chubbs

Ocean heat data is out for 2023. Overall the data is similar to recent years. The oceans continue to warm at a steady clip. Found this twitter exchange interesting. There is considerable uncertainty in short-term trends making it hard to determine how much acceleration is occurring. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-024-3378-5

Let me put it this way. I believe it is possible to peak around 2C without hurting the economy but we will need to pick up the pace of global policy implementation. Temperatures are proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions. To stop warming, net emissions must go to zero, hence net zero is the goal. If we cut emissions in half the warming rate will drop by roughly 50%. Because emissions are cumulative it is much better to reduce emissions today than 10 years from now. That's the problem, we've procrastinated so long our options are more limited.

You are asking some complicated questions. I can only give a brief response. It has taken decades of government support to allow solar/wind/EV to compete in the marketplace. However capitalism can claim some credit also. Pushing these technologies into the marketplace, where they were able to learn by doing, before they were competitive was key for their development. Its complicated to compare countries at different stages of development. Europe and the US are de-industrializing so its easier to reduce emissions. We have exported our emissions to the countries that supply our imports. China is closer to peaking emissions than India due to heavy investment and government policies supporting solar/EV/batteries etc.. While China has been building coal plants, coal use isn't increasing very fast as newer plants often just replace old in-efficient plants. Solar/batteries/EV have become big commercial successes in China. China dominates world production both for internal use and export. Recently these technologies have made up a large fraction of China's export growth. The IRA program adopted by the US last year is our attempt to catch up. Already IRA has spurred big investment in the US, more than doubling US manufacturing investment. Big investments around world, spurred by government policy, is why emissions are likely to peak this decade.

Agree on the 1.5C, we are not acting fast enough. Note that even if Hanson is wrong about climate sensitivity, some acceleration in warming is expected because forcing is increasing at a faster rate as aerosols are reduced. The only way to slow down warming is to reduce CO2+CH4 emissions, fortunately there is some hope of peaking and starting to turn down emissions this decade as fossil fuels continue to lose competitive advantage and the need to do more slowly gains proponents.

I think the yellow-cone is too high but at least he is giving a testable prediction. We should have an indication by the end of this year if he is right. In the Climate Brink's year-end podcast, Zeke Hausfather said that Hanson's yellow-cone predictions were similar to the CMIP6 ensemble mean.

The 3-year nina was probably also a factor. The 2023 projections were based on the weak nina conditions that existed in the 34 region at the start of the year and 2022 temps (in Hausfather's method - Schmidt uses a 20-year Loess) which were held down by the 3-year nina. The rapid onset of east-based nino flipped the script. Large areas in the EPac went from cool which favors inversions and low clouds to warm which favors mixing and sunshine. There are other factors also. Like you say will take a while to unpack. 2022 10 19.23 -1.78 23.88 -1.11 27.64 -1.12 25.73 -0.99 2022 11 20.52 -1.13 24.16 -0.94 27.71 -0.99 25.80 -0.90 2022 12 22.35 -0.46 24.41 -0.82 27.70 -0.84 25.75 -0.85 2023 1 24.00 -0.56 25.10 -0.56 27.66 -0.66 25.83 -0.72 2023 2 26.58 0.48 26.31 -0.10 27.65 -0.55 26.29 -0.46 2023 3 27.98 1.49 27.50 0.30 28.07 -0.25 27.17 -0.11 2023 4 28.16 2.62 28.05 0.47 28.75 0.13 27.96 0.14 2023 5 26.64 2.22 28.09 0.84 29.22 0.30 28.39 0.46 2023 6 25.63 2.50 27.88 1.26 29.55 0.58 28.57 0.84

2024 in unchartered SST territory out of the gate.

Neither come out and say it, but one source of error in the predictions at the beginning of 2023 was the rapid shift to strong el nino. Will make following this year more interesting. If the predictions for 2024 are good then we can probably give el nino or natural variability most of the blame since the other factors are still in play (Hunga-Tonga, shipping and other aerosols, high climate sensitivity).

Unfortunately study doesn't cover last couple of years, when Ceres energy balance estimates have continued to spike higher. There is brief discussion in the paper comparing Ceres to the ocean heat data. Ceres is running higher than OHC at the end of the study period, (ending in 2020). There are large error bars though and the difference is not statistically significant. They mention that the ocean heat data only covers 60S to 60N and 0-2000m and could be missing some heat content increase. Bottom-line confirming the recent Ceres spike with ocean heat content data is still an open question.

NOAA climate analysis uses all the local station data and corrects for bias including heat island effects. My understanding is that currently official NWS data is collected at Metro Airport. The Metro data lines up well the NOAA analysis. Starting the regression in 1959 (as far back as I can obtain data) instead of 1970 doesn't appear to make much difference. Bottom-line: I don't see any evidence that your winter temperature trend experience is much different from mine.

Relax, !970 is used because that's when net man-made climate forcing took off. Here is the whole NOAA analysis for the SE Michigan climate division. 1970 was warmer compared to the period before 1920 and about the same as the 1896-1950 baseline. You need to be careful using raw COOP data, the older data has a known warm bias.

I posted a chart s couple of weeks ago upthread which showed roughly 5F of winter warming at Detroit Metro Airport since it opened in 1958. Looks like many of us are in the same 5F boat.

As is often the case in winter, Northern Hemisphere temperatures have been volatile in December. The cold spell in Eurasia did lower North Hemi temps mid-month; but, NHemi has also been almost off the chart warm at times this month. In-any-case December will break records by a large margin, North Hemi and global.

The spike is largely due to last years Inflation Reduction Act i.e. solar, batteries, EV etc.

September update continues this years ocean heat content (OHC) spike which started in May. Broadly consistent with Ceres net radiation data which shows an increasing earth energy imbalance, but doesn't match in detail since the Ceres imbalance has been increasing since 2015. Not clear why OHC would spike in a nino, when stored ocean heat is being released to atmosphere and space, but measurement uncertainty probably plays a role. Another one of this years warm-side surprises.

This is why I don't worry about the worst case anymore. Solar can dent fossil fuel demand. Solar+batteries can destroy it.

I'm not worrying about the worst case. Much more concerned about the best-case. That's what we are frittering away.

El Nino comparison chart from Makiko Sato's twitter. The enso regions are warming slower than the rest of the world, so our el ninos aren't what they used to be.

Don, yes not much positive out of COP. However, In terms of fossil fuel competitive position there is continuing change afoot. Below is a recent article on China's industrial policy which led to the development of the "new three": solar, batteries and EV which are now driving export growth. Expect competition to continue to increase among the big industrial powers as clean energy technology is increasingly seen as critical for economic growth. Although last years IRA is a good start, not confident in our ability to play the long game. We'll see. https://energypost.eu/china-is-still-playing-the-long-game-with-its-new-three-solar-cells-lithium-batteries-evs/

Don't agree with views ascribed to either in the article. I don't think Hanson's latest paper is definitive vs all the other ECS literature. While warming has been accelerating recently, most of that can be attributed to increased forcing, due to reductions in aerosols. Also not ready to buy off on geoengineering, until more research is conducted. However I also don't think net zero is sufficient as Mann advocates. Net zero allows society to put off tough decisions, while we fill the carbon bathtub at a rapid rate. I doubt we will be able and/or willing to remove carbon at scale to make the "net" a reality or to cure "overshoot". Instead think we need to focus more on near-term emission reductions. Also need to develop the policy to support the development of viable non-carbon options for sectors that are lacking good solutions.

Below is an interesting blog article on how natural variability is impacting this years global temperatures. Bottom-line: this year's nino packs an unusually large punch due to sudden flip from nina to nino and warming across all enso regions. Nice job by a retired engineer. https://dmn613.wordpress.com/2023/11/20/more-details-on-sep-oct/

First ocean data I've seen that confirms recent CERES net radiation spike.

Ceres data global net radiation data for September has become available. Year-over-year values have started to decrease with the 12-month mean peaking in July. Still the decrease in net radiation since the July peak is small considering the large rise in global temperatures this year, which should increase outgoing radiation.

After reading the thread was interested in checking the Detroit numbers, below is Detroit Metro with obs back to 1959. Looks similar to what we see locally, about 5F of winter warming. Slow starts to add up after half a century.

Agree we are not in a good climate position due to poor policy choices in the past and will end up with a mediocre climate outcome that could have been avoided. However I also think that we have overestimated the economic advantage/benefits of fossil fuels. Turns out solar/wind/EV are better technologies from an economic standpoint that will out-compete fossil fuels in the future. Below is a recent paper that asks the question: Has solar passed an economic tipping point? The answer is yes. Solar will dominate electricity markets in the future even without climate policy. Ten years ago solar (and batteries) were not competitive with fossil fuels, now it is close. 10 years from now solar and batteries will be much cheaper. You are also right that tremendous amounts of money are made with fossil fuels, particularly oil. Oil is a scarce resource, competition is limited and the market isn't entirely free. In contrast solar/wind/ev are highly competitive markets with more participants and much lower profit margins. Another reason to speed up the move away from fossil fuels. Yes all that fossil money has slowed progress; but, as fossil continues to lose the competition race it gets easier to push aggressive non-fossil policies. Expect countries without a big fossil endowment to lead the way. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41971-7