate out the human influence, from natural changes that may take place anyway. 

It was only around 9000 years ago that Doggerland was wiped off the map, because of climate change and local events. That was nothing to do with emissions. This is what worries me with hyper focus on extremes. We could be turning ourselves into climate martyrs, based on strong evidence within the context of what we know, but potentially rather weak evidence, as we simply don't have the full facts from a longer time period. The further we look back, the weaker the evidence becomes, so we end up basing all our decisions on a very narrow timeframe of evidence. I'm uncomfortable with this, uncomfortable because we could potentially throw ourselves into the gutter and ruin our prosperity and peace, just for the sake of climate change, which we don't fully understand. 

I'm all for cleaning up our act and looking after the planet as a general principle, including reducing pollutants in the air and on the surface. I just want to make that clear. I'm not prepared to become a climate change martyr though, I don't think it's fair for a single generation of people to take this burden onto their shoulders and make themselves mentally ill and poorer. I became concerned when I read some of the recent posts where people are seriously worried about the events reported in this thread. I think it's too much for an individual to take onto their shoulders. Our priorities should be firstly, our families and immediate environment. That's where we really matter, and beyond that maybe too much for us to worry about as individuals. 

Oh I'm certainly doing my best there. Have a wild garden alsorts of bees butterflies and still have them thanks to the weather this year. Still see the odd bumble in my fusia, although most have gone now, the late mining bees though are still flying around doing their thing. 

Edited October 4, 2023 by alexisj9

[WYorksWeather]

5 minutes ago, richie3846 said:

Yes I think it's all part of the changing climate also. What we can't know, is how much the weather this year, would be different from previous years and decades, without human influences. It's unfortunately impossible to separate out the human influence, from natural changes that may take place anyway. 

It was only around 9000 years ago that Doggerland was wiped off the map, because of climate change and local events. That was nothing to do with emissions. This is what worries me with hyper focus on extremes. We could be turning ourselves into climate martyrs, based on strong evidence within the context of what we know, but potentially rather weak evidence, as we simply don't have the full facts from a longer time period. The further we look back, the weaker the evidence becomes, so we end up basing all our decisions on a very narrow timeframe of evidence. I'm uncomfortable with this, uncomfortable because we could potentially throw ourselves into the gutter and ruin our prosperity and peace, just for the sake of climate change, which we don't fully understand. 

I'm all for cleaning up our act and looking after the planet as a general principle, including reducing pollutants in the air and on the surface. I just want to make that clear. I'm not prepared to become a climate change martyr though, I don't think it's fair for a single generation of people to take this burden onto their shoulders and make themselves mentally ill and poorer. I became concerned when I read some of the recent posts where people are seriously worried about the events reported in this thread. I think it's too much for an individual to take onto their shoulders. Our priorities should be firstly, our families and immediate environment. That's where we really matter, and beyond that maybe too much for us to worry about as individuals. 

I see this argument a lot. Maybe I'm not going to change your mind on the natural / anthropogenic point, but I'll try to explain why the scientific mainstream is convinced that warming is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. I'm going to present three main arguments.

The first is paleoclimatology (the study of past climates). Essentially, by creating reconstructions of past climates, we can have a good idea of what the normal rates of change are. Natural climate change usually has a very, very slow trend on a global scale (important to recognise that this emphatically does not apply to regional changes!). Throughout the last 10,000 years up to the 19th century, we see some variation, and an overall linear trend of around -0.01C/century. In context, the current warming trend if extrapolated linearly is 2C/century. There is no known natural process that can explain a trend this steep. Of course excluding major cataclysms we couldn't possibly miss, like massive volcanic eruptions all over the world, or a civilisation-threatening asteroid! If such natural processes were going on, we'd know.

Of course that's almost an argument by exclusion, so here's a more positive argument. Carbon isotopes. Carbon-14 (C14) decays to Carbon-12 (C12) with a half-life of just over 5,000 years. In the atmosphere, C14 is extremely rare, in the range of one atom of C14 for every trillion C12 atoms. However, fossil fuel carbon is very old - hundreds of millions of years, and therefore has no C14 left. This means that you'd expect the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere to decrease, if the rise in CO2 levels was due to humans. This is exactly what we observe.

The final argument is about atmospheric impacts.  Different sources of warming impact the atmosphere in different ways. Changes in solar energy reaching the Earth would be expected to heat all layers of the atmosphere, but that isn't what we see. CO2 is transparent to incoming shortwave radiation, but opaque to outgoing longwave radiation. Hence the troposphere warms, and the stratosphere cools, or so theory predicts. And yet again, theory matches observations - we observe simultaneous tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling.

I don't know whether this will be convincing or not, but there's my attempt!

[richie3846]

23 minutes ago, WYorksWeather said:

I see this argument a lot. Maybe I'm not going to change your mind on the natural / anthropogenic point, but I'll try to explain why the scientific mainstream is convinced that warming is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. I'm going to present three main arguments.

The first is paleoclimatology (the study of past climates). Essentially, by creating reconstructions of past climates, we can have a good idea of what the normal rates of change are. Natural climate change usually has a very, very slow trend on a global scale (important to recognise that this emphatically does not apply to regional changes!). Throughout the last 10,000 years up to the 19th century, we see some variation, and an overall linear trend of around -0.01C/century. In context, the current warming trend if extrapolated linearly is 2C/century. There is no known natural process that can explain a trend this steep. Of course excluding major cataclysms we couldn't possibly miss, like massive volcanic eruptions all over the world, or a civilisation-threatening asteroid! If such natural processes were going on, we'd know.

Of course that's almost an argument by exclusion, so here's a more positive argument. Carbon isotopes. Carbon-14 (C14) decays to Carbon-12 (C12) with a half-life of just over 5,000 years. In the atmosphere, C14 is extremely rare, in the range of one atom of C14 for every trillion C12 atoms. However, fossil fuel carbon is very old - hundreds of millions of years, and therefore has no C14 left. This means that you'd expect the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere to decrease, if the rise in CO2 levels was due to humans. This is exactly what we observe.

The final argument is about atmospheric impacts.  Different sources of warming impact the atmosphere in different ways. Changes in solar energy reaching the Earth would be expected to heat all layers of the atmosphere, but that isn't what we see. CO2 is transparent to incoming shortwave radiation, but opaque to outgoing longwave radiation. Hence the troposphere warms, and the stratosphere cools, or so theory predicts. And yet again, theory matches observations - we observe simultaneous tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling.

I don't know whether this will be convincing or not, but there's my attempt!

There is some very good information there, thanks. The one point that I'd like to highlight, is the 10000 year timescale, where scientists believe the change has been rather slow until the 19th century. In terms of the age of the earth, that 10000 years is still a very small timescale, and not really representative of in/out ice ages, over millions of years. In terms of the entire climate history of the earth, I believe a 10000 year dataset could have a distorting effect.

This is a ridiculous analogy I know, but imagine we were a butterfly, only living for 2 weeks. We wouldn't know that 12 weeks before we were flying about, it was winter, and everyone was freezing their cocks off in the Northern hemisphere (except for the southern UK, land without snow ). We wouldn't know that our fragile insect body couldn't survive 12 weeks earlier. We wouldn't even know winter exists, because we lived in the summer, and never had the opportunity to see the winter. 

Generally speaking, we do need to clean up our ways and stop abusing the earth. We don't even need to know about the climate to understand this would be a great thing to achieve. I fear that rushed and panicked decisions, with hyper focus solely on climate, rather than sustainability, may have so many unintended consequences, that our kids end up wondering why our generation threw mankind under a bus in the first place. 

I do think that our emissions are having an impact on the climate, and I wouldn't deny the validity of solid evidence like you have provided. I do also believe we should accept we don't know everything, and admit uncertainty will prevent climate science from ever being 'settled', therefore any policies arising from the evidence, should be carefully considered and administered in the round, with a dose of realism. We've already witnessed what happens when ideas get pushed too fast, with the inevitable roll back of the end of diesel cars. Concerns about batteries, ethics, electricity, infrastructure etc etc. Almost all new ideas to combat climate change will run into these types of problems. Digging ridiculous amounts of minerals out of the ground, and installing millions of electric points, which of course is using the earth's resources and also pumping more stuff into the atmosphere in the production and fitting process, is a problem in itself. 

[WYorksWeather]

2 minutes ago, richie3846 said:

There is some very good information there, thanks. The one point that I'd like to highlight, is the 10000 year timescale, where scientists believe the change has been rather slow until the 19th century. In terms of the age of the earth, that 10000 years is still a very small timescale, and not really representative of in/out ice ages, over millions of years. In terms of the entire climate history of the earth, I believe a 10000 year dataset could have a distorting effect.

This is a ridiculous analogy I know, but imagine we were a butterfly, only living for 2 weeks. We wouldn't know that 12 weeks before we were flying about, it was winter, and everyone was freezing their cocks off in the Northern hemisphere (except for the southern UK, land without snow ). We wouldn't know that our fragile insect body couldn't survive 12 weeks earlier. We wouldn't even know winter exists, because we lived in the summer, and never had the opportunity to see the winter. 

Generally speaking, we do need to clean up our ways and stop abusing the earth. We don't even need to know about the climate to understand this would be a great thing to achieve. I fear that rushed and panicked decisions, with hyper focus solely on climate, rather than sustainability, may have so many unintended consequences, that our kids end up wondering why our generation threw mankind under a bus in the first place. 

I do think that our emissions are having an impact on the climate, and I wouldn't deny the validity of solid evidence like you have provided. I do also believe we should accept we don't know everything, and admit uncertainty will prevent climate science from ever being 'settled', therefore any policies arising from the evidence, should be carefully considered and administered in the round, with a dose of realism. We've already witnessed what happens when ideas get pushed too fast, with the inevitable roll back of the end of diesel cars. Concerns about batteries, ethics, electricity, infrastructure etc etc. Almost all new ideas to combat climate change will run into these types of problems. Digging ridiculous amounts of minerals out of the ground, and installing millions of electric points, which of course is using the earth's resources and also pumping more stuff into the atmosphere in the production and fitting process, is a problem in itself. 

Should have been clearer on the 10,000 year timescale - that's just one example. You could write several books on various paleoclimate investigations - obviously the evidence gets patchier the further back you go. At the moment the IPCC consensus is that on temperature, we are now globally most likely at the hottest temperatures within the last 10,000 years. In terms of CO2 levels, we have high confidence that CO2 levels have not been higher in the last 800,000 years.

For me though, the most impressive research I've seen is on rate of CO2 increase. Evidence shows that the rate of increase is likely unprecedented in the last 66 million years. I've attached a link to the study below - it's not open access unfortunately but the abstract is visible. I've also attached a press link which is more accessible if you're not used to reading scientific articles.

I do agree that sustainability has to be considered in the round. I also think the question around solutions is very much a live question. Once you start getting into what should be done with the information, you're leaving the realm of scientific discourse, and starting to look  philosophy, economics, politics and so on. 

Rate of carbon emissions put in context

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

---

Humans are now putting carbon into the atmosphere at a rate unprecedented since at least the age of the dinosaurs, scientists say.

Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years

WWW.NATURE.COM

---

Carbon release rates during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum are difficult to constrain. Comparing relative rates of carbon cycle and climate change at the event’s onset suggests emissions were much slower than...

 

[richie3846]

1 hour ago, alexisj9 said:

Oh I'm certainly doing my best there. Have a wild garden alsorts of bees butterflies and still have them thanks to the weather this year. Still see the odd bumble in my fusia, although most have gone now, the late mining bees though are still flying around doing their thing. 

Same here. I've wilded up my garden, and also walk to work unless it's absolutely hacking it down. When we bought our house, we made sure it was within walking distance of the place where we both work. I've been vegan for over 20 years, and have never been on a plane in my life.

 

[alexisj9]

10 minutes ago, richie3846 said:

Same here. I've wilded up my garden, and also walk to work unless it's absolutely hacking it down. When we bought our house, we made sure it was within walking distance of the place where we both work. I've been vegan for over 20 years, and have never been on a plane in my life.

 

I don't drive, walk to town, usually get a bus back though, use public transport for long journeys, and obviously recycle, though who knows what really happens to recycling once picked up.

[richie3846]

1 minute ago, alexisj9 said:

I don't drive, walk to town, usually get a bus back though, use public transport for long journeys, and obviously recycle, though who knows what really happens to recycling once picked up.

I heard the term 'wishcycling' once. I think that sums it up. We hope our carefully sorted and washed recycling goes to a good home, but deep down we know a lot of it probably doesn't!

[Penguin16]

17 hours ago, richie3846 said:

Interpreting extreme weather statistics.

IRRATIONALFEAR.SUBSTACK.COM

---

Why scientists must use caution when interpreting statistical outlier events in the weather and attributing them to anthropogenic climate change.

I've been following this thread for some time, and enjoying learning about the extreme events occurring worldwide. I found this article an interesting counterbalance to the focus on the events. Sometimes when we focus on things, it can skew our perception, as we are not focused on the rest of the weather around the world, which, for the most part, is bland and normal when compared with our datasets. 

 

 

Ah yes the geologist who calls it the climate scam will certainly offer a nice counter balance. F me

Spreading climate misinformation is fast becoming a shortcut to popularity across right-wing media. This man’s rise proves it.

WWW.MEDIAMATTERS.ORG

 

 

[cowdog]

Something else is going on, there has to be some feedback loop effect being triggered for this to keep rising so significantly. We knew this year and next were going to be warm, but this is warmer than most expected.

[richie3846]

7 hours ago, Penguin16 said:

Ah yes the geologist who calls it the climate scam will certainly offer a nice counter balance. F me

Spreading climate misinformation is fast becoming a shortcut to popularity across right-wing media. This man’s rise proves it.

WWW.MEDIAMATTERS.ORG

 

 

This really does highlight the minefield we are treading, when it comes to sourcing information. I saw the piece in isolation, and didn't get any sort of vibe that the guy was this way inclined. The piece he wrote, which I linked, did not appear to be a conspiracy piece, though I may have missed clues of course. I give up trying to understand it. It's time for me to switch off from climate matters, it's too big for me to understand, because I don't care enough, as it's not down to me to save the planet. My nervous system wasn't built for this crap. I'm out. Good luck guys

[WYorksWeather]

1 hour ago, cowdog said:

Something else is going on, there has to be some feedback loop effect being triggered for this to keep rising so significantly. We knew this year and next were going to be warm, but this is warmer than most expected.

Hence the graph I posted higher up which is by Berkeley Earth:

Combination of the warming trend plus a phase change for many forms of natural variability from negative to positive. Negative phases of internal variability can mask warming over short timescales, which is why we've not seen new records since 2016, and now we seem to have suddenly warmed by a lot.