Climatologist Eliseev appreciated Guterres’ statement about the “epoch of global boiling”

Global warming has been replaced by the “epoch of global boiling”! This is how UN Secretary General António Guterres outlined the current climate picture last week, referring to data from Western climatologists. They stated that July 2023 turned out to be the hottest month in the world in the entire history of observations, and the entire current year has “added” compared to the average data from 16 to 17 degrees. Guterres’ loud statement that the climate situation is reaching a peak coincided with the terrible typhoon “Doksuri” in China, and the world media literally began to panic, prophesying almost the death of all mankind in the very near future. We contacted a Russian climatologist, a leading researcher at Moscow State University. Lomonosov Alexei YELISEEV to hear a more balanced analysis of what is happening in nature.

How did it all start? The UN World Meteorological Organization and the European Union Climate Change Service Copernicus said last week that July 2023 is “very likely” to beat the record set in July 2019 by 0.2 degrees Celsius. They also reported that heatwaves like those now hitting Europe, North America and China, the Earth, apparently, did not pass for about 120,000 years.

“We can say that the first three weeks of July were the warmest three-week periods ever experienced in our history,” said Carlo Buentempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Despite the rather cautious conclusions of scientists, Guterres, speaking in New York, decided to generalize and strengthen the effect, discarding all subjunctive moods: “We do not need to wait until the end of the month to be convinced of this. Short of a mini ice age in the coming days, July 2023 will break all records across the board. In 2023, the average temperature on the planet has increased by a whole degree compared to previous years, from 16 to 17 degrees. And this is just the beginning of the “boil”.

– Alexei Viktorovich, do you agree with the statement of the UN Secretary General, who announced a record-breaking heat wave in July and the year as a whole?

– July, of course, can be the hottest in history, as a whole all summer and the whole year. But it can be unambiguously declared only when the data of meteorologists pass the so-called quality control. It is partly automated and partly done by hand. By and large, international data centers will publish the final result of the current year only by the middle of next summer.

— So now you can say for sure what the year 2022 was like?

– According to the British Hadley Center, 2022 was warmer than the average value for the planet (the period from 1961 to 1990 is taken) by 0.8 degrees.

– Where did the data on the difference of 1 degree for 2023 come from?

– Firstly, we are not talking about 1 degree (Guterres, apparently, rounded off the value. — Auth.), but about 0.94 degrees, and even this is still a highly preliminary figure. Its uncertainty interval ranges from 0.84 to 1.03 degrees (that is, 0.19 degrees). In previous years, this interval was half as long – this is so that you understand the degree of reliability of the data for this year.

— Is it possible to judge by the exceptional hotness of the year about the trend towards warming of the climate as a whole?

— I don’t like all this talk about record years and record heatwaves, the events of individual months, which can be influenced by the seasonal course of temperature superimposed on the overall picture. This is not a running race! Each particular year can be a record year, but if we are talking about warming in general, we are only talking on a decade-wide basis.

Therefore, I would not take Guterres’ statements too seriously. As an example, I will cite an absolutely tragic event in 2012 in the city of Krymsk, Krasnodar Territory. As a result of a severe flood caused by a three (!) times increase in precipitation, more than 100 people died then. But in subsequent years, this, fortunately, did not happen again.

— Now the strongest flood happened in China. With what it can be connected?

– In general, China, which is part of the so-called monsoon belt (it also includes India, Asia Minor, East Africa), is characterized by heavy precipitation at this time of the year. Their intensity depends on the magnitude of the temperature difference between the land and the ocean, where the monsoon is formed. As the climate warms, this difference is getting bigger, that’s a fact.

Why do you think Guterres is in such a hurry to draw conclusions about this year?

— To be honest, I don’t know a climatologist with that last name… He’s a politician. Apparently, he needs to make loud statements. From their prematureness, however, the credibility of the speaker does not increase.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29083 dated August 2, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Above us does not burn?