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Earth

2023 Temperatures Were Warmest We've Seen For At Least 2,000 Years (arstechnica.com) 200

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Starting in June of last year, global temperatures went from very hot to extreme. Every single month since June, the globe has experienced the hottest temperatures for that month on record -- that's 11 months in a row now, enough to ensure that 2023 was the hottest year on record, and 2024 will likely be similarly extreme. There's been nothing like this in the temperature record, and it acts as an unmistakable indication of human-driven warming. But how unusual is that warming compared to what nature has thrown at us in the past? While it's not possible to provide a comprehensive answer to that question, three European researchers (Jan Esper, Max Torbenson, and Ulf Buntgen) have provided a partial answer: the Northern Hemisphere hasn't seen anything like this in over 2,000 years. [...]

The first thing the three researchers did was try to align the temperature record with the proxy record. If you simply compare temperatures within the instrument record, 2023 summer temperatures were just slightly more than 2C higher than the 1850-1900 temperature records. But, as mentioned, the record for those years is a bit sparse. A comparison with proxy records of the 1850-1900 period showed that the early instrument record ran a bit warm compared to a wider sampling of the Northern Hemisphere. Adjusting for this bias revealed that the summer of 2023 was about 2.3 C above pre-industrial temperatures from this period. But the proxy data from the longest tree ring records can take temperatures back over 2,000 years to year 1 CE. Compared to that longer record, summer of 2023 was 2.2 C warmer (which suggests that the early instrument record runs a bit warm).

So, was the summer of 2023 extreme compared to that record? The answer is very clearly yes. Even the warmest summer in the proxy record, CE 246, was only 0.97 C above the 2,000-year average, meaning it was about 1.2 C cooler than 2023. The coldest summer in the proxies was 536 CE, which came in the wake of a major volcanic eruption. That was roughly 4 C cooler than 2023. While the proxy records have uncertainties, those uncertainties are nowhere near large enough to encompass 2023. Even if you take the maximum temperature with the 95 percent confidence range of the proxies, the summer of 2023 was more than half a degree warmer. Obviously, this analysis is limited to comparing a portion of one year to centuries of proxies, as well as limited to one area of the globe. It doesn't tell us how much of an outlier the rest of 2023 was or whether its extreme nature was global.
The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

2023 Temperatures Were Warmest We've Seen For At Least 2,000 Years

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  • Didn't find any statement on the margin of error, tolerance, or compensation mechanism for scaling more uncertain older data with more modern data.

    Can anyone give a reference or data on those?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      From the article: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @04:35AM (#64473245)

      Didn't find any statement on the margin of error

      No you didn't look, there's a difference. Go read the paper.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SerpentMage ( 13390 )

      Why are you classified as a troll? You asked the right question. When I read the headline;

      "Adjusting for this bias revealed that the summer of 2023 was about 2.3 C above pre-industrial temperatures from this period. "

      I read BS. Let me explain it this way. Imagine you do statistical sampling. It relies on the fact that data follows a Gaussian curve. The problem is that if your data is incomplete, LIKE SAID IN THE ARTICLE, then you can't do statistical adjustment. Of course it has not stopped the statistician

      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by quonset ( 4839537 )

        Imagine you do statistical sampling.

        Everyone knows 95% of all statistics are made up.

        As an aside, this is why the Federal Reserve and BLS numbers can't be trusted. Their sample sizes are far too small and their response rate too low.

      • Why are you classified as a troll? You asked the right question.

        Even stranger - when he posted an expanded version of the same comment, it got moderated "2, insightful".

      • by ichthus ( 72442 )

        Why are you classified as a troll? You asked the right question.

        He was modded as a troll, because he asked questions that members of a religion don't want people asking. Neither do they want the answers.

        • no, he was modded as a troll because he lied, all the things that he complained wasn't in the article was in the article.
      • by sosume ( 680416 )

        Because some people think this is /r/slashdot

    • by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @08:15AM (#64473557)
      So how did the pre-industrial Romans and Greeks heat up the world so much?
    • by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Why? You can go searching for it as easily as anyone else.

      No, lazy creep, you do not get to dump it on anyone else, and use that to question the facts.

  • by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @01:40AM (#64473049)
    They had a meeting with Trump and he said that for a big enough bribe he'd eliminate the EPA, end pollution regulation, make electric vehicles illegal, and have zero taxes on fossil fuel profits. Buying the government is the best investment an oligarch can ever make, and right now everything is for sale at bargain prices. Big Pharma, media conglomerates, Wall Street, real estate, the military complex, and anyone else with a billion or so to spare are all lining up purchase a complete lack of oversight and accountability.

    When technological civilization collapses they and their families will all be fine, having bought all the places that can still support comfortable human existence. Or they will be hanging out with Elon on Mars, in a techno-libertarian paradise without the bother of pesky human scum who have a net worth of less then half a billion dollars. Everyone else will get the mass extinction event they deserve because they are poor.

    Problem solved.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    2000 years ago are still in the same spot today, so we can measure this accurately.
  • by Budenny ( 888916 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @03:36AM (#64473163)

    Cannot do it like this.

    The first step is to cool the past by assuming the temp records are wrong and that the proxies are right. How do we know the temp records were wrong and running hot? They are measuring two different things, the proxies are stuff like annual tree rings. The temp records are daily observations. You cannot correct the observations from the proxies.

    Then it gets worse, the next step is to assume that the proxy records are comparable to the last couple of years temperature records.

    "very single month since June, the globe has experienced the hottest temperatures for that month on record -- that's 11 months in a row now, enough to ensure that 2023 was the hottest year on record, and 2024 will likely be similarly extreme. There's been nothing like this in the temperature record, and it acts as an unmistakable indication of human-driven warming."

    There may be human driven warning, but this cannot possibly be an indicator of it. There is no causal chain from these observations to human activity.

    In addition, you have no idea from the proxy record what the monthly fluctuations of temp were in 1568 or whenever. It is entirely possible, from the cited evidence, that there have been many years like 2023 in the past 2,000 years. Its just that there were no instruments around to keep track of them.

    What we can however do it take a given country with good instrumental records and ask whether, for that country, 2023 was particularly unusual. The cases I have read where this has been done do not show anything much out of the ordinary. The UK for instance, the hot summer was not remarkable. Unusual, but not unprecedented. Back in the seventies of the last century there were similar or hotter summers. Pakistan similar.

    If this is the methodology and the evidence we are justified in classing this as alarmist nonsense. There may be a serious coming problem with global warming, but you cannot show that like this.

  • Scam (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NetNed ( 955141 )
    Have to dial back the scam because people are realizing that the numbers are manipulated, just like they stopped pushing the "97% of scientist agree that climate change is real!" because someone looked in to how they got that number
  • The constant ignorance of scale really pisses me off.

    200 years is basically nothing geologically. It's like making long term conclusions years ahead based on the change of something between one week and the next.

    Multiply it by 10 and we could start thinking more serioulsy.

    • It is nothing unless you consider rate of change and correlation with industry growth (pollution). Yes a point may be made that it *could be* a random coincidence, but are you willling to bet on it?

  • What's the data look like going back 3000, 5000 or even several hundred million years ?
    More importantly, can the data itself be trusted to be unfiltered and unmanipulated ?

    Assuming we have any trust left in the Science at all. Covid should be a stark reminder of how politics and greed
    can have a massive impact on data and the reliability of it. He who controls the data, controls the World.

    We can cherry pick the data to show doom and gloom all day long by omitting long term data that shows planet
    temperatures

    • Pretty dumb post.
      With current CO2 levels: there won't be any "ice age" anymore.

    • by dvice ( 6309704 )

      I think this image clarifies quite well what is the difference between normal ice age cycles and current warming period.
      https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]

      1. We should currently be heading towards the ice age, but we are going to opposite direction
      2. The warming speed is much higher than what is has normally been, which is deadly to many species that require time to adapt.

  • We had one of the coldest and wettest summers in memory.

    • by dvice ( 6309704 )

      Local weather is like peanut butter and global temperature is like toothpaste. If you mix them up it won't leave a good taste in your mouth.

      This is why instead of global warming, scientists started talking about climate change. It is easier for people to understand that it is not just about global average temperature, it also affects local weather.

  • So what the world needs now is a volcanic eruption. Any ideas on how to do that?

  • Interesting to cite Buntgen in this article as if he has no criticisms of climate science, when he is in the recent issue of Nature saying this, among other things:

    "In essence, I suggest that an ever-growing commingling of climate science, climate activism, climate communication and climate policy, whereby scientific insights are adopted to promote pre-determined positions, not only creates confusion among politicians, stakeholders and the wider public, but also diminishes academic credibility."

    https://www. [nature.com]

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