Fourteen years ago, a new climate myth was born. A grand solar minimum (GSM) was in the making that would not only reverse global warming but plunge the planet into a new Little Ice Age, surprising the warming alarmists and causing undue suffering. The time has come to bury that myth.
1. The origin of the myth
The deep solar minimum of 2008-2009 was a complete surprise to solar physicists. They did not know that solar activity could become so low because it had not occurred during the time of solar observations with modern instrumentation. In 2009, a solar scientist named Habibullo Abdussamatov published a paper in Russian in which he argued that the following years would see a major cooling based on the onset of a new GSM. His evidence was
The low solar activity of the then ongoing solar cycle (SC) minimum 23-24.
A bicentennial cycle in solar activity that supposedly decreased solar activity after 1600 and after 1800
The pause in global warming since 1998
Figure 1. From Abdussamatov 2009. “The Sun defines the climate”. Nauka i Zhizn, N1, pp. 34-42.
This prediction reached the West and became very popular, like any catastrophic prediction, actually. Articles about the arrival of a GSM proliferated on climate blogs, such as the one on WUWT: The ‘Baby Grand’ has arrived.
Other scientists, such as Livingston & Penn and de Jager & Duhau, joined Abdussamatov in 2009 in proposing the arrival of a GSM, though being more cautious about its climatic effects. It went so far as to threaten the global warming narrative at a time under assault from the Pause and Climategate. Thus, none other than Stefan Rahmstorf came to their defense saying that according to the models
“a new Maunder-type solar activity minimum cannot compensate for global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.”
Despite being small, microbes, and especially bacteria, contribute a lot to the global carbon cycle — the movement of carbon in various forms through nature. Its level in the atmosphere, and so its influence on climate change, is controlled by a series of sources and sinks, such as respiration and photosynthesis respectively.
Now, new research from Imperial College London and University of Exeter scientists has shown that, when warmed, bacterial communities that have matured to co-operate release more carbon dioxide (CO2) than communities that are in competition with each other.
The results are published in Nature Microbiology.
Co-author Dr Tom Clegg, who led the theory development from the Department of Life Sciences (Silwood Park) at Imperial, said: “Our findings have far-reaching implications given the significant contributions that bacterial communities make to the carbon cycle. We show that changes in bacterial species interactions can rapidly and substantially increase the carbon emissions from natural ecosystems worldwide.”
Bacteria — like humans — respire, taking in oxygen and releasing CO2. Of the many factors that control their level of respiration, temperature is particularly important.
Bacteria form communities of different species in all habitable environments, including in soil, puddles, and in our guts. When communities first form, the bacterial species are often ‘competitive’, each trying to get the best resources.
by R. Pielke, Feb 13, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch
This is the latest post in an ongoing series, titled “what the media won’t tell you about…”, which is motivated by the apparent systemic inability of the legacy media to play things straight when it comes to extreme weather and disasters.
Climate change is real and important, but its importance is not an excuse for the pervasive climate misinformation found across the legacy media. [emphasis, links added]
Here are the previous installments in the series, which are among my most popular posts and which have gone unchallenged.
Today’s post focuses on U.S. tornadoes. This year so far has seen a lot of tornadoes — 178 were reportedthrough February 11th, the 2nd most since 2005 and well above the 2005-2022 mean of 66 to date.
For instance, after a tornado outbreak last month, the Associated Press reported that the tornadoes had been “juiced by climate change.”
Similarly, The Washington Post said that in the past it was difficult to tie tornadoes to climate change but now, “science is accumulating to support the linkage.”
Neither reported any of the data and science I share below. So, let’s take a look
by N. Scafetta, Feb 3, 2023 in MDPI, Earth Science
Global climate models (GCMs) from the sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phases (CMIP6) have been employed to simulate the twenty-first-century temperatures for the risk assessment of future climate change. However, their transient climate response (TCR) ranges from 1.2 to 2.8 °C, whereas their equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) ranges from 1.8 to 5.7 °C, leading to large variations in the climatic impact of an anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 levels. Moreover, there is growing evidence that many GCMs are running “too hot” and are hence unreliable for directing policies for future climate changes. Here, I rank 41 CMIP6 GCMs according to how successfully they hindcast the global surface warming between 1980 and 2021 using both their published equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and transient climate response (TCR) estimates. The sub-ensemble of GCMs with the best performance appears to be composed of the models with ECS ranging between 1.8 and 3.0 °C (which confirms previous studies) and TCR ranging between 1.2 and 1.8 °C. This GCM sub-ensemble is made up of a total of 17 models. Depending on the emission scenarios, these GCMs predict a 2045–2055 warming of 1.5–2.5 °C compared to the pre-industrial era (1850–1900). As a result, the global aggregated impact and risk estimates seem to be moderate, which implies that any negative effects of future climate change may be adequately addressed by adaptation programs. However, there are also doubts regarding the actual magnitude of global warming, which might be exaggerated because of urban heat contamination and other local non-climatic biases. A final section is dedicated to highlighting the divergences observed between the global surface temperature records and a number of alternative temperature reconstructions from lower troposphere satellite measurements, three-ring-width chronologies, and surface temperature records based on rural stations alone. If the global warming reported by the climate records is overestimated, the real ECS and TCR may be significantly lower than what is produced by the CMIP6 GCMs, as some independent studies have already suggested, which would invalidate all of the CMIP6 GCMs.
Claims the Swedish Scandes are unprecedentedly warm and tree-covered today “appear as large and unfounded exaggerations,” as the “climate and arboreal responses” of the last few decades “are still inside the frames of natural historical variation.” – Kullman, 2022 and Kullman, 2022a
Extensive birch forest fossils can be dated to the early- to mid-Holocene in northern Scandinavian regions, indicating these warmth-sensitive trees could exist in climates that are too cold for them to grow in today. This documents a much warmer period, “at least 3°C higher than during the past few decades,” 3000 to 10,000 years ago, or when CO2 was about 265 ppm (Kullman, 2022).
Contrary to modeler opinions, “there is little factual nourishment” to support modern projections that the Swedish Scandes will soon be returning to the subalpine birch forest climates of past millennia. The observed forest advancement in recent decades “is so small” that these modeling claims appear to be “unfounded exaggerations.”
“In the southernmost Swedish Scandes, pine has already “leap-frogged” over receding the birch forest-limit (Kullman 2014, 2019). That scenario would mimic the arboreal landscape during the early Holocene and shift to a landscape unseen for thousands of years (cf. Blűthgen 1942; MacDonald et al. 2008, Macias-Fauria et al. 2012). During that epoch, summer temperatures are inferred to have been at least 3°C higher than during the past few decades.”
“At the landscape level, the obtained changes contribute to a greater and lusher landscape, in contrast to the dire conditions during the Little Ice Age, more than 100 years ago (Kullman 2010, 2015). Currently, there is little factual nourishment to flourishing projections stating that a major part of Swedish alpine areas is on verge of transformation to subalpine birch forest (e.g. Moen et al. 2004). Apparently, climate and arboreal responses are still inside the frames of natural historical variation, as inferred by several authors (e,g. Hammarlund et al. 2004; Bergman et al. 2005; Kullman 2013, 2017a, b; Kullman & Öberg 2018, 2020).”
“Given that the current relatively warm climate phase continues, the subalpine birch forest belt may eventually recede and give way to a subalpine pine belt. The obtained modest forest-limit advancement is so small that flourishing model simulations of extensive birch forest expansion over most of the current alpine tundra appear as large and unfounded exaggerations.”
Tree remnants (trunks, cones, roots, etc.) found at northern Sweden mountain sites 500 to 700 meters atop where the 21st century tree line ends imply the early-Holocene (~13,000 to 7000 years ago) climate was significantly warmer than today in this region (Kullman, 2022a).
The temperature lapse rate for the Swedish Lapland region is 0.6°C/100 m. Accounting for glacio-isostatic uplift, this tree line elevation implies surface air temperatures were 3.6°C higher than today during the Early Holocene.
The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for January 2023 was -0.04 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean. This is down from the December 2022 anomaly of +0.05 deg. C.
The linear warming trend since January, 1979 now stands at +0.13 C/decade (+0.11 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).
Various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 13 months are:
YEAR
MO
GLOBE
NHEM.
SHEM.
TROPIC
USA48
ARCTIC
AUST
2022
Jan
+0.03
+0.06
-0.00
-0.23
-0.13
+0.68
+0.10
2022
Feb
-0.00
+0.01
-0.01
-0.24
-0.04
-0.30
-0.50
2022
Mar
+0.15
+0.27
+0.03
-0.07
+0.22
+0.74
+0.02
2022
Apr
+0.26
+0.35
+0.18
-0.04
-0.26
+0.45
+0.61
2022
May
+0.17
+0.25
+0.10
+0.01
+0.59
+0.23
+0.20
2022
Jun
+0.06
+0.08
+0.05
-0.36
+0.46
+0.33
+0.11
2022
Jul
+0.36
+0.37
+0.35
+0.13
+0.84
+0.55
+0.65
2022
Aug
+0.28
+0.31
+0.24
-0.03
+0.60
+0.50
-0.00
2022
Sep
+0.24
+0.43
+0.06
+0.03
+0.88
+0.69
-0.28
2022
Oct
+0.32
+0.43
+0.21
+0.04
+0.16
+0.93
+0.04
2022
Nov
+0.17
+0.21
+0.13
-0.16
-0.51
+0.51
-0.56
2022
Dec
+0.05
+0.13
-0.03
-0.35
-0.21
+0.80
-0.38
2023
Jan
-0.04
+0.05
-0.14
-0.38
+0.12
-0.12
-0.50
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for January, 2023 should be available within the next several days here.
The global and regional monthly anomalies for the various atmospheric layers we monitor should be available in the next few days at the following locations:
The mean temperature data for December, 2022, for the city of Tokyo, Japan and its Hachijō-jima island in the Pacific are now available from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
These data now allow us to look at the newest annual mean temperature trends for the two locations.
First we look at latest annual mean temperature plots for Tokyo since 1994:
According to the alarmists, the increase in CO2 is supposed to be heating up the entire planet. Strangely, using data from the JMA, Tokyo has in fact cooled modestly since 1994 – despite the urban heat sink effect from all the concrete, asphalt, steel and waste heat.
Independent analyses from multiple independent sources indicate Arctic Siberia was 3 to 5°C warmer than today during the peak of the last glacial, or when CO2 levels were below 200 ppm.
Measurements from Antarctica’s ice sheet are almost invariably used to characterize both the global-scale atmospheric CO2 levels and climate for the last 10s to 100s of thousands of years.
But it is rather odd that Antarctica’s climate is considered globally representative (i.e., “global warming”) since there has been no warming here for the last seven decades.
Further, ice samples from Antarctica have CO2 values that range between 900 and 2900 ppm (Matsuo and Miyake, 1966) for the modern period (i.e., the 1960s). These values are far outside the range of the accepted modern global atmospheric values (~300 to 400 ppm).
by R. Barmby, Jan 23; 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Most people have a firm opinion on whether human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing unnatural global warming, and hold that opinion without understanding how the molecule physically absorbs and then releases heat energy.
Understanding that mechanism reveals why today’s significant global CO2 emissions are insignificant to future global warming.
Analogies are a great way to explain science, and I’m going to share the worst and best analogies for how carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas. I will also share why the warming effect of CO2 is limited.
…
…
…
Why Today’s Carbon Dioxide Emissions Are Insignificant To Global Warming
As more CO2 molecules are added as potential absorbers for the fixed amount of the specific band of infrared radiation, there is less chance that any CO2 molecule will be hit. If the additional CO2 molecules do not absorb infrared radiation, they cannot contribute to global warming.
The ever-reducing CO2 contribution to global warming looks like this graph, which, ironically, is based on the IPCC’s formula (from Inconvenient Facts by Gregory Wrightstone):
On the graph above, consider that the pre-industrial (circa 1875) atmospheric CO2 level was about 280 parts per million (ppm), and today it is about 420 ppm—an increase of 140 ppm.
As a rough approximation, the three bars labeled 350, 400, and 450 ppm represent this past increase in CO2, and the sum of the global warming temperature increases associated with those three bars is about 0.7°C.
The next four bars (500, 550, 600, and 650 ppm) represent a future CO2 increase of 200 ppm, which at today’s rate of 2.5 ppm increase each year would take from now to about 2100.
I chose bars 350 through 650 ppm to highlight that the IPCC’s formula predicts that global warming from current CO2 emissions held flat (1.35°C) would still beat the IPCC’s target of 1.5°C of human-caused global warming from preindustrial times to the year 2100.
The above graph suggests global warming from increasing CO2 never stops, but we know from ancient climates that even 12 times today’s CO2 concentrations did not cause runaway global warming.
Drs. Happer, Koonin, and Lindzen submitted to the U.S. (Northern California) District Court in 2021 that minor changes in cloud cover and convection currents can have a bigger effect on the Earth’s surface temperature than major increases in CO2.
Robust evidence from bison remains recovered from the Austrian Alps in 2020 and 2021 invalidate claims modern Alpine temperatures are unusually warm.
A new study suggests that from about 6000 to 1200 years ago European bison fed on deciduous tree/vegetation that grew at Alpine altitudes reaching around 800 m higher than they do today.
Known beech and oak tree growth warmth thresholds – the required number of days per year above a minimum temperature limit – thus affirm Austria needed to be 4-7°C warmer than now during this period (~2000 years ago).
“[T]he beech limit but also the forest line during the »wisent time« (6,000 to 1,200 years before today) was much higher and the average summer temperature had to be at least 3 to 6 °C higher than today. Remarkable is a palynological record (Ressl, 1980) from the shaft cave Stainzerkogelschaft near Lunz am See. Remains of wisent were found in the shaft (1,463 m, see Tab. 3). The clay with a skull fragment with horncores inside was examined palynologically. The dominating pollen were from alder (Alnus), oak (Quercus) and linden tree (Tilia). The oak boundary (boundary between colline and montane vegetation stages) today lies between 400 and 800 metres in the Northern Alpine Alps (Grabherr et al., 2004). Oaks (Quercus) at an altitude of 1,450 metres around 2,000 years ago also indicate a climate approximately 4 to 7 °C warmer than today.”
Here in Figure 1 is the monthly atmospheric CO2 concentration measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, Latitude19.5̊ N, Longitude 155̊ W, elevation 3397m, for the 64 year period from March 1958 to May 2022.
Figure 1. Monthly atmospheric CO2 concentration, Mauna Loa Observatory, Source:[ Ref. 2]
The source file, Ref. 2, lists the data in 10 columns. The columns used here were columns 3 and 4, the date in Excel and decimal format, column 9 being the measured CO2 concentration with missing values in-filled from a smoothed fit to the data and column 10 being the seasonally adjusted measurements again with missing values in-filled.
The monthly CO2 concentration had an average rate of increase over the 64 year period from March 1958 to May 2022 of 1.60 ppm pa. For the 5 year period March 1958 to March 1963 the rate was 0.68 ppm pa and for the 5 year period May 2017 to May 2022 the rate was 2.50 ppm pa, that is, the rate of increase has steadily accelerated over time to be 3.7 times greater than it was 59 years earlier. The range was from a minimum of 312.43 ppm to a maximum of 420.78 ppm.
The amplitude of the seasonal variation was estimated to range from 5.25 ppm to 8.03 ppm, increasing in amplitude over time, in an irregular fashion. The maxima occurred, on average, in early May, which is the beginning of Summer, and the minima in late September, at the end of Summer. The greatest seasonal variation took place between September 2015 and April 2016. This means that the CO2 concentration rose during the cool of Winter and fell during the heat of Summer, which is out of phase with the UN IPCC claim that increased CO2 concentration causes an increase in temperature. Nor does the UN IPCC hypothesis provide an explanation for the steady increase in the rate of increase of the CO2 concentration.
Temperature and CO2 concentration
Here is 522 months of empirical data, showing a distinct lack of a relationship between the Tropics satellite lower troposphere temperature [ Ref.1] and the seasonally adjusted atmospheric CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory.
Figure 2. Mauna Loa Observatory, Source: [ Ref. 1] and [ Ref. 2]
Figure 2 shows the monthly satellite lower troposphere temperature for the Tropics zone, 20̊ South to 20̊ North, in blue, and the relevant monthly CO2 concentration in red after removal of the seasonal variation so as to match the residual temperature series. The range for the monthly CO2 concentration is from 335.77 ppm to 418.2 ppm. The range for the Tropics temperature is from -0.99̊ Celsius to +1.15̊ Celsius with respect to a 30 year average base value. The clear and obvious difference between the two raises the possibility that there may be no common causal factor whereby the CO2 concentration drives the temperature as claimed by the UN IPCC.
Calculation of the Ordinary Linear Regression between the two time series gave a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.462 from the 522 monthly data pairs. This is a measure of the relationship between the background linear trend of each of the time series as shown by an almost identical correlation of 0.463 between the temperature and the time. The correlation between the CO2 concentration and the time was 0.995, that is, the seasonal adjusted CO2 concentration time series was practically a linear trend with respect to time. Any pair of linear trends, no matter what their source, will have a high correlation coefficient of about 1.0 which is necessarily of no causal significance as a background linear trend with respect to time can be calculated for any time series.
Despite all the claims of a “rapidly warming planet”, we know Antarctic sea ice extent has seen a rather impressive upward trend over the past 40 years, which tells us cooling is more likely at play.
Here’s southern hemisphere sea ice extent chart (up to 2017):
Antarctic sea ice has gained steadily over the past 40 years. Chart: Comiso et al, 2017
It’s not what you’d expect from a CO2-induced warming planet.
As in years past, the annual rollout of the GISTEMP, NOAA, HadCRUT and Berkeley Earth analyses of the surface temperature record have brought forth many stories about the long term trends and specific events of 2022 – mostly focused on the impacts of the (ongoing) La Niña event and the litany of weather extremes (UK and elsewhere having record years, intense rainfall and flooding, Hurricane Ian, etc. etc.).
But there are a few things that don’t get covered much in the mainstream stories, and so we can dig into them a bit here.
What influence does ENSO really have?
It’s well known (among readers here, I assume), that ENSO influences the interannual variability of the climate system and the annual mean temperatures. El Niño events enhance global warming (as in 1998, 2010, 2016 etc.) and La Niña events (2011, 2018, 2021, 2022 etc.) impart a slight cooling.
GISTEMP anomalies (w.r.t. late 19th C) coded for ENSO state in the early spring.
Consequently, a line drawn from an El Niño year to a subsequent La Niña year will almost always show a cooling – a fact well known to the climate disinformers (though they are not so quick to show the uncertainties in such cherry picks!). For instance, the trends from 2016 to 2022 are -0.12±0.37ºC/dec but with such large uncertainties, the calculation is meaningless. Far more predictive are the long term trends which are consistently (now) above 0.2ºC/dec (and with much smaller uncertainties ±0.02ºC/dec for the last 40 years).
It’s worth exploring quantitatively what the impact is, and this is something I’ve been looking at for a while. It’s easy enough correlate the detrended annual anomalies with the ENSO index (maximum correlation is for the early spring values), and then use that regression to estimate the specific impact for any year, and to estimate an ENSO-corrected time series.
by J. Woudhuysen, Jan 12, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch
All forecasters make mistakes. But few forecasters have been as consistently wrong as biologist Paul Ehrlich.
So it was quite surprising to see, on January 1, the once venerable CBS series, 60 Minutes, inviting Ehrlich on the show to give his take on the state of the planet.
Ehrlich, a Stanford University entomologist, is most infamous for his 1968 doom-mongering tome, The Population Bomb.
In the tradition of Thomas Malthus, the prologue begins with the following warning:
‘The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.’
In reality, since The Population Bomb was published, rates of starvation have fallen off a cliff, while the world’s population has doubled.
Ronald Bailey, the science correspondent at Reason magazine, notes that the global crude death rate (deaths per 1,000 people) fell ‘from 12.5 in 1968 to seven in 2019, before ticking up to eight in the pandemic year of 2020’.
The HadCRUT3 global temperature trend was recorded as 0.03°C per decade during the global warming hiatusyears of 2000-2014 (Scafetta, 2022).
…
This was increased to 0.08°C per decade by version 4, as the overseers of the HadCRUT data conveniently added 0.1°C to 0.2°C to the more recent anomalies.
Today, in HadCRUT5, the 2000-2014 temperature trend has been adjusted up to 0.14°C per decade when using the computer model-infilling method.
So, within the last decade, a 15-year temperature trend has been changed from static to strong warming.
Each year, we invite Net Zero Watch readers to enter our annual Global Temperature Prediction Competition, in which we try to outdo the Met Office for the accuracy of our soothsaying.
For 2022, the Met Office predicted an average of between 0.97 and 1.21°C (midpoint 1.09°C) above pre-industrial temperatures for the HadCRUT5 index. However, Net Zero Watch readers, as is their wont, went slightly lower, with the median prediction coming in at 1.00°C, and the mode at 1.03°C. This is all shown in the graph below, alongside the correct value, just announced by the Met Office, of 1.16°C.
As you can see, none of our competition entrants got the right answer. There were three people just above, and three more just below. We’ll put all six names into a hat to pick a winner. We’ll be in contact shortly.
If you’d like to enter the 2023 competition, now is your chance!
As always, the prize is a bottle of hooch of your choice, and a book from the GWPF or Net Zero Watch publication lists.
The Met Office reckons on a relatively sharp warming, suggesting HadCRUT5 will come in at between 1.08 and 1.32°C above pre-industrial (with a central estimate of 1.20°C). That’s 0.04°C above last year’s outturn, which doesn’t seem unreasonable, assuming we come out of the La Nina conditions that prevailed in 2022.
To enter, click here (opens a new site). Good luck!
The unusually mild weather at the turn of the year in Central Europe has strengthened the belief of many in Germany that CO2-induced global warming is in full swing. Globally – and this is the only thing that matters – temperatures are developing in a different direction.
If we take the average of the last years, the global temperature has been constant for 8 years and 4 months.
In December, the deviation of the global temperature from the 30-year average of the satellite-based measurements of the University of Alabama (UAH) dropped again, to 0.05 degrees Celsius. To be sure, there is a long-term temperature increase through 2015. But it has averaged only 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade since 1979.
Weakening North Atlantic Oscillation
But it gets even better: the latest scientific studies show for Europe that it will first go slightly downhill for 15-20 years.
Some climate science heavyweights recently caused a stir in the Nature journal “Climate and Atmospheric Science.” Katja Matthes, director of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Johann Jungclaus of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for climate research published a study showing that we are facing a weakening of the North Atlantic Oscillation, a cooling of the North Atlantic and a related global temperature development as between 1950 and 1970 (the authors say in their summary).
The graph shows the decline in North Atlantic temperatures by 2040, but because of the global warming trend, temperatures are not falling back to 1950-1970 levels, explains one of the authors, Eddine Omrani. The expected pause in warming gives us time, Omrani says, to work out technical, political and economic solutions before the next warming phase, which will take over again from about 2050.
Why is the coming cooling in Europe not being reported ?
No minimally informed person denies that climate changes. The climate has always changed. Since 1860 the predominant climate change has been warming, which is fortunate because if we had a winter like those of 1800-1850, we would be in for a shock. No one has been able to prove that global warming is primarily a consequence of our emissions. It is reasonable to assume that increased CO2 has contributed to warming since the mid-20th century when our CO2 emissions increased significantly, but no one knows how much they have contributed, no matter how much the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) insists that “humans are the dominant cause of observed global warming over recent decades.”(IPCC AR6, page 515).
There is no evidence for this statement. I know this because I have read thousands of scientific papers looking for it. And no, computer models are not evidence of anything but the programming skills of their authors. Models and their predictions are constantly changing and when our knowledge of climate changes, they must be redone.
The absolute lack of evidence contrasts sharply with the decision to cut our CO2 emissions to zero by completely changing our fossil fuel-based energy system and calling CO2 a pollutant—when it is as essential to life as oxygen. All this while most of the world doesn’t give a damn about emissions and many are only on board for the promised money.
December of 2022 finished the year with a global tropospheric temperature anomaly of +0.05 deg. C above the 1991-2020 average, which was down from the November value of +0.17 deg. C.
The average anomaly for the year was +0.174 deg. C, making 2022 the 7th warmest year of the 44+ year global satellite record, which started in late 1978. Continuing La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean have helped to reduce global-average temperatures for the last two years. The 10 warmest years were:
#1 2016 +0.389
#2 2020 +0.358
#3 1998 +0.347
#4 2019 +0.304
#5 2017 +0.267
#6 2010 +0.193
#7 2022 +0.174
#8 2021 +0.138
#9 2015 +0.138
#10 2018 +0.090
The linear warming trend since January, 1979 continues at +0.13 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).
No minimally informed person denies that climate changes. The climate has always changed. Since 1860 the predominant climate change has been warming, which is fortunate because if we had a winter like those of 1800-1850, we would be in for a shock. No one has been able to prove that global warming is primarily a consequence of our emissions. It is reasonable to assume that increased CO2 has contributed to warming since the mid-20thcentury when our CO2 emissions increased significantly, but no one knows how much they have contributed, no matter how much the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) insists that “humans are the dominant cause of observed global warming over recent decades.” (IPCC AR6, page 515).
There is no evidence for this statement. I know this because I have read thousands of scientific papers looking for it. And no, computer models are not evidence of anything but the programming skills of their authors. Models and their predictions are constantly changing and when our knowledge of climate changes, they must be redone.
The absolute lack of evidence contrasts sharply with the decision to cut our CO2 emissions to zero by completely changing our fossil fuel-based energy system and calling CO2 a pollutant—when it is as essential to life as oxygen. All this while most of the world doesn’t give a damn about emissions and many are only on board for the promised money.
To get to the good news about global warming we need to look at variations in the rate of global warming, i.e., the speed of warming. Today we are going to use satellite-calculated global temperature data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, UAH 6.0. They are plotted in Figure 1.
Figure 1. UAH satellite global temperature anomaly data in °C relative to the mean from 1991 to 2020. In green is the linear trend of the series (+0.13 ºC/decade) and in blue is the linear trend since 2016. Data: UAH 6.0Graph: Woodfortrees.
As we can see, the temperature trend decreases since 2016, so 2022 is the seventh warmest year. For 7 years the planet has been cooling. Does that mean that warming is over? No, periods of 7 years of cooling are frequent in the record, there being 8 of them since 1979, and the warming continues. But there is only one period of more than 15 years of cooling, from 1998 to 2014, that appears in the record for the last 45 years. It is known as the “Pause.”
To analyze the evolution of the warming rate, we subtract from each monthly data the previous one to calculate the monthly increase. We then deseasonalize the monthly increase by finding the 12-month moving average to remove a lot of the noise. Finally, we calculate the 15-year average warming rate in °C/decade by calculating the 180-month moving average and multiplying the resulting data by 120.
Figure 2. Evolution of the warming rate for 15-year periods between 1979 and 2022 in °C/decade and its linear trend, from monthly UAH 6.0 satellite temperature data.
The truth is that we are being lied to by much of the mainstream media who are simply pushing an agenda with no regard for the facts. Another excellent piece by Roger Pielke Jr. explains.
The conceptualization of a 33 K warmer Earth due to the presence of water vapor and CO2 (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere is wholly based on the unobserved and unknown, or assumptions about what an imaginary world with no atmosphere would be like.
It is widely believed that we can determine the effective radiating temperature, a uniformly global temperature, the globally uniform albedo…of a rocky planets simply by conjuring up thought experiments about what a made-up world would be like if it did not have an atmosphere (e.g., no N2, O2, atmospheric pressure, clouds, water vapor…).
This “thought model” has been subjected to critical analysis in a new paperpublished by four atmospheric physicists.
The authors use observational measurements from 24 datasets for the moon — which actually is the closest real-world proximity to a rocky planet without an atmosphere — as their testbed. They conclude that the globally averaged surface temperature is necessarily “about 60 K” lower than the effective radiation temperature, rendering the “thought model” presumptions about a 33 K “greenhouse effect” differential for the effective radiating vs. global average temperature (255 vs. 288 K) “meritless.”
Other instances of a disqualifying contrast between observations and modeled assumptions include:
TOA greenhouse gas forcing is a fundamental tenet of the CO2-drives-climate-change belief system. And yet the “global-mean longwave radiative forcing of CO2 at TOA” (Schneider et al., 2020) may not even exist.
It is easily recognized that water vapor (greenhouse gas) forcing cannot occur above a certain temperature threshold because water freezes out the farther away from the surface’s warmth H2O goes.
According to NASA, the TOA is recognized as approximately 100 km above the surface. The temperature near that atmospheric height is about -90°C.
We all know that Santa’s workshop is somewhere in the Arctic, producing toys for the world’s children. Also north of the Arctic Circle is Professor Humlum’s office at the Unversity of Svalbaard wherein he toils each month to update a report on climate. The first chart in that report is the UAH temperature for the lower troposphere, copied following and annotated with lines showing the evident trends:
Figure 1: UAH global temperature anomaly
In the period from 1978 to 2015, the lower bound of the record is shown by the orange line. Then there was a period of a couple of years in which the temperature anomaly was in a narrow, steep uptrend channel. The temperature anomaly broke up from that channel due to the 2016 El Nino.
Since that 2016 El Nino, two parallel upper bounding lines have formed, in downtrend. The lower green one is formed by six points. The upper red line is formed from only two points – the minimum to make a line – but is notable in that it is parallel to the green line. So climate isn’t a randowm walk. There is some physical process that limits how far temperature excursions go.
The uptrend from the beginning of the satellite record in 1978 to 2015 was 0.4°C over 36 years. That equates to 0.000926°C per month. If we take that amount from each monthly temperature anomaly, cumulatively, we produce the following graph of the detrended monthly temperature anomaly distribution from 1978 to 2015:
Posted onDecember 14, 2022| Comments Offon Arctic Report: primary productivity still high & sea ice flatline continues despite warmer temperatures
NOAAs annual Arctic Report Card is, for the most part, a valiant effort to turn good and ambiguous news into harbingers of climate change disaster. Primary productivity is up across most of the region (good news for wildlife) and despite Arctic temperatures being “twice as high” as the rest of the world in recent years, the summer sea ice ‘death spiral’ has failed to materialize.
Oddly, there is no bad news about polar bears (last mention was 2014). However, the media were told that the few hundred sea birds that died this year in the enormous Bering/Chukchi Sea region over the four months of summer in 2022 is a portend of climate change catastrophe–even though the authors of the NOAA report admit they have no conclusive evidence to explain the phenomenon. However, here are also some honest figures that are quite illuminating.
Sea ice
The graph at the bottom of this graphic, spread out rather than bunched up to make changes seem more dramatic, makes it much easier to see the lack of a declining trend in sea ice extent since 2007, and that winter (March) coverage has changed hardly at all.
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La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
Figure 1: UAH global temperature anomaly