The Crisis Report - 76

A discussion of Hansen’s last few posts.

This graph was from his post of November 2023. At that point the 12 month Running Mean showed the Global Mean Temperature at +1.4°C. Hansen was projecting the peak of the El Nino at around +1.7C (pink dot). With temperatures cooling down slightly with La Nina conditions and the Rate of Warming shifting from the green line to the yellow cone.

This is his update in May of 2024.

Comments on Global Warming Acceleration, Sulfur Emissions, Observations — (16 May 2024) James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato

See the progression of the “blue line”. That's the 12 month “running mean” of the Global Mean Temperature. That's NOT the same as the current GMT. It’s the “mean” of temperatures for the last 12 months. In 2023 temperatures started rapidly climbing in March and didn't peak until September. This line is about to go shooting up and will then “fall back” a little bit around October this year.

“Global temperature (12-month mean) is still rising at 1.56°C relative to 1880–1920 in the GISS analysis through April (Fig. 1). [Robert Rohde reports that it is 1.65°C relative to 1850-1900 in the Berkeley Earth analysis.3] Global temperature is likely to continue to rise a bit for at least a month, peak this summer, and then decline as the El Nino fades toward La Nina.”

Takeaway:

12 Month Mean GMT:

GISS (Moderate/Minimizer Aligned Agency) says +1.56°C above an 1880–1920 average baseline.

Berkeley Earth (Moderate NGO) says +1.65°C above an 1850–1900 average baseline.

Who you listen to, can shave about a tenth of a degree over the amount of warming that gets reported. GISS is regarded as the “gold standard” btw, when the press says that we are at “+1.56°C of warming”. That’s whose number they are using.

GISS and NOAA are consistently the “lowball” numbers for the amount of warming since the “preindustrial”.

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Let's review for a second what’s happened. Part of the problem with climate reporting is the lack of context most of the time. Papers, interviews, reports, and disasters are reported “in isolation” most of the time. It's difficult to get a cohesive picture of what's going on and, MORE IMPORTANTLY, it’s difficult to track who was right, over time.

People like Zeke Hausfather, Hannah Ritchie, and Michael Mann get away with making impossibly optimistic forecasts because everyone has forgotten what they said two years ago. The “crush of the NOW” means that most people live very much “in the moment”.

People believe the statements of Moderates, because they have been told by the “authorities” they trust, that they should. When MSNBC’s Chris Hayes has Hannah Ritchie on to talk about her book, or Ali Velshi has Michael Mann on, it signals to viewers that these are the “credible voices” you should listen to.

So, lets go back to May of 2022 for a second.

The Crisis Report — 02 : The UN has confirmed that we are about to get a massive temperature spike. May, 2022.

I stated:

“Natural variation, like the cooling influence of La Niña, can barely put a dent in the man-made warming trend.”

“It was the seventh year in a row in which global temperatures were more than 1 degree Celsius above the preindustrial average. Short of geoengineering the climate, no one alive today will ever see the world’s temperature drop below that 1-degree benchmark again.”

“There is no going back, and we are about to have a “heatwave”.”

I was reporting on a spate of articles that were saying that we were about to have a MASSIVE “heat spike”.

Earth Stands ‘50:50’ Chance Of Passing 1.5 Degrees Warming Within 5 Years — Forbes

World has 50–50 chance of hitting 1.5C mark soon: U.N. — Frontline India

Forecasters also say there’s a 93 per cent chance that the five years from 2022 to 2026 will be the hottest on record.

I stated:

When the IPCC says that there is a 50% chance the GMT will “temporarily” exceed 1.5℃ of warming by 2026, what exactly do they mean by that?

Because in 2021 the GMT was at 1.1℃ of warming. Climbing to 1.5℃ by 2026 means;

THEY ARE FORECASTING 0.4C OF WARMING IN JUST 4 YEARS! Almost half a degree of warming in just 4 years!

This was the graphic I used to illustrate my point. Look at how EXTREME that looked just 2 years ago.

TWO YEARS AGO I SAID WHAT WAS HAPPENING.

May, 2022

Let’s see,

The IPCC is forecasting warming of +0.4C by 2026.

James Hansen is forecasting +0.6C of warming by 2026.

I am forecasting +0.8C of warming by 2026.

We are all saying there is going to be warming. We are all saying part of that warming is going to be an El Nino (that’s what the IPCC is implying when they say the warming will be temporary). We are all saying that some of this warming is going to be caused by SOx getting washed out of the atmosphere.

We are all saying the same thing, we just disagree about how hot it’s going to get.

The IPCC, throughout it’s entire history, has always underestimated and understated the amount of warming that actually occurred. I would bet on warming being greater than the 0.4C they are forecasting.

“We are “in crisis” right now and it’s about to get a lot hotter.” -05/22

This year I used Hansen’s graph to illustrate both, “what had happened” and “what’s going to happen”. The “red line” is my addition. As you can see, temperatures JUMPED exactly like the WMO, Hansen, and I all said they would. The WMO was off by about 50%. So, either their models are understating warming by 50%, or they are lying to us. Either scenario should alarm you.

SO.

NO ONE was “surprised” by the warming in 2023. It was CLEARLY PREDICTED in May of 2022 that it was going to happen. The Moderates understated\underestimated the amount of warming there would be by a LOT. Now we are dealing with the fallout of what happened because the Moderates have no answers for “why?” they were so badly off.

— — — — — —

Back to Dr. Hansen:

“Acceleration of global warming is now hard to deny. The GISS 12-month temperature is now 0.36°C above the 0.18°C/decade trend line, which is 3.6 times the standard deviation (0.1°C). Confidence in global warming acceleration thus exceeds 99%, but we need to see how far temperature falls with the next La Nina before evaluating the post-2010 global warming rate.”

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This needs context to fully understand.

Hansen is saying that the RATE of WARMING has jumped from the 2000–2010 rate of +0.18°C per decade to a RoW of +0.36°C per decade. This jump is SO LARGE (“3.6 times the standard deviation of 0.1°C”) that it’s undeniable that the RoW has accelerated.

“Confidence in global warming acceleration thus exceeds 99%” — James Hansen May 2024

However, the acceleration in the RoW seems to start around 2014. The same year that Goode’s “Project Earthshine” observed a significant dimming of the Earth’s albedo.

Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine pub. Aug 2021

So, Hansen is cautiously saying, that the short term RoW looks like +0.36°C per decade. But, we have to see how 2024 plays out before we can calculate a decadal RoW for the 2014 to 2024 period.

The +0.36°C/decade estimate may be “too low”.

— — — — — —

Hansen:

“Present extreme planetary energy imbalance will limit La Nina-driven temperature decline.”

Remember, a “normal” EEI for the last 2 MILLION years is between -0.2W/m2 and +0.2W/m2.

Thus, El Nino/La Nina average global temperature likely is about 1.5°C, suggesting that, for all practical purposes, global temperature has already reached that milestone.

Since March of 2023 the average temperature for the last 12 months has been over +1.5C. It has been +1.7C for over 180 days. Hansen is saying that he doesn’t expect temperatures to ever drop below +1.5C for the rest of this century.

Temperature is temporarily well above the 50–100 percent increase that we projected (yellow region in Fig.1) for the post-2010 warming rate.

The “green line” is a +0.18°C/decade warming rate. It started around 1970 and held until about 2014. You can see this on the chart where the “red line” and the green line diverge. This is the point that the Rate of Warming starts accelerating. The “yellow cone” is a projection of +0.27°C/decade (lower edge) and +0.36°C/decade (upper edge). The observed reality over the last 12 months is the blue line. It's already way higher than a +0.36°C RoW but Hansen expects it to “fall back” some with the start of the La Nina.

“That projected increase is based on evidence that human-made aerosols and their cooling effect are in decline. In other words, we are beginning to realize the consequences of the Faustian bargain, in which humanity partly offset greenhouse gas warming with aerosol (particulate air pollution) cooling.”

Remember this? The International Maritime Organization agreed in 2016 to reduce the sulfur content in marine diesel fuel by 85% starting in 2020. We know for sure that this will prevent 20–40 million premature deaths in port cities around the world from lung disease. We GUESSED, based on the Moderate understanding of how much SOx was cooling the Earth, that it would only cause +0.06°C of warming.

“A recent comment in the social media that a decline of global temperature will signify that we are “back to normal” is right ONLY (emphasis mine) if one considers accelerating global warming to be normal.” - James Hansen 05/24

However, we see no reason to believe that the jump in 2023–24 global temperature indicates we are missing some fundamental climate physics — other than good aerosol physics.

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We don’t actually measure the amount of “cooling” aerosols in the atmosphere. We never have. It’s a HUGE GAPING HOLE in our understanding of the Climate System. Here’s Hansen commenting on this in 2021 (July Temperature Update: Faustian Payment Comes Due” is available for download here).

— — — — — —

Hansen:

“None of the measured forcings can account for the global warming acceleration. The growth rate of climate forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases (GHGs) is near the 40-year mean. Solar irradiance is just beginning to rise from the recent solar minimum; it is still below the average over the last few solar cycles.”

“It follows that the global warming acceleration is due to the one huge climate forcing that we have chosen not to measure: the forcing caused by imposed changes of atmospheric aerosols.”

Specifically, the CERES data show that most of the increased imbalance since 2015 is due to an increase of absorbed solar energy, i.e., a decrease in Earth’s reflectivity.

“That is consistent with the expectation that the largest effect of aerosols on Earth’s radiation balance and climate is via their effect on clouds. Such consistency is hardly a substitute for actual aerosol and cloud measurements.”

It is possible to measure from space detailed microphysical information (particle size, shape, refractive index) for aerosols and cloud particles. Extraction of full information in reflected sunlight — including opacity of the aerosol layer and aerosol single-scatter reflectivity — requires observations of a given area from a wide range of scattering angles, in several spectral bands over the solar spectrum from the near-ultraviolet to the near-infrared, and with polarization of the reflected light measured to an accuracy of the order of 0.1 percent.

“NASA once launched a mission with that capability, but it ended up on the floor of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica rather than in space, when satellite failed to separate from the launch vehicle. No replacement satellite was built — that’s a sad story for another time.”

For now, we can only infer that Earth’s energy imbalance — which was less than or about half a watt per square meter during 1971–2015 — has approximately doubled to about 1 W/m2 since 2015. This increased energy imbalance is the cause of global warming acceleration.

We should expect the global warming rate for the quarter of a century 2015–2040 to be about double the 0.18°C/decade rate during 1970–2015 (see Fig. 2), unless appropriate countermeasures are taken.

— — — — — —

The story of that satellite, which would have PROVED Hansen’s theories about the cooling effects of aerosols in the Climate System and probably gotten him a Nobel prize, is EXTREMELY ODD. It can lead you into “conspiracy thinking” territory.

Hansen was the head of GISS under Clinton and his term extended into the Bush years. The agency however, was packed with “Climate Moderates” who vehemently disagreed with him and his theories.

Hansen managed to shepherd the construction of the satellite to completion against an agency that didn’t want to build it and in 2004 (his final year in charge) it was launched. It crashed into the ocean around Antarctica .

OK, shit happens. That's why they build 3 of these satellites when they do these contracts. Just in case.

The second one was launched in 2008 at the end of the Bush years. It made it into orbit but then “blew up” when it was activated.

The third one was warehoused for “rework”, since clearly the design was “flawed”. It languished there until the Trump years, when it was “scrapped” as a “cost savings” measure.

It’s almost like GISS doesn't want to be able to measure aerosols in the atmosphere accurately. Almost like they don’t want Hansen to be right.

Like I said, the whole matter is ODD and leads you down into weird places. FYI- Hansen is BITTER about it.

— — — — — —

Hansen:

The 2023–24 temperature jump is a result of strong warming trend over several years at middle latitudes combining with a switch at low latitudes in 2023 from a strong La Nina to a moderately strong El Nino, as shown by zonal-mean sea-surface temperatures (SSTs, Fig. 2).

This is only showing Sea Surface Temperature and the warming at various latitudes over time. The warming in the mid-latitudes (30°N to 60°N) in the NH is very pronounced since 2020.

The maximum of the solar cycle in 2023–25 may add a bit to the appearance of a leap in 2023–24 temperature. When land measurements of surface air temperature are included to obtain zonal-mean global surface temperature change, the warming in the Northern Hemisphere becomes even more dramatic (Fig. 3)

When you consider both land and sea temperatures the warming in the High Latitudes becomes dramatically clear. This is due to “Arctic Amplification”. Because the Arctic is warming a LOT faster than the rest of the Earth. The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979 Communications Earth & Environment volume 3, Article number: 168 (Aug, 2022).

We interpret acceleration of warming since 2010 to be a consequence of decreasing aerosols, with a significant contribution from reduction of ship aerosols due to the strict 2020 emission limit imposed by the IMO (International Maritime Organization).

Cleaner Air in 2020: 0.5% sulfur cap for ships enters into force worldwide

From January 2020, the maximum sulphur content of marine fuels is reduced to 0.5% (down from 3.5%) globally — reducing air pollution and protecting health and the environment. Sulphur Oxide (SOx) emissions from ships’ combustion engines cause acid rain and generate fine dust that can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as reduced life expectancy.

Another recent social media comment is that reduction of ship emissions is negligible compared to emission reductions by China. That comment misses the point. It is well known that ship emissions are a tiny part of total anthropogenic emissions and of emission changes, but ships emit into relatively pristine ocean air and the aerosol effect is nonlinear.

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This is something I think Hansen is getting wrong. Ships aren’t a “tiny part of total anthropogenic emissions and of emission changes”.

The shipping industry is among the world’s largest emitters of sulfur behind the energy industry, with the sulfur dioxide (SOx) content in heavy fuel oil up to 3,500 times higher than the latest European diesel standards for vehicles.

“One large vessel in one day can emit more sulfur dioxide than all the new cars that come onto the world’s roads in a year.” — Shippers brace for new rules to cut deadly sulfur emissions (2016)

Also, those “super polluting” super container ships, cover the oceans now.

Power plants produce MORE SOx particulate than ships do BUT, their effect is SMALLER because they are FIXED points. While ships blanket the planet in SOx. This is a visualization of global shipping on ONE DAY in 2012.

Over the past decade, the number of container ships in the the global fleet increased from 4,966 ships in 2011 to 5,589 ships in 2022, while the carrying capacity of the global merchant fleet reached roughly two billion deadweight tons in 2020.

That’s a big part of why I think Hansen underestimated the “peak” for the El Nino. He doesn’t realize just HOW BIG the volume of marine aerosol pollution has become.

We agree on the effect. I think it’s bigger than he, or the Moderates expected.

— — — — — —

Hansen:

The inadvertent experiment provided by the IMO emission limit is a great opportunity to improve understanding of aerosol and cloud physics. (LOL)

An important issue concerns how much additional global warming lurks in our Faustian aerosol bargain.

Is it +0.1°C or +0.9°C?

That depends on interpretation of ongoing change.

Our (Hansen) preliminary analysis suggests a ship aerosol forcing an order of magnitude (factor of ~10) greater than what follows from IPCC estimates.

The 2021 IPCC report (AR6) pegs total aerosol forcing as 1.06W/m2 in 2019, with 0.22 direct aerosol forcing and 0.84 the indirect effect on clouds. A 2021 update REDUCES (emphasis mine) the aerosol forcing to 0.98 W/m2 (0.21 direct, 0.77 indirect).

Reference:

Each +0.1W/m2 adds roughly about +0.1°C to the temperature. When Hansen says the “2021 IPCC report (AR6) pegs total aerosol forcing as 1.06W/m2 in 2019” what he is talking about is the EEI, the TOTAL Energy Imbalance from ALL aerosol sources. Including CO2, CH4, and about half a dozen others. So, in 2019 the IPCC was saying that the Global Mean Temperature was being “forced” up about +1.06°C over the “preindustrial” baseline.

Based on this small aerosol forcing,

Hausfather and Forster obtain a forcing of 0.079 W/m2 for 100% implementation of 2020 IMO ship emission limits.

Our (Hansen) estimate of a minimum of 0.5 W/m2 for the aerosol forcing from shipping refers to the present (~80%) reduction of sulfates from ships.

The difference with the Hausfather and Forster value is so large that it must be possible to resolve this issue within the next few years.

BUSTED!

The Climate Moderates have gotten away with using extremely low estimates for the effect of SOx on the Climate System. They didn't even want to admit this effect existed until the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991, and the -0.5°C cooling over the next 9 months, forced them to.

WHY ARE THEY SO ADAMANT ABOUT THIS SEEMINGLY TRIVIAL POINT?

Because they never factored it into their models in the 70’s. When Climate Science split into two camps.

The “Moderates” who argued that the warming they were seeing, “was ALL” the warming, and the “Alarmists” who argued the physics indicated that there should be a LOT more warming and “something” was preventing us from seeing it.

In 1979 at the “Woods Hole Climate Conference” the two groups produced estimates on the amount of warming “doubling” the preindustrial level of atmospheric CO2 should cause (2XCO2). This was when it was decided “if it was safe” to keep using fossil fuels as the principle power source for the global economy.

In 1979 the “battle lines” were drawn. The MODERATES forecast +1.8C to +3.0°C of warming. The ALARMISTS forecast between +4.5C and +6.0C of warming.

40 YEARS LATER.

An Assessment of Earth’s Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence - American Geophysical Union, September 2020

“Our findings suggest that the range of ECS is “likely” (66%) to be between +2.6C and +4.1C.” — Moderates

“With a >5% likelihood of +5.7°C” — Alarmists

NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

This is the FUNDAMENTAL SCHISM in Climate Science.

The Moderates, backed by the Fossil Fuel Elites, have dominated Climate Science for over 40 years based on their “being right” in 1979.

If they were WRONG about how much SOx actually cools the planet. If it's actually more like -0.9°C than -0.1°C, then the entire edifice of “Moderate Climate Science” is flawed. Going all the way back to 1979.

“Estimates indicate that aerosol pollution emitted by humans is offsetting about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, of the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a 40-year delay in the effects of climate change.”

“Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970.”

“Climate effects of aerosols reduce economic inequality. Nature Climate Change, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41558–020–0699-y”.

If SOx aerosols cool the planet the amount Hansen forecast, then the 2XCO2 estimates of the Moderates are crap. It means their careers are over, they wasted their lives defending a flawed theory, the Alarmists were right, and they are complicit in bringing on the COLLAPSE of civilization and the death of billions.

Can you see WHY the Moderates are fighting ‘tooth and nail’ to NOT admit what’s going on with the Climate System?

— — — — — —

Hansen:

Accurate evaluation of human made aerosol forcing has double importance because of implications for climate sensitivity, as we have discussed elsewhere. If IPCC has underestimated aerosol forcing, they probably have also underestimated climate sensitivity.

Aerosol climate forcing is unmeasured and difficult to estimate because (1) aerosol forcing operates mainly by altering clouds, (2) cloud changes also occur as a climate feedback that is poorly quantified, and (3) clouds have large natural variability.

We obtain an indication of likely aerosol forcing from precise data for changes of Earth’s absorbed solar radiation (ASR) and Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). Unbroken time series of ASR and EEI are available from March 2000 to the present from CERES (Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instruments with calibration via precise measurement of changing ocean heat content over decades; the calibration depends on a global network of deep-diving Argo floats.

The ARGO Float Network.

We are ACCURATELY measuring the HEAT content of the Global Ocean on a daily basis now.

— — — — — —

Again, this will seem INSANE but the Moderates have had to “contort reality” for decades to make their numbers work. They have managed this “sleight of hand” because the EEI estimates were “decoupled” from reality.

We didn’t really KNOW how much we were warming the planet until the last few years. Because 90% of the HEAT we force into the Climate System goes into the Oceans and we didn’t have a good way to measure that number.

Can you see how that situation is just RIPE for intellectual dishonesty?

As long as we DIDN’T KNOW how much ENERGY was going into the oceans, we had no way of knowing if the Moderate “Climate Sensitivity” estimates for CO2 were real or not. They ABUSED that uncertainty ruthlessly and labeled anyone who questioned their “orthodoxy” as “mentally ill” (Michael Mann has actually stated this about colleges who disagree with him) or “charlatans”.

Well, now we KNOW. The Moderates were COMPLETELY WRONG.

That’s why Hansen brings up the CERES and ARGO data.

— — — — — —

Hansen:

With this indirect approach we use the temporal and spatial variations of measured quantities to glean information on unmeasured climate forcings. An example is the zonal-mean absorbed solar radiation (Fig. 4).

See how much hotter it has gotten between 30°N and 60°N. That's what Hansen is talking about.

The large anomaly of increased absorbed solar radiation at midlatitudes in the Northern Hemisphere is consistent with and a likely cause of the unusual warming rate there. The latitude location is consistent with the region of decreased shipping emissions.

Increased ASR occurs over the North Atlantic, as well as the North Pacific, the two regions where ship aerosols are dominant condensation nuclei. Part of the increased absorption of solar radiation could be related to reduced aerosols from China, as has been proposed by Hai Wang et al.

— — — — — —

The Moderates want to “Blame China” for 2023 by saying their reduction in the use of high sulfur coal in power plants is what caused the 2023 “termination shock”. I’m not sure why they think this is a “winning” strategy BUT it seems to be part of a pattern by GISS to discredit the Chinese Climate Agencies and Institutes.

— — — — — —

However, neither the temporal nor spatial distribution of aerosol changes from China are a good match with the changes of absorbed solar radiation. For example, according to Zhili Wang et al. the reduction of sulfate aerosols from China was mainly in the period 2006–2014. Changes during that period cannot be the cause of the strong observed changes of absorbed solar radiation and zonal temperature in the period 2020–2024.

Thus, if the GCMs employed by IPCC are obtaining an acceleration of global warming, as noted in social media, they may be getting the right answer for the wrong reason.

In other words, a GCM can obtain accelerated warming via a large reduction of aerosols from China, but it needs to be shown that the temporal and geographical response of absorbed solar radiation and temperature look like observations.

The same challenge applies to ship aerosols, even though qualitatively the observed changes of absorbed solar radiation and temperature seem to be consistent with expectations for ship emissions.

Simulating the highly nonlinear effects of aerosols on clouds is challenging. Aerosol-cloud modeling is still developing, with the impact of ship aerosols varying among different models by an order of magnitude.

— — — — — —

The General Climate Models that the Moderates rely on are “all over the place” when it comes to clouds. Mostly, because trying to “force” them to work within the CO2 sensitivity range of the Moderates doesn’t yield results consistent with reality.

— — — — — —

Hansen:

That’s why the IMO inadvertent experiment is so useful; it provides a chance to test and improve the models. Global measurements of aerosol and cloud properties also are needed and are being pursued, but these, too, are challenging and will not, by themselves, define the effect of aerosols on climate. It is crucial to also assure continuation of the CERES or CERES-like monitoring of Earth’s radiation balance.

In other words, “direct observation and measurements beats ‘fancy models’ that produce bullshit guesses”.

In other words, it's going to get a LOT HOTTER, “faster than expected”.

Because now, we live in Bomb Time.

This is my analysis.

This is what I see.

This is my “Crisis Report”.

• rc 060824

Personal Note:

Well, this took longer than I thought it would. My output right now is highly variable and depends on my brain chemistry. I’ll come back to Hansen again but I’m ready to move on at this point.

The Climate Crisis is about to enter a new phase. “Summer is coming” and it’s going to be BRUTAL.