bdgwx

It is especially perplexing to hear people claim that a mere 150 Mt of H2O can be responsible for significant warming, but those same people are incredulous about 2,500,000 Mt of CO2 having any effect at all.

Nobody is suppressing discussion. Already there are 4 publications that I'm aware of that discuss the contribution from Hunga Tonga. This list is likely to grow. Jucker et al. 2023 Jenkins et al. 2023 Zhang et al. 2022 Zhu et al. 2022 Sellitto et al. 2022 2 of these say the surface temperature will go down, 1 says it will go up slightly, and 1 is more of a regional impact study that doesn't make a statement about the global effect. None of them show significant global warming. Andrew Dressler posted commentary regarding this topic today. It is worth a read. Hunga Tonga may be contributing some to the recent warming. In fact, I've mentioned a couple times that we should not be so quick to dismiss its contribution. But to insinuate that it is the primary contributing factor to the recent warming is inconsistent with the consilience of evidence. BTW...Ryan Maue is on my long list of contrarians that promulgate misinformation regarding the climate. He got added when he and David Legates overstepped their positions and conspired to publish the contrarian Climate Change Flyers on a website run by Willie Soon with the Presidential Seal in a move that was at best unethical and at worst illegal under US Code 18 § 1017.

I hear what you're saying. And I'm skeptical of significant warming claims myself. Afterall the UWIR must pass through 12,000,000 MtH2O before it encounters the extra 150 MtH2O that Hunga Tonga put up there. However, the extra H2O is expected to deplete O3 making the ozone hole larger. And that is exactly what observations are showing. Since O3 does more to block incoming shortwave radiation than outgoing longwave radiation in the stratosphere we should expect a slightly larger bump up in the planetary energy imbalance than if we had only considered the H2O effect itself. Of course I don't think either effect is all that large and would almost certainly max out at no more than a few 0.01 of a degree C bump in the global average temperature. It certainly doesn't explain the recent bout of warming we've seen this year.

It's buried pretty deep in Dr. Hausfather's article, but he now gives 2023 a 98% chance of a new record. I'll provide updates later but my model is now at 96%.

ERSST came in at a record +0.47 relative to 1991-2020 for July 2023.

And this is with a 4m lagged ONI of only -0.1.

That 36m running average EEI of +1.44 W/m2 from CERES is extremely high. Even assuming a modest climate sensitivity of 0.5 C per W/m2 that is 0.7 C of warming that is already queued up. I'm cautious about whether 2 C by the 2030s is possible, but I'm certainly not going to eliminate the possibility. Afterall, had you asked me 3 years ago if the EEI would be above 1 W/m2 in 2023 I would have said no way. Hansen et al. 2022 certainly seem to think it is possible. There are some big names on that paper including Loeb who runs the CERES project. Side note...I wonder if we haven't underestimated the Hunga-Tonga effect?

@wishcast_hater The 1970's was actually the period in which the consilience of evidence suggested that the GHG effect would dominate over the aerosol effect and that the planet would warm despite the ever increasing pollution. See Peterson et al. 2008 for details. In regards to the ice caps being gone I've never seen anything even remotely close to 10 years so that one is new to me. The ice cap melt out predictions have actually been getting more aggressive in recent years. But we're still looking at least a couple thousand years in the future. It's not even clear that 420 ppm of CO2 is enough to cause a complete melt out though it cannot be eliminated. Even the most wildly fantastic predictions supported by robust evidence that I have seen are > 1000 years. There is a massive amount of ice in the polar regions so its going to take awhile regardless. Even the Arctic sea ice isn't expect to go "practically ice-free" (< 1e6 km2) for a short period during the summer until around 2050. And that is with the newest and most aggressive prediction from the IPCC to date. See IPCC AR6 WGI SPM pg. 16 for details.

Normally heat transfers from the ocean to the atmosphere during an El Nino so typically we would expect a drop in OHC this year and/or next. However, with the EEI being so high right now I would not eliminate the possibility that both 2023 and 2024 will be record years as well. The May 2023 EEI via CERES came in at +1.97 W/m2 for the 12m running average and +1.44 W/m2 for the 36m running average. This is quite remarkable. Assuming this isn't just a transient spike (which is possible) we could have a significant amount of warming queued up.

The May CERES data just came out. The 12m running average EEI is +1.97 W/m2. The 36m running average is +1.44 W/m2. Yikes! Credit goes to Prof Eliot Jacobson for the graph.

My expectation for GISTEMP for the month of July is now 1.23 ± 0.13 C. That is a gap up on the record from 0.94 C of 0.29 C. And that is with a 3-month lagged ONI of only 0.16. That is astonishing!

Refer to my post above. The issue is land use changes in the interior specifically in the corn belt as a result of agricultural intensification. This attenuates the warming in that region. The issue with modeling is two fold: 1) they have inadequate parameterization schemes to fully capture how the land use changes effect the climate in this region and 2) they have inadequate inputs on the land use changes themselves (eg. neglecting irrigation).

Here is the evolution of my expectation for GISTEMP for the month of July. 6/08: 1.02 ± 0.23 C 6/16: 1.03 ± 0.22 C 7/13: 1.11 ± 0.16 C 7/19: 1.16 ± 0.14 C 7/24: 1.20 ± 0.13 C The previous record for July is 0.94 C set in 2019. It is looking very likely that 2023 is going to shatter that record.

Here are some of the more recent and relevant publications I have in my stash related to this topic. Mueller et al. 2016 DOI 10.1038/nclimate2825 – Cooling of US Midwest summer temperature extremes from cropland intensification Lin et al. 2017 DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-01040-2 – Causes of model dry and warm bias over central U.S. and impact on climate projections Alter et al. 2018 DOI 10.1002/2017GL075604 – Twentieth Century Regional Climate Change During the Summer in the Central United States Attributed to Agricultural Intensification Zhang et al. 2018 DOI 10.1002/2017JD027200 – Diagnosis of the Summertime Warm Bias in CMIP5 Climate Models at the ARM Southern Great Plains Site Qian et al. 2020 DOI 10.1038/s41612-020-00135-w – Neglecting irrigation contributes to the simulated summertime warm-and-dry bias in the central United States Coffel et al. 2022 DOI 10.1029/2021GL097135 – Earth System Model Overestimation of Cropland Temperatures Scales With Agricultural Intensity

Probably a little bit. @chubbs tracked down the radiative forcing data for Hunga Tonga. It can be downloaded here and plots are here. Basically the stratospheric aerosols have waned enough that the net effect including H2O is now about +0.1 W/m2. Also look at how significantly Hunga Tonga effected the upper atmosphere. These plots are available here (jump all the way down to the water plots at the bottom). But keep in mind that a +0.1 W/m2 effect is small compared to the +1.8 W/m2 energy imbalance. Other factors including suppressed Saharan Dust and a reduction in marine sulfur emissions also contribute. But changes in the global circulation pattern caused by El Nino and increased GHGs are probably the bulk of the effect. The following graphic is made from data available here.

Here is my updated analysis which includes the July IRI ENSO ensemble forecast. Jan: 0.86 ± 0.01 C (3m lagged ENSO -0.99) Feb: 0.97 ± 0.01 C (3m lagged ENSO -0.90) Mar: 1.20 ± 0.01 C (3m lagged ENSO -0.86) Apr: 1.00 ± 0.01 C (3m lagged ENSO -0.71) May: 0.93 ± 0.01 C (3m lagged ENSO -0.46) Jun: 1.07 ± 0.02 C (3m lagged ENSO -0.11) Jul: 1.16 ± 0.14 C (3m lagged ENSO +0.14) Aug: 1.04 ± 0.22 C (3m lagged ENSO +0.46) Sep: 1.08 ± 0.23 C (3m lagged ENSO +0.81) Oct: 1.13 ± 0.24 C (predicted 3m lagged ENSO +1.00) Nov: 1.15 ± 0.25 C (predicted 3m lagged ENSO +1.19) Dec: 1.16 ± 0.26 C (predicted 3m lagged ENSO +1.32) Jan - Jun average: 1.01 C Jul - Dec average (predicted): 1.12 C 2023 Average: 1.060 ± 0.07 with 80% chance of >= 1.03 (new record) and 65% chance >= 1.05.

IRI July 2023 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 JAS ASO SON OND NDJ DJF JFM FMA MAM Dynamic 1.44 1.62 1.73 1.81 1.75 1.50 1.31 1.07 0.87 Statistical 0.93 1.02 1.09 1.13 1.04 0.88 0.69 0.49 0.32 Avg of All 1.28 1.43 1.53 1.59 1.52 1.30 1.11 0.88 0.69 (D+S) / 2 1.19 1.32 1.41 1.47 1.40 1.19 1.00 0.78 0.60

GFS is forecasting a further decline in the SH over the next 7 days. GFS 7-day forecasts are usually good for ±0.2 C uncertainty.

I just simply don't have time to track down all of the models in the IRI ensemble individually, but I did happen to see the July run of NASA's GMAO S2S model and it too was a significant bump up in the peak. It went from 1.6 to 1.9 in the August/September timeframe. If that's going to verify we're going to need to see the warming going into hyperdrive especially since it shows July starting at 1.5 which seems to be out of the realm of possibility at this point.

For those interested...the CERES net TOA flux (EEI) is much easier to download than I originally thought. Go to the following link. Make sure TOA Fluxes is ticked with Net Flux and All Sky ticked as well. Make sure Monthly and Global are ticked as well. Click Visualize Data. When the plot appears click on the graph and you'll see a Save Data as ASCII File button. Click that and you've got data that can be easily loaded into Excel, R, or whatever. Make sure you do a 12m moving average or 13m centered average to remove the annual cycle. The 12m average ending in April 2023 is 1.81 W/m2...the highest observed. https://ceres-tool.larc.nasa.gov/ord-tool/jsp/EBAFTOA42Selection.jsp

Oh duh. Yeah, it's right there. Thanks!

@ORH_wxman do you make predictions for NSIDC extent as well? If so what are thoughts on the minimum extent for 2023?

It might be important to note that my predictions are based on GISTEMP lagging ENSO by 3 months. I know other analysis say it is 4-5 months and that is what I get for the satellite datasets, but my modeling hones in on 3 months for the surface datasets. I'm also using an equal weighting of the statistical and dynamic model averages from the IRI ensemble. That is [statistical_average] + [dynamic_average] / 2. I debated on whether to use the "Average, all Models" line in the table and decided against it since it weights the dynamic models more heavily because there are more of them. Based on what I've seen dynamic models are superior Jan-May (through the spring predictability barrier), but then statistical models have similar skill from June onward. For that reason I wanted to equally weight them. That may end up causing my global average temperatures to be conservative since statistical models basically say this ENSO cycle has peaked which seems unlikely. One last thing...Hansen's monthly email came through today. He does not mince words. He says the warming rate has likely accelerated due to the extremely high Earth energy imbalance. If that is the case then that may contribute to me underestimating the global average temperature increase as well.

I don't have an exact value since I don't typically download daily ERA5 data (it's a lot of work). But here is the twitter post.

Yeah. That is interesting. My guess is that there was a larger than usual data upload into GHCN and ERSST this month. I know there are ongoing record digitization efforts so it's possible some newly digitized records got uploaded. I had to deal with this situation in 2020 as well. The 2016 value was hovering very near a 0.005 value causing near monthly rounding changes. That market was based on 2020 being higher than 2016 when rounded to 2 decimal places. So I had to track both 2016 and 2020 values down to 3 decimal places which required running a modified version of GISTEMP on my own machine. Fortunately like you say Kalshi is strictly defined as >= 1.03 regardless of what 2016 and 2020 are doing. One strategy I was thinking of was to cash out my position on the >= 1.03 contract and take my gains and instead try to play the new 1.05 - 1.07 contract. The 1.05 - 1.07 contract is undervalued according to my analysis. The problem is that there isn't a lot of market depth on that contract. A mere $99 will take it from $0.20 to $0.69 instantly. I show a fair value around $0.60. So that play isn't going to work right now. And I only show maybe another $0.10 gain on the >= 1.03 contract before it reaches fair value. I think the opportunities via Kalshi are limited right now. My initial impression of the Kalshi is meh. I don't think it has been correctly valuing the contracts. It seems to be very reactionary leading me to believe that there are very few participants using predictive tools. The other markets I've tracked in the past had more participants and more educated/sophisticated participants at that resulting in the market being a leading indicator instead of a lagging indicator like what Kalshi is. So be it I guess. It's easier to get an edge this way.