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

[WYorksWeather]

 Pennine Ten Foot Drifts The suggested overall tendency is for us to develop more of a seasonal range in terms of rainfall. Over the longer term, the weakening difference in temperature between the Arctic and the equator, and the overall increase in temperature, should work to increase rainfall. However, in summer in particular, we expect the Hadley cell to extend northwards, leading to the Azores high extending over to Iberia more frequently, which would act to reduce rainfall.

Hence, the overall impact by 2100 is generally thought to be wetter winters / extended cold seasons, and drier summers. Of course, modelling these things is still somewhat difficult, and rainfall patterns are much less certain than temperature, especially if any tipping points are crossed that significantly reconfigure global circulation patterns.

[Midlands Ice Age]

50 minutes ago, Pennine Ten Foot Drifts said:

1. The reduction in the temperature difference between mid-latitudes and the Arctic weakening the northern polar jet and causing it (combined with other factors you've mentioned) to persist on a more southerly track.

2. Generally warmer air, therefore holding more moisture, leading to heavier rainfall associated with the procession of depressions.

If this is generally correct does that not mean that this type of pattern is going to persist for potentially many years (at least in human terms i.e potentially 5-10 years) until the next 'level' of climate change kicks in and we move to the next phase? (however that manifests itself).

PTFD..

I agree with your general statements above...

But do not forget the other 'unknowns' which are inherent in our climate.

That is the variability of 'natural' forcings.

There two things need to be considered 

1) The sigma variation from the usual climate normal. Best understood as 1 in a xxx year events by most people.

2) It automatically  means that variations in climate  have always occured and they have always been around. The natural elements of climate change have not become extinct. I accept that these events  may well be becoming a bit more frequent in recent  years ..

For example - If you simply look at the CET data,  the 1730 decade saw over a 1.2C degree increase in temperature compared to decades both before and after until about 50 years ago. That was long before the major forcing increases believed to be being caused by CO2.    It, I believe, would have been caused by some sort of natural climate change. Perhaps with lows 'stalling' in similar positions to those we currently are enjoying so much right now.!!! 

Fierce wind storms swept the UK during the period of the early 1720's. I believe that the earth's natural climate variability has not yet been completely taken over by other new forcings, just yet.

We will have to wait and see what happens and then analyse the data.

MIA

Edited March 28 by Midlands Ice Age

[LetItSnow!]

 WYorksWeather Perhaps a greater deviation of annual rainfall from Scotland and the south of England by this theory. This summary is interesting. I've thought that summers of the future may swing wildly between extremes of dryness and wetness between summers; summers like 1976 followed by summers like 2012. A more blocked pattern in summer doesn't always guarantee it will land in a hot position. But basically sounds like rain is the name of the game. Interesting that the Hadley Cell isn't taken into account for winters. Perhaps even AGW will never overpower the mighty Atlantic.

Extended cold season probably just means extended autumn...

Though I have wondered that if winters were more blocked in Europe, that even though the earth would be warmer, less power from the Atlantic may allow cold pools to develop over Europe? Cuz in my head, many a mighty cold pool in recent years has easily been swept away from the Atlantic and sent warm air bathing over Europe. If the Atlantic was weaker then maybe Scandinavian highs and such would last longer and therefor be able to pack a punch. We know with warming of about 1-1.5C we can still see cold pools develop of an extreme intensity so maybe they would fester over Europe with little forcing.

Overall trends do show that UK rainfall tended to be dryer when it's colder so it makes sense for it to be wet when wetter. We've not seen any proof of the more blocked winters yet...

Apologies for being all over the place but no one knows for sure anyway.

[WYorksWeather]

 Midlands Ice Age To use the terms technically - a forcing implies some sort of external impact on the climate, i.e. outside the 'normal' workings of the Earth system. These are generally taken to include large scale volcanic eruptions, solar activity, etc. Volcanic especially is hard to predict of course - the next Pinatubo will come along at some point and will temporarily reverse the warming trend for a few years. A series of such eruptions, or a very extreme one (e.g. Tambora) might even produce quite a notable dip - perhaps even close to a decade. And it could happen tomorrow, or maybe not for 50-100 years or even longer than that.

Ultimately there is a reason I feel why climate is generally done using 20-year or 30-year periods, and at a global scale. The CET, which will of course probably be at least somewhat reflective of climate patterns for NW Europe, but not more than that, will naturally be more prone to swings over a 10-year period, as it is both a shorter time period than the 20-year or 30-year standards, and a smaller geographic area.

I think that was the key in a recent study of the last 2000 years, which I've linked below. The key is that past trends don't really show the sort of global scale. Most areas of the planet, with the exception of some high latitude areas, chiefly in the Northern Hemisphere, are now hotter than they've been for as far as we can tell, several thousand years, when you consider a multi-decadal time period and use the entire planet as your dataset.

No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era - PubMed

PUBMED.NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV

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Earth's climate history is often understood by breaking it down into constituent climatic epochs¹. Over the Common Era (the past 2,000 years) these epochs, such as the Little Ice Age^2-4, have...

Nevertheless though, I do think it's interesting to look at the smaller geographies and the interannual to interdecadal variability, because it would be great to get better at predicting it. Even our seasonal forecasts are presently pretty poor - it'd be good to at least be able to say with moderate confidence what the broad trends will be a few months or a year or two out, i.e. above or below average for temperature and rainfall. At the moment, the skill level of most forecasts drops to little better than climatology once you go beyond 2-3 weeks. We've seen how poor even sub-seasonal models like the EC46 can be, or the CFSv2 charts for weeks 3 and 4.

[WYorksWeather]

 LetItSnow! Extended cold season is just a technical term used in some papers - it means November to March, and the extended warm season is May to September. These are often used because if you're looking at heatwaves or cold spells, there's no point excluding a notable event if it mostly or entirely falls just outside the traditional summer or winter definitions, e.g. September 2023 or March 2018.

I do think there'll still be wild swings from year to year - it's highly doubtful the Hadley Cell will expand far enough to perpetually lock us into a Mediterranean-type pattern. But I would expect that overall we will have more summers like 2022 and 2018, and more winters like this current one, 2015-2016, etc., with extremely wet conditions and little in the way of snow.

Of course, if the AMOC ever shuts down, all bets are off, and similarly if any other large scale pattern change happens, like major changes to Arctic sea ice, or the Amazon rainforest. All of those will drastically alter global precipitation patterns if they occur in ways that can't be predicted with certainty in advance.

 

[raz.org.rain]

12 minutes ago, WYorksWeather said:

To use the terms technically - a forcing implies some sort of external impact on the climate, i.e. outside the 'normal' workings of the Earth system. These are generally taken to include large scale volcanic eruptions, solar activity, etc. Volcanic especially is hard to predict of course - the next Pinatubo will come along at some point and will temporarily reverse the warming trend for a few years. A series of such eruptions, or a very extreme one (e.g. Tambora) might even produce quite a notable dip - perhaps even close to a decade. And it could happen tomorrow, or maybe not for 50-100 years or even longer than that

Rather oddly enough, volcanic eruptions don't necessarily lead to cooling. They can, in fact, cause significant warming. This is theoretically one of the factors that helped tip the earth into the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum. I believe there was a paper released at one point that theorized that sulfur induced cooling from a supervolcanic eruption would struggle to contend with anthropogenic warming, I feel that we generally underestimate how much of an impact we've had on how our atmosphere behaves.

[WYorksWeather]

 raz.org.rain Yep, it's not a universal rule, but the injection of SO2 generally exceeds the opposite effect. However, it is plausible that a warming effect could be kickstarted if undersea volcanoes kicked off a massive methane release, for example.

At some point, another Mount Tambora will happen though. However, they are very rare events. That eruption was the largest in recorded history. I actually understated it a bit - we only know of four eruptions of a similar scale since the dawn of agriculture.

I still think at the very least, the aftermath of a Tambora-type event would at least temporarily return us to a pre-industrial climate for a few years. But none of us on this forum may live to see it happen.

[Midlands Ice Age]

WYW..

Thanks for the above, but I was replying to Pennines note about whether the 'weather' will be the same over the next  few years, and  not  LONG TERM climate change.

HIs note suggested that the current situation was here for.... (ever?, he mentioned 10 years) due to the current 'stuck' situation. I was pointing out that natural climate change will be effective  a long time before your 30 year averages for CC  become  effective. 

I  was simply pointing out that , despite CC, that there will still be a large variation  in  'regional' temperatures in exactly the same  way as there always have been, with areas below the average values as well as those above, caused by the normal rhythms of changeable 'weather' and not climate.

I was deliberately talking about the many different regions within earth's atmosphere., not talking about the global climate.  

'Weather' changes will not cease with Climate Change.

MIA

[WYorksWeather]

 Midlands Ice Age Yep, definitely agree with that. I think I was trying to illustrate the difference in type between what we call externally forced changes and internal variability. And also the difference between the shorter-term fluctuations and the longer-term ones.

The key question is whether there are any good patterns that we will eventually be able to pick out to give at least somewhat reliable sub-seasonal to seasonal or annual forecasts. At the moment, it doesn't seem we can do much more than take a climatological guess - in other words if you had to take a bet on this summer you'd be safest to go for a degree or so above 1991-2020, say. Models really don't seem to be able to improve on that at that time horizon.

My usual rule is that for the UK and NW Europe more generally, predictability falls to little better than climatology by week 3 in almost all cases.

[Dare i watch the GFS 06Z]

Strong scandinavian/northern european cooling to be seen during winter&summer while spring and autumn remains unchanged for the years 2025-2029 because of lingering water vapor in the stratosphere.

 

Long-term climate impact of large stratospheric water vapor perturbations

ESSOPENARCHIVE.ORG

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The amount of water vapor injected into the stratosphere after the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) was unprecedented, and it is therefore unclear what it might mean for surface climate. We...

 

[reef]

 WYorksWeather And it has:

Surface air temperature for March 2024

CLIMATE.COPERNICUS.EU

Warmest March on record. 1.68C above the pre-industrial average. A large proportion of the Atlantic is still the warmest on record despite El Nino waning.

[WYorksWeather]

 reef Yep, now we see what April brings. I think the run will break later this year (El Nino has some inertia for a few months usually, so maybe around September/October time we might see the effect of the current fading on the temperature. It'll be interesting to see whether 2024 ends higher than 2023 - the first half will definitely be warmer but the second half could well be cooler.

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

Whilst there will be ongoing MJO feedback some additional significant teleconnective developments of late giving a global temperature evolution featuring noteworthy amounts of cold / below average - significantly below average temperature scenarios throughout both Southern and Northern Hemispheres.

The switch back into a strongly positive AAO [Antarctic Oscillation] which has been a persisting feature of this El Ninò will continue to have feedback across the Southern Hemisphere especially.

However the main influence I believe will be the recent evolution of the 2023-2024 Super El Ninò into more of a west based El Ninò which occurs with Western Pacific ENSO regions [3,3.4 &4] being noteably warmer than Eastern Pacific ENSO regions [1&2] 

We can see this evolution via the NOAA ENSO SST animations upto April 3rd

And via the 15 day smoothed means from cyclonicwx

Doing my research I found the typical April temperature setup during a West Based El Ninò bearing in mind no two ENSO events are ever 100% identical and other teleconnective feedback also factors in, however it is a good match to the temperature evolutions from now through the next 10 days at least.

One of the most noteable below average anomalies is across Australia, there were many cold records broken following cyclone Megan last month and I wouldn't be one bit shocked seeing further records tied and/or broken.

Sticking in the Southern Hemisphere there are other noteworthy significant below average temperature anomalies in South America and South Africa.

Moving to the Northern Hemisphere some of the most significant cold events,

Alaska discussed here

 

A predominantly cold pattern moving across the Middle East intensifying as we head nearer to Mid April with significantly below average temperatures potentially record breaking I'd imagine.

850hpa and surface temperatures.

Dynamics involved see a new cut off low become very slow moving and maintaining intensity / reintensifying. 

Significantly cold temperature anomaly across Tibet.

Cold - significantly cold anomalies will also develop across India particularly Northern India likely in part connecting to the Middle East cut off low / trough.

Multiple cold air outbreaks farther north toward Russia though this looks likely to trend into Higher pressure and associated above - significantly above average temperatures.

Northern Africa seeing a significant cold plunge this coming weekend 

Predominantly cool - cold setup initially before a gradual transition into above average, though the below average temperatures in the south are associated with Monsoon rains still noteably colder than average with above average rainfalls.

Global view.

@Midlands Ice Age

[damianslaw]

 Kirkcaldy Weather Interesting significantly cold outbreaks everywhere it seems but never the UK! Are we just being dealt a poor hand at present?

[sundog]

Hopefully these cold outbreaks will perhaps prevent April from being the 11th consecutive warmest month on record.  We shall see.......

[Methuselah]

Rather than create a new thread, I thought I'd bung this in here:

 

[raz.org.rain]

 Methuselah and the extreme opposite 

Scientists assess potential for super greenhouse effect in Earth's tropics

CLIMATE.NASA.GOV

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Scientists investigate whether continued warming on Earth could cause a super greenhouse effect in tropical regions to “run away” as it might have on Venus.

 

[WYorksWeather]

 raz.org.rain I've done a fair bit of reading on this topic, and my understanding is that until the far future, a true runaway greenhouse effect in the UK is actually impossible. It would require Earth's average surface temperature to reach something in the mid-40s Celsius. It's apparently not feasible even if you calculate the sum total emissions that might be obtained by burning every last bit of fossil fuel in the Earth's crust. That is of course different to whether we could cross tipping points or drive ourselves extinct if emissions were extremely high, or there were extremely strong unknown feedback processes - that's very possible without necessitating us turning the Earth into Venus.

[raz.org.rain]

 WYorksWeather I would say that it's impossible based purely on anthropogenic greenhouse gas emisssions. However, depending on how positive feedback loops interact with each other, I would say that a drastic warming trend isn't out of the question. But as far as I know, a true runaway greenhouse effect is highly unlikely under any scenario (unless there's a sudden unexpected intensification of solar activity, which is very unlikely either way).

[WYorksWeather]

 raz.org.rain Yep, this is the differentiation between 'tipping points' and 'runaway greenhouse effect'. We could completely transform the Earth, reversing the clock 55 million years to the point where we'd have crocodiles and palm trees at the poles. But that is not a runaway, since of course those conditions occurred in the past, and once most of us were dead as a result, CO2 emissions would then drop precipitously, and over a relatively short time from the Earth's perspective, temperatures would drop again. But I have no doubt that we'd be just as dead. We'd either be extinct or there'd be a few million of us scrabbling around to survive in some sort of pre-industrial existence, at best. There's no way that sort of transformation is survivable for modern civilisation and billions of humans.

 

[jonboy]

I have a simple question. 

Why given the last 18 months of above average temperature is no one talking about the  effect of Hunga Tonga and laying the blame on CO2 climate change when the research suggested temperature would rise as a result of the event?

[Derecho]

1 hour ago, jonboy said:

Why given the last 18 months of above average temperature is no one talking about the  effect of Hunga Tonga and laying the blame on CO2 climate change when the research suggested temperature would rise as a result of the event?

Research indicates that the amount of water vapour added to the atmosphere as a result of that eruption will lead to only +0.035C warming. Global temperatures over the past few months have been around 0.4C higher then what they were in the lead up to that eruption.

Take away the 0.035C and the influence of El Nino and you still get an accelerating warming trend, regardless of whether Hunga Tonga erupted or not.

Did the Tonga undersea volcano eruption cause this year's extreme heat? | Space

WWW.SPACE.COM

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The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption may have contributed to this year's heat, but it's not causing climate change.

 

Edited April 10 by Derecho
Link added.

[Midlands Ice Age]

Back from my shopping trip with  you know who.

Promised a look at the hemispheric temperature profile (and this shocked me!) -

  (Southern hemisphere data) - No change from 2016

 (Northern hemisphere data) No change from 2016...

Looking as though it could well drop below 2023 in a couple of months if it goes as per 2016.

and finally the 'Tropics' -

 

So it looks as if it is the Tropics  which is causing the current temperature climb. 

Not surprising really,  as it looks as if it where it should be with a 9 month El Nino beginning to fade.

- and here was me thinking/believing/misunderstanding(?)  it was the Northern Hemisphere that had warmed up uncontrollably.!!! 

MIA

Edited April 20 by Midlands Ice Age

[WYorksWeather]

 Midlands Ice Age The Northern Hemisphere view isn't really specific enough to show the bit that is considered out of control.

Essentially there is a view that reductions in aerosol pollution in the shipping areas in the Atlantic and Pacific may be responsible for accelerated regional warming. This remains somewhat controversial, but this is where the main unprecedented events are taking place warming wise.

In terms of the future trends I think you're quite right that we'd expect temperatures to drop back below 2023 later on this year, though it's still on a knife edge whether 2024 will beat 2023 overall. The likely outcome is that the first half of 2024 will be warmer than the first half of 2023, but the second half of 2024 will be cooler than the first half of 2023.

At the time of the last IPCC report for Working Group 1 (Physical Science Basis),  trend warming absent El Nino and volcanic effects was estimated at around 1.3C over pre-industrial, so we should now expect to be at around 1.4C as that was about four years ago. This seems in line with predictions that trend warming will likely pass 1.5C in the late 2020s or early 2030s.

 

[Midlands Ice Age]

 WYorksWeather

Thanks for the above.

My note was not intended to be a comment about CC. But someone obviously thought it was and so it was transferred in here.

So from a CC point of view, as far as I can see, and despite your hotspots in the Atlantic and Pacific,  since the graphs for the SH and the NH add up to the earth's total surface surely it means that somewhere must be below average? That is why I was surprised. 

It seems to not bear out the oft reported facts that large areas of the continents are becoming over heated. You seem to be suggesting that the major part of the warming currently is in the oceans. I was under the impression that GW would not impact the oceans as much as the 'ground' surface, since the oceans have the ability to soak up 9 times more heat capacity, but who knows?

 

MIA