Global warming makes it hotter more often

As if anyone with a functioning brain didn't realize that global warming will make the world get warmer, there's news from the AGU (that's the American Geophysical Union) that makes it clearer:

Human-caused warming increasing likelihood of record-breaking hot years

Yes, that should be fairly obvious.  But what's the statistical breakdown?

Quoting the press release:

"Global annual temperature records show there were 17 record hot years from 1861 to 2005. The new study examines whether these temperature records are being broken more often and if so, whether human-caused global warming is to blame.

The results show human influence has greatly increased the likelihood of record-breaking hot years occurring on a global scale. Without human-caused climate change, there should only have been an average of seven record hot years from 1861 to 2005, not 17. Further, human-caused climate change at least doubled the odds of having a record-breaking hot year from 1926 to 1945 and from 1967 onwards, according to the new study."

Here's something really interesting -- which I have told to numerous global warming denier-types on Twitter, sometimes repeatedly:

"He [Andrew King, lead author of the study] also determined human-caused climate change at least doubled the odds of having a record-breaking hot year from 1926 to 1945 and from 1967 onwards. The odds didn’t increase from 1945 to 1967 because man-made aerosol emissions generated a cooling effect, which counteracted warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases."

The press release provides a link to the article (which isn't even officially published yet), and I will do the same here:

Attributing changing rates of temperature record-breaking to anthropogenic influences


Final thought: sometimes you have to clarify the obvious for the benefit of those for which the obvious is not something they want clarified.