The Global average temperature for May was 0.69C an insignificant rise of 0.05C since April.
Monthly temperature anomalies relative to a 1961-1990 baseline. See this post for details
After the first 5 months 2021 is already significantly cooler than 2020. Here is the annual average up to May.
Annual Global Temperature Anomaly (first 5 months of 2021)
Europe and Eastern US were colder than normal
As was the Southern Hemisphere
May temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere.
There is also a strong La Nina effect in 2021
Strong La Nina ?
At least we have had a few warm days in the UK to cheer us up a bit and take our minds off the Global Pandemic “Emergency” and loss of most civil liberties !
It seems that tracking slightly changing global averages is not a useful tool for explaining what seems to be very clear observations of massive ice melt. (And perhaps that is not the intent) If the global average is increasing only minimally, then what is causing glaciers to be retreating faster than expected? If not global temperature rise (whether man made or not), then what? Microclimates changing? Tectonic shifts? Or ???
I’m just trying to be open minded, not political. Politics has no place in scientific analysis. My background is electrical engineering, so don’t have much to offer in terms of a science based postulation.
Hi you raise some interesting points. I too am in electricity and energy and have been for 22 years at the heart of GB and EU energy policy, power system security, control system design and market design; before which I was trained in Meteorology to study atmospheric and ocean phenomena through looking at the data and attempting to explain it using mathematical models of the physical processes.
I would agree with you that a global temperature anomally is not a good metric as to whether the climate and more specifically the weather at some place on the globe is changing significantly, whether it is outside of the historical range, whether it is mainly natural or anthropogenic and whether it has any positive or negative consequences for humans and nature.Furthermore when it comes to all the crap policies to deprive people of clean, reliable, always available, cheap fossil fuels for alternatives that are none of these and can only be afforded by the richest then that is immoral collectivisation and socialism masquarading as environmentalism or some such anti-human religion. Ok back to the science.
The idea that the climate at any place on the globe is in homostasis and that humans are upsetting some perfect balance that exists in nature is another nonsense myth. When looking at any situation and comparing it with some point in history you will need to look for broader trends over many different timescales. Sea Ice comes and goes according to many factors such as prevailing winds, ocean circulation strength and therefore temperatures as well as who knows perhaps all those scientific researchers with their icebreakers (I jest). You can say the same for glaciers the treeline and glacier meltpoint were at significantly higher altitudes prior to the little ice age when they advanced significantly. Since this time there has been significant melt and retreat. This is not a sign of anything unusual in climate and no proof that human emitted CO2 into the atmosphere is radically altering global or even local climate. As an example, if you take a frozen piece of meat out of the freezer and put it in your fridge it will continue to thaw even though your fridge is not warming up! The question for the glaciers is where is the ice accumulation zone and how much residency time does ice have up there, what is the trend in snow fall and ice mass aaccumulation versus the calving and melting. There could be several different drivers for the advance or retreat of glaciers. European glaciers have retreated somewhat in the last century after advancing in previous periods for example a cave that was completely envelopped under a glacier in switzerland recently melted and re-exposed materials and stores from the first world war. Evidence that the glacier which although retreating currently was obviousy not at that point in the 1920s and 1930s!
Beware of big government taxing and depriving you of reliable, affordable transport, heat, power and the cheap food, goods and comfort that it brings… they are all deluded tyrannts!
A few years back the Italians discovered a neolithic man under glacier.
“Ötzi, also called the Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3400 and 3100 BCE, discovered in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps (hence the nickname “Ötzi”) on the border between Austria and Italy.”
I also wonder what effect the multitude of research stations have on Antarctica ? Each station is powered by diesel generators running day and night 365 days a year. I was surprised at just how many of them there actually are !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_stations_in_Antarctica
So, we can use observable data to show that the ice has receded yesterday, in geological terms, but we cannot explain why that happened. I think we can say that the most recen prior ice melt was not due to generators. lol
What about the postulation we are hearing that the current ice melt is accelerating. Is that true? If so, is that unprecedented? Without knowing the why is is harder to say and we’ll end up with political “answers”.
Please take another look at my previous post about the underlying nature and variability of climate. The crux of your question also hints at what might create this variability. With many systems influencing one another and having cycle periods things are always going up or down, more or less. As to any external drivers to the system you have solar cycles and strong evidence of cosmic rays modulated by solar wind impacting cloud nucleation particles. Sea Ice has been getting lower in recent years in the Arctic, however in Antarctic it is growing. Greenland ice mass may have decreased a small and insignificant amount but ice mass in Antarctic is going up. But when you read a paper or mainstream media report these days you have to check the sources and also check out their methods, their data and how they have collected and processed their data… quite a lot of time there is a strong warmest bias and alarmist tendency.
It is the engineer in my searching for something actionable or at least the dominant factor(s) to observe and find a way to work with or around. I’m not the observing type, simply for observations sake. It may be that all we can do is observe natural phenomenon in action, but I’d like to be able to isolate the cause down to some specifics, if at all possible. You mention several possible reasons, but I still see nothing concrete. Without that, the politicos will simply latch onto a populous viewpoint and pursue that until is is driven into the ground and then, assuming civilization survives their “solutions”, they will move on to the next populous notion that pokes its head above the noise.
I would go to the saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. The climate is varying naturally, increasing CO2 could bring about a small amount of additional warming but we cannot accurately model the effects since the models for all their complexity don’t model all the forcings or all the internal processes and interdependencies. The models are too warm by far even if all the warming experienced were totally true (the global datasets are in my opinion corrupted by urban heat island effects and data tampering) and if all supposed warming were human caused then the models over estimate the trend by four times. Alternative models linking solar cycles (modulating cloud cover) which nicely match archeological proxy information about warm and cold periods and suggest at least 1/2 if not most of the warming experienced over the last century is natural in origin.
I would continue with nuclear and natural gas to power our electricity systems and use petroleum to power transport and aggriculture. Coal is fine as long as you capture soot, NOx, SO4 etc. which we were doing until the idiots started manipulating market rules against coal and now gas and seeking to outright ban them in the western countries. Of course India, Indonesia and China continue to build their power system and industry based on coal and gas! In the USA, EU, UK and Australia the idea is to have a great deal of impoverishment and deprivation as the right to reliable and affordable heating, transport and power are taken away from most of society. As the economy weavers and it becomes harder to manufacture or farm we will have cost spikes and shortages. It’s a planned economic depression and regression of society.
The demonizing of nuke power by environmentalists is quite frustrating.
What will power the remote stations once diesel is banned?
“and loss of most civil liberties !”
Sounds serious. What civil liberties have you lost?
There has been a huge loss of civil liberties in the last 15 months or so and it is highly doubtful if some of those losses will ever be recovered.
Bit of an exaggeration I agree. However 80% of the adult population are now vaccinated. We walk around in masks and are blocked from leaving the country. Yet the recent peak in Delta cases is mostly due to politics – Boris wanted to sign a trade deal in Delhi. So he left the border open for 3 weeks after Pakistan despite a surge in infections in India.
Children are a difficult case – I agree. We will know soon whether it is safe for over 12 year olds
Now we are paying the price. EU countries are applying quarantine on us ! Our government squandered our advanced vaccine record. Now German and Italy apply quarantine rules on us!
We should have remained in the EU.
I’m just curious about specific liberties that have been lost. I have to admit that the temporary wearing of a mask during a pandemic did not bother me and helped prevent colds and flus if nothing else. And they are no longer required, so being maskless in public was regained. We have had Covid cases in our family coming from non-masked events. 7 months later, our daughter still is recovering her taste and smell senses.