Global Average Temperature 2023

[chubbs]

12 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Humans are an extremely adaptable species. So even if the most severe climate scenarios play out, we will find a way to survive. But other species may not be as fortunate. That being said, most of the carbon emissions are now occurring in places like China. The US has actually slightly decreased emissions. Outside of technological innovations on our part, we don’t have any say in how other countries like China manage their emissions. So while our economies are still depended too on fossil fuels, we need to find innovations to adapt to a warming climate. It’s probably going to be a slow energy transition and my guess is that we are probably on track for at least +2C to +3C of warming since the industrial revolution. And possibly beyond that if we don’t start moving faster to find a technologies to transition between 2030 and 2050.

Yes I don't think the sky is falling, we just aren't doing as good a job of preparing for the future as we could. US has decoupled economic growth from increasing CO2 emissions and China will too eventually. China has lead the way in solar, driving costs down. When the sun is shining solar is the now the cheapest source of electricity almost everywhere in the world. Looking back a decade ago both climate and energy technology has changed faster than I anticipated. I think we are close to a peak in global fossil fuel use and the move away from fossil fuels could be surprisingly fast if renewable energy and batteries continue to out-compete fossil fuels. Still we are going to end up much warmer than we needed to be.

[stadiumwave]

2 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Humans are an extremely adaptable species. So even if the most severe climate scenarios play out, we will find a way to survive. But other species may not be as fortunate. That being said, most of the carbon emissions are now occurring in places like China. The US has actually slightly decreased emissions. Outside of technological innovations on our part, we don’t have any say in how other countries like China manage their emissions. So while our economies are still depended too on fossil fuels, we need to find innovations to adapt to a warming climate. It’s probably going to be a slow energy transition and my guess is that we are probably on track for at least +2C to +3C of warming since the industrial revolution. And possibly beyond that if we don’t start moving faster to find a technologies to transition between 2030 and 2050.

Roundy argues that the spike is a temporary blip.  It's not a spike directly related to C02 which is more gradual. He explained it as this unusual El Nino event preceded by triple La Nina:

Paulshared Ryan's research about the 1877-78, which is arguably the strongest El Nino on record. Eric Webb has referenced this greatly in the past. Paul has as well.

I'm not good at going back through tweets but somewhere Paul explained the ocean heat release with this El Nino which he says is the most unique since 1877-78, indexes aside. 

 

[bluewave]

6 hours ago, stadiumwave said:

Roundy argues that the spike is a temporary blip.  It's not a spike directly related to C02 which is more gradual. He explained it as this unusual El Nino event preceded by triple La Nina:

While this spike may very well be temporary, the reason behind it is open to debate. May not be exclusively related to El Niño in a way that we traditionally understand. This El Niño is much weaker than 15-16. El Nino global temperatures typically peak near the end of the event in the late winter like in February 2016. This summer into fall historic spike is going against that previous pattern.
 

 

 

[chubbs]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

While this spike may very well be temporary, the reason behind it is open to debate. May not be exclusively related to El Niño in a way that we traditionally understand. This El Niño is much weaker than 15-16. El Nino global temperatures typically peak near the end of the event in the late winter like in February 2016. This summer into fall historic spike is going against that previous pattern.
 

 

 

Yes, what Roundy is missing is that the ocean heat increase during the 3-year nina was an add to the earth's climate system due to the large (and growing) energy imbalance.

[stadiumwave]

6 hours ago, bluewave said:

While this spike may very well be temporary, the reason behind it is open to debate. May not be exclusively related to El Niño in a way that we traditionally understand. This El Niño is much weaker than 15-16. El Nino global temperatures typically peak near the end of the event in the late winter like in February 2016. This summer into fall historic spike is going against that previous pattern.
 

 

 

 

Paul explained why the heat release was immediate, very similar to 1877-78, rather than typical Nino spike. Again, Paul argues this event is unique even compared to 2015-16 although that Nino was stronger yet did not affect global patterns to the extent this one has per Paul.

BTW, I'm not a Gavin Schmidt fan. I think he's dirty & untrustworthy. The same with Michael Mann who I think is a crook & a massive jerk. I'm not a denier at all, but I detest propaganda. It hurts science in the long run...maybe even in the short run.

[stadiumwave]

5 hours ago, chubbs said:

Yes, what Roundy is missing is that the ocean heat increase during the 3-year nina was an add to the earth's climate system due to the large (and growing) energy imbalance.

 

Then it's not C02. It doesn't work that way. C02 induced is more of a gradual issue. There maybe other factors that are not understood as of yet, like the massive amount of water vapor produced by Tonga. There's just so much about our climate system we do not understand, as much as we've learned the last century, the field of climatology is relatively young. 

[chubbs]

8 hours ago, stadiumwave said:

 

Then it's not C02. It doesn't work that way. C02 induced is more of a gradual issue. There maybe other factors that are not understood as of yet, like the massive amount of water vapor produced by Tonga. There's just so much about our climate system we do not understand, as much as we've learned the last century, the field of climatology is relatively young. 

Huh? Sure the CO2 increase is gradual. The build-up of the earth's energy balance is also gradual as is the increasing heat content of the oceans. However, ENSO makes the global temperature increase look uneven. If you average temperature over 11 years (red line in chart below) most of the enso variability is removed and the temperature increase becomes steady.

The Tonga volcano has been over-hyped by skeptics like Maue. There are posts in this thread with model results showing modest volcano impacts this year, net cooling in one study. If you are worried about increasing water vapor in the atmosphere, worry about greenhouse gases.  Water vapor added to the atmosphere from GHG induced feedback swamps Tonga water by orders of magnitude (also discussed above).

The science around climate change is well established and backed-up by a track record of successful prediction. What we are finding out this year is that scientific uncertainty can work both ways, for less warming than expected, or for more. Note on the chart below that in the past decade we are spending more time above the trendline than below. Even a 3-year nina couldn't get much below the trendline That's what Roundy is missing. We spiked up from a temperature that would have been a record before the 2015 nino.

[chubbs]

A decade of warming is roughly 0.2C. We've had a 2fer, roughly 2 decades of warming in one decade. Who predicted that?

 

[bdgwx]

12 hours ago, stadiumwave said:

 

There's just so much about our climate system we do not understand, as much as we've learned the last century, the field of climatology is relatively young. 

The field of climatology dates back to the 1820's when Fourier pondered why Earth was warmer than it otherwise would be without an atmosphere. Pouillet hypothesized that CO2 was the agent most responsible back in 1837. Foote and Tyndall independently confirmed CO2's heat trapping behavior in 1856 and 1861 respectively. And Arrhenius developed a rather complex model (for his day anyway) of climate change and even calculated the warming potential of increased CO2 back in 1896. He even predicted that humans would cause the planet to warm. Chamberlin published A Group of Hypothesis Bearing on Climate Changes in 1897. And all of this occurred before the turn of the 20th century. Climate science is not what I'd call young.

 

 

[stadiumwave]

10 minutes ago, bdgwx said:

The field of climatology dates back to the 1820's when Fourier pondered why Earth was warmer than it otherwise would be without an atmosphere. Pouillet hypothesized that CO2 was the agent most responsible back in 1837. Foote and Tyndall independently confirmed CO2's heat trapping behavior in 1856 and 1861 respectively. And Arrhenius developed a rather complex model (for his day anyway) of climate change and even calculated the warming potential of increased CO2 back in 1896. He even predicted that humans would cause the planet to warm. Chamberlin published A Group of Hypothesis Bearing on Climate Changes in 1897. And all of this occurred before the turn of the 20th century. Climate science is not what I'd call young.

 

 

 

You're not getting it. We've learned so much but there's so much we do not know. Most Climatologist will tell you the same. I'm not saying anything other than that. 

[donsutherland1]

On 11/15/2023 at 3:30 PM, bluewave said:

While this spike may very well be temporary, the reason behind it is open to debate. May not be exclusively related to El Niño in a way that we traditionally understand. This El Niño is much weaker than 15-16. El Nino global temperatures typically peak near the end of the event in the late winter like in February 2016. This summer into fall historic spike is going against that previous pattern.
 

 

 

I agree that there’s more to the story than ENSO. It’s worth noting that since 2018, the 30-year trend has been warming at or above 0.2C per decade. It’s unclear what role this acceleration in the warming rate plays and whether it will persist. Dr. Hansen expects further acceleration. The acceleration coincides with the increase in the Earth Energy Imbalance documented by NASA.

 

 

[chubbs]

As forecast, the past two days have broken the recent September CFS anomaly record. Models indicate the spike will be short lived.  In general, still following the typical nino timing pattern, well ahead of 2015/16. 

[bluewave]

 

 

[chubbs]

Above 2C on ERA as well

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[TheClimateChanger]

On 11/15/2023 at 9:07 AM, chubbs said:

Yes I don't think the sky is falling, we just aren't doing as good a job of preparing for the future as we could. US has decoupled economic growth from increasing CO2 emissions and China will too eventually. China has lead the way in solar, driving costs down. When the sun is shining solar is the now the cheapest source of electricity almost everywhere in the world. Looking back a decade ago both climate and energy technology has changed faster than I anticipated. I think we are close to a peak in global fossil fuel use and the move away from fossil fuels could be surprisingly fast if renewable energy and batteries continue to out-compete fossil fuels. Still we are going to end up much warmer than we needed to be.

The sky is literally falling though.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate-change-upper-atmosphere-cooling#:~:text=it to contract.-,The sky is falling — literally.,at Charles University in Prague.

[Amped]

This wasn't supposed to happen for like another 30 to 50 years.

[bdgwx]

For the lurkers...this is what a +2.0 W/m2 planetary energy imbalance does.

[csnavywx]

Endless ink is spilled about costs, but you'd never know we were in a capitalist economy. Zero is written about profits in any analysis I've seen, which is where the rubber hits the road. It can be as cheap as you want, but if the return can't exceed the risk free rate+risk premium, it will suffer. Ask GE or Siemens about that this year.

Nor does it consider thermodynamics in a closed system (as the globe necessarily is), which necessitates that if you add energy of any form to the civilizational system and all of its networks, it will grow. Much like a snowflake, if you add water vapor, the dendritic arms grow "at the expense" of the basal facet, nevertheless some of that added water vapor makes it to the facet and causes it to grow as well. We therefore should not be surprised that fossil energy has continued to stubbornly grow and any declines have been (and likely will continue to be) short lived absent recessions or stagflation (see Europe currently). Of course, it's not impossible to decarbonize, but decarbonization is extremely tough and the forces of growth will resist.

[chubbs]

5 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Endless ink is spilled about costs, but you'd never know we were in a capitalist economy. Zero is written about profits in any analysis I've seen, which is where the rubber hits the road. It can be as cheap as you want, but if the return can't exceed the risk free rate+risk premium, it will suffer. Ask GE or Siemens about that this year.

Nor does it consider thermodynamics in a closed system (as the globe necessarily is), which necessitates that if you add energy of any form to the civilizational system and all of its networks, it will grow. Much like a snowflake, if you add water vapor, the dendritic arms grow "at the expense" of the basal facet, nevertheless some of that added water vapor makes it to the facet and causes it to grow as well. We therefore should not be surprised that fossil energy has continued to stubbornly grow and any declines have been (and likely will continue to be) short lived absent recessions or stagflation (see Europe currently). Of course, it's not impossible to decarbonize, but decarbonization is extremely tough and the forces of growth will resist.

I am not as pessimistic as you are. Internal combustion is facing stiff competitive headwinds. Fossil fuels aren't getting any cheaper and the long-term oil supply outlook is bleak. Similar story in the power industry, fossil fuels are losing competitive advantage. Won't happen fast enough but the obstacles to better climate policy/reduced fossil fuel use are steadily eroding.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/electric-vehicle-battery-prices-falling.html

[csnavywx]

10 hours ago, chubbs said:

I am not as pessimistic as you are. Internal combustion is facing stiff competitive headwinds. Fossil fuels aren't getting any cheaper and the long-term oil supply outlook is bleak. Similar story in the power industry, fossil fuels are losing competitive advantage. Won't happen fast enough but the obstacles to better climate policy/reduced fossil fuel use are steadily eroding.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/electric-vehicle-battery-prices-falling.html

Oh yes, there's nothing stopping it on a *regional* level, but that's because looking at it regionally essentially means treating it as an open system. Once you go global, it switches to closed. China, EU and US are all in a pretty stiff manufacturing recession (all PMIs are down every month over the last year). China's particularly because they frontran years of industrial production with their real estate bubble, so some reversion to the mean is to be expected. EU because of the war (and their primary energy consumption is down 4.4% y/o/y): 

 

The net however, is probably still going to end up positive (+0.1-0.9%), despite all of the renewable capacity installs and the recessions/stagnation -- and that's because growth shifted elsewhere, in this case India. (+8.5% yoy emissions with 7.8% yoy growth). And there's plenty more where that came from this decade. In addition, we still have growth phases to go through in the rest of the SE Maritime Continent (Vietnam, Indonesia, etc) and most importantly Africa, whose growth rate is just now starting to take off. Pop will double there by mid-century to >2.5B. All of this explosive growth will require some emissions. How much exactly is still up to us, but we will need to press twice as hard as we think we need to to really get this under control before climate damage begins to inflict big losses and strong inflationary pressure.

A wave of baseload installs (standardization and mass production) via nuclear plants could do it. I've oft thought about a program to issue the currency directly to do it (no loans/bonds) and then use some of the proceeds from the plants to retire the currency afterwards. That would cut financing costs out of the equation and standardization would greatly reduce up-front costs. Since it's a gov't project, you wouldn't need to worry about the profit motive nearly so much. And 30-40 extra years of tech improvements would improve safety greatly.

Applying that plan to Africa, much in the same way we do with health, could jumpstart and frontrun emissions increases there too.

Anyways, I'm rambling. I think we greatly underestimate how difficult this is going to be beyond the low-hanging fruit stage, especially if it's the profit motive doing all of the driving. Because despite renewable costs being low, they're also pretty friggin unprofitable under a high inflation/high interest rate regime with massive oversupply. Oil and gas extraction are still massively profitable. A quick check of those markets (and the stocks behind them) shows that in spades the past couple of years, with most solar/wind stocks suffering large drawdowns from their peaks and oil companies are still doing just fine raking in money.

[chubbs]

11 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Oh yes, there's nothing stopping it on a *regional* level, but that's because looking at it regionally essentially means treating it as an open system. Once you go global, it switches to closed. China, EU and US are all in a pretty stiff manufacturing recession (all PMIs are down every month over the last year). China's particularly because they frontran years of industrial production with their real estate bubble, so some reversion to the mean is to be expected. EU because of the war (and their primary energy consumption is down 4.4% y/o/y): 

 

The net however, is probably still going to end up positive (+0.1-0.9%), despite all of the renewable capacity installs and the recessions/stagnation -- and that's because growth shifted elsewhere, in this case India. (+8.5% yoy emissions with 7.8% yoy growth). And there's plenty more where that came from this decade. In addition, we still have growth phases to go through in the rest of the SE Maritime Continent (Vietnam, Indonesia, etc) and most importantly Africa, whose growth rate is just now starting to take off. Pop will double there by mid-century to >2.5B. All of this explosive growth will require some emissions. How much exactly is still up to us, but we will need to press twice as hard as we think we need to to really get this under control before climate damage begins to inflict big losses and strong inflationary pressure.

A wave of baseload installs (standardization and mass production) via nuclear plants could do it. I've oft thought about a program to issue the currency directly to do it (no loans/bonds) and then use some of the proceeds from the plants to retire the currency afterwards. That would cut financing costs out of the equation and standardization would greatly reduce up-front costs. Since it's a gov't project, you wouldn't need to worry about the profit motive nearly so much. And 30-40 extra years of tech improvements would improve safety greatly.

Applying that plan to Africa, much in the same way we do with health, could jumpstart and frontrun emissions increases there too.

Anyways, I'm rambling. I think we greatly underestimate how difficult this is going to be beyond the low-hanging fruit stage, especially if it's the profit motive doing all of the driving. Because despite renewable costs being low, they're also pretty friggin unprofitable under a high inflation/high interest rate regime with massive oversupply. Oil and gas extraction are still massively profitable. A quick check of those markets (and the stocks behind them) shows that in spades the past couple of years, with most solar/wind stocks suffering large drawdowns from their peaks and oil companies are still doing just fine raking in money.

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

[chubbs]

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.

[chubbs]

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