The Crisis Report - 95
In 2023 around +15 Zettajoules of HEAT ENERGY got added to the Global Ocean. That works out to about 471 million Hiroshima bombs worth. In 2024, the oceans are actually warmer overall than they were in 2023.
AND, so is the Global Mean Temperature. The thing most people think of when you talk about Global Warming or Climate Change. Since it shot up in May of 2023 the GMT has averaged around +1.6°C over baseline for about a year now.
In response to these FACTS, we got two different narratives reported this past week.
The Alarming UN statement that everyone will ignore.
Climate change: UN report says planet to warm by +3.1°C without greater action
Current climate policies will result in global warming of more than +3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the…
AND, this piece in New Scientist. Which I am sure will be “picked up” and reported by MSNBC, WAPO, the NYT, HuffPO, and other “mainstream” media outlets.
Earth is now gaining less heat than it has for several years
The recent surge in warming led to fears that climate change may be accelerating beyond model projections, but a fall…
Because it basically states that EVERYTHING I have said over the last three years is a “crock of shit”. Here's how the article starts.
“This year is on course to be the hottest on record, with an average global surface temperature more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But there is some better news: the overall amount of heat energy being gained by the planet has fallen sharply from a record spike early in 2023.”
OK. Remember that the “official” Global Mean Temperature (GMT) in 2021 was +1.1°C over the “preindustrial” baseline. Which -btw can literally be defined in ways you don’t expect. There is NO “official” definition of what the word “preindustrial” means.
Some use 1760 as the start date, commonly 1850 is used in General Climate Models, the Fossil Fuel industry lobbied heavily during the Trump years for 1880. What year you use, makes as much as +0.7°C of additional warming, with 1880 resulting in the least amount of warming.
SO. Using the “lowball” estimate of +1.1°C of warming in 2021, we just experienced +0.4°C of warming IN THREE YEARS. To me, that should be the headline of the article. But, that’s not the narrative the writer wants to tell.
He wants to tell you some “good news”.
“At the time, there were suggestions that the spike in heat gain showed there are serious flaws in climate models that mean they are underestimating how fast the planet will warm. But the fall since then makes this much less likely.”
Now, go back and look at the two graphs at the start. Do you see a sharp fall in “the overall amount of heat energy being gained by the planet” in 2024? WHAT is he talking about?
“Given the way that the numbers have evolved in the last year, it no longer looks like there’s anything dramatically wrong with the models,” says Ben Sanderson at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway. “So it’s not the sort of potentially dramatic issue some people were saying it was a year ago.””
The EEI is THE NUMBER Mr. Sanderson is talking about. This big decline makes it possible for the Moderates in Climate Science to “hold on to hope” that the 2023 jump in global temperatures was “just a rare spike”.
“The latest satellite data showing the fall in heat gain was posted on Bluesky by Gavin Schmidt at NASA. “It doesn’t support a doomist narrative,” Schmidt posted.”
What Schmidt actually posted is much “snarkier”.
“For some reason, folks that were spending a lot of time looking at the Earth’s Energy Imbalance last year, haven’t been posting too much recently.”
Implying that all the Alarmists are having to “eat crow” because the EEI appears to have fallen.
“There is a big difference between tracking the increasing impacts that climate change and habitat loss are having, and buying into a notion that everything is spiraling out of control and we no longer have agency, he said. “That (IMO) is not justified.””
FYI- Gavin Schmidt at NASA/GISS is the “Head” of the Agency. He is the guy who replaced James Hansen during the Bush II years. He is also the guy who started GISS using 1880 as the “preindustrial baseline” during the Trump years. Gavin Schmidt is a bureaucrat who’s “scientific position” changes with whoever is in charge of his Agency’s budget.
This paragraph is basically the Moderate retort to my analysis and that of the Alarmists for the last five years. Mr. Schmidt is spelling out the “Official Response” to those who have been “preaching doomism”. He is “debunking” me with his words and telling you that “in his opinion” things are NOT “spiraling out of control”.
Things are NOT “spiraling out-of-control” is the NARRATIVE of this article. It is the “official” message from the mainstream scientific community.
YOU CAN BE CERTAIN YOU WILL BE HEARING MORE ABOUT THIS.
The rest of the article is the “technical” details about what the EEI actually is and how it's measured. It's not long and I want to go through it so that we are all clear on the “science”.
“Studies of global warming naturally focus on the surface temperature, which accounts for the air a couple of metres above the land or sea. But this thin layer of air in which we live is just a small part of the climate system, which includes the entire atmosphere and oceans.”
“To get a measure of how much the entire climate system is warming, climate scientists can look at how much of the sun’s energy enters the planet’s atmosphere versus how much leaves it. Some sunlight is reflected immediately by, say, clouds or ice. The rest is absorbed and may later be emitted as heat energy.”
“How much?” you ask. Well, let's talk about that.
A Zettajoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules. Not easy to visualize right? Here's something from Wikipedia.
“The zettajoule is somewhat more than the amount of energy required to heat the Baltic Sea by 1 °C, assuming properties similar to those of pure water.[28] Human annual world energy consumption is approximately 0.5 ZJ. The energy to raise the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere 1 °C is approximately 2.2 ZJ.”
Which means 762 years worth of the Current Annual Human Energy Consumption (CAHEC) of 0.5 ZJ has been added to the Global Ocean over the last 50 years.
That’s still not an “easy to visualize” number is it? OK, how about this.
HIROs is short for Hiroshima Bombs worth of ENERGY. It is much stronger in that it conveys more viscerally what these levels of ENERGY translate to in human terms.
It works fairly well in that.
An EEI of +1.5W/m2 roughly equals +15 HIROS/second roughly equals the +15 Zettajoules of HEAT ENERGY added to the Ocean Heat Content in 2023. Which works out to about 471 MILLION HIROs worth of HEAT ENERGY added to the Global Ocean in 2023.
Thanks to the ARGO float network, we can accurately measure increases to the Ocean Heat Content. So we KNOW with a “high level of certainty” that it was about +15 ZJ in 2023.
That measurement allows us to calibrate the EEI with changes in OHC. A REALLY useful way of measuring how much HEAT is going into the system, since the oceans absorb 89% of the ENERGY the Earth receives from the Sun.
So, we can say with a high degree of certainty that a +15 ZJ annual increase in the OHC corresponds to a +1.5W/m2 EEI level for 2023.
Elliot Jacobson correlated the EEI with HIROs per second. He calculated that each +0.1W/m2 change in the EEI equals about 1 HIRO per second worth of HEAT being added to the oceans.
So, an EEI of +1.5W/m2 means about 471 million HIROs worth of HEAT went into the oceans in 2023. As if EVERY SQ MILE of ocean on Earth had 3.4 Hiroshima bombs dropped on it in just 2023 alone.
NOW, do you understand why the oceans are “warming up”?
Here's “the thing” hidden in that +381 ZJ number added to the Global Ocean between 1971 and 2020. That’s equal to 12 BILLION HIROs worth of ENERGY going into the oceans in just 50 years.
The Chicxulub Asteroid 65mya that killed the dinosaurs. It released an estimated 10b HIROs. We have added 12b HIROs worth of HEAT to the Global Oceans. In just 50 years.
I told you that +381 ZJ is an OMG number if you have context.
Back to the paper.
“If as much energy is reflected or emitted back into space as hits the atmosphere, the planet doesn’t gain any heat. But because rising greenhouse gas levels are blocking heat emissions, the planet has been gaining more heat than it loses to space.”
Not so subtly blaming ALL of the warming on increasing CO2 levels.
“Since around 2001, Earth’s energy imbalance, as this difference is known, has been measured directly by instruments on satellites as part of a NASA project called CERES. Over this time, the average energy imbalance has more than doubled.”
Yeah, that’s not “exactly” what’s happened. The CERES satellites weren’t designed to measure the EEI. They were designed to measure “cloud coverage” and “cloud radiance”. The objective wasn’t to measure the EEI, it was to measure the ALBEDO.
They did this “officially” from 2000 to 2019. Since then, they have been “in use” but decaying and dying over time. Goode used the CERES data, in conjunction with his “Project Earthshine” data to plot changes to the Earth’s Albedo between 1999 and 2019.
That’s what the chart above shows.
Goode’s Earthshine Project was “defunded” during the Trump years (thank you Gavin) and the CERES project “officially” ended in 2019. Since then, researchers have been using the remaining CERES satellites to measure cloud coverage and cloud radiance. Then, using those measurements they can estimate changes in the ALBEDO.
Changes in the ALBEDO have a 1:1 relationship with changes in the EEI. As the ALBEDO “dims” the EEI increases.
Here are some things you should notice about this graph.
When Goode says that the Earth’s albedo has declined about -0.6W/m2 since 1999, he’s not referring to where the blue dotted line ends up in “2020”. He’s talking about the black-dotted-line between 1999 and 2017.
The one that starts at +0.4W/m2 and ends at -0.2W/m2.
That’s the -0.6W/m2 of additional “climate forcing” due to albedo diminishment that Goode is talking about when he says that changes in the albedo have doubled the amount of energy going into the Climate System.
Goode’s study stops in 2017 because his 20 year project ran out of funding.
The NASA CERES project did not. In this graph, their data goes out to 2019. They show a decline of -1.8W/m2 in the planetary albedo level from 2000 to 2019 (red circle).
The NASA CERES data indicates the problem is three times worse than Goode is reporting in his conclusions.
That was in 2019. The ALBEDO dimming and the EEI increasing was already happening before the big change in marine diesel fuels in 2020. This isn’t about CO2 levels, this is about something causing the ALBEDO to “dim” over the last 20 years.
BUT, that’s not how GISS sees it. The link in the article “Over this time, the average energy imbalance has more than doubled.” takes you to this article.
Earth's atmosphere is trapping twice as much heat as it did in 1993
Earth's energy imbalance, a key measure of global warming, has doubled in the past 20 years, raising concerns about how…
REALLY NOT being subtle about how to interpret the increased Rate of Warming since 2000. The keyword here is “trapped”.
CO2 “traps” heat in the Climate System by “reflecting” it back into the system as it tries to bleed off into space. As the level of CO2 increases the amount of HEAT that’s ‘trapped” increases.
This is the Moderate interpretation of warming since 2000.
It sees warming as primarily being driven by increases in CO2 AND as being directly tied to CO2. IE, when the CO2 level stops going up, warming will also stop going up. It is the FOUNDATION of “Net Zero” as a Climate Change Strategy.
It is a THEORY that has NEVER been tested IRL.
“It is on the high end compared to the models,” says Norman Loeb at NASA, who leads the CERES project.”
The problem for Moderates is that the change in the EEI is due to only one of two things. This is VERY BAD for them.
It means there is no real way to “spin” this.
Either the “Doubling of the EEI” from +0.8W/m2 to +1.6W/m2 that they admit has happened due to the amount of HEAT in the oceans was caused by:
Climate Sensitivity to CO2 being “on the high end of the models” so that the CO2 in the atmosphere is “trapping” more HEAT than they expected. Bad, it means AT LEAST +3.0°C of warming, probably a little more.
OR
Changes in the ALBEDO. HORRIFICALLY BAD, it means that warming will probably be in the +5°C to +6°C range and possibly even worse.
Recent reductions in aerosol emissions have increased Earth's energy imbalance - Communications…
The Earth's energy imbalance is the net radiative flux at the top-of-atmosphere. Climate model simulations suggest that…
They would DIE before they went with option two. Because option two means the models have clouds wrong or they have aerosol cooling wrong. Both of those mean the models are BADLY FLAWED and that the Moderates got EVERYTHING about the Climate System wrong.
It would mean they killed our civilization with their hubris and arrogance.
Can you see WHY the Moderates in Climate Science don’t like “option two?
“But the energy imbalance also varies due to factors such as La Niña and El Niño. The big spike in 2023 was a result of a rare “triple-dip” La Niña that continued for three winters, says Loeb.”
Wait what? Are they SERIOUSLY blaming this on “natural variance”.
“During a La Niña, cold ocean waters spread across the Pacific, soaking up a lot more heat from the sun and atmosphere than they emit, which increases the energy imbalance.”
Wait, what?
HEAT in the oceans isn’t part of the EEI. It's the OHC, Ocean Heat Content.
This is equating the EEI with the OHC and they are VERY different things.
The EEI isn’t about the amount of HEAT building up in the oceans, it’s about the difference between the amount of ENERGY going into the Climate System and the amount going out of it. The HEAT building up in the Global Ocean is a symptom of changes in the EEI over the last 50 years not part of it.
Don’t take my word for it. Here's what the WMO says.
“The Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI), the difference between the amount of energy from the sun arriving at the Earth and the amount returning to space, serves as a fundamental metric to allow the WMO co-sponsored Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) to assess how well the world responds to the task of bringing climate change under control.”
New study shows Earth energy imbalance
The Earth climate system is out of energy balance as a result of human-induced climate change. Heat has accumulated… - wmo.int
“This La Niña then gave way to an El Niño, in which warm waters spread across the Pacific, emitting heat and reducing the energy imbalance.”
OK, except for the part equating Ocean Heat Content with the EEI this is “sorta” how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) heat pump works. However, this is VERY misleading, any casual reader is going to come away with a faulty understanding of the EEI.
This article is BAD REPORTING that will spread misinformation.
“As far as Loeb is concerned, neither the spike in 2023 nor the decline since the El Niño developed are especially surprising.”
Oh REALLY asshole. Where were you back in 2022 when Hansen and I correctly predicted both the timing and intensity of the spike in 2023. The Moderates were bleating that 2023 had a 50/50 chance of being “ENSO Neutral” with no El Nino until 2024.
They were saying this, DESPITE the fact that 2022 was so hot that the Global Mean Temperature went up +0.1°C DURING a “La Nina” year.
But, Mr. Loeb doesn’t find what/s happened in 2023 and 2024 “especially surprising.”
“Had that [spike] continued, it would have very much looked like the real world was doing something which we weren’t seeing in any of the models,” says Sanderson. “As it actually turned out, it was a short spike, and we do see comparable spikes in the model data as well.”
OMG.
The overall trend-line is clearly one where the EEI has been increasing over the last 20 years. However, there is also clearly a LOT of year to year variation in the EEI. Look at 2010, in three years we could be right back to where we are now.
Or, even worse.
From Comments on Global Warming Acceleration, Sulfur Emissions, Observations — (16 May 2024) James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato.
“That said, many questions remain to be resolved, Sanderson says. For instance, reductions in air pollution in many parts of the world are thought to have contributed to the rise in the energy imbalance. Aerosol pollutants reflect sunlight back into space, so less pollution from, say, shipping allows more sunlight to reach the planet’s surface. But there is a lot of uncertainty about the size of these effects.”
From say, oh, shipping. I suppose we should be grateful they acknowledge the Alarmist position AT ALL.
“Then there is the question of how the energy imbalance will change in the future.”
Yeah, I have some thoughts about that. I will save them till the end.
“If greenhouse gas emissions remain at roughly the same level, rather than continuing to rise, the energy imbalance should stop rising too, says Sanderson.”
If CO2 levels stop going up, temperatures will stop going up. In the long run this is absolutely true. The paleoclimate record is CLEAR. CO2 levels are the main driver of the global temperature on planet Earth.
However, we DO NOT KNOW if temperatures will stop going up IF/WHEN we ever stop making the CO2 level go up. That’s just a THEORY. One that has never been proven.
IN the “short term” temperatures might go up quite a bit after we get to “Net Zero”. We may have “locked in” a LOT of additional warming.
The Moderates are CERTAIN that’s “not true” and their models are correct. They are so sure of that, they have literally bet “all our lives” on their being right.
But guess what?
“There is a danger that we won’t be able to tell, says Loeb, because the number of satellites carrying CERES instruments is falling, and they aren’t being replaced.”
Remember this project was only designed to run from 1999 to 2019. They didn’t fund replacements or additional satellites during the Trump years.
The CERES satellites are failing and we don’t have ANYTHING to replace their observations with. Soon, like in 2–3 years soon, we will have no indication of what the ALBEDO is doing and our only indication of the EEI will be the increasing amounts of HEAT in the oceans.
“It takes a long time from the time you start working on the satellite instrument until it actually launches,” Loeb says. “So you have to really plan ahead, and I don’t think we’re doing a very good job on that.”
End Article.
Did you find this article “reassuring”?
If you didn’t have “context” though, what would you have thought?
Articles like this are WHY most people don’t really understand what's going on with the Climate System and in Climate Science. It’s almost designed to soothe the average readers “climate anxiety” while still assuring them that Climate Change is something they need to be aware of and “concerned” about.
Here's what I would say to people.
Let’s look at what happened in 2009 and 2010.
First there was a “moderate” El Nino.
“The first phase of the global heatwaves was caused by a moderate El Niño event, which lasted from June 2009 to May 2010. This lasted only from April 2010 to June 2010 and caused only moderate above-average temperatures in the affected regions, but it also set new record high temperatures for most of the area affected in the Northern Hemisphere.” -wikipedia
The second, more devastating phase was caused by a very strong La Niña event, which lasted from June 2010 to June 2011.
That would be the part when the EEI “bottomed out” and then suddenly started climbing steadily for the next 3 years.
“According to meteorologists, the 2010–11 La Niña event was one of the strongest La Niña events ever observed. That same La Niña event also had devastating effects in the Eastern states of Australia.” -wikipedia
Most of us don’t remember 2010 for its climate disasters. The BIG news that year were the THREE major earthquakes.
Overall picture of natural catastrophes in 2010 - Very severe earthquakes and many severe weather…
Overall picture of natural catastrophes in 2010 - Very severe earthquakes and many severe weather events | Munich Re
“In all, there were five catastrophes last year assignable to the top category of “great natural catastrophes” based on the definition criteria of the United Nations: the earthquakes in Haiti (12 January), Chile (27 February) and central China (13 April), the heatwave in Russia (July to September), and the floods in Pakistan (also July to September). These accounted for the major share of fatalities in 2010 (around 295,000) and just under half the overall losses caused by natural catastrophes.”
“In the summer (2010), floods following extreme monsoon rainfall had devastating consequences in Pakistan. For weeks, up to one-quarter of the country was flooded. Countless people lost all their worldly possessions. The overall loss totalled US$ 9.5bn — an extremely high amount for Pakistan’s emerging economy.”
2024
Two Years After Deadly Floods Hit Pakistan, It's Happening Again
Millions of people still recovering from the devastation of 2022 are bracing for the possibility of losing what they've…
“A widescale catastrophe also resulted from the heatwave in Russia and neighbouring countries between July and September (2010).”
2024
A historic September heat wave has swelled over Europe
Both Sweden and Norway saw their highest September temperatures on record Thursday.
“Many places, including Moscow, experienced record temperatures. In some regions of central Russia, they exceeded 30°C for two months on end. Forests burned, with the fires threatening nuclear facilities and areas where the ground had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. At least 56,000 people died as a result of heat and air pollution, making it the most deadly natural disaster in Russia’s history.” (2010)
2024
A heat wave that hasn't been in 115 years is coming to Moscow - weather forecasters: EADaily
"On the 120th day of summer - on Friday, the 13th, a double temperature record is expected in Moscow - there will be a…
“The hurricane season in the North Atlantic was benign — but only at first glance. Favourable weather patterns meant that the US coast was not hit by a single hurricane. In Mexico, however, a few storms caused substantial damage. Otherwise, the tropical cyclones turned away in a northeasterly direction over the sea, only grazing some islands in the Caribbean.”
But what appeared benign was, in terms of the number and intensity of the storms, one of the severest hurricane seasons of the past 100 years. (2010)
Altogether, there were 19 named tropical cyclones, equalling the number recorded in 1995 and putting 2010 in joint third place after 2005 (28) and 1933 (21). Twelve of the storms attained hurricane strength, with five of these falling into the top hurricane categories (wind speeds over 178 km/h). This means the forecasts of various institutes about the number of storms turned out to be very accurate. “The number of storms was indeed well above average. It is just that it is impossible to forecast whether and where such storms will make landfall”, said Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research.
Right at the start of the 2010 hurricane season, the water temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic were up to 2°C above the long-term mean — and thus significantly higher than the level to be expected for the cyclical warm phase in the North Atlantic that has persisted since 1995. The water temperatures thus provided ideal conditions for the occurrence and high intensity of hurricanes. As from the beginning of August, atmospheric conditions also favoured the occurrence of Atlantic tropical cyclones (“La Niña” conditions).
That was 2010.
We weren’t so lucky in 2024.
If the pattern repeats itself, this La Nina is going to be “super charged”.
That's what I am telling you. That’s what I am warning you to get ready for.
Because when I look at this graph.
I don’t see the situation “improving”.
No matter what Gavin Schmidt says.
Now YOU have to decide. Do you agree with the Moderates, or not?
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
— rc 102924
Personal Notes:
If you are new to my stuff I maintain an index of my past articles here on Substack.
SubStack Index : A Guide to my Stack.
I am also on Medium.
A Mind at Work - A catalogue of Articles I’ve Written.
Data, data, everywhere and none of it fit to apply to common sense. What's left out of the surface heat energy numbers are the three energy absorbing elements of the hydrological cycle: 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice annually, 3.3 billion tons daily; the 321 million cubic miles of heating oceans; the 1.4 trillion tons of water vapor rising in the atmosphere daily; and the amount of heat energy exhausted into outer space daily. Anyone attempting to show less heat energy in the environment now than last year is, well, just nuts. Greenland has been melting at the rate (NOAA) of 28.5 million tons per hour, although the high temp there just fell below 32 degF, and one pound of melting ice absorbs 144 BTUs. The watts/sq.m. number is lost on me. Eliot Jacobson's calculation of 20-30 Hiroshima bomb blast equivalents PER SECOND is comprehendable for me, where the AEC says each one releases 63 trillion BTUs into the environment.
My gold standard for this data is C3S, and their "Climate Pulse" page. In their article "Hottest May on record spurs call for climate action", June 5, 2024, includes data demonstrating a 0.2 degC annual increase since 2020 on their 1991-2020 baseline. At this rate of global surface air temp increase, we may see a 1 degC increase EVERY 5 YRS. This is simple math from a retired physician with time on my hands and an a genuine interest in the fate of all life on the planet. If this trend continues, we may see a 6 degC global ave. temp increase by the 23rd BD of any child unfortunate to be born today, 2047. Love your effort, Richard, but I'm a fan of simplicity and common sense, plain language. Maybe the product of 42 yrs'. of explaining complex medical diagnoses to folks with a HS education. Have a blessed night! Gregg Miklashek, MD
Just a note of thanks! I find some of the numbers you report hard to follow - that's the part of climate science that always makes my eyes glaze over, but the way you stay on top of the shifting baseline is invaluable. I hate this narrative that we live in and I hate that scientists like Gavin Schmidt always have to put a positive spin on things to maintain funding. But I sincerely appreciate your analysis and the work that you put into this endeavor.