Friday January 24th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials)😉
Main Topic: A Global Temperature Forecast Via Gavin Schmidt
Dear Diary. Over the course of the first 23 days of 2020 we have posted several articles summarizing temperature and climate crisis phenomena for 2019 and the 2010s. This will be the first post forecasting what lies ahead for 2020, or an educated guess concerning just global temperature averages. Over the past several years I’ve found that the most reliable forecaster in this department is renowned NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt. Here is what he has offered in some tweets from late December 2019:
As we know, Gavin’s forecast for 2019 was spot on. The world came in as second warmest next to 2016. Let’s blow up Gavin’s chart for the forecast for 2020 for a little closer scrutiny:
It appears that the forecast is for 2020 to come in at second warmest next to 2016 and slightly above that of 2019…right at 1.2°C above preindustrial conditions. Of note we are expecting 2020 to be a “neutral” year concerning ENSO, probably the warmest neutral year on record. Also, Gavin’s forecast does not take into account any big up tic in volcanic activity, most notably from the Phillipine Volcano Taal, which could cool the planet in 2020 significantly. We will keep a careful eye on SO2 emissions in the atmosphere this year due to active volcanos.
All this means that we should expect very similar phenomena as occurred in 2019. In 2019 the most anomalous heat waves occurred in Europe and Australia, which were historically hot. Any given continent or large area is now susceptible to a heat wave. Will this year be North America’s or Asia’s turn? We will see.
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Here is some more weather and climate news from Friday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity.)
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The Climate Guy