Archives par mot-clé : 2024

EXCLUSIVE: Sensational Findings Point to Hunga Tonga Eruption as Prime Suspect Behind Recent Temperature Spike

by C. Morrison, Feb 8,2025 in TheDailySceptic

In January 2022, a massive underwater volcano called Hunga Tonga suddenly erupted and shot so much water into the upper atmosphere that levels in the stratosphere rose suddenly by at least 10%. It was a genuine one in 100, even 200 year event and was reasonably expected to produce temporary weather changes around the globe. Sure enough, subsequent temperatures showed a 0.3-0.4°C upward spike. Needless to say, the Net Zero fanatics claimed the rise as their own and blamed it on humans controlling the climate by increasing the trace gas carbon dioxide. Today the Daily Sceptic can give wider publicity to sensational recent findings that suggest Hunga Tonga was the main culprit in producing the recent spike. The scientists directly link a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere of between 0.5-2°C to Hunga Tonga. It is generally held that there is an anti-correlation between the lower and upper atmosphere and cooling at the top produces warming at the bottom due to a number of complex atmospheric processes.

Hunga Tonga was an unusual volcanic eruption since it produced few dust particulates that usually cool the surface. Two recent land-based eruptions, El Chichon and Pinatubo, caused a temporary downward spike of around 0.5°C. The team of Colorado-based scientists found that the Hunga Tonga cooling was “comparable in magnitude” to the stratospheric warming caused by the two surface volcanoes in 1982 and 1991. The scientists reported “good agreement of observations with chemistry-climate model simulations”. “Cooling is mainly due to Hunga Tonga H2O [water] impacts,” they state.

This is dramatic stuff. It appears to promote Hunga Tonga as the prime cause in explaining the recent spike in temperatures. Indeed it could be concluded that the temperature rise should have been a little higher – and higher even still if the effects of a recent strong El Niño natural oscillation are included. Satellite observations, confirmed by computer analysis, shows stratospheric cooling of 0.5°C to 1°C in the middle and upper stratosphere during 2022 through middle 2023, followed by stronger reductions of 1°C to 2°C in the mesosphere after the middle of 2023, note the scientists. Last year, two distinguished atmospheric scientists observed the anti-correlation between the higher and lower atmosphere and suggested the lower stratosphere cooled by approximately two degrees per degree of warming nearer the surface. Where the troposphere has been anomalously warming, the lower stratosphere has been anomalously cooling “and vice versa”, note the scientists.

In January 2022, a massive underwater volcano called Hunga Tonga suddenly erupted and shot so much water into the upper atmosphere that levels in the stratosphere rose suddenly by at least 10%. It was a genuine one in 100, even 200 year event and was reasonably expected to produce temporary weather changes around the globe. Sure enough, subsequent temperatures showed a 0.3-0.4°C upward spike. Needless to say, the Net Zero fanatics claimed the rise as their own and blamed it on humans controlling the climate by increasing the trace gas carbon dioxide. Today the Daily Sceptic can give wider publicity to sensational recent findings that suggest Hunga Tonga was the main culprit in producing the recent spike. The scientists directly link a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere of between 0.5-2°C to Hunga Tonga. It is generally held that there is an anti-correlation between the lower and upper atmosphere and cooling at the top produces warming at the bottom due to a number of complex atmospheric processes.

Hunga Tonga was an unusual volcanic eruption since it produced few dust particulates that usually cool the surface. Two recent land-based eruptions, El Chichon and Pinatubo, caused a temporary downward spike of around 0.5°C. The team of Colorado-based scientists found that the Hunga Tonga cooling was “comparable in magnitude” to the stratospheric warming caused by the two surface volcanoes in 1982 and 1991. The scientists reported “good agreement of observations with chemistry-climate model simulations”. “Cooling is mainly due to Hunga Tonga H2O [water] impacts,” they state.

This is dramatic stuff. It appears to promote Hunga Tonga as the prime cause in explaining the recent spike in temperatures. Indeed it could be concluded that the temperature rise should have been a little higher – and higher even still if the effects of a recent strong El Niño natural oscillation are included. Satellite observations, confirmed by computer analysis, shows stratospheric cooling of 0.5°C to 1°C in the middle and upper stratosphere during 2022 through middle 2023, followed by stronger reductions of 1°C to 2°C in the mesosphere after the middle of 2023, note the scientists. Last year, two distinguished atmospheric scientists observed the anti-correlation between the higher and lower atmosphere and suggested the lower stratosphere cooled by approximately two degrees per degree of warming nearer the surface. Where the troposphere has been anomalously warming, the lower stratosphere has been anomalously cooling “and vice versa”, note the scientists.

Scientists don’t know why 2024 was so hot

by D. Whitehouse, Jan 29, 2025 in NetZeroWatch


2024 broke many records.

There’s no doubt that 2024 was the hottest year of the instrumental period. But why it was so warm is not exactly clear, even with the backdrop of increasing global temperatures.

Over the years we have heard a lot about consensus when it comes to climate science. Sometimes it has been manufactured, for example the suggestion that 97% of all scientists believe global warming is real, but in many cases it does represent what is at least a snapshot of what scientists think is happening.

So it was on December 10th at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington. A show of hands was requested in answer to the question as to whether we understand why 2023 and 2024 was so hot. Very few hands were raised. Asked a slightly different question, the majority of the audience raised their hands to the proposition that we can’t explain it.

The spike in, already elevated, global temperatures of 2023 and 2024 is beyond what can be explained by more CO2 in the atmosphere. It can’t be explained with El Niño, volcanic emissions or the decline in ship fuel pollution letting more sunlight reach the ocean. Something else is going on.

One team of researchers have suggested it’s due to a decrease in low cloud, which tends to cool our planet. If this is so, then it is important to see if it is a blip or a trend.

Reporting certainty

Such scientific niceties haven’t bothered most reporters dealing with the record-breaking warmth of 2024, which broke the 1.5°C Paris Agreement boundary.

Given that the increase is unexplained, is it wise to present it as evidence of a dangerous new phase in our broken clime, as New Scientist did? Despite the uncertainties, they say that Earth’s climate systems are no longer behaving as they should. It points to the wavering Jet Stream and the recent Californian wildfires as proof, even though it’s technically possible to explain these effects without climate change, catastrophic or not.

New Scientist says the one thing we can now expect ‘with certainty’ is that we ‘should’ expect extreme weather events to become more frequent. What is it? Is it certain, or just something that should happen?

The uncertainty extends into 2025. It was expected that El Niño, which boosted 2023 and 2024 temperatures, would have declined by mid-year, but it didn’t. It has hung on and is expected to linger for most of this year, to be followed by a weak and brief cooling La Niña.

I wonder if there will be another show of hands by puzzled scientists at the end of 2025.

UK Temperatures In 2024

by P. Homewood, Jan 5, 2025 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


UK annual temperatures have dropped for the second year running, though the Met Office will emphasise what they claim is a remorseless upwards trend. However they don’t show error margins in their graphs, and as we know, nine out of ten of the weather stations used for their UK temperature dataset are junk or near junk sites, where poor siting can mean temperatures may be overstated by as much as five degrees for Class 5 and two degrees for Class 4:

Media Hypes Report That 2024 Will Break 1.5°C Limit, But Data Doesn’t Back It Up

by L. Lueken, Nov 11, 2024 in ClimateChangeDispatch


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Multiple outlets have posted articles covering a report from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (“Copernicus”) which says that 2024 will be the first to surpass 1.5°C warming since preindustrial times, which the media claims will cause untold weather disasters. [emphasis, links added]

This is mostly false.

Although 2024 will likely have higher average temperatures than in recent decades, it is not the end of the year yet, and there is limited evidence to support the claim that it will represent the highest temperatures humans have ever experienced and no evidence whatsoever that weather disasters have gotten or will get worse.

The BBC and CNN are among the numerous mainstream media outlets reporting on Copernicus’ report.

CNN describes the report as “devastating news for the planet that comes as America chooses a president that has promised to undo its climate progress both at home and abroad.”

The Copernicus group estimates that 2024 will end up 1.55°C hotter than the 1850-1900 average, which is 0.05°C above the warming limit set by the Paris Agreement. This may be true, but there is no evidence that the 1.5℃ threshold is some kind of deadly tipping point for weather disasters.

The same organization sounded the alarm last year that the “limit” was breached for several months in a row while ignoring natural factors like an underwater volcano eruption.

As for the 1.5-degree limit itself, it was not established by professional climate scientists. Only one of the people who were on the panel who came up with the value was even a meteorologist.

Two other points worth noting. The claim is a bit of sleight of hand, cherry-picking the data for comparison. Earth was only just coming out of the Little Ice Age at the onset of the 1850 period, one of the coldest periods during the past millennia.

When you pick an unusually cold period for comparison, modest warming seems more dramatic than it is.

Second, the 1.5℃ is an arbitrary temperature choice. As Climate Realism has discussed repeatedly here, here, and here, it was chosen by politicians for political reasons.

There is no scientific evidence it represents some tipping point for catastrophic climate change. The world has likely warmed more than 2°C since the 1700s, with no apocalypse.

One would think that if warming causes more extreme weather there would be solid data and identifiable consistent trends showing an increase in extreme weather, but there is none.

Three of the weather events CNN cites at the end of their article as proof of a supposed climate emergency, Hurricane Milton, the flooding in Spain, and low snow amounts at Mt. Fuji are not proof of a climate emergency.

Despite Media Panic, There Is No Reason to Think 2024’s Warming Is Disastrous

by L. Lueken, Nov 10, 2024 in WUWT


Multiple outlets have posted articles covering a report from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (“Copernicus”) which says that 2024 will be the first to surpass 1.5°C warming since pre-industrial times, which the media claims will cause untold weather disasters. This is mostly false. Although it is likely that 2024 will have higher average temperatures than in recent decades, it is not the end of the year yet, and there limited evidence to support the claim that it will represent the highest temperatures humans have ever experienced and no evidence whatsoever that weather disasters have gotten or will get worse.

The BBC and CNN are among the numerous mainstream media outlets reporting on Copernicus’ report.

CNN describes the report as “devastating news for the planet that comes as America chooses a president that has promised to undo its climate progress both at home and abroad.”

The Copernicus group estimates that 2024 will end up 1.55°C hotter than the 1850-1900 average, which is 0.05°C above the warming limit set by the Paris Agreement. This may be true, but there is no evidence that the 1.5℃ threshold is actually some kind of deadly tipping point for weather disasters. The same organization sounded the alarm last year that the “limit” was breached for several months in a row, while ignoring natural factors like an underwater volcano eruption. As for the 1.5 degree limit itself, it was not established by professional climate scientists. Only one of the people who were on the panel that came up with the value was even a meteorologist.

Two other points worth noting. The claim is bit of sleight of hand, cherry picking the data for comparison. Earth was only just coming out of a little ice age at the onset of the 1850 period, one of the coldest periods during the past millennia. When you pick an usually cold period for comparison, a modest warming seems more dramatic than it is.

Second, the 1.5℃ is an arbitrary temperature choice. As Climate Realism has discussed repeatedly, herehere, and here, for example, it was chosen by politicians for political reasons. There is no scientific evidence it represents some tipping point for catastrophic climate change. It is likely that the world has warmed more than 2°C since the 1700s, with no apocalypse.

UAH Global Temperature Update for August, 2024: +0.88 deg. C

by P. Homewood,  Sep 2, 2024 in NotaLotofPeople KnowThat


From Dr. Roy Spencer’s Global Warming Blog.

The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for August, 2024 was +0.88 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, up slightly from the July, 2024 anomaly of +0.85 deg. C.

Persistent global-averaged warmth was (unusually) contributed to this month by the Southern Hemisphere. Of the 27 regions we routinely monitor, 5 of them set record-warm (or near-record) high monthly temperature anomalies in August, all due to contributions from the Southern Hemisphere:

Global land: +1.35 deg. C

Southern Hemisphere land: +1.87 deg. C

Southern Hemisphere extratropical land: +2.23 deg. C

Antarctica: +3.31 deg. C (2nd place, previous record was +3.37 deg. C, Aug. 1996)

Australia: +1.80 deg. C.

The linear warming trend since January, 1979 now stands at +0.16 C/decade (+0.14 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.21 C/decade over global-averaged land).

The following table lists various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 20 months (record highs are in red):

Global Temperature updated for August 2024

by C. Best, Aug 27, 2024 in SciTravelOpinion


The global temperature anomaly for August was 1.27 deg.C relative to a 1961-1990 baseline. These results use GCHN monthly land temperatures combined with HadSST4 ocean temperatures. I use a novel method to calculate this using a 3D spherical triangulation of the earth’s surface. This is shown below.

The monthly trends relative to the 1961-1990 baseline are shown below.

Temperature trends

One of the problems with Global Warming is that the underlying temperature trends are superimposed on far larger but shorter natural variability cycles (El Nino). Therefore it makes little sense to push for action based on just one month’s temperature. It may even take another decade to be certain that average temperatures really have exceeded  1.5 C.

A far better method to determine when this will happen is based on using Icosahedral grids with decadal averaging 

The observed stable decadal trend shows that the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5C since the preindustrial level will very likely be exceeded in 2032

L A Times Cherry Picks & Misrepresents NOAA Climate Data to Exaggerate March 2024 U.S. and Global Temperature Outcomes

by L. Hamlin, Apr 19, 2024 in WUWT


The L A Times article and headline shown below exaggerate the March 2024 U.S. and global temperature outcomes by cherry picking and misrepresenting data that mischaracterizes what the data actually shows.

 

The Times article makes the following claims regarding the U.S. for the period January through March 2024:

“In the United States, March was the 17th warmest in the 130-year data record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The average temperature in the contiguous U.S. was 45.1 degrees — 3.6 degrees above average.”

The Times article does not present readily available NOAA measured  Maximum Contiguous U.S Temperature for the month of March from 1895 through 2024 as shown below.

UAH Global Temperature Update for March, 2024: +0.95 deg. C

by R. Spencer, Apr 2, 2024 in WUWT


The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for March, 2024 was +0.95 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, up slightly from the February, 2024 anomaly of +0.93 deg. C, and setting a new high monthly anomaly record for the 1979-2024 satellite period.

New high temperature records were also set for the Southern Hemisphere (+0.88 deg. C, exceeding +0.86 deg. C in September, 2023) and the tropics (+1.34 deg. C, exceeding +1.27 deg. C in January, 2024). We are likely seeing the last of the El Nino excess warmth of the upper tropical ocean being transferred to the troposphere.