Back in 2012 James Hansen wrote a paper in which he said that the aerosols in the atmosphere, which include soot from burning coal, sulphur from burning oil and dust from farming, was cooling the planet by as much as 1.5C. In other words the temperature has risen by 1.5C, caused by the 420 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, but if we did not have aerosols in the atmosphere the temperature would have risen by 3C. This is an alarming statement and often derided by climate scientists, but Hansen has been proven to be right before and knows more about our planet’s atmosphere than most people.
I know from experience in the UK, how aerosols from aircraft making contrails can cloud the sky with a white haze and reduce sunburn and yet when I come to New Zealand with its clean atmosphere, I burn in twenty minutes.
Hansen wrote another paper in which he predicted that the planned reduction in sulphur in the atmosphere from the laws forcing shipping to burn cleaner fuel from January 2020 would increase the temperature by 0.2C.
Independent of this, the temperature in 2023 reached 1.5c above preindustrial levels and 2024 will probably clear 1.6C. Initially this was attributed to the El Nino but the rise was too big and so scientists are looking for other causes.
A recent paper shows that low clouds in the Northern oceans have reduced in 2023  and 2024 and the lack of bright reflective clouds has caused the sun to warm the oceans.  
Clouds are caused by moisture in the atmosphere and can coalesce around an aerosol of soot or sulphur and form a cloud droplet. For 200 years , as we burned copious quantities of coal and oil, we have benefited from increased cloud cover to keep the temperature down but now, as we clean up our polluting output, the sky is clearing, and we are beginning to experience the true effect of burning fossil fuels. This is what Hansen called the ‘Faustian bargain’ where, as we move to a cleaner energy, as we must, we experience the damage that we have already done.
Shipping is not the only cause of a cleaner atmosphere. The USA has reduced its reliance on electricity from burning coal from 51% to 10% in a decade, Europe is replacing coal, gas and oil as quickly as it can and the China has a massive amount of solar, hydro and wind energy and is cleaning up its cities very quickly and has already started to import less oil and coal.
New Zealand should be doing the same as we have a monthly oil bill of $1 billion dollars and if we concentrated on importing only electric cars busses and trucks we could halve that figure in five years which would save $6 billion a year.

Recent research published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, by Franz Philip Tuchen of  Earth Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA shows how the Pacific Equatorial currents have increased over the last three decades.
Using records from satellites, drifting buoys and moored buoys the researchers found that the increased speed of the trade winds across the Pacific along the equator in a westerly direction, from the South American coast towards the Philippines, increased the near-surface current  by 20% % and where it turns Northwards it has increased by 60% and the branch to the South by 20%. This near surface current extends down about 200 metres.
This increased wind speed drives the surface water towards an area in the West Pacific, between the Philippines and Australia, leading to weather events where the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and the increased heat of the sea can generate increased rainfall and more powerful storms.​
There is no indication at the moment that this increased activity is having an effect on frequency of occurrence of the El Nino/La Nina although these are difficult to quantify due to their irregular pattern.
When this information is put together with research on Southern Ocean winds which have increased in speed by 40% over four decades, we can’t help but wonder what is in store for New Zealand as these big changes must have a significant effect on the storms that hit the country.
The country’s Southerly location makes us vulnerable to powerful Westerly storms, which are becoming more frequent, but the Southern Alps give protection to the more densely habitated farming areas on the South Island Canterbury plain.
The top of the Noth Island is vulnerable to tropical storms coming down from the Pacific and we have had some bad flood events on the North Island East coast, where the clockwise rotation of a low-pressure storm has driven excessive rain events into Hawks Bay and Auckland but so far we have avoided a full blown tropical cyclone giving us a direct hit.
The movement of atmospheric circulation and the combination of high and low pressure systems are extremely difficult to predict in a climate model but the overall circumstances can indicate likely risks. Changes in water temperatures and wind patterns can have profound effects in regions far away from the causes and monsoons on which millions of people depend for their annual rainfall
As the oceans warm, they make more heat available to power tropical storms and the shifts in warm zones can change wind patterns which can cause droughts and atmospheric rivers such as a string of rain bearing systems coming in a long line from the Queensland vicinity and collectively flood our North East coast.
These events have been more pronounced in California where they have caused extensive damage but we have experienced similar smaller events here and we don’t want them becoming stronger and more frequent.
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The 2024 floods in Spain and storm Bert in the UK have highlighted how climate change is making storms considerably more extreme than they would normally be.
The obvious culprit would be that the planet has been at, or over, 1.5C warmer than the long-term average and probably warmer than the last 120 thousand years, but there are other factors at work that influence the weather in Europe.
In the last few years, a number of papers have been published that deal with the North Atlantic part of what is referred to as the Great Ocean Conveyor. This is a huge system circling the world, both on the surface and in the depths of the ocean and it distributes heat and nutrients around the globe.
The part of the Ocean Conveyor that is causing concern is the surface water that leaves the African coast, goes to the Gulf of Mexico and then passes between Florida and Cuba, up the East coast of the USA and then across the North Atlantic to Europe.


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This current is in two parts of which the major one is the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Current (AMOC) and a smaller proportion is the Gulf Stream. The AMOC is a big wide current that reaches down 1000 metres and is the water that sinks into the deep when it reaches the Polar region, while the Gulf Stream spreads into a multitude of eddies and eventually sheds it heat to the atmosphere and the remnants head South down the Spanish coast.
A string of buoys has been measuring the Gulp Stream between Florida and Cuba and the current has reduced in speed by 4% in the last forty years.
The AMOC is measured by taking core samples from the seabed in the North Atlantic around Greenland, Iceland and Norway and this shows that the AMOC has reduced by 15% since the 1950’s.
Further evidence is the “cold blob’ or coller patch of the Atlantic just South of Greenland which indicates that the AMOC is not delivering as much warm water as it used to and the area is cooler. There is also the additional cold, fresh water flowing out of Greenland as the ice melts
The worrying part is that some recent research shows that, if the AMOC flow collapsed, it would cause a 40C drop in the temperature in Norway and a 5C drop in temperature in the UK.​
Although scientists are looking for a tipping point that would collapse the system for centuries, a 14% drop in the conveying of warm water from the Equator to Europe must have a detrimental effect on today’s weather and causing major storms.
There are other aspects af the changing weather pattern such as the slowing polar vortex which causes changes in the flow of weather or causes storms to stall, in position, and either create a drought or excessive rain and floods in this highly populated region.