Today’s 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) average global temperature rise above preindustrial levels is now as warm as any time in the last 10,000 years. It is three-times warmer than the average temperature in the last 2,000 yearsThe period in which the Earth systems that our advanced civilization relies upon developed. These systems include the Amazon and boreal forests, the Gulf Stream, ice sheets, sea ice, and ice sheets. Although this relatively small amount of warming may seem insignificant, it is only a fraction. 5 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit)The deepest Ice-Age cold is distinguished from our previous climate.
Some of the latest scienceIt is estimated that half of the climate-tipping system have had their collapses activated since 2009. A tipping point is crossed when a small change creates a big outcome — like leaning over in a small boat too far and suddenly going for a swim. Fundamentally, Earth’s temperature has risen above the evolutionary boundaries of these systems, and their collapse thresholds have been crossed.
Three Earth systems are in tipping point: the Amazon rainforest, Canadian forests, and global permafrost. They have switched from carbon sequestration towards emissions with greenhouse gases emissions of plausibly plausible. seven gigatonsEach year. This is equal to all global emissions from transportation.
These collapses were activated with warming of 0.5 to 0.75 degrees Celsius (0.9 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal from the late 19th century, when the last 2,000 years our world’s average temperature was no warmer than 0.4 degree Celsius (0.75 degree Fahrenheit) above the late 19th century. But these averages can be misleading. For example, warming is more prevalent on land than it is on the sea. twiceWhat it looks like over oceans. High temperatures are another example of why today’s averages are misleading.
In Austin, Texas, where my family lives, the average September high temperature was 5.3 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in 1966 and 1969. In other words, the normal high in early September, that was 93 degrees Fahrenheit in our “previous climate” (circa 1900), is 98 degrees Fahrenheit today. This kind of warming would be expected to make the headlines in recent times, but it is not the case. There is a reason. The National Weather Service’s (NWS) long-standing and well-known statistical data procedure for weather data inadvertently aids in denial of global temperature disruption.
The “normal” temperatures the NWS reports are averages of the last 30 years. This is the data broadcast every night on the weather report. These so-called normal temperatures do not correspond to the temperatures of our past climate. They are not from before our climate became unusually warm. What we hear as “normal” from our faithful weather professionals is actually significantly warmer for most of us, has nothing to do with what most of us think of as “normal” and has nothing to do with our previous climate where our advanced civilization evolved.
As an example, consider my home state of Texas. It was extremely warm in December 2021. broke the 1933 monthly average temperature recordAmazingly, 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Normally, monthly average temperatures are broken by less that a degree or so Fahrenheit in a stable environment. In our previous experiment, however, this was 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Normal climate. Texas’s high temperature was 12° Fahrenheit higher than its 20th century average December temperature. Austin’s December average high temperatureIt was 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 30-year average.
The statistical procedure to change the normal temperature data is known in professional circles as the “30-year normal,” or the climatological normals, but among the public, this weather data is known as our “normal” weather. This is why data manipulationThe 1930s saw the rise of agriculture and the need for more. historic climate data increasedEventually, they were expanded into other industries.
This was done to provide accurate weather data to agricultural and industrial communities. It included temperatures, heat waves and hours below freezing. Also, the latest information on precipitation records and other meteorological records. The justification of the NWS for this deliberate manipulation of weather data is, “a better understanding of what is happening today. Rather than assess long-term climate trends, Normals (sic) reflect the impacts of the changing climate on our day-to-day weather experience.”
This strategy of changing the “normal” data for scientific accuracy worked well when our climate was stationary (not changing radically), and when a hugely significant portion of our population needed to know so they could successfully grow food for us all. Today is not the same as the past. What the NWS is doing by warming the so-called “normal” temperatures hides global climate disruption in the minds of the public. “Normal climate” today is not the average of the last 30 years; it is what our climate was before it began to radically warm.
So, what is “normal” then? Climate science defines two major “normal” periods. One is “pre-industrial times.” This is the period between 1850 and 1900 and is the baseline for our stable climate before we began to massively emit greenhouse gasses. The other is 1951 to 1980. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes this period as that time “when many of today’s adults grew up, so it is a common reference that many people can remember.”
It is significant to note the 2,000 years that elapsed before the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900. During this 2,000 years, Earth’s temperature was very stableIt is no more than 0.4° Celsius (0.7° Fahrenheit) below the 1850-1999 average temperature for almost the entire 2000 years. This means that our 1.2 degrees Celsius above average current warming is three times more than the maximum over the last 2,000 year. This 0.4 degree Celsius-maximum temperature range is the upper boundary of climate where our current Earth systems evolved. It’s also known as the “natural variation” of our climate. It represents the evolutionary boundary of our Earth’s systems.
We have warmed Earth beyond its evolutionary boundaries, and they are in collapse. This allows them to re-evolve using species and mechanisms that are more tolerant of the new climate. This nonlinear rise in climate and extreme weather is evidence of the collapse or departure from the normal.
Climate tipping is a situation in which the Earth system collapses, resulting in loss of or even reverse of environmental services. Our ecologies and Earth systems provide us with or do things for us. These include forest products for building materials and oxygen generation from plants. Carbon sequestration is one of the most important but easily degraded environmental services. This refers to the Earth’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide. This is reversed by tipping collapses such as what we see in the Amazon, Canadian forest, and permafrost. These possible emissions of seven gigatons annually of greenhouse gases are a sign of this sequestration. Importantly, these are only the first system crashes to be studied. Similar systems are likely to be in collapse around the globe, and the collapses only just begun.
For us to make informed decisions about climate change, the public must know how much heat has been experienced. Americans trustWeather professionals on climate change. The vast majority of us are able to trust the information provided by our television weather personnel about climate change. They are hiding evidence of global climate change through their professional processes, even though they are not at fault.
Today in Austin, the summer (June through August) five-year average high temperature has warmed 6 degrees Fahrenheit, the 10-year average summer high temperature has warmed 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but the 30-year NWS “normal” has warmed only 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This 30-year averaging procedure doesn’t just mask warming, but it also understates the phenomenon.
Consider what this means for reporting heatwaves. As the NWS warms the “normal” temperatures, the heat wave diminishes in relative extremeness to us poor, sweltering humans, and we don’t even realize that the NWS has created a stifling understatement through their long-held data reporting standards.
It is urgent and necessary to use a shorter average period. It is unlikely that warming will self-restore. Instead, it will continue to heat nonlinearly for the next hundred years.
Our historical normal temperatures (not the NWS “normals”) are from the time when our advanced civilization evolved; they come from the climate that created humankind as we know it. This climate definitively does not include the temperature “normals” of the last 30 years presented by the NWS to broadcast to the entire United States population. Our true normal temperatures reflect what they were in the late-19th-century before greenhouse gas emissions from fossilfuels and land use change significantly increased Earth’s temperature.
When historic weather statistics are removed from daily weather communications and replaced with statistics that are warmer and warmer every 10 years, the results are that the public’s awareness of global climate disruption is damaged, degraded, or simply erased.
Even worse, the same person who tells us that the current high temperatures are normal also tells me that our climate is warming.
This confusion, almost imperceptible to most of us, leads to distrust, disbeliefs and loss in credibility with our weather professionals. What does this do to the public’s perception of climate change? What are we to believe when our weather experts tell us that our daily temperatures are “normal” and then tell us that climate change is a problem? How many citizens understand this is going on — that the “normal temperatures” delivered on the weather report every night are not normal? The narrative that climate change is not real or meaningful is being fed by the loss of climate change awareness.
The public must be able to see the difference between the climate of today and the past in order to see the warming.
Today, the majority of our population is not agrarian-based. In 1900, just under 40 percentThousands of Americans lived on farms. 1 percentFarms are where most people live. This information is needed by only a small percentage of the population, industrialists. Those that need this kind of up-to-date weather data can easily get it from the NWS or others, but the rest of us need to know what “normal climate” really means.
The climate has warmed — a lot. It’s not normal. It is not natural. Most of the warming is recent, with two-thirds occurring in the last thirty years, and half within the last twenty years. The rate of warming is still increasing. The result of this warming is nonlinearly increasing extremes as well as Earth systems tipping over. The global average temperature today is three times higher than the climate that evolved our Earth systems. These systems are now collapsing and cannot stabilize unless the temperature drops below the tipping threshold.
If there is no risk of irreversible and societally devastating scenarios from an artificially warm climate, it is okay to recalculate normals. This practice of recalculating the normals is dangerous when global warming awareness is greater than ever.
It is now profoundly important this policy of changing the “normals” be eliminated. As the climate warms, the NWS purposefully raises normal temperature statistics. This is because it is a past habit that must end.
