Hunga Tonga Warming: Vindication From Vinos At Climate Etc.
Here is the link to an excellent summary analysis by Javier Vinos of the possible causes of the observationally unprecedented 2023/24 global warming spike:
https://judithcurry.com/2024/07/05/hunga-tonga-volcano-impact-on-record-warming/
Javier says:
The climate event of 2023 was truly exceptional, but the prevailing catastrophism about climate change hinders its proper scientific analysis. I present arguments that support the view that we are facing an extraordinary and extremely rare natural event in climate history.
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s climate monitoring institute, also uses the expression “uncharted territory” when he explains that the 2023 anomaly worries scientists, saying that climate models cannot explain why the planet’s temperature suddenly spiked in 2023. Not only was the temperature anomaly much larger than expected, but it occurred months before the onset of El Niño. In his own words: “The 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated.”[iii] According to Gavin, we could have broken the climate and the models would no longer work.
Instead of abandoning science for wild speculation let’s examine the possible factors responsible for the abrupt warming that Gavin Schmidt dismisses by saying they could explain at most a few hundredths of a degree, for which he has little evidence.
3. The little boy is innocent
El Niño is unlikely to be responsible for the simple reason that such abrupt global warming is unprecedented in our records, and El Niño has many precedents. In addition, El Niño warms a specific region of the equatorial Pacific and primarily affects the Pacific, while the “2023 event” warmed parts of the North Atlantic to an extraordinary degree. This does not prevent scientists like Jan Esper and Ulf Büntgen from saying that 2023 is consistent with a greenhouse gas-induced warming trend amplified by an El Niño.[iv] They clearly did not examine the data before writing this, nor did the reviewers of their Nature paper.
This graph of PDO vs. Nino 3.4 is especially revealing as to why 202324 was so extraordinary. The only other comparable year when PDO and ENSO were so at odds was 1991 when Pinatubo erupted:
Ship fuel aerosols get a beating too:
A recent study, still under peer review, used a climate model to calculate that sulfur emission reductions from 2020 could cause global warming of 0.02°C in the first decade.[v] Since the warming in 2023 was 10 times greater, it is difficult to believe that emissions reductions since 2020 could have been a major factor in the abrupt warming in 2023.
Well worth reading the whole article.
The cerescokid comment under the Vinos article sums up the patent dishonesty of establishment so-called scientists like Gavin Schmidt and his chums: ‘It must be wonderful being an activist climate scientist. You just turn off the cognitive functioning button and like a talking doll say “AGW did it”. What a simple world to live in’.
Thanks for the link. Typically the skeptical studies of CAGW will not get the coverage "scientists" like Gavin promote. I am guessing you covered earlier articles on stratospheric W/V , It is not surprising that the agenda driven studies attempt to discount WV post a natural event.
In 2013 (you likely already covered these), S W/V was not so discounted.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1215209110 2013 study
We show observational evidence for a stratospheric water vapor feedback—a warmer climate increases stratospheric water vapor, and because stratospheric water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas, this leads to further warming. An estimate of its magnitude from a climate model yields a value of +0.3 W/(m2⋅K), suggesting that this feedback plays an important role in our climate system.
NOAA commented....
The new results suggest that the stratospheric water vapor feedback may be an important component of our climate system. The researchers estimated that at a minimum this feedback adds another ~5-10% to the climate warming from the addition of greenhouse gases, and is possibly substantially more than this amount.