Pumping up the weather

THE year 2022 effectively tied for Earth’s fifth warmest year since 1880 - and the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest nine on record, according to the latest analysis released by NASA.

Scientists from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA’s leading centre for climate modelling in New York have reported global temperatures in 2022 were 0.89 degrees Centigrade (C) above the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980), continuing the planet’s long-term warming trend. Earth is now about 1.11 degrees C warmer than the late 19th century average.

“This is alarming,” admits NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former Space Shuttle astronaut. “Our warming climate is already making a mark. Forest fires are intensifying, hurricanes are getting stronger, droughts are wreaking havoc and sea levels are rising.”

He says NASA is deepening its commitment to addressing climate change and adds: “Our Earth System Observatory will provide state-of-the-art data to support our climate modelling, analysis and predictions to help humanity confront our planet’s changing climate.”

“The reason for the warming trend is that human activities continue to pump enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the long-term planetary impacts will also continue,” explains Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS.

NASA scientists, working with leading international climatologists, have determined carbon dioxide emissions were the highest on record in 2022, despite a short-lived dip in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Levels of these human-driven greenhouse gas emissions have rebounded since.

Using the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation instrument that launched to the International Space Station last year, they have also identified some super-emitters of methane – another powerful greenhouse gas.

Earth’s Arctic region continues to experience the strongest warming trends – close to four times the global average – according to GISS research presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, as well as in a separate study.

Communities around the world are already experiencing the impacts that scientists see as connected to the warming atmosphere and ocean – intensified rainfall and tropical storms, severe droughts and increased storm surges.

Among many other climate-driven weather events around the world – including the UK’s hottest ever daytime temperatures which peaked at 40.3 C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire – last year brought torrential monsoon rains that devastated Pakistan and a persistent megadrought in the US Southwest. In September, Hurricane Ian became one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to strike the continental US.

NASA’s global temperature analysis is drawn from data collected by weather stations and Antarctic research stations, as well as instruments mounted on ships and ocean buoys.

Scientists analyse these measurements to account for uncertainties in the data and to maintain consistent methods for calculating global average surface temperature differences for every year. These ground-based measurements of surface temperature are consistent with satellite data collected since 2002 by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder on NASA’s Aqua satellite and with other estimates.

NASA uses the period from 1951-1980 as a baseline to understand how global temperatures change over time. That baseline includes climate patterns such as La Niña and El Niño, as well as unusually hot or cold years due to other factors, ensuring it encompasses natural variations in Earth’s temperature.

Many factors can affect the average temperature in any given year. For example, 2022 was one of the warmest on record despite a third consecutive year of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

NASA scientists estimate that La Niña’s cooling influence may have lowered global temperatures slightly (about 0.06 degrees C) from what the average would have been under more typical ocean conditions.

A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that the global surface temperature for 2022 was the sixth highest since 1880.

NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis and have a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology. Although rankings for specific years can differ slightly between the records, they are in broad agreement and both reflect ongoing long-term warming.

NASA’s full dataset of global surface temperatures through 2022, as well as details with code of how NASA scientists conducted the analysis, are publicly available from GISS. 

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This article by Clive Simpson was first published by Central Bylines under the title 'Heating Earth drives more extreme weather'.

UK voters suffer Brexit 'bregret'

A NEW poll to mark the third anniversary at the end of January 2023 of the UK leaving the EU has suggested most voters think voting for Brexit in the 2016 referendum was now a mistake. The term coined by observers to describe the change of heart is 'Bregret'.

The survey by Unherd and Focaldata asked voters across England, Scotland and Wales whether ‘Britain was wrong to leave the EU’ and in all but three of 632 constituencies, more people now agree than disagree.

As it happens, the three constituencies that are still in favour of having left – Boston & Skegness, South Holland & the Deepings, and Louth & Horncastle – are all in Lincolnshire, England’s second largest county which sprawls around the Wash.

In his recent book ‘Edge of England’ on this enigmatic area, author Derek Turner dubbed Lincolnshire ‘England’s forgotten county’. It was perhaps something of a prophetic insight and, having reviewed it for Central Bylines, it seems to me there are undoubtedly some answers lurking within its pages as to why this should be so.

Despite holding on to the number one anti-Europe spot though, the number of people in Boston & Skegness follows the survey’s national trend. Those expressing faith in Brexit have fallen from 75 percent at the time of the referendum in 2016 to 41 percent now, just four percentage points above those agreeing Britain was wrong to leave the EU.

In the past, one could say that by and large the UK was properly governed and MPs in the main were public servants. Indeed, leaving the EU was hardly in the minds of the British general public until it was elevated to the top of the political agenda by Prime Minister of the day, David Cameron at the beginning of 2016, for party political reasons.

In one way, it was a politically-naive way to silence a small but increasingly vocal anti-Europe brigade on the fringes of the Conservative party and in UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).

But it was also a handy smokescreen for those with vested interests who felt threatened by a soon-to-be-introduced EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive to control offshore tax havens, including questionable tax dealings by either those holding power or those wealthy enough to influence it. 

That would certainly would help explain a lot of things because at present many MPs, though not all, particularly those serving in the current cabinet and government, look like they are there to best their own personal influence and financial self-reward.

As the UK marks the third anniversary of having left the EU, it is not Brexit per se that has done the real damage but the incompetence and ignorance of politician after jingoistic politician who have proclaimed much but delivered nothing.

Figures released today (31 January) reveal the UK is the only leading economy likely to fall into recession this year, and this even behind Russia! The IMF forecasts that the UK economy will shrink 0.6 percent in 2023 as it is weighed down by the disadvantages of having left the European single market, combined with a toxic mix of sky high energy prices, rising mortgages and higher taxes.

It all adds up to a very bleak forecast for a vacuous government without a long term plan that pinned its hopes on ‘recovery’ and it leaves Rishi Sunak, the country’s third Tory prime minister in a year, mired in the sleaze and the false rhetoric of his predecessors, particularly Boris Johnson.

In the real world away from the Palace of Westminster, one business person after another describes Brexit and the form it has taken as an unmitigated disaster for the country.

One of them, entrepreneur and business leader Deborah Meaden, who regularly features on the TV programme ‘Dragon’s Den’, says: “Brexit is definitely a factor in 99 percent of businesses that I talk to. They are suffering, they’re bewildered.”

In the 2016 vote, Brexiteers got what they wanted. But despite the extensive promises, it hasn’t heralded a new dawn or a new age of prosperity for the country. Instead Brexit is costing the UK economy a million pounds per hour; it means the UK has around £20 billion a year less available for public spending; and it has lost around 330,000 workers from the UK economy.

After more than a dozen years of Conservative-controlled majority government, the country and its economy is in very poor shape. Promises are never going to be delivered, and the lies about the benefits of Brexit told during the referendum campaign and repeated ad nauseam since, only add to the image of deceitfulness at the very heart of this hard Brexit government.

Meanwhile, the government is preparing later this year to delete thousands of laws that largely benefit the ordinary people of this country, including the right to compensation for delayed trains or flights, the right to paid annual leave, equal pay and bank holidays, parental leave and pay and pension protection when a company goes bust.

These things won’t affect the super-wealthy but they will affect everyone else. Is it really what people voted for back in 2016? Probably not, given the results of the poll discussed at the beginning of this piece.

As the latest figures show, decline for the UK is now very real and continued Brexit denial will no longer cut it. Perhaps a corner is being turned at last as people finally realise what has been foisted on them?

Brexit doesn’t necessarily need to be undone wholesale but the country does need to rejoin the single market and customs union as soon as possible.

Such a dramatic reset to the country’s political direction and agenda might only be delivered in one of two ways – a General Strike that brings down the current government, or an unscheduled General Election after a vote of no confidence in which enough MPs decide to put the country and its future first for once. 

What is certain, however, is that the UK urgently, urgently needs mature, proper politicians who will put the interests of the people they represent first and, in doing so, pave the way for the country to rebuild and prosper.

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Editor's note: this article is an amended version of an opinion piece written for and published by Central Bylines.