Climate Science | Science Matters

From Executive Summary

In this action, the EPA proposes to rescind all greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines under CAA section 202(a). Upon review of the underlying actions and intervening legal and scientific developments, including recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the scientific information summarized in this preamble, the EPA no longer believes that we have the statutory authority and record basis required to maintain this novel and transformative regulatory program. We seek comment on all aspects of this proposal, including on the legal and scientific developments that are being subject to public comment for the first time in this rulemaking.

The EPA now proposes to rescind the Endangerment Finding and all resulting GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles and engines, including the light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicle and engine standards for model years (MY) 2012 to 2027 and beyond. The remainder of this section describes the need for regulatory action and the scope of the proposed action, including rescission of the Endangerment Finding, repeal of related GHG emission standards, and minor conforming adjustments to unrelated emission standards for new motor vehicles and engines that we are not proposing to alter as part of this rulemaking.

Section II of this preamble sets out relevant background, including the events leading up to the Endangerment Finding, the approach taken in the Endangerment Finding to analyzing the scientific record, and the regulations issued since 2009 in reliance on the Endangerment Finding. We also summarize the premises, assumptions, and conclusions in the Endangerment Finding and the scientific information, including empirical data, peer-reviewed studies, and real-world developments since 2009 that led the Administrator to develop concerns sufficient to initiate reconsideration of the ongoing validity and reliability of the Endangerment Finding.

Section III of this preamble describes our legal authority to rescind the Endangerment Finding and repeal the resulting GHG standards issued under CAA section 202(a). Because this proposed action would not impact fuel economy standards and emission standards for criteria pollutants and hazardous air pollutants regulated under the CAA, we explain the relationship between these regulations to set the outer bounds of amendments at issue in this rulemaking.

Section IV.A of this preamble describes our proposal to rescind these prior actions because the Endangerment Finding exceeded our statutory authority under CAA section 202(a). As explained further below, we propose that the term “air pollution” as used in CAA section 202(a) is best read in context as referring to local or regional exposure to dangerous air pollution, consistent with our longstanding practice before 2009. We further propose that CAA section 202(a) does not grant the Administrator “procedural discretion” to issue standalone findings that trigger a duty to regulate, or, conversely, to prescribe standards, without making the requisite findings for the particular air pollutant emissions and class or classes of new motor vehicles or engines at issue. We also propose that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the Administrator to make separate findings for endangerment and causation or contribution. Rather, we propose that CAA section 202(a) requires the Administrator to find that the relevant air pollutant emissions from the class or classes of new motor vehicles or engines at issue cause, or contribute to, air pollution which endangers public health or welfare, without relying on emissions from stationary or other sources regulated by distinct CAA provisions. As the Supreme Court made clear in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024), we can no longer rely on statutory silence or ambiguity to expand our regulatory power. And because the Nation’s response to global climate change concerns is an issue of significant importance that Congress did not clearly address in CAA section 202(a), we propose that the major questions doctrine further reinforces and provides an additional basis for our proposed interpretations and actions.

The Agency did not have the benefit of the Court’s decisions in Loper Bright and West Virginia, among other applicable precedents, when issuing the Endangerment Finding in 2009. Finally, we explain that the EPA reached contrary conclusions in the Endangerment Finding by misconstruing the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), which vacated our denial of a petition for rulemaking on distinct grounds. Read on its own terms, Massachusetts did not require the Agency to find that GHGs are subject to regulation under CAA section 202(a) and does not support our implementation of the statute since 2009.

The Administrator’s review of the relevant information, including scientific literature, gave rise to serious concerns that our actions taken to regulate GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines exceed our statutory authority under CAA section 202(a) and are otherwise inappropriate. Continuing to impose billions of dollars in regulatory costs on American businesses and consumers without an adequate legal basis would threaten to undermine public confidence in our activities and commitment to fulfilling the Agency’s core mission: protecting human health and the environment. The EPA has expended significant resources implementing the GHG regulatory program for mobile sources and attempting to expand its GHG regulatory program to stationary sources with limited success in the courts and no apparent real-world results, often at the expense of programs that fall squarely within our statutory authority. Prompt action is needed to address these concerns with the benefit of public participation.

Relatedly, the Administrator has serious concerns that many of the scientific underpinnings of the Endangerment Finding are materially weaker than previously believed and contradicted by empirical data, peer-reviewed studies, and scientific developments since 2009. This proposal seeks public comment on these developments for the first time. Prompt action is needed to address these concerns, and the Administrator requests stakeholder input on the continuing vitality of the assumptions, predictions, and conclusions animating the Endangerment Finding.

No Right to a Stable Climate

Posted on July 29 by Ron Clutz

Judges in high courts are all claiming a “Human Right to a Stable Climate,” as though any court, parliament or government can make it happen. The latest proclamations come from the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ( IACtHR )

The 234-page IACtHR advisory opinion sets out the court’s perspective on the climate emergency and human rights, recognizing that states have legal obligations under international law to protect current and future generations from the impacts of climate change, to take “urgent and effective” action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, to adapt, to cooperate, and to guard against climate disinformation and greenwashing.

Question to perplexity.ai: Could courts’ emphasis on human activity overlook natural climate variability evidence?

Answer: (my bolds) Courts’ emphasis on human activity as the primary driver of recent climate change is based on the strong scientific consensus reflected in assessments by bodies like the IPCC, and courts have generally accepted these conclusions as beyond reasonable dispute when adjudicating climate law cases23. This approach often involves taking “judicial notice” of mainstream climate science, meaning courts regard anthropogenic climate change as an established fact, obviating the need to litigate scientific basics repeatedly23.

However, this legal methodology can, in practice, result in
underweighting evidence of natural climate variability:

The dominant legal standard centers on whether human-caused disruptions introduce new or heightened risks to rights, rather than parsing the specific historical roles of natural versus anthropogenic drivers6. Thus, courts sometimes set a lower bar for causal linkage, assuming risks to rights where types of harm are deemed foreseeable consequences of climate change, even if local variability or confounding natural factors exist65.
Defense arguments in litigation, such as those in Juliana v. United States, have challenged the ability of current science to disentangle anthropogenic from natural variability (especially for region-specific impacts), but such arguments are usually overruled or considered less compelling compared to the broader trend evidence53.
Some court rulings have acknowledged the complexity and multiple contributors to climate outcomes, yet uphold state obligations for mitigation and adaptation, reasoning that even where natural variability exists, the unprecedented pace and scope of human forcing is sufficient to establish state duties under rights frameworks6.

In summary, while courts do not categorically ignore natural climate variability, their emphasis on human activity is guided by prevailing scientific consensus and the precautionary principle. This can lead to less rigorous scrutiny of the full extent of natural variability’s contribution, particularly where the focus is on the foreseeability and scale of rights-endangering risks from ongoing anthropogenic change. Legal recognition of these risks typically does not require natural and human factors to be weighed equally—potentially overlooking specific nuances of natural variability in individual cases6 53.

Caveat: There are exceptions, and courts have dismissed some claims where causal links to human activity were too indirect or not supported by sufficient evidence, especially in jurisdictions with stricter standards for standing or causation6. However, the overarching trend is to defer to consensus science prioritizing human-driven change as the principal legal concern.

Question to perplexity.ai: Could ignoring natural variability lead to misjudging climate damage extent?

Answer: (My bolds)

Ignoring natural climate variability in assessing climate damage could indeed lead to misjudging the extent and nuances of that damage. Scientific and assessment literature on climate impacts and natural resource damage emphasizes that both natural variability and human-driven climate change influence climate-related hazards and ecosystem responses, and failing to account for natural variability can complicate accurate attribution and magnitude estimation of damage.

Key points synthesized from relevant sources include:

Baseline Challenge and Detection Difficulty: Climate change increases variability and the frequency of extreme events such as droughts, floods, and storms, but natural variability also influences these patterns. This complicates establishing a stable baseline for comparison. Ignoring natural fluctuations can lead to an under- or overestimate of true climate-related damages, as it is harder to detect how much harm is caused specifically by human activity versus natural cycles5.
Attribution Complexity: Natural variability introduces uncertainty when attributing specific events or damages to human-caused climate change. Explicitly considering natural variability in event attribution studies increases uncertainty ranges but still supports the conclusion that human activity raises the likelihood and severity of some events. Neglecting natural variability risks oversimplifying cause-effect relationships and could distort the assessment of climate risks and damages6.
Changing Reference Conditions: The selection of appropriate reference or baseline conditions for assessing injury to natural resources needs to factor in both long-term trends and natural fluctuations altered by climate change. Static references ignoring natural variability may mischaracterize damage extent or recovery needs5.
Implications for Risk and Damage Assessment: Failure to incorporate natural variability may lead to misjudging vulnerabilities, underestimating risk likelihoods, and misguided policy decisions. Accurate modeling and impact assessment require analysis frameworks that integrate historical variability alongside anthropogenic warming influences27.

In summary, rigorous climate damage and risk assessments seek to integrate natural variability to improve accuracy and avoid misjudging the scale or cause of damage. While natural variability is not a reason to dismiss anthropogenic climate impacts, acknowledging it refines understanding and strengthens attribution and legal or policy responses.

This nuanced view aligns with the legal and scientific approaches courts rely upon when considering climate damage claims: they defer to comprehensive scientific consensus but remain mindful of uncertainties introduced by natural climate variability.

My Comment:

Not seeing much of that nuance from judges blindly following IPCC nostrums. The right to a stable climate ignores the fact the modern era is full of both warm and cool periods, including many times without any possible human influence.

A coincidental positive correlation is considered evidence of human causality, ignoring periods of weak or negative correlation.

ICJ Issues Biased Advice on Climate Change

Posted on July 23 by Ron Clutz

Activists hoping the opinion from the ICJ’s judges will have far-reaching legal consequences in the fight against climate change Image: Peter Dejong/AP Photo/picture alliance

The media is rampant today with headlines like these:

World Court says countries are legally obligated to curb emissions, protect climate, UN News

World’s top court says major polluters may need to pay reparations for climate harm, CNN

UN’s top court says failing to protect planet from climate change could violate international law, CBC

Top UN court says countries can sue each other over climate change, BBC

Top U.N. Court Says Countries Must Act on Climate Change, New York Times

Etc., Etc., Etc.

I asked perplexity.ai: (bolds in answer supplied by perplexity)

Question: How did the ICJ address scientists disputing IPCC reports like Clintel in its climate advice?

Answer: The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its advisory proceedings on climate change, did not address or give consideration to scientists or groups—such as Clintel—who dispute the findings of the IPCC. Instead, the ICJ relied heavily and explicitly on the IPCC as the authoritative source on climate science throughout the process.

Key points from the available evidence:

The ICJ held a private meeting with IPCC scientists just before hearings began, reflecting the Court’s view of the IPCC as the “scientific pillar” of the climate change regime1.
This meeting was not part of the formal, public hearings and did not include scientists who dissent from the IPCC—states and organizations participating in the advisory proceedings had no opportunity to question or respond to IPCC scientists1.
The process was criticized for lacking transparency and procedural fairness precisely because it favored a single scientific perspective (the IPCC’s), with no indication that alternative scientific viewpoints were admitted or reviewed1.
The UN General Assembly’s request for the advisory opinion itself referenced the “utmost concern [for] the scientific consensus expressed” in the IPCC reports, reinforcing the Court’s mandate to treat the IPCC’s findings as the foundation for its analysis13.
Available commentaries and summaries of the ICJ process do not mention any engagement with scientists or organizations disputing IPCC conclusions, nor do they report that groups like Clintel were referenced or invited as experts13.
While the ICJ has, in rare past cases, consulted technical experts informally, in this climate case it only announced consultation with IPCC figures, reinforcing the exclusion of dissident scientific voices19.

In summary, the ICJ’s approach gave exclusive scientific authority to the IPCC and provided no forum, reference, or weight to scientists disputing its reports, such as those from Clintel13. The Court did not discuss or acknowledge the existence of such scientific disagreement in its process, instead treating the IPCC’s consensus as fact. This approach has been criticized for its lack of transparency and its failure to incorporate procedural safeguards for alternative scientific views19.

Followup Question: Why might the World Court have misunderstood the legal status of the Paris Accord?

Answer: The World Court might have appeared to misunderstand or at least oversimplify the legal status of the Paris Agreement because the Agreement’s nature is complex and somewhat ambiguous under international law, blending legally binding procedural obligations with politically framed, flexible commitments that lack sharp enforcement mechanisms.

Key reasons explaining why the Court could be seen as misunderstanding or glossing over these complexities include:

Legal Flexibility and Lack of Enforcement: The Paris Agreement is a treaty with binding procedural obligations but lacks strong accountability measures, sanctions, or punitive mechanisms for non-compliance1. Articles 13 and 15 establish monitoring and compliance mechanisms that are explicitly “non-intrusive” and “non-punitive,” reflecting the Agreement’s flexible, voluntary essence rather than strict legal constraints on outcome1. Courts may struggle to treat such a hybrid treaty as fully binding in the traditional sense.
Ambiguity over Obligation Types: The Paris Agreement distinguishes between “obligations of conduct” (procedural duties) versus “obligations of result” (achieving emission cuts). It requires parties to submit NDCs and report on implementation but does not legally bind States to achieve specific emission targets or outcomes34. This ambiguity can lead to varying interpretations of the Agreement’s binding force.
Differing State Practices and Interpretations: There remains disagreement among states and experts about whether the Paris Agreement creates firm legal obligations to prevent climate change or is largely aspirational with voluntary commitments6. Some states perceive it as political guidance rather than a hard treaty, influencing how international bodies perceive its weight.
Constraints of International Litigation and Court Jurisdiction: International courts like the ICJ have limited jurisdiction and cannot enforce treaty provisions on states unwilling to submit to their authority1. This constrains how formally the Court can treat the Agreement’s legal status, especially when major emitters are outside its compulsory jurisdiction16. The Court’s advisory role means it clarifies law based on existing commitments but cannot enforce or create new obligations.
Interaction with Customary International Law: Some legal scholarship suggests that customary international law—independent but related to treaty law—may impose broader climate duties on states, which complicates whether the Court grounds its decisions on the Paris Agreement alone or on evolving international legal norms1.

In sum, the World Court may have been perceived as misunderstanding the Paris Agreement’s legal status because the Agreement is simultaneously a legally binding treaty in form with procedural and transparency obligations, yet it remains politically flexible, non-punitive, and ambiguous regarding enforcement or specific outcome obligations. This hybrid nature poses challenges for courts in characterizing it strictly as a binding treaty imposing strong legal duties, thus potentially giving the appearance of oversimplification or misunderstanding in the Court’s advice.

Therefore, the Court’s approach likely reflects the difficulty of interpreting a treaty designed to maximize participation through flexibility rather than strong binding commitments, rather than a simple misunderstanding of the Paris Agreement’s status1 3 46.

My Summary

Despite the courtroom venue and judges participating in rendering an opinion, this was a political, not a legal process. A court of law seeks truth through an adversarial process whereby parties advocate for two or more viewpoints on the matter at hand, including facts and logic of the arguments. Here there was no hearing and weighing of differing evidence and perspectives, just a preconceived partisan political declaration.

SH and Tropics Lead UAH Cooling June 2025

Posted on July 21 by Ron Clutz

The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean. Each month and year exposes again the growing disconnect between the real world and the Zero Carbon zealots. It is as though the anti-hydrocarbon band wagon hopes to drown out the data contradicting their justification for the Great Energy Transition. Yes, there was warming from an El Nino buildup coincidental with North Atlantic warming, but no basis to blame it on CO2.

As an overview consider how recent rapid cooling completely overcame the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016). The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November 2021, and in February and June 2022 At year end 2022 and continuing into 2023 global temp anomaly matched or went lower than average since 1995, an ENSO neutral year. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020). Then there was an usual El Nino warming spike of uncertain cause, unrelated to steadily rising CO2 and now dropping steadily.

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa. While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~60 ppm, a 15% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

gmt-warming-events

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.

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 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 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 below its peak.

Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT

June 2025 SH and Tropics Lead UAH Temps Lower

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea. While you heard a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast the cooling set in. The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino had fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions. After a warming blip in 2022, land and ocean temps dropped again with 2023 starting below the mean since 1995. Spring and Summer 2023 saw a series of warmings, continuing into 2024 peaking in April, then cooling off to the present.

UAH has updated their TLT (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for June 2025. Due to one satellite drifting more than can be corrected, the dataset has been recalibrated and retitled as version 6.1 Graphs here contain this updated 6.1 data. Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month are behind the update from HadSST4. I posted recently on SSTs June 2025 Ocean SSTs: NH Warms, SH Cools.These posts have a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes. In July 2024 all oceans were unchanged except for Tropical warming, while all land regions rose slightly. In August we saw a warming leap in SH land, slight Land cooling elsewhere, a dip in Tropical Ocean temp and slightly elsewhere. September showed a dramatic drop in SH land, overcome by a greater NH land increase. 2025 has shown a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February. Then land air temps, especially NH, dropped in February and recovered in March. Now in June SH land dropped markedly and NH land down slightly, while ocean air temps rose slightly in NH, offset by cooling in SH and Tropics.

Note: UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021. v6.1 data was recalibrated also starting with 2021. In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same but the anomaly values changed with the baseline reference shift.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system. Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy. Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements. In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates. Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST. Thus cooling oceans portend cooling land air temperatures to follow. He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months. This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

After a change in priorities, updates are now exclusive to HadSST4. For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6.1 which are now posted for June 2025. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the revised and current dataset.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI). The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean air temps since January 2015.

In 2021-22, SH and NH showed spikes up and down while the Tropics cooled dramatically, with some ups and downs, but hitting a new low in January 2023. At that point all regions were more or less in negative territory.

After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, there was a remarkable spiking of Tropical ocean temps from -0.5C up to + 1.2C in January 2024. The rise was matched by other regions in 2024, such that the Global anomaly peaked at 0.86C in April. Since then all regions have cooled down sharply to a low of 0.27C in January. In February 2025, SH rose from 0.1C to 0.4C pulling the Global ocean air anomaly up to 0.47C, where it stayed in March and April. In May drops in NH and Tropics pulled the air temps over oceans down despite an uptick in SH. At 0.43C, ocean air temps were similar to May 2020, albeit with higher SH anomalies. Now in June Global ocean air anomaly is little changed despite a slight rise in NH.

Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly. The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground. UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps. The graph updated for June is below.

Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land. The seesaw pattern in Land temps is similar to ocean temps 2021-22, except that SH is the outlier, hitting bottom in January 2023. Then exceptionally SH goes from -0.6C up to 1.4C in September 2023 and 1.8C in August 2024, with a large drop in between. In November, SH and the Tropics pulled the Global Land anomaly further down despite a bump in NH land temps. February showed a sharp drop in NH land air temps from 1.07C down to 0.56C, pulling the Global land anomaly downward from 0.9C to 0.6C. In March that drop reversed with both NH and Global land back to January values, holding there in April. In May sharp drops in NH and Tropics land air temps pulled the Global land air temps back down close to February value. In June the Global land air drop was significant, down from 0.67C to 0.55C despite a small rise in the Tropics.

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

The chart shows monthly Global Land and Ocean anomalies starting 01/1980 to present. The average monthly anomaly is -0.03, for this period of more than four decades. The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20. An upward bump in 2021 was reversed with temps having returned close to the mean as of 2/2022. March and April brought warmer Global temps, later reversed

With the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January 2023 temps, there was no increase over 1980. Then in 2023 the buildup to the October/November peak exceeded the sharp April peak of the El Nino 1998 event. It also surpassed the February peak in 2016. In 2024 March and April took the Global anomaly to a new peak of 0.94C. The cool down started with May dropping to 0.9C, and in June a further decline to 0.8C. October went down to 0.7C, November and December dropped to 0.6C. February went down to 0.5C, then back up to 0.6C in March and April driven by the bounce in NH land air temps, followed by May’s return to 0.5C, and June slightly lower at 0.48C.

The graph reminds of another chart showing the abrupt ejection of humid air from Hunga Tonga eruption.

Note on Ocean Cooling Not Yet Fully Appearing in UAH Dataset

The above chart shows sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) in the North Atlantic 0 to 60N. The index is derived from ERSSTv.5 by subtracting the global anomalies from the North Atlantic anomalies, the differences as shown in the chart. The baseline of 0.0C is the average for the years 1951 to 1980. The mean anomaly since 1980 is in purple at 0.33C, and persisted throughout up to 2018. The orange line is the average anomaly in the the last six years, 2019 to 04/2025 inclusive, at 0.84C. The remarkable spikes in 2023 and 2024 drove that rise to exceed 1.4C, which has been cut in half over the last 10 months. As Dr. Humlum observed, such oceanic changes usually portend air temperature changes later on.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps. Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak. Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force. TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST4, but are now showing the same pattern. Despite the three El Ninos, their warming had not persisted prior to 2023, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995. Of course, the future has not yet been written.

Climate Model Assumptions Contrary to Balloon Data

Posted on July 21 by Ron Clutz

Recently Michael Connolly presented the evidence contradicting assumptions built into GCMs (Global Climate Models). This post consists of the exhibits he used, and additional Connolly comments in italics from a similar talk this month to Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. (Video embedded later in post.)

Michael Connolly:

I’m an engineer and a scientist. As an engineer, I use computer models to design and make things. As a scientist, I look at the data to see if my computer models are correct. So, what we did at the center for environmental research and earth sciences (CERES) is that we looked at the data from 20 million radio balloons.

We then asked, can we look at this data and see how we can use it to check the computer models? And we found there’s two types of balloons. One: the average weather balloon does about a 100 measurements as it goes up to the stratosphere. But the ones which measure ozone do a measurement about once every second. So you have maybe four or 5,000 measurements on each sample. But all of the climate models, and by the way, nobody in the climate model community bothered to check the data to see if their models were correct, which I find very bizarre. But what all of the model community do is they divide the earth into a number of little boxes. So on a horizontal scale the boxes are about 1,000 mi long and on a vertical scale they’re about less than a mile in height.

They then make a number of assumptions about how the air behaves within each of these boxes. So their first assumption is that the air in each box is in a state which we call thermodynamic equilibrium. which I’ll explain in a few minutes. So they assume that on a horizontal scale the air in a box is in equilibrium over a distance of a 1,000 miles. But on a vertical scale only in equilibrium for slightly less than a mile.

And they also assume that the different boxes are not in thermodynamic equilibrium with each other. Because if it turns out that the boxes are in thermodynamic equilibrium with each other, all of the assumptions of the climate models collapse because Einstein and his co-authors over a 100 years ago showed that if a system was in thermodynamic equilibrium, if you put in a greenhouse gas into that system, it would absorb more energy. But if it’s in thermodynamic equilibrium, it emits more energy. So increasing the level of greenhouse gases will increase the rate of absorption but also increase the rate of emission. So there’s no net change due to the radiation. So if it turns out that the assumption that the the different boxes aren’t in thermodynamic equilibrium is false, then the whole theory of man-made global warming collapses.

So how do we know if something is in thermodynamic equilibrium or not? Well, what you do is you take a system and you do all the measurements of the different parameters involved and if you can describe the system in what’s called an equation of state with using these parameters, then we say the state is in thermodynamic equilibrium. So in other words, obeying an equation of state is one side of the coin of being in thermodynamic equilibrium. They’re both different sides of the same coin.

So for the air, the equation of state is this. It’s called the ideal gas law. And this is the equation that’s used by the climate modelers in treating the different boxes as being in thermodynamic equilibrium. You can see down there it tells you the relationship between the different parameters, but it doesn’t tell you how much energy it would take to change the temperature of a system. For that you need to know the heat capacity of the system. And it doesn’t tell you anything about potential energy. In other words, if I take a cubic meter of air and lift it up and keep it at the same temperature and pressure, it would obey the same equation, but it would have gravitational potential energy because it takes energy to lift it up. That’s not reflected in the equation of state.

As a chemist I thought there was something dead obvious to do. The equation of state can be rewritten in a different form called the molar density form, and this form has been used by chemists for hundreds of years to determine the molecular weight of new gases. So we asked what happens if we describe the atmosphere in terms of molar density form instead of the energy form? We were the first and still the only people to have done this.

When we did that we got a big surprise. We found that if you plot the molar density versus pressure you get these two straight lines. Now this means that the atmosphere in the troposphere, that’s the lower bit, is obeying an equation of state. So that means it’s in thermodynamic equilibrium. And when you get to the tropopause it turns into another straight line. Now this is quite common in studying materials. If you can describe it in terms of one equation of state and then it changes into another equation of state, we call it a change of phase. For example, you can describe water using the gaseous water using the gas laws, but then when it turns into liquid water, you have to use a different equation of state.

Now we studied all the different weather balloons from all around the world and we found that this phenomenon occurred in all of them. The only difference was that in the tropics the change of phase occurred at a higher altitude and in the Arctic and polar regions it occurred at a lower altitude. So, when we were here in Tucson 5 years ago, we made a video for the entire year of all of the radio balloon data for Tucson for 2018. And the reason for this video is that looking at a static graph like that, you don’t see any changes. Now, in the models that they’re using, the different boxes are isolated from each other, if you put energy into one of the boxes, it would kind of stay there. But if they’re in thermodynamic equilibrium, you put energy into one box, then all of the boxes will change because all of the energy will be distributed throughout the system. When you look at the video, the behavior of the boundary layer position moves up and down.

But also the temperature: if it moves to the right, the temperature is increasing. If it moves to the left, the temperature is decreasing. And what you will see once you watch the video, it’s all synchronized. In other words, if a change occurs, if the troposphere is warming up and the temperature is moving to the right, the tropopause moves down, the tropopause moves in the opposite direction. So in other words, when the troposphere heats up, the tropopause cools down. when the troposphere cools down the tropopause heats up and it does so in a synchronized way. So that synchronization shows that it’s thermodynamically connect connected. The idea that all of these boxes are not in thermodynamic equilibrium is contradicted by this data. [The referenced video starts at 10 minutes into the embedded presentation below.]

So that’s the first assumption. Now looking at the second assumption.
Back in the day, 18th century or something, Hadley was looking to explain the trade winds. So he came up with this idea of what happens: The very hot temperatures landing on the equator heated up the atmosphere. here and this hot air then rose up. Then as it rose up it started to move towards the poles and as it moved towards the poles it cooled down and you got this circular phenomenon. They came up with three different types of circular cells: the Hadley cells; the Ferrel cells and the Polar cells. But all of these this theoretical stuff was based on ground measurements.

And again uh nobody bothered to check whether this is true or not. So I’ll just show how we checked it. But first of all I just want to explain what’s meant by mass flux. So if you take a square meter and you measure the air flowing through it and what weight of air that is the mass flux. So in the weather balloons they give you the speed of the air and they give you the direction in which it’s it’s going. So you can use this to calculate the mass flux. So we said fine. So can we use this to check the idea of the Hadley cells and it turns out that you can. So we did and we published a paper two years ago.

We found first of all if you take a balloon and you launch it up through one of these cells then if Hadley is correct you would expect the hot air was rising here in the tropics and that drags in the air from the colder regions and then it hits the tropopause. Now, when Hadley came up with the idea, nobody knew the tropopause existed, and it’s only 30 years before I was born that it was actually discovered. So, that’s telling something about my age.

Anyway, if you send a balloon up through the atmosphere, you would expect the mass flux flow to flow in that direction down at the lower levels. And then as you go up at some stage it would shift over and start going in the opposite directions. So since that was available that mass flux we could measure from the balloon data we did that and we got a surprise.

There was absolutely no circulation patterns at all. Instead what the atmosphere was doing. So if we point here you can see these ones are the lower ones. So you have the direction the north south direction of the mass flux. These are the ones at the lower half of the troposphere. These are the ones in the opposite half of the troposphere.

For a Hadley cell you would expect these ones to be flowing in the opposite direction to these ones. But instead what we find is they all flow in the same direction. And in a very unusual pattern. What happens is here it’s flowing south then the atmosphere slows down over a couple of days goes back and forth and so on. So instead of this circular pattern what’s happening is the whole atmosphere is moving like a giant pendulum back and forth. So we have the atmosphere going one way, then after a few days it turns around and comes back in the opposite direction. And this is for Iceland but we found the exact same thing occurred for all the different stations.

So in that published paper we we took a station from each of the different five climate types and we found the exact same sort of thing happened. Now people said: okay so maybe it’s going back and forward on a daily basis but over a period of a year it might average out. So we average the data over the five years for each of the stations.

And since we published that paper, we’ve analyzed over 250 of the weather stations in the tropics. And we found for these 82% of them are Hadley. 73 in the northern hemisphere. So the majority are not Hadley cells. And in the southern hemisphere they’re equally balanced. But the problem with even the ones that were Hadley cells is you can see here the mass flux grow flowing in this direction the area under the curve is not the same as the one up above. And if it was a proper Hadley cell, they’d have to be the same. So what we found is for none of them this worked out. So they don’t exist, right?

June 2025 Ocean SSTs: NH Warms, SH Cools

Posted on July 17 by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3. The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies than v.3. This analysis concerns more recent time periods and depends on very similar differentials as those from v.3 despite higher absolute anomaly values in v.4. More on what distinguishes HadSST3 and 4 from other SST products at the end. The user guide for the current version HadSST4.1.1.0 is here. The charts and analysis below is produced from the current data.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through June 2025. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016, followed by rising temperatures in 2023 and 2024 and cooling in 2025.

Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes. That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period. A small warming was driven by NH summer peaks in 2021-22, but offset by cooling in SH and the tropics, By January 2023 the global anomaly was again below the mean.

Then in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C last year, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak. Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. After 12 months of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by NH cooling the last 8 months from its 1.3C peak in August, down to 0.8C in March and April. Remarkably, April 2025 SST anomalies in all regions and globally are the coolest since March 2023. May showed little change in the Global anomaly, while in June declines in SH along with the Tropics mostly offset an upward bump in NH.

Comment:

The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof their Zero Carbon agenda is needed, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures. It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around. Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:

El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years. Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on. Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds. As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century It iswell understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world. We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example. So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.

It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well. One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations. Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015. This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since. The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies. Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July. 1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.

The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.

SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8, a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12. Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

Now a different pattern appears. The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off. But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average. In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16. NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.) Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021. In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.

Then in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year. Despite El Nino driving the Tropics January 2024 anomaly higher than 1998 and 2016 peaks, following months cooled in all regions, and the Tropics continued cooling in April, May and June along with SH dropping. After July and August NH warming again pulled the global anomaly higher, September through January 2025 resumed cooling in all regions, continuing February through April 2025, with little change in May and June despite upward bumps in NH.

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH. The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before. After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has current data. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “ERSST5 AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent SST anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed. As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its variability, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin. Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Then in 2023 the peak was holding at 1.4C before declining. An annual chart below is informative:

Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years. 2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September. 1998 and 2007 were mildly warm. 2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average. 2023 started out slightly warm, then rose steadily to an extraordinary peak in July. August to October were only slightly lower, but by December cooled by ~0.4C.

Then in 2024 the AMO anomaly started higher than any previous year, then leveled off for two months declining slightly into April. Remarkably, May showed an upward leap putting this on a higher track than 2023, and rising slightly higher in June. In July, August and September 2024 the anomaly declined, and despite a small rise in October, ended close to where it began. Note 2025 started much lower than the previous year and is headed sharply downward, well below the previous two years, now in May and June aligning with 2010.

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

The purple line is the average anomaly 1980-1996 inclusive, value 0.17. The orange line the average 1980-2024, value 0.4, also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2013-2024, value 0.67. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher than expected 1-2 years in the future. As livescience put it: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be? Some charts from spaceweatherlive look familar to these sea surface temperature charts.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century. SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.” The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect. The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

HadSST is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST4 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

Why Shut Down US gov climate websites

Posted on July 10 by Ron Clutz

July news is full of reports decrying the shuttering of federal government climate websites with headlines like these:

Top Website for Crucial U.S. Climate Information Goes Dark, Scientific American

Nation’s top climate science assessments removed from federal websites, UPI

Major climate change reports are removed from US websites, Los Angeles Daily News

etc., etc. etc.

Part of the missing context is this July 7 report:

Agencies plan to decommission hundreds of .gov websites following GSA review

Thomas Shedd, commissioner of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, directed
agencies to eliminate the “low-hanging fruit” of unnecessary federal websites.

In an analysis led by the General Services Administration, the 24 largest departments and agencies inventoried more than 7,200 total websites. Documents obtained by Federal News Network show agencies plan to eliminate 332 of those websites — less than 5% of their total web presence.

According to documents obtained by Federal News Network, Thomas Shedd, commissioner of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, said the “low-hanging fruit” of websites to cut include standalone sites for agency blogs, photo galleries and forums that would be housed elsewhere.

GSA also directed agencies to eliminate sites for events or initiatives that haven’t been relevant for a number of years, as well as standalone sites for “niche topics or working groups.”

Climate Doctrine Promoted at NASA, NOAA and Climate.gov

NASA

2024 is the Warmest Year on Record Climate change • Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. January 10, 2025.

Scientists have concluded the warming trend of recent decades is driven by heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. In 2022 and 2023, Earth saw record increases in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, according to a recent international analysis. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from pre-industrial levels in the 18th century of approximately 278 parts per million to about 420 parts per million today.

NOAA

Richard Spinrad NOAA Administrator in 2023 NOAA Budget Summary

The next decade is a critical time to address the climate crisis. We have a small window to shift to a carbon neutral economy and hold climate impacts in check. With increased climate funding, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance climate services across the nation. To that end, NOAA’s climate ready nation initiative will target investments to address climate risks and build climate resilience, especially in our most vulnerable communities.

Climate.gov program manager Rebecca Lindsey

What evidence exists that Earth is warming and that humans are the main cause?

We know this warming is largely caused by human activities because the key role that carbon dioxide plays in maintaining Earth’s natural greenhouse effect has been understood since the mid-1800s. Unless it is offset by some equally large cooling influence, more atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to warmer surface temperatures. Since 1800, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 parts per million to 410 ppm in 2019. We know from both its rapid increase and its isotopic “fingerprint” that the source of this new carbon dioxide is fossil fuels, and not natural sources like forest fires, volcanoes, or outgassing from the ocean.

Finally, no other known climate influences have changed enough to account for the observed warming trend. Taken together, these and other lines of evidence point squarely to human activities as the cause of recent global warming.

Agencies Aligned with Politicians In Power

2024 presidential candidates on climate change

Democrat Joe Biden

In a campaign speech Biden said, “We passed the biggest investment in history to combat climate change, because I believe climate change is the only existential threat we have. I mean that in a literal sense. Not a joke. If we don’t get it under control, we will have mortgaged not only the next generation, but mortgaged humanity. I believe that with every fiber of my being.” [source, as of 2023-09-28]

Democrat Kamala D. Harris

Harris’ campaign website said, “As President, she will unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis as she builds on this historic work, advances environmental justice, protects public lands and public health, increases resilience to climate disasters, lowers household energy costs, creates millions of new jobs, and continues to hold polluters accountable to secure clean air and water for all.” [source, as of 2024-09-09]

However, Voters Backed a Change in Priorities

Republican Ron DeSantis

DeSantis’ campaign website said he would, “Withdraw from Paris Climate Accords, Global Methane Pledge, and all ‘Net Zero’ commitments. Eliminate ESG regulations and prohibit government accounts and pensions from using ESG. […] Repeal Biden rules targeting gas stoves, furnaces, and appliances. Streamline the environmental review process for energy and infrastructure projects. Work with states to reduce time and duplication in permitting. Prevent abusive litigation by environmental groups and defund ideological activism.” [source, as of 2023-12-19]

Republican Donald Trump

Trump’s campaign website said, “President Trump will once again exit the horrendously unfair Paris Climate Accords and oppose all of the radical left’s Green New Deal policies that are designed to shut down the development of America’s abundant energy resources, which exceed any country’s in the world, including Russia and Saudi Arabia. […] President Trump will immediately stop all Joe Biden policies that distort energy markets, limit consumer choice, and drive-up costs on consumers, including insane wind subsidies, and DoE and EPA regulations that prevent Americans from buying incandescent lightbulbs, gas stoves, quality dishwashers and shower heads, and much more.” [source, as of 2023-12-21]

Summary

No surprise that “elections have consequences.” A change in leadership means a change in political doctrine and priorities, and in this case, reopening the file on natural as well as human contributions to weather and climate fluctuations and what to do about it.

Climatists Deny Natural Warming Factors

June 2025 Update–Temperature Falls, CO2 Follows

Posted on July 3 by Ron Clutz

Previously I have demonstrated that changes in atmospheric CO2 levels follow changes in Global Mean Temperatures (GMT) as shown by satellite measurements from University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). That background post is reprinted later below.

My curiosity was piqued by the remarkable GMT spike starting in January 2023 and rising to a peak in April 2024. GMT has declined steadily, and now 14 months later, the anomaly is 0.48C down from 0.94C. I also became aware that UAH has recalibrated their dataset due to a satellite drift that can no longer be corrected. The values since 2020 have shifted slightly in version 6.1, as shown in my recent report NH and Tropics Lead UAH Temps Lower May 2025. The data here comes from UAH record of temperatures measured in the lower troposphere (TLT).

In this post, I test the premise that temperature changes are predictive of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The chart above shows the two monthly datasets: CO2 levels in blue reported at Mauna Loa, and Global temperature anomalies in purple reported by UAHv6.1, both through June 2025. Would such a sharp increase in temperature be reflected in rising CO2 levels, according to the successful mathematical forecasting model? Would CO2 levels decline as temperatures dropped following the peak?

The answer is yes: that temperature spike resulted
in a corresponding CO2 spike as expected.
And lower CO2 levels followed the temperature decline.

Above are UAH temperature anomalies compared to CO2 monthly changes year over year.

Changes in monthly CO2 synchronize with temperature fluctuations, which for UAH are anomalies referenced to the 1991-2020 period. CO2 differentials are calculated for the present month by subtracting the value for the same month in the previous year (for example February 2025 minus February 2024). Temp anomalies are calculated by comparing the present month with the baseline month. Note the recent CO2 upward spike and drop following the temperature spike and drop.

The final proof that CO2 follows temperature due to stimulation of natural CO2 reservoirs is demonstrated by the ability to calculate CO2 levels since 1979 with a simple mathematical formula:

For each subsequent year, the CO2 level for each month was generated

CO2 _{this month this year} = a + b × Temp _{this month this year} + CO2 _{this month last year}

The values for a and b are constants applied to all monthly temps, and are chosen to scale the forecasted CO2 level for comparison with the observed value. Here is the result of those calculations.

In the chart calculated CO2 levels correlate with observed CO2 levels at 0.9988 out of 1.0000. This mathematical generation of CO2 atmospheric levels is only possible if they are driven by temperature-dependent natural sources, and not by human emissions which are small in comparison, rise steadily and monotonically. For a more detailed look at the recent fluxes, here are the results since 2015, an ENSO neutral year.

For this recent period, the calculated CO2 values match well the annual highs, while some annual generated values of CO2 are slightly higher or lower than observed at other months of the year. Still the correlation for this period is 0.9939.

Key Point

Changes in CO2 follow changes in global temperatures on all time scales, from last month’s observations to ice core datasets spanning millennia. Since CO2 is the lagging variable, it cannot logically be the cause of temperature, the leading variable. It is folly to imagine that by reducing human emissions of CO2, we can change global temperatures, which are obviously driven by other factors.

Background Post Temperature Changes Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse

This post is about proving that CO2 changes in response to temperature changes, not the other way around, as is often claimed. In order to do that we need two datasets: one for measurements of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over time and one for estimates of Global Mean Temperature changes over time.

Climate science is unsettling because past data are not fixed, but change later on. I ran into this previously and now again in 2021 and 2022 when I set out to update an analysis done in 2014 by Jeremy Shiers (discussed in a previous post reprinted at the end). Jeremy provided a spreadsheet in his essay Murray Salby Showed CO2 Follows Temperature Now You Can Too posted in January 2014. I downloaded his spreadsheet intending to bring the analysis up to the present to see if the results hold up. The two sources of data were:

Temperature anomalies from RSS here: http://www.remss.com/missions/amsu

CO2 monthly levels from NOAA (Mauna Loa): https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/data.html

Changes in CO2 (ΔCO2)

Uploading the CO2 dataset showed that many numbers had changed (why?).

The blue line shows annual observed differences in monthly values year over year, e.g. June 2020 minus June 2019 etc. The first 12 months (1979) provide the observed starting values from which differentials are calculated. The orange line shows those CO2 values changed slightly in the 2020 dataset vs. the 2014 dataset, on average +0.035 ppm. But there is no pattern or trend added, and deviations vary randomly between + and -. So last year I took the 2020 dataset to replace the older one for updating the analysis.

Now I find the NOAA dataset starting in 2021 has almost completely new values due to a method shift in February 2021, requiring a recalibration of all previous measurements. The new picture of ΔCO2 is graphed below.

The method shift is reported at a NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory webpage, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) WMO Scale, with a justification for the difference between X2007 results and the new results from X2019 now in force. The orange line shows that the shift has resulted in higher values, especially early on and a general slightly increasing trend over time. However, these are small variations at the decimal level on values 340 and above. Further, the graph shows that yearly differentials month by month are virtually the same as before. Thus I redid the analysis with the new values.

Global Temperature Anomalies (ΔTemp)

The other time series was the record of global temperature anomalies according to RSS. The current RSS dataset is not at all the same as the past.

Here we see some seriously unsettling science at work. The purple line is RSS in 2014, and the blue is RSS as of 2020. Some further increases appear in the gold 2022 rss dataset. The red line shows alterations from the old to the new. There is a slight cooling of the data in the beginning years, then the three versions mostly match until 1997, when systematic warming enters the record. From 1997/5 to 2003/12 the average anomaly increases by 0.04C. After 2004/1 to 2012/8 the average increase is 0.15C. At the end from 2012/9 to 2013/12, the average anomaly was higher by 0.21. The 2022 version added slight warming over 2020 values.

RSS continues that accelerated warming to the present, but it cannot be trusted. And who knows what the numbers will be a few years down the line? As Dr. Ole Humlum said some years ago (regarding Gistemp): “It should however be noted, that a temperature record which keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct.”

Given the above manipulations, I went instead to the other satellite dataset UAH version 6. UAH has also made a shift by changing its baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020. This resulted in systematically reducing the anomaly values, but did not alter the pattern of variation over time. For comparison, here are the two records with measurements through December 2023.

Comparing UAH temperature anomalies to NOAA CO2 changes.

Here are UAH temperature anomalies compared to CO2 monthly changes year over year.

Changes in monthly CO2 synchronize with temperature fluctuations, which for UAH are anomalies now referenced to the 1991-2020 period. As stated above, CO2 differentials are calculated for the present month by subtracting the value for the same month in the previous year (for example June 2022 minus June 2021). Temp anomalies are calculated by comparing the present month with the baseline month.

The final proof that CO2 follows temperature due to stimulation of natural CO2 reservoirs is demonstrated by the ability to calculate CO2 levels since 1979 with a simple mathematical formula:

For each subsequent year, the co2 level for each month was generated

CO2 _{this month this year} = a + b × Temp _{this month this year} + CO2 _{this month last year}

Jeremy used Python to estimate a and b, but I used his spreadsheet to guess values that place for comparison the observed and calculated CO2 levels on top of each other.

In the chart calculated CO2 levels correlate with observed CO2 levels at 0.9986 out of 1.0000. This mathematical generation of CO2 atmospheric levels is only possible if they are driven by temperature-dependent natural sources, and not by human emissions which are small in comparison, rise steadily and monotonically.

Comment: UAH dataset reported a sharp warming spike starting mid year, with causes speculated but not proven. In any case, that surprising peak has not yet driven CO2 higher, though it might, but only if it persists despite the likely cooling already under way.

Previous Post: What Causes Rising Atmospheric CO2?

nasa_carbon_cycle_2008-1

This post is prompted by a recent exchange with those reasserting the “consensus” view attributing all additional atmospheric CO2 to humans burning fossil fuels.

The IPCC doctrine which has long been promoted goes as follows. We have a number over here for monthly fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and a number over there for monthly atmospheric CO2. We don’t have good numbers for the rest of it-oceans, soils, biosphere–though rough estimates are orders of magnitude higher, dwarfing human CO2. So we ignore nature and assume it is always a sink, explaining the difference between the two numbers we do have. Easy peasy, science settled.

What about the fact that nature continues to absorb about half of human emissions, even while FF CO2 increased by 60% over the last 2 decades? What about the fact that in 2020 FF CO2 declined significantly with no discernable impact on rising atmospheric CO2?

These and other issues are raised by Murray Salby and others who conclude that it is not that simple, and the science is not settled. And so these dissenters must be cancelled lest the narrative be weakened.

The non-IPCC paradigm is that atmospheric CO2 levels are a function of two very different fluxes. FF CO2 changes rapidly and increases steadily, while Natural CO2 changes slowly over time, and fluctuates up and down from temperature changes. The implications are that human CO2 is a simple addition, while natural CO2 comes from the integral of previous fluctuations. Jeremy Shiers has a series of posts at his blog clarifying this paradigm. See Increasing CO2 Raises Global Temperature Or Does Increasing Temperature Raise CO2 Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The following graph which shows the change in CO2 levels (rather than the levels directly) makes this much clearer.

Note the vertical scale refers to the first differential of the CO2 level not the level itself. The graph depicts that change rate in ppm per year.

There are big swings in the amount of CO2 emitted. Taking the mean as 1.6 ppmv/year (at a guess) there are +/- swings of around 1.2 nearly +/- 100%.

And, surprise surprise, the change in net emissions of CO2 is very strongly correlated with changes in global temperature.

This clearly indicates the net amount of CO2 emitted in any one year is directly linked to global mean temperature in that year.

For any given year the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be the sum of

all the net annual emissions of CO2
in all previous years.

For each year the net annual emission of CO2 is proportional to the annual global mean temperature.

This means the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be related to the sum of temperatures in previous years.

So CO2 levels are not directly related to the current temperature but the integral of temperature over previous years.

The following graph again shows observed levels of CO2 and global temperatures but also has calculated levels of CO2 based on sum of previous years temperatures (dotted blue line).

Summary:

The massive fluxes from natural sources dominate the flow of CO2 through the atmosphere. Human CO2 from burning fossil fuels is around 4% of the annual addition from all sources. Even if rising CO2 could cause rising temperatures (no evidence, only claims), reducing our emissions would have little impact.

Atmospheric CO2 Math

Ins: 4% human, 96% natural
Outs: 0% human, 98% natural.
Atmospheric storage difference: +2%
(so that: Ins = Outs + Atmospheric storage difference)

Balance = Atmospheric storage difference: 2%, of which,
Humans: 2% X 4% = 0.08%
Nature: 2% X 96 % = 1.92%

Ratio Natural : Human =1.92% : 0.08% = 24 : 1

Resources

For a possible explanation of natural warming and CO2 emissions see Little Ice Age Warming Recovery May be Over

Resources:

CO2 Fluxes, Sources and Sinks

Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

Fearless Physics from Dr. Salby

2025 Update: No, CO2 Doesn’t Drive the Polar Vortex

Posted on July 2 by Ron Clutz

July 2025 Update

Linnea Lueken published this week at Climate Realism Thanks, NewScientist, for Admitting Climate Change Isn’t Making the Jet Stream More Erratic. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

NewScientist, a publication dedicated to popularizing science, recently published a post titled “Extreme winter weather isn’t down to a wavier jet stream,” reporting on a new study that shows, the jet stream is not getting wavier in winter months due to climate change. NewScientist writes that “[i]ncreasingly erratic winter weather in the northern hemisphere isn’t a result of the polar jet stream getting more wavy, according to new research . . ..”

This is true, and it has been evident for some time, but runs counter
to assertions commonly made by climate alarmists.

Although the vast bulk of the article is devoted to insisting that climate change is causing worsening winter and summer weather, claims regularly debunked at Climate Realism, the publication deserves some credit for reporting the study’s results concerning the jet stream, which was, in fact, the focus of the research itself.

The new reports findings are not actually that “new,” in the sense that Climate Realism has reported on research that came to the same conclusion several times in the past few years, here, here, and here, for instance. There is copious evidence showing that not only are cold snaps not uncommon, but that the jet stream’s (and more specifically, polar vortex) influence on extreme winter weather has been acknowledged since at least 1853. Years of studies looking at the frequency of and intensity of polar vortex events have found no consistent trends. As pointed out by my colleague Anthony Watts in this post on the subject:

“a 2021 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found no statistically significant increase in jet stream waviness or meandering in recent decades,”

and he explains there has never been a consensus among scientists when it comes to the issue of polar vortex/jet stream behavior.

The post at NewScientist goes on to explain the new study, saying “recent erratic behaviour isn’t out of the ordinary,” and that the jet stream has been both wavier and less wavy than it is today. Unfortunately, that is where the NewScientist and the authors of the paper it was discussing ceased to follow the evidence. One of the study’s authors reassured NewScientist that climate change is still “affecting extreme weather events in all sorts of really important ways,” and that the jet stream is actually becoming wavier in the summertime, “where it is getting slower, with bigger waves, which leads to things like big heatwaves, drought, and wildfires.”

This would be compelling if existing data backed up the claim,
but, in fact, big heatwaves, drought, and wildfires have not
become more frequent or severe in recent decades.

Heatwaves were much more severe in the earlier decades of the 20^th century, and overall drought has been declining while precipitation increases. Now that it is summer, many outlets are attempting to claim that hot weather is driven by climate change. In doing so they almost always ignore where heat records are being set, as it is often at airports and other heat-absorbing locations, and ignore historical records that show hot summers are not unprecedented.

Similarly, data shows that wildfires were worse in the past with research from NASA and the European Space Agency showing that acreage lost to wildfires has declined markedly over the past few decades.

The NewScientist, and the AGU study it references, should have quit when they were ahead. They should have published their unalarming findings about climate change’s lack of an impact on the winter jet stream without then assuring people that despite their study’s findings, they really are true believers and climate change is making weather worse. The latter point is refuted by real world data.

Simulation of jet stream pattern July 22. (VentuSky.com)

Background from Previous Post

We are heading into winter this year at the bottom of a solar cycle, and ocean oscillations due for cooling phases. The folks at Climate Alarm Central (CAC) are well aware of this, and are working hard so people won’t realize that global cooling contradicts global warming. No indeed, contortionist papers and headlines are warning us all that CO2 not only causes hothouse earth, overrun with rats and other vermin. CO2 also causes ice ages when it feels like it.

Update Nov. 26, 2019: Much ado about the polar jet stream recently with a publication by Tim Woolings A battle for the jet stream is raging above our heads. The Claims are not new:

The jet has always varied – and has always affected our weather patterns. But now climate change is affecting our weather too. As I explore in my latest book, it’s when the wanderings of the jet and the hand of climate change add up that we get record-breaking heatwaves, floods and droughts – but not freezes.

The same supposition was made last year in an article by alarmist Jason Samenow at Washington Post. Study: Freak summer weather and wild jet-stream patterns are on the rise because of global warming. Excerpts in italics with my bolds

In many ways, the summer of 2018 marked a turning point, when the effects of climate change — perhaps previously on the periphery of public consciousness — suddenly took center stage. Record high temperatures spread all over the Northern Hemisphere. Wildfires raged out of control. And devastating floods were frequent.

Michael Mann, climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, along with colleagues, has published a new study that connects these disruptive weather extremes with a fundamental change in how the jet stream is behaving during the summer. Linked to the warming climate, the study suggests this change in the atmosphere’s steering current is making these extremes occur more frequently, with greater intensity, and for longer periods of time.

The study projects this erratic jet-stream behavior will increase in the future, leading to more severe heat waves, droughts, fires and floods.

The jet stream is changing not only because the planet is warming up but also because the Arctic is warming faster than the mid-latitudes, the study says. The jet stream is driven by temperature contrasts, and these contrasts are shrinking. The result is a slower jet stream with more wavy peaks and troughs that Mann and his study co-authors ascribe to a process known as “quasi-resonant amplification.”

The altered jet-stream behavior is important because when it takes deep excursions to the south in the summer, it sets up a collision between cool air from the north and the summer’s torrid heat, often spurring excessive rain. But when the jet stream retreats to the north, bulging heat domes form underneath it, leading to record heat and dry spells.

The study, published Wednesday in Science Advances, finds that these quasi-resonant amplification events — in which the jet stream exhibits this extreme behavior during the summer — are predicted to increase by 50 percent this century if emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue unchecked.

Whereas previous work conducted by Mann and others had identified a signal for an increase in these events, this study for the first time examined how they may change in the future using climate model simulations.

“Looking at a large number of different computer models, we found interesting differences,” said Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-author of the study, in a news release. “Distinct climate models provide quite diverging forecasts for future climate resonance events. However, on average they show a clear increase in such events.”

Although model projections suggest these extreme jet-stream patterns will increase as the climate warms, the study concluded that their increase can be slowed if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced along with particulate pollution in developing countries. “[T]he future is still very much in our hands when it comes to dangerous and damaging summer weather extremes,” Mann said. “It’s simply a matter of our willpower to transition quickly from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

Mann has been leading the charge to blame anticipated cooling on fossil fuels, his previous attempt claiming CO2 is causing a slowdown of AMOC (part of it being the Gulf Stream), resulting in global cooling, even an ice age. The same idea underlay the scary 2004 movie Day After Tomorrow.

day-after-tomorrow Other scientists are more interested in the truth than in hype. An example is this AGU publication by D.A Smeed et al. The North Atlantic Ocean Is in a State of Reduced Overturning Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Figure 3

Indices of subsurface temperature, sea surface height (SSH), latent heat flux (LHF), and sea surface temperature (SST). SST (purple) is plotted using the same scale as subsurface temperature (blue) in the upper panel. The upper panel shows 24 month filtered values of de‐seasonalized anomalies along with the non‐Ekman part of the AMOC. In the lower panel, we show three‐year running means of the indices going back to 1985 (1993 for the SSH index).

Changes in ocean heat transport and SST are expected to modify the net air‐sea heat flux. The changes in the total air‐sea flux (Figure S4, data obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction‐National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalysis; Kalnay et al., 1996) are almost all due to the change in LHF. The third panel of Figure 3 shows the changes in LHF between the two periods. There is a strong signal with increased heat loss from the ocean over the Gulf Stream. That the area of increased heat loss coincides with the location of warming SST indicates that the changes in air‐sea fluxes are driven by the ocean.

Whilst the AMOC has only been continuously measured since 2004, the indices of SSH, heat content, SST, and LHF can be calculated farther back in time (Figure 3, bottom). Over this longer time period, all four indices are strongly correlated with one another (Table S5; correlations were calculated using the nonparametric method described in McCarthy et al., 2015). These data suggest that measurement of the AMOC at 26°N started close to a maximum in the overturning. Prior to 2007 the indices show variability on a time scale of 8 to 10 years and no trend is evident, but since 2014 all indices have had values lower than any other year since 1985.

Previous studies have shown that seasonal and interannual changes in the subtropical AMOC are forced primarily by changing wind stress mediated by Rossby waves (Zhao & Johns, 2014a, 2014b). There is growing evidence (Delworth et al., 2016; Jackson et al., 2016) that the longer‐term changes of the AMOC over the last decade are also associated with thermohaline forcing and that the changed circulation alters the pattern of ocean‐atmosphere heat exchange (Gulev et al., 2013). The role of ocean circulation in decadal climate variability has been challenged in recent years with authors suggesting that external, atmospheric‐driven changes could produce the observed variability in Atlantic SSTs (Clement et al., 2015). However, the direct observation of a weakened AMOC supports a role for ocean circulation in decadal Atlantic climate variability.

Our results show that the previously reported decline of the AMOC (Smeed et al., 2014) has been arrested, but the length of the observational record of the AMOC is still short relative to the time scales of important decadal variations that exist in the Atlantic. Understanding is therefore constantly evolving. What we identify as a changed state of the AMOC in this study may well prove to be part of a decadal oscillation superposed on a multidecadal cycle. Overlaying these oscillations is the impact of anthropogenic change that is predicted to weaken the AMOC over the next century. The continuation of measurements from the RAPID 26°N array and similar observations elsewhere in the Atlantic (Lozier et al., 2017; Meinen et al., 2013) will enable us to unravel and reveal the role of ocean circulation in the changing Atlantic climate in the coming decades.

Regarding the more recent attempt to link CO2 with jet stream meanderings, we have this paper providing a more reasonable assessment. Arctic amplification: does it impact the polar jet stream? by Valentin P. Meleshko et al. Excerpts below in italics with my bolds.

Analysis of observation and model simulations has revealed that northward temperature gradient decreases and jet flow weakens in the polar troposphere due to global climate warming. These interdependent phenomena are regarded as robust features of the climate system. An increase of planetary wave oscillation that is attributed to Arctic amplification (Francis and Vavrus, 2012; Francis and Vavrus, 2015) has not been confirmed from analysis of observation (Barnes, 2013; Screen and Simmonds, 2013) or in our analysis of model simulations of projected climate. However, we found that GPH variability associated with planetary wave oscillation increases in the background of weakening of zonal flow during the sea-ice-free summer. Enhancement of northward heat transport in the troposphere was shown to be the main factor responsible for decrease of northward temperature gradient and weakening of the jet stream in autumn and winter. Arctic amplification provides only minor contribution to the evolution of zonal flow and planetary wave oscillation.

It has been shown that northward heat transport is the major factor in decreasing the northward temperature gradient in the polar atmosphere and increasing the planetary-scale wave oscillation in the troposphere of the mid-latitudes. Arctic amplification does not show any essential impact on planetary-scale oscillation in the mid and upper troposphere, although it does cause a decrease of northward heat transport in the lower troposphere. These results confound the interpretation of the short observational record that has suggested a causal link between recent Arctic melting and extreme weather in the mid-latitudes.

There are two additional explanations of factors causing the wavy jet stream, AKA Polar Vortex. Dr Judah Cohen of AER has written extensively on the link between Autumn Siberian snow cover and the Arctic oscillation. See Snowing and Freezing in the Arctic for a more complete description of the mechanism.

Finally, a discussion with Piers Corbyn regarding the solar flux effect upon the jet stream at Is This Cold the New Normal?

Video transcript available at linked post.

The Real Climate Science Crisis: CAGW Hypothesis Lacks Scientific Evidence

Posted on June 28 by Ron Clutz

From C3 headlines The Real Climate Science Crisis: The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) Hypothesis Is Without Scientific Evidence. Excerpts in italics with my added images.

For a hypothesis to reach the status of being a legit theory, it requires withstanding the onslaught of observed empirical evidence. The CAGW hypothesis is no such animal.

Known by its more contemporary aliases, such as ”climate crisis,” “climate emergency,” “climate collapse,” or “existential threat,” the CAGW has zero empirical evidence to support it.

Unlike the related hypothesis regarding greenhouse gases (GHG) and global warming, at least the GHG hypothesis has warming global temperature data that somewhat coincides with increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, putting aside the growing possibility that the purported cause-and-effect direction is probably the reverse.

In order to reach a CAGW climate disaster, global warming
temperatures must change rapidly in an accelerating manner
that will initiate a ‘tipping point’ for the climate.

The rapid acceleration would present its occurrence in a continuous increasing of the slope, i.e., trend, of temperatures, such as monthly temperatures. Each subsequent month would represent a greater temperature magnitude increase than the month before, hypothetically.

But those tipping point precursors are not occurring in the real-world climate.

For example, it is agreed by all climate scientists that oceans play a very major role in the world’s climate and its global temperatures due to their being both the world’s largest carbon sink and its largest heat content storage.

However, despite these characteristics, in totality, the global oceans HAVE NOT warmed since the year 2014. And certainly, there is no empirical evidence that oceans exhibit constant temperature increases of magnitude.

Quite the contrary, combined oceans exhibit a regular pattern of temperature decreases and increases, as the adjacent plot of NOAA’s monthly ocean data indicates.

Specifically, this is a plot (dark blue) of moving 5-year temperature changes ending each month of the 60-year period from March 1963 through March 2023.

[Explanation: the first data point is the temperature change for the 60 months ending on March 30, 1963; and the chart’s last temperature change data point is for the five 5 years (i.e. 60 months) ending on March 2023.]

The chart also includes a plot (green) of the moving 60-month CO2 level changes over the same sixty year period, plus a linear trend for both CO2 changes and ocean temperature changes.

The trend of the 60-month CO2 changes significantly exceeds the slight positive trend of ocean temperature changes by a factor of 117x. This huge differential undercuts the belief that global warming is primarily the result of GHGs. Which is confirmed by the paltry R^2 of +0.06 – an almost non-existent relationship between 5-year atmospheric CO2 changes and 5-year changes in ocean temperature.

Not only are the large increases in CO2 levels not causing a concerning uptick of temperature change magnitude, it also has not lead to any type of acceleration, per the linear trend since 1963.

Specifically, with a trend of a tiny +0.0001°C, that would project out 20 years to be an increase of 5-year temperature changes to an insignificant amount of +0.024°C – definitely not an existential threat of ‘runaway warming’ or a CAGW ‘climate crisis’ as portrayed by bureaucrats, politicians and Hollywood celebrities.

So, if 5 years of increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere barely influence 5-year changes in temperature over a 60-year span, either in magnitude or acceleration rate, then it is highly unlikely that this trace gas would cause a catastrophic climate disaster or an extinction event.

Thus, it is fair to state that for all those scientists pushing a narrative of an imminent climate change catastrophe from CO2 without the requisite empirical evidence, this has become the real climate science crisis facing society.

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