The current sea temperature anomaly is extreme. You can see it plotted since 1980 here: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ The dark black line that diverges in March is this year to date.
it may indeed be unprecedented - but this type of chart could do a better job of showing that. here's what I mean: we know that temperature has been increasing steadily for 140 years. So we expect each year can be higher than the previous one. And in an El Niño year, higher even. This chart shows that happening. What it doesn't show (clearly) is how high this year is vs. the previous year - and, importantly, whether that jump in temperature is the highest ever, or one of the highest ever, or whatever. maybe it is, but this type of chart doesn't highlight that fact because all of the years are jumbled together.
The black line is the current year, the orange line is the last year, in my opinion you can see very clearly the difference between the two. There are also three dotted lines: a mean (1982-2011) and a +-2sigma interval from the mean.
You’re assuming that the ocean temperature relative to the previous year is meaningful. I don’t think that’s true, absolute difference from normal is what matters for ocean ecology.
I agree it’s not great. However, you may have missed it but the key in interactive you can click on individual years and groups of years you see the trends. 2021 and 2022 are also quite distinctive lines. So it’s easy to see from the data how large an anomaly 2023 is.
Enabling individual years lines in sequence, 1998 was a major jump from what came before as was parts of 2015, and 2016. But 2023 is still a huge jump which going from past patters will settle down for a few years before becoming the new normal.
It will happen just slow enough for people to get used to it and not panic. And then it will be the new normal. Humans can adapt to terrible situations.
Honestly I'll ride it out but I do feel bad for people with kids.
Or in past years, or in adjacent climate cells, etc.
Check the equations, there are lag terms .. heat transfers take time.
The factors here are increased insulation gases (CO2, methane, water vapor), decreased Saharan dust, decreased shading sulphates, changing swing of the ENSO cycle.
Just for tonga folks. I remember reading this yesterday and they calculated that the effect of tonga only make at best 0.1 degree C increase in temperature. However what human did is 1.x degree C. That is order of magnitude difference => tonga is almost irrelevant.
The worldwide anomaly in 2023 is about 0.9 degrees C from the mean since 1979, not 2.x. Furthermore, the 2023 anomaly from the last decade mean is about 0.3 degrees C. The 2023 anomaly from 2022 is 0.18 degrees, which is close to what they predicted the Tonga eruption would cause.
One of the best ways to fight climate change is to not make up numbers out of thin air. There has to be trust for people to begin to change, and exaggerating because you want people to feel as scared as you will not help.
> One of the best ways to fight climate change is to not make up numbers out of thin air
I can tell you one of the best ways to fight climate change is not to spend 0 time reading someone's source to see what's going on with their numbers and accusing them of purposefully exaggerating instead. That's just using the guise of Wikipedia expertise to be lazy and stop a conversation before it starts
From their article, the "2.x" clearly comes from the fahrenheit number given. They likely meant 1.2 degrees C, measured from the preindustrial era.
(and you're clearly willing to speculate based on nothing but your feelings[1], so I'm not sure you have much of a leg to stand on criticizing like that)
Just an interesting first person anecdote: In the south of Brazil (close to Argentina) we normally have well defined seasons, but almost like clockwork we always had a famous "mini-summer of May", an unusually warm week in an otherwise cold mid-autumn. Well in the last decade the new concepts of "mini-summer of June" and now "mini-summer of July" started entering the popular parlance, as this abnormally warm weeks during a cold season are becoming more numerous and coming later in the season (late Autumn and even Winter).
Veranillo de San Juan has been a thing since forever[0], and it usually was at the end of June. However, people have taken to call any hot spell this way, even if it's nowhere near St. John's date (June 24th). My anecdotal observations are similar to yours.
From the NASA article: "The effect would dissipate when the extra water vapor cycles out of the stratosphere and would not be enough to noticeably exacerbate climate change effects."
I feel like there must be some other influence here, and the Tonga eruption is a good candidate. That's not to say this isn't already exacerbated by existing human-derived climate change, but the way the temperature leaps off the chart starting in April is not like the gradual upward trend we see with climate change. It makes utterly no sense from that perspective. Something external to climate change has to be influencing the system.
Unfortunately, it also seems like a lot of people are hesitant to even discuss this possibility for fear of being ostracized by the mob.
“ Unfortunately, it also seems like a lot of people are hesitant to even discuss this possibility for fear of being ostracized by the mob.”
This assessment is the same that a climate denier would make - it’s essentially climate gas lighting. Why do I say this?
Because the real reason it’s hard to discuss events with nuance is the highly vocal contingent of climate deniers that are looking for any single word or event that can be twisted to obfuscate the issue - first deny climate change, then to claim it’s not that bad etc etc.
That is the actual reason people are careful discussing climate, nothing to do with fear of ostracism. they’re rightly worried that the vocal anti-science people will twist their words.
The only people who fear getting ostracized are those doing the word twisting, the others are simply hesitant to give the Ron desantis types sounds bites to twist.
Apparently warming is compounded by the eruption, low sulphur shipping fuel rules, low amounts of Saharan dust and changes by El Niño according to this:
There's something called a tipping point, and it can result in exactly that sort of sudden rate of change increase entirely due to a certain threshold being breached.
My issue the last few years with anything related to the topic of climate change and weather patterns is that it's to me the poster child of where science communication can make or break an issue (even one that is existential like this one). And in this case, it has failed miserably and continues to do so.
I am strongly in favor of moving to renewable sources just because they seem like the obvious next technical evolution (And all the CO2 reduction benefits, for sure). I'm also completely trusting that climatologists are doing their thing and that the models we have only keep getting better. I have nearly zero issues with the science or the scientific process as I understand it.
But can we just admit that communicating about warming the earth by 2 degrees always has, and will always be a major failure in getting through to the population? Whenever I see another article talking about "2 degrees by 2035" or something similar, I roll my eyes now because that is such heavy jargon that is meaningful to such a small amount of people. How can we better communicate exactly what that means on a day to day basis? Or connect that to solutions?
We have to find a better way to communicate this both at the macro level and at the micro level.
At the macro level, even someone like me who is fully onboard with the science and the phenomenon, has a hard time getting worked up about chatter about 2 degrees, 0.9 degrees, and measuring tons of carbon. As humans we just can't process this in a meaningful way.
And at a micro level, I'm also sick of us looking at the weather around us on individual days saying "look at this hot day, climate change" and ignoring other factors. But then when people joke about frigid winters, we are quick to correct them and say that it's still due to climate change (we seem to understand that systems are interrelated, cold fronts, warming water evaporating more and resulting in more snow for example), but in hot weather, we just use the "climate change!" sledgehammer and forget about undersea volcanoes, El Ninos, the intensity of the sun (all small factors but factors nonetheless).
The whole thing to me has long been a failure in public communication of science. And I think that should be given as much attention as all the other technical solutions.
But human lifes matter much more than the whole planet's ecosystem! No one likes to sacrifice their own comfort to keep the globe cool, so keep belief in infinite growth of economy and generate money from thin air!
Readit News
Enabling individual years lines in sequence, 1998 was a major jump from what came before as was parts of 2015, and 2016. But 2023 is still a huge jump which going from past patters will settle down for a few years before becoming the new normal.
Honestly I'll ride it out but I do feel bad for people with kids.
Check the equations, there are lag terms .. heat transfers take time.
The factors here are increased insulation gases (CO2, methane, water vapor), decreased Saharan dust, decreased shading sulphates, changing swing of the ENSO cycle.
Take a few grains of salt. Even 1980 was long before we had great satellite data so a lot is inferred from tidal measurements in European cities
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https://e360.yale.edu/digest/summer-2023-extreme-heat-causes
edit: previous claimed 2.x is in degree F, here we global citizens use international standard unit degree C which convert to 1.x.
One of the best ways to fight climate change is to not make up numbers out of thin air. There has to be trust for people to begin to change, and exaggerating because you want people to feel as scared as you will not help.
I can tell you one of the best ways to fight climate change is not to spend 0 time reading someone's source to see what's going on with their numbers and accusing them of purposefully exaggerating instead. That's just using the guise of Wikipedia expertise to be lazy and stop a conversation before it starts
From their article, the "2.x" clearly comes from the fahrenheit number given. They likely meant 1.2 degrees C, measured from the preindustrial era.
(and you're clearly willing to speculate based on nothing but your feelings[1], so I'm not sure you have much of a leg to stand on criticizing like that)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37002288
[0] It even has its own (poorly sourced) wikipedia article: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veranito_de_San_Juan
Excuse the language, but it would appear that we are in a bit of a jam.
https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1685971656198545408
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unpr...
Unfortunately, it also seems like a lot of people are hesitant to even discuss this possibility for fear of being ostracized by the mob.
This assessment is the same that a climate denier would make - it’s essentially climate gas lighting. Why do I say this?
Because the real reason it’s hard to discuss events with nuance is the highly vocal contingent of climate deniers that are looking for any single word or event that can be twisted to obfuscate the issue - first deny climate change, then to claim it’s not that bad etc etc.
That is the actual reason people are careful discussing climate, nothing to do with fear of ostracism. they’re rightly worried that the vocal anti-science people will twist their words.
The only people who fear getting ostracized are those doing the word twisting, the others are simply hesitant to give the Ron desantis types sounds bites to twist.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...
Also, the temperature anomalies seem to be close to the El Nino temperature changes (which is a big blob of hot water over the Pacific)
A much more compelling argument than your sibling arguing a mob is suppressing anonymous discussion lol.
I am strongly in favor of moving to renewable sources just because they seem like the obvious next technical evolution (And all the CO2 reduction benefits, for sure). I'm also completely trusting that climatologists are doing their thing and that the models we have only keep getting better. I have nearly zero issues with the science or the scientific process as I understand it.
But can we just admit that communicating about warming the earth by 2 degrees always has, and will always be a major failure in getting through to the population? Whenever I see another article talking about "2 degrees by 2035" or something similar, I roll my eyes now because that is such heavy jargon that is meaningful to such a small amount of people. How can we better communicate exactly what that means on a day to day basis? Or connect that to solutions?
We have to find a better way to communicate this both at the macro level and at the micro level.
At the macro level, even someone like me who is fully onboard with the science and the phenomenon, has a hard time getting worked up about chatter about 2 degrees, 0.9 degrees, and measuring tons of carbon. As humans we just can't process this in a meaningful way.
And at a micro level, I'm also sick of us looking at the weather around us on individual days saying "look at this hot day, climate change" and ignoring other factors. But then when people joke about frigid winters, we are quick to correct them and say that it's still due to climate change (we seem to understand that systems are interrelated, cold fronts, warming water evaporating more and resulting in more snow for example), but in hot weather, we just use the "climate change!" sledgehammer and forget about undersea volcanoes, El Ninos, the intensity of the sun (all small factors but factors nonetheless).
The whole thing to me has long been a failure in public communication of science. And I think that should be given as much attention as all the other technical solutions.
This has been debunked. The 48 degree reported was land surface temperature, not air temperature that is usually reported.
https://skepticalscience.com/land-air-difference.html
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