I find the obsession with Global Mean XYZ meaningless. Societally irrelevant.

GMT was necessary when change wasn't as obvious, ie in the 1980s or 1990s.
Today, regional impact stats and collapse thresholds are societally relevant. Both, to inform policy and to inform the public.
1.5°C stays relevant as enshrined binding international law. And maybe for climate litigation; all countries' governments in Paris accepted damages from up to 1.5°C.

I imagine a parallel world where climate scientists KNOW that #ClimateChange is an accepted fact, and Copernicus doesn't title a "Warmest year on record", trapped in the forever-loop of trying to convince climate trolls.

But instead, Copernicus has the intellectual free space for societally relevant scoops: "Year where C-C shatters the most livelihoods in South America" or
"Year of largest harvest loss in both, East Europe and South Asia".

#RCPcollapse #GlobalMean #Globalwarming #ClimateCommunication #SciCom

Interesting, enlightening collection of expert comments on what the two new papers regarding CO2 in ancient blue ice actually mean.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-two-papers-on-links-between-ancient-climate-shifts-and-ocean-temperatures-greenhouse-gases-as-published-in-nature/

Gavin Schmidt also wrote a blogpost about them https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/03/the-puzzling-pleistocene/
"At face value, these results seem to suggest that CO2 declines were not the dominant/only cause of the cooling at the onset of the ice ages, despite expectations. Some of the usual suspects are certainly going to claim (fallaciously) that this means that CO2 can’t be the cause of anything. This is obviously a stupid argument so feel free to judge anyone that makes it.'

Not mentioned but I will point it out to him on Bluesky: the hydrogen cloud our solar system traversed (or vice versa) from precisely 2.7ma to 750ka. You might recall Opher et al? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02279-8
The cloud dented the heliosphere and left Earth wide open to cosmic rays.

My confirmed bias takeaway from the blue ice papers: how vastly different ocean currents and other vastly different properties drove °C evolution on that planet that was Earth 3mio years ago in the Pliocene, renders that ancient Earth incomparable to what we're unleashing thanks to #ExxonKnew

#ClimateChange #OceanHeat #Ocean #GlobalMean #Pliocene #Blueice

"Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today", https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/17/revealed-world-worst-methane-leaks-global-heating

that's incorrect.
For the experienced warming of 1.1°C in the decade 2010-2019, the assessment report AR6-WG1 attributes 0.8°C to carbon dioxide and 0.51°C to methane.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/summary-for-policymakers/figure-spm-2/

This half a degree came from back then 1840 ppb CH4 in the atmosphere.

I am no maths geek ^^ but it looks like 0.5 is not a quarter of 1.1C.
More like 2 quarters. Or half.

The decadal average of 1840 ppm is now 1000 ppb higher https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/

Despite methane getting broken down after 10 years: All of the 1840ppb which the AR6 looked at for that decade 2010-2019 above, have already vanished. Gone. Puff. Bombed to bits by "OH radicals", split into water and CO2.

But we simply managed to re-emit the same amount – plus 1000ppb more*.

If 1840ppb = 0.51C, then today's 1945ppb is about 0.54C.
Or just over a third of the experienced warming of just below 1.5C by now.

The 25% in the article maybe come from the concept of "Global Warming Potential": potential warming over the course of 100 years?
But our civilisation isn't eroded by the concept of a Global Mean 100-year potential. It is eroded by the warming = extreme weather pummelling societies today. To which our methane emissions contribute a third.

Of which 25% come from beef and dairy consumption, 20% from rice paddies, the rest from fossil fuel and decomposing organics in landfills.
Replacing beef and dairy with plant-based nutrition shaves off 0.14C immediately from the avoided methane contribution alone.
When the land currently in use for beef and dairy is also rewilded, nature can draw down over 700 Gt of CO2 within 30 years. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4

That shaves another 0.3C off the warming.
Bringing us down to 2014_temperatures.
2014? So Syria would still become a failed state due to that mega drought and neoliberal privatisation of water access.
But Tehran's and Johannesburg's Water DayZero would be ages away.
Buying more time…

#extremeweather #climateChange #beef #methane #GlobalMean #Dayzerodroughts