Ocean Heat Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year. What’s Happening?

The eruption of an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean near Tonga last year, which spewed tens of millions of tons of water vapor into the stratosphere, may have also influenced this year’s ocean temperatures. Water vapor, like carbon dioxide, is a greenhouse gas that traps heat near Earth’s surface.

But early analyses have so far suggested that those factors cannot account for all of this year’s extra warming.

“The level of warmth we are seeing today is only possible because of the warming over the past 150 years due to human activity,” Dr. Hausfather said.

Scientists expect warm ocean conditions to continue into the fall, with El Niño intensifying in the months ahead.

 

I suggest you review the link in #871. Hausfather is quite wide of the mark.

 

I say that to point out that global warming is trivial.

 

Sorry. I agree with NASA.I get frustrated by those who don't think of their families futures.

I've watched the climate change over 8 decades and looked into the way things have been going. Climate has always been with us. Global warming has happened in the very distant past - particularly when volcanoes were active and cloaked the earth with fumes etc. Ditto asteroids. Glaciers are disappearing they have always been subject to 'shrinkage' but not as now and a 'Doomsday glacier' in the Antarctic is rapidly melting. If this completes its melt oceans will rise by 2 feet. This will affect sea currents around the world and change climates. Areas ,which depend on certain currents for their climate will change. My concern is for my descendants.

 

As Yogi Bera once said, predictions are very hard to make, especially those about the future.

You may be right about what's going to happen, maybe you and I can agree that those things haven't happened yet. Meanwhile I'm hard pressed to see how this issue is affecting me personally except for the higher taxes now to "fix" what's wrong in the future but not now.

 

But is much more powerful than CO2, as well as far more abundant, especially near the earth's surface where all climate happens.

That is the same despicable dishonesty I have exposed before. If all of the warming over the last two years was caused by the combination of the Tonga submarine volcano, the dramatic and unexpected increase in solar activity, and the turn from La Nina to El Nino, and none at all by CO2, it would still be accurate to say that the Tonga volcano cannot account for all of this year's extra warming, increased solar activity cannot account for all of this year's warming, and El Nino cannot account for all this year's warming. The fact that none of the three alone can account for all of this year's warming does not imply that the combination cannot. That is the fact Hausfather is trying to deceive people about.

Again, that is the same type of dishonesty: it is technically correct, but deeply dishonest, as we have come to expect from Hausfather and every other "climate scientist" whose only goal is to force the CO2 climate narrative into the public's brains. It would be just as true if the human contribution was 0.01C as if it was 1.0C, but the implications of those two situations are very, very different.

And those pushing the CO2 climate narrative will continue to deliberately deceive people even while technically hewing to the facts.

 

Egads. You think that explains it.

 

As anthropogenic climate change increasingly becomes more obvious, the desperate remnant of science deniers concoct increasingly diverse pretexts.

Clouds are their latest culprits.

​

...The vast majority of climate scientists agree that global warming will have catastrophic consequences for current and future generations. They warn that heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end if humanity does not rapidly reduce emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

The influence of climate deniers has waned over the past several decades, as the science has become clearer and the impacts of global warming have become starker. But a small group of vocal skeptics — including several prominent physicists — has persisted...
​

The resistance to science, traditionally bankrolled by fossil fuel interests, is now dominated by ideological zealots

At a fiery news conference at the Four Seasons hotel here Tuesday, speakers denounced climate change as a hoax perpetrated by a “global cabal” including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and many leaders of the Catholic Church.

​

Tuesday’s event was organized by the Deposit of Faith Coalition, a group of more than a dozen Catholic organizations that argues that “those pushing the anti-God and anti-family climate agenda need to be called out and exposed.” Clauser, who is an atheist, needed some convincing to be the keynote speaker, a coalition spokesman acknowledged.

[Eighty-year-old John Clauser, a prominent physicist] who has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change, has homed in on one message in particular: Earth’s temperature is primarily determined by cloud cover, not carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The other speakers included Marc Morano, a former Republican congressional staffer who runs a website that rejects mainstream climate science, and Alex Newman, a journalist for right-wing media outlets who has called for exposing the “climate scam.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/16/john-clauser-nobel-climate-denial/

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all."​

 

I have a large family including 7 great grandchildren. I don't live in the USA but I have no objection to taxes that will keep this earth safe for my extended family and their descendants.
Predictions about the future are certainly hard to make but when they are based on what has been happening over many years and is worsening as we 'speak', surely we should take heed. Whether one calls it climate change or global warming makes little difference.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
There are many such sites but most require accepting 'cookies' so I don't use them. You could probably find them.

I take no pleasure in the fact that the scientific predictions I've relayed to popular audiences turn out to be true.

Al Gore

Good luck.

 

Climate alarmism increasingly relies on ad hominem attacks as the scientific basis of alarmist claims is eroded by research.

 

Liars, Leftists, Con Artists and Manipulators.

'“TEACHING SOCIOLOGY” JOURNAL IS AN IDEOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE. No surprise, sadly, but it’s “good” to have confirmation. Representative example: On climate change, “‘horrific … scenarios’ must be privileged even if they cause ‘students … [to] fall into despair,’ because ‘climate change is, in fact, an intractable existential crisis.'” Wow, thanks, “science.”'

Know who they are.

 

Please show me the actual survey where the vast majority of climate scientists agree that global warming will catastrophic consequences.

 

Climate change sceptic scientists 'less prominent and authoritative'
Scientists who believe in man-made climate change have better scientific credentials than global warming sceptics, according to a studyhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/7845662/Climate-change-sceptic-scientists-less-prominent-and-authoritative.html,en,Daily%20Telegraph,1750,332994822?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_psc_ppc_google_core_pmax_broad_pmax_content_DSA_BrandExclusions&rm_id=RM_News_UK_Pmax_Ads_Bau_Core_DSA_Exclusions&gad_source=5&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2bSH39WchwMVlgYGAB2d0QQ6EAAYBSAAEgKd5PD_BwE

https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/scientific-consensus/ Extract
International Academies: Joint Statement
"Climate change is real. There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate. However there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001)." (2005, 11 international science academies)10
The above bold will cause chaos to ocean currents which affect climatic conditions around the world.

Ask a climate scientist about possible “tipping points” and you are likely to hear about amoc. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is a stream of water which, as it flows from the southern to the northern (hence “meridional”) part of the Atlantic, grows cooler and saltier. Eventually it sinks to the ocean floor, 3km down, and flows back (hence “overturning”) across the abyssal plain. Mounting evidence suggests that the system that helps distribute heat around the world is weakening. Why do scientists find this so worrying?

amoc is something of a poster child for tipping points, which are notional thresholds beyond which systems that have been responding gradually and incrementally to global warming undergo sudden and dramatic changes. One reason for this is its sheer power and the scope of its influence. The rate at which it transfers heat towards the pole—about one petawatt, or 1,000 terawatts, roughly 60 times the rate at which humans produce energy by burning fossil fuels in factories, furnaces, power stations, cars, aircraft and everything else—accounts for about a quarter of all the northward flow of heat from the tropics. At least half of the water that gets into the ocean depths does so in the North Atlantic.

Another reason is that its tipping-point nature is not open to question. Theory, modelling and reconstructions of prehistoric climate all support the idea that amoc is “bistable”. Rather than just gradually getting stronger or weaker, it can go suddenly from “on” to “off” if pushed too far, and does so in a way that makes it very hard to flip it back on again. It was one of the first such instabilities clearly demonstrated in the climate system. And on top of all that there has long been good reason to think that global warming may be pushing that switch. On July 25th a paper published in Nature Communications suggested that the change of state could come about by the middle of this century.
https://www.economist.com/the-econo...V5otoCR3uBwHnEAAYAiAAEgKVXvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

All the worlds currents interact with each other. Throw one out of line and the rest go with it.

 

It explains nothing. It just points out that the warming is trivial.

 

Fourteen years old, and beside the point.
“In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.”
― Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

 

I realize that you will deny the reality anyway because denial is apparently a matter of dogma for you, but

Numerous studies, using diverse methodologies and measures of climate expertise, have quantified the scientific consensus, finding between 90% and 100% agreement on human-caused global warming with multiple studies converging on 97% agreement. This study revisits the consensus among geoscientists ten years after an initial survey of experts, while exploring different ways to define expertise and the level of agreement among these groups. ​

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2774/pdf
​

 

“And even when the apparatus exists, novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect, is able to recognize that something has gone wrong.”
― Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

 

More than most of the pretexts, I rather like the "The clouds are bad!" excuse for anthropogenic climate change.

 

Kuhn was not a climatologist and, as far as I know, never denied anthropogenic global warming.

 

It would be easier if you listed all the qualified climatologists who currently deny anthropogenic climate change.

Are there any?

 

Well, I'm interested in more precision.

The American Southwest had centuries of drought. "Lifetime" isn't the yardstick.

Burning fossil fuels by 8b people is four times worse than 2b. Too many people.

I disagree. This is an area we should consider carefully.

I disagree about remaking Metro Vancouver, particularly when we have an incompetent government.

A robot teacher? Sure, why not? We use our computers to learn.

 

Warming may not be a trivial matter.

 

He would certainly have denied justifications based on consensus in any field.

 

Be careful what you wish for.

Water Vapor Absorbs 84 Times More Radiation Than CO2 … Clouds Drove 89% Of 1982-2018 Warming

By Kenneth Richard on 2. May 2024

Less than 4% of longwave infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere. Greenhouse gases can have no effect outside of their narrow infrared atmospheric window.

Of all the greenhouse gases, water vapor (30,000 ppm) has easily the most dominant effect, absorbing 84 times more radiation than CO2 does, and 407,000 times more radiation than CH4 (methane).

If water vapor’s absorption capacity were to change by a factor of 1 (i.e., from 84 times greater than CO2 to 83 times greater), this tiny change would “wipe out all of what CO2 could have contributed” within the greenhouse effect.



Image Source: Nelson and Nelson, 2024
Over the last 50 million years CO2 and temperature were negatively correlated (CO2 rose, temperatures fell or temperatures rose, CO2 fell) 42% of the time, and there was a glaring lack of recurring ratios, and “many ratios were zero or near zero.”

Over the last 1 million years “87% of the ratios were negative or zero or near zero.” This “directly contradicts the Climate Change-CO2 hypothesis.”

Furthermore, high CO2 levels and/or warming were not the cause of mass extinctions, as plants and animals “thrive” in much hotter temperatures than exist today.

These conclusions are very similar to Davis (2017 and 2023), who determined that over the last 210 million years (a) CO2 falls as temperatures rise (negative correlation, r = -0.76), (b) mass extinctions occur 4.08 million years after CO2 peaks, and (c) global warming/CO2 radiative forcing “did not cause extinction of biodiversity.”



Image Source: Nelson and Nelson, 2024
Finally, approximately 89% of the warming over the period 1982-2018 could be attributed to the decline in cloud cover, which has allowed more solar radiation to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The rest “may be attributed to other factors including the greenhouse effect applicable to water vapor.”

In other words, due to the decoupling of CO2 from global warming (or cooling), there is effectively no consequential role for CO2 in climate change.



Image Source: Nelson and Nelson, 2024

 

In other words there is no vast consensus.