Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Good news (unless you are a climate doomster) from the University of Illinois Chicago Climate Research Lab. Of course, it’s another climate model, so take it with a grain of salt – Anthony
But by the second half of the 21st century, rising global temperatures could make the Sahara much wetter, according to UIC researchers. By that time, the North African desert could see 75% more precipitation than its historical norm, as reported in Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. Under extreme climate conditions, rainfall is expected to increase in southeastern and south-central Africa, too, the researchers said.
“Changing rainfall patterns will affect billions of people, both in and outside Africa,” said lead author Thierry Ndetatsin Taguela, a postdoctoral climate researcher in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “We have to start planning to face these changes, from flood management to drought-resistant crops.”
Taguela said understanding how rising temperatures affect rainfall can help in the development of adaptation strategies. In the study, he used an ensemble of 40 climate models to simulate summer precipitation in Africa in the second half of the 21st century (2050-2099) compared with the historical period (1965-2014). Taguela analyzed models’ outputs under two climate scenarios: one that simulated moderate greenhouse gas emissions and one that simulated very high greenhouse gas emissions.
Both scenarios predicted that precipitation over Africa will generally increase by the end of the 21st century, with some regional variation. Notably, rainfall in the Sahara Desert is expected to increase by 75%, followed by a 25% increase in southeastern Africa and a 17% increase in south-central Africa. In contrast, researchers expect the southwestern region to be drier, with an anticipated 5% decline in precipitation.
“The Sahara is projected to almost double its historical precipitation levels, which is surprising for such a climatologically dry region,” Taguela said. “But while most models agree on the overall trend of wetter conditions, there’s still considerable uncertainty in how much rainfall they project. Improving these models is critical for building confidence in regional projections.”
For the most part, these projected changes are associated with the effects of climate change, as higher temperatures help the atmosphere hold more moisture, which in turn enhances rainfall. Changes in atmospheric circulation also played a part in reducing rainfall.
“Understanding the physical mechanisms driving precipitation is essential for developing adaptation strategies that can withstand both wetter and drier futures,” Taguela said.
Sadiq Khan’s Ulez failed to lower pollution levels, a study has found.
Sadiq Khan’s Ulez failed to lower pollution levels, a study has found.
Sadiq Khan controversially expanded London‘s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) two years ago, at an estimated cost of up to £155 million. The Daily Mail has the story.
Now, a breakthrough study suggests that fervent opposition at the time was well–judged.
Scientists at the University of Birmingham say the expansion of the ULEZ in August 2023 had no significant impact on lowering air pollution.
In addition, London still faces air pollution levels well above international health–based guidelines, according to the experts.
Campaigners are now calling for ULEZ to be scrapped altogether as it is saddling ‘Londoners with mountains of debt’.
‘This is just further evidence that the ULEZ expansion was about raising money rather than improving air quality,’ Thomas Turrell AM, Transport & Environment spokesperson for City Hall Conservatives, told the Daily Mail.
‘This is exactly what TfL’s own modelling showed, but yet again, Sadiq Khan is ignoring the evidence when it doesn’t suit his agenda.’
Damning figures released in 2023 showed how the ULEZ expansion generated a whopping £5.3 million in its first week alone – with millions more raked in from drivers since.
Introduced in April 2019, ULEZ allows authorities to charge diesel and petrol vehicles £12.50/day for operating in London if they are not compliant with emissions standards.
It uses a network of cameras that snap a photo of a vehicle’s plates, which searches a database to check if it is compliant, and, if not, issues a fine to the owner.
ULEZ was intended to reduce vehicle emissions in some of London’s most polluted areas, but the decision to expand it to areas where traffic is less dense two years ago proved controversial.
It means the ULEZ now applies to all 32 London boroughs, covering over 1,500 square kilometres (580 sq miles) and around nine million people. The zone pushes right up to the borders of surrounding counties including Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire.
The new University of Birmingham study focused on two harmful pollutants called nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and PM2.5 – which refers to fine particles with a diameter 2.5 micrometers or less, invisible to the naked eye.
NO2 can lead to health issues like inflamed airways while aggravating existing heart and lung diseases, while PM2.5 can enter the lungs and then the bloodstream, lodging in the heart, brain and other organs.
The team studied air quality data captured hourly at 124 sites across London following the introduction of ULEZ in April 2021, and its major expansion in August 2023.
They also created a computer model for assessing the direct impact of ULEZ on these pollutants in the Greater London area.
According to the findings, there was a 19.6 per cent reduction in NO2 at roadside sites in central London within three months of ULEZ originally being introduced in 2019.
Meanwhile, nitrogen oxides (NOx) – the wider group of toxic gases to which NO2 belongs – fell by 28.8 per cent in the same period for the same area.
However, no significant impact was detected on NO2 or NOx levels following the ULEZ expansion in August 2023.
What’s more, PM2.5 pollution across the whole of London has not significantly fallen over the entire period – not just since 2023.
Unfortunately, NO2 and PM 2.5 (fine particles that can enter into our lungs) pollution in London remains well above guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The city will host some 70,000 scientists, activists, journalists, politicians, and observers (including CFACT), who will party, participate in endless meetings, and plot ways to convert waning worries about a planetary climate crisis into continued sinecures for those who profit.
Repeating the annual United Nations ritual yet again, COP30 will run from Nov. 10 to Nov. 21 in Belem, on the edge of Brazil’s northwestern Amazon rainforest.
The city will host some 70,000 scientists, activists, journalists, politicians, and observers (including CFACT), who will party, participate in endless meetings, and plot ways to convert waning worries about a planetary climate crisis into continued sinecures for those who profit.
This 30th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change intends to “accelerate global action” on climate change through “multilateral cooperation” and “nature-based” solutions.
Its key priorities include limiting industrial-era (post-Little Ice Age) global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, advancing “just transitions” from fossil fuels to “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy, and addressing social and economic impacts resulting from climate changes imposed on poor countries by rich developed countries, primarily by transferring trillions of dollars from rich to poor nations.
Other “core themes” include protecting rainforests and other sensitive areas and creating a global “bioeconomy” that “prioritizes the sustainable use of biological resources” (plants, animals, microorganisms and their derivatives) to produce food, energy, raw materials, and other essential products “while minimizing environmental harm and promoting social equity.”
Diversity, equity, inclusion, social and climate justice, “net zero” and special concern for women and children who will be most “grievously impacted” by so-called climate change remain the guiding principles.
COP30 arrives hot on the heels of an International Court of Justice decision declaring that all countries are obligated to prevent climate change and ensure a clean, healthy, sustainable environment for all.
This supposedly includes the United States, even though it withdrew from International Court of Justice jurisdiction 39 years ago, will officially withdraw from the Paris climate accord in January, will not participate in COP30, and is unlikely to pump billions of dollars more into U.N. climate funds for leftist notions of “reparations” and “resilience.”
COP30 and other U.N. and European Union programs will also attempt to encroach on U.S. sovereignty, especially through mechanisms such as the “Baku to Belem Roadmap” for climate finance.
Meanwhile, British House of Lords member Daniel Hannan observes that all 50 U.S. states — including Mississippi, the poorest of them all — are now richer than Britain. While Britain lessened use of fossil fuel energy to assuage its climate fear neurosis, thus destroying its industries and jobs, Mississippi’s pro-growth policies and cheap fossil and nuclear energy increased household incomes by 6% in 2024.
In fact, the average electricity price for British households now equals 35¢ per kilowatt-hour and is projected to rise to 54¢ by 2026 or 2027. By comparison, families pay 19.5¢ per kilowatt-hour in Pennsylvania, 15.1¢ in Florida and 13.5¢ in Mississippi. No wonder many Britons can’t afford to heat or cool their homes, and their employers can’t afford to stay in business.
The ironies, insanities, hypocrisies, and hard realities hardly end there:
While COP30 pushes for “phasing out” fossil fuels in favor of wind, solar and other “clean” energy, host Brazil is expanding its offshore oil and gas exploration and development.
Belem is largely surrounded by Amazon rainforests. So participants can reach the city more easily, Brazil constructed an 8-mile, four-lane highway through those protected areas, felling thousands of trees and clearing tens of thousands of acres. Crews used gasoline and diesel-powered equipment and paved the road with oil-based asphalt.
Belem and surrounding communities had only 25,000 to 53,000 hotel beds. Officials went on a building spree, erecting new accommodations, converting shipping containers into private quarters, turning schools into dorms, docking cruise ships as floating hotels — and clearing more rainforest in the process.
Greenpeace, the United Nations and other climate scolds and Earth protectors have decried (and exaggerated) rainforest destruction for decades. They have ignored the fact that wind, solar, backup battery, and transmission line installations wipe out millions of acres of biodiverse habitats and kill countless birds, bats, and other wildlife and plants — dozens of times more than coal, gas, and nuclear power plants.
Their enormously greater raw material requirements mean that mines, processing plants, factories, and pollution dumps pollute and destroy even more crop, scenic, and wildlife habitat lands.
COP29 in Azerbaijan agreed on a Collective Quantified Goal for climate finance of $300 billion annually by 2035, to be transferred from industrialized nations and corporations to poor and rapidly developing nations. However, the recipient countries decided this was far too little and launched the Baku to Belem initiative to demand $1.3 trillion annually by 2035. The money will supposedly come from currently or recently wealthy industrialized nations, as they de-develop, strive for net zero, and impoverish more of their citizens. Meanwhile, China and India will be exempt from payment obligations or might even become recipients.
These concerns barely scratch the surface, but, as always, “hopes are high” that this time, under Brazil’s liberal environmentalist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, real “progress” will be made in saving the planet, even if a few hectares of rainforest must be slashed and burned to get us there.
Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.
Also last week, the Guardian commented on the Green Blob-funded ‘Global Tipping Points Report 2025’ and reported its contention that the planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point had been reached with “coral reefs facing widespread dieback”. About time too, Guardianistas might have felt. In June 1999, the newspaper’s veteran eco loon George Monbiot wrote that “the imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story but a fact”.
Writing in the Spectator last week, the Daily Sceptic’s Esteemed Editor-in-Chief Lord Tobes noted that eco-activists were fond of plucking numbers out of the air and claiming that’s how long we have left to save the Earth. But, he added, “it looks like they are now facing a ‘tipping point’ of their own”. Also last week, the Guardian commented on the Green Blob-funded ‘Global Tipping Points Report 2025’ and reported its contention that the planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point had been reached with “coral reefs facing widespread dieback”. About time too, Guardianistas might have felt. In June 1999, the newspaper’s veteran eco loon George Monbiot wrote that “the imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story but a fact”.
Toby went on to observe Sun Tzu’s maxim that you should never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake, “but I’m beginning to feel sorry for the climate hysterics”. There is none more hysterical (G. Monbiot excepted) than the annual ‘Global Tipping Points Report’, which is primarily bank-rolled by the Bezos Earth Fund. Along with numerous other scare reports, it is timed to lift mass climate psychosis ahead of the annual COP conference. Humanity will soon be in a danger zone where “multiple climate tipping points pose catastrophic risks to billions of people”, it wails. Already warm water coral reefs are crossing their “thermal tipping points”, it is claimed.
The work is headed by Professor Timothy Lenton from the University of Exeter and is said to draw on research from scientists across the world. In fact, the agitprop is mostly climate-catastrophising codswallop produced by wishful thinking activists consulting their modern-day crystal balls, otherwise known as climate computer models. In the case of the coral reefs, the scare is risible. Tropical coral has existed for millions of years in waters between 24°C-32°C. Small local increases in temperature can lead to a natural process called bleaching, but there is solid scientific evidence that recovery is rapid when temperatures stabilise. Despite significant bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef over the last two decades, coral cover is currently at its fourth highest level since serious observations began about 40 years ago.
The so-called “central estimate” of coral’s “thermal tipping point” is claimed to be 1.2°C of global warming and this threshold is now said to have been passed. There is nothing right about this claim given the wide range of current temperatures that coral grows in today. In fact, coral grows faster in warmer waters as evidenced by comparing growth near the equator and the southern Great Barrier Reef. Sceptics might also ask how such temperature tipping point precision is available given what is now known about the lamentable state of much Government-organised meteorological measurement activity.
Net Zero is dying in many parts of the world, but the politically motivated settled science crowd is desperate to keep the fantasy alive by holding up the pseudoscientific results of computer models as some kind of convincing evidence. However, the report is not just about what is incorrectly referred to as ‘the’ science. High politics is on show with the COP30 President Designate André Aranha Correa do Lago writing the foreword and claiming: “United, we can reverse the dangerous trend towards a sequence of systems collapse in domino effect”. There is something for m’learned friends as well with the report suggesting: “Tipping points science should be used to strengthen future litigation efforts related to human rights.” Similar ambitions are shared by single weather ‘attribution’ agitators using computer model findings to pump up the claims in climate lawfare cases.
The report observes that climate communications can be instrumental in generating political momentum, particularly when targeted to policy advocacy and “trusted messengers”. Few messenger are trusted more than the BBC and its fellow climate bedwetters at the Guardian. In July 2023, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakened Gulf Stream, which is a major part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), could collapse by 2025. Most people are aware of the film The Day After Tomorrow when such a collapse caused the onset of Arctic weather conditions across the northern hemisphere. The AMOC collapse remains the gold standard of climate fearmongering. Computer models are worked hard to produce the often-outlandish claims.
“We cannot exclude that an AMOC tipping point may already have been passed,” states the report. Many computer models are said to predict the AMOC declining to a weak state by 2050. The tipping brigade’s answer to imaginary global disaster is of course to shorten Net Zero timelines, “and the immediate investment in the developing and scaling of sustainable carbon removal technologies”.
Meanwhile back in the real world, where unlimited pots of money are not available for ridiculous schemes like carbon capture and where the product of agitprop-narrated computer models is taken with a large pinch of salt, there is good news on the Gulf Stream. A group of scientists recently found that the AMOC had shown no decline since at least the 1960s. In a paper published recently in Nature, the scientists noted that many of the AMOC observations arise from examining sea-surface temperature anomalies, but these records “are not long enough to differentiate between low-frequency variability and long-term trends”. In other words, much alarmists copy is little more than opinions based on short-term variability.
In the detailed body of the ‘tipping points’ report, a median AMOC temperature tipping point of 1.8°C is established based on the latest computer modelling incorporating reduced overturning strength. Another tempting story here for the BBC/Guardian perhaps. Admittedly it comes with “low confidence”, but “scientists say” their scenario indicates imminent collapse of the AMOC from 2025 onwards.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor. Followhim on X.
A recent article at the BBC, “Government told to prepare for 2C warming by 2050,” claims that the United Kingdom needs to prepare for increasing extreme weather as the planet approaches 2°C warming. This is false in its framing. Although it’s always a good idea to harden infrastructure against weather, the UK is not suffering more extreme weather due to human emissions of carbon dioxide, and the recommendation of attempting to prevent temperature rise is not going to help anyone.
A recent article at the BBC, “Government told to prepare for 2C warming by 2050,” claims that the United Kingdom needs to prepare for increasing extreme weather as the planet approaches 2°C warming. This is false in its framing. Although it’s always a good idea to harden infrastructure against weather, the UK is not suffering more extreme weather due to human emissions of carbon dioxide, and the recommendation of attempting to prevent temperature rise is not going to help anyone.
The BBC’s post discusses a letter written by the UK government’s “Climate Change Committee” (CCC), which the BBC reports said, “[t]he country was ‘not yet adapted’ to worsening weather extremes already occurring at current levels of warming, ‘let alone’ what was expected to come.”
The CCC asked the government to “set out a framework of clear long-term objectives” to prevent further temperature rise, with new targets every five years and departments “clearly accountable” for delivering those goals. It warned that “a global warming level of 2C would have significant impact on the UK’s weather, with extreme events becoming more frequent and widespread.”
These include increases in heatwaves, droughts, floods, and longer wildfire seasons.
These claims are fearmongering, and no amount of deindustrialization – which is what’s implied by the “objectives to prevent further temperature rise”—will stop bad weather from happening, nor will it have any measurable impact on global average temperature.
The simple fact is that the UK contributes a very small amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which would in theory contribute an even smaller amount to warming. According to emissions data, the global share of all UK carbon dioxide emissions is 0.88 percent. Not even 1 percent. Eliminating UK emissions would do absolutely nothing to slow or stop any amount of warming that could be connected to human emissions, if they are, in fact, driving temperature changes.
On top of that, data do not show that weather is becoming more extreme in the UK.
The BBC claims that global warming will increase the wildfire season in the UK, and presumably they believe it must have already done so during the past 150 years of planetary warming. A longer wildfire season should result in more fires. Available data, however, does not show that wildfires are getting more frequent or more intense in the UK. Satellite data from Copernicus show no trend at all.
Chart of United Kingdom yearly burned area and number of fires from Copernicus.
For another example, looking at Central England as thisClimate Realism post did, the number of days per year breaching 25°C (77°F) show no rising trend, nor does the measured highest daily maximum.
Long term historical data for Europe show that drought is likewise not worse today than it was during the Renaissance, long before industrialization.
What is really notable is that Europe alone has actually already warmed 2°C since about 1820, according to historic European temperature averages, but no catastrophic change in weather has occurred. (See figure below)
Weather isn’t getting worse, but bad weather does still happen. The UK’s largest industrial solar facility, for example, blighting the landscape of Anglesey, North Wales, was recently destroyed by a bad storm. That should be enough to give government agencies pause when it comes to at least some net-zero policies, but the real point is that hardening infrastructure against weather should be a priority regardless of climate change. Bad weather will occur, and it will wreck fragile facilities, including solar complexes.
Hardening against weather extremes, which always have and always will exist, is just common sense. As technology develops and new ways of protecting against bad weather are discovered (like the invention of air conditioning) they should be implemented where they can be, as they can be. Achieving net zero – especially for a county that emits negligible amounts of greenhouse gases anyway—will not save the UK from bad weather events.
As a news organization, the BBC should not carry water for its government or government advisory boards that want to continue wasting money on futile “objectives to prevent further temperature rise” when direct efforts to improve infrastructure and harden it against weather extremes, which have happened throughout history, would be far more effective in saving lives and reducing harm.
You will also have read and seen it: The CO2 increase from 2023 to 2024 reached a record level. That is completely correct. In the messages (e.g. here) you can also read something like
You will also have read and seen it: The CO2 increase from 2023 to 2024 reached a record level. That is completely correct. In the messages (e.g. here) you can also read something like
“The system is collapsing”.
The main emphasis is on a “decreasing effect of land sinks (including forests)” to remove CO2 from the air. What is truth and what is poetry, freely adapted from Goethe?
The data basis for all this news can be found at NOAA. Since the end of the 1950s, monthly measured values for the CO2 content of the atmosphere have been stored there. Measurements are taken at Mauna Loa in Hawaii.
You can see (in black) a continuously rising line. This is to be expected as long as humans gain a lot of energy through carbon combustion. No matter what is burned, whether coal, gas, oil, wood or “energy plants” (dressed up as “biofuel”): Burning means oxidation, in addition to heat, plenty of CO2 is produced from the carbon of the energy source and the oxygen in the air. A first logical step to reduce the increase in CO2 (this is a greenhouse gas and that undoubtedly warms physics) would therefore be to avoid oxidation as far as possible. Unfortunately, Germany did not choose this path either, it would inevitably lead to nuclear power. Instead, in addition to renewable energies (no combustion), a lot of carbon continues to be converted if renewable energies do not provide enough, unfortunately a normal state.
So much for the climb itself. The red curve in the diagram above shows the actual measured values per month and they have a conspicuous course over each year. There is always a steep rise until May, an almost equally steep drop until the following September, after which it goes up again until the end of the year. Where does that come from? Almost all of the land is concentrated in the northern hemisphere of the earth. The vegetation outside the tropics goes through a cycle: it is active in the months from April, the forests grow and bind a lot of CO2. It is (along with light and water) THE fuel of photosynthesis, which represents a “CO2 sink”. And it is now supposed to show “signs of collapse”? Then the amount of CO2 removed in the figure above would have to be very conspicuously low in 2024. Over the years from 1960 onwards, an average value for May to September (end of growth of the plants) of around 5.7 ppm CO2 reduction is achieved. The deviations from this, plotted in multiples of the standard deviation (sigma), are recorded in this diagram:
One speaks of “unusual” when the deviation is more than 2 sigma, so coincidence must be 95% excluded. The “sink performance” of vegetation already did this in 1965 (-2.53 sigma) and 2000 (-2.05 sigma), not so in 2024 (-1.54 sigma)! Contributing factors were discussed in the “The system is collapsing!” reports, e.g. fires in the Amazon in 2023/24. These are not included in the sink performance of the vegetation of the extratropical northern hemisphere considered above. Among other things, they did indeed lead to an observed record increase of 3.54 ppm from December 2023 to December 2024. These fires were also fueled by El Niño, which brings drought to the area. There are many factors at work! If you look at the deviations from the linear black trend discussed above in the first image, you get this from 1960 onwards:
Deviations from the linear trend (ppm)
They were even higher in 1983 and 1998 than in 2024 with its temperature increase compared to 2022, the cause of which is still unclear in science, we reported.
So is there really so much excitement about the CO2 increase from 2023 to 2024, with “system collapse”? The sober data evaluation clearly says “no”! What can be expected for 2025? The WMO employee quoted above denies the possibility of a forecast:
“We can no longer predict whether the 3.5 ppm increase will be repeated this year.”
The inclined reader here could be smarter and consult the increase from August 2024 to August 2025 (last data point of the source): It is 2.5 ppm; in the previous year it was already 3.3 ppm. The May-August reduction is also 1.1 ppm higher than in 2024. We no longer see an El Niño, which has a very decisive influence on growth. There is nothing unusual in behavior, not even retrospectively in the period up to 2024. What must be of real concern, however, is the increasing growth of the greenhouse gas as a whole, accompanied by warming. In the crucial “sector” of energy, the only way to counter this is really something measurable through real “decarbonization”. What Germany is doing here is well below the EU average. It is also very likely that things will not get better in this country, new gas-fired power plants are objectively unavoidable if the security of energy supply is to be guaranteed. The deeper cause of this is now of a physical nature after a political decision to abolish nuclear power. After that, something was formed that is called a “forced move sequence” in chess. Germany is a “driven country” when it comes to CO2 emissions, it has put itself in a pitiful, purely ideologically determined position with the phase-out of non-carbon-oxidizing nuclear power and the one-sided fixation on low-density “renewable energies”.
This is the “truth” in the figures for the CO2 data, the rest is “poetry”.
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.
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. I’ve grown weary of waiting each month for HadSST4 updates, so the July and August reports were based on data from OISST2.1. This dataset uses the same in situ sources as HadSST along with satellite indicators. Now however, the US government is shut down and updates to climate datasets are likely to be delayed. Reminds of what hospitals do when their budgets are slashed: They close the Maternity Ward to get public attention.
So this September report is based again 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 September 2025. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016, followed by rising temperatures in 2023 and 2024 and cooling in 2025.
Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes. That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period. A small warming was driven by NH summer peaks in 2021-22, but offset by cooling in SH and the tropics, By January 2023 the global anomaly was again below the mean.
Then in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C in 2023, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak. Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. During 2 years of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by Tropics cooling from its 1.3°C peak 2024/01, down to 0.6C in September this year. Note the smaller peak in NH in July 2025 now declining along with SH and the Global anomaly cooler as well. Presently the Global anomaly is only slightly above the mean for this period
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
The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations. Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015. This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since. The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies. Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July. 1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.
The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.
SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8, a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12. Again SSTs are average 2013-14.
Now a different pattern appears. The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off. But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average. In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16. NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.
The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.) Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021. In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.
Then in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year. Despite El Nino driving the Tropics January 2024 anomaly higher than 1998 and 2016 peaks, following months cooled in all regions, and the Tropics continued cooling in April, May and June along with SH dropping. After July and August NH warming again pulled the global anomaly higher, September through January 2025 resumed cooling in all regions, continuing February through April 2025, with little change in May,June and July despite upward bumps in NH. Now temps in all regions are cooling August and September 2025.
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 last month. 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, then since April through September aligning with 2010.
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 1982-1996 inclusive, value 0.18. The orange line the average 1982-2025, value 0.41 also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2015-2025, value 0.69. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.
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
Cynical, disaster-seeking climate change hysterics have been pushing, for decades now, a narrative that global warming, especially warming ocean temperatures, increase the risk of hurricane activity. Every year, they seem to be eagerly awaiting devastating superstorms to prove them right. And the 2025 hurricane season looked ripe.
Cynical, disaster-seeking climate change hysterics have been pushing, for decades now, a narrative that global warming, especially warming ocean temperatures, increase the risk of hurricane activity. Every year, they seem to be eagerly awaiting devastating superstorms to prove them right. And the 2025 hurricane season looked ripe.
In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a more-active-than-average season (which runs from June 1 to Dec. 1). The Washington Post hyped this prediction into: “The forecast underscored the dangers of a historically active stretch of Atlantic hurricane activity.”
And, indeed, the stage was set for the perfect storm to cause catastrophic impact on the American Southeast: NOAA fretted hurricane-fueling warm ocean waters; the South had just come off of a record year of domestic net migration raising the potential human cost; and climate change-denying President Trump had scaled back the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) which, alarmists claimed, would significantly hinder disaster response.
There was an ominous anniversary, too. Late summer 2025 marked exactly 20 years since the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. “Now more than ever, NOAA is prepared for what the hurricane season may bring,” said Laura Grimm, NOAA’s acting administrator, at an event announcing the forecast in Jefferson Parish, La., to mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.”
Yep, the narrative of a disastrous 2025 hurricane season fueled by man-made climate change wrote itself; all the alarmists had to do was wait.
June and July passed quickly and quietly without a single U.S. landfall. August showed promise as Hurricane Erin swelled into a threatening category 5 hurricane. The alarmists manned their stations, and the media began sowing panic over this climate-induced superstorm. Unfortunately for the catastrophists, the storm never got closer than 200 miles from the U.S. coastline.
By early September, the Atlantic was still pitching a shutout. Sept. 10, the day at the center of the peak hurricane window, saw zero hurricane landfalls and no storms on the horizon. No devastating storm has yet hit, and time is running out for the season. There are six weeks remaining. Sure, anything could happen in that time. But so far nothing has.
Instead of just admitting the error of their ways, the climate activists at the Washington Post doubled down this week and claimed that the lack of storms is actually evidence of manmade climate change. This never-admit-error mindset underscores the climate movement’s willingness to twist any outcome into proof of their radical worldview. With them, it’s always: “Heads I win; tails you lose.”
When ideology is put aside and actual scientific principles are followed, the picture is crystal clear: there is no relationship between man-made emissions and increased hurricane frequency, intensity or any other aspect of hurricanes. All hurricane activity remains within the bounds of natural variability, according to NOAA.
Hurricane tracking reveals that there have been no changes in trends, even though man-made emissions have steadily risen during the same period. And while promoters of climate change narratives like to highlight the increased costs in storm damage, they ignore the fact that population growth in coastal regions is the main driver in this phenomenon – not increased storm strength. This is so obvious. Even the Washington Post has had to admit this.
The superstorms that weren’t, serve as a stark reminder: the climate agenda thrives on fear. Rain or shine, the alarmists’ forecast of planetary doom remained the same. In doing so, they show their hand – prioritizing political agenda over evidence. It’s time to separate rhetoric from reality and liberate ourselves from climate hysteria.
Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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