This summer of extremes has been a summer of mystery, debate and even some confusion for climate scientists, who’ve been watching the news with the rest of us and asking, What, exactly, is going on?
Is it just baseline global warming, trending upward, that explains the extreme temperatures on land and over sea?
The arrival of a planet-warming El Niño in the Pacific?
And when considering off-the-charts sea-surface temperatures, what role is being played by recent regulations designed to significantly reduce the sulfur emissions of ships, since less pollution in the air means more heat making its way to the water below?
And almost certainly, the sulfur effect has been larger locally, along particular shipping routes in the world’s oceans, where some especially striking anomalies have been observed.
Persons:
who’ve, what’s, alarmists, Robert Rohde
Organizations:
Berkeley
Locations:
Tonga, South, Phoenix