Leon Simons (is fine) Profile picture
Dad, trying to leave a better world behind. Follow me on Patreon & 🦋 Plain climate science & communication Mission: To understand & protect the home planet
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Dec 16 4 tweets 2 min read
The Atlantic Ocean used to transport about 500,000,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat northward.

This will decrease by ~30% in OUR lifetimes.

What does that mean?

I think the main problem with climate change is that our tiny brains are incapable of comprehending it. I tried to cover the basic AMOC maths here:

patreon.com/posts/10867891…
Nov 22 7 tweets 4 min read
🌊🌡📈 = 🦠📉

Plankton may not survive global warming, with "devastating effects"

🚨Plankton is at the basis of the ocean food web!
🚨Plankton sequesters carbon & releases oxygen!
🚨Plankton keeps the planet cool by creating cloud condensation nuclei! Image
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This is one of the most worrying studies I've seen in a long time.

And I come across a lot of worrying studies.
oceanographicmagazine.com/news/plankton-…
Nov 15 15 tweets 5 min read
🌍🌡📈
How close is +1.5 °C ?!

7 years away?
2.5 years away? 👇
4 months ago??

It very much depends on how you look at the data.
🧵 1/Image The average of the past 17 months was +1.60 °C above the 1850-1900 preindustrial baseline in the @CopernicusECMWF ERA5 dataset.

October was +1.65°C and November will likely be about the same.

While El Niño ended in May. Image
Nov 11 5 tweets 3 min read
BREAKING 🌊🌡️📈

"All datasets agree that ocean warming RATES show a particularly strong increase in the past
two decades."

@WMO State of the Global Climate 2023 Report.

About 90% of the energy that has accumulated in the Earth system is stored in the oceans!Image @WMO @MercatorOcean This was highlighted today by @WMO's Secretary General State of Climate 2024 update

@borenbears asked the crucial question about 1.5 °C.

All these methods shown in their Fig 2 underestimate the rate of warming:

unfccc.int/event/wmo-stat…Image
Oct 20 10 tweets 4 min read
"the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59%"

Looking and Atlantic heat transport reanalysis, relative sea ice anomalies, and model studies (including the effects of aerosols), I'm afraid the collapse of the AMOC might already be ongoing.. Reanalysis:

Oct 15 5 tweets 2 min read
What the f*ck!

This is the most recent 12-month average Atlantic Ocean's Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly: Image This is not just about a single month or small region of the globe.

Our whole f*cking planet is in peril and most people are completely ignorant about it.

Often wilfully.
Oct 14 4 tweets 2 min read
"The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating"Image “We shouldn’t rely on natural forests to do the job. We really, really have to tackle the big issue: fossil fuel emissions across all sectors,” says Prof @PFriedling

“We can’t just assume that we have forests and the forest will remove some CO2 ..."
theguardian.com/environment/20…
Oct 7 6 tweets 2 min read
Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified to Category 5.

From Cat 1 in only 11 hours.

Gaining power at a rate of about 500 TW (terrawatt = 500,000,000,000,000 joules per second)!

This is equal to scale of Earth's Energy Imbalance, the rate at which our planet is warming. So much power:
Oct 3 4 tweets 2 min read
Many are under the impression that we have not yet reached the double CO₂-equivalent Greenhouse Gas level.

We definitely have, using the @IPCC_CH's based estimates.

Don't ask me why nobody mentions this..

Total Greenhouse gas forcing:
4 W/m² = ~560 ppm CO2-eq = 2 x CO2Image @IPCC_CH Every climate scientist worth their salt knows and understands this.

Forcings are what cause the climate to change.

It's the first thing you (should) learn about when you study climate change. Image
Sep 18 5 tweets 2 min read
This changes everything📈.
The Northern Hemisphere's Energy Imbalance.

The most important @NASA data you've never heard about.

The northern half of our planet started to absorb much more heat from the sun than it radiates to space.

These are absolute values (not anomalies):Image For the first time @NASA CERES satellite data shows the Northern Hemisphere absorbing more sunlight (48-month average of 242.2 W/m²) than the Southern Hemisphere.

The amount of absorbed sunlight increased by 0.6 W/m² more over the Northern than over the Southern Hemisphere: Image
Sep 16 4 tweets 2 min read
As parts of Europe are flooding, remember how aerosols decreased rainfall.

We need extensive assessments of what the rapid desulphurisation means for extreme rainfall over Europe. 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀, 𝗔𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗩𝘂𝗹𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆
The @IPCC_CH WG2 report barely mentioned aerosols, while:

"Anthropogenic aerosols greatly modify sub-regional precipitation changes, and their spatio-temporal changes are uncertain"
Aug 31 8 tweets 4 min read
Wake up!
Image The past two months were similar to 2023.

We might not see pre-2023 monthly global average temperatures for a total of >30 months!

If the rate of warming has increased even more than we think, we might never experience pre-2023 temperatures again..


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Aug 27 16 tweets 6 min read
🤖 AI can lie to you.

Don't trust it!

I asked a simple question: How much heat (in ZJ) does it take to increase global sea levels by one meter, only melting land ice.

It says it considers the density differences between 🧊ice & 🌊water (917 vs 1000 kg/m³), but it doesn’t.
1/ Image 2/
I see more and more people trust AI to do their calculations for them.

As I showed here, it's more often wrong than right:

patreon.com/posts/11016073…
Aug 21 12 tweets 4 min read
🚢🗞️🌡️📈
As climate science and journalism are finally starting to widely cover the effects of IMO 2020, there's still very little reporting on what will happen over the Mediterranean next year.

The introduction of Emission Control Area MED-ECA.

🧵:
Image The Mediterranean covers less than 1% of global oceans, while supporting 20% of seaborne trade! Image
Aug 6 6 tweets 3 min read
Here's what happened.

A single cherry-picked dataset kept being used to imply others, including @NASA and @NOAA, were lying ("the truth is bad enough") about accelerated warming.

Now that single dataset has been updated and does show an acceleration.
This confirms what @NASA and @NOAA researchers (Loeb et al. 2021) found about the doubling in the rate of global warming (Earth's Energy Imbalance, which is mainly ocean warming, as those take up 90% of the additional heat) over the past ~20 years.


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Aug 3 7 tweets 3 min read
May 2024 was the first month since February 2016 for which @NASA CERES satellite data shows a relatively strong negative monthly Earth Energy Imbalance.

For global warming to stabilize, the long term average needs to be zero.

Values climatology corrected. Image @NASA These are the monthly values.

A lot to see here.

I'll write a detailed explainer on Patreon (link in bio) once the data for June are available. Image
Jul 14 5 tweets 2 min read
👇🏻🥶
🌍🌡📉

If the AMOC shuts down, winter in Bergen, Norway will be about 30°C colder!..
Image Much less heat will be transported northward through the Atlantic Ocean.

Aerosols were keeping the AMOC relatively strong (reduced weakening from greenhouse gas warming).

With the reductions in aerosols, that AMOC strengthening has largely vanished.


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Jun 14 4 tweets 3 min read
🌊🌡📈
Sea Surface Temperatures of these Northern Oceans were a record of >9 standard deviations above the 1951-1980 climatology in May.
Image When using 1991-2020 climatology, the peak was in April and "only" 4 Standard Deviations:
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Jun 4 9 tweets 4 min read
🔥Decadal warming of 0.42°C!?🔥

There is a lot to going on here.
Please bear with me as I break it down below.Image @CopernicusECMWF @ECMWF @OceanTerra @DrJamesEHansen @NOAA @NOAAClimate 🌍🌡️📈
First note the temperature of 2023 and 2024 (up to May) plotted in red.

These are the global monthly average surface air temperatures above 1850-1900 (from @ECMWF ERA5).

The past 12 months were on average +1.63 °C! Image
May 29 5 tweets 2 min read
📈
Like many leading climate scientists, most of my followers got this wrong!

Earlier this month I asked my followers whether outgoing infrared radiation to space has been increasing or decreasing.

Outgoing longwave (IR) from @NASA satellite observations is record high!

1/
Image There is an increase in greenhouse gases, but also a decrease in aerosols.

Less sunlight is reflected to space and more is absorbed.

Part of that excessive heat leaves our planet as infrared radiation instead:

Mar 29 5 tweets 5 min read
Must read on the aerosol termination shock, darkening of our planet, and on the accelerating regional and global warming!

It's getting harder and harder to deny what @NASA and @NOAA observations are telling use.

Full mailing copied below:



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Absorbed Solar Radiation and Earth's Energy Imbalance are off the chart, leading to acceleration of regional and global warming!


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