Yes.
> How is that possible, and what am I failing to take into account?
There are factors like that most of the landmass is in the northern hemisphere, we are in a strong El Nino, ships have to burn fuel with less sulphur and so on. Right now the factors involved are unclear but there is an unsettling possibility: The Earths climate might drastically and quickly change at so called tipping points, after which a new balance becomes the norm. This new balance may or may not be hospitable or even habitable for us.
> Does it have something to do with the elliptical orbit of the earth, and possibly that our closest yearly approach to the sun just happens to align with summer months in the northern hemisphere?
Nope, our orbit is very round and if this was a major factor we'd see it in historic data.
What does 'moderation' mean? The solar energy has to go somewhere, I'm assuming that's temperature. Are you saying it's not going into temperature, but instead being stored some otherway (like evaporation causing an increase in potential energy as the molecules rise?).
To me it's a question of energy input from sun - energy reflected and radiated out. Something like
temperature = constant * (energy from sun - energy reflected - energy radiated)
temperature = constant * (energy from sun - energy reflected - energy radiated)
Temperature is not 'the leftover energy'. The Earth is broadly in equilibrium.
It's more like
delta_temperature = constant * (energy from sun - energy reflected - energy radiated)
This Veritasium video gives a good idea of what we do get from the sun, if not 'net energy in': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxL2HoqLbyA
First you’re assuming there’s a linear relationship this is false. Also, X energy always moves from X to Y temperature, this is false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity
Also it seems like energy reflected radiated should be a constant or even a direct function of temperature, this is also false.
Thermodynamics is complicated, but earth is more so because energy moves around quite a bit. Wind and ocean currents move enormous quantities of energy around.
So, this, as well as ocean mixing is how the surface temperature is "moderated", in addition to the heat capacity that others have brought up.
So in the southern hemisphere with that much water, some of the energy goes into the phase change between water/steam. Much less so in the northern hemisphere.
Thank god we have these big thermal sinks (ice/water) to hold a lot of this energy to keep temp a little more stable.
Follow up question: I'm assuming the exact same thing applies with ice->water. So some of the energy hitting the earth is going into melting the ice instead of increasing temperature. It would seem to follow that, once all the sea ice and glaciers have melted, that this phase-change effect is removed, and therefore the temperatures will increase faster as none of the excess energy is going into ice->water phase-change?
Do they predict the temperature rise to increase once all of the sea ice and glaciers have melted?
Or maybe once it's water it just means that there is that much more liquid water available to evaporate into humidity?
Also, anyone know how the Canadian wildfires impacting the equation? Is that a potential explanation for the several sigma deviation this year?
Yes, and it's even worse than that. The ice also reflects and awful lot of energy back into space due to being highly reflective. When that the ice is gone, that exposes darker surface which is a lot less reflective. That will also result in lot more heating.
The more things warm up, the more things will warm up in a vicious cycle with many positive feedback loops. Sadly a lot of it seems irreversible at this point.
Water happens to have some of the highest specific heat capacities. Therefore, the south can "store" more energy in the hot months, and release that same energy in the cool months better than the north can
Thank god we have these big wet heat sinks available to help keep climate stable.
If you look at the annual temperature range for the northern hemisphere (NH) it has a range >10C, while the southern hemisphere has a range ~5C.
You can read more about this here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-does-land-warm-up...
** Since 1850
Why do these articles always try to sensationalize things? You lose credibility when you create clickbait headlines.
My understanding is temperatures recorded before about 1880 are unreliable[1]. This article does not provide a source for where their data comes from.
[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/21/why-does-the-temperature-rec....
It shows average temperatures month by month, peaking in summer months, cooler in winter months. As expected.
Except that the graph says this is a global mean temperature, not just the northern hemisphere.
I would expect that the earth, on average, from north pole to equator to south pole, would, on average day, have about the same mean temperature, as it gets the same amount of total sunlight overall, regardless of the tilt of the earth. We're essentially on a sphere, and it gets the same sunlight coverage even though some points get more light than others.
I mean it's not like the earth gets less overall sun just because it's winter in the north.
So for whatever reason the entire earth is warmer when the northern hemisphere is experiencing summer? Am I interpreting that right? How is that possible, and what am I failing to take into account?
Does it have something to do with the elliptical orbit of the earth, and possibly that our closest yearly approach to the sun just happens to align with summer months in the northern hemisphere?
[1] https://media.nature.com/lw767/magazine-assets/d41586-023-02...