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I like this 'staircase of denial' image: https://twitter.com/mathiasced/status/1616348855842250754?lang=en https://twitter.com/mathiasced/status/16163488558422
by photochemsyn 3y ago
I like this 'staircase of denial' image:
https://twitter.com/mathiasced/status/1616348855842250754?lang=en https://twitter.com/mathiasced/status/1616348855842250754?la...
However, what it also demonstrates is that you can't reliably predict 'the next five years', what you see is that if you break up the global temperature trend into ten-year intervals, from one interval to the next you see this stepwise increase. The noise-to-signal ratio is such that it takes about ten years for climatic conditions to become noticeably different from the perspective of a human observer.
All we can really say at present is that the trend of extreme floods and droughts and heat waves and so on will be noticeably worse in 2033.
Incidentally, this is what the Earth looks like from space to an alien who evolved in a solar system where the Sun was much much redder - rather like Venus.
https://youtu.be/f7QttjGu628 https://youtu.be/f7QttjGu628
You can't see the planet's surface in IR, but the black spots are the cloud tops (if you look to the far right, you can see the daily Amazon jungle cloudburst cycle) - and the image is centered over the Pacific Ocean, which is reasonable, as it's hardly Planet Earth, at least not from the climate perspective - it's Planet Ocean. Temperature-wise, this means we won't see the planetary temperature stabilize for at least a century after fossil fuel emissions cease, due to the lag/buffering effect.
Don't get depressed, you get to live in interesting times!
- paulddraper 3y agoPeople are very good at picking their source data, depending what they want to prove. Staircase looks a lot less exciting here: https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/UAH_LT_1979_thru_April_2023_v6.jpg https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/202...
- xg15 3y agoIndeed. Like picking a dataset that is measuring lower/mid atmosphere temperature and was known for producing unusually low temperature measurements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_data... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_Sounding_Unit_temperature_measurements#Comparison_of_data_with_climate_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_Sounding_Unit_temper...
- D13Fd 3y agoOh good, we're fine, we can all stop caring. Whew that was close.
- xg15 3y ago> However, what it also demonstrates is that you can't reliably predict 'the next five years' Generally, you can't, though I think in this case, the prediction is more confident due to the La Nina/El Nino phenomena. Basically, the last few years have been breaking heat records despite a cooling force being in effect (La Nina). Now, that cooling force is gone and is replaced by a heating force (El Nino). So it's likely the fluctuations will now rather go up than down for the next few years.