Record hot year may be the new normal by 2025
No matter what we do, it is inevitable that the record hot year of 2015 will soon become an average year
From the UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (home of the Ship of Fools)
The hottest year on record globally in 2015 could be just another average year by 2025 if carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, according to new research published in the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society.
And no matter what action we take, human activities had already locked in a “new normal” for global average temperatures that would occur no later than 2040, according to lead author Dr Sophie Lewis, from the Australian National University (ANU) hub of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS).
However, while annual global average temperatures were locked in, it was still possible with immediate and strong action on carbon emissions to prevent record breaking seasons from becoming average – at least at regional levels.
“If we continue with business-as-usual emissions, extreme seasons will inevitably become the norm within decades and Australia will be the canary in the coal mine that will experience this change first,” said Dr Lewis.
“That means the record hot summer of 2013 in Australia – when we saw temperatures approaching 50°C in parts of Australia, bushfires striking the Blue Mountains in October, major impacts to our health and infrastructure and a summer that was so hot it became known as the “angry summer” – could be just another average summer season by 2035.
“But if we reduce emissions drastically to the lowest pathway recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (RCP2.8), then we will never enter a new normal state for extreme seasons at a regional level in the 21st Century .”
The idea of what the term “new normal” actually means was the cornerstone of this new research. It has often been used when talking about climate change but it had seldom been clearly defined. Dr Lewis and colleagues have now developed a scientific definition for the term.
“Based on a specific starting point, we determined a new normal occurred when at least half of the years following a record year were cooler and half warmer. Only then can a new normal state be declared,” she said.
After this process was used by the researchers to determine new normal conditions for global average temperatures, it was used again to examine record hot seasonal temperatures at a regional level.
Using the National Computational Infrastructure supercomputer at ANU to run climate models, the researchers explored when new normal states would appear under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change’s four emissions pathways.
The research team then examined seasonal temperatures from December to February across Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.
The results revealed that while global average temperatures would inevitably enter a new normal under all emissions scenarios, this wasn’t the case at seasonal and regional levels.
“It gives us hope to know that if we act quickly to reduce greenhouse gases, seasonal extremes might never enter a new normal state in the 21st Century at regional levels for the Southern Hemisphere summer and Northern Hemisphere winter,” Dr Lewis said.
“But if If we don’t act quickly Australia’s “angry summer” of 2013 may soon be regarded as mild. Imagine for a moment, if a summer season like 2013 became average. The likely impacts of an extremely hot year in 2035 would beyond anything our society has experienced.”
###
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
As I understand it, temperatures have barely fluctuated for two decades – which, by definition, would make 2015 an ‘average’ year – at least for the last twenty or so – separated, of course, by a couple hundredths of a degree.
This was true until Karl changed the way we average temperatures worldwide. With one swoop of a pen, the temperature increased.
I for one am certainly interested in warmer averages…
I for one have no interest in your average warmer.
‘This was true until Karl changed the way we average temperatures worldwide. With one swoop of a pen, the temperature increased.’
Yeah. He did that and then he quit, as I recall.
Your understanding is perfect, Joel. When they say “hottest year evah!”, think “margin of error of the measuring instrument”.
There is no effing average temperature!! Arrrgh!! It’s meaningless! Both sides of the “debate” do this crap and it’s infuriating.
That’s the trick they play with all this Jeff, the idea they can fabricate meaningless metrics, then present meaningful statistical moments based on them and get away with it.
Beyond that trickery, they pick an an increasing measure (such as temperature during a known 10,000+ year warming trend) and tie it to some other increasing measure, such as pork belly prices. The more creative and sarcastic choose a measure that decreases consistently as the supposed dependent measure increases, for instance the number of Caribbean pirates. No attempt is made to show the two are related causally, it just “makes sense” that CO2 drives temperature, we have simple (though unrepeatable by Bill Nye and former Vice President Gore) demonstrations of the “effect”, demonstrations so simple in fact they bear no relation at all to the natural world, which is unfortunately too complex for them to actually measure, so instead they “model” it.
I’m a statistician so it gives me no pleasure at all to announce they’re lying with statistics and badly designed experiments. It’s all a lie. To paraphrase you, “meaningless crap”.
I’ll also mention the trickery they’ve perpetrated with fundamental measures. It’s common to find well accepted “reconstructions” of Earth’s climate predating the invention of the thermometer by hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. Those reconstructions never seem to mention the error of estimate in these proxy measures of things like tree rings, ice cores and the radioactive isotope decay of fossilized plankton. But there are, very definite errors in those proxy measures, errors that consistently exceed the precision claimed by the results. It’s statistically impossible to use measures that aren’t precise to 0.1 degree to build models that are.
If you’d be interested in a more detailed critique of the house of cards we’ve come to call climate “science”, just click on my handle “Bartleby” at the top of this post.
Well if they’re right then they better get used to it because the world is not taking immediate or drastic action. At most we’ll have the token changes agreed to in Paris.
Modeturbation.
What is an interesting excercise is going through the “adjustments” used to justify the new “record temperature”. Tony Heller’s site usually gives a good history of the games out of Orwell, and the claims of the zealots is that much weaker due to reliance on cooked data.
“However, while annual global average temperatures were locked in, it was still possible with immediate and strong action on carbon emissions to prevent record breaking seasons from becoming average”
Is science talking or politics? Sounds like the latter.
Tony, plenty of action taking place
India and China alone plan to build 1617 new coal power plants by 2030. Indonesia intends building 47.
Between 50 and 86 new coal plants are planned for Turkey in the next few years.
Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.
New coal-fired plants have been proposed in Germany, France, Italy, Slovakia, and the UK,Cambodia, Laos, Oman, Sri Lanka, and Uzbekistan. Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Morocco, Namibia, Senegal.
Nothing Australia does will make one single tiny bit of difference.
EXCEPT – Australia.
Australia will not be building any new coal fired power stations.
BECAUSE – Australia is becoming dumber and dumber.
They should be replacing Hazelwood with new SOTA HELE coal.
They would achieve far greater CO2 reductions than by any other way.
The current stupidity will almost certainly lead to an INCREASE in GLOBAL CO2 emissions, as production transfers to India and China, with added shipping fuel usage.
Except Australia will be supplying the coal to, at least, India.
All this trumpeting because of El Nino producing above average SSTs. It is the last hurrah before the cooling.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/el-ninos-hottest-year/
Cooling is the next warming; http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/10/28/russian-scientist-the-new-little-ice-age-has-started/
We keep hearing about imminent cooling. David Archibald, Don Easterbrook…. on and on it goes. The list of people who, over the years, have predicted imminent cooling through articles published on this site is quite large. Yet global temperatures keep getting warmer. Even the satellites show it now.
““angry summer””
Can anyone spot this on the UAH temperature data for Australia ?
Fact is , that the usual westerly winds in summer from the centre of Australia to the east coast, were a bit intermittent that year. That meant there were parts of the inland that got quite warm… BUT it also meant that the cities on the east coast, where a large proportion of people live, did not get there normal allocation of hot days. Angry summer.. nope!
One day in January the westerlies came, and it did get warm on the coast, and they “adjusted” the Sydney Observatory Hill automatic weather station (AWS) temperature of 45.3ºC (same as in 1939, 74 years earlier) up to 45.8ºC.. But that was not real. The AWS summary next day said maximum of 45.3ºC, and despite emails to BOM, I never got an explanation where the extra 0.5ºC came from.
“…despite emails to BOM, I never got an explanation where the extra 0.5ºC came from.”
Probably from Cairns. BOM have been mixing southerly city’s temperatures with much warmer climes to create their warming trend. You can see where the famous hockey stick comes from in all the interventions they make in the temperature record.
I have no idea what it was like before, but why did you start in 1996?
” Last 20 Years” ?? D’oh !
Typical cherry picking in order to select a period with zero increase of temperature.
Starting with jan 1979 you obtain a linear trend of 0.154 ± 0.026 °C / decade, i.e. 0.3 °C higher than for the whole Globe.
“Typical cherry picking”
Try starting with 400k year ago. No global warming; in fact, the global temperature reveals it’s cyclical nature quite well.
Hivemind on November 7, 2016 at 9:50 pm
You know exactly what I mean, Hivemind: the satellite era, which as you know started by dec 1978 at UAH and jan 1979 at RSS.
If somebody hides the period between 1979 and 1996, then certainly with some clear intention.
Andy,
The number of hot days in Queensland regions are not exactly playing ball with the models either. I have been working on a post about “Exploring the Null Hypothesis for Hot Days in Queensland Regions”, which will set the scene for testing the null hypothesis over time using the number of hot days. As of the end of 2015 none of the 12 locations I have analysed fall outside two standard deviations of the average number of hot days using the classical 30 year climatology. If I get some spare time I hope to finish this before the end of the year so that 2016 can be added to the analysis when the results become official.
Enjoyed your post about the coal fired power stations. What a difference between the reality and the virtual world that some people seem to think we live in.
cheers, Basil
What’s really interesting is to look at the patterns within the Australian UAH data since the 1998 El Nino
Distinct downwards trends interrupted by steps back up.
(note, light blue lines are sketched, not calculated trend lines)
Sketching trend lines onto a graph instead of using linear regression to calculate the trend properly is a great idea. It means you can show whatever you want to show without relevance to the facts. I think it will catch on.
Great comment, DWR54.
You can’t spot anger, you have to feel it. Be the summer. Feel the anger. It’s a zen thing.
Feed the media beast.
How can it be the ‘hottest’ when it’s not even hot ???
Because alarmism. The seas boil.
It’s a Hollywood CGI thing.
More tumescent models.
Spending too much time with pre-pubescent models can get you in big trouble.
How can it be hottest when winter heating bills are the most expensive they”be ever been? Who stole our global warming?
You’ve got to understand the timing of these press releases. It is nearly summer down here and we are all looking forward to some nice weather. The first ‘heatwaves’ and the ‘fire season’ will be upon us soon.
This is like selling ice cream…or sunglasses, they put the scare stories out to coincide with Warm Weather…they are Warmists.
Charles is correct – we Aussies have already had the dark and dire warnings of cyclones, bushfires and heatwaves.
We have had those same dire warnings for several past years now.
They emanate from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Gotta love those “due by date” demands that climatists make on Earth’s climate.
Cultists and End of Earth doomsayers have done since like forever.
“Noble Casue Corruption” is Gollum clinging to his “Precious”.
Eugene WR Gallun
So we are to believe these folks know what the “old normal” was and that it was the best possible “normal”. Anyway, using averages, yes, sooner or later, we get a “new normal”. Now, had we started at the beginning of the MWP, then colder would have been the new normal. Statistics are a wonderful way to create whatever outcome you want. Choose the right statistic, the right data and voila! Instant proof.
That’s funny. I’ve lived in Australia for a lot of summers (over 60 actually) and I don’t recall any remarkable ones lately. Maybe I didn’t get the memo
If it gets too hot on the Big Island, just come to Tasmania. At the start of November, I am sitting inside with the heater on and a blanket over my knees. If Bob Brown had been telling the truth, I should be sitting in an absolute beachfront property in a tropical paradise by now. I want my Global Warming!
Even if the heat of 2016 becomes average by 2025 that will have no climate significance. The climate clowns are really, really crazy.
We certainly won’t be having El Nino transients every year !
That is all the 2016 warm is based on, an El Nino transient effect.
Gotta laugh….if they were serious those other 200 countries would have to “immediate and strong action on carbon emissions” also
Pardon this unrelated posting but I didn’t know where else to put it.
Deutsche Welle has, like most other MSM, been promoting the AGW tale. Have a look at this for Bill McKibben’s warnings, etc.:
http://www.dw.com/en/living-planet-the-politics-of-climate-change/av-36246598
Ian M
I have no doubt each year will be the hottest on record. That’s easy to do when those making the predictions also alter past data, making it cooler and cooler, to prove they’re right. It will continue to be the hottest year on record until ice sheets start advancing southward into North America, Europe, and Asia. Then, of course, we’ll be getting an ice age because global warming triggered it…because, of course, an ice would never, ever have happened without human intervention.
Sadly you are right Richard.
“I have no doubt each year will be the hottest on record. That’s easy to do when those making the predictions also alter past data, making it cooler and cooler, to prove they’re right.”
They can only make those “hottest year evah!” claims using the manipulated surface temperature charts. If they used the satellite temperature charts, they couldn’t have said “hottest year evah!” until Feb 2016, and not year after year like they did, pretending it was getting hotter and hotter with each successive year.
The drew the surface temperature chart to fit their “hottest year evah!” narrative. It’s the only item they can show someone to convince them of the CAGW narrative. Without the bastardized surface temperature chart the climate alarmists would have nothing to offer as “proof”. That’s a mighty costly chart they have there.
Here is a chart with three 60 month running mean plots for the satellite era (1979-2016):
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/161102/hj6ylc6d.jpg
– yellow: UAH6.0beta5, Australia region
– red: GHCN unadjusted data (mean of all australian GHCN stations)
– green: mean of all UAH6.0beta5 grid cells encompassing one or more australian GHCN stations.
So much about your endless claim concerning “manipulated surface temperature charts”.
1. Though GHCN of course is warmer than UAH (measuring temperatures at over 7 km altitude), there is a good fit between UAH and GHCN.
2. The concordance between the yellow and the green plot tells us that the GHCN station set in Australia is well representative of the whole country.
Sources
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0beta5.txt
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v3/
In http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/
tltmonamg.1979_6.0beta5 through tltmonamg.2016_6.0beta5
GLOBAL FREEZING: 15-year ICE AGE to hit in just 4 years as the sun prepares to ‘HIBERNATE’
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/729767/Ice-age-prediction-sun-hibernates-global-cooling-climate-change
ICE AGE! And more! From their first para:
“A team of experts have warned that huge seismic events, including volcanic eruptions, plunging global temperatures and destabilisation of the Earth’s crust will become more common after worrying changes to the surface of the Sun were recorded.”
Volcanos! Big earthquakes! And just one solar cycle! They are pretty cagey about who the “team of experts” are. That’s the Express for you.
“and destabilisation of the Earth’s crust ”
Sounds like the movie “2012”. We may need an ark.
The crust is in perpetual motion, it never stops. This motion, throughout the earth itself, is what keeps the mantle and core molten. Sometimes we notice, most times we don’t. And then we have the SMH in Australia who relies on climate experts like Flannery and Hannam, good one Stokes!
Anoneumouse on November 7, 2016 at 3:21 pm
The study looked at volcanic activity between 1650 – 2009 and earthquake activity between 1700 – 2009 comparing it to sunspots records.
It revealed a terrifying correlation between reduced solar activity and the largest seismic and volcanic events in recorded history.
That’s amazing! Here is a list of eruptions preceeding the LIA by far (VEI, volcano, date AD, VEI i.e. volcano explosivity index):
Peru Huaynaputina 1600, 6
Billy Mitchell 1580, 6
Bárðarbunga 1477, 6
Kuwae 1452, 6
Quilotoa 1280, 6
Rinjani 1257, 7
Should now suddenly all these guys’ eruption be put in relation to sunspots? Hmmmmh.
Yaaaaaawwwwnnnn.
When you are in charge of the temperature record, you are able to produce a politically required ‘hottest year ever’ on demand. Mother Nature is not involved and has to be hidden from public view.
Since “global average temperatures” have no real world meaning nobody should give a damn about whether that average goes up or down.
Global average temperatures do have one useful function, whenever a warmist starts rabbiting on about GW just ask them what the earths temperature is, and if by some miracle they know it, you ask them what should it be. Usually ends the discussion.