Wood Romances

A prepublication version of the Indicators of Global Climate Change 2025 (IGCC25) has recently been released. This report provides an annual update to IPCC's AR6 WG1 report concerning human emissions and global warming. The data provided as excel spreadsheets related to this report was extensive, and this allows me to produce some graphs I haven't been able to do before. These data do a really good job of showing the relative impact of human and anthropogenic forcings since 1750.  Using HadCRUT5 (1850-1900 Baseline) First I decided to show these forcings with GMST anomalies from HadCRUT5 to see how well the quantifications of forcings agree with observations for warming. This means for this section I'm limiting myself to values from 1850 to present. The graph below shows an update to Gillett's analysis used in AR6 that made it possible to conclude that human activity is responsible for virtually all the warming above the 1850-1900 mean. For this graph, I set HadCRUT5 to...

A couple months ago, I saw that the " Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024 " ( IGCC24 ) was published, which is an annual update on the state of global climate and how it is changing in response to human and natural forcings. The data provides the most up to date information on human emissions and associated changes in radiative forcings as well as an evaluation of the change in temperature. A graphical summary of this is below. From IGCC24 I thought it would be helpful to show how updated values for warming, EEI, and radiative forcings would impact calculations for Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS). Here's their accounting of the various natural and anthropogenic forcings. Note that s olar forcing in the diagram above is only for 2024 only and so disagrees with the accounting in the table below. Change in Radiative Forcing Forcer 1750-2024 CO2 2.33 ± 0.28 W/m² CH4 0.57 ± 0.11 W/m² N2O 0.23 ± 0.03 W/m² Halogenated GHGs 0.41 ± 0.08 W/m² Ozone 0.5 ± 0.25 W/m² Strat...

Accounting for Climate Forcings Puts ECS Near 3 °C From ClimateBrink The so-called "Climate Working Group," hired by the Department of Energy to write what Roger Pielke Jr termed a "red team" response to climate science  (my initial response is here ) is predictably critical of the central scientific estimate for ECS. The first ECS estimate I know of was calculated by Arrhenius, who concluded that 2xCO2 would cause between 4-6°C warming. This value was revised downward by Gilbert Plass in the 1950s to ~3°C, and since the 1970s this has become the standard estimate. The IPCC currently says the likely range is 2.5-4.0°C, largely as a result of Sherwood et al 2020 (S22),[1] which is still to date the most comprehensive assessment of ECS (Sherwood's likely range was 2.6-3.9°C). There is a growing body of scientific literature arguing that recent observational evidence is more consistent with an ECS closer to 4°C, suggesting that the IPCC may be a bit conservative on...

A paper was published this week that argues that low-sensitivity models do a poor job of reproducing CERES-derived EEI trends. In the words of the paper, the authors used CMIP6 models "to illustrate that low climate sensitivity models have an EEI trend behavior that is inconsistent with the satellite-derived EEI trend." Even though models with an ECS near 3°C do a good job of reproducing current warming, CMIP6 models often differ in the in EEI trends. For instance, The CERES data show a stronger trend in EEI than the multi-model CMIP6 mean and higher EEI in 2023 than any of the CMIP6 models. However, for individual CMIP6 models and ensembles, EEI is comparable to or higher at other periods than the CERES value in 2023. The difference in trends can be seen by comparing the red CERES line to the black CMIP6 model mean. Even though the interannual variability in the CMIP6 models is consistent CERES observations, the observed trend in EEI, especially since about 2010, is higher t...

In a recent talk  (relevant excerpt from John Shewchuk  here ) given to an Australian political group called the Institute for Public Affairs (IPA), William Happer argued that doubling CO2 causes only 0.71 K warming, and that amount of warming for 2xCO2 is too small to matter. He then suggests that in order to make CO2 a problem, scientists had to invent giant feedbacks to amplify warming by as much as 10x the amount caused by CO2 alone. I've seen this claim repeated by others on X and other social media platforms, but as best I can tell Happer originates this particular argument. So I'd like to consider, is this plausible at all? I think it's pretty easy to investigate this and show conclusively that it is not. In fact, even Happer disagreed with this claim as recently as 2020. Ranges for ECS/TCR in IPCC Reports Happer's Argument At about the 1 minute mark of the above linked excerpt, Happer explains his math on how he arrives at 0.71 K for equilibrium climate sensitiv...