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Instrumental Record

A Tale of Two Hockey Sticks

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Two decades ago, the so-called “Hockey Stick” curve, published in 1999 by me and my co-authors (Mann, Bradley and Hughes, 1999), was featured in the all-important “Summary for Policy Makers” (SPM) of the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment report. The curve, which depicted temperature variations over the past 1000 years estimated from “proxy data such as tree rings, corals, ice cores, and lake sediments”, showed the upward spiking of modern temperatures (the “blade”) as it dramatically ascends, during the industrial era, upward from the “handle” that describes the modest, slightly downward steady trend that preceded it.

The Hockey Stick became an icon in the case for human-caused climate change, and I found myself at the center of the contentious climate debate (I’ve described my experiences in “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”).

Featured two decades later now in the AR6 SPM is a longer Hockey Stick with an even sharper blade. And no longer just for the Northern Hemisphere, it now covers the whole globe. The recent warming is seen not only to be unprecedented over the past millennium, but tentatively, the past hundred millennia.

Side-by-side comparison of the (left) original Mann et al (1999) “Hockey Stick” reconstruction as featured in the Summary for Policy Makers of the IPCC 3rd Assessment report (2001) and the (right) longer, sharper “Hockey Stick” as featured in the Summary for Policy Makers of the IPCC 6th Assessment report (2021).

The relevant statements in the SPM and Technical Summary are:

A.2.2 Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years (high confidence). Temperatures during the most recent decade (2011–2020) exceed those of the most recent multi-century warm period, around 6500 years ago13 [0.2°C to 1°C relative to 1850– 1900] (medium confidence). Prior to that, the next most recent warm period was about 125,000 years ago when the multi-century temperature [0.5°C to 1.5°C relative to 1850–1900] overlaps the observations of the most recent decade (medium confidence). {Cross-Chapter Box 2.1, 2.3, Cross-Section Box TS.1}

SPM AR6

Global surface temperature has increased by 1.09 [0.95 to 1.20] °C from 1850–1900 to 2011–2020, and the last decade was more likely than not warmer than any multi-centennial period after the Last Interglacial, roughly 125,000 years ago.

Cross Section Box TS.1

As the new IPCC report lays bare (you can find my full commentary about the new report at Time Magazine), we are engaged in a truly unprecedented and fundamentally dangerous experiment with our planet.

References

  1. M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, "Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 26, pp. 759-762, 1999. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/1999GL900070

We are not reaching 1.5ºC earlier than previously thought

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Guest commentary by Malte Meinshausen, Zebedee Nicholls, and Piers Forster

Of all the troubling headlines emerging from the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) WG1 report, one warning will surely dominate headlines in the next days and weeks: Earth is likely to reach the crucial 1.5℃ warming limit in the early 2030s.

In 2018, the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C warming  stated in its summary for policy makers that the world was likely to cross the 1.5℃ threshold between 2030 and 2052, if current warming trends continue. 

In this latest AR6, a more comprehensive assessment was undertaken to estimate when a warming level of 1.5℃ might be reached. As a result, some early media reports suggest 1.5ºC warming is now anticipated 10-years earlier than previously assumed (AFR, THE TIMES). 

We want to explain here why that is not backed up by a rigorous comparison of the SR1.5 and AR6 reports. In fact, the science in the previous SR1.5 report and the new AR6 report are remarkably consistent.

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The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report

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Climate scientists are inordinately excited by the release of a new IPCC report (truth be told, that’s a bit odd – It’s a bit like bringing your end-of-(seven)-year project home and waiting anxiously to see how well it will be received). So, in an uncharacteristically enthusiastic burst of effort, we have a whole suite of posts on the report for you to read.

If/when we add some more commentary as we digest the details and we see how the report is being discussed, we’ll link it from here. Feel free to discuss general issues with the report in the comments here, and feel free to suggest further deep dives we might pursue.

Rapid attribution of PNW heatwave

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Summary: It was almost impossible for the temperatures seen recently in the Pacific North West heatwave to have occurred without global warming. And only improbable with it.

It’s been clear for at least a decade that global warming has been in general increasing the intensity of heat waves, with clear trends in observed maximum temperatures that match what climate models have been predicting. For the specific situation in the Pacific NorthWest at the end of June, we now have the first attribution analysis from the World Weather Attribution group – a consortium of climate experts from around the world working on extreme event attribution. Their preprint (Philip et al.) is available here.

Trends in Tmax globally
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Nenana Ice Classic 2021

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And…. it’s that time again. The clock stopped on the Nenana ice classic this afternoon (April 30, 12:50pm AT). This is pretty much on trend and unsurprising given the relatively slightly cool winter in Alaska. The jackpot on offer this year was $233,591 but will likely be shared among several winners. This year’s ‘break up’ is a little odd, since the ice moved sufficiently to trigger the clock, but not enough to actually topple the tripod (which is still visible as this is being written (9pm ET) – Update 10:30pm ET: gone now though!). But, the rules are the rules…

Nenana Ice Classic break-up dates since 1917.

The trends in the break up date is about 8 days earlier per century (±4), estimated over the whole record, but substantially faster over the last 50 years (16 ± 12 days/century, 95% CI).

Other phenological records show similar trends, notably the longest cherry blossom record from Kyoto which dates back to 9th Century, and which had a record earliest peak bloom this year and a clear trend over the last few decades:

Kyoto Cherry Blossom trends (graph from Statista)

Feel free to link to your favorite such record in the comments…

Should the official Atlantic hurricane season be lengthened?

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By Jim Kossin, Tim Hall, Mike Mann, and Stefan Rahmstorf

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season broke a number of records, with the formation of an unprecedented 30 “named storms” (storms that reach wind-speed intensity of at least 18 m/s and are then given an official name). The season also started earlier than normal. In fact, when ranked by their order in the season, the date of formation of every named storm, from Tropical Storm Arthur to Hurricane Iota was substantially earlier than normal (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Average number of named storms by day of the year in the historical record from 1851–2019 (dark blue line). The light blue shading denotes the range between the minimum and maximum number of storms observed by each day. The days of formation for the 2020 named storms are shown by the red squares.
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The Rise and Fall of the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”

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Two decades ago, in an interview with science journalist Richard Kerr for the journal Science, I coined the term the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” (AMO) to describe an internal oscillation in the climate system resulting from interactions between North Atlantic ocean currents and wind patterns. These interactions were thought to lead to alternating decades-long intervals of warming and cooling centered in the extra-tropical North Atlantic that play out on 40-60 year timescales (hence the name). Think of the purported AMO as a much slower relative of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), with a longer timescale of oscillation (multidecadal rather than interannual) and centered in a different region (the North Atlantic rather than the tropical Pacific).

Today, in a research article published in the same journal Science, my colleagues and I have provided what we consider to be the most definitive evidence yet that the AMO doesn’t actually exist.

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Don’t climate bet against the house

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Decades ago (it seems) when perhaps it was still possible to have good faith disagreements about the attribution of current climate trends, James Annan wrote a post here summarizing the thinking and practice of Climate Betting. That led to spate of wagers on continued global warming (a summary of his bets through 2005 and attempts to set up others is here).

There were earlier bets, the most well known perhaps was the one for $100 between Hugh Ellsaesser and Jim Hansen in 1989 on whether there would be a new temperature record within three years. There was (1990), and Ellsaesser paid up in January 1991 (Kerr, 1991). But these more recent bets were more extensive.

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References

  1. R.A. Kerr, "Global Temperature Hits Record Again", Science, vol. 251, pp. 274-274, 1991. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.251.4991.274

Update day 2021

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As is now traditional, every year around this time we update the model-observation comparison page with an additional annual observational point, and upgrade any observational products to their latest versions.

A couple of notable issues this year. HadCRUT has now been updated to version 5 which includes polar infilling, making the Cowtan and Way dataset (which was designed to address that issue in HadCRUT4) a little superfluous. Going forward it is unlikely to be maintained so, in a couple of figures, I have replaced it with the new HadCRUT5. The GISTEMP version is now v4.

For the comparison with the Hansen et al. (1988), we only had the projected output up to 2019 (taken from fig 3a in the original paper). However, it turns out that fuller results were archived at NCAR, and now they have been added to our data file (and yes, I realise this is ironic). This extends Scenario B to 2030 and Scenario A to 2060.

Nothing substantive has changed with respect to the satellite data products, so the only change is the addition of 2020 in the figures and trends.

So what do we see? The early Hansen models have done very well considering the uncertainty in total forcings (as we’ve discussed (Hausfather et al., 2019)). The CMIP3 models estimates of SAT forecast from ~2000 continue to be astoundingly on point. This must be due (in part) to luck since the spread in forcings and sensitivity in the GCMs is somewhat ad hoc (given that the CMIP simulations are ensembles of opportunity), but is nonetheless impressive.

CMIP3 (circa 2004) model hindcast and forecast estimates of SAT.

The forcings spread in CMIP5 was more constrained, but had some small systematic biases as we’ve discussed Schmidt et al., 2014. The systematic issue associated with the forcings and more general issue of the target diagnostic (whether we use SAT or a blended SST/SAT product from the models), give rise to small effects (roughly 0.1ºC and 0.05ºC respectively) but are independent and additive.

The discrepancies between the CMIP5 ensemble and the lower atmospheric MSU/AMSU products are still noticeable, but remember that we still do not have a ‘forcings-adjusted’ estimate of the CMIP5 simulations for TMT, though work with the CMIP6 models and forcings to address this is ongoing. Nonetheless, the observed TMT trends are very much on the low side of what the models projected, even while stratospheric and surface trends are much closer to the ensemble mean. There is still more to be done here. Stay tuned!

The results from CMIP6 (which are still being rolled out) are too recent to be usefully added to this assessment of forecasts right now, though some compilations have now appeared:

CMIP6 model SAT (observed forcings to 2014, SSP2-45 scenario subsequently) (Zeke Hausfather)

The issues in CMIP6 related to the excessive spread in climate sensitivity will need to be looked at in more detail moving forward. In my opinion ‘official’ projections will need to weight the models to screen out those ECS values outside of the constrained range. We’ll see if other’s agree when the IPCC report is released later this year.

Please let us know in the comments if you have suggestions for improvements to these figures/analyses, or suggestions for additions.

References

  1. Z. Hausfather, H.F. Drake, T. Abbott, and G.A. Schmidt, "Evaluating the Performance of Past Climate Model Projections", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 47, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085378
  2. G.A. Schmidt, D.T. Shindell, and K. Tsigaridis, "Reconciling warming trends", Nature Geoscience, vol. 7, pp. 158-160, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2105

2020 Hindsight

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Yesterday was the day that NASA, NOAA, the Hadley Centre and Berkeley Earth delivered their final assessments for temperatures in Dec 2020, and thus their annual summaries. The headline results have received a fair bit of attention in the media (NYT, WaPo, BBC, The Guardian etc.) and the conclusion that 2020 was pretty much tied with 2016 for the warmest year in the instrumental record is robust.

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