Leon Simons
@leonsimons
Mission: To understand & protect the home planet. Innovator, climate research & communication, social entrepreneur. Board member Club of Rome NL
Modeling teams have their work cur out for them. Many thought the high end model runs were very unlikely to come true. See purple dotted line for the actual El Niño temps for the main 3.4 region, compared to the forecasts from April. The biggest harm will come from underestimating tail risks:
How manny will keep denying acceleration of global warming is real if this central estimate of global temperature above pre-industrial materializes in 2027?
Great summary of why "Europe is hot as f*ck" this summer, by comedian Ryan Kelly on Instagram.
"The Netherlands can't stop climate change. Let's just embrace living under water." 🤦
Extreme summer heatwaves in the Mediterranean are the "new normal" (and it keeps getting more abnormal) The 2 x ~80% desulphurization of regional shipping (in 2020 maximum sulphur fuel content from 3.5% to 0.5% and in 2025 from 0.5% to 0.1%) definitely contributes to this. bsky.app/profile/leon...
It's even worse: Models don't take into account the reduction of aerosols over western-central Europe and underestimate regional warming by ~0.5 °C!! And summer warming by ~1.0 °C! Exacerbated summer European warming not captured by climate models neglecting long-term aerosol changes 2/
Europe’s Summer of Reckoning Is ‘Just the Beginning’ “2026 is just the beginning,” Professor Rockström added. “It will inevitably get worse. It will get worse and worse and worse to the point where, I’m afraid, we’ll be passing the limits of adaptation.” @nytimes.com 1/
US embassies are quite subtle, aren’t they? Could barely tell which country this one represents.
How long CO₂ lasts in the atmosphere largely depends on how much humanity keeps emitting, how much the world warms and how strong carbon-cycle feedbacks are and will be. See IPCC AR6 WG1 feedbacks figure, Ts.17 3/ @ghostpanther.bsky.social
"The 460 billion tonnes of carbon that humans have dug up and burned since 1850 is greater than the estimated amount of carbon present in all of the currently living plants and animals" 🤯 (From the good old twitter days👇) 2/
This is such a great visualization of the carbon cycle and of how humanity has completely altered it within a geological instant. Visualization by @rarohde.bsky.social. 1/
I was reading how The ministry of the future was "One of Obama's favourite books of the year" the other day..
"2026 and 1997 are El Niño twins, both featuring 8°C ocean temperature anomalies beneath the surface of the Pacific. But they're not identical. This year's El Niño is warmer across a wider region, meaning there's more heat in the tank and its impacts won't exactly mirror 1997." Ben Noll
So a lot of this + a record Super El Niño. Hold on to your hats people. And hold your representatives accountable!
The models were wrong and people have been misinformed. Quite a strawman "Fact-check" by Carbon Brief again..
There is insufficient time to address points like this effectively because the paper is pushed through the review process every year. See:
Reviewers have pointed this out in the past. Your aerosol forcing has actually increased (become more negative) because of this..
You can hide it in the very fine print, but the truth is that the warming rate is mainly based on simple models (FaIR). That's not specified in the main paper or in communications (like your CB article today..) This is ridiculous. E.g. assuming biomass aerosols are anthropogenic (but CO₂ isn't):
These continuous strawmann arguments (after years of denial of accelerated warming and implying we, incl NASA and NOAA, were lying) only confuse media and the public. Which is extremely dangerous in a time of rapidly increasing climate and weather risks.
I would add: 5: How does your model compare to real world observations? Both global and regional models often underestimate crucial real world changes:
You're most probably referring to Partanen et al. 2013. Partanen wrote his PhD on this subject. acp.copernicus.org/articles/13/...
It looks like extreme summer heatwaves in the Mediterranean are the "new normal". 2 x ~80% desulphurization of shipping definitely (in 2020 maximum sulphur fuel content from 3.5% to 0.5% and in 2025 from 0.5% to 0.1%) contributes to this.
We haven't seen anything of what climate change will have in store for us the next 20 years! This Super El Niño is only just materializing and will be an indication of what the average year will more or less look like a decade from now. Based on the past years, I think denial will only increase.
James Lovelock is one of the greatest climate scientists that ever lived. We're about find out how on point his statements from over 18 years ago were.
Still love this accurate point in your book: "IMO has a far greater ability to play with the parameters of the climate than enjoyed by UNFCCC" (Somewhat paraphrased)
Uncertainty is rarely our friend, with relation to climate change. And in science 'conservative' means the opposite of what it means to risk mitigation professionals.