{"id":331879,"date":"2024-06-06T15:38:38","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T13:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=331879"},"modified":"2024-06-06T15:38:41","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T13:38:41","slug":"sea-surface-temperature-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=331879","title":{"rendered":"Sea Surface Temperature Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over in the X-Twitterverse, I see that Roger Hallam (@RogerHallamCS21) is doing his very best to scare people. Here\u2019s his xtweet<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If ever there was one datapoint which proved that humanity is inevitably moving into a period of revolutionary social disruption, it is the top right hand point of this chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The global sea level temperature for the first 5 months of 2024 is literally off the chart. The super exponential hypothesis is alive and kicking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meaning, in everyday language, things are going to get so bad so quickly political regimes are going to collapse like dominoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I keep saying \u2013 the key question of our time is this: WHAT COMES NEXT? \u2013 Fascism or Radical Democracy?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Figure 1. Roger Coppock\u2019s graph referred to in Roger Hallam\u2019s tweet.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

So what\u2019s not to like about this chart?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, first off, every dot in the chart represents a full year of data \u2026 except for the dot at the top right, which only has 5 months of data, from January to May. If memory serves, this is known as \u201ccomparing apples to orange peels\u201d<\/em> or something similar. And in any case, under any name \u2026 it\u2019s not done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, they\u2019ve thrown away about 90% of the data by averaging it into years. Why not use monthly data, since we have it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, the idea that a few months of warmer-than-usual sea levels \u201cproves that humanity is inevitably moving into a period of revolutionary social disruption\u201d <\/em>is a joke. It assumes that we\u2019ve never seen rapid sea surface temperature increases before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what would a real graph of the ERSST data look like? To answer that, as is my habit, I went and got the underlying data and graphed it up. Here\u2019s the result.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Figure 2. Graph of the full ERSST.V5 monthly sea surface temperature (SST) dataset. Periods with red line and blue background are times of rapid warming or cooling.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Now, there are several interesting things about this dataset. First, there were two times in the past, around 1878 and around 1942, when we saw similar large jumps in the sea surface temperature. I\u2019ve highlighted those two anomalies, along with the current warming, in red. Curiously, neither of them led to, what was it \u2026 \u201ca period of revolutionary social disruption<\/em>\u201c. In fact, were it not for thermometers, nobody would even have known they occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, when\u2019s the last time you woke up and thought \u201cWow, it certainly feels like the global ocean surface temperature is a quarter of a degree C warmer than a couple of months ago!\u201d<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what caused the jumps in 1878 and 1942? And more than that, in both cases why did the temperature return quite quickly to the status quo ante?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we used to say during the many seasons I spent commercial fishing, \u201cMore unsolved mysteries of the sea.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, although the CO2 levels were rising during the half-century from 1860 to 1910, sea surface temperatures were dropping over that time\u2026 go figure. Another unsolved mystery of the sea \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, there\u2019s a relatively strong cycle with a period of about 9.1 years in the data \u2026 too short to be sunspot-related. Why nine+ years? Dang those mysteries!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we come to the question mark in the upper right corner in Figure 1\u2014what will tomorrow bring? My first guess would be that it would do what it did in the past, go up and come down again. However, to get a better sense of where it\u2019s going, Figure 2 shows a closer look at the recent part of the same data shown in Figure 1, with the same yellow\/red smoothed lines as in Figure 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Figure 2. Same data as in Figure 1, but only showing the recent sea surface temperature since 2016.<\/em>\u00a0Yellow\/red lines are the same CEEMD smooth of the data as shown in Figure 1<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And this reveals a curious fact \u2026 sea surface temperatures are not skyrocketing as Hallam and Coppock claim. Quite the opposite\u2014the temperature peaked in August of last year, 2023, and has generally dropped in the nine months since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, we can see why in the Hallam \/ Coppock graph the average of the first five months of the 2024 temperature data is so much higher than the average of the full twelve months of 2023 data, despite the fact that sea surface temperatures have been dropping for nine months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TL;DR Version: <\/strong>We may indeed be \u201cmoving into a period of revolutionary social disruption\u201d<\/em>, but it\u2019s not because of one very misleading dot on a graph of global sea surface temperatures \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My very best wishes to all, now I gotta go mow the lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

w.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, you\u2019ve heard it before: <\/strong>When you comment, please quote the exact words you\u2019re discussing. I can defend my words, but I can\u2019t defend your interpretation of my words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you want to show I\u2019m wrong, here are instructions on How To Show Willis Is Wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, first off, every dot in the chart represents a full year of data \u2026 except for the dot at the top right, which only has 5 months of data, from January to May. If memory serves, this is known as\u00a0\u201ccomparing apples to orange peels\u201d\u00a0or something similar. And in any case, under any name \u2026 it\u2019s not done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":331886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818076,691820089,691819222],"class_list":{"0":"post-331879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-co2","9":"tag-sea-surface-temperature","10":"tag-temperature","12":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/00ocean_0.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1okT","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":407934,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=407934","url_meta":{"origin":331879,"position":0},"title":"About Sea Surface\u00a0Temperatures","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"13\/10\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Satellite instruments\u00a0measure sea surface temperature\u2014often abbreviated as SST\u2014by checking how\u00a0much energy comes off the ocean at different wavelengths. Computer programs\u00a0merge sea surface temperatures from ships and buoys with the satellite data and incorporate information from maps of sea ice. To produce the daily maps, programs invoke mathematical filters to combine\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"NOAA\u2019s Climate Data Records Program\"","block_context":{"text":"NOAA\u2019s Climate Data Records Program","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=noaas-climate-data-records-program"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0AQP98IzXCikOi25GyXaZgqnleeOllzj2cF2IU0Mt5tXH7DcXqvgclpzRkw9cPe_FYNPUPPT43585loa8GVa0YgQPeawI08WfEOtXBslfazcm2KcTRuGZLeJpzDjVNKVO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C681&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0AQP98IzXCikOi25GyXaZgqnleeOllzj2cF2IU0Mt5tXH7DcXqvgclpzRkw9cPe_FYNPUPPT43585loa8GVa0YgQPeawI08WfEOtXBslfazcm2KcTRuGZLeJpzDjVNKVO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C681&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0AQP98IzXCikOi25GyXaZgqnleeOllzj2cF2IU0Mt5tXH7DcXqvgclpzRkw9cPe_FYNPUPPT43585loa8GVa0YgQPeawI08WfEOtXBslfazcm2KcTRuGZLeJpzDjVNKVO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C681&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0AQP98IzXCikOi25GyXaZgqnleeOllzj2cF2IU0Mt5tXH7DcXqvgclpzRkw9cPe_FYNPUPPT43585loa8GVa0YgQPeawI08WfEOtXBslfazcm2KcTRuGZLeJpzDjVNKVO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C681&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0AQP98IzXCikOi25GyXaZgqnleeOllzj2cF2IU0Mt5tXH7DcXqvgclpzRkw9cPe_FYNPUPPT43585loa8GVa0YgQPeawI08WfEOtXBslfazcm2KcTRuGZLeJpzDjVNKVO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C681&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":315589,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=315589","url_meta":{"origin":331879,"position":1},"title":"2023 Climate Report: Earth\u2019s Climate Is\u00a0Fine","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/04\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The observational data presented here reveal a vast number of natural variations, some of which appear in more than one series. 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