The Associated Press (AP) ran a story claiming that a “red alert” was issued by The United Nations (UN) weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which claimed that global temperature in 2023 set new records due to human caused climate change, and expectations that new record high temperatures would be set in 2024. The story is misleading at the very least. It is based on a false premise, because the UN didn’t reference historical nor current real-world data before issuing the report that the AP story touted.
On March 19th, the AP carried a story, titled UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change after record heat, ice-melt increases in 2023. The story begins with this:
The U.N. weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures, and melting of glaciers and sea ice, and is warning that the world’s efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate.
The World Meteorological Organization said there is a “high probability” that 2024 will be another record-hot year.
The AP’s story is based upon the “State of the Climate” report issued by the UN, which states:
The WMO report confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record, with the global average near-surface temperature at 1.45 °Celsius (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.12 °C) above the pre-industrial baseline. It was the warmest ten-year period on record.
“Sirens are blaring across all major indicators… Some records aren’t just chart-topping, they’re chart-busting. And changes are speeding-up.” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
…
The shift from La Niña to El Niño conditions in the middle of 2023 contributed to the rapid rise in temperature from 2022 to 2023.
That AP’s claim of a high probability of a record warm year is already headed towards low probability territory even as the statement was issued. Had the WMO acted like meteorologists rather than climate alarm advocates, they would have noticed an inconvenient fact that never made their report: the El Niño which “contributed to the rapid rise in temperature from 2022 to 2023,” is on the way to the cooler La Niña phase already. This is shown in the data informing the Figure 1 below from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
In Figure 1 above, the solid black line is an indicator of the measured sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the Pacific Ocean. Notice that the peak occurred during the period of November 2023 through December and January of 2024. That was when the El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean were at their warmest. However, since then ocean temperatures have started to significantly decline and the forecast temperatures through October and November of 2024 are about 4.2° below the peak temperature during the El Niño event.
Between the measured decline in SST temperature already and the forecast into 2024 this suggests that the claim of “high probability that 2024 will be another record-hot year,” is almost certain to prove false.
The UN is conflating yearly weather patterns with long term climate change. The WMO itself defines climate as measured trends over a 30 year period, being an average of weather over 30 years. A single year of warm temperatures means nothing in the long-term scheme of things for climate change. El Niño Is a pattern of weather in the Pacific Ocean that has been going on for millennia which changes from year to year. As described in Climate at a Glance: El Niño and Global Warming,
“El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern associated with warming of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which can significantly influence weather patterns, ocean conditions, and marine fisheries worldwide.”
In fact, records going as far back as 1876 show that many similarly sized El Niño events occurred, as seen in figure 2, below:
Given that we only have about 100 years of good temperature records for the globe and because the earth is billions of years old with naturally occurring events that we have no record of, it’s certainly likely that particularly warm years caused by El Nino conditions have gone unnoticed and unrecorded. Creating a “red alert” alarm over a single year of warm temperatures driven by El Niño, especially since indicators show the driver is now on the way down, is not only irrational, it’s an irresponsible red herring.
It certainly appears that 2024 will in fact be cooler than 2023. Given the WMO’s and the media’s past behavior, it’s highly unlikely that the AP will issue a retraction or even a story mentioning that the forecast made by the U.N. failed to materialize in late 2024.
This is just another shameful episode of the media regurgitating irresponsible climate alarm claims without bothering to check the facts.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Red Alert!!! There are commies under your bed!
My my, how much fear mongering has changed during my lifetime. I just shake my head.
There might not be commies under your bed, if you have good dogs, but there are certainly commies listening on your phone and internet communications. Although it may just be the fascists of big tech and big government.
People forget that Joe McCarthy did find commies in government way back when. A fact that keeps getting pushed under the rug.
Upon the fall of the USSR, they opened much of their KGB records and research showed that MUCH of “Hollywood” was into the communist movement and also that another of the “left’s” favorite causes, the Rosenburgs, were direct paid for Soviet spies.
It is amazing how this information never made it to the front page of the NYT, or on to ANY MSM news telecast, of to Newsweek, or Time, etc., NOT!
WMO is all in on global warming. No different than rest of UN.
Years ago, WMO said it would take a 10 year pause to falsify climate models. When the pause hit 9 years, WMO changed to 15. When the pause hit 14, WMO changed to 18. When the pause hit 17, WMO changed to 21. Notice the pattern of moved goalposts.
So AP promoting WMO red herrings is unsurprising. Good news, AP is in trouble. The two largest newspaper chains in the US just announced they would no longer pay for AP services because they can get the same information for free from the internet. You know, like the bogus WMO pronouncement the AP just echoed.
The scientific method includes a falsifiable hypothesis.
If you constantly move the goalposts, then the hypothesis can never be falsified.
If no conceivable data can ever falsify the hypothesis, then you are not doing science!
This ‘hiatus’ prompted the change from global warming to climate change. Difficult to attribute an unprecedented Brazilian snowfall to global warming- you might get sniggered at. But call it climate change and you can stroke your beard in wisdom
They output complete nonsense and censor anything remotely scientifically rational
World Propaganda is what they do
No chance for a red alert should go wasted. This chance was the morning of March 19, 2024.
AP reminds me of ‘The boy who cried wolf’. Each time you cry wolf and its false alarm your credibility decreases.
The problem is Peter has been crying wolf for 50 years but one day real soon, he’ll be correct.
The younger generations believe Peter is a Prophet and genuflect into their mochachocalattefrappe’s.
It’s all about the grift. Science, facts reason … are all irrelevant in the face of grifting money and power on the basis of bovine effluent. Too many people’s cash flow depends on pushing the lies.
Twu dat.
Are these reporters channeling Humpty Dumpty?
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
RIMMER: Step up to red alert!
KRYTEN: Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb.
I have zero confidence in international organizations and little to no confidence in national organizations. These people aren’t trustworthy and no one should blindly accept what they say or do.
They are all suffering from ignoble-cause corruption.
Because the globe is warming at 1.5degsC a century, every year should be the hottest. So what? There is not the slightest chance that the steady increase in global CO2 will be checked. So relax
Despite the acceptance by many that “climate” is changed by a couple of degrees increase in average temperature, I have a quote that fits: It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. [multiple attributions; creator remains anonymous]
Should my average temperature increase by two degrees, my climate would still be cold in winter, hot in summer, and quite dry. Arid Steppe cold (BSk) — prove me wrong. 🙂
The only thing I’m certain of is the rise in CO2 is reducing the average IQ of kids (or that may be indoctrination by the eco-mentalists)
The chart of the El Ninos and La Ninas over the past 150 years shows there wasn’t one in the 1930s yet this decade was, according to temperature instruments, much hotter than any time following. NASA and NOAA have conveniently “adjusted” the data to remove these high temperatures from their “record” but the question remains, what could have caused it to be so hot absent an El Nino or alternately giving NOAA and NASA their due, what could have caused thermometers in service in the 1930s to falsely read so high?
Computers don’t lie, but people using computers do.
UN Sec. Gen. in 2017 declared Code Red for the climate.
UN Sec. Gen. in 2024 declared again Code Red about a month after the head of the IPCC said alarmism was not needed and about a month after the IPCC report came out concluding there were not disaster coming in the foreseeable future.
Now, according to the UN were are at the precipice.
Where does the IPCC say “Climate red alert” or “Climate emergency”?
{Hint: It doesn’t}