Since the 1960s each decade has been hotter than the last, exactly as predicted by many climate models. But there has been some debate in the science community about whether or not this rate of warming is accelerating, particularly in light of last year’s climate chaos.
A few months ago former NASA climatologist James Hansen, who published one of the main early papers warning the world about global warming, authored a study suggesting the rate of warming has jumped by 50 percent since 2010.
This was met with skepticism from colleagues, despite a degree of acceleration being predicted in some climate models.
“[Hansen’s study is] not implausible but not particularly well supported by the literature,” Berkeley climate scientist Zeke Hausfather told the Associated Press.
Now, a new study led by environmental scientist Audrey Minière from Paul Sabatier University in France has found signs of accelerating heating in ocean temperatures too.
I find the article’s quoting of Hausfather deceptive, particularly the part about not being well supported by the literature. I don’t think Hausfather thinks Hansen is wrong at all. I think he wants more data confirming Hansen’s findings. I read a lot of climate literature, and I have not seen any data that contradicts Hansen. If anything, 2023 seems like an even more rapid acceleration over what has been previously observed. This is the chart that scares the crap out of me:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
It takes an incomprehensible large amount of energy to heat the ocean and in 2023 the amount of heat it is storing jumped to an entirely new level. I think Hansen has to be correct for that to have happened.