It kinda feels like the conclusion is that 2037 will likely be worst than the brief El Niño heat of 2027. Everything will have more heat and more energy, etc.
Andrew and Zeke, I really enjoyed this piece. I especially appreciate your effort to take a complicated climate problem, think it through yourselves, and then explain it in a way that the general public can understand. This kind of scientific communication is important.
One small thought from my own reading: when we present quantitative projections such as 1.76°C, I would love to see the statistical result connected even more explicitly to the underlying physics.
I fully respect what the observations and regressions tell us. But a calculated number and the physical meaning we assign to that number are not necessarily the same thing. In a coupled and highly complex Earth system, I tend to be a little more conservative about numerical precision unless we can also explain the physical mechanisms supporting it.
Perhaps the most interesting question is not only what number the data give us, but how much of the physics behind that number we truly understand.
Very thoughtful work, and thank you both for bringing these difficult questions to a much wider audience.
Good analysis, worth expanding later this year/next as damages appear -- the media needs to know to what extent this is a harbinger. BUT it seems likely that in the 2030s, '40s, etc. the worst shocks will be in the years of an El Nino. So the disasters we will see in the coming 12 months are in fact harbingers of similar but worse disasters in future El Nino years?
The worst effects *in some places* will occur during El Nino years. In other places, the worst impacts will be La Nina years. It depends on where you are and what impacts you're sensitive to. e.g., El Nino years have fewer Atlantic hurricanes and, in TX where I live, it's a bit more pleasant than neutral or La Nina years.
Pour survivre il faudra s'adapter; ce qui veut dire d'émettre moins de chaleur, mois consommer d'énergie et donc enfin faire le choix d'abandonner définitivement les fossiles souterrains pour le Solaire et les vents qui seront plus forts et aussi dangereux.
Does this assume your complete confidence that El Niño events aren’t amplified by the underlying global warming? The prediction that next year will not be global average until late 30s strikes me as dangerously conservative. If El Niños become more frequent and more intense, then this year will indeed be a great preview. More importantly, the whiplash between each event is the point. I am also surprised you didn’t mention the amount of moisture that is expected to accumulate in the atmosphere. 2027 will by definition generate some of the most epic flooding in history.
Whether climate change is having an effect on El Nino is not a settled question. If this event ends up being as large as it looks now, many researchers will be trying to determine if climate change amplified it.
Why do we only hear about the absolutely catastrophic, worsening climate crisis as if it wold be an unchangeable fact, a "fait acoompli"?
Please add what can-must be done: we the people must request a radical comrehensive response by the government that will reverse global warming, by greatly decreasing atmospheric CO2 levels, etc.
We need to greatly increase the world's vegetation - much of the 38,000km2 (4/5 of all agricultural land) that now produce beef must be covered with CO2 absorbing vegetation. And much can be done to prevent dead plant material and organic trash to become CO2 and methane, by preventing its burning and decomposing.
Many approaches have been described, but governments have to enact them, acting as decisive as during WWII. humanecivilization.org
"what can-must be done: we the people must request a radical comprehensive response by the government that will reverse global warming".
While reforesting beef-producing land would help draw down atmospheric CO2 faster, the first thing to do when you're in a hole is stop digging. The largest share of the warming is due to burning fossil fuels, both directly and embedded in every good and service we buy. Those "can-must" be reduced collectively, by "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon "(G. Hardin). Under popular sovereignty that means voting.
Despite the preposterous current POTUS's gleeful mockery of collective decarbonization, a global "green vortex" (h/t Robinson Meyer) of public investment and otherwise-'free' market response has been driving down the levelized cost of renewable energy around the world for the last couple of decades, and that's most likely to continue under sustained public investment, until nobody buys fossil carbon anymore because RE is cheaper. It's an easier sell to voters than reforesting former beef-producing land.
In the USA, modest federal public investment in RE and consumer electrification was finally enacted in 2022, only to be severely curtailed soon afterward What US voters need to do in the short term is vote for the de facto party of collective action for public good, at least until some candidate of the other party supports taking the profit out of selling fossil carbon.
Great elucidation about what the super el nino may bring, Zeke! A fellow substacker uses the phrase "ratchet effect" when we go from one state to the next and it's harder to revert. We are in uncharted territory and hope it won't ratchet up the heat.
'"global warming"'? You sound "skeptical"! A genuine skeptic wouldn't put scare quotes around the phrase. Because a genuine skeptic would already be persuaded by the verifiable case for anthropogenic global warming, and would use the phrase without tendentious irony. Ergo, you're not one.
It kinda feels like the conclusion is that 2037 will likely be worst than the brief El Niño heat of 2027. Everything will have more heat and more energy, etc.
Andrew and Zeke, I really enjoyed this piece. I especially appreciate your effort to take a complicated climate problem, think it through yourselves, and then explain it in a way that the general public can understand. This kind of scientific communication is important.
One small thought from my own reading: when we present quantitative projections such as 1.76°C, I would love to see the statistical result connected even more explicitly to the underlying physics.
I fully respect what the observations and regressions tell us. But a calculated number and the physical meaning we assign to that number are not necessarily the same thing. In a coupled and highly complex Earth system, I tend to be a little more conservative about numerical precision unless we can also explain the physical mechanisms supporting it.
Perhaps the most interesting question is not only what number the data give us, but how much of the physics behind that number we truly understand.
Very thoughtful work, and thank you both for bringing these difficult questions to a much wider audience.
Good analysis, worth expanding later this year/next as damages appear -- the media needs to know to what extent this is a harbinger. BUT it seems likely that in the 2030s, '40s, etc. the worst shocks will be in the years of an El Nino. So the disasters we will see in the coming 12 months are in fact harbingers of similar but worse disasters in future El Nino years?
The worst effects *in some places* will occur during El Nino years. In other places, the worst impacts will be La Nina years. It depends on where you are and what impacts you're sensitive to. e.g., El Nino years have fewer Atlantic hurricanes and, in TX where I live, it's a bit more pleasant than neutral or La Nina years.
That implies ratcheting up the heat if you say worst impacts will happen the La Nina years. Otherwise there would be no impact from this el Nino.
Il faut absolument que les gouvernants ouvrent les yeux et cessent de nier l'évidence. S'adapter ou disparaître.
Vivre le revolucion
Pour survivre il faudra s'adapter; ce qui veut dire d'émettre moins de chaleur, mois consommer d'énergie et donc enfin faire le choix d'abandonner définitivement les fossiles souterrains pour le Solaire et les vents qui seront plus forts et aussi dangereux.
Les fossils c'set merde..et Trump
Does this assume your complete confidence that El Niño events aren’t amplified by the underlying global warming? The prediction that next year will not be global average until late 30s strikes me as dangerously conservative. If El Niños become more frequent and more intense, then this year will indeed be a great preview. More importantly, the whiplash between each event is the point. I am also surprised you didn’t mention the amount of moisture that is expected to accumulate in the atmosphere. 2027 will by definition generate some of the most epic flooding in history.
Whether climate change is having an effect on El Nino is not a settled question. If this event ends up being as large as it looks now, many researchers will be trying to determine if climate change amplified it.
Why do we only hear about the absolutely catastrophic, worsening climate crisis as if it wold be an unchangeable fact, a "fait acoompli"?
Please add what can-must be done: we the people must request a radical comrehensive response by the government that will reverse global warming, by greatly decreasing atmospheric CO2 levels, etc.
We need to greatly increase the world's vegetation - much of the 38,000km2 (4/5 of all agricultural land) that now produce beef must be covered with CO2 absorbing vegetation. And much can be done to prevent dead plant material and organic trash to become CO2 and methane, by preventing its burning and decomposing.
Many approaches have been described, but governments have to enact them, acting as decisive as during WWII. humanecivilization.org
"what can-must be done: we the people must request a radical comprehensive response by the government that will reverse global warming".
While reforesting beef-producing land would help draw down atmospheric CO2 faster, the first thing to do when you're in a hole is stop digging. The largest share of the warming is due to burning fossil fuels, both directly and embedded in every good and service we buy. Those "can-must" be reduced collectively, by "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon "(G. Hardin). Under popular sovereignty that means voting.
Despite the preposterous current POTUS's gleeful mockery of collective decarbonization, a global "green vortex" (h/t Robinson Meyer) of public investment and otherwise-'free' market response has been driving down the levelized cost of renewable energy around the world for the last couple of decades, and that's most likely to continue under sustained public investment, until nobody buys fossil carbon anymore because RE is cheaper. It's an easier sell to voters than reforesting former beef-producing land.
In the USA, modest federal public investment in RE and consumer electrification was finally enacted in 2022, only to be severely curtailed soon afterward What US voters need to do in the short term is vote for the de facto party of collective action for public good, at least until some candidate of the other party supports taking the profit out of selling fossil carbon.
Something wicked comed this way..
After el nino,someWhyNotcrats will replace Whinocrats. Some RespectAgains will replace Maghgats.
FFoil IS fair. Fair is FFoil.
As earth burns the oracools chant.
Sahara, Northern Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean to take the brunt of the drying!
A much-drier Southern border, Miami, Portland, Seattle, and .. Denver,?!
Great elucidation about what the super el nino may bring, Zeke! A fellow substacker uses the phrase "ratchet effect" when we go from one state to the next and it's harder to revert. We are in uncharted territory and hope it won't ratchet up the heat.
And Andrew, too!
Just curious Andrew and Zeke.. Alpha and Omega?
If one plots that monthly NINO 3.4 index against the monthly Mauna Loa CO2 there is no correlation going back to 1982.
ENSO is unforced, meaning it’s unrelated to greenhouse gases.
Yes, ENSO is unrelated to global warming. It is a natural phenomenon that would be occurring w/o any human activities.
Sorry, your comment was hidden and, in trying to unhide, it I accidentally deleted it.
Thank you, Prof. Dessler!
'"global warming"'? You sound "skeptical"! A genuine skeptic wouldn't put scare quotes around the phrase. Because a genuine skeptic would already be persuaded by the verifiable case for anthropogenic global warming, and would use the phrase without tendentious irony. Ergo, you're not one.
I'll let someone else have the mallet now.