Data from the Met Office shows that the Earth’s mean surface temperature is now 1 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels for the first time.
The 1 °C threshold is an important marker, representing the midway point to the 2 °C limit that most agree the planet needs to stay within to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Based on data from January to September, the results show a global mean temperature at 1.02 °C above the 1850-1900 reference period.
“This year marks an important first but that doesn’t necessarily mean that every year from now on will be a degree or more above pre-industrial levels, as natural variability will still play a role in determining the temperature in any given year,” said Peter Stott, head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.
Natural variability for 2015 has included the effects of El Nino, the sporadic Pacific weather system that generally has a warming effect on the Earth’s temperature. But according to the Met Office, similar events in the past have never been enough to push global temperatures across the 1 degree threshold.
“We have seen a strong El Nino develop in the Tropical Pacific this year and that will have had some impact on this year’s global temperature,” said Stephen Belcher, director of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre.
“We’ve had similar natural events in the past, yet this is the first time we’re set to reach the 1 °C marker and it’s clear that it is human influence driving our modern climate into uncharted territory.”
The announcement comes at an important time, with the Paris climate talks set to get under way later this month. Although we are halfway to 2 °C of warming, the Met Office says we have already used up more than two-thirds of the carbon budget (2,000 GtCO2 out of an estimated budget of 2,900 GtCO2) that would keep us under that marker. This is due to the delayed warming effects of CO2 as it remains in the atmosphere for many years after it is emitted.
According to Myles Allen, a Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford, governments should be framing emissions reduction against future warming rather than targeted dates in the future. He said that when considering the actions required to stay within 2 °C, there is a simple way of thinking about the problem.
“Once we reach one degree, then we need to reduce emissions by 10 per cent of baseline for every tenth of a degree warming thereafter if we are to meet the two degree goal,” Allen explained.
“That’s a really simple way of thinking about it. We think it would be really helpful if governments were to think about it in this way, framing their objectives against future warming rather than against arbitrary dates, because it links progress trajectory to the target they have set themselves.
Is this effect likely to accelerate…?
To analogise: I am wonderring whether the effect will be like running water in to a funnel….at low enough volumes, the funnel drains as quickly as it fills. But when equillibrium is exceeded, there is a sudden filling effect that can catch everyone unawares!
Combine this possibility with the UK curring back on its “cutting back”…its a very worrying situation!
How long do we have to continue wasting trillions chasing phantom problems that have no solution? Forty years ago the specter of worldwide oil shortages had the alarmists in a tizzy to switch to vastly more expensive alternative energy sources to avoid the collapse of civilization after the mid 1990’s consumption of the last drop of oil in the world.
Of course, this never happened and by the 2000’s the world was awash in so much oil and gas that the alarmists had to change their tune and promote spending additional trillions to develop “Green Energy” alternatives to reduce the consumption of carbon based fuels.
Unfortunately, the Green Energy pipe dream can never come to fruition. Europe and the US can pave over every square centimeter of their land to construct wind, solar, and thermal energy generating plants and it still won’t come close to producing enough energy to replace the existing power generation sources.
Worse, even if Europe and the US bankrupt their economies producing energy that is too expensive for anyone to afford without massive reduction in living standards expansion of the Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian economies will replace every atom of carbon Europe and the US reduce with 20 atoms generated by their massive burning of coal and the increase in standard of living of their billions of people resulting in purchase of billions of cars and adopting high energy consuming western style lifestyles.
Short of declaring war on these emerging economies and forcing them back to pre-industrial levels there is nothing the West can do to stop them from flooding the world’s atmosphere with massive quantities of CO2. So, if the alarmists theory that man made CO2 production is causing global warming is true then we’d all better get used to living in the new world climate.
At the dawn of the 19th century most people in Europe and the US had never seen a car much less driven one. A decade later cars had largely replaced horses and two decades later it was rare to see a horse on the road. Humans used horses as the primary source of transportation for thousands of years yet when a better alternative was developed horses were eliminated virtually overnight.
The solution to global warming is not to bankrupt western economies subsidizing green energy that no one can afford to buy and that the Chinese, Indians, and Brazilians will never use. The solution is to develop energy alternatives that are better and more economical and that will displace current energy sources without government intervention.
Right now, fusion power holds the most promise of providing that paradigm changing technology. While skeptics complain that Fusion will not be commercially viable for 20 years they conveniently fail to mention that it will take much longer than 20 years to build enough windmills and solar plants to generate enough super expensive energy to replace the current carbon and fission based plants.
Once (comparably) “free” fusion power becomes viable it will replace most other energy alternatives virtually overnight. Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian coal and oil based power plants will be shuttered and the thousands of massively subsidized windmills dotting the European landscape will be abandoned and left for future generations to use to instruct their children on the folly of governments.
“Data from the Met Office shows that the Earth’s mean surface temperature is now 1 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels for the first time”
As in roman times where they gre grape along Hadrians wall?
The Met Office, like the NAOO in the USA is becoming totally foolish in its politicising of AGW.
The satellite evidence is that no warming has occurred and the land data has now been corrupted beyond sense by algorithms written to support AGW.
The 2 C myth is another nonsense to frighten the people into supporting a foolish policy.
The USA (i.e. Congress) will not support the restrictions any more than they supported Kyoto: they just provide the nonsense for others to act on.
It is a fact that the kinematic viscosity of gases including air increases with temperature. The units of kinematic viscosity m2/sec are the same as those of momentum transfer. Warm air therefore has greater momentum than cool air. With the average temperature of the atmosphere increasing does this mean that across the globe we can expect more violent storms?
According to the IPCC there has been no significant increase in floods, doubts, storms, cyclones, hurricanes or tornadoes. In fact, most/all have decreased.
According to the IPCC, most of the temperature rise since the 1950s is man-made.
If they are correct, then the man-made component is a bit more than half of the 0.5° rise since 1950. So, of this 1°, maybe 0.3° is due to man-made causes.
Not very frightening is it?
Not only that, but the temperature has not increased as predicted by the climate models for the last 18 years. So we can be sure that the climate models are worthless for temperature prediction. Yet the IPCC and the Met office continue to rely on them.
So why aren’t we listening to the people who have studied past climate cycles and are predicting that we are probably at the beginning of a new little ice age? Much more frightening than global warming.
Reporting all the facts is what the Met office should be doing. By telling half-truths, they are guilty of distortion.
The fact is that there has been a recent rise in world temperatures due to the El Niño effect – just as there was in 1998. This should have been mentioned by the Met office
As you may know, a few weeks ago we received the news of the “Largest, most intense hurricane in history” was about to hit the pacific coast of Mexico… but as soon as it formed and reached Category-5, it vanished and (fortunately) the real damage was done more on the catastrophists credibility, than on mexican land. Given the now observed FACTS, we sincerely doubt that the american NOAA was giving true hard data. In any case, the huge hurricane lost the 5 categories in less than 21 hours.
Additionally, the recorded wave heights by an independent entity (Mexican Navy), cannot be made to correspond to the supossed intensity and duration of the winds, placing more doubts that the much publicized phenomena really was so intense. (Those familiar to Offshore platform design, will understand that wave height needs both wind speed and certain duration to raise large sustained waves). As engineers and scientists, we need to be careful about propagating gross climate alterations that could have a political agenda, more than facts. Amclaussen, MEXICO.
Richard, you seem to forget that fusion has been 20-30 years away for at least four decades, although much of what you say is right. We were of course told in the 60s that fission power would be too cheap to need to charge for, then North sea gas the same in the 70s.
First task is to use up all that plutonium
Note to the editor.
I do not wish to suppress anyones opinions, even the Met office.
My concern is the concerted press support for any half-baked global warming rubbish as COP 21 approaches.
The issue of the temperature rise is well worthy of discussion, but it would be good to acknowledge that the NOAA data that are used are highly suspect and that recent claims are against the well established satellite data.
This editor has killed the engineer print edition with all this climate change nonsense and is heading the same way with the online edition.
Stick to engineering! If you have a solution to report for the energy crunch or CCS fine – we all want to hear it – but pronouncements of doom from the discredited Met Office are irrelevant to engineers, most of whom are sceptical of manmade climate change and the collection of charlatans who yet refuse to admit they were wrong despite all the observations telling them so.
Satellites say that 1998 is still the hottest year even with this current el nino which causes only a temporary blip in any event. Next year will see the typical la nina dip which always follows el nino.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/11/uah-v6-0-global-temperature-update-for-october-2015-0-43-deg-c/
That UAH dataset is backed by the RSS satellite and Radiosondes.
So if global satellite coverage is now regarded as less accurate than a spurious handful of UHI-affected ground stations combined with sea surface data collected from buckets or ship intakes then technology has seriously left the building of the engineer.
And please don’t bring up the hockey-stick fiasco again: A shameful episode that paleos are trying to forget. Even the HS author superceded it with a recon that showed a medieval warm period and 5 more recons have since confirmed that the MWP was just as warm. Climategate emails revealed that most paleos thought the hockey-stick was rubbish even when it was published. This is no secret! Such bad stats if done by any engineer would have meant bridges collapsing. Alas we don’t have the luxury of putting politics before common sense: When data disproves our theory we have to adjust the theory or people may die.
The claim that the one-degree has been passed is worthy of questioning because the NOAA data on which it is based are suspect and being challenged in the US Senate. The historical world temperature history data have been annually altered by algorithms that are not transparent or even credible.
The historical warming claim is based on a “cooling” of the past by systematically reducing historical temperature values. This humangenisation of data accounts for about 0.5C / century of the virtual temperature rise rate. That is to say, the one-degree rise is not based on actual measured values but is a virtual value for “believers” only.