You probably heard that 2023 was the warmest year on record. For example: “NASA Analysis Confirms 2023 as Warmest Year on Record.” And here’s CNN, “2023 will officially be the hottest year on record, scientists report.”
But notice that these and many other news stories stress that it was the hottest year “on record.” So how long is the “record”? Are we talking about 5,000 years, 10,000 years, maybe a million years? Nope. The “record” goes back to … wait for it … 1880. Or 1850 for some measurers.
Why no longer? Because prior to that time there was a lack of reliable global measurements. Here’s how NASA puts it: “The oldest continuous temperature record is the Central England Temperature Data Series, which began in 1659, and the Hadley Centre has some measurements beginning in 1850, but there are too few data before 1880 for scientists to estimate average temperatures for the entire planet.” So 1880.
Or maybe 1850. The government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been tracking temperatures since about 1850. Which is why it claimed that last November was the warmest “in NOAA’s 174 year global climate record.”
Here’s a few facts that put those dire warnings into perspective.
First, the earth has been on a gradual warming trend since the last ice age—which is, of course, why we aren’t in an ice age. That’s thousands of years ago, and millennia before the widespread use of fossil fuels.
Second, over those thousands of years there have been very warm periods and very cold periods that often lasted for centuries.
Third, there was what’s referred to as the “Little Ice Age” that lasted from roughly 1300 to 1850.
Fourth, and this is the key point, those global recorded-temperature efforts began toward the end of the Little Ice Age (1850 or 1880) when temperatures were dramatically lower than normal.
Here’s how Smith College’s “Climate Literacy” project puts it: “The Little Ice Age was a period of wide-spread cooling from around 1300 to around 1850 CE when average global temperatures dropped by as much as 2°C (3.6°F), particularly in Europe and North America.”
So, when CNN reports, “The analysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found this year’s global temperature will be more than 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels,” notice that it started from a lower level.
So, yes, the earth has been on a gradual warming trend for a very long time. And humans may be exacerbating that trend. But when recorded measurements begin at a temperature low point because of the Little Ice Age, it will make the warming trend look larger and faster than it really is.
January 16, 2024