Both NASA and also a group of independent researchers who call their outfit, Berkeley Earth, remain befuddled as to why 2023 was the hottest year on record. They can’t make the numbers come out. But that’s because they do not apply a cloud-based amplification of altered solar activity. Here is Berkeley Earth showing climate drivers:
Notice how they apportion so little of driving force to the Solar Cycle. The amplitude in that wave pattern could actually reach to 4 times its size (up to +0.2 and -0.2), along with a corresponding decrease in the Man-made Global Warming at left. NASA disagrees with them about the Hunga Tonga Eruption, which had a net-cooling effect.
Both sources agree that the reduction in pollution seen from reduced shipping during COVID and then new laws on fuel pollution had a warming effect. But the reason that these outfits can’t make the numbers come out right is because the answer — once admitted — also downplays the relevance of human emission of greenhouse gases.
It has been theorized that most of recent warming has been due to alterations in solar irradiance (the amount of energy from the sun which reaches Earth) and subsequent absorption of that energy. Climate alarmists do not like that theory because it jeopardizes things they’ve work for, things they’ve invested in, at least psychologically.
But check out the amount of 2800-megaHertz (10.7-cm wavelength) radio energy — the most objective measure of solar output — that the sun has been putting out in the most recent solar cycle, solar cycle number 25:
It’s now over 200 solar flux units (s.f.u.) and, importantly, it is so far beyond the red prediction line that it is even well beyond the gray uncertainty area. Climate alarmists will claim that we’ve been above 250 s.f.u. before, so that this solar activity is within norms, but that argument also depends on not factoring in the 4x amplification.
If higher solar energy cuts the incoming cosmic rays by so much that low clouds don’t form on Earth, then less solar energy gets reflected back into outer space (we get less of the “albedo” effect). The increased solar energy then effectively “self-amplifies” its own effect on Earth.
Evidence suggests that climate alarmists cannot explain the heat wave of 2023 because, in order to do so, they would have to admit that the sun has had a greater impact on climate change — even greater than all effects of humankind, even including urban heat islands — and they just have too much riding on it to admit it.
Ironically, they admit a decrease in solar-reflective low clouds and albedo in general — admitting that we were absorbing more of the sun’s energy throughout 2023 — but they keep trying to find other factors to explain the change in cloud cover without having to bring up the evidence that it is the sun blocking the incoming cosmic rays.
Reference
[scientists at Berkeley Earth cannot explain 2023] — https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2023/
[scientists at NASA can’t explain 2023] — https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153588/charting-the-exceptional-unexpected-heat-of-2023-and-2024
[central estimate that solar irradiance, albeit indirectly, explains 89% of global warming] — E Pallé Bagó , C J Butler, The influence of cosmic rays on terrestrial clouds and global warming, Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 41, Issue 4, August 2000, Pages 4.18–4.22, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1468-4004.2000.00418.x
[the indirect effect of the sun that is noted above is confirmed as substantial] — Svensmark, H., Svensmark, J., Enghoff, M.B. et al. Atmospheric ionization and cloud radiative forcing. Sci Rep 11, 19668 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99033-1
[an objective measure of solar output (10.7-cm wavelength)] — https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
Thank you! Great explanation.