Science Matters

As noted in previous posts, warming during the satellite era appears in stair steps starting in the ocean which covers 71% of the earth surface,  Oceans drive temperatures directly by providing the majority of gridded measurements, and also indirectly by evaporating more H20.  The chart above is from OISST which serves as the database for all SST reports.

I identified the changepoints beginning with 1982/01 to 1997/01 to 2013/01 to 2023/01 to the endpoint 2026/03.  The means for each period are as follows:

This compares with similar patterns in global land and ocean datasets.  For example HadCRUT4, going back to 1900.

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event.  The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4.  This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C.  Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C.  Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947. In 2023-2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.

Finally, there is also the UAH lower troposphere global land and ocean dataset since 1980 showing these steps:

The yellow line is a mean of -0.25C up to 1997/01.  Orange line is the overall mean of -0.02C and also the mean for 1997 to 2014. Purple line is mean of 0.20C for 2014 to 2023.  Green line is 0.54C for 2023 to 2025/06.

Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate.  On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 has been episodic, coming from brief events associated with oceanic cycles.