As far as global temperature goes it’s been a warmish start to the year, though not exceptional. This has led Carbon Brief in its three-monthly “state of the climate” report to predict that this year “is likely” to be as warm as the fourth warmest year since records began about 150 years ago. They say it could be as high as the second or as low as the 12th warmest.

Carbon Brief says, “The first three months of 2018 can give some sense of what to expect for the entire year.” But being based on a quarter of this year’s monthly measurements it could be described as either bold or foolish. Because the prediction is made without a good understanding of what has been happening to the global temperature in the past months it is probably more of the latter.

Nowhere is the Carbon Brief prediction is there any analysis of why 2018 got off to a warm start. Look towards the  Tasman Sea that has been adding to global temperatures since late 2017.

The water temperature in the Tasman Sea is well above normal –  6° C more than average for the start of December. New Zealand’s summer was the hottest on record, Tasmania had its hottest November-January on record. It was exceptionally warm on both sides of the Tasman, more than two degrees above average in December and part of January.

The increase is not due to climate change but to a La Nina climate system. Globally La Nina events are associated with cooling but that is not true in some regions which because of blocking high pressure regions and sometimes a lack of storms allows sea temperature to increase. New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research  meteorologist Ben Noll told newshub nz that the “very impressive marine heatwave” has led to the largest deviation from normal temperatures in the world. “The sea surface temperatures in the Australia-New Zealand region are presently the most anomalous on the globe…typical La Nina signature, but intensity turned up many notches.” He added that there were other factors driving the temperature higher, “La Nina sits in the background as big driver of the change, but it’s at the top of a pyramid of other factors”.

It was so warm that the Australian Government Bureau of and New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research teamed up to release a “special climate statement”. Though why this abnormal weather merits a climate statement seems strange. The hot spot off the Tasman Sea has not been the only one in the past few months.

Recently scientists at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation produced a framework for marine heatwaves. The new classification system ranks them by intensity using four levels. A Category 1 heatwave is the lowest intensity. Under the new system, a heatwave that hit the Mediterranean Sea in 1999 would be considered a Category 1 heatwave. The NE Pacific event of 2013 – 2015 the so-called Blob is a Category 3. A marine heatwave in Western Australia in 2011 would be a Category 4.

The study of marine heatwaves is in its infancy. It is possible they are increasing in frequency and they may be linked to rising sea temperatures. Much more work is needed.

2018 has been warm because of unusual weather which has already subsided. It is not representative of the global temperature for the remainder of the year. There is evidence the oceans are cooling. 

Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com

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June 6, 2018 at 06:35AM

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June 6, 2018 at 06:33AM

People with 8 kids should be told they "surely would not behave that way today." Those considering a third should be accused of self-indulgence.

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June 6, 2018 at 06:24AM

MPs have have a fatal weakness for policies that involve a good backdrop for a photograph. Maria Caulfield, the Conservative MP for Lewes in Sussex, is no exception. Last week she appeared in the obligatory hard-hat-and-hi-viz-jacket combination to give an upbeat speech at the opening of the Newhaven headquarters of the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm, which is currently approaching completion.

No politician would turn down such an opportunity. And that is in spite of increasing awareness in some circles of the shaky economic foundations of the UK’s renewables programme.

Stations currently commissioning, like Rampion, benefit from the fact that even those interested in such matters believe that the whole orgy of subsidies is over. The Renewables Obligation closed to new entrants in 2017, and the moratorium imposed by the Treasury in last year’s Autumn Budget is perhaps the most significant and under-publicised climate policy decision of the last five years or so.

The game is clearly up. But if so, what is Rampion playing at? The developers’ own website tells you that the project has created a number of jobs locally, that it is making a substantial sum available for a local community fund, that it will generate enough electricity for 350,000 homes, that it will prevent the emission of a certain quantity of carbon dioxide, and that they are investing £1.2 billion in the project. Of their likely income you will find nothing.

£1.2 billion is a lot of money, about £3m/MW in fact. That is around four or five times as much as the capital cost of a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT). Sensible companies don’t spend on that scale without a very clear idea of how they will make a return, and Rampion’s owners are about as far from being naive idealists as it gets. E.ON owns 50.1 per cent, the Green Investment Bank, now part of Macquarie Group Limited, has 25 per cent, and, curiously, the North American energy company, Enbridge, whose pipelines move about one fifth of all the natural gas consumed in the United States, owns 24.9 per cent.

What could possibly motivate such level-headed, profit-driven people to throw more than a billion pounds into the sea?

The answer, of course, is subsidies. The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm has a legacy entitlement under the so-called “grace period” of the Renewables Obligation. Ofgem’s public register tells us that this station was accredited on the 26 November 2017. It will therefore receive 1.8 Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) for every one of the approximately 1,400,000 megawatt hours that its owners believe it will generate.

At current ROC prices that will amount to about £126 million pounds a year in subsidy. The wholesale price of the electricity will only add about another £60 million a year, so roughly two thirds of the annual income of the project will be non-market public support. Put another way, if the UK used CCGTs instead of Rampion, it would have almost three times as much electricity for the same cost, and have it when it was needed, rather than when the weather permitted.

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John Constable is the Energy Editor of the Global Warming Policy Forum.

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June 6, 2018 at 06:04AM