December 2023 was the warmest December on record for the Contiguous U.S. by a wide margin using Prism Climate Group data. It was 0.67°F (0.37°C) warmer than December 2021. 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/nhRL9j0O4G
— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) January 1, 2024
42 thoughts on “We just keep setting new climate records”
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Please don't feed the doom narrative.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/not-the-end-of-the-world-how-we-can-be-the-first-generation-to-build-a-sustainable-planet-hannah-ritchie/20055919
Unexpectedly, my most popular post last year
https://www.mattball.org/2023/02/greta-thunbergs-misery-is-result-of.html
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That it really quite misleading. The weather over the US could be matched by some colder weather elsewhere on the planet, and hence be just flucatuation.
Only the whole planet temperatue is really significant.
Yes, and the planet as a whole had the warmest year, the warmest month, and the warmest day ever recorded last year, including going over the 2C mark. So alas, it is typical and not misleading.
It is misleading, because it can be countered by a case of a very cold weather at some specific location, and that what the climate-deniers are doing all the time.
(small) part of the failure to convince the public about global warming is the failure to stick to the correct message, which allows deniers to counter.
So it's not misleading at all; it's correct both in particular and as a general indicator.
That it allows those who are willing to say truly misleading things to do so perhaps makes it less than a "perfect argument," but I would say that, given the deniers' intentions (to deny reality and do nothing) and their propensity to lie in service of those intentions, there is no such argument. They will deny and lie because that's what they do. And if someone does say, "well but it was cold in X" in good faith, one can then trot out the relevant global statistics.
"I would say that.."
You really just say. The fact is that the deniers keep saying "it is cold in x and hence no warming" (in bad faith), and it works for them , because it looks the same as saying "It is hot in X and hence warming". It is the logic of the argument (which is implied)which is wrong, and using wrong logic makes it easier to ther other side to use wrong logic.
And you do have to worry about the bad-faith arguments, not about the good-faith ones (there weren't any for decades).
So it's not OK to report the temperature deviation in one country? Especially the country that is most important to climate deniers? It's easy to find global maps too.
A more important objection is that these temps are compared only to the 1991-2020 average, and so doesn't capture the entire post-industrial history. That would be far more stunning.
"So it's not OK to report the temperature deviation in one country?"
Reporting on its own is ok. The problem is that it is usually implied that it shows global warming, and on its own it doesn't. It is a bad inference, and opens the door for bad inferences from the deniers.
This shows a total misunderstanding of bad faith arguments.
Literally noone is waiting for a door to be opened before making their bad faith argument.
Global or groupwide problems generally dont get much traction. If it isnt personal, few people care. Americans will have a stronger interest in how climate change is impacting America, their state, their county, etc...
"Literally noone is waiting for a door to be opened before making their bad faith argument. "
That is obviously correct, but "open the door" means here "make it possible to make the bad-faith arguments look convincing to neutrals".
Concentarting on US weather because it is more personal does make sense, but it is important not to present it as an argument on its own. It is essential to always pair with the global evidence.
I am reminded of a climate denier telling me that there was no global warming because they (Omaha area) got snow. I told them that normally it is too cold for snow, that a relative warm streak allowed snow to form.
Climate is composed of many elements over many locations. Data will show that planetary climate is warming. The planet will survive even though global warming might only support a different kind of life.
You always have to be careful with one data point. However, when temperature records are being set repeatedly in diverse parts of the world, a picture builds up. Record warm temperature for the whole US for a whole month is a substantial data point which cannot prove or disprove global warming by itself, but it's another datapoint in support.
North and South Poles are significant as well as the areas where we grow food.
Whooo-oo! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Ima go get in my 15mpg 8-cylinder Turbo Super Ram Max-T XL-350 and just drive around to celebrate!
Do we get applause for selling off our two dodge ram diesel pickups? Any love for my wife's Tesla. I was going to buy an electric pickup till I found out the range pulling a horse trailer.
What does a guy need with 2 big pickups? I have one myself that sits in the driveway until I actually need a pickup. Can't see the point in buying an additional one. re Tesla: They could take the battery mass in a Tesla and use it to make dozens of gas-electric hybrids and save way more fuel. This was Toyota's point for many years until market forces forced them to start making an all-electric vehicle. 90-something percent of the driving people do is under 50 miles per day so you could make (I'm guessing) at least 10 modestly sized electric vehicles with the battery mass in 1 Tesla.
"They could take the battery mass in a Tesla and use it to make dozens of gas-electric hybrids and save way more fuel."
Sure, sure. If the limiting factor on zero-emission driving was battery availability, then I guess you are right.
But then again, the point isn't to "save fuel." It's to get to a net zero carbon economy. Increased efficiency in relying on gasoline does not get you to a non-gasoline future.
Further, Toyota's point was never that ZOMG you could build more small batteries than one big battery; it was a stupid bet on hydrogen cars as the green tech of the future.
(Why stupid, you say? Because new products do not compete with old products on a one-to-one basis--they compete against the established system of products. Thus, even though an electric car is superior to a gas car in almost every way--they're quieter, have fewer moving parts, can be "fueled' at home, etc.--adoption has been slow, because planet Earth has ~$50 trillion in legacy infrastructure supporting ICE cars. The problem is even harder with hydrogen cars, because at least with EVs you already have a electricity grid; there is no hydrogen pipeline network, set of storage depos, etc. Not to mention, there isn't actually any hydrogen out there, just hydrogen bound up in lower-energy state compounds, like water).
" there isn't actually any hydrogen out there,"
There are some claims to the contrary.
https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel
No idea how seriously to take this.
Obviously it doesn't give you infrastructure.
Thank you for the anecdote.
"There are some claims to the contrary."
There is one (1) claim, to the contrary, and that claim seems more an anomaly than something to expect. I would feel more comfortable were we to understand what causes the "leak".
"There is one (1) claim, .."
The link I gave contains statements like:
"Hundreds of hydrogen seeps have now been documented around the world. "
That sounds to me more than one. It also gives several specific examples.
If you mean just one article, it is in Science, so I wouldn't dismiss it without discussing its contents.
Oh, a lot of us are looking forward to net zero CO2. I could Google around but you may well have seen this:
Roughly half of the carbon footprint for a new gas engine vehicle is the manufacture and half is the gas burned during the (hopefully, maybe) 15-20 year lifetime. The CO2 footprint for manufacturing a comparable EV is (I read) 70% higher because of the battery.
Since a new EV starts in a deeper hole it takes longer than people usually think to "break even," carbon wise. This is further parsed by the source of the local electricity.
I'm not trying to badmouth short-range (~50 miles) EVs because they are a fantastic way to deal with air quality problems in a congested area, and EVs that you plug in at home (or work) avoid the charging station infrastructure problem they are always going on about should you want to take a Tesla cross country.
Here is a piece by the surprisingly well credentialed Mr. Bean
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electric-vehicles-early-adopter-petrol-car-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson?fbclid=IwAR2kY6phSnk-cvNWeC-jOmV-U7-UtygF0YbbiQIwDuG0NbF3fX1hOo0NEgE
Here's a more recent article:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/23/do-electric-cars-really-produce-fewer-carbon-emissions-than-petrol-or-diesel-vehicles
It moderates the points Rowan Atkinson was making somewhat and shows both worse case and current best case for EV's.
IF the US kept raising fleet MPG's earlier, we could have gone all in with hybrids decade(s) ago and a slower transition to full EV's. Now we don't have time and car makers won't invest in new hybrids now with only a decade left in sales. There are new battery designs coming online soon--but may take a decade to ramp up production--and that will play a role in launching battery plants today.
Your link cites a claim by Volvo that lifetime emissions from one of their gasoline powered vehicles are apportioned as follows: 26% from the manufacturing, 72% from burning gasoline, and 2% from disposal at end of life. 72% strikes me as quite a bit more than "roughly half."
No snow for Christmas this year. And I was able to avoid my wingnut relatives.
So everything worked out! A Christmas miracle!
No snow in Chicago either. Waiting for the re-migration back to the Midwest, where we still have summers under 100°F and fresh water.
There was some during the Bears game. It was falling on daffodils that have popped up already (not getting ready to flower yet). This week will be in mid-30's--looks like it will be a little warmer the following week, then a little colder the week after that.
Kevin left of the freak states (Alaska and Hawaii). I imagine Alaska would look pretty dramatic compared to the Lesser 48.
Reading assignment: James Hansen, et al. 2023. "Global Warming In The Pipeline." Yes, some have questioned Hansen's break from strictly data driven climate predictions. This approach, however, has failed and continues to fail to account for Earth system sensitivity, and has underestimated, often dramatically, system response to carbon forcing. Hansen's 40 year record of predicting climate change speaks for itself; I highly doubt that all of a sudden he's wrong this time around.
It's doom and gloom whether anyone wants to accept it or not. We're in big, big, big trouble, period. It's not just AGW; it's all Earth systems, biotic and abiotic, ecosystems, biodiversity, all of it. There's no happy ending here. It's going to get bad, really bad, and not in some distant future either; we've stepped over the edge, and the only question now is what and who's going to survive the fall.
I’m going to ask a real question for Kevin’s sciencey commenters:
The map show Florida with little or no warming. But I have heard that the waters around Florida have been historically warm. Why wouldn’t that translate to more warmth in Florida?
The waters were hot in the summer. The map is for December.
So the water just cooled down really fast? Seems counterintuitive to me.
On the east side the water are replaced quite fast by the Florida current, so it is different water than what was there at the summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Current
There is less flow in the west, but it still would be enough to change the temperature.
Yes. The west Florida shallow continental shelf is wider than the whole state. That means it heats up and cools down easily as the seasons change. Florida is flat, including underwater on the west side.
Reading around suggests that meteorolgists believe that the local heat flow (from the sun and to/from the atmosphere) is what actualy determined the temperature rather than the water flow, and that the special heat in the summer was associated with high-pressure that reduce the wind.
Didn't find a proper discussion of it.
The Ohio river aligns perfectly with the divide between +5° and +3° and it's not just Kentucky, but also West Virginia. That is peculiar. Why? The Appalachian Mountains are many miles south and east, so I don't see how they could be a factor.
Very interesting....
Though it also falls along the typical dip in the jet stream over the US--cooler north of it, warmer south of it. It that shifts up, then places that were south of it warm a little, but those that were north of it but are not south of it warm a lot. That's my crude understanding--but apparently things will be shifting to a cold weather pattern for the US soon...
https://www.severe-weather.eu/long-range-2/strong-jet-stream-winter-pattern-arrives-in-2024-united-states-canada-fa/
The twenty-six-year plan to Absolute Zero 2050. https://ukfires.org/impact/publications/reports/absolute-zero/
Here is a summary of some of the ukfires' other ideas:https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/29/no-bricks-no-glass-no-cement-what-net-zero-2050-demands-according-to-government-funded-report/
Some of you may not have seen the latest carbon budget graph. It is an impossible task to reach net zero before we hit over +2C and the former Energy secretary Steven Chu said a few weeks ago that he thinks we'll be closer to +3C than +2C. But notice that the graphs show steep declines in order to achieve net zero. This is not how it actually works, though. You'd expect a Pareto-like curve where the last bits of emissions are the most difficult to eliminate.
It might be a moot argument between Hansen and Mann (on whether recent heating is a sign of a new trajectory of temperature increases or just an anomaly). The graph shows the world passing all the tipping points that matter.
Remember that net zero has to be just an interim goal. We need net negative if we're going to reverse climate change.
It's going to be a brave new world with no people in it! /s
OK but are these so-alled "records" adjusted for inflation?