Is El Niño really getting worse?

Average surface temperatures across Europe soared to 3.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in February 2024. The global average was almost 1.8 degrees above pre-industrial. Some say this marks the start of Abrupt Global Warming. So, is that true?

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Research Links

April 2024 : News of South-East Asia heatwave

World Metrological Organisation March 2024

Severe Weather Europe

NOAA

IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report 2023

Johan Rockstrom at Frontiers Forum 2023

Original Guardian Articles

Just Have a Think videos on AGW and ENSO

Check out other YouTube Climate Communicators

[andacomfeeuvou]

I'll leave my opinion here. I'm not an expert, I'm not a scientist. I am an observer of the nature of my country, Brazil. I'm 70 years old and since I was a teenager I've been interested in environmental issues. During my life I have lived in many Brazilian cities. I don't need academic knowledge to see that my country is becoming hotter and drier due to human action. I only studied the reports about the forests and animals of Brazil, made by nature observers 100 years ago or older. Nature has become impoverished, we have lost insects, birds, fish, reptiles and mammals. Rivers have lost their regular volume of water, are either dangerously full or almost dry. Mineral extraction, animal husbandry and monoculture have destroyed enormous areas and continue to do so. I could go on, but I think people with common sense will be able to understand what I'm saying.
What happened to Brazil is happening to the whole world. The difference is that here we still have a lot to destroy. We still have large forests in the northern region. Brazilian environmental agencies are barely able to take care of what happens near large cities. The Amazon region is practically impossible to monitor. News about the Amazon belongs to the political game. The real Amazon is different and it is slowly dying.

For me it is very difficult to understand how there are people, and even scientists, who do not see the dangerous level of destruction that we have imposed on the planet and its obvious climate consequences. Do I live in a world of blind people?
.

[TKSSLCHN]

4:30 I think the critical part to understand about global warming is this:
Weather is just a matter of how the energy is distributed in our atmosphere. This can change quickly. A local change of 1.5°C can happen within minutes and isn't much at all.
Global warming is about the TOTAL AMOUNT OF ENERGY in the global climate system. This value only changes very slowly, and a global increase of 1.5°C means a massive increase in total energy.

[dpsdps]

I live in Austria and we are for the last week experiencing temperatures of 30 degrees, even in the alps. That is 10 days earlier than the earliest on record and extremely unusual for this time of the year.

[judithmcdonald]

Rachel Carson talked, I listened. I've been an gardening organically ever since (1970). They say if you want to know about climate, ask an ornthologist -- it's kind of the same with gardeners. Did you know that plant cells burst at 105 F. I lost plants last year and am getting everything planted as quickly as possible this year in anticipation of another hot year. I planted 5 more shade trees. And I'm planting more food because I know that most people don't understand the implications. End game is we will probably starve before our cells start bursting from heat. We could change that and work on adaptations, but that requires admitting the problem exists. I appreciate your honesty.

[jessegee]

I work outdoors, after last years extreme heat I’m already worried how I’m going to cope again this year. I feel for anyone worldwide who doesn’t have access to shade, air conditioning, drinking water, and an employer who will support a slower pace of work. It sounds simple in the U.K., but even here it’s not a given

[colinpodhaski]

No, Mr. Dave, your messages are not alarmist or contentious. Any reasonable person who considers the facts and data should be genuinely concerned about our planet, at this stage. Please keep up the great work!

[martiusyamamoto]

Thank you, Dave. I'm 57 and an ordinary citizen with no degrees in any relevant area concerning climate chaos. I can only tell you that living in Rio de Janeiro and being a gardening and climate buff, In Rio this year alone the heat index reached an astonishing 62.5 C. Several of the native tropical plants I cultivate have perished and I have been keeping my AC unit on since early spring of 2023, and now it is early fall 2024. I'm baffled to find so many people in my generation and younger ones in complete denial about climate change here in Brazil.

[supermikeb]

I've only subscribed to a very few channels, and yours is the first that I've become a Patron. I appreciate all that you do to keep the world informed! No commercials is amazing too!

[deepashtray]

The money's there, the knowledge is there, the capability is there, but on every level of society the will to act is almost completely absent. The scale of what we are getting hit by is too abstract, too complex and too colossal for the vast majority of people to even process yet alone try and take any meaningful action on, and you would be hard pressed to find it enough of a priority issue among any of our political, business or civic leaders to show anything resembling urgency.

[CitiesForTheFuture]

Tx for another important video topic.

Prof Rockstrom has identified 9 planetary boundaries for a liveable planet - climate being one of them. Good news, we have exceeded 6 and are about the exceed the last 3. Happy days!

What everyone keeps forgetting is that while planetary cycles are continuing as per normal (such as El Nino & La Nina), GHGs in the atmosphere are increasing at alarming rates and this will always make everything slightly worse. The problem with the enviro is that its pretty resilient right before it isn't - like a hair that breaks the camel's back. Everyone keeps going fine until it doesn't, and then its too late - putting a broken ecosystem back together is incredibly expensive, resource intensive & requires lots & lots of time (everything the world DOESN'T have right now).

There are 16 critical ecosystems that, once they tip, will also impact the climate in ways best avoided (and they could cause other ecosystems to tip - like a game of dominos). The complicating factor is that they are also being impacted by threats other than temperature, meaning they could be even more vulnerable to climate change and may collapse earlier than predicted solely on climate factors alone. Everything is interconnected and its very difficult to fully understand how each little break in ecological systems, processes & services could have an even greater impact on the wider system (like a tiny crack in a support beam that results in the complete collapse of a structure). We are literally "playing with fire"...

[grahamhart]

For the last 26 years I have been living in the French Pyrenees mountains in the departement of Ariege. 26 years ago winter temperatures at my house (500m altitude) got down to -15C for about four weeks, the coldest night recorded was - 19C. We regularly had snow in the garden, once 60cm in one go. The snow would stay around for upto 6 weeks. In a nearby town, Ax Les Thermes 720m altitude, the deepest snow depth there from a single snowy episode was 80cm. Now, at home it hardly ever snows, frosts were unusual this last winter ( ie night time temperatures in the middle of winter were above freezing). The coldest night was -8C which occured on four nights the whole winter. At Ax Les Thermes there were three episodes of slushy snow that was gone in two or three days, and up at the Ax Les Thermes Ski station (1400m to 2400m) many nights were not cold enough for the snow cannons to be used and natutal snow fall was well below normal. At a photo exhibition at Ax Les Thermes there were a series of photos from 70 years ago……… snow in the townup to about 1, 6m, snowdrifts on the road up to Andorra of nearly 6m high. The change here is mind blowing, temperatures here yesterday 31C, on the 7thApril!! In my opinion observing the changes here the warming is definately speeding up. We used to get very wet springs, which provided a lot of water for evaporo-transpiration from trees, which produced clouds, which heated rapidly in July and August leading to lots of end of the afternoon thunderstorms with the sky clearing by 7 in the evening for barbecuing……… now the springs are drier, the snowpack melt is nothing like it was. The water cycle is broken, few summer storms and water scarcity worries especially in the neighboring departement of Pyrenees Orientals. All extremely worrying !!!

[WTH]

48 years ago President Carter touted alternative energy sources and cutting reliance on petroleum fuels.

40 years ago, President Reagan had removed all of Carter's initiatives and brought back "drill, baby, drill", and lower MPG levels for cars.

[ronellis]

In SE Minnesota this year we for the first time in my life didn't have winter. The frost line in my small town of Dover only reached 3 inches. I only had to clear snow once. I'm 69 so I've seen a few winters. This scares me for my grandkids.

[billappledorf]

James Hansen explained the recent spike in sea surface temperature as resulting from a decrease in aerosols over transoceanic shipping routes due to a switch to low-sulfur bunker fuel. Paul Beckwith analyzed Hansen's paper recently, and the paper itself is available online. Less aerosols -> fewer clouds -> lower albedo -> more energy absorption by the oceans. Shipping routes and the number of ships are much bigger than one might have noticed.

[CityPrepping]

Great video as always. Thanks for the excellent presentation.

[shanbotable]

This is the first video I have watched in a while because I’ve always been a catastrophic thinker. I just finished a degree in environmental practice and all I want to do is put my head in the sand. My instructors would say, I wouldn’t teach this if I had no hope but I’m not optimistic. I’m terrified, I don’t trust the world and I think the more disasters we see the more we will be in response mode rather than planning. Where I live in Canada we are in extreme drought. Anyways, I try and just live right now as watching this sent my anxiety up. I try and just appreciate what we have.

[MarcoNierop]

It was above 25 degrees Celcius here in The Netherlands this weekend, that is what we call a warm summer day... never happened before so early in the year... How many data points you need to call it a fact or a clear trend?? I think we are already there.

[eloyprado]

I'm from Chile and I have never had such a warm march, like the maximum is still 23°C on some days and then next week it will drop to 12°C climate is swinging like crazy in Araucania region and the rest of the world.

[skysea]

I live in South East Asia, Malaysian in the island of borneo. Currently, it's hotter here than previous years. Even at night, it's hot. Not even taking a bath in the middle of the day would help much.

[alanattfield]

Our weather in the UK has been terrible. Constant rain, leading to floods, crops rotting in the field, cattle unable to pasture, building construction