chubbs

Will need to see more evidence re; smoke/volcano. Spencer is missing the two obvious factors for UAH warmth: GHG and improved satellites with no diurnal drift. Evidence for the last point is the UAH trace - the period after the 2016 nino is much warmer relative to the super nino peak than the period after the 1998 nino. What happened in 1998? the MSU to AMSU transition. Scientists still don't know which satellite was right NOAA-14 or NOAA-15. UAH picked the colder satellite, of course, which looks like the wrong choice when compared against other series. Meanwhile per the article below, recent satellites have essentially no diurnal drift, with very stable performance for climate detection. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaau0049.full

Unfortunately, we have been running above the trend-line used for the prediction the past 4 or 5 years.

Winter temps From Karsten Haustein's twitter.

Summit station is a research site, uninhabited, 10500', Jan avg temp is around -40C, short record (roughly 30 years, with gaps), apparently not an all-time site record (colder temp in March 2011 below), during an extreme strat polar vortex event when mid and upper troposphere was very cold. With no background on technical aspects of the record in the article, looks more like an opportunity to cherry pick and whine about the media.

Meanwhile in Antarctica, the recent record wasn't an isolated event. Temperatures have been well above normal all summer (4th from top). Surface melting has been off the charts (2nd from top), causing below average surface mass balance (top) despite average snowfall ( link). http://climato.be/cms/index.php?climato=the-2020-melt-season-over-antarctica-as-simulated-by-marv3-10

Thanks, the article made me chuckle: "Rarely, for the times we’re in (where historically low solar activity is weakening the jet stream, reverting it’s usual tight zonal flow to a wavy meridional one), the cold air has actually remained locked in the Arctic Circle, and the results have been punishing for the region. Though skipping forward 7-or-so-days, another violent buckling of the jet stream looks due to arrive by mid-January, and should once-again funnel dangerously cold polar air masses to the lower-latitudes. Watch out North America, as according to latest GFS runs, a pulse of brutal Arctic air will have engulfed practically all of Canada by Jan 09, and should have swept the Central & Western U.S. by Jan 17: This could be big. Prepare. The cold times are returning, in line with historically low solar activity. The jet stream is weakening, diverting brutal polar cold to the lower-latitudes:"

Decent shot at a record this year https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202001/supplemental/page-2

This years decadal forecast from UK MetOffice. " The forecast remains towards the mid to upper end of the range simulated by CMIP5 models that have not been initialised with observations (green shading in Figure 3). " https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc/index

You are right. The earth's climate varies. When CO2 is high - hothouse; when CO2 is low - ice age. The change we are causing now is no big deal to the planet as a whole. It will shrug it off and keep on ticking. It may be problematic to us and other species though due to the speed at which it is occurring. When we came out of the last ice age the earth warmed at a rate of roughly 1C per 1000 years, currently we are warming at 1C per 50 years. During the last ice age - 2 million hunter gatherers were able to adapt - they could move as ecosystems changed. Different situation today.

Watch the video, Australia is a big country. Fires in unpopulated dryland is not the same as fire in forested SE with more towns, people.

You don't have to go back very far to for record high global temperatures, December for example.

Here are 0 to 700m ocean temperatures. Your estimate is pretty good. The top 100m have warmed twice as fast.

From Lijeng Cheng's twitter - 2019 ended on a high note.

Haven't seen the commercial. Natural gas is better than coal, but need to get to zero emissions eventually to halt warming. Most of the improvement in long-term outlook is due to the big cost drops this decade for solar, wind and batteries. For me highest priority is introducing some kind of carbon pricing, which would improve economics of nuclear and all other improvement options.

The article below provides a good summary of how recent energy trends are impacting IPCC emission scenarios. While I am even more pessimistic about the science of climate than I was a decade ago, I have become much more optimistic about non-fossil energy technology and natural gas vs coal. Limited policy and luck has improved the "worst-case" considerably vs CMIP5 IPCC scenarios. Unfortunately though, we haven't made any progress on the "best" case due to inaction/denial. Recent experience shows that improved climate policy and support for renewable energy technology could have enormous long-term pay-back. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/3c-world

Very strong warming the past 5-6 years. The warm departure from the trend-line has stayed more prominent than the cool departure during the hiatus.

Off the charts surface melting so far this summer in Antarctica aided by the September SSW with temperatures above normal since late September. http://climato.be/cms/index.php?climato=the-2020-melt-season-over-antarctica-as-simulated-by-marv3-10

Strong ocean warming since the end of the hiatus. The 2016 super nino spike was completely erased by the following la nina. It's the non-super nino periods that have been killing us. Most recently we have warmed in the past year even though 3.4 temps have cooled.

GISS vs CMIP5 forcing (source for forcing # below, volcanoes*0.25 reflecting observed response to short duration activity). Observed TCR is roughly 1.8 inline with model estimates. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018JD028481

GISS - the current spike has fully corrected the hiatus, but the 11-year mean hasn't turned up much --- yet. http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/

PV = photovoltaic i.e. solar

Here is solar in previous IEA outlooks - 2035 in the base case is undoubtedly conservative.

Saw this on twitter from the International Energy Agency's recently issued 2019 World Energy Outlook. Base case on left, sustainable development, broadly consistent with Paris targets, on right. Solar forecast to be #1 in global power generation by 2035 in base case. That date is moved forward to 2028 for "sustainable development". This isn't rocket science.

From ZHausfather's twitter. Every possible trend to present, CMIP5 vs obs. Warming has picked-up in the past decade or so and is now faster than CMIP5 models.

HadSST vs CMIP5 RCP6 SST prediction. 2019 is through Sept for HADSST3 and not available for HADSST4. Overall CMIP5 is performing well. The post-hiatus spike has taken SST from below to above the model prediction.