Leon Simons Profile picture
Gentleman scientist. Mission: To understand & protect the home planet. Innovation, climate research & communication, social entrepreneur. Board Club of Rome NL
Daniel O'Donnell Profile picture Jörg 🌻 @j_honegger@swiss.social Profile picture p rehmer Profile picture Excali Profile picture DenysThorez Profile picture 18 subscribed
Mar 19 4 tweets 2 min read
People living in and around this area might want to know that the amount of Absorbed Solar Radiation in this area increased to +4.3 W/m² in 2023 since 2000-2009!

This is more than the greenhouse gas forcing from all greenhouse gases we've added to the atmosphere since 1750!Image +4.3 W/m² for over 10% of the Earth's surface!

If people understood what this means, it would be front page news everywhere.

We all know this won't be covered anywhere.Image
Mar 12 8 tweets 3 min read
☀️📈BREAKING @NASA CERES🌡️📈

Why was 2023 so extreme? The data is finally in!

The world absorbed a lot more sunlight, as less was reflected.

While greenhouse gases kept most of the additional heat in.

Add El Niño and all temperature records shattered!

More 👇🧵 Image Let's start with the sun. It's a bit brighter, as it is starting to reach the peak of its 11-year cycle.

But that doesn't explain why our planet absorbed an additional 2.3 Watts per square meter over its 510 trillion m² surface, compared to the first decade of satellite data: Image
Mar 4 6 tweets 3 min read
🌊🌡️📈

The North Atlantic Ocean reached 365 days of continuous record high temperatures!

Thank you to the journalists who have accurately reported on this!

E.g:

Scientists warn Earth warming faster than expected — due to reduction in ship pollution
cbc.ca/news/science/m…Image After the publication of our @DrJamesEHansen et al. Pipeline paper, the person smearing our research and question my qualifications, coauthored a paper agreeing with the @NASA CERES data we presented.

Unfortunately, global warming is indeed accelerating:


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Feb 13 10 tweets 7 min read
🌎📉🌍
I did some basic energy and water calculations on the scary AMOC study (1) that's making headlines, so you don't have to.

It's quite simple, so please don't let the orders of magnitude scare you off.

This is a Big F*cking Deal (BFD)!

First, what are we talking about here?

What is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation?

It's a shitload of water transporting a shit ton of heat energy North, through the Atlantic Ocean!

The study starts with an AMOC strength of about 15 sverdrups, or 15,000,000 cubic meters of ocean water per second.

This transports about 1 PW (1 petawatt = 1*10^15 watt) of heat North from the Southern Hemisphere and the tropics.

That's about 32 ZJ (32 zettajoules = 32*10^21 joules) of heat per year.

When the AMOC tips, most of this ocean heat transport stops.

The obvious question people are asking is "could this happen any time soon and how?"

The study (as have others, for example @DrJamesEHansen et al. (2016) (2), which is not referenced for some reason) shows that a lot of fresh water input from rainfall and Greenland ice melt could shut this thing down this century.

The more fresh water is added, the slower the AMOC becomes.

The tipping in the model happens at about 0.5 sverdrups (0.5 Sv, 500,000 m³ per second) of fresh water input.

There is a lot of fresh water waiting to add those 0.5 Sv, if only there was enough heat available to melt the ice sheet of Greenland.

0.5 Sv is 1.6*10^13 m³ of water per year.

Greenland holds 2.85*10^15 m³ of ice, which could provide about 170 years of 0.5 sverdrups of fresh water (after which global sea levels would be over 7 meters higher).

To melt 0.5 sverdrups worth of ice for a year takes 5.3 ZJ of heat.

Since 1970, our greenhouse gases have caused about 450 ZJ of additional heat to accumulate in the Earth system. ~90% of that warmed the oceans.

Aerosols, notably from coal plants and ships burning sulfur rich fuels, have reduced that heat accumulation.

Now that we are reducing aerosols, more heat is accumulating.

The larger North Atlantic Ocean region shows a spike in how much sunlight is being absorbed over recent years, while higher temperatures cause more heat radiation to space.

The net effect is a spike of over 2.4 W/m² above the 2000-2009 average. This spike added 4 ZJ of heat over 12-months:

The record high global energy imbalance is now (2023) about 1.8 W/m², which adds 29 ZJ of heat to the Earth system over a year.

To make a long story short, the heat is there to melt enough Greenland ice to shut the AMOC down.

And we don't need all that heat to be directed to the melting of ice, as more precipitation also contributes.

And of course, we are only making the climate forcing and Earth's Energy Imbalance worse by rapidly increasing greenhouse gas concentrations while decreasing aerosols.

Sorry I couldn't make this more hopeful.
But numbers don't lie.

(1): Physics-based early warning signal shows that AMOC is on tipping course
René M. van Westen et al. (2024)


(2): Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: Evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2°C global warming is dangerous
@DrJamesEHansen , @MakikoSato6 et al. (2016)
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
acp.copernicus.org/articles/16/37…Image
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Also see this thread, and this great article by @bberwyn:



insideclimatenews.org/news/09022024/…
Feb 7 4 tweets 2 min read
🌊🌡️📈
We are now very close to the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly of June 10 last year, when this graph went viral all over the world.

I guess people are already getting used to this?

Maybe we need more of those new Category 6 Hurricanes to wake people up? 🌀
Image Until 8 months ago, the anomaly had never been this high!: Image
Feb 5 5 tweets 2 min read
🌊🌡️📈
The North Atlantic Ocean is heading towards a >365-day record temperature anomaly streak.

That's 40 million square kilometers of record shattering heat!

🔥It takes >3000 times as much heat to warm ocean water by 1°C than it does for the same volume of air!🔥 Image This is not normal. Something has changed over recent years.
This is most likely it:

Jan 27 8 tweets 4 min read
Plot twist! 🔥 🛢 ❄️

Shell asked James Lovelock not to tell the world that the emissions from burning fossil fuels were COOLING the planet..

January 27th, 1967:

'Rothschild’s response was to insist that Lovelock refrain from discussing the topic—“the weather getting colder, and the cause possibly being fossil fuel combustion products in the atmosphere”—with “non-Shell people.”'Image Now I want to read Lovelock's report from 57 years ago:

“Combustion of Fossil Fuels: Large Scale Atmospheric Effects”

And, of course, it were the sulphur emissions causing most of the cooling.

Reference:
documentcloud.org/documents/2373…
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Jan 18 6 tweets 3 min read
☀️📈
One more month of @NASA CERES data and this line keeps going through the f*cking roof!

As @DrJamesEHansen said, this is a Big F*cking Deal (BFD)!

Don't let anyone downplay its importance.

I talked about this in detail with @NJHagens here:


Image @NASA @DrJamesEHansen @NJHagens 🌊📈
Oh, and sea level rise is accelerating: Image
Jan 17 5 tweets 2 min read
🌎🌡📈
The past three months were off the chart.

They were 1.74°C above 1850-1900.

The truth is bad enough, folks: Image The truth is bad enough without people peddling false hope and disinformation for profit and fame.

The risks are too great!

2023 was 0.34°C warmer than 2015 was, indicating decadal warming rate of +0.43°C.

If this warming rate continues, 2024 will be +1.66°C in @ECMWF dataset.
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Jan 9 9 tweets 3 min read
"2023 was the hottest year on record, with the global temperature [anomaly from pre-industrial] close to the +1.5C Paris limit."

Mauro Facchini Image @CopernicusECMWF Main points:

1: Warmest year in observational history, in human [written] history and likely in 100,000 years.

2: Needs to be a fine balance between absorbed solar radiation and outgoing heat radiation.
Without reducing GHG, 2023 will be relatively cold.

3: Data is crucial. Image
Jan 8 5 tweets 2 min read
Greenhouse gas warming of the Northern Hemisphere was masked by increasing sulphur air-polution for decades, until clean air regulations in the 80's.

With rapid reductions in air pollution, warming is now accelerating.

We need to prepare for rapid changes to our weather. Image Read more on this in this thread, with many peer reviewed science referenced at the end:

Dec 16, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
WE AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET!

Global Sea Surface temperatures are about to increase for 4 months, heading for record highs.

This will help to shatter atmospheric temperatures.

The unprecedented atmospheric heat will cause a lot of extreme weather in 2024.

Hold on to your hats.
Image This is an aerosol termination shock.

We've been trying to warn about this for years.

Nov 9, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
This record high amount of precipitatable water is a clear indication of increasing atmospheric heat.

Temperature increase means more SPECIFIC heat.

With a temperature increase of 1°C, the atmosphere can hold ~7% more Water Vapor.

More WV increases LATENT heat.

1/
Image From 2006-2020, the amount of heat in the atmosphere increased 4(!!) times faster than in the decades before 2000.

2/


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Oct 27, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
😳 Absorbed Solar from @NASA 📈

The amount of solar radiation Earth absorbs is now over 2 W/m² higher than from 2000-2009!

It's hard to explain how much heat this represents.

This is the most important graph in the world!

👇
Image @NASA Of course, the ASR anomaly graph shares this position with the Net flux (= Earth's Energy Imbalance), which is Absorbed Solar Radiation minus Outgoing Longwave Radion.

Net Flux is now 1.4 W/m² higher than the 2000-2009 average: Image
Oct 24, 2023 7 tweets 4 min read
📰 The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory

We have this paper, lead by william Ripple (@WilliamJRipple) & Christopher Wolf et al. published today in @OxUniPress

Thread on the most important findings 👇

📎Link to paper: academic.oup.com/bioscience/adv… Each of these figures show how we are in uncharted territory.

Combined they tell a shocking story of rapid change.

❗️20 of the 35 identified planetary vital signs are now showing record extremes! Image
Oct 7, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
This is so crazy.

The Northern Hemisphere used to radiate more heat to space than it absorbed from the sun.

The difference was made up for by heat transported north from the Southern Hemisphere through (mainly the Atlantic) oceans and atmosphere.

Around 2014 the amount of Absorbed Solar Radiation started to rapidly increase, surpassing Outgoing Longwave (Thermal or IR) Radiation to space, leading to a positive Energy Imbalance of the Northern Hemisphere!

So more heat was absorbed from the sun than radiated to space, possibly also reducing heat transported from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere and leaving more to e.g. melt Antarctic Sea ice.

In recent years this energy imbalance has been increasing further, as air pollution and cloud cover decreased, and the amount of sunlight reflected back to space decreased.

And because outgoing heat radiation was not increasing (as much).

The balance can be restored (or made negative again) in two ways:

1⃣ Increasing Outgoing Longwave Radiation.
For that temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere need to increase, which is happening at the moment.

2⃣ Increasing air pollution and cloud cover to reflect more sunlight to space.

Neither of these are policy recommendations.

We are between a rock and a hard place.

People need to be aware of the situation.
Image More on this here:

Oct 1, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
🌍📈
Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Earth Energy Imbalance from @NASA's CERES data reached a new record with the data from July coming available.

As July 2023 was the hottest month on record, outgoing longwave radiation was also record high.

But...

1/ Image .. globally Absorbed Solar Radiation was almost 1 W/m² higher than ever observed for July.

This more than compensated for the high Outgoing Longwave Radiation (which is kept artificially low by the 4 W/m² anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing and Water Vapor Feedback).

2/ Image
Sep 19, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
🌊🌡📈
The August global Sea Surface Temperature really was something else..

See monthly anomalies since 1940
1/ Image For those who keep saying that the ocean surface temperatures in shipping areas only started to increase faster this year,

see summer and monthly anomalies for the Northern Hemisphere mid latitudes:

2/
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Sep 3, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
The most important graph in the world has been updated to include the last 150,000 years!

📄 Benthic δ¹⁸O records Earth’s energy imbalance

Great work by Sarah Shackleton, Alan Seltzer, Daniel Bagenstos and Lorraine Lisiecki (2023) in @NatureGeosci

1/
nature.com/articles/s4156… This shows the Earth's Energy Imbalance from a new perspective.

We have changed the rate at which heat accumulates on our planet beyond anything ever before.

We are finding out what this means together.

And we better pay attention.

Rapid changes come with great risks!

2/2 Image
Aug 13, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read
😳What the f*ck😳

Sometimes I can't help myself and swear.

Two months ago, I thought I'd do something ridiculous and plot the Super El Niño trend of 2015 forward for Sea Surface Temperatures, see dashed lines in red (2023) and green (2024).

I turns out that we are largely running above that..

🌊🌡️📈

The effect of El Niño on the tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures is clearly visible.
Also see the North Pacific and Atlantic:

The anomaly is running off the chart again.

All this extreme ocean surface heat is about to turn into a year of shocking extreme atmospheric temperatures and (even) more extreme weather.

We might be getting a first taste of the Termination Shock from terminating part of our cooling sulphur pollution, while still increasing greenhouse gases.


Also see this long message on how the sun is currently adding to the heat.

And on how greenhouse gases keep the Earth from cooling down.

With some simplified climate energy math.

Aug 8, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
We have had 36 days in a row of record global surface temperatures.

The 150 days of record ocean surface temperatures are starting to increase atmospheric heat.

Most of the effects of the developing El Niño on global temperatures are still in the pipeline.


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Records are being obliterated.


https://t.co/FIYBNqrUyz https://t.co/EEHBpL4usXclimatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

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