science
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When is an Arctic bias not an Arctic bias?
Wondering whether a warm bias in the Arctic in ERA5 affects our estimates of global temperature change. Continue reading
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Sea level papers
Two interesting papers on sea level change over very different time scales and the thorny question of estimating and validating uncertainty estimates. Continue reading
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Seeping
This is quite an old paper – Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community – dating back to 2015, but it popped up today so I dusted off my old notes. It contends that the “pause” was a contrarian idea that “seeped” into proper scientific discourse where it didn’t belong. It’s… Continue reading
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Flawed communication
A paper came out recently in Nature Climate Change. It presents a series of global mean temperature going back to 1700. Their series shows that global temperature had already reached 1.7 ± 0.1 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2020. We have gone whooshing past 1.5°C without even realising it. Huge – as they say – if true. Of… Continue reading
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Oh, there’s a hole in my bucket
In the press conference to announce to an unsurprised world that 2023 was the warmest year on record, Gavin Schmidt noted that expressing that temperature relative to a pre-industrial baseline introduced a large uncertainty. That uncertainty has a lot to do with sea-surface temperatures. This statement has since become a news article in Science. It’s… Continue reading
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Unveiling the unveiled
A paper by Storto and Yang claims that “Acceleration of the ocean warming from 1961 to 2022 unveiled by large-ensemble reanalyses“, which is a bit odd given that acceleration of ocean warming is a fairly robust result. Still, an interesting paper. I still think that ocean warming is accelerating, but now I feel less certain… Continue reading
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Smoothly does it
Scherrer S.C et al. (2023) Estimating trends and the current climate mean in a changing climate. Climate Services vol 33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2023.100428 Scherrer et al. brings together a few of my favourite things: data smoothing, climate normals, and 1.5°C. Whiskers on kittens they are not. The three are inter-related and specific cases of something that’s quite… Continue reading
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Clarity on Paris Agreement temperature limits is restricted by observational uncertainty
Abstract There has been a lot of discussion about how to monitor progress relative to the Paris Agreement’s goals of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. The discussion has largely dealt with establishing a unique, precise,… Continue reading
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Making it official
In the next few days and weeks (and probably in the past few) you are going to hear the phrase “it’s official”. It’s official! The global temperature for 2023 was the highest on record. That kind of thing. It’s worth bearing in mind that there is no single officially official global temperature record. There are… Continue reading
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How video games helped me make sense of academic life
With apologies to… In March, I was passed over for a prestigious fellowship. Upon failing to unlock this platinum trophy, which only 1% of academics obtain, I reflected upon what had led me to this point – overlooking for a moment that it was a mission given to me by an old man marked out… Continue reading