20th January - Today's News: Why Hasn't Earth Warned as Much as Expected?

Breaking news this morning: fresh snow chaos hits Gloucestershire. I'm a few miles north of Cheltenham and whilst they've had snow all we've had is rain ..... But I think there'll be more reports of problems elsewhere in England later. Tomorrow we expect heavy rain - and concerns about serious flooding grow since many rivers are already close to bursting.

It's been hot on the Gold Coast in Australia as Coolangatta sets record temperature (though has to be emphasised that's a January record for that specific location only)

Tornado strikes Long Beach, Huntington Beach in Los Angeles as storm pounds Southland, flooding street and homes - 2 more storms are expected this week with total rainfall in places possibly as high as 20 inches.

And a new study looks into why hasn't Earth warmed as much as expected

Schwartz's analysis attributes the reasons for this discrepancy to a possible mix of two major factors: 1) Earth's climate may be less sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than currently assumed and/or 2) reflection of sunlight by haze particles in the atmosphere may be offsetting some of the expected warming.

I think there may be more to it than that. But I do agree that if sensitivity to increases in greenhouse gases is as currently assumed, then the temperature ought have risen by quite a bit more than it has. Indeed, I've often wondered whether all of the observed warming can be attributed to factors - natural and anthropogenic - other than carbon emissions. Which doesn't we shouldn't cut such emissions! I also agree that there may be other factors - again natural or anthropogenic - that may be off-setting the warming. So this is an encouraging paper. Though I suspect many more years of research needed.