The claims: 2021 was the sixth hottest year on record & 2021 Tied for 6th Warmest Year in Continued Trend, NASA Analysis Shows (Claims)
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Reality Check:
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Larry Hamlin: NOAA published its global climate report for year end 2021 highlighting that its global temperature anomaly measurements showed 2021 being the sixth highest of its recorded measurements. NOAA’s global annual measurement for 2021 was 0.84 degrees C. … NOAA has exaggerated the importance of both monthly and annual temperature anomaly changes with as small a difference as +0.01 degrees C as a basis for climbing “hottest temperature ever” hype as was done for the July 2021 temperature anomaly data even though the confidence level for this measurement is +/-0.19 degrees C as discussed in WUWT articles here and here. …
More than 1/3rd of the monthly temperature anomaly measurements between 1992 and 2021 were adjusted upward by 0.01 degrees C just between NOAA’s August and November temperature anomaly update releases. These large numbers of constantly on-going upward adjustments result in increasing changes in reported data values with for example the highest annual global temperature anomaly measurement as reported originally for year-end 2016 increasing from 0.94 degrees C to 0.99 degrees C in the year-end 2021 report. …
In addition to NOAA’s global temperature anomaly decline since year end 2016 all other global temperature anomaly measurement systems used by climate scientists worldwide all show declining global temperature anomaly measurements during the period from 2016 through 2021 as shown in the graphs below for surface global temperature anomaly measurement systems from NASA GISS and UK Met Office and for satellite global temperature anomaly measurement systems from UAH and RSS respectively.
Despite the usual climate alarmist grossly exaggerated hype by NOAA and NASA in their year 2021 annual reports trying to conceal the clearly obvious downward global temperature anomaly measurement trends while global atmospheric CO2 levels are continuing to climb the annual global temperature anomaly outcomes for year-end 2021 and the last six years do not support and in fact clearly dispute recent climate alarmist claims that we are in a “climate emergency” driven by man-made CO2 emissions.
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“The annual average anomaly for 2021 was +0.134 deg. C above the 30-year mean (1991-2020), which places it as the 8th warmest year in the 43 year satellite record, behind 2016, 2020, 1998, 2019, 2017,2010, and 2015.”
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You might also note that the satellite data begins in 1979, which just so happens to be the coldest period of the 20thC. At the time it was acknowledged that global temperatures had decline by 0.5C since 1940, which offsets most of the increase since 1979. This decline in temperatures coincides with the cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which has been in warm phase since the 1990s and is soon due to revert to cold.”
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“It’s been cooling for 6,000 years. The blip of modern warming is higher than the graph shows (which stops in 1950). Things might be the same temperature now as a thousand year ago. But all the records we set today are nothing in the big scheme.”
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Update: Wired mag: The World Was Cooler in 2021 Than 2020. That’s Not Good News – Excerpt: One reason for cooler temperatures in 2021 was likely La Niña, a band of cold water in the Pacific. … The Covid-19 pandemic may have had an additional influence, but not in the way you might think. As the world locked down in 2020, fewer emissions went into the sky, including aerosols that typically reflect some of the sun’s energy back into space. “If you take them away, you make the air cleaner, then that’s a slight warming impact on the climate,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, during a Thursday press conference announcing the findings. But as economic activity ramped back up in 2021, so did aerosol pollution, contributing again to that cooling effect. The 2021 temperature drop “may be possibly due to a resumption of activity that produces aerosols in the atmosphere,” Schmidt said. … While global temperatures were cooler in 2021 than the year before, last year 1.8 billion people lived in places that experienced their hottest temperatures ever recorded, according to a report released today by Berkeley Earth. This includes Asian countries like China and North and South Korea, African nations like Nigeria and Liberia, and in the Middle East places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “We talk a lot about global average temperatures, but no one lives in the global average,” says Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.
.Flashback: Here we go again! Media hypes alleged ‘Hottest year’ declarations as 2018 cools, slips to 4th ‘warmest’ – Book excerpt – Media and scientists hyping temperature changes year-to-year so small as to be within the margin of error. Book Excerpt – The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change:
Retired MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen has ridiculed “hottest year” claims. “The uncertainty here is tenths of a degree. When someone points to this and says this is the warmest temperature on record, what are they talking about? It’s just nonsense. This is a very tiny change period,” Lindzen said.
“If you can adjust temperatures to 2/10ths of a degree, it means it wasn’t certain to 2/10ths of a degree.” Lindzen pointed out, “We’re talking about less than a tenth of degree with an uncertainty of about a quarter of a degree. Moreover, such small fluctuations—even if real—don’t change the fact that the trend for the past 20 years has been much less than models have predicted.”
