bdgwx

Good point. I wasn't even aware of the cloud nuclei effect.

Speaking of Tony Heller...his anti-science viewpoint is so extreme that even the Watts Up with That blog, which is already one of the most anti-science blogs out there, banned him.

@ChescoWx The argument that climate science is not "settled" is the fallacy of false dichotomy. It is not a requirement that 100% of the minutia of details be "settled" for certain core principals to be "settled". For example, we don't need to know exactly how much the planet will warm given a 2xCO2 pulse to a hundredth of degree to know that the planet will indeed warm within some reasonable margin of error. That fact that it will warm is as "settled" as anything else in science that is considered "settled". We don't need to know every single factor that can influence the climate to know that humans can and do influence the climate significantly. The fact that humans influence the climate is as "settled" as anything else in science that is considered "settled". The fundamental principals dictating our knowledge and understanding of climate change is indeed "settled".

No.

[Hansen et al. 2025] - Global Warming Has Accelerated 2024 comes to end with Hansen (and cohorts) calling it. Global warming has accelerated. Those who track my posts know that I'm more pragmatic and conservative in general in regard to global warming perhaps even to the point that some might call me a skeptic though that would obviously mischaracterize my position. I just simply take a more middle-of-the-road IPCC style position. And I've said before that I'm currently Team Mann on this particular topic. However, I've also said that my conservative position is becoming more untenable by the year. I'm still not quite ready to switch over to Team Hansen, but I have to admit he has taken the lead in the debate...at least for now. Are you Team Mann or Team Hansen?

The fact that the bottom is around 1 W.m-2 is concerning. Some estimates of sensitivity put us at 1 C per W.m-2. That means there could be 1 C of warming still in the pipeline without any additional forcing. Yikes.

It is too early to make any definitive conclusions, but it does look like we could be starting to pull away from the old CMIP3 RCP 4.5 prediction.

Reports of thunder snow/sleet are widespread around the St. Louis metro area now.

St. Louis just experienced a very robust band of conditional symmetric instability induced snow. The flakes were were huge and visibilities crashed. This band is moving generally along I-70 in IL right now. Snowfall rates were probably 2-3"/hr.

There is a chance St. Louis might actually get 6"+ out of this storm. It would be the first occurrence in nearly 5 years. It depends on how much of the expected precipitation falls as sleet.

San Juan, PR broke 151 daily max (high + low) records in 2024.

2024 ends as the warmest in the ERA5 period of record. BTW...a lot of atmospheric scientists are moving away from Twitter/X to Bluesky. I'm not sure how to get bsky links to embed or if that's even possible here yet so I'll just post the main link for now. https://bsky.app/profile/climatologist49.bsky.social/post/3lerlgto6y22y

Regarding the MWP...Hubert Lamb, who first identified the MWP, even said he didn't think it was a globally synchronous event. Another related myth is that Michael Mann was trying to hide it. He didn't. His own work corroborated what Lamb and others had already discovered. And it is an especially bizarre myth since Mann was one of the first to hypothesize a cause; what we now call the AMOC. [Lamb 1965] [Mann et al. 2002]

Quoting Tony Heller in an atmospheric science related forum is like quoting Samuel Shenton in an geoscience related forum. Heller's pseudoscience and conspiracy position is so extreme that even one of the most anti-science and conspiracy focused blogs on the internet banned him. It almost defies credulity to believe that either Shenton or Heller genuinely believed the positions they publicly espouse.

The publication cited is [Beaulieu et al. 2024]. They absolutely do NOT say they found no change in the global warming rate since 1970. What they said is that a detectable surge does not meet the statistical significance test using their changepoint modeling methodology...yet. They also outline various warming rates and years at which the warming rate would qualify as a surge with statistical significance. "To detect a warming surge starting in 2010 and ending in 2024, the trend needs to have changed by 84% (equivalent to a trend of 0.034 ∘C/year from 2010–2024). If the time series extends to 2030, the surge would need to change by at least 58% (a magnitude of 0.028 ∘C/year from 2010–2030) to be detectable. If the time series is further extended to 2040, a surge of at least a 39% change (corresponding to a magnitude of 0.026 ∘C/year from 2010–2040) could be detectable." It might be interesting to note that UAH, which the authors did not consider, reports a warming rate of +0.04 C/year from 2010/01 through 2024/10. So the one remaining dataset dataset that many contrarians are still willing to consider does suggest a surge in the warming rate.