Graphs of sea surface temperatures have been circulating almost daily over the last year, and seeming more concerning as weeks go by.
“Gob Smacking Bananas” was the description global temp expert Zeke Hausfather famously applied last fall.
Now, as the warming El Nino gives way to the “cooler” La Nina phase, it could be that some of those ridiculous high peaks will level out a bit.
Michael Mann posts a recent graph with the reminder, we don’t need dooms, the truth is bad enough.
As El Nino gives way to La Nina, we’re seeing a drop-off in global sea surface temperatures (as some of us said would happen). The problem was never about one or two years–it’s about the TREND. Planet will continue to warm until carbon emissions reach zero. Truth is bad enough!
I still don’t get the concern about dooms or doomerism when it’s quite clear we have to prepare people who live places that are doomed to move or live with the consequences. “Resilience” is for households or communities that can afford it, and there aren’t a lot of communities that have spare budget to address what’s here now and what’s coming (plus the communities wasting resources on insufficient fixes because they cut corners as compromise).
It’s 20-bloody-24 and there are still people in power who are doubt-mongering the issue.
/rant
Not directly related but still worrisome: https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-annual-report-highlights-continuous-advance-of-climate-change
quote: Global mean sea level (GMSL) continued to rise in 2022, reaching a new record high for the satellite altimeter record (1993-2022). The rate of global mean sea level rise has doubled between the first decade of the satellite record (1993-2002, 2.27 mm/yr) and the last (2013-2022, 4.62 mm/yr).
Recall that I was previously worried when the rate jumped from 1.7 mm/yr to 3.9 mm/yr