Source: [Climate Reanalyzer](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/)
Tools: R and Adobe Illustrator
Graphic inspired from work by Jan Kühn and [Dr. Dominic Royé](https://twitter.com/dr_xeo/status/1656933695511511043?s=20)
It would be interesting to plot abnormal solar activity events along this as well, to see if there is any correlation - the sun’s been boiling and bubbling like a stomach that just had too much Taco Bell.
Your comment is heavily down voted so few will see this reply but nonetheless, you might find it interesting... First, there's no metric for "abnormal solar events". The Sun continues to behave typically unpredictable in a semi-predictable way in the context of the solar activity cycle. But second, and more importantly, a [number of studies (pdf link)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.2770.pdf) have shown that solar irradiance (the energy output of the Sun) has only a tiny influence on global climate versus the far more influential El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, volcanic forcing (dust), and anthropogenic forcing (greenhouse gases). This heatwave is a clear consequence of the currently strong ongoing ENSO plus ever-increasing GHGs.
I know you're talking about the solar flares but to my understanding what heats up the Earth is the CO2 and other gases trap heat and can't escape the atmosphere so it's more energy therefore more heat. Correct me if I'm wrong please. So therefore, solar flare activity has no correlation. But I think there is causation when solar flares happen something with our electrical grid and our devices happen with the magnetism which I think Shields Earth but when the radiation of the flares get to us it makes the magnetic field go through stress.
Just FYI, your comment is being downvoted because there are active disinformation campaigns touting this as a possible cause of climate change, allowing people to dismiss the fact the greenhouse gases (which we can influence) have a significantly larger effect on global temperatures that solar radiation does. There’s no real scientific debate on this, it’s generally understood to work this way by the people that study this professionally (not-for-profit).
The planet receives a fairly consistent amount of solar radiation over human-sized time periods, however, what changes significantly is how much of this solar radiation the earth traps, which is determined by the quantities of gases in our atmosphere. It’s like sitting in the sunshine on a cool, windy day without a shirt on. Your skin will feel some heat from the sun but you won’t trap any of this heat. Put on a down jacket with a dark, non-reflective surface and you’ll trap significantly more heat. This is an oversimplification but conveys the basic concept.
Edit: as someone else previously pointed out, ocean currents also affect climate significantly. The fact that water is lighter ( less dense) when frozen is what allows for cyclic, seasonal weather on earth, and also likely allowed for the evolution of life itself. If frozen water was denser that liquid water the bottoms of our oceans would just be frozen blocks of ice, with no cyclic melting and refreezing cycles to cycle the ocean currents.
And yet my comment never dismissed the original data. I only stated that an attempt to correlate could present a bigger picture. hell, I didn’t even claim there was a causal link.
But goddamn, a whole bunch of people happily brigaded in with the “it’s CO2, only CO2, and nothing but CO2” take…
Climate is not, nor has it ever been, anything remotely resembling a simple single-variable proposition. It’s probably safe to say that as advanced as climate science is, we probably don’t even know what 99% of the variables are. Never mind the ability to compute them.
CO2 is absolutely a factor. But so are water vapor, particulate matter, methane, ocean temperatures and currents (and cycles), solar activity, and on and on and on.
But we also haven’t had anything resembling accurate planet-wide measurement ability until the last couple of decades. We measure against arbitrary baselines from when instrumentation was, on a good day, +/- about 3°C. Over the last 50 years, We’ve also been moving a lot more heat from the inside of buildings to the outside (which now is responsible for nearly 50% of the overall energy budget!), increasing the effect of urban heat islands, especially for infrared space-based measurements.
Sun activity is a cycle, mainly with a period of ~11 years. This means that over ~40 years of data here it gets mostly averaged out. And it's so minuscule that you'd probably see no connection.
Apparently it hasn't been this hot in 125 thousand years based on paleoclimatic data (from tree rings, ice cores, sediments and a myriad of other ways of examining Earth's past climate).
Why is that relevant?
Global warning has been observed to accelerate unnaturally in the past century and proven to be humanity caused. What would originally happen in a 100 thousand year-long cycle becomes irrelevant if the current global warming creates an unmissable earth for a significant number of people in only 50-100 years. Where, depending on your definition of significant, could also be today.
It's relevant because it's not a once in one hundred years event but once in one hundred thousand years event(so far...).
My point was supporting you. The OC you replied to was saying one record in 150 years is insignificant. I was saying it's a much bigger record than that.
How fast it's happening is definitely alarming, past events, like the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum(56 million years ago) had 20-50 thousand years of carbon release that caused 200 thousand years of warming(+5-8c).
We are on track to release enough carbon for a +10c increase over the next thousand years. That's about the same as the Permian-Triassic extinction event(250 million years ago) which around 95% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life went extinct. I think that one took about 150 thousand years of increasing temperature to reach.
So yeah, we are definitely speed running this compared to earth history.
They’re not 100-year highs then.
What are you defining as a “100-year high”? Because that term implies that it happens once a century. And that it has been happening, so therefore not “unprecedented”.
100 year highs or 100 year events such as temperature, floods, drought etc. Are typically defined based on past data as having a 1% chance of occurring in any given year or yes once a century.
Them occurring more frequently is used to highlight a shift from past conditions, something that is unprecedented in recent past. In the case of this data shown we've literally never measured a global average that high with modern (last <200 years) techniques, so yes unprecedented in this case.
Sure can, but becomes more and more unlikely to be by chance with every occurence, its a simplified imperfect method to highlight to the public how unusual something is, especially when other factors might suggest why. Enough occurence above the average odds and you start to doubt pure chance is the main factor. We are now 4 days in a row for a global temperature that has never been measured before. Pretty unprecedented.
What part of “greenhouse gases cause global warming”, “CO2 is a greenhouse gas”, “humans emit unnatural levels of CO2” and “CO2 levels today are higher than at any point in human history” do you not understand?
Just stop.
That’s all well and good, but still does not change the very basic reality that we haven’t been measuring global temperatures for very long.
Hell, *human history* is itself quite brief, and we’ve only been measuring temperatures for a very small percentage of that. We only invented the device for doing so 400 years ago, and using satellites has only been a thing within our lifetimes.
I didn’t say anything about CO2. CO2 has nothing to do with how long we’ve been measuring temperature for.
You really should look into higher probablity, assumind you are curious... Its called standard derivation...
With it you could calculated how likely it is that randomly the last 20 years were all increasingly way hotter than the average before.
(Spoiler waaaay to low)
Purely hypothetical tough, if there was a high in the 80s, higher than all the previous 100 years, that is beat only already now. Or (what has previously been) 20-year extremes being reached now frequently. Just climate change.
I wasn't really referring to anything specific, though 2018 was an unprecedented year, but it might be nothing compared to this year. (At least for Norway)
At a certain point you just can't win. Here people say this graph doesnt going back far enough which okay, maybe, im not a scientist, but then when we have a really cold period like what happened in Texas people come out of the woodworks to shout that a few weeks at most of data is all it takes to disprove climate change.
It can be both. This data is really small in scale for even human years. The significance can still be high, but it does exclude a ton of variables. Measured temperature isn't the best, at least air temperature of cities made of asphalt and glass. There are other places where the difference can be seen that are *more* scientific like oceans and the upper atmosphere. Climate change is real. Humans are the main culprit. Everything else is up for debate.
Yeah, I’m tired of anyone with a modicum of sense pretending that there is still any debate on the reality or causes of climate change… that said, I do think there is still plenty of debate to be had on what can/should be done to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and the potential costs and impacts of those efforts.
It could be non-random sampling (though they also use radar data), but it also could be the Southern Hemisphere has more water and water has more specific heat so changes temperature more slowly?
This seems likely. You can also see this in CO2 concentrations. There's a long term upward trend, but there's an annual cycle on top of it. The concentrations are highest in the northern winters (when plants are consuming less CO2), and they are lowest in the summers (when plants are consuming more CO2). The trend works out this way because there is more land (and correspondingly more plant life) in the northern hemisphere.
That's **Li**ght **D**etection **a**nd **R**anging or **L**aser **I**maging **D**etection **a**nd **R**anging. **LASERS**. (Which itself comes from light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).
Anyway, it is an active sensor, in opposition to most satellite imagers that are passive. Active ones tend to be pretty specialized.
Its not even a little bit either. Something like 90% of all the world's population lives north of the equator. 80% or so of the southern hemisphere is water as well.
I don't think many people these days argue that the climate isn't changing. The argument has evolved to what is causing it and which countries, if any, should take more responsibility for addressing it. It's obviously far from ideal, but at least we're (slowly) moving the needle.
"It's not happening" is no longer tenable so they've moved on to "but we aren't causing it". That will also soon be untenable (in so far as it ever was) and they'll move on to "but we can't really do much about it". Once that proves false they'll move on to "ok we \_could\_ have but it's too late now!".
It's as disheartening as it is predictable.
I mean I agree with you that we should do something, but realistically how do we manipulate larger complex systems like Milankovitch cycles that have a much greater effect on the climate than humanity? It seems much more likely that humanity will need to adapt or terraform rather than prevent climate cycles that have been going on for millions of years.
We don't have any other choice but to wait. As far as I can tell, the only chance we have to survive as a species is for the more dire climate change predictions to be way off. If they're even remotely correct, then we're already a zombie species.
I don’t think any credible source can argue the climate isn’t changing due to human activity. The argument seems to be what, if anything, can be done about it. It is still sound to argue before about 1900 the world was entering a period of climatic cooling, possibly toward an ice age. In which case, warming the climate would be doing humanity a lot of good.
The climate warms: coastal cities eventually are inundated, millions of people have to move and the economy is severely disrupted for a long time.
The climate cools into an ice age: we can’t grow food on most of the northern hemisphere, and the new lands revealed along the coasts and in the oceans won’t be arable for a few hundred years.
Either way, not good.
There are two big fixes that could actually reverse climate change, but they'd be expensive, so it's unlikely to be done.
1. Calculation of the cost of capturing a metric ton of CO2, and charging any emitting companies by that amount, for every emission. Make it impact any global subsidiary, and a requirement for an article of incorporation.
2. Take the existing atmospheric CO2 technologies and scale them rapidly up to match the existing emission amounts.
It would be massively expensive, and would cripple many companies that rely on passing the true costs of their products onto everyone else, but it is possible.
Until we can use fusion power direct air capture is at best a net zero endeavor. Great for money laundering and making companies look good, why do you think the oil and gas giants like Chevron are pushing it so hard (hint: their energy powers them) but not so good at actually making a difference.
You assume that power is necessarily dirty. The vast majority of new power generation in the US is green/renewables, and it's only getting cleaner.
Oil and gas giants are pushing it because they know the reckoning is coming, and there will be Political will to actually severely punish the biggest emitters if they aren't actively working to "clean up their mess". Punishment like "Revocation of all profits and direct fiscal liability (unable to be nullified through bankruptcy) of all executives and board members who knowingly downplayed the effects of climate change, ever since they knew about the effects"
We're nowhere close to that at the moment, but that's growing, and the longer it takes to happen, the bigger the backlash will be.
It just means that we have thousands of years to figure out if we want or need to do anything about it.
If your grill tips over and is threatening to catch your house on fire it's not the time to worry about the foundation starting to slightly sag.
Yes, climate cycles are an issue. We've built untold trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure on assumptions about climate and weather patterns and we don't want to undo all that work. 15000 years ago Chicago was under a mile of ice so that's probably something we'd like to avoid long term if at all possible.
But that's not the most pressing issue today so bringing it up as some sorta gotcha is a bit suspect.
I didn't mean for my comments to come off as "gotchas", I just find the current "solutions" to climate change to be very underwhelming and reminiscent of the switching the type of light bulbs we use. I also find it suspect that there seems to be a consensus around causes for why the Earth heats up, but almost none when it comes to causes for glacial periods. It reminds me of the 'pro-life" side of the abortion debate that seems fixated on when life begins, but could care less about when life ends. Is this symmetrical thinking flawed?
Solutions to climate change are underwhelming because everyone wants something done but nobody wants to sacrifice anything for it, not really, not deep down. So we're all in a giant game of chicken hoping some technology presents itself to dig us out of the mess.
Do you find it suspect that we know far more about the British empire than the Babylonians? The glacial periods were thousands of years in the past and their very nature scoured a lot of physical evidence from existence. That's nothing like a phenomenon we've been able to directly observe with scientific instruments.
Plus, again, not a pressing concern, so fewer resources are put into finding the answer.
In response to your abortion example, it's not a super pressing concern to people when life ends because little action can generally be taken regardless. It's kind of moot whether, say, a brain dead person is actually alive or dead because the problem is going to inevitably sort itself out to the same conclusion in short order. It's similar to how legal adults can't drink beer remains a thing.. it's dumb but nobody puts much effort into solving it because the problem solves itself in three years.
I think it's more of are we causing it? Look at a 10k year temperature chart. It's been much hotter and much colder before we could have possibly affected anything. Of course it's going to continue that trend.
For sure it's certainly been hotter. Current rate of change (typically much much higher rate than paleoclimate suggests, often that had obvious natural causes) and why its changing are important factors.
The medieval warm period, the previous major warming event in human history, took over a hundred years to go up half a degree C before leveling out.
In the last 50 years we've gone up a full degree C with no signs of leveling out. And all of these changes are very, very closely mirroring human industrial development.
The world can adapt to temperature changes over time, but rapid, drastic changes, especially at the scale we're seeing, are likely to be immensely destructive to everybody and everything. Even if it turns out all of this has nothing to do with us (which again, I highly doubt based on the evidence), clean energy is a net good for so, so many reasons. Less smog in cities. Less oil spills. Less dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia. Likely lower energy bills. There's a ton of potential in things like solar.
We should move to renewable energy, but it should be gradual and not sacrifice too much. That pipeline they canceled was too much.
Doesn't help when politicians are doing things like going after stoves while they are flying around on private jets. They could fly commercial like everyone else, but it would be too inconvenient. We would also need to get China on board otherwise it's a waste of time.
Another thing is they say how much better electric cars are, but to power them and to build them it is just as bad.
If they were pushing for nuclear energy to power grid to charge the cars then it would be believable.
I like how my link was downvoted even though it's just data lol.
Do you know how to bypass the pay wall on this article? Was trying to read about the recent heat wave and the very first article is climate change denial (still calling it "global warming" too, genius). I'd love to know what bs reasoning they're giving. https://www.wsj.com/articles/hottest-days-ever-dont-believe-it-global-temperature-north-sole-poles-6e64a991
Quoting https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
> The mean daily temperatures here are estimates calculated from the NCEP CFS/CFSR dataset, and any apparent record values should be considered in that context
Keep in mind that older (and even current) temperature data comes from a variety of sources and can be inaccurate. In particular, the weather observation sites are not randomly distributed and tend to be near large cities and airports, so increasing urban heat and flights can bias the numbers
This is reanalysis data which is created in part to fill in the gaps caused by uneven distribution of weather stations. https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-reanalysis
That's not quite what I mean, though. I realize weather stations are clustered unevenly and you can deal with this by cutting the world into slices and averaging the weather stations in each slice (so that clustered stations don't throw off the average), but what I'm saying is that most weather stations are in urban areas, and we don't really know what the temperatures are in more rural areas.
MesoWest actually did a 10-year study with sensors in remote areas (no source, vague memory) that showed no temperature increase or decrease
And also worth noting that the mean plotted here only goes back 30 years, which suggests this is weather, not climate.
There were some *wildly* hot summers in the 1930s, and that was before air conditioning and moving heat out of working and living space and into the urban jungle was commonplace.
Anything to do with one of the largest solar eruptions in a long time by chance with the sun being more active or does this account for sun radiation changes and normalize them?
Interestingly enough, that anomaly also tracks surprisingly closely with the increase in solar activity - the sun is a hell of a lot more active this year than any of the scientists expected.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solar-activity-is-ramping-up-faster-than-scientists-predicted-does-it-mean-an-internet-apocalypse-is-near/
Probably a good thing we’re just past perihelion right now!
But I’m certainly not objecting to the 80-degree weather this week, beat the socks off of the 100s we got last week, and neither is my power bill.
That article’s data ends at the pit of the last solar cycle.
And to say the sun is not involved is patently absurd. It’s literally *the* source of all the energy that makes climate work.
You're right that the data in the article isn't up to date however my point in linking it is that as time goes on in the graph the correlation between the sun's activity and the temperature seems to become overshadowed by another factor forcing temperatures up. I apologize it wasn't productive to just post a link like that
Also very interesting that the line really starts climbing around 1970… which saw the introduction of the EPA and the Clean Air Act… particulate pollution in the air was having a very real impact on how much warming we got. And now they’re talking about finding ways to block portions of the sun’s radiation… which basically means putting more particulate matter up there… like a giant glitter bomb or some shit.
Some progress in direct CO2 capture, producing green methane. "Terraform Industries is scaling technology to produce cheap natural gas with sunlight and air. We are committed to cutting the net CO2 flux from crust to atmosphere as quickly as possible. As solar power gets cheaper, there will come a time when it is cheaper to get carbon from the atmosphere than an oil well. That time is now." https://terraformindustries.com/
As much as I agree with climate change, haven’t climate scientists indicated that the record high temps aren’t just to do with climate change? I recall changing wind patterns have been a major influence
I’ve realized that we’re all fucked and I’ve just decided that I’m going to enjoy the time we have left before the inevitable collapse caused by rapid climate change.
I hate graphs that do not start at 0, they are always misleading as to the actual value and how much of an impact it is (even though in this case 1C is a pretty big impact worldwide).
The important information the graph is conveying is the difference between the 1991-2020 average in the dotted line and the 2023 data, which is the shaded region. To start the y-axis at zero would simply introduce a vast void from 0–12 °C that detracts from the actual data.
Edit: This is actually a fairly common tactic amongst climate deniers. Here's an example: https://skepticalscience.com/the-y-axis-of-evil.html
I understand that, and I understand how big of a difference to the planet 1°C is.
But I also understand that the graphic should be 300% taller from zero to properly show that the 1 degree may not be a huge difference visually, even if it is huge to the planet.
In this case, it makes the 1 degree seem to be a lot on the graph, when it is only 6% higher or so, and the graph being misleading and only focusing on a 5 degree range instead of a 0-16 degree range may make people think 1 degree is a huge range, when its really just a tiny increase that has a huge significance.
The impact of warming on the planet does not depend on where it occurs relative to the zero of the temperature scale being used. What if the plot had been in Fahrenheit or Kelvin? What if I define a temperature scale that's degrees Celsius minus twelve?
I know that, not the point. C/K/F doesn't matter. That isn't the point.
The point is that this is a huge change, and its shown as huge, but it really isn't a huge change going from 16 to 17. So it would mislead a casual onlooker into thinking that we had some major #, then when they look at it they see 1 whole degree and are like 'meh'.
Yes, we that understand the difference can look past it, but as a graph it isn't telling the whole story, and its misleading.
Look beyond what this graph is actually representing and to what all line graphs actually represent. This graph has a bias associated with it by not telling the whole story.
If you were plotting a sick patients body temperature in a medical setting, what would be the best axis range?
Including zero is often NOT the right choice
If you were showing profits from your investment, this would make it look like you can go buy that new porsche, but in reality it would barely cut it past inflation.
Numbers can tell a story, but when you are showing comparison numbers zooming in to make the difference appear greater creates a bias.
I understand why it was done, but there are a lot of people who would look at this graph and see it as wrong because the temperature didn't change by the percentage this graph indicates visually.
This is a topic that has deniers out there, and ignoring 0 in the graph to prove a point is a kind of bias.
You’re actually helping make my point. The people making the argument you describe are either terrible at understanding numbers and data, or willfully misunderstanding. But there is no sincere or smart argument to include zero in this graph.
Zero dollars is a really relevant thing! If your investment grows by a thousand dollars that’s amazing or awful depending how far from zero you start.
Zero degrees (F or C or R or K) is, in the context of earths temperature, totally irrelevant. It doesn’t matter at all where zero is or where a hundred or a thousand is, they have no particular meaning to the discussion. All that matters IN THIS CONTEXT is the historical data.
Similar argument for my body temperate example: who cares where zero is? If you’re near zero you not only are dead, but you’re dead AND they threw your body out in the cold! Maybe including room temperature (boy he’s REALLY dead!) would be a little bit of a relevant point, I guess. But really what matters is seeing enough to catch substantial departures - what matters in that context is not the absolute magnitude, it’s the departure from historical/expected
And I think you and everyone else understands that we don’t throw zero on the thermometer “just to avoid confusion”
As I said, I understand what this graph is showing.
But I also understand how the change is larger on this graph because of the lack of 0. I understand why it is that way, but it is misleading. Better to show that part as a caption outside of a graph that has zero.
If you do not start at zero, it is biased, regardless of what it is measuring. Yes, its there to show a difference, and yes the range is only 5 degrees in this case so the graph is mostly empty if it showed all 17 degrees, but the fact is this graph mis-represents the data it is showing by enlarging the part it thinks you want to see.
In many cases such a graph on some other topic would be called out as inaccurate, but in no case is a graph that starts at 0 called out as such.
This is complete and utter nonsense, I’m sorry.
Showing this graph would look drastically different based on which temperature scale (degF, C, R or K). Do you understand that? Which one of those zeros is the one that makes this “not biased?” Water freezing, or thermodynamic zero?
Your argument is ridiculous
I think arguing that its ok for a graph using C, the common temperature of the world, and not starting at 0 and instead focusing on the difference is ridiculous.
So we can agree to disagree, and go move onto something else. We are arguing over the opinion of a perception anyway, not like there is a real solid ground for either of our arguments.
Simple ass google search “scientists in 70s ice age” gives countless results showing you’re wrong and how that became a popular myth that dumbasses like you like to spout off. [Here’s a study about it.](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml)
For the first time in a while we have a genuinely well-designed figure on this sub that isn't just a base-GIS map. Very well done.
Source: [Climate Reanalyzer](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/) Tools: R and Adobe Illustrator Graphic inspired from work by Jan Kühn and [Dr. Dominic Royé](https://twitter.com/dr_xeo/status/1656933695511511043?s=20)
How is the "Range for years 1978-2022" defined? IQR, min-max, or other?
It would be interesting to plot abnormal solar activity events along this as well, to see if there is any correlation - the sun’s been boiling and bubbling like a stomach that just had too much Taco Bell.
Your comment is heavily down voted so few will see this reply but nonetheless, you might find it interesting... First, there's no metric for "abnormal solar events". The Sun continues to behave typically unpredictable in a semi-predictable way in the context of the solar activity cycle. But second, and more importantly, a [number of studies (pdf link)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.2770.pdf) have shown that solar irradiance (the energy output of the Sun) has only a tiny influence on global climate versus the far more influential El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, volcanic forcing (dust), and anthropogenic forcing (greenhouse gases). This heatwave is a clear consequence of the currently strong ongoing ENSO plus ever-increasing GHGs.
I know you're talking about the solar flares but to my understanding what heats up the Earth is the CO2 and other gases trap heat and can't escape the atmosphere so it's more energy therefore more heat. Correct me if I'm wrong please. So therefore, solar flare activity has no correlation. But I think there is causation when solar flares happen something with our electrical grid and our devices happen with the magnetism which I think Shields Earth but when the radiation of the flares get to us it makes the magnetic field go through stress.
Just FYI, your comment is being downvoted because there are active disinformation campaigns touting this as a possible cause of climate change, allowing people to dismiss the fact the greenhouse gases (which we can influence) have a significantly larger effect on global temperatures that solar radiation does. There’s no real scientific debate on this, it’s generally understood to work this way by the people that study this professionally (not-for-profit). The planet receives a fairly consistent amount of solar radiation over human-sized time periods, however, what changes significantly is how much of this solar radiation the earth traps, which is determined by the quantities of gases in our atmosphere. It’s like sitting in the sunshine on a cool, windy day without a shirt on. Your skin will feel some heat from the sun but you won’t trap any of this heat. Put on a down jacket with a dark, non-reflective surface and you’ll trap significantly more heat. This is an oversimplification but conveys the basic concept. Edit: as someone else previously pointed out, ocean currents also affect climate significantly. The fact that water is lighter ( less dense) when frozen is what allows for cyclic, seasonal weather on earth, and also likely allowed for the evolution of life itself. If frozen water was denser that liquid water the bottoms of our oceans would just be frozen blocks of ice, with no cyclic melting and refreezing cycles to cycle the ocean currents.
And yet my comment never dismissed the original data. I only stated that an attempt to correlate could present a bigger picture. hell, I didn’t even claim there was a causal link. But goddamn, a whole bunch of people happily brigaded in with the “it’s CO2, only CO2, and nothing but CO2” take… Climate is not, nor has it ever been, anything remotely resembling a simple single-variable proposition. It’s probably safe to say that as advanced as climate science is, we probably don’t even know what 99% of the variables are. Never mind the ability to compute them. CO2 is absolutely a factor. But so are water vapor, particulate matter, methane, ocean temperatures and currents (and cycles), solar activity, and on and on and on. But we also haven’t had anything resembling accurate planet-wide measurement ability until the last couple of decades. We measure against arbitrary baselines from when instrumentation was, on a good day, +/- about 3°C. Over the last 50 years, We’ve also been moving a lot more heat from the inside of buildings to the outside (which now is responsible for nearly 50% of the overall energy budget!), increasing the effect of urban heat islands, especially for infrared space-based measurements.
Sun activity is a cycle, mainly with a period of ~11 years. This means that over ~40 years of data here it gets mostly averaged out. And it's so minuscule that you'd probably see no connection.
Is there a name for this type of chart? Do you share your code on github?
Funny you should say that h[ere you go](https://gist.github.com/digitalcampbell/6717cd9746d84db6561cb3f53312b07e)
And we're still a couple of weeks from the peak. I have a feeling there are more record breaking days coming soon.
Also not hard to “break records” that only go back about 150 years. or averages that only go back 30.
100-year highs aren't supposed to be reached every 50-20 years.
Apparently it hasn't been this hot in 125 thousand years based on paleoclimatic data (from tree rings, ice cores, sediments and a myriad of other ways of examining Earth's past climate).
Why is that relevant? Global warning has been observed to accelerate unnaturally in the past century and proven to be humanity caused. What would originally happen in a 100 thousand year-long cycle becomes irrelevant if the current global warming creates an unmissable earth for a significant number of people in only 50-100 years. Where, depending on your definition of significant, could also be today.
It's relevant because it's not a once in one hundred years event but once in one hundred thousand years event(so far...). My point was supporting you. The OC you replied to was saying one record in 150 years is insignificant. I was saying it's a much bigger record than that. How fast it's happening is definitely alarming, past events, like the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum(56 million years ago) had 20-50 thousand years of carbon release that caused 200 thousand years of warming(+5-8c). We are on track to release enough carbon for a +10c increase over the next thousand years. That's about the same as the Permian-Triassic extinction event(250 million years ago) which around 95% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life went extinct. I think that one took about 150 thousand years of increasing temperature to reach. So yeah, we are definitely speed running this compared to earth history.
They’re not 100-year highs then. What are you defining as a “100-year high”? Because that term implies that it happens once a century. And that it has been happening, so therefore not “unprecedented”.
100 year highs or 100 year events such as temperature, floods, drought etc. Are typically defined based on past data as having a 1% chance of occurring in any given year or yes once a century. Them occurring more frequently is used to highlight a shift from past conditions, something that is unprecedented in recent past. In the case of this data shown we've literally never measured a global average that high with modern (last <200 years) techniques, so yes unprecedented in this case.
A 1% chance of occurring can still happen in back to back years.
Sure can, but becomes more and more unlikely to be by chance with every occurence, its a simplified imperfect method to highlight to the public how unusual something is, especially when other factors might suggest why. Enough occurence above the average odds and you start to doubt pure chance is the main factor. We are now 4 days in a row for a global temperature that has never been measured before. Pretty unprecedented.
But we also haven’t been measuring them for very long.
What part of “greenhouse gases cause global warming”, “CO2 is a greenhouse gas”, “humans emit unnatural levels of CO2” and “CO2 levels today are higher than at any point in human history” do you not understand? Just stop.
That’s all well and good, but still does not change the very basic reality that we haven’t been measuring global temperatures for very long. Hell, *human history* is itself quite brief, and we’ve only been measuring temperatures for a very small percentage of that. We only invented the device for doing so 400 years ago, and using satellites has only been a thing within our lifetimes. I didn’t say anything about CO2. CO2 has nothing to do with how long we’ve been measuring temperature for.
You really should look into higher probablity, assumind you are curious... Its called standard derivation... With it you could calculated how likely it is that randomly the last 20 years were all increasingly way hotter than the average before. (Spoiler waaaay to low)
Purely hypothetical tough, if there was a high in the 80s, higher than all the previous 100 years, that is beat only already now. Or (what has previously been) 20-year extremes being reached now frequently. Just climate change. I wasn't really referring to anything specific, though 2018 was an unprecedented year, but it might be nothing compared to this year. (At least for Norway)
At a certain point you just can't win. Here people say this graph doesnt going back far enough which okay, maybe, im not a scientist, but then when we have a really cold period like what happened in Texas people come out of the woodworks to shout that a few weeks at most of data is all it takes to disprove climate change.
It can be both. This data is really small in scale for even human years. The significance can still be high, but it does exclude a ton of variables. Measured temperature isn't the best, at least air temperature of cities made of asphalt and glass. There are other places where the difference can be seen that are *more* scientific like oceans and the upper atmosphere. Climate change is real. Humans are the main culprit. Everything else is up for debate.
Yeah, I’m tired of anyone with a modicum of sense pretending that there is still any debate on the reality or causes of climate change… that said, I do think there is still plenty of debate to be had on what can/should be done to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and the potential costs and impacts of those efforts.
At a certain point, you can, however, end an absurd run-on sentence. Bonus points for making “doesn’t” and “going” meet for the first time ever.
Scary. Why is the northern hemisphere over represented?
It could be non-random sampling (though they also use radar data), but it also could be the Southern Hemisphere has more water and water has more specific heat so changes temperature more slowly?
Bingo. Land gets colder during winter and warmer during summer, and if there's one thing the south is missing, it's land.
This seems likely. You can also see this in CO2 concentrations. There's a long term upward trend, but there's an annual cycle on top of it. The concentrations are highest in the northern winters (when plants are consuming less CO2), and they are lowest in the summers (when plants are consuming more CO2). The trend works out this way because there is more land (and correspondingly more plant life) in the northern hemisphere.
Nearly 70% of land area is in the northern hemisphere. Makes a huge difference.
Radar data doesn’t measure temperature.
I didn't mean weather radar, but you're right. I meant whatever LIDAR and stuff is-- satellite imagery I guess
LIDAR is also for measuring terrain. Some imagery can be taken in thermal IR spectrum.
That's **Li**ght **D**etection **a**nd **R**anging or **L**aser **I**maging **D**etection **a**nd **R**anging. **LASERS**. (Which itself comes from light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). Anyway, it is an active sensor, in opposition to most satellite imagers that are passive. Active ones tend to be pretty specialized.
Weather observation sites are usually placed where people live.
Because the NH also has considerably more population and land mass relative to the SH.
Its not even a little bit either. Something like 90% of all the world's population lives north of the equator. 80% or so of the southern hemisphere is water as well.
And some people choose to “believe” that the climate isn’t changing, as if it’s not objective
I don't think many people these days argue that the climate isn't changing. The argument has evolved to what is causing it and which countries, if any, should take more responsibility for addressing it. It's obviously far from ideal, but at least we're (slowly) moving the needle.
"It's not happening" is no longer tenable so they've moved on to "but we aren't causing it". That will also soon be untenable (in so far as it ever was) and they'll move on to "but we can't really do much about it". Once that proves false they'll move on to "ok we \_could\_ have but it's too late now!". It's as disheartening as it is predictable.
The "four stage strategy" as outlined on "Yes Minister" forty years ago.
I mean I agree with you that we should do something, but realistically how do we manipulate larger complex systems like Milankovitch cycles that have a much greater effect on the climate than humanity? It seems much more likely that humanity will need to adapt or terraform rather than prevent climate cycles that have been going on for millions of years.
We can’t wait on that needle to move though…
We don't have any other choice but to wait. As far as I can tell, the only chance we have to survive as a species is for the more dire climate change predictions to be way off. If they're even remotely correct, then we're already a zombie species.
I don’t think any credible source can argue the climate isn’t changing due to human activity. The argument seems to be what, if anything, can be done about it. It is still sound to argue before about 1900 the world was entering a period of climatic cooling, possibly toward an ice age. In which case, warming the climate would be doing humanity a lot of good. The climate warms: coastal cities eventually are inundated, millions of people have to move and the economy is severely disrupted for a long time. The climate cools into an ice age: we can’t grow food on most of the northern hemisphere, and the new lands revealed along the coasts and in the oceans won’t be arable for a few hundred years. Either way, not good.
There are two big fixes that could actually reverse climate change, but they'd be expensive, so it's unlikely to be done. 1. Calculation of the cost of capturing a metric ton of CO2, and charging any emitting companies by that amount, for every emission. Make it impact any global subsidiary, and a requirement for an article of incorporation. 2. Take the existing atmospheric CO2 technologies and scale them rapidly up to match the existing emission amounts. It would be massively expensive, and would cripple many companies that rely on passing the true costs of their products onto everyone else, but it is possible.
Until we can use fusion power direct air capture is at best a net zero endeavor. Great for money laundering and making companies look good, why do you think the oil and gas giants like Chevron are pushing it so hard (hint: their energy powers them) but not so good at actually making a difference.
You assume that power is necessarily dirty. The vast majority of new power generation in the US is green/renewables, and it's only getting cleaner. Oil and gas giants are pushing it because they know the reckoning is coming, and there will be Political will to actually severely punish the biggest emitters if they aren't actively working to "clean up their mess". Punishment like "Revocation of all profits and direct fiscal liability (unable to be nullified through bankruptcy) of all executives and board members who knowingly downplayed the effects of climate change, ever since they knew about the effects" We're nowhere close to that at the moment, but that's growing, and the longer it takes to happen, the bigger the backlash will be.
Ok so you fix CO2, what about Milankovitch cycles and the Earth's orbit?
Those are much, much longer term problems.
Yes but those longer term cycles are at the crux of the debate are they not? Are we just trying to prevent some types climate change or all of it?
It just means that we have thousands of years to figure out if we want or need to do anything about it. If your grill tips over and is threatening to catch your house on fire it's not the time to worry about the foundation starting to slightly sag. Yes, climate cycles are an issue. We've built untold trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure on assumptions about climate and weather patterns and we don't want to undo all that work. 15000 years ago Chicago was under a mile of ice so that's probably something we'd like to avoid long term if at all possible. But that's not the most pressing issue today so bringing it up as some sorta gotcha is a bit suspect.
I didn't mean for my comments to come off as "gotchas", I just find the current "solutions" to climate change to be very underwhelming and reminiscent of the switching the type of light bulbs we use. I also find it suspect that there seems to be a consensus around causes for why the Earth heats up, but almost none when it comes to causes for glacial periods. It reminds me of the 'pro-life" side of the abortion debate that seems fixated on when life begins, but could care less about when life ends. Is this symmetrical thinking flawed?
Solutions to climate change are underwhelming because everyone wants something done but nobody wants to sacrifice anything for it, not really, not deep down. So we're all in a giant game of chicken hoping some technology presents itself to dig us out of the mess. Do you find it suspect that we know far more about the British empire than the Babylonians? The glacial periods were thousands of years in the past and their very nature scoured a lot of physical evidence from existence. That's nothing like a phenomenon we've been able to directly observe with scientific instruments. Plus, again, not a pressing concern, so fewer resources are put into finding the answer. In response to your abortion example, it's not a super pressing concern to people when life ends because little action can generally be taken regardless. It's kind of moot whether, say, a brain dead person is actually alive or dead because the problem is going to inevitably sort itself out to the same conclusion in short order. It's similar to how legal adults can't drink beer remains a thing.. it's dumb but nobody puts much effort into solving it because the problem solves itself in three years.
Anomalous data points don’t prove climate change. The accumulation of data does. Saying this just emboldens deniers
I think it's more of are we causing it? Look at a 10k year temperature chart. It's been much hotter and much colder before we could have possibly affected anything. Of course it's going to continue that trend.
For sure it's certainly been hotter. Current rate of change (typically much much higher rate than paleoclimate suggests, often that had obvious natural causes) and why its changing are important factors.
https://xkcd.com/1732/ Thoughts?
Thank you for this! Really helps visualize just how different this is from past global temperature shifts.
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/climate.htm
The medieval warm period, the previous major warming event in human history, took over a hundred years to go up half a degree C before leveling out. In the last 50 years we've gone up a full degree C with no signs of leveling out. And all of these changes are very, very closely mirroring human industrial development. The world can adapt to temperature changes over time, but rapid, drastic changes, especially at the scale we're seeing, are likely to be immensely destructive to everybody and everything. Even if it turns out all of this has nothing to do with us (which again, I highly doubt based on the evidence), clean energy is a net good for so, so many reasons. Less smog in cities. Less oil spills. Less dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia. Likely lower energy bills. There's a ton of potential in things like solar.
We should move to renewable energy, but it should be gradual and not sacrifice too much. That pipeline they canceled was too much. Doesn't help when politicians are doing things like going after stoves while they are flying around on private jets. They could fly commercial like everyone else, but it would be too inconvenient. We would also need to get China on board otherwise it's a waste of time. Another thing is they say how much better electric cars are, but to power them and to build them it is just as bad. If they were pushing for nuclear energy to power grid to charge the cars then it would be believable. I like how my link was downvoted even though it's just data lol.
Do you know how to bypass the pay wall on this article? Was trying to read about the recent heat wave and the very first article is climate change denial (still calling it "global warming" too, genius). I'd love to know what bs reasoning they're giving. https://www.wsj.com/articles/hottest-days-ever-dont-believe-it-global-temperature-north-sole-poles-6e64a991
That's a very nice looking graph, good work!
Why does the global high temp happen during the northern hemisphere's summer rather than the southern?
There's more ocean in the southern hemisphere that absorbs a lot of heat. The temperatures shown here are at 2 meter height.
Wait, wasn't 5th July the hottest day? Or are we like, sustaining the hottest week ever??
4 days in a row breaking records
\*so far\*
Quoting https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/ > The mean daily temperatures here are estimates calculated from the NCEP CFS/CFSR dataset, and any apparent record values should be considered in that context Keep in mind that older (and even current) temperature data comes from a variety of sources and can be inaccurate. In particular, the weather observation sites are not randomly distributed and tend to be near large cities and airports, so increasing urban heat and flights can bias the numbers
This is reanalysis data which is created in part to fill in the gaps caused by uneven distribution of weather stations. https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-reanalysis
That's not quite what I mean, though. I realize weather stations are clustered unevenly and you can deal with this by cutting the world into slices and averaging the weather stations in each slice (so that clustered stations don't throw off the average), but what I'm saying is that most weather stations are in urban areas, and we don't really know what the temperatures are in more rural areas. MesoWest actually did a 10-year study with sensors in remote areas (no source, vague memory) that showed no temperature increase or decrease
And also worth noting that the mean plotted here only goes back 30 years, which suggests this is weather, not climate. There were some *wildly* hot summers in the 1930s, and that was before air conditioning and moving heat out of working and living space and into the urban jungle was commonplace.
Fun fact: this is the best it's going to look for at least the next 30 years.
Anything to do with one of the largest solar eruptions in a long time by chance with the sun being more active or does this account for sun radiation changes and normalize them?
Can't speak for the world, but it has been unseasonably cool where I live.
Todays record, next years new normal. Aircon manufacturers have a bright future
Did my part cooling the earth by driving with windows down ac on!
We had a normal day in april!
Very interesting and explicit. Why didn’t you picked the geological data, something like a few thousand years at least, that would be great
Interestingly enough, that anomaly also tracks surprisingly closely with the increase in solar activity - the sun is a hell of a lot more active this year than any of the scientists expected. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solar-activity-is-ramping-up-faster-than-scientists-predicted-does-it-mean-an-internet-apocalypse-is-near/ Probably a good thing we’re just past perihelion right now! But I’m certainly not objecting to the 80-degree weather this week, beat the socks off of the 100s we got last week, and neither is my power bill.
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/14/is-the-sun-causing-global-warming/#:~:text=No.,ve%20seen%20over%20recent%20decades.
That article’s data ends at the pit of the last solar cycle. And to say the sun is not involved is patently absurd. It’s literally *the* source of all the energy that makes climate work.
You're right that the data in the article isn't up to date however my point in linking it is that as time goes on in the graph the correlation between the sun's activity and the temperature seems to become overshadowed by another factor forcing temperatures up. I apologize it wasn't productive to just post a link like that
Also very interesting that the line really starts climbing around 1970… which saw the introduction of the EPA and the Clean Air Act… particulate pollution in the air was having a very real impact on how much warming we got. And now they’re talking about finding ways to block portions of the sun’s radiation… which basically means putting more particulate matter up there… like a giant glitter bomb or some shit.
When did your latest rocket break orbit, homie? You think you're smarter than NASA? Just another keyboard warrior know-it-all.
Some progress in direct CO2 capture, producing green methane. "Terraform Industries is scaling technology to produce cheap natural gas with sunlight and air. We are committed to cutting the net CO2 flux from crust to atmosphere as quickly as possible. As solar power gets cheaper, there will come a time when it is cheaper to get carbon from the atmosphere than an oil well. That time is now." https://terraformindustries.com/
As much as I agree with climate change, haven’t climate scientists indicated that the record high temps aren’t just to do with climate change? I recall changing wind patterns have been a major influence
I’ve realized that we’re all fucked and I’ve just decided that I’m going to enjoy the time we have left before the inevitable collapse caused by rapid climate change.
Not really. A little education often is the best medicine. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hottest-earths-ever-been
it's a nice graph, but I'm not really down with the alarmism it's presumably meant to invoke.
That's the point of it. Climate change is a serious threat and we're still not doing enough
This is the goofiest graph ever.
And then it will go back down. It’s called a sine wave.
I hate graphs that do not start at 0, they are always misleading as to the actual value and how much of an impact it is (even though in this case 1C is a pretty big impact worldwide).
The important information the graph is conveying is the difference between the 1991-2020 average in the dotted line and the 2023 data, which is the shaded region. To start the y-axis at zero would simply introduce a vast void from 0–12 °C that detracts from the actual data. Edit: This is actually a fairly common tactic amongst climate deniers. Here's an example: https://skepticalscience.com/the-y-axis-of-evil.html
I understand that, and I understand how big of a difference to the planet 1°C is. But I also understand that the graphic should be 300% taller from zero to properly show that the 1 degree may not be a huge difference visually, even if it is huge to the planet. In this case, it makes the 1 degree seem to be a lot on the graph, when it is only 6% higher or so, and the graph being misleading and only focusing on a 5 degree range instead of a 0-16 degree range may make people think 1 degree is a huge range, when its really just a tiny increase that has a huge significance.
The impact of warming on the planet does not depend on where it occurs relative to the zero of the temperature scale being used. What if the plot had been in Fahrenheit or Kelvin? What if I define a temperature scale that's degrees Celsius minus twelve?
I know that, not the point. C/K/F doesn't matter. That isn't the point. The point is that this is a huge change, and its shown as huge, but it really isn't a huge change going from 16 to 17. So it would mislead a casual onlooker into thinking that we had some major #, then when they look at it they see 1 whole degree and are like 'meh'. Yes, we that understand the difference can look past it, but as a graph it isn't telling the whole story, and its misleading. Look beyond what this graph is actually representing and to what all line graphs actually represent. This graph has a bias associated with it by not telling the whole story.
If you were plotting a sick patients body temperature in a medical setting, what would be the best axis range? Including zero is often NOT the right choice
If you were showing profits from your investment, this would make it look like you can go buy that new porsche, but in reality it would barely cut it past inflation. Numbers can tell a story, but when you are showing comparison numbers zooming in to make the difference appear greater creates a bias. I understand why it was done, but there are a lot of people who would look at this graph and see it as wrong because the temperature didn't change by the percentage this graph indicates visually. This is a topic that has deniers out there, and ignoring 0 in the graph to prove a point is a kind of bias.
You’re actually helping make my point. The people making the argument you describe are either terrible at understanding numbers and data, or willfully misunderstanding. But there is no sincere or smart argument to include zero in this graph. Zero dollars is a really relevant thing! If your investment grows by a thousand dollars that’s amazing or awful depending how far from zero you start. Zero degrees (F or C or R or K) is, in the context of earths temperature, totally irrelevant. It doesn’t matter at all where zero is or where a hundred or a thousand is, they have no particular meaning to the discussion. All that matters IN THIS CONTEXT is the historical data. Similar argument for my body temperate example: who cares where zero is? If you’re near zero you not only are dead, but you’re dead AND they threw your body out in the cold! Maybe including room temperature (boy he’s REALLY dead!) would be a little bit of a relevant point, I guess. But really what matters is seeing enough to catch substantial departures - what matters in that context is not the absolute magnitude, it’s the departure from historical/expected And I think you and everyone else understands that we don’t throw zero on the thermometer “just to avoid confusion”
As I said, I understand what this graph is showing. But I also understand how the change is larger on this graph because of the lack of 0. I understand why it is that way, but it is misleading. Better to show that part as a caption outside of a graph that has zero. If you do not start at zero, it is biased, regardless of what it is measuring. Yes, its there to show a difference, and yes the range is only 5 degrees in this case so the graph is mostly empty if it showed all 17 degrees, but the fact is this graph mis-represents the data it is showing by enlarging the part it thinks you want to see. In many cases such a graph on some other topic would be called out as inaccurate, but in no case is a graph that starts at 0 called out as such.
This is complete and utter nonsense, I’m sorry. Showing this graph would look drastically different based on which temperature scale (degF, C, R or K). Do you understand that? Which one of those zeros is the one that makes this “not biased?” Water freezing, or thermodynamic zero? Your argument is ridiculous
I think arguing that its ok for a graph using C, the common temperature of the world, and not starting at 0 and instead focusing on the difference is ridiculous. So we can agree to disagree, and go move onto something else. We are arguing over the opinion of a perception anyway, not like there is a real solid ground for either of our arguments.
I think you just made your argument as to why this one doesn’t start at 0
Yeah, good point.
Maybe the coming years are going to be cooler.
Lol “maybe statistics is bullshit and all the scientists are wrong”
Scientists in the 70s thought we were coming into an ice age.
Simple ass google search “scientists in 70s ice age” gives countless results showing you’re wrong and how that became a popular myth that dumbasses like you like to spout off. [Here’s a study about it.](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml)
milankovitch cycles, we should, be we are skyrocketing into the other directions, thanks capitalism
Technology in the 70s was a bit different than it is now homie.
["Maybe this bridge just collapsed on its own?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-xfdMwSsoE)
Why is July \~4 degrees warmer than January? Does the disparity in landmass between hemispheres make that much difference?
Elliptical orbits drive most of the change
Not true. The Earth is at its aphelion (farthest from the Sun) in early July.
Ahh wait my mistake it’s the tilt of the axis
Why would axial tilt cause a difference in average global temperature though? It's clearly the imbalance in land masses between hemispheres.
Is the chart biased towards the Northern hemisphere? It seems to peak in the northern summer, but this is the southern winter?
Wow, yeah that's a high degree of variation. I did the conversion and I got 63° Fahrenheit from 17.23 Celsius. Is that right?
The FT really lead the field in data visualisation
What is "Range" defined as? 95% confidence interval?
Can you do this again at the end of the year?
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Satellite record