The “remarkably unprecedented” increase in warming rate in 2023 and 2024
* All time global temperature records keep falling|
* Almost every single day over the last 13 months set a new global daily all-time high temperature records
Bruce Melton PE
Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
ClimateDiscovery.org
It’s not just all-time temperature records being broken. Almost every single day for the last 13 to 14 months have exceeded all-time global daily temperature records. The climate scientists I run with are extremely concerned about what the World Meteorological Association director calls, “remarkably unprecedented” warming in 2023 (where this warming is extending to today). Numerous academic papers have concluded that only a relatively small amount of this warming is due to El Nino and of course, La Nina is active now with a slight global cooling influence. Much of the warming is likely from unmasking of warming that should be occurring because of new sulfur regulations in ships fuels, new vehicles emissions standards in Europe, and new sulfur regs broadly in China and India. Sulfur is normally found in fossil fuels and when burned it creates sulfate aerosols that reflect sunlight back into space, and cool, instead of warm by trapping heat with greenhouse gases.
The Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change estimates that about half of warming that should have occurred to date has been masked by global cooling sulfates from fossil fuels. These sulfates are significantly responsible for millions of respiratory ailment deaths annually, globally. Western nations started significantly limiting sulfur in fossil fuels with the Clean Air Act in 1970, and the rest of the world is now catching up.
I think there is another cause to the warming jump – that of collapsing global ecologies or tipping systems that have now activated, resulting in natural feedback emissions instead of the systems naturally sequestering carbon. Our film work anecdotally observing forest mortality across North America, shows that not only is the research valid that most forests globally have seen on average a doubling or more of mortality, it’s a lot worse than this with mortality easily way above a doubling in the quadrupling range or more. And, this is for healthy forests. Beetle kill, drought mortality, and salt water intrusion achieve mortality ranging from 50 to 100 percent. And fires… From 2003 to 2023, extreme fires have doubled globally, and increased 7 times in the boreal/tiaga and 11 times in temperate conifer forests (Cunningham 2024)
Below are some visualizations on what may be a threshold passing in the warming rate: (Hint – go to the links and these graphics are interactive. You can highlight any individual year or turn off one or all years except whatever target year you wish to see.)
Climate Reanalyzer Surface Air Temperature
Climate Reanalyzer Sea Surface Temperature