I've watched the soils warm up here in PA, OH, NY, WV since the late 80s. I became particularly concerned in winter 2011/12 when the soils didn't freeze at all. Now its a common occurrence, even the epipedon doesn't freeze except for the top inch or two. And now other soil scientist speak of their shock on the abrupt permafrost thaw in the northern climes! Why they were surprised that rain would thaw permafrost, I don't know, because I've been expecting it since 2011, maybe before if I really examine my past notes. Everyone speaks of the record warmth of the oceans, but I suggest they check what's under their feet. There's a lot of warmth stored there.
Why does the 0 point for graphs keep changing? I had thought the reference was "pre-industrial" temperatures. But many graphs had anomalies relative to average from 1900 to 1970. Now, many seem to use average from 1991-2020. It makes it hard to compare over time.
Or do different groups use different standards? If so, why?
as a general rule, the baseline doesn't matter because what you care about is the trend. I pulled the data from ECMWF and this is the baseline they used.
Oh but it does matter. Not to scientists or anyone semi-literate about climate science findings. Nor to so-called dismissives who reject all facts they don’t like. It matters to people confused about C vs F, baselines, std dev, and especially, why should they worry about a 0.5 anomaly when 1.5 and 2 are the big numbers they’re constantly told to worry about.
I’d love to simplify to an absolute such as 70F but Zeke advises no because of uncertainties vs more precise anomalies. I accept that, but we can’t afford to lose anyone from basic arithmetic confusion.
That said, thank you for this great article reviewing the hiatus and the pols who abused it to their donors’ advantage. I believe the surge is different from the hiatus, because the threat of non-linear heating is greater than from non-linear, um, pausing (800,000 Hiroshima bombs of heat per day now according to Hansen). Racing toward multi-tipping points scares the hell out of me even if (especially if) we don’t know for sure when they tip.
The ability of mismanagement, corruption, short-sightedness, blameshifting and conflict to make a very difficult but manageable problem much more difficult and potentially un-manageable should never be underestimated; the persistent undermining of our efforts by Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking over the past 3 decades is evidence of that.
Will need to have a good model of natural climate variations to keep the naysayers at bay. Climate science is one of the few disciplines that doesn't have a good handle of the cause+understanding concerning what should be the foundational principles of cyclic activities beyond seasonal. Yes, some of it is El Nino and La Nina cycles, but what is the consensus cause for that? And is AMO a cycle or not? Why does QBO do what it does? etc.
I can't think of another scientific discipline with that problem.
Thank you, I agree with you. It can be hard to sleep if you understand the science and what it means for our species. That is simply the space we inhabit these days. Stay well. I appreciate your work.
Most of the people who are not worried are not well versed in the science. They make arguments like, "we've always adapted" or "humans are doing great right now, so nothing bad can happen". Terrible arguments.
The Arctic region and its very small ocean holds the key to cooling the planet. And why is that? Because scientists now know that the the Arctic region is heating 4-5x faster than the remainder of the planet. Unfortunately the scientific community is stuck. Stuck on a meaningless phrase called "climate change". There are very specific reasons why the climate is warming and N Hemisphere Arctic is heating at break-neck speed. The Soviets in the 1950's announced to the United Nations that they developed a plan on heating Siberia and changing the climate there so they would have more land to use, and that they would heat the Arctic region particularly around the Kara Sea in order to have an ice free port on the Arctic Ocean. How they did this and why they have been successful and are still heating this region today but now along with the help of GREEDY Canadian hydroelectric companies along the Canadian Sub Arctic will be in my substack.
According to NOAA, global land temperatures have increase 1.72C since 1900 (as of August 2023). That is a significant amount of warming, perhaps even gobsmacking. The models project another 1.5C increase or so by 2100 assuming no significant reductions in CO2 emissions.
Despite this significant amount of warming since 1900, virtually every objective measure of human well-being has improved dramatically, say, gobsmacking squared. Global GDP per capita has increased about 700%, life expectancy has doubled, infant mortality has plummeted from 15.7/100 to 0.7/100 , global poverty rates have plummeted. Importantly, per capita deaths from weather disasters, especially droughts and floods, has plummeted.
In the face of these dramatic improvements during a period of quite significant global warming, it is simply hard to believe that another 1.5C over 77 years will stop this trend. Andrew likes to warn against the notion that we can inexpensively adapt to the next 1.5C increase, but it’s indisputable that not only did we adapt to the last 1.7C increase, we thrived. Indeed, while the planet was heating up by 1.7C since 1900, world population has gone from 1.2 billion to about 8 billion. moreover, access to food, energy, shelter, medicine, and other aspects of the modern world have expanded in hockey stick fashion. These improvements are spread across the globe, from the hottest places (Arizona or India) to the coldest (the Rocky Mountains or the Baltic).
I acknowledge that the climate is changing, and that CO2 emissions play a role, but 123 years of indisputable evidence tells us that man’s ability to thrive is increasing dramatically faster than the temperature is rising.
What would you do? No snark intended. Despite many good and great people doing all they can, atmospheric CO2 continues to rise and CH4 continues to accelerate unabated. We must never give up the fight, but our fighting has failed. So we must act differently, probably radically differently, or let climate itself wreck enough of civilization to slow human emissions.
What we’ve done amounts to separating the plastic window from the return envelope before recycling it. What should we do instead?
I’ve always wondered about the “pause”. Is the heat simply elsewhere? In other words, if we had a broader system of sensors, spanning the globe from the upper atmosphere to the deepest ocean, would the variability disappear?
And if that sensor grid already exists, wouldn’t it make sense to publish that result also, where the public can see both the total global warming as well as the movement of heat between different areas?
Prof. Dessler: "At this point, I’m reasonably sure that the pause was a big nothing. It was probably just random variability of the climate system, perhaps combined with a few other factors, like slightly reduced radiative forcing due to several small factors. "
It's true the pause was a statistical big nothing, but some climate scientists did become interested in the physical sources of the 'random' variation. In 2014 Gavin Schmidt offered an overview on the RealClimate blog: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/it-never-rains-but-it-pause/. Some of the variability is attributable to volcanic activity apparently overlooked by modelers, some to the ENSO and other quasi-periodic heat redistributions within the global system, and so forth. Great stuff.
See https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-ocean-heat for a graph of ocean heat content from four different measurement groups. You can see how there is much less year to year variability in ocean heat than in surface temperatures, and therefore much less opportunity to point out "pauses" and "surges". But, a) we live on the surface, so care about it more, b) ocean heat indices don't go back as far, so we have less historical context (both my link and the Lijing Cheng tweet that Dr. Dessler linked to start in the 1950s), and c) are generally not updated as frequently (though Lijing Cheng's graph does have data through August!). It is also a slightly harder measurement to wrap one's mind around, because it isn't just a bunch of stationary thermometers on land (of course, global surface temperature measurements also rely on temperature measurements from ships).
I've watched the soils warm up here in PA, OH, NY, WV since the late 80s. I became particularly concerned in winter 2011/12 when the soils didn't freeze at all. Now its a common occurrence, even the epipedon doesn't freeze except for the top inch or two. And now other soil scientist speak of their shock on the abrupt permafrost thaw in the northern climes! Why they were surprised that rain would thaw permafrost, I don't know, because I've been expecting it since 2011, maybe before if I really examine my past notes. Everyone speaks of the record warmth of the oceans, but I suggest they check what's under their feet. There's a lot of warmth stored there.
Why does the 0 point for graphs keep changing? I had thought the reference was "pre-industrial" temperatures. But many graphs had anomalies relative to average from 1900 to 1970. Now, many seem to use average from 1991-2020. It makes it hard to compare over time.
Or do different groups use different standards? If so, why?
as a general rule, the baseline doesn't matter because what you care about is the trend. I pulled the data from ECMWF and this is the baseline they used.
Oh but it does matter. Not to scientists or anyone semi-literate about climate science findings. Nor to so-called dismissives who reject all facts they don’t like. It matters to people confused about C vs F, baselines, std dev, and especially, why should they worry about a 0.5 anomaly when 1.5 and 2 are the big numbers they’re constantly told to worry about.
I’d love to simplify to an absolute such as 70F but Zeke advises no because of uncertainties vs more precise anomalies. I accept that, but we can’t afford to lose anyone from basic arithmetic confusion.
That said, thank you for this great article reviewing the hiatus and the pols who abused it to their donors’ advantage. I believe the surge is different from the hiatus, because the threat of non-linear heating is greater than from non-linear, um, pausing (800,000 Hiroshima bombs of heat per day now according to Hansen). Racing toward multi-tipping points scares the hell out of me even if (especially if) we don’t know for sure when they tip.
The ability of mismanagement, corruption, short-sightedness, blameshifting and conflict to make a very difficult but manageable problem much more difficult and potentially un-manageable should never be underestimated; the persistent undermining of our efforts by Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking over the past 3 decades is evidence of that.
Will need to have a good model of natural climate variations to keep the naysayers at bay. Climate science is one of the few disciplines that doesn't have a good handle of the cause+understanding concerning what should be the foundational principles of cyclic activities beyond seasonal. Yes, some of it is El Nino and La Nina cycles, but what is the consensus cause for that? And is AMO a cycle or not? Why does QBO do what it does? etc.
I can't think of another scientific discipline with that problem.
Thank you, I agree with you. It can be hard to sleep if you understand the science and what it means for our species. That is simply the space we inhabit these days. Stay well. I appreciate your work.
You say this matter keeps you up at night. This matters also keeps me up at night. Should that be the case? Should we be up at night over this?
Some folks tell me I am wrong to think that this is adequate cause to be up at night.
Most of the people who are not worried are not well versed in the science. They make arguments like, "we've always adapted" or "humans are doing great right now, so nothing bad can happen". Terrible arguments.
The Arctic region and its very small ocean holds the key to cooling the planet. And why is that? Because scientists now know that the the Arctic region is heating 4-5x faster than the remainder of the planet. Unfortunately the scientific community is stuck. Stuck on a meaningless phrase called "climate change". There are very specific reasons why the climate is warming and N Hemisphere Arctic is heating at break-neck speed. The Soviets in the 1950's announced to the United Nations that they developed a plan on heating Siberia and changing the climate there so they would have more land to use, and that they would heat the Arctic region particularly around the Kara Sea in order to have an ice free port on the Arctic Ocean. How they did this and why they have been successful and are still heating this region today but now along with the help of GREEDY Canadian hydroelectric companies along the Canadian Sub Arctic will be in my substack.
According to NOAA, global land temperatures have increase 1.72C since 1900 (as of August 2023). That is a significant amount of warming, perhaps even gobsmacking. The models project another 1.5C increase or so by 2100 assuming no significant reductions in CO2 emissions.
Despite this significant amount of warming since 1900, virtually every objective measure of human well-being has improved dramatically, say, gobsmacking squared. Global GDP per capita has increased about 700%, life expectancy has doubled, infant mortality has plummeted from 15.7/100 to 0.7/100 , global poverty rates have plummeted. Importantly, per capita deaths from weather disasters, especially droughts and floods, has plummeted.
In the face of these dramatic improvements during a period of quite significant global warming, it is simply hard to believe that another 1.5C over 77 years will stop this trend. Andrew likes to warn against the notion that we can inexpensively adapt to the next 1.5C increase, but it’s indisputable that not only did we adapt to the last 1.7C increase, we thrived. Indeed, while the planet was heating up by 1.7C since 1900, world population has gone from 1.2 billion to about 8 billion. moreover, access to food, energy, shelter, medicine, and other aspects of the modern world have expanded in hockey stick fashion. These improvements are spread across the globe, from the hottest places (Arizona or India) to the coldest (the Rocky Mountains or the Baltic).
I acknowledge that the climate is changing, and that CO2 emissions play a role, but 123 years of indisputable evidence tells us that man’s ability to thrive is increasing dramatically faster than the temperature is rising.
References:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison?tab=chart&time=1900..latest&country=~OWID_WRL
https://www.mdch.state.mi.us/osr/InDxMain/Infsum05.asp#:~:text=In%201900%2C%20the%20infant%20death,1%2C000%20live%20births%20in%202010.
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decline
https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters
Please! No more “what to think.” Let’s talk about what to do.
What would you do? No snark intended. Despite many good and great people doing all they can, atmospheric CO2 continues to rise and CH4 continues to accelerate unabated. We must never give up the fight, but our fighting has failed. So we must act differently, probably radically differently, or let climate itself wreck enough of civilization to slow human emissions.
What we’ve done amounts to separating the plastic window from the return envelope before recycling it. What should we do instead?
I’ve always wondered about the “pause”. Is the heat simply elsewhere? In other words, if we had a broader system of sensors, spanning the globe from the upper atmosphere to the deepest ocean, would the variability disappear?
And if that sensor grid already exists, wouldn’t it make sense to publish that result also, where the public can see both the total global warming as well as the movement of heat between different areas?
Prof. Dessler: "At this point, I’m reasonably sure that the pause was a big nothing. It was probably just random variability of the climate system, perhaps combined with a few other factors, like slightly reduced radiative forcing due to several small factors. "
It's true the pause was a statistical big nothing, but some climate scientists did become interested in the physical sources of the 'random' variation. In 2014 Gavin Schmidt offered an overview on the RealClimate blog: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/it-never-rains-but-it-pause/. Some of the variability is attributable to volcanic activity apparently overlooked by modelers, some to the ENSO and other quasi-periodic heat redistributions within the global system, and so forth. Great stuff.
See https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-ocean-heat for a graph of ocean heat content from four different measurement groups. You can see how there is much less year to year variability in ocean heat than in surface temperatures, and therefore much less opportunity to point out "pauses" and "surges". But, a) we live on the surface, so care about it more, b) ocean heat indices don't go back as far, so we have less historical context (both my link and the Lijing Cheng tweet that Dr. Dessler linked to start in the 1950s), and c) are generally not updated as frequently (though Lijing Cheng's graph does have data through August!). It is also a slightly harder measurement to wrap one's mind around, because it isn't just a bunch of stationary thermometers on land (of course, global surface temperature measurements also rely on temperature measurements from ships).