Explaining Climate Resilience & Change

Written by Dr Jennifer Marohasy on April 2, 2025. Posted in Current News

The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991 led to a significant cooling of the tropical ocean surface due to the cloud belt formed by the eruption. ​ This cooling resulted in a temporary reduction in the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations

Despite ongoing human CO2 emissions and natural sources of CO2, the cooling effect caused by the volcanic aerosols led to a rapid absorption of CO2 by the ocean.

At least that is an important conclusion of a study by my friend and chemist, Bud Bromley.

Bud lives in Hawai’i and is a chemist by training.  He blogs at  https://budbromley.blog/

Bud’s study demonstrates, along with so many others, that humans are not causing the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.  It is natural and driven by ocean warming.

I’m going to be interviewing Bud Bromley next month, specifically at 6pm Hawai’i time on Thursday, 24^th April (2pm Brisbane-time the next day, Friday April 25^th).  This will be the fourth zoom meeting in my series Towards a New Theory of Climate Change.

If you would like to be a part of this Webinar please register at: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QrVa8XEzSPS_GvUWnXkX0Q

You will then be sent a confirmation email with a link that you will need to join the webinar, so please file the confirmation email carefully.

Most everyone can tell me their theory of climate change, they just can’t always explain to me why temperatures at Greenland – at least at Nuuk – increased by some four degrees Celsius between 1880 and 1940, only to cool again.

In his book ‘Climate Present, Past and Future’ Hubert Lamb, a past Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), University of East Anglia, wrote about carbon dioxide and the decline in temperatures after 1945 that:

‘The Observed decline of global temperatures since 1945 implies some other factor exercising about three times as strong an effect (in the opposite direction) as the C02 increase.’ (page 46).

Of course, more recently the powers that be, most particularly scientists at the CRU have remodelled the 1940s ‘blip’ out of the climate record, and so there is nothing to explain.

The ‘consensus’ view is that there was a steady and mostly linear increase in temperatures through the twentieth century.

I have always been interested in the temperature record for Greenland, that like many very northern locations shows warming from at least 1880 to 1940, then cooling to 1980 and then warming to the present.

Indeed, most temperature series – before they are remodelled for political purposes to show slow and steady warming through the twentieth century – show significant warming and then cooling though the pattern tends to vary regionally.  
 
Another one of the temperature series that puzzles me is Darwin.  I was born in Darwin at the General Hospital on 26^th August 1963, the maximum temperature recorded on that day was 29.6 degrees Celsius.

This value has since been changed to 28.8 degrees Celsius – a drop of 0.8 degrees – ostensibly to ‘correct’ the record.   

The day before the city was bombed by the Japanese, on 18^th February 1942, a maximum temperature of 31.1 degrees Celsius was recorded – subsequently changed to 30.1, a drop of 1.0 degrees Celsius. 

The official record of remodelled temperatures for Darwin, as held by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology begins on 1 January 1910, on that day the maximum temperature was measured as 34.2 degrees Celsius, but the remodelled value incorporated into global datasets is 32.8 degrees Celsius – a difference of 1.4C.

Those in positions of authority claim that a mean global increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius will be catastrophic, all the while adjusting down the historic record to almost that much exactly.  

An important philosophical principle in traditional science states that no more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary. It is often referred to as ‘Occam’s Razor’ after an English Franciscan friar and philosopher, William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349).

If there is no evidence of systematic errors in the raw temperature measurements, then there is no need to make any adjustments down.

There is no scientifically justifiable reason to remodel the numbers as recorded at Darwin, yet that is what they do.

The further back I go in time the more the numbers are adjusted down giving the impression that it is getting hotter and hotter at Darwin, where I was born, simply by cooling the past more, and more and more.

Eventually when all the numbers are assembled, they show what could be described as steady increase. That is the hype.

When I compile the series for Darwin – there is no one long continuous series because temperatures were first recorded at the post office and subsequently at the airport – it is the case that there is statistically significant cooling of 2.4 degrees Celsius from 1895 to 1941.

This is quite different from the situation at Nuuk, Greenland. The Darwin record, however, is consistent with maximum temperatures for other locations in northern and eastern Australia.

I assume the regional variation, including between Nuuk and Darwin, is at least in part a consequence of the position of these particular landmasses relative to ocean currents and also climate zones.

(I have very much appreciated recent correspondence from George Angus suggesting I consider the Koppen-Geiger maps as I attempt to explain climate variability and change. Certainly, the distribution of the greenhouse gas water vapour is more consistent with this classification system than is carbon dioxide.)

Anyway, I am very grateful to everyone who has already subscribed for the zooms on Saturday. So far there are nearly 50 subscribed for the first session, ‘Calling Home’, more than 20 subscribed for ‘Calling London’ and more than 10 subscribed for ‘Calling Houston’.

And as homework, I would be keen for everyone who has subscribed to think about how they might describe the time series data from Nuuk (chart below), and also Darwin (you can see this across at my blog jennifermarohasy.com), in terms of how they understand climate variability and change.

To be sure, I am keen to hear about different theories of climate variability and change and how they can provide some explanation of the patterns of temperature change at Nuuk and also Darwin.

See more here jennifermarohasy.com

Header image: ANU

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