@LeonSimons8:
I was asked to write a plain language summary. Does this help?:
The climate models used by the UN climate panel (IPCC) underestimate the changes in our climate observed by NASA satellites over the past 23 years.
Over the past 15 years (2010-2014), the Earth has warmed more than twice as fast as during the preceding 40 years (1970-2010).
NASA CERES satellites can be used to explain the underlying cause.
Due to the melting of ice and snow and a decrease in cloud cover, the Earth reflects less sunlight back into space. This amplifies the (greenhouse gas-induced) warming of the Earth more than expected based on models.
Another reason for the discrepancy between observations and models is that the effect of particulate air pollution (aerosols) is likely underestimated. Air pollution also reflects sunlight and enhances cloud formation.
The fact that models are not aligned with observations is deeply concerning, as it means we are underestimating the climate impact and the necessary measures.
Furthermore, it is essential to secure and expand satellite observations in the future to ensure humanity does not become blind in an increasingly rapidly changing world.
@JonathanWiltsh7:
To add insult to injury, the taxpayer picks up this list as implicit subsidies to fossil fuel giants.
Total subsidies to fossil fuel giants, including explicit (tax breaks etc) and implicit (health related costs, etc) was $7 trillion in 2023. That’s 7% of global GDP!
2006: Cover from William Marsden’s best seller! Twenty years later, we’re more stupid, more poisoned and our province more polluted – in politics and the environment.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) @DoctorVive:
Meanwhile, the US alone is already spending nearly $1 T every year on climate damages.
US Spending on Climate Damage Nears $1 Trillion Per Year, The bill for impacts from rising temperatures exceeded 3% of US GDP, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence by Eric Roston, June 17, 2025, Bloomberg
- The US has spent nearly $1 trillion on disaster recovery and climate-related needs over the 12 months ending May 1, equivalent to 3% of GDP.
- The biggest drivers of disaster-related spending in the US are insurance premiums, post-disaster repair spending, and federal aid, with climate costs responsible for $7.7 trillion, or 36%, of US GDP growth since 2000.
- Federal spending on climate-related costs has decreased from a third to around 2% in recent years, leaving stricken communities to rely on general debt, which may not always be payable.
The US has spent nearly $1 trillion on disaster recovery and other climate-related needs over the 12 months ending May 1, according to an analysis released Monday by Bloomberg Intelligence. That’s 3% of GDP that people likely would have spent on goods and services they’d prefer to have, and amounts to “a stealth tariff on consumer spending,” analysts write.
Hurricane Helene struck Florida in late September 2024 as the most powerful storm ever to hit the state’s panhandle. Its rampage was followed a week and a half later by Hurricane Milton. Those two storms caused $113 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Los Angeles fires in January added another $65 billion to the national total.
The new report, “The Climate Economy: 2025 Outlook,” draws on data from dozens of public sources to demonstrate the volume of disaster-related spending, which represents $18.5 trillion globally since 2000. The biggest drivers of this trend in the US are insurance premiums — which have doubled since 2017 — post-disaster repair spending and federal aid.
Overall, increased climate costs from insurance premiums, power outages, disaster recovery and uninsured damage are responsible for $7.7 trillion, or 36%, of US GDP growth since 2000. Risks are rising both from climate change, as it increases the severity and frequency of extreme weather, and from development that is insufficiently focused on resilience.
Andrew John Stevenson, a Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst, assembled a basket of 100 companies that have stood to gain from this spending. The firms, which span sectors from insurance to engineering, materials and retail, together outperformed the S&P index by 7% in each of the last three years.
Insurance is a “hidden burden of the climate economy,” write Stevenson and Eric Kane, director of ESG research for Bloomberg Intelligence. Wind, water and fires led insurers to raise premiums by as much as 22% in 2023 alone. They may rise again more than 6% this year. These costs are not included in the Consumer Price Index, which means that national spending on housing, thought to be about 35.5% of the total, may actually be higher than 40%.
Federal spending covered as much as a third of climate-related costs, for both disaster prevention and recovery, until 2016. The share has fallen in the last couple of years to only around 2%, and federal budget freezes and proposed cuts may diminish the outlook further. That puts stricken communities at greater need to issue general debt — which their post-disaster economies may not always be resilient enough to pay off.
“Bond markets aren’t big enough to fill the gap left by a federal pullback,” the analysts write.
Ryan Katz-Rosene, PhD@ryankatzrosene:
130 years!
New important paper published today shows how “a discernible human influence on atmospheric temperature has likely existed for over 130 years”! (If scientists in the late 19th Century only had the same instrumental accuracy as today’s satellite-borne microwave radiometers!)
Human influence on climate detectable in the late 19th century by Benjamin D. Santer, Susan Solomon, David W. J. Thompson and Yaowei Li, June 16, 2025, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 122 | No. 25
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2500829122
- Significance
- Abstract
- Global-Mean Changes
- Fingerprinting and Signal-to-Noise Ratios
- Fingerprint Detection Times
- Simulated and Observed Temperature Variability
- Conclusions
- Materials and Methods
- Data, Materials, and Software Availability
- Acknowledgments
- Supporting Information
- References
Significance
When could scientists have first known that fossil fuel burning was significantly altering global climate? We attempt to answer this question by performing a thought experiment with model simulations of historical climate change. We assume that the capability to monitor global-scale changes in atmospheric temperature existed as early as 1860 and that the instruments available in this hypothetical world had the same accuracy as today’s satellite-borne microwave radiometers. We then apply a pattern-based “fingerprint” method to disentangle human and natural effects on climate. A human-caused stratospheric cooling signal would have been identifiable by approximately 1885, before the advent of gas-powered cars. Our results suggest that a discernible human influence on atmospheric temperature has likely existed for over 130 y.
Abstract
The physics of the heat-trapping properties of CO were established in the mid-19th century, as fossil fuel burning rapidly increased atmospheric CO
levels. To date, however, research has not probed when climate change could have been detected if scientists in the 19th century had the current models and observing network. We consider this question in a thought experiment with state-of-the-art climate models. We assume that the capability to make accurate measurements of atmospheric temperature changes existed in 1860, and then apply a standard “fingerprint” method to determine the time at which a human-caused climate change signal was first detectable. Pronounced cooling of the mid- to upper stratosphere, mainly driven by anthropogenic increases in carbon dioxide, would have been identifiable with high confidence by approximately 1885, before the advent of gas-powered cars. These results arise from the favorable signal-to-noise characteristics of the mid- to upper stratosphere, where the signal of human-caused cooling is large and the pattern of this cooling differs markedly from patterns of intrinsic variability. Even if our monitoring capability in 1860 had not been global, and high-quality stratospheric temperature measurements existed for Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes only, it still would have been feasible to detect human-caused stratospheric cooling by 1894, only 34 y after the assumed start of climate monitoring. Our study provides strong evidence that a discernible human influence on atmospheric temperature has likely existed for over 130 y.
In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Eunice Foote and John Tyndall made seminal experimental discoveries about the heat-trapping properties of CO and other greenhouse gases (1). Their work, along with earlier insights from Fourier, Pouillet, and de Saussure, paved the way for subsequent climate modeling efforts by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (2). Arrhenius recognized that human-caused fossil fuel burning contributed to increases in CO and estimated that surface temperature could increase by 4 C in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO levels (3).
In tandem with this developing understanding of the greenhouse effect in the mid- to late 1800s, the data required for efforts to identify human fingerprints on climate were accumulating. At Earth’s surface, observers at many urban locations in Europe and North America started systematic daily measurements of surface temperature in the 1860s (4). The first use of unpiloted weather balloons to study the free atmosphere was in 1892, when the French physicist Gustave Hermite and journalist Georges Besançon launched balloons carrying a device for measuring temperature and pressure (5).
The pioneering work of Hermite and Besançon was followed at the end of the 1800s by more systematic balloon-based measurements of atmospheric temperature conducted by Léon Teisserenc de Bort in France (6, 7) and Richard Assmann in Germany (8). Using balloons made of paper, silk, and rubber, Teisserenc de Bort and Assmann demonstrated that temperature did not simply continue to decrease with increasing height above Earth’s surface. They found that above roughly 11 to 14 km, there was a layer in which temperature was uniform or increased with height. This marked the discovery of the stratosphere.
The pioneering work of Teisserenc de Bort and Assmann led to efforts to construct radiosonde-based estimates of global-scale changes in tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature. Unlike the first weather balloons, radiosondes transmitted temperature measurements to ground stations via radio. A summary of the history of radiosonde measurements (9) argues that the International Geophysical Year in 1958 marked the beginning of true global records of the temperature of the free atmosphere. Other analysts report global-scale monitoring of upper-air temperature dating back to 1946 (10). Statistical reconstructions of global atmospheric temperature changes constrained by “historical upper-air data and surface data” are available from as early as 1918 onward (11).
As scientists began to measure atmospheric temperature, large ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland were preserving a signal of changes in atmospheric CO
, methane, and other greenhouse gases (12, 13). This signal arose from the ramping up of fossil fuel burning during the Industrial Revolution. The ice cores revealed that carbon dioxide was growing at a rate of roughly 2.5 ppmv per decade over 1860 to 1899 (SI Appendix, Fig. S1).*
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, therefore, there was emerging scientific understanding that fossil fuel burning produced CO, thus enhancing Earth’s natural greenhouse effect, and that this enhancement would warm Earth’s surface. The capability to measure changes in the temperature of the free atmosphere was developing rapidly. However, there was not yet an understanding of how elevated levels of CO might change the vertical structure of atmospheric temperature in the stratosphere and troposphere. This understanding became available with publication of the modeling work of Manabe and Wetherald in the 1960s (15).
Few studies have considered when the human influence on climate predicted by Foote, Tyndall, Arrhenius, and others might first have been detectable. Prior work in the detection of early anthropogenic signals has focused on paleoclimatic reconstructions and/or long-term observations of changes in surface temperature from spatially limited samples (16, 17). None of these previous investigations examined global changes in the temperature of the troposphere, where temperature fluctuations arising from intrinsic variability are spatially less noisy than at the surface, thus facilitating early detection of anthropogenic effects. Nor has previous work explored the possibility of early detection of an anthropogenic signal in the stratosphere, a region with a large expected anthropogenic signal and distinct differences between this signal pattern and patterns of intrinsic variability (18).
Here we pose a simple question: when could scientists have first known that fossil fuel burning was significantly altering global climate? We attempt to answer this question by performing a thought experiment with climate model simulations of historical changes in atmospheric temperature. We assume that: 1) the capability to monitor global changes in atmospheric temperature existed as early as 1860; 2) instruments available at that time had the same accuracy as today’s satellite microwave radiometers; and 3) the model simulations of historical climate change that are analyzed in our thought experiment use reliable estimates of CO changes from ice cores and direct air measurements (19).
In this hypothetical “Gedanken world,” when could scientists have first detected a human fingerprint on climate relative to the natural variability of the climate system? We also ask a related question: when could human effects on climate have been identified if accurate measurement of atmospheric temperature after 1860 was not possible globally, but only for a limited geographical region, such as mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere? The latter region is where the first measurements of stratospheric temperature were made, and has the advantage of avoiding polar regions characterized by large stratospheric temperature variability (20).
Our thought experiment has multiple goals. The first is to estimate the detection time of human-caused temperature fingerprints for different layers of Earth’s atmosphere and different geographical regions. The second is to understand how detection time varies based on different choices of the assumed “start date” for climate monitoring. We examine a set of eight start dates. The first is in 1860, near the beginning of the rapid anthropogenic increase in fossil fuel burning. The final start date is in 1986, when a globally complete satellite record of tropospheric and stratospheric temperature change commenced and signal detection could be performed in the real world (21, 22).
The choice of the assumed monitoring start date influences not only the size of the human-caused climate signal that is sampled, but also the sampling of naturally forced climate variability caused by large volcanic eruptions and fluctuations in solar irradiance (23, 24). The stratospheric volcanic aerosol from large eruptions scatters some portion of incoming solar radiation back to space, thus cooling the troposphere, while simultaneously warming the stratosphere by absorbing solar radiation and outgoing long-wave radiation (25). Changes in total solar irradiance (TSI) occur on timescales ranging from roughly 11 y to centuries, causing coherent warming of the stratosphere in high TSI periods and coherent stratospheric cooling in low TSI periods (26). Our set of start dates allows us to compare detection of human fingerprints in periods with reduced and pronounced volcanic and solar activity, thus yielding insights into the impact of both forcings on fingerprint detection times.
As we will show, our thought experiment suggests that human influence on atmospheric temperature could have been identified with high confidence in the late 1800s, at a time when the decadal increase in atmospheric CO was roughly a factor of nine smaller than in the first 25 y of the 21st century. This finding indicates that significant human interference with Earth’s climate is not a new phenomenon. It has existed for over 130 y.
…
Conclusions
When could scientists have first known that human activities were altering Earth’s climate? We addressed this question here by performing a simple thought experiment. We assumed that the capability to measure global temperature changes in the mid- to upper stratosphere, with today’s measurement accuracy and geographical coverage, existed in 1860. If scientists had commenced monitoring atmospheric temperature at that time, only 25 y would have been required to identify the stratospheric cooling signal arising from human-caused fossil fuel burning and relatively small CO increases (SI Appendix, Fig. S1). Put differently, a human fingerprint on stratospheric temperature could have been identified with high confidence as early as 1885—over 130 y ago.
Even if our monitoring capability in 1860 had not been global, and high-quality stratospheric temperature measurements existed for Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes only, it still would have been feasible to detect human-caused stratospheric cooling by 1894, only 34 y after the assumed start of climate monitoring. The latter result is partly due to the fact that the NH mid-latitudes exclude the large stratospheric temperature variability of the Arctic, but still sample pronounced anthropogenic stratospheric cooling.
Early detection of human effects on stratospheric temperature occurs because the mid- to upper stratosphere is an environment where human-caused stratospheric cooling is large (15, 33, 39) and the patterns of signal and noise are spatially different. In the troposphere, however, global-mean anthropogenic signals are smaller and signal and noise patterns are more similar (18). Robust anthropogenic fingerprint identification in the troposphere would not have been feasible for an 1860 climate monitoring start date and 40 y of continuous temperature measurements. It is only for assumed monitoring start dates on or after 1960 that we obtain consistent detection of anthropogenic fingerprints in tropospheric temperature (Fig. 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S4).
In both the stratosphere and the troposphere, fingerprint detection time is influenced by the interplay between anthropogenic signal strength, the natural external forcing arising from solar variability and volcanic activity (23, 24), and the stipulated significance level for fingerprint identification. In the mid- to upper stratosphere, for example, temperature variability driven by the 11-y cycle of solar irradiance fluctuations can temporarily affect the detection of human-caused stratospheric cooling, particularly for early monitoring start dates sampling relatively small anthropogenic signals (Figs. 1 and 3). Low-frequency changes in the amplitude of the 11-y solar cycle (26) can also influence stratospheric signal detection. Because of such low-frequency changes, the time required for anthropogenic signal detection does not decrease monotonically for later assumed monitoring start dates, even as CO-driven cooling of the mid- to upper stratospheric increases over time (Figs. 1 and 4). Large volcanic eruptions can also temporarily delay anthropogenic signal detection, both in the stratosphere and the troposphere, and have longer-lasting effects on tropospheric temperature signals due to the large thermal inertia of the ocean (43, 58).
Such simple thought experiments are useful tools for learning about anthropogenic signal detection in the real world. Similar thought experiments can be performed for other climate variables, such as changes in ocean heat content or in sea level. In the latter case, long-term tide gauge measurements could be employed to determine whether model-based estimates of signal detection time are in accord with observations (59). For the example considered here, it would be useful to explore whether suitable long-term atmospheric temperature records from radiosondes (9–11, 60), airglow measurements (61), lidar, and rocketsondes allow cross-checking of model-inferred signal detection times against detection times inferred from early observations.
Our study reveals that with suitable high-quality temperature measurements, a “discernible human influence on global climate” (62) could have been detected by the end of the 19th century. It is unclear whether such early knowledge of the climate-altering consequences of fossil fuel burning would have prompted human societies to follow a more environmentally sustainable greenhouse gas emissions pathway. Today, however, we know with high confidence that sustainable pathways must be followed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with climate. For the mid- to upper stratosphere and the troposphere, the projected future changes over the next 26 y are larger than the simulated changes over the 39-y period from 1986 to 2024 (SI Appendix, Fig. S10). Humanity is now at the threshold of dangerous anthropogenic interference. Our near-term choices will determine whether or not we cross that threshold.
…
Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net:
Your ‘moment of doom’ for June 17, 2025 ~ The human virus.
“I do think it’s important for non-scientists to know what’s at stake here. That when we lose the capability to measure and monitor how our world is changing, it makes us all less safe”
Jeff Berardelli @WeatherProf:
The study shows that such extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe. The steepness of the rise was not foreseen. The researchers say they are amazed and alarmed by the latest figures from Nasa’s Grace satellite.
Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net:
Your ‘moment of doom’ for June 18, 2025 ~ Seal of disapproval.
“For once, we’re not just predicting how wildlife might respond to shrinking sea ice and environmental shifts, we’ve had the rare opportunity to confirm it, using solid, long-term data. The emerging picture is deeply concerning.”
And that’s one of the main reasons con politicos and con voters hate science, and hate data – same as they hate the data proving frac’ing and the oil and gas industry contaminates drinking water, and their baby’s bathing water.