Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I stumbled across a paper called “Future of the human climate niche“, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The abstract says (emphasis mine):
Abstract
All species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception. Here, we demonstrate that for millennia, human populations have resided in the same narrow part of the climatic envelope available on the globe, characterized by a major mode around ∼11 °C to 15 °C mean annual temperature (MAT).Supporting the fundamental nature of this temperature niche, current production of crops and livestock is largely limited to the same conditions, and the same optimum has been found for agricultural and nonagricultural economic output of countries through analyses of year-to-year variation.
We show that in a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 y than it has moved since 6000 BP. Populations will not simply track the shifting climate, as adaptation in situ may address some of the challenges, and many other factors affect decisions to migrate.
Nevertheless, in the absence of migration, one third of the global population is projected to experience a MAT >29 °C currently found in only 0.8% of the Earth’s land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara. As the potentially most affected regions are among the poorest in the world, where adaptive capacity is low, enhancing human development in those areas should be a priority alongside climate mitigation.
Well, that seemed kinda reasonable. After all, a mean average temperature (MAT) between 11 °C to 15 °C (52°F to 59°F) sounds comfortable, and I imagined it would be a fairly wide zone. And people tend to go where it’s comfortable.
So I decided to graph out just how that plays out around the globe … here’s that result. Upper graphic shows the whole planet, lower graphic shows just the land.
Figure 1. The “human climate niche” lies between 11°C (blue line) and 15°C (red line). Berkeley Earth data
YIKES! When the Abstract said a “narrow part of the climatic envelope”, they weren’t kidding. A skinny strip across the US, a skinny strip along the Andes, a narrow band from Europe to China, a tiny part of Africa and Australia … wow.
Of course, my first question was whether the problem was with my data. So I repeated the experiment with the CERES data.
Figure 2. The “human climate niche” lies between 11°C (blue line) and 15°C (red line). CERES data.
Well, slight differences, but basically the same.
So I thought, well, maybe they’re using some special dataset. So I checked the Supplementary Information and found that they use a dataset called the “WorldClim” data. I downloaded that, spent far too long trying to figure out how to import a “GeoTiff” file into R, and took a look.
Figure 3. The “human climate niche” lies between 11°C (blue line) and 15°C (red line). WorldClim data.
Aaaand … they all agree, within the usual differences in climate datasets.
Next, I looked at where people live on this wonderful planet. Here’s that chart. I’ve overlaid the WorldClim 11°C (white) and 15°C (yellow) lines on the graphic.
Figure 4. Log base 10 of population density per square kilometer.
As you might have guessed, the biggest population centers are in India and eastern China. Other populated spots are Europe, tropical Africa, southeast Asia, eastern Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and the eastern US.
And the crazy part?
Not one of those centers of dense population lies within their “human climate niche” … some are too cold, some are too hot. India, packed with people, has an average annual temperature of 27°. Canada and Russia are hopeless. And cold foggy England? Fuggeddaboutit!
Not sure I can say much more about that study … have I made some curious error? I don’t think so.
Onwards, ever onwards,
w.
PS—My usual request: When you comment please quote the exact words you are discussing. It avoids endless misunderstandings. Thanks.
11 to 15C? Really?
A garbage assumption, as Willis shows. Then they use RCP8.5 for the usual doomsday conclusion.
The usual doomsday conclusion where ironically Europe and North America are more suitable places to live according to their 2070 suitability map. And a band across the Australian deserts becomes more suitable.
This paper is just awful.
As per the usual Willis Way…
Pause the article…
Locate the ample bovine effluent…
Fling it back in the author’s face!!!
That said peruse not pause
“Pause the article…”
You would be stopping every line to point out the bovine effluent !!
It is positively dripping from the whole paper.
The worst part of this, these basket waving/social sciences, Niche-Hoax-Folks likely get government money to come up with this nonsense.
I live being outside their niche areas, and so do all Norwegians, etc.
The happiest country is Finland, totally outside
Tell them to go hang themselves!
Annual average T of most of world’s largest cities is well above 15C. Tokyo’s is 15.2, but Mumbai’s is 27.7.
That range may have been applicable to our pre-fire ancestors. I have no idea why PNAS believes that it has any relevance since the Neolithic, unless it has something to do with advancing the alarmist narrative.
Perhaps it is based on their preferences for what remains of humans once they get their own way.
“That range may have been applicable to our pre-fire ancestors”
Seeing as humans probably came from central Africa.. NO. !!
Unless I’m mistaken, humans without fire and clothing would all die of exposure even 5° above the top of that absurd range. That so-called niche is certainly not applicable to pre-fire times.
Actually, it is only the places where clothing is strictly for modesty and protection against UV that humans can survive without technology. Just an unsustainable pure coincidence I am sure, that most of the world’s population is in warmer areas than this nonsense niche.
Although we will perhaps still have clothing, we are to be denied access to reliable energy. It’s almost as if they are trying to kill us?
Using the same data source for all ten of the largest metro area, Tokyo’s at 15.8 C.
The only one within the supposed T niche for humans is #8 Beijing, at 13.3 C average daily T.
Some species like it hot, and we’re one, as a mostly naked African tropical mammal which has spread globally.
Number Two conurbation Delhi averages 25.3 C, Dhaka 25.9 and Sao Paolo 20.4. Others except Beijing are in the 17s and 18s: Mexico DF, Shanghai, Cairo and Osaka.
Our ancestral homeland, to whose climate we;re adapted, is tropical East Africa. Nowadays in the current interglacial, the temperature range there probably isn’t too different than from that of glacial intervals during the past three million years. That’s an annual average T around 30 C in the lowlands and 20 C in the highlands, ie the real niche of H. sapiens. However we easily adapt to both warmer and colder environments.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but 52F to 59F is not comfortable. It is chilly.
That aside. Given the narrow bands of the “Temperature Niche” one could move a few KM N or S with each 0.1 C change.
Yes, “warmth, hot, muggy, cool, cold” etc etc are very subjective, individual and widely-varying perceptions.
Impossible to quantify into standard determinations, in my opinion.
My house is almost always 64-69°F / 17.7-20.5°C
“That aside. Given the narrow bands of the “Temperature Niche” one could move a few KM N or S with each 0.1 C change.”
Or one could take off the sweater and put on a thinner hoodie.
I’m in Canada, +5°C over the next 100 years is not a crisis – it’s barely a good start!
Subject article is full of sh!t from the first few paragraphs – MAT of 11 to 15°C!?
Somebody call Scandinavia and Brazil – this article says nobody lives there.
The 300 million in Indonesia don’t exist – just figments of the imagination walking around in shorts and flip-flops all year round living in paradise.
Funny, the species with the absolute best cooling system apparently can only live where it doesn’t need it!
The article is written to provide a rationale supporting
I hope you’ve mailed your critique to Proceedings.
Thanks for pointing this out, Willis. It is amazing they can publish such crap, and sad it is to be believed by many.
Peer reviewed!!!
Given that this is published in PNAS it’s probably pal-reviewed. The journal asks the authors who they want to review it and when their pals pass it with flying colors it gets published. Easy peasy.
But, but, but, it has to be one of the gadzillion climate catastrophe papers that are peer reviewed and included in everything as proof. 97%, remember (/sarc)
Good posting of another Reality Check on CAGW nonsense, Willis. The reality is that from Bushman of the Kalahari to Eskimos of the frozen north, the adaptation of human beings is remarkable. Add in heating and air conditioning and no problem.
Good grief! 15°C for the high? That isn’t even room temperature! And 11°C for the low? That’s nice walking weather, maybe a long sleeve shirt if you’re gonna be standing around. And a 4°C range is just bonkers.
I’d call them snowflakes, but they’d be melted and gone under such conditions. We should be so lucky.
Well, if we eliminate oil, there will not be much in the way of clothing to be worn.
Tahiti here I come!
11-15°C was the range of the believed livable MAT, mean annual temperature – so, to simplify imagine a winter averaging 0°C and summer averaging 25°C (say 20 at night and 30 day) – you would have an annual mean of 12-13°C.
Ridiculous paper from paragraph one.
No way this was properly peer reviewed.
So someone makes the data fit their assumptions once again. So what? People must be tired by now of being due for elimination especially after all the past prognostications coming and going without any change to their lifestyle.
Wasn’t it ∼11 °C to 15 °C?
-11 to 15 would give a mean of 2°
The article is talking about areas that have a bMean Annual Temperature of 11 to 15°C.
It’s almost as if they didn’t think about where most people live – or maybe they didn’t want a little trivial thing like the truth get in the way of spreading their propaganda.
It’s ~11, not -11.
I have always understood “~” to mean “approximately”
In engineering “~” means approximately (or estimated), but who can say what version of math those idiots are using. Maybe it was just a typo. (/sarc)
Holy smokes. Looks like more than half the population needs to relocate, stat!
Since WE has convincingly shown that the alarming climate niche paper is very wrong, I thought I would try to track down how and why.
The paper begins with “We mine the massive sets of demographic, land use, and climate info that have become available in recent years.” Fair enough. But so did WE, with a very different result.
They then go straight to results, the key climate niche chart being figure one. Color coded from low blue to high red. And sure enough red for people and animals is only in the proclaimed temperature and rainfall climate niche. Now, red and blue are not very quantitative.
So I skipped down to the methods section (which ordinarily would come before, not after, results) to figure out the data mining quantification.
In methods I learned again that they datamined, but now on a global high resolution grid, with details in the SI. Nothing about blue to red resolution.
So I go to the SI, where there is a long description of the data sources but not the mining, and not blue to red. The last SI sentence, however says all the data and scripts (for mining) are deposited in Dryad, with a link given.
So I go to Dryad. Sure enough, there are links to deposited data and scripts. There are six scripts. #5 and #6 are labeled human niche, respectively 34 and 12 kb. So I download those two, thinking I was finally getting somewhere.
They downloaded as very small unreadable image thumbnaills that would not open directly. I imported them into Pages, and got them to open. Sure enough, there is the code, with a lot of %comments. Just one problem. They don’t give you the computer language. I am very familiar with a number of currently used ones, and it was Greek to me. And still nothing recognizable on the blue to red quantification scheme either in code or comments, other than ;colormap(‘jet’);
Sciency, but not science as it should be done in PNAS. More like ‘climate science’.
That would be MATLAB, a rather ancient FORTRANish language based on matrix algebra. It is widely used in academia for science and engineering applications.
I was hoping it would be something fairly modern, like Python, which is used for both scripting (interpreter) and programming (compiler), and in which I am fluent. I am rather ancient myself, but never heard of Matlab until now.
MATLAB was originally written in FORTRAN, which is why their names were usually written in all caps. (Up to FORTRAN 77 only capital letters were included in the programming alphabet.)
There is a strong feeling these days that Python would make a lovely replacement for MATLAB.
https://www.johnsonmitchelld.com/opinion/2020/12/20/stop-teaching-matlab.html
Let me see. Colleges get it, probably almost for free, then EVERYONE pays through the nose FOREVER, OR, everyone gets it for free.
I just can’t make up my mind which choice I would make. I bet 97% of engineering educators agree with the status quo. I wonder what kind of junkets to Vegas the educators/administrators/managers get, paid for by the sellers of MATLAB???
Just looked at the sales site. You can get a personal “perpetual” copy for US $149.00. A student one is $99 perpetual, but about everyone else is annual, and much more.
They got the Microsoft/McAfee/most everyone scam going. I am suspicious of the perpetual thing.
I have read that you can import matlab files into Octave, which is open source and said to be 99% compatible.
And there seem to be online conversion services which will convert matlab to python:
https://www.codeconvert.ai/python-to-matlab-converter
Then there is SMOP
https://github.com/victorlei/smop
I have never done any of this myself!
re: “Figure 3. The “human climate niche” lies between 11°C (blue line) and 15°C (red line).”
vs. “…characterized by a major mode [centered] around ∼11 °C to 15 °C” [the underlined word has been added in brackets]
From the text & figures (especially Figs. S1 & S2), it is apparent that the “major mode” is a very broad one, its center lying somewhere in the range of 11 to 15 C. A separate minor mode (the Indian Subcontinent or ‘monsoon region’) is centered above 20 C MAT.
Very nice Willis. The CAGW crowd has nothing but scaremongering, they are itiful.
The largest country in the world – area wise – is Russia.
The largest country – population wise – is India.
The population density of India is 50 times that of Russia. Fifty times!!!
And they tell us cold is good and warmth is bad?
Thanks to Willis for another piece of climate-fiction sleuthing.
These doomsday articles appear so often that they are now just part of the random noise that surrounds us, and we don’t pay much attention to them. I suspect it’s not much different for the great majority of normal people. Tell them enough times that the sky is going to fall, and the sky never actually falls, folk will start to tune out.
Others take it all in and use the noise to feed their own distress about the coming climate apocalypse.
“a business-as-usual climate change scenario”
This is the one (RCP8.5) that has been shown to be ‘not’ probable and likely impossible.
Any study using it is wrong and close to defrauding of the funders.
Only “Climate Cult” members still believe this schist.
But you need it to conclude that up to 3 billion people will be climate niche refugees in 50 years. See how that works?
Greetings from without the niche!
My survival surprises even me. Trebles all round
But of course the people who wrote that paper use FF every day and have no intention of stopping, they are the elites, don’t you know…unless they want to portray themselves as peasants being trodden upon by the big greedy corporations. Whatever suits the situation.
Lies, damn lies and statistics 🙂
> major mode around ∼11 °C to 15 °C
Tells us absolutely nothing meaningful about the distribution of data,
What are the mean and median? By how much does that mode exceed the values in other temperature ranges. What percentage of the total population does that mode represent?
Did they just use 5°C buckets or sliding buckets?
Story tip – Floating Offshore Wind Projects Will Squander Hundreds of Billions of Dollars › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)
So I read the figure descriptions:
and thought, Yep!
My guess is they have a typo and meant 15to 25. I think this base on their prediction of:”Nevertheless, in the absence of migration, one third of the global population is projected to experience a MAT >29 °C currently found in only 0.8% of the Earth’s land surface”
Even their figure 2 part B is absolute nonsense.
“Mean temperature experienced by a human being in different periods.”
And they are indicating on their chart that current society experience a range of 18C +/-1 at a 5-95% range , which is absolute balderdash.
Also… their data doesn’t remotely indicate any 11-15 range.
How did absolute crap like this ever get published.. except in a “climate” journal. !! ???
Oh, and ignore the 2070 line in “A”…
…. their crystal balls have been castrated and are rolling about in the putrid climate trough/sewer.
It Is getting hard not to notice that no matter how many excellent postings we see from WE and other erudite writers that destroy the alarmist premise, the “system” keeps rolling on, making only the smallest of concessions (like during the coming UK elections) and continue to force15 Minute Cities, Canadian carbon taxes, outlawing ICE vehicles timetables, etc. etc. Are we not losing?
Personally, being a US citizen, I will know in November.
The Climate Change Scam has a lot of momentum, but I think it is starting to stumble, at least as results are concerned. The problems are pretty obvious, and look insurmountable, but the politicians will continue along this path for various reasons, to the detriment of the rest of us.
I see where the Biden administration is spending $1.5 billion to restart a nuclear reactor. That came out of left field! But it won’t keep the Democrats from going for a completely renewable grid by 2035, so the attack on our conventional grid will continue at least for the next ten months or so, then national policy may change.
Story tip
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4560203-biden-administration-announces-1-5-billion-loan-for-first-reopening-of-a-shuttered-nuclear-plant/
just waiting for BBC and Sky to repeat this story…whereupon I shall hit them with this WE rebuttal!
We yachties say that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing.
LionHeart ==> But eGads! there is NASTY weather!
We don’t know the global average temperatures in the past 5000 years but we do know people strongly preferred wsrmer centuries an hated colder centuries. The obvious conclusions:
Global warming is good news
Global cooling is bad news
It should be mentioned that most of the warming since 1975 was in the Northern half of the N.H., mainly in the six coldest months of the year, and mainly TMIN.
The warmer areas in red / orange on the charts were least affected by the warming since 1975.
Even though winters in Michigan are much milder now than in the 1970s, and there is far less snow now, people who retire and leave the state almost always move a long distance south of Michigan: to Florida, The Carolinas, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, etc.
Then they tell us it’s 110 degrees F. outside in the summer but that’s no big deal because it’s “dry heat”. Meanwhile, they stay in air conditioned environments
11 to 15c as optimal? wtf? at 15c bugger all of the garden grows, and its long pants socks and a jumper unless youre working. for a chilly winters day in aus.
“ The “human climate niche” lies between 11°C (blue line) and 15°C (red line). “
The paper isn’t saying everyone lives between 11 and 15°C. It’s saying there is a “niche” which has a major mode between those values. It also has a secondary warmer mode due to India. The spread of people. The actual distribution is over a wider range of temperatures, but has a peak density somewhere around between those values..
Here’s a graph from the supplementary material showing current population density by temperature.
Bellman ==> Yeah — see the earlier on the Human Niche idea: Chi Xu 2020
Chi Xu 2020 is the paper being discussed. You’ve linked to one about Disappearing Cities.
Bellman ==> Quite right. sorry…my mistake. Chi Xu is years old…2019.
The analysis in Chi Xu is far different than w.’s — not sure why.
“It’s saying there is a “niche… blah, blah…””
It is not a “niche” then…… It is basically the whole planet !!
Wrong. But if you disagree with the paper, take it up with the authors not me. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with it – just pointing out where Eschenbach has misunderstood it.
A naked person can die of exposure at 15 C. Fortunately Mother Nature made us very much more adept at finding sunny spots, warm rocks, huddling together and such, than cold blooded amphibians and reptiles, plus we societally inherit skills such as using fire and animal furs, and shelter construction.
w. ==> As of this moment, the WUWT sidebar includes: Real-time Global Temperature (updated every 1-2 minutes)
58.11°F / 14.51°C Deviation: 0.91°F / 0.51°C
So by some CliSci definition, the whole planet is suitable for humans — the human niche.
This Human Climate Niche idea is featured in this earlier paper “Future of the human climate niche” .
They have quite a different range of suitability in their figures and maps for the same temperature range. (Ignore their future projections, of course, RCP8.5 etc). You might take a look at it.
The paper’s Fig 3 “World Temperatures” is so different from Willis’s CERES data that they are like the proverbial description by blind men touching different parts of an elephant.
DMac ==> It is possible that w.’s approach was too numerically literal….don’t really know — but w.’s niche band appears far too narrow, especially compared to the original research on human niche.
Figure 3 is the projected warming for 2070.
Which is just manic NONSENSE. !
Sorry, WE ‘s graph is from BerkleyEarth data, NOT CERES.
“This Human Climate Niche idea is featured in this earlier paper”
That’s the same paper Willis Eschenbach is talking about.
Bellman ==. yes, again sorry — didn’t realize he was talking about this older paper itself.
The first thing I see is that it appears to assume no heating or cooling is available. In other words, back to naked and afraid existence. Good luck with that being an accepted result.
Secondly, one needs to know what real world temperature ranges give averages in this MAT range. 0 – 22, 0 – 30, -10 – 35, -10 – 32? These are important distinctions that aren’t really defined.
Jim ==> The work being discussed is derivative — stemming from a 2020 paper Chi Xu et al. Chi Xu gives a better perspective.
eGads! It is this older Chi Xu paper w. is on about.
The analysis in Chi Xu is very very different than w.’s.
Maybe the authors of this study were British, where a mean annual temperature of about 13 C represents about a 4 C average in winter and a 21 C average in summer, with plenty of rainfall to raise crops, with a relatively long growing season, despite the generally chilly temperatures.
But a 13 C mean annual temperature in a continental climate (far from the Gulf Stream or other moderating ocean currents) can have snowstorms in winter while reaching 30 C or higher in summer.
People tend to settle where there is a favorable climate for agriculture, which depends on length of growing season, rainfall, and nutrients in the soil for crops. Tropical and subtropical areas like India or southeastern China are heavily populated and have year-round growing seasons. In areas farther from the equator where plant growth stops in winter, in history people have tended to congregate near major rivers, so that food products which do not grow in those climates can be shipped in from more favorable climates, in exchange for crops which can be grown in summer in middle latitudes.
in history people have tended to congregate near major rivers
Yes. While humans can live successfully in many areas of planet, some areas aren’t conducive to large concentrations of people. The areas that are densely populated are usually on or near bodies of navigable water. There are exceptions, Mexico City, for instance. Climate is very much a less important factor.
obvious the study didn’t start with geographic population and THEN determine what temperatures exist there to come up with the human “niche” …
52 to 59 degree water is lethal for humans for any extended period of time submerged …
Comical.
Just another climate scare story except, as the charts remind us, humans are remarkably resilient in adapting to the supposed overheated zones on the planet. Otherwise we would have seen a large population shift from the tropical and subtropical zones to Alaska, Yukon, Nunavut, Labrador, northern Scandinavia, Siberia, Manchuria, the upper midwestern US and the Canadian Prairie provinces. So no one should lose sleep about an overheated planet which is just a propaganda effort by the eco-alarmists trying to convince people to buy into their theories of the necessity to adopt green technologies and more basic lifestyles.
The abstract you quote says -11°C not +11°C. That is a much more realistic band.
Who finances this garbage??