State of the climate – summer 2023
Posted on August 14, 2023 by curryja | 10 Comments
by Judith Curry, Jim Johnstone, Mark Jelinek
A deep dive into the causes of the unusual weather/climate during 2023. People are blaming fossil-fueled warming and El Nino, and now the Hunga-Tonga eruption and the change in ship fuels. But the real story is more complicated.
Observations
Starting in June, the global temperatures are outpacing the record year 2016 (Figure 1).
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Figure 1. From Copernicus ECMWF
Here is the time series of the monthly surface temperature anomalies from the ERA5 reanalysis (Figure 2). The July 2023 spike was of comparable magnitude to the winter 2016 anomaly which occurred in late winter.
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Figure 2.
Here is the time series of the monthly lower atmospheric temperature anomalies from the UAH satellite-based analysis. The July 2023 temperature anomaly remains slightly below the peak 2016 temperature anomalies and comparable to the peak 1998 temperature anomaly.
https://judithcurry.com/2023/08/14/state-of-the-climate-summer-2023/#more-30374
