Daily Sceptic Plugs El Nino As The Cause Of 2023 Global Warming Spike - Concedes Hunga Tonga May Have Had Something To Do With It

h/t Mark Hodgson

This is the headline at the Daily Sceptic:

That’s a statement of alleged fact. Chris Morrison backs up the headline statement by saying the following:

Examine the latest global temperatures calculated by NASA and it can be seen that the recent months-long pattern of increasing anomalies is consistent with a similar rising record for the last El Niño in 2015-16.

The table below is compiled by GISS, the NASA global temperature dataset. The trend in higher anomalies – departures from the norm – seen from October 2015 through to April 2016 is similar to that seen from June this year. In an enlightening essay published recently by the online science publication Watts Up With That?, Larry Hamlin notes that the highest prior GISS measured temperature anomaly at 1.37°C was in February 2016 and this compared with 1.44°C recorded last November (‘hottest month ever’). This amounts to a higher anomaly of 1/14th of a degree centigrade. The author states that the GISS data shows that the 2023 El Niño is driving the current global temperature anomaly increases.

So basically, Chris is taking his lead from an author at WUWT. I have skimmed the WUWT article. There doesn’t appear to be much science on offer in the article; it’s basically an observation and comparison of temperature data. i.e. GISS global and contiguous US states, which concludes that it is El Nino wot dunnit and furthermore, there is zero evidence of a ‘climate emergency’ in the US data. Whereas I would agree with the latter, I cannot see a justification for the former. The WUWT article completely ignores Hunga Tonga as well.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: in June 2023, the current El Nino (rated moderate/strong - 2015/16 El Nino was rated very strong) was in the development phase. Unless there is some mysterious unknown physical process whereby a moderate developing El Nino can suddenly bump up global mean surface temperature anomalies to record levels starting in early summer and maintain those record anomalies into November, then it could not have been El Nino wot dunnit!

So credit to Chris Morrison for suggesting that Hunga Tonga may have played a bit part in accelerating global warmth in 2023, but it’s frustrating that he will not apply some simple logic to questioning the hypothesis that it was El Nino which was responsible for the major role, and it’s also frustrating that climate sceptic authors seem to be so reluctant to delve more deeply into the science which might suggest that it was the eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano which caused the 2023 ‘global boiling’ (currently ongoing).