Climate Communication - What Happens When We Don't Set a New Heat Record?

Both NASA and NOAA report that the first six months of 2016 have been the warmest half-year on record. This year, 2016, has a 99% chance of setting a new record for the hottest year ever recorded in global surface temperatures. It would surpass the previous record year, 2015, which surpassed the previous record year, 2014, thus making 2016 the third straight year setting a new heat record. But what happens when we don't set a new record?

This fact is inevitable. While increasing CO2 is causing a long-term trend in increasing temperatures, there is short-term variability that can make any year either a bit higher or lower. Check out the basics in this short video. [See also here for a good explanation of trend vs variation]

So even non-record-setting years are still getting warmer, just not record-setting warm. You can see this clearly in a NASA graphic of January-June temperature trends taken from the first link above: 2016 blows away the old records and even less warm years are well above the older years.

CO2 will continue to push temperatures upward over the long term. But short-term phenomena like El Nino and La Nina (and others) are what defines the level for any given year. For the earlier part of the 21st century we saw very little in the way of El Nino events after the massive 1998 El Nino that spiked temperatures higher. That is why deniers always pick 1998 as the start date for any dishonest claim of a "pause" in warming. There never was any "pause" or "hiatus," just short-term variation caused by lack of El Ninos and a series of La Ninas (the latter of which tends to dampen warming just as the former tends to enhance it). We've had a very large El Nino the last year or so, which is partially why the rising temperatures have broken the records by such a great amount (keeping in mind that the 2014 record was set without any help from El Nino).

That El Nino is dissipated and scientists anticipate a La Nina starting up this fall, so while 2016 is still likely to set a new record for the third year in a row, conditions appear to be setting up for 2017 not to set a new record. If it comes up less warm than 2016 we'll see all the climate deniers screaming "See, it's getting cooler," despite the fact that "less hot" does not equate to "cooler." [Think of your stove: the high setting is very hot, but the medium setting is not "cool."]

Just as it is inevitable that we'll have a year that is not as hot as this year (though the following years will continue the upward trend), it's inevitable that the climate denial lobbying industry will misrepresent the less hot year as "cooler." We've seen this with the non-"pause" and we've seen it with the "Arctic sea ice has recovered" every time the short-term variation gives a year where ice decreases slightly less than the previous year. These lobbyists know what they are saying is dishonestly misrepresenting the science, but they do it anyway. That is their job as fossil fuel lobbyists.

So scientists and science communicators need to be prepared to deal with the inevitable deceit of climate deniers when a year, possibly 2017, shows less warming than the previous record years.

The Hot Climate Trend Continues in April and the Arctic is Melting

2014 set a record for the hottest year on record. 2015 beat that to become the new hottest year. And 2016 is well on its way to becoming the third year straight setting a new record for hottest year in global climate.

So much for the non-"pause."

NOAA released its April 2016 data this week and reported that April is the 12th straight month of heat records. It wasn't just the hottest April ever recorded, it was the biggest heat gain for April since global records began in 1880. The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces was 0.10 degress C (1.98 degrees F) above the 20th century average. That's huge.

In the graphic above (larger here), all the pink and red are warmer than normal, with the darker reds showing the greatest warming. The blues and whites are areas where it was cooler in April. Not surprisingly, climate denial lobbyists like to talk about the small areas of blue and ignore the rest of the red planet.

This isn't just warming, it's staggeringly increased warming. And this is even though 2015 already showed a huge jump from the normal range of warming. In short, it's getting hot. Really hot.

NASA released its data a few days prior to NOAA and it also shows a record April and continuation of a long trend of record heating. There really is no way to deny the heating that has been taking place. Nor the cause, which is primarily human combustion of fossil fuels that is putting huge amounts of excess CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans.

The Arctic is melting

All of this heat is having a horrific effect on sea ice extent in the Arctic. We've seen a continuing trend towards reduced ice extent during the summer in the Arctic. This year it's been even worse. As noted many times, Arctic sea ice grows in the winter and melts in the summer (though not completely). This winter had the worst sea ice extent growth on record. Not only is that bad but it starts off the melt season with a lot less ice than normal, which is reflected in the current sea ice extent as of mid-May that is well below this time during the record season of 2012. (Larger here)

The annual minimum won't be until September and conditions could change, but with such a bad start it's entirely possible we could hit a record low ice amount this summer.

Alaska is baking

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it does. At 320 miles above the Arctic Circle, Barrow, Alaska is the last place you would expect to lose snow cover. It's already melting. Alaska has experienced record heat and May 13th set the earliest snowmelt date ever recorded. It smashed the previous record.

The early melting follows a record-setting winter that saw temperatures average more than 11 degrees above normal...shattering the previous record set in 2015.

Worse, "an ominous series of openings, known as leads, extending deep into the Arctic" have opened up as sea ice is already showing signs of massive breakup. It's not pretty.

All of this doesn't bode well for the summer. This year (2016) is currently on track to break the global heat record set in 2015 (which broke the previous record of 2014), and we're on pace to have the worse Arctic melt year on record to boot.

While climate denier lobbyists desperately search for a "pause" in warming, the climate just keeps on getting hotter.

January is Hot, And the Supreme Court Just Got Interesting

January 2016 set the record for being the hottest January recorded. It follows on the heals of the hottest year ever recorded (2015), which itself blew away the previous record holder set just one year before in 2014. See a trend, anyone? With the climate clearly heating up, so too is the Supreme Court battle over President Obama's attempt to deal with climate change heating up.

The January heat wasn't just hot, it was a bigger hot than any previous hot. At 1.13 degrees C above the norm it exceeds the previous record increase set a month before. This sets the stage for 2016 to possibly set yet another record, the third year in a row to break the previous record. Worse yet, the biggest increase in heat is in the Arctic, where it's so hot that the annual maximum sea ice extent is trending the lowest it has ever been. Bottom line = the rate of warming is higher than it has been in a decade, which will speed up the impacts we are already noticing and move closer impacts we hoped wouldn't be seen until the end of the century.

Which makes the sudden passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia so important. Last week I reported on what the February 9th stay on implementation of the President's Clean Power Plan meant for climate. In the blink of an eye the entire calculus changes. The Constitution requires President Obama to nominate a successor to fill Justice Scalia's now vacant position on the bench. That same Constitution requires the Senate to review and vote on the nominee. Despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's bloviating about not even considering a nominee, the Constitution requires them to act. With nearly a year left in President Obama's term, there is plenty of time for all to conform to their Constitutional responsibilities.

Given the far right "conservative" leanings of Justice Scalia, it's likely that any Obama nominee will be more judicially, well, judicial rather than overtly political. That obviously puts the Republican majority Senate in a position they would prefer not to be in - hence the bloviating - but they have an obligation to move forward. Assuming some Obama-appointed justice is confirmed, that justice is likely to have a different view on the Clean Power Plan than did Scalia. The same is true for several other pending and possible future issues before the Court.

So what happens next? As Obama decides who he will nominate, the Court is essentially (or at least presumably) deadlocked on key cases; those cases are remanded to the appeal court decisions, which in general favors Obama's positions. For the Clean Power Plan it likely means it will be allowed to move forward. That isn't a given, but the probabilities increase for it to happen.

As a reminder, the Clean Power Plan is simply a set of EPA rules that would help reduce carbon emissions from power plants. It is by no means the "answer" to climate change, merely the first small step within the limitations of Executive Branch authority while we all wait for Congress to take more substantive action. Given the Republican-led Congress's denial of the science, it seems likely that Congress won't take any action until Democrats can retake the majority. That's possible in the Senate this year (though by no means a given), but won't happen in the House until gerrymandering reform makes House seats honestly competitive (something that won't happen at least until after the 2020 elections).

Which is why the Clean Power Plan is so important. It's a small step, but it's a step in the right direction.

2015 Smashes Record for Hottest Year

As anticipated for many months, 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded. And not just the hottest by a slim margin...this was no "by the nose" win...2015 obliterated the previous record holder. By the way, that was 2014. NASA and NOAA jointly announced their independent findings this week. Here's the trend video:

This is no big surprise. Rising CO2 levels surpassed 400 ppm, a trend that has been taking CO2 about 40% higher than the normal range maintained for thousands of years. With CO2 as a driver, the mean global temperature trend has been staggering upward for many decades. Each decade has been warmer than the one before, and the hottest years are stacking up. The ten hottest years have all been since 1998, with 15 out of the 17 hottest years occurring since 2000.

You want a cool graphic? Check out this 15-second video that shows the record years continuing to rise.

In short, human activity is continuing to heat up the climate system.

Why was 2015 such a huge record breaker? Part of it is because of a massive El Nino event. You remember El Nino, right? The last big one was 1998, which not coincidentally is the year that the denier lobbyists cherry pick as their start date when they want to falsely claim "warming stopped" (despite the obvious fact that warming has continued, and more recently, sped up). El Ninos appear sporadically and in El Nino years we can generally expect global temperatures to be higher. La Nina years tend to tamp down increasing temperatures.

Aha! You might say (incorrectly). It's only warmer because El Nino made it warmer. Wrong. It's warmer because CO2 and other greenhouse gases are driving the warming trend in our climate. This year would have continued that trend even without El Nino. What El Nino did do was help 2015 not only break the previous record (of 2014), but smash it. Look again at the far right column in the graph above. Now look at the second from the right column - that's 2014. Normally the new records increase only incrementally over the previous record; after all, the climate is fairly stable and it takes a lot to change it. El Nino helped 1998 make a big jump, and it helped 2015 make a big jump. Based on how this year is starting out, 2016 has a reasonable chance of breaking the record for the third year in a row.

NASA and NOAA are not alone. The Met Office in the UK also reported that 2015 was the warmest year on record. The Japan Meteorological Agency is expected to report the same within the next few days.

None of this comes as a shock given that the early months of 2015 were already breaking monthly records by such a large margin that it would have taken a worldwide deep freeze for the rest of the year to not break the record. Instead we saw continued monthly record-breaking, which is why 2015 shattered the annual global mean temperature record.

Of course, denier lobbyists and their affiliated blogs have trotted out their usual non-scientists to dismiss the scientific findings with claims of worldwide conspiracies. Mostly the deniers have tried to ignore the inconvenient science and instead have focused on the snowstorm expected to hit one part of the eastern United States, as if it is somehow relevant. In other words, deniers will continue their desperate attempts to keep policy action from happening by intentionally lying about the well-known science.

But as the recent commitments in Paris demonstrate, the world has left the deniers to drown in their own buffoonish dishonesty while the rest of us take responsibility. It's on to 2016.