2023’s ‘Record Temperatures’ Were Not Driven by CO2 Emissions, New Science Paper Finds
It is becoming increasingly obvious to serious climate scientists that sudden changes in temperature and weather cannot be directly attributed to any long-term effect of warming caused by human-produced ‘greenhouse’ gases.
Suggestions to the contrary are best left to climate comedy-turn Jim ‘jail the deniers’ Dale and the guided hands writing most mainstream media copy.
Last year saw a large spike upwards in global ‘hottest year ever’ temperatures and alarmism went into overdrive. But a recent paper published by the EU weather service Copernicus shows that the warming spike was driven by a strong, naturally occurring El Niño oscillation.
Furthermore, the 0.29°C spike is not unprecedented in the observation record since a slightly larger rise occurred in 1976-77.
The Copernicus paper published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics is of particular interest because it makes a connection between a strong El Niño developing across the southern hemisphere after a prolonged La Niña. El Niño is the positive phase of the ENSO natural climate variation.
While La Niña, which tends to lower temperatures, is the corresponding negative episode. In the years around 2023 and 1976, a strong El Niño occurred after a prolonged La Niña phase. In 1976 the spike was even higher at a reported 0.31°C.
The work published through Copernicus is firmly in the mainstream, so the seemingly obligatory reference is made to the unproven suggestion that global temperatures since 1950 have been rising “principally due to human activities”.
This may well be the considered opinion of the scientists involved, conveniently so since such work is unlikely to be published with a different take on the politicised ‘settled’ climate science behind the Net Zero project.
However the authors point out that the recent temperature spike has been a societal cause for concern, not least because its causes “are not obvious”.
Thankfully such doubts do not unduly cloud the judgements of those engaged in important Net Zero work, including Jim Dale, Justin Rowlatt of the BBC and George Monbiot of the Guardian.
There has been a recent scrabble in climate circles to explain the temperature spike, given the lack of scientific proof linking it to rises in just one trace atmospheric gas, namely carbon dioxide.
The authors note the recent reduction in atmospheric particulates or aerosols caused by cleaner marine fuels, increased solar activity and the Hunga Tonga submarine volcano eruption and the associated boost to upper atmosphere water vapour.
But they come down on the side of the argument that “ENSO is the primary reason for the global warming spikes”.
Their conclusion is based on two significant recent observations, but they attempt to back up their work by citing the findings of climate models. Such computer models have a poor track record since they are frequently used to provide cover for pre-prepared narratives and conclusions.
Whether they can provide useful or conclusive information on the chaotic, non-linear atmosphere is a subject for endless argument, but they are the best we have for attempting to measure climate mechanisms.
In their paper, the scientists show that climate models that are subject only to internal variability can generate temperature spikes, although they are an uncommon occurrence.
But when a prolonged La Niña immediately precedes an El Niño in the simulations, as occurred in 1976 and 2023, “such spikes become much more common”.
“Thus, our results underscore the importance of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation driving the occurrence of global warming spikes such as the one in 2023, without needing to invoke anthropogenic forcing, such as changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases or aerosols, as an explanation,” they conclude.
There have been a number of scientific papers trying to understand the recent temperature spike, although some are inconvenient in failing to support the ‘boiling’ trope and are therefore ignored in the mainstream.
As the Daily Sceptic recently reported, a detailed paper from a group of mathematicians and scientists published in Nature found “limited evidence” for a global warming surge over the last the last 50 years.
“No change in the warming rate beyond the 1970s is detected despite the breaking record temperatures observed in 2023,” they wrote. It is important to consider random noise caused by natural variation when investigating the recent pauses in temperature, and the more recent “alleged warming acceleration,” they argued.
All of which, of course, helps knock on the head the fast-emerging pseudoscience of weather attribution.
These whackadoodle weather findings of computer models attributing individual events to long-term changes in the climate caused by humans feature heavily in mainstream media.
In the absence of scientific backing, notably from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change despite its usually alarmist outlook, their political job is to help catastrophise natural events such as hurricanes, flooding and droughts.
They are pseudoscience since their claims cannot be disproved or falsified. They are outside the scientific process and are simply opinions. The distinguished climate writer Roger Pielke Jr. calls them “weather attribution alchemy”.
It says it all that they are now the main instrument used to alarm and scare populations into believing in a non-existent climate crisis.
See more here Daily Sceptic
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATI ONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. [paypal-donation
Trackback from your site.