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.
Prototypes and initial tests are slated for 2026–2027, with limited commercial operations possibly following shortly after, but large-scale “hubs” are likely a decade or more away.
Prototypes and initial tests are slated for 2026–2027, with limited commercial operations possibly following shortly after, but large-scale “hubs” are likely a decade or more away.
Several companies have moved from concepts to hardware demonstrations:
Starcloud (Nvidia-backed): Launched Starcloud-1 in late 2025 with an Nvidia H100 GPU — the first to train a large language model (LLM) and run a version of Google Gemini in space. Starcloud-2 (GPU cluster for commercial use) targets 2027.
Google (Project Suncatcher): Plans to launch two prototype satellites (with TPUs) in early 2027, in partnership with Planet Labs, for testing AI hardware in orbit. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has described space data centers as potentially the “new normal” within the next decade.
Orbital (startup): Orbital-1 satellite, carrying Nvidia GPUs for AI inference, is scheduled for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in April 2027. Goals include validating sustained GPU operation, radiation hardening, and initial commercial workloads.
Aetherflux (Galactic Brain): Targets first solar-powered orbital data center satellite in Q1 2027.
Axiom Space: Launched initial orbital data center nodes/prototypes in early 2026 for cloud, AI/ML, and edge processing.
SpaceX: Ambitious plans for massive constellations (potentially up to a million satellites) integrated with Starlink for on-orbit data centers/AI compute. Elon Musk has confirmed involvement; Starlink V3 and Starship will be key enablers.
Other players include Blue Origin, European efforts (e.g., Thales Alenia Space-led ASCEND, aiming for larger demos by ~2030), and Nvidia providing space-optimized hardware (e.g., Space-1 Vera Rubin modules).
Challenges:
Radiation hardening for electronics.
Massive radiators for heat dissipation.
High launch costs (though Starship aims to slash these).
Latency for ground users, maintenance/repair difficulties, and regulatory/FCC hurdles for large constellations.
Initial systems will likely focus on inference (running models) or edge processing rather than massive training.
The race is heating up fast due to exploding terrestrial AI power demands, but space versions remain high-risk/high-reward. Early movers are betting on solar + vacuum cooling to bypass Earth’s grid and cooling constraints.
There is a Publication in the Springer Nature with the tile “AI data hubs in space: when will they take flight?” (published 28 April 2026) by Jenna Ahart.
AI data hubs in space: when will they take flight?
As terrestrial data centers face backlash over massive energy use, water consumption, and land footprint — driven by the AI boom — tech companies are racing to develop orbital data centers (constellations of satellites acting as interconnected compute nodes). These would leverage constant sunlight for power and space’s vacuum for radiative cooling. However, significant engineering and practical hurdles mean widespread deployment is not imminent.
Background:
Origins: Ideas have circulated for years, but gained traction with Starcloud’s 2024 white paper arguing orbital centers are “feasible, economically viable, and necessary” for AI. Google’s Suncatcher project (announced November 2025) added credibility.
2026 Explosion: SpaceX (Elon Musk) announced plans for up to one million satellites for orbital data centers. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos) also filed ambitious constellation plans. This coincided with political pressure in the US (e.g., Trump’s administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge) pushing AI firms to secure their own power without burdening ratepayers.
Communities are increasingly opposing new Earth-based hyperscale data centers (e.g., moratoriums on water use).
Key Advantages Highlighted:
Energy: Solar power in orbit avoids straining terrestrial grids.
Cooling: Vacuum environment enables radiative cooling, reducing water needs.
Scale: Potential to support massive AI compute without local land or infrastructure disputes.
Major Challenges:
Cooling in Vacuum: Heat from AI chips (especially GPUs/TPUs) doesn’t dissipate easily without heavy radiators (like those on the ISS), which are expensive to launch. University of Pennsylvania researcher Igor Bargatin notes this as a key obstacle.
Other Hurdles: Radiation hardening for electronics, launch costs, maintenance, latency for Earth users, orbital congestion, and regulatory approvals for huge constellations.
Timeline Realism: Companies push for prototypes in the “next few years,” but researchers interviewed see it taking longer to mature into reliable, large-scale systems. Early efforts will likely be proofs-of-concept rather than full data-center replacements.
The article ties into related Nature pieces on AI’s energy demands (projected to double data center power use by 2030) and satellite swarm issues (e.g., interference with astronomy). It portrays the trend as a high-stakes response to terrestrial constraints but emphasizes that the “sci-fi technology” still needs substantial engineering work.
The piece is balanced: optimistic about the why (sustainability, political drivers) but cautious on the when and how.
A recent article at the Los Angeles Times (LAT) titled, “Georgia blaze shows how climate change has led to more wildfires in the East,” claims that the Eastern United States is suffering from more extreme and frequent wildfires due to climate change. This is false. Data show no trend in an increase in fires, though it is not unreasonable to be concerned about fire fuel buildup from hurricane damage.
A recent article at the Los Angeles Times (LAT) titled, “Georgia blaze shows how climate change has led to more wildfires in the East,” claims that the Eastern United States is suffering from more extreme and frequent wildfires due to climate change. This is false. Data show no trend in an increase in fires, though it is not unreasonable to be concerned about fire fuel buildup from hurricane damage.
The LAT writes that “wildfires are becoming more intense, frequent and damaging in the East, such as last week’s blaze that destroyed dozens of homes in Georgia, fire scientists said.”
The fire scientists attribute the fires to “climate change causing fuel to dry out and be more flammable, a record drought, tens of millions of tons of dead trees from Hurricane Helene, and the vast area where dense forests and high numbers of people try to coexist,” with the article really emphasizing the climate angle.
There are a few parts to this claim: are wildfires getting worse in Georgia, and are climate conditions in Georgia becoming more conducive to fire outbreaks, and is this because of global climate change?
The study, especially for the state of Georgia in particular, uses a seriously flawed methodology.
Their data were taken from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity Database (MTBS) a joint project of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey. In particular, it uses the MTBS’ “burned area boundary product” to account for wildfire perimeter data combined with the USDA’s Fire Program Analysis Fire Occurrence Database for information on how the fires were started (human or lightning).
The study specifically targets what they define as “large” wildfires, relying entirely on statistical analysis rather than a straightforward mapping of the number of fires in a region and totaling up the acreage burned across time.
Statistical modeling and analysis can be reasonable, when data are sparce or incomplete, but is unnecessary for measurements like this when straightforward measured data exist. Relying on p-values and tau can sometimes “find” a trend where there really isn’t one, especially if a year has “freak” wildfires that really are not indicative of any long-term trend.
The study looks not at particular states but EPA determined “ecoregions,” and Georgia is crossed by three of their listed regions that span very long longitudinal (North-South) areas, designated as the “Piedmont” region, “Southeastern Plains,” and “Southern Coastal Plain,” the latter two making up most of the state. With a wildfire count of three, the Southern Coastal Plain has the highest total wildfire of all the ecoregions examined.
An examination of the MTBS data using their exploration tool to chart the annual burn severity for Georgia shows this as an output:
There are a few years in that dataset that show spikes in burn areas, all of which correspond to periods of extended multi-year droughts combined with known heavy fuel loads.
Long periods of drought are a natural part of Georgia’s climate, especially in the coastal plains, because of a periodic and known pressure system offshore called “The Bermuda High.” When it comes closer to shore and extends into the Southeast and is combined with La Niña years, severe drought follows. There is no particular long-term trend of extended periods of drought in the state, with the driest years in state history occurred in the 1930s, 50s, and 80s, decades of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming ago.
Looking closer at more on-the-ground wildfire reporting, the National Interagency Fire Center keeps state by state wildfire data. From 2006 to 2025 there is again no particular trend in fires in Georgia. In fact, the number of fires seem to have declined over the past 20 years.
This is unsurprising since data from NASA and the European Space Agency both show a marked decline in wildfire globally over the past few decades. Georgia is part of the larger trend of less severe, less frequent wildfires across the planet.
Also, fires that burn larger areas are not necessarily because of conditions resulting from climate change, but are heavily influenced by land-use changes and, as the paper acknowledges, human encroachment on wild areas and an excess of burnable material. This is particularly a problem for Georgia right now, as the LAT article explains “13,954 square miles of forest land was hit by Hurricane Helene, downing more than 26 million tons of pine and 30 million tons of hardwood,” which an interviewed scientist called “a ticking time bomb.” This is especially true in drought conditions. But this is a problem that can be fixed with the clearing of that burnable material. It is a local, politically induced environmental problem, not a climate problem. The timber could have been recovered and used. Instead, Georgia officials decided to let nature take its course.
As this post is written, two wildfires are burning in Georgia that are very severe. They have already destroyed more than 100 homes and tens of thousands of acres of land. The fact of the matter is that wildfires are massively influenced by land use and management, and they can get out of control when conditions are right. High winds and drought have considerably added to the spread of these fires, similar to the conditions in 2007. But since there is no long-term trend in worsening drought in Georgia, rather just a couple of bad years similar to dozens recorded historically, and there is no evidence climate change is changing wind speeds in Georgia or elsewhere, climate change can’t be blamed for the present fire conditions.
There is no need to focus on climate change when discussing these natural disasters, especially when it is the supposed villain in the climate discussion – petroleum products—which make it possible to fight these fires in the first place by fueling aircraft and vehicles, and delivering fast reliable power to aid efforts and disaster cleanup. Perhaps, when reporting on disasters, especially disasters out of state, the Los Angeles Times should do a little research, rather than referencing a single, flawed study to claim a climate induced disaster is happening. Real-world data trumps both theory and statistical analyses and its time the LAT acknowledged that.
The Miocene epoch (especially the Early to Middle Miocene, ~23–11.6 million years ago) saw one of the most significant expansions of coral reefs in the Cenozoic era, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. This boom helped establish the foundations of modern reef biodiversity in the Coral Triangle.
Researchers describe it as driven by a confluence of environmental, tectonic, and biological factors.
The Miocene epoch (especially the Early to Middle Miocene, ~23–11.6 million years ago) saw one of the most significant expansions of coral reefs in the Cenozoic era, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. This boom helped establish the foundations of modern reef biodiversity in the Coral Triangle.
Researchers describe it as driven by a confluence of environmental, tectonic, and biological factors.
1. Tectonic and Geological Drivers (Major Role)
Plate movements and shallow marine habitat creation: The northward drift of the Australian plate and its convergence with Eurasian/Philippine plates increased tropical shallow-water shelf areas. This provided more stable, suitable substrates for reef growth (e.g., broad continental shelves).
Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA) formation: Tectonic activity created complex island arcs, atolls, and varied topography, boosting habitat heterogeneity and connectivity for larval dispersal.
Regional examples: In areas like Australia’s North West Shelf, precursor barrier reefs formed around 20 million years ago, acting as foundations for later systems. Tectonic subsidence, uplift, and sea-level interactions influenced local growth and drowning cycles.
2. Environmental and Climatic Drivers
Warm temperatures during the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO): Relatively high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) supported coral calcification and symbiosis with zooxanthellae. Reefs thrived in tropical to subtropical zones before later cooling events.
Sea-level fluctuations and eustasy: Transgressive-regressive cycles provided accommodation space for vertical reef accretion. Repeated exposures and flooding helped shape lagoon and reef systems.
Ocean circulation: Enhanced currents (e.g., proto-Leeuwin Current) transported warm water, larvae, and nutrients, supporting growth along margins like Western Australia.
Nutrient and productivity regimes: Oligotrophic (low nutrient) conditions in many areas favored zooxanthellate corals, while localized upwelling or terrestrial inputs may have varied by region. Aridification in some coastal areas reduced sediment stress.
Later in the Miocene, cooling (Late Miocene Cooling ~7–5.4 Ma) contributed to reef declines or “gaps” (e.g., Pliocene Reef Gap), with ~2°C SST drops, shifts in monsoons, increased terrestrial runoff, and changes in currents acting as stressors.
3. Biological and Ecological Drivers
Coral evolution and growth forms: Diversification of reef-building corals (Scleractinia), including more robust, wave-resistant structures (e.g., certain Acropora and other genera). Shifts toward modular, fast-growing species enabled larger, thicker reefs.
Symbiosis and functional innovations: Strengthened coral-algal symbioses improved energy efficiency. Concurrent radiations in reef fishes (e.g., labrids/wrasses, planktivores, herbivores) created feedback loops—fishes helped control algae, promote coral recruitment, and enhance ecosystem resilience.
Reef-fish co-evolution: Trophic innovations and increased reef association fueled diversification, with reefs providing new niches.
There is a major scientific study published in 2026 links a massive expansion of coral reefs around 20 million years ago (Early Miocene) to the origins and explosive diversification of modern coral reef ecosystems, particularly in the Indo-Pacific Coral Triangle—the world’s richest marine biodiversity hotspot.
The 2026 Science Advances paper highlights that unique combinations of these factors allowed Indo-Pacific reefs to reach unprecedented size and thickness, surpassing prior Cenozoic systems. This habitat expansion then amplified biodiversity by creating more space and complexity.
Earlier work (e.g., Jones et al. 2022) similarly stresses the interplay of global cooling trends (post-Optimum) with tectonic increases in tropical substrate as key to modern distributions.
Miocene reefs contrast with earlier (e.g., Eocene Tethys) or later systems. Post-Miocene declines involved cooling, sea-level drops, increased sedimentation, and tectonic changes (e.g., Tethys closure). The Miocene represents a “sweet spot” of warmth, substrate availability, and biological innovation.
The rise and fall of the world’s greatest marine biodiversity hotspot
“The rise and fall of the world’s greatest marine biodiversity hotspot” is the title of a 2026 paper published in Science Advances by Alexandre C. Siqueira and colleagues.
The study shows that the Indo-Pacific Coral Triangle (the planet’s richest marine biodiversity hotspot) arose primarily due to a dramatic expansion of coral reefs in the Early to Mid-Miocene (roughly 23 to 11.6 million years ago). This reef boom created unprecedented habitat area and complexity, which in turn drove the diversification of corals, reef fishes, and associated marine life.
Unprecedented reef scale: During this period, Indo-Pacific reefs reached sizes and thicknesses greater than any in the previous 66 million years (post-Cretaceous). These were massive systems, likely facilitated by a combination of tectonic shifts (e.g., continental positioning), environmental conditions (warm tropical waters, suitable sea levels), and biological factors (e.g., coral growth forms and symbioses).
Biodiversity linkage: Reef expansion directly correlated with increased species richness and functional diversity in marine assemblages. Larger, more structurally complex reefs provided new ecological niches, promoting speciation and supporting higher biomass and variety of fish and corals.
“Rise”: This Miocene peak established the foundations for the modern Coral Triangle hotspot, which today spans a relatively small ocean area but hosts a disproportionate share of global marine biodiversity (e.g., ~76% of reef coral species and thousands of fish species).
“Fall” (or implications): The paper highlights that these ancient massive reefs eventually declined or shifted, and it draws parallels to current threats. Ongoing reef loss due to climate change, pollution, and other human impacts risks reversing the biodiversity gains built over millions of years, with major consequences for tropical marine ecosystems.
It emphasizes habitat area and condition as primary drivers of marine biodiversity over deep time, beyond just climate.
It provides historical context for why the Coral Triangle is so special and underscores the fragility of these systems—reefs aren’t static; they rise and fall with geological and environmental changes.
Related research shows fast-growing corals and certain fish groups (e.g., wrasses, parrotfishes) radiated around this time, filling new roles in the expanding ecosystems.
This work builds on earlier studies of reef history in the Tethys Sea, Australian precursor reefs, and global Cenozoic patterns.
Habitat condition and area shape global species distributions, with shallow-water reefs hosting a disproportional share of marine biodiversity. Although reef area is a well-established predictor of marine species richness, its historical context is less well understood. Here, we show that the rise of tropical marine biodiversity is closely tied to reef expansion in space and time. During the Early/Mid Miocene (23 to 11.6 million years ago), Indo-Pacific reefs reached unprecedented size and thickness, surpassing any reef systems in the past 66 million years. These massive reefs, likely driven by unique environmental, biotic, and tectonic conditions, fostered the expanding diversity and functional evolution of marine fish and coral assemblages. Our findings underscore the importance of historical reef contexts and the implications of ongoing reef losses for tropical marine biodiversity.
This article examines how Earth–Sun geometry and solar variability change top-of-atmosphere (ToA) sunlight by latitude and season, and how those changes can propagate through convection, clouds, and poleward heat transport to shape regional climate trends. Daily insolation calculated across latitudes over 1200 years is compared with satellite-era observations to assess whether the geographic pattern of observed changes is consistent with solar-forced changes in the climate system.
This article examines how Earth–Sun geometry and solar variability change top-of-atmosphere (ToA) sunlight by latitude and season, and how those changes can propagate through convection, clouds, and poleward heat transport to shape regional climate trends. Daily insolation calculated across latitudes over 1200 years is compared with satellite-era observations to assess whether the geographic pattern of observed changes is consistent with solar-forced changes in the climate system.
Poleward heat transport from the tropics is described and related to why ocean heat content (OHC) changes tend to concentrate in the main condensation and storm-track zones of each hemisphere. The intent is to connect latitudinal differences in solar forcing to differences in advection and heat storage.
A simple matrix of climate zones and seasons is then used as an organising framework for comparing year-to-year and century-scale changes in seasonal sunlight and relating those changes to observed shifts in temperature, clouds, and heat uptake.
Introduction
Throughout this article, solar electromagnetic radiation per unit area (solar flux) is expressed in W/m² and refers to top-of-atmosphere (ToA) daily-mean insolation. Over timescales longer than a day, ToA insolation at a given latitude and time of year is set by (i) Earth–Sun distance, (ii) solar declination (the Sun’s angular position relative to Earth’s equatorial plane), and (iii) solar output. These inputs are sufficient to compute ToA daily-mean insolation at any latitude for any day of the year. The sections that follow first quantify how insolation varies by latitude and time, then relate those patterns to reflection in the tropics, poleward heat transport, OHC, and mid-latitude temperature response.
NASA/JPL’s HORIZONS system provides precise ephemerides that can be used to calculate Sun–Earth distance and solar declination for any date, which are the key astronomical inputs used here to compute daily-mean ToA insolation by latitude. The cyclic change in solar constant uses the observed correlation between divergence of the Sun velocity from average and the solar activity.
Daily Average Solar Flux across Latitudes and Time
The charts in this section show how the maximum daily average flux has varied over time for selected latitudes. Chart 1 provides trends for the Northern Hemisphere (NH) while Chart 2 has trends for the Southern Hemisphere (SH).
For the selected latitudes in the NH, 45N has the highest maximum daily average near 474W/m² that has little change over the 1200 years plotted. By contrast, 10N has the lowest maximum daily average and shows a distinct inflection around 1200AD.
For the same selected latitudes in the SH, 75S exhibits the highest maximum daily average solar flux and has declined over the entire period from 538W/m² in 1000AD. 10S shows a barely visible minimum inflection point around 1200AD. 15S is almost flat trend while 30S and 45S have slight down trends.
Note that there is no symmetry between the NH and SH. The significant differences are better appreciated by expanding the scale for selected north and south latitudes. Chart 3 compares 45N and 45S.
Over the 1200 years, 45S declines almost 4W/m² from 502W/m² while 45N exhibits a shallow minimum of 473.8W/m² in 1640 while changing less than 1W/m² over the entire 1200 years. Also note that the scales have the same range but are offset by 25W/m². In the present era, the maximum daily average solar flux in the SH is considerably more intense than the solar flux in the NH.
The next step is to consider how much of this ToA insolation is actually absorbed by the ocean–atmosphere system versus rejected back to space, particularly in the tropics where convection and associated clouds strongly regulate surface temperature.
Rejected ToA Solar Flux
A significant portion of incoming ToA solar flux is not thermalised; it is reflected by clouds and by high-albedo surfaces (ice and snow). This is especially important in the tropics, where deep convection and associated cloud fields act as a strong regulator of sea-surface temperature (SST), which rarely sustains values much above ~30°C in the warmest regions. Chart 4 examines this regulation by plotting mean ocean surface temperature against available ToA solar flux across a 1°×1° global grid.
It is evident that the temperature falls with rising ToA solar flux above 425W/m². Chart 5 zooms in on the tropical ocean where solar flux is above 425W/m² showing all grid points as well as a line of best fit.
The temperature exhibits a declining value with increasing solar flux.
Chart 6 plots all-sky reflected shortwave flux against available ToA solar flux for a representative day (in week 5, 2026), matched to the SST snapshot used above.
The reflected solar flux remains near constant until the solar flux is above 375W/m² then reflection increases rapidly to a peak approaching 50% of the available solar before reducing somewhat.
Chart 7 combines the calculated average daily solar flux across latitudes and the atmospheric thermo-regulating process to arrive at an estimate of the potential heat rejected through short wave reflection in the tropics of the NH each year.
This annual estimate is an area average based on a threshold approach: for each hemisphere, shortwave “rejection” is counted only on days and at latitudes where daily-mean ToA flux exceeds an assumed convection/reflectance threshold of 425W/m². Here, the thresholds are guided by (i) warm-pool buoy observations (SST near 28–30°C where persistent convection is common) and (ii) typical tropical reflected shortwave values (often exceeding ~80 W/m² under convective cloud regimes). Latitudes poleward of 30° are excluded because these regions rarely sustain SSTs high enough for persistent cyclic deep convection.
Based on this estimate, the NH had its lowest heat rejection around 1600AD and is now on a slight increasing trend. By contrast, the trend for the SH shown in Chart 8 has been steadily downward since before 1000AD without an inflection observed in the NH.
Given tropical cyclones require an environment that is potentially unstable due to moist convection (i.e., able to support deep convection) to spin up (Gray, 1968; NOAA, n.d.), it is probable that cyclone activity in both hemispheres was higher in 1000AD than present (e.g., Mann, Woodruff, Donnelly, & Zhang, 2009). Observed records for the Australian region indicate a decline in total tropical cyclone numbers since the start of reliable satellite-era observations, with large modulation by ENSO (Nicholls, Landsea, & Gill, 1998; Dowdy, 2014).
Heat Transport Tropics to Poles
Convective towers that form over tropical warm pools are the primary engines of the global circulation. They create the latitudinal atmospheric pressure gradient in each hemisphere that transports heat from the tropics toward the poles. This heat transport has a temporal aspect as well as latitudinal due to greater annual variation in solar flux at higher latitudes. Chart 9 combines the latitudinal and temporal aspects by considering the difference between the maximum daily average at 15 degrees and the minimum at 45 degrees for both hemispheres.
It is apparent that the NH is in a strong upward trend after bottoming around 1300AD while the SH is declining after peaking around 1000AD, albeit SH has greater difference than the NH.
The CERES and ARGO projects have been providing high resolution ToA radiation and ocean heat (OHC) data for most of the 21st century. Chart 10 is based on CERES Net radiation data to show the cumulative picture of heat retained or lost across the latitudes for the past 21 years.
The tropics-to-pole heat transport calculated for the SH (4044 ZJ) is higher than the NH (3856 ZJ), and the SH has retained more (320 ZJ) compared with the NH (117 ZJ). This asymmetry is consistent with the SH receiving higher tropical insolation in the present era.
The ARGO ocean heat data is shown in Chart 11 also across latitudes.
The two hemispheres are quite different with the NH showing distinct peaks in the tropics and in the advection zone north of 30N. The SH has one high, distinct peak at 45S, in the middle of the high advection zone. Also the SH has retained more ocean heat than the NH.
Chart 12 compares (i) accumulated monthly net radiation (CERES) and (ii) December OHC (Argo/derived OHC product) for each hemisphere across the Argo era. Given the observing systems and accounting are consistent, multi-year changes in net radiation should broadly track multi-year changes in ocean heat uptake (recognising that heat can also be stored in the atmosphere, land, and cryosphere, and that timing lags are expected).
The NH series track closely, whereas the SH series diverge after 2015. The divergence is clearer in Chart 12A, which compares year-end (December) accumulations for both net radiation and OHC.
The divergence at the end of 2025 was 140ZJ.
The annual change in OHC for both hemispheres per Chart 13 exhibit opposite trends.
The annual change in the SH is approaching zero. While the change in the NH is continuing to accelerate. Allowing for substantial time lags, both these trends are consistent with the changes in solar forcing of advection.
Mid Latitude Temperature Response to Solar Forcing
It is evident that the solar flux is not changing symmetrically across the two hemispheres. It is also apparent that the thermal response of the two hemispheres is quite different. Charts 14 and 15 show the monthly temperature for the mid latitudes in the two hemispheres from 2000 to 2025. The data is from the Berkeley global gridded 2m air temperature database.
Both mid-latitude bands exhibit an upward trend over 2000–2025, but the NH warms faster than the SH over this interval. If recent trends persist, the NH mid-latitudes will become consistently warmer, on average, than the SH mid-latitudes from 2026.
Both temperature records are highly correlated to solar flux but the response of the SH is slower and only a fifth of the response of the NH. Chart 16 shows X-Y plots for monthly temperature against 30-day daily average solar flux with NH lagged 36 days and SH lagged 61 days.
Year-to-Year Changes in Solar Forcing
There are substantial changes in seasonal solar forcing from year-to-year. The changes in the tropics drive convection and have linkage to convective potential and cyclone activity. The thermo-regulation of the tropics limit the impact on temperature from solar forcing. Once ice forms on the surface at the poles, the thermal response to forcing is highly non-linear. By contrast, the mid latitudes show almost linear response to solar forcing per Chart 16 above. Accordingly, the variation in daily solar forcing in the mid latitudes from year-to-year gives insight into expected temperature change from year-to-year.
The following series of charts are selected samples to show how daily sunlight in one year varies relative to a chosen base year for 45N and 45S. The days are numbered from the September Equinox of the year prior to the year being considered and continue to near March Equinox of the following year. The vertical green line identifies the December Solstice, which occurs about a week before the start of the year being considered.
Year 2023 had the highest spring to summer solar flux in both hemispheres in recent history. The difference relative to 1944 is as much as 3W/m² on the days of greatest divergence.
Considering 2026 relative to 2023, the spring to summer sunlight in both hemispheres is down by as much as 2W/m². As a matter of fact, 2027 mid latitude insolation in both hemispheres is not much different to 2023.
The next year that will have almost identical mid-latitude sunlight to 2023 is 2052. Marginally closer to 2023 than 2027.
Discussion
This discussion summarises what the charts show and then evaluates whether the combined pattern—insolation changes, tropical reflection behaviour, and hemispheric differences in advection and heat uptake—forms a coherent explanation for the observed trends highlighted above.
Variation in insolation – The analysis extends far enough back to identify inflection points in the precession-driven evolution of seasonal and latitudinal insolation. The charts show clear hemispheric and latitudinal asymmetries: maxima and minima do not occur at the same times in the NH and SH, and different latitudes exhibit different long-term tendencies. For example, the maximum daily solar flux at 45N reaches a shallow minimum around 1640 AD and then rises slowly, whereas 45S peaks around ~1000 AD and then declines. Low latitudes (e.g., ~10N) show an inflection near ~1200 AD and then increase by several W/m² over subsequent centuries. In addition to these multi-century trends, the year-to-year changes in seasonal insolation shown in the later charts are large enough (order 1–3 W/m² at some times of year) to influence interannual variability in circulation and temperature where the system response is close to linear.
Heat rejected (shortwave reflection) – Charts 4–6 indicate a regime change in the tropical ocean once daily-mean ToA flux is high enough that SST approaches the warm-pool ceiling: convection becomes persistent and all-sky reflected shortwave increases rapidly with further increases in ToA flux. In this framework, additional ToA forcing above a threshold contributes more to reflection and circulation changes than to further SST increase. Applying the threshold method in Charts 7–8 yields a higher estimated shortwave “rejection” in the NH tropics than in the SH tropics in the present era, despite higher ToA flux in parts of the SH. If the thresholds are reasonable, changes in this rejected-energy term would be expected to correlate with changes in convective potential and therefore relevant to cyclone energy.
Net radiation and OHC mismatch – Earth’s energy imbalance cannot be measured directly; rather it is inferred from satellite radiation products and checked for consistency against changes in ocean heat uptake. In Charts 12–13 the NH net-radiation accumulation and NH OHC track closely, while the SH series diverge after about 2015, reaching an end‑2025 cumulative difference of ~140 ZJ. Interpreting such a mismatch requires considering a number of possibilities: it can arise from observing-system uncertainty, from timing/lag differences between hemispheres, and/or from heat being stored outside the 0–2000 m ocean layer used for OHC (e.g., deeper ocean, cryosphere, land, and atmosphere). The remainder of this discussion point therefore considers candidate terms and whether their magnitude is plausibly large enough to explain the observed divergence starting with Chart 17 and atmospheric energy accumulation.
The calculated atmospheric-moisture contribution of ~4.8 ZJ over the decade is only a small fraction of the ~140 ZJ divergence, so it cannot resolve the mismatch on its own. It is nonetheless noteworthy that the moisture increase peaks near ~10N, where the long‑term maximum daily solar flux has been rising the most
. The mid-latitude moisture maxima are also qualitatively consistent with enhanced poleward transport in both hemispheres.
Other possibilities for Net radiation rising faster than OHC in the SH include:
Latent heat of ice melt in the SH but it is estimated at less than 1ZJ in the past decade.
There are some glaciers in the SH that are expanding but the heat associated with this is less than 1ZJ.
There has been an increase of biomass globally but, while the NH has gained significantly, the evidence does not support substantial increase in biomass in the SH including the oceans.
There has been heat transfer from the SH to the NH but the OHC and Net radiation in the NH currently show close balance rather than a deficit requiring an increase in heat transfer from the SH.
A potential source of error is that the basis for the 2005 to 2015 alignment was flawed due to the high thermal lags in the climate system. Essentially the system is never static; rather always changing as it must due to changing solar forcing.
Thermal response – In this framework, tropical SST responds weakly to additional ToA forcing once deep convection becomes persistent, because reflected shortwave and latent-heat export increase sharply. By contrast, the mid-latitudes in Charts 14–16 show an approximately linear relationship between monthly temperature and recent (30‑day) mean insolation, with lagged responses of ~36 days (NH) and ~61 days (SH) in the illustrative fits shown. The smaller SH amplitude and longer lag are consistent with a greater ocean fraction and larger effective heat capacity in the SH mid-latitudes.
Conclusions
The daily-maximum ToA insolation series show hemispheric asymmetry over the past millennium. In the present era, maximum daily insolation in the SH is higher than at the corresponding NH latitudes, but the long-term trends differ: several SH latitudes (e.g., 45S) have been declining since around ~1000 AD, whereas several NH mid-latitudes (e.g., 45N) have been slowly increasing since reaching a minimum around ~1640 AD. In the low latitudes, an inflection around ~1200 AD is followed by a gradual increase in maximum daily insolation.
Using the threshold method introduced in the “Rejected ToA Solar Flux” section, the analysis implies that long-term changes in the frequency and intensity of tropical convective cloud regimes modulates how much additional ToA forcing is reflected rather than absorbed. In this framing, a decline in the SH maximum daily insolation south of ~10S reduces convective “rejection” there, while the NH shows a smaller change but is now increasing from its minimum. Given convective potential is a prerequisite for cyclones, this is consistent with observed reduction in SH cyclone relative to earlier periods. The NH cyclone intensity being higher in 1000AD than present is consistent with more heat being rejected in that period.
In the satellite era, the mid-latitude temperature series used here show a strong, near-linear relationship to recent insolation when an appropriate lag is applied, consistent with a relatively direct radiative forcing response in these bands. The same mid-latitude temperatures are also influenced by changes in advection, which can shift the seasonal timing and the geographic distribution of warming. In this framework, changes in tropical insolation and convection affect poleward moisture and heat transport, which can amplify or dampen local radiative forcing responses depending on season and hemisphere.
Many climate models have persistent biases in tropical convection, clouds, and the representation of warm-pool processes, and these biases affect simulated trends in regions where SST is strongly regulated by convection (including parts of the tropical west Pacific). Chart 18 is presented here as an example of a regime where observed SST is constrained near the warm-pool ceiling, highlighting why correctly representing convective cloud feedbacks matters for attribution and projection.
This limitation means that projections for tropical warm-pool regions (and for circulation responses tied to those regions) should be interpreted cautiously, and model evaluation should emphasise observed constraints on convection, cloud reflectance, and heat export.
The long-term decline in maximum daily insolation at high southern latitudes is consistent with the presence of cooling trends in regions south of ~55S during the satellite era (Kang et al., 2023), and with documented multi-decadal cooling over parts of Antarctica such as the Antarctic Peninsula since the late 1990s (Turner et al., 2016).
Overall, the changing seasonal and latitudinal pattern of ToA insolation provides a coherent, physically motivated framework that is consistent with many of the hemispheric and regional asymmetries highlighted in this article (including differences in tropical reflection behaviour, poleward transport, and mid-latitude temperature response). On that basis, changes in solar intensity across latitudes and seasons are argued here to be a primary driver of the observed patterns and a useful guide for anticipating future regional trends. Broadly, the NH has strong upward temperature trends while the SH is cooling in the high latitudes that will eventually progress to the mid-latitudes as both maximum daily insolation and poleward advection decline.
The Author
Richard Willoughby is a retired electrical engineer having worked in the Australian mining and mineral processing industry for 30 years with roles in large scale operations, corporate R&D and mine development. A further ten years was spent in the global insurance industry as an engineering risk consultant where he developed an enduring interest in natural catastrophes and changing climate.
References and data sources
Datasets and tools used
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Solar System Dynamics. HORIZONS System (online ephemeris and solar system data service). Documentation: HORIZONS System Manual, version 4.98d (21 Nov 2025). NASA/JPL-Caltech.
NASA Langley Research Center. Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) Edition 4.x, monthly mean TOA flux products (Level 3b). Product description and data quality summaries available via CERES data portal.
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International Argo Program and national partners. Argo (global profiling float observations of temperature/salinity, upper 2000 m). General program documentation available via Argo data portals.
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Riser, S. C., Freeland, H. J., Roemmich, D., et al. (2016). Fifteen years of ocean observations with the global Argo array. Nature Climate Change, 6, 145–153.
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Berkeley Earth. Berkeley Earth temperature data: gridded and time-series products (land and land–ocean; includes gridded near-surface air temperature over land and sea surface temperature over oceans; see Berkeley Earth data portal for product notes and licensing).
Supporting scientific literature (selected)
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Tompkins, A. M. (2001). On the relationship between tropical convection and sea surface temperature. Journal of Climate, 14(5), 633–637.
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Kang, S. M., Yu, Y., Deser, C., Zhang, X., Kang, I.-S., Lee, S.-S., Rodgers, K. B., & Ceppi, P. (2023). Global impacts of recent Southern Ocean cooling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(30), e2300881120.
MIT researchers and spinouts have made significant progress on key fusion energy challenges in recent years, though commercial power is still likely years away.
Just as Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a company spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018, was announcing that its mission to build a compact fusion power plant (the SPARC) based on the ARC tokamak design was nearing completion, a team of engineers from ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) were throwing cold water on the idea that fusion power plants (FPPs) can be cost-competitive in future net-zero energy systems.
Tobias Schmidt, founding director of the Albert Einstein School of Public Policy at ETH Zurich, lead author Lingzi Tang, and two others published their findings in Nature Energy on March 23. They concluded that the large unit size, extraordinary complexity, and intermediate need for customization of FPPs are empirically linked to experience rates (cost reductions for additional units) of 2% to 8% rather than the industry’s estimates of 8% to 20% – and that, paired with expected high initial capital costs, spells financial doom for the fledgling industry.
Schmidt told Techxplore.com that, after hearing promises from “some actors in the fusion space” of extremely low levelized costs for FPPs, his team applied to fusion an ETH framework that analyzes why some technologies learn with higher experience rates than others. The team compared magnetic fusion (which prompts fusion by confining hot plasma using powerful magnetic fields) and inertial fusion (which works by compressing fuel using lasers).
Casey Crownheart, writing for MIT Technology Review, said the ETH team asked fusion experts to evaluate FPPs on size, complexity, and customization to predict an experience rate. Tang told Crownheart that “there was almost unanimous agreement that fusion is incredibly complex,” and that reaching the experience rate of 23% for solar modules, 20% for lithium-ion batteries, or even 12% for onshore wind power was highly unlikely.
Tang believes it would take a lot of deployment and quite a long time for the price of building an FPP to drop significantly – and thus that “questions should be raised about current investment levels in fusion,” especially investments by the federal government. “If you’re talking about decarbonization of the energy system,” said Tang, “is this really the best use of public money?”
Not coincidentally, CFS is building its prototype FPP – the SPARC (smallest possible affordable, robust, compact) tokamak – in collaboration with MIT at its Devers, Massachusetts, facility, with completion now scheduled for 2027. CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard says it will be the world’s first commercially relevant fusion energy machine to produce more energy from fusion than it needs to power the process – or net energy generation (Q>1).
Mumgaard went on the record with Reuters’ Tim Gardner, just days after the ETH Zurich report was published, and spoke extensively about the progress his company is making toward its goal of building a larger FPP in Virginia starting in this decade. Mumgaard noted that the ETH Zurich authors are unaffiliated with fusion (Schmidt even said they would not be doing further studies on fusion costs). These academics did not contact him or anyone who is building “anything.”
“When you actually look at … the speed at which we’re able to build our things, the ability that we’ve actually shown to decrease the cost of every component that goes into it, those are following well-known industrial trends that are not from the 1950s or 1960s but are from today. And so we remain very bullish that power bills in Virginia in the 2030s will include fusion.”
Mumgaard says the scaling of costs for FPPs depends not on “the right geographies” or “the right contracts” or even the various flows of big systems but rather on how quickly you can manufacture plants and install them. France switched to nuclear energy in just two decades, and it is even possible that fusion can go significantly faster – possibly as rapidly as what we are seeing in the digital world.
A CFS spokesperson added that, while “we appreciate that researchers are looking into the economics of fusion power plants, the [ETH Zurich study] makes some assumptions that we believe are flawed – notably examining learning rates from the top down instead of at the component level and overestimating customization costs. We track our economics very carefully … and we fully expect to be competitive with other energy sources.”
Mumgaard, who was just appointed as the first representative of the fusion industry to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), is ebullient about fusion’s – and his company’s – future, much of which depends on the success of the SPARC reactor. The appointment emphasizes the realization that fusion has moved from basic science to applied science to demonstrations that we understand how the science works.
The planned commercial fusion power plant (the ARC), to be sited in Chesterfield County, Virginia, is a partnership with Dominion Energy. CFS anticipates first deliveries of up to 400 megawatts of electricity in the 2030s – with Google and ENI as its first customers. But Mumgaard says CFS is planning to build multiple ARC units in rapid fire if capital is available and the markets are right.
In so doing, says Mumgaard, you learn as you go from one plant to another and eventually get to the point where you believe you have it all sorted out – the technology works, the supply chain exists, the design is refined enough to build units in parallel. The scaling is enhanced because the tritium fuel used in tokamak reactors is regenerative.
Mumgaard says all you need to begin endless production of tritium is “a little starter, sort of like a sourdough starter.” SPARC’s tritium came from a fission power plant but can make its own. Any tritium that leaks out we recapture and reuse; it’s well understood how to contain tritium and well written into the regulations.
While CFS has raised billions in private funding, Mumgaard joined the Fusion Industry Association in calling for a $10 billion federal infusion [denied in 2026] to expedite the deployment of fusion power plants in the U.S. The argument was that, while a decade ago the U.S. was shutting down its facilities and sending its experts to help China bring its own facilities online, things have changed, and now it is urgent that the U.S. catch up and surpass the Chinese.
Mumgaard envisioned federal dollars going into three pots – research at the national science laboratories and universities to build the foundations for a future fusion industry; helping the first commercial plants get up and running; and translational research that helps move laboratory innovations into the supply chain and into power plants.
If Mumgaard – and CFS’ investors – are right, the ARC is generating electricity at competitive prices ten years from now, and a new industry could begin rapid growth. Success would also bring in new investors – and new customers to help CFS (and perhaps other fusion companies) to turn a profit.
Once fusion energy achieves commercial success, Mumgaard envisions a high demand, especially in countries like Japan, South Korea, and Singapore that are attracted to an energy source that uses so little land and natural resources, ends dependency on LNG delivered by tankers, and avoids the threats of nuclear weapons being cobbled together from plutonium.
If that happens, China’s massive public sector investment in fusion might not matter.
Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, “Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout.”
In 2024/25, total balancing costs hit £2.7 billion, of which £1.7 billion arose from constraint payments. Prior to the Climate Change Act, these balancing costs would have been inconsequential.
Grid upgrades will add about £9 billion a year to bills by 2031. Self evidently, this cost will far outweigh any potential savings. What they might do, of course, is reduce the cost of future constraint bills, which are projected to massively increase:
NESO project that constraint payments could rise to £7.2 billion in 2030, before OFGEM’s £80 billion grid upgrades kick in, dropping back to £2.9 billion in 2031.
In other words, after the upgrades, constraint payments will be just as high as now. If we don’t upgrade, constraints will increase. If we do, network charges will increase.
Either way, our bills go up!
Significantly, NESO state that constraint payments will resume their upward increase after 2031, as more renewables come on stream. This will require yet more grid upgrades, a never ending roundabout it seems!
In fact, NESO have underestimated long term constraint costs.
This is how they define them:
So, for example, there is a lot of surplus wind power in Scotland at times, but not enough transmission capacity to take it south to markets. In large part, OFGEM’s upgrades are intended to solve this problem.
But there is a much bigger problem looming, that no amount of grid upgrades will cure – soon, there will be far more power on the grid on windy/sunny days than there is demand for.
In their Clean Power 2030 Report, NESO reckoned we would have to throw away 83 TWh of excess wind and solar power in 2030 – 22 TWh curtailed and 61 TWh exported at a loss (they hope!).
NESO stressed in their report that their projections assumed full implementation of OFGEM’s network upgrades, so existing bottlenecks are not to blame for the 83 TWh of wasted power.
Indeed, the Counterfactual scenario, which assumes no accelerated progress, is virtually constraint free – the £80 billion upgrades will do their job.
The extra constraint costs are the direct consequence of building out more and more renewables.
So, let’s recap:
OFGEM want to spend £80 billion on upgrading the grid in the next five years, adding £9 billion to electricity bills.
Expansion of intermittent renewable capacity to meet Net Zero targets will necessitate wasting billions of pounds worth of power, when it is too windy or sunny.
Post 2030, tens of billions more will need to be spent to cope with increasing renewable capacity.
Far from reducing bills, this never ending cycle of increasing renewable capacity/upgrading the grid will inevitably increase them.
Nobody in their right mind would have designed such a system. Unfortunately by the time of the next election, most of the damage will be irreversible.
Prioritizing reliable energy and raw materials (including North Sea/gas) makes sense for medical security—fossil fuels enable modern medicine at scale. Blanket Net Zero timelines that ignore trade-offs risk higher costs and fragility without proportional climate benefits (given global emissions and adaptation options). Better balance: pragmatic emissions cuts via tech/innovation, not ideological restrictions that hobble critical supply chains.
Windy entrepreneur Dale Vince thinks there is “no single reason for us to drill more oil and gas in the North Sea”, former UK Green leader Caroline Lucas comments on BP’s recent cyclical profits rise by claiming, “such blatant profiteering from human misery is sickening”, while the headbangers’ headbanger George Monbiot likens Norway’s exports of hydrocarbons to “a curse to be dumped on other countries”. One can only pray that these twaddle transmitting twits do not become ill and have to call on modern, sophisticated, hydrocarbon-rich medicines.
Up to 20% of drilled oil and gas is turned into petrochemicals and these are used to make famine-reducing fertiliser, uber-useful plastics and life-saving medicines. Yet around 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared last year to vote for the demented, anti-human private legislation that would have cut all hydrocarbon use in the country, whether it arose domestically or abroad, to just 10% within a decade. Food starvation and painful lingering deaths are just a few thoughts and words that spring to mind.
Treason is another. What other word can possibly describe the wilful political decisions currently being made in countries like the UK to stop future extractions of hydrocarbons? How can politicians like the sinister Ed Miliband claim international leadership of the Net Zero fantasy and expect others to provide future food, fertiliser and medicines? Who will tend to an ailing G. Monbiot when the medicine cabinet is empty and Norway sells its ‘curses’ elsewhere.
Modern medicine depends heavily on hydrocarbons, both as raw material and chemical building blocks. Without them, the production of many essential drugs – from painkillers and antibiotics to cancer therapies – would be significantly more difficult, much more expensive, and in some cases impossible to produce at the required scale. Many pharmaceuticals are organic molecules and hydrocarbons form the backbone of the complex manufacturing chemistry. For example, hydrocarbon-derived benzene can be converted through controlled reactions into compounds such as phenol and aniline to synthesise drugs such as paracetamol. Treating propylene provides vital solvents and other manufacturing intermediaries.
Inactive substances made from hydrocarbons such as paraffin wax and certain emulsifiers help stabilise drugs, control their release in the body and improve their shelf life. Ointments and gels provide a stable way that active ingredients can be applied to the skin. Hydrocarbons are also widely used in drug delivery systems such as syringes and are widespread in the manufacture of protective clothing, IV bags, pill bottles and sterile packaging.
The current problems in the Gulf with the 20% reduction in the global supply of oil and gas are a dress rehearsal for absolute Net Zero. Within weeks of the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, prices of both medicines and fertilisers are soaring. Fertiliser prices are up 50%, and those countries with Net Zero ambitions and related high energy costs such as the UK and Australia face heavy food inflation as crop yields inevitably fall. Prices of medicines are reported by some pharmacies in the UK to have increased by 20-30%, partly due to disruptions in the supply chain, but also the rising cost of hydrocarbons. Even the Guardian seems to be catching on with an April 26th headline: ‘From syringes to stents: Iran war exposes NHS dependency on petrochemicals.’ The newspaper reports that the NHS spent £21.6 billion on medicines in 2024-25, so a touch of Net Zero-style inflation from the Gulf is likely to blow further massive holes in the budget of bankrupt Britain.
It is difficult to put a global figure on the amount of oil and gas used by the pharmaceutical business, but it is clear that many millions of tonnes of hydrocarbon-derived chemicals are consumed every year. Some drugs such as cancer treatments with highly complex molecules use large quantities of hydrocarbons and derivates such as solvents, reagents and processing aids. Inevitably, there have been suggested ‘green’ replacements but they face major, likely impossible, challenges in matching the performance, scalability and cost of traditional hydrocarbon-based processes. The existing infrastructure for petrochemical production is proven, cost-effective and capable of supplying global demand at the scale needed.
The sooner Net Zero is kicked into touch the better. This is getting serious. Entire generations, pampered and protected from hardship in ways unimaginable to their ancestors, have been brainwashed into accepting that carbon dioxide, the gas of life, somehow controls the climate thermostat. This despite a lack of proof from actual observations going back at least 600 million years. Cutting North Sea drilling and failing to frack the vast, easily extracted gas that could be sitting under our feet takes away our energy security. But even worse, it could spread hunger and once-controllable diseases across the land. It is the ultimate luxury belief from neo-Malthusian, Marxist-inspired ideologues who seek political control, seemingly at whatever cost.
History shows that this type of commanding collectivisation often ends in tears – witness the gulags and starvation of Stalin’s Soviet Union, the deliberate famines in Mao’s China, and not forgetting the mountains of human skulls that arose from Pol Pot’s Cambodian Ground Zero experiment.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Rainfall (precipitation) prediction remains challenging in a warming world primarily because of uncertainties in how large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns will shift, even as basic thermodynamic (moisture-related) changes are more predictable.
Rainfall (precipitation) prediction remains challenging in a warming world primarily because of uncertainties in how large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns will shift, even as basic thermodynamic (moisture-related) changes are more predictable.
A major 2026 study led by the University of Oxford and ETH Zurich (published in Nature) analyzed Northern Hemisphere winter rainfall (1950–2022) and separated these influences. Models capture thermodynamic changes well but significantly underrepresent circulation-driven trends—for example, simulating only about 10% of the observed circulation-driven rainfall trend in Southern Europe. This gap limits confidence in regional forecasts of floods and droughts.
Regional details (e.g., exact shifts in monsoon strength, mid-latitude storm tracks, or subtropical drying) carry lower confidence, especially for specific locations and seasons. This is why IPCC reports often show wider uncertainty ranges or hatching (low model agreement) for precipitation projections compared to temperature.
Uncertain dynamic response of mid-latitude winter precipitation
“Uncertain dynamic response of mid-latitude winter precipitation” is the title of a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature on April 29, 2026, led by Lei Gu (University of Oxford, formerly ETH Zurich) along with co-authors including Dominik L. Schumacher, Erich M. Fischer, and Reto Knutti.
Understanding changes in precipitation is crucial for society and ecosystems. Previous studies have examined contributions from anthropogenic forcing versus internal variability, but discrepancies remain between observed and simulated patterns. In Northern Hemisphere winter, mismatches are often blamed on unforced internal variability. However, evidence suggests models may underestimate the total precipitation response to human forcings.
The study shows that thermodynamic contributions (related to moisture and temperature changes) are broadly reproduced by climate models. In contrast, dynamic contributions (shifts in large-scale atmospheric circulation) diverge more substantially. The authors disentangle forced thermodynamic and dynamic components from internal variability in winter precipitation trends (1950–2022).
Key finding in the Mediterranean:
The forced dynamic signal in model simulations explains only about 10% of the observed dynamic trend, making detection challenging. Under continued emissions, projected circulation responses intensify and increasingly resemble observed patterns—though internal variability may still dominate observations. Improving the representation of forced large-scale circulation changes in models is essential for better regional projections.
Thermodynamic: Moisture-related effects from warming (e.g., higher atmospheric water-holding capacity).
Dynamic: Changes in circulation patterns (e.g., jet stream, storm tracks, pressure systems like the North Atlantic Oscillation) that steer where moisture is delivered.
Internal variability: Natural fluctuations unrelated to long-term forcing.
They used observations (e.g., ERA5, MSWEP, other reanalyses and datasets), CMIP6 models, large ensembles (e.g., CESM2-LE), and nudged simulations to isolate signals.
Analysis focused on Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude winter trends over ~70+ years.
This work directly addresses why regional rainfall projections, especially in mid-latitudes during winter, carry high uncertainty despite clearer global thermodynamic signals.
Dynamic uncertainties stem from:
Strong natural decadal variability in circulation.
Potential model underestimation of how circulation responds to greenhouse gases, aerosols, or other forcings.
Challenges in distinguishing forced trends from noise in relatively short observational records. bioengineer.org
The study suggests an emerging forced dynamic signal under further warming, but confidence remains limited. This has implications for predicting shifts in storm tracks, Mediterranean drying, European rainfall patterns, and risks of extremes (floods/droughts).
It aligns with prior findings on circulation biases in models (e.g., North Atlantic jet stream) and complements research on why mean precipitation and extremes are harder to project regionally than temperature. Data and code are available via Zenodo and OSF repositories for reproducibility.
The full paper is behind a paywall on Nature.com, but the abstract, figures (showing observed vs. simulated trends and decompositions), and supplementary information provide substantial detail. News summaries from Oxford, EurekAlert, and others offer accessible overviews.
This paper advances attribution science and highlights priorities for model improvement ahead of future CMIP phases.
Uncertain dynamic response of mid-latitude winter precipitation
Understanding changes in precipitation is crucial for society and ecosystems1,2. Studies have documented the respective contributions of anthropogenic forcing and internal variability to precipitation trends3,4, yet discrepancies persist between observed and simulated patterns. In Northern Hemisphere winter, these mismatches are often attributed to unforced internal variability that dominates observed trends5. However, growing evidence also indicates that climate models underestimate the total response of precipitation to human forcings6,7,8. Here we show that the thermodynamic contribution is broadly reproduced by climate models, whereas the dynamic contribution can diverge more substantially. Our approach disentangles the anthropogenic forced thermodynamic and dynamic components from internal variability in winter precipitation trends (1950–2022) to investigate their contribution to the trend discrepancies. In the Mediterranean, the forced dynamic signal from model simulations explains only about 10% of the observed dynamic trend, making detection challenging. Under continued anthropogenic emissions, the projected circulation response intensifies and more closely resembles observed trend patterns. Although internal variability in the observed record may contribute to this similarity, the results indicate an uncertain yet potentially emerging role of dynamic response in shaping regional winter precipitation trends. A reliable representation of the forced large-scale circulation response in climate models remains key for increasing confidence in regional precipitation projections.
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