Friday, December 15, 2023
GISS November global temperature up by 0.1°C from October.
As with TempLS, November was by a large margin the warmest November in the record - next was 1.1°C in 2020. It was the second warmest month of all kinds; just 0.03°C less than last September.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
November global surface TempLS up 0.061°C from October.
The average for 2023 to date is 0.995°C, well ahead of 2016 at 0,855°C. I'll show again the table of months in descending order of warmth:
Here is the corresponding stacked graph, showing how much hotter recent months have been
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Thursday, November 16, 2023
GISS October global temperature down by 0.13°C from September.
As with TempLS, October was by a large margin the warmest October in the record - next was 1.02°C in 2016. It was nearly the second warmest month of all kinds; just pipped by Feb/Mar of 2016.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
October global surface TempLS down 0.102°C from September.,still second warmest month.
The average for 2023 to date is 0.966°C, well ahead of 2016 at 0,855°C. I'll show again the table of months in descending order of warmth:
Here is the corresponding stacked graph, showing how much hotter recent months have been
Most of the world was warm, with the only cool spots being Scandinavia and areas of Antarctica. Very warm in central Siberia.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Sunday, October 8, 2023
September global surface TempLS up 0.191°C from August. Record warm month.
That makes four very warm months in a row, and the recent warmth makes it almost certain that 2023 will be the warmest year in the record. The average to date is 0.946°C, well ahead of 0.857°C in 2016. But unlike 2016, 2023 is getting warmer, while 2016 peaked in Feb-Mar. I'll show the stacked plot of months in descending order of warmth:
The table from which it is derived is here.
Most of the world was warm, with the only cool spot being an area around Patagonia. Europe was quite warm.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies. Use the arrows for different projections.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Friday, September 15, 2023
GISS August global temperature up by 0.05°C from July.
As with TempLS, August was by a large margin the warmest August in the record - next was 1.02°C in 2016. As GISS emphasises in another tweet, the three months in a row make it by far the warmest summer in the record.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Thursday, September 7, 2023
August global surface TempLS up 0.056°C from July.
That makes three vrey warm months in a row, and the recent warmth makes it very likely that 2023 will be the warmest year in the record. The average to date is 0.904°C, well ahead of 0.857°C in 2016. But unlike 2016, 2023 is getting warmer, while 2016 peaked in Feb-Mar. I'll show again the table of months in descending order of warmth:
Most of the world was warm, with the only cool spots neing areas of Antarctica. The pattern was so similar to July that I had to check that I wasn't just recycling!
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Tuesday, August 15, 2023
GISS July global temperature up by 0.10°C from June.
As with TempLS, July was by a large margin the warmest July in the record - next was 0.94°C in 2019. Here, in the style of my mentioned in my last post, is the graphical representation of monthly temperatures, stacked in order. The top black rectangles are the recent June and July
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Graphs showing the leadup to a record hot year
The first is one of a kind that I tracked the progress of 2015 and 2016. It shows the year to date averages of recent hot years over the twelve months. It isn't ideal for 2023, because the early warmth of 2016, say, is exaggerated. I have marked with a fine grey line the previous record, which 2023 to date has just passed. But more significant are the black dots of the actual 2023 monthly temperatures. It means that if anything like the July level can be maintained, 2023 will be, so to speak, a boilover.
Next is a graphical version of the table of ordered months that I wrote about last month and added to the data page. It shows a rectangle for each of the warmer months, the top of which is the temperature for thet month,and the bottom is that of the next lower month. The annual average is to the right (year to date for 2023). The key for year colors is at the top.
It emphasises by how much June and July 2023 exceeded previous months. This could be seen as overstated, since other record-setting years have been overwritten by more recent hot months. So here now is a plot of the months as they would have shown when they set the record, ie the years descending are monotonic. That shows how the years of 2015 and 2016 were more remarkable at the time. But again, I think 2023 is just getting started.
Finally I'll show an updated plot of the time history of hot year records. It is just a regular annual plot, but with colors to show the years for which each record lasted, showing also the rapid recent rise.
Monday, August 7, 2023
July global surface TempLS up 0.093°C from June.
June was already very warm, and the recent warmth makes it very likely that 2023 will be the warmest year in the record. The average to date is 0.87°C, already ahead of 0.857°C in 2016. But unlike 2016, 2023 is getting warmer, while 2016 peaked in Feb-Mar. I'll show again the table of months in descending order of warmth:
Most of the world was warm, with the only cool spots being the northern prairies of N America, and areas of Antarctica.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Friday, July 14, 2023
GISS June global temperature up by 0.14°C from May.
As with TempLS, June was by a large margin the warmest June in the record - next was 0.92°C in 2022. As mentioned in my last post, I now have on the data page a maintained table of months in descending order to facilitate these comparisons. Here is the GISS monthly average anomaly:
There seems to be ongoing warming, if you let your eye follow the red "23" squares. Since the annual to date is close to the hottest ever, it is likely 2023 will end up on top.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
Maintained table of global temperatures listed in order for each calendar month.
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/2023/07/month.csv
It is the record as it stood in that month; just make the obvious changes to the date in the URL to get other months.
One of my tasks in posting the monthly temperatures is to look up where that month stood in the ranking of months. I have now made a maintained table which shows temperatures in ranked order (top 10) for each calendar month, for TempLS and various other sources (scroll down). It also shows the annual average (to date, for the current year). Columns contain a two digit number of the year, and then the anomaly average, in whatever anomaly base is used by the source. TempLS is 1961-90.
Sunday, July 9, 2023
June global surface TempLS up 0.142°C from May.
Most of the world was warm, with a cooler band across the southern US, and in western Russia. The Pacific W of Peru was warm.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Thursday, June 15, 2023
GISS May global temperature down by 0.06°C from April.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, June 6, 2023
May global surface TempLS down 0.028°C from April.
Almost all the world was warm, with a cold spot in India, north into central Asia, and also somewhat in Australia. Most of Canada was very warm. The Pacific W of Peru is starting to warm.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Saturday, May 13, 2023
GISS April global temperature down by 0.2°C from March.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Monday, May 8, 2023
April global surface TempLS down 0.158°C from March.
Almost all the world was warm, with cold spots just in Alaska, central Siberia down to India, and some of mid west USA. Nowhere was very warm, except a patch in Antarctica.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Thursday, April 20, 2023
Hourly modelling of conversion of USA48 to wind/solar, with costing and optimisation - Updated.
Update note - I made an error which inflated the build costs of S&W by 8.76. That greatly inflated the resulting optima, by about that amount. I have rewritten this post; you can see the original here.
Update 2 (two hours later). I realised that I used the mean GW to cost, rather than the built faceplate GW. I have fixed that; optima are approximately doubled.
Update 3 (four hours later). I realised that The first estimate wasn't bad, because I had multiplied the cost by 3 for the capacity factor. Working with faceplate installed, that isn't appropriate. So it's back in the range of 5-6 $T.
Update 4. Not a mistake this time, but an improvement. I've costed wind and solar separately, with wind the same at $1.647/W, but solar is cheaper at $1/Watt. This is preparatory to improve by changing proportion of solar, as per next post. The difference here is small , saving maybe $0.5T.
The original analysis of hourly IEA data was done by Ken Gregory, of Friends of Science. I pointed out the problem, which was that they had allowed too little generation capacity, so the hypothetical grid was relying on storage to cope with annual fluctuations in demand. No system, FF or otherwise, can reasonably do this. You must have enough generation to cover the annual peak periods.
So I adapted Ken's spreadsheet to allow variable amounts of generation. Bringing it up to adequate levels hugely reduces the storage requirement. Building more quickly makes it very small.
Now increasing the generation also has costs, but nothing like the huge costs of Gregory and CFACT. A small number of trillions. The US grid is big business.
A commenter at WUWT, Old Cocky, suggested that costing would be interesting. Being the sum of a rising cost of build with rapidly falling storage costs, there must be an optimum. Ken's model was that W&S would increase proportionally (factor H) to meet the demand formerly met by FF, while nuclear and hydro would remain unchanged (and so not in the analysis). You can analyse hourly data for just one year to get the minimum storage that would get through the year.
Data collection
I have recently been able to extend the data to the four years 2019-2022, which seem to be all the full years IEA has. It would be tempting to use a multi-year set, but the problem is that wind has been growing rapidly, so if the expansion of 2019 is sufficient, then later years are wastefully more than sufficient. I could have tested one year of wind on four years of variable demand, but that misses the point, which is looking for the effect of rare bad wind episodes.Costs
There are basically just two costs that matter for this optimisation, and I've used Ken's numbers, for which he gives the source. The capital cost of building W&S is set at $1647 per KW. And for storage, $347 per KWh. To cost the build, we need the currently installed base (to be multiplied by H). I had to look that up in Wikipedia; the values (for all USA, W&S) for 2019-2022 are 0.1821 0.2190 0.2563 0.2813 TW.Optimising
A small change from the last post (and KG). H is now the ratio of new (not old+new) W&S to old W&S. So values are one less than in that post.As shown in that post, the storage requirement and cost reduces rapidly (exponentially) with H. But the build cost increases linearly with H. So somewhere there is an optimum. Here is a table of computed values around the optimum, for the years 2019-2022. The first column is H, the second is minimum storage needed, computed as in the earlier post. The third is the build cost in $B, formed by multiplying the faceplate GW by the cost per GW. The fourth is storage (col 2) multiplied by storage cost/TWh, and the fifth is the sum, for which we want the minimum (bolded).
For any H, as years progress the build cost increases and the storage cost decreases. This is because the base W&S level is increasing. So the optimum moves to lower H. Y
2019 | Storage TWh | Cost(H*S&W) $T | Storage $T | Sum Costs $T |
12 | 26.551 | 3.005 | 2.521 | 5.526 |
13 | 18.724 | 3.256 | 1.778 | 5.033 |
14 | 15.606 | 3.506 | 1.482 | 4.988 |
15 | 13.226 | 3.756 | 1.256 | 5.012 |
16 | 10.935 | 4.007 | 1.038 | 5.045 |
2020 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
10 | 26.514 | 2.983 | 2.372 | 5.354 |
11 | 15.274 | 3.281 | 1.366 | 4.647 |
12 | 9.506 | 3.579 | 0.85 | 4.429 |
13 | 7.163 | 3.877 | 0.641 | 4.518 |
14 | 6.091 | 4.176 | 0.545 | 4.72 |
2021 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
10 | 33.56 | 3.442 | 3.13 | 6.571 |
11 | 17.073 | 3.786 | 1.592 | 5.378 |
12 | 9.635 | 4.13 | 0.899 | 5.029 |
13 | 7.142 | 4.474 | 0.666 | 5.14 |
14 | 6.153 | 4.818 | 0.574 | 5.392 |
2022 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
9 | 18.396 | 3.354 | 1.751 | 5.105 |
10 | 8.13 | 3.727 | 0.774 | 4.501 |
11 | 3.302 | 4.1 | 0.314 | 4.414 |
12 | 1.967 | 4.473 | 0.187 | 4.66 |
13 | 1.117 | 4.845 | 0.106 | 4.952 |
Discussion
The amounts are much less that the hundreds of trillions in the CFACT report, and now around $5T (US GDP is about $22T). How should we think about this? Well, electricity generation is big business, and this represents renewal over, say, 27 years. That would have cost a lot in any technology, and of course produces a system with much reduced fuel costs. But here are some factors which might increase or reduce it- The obvious big thing that might increase it is the need to be more conservative about storage. The criterion for each year was to get through that year with storage not drained. There will be worse years.
- The obvious big thing that might decrease it is continued reduction in costs, which have been coming down a lot.
- Another big reduction comes from the artificial requirement that the dips in W&S that drain storage are proportional to H. That would be true if the original sites were each expanded by that factor. But new sites will be found, and their diversity will smooth out the dips in W&S.
- A very big reduction comes if cheaper forms of storage than battery are used, as they will be, particularly pumped storage.
- In Europe at least, a big reduction will come from improved interconnection, allowing trade in surpluses, and also rationalisation in location. It is much better to spend on solar in Spain (or Morocco) than in Germany. And in Mexico rather than Maine.
- The model assumed hydro would continue as before. But there will be a continued market-led shift of hydro to drain dams only when W&S are low (and prices high). This has the effect of a big storage increase.
Conclusion
As before, the very high levels of storage in the reports by Ken Gregory and CFACT are ridiculous. You have to optimise, and then the costs come down to manageable levels (about $5T) as capital cost to replace FF with W&S and battery storage. And there are many ways of ameliorating them.Postscript
I have added the csv files for each of the years 2019-2022 to the earlier zipfile.I thought about ways to test all years in a continuous optimisation. The problem is that W&S has been increasing rapidly, so how should it be expanded. If uniformly, the storage troubles of 2019 will dominate. There isn't any point in using one W&S year expanded for 2019-22; the point is to test the variability of W&S over four years.
I tried detrending W&S (and FF), so 2019 was in effect pre-expanded. But this was still not good enough; 2019 was still the limiting year, because exaggerated expansion leads to exaggerated variability. So I'm stuck, for the moment, with doing individual years.
Friday, April 14, 2023
GISS March global temperature up by 0.23°C from February.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Thursday, April 6, 2023
March global surface TempLS up 0.229°C from February.
Almost all of Eurasia was warm, with a very warm band from Ukraine to the Pacific. There was a cool to cold region in W US and Canada, but warm in the East. The cold ENSO plume in the E Pacific has gone.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
CFACT says Net Zero is impossible? Debunked.
The basic claim is that if you replaced the total USA48 power generated in 2019 by a scaled up version of the 10% of that which was wind and solar (W&S)), then you would need 250 TWh of storage to make it work, and this is impossible.
It is of course wrong. To explain qualitatively, an issue with both fossil fuel (FF) generation and W&S is that demand varies throughout the year. It is possible to generate just the average required, and use storage to meet the peak. But traditionally, this is of course never done. Enough generation is always provided to meet the peak, so that some is idled at other times. And you would do the same with W&S, with a subtle difference that there is no need to idle outside the peak, since no fuel is required.
What these reports do is to wrongly underestimate the amount of W&S required, so it is not meeting the peak, and so is using storage to cover the annual variation. That accounts for the huge storage estimates. The reason is that they scale up W&S so the average matches the FF average, although I think even then they underscale. But it is the wrong thing to do, because the FF profile was sculpted to match the peaks, by idling at other times. The 10% W&S profile did not have that requirement, and so if you scale it by average, it won't match the peaks.
Quantitative scaling
Ken Gregory has an extensive spreadsheet here which has the basic data I used. It has hourly generation figures of each source for 2019, and also other years, but I'll stick to 2019. Ken calculated a "target" T, which was total generation excluding nuclear and hydro. I'm not sure why the exclusion, but I'll do that too (it isn't much). Then he looked at the difference between this T, and W&S multiplied by a scale factor. I will call the factor H, and the product HW. He used values about H=7. He accumulated the difference HW-T, which became the storage S. He showed that if S has to be positive through the year, then it could rise as high as 250 TWh.I use a slightly different, and more realistic approach to storage. I specify a maximum storage Sm. Then at each hourly step, the difference HW-T (which might be negative) is added to S only to the extent that Sm is not exceeded. In fact, I set Sm=0, because you can add a constant without changing anything. Then the storage required is the minimum (negative) value reached during the year. Of course, this is the bare minimum for just getting through 2019; a reserve will have to be added to H to allow for less favorable years.
So I did that using various factors H. In fact H=10 is what would scale up W&S to match total demand for 2019. I got the following values for minimum storage required:
|
It is close to exponential decrease. And in my reckoning, H=15 is closest to matching the existing FF build, and 2.4 TWh is not an impossible amount of storage. But building a bit more W&S reduces this a lot further.
Here is a graph of the various cumulative storages. The x-axis is in hours of the year 2019. You can see that at H=7.3 the storage does have to make up for a big change in annual demand, while at H=10, is is only needed to cover the short term changes, since there is enough generation to cover the peak.
I'll show the same on a log scale, same colors. It distorts the annual cycle, but gives a better picture of the higher H storage behaviour.
Conclusion
Ken Gregory, amplified by David Wojick, claim that a simulation of 2019 electricity generation for USA48 with wind and solar only shows a requirement for very large storage (250 TWh). But as siimilarly simulated here, that is because they provided too little W&S, thus requiring storage to cover the annual demand cycle. Doubling the provision reduces storage to 2.5 TWh, with further exponential decrease.The R code and data used are in a zipfile here
Thursday, March 16, 2023
GISS February global temperature up by 0.11°C from January.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
February global surface TempLS up 0.093°C from January.
Almost all of Eurasia was warm, to very warm in NE Russia. Warm in E USA, but cool in the W and cold in NE Canada. Warm in the S Atlantic; neutral in the ENSO region.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Thursday, February 16, 2023
GISS January global temperature up by 0.06°C from December.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
January global surface TempLS up 0.014°C from December.
Continental Europe and N Africa were warm, as was most of N America. But there was a large cold region in northern Russia, and Antarctica was quite cold.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
GISS December global temperature up by 0.07°C from November.
Apologies for being a little late this month - I have been away from my computer.
As usual here, I will compare the GISS and earlier TempLS plots below the jump.
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
December global surface TempLS up 0.065°C from November.
Continental Europe and N Africa were warm, as was Eastren N America. But there was a large cold region in the W of N America, especially Canada. Cold in central Asia, but warm in much of the Arctic..
Apologies for the lateness of this month's report; I have been away from my computer. But the scripts kept going, on the results page here.
Here is the temperature map, using now the FEM-based map of anomalies.
As always, the 3D globe map gives better detail. There are more graphs and a station map in the ongoing report which is updated daily.