Funding Country Prosperity and Self-Reliance vs. Climate Mitigation

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The news from a climatist perspective is reported in the LinkedIn article World Bank and IMF Retreat from Climate Finance Under US Pressure.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In a significant shift in global financial priorities, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appear to be scaling back their commitments to climate finance in 2026, likely influenced by pressure from the United States. This development, reported in mid-2025, has sparked concerns among environmental advocates, developing nations, and the business community about its potential to disrupt the global transition to a sustainable economy. Climate finance, which funds projects aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change, is critical for supporting renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and climate resilience initiatives. [ Note: The United States is the largest shareholder of the World Bank, controlling about 16% of voting power. This allows the U.S. to single-handedly block any decision that requires a supermajority, such as extending or replacing the climate financing targets.]

Reorientation Background from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Excerpts from Secretary Bessent IMFC-DC Statement in italics with my bolds and added images.

In recent years, the IMF has suffered from mission creep. Its work has too often extended into areas such as international development, climate change, gender, and social issues, which are disconnected from the institution’s core mandate. To restore its relevance and impact, the Fund must drop these extraneous items and focus on the critical economic work at hand. 

As part of the ongoing Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR), the IMF is taking important steps to better calibrate the scope of its surveillance and reverse these concerning trends. Through the ongoing Review of Program Design and Conditionality, we expect the IMF to reemphasize a culture focused on achieving successful program outcomes rather than prioritizing inputs, such as the volume of financing provided.

In a more constrained external financing environment, the IMF should promote domestic revenue mobilization, better governance, and policies that support durable, private sector-led growth.  Moreover, the IMF, together with the World Bank, must continue its efforts to improve debt data reporting, help build debt management capacity for borrowing countries, restore momentum in debt-restructuring processes, and advance progress under the Common Framework.

The World Bank must maintain focus on its core mission of reducing poverty and increasing economic growth. This means:

♦ Promoting a stronger development agenda focused on country self-reliance by directing resources to the countries most in need for foundational investments that increase productivity and growth and graduating countries from Bank support;
♦ Delivering access to all technologies which can provide abundant, reliable, and affordable energy;
♦ Promoting prudent macroeconomic management and the rule-of-law; and improving development outcomes by proactively seeking to expand competition in procurement.
♦ Striving for greater efficiency, discipline, and accountability so that every dollar delivers more impact.

The Bank must do more to advance developing country access to abundant, affordable, and reliable energy to support economic growth and poverty reduction. Energy abundance sparks economic abundance, and the World Bank should support an all-of-the-above approach to energy technologies—including fossil fuels such as gas, oil, and coal, rather than restrict borrower choice. We call on the Bank to further expand its support for affordable, reliable energy by removing constraints on its support for natural gas and increasing the number of gas projects in the pipeline. We continue to welcome the Bank’s removal of the prohibition on financing nuclear power generation last year. We further welcome the Bank’s leadership in a working group on nuclear energy development with other multilateral development banks. Financing that delivers energy abundance will provide a strong boost to growth, which will also support debt sustainability.

Focusing on the Bank’s core mission also means abandoning its distortionary 45% climate finance target, which impedes market efficiency, distorts incentives, and undermines efforts to reduce poverty and spur economic growth. We welcome the coming expiration of the Climate Change Action Plan, and upon its long-overdue expiration, expect the Bank to immediately shift its myopic focus on climate and financing volumes to one that emphasizes high-quality, durable projects rather than shaping and selecting projects to chase arbitrary financing targets that do little to lift people out of poverty. The Bank should turn its attention to whether its investments and the countries they support are resilient to a multitude of shocks, rather than to meeting nonsensical arbitrary targets.

As public institutions, the World Bank and IMF can most clearly demonstrate accountability to their shareholders by ensuring that a sharper focus on their respective core missions is also reflected by restrained budgets. In service of this goal, we are pleased that both institutions have proposed flat real administrative budget growth for the upcoming fiscal year alongside streamlining efforts that will help reverse the mission creep of recent years.

More than eight decades after their creation at Bretton Woods, we must ensure that the international financial institutions remain true to their mandates and fit for purpose. Streamlining policy priorities will allow both the World Bank and IMF to focus limited public resources on effectively fulfilling their core mandates while nimbly responding to crises. The United States will continue to work with Management and staff, as well as other shareholders, to advance these priorities.

 

 

2026 Update: Fossil Fuels ≠ Global Warming

Posted on by Ron Clutz

gas in hands

Previous posts addressed the claim that fossil fuels are driving global warming. This post updates that analysis with the latest (2025) numbers from Energy Institute and compares World Fossil Fuel Consumption (WFFC) with three estimates of Global Mean Temperature (GMT). More on both these variables below. Note: Previously these same statistics were hosted by BP.

WFFC

2025 statistics are now available from Energy Institute for international consumption of Energy sources. Statistical Review of World Energy. 

The reporting categories are:
Oil
Natural Gas
Coal
Nuclear
Hydro
Renewables (other than hydro)

Note:  Energy Institute began in 2023 to use Exajoules to replace MToe (Million Tonnes of oil equivalents.) It is logical to use an energy metric which is independent of the fuel source. OTOH renewable advocates have no doubt pressured EI to stop using oil as the baseline since their dream is a world without fossil fuel energy.

From BP conversion table 1 exajoule (EJ) = 1 quintillion joules (1 x 10^18). Oil products vary from 41.6 to 49.4 tonnes per gigajoule (10^9 joules).  Comparing this annual report with previous years shows that global Primary Energy (PE) in MToe is roughly 24 times the same amount in Exajoules.  The conversion factor at the macro level varies from year to year depending on the fuel mix. The graphs below use the new metric.

A new wrinkle in the EI 2026 report is a shift in terminology concerning supply and consumption.  Previous reports headlined Primary Energy Consumption (PEC), but this year the top line is Total Energy Supply (TES).  No doubt the change is to raise the profile of non-carbon energy (NCE).  A comparison with previous years stats shows that consumption numbers for all years from 1965 to 2024 have been lowered in this report, a puzzling result likely due to methodology.  And yet tables show that summing the consumption EJs of each of the six energy categories matches the TES, effectively the same result as Energy Consumption, albeit with lower numbers across the board.  Apparently the motivation was to remove “Primary” to make room for Non Carbon Energy (NCE) sources like renewables that only input into Electricity, a Secondary energy form.

I found this diagram on the internet, but don’t have a link for it at  EI itself.  However, I can confirm it with statistics from the 2026 Data Report.  Those provided the basis for the chart later on. Firstly, here is analysis from 2025  combining the first three, Oil, Gas, and Coal for total fossil fuel consumption world wide (WFFC).  The chart below shows the patterns for WFFC compared to world consumption of Primary Energy from 1965 through 2024 from the EI 2025 report.

The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965  oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 81% in 2024.  Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021.  WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. For the 60 year period, all net changes were increases from previous years and were:

Oil 207%
Gas 555%
Coal 183%
WFFC 252%
PE 308%
And Now The Energy Institute 2026 Report

Note the orange TEC line is slightly below the green line in the 2025 report, and also that FF have a slightly larger % of TEC. The 600 EJ total matches the consumption sum of all energy categories. The green NCE line includes Nuclear, Hydro and Renewables.  WFFC proportion of Total Energy Consumption ranged from 97% in 1965 to 86% in 2025, an average of 91% over those six decades. NCE proportion matches exactly the remainder of TEC after subtracting WFFC, from 2.6% to 13.8%. The Table below shows EJs and %s for 2024 and 2025

2024 EJ 2025 EJ EJ Increases Sources 2024 %s 2025 %s
592.18 600.31 8.14 Total
199.04 200.97 1.93 Oil 33.61% 33.48%
148.72 150.70 1.97 Gas 25.11% 25.10%
165.35 166.03 0.68 Coal 27.92% 27.66%
30.71 31.04 0.33 Nuclear 5.19% 5.17%
16.1 16.1 0.02 Hydro 2.72% 2.69%
32.24 35.45 3.20 Renewables 5.45% 5.90%
592.18 600.31 8.14 Sum of All 100.00% 100.00%
Renewables Breakdown
Exajoules Consumed
2024 2025
Solar  7.8 10.1
Wind 9.1 9.8
Bio and Other 15.4 15.6
Renewables 32.2 35.4

The data show that Wind and Solar energy is about half of the Renewables category, or about 3% of Total Energy Consumed, not much larger than previously.

Global Mean Temperatures. 

Everyone acknowledges that GMT is a fiction since temperature is an intrinsic property of objects, and varies dramatically over time and over the surface of the earth. No place on earth determines “average” temperature for the globe. Yet for the purpose of detecting change in temperature, major climate data sets estimate GMT and report anomalies from it.

UAH record consists of satellite era global temperature estimates for the lower troposphere, a layer of air from 0 to 4km above the surface. HadSST estimates sea surface temperatures from oceans covering 71% of the planet. HadCRUT combines HadSST estimates with records from land stations whose elevations range up to 6km above sea level.

Both GISS LOTI (land and ocean) and HadCRUT4 (land and ocean) use 14.0 Celsius as the climate normal, so I will add that number back into the anomalies. This is done not claiming any validity other than to achieve a reasonable measure of magnitude regarding the observed fluctuations.[Note: HadCRUT4 was discontinued after 2021 in favor of HadCRUT5.]

No doubt global sea surface temperatures are typically higher than 14C, more like 17 or 18C, and of course warmer in the tropics and colder at higher latitudes. Likewise, the lapse rate in the atmosphere means that air temperatures both from satellites and elevated land stations will range colder than 14C. Still, that climate normal is a generally accepted indicator of GMT.

Correlations of GMT and WFFC

The next graph compares WFFC to GMT estimates over the decades from 1965 to 2024 from HadCRUT5, which includes HadSST4.

Since 1965 the increase in fossil fuel consumption is dramatic and monotonic, steadily increasing by 252% from 146 to 513 exajoules.  Meanwhile the GMT record from Hadcrut shows multiple ups and downs with an accumulated rise of 1.4C over 60 years, 10% of the starting value.

The graph below compares WFFC to GMT estimates from UAH6, and HadSST4 for the satellite era from 1980 to 2024 a period of 45 years.

In the satellite era WFFC has increased at a compounded rate of 1.5% per year, for a total increase of 99% since 1980. At the same time, SST warming amounted to 0.8C, or 5.6% of the starting value.  UAH warming was 1.1C, or 8% up from 1979.  The temperature compounded rate of change is 0.1% per year for HadSST4, and 0.2% per year for UAH, an order of magnitude less than WFFC.  Even more obvious is the 1998 El Nino peak and flat GMT until 2023-24.

Summary

The climate alarmist/activist claim is straight forward: Burning fossil fuels makes measured temperatures warmer. The Paris Accord further asserts that by reducing human use of fossil fuels, further warming can be prevented.  Those claims do not bear up under scrutiny.

It is enough for simple minds to see that two time series are both rising and to think that one must be causing the other. But both scientific and legal methods assert causation only when the two variables are both strongly and consistently aligned. The above shows a weak and inconsistent linkage between WFFC and GMT.

Going further back in history shows even weaker correlation between fossil fuels consumption and global temperature estimates:

wfc-vs-sat

Figure 5.1. Comparative dynamics of the World Fuel Consumption (WFC) and Global Surface Air Temperature Anomaly (ΔT), 1861-2000. The thin dashed line represents annual ΔT, the bold line—its 13-year smoothing, and the line constructed from rectangles—WFC (in millions of tons of nominal fuel) (Klyashtorin and Lyubushin, 2003). Source: Frolov et al. 2009

In legal terms, as long as there is another equally or more likely explanation for the set of facts, the claimed causation is unproven. The more likely explanation is that global temperatures vary due to oceanic and solar cycles. The proof is clearly and thoroughly set forward in the post Quantifying Natural Climate Change.

Footnote: CO2 Concentrations Compared to WFFC

Contrary to claims that rising atmospheric CO2 consists of fossil fuel emissions, consider the Mauna Loa CO2 observations in recent years.

Despite the drop in 2020 WFFC, atmospheric CO2 continued to rise steadily, demonstrating that natural sources and sinks drive the amount of CO2 in the air.

See also: Nature Erases Pulses of Human CO2 Emissions

02/2025 Update–Temperature Changes, CO2 Follows

2026 June Arctic Ice Extents Basically Normal

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Russian Nuclear Icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route, March 2025

The arctic ice extents are now reported through end of June 2026, and as noted previously the wavy polar vortex has hampered ice formation with incursions of warmer southern air into the Arctic circle.  This factor receded in May and June, with extents closing the gap with the averages. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) goes through the Russian shelf seas of Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas on the way to Bering Strait in Beaufort Sea.

As the image from yesterday shows, despite some melting on the margins, the Arctic Ocean core is solid, expecially along the Eurasian NSR seen on the left vertical side. As usual end of June, Hudson Bay (bottom right) is opening to water, as is Baffin Bay (middle right)

The chart below shows the 20-year June averages for Arctic ice extents, along with 2026, 2025 and 2007 as well as SII v.4. Note that on average June loses 2M km2 of ice extent.  By comparison SII v.4 lost 2.3M and MASIE lost 1.7M. In other words, MASIE 2026 ice melt is just two days ahead of average.

Note the deficit to average mid-month was ~400k km2 but since then 2026 extents tracked close to average before ending down 142k km2. SII tracked close to MASIE first half of June, but as we have seen in previous months SII v.4 lost a lot of ice in the last two weeks ending 504k km2 lower than MASIE, or half a Wadham.

The table below shows the distibution of ice extents on day 181 across regions of the Arctic ocean.

Region 2026181 Dasy 181 ave 2026-Ave. 2007181 2026-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 9606298 9748505 -142207 9672969 -66671
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1050375 932169 118205 939209 111165
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 836066 736703 99363 670088 165978
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 978394 1013254 -34859 901963 76431
 (4) Laptev_Sea 818505 701277 117228 658742 159762
 (5) Kara_Sea 490236 542563 -52328 657478 -167242
 (6) Barents_Sea 16225 113543 -97318 130101 -113876
 (7) Greenland_Sea 418285 504228 -85944 548399 -130114
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 379841 522139 -142297 450461 -70619
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 812857 775268 37588 773611 39246
 (10) Hudson_Bay 650307 683587 -33280 718441 -68134
 (11) Central_Arctic 3140155 3201754 -61599 3218999 -78844
 (12) Bering_Sea 17 8137 -8120 981 -964
 (13) Baltic_Sea 0 3 -3 0 0
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 13845 12549 1296 2983 10862

The table shows that most regions are close to or above the 20-year average. The Eurasian shelf seas of Laptev, Chukchi and Beaufort are in surplus. The majority of the 1.5% overall deficit is from Baffin Bay, Barents, and Greenland seas.  All of those regions will be nearly ice-free end of summer.

 

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring ice and snow extents.

 

UN Chief Demands $1.3 Trillion a Year

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The news article at Breibart is U.N. Secretary-General Demands $1.3 Trillion a Year to Fight ‘Climate Chaos’.  The images below put into perspective the scale of climate money to which Guterres lays claim. Excerpts wtih my bolds and added images.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for a massive increase in global climate spending, arguing that governments and financial institutions must devote significantly more resources to addressing climate-related challenges.  In a special address at London Climate Action Week on Monday, Guterres said that governments must invest more heavily in climate-related initiatives. Guterres said.

“We must do far more to protect people and communities from the here-and-now effects of climate chaos,” Guterres said. “Because even at full speed, we cannot outrun climate change. Its impacts are already here, compounding and cascading.”

Guterres also highlighted Africa’s energy potential while arguing that the continent receives too little investment despite its abundant natural resources. Guterres continued:

“Africa is home to 60% of the world’s best solar resources, 30% of critical minerals, 1/5 of humanity,”  “Yet it receives just 2% of global clean energy investment. At the same time, more than 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity. This is unjust and a lost opportunity for Africa and the world.”
The U.N. chief urged wealthy nations to honor previous climate-financing commitments and dramatically increase funding for developing countries over the next decade.   Guterres said.

“Developed countries must keep their promises, including support to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage and the Green Climate Fund. The $300 billion pledged to developing countries must be delivered with concrete steps to mobilize the $1.3 trillion a year by 2035,” “In a world of shrinking aid, we must also unleash the catalytic role of multilateral development banks and the wider development finance system to help fund long-term infrastructure such as grids, mass transit, and water systems.”

Guterres further argued that international lenders should play a larger role in financing infrastructure and climate-related projects around the world.

“Recent reforms and policy decisions have increased the lending capacity of multilateral development banks by 600 to 800 billion U.S. dollars. They must use it aggressively to finance the infrastructure of the future and climate adaptation.  They must also adapt their instruments to match the scale and time frame of the challenge, including 50-year finance where needed.”

     

    See Also

    Waste Example #5: Green Hydrogen Projects–
    Absurd, Exorbitant and Pointless

    The map above from IEA shows more than 2200 hydrogen fuel projects around the world, intending to replace hydrocarbon fuels to save the planet.  They dream of being operational by 2030 claiming that real world obstacles will be overcome if enough taxpayer dollars are thrown at the problems.
    A table from Hydrogen Newsletter provides a non-exhaustive but representative catalogue of the major green hydrogen projects that have been cancelled, postponed, or significantly scaled back between 2023 and mid-2025, illustrating the global scale of this market recalibration.

    El Ninos Signal Cooling Earth Climate

    Posted on by Ron Clutz

    Andy May provides data from instruments along with proxies showing that historically when Earth goes into a cooling period, the number of El Ninos increase, while declining during stable warm periods. The article at his blog is Do Los Niños cause climatic cooling?.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

    We’ve seen a lot of news stories about an upcoming El Niño, that may turn into a so-called “super” El Niño over the next year. This will affect our weather for a year or two, but what is the climatic effect of this weather feature, if any? Here we examine the history of warm ENSO events.

    Los Niños warm Earth’s atmosphere for a few years because they cause excess thermal energy (heat) to be expelled from the topical Pacific Ocean and the heat is then circulated around the planet via atmospheric circulation, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where most of us live. But this is warm weather, not climate. Climate is normally defined as the average weather over a period of more than 30 years. Over 30 years, Los Niños are a cooling event since nearly all the heat they transfer to the atmosphere is eventually radiated to space. Very little of the heat released from the oceans during an El Niño is returned to the oceans because downwelling infrared radiation from the atmosphere cannot penetrate the ocean surface (Wong & Minnett, 2018). Only solar radiation can penetrate to the deeper ocean and significantly warm it.

    Irreversible processes in the atmosphere. Neglecting radiative processes (not shown here), the largest sources of irreversibility in the atmosphere are those associated with the hydrologic cycle: evaporation, the mixing of moist and dry air, and the melt–freeze cycle (60–80% collectively), and the fallout of precipitation (5–15%).

    Many Los Niños are very powerful weather features and can be traced back in time with lake sediment proxies in Ecuador as has been done by Christopher Moy and colleagues at Syracuse University (Moy et al., 2002). Figure 1 shows Moy’s El Niño proxy record and Rosenthal’s Makassar Strait proxy temperature record since 0AD. Moy’s sediment record from the Laguna Pallcacocha drainage basin is well located to record warm El Niño events since these events cause anomalous sea surface temperatures off the coast of Ecuador which initiate strong and widespread convection in the area.

    Figure 1. The Moy warm El Niño record in blue (left scale) and Rosenthal’s North Pacific temperature record in orange (right scale) overlain. Data sources: (Moy et al., 2002) & (Rosenthal et al., 2013).

    The important point is that during the Medieval Warm Period Los Niños were rare and did not become common until the Little Ice Age began around 1200 AD and then declined as the Little Ice Age progressed and the world became colder. They have since become common again as the world has warmed, as shown in figure 2 which is a plot of the NOAA ERSST Niño 3.4 Index where Los Niños are positive and Las Niñas are negative values.

    Figure 2. The NOAA ERSST v5 ENSO index from the end of the Little Ice Age (~1850) to the present. Data source: Climate Explorer. In this plot, an El Niño is positive (0.5 or greater) and a La Niña is negative (-0.5 or less).

    Los Niños were extremely rare during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, only increasing in number as the Neoglacial began as shown in figure 3. The paucity of Los Niños during the Holocene Climatic Optimum is confirmed by numerous geological proxies from around the Pacific basin as discussed in Moy et al. (Moy et al., 2002).

    Figure 3. The Vinther Greenland area temperature and Moy’s warm ENSO proxy (number of events each 100 years).

    The paucity of Los Niños during the Holocene Climatic Optimum has been connected to Earth’s orbital cycles by Clement et al. (Clement et al., 2000). A discussion of the effects of orbital cycles on climate can be seen here. During the Holocene Climatic Optimum, Northern Hemisphere summer insolation was maximal. It appears that when this happens Los Niños are suppressed. Since the Neoglacial began, around 3800 BC, Northern Hemisphere summer insolation has declined significantly.

    Figures 1 to 3 suggest that a warm stable climate is associated with very few Los Niños, but when Earth’s climate is beginning to cool, as at the beginning of the Neoglacial Period or the early cooling years of the Little Ice Age, there are more Los Niños. Los Niños were very common as we cooled into the depths of the Little Ice Age (~1750 or so) and then as we began to warm coming out of the deepest period of the Little Ice Age the number of Los Niños dropped off.

    We are currently at the end of Modern Solar Maximum or
    the Modern Warm Period, and we are seeing more Los Niños,
    suggesting the world is beginning to cool.

    Footnote: Atlantic Cold Blob Comes On the Scene

    Ironically, as climatists proclaim warming from Pacific El Ninos confirms their CO2 hysteria, the actual climate signal points to a cold period, already manifesting in a large Atlantic cold blob.

    May 2026 SSTs Cease Warming

    Posted on by Ron Clutz

    The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

    • The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
    • SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
    • A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

    Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated.  This February report is based on HadSST 4, but with a twist. The data is slightly different in the new version, 4.2.0.0 replacing 4.1.1.0. Product page is here.

    The Current Context

    The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST 4.2 starting in 2015 through May 2026. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016, followed by rising temperatures in 2023 and 2024 and cooling in 2025, now with a steady mild rising in 2026 ceasing in May.

    Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes.  That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period.  A small warming was driven by NH summer peaks in 2021-22, but offset by cooling in SH and the tropics, By January 2023 the global anomaly was again below the mean.

    Then in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C in 2023, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak.  Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. During 2 years of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by Tropics cooling from its 1.3°C peak 2024/01, down to 0.5C in November 2025. That same month, the Global anomaly exactly matched the mean for this period, with all regions converging on that value, lincluding a 5 month drop in NH.  Now in 2026, due to a six-month rise in SH and Tropice, plus NH the last three months. The Global anomaly in April matched the value 2 years ago, and in May is slightly lower due primarily to SH cooling.

    Comment:

    The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof their Zero Carbon agenda is needed, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures.  It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around.  Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:

    El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years.  Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on.  Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds.  As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century  It iswell understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

    Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world.   We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example.  So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.

    It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well.  One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.

    A longer view of SSTs

    To enlarge, open image in new tab.

    The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations.  Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015.  This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since.  The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies.  Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July. 1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.

    The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 was dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.

    SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8,  a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12.  Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

    Now a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off.  But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average.  In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16.  NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

    The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.)  Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021.  In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.

    Then in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year.  Despite El Nino driving the Tropics January 2024 anomaly higher than 1998 and 2016 peaks, following months cooled in all regions, and the Tropics continued cooling in April, May and June along with SH dropping.  After July and August NH warming again pulled the global anomaly higher, September through January 2025 resumed cooling in all regions, continuing February through April 2025, with little change in May,June and July despite upward bumps in NH. Now temps in all regions have cooled  from August through November 2025, followed by a rebound of mild warming in 2026 appears in all regions through April ceasing in May.

    What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH.  The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before.  After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

    Contemporary AMO Observations

    Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future.  So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has current data.  It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic.  “ERSST5 AMO  follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.”  So the values represent SST anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

    The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed.  As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its variability, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin.  Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Then in 2023 the peak reached 1.4C before declining to 0.9 August 2026.  An annual chart below is informative:

    Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years.  2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September.  1998 and 2007 were mildly warm.  2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average.  2023 started out slightly warm, then rose steadily to an  extraordinary peak in July.  August to October were only slightly lower, but by December cooled by ~0.4C.

    Then in 2024 the AMO anomaly started higher than any previous year, then leveled off for two months declining slightly into April.  Remarkably, May showed an upward leap putting this on a higher track than 2023, and rising slightly higher in June.  In July, August and September 2024 the anomaly declined, and despite a small rise in October, ended close to where it began.  Note 2025 started much lower than the previous year and headed sharply downward, well below the previous two years, then since April through September aligning with 2010. In October there was an unusual upward spike, now reversed down to match 2022 and 2016.  The orange 2026 line continues downward and is visible on top of 2016 purple line, now slightly higher but well below the peak years of 2023 and 2024.

    The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

    The rose line is the average anomaly 1982-1996 inclusive, value 0.18.  The orange line the average 1982-2025, value 0.41 also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2015-2025, value 0.74. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

    Curiosity:  Solar Coincidence?

    The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher  than expected 1-2 years in the future.  As livescience put it:  Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be?  Some charts from spaceweatherlive look familar to these sea surface temperature charts.

    Summary

    The oceans are driving the warming this century.  SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.”  The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect.  The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?

    uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

    USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

    Follow the Money Leaving Wind Farms

    Posted on by Ron Clutz

    Boluwatife Remy reveals what many have overlooked, widespread disinvesting in wind power.  Not so long ago, the climate feaful were badgering education and religious institutions, among others, to disinvest in hydrocarbons from Big Oil companies.  Well, the worm has turned.  Remy’s article at benzinga is
    Why Shell Is Selling Its Wind Farms—And What It’s Building Instead. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

    The energy transition was supposed to be the defining corporate story of the 2020s. For Shell (NYSE:SHEL), it has become the story of what the company tried, reconsidered, and is now unwinding at a pace that leaves little room for ambiguity about where management stands.

    Bloomberg reported Friday that Shell is preparing to offload a portfolio of offshore wind farms in a transaction expected to generate more than $1 billion. Rothschild and PJT Partners are handling the advisory work, with the formal sale process targeted for 2027. Shell said nothing publicly. What the company has not stayed quiet about, expressed through a long sequence of exits and disposals over the past two years, is the direction it has chosen and the conviction behind it.

    This Is Not a One-Off Decision

    Anyone tempted to read the Bloomberg report as an isolated portfolio adjustment has not been following what Shell has been doing since Wael Sawan took the chief executive role with an explicit mandate to tighten the company’s strategic focus and restore the return on capital that investors had been pushing for.

    The wind exits have been coming in steady succession. Shell walked away from the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project in the United States, absorbing a $1 billion writedown after concluding the numbers no longer worked. It sold its half of the MarramWind floating offshore wind development off Scotland to joint venture partner ScottishPower Renewables and abandoned the CampionWind project it had been developing independently.

    Positions in other offshore wind assets across multiple markets have been quietly sold down as each successive review of the business case reached the same conclusion. The explanation attached to each departure has been consistent: the project either fails to meet the company’s return thresholds or no longer fits what Shell believes it does well.

    One exit looks like a portfolio decision. A dozen exits
    over twenty-four months looks like a verdict.

    What Shell Is Building in Place of Wind

    The company Sawan is assembling has a narrower and more deliberate focus than the Shell that spent the early 2020s presenting sweeping energy transition commitments to investors and government audiences. Liquefied natural gas trading and upstream oil and gas production are where the strategy now concentrates, businesses where Shell carries genuine competitive advantages built over decades that no amount of capital could quickly replicate elsewhere.

    That repositioning is not unique to Shell. The same reassessment has been running simultaneously across the major integrated oil companies. BP has been selling renewable assets and reorienting capital toward upstream production. Equinor reduced its renewable energy workforce by around 20% while boosting spending on oil and gas. TotalEnergies negotiated an exit from nearly $1 billion in U.S. offshore wind leases and committed the equivalent amount to domestic fossil fuel development instead.

     The companies that arrived at the 2021 and 2022 investor days with ambitious clean energy targets have each, at their own pace and with varying degrees of public candor, concluded that those targets were built on assumptions that did not hold.

    How Offshore Wind Lost Its Financial Logic

    The deterioration in offshore wind economics between 2021 and 2024 was sharper than almost anyone inside the industry publicly acknowledged while it was happening. Construction costs climbed as specialist installation vessels became scarce and supply chains struggled to keep pace with the volume of projects that had been approved simultaneously across European and American markets.

    Interest rates moved from near zero to levels that fundamentally changed the math on capital-intensive long-duration infrastructure. Turbine manufacturers, squeezed between fixed-price contracts and rising input costs, ran into serious financial difficulty.

    The gap between what projects were expected to cost when developers submitted bids and what actually arrived on the invoice became a recurring crisis.

    Contracts got cancelled. Projects got written down. 

    Governments that had structured power purchase agreements around cost assumptions from a different era found themselves in renegotiations that pleased nobody. The companies carrying the heaviest exposure to offshore wind at the peak of the enthusiasm cycle spent years managing the fallout from decisions that looked reasonable in 2020 and looked considerably less so by 2023.

    What This Means for Shell Shareholders

    Selling wind farms that are not generating acceptable returns and redirecting the proceeds into businesses that are creates a cleaner financial picture for investors who have been watching Shell carry underperforming assets longer than they would have preferred. 

    Shell has been among the more aggressive capital returners among the major oil companies, and management has been consistent about treating buyback capacity and dividend sustainability as priorities that outrank maintaining positions in low-return businesses.

    The assets being brought to market will find buyers. Infrastructure funds and specialist renewable developers have been steady acquirers of divested offshore wind portfolios throughout this cycle, often able to hold the assets more cheaply than integrated oil companies whose capital costs and return expectations create a structural disadvantage in low-margin infrastructure. Shell selling is not the same as the assets disappearing. It is the assets moving to owners better suited to hold them.

    What stays with Shell is the part of the energy business it has decided it is actually good at. For investors, that clarity is worth more than a diversified portfolio of businesses generating mixed returns and requiring constant explanation.

    See Also: Wind Power Economic Failure

    The Short Lives of Wind Turbines

    2026 Mid-June Arctic Ice Extents 98% Normal

    Posted on by Ron Clutz

    Russian Nuclear Icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route, March 2025

    The arctic ice extents are now reported through Mid-June 2026, and as noted previously the wavy polar vortex has hampered ice formation with incusions of warmer southern air into the Arctic circle.  This factor receded in May and June, and extents have mostly closed the gap with the averages. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) goes through the Russian shelf seas of Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas on the way to Bering Strait in Beaufort Sea.

     

    As the image from yesterday shows, despite some melting on the margins, and a bit of open water in East Siberian sea, the Arctic Ocean core is solid, expecially along the Eurasian NSR seen on the left vertical side.

    The chart below shows the 20-year Mid-June averages for Arctic ice extents, along with 2026, 2025 and 2007 as well as SII v.4.

     

    The deficit to average was as large as 440k km2 (day 156) to 739k km2, but since then the gap was halved  142k km2, before ending this period at 201k, or a deficit of 1.8%.  SII tracked close to MASIE throughout.

    The table below shows the distibution of ice extents on day 165 across regions of the Arctic ocean.

    Region 2026165 Dday 165 Ave. 2026-Ave. 2025165 2026-2025
     (0) Northern_Hemisphere 10696425 10897539 -201114 10567590 128835
     (1) Beaufort_Sea 1042387 977664 64724 1069789 -27402
     (2) Chukchi_Sea 879186 811784 67402 884719 -5533
     (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1040050 1051599 -11549 1050151 -10101
     (4) Laptev_Sea 845784 768965 76819 714429 131355
     (5) Kara_Sea 788382 716558 71824 589168 199214
     (6) Barents_Sea 68324 203502 -135178 111023 -42699
     (7) Greenland_Sea 473392 582910 -109518 548170 -74778
     (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 595439 727315 -131876 683063 -87624
     (9) Canadian_Archipelago 837498 797884 39614 825305 12193
     (10) Hudson_Bay 957932 967494 -9562 881108 76824
     (11) Central_Arctic 3126593 3216681 -90088 3165365 -38772
     (12) Bering_Sea 17089 38344 -21255 19646 -2557
     (13) Baltic_Sea 0 5 -5 0 0
     (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 23112 35439 -12327 24010 -898

    The table shows that most Eurasian regions are in surplus to the 20-year averages, with a small deficit in East Siberian sea..  The majority of the 2% overall deficit is from Baffin Bay, Barents, and Greenland seas, while Bering, Okhotsk and Baltic seas are as usual mostly open water at this time of year. All of these regions will be nearly ice-free end of summer.

     

    Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring ice and snow extents.

     

    Disband the Climate Cult Madness (Happer)

    Posted on by Ron Clutz

    William Happer calls for a return to climate sanity ASAP in this article from Daily Sceptic The Climate Cult.

    The text is an excerpt from Canary in a Climate World: Climate Realism vs. the Net Zero Myth, a newly released book bringing together 38 Climate Canaries from across science, climatology, geology, engineering, economics, medicine, law, journalism, public policy and independent research. The chapter below, by Princeton physicist Professor William Happer, is one of many thought-provoking contributions examining climate science, energy policy, Net Zero and the wider climate debate. My bolds and added images.

    Fifty years from now, academic treatises will be written about the climate madness that prevailed when these canary songs were written. I hope the songs will clarify the Zeitgeist of this bizarre interval in the history of human folly.

    Many people with inadequate scientific knowledge are convinced that Planet Earth is in mortal danger from global warming due to humans. If Planet Earth were really in great danger from humans, any means to protect it would be justified. Some extremists propose reducing Earth’s eight billion population of people to no more than one billion. How this is to be done has always been a bit vague. Genghis Khan made a good start by slaughtering some 40 million people in the 13th century. In our day, Prince Philip, father of King Charles III of the United Kingdom, opined that: “If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”

    The climate alarmism of our time is a malignant alliance of ignorant fanaticism, like that mentioned above, and opportunism: the lust for power, fame and wealth. Like all fanatical movements, climate alarmism is doing great collateral damage, most notably to the reputation of my own profession of science. Generous research grants from governments and private foundations have created a new discipline of ‘climate science’.

    Traditional, rigorous disciplines like atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, meteorology or palaeontology were quick to cash in by renaming themselves with some variant of ‘Centre for Saving the Planet’. They were generously rewarded with research grants, new laboratories, professorships, elections to learned societies, prizes and other tokens of gratitude.

    This largess came with strings. If your research did not show that the planet needed to be saved, you would be expelled from the elect. Many credible scientists made no public mention of doubts they had about the party line. But a few refused to accept this new ‘science by consensus’ and remained faithful to the traditional criterion: the validity of a scientific theory is how well its predictions agree with all available observations, and how successfully it predicts previously unobserved phenomena.

    In the laconically accurate words of Karl Popper: “One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.” By this criterion, climate alarmism is not a scientific theory, since it has made many alarming predictions and none have turned out to be true. Rather climate alarmism is more like astrology or the cargo-cult science described so graphically by Richard Feynman.

    Climate alarmism is centred on the dogma is that ‘carbon dioxide is the control knob of Earth’s climate’. This dogma is false, but because of frenzied propaganda for over half a century it is as widely accepted today as was the geocentric universe in the days of Giordano Bruno. In the year 1600, Pope Clement VIII, the Vicar of Christ’s Church of Faith, Hope and Love, had Bruno burnt alive for promoting heliocentrism and other ideas deemed heretical.

    To enlarge, open image in new tab.

    Less than 50 years later, Galileo Galilei barely escaped the same fate by recanting his heretical promotion of heliocentrism — that Earth moves around the Sun, and not vice versa. Galileo, the inventor of the astronomical telescope, knew perfectly well from direct observation that planets moved about the Sun and planetary moons moved around the planets. Supposedly he muttered “eppur si muove” (and yet it moves) as friends, relieved at his acquittal, hustled him away from the inquisition before he could get into more trouble.

    Many of the songsters of this collection, especially those from academia, will recall being the targets of fanatical hatred, similar to that experienced by Bruno and Galileo, for suggesting that carbon dioxide is not the control knob of climate.

    The dogma that CO₂ is the control knob of Earth’s climate has the ring of plausibility. Similarly, an immobile Earth, with celestial speres rotating around it seemed obvious to Ptolemaic astronomers. CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, that is, a gas that is nearly transparent to shortwave, visible and near-visible sunlight, but partially opaque to the longwave infrared radiation that dumps excess heat from the Earth into the cold darkness of outer space.

    Greenhouse gases do little to hinder the heating of the Earth by sunlight, but they readily absorb and re-emit thermal infrared radiation, making it harder for Earth to release thermal radiation directly from its surface to space, and requiring higher temperatures to get rid of the heat than would otherwise be needed if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

    But the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor, H₂O, not CO₂. When the effects of clouds are included, water in all of its phases, vapour, liquid and solid, has a much bigger influence on radiative transfer of heat than CO₂. And radiative transfer is only part of what controls Earth’s climate. Huge amounts of heat are transported by air and ocean currents from the tropics, where maximum sunlight is absorbed, to polar regions, where much more thermal radiation is released to space than is absorbed from the Sun.

    Figure 10. This graph is the cloud fraction and is set forth on the left vertical axis. The temperature is on the right vertical axis and the horizontal axis represents the observation year. The information was extrapolated from figures prepared by Hans-Rolf Dubal and Fritz Vahrenholt [37].

    In fact, the climate of the Earth has no single control knob, and all theoretical and empirical evidence points to CO₂ being a relatively unimportant factor. The most important influences on Earth’s climate are the Sun and cloud cover. Neither the Sun nor clouds are understood as well as they should be. What understanding we have has been set back at least 50 years by the manic focus on greenhouse gases.

    A particular irony of the demonization of CO₂ is that increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ are benefitting life on Earth. Satellite measurements show a clear greening of Earth, especially of arid areas, due to the modest increases in CO₂ that have already occurred. CO₂ really is plant food, one of the three key ingredients of photosynthesis: sunlight, water molecules, H₂O, and CO₂ molecules. More CO₂ has contributed to the agricultural abundance that has characterised the past 50 years.

    Parts of the climate alarm establishment have evolved into protection rackets. According to Wikipedia:

    A protection racket is racketeering scheme, usually perpetrated by a criminal organisation, that coerces payments on a regular basis from an individual or group in exchange for agreeing to not harm them (or for supposedly ‘protecting’ them). The threat of harm may be indirectly communicated or implied, and it may include violence, robbery, ransacking, arson, vandalism, etc. The payments are called ‘protection money’ or a ‘protection fee’.

    Courts of law have been flooded with lawsuits against fossil fuel companies that have supposedly been knowingly killing the planet for years by providing the coal, oil and gas. It does not matter that these fossil fuels have facilitated the most prosperous economy the world has ever known, with ordinary citizens today living like the nobility of past centuries.

    Not only businesses, but every citizen of the world is being hectored to pay up for protection against the non-existent threat of human-induced climate change.

    Trial lawyers, well-paid expert witnesses, a meretricious mass media and many other hangers-on are benefitting from, or hope to benefit from, this racket.

    The huge influxes of research funding for compliant scientists have made it difficult to oppose the fable of a threatened planet. Any scientist who speaks up against the cacophony of nonsense about a climate threat is treated like Dr Thomas Stockmann in Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People. Rather than being thanked for discovering that the water of his town’s popular spa is contaminated with deadly disease organisms, Dr Stockman and his family are viciously ostracised by most of the town’s citizens, who are making a good living by promoting the supposed health benefits of the spa.

    Climate nonsense will eventually end and will be dumped onto the ash heap of history where it belongs. But the longer the cult goes on, the more damage is done. We should all do what we can to stop the madness as soon as possible.

     

    UAH May 2026 Ocean Warms More Than Land

    Posted on by Ron Clutz

    The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean. Each month and year exposes again the growing disconnect between the real world and the Zero Carbon zealots.  It is as though the anti-hydrocarbon band wagon hopes to drown out the data contradicting their justification for the Great Energy Transition.  Yes, there was warming from an El Nino buildup coincidental with North Atlantic warming, but no basis to blame it on CO2.

    As an overview consider how recent rapid cooling  completely overcame the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November 2021, and in February and June 2022  At year end 2022 and continuing into 2023 global temp anomaly matched or went lower than average since 1995, an ENSO neutral year. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020). Then there was an usual El Nino warming spike of uncertain cause, unrelated to steadily rising CO2, and now dropping steadily back toward normal values.

    For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~66 ppm, an 18% increase.

    Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

    gmt-warming-events

    The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event.  The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4.  This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C.  Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C.  Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.

    Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate.  On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.

    Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT

    image-8

    See Also Worst Threat: Greenhouse Gas or Quiet Sun?

    May 2026 UAH Temps: Ocean Warms More Than Landbanner-blog

    With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  While you heard a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast the cooling set in.  The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino had fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions. After a warming blip in 2022, land and ocean temps dropped again with 2023 starting below the mean since 1995.  Spring and Summer 2023 saw a series of warmings, continuing into 2024 peaking in April, then cooling off to the present.

    UAH has updated their TLT (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for May 2026. Due to one satellite drifting more than can be corrected, the dataset has been recalibrated and retitled as version 6.1 Graphs here contain this updated 6.1 data.  Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month are ahead the update from HadSST4.  I posted recently on April 2026 SSTs Continue to Warm. These posts have a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

    Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes. 2025 showed a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February.  Then in November and December SH land temps spiked while ocean temps showed litle change. In February 2026 NH land temps doubled, from Dec. 0.53C up to 1.14C last month.  Despite SH land changing little, and Tropical land cooling, the Global land anomaly jumped up from 0.53 to 0.93C.  That reversed in March with both NH land and Global land anomaly back down to 0.63C. That cooling offset SH Ocean warming doubling from 0.19C to 0.38C. Now in May comes a warming spike in Tropics and SH ocean air while NH ocean air was flat. At the same time, Land air temps warmed in Tropics and NH while dropping in SH.  The unusual end result for May was Global, Land and Ocean air temp anomalies all showing the same 0.53C.

    Note:  UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021.   v6.1 data was recalibrated also starting with 2021. In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same but the anomaly values changed with the baseline reference shift.

    Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

    Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  Thus cooling oceans portend cooling land air temperatures to follow.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

    After a change in priorities, updates are now exclusive to HadSST4.  For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6.1 which are now posted for May 2026.  The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the revised and current dataset.

    The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean air temps since January 2015.

    After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, there was a remarkable spiking of Tropical ocean temps from -0.5C up to + 1.2C in January 2024.  The rise was matched by other regions in 2024, such that the Global anomaly peaked at 0.86C in April. Since then all regions have cooled down sharply to a low of 0.27C in January.  In February 2025, SH rose from 0.1C to 0.4C pulling the Global ocean air anomaly up to 0.47C, where it stayed in March and April. In May drops in NH and Tropics pulled the air temps over oceans down despite an uptick in SH. At 0.43C, ocean air temps were similar to May 2020, albeit with higher SH anomalies. In November/December all regions were cooler, led by a sharp drop in SH bringing the Global ocean anomaly down to 0.02C. In 2026, ocean warming is evident, with Tropics and SH pulling up Global ocean air temps despite little rise in NH ocean.

    Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern

    We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for May is below.

    Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land.  The seesaw pattern in Land temps is similar to ocean temps 2021-22, except that SH is the outlier, hitting bottom in January 2023. Then exceptionally SH goes from -0.6C up to 1.4C in September 2023 and 1.8C in  August 2024, with a large drop in between.  In November, SH and the Tropics pulled the Global Land anomaly further down despite a bump in NH land temps. February showed a sharp drop in NH land air temps from 1.07C down to 0.56C, pulling the Global land anomaly downward from 0.9C to 0.6C. Some ups and downs followed with returns close to February values in August.  A remarkable spike in October was completely reversed in November/December, along with NH dropping sharply bringing the Global Land anomaly down to 0.52C, half of its peak value of 1.17C 09/2024. In 2026 January and February Global land rebounded up to 1.14C, led by a NH warming spike. That NH spike was reversed in March and April back down to 0.43C.  Now in May the Global land anomaly is back up to o.53C with all regions around that value.

    The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

    The chart shows monthly Global Land and Ocean anomalies starting 01/1980 to present.  The average monthly anomaly is -0.02 for this period of more than four decades.  The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20.   An upward bump in 2021 was reversed with temps having returned close to the mean as of 2/2022.  March and April brought warmer Global temps, later reversed

    With the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January 2023 temps, there was no increase over 1980. Then in 2023 the buildup to the October/November peak exceeded the sharp April peak of the El Nino 1998 event. It also surpassed the February peak in 2016. In 2024 March and April took the Global anomaly to a new peak of 0.94C.  The cool down started with May dropping to 0.9C, later months declined steadily until  August Global Land and Ocean was down to 0.39C. then rose slightly to 0.53 in October, before dropping to 0.3C in December.  Now in May 2026 the anomaly is back up to 0.53C.

    The graph reminds of another chart showing the abrupt ejection of humid air from Hunga Tonga eruption.

    TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak.  Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST4, but are now showing the same pattern. Despite the three El Ninos, their warming had not persisted prior to 2023, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.