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Dr. Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
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Jan 15,, 5 tweets, 2 min read
The Tonga eruption yesterday appears to be one of the largest volcanic events we have seen in decades.

We do not know how much cooling SO2 it has put in the stratosphere (data will come in later today), but this is the effect a Pinatubo-sized volcano would have on temps today:
That being said, we have no particular reason to think that this eruption will be Pinatubo-sized in terms of its stratospheric SO2 injection. That will depend on how much SO2 was released for how long how high in the stratosphere. We will know more in a day, so watch this space!
Scientists get excited about these sort of events because they can serve as natural climate experiments, but we should not lose sight of the real suffering on the ground that this event (and the resulting tsunami) have caused for people in Tonga and the surrounding regions.
We finally have post-eruption SO2 measurements in, and it looks like it is probably not enough to meaningfully affect global temperatures. That being said, more measurements will be taken, and more eruptions are possible.
For comparison, Pinatubo was around 20 Tg SO2: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

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More from @hausfath

Dr. Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
Jan 17,
Our State of the Climate 2021 is out! carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-c…

⬆ 5th or 6th highest surface temps
⬆ Warmest summer on land
⬆ Warmest year for 25 countries + 1.8 billion people
⬆ Record ocean heat
⬆ Record high GHGs
⬆ Record high sea levels
⬇ Record low glacier mass
1/18 ImageImageImageImage
We saw the 5th warmest (@CopernicusECMWF) or 6th warmest year on record (@NASAGISS @NOAANCEI @BerkeleyEarth). Temperatures were 1.1C to 1.2C above preindustrial levels in 2021: Image
2021 was a bit cooler than the last few years due to a moderate La Nina event. La Nina tends to result in cooler temps globally, though the global response tends to lag 3-4 months after peak conditions. Here is what global temps look like since 1970 with and without ENSO removed: ImageImage
Read 18 tweets
Dr. Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
Jan 11,
Ocean heat content is our best measure of the impact of human activity on the climate; >90% of all heat trapped by greenhouse gases is absorbed by the oceans.

In 2021, we saw the warmest ocean heat content since records began, >400 billion trillion joules higher than the 1940s.
This is from the newly released dataset by @Lijing_Cheng and the Institute for Atmospheric Physics, though NOAA's ocean heat content record shows similar results: link.springer.com/article/10.100…
For more details on surface and atmospheric temperatures, ocean heat, sea level rise, atmospheric GHGs, sea ice, and other climate indicators in 2021 see our @CarbonBrief state of the climate analysis coming out in the next few days.
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
Jan 11,
I'm used to foolish and misguided attempts at blaming climate scientists for society not having effectively dealt with climate change.

But suggesting that a solution is for climate scientists to strike and stop doing science is a supernova of stupid: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
I'm sure politicians will finally get on to putting effective climate policy into place if only they didn't have those pesky IPCC reports warning them of the dire risks of inaction...
I'm also sure that all of the climate scientists who are not old tenured white dudes would also love the career advancement that comes from refusing to do work...
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
Jan 10,
El Nino and La Nina (ENSO) are main drivers of year-to-year variability in global temperatures, on top of the long-term human-caused warming trend.

Here is what happens if we use statistics (following @rahmstorf and Forster 2011) to remove their effects from @CopernicusECMWF:
And here is what the recorded temperatures (red) look like compared to these ENSO-removed variants:
Its interesting (and somewhat coincidental) that 2021 still ends up as the 5th warmest year even when ENSO effects are removed, but its much closer to the past few years, and the long-term warming trend even clearer without ENSO.
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
Jan 7,
With 2021 annual temperatures (nearly) in, its time for my first prediction of where 2022 will end up!

I find that 2022 is most likely to be the 6th warmest on record, with a very small chance of being the warmest year on record and a small chance of below the 8th warmest.
This uses GISTEMP, and is based on a multivariate regression model using the prior year, past three months, and El Nino/La Nina (ENSO) conditions for the past 6 months and the ENSO forecast for the next 6 months. Here is how it does for past years (red forecast, blue actual):
Note that I'm estimating December 2021 temperature for GISTEMP for this analysis based on the difference between November 2021 and December 2021 temperatures in ERA5 (which has already reported its December numbers).
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
Jan 4,
The first official 2021 global surface temperature results are now out from @CopernicusECMWF.

2021 was the 5th warmest year on record in their dataset. It was a bit cooler than the past few years due to a moderate La Nina event, but well in-line with the long-term warming trend Image
2021 was effectively tied with 2018 and 2015 in ERA5, and will likely end up between 5th and 7th warmest in all the surface temperature datasets once they are out. Data through December for both the global and Europe can be found here: climate.copernicus.eu/sites/default/…
Global temperatures are strong effected by El Nino and La Nina events, which is the primary driver of year-to-year variability on top of the long-term human-caused warming trend. You can think of it as a man walking a dog on the beach, as @neiltyson illustrated in @COSMOSonTV: Image
Read 5 tweets

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