{"id":339847,"date":"2024-08-17T15:31:51","date_gmt":"2024-08-17T13:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=339847"},"modified":"2024-08-17T15:31:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T13:31:54","slug":"we-should-have-better-answers-by-now-broken-climate-models-cant-even-explain-the-recent-warm-bump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=339847","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe should have better answers by now\u201d: Broken Climate Models Can\u2019t even Explain the Recent Warm Bump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by<\/strong> Eric Worrall<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If climate models can\u2019t even get heat spikes right, what use are they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018We should have better answers by now\u2019: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Watts<\/a> Global environment editorThu 15 Aug 2024 22.00 AEST<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a remarkably candid essay in the journal Nature<\/a> this March, one of the world\u2019s top climate scientists posited the alarming possibility that global heating may be moving beyond the ability of experts to predict what happens next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth\u2019s climate system,\u201d wrote Gavin Schmidt, a British scientist and the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this anomaly does not stabilise by August, he said, it could imply \u201cthat a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated\u201d.

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With August now here, Schmidt is a fraction less disturbed. He said the situation remains unclear, but the broader global heating trends are starting to move back in the direction of forecasts. \u201cWhat I am thinking now is we aren\u2019t that far off from expectations. If we maintain this for the next couple of months then we can say what happened in late 2023 was more \u2018blippish\u2019 than systematic. But it is still too early to call it,\u201d he said. \u201cI am slightly less worried, but still humbled that we can\u2019t explain it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back at the most extreme months of heat in the second half of 2023 and early 2024 when the previous records were beaten at times by more than 0.2C, an enormous anomaly, he said scientists were still baffled: \u201cWe don\u2019t have a quantitative explanation for even half of it. That is pretty humbling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cWe should have better answers by now. Climate modelling as an enterprise is not set out to be super reactive. It is a slow, long process in which people around the world are volunteering their time. We haven\u2019t got our act together on this question yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recent El Nin\u00f5 added to global heat pressures. Scientists have also pointed to the fallout from the January 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha\u2019apai volcanic eruption in Tonga<\/a>, the ramping up of solar activity in the run-up to a predicted solar maximum<\/a>, and pollution controls that reduced cooling sulphur dioxide particles. But Schmidt said none of these possible causes was sufficient to account for the spike in temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/a>Read more:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/article\/2024\/aug\/15\/we-should-have-better-answers-by-now-climate-scientists-baffled-by-unexpected-pace-of-heating<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Despite Schmidt\u2019s skepticism, I don\u2019t believe the Hunga Tonga eruption should be dismissed as a candidate explanation for this year\u2019s temperature bump. It seems logical to infer that the temperature spike which followed the volcano which filled the stratosphere with an enormous spike of powerful greenhouse gas was possibly caused by the volcano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hunga Tonga volcano: impact on record warming<\/a><\/blockquote>