Cleaning up today, after our offices were flooded. I'll file this photo under #irony
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Steve Easterbrook
@steve@fediscience.org
mastodon 4.6.9Director, School of the Environment, University of Toronto. Professor of Computer Science. I study how climate models are built & tested + systems thinking for sustainability. New book, Computing the Climate, order it here: https://www.cambridge.org/9781107589926
He/him
#Climate #Sustainability #Environment #Resilience #STS #Transdisciplinarity #Community #Complexity #SystemsThinking #ClimateJustice #LandBack #Feminism #TransRights #Ecology #Computing #ML #Models #ClimateData
#fedi22
3307 Followers
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16 Posts
Joined July 19, 2020
I'm rather taken with this elegant visualization of @ClimateChange from the BBC. Particularly as it clearly shows how anomalous 2023 was.
It's a Ridgeline plot (also sometimes called a joyplot, after the iconic album cover from the band #JoyDivision).
I just wish they'd used a pre-industrial average as the baseline. 2023 was 1.48°C warmer than pre-industrial times according to the Copernicus data.
I'm deeply saddened to learn today that the Trump administration has announced plans to shut down NCAR, one of the world's leading centres for atmospheric research. For those not familiar with NCAR, I've posted an extract about NCAR's work from my book on climate modelling: https://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2025/12/an-ode-to-ncar/
Carney’s pipeline deal contradicts everything he knows about climate change
#ClimateChange #Canada #MarkCarney #Alberta #Oil
https://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2025/12/carneys-pipeline-deal-contradicts-everything-he-knows-about-climate-change/
While Annie studied maths at Perdue,
Her cat needed something to do.
So she spent the whole week,
Teaching it mathematical Greek,
But the cat only learned to say μ.
I'm convinced two-factor authentication is a huge prank played on people with #ADHD
What do you mean the code has expired? Again!?!
As I'm giving a talk tonight on causes and consequences of #ClimateChange, I just redid a calculation I first did in 2012:
The Earth is currently warming at the rate of 380TW (terawatts). Humanity as a whole consumes about 15TW of energy.
So we're warming the planet about 25 times faster than all the energy we use!
Kennedy’s latest attack on vaccine science is as dangerous as it is cynical
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5459677-kennedy-bullying-vaccine-research/
@edwiebe@mstdn.ca Ah, don't be such a physicist. See the note at the end of my blog post on precisely this point! https://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2012/01/how-much-extra-energy-are-we-adding-to-the-earth-system/
Replying to
@robinadams
Back then, I had 0.58W/m^2 for the energy imbalance, and a ratio of 18 for energy absorbed by the planet versus what humans use. For details, see: https://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2012/01/how-much-extra-energy-are-we-adding-to-the-earth-system/
Replying to
@micefearboggis
True, but irrelevant.
The lede in the article is 2023 was 1.48°C warmer than pre-industrial (3 significant figures!). Then all the graphics use a different baseline. That's a mess.
For a news article, I don't see any problem generating a pre-industrial baseline from the same model, and then addressing the uncertainty in a footnote. Sure, you wouldn't do this in a paper for Nature, but this is a very different audience. Simple clear messaging matters.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67861954
Replying to
@gpk
Yes, exactly. Climate scientists like to measure "temperature anomalies" rather than actual temperatures. In this case they're measuring daily anomalies - the global average temperature on each day, compared to the baseline average for that day of the year.
It removes seasonal effects - northern hemisphere summers make global temperatures higher anyway, because of all that landmass getting more direct sunlight.
More charts here, for context:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67861954
Replying to
@micefearboggis But I have a more interesting question for you. In your (great!) blog post you say: "For any particular threshold, there will likely be a period of time when it is not clear whether we are above or below it"
The threshold should also have an uncertainty range on it. Which means the question shouldn't be whether we are "above or below" it , but: "above, within the uncertainty range, or below".
Wouldn't that be much better messaging as we approach the 1.5°C ±X threshold?
Replying to
@micefearboggis well we’re going to be saying maybe for a decade anyway. My argument is instead of saying maybe, we say we’ve entered the threshold (or some such form of words)
On the threshold?
In the 1.5 degree zone?
On the cusp?
The key will be to communicate that it will take a number of years to pass through the threshold. Ie it’s not an instantaneous thing.