HadCET: Warmest Meteorological Spring

Meteorological spring is March to May. (*In the Northern Hemisphere.)

The Hadley Central England Temperature (HadCET) just had the warmest meteorological spring in its 367-year history.

(OK, it's really only 303 years, because some of those early years had temperatures taken inside buildings, etc., not in a systematic fashion, but can you really blame them for trying?)

But still, 303 years. That's pretty impressive.

And this year's March-April-May average saw the warmest temperature anomaly in that little region, 2.26°C, which was the same as last year's value, exactly.

Baseline is 1901-2000.

Still, this year's year-to-date average only ranks 11th highest in all those years.

But things are cooking.

The 10-year moving average for HadCET is at a maximum, 0.52°C higher than 10 years (120 months) ago.

The 50-year linear trend is an impressive 0.31°C/decade.

But it's just a little region in England.

Some Retractions and Clarifications

So I wrote a few things the other day that were pretty dumb and which I don't really think. 

What can I say? I was having a bad day. A very bad day. It happens, more than I'd like. I've been dealing with bad days (and bad weeks and bad months) since I was 17 years old. Depression is an illness and one of the worst illnesses, I think. I've often wished I had cancer instead, because then you get to die from the disease and it's over, or you are (usually) cured and get over it and move on. Not always, I know. 

Psychiatrists and doctors and therapists like to say depression is curable, like a doctor I recently read in the NY Times. But I've never found that cure. There is such a thing as treatment-resistant depression. Or maybe, perhaps, and I'm not kidding, I'm just a weak person. It's a real possibility. In any case, nothing else has had such a large impact on my being in the last 50 years. 

On May 24th I wrote:

...but I'm also not that interested in climate change anymore. I was only ever interested in the science, not the politics, but as the science seems more and more established it's falling out of my Overton Window. I'm not interested in every nuance of the AMOC ocean stream and polar ice and carbon capture, and certainly not whether the world will seriously address the problem.

It's true that the US politics are a mess, and I don't want to write about every stupid thing Trump says or all the other deniers who, to me, seem less relevant every year. Of course, since Trump is cutting science in about every way possible, including climate science and meteorology, deniers like Anthony Watts probably think they are winning, or have won. 

But that just speaks to their ideological focus and lack of scientific understanding. It's always been clear that Watts knows little science and was more interested in traffic and money than in publishing the truth.... Of course, no professional scientist or expert thinks climate change is done, and no sane person would believe the usual denier suspects than the professionals. They will have to answer to someone, someday, though surely are too arrogant and full of themselves to do so honestly.

We have a lot of climate change still ahead of us, probably enough to get us to at least 3°C. 

One-half of an ice ages' worth of warming. My God.

While I might not be interested in every up and down of the AMOC's decline, I know the trends and they are extremely worrisome. Few people outside the climate community and smart readers (like you) understand this.

I also wrote:

I hope he [Trump] brings about the collapse of the US as soon as possible--it's been coming on for 50 years, and America certainly deserves it--so US regions can secede and start again. But I don't care about that either--I'm not married, I don't have any kids, so I don't have any stake in the future.

Well, to be honest, I do hope the US collapses soon. It surely won't be pleasant, but it is necessary, I believe--not just for Americans, but for the entire world. The US is now 1/3rd of a billion people, too big to form a true democracy, even a democratic republic. Our representatives don't give a shit what their constituents think, there are simply too many of them. I've read that they all spend a significant fraction of their time simply on the phone calling past donors for more donations. I don't doubt it. Citizen's United, and all that, set the ultimate destruction of the US in place. Yet I don't think it was incorrectly decided. This was a fundamental flaw in the Constitution (speech=money), which I don't see any way out of. If newspapers get free speech, why doesn't anyone else get it in a similar fashion?

The US needs to break up to return government closer to the people. 

Trump -- probably the devil incarnate (if I believed in supernatural beings like the devil) -- isn't fixing anything, and only accelerating our downfall.

Yes, I'm not married, never will be, don't have any children and never will. I have a niece and nephew whom I love, but they are pretty intelligent and come from a great home and have (and will have more) a ton of advantages. They'll get by, even if maybe they need to leave the US to do it. But what am I to do? I can hope the future is amenable to them, but there's nothing I can do to make it so, besides loving them. But now that they're no longer children, they need me less, and frankly not at all anymore.... 

None of us can do anything else for them. That's the huge tragedy of all this. It's long since been out of our hands. And, what did we really do wrong? 

Again, the country (and the world) is too big.

More and more it seems futile to me to hope for a better future when there's nothing I can do to make it so. Not really. And I'm getting old and tired and sore and am all stoved up and just don't have the energy I used to. Not that my energy has ever done any good anyway. I really don't see that I've accomplished anything in my life. I didn't even pass my genes on--intelligent genes, even though they carry depression.

This is what I felt I needed to say about that post, now over a week old. It's embarrassing, and I hope you will forgive me.

Cheers.

Excellent Anthropology YouTube Channel: @stefanmilo

I recently discovered a great YouTube channel called @stefanmilo about issues in anthropology, and I've been watching its back issues. It's by Stefan Milosavljevich, who, it turns out, lives in Portland, Oregon, just an hour north of me. He's interesting, he's a very good video producer, level-headed and enticingly curious, has a global perspective, and he asks real scientists for interviews. He writes:

"To ensure I'm not spewing bollocks into the void I follow these golden rules: 

Use only academic sources for my videos

Share those sources with the viewers

Make it obvious when I'm just giving my personal opinion

No Atlantis, No Aliens, No Nonsense."

It's very engaging and has really open my eyes to world of anthropology (in a way a 6-9 pm college course never did) and the modern issues within it. One of the best channels I've found in awhile.

from E B White

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."

E. B. White

from the 2016 book The Myth of Human Supremacy by Derrick Jensen, which I'm reading now and gives a lot to think about.

E.B. White was a prominent US writer last century who wrote a great deal for The New Yorker magazine, and who wrote, among many other things, the famous children's book Charlotte's Web.

USA Wildfires

Data: National Interagency Fire Center

https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics

--

Not sure how much I'm going to blog anymore. I have a really bad neck, with four fusions, since 2010, and it's gotten a lot worse this year as I try to sit at a computer for more than an hour or two. I'm not even doing enough work to earn a living. At this point even opiates don't help alot, and the more I work the worse it gets. And I just get tired. But I'll never be able to retire here, so unless I move to another country I'm going to have to be miserly about spending time typing unless it's for pay. I'll drop in every now and again to post something I find interesting, about science or literature or something else, but I'm also not that interested in climate change anymore. I was only ever interested in the science, not the politics, but as the science seems more and more established it's falling out of my Overton Window. I'm not interested in every nuance of the AMOC ocean stream and polar ice and carbon capture, and certainly not whether the world will seriously address the problem [added 5/30: I retract that; I was having a bad day.] (which they haven't yet in 30 years, despite Kyoto and Paris, aided by immoral, even evil bloggers like Watts and Steve what's-his-name and Chuck W and that guy in Montana whose name I'm not interested enough to remember.) Ed-something, I think. (He's full of shit anyway.) They are all completely wrong, of course, but all too shameless and arrogant to ever admit it. And, the corporations have won, putting endless profits over the survival of society. Republicans have won, even though they're destroying the country & the world. And I certainly don't want to write about Trump, the devil incarnate--I hope he brings about the collapse of the US as soon as possible--it's been coming on for 50 years, and America certainly deserves it--so US regions can secede and start again. But I don't care about that either--I'm not married, I don't have any kids, so I don't have any stake in the future. [added 5/30: I retract this too. It wasn't the best day for me to be blogging.] And lately I really feel that. My fault for not establishing stakes, a major failure, but it's too late now. I'm mostly here to see my 15-year old cat's life through to its end. I'd just rather do whatever paying work I can in the hours I have then read novels the rest of the time and watch hockey when it's in season.

Bizarro Arctic Sea Ice

Arctic Sea Ice is acting weird. Here's the volume as modeled by PIOMAS. {Really this is just an excuse for me to try datawrapper.de, because Excel charts have never looked good and by now look like something from the late 1900s.} But it is strange how the SIV has been basically flat for the last 15 years. (Arctic sea ice extent is just as unusual.) 

Here is a conference presentation screen capture I captured from the leading PIOMAS modeler in Sept 2014:

I think this was from a Cliff Maas blog post or comment I read in 2017, but can't find it exactly. The screen capture looks like it's from a conference. 

Anyway it's very wrong. Actually the decline, linearly regressed, is about 1/1.5, now 1/6.  

Lesson?: beware of making climate predictions unless it's about mean global surface temperature, and even then ENSOs mess you up.

--

So why is there a "pause" in Arctic melting? This paper on ESS Open Archive (?) goes into it. It's not peer reviewed, which is unfortunate. Given that, here's the abstract:

So it's maybe worse, going back 20 years (to 2005). Could last 5-10 more years. (Not convenient, given my lifespan.) 

So, internal variability, which is nearly impossible to explain to deniers.

Conquering the Universe

"Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."

Kurt Vonnegut

CO2 > 430 ppm

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has cracked the 430 ppm level at the Mauna Loa Observatory in on Hawaii. 

Here's NOAA's daily source for the data; the image above is from Daily CO2.

In fact, atmospheric CO2 at MLO peaked this year at 431.13 ppm on 27-April-2025. Last year it peaked at 428.59 ppm on 26-April-2024. That's only a 2.45 ppm increase, maybe a touch below the recent average, maybe due to the relative ENSO states. 2024 as a year (not a season) was somewhat on the La Nina-side, with this year slightly towards the El Nino-side. (I think.)

So, it's not clear if next year will break 435 ppm. Anyway the fascists might have stopped all US scientific measurements by then. (Yes, I know it's measured at many other places around the globe, but as far as I know none of them has the longevity of the Mauna Loa data.)

"They Haven't Started and We're Almost Done"

Suppressing the Costs of Climate Change

The fascists have decided to stop keeping track of the costs of climate change. Free link to NY Times story.

If you don't keep track of it, it's like it doesn't exist. This is hard for me to wrap my head around at the moment.

50 Years at 0.30°C/decade

The 50-year linear trend for the Hadley Central England Temperature (HadCET) is a very healthy worrisome 0.30°C/decade.

Without including any autocorrelation, because I don't feel like calculating it today, the 2-sigma uncertainty is 0.07°C/decade.

Over 50 years that's an increase of 1.52°C (2.73°F).

Also, the 10-year moving average reached a record high in April at 10.7°C. (That's an absolute number, not an anomaly.) 

HadCET is measured over a fairly broad area of...central England...bounded by an approximate triangle from Lancaster in the north of England to Bristol in the southwest to London in the southeast. Former homes of such famous people as Gollum (well, actor Andy Serkis), Blackbeard the Pirate and Charles the Darwin, son of Robert, a wealthy society doctor and financier, and grandson of Erasmus the Darwin, a (inhale) "natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor, freemason, and poet" (exhale). 

Via Wikipedia.

Caught Only Half the Time

Meowthematics >> Mathematics
byu/Ok-Cap6895 inmathmemes

The Dispossessed

“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives…But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

A really great book.

Latest SST

If you need an update on the latest sea surface temperatures, this is from Zack Labe on Bluesky:

2024: Record high CO2 energy emissions

2024 global energy-related CO2 emissions were a record high, at 37.8 Gt, according to the International Energy Administration (IEA). That's an annual increase of 1.0%.

In 2024, CO2 emissions from fuel combustion grew by around 1% or 357 Mt CO2, while emissions from industrial processes declined by 2.3% or 62 Mt CO2. Emissions growth was lower than global GDP growth (+3.2%), restoring the decades-long trend of decoupling emissions growth from economic growth, which had been disrupted in 2021.

Natural gas emissions rose by around 2.5% (180 Mt CO₂) in 2024, making it the largest contributor to global carbon emissions growth. This increase was driven by higher consumption in China, the United States, the Middle East, and India.

This is disappointing:

Global coal emissions rose by 0.9% (135 Mt CO₂) in 2024. The increase was primarily fuelled by growing coal consumption in China, India and Southeast Asia, while demand declined in advanced economies, particularly in the United States and the European Union.

 

Climate Sensitivity from Paleoclimate Data

Here's a graph from Skinner 2012 that I've never seen before and I'm surprised I've never seen it before--the climate sensitivity from many climate events, warming and cooling, in the distant past:

This is from 

"A Long View on Climate Sensitivity," Luke Skinner

Science 24 Aug 2012, Vol. 337, Issue 6097, pp. 917-919

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6097/917/tab-figures-data

(paywalled). The individual climate sensitivities--the amount of global warming that may be expected as a result of a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration--vary, in part because every climate event starts in a different climate and so won't trace the same warming path as any other. Still there's apparently not a lot of variation between events. 

The author gives 12 pairs of data for the different in supplementary material (also paywalled). From it I get a best linear fit to this graph of 

ΔT/ΔF = 0.704°C/(W/m²)

which, using the definition of climate sensitivity λ 

gives, for a doubling of temperature

where α is this proportionality constant equal to 5.35 W/m². Plugging in the numbers

and that quite enough LaTeX for one day. (Like all physics graduate students, I used to be a wiz in LaTeX back then.)

The IPCC 6AR gives a climate sensitivity of 2.5 - 4.0°C, so there is some agreement.

When the Ice Leaves the Port

Lake Winnipesaukee is the largest lake in New Hampshire, US, at 185 km² (71.4 mi²) (8.4 mi)². I still find it interesting because for about 6 years I lived high above it and close in a cozy mother-in-law apartment, with a screened porch, and the Lake spread out before me like...well, like a big lake. At least a good part of it. 

Consequently, I can still spell "Winnipesaukee." 

From CoPilot:

The name "Winnipesaukee" is derived from the Algonquian language and translates to "The Smile of the Great Spirit" or "Beautiful Water in a High Place".

The Lake freezes over in the winter, and people go out ice-fishing, etc. There's an airport runway on the ice over in Alton on the east end of the Lake--"the only FAA-certified, plowed ice runway in the continental United States." It doesn't (viz. can't) open every year, but it did open this year. Global warming is affecting the Lake.

A popular metric in that region is the Lake's "ice-out" date.

Ice-Out is declared when the cruise ship MS Mount Washington can make it to every one of its ports: Center Harbor, Wolfeboro, Alton, Weirs Beach and Meredith. It is also considered the unofficial start to the boating season as well as the end of winter in New Hampshire.

These day a local pilot flies over the Lake multiple times a day this time of year to declare Ice-Out. I wrote about him for Yale Climate Connections several years ago.

There is also an "ice-in" date, but it's not as popular because it means the start of a long, cold, dark winter and nobody gets too hyped for that. (In truth winter there sets in long before ice-in, which usually is announced in January or early February.) But ice-out is a ritual of spring, and soon your cabin fever will break. About mid-May, if you can just hang on.

Anyway...and please pardon me if I've written about all this before somewhere on this blog...this year's Ice-out was declared this morning at 7:02 am. (Seems suspiciously exact, but anyway.) The time series of Ice-Out dates is carried by Wikipedia. I had to look up the time in the local news, and I only have times since 2020. For earlier years there is ice-out data, but no time, so I took it as noon.

Here's the time-series of ice-out dates on Winnipesaukee since 1887. The red line is the 30-year moving average.

So the 30-year moving average has decreased about 10 days since 1917, that is, ice-out arrives earlier. The linear trend is about -0.75 days/decade, but of course the R² is small, just 0.28. That's -7.5 days/century. A week per century. 

The data are a pretty decent proxy for global temperature. I should make a histogram. Soon. Maybe. 

BTW, there was a year without an ice-out date--2001, when I was living there--because there never was an ice-in--the Lake didn't freeze over that year. This was before smartphones so I don't have pictures of it. I did take a lousy picture with a digital camera, but can't find it now. Any more it's kind of like life started only when smartphones became ubiquitous.

Ice fisherman lost some trucks.

Addendum: Once up there I saw a section of the lake surface freeze over in real time--a rolling edge of freezing, maybe traveling over a half-mile. Maybe a mile. Took about 10-15 seconds. I wasn't sure if I really saw that or not--I thought I did, but it seemed impossible--so I contacted a few limnologists--scientists who study lakes--and more than one told me they'd heard of such a phenomenon, but had never seen it, and called me lucky or fortunate or some such word.

So, spring is coming even to New England. There's hope. Here in Oregon it's getting into the 70s. (Fahrenheit. About 20 degrees Celsius.)

Have a nice day.

A1, Artificial One

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

 *

Why? The US Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, who with her husband and business partner Vince McMahon founded the clownish WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment recently pronounced "AI" (as in artificial intelligence) as "A1"--"A One." No kidding. That's the kind of inspiring leadership this country has now. Unfortunately, her job working for Trump is to dismantle [of course] the Department of Education because 30 percent is apparently too low. Trump said when campaigning the Department is filled with "radicals, zealots and Marxists," which are apparently new synonyms for "teacher." 

Actually what the Department mostly does is distribute money and administer the student loan program, which Trump doesn't like either because too many push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and he wants to (AP) "reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs." In short, they want that money for private schools, religious and otherwise, and to keep the poor poor in subpar public schools. Remember, Trump "likes the poorly educated." Yes, he actually said that while campaigning.

I wish this was just a crazy stupid made-up story, but it's all true. No, it makes no sense for us either. The Trump administration is increasingly looking like clowns running amuck in a shooting gallery. Except the gallery is the entirety of the United States of America.

*

Costa Rica, Portugal, Greece, the Philippines, Romania, Mexico. Where to go? 

 *

Check out this brutal putdown of the US by a Chinese official. "We expect to survive for another 5,000 years." 

* 

Sign from a recent protest rally:

NOAA, Is This Really Necessary???

Sheesh.

Via: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/tavg/land_ocean/1/0/1850-2025

Musk Popularity

At least Elon Musk's popularity (in the US) is tanking. Or at least declining:

 

Imagine the richest person in the world getting to decide who gets to work in the federal government and how many benefits Americans receive. It sounds like something from a bad Ayn Rand novel. (As if all of them weren't bad.)

Fortunately Tesla sales in Europe are tanking even more. Here's even more bad news. Even cabinet members in the Trump regime are getting sick of him: 

Gizmodo: "Elon Musk Is Annoying, Unfunny, and Should Probably Take a Drug Test, Trump Officials Reportedly Say: A senior official describes the billionaire as an awkward and obnoxious asshole."

I mean, Musk's idea of being funny (or something) is throw up Nazi salutes. He should be drummed out of any public life for that alone. Somehow that no longer happens in today's America. I can't come close to explaining it.

from "The Dispossessed"

“Suffering is a misunderstanding,” Shevek said, leaning forward, his eyes wide and light. He was still lanky, with big hands, protruding ears, and angular joints, but in the perfect health and strength of eariy manhood he was very beautiful. His dun-colored hair, like the others', was fine and straight, worn at its full length and kept off the forehead with a band. Only one of them wore her hair differently, a girl with high cheekbones and a flat nose; she had cut her dark hair to a shiny cap all round. She was watching Shevek with a steady, serious gaze. Her lips were greasy from eating fried cakes, and there was a crumb on her chin.

“It exists,” Shevek said, spreading out his hands. “It's real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can't pretend that it doesn't exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we'll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we'll die. That's the condition we're born on. I'm afraid of life! There are times I — I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding — this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain . . . .  If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could . . . get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self — ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality — the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness — that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.'"

“'The reality of our life is in love, in solidarity,' said a tall, soft-eyed girl. 'Love is the true condition of human life.'

“Bedap shook his head. ‘No. Shev's right,’ he said. ‘Love's just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don't have much choice about enduring it! We will whether we want to or not.”

-- The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

"Henry Fonda for President"

Movie trailer, from an Australian director who posits that actor Henry Fonda was the embodiment of America itself. 

"Caged and fighting the bars but timid of the light."

 

Myanmar Earthquake Waves Traveling Through Europe

Very cool:

Sick Goal

Pardon me, I try to avoid blogging about hockey, but this is an amazing goal by Brian Rust of the [my] Pittsburgh Penguins.

 

Notice how Sidney Crosby--number 87 and one of the best hockey players in the visible universe--first whacks down a pass to him that was above the ice, controls the puck, then passes the puck while lifting it over the stick/blade of the guy defending him. Then Rust (#17) stretches and hits the puck after a bounce over the goalie. I've never seen a goal like this.

 
The Penguins, legendary in the '00s and '10s, have really lost it and are now ranked #28 in the league (of 32 teams). They will miss the playoffs for the third straight year. But it's worth watching because every game Crosby does something you've never seen before.

Last game Crosby set a record of 20 seasons scoring one point a game or better. (A point is a goal or an assist.) He beat out Wayne Gretzky, who had 19. Incredible consistency, since he joined the league at 18 years old. In fact, he's never had an NHL season where he's scored less than one point per game.

New Record Low for Arctic Sea Ice

The NSIDC says that Arctic sea ice just set a record for the lowest annual maximum. This is from their press release. I've abbreviated some of the units, which they choose to write out in their long-form, and made everything metric (because around here we don't dabble in the black arts):

On March 22, Arctic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.33 Mkm²..., the lowest in the 47-year satellite record. This year’s maximum extent is 1.31 Mkm²...below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum of 15.64 Mkm²...and 80,000 km²...below the previous lowest maximum that occurred on March 7, 2017.

But this is meaningless in the US now, because climate change doesn't officially exist. (They know it does, but practice fake denialism.) Trump recently said he thinks science don't know what's causing climate change.... NSIDC gets plenty of US federal government funding, so perhaps they won't exist for next year's annual maximum (not kidding), and maybe even the satellites will be turned off (also not kidding). After all, that's money that should properly be going to (more) tax cuts for billionaires (still not kidding). You don't know what you can't measure, and President Krasnov clearly doesn't want us to know.

Great Image of Venus

from "The COSPAR planetary protection requirements for space missions to Venus," María Paz Zorzano et al, Life Sciences in Space Research, Volume 37, May 2023, Pages 18-24.

note: orange represents a data gap. 

Is Ocean Heat Content Really Accelerating?

An article in the NY Times (free link) reports on a World Meteorological Organization report that says the 10 warmest years in the surface temperature records are the last 10 years. That's very bad. 

One sentence in the article especially caught my eye. 

This warmth is especially apparent in the oceans, where key indicators of climate change are now accelerating.

They don't say which indicators, but I assume ocean heat content (OHC) is a prominent one. 

I used to think, based on the data, that it was indeed accelerating. But from my amateurish calculations, it looks like the OHC in the 0-2000 meter range (top half) has stopped accelerating. It had a peak in the first quarter of last year, and the last three readings are below that. OK, ENSOs and whatnot. A very recent peak isn't important or interesting.

Here are the data:

The leading coefficient of the second-degree polynomial is now 0.037 ZJ/yr² (ZJ=zetajoules=10²¹ joules). But it has a 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.044 ZJ/yr², calculated by the standard linear regression (with no autocorrelation, which would only make the error bars higher (I think)).

The 0-2000 m acceleration is twice this coefficient, and in more typical units is 0.0046 ± 0.0055 (W/m²)/yr. So it's not statistically significant at the 2-sigma level.  

The 0-700 m acceleration is statistically significant at 0.0088 ± 0.0004 (W/m²)/yr.

I don't have data on the lower half of the ocean. I don't even know if it exists, though I have seen a few papers years ago that it's warming, though at a much slower rate. (Now I can't find them.)

Don't know if this means anything--the ocean heat is still increasing strongly, of course. I could calculate that, but I'm not going to right now because I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow. Likely the recent OHCs are messed up wonky because of the big El Nino than the small La Nina. 

Just wanted to put up my the little calculations, to justify the time it took to build the spreadsheet. (Really, I just like making spreadsheets & keeping track of the basic climate data).

Cheers.

How Tariffs Work

Early Blogger Kevin Drum Has Died

The blogger Kevin Drum has died. He was one of the first bloggers I ever read regularly, way back in the early-to-mid aughts. The NY Times has an obituary (free link), and there was a last post on his latest blog.

La Niña is Done

Source: Tropicaltidbits.com

Back in Charge

Roy Spencer's Comical, Sad, Desperate Arguments

Roy Spencer continues to make some very sad, desperate arguments in the name of climate denial. Arguments are that beneath him as a professional scientist. Arguments that show why he has no respect at all in the climate science community. 

In a recent post he wrote:

"The regulation of CO2 emissions (and some other chemicals) by the EPA has also mystified me. However many of the EPA’s ~185 lawyers worked on the 2009 Endangerment Finding, they must have known that regulating CO2 emissions from U.S. cars and light-duty trucks would have no measurable impact on global climate, including sea level rise (which was a major argument in Massachusetts v. EPA).

None."

Of course, by this argument no one should do ever do anything about CO2 emissions because, individually, all regulations are "too small" to solve the global problem.

But the sum over many small quantities can certainly be a big quantity.  

It's an intentionally deceitful argument that convinces no one except the hare-brained commenters on his site. And Roy knows enough to know this. Sad. It's a dumb argument and I'm wondering why he made it. This is exactly why people don't trust Roy or his "science."

He also wrote:

"Their reason for existence is to regulate pollutants (and it doesn’t matter if Nature produces far more of a “pollutant” than people produce)."

Another extremely, obviously vapid argument. Yes, Nature emits more CO2 than do humans. But Nature absorbs that amount of CO2 and even more, which is why only half (about) of anthropogenic emissions reside in the atmosphere.

 
Roy certainly knows this. So why pretend otherwise, to make such scientifically trashy arguments? Does he ever wonder why no real scientists take him seriously, and haven't for...decades? 

Maybe he give up on being a valuable scientist long ago, and is only looking for money for his opinions from conservative, denier think tanks in DC?

 
It's very sad to see a senior scientist making such shitty arguments, thinking they do any good whatsoever. They only ruin whatever respectability he had, which was very low to begin with. 

How You Like Them Odds

Musk said he believed A.I. would be smarter than any individual human in the next year or two, and predicted that A.I. would be smarter than all humans combined by 2029 or 2030. He said he thought there was an 80 percent chance that A.I. would have a “good outcome,” and that there was a 20 percent chance of “annihilation.”

- Elon Musk, interview with Joe Rogan, covered by the New York Times March 3, 2025. (free link)

Mass Firings at NOAA

If no one is researching climate, climate change doesn't exist.

Notifications of mass firings of NOAA employees were sent out Thursday afternoon, to mostly "probationary employees," recent new hires. 800 firings out of 13,000 employees (6%). New York Times (free link):

As is the case at other agencies, the Trump administration appears to be firing probationary employees at NOAA not because their work is necessarily less valuable than that of other staff members, but because they’re easier to dismiss.

More cuts are coming. This isn't about cutting the federal budget deficit or debt as federal employee salaries and benefits are only 3% of the federal budget. It gets even more ridiculous:

The General Services Administration, which manages government facilities, has begun canceling some of the contracts for buildings that NOAA uses, according to a person familiar with the matter. The agency has frozen credit cards used to pay for travel and sharply restricted the amount of money employees are able to put on those cards for other purchases.

The cuts are purely political:

NOAA has been singled out for especially deep cuts by members of the Trump administration. Project 2025, the policy blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation that is reflected in many of the actions taken by the Trump administration so far, calls the agency “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” The document urges that NOAA be dismantled and some of its programs be terminated.

Every billion saved is another billion for billionaires.... I can't tell if Trump is trying to destroy America or if he thinks he's saving it (and for whom). He's not much of a thinker, but the people around him know what they're doing. Disgusting.

Climate News Lately, Mostly Bad

== Oops, published this to soon. Deleted the text and will try again. == 

RESIST

By Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz. Very clever.

 

2% Chance of Catastrophe in 2032

The asteroid 2024 YR4 -- which is different than Apophis -- has a 2% chance of impacting Earth on Dec 12, 2032. Those odds are up from the previous 1.3%. That seems large, but they say the odds will almost surely shrink as its orbital parameters are better specified. Besides it's only 40-90 m in diameter, enough to screw up your day, week and maybe month, but probably not much longer than that, unless you're underneath it or within X km. (X ~ 250 km, I'm guessing, based on nothing.)

 

I learned recently that on April 13, 2029 Apophis will swing by beneath Earth's communication satellites (which I think are at GEO, 35,786 km in altitude). It will be visible with the naked eye for some hours. When it was discovered in 2004 there was some concern it would impact Earth the next time it came around, on Easter 2036. But in 2021 that was ruled out.

The Los Angeles Fires

I haven't written anything about the fires in Los Angeles, particularly with respect to climate change, because, well, the causes and problems of the fires are highly complex and not due to any one thing. It's clear that the fires were not caused/exacerbated by (a) the mayor being abroad, (b) the state's desire to protect smelt, a fish, (c) water and reservoir shortages. The nearby reservoirs have ample water. What I've read says that there was a water shortage in places like Pacific Palisades because there was massive demand that ran the water system there dry. Not surprising when fighting a major wildfire in major suburbs. (d) it's not due to cuts in any fire department budgets, which were on the order of $20 million out of about $900 million. 2%. Fire departments don't live and die on such budget changes. They don't suddenly collapse because women have some very high positions in the department, or because of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs. The right-wing in this country, who can no longer be called "conservatives," now uses trolling as a significant political weapon, without regard for the truth, and it's really ruining the country. Trump is, needless to say, useless, calling the California governor juvenile names and expressing little-to-no interest in what's happening to people and their homes. And so on. A large group in this country is far more interested in assigning blame than in understanding and empathizing with those who lost their homes and possessions and everything. It's almost unbelievable the things "they" say.

The latest number of deaths I've seen is 24. The fires are still raging. Sometimes it looks like all of Los Angeles is going to burn down completely. As of this morning the Palisades fire was only 17% contained. Police are arresting drone pilots. It's now possible (!!!) to place bets on Polymarket on parameters of the fires--how many acres will the Palisades fire burn in total, when will the Palisades fire be contained, etc. There is something really sick about that. Only in America (I suppose. I hope.).

As for how climate change is affecting the fires, I trust this blog post by Andrew Dessler on The Climate Brink. The whole thing is worth reading. Here's part:

Climate change does not “cause” extreme events, but it can amplify them. In fact, it is certain that climate change affects every weather event by altering the baseline conditions in which they occur.

Thus, the real scientific question is not whether climate change influenced the fire — of course it did. Rather, the real question is quantifying the impact: how much did climate change increase this specific event’s intensity or likelihood? We don’t know the answer yet, but I’m sure scientists are already working on it.

The entire post is well worth reading.

Meanwhile, the true heroes are those fighting the fire on the ground and in airplanes and helicopters, especially when put to rebellious music. Wish I had a job that made a difference in people's lives.

https://youtube.com/shorts/jSNy8nYg8yw

Sorry, not embeddable. 

There is more than I expected I had to say about the fires. Comments welcome.

The Execrable Patrick Moore

Perhaps you remember this vomitous piece of feculence.

 
In an article published two days ago by the Western Standard (whoever they are) titled "Guilbeault, CTV publish fake news about 2024 'hottest year ever' as LA burns," they quote Patrick Moore:

According to Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, supported by multiple data sets, the overall trend in Earth's temperature is actually decreasing — debunking a claim by CTV, posted to social media by federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault — that 2024 was the "hottest year ever."

"Here is the record of global temperatures going back 5 million years, as the Earth sank into the Pleistocene Ice Age which began 2.6 million years ago," said Moore in a statement.

"Note that it is still getting colder over the long term."

That's what this hypocrite denier has been reduced to: a deceiver by any means possible, a clown, a fool, a mummer. The worst of the worst. 

Remember, in a 2006 op-ed in the Washington Post, Moore warned of "catastrophic climate change." Somebody different was paying him then. It's warmed 0.6°C since then. 1/10th of an ice age.

Dirac on Oppenheimer's Poetry

Paul Dirac's comment on Robert Oppenheimer's interest in poetry:

"The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible."

P.A.M Dirac developed an equation that made quantum mechanics compatible with special relativity (at least for spin ½ particles like the electron).

While a superlative physicist, Dirac was a bit of an oddball; more stories here.

Dolphin Stampede

Here's a "dolphin stampede" off the coast of Dana Point in Southern California, posted two weeks ago on YouTube.

 
I don't know what it is about dolphins, but they seem to exude the very idea of freedom. Also here.

    

Rankings of 2024 Climate Variables

I had higher ambitions, but this started to become tedious. As always, click the image for a clearer view.

Is Global Warming Speeding Up?

From Nature magazine. (Might be paywalled, I get free access so I'm not sure what permissions are set for me.)

"Earth shattered heat records in 2023 and 2024, with temperatures rising further than expected on the basis of previous trends and modelling. A mysterious reduction in cloud cover, combined with an El Niño weather pattern, could be responsible for temperature increases in 2023. However, scientists expected temperatures would decrease again in June 2024 when the El Niño subsided, which didn’t happen. Now they are racing to work out whether this sudden spike is just a blip in the climate data, or an early indicator that the planet is heating up at a faster pace than they thought.

"...Some scientists argue that the spike can be mostly explained by two factors. One is the El Niño event that began in mid-2023 — a natural weather pattern in which warm water pools in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, often leading to hotter temperatures and more-turbulent weather. The other is a reduction over the past few years in air pollution, which can cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space and seeding low-lying clouds. Yet neither explanation fully accounts for the temperature surge, other researchers say.

"Clouds clearly played a part, according to a study published in Science in December, just before the AGU meeting1. A research team identified a reduction in low-lying cloud cover across parts of the Northern Hemisphere and the tropics that, combined with El Niño, was large enough to explain the temperature spike in 2023. But the cause of this decrease — and whether it can be chalked up to normal climate variations — remains a mystery, the authors say. Decreased air pollution alone doesn’t seem to explain it. They suggest that global warming itself could be causing some reduction in cloud coverage, creating a feedback loop that could accelerate the rate of climate change for decades to come.

"'I would be very careful about saying this is clear evidence [of acceleration], but there might be something going on,' says co-author Helge Goessling, a climate physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.

"Another reason is that last year was also much warmer than expected. Scientists projected that early 2024 would be hot owing to El Niño. But they also anticipated that temperatures would fall after the weather pattern subsided and conditions in the equatorial Pacific returned to normal last June.

"'That didn’t happen,' says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit organization in California that tracks global temperatures. Instead, global temperatures remained elevated, shattering more records and probably making last year the warmest on record by a sizeable margin. “All of us who made projections at the start of the year underestimated just how warm 2024 would be.'"There's more, including about a possible decrease in shipping aerosol emissions."

2025 will be interesting. But then all years are interesting now.

 

The Trump Dystopia Begins

Note added: Oh, yeah--Trump says he want to ban all construction of new wind turbines, because they're "ugly" and something about whales.

Temperatures vs ENSO Category

 Here's NOAA's 12-month average temperature as a function of the ENSO category of that season:

El Nino seasons keep getting hotter, La Nina seasons keep getting hotter, and neutral seasons keep getting hotter.

The trends for each category, since 1950-1951, are almost equal:

El Ninos:  +0.15°C/decade

La Ninas:  +0.17°C/decade

neutral:     +0.16°C/decade

Data sources:

NOAA monthly temperature anomalies
ONI (Oceanic Nino Index)

Messi's Florida Residence is in Danger from Land Subsidence

Land subsidence in Florida has been in the news lately, as a study from the University of Miami came out last month. From El Futbolero:

The southern coast of Florida, a paradise of sunny beaches and imposing skyscrapers, hides a secret that worries engineers and geologists: subsidence. This phenomenon, a slow but constant sinking of the land, is affecting numerous buildings along the coast, from Miami Beach to Sunny Isles Beach. A recent study by the University of Miami has revealed that at least 35 buildings are experiencing this gradual settling, raising questions about the long-term safety of these structures and, in particular about the well-being of their most famous residents.

"Drama": Lionel Messi's Florida residence may be in danger!

Among the celebrities who reside in these buildings is Lionel Messi, the star of Argentinian football, along with his family. The news that his home could be affected by subsidence has generated a wave of concern among his fans and the community in general. The idea that such a beloved figure could be living in a building with structural problems raises serious questions about the safety measures and construction control in the area.

I guess if worry about Messi's building gets the message across a little bit better, that's a good thing. 

The concern for the Messi family and the rest of the residents affected by subsidence should serve as a catalyst for action. It is crucial that concrete measures are taken to protect people and preserve the future of the Miami coast. The safety and well-being of everyone must be the top priority.

Here is Messi's residence in Florida; he bought it 2023 for $10.75 M. (Note: that's about when he started playing for a Florida team in the US Major Soccer League, where all global superstars are put out to pasture.)

 

PS: I have nothing against Messi. Just the excessive concern about someone who can surely get his house directly studied and retooled if he and his family need it.

Where Are The....

Seems Musk is mostly a narcissistic drug addict.

Maybe he thinks he's doing his part by impregnating any woman who will put up with him (put up with his billions).

Stuff I've Read or Heard (in some cases, both)

Last month was the lowest Arctic sea ice extent (among Decembers) in the record. [it's an Excel file]

For the year, Arctic SIE ranked at 7th lowest, according to the NOAA data. Antarctica SIE ranked as 2nd lowest, above only last year (but 5.5% above).

Two-thirds of the world’s food comes today from just nine plants: sugar cane, maize (corn), rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet, and cassava. (Atlas Obscura)

Finland has more saunas than cars. (Between the Benches, YouTube 8:50)

Never knew this: the Mediterranean Sea was dry when the Strait of Gibraltar closed off 6 million years ago due to tectonic activity. It stayed dry for about 500,000 years until the Strait opened back up again.

Today I heard on a podcast that the EU allows 300 additives to its foods, while the US allows 10,000.

On this same podcast the name Nicholas Scarfetta Scafetta came up, the well-known climate denier (by every means possible). It was about a paper he wrote, I don't know when, showing that, while the income distribution by percentile follows a power law (something like this), it's apparently not true at the lowest percentiles. I think. I haven't found the paper yet. But the economist who mentioned it seemed to think it was good and important work. (It may have been a physics-like paper using a model of people, somehow like Brownian motion or an Ising model, I'm still not sure, but want to look it up.

How cats say Happy New Year:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2241518019552267

"They haven't started, and we're almost done."