banner
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde
@rarohde.bsky.social
7.8K followers 590 following 760 posts
Chief Scientist for @berkeleyearth.org. Physics PhD & data nerd. Usually focused on climate change, fossil fuels, & air quality issues.
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · Nov 22
A new paper led by Sebastian Sippel just appeared in Nature arguing that ocean temperature measurements in the early 20th century have a cold bias.

It's a fun story illustrating the process of scientific discovery, so let me talk about it a bit. 🧵

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Early-twentieth-century cold bias in ocean surface temperature observations - Nature
Independent statistical reconstructions of the global mean surface temperature from either ocean or land data show that existing estimates of early-twentieth-century ocean surface temperatures are too...
www.nature.com
11 94 290
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 6d
According to ChatGPT, despite reaching an "agreement" with the Georgia utility, Form Energy never submitted an application for regulatory approval for a Georgia installation. Instead, they focused on other projects.

Not sure if that means it is dead or just delayed.
1 1
Reposted by Robert Rohde
christinatoms.bsky.social
Christina Toms @christinatoms.bsky.social · 7d
this is great - we’re not gonna scicomm our way out of this
sciencevs.bsky.social
Science Vs @sciencevs.bsky.social · 7d
This moment from our latest episode with science writer @edyong209.bsky.social is 🔥

We asked Ed — how do we talk up the benefits of science in the face of government cuts? He told us that's the wrong approach. 🧪

Listen wherever, or watch on Spotify 👇

open.spotify.com/episode/7Evh...
2 23 44
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 7d
That's right. The Courts have consistently ruled that third parties can not sue to enforce the Hatch Act.

They can submit allegations to the US Office of Special Counsel, but OSC has to initiate any investigations and potential corrective or punitive actions.
1 3
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 7d
Hatch Act is great in principle, but creates no private cause of action.

It relies on the Federal government to enforce it (typically via the US Office of Special Counsel).

Sadly, upholding the law doesn't seem like a government priority right now.
2 4
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 8d
Gift link to NYTimes Article: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/c...
‘Mine, Baby, Mine’: Trump Officials Offer $625 Million to Rescue Coal
www.nytimes.com
6
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 8d
So not only are they repealing limits on mercury and other pollutants but they are also giving the coal industry a half billion dollar bailout?!

Just let the coal power industry die already. Coal is a toxic and expensive power solution that we simply don't need anymore.
Heading and intro of a New York Times article titled "'Mine, Baby, Mine': Trump Officials Offer $625 Million to Rescue Coal.
3 2 23
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 12d
Can anyone here recommend papers that they like which focus on the biases in ERA5 with respect to the measurement of extreme temperature events (e.g. comparing rare temperature extremes in ERA5 to the same events in station data and noting the systematic differences)?
2 2 4
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 14d
I'm aware of issues with missing data, and I'm aware of some of the internal challenges, but I don't have good visibility into how everything is connected or close it is to being resolved.
1 2
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 14d
I'm actually of the opinion that USHCN should be discontinued at this point, to reduce confusion.

The GHCN programs are now NOAA's primary repositories for both US and foreign weather station data.
1 2
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 14d
USHCN hasn't been officially deprecated or marked for end-of-life, so it keeps on chugging along.

But the 1218 stations were selected in 2009 and no new stations have been added to compensate for station closures since then, meaning it has degraded significantly.
2 1 2
Reposted by Robert Rohde
hausfath.bsky.social
Zeke Hausfather @hausfath.bsky.social · 15d
In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong".

Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!
17 370 770
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 14d
BTW, CRUTEM still lists USHCN as a source.

USHCN is pretty archaic at this point. NOAA no longer uses it as the basis for their climate analyses, and a large fraction of the USHCN stations have been discontinued.

If that's your only US network, you might want to consider using a more recent one.
1 1 2
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 14d
Glad to see that this is up and running again.

Less glad that I again have to update all my scripts to deal with another version number change in paths and filenames.
3
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 14d
NCEI is having some issues. Not sure if it will affect you, but there were also unusual glitches and missing data in NCEI-based reports of August station means at locations outside of the USA.
1 1
Reposted by Robert Rohde
billmckibben.bsky.social
Bill McKibben @billmckibben.bsky.social · 15d
At the UN today Trump called climate change the ‘greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.’

Congrats to the clever plotters for enlisting the planet’s glaciers, oceans and forests in their scheme.
17 130 430
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
Anyway, that's my perspective.

I'm not sure if that actually clarifies the situation or not, but I wanted to make my point of view clear because I felt like you seemed to be responding to something other than the point I was actually making.

11/11
1 1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
I don't think IMO2020 played much, if any, role in the warming event that specifically occurred in May / June 2023.

But I do find it plausible that IMO2020 played a minor, but not trivial, role in warming the background state upon which those events occurred.

10/
1 1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
If the 1.65 C extreme in the North Atlantic included ~0.2 C of warming from IMO2020, the amount that needs to be explained by short-term internal variability would be reduced to ~0.45 C, which is large and rare but not shocking or unprecedented.

9/
1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
Independently, one would expect ~0.2 C of warming to have accumulated in the North Atlantic by 2023 due the effects of IMO2020. (Maybe a bit more, maybe less, depending on who is doing the modeling, but plausibly somewhere around there.)

8/
1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
Now maybe 2023 was simply the 1-in-200 year event? A super rare internal variability event capable of a 0.65 C deviation above the long-term trend.

Or maybe there is an additional factor at play?

7/
1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
Long-term global warming contributes about 1.0 C to the 1.65 C total. In the 140 years prior to 2023, short-term variability in the North Atlantic rarely deviated more than 0.4 C from the 30-year LOESS trend and never more than 0.55 C.

So that leaves about 0.1-0.25 C of extraordinary warming.

6/
1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
Let's frame it more concretely. The Northern Hemisphere portion of the Atlantic reached ~1.65 C above the 1850-1900 average in 2023.

5/
1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
From my point of view, the works you are citing are largely unresponsive to my question because they mostly ignore the circumstances of how you got to the warm state leading into 2023.

4/
1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
The question I care about is subtly different. What factors contributed to the record temperatures in North Atlantic (and North Pacific) relative to the late 19th century.

The warm background state is not simply a starting point for me, but rather a major point of the discussion.

3/
1
rarohde.bsky.social
Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 17d
The details of that event (May / June 2023) are obviously interesting, but also pretty obviously down to internal variability within the already warmed background state.

2/
1