This latest paper headed by James Hansen (released today, Dec. 7, 2023) is an update on his Nov. 2023 paper, Global Warming in the Pipeline, in which they provide more detail for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which IPCC computes is 3°C, but Hansen et al. show from paleoclimate data that ECS = 4.8°C ± 1.2°C, a significant increase towards an even worse climate crisis. IPCC scientists have been particularly critical of Hansen’s work of late, but he has faced that throughout his career, and in my opinion, he remains the pre-eminent climate scientist on the globe. Hansen explains some of that criticism in Section 2.2 on Scientific Reticence and Policy.
Pay attention to their explanation of Fig. 4 (also in the previous paper). The difference between IPCC and Hansen estimates of ECS result in the globe exceeding the 1.5°C temperature anomaly during 2024 with the super-El Nino still building, and increased aerosol forcing due to the reduction of sulfur content of ship fuels that began in January 2015 under international agreement. Hansen et al. predict permanently exceeding 1.5°C by 2030 with high probability, and with no rapid changes in carbon emissions, exceeding 2°C by 2050, but with accelerated warming, those years could come forward to 2025 (1.5°C) and 2040 (2°C).
There are other important results revealed in this paper, including an almost doubling of Earth’s energy imbalance (Fig. 7) since 2010; global temperatures at least temporarily far exceeding 1.5°C by May 2024 – translate: if you thought 2023 was warm, you ain’t seen nothing yet! I leave readers to make their own conclusions from the attached paper. But I expect these two studies by Hansen et al. to be extremely important in the years to come – I could be wrong but that’s my honest opinion at this stage. WE ARE IN TROUBLE, while Nero and his followers play the fiddle in Dubai while the globe burns.
I’m interested in COMMENTS, positive or negative.
Geoff Strong
G.S. (Geoff) Strong, PhD
Atmospheric/Climate Scientist
Cowichan Bay, BC
Email: [email protected]