We remember: by mid-2023, the data on global temperatures had shown a very marked increase. It had gotten warmer globally quite quickly, by an incredible 0.5°C compared to 2022. [emphasis, links added]
This led to a new record for the year being announced in 2024. The German public television Tagesschau (and many other media) did so in great detail.
The whole (climate) world asked about the cause. The Tagesschau correctly concluded that the (rather mediocre) El Nino could only make a very small contribution in the second half of 2023.
Looking at the temporal change, the rise in global temperatures occurred simultaneously with the El Niño rise in ocean temperatures in the tropical East Pacific (an area called “Niño 3.4”), which was already an indication that this was not where the problem lay: the lag is usually three months for global temperatures to follow Niño 3.4.
Causality would have been violated.
It was already apparent in January 2022 that something was up; the Honga Tonga volcano erupted. It is an underwater volcano, and large masses of water were hurled into the stratosphere. Here is a satellite image of it.
It has long been known that stratospheric water vapor causes temperatures on the ground to rise globally. But a volcano like this is a natural event, and the warming effect is then added “on top” of the greenhouse gas effect.
However, the “bump” itself was not man-made. Unfortunately, the news report did not mention this at all.
Every “pulse” that affects global temperatures (including land volcanoes such as the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991, which had a cooling effect due to many aerosols in the stratosphere) does so with some delay.
The climate effect builds up slowly in the atmosphere, and the thermal inertia of the Earth system as a whole does the rest.
Consequently, studies such as this one appeared at the beginning of 2023, which predicted a temporary warming of more than the “famous” 1.5°K deviation from preindustrial values.
According to the Tagesschau, this is exactly what happened: “2024 was also the first calendar year to be 1.6 degrees warmer globally than preindustrial levels from 1850 to 1900.”
However, the report itself attributes this to progressive man-made warming. At the time, this also partly reflected the state of knowledge that some literature on the subject sought to convey.
This study from July 2024, which even determined an overall cooling effect of the volcanic eruption due to the aerosols that were also released, should be mentioned here as a representative example.
Here’s the most complete possible development of global temperatures according to GISS:
The values are extrapolated to the end of July 2025; this month is estimated using a model, seven days before its end.
The volcano in question erupted at the end of January 2022. Not much happened until around May 2023.
However, the “impulse response” of the climate system probably took place: in September 2023, an additional warming of 0.58°C was detected compared to the average for 2022.
The entire year 2024 saw an increase of 0.39°C compared to 2022. This can NOT be explained by the gradual increase in forcing by greenhouse gases, etc.!
Between 1980 and 2020, there was a warming of 0.018°C/year, and now it should suddenly be a factor of 10 in the years 2022-2024? That was always unlikely!
Likewise, the downturn in 2025 of over 0.4°C globally within only 6 months.
So the (climate) world continues to puzzle. Here, too, no definitive cause can be given for the roller coaster ride of global temperatures.
However, the probability speaks for a course that was determined to a large extent by the underwater volcanic eruption with a lot of water vapor injected into the stratosphere (an unprecedented amount, according to this study).
However, this is not enough to warn against a man-made “climate catastrophe” by exceeding the (purely politically determined) 1.5°C mark, even with the knowledge of “accelerating warming”.
Because the whole thing in 2023/24 was very likely a natural event. The 3/10°C missing from the 1.5°C warming compared to preindustrial times in 2022 could also be missing in 2026; the gap will probably be a little smaller.
The “volcano is over,” and hopefully the propaganda and scaremongering!
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