Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[gallopinggertie]

Hong Kong recently broke its all-time high, during Typhoon Dolphin. Here is an excerpt from an environmental newsletter I receive, describing the day:

“

Dear Reader,

On Sunday, August 9th, the Hong Kong Observatory recorded a temperature of 36.9 C (98.4 F), the highest since records began in 1884.

I’ve often told my friends stateside to imagine Hong Kong’s normal summer climate as “Houston on steroids.” This past Sunday was something else: I was breaking into a sweat just standing in the shade waiting for the bus. There was no breeze, and you could feel the heat radiating into your body, as if you stepped into a sauna. In fact, the “feels like” temperature reached 46 C (114.8 F) — hotter than Houston, Miami, or Phoenix.”

[chubbs]

21 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Per the following reliable and objective source, year 2026 as of week 32 has had the lowest area burnt in North America since 2012 by a good margin vs other years as of the same week (by a third). Also, globally it has been by a large margin the lowest for this point in the year since 2012 as I’ve been posting despite being near the warmest globally along with 2025 being 2nd lowest. My point in posting about 2026 for N.A. and 2026/5 globally is not to say CC is causing a decrease in wildfire activity because I’m not saying that. Instead, my point in posting this is to show that that there isn’t a proven simple relationship between CC and wildfire related activity and that different kinds of wildfire related data from various sources from various periods can be presented in various ways:
 

I don't think area burned is telling you much about CC; because, other human factors are driving the long-term trends. Per Our World in Data, the vast majority of wildfires occur in grassland and savanna in the sub-tropics and tropics, roughly 50% in Africa. Forest burning is a small portion of area burned in all regions. Our World in Data cites  a Science paper that attributes the long-term decrease in area burned to the spread and intensification of agriculture. In Europe and North America, reduction in cropland burned is another important long-term trend.

Have to look at other stats to see the effect of climate change. The blog I linked makes the point that the intensity of the largest fires is increasing due to climate change. Big, intense fires are the most problematic but aren't well captured by the area burned stats. Here's a recent paper that finds that a small number of extreme fires are having an out-sized impact on the forest ecosystem in western and boreal North America.

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aeg5802

[chubbs]

This study provides an estimate of transient climate response (TCR) using CERES net radiation estimates and updates temperature-based estimates through 2025. The new TCR estimates for temperature are a little higher than previous studies (orange bars) and the CERES TCR estimates (red bars) are higher still, inline with TCR estimated with the warmer CMIP6 models. 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2026EF008356

[Typhoon Tip]

2 hours ago, chubbs said:

This study provides an estimate of transient climate response (TCR) using CERES net radiation estimates and updates temperature-based estimates through 2025. The new TCR estimates for temperature are a little higher than previous studies (orange bars) and the CERES TCR estimates (red bars) are higher still, inline with TCR estimated with the warmer CMIP6 models. 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2026EF008356

Intuitively it has to be higher.  Not intending to condescend but it occurs upon looking at this, the background state is accelerating two-fold:  once over for the fact that CC has not been linear over the last 2 to 3 decades, but now especially with the 2nd reason in the onsetting supposed record warm ENSO. ENSOs are correlated with warm global 'spikes' in temperature means.  Superimposing these two expectations over one another lends to 'adjusting' an increase in any derivatives that describe that system - a transience certainly being one of those... 

[GaWx]

 Joe Bastardi brings something up that I think merits further study. The contrast in temps between the tropics and Arctic has dropped significantly since 1999 because the Arctic has warmed ~2C while the tropics have warmed significantly less. GW has been most concentrated in the Arctic.

“A reduced equator-to-pole temperature gradient lowers zonal available potential energy (ZAPE) and surface baroclinicity. Baroclinic instability is the primary energy source for extratropical cyclones (the large-scale mid-latitude storms that form along the jet stream and frontal zones). With less available energy to draw from:

• Models (including coordinated experiments focused on Arctic sea-ice loss and amplification) generally show fewer individual cyclones each season across the northern mid-latitudes and Arctic.
• The remaining storms tend to be, on average, somewhat weaker, slower-moving, and longer-lived.”

Individual events can still be intense or produce more extreme rainfall because of thermodynamic changes.

Because of the distortion of warming, it leads to some things opposite of what is portrayed in the general sense.

Your point is that this differential warming can produce effects that run counter to the simple ‘warmer world = more of everything extreme’ narrative, especially for baroclinic storm frequency and intensity. The thought experiment cleanly highlights how the pattern of warming, not just global-mean temperature, controls the dynamical response.”

 

[Typhoon Tip]

2 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Joe Bastardi brings something up that I think merits further study. The contrast in temps between the tropics and Arctic has dropped significantly since 1999 because the Arctic has warmed ~2C while the tropics have warmed significantly less. GW has been most concentrated in the Arctic.

“A reduced equator-to-pole temperature gradient lowers zonal available potential energy (ZAPE) and surface baroclinicity. Baroclinic instability is the primary energy source for extratropical cyclones (the large-scale mid-latitude storms that form along the jet stream and frontal zones). With less available energy to draw from:

• Models (including coordinated experiments focused on Arctic sea-ice loss and amplification) generally show fewer individual cyclones each season across the northern mid-latitudes and Arctic.
• The remaining storms tend to be, on average, somewhat weaker, slower-moving, and longer-lived.”

Individual events can still be intense or produce more extreme rainfall because of thermodynamic changes.

Because of the distortion of warming, it leads to some things opposite of what is portrayed in the general sense.

Your point is that this differential warming can produce effects that run counter to the simple ‘warmer world = more of everything extreme’ narrative, especially for baroclinic storm frequency and intensity. The thought experiment cleanly highlights how the pattern of warming, not just global-mean temperature, controls the dynamical response.”

 

The tropics have expanded more to accommodate heating - this is balancing the wholesale integrated PV=nrT ideal gas state.   Increasing the temp --> increases either P, V or both, on the left side of the equation.

That expansion is the Hadley Cell ...

But this is not linear.  Generally, gases expand more significantly the higher temperature.  Thus, the colder Arctic domain can increase more temperature, before it begins to expand ...

The atmosphere is free to expand in the horizontal and upward direction.  It's obviously not expanding through the ground...  The disproportionate expansion at higher temperatures thus causes the HC expansion, and the temperature only shows a more modest rise - it's a trade off. More volume as thermal energy is increasing, the register of the actual kinetic temperature is slowed.  If the tropics were in a closed container, it'd have risen more than what is being measured. 

 

 

 

[donsutherland1]

The distributions of Phoenix's warming summer high temperatures is shown below.

Summer Mean High:
1961-1990: 104.3°
1991-2020: 105.4°
1996-2025: 105.9°

[LibertyBell]

10 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Joe Bastardi brings something up that I think merits further study. The contrast in temps between the tropics and Arctic has dropped significantly since 1999 because the Arctic has warmed ~2C while the tropics have warmed significantly less. GW has been most concentrated in the Arctic.

“A reduced equator-to-pole temperature gradient lowers zonal available potential energy (ZAPE) and surface baroclinicity. Baroclinic instability is the primary energy source for extratropical cyclones (the large-scale mid-latitude storms that form along the jet stream and frontal zones). With less available energy to draw from:

• Models (including coordinated experiments focused on Arctic sea-ice loss and amplification) generally show fewer individual cyclones each season across the northern mid-latitudes and Arctic.
• The remaining storms tend to be, on average, somewhat weaker, slower-moving, and longer-lived.”

Individual events can still be intense or produce more extreme rainfall because of thermodynamic changes.

Because of the distortion of warming, it leads to some things opposite of what is portrayed in the general sense.

Your point is that this differential warming can produce effects that run counter to the simple ‘warmer world = more of everything extreme’ narrative, especially for baroclinic storm frequency and intensity. The thought experiment cleanly highlights how the pattern of warming, not just global-mean temperature, controls the dynamical response.”

 

This is exactly why I stated we are approaching entropy. In that sense ACC is entirely normal because the entire universe is headed towards entropy. Also see my post in the El Nino thread about there being no ice on this planet for 85 percent of its history. 

[chubbs]

17 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Joe Bastardi brings something up that I think merits further study. The contrast in temps between the tropics and Arctic has dropped significantly since 1999 because the Arctic has warmed ~2C while the tropics have warmed significantly less. GW has been most concentrated in the Arctic.

“A reduced equator-to-pole temperature gradient lowers zonal available potential energy (ZAPE) and surface baroclinicity. Baroclinic instability is the primary energy source for extratropical cyclones (the large-scale mid-latitude storms that form along the jet stream and frontal zones). With less available energy to draw from:

• Models (including coordinated experiments focused on Arctic sea-ice loss and amplification) generally show fewer individual cyclones each season across the northern mid-latitudes and Arctic.
• The remaining storms tend to be, on average, somewhat weaker, slower-moving, and longer-lived.”

Individual events can still be intense or produce more extreme rainfall because of thermodynamic changes.

Because of the distortion of warming, it leads to some things opposite of what is portrayed in the general sense.

Your point is that this differential warming can produce effects that run counter to the simple ‘warmer world = more of everything extreme’ narrative, especially for baroclinic storm frequency and intensity. The thought experiment cleanly highlights how the pattern of warming, not just global-mean temperature, controls the dynamical response.”

 

This isn't a new thought, scientists have been looking for weather impacts from accelerated warming in the arctic for a while. One hypothesis is a weaker, wavier jetstream, amplifying and slowing the progression of weather patterns. As far as I am aware this hasn't been proven with studies on both sides. Not aware of any findings on baroclinic storms either. Note that increased moisture compensates for weaker temperature gradients in baroclinic storms through increased heat release from condensation in clouds. One weather effect that has been found is a northward shift in the jet stream and storm track.

[Typhoon Tip]

12 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

This is exactly why I stated we are approaching entropy. In that sense ACC is entirely normal because the entire universe is headed towards entropy. Also see my post in the El Nino thread about there being no ice on this planet for 85 percent of its history. 

I think they got that wrong... (this is a bit lengthy so if don't wanna read it all it's all good)

The expansion of the Universe may only look entropic as the final consequence by the limitations of our human capacity for observation/understanding. 

It's entirely possible, admittedly a conjecture, that the expansion won't inevitably stretch so far that all actions, even the excitations of the quantum scale, are forced to smooth to nothing - when that happens, that's an inability to manifest reality itself above the "Quantum lens". No excitations, no-nothing exists.

Imagine a tarp with wrinkles and as we pull outward in all directions along it's edges the expansion naturally would force all wrinkles to flatten.  That's a metaphor for the cold entropic hell finish idea of accelerating expansion to oblivion. 

What could really be happening, oblivion by our limitations, is that the Universe is expanding because there is always new excitations being added into a 'concept of a Universal volume'. Of instrumental importance there, happening at a faster rate than the existing one's and actions decay.  It's almost like the Universe is actually still "big banging" - like it's been occurring for the past 13.5 billion years.  There's a funny pun somewhere in there related to how new life necessarily needs this...

An implication arises that is interesting.  The Universe might necessarily be expanding to make room for the addition. Add air to a balloon, it expands.  However, since if and when we don't see the new excitation emergence (which we don't) then entropy in the localized scale creates an illusion of supremacy there - of course we are inclined to assume what we can observe as to being the nature of the whole. 

However, in this re-imagined aspect of whole-nature, decaying to pure disorder still occurs slower then the emergence of new excitation, by the time the integral reaches the edge/boundary of the whole volume of the whole Universe ...entropy was actually increasing at a slower rate then the advent of new excitation - in the ongoing big bang.    

What is a creepy implication falling from this philosophy is that all entropy is, is a measure of finality of actions at smaller scales.  So yeah...  we (meaning all actions at less than the expansion of the cosmos) die, perhaps necessarily so, so that the Universe can make room for new excitation emergence, so that it can go on existing forever. 

This is an analogy for life as we know it, too, but first ... you might recall our discussion from months and months ago about the emergence of reality from an analog engine.  Basically,  there are 3 original colors of reality - then mixed essentially forever to form an infinite spectrum of colors amid the 'reality color wheel'.   No one thinks brown looks like blue - but the heredity from red, yellow and blue combinations eventually arrives to either.  And if we look around us, we just might see or sense once in a while this kind of "infinity" is almost like a scam in originality; but it gets caught in the act. 

I like this analogy of the tree and the river to help visualize (I believe we may have even touched on this in that prior conversation - ).  If we look at a very high resolution of a river's complete water shed, then, look at a defoliated tree against the canvas of a grey winter sky, the river's water shed looks like a virtual reprint of the same visible specter of the tree's structure against the sky, and vice versa. 

Everything about nature and reality is a repro and/or repurposing like that. Reused structure hidden by end result-unlike contexts - perhaps existing so that context identities may be created - the emergence of reality.   

So the life analogy...  we exist with our awareness and consciousness because of trillions of cells that live and die in a fraction of the time we totally exist.   This is a tree-river inheritance, a new color as it were ... that is inherited and repurposed by a Universe that doesn't really create anything in reality, uniquely.  It's all repro's only differentiable by context.  We, and in fact, everything exists, because the Universe has excitations vs decay occurring, so the model of our systems are deeper than mere analog - it's just inherited.  The new excitations are new cells... so long as cell existence out lasts the rate of decay, we continue to exist. The balloon's expansion occurs because the same calculus (whatever that is..) that drives the emergence of excitation --> expanding cosmos, is parental to the reality of both. 

Back to the original discussion point.  To summarize, it is possible that entropy is just more clearly evident at smaller scales; human limitation to what is coherently perceivable then guides the faux impression of supremacy. But it may not be in control of destiny.  Whatever is introducing this - re-imagined conjecture - emergence of new excitations, driving the expansion of the cosmos, is allowing it to persist. Everything are the children inside.    

 

[LibertyBell]

On 8/20/2026 at 8:41 AM, Typhoon Tip said:

I think they got that wrong... (this is a bit lengthy so if don't wanna read it all it's all good)

The expansion of the Universe may only look entropic as the final consequence by the limitations of our human capacity for observation/understanding. 

It's entirely possible, admittedly a conjecture, that the expansion won't inevitably stretch so far that all actions, even the excitations of the quantum scale, are forced to smooth to nothing - when that happens, that's an inability to manifest reality itself above the "Quantum lens". No excitations, no-nothing exists.

Imagine a tarp with wrinkles and as we pull outward in all directions along it's edges the expansion naturally would force all wrinkles to flatten.  That's a metaphor for the cold entropic hell finish idea of accelerating expansion to oblivion. 

What could really be happening, oblivion by our limitations, is that the Universe is expanding because there is always new excitations being added into a 'concept of a Universal volume'. Of instrumental importance there, happening at a faster rate than the existing one's and actions decay.  It's almost like the Universe is actually still "big banging" - like it's been occurring for the past 13.5 billion years.  There's a funny pun somewhere in there related to how new life necessarily needs this...

An implication arises that is interesting.  The Universe might necessarily be expanding to make room for the addition. Add air to a balloon, it expands.  However, since if and when we don't see the new excitation emergence (which we don't) then entropy in the localized scale creates an illusion of supremacy there - of course we are inclined to assume what we can observe as to being the nature of the whole. 

However, in this re-imagined aspect of whole-nature, decaying to pure disorder still occurs slower then the emergence of new excitation, by the time the integral reaches the edge/boundary of the whole volume of the whole Universe ...entropy was actually increasing at a slower rate then the advent of new excitation - in the ongoing big bang.    

What is a creepy implication falling from this philosophy is that all entropy is, is a measure of finality of actions at smaller scales.  So yeah...  we (meaning all actions at less than the expansion of the cosmos) die, perhaps necessarily so, so that the Universe can make room for new excitation emergence, so that it can go on existing forever. 

This is an analogy for life as we know it, too, but first ... you might recall our discussion from months and months ago about the emergence of reality from an analog engine.  Basically,  there are 3 original colors of reality - then mixed essentially forever to form an infinite spectrum of colors amid the 'reality color wheel'.   No one thinks brown looks like blue - but the heredity from red, yellow and blue combinations eventually arrives to either.  And if we look around us, we just might see or sense once in a while this kind of "infinity" is almost like a scam in originality; but it gets caught in the act. 

I like this analogy of the tree and the river to help visualize (I believe we may have even touched on this in that prior conversation - ).  If we look at a very high resolution of a river's complete water shed, then, look at a defoliated tree against the canvas of a grey winter sky, the river's water shed looks like a virtual reprint of the same visible specter of the tree's structure against the sky, and vice versa. 

Everything about nature and reality is a repro and/or repurposing like that. Reused structure hidden by end result-unlike contexts - perhaps existing so that context identities may be created - the emergence of reality.   

So the life analogy...  we exist with our awareness and consciousness because of trillions of cells that live and die in a fraction of the time we totally exist.   This is a tree-river inheritance, a new color as it were ... that is inherited and repurposed by a Universe that doesn't really create anything in reality, uniquely.  It's all repro's only differentiable by context.  We, and in fact, everything exists, because the Universe has excitations vs decay occurring, so the model of our systems are deeper than mere analog - it's just inherited.  The new excitations are new cells... so long as cell existence out lasts the rate of decay, we continue to exist. The balloon's expansion occurs because the same calculus (whatever that is..) that drives the emergence of excitation --> expanding cosmos, is parental to the reality of both. 

Back to the original discussion point.  To summarize, it is possible that entropy is just more clearly evident at smaller scales; human limitation to what is coherently perceivable then guides the faux impression of supremacy. But it may not be in control of destiny.  Whatever is introducing this - re-imagined conjecture - emergence of new excitations, driving the expansion of the cosmos, is allowing it to persist. Everything are the children inside.    

 

I love reading your posts they are always very informative John!

Are you aware of Sir Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclical Cosmology? He uses geometry to explain how the expansion of the universe could be one in many cycles of expansion and contraction and how what seems like increasing entropy will one day maybe a trillion years from now lead to a return to a very low entropy state like at the so called Big Bang which was really a Big Bounce. It doesn't violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics as long as the universe is at least slightly larger with each reiteration of the cycle. Think of a ball rolling up and down successive hills with potential energy being converted to kinetic energy as it rolls downhill and being converted back to potential energy as it rolls up the next hill. This is how a cyclic universe would be possible with the ball rolling downhill representing expansion and the ball rolling uphill representing contraction. Reason being that going uphill goes against gravity and going downhill happens because of gravity.

 

Each cell living,  breathing and dying really is like its own universe but also cyclic in a way because nothing is ever truly destroyed (the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy) it just changes form and becomes part of the next whole.

 

The idea of the primary colors representing the universe are intriguing. You could have space represented by the additive primaries of RGB red green blue and the arrow of time represented by black in our universe and an anniversary with its anti-space represented by the subtractive primaries of CMY cyan magenta yellow and an equal but opposite arrow of time represented by white, so as our universe expands its anniversary contracts and vice versa.