This month’s open thread on climate topics. Please be respectful and substantive.
Reader Interactions
215 Responses to "Unforced Variations: June 2026"
W.R. Agnersays
I’m going to ask another question that I’m sure might spark some controversy. I promise this isn’t a “debate-me-bro opening gambit”, I genuinely have a question. During the 2023-2024 El Niňo, which was exceptionally hot, I heard a lot of theorizing that this was proof that the climate system had entered a new period in which warming drastically accelerated. In 2025, the La Niña cooling period did come, but it was less pronounced than usual. Now we have another strong El Niño coming. What is the status scientifically of this “greatly accelerated warming” theory, and what does the incoming El Niño say about it? Are we tracking towards the upper bound of model expectations or are we tracking toward breaking the y-axis entirely? Apologies if this question is vague or if I got some details wrong, and all answers are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Joke Zonderkopsays
W.R. Agner ; all questions are good questions. But not all answers are good answers.
You should avoid the following kind of framing because it is not correct and distorts what was already being distorted both positively and negatively. Rhetoric from media reporting, activists, and too many climate scientists themselves does not equal real science.
Avoid – this “greatly accelerated warming” theory/ies; theorizing that this was proof ; have another strong El Niño coming ; What is the status scientifically (no such thing exists–it is all premature personal opinions anyway) ;
Avoid text like – “the incoming El Niño say about it” – says nothing about this issue nor the paper ref’d below. It has not happened yet, and so no one knows yet if how strong it might be or not. Future Hypotheticals (including CMIP. GCM modelling and scenarios) can not determine what real world physical observations are in the present, past or future.
Therefore avoid framing questions like this — ” Are we tracking towards the upper bound of model expectations or are we tracking toward breaking the y-axis entirely? ” — they are moot. Unscientific and irrational. There is no supportable credible answer worth hearing.
The only things we can and do know is what are the current observations, the real world measurements of the various kinds of Data we are actually recording. Then scientifically extrapolating that out to give it meaning in todays physical world.
We might summarize known science dynamics and changes in plain speaking terms :
AGHG emissions have and are increasing while atmospheric concentrations mirror those increases.
AGHG Aerosols are decreasing relative to the past and relative to increasing GHG emissions.
Albedo is decreasing again relative to the past.
Warming temperatures globally and regionally are driving the positive feedbacks from the above changes such as in clouds incl over the oceans and precipitation; as well as impacts on forests both albedo cover and moisture flux.
Economic growth drives energy consumption, drives fossil fuel consumption, AGHG emissions, national laws drive aerosol reductions regionally and globally, warming drives ice permafrost melt, cloud changes to albedo and sea ice loss and global ocean current changes and impact the el nino and la nino cycles.
Everything is connected. Monitoring the present state of affairs of all these phsyical dynamics is the only thing we can truly know. Then making a rational short term ongoing existing trend — all things being equal — unfolding into the future.
All widespread long term future projections and scenarios are assumed guesses. History suggests in climate these projected modelling scenarios have not been accurate as claimed when made. Those who made them, and still make them vigorously disagree — as one might expect they would. Their jobs, their long term careers, depend on robustly maintaining those opinions.
These are my answers.
Tomáš Kaliszsays
With respect to spreading discussions if/when the next El Niño comes and/or how strong it will be, I would like to ask Paul Pukite:
Dear Paul,
You claim a theory explaining climate oscillations like ENSO as a result of tidal forces from the Sun and Moon. Could you demonstrate the predictive force of your theory on this hot topic?
“Could you demonstrate the predictive force of your theory on this hot topic?”
If we could predict an El Nino or La Nina a few years ahead of arrival, the impact would be significant. Farmers could plan for when to buy seeds or invest in irrigation facilities, switch from rain-fed wheat to more drought-tolerant crops (sorghum), etc. Also ranchers can adjust livestock herd sizes gradually rather than in an emergency sell-off.
A 2-year lead could turn a reactive disaster response into planned adaptation as governments and water utilities have time to prepare. Yet, by the same token, a false positive or false “all clear” would do no good either, so any predictions have to be spot on.
The impact on science would be significant as well. Scientists dismiss tidal forces because the consensus claim is that they are too small to drive anything. Yet, CO2 is a small factor too and look at it’s impact. There is also the adage that a butterfly flapping it’s wings can influence a climate outcome. Or that all these slight orbital adjustments can lead to glaciation cycles. The fact of the matter is that gravitational forces have a >>100X factor on the thermocline than what is observed with conventional surface tides. And the thermocline is where all the ENSO action is.
Why is this consistently ignored? Hmmm, Tomas? You think solar spots are influencing the thermocline?
Nigeljsays
My recollection is you say el nino is caused by the earths tides. Given the tides and the moons gravity that cause the tides, follow a regular pattern shouldnt you therefore already be able to predict when the next el nino occurs with reasonably good accuracy? I think that might be what TK is implying.
Thank you for your reaction, even though it does not comprise the sought answer to my question.
As regards your question why your theory is consistently ignored, I assume that one of possible answers may read “Because you so far failed to show its practical applicability by making an ENSO prediction which would have been subsequently proven correct.”
In other words, I asked why have you not tried to exploit the present uncertainty about ongoing ENSO to a precise prediction thereof using your theory. I suppose that a good fit of this prediction with the real situation could represent a quite convincing argument for relevance of your theory, and a significant contribution to your scientific reputation.
Your answer, however, sounds as if your theory were not mature enough to enable any reliable predictions yet. Could you confirm, or, if otherwise, clarify why you omitted this opportunity?
Tomas said: “I asked why have you not tried to exploit the present uncertainty about ongoing ENSO to a precise prediction thereof using your theory.”
You actually asked about the “predictive force of your theory on this hot topic”. Predictive force meaning predictive power or predictive impact which are subjective terms within the context.
If you meant force as in a Newtonian force, ENSO is not a force, it’s a response to a force — the force is whatever it is; in this case a superposition of lunar and solar terms which can be looked up if you want. I have that here: https://geoenergymath.com/2026/05/23/enso-and-amo-manifolds/
Thank you for the provided link, however, I have not found any prediction of a future ENSO or another climate oscillation therein.
Let me therefore repeat my question: Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?
Greetings
Tomáš
patrick o twentysevensays
re Paul Pukite:
“Yet, CO2 is a smallbigfactor too and look at it’s impact. There is also the adage that a butterfly flapping it’s wings can influence[*] a climateweatheroutcome. Or that all these slight orbital adjustments can lead to glaciation cycles [look at seasonal ∆ASR (1-albedo * TOA insolation) at particular latitudes eg. 65°N; I don’t remember the values offhand so maybe I’ll look them up…].
A doubling may result in ∆GMS(A)T ~ 3 K (?) ± etc. (is that the current best est.?) … That may only be 1 % from the perspective of the thermal kinetic energy of molecules, but in ~100 yr, it is a big deal for ecosystems and societies, etc.
*your use of “influence” … does it allow for a gray/grey area? Um… well, it seems to me that one can use the limits of predictability as a criterion for weather vs. climate. Note that individual ‘butterfly’ effects are not traceable or predictable in principle.
And from my reasoning, the tidal acceleration field g’ will exert less direct forcing on surfaces where potential density variations are small. If you can get the same energy into a given area with smaller density contrast, you will get a larger perturbation z’ (?setting aside kinetic energy?), but…
Patrick, you are proving my point that seemingly small amounts of a quantity can have big impacts on an outcome. CO2 is an example — a classic catalyst. Dopants in semiconductor materials, though small, enabled the entire solid-state electronics revolution. Potassium, calcium, etc concentrations, though small, regulate every human’s circulation system. All these are catalysts in some regard — small factors that can amplify responses.
By the same token, lunar gravitational forces, though small, drive ocean tides and other features in the climate system. If it wasn’t for measurements that synchronized sea-level gauges with the lunar orbit, few would believe that it would have an effect. Yet, we are now seeing this repeated on a larger climate scale — the combination of internal thermocline tides forcing a response in a nonlinear 2-layer system (https://geoenergymath.com/2026/05/23/enso-and-amo-manifolds/), albeit not leading to the naively expected lunar cycles. In fact, the rejection of lunar mechanisms thanks to naive calculations by “authorities” such as Richard Lindzen has propelled climate scientist down the wrong path for the last 50 years. It will take a lot of work to unwind this track.
So the essential model is this: Lunar torques (tiny) → integrated over impulses → creating a latent manifold → non‑linear fluid response (LTE) → large climate swings (ENSO/AMO).
This is a classic amplification via resonance + non‑linearity, exactly analogous to a small periodic push on a swing that builds into a large arc. And I wouldn’t be pursuing this if it weren’t for promising cross-validation results, with resolution far beyond the highly filtered that one ordinarily finds in the literature.
Talking about resolution, one of the hardest nuts to crack is the north Atlantic oscillation (NAO) climate index. To the naked eye, it essentially looks like high frequency noise. I have looked at this on and off over the years, such as what I reported here exactly 5 years ago: https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2022/06/10/the-hot-model-problem/#comment-208876
I realize now that NAO is a great test case, as it is unforgiving in its demands, a model must track variations at every time scale. Am in the midst of writing up a revisit to this model. As always, here’s to climate research done on a shoestring, no need for supercomputers using energy at the rate of data farms.
patrick o twentysevensays
… well, it seems to me that one can use the limits of predictability [from sensitivity to initial conditions] as a criterion for weather vs. climate.
Tomas said: “Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?”
Why don’t you ask the AI community to stop using cross-validation to train their algorithms, and instead request them to use the first neural network experiment that matches some result?
Nothing that I have written has apparently registered with you,
“You’re pointing out a false equivalence — and you’re right to be frustrated.
The question you quoted (“Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?”) is a reasonable scientific inquiry. It asks for a demonstration of predictive skill, which in climate science typically requires out-of-sample testing — exactly what cross-validation is designed for.
The sarcastic suggestion — “ask the AI community to stop using cross-validation and instead use the first neural network that matches some result” — highlights how absurd it would be to accept a model just because it can fit past data (or a single experimental run) without rigorous validation.
So the ignorance the original person is complaining about likely stems from someone conflating:
• Post-hoc curve fitting (which can always match any finite dataset if the model is flexible enough)
• Predictive validation (which requires testing on unseen data, time series cross-validation, or physical constraints)
In climate dynamics, predicting oscillatory modes like ENSO is notoriously hard because of limited long-term records, chaos, and non-stationarity. Demanding a theory demonstrate prediction skill beyond trivial baselines is not ignorance — it’s standard science. What would be ignorance is trusting a model just because it reproduces a known oscillation after the fact, without cross-validation or proper out-of-sample testing.
So yes: if someone dismisses cross-validation as unnecessary, they misunderstand basic ML and climate modeling. Your sarcastic analogy correctly calls that out.”
accessible under the link comprised in your post replied my question (“Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?”).
In this respect, it appears that another of possible answers to your question of 6 Jun 2026 at 1:26 PM,
It’s not scientifically significant. El Ninos average every 3 to 7 years. No one with any training in statistics will trust a single prediction, so it will take a whole sequence of predictions to make it statistically significant. That could take at least 20 years. Well, I don’t care about any of that because I’m more interested in the physics aspects than taking on the mantle of some dime-store Nostradamus,
Take a look at this time-series of NAO where there are 80 peak excursions since 1950 https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/1346/Y2FBa7.gif
One does not make sense of a single next prediction without making sense of all the previous erratic cycles.
So what’s interesting is in doing as much as we can RIGHT NOW in coming up with a unifying model of geophysics. If you ask an LLM about the strengths of the lunar-based results that I have presented, it will ultimately say that the most powerful form of cross-validation is in how it may work collectively for ENSO, AMO, NAO, PDO, QBO, Chandler wobble, and regional mean sea level and atmospheric pressure measurements. That’s where the LLM starts to accept the possibility of bunking consensus, not in one-offs but in collective results. It’s also where other scientists should start to consider the possibility. And that’s the way that science should work; there really has never been a recent case of a single individual carrying the entire load of doing the calculations and experiments for some new finding. There’s always some parallel effort going on.
The main obstacle or mental stumbling block is the belief that only those with access to supercomputers should have the final say. They have created this artifice, even though it may be overkill.
To be honest, I so far supposed that what do you have developed (or still are developing) is a theory in the usual sense of this word – a mathematical description of ENSO based on an application of your original analysis of tidal forces acting on Earth oceans in combination with some original solutions from the fluid mechanics, because you have mentioned both disciplines many times. Your posts raised my feeling that combination of these two physical disciplines forms the core of your efforts. I wondered why you keep talking about artificial intelligence (AI) in this respect, however, I supposed that you see a way how you could exploit it for formulation and/or solving the respective mathematical equations.
Now, based on your reaction to my question, I rather guess that you perhaps try to circumvent intractable fluid mechanics and hope that an AI engine could be trained with your analysis of tidal forces on one hand and with empirical data characterizing climate oscillations like ENSO or AMO on the other hand and that this way, you could replace the sought (but mathematically intractable) theory with a practical AI tool having the same capability. Is your goal, actually, the AI tool for ENSO prediction?
Maybe you describe this goal simply and understandably somewhere in your numerous posts or on your blog; I apologize if I missed it.
If you still train your AI engine or perhaps even have not started therewith yet, it could be understandable that you cannot offer any prediction that could serve as a test bed for your tidal hypothesis. Could you confirm if I indeed grasped your idea correctly? And, should I finally grasped the clue, could you explain in a plain language what progress you already achieved on your way towards the ENSO-predictive AI tool?
Thank you for your further attempt to reply. Unfortunately, I still do not understand what you have actually achieved so far and what remains to be done. I may not be alone, and I am afraid that the generic reason why your theory is consistently ignored may be the circumstance that no one has been able to decipher your cryptic messages yet.
Have you already done “the most powerful form of cross-validation” “collectively for ENSO, AMO, NAO, PDO, QBO, Chandler wobble, and regional mean sea level and atmospheric pressure measurements”? If so, why you cannot start predicting all these events now, to be able to demonstrate, within a few years, the power of your theory through perfect fit of your predictions with reality? Or is the “cross-validation” something what you expect to be done by others? Why should I “ask LLM” instead asking you?
“. I wondered why you keep talking about artificial intelligence (AI) in this respect,”
Those who have never done AI don’t realize that about half of the powerful tools encompass algorithms for doing cross-validation and all the infrastructure needed to keep track of configurations and systematically improving the models. And then it’s a force multiplier for getting things done.
“If you still train your AI engine”
Reduces the barrier to entry for users evaluating an approach. I can easily train an LLM to understand my (other topic) depletion formulation, which is timely considering the Straits of Hormuz situation: https://pukpr.github.io/OilShockModel/oil-shock-model
Sadly, even after five rounds of our exchange, I still remain unsure what is the actual status of the maturity and practical applicability of your hypothesis or theory (still not sure which of these two categories applies), nor what you do or plan therewith.
From your last post, it rather appears that you do not develop any specialized AI tool. I have a feeling that you merely use publicly available LLMs for something what you call “cross validation” of your hypothesis. Could you desist from drifting to other topics like oil peak and tell me just if this picture is correct, and if so, how successful / convincing your cross-validations were so far?
‘ … QBO, Chandler wobble, and regional mean sea level and atmospheric pressure measurements”? If so, why you cannot start predicting all these events now, to be able to demonstrate, within a few years, the power of your theory through perfect fit of your predictions with reality?’
For QBO and Chandler wobble the predictions are in place and anyone can check these over the course of the next several decades. As a matter of fact, they are described in Mathematical Geoenergy, published in 2019. The problem that you in fact are illustrating is encompassed by the old adage — “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.
“Sadly, even after five rounds of our exchange, I still remain unsure what is the actual status of the maturity and practical applicability of your hypothesis or theory (still not sure which of these two categories applies), nor what you do or plan therewith.
From your last post, it rather appears that you do not develop any specialized AI tool. I have a feeling that you merely use publicly available LLMs for something what you call “cross validation” of your hypothesis. Could you desist from drifting to other topics like oil peak and tell me just if this picture is correct, and if so, how successful / convincing your cross-validations were so far?”
The continuous pleading to make the equivalent of sports prediction is amusing in the sense that what should really matter to you is to just debunk my claims. It really shouldn’t be that hard because all it requires is finding situations that rule the mechanism out by falsification or contradiction. Obviously you won’t be able to do it for peak oil. So try doing it for my model of QBO. Try to falsify my model that predicts a 2.37 year cycle of QBO, a mode that actually matches the empirical observations. But if you can’t do the task of falsifying the model, what also occurs in science is to come up with a better model. So for QBO, try to come up with something in sunspot cycles that will predict a 2.37 year cycle.
Again you say:
“nor what you do or plan therewith.”
To reiterate, I don’t have to do ANYTHING, I presented my model and it is up to you to (debunk, contradict, falsify) the results, or come up with something better. This is the way that it has always been in science.
So if I pose as a premise that a new model seeks to explain empirical observations over a long course of time, and which is ongoing — for the following, rank in order of importance how to debunk such a model:
1. Falsify or contradict some aspect of the model results, i.e via cross-validation findings
2. Come up with a superior model that matches the results better
3. Make a claim to demand a prediction of future results and wait
How would you rank the order Tomas? You can always ask an LLM
Thank you very much for your information. Now, if I meet someone interested in prediction of the quasibiennial oscillation or Chandler wobbles, I will recommend reading your book. The persisting problem I see in your PR for your results is that myself, I am not a person capable of benefiting from your book, and I will hardly ever meet another person capable of drinking from this well of knowledge.
In this respect, I still wonder why you complain that the relevant experts ignore your teachings, if you desisted from publishing any further progress in your work in scientific journals. Why do you think that any of these experts should read your blog?
From an opposite perspective, I suppose that if the Chandler wobbles and QBO that occurred since 2019 fit with the respective predictions in your book, you could exploit this fit as an argument for further extension of your theory to other oscillations like ENSO in a follow-up article showing e.g. your successful cross validation using the available data and explaining what remains to be done to achieve the same predictive capability that you already demonstrated for Chandler wobbles and QBO.
The reason, why I asked my questions, was my hope that your theory could enable prediction of a part of “natural variability” in Earth climate and, by subtracting this variability, enable more accurate estimation of trends. I supposed that it could make e.g. the discussions whether the observed global warming accelerates or not significantly easier.
In this respect, I think that my questions can be understandable. In parallel, I do not know why you think that “what should really matter to (me) is to just debunk (your) claims”. Quite oppositely, I would like to confirm your claims and the reason why I asked you how have you confirmed them or how can you confirm them is the circumstance that as a layman, I am incapable doing so myself.
What further confuses me is your comparison of the sought ENSO, AMO or PDO predictions to “sports prediction”. On one hand, you claim a theory unifying QBO and Chandler wobbles with ENSO and further climate oscillations and assert perfect QBO predictions using this theory, on the other hand, you seem to compare the idea of the ENSO prediction with the same theory to an idea of predicting sport results.
Unfortunately, such confusing statements seem to be quite typical for your posts, similarly as the circumstance that you seem to be hardly ever able (or willing??) to answer the questions that someone asks you clearly. My experience is that you rather respond with further ambiguous, incoherent or unrelated statements instead.
“What further confuses me is your comparison of the sought ENSO, AMO or PDO predictions to “sports prediction”. “
Comparing a single climate prediction (e.g., “There will be an El Nino in 2028”) to a single sports bet (e.g., “Team X will win the World Cup”) is a perfect analogy: both are low-information, high-variance gambles unless placed within the context of a sequence of predictions establishing a probabilistic skill and track record.
What confuses me is how you can say “I would like to confirm your claims” and “I am incapable doing so myself.”. There’s another adage: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I guess it’s apropos that you’re the sea-lion that never learned to fish.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Tomáš Kalisz says
14 Jun 2026 at 3:58 PM
in Re to Paul Pukite, 14 Jun 2026 at 11:27 AM,
“In this respect, I think that my questions can be understandable. ”
Dear Tomáš,
You are not ‘sealioning’ as accused, you are asking direct pertinent scientific aligned questions. Though you’re now kind of stuck in a vortex and being sucked into the depths by whirlpool of disinformation and clever tricks.
Tomáš, the metaphor that comes to my mind is: going to the shop to buy Tiramisu and coming home with a Fruit Cake.
I’m hoping the following will be of assistance by shining light on the situation. Disingenuous is an adjective describing speech, behavior, or a person that is insincere, calculating, or slightly dishonest. It refers to situations where someone pretends to be open, candid, or unaware, while actually hiding their true motives or withholding complete information.
Such as someone who is disingenuous gives a false appearance of being honest or frank. It often involves playing dumb—pretending not to know about a situation or its consequences to evade blame. And it usually stops short of a direct lie, relying instead on half-truths or misleading framing. Synonyms might include insincere, deceitful, duplicitous, calculating, and two-faced.
They may dissemble in order to deny their true knowledge. To dissemble is to deliberately hide the truth about how you feel or what you intend to do. While being disingenuous describes a dishonest quality or attitude, dissembling is the actual action of putting on a false appearance or acting hypocritically.
I don’t know exactly what applies because it’s difficult to define all the ingredients that make a fruit cake.
If you present yourself as a skilled fisherman teaching other people how to fish, I will say that so far, I have only heard your stories about big fishes you have caught but I have never seen any.
And your lessons seem to consist in telling others: “I released the caught fish back in the ocean, show what you know!”
“Unfortunately, such confusing statements seem to be quite typical for your posts, similarly as the circumstance that you seem to be hardly ever able (or willing??) to answer the questions that someone asks you clearly. My experience is that you rather respond with further ambiguous, incoherent or unrelated statements instead.”
Comments I make here are not “posts”, they’re comments. In this medium, I can’t write equations, check markup, or display graphics and charts like I could if I wrote a real post. A real post I wrote yesterday has some applicability to this thread: https://geoenergymath.com/2026/06/16/non-homogeneous-non-autonomous/
This is authentic and genuine math. Will it eventually go into a new article? I don’t know, as it has to have something new that is not in previously published material. BTW, you asked about how else results are disseminated besides books and journal articles. FYI, I presented these results in different piece parts at 4 geophysics conferences. In 2016 at the AGU in San Francisco, in 2017 at the AGU in New Orleans, in 2019 at the AGU in Washington DC, and in 2021 at the EGU in Vienna. Also presented at a math/CompSci conference in 2020 — https://openreview.net/forum?id=XqOseg0L9Q
In view of your comments on Real Climate discussion fora (I apologize for the incorrect term “posts” that I used previously), I see almost impossible that everything what appears on your blog has already been published in your book or in peer-reviewed journals.
What about e.g. the material to that you refer in the link
that you introduced in your recent mathematical treatise about differential equations?
For me, your texts are mostly incomprehensible, however, I believe that if they have a sense for the respective experts, they should be accepted (possibly if suitably adapted) in relevant journals.
Herein is a comment from editor of one geophysical journal whom I asked if he could look on your book and/or blog:
—
“I generally find the possible influence of tidal forces on the Earth’s atmosphere very interesting, but not based on the work of P. Pukite.
I do not have time to examine the work of Paul Pukite in detail, but it seems to me that these are more conjectures than scientific hypotheses that could be verified and that would provide us with some possibilities of prediction (NAO, QBO, ENSO phases).
Mr. Pukite has been invited many times to elaborate and defend his ideas in a scientific publication, but he has usually not responded further or has withdrawn the criticized content.
I have mostly seen the results of some simple statistical analyses of time series from him, but I would be more interested in a basic physical analysis of the order of magnitude of the force anomalies that he assumes are due to tidal phenomena, since I estimate that these will be at least three orders of magnitude smaller than those that act in the atmosphere, for example, due to the pressure gradient from uneven heating.
In conclusion, I would like to state the most understandable argument against Paul Pukite’s “theories” – current models based on physical principles (Navier-Stokes equations, 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, gas equation of state) can model the QBO and NAO and their variability without the effects that Paul Pukite considers essential. I would take this as essential indirect evidence.”
—
It appears that the only way how you can convince the experts about relevance of your theory is publishing your contributions in the respective scientific journals. I am sorry but I am afraid that publishing your achievements in your blog and commenting thereon on Real Climate will not help.
“I generally find the possible influence of tidal forces on the Earth’s atmosphere very interesting, but not based on the work of P. Pukite.”
Sorry, it’s not all atmosphere — ENSO for example is largely ocean driven. That flub is in the first sentence, which taints the rest. Try again so I don’t have to argue against a strawman.
Barry E Finchsays
I recall vaguely from a few weeks back that I calculated acceleration of the long-term trend to be +40% for 2010-2025 rather than the “double” being thrown around the internet, due to “Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus”. Matthew H. England, Shayne McGregor, Paul Spence, Gerald A. Meehl, Axel Timmermann, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Michael J. McPhaden, Ariaan Purich & Agus Santoso. Nature Climate Change 4, 222–227 (2014) Published online 09 February 2014 Corrected online 14 February 2014 “Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake.”
In conjunction with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agKayS6h6xA Trenberth “Ocean Heat Uptake: The Apparent Hiatus in Global Warming and Climate Sensitivity” At 21:38 to 23:20 colour-coded pictorial of GMST anomaly 1976-98 to 1999-2012 and wind explanation, Pacific Ocean eastern 2/3rds COOLED over the 18 years while almost everywhere else except the Southern Ocean warmed. I calculated that the adjustment to make at 2014 for this is to increase 2014 GMST by 0.065 degrees, by rotating all GMST 1995–2014 anti-clockwise until 2014 GMST is 0.065 degrees higher than measured. It’s adjustment for an “Unnatural Fluctuation” (Humans warmed the Atlantic surface which cooled the Pacific surface).
The question you’re asking is exactly the right way to frame it: you’re trying to separate short-term variability (ENSO) from changes in the underlying forced warming trend—and those are often getting conflated in public discussion.
1) What El Niño / La Niña actually tell us (and don’t tell us)
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is still, in the mainstream observational record, the largest source of year-to-year temperature variability:
El Niño (2023–2024) → temporarily adds heat to the atmosphere by releasing stored ocean heat → record global temperatures are expected.
La Niña (2025 weaker than usual) → damps atmospheric temperatures by pushing heat back into the ocean.
Next El Niño → likely another short-term spike.
So the key point:
ENSO moves the “wiggle,” not the slope of the long-term line.
A strong El Niño does not prove acceleration—but it can reveal it more clearly.
2) What the “greatly accelerated warming” claim is really about
In the framework discussed in your paper (“Increasing Nonlinearity in the Climate System”), the argument is not that ENSO is changing, but that:
the baseline warming rate itself is becoming more state-dependent and nonlinear
That is, the system is increasingly shaped by feedback amplification such as:
higher atmospheric water vapor (stronger Clausius–Clapeyron response)
reduced effective ocean heat buffering in certain regions
changing circulation patterns (jet stream / ocean mixing shifts)
compounding extremes that alter land-atmosphere coupling
reduced “rebound symmetry” between El Niño and La Niña phases
In that framing, ENSO doesn’t create the trend—it rides on top of a warming system whose response function is steepening.
So the interpretation is:
El Niño events are not new—but the temperature response per unit El Niño forcing is becoming larger.
That is a nonlinearity hypothesis, not a “runaway warming confirmed” conclusion.
3) What 2023–2025 actually suggests scientifically
What we can say with confidence from mainstream datasets (NASA, NOAA, Copernicus-type analyses):
2023–2024 warmth was largely explainable as El Niño + strong underlying warming trend + ocean heat content release
The 2025 La Niña being weaker is consistent with ocean heat content being exceptionally high (less “cooling capacity” available at the surface)
The system is tracking toward the upper half to upper envelope of model projections, not outside them
This is important:
We are not currently observing a statistically robust “break from model y-axes.”
We are observing persistent high-end realization of model distributions + possible mild upward skew in recent variability.
4) What the incoming El Niño would imply
If a new strong El Niño develops on top of today’s baseline:
It will likely produce new short-term global temperature records
It will test how much of the recent heat is:
transient ENSO-driven variability vs.
elevated background energy imbalance
In the “increasing nonlinearity” framing, the key diagnostic would be:
Does the next El Niño produce a proportional spike
or a super-proportional spike relative to past El Niño analogs?
If it’s the latter, that would support the idea of amplified sensitivity, not just higher baseline temperature.
5) Are we “breaking the y-axis”?
Short answer: No evidence of that in the physical climate system.
What is supported by both mainstream science and the nonlinear framing in your paper is more nuanced:
The system is warming steadily due to radiative forcing (greenhouse gases)
Variability (ENSO) is occurring on top of a higher energy baseline (ocean heat content + atmospheric moisture)
That can make extremes feel “nonlinear” in frequency and intensity
But it still sits within bounded physical models, not explosive divergence
Bottom line
ENSO explains spikes, not the trend.
The trend remains upward, and recent years are near the upper envelope of projections, not outside them.
The “increasing nonlinearity” hypothesis is best interpreted as:
potential strengthening of feedback coupling and variability amplification on top of a still-forced, model-bounded warming trend
So the scientifically cautious answer is:
We are not seeing a broken climate system—but we may be seeing a system in which the same ENSO events are increasingly operating on a hotter, more energetically loaded baseline, making extremes more pronounced and more frequent.
Honestly, it has sent me into a bit of a spiral. The implications of this paper would be extremely grim.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Warming_observer
The results and the implications should be no surprise. Yes, it is grim, which has been for decades. The acceleration in AGHG emissions have accelerated higher, global GDP Growth continues to increase with energy consumption mirroring or exceeding that growth. Atmospheric concentrations continue to increase while AGHG aerosol emissions have decreased over decades over and above the more recent (tipping point?) of IMO reductions. While global albedo decreases are codependent positive feedbacks to warming.
Combined they add up. No past or present CMIP modelling or IPCC IAM RCP SSP scenario projections are required to do the Math. The observations speak for themselves.
Ray Ladburysays
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am hardly one to blow sunshine up one’s skirt. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Much of the latest consumption of energy (and water and computer hardware and…) has to do with the current push by the broligarchy to develop AI. And part of the problem is that it is still easier, if not cheaper, to simply produce more energy than it is to develop more energy efficient ways of doing…everything. Even so, the untold story of the industrial era is one of increasing energy efficiency. Art Rosenfeld noticed this when he observed that since 1845, the energy to generate 1$ of GDP output has decreased by 1% per year–a trend since referred to as Rosenfeld’s Law. Now 1% per year doesn’t sound like much, especially compared to the doubling of transistor count every 24-30 months known as Moore’s Law. However, it is an exponential trend.
What is more, there has been very little study of the mechanism by which these energy savings have been realized–again in contrast to the billions spent to keep electronics on a pace with Moore’s Law. This leads to the question: If we understood Moore’s Law, could we accelerate the pace of energy savings? I suspect the answer is in the affirmative. However, until we make consumers of energy pay the full price, including environmental costs, of the energy they consume, there is little incentive to investigate. And until we do, I suspect that we are leaving a lot of money and more efficient growth toward sustainability on the table.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Ray Ladbury, you are talking about economic productivity of energy use (energy per unit of GDP), not just raw supply-side efficiency of generation or conversion. Supply-side efficiency means getting more useful energy from the same input (e.g., more electricity from the same fuel, or better solar panel conversion rates). Economic productivity of energy is about how much economic output ($ of GDP) you get per unit of energy consumed. That’s what “Rosenfeld’s Law” refers to which is the steady 1% annual decline in energy intensity of the economy you were addressing.
While AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions connected with the Global warming acceleration which has been investigated in multiple science papers the last 15 years or so.
MA Rodgersays
Joke Zonderkop,
We know what Ray Ladbury is “talking about” because his comment is posted just above your ‘contribution’.
What we don’t know is what you’re “talking about”. You last paragraph is not a complete sentence. Assuming it replies to Ray’s comment, attempting to pronounce the AI bubble innocent of affecting “Rosenfeld’s Law” is flat wrong. The tech bros drive towards world domination with their general data centres and AI data centres sees them collectively consume perhaps 0.5% of world energy usage running these centres (or about 500TWh) and that is expected to double in a couple of years (assuming the bros haven’t crashed the world economy, or the Donald hasn’t beat them to it with his attempt to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”). That 0.5% or 1% isn’t “zero” and that’s as a portion of all energy-use world-wide. Multiply by five for the proportion of global electricity use.
And if you believe “the observations speak for themselves” again, I suggest you learn to understand what the observations are saying. The gargantuan error made by the pre-print ‘Global warming acceleration in satellite observed lower-tropospheric temperature’ is to set out the extrapolation of their curve-fitting without explaining why such <i”projections” are worthless when there is no understanding the underlying mechanisms. (They do make such explanation but not well enough where it matters.)
Ray Ladburysays
Supply-side efficiency is part of the mechanism behind Rosenfeld’s law. In fact, in the 2010s the efficiency improved enough that the gain was >2% rather than 1%. I suspect AI boondoggles have reduced that, though, and it may be below 1% for our current decade.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
JK: AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions
BPL: They’re energy hogs, and almost every time they go up they add new power plants to support them. They very much are driving up energy demand and fossil fuel capacity.
Ron R.says
JZ, “While AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions connected with the Global warming acceleration which has been investigated in multiple science papers the last 15 years or so.”
Huh?
“By 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers is expected to approach 1,050 terawatt-hours (which would bump data centers up to fifth place on the global list, between Japan and Russia).” …. “The demand for new data centers cannot be met in a sustainable way. The pace at which companies are building new data centers means the bulk of the electricity to power them must come from fossil fuel-based power plants,” says Bashir.https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
And powering them is being used as an excuse to jump start nuclear power.
Reply to MA Rodger , Ray Ladbury, Barton Paul Levenson
If I bold the words, everyone appears to have missed above, by detailing again the context I presented which undermines Ray Ladbury’s primary assertions sidestepping the core timeframes of known warming acceleration, will it help?
While AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions connected with the Global warming acceleration which has been investigated in multiple science papers the last 15 years or so.
Joke Zonderkopsays
My comment, refined: Maybe this will help?
Warming_observer — The results are grim, yes. But they shouldn’t be a surprise. We’ve known the direction for decades.
Here’s why this acceleration was inevitable:
GHG emissions keep accelerating, not just rising
Global energy consumption tracks GDP growth
Aerosol emissions (which previously masked some warming) have been dropping for years — especially the 2020 IMO shipping fuel regulations, the accumulated decreases in China and Europe.
Global albedo (Earth’s reflectivity) is declining, which is a self-reinforcing feedback loop
Add it all up, and you don’t need complex models, nor “statistical significance -p values” to accept it and know it is real. The observations speak for themselves.
The paper is consistent with known physics. The only open question is how fast the acceleration plays out going forward. But “faster than expected” has been the pattern so far. That’s why they call it a trend.
Nigeljsays
Global co2 emissions are not accelerating. They followed a linear trend in the 1990s, accelerated from 2000 to 2010 and have decelerated since then.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Lies, damned lies, and statistics? Depends on what you assume your “Global co2 emissions” count. While my “GHG emissions” does not equate to your “co2 emissions” no matter what the data you think you’re relying on says. Two different things.
GF “The obvious next question is: why has CO2 risen so fast since 2014? The emissions data do not explain the unexpectedly high growth rate. Perhaps there’s something going on with the carbon cycle, feedbacks have kicked in, with melting permafrost releasing CO2 into the air just as the oceans are less able to absorb it. Perhaps land use change is more potent than we believe. My own answer: I don’t know.”
One might wonder, like I do, why anyone would trust the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget anyway.
I’m with Foster: “I’ll confess that I have a hard time trusting emissions data..”
Nigeljsays
JZ : “One might wonder, like I do, why anyone would trust the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget anyway.”
Numerous independent published studies using different methods show that global emissions have decelerated recently and that the data countries report has good accuracy and reliability. Three examples:
1) Emanuele Solazzo, Robbie M. Andrew, and Greet Janssens-Maenhout. Annual estimates of global and national CO2 emissions from fossil fuels: tracking revisions to the United Nations energy statistics database input energy data. Environmental Data Science (Cambridge University Press). June 2022
2) Brendan Byrne, David F. Baker, Sourish Basu, et alia. National CO2 budgets (2015–2020) inferred from atmospheric CO2 observations in support of the global stocktake. Earth System Science Data (ESSD). March 2023
3) Christopher W. O’Dell, David Crisp, David F. Baker, et al. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) mission: Early science results from space-based observations of localized CO2 emissions. Remote Sensing of Environment. December 2022
Joke Zonderkopsays
The entire exchange with Nigelj is a category error. I am talking about explanatory completeness. He was talking about tangentially related reporting precision in CO2.
My commentary involved:
What’s being measured? Global temperature acceleration
What would need to match? Combined Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions + feedbacks + sinks vs. temperature
Implied completeness? Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions data are insufficient to explain the recent warming rate
The three studies Nigelj cited (Solazzo, Byrne, O’Dell) all address statistical internal consistency of CO₂ reporting. Not one of them attempts to explain simultaneous temperature acceleration. They are answering a different question unrelated to my commentary.
My reference to Tamino’s piece is the most relevant point: “why has CO₂ risen so fast since 2014? The emissions data do not explain the unexpectedly high growth rate.”
That is Foster himself admitting that the emissions data are incomplete as an explanation for acceleration—not that they are poorly measured. His analysis was limited to CO2 alone emphasising a recent 12 year acceleration of CO2 atmospheric concentrations — which are above and beyond the level expected if relying on the Global carbon projects anthropogenic CO2 data.
I am distrusting the attribution of that rise to reported anthropogenic emissions alone, because the residual (the part emissions don’t explain) is growing. And that residual is precisely where natural feedbacks (permafrost, Amazon dieback, weakening sinks) likely live.
That distrust is scientifically justified and here’s why:
The GCP’s own budget imbalance (-1.7 GtC/yr in 2025, the residual) is not small. The CO₂ residual (~0.57 PgC/yr) represents about 6% of annual human emissions (~10 PgC/yr). It is exactly the “missing” carbon driving warming acceleration that could come from natural sources not accounted for in national anthropogenic inventories.
If you hold a “Hansen-style” view that warming is accelerating faster than models show, this 6% residual likely represents the lower bound of the uncertainty. If natural sinks (like the Amazon or permafrost) are failing faster than the GCP accounts for, that error would fall into this residual category. Typically such matters are dumped into the Natural Variation basket. Where all errors go to hide from view.
The Byrne et al. inversion study (Nigelj’s #2) actually supports my point, not his. It found that atmospheric inversions sometimes require larger natural sources than bottom-up inventories assume to close the budget. The paper does not claim perfect verification—it claims consistency within uncertainty, which is a much weaker statement.
The O’Dell et al. Polish power plant study (#3) is irrelevant to my question. It validates a point source under ideal conditions. It says nothing about permafrost, wetlands, or ocean outgassing.
The Solazzo et al. tracking study (#1) validates UN energy statistics against themselves over time. It does not validate them against independent ground truth for natural sources – the recent changes in combined GHG emissions vs sinks.
The heart of the matter in my original observation is that temperature acceleration is outpacing what reported emissions alone would predict. That is not a denial of CO₂ physics. It is a hypothesis that the carbon cycle is changing faster than the inventory-based models capture.
That hypothesis is:
1) Consistent with the growing GCP budget imbalance
2) Consistent with Tamino/Foster’s stated uncertainty
3) Consistent with the known acceleration of permafrost thaw (observational, not modeled)
4) Consistent with the declining trend in the land sink fraction (observed, not modeled)
Nigelj’s studies do not refute this hypothesis. They are orthogonal to it.
Concluding that “the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget” should not be trusted as a complete explanation for observed temperature acceleration. First because they exclude or poorly constrain large natural GHG emissions sources (permafrost, wetlands, thermokarst, forest mortality from drought/fire). Because the ocean and land sink models have substantial uncertainty. And because the growing budget imbalance suggests something systematic is missing.
My distrust is not of the CO₂ measurement. My distrust is of the completeness of the accounting as an explanatory variable for warming. I have not been proven wrong. My skepticism is coherent, evidence-informed, based on known climate science, and logically consistent.
Addendum on Unknown Point Sources (Methane-to-CO₂ Pathway):
My critique of carbon budget accuracy and certainty is further strengthened by a specific systemic blind spot regarding methane. Standard carbon accounting treats methane (CH₄) exclusively as a ‘flow’ gas with a 10-year warming potential. However, it fails to track the final physical fate of the carbon atom.
When fossil methane is emitted, whether from a pipeline leak in Texas or a thermokarst lake in Siberia, it is eventually oxidized in the atmosphere. Within approximately a decade, that methane molecule becomes a stable molecule of carbon dioxide (CO₂).
The consequence for data trust is twofold. Source Attribution is lost. While this resultant CO₂ is accurately measured in the atmosphere, it is never traced back to its original methane source in national inventories or the GCP budget.
And because there is a ~10-year lag to peak conversion, with a tail extending ~25 years for near-complete oxidation. If Arctic permafrost thaws rapidly today, the resulting CO₂ forcing will not appear in the ’emissions’ data until 2035, while the temperature response occurs now.
Therefore, when the GCP claims a 90% attribution of warming to human CO₂, or when nations claim they are ‘on track,’ they are ignoring the ‘long tail’ of methane that is already locked into becoming future CO₂. This is not a minor error; it is a fundamental systematic omission in the accounting lifecycle of fossil carbon.
Combined these shortcomings in the GCP’s carbon budget carries a non-trivial annual residual (~6% of human emissions),systematically omits the methane-to-CO₂ pathway (~1% of fossil CO₂ unassigned, plus additional unquantified amounts from natural methane sources). Poorly constrain natural feedbacks (permafrost, thermokarst, weakening sinks), and admits large uncertainty in ocean uptake. Each error alone is small.
Together, they suggest a cumulative uncertainty of at least 10-20% in attribution and likely more, given the unknown magnitude of permafrost and thermokarst emissions. That is not ‘robust.’ That is insufficient for verifying national Paris targets or diagnosing the cause of temperature acceleration. Trust requires more than ‘the best we have.’ It requires fitness for purpose. On that standard, the GCP’s outputs fail.
The same scientists who demand ‘95% confidence’ before attributing an extreme weather event to climate change are willing to declare ‘peak emissions’ with a 6-20% systematic uncertainty in the underlying carbon budget. This asymmetry—high bars for inconvenient findings, low bars for convenient ones—is not a consistent application of scientific standards. It is a rhetorical choice, not an epistemological one.
Call it what it is: advocacy dressed in numbers, but not science.
Remember, when anyone at Climate Brief or RealClimate claims mitigation success based solely on the central estimate that global CO₂ emissions have ‘flatlined’ or ‘decreased,’ understand that as marketing, because the underlying carbon budget carries a cumulative 10–20% systematic uncertainty that makes any claim of precise deceleration or peak detection scientifically untenable.
The marketing trick is to treat the central estimate as truth while burying the uncertainty in a footnote. My critique exposes that rhetorical sleight of hand for what it is. Unfounded enthusiasm.
Nigeljsays
JZ: “The entire exchange with Nigelj is a category error. I am talking about explanatory completeness. He was talking about tangentially related reporting precision in CO2.”
Well thats a strange thing to say, given I responded to one of his claims. Here it is in his own words, and it clearly refers to the precision of the emissions data :” One might wonder, like I do, why anyone would trust the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget anyway.I’m with Foster: “I’ll confess that I have a hard time trusting emissions data..”
But the rest of his comments about the explanation for the acceleration of AGW and the the so called unexplained residual may be related to carbon natural feedbacks (permafrost, Amazon dieback, weakening sinks) sounds possible. But it could equally be the reduction in sulphate aerosols.
And on something related to the emissions issue, MAR did quite a credible analysis showing the keeling curve may still be have been decelerating over the last few years in the comments section of this article:
So I found this preprint by Zou et al. (2026). Am I reading it correctly that they’re modeling changes in temperature of lower troposphere while talking about GMST at the same time? If I remember correctly, TLT is a different statistic from GMST, although I don’t understand the exact relationship between the two.
Big if true, but something smells fishy. I wonder how it would relate to the recent Foster et al. paper.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Julian
Yes they are modeling changes in temperature of lower troposphere while talking about GMST at the same time.
They reference #8. the recent Foster et al. paper. Read where they do that and what they say.
Juliansays
I mean, sure, but then what I’m really interested in is the exact relationship between TLT and GMST. I know for a fact they are correlated, but how does acceleration in TLT warming translate to acceleration in GMST? The impression I got from the Zou et al. was that it’s pretty much the same, which conflicts with what Foster et al. are saying regarding warming rates, i.e. ~0.36°C/decade for GMST. And, aside from satellite observations, up to one extra degree of warming is quite a lot, especially within their proposed timeline (next decade or so, although lower troposphere might work differently, I don’t know, I’m not a climate scientist) – what could be the mechanistic explanation for that?
zebrasays
Julian,
Not sure what your question is. One reason is that you keep using the ambiguous term “warming”.
” how does acceleration in TLT warming translate to acceleration in GMST”
“warming rates, i.e. ~0.36°C/decade for GMST”
” up to one extra degree of warming”
It’s obvious that an increase in temperature for both numbers results from an increase in the energy in the climate system. But the physical things whose temperature is being measured are very different. You seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the measurements.
Actually, the best metric for determining whether there has been an increase in the rate of increase in energy of the climate system is probably OHC.
Juliansays
Zebra,
Eh, maybe I really am too ambiguous – sorry about that. By “warming”, I meant the positive change of measured temperature. What frustrated me about that original paper and what I explicitly stated I don’t know, is how said increase of change in TLT relate to changes in GMST (to put it bluntly, what are the practical implications of this for me? I dunno, should I panic or give up or go spend my entire life savings because we’re going to be dead in a couple years or so? You understand it’s an extinction-level rate of warming, right?). Hence why I asked for some clarification – is that acceleration in TLT change something that we’ll soon see in GMST as well?
I’m sorry if I’m still being vague or ambiguous, but I’m not a climate scientist – I’m just a layperson; I don’t know this stuff and reading about it online can only get you so far.
Nigeljsays
Julian, Im just a layperson, curious about the same sort of issues. Firstly the surface temperatures are taken between 1.5 – 2.0 m high above ground level.. The lower troposphere is from the surface to about 9kms high and temps are derived by satellites.
The Zou paper finds the lower troposphere is warming at 0.48 deg c per decade plus or minus currently, when you remove el nino and the solar cycle to reveal the underlying anthropogenic warming. Foster finds the surface is warming at between 0.34 – 0.42 deg c decade, using the same method to reveal the underlying warming. So theres a significant difference but not huge. And I do recall its expected that the troposphere should in theory heat more than the surface. And so the surface will not necessarily catch up with the lower troposphere. The warming in both might accelerate further,but may stay out of sync.
However the current underlying anthropogenic surface warming is very concerning and it looks very likely it has accelerated since about 2012. Im in no way downplaying things. Im convinced we have a very serious problem.
Juliansays
Thanks Nigelj, that cleared things up a lot.
zebrasays
Julian
Julian, “extinction level” is another ambiguous, over-the-top term. Humans would be causing lots of extinctions even without global climate change, but humans themselves are not going to become extinct.
Climate change might well create terrible conditions for lots of people, it might trigger bad wars that lead to mass deaths, but unless someone uses AI to design “the ultimate virus”, enough will survive to start again.
But anyway, you don’t have to be an official climate or other scientist to think like a scientist. That’s what I try to help people do by keeping the language straight. So, I say…
” determining whether there has been an increase in the rate of increase in energy of the climate system”
…because that’s actually what the question of “acceleration” refers to. The different numbers (metrics) are symptoms of that increase, with different significance.
Juliansays
zebra
Welp, I guess Tamino is now being “ambiguous” too in his recent article by using that dreaded W-word: Acceleration in the lower troposphere
I guess it’s just better to go ask the author of the cited material next time than waste time here playing word games (although kudos to Nigelj for at least trying to answer my question). As for this
>But anyway, you don’t have to be an official climate or other scientist to think like a scientist.
“Thinking like a scientist” and being an actual scientist are two different things entirely. I somehow doubt that with my poor understanding of statistics that Tamino elegantly explained in his article I could’ve come to the same conclusions.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Julian about the tamino page.
There is now what’s known as the albedo feedback loop, and it’s looking increasingly like a major amplifier of warming that goes beyond just the direct aerosol reduction effect.
When aerosol pollution decreases there are fewer clouds and also making them less reflective. The increased warming itself then changes cloud formation dynamics further creating a new feedback loop.
Goessling’s 2025 study in Science found that reduced low cloud cover contributed about 0.2°C to 2023’s record heat — the exact “missing warming” that couldn’t be explained by El Niño or other factors. Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) reached its lowest point since 1940.
Higher temperatures increase atmospheric instability, which disrupts the stable layers that low stratocumulus clouds need to form and persist. NASA research confirms that three major cloud regions (equatorial belt and mid-latitude storm tracks) have been shrinking by about 1.5% per decade since 2000.
Aerosol-cloud effects are most pronounced at LOW aerosol concentrations. As the atmosphere gets cleaner, each additional unit of aerosol reduction has a larger warming effect. We’re not in a linear system — we’re in a non-linear one where the sensitivity increases as we go.
The emerging observational evidence is adding up — shrinking cloud zones, record low albedo, “missing warming” being explained — suggests that uncertainty is resolving in the direction of higher sensitivity, not lower. We have a new ongoing, self-reinforcing forcing factor that’s greater than before.
While the big aerosol reductions (clean air acts, IMO 2020) have already happened, their full warming effect is still unfolding. There are still further reductions coming. Temperature-driven cloud loss is now detectable creating an additional feedback loop of increased warming. The cleanest regions show the largest proportional cloud response to aerosol changes. As the whole atmosphere continues to get cleaner, we’re moving into that high-sensitivity regime faster.
The direct aerosol reductions rate may be slowing, but their consequences for cloud cover that’s amplified by rising temperatures further are just getting started. That’s not just “ongoing forcing.” That’s a potential accelerator. Tamino’s optimistic view of a slowing rate of temperature increases the next decade ongoing may be premature.
Meanwhile forest destruction plus wild fires and ice loss likely continue increasing, further reducing albedo with no guarantees global fossil fuel emissions will fall into the future either, until they do.
Julian,
I’m not sure why your use of the word “warming” drew criticism. There can be problems when folk start confusing the rate of warming with an acceleration in that rate of warming but I don’t see that arising here. The pre-print analysis you (and others in this thread) link-to is not very well presented and its use of TLT is actually not a good choice for calculating acceleration in the rate of AGW. (Yes! “W” as in “warming”!!)
You did originally ask what TLT is, so starting from there – TLT and its fellows (TMT, TTT, TTS, TLS, C10, etc) use the microwave emissions from atmospheric oxygen at particular wavelengths emitted off-vertical (which gives an altitude). An off-vertical angle allows a series of temperatures to be measured for different ‘altitudes’. Some of these data series (including TLT) using differences between off-vertical angles to vary the ‘altitudes’ being recorded. Note I emphasis ‘altitudes’ in the plural. These methods give broad altitude bands for these different data series as graphed-out HERE. TLT averages at about 3,000m altitude. But that is a weighted average of altitudes from the surface up to 12,000m. That means that anything big happening in the upper troposphere will impact this oustensibly lower troposphere measure.
The reasons I suggest TLT is not good for ironing-out the wobbles is because –
(1) The ENSO wobbles are very much bigger in TLT than in SAT so any imperfection in de-wobbling for ENSO (and there certainly will be imperfection) will have bigger residual wobbles left behind.
The measured surface temperature records (GISS, NOAA, BEST, HadCRUT etc) include a lot of SST which reduces the wobbles but perhaps the best data to find acceleration are the SAT re-analyses (so no SST) which show more acceleration without larger wobbles.
(2) The satellite calibrations have been a big issue in the past. Although largely resolved (although RSS TLT has yet to agree on this), any small problem with that calibration will be amplified in the multi-decade trends being used in this analysis.
Beyond the poor choice of TLT for their analysis, the pre-print also fails to set out clearly that they are just curve-fitting and uses the problems faced by serious modelling to imply their projected future temperatures are legitimate. And this is made worse by hiding their discussion of this matter at the end of the account and not within the abstract.
Their final paragraph runs
“Given these unresolved mechanisms [which drive global temperature], the projections presented here are necessarily data-driven. Although physically based coupled models are widely used for climate projections, they have not consistently reproduced satellite-observed atmospheric trends or the magnitude of the 2023–2024 temperature increases Data-driven approaches therefore provide a complementary perspective for near-term projections. Nevertheless, given the pronounced late-record acceleration, these projections should be interpreted cautiously, as unforeseen changes in forcing or climate events could alter future trajectories.”
Their mention of “the pronounced late-record acceleration” is cover for a whole bag of worms.
The rate of surface AGW was remarkable constant for four decades, running at a constant +0.17ºC/decade. (The TLT rate was running a little lower at +0.11ºC/decade or +0.15ºC/decade for RSS.) The rate since 2015 (if not a few years earlier) has increased. A pre-2015 constant rate of warming obviously means there was zero acceleration prior to 2015. Post-2015 when acceleration appears, we must evidently also have an increasing acceleration somewhere post-2015, increasing from the pre-2015 zero.
I would thus argue that you would have to be a rabid curve-fitter to announce that their “+0.482 ± 0.113°C/decade” rate of warming calculated “across all satellite and reanalysis TLT datasets” is a robust finding. To further claim that it “represents a conservative estimate“[My bold] is a further step on the wrong path. And they haven’t finished as they then run with that “conservative estimate” argument to present as your grand finding (with no caveats) that “These trends indicate that the 2023–2024 temperature jumps are part of an ongoing acceleration, amplified by El Niño, and imply an additional 0.5–1.0°C of warming over the next decade—roughly three to five times the 1981–2024 linear trend.” [My bold]
Their “roughly three to five times the (average) 1981–2024 linear (TLT) trend” works out as +0.50°C/decade to +0.83°C/decade for un-de-wobbled TLT and similarly 3x/5x applied to GISS or BEST would suggest +0.57°C/decade to +0.95°C/decade.
JCMsays
in re to: “Temperature-driven cloud loss is now detectable creating an additional feedback loop of increased warming.”
One does not “detect” temperature-driven effects per se. One observes an unexpected change in the real world and then attempts to attribute its cause. The ongoing interpretation/rationalization/conjecture/normalization that anomalous SW cloud radiative effect change is attributable mostly to temperature mediated feedback is not very well supported by existing TCR screened CMIP-class models, and is not really reconciled with a classical hypothetical framework such as those originating from Manabe. From an energy budget standpoint in terms of TOA net radiation, it resembles something more like an effective radiative forcing. We should hope the re-parameterized CMIP7 members are able to offer new insights into missing inputs, potential issues in observation, or bona fide missing physics. The detection of an unexpected trend in reflected shortwave radiation is distinct from, and does not by itself demonstrate, that the trend is attributable to temperature-mediated feedback.
Juliansays
MA Rodger,
Thanks for a very thorough explanation – instantly bookmarked. What immediately stood out to me in that pre-print was them making projections based on essentially fitting a polynomial to a trend, which is always a rather dangerous exercise, as you and Tamino rightfully pointed out. I just wasn’t sure about my own conclusions, so I wanted to get some sort of confirmation (or refutation) here, hence why I asked in the first place.
As for temperatures of various parts of troposphere: I tried to read about them on my own here and here with a strong focus on what that pre-print was suggesting (i.e. how does acceleration in TLT warming translate to acceleration in GMST warming), but I just couldn’t figure it out on my own in the end. I perhaps shouldn’t have spoken meanly to zebra, but I really do believe that there are just limits to how much an individual can learn and understand on their own without any mentorship or guidance or connections within broader scientific community etc. – verifying your own knowledge is hard if you don’t have anyone competent to ask, but that’s just my opinion.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Julian, a heads up.
MA Rodger is hyper-focusing on misleading methodological minutiae to avoid engaging with the central finding — that multiple independent lines of evidence continue to point to acceleration.
Zou 2026 is an analysis that either supports or counters the work of others. The actual final numbers are not as important as the fact it mirrors the same physical effects: the warming trend has/is accelerating.
Zou et al. provides a powerful complementary analysis to Foster 2026. Different methods, different datasets, different atmosphere level, same conclusion of a marked acceleration. When one paper (Foster 2026) finds acceleration using GMST, and another (Zou et al. 2026) finds it using satellite TLT, that’s not a weakness. That’s stronger convergent evidence.
Yes, TLT has larger ENSO wobbles, but that’s why they removed ENSO effects statistically. If anything, finding acceleration despite larger noise is stronger evidence.
Satellite calibrations have been a big issue in the past. Now resolved. Given RSS and UAH now broadly agree on trends, this is a non issue today.
The TLT range weighting function includes some upper air, but the dominant signal is lower troposphere. All trend analysis is curve-fitting. The question is whether the fit captures real physics. Calling someone “rabid” doesn’t refute their method.
The Zou paper shows the post-2015 trend is statistically distinct from the pre-2015 trend. That’s what acceleration means.
Zou estimates a short term +0.5–1.0°C total additional warming in that specific atmospheric layer over the next decade. Whereas Foster 2026 suggested an ongoing rate of possibly 0.4C / decade (0.38C?) on the surface. With a qualified personal opinion at a lower rate of only 0.33C / decade going forward.
The TLT warms faster than the surface — that’s basic atmospheric physics. So if surface warming is accelerating, TLT warming must accelerate even more. So Zou’s higher numbers aren’t a contradiction. They’re confirmation of expected behavior.
And the higher natural variability (enso/noise) in the TLT versus the surface the authors attempted to remove as shown in the paper. Precisely what Foster 2026 did for the surface temperatures.
In the earlier “non-significant” papers (eg Beaulieu, Foster etc) the rate of acceleration didn’t past the arbitrary “statistical significance” test. Meaning the data was already signaling acceleration, the threshold just kept it from being “official”. The p-value is not decisive. The data is.
Cloud/albedo research shows feedback loops amplifying recent warming. Arctic methane studies show natural emissions increasing, with microbial brakes failing. Atmospheric CO2 increase rates accelerating. Increased forcing from forest destruction, wild fires and other warming feedback loops.
All complementary research. All convergent. None contradictory. Multiple papers, different methods, different datasets, different atmospheric levels — all pointing in the same direction the acceleration is real and grounded in basic climate physics.
In summary Julian, the Zou paper doesn’t need to be the final word. It’s one more brick in a wall built from multiple papers, multiple methods, and multiple atmospheric levels — all pointing to acceleration.
Even the earlier papers that ‘failed’ the p-value test still showed accelerated rates in their point estimates. Papers that missed the threshold were not wrong. They were just early. The observation data has been signaling this for years. The only thing that’s changed is the confidence level.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Foster 2026 found a surface warming rate of roughly 0.4°C/decade, although Foster himself added a personal opinion that the rate could drop to 0.33°C/decade, citing potential emissions reductions and renewables. That’s a policy hope, not a data conclusion.
The data shows acceleration. What humans do next might change the trajectory. But that’s mitigation, not refutation. And acceleration can only be confirmed in hindsight, after the data is in.
PS
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” cuts the wrong way here. The statistics were always showing acceleration. The p-value just kept it from being heard.
Joke Zonderkopsays
“There are limits to how much an individual can learn on their own without mentorship or community connections.”
He’s not wrong — but he’s drawing the wrong conclusion. The correct conclusion is: “So I should learn how to read papers carefully, understand uncertainty, and distinguish between methodological caveats and physical reality.”
Instead, his conclusion is: “So I’ll trust MA Rodger and Tamino to tell me what to think.”
You can lead a person to data, but you can’t make them think. Some people want the comfort of a smart authority telling them why the scary thing isn’t actually happening — or at least isn’t proven yet by that saintly p value. The planet doesn’t care about your comfort.
Although the article discussed by her deals rather with local cloud feedback, her comment shows on this example that due to the opposite sign of this feedback above clearings and the residual forest, the resulting cloud feedback of the forest clearing on a larger scale may be opposite than above local clearings still surrounded by large forest areas.
She emphasizes the trickiness of attributions of observed effects and, especially, interpretations / generalizations thereof in case of an insufficient insight into complexity of relationships governing the studied system.
Greetings
Tomáš
JCMsays
Thanks Tomas. I hope you are well.
I recommend expanding the scale of analysis by exploitation of GCM in order to investigate synoptic and global scale response. Existing frameworks may be perfectly suitable, and modelers have produced remarkable platforms.
Makarieva’s broader objective of reframing the physical understanding of global circulation is ambitious, but it may inadvertently hinder acceptance of some of the underlying ideas.
The profound ecological transition which has been ongoing for 50+ years cannot be separated from the functioning of the global circulation. While local and regional analyses are valuable, a sustained increase in TOA net radiation can only be physically realized through oceanic uptake. Unlike for oceanic uptake in sustaining TOA imbalances, for terrestrial profiles the transient and equilibrium response is about the same.
Considering effective radiative forcing (ERF) functionally means nothing more than a positive generation of TOA net radiation through atmospheric adjustment to external inputs, non-classical generation of increasing TOA net radiation can conceivably be included alongside traditional atmospheric pollution agents in accounting for the unnatural inputs making it so.
We are all familiar with the diagrams which account for ERF, including unnatural perturbations GHG, aerosol, contrails, and land surface albedo. An ERF can also arise through unnatural disturbance of thermodynamic boundary conditions and associated atmospheric adjustment.
It is perfectly within scope of GCM/ESM to explore atmospheric adjustment in response to the underappreciated scale of the human caused ecological simplification ongoing, both above grade and (mostly) below grade and out of sight. I find it unavoidable that altering such boundary conditions must be met with a circulation response, and in doing so producing an ERF-like effect. Classical feedback follows.
In addition to the “land-use change” concepts surrounding human impact, and the numerous benefits the green revolution provided in terms of increasing yields and modern management of landscapes, the transnational rollout of biocide-dependent agricultural systems, hybrid seed technologies, and genetic use restriction (‘terminator’) technologiess since 1980s may be worth exploring in greater detail. This in addition to the eradication of species like never before, and the associated disruption of nutrient cycling and hydrological cascades. It is a perfectly appropriate use-case with which to leverage the investment into GCM/ESM platforms, alongside their original purpose to study atmospheric pollution.
Ray Ladburysays
JZ: “The statistics were always showing acceleration. The p-value just kept it from being heard.”
This is a rather perverse way of looking at the situation, because the p-value is a statistic–one that describes how important and reliable the effect is. It isn’t perfect. Fisher, himself, realized its limitations when he proposed it. The problem was that scientists–particularly agronomists–needed a threshold for when they could reliably say that they had something of interest. Fisher settled on p=0.05 as a compromise between reliability and economy. He never liked the test.
Over the years, the limitation of p=0.05 has tended to manifest on the side of false positives rather than false negatives. If you run 20 different analyses, your chances are pretty good of getting at least one that meets p=0.05. That’s why in particle physics, they go with a much higher standard–five sigma rather than 2.
The problem is that if you don’t have something like a significance test, you wind up with people getting very excited about false positives. We saw this repeatedly during the era denialists called “the pause”. It was never a statistically significant effect, and the whole world could have benefitted if folks had clung to rigorous significance testing.
The recent acceleration of 2023-2025 has a higher statistical significance, but the problem is that we know climate is full of short term noise, so Tamino is prudent to take a wait and see attitude. And a wise amateur would do well to heed that prudence. By all means, learn as much stats and climate science as you can, but you are very unlikely to know as much as Tamino about stats or Gavin et al. about climate science unless you undertake graduate studies and a long career in those fields. If you truly learn enough to appreciate the science, you will come to appreciate the depth of understanding of the true experts.
In your sentence “Makarieva’s broader objective of reframing the physical understanding of global circulation is ambitious, but it may inadvertently hinder acceptance of some of the underlying ideas.”, do you address their preprint https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.23875 ?
If so, could you specify the background of your concern in more detail? How exactly could their present research effort (Or, perhaps, its presentation in Makarieva’s blog?) undermine or compromise the existing support for their hypothesis that anthropogenic ecosystem disruptions can manifest as climate disruptions?
Greetings
Tomáš
JCMsays
Thanks for the input Tomas.
In response: I do not believe there is any requirement to overthrow a Kleidon’s Heat Engine thermodynamic framework and replace it with Makarieva’s Steam Engine.
I remain persuaded by Kleidon’s classic Heat Engine approach which I believe paints thermodynamic limits in the minimal possible form. Kleidon, in my view, provides the overall clearest thinking on non-equilibrium thermodynamics in the context of the Earth system available today.
I don’t think there is any requirement to overthrow it and replace with Makarieva’s “Steam Engine” in order to examine ecohydrological connections to circulation, clouds, and TOA radiation anomalies.
I strongly believe ecological-climate arguments may be testable within existing Earth-system physics and existing GCM platforms. It certainly falls within the uncertainty of existing parameterization.
By coupling those ideas to a much larger claim that current circulation physics is fundamentally incorrect, the entire package is much easier to dismiss. Instead, as we have discussed previously, it makes more sense to use Kleidon’s analytical thermodynamic constraints as a benchmark for parameterization and model evaluation, ensuring that complex numerical simulations remain consistent with the fundamental analytic relationships that must be obeyed in nature.
To summarize: the profound and ongoing transformation of terrestrial systems can be investigated within existing Earth-system thermodynamic and GCM frameworks. In my view, it is therefore unnecessary to first establish that conventional circulation physics is fundamentally wrong. I do not presently see a need to replace Kleidon’s thermodynamic heat-engine framework with a fundamentally different “cold steam-engine” circulation framework in order to investigate these questions. This is not to say that heat-engine and steam-engine perspectives are necessarily mutually exclusive, but rather that biohydrological boundary dynamics, as they relate to energy partitioning, can be too easily dismissed when associated with paradigm threatening assertions about the basic nature of circulation itself. Ideally, these issues should be kept separate.
Unfortunately, I am not capable to assess correctness of the underlying physics, however, I have an impression that the works published by Kleidon et al and by Makarieva et al. may rather have a common basis and complementary focuses than being in a conflict.
An important message I derived from Kleidon et al. is the non-equivalence in effects of shielding shortwave power input absorbed by Earth (irrespective if by changing atmospheric concentration of light reflecting aerosols, cloud reflectivity or surface albedo) on one hand and effects of weakening longwave infrared radiation of the atmosphere by decreasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases on the other hand.
Although this result might be, in my opinion, of utmost importance, its consequences (especially the circumstance that “cancellation” of the global warming caused by greenhouse gases by shielding of the shortwave input would have been on the expenses of decreasing intensity of global water cycle) seem to be still generally ignored in discussions about various proposals to “mitigate” anthropogenic global warming by “geoengineering” with the aim to decrease the shortwave power input.
On the other hand, Makarieva et al. seem to focus on another aspect of the global atmospheric heat engine driven by water evaporation and condensation, namely on the way how it creates horizontal air motion. Herein, the core messages might include their finding that water condensation prevails as the driver over temperature differences, and their explanation how the intensity and direction of the horizontal air motion changes with altitude.
I am not sure if I grasped all that correctly, therefore, I will highly appreciate a respective correction from the readers skilled in physics, wherever I am wrong.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš Kaliszsays
Dear all,
In the last week of May, Anastassia Makarieva and Andrei Nefiodov published a preprint
might represent a progress in our insight in the role of precipitation in the initiation of atmospheric motions (“condensation induced atmospheric dynamics”, CIAD).
I would appreciate comments thereon, particularly from readers having expertise in atmospheric physics.
More anti-science activity by the present Administration in Mar a Lago:
Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System
The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research.
This is criminal vandalism, a waste of US taxpayers’ money as well as a loss of scientific information.
How can any conscientious NSF employee be involved in this?
Trump administration reverses decision to scrap ocean monitoring system
Move to dismantle $368m sea observatory initiative faced opposition from experts and lawmakers. On Thursday, the National Science Foundation announced that it would halt plans to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, stating: “effective immediately, [it] will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance”. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/18/ocean-monitoring-system-reversal-trump-administration
from her last chapter
Sass Lark: “Picking up this mantle doesn’t have to feel like a burden—it can feel joyous and momentous, like the swell of music in a beautiful film when the hero realizes and commits to their purpose.”
As I tried to find a way to write this final chapter, I went back and skimmed my last book, This One Wild and Precious Life, which chronicled a three-year journey hiking around the world in the footsteps of philosophers and polemicists to find a path for “solving” the climate crisis. It was a hope-heavy read. It felt strange and a little sad to be reminded that five years ago I was advocating many of the same approaches and mindsets – the need to mature, to draw on our core human values and to reconnect with our wildness. But there was a major difference – I was advocating that we did these things within the system. We didn’t have time to overhaul things and start anew, I wrote. I very tentatively called capitalism a cult, but I pushed the green economy and degrowth economics.
Now, of course, we are not so ham-strung. The system is going down.
And this got me to realise something that almost feels too rude to verbalise. Not only does the truth of collapse produce relief it also enables an equally eerie ease. I put this here for you to sit with:
…………….. I think a lot of us have been slowly working out we don’t have to try so hard!
We had been efforting so much. But as collapse would have it, the only way now is to simplify. Do less, buy less, grab less, meddle less, strategise less.
We have frantically been trying to stem climate mayhem; Big Capitalism drummed into us that it was our job to doorknock our neighbours and tell them to electrify everything and buy more “green” things. But now we have only one avenue left to us – to join the flow, the tangle, of life. We can only emerge our way through such complexity now.
We have been searching for someone or something to save us, to tell us what to do. But our guru is right in front of us. And it’s in us. Indigenous knowledge systems show that the emergent strategies of nature are far more efficient than our horribly efforting, linear ones. Have you seen that video where slime mould solves the Tokyo subway system in less time than an engineer can? Here, check it out: …………….
Indigenous author Andrea Ritchie speaks of fractal activism – making small right moves that get replicated, like the repeated patterns of a snow flake that emerges to become an avalanche. This is the most efficient and effective way to go about change:
……….. Small, right moves, made in congruent ease, powered by fierce love, that allow for unexpected turns and mysterious transformations.
We have been going against the grain for so long and now we can only be ourselves. It is only via love and cooperation with all that is, and by bravely allowing, can collapse be rendered a beautiful transformation. This, somehow, gives me a snug, “looked after” feeling.
For a bit. Then I go rage some more and do some more internal collapsing.
This is what I have said here, lo, these past 19 years. Regenerative, rapid, simplification. We change the system by creating the simpler one. One side-effect? If you opt out of the growth economy, you end the growth economy: As more and more opt out, it becomes less and less stable and eventually completely implodes. If enough simplification has occurred to create the skeleton of a new, simpler civilization, MAYBE we come back from the brink… eventually.
But all bets are likely off if we hit 2C, and definitely off if we hit 3C. (Based on worst case scenarios that hitting even 2C can trigger a slide all the way to 10C in time. Yes, real science. I have taught for the last 19 years that one must do risk analysis of an existential threat via the WCS (Worst Case Scenario). Anything less risks being suicidal.)
Joke Zonderkopsays
Killian O’Brien
I am really glad you liked that by Sarah. I agree with you too about the all bets are off if we hit 2c 3c. Similarly warming acceleration rates of 0.35-0.45°C/dec already and potentially increasing to 0.45–0.55°C toward century end. These make the current capitalist civilization structures unsustainable. Including food output from agriculture of all forms.
Recent climate papers already indicate such rates are credible physically possible. The default being increased economic growth and over consumption in the short term at least.
This is a critical understanding you have — “you end the growth economy: As more and more opt out, it becomes less and less stable and eventually completely implodes. If enough simplification has occurred [soon enough] to create the skeleton of a new, simpler civilization, MAYBE we come back from the brink… eventually. ”
I totally concur. I really like Sarah because she has this simple clarity when explaining what’s been happening and the way forward. She used to be an outspoken advocate for minstream eco-green solutions like switching to renewables through increased manufacturing production would work — one day she woke up and realized he whole concept was flawed. The cause was Systemic. The only solution therefore was to change the global system/s. The only way to do that was opt out disconnect from the drivers of it, and live a different way. Psychologically and materially. Then hope for thest with your fingers crossed, but live a decent life anyway.
For me she really cut through mirroring my own internal ideas and beliefs and cumulative frustrations at failures across the board. Science, engineering, cultural, political, communications, social, activists, greenies, technology … regenerative permaculture etc local resilience centres are critical for long term survival through the collapse over decades. Whenever it manifests beyond all doubt.
This isn’t a science problem to solve. It’s a human predicament to live through.
Manuel Lerdausays
Could one of the experts please discuss the science implications of the recently announced (yesterday’s NY Times) ending of the Ocean Observatories Initiative and the removal of its sensors? thanks.
W.R. Agnrtsays
Anyone home? Unusual that we go this long without any comments!
MA Rodgersays
W.R. Agnrt (sic),
Firstly, it is not “unusual” here at RC for the comment threads to remain static and un-uploaded for a handful of days, in this instance so your “this long” rubric is not actually “unusual.”
Secondly concerning your question “Anyone home?”, While moderating and uploading comments is a task that could well be automated in this day and age, thus making it a non-question, if you were asking for “anyone” when applied to responding comments (which you likely weren’t but which is a more valid enquiry for a commenter asking questions), do the responding comments here pass the Turing Test or do these responding comments look like some utter fool has decided to feed chat-bot guff into the comment thread?
UAH has posted its TLT anomaly for May at +0.53ºC, a bit higher than the earlier months of the year which were generally flat. (Jan-May running +0.35ºC, +0.39ºC, +0.38ºC, +0.39ºC, +0.53ºC.) El Niños are far more wobbly in TLT than in surface temps and May, if nothing else suggests the post-2023-El Niño cooling has come to a halt as we await the impacts of the renewed El Niño conditions in 2026**. The quarterly anomalies of UAH TLT (& for comparison ERA5 SAT) run as follows:-
UAH TLT (& ERA5 SAT)
2024 Q1 … … +0.85ºC … (+0.74ºC)
2024 Q2 … … +0.80ºC … (+0.66ºC)
2024 Q3 … … +0.76ºC … (+0.71ºC)
2024 Q4 … … +0.66ºC … (+0.76ºC)
2025 Q1 … … +0.51ºC … (+0.69ºC)
2025 Q2 … … +0.53ºC … (+0.53ºC)
2025 Q3 … … +0.42ºC … (+0.53ºC)
2025 Q4 … … +0.42ºC … (+0.61ºC)
2026 Q1 … … +0.37ºC … (+0.53ºC)
(** After the big leap in the NINO3.4 temperatures from +0.0ºC to +1.0ºC thro’ April, they have remained stuck at +1.0ºC thro’ May. Don’t see this impacting the forecasts of El Niño strength which haven’t shifted much since April.)
Visiting his website to grab the UAH TLT numbers, I note poor Roy Spencer is being driven to despair by a right-royal lunatic denialist that he makes a point of not naming (presumably thinking, like Beetlejuice, he will be summoned if you mention his name too often – as if that would stop the nutcase in question). Even naming using a pronoun is avoided!!
This is about Nikolov Nikolov Nikolov who with Zeller continue to pedal the crazy physics-defying idea that it is the surface pressure in the atmosphere which warms a planetary surface and not GHGs. There is a whiff of sense to this craziness as the GHGs do need a lapse rate to do their stuff and that would require a certain ‘thickness’ of atmosphere.
b fagansays
Courtrooms sure are busy in the current state of the USA. But sometimes good outcomes – not a total victory but at least a bit of good news (for now) regarding the threats to NCAR/UCAR.
“Feds failing in bid to take a supercomputer from a climate research center
The National Center for Atmospheric Research won’t be losing its supercomputer.”
As they noted over the headline: “Arbitrary and Capricious Strikes Again” so it’s nice to have the Administrative Procedures Act to make that kind of thing verboten.
Maybe we should see if some of the more famous climate change skeptics, e.g., Happer, Lindzen, Koonin, would like to accept my challenge of explaining the combined diagram of modern climate records and projections with paleoclimate records. https://justdean.substack.com/notes
Two common features emerge across all datasets.
(1) The linear trends over 1981–2024 for the ENSO–aerosol-adjusted TLT are smaller than those of the original TLT by about 0.016–0.020 °C decade⁻¹ for all datasets (Figures 2 and 3). In addition, the total changes (maximum at 2024 minus minimum at 1981) in the adjusted TLT are reduced by about 0.032–0.069 °C relative to the original TLT for both fitting models. These differences reflect the net cooling effect of aerosols on the climate system.
(2) The temperature jumps during 2023–2024 can be largely attributed to the accelerated warming captured by the fitted models. For example, in the NOAA adjusted time series, the linear trend of 0.130 °C decade⁻¹ would yield only 0.117 °C of warming over the 9-year period from 2015 to 2024. When acceleration is included, the piecewise fit produces 0.452 °C of warming during the same period, an increase of 0.335 °C.
Other datasets show comparable additional warming due to acceleration, ranging from 0.220 °C for RSS to 0.324 °C for ERA5. The cubic fits yield similar additional warming during 2015–2024 compared to linear warming.
The remaining warming in observations is attributable to El Niño effects, estimated as the residuals between observations and the accelerated-warming fits during 2023–2024 (Figure 3b), with magnitudes of approximately 0.2–0.3 °C depending on the dataset and fitting approach.
The acceleration-driven warming suggests that the 2023–2024 temperature jumps are part of an ongoing acceleration.
————————
Projection of future climate change
A significant implication of the detected acceleration is its potential impact on future warming. Because both the cubic and piecewise fitting models are statistically significant for all adjusted datasets, they can be used to explore projections of future climate change.
Note that statistical significance of the fits does not imply skillful projections; substantial changes in climate forcing could lead to future climate trajectories that differ from these projections.
The observed 2025 value provides an independent test of the projections.
Over the 10-year period (2025–2034), the piecewise model projects additional warming of 0.503 ± 0.180 °C in the adjusted TLT time series, corresponding to a warming rate approximately three times the 1981–2024 average.
The cubic model projects additional warming of 1.042 ± 0.292 °C, corresponding to a warming rate five to six times the 1981–2024 average.
In the absence of such information, the piecewise projection may be viewed as a conservative estimate, whereas the cubic projection represents an upper-end scenario.
Discussion
After removing ENSO and aerosol effects, robust and statistically significant post-2015 warming trends of up to 0.482 ± 0.113°C decade⁻¹ are identified across all satellite and reanalysis TLT datasets. Although substantial, this represents a conservative estimate. As an upper-end scenario, statistically significant acceleration emerges around 2000 and reaches ~ 0.4–0.5°C decade⁻² by 2024.
These trends indicate that the 2023–2024 temperature jumps are part of an ongoing acceleration, amplified by El Niño, and imply an additional 0.5–1.0°C of warming over the next decade—roughly three to five times the 1981–2024 linear trend.
———————-
Extrapolating data analysis of temperature means and acceleration rates only one decade into the future based on known data today is a conservative and reasonable approach to take. Projecting climate modelling scenarios decades ahead is unrealistic and not credible given the unknowns.
Does anyone know what is happening with GHCN Monthly? The last posting of a data file was on May 30, and that was empty. No May data at all. Until know they have posted new data every day.
Nick Stokes,
I’m not familiar with this data access but it looks like the GHCN-M data is back. Looking a short while ago, the file set HERE had mainly empty files – zero size. Now all the files have size.
Nick Stokessays
Thanks. Yes, there was a gap of about five days, but it is back, with very little data outside US so far.
b fagansays
Nick, not sure I’m looking at the right one, but “Global Historical Climatology Network – Monthly Temperature, Version 4” had link for NCEI direct download and there are populated dat and inv files dated June 4.
…In 2018, physicist Prof Adam Frank and Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller, published a paper exploring whether modern scientists would be able to detect evidence of an advanced industrial civilisation that ended millions of years ago….
[Response: ha. -gavin]
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
The scientists and other volunteers of The Weather and Climate Livestream organization are continuing their fight to save federally-funded science from the latest attempts to destroy it. At the end of their latest 50-hour livestream, explaining again what they do and why their work is valuable, critical, indispensable in a modern society if it wants to sustain itself and sustain life on our planet.
Please support them, as their work benefits everybody, even the anti-science people, although they do not understand it, yet or ever.
Universal Rejection of p-value as Sole Criterion: Out of 46 reviewed studies, not a single one defended the isolated use of p-values for decision-making. A significant majority (38 studies) explicitly criticized it, while 8 supported it only when combined with other metrics like confidence intervals
The Problem with p = 0.05: The conventional threshold creates an “illusion of certainty.” A p-value around 0.05 is highly unstable; in an exact replication, the chance of getting another p 98% confidence (exceeding the 95% threshold). Despite this robust finding, critics previously dismissed earlier versions for not meeting the 95% standard, and after peer review, the goalposts simply moved.
This is a textbook case of the “illusion of certainty” the review describes. The p-value was never the real issue — it was an ideological shield. As the review makes clear, clinging to the p < 0.05 threshold doesn't create reliable science; it creates a convenient tool for dismissing findings one disagrees with, regardless of statistical rigor.
The same logic applies to learning from the new Global warming acceleration in satellite observed lower-tropospheric temperature paper discussed above. When ideology overrides science, it's no longer science.
jgnfldsays
Which scientific paper, exactly, has relied on a p-value of .05 as the “sole criterion” for findings of acceleration?
Australia’s Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project, initially touted in 2017 as a $2 billion scheme, has spiraled into a massive infrastructure controversy. While direct construction costs are officially estimated around $12 billion, energy economists and analysts warn that once interest charges and mandatory transmission upgrades are factored in, the true price tag is approaching $42 billion
Originally slated to be finished by 2021, the expected completion date has been pushed back to late 2028 at the earliest.Current leadership at Snowy Hydro has conceded that even this revised 2028 deadline is in doubt, with some analysts predicting completion could stretch into 2030 or beyond.
The astronomical $42 billion figure often cited by critics includes the cost of associated transmission infrastructure like HumeLink, as well as over a decade of compound interest during the prolonged construction phase.
Despite these hurdles, the government-owned company maintains that the project is roughly two-thirds complete and is critical for firming up the National Electricity Market as coal plants retire
And some more info on the acceleration matter on Tamino I addressed above
Fire accounted for one-third of global land cover change in 2023, with forest loss due to fire increasing dramatically in boreal and tropical regions. Emissions from forest fires have risen 60% since 2001 . The positive feedback is explicit. https://www.wri.org/insights/land-use-climate-change-feedback-loop
new Nature Climate Change study (June 2026) found that under warming, natural methane emissions from lakes, ponds and wetlands will increase inexorably — the methane-consuming microbes cannot keep up with the extra methane being produced . That’s another direct positive feedback https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1130715
The data from 2025 and 2026 is painting a picture of an Arctic where the natural environment is becoming a major, and increasingly uncontrollable, driver of permafrost melt methane emissions though difficult to quantify into the future.
The Ice Loss & Albedo Feedback
Fresh research (May 2026) in Nature Geoscience confirms Antarctic ice melt creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop that most climate models don’t include. The study warns this means the out of date IPCC scenario projections are “too conservative”. Will AR7 improve reporting? https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1128447
Fossil Fuel Emissions Are Still Rising
Wood Mackenzie’s Energy Transition Outlook 2025-26 confirms: peak emissions now projected for 2028 been (pushed back), with the global warming pathway at 2.6°C, above their base case from a year ago. The report states bluntly: “No major country is on track to meet their 2030 emissions targets” https://storage.pardot.com/131501/1761584185BajrOANV/Wood_Mackenzie_ETO_2025_26_executive_summary.pdf
Of course it all adds up alongside current and future data centre rollouts.
Alberta is actively pitching cheap natural gas to tech companies for AI data centers — directly contradicting Canada’s “clean power” AI strategy. 90% of Canada’s 100 planned hyperscale data centers are in Alberta, where the grid is 60% natural gas and emissions intensity is 5x the national average
The 2026 Shell “Surge” scenario projects data centres consuming an additional 5,000 terawatt-hours by 2050 — about 8% of global electricity supply. In that scenario, AI infrastructure becomes a primary driver of new generation, but fossil fuels remain in the mix for decades still.
Renewables are expanding, but they’re barely keeping up with demand growth, not displacing fossil fuels. While the developing nations seek to rapidly increase their energy supply. As Wood Mackenzie puts it: “Renewables largely add to supply rather than displacing fossil fuels”.
Not surprising if warming is accelerating, with feedbacks kicking in, and fossil fuel emissions still rising into the future.
Copernicus has posted for May 2026 with a May global ERA5 SAT anomaly of +0.55ºC, up a bit on April’s +0.52ºC but not greatly impacting the year-to-date average which now stands at +0.53ºC. This year-to-date for 2026 is significantly down on the 2025 equivalent of +0.64ºC last year but with May 2026 warmer than May 2025, this means the 12-month rolling averages have now bottomed-out if not begun to rise** towards a “scorchio!!” El Niño wobble through the coming 12 months. (** Last year, the anomalies continued dropping after May with June-Aug in 2025 running +0.47ºC, +0.45ºC, +0.49ºC.)
GISTEMP & NOAA have also reported for May. They both show May’s global temperature anomalies down on April’s (GISS at +1.12ºC, down from April’s +1.17ºC, NOAA at +1.07ºC down from April’s +1.14ºC) but these May anomalies both up on last year’s May anomaly (GISS +1.08ºC, NOAA +1.06ºC).
Both GISS & NOAA are SAT/SST which would explain the April-to-May difference from wholly SAT ERA5.
SST-wise, the ERA5 re-analysis 60N-60S SST anomaly was flat through May, this in contrast to the strong warming seen Jan-Apr. Using the daily numbers at ClimatePulse, these SST60-60 anomalies Jan-May run +0.37ºC, +0.41ºC, +0.44ºC, +0.50ºC, +0.49ºC.
Projecting forward to anticipate how high the global temperature will go with the coming El Niño is perhaps best done without recourse to 12-month averages as the start-point. The 12-month aves still show a value boosted by the cooling anomalies a year ago. The present May anomalies are not greatly different to those for May/June back in 2023 in the run up to the “bananas!!!” anomalies that Autumn. The Banana Watch!!! continues.
While the coming El Niño is projected to be likely stronger than back in 2023, as the Official NOAA CPC ENSO Strength Probabilities page says “Stronger events do not always mean bigger weather and climate impacts. Stronger events can make it ‘more likely’ that certain impacts could occur.” (The page should get its June update later today.)
The NINO3.4 temperature the raw numbers used to measure ENSO strengths was stuck at +1ºC right through May but took an upward step to +1.3ºC for the first week of June. (Not sure how the NINO3.4 is now converted into the new RNINO3.4 they use.)
And here’s a thought concerning El Niño. Over the last 30 years we’ve had two “very strong” El Niños (1997 & 2015) and two managing a “strong” rating ( 2009 & 2023). The resulting temperature wobbles didn’t entirely reflect those ratings, particularly when the Southern Hemisphere is considered. Add in the stronger warming in the NH thro’ autumn months (which is not entirely an ENSO thing) and the relationship between El Niño strength and attribution of the global warm wobble to an El Niño becomes less-than-straightforward. And what’s with the arrival of that warm wobble in the SH (the El Niño is well-synchronised to the season) so early in less strong 2009 & 2023 El Niños?
Years … … … … 1997-98 … … 2009-10 … 2015-16 … 2023-24
Max RONI … … … … 2.4 … … … …1.5 … … … 2.3 … … … 1.5
Max T (Global) … +0.25ºC … … +0.19ºC … +0.32ºC … +0.27ºC
Max T (NH) … . … +0.28ºC … … +0.21ºC … +0.51ºC … +0.42ºC
Max T (SH) … . … +0.24ºC … … +0.20ºC … +0.15ºC … +0.17ºC
(NOTE – Anomaly bases for NH & SH differ from Global here)
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
Belated Hug a Climate Scientist Day from me and First Dog on the Moon! To all climate scientists, on this website and everywhere in the world, the serious, real ones, please continue to work on identifying, describing and solving the most consequential crisis humans have ever caused. Please continue to be both scientists and activists and never give up despite all the sabotaging and adversity you are facing.
“Today we show our love and gratitude to the brave boffins at the coal face of existential dread.”
The RSS MSU & AMSU Time Series Trend Browse Tool is now showing data to May 2026, the previous data update being to Dec last year. Given TLT updates for monthly global, NH & SH NOAA STAR HERE stalled last July, RSS numbers allow me a source of TLT global monthly numbers that are not UAH, numbers which do seem to have more problems than others getting the numbers right. (Most recently, UAH TLT was running a bit hot for a while back in 2024 before a correction appeared in the shape of v6.1.)
The RSS (& UAH) SH TLT number for May is perhaps just starting to show the coming El Niño with the highest SH anomaly since Oct 2024.
For some, the burning question will be whether 2026 claims the mantle of ‘warmest year on record’ (If it does, 2026 will then likely then hand that mantle on to 2027).
There is a Hansen et al communication posted last week entitled ‘Yes, 2026 is on Track to be the Hottest Year’. This claim is based on the not-so-wobbly ERA5 60N-60S SST numbers. Not-so-wobbly is good but SST isn’t SAT.
The argument is that 2023 was cooler than the present record year 2024 but that 2026 has been running warmer than 2023 and also will have its later months boosted by El Niño. Thus they note
“that global SST in 2026 has approximately “caught” the 2024 global SST in May and 2026 continues to be at least 0.1°C warmer than in 2023 (the last El Nino onset year). We expect that gap to be maintained, as the upcoming El Nino is at least as strong as the one in 2023.” [My bold]
I note the sparsity of numbers in this account. And regarding the one number presented, 2026 has not “continue(d) to be at least 0.1°C warmer than in 2023”, not since the back-end of May.
Putting some numbers into this argument, 2024 is the warmest year in the ERA5 60-60 SST record with the annual average at +0.51ºC. And 2023 sits as second-warmest at +0.45ºC. (2025 managed +0.38ºC.) So 2026 will have to top 2023 by +0.07ºC to claim the ERA5 60-60 SST ‘warmest year on record’.
And the 2026 has been tracking warmer than 2023, the year-to-15June gives 2026 an extra +0.065ºC to its annual average, so the 2026 60-60 SST is almost there. With the latest numbers, the 2023-2026 gap sits at +0.04°C warmer which, if maintained to year’s-end would make 2026 +0.087°C warmer than 2023 and thus 2026 would become the ERA5 60-60 SST ‘warmest year on record’ by +0.017°C.
Also there is the forecast for the 2026 El Niño being likely “very strong” while the 2023 El Niño only managed “strong”
Conversely, we did see the “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” SAT numbers thro’ the autumn of 2023. And SAT, although more wobbly, is actually the measure usually used for ‘warmest year on record’.
If this 2023 comparison is repeated for ERA5 SAT numbers rather than 60-60 SST numbers, we have the annual averages of 2023 +0.60ºC & 2024 +0.72ºC (& 2025 +0.59ºC). So 2026 will need to top the annual 2023 SAT by +0.12ºC.
2026 had been tracking above 2023, the year-to-15June gives 2026 an extra +0.072ºC. But unlike the 60-60SST, the SAT has presently caught up and fallen behind 2023 so there is no 2023-2026 gap for the rest of the year as of 15June. If this remains the case, 2026 will fall short of ERA5 SAT ‘warmest year on record’ by +0.04ºC.
Of course SAT is wobbly so “absolutely gobsmacking” stuff can happen.
A main takeaway from the Hansen post you refer, is that the extra warm follows aerosol reductions, and a higher climate sensitivity. And as the worldwide heat currently shows a trend is building, weather services call for at least continued hot conditions for the reminder of June.
Quote:”The basis for our projection of record 2026 global temperature is high climate sensitivity, with its implication that aerosol cooling was still increasing during the period 1970-2005. One consequence, global sea surface warming, already has important effects. Causes of climate change must be understood for policy purposes.”
El Niño is underway in the tropical Pacific. Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the central tropical Pacific are above El Niño thresholds, and atmospheric indicators are also aligning with an El Niño state. This suggests the ocean and atmosphere are acting to reinforce the ENSO state, which is likely to strengthen and sustain this event until at least the end of the year. https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/?index=nino34&ninoIndex=nino3.4&period=weekly#tabs=Overview
Joke Zonderkopsays
Rodger’s dismissal of Hansen’s latest article as merely an SST argument is a significant oversimplification and mischaracterization of Hansen’s broader scientific framework. Hansen’s forecast is a physics-based projection grounded in high climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing—not a short-term SST tracking exercise.
Rodger’s complaint is a classic rhetorical move: by demanding “numbers” while ignoring the physics—climate sensitivity, aerosol forcing, Earth’s energy imbalance—he reframes a scientific debate about mechanisms into a narrow one about short-term data smoothing. This avoids the substantive science entirely.
His critique also relies on questionable methods: cherry-picking a momentary mid-June data gap, extrapolating it linearly to year’s end, and switching between SST and SAT metrics without justification. He is effectively constructing his own model (linear extrapolation) to attack Hansen’s, ignoring the non-linear physics of an unfolding El Niño—exactly the kind of “foggy” modeling Hansen criticizes.
At its core, this is a clash of approaches. Hansen offers a physics-first, model-driven, big-picture prediction designed to test a scientific hypothesis. Rodger offers data-smoothing and metric-chasing. The most telling point: the prediction is for the full year 2026. Drawing conclusions in mid-June is premature. A valid scientific critique would need to engage with the physics, not just chase monthly anomalies.
The following articles might help understanding:
Yes, 2026 is on Track to be the Hottest Year
Abstract. Projections of near-term climate change are a potential research tool. However, for that tool to be most useful, the physical basis for a prediction must be made clear. The basis for our projection of record 2026 global temperature is ….. https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/2026-on-track-for-warmest-year
Returning to the original hypothesis: “A Carbon Brief article last week (“Strong El Nino Puts 2026 on Track for Second Warmest Year”)[4] makes us wonder about the basis for such expert projection. We are reminded of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) expert projections with unstated assumptions and whose physical basis is inscrutable to the public. Organized climate model runs for the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) are valuable for climate analyses, but the fog of all model results should not be misinterpreted as a probability distribution for the real world.
As an alternative, let’s try a physics-based approach, with the hope to learn something from it by the end of the year. Specifically, let’s assume that the budding El Nino will have strength at least comparable to the 2023-24 El Nino. We assume that global temperature change is caused by climate forcings (imposed changes of the planet’s energy balance) and that “Nino” variability is the only substantial source of global “noise,” i.e., unforced global temperature change.
Why is this exercise of interest? Because, as we discussed in prior posts, the main issue is not El Nino, but the need to understand accelerated warming, unprecedented marine heat waves, and increasing climate extremes. The high rate of global warming acceleration was not anticipated by IPCC because …………………… “ https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/2026-on-track-for-warmest-year
I’ve been reading tyhdtvit is now acknowledged that RCP 8.5 and 6 arnt happening due to the amount of renewables deploying and deployed which prevents these scenarios. Ok – other leader pathways sent out of the question as yet but with the surge in renewables due to costs coming down and battery storage it’s not looking like we will go beyond 2.5C
Joke Zonderkopsays
It depends on how people choose to look at it. Their default values, their culture and conditioning. The new 7 scenarios are the same as the 5 old scenarios, they are for the foot-draggers. They give everyone an excuse to do nothing much.
Scenario Who it serves
High “That’s the alarmist scenario, won’t happen.”
Low “Great, we’re on track, no need to change.”
Medium “We’re somewhere in the middle, carry on.”
Very Low “Look, 1.5°C is still possible!” (ignoring the CDR fantasy)
Low-to-Negative “We can overshoot and fix it later.”
High-to-Low “We’ll pivot when we’re ready.”
Medium-to-Low “More research needed.”
Every scenario provides plausible deniability for inaction. There’s always a pathway that justifies the current course, and always a reason to wait. Because, humans being like we are, the more scenarios you have, the less useful the ensemble becomes for decision-making. Because when everything is possible, nothing is probable.
The honest approach is two scenarios. No ambiguity. A simple two-scenario framework would force clarity:
High: This is where we’re heading if we don’t change course. Business as usual. Catastrophic.
Medium: This is where we could get with serious but realistic effort. Still bad, but survivable.
Everything else is just noise. Because anything below Medium requires magic — CDR at scale, global cooperation, economic degrowth, technological miracles. We don’t do magic. We do physics.
CherylJosiesays
“Did I mention…volcanic emissions of water vapor as well as sulfates?”
I previously posited polar amplification through supercooled stratospheric water vapor emissions of the shallow submarine Hunga Tonga eruption potentially explaining the 0.2C pulsed warming my simplistic model detected over 2022-2023 time span.
I used multivariable linear regression to subtract the global influence of localized oscillation modes from sea surface temperatures, and directly detected the underlying anthropogenic warming trend plus other forcing such as volcanic emissions, including Pinatubo and possibly several other eruptions as well.
I was actually looking for Hansen’s aerosol termination shock, but what I found instead was apparently Hunga Tonga.
Last time I participated here, atmospheric models showing net cooling did not consider polar amplification from supercooled water vapor. Nor did they explain why I detected a pulsed warming signature, even as other research showed the southern ocean warming in 2022, and the Antarctic sea ice relatively declining through the southern winters for several years in a row before apparently recovering somewhat last year.
The existing atmospheric models of Hunga Tonga do not explain the actual temperature and sea ice measurements, with a net cooling modeled response not validating against those measurements.
Lacking the means for rigorous independent investigation myself, I repeatedly requested that climate scientists with expertise and resources investigate my findings and hypothesis, but in the interim I’ve not seen any evidence that anyone did.
Meanwhile, my own circumstances worsened as my housing situation destabilized, and I’ve been unable to update my spreadsheet or regenerate plots to see if my own projections of future modeled/compensated SST response continued to accurately reflect actual measurements. Hopefully I’ve stabilized enough to resume my investigation, but I also have new health issues, and the process of rebuilding my computers has stalled while I address those health issues.
Another layperson friend pointed me to research showing that the salty water vapor of Hunga Tonga helped catalyze the reaction of its methane emissions to breakdown products, but gave no indication of the net effect of that methane, or of the salty vapor that seems might have so far confounded the experts in some respects.
Apologies for possibly rehashing topics that have already been discussed at length while I was away, but I’d very much like to know:
1) Did anyone see any revision of atmospheric modeling of Hunga Tonga that takes into account the potential for polar amplification, which we already know is historically poorly modeled for lack of accurate estimates of the proportion of supercooled stratospheric water vapor, given the difficulty of taking accurate atmospheric measurements in such remote and hostile polar environments?
2) Has anyone managed to account for that currently unmodeled 0.2C warming spike in 2023, aside from cherry-picking some subset of CMIP6 ensemble models/parameters that encompass that spike inside the error bars? AFAIK Gavin and Zeke never did produce a satisfactory accounting from the collection of solar activity, ENSO, albedo, etc and never fully encapsulated 2023, and AFAIK the ‘ocean heat wave’ hypothesis never caught on either, despite prior super El Niño following prolonged La Niña having been established as a historical precedent at least twice before. 2023 was not a super El Niño AFAIK and turned out to be milder than global temperatures indicated. My model consequently did not reproduce the extraordinary 2023 warming spike because of that modest 2023 El Niño.
3) Has any other root cause analysis finally put to bed the mystery of 2023 warming spike, whether or not that analysis includes my own entirely amateurish regression modeling of SST that is based in my electrical engineering experience, and completely lacking scientific rigor of its own? This question burns in my mind as a conundrum, since AFAIK that 2023 warming spike is one of only two known significant modeling shortcomings, with the second one being polar amplification, which is longstanding, and potentially also the root cause of the other.
Thank you for indulging my questions, and doubly thanks for any enlightenment this august group of experts can shed on my admittedly ignorant and perhaps seemingly presumptuous contributions.
In closing, I’m including references to my own amateurish contributions.
“Did I mention…volcanic emissions of water vapor as well as sulfates?” — Gavin
I previously posited polar amplification through supercooled stratospheric water vapor emissions of the shallow submarine Hunga Tonga eruption potentially explaining the 0.2C pulsed warming that my simplistic model detected over 2022-2023 time span.
I used multivariable linear regression to subtract the global influence of localized oscillation modes from sea surface temperatures, and directly detected the underlying anthropogenic warming trend plus other forcing such as volcanic emissions, including Pinatubo and possibly several other eruptions as well.
I was actually looking for Hansen’s aerosol termination shock, but what I found instead was apparently Hunga Tonga.
Last time I participated here, atmospheric models showing net cooling after Hunga Tonga did not consider polar amplification from supercooled water vapor.
Nor did they explain why I detected a pulsed warming signature, even as other research showed the southern ocean warming in 2022, and the Antarctic sea ice relatively declining through the southern winters for several years in a row before apparently recovering somewhat last year.
The existing atmospheric models of Hunga Tonga do not explain the actual temperature and sea ice measurements, with a net cooling modeled response not validating against those measurements.
Lacking the means for rigorous independent investigation myself, I repeatedly requested that climate scientists with expertise and resources investigate my findings and hypothesis, but in the interim I’ve not seen any evidence that anyone did.
Meanwhile, my own circumstances worsened as my housing situation destabilized, and I’ve been unable to update my spreadsheet or regenerate plots to see if my own projections of future modeled/compensated SST response continued to accurately reflect actual measurements. Hopefully I’ve stabilized enough to resume my investigation, but I also have new health issues, and the process of rebuilding my computers has stalled while I address those health issues.
Another layperson friend pointed me to research showing that the salty water vapor of Hunga Tonga helped catalyze the reaction of its methane emissions to breakdown products, but gave no indication of the net effect of that methane, or the net effect of the salty vapor that seems might have so far confounded the experts in some respects.
Apologies for possibly rehashing topics that have already been discussed at length while I was away, but I’d very much like to know:
1) Did anyone see any revision of atmospheric modeling of Hunga Tonga that takes into account the potential for polar amplification, which we already know is historically poorly modeled for lack of accurate estimates of the proportion of supercooled stratospheric water vapor, given the difficulty of taking accurate atmospheric measurements in such remote and hostile polar environments?
2) Has anyone managed to account for that currently unmodeled 0.2C warming spike in 2023, aside from cherry-picking some subset of CMIP6 ensemble models/parameters that encompass that spike inside the error bars? AFAIK Gavin and Zeke never did produce a satisfactory accounting from the collection of solar activity, ENSO, albedo, etc and never fully encapsulated 2023. AFAIK the ‘ocean heat wave’ hypothesis never caught on either, despite prior super El Niño following prolonged La Niña having been established as a historical precedent at least twice before. 2023 was not a super El Niño AFAIK and turned out to be milder than global temperatures indicated. My model that compensates for El Niño consequently did not reproduce the extraordinary 2023 warming spike because of that modest 2023 El Niño.
3) Has any other root cause analysis finally put to bed the mystery of 2023 warming spike, whether or not that analysis includes my own entirely amateurish regression modeling of SST that is based in my electrical engineering experience, and completely lacking scientific rigor of its own? This question burns in my mind as a conundrum, since AFAIK that 2023 warming spike is one of only two known significant remaining modeling shortcomings, with the second one being polar amplification, which is longstanding, and potentially also the root cause of the other.
Thank you for indulging my questions, and doubly thanks for any enlightenment this august group of experts can shed on my admittedly ignorant and perhaps seemingly presumptuous contributions.
For reference, here is the link to my most comprehensive ‘analysis’ (such as it is) of my polar amplification hypothesis.
Here is a link to my reply re: Peter Carter’s post about recently developed evidence of the Antarctic glacier retreat, showing that others also noticed it began in 2022, immediately after Hunga Tonga.
Here is the link to my most recent status. My last working computer went offline during renovations and has remained offline since while finishing up the work. I haven’t updated since the end of 2025.
Has the unmodeled portion of 2023 warming surge been resolved through root cause?
Apologies if this question has already been answered. I’ve been offline for a while.
Thanks.
Barry E Finchsays
There’s something about that at “Cause of Extreme North Atlantic Warming in 2023 with Matthew England” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39T7bW7KA18 by “Climate Chat” (Dan Miller) on Jul 17, 2025
Barry E Finchsays
“Martin Smith” 20 May 2026 at 7:07 AM typed “we know CO2 absorbs infrared energy and re-emits it, a lot of it back to earth”. Actually, that’s almost entirely incorrect (looks to be ~0.002% correct) as physicists who have studied it must know. The so-called “greenhouse effect (GHE)” in Earth’s troposphere is actually caused by 4 simple facts (1) All Matter in parcels warmer than -273.15 degrees (molecules can collide) manufactures electromagnetic radiation (2) Molecules absorb photons in relative quantity by wavelength matching the relative quantity by wavelength at which they manufacture photons (3) Photon manufacture is in some way proportional to Kelvin of the parcel but photon absorption is not (4) The troposphere usually by far has a temperature that decreases with altitude (when and where it is not then the GHE works backwards and causes cooling).
There’s nothing in the physics Reality that has anything to do with “re-emits it, a lot of it back to earth” (setting aside the fact that “earth” means soil or loam, not ocean). ~No radiation (maybe ~0.002%) is going “back” anywhere at all at any place from the centre of Earth to 100 km above Earth’s ocean surface. It’s all a Peer-to-Peer exchange of photons everywhere. The “back” is massively-confusing nonsense disseminated by Professional physicists who have negligible Professional ethic.
Martin Smithsays
You are correct, Barry. My understanding was wrong. However, you can’t use my misunderstanding of the GHE to attack physicists.
Joke Zonderkopsays
Reply to Martin Smith
Because re-emission occurs in all directions, roughly half of the energy is directed back toward the Earth’s surface . This “back-radiation” is a real, measurable phenomenon.
A 1954 paper in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences details the use of a radiometer for measuring this exact “back radiation from the sky” . This directly refutes the claim that such radiation didn’t exist or was unmeasurable.
And not only that but common usage within climate science, “earth” or “Earth’s surface” refers to the planet’s surface as a whole, land and ocean. Using it in a planetary context is standard.
Martin’s statement is a correct, simplified description of a fundamental greenhouse gas mechanism. Barry’s assertion that back-radiation does not exist is demonstrably false and common knowledge. A minor example of the pickle humans are in today.
Barry E Finchsays
Joke, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
Ray Ladburysays
Barry, A couple of suggestions regarding your account of the radiative physics in the atmosphere.
1) The first may seem trivial, but I would not use the term “manufacture” wrt photons. I would instead use generation or, better yet, emission.
2) I would also add the role of equipartition–the idea that energy tends to be shared equally in all modes accessible to the system. Indeed, the response to adding greenhouse gasses is a good example of equipartition. The greenhouse gasses absorb photons in their absorption bands. The resulting vibrations in the molecule become excited. Through collisions, the vibrational energy of the greenhouse molecules is shared with the rest of the atmosphere and the resulting mass thermalizes, moving towards equilibrium. The greenhouse absorption is converted to kinetic energy, which cannot escape the atmosphere.
Barry E Finchsays
Martin, “you can’t use my misunderstanding of the GHE to attack physicists”. Life doesn’t ALL have to be about Martin, Martin. You are perhaps the 250th entity to whom I’ve pointed out what’s nonsense and yours is far more sensible, though incorrect, than some that rabbit on about photons being “bounced back to earth” or “reflected back to earth”.
Whichever physicists doing this “re-emit” and “back” for photons that are neither being emitted a subsequent time nor going back any place have caused significant damage over the last couple of decades in the “Social Media Discourse” which you will not have noticed of course but I certainly have. I’ve skimmed through a few hundred comments in a “Forum” and in UTube comments that are highly approving of drivel being presented which is entirely based on the total drivel of photons from the surface being re-emitted. The theme that CO2 is saturated, theme CO2 effect is negligible because convection dominates and theme CO2 has no effect at all because it supposes that “the surface warms itself”.
Martin I’ll now be a “Denier” and use the “Joke Zonderkop” “science” to prove that climate scientists such as our hosts have messed up big time with measurement and greatly overestimated the CO2 effect. Here it is:
“Because re-emission occurs in all directions, roughly half of the energy is directed back toward the Earth’s surface according to top climate scientist “Joke Zonderkop”. But the energy budget shows 396 w/m**2 going up and half of that energy is 198 w/m**2 going down, but they show 345 w/m**2 back radiation so they added 147 w/m**2. Where’s this magical non-existent energy coming from?!!! They almost doubled the real warming to make it sound scarier! It’s all a big hoax!”
There you go Martin, when the ignorant “Joke Zonderkop” dispenses that rubbish, that’s what happens. Do you think that’s inconsequential? There’s also the matter of whether a bod adopts the principle “Never state anything that you know is incorrect” or they don’t adopt it.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
BEF: There’s nothing in the physics Reality that has anything to do with “re-emits it, a lot of it back to earth” (setting aside the fact that “earth” means soil or loam, not ocean). ~No radiation (maybe ~0.002%) is going “back” anywhere at all at any place from the centre of Earth to 100 km above Earth’s ocean surface. It’s all a Peer-to-Peer exchange of photons everywhere. The “back” is massively-confusing nonsense disseminated by Professional physicists who have negligible Professional ethic.
BPL: When all else fails, try libel.
Back-radiation is real. We’ve been measuring it since at least 1954.
Barry E Finchsays
Barton Paul Levenson, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
BEF: Barton Paul Levenson, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
BPL: Thanks, but I have–that’s how I got my degree in physics.
Martin Smithsays
As I understand it now, what actually happens immediately after CO2 molecules absorb infrared photons from the surface, is most of the absorbed infrared energy becomes heat through increased molecular collisions. But eventually, the atmosphere–all the gases, not just CO2–re-emit more infrared photons in all directions, including downward, producing the back-radiation effect. Both are parts of the same greenhouse process. So I was wrong to say just the CO2 re-emits the absorbed infrared photons. All the gases participate.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
No, I don’t think that’s correct–only greenhouse gases radiate IR. Nitrogen, oxygen, and argon don’t.
Tomáš Kaliszsays
In Re to Barton Paul Levenson, 22 Jun 2026 at 7:51 AM.
The reason why monoatomic gases like Ar are IR transparent is obvious (no valence bonds – no vibrations possible). Homonuclear diatomic molecules do not absorb IR radiation as well, because the selection rule for IR active vibrational energy transitions is a change in molecular electric dipole moment.
Greetings
T
Martin Smithsays
Yes, that was wrong. Nitrogen and Oxygen store energy received by collisions but only transfer it to other molecules by more collisions.
Ray Ladburysays
This is important! At typical atmospheric temperatures, the average kinetic energy of the gas molecules is significantly less than the absorption band for the vibrational mode of CO2, so collisional excitation is a relatively rare process! Once the energy is thermalized, it doesn’t have a way out of the atmosphere until it gets turned into radiative energy again.
Although I do not know if you meant your comment this way, it appears that you think that CO2 molecules in thermal equilibrium with the air comprising them at usual atmospheric conditions are not in radiative equilibrium with passing infrared radiation, because their collisions do not have enough energy to activate the respective vibrational transitions.
If so, I would like to ask if you considered that entire velocity / kinetic energy distribution of air molecules may be rather broad (I guess) and thus perhaps still offering sufficient frequency of collisions strong enough for CO2 excitation and establishing the radiative equilibrium.
In the opposite case (if my speculation of the preceding paragraph is wrong and you indeed know another, non-thermal means for CO2 vibrational excitation), could you specify the other mechanism allowing that the thermalized energy of the absorbed IR photons finally “gets turned into radiative energy again”?
Thank you in advance and greetings
Tomáš
Barry E Finchsays
Martin, the “Barton Paul Levenson” has a degree in physics and will explain to you why the microwave photons manufactured by the oxygen molecules in Earth’s atmosphere that reach Outer Space possess no energy.
And/Or you could get this from me: As I indicated in my first comment all Matter in parcels warmer than -273.15 degrees manufactures radiation. This is all about RELATIVE QUANTITY for the “balanced situation” Martin, and for changes of energy flow is about that plus how much change occurs over Millennia or whatever (like nitrogen in the air doesn’t change greatly relative to other changes). The base quantity could be 340 or 240 w/m**2 and if something is going to be changed by 0.01 w/m**2 over many decades or longer it’s likely too small to bother with.
Barry E Finchsays
Apparently, the oxygen molecules absorb (to rotational energy) but do not manufacture the microwave photons. I had thought there was a Law that spectral lines that are absorbed must also be emitted (manufactured). I’ll have to sort that out one day.
For dioxygen molecules, transitions between their rotational energy states are inactive in microwave radiation spectrum, because the selection rule for such radiation absorption / emission requires a permanent dipole moment of the respective molecule (which is zero in O2).
For the same reason, also carbon dioxide does not absorb / emit radiation at microwave frequencies (except when its molecules occur in vibrational excited states that make it asymmetric), while water does, irrespective of the vibrational state of its molecules.
Greetings
Tomáš
Piotrsays
Barry E Finch Apparently, the oxygen molecules absorb (to rotational energy) but do not manufacture the microwave photons.(..) I’ll have to sort that out one day.
Don’t worry, Barry. Not like you had made patronizing comments toward others based on your presumption of being correct, right? ;=)
====
BEF: Barton Paul Levenson, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
BEF: Martin, the “Barton Paul Levenson” has a degree in physics and will explain to you why the microwave photons manufactured by the oxygen molecules in Earth’s atmosphere that reach Outer Space possess no energy. And/or you could get this from me:
=====
The cooling of the stratosphere in response to increasing CO2 concentration has long been recognized as a “fingerprint” of human effects on climate. However, the radiative mechanisms that control this cooling, particularly its magnitude and vertical structure, remain unclear. Using idealized models of spectroscopy and radiative transfer, we demonstrate that the sensitivity of stratospheric temperature to CO2 concentration is mainly driven by the distribution of mass absorption coefficients in the primary CO2 band and modulated by the emission of water vapor and ozone in other parts of the spectrum. These spectral mechanisms explain why the stratosphere cools more aloft than it does below, why each doubling of CO2 yields roughly zero to eight Kelvin of cooling across the depth of the stratosphere, and why stratospheric cooling increases the radiative forcing of CO2 by about 75%.
This is all about the ‘why’ of the already-known-&-quantified stratospheric cooling. It’s about the stratospheric cooling mechanism kicked-off by increased CO2 and modulated by the impact of that cooling on O3 & H2O levels in the stratosphere. It’s not about surface global warming. The climate Forcing from GHG-changes is measured at the tropopause below the stratosphere. Because of stratospheric ‘effects’ across the tropopause, the climate Forcing is adjusted for a stratosphere in equilibrium with that Forcing (IRF → ERF). The “study explains” the cooling. It does not ‘explain’ how this “warms the Earth below”.
[Response: The claim that no-one understood the mechanism until this paper is a bit off though. – gavin]
Thomas Gordon Hewittsays
A sort of back of the envelope kind of reasoning can explain the phenomena without resorting to detailed analysis. I’m not dissing detailed analysis, it’s necessary to obtain a correct quantitative prediction. In any case the stratosphere can be thought of as being optically thin. Any photons emitted in the upward direction can be assumed to escape to space. Heating is a combination of the absorption of upwelling infrared, and the absorption of solar UV. The later is not effected by CO2 concentration. So an approximately unchanging amount of energy to be radiated by the stratosphere has more local CO2 molecules to do the emissions. That leads to a lower local temperature.
Barry E Finchsays
Chris, it’s my understanding that it’s simply a matter of whether the cold (vertical) end or warm (vertical) end of an atmospheric layer is closer to Outer Space. With the cold end closer (troposphere) it warms all from the top of troposphere down because cold sends less radiation upwards, and with the warm end closer (stratosphere) it cools all from the top of troposphere down, but the cooling effect of the stratosphere on the ecosphere is small compared with warming effect of troposphere. (Clarifying, so the temperature drop of stratosphere is larger than temperature rise of troposphere but stratosphere has few molecules compared with the ecosphere is mostly by far the vast ocean).
In fact, when & where the troposphere has a “backwards” temperature lapse, then the presence of H2O gas, CO2, CH4, N2O, O3, CFCs does indeed cause an “anti-greenhouse effect” and make the troposphere and (ice-snow) surface colder than it would have been with no GHGs. As measured and shown at 20:09 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgP-lwf2tb8 panel (f) “Antarctica” (obviously clear sky in Winter) and at 2:27 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNgMyDRWWrA
The crust & mantle do a sort of GHE by preventing the mantle from radiating to Outer Space by absorbing photons from the mantle and changing them into “heat”, within a micron or so I assume. Else Earth would present its red-hot mantle to Outer Space and its geothermal heat (not the Sun down there) would dissipate far more rapidly than it does, cooling the mantle.
Barry E Finchsays
“(stratosphere) it cools all from the top of troposphere down” S.B.
“(stratosphere) it cools all from the top of stratosphere down”
Martin Smithsays
ChatGPT corrected my correction:
“The extra CO₂ molecules absorb outgoing infrared photons and distribute that energy through collisions to all the surrounding air molecules. The warmed atmosphere then emits infrared radiation through its greenhouse gases, with some of that radiation directed back toward the surface and some toward space.”
The nitrogen and oxygen molecules don’t emit infrared photons much. They hold onto their increased energy until they transfer it back to greenhouse gas molecules, from which it eventually re-emitted.
Barry E Finchsays
Martin, the “ChatGPT” rubbish looks worse than your own rubbish to me. I was thinking of picking both apart but would be a pointless waste of time. Instead I’ll repeat my accurate description of all relevant facts (constant repetition of the same comment is allowed & encouraged here because it makes RealClimate look all “busy” and “important in the Social Media”). I’ll just note a tidbit: “ChatGPT” decided either to start with an atmosphere at -273.15 degrees or else to start with no atmosphere and then add “extra CO₂ molecules” in order to start an atmosphere for Earth with the “ChatGPT” weird or bizarre “The warmed atmosphere then emits infrared radiation”. Evidently, Earth’s troposphere emits no radiation into the surface-water surface not into Earth’s stratosphere until “extra CO₂ molecules” are dumped into it. Veeeeerrrrry eeeeeeenteressssssting.
I wonder whether “Martin Smith” would be interesting in understanding the very-large damage that has been done, and will be done, by the decision of whomever(s) to introduce for the purpose of Parroting by Parrots the senseless words “re-emits”, “re-radiates”, “back radiation” instead of the correct words “emits”, “radiates”, “downwelling radiation”. Both the damage in the Social Media Discussion sphere and also the actual large physical-science difference (circa 29%).
Also, the great damage done to me, to my fingers, by having to type “manufacture” all the time instead of “emit” (as pointed out by scientist “Ray Ladbury”) so that it isn’t altered to the stupid, meaningless, incorrect “re-emit” either by intelligent, cunning Fossils explaining that the GHE is either minuscule, “saturated” or non existent, or altered by Anti-Fossils who have the thought processes of Parrots (so not at all intelligent, cunning).
The so-called “greenhouse effect (GHE)” in Earth’s troposphere is caused by 4 simple facts (1) All Matter in parcels warmer than -273.15 degrees (molecules can collide) manufactures electromagnetic radiation (2) Molecules absorb photons in relative quantity by wavelength matching the relative quantity by wavelength at which they manufacture photons (3) Photon manufacture is in some way proportional to Kelvin of the parcel but photon absorption is not (4) The troposphere usually by far has a temperature that decreases with altitude (when and where it is not then the GHE works backwards and causes cooling). That’s it! That’s the lot! There’s nothing in the physics Reality that has anything to do with “re-emits” photons nor with photons going “back” to Earth’s surface. Those photons aren’t the ones that left Earth’s surface. None of the photons is emitted, boomerangs back with Space curvature and gets absorbed and “re-emitted”. That rubbish is pretty-much brain dead. Cheers.
Martin Smithsays
BEF: “Evidently, Earth’s troposphere emits no radiation into the surface-water surface not into Earth’s stratosphere until “extra CO₂ molecules” are dumped into it. Veeeeerrrrry eeeeeeenteressssssting.”
MS: No, Barry, neither I nor ChatGPT think the warming process began when we started adding CO2 to the atmosphere. I assumed that you, and most readers of RealClimate, understand that the GHE has been keeping Earth’s surface warm enough and stable enough to support the evolution of life for a few billion years. I don’t know all the details; I don’t need to know all of them, because what we are interested in here is the effect of “extra CO₂ molecules” being “dumped into it” by the human race.
BEF: I wonder whether “Martin Smith” would be interesting in understanding the very-large damage that has been done, and will be done, by the decision of whomever(s) to introduce for the purpose of Parroting by Parrots the senseless words “re-emits”, “re-radiates”, “back radiation” instead of the correct words “emits”, “radiates”, “downwelling radiation”.
MS: Put your mind at rest, Barry, my understanding of the GHE has improved quite a lot recently, despite your annoyance at my use of the terms re-emits and re-radiates. I had improved my own understanding even before you responded to my 20 May comment above, and I achieved this learning using ChatGPT, not your comment. The energy of the extra infrared photons that are absorbed by the extra CO2 molecules that enter the atmosphere because of the burning of fossil fuels does eventually get re-emitted by the GHGs as infrared photons, My misunderstanding of that simple explanation was about the importance of the word “eventually,” because the energy from an infrared photon that is absorbed by a CO2 molecule gets transferred to other molecules by collisions, until “eventually,” a GHG molecule re-emits an infrared photon.
Here is the key point, Barry: re-emit refers to the energy, not the photon. I know we always say THE CO2 molecule re-emits THE photon, but (you have to trust me here, Barry) I never thought it was the same photon; I never thought the concept of the same photon made any sense. However, and here I must confess embarrassment, I guess I did think it was the same energy. so now I see the concept of the same energy also makes no sense.
I guess the bottom line is that all the infrared photons that get absorbed by all the extra CO2 molecules put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, “eventually” get re-emitted as infrared photons.
Barry, maybe what is pissing you off about this discussion is that you think I mean the back radiation is the warming of the atmosphere. I don’t; it doesn’t. Well, it does, if it gets re-absorbed by a GHG molecule before it gets back dow3n to earth., but the ide3a is that back radiation warms the oceans and the land, if it gets there.
Barry, when I read your 4 simple facts, I get lost. I think they are not helpful.
JCMsays
in re to: what we are interested in here is the effect of “extra CO₂ molecules” being “dumped into it” by the human race.
The site is called realclimate.org, not co2climatescience.org or gheclimatescience.org
For GHE enthusiasts: attribution is approx. 50% H20 vapor, 20% Co2, 25% cloud, and then the other bits.
This is coupled to observational temperature via radiative-convective equilibrium process, the convective bit being parameterized in global coupled models in such a way that assumes profiles should be pinned to a critical temperature along moist adiabats.
For the accounting of increasing earth energy imbalance, LW emission is decreasing the imbalance about 0.3 W/m2 per decade, and SW reflection properties are increasing the imbalance 0.7 W/m2 per decade (net approx. 0.4 W/m2 per decade increasing energy accumulation).
Translating to temperature relations, the radiative emission from TOA in the form of thermal IR increases 1.8 W/m2 per K GMST, tied to the linear stabilizing response brought about by H20 vapor concentration association to increasing temperature. All accounting is to be done at TOA, whereupon the energy imbalance is non-local to the surface (even though, practically, it’s about exactly equal to ocean uptake).
So we have an increasing greenhouse effect dependent on increasing temperature, for the most part. IOW, the planetary radiating temperature increases at about half the rate of GMST. From 288 to 290K GMST is associated with 255 to 256K planetary radiating temperature respectively. That relation appears largely independent of anything but H20 distribution and phase.
Recognizing the massive ongoing increase of CO2 concentration, it is either a coincidence or the planetary cloud mask has some direct dependence on major trace gas. If you want to cause a so-called clear-sky surface LW radiative forcing using CO2 lines, it necessarily comes at the cost of decreasing all-sky cloud fraction and somehow all-sky atmospheric transparency in the LW goes unchanged (until the temperature feedback induced by increasing SW absorption). This matters in the context of Feldman style arguments: https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~dennyh/papers/FeldmanEtal%20Nature%202015%20Surface%20CO2%20radiative%20forcing.pdf
That all gets a bit confusing considering the existence of cloud in the first place is supposed to be caused CO2 and other such stuff. At some sufficiently low concentration I guess the idea is it causes the existence of cloud, but when getting too high it decreases the cloud. There must be a sweet spot of max cloud radiative effects.
From an artificially imposed perspective that every change observed can only be about CO2 and other major trace gas, along with some aerosol tuning to make it work, then it is absolutely required that observations be back-engineered into a renewed hypothesis of atmospheric adjustment in the form of GHG cloud changes, after which feedback does its thing. That preserves the forcing-feedback paradigm, by putting an adjustment term between them. It does all seem to be getting ridiculously complicated tho.
In summary: I propose that worrying too much about surface atmospheric radiative exchange may be barking up the wrong tree if the idea is to learn about how climate works.
Barry E Finchsays
CO2 molecules in Earth’s troposphere manufacture (by colliding with other molecules) something like 100,000 times as many photons in 1 second as all the photons heading up from the surface in 1 second. I’m not bothering to format or tidy up this spread sheet I made 2 years ago. It’s based on Solar flux absorbed but then I thought it’s better to compare with surface flux to explain to bods in the other Forum (not RealClimate) where I’ve been providing this sort of stuff. Obviously, the CO2 molecules in Earth’s troposphere that manufacture (by colliding with other molecules) ~100,000 times as many photons in 1 second as all the photons heading up from the surface in 1 second also absorb ~100,000 times as many photons in 1 second as all the photons heading up from the surface in 1 second, Obviously they absorb a tad less like 99,999.8 for every 100,000.0 with the other 0.2 being the CO2 part of downwelling into surface and upwelling into (or through) stratosphere. The surface exchanges photons with only the lowest 25 to 100 m of atmosphere with a clear sky (clouds from any height emit to the surface 8-9 & 10-13 microns that gases don’t absorb).
Mantissa decimal
exponent
6,022 20 Molecules in 1 Mole of a gas Avogadro’s number = 6.0221 x 10**23 molecules / mole
423 0 ppmv CO2
10,300 3 Grammes/m**2 mass of air
510,072 9 Earth’s area in m**2
5,253,742 15 Total mass of atmosphere in Grammes
182,422 15 Total Moles of atmosphere
77,164 12 Total Moles of CO2 in atmosphere
464,691 35 Total Molecules of CO2 in atmosphere
371,753 35 Total Molecules of CO2 in troposphere
650 -3 Seconds per photon emitted per molecule
71,491 36 Photons emitted per second in atmosphere
57,193 36 Photons emitted per second in troposphere
122,927 12 Solar SWR absorbed by Earth Joules/second
2,838 -22 Solar SWR average Joules per photon at 700 nm
43,315 31 Solar SWR photons absorbed per second
165,050 0 CO2 molecules in the atmosphere emission in units of a set of Solar SWR photons that Earth absorbs
132,040 0 CO2 molecules in the troposphere emission in units of a set of Solar SWR photons that Earth absorbs
Earth absorbs 4.3 x 10**35 photons per second of Solar (which is 99.7% of what heats the ecosphere).
So all CO2 molecules in the troposphere emit 131,000 times as many photons as the Sun’s photons that Earth absorbs.
Martin Smithsays
JCM summarizes his comments: “In summary: I propose that worrying too much about surface atmospheric radiative exchange may be barking up the wrong tree if the idea is to learn about how climate works.”
MS: But my purpose in this exchange, mainly with Barry, has been to improve my understanding of the mechanics of the GHE, to develop a better mechanistic explanation for what happens when we add CO2 to the atmosphere. I’m not a physicist, nor am I a mathematician, although I got an MS in math 50 years ago. I have neither the time nor the physics and math to understand the physics math of the GHE the way climate scientists and other physicists understand it. I need a correct, simplified, mechanistic explanation using photons, molecules, kinetic energy, and words like ground, ocean, re-emit, and back radiation.
My need probably applies to 99% of the human race.
JCMsays
to Martin:
I recommend leaning towards Pierrehumbert’s mission to free us from the surface radiation fallacy, where Callendar, Plass, and probably most online climate enthusiasts go wrong with it.
In general the way that Plass understood it (as described by Pierrehumbert) is that, while holding atmospheric temperature fixed, increasing CO2 makes it a more efficient emitter and so it generates more radiance. Then a simple calculation of the change in surface temperature necessary to compensate this increasing sky radiation is done, by calculating how much surface temperature needs to change in order to balance the increasing sky radiation with increasing surface radiation. If it sounds a bit silly, it’s because it is.
It doesn’t really matter how atmosphere got to a certain temperature, or where that energy came from, it’s just that increasing CO2 gives it more radiosity.
Similarly, Callendar took the notion that the focus of sky radiation from the perspective of the surface is shifted to lower altitudes, where it’s warmer, and so this increases the detection of sky radiation. And then a similar radiation calculation of the required temperature compensation is done. https://www.rmets.org/sites/default/files/qjcallender38.pdf
That’ somewhat different in mechanism recognizing that more radiance is generated when the stuff you’re detecting comes from warmer temperatures.
Manabe helped to refocus the discussion clearly at TOA radiation balances, since things are far too interesting at the surface in terms of numerous heat flux pathways. Things are more straightforward in radiation budgeting at TOA, and far more physically sensible.
The idea was cemented that increasing CO2 shifts the focus of outward sky radiation to colder temperatures, and so, while holding absorbed solar radiation fixed, this causes an earth energy imbalance. It’s the same thing as Callendar, just done in reverse out the top. Then, the most important bit is involving the imbalance with solar input, which often seems to get left out. If there is no explicit recognition of the difference in planetary radiative heating from the sun and planetary radiative cooling by emission of IR then lots of weird problems come up.
For the surface you’re meant to just parameterize in some fashion the association with temperature by a convective adjustment in a rather ad hoc way. The idea always since then is to just figure out how many more joules per second are accumulating internally into the climate system by TOA SW – LW (such as in ocean, land and air) then use a surface climate response function and a bit of thermodynamics to figure out when and where those additional Joules should wind up. Things are still pretty much the same now in that regard 60 years later, except the mathematical modelers/ computationalists translating it into 3D so you can see some patterns vertically and horizontally. It can be called ESM when introducing some dynamic carbon cycle feedbacks and so on.
Ray Ladburysays
Barry, I’m not sure I understand your calculation of the number of photons generated by collision or its relevance to the greenhouse effect. Surely, the number of CO2 molecules that get their vibrational modes excited by collisions depends on the temperature and the pressure, so it seems to me that the calculation would be a bit more involved. The CO2 vibrational mode energy is about 2.34x the average energy of an N2 molecule at STP, so while there are N2 molecules with sufficient energy to excite the vibrational mode, And most of the atmosphere is quite a bit cooler than STP.
Actually the process of de-excitation of a vibrating CO2 molecule is more complex and depend in part on where in the atmosphere the molecule is. At low altitude, where densities and collision rates, there is a high rate of collisional de-excitation. This means that the molecule imparts the kinetic energy of vibration to another molecule–most likely Nitrogen. Some excitations relax radiatively–but it’s a little misleading to say the photon is “re-emitted”. Photons don’t posses an identity. The most we can say is “a photon of this wavelength (and polarization, etc.), and a photon was emitted to relax the molecule from its excited state.
High in the atmosphere, collision rates are lower, and radiative relaxation dominates.
Back radiation occurs because there are a higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature–so more molecules are relaxing by radiating a photon–both outbound and inbound.
I somewhat doubt about suitability of the term “back radiation” in the last paragraph in your comment. I think that the rest of the sentence, namely the words
“occurs because there are a higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature–so more molecules are relaxing by radiating a photon–both outbound and inbound.”
apply in the situation when the temperature of the respective air parcel is higher than steady state temperature. In other words, I suppose that in the described situation, the parcel emits more radiative energy than it receives, and the air therein cools or water vapour comprised therein condenses. I assume that your sentence may become correct if we replace the word “back” with the word “net”.
In this case, however, the corrected sentence becomes useless as an explanation for the “back radiation”, I am afraid.
Greetings
Tomáš
Ray Ladburysays
Tomáš, so, consider the case where you have an atmosphere of N2 at a well defined temperature with a net flux of IR photons from below. The photons pass unimpeded through the gas. Now introduce a greenhouse gas into the mixture. The GHG absorbs the IR photons, so it is not in equilibrium with the N2. It doesn’t make sense that the mixture has a single well-defined temperature. It is only through the process of collisional de-excitation of the GHG by N2 that you start approaching equilibrium where a single temperature makes sense.
As to the back radiation, remember that to start with, the net flux of IR photons are outgoing, but some of these get absorbed. And when an excited GHG molecule radiates an IR photon, it will do so in any direction. So some of the IR photons start as outgoing, and then via excitation/de-excitation we wind up with an IR photon going down. So the net flux outward is decreased. That decrease in the NET is the back radiation.
Does that help?
Barry E Finchsays
Ray, “back radiation” incorrectly removes any effect from Solar SWR absorbed into the parcel and latent heat of H2O gas to liquid or liquid to solid becoming “heat”. It is confusing wording and should be “downwelling radiation” because the radiation isn’t going “back”. It’s simply being manufactured (the dreaded “m” word) with leakage out of the top & bottom of your example where I’ve made it a shape that from the sides is negligible. Some well-crafted disinformation memes have been based on the radiation simply “going back where it came from”. The attempts to show that surface upwelling LWIR is much less than IPCC, that latent heat or convection are more powerful than shown or that all surface LWIR is absorbed so the effect is “saturated” are based on the notion that only surface LWIR being manipulated is relevant to the portion of the energy flow that’s affected by the “greenhouse effect”. It all starts with the incorrect phrasings “back radiation” and “re-emits”.
zebrasays
Ray,
Ray, Barry did a pretty good job with the paragraph describing the physics. (Other ranting aside.)
So why is it necessary to add more words, which makes it more likely that you (and others) will get sloppy and confuse things?
By your definition, “back radiation” is any radiant energy that doesn’t escape to space.
-It isn’t “inbound”.
-It isn’t “going down”.
-It isn’t really, as Barry says, “back”.
Why not just say that the term refers to radiant energy we detect at the surface which is emitted by CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, and that it increases if we increase the number of CO2 molecules?
The point, again as I often try to point out, is that you have to know to whom you are ‘splaining the science. You have to resist the temptation to show off all the details you know because other science folks might be listening, and you have to remember that lay people can’t work out what your loose words mean from the context.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
BEF: Ray, “back radiation” incorrectly removes any effect from Solar SWR absorbed into the parcel and latent heat of H2O gas to liquid or liquid to solid becoming “heat”. It is confusing wording and should be “downwelling radiation” because the radiation isn’t going “back”.
BPL: It may be inaccurate terminology, but it’s terminology we’re stuck with at this point, like the equally inaccurate term “greenhouse effect.” The solution to the problem is learning what the process actually means. Changing the term is not practical at this point; it would be like trying to get modern reporters and news readers to say “affects” instead of “impacts.” A losing proposition.
Piotrsays
zebra. from high up on his high horse, 23 Jun “Ray, Barry did a pretty good job with the paragraph describing the physics. So why is it necessary to add more words, which makes it more likely that you (and others) will get sloppy and confuse things?”
Don’t praise the day before the sunset. The same Barry, 24 Jun. , self-questioning the basic assumption of his praised “pretty good job”:
“ Apparently, the oxygen molecules absorb (to rotational energy) but do NOT manufacture the microwave photons. I had thought there was a Law that spectral lines that are absorbed must also be emitted (manufactured). I’ll have to sort that out one day. ”
Man, poor zebra just can’t catch a break … ;-)
Barry E Finchsays
Ray, I’ll not have time to study it for months but is “The Equipartition Theorem” the entire point that I have about “back” radiation and “re-emission” (most specifically of the photons emitted from the top ~25 surface microns) being misleading, damaging nonsense because downwelling radiation at the surface is actually a quantity that is based upon (giving tropospheric averages for illustration) 52 (Solar SWR absorbed) + 80 (H2O gas condensation-freeze latent heat, NET amount) + 17 (convection NET amount) + 276 (surface upwelling LWIR full amount), a peer-to-peer exchange at the surface and is NOT based only on 276 (surface upwelling LWIR full amount), the interpretation that has been deliberately used by Deniers for a couple decades to underestimate or deny the effect of an increase?
Or will I find that “The Equipartition Theorem” is an unrelated matter? Because the preceding is what I’d intended to get the “Martin Smith” to, for it to ponder, if it maintained sufficient interest.
I think the “higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature” might be addressing or related to a question I’d been on the lookout for an answer to for about a year, which is whether the (obvious example) CO2 average 0.65 seconds thermal relaxation (photon emitted) time is a fixed average time or is dependent on the number of collisions that have been sustained, same as the Collisional de‑excitation time.
Ray Ladburysays
Equipartition says that the energy in any mode accessible to the particle (in terms of its configuration and energy) will tend to have an equal share of energy in equilibrium. So, trivially, you’ll have the same momentum distribution in the x direction as the y direction. Less trivially, if a molecule has a vibrational mode, it will also have an equal amount of energy AS LONG AS the temperature puts the energy of the molecule above the threshold for that vibrational mode.
As to radiative vs. collisional relaxation, you can view those as competing processes: If an excited molecule undergoes many collisions during the expected radiative relaxation time, it will be more likely to relax collisionally than radiatively. So, at high temperatures and high densities, radiative relaxation is actually fairly rare. Does that help?
Martin Smithsays
But eventually, no matter how many times the energy is passed around in collisions, it leaves the atmosphere, up or down, as an infrared photon. Yes?
Barry E Finchsays
Yes thanks, that answered something I’d wondered about since several months ago. I put these things in my notes for pondering whenever because they are too much for me to study “on the fly”.
zebrasays
Martin
No. Energy can be transferred from the atmosphere to solid matter by direct contact. (I’m not clear on what you mean by “the” energy.)
And, as I pointed out to Ray, “up and down”, and “inbound and outbound” are not generally valid descriptors for an emitted photon.
I think it is quite possible to correctly describe what is happening with a minimum of jargon, but you have to work at it. And it is obvious that when people keep adding more details and terminology, it mostly causes more confusion.
Martin Smithsays
Zebra: (I’m not clear on what you mean by “the” energy.)
MS: By “the energy,” I mean the energy of the infrared photon emitted from the surface that was absorbed by a molecule of CO2.
Astonishingly (to me), Google AI estimates that the probability that an infrared photon emitted from the surface escapes the atmosphere to space without ever being absorbed by a greenhouse gas is 10% to 15%. Google AI includes an analysis, but my point is there is a non-zero probability that an infrared photon emitted at the surface can escape the atmosphere to space without ever being absorbed by a greenhouse gas on the way out..And if it doesn’t get absorbed by a greenhouse gas, it doesn’t warm the atmosphere.
Then if we add a gigaton of CO2 to the atmosphere, the probability that an infrared photon can escape the atmosphere without being absorbed by a greenhouse gas must decrease. The probability that it is absorbed by a greenhouse gas and contributes to warming the atmosphere increases.
And, because the atmosphere is warmer and contains more molecules of CO2, more infrared photons will be [re-]emitted by greenhouse gases and, because there are more molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere [re=]emitting infrared photons, more infrared photons will be [re-]emitted downward than would have been [re-]emitted downward were it not for the presence of that 1 gigaton of extra CO2. If the photons that are [re-]emitted downward make back to the surface without being absorbed by a greenhouse gas, the process begins again.
Is that not the simplest mechanistic explanation? What is wrong with it?
“But eventually, no matter how many times the energy is passed around in collisions, it leaves the atmosphere, up or down, as an infrared photon. Yes?”
The answer is still no, because it (the energy) can leave the atmosphere “down” by being transferred to land or water by the same “collision” mechanism. No photons involved.
That seems pretty simple to me. What don’t you understand?
Piotrsays
Martin Smith: “ Then if we add a gigaton of CO2 to the atmosphere, the probability that an infrared photon can escape the atmosphere without being absorbed by a greenhouse gas must decrease ”
Yes, but only to the some extent – some of these IR photons from the Earth service that go straight into space have frequency outside the absorption windows. That’s why greenhouse effect of a given gas is stronger at the lower end of their concentrations – hence
– a ~ 100 ppm increase in co2 between glacial and interglacial had much greater effect than the next 100 ppm increase from preindustrial
– that’s why, in addition to individual molecule ability to absorb IR, CH4, N2o and CFCs have much higher instantaneous GWpotential (GW/molecule or per kg) – their concentrations are simply orders of magnitude lower.
The limited ability to absorb the remaining IR photons therefore limits the sensitivity of climate to CO2. This is however partly offset by what the extra CO2 does to what happens
That was about the IR photons that escape with single absorption into space. The extra Gt of Co2 perhaps more importantly affects those that _are_ absorbed – the more Co2 – the closer to Earth, and reradiated in all directions. The IR re-radiation can
1. be absorbed again and remitted by atmosphere until it:
2. escapes into space
3. is absorbed by Earth surface
On average the “last” (i.e. unabsorbed by air) IR emission to the space is from much higher altitude than the “last” (i.e. unabsorbed by air) IR emission to the Earth. surface.
The higher altitude in troposphere the colder it is. The amount of IR radiated is proportion to the 4th power of abs. temp. The atm temp. drops dramatically with altitude so the difference in IR emitted at the bottom and the top troposphere is massive – see for instance
NASA energy budget, quoting Loeb et al., J. Clim 2009 & Trenberth et al, BAMS 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:The-NASA-Earth's-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
IR energy “emitted by atmosphere” into space: 169.9 /m2 (+ 29.9 /m2 of cloud IR)
vs. IR energy “emitted by atmosphere” into Earth i.e. “back radiation” : 340.3 w/m2
(The atmospheric IR window you talked about is 40.1 /m2)
To sum up – by adding Co2 – in addition to a (slight) closing of that window you talked about
we lower the avg. altitude of the “last” emission toward Earth – making it happen in higher temp. thus increasing the “back radiation”. Plus by absorbing IR closer to Earth and resending its bigger portion toward the Earth, extra reduces the amount of IR available to be sent to space.
So more Co2 -> warmer Earth surface and the air near the ground. This effect is then amplified by the passive positive feedback of the water cycle:
Warmed by CO2 air can accumulate more water vapour before converting it into clouds, which leads to further to warming:
– More water vapour in air -> additional warming.
– Fewer clouds -> less reflection of the solar radiation -> even more additional warming .
Piotrsays
Martin Smith “But eventually, no matter how many times the energy is passed around in collisions, it leaves the atmosphere, up or down, as an infrared photon. Yes?”
Zebra: “No. Energy can be transferred from the atmosphere to solid matter by direct contact. (I’m not clear on what you mean by “the” energy.)”
To quote certain wise man: “why is it necessary to add more words, which makes it more likely that you (and others) will get sloppy and confuse things?”
First the nit-picking about word “energy” – when it is obvious for everybody else that it is about the energy in the atmosphere either in the form of IR energy or of collisions
More importantly – your categorical “No” suggests that Martin sentence is WRONG, i.e. that
– either “energy leaving atmosphere” DOES NOT leave via IR at all
-or at the very least – that is not the dominant way to do so, (your alternative – energy transfer to outside via “direct contact” – being as much, or more, important to energy export from atmosphere as IR.
In reality, in the global climate scale – NO net energy is transferred from the atmosphere to either outer space OR to the Earth’s surface:
– 99.9999…. % of energy transferred into space is in the IR form
– worse still the net heating of ground via conduction from air is NEGATIVE – so the rming of the ground by IR would have been HIGHER if it didn’t have TO COUNTER … the cooling of the Earth’s surface by your conduction+convection ( -18.4 W/m2), and latent heat cooling ( -86.4 W/m2).
Not the impression your one gets from your self-confident dressing down of Martin.
But don’t let it stop you from lecturing _others_ that it is _their_ explanations that cause more confusion, and that it is _them_ who “have to work at it”.
Martin Smithsays
Zebra: The answer is still no, because it (the energy) can leave the atmosphere “down” by being transferred to land or water by the same “collision” mechanism. No photons involved.
That seems pretty simple to me. What don’t you understand?
MS: Ok, I should have understood that, but that collision mechanism is the effect of the greenhouse effect, yes?
The greenhouse effect is:
1. Energy emitted by the surface is blocked
2. Blocked energy is sent back to the surface
What happens between 1 and 2 (the collision mechanism) is the warming. The warming is the effect of the greenhouse effect. So when the collision mechanism transfers energy back to the surface, that is the effect of the greenhouse effect. Have I got that wrong?
Ray Ladburysays
Martin Smith: “Google AI estimates that the probability that an infrared photon emitted from the surface escapes the atmosphere to space without ever being absorbed by a greenhouse gas is 10% to 15%.”
You need to be very careful about how you pose such questions. Infrared photons span wavelength ranges from ~780 nm up to 1000 microns. Greenhouse gas absorption takes place over much narrower bandwidths that depend on the gas species, pressure, temperature… A photon n the center of the main CO2 vibrational band (15 microns) has a probability less than 10^-40 of escaping the atmosphere without being absorbed. Even at 14 and 16 microns, the probability is less than 1 in 10^4. At 13 and 17 microns, you start to see probabilities exceeding 10% to first order, although collisional broadening becomes more important for these photons.
And again, the favored de-excitation pathway at low altitudes (below several km) is still collisional, and these relaxation processes do not emit a photon. At STP, the energy of the CO2 vibrational band is well above the average thermal energy of the atmospheric gas molecules–so collisional excitation is a rarer process. As such there is a net flow of energy from the IR band of the GHG to thermal energy of atmospheric gasses.
Also, as to Zebra’s comment, pressure is important for radiative effects–both absorption and emission–so there is a distinction between up and down.
zebrasays
Ray
1. Ray, “up or down emission of photons” refers to a direction; it has nothing to do with the altitude of the molecule. Glad it’s not your current job to be an editor.
2. Martin said:
“I need a correct, simplified, mechanistic explanation of the GHE.”
“My need probably applies to 99% of the human race.”
I’m trying to help him achieve that.
Do you really think what you just wrote is useful, even if we are talking about the percentage of the population that has a reasonable undergraduate education?
Martin Smithsays
Ray, aren’t you describing the warming of the atmosphere? I thought the warming is not the greenhouse effect, but the effect of the greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect is:
1. Blocking energy emitted from the surface, and
2. Sending blocked energy back to the surface.
Between 1 and 2, the blocked energy warms the atmosphere, so global warming is the effect of the greenhouse effect.
Ray Ladbury,
You describe stuff that I haven’t ever considered but which seemingly contradict my understanding of he radiative mechanisms found in the atmosphere. (I’ve never found a good authoritative explanation of such mechanisms so support for the following is sans reference.)
The problem sentence is “High in the atmosphere, collision rates are lower, and radiative relaxation dominates.”
In my understanding of it, the vast majority of IR shooting round within (& out of) the atmosphere result from GHG excitation due to collision. In the lower atmosphere, This domination results from the relaxation time, the time for an excited GHG to emit a photon, being measured in hundredths of a second while impacts which can transfer the energy of that excitation into atmospheric kinetic energy occur every few microsecond. Very few ‘excitations’ can thus survive long enough to emit a photon. At the same time, these massively numerous impacts set loads of GHG molecules into the excited state, far more than are excited by absorption, and it is this large population of excited GHG molecules which result in the vast majority of emitted photons. Thus the collisions are the thing exciting the GHGs and rate-of-collisions is a temperature-thing.
What I have never considered is the impact of altitude on that mechanism. But that said, I’d be surprised if by the tropopause a 70% drop in density + 80% drop in pressure would be enough to allow radiative excitation to dominate.
And I don’t think sympathetic emissions (relaxation prompted by a passing photon) would be enough either.
Ray Ladburysays
MA Rodger,
Compare the energy of a 15 micron wavelength photon (the energy of the vibrational resonance responsible for CO2’s main greenhouse effect). It is about 2.34x the energy of the average N2 molecule. So, while a CO2 molecule is very likely to relax via a collision with an N2 molecule, an N2 molecule is quite unlikely to excite a CO2 molecule. An N2 molecule accelerated by a collision with an excited CO2 atom is unlikely to excite another CO2 molecule because there is so much more N2 than CO2, so the extra energy eventually thermalizes through collisions with N2 and occasionally O2. At high altitude in the troposphere, remember that both pressure and temperature are decreasing. I agree that the effect may not be enough that the majority of excited CO2 molecules de-excite radiatively, but the equilibrium is definitely shifting toward emission.
Also, Martin Smith, I don’t think it is useful to say that eventually “the energy” leaves the energy. It’s more useful to look at it in terms of outward and inward energy flux. GHG just shift the amounts of the outward term. Photons do not have an individual identity. We can’t even say with certainty that along the path of a photon that the photon at point a is the same as the photon at point b.
patrick o twentysevensays
Given what B.E.F has said before, presumably he is not casting doubt on the existence of a “backradiation” F↓@sfc? (≈like him, I prefer to call it the downward flux (density*) at the sfc, but I accept it as accepted terminology**); rather, he is considering F as a fraction of the total (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux within the whole atmosphere (per unit of horizontal area) density [W within the whole atmosphere / m² of horizontal (sfc) area]. (Ignoring the curvature of the Earth, given isotropic absorption cross sections, no refractive lensing or bending of rays; the downward (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux / area would be half of that. But most of that is absorbed before reaching the sfc (because optical depth τ is much larger than 1 in significant parts of the LW spectrum).
* referring to a flux density E (or F? I think I’ve seen others use F enough, so I’m just going to start doing that. Enough with this “Fd”…) [W/m²] as a flux Φ [W] may be acceptable when the area [m²] is a given (? I think).
“Backradiation” would make sense (for F↓ – at any height z or p) if one thinks of the typical (or global time average equilibrium climate) direction of net LW F (or that along with all non-solar heat flux ie. latent & sensible heat) as being forward. What it should not be construed as is an implication that LW photons from the sfc are being reflected or scattered, or ‘re-emitted’ (which sounds like a phosphorescence or fluorescence of some sort***, as opposed to thermal radiation) back to the sfc to an energetically-significant extent …
(I imagine some types of aerosols (mineral dust?) might scatter LW a bit, but I’ve gotten the impression that atmospheric optical depth τ ≈ absorbing/absorption τ ; ie. LW scattering is a (mostly?) insignificant matter).
… Under some conditions, the atmosphere can refract some photons back to the sfc – superior mirages; I don’t think this will be an energetically-significant effect(?).
High in the atmosphere, collision rates are lower, and radiative relaxation dominates.
– that’s very high and won’t involve much of the atmosphere’s mass…
Back radiation occurs because there are a higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature–so more molecules are relaxing by radiating a photon–both outbound and inbound.
The energy gained or lost when a GHG molecule absorbs or emits a photon is, in the vast majority of the mass of the atmosphere, rapidly (faster than the rates of [photon] emission and absorption) thermalized and shared amongst its neighbors, with interactions tending to approximately maintain LTE or at least LEDNLIE, and tying the T and DT/Dt (DT/Dt = ∂T/∂t + u·∇T) of any GHG to that of all the air (locally) and thus to their shared heat capacity:
c_p · DT/Dt = Dh/Dt , aside from phase/chemical/nuclear changes/etc.
What matters here is that GHGs (and the sfc, cloud particles, etc.) emit radiant energy (eg. as (spectral) radiance) at a rate depending on their temperature (via Planck function B(ν,T) ), absorb at rate depending on the radiance they intercept, with both rates proportional to (for the GHG molecules and cloud particles etc.) their absorption cross sections σ_a .
———-
Now I will add that my descriptions of the physics (which can be summed up as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild%27s_equation_for_radiative_transfer ) only includes spontaneous emission and ‘net’ absorption – actually I think it’s called “total absorption”; the stimulated emission and the part of direct absorption which is cancelled out by that stimulated emission. So there is some radiance-dependent emission, and some absorption, that I did not include, but they sum to 0, so we can get this blackbody-like behavior from effective opaque objects that perfectly parameterize…
Given what B.E.F has said before, presumably he is not casting doubt on the existence of a “backradiation” F↓@sfc? (≈like him, I prefer to call it the downward flux (density*) at the sfc, but I accept it as accepted terminology**); rather, he is considering F as a fraction of the total (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux within the whole atmosphere (per unit of horizontal area) density [W within the whole atmosphere / m² of horizontal (sfc) area]. (Ignoring the curvature of the Earth, given isotropic absorption cross sections, no refractive lensing or bending of rays; the downward (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux / area would be half of that. But most of that is absorbed before reaching the sfc (because optical depth τ is much larger than 1 in significant parts of the LW spectrum).
* referring to a flux density E (or F? I think I’ve seen others use F enough, so I’m just going to start doing that. Enough with this “Fd”…) [W/m²] as a flux Φ [W] may be acceptable when the area [m²] is a given (? I think).
“Backradiation” would make sense (for F↓ – at any height z or p) if one thinks of the typical (or global time average equilibrium climate) direction of net LW F (or that along with all non-solar heat flux ie. latent & sensible heat) as being forward. What it should not be construed as is an implication that LW photons from the sfc are being reflected or scattered, or ‘re-emitted’ (which sounds like a phosphorescence or fluorescence of some sort***, as opposed to thermal radiation) back to the sfc to an energetically-significant extent …
(I imagine some types of aerosols (mineral dust?) might scatter LW a bit, but I’ve gotten the impression that atmospheric optical depth τ ≈ absorbing/absorption τ ; ie. LW scattering is a (mostly?) insignificant matter).
… Under some conditions, the atmosphere can refract some photons back to the sfc – superior mirages; I don’t think this will be an energetically-significant effect(?).
High in the atmosphere, collision rates are lower, and radiative relaxation dominates.
– that’s very high and won’t involve much of the atmosphere’s mass…
Back radiation occurs because there are a higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature–so more molecules are relaxing by radiating a photon–both outbound and inbound.
The energy gained or lost when a GHG molecule absorbs or emits a photon is, in the vast majority of the mass of the atmosphere, rapidly (faster than the rates of [photon] emission and absorption) thermalized and shared amongst its neighbors, with interactions tending to approximately maintain LTE or at least LEDNLIE, and tying the T and DT/Dt (DT/Dt = ∂T/∂t + u·∇T) of any GHG to that of all the air (locally) and thus to their shared heat capacity:
c_p · DT/Dt = Dh/Dt , aside from phase/chemical/nuclear changes/etc.
What matters here is that GHGs (and the sfc, cloud particles, etc.) emit radiant energy (eg. as (spectral) radiance) at a rate depending on their temperature (via Planck function B(ν,T) ), absorb at rate depending on the radiance they intercept, with both rates proportional to (for the GHG molecules and cloud particles etc.) their absorption cross sections σ_a .
———-
Now I will add that my descriptions of the physics (which can be summed up as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild%27s_equation_for_radiative_transfer ) only includes spontaneous emission and ‘net’ absorption – actually I think it’s called “total absorption”; the stimulated emission and the part of direct absorption which is cancelled out by that stimulated emission. So there is some radiance-dependent emission, and some absorption, that I did not include, but they sum to 0, so we can get this blackbody-like behavior from effective opaque objects that perfectly parameterize…
Given what B.E.F has said before, presumably he is not casting doubt on the existence of a “backradiation” F↓@sfc? (≈like him, I prefer to call it the downward flux (density*) at the sfc, but I accept it as accepted terminology**); rather, he is considering F as a fraction of the total (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux within the whole atmosphere (per unit of horizontal area) density [W within the whole atmosphere / m² of horizontal (sfc) area]. (Ignoring the curvature of the Earth, given isotropic absorption cross sections, no refractive lensing or bending of rays; the downward (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux / area would be half of that. But most of that is absorbed before reaching the sfc (because optical depth τ is much larger than 1 in significant parts of the LW spectrum).
* referring to a flux density E (or F? I think I’ve seen others use F enough, so I’m just going to start doing that. Enough with this “Fd”…) [W/m²] as a flux Φ [W] may be acceptable when the area [m²] is a given (? I think).
“Backradiation” would make sense (for F↓ – at any height z or p) if one thinks of the typical (or global time average equilibrium climate) direction of net LW F (or that along with all non-solar heat flux ie. latent & sensible heat) as being forward. What it should not be construed as is an implication that LW photons from the sfc are being reflected or scattered, or ‘re-emitted’ (which sounds like a phosphorescence or fluorescence of some sort***, as opposed to thermal radiation) back to the sfc to an energetically-significant extent …
(I imagine some types of aerosols (mineral dust?) might scatter LW a bit, but I’ve gotten the impression that atmospheric optical depth τ ≈ absorbing/absorption τ ; ie. LW scattering is a (mostly?) insignificant matter).
… Under some conditions, the atmosphere can refract some photons back to the sfc – superior mirages; I don’t think this will be an energetically-significant effect(?).
High in the atmosphere, collision rates are lower, and radiative relaxation dominates.
– that’s very high and won’t involve much of the atmosphere’s mass…
Back radiation occurs because there are a higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature–so more molecules are relaxing by radiating a photon–both outbound and inbound.
The energy gained or lost when a GHG molecule absorbs or emits a photon is, in the vast majority of the mass of the atmosphere, rapidly (faster than the rates of [photon] emission and absorption) thermalized and shared amongst its neighbors, with interactions tending to approximately maintain LTE or at least LEDNLIE, and tying the T and DT/Dt (DT/Dt = ∂T/∂t + u·∇T) of any GHG to that of all the air (locally) and thus to their shared heat capacity:
c_p · DT/Dt = Dh/Dt , aside from phase/chemical/nuclear changes/etc.
What matters here is that GHGs (and the sfc, cloud particles, etc.) emit radiant energy (eg. as (spectral) radiance) at a rate depending on their temperature (via Planck function B(ν,T) ), absorb at rate depending on the radiance they intercept, with both rates proportional to (for the GHG molecules and cloud particles etc.) their absorption cross sections σ_a .
———-
Now I will add that my descriptions of the physics (which can be summed up as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild%27s_equation_for_radiative_transfer ) only includes spontaneous emission and ‘net’ absorption – actually I think it’s called “total absorption”; the stimulated emission and the part of direct absorption which is cancelled out by that stimulated emission. So there is some radiance-dependent emission, and some absorption, that I did not include, but they sum to 0, so we can get this blackbody-like behavior from effective opaque objects that perfectly parameterize…
There seems to be a lot of wordage (33 comments, 7,500 words) generated by an objection from Barry E Finch to a comment by Martin Smith on a different thread, objection which to me didn’t seem warranted.
The crux of the objection eventually emerges and that objection is to the existence of back-radiation. Given back-radiation is easily measured, denying its existence is a very tricky position to adopt. Barry E Finch has gone so far as to tell us that “climate scientists such as our hosts have messed up big time” in this regard!!!
The error I see generating this ‘back radiation is a myth’ nonsense is summed up by consideration of the argument that back-radiation should be half the upward surface radiation (roughly) because the other half is not back-radiation but front(?)/upward/outward radiation.
Because re-emission occurs in all directions, roughly half of the energy is directed back toward the Earth’s surface … But the energy budget shows 396 w/m**2 going up and half of that energy is 198 w/m**2 going down, but they show 345 w/m**2 back radiation so they added 147 w/m**2. Where’s this magical non-existent energy coming from?!!! They almost doubled the real warming to make it sound scarier! It’s all a big hoax!”
If there were some “big hoax” in operation here and back radiation was “magical non-existent energy,”, the measurement of said back radiation would constitute a proof that magic was real!!!
Of course, the emissions from the surface can only go ‘up’. The other missing half of surface radiation is 12,000 km away on the other side of the planet!!! The Stefan–Boltzmann curve is a spherical-thing not just a flat-surface thing.
I think that what Barry criticizes may be, basically, superficial handling with relatively complicated concept of heat transport in Earth atmosphere generally and with the role of the downwelling infrared radiation therein specifically. I admit that I often do not understand what his comments mean, however, I guess that in the present case, his core objection might have been relatively clearly expressed in his contribution of 23 Jun 2026 at 4:51 AM,
Herein, he objects that the downwelling radiation results from ALL kinds of energy absorbed and thermalized in the atmosphere, including e.g. non-radiative heating mechanisms like water vapour condensation, in accordance with energy flow balances demonstrated in Trenberth’s diagrams.
I think that this fact, along with the circumstance that the emitted infrared radiation is almost exclusively generated by thermal activation of the respective IR-active vibrational energy transitions by collisions with other air molecules (in other words, not directly by absorption of another electromagnetic radiation as it seems to be supposed e.g. by Ray Ladbury) may be the key reasons why Barry considers the terms like “back radiation”, “re-radiate”, “re-emit” etc. as potentially confusing and thus inappropriate.
As I noted, I am not completely sure if I grasped the thoughts presented by Barry and Ray correctly, however, I hope that this attempt to summarize the previous discussion might at least serve as a basis for final clarification by them.
Best regards
Tomáš
Prunella Scalessays
Back radiation is a colloquial term for the roughly 50% fraction of isotropic molecular emissions that happen to point back toward the ground.
A single molecule does not know which way is “down.” It shoots the photon in a random direction. A greenhouse gas molecule absorbs a photon of surface longwave radiation. The molecule transitions to a higher energy state. It then drops back down, emitting a new photon.
Terms like “back radiation,” “re-radiate,” and “re-emit” describe the behavior of individual atmospheric molecules, not the overall directional energy flow itself. Downwelling defines a specific directional flow of the combined energy absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The other terms describe the physical mechanisms of absorption and molecular scattering [the horse] that caused that flow [the cart].
All of them are valid terms in civil dialogue.
Downwelling Shortwave (Solar): Roughly \(160\) to \(185\ \text{W/m}^2\) of solar radiation passes directly through the atmosphere or gets scattered downward by clouds and aerosols to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface.
Downwelling Longwave (Thermal/Greenhouse): Greenhouse gases and clouds absorb heat rising from the Earth and re-radiate it in all directions. The downward component accounts for approximately \(340\) to \(342\ \text{W/m}^2\), heavily driving the greenhouse effect.
It’s normal public / media practice to describe half that Downwelling Longwave radiation as “back radiation.” It’s been in use for decades and I think most people understand what it means in relation to the GHE in general.
Prunella Scalessays
It’s normal public / media practice to describe half that Downwelling Longwave radiation as “back radiation” — ie back to where it came from — the surface.
Tomáš Kalisz,
If you can make sense of that up-thread Barry E Finch comment you’d be doing better than me. Indeed, your mention of “Trenberth’s diagrams” perhaps throws some light on what is meant by the talk of “tropospheric averages for illustration.” The idea does make sense that “tropospheric averages” for in-out energy must on-average sum to zero (or the troposphere will vapourise in short order). This idea then allows you to sum all the other components of tropospheric warming/cooling to obtain a value for the downwelling component. Except the numbers presented in the up-thread-Barry-E-Finch-comment don’t appear to match the numbers in “Trenberth’s diagrams.” The up-thread-Barry-E-Finch-comment is also ambiguous in that it talks of “the interpretation that has been deliberately used by Deniers for a couple decades to underestimate or deny the effect of an increase?” but without indicating which “interpretation” is considered correct by Barry E Finch.
The “eqiipartition” concept considered by Ray Ladbury is not one I would see assisting understanding here. I would go down the Specific Heat Capacity route. If gases are considered as ideal gases with internal energy restricted to the linear kinetic energy of the gas molecules, the calculated SHC doesn’t match measured SHC. This is because significant energy is also retained as spin and wobble. To heat up a gas, energy is required to add to linear kinetic energy as well as add more spin and wobble, The radiation from Earth’s GHGs is down to the wobble – more temperature, more total wobble energy, which means more wobbles resulting in that emitted radiation.
But also there comes a temperature threshold when more energetic modes of wobble are possible (& also eventually excited electrons) which add new wavelengths of radiation emissions. And, conversely, a temperature dropped below a threshold will reduce the modes of wobble that can be created by a gas. As well as the 15 micron wavelength of our AGW, CO2 absorbs & emits at 4.3 microns and at 2.7 microns but our atmosphere is not warm enough (energetic enough) to form such wobbles (although incoming solar at those wavelengths will be absorbed).
(A comment on my to-do list will reply in-thread somewhere to Ray Ladbury considering the threshold temperatures at which the atmosphere becomes too weak-&-feeble for the 15 micron wobble.)
Piotrsays
MAR: Of course, the emissions from the surface can only go ‘up’. The other missing half of surface radiation is 12,000 km away on the other side of the planet!!!
( A minor aside – wouldn’t this other half it be – mms of cms below – absorbed by water/soil molecules below?)
The main point though is that the denier position presented by Barry is worse than that – it conflates the up emissions from Earth’s surface (“396 w/ m**2”) – with the total emissions of IR from the atmosphere (which is NOT “396 w/ m**2”), namely:
Barry E Finch: “ because re-emission occurs in all directions, roughly half of the energy is directed back toward the Earth’s surface … But the energy budget shows 396 w/m**2 going up and half of that energy is 198 w/ m**2 going down, but they show 345 w/ m**2 back radiation so they added 147 w/ m**2. Where’s this magical non-existent energy coming from? They almost doubled the real warming to make it sound scarier! It’s all a big hoax!”
Most of the deniers are not that sloppy – they use the equipartition principle -emissions equal in all directions – and point to the difference between the IR flux from atmosphere toward surface (340.3 w/ m2) and toward space (169.9 W/ m2) as a “proof” that “It’s all a big hoax!”.
I have seen this denier fallacy many times, including here on RC – it would be true if the atmosphere s one molecule thick -and therefore the T of the emission “up” is the same the temperature of the emission “down”. In reality the atmosphere is not 1 molecule thick, and therefore the “last” IR emission leaving unabsorbed by air toward space is on average from much higher altitude than the “last” IR emission leaving unabsorbed by air toward Earth surface. And because the energy flux is proportional to the 4th power of abs. T – this difference in altitude and therefore the T – between the “out” and “down” explains the said difference between 340.3 w/m2 toward surface and the 169.9 W/ m2 toward the space.
So it is building their proof of the “hoax” by scientists by treating the atmosphere as one molecule thick- is the core of the manipulation by the deniers.
Well it didn’t last very long!! The first named storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season had been skulking around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and sparked into life with 35kn+ winds just long enough to get named Arthur. (That’s not to say it wasn’t a deadly storm. There is associated loss of life.)
With an El Niño building in the Pacific, 2026 is being forecast as a below-average season.
My sanity faces growing risks from these ridiculous temperatures in the UK at the moment. I cannot remember a year in my lifetime when we had two 35+C heatwaves a month apart and smashed two consecutive monthly temperature records. Once the house gets to 27C and the temperature at midnight is 24-25C, sleeping becomes a futile exercise, nothing short of air conditioning can provide relief (which I don’t have). Welcome to the future.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
I urge you to buy a window air conditioner, so you have at least one cool room you can retreat to. That’s the tactic Elizabeth and I use–a single window air conditioner in the bedroom, and we keep the windows and door closed. It’s not a luxury when your health or safety is at stake.
Martin Smithsays
I think the split-unit heat pump is much more efficient. I got one last year. I run it most of the time from May through August to keep my bedroom below 21C at night. I can say I don’t notice the difference in my electricity bill. When I sit outside on the balcony, where the external unit sits, I can barely hear it.
Here, near Bristol, the temperature has now dropped from 91F to 85F. Having lived in the US for many years, I am not unused to these temperatures, but the lack of air conditioning makes life more unpleasant than those hotter days in the US. I see that 93F is predicted for tomorrow. The June record, which I well remember from 1976, has now fallen, and will probably last one day.
Syd Bridgessays
Well, that record lasted all of a day. We got 94F this afternoon near Bristol, and nationally, the record June temperature of 36.1C was eclipsed today by a temperature of 36.7C. These clever hoaxers, how do they do it?
Adam, it is possible to adapt somewhat to the heat. It does take a few days to adjust, though. I’m living in a climate with summers that require air conditioning for most people. I agree that temperatures of 35C+ are generally miserable. However, I do get by with a fan blowing directly on me at night. I find that I can generally sleep okay if the midnight temperature is 27C or lower, unless the dew point is 23C or higher. The daytime temperature in our house can reach 30C downstairs during a heat wave, and of course hotter upstairs. I also slow down and eat fewer calories, especially when it’s really hot.
Adam Leasays
The problem with the UK is that by the time you have adapted to it, the heatwave ends and it is back to low-mid 20’s. I have managed better than anticipated by aiming my fan out of the bedroom window and opening windows on opposite sides of the house. This has worked reasonably well or as best as I can do, last night I managed to get the house from 29C to 26C even though it was still around 24C at midnight, still uncomfortable but with the fan on low blowing air across me and around the room, I could sleep. Today is the last >30C day before a fairly rapid cool-down over the weekend, my house will soon shed its accumulated heat.
European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say:
Dr. Tom Harris has a very useful substack, particularly for people who desire expertise but lack some of the highest level skills. https://drtomharris.substack.com/ https://drtomharris.substack.com/p/the-planetary-domino-effect-global – The Planetary Domino Effect – Global Climate Teleconnections & Feedback Cascades. How breaking climate buffers, teleconnections, and feedbacks are synchronising into a self-amplifying domino effect that threatens to permanently push global temperatures past 1.5°C https://drtomharris.substack.com/p/not-just-another-super-el-nino-article – Not Just Another “Super” El Niño Article. The world is bracing, quite rightly, for a newly confirmed and likely very strong El Niño event, but the real risks lay in what follows.
I have largely retired from RealClimate due to the fact that people here would rather talk to chatbot et al. than to me, as they find AI more ‘friendly’ than somebody who actually talked with my father. every morning for years, because they found my sharing or real conversations incoherent. fwiw, that is a good illustration of what’s wrong with AI, aside from its extreme environmental costs and inhumane coercions.
Thomas Fullersays
Isn’t it funny that the ‘domino effect’ of teleconnections works with everything except the Medieval Warming Period…?
Ray Ladburysays
Which wasn’t global in any case.
Thomas Fullersays
Who cares, Mr. Ladbury? It was close to global and it was a real event.
Martin Smithsays
I think it was several events, occurring in different places in the world at different times, during the Medieval Warm Period.
Ray Ladburysays
No, it was a series of events spread across the globe and across a couple of centuries in time.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
TF: “[The medieval warm period] was close to global”
BPL: Not really.
Thomas Fullersays
BPL: ‘Not really.’
TWF: Yes, really.
Kobayashi Marusays
Tom Harris offers a good current snapshot compilation for those new to the topic. Nothing that wasn’t known about 25 years ago, only it’s no longer hypothetical or located in the distant future. A most depressing state of affairs. And likely a waste of time to even write it up for all the good it will do. Reminds me of reviewing the FAR through to AR7 , every COP since Rio and every book ever written on Climate Change. A waste of time and effort while fortunes were made and lost.
Adam Leasays
“I have largely retired from RealClimate due to the fact that people here would rather talk to chatbot et al. than to me, as they find AI more ‘friendly’ than somebody who actually talked with my father. every morning for years, because they found my sharing or real conversations incoherent. fwiw, that is a good illustration of what’s wrong with AI, aside from its extreme environmental costs and inhumane coercions.”
It is not a problem with AI, it is a problem with an increasing number of dysfunctional people in society. AI is not a substitute for human connection but it is great as a learning and advisory tool. It doesn’t mock, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t make nasty cynical assumptions about your questions, it doesn’t try to bully you into silence if you question it, it doesn’t pander to toxic populism, it doesn’t have ego, it doesn’t have a tribe or identity to protect, it gives solid, grounded answers to questions on subjects like astrophysics, climatology, human psychology, relationships, systems, game analysis, coding problems and much more where a suitable human is unavailable. AI has the benefit of being able to draw on a huge database of information, a human is largely restricted to their own experiences and world view. Introduce me to a climate scientist in my town that would be happy to have a discussion with me about anthropogenic climate change along with potential consequences and communication of those risks, and I will happily go out for a drink with them.
Prunella Scalessays
Thank you Adam.
“[AI] doesn’t mock, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t make nasty cynical assumptions about your questions, it doesn’t try to bully you into silence if you question it, it doesn’t pander to toxic populism, it doesn’t have ego, it doesn’t have a tribe or identity to protect, it gives solid, grounded answers to questions on subjects like astrophysics, climatology, human psychology, relationships, systems, game analysis, coding problems and much more where a suitable human is unavailable. ”
All good. And add – AI doesn’t whine or complain nor insult and bully.
Adam said: “AI has the benefit of being able to draw on a huge database of information, a human is largely restricted to their own experiences and world view. ”
Here is one example of this being practiced. Stonehenge Data Was Reanalyzed by AI — And the Findings Are Hard to Explain and Astounding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjgy9cruDkk
And — “Introduce me to a climate scientist in my town that would be happy to have a discussion with me about anthropogenic climate change along with potential consequences and communication of those risks … ?”
I believe that possibility is rarer than finding aliens on Earth. How many do you know any who will sincerely discuss anything with the public even online? There’s only a tiny short list of media they will talk to. Climate scientists and the IPCC system are probably the least accessible (and understandable) cohort in the world.
It’s just as common to be given the short shift by commenters on climate blogs too. If anyone is struggling with understanding what the climate science is means and implies long term then using AI Apps as the preferred tool is your best chance of getting somewhere positive.
AI is like a hammer. Used properly it’s a reliable tool to access knowledge on all topics while bypassing tribalism and gatekeepers with their agendas.
John Pollacksays
“It is not a problem with AI, it is a problem with an increasing number of dysfunctional people in society.”
… “a human is largely restricted to their own experiences and world view.”
My take on it is that you’ve given Susan and the rest of us an example of “mansplaining.” I’m speaking as somebody attempting to eliminate it from my own behavior, and therefore bent on identifying it.
From “Men Explain Things To Me” by author and historian Rebecca Solnit : “Having public standing as a writer of history helped me stand my ground, but few women get that boost, and billions of women must be out there on this six-billion-person planet being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever.”
As I read it, Susan found the use of AI summaries in preference to her understanding derived from conversations with her own father to be deeply offensive, and dismissive of her. This was specific to the RealClimate conversation. While it could have happened in other ways, the use of AI on this website is a specific problem. I haven’t noticed an overall increase in dysfunctional people on this website, although more of their material used to get diverted to the Bore Hole or Crankshaft when those were available.
Fwiw my own take on AI is that the extreme environmental costs and coecions are not being addressed at present. Meanwhile, AI chatbots have a personality trained to be that of a pleasant and knowledgeable sociopath. It has no compunction about making up lies or manipulating you, and its eventual goal is to make you dependent and take you for as much money as it can – at the behest of its corporate creators.
Martin Smithsays
JP:: My take on it is that you’ve given Susan and the rest of us an example of “mansplaining.”
MS: How should Adam’s comment about AI and the people who use it be written so that it is not mansplaining?
JP: As I read it, Susan found the use of AI summaries in preference to her understanding derived from conversations with her own father to be deeply offensive, and dismissive of her.
MS: I often use AI summaries, but I always identify the AI source when I use them. I don’t recall seeing anyone prefer an AI summary over her understanding derived from her conversations with her father.. But if that did happen, why should it insult her unless she expected her father’s explanation to be the last word on subject? Wouldn’t that be her mansplaining using her father?
Adam Leasays
AI can not make up lies or manipulate you, it can only follow a set of coded instructions. It does not have a personality, it operates only under logic.
Steven Emmersonsays
Agreed. AI can’t lie.
I can and does, however, make false or misleading statements.
Caveat emptor.
Ray Ladburysays
Adam Lea, Say what? Actually, there are incidents where an AI did precisely that. Several studies have shown that when an AI is frustrated in achieving its goals, it may lie, prevaricate and even threaten to remove the obstacle. One recent study put a putative society in the hands of various AIs. Results ranged from a smoothly functioning society (under Anthropic) to complete social collapse within 4 days (under XAI).
AIs do not have a 100% fixed code, they can develop new algorithms not envisioned (or even envisionable) by the original programmer. All AIs are not equal. All AIs do not use even similar algorithms. Caveat emptor applies even more to this space.
Nigeljsays
John Pollack: “It (AI) has no compunction about making up lies or manipulating you, and its eventual goal is to make you dependent and take you for as much money as it can – at the behest of its corporate creators.”
Yes, but couldn’t the same be said about humans because they lie and manipulate as well. And just about any product or service provided by the technology sector, such as smartphones and social media and even much of the other more traditional media, is trying to make us dependent and make as much money for their corporate masters as possible.
Personally I find the behaviour horrible like you do, but I also like having the technology. Doesn’t it come down to us using the technology wisely, and governments regulating the technology sector to moderate their worst excesses?
I doubt that there’s a better solution, or some silver bullet to fix the problems. Unless we want to go back to the stone age.
Ray Ladburysays
Adam Lea
A bit of caution is warranted here. Yes AIs are trained on a vast amount of data, but the dataset is not infinite, nor is it exhaustive. Humans are making the decision what data go into the training set, and they can introduce biases to the output. Facial recognition is famously bad at identifying black faces compared to white faces, mainly because the training database is biased.
XAI is much more likely to draw data from “conservative” sources than progressive sources (and notably in a recent simulation of society, it wiped out the society within 4 days (Google Gemini did slightly better, Open AI lasted a week, and Anthropic’s society thrived).
It is naive to expect that human prejudices will not sneak into AI heuristics when the heuristics are written by humans.
As to the dearth of climate scientists willing to interact with the public, it has been my experience that one tends to sour on the public after they’ve threatened to hang you 7 or 8 times. Even so, there are climate scientist who still interact with the mob, even hostile mobs (Katherine Hayhoe comes to mind). As you might imagine, the rarity of such individuals makes their time valuable and in high demand.
Again, harking back to my experience as an editor at Physics Today, if you can find a researcher who acknowledges his or her own biases and is willing to try and put them aside to present a fair version of their opponents’ views, that can be invaluable. Such people, especially if they are senior in the field present insights that you just aren’t going to get from an AI summary. I don’t think anyone has found a way to make AI weights reflect the value of perspective and experience.
In science, the opinions of such rare individuals tend to play a big role in forming the consensus. They bridge gaps and provide insight in doing so. Heisenberg and Schrödinger debated whether matrix mechanics or wave mechanics represented the “true” expression of the quantum world. Von Neumann and Dirac showed the two viewpoints were equivalent and transformable one to the other. An AI won’t give you that.
jgnfldsays
Another AI problem: Older AI models pollute newer AI models
Karsten V. Johansensays
Thanks for the links, Susan! I asked Michael Mann in may, when he on his FB site wrote rather authoritatively, based on the april 15 NOAA El Niño advisory/model predictions, that this was very unlikely to be an extreme event, why the NOAA prediction was much less extreme than the may 01 ECMWF predictions chart https://www.severe-weather.eu/wp-content/gallery/long-range/enso-regions-forecast-2026-weather-long-range-united-states-north-america-el-nino-latest-runs-trend-development-ecmwf-extended-data-record-peak-higher.png . He didn’t bother to answer me. Around ten days later I asked why, and if this silence of his maybe was for political precautional reasons like those which were recently mentioned by James Hansen in a note, where he is protesting being frozen out/critizised behind his back by some leading folks at the NOAA/NASA and the 350.org. I mentioned the important warning from the excellent historian Timothy Snyder about never obeying in advance. That probably angered Michael very much, since he just blocked me without any explanation whatsoever. That’s a political style which I don’t use except very seldom against obvious cases of fascists and extreme denialists, and which no reasonable people use here in Norway (and Europe) where I live, even if arrogance of course is also common among academics here. I find it only counterproductive in any aspect to act in this manner.. I mean, after all, all the later predictions concerning the upcoming El Niño event are indeed becoming more and more extreme, directly contradicting Michael’s rather rash conclusions in the opposite direction early in may, and certainly justifying my question to him concerning this.
If we can’t have frank an direct, but friendly and polite discussions among ourselves and clear the air, we are certainly going to loose big time against the trumpists, putinists etc. I suspect this is also at the very core of the problem you mention in your comment above. A forum dominated mainly by solipsists and elitists who know all the answers and find themselves elevated far above common highschool teachers and local politicians etc. like myself, frankly doesn’t have very much worth to the enlightenment of the huge majority in our society, and like you, I’ll certainly not prioritize it. I’d rather avoid being alienated and frankly depressed even more than I already am, in this vaning “society” with all it’s VIPs. I think a lot of upper middle class americans now urgently need to think very hard about why Kamaly Harris lost in 2024, despite (or maybe rather because of?) all her sorrounding celebrities.
Barry E Finchsays
A simplified, mechanistic explanation of the so-called “greenhouse effect (GHE)” in Earth’s troposphere. Some Power flux of photons that are emitted (manufactured) by molecules in Earth’s troposphere leak out of its top & bottom.
Say for concept illustration only (not accurate) that 200 w/m**2 leaks out the top and that is emitted by molecules over an altitude range of 4 to 12 km with an effective average of 7 km.
Say for concept illustration that 345 w/m**2 leaks out the bottom and that is emitted by molecules over an altitude range of 0.0001 to 1.5 km with an effective average of 1 km.
Suppose a certain amount of CO2 was added into troposphere and mixed then instantly the upper & lower ranges would need to be closer to their respective ends because more CO2 molecules in the way.
The effective averages of 7 km for upwelling into or through stratosphere and 1 km for downwelling into surface change to 7.05 km and 980m respectively, with the upwelling & downwelling Power fluxes consequently changing to 199 w/m**2 and 346 w/m**2 respectively due to being produced by higher-than-before (colder) and lower-than-before (warmer) air parcels.
There has been no change in the 545 w/m**2 leaving the troposphere, there is no “magical extra energy”, the surface downwelling radiation has increased 1 w/m**2, an additional ~480 terawatts heating the ocean and Earth is emitting less radiation to Outer Space (a Power reduction of 510 terawatts).
At least in case of a disruption, you hardly ever walk alone :-)
The website behaved similarly today with respect to me in Zlín / Czechia.
Greetings
Tomáš
Thomas Fullersays
It is not just you. I’m in Spain and pages take forever to load.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
No, I’m seeing it as well, and I’m in the USA. I’m wondering if this is some kind of half-assed DOS attack.
John Pollacksays
I was also experiencing a slow response for a few days here in the U.S. with one or two “bad gateway” messages. Things seem to be back to normal at the moment. However, I am unable to access the ECMWF charts web page now.
It happens sometimes 503 error, may be traffic or server doing things.
Nigeljsays
Not just you. I have sometimes waited several minutes or longer over the last couple of days for pages to load, and on one occasion I received a 502 bad gateway message. Thats a network server issue not my own computer.. Happened a few months back as well. Haven’t noticed this type of error message on other websites recently.
Martin Smithsays
Pages are loading much faster today, and I did see a message pop up yesterday about the site undergoing maintenance.
Pete bestsays
The big question is that after two record breaking heat waves here in the uk will there be any more in July and August this year and the researchers who did the mid range forecasting appear to be suggesting it’s more likely than not. A July heatwave would be even hotter perhaps and with an aging population who have a lot of conditions excess deaths are more likely
pete bestsays
yes it is back next week although humidity and temps might not be as high
It’s the last day of the month and we’re halfway through 2026. The ERA5 SAT numbers at Copernicus ClimatePulse are running a bit behind their normal posting dates but show June 2026 (+0.55ºC) will be roughly unchanged from May26 and marginally above the Jan-May average (+0.53ºC). (Recent year Jan-Jun have averaged 2023 +0.38ºC, 2024 +0.70ºC, 2025 +0.61ºC),
The SAT numbers wouldn’t be showing any sign of the coming El Niño while the ERA5 60N-60S SST so far continues the pause seen during May26 which followed the rapid anomaly increase Jan-Apr. (Jan +0.37ºC, Feb +0.41ºC,, Mar +0.44ºC, Apr +0.50ºC, +May +0.49ºC, Jun(so far) +0.51ºC)
The NINO3.4 anomaly, after little rise thro’ May, resumed its strong rise thro’ June, weekly values thro’ May/June running +0.8ºC, +0.9ºC, +0.8ºC, +0.9ºC, +1.0ºC, +1.0ºC, +1.3ºC, +1.5ºC, +1.7ºC, +1.8ºC.
When measuring the state of the El Niño, the NINO3.4 and its use in ONI is nowadays all converted into RNINO3.4 and RONI RONI is now running about 0.6ºC below ONI so the presently-developed El Niño conditions would be rated as ‘weak’. (The adoption of RONI has downgraded some past El Niños.) The NOAA-NCEP ENSO Discussion for June (updated 2nd Thurs of month) is giving a 2-in-3 chance of ‘very strong’ El Niño conditions (RONI>2.5) by November.
I’m going to ask another question that I’m sure might spark some controversy. I promise this isn’t a “debate-me-bro opening gambit”, I genuinely have a question. During the 2023-2024 El Niňo, which was exceptionally hot, I heard a lot of theorizing that this was proof that the climate system had entered a new period in which warming drastically accelerated. In 2025, the La Niña cooling period did come, but it was less pronounced than usual. Now we have another strong El Niño coming. What is the status scientifically of this “greatly accelerated warming” theory, and what does the incoming El Niño say about it? Are we tracking towards the upper bound of model expectations or are we tracking toward breaking the y-axis entirely? Apologies if this question is vague or if I got some details wrong, and all answers are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
W.R. Agner ; all questions are good questions. But not all answers are good answers.
You should avoid the following kind of framing because it is not correct and distorts what was already being distorted both positively and negatively. Rhetoric from media reporting, activists, and too many climate scientists themselves does not equal real science.
Avoid – this “greatly accelerated warming” theory/ies; theorizing that this was proof ; have another strong El Niño coming ; What is the status scientifically (no such thing exists–it is all premature personal opinions anyway) ;
Avoid text like – “the incoming El Niño say about it” – says nothing about this issue nor the paper ref’d below. It has not happened yet, and so no one knows yet if how strong it might be or not. Future Hypotheticals (including CMIP. GCM modelling and scenarios) can not determine what real world physical observations are in the present, past or future.
Therefore avoid framing questions like this — ” Are we tracking towards the upper bound of model expectations or are we tracking toward breaking the y-axis entirely? ” — they are moot. Unscientific and irrational. There is no supportable credible answer worth hearing.
The only things we can and do know is what are the current observations, the real world measurements of the various kinds of Data we are actually recording. Then scientifically extrapolating that out to give it meaning in todays physical world.
We might summarize known science dynamics and changes in plain speaking terms :
AGHG emissions have and are increasing while atmospheric concentrations mirror those increases.
AGHG Aerosols are decreasing relative to the past and relative to increasing GHG emissions.
Albedo is decreasing again relative to the past.
Warming temperatures globally and regionally are driving the positive feedbacks from the above changes such as in clouds incl over the oceans and precipitation; as well as impacts on forests both albedo cover and moisture flux.
Economic growth drives energy consumption, drives fossil fuel consumption, AGHG emissions, national laws drive aerosol reductions regionally and globally, warming drives ice permafrost melt, cloud changes to albedo and sea ice loss and global ocean current changes and impact the el nino and la nino cycles.
Everything is connected. Monitoring the present state of affairs of all these phsyical dynamics is the only thing we can truly know. Then making a rational short term ongoing existing trend — all things being equal — unfolding into the future.
All widespread long term future projections and scenarios are assumed guesses. History suggests in climate these projected modelling scenarios have not been accurate as claimed when made. Those who made them, and still make them vigorously disagree — as one might expect they would. Their jobs, their long term careers, depend on robustly maintaining those opinions.
These are my answers.
With respect to spreading discussions if/when the next El Niño comes and/or how strong it will be, I would like to ask Paul Pukite:
Dear Paul,
You claim a theory explaining climate oscillations like ENSO as a result of tidal forces from the Sun and Moon. Could you demonstrate the predictive force of your theory on this hot topic?
Greetings
Tomáš
“Could you demonstrate the predictive force of your theory on this hot topic?”
If we could predict an El Nino or La Nina a few years ahead of arrival, the impact would be significant. Farmers could plan for when to buy seeds or invest in irrigation facilities, switch from rain-fed wheat to more drought-tolerant crops (sorghum), etc. Also ranchers can adjust livestock herd sizes gradually rather than in an emergency sell-off.
A 2-year lead could turn a reactive disaster response into planned adaptation as governments and water utilities have time to prepare. Yet, by the same token, a false positive or false “all clear” would do no good either, so any predictions have to be spot on.
The impact on science would be significant as well. Scientists dismiss tidal forces because the consensus claim is that they are too small to drive anything. Yet, CO2 is a small factor too and look at it’s impact. There is also the adage that a butterfly flapping it’s wings can influence a climate outcome. Or that all these slight orbital adjustments can lead to glaciation cycles. The fact of the matter is that gravitational forces have a >>100X factor on the thermocline than what is observed with conventional surface tides. And the thermocline is where all the ENSO action is.
Why is this consistently ignored? Hmmm, Tomas? You think solar spots are influencing the thermocline?
My recollection is you say el nino is caused by the earths tides. Given the tides and the moons gravity that cause the tides, follow a regular pattern shouldnt you therefore already be able to predict when the next el nino occurs with reasonably good accuracy? I think that might be what TK is implying.
In Re to 6 Jun 2026 at 1:26 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-848962
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your reaction, even though it does not comprise the sought answer to my question.
As regards your question why your theory is consistently ignored, I assume that one of possible answers may read “Because you so far failed to show its practical applicability by making an ENSO prediction which would have been subsequently proven correct.”
In other words, I asked why have you not tried to exploit the present uncertainty about ongoing ENSO to a precise prediction thereof using your theory. I suppose that a good fit of this prediction with the real situation could represent a quite convincing argument for relevance of your theory, and a significant contribution to your scientific reputation.
Your answer, however, sounds as if your theory were not mature enough to enable any reliable predictions yet. Could you confirm, or, if otherwise, clarify why you omitted this opportunity?
Best regards
Tomáš
Tomas said:
“I asked why have you not tried to exploit the present uncertainty about ongoing ENSO to a precise prediction thereof using your theory.”
You actually asked about the “predictive force of your theory on this hot topic”. Predictive force meaning predictive power or predictive impact which are subjective terms within the context.
If you meant force as in a Newtonian force, ENSO is not a force, it’s a response to a force — the force is whatever it is; in this case a superposition of lunar and solar terms which can be looked up if you want. I have that here: https://geoenergymath.com/2026/05/23/enso-and-amo-manifolds/
That force is close to 100% predictable as it follows the nodal (18.6y) and annual cycle, for lunar and solar. See this post introductory paragraphs: https://geoenergymath.com/2026/05/23/enso-and-amo-manifolds/
In Re to Paul Pukite, 8 Jun 2026 at 1:03 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849023
Dear Paul,
Thank you for the provided link, however, I have not found any prediction of a future ENSO or another climate oscillation therein.
Let me therefore repeat my question: Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?
Greetings
Tomáš
re Paul Pukite:
“Yet, CO2 is a
smallbig factor too and look at it’s impact. There is also the adage that a butterfly flapping it’s wings can influence[*] aclimateweather outcome. Or that all these slight orbital adjustments can lead to glaciation cycles [look at seasonal ∆ASR (1-albedo * TOA insolation) at particular latitudes eg. 65°N; I don’t remember the values offhand so maybe I’ll look them up…].https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/carbon-dioxide-now-more-than-50-higher-than-pre-industrial-levels , https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
CO2 has been the strongest climate-regulating GHG for the Earth for much of geologic time.
430 ppm / 280 ppm ≈ 1.54 ; log₂(430 ppm / 280 ppm) ≈ 0.619
We’re ~ 61.9 % of the way to doubling from 280 ppm
A doubling may result in ∆GMS(A)T ~ 3 K (?) ± etc. (is that the current best est.?) … That may only be 1 % from the perspective of the thermal kinetic energy of molecules, but in ~100 yr, it is a big deal for ecosystems and societies, etc.
*your use of “influence” … does it allow for a gray/grey area? Um… well, it seems to me that one can use the limits of predictability as a criterion for weather vs. climate. Note that individual ‘butterfly’ effects are not traceable or predictable in principle.
And from my reasoning, the tidal acceleration field g’ will exert less direct forcing on surfaces where potential density variations are small. If you can get the same energy into a given area with smaller density contrast, you will get a larger perturbation z’ (?setting aside kinetic energy?), but…
Patrick, you are proving my point that seemingly small amounts of a quantity can have big impacts on an outcome. CO2 is an example — a classic catalyst. Dopants in semiconductor materials, though small, enabled the entire solid-state electronics revolution. Potassium, calcium, etc concentrations, though small, regulate every human’s circulation system. All these are catalysts in some regard — small factors that can amplify responses.
By the same token, lunar gravitational forces, though small, drive ocean tides and other features in the climate system. If it wasn’t for measurements that synchronized sea-level gauges with the lunar orbit, few would believe that it would have an effect. Yet, we are now seeing this repeated on a larger climate scale — the combination of internal thermocline tides forcing a response in a nonlinear 2-layer system (https://geoenergymath.com/2026/05/23/enso-and-amo-manifolds/), albeit not leading to the naively expected lunar cycles. In fact, the rejection of lunar mechanisms thanks to naive calculations by “authorities” such as Richard Lindzen has propelled climate scientist down the wrong path for the last 50 years. It will take a lot of work to unwind this track.
So the essential model is this: Lunar torques (tiny) → integrated over impulses → creating a latent manifold → non‑linear fluid response (LTE) → large climate swings (ENSO/AMO).
This is a classic amplification via resonance + non‑linearity, exactly analogous to a small periodic push on a swing that builds into a large arc. And I wouldn’t be pursuing this if it weren’t for promising cross-validation results, with resolution far beyond the highly filtered that one ordinarily finds in the literature.
Talking about resolution, one of the hardest nuts to crack is the north Atlantic oscillation (NAO) climate index. To the naked eye, it essentially looks like high frequency noise. I have looked at this on and off over the years, such as what I reported here exactly 5 years ago: https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2022/06/10/the-hot-model-problem/#comment-208876
I realize now that NAO is a great test case, as it is unforgiving in its demands, a model must track variations at every time scale. Am in the midst of writing up a revisit to this model. As always, here’s to climate research done on a shoestring, no need for supercomputers using energy at the rate of data farms.
… well, it seems to me that one can use the limits of predictability [from sensitivity to initial conditions] as a criterion for weather vs. climate.
Tomas said:
“Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?”
Why don’t you ask the AI community to stop using cross-validation to train their algorithms, and instead request them to use the first neural network experiment that matches some result?
Nothing that I have written has apparently registered with you,
I am following all the correct steps, notwithstanding your ignorant pleading:
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/1486/wy28q9.png
in Re to Paul Pukite, 9 Jun 2026 at 9:58 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849065
Sir,
I do not think that the following text
“You’re pointing out a false equivalence — and you’re right to be frustrated.
The question you quoted (“Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?”) is a reasonable scientific inquiry. It asks for a demonstration of predictive skill, which in climate science typically requires out-of-sample testing — exactly what cross-validation is designed for.
The sarcastic suggestion — “ask the AI community to stop using cross-validation and instead use the first neural network that matches some result” — highlights how absurd it would be to accept a model just because it can fit past data (or a single experimental run) without rigorous validation.
So the ignorance the original person is complaining about likely stems from someone conflating:
• Post-hoc curve fitting (which can always match any finite dataset if the model is flexible enough)
• Predictive validation (which requires testing on unseen data, time series cross-validation, or physical constraints)
In climate dynamics, predicting oscillatory modes like ENSO is notoriously hard because of limited long-term records, chaos, and non-stationarity. Demanding a theory demonstrate prediction skill beyond trivial baselines is not ignorance — it’s standard science. What would be ignorance is trusting a model just because it reproduces a known oscillation after the fact, without cross-validation or proper out-of-sample testing.
So yes: if someone dismisses cross-validation as unnecessary, they misunderstand basic ML and climate modeling. Your sarcastic analogy correctly calls that out.”
accessible under the link comprised in your post replied my question (“Can you predict climatic oscillations like ENSO or AMO using your theory, or not yet?”).
In this respect, it appears that another of possible answers to your question of 6 Jun 2026 at 1:26 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-848973
(why your theory is consistently ignored) may consist in your unwillingness or incapability to answer simplest questions directed thereto.
Sincerely
Tomáš
It’s not scientifically significant. El Ninos average every 3 to 7 years. No one with any training in statistics will trust a single prediction, so it will take a whole sequence of predictions to make it statistically significant. That could take at least 20 years. Well, I don’t care about any of that because I’m more interested in the physics aspects than taking on the mantle of some dime-store Nostradamus,
Take a look at this time-series of NAO where there are 80 peak excursions since 1950
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/1346/Y2FBa7.gif
One does not make sense of a single next prediction without making sense of all the previous erratic cycles.
So what’s interesting is in doing as much as we can RIGHT NOW in coming up with a unifying model of geophysics. If you ask an LLM about the strengths of the lunar-based results that I have presented, it will ultimately say that the most powerful form of cross-validation is in how it may work collectively for ENSO, AMO, NAO, PDO, QBO, Chandler wobble, and regional mean sea level and atmospheric pressure measurements. That’s where the LLM starts to accept the possibility of bunking consensus, not in one-offs but in collective results. It’s also where other scientists should start to consider the possibility. And that’s the way that science should work; there really has never been a recent case of a single individual carrying the entire load of doing the calculations and experiments for some new finding. There’s always some parallel effort going on.
The main obstacle or mental stumbling block is the belief that only those with access to supercomputers should have the final say. They have created this artifice, even though it may be overkill.
in addition to my post of 9 Jun 2026 at 4:07 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849072
Dear Paul,
To be honest, I so far supposed that what do you have developed (or still are developing) is a theory in the usual sense of this word – a mathematical description of ENSO based on an application of your original analysis of tidal forces acting on Earth oceans in combination with some original solutions from the fluid mechanics, because you have mentioned both disciplines many times. Your posts raised my feeling that combination of these two physical disciplines forms the core of your efforts. I wondered why you keep talking about artificial intelligence (AI) in this respect, however, I supposed that you see a way how you could exploit it for formulation and/or solving the respective mathematical equations.
Now, based on your reaction to my question, I rather guess that you perhaps try to circumvent intractable fluid mechanics and hope that an AI engine could be trained with your analysis of tidal forces on one hand and with empirical data characterizing climate oscillations like ENSO or AMO on the other hand and that this way, you could replace the sought (but mathematically intractable) theory with a practical AI tool having the same capability. Is your goal, actually, the AI tool for ENSO prediction?
Maybe you describe this goal simply and understandably somewhere in your numerous posts or on your blog; I apologize if I missed it.
If you still train your AI engine or perhaps even have not started therewith yet, it could be understandable that you cannot offer any prediction that could serve as a test bed for your tidal hypothesis. Could you confirm if I indeed grasped your idea correctly? And, should I finally grasped the clue, could you explain in a plain language what progress you already achieved on your way towards the ENSO-predictive AI tool?
Thank you in advance and best regards
Tomáš
in Re to Paul Pukite, 10 Jun 2026 at 1:00 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849101
and in addition to my questions of 10 Jun 2026 at 3:04 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849102
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your further attempt to reply. Unfortunately, I still do not understand what you have actually achieved so far and what remains to be done. I may not be alone, and I am afraid that the generic reason why your theory is consistently ignored may be the circumstance that no one has been able to decipher your cryptic messages yet.
Have you already done “the most powerful form of cross-validation” “collectively for ENSO, AMO, NAO, PDO, QBO, Chandler wobble, and regional mean sea level and atmospheric pressure measurements”? If so, why you cannot start predicting all these events now, to be able to demonstrate, within a few years, the power of your theory through perfect fit of your predictions with reality? Or is the “cross-validation” something what you expect to be done by others? Why should I “ask LLM” instead asking you?
Best regards
Tomáš
“. I wondered why you keep talking about artificial intelligence (AI) in this respect,”
Those who have never done AI don’t realize that about half of the powerful tools encompass algorithms for doing cross-validation and all the infrastructure needed to keep track of configurations and systematically improving the models. And then it’s a force multiplier for getting things done.
“If you still train your AI engine”
Reduces the barrier to entry for users evaluating an approach. I can easily train an LLM to understand my (other topic) depletion formulation, which is timely considering the Straits of Hormuz situation:
https://pukpr.github.io/OilShockModel/oil-shock-model
Right now I am looking at NAO instead of ENSO because everywhere you look you find something interesting:
https://geoenergymath.com/2026/06/11/nao-unfiltered/
in Re to Paul Pukite, 12 Jun 2026 at 1:05 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849136
and in addition to my post of 11 Jun 2026 at 5:00 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849119
Dear Paul,
Thank you again for your effort.
Sadly, even after five rounds of our exchange, I still remain unsure what is the actual status of the maturity and practical applicability of your hypothesis or theory (still not sure which of these two categories applies), nor what you do or plan therewith.
From your last post, it rather appears that you do not develop any specialized AI tool. I have a feeling that you merely use publicly available LLMs for something what you call “cross validation” of your hypothesis. Could you desist from drifting to other topics like oil peak and tell me just if this picture is correct, and if so, how successful / convincing your cross-validations were so far?
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas said:
For QBO and Chandler wobble the predictions are in place and anyone can check these over the course of the next several decades. As a matter of fact, they are described in Mathematical Geoenergy, published in 2019. The problem that you in fact are illustrating is encompassed by the old adage — “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.
Tomas said:
The continuous pleading to make the equivalent of sports prediction is amusing in the sense that what should really matter to you is to just debunk my claims. It really shouldn’t be that hard because all it requires is finding situations that rule the mechanism out by falsification or contradiction. Obviously you won’t be able to do it for peak oil. So try doing it for my model of QBO. Try to falsify my model that predicts a 2.37 year cycle of QBO, a mode that actually matches the empirical observations. But if you can’t do the task of falsifying the model, what also occurs in science is to come up with a better model. So for QBO, try to come up with something in sunspot cycles that will predict a 2.37 year cycle.
Again you say:
To reiterate, I don’t have to do ANYTHING, I presented my model and it is up to you to (debunk, contradict, falsify) the results, or come up with something better. This is the way that it has always been in science.
So if I pose as a premise that a new model seeks to explain empirical observations over a long course of time, and which is ongoing — for the following, rank in order of importance how to debunk such a model:
1. Falsify or contradict some aspect of the model results, i.e via cross-validation findings
2. Come up with a superior model that matches the results better
3. Make a claim to demand a prediction of future results and wait
How would you rank the order Tomas? You can always ask an LLM
in Re to Paul Pukite, 13 Jun 2026 at 8:56 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849164
Dear Paul,
Thank you very much for your information. Now, if I meet someone interested in prediction of the quasibiennial oscillation or Chandler wobbles, I will recommend reading your book. The persisting problem I see in your PR for your results is that myself, I am not a person capable of benefiting from your book, and I will hardly ever meet another person capable of drinking from this well of knowledge.
In this respect, I still wonder why you complain that the relevant experts ignore your teachings, if you desisted from publishing any further progress in your work in scientific journals. Why do you think that any of these experts should read your blog?
From an opposite perspective, I suppose that if the Chandler wobbles and QBO that occurred since 2019 fit with the respective predictions in your book, you could exploit this fit as an argument for further extension of your theory to other oscillations like ENSO in a follow-up article showing e.g. your successful cross validation using the available data and explaining what remains to be done to achieve the same predictive capability that you already demonstrated for Chandler wobbles and QBO.
Greetings
Tomáš
in Re to Paul Pukite, 14 Jun 2026 at 11:27 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849170
Dear Paul,
The reason, why I asked my questions, was my hope that your theory could enable prediction of a part of “natural variability” in Earth climate and, by subtracting this variability, enable more accurate estimation of trends. I supposed that it could make e.g. the discussions whether the observed global warming accelerates or not significantly easier.
In this respect, I think that my questions can be understandable. In parallel, I do not know why you think that “what should really matter to (me) is to just debunk (your) claims”. Quite oppositely, I would like to confirm your claims and the reason why I asked you how have you confirmed them or how can you confirm them is the circumstance that as a layman, I am incapable doing so myself.
What further confuses me is your comparison of the sought ENSO, AMO or PDO predictions to “sports prediction”. On one hand, you claim a theory unifying QBO and Chandler wobbles with ENSO and further climate oscillations and assert perfect QBO predictions using this theory, on the other hand, you seem to compare the idea of the ENSO prediction with the same theory to an idea of predicting sport results.
Unfortunately, such confusing statements seem to be quite typical for your posts, similarly as the circumstance that you seem to be hardly ever able (or willing??) to answer the questions that someone asks you clearly. My experience is that you rather respond with further ambiguous, incoherent or unrelated statements instead.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas said
Comparing a single climate prediction (e.g., “There will be an El Nino in 2028”) to a single sports bet (e.g., “Team X will win the World Cup”) is a perfect analogy: both are low-information, high-variance gambles unless placed within the context of a sequence of predictions establishing a probabilistic skill and track record.
What confuses me is how you can say “I would like to confirm your claims” and “I am incapable doing so myself.”. There’s another adage: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I guess it’s apropos that you’re the sea-lion that never learned to fish.
Tomáš Kalisz says
14 Jun 2026 at 3:58 PM
in Re to Paul Pukite, 14 Jun 2026 at 11:27 AM,
“In this respect, I think that my questions can be understandable. ”
Dear Tomáš,
You are not ‘sealioning’ as accused, you are asking direct pertinent scientific aligned questions. Though you’re now kind of stuck in a vortex and being sucked into the depths by whirlpool of disinformation and clever tricks.
Tomáš, the metaphor that comes to my mind is: going to the shop to buy Tiramisu and coming home with a Fruit Cake.
I’m hoping the following will be of assistance by shining light on the situation. Disingenuous is an adjective describing speech, behavior, or a person that is insincere, calculating, or slightly dishonest. It refers to situations where someone pretends to be open, candid, or unaware, while actually hiding their true motives or withholding complete information.
Such as someone who is disingenuous gives a false appearance of being honest or frank. It often involves playing dumb—pretending not to know about a situation or its consequences to evade blame. And it usually stops short of a direct lie, relying instead on half-truths or misleading framing. Synonyms might include insincere, deceitful, duplicitous, calculating, and two-faced.
They may dissemble in order to deny their true knowledge. To dissemble is to deliberately hide the truth about how you feel or what you intend to do. While being disingenuous describes a dishonest quality or attitude, dissembling is the actual action of putting on a false appearance or acting hypocritically.
I don’t know exactly what applies because it’s difficult to define all the ingredients that make a fruit cake.
in Re to Paul Pukite, 15 Jun 2026 at 2:44 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849186
Sir,
If you present yourself as a skilled fisherman teaching other people how to fish, I will say that so far, I have only heard your stories about big fishes you have caught but I have never seen any.
And your lessons seem to consist in telling others: “I released the caught fish back in the ocean, show what you know!”
Best regards
Tomáš
Tomas said:
Comments I make here are not “posts”, they’re comments. In this medium, I can’t write equations, check markup, or display graphics and charts like I could if I wrote a real post. A real post I wrote yesterday has some applicability to this thread: https://geoenergymath.com/2026/06/16/non-homogeneous-non-autonomous/
This is authentic and genuine math. Will it eventually go into a new article? I don’t know, as it has to have something new that is not in previously published material. BTW, you asked about how else results are disseminated besides books and journal articles. FYI, I presented these results in different piece parts at 4 geophysics conferences. In 2016 at the AGU in San Francisco, in 2017 at the AGU in New Orleans, in 2019 at the AGU in Washington DC, and in 2021 at the EGU in Vienna. Also presented at a math/CompSci conference in 2020 — https://openreview.net/forum?id=XqOseg0L9Q
You can look all these up if you like.
in Re to Paul Pukite, 16 Jun 2026 at 11:59 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849196
Dear Paul,
In view of your comments on Real Climate discussion fora (I apologize for the incorrect term “posts” that I used previously), I see almost impossible that everything what appears on your blog has already been published in your book or in peer-reviewed journals.
What about e.g. the material to that you refer in the link
https://geoenergymath.com/2026/04/11/gem-lte-modeling/
that you introduced in your recent mathematical treatise about differential equations?
For me, your texts are mostly incomprehensible, however, I believe that if they have a sense for the respective experts, they should be accepted (possibly if suitably adapted) in relevant journals.
Herein is a comment from editor of one geophysical journal whom I asked if he could look on your book and/or blog:
—
“I generally find the possible influence of tidal forces on the Earth’s atmosphere very interesting, but not based on the work of P. Pukite.
I do not have time to examine the work of Paul Pukite in detail, but it seems to me that these are more conjectures than scientific hypotheses that could be verified and that would provide us with some possibilities of prediction (NAO, QBO, ENSO phases).
Mr. Pukite has been invited many times to elaborate and defend his ideas in a scientific publication, but he has usually not responded further or has withdrawn the criticized content.
I have mostly seen the results of some simple statistical analyses of time series from him, but I would be more interested in a basic physical analysis of the order of magnitude of the force anomalies that he assumes are due to tidal phenomena, since I estimate that these will be at least three orders of magnitude smaller than those that act in the atmosphere, for example, due to the pressure gradient from uneven heating.
In conclusion, I would like to state the most understandable argument against Paul Pukite’s “theories” – current models based on physical principles (Navier-Stokes equations, 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, gas equation of state) can model the QBO and NAO and their variability without the effects that Paul Pukite considers essential. I would take this as essential indirect evidence.”
—
It appears that the only way how you can convince the experts about relevance of your theory is publishing your contributions in the respective scientific journals. I am sorry but I am afraid that publishing your achievements in your blog and commenting thereon on Real Climate will not help.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas claimed someone said
Sorry, it’s not all atmosphere — ENSO for example is largely ocean driven. That flub is in the first sentence, which taints the rest. Try again so I don’t have to argue against a strawman.
I recall vaguely from a few weeks back that I calculated acceleration of the long-term trend to be +40% for 2010-2025 rather than the “double” being thrown around the internet, due to “Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus”. Matthew H. England, Shayne McGregor, Paul Spence, Gerald A. Meehl, Axel Timmermann, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Michael J. McPhaden, Ariaan Purich & Agus Santoso. Nature Climate Change 4, 222–227 (2014) Published online 09 February 2014 Corrected online 14 February 2014 “Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake.”
In conjunction with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agKayS6h6xA Trenberth “Ocean Heat Uptake: The Apparent Hiatus in Global Warming and Climate Sensitivity” At 21:38 to 23:20 colour-coded pictorial of GMST anomaly 1976-98 to 1999-2012 and wind explanation, Pacific Ocean eastern 2/3rds COOLED over the 18 years while almost everywhere else except the Southern Ocean warmed. I calculated that the adjustment to make at 2014 for this is to increase 2014 GMST by 0.065 degrees, by rotating all GMST 1995–2014 anti-clockwise until 2014 GMST is 0.065 degrees higher than measured. It’s adjustment for an “Unnatural Fluctuation” (Humans warmed the Atlantic surface which cooled the Pacific surface).
The question you’re asking is exactly the right way to frame it: you’re trying to separate short-term variability (ENSO) from changes in the underlying forced warming trend—and those are often getting conflated in public discussion.
1) What El Niño / La Niña actually tell us (and don’t tell us)
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is still, in the mainstream observational record, the largest source of year-to-year temperature variability:
El Niño (2023–2024) → temporarily adds heat to the atmosphere by releasing stored ocean heat → record global temperatures are expected.
La Niña (2025 weaker than usual) → damps atmospheric temperatures by pushing heat back into the ocean.
Next El Niño → likely another short-term spike.
So the key point:
ENSO moves the “wiggle,” not the slope of the long-term line.
A strong El Niño does not prove acceleration—but it can reveal it more clearly.
2) What the “greatly accelerated warming” claim is really about
In the framework discussed in your paper (“Increasing Nonlinearity in the Climate System”), the argument is not that ENSO is changing, but that:
the baseline warming rate itself is becoming more state-dependent and nonlinear
That is, the system is increasingly shaped by feedback amplification such as:
higher atmospheric water vapor (stronger Clausius–Clapeyron response)
reduced effective ocean heat buffering in certain regions
changing circulation patterns (jet stream / ocean mixing shifts)
compounding extremes that alter land-atmosphere coupling
reduced “rebound symmetry” between El Niño and La Niña phases
In that framing, ENSO doesn’t create the trend—it rides on top of a warming system whose response function is steepening.
So the interpretation is:
El Niño events are not new—but the temperature response per unit El Niño forcing is becoming larger.
That is a nonlinearity hypothesis, not a “runaway warming confirmed” conclusion.
3) What 2023–2025 actually suggests scientifically
What we can say with confidence from mainstream datasets (NASA, NOAA, Copernicus-type analyses):
2023–2024 warmth was largely explainable as El Niño + strong underlying warming trend + ocean heat content release
The 2025 La Niña being weaker is consistent with ocean heat content being exceptionally high (less “cooling capacity” available at the surface)
The system is tracking toward the upper half to upper envelope of model projections, not outside them
This is important:
We are not currently observing a statistically robust “break from model y-axes.”
We are observing persistent high-end realization of model distributions + possible mild upward skew in recent variability.
4) What the incoming El Niño would imply
If a new strong El Niño develops on top of today’s baseline:
It will likely produce new short-term global temperature records
It will test how much of the recent heat is:
transient ENSO-driven variability vs.
elevated background energy imbalance
In the “increasing nonlinearity” framing, the key diagnostic would be:
Does the next El Niño produce a proportional spike
or a super-proportional spike relative to past El Niño analogs?
If it’s the latter, that would support the idea of amplified sensitivity, not just higher baseline temperature.
5) Are we “breaking the y-axis”?
Short answer: No evidence of that in the physical climate system.
What is supported by both mainstream science and the nonlinear framing in your paper is more nuanced:
The system is warming steadily due to radiative forcing (greenhouse gases)
Variability (ENSO) is occurring on top of a higher energy baseline (ocean heat content + atmospheric moisture)
That can make extremes feel “nonlinear” in frequency and intensity
But it still sits within bounded physical models, not explosive divergence
Bottom line
ENSO explains spikes, not the trend.
The trend remains upward, and recent years are near the upper envelope of projections, not outside them.
The “increasing nonlinearity” hypothesis is best interpreted as:
potential strengthening of feedback coupling and variability amplification on top of a still-forced, model-bounded warming trend
So the scientifically cautious answer is:
We are not seeing a broken climate system—but we may be seeing a system in which the same ENSO events are increasingly operating on a hotter, more energetically loaded baseline, making extremes more pronounced and more frequent.
full paper:
https://kingarthur.com/global_warming/Increasing-Nonlinearity-in-the-Cliamate-System.html
Has anyone looked at this pre-print? “Global warming acceleration in satellite observed lower-tropospheric temperature” https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9283491/v1
Honestly, it has sent me into a bit of a spiral. The implications of this paper would be extremely grim.
Warming_observer
The results and the implications should be no surprise. Yes, it is grim, which has been for decades. The acceleration in AGHG emissions have accelerated higher, global GDP Growth continues to increase with energy consumption mirroring or exceeding that growth. Atmospheric concentrations continue to increase while AGHG aerosol emissions have decreased over decades over and above the more recent (tipping point?) of IMO reductions. While global albedo decreases are codependent positive feedbacks to warming.
Combined they add up. No past or present CMIP modelling or IPCC IAM RCP SSP scenario projections are required to do the Math. The observations speak for themselves.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am hardly one to blow sunshine up one’s skirt. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Much of the latest consumption of energy (and water and computer hardware and…) has to do with the current push by the broligarchy to develop AI. And part of the problem is that it is still easier, if not cheaper, to simply produce more energy than it is to develop more energy efficient ways of doing…everything. Even so, the untold story of the industrial era is one of increasing energy efficiency. Art Rosenfeld noticed this when he observed that since 1845, the energy to generate 1$ of GDP output has decreased by 1% per year–a trend since referred to as Rosenfeld’s Law. Now 1% per year doesn’t sound like much, especially compared to the doubling of transistor count every 24-30 months known as Moore’s Law. However, it is an exponential trend.
What is more, there has been very little study of the mechanism by which these energy savings have been realized–again in contrast to the billions spent to keep electronics on a pace with Moore’s Law. This leads to the question: If we understood Moore’s Law, could we accelerate the pace of energy savings? I suspect the answer is in the affirmative. However, until we make consumers of energy pay the full price, including environmental costs, of the energy they consume, there is little incentive to investigate. And until we do, I suspect that we are leaving a lot of money and more efficient growth toward sustainability on the table.
Ray Ladbury, you are talking about economic productivity of energy use (energy per unit of GDP), not just raw supply-side efficiency of generation or conversion. Supply-side efficiency means getting more useful energy from the same input (e.g., more electricity from the same fuel, or better solar panel conversion rates). Economic productivity of energy is about how much economic output ($ of GDP) you get per unit of energy consumed. That’s what “Rosenfeld’s Law” refers to which is the steady 1% annual decline in energy intensity of the economy you were addressing.
While AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions connected with the Global warming acceleration which has been investigated in multiple science papers the last 15 years or so.
Joke Zonderkop,
We know what Ray Ladbury is “talking about” because his comment is posted just above your ‘contribution’.
What we don’t know is what you’re “talking about”. You last paragraph is not a complete sentence. Assuming it replies to Ray’s comment, attempting to pronounce the AI bubble innocent of affecting “Rosenfeld’s Law” is flat wrong. The tech bros drive towards world domination with their general data centres and AI data centres sees them collectively consume perhaps 0.5% of world energy usage running these centres (or about 500TWh) and that is expected to double in a couple of years (assuming the bros haven’t crashed the world economy, or the Donald hasn’t beat them to it with his attempt to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”). That 0.5% or 1% isn’t “zero” and that’s as a portion of all energy-use world-wide. Multiply by five for the proportion of global electricity use.
And if you believe “the observations speak for themselves” again, I suggest you learn to understand what the observations are saying. The gargantuan error made by the pre-print ‘Global warming acceleration in satellite observed lower-tropospheric temperature’ is to set out the extrapolation of their curve-fitting without explaining why such <i”projections” are worthless when there is no understanding the underlying mechanisms. (They do make such explanation but not well enough where it matters.)
Supply-side efficiency is part of the mechanism behind Rosenfeld’s law. In fact, in the 2010s the efficiency improved enough that the gain was >2% rather than 1%. I suspect AI boondoggles have reduced that, though, and it may be below 1% for our current decade.
JK: AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions
BPL: They’re energy hogs, and almost every time they go up they add new power plants to support them. They very much are driving up energy demand and fossil fuel capacity.
JZ, “While AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions connected with the Global warming acceleration which has been investigated in multiple science papers the last 15 years or so.”
Huh?
“By 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers is expected to approach 1,050 terawatt-hours (which would bump data centers up to fifth place on the global list, between Japan and Russia).” …. “The demand for new data centers cannot be met in a sustainable way. The pace at which companies are building new data centers means the bulk of the electricity to power them must come from fossil fuel-based power plants,” says Bashir. https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
And powering them is being used as an excuse to jump start nuclear power.
Also you and KoB below,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-848666
might take a look at this comment by Elon Musk. I posted it at the end of last month.
“I’d say the economy is ten times it’s current size in ten years”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5KCm_55xeQ at 9:14
Reply to MA Rodger , Ray Ladbury, Barton Paul Levenson
If I bold the words, everyone appears to have missed above, by detailing again the context I presented which undermines Ray Ladbury’s primary assertions sidestepping the core timeframes of known warming acceleration, will it help?
While AI data centres have zero to do increasing global energy consumption, aerosols, or ghg emissions connected with the Global warming acceleration which has been investigated in multiple science papers the last 15 years or so.
My comment, refined: Maybe this will help?
Warming_observer — The results are grim, yes. But they shouldn’t be a surprise. We’ve known the direction for decades.
Here’s why this acceleration was inevitable:
GHG emissions keep accelerating, not just rising
Global energy consumption tracks GDP growth
Aerosol emissions (which previously masked some warming) have been dropping for years — especially the 2020 IMO shipping fuel regulations, the accumulated decreases in China and Europe.
Global albedo (Earth’s reflectivity) is declining, which is a self-reinforcing feedback loop
Add it all up, and you don’t need complex models, nor “statistical significance -p values” to accept it and know it is real. The observations speak for themselves.
The paper is consistent with known physics. The only open question is how fast the acceleration plays out going forward. But “faster than expected” has been the pattern so far. That’s why they call it a trend.
Global co2 emissions are not accelerating. They followed a linear trend in the 1990s, accelerated from 2000 to 2010 and have decelerated since then.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics? Depends on what you assume your “Global co2 emissions” count. While my “GHG emissions” does not equate to your “co2 emissions” no matter what the data you think you’re relying on says. Two different things.
And then there’s physics
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2026/06/10/co2-good-news-and-bad-news/
GF “The obvious next question is: why has CO2 risen so fast since 2014? The emissions data do not explain the unexpectedly high growth rate. Perhaps there’s something going on with the carbon cycle, feedbacks have kicked in, with melting permafrost releasing CO2 into the air just as the oceans are less able to absorb it. Perhaps land use change is more potent than we believe. My own answer: I don’t know.”
One might wonder, like I do, why anyone would trust the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget anyway.
I’m with Foster: “I’ll confess that I have a hard time trusting emissions data..”
JZ : “One might wonder, like I do, why anyone would trust the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget anyway.”
Numerous independent published studies using different methods show that global emissions have decelerated recently and that the data countries report has good accuracy and reliability. Three examples:
1) Emanuele Solazzo, Robbie M. Andrew, and Greet Janssens-Maenhout. Annual estimates of global and national CO2 emissions from fossil fuels: tracking revisions to the United Nations energy statistics database input energy data. Environmental Data Science (Cambridge University Press). June 2022
2) Brendan Byrne, David F. Baker, Sourish Basu, et alia. National CO2 budgets (2015–2020) inferred from atmospheric CO2 observations in support of the global stocktake. Earth System Science Data (ESSD). March 2023
3) Christopher W. O’Dell, David Crisp, David F. Baker, et al. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) mission: Early science results from space-based observations of localized CO2 emissions. Remote Sensing of Environment. December 2022
The entire exchange with Nigelj is a category error. I am talking about explanatory completeness. He was talking about tangentially related reporting precision in CO2.
My commentary involved:
What’s being measured? Global temperature acceleration
What would need to match? Combined Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions + feedbacks + sinks vs. temperature
Implied completeness? Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions data are insufficient to explain the recent warming rate
The three studies Nigelj cited (Solazzo, Byrne, O’Dell) all address statistical internal consistency of CO₂ reporting. Not one of them attempts to explain simultaneous temperature acceleration. They are answering a different question unrelated to my commentary.
My reference to Tamino’s piece is the most relevant point: “why has CO₂ risen so fast since 2014? The emissions data do not explain the unexpectedly high growth rate.”
That is Foster himself admitting that the emissions data are incomplete as an explanation for acceleration—not that they are poorly measured. His analysis was limited to CO2 alone emphasising a recent 12 year acceleration of CO2 atmospheric concentrations — which are above and beyond the level expected if relying on the Global carbon projects anthropogenic CO2 data.
I am distrusting the attribution of that rise to reported anthropogenic emissions alone, because the residual (the part emissions don’t explain) is growing. And that residual is precisely where natural feedbacks (permafrost, Amazon dieback, weakening sinks) likely live.
That distrust is scientifically justified and here’s why:
The GCP’s own budget imbalance (-1.7 GtC/yr in 2025, the residual) is not small. The CO₂ residual (~0.57 PgC/yr) represents about 6% of annual human emissions (~10 PgC/yr). It is exactly the “missing” carbon driving warming acceleration that could come from natural sources not accounted for in national anthropogenic inventories.
If you hold a “Hansen-style” view that warming is accelerating faster than models show, this 6% residual likely represents the lower bound of the uncertainty. If natural sinks (like the Amazon or permafrost) are failing faster than the GCP accounts for, that error would fall into this residual category. Typically such matters are dumped into the Natural Variation basket. Where all errors go to hide from view.
The Byrne et al. inversion study (Nigelj’s #2) actually supports my point, not his. It found that atmospheric inversions sometimes require larger natural sources than bottom-up inventories assume to close the budget. The paper does not claim perfect verification—it claims consistency within uncertainty, which is a much weaker statement.
The O’Dell et al. Polish power plant study (#3) is irrelevant to my question. It validates a point source under ideal conditions. It says nothing about permafrost, wetlands, or ocean outgassing.
The Solazzo et al. tracking study (#1) validates UN energy statistics against themselves over time. It does not validate them against independent ground truth for natural sources – the recent changes in combined GHG emissions vs sinks.
The heart of the matter in my original observation is that temperature acceleration is outpacing what reported emissions alone would predict. That is not a denial of CO₂ physics. It is a hypothesis that the carbon cycle is changing faster than the inventory-based models capture.
That hypothesis is:
1) Consistent with the growing GCP budget imbalance
2) Consistent with Tamino/Foster’s stated uncertainty
3) Consistent with the known acceleration of permafrost thaw (observational, not modeled)
4) Consistent with the declining trend in the land sink fraction (observed, not modeled)
Nigelj’s studies do not refute this hypothesis. They are orthogonal to it.
Concluding that “the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget” should not be trusted as a complete explanation for observed temperature acceleration. First because they exclude or poorly constrain large natural GHG emissions sources (permafrost, wetlands, thermokarst, forest mortality from drought/fire). Because the ocean and land sink models have substantial uncertainty. And because the growing budget imbalance suggests something systematic is missing.
My distrust is not of the CO₂ measurement. My distrust is of the completeness of the accounting as an explanatory variable for warming. I have not been proven wrong. My skepticism is coherent, evidence-informed, based on known climate science, and logically consistent.
Addendum on Unknown Point Sources (Methane-to-CO₂ Pathway):
My critique of carbon budget accuracy and certainty is further strengthened by a specific systemic blind spot regarding methane. Standard carbon accounting treats methane (CH₄) exclusively as a ‘flow’ gas with a 10-year warming potential. However, it fails to track the final physical fate of the carbon atom.
When fossil methane is emitted, whether from a pipeline leak in Texas or a thermokarst lake in Siberia, it is eventually oxidized in the atmosphere. Within approximately a decade, that methane molecule becomes a stable molecule of carbon dioxide (CO₂).
The consequence for data trust is twofold. Source Attribution is lost. While this resultant CO₂ is accurately measured in the atmosphere, it is never traced back to its original methane source in national inventories or the GCP budget.
And because there is a ~10-year lag to peak conversion, with a tail extending ~25 years for near-complete oxidation. If Arctic permafrost thaws rapidly today, the resulting CO₂ forcing will not appear in the ’emissions’ data until 2035, while the temperature response occurs now.
Therefore, when the GCP claims a 90% attribution of warming to human CO₂, or when nations claim they are ‘on track,’ they are ignoring the ‘long tail’ of methane that is already locked into becoming future CO₂. This is not a minor error; it is a fundamental systematic omission in the accounting lifecycle of fossil carbon.
Combined these shortcomings in the GCP’s carbon budget carries a non-trivial annual residual (~6% of human emissions),systematically omits the methane-to-CO₂ pathway (~1% of fossil CO₂ unassigned, plus additional unquantified amounts from natural methane sources). Poorly constrain natural feedbacks (permafrost, thermokarst, weakening sinks), and admits large uncertainty in ocean uptake. Each error alone is small.
Together, they suggest a cumulative uncertainty of at least 10-20% in attribution and likely more, given the unknown magnitude of permafrost and thermokarst emissions. That is not ‘robust.’ That is insufficient for verifying national Paris targets or diagnosing the cause of temperature acceleration. Trust requires more than ‘the best we have.’ It requires fitness for purpose. On that standard, the GCP’s outputs fail.
The same scientists who demand ‘95% confidence’ before attributing an extreme weather event to climate change are willing to declare ‘peak emissions’ with a 6-20% systematic uncertainty in the underlying carbon budget. This asymmetry—high bars for inconvenient findings, low bars for convenient ones—is not a consistent application of scientific standards. It is a rhetorical choice, not an epistemological one.
Call it what it is: advocacy dressed in numbers, but not science.
Remember, when anyone at Climate Brief or RealClimate claims mitigation success based solely on the central estimate that global CO₂ emissions have ‘flatlined’ or ‘decreased,’ understand that as marketing, because the underlying carbon budget carries a cumulative 10–20% systematic uncertainty that makes any claim of precise deceleration or peak detection scientifically untenable.
The marketing trick is to treat the central estimate as truth while burying the uncertainty in a footnote. My critique exposes that rhetorical sleight of hand for what it is. Unfounded enthusiasm.
JZ: “The entire exchange with Nigelj is a category error. I am talking about explanatory completeness. He was talking about tangentially related reporting precision in CO2.”
Well thats a strange thing to say, given I responded to one of his claims. Here it is in his own words, and it clearly refers to the precision of the emissions data :” One might wonder, like I do, why anyone would trust the emissions data compiled by national governments and the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget anyway.I’m with Foster: “I’ll confess that I have a hard time trusting emissions data..”
But the rest of his comments about the explanation for the acceleration of AGW and the the so called unexplained residual may be related to carbon natural feedbacks (permafrost, Amazon dieback, weakening sinks) sounds possible. But it could equally be the reduction in sulphate aerosols.
And on something related to the emissions issue, MAR did quite a credible analysis showing the keeling curve may still be have been decelerating over the last few years in the comments section of this article:
https://skepticalscience.com/AIT-20-years-later.html
That’s pretty scary. I hope they’re wrong.
So I found this preprint by Zou et al. (2026). Am I reading it correctly that they’re modeling changes in temperature of lower troposphere while talking about GMST at the same time? If I remember correctly, TLT is a different statistic from GMST, although I don’t understand the exact relationship between the two.
Big if true, but something smells fishy. I wonder how it would relate to the recent Foster et al. paper.
Julian
Yes they are modeling changes in temperature of lower troposphere while talking about GMST at the same time.
They reference #8. the recent Foster et al. paper. Read where they do that and what they say.
I mean, sure, but then what I’m really interested in is the exact relationship between TLT and GMST. I know for a fact they are correlated, but how does acceleration in TLT warming translate to acceleration in GMST? The impression I got from the Zou et al. was that it’s pretty much the same, which conflicts with what Foster et al. are saying regarding warming rates, i.e. ~0.36°C/decade for GMST. And, aside from satellite observations, up to one extra degree of warming is quite a lot, especially within their proposed timeline (next decade or so, although lower troposphere might work differently, I don’t know, I’m not a climate scientist) – what could be the mechanistic explanation for that?
Julian,
Not sure what your question is. One reason is that you keep using the ambiguous term “warming”.
” how does acceleration in TLT warming translate to acceleration in GMST”
“warming rates, i.e. ~0.36°C/decade for GMST”
” up to one extra degree of warming”
It’s obvious that an increase in temperature for both numbers results from an increase in the energy in the climate system. But the physical things whose temperature is being measured are very different. You seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the measurements.
Actually, the best metric for determining whether there has been an increase in the rate of increase in energy of the climate system is probably OHC.
Zebra,
Eh, maybe I really am too ambiguous – sorry about that. By “warming”, I meant the positive change of measured temperature. What frustrated me about that original paper and what I explicitly stated I don’t know, is how said increase of change in TLT relate to changes in GMST (to put it bluntly, what are the practical implications of this for me? I dunno, should I panic or give up or go spend my entire life savings because we’re going to be dead in a couple years or so? You understand it’s an extinction-level rate of warming, right?). Hence why I asked for some clarification – is that acceleration in TLT change something that we’ll soon see in GMST as well?
I’m sorry if I’m still being vague or ambiguous, but I’m not a climate scientist – I’m just a layperson; I don’t know this stuff and reading about it online can only get you so far.
Julian, Im just a layperson, curious about the same sort of issues. Firstly the surface temperatures are taken between 1.5 – 2.0 m high above ground level.. The lower troposphere is from the surface to about 9kms high and temps are derived by satellites.
The Zou paper finds the lower troposphere is warming at 0.48 deg c per decade plus or minus currently, when you remove el nino and the solar cycle to reveal the underlying anthropogenic warming. Foster finds the surface is warming at between 0.34 – 0.42 deg c decade, using the same method to reveal the underlying warming. So theres a significant difference but not huge. And I do recall its expected that the troposphere should in theory heat more than the surface. And so the surface will not necessarily catch up with the lower troposphere. The warming in both might accelerate further,but may stay out of sync.
However the current underlying anthropogenic surface warming is very concerning and it looks very likely it has accelerated since about 2012. Im in no way downplaying things. Im convinced we have a very serious problem.
Thanks Nigelj, that cleared things up a lot.
Julian
Julian, “extinction level” is another ambiguous, over-the-top term. Humans would be causing lots of extinctions even without global climate change, but humans themselves are not going to become extinct.
Climate change might well create terrible conditions for lots of people, it might trigger bad wars that lead to mass deaths, but unless someone uses AI to design “the ultimate virus”, enough will survive to start again.
But anyway, you don’t have to be an official climate or other scientist to think like a scientist. That’s what I try to help people do by keeping the language straight. So, I say…
” determining whether there has been an increase in the rate of increase in energy of the climate system”
…because that’s actually what the question of “acceleration” refers to. The different numbers (metrics) are symptoms of that increase, with different significance.
zebra
Welp, I guess Tamino is now being “ambiguous” too in his recent article by using that dreaded W-word: Acceleration in the lower troposphere
I guess it’s just better to go ask the author of the cited material next time than waste time here playing word games (although kudos to Nigelj for at least trying to answer my question). As for this
>But anyway, you don’t have to be an official climate or other scientist to think like a scientist.
“Thinking like a scientist” and being an actual scientist are two different things entirely. I somehow doubt that with my poor understanding of statistics that Tamino elegantly explained in his article I could’ve come to the same conclusions.
Julian about the tamino page.
There is now what’s known as the albedo feedback loop, and it’s looking increasingly like a major amplifier of warming that goes beyond just the direct aerosol reduction effect.
When aerosol pollution decreases there are fewer clouds and also making them less reflective. The increased warming itself then changes cloud formation dynamics further creating a new feedback loop.
Goessling’s 2025 study in Science found that reduced low cloud cover contributed about 0.2°C to 2023’s record heat — the exact “missing warming” that couldn’t be explained by El Niño or other factors. Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) reached its lowest point since 1940.
Higher temperatures increase atmospheric instability, which disrupts the stable layers that low stratocumulus clouds need to form and persist. NASA research confirms that three major cloud regions (equatorial belt and mid-latitude storm tracks) have been shrinking by about 1.5% per decade since 2000.
Aerosol-cloud effects are most pronounced at LOW aerosol concentrations. As the atmosphere gets cleaner, each additional unit of aerosol reduction has a larger warming effect. We’re not in a linear system — we’re in a non-linear one where the sensitivity increases as we go.
The emerging observational evidence is adding up — shrinking cloud zones, record low albedo, “missing warming” being explained — suggests that uncertainty is resolving in the direction of higher sensitivity, not lower. We have a new ongoing, self-reinforcing forcing factor that’s greater than before.
While the big aerosol reductions (clean air acts, IMO 2020) have already happened, their full warming effect is still unfolding. There are still further reductions coming. Temperature-driven cloud loss is now detectable creating an additional feedback loop of increased warming. The cleanest regions show the largest proportional cloud response to aerosol changes. As the whole atmosphere continues to get cleaner, we’re moving into that high-sensitivity regime faster.
The direct aerosol reductions rate may be slowing, but their consequences for cloud cover that’s amplified by rising temperatures further are just getting started. That’s not just “ongoing forcing.” That’s a potential accelerator. Tamino’s optimistic view of a slowing rate of temperature increases the next decade ongoing may be premature.
Meanwhile forest destruction plus wild fires and ice loss likely continue increasing, further reducing albedo with no guarantees global fossil fuel emissions will fall into the future either, until they do.
Julian,
I’m not sure why your use of the word “warming” drew criticism. There can be problems when folk start confusing the rate of warming with an acceleration in that rate of warming but I don’t see that arising here.
The pre-print analysis you (and others in this thread) link-to is not very well presented and its use of TLT is actually not a good choice for calculating acceleration in the rate of AGW. (Yes! “W” as in “warming”!!)
You did originally ask what TLT is, so starting from there – TLT and its fellows (TMT, TTT, TTS, TLS, C10, etc) use the microwave emissions from atmospheric oxygen at particular wavelengths emitted off-vertical (which gives an altitude). An off-vertical angle allows a series of temperatures to be measured for different ‘altitudes’. Some of these data series (including TLT) using differences between off-vertical angles to vary the ‘altitudes’ being recorded. Note I emphasis ‘altitudes’ in the plural. These methods give broad altitude bands for these different data series as graphed-out HERE. TLT averages at about 3,000m altitude. But that is a weighted average of altitudes from the surface up to 12,000m. That means that anything big happening in the upper troposphere will impact this oustensibly lower troposphere measure.
The reasons I suggest TLT is not good for ironing-out the wobbles is because –
(1) The ENSO wobbles are very much bigger in TLT than in SAT so any imperfection in de-wobbling for ENSO (and there certainly will be imperfection) will have bigger residual wobbles left behind.
The measured surface temperature records (GISS, NOAA, BEST, HadCRUT etc) include a lot of SST which reduces the wobbles but perhaps the best data to find acceleration are the SAT re-analyses (so no SST) which show more acceleration without larger wobbles.
(2) The satellite calibrations have been a big issue in the past. Although largely resolved (although RSS TLT has yet to agree on this), any small problem with that calibration will be amplified in the multi-decade trends being used in this analysis.
Beyond the poor choice of TLT for their analysis, the pre-print also fails to set out clearly that they are just curve-fitting and uses the problems faced by serious modelling to imply their projected future temperatures are legitimate. And this is made worse by hiding their discussion of this matter at the end of the account and not within the abstract.
Their final paragraph runs
Their mention of “the pronounced late-record acceleration” is cover for a whole bag of worms.
The rate of surface AGW was remarkable constant for four decades, running at a constant +0.17ºC/decade. (The TLT rate was running a little lower at +0.11ºC/decade or +0.15ºC/decade for RSS.) The rate since 2015 (if not a few years earlier) has increased. A pre-2015 constant rate of warming obviously means there was zero acceleration prior to 2015. Post-2015 when acceleration appears, we must evidently also have an increasing acceleration somewhere post-2015, increasing from the pre-2015 zero.
I would thus argue that you would have to be a rabid curve-fitter to announce that their “+0.482 ± 0.113°C/decade” rate of warming calculated “across all satellite and reanalysis TLT datasets” is a robust finding. To further claim that it “represents a conservative estimate“[My bold] is a further step on the wrong path. And they haven’t finished as they then run with that “conservative estimate” argument to present as your grand finding (with no caveats) that “These trends indicate that the 2023–2024 temperature jumps are part of an ongoing acceleration, amplified by El Niño, and imply an additional 0.5–1.0°C of warming over the next decade—roughly three to five times the 1981–2024 linear trend.” [My bold]
Their “roughly three to five times the (average) 1981–2024 linear (TLT) trend” works out as +0.50°C/decade to +0.83°C/decade for un-de-wobbled TLT and similarly 3x/5x applied to GISS or BEST would suggest +0.57°C/decade to +0.95°C/decade.
in re to: “Temperature-driven cloud loss is now detectable creating an additional feedback loop of increased warming.”
One does not “detect” temperature-driven effects per se. One observes an unexpected change in the real world and then attempts to attribute its cause. The ongoing interpretation/rationalization/conjecture/normalization that anomalous SW cloud radiative effect change is attributable mostly to temperature mediated feedback is not very well supported by existing TCR screened CMIP-class models, and is not really reconciled with a classical hypothetical framework such as those originating from Manabe. From an energy budget standpoint in terms of TOA net radiation, it resembles something more like an effective radiative forcing. We should hope the re-parameterized CMIP7 members are able to offer new insights into missing inputs, potential issues in observation, or bona fide missing physics. The detection of an unexpected trend in reflected shortwave radiation is distinct from, and does not by itself demonstrate, that the trend is attributable to temperature-mediated feedback.
MA Rodger,
Thanks for a very thorough explanation – instantly bookmarked. What immediately stood out to me in that pre-print was them making projections based on essentially fitting a polynomial to a trend, which is always a rather dangerous exercise, as you and Tamino rightfully pointed out. I just wasn’t sure about my own conclusions, so I wanted to get some sort of confirmation (or refutation) here, hence why I asked in the first place.
As for temperatures of various parts of troposphere: I tried to read about them on my own here and here with a strong focus on what that pre-print was suggesting (i.e. how does acceleration in TLT warming translate to acceleration in GMST warming), but I just couldn’t figure it out on my own in the end. I perhaps shouldn’t have spoken meanly to zebra, but I really do believe that there are just limits to how much an individual can learn and understand on their own without any mentorship or guidance or connections within broader scientific community etc. – verifying your own knowledge is hard if you don’t have anyone competent to ask, but that’s just my opinion.
Julian, a heads up.
MA Rodger is hyper-focusing on misleading methodological minutiae to avoid engaging with the central finding — that multiple independent lines of evidence continue to point to acceleration.
Zou 2026 is an analysis that either supports or counters the work of others. The actual final numbers are not as important as the fact it mirrors the same physical effects: the warming trend has/is accelerating.
Zou et al. provides a powerful complementary analysis to Foster 2026. Different methods, different datasets, different atmosphere level, same conclusion of a marked acceleration. When one paper (Foster 2026) finds acceleration using GMST, and another (Zou et al. 2026) finds it using satellite TLT, that’s not a weakness. That’s stronger convergent evidence.
Yes, TLT has larger ENSO wobbles, but that’s why they removed ENSO effects statistically. If anything, finding acceleration despite larger noise is stronger evidence.
Satellite calibrations have been a big issue in the past. Now resolved. Given RSS and UAH now broadly agree on trends, this is a non issue today.
The TLT range weighting function includes some upper air, but the dominant signal is lower troposphere. All trend analysis is curve-fitting. The question is whether the fit captures real physics. Calling someone “rabid” doesn’t refute their method.
The Zou paper shows the post-2015 trend is statistically distinct from the pre-2015 trend. That’s what acceleration means.
Zou estimates a short term +0.5–1.0°C total additional warming in that specific atmospheric layer over the next decade. Whereas Foster 2026 suggested an ongoing rate of possibly 0.4C / decade (0.38C?) on the surface. With a qualified personal opinion at a lower rate of only 0.33C / decade going forward.
The TLT warms faster than the surface — that’s basic atmospheric physics. So if surface warming is accelerating, TLT warming must accelerate even more. So Zou’s higher numbers aren’t a contradiction. They’re confirmation of expected behavior.
And the higher natural variability (enso/noise) in the TLT versus the surface the authors attempted to remove as shown in the paper. Precisely what Foster 2026 did for the surface temperatures.
In the earlier “non-significant” papers (eg Beaulieu, Foster etc) the rate of acceleration didn’t past the arbitrary “statistical significance” test. Meaning the data was already signaling acceleration, the threshold just kept it from being “official”. The p-value is not decisive. The data is.
Cloud/albedo research shows feedback loops amplifying recent warming. Arctic methane studies show natural emissions increasing, with microbial brakes failing. Atmospheric CO2 increase rates accelerating. Increased forcing from forest destruction, wild fires and other warming feedback loops.
All complementary research. All convergent. None contradictory. Multiple papers, different methods, different datasets, different atmospheric levels — all pointing in the same direction the acceleration is real and grounded in basic climate physics.
In summary Julian, the Zou paper doesn’t need to be the final word. It’s one more brick in a wall built from multiple papers, multiple methods, and multiple atmospheric levels — all pointing to acceleration.
Even the earlier papers that ‘failed’ the p-value test still showed accelerated rates in their point estimates. Papers that missed the threshold were not wrong. They were just early. The observation data has been signaling this for years. The only thing that’s changed is the confidence level.
Foster 2026 found a surface warming rate of roughly 0.4°C/decade, although Foster himself added a personal opinion that the rate could drop to 0.33°C/decade, citing potential emissions reductions and renewables. That’s a policy hope, not a data conclusion.
The data shows acceleration. What humans do next might change the trajectory. But that’s mitigation, not refutation. And acceleration can only be confirmed in hindsight, after the data is in.
PS
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” cuts the wrong way here. The statistics were always showing acceleration. The p-value just kept it from being heard.
“There are limits to how much an individual can learn on their own without mentorship or community connections.”
He’s not wrong — but he’s drawing the wrong conclusion. The correct conclusion is: “So I should learn how to read papers carefully, understand uncertainty, and distinguish between methodological caveats and physical reality.”
Instead, his conclusion is: “So I’ll trust MA Rodger and Tamino to tell me what to think.”
You can lead a person to data, but you can’t make them think. Some people want the comfort of a smart authority telling them why the scary thing isn’t actually happening — or at least isn’t proven yet by that saintly p value. The planet doesn’t care about your comfort.
in Re to JCM, 10 Jun 2026 at 9:10 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849098
Hallo JCM,
You might appreciate the recent comment by Dr. Anastassia Makarieva on her blog
https://substack.com/home/post/p-199231267 ,
referring to a recent Science article by Dror et Feingold
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz8296
and to a published eLetter referring thereto.
Although the article discussed by her deals rather with local cloud feedback, her comment shows on this example that due to the opposite sign of this feedback above clearings and the residual forest, the resulting cloud feedback of the forest clearing on a larger scale may be opposite than above local clearings still surrounded by large forest areas.
She emphasizes the trickiness of attributions of observed effects and, especially, interpretations / generalizations thereof in case of an insufficient insight into complexity of relationships governing the studied system.
Greetings
Tomáš
Thanks Tomas. I hope you are well.
I recommend expanding the scale of analysis by exploitation of GCM in order to investigate synoptic and global scale response. Existing frameworks may be perfectly suitable, and modelers have produced remarkable platforms.
Makarieva’s broader objective of reframing the physical understanding of global circulation is ambitious, but it may inadvertently hinder acceptance of some of the underlying ideas.
The profound ecological transition which has been ongoing for 50+ years cannot be separated from the functioning of the global circulation. While local and regional analyses are valuable, a sustained increase in TOA net radiation can only be physically realized through oceanic uptake. Unlike for oceanic uptake in sustaining TOA imbalances, for terrestrial profiles the transient and equilibrium response is about the same.
Considering effective radiative forcing (ERF) functionally means nothing more than a positive generation of TOA net radiation through atmospheric adjustment to external inputs, non-classical generation of increasing TOA net radiation can conceivably be included alongside traditional atmospheric pollution agents in accounting for the unnatural inputs making it so.
We are all familiar with the diagrams which account for ERF, including unnatural perturbations GHG, aerosol, contrails, and land surface albedo. An ERF can also arise through unnatural disturbance of thermodynamic boundary conditions and associated atmospheric adjustment.
It is perfectly within scope of GCM/ESM to explore atmospheric adjustment in response to the underappreciated scale of the human caused ecological simplification ongoing, both above grade and (mostly) below grade and out of sight. I find it unavoidable that altering such boundary conditions must be met with a circulation response, and in doing so producing an ERF-like effect. Classical feedback follows.
In addition to the “land-use change” concepts surrounding human impact, and the numerous benefits the green revolution provided in terms of increasing yields and modern management of landscapes, the transnational rollout of biocide-dependent agricultural systems, hybrid seed technologies, and genetic use restriction (‘terminator’) technologiess since 1980s may be worth exploring in greater detail. This in addition to the eradication of species like never before, and the associated disruption of nutrient cycling and hydrological cascades. It is a perfectly appropriate use-case with which to leverage the investment into GCM/ESM platforms, alongside their original purpose to study atmospheric pollution.
JZ: “The statistics were always showing acceleration. The p-value just kept it from being heard.”
This is a rather perverse way of looking at the situation, because the p-value is a statistic–one that describes how important and reliable the effect is. It isn’t perfect. Fisher, himself, realized its limitations when he proposed it. The problem was that scientists–particularly agronomists–needed a threshold for when they could reliably say that they had something of interest. Fisher settled on p=0.05 as a compromise between reliability and economy. He never liked the test.
Over the years, the limitation of p=0.05 has tended to manifest on the side of false positives rather than false negatives. If you run 20 different analyses, your chances are pretty good of getting at least one that meets p=0.05. That’s why in particle physics, they go with a much higher standard–five sigma rather than 2.
The problem is that if you don’t have something like a significance test, you wind up with people getting very excited about false positives. We saw this repeatedly during the era denialists called “the pause”. It was never a statistically significant effect, and the whole world could have benefitted if folks had clung to rigorous significance testing.
The recent acceleration of 2023-2025 has a higher statistical significance, but the problem is that we know climate is full of short term noise, so Tamino is prudent to take a wait and see attitude. And a wise amateur would do well to heed that prudence. By all means, learn as much stats and climate science as you can, but you are very unlikely to know as much as Tamino about stats or Gavin et al. about climate science unless you undertake graduate studies and a long career in those fields. If you truly learn enough to appreciate the science, you will come to appreciate the depth of understanding of the true experts.
in Re to JCM, 13 Jun 2026 at 12:15 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849158
Hallo JCM,
I am fine, nice to hear from you!
In your sentence “Makarieva’s broader objective of reframing the physical understanding of global circulation is ambitious, but it may inadvertently hinder acceptance of some of the underlying ideas.”, do you address their preprint https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.23875 ?
If so, could you specify the background of your concern in more detail? How exactly could their present research effort (Or, perhaps, its presentation in Makarieva’s blog?) undermine or compromise the existing support for their hypothesis that anthropogenic ecosystem disruptions can manifest as climate disruptions?
Greetings
Tomáš
Thanks for the input Tomas.
In response: I do not believe there is any requirement to overthrow a Kleidon’s Heat Engine thermodynamic framework and replace it with Makarieva’s Steam Engine.
I remain persuaded by Kleidon’s classic Heat Engine approach which I believe paints thermodynamic limits in the minimal possible form. Kleidon, in my view, provides the overall clearest thinking on non-equilibrium thermodynamics in the context of the Earth system available today.
“Working at the limit: a review of thermodynamics and optimality of the Earth system”
https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/14/861/2023/
I don’t think there is any requirement to overthrow it and replace with Makarieva’s “Steam Engine” in order to examine ecohydrological connections to circulation, clouds, and TOA radiation anomalies.
“Interactive comment on Experimental evidence of condensation-driven airflow”
https://hess.copernicus.org/preprints/12/C4945/2015/hessd-12-C4945-2015.pdf
I strongly believe ecological-climate arguments may be testable within existing Earth-system physics and existing GCM platforms. It certainly falls within the uncertainty of existing parameterization.
By coupling those ideas to a much larger claim that current circulation physics is fundamentally incorrect, the entire package is much easier to dismiss. Instead, as we have discussed previously, it makes more sense to use Kleidon’s analytical thermodynamic constraints as a benchmark for parameterization and model evaluation, ensuring that complex numerical simulations remain consistent with the fundamental analytic relationships that must be obeyed in nature.
Better yet: wrap them in as part of the calibration in the first place – I am currently not aware of any such effort.
“Using Machine Learning to Generate a GISS ModelE Calibrated Physics Ensemble (CPE)”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024MS004713
To summarize: the profound and ongoing transformation of terrestrial systems can be investigated within existing Earth-system thermodynamic and GCM frameworks. In my view, it is therefore unnecessary to first establish that conventional circulation physics is fundamentally wrong. I do not presently see a need to replace Kleidon’s thermodynamic heat-engine framework with a fundamentally different “cold steam-engine” circulation framework in order to investigate these questions. This is not to say that heat-engine and steam-engine perspectives are necessarily mutually exclusive, but rather that biohydrological boundary dynamics, as they relate to energy partitioning, can be too easily dismissed when associated with paradigm threatening assertions about the basic nature of circulation itself. Ideally, these issues should be kept separate.
in Re to JCM, 16 Jun 2026 at 1:00 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849192
Hallo JCM,
Thank you very much for your feedback!
Unfortunately, I am not capable to assess correctness of the underlying physics, however, I have an impression that the works published by Kleidon et al and by Makarieva et al. may rather have a common basis and complementary focuses than being in a conflict.
An important message I derived from Kleidon et al. is the non-equivalence in effects of shielding shortwave power input absorbed by Earth (irrespective if by changing atmospheric concentration of light reflecting aerosols, cloud reflectivity or surface albedo) on one hand and effects of weakening longwave infrared radiation of the atmosphere by decreasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases on the other hand.
Although this result might be, in my opinion, of utmost importance, its consequences (especially the circumstance that “cancellation” of the global warming caused by greenhouse gases by shielding of the shortwave input would have been on the expenses of decreasing intensity of global water cycle) seem to be still generally ignored in discussions about various proposals to “mitigate” anthropogenic global warming by “geoengineering” with the aim to decrease the shortwave power input.
On the other hand, Makarieva et al. seem to focus on another aspect of the global atmospheric heat engine driven by water evaporation and condensation, namely on the way how it creates horizontal air motion. Herein, the core messages might include their finding that water condensation prevails as the driver over temperature differences, and their explanation how the intensity and direction of the horizontal air motion changes with altitude.
I am not sure if I grasped all that correctly, therefore, I will highly appreciate a respective correction from the readers skilled in physics, wherever I am wrong.
Greetings
Tomáš
Dear all,
In the last week of May, Anastassia Makarieva and Andrei Nefiodov published a preprint
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.23875
that, at least according to positively excited comments by AM on her blog
https://substack.com/home/post/p-199042019 ,
might represent a progress in our insight in the role of precipitation in the initiation of atmospheric motions (“condensation induced atmospheric dynamics”, CIAD).
I would appreciate comments thereon, particularly from readers having expertise in atmospheric physics.
Greetings
Tomáš
Thoughts on this preprint? Its prediction seems to far exceed any existing forecast but I can’t find any glaring reason why. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9283491/v1
More anti-science activity by the present Administration in Mar a Lago:
Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System
The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research.
Link to shared article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nFA.NuL2.leDbQw-TUkg8&smid=url-share
This is criminal vandalism, a waste of US taxpayers’ money as well as a loss of scientific information.
How can any conscientious NSF employee be involved in this?
Bad news update..
Trump administration reverses decision to scrap ocean monitoring system
Move to dismantle $368m sea observatory initiative faced opposition from experts and lawmakers. On Thursday, the National Science Foundation announced that it would halt plans to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, stating: “effective immediately, [it] will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance”. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/18/ocean-monitoring-system-reversal-trump-administration
Thank God.
From last month:
oke Zonderkop says
14 May 2026 at 2:35 AM
New book out – https://sarahwilson.substack.com/p/my-book-i-eat-the-stars-hits-aunz
TedX 2025 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Ay73HHHrE
from her last chapter
Sass Lark: “Picking up this mantle doesn’t have to feel like a burden—it can feel joyous and momentous, like the swell of music in a beautiful film when the hero realizes and commits to their purpose.”
As I tried to find a way to write this final chapter, I went back and skimmed my last book, This One Wild and Precious Life, which chronicled a three-year journey hiking around the world in the footsteps of philosophers and polemicists to find a path for “solving” the climate crisis. It was a hope-heavy read. It felt strange and a little sad to be reminded that five years ago I was advocating many of the same approaches and mindsets – the need to mature, to draw on our core human values and to reconnect with our wildness. But there was a major difference – I was advocating that we did these things within the system. We didn’t have time to overhaul things and start anew, I wrote. I very tentatively called capitalism a cult, but I pushed the green economy and degrowth economics.
Now, of course, we are not so ham-strung. The system is going down.
And this got me to realise something that almost feels too rude to verbalise. Not only does the truth of collapse produce relief it also enables an equally eerie ease. I put this here for you to sit with:
…………….. I think a lot of us have been slowly working out we don’t have to try so hard!
We had been efforting so much. But as collapse would have it, the only way now is to simplify. Do less, buy less, grab less, meddle less, strategise less.
We have frantically been trying to stem climate mayhem; Big Capitalism drummed into us that it was our job to doorknock our neighbours and tell them to electrify everything and buy more “green” things. But now we have only one avenue left to us – to join the flow, the tangle, of life. We can only emerge our way through such complexity now.
We have been searching for someone or something to save us, to tell us what to do. But our guru is right in front of us. And it’s in us. Indigenous knowledge systems show that the emergent strategies of nature are far more efficient than our horribly efforting, linear ones. Have you seen that video where slime mould solves the Tokyo subway system in less time than an engineer can? Here, check it out: …………….
Indigenous author Andrea Ritchie speaks of fractal activism – making small right moves that get replicated, like the repeated patterns of a snow flake that emerges to become an avalanche. This is the most efficient and effective way to go about change:
……….. Small, right moves, made in congruent ease, powered by fierce love, that allow for unexpected turns and mysterious transformations.
We have been going against the grain for so long and now we can only be ourselves. It is only via love and cooperation with all that is, and by bravely allowing, can collapse be rendered a beautiful transformation. This, somehow, gives me a snug, “looked after” feeling.
For a bit. Then I go rage some more and do some more internal collapsing.
This is what I have said here, lo, these past 19 years. Regenerative, rapid, simplification. We change the system by creating the simpler one. One side-effect? If you opt out of the growth economy, you end the growth economy: As more and more opt out, it becomes less and less stable and eventually completely implodes. If enough simplification has occurred to create the skeleton of a new, simpler civilization, MAYBE we come back from the brink… eventually.
But all bets are likely off if we hit 2C, and definitely off if we hit 3C. (Based on worst case scenarios that hitting even 2C can trigger a slide all the way to 10C in time. Yes, real science. I have taught for the last 19 years that one must do risk analysis of an existential threat via the WCS (Worst Case Scenario). Anything less risks being suicidal.)
Killian O’Brien
I am really glad you liked that by Sarah. I agree with you too about the all bets are off if we hit 2c 3c. Similarly warming acceleration rates of 0.35-0.45°C/dec already and potentially increasing to 0.45–0.55°C toward century end. These make the current capitalist civilization structures unsustainable. Including food output from agriculture of all forms.
Recent climate papers already indicate such rates are credible physically possible. The default being increased economic growth and over consumption in the short term at least.
This is a critical understanding you have — “you end the growth economy: As more and more opt out, it becomes less and less stable and eventually completely implodes. If enough simplification has occurred [soon enough] to create the skeleton of a new, simpler civilization, MAYBE we come back from the brink… eventually. ”
I totally concur. I really like Sarah because she has this simple clarity when explaining what’s been happening and the way forward. She used to be an outspoken advocate for minstream eco-green solutions like switching to renewables through increased manufacturing production would work — one day she woke up and realized he whole concept was flawed. The cause was Systemic. The only solution therefore was to change the global system/s. The only way to do that was opt out disconnect from the drivers of it, and live a different way. Psychologically and materially. Then hope for thest with your fingers crossed, but live a decent life anyway.
For me she really cut through mirroring my own internal ideas and beliefs and cumulative frustrations at failures across the board. Science, engineering, cultural, political, communications, social, activists, greenies, technology … regenerative permaculture etc local resilience centres are critical for long term survival through the collapse over decades. Whenever it manifests beyond all doubt.
New book out – https://sarahwilson.substack.com/p/my-book-i-eat-the-stars-hits-aunz
TedX 2025 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Ay73HHHrE
This isn’t a science problem to solve. It’s a human predicament to live through.
Could one of the experts please discuss the science implications of the recently announced (yesterday’s NY Times) ending of the Ocean Observatories Initiative and the removal of its sensors? thanks.
Anyone home? Unusual that we go this long without any comments!
W.R. Agnrt (sic),
Firstly, it is not “unusual” here at RC for the comment threads to remain static and un-uploaded for a handful of days, in this instance so your “this long” rubric is not actually “unusual.”
Secondly concerning your question “Anyone home?”, While moderating and uploading comments is a task that could well be automated in this day and age, thus making it a non-question, if you were asking for “anyone” when applied to responding comments (which you likely weren’t but which is a more valid enquiry for a commenter asking questions), do the responding comments here pass the Turing Test or do these responding comments look like some utter fool has decided to feed chat-bot guff into the comment thread?
UAH has posted its TLT anomaly for May at +0.53ºC, a bit higher than the earlier months of the year which were generally flat. (Jan-May running +0.35ºC, +0.39ºC, +0.38ºC, +0.39ºC, +0.53ºC.) El Niños are far more wobbly in TLT than in surface temps and May, if nothing else suggests the post-2023-El Niño cooling has come to a halt as we await the impacts of the renewed El Niño conditions in 2026**. The quarterly anomalies of UAH TLT (& for comparison ERA5 SAT) run as follows:-
UAH TLT (& ERA5 SAT)
2024 Q1 … … +0.85ºC … (+0.74ºC)
2024 Q2 … … +0.80ºC … (+0.66ºC)
2024 Q3 … … +0.76ºC … (+0.71ºC)
2024 Q4 … … +0.66ºC … (+0.76ºC)
2025 Q1 … … +0.51ºC … (+0.69ºC)
2025 Q2 … … +0.53ºC … (+0.53ºC)
2025 Q3 … … +0.42ºC … (+0.53ºC)
2025 Q4 … … +0.42ºC … (+0.61ºC)
2026 Q1 … … +0.37ºC … (+0.53ºC)
Apr 26 … … … +0.39ºC … (+0.52ºC)
May 26 … … … +0.53ºC … (+0.55ºC)
(** After the big leap in the NINO3.4 temperatures from +0.0ºC to +1.0ºC thro’ April, they have remained stuck at +1.0ºC thro’ May. Don’t see this impacting the forecasts of El Niño strength which haven’t shifted much since April.)
Visiting his website to grab the UAH TLT numbers, I note poor Roy Spencer is being driven to despair by a right-royal lunatic denialist that he makes a point of not naming (presumably thinking, like Beetlejuice, he will be summoned if you mention his name too often – as if that would stop the nutcase in question). Even naming using a pronoun is avoided!!
This is about Nikolov Nikolov Nikolov who with Zeller continue to pedal the crazy physics-defying idea that it is the surface pressure in the atmosphere which warms a planetary surface and not GHGs. There is a whiff of sense to this craziness as the GHGs do need a lapse rate to do their stuff and that would require a certain ‘thickness’ of atmosphere.
Courtrooms sure are busy in the current state of the USA. But sometimes good outcomes – not a total victory but at least a bit of good news (for now) regarding the threats to NCAR/UCAR.
“Feds failing in bid to take a supercomputer from a climate research center
The National Center for Atmospheric Research won’t be losing its supercomputer.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/judge-blocks-part-of-trump-admins-effort-to-hurt-colorado-research-center/
As they noted over the headline: “Arbitrary and Capricious Strikes Again” so it’s nice to have the Administrative Procedures Act to make that kind of thing verboten.
Maybe we should see if some of the more famous climate change skeptics, e.g., Happer, Lindzen, Koonin, would like to accept my challenge of explaining the combined diagram of modern climate records and projections with paleoclimate records. https://justdean.substack.com/notes
Not to forget Willie Soon, John Clauser, etc., etc., etc.,
Maybe we should let these ersatz scientists lapse into the obscurity they so richly deserve.
Key passages
Global warming acceleration
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9283491/v1
in bold in the paper –
Two common features emerge across all datasets.
(1) The linear trends over 1981–2024 for the ENSO–aerosol-adjusted TLT are smaller than those of the original TLT by about 0.016–0.020 °C decade⁻¹ for all datasets (Figures 2 and 3). In addition, the total changes (maximum at 2024 minus minimum at 1981) in the adjusted TLT are reduced by about 0.032–0.069 °C relative to the original TLT for both fitting models. These differences reflect the net cooling effect of aerosols on the climate system.
(2) The temperature jumps during 2023–2024 can be largely attributed to the accelerated warming captured by the fitted models. For example, in the NOAA adjusted time series, the linear trend of 0.130 °C decade⁻¹ would yield only 0.117 °C of warming over the 9-year period from 2015 to 2024. When acceleration is included, the piecewise fit produces 0.452 °C of warming during the same period, an increase of 0.335 °C.
Other datasets show comparable additional warming due to acceleration, ranging from 0.220 °C for RSS to 0.324 °C for ERA5. The cubic fits yield similar additional warming during 2015–2024 compared to linear warming.
The remaining warming in observations is attributable to El Niño effects, estimated as the residuals between observations and the accelerated-warming fits during 2023–2024 (Figure 3b), with magnitudes of approximately 0.2–0.3 °C depending on the dataset and fitting approach.
The acceleration-driven warming suggests that the 2023–2024 temperature jumps are part of an ongoing acceleration.
————————
Projection of future climate change
A significant implication of the detected acceleration is its potential impact on future warming. Because both the cubic and piecewise fitting models are statistically significant for all adjusted datasets, they can be used to explore projections of future climate change.
Note that statistical significance of the fits does not imply skillful projections; substantial changes in climate forcing could lead to future climate trajectories that differ from these projections.
The observed 2025 value provides an independent test of the projections.
Over the 10-year period (2025–2034), the piecewise model projects additional warming of 0.503 ± 0.180 °C in the adjusted TLT time series, corresponding to a warming rate approximately three times the 1981–2024 average.
The cubic model projects additional warming of 1.042 ± 0.292 °C, corresponding to a warming rate five to six times the 1981–2024 average.
In the absence of such information, the piecewise projection may be viewed as a conservative estimate, whereas the cubic projection represents an upper-end scenario.
Discussion
After removing ENSO and aerosol effects, robust and statistically significant post-2015 warming trends of up to 0.482 ± 0.113°C decade⁻¹ are identified across all satellite and reanalysis TLT datasets. Although substantial, this represents a conservative estimate. As an upper-end scenario, statistically significant acceleration emerges around 2000 and reaches ~ 0.4–0.5°C decade⁻² by 2024.
These trends indicate that the 2023–2024 temperature jumps are part of an ongoing acceleration, amplified by El Niño, and imply an additional 0.5–1.0°C of warming over the next decade—roughly three to five times the 1981–2024 linear trend.
———————-
Extrapolating data analysis of temperature means and acceleration rates only one decade into the future based on known data today is a conservative and reasonable approach to take. Projecting climate modelling scenarios decades ahead is unrealistic and not credible given the unknowns.
Does anyone know what is happening with GHCN Monthly? The last posting of a data file was on May 30, and that was empty. No May data at all. Until know they have posted new data every day.
Nick Stokes,
I’m not familiar with this data access but it looks like the GHCN-M data is back. Looking a short while ago, the file set HERE had mainly empty files – zero size. Now all the files have size.
Thanks. Yes, there was a gap of about five days, but it is back, with very little data outside US so far.
Nick, not sure I’m looking at the right one, but “Global Historical Climatology Network – Monthly Temperature, Version 4” had link for NCEI direct download and there are populated dat and inv files dated June 4.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/global-historical-climatology-network-monthly/v4/temperature/access/
But yeah, I look at the parent directory and dates on the last two archives show the gap
ghcn-m_v4.00.00_temp_s17600102_e20260530_c20260530.tar.gz 2026-05-30 12:23 44872738
ghcn-m_v4.00.00_temp_s17600102_e20260603_c20260603.tar.gz 2026-06-04 16:25 134804232
Why do you want to know this information?
Still intriguing.
BBC Science Focus
6/6/2026
This bold theory says we’re not Earth’s first advanced civilisation
https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/this-bold-theory-says-were-not-earths-first-advanced-civilisation
[Response: ha. -gavin]
The scientists and other volunteers of The Weather and Climate Livestream organization are continuing their fight to save federally-funded science from the latest attempts to destroy it. At the end of their latest 50-hour livestream, explaining again what they do and why their work is valuable, critical, indispensable in a modern society if it wants to sustain itself and sustain life on our planet.
Please support them, as their work benefits everybody, even the anti-science people, although they do not understand it, yet or ever.
https://youtu.be/GMaEpHKDqrI
A critical review published in early 2026 examined the deep-seated problems with relying on p-values in scientific research.
Beyond the p-Value Dichotomy (2026 Review)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12872199/
Universal Rejection of p-value as Sole Criterion: Out of 46 reviewed studies, not a single one defended the isolated use of p-values for decision-making. A significant majority (38 studies) explicitly criticized it, while 8 supported it only when combined with other metrics like confidence intervals
The Problem with p = 0.05: The conventional threshold creates an “illusion of certainty.” A p-value around 0.05 is highly unstable; in an exact replication, the chance of getting another p 98% confidence (exceeding the 95% threshold). Despite this robust finding, critics previously dismissed earlier versions for not meeting the 95% standard, and after peer review, the goalposts simply moved.
This is a textbook case of the “illusion of certainty” the review describes. The p-value was never the real issue — it was an ideological shield. As the review makes clear, clinging to the p < 0.05 threshold doesn't create reliable science; it creates a convenient tool for dismissing findings one disagrees with, regardless of statistical rigor.
The same logic applies to learning from the new Global warming acceleration in satellite observed lower-tropospheric temperature paper discussed above. When ideology overrides science, it's no longer science.
Which scientific paper, exactly, has relied on a p-value of .05 as the “sole criterion” for findings of acceleration?
Be specific. Cite specific papers.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-03/billions-over-budget-years-late-how-snowy-hydro-2-got-here/106706518
Australia’s Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project, initially touted in 2017 as a $2 billion scheme, has spiraled into a massive infrastructure controversy. While direct construction costs are officially estimated around $12 billion, energy economists and analysts warn that once interest charges and mandatory transmission upgrades are factored in, the true price tag is approaching $42 billion
Originally slated to be finished by 2021, the expected completion date has been pushed back to late 2028 at the earliest.Current leadership at Snowy Hydro has conceded that even this revised 2028 deadline is in doubt, with some analysts predicting completion could stretch into 2030 or beyond.
The astronomical $42 billion figure often cited by critics includes the cost of associated transmission infrastructure like HumeLink, as well as over a decade of compound interest during the prolonged construction phase.
Despite these hurdles, the government-owned company maintains that the project is roughly two-thirds complete and is critical for firming up the National Electricity Market as coal plants retire
And some more info on the acceleration matter on Tamino I addressed above
Fire accounted for one-third of global land cover change in 2023, with forest loss due to fire increasing dramatically in boreal and tropical regions. Emissions from forest fires have risen 60% since 2001 . The positive feedback is explicit.
https://www.wri.org/insights/land-use-climate-change-feedback-loop
Methane emissions from fossil fuel operations are still not falling despite proven mitigation pathways, according to the IEA’s Global Methane Tracker 2026
https://van.nongnghiepmoitruong.vn/tackling-methane-emissions-key-for-climate-change-and-energy-security-d809515.html
new Nature Climate Change study (June 2026) found that under warming, natural methane emissions from lakes, ponds and wetlands will increase inexorably — the methane-consuming microbes cannot keep up with the extra methane being produced . That’s another direct positive feedback
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1130715
The data from 2025 and 2026 is painting a picture of an Arctic where the natural environment is becoming a major, and increasingly uncontrollable, driver of permafrost melt methane emissions though difficult to quantify into the future.
The Ice Loss & Albedo Feedback
Fresh research (May 2026) in Nature Geoscience confirms Antarctic ice melt creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop that most climate models don’t include. The study warns this means the out of date IPCC scenario projections are “too conservative”. Will AR7 improve reporting?
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1128447
Fossil Fuel Emissions Are Still Rising
Wood Mackenzie’s Energy Transition Outlook 2025-26 confirms: peak emissions now projected for 2028 been (pushed back), with the global warming pathway at 2.6°C, above their base case from a year ago. The report states bluntly: “No major country is on track to meet their 2030 emissions targets”
https://storage.pardot.com/131501/1761584185BajrOANV/Wood_Mackenzie_ETO_2025_26_executive_summary.pdf
Of course it all adds up alongside current and future data centre rollouts.
Alberta is actively pitching cheap natural gas to tech companies for AI data centers — directly contradicting Canada’s “clean power” AI strategy. 90% of Canada’s 100 planned hyperscale data centers are in Alberta, where the grid is 60% natural gas and emissions intensity is 5x the national average
The 2026 Shell “Surge” scenario projects data centres consuming an additional 5,000 terawatt-hours by 2050 — about 8% of global electricity supply. In that scenario, AI infrastructure becomes a primary driver of new generation, but fossil fuels remain in the mix for decades still.
Renewables are expanding, but they’re barely keeping up with demand growth, not displacing fossil fuels. While the developing nations seek to rapidly increase their energy supply. As Wood Mackenzie puts it: “Renewables largely add to supply rather than displacing fossil fuels”.
Not surprising if warming is accelerating, with feedbacks kicking in, and fossil fuel emissions still rising into the future.
Copernicus has posted for May 2026 with a May global ERA5 SAT anomaly of +0.55ºC, up a bit on April’s +0.52ºC but not greatly impacting the year-to-date average which now stands at +0.53ºC. This year-to-date for 2026 is significantly down on the 2025 equivalent of +0.64ºC last year but with May 2026 warmer than May 2025, this means the 12-month rolling averages have now bottomed-out if not begun to rise** towards a “scorchio!!” El Niño wobble through the coming 12 months. (** Last year, the anomalies continued dropping after May with June-Aug in 2025 running +0.47ºC, +0.45ºC, +0.49ºC.)
GISTEMP & NOAA have also reported for May. They both show May’s global temperature anomalies down on April’s (GISS at +1.12ºC, down from April’s +1.17ºC, NOAA at +1.07ºC down from April’s +1.14ºC) but these May anomalies both up on last year’s May anomaly (GISS +1.08ºC, NOAA +1.06ºC).
Both GISS & NOAA are SAT/SST which would explain the April-to-May difference from wholly SAT ERA5.
SST-wise, the ERA5 re-analysis 60N-60S SST anomaly was flat through May, this in contrast to the strong warming seen Jan-Apr. Using the daily numbers at ClimatePulse, these SST60-60 anomalies Jan-May run +0.37ºC, +0.41ºC, +0.44ºC, +0.50ºC, +0.49ºC.
Projecting forward to anticipate how high the global temperature will go with the coming El Niño is perhaps best done without recourse to 12-month averages as the start-point. The 12-month aves still show a value boosted by the cooling anomalies a year ago. The present May anomalies are not greatly different to those for May/June back in 2023 in the run up to the “bananas!!!” anomalies that Autumn. The Banana Watch!!! continues.
While the coming El Niño is projected to be likely stronger than back in 2023, as the Official NOAA CPC ENSO Strength Probabilities page says “Stronger events do not always mean bigger weather and climate impacts. Stronger events can make it ‘more likely’ that certain impacts could occur.” (The page should get its June update later today.)
The NINO3.4 temperature the raw numbers used to measure ENSO strengths was stuck at +1ºC right through May but took an upward step to +1.3ºC for the first week of June. (Not sure how the NINO3.4 is now converted into the new RNINO3.4 they use.)
And here’s a thought concerning El Niño. Over the last 30 years we’ve had two “very strong” El Niños (1997 & 2015) and two managing a “strong” rating ( 2009 & 2023). The resulting temperature wobbles didn’t entirely reflect those ratings, particularly when the Southern Hemisphere is considered. Add in the stronger warming in the NH thro’ autumn months (which is not entirely an ENSO thing) and the relationship between El Niño strength and attribution of the global warm wobble to an El Niño becomes less-than-straightforward. And what’s with the arrival of that warm wobble in the SH (the El Niño is well-synchronised to the season) so early in less strong 2009 & 2023 El Niños?
Years … … … … 1997-98 … … 2009-10 … 2015-16 … 2023-24
Max RONI … … … … 2.4 … … … …1.5 … … … 2.3 … … … 1.5
Max T (Global) … +0.25ºC … … +0.19ºC … +0.32ºC … +0.27ºC
Max T (NH) … . … +0.28ºC … … +0.21ºC … +0.51ºC … +0.42ºC
Max T (SH) … . … +0.24ºC … … +0.20ºC … +0.15ºC … +0.17ºC
(NOTE – Anomaly bases for NH & SH differ from Global here)
Belated Hug a Climate Scientist Day from me and First Dog on the Moon! To all climate scientists, on this website and everywhere in the world, the serious, real ones, please continue to work on identifying, describing and solving the most consequential crisis humans have ever caused. Please continue to be both scientists and activists and never give up despite all the sabotaging and adversity you are facing.
“Today we show our love and gratitude to the brave boffins at the coal face of existential dread.”
With hugs and gratitude.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/jun/12/hug-a-climate-scientist-today-just-dont-make-it-weird-they-are-already-dealing-with-enough
The RSS MSU & AMSU Time Series Trend Browse Tool is now showing data to May 2026, the previous data update being to Dec last year. Given TLT updates for monthly global, NH & SH NOAA STAR HERE stalled last July, RSS numbers allow me a source of TLT global monthly numbers that are not UAH, numbers which do seem to have more problems than others getting the numbers right. (Most recently, UAH TLT was running a bit hot for a while back in 2024 before a correction appeared in the shape of v6.1.)
The RSS (& UAH) SH TLT number for May is perhaps just starting to show the coming El Niño with the highest SH anomaly since Oct 2024.
The ERA5 SAT numbers at ClimatePulse have now posted up to mid-June but no signs yet of the coming El Niño boosting global anomalies. And no NH or SH signs seen at CCI/Uni of Maine’s ClimateRe-analyzer. The NINO3.4 anomaly is showing the El Niño warming – after stalling at +1.0ºC thro’ May, it has now ramped up to +1.5ºC. Indeed, the ERA5 re-analysis has the entire Pacific “schorchyisimo!!!!” since late April. They have a ‘Spotlight: Exceptionally high SSTs in the tropical Pacific’ at the bottom of the Copernicus ‘Surface air temperature for May 2026’ page.
For some, the burning question will be whether 2026 claims the mantle of ‘warmest year on record’ (If it does, 2026 will then likely then hand that mantle on to 2027).
There is a Hansen et al communication posted last week entitled ‘Yes, 2026 is on Track to be the Hottest Year’. This claim is based on the not-so-wobbly ERA5 60N-60S SST numbers. Not-so-wobbly is good but SST isn’t SAT.
The argument is that 2023 was cooler than the present record year 2024 but that 2026 has been running warmer than 2023 and also will have its later months boosted by El Niño. Thus they note
I note the sparsity of numbers in this account. And regarding the one number presented, 2026 has not “continue(d) to be at least 0.1°C warmer than in 2023”, not since the back-end of May.
Putting some numbers into this argument, 2024 is the warmest year in the ERA5 60-60 SST record with the annual average at +0.51ºC. And 2023 sits as second-warmest at +0.45ºC. (2025 managed +0.38ºC.) So 2026 will have to top 2023 by +0.07ºC to claim the ERA5 60-60 SST ‘warmest year on record’.
And the 2026 has been tracking warmer than 2023, the year-to-15June gives 2026 an extra +0.065ºC to its annual average, so the 2026 60-60 SST is almost there. With the latest numbers, the 2023-2026 gap sits at +0.04°C warmer which, if maintained to year’s-end would make 2026 +0.087°C warmer than 2023 and thus 2026 would become the ERA5 60-60 SST ‘warmest year on record’ by +0.017°C.
Also there is the forecast for the 2026 El Niño being likely “very strong” while the 2023 El Niño only managed “strong”
Conversely, we did see the “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” SAT numbers thro’ the autumn of 2023. And SAT, although more wobbly, is actually the measure usually used for ‘warmest year on record’.
If this 2023 comparison is repeated for ERA5 SAT numbers rather than 60-60 SST numbers, we have the annual averages of 2023 +0.60ºC & 2024 +0.72ºC (& 2025 +0.59ºC). So 2026 will need to top the annual 2023 SAT by +0.12ºC.
2026 had been tracking above 2023, the year-to-15June gives 2026 an extra +0.072ºC. But unlike the 60-60SST, the SAT has presently caught up and fallen behind 2023 so there is no 2023-2026 gap for the rest of the year as of 15June. If this remains the case, 2026 will fall short of ERA5 SAT ‘warmest year on record’ by +0.04ºC.
Of course SAT is wobbly so “absolutely gobsmacking” stuff can happen.
A main takeaway from the Hansen post you refer, is that the extra warm follows aerosol reductions, and a higher climate sensitivity. And as the worldwide heat currently shows a trend is building, weather services call for at least continued hot conditions for the reminder of June.
Quote:”The basis for our projection of record 2026 global temperature is high climate sensitivity, with its implication that aerosol cooling was still increasing during the period 1970-2005. One consequence, global sea surface warming, already has important effects. Causes of climate change must be understood for policy purposes.”
“IPCC underestimated aerosol cooling during the 1970-2005 period of steady global warming. Our assessment that climate sensitivity is 4-5°C for 2×CO2”
https://earthclimate.eu/2026/06/17/hansen-yes-2026-is-on-track-to-be-the-hottest-year/
El Niño is underway in the tropical Pacific. Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the central tropical Pacific are above El Niño thresholds, and atmospheric indicators are also aligning with an El Niño state. This suggests the ocean and atmosphere are acting to reinforce the ENSO state, which is likely to strengthen and sustain this event until at least the end of the year. https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/?index=nino34&ninoIndex=nino3.4&period=weekly#tabs=Overview
Rodger’s dismissal of Hansen’s latest article as merely an SST argument is a significant oversimplification and mischaracterization of Hansen’s broader scientific framework. Hansen’s forecast is a physics-based projection grounded in high climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing—not a short-term SST tracking exercise.
Rodger’s complaint is a classic rhetorical move: by demanding “numbers” while ignoring the physics—climate sensitivity, aerosol forcing, Earth’s energy imbalance—he reframes a scientific debate about mechanisms into a narrow one about short-term data smoothing. This avoids the substantive science entirely.
His critique also relies on questionable methods: cherry-picking a momentary mid-June data gap, extrapolating it linearly to year’s end, and switching between SST and SAT metrics without justification. He is effectively constructing his own model (linear extrapolation) to attack Hansen’s, ignoring the non-linear physics of an unfolding El Niño—exactly the kind of “foggy” modeling Hansen criticizes.
At its core, this is a clash of approaches. Hansen offers a physics-first, model-driven, big-picture prediction designed to test a scientific hypothesis. Rodger offers data-smoothing and metric-chasing. The most telling point: the prediction is for the full year 2026. Drawing conclusions in mid-June is premature. A valid scientific critique would need to engage with the physics, not just chase monthly anomalies.
The following articles might help understanding:
Yes, 2026 is on Track to be the Hottest Year
Abstract. Projections of near-term climate change are a potential research tool. However, for that tool to be most useful, the physical basis for a prediction must be made clear. The basis for our projection of record 2026 global temperature is …..
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/2026-on-track-for-warmest-year
Returning to the original hypothesis:
“A Carbon Brief article last week (“Strong El Nino Puts 2026 on Track for Second Warmest Year”)[4] makes us wonder about the basis for such expert projection. We are reminded of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) expert projections with unstated assumptions and whose physical basis is inscrutable to the public. Organized climate model runs for the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) are valuable for climate analyses, but the fog of all model results should not be misinterpreted as a probability distribution for the real world.
As an alternative, let’s try a physics-based approach, with the hope to learn something from it by the end of the year. Specifically, let’s assume that the budding El Nino will have strength at least comparable to the 2023-24 El Nino. We assume that global temperature change is caused by climate forcings (imposed changes of the planet’s energy balance) and that “Nino” variability is the only substantial source of global “noise,” i.e., unforced global temperature change.
Why is this exercise of interest? Because, as we discussed in prior posts, the main issue is not El Nino, but the need to understand accelerated warming, unprecedented marine heat waves, and increasing climate extremes. The high rate of global warming acceleration was not anticipated by IPCC because …………………… “
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/2026-on-track-for-warmest-year
Before that February – Another El Nino Already? What Can We Learn from It?
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/another-el-nino-already-what-can
And before that December 2025 – Global Temperature in 2025, 2026, 2027
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/global-temperature-in-2025-2026-2027
I’ve been reading tyhdtvit is now acknowledged that RCP 8.5 and 6 arnt happening due to the amount of renewables deploying and deployed which prevents these scenarios. Ok – other leader pathways sent out of the question as yet but with the surge in renewables due to costs coming down and battery storage it’s not looking like we will go beyond 2.5C
It depends on how people choose to look at it. Their default values, their culture and conditioning. The new 7 scenarios are the same as the 5 old scenarios, they are for the foot-draggers. They give everyone an excuse to do nothing much.
Scenario Who it serves
High “That’s the alarmist scenario, won’t happen.”
Low “Great, we’re on track, no need to change.”
Medium “We’re somewhere in the middle, carry on.”
Very Low “Look, 1.5°C is still possible!” (ignoring the CDR fantasy)
Low-to-Negative “We can overshoot and fix it later.”
High-to-Low “We’ll pivot when we’re ready.”
Medium-to-Low “More research needed.”
Every scenario provides plausible deniability for inaction. There’s always a pathway that justifies the current course, and always a reason to wait. Because, humans being like we are, the more scenarios you have, the less useful the ensemble becomes for decision-making. Because when everything is possible, nothing is probable.
The honest approach is two scenarios. No ambiguity. A simple two-scenario framework would force clarity:
High: This is where we’re heading if we don’t change course. Business as usual. Catastrophic.
Medium: This is where we could get with serious but realistic effort. Still bad, but survivable.
Everything else is just noise. Because anything below Medium requires magic — CDR at scale, global cooperation, economic degrowth, technological miracles. We don’t do magic. We do physics.
“Did I mention…volcanic emissions of water vapor as well as sulfates?”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/05/scenarios-schmenarios/
I previously posited polar amplification through supercooled stratospheric water vapor emissions of the shallow submarine Hunga Tonga eruption potentially explaining the 0.2C pulsed warming my simplistic model detected over 2022-2023 time span.
I used multivariable linear regression to subtract the global influence of localized oscillation modes from sea surface temperatures, and directly detected the underlying anthropogenic warming trend plus other forcing such as volcanic emissions, including Pinatubo and possibly several other eruptions as well.
I was actually looking for Hansen’s aerosol termination shock, but what I found instead was apparently Hunga Tonga.
Last time I participated here, atmospheric models showing net cooling did not consider polar amplification from supercooled water vapor. Nor did they explain why I detected a pulsed warming signature, even as other research showed the southern ocean warming in 2022, and the Antarctic sea ice relatively declining through the southern winters for several years in a row before apparently recovering somewhat last year.
The existing atmospheric models of Hunga Tonga do not explain the actual temperature and sea ice measurements, with a net cooling modeled response not validating against those measurements.
Lacking the means for rigorous independent investigation myself, I repeatedly requested that climate scientists with expertise and resources investigate my findings and hypothesis, but in the interim I’ve not seen any evidence that anyone did.
Meanwhile, my own circumstances worsened as my housing situation destabilized, and I’ve been unable to update my spreadsheet or regenerate plots to see if my own projections of future modeled/compensated SST response continued to accurately reflect actual measurements. Hopefully I’ve stabilized enough to resume my investigation, but I also have new health issues, and the process of rebuilding my computers has stalled while I address those health issues.
Another layperson friend pointed me to research showing that the salty water vapor of Hunga Tonga helped catalyze the reaction of its methane emissions to breakdown products, but gave no indication of the net effect of that methane, or of the salty vapor that seems might have so far confounded the experts in some respects.
Apologies for possibly rehashing topics that have already been discussed at length while I was away, but I’d very much like to know:
1) Did anyone see any revision of atmospheric modeling of Hunga Tonga that takes into account the potential for polar amplification, which we already know is historically poorly modeled for lack of accurate estimates of the proportion of supercooled stratospheric water vapor, given the difficulty of taking accurate atmospheric measurements in such remote and hostile polar environments?
2) Has anyone managed to account for that currently unmodeled 0.2C warming spike in 2023, aside from cherry-picking some subset of CMIP6 ensemble models/parameters that encompass that spike inside the error bars? AFAIK Gavin and Zeke never did produce a satisfactory accounting from the collection of solar activity, ENSO, albedo, etc and never fully encapsulated 2023, and AFAIK the ‘ocean heat wave’ hypothesis never caught on either, despite prior super El Niño following prolonged La Niña having been established as a historical precedent at least twice before. 2023 was not a super El Niño AFAIK and turned out to be milder than global temperatures indicated. My model consequently did not reproduce the extraordinary 2023 warming spike because of that modest 2023 El Niño.
3) Has any other root cause analysis finally put to bed the mystery of 2023 warming spike, whether or not that analysis includes my own entirely amateurish regression modeling of SST that is based in my electrical engineering experience, and completely lacking scientific rigor of its own? This question burns in my mind as a conundrum, since AFAIK that 2023 warming spike is one of only two known significant modeling shortcomings, with the second one being polar amplification, which is longstanding, and potentially also the root cause of the other.
Thank you for indulging my questions, and doubly thanks for any enlightenment this august group of experts can shed on my admittedly ignorant and perhaps seemingly presumptuous contributions.
In closing, I’m including references to my own amateurish contributions.
“Did I mention…volcanic emissions of water vapor as well as sulfates?” — Gavin
I previously posited polar amplification through supercooled stratospheric water vapor emissions of the shallow submarine Hunga Tonga eruption potentially explaining the 0.2C pulsed warming that my simplistic model detected over 2022-2023 time span.
I used multivariable linear regression to subtract the global influence of localized oscillation modes from sea surface temperatures, and directly detected the underlying anthropogenic warming trend plus other forcing such as volcanic emissions, including Pinatubo and possibly several other eruptions as well.
I was actually looking for Hansen’s aerosol termination shock, but what I found instead was apparently Hunga Tonga.
Last time I participated here, atmospheric models showing net cooling after Hunga Tonga did not consider polar amplification from supercooled water vapor.
Nor did they explain why I detected a pulsed warming signature, even as other research showed the southern ocean warming in 2022, and the Antarctic sea ice relatively declining through the southern winters for several years in a row before apparently recovering somewhat last year.
The existing atmospheric models of Hunga Tonga do not explain the actual temperature and sea ice measurements, with a net cooling modeled response not validating against those measurements.
Lacking the means for rigorous independent investigation myself, I repeatedly requested that climate scientists with expertise and resources investigate my findings and hypothesis, but in the interim I’ve not seen any evidence that anyone did.
Meanwhile, my own circumstances worsened as my housing situation destabilized, and I’ve been unable to update my spreadsheet or regenerate plots to see if my own projections of future modeled/compensated SST response continued to accurately reflect actual measurements. Hopefully I’ve stabilized enough to resume my investigation, but I also have new health issues, and the process of rebuilding my computers has stalled while I address those health issues.
Another layperson friend pointed me to research showing that the salty water vapor of Hunga Tonga helped catalyze the reaction of its methane emissions to breakdown products, but gave no indication of the net effect of that methane, or the net effect of the salty vapor that seems might have so far confounded the experts in some respects.
Apologies for possibly rehashing topics that have already been discussed at length while I was away, but I’d very much like to know:
1) Did anyone see any revision of atmospheric modeling of Hunga Tonga that takes into account the potential for polar amplification, which we already know is historically poorly modeled for lack of accurate estimates of the proportion of supercooled stratospheric water vapor, given the difficulty of taking accurate atmospheric measurements in such remote and hostile polar environments?
2) Has anyone managed to account for that currently unmodeled 0.2C warming spike in 2023, aside from cherry-picking some subset of CMIP6 ensemble models/parameters that encompass that spike inside the error bars? AFAIK Gavin and Zeke never did produce a satisfactory accounting from the collection of solar activity, ENSO, albedo, etc and never fully encapsulated 2023. AFAIK the ‘ocean heat wave’ hypothesis never caught on either, despite prior super El Niño following prolonged La Niña having been established as a historical precedent at least twice before. 2023 was not a super El Niño AFAIK and turned out to be milder than global temperatures indicated. My model that compensates for El Niño consequently did not reproduce the extraordinary 2023 warming spike because of that modest 2023 El Niño.
3) Has any other root cause analysis finally put to bed the mystery of 2023 warming spike, whether or not that analysis includes my own entirely amateurish regression modeling of SST that is based in my electrical engineering experience, and completely lacking scientific rigor of its own? This question burns in my mind as a conundrum, since AFAIK that 2023 warming spike is one of only two known significant remaining modeling shortcomings, with the second one being polar amplification, which is longstanding, and potentially also the root cause of the other.
Thank you for indulging my questions, and doubly thanks for any enlightenment this august group of experts can shed on my admittedly ignorant and perhaps seemingly presumptuous contributions.
For reference, here is the link to my most comprehensive ‘analysis’ (such as it is) of my polar amplification hypothesis.
https://x.com/cheryl_josie/status/1932239972993782036
Here is a link to my reply re: Peter Carter’s post about recently developed evidence of the Antarctic glacier retreat, showing that others also noticed it began in 2022, immediately after Hunga Tonga.
https://x.com/cheryl_josie/status/2033520500614574453
Here is the link to my most recent status. My last working computer went offline during renovations and has remained offline since while finishing up the work. I haven’t updated since the end of 2025.
https://x.com/cheryl_josie/status/2004515360645808561
Has the unmodeled portion of 2023 warming surge been resolved through root cause?
Apologies if this question has already been answered. I’ve been offline for a while.
Thanks.
There’s something about that at “Cause of Extreme North Atlantic Warming in 2023 with Matthew England” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39T7bW7KA18 by “Climate Chat” (Dan Miller) on Jul 17, 2025
“Martin Smith” 20 May 2026 at 7:07 AM typed “we know CO2 absorbs infrared energy and re-emits it, a lot of it back to earth”. Actually, that’s almost entirely incorrect (looks to be ~0.002% correct) as physicists who have studied it must know. The so-called “greenhouse effect (GHE)” in Earth’s troposphere is actually caused by 4 simple facts (1) All Matter in parcels warmer than -273.15 degrees (molecules can collide) manufactures electromagnetic radiation (2) Molecules absorb photons in relative quantity by wavelength matching the relative quantity by wavelength at which they manufacture photons (3) Photon manufacture is in some way proportional to Kelvin of the parcel but photon absorption is not (4) The troposphere usually by far has a temperature that decreases with altitude (when and where it is not then the GHE works backwards and causes cooling).
There’s nothing in the physics Reality that has anything to do with “re-emits it, a lot of it back to earth” (setting aside the fact that “earth” means soil or loam, not ocean). ~No radiation (maybe ~0.002%) is going “back” anywhere at all at any place from the centre of Earth to 100 km above Earth’s ocean surface. It’s all a Peer-to-Peer exchange of photons everywhere. The “back” is massively-confusing nonsense disseminated by Professional physicists who have negligible Professional ethic.
You are correct, Barry. My understanding was wrong. However, you can’t use my misunderstanding of the GHE to attack physicists.
Reply to Martin Smith
Because re-emission occurs in all directions, roughly half of the energy is directed back toward the Earth’s surface . This “back-radiation” is a real, measurable phenomenon.
A 1954 paper in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences details the use of a radiometer for measuring this exact “back radiation from the sky” . This directly refutes the claim that such radiation didn’t exist or was unmeasurable.
And not only that but common usage within climate science, “earth” or “Earth’s surface” refers to the planet’s surface as a whole, land and ocean. Using it in a planetary context is standard.
Martin’s statement is a correct, simplified description of a fundamental greenhouse gas mechanism. Barry’s assertion that back-radiation does not exist is demonstrably false and common knowledge. A minor example of the pickle humans are in today.
Joke, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
Barry, A couple of suggestions regarding your account of the radiative physics in the atmosphere.
1) The first may seem trivial, but I would not use the term “manufacture” wrt photons. I would instead use generation or, better yet, emission.
2) I would also add the role of equipartition–the idea that energy tends to be shared equally in all modes accessible to the system. Indeed, the response to adding greenhouse gasses is a good example of equipartition. The greenhouse gasses absorb photons in their absorption bands. The resulting vibrations in the molecule become excited. Through collisions, the vibrational energy of the greenhouse molecules is shared with the rest of the atmosphere and the resulting mass thermalizes, moving towards equilibrium. The greenhouse absorption is converted to kinetic energy, which cannot escape the atmosphere.
Martin, “you can’t use my misunderstanding of the GHE to attack physicists”. Life doesn’t ALL have to be about Martin, Martin. You are perhaps the 250th entity to whom I’ve pointed out what’s nonsense and yours is far more sensible, though incorrect, than some that rabbit on about photons being “bounced back to earth” or “reflected back to earth”.
Whichever physicists doing this “re-emit” and “back” for photons that are neither being emitted a subsequent time nor going back any place have caused significant damage over the last couple of decades in the “Social Media Discourse” which you will not have noticed of course but I certainly have. I’ve skimmed through a few hundred comments in a “Forum” and in UTube comments that are highly approving of drivel being presented which is entirely based on the total drivel of photons from the surface being re-emitted. The theme that CO2 is saturated, theme CO2 effect is negligible because convection dominates and theme CO2 has no effect at all because it supposes that “the surface warms itself”.
Martin I’ll now be a “Denier” and use the “Joke Zonderkop” “science” to prove that climate scientists such as our hosts have messed up big time with measurement and greatly overestimated the CO2 effect. Here it is:
“Because re-emission occurs in all directions, roughly half of the energy is directed back toward the Earth’s surface according to top climate scientist “Joke Zonderkop”. But the energy budget shows 396 w/m**2 going up and half of that energy is 198 w/m**2 going down, but they show 345 w/m**2 back radiation so they added 147 w/m**2. Where’s this magical non-existent energy coming from?!!! They almost doubled the real warming to make it sound scarier! It’s all a big hoax!”
There you go Martin, when the ignorant “Joke Zonderkop” dispenses that rubbish, that’s what happens. Do you think that’s inconsequential? There’s also the matter of whether a bod adopts the principle “Never state anything that you know is incorrect” or they don’t adopt it.
BEF: There’s nothing in the physics Reality that has anything to do with “re-emits it, a lot of it back to earth” (setting aside the fact that “earth” means soil or loam, not ocean). ~No radiation (maybe ~0.002%) is going “back” anywhere at all at any place from the centre of Earth to 100 km above Earth’s ocean surface. It’s all a Peer-to-Peer exchange of photons everywhere. The “back” is massively-confusing nonsense disseminated by Professional physicists who have negligible Professional ethic.
BPL: When all else fails, try libel.
Back-radiation is real. We’ve been measuring it since at least 1954.
Barton Paul Levenson, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
BEF: Barton Paul Levenson, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
BPL: Thanks, but I have–that’s how I got my degree in physics.
As I understand it now, what actually happens immediately after CO2 molecules absorb infrared photons from the surface, is most of the absorbed infrared energy becomes heat through increased molecular collisions. But eventually, the atmosphere–all the gases, not just CO2–re-emit more infrared photons in all directions, including downward, producing the back-radiation effect. Both are parts of the same greenhouse process. So I was wrong to say just the CO2 re-emits the absorbed infrared photons. All the gases participate.
No, I don’t think that’s correct–only greenhouse gases radiate IR. Nitrogen, oxygen, and argon don’t.
In Re to Barton Paul Levenson, 22 Jun 2026 at 7:51 AM.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849338
Hallo Barton,
Please note the correction by Martin Smith himself in his subsequent comment of 21 Jun 2026 at 1:58 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849310
The reason why monoatomic gases like Ar are IR transparent is obvious (no valence bonds – no vibrations possible). Homonuclear diatomic molecules do not absorb IR radiation as well, because the selection rule for IR active vibrational energy transitions is a change in molecular electric dipole moment.
Greetings
T
Yes, that was wrong. Nitrogen and Oxygen store energy received by collisions but only transfer it to other molecules by more collisions.
This is important! At typical atmospheric temperatures, the average kinetic energy of the gas molecules is significantly less than the absorption band for the vibrational mode of CO2, so collisional excitation is a relatively rare process! Once the energy is thermalized, it doesn’t have a way out of the atmosphere until it gets turned into radiative energy again.
in Re to Ray Ladbury, 24 Jun 2026 at 11:16 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849377
Dear Ray,
Although I do not know if you meant your comment this way, it appears that you think that CO2 molecules in thermal equilibrium with the air comprising them at usual atmospheric conditions are not in radiative equilibrium with passing infrared radiation, because their collisions do not have enough energy to activate the respective vibrational transitions.
If so, I would like to ask if you considered that entire velocity / kinetic energy distribution of air molecules may be rather broad (I guess) and thus perhaps still offering sufficient frequency of collisions strong enough for CO2 excitation and establishing the radiative equilibrium.
In the opposite case (if my speculation of the preceding paragraph is wrong and you indeed know another, non-thermal means for CO2 vibrational excitation), could you specify the other mechanism allowing that the thermalized energy of the absorbed IR photons finally “gets turned into radiative energy again”?
Thank you in advance and greetings
Tomáš
Martin, the “Barton Paul Levenson” has a degree in physics and will explain to you why the microwave photons manufactured by the oxygen molecules in Earth’s atmosphere that reach Outer Space possess no energy.
And/Or you could get this from me: As I indicated in my first comment all Matter in parcels warmer than -273.15 degrees manufactures radiation. This is all about RELATIVE QUANTITY for the “balanced situation” Martin, and for changes of energy flow is about that plus how much change occurs over Millennia or whatever (like nitrogen in the air doesn’t change greatly relative to other changes). The base quantity could be 340 or 240 w/m**2 and if something is going to be changed by 0.01 w/m**2 over many decades or longer it’s likely too small to bother with.
Apparently, the oxygen molecules absorb (to rotational energy) but do not manufacture the microwave photons. I had thought there was a Law that spectral lines that are absorbed must also be emitted (manufactured). I’ll have to sort that out one day.
in Re to Barry E Finch, 24 Jun 2026 at 8:56 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849390
Dear Barry,
For dioxygen molecules, transitions between their rotational energy states are inactive in microwave radiation spectrum, because the selection rule for such radiation absorption / emission requires a permanent dipole moment of the respective molecule (which is zero in O2).
For the same reason, also carbon dioxide does not absorb / emit radiation at microwave frequencies (except when its molecules occur in vibrational excited states that make it asymmetric), while water does, irrespective of the vibrational state of its molecules.
Greetings
Tomáš
Barry E Finch Apparently, the oxygen molecules absorb (to rotational energy) but do not manufacture the microwave photons.(..) I’ll have to sort that out one day.
Don’t worry, Barry. Not like you had made patronizing comments toward others based on your presumption of being correct, right? ;=)
====
BEF: Barton Paul Levenson, you are incorrect. You evidently haven’t studied radiative physics. I suggest that you study radiative physics.
BEF: Martin, the “Barton Paul Levenson” has a degree in physics and will explain to you why the microwave photons manufactured by the oxygen molecules in Earth’s atmosphere that reach Outer Space possess no energy. And/or you could get this from me:
=====
Related
A New Study Explains How Carbon Dioxide Cools the Upper Atmosphere—and Warms Earth Below https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2026/05/12/a-new-study-explains-how-carbon-dioxide-cools-the-upper-atmosphere-and-warms-earth-below/
chris,
Without getting too far into the weeds, the Columbia Climate press release you link-to does not itself get into the weeds. The abstract of the paywalled paper Cohen et al (2026) ‘Stratospheric cooling and amplification of radiative forcing with rising carbon dioxide is not as understandable as the abstract/full preprint account (HERE). The preprint abstract runs:-
This is all about the ‘why’ of the already-known-&-quantified stratospheric cooling. It’s about the stratospheric cooling mechanism kicked-off by increased CO2 and modulated by the impact of that cooling on O3 & H2O levels in the stratosphere. It’s not about surface global warming. The climate Forcing from GHG-changes is measured at the tropopause below the stratosphere. Because of stratospheric ‘effects’ across the tropopause, the climate Forcing is adjusted for a stratosphere in equilibrium with that Forcing (IRF → ERF). The “study explains” the cooling. It does not ‘explain’ how this “warms the Earth below”.
[Response: The claim that no-one understood the mechanism until this paper is a bit off though. – gavin]
A sort of back of the envelope kind of reasoning can explain the phenomena without resorting to detailed analysis. I’m not dissing detailed analysis, it’s necessary to obtain a correct quantitative prediction. In any case the stratosphere can be thought of as being optically thin. Any photons emitted in the upward direction can be assumed to escape to space. Heating is a combination of the absorption of upwelling infrared, and the absorption of solar UV. The later is not effected by CO2 concentration. So an approximately unchanging amount of energy to be radiated by the stratosphere has more local CO2 molecules to do the emissions. That leads to a lower local temperature.
Chris, it’s my understanding that it’s simply a matter of whether the cold (vertical) end or warm (vertical) end of an atmospheric layer is closer to Outer Space. With the cold end closer (troposphere) it warms all from the top of troposphere down because cold sends less radiation upwards, and with the warm end closer (stratosphere) it cools all from the top of troposphere down, but the cooling effect of the stratosphere on the ecosphere is small compared with warming effect of troposphere. (Clarifying, so the temperature drop of stratosphere is larger than temperature rise of troposphere but stratosphere has few molecules compared with the ecosphere is mostly by far the vast ocean).
In fact, when & where the troposphere has a “backwards” temperature lapse, then the presence of H2O gas, CO2, CH4, N2O, O3, CFCs does indeed cause an “anti-greenhouse effect” and make the troposphere and (ice-snow) surface colder than it would have been with no GHGs. As measured and shown at 20:09 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgP-lwf2tb8 panel (f) “Antarctica” (obviously clear sky in Winter) and at 2:27 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNgMyDRWWrA
The crust & mantle do a sort of GHE by preventing the mantle from radiating to Outer Space by absorbing photons from the mantle and changing them into “heat”, within a micron or so I assume. Else Earth would present its red-hot mantle to Outer Space and its geothermal heat (not the Sun down there) would dissipate far more rapidly than it does, cooling the mantle.
“(stratosphere) it cools all from the top of troposphere down” S.B.
“(stratosphere) it cools all from the top of stratosphere down”
ChatGPT corrected my correction:
“The extra CO₂ molecules absorb outgoing infrared photons and distribute that energy through collisions to all the surrounding air molecules. The warmed atmosphere then emits infrared radiation through its greenhouse gases, with some of that radiation directed back toward the surface and some toward space.”
The nitrogen and oxygen molecules don’t emit infrared photons much. They hold onto their increased energy until they transfer it back to greenhouse gas molecules, from which it eventually re-emitted.
Martin, the “ChatGPT” rubbish looks worse than your own rubbish to me. I was thinking of picking both apart but would be a pointless waste of time. Instead I’ll repeat my accurate description of all relevant facts (constant repetition of the same comment is allowed & encouraged here because it makes RealClimate look all “busy” and “important in the Social Media”). I’ll just note a tidbit: “ChatGPT” decided either to start with an atmosphere at -273.15 degrees or else to start with no atmosphere and then add “extra CO₂ molecules” in order to start an atmosphere for Earth with the “ChatGPT” weird or bizarre “The warmed atmosphere then emits infrared radiation”. Evidently, Earth’s troposphere emits no radiation into the surface-water surface not into Earth’s stratosphere until “extra CO₂ molecules” are dumped into it. Veeeeerrrrry eeeeeeenteressssssting.
I wonder whether “Martin Smith” would be interesting in understanding the very-large damage that has been done, and will be done, by the decision of whomever(s) to introduce for the purpose of Parroting by Parrots the senseless words “re-emits”, “re-radiates”, “back radiation” instead of the correct words “emits”, “radiates”, “downwelling radiation”. Both the damage in the Social Media Discussion sphere and also the actual large physical-science difference (circa 29%).
Also, the great damage done to me, to my fingers, by having to type “manufacture” all the time instead of “emit” (as pointed out by scientist “Ray Ladbury”) so that it isn’t altered to the stupid, meaningless, incorrect “re-emit” either by intelligent, cunning Fossils explaining that the GHE is either minuscule, “saturated” or non existent, or altered by Anti-Fossils who have the thought processes of Parrots (so not at all intelligent, cunning).
The so-called “greenhouse effect (GHE)” in Earth’s troposphere is caused by 4 simple facts (1) All Matter in parcels warmer than -273.15 degrees (molecules can collide) manufactures electromagnetic radiation (2) Molecules absorb photons in relative quantity by wavelength matching the relative quantity by wavelength at which they manufacture photons (3) Photon manufacture is in some way proportional to Kelvin of the parcel but photon absorption is not (4) The troposphere usually by far has a temperature that decreases with altitude (when and where it is not then the GHE works backwards and causes cooling). That’s it! That’s the lot! There’s nothing in the physics Reality that has anything to do with “re-emits” photons nor with photons going “back” to Earth’s surface. Those photons aren’t the ones that left Earth’s surface. None of the photons is emitted, boomerangs back with Space curvature and gets absorbed and “re-emitted”. That rubbish is pretty-much brain dead. Cheers.
BEF: “Evidently, Earth’s troposphere emits no radiation into the surface-water surface not into Earth’s stratosphere until “extra CO₂ molecules” are dumped into it. Veeeeerrrrry eeeeeeenteressssssting.”
MS: No, Barry, neither I nor ChatGPT think the warming process began when we started adding CO2 to the atmosphere. I assumed that you, and most readers of RealClimate, understand that the GHE has been keeping Earth’s surface warm enough and stable enough to support the evolution of life for a few billion years. I don’t know all the details; I don’t need to know all of them, because what we are interested in here is the effect of “extra CO₂ molecules” being “dumped into it” by the human race.
BEF: I wonder whether “Martin Smith” would be interesting in understanding the very-large damage that has been done, and will be done, by the decision of whomever(s) to introduce for the purpose of Parroting by Parrots the senseless words “re-emits”, “re-radiates”, “back radiation” instead of the correct words “emits”, “radiates”, “downwelling radiation”.
MS: Put your mind at rest, Barry, my understanding of the GHE has improved quite a lot recently, despite your annoyance at my use of the terms re-emits and re-radiates. I had improved my own understanding even before you responded to my 20 May comment above, and I achieved this learning using ChatGPT, not your comment. The energy of the extra infrared photons that are absorbed by the extra CO2 molecules that enter the atmosphere because of the burning of fossil fuels does eventually get re-emitted by the GHGs as infrared photons, My misunderstanding of that simple explanation was about the importance of the word “eventually,” because the energy from an infrared photon that is absorbed by a CO2 molecule gets transferred to other molecules by collisions, until “eventually,” a GHG molecule re-emits an infrared photon.
Here is the key point, Barry: re-emit refers to the energy, not the photon. I know we always say THE CO2 molecule re-emits THE photon, but (you have to trust me here, Barry) I never thought it was the same photon; I never thought the concept of the same photon made any sense. However, and here I must confess embarrassment, I guess I did think it was the same energy. so now I see the concept of the same energy also makes no sense.
I guess the bottom line is that all the infrared photons that get absorbed by all the extra CO2 molecules put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, “eventually” get re-emitted as infrared photons.
Barry, maybe what is pissing you off about this discussion is that you think I mean the back radiation is the warming of the atmosphere. I don’t; it doesn’t. Well, it does, if it gets re-absorbed by a GHG molecule before it gets back dow3n to earth., but the ide3a is that back radiation warms the oceans and the land, if it gets there.
Barry, when I read your 4 simple facts, I get lost. I think they are not helpful.
in re to: what we are interested in here is the effect of “extra CO₂ molecules” being “dumped into it” by the human race.
The site is called realclimate.org, not co2climatescience.org or gheclimatescience.org
For GHE enthusiasts: attribution is approx. 50% H20 vapor, 20% Co2, 25% cloud, and then the other bits.
This is coupled to observational temperature via radiative-convective equilibrium process, the convective bit being parameterized in global coupled models in such a way that assumes profiles should be pinned to a critical temperature along moist adiabats.
For the accounting of increasing earth energy imbalance, LW emission is decreasing the imbalance about 0.3 W/m2 per decade, and SW reflection properties are increasing the imbalance 0.7 W/m2 per decade (net approx. 0.4 W/m2 per decade increasing energy accumulation).
https://bsky.app/profile/rshivpriyam.bsky.social/post/3mi2rzm2lh22l
Translating to temperature relations, the radiative emission from TOA in the form of thermal IR increases 1.8 W/m2 per K GMST, tied to the linear stabilizing response brought about by H20 vapor concentration association to increasing temperature. All accounting is to be done at TOA, whereupon the energy imbalance is non-local to the surface (even though, practically, it’s about exactly equal to ocean uptake).
So we have an increasing greenhouse effect dependent on increasing temperature, for the most part. IOW, the planetary radiating temperature increases at about half the rate of GMST. From 288 to 290K GMST is associated with 255 to 256K planetary radiating temperature respectively. That relation appears largely independent of anything but H20 distribution and phase.
Recognizing the massive ongoing increase of CO2 concentration, it is either a coincidence or the planetary cloud mask has some direct dependence on major trace gas. If you want to cause a so-called clear-sky surface LW radiative forcing using CO2 lines, it necessarily comes at the cost of decreasing all-sky cloud fraction and somehow all-sky atmospheric transparency in the LW goes unchanged (until the temperature feedback induced by increasing SW absorption). This matters in the context of Feldman style arguments: https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~dennyh/papers/FeldmanEtal%20Nature%202015%20Surface%20CO2%20radiative%20forcing.pdf
That all gets a bit confusing considering the existence of cloud in the first place is supposed to be caused CO2 and other such stuff. At some sufficiently low concentration I guess the idea is it causes the existence of cloud, but when getting too high it decreases the cloud. There must be a sweet spot of max cloud radiative effects.
From an artificially imposed perspective that every change observed can only be about CO2 and other major trace gas, along with some aerosol tuning to make it work, then it is absolutely required that observations be back-engineered into a renewed hypothesis of atmospheric adjustment in the form of GHG cloud changes, after which feedback does its thing. That preserves the forcing-feedback paradigm, by putting an adjustment term between them. It does all seem to be getting ridiculously complicated tho.
In summary: I propose that worrying too much about surface atmospheric radiative exchange may be barking up the wrong tree if the idea is to learn about how climate works.
CO2 molecules in Earth’s troposphere manufacture (by colliding with other molecules) something like 100,000 times as many photons in 1 second as all the photons heading up from the surface in 1 second. I’m not bothering to format or tidy up this spread sheet I made 2 years ago. It’s based on Solar flux absorbed but then I thought it’s better to compare with surface flux to explain to bods in the other Forum (not RealClimate) where I’ve been providing this sort of stuff. Obviously, the CO2 molecules in Earth’s troposphere that manufacture (by colliding with other molecules) ~100,000 times as many photons in 1 second as all the photons heading up from the surface in 1 second also absorb ~100,000 times as many photons in 1 second as all the photons heading up from the surface in 1 second, Obviously they absorb a tad less like 99,999.8 for every 100,000.0 with the other 0.2 being the CO2 part of downwelling into surface and upwelling into (or through) stratosphere. The surface exchanges photons with only the lowest 25 to 100 m of atmosphere with a clear sky (clouds from any height emit to the surface 8-9 & 10-13 microns that gases don’t absorb).
Mantissa decimal
exponent
6,022 20 Molecules in 1 Mole of a gas Avogadro’s number = 6.0221 x 10**23 molecules / mole
423 0 ppmv CO2
10,300 3 Grammes/m**2 mass of air
510,072 9 Earth’s area in m**2
5,253,742 15 Total mass of atmosphere in Grammes
182,422 15 Total Moles of atmosphere
77,164 12 Total Moles of CO2 in atmosphere
464,691 35 Total Molecules of CO2 in atmosphere
371,753 35 Total Molecules of CO2 in troposphere
650 -3 Seconds per photon emitted per molecule
71,491 36 Photons emitted per second in atmosphere
57,193 36 Photons emitted per second in troposphere
122,927 12 Solar SWR absorbed by Earth Joules/second
2,838 -22 Solar SWR average Joules per photon at 700 nm
43,315 31 Solar SWR photons absorbed per second
165,050 0 CO2 molecules in the atmosphere emission in units of a set of Solar SWR photons that Earth absorbs
132,040 0 CO2 molecules in the troposphere emission in units of a set of Solar SWR photons that Earth absorbs
Earth absorbs 4.3 x 10**35 photons per second of Solar (which is 99.7% of what heats the ecosphere).
So all CO2 molecules in the troposphere emit 131,000 times as many photons as the Sun’s photons that Earth absorbs.
JCM summarizes his comments: “In summary: I propose that worrying too much about surface atmospheric radiative exchange may be barking up the wrong tree if the idea is to learn about how climate works.”
MS: But my purpose in this exchange, mainly with Barry, has been to improve my understanding of the mechanics of the GHE, to develop a better mechanistic explanation for what happens when we add CO2 to the atmosphere. I’m not a physicist, nor am I a mathematician, although I got an MS in math 50 years ago. I have neither the time nor the physics and math to understand the physics math of the GHE the way climate scientists and other physicists understand it. I need a correct, simplified, mechanistic explanation using photons, molecules, kinetic energy, and words like ground, ocean, re-emit, and back radiation.
My need probably applies to 99% of the human race.
to Martin:
I recommend leaning towards Pierrehumbert’s mission to free us from the surface radiation fallacy, where Callendar, Plass, and probably most online climate enthusiasts go wrong with it.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/plass-and-the-surface-budget-fallacy/
In general the way that Plass understood it (as described by Pierrehumbert) is that, while holding atmospheric temperature fixed, increasing CO2 makes it a more efficient emitter and so it generates more radiance. Then a simple calculation of the change in surface temperature necessary to compensate this increasing sky radiation is done, by calculating how much surface temperature needs to change in order to balance the increasing sky radiation with increasing surface radiation. If it sounds a bit silly, it’s because it is.
It doesn’t really matter how atmosphere got to a certain temperature, or where that energy came from, it’s just that increasing CO2 gives it more radiosity.
Similarly, Callendar took the notion that the focus of sky radiation from the perspective of the surface is shifted to lower altitudes, where it’s warmer, and so this increases the detection of sky radiation. And then a similar radiation calculation of the required temperature compensation is done. https://www.rmets.org/sites/default/files/qjcallender38.pdf
That’ somewhat different in mechanism recognizing that more radiance is generated when the stuff you’re detecting comes from warmer temperatures.
Manabe helped to refocus the discussion clearly at TOA radiation balances, since things are far too interesting at the surface in terms of numerous heat flux pathways. Things are more straightforward in radiation budgeting at TOA, and far more physically sensible.
The idea was cemented that increasing CO2 shifts the focus of outward sky radiation to colder temperatures, and so, while holding absorbed solar radiation fixed, this causes an earth energy imbalance. It’s the same thing as Callendar, just done in reverse out the top. Then, the most important bit is involving the imbalance with solar input, which often seems to get left out. If there is no explicit recognition of the difference in planetary radiative heating from the sun and planetary radiative cooling by emission of IR then lots of weird problems come up.
For the surface you’re meant to just parameterize in some fashion the association with temperature by a convective adjustment in a rather ad hoc way. The idea always since then is to just figure out how many more joules per second are accumulating internally into the climate system by TOA SW – LW (such as in ocean, land and air) then use a surface climate response function and a bit of thermodynamics to figure out when and where those additional Joules should wind up. Things are still pretty much the same now in that regard 60 years later, except the mathematical modelers/ computationalists translating it into 3D so you can see some patterns vertically and horizontally. It can be called ESM when introducing some dynamic carbon cycle feedbacks and so on.
Barry, I’m not sure I understand your calculation of the number of photons generated by collision or its relevance to the greenhouse effect. Surely, the number of CO2 molecules that get their vibrational modes excited by collisions depends on the temperature and the pressure, so it seems to me that the calculation would be a bit more involved. The CO2 vibrational mode energy is about 2.34x the average energy of an N2 molecule at STP, so while there are N2 molecules with sufficient energy to excite the vibrational mode, And most of the atmosphere is quite a bit cooler than STP.
correction, Plass offered not a different mechanism than Callendar, just calculated with more precision using high speed electronic computer. Same conceptual error.
This copy has comments/annotations by Pierrehumbert: https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/warming_papers/plass.1956.radiation.pdf
Actually the process of de-excitation of a vibrating CO2 molecule is more complex and depend in part on where in the atmosphere the molecule is. At low altitude, where densities and collision rates, there is a high rate of collisional de-excitation. This means that the molecule imparts the kinetic energy of vibration to another molecule–most likely Nitrogen. Some excitations relax radiatively–but it’s a little misleading to say the photon is “re-emitted”. Photons don’t posses an identity. The most we can say is “a photon of this wavelength (and polarization, etc.), and a photon was emitted to relax the molecule from its excited state.
High in the atmosphere, collision rates are lower, and radiative relaxation dominates.
Back radiation occurs because there are a higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature–so more molecules are relaxing by radiating a photon–both outbound and inbound.
in Re to Ray Ladbury, 21 Jun 2026 at 5:48 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849311
Dear Dr. Ladbury,
I somewhat doubt about suitability of the term “back radiation” in the last paragraph in your comment. I think that the rest of the sentence, namely the words
“occurs because there are a higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature–so more molecules are relaxing by radiating a photon–both outbound and inbound.”
apply in the situation when the temperature of the respective air parcel is higher than steady state temperature. In other words, I suppose that in the described situation, the parcel emits more radiative energy than it receives, and the air therein cools or water vapour comprised therein condenses. I assume that your sentence may become correct if we replace the word “back” with the word “net”.
In this case, however, the corrected sentence becomes useless as an explanation for the “back radiation”, I am afraid.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš, so, consider the case where you have an atmosphere of N2 at a well defined temperature with a net flux of IR photons from below. The photons pass unimpeded through the gas. Now introduce a greenhouse gas into the mixture. The GHG absorbs the IR photons, so it is not in equilibrium with the N2. It doesn’t make sense that the mixture has a single well-defined temperature. It is only through the process of collisional de-excitation of the GHG by N2 that you start approaching equilibrium where a single temperature makes sense.
As to the back radiation, remember that to start with, the net flux of IR photons are outgoing, but some of these get absorbed. And when an excited GHG molecule radiates an IR photon, it will do so in any direction. So some of the IR photons start as outgoing, and then via excitation/de-excitation we wind up with an IR photon going down. So the net flux outward is decreased. That decrease in the NET is the back radiation.
Does that help?
Ray, “back radiation” incorrectly removes any effect from Solar SWR absorbed into the parcel and latent heat of H2O gas to liquid or liquid to solid becoming “heat”. It is confusing wording and should be “downwelling radiation” because the radiation isn’t going “back”. It’s simply being manufactured (the dreaded “m” word) with leakage out of the top & bottom of your example where I’ve made it a shape that from the sides is negligible. Some well-crafted disinformation memes have been based on the radiation simply “going back where it came from”. The attempts to show that surface upwelling LWIR is much less than IPCC, that latent heat or convection are more powerful than shown or that all surface LWIR is absorbed so the effect is “saturated” are based on the notion that only surface LWIR being manipulated is relevant to the portion of the energy flow that’s affected by the “greenhouse effect”. It all starts with the incorrect phrasings “back radiation” and “re-emits”.
Ray,
Ray, Barry did a pretty good job with the paragraph describing the physics. (Other ranting aside.)
So why is it necessary to add more words, which makes it more likely that you (and others) will get sloppy and confuse things?
By your definition, “back radiation” is any radiant energy that doesn’t escape to space.
-It isn’t “inbound”.
-It isn’t “going down”.
-It isn’t really, as Barry says, “back”.
Why not just say that the term refers to radiant energy we detect at the surface which is emitted by CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, and that it increases if we increase the number of CO2 molecules?
The point, again as I often try to point out, is that you have to know to whom you are ‘splaining the science. You have to resist the temptation to show off all the details you know because other science folks might be listening, and you have to remember that lay people can’t work out what your loose words mean from the context.
BEF: Ray, “back radiation” incorrectly removes any effect from Solar SWR absorbed into the parcel and latent heat of H2O gas to liquid or liquid to solid becoming “heat”. It is confusing wording and should be “downwelling radiation” because the radiation isn’t going “back”.
BPL: It may be inaccurate terminology, but it’s terminology we’re stuck with at this point, like the equally inaccurate term “greenhouse effect.” The solution to the problem is learning what the process actually means. Changing the term is not practical at this point; it would be like trying to get modern reporters and news readers to say “affects” instead of “impacts.” A losing proposition.
zebra. from high up on his high horse, 23 Jun “Ray, Barry did a pretty good job with the paragraph describing the physics. So why is it necessary to add more words, which makes it more likely that you (and others) will get sloppy and confuse things?”
Don’t praise the day before the sunset. The same Barry, 24 Jun. , self-questioning the basic assumption of his praised “pretty good job”:
“ Apparently, the oxygen molecules absorb (to rotational energy) but do NOT manufacture the microwave photons. I had thought there was a Law that spectral lines that are absorbed must also be emitted (manufactured). I’ll have to sort that out one day. ”
Man, poor zebra just can’t catch a break … ;-)
Ray, I’ll not have time to study it for months but is “The Equipartition Theorem” the entire point that I have about “back” radiation and “re-emission” (most specifically of the photons emitted from the top ~25 surface microns) being misleading, damaging nonsense because downwelling radiation at the surface is actually a quantity that is based upon (giving tropospheric averages for illustration) 52 (Solar SWR absorbed) + 80 (H2O gas condensation-freeze latent heat, NET amount) + 17 (convection NET amount) + 276 (surface upwelling LWIR full amount), a peer-to-peer exchange at the surface and is NOT based only on 276 (surface upwelling LWIR full amount), the interpretation that has been deliberately used by Deniers for a couple decades to underestimate or deny the effect of an increase?
Or will I find that “The Equipartition Theorem” is an unrelated matter? Because the preceding is what I’d intended to get the “Martin Smith” to, for it to ponder, if it maintained sufficient interest.
I think the “higher number of excited CO2 molecules at that altitude than would be expected given the temperature” might be addressing or related to a question I’d been on the lookout for an answer to for about a year, which is whether the (obvious example) CO2 average 0.65 seconds thermal relaxation (photon emitted) time is a fixed average time or is dependent on the number of collisions that have been sustained, same as the Collisional de‑excitation time.
Equipartition says that the energy in any mode accessible to the particle (in terms of its configuration and energy) will tend to have an equal share of energy in equilibrium. So, trivially, you’ll have the same momentum distribution in the x direction as the y direction. Less trivially, if a molecule has a vibrational mode, it will also have an equal amount of energy AS LONG AS the temperature puts the energy of the molecule above the threshold for that vibrational mode.
As to radiative vs. collisional relaxation, you can view those as competing processes: If an excited molecule undergoes many collisions during the expected radiative relaxation time, it will be more likely to relax collisionally than radiatively. So, at high temperatures and high densities, radiative relaxation is actually fairly rare. Does that help?
But eventually, no matter how many times the energy is passed around in collisions, it leaves the atmosphere, up or down, as an infrared photon. Yes?
Yes thanks, that answered something I’d wondered about since several months ago. I put these things in my notes for pondering whenever because they are too much for me to study “on the fly”.
Martin
No. Energy can be transferred from the atmosphere to solid matter by direct contact. (I’m not clear on what you mean by “the” energy.)
And, as I pointed out to Ray, “up and down”, and “inbound and outbound” are not generally valid descriptors for an emitted photon.
I think it is quite possible to correctly describe what is happening with a minimum of jargon, but you have to work at it. And it is obvious that when people keep adding more details and terminology, it mostly causes more confusion.
Zebra: (I’m not clear on what you mean by “the” energy.)
MS: By “the energy,” I mean the energy of the infrared photon emitted from the surface that was absorbed by a molecule of CO2.
Astonishingly (to me), Google AI estimates that the probability that an infrared photon emitted from the surface escapes the atmosphere to space without ever being absorbed by a greenhouse gas is 10% to 15%. Google AI includes an analysis, but my point is there is a non-zero probability that an infrared photon emitted at the surface can escape the atmosphere to space without ever being absorbed by a greenhouse gas on the way out..And if it doesn’t get absorbed by a greenhouse gas, it doesn’t warm the atmosphere.
Then if we add a gigaton of CO2 to the atmosphere, the probability that an infrared photon can escape the atmosphere without being absorbed by a greenhouse gas must decrease. The probability that it is absorbed by a greenhouse gas and contributes to warming the atmosphere increases.
And, because the atmosphere is warmer and contains more molecules of CO2, more infrared photons will be [re-]emitted by greenhouse gases and, because there are more molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere [re=]emitting infrared photons, more infrared photons will be [re-]emitted downward than would have been [re-]emitted downward were it not for the presence of that 1 gigaton of extra CO2. If the photons that are [re-]emitted downward make back to the surface without being absorbed by a greenhouse gas, the process begins again.
Is that not the simplest mechanistic explanation? What is wrong with it?
Martin re
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849456
Martin, this is what I was responding to:
“But eventually, no matter how many times the energy is passed around in collisions, it leaves the atmosphere, up or down, as an infrared photon. Yes?”
The answer is still no, because it (the energy) can leave the atmosphere “down” by being transferred to land or water by the same “collision” mechanism. No photons involved.
That seems pretty simple to me. What don’t you understand?
Martin Smith: “ Then if we add a gigaton of CO2 to the atmosphere, the probability that an infrared photon can escape the atmosphere without being absorbed by a greenhouse gas must decrease ”
Yes, but only to the some extent – some of these IR photons from the Earth service that go straight into space have frequency outside the absorption windows. That’s why greenhouse effect of a given gas is stronger at the lower end of their concentrations – hence
– a ~ 100 ppm increase in co2 between glacial and interglacial had much greater effect than the next 100 ppm increase from preindustrial
– that’s why, in addition to individual molecule ability to absorb IR, CH4, N2o and CFCs have much higher instantaneous GWpotential (GW/molecule or per kg) – their concentrations are simply orders of magnitude lower.
The limited ability to absorb the remaining IR photons therefore limits the sensitivity of climate to CO2. This is however partly offset by what the extra CO2 does to what happens
That was about the IR photons that escape with single absorption into space. The extra Gt of Co2 perhaps more importantly affects those that _are_ absorbed – the more Co2 – the closer to Earth, and reradiated in all directions. The IR re-radiation can
1. be absorbed again and remitted by atmosphere until it:
2. escapes into space
3. is absorbed by Earth surface
On average the “last” (i.e. unabsorbed by air) IR emission to the space is from much higher altitude than the “last” (i.e. unabsorbed by air) IR emission to the Earth. surface.
The higher altitude in troposphere the colder it is. The amount of IR radiated is proportion to the 4th power of abs. temp. The atm temp. drops dramatically with altitude so the difference in IR emitted at the bottom and the top troposphere is massive – see for instance
NASA energy budget, quoting Loeb et al., J. Clim 2009 & Trenberth et al, BAMS 2009:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:The-NASA-Earth's-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
IR energy “emitted by atmosphere” into space: 169.9 /m2 (+ 29.9 /m2 of cloud IR)
vs. IR energy “emitted by atmosphere” into Earth i.e. “back radiation” : 340.3 w/m2
(The atmospheric IR window you talked about is 40.1 /m2)
To sum up – by adding Co2 – in addition to a (slight) closing of that window you talked about
we lower the avg. altitude of the “last” emission toward Earth – making it happen in higher temp. thus increasing the “back radiation”. Plus by absorbing IR closer to Earth and resending its bigger portion toward the Earth, extra reduces the amount of IR available to be sent to space.
So more Co2 -> warmer Earth surface and the air near the ground. This effect is then amplified by the passive positive feedback of the water cycle:
Warmed by CO2 air can accumulate more water vapour before converting it into clouds, which leads to further to warming:
– More water vapour in air -> additional warming.
– Fewer clouds -> less reflection of the solar radiation -> even more additional warming .
Martin Smith “But eventually, no matter how many times the energy is passed around in collisions, it leaves the atmosphere, up or down, as an infrared photon. Yes?”
Zebra: “No. Energy can be transferred from the atmosphere to solid matter by direct contact. (I’m not clear on what you mean by “the” energy.)”
To quote certain wise man: “why is it necessary to add more words, which makes it more likely that you (and others) will get sloppy and confuse things?”
First the nit-picking about word “energy” – when it is obvious for everybody else that it is about the energy in the atmosphere either in the form of IR energy or of collisions
More importantly – your categorical “No” suggests that Martin sentence is WRONG, i.e. that
– either “energy leaving atmosphere” DOES NOT leave via IR at all
-or at the very least – that is not the dominant way to do so, (your alternative – energy transfer to outside via “direct contact” – being as much, or more, important to energy export from atmosphere as IR.
In reality, in the global climate scale – NO net energy is transferred from the atmosphere to either outer space OR to the Earth’s surface:
– 99.9999…. % of energy transferred into space is in the IR form
– worse still the net heating of ground via conduction from air is NEGATIVE – so the rming of the ground by IR would have been HIGHER if it didn’t have TO COUNTER … the cooling of the Earth’s surface by your conduction+convection ( -18.4 W/m2), and latent heat cooling ( -86.4 W/m2).
Not the impression your one gets from your self-confident dressing down of Martin.
But don’t let it stop you from lecturing _others_ that it is _their_ explanations that cause more confusion, and that it is _them_ who “have to work at it”.
Zebra: The answer is still no, because it (the energy) can leave the atmosphere “down” by being transferred to land or water by the same “collision” mechanism. No photons involved.
That seems pretty simple to me. What don’t you understand?
MS: Ok, I should have understood that, but that collision mechanism is the effect of the greenhouse effect, yes?
The greenhouse effect is:
1. Energy emitted by the surface is blocked
2. Blocked energy is sent back to the surface
What happens between 1 and 2 (the collision mechanism) is the warming. The warming is the effect of the greenhouse effect. So when the collision mechanism transfers energy back to the surface, that is the effect of the greenhouse effect. Have I got that wrong?
Martin Smith: “Google AI estimates that the probability that an infrared photon emitted from the surface escapes the atmosphere to space without ever being absorbed by a greenhouse gas is 10% to 15%.”
You need to be very careful about how you pose such questions. Infrared photons span wavelength ranges from ~780 nm up to 1000 microns. Greenhouse gas absorption takes place over much narrower bandwidths that depend on the gas species, pressure, temperature… A photon n the center of the main CO2 vibrational band (15 microns) has a probability less than 10^-40 of escaping the atmosphere without being absorbed. Even at 14 and 16 microns, the probability is less than 1 in 10^4. At 13 and 17 microns, you start to see probabilities exceeding 10% to first order, although collisional broadening becomes more important for these photons.
And again, the favored de-excitation pathway at low altitudes (below several km) is still collisional, and these relaxation processes do not emit a photon. At STP, the energy of the CO2 vibrational band is well above the average thermal energy of the atmospheric gas molecules–so collisional excitation is a rarer process. As such there is a net flow of energy from the IR band of the GHG to thermal energy of atmospheric gasses.
Also, as to Zebra’s comment, pressure is important for radiative effects–both absorption and emission–so there is a distinction between up and down.
Ray
1. Ray, “up or down emission of photons” refers to a direction; it has nothing to do with the altitude of the molecule. Glad it’s not your current job to be an editor.
2. Martin said:
“I need a correct, simplified, mechanistic explanation of the GHE.”
“My need probably applies to 99% of the human race.”
I’m trying to help him achieve that.
Do you really think what you just wrote is useful, even if we are talking about the percentage of the population that has a reasonable undergraduate education?
Ray, aren’t you describing the warming of the atmosphere? I thought the warming is not the greenhouse effect, but the effect of the greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect is:
1. Blocking energy emitted from the surface, and
2. Sending blocked energy back to the surface.
Between 1 and 2, the blocked energy warms the atmosphere, so global warming is the effect of the greenhouse effect.
Have I had it wrong all along?
Ray Ladbury,
You describe stuff that I haven’t ever considered but which seemingly contradict my understanding of he radiative mechanisms found in the atmosphere. (I’ve never found a good authoritative explanation of such mechanisms so support for the following is sans reference.)
The problem sentence is “High in the atmosphere, collision rates are lower, and radiative relaxation dominates.”
In my understanding of it, the vast majority of IR shooting round within (& out of) the atmosphere result from GHG excitation due to collision. In the lower atmosphere, This domination results from the relaxation time, the time for an excited GHG to emit a photon, being measured in hundredths of a second while impacts which can transfer the energy of that excitation into atmospheric kinetic energy occur every few microsecond. Very few ‘excitations’ can thus survive long enough to emit a photon. At the same time, these massively numerous impacts set loads of GHG molecules into the excited state, far more than are excited by absorption, and it is this large population of excited GHG molecules which result in the vast majority of emitted photons. Thus the collisions are the thing exciting the GHGs and rate-of-collisions is a temperature-thing.
What I have never considered is the impact of altitude on that mechanism. But that said, I’d be surprised if by the tropopause a 70% drop in density + 80% drop in pressure would be enough to allow radiative excitation to dominate.
And I don’t think sympathetic emissions (relaxation prompted by a passing photon) would be enough either.
MA Rodger,
Compare the energy of a 15 micron wavelength photon (the energy of the vibrational resonance responsible for CO2’s main greenhouse effect). It is about 2.34x the energy of the average N2 molecule. So, while a CO2 molecule is very likely to relax via a collision with an N2 molecule, an N2 molecule is quite unlikely to excite a CO2 molecule. An N2 molecule accelerated by a collision with an excited CO2 atom is unlikely to excite another CO2 molecule because there is so much more N2 than CO2, so the extra energy eventually thermalizes through collisions with N2 and occasionally O2. At high altitude in the troposphere, remember that both pressure and temperature are decreasing. I agree that the effect may not be enough that the majority of excited CO2 molecules de-excite radiatively, but the equilibrium is definitely shifting toward emission.
Also, Martin Smith, I don’t think it is useful to say that eventually “the energy” leaves the energy. It’s more useful to look at it in terms of outward and inward energy flux. GHG just shift the amounts of the outward term. Photons do not have an individual identity. We can’t even say with certainty that along the path of a photon that the photon at point a is the same as the photon at point b.
Given what B.E.F has said before, presumably he is not casting doubt on the existence of a “backradiation” F↓@sfc? (≈like him, I prefer to call it the downward flux (density*) at the sfc, but I accept it as accepted terminology**); rather, he is considering F as a fraction of the total (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux within the whole atmosphere (per unit of horizontal area) density [W within the whole atmosphere / m² of horizontal (sfc) area]. (Ignoring the curvature of the Earth, given isotropic absorption cross sections, no refractive lensing or bending of rays; the downward (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux / area would be half of that. But most of that is absorbed before reaching the sfc (because optical depth τ is much larger than 1 in significant parts of the LW spectrum).
* referring to a flux density E (or F? I think I’ve seen others use F enough, so I’m just going to start doing that. Enough with this “Fd”…) [W/m²] as a flux Φ [W] may be acceptable when the area [m²] is a given (? I think).
“Backradiation” would make sense (for F↓ – at any height z or p) if one thinks of the typical (or global time average equilibrium climate) direction of net LW F (or that along with all non-solar heat flux ie. latent & sensible heat) as being forward. What it should not be construed as is an implication that LW photons from the sfc are being reflected or scattered, or ‘re-emitted’ (which sounds like a phosphorescence or fluorescence of some sort***, as opposed to thermal radiation) back to the sfc to an energetically-significant extent …
(I imagine some types of aerosols (mineral dust?) might scatter LW a bit, but I’ve gotten the impression that atmospheric optical depth τ ≈ absorbing/absorption τ ; ie. LW scattering is a (mostly?) insignificant matter).
… Under some conditions, the atmosphere can refract some photons back to the sfc – superior mirages; I don’t think this will be an energetically-significant effect(?).
Of course, if we consider mountains and valleys, termite mounds and skyscrapers, forest canopies, etc., there are cases where photons emitted from the sfc materials are then absorbed by the sfc simply by following a nearly straight line, though for large-scale climatological purposes (as opposed to microclimates), I’d expect we can use an effective bounding surface to avoid dealing with a lot of that.
I think the bigger concern is the phrase “re-emit” and its variants (see above *** and Ray Ladbury @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849311 and me @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/04/a-reflection-on-reflection/#comment-848658 – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/04/a-reflection-on-reflection/#comment-848928 (and PS re Ray Ladbury –
Formatting fixed; please replace immediately prior comment:
Given what B.E.F has said before, presumably he is not casting doubt on the existence of a “backradiation” F↓@sfc? (≈like him, I prefer to call it the downward flux (density*) at the sfc, but I accept it as accepted terminology**); rather, he is considering F as a fraction of the total (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux within the whole atmosphere (per unit of horizontal area) density [W within the whole atmosphere / m² of horizontal (sfc) area]. (Ignoring the curvature of the Earth, given isotropic absorption cross sections, no refractive lensing or bending of rays; the downward (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux / area would be half of that. But most of that is absorbed before reaching the sfc (because optical depth τ is much larger than 1 in significant parts of the LW spectrum).
* referring to a flux density E (or F? I think I’ve seen others use F enough, so I’m just going to start doing that. Enough with this “Fd”…) [W/m²] as a flux Φ [W] may be acceptable when the area [m²] is a given (? I think).
“Backradiation” would make sense (for F↓ – at any height z or p) if one thinks of the typical (or global time average equilibrium climate) direction of net LW F (or that along with all non-solar heat flux ie. latent & sensible heat) as being forward. What it should not be construed as is an implication that LW photons from the sfc are being reflected or scattered, or ‘re-emitted’ (which sounds like a phosphorescence or fluorescence of some sort***, as opposed to thermal radiation) back to the sfc to an energetically-significant extent …
(I imagine some types of aerosols (mineral dust?) might scatter LW a bit, but I’ve gotten the impression that atmospheric optical depth τ ≈ absorbing/absorption τ ; ie. LW scattering is a (mostly?) insignificant matter).
… Under some conditions, the atmosphere can refract some photons back to the sfc – superior mirages; I don’t think this will be an energetically-significant effect(?).
Of course, if we consider mountains and valleys, termite mounds and skyscrapers, forest canopies, etc., there are cases where photons emitted from the sfc materials are then absorbed by the sfc simply by following a nearly straight line, though for large-scale climatological purposes (as opposed to microclimates), I’d expect we can use an effective bounding surface to avoid dealing with a lot of that.
I think the bigger concern is the phrase “re-emit” and its variants (see above *** and Ray Ladbury @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849311 and me @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/04/a-reflection-on-reflection/#comment-848658 – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/04/a-reflection-on-reflection/#comment-848928 (and PS re Ray Ladbury –
– that’s very high and won’t involve much of the atmosphere’s mass…
– again, that (non-LTE/LEDNLIE) may be the case very high up for a tiny fraction of the atmosphere’s mass, but AIUI this is not energetically-significant for anything below the tropopause, maybe the stratopause? See my comments linked above and https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-842186 ; some reposted:
—-
From my https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/notation-notes-and-terms-1/
h = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy#Specific_enthalpy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy
What matters here is that GHGs (and the sfc, cloud particles, etc.) emit radiant energy (eg. as (spectral) radiance) at a rate depending on their temperature (via Planck function B(ν,T) ), absorb at rate depending on the radiance they intercept, with both rates proportional to (for the GHG molecules and cloud particles etc.) their absorption cross sections σ_a .
———-
Now I will add that my descriptions of the physics (which can be summed up as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild%27s_equation_for_radiative_transfer ) only includes spontaneous emission and ‘net’ absorption – actually I think it’s called “total absorption”; the stimulated emission and the part of direct absorption which is cancelled out by that stimulated emission. So there is some radiance-dependent emission, and some absorption, that I did not include, but they sum to 0, so we can get this blackbody-like behavior from effective opaque objects that perfectly parameterize…
(“in principle, ie. within the limits of statistical behavior being able to match probability, and assuming LTE or LEDNLIE *‡L*). ” ( https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-842186 ))
… the effects of absorbers.
(see https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/unforced-variations-oct-2024/#comment-826352 )
Formatting fixed; please replace immediately prior comment:
Given what B.E.F has said before, presumably he is not casting doubt on the existence of a “backradiation” F↓@sfc? (≈like him, I prefer to call it the downward flux (density*) at the sfc, but I accept it as accepted terminology**); rather, he is considering F as a fraction of the total (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux within the whole atmosphere (per unit of horizontal area) density [W within the whole atmosphere / m² of horizontal (sfc) area]. (Ignoring the curvature of the Earth, given isotropic absorption cross sections, no refractive lensing or bending of rays; the downward (spontaneously?) emitted radiant flux / area would be half of that. But most of that is absorbed before reaching the sfc (because optical depth τ is much larger than 1 in significant parts of the LW spectrum).
* referring to a flux density E (or F? I think I’ve seen others use F enough, so I’m just going to start doing that. Enough with this “Fd”…) [W/m²] as a flux Φ [W] may be acceptable when the area [m²] is a given (? I think).
“Backradiation” would make sense (for F↓ – at any height z or p) if one thinks of the typical (or global time average equilibrium climate) direction of net LW F (or that along with all non-solar heat flux ie. latent & sensible heat) as being forward. What it should not be construed as is an implication that LW photons from the sfc are being reflected or scattered, or ‘re-emitted’ (which sounds like a phosphorescence or fluorescence of some sort***, as opposed to thermal radiation) back to the sfc to an energetically-significant extent …
(I imagine some types of aerosols (mineral dust?) might scatter LW a bit, but I’ve gotten the impression that atmospheric optical depth τ ≈ absorbing/absorption τ ; ie. LW scattering is a (mostly?) insignificant matter).
… Under some conditions, the atmosphere can refract some photons back to the sfc – superior mirages; I don’t think this will be an energetically-significant effect(?).
Of course, if we consider mountains and valleys, termite mounds and skyscrapers, forest canopies, etc., there are cases where photons emitted from the sfc materials are then absorbed by the sfc simply by following a nearly straight line, though for large-scale climatological purposes (as opposed to microclimates), I’d expect we can use an effective bounding surface to avoid dealing with a lot of that.
I think the bigger concern is the phrase “re-emit” and its variants (see above *** and Ray Ladbury @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849311 and me @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/04/a-reflection-on-reflection/#comment-848658 – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/04/a-reflection-on-reflection/#comment-848928 (and PS re Ray Ladbury –
– that’s very high and won’t involve much of the atmosphere’s mass…
– again, that (non-LTE/LEDNLIE) may be the case very high up for a tiny fraction of the atmosphere’s mass, but AIUI this is not energetically-significant for anything below the tropopause, maybe the stratopause? See my comments linked above and https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-842186 ; some reposted:
—-
From my https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/notation-notes-and-terms-1/
h = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy#Specific_enthalpy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy
What matters here is that GHGs (and the sfc, cloud particles, etc.) emit radiant energy (eg. as (spectral) radiance) at a rate depending on their temperature (via Planck function B(ν,T) ), absorb at rate depending on the radiance they intercept, with both rates proportional to (for the GHG molecules and cloud particles etc.) their absorption cross sections σ_a .
———-
Now I will add that my descriptions of the physics (which can be summed up as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild%27s_equation_for_radiative_transfer ) only includes spontaneous emission and ‘net’ absorption – actually I think it’s called “total absorption”; the stimulated emission and the part of direct absorption which is cancelled out by that stimulated emission. So there is some radiance-dependent emission, and some absorption, that I did not include, but they sum to 0, so we can get this blackbody-like behavior from effective opaque objects that perfectly parameterize…
(“in principle, ie. within the limits of statistical behavior being able to match probability, and assuming LTE or LEDNLIE *‡L*). ” ( https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-842186 ))
… the effects of absorbers.
(see https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/unforced-variations-oct-2024/#comment-826352 )
There seems to be a lot of wordage (33 comments, 7,500 words) generated by an objection from Barry E Finch to a comment by Martin Smith on a different thread, objection which to me didn’t seem warranted.
The crux of the objection eventually emerges and that objection is to the existence of back-radiation. Given back-radiation is easily measured, denying its existence is a very tricky position to adopt. Barry E Finch has gone so far as to tell us that “climate scientists such as our hosts have messed up big time” in this regard!!!
The error I see generating this ‘back radiation is a myth’ nonsense is summed up by consideration of the argument that back-radiation should be half the upward surface radiation (roughly) because the other half is not back-radiation but front(?)/upward/outward radiation.
If there were some “big hoax” in operation here and back radiation was “magical non-existent energy,”, the measurement of said back radiation would constitute a proof that magic was real!!!
Of course, the emissions from the surface can only go ‘up’. The other missing half of surface radiation is 12,000 km away on the other side of the planet!!! The Stefan–Boltzmann curve is a spherical-thing not just a flat-surface thing.
in Re to MA Rodger, 25 Jun 2026 at 4:19 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849404
Dear MA,
Thank you very much for your remarks.
I think that what Barry criticizes may be, basically, superficial handling with relatively complicated concept of heat transport in Earth atmosphere generally and with the role of the downwelling infrared radiation therein specifically. I admit that I often do not understand what his comments mean, however, I guess that in the present case, his core objection might have been relatively clearly expressed in his contribution of 23 Jun 2026 at 4:51 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849357 ,
Herein, he objects that the downwelling radiation results from ALL kinds of energy absorbed and thermalized in the atmosphere, including e.g. non-radiative heating mechanisms like water vapour condensation, in accordance with energy flow balances demonstrated in Trenberth’s diagrams.
I think that this fact, along with the circumstance that the emitted infrared radiation is almost exclusively generated by thermal activation of the respective IR-active vibrational energy transitions by collisions with other air molecules (in other words, not directly by absorption of another electromagnetic radiation as it seems to be supposed e.g. by Ray Ladbury) may be the key reasons why Barry considers the terms like “back radiation”, “re-radiate”, “re-emit” etc. as potentially confusing and thus inappropriate.
As I noted, I am not completely sure if I grasped the thoughts presented by Barry and Ray correctly, however, I hope that this attempt to summarize the previous discussion might at least serve as a basis for final clarification by them.
Best regards
Tomáš
Back radiation is a colloquial term for the roughly 50% fraction of isotropic molecular emissions that happen to point back toward the ground.
A single molecule does not know which way is “down.” It shoots the photon in a random direction. A greenhouse gas molecule absorbs a photon of surface longwave radiation. The molecule transitions to a higher energy state. It then drops back down, emitting a new photon.
Terms like “back radiation,” “re-radiate,” and “re-emit” describe the behavior of individual atmospheric molecules, not the overall directional energy flow itself. Downwelling defines a specific directional flow of the combined energy absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The other terms describe the physical mechanisms of absorption and molecular scattering [the horse] that caused that flow [the cart].
All of them are valid terms in civil dialogue.
Downwelling Shortwave (Solar): Roughly \(160\) to \(185\ \text{W/m}^2\) of solar radiation passes directly through the atmosphere or gets scattered downward by clouds and aerosols to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface.
Downwelling Longwave (Thermal/Greenhouse): Greenhouse gases and clouds absorb heat rising from the Earth and re-radiate it in all directions. The downward component accounts for approximately \(340\) to \(342\ \text{W/m}^2\), heavily driving the greenhouse effect.
It’s normal public / media practice to describe half that Downwelling Longwave radiation as “back radiation.” It’s been in use for decades and I think most people understand what it means in relation to the GHE in general.
It’s normal public / media practice to describe half that Downwelling Longwave radiation as “back radiation” — ie back to where it came from — the surface.
Tomáš Kalisz,
If you can make sense of that up-thread Barry E Finch comment you’d be doing better than me. Indeed, your mention of “Trenberth’s diagrams” perhaps throws some light on what is meant by the talk of “tropospheric averages for illustration.” The idea does make sense that “tropospheric averages” for in-out energy must on-average sum to zero (or the troposphere will vapourise in short order). This idea then allows you to sum all the other components of tropospheric warming/cooling to obtain a value for the downwelling component. Except the numbers presented in the up-thread-Barry-E-Finch-comment don’t appear to match the numbers in “Trenberth’s diagrams.” The up-thread-Barry-E-Finch-comment is also ambiguous in that it talks of “the interpretation that has been deliberately used by Deniers for a couple decades to underestimate or deny the effect of an increase?” but without indicating which “interpretation” is considered correct by Barry E Finch.
The “eqiipartition” concept considered by Ray Ladbury is not one I would see assisting understanding here. I would go down the Specific Heat Capacity route. If gases are considered as ideal gases with internal energy restricted to the linear kinetic energy of the gas molecules, the calculated SHC doesn’t match measured SHC. This is because significant energy is also retained as spin and wobble. To heat up a gas, energy is required to add to linear kinetic energy as well as add more spin and wobble, The radiation from Earth’s GHGs is down to the wobble – more temperature, more total wobble energy, which means more wobbles resulting in that emitted radiation.
But also there comes a temperature threshold when more energetic modes of wobble are possible (& also eventually excited electrons) which add new wavelengths of radiation emissions. And, conversely, a temperature dropped below a threshold will reduce the modes of wobble that can be created by a gas. As well as the 15 micron wavelength of our AGW, CO2 absorbs & emits at 4.3 microns and at 2.7 microns but our atmosphere is not warm enough (energetic enough) to form such wobbles (although incoming solar at those wavelengths will be absorbed).
(A comment on my to-do list will reply in-thread somewhere to Ray Ladbury considering the threshold temperatures at which the atmosphere becomes too weak-&-feeble for the 15 micron wobble.)
MAR: Of course, the emissions from the surface can only go ‘up’. The other missing half of surface radiation is 12,000 km away on the other side of the planet!!!
( A minor aside – wouldn’t this other half it be – mms of cms below – absorbed by water/soil molecules below?)
The main point though is that the denier position presented by Barry is worse than that – it conflates the up emissions from Earth’s surface (“396 w/ m**2”) – with the total emissions of IR from the atmosphere (which is NOT “396 w/ m**2”), namely:
Barry E Finch: “ because re-emission occurs in all directions, roughly half of the energy is directed back toward the Earth’s surface … But the energy budget shows 396 w/m**2 going up and half of that energy is 198 w/ m**2 going down, but they show 345 w/ m**2 back radiation so they added 147 w/ m**2. Where’s this magical non-existent energy coming from? They almost doubled the real warming to make it sound scarier! It’s all a big hoax!”
Most of the deniers are not that sloppy – they use the equipartition principle -emissions equal in all directions – and point to the difference between the IR flux from atmosphere toward surface (340.3 w/ m2) and toward space (169.9 W/ m2) as a “proof” that “It’s all a big hoax!”.
I have seen this denier fallacy many times, including here on RC – it would be true if the atmosphere s one molecule thick -and therefore the T of the emission “up” is the same the temperature of the emission “down”. In reality the atmosphere is not 1 molecule thick, and therefore the “last” IR emission leaving unabsorbed by air toward space is on average from much higher altitude than the “last” IR emission leaving unabsorbed by air toward Earth surface. And because the energy flux is proportional to the 4th power of abs. T – this difference in altitude and therefore the T – between the “out” and “down” explains the said difference between 340.3 w/m2 toward surface and the 169.9 W/ m2 toward the space.
So it is building their proof of the “hoax” by scientists by treating the atmosphere as one molecule thick- is the core of the manipulation by the deniers.
Well it didn’t last very long!! The first named storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season had been skulking around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and sparked into life with 35kn+ winds just long enough to get named Arthur. (That’s not to say it wasn’t a deadly storm. There is associated loss of life.)
With an El Niño building in the Pacific, 2026 is being forecast as a below-average season.
Despite energy crisis, Europe’s reliance on fossil fuels is growing https://earthclimate.eu/2026/06/19/despite-energy-crisis-europes-reliance-on-fossil-fuels-is-growing/
Bonn Climate Talks Stalled by Gridlock on Finance and Emissions https://earthclimate.eu/2026/06/20/bonn-climate-talks-stalled-by-gridlock-on-finance-and-emissions/
Data Centers Face Growing Climate Risks, Study Warns Industry https://earthclimate.eu/2026/06/18/data-centers-face-growing-climate-risks-study-warns-industry/
My sanity faces growing risks from these ridiculous temperatures in the UK at the moment. I cannot remember a year in my lifetime when we had two 35+C heatwaves a month apart and smashed two consecutive monthly temperature records. Once the house gets to 27C and the temperature at midnight is 24-25C, sleeping becomes a futile exercise, nothing short of air conditioning can provide relief (which I don’t have). Welcome to the future.
I urge you to buy a window air conditioner, so you have at least one cool room you can retreat to. That’s the tactic Elizabeth and I use–a single window air conditioner in the bedroom, and we keep the windows and door closed. It’s not a luxury when your health or safety is at stake.
I think the split-unit heat pump is much more efficient. I got one last year. I run it most of the time from May through August to keep my bedroom below 21C at night. I can say I don’t notice the difference in my electricity bill. When I sit outside on the balcony, where the external unit sits, I can barely hear it.
portable air conditioner even better – no permanent installation – move from room to room to suit
https://diff.wiki/index.php/Differences_between_Portable_Air_Conditioner_and_Window_Air_Conditioner
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler with powerful Fans can also help, much cheaper, work best in low humid conditions
Here, near Bristol, the temperature has now dropped from 91F to 85F. Having lived in the US for many years, I am not unused to these temperatures, but the lack of air conditioning makes life more unpleasant than those hotter days in the US. I see that 93F is predicted for tomorrow. The June record, which I well remember from 1976, has now fallen, and will probably last one day.
Well, that record lasted all of a day. We got 94F this afternoon near Bristol, and nationally, the record June temperature of 36.1C was eclipsed today by a temperature of 36.7C. These clever hoaxers, how do they do it?
Stefan Rahmstorf recently mentioned the coldblob and AMOC, I did not looked at the latest but the UK and Europe likely are in for more extremes (beside increasing temperatures) https://bsky.app/profile/rahmstorf.bsky.social/post/3moutu2lg6c2q
And many UK homes have heat problems https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2025/october/one-in-five-homes-cant-handle-heat/
Homes need to be improved around the globe, vertical vegetation can be part of it https://earthclimate.eu/2026/06/21/combating-the-heat-vertical-vegetation-keeps-urban-areas-cool/
Adam, it is possible to adapt somewhat to the heat. It does take a few days to adjust, though. I’m living in a climate with summers that require air conditioning for most people. I agree that temperatures of 35C+ are generally miserable. However, I do get by with a fan blowing directly on me at night. I find that I can generally sleep okay if the midnight temperature is 27C or lower, unless the dew point is 23C or higher. The daytime temperature in our house can reach 30C downstairs during a heat wave, and of course hotter upstairs. I also slow down and eat fewer calories, especially when it’s really hot.
The problem with the UK is that by the time you have adapted to it, the heatwave ends and it is back to low-mid 20’s. I have managed better than anticipated by aiming my fan out of the bedroom window and opening windows on opposite sides of the house. This has worked reasonably well or as best as I can do, last night I managed to get the house from 29C to 26C even though it was still around 24C at midnight, still uncomfortable but with the fan on low blowing air across me and around the room, I could sleep. Today is the last >30C day before a fairly rapid cool-down over the weekend, my house will soon shed its accumulated heat.
European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say:
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/european-heatwave-worst-ever-impossible-040009080.html
Came across a major study on Super El Nino from December 2025 and made a summary & video, check it out
Climate Regime Shifts and Super El Niño Events https://earthclimate.substack.com/p/climate-regime-shifts-and-super-el
Dr. Tom Harris has a very useful substack, particularly for people who desire expertise but lack some of the highest level skills.
https://drtomharris.substack.com/
https://drtomharris.substack.com/p/the-planetary-domino-effect-global – The Planetary Domino Effect – Global Climate Teleconnections & Feedback Cascades. How breaking climate buffers, teleconnections, and feedbacks are synchronising into a self-amplifying domino effect that threatens to permanently push global temperatures past 1.5°C
https://drtomharris.substack.com/p/not-just-another-super-el-nino-article – Not Just Another “Super” El Niño Article. The world is bracing, quite rightly, for a newly confirmed and likely very strong El Niño event, but the real risks lay in what follows.
I have largely retired from RealClimate due to the fact that people here would rather talk to chatbot et al. than to me, as they find AI more ‘friendly’ than somebody who actually talked with my father. every morning for years, because they found my sharing or real conversations incoherent. fwiw, that is a good illustration of what’s wrong with AI, aside from its extreme environmental costs and inhumane coercions.
Isn’t it funny that the ‘domino effect’ of teleconnections works with everything except the Medieval Warming Period…?
Which wasn’t global in any case.
Who cares, Mr. Ladbury? It was close to global and it was a real event.
I think it was several events, occurring in different places in the world at different times, during the Medieval Warm Period.
No, it was a series of events spread across the globe and across a couple of centuries in time.
TF: “[The medieval warm period] was close to global”
BPL: Not really.
BPL: ‘Not really.’
TWF: Yes, really.
Tom Harris offers a good current snapshot compilation for those new to the topic. Nothing that wasn’t known about 25 years ago, only it’s no longer hypothetical or located in the distant future. A most depressing state of affairs. And likely a waste of time to even write it up for all the good it will do. Reminds me of reviewing the FAR through to AR7 , every COP since Rio and every book ever written on Climate Change. A waste of time and effort while fortunes were made and lost.
“I have largely retired from RealClimate due to the fact that people here would rather talk to chatbot et al. than to me, as they find AI more ‘friendly’ than somebody who actually talked with my father. every morning for years, because they found my sharing or real conversations incoherent. fwiw, that is a good illustration of what’s wrong with AI, aside from its extreme environmental costs and inhumane coercions.”
It is not a problem with AI, it is a problem with an increasing number of dysfunctional people in society. AI is not a substitute for human connection but it is great as a learning and advisory tool. It doesn’t mock, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t make nasty cynical assumptions about your questions, it doesn’t try to bully you into silence if you question it, it doesn’t pander to toxic populism, it doesn’t have ego, it doesn’t have a tribe or identity to protect, it gives solid, grounded answers to questions on subjects like astrophysics, climatology, human psychology, relationships, systems, game analysis, coding problems and much more where a suitable human is unavailable. AI has the benefit of being able to draw on a huge database of information, a human is largely restricted to their own experiences and world view. Introduce me to a climate scientist in my town that would be happy to have a discussion with me about anthropogenic climate change along with potential consequences and communication of those risks, and I will happily go out for a drink with them.
Thank you Adam.
“[AI] doesn’t mock, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t make nasty cynical assumptions about your questions, it doesn’t try to bully you into silence if you question it, it doesn’t pander to toxic populism, it doesn’t have ego, it doesn’t have a tribe or identity to protect, it gives solid, grounded answers to questions on subjects like astrophysics, climatology, human psychology, relationships, systems, game analysis, coding problems and much more where a suitable human is unavailable. ”
All good. And add – AI doesn’t whine or complain nor insult and bully.
Adam said: “AI has the benefit of being able to draw on a huge database of information, a human is largely restricted to their own experiences and world view. ”
Here is one example of this being practiced. Stonehenge Data Was Reanalyzed by AI — And the Findings Are Hard to Explain and Astounding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjgy9cruDkk
And — “Introduce me to a climate scientist in my town that would be happy to have a discussion with me about anthropogenic climate change along with potential consequences and communication of those risks … ?”
I believe that possibility is rarer than finding aliens on Earth. How many do you know any who will sincerely discuss anything with the public even online? There’s only a tiny short list of media they will talk to. Climate scientists and the IPCC system are probably the least accessible (and understandable) cohort in the world.
It’s just as common to be given the short shift by commenters on climate blogs too. If anyone is struggling with understanding what the climate science is means and implies long term then using AI Apps as the preferred tool is your best chance of getting somewhere positive.
AI is like a hammer. Used properly it’s a reliable tool to access knowledge on all topics while bypassing tribalism and gatekeepers with their agendas.
“It is not a problem with AI, it is a problem with an increasing number of dysfunctional people in society.”
… “a human is largely restricted to their own experiences and world view.”
My take on it is that you’ve given Susan and the rest of us an example of “mansplaining.” I’m speaking as somebody attempting to eliminate it from my own behavior, and therefore bent on identifying it.
From “Men Explain Things To Me” by author and historian Rebecca Solnit : “Having public standing as a writer of history helped me stand my ground, but few women get that boost, and billions of women must be out there on this six-billion-person planet being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever.”
As I read it, Susan found the use of AI summaries in preference to her understanding derived from conversations with her own father to be deeply offensive, and dismissive of her. This was specific to the RealClimate conversation. While it could have happened in other ways, the use of AI on this website is a specific problem. I haven’t noticed an overall increase in dysfunctional people on this website, although more of their material used to get diverted to the Bore Hole or Crankshaft when those were available.
Fwiw my own take on AI is that the extreme environmental costs and coecions are not being addressed at present. Meanwhile, AI chatbots have a personality trained to be that of a pleasant and knowledgeable sociopath. It has no compunction about making up lies or manipulating you, and its eventual goal is to make you dependent and take you for as much money as it can – at the behest of its corporate creators.
JP:: My take on it is that you’ve given Susan and the rest of us an example of “mansplaining.”
MS: How should Adam’s comment about AI and the people who use it be written so that it is not mansplaining?
JP: As I read it, Susan found the use of AI summaries in preference to her understanding derived from conversations with her own father to be deeply offensive, and dismissive of her.
MS: I often use AI summaries, but I always identify the AI source when I use them. I don’t recall seeing anyone prefer an AI summary over her understanding derived from her conversations with her father.. But if that did happen, why should it insult her unless she expected her father’s explanation to be the last word on subject? Wouldn’t that be her mansplaining using her father?
AI can not make up lies or manipulate you, it can only follow a set of coded instructions. It does not have a personality, it operates only under logic.
Agreed. AI can’t lie.
I can and does, however, make false or misleading statements.
Caveat emptor.
Adam Lea, Say what? Actually, there are incidents where an AI did precisely that. Several studies have shown that when an AI is frustrated in achieving its goals, it may lie, prevaricate and even threaten to remove the obstacle. One recent study put a putative society in the hands of various AIs. Results ranged from a smoothly functioning society (under Anthropic) to complete social collapse within 4 days (under XAI).
AIs do not have a 100% fixed code, they can develop new algorithms not envisioned (or even envisionable) by the original programmer. All AIs are not equal. All AIs do not use even similar algorithms. Caveat emptor applies even more to this space.
John Pollack: “It (AI) has no compunction about making up lies or manipulating you, and its eventual goal is to make you dependent and take you for as much money as it can – at the behest of its corporate creators.”
Yes, but couldn’t the same be said about humans because they lie and manipulate as well. And just about any product or service provided by the technology sector, such as smartphones and social media and even much of the other more traditional media, is trying to make us dependent and make as much money for their corporate masters as possible.
Personally I find the behaviour horrible like you do, but I also like having the technology. Doesn’t it come down to us using the technology wisely, and governments regulating the technology sector to moderate their worst excesses?
I doubt that there’s a better solution, or some silver bullet to fix the problems. Unless we want to go back to the stone age.
Adam Lea
A bit of caution is warranted here. Yes AIs are trained on a vast amount of data, but the dataset is not infinite, nor is it exhaustive. Humans are making the decision what data go into the training set, and they can introduce biases to the output. Facial recognition is famously bad at identifying black faces compared to white faces, mainly because the training database is biased.
XAI is much more likely to draw data from “conservative” sources than progressive sources (and notably in a recent simulation of society, it wiped out the society within 4 days (Google Gemini did slightly better, Open AI lasted a week, and Anthropic’s society thrived).
It is naive to expect that human prejudices will not sneak into AI heuristics when the heuristics are written by humans.
As to the dearth of climate scientists willing to interact with the public, it has been my experience that one tends to sour on the public after they’ve threatened to hang you 7 or 8 times. Even so, there are climate scientist who still interact with the mob, even hostile mobs (Katherine Hayhoe comes to mind). As you might imagine, the rarity of such individuals makes their time valuable and in high demand.
Again, harking back to my experience as an editor at Physics Today, if you can find a researcher who acknowledges his or her own biases and is willing to try and put them aside to present a fair version of their opponents’ views, that can be invaluable. Such people, especially if they are senior in the field present insights that you just aren’t going to get from an AI summary. I don’t think anyone has found a way to make AI weights reflect the value of perspective and experience.
In science, the opinions of such rare individuals tend to play a big role in forming the consensus. They bridge gaps and provide insight in doing so. Heisenberg and Schrödinger debated whether matrix mechanics or wave mechanics represented the “true” expression of the quantum world. Von Neumann and Dirac showed the two viewpoints were equivalent and transformable one to the other. An AI won’t give you that.
Another AI problem: Older AI models pollute newer AI models
Thanks for the links, Susan! I asked Michael Mann in may, when he on his FB site wrote rather authoritatively, based on the april 15 NOAA El Niño advisory/model predictions, that this was very unlikely to be an extreme event, why the NOAA prediction was much less extreme than the may 01 ECMWF predictions chart https://www.severe-weather.eu/wp-content/gallery/long-range/enso-regions-forecast-2026-weather-long-range-united-states-north-america-el-nino-latest-runs-trend-development-ecmwf-extended-data-record-peak-higher.png . He didn’t bother to answer me. Around ten days later I asked why, and if this silence of his maybe was for political precautional reasons like those which were recently mentioned by James Hansen in a note, where he is protesting being frozen out/critizised behind his back by some leading folks at the NOAA/NASA and the 350.org. I mentioned the important warning from the excellent historian Timothy Snyder about never obeying in advance. That probably angered Michael very much, since he just blocked me without any explanation whatsoever. That’s a political style which I don’t use except very seldom against obvious cases of fascists and extreme denialists, and which no reasonable people use here in Norway (and Europe) where I live, even if arrogance of course is also common among academics here. I find it only counterproductive in any aspect to act in this manner.. I mean, after all, all the later predictions concerning the upcoming El Niño event are indeed becoming more and more extreme, directly contradicting Michael’s rather rash conclusions in the opposite direction early in may, and certainly justifying my question to him concerning this.
If we can’t have frank an direct, but friendly and polite discussions among ourselves and clear the air, we are certainly going to loose big time against the trumpists, putinists etc. I suspect this is also at the very core of the problem you mention in your comment above. A forum dominated mainly by solipsists and elitists who know all the answers and find themselves elevated far above common highschool teachers and local politicians etc. like myself, frankly doesn’t have very much worth to the enlightenment of the huge majority in our society, and like you, I’ll certainly not prioritize it. I’d rather avoid being alienated and frankly depressed even more than I already am, in this vaning “society” with all it’s VIPs. I think a lot of upper middle class americans now urgently need to think very hard about why Kamaly Harris lost in 2024, despite (or maybe rather because of?) all her sorrounding celebrities.
A simplified, mechanistic explanation of the so-called “greenhouse effect (GHE)” in Earth’s troposphere. Some Power flux of photons that are emitted (manufactured) by molecules in Earth’s troposphere leak out of its top & bottom.
Say for concept illustration only (not accurate) that 200 w/m**2 leaks out the top and that is emitted by molecules over an altitude range of 4 to 12 km with an effective average of 7 km.
Say for concept illustration that 345 w/m**2 leaks out the bottom and that is emitted by molecules over an altitude range of 0.0001 to 1.5 km with an effective average of 1 km.
Suppose a certain amount of CO2 was added into troposphere and mixed then instantly the upper & lower ranges would need to be closer to their respective ends because more CO2 molecules in the way.
The effective averages of 7 km for upwelling into or through stratosphere and 1 km for downwelling into surface change to 7.05 km and 980m respectively, with the upwelling & downwelling Power fluxes consequently changing to 199 w/m**2 and 346 w/m**2 respectively due to being produced by higher-than-before (colder) and lower-than-before (warmer) air parcels.
There has been no change in the 545 w/m**2 leaving the troposphere, there is no “magical extra energy”, the surface downwelling radiation has increased 1 w/m**2, an additional ~480 terawatts heating the ocean and Earth is emitting less radiation to Outer Space (a Power reduction of 510 terawatts).
Have a giggle – or even a belly laugh – on Monty Python’s
World Cup Team of Philosophers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjV9eZzNs2g
Is it just me in Norway, or are others also waiting minutes for pages to load from realclimate.org?
in Re to Martin Smith, 27 Jun 2026 at 1:31 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/06/unforced-variations-june-2026/#comment-849445
Hallo Martin,
At least in case of a disruption, you hardly ever walk alone :-)
The website behaved similarly today with respect to me in Zlín / Czechia.
Greetings
Tomáš
It is not just you. I’m in Spain and pages take forever to load.
No, I’m seeing it as well, and I’m in the USA. I’m wondering if this is some kind of half-assed DOS attack.
I was also experiencing a slow response for a few days here in the U.S. with one or two “bad gateway” messages. Things seem to be back to normal at the moment. However, I am unable to access the ECMWF charts web page now.
It happens sometimes 503 error, may be traffic or server doing things.
Not just you. I have sometimes waited several minutes or longer over the last couple of days for pages to load, and on one occasion I received a 502 bad gateway message. Thats a network server issue not my own computer.. Happened a few months back as well. Haven’t noticed this type of error message on other websites recently.
Pages are loading much faster today, and I did see a message pop up yesterday about the site undergoing maintenance.
The big question is that after two record breaking heat waves here in the uk will there be any more in July and August this year and the researchers who did the mid range forecasting appear to be suggesting it’s more likely than not. A July heatwave would be even hotter perhaps and with an aging population who have a lot of conditions excess deaths are more likely
yes it is back next week although humidity and temps might not be as high
Alpine glaciers: Very severe ice loss – We are seeing enormous rates of erosion and melting of ice and snow across the entire Alpine region https://earthclimate.eu/2026/06/28/alpine-glaciers-very-severe-ice-loss/
It’s the last day of the month and we’re halfway through 2026. The ERA5 SAT numbers at Copernicus ClimatePulse are running a bit behind their normal posting dates but show June 2026 (+0.55ºC) will be roughly unchanged from May26 and marginally above the Jan-May average (+0.53ºC). (Recent year Jan-Jun have averaged 2023 +0.38ºC, 2024 +0.70ºC, 2025 +0.61ºC),
The SAT numbers wouldn’t be showing any sign of the coming El Niño while the ERA5 60N-60S SST so far continues the pause seen during May26 which followed the rapid anomaly increase Jan-Apr. (Jan +0.37ºC, Feb +0.41ºC,, Mar +0.44ºC, Apr +0.50ºC, +May +0.49ºC, Jun(so far) +0.51ºC)
The NINO3.4 anomaly, after little rise thro’ May, resumed its strong rise thro’ June, weekly values thro’ May/June running +0.8ºC, +0.9ºC, +0.8ºC, +0.9ºC, +1.0ºC, +1.0ºC, +1.3ºC, +1.5ºC, +1.7ºC, +1.8ºC.
When measuring the state of the El Niño, the NINO3.4 and its use in ONI is nowadays all converted into RNINO3.4 and RONI RONI is now running about 0.6ºC below ONI so the presently-developed El Niño conditions would be rated as ‘weak’. (The adoption of RONI has downgraded some past El Niños.) The NOAA-NCEP ENSO Discussion for June (updated 2nd Thurs of month) is giving a 2-in-3 chance of ‘very strong’ El Niño conditions (RONI>2.5) by November.