James Hansen of Columbia University is probably the leading scientist who alerted the world to climate change. He initiated a NASA project to investigate the atmosphere of Venus but when the satellite was on its way he realised that we did not know enough about the climate of our own planet so he resigned from the project and started studying Earths global warming and has been publishing papers for thirty years.
His latest paper released on 14/06/2023  http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/ElNino2023.14June2023.pdf discusses the coming El Nino and the current conditions that combine to make it very concerning. Much of Hansen’s work is on the biosphere and the thermal balance that measures how much heat from the sun is captured to create global warming.
The Earths atmosphere is a big and complicated subject but there are certain events that alter the atmosphere and can be measured and one of these was the Pinatubo volcano that erupted in 1991 the second-largest eruption of the 20th century. The ash plume height reaching more than 40 km (28 mi) high and ejecting more than 10 km3 of magma and the ash plume, plus the sulphur, cooled the planet by a global decrease of about 0.4 °C (0.7 °F).
The ash and sulphur in the atmosphere reflect the suns heat back out into space and cool the planet counteracting the CO2 that is warming the planet. The ash and sulphur are described as aerosols and they are not the only ones that help cool the planet. Coal fired power stations, dust from farming, industrial activity and jet planes are also contributors and as we switch to cleaner forms of energy, we reduce their cooling effect and it is this that Hansen describes as a Faustian bargain, and he suggests that a significant payment in accelerated global warming is now coming due.
Although we are most concerned about the atmosphere, 90% of the heat from the sun is absorbed into the oceans and here we have a fleet of 3500 Argo floats which are spread around the world’s seas and measure temperature and salinity of the top layer of the sea. They have a pattern of sinking one kilometre and stay there for ten days to get an idea of current flow and then they dive to two kilometres before coming to the surface to send the data to a satellite in space and then relayed to the Argo project.
Measuring the combined results of the Argo float from 2005 to2015 shows an energy imbalance for the planet of +0.71C watts per sq. mt but this has risen to +1.18C wattspsqm in the last decade but +1.33C Wpsqmin the last four years.
Hansen admits that there are many complex forces at play but the underlying figures show that we are in a very bad position with global warming and if we get a strong El Nino it may very well be much worse than predicted and go well beyond the 1.5C forecast.

A recent report in Nature Communications entitled ‘Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic’ shows that even if we manage to curb our burning of fossil fuels to a moderate level we will still have an ice free Arctic ocean as early 2030 and almost certainly within the subsequent twenty years, to 2050. This is considerably earlier than the IPCC report which were estimating somewhere between 2080 and 2100.
The IPCC reports are the gold standard on climate research but their failure is that the report is made from almost every country on the planet and many of the countries have big oil and coal industries including the USA, Australia and Russia and they will not allow a report that impacts their industries adversely.
Being close to the heavily populated areas in the northern hemisphere the Arctic is one of the most comprehensively monitored regions on the planet and we have good satellite observations for some forty years. Climate models are becoming increasingly accurate and the Korean researchers combined the observations from several satellites and used three different models and no doubt a very powerful computer to crunch the data to get a series of results and they all came out with essentially similar results.
A Blue Ocean event in the Arctic would be a massive milestone to the planets climate as we have already lost 40% of the sea ice and it is influencing the weather of the USA, Europe and Asia by changing the polar vortex and bringing extremes of weather. As the ice disappears the dark blue ocean absorbs the heat from the sun and raises the temperature of the region.
The atmosphere to the top of the troposphere is higher at the equator than it is at the poles because the air is warmer at the equator and consequently thinner and to get a barometric pressure of 1000 millibars you need a higher amount of air than you do at the cooler poles.
In the stratosphere air flows from a high point at the equator towards the lower level at the poles and because of the spin of the planet the upper winds flow from the west to the east in a circular ring at 60 to 80 degrees of latitude in both north and south hemispheres.
If there is a good differential of temperature the Vortex flows in a steady ring but as the poles warm faster the differential gets smaller and the Vortex slows down and starts to wonder in big loops. It can also stall so that there is no progression of weather. The problem here is that if you have a rainy wet event it can stay for days or weeks and cause a serious flood. An extended dry period will become a serious drought and cause massive bush fires that burns thousands of acres of land.
These events are already happening increasingly more frequently with only a 40% loss of ice and we don’t want a milestone event like a Blue Ocean.