Defective local weather fashions can’t even clarify the latest rise in temperature – what does that imply?
Essay by Eric Worrall
If climate models cannot even correctly calculate heat peaks, what use are they?
“We should have better answers by now”: Climate scientists baffled by unexpected rate of warming
Jonathan Watts Global Environment EditorThu 15 August 2024 22:00 AEST
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In a remarkably candid essay in the journal Nature in March this year, one of the world's leading climate scientists raised the alarming possibility that global warming may be progressing to the point where experts can no longer predict its next steps.
“The 2023 temperature anomaly came out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented gap in knowledge for perhaps the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data gave modelers an unprecedented real-time view of Earth's climate system,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, a British scientist and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
If this anomaly does not stabilize by August, it could mean “that the warming of the planet is already fundamentally changing the way the climate system works, much sooner than science expects.”
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Now that August is here, Schmidt is a little less worried. He said the situation remains unclear, but overall global warming trends have started to move back toward projections. “I think now that we are not that far from expectations. If this continues over the next few months, we can say that what happened in late 2023 was 'fleeting' rather than systematic. But it's too early to predict that,” he said. “I'm a little less worried, but still humbled that we can't explain it.”
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Looking back on the most extreme heat months in the second half of 2023 and early 2024, when previous records were at times exceeded by more than 0.2 degrees Celsius – a huge anomaly – he said scientists were still baffled: “We don't even have a quantitative explanation for half of them. That's pretty humbling.”
He added: “We should have better answers by now. Climate modelling as an endeavour is not designed to be extremely reactive. It is a slow, drawn-out process in which people all over the world volunteer their time. We have not yet got our act together on this issue.”
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The recent El Niño phenomenon has added to global heat pressure. Scientists have also pointed to the effects of the January 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption in Tonga, increased solar activity ahead of a predicted solar maximum, and pollution controls that reduced cooling sulfur dioxide particles. But Schmidt said none of these possible causes are enough to explain the temperature rise.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/15/we-should-have-better-answers-by-now-climate-scientists-baffled-by-unexpected-pace-of-heating
Despite Schmidt's skepticism, I do not believe that the Hunga Tonga eruption should be dismissed as a possible explanation for this year's temperature rise. It seems logical to conclude that the temperature rise that followed the volcanic eruption, filling the stratosphere with an enormous amount of greenhouse gases, may have been caused by the volcano.
The fact that no one knows whether and how much Hunga Tonga contributed to this year's temperature rise, and climate scientists like Schmidt admit that there are no other good explanations, is an unusually frank insight into the incompleteness of our knowledge of the climate system.
If climate models can't capture significant temperature changes, how can we trust them to get anything right? Current climate models are clearly not suitable for advising government policy.
One bright spot in this scientific embarrassment: The 1.5-degree catastrophe story has been thoroughly refuted. But the 2-degree limit of global warming is still the only valid one, right? /sarc
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