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Unforced Variations: May 2024

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This month’s open thread on climate topics. Many eyes will be focused on whether April temperatures will be the 11th month in row of records…

Note that we have updated the data and figures from the Nenana Ice Classic and Dawson City river ice break up pools (the nominal 13th and 5th earliest break-ups (or 15th and 4th, w.r.t. to the vernal equinox) in their respective records)).

And a quick note about moderation: If your comment is a personal attack on another commenter instead of a substantive argument, it will just be deleted. As will your subsequent complaints. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Reader Interactions

429 Responses to "Unforced Variations: May 2024"

  3. a great little tete et tete

    Energy Wars | Art Berman (the Oil/Energy Man)
    https://youtu.be/OHq_gGN2Oa0?si=_jVxwtPcKFzqdChl&t=229

    Q. My first question for you is why is the world in crisis?

    Art: The world is in crisis primarily because we are psychologically adolescent or infantile, and I don’t mean that in any sort of a derogatory way it’s just an observation and a fact.

    And so our civilization has given priority to things over relationships, and over mindfulness, thoughtfulness etc and therefore we act in ways that are often irresponsible when we look at them from a high altitude when we zoom in and think about what you know – “why have I made this decision today?” – it seems incredibly mature and responsible but unfortunately you know we’re all acting out of our own self-interest.

    Which is understandable but you add up 8 billion people’s self-interests and it often works against the real primary self-interest of everyone including the individual. So to me that is the fundamental problem.

    And that is also why I am skeptical about solutions that involve substituting one form of energy for another or relying on some technology or some ideology or some clever new idea about how we can organize the economy. I’m certainly not against any of those ideas. I just feel like you know as long as we’re still dealing with self-interested individuals, I don’t think any of that’s going to work.

    Nor do I have a lot of optimism that what I just said will particularly get a great reception from most people, but that is you know 45 years into a professional energy career and that’s what I see.

    Rachel: That’s such an astounding answer because I was expecting an energy answer, but of course that is when you pull back as far as possible there is some kind of deep psychological spiritual social problem with regards to our relationship to the world, with each other, to nature, that is driving and perpetuating a fundamentally violent system that we cannot sustain.

    Gets even better ……

  4. In hindsight at May 2024, this report now seems somewhat prescient, slightly ahead of it’s time, despite it’s recency.

    The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory
    BioScience December 2023

    Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up.
    In the present report, we display a diverse set of vital signs of the planet and the potential drivers of climate change and climate-related responses first presented by Ripple and Wolf and colleagues (2020), who declared a climate emergency, now with more than 15,000 scientist signatories.
    We are venturing into uncharted climate territory.

    As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms. The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023. We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered. Conditions are going to get very distressing and potentially unmanageable for large regions of the world, with the 2.6°C warming expected over the course of the century, even if the self-proposed national emissions reduction commitments of the Paris Agreement are met (UNEP 2022b). We warn of potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems in such a world where we will face unbearable heat, frequent extreme weather events, food and fresh water shortages, rising seas, more emerging diseases, and increased social unrest and geopolitical conflict.
    https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/73/12/841/7319571

    Authors
    William J. Ripple and Christopher Wolf main authors with
    Jillian W. Gregg
    Johan Rockström
    Thomas M. Newsome
    Beverly E. Law
    Luiz Marques
    Timothy M. Lenton
    Chi Xu
    Saleemul Huq
    Leon Simons
    Sir David Anthony King
    see backgrounds https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/73/12/841/7319571#433480310

  5. A new month is upon us and the global SAT continues to drop from the ‘bananas’ of last year.
    In the ERA5 re-analysis the drop is perhaps roughly -0.04ºC/month with the daily numbers from the Copernicus Climate Pulse showing the average May anomaly coming in at +0.64ºC. This compares with the ‘bananas’ of Oct-Dec 2023 which averaged +0.85ºC. (The May anomaly for the measured SAT will be interesting with, for instance, GISTEMP so-far to April showing very little of such a drop. See Graphs 2b & 2c)

    The drop in global SAT is show to be almost all Northern Hemisphere (which was also mostly the reason for the ‘bananas’). Average Northern Ocean temperatures have been dropping since Oct 2023 and Northern Land (the big ‘banana’ contributor) peaked in Dec 2023. Perhaps the Southern Hemisphere is now beginning to show signs of a drop with downward wobbles dropping down lower than seen for a year. (I’ve added a SH SAT graphic to the Global/NH ones posted 15/12/23 & updated HERE.)

    The issue folk will likely be animated-by is where 2024 will end-up sitting relative to the “scorchyisimo!!!” 2023.
    The ERA5 numbers show the first 5 months of 2024 averaged +0.71ºC while the last 5 months of 2023 averaged +0.84ºC, with the first 5 months of 2023 averaging a cool +0.35ºC.
    So if June/July 2024 sees the SAT dropping half as quick as the rise in SAT of June/July2023 (but 2x faster than seen so far this year), 2023 may retain its “scorchyisimo!!” status.
    There is a predicted La Niña in the offing, looking more 2016-strength than the full 1998/2010 strength.

    And in all this, I don’t see anything significant that doesn’t say “It was ENSO wot dun it Guv!!!!”