By P Gosselin on 1. June 2024
Better air temporarily warms the atmosphere
Image: NASA (pubic domain)
By Klimanachrichten
An interesting article in Spektrum about a development that we have already reported on here. Apparently there is a connection between cleaner fuels for ships and cloud formation, which means more sunshine and higher temperatures.
However, the reduced content of atmospheric sulphate aerosols has ensured that the cloud droplet density has decreased considerably. This in turn led to a darkening of the sea clouds, which reflected less solar radiation back into space. The team calculated the greatest reduction in aerosol concentration for the North Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea and the South China Sea – regions with the busiest shipping routes. According to the study, the new regulation represents a strong temporary shock to the planet’s net heat uptake. “The effect is consistent with the recently observed strong warming in 2023 and is likely to make the 2020s anomalously warm,” the researchers say. Accordingly, IMO2020 could give global warming a significant boost in the coming years. According to the modeling, a warming rate of 0.24 degrees could be expected for the decade – more than twice as much as the average since 1880.”
And because what should not be cannot be, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warns. What a surprise.
Independent researchers are critical of the study, however, as the observation period is too short. In addition, the increase in man-made greenhouse gases continues to play the decisive role in climate change. ‘Caution is required,’ Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) told dpa. If you look at an effect for such a short period of time, it is generally more prone to error than for longer periods of time.”
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“You cannot do just one thing” seems to be a rule.
When I suggested that cleaner bunker fuel contributed to last year’s jump in global average temperature, alarmists said, no way!
The bunker fuel change was in 2020.
2023 was mainly affected by an El Nino temporarily boosting the 1975 through 2023 long term rising temperature trend.
Less shipping during the pandemic delayed the effect.
The largest relationship between “clean fuels” is with the quantity used and the balance left in most people’s account at the end of the month.
The various clean air acts brought in across Europe and America are my prime suspect for the warming we’ve experienced – just a hunch
Personally, the last few years in Colorado have been on the cool side of normal. Heading to the ski slopes in about an hour.
I travel to California tomorrow, where the weather will be on the hot side of normal for a couple of days at least. It might be nice to jump into a pool.
There are smokestacks that are no longer used in old buildings that are all over where I live in Cleveland, Ohio.
At one time they were emitting lots of smoke that was blocking the sun’s rays from striking the Earth keeping it from warming as much as today.
Not that there is anything wrong with it warm, it is usually cool enough to need a jacket.
what should not be cannot be…
https://youtu.be/LiczyhDwuBs?si=4NPSDvj__pIIeTbr
It seems that effects of too many drugs in the 70’s and 80’s are working their way through the West.
I saw an article about researchers finding opium cultivation from 5000 years ago and wondered why they and other cultures could use it safely and the US couldn’t.
I did some digging and found some interesting results.
In the US opioid deaths didn’t start until 7 years AFTER the Harrison Act in 1914 banning it without a doctor’s prescription.
According to Mortality Statistics from the CDC deaths from opioids started in 1921 even though it had been used in the US for a long time..
It seems like the main purpose of the law was to protect the alcohol and tobacco industries from competition.
Opium and its derivatives give a similar feeling to alcohol but without the drunkness and hangover and it is more long-lasting than tobacco so it was making inroads in those markets.
The law restricted the supply of opioids and made it necessary to inject it to be able to afford it which has caused millions of deaths in the US over the years.
Just like alcohol, both stimulate the release of dopamine, some people don’t like it, some like it a little, and some like it a lot.
Interesting. There’s always a back story.
Opium consists of a mixture of alkaloids. Heroine is the acetylated derivative of morphine that was extracted from opium. Acetylation helps these compound pass the blood brain barrier kind of like acetylation of salicylic acid from plants becomes aspirin.
“If you look at an effect for such a short period of time, it is generally more prone to error than for longer periods of time.”
You mean like jumping to massive temporal conclusions with the pitiful thermometer record? Right got it!
There was a one time 30% reduction of SO2 emissions from 2019 to 2020 mainly from the shipping industry
That should have caused warming n the days in the Northern Hemisphere in 2020, where most SO2 emission are located.
That one year reduction was part of the 1980 to 2024 decline of SO2 emissions
Total manmade SO2 emissions were 26 million tons a year in 2019.
The decline of mainly ship related SO2 emissions in 2020 was 7 million tonnes from 2019 to 2020, or 7.7 million US tons
How could a 30% decline of SO2 emissions in 2020 explain the warming that happened after 2020?
SO2 emissions mainly affect TMAX warming in the day.
But since 1975 most warming has been TMIN, at dawn, which is a symptom of greenhouse warming.
SO2 emissions were rising from 1975 to 1980. That is supposed to cause global cooling. But there was actually global warming from 1975 to 1980. How does one explain that?
The 2020 change mainly resulted from the International Maritime Organization’s strict limits on marine fuels, introduced in 2020: the maximum percentage of sulfur allowed in these fuels fell from 3.5% to 0.5%. All ships worldwide had to comply. This drop is positive for tackling local air pollution and acid rain.
Manmade SO2 emissions per year
26 million tons
Lifetime in atmosphere
10 days
Manmade CO2 emissions per year
37 billion tons
Lifetime in atmosphere
300 years+
All of these facts are missing from ths incompetent article.
“But since 1975 most warming has been TMIN, at dawn, which is a symptom
of greenhouse warming.”an overactive evidence-free imagination.Most surface warming since the 1970s is from urbanisation.
Even urban expansion in so-called rural areas.
“Lifetime in atmosphere 300 years+”
More AGW cult mantra from RG, the AGW zealot.
Reality is that human emissions are only 4-5% of the total CO2 flux in the carbon cycle.
So since nature cannot tell the difference, 95-96% of human CO2 get taken back into that cycle.
Exactly what I was going to question. It doesn’t take plants 300 years to take in CO2, where is that number even coming from?
It’s a factual lie. What I call making a true statement and implying a lie.
The true statement is that it may take 300 or even more years to remove 100% of the excess CO2 that fossil fuel burning has added to the atmosphere. That is because the closer you get to equilibrium, the smaller the driving force toward equilibrium. It would approach equilibrium asymptotically if we stopped emitting. Better to ask how long it would take to remove 80%, not 100%.
(Also this hypothetical assumes everything else being equal. If natural factors turned toward cooling, CO2 might be absorbed faster or if natural factors led to greater warming it might take longer).
The implied lie is that the entire amount or the supposedly dangerous amount would take 300+ years to go away. The reality is that most of it would be absorbed by nature within a few decades.
With something like this, it’s best to look at the half-life. For ‘excess’ atmospheric CO2 that’s around 12 years. ‘excess’ relates to balance with the oceans (Henry’s Law and all that).
I believe on rereading that RG is making the point that the SO2 reduction just didn’t do much to overall “climate” and was more about air pollution in ports.
That’s not accurate bnice, and by now we must assume that you know it. Fossil fuel emissions represent 200% of the net increase in CO2. Nature is a net sink, which soaks up about half of our emissions, not 95 or 96% of them. Nature cannot be the potential source of the extra CO2 when it is a net sink.
There is a natural greenhouse effect and adding greenhouse gases must enhance it, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to significant warming, let alone to dangerous warming. The combination of other factors and the enhanced greenhouse effect have led to a wholly beneficial warming trend.
Deny the emergency, not the valid science! Denying valid science only undermines the effectiveness of realist arguments.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
The trend of sulfur in jet fuel has also been down for the past 2 or 3 decades as a consequence of increased hydrotreating in refineries to meet gasoline and diesel specs.
Tmin increase is the result of retained heat in streets and buildings in urban areas, no need of CO2.
Yes, that is true. And it’s also true that rising minimum temperatures would be consistent with the enhanced GHE.
Either way, there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
CO2 lifetime of 300+ years is not even an assumption of the IPCC, they talk about 50-200 years, and that’s certainely an exaggeration too.
CO2 only stays in the atmosphere for about 4 years on average before plants take it up.
‘Scrutinizing the carbon cycle and CO2 residence time in the atmosphere’https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921818116304787
Oops
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921818116304787
There are also the smog and other particulate matter reductions that have been taking place in countries for many decades. The smog reductions in China have caused the Pacific to warm 4C(7F) in some large areas of the Pacific by itself.
‘Pollution Paradox: How Cleaning Up Smog Drives Ocean Warming’
New research indicates that the decline in smog particles from China’s air cleanups caused the recent extreme heat waves in the Pacific.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/aerosols-warming-climate-change
It looks to me like a paper seeking to justify climate engineering. If slightly higher temperatures is the price to pay for cleaner air, then why not. It’s also better for agriculture. As for the Potsdam institute … no comment.
I fully understand the motivation to justify one’s grants by making some sort of We Are All Going To Die By Climate Change connection in pretty much all papers these days. People have mortgages and the industry is over saturated in credentialed lap top class wannabees who like air-conditioning over working an assembly line.
But what transformation I do find disturbing is the implied permission, if not duty to take half baked ideas and transform them into, by their own imagination, into globe altering geo hacking. Whether its Bill Gates, or some other kook in academia who want to alter the planet’s albedo or the jet stream, there is this idea that they have the Right to make decisions that they believe will alter the lives of billions of people.
It is profound arrogance and god complex dialed up to 11. You can almost hear them stomping around the kitchen or their office yelling about how everyone is so stupid as to not fully understand and fund their hare-brained schemes.
In the US, after the EPA required power plants to start scrubbing SO2 out of their emissions, farmers down wind had to start increasing the amount of sulfur they were adding to their fields.
Everyone expected something like this. We’re turning off a global uncontrolled cloud seeding experiment.
The same thing happened when US and European regulations reduced similar emissions from coal plants years ago because of acid rain. Chinese and Indian sulphur emissions reductions may have a similar impact if they ever occur.
Ollie Humlum’s site, climate4you, presents cloud cover data indicating that global cloudiness has decreased about 2% over the past few decades. This suggests your thesis may be correct. However, although coal combustion has decreased in the US and Europe, both China and India have greatly increased coal consumption. In addition there are about 1,000 active coal mine fires in China alone and more elsewhere. Has the amount of cloud seeding particles in our atmosphere really been reduced?
In the US, and most of the west, SO2 and other particulates were pretty much eliminated for power plant emissions starting in the mid to late 70’s. By the 2000’s, they were all but eliminated. The switch over from coal to natural gas over the last few decades has had very little impact on such emissions in the west.
Chinese coal plants have such pollution control equipment, but are notorious for only using them when the authorities are watching.
I can’t speak to the status of coal plant emissions in India.
Would you use a quarter of your power plants output to run the CSS and scrubbers if the inspector was not on site?
Which brings up the question of how much CO2 is being emitted by these fires? I recall seeing some impressively large numbers for the amount of CO2 generated by those fires.
“strong temporary shock to the planet’s net heat uptake.”
No climate science propaganda here; nope, none at all.
And things will get even more expensive as the IMO is pushing for Methanol as the fuel of choice for maritime applications. MeOH has 1/2 the energy content as gasoline and even less than bunker fuel. Plus, it has the advantage of burning without a visible flame and has a far lower flash point. This is the ideal fuel to use when your cargo of EV’s catches fire. You won’t pollute the atmosphere with all that smoke from bunker fuel burning. The MeOH will burn clean as a whistle while it melts your ship to the waterline. Keep in mind that saving the plant is the goal, not saving the ship.
Methanol as fuel heads for the mainstream in shipping (dnv.com)
Oh, I forgot to mention that IMO wants the Methanol to be produced by Wind/Solar “excess power”, whatever that is. So the cost of MeOH will be 3-5X that of hydrocarbon fuels. Remember the goal is not to have low cost and efficient shipping!
Missing from this statement is “Everything else remaining constant”
Since the earth and the solar system are moving through space constantly, each period of observation chosen is unique to that time period and can never be duplicated again.
That must mean that shorter periods of observation are less prone to error as there is less time for errors to collect due to any unknown phenominia that may occur as the earth travels along.
It’s hard to do science when there is no control group.
It’s even harder when you purposely ignore the rules.
SO2 has been dropping since the 1970s, ISCCP show global cloud cover reduced, and the MetOffice for example show sunlight at the surface increasing. And quite a lot too, with much more power than CO2.
Guess where the majority of post 60s warming is from? Yes, reduced SO2, reduced pollution.
Warming is good. Outside of the Tropics everybody has to find a way to keep warm most of the year, whether it is by living or working in heated buildings, using heated transportation, or wearing warm clothes.