Cohler Crushes IPCC Circle of Lies

From 10.000 Years to 4: One Equation Falsifies the Entire IPCC CO₂ Narrative – by Jonathan Cohler

The video above is a recent presentation by Jonathan Cohler at EIKE ( European Climate and Energy Institute).  The english audio is available. He does a complete and evidence-based destruction of IPCC “concensus” Climate Science.  For those prefering to read I provide a transcript lightly edited from the captions, along with some bolds and key exhibits from the talk.

Just very briefly, I’m Jonathan Cohler. I’m a Harvard-trained physicist, AI researcher, software developer.  I serve on the Heartland Institute’s Board of Policy Advisors, and I’m a member of the CO2 Coalition. And over the past year, I’ve authored six climate papers, both peer-reviewed and pre-print, with illustrious co-authors including Willie Soon, David Legates, Keston Green, and Ole Humlum.

Collectively, the papers falsify the entire IPCC framework.

I presented some of this at Heartland’s conference in Washington this April, but today at EIKE is the first public presentation of our newest paper on the bomb radiocarbon falsification of the IPCC CO2 attribution, and more. So I’m going to start here by sharing my screen with you so you can see the presentation. So for 38 years, numerous IPCC purported metrics and associated lies have been paraded before the world as settled science.

Today, I’m going to show you that none of them are true, and most aren’t even real. One note on language I use, I use the word lie in its plain sense, a statement that is not true. Intent is not part of the definition.  Orwell’s 2 plus 2 equals 5 is a lie regardless of who says it or why. When I call an IPCC claim a lie, I’m stating it’s false.

That said, intent in this case is not in doubt. The IPCC has had 38 years of access to all the data and the resources of every major government on earth. It knows what it has been promulgating, it knows what it has been suppressing, and significant numbers of scientists know as well. I won’t name any individuals, they know who they are, but I will name the institution, the IPCC.

My presentation is based on five papers, my 2025 peer-reviewed paper, building on Essex et al., 2007, and proving again that global mean surface temperature, GMST, does not exist. Our 2026 peer-reviewed paper on the invalidity of Argo-based ocean heat content with co-authors Dave Legates, Keston Green, Ole Humlum, Franklin Soon, and Willie Soon. Our 2026 paper with co-author Willie Soon on the dominance of natural CO2 dynamics currently under review.

My pre-print proving my new physical tether theorem. And most recently, our paper with co-author Willie Soon analyzing 50 years of global bomb radiocarbon decay, falsifying the key assumptions of the IPCC carbon cycle framework. I want to acknowledge all my co-authors, and in particular, my mentor and dear friend Willie Soon, whose decades of courageous work made much of this possible.  I also want to honor the truly seminal contributions of Christopher Essex and Demetris Koutsoyiannis, whose work laid the foundation for all my papers here.

So let’s start with the verdict. Every major public-facing claim of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, is scientifically invalid and categorically false. Not uncertain, not weakened, not in need of more research, false. I’ll prove this in the next 35 minutes or so by math, physics, and data. Words lie. Math does not. A statement is either derivable from its premises or not. There is no, quote, 97% of mathematicians agree nonsense. There’s proof or there isn’t.

For 38 years, the IPCC has paraded a framework draped in equations, satellite data, supercomputer models, academy awards, even Nobel Prizes. A snake eating its own tail.  Each piece appears to validate the next. Once you see that the circle is empty, the entire framework collapses. Each lie leads to the next. None stand on their own.

GMST,Global mean surface temperature, the number that has purportedly risen 1.1 degrees since 1850, the number whose further rise to 1.5 or 2 degrees is, “catastrophic”, what some have called, “the most important number in the world”. CMIP, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, those are the general circulation models tuned to reproduce GMST.

OHC stands for Ocean Heat Content, a physically meaningless global aggregate constructed by the same averaging machinery as GMST. EEI, Earth’s Energy Imbalance, the energy gain inferred from OHC overriding satellite radiation measurements. CO2, atmospheric carbon dioxide, the persistence and attribution modeled by Bern impulse response functions validated against CMIP purported driving force in the entire attribution chain.

And then the loop closes back on itself. GMST tunes the models. The models produce Bern. Bern produces the budgets. Budgets define the targets. Targets are written in GMST. Each of the five nodes is independently falsified by physics, data, and math.

Let’s begin. Node 1, GMST is physically meaningless.

It’s the anchor of every policy claim. The Paris Agreement is written in degrees of GMST. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is defined in GMST. Transient climate response is defined in GMST. Attribution regressions use GMST as a dependent variable. CMIP models are tuned to reproduce GMST trajectories.

But GMST was proven meaningless in a 2007 paper by Essex, McKitrick, and Andresen unrefuted in 19 years. Two months ago, my physical tether theorem paper established from axioms of classical science alone that GMST cannot exist in the real world. It’s completely physically meaningless.

You take valid local thermometer readings, average them, get a global average. Seems right. Why not? Think telephone numbers. Average the phone numbers of everyone in Boston and Halle. Then ask three simple questions. Whose phone number is it? Is it a phone number? Does it mean anything at all?

Temperature is an intensive property defined only under local
thermodynamic equilibrium in single connected systems, like a
phone
number that applies to one point on a telecom network.

The Earth’s surface, oceans, and atmosphere are not in equilibrium. They’re an open-driven non-equilibrium system. Persistent gradients, persistent fluxes, in-homogeneity at every scale.  Physics has no law for aggregating local temperatures into a global mean. Disconnected systems cannot affect each other. Unlike quantum mechanical spooky action at a distance, which Einstein doubted and my friend and colleague John Clauser proved real, there is no thermodynamics at a distance.

The temperature in Boston has zero effect on the temperature in Halle. Temperature is defined only in a connected equilibrium system, and it is precisely the partial derivative of U, internal energy, with respect to S, entropy. Every thermometer agrees.

For an aggregate of disconnected systems, there is no thermodynamics, period. The GMST formulas imposed by the IPCC, NASA, or NOAA are just made up. The output is a number, not a temperature. Not anything in the physical, real world. The 2007 Essex paper showed the consequences for averaging arithmetic, area weighted, mass weighted, fourth root, enthalpy weighted. They all yield different numbers and different trends from the same data.

The choice is arbitrary. This isn’t a quarrel over data adjustments. We’re not talking about urban heat islands, homogenization, data improvement. No amount of data improvements can fix a category error. No averaging convention can rescue it. My physical tether theorem states it formally.

An abstract math formula is scientifically valid if and only if it is connected to the physical world by a unique, physical law-governed objective link. For a connected, equilibrated system, that link exists. Temperature is precisely the partial derivative of U with respect to S, and every valid thermometer agrees.  A unique mapping exists. For disconnected systems, no physics, no mapping, just arbitrary statistical aggregations with no unique operational definition. The outputs are meaningless numbers.

GMST is a number the IPCC has falsely labeled as a temperature. Consequences are immediate and total. The 1.5 degree C limit is not a physical threshold. It’s an arbitrary number with a fake label applied to a meaningless calculation. The claim that the planet is warm by 1.1 degrees C is not a measurement. The equilibrium climate sensitivity defined as a change in GMST per CO2 doubling is equally physically meaningless.

The AR5 attribution statement,  “more than half of observed warming is anthropogenic”,  is a regression on a dependent variable that doesn’t exist. Every claim built on GMST is null and void. And AR6 went further. They abandoned their own calibrated uncertainty language and declared human influence, “unequivocal”, and then proceeded to use the word at least 37 times.

Unequivocal is not a science word. Science does not produce unequivocal claims.

Math proofs do. Empirical science operates within probability and falsifiability. Karl Popper settled this long ago. By its own word choice, the IPCC has abandoned science. Node 1 falsified. Every quantity dependent on GMST collapses with it.

Node 2, CMIP models are tuned to a fiction.

Every IPCC projection comes from CMIP, the coupled model intercomparison project. The models are tuned so simulated GMST matches the numerically calculated and physically meaningless GMST. Remember, there is no observed GMST. Those are just Orwellian words that the IPCC uses. It is purely a calculation.

Models that fail to reproduce historical GMST are discarded or retuned. GMST is physically meaningless. The model tuning target is physically meaningless. The model extracted parameters are extracted against a physically meaningless target. This is not a small effect. Cloud feedbacks, radiative forcing, equilibrium climate sensitivity, transient climate response, every one is an emergent property of models optimized against a physically meaningless target.

Equilibrium climate sensitivity, look at what IPCC actually means by this. ECS is defined as the change in GMST between models at 280 and 560 ppm CO2 both run to model equilibrium. But the earth is never in equilibrium. The fact that a model converges to equilibrium proves it isn’t modeling the earth. The equilibrium is a feature of the model, not the earth.

And even that’s not true. The CMIP model purveyors don’t actually run to that fictional equilibrium. They run 150 years or so, observe the drift, and extrapolate. They assume the model will reach an equilibrium that it never reaches.

ECS is an assumed extrapolation of an unreached state of a model
that fails reality at the level of being able to converge in the first place.

All to promulgate a number physically meaningless by definition. If A is meaningless and B is meaningless, then A minus B is meaningless. A and B are both meaningless GMST values. I know this is twisted IPCC Orwellian stuff, but follow me here because this is what is actually happening. Trillions of dollars of policy are calibrated to a number that does not exist in the real world, to a fake equilibrium state that never occurs in a model that fails to represent earth by virtue of having that equilibrium state in the first place.

And the model itself contains essentially none of the physics that drives earth’s permanent non-equilibrium state, namely meaningful cloud microphysics and feedbacks, real solar variability, turbulence, phase changes, biological dissipation, and more. Node 2, falsified.

 

Node 3, IPCC’s Argo-derived ocean heat content is physically meaningless. 

You’ll notice I keep repeating those words. It’s not just a tick. My personal favorite from the circle of lies.  Argo has deployed roughly 4,400 autonomous floats across the oceans. Each measures local temperature, salinity, and pressure as they drift.

And ocean heat content is a real physical concept and a physical
phenomenon, but what the IPCC presents as ocean heat content is not.

Orwell strikes again. Argo-derived IPCC OHC is a global statistical aggregate fabricated from local measurements through five layers of processing that destroy all physical meaning. This is the official Argo map, and it looks impressive, but it’s cropped to hide the poles and doesn’t differentiate deep from upper floats.

This is the real picture from NOAA showing every float that surfaced in the 12 days prior to March 25. Look at the poles. Virtually no floats beyond 60 degrees. And the entire deep Argo fleet has deployed only 230 floats to the bottom half of the ocean, below 2,000 meters, where literally half of the thermal energy resides. But the Argo program calls that, “nearly complete global coverage” in perfect Orwell style. Let that sink in for a moment.

Half the ocean’s volume sits below 2,000 meters, and it’s not sampled at all. Twenty-five percent of the surface is excluded entirely. Continental shelves, the Mediterranean, South China Sea, the Arctic, all ice-covered regions, add continental slopes and polar undersampling, and the IPCC interpolation scheme covers at most 40 percent of ocean volume.

Within the 40 percent, the volume actually sampled around the temperature sensors is one part per billion, 10 to the ninth. So here’s how each of the 4,200 non-deep floats works. They descend to 1,000 meters. They drift for nine days doing nothing. They drop down to 2,000 meters. They ascend slowly to the surface over 6 to 10 hours, collecting about 1,000 temperature measurements. Then they spend about 15 minutes at the surface to get a GPS time and location fix, transmit the measurements to a satellite, rinse and repeat for a few years until the battery dies.

Now, to be fair, that’s valid local data gathering,
but that’s also where reality ends.

Five steps destroy the physics. Number one, there is no subsurface positioning. Every measurement from the ascent is assigned to the one surface GPS time and location fix. Two, 12,000 profiles per month are extrapolated onto 45,000 grid cells using correlation scales up to 2,800 kilometers. Every single gridded value is calculated, not measured, and extrapolation does not increase information content. It decreases it. Number three, the same invalid process constructs a reference climatology over an arbitrary 15-year baseline, adding an entire other layer of invalid averaging.

Then anomalies are computed, which we like to call the ghost minus ghost trick, a discrete sum over these calculated meaningless anomalies, not an integral, which would require continuous data, multiplied by incorrectly assumed constant density and heat capacity.

EEI is then declared to be 0.7 plus or minus 0.2 watts per square meter
despite 60% of the ocean unsampled and true uncertainty easily
exceeding plus or minus 1 watt per square meter.

The actual result, EEI (Earth’s Energy Imbalance) is no different from zero. Even without thermodynamic nullification, at least seven independent uncertainty sources, mesoscale variability, deep ocean ignorance, sea level closure, framework bias, baseline bias, and more easily exceed plus or minus 1 watt per meter squared. The claimed signal of 0.7 is smaller than the noise. Now in 1998, the founding document designed ARGO for real-time forecasting, namely hurricane intensification, marine weather, search and rescue, ship routing, fisheries, ENSO outlooks, decision windows of hours to weeks. Neither ARGO nor land weather stations were designed for centennial energy accounting. The original ARGO objectives contained no mention whatsoever of global ocean heat content or earth energy imbalance because ARGO was never designed for global climate monitoring.

That idea was forced on the system more than a decade later during ClimateGate when Kevin Trenberth emailed hockey stick Michael Mann and the entire climate science hockey team. He wrote,

“We can’t account for the lack of warming, and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data shows there should be even more warming, but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate”.

What followed was a 12-year program to repurpose ARGO as the global energy accounting tool, force series to match ARGO, and codify the result into AR6 as EEI equals 0.7 plus or minus 0.2. Our OHC paper published on March 10th this year agrees with Trenberth’s 2009 assessment. His response a few days later, he said,  “It is absolute nonsense. I don’t want to waste my time on it”. Clearly, we’re over the target. Node 3 falsified. ARGO derived OHC is physically meaningless.

Node 4, Earth’s energy imbalance is indistinguishable from zero.

First, look at the name, Earth’s energy imbalance. Watts are power, not energy. The correct name would be net radiative flux or power balance at the top of the atmosphere. But honesty is not an IPCC concern. The IPCC’s founding mandate charges them with assessing, “the risk of human-induced climate change”. Not whether humans are causing it, but that humans are causing it. The conclusion is built into the question.

EEI is computed in one of two ways. First, from CERES top of atmosphere satellite measured net radiation flux. And second, from ARGO derived OHC growth divided by Earth’s surface area and elapsed time. The CERES team itself admitted in Loeb et al. 2018 that its instruments cannot measure the absolute energy budget. And yet AR6 figure 7.2 went ahead and reported EEI as 0.7 plus or minus 0.2 watts per square meter with no caveat. Notice, by the way, that the number sits down at the surface on the ocean, not at the top of the atmosphere.

Hmm. Where does that number come from?  CERES quietly reports an absolute imbalance of 4.3 watts per square meter, then silently adjusts it to match the ARGO derived 0.7. The matched values are then cited as independent confirmation of each other. AR6 page 935 documents the adjustment openly. Circular reasoning, not validation. The signal is indistinguishable from zero. Node 4, falsified.

Node 5, bomb radiocarbon falsification of the carbon cycle.

My newest paper with Willie Soon titled, One Equation Reproduces 54 Years of Bomb Radiocarbon Decay and Challenges Central Assumptions of the IPCC Carbon Cycle Framework. We extracted two atmospheric time scales precisely from the data. It falsifies every Bern IRF model the IPCC has published. It shows post-industrial CO2 rise is natural. And it closes every standard IPCC and consensus escape hatch, including the Suess effect.

Between 1955 and 1963, atmospheric thermonuclear, aka hydrogen bomb testing, roughly doubled atmospheric carbon-14, known as radiocarbon. After the 1963 test ban, the excess decayed. We have measured that continuously for over 50 years. This is the most precise impulse response experiment ever done. We created the pulse. The atmosphere gave us the response. No model, no tuning, a direct measurement of nature’s eeigenvalue.

The IPCC has had this data set for 40 years and never used it to check,
validate, or falsify any of its carbon cycle claims.

They ignored it. We don’t. Start with two definitions from AR6 glossary, page 2237. Number one, “carbon dioxide is an extreme example. Its turnover time is only about four years” because of the rapid exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean and terrestrial biota. Number two, “response time or adjustment time is the time scale characterizing the decay of an instantaneous pulse into the reservoir”. Both are measured atmospheric quantities.

The global measured turnover time given by atmospheric inventory divided by gross output flux is 3.8 plus or minus 0.12 years.  Computed two independent ways. First, snapshot mass balance from AR6 figure 512 and refined reservoir routing on Mauna Loa data. They agreed to better than 1% supported by dozens of peer-reviewed studies over 40 years. Even the IPCC quotes about four years.

The adjustment time, the decay of an instantaneous pulse is exactly what the radiocarbon experiment measures. The 1955 to 63 nuclear tests were the pulse. The answer, decay time scale is 18.383 plus or minus 0.015 years. Single exponential R squared 99.998% over 54 years.

Using the IPCC’s own AR6 definitions, the two atmospheric time scales are 3.8 years for CO2 turnover and 18.383 years for bomb radiocarbon adjustment time linked by the bridge equations shown on the slide. Not 1,000, not 10,000, not hundreds of thousands. That’s what the data says. Now, look at what the IPCC has published. The Bern IRF model is the carbon cycle equation underlying every IPCC CO2 projection, every global warming potential, every CO2 equivalent number, every remaining carbon budget, every net zero pathway. The IPCC labels its time scales as policy relevant, then applies the Bern IRF models at 100, 200, 500, and even 1,000 year horizons.

The IPCC’s published Bern IRF models take a specific mathematical form, a permanent fraction, A0, plus a sum of exponentials. AR2 used five exponentials, AR3 through 6 used three exponentials. Now, look at the E folding time, T sub 1 over E. AR5 and 6 say it’s 165 years, AR4 says it’s 96 years, AR3 says it’s 46, and AR2 says it’s 41. Look at the permanent fraction, A0. AR5 and 6 say it’s 22%, AR4 says it’s 22, AR3 said it was 15, and AR2 said it was 14%. Very strange.

Now, look at the tau 1, which is the longest time constant. AR5 and 6 said it was 394 years, AR4 said it was 173, AR3 said it was 171, and AR2 said it was 372. Real physical impulse responses don’t double and halve and double again as modeling groups update their codes.

The bomb radiocarbon record was a single exponential decay the whole time. Bern was not. Now, look at all four Bern IRFs against the actual data. Everyone diverges within the first year or two. The Bern models predict 33 to 48% of a pulse will remain after 54 years. The data at 54 years says 4%.

The divergence from reality grows dramatically, a factor of 10 by 2020, a factor of 90 by 100 years, and a factor of 18,500 at 200 years. What does the IPCC say? AR5 box 6.1, multiple residence times for an excess of carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere, stating, “15 to 40% of CO2 emitted until 2100 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years”.

Now, step back for a moment. Why are they using this functional form at all? Why a sum of exponentials with a permanent constant added? The multi-exponential family is the natural function class for linear relaxation processes. That part is correct mathematics. But the family is general. The simplest member of the family, which is one exponential with no permanent fraction, decays to zero with a single time constant. Exactly what the data shows, 18.383 years, permanent fraction zero.

The data picks the simplest answer within the IPCC’s own function class.  But the IPCC doesn’t allow that answer. Their published forms require permanent fractions from 14 to 22%. They require three or more exponentials. And neither of those requirements comes from physics or reality.

There are constraints imposed on top of the function class
to purposely exclude the single exponential point.

Why? The single exponential has no permanent fraction. The permanent fraction is the entire policy payload. It’s what creates the multi-thousand year residence result. It is the lie buried in the math. It justifies cumulative carbon budgets, net zero targets, the claim that an emission today is committing the atmosphere for a thousand years or more. All lies. Set the permanent fraction to what the data shows, i.e. zero, and the cumulative emissions framework collapses.  Set the number of modes to what the data requires, i.e. one, and the long tail disappears. The function class is correct, but its constraints were chosen to to preserve a predetermined political conclusion.

Bern is parallel. Reality is serial. We call this the parallel serial fallacy.  A sum of exponentials is the impulse response of independent parallel reservoirs each draining directly on its own time constant. That is how the Bern IRF manufactures the long tails.

But reality is serial. Carbon flows from the atmosphere to
the surface ocean. Surface ocean to the thermocline
to the deep ocean. Each stage feeds the next.

The deep ocean is not a parallel drain on the atmosphere. It is the end of a serial pipeline. Parallel and serial systems are governed by entirely differential equations with different solution spaces. No parameter choice in the parallel family produces the serial answer.

The actual physical serial cascade observed from upstream collapses to a single dominant fast mode. Exactly what the bomb radioarbon data show. Wrong differential equations, wrong solution space, wrong functional form, structural falsification.

Now, we play Whack-a-Lie, the thousand-year defense.

So, where does the thousand-year tale come from? What’s the evidence? Answer: There is none. Not from measurement, not from observation, not from math, only neverending popup assertions.

The first one that always pops up is 14 C is just a tracer. It’s not the bulk. We proved the operator equivalence theorem OE and it it closes that completely.12 CO2 and 14 CO2 are exchanged by the exact same physical processes. Their mass balance operators are identical up to a small fractionation factor. Identical linear operators have identical eigen values. The bulk and the tracer decay with the exact same time constants.

Whack that one and out pops, the bomb pulse is too small. So the Revel nonlinearity kicks in at larger amplitude. The the OE closes that too. eigenvalues are intrinsic to the linear operator, not the input amplitude. And there is no evidence of a global ocean sink slowing ever.

Whack that and we get revel plus slow deep ocean circulation manufactures the tail. Bern is parallel. Reality is serial. Rapid cycling to the thermocline drains the surface. The deep ocean is downstream, not in parallel.  Whack that. You’ve now whacked all three. and they cycle back to tracer versus bulk as if you never mentioned it.

Now, one other defense I didn’t put on the slide. They’ll come and say, “But the surface ocean is observed to be saturating.” What they’re talking is about is there are three subtropical gyre stations between 22 and 32° north. One is called HOT in Hawaii,BATS in Bermuda, and ESOC in the Canary Islands. The combined area of those three points in the ocean is less than 1 millionth of the ocean surface.

The only regimes where revel buffering could show up first because gyres have the lowest exchange flux and the surface is only half the story. To slow that drain, the entire water column below down to the abyss would have to be saturated too with DIC (Dissolved Inorganic Carbon) . There is no such measurement. Argo OHC is meaningless. DIC sampling is even sparer. No global time series at policy precision.

And the IPCC’s claimed 2 and a half gigaton per year ocean sync isn’t measured at all. It’s a budget residual. Emissions minus atmospheric growth minus an alleged land sink. Even granting them their imaginary 2 gigaton per year ocean sink. The ocean holds 38,000 gigatons of carbon. That’s 0.66% per year below the precision of a single DIC measurement. That would be 666% per century. Saturation on any policy relevant time scale is mathematically impossible.

The bomb radiocarbon record proves it directly. Eight independent fit windows
across 50 years return the same value to within four parts in a thousand.
The global atmospheric sink rate has not slowed anywhere ever.

This is Whack-a-Lie. Each retreat has zero supporting evidence. When closed, another pops up. When they’re all closed, the cycle starts over again. They fail Popper’s criterion. The thousand-year claim is unfalsifiable by their own standards.

IPCC airborne fraction confusion.

The IPCC reports a  “stable airborne fraction” of “about 44%” cited as evidence that the ocean sink will saturate. But there are two distinct quantities both commonly called airborne fraction totally contradictory and both used by the IPCC imperfect Orwellian double speak lock step.

First is called ABF subL where L stands for logical. That’s the fraction of cumulative anthropogenic mass still airborne exactly as in IPCC’s own glossary definition. Under mass balance with the 3.8 year residence time, ABF subL is approximately 5.3% not 44%.

The second is called ABF subC. C is for crazy. That’s my word. I think Koutsoyiannis called it computational, but I prefer crazy. The the annual ratio of atmospheric increase to anthropogenic emissions, that’s a year-by-year number.   And from 1966 to 2019, it ranges between 18 to 77%. Up and down.It’s not like uniformly increasing or anything. It’s just randomly up and down between 18 and 77, a range factor of four.

The Orwellian “stable 44%” doesn’t exist. That arises only from unmentioned 15 to 30 year smoothing windows and then the constancy is a property of the smoothing operator. The variance collapses by a factor of two at a 4-year smoothing independently supporting our tow of 3.8 years.

The atmospheric CO2 inventory is rising. There is a net input of CO2. So what’s the signature of that net input? Note, I’m not talking about the signature of the atmosphere, but the signature of the net input to the atmosphere over the instrumental years. Koutsoyiannis measured it directly using the standard Keeling plot intercept method that you see on the screen. He calls the number delta 13 C subi meaning for input. Koutsoyiannis computed it across the 40 plus years from 1978 to 2022 at four clean air stations both hemispheres. The result -3.2 plus or minus.3 per mill constant no trend no drift.

Proxy reconstruction extended the analysis back 500 years to the little ice age. Same value invariant minus3. If fossil fuel carbon at 28 per mill were a significant fraction of the net input, the flux weighted signature would have to have drifted more negative values. It doesn’t. Fossil fuel carbon is below the detection threshold as a quantitative driver of the observed CO2 growth. Period.

The Suess effect that declining total atmospheric delta is evidence of fossil fuel dilution is completely falsified by this finding alone. The decline of total delta 13C by about 2 per mill is consistent with natural CO2 being added at the natural signature.  But the constant net input signature of -3.2 per mill is not consistent with fossil fuel dilution. Suess effect al falsified.  These three independent lines converge on the same verdict. The bomb radioarbon value which is 18.383 the constant delta 13 C subi which is -3.2 and the direct mass balance. Different physics, different data, same answer. The atmospheric rise of CO2 over 62 years is natural. The human contribution to the rise is negligible. Node 5 falsified.

The loop is closed. I’ve walked the circle of lies. GMST is not a physical quantity. It’s falsified by the physical tether theorem and Essex et al. CMIP is tuned to a fiction. OHC is an untethered global average over a non-equilibrium fluid. EI is indistinguishable from zero. Bern IRF mathematically incompatible with single exponential.

The rise is natural. The five nodes do not stand independently. GMST tunes the models. The models project OHC and EEI. The Bern IRF preserves the energy budget. The budget preserves GMST. Remove any node. The others lose their bases. Remove all five. The framework is gone. Every downstream quantity collapses with them. Every 1.52° threshold, every global warming potential, every CO2 equivalent number, every remaining carbon budget, it’s all void.

Every single IPCC climate metric is physically meaningless
because they’re all built on the same falsified constructs.
More than 30 IPCC metrics gone. All physically meaningless.
And now we’re back to the empty circle.

Their Whack-a-Lie Orwellian defense is that they have multiple lines of evidence. But even that fails because 5 * 0 equals 0.  38 years. How many of the major public-facing claims of the IPCC survive? Zero.  Every major public-facing claim of the IPC is scientifically invalid and categorically false. For 38 years, the IPCC has rewritten Western energy policy. Net zero by 2050, hundreds of trillions in projected expenditure, bans on combustion engines, natural gas, the cancellation of modern industrial civilization.

The IPCC never subjected its claims to proper falsification.
It declared them facts by repetition. “Unequivocal” 37 times in AR6.

We performed the falsification steps. They skipped. Five hypotheses flatly falsified. Direct empirical absolute. 38 years. All lies. Zero physical foundation. Words lied. Math didn’t. Math never lies. Galileo told us that God wrote two books, the Bible and the universe itself. He said, “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, in the language of mathematics. The math is the universe speaking. We listened. The IPCC did not.”

Thank you.

August 2026 El Nino Drives Global UAH Warming

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, which dropped back toward normal values. Now in August 2026 there is again an El Nino peaking, albeit at a lower level.

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 ~66 ppm, an 18% 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 well 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

image-8

See Also Worst Threat: Greenhouse Gas or Quiet Sun?

August 2026 UAH Temps: Ocean and Land Warms in All Regions banner-blog

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 a low in January 2026.  Since then El Nino in the Tropics has risen sharply pulling up all regions despite a drop in July.

UAH has updated their TLT (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for August 2026. 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 ahead the update from HadSST4 I posted recently on July 2026 El Nino Spikes SSTs Warming, 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. 2025 showed a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February.  Then in November and December SH land temps spiked while ocean temps showed litle change. In February 2026 NH land temps doubled, from Dec. 0.53C up to 1.14C last month.  Despite SH land changing little, and Tropical land cooling, the Global land anomaly jumped up from 0.53 to 0.93C.  That reversed in March with both NH land and Global land anomaly back down to 0.63C. That cooling offset SH Ocean warming doubling from 0.19C to 0.38C. In May was a warming spike in Tropics and SH ocean air while NH ocean air was flat. At the same time, Land air temps warmed in Tropics and NH while dropping in SH.  The unusual end result for May was Global, Land and Ocean air temp anomalies all showing the same 0.53C. In June  and July there were ups and down, and now in August an upward bump in NH and SH, both land and sea.

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 August 2026.  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.

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.  During 2025 there were ups and downs, but  in November/December all regions were cooler, led by a sharp drop in SH bringing the Global ocean anomaly down to 0.02C. In 2026, ocean warming was evident, with Tropics and SH pulling up Global ocean air temps despite little rise in NH ocean. Now in June and July that has reversed with SH cooling and pulling down the Global ocean anomaly, even despite tropical warming. Now in August all regions are up again, near summer of 2024 values, though Tropics rose only slightly.

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 Augusr 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. Some ups and downs followed with returns close to February values in August.  A remarkable spike in October was completely reversed in November/December, along with NH dropping sharply bringing the Global Land anomaly down to 0.52C, half of its peak value of 1.17C 09/2024.

In 2026 January and February Global land rebounded up to 1.14C, led by a NH warming spike. That NH spike was reversed in March and April back down to 0.43C.  In June land temps in SH plunged nearly 0.6C down to 0.2C, pulling Global land anomaly down more than 0.1C. July and August saw Global land temps up again with warming in all regions.

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 -0.02 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, later months declined steadily dropping. to 0.3C in December.  In 2026 the global anomaly was little changed through April, then rose to a new peak of 0.68C in August.

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

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.

July 2026 El Nino Spikes SSTs Warming

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.

Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated.  Reports since February are based on HadSST 4, but with a twist. The data is slightly different in the new version, 4.2.0.0 replacing 4.1.1.0. Product page is here.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST 4.2 starting in 2015 through July 2026. 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, now with a steady mild rising in 2026 pausing in May, resuming in June and extending in July.

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 comes a third iteration of the pattern starting in 2023 and continuing through July 2026. Each year presents a summer NH warming spike with the highest in 2023, now approached by 2026. The Tropics have a different rhythm, rising dramatically in 2023, peaking in 2024, then rapidly declining hitting bottom end of 2025. Now in 2026 El Nino is returning with a spike, helping to bring the Global anomaly upward.  Meanwhile SH is hovering around the Global mean, a slightly higher plateau than previous iterations. The result is that all regions are nearly matching July 2023.

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 was 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 starting 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.  2024 and 2025 replicated summer peaks in the previous itertation.  Now in 2026 July is nearly as high as 2023.

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 reached 1.4C before declining to 0.9 August 2026.  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 headed sharply downward, well below the previous two years, and since April through September aligning with 2010. In October there was an unusual upward spike, now reversed down to match 2022 and 2016.  The orange 2026 line started downward and is visible on top of 2016 purple line, then slightly higher, and now spiking higher in July.

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

The rose line is the average anomaly 1980-1996 inclusive, value 0.18.  The orange line the average 1980-2026, value 0.42 also for the period 1996-2013. The red line is 2013-2026, value 0.72. 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?

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

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

Updated: Fears and Facts about Reservoirs and Methane

A previous post explained how methane has been hyped in support of climate alarmism/activism. Now we have an additional campaign to disparage hydropower because of methane emissions from dam reservoirs. File this under “They have no shame.” Excerpts below with my bolds.

On March 5, 2018 a study was published in Environmental Research Letters Greenhouse gas emissions of hydropower in the Mekong River Basin can exceed those of fossil fuel energy sources

“The hydropower related emissions started in the Mekong in mid-1960’s when the first large reservoir was built in Thailand, and the emissions increased considerably in early 2000’s when hydropower development became more intensive. Currently the emissions are estimated to be around 15 million tonnes of CO2e per year, which is more than total emissions of all sectors in Lao PDR in year 2013,” says Dr Timo Räsänen who led the study. The GHG emissions are expected to increase when more hydropower is built. However, if construction of new reservoirs is halted, the emissions will decline slowly in time.

Another recent example of the claim is from Asia Times Global hydropower boom will add to climate change

The study, published in BioScience, looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted from 267 reservoirs across six continents. In total, the reservoirs studied have a surface area of more than 77,287 square kilometers (29,841 square miles). That’s equivalent to about a quarter of the surface area of all reservoirs in the world, which together cover 305,723 sq km – roughly the combined size of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“The new study confirms that reservoirs are major emitters of methane, a particularly aggressive greenhouse gas,” said Kate Horner, Executive Director of International Rivers, adding that hydropower dams “can no longer be considered a clean and green source of electricity.”

In fact, methane’s effect is 86 times greater than that of CO2 when considered on this two-decade timescale. Importantly, the study found that methane is responsible for 90% of the global warming impact of reservoir emissions over 20 years.

Alarmists are Wrong about Hydropower

Now CH4 is proclaimed the primary culprit held against hydropower. As usual, there is a kernel of truth buried beneath this obsessive campaign: Flooding of biomass does result in decomposition accompanied by some release of CH4 and CO2. From HydroQuebec:  Greenhouse gas emissions and reservoirs

 

Impoundment of hydroelectric reservoirs induces decomposition of a small fraction of the flooded biomass (forests, peatlands and other soil types) and an increase in the aquatic wildlife and vegetation in the reservoir.

The result is higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions after impoundment, mainly CO2 (carbon dioxide) and a small amount of CH4 (methane).

However, these emissions are temporary and peak two to four years after the reservoir is filled.

During the ensuing decade, CO2 emissions gradually diminish and return to the levels given off by neighboring lakes and rivers.

Hydropower generation, on average, emits 50 times less GHGs than a natural gas generating station and about 70 times less than a coal-fired generating station.

The Facts about Tropical Reservoirs

Activists estimate Methane emissions from dams and reservoirs across the planet, including hydropower, are estimated to be significantly larger than previously thought, approximately equal to 1 gigaton per year.

Activists also claim that dams in boreal regions like Quebec are not the problem, but tropical reservoirs are a big threat to the climate. Contradicting that is an intensive study of Brazilian dams and reservoirsGreenhouse Gas Emissions from Reservoirs: Studying the Issue in Brazil

The Itaipu Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. The name “Itaipu” was taken from an isle that existed near the construction site. In the Guarani language, Itaipu means “the sound of a stone”. The American composer Philip Glass has also written a symphonic cantata named Itaipu, in honour of the structure.

Five Conclusions from Studying Brazilian Reservoirs

1) The budget approach is essential for a proper grasp of the processes going on in reservoirs. This approach involves taking into account the ways in which the system exchanged GHGs with the atmosphere before the reservoir was flooded. Older studies measured only the emissions of GHG from the reservoir surface or, more recently, from downstream de-gassing. But without the measurement of the inputs of carbon to the system, no conclusions can be drawn from surface measurements alone.

2) When you consider the total budgets, most reservoirs acted as sinks of carbon in the short run (our measurements covered one year in each reservoir). In other words, they received more carbon than they exported to the atmosphere and to downstream.

3) Smaller reservoirs are more efficient as carbon traps than the larger ones.

4) As for the GHG impact, in order to determine it, we should add the methane (CH4) emissions to the fraction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions which comes from the flooded biomass and organic carbon in the flooded (terrestrial) soil. The other CO2 emissions, arising from the respiration of aquatic organisms or from the decomposition of terrestrial detritus that flows into the reservoir (including domestic sewage), are not impacts of the reservoir. From this sum, we should deduct the amount of carbon that is stored in the sediment and which will be kept there for at least the life of the reservoir (usually more than 80 years). This “stored carbon” ranges from as little as 2 percent of the total carbon output to more than 25 percent, depending on the reservoirs.

5) When we assess the GHG impacts following the guidelines just described, all of FURNAS’s reservoirs have lower emissions than the cleanest European oil plant. The worst case – Manso, which was sampled only three years after the impoundment, and therefore in a time in which the contribution from the flooded biomass was still very significant – emitted about half as much carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2 eq) as the average oil plant from the United States (CO2 eq is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases based upon their global warming potential, GWP. CO2 eq for a gas is derived by multiplying the tons of the gas by the associated GWP.) We also observed a very good correlation between GHG emissions and the age of the reservoirs. The reservoirs older than 30 years had negligible emissions, and some of them had a net absorption of CO2eq.

 

Keeping Methane in Perspective

Over the last 30 years, CH4 in the atmosphere increased from 1.6 ppm to 1.8 ppm, compared to CO2, presently at 400 ppm. So all the dam building over 3 decades, along with all other land use was part of a miniscule increase of a microscopic gas, 200 times smaller than the trace gas, CO2.

Background Facts on Methane and Climate Change

Methane pollution surrounding Porter Ranch, LA, ( Photo credit: Energy Efficiency Team)

 

The US Senate is considering an act to repeal with prejudice an Obama anti-methane regulation. The story from activist source Climate Central is
Senate Mulls ‘Kill Switch’ for Obama Methane Rule

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote soon on whether to use the Congressional Review Act to kill an Obama administration climate regulation that cuts methane emissions from oil and gas wells on federal land. The rule was designed to reduce oil and gas wells’ contribution to climate change and to stop energy companies from wasting natural gas.

The Congressional Review Act is rarely invoked. It was used this month to reverse a regulation for the first time in 16 years and it’s a particularly lethal way to kill a regulation as it would take an act of Congress to approve a similar regulation. Federal agencies cannot propose similar regulations on their own.

The Claim Against Methane

Now some Republican senators are hesitant to take this step because of claims like this one in the article:

Methane is 86 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years and is a significant contributor to climate change. It warms the climate much more than other greenhouse gases over a period of decades before eventually losing its potency. Atmospheric carbon dioxide remains a potent greenhouse gas for thousands of years.

Essentially the journalist is saying: As afraid as you are about CO2, you should be 86 times more afraid of methane. Which also means, if CO2 is not a warming problem, your fear of methane is 86 times zero. The thousands of years claim is also bogus, but that is beside the point of this post, which is Methane.

IPCC Methane Scare

The article helpfully provides a link referring to Chapter 8 of IPCC AR5 report by Working Group 1 Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing.

The document is full of sophistry and creative accounting in order to produce as scary a number as possible. Table 8.7 provides the number for CH4 potency of 86 times that of CO2.  They note they were able to increase the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CH4 by 20% over the estimate in AR4. The increase comes from adding in more indirect effects and feedbacks, as well as from increased concentration in the atmosphere.

In the details are some qualifying notes like these:

Uncertainties related to the climate–carbon feedback are large, comparable in magnitude to the strength of the feedback for a single gas.

For CH4 GWP we estimate an uncertainty of ±30% and ±40% for 20- and 100-year time horizons, respectively (for 5 to 95% uncertainty range).

 

Methane Facts from the Real World
From Sea Friends (here):

Methane is natural gas CH4 which burns cleanly to carbon dioxide and water. Methane is eagerly sought after as fuel for electric power plants because of its ease of transport and because it produces the least carbon dioxide for the most power. Also cars can be powered with compressed natural gas (CNG) for short distances.

In many countries CNG has been widely distributed as the main home heating fuel. As a consequence, methane has leaked to the atmosphere in large quantities, now firmly controlled. Grazing animals also produce methane in their complicated stomachs and methane escapes from rice paddies and peat bogs like the Siberian permafrost.

It is thought that methane is a very potent greenhouse gas because it absorbs some infrared wavelengths 7 times more effectively than CO2, molecule for molecule, and by weight even 20 times. As we have seen previously, this also means that within a distance of metres, its effect has saturated, and further transmission of heat occurs by convection and conduction rather than by radiation.

Note that when H20 is present in the lower troposphere, there are few photons left for CH4 to absorb:

Even if the IPCC radiative greenhouse theory were true, methane occurs only in minute quantities in air, 1.8ppm versus CO2 of 390ppm. By weight, CH4 is only 5.24Gt versus CO2 3140Gt (on this assumption). If it truly were twenty times more potent, it would amount to an equivalent of 105Gt CO2 or one thirtieth that of CO2. A doubling in methane would thus have no noticeable effect on world temperature.

However, the factor of 20 is entirely misleading because absorption is proportional to the number of molecules (=volume), so the factor of 7 (7.3) is correct and 20 is wrong. With this in mind, the perceived threat from methane becomes even less.

Further still, methane has been rising from 1.6ppm to 1.8ppm in 30 years (1980-2010), assuming that it has not stopped rising, this amounts to a doubling in 2-3 centuries. In other words, methane can never have any measurable effect on temperature, even if the IPCC radiative cooling theory were right.

Because only a small fraction in the rise of methane in air can be attributed to farm animals, it is ludicrous to worry about this aspect or to try to farm with smaller emissions of methane, or to tax it or to trade credits.

The fact that methane in air has been leveling off in the past two decades, even though we do not know why, implies that it plays absolutely no role as a greenhouse gas.

More information at THE METHANE MISCONCEPTIONS by Dr Wilson Flood (UK) here

Summary:

Natural Gas (75% methane) burns the cleanest with the least CO2 for the energy produced.

Leakage of methane is already addressed by efficiency improvements for its economic recovery, and will apparently be subject to even more regulations.

The atmosphere is a methane sink where the compound is oxidized through a series of reactions producing 1 CO2 and 2H20 after a few years.

GWP (Global Warming Potential) is CO2 equivalent heat trapping based on laboratory, not real world effects.

Any IR absorption by methane is limited by H2O absorbing in the same low energy LW bands.

There is no danger this century from natural or man-made methane emissions.

Conclusion

Senators and the public are being bamboozled by opaque scientific bafflegab. The plain truth is much different. The atmosphere is a methane sink in which CH4 is oxidized in the first few meters. The amount of CH4 available in the air is miniscule, even compared to the trace gas CO2, and it is not accelerating. Methane is the obvious choice to signal virtue on the climate issue since governmental actions will not make a bit of difference anyway, except perhaps to do some economic harm.

Give a daisy a break (h/t Derek here)

Daisy methane

Footnote:

For a more thorough and realistic description of atmospheric warming see:

Fearless Physics from Dr. Salby

August Update: Pacific El Niño and Atlantic Niña Impacting Hurricanes

A previous post in July reprinted below describes the unusual oceanic event juxtaposing a strong Pacific El Nino with an Atlantic Nina.  Now in August Colorado State University (CSU) hurricane researchers have maintained their forecast for a well  below-average Atlantic hurricane season with their updated 2026 projection.

To enlarge, open image in new tab

Meteorology Science Behind These Forecasts

From severe-weather.eu: Above is the 30-day anomaly change, which shows the extent of cooling over the last month. You can see the cooling process over a large area of the tropical Atlantic, peaking right over the equatorial region, where the trade winds are strongest.

When observing changes between the ocean and the atmosphere, there is one indicator that tells us right away how the atmospheric circulation is behaving, called the Velocity Potential. This tells us on a large scale, where air is sinking and where it is rising in the atmosphere.

An example of this is shown in the image above: increased storms and rainfall on one side, and reduced storms and drier weather on the other. You can see on the top, how the air is diverging (moving away) and converging (moving together). This movement and rising/sinking of air is referred to as the Velocity Potential.

Above is the average upper-level velocity potential during a cold Atlantic Niña event in August. You can see sinking air over the Atlantic, aided by its cold Niña event, or at least by its driving force, while the Pacific is in strong lift mode (usually El Niño).

The main focus in these maps is an area called the Main Development Region (MDR). It is where tropical systems form and strengthen during the Hurricane Season, like a hurricane nursery area.

You can see this area marked in the next image below, which is the EMCWF seasonal forecast for the September 2026 Velocity Potential anomaly. This is the peak month for hurricane activity, and as you can see, the forecast shows a significant lift anomaly in the Pacific due to the Super El Niño Event.

Note: In this chart, the blue area signifies rising air, and the red area shows sinking air.

That creates a matching pair in a sinking air region to the west over the Indian Ocean, outlining large-scale atmospheric circulation. The Atlantic MDR zone is in a neutral anomaly, but with Africa suppressed, this is unfavorable for a large number of storms.

El Niño events also significantly alter the number of tropical systems in the Atlantic and their intensity. At the top is our simple schematic of the El Niño impact on the hurricane season, producing an atmospheric flow that causes a hostile environment for tropical storms, protecting the U.S. from landfalls.

Background from Previous Post

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, showing a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa. © NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations, arrow added using Canva

There’s been much ado about a strong El Niño, but less is heard about the appearance of a sister anomaly Atlantic Niña.  What happens to summer storm activity when both are on stage?  Ben Cost does a good job of pulling together the implications in his NY Post article El Niño’s sister La Niña has arrived in the Atlantic — here’s what that means for summer weather.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Update with latest Ocean SST from OISST v.2

As described in more detail below, currently we are seeing an unusual mixed signal in the ocean patterns: a surging El Nino in the Pacific and at the same time an Atlantic Nina.  Here are the latest data from OISST v.2 regarding this phenomenon.

 

The extremely strong El Niño brewing in the South Pacific isn’t the only unusual weather pattern on the horizon.  Meteorological experts warn that the oceanic anomaly’s sister —  Atlantic Niña — could be rearing its head in the tropical part of The Pond, potentially helping curtail the number of storms we’ll see this season, according to Severe Weather Europe.

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, shows a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa.

This climate pattern is similar to La Niña — the cold phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) — in that both cause temperature plunges below average. The difference is that this big chill affects the eastern equatorial Atlantic Ocean instead of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, potentially altering wind and rainfall across the tropics, per Climate.org.

These two anomalies appear to work on opposite poles (warm vs. cold), but they are actually perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact.

Should surface temps on the Atlantic Ocean hover at 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit below average for at least two overlapping seasons, this could mark just the sixth Atlantic Niña in the last four decades.

The sibling anomaly El Niño, meanwhile, causes preternaturally warm temperatures on the Pacific Ocean’s surface with forecasters predicting that this particular version could be up to 6.5 degrees warmer than average, potentially making it the strongest El Niño on record.

Despite being polar opposites on the thermometer, these temp-affecting twins are “perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact,” long-range forecaster Andrej Flis wrote for Severe Weather Europe.

This means that both will help curb hurricanes — but in different ways. El Niño produces high wind shear and sinking dry conditions over the Atlantic and Caribbean — where wind shear is already the second highest on record for July — potentially nipping the storm systems in the bud, according to Weather.com.

This prophylactic effect is evident in the dramatic reduction in the number of forecasted storms, which currently totals just nine, according to Colorado State University’s tropical meteorology project team.

Of these, only four are projected to become hurricanes, while just one will attain Category 3 status or stronger, marking five fewer storms and three fewer hurricanes than an average season.

El Niño’s sister system, meanwhile, literally throws cold water on cyclones. Cooler ocean temps in the Atlantic prevent the heat and moisture buildup required for thunderstorm buildup, according to The Conversation.

It will be interesting if these sibling systems have double the preventive impact come hurricane season.

Despite the forecast covering the August-January period, we are already observing this in July. If we look at the seasonal forecast, the latest data clearly shows a large area of below-normal tropical activity across the MDR and the Atlantic region. At the same time, we see enhanced activity in the Pacific, aided by the low pressure and rising air associated with El Niño.

So far, Tropical Storm Arthur was the only named storm to form in the Atlantic Basin before July 17 — one fewer than during and average year, Gizmodo reported.

And while it caused flash flooding and tornadoes to lash the south, this so-called superstorm fizzled before long.   Meanwhile, there are no signs of an Atlantic hurricane; the first one usually forms by August 11.

To enlarge, open in new tab.

Canada Wildfire Data vs. Fears

Traffic moves along One World Trade Center in New York City amid smokey haze from wildfires in Canada.Andy Bao / AP June 2026

There’s been a lot of concern this summer about Canada wildfires along with claims about global warming/climate change being the cause.  This post is to provide data and history as context for understanding what happens in this boreal forest.  First an update from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS).

The map shows the current distribution of wildfires in Canada and hotspots as of August 6, 2026. The Eastern part has now reduced down greatly.  The action now is in the West along the US border. The infographic provides the data on Active fires, new fires and extinguished fires. There are numbers for year to date and 10 yr. averages. The graph on the left shows area burned each year from 2017 through 2026 to date. Humans caused 42% of the number of wildfires, and nature caused 92% of the area burned.

As Chris Martz pointed out in an interview, boreal forests burn every year as part of their natural life cycle. Also Canada forests are vast and remote so that management is challenging.  A previous post here mentioned that some practices can and should be improved, especially since recent years have been more active and destructive, especially 2023, 25 and now 2026. Martz also provided some data contradicting the notion global warming is the cause.

The drought and heat wave indices are where climatic effects would show up.  Yes there are recent spikes, but also numerous precedents in the past. In neither case do the patterns reflect rising CO2, let alone human hydrocarbon use.  In fact there is a significant decrease in the worst of the drought categories despite the spike in 2023–24.

 

July 2026 SH Ocean Cools, Land Warms, Global UAH Stable

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 back toward normal values.

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 ~66 ppm, an 18% 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 well 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

image-8

See Also Worst Threat: Greenhouse Gas or Quiet Sun?

July 2026 UAH Temps: SH Ocean Cools, Offsets Land Warming banner-blog

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 July 2026. 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 ahead the update from HadSST4 I posted recently on May 2026 SSTs Cease Warming. 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. 2025 showed a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February.  Then in November and December SH land temps spiked while ocean temps showed litle change. In February 2026 NH land temps doubled, from Dec. 0.53C up to 1.14C last month.  Despite SH land changing little, and Tropical land cooling, the Global land anomaly jumped up from 0.53 to 0.93C.  That reversed in March with both NH land and Global land anomaly back down to 0.63C. That cooling offset SH Ocean warming doubling from 0.19C to 0.38C. In May was a warming spike in Tropics and SH ocean air while NH ocean air was flat. At the same time, Land air temps warmed in Tropics and NH while dropping in SH.  The unusual end result for May was Global, Land and Ocean air temp anomalies all showing the same 0.53C. In June SH land dropped sharply along with some SH ocean cooling, pulling down Global anomalies. Now in July, SH ocean cooled offsetting Global land warming.

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 July 2026.  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.

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. In November/December all regions were cooler, led by a sharp drop in SH bringing the Global ocean anomaly down to 0.02C. In 2026, ocean warming was evident, with Tropics and SH pulling up Global ocean air temps despite little rise in NH ocean. Now in June and July that has reversed with SH cooling and pulling down the Global ocean anomaly, even despite tropical warming.

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 July 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. Some ups and downs followed with returns close to February values in August.  A remarkable spike in October was completely reversed in November/December, along with NH dropping sharply bringing the Global Land anomaly down to 0.52C, half of its peak value of 1.17C 09/2024. In 2026 January and February Global land rebounded up to 1.14C, led by a NH warming spike. That NH spike was reversed in March and April back down to 0.43C.  In May the Global land anomaly went back up to 0.53C with all regions around that value. Then in June land temps in SH plunged nearly 0.6C down to 0.2C, pulling Global land anomaly down more than 0.1C. July saw Global land temps up again with warming in all regions.

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 -0.02 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, later months declined steadily until  August Global Land and Ocean was down to 0.39C. then rose slightly to 0.53 in October, before dropping. to 0.3C in December.  By May 2026 the anomaly was back up to 0.53C, now holding at 0.48C in July.

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

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.

July Update: Pacific El Niño and Atlantic Niña

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, showing a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa. © NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations, arrow added using Canva

There’s been much ado about a strong El Niño, but less is heard about the appearance of a sister anomaly Atlantic Niña.  What happens to summer storm activity when both are on stage?  Ben Cost does a good job of pulling together the implications in his NY Post article El Niño’s sister La Niña has arrived in the Atlantic — here’s what that means for summer weather.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Update with latest Ocean SST from OISST v.2

As described in more detail below, currently we are seeing an unusual mixed signal in the ocean patterns: a surging El Nino in the Pacific and at the same time an Atlantic Nina.  Here are the latest data from OISST v.2 regarding this phenomenon.

 

The extremely strong El Niño brewing in the South Pacific isn’t the only unusual weather pattern on the horizon.  Meteorological experts warn that the oceanic anomaly’s sister —  Atlantic Niña — could be rearing its head in the tropical part of The Pond, potentially helping curtail the number of storms we’ll see this season, according to Severe Weather Europe.

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, shows a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa.

This climate pattern is similar to La Niña — the cold phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) — in that both cause temperature plunges below average. The difference is that this big chill affects the eastern equatorial Atlantic Ocean instead of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, potentially altering wind and rainfall across the tropics, per Climate.org.

These two anomalies appear to work on opposite poles (warm vs. cold), but they are actually perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact.

Should surface temps on the Atlantic Ocean hover at 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit below average for at least two overlapping seasons, this could mark just the sixth Atlantic Niña in the last four decades.

The sibling anomaly El Niño, meanwhile, causes preternaturally warm temperatures on the Pacific Ocean’s surface with forecasters predicting that this particular version could be up to 6.5 degrees warmer than average, potentially making it the strongest El Niño on record.

Despite being polar opposites on the thermometer, these temp-affecting twins are “perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact,” long-range forecaster Andrej Flis wrote for Severe Weather Europe.

This means that both will help curb hurricanes — but in different ways. El Niño produces high wind shear and sinking dry conditions over the Atlantic and Caribbean — where wind shear is already the second highest on record for July — potentially nipping the storm systems in the bud, according to Weather.com.

This prophylactic effect is evident in the dramatic reduction in the number of forecasted storms, which currently totals just nine, according to Colorado State University’s tropical meteorology project team.

Of these, only four are projected to become hurricanes, while just one will attain Category 3 status or stronger, marking five fewer storms and three fewer hurricanes than an average season.

El Niño’s sister system, meanwhile, literally throws cold water on cyclones. Cooler ocean temps in the Atlantic prevent the heat and moisture buildup required for thunderstorm buildup, according to The Conversation.

It will be interesting if these sibling systems have double the preventive impact come hurricane season.

Despite the forecast covering the August-January period, we are already observing this in July. If we look at the seasonal forecast, the latest data clearly shows a large area of below-normal tropical activity across the MDR and the Atlantic region. At the same time, we see enhanced activity in the Pacific, aided by the low pressure and rising air associated with El Niño.

So far, Tropical Storm Arthur was the only named storm to form in the Atlantic Basin before July 17 — one fewer than during and average year, Gizmodo reported.

And while it caused flash flooding and tornadoes to lash the south, this so-called superstorm fizzled before long.   Meanwhile, there are no signs of an Atlantic hurricane; the first one usually forms by August 11.

To enlarge, open in new tab.

Oceans Make Climate in Steps

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

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

Period Average ºC
1982-1997 18.0
1997-2014 18.2
2014-2023 18.5
2023-2025/03 18.7

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

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

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

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

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

Outlook: Pacific El Niño and Atlantic Niña

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, showing a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa. © NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations, arrow added using Canva

There’s been much ado about a strong El Niño, but less is heard about the appearance of a sister anomaly Atlantic Niña.  What happens to summer storm activity when both are on stage?  Ben Cost does a good job of pulling together the implications in his NY Post article El Niño’s sister La Niña has arrived in the Atlantic — here’s what that means for summer weather.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The extremely strong El Niño brewing in the South Pacific isn’t the only unusual weather pattern on the horizon.  Meteorological experts warn that the oceanic anomaly’s sister —  Atlantic Niña — could be rearing its head in the tropical part of The Pond, potentially helping curtail the number of storms we’ll see this season, according to Severe Weather Europe.

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, shows a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa.

This climate pattern is similar to La Niña — the cold phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) — in that both cause temperature plunges below average. The difference is that this big chill affects the eastern equatorial Atlantic Ocean instead of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, potentially altering wind and rainfall across the tropics, per Climate.org.

These two anomalies appear to work on opposite poles (warm vs. cold), but they are actually perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact.

Should surface temps on the Atlantic Ocean hover at 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit below average for at least two overlapping seasons, this could mark just the sixth Atlantic Niña in the last four decades.

The sibling anomaly El Niño, meanwhile, causes preternaturally warm temperatures on the Pacific Ocean’s surface with forecasters predicting that this particular version could be up to 6.5 degrees warmer than average, potentially making it the strongest El Niño on record.

Despite being polar opposites on the thermometer, these temp-affecting twins are “perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact,” long-range forecaster Andrej Flis wrote for Severe Weather Europe.

This means that both will help curb hurricanes — but in different ways. El Niño produces high wind shear and sinking dry conditions over the Atlantic and Caribbean — where wind shear is already the second highest on record for July — potentially nipping the storm systems in the bud, according to Weather.com.

This prophylactic effect is evident in the dramatic reduction in the number of forecasted storms, which currently totals just nine, according to Colorado State University’s tropical meteorology project team.

Of these, only four are projected to become hurricanes, while just one will attain Category 3 status or stronger, marking five fewer storms and three fewer hurricanes than an average season.

El Niño’s sister system, meanwhile, literally throws cold water on cyclones. Cooler ocean temps in the Atlantic prevent the heat and moisture buildup required for thunderstorm buildup, according to The Conversation.

It will be interesting if these sibling systems have double the preventive impact come hurricane season.

Despite the forecast covering the August-January period, we are already observing this in July. If we look at the seasonal forecast, the latest data clearly shows a large area of below-normal tropical activity across the MDR and the Atlantic region. At the same time, we see enhanced activity in the Pacific, aided by the low pressure and rising air associated with El Niño.

So far, Tropical Storm Arthur was the only named storm to form in the Atlantic Basin before July 17 — one fewer than during and average year, Gizmodo reported.

And while it caused flash flooding and tornadoes to lash the south, this so-called superstorm fizzled before long.   Meanwhile, there are no signs of an Atlantic hurricane; the first one usually forms by August 11.

To enlarge, open in new tab.