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Featured Story

High-resolution ‘fingerprint’ images reveal a weakening Atlantic Ocean circulation (AMOC)

12 Oct 2025 by Stefan 11 Comments

The #AMOC is the reason for Europe’s mild climate. Evidence that it is slowing has been piling up over the years – it now is likely at its weakest in at least a millennium, and it may even be approaching a tipping point. Here I will show you the latest high-resolution images – and also discuss whether there is serious evidence speaking against an ongoing AMOC weakening.

Our regular readers are well aware of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC in short, a large-scale overturning motion of water along the whole Atlantic which transports a quadrillion Watts (that is 1015 W) of heat to the northern Atlantic, partly via the Gulf Stream. (If you are new to the topic, check out this article.)

Instabilities of the AMOC have produced some of the most dramatic climate changes in recent Earth history, well-known to paleo-climatologists (see e.g. my by now ancient review in Nature 2002), and concerns that we are destabilizing it by causing global warming has been rising sharply in expert circles in recent years (see last year’s open letter by 44 experts).

[Read more…] about High-resolution ‘fingerprint’ images reveal a weakening Atlantic Ocean circulation (AMOC)

Filed Under: Climate Science, Featured Story, Oceans

“But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years!”

21 Sep 2025 by Gavin 225 Comments

Almost two decades ago, some scientists predicted that Arctic summer sea ice would ‘soon’ disappear. These predictions were mentioned by Al Gore and got a lot of press. However, they did not gain wide acceptance in the scientific community, and were swiftly disproven. Unsurprisingly, this still comes up a lot. Time for a deeper dive into what happened and why…

[Read more…] about “But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years!”

Filed Under: Arctic and Antarctic, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Featured Story, Instrumental Record, Scientific practice Tagged With: Arctic, predictions, sea ice

Time and Tide Gauges wait for no Voortman

18 Sep 2025 by Gavin 60 Comments

Here we go again. An obscure, methodologically poor, paper published with little to no review makes a convenient point and gets elevated into supposedly ‘blockbusting’ science by the merchants of bullshit, sorry, doubt. Actual scientists drop everything to respond, but not before the (convenient) nonsense has spread widely. Rebuttals are written and submitted, but by the time they are published everyone has moved on.

[Read more…] about Time and Tide Gauges wait for no Voortman

Filed Under: Climate Science, Featured Story, In the News, Instrumental Record, Oceans, Sea level rise, skeptics Tagged With: DOE, Endangerment Finding, sea level rise

Lil’ NAS Express

17 Sep 2025 by group 47 Comments

The fast-tracked update of the 2009 EPA Endangerment finding from the National Academies for Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), has now been released.

[Read more…] about Lil’ NAS Express

Filed Under: Climate impacts, Climate Science, Featured Story, Greenhouse gases, In the News, Instrumental Record Tagged With: DOE, Endangerment Finding

DOE CWG Report “Moot”?

10 Sep 2025 by Gavin 119 Comments

Somewhat breaking news. A court filing (from 9/4) from DOE has noted that the Climate Working Group has been disbanded (as of 9/3). This was done to make the EDF/UCS lawsuit moot, but it also means that DOE is withdrawing the report, no-one will respond appropriately to the comments submitted, and (possibly) it becomes irrelevant for the EPA reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding.

What a farce.

Update: Via Andy Revkin, the EDF/UCS’s blistering response to the DOE filing. Pass the popcorn.

Filed Under: Climate impacts, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Featured Story, Instrumental Record, IPCC, Model-Obs Comparisons, Scientific practice

Climate Scientists response to DOE report

2 Sep 2025 by Gavin 71 Comments

As we’ve mentioned, Andrew Dessler and Robert Kopp have been coordinating a scientific peer review of the DOW ‘CWG’ Critique of Climate Science. It is now out.

[Read more…] about Climate Scientists response to DOE report

Filed Under: Arctic and Antarctic, Carbon cycle, Climate impacts, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Featured Story, Greenhouse gases, Hurricanes, Instrumental Record, IPCC, Model-Obs Comparisons, Scientific practice, Sea level rise, Sun-earth connections Tagged With: CWG, DOE, Endangerment Finding

Critique of Chapter 6 “Extreme Weather” in the DOE review

2 Sep 2025 by group 60 Comments

Guest commentary by Kerry Emanuel

Executive Summary

Chapter 6 of the draft DOE report examines whether global warming exacerbates extreme weather. It rightly notes that because events such as hurricanes are rare, detecting their response to climate change in short and imperfect historical records is extremely difficult—if not impossible. Yet the authors devote most of the remainder of the chapter to attempting just that. By omitting to frame such efforts in the context of theory and models, they commit three fundamental errors: 1) searching for trends where none were predicted, 2) neglecting important variables for which trends were predicted and 3) overlooking—or failing to acknowledge—that some predicted trends are of a magnitude that is not a priori detectable in existing noisy and short data sets. The draft report also overlooks recent literature on climate change effects on weather extremes, and quotes selectively and misleadingly from the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For these reasons, I find much of Chapter 6 to be of questionable utility. There are at least three climate change-induced trends in hurricane-related hazards that were predicted theoretically, simulated by models, and confirmed by observations:

  1. Hurricanes are producing more rain, causing increased flooding. As water, not wind, is the source of most damage and mortality in hurricanes, this is the most consequential scientific finding.
  2. The proportion of hurricanes that reach high intensity is increasing.
  3. Hurricanes are intensifying more rapidly.

There is no robust scientific finding that hurricane frequency is increasing or expected to increase. Thus, much of Chapter 6 of the DOE report is devoted to refuting a hypothesis unsupported by scientific consensus. The short section on tornadoes does not include other more destructive aspects of severe convective storms, such as hail and damaging straight-line winds, and as with the section on hurricanes, omits inferences from theory and models.

[This commentary is also available as a pdf file]

[Read more…] about Critique of Chapter 6 “Extreme Weather” in the DOE review

Filed Under: Climate Science, Featured Story, Greenhouse gases, Hurricanes, In the News, Instrumental Record, IPCC Tagged With: CWG, DOE, Endangerment Finding

Critiques of the ‘Critical Review’

14 Aug 2025 by group 285 Comments

The first somewhat comprehensive reviews of the DOE critical review are now coming online.

[Read more…] about Critiques of the ‘Critical Review’

Filed Under: Climate impacts, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Communicating Climate, Featured Story, Greenhouse gases, In the News, Instrumental Record, Model-Obs Comparisons, Reporting on climate, skeptics Tagged With: climate change, DOE, Endangerment Finding, EPA

Are direct water vapor emissions endangering anyone?

31 Jul 2025 by group

In the EPA EF reconsideration document there is a section on p62 where they attempt to make the argument that the CO2 endangerment finding would also apply to direct water vapor emissions to the atmosphere, which is (according to them) obviously absurd. But both claims are bogus.

[Read more…] about Are direct water vapor emissions endangering anyone?

Filed Under: Aerosols, Carbon cycle, Climate impacts, Climate Science, Featured Story, Greenhouse gases, hydrological cycle, In the News Tagged With: Endangerment Finding, EPA, Water vapor

The Endangerment of the Endangerment Finding?

29 Jul 2025 by group

The EPA, along with the “Climate Working Group” (CWG) of usual suspects (plus Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) at DOE, have just put out a document for public comment their attempt to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gas emissions.

[Read more…] about The Endangerment of the Endangerment Finding?

Filed Under: Climate impacts, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Featured Story, Greenhouse gases, In the News, Instrumental Record, IPCC, Model-Obs Comparisons, Reporting on climate Tagged With: DOE, Endangerment Finding, EPA

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  • High-resolution ‘fingerprint’ images reveal a weakening Atlantic Ocean circulation (AMOC)
  • Unforced variations: Oct 2025
  • “But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years!”
  • Time and Tide Gauges wait for no Voortman
  • Lil’ NAS Express
  • DOE CWG Report “Moot”?

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