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Reggie VanderVeen's avatar

Remember when Mount St. Helens tossed 1 cubic mile of rock and ash into the mesosphere in 1980? It took years for the debris to clear. Well, Hunga Tonga put 2.5 cu mi into the mesosphere in 2022 plus an unbelievable (and unmeasurable) amount of water vapor, considered to be the most plentiful greenhouse. Hunga Tonga's influence on GAST is underreported.

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Oscar's avatar

Not sure if you follow John Dee Climate Normal. But he does a splendid job of ripping apart the weather data and exposing the corruption of said data.

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Gary Sharpe's avatar

Amazing how the excess temperature has been really consistent for months too, around a +0.9 C, not sure if that is co-incidence, or whether this is to be expected with Hunga Tong...?

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Jaime Jessop's avatar

With El Nino, the water vapour in the troposphere heats the atmosphere but is fairly short-lived, hence the brief spike in global temperature. What we've seen since autumn last year is a plateau of high temperature, which appears to be consistent with the fact that the water vapour in the stratosphere is only declining gradually. In two years, there has only been a modest reduction. It may take another 12 months for it to decline significantly.

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Douglas Brodie's avatar

There seems to be not much correlation between recorded temperatures and actual weather, e.g. as between the recent record highs of the UAH tropospheric series and the cold weather recorded all around the globe.

Here in Lanzarote, the Met Office says the local temperature is around 21C max, yet it feels dangerously burning hot, like 30C in July South of France.

Maybe far too much store is being put in temperature readings with regard to their impact on weather and, longer term, on climate.

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Jaime Jessop's avatar

NE US is experiencing some particularly severe Spring weather at the moment. Here in the UK, the jet stream, much further south than normal for this time of year, is still dominating our weather. Mean global surface temperature and global atmospheric circulation patterns (affecting regional weather) are just two symptoms of a wider influence upon the earth's climate. What we got in Jan 2022 was a significant perturbation of that wider influence.

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