Tony Climate

DOE CWG STATEMENT (second paragraph of section 2.1.1, page 3): “Piao et al. (2020) noted that greening was even observable in the Arctic.” COMMENT: This statement implies that the Arctic greening signal was caused by elevated CO2 , however that is not the scientific consensus. Piao et al. (2020) attribute the greening trend in the Arctic predominantly to growing season length driven by warmer temperatures (see also Y. Zhang et al., 2022). Piao et al. (2020) also note that this positive impact of increasing temperatures appears to have weakened over the past four decades, “suggesting a possible saturation of future greening in response to warmer temperature” (see also comment on greenness trends related to Section 2.1.1, first sentence of Page 4). It is also important to put Arctic greening more broadly into the context of the carbon cycle and other impacts. While above-ground plants may have displayed more leaf area over the past decades, rising temperatures also thaw permafrost and drive accelerated decomposition in highly carbon rich soils (Turetsky et al., 2020), a process which is expected to accelerate as climate continues to warm (Miner et al., 2022). Thus even with Arctic greening, high latitude terrestrial systems may become net carbon sources to the atmosphere, causing an amplifying feedback (Braghiere et al., 2023). Other risks to the Arctic linked to higher CO2 levels and rising temperatures are not mentioned in this report (Virkkala et al., 2025). The Arctic is warming at a rate of 2 to 3 times the global average, leading to thawing of permanently frozen soils (permafrost), with downstream impacts including loss of structural support for buildings and subsidence, threatening communities, roads, runways, and other assets across Alaska (Manos et al., 2025; University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Northern Engineering US Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District & Laboratory, 2019).

Our comment on the DOE CWG report is done. It tips the scales at 439 pages, approx. 3x longer than the DOE report.
This is related to Brandolini's law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

Example: refuting one sentence.

Climate models since the 1970s nailed it—most predicted global warming almost exactly as it happened.

Even Exxon nailed it!

#ExxonKnew

Time series of global temperature anomalies from the 1850-1900 baseline showing steadily increasing warming to record years of 2023 and 2024, together with an estimate of 2025 close to 2023 w/uncertainties.

Amid the unremitting bad news, something positive!

2025 will only be the 2nd or 3rd warmest year in the instrumental record. 🙄

How does the UK summer so far compare to the extreme hot, dry summer of 1976? By Dr Laura Baker   Senior NCAS Scientist in the Department of Meteorology As we come to the end of the third heatwave of 2025, and a third English water board has announced a hosepipe ban, more an…

As the hosepipe ban kicks in over parts of Reading we look at how this summer so far compares to the UK’s infamous hot, dry summer of 1976 in this week’s @unirdg-met.bsky.social blog:
blogs.reading.ac.uk/weather-and-...

Arctic Sea Ice Extent battling for record low....

Collection of small polar stereographic maps showing the average June Arctic sea-ice thickness for each year from 1979 to 2025. There is large spatial variability, but a long-term decreasing trend. The thickness of ice ranges from 0 meters to more than 5 meters.

47 years of #Arctic sea ice thickness during the month of June... (updated through 2025)

Graphic available at zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i...

July 23, 1979 - Charney Report meeting begins - All Our Yesterdays Forty six years ago, on this day, July 23rd,  1979 Ad Hoc Study Group on C02 and Climate at Woods Hole from 23 to 27 “Charney Report” http://web.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf The...

The "Ad Hoc Study Group on C02 and Climate" begins at Woods Hole from 23 to 27 and produces what is popularly known as the Charney Report.
tl;dr - if we keep on burning fossil fuels the world will warm by something between 1.5 and 3 degrees in 21st century.

allouryesterdays.info/2025/07/22/j...

July 23, 1987 - Calvin (and Hobbes) versus climate change! - All Our Yesterdays Thirty six years ago, on this day, July 23, 1987,  Calvin blames his mother, and her generation… The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here f...

On this day in 1987, a brilliant Calvin and Hobbes cartoon about climate change

allouryesterdays.info/2023/07/22/j...

Screenshot showing a variability of different climate-related graphics for different United States climate change indicators

I'd like to introduce a new page on my website: U.S. climate indicator visuals (zacklabe.com/united-state...).

I only have a few basic variables so far, but I will be expanding this summer to add a range of metrics (e.g., ecological). I welcome suggestions! Hope this is useful, especially nowadays.

Amplified warming accelerates deoxygenation in the Arctic Ocean - Nature Climate Change Rapid warming of the global ocean and amplified Arctic warming will alter the ocean biogeochemistry. Here the authors show that Atlantic water inflow, and the subsequent subduction and circulation, is...

🌊 The Arctic Ocean is losing dissolved oxygen 6x faster than the global average, driven by warm Atlantic water inflow and rapid Arctic warming

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green | Google - United Kingdom Google’s carbon emissions have soared by 51% since 2019 as artificial intelligence hampers the tech company’s efforts to go green.

Because Big Oil spent the last 50+ years blocking clean energy, more energy use now means more pollution.

But if we'd instead spent those years advancing tech to capture the sun's *virtually limitless, pollution-free energy,* it wouldn't matter how many dumb pictures of Baby JD Vance you generate.

#IPCC's 2022 #ClimateReport shows heatwaves in Europe will become more frequent, more intense & will last longer.

By 2050, about half of the European population may be exposed to high or very high risk of heat stress during summer.

➡️ bit.ly/IICpt13

Starting to think the climate is changing

👇🏽 Good but scary read - weather systems stalling amplifying extreme events 🌀🥵⛈️

Increased frequency of planetary wave resonance events over the past half-century | PNAS We demonstrate a tripling in the frequency of planetary wave resonance events over the past halfcentury, coinciding with the rise in persistent bor...

and here's a link to the study itself: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Warming stripes for Japan

Warming stripes for Australia

Warming stripes for New Zealand

Warming stripes for Papua New Guinea

It's already #ShowYourStripes day in many places like New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Papua New Guinea.

All these countries are warming rapidly. Visit www.ShowYourStripes.info to find your warming stripes with 4 different designs.

Start a climate conversation online or with friends and family?

plot comparing global surface temperature observations ("Berkeley Earth" project--red) with IPCC ("CMIP6") climate model simulations (black is average over all models; blue shading shows spread among models)

Here's the latest comparison of global surface temperature observations (red) with IPCC climate model simulations (through March 2025, via @hausfath.bsky.social):

Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability - Nature A transparent and reproducible scientific framework is introduced to formalize how trillions in economic losses are attributable to the extreme heat caused by emissions from fossil fuel companies, whi...

Emissions linked to Chevron... very likely caused between US $791 billion and $3.6 trillion in heat-related losses over the period 1991–2020, disproportionately harming the tropical regions least culpable for warming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

THE FOUR STAGES OF PRO-FOSSIL EXPLOITATION OF MAJOR BLACKOUTS

[a thread with videos]

Stage 1: Guilt By Proximity - "any blackout that happens in a region with renewable energy must have been caused by renewable energy"

[we are in the later end of this stage -see, FT, Bloomberg (Blas), etc]

Matthew Yglesias & @mattyglesias You can kind of talk in circles all day about "populism" or "abundance" or "kitchen table issues" or whatever else, but the practical dividing line is between material prosperity (call it whatever you want) vs reasoning backwards from climate targets.

Happy Tuesday! How about an anti-Matt-Yglesias climate economics thread?

I'll start by saying "material prosperity" is not opposed to "reasoning backwards" from temperature targets — doing what we must NOW to halt global heating at a safe level will INCREASE Americans' material prosperity.

1/n

With the first four months of the year now available, I estimate that 2025 is most likely to be the second warmest year on record at 1.52C in ERA5, with a ~8% chance of beating 2024 as the warmest and a ~25% chance of coming in at the third warmest after 2023:

Anyone who says the fossil-fuel industry will contribute to decarbonization w funding and/or innovation should be laughed off the stage.

In the 2024 election, fossil-fuel companies & associated interests gave Trump somewhere between $75 and $450 million.

They knew what they were buying.

1/3

Last week I was playing around with a new "tree ring plot" to visualize daily global temperature anomalies from ERA5.

I thought it would be neat to make a version of the plot for daily global absolute temperatures (rather than anomalies):

Warming stripes for deep ocean to upper stratosphere

The Warming Stripes have now been extended downwards into the ocean and upwards into the stratosphere!

Collaborative paper which tells the story of how the stripes were developed, and discusses their extension across the Earth system, is now available in BAMS: journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

The Extreme Weather Report, April 10, 2025: This is your weather on fossil fuels.
#extremeweather #weathersky #wx #news

thetradeoff.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-...

Figure 1 of Allan & Merchant (2025) ERL

Figure 2 of Allan & Merchant (2025) ERL

Figure 3 of Allan & Merchant (2025) ERL

Table 1 of Allan & Merchant (2025) ERL

Our planet is becoming dimmer, in so many ways… our new @nceoscience.bsky.social @uor-research.bsky.social study teases out a signal of less shiny ocean clouds & how they combined with greenhouse gas heating to fast track #climate warming up to the balmy 2023/24 El Niño: doi.org/10.1088/1748...

The worlds oldest mountain weather monitoring station is in Germany at Hohenpeissenberg. It's records go back to the mid 1700s and an almost continuous record since the late 1700s. p.s. Yes, human induced climate change is real. Source: www.dwd.de/EN/research/...

Here's a superb IPCC infographic that summarizes the state of our planet's #climatechange as of 2023:
https://ca1-eci.edcdn.com/infographics/IPCC_Synthesis_Report_Infographic_2024.pdf?v=1710839064

Thanks to @TheDisproof!

The image below is just a snip of the HUGE graphic with a...