No surprise: 2023 and 2024 have been absolutely nuts
2023 / 2024 have been circling around and past the 1.5C paris agreement lower limit
2024 pretty much guaranteed to be over 1.5C.
You can see 2016 jump over 1.5C
Sanity Checking the Graphic
Given that I am using a running 30 day average, and then plotting every day (ignoring any leap years)…
Each year has exactly 365 data points (apart from 1940 and 2024)
For months with 30 days, the last day of the month, should exactly match the “Monthly Bulletins” posted by copernicus
All non-30-day months should be pretty close to the copernicus bulletin temperatures, but not exactly the same
Test:
The top image below shows
On the left: All years in the spiral, viewed from the top (2024: 1st Jan -> Nov 16th)
On the right: a table showing
Monthly anomaly numbers from copernicus
My 30-day-average-anomaly plotted on the graph
My monthly-average data that underlies my graphic. From GMST Data Sets
They match great
The Green dots are the 2024 monthly temperatures
These are the anomalies for each 2024 month, posted by Copernicus in a BlueSky “skeet” (see bottom image below).
The Green dots underlay the 2024 line very nicely
I have done other tests, but I’m not posting them here.
ScreenshotScreenshot
How this Graphic was created
Inspired by a video
Featuring “Climate Extremes: At The Abyss?”, on YouTube, featuring Johan Rockström (Director of Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact), Dr Sam Burgess, Daniel Swain, Ph.D.
Good grief, it was more complex and refined than I thought it would be.
I was annoyed that
The original was not baselined to pre-industrial
The original stopped in 2021
The video was talking about how bad 1.5C is, but then kept choosing graphics that weren’t baselined to pre-industrial (so 1C heating on the graphic wasn’t the same as 1C above pre-industrial
I raised this with Daniel Swain, who kindly replied, but I wasn’t hugely satisfied with the answer.
I totally underestimated how much refinement had gone into the original
How hard could it be.
Well the basic wasn’t too bad. A few hours. The refined version … too embarrassed to mention.
Get rid of leap year (every day 366 for a leap year was discarded), to make things easier
Run a 30-day-average, so that each day now represents the average anomaly of the previous 30 days
Plot a line for every day of each year from Feb 1940 -> November 16th 2024
Plot on a 3D graphic, where each line is plotted
Each line joins one data point, to the next. E.g. one line from Jan 1st -> Jan 2nd
Z-axis is the year. So 1940 at the bottom, 2024 at the top
In a circle: Jan at the top, April to the right, July at the bottom, Oct on the left
The distance from the centre is the “anomaly vs 1850-1900”
The colour goes from Blue -> Red. Blue being colder anomaly. Red being warmer anomaly
Design it, so you choose how many “frames per year”, and have this variable
For every frame, have the “leading data point” lime green, and fade it back to its orginal poper colour, by the time you get to 1 year before the leading point.
You need this, otherwise it is hard to see the latest year being added
Refinements
While viewing from the top
Year is shown in the middle (colour matches year anomaly)
Yellow concentric circles, for anomalies: 0C, 0.5C, 1C, 1.5C
Months listed around the outside
Last 12 months plotted are lime green, fading back to their proper “anomaly colour”
I modified the number of frames-per-year to balance how large the file is, how long the video takes, and prioritise more time on the later years. I was aiming for under 3MB
Transition from top view to side view
Over about 15 images, swing the view from the top to the side
Get rid of the concentric yellow lines
Get rid of the month labels
Side view
Years now look like “pancakes” stacked on top of each other
Fade in vertical lines to show the anomalies: 0C, 0.5C, 1C, 1.5C
