Climate scientist interested in theory of how atmospheres work, exoplanets.
New York, NY
Joined April 2013
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We still have scientists confused over the fact extreme precipitation and mean precipitation are pretty much independent.
Shocking -- but global land precipitation is at record lows due to extreme El Niño.
While some climate scientists focus on record high water vapor predicting more extreme precipitaion, the opposite is actually happening.
You could laugh at Dessler's ignorant post, but this is very serious because the lack of tropical latitude precipitation leads to extreme droughts and famines e.g. 1877. This is a dire situation unfolding.
Chris Colose retweeted
The emissions scenarios underlying the next generation of climate model runs that will be featured in the upcoming IPCC 7th Assessment Report are officially out! I have a new explainer over at Carbon Brief taking an in-depth look at what they mean and whats changed (link below)
I only listened to the climate change part but it’s incredible, though not surprising, how bad this is.
unavailable
Chris Colose retweeted
Supplementing this thread with a reminder that the most recent IPCC assessment shows very little consensus as to whether or not El Niño events will increase in amplitude with warming:
"As super El Niño strengthens, study suggests that climate change is intensifying El Ninos" by @borenbears for the @AP /@AP_Climate: [Important data & study; But like UNC's John Bruno, I disagree w/ the authors' interpretation of the data]: independent.co.uk/news/el-ni…
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This response to @ryankatzrosene mostly misses the point. Obviously actual climate scientists/modelers are very interested in obs-model discrepancies and will say how important they are in the same way all scientists do in their fields, but it’s not really surprising that 1/
The other Ryan curiously omits the next sentence in the discussion:
"This poses a challenge to the fidelity of climate models (9), casting doubts on their ability to simulate historical change and project future climate change (39,40)."
This provides an opportunity to dig into reference (9):
Nature 2025: The other climate crisis (Shaw and Stevens) on the accumulation of "discrepancies" between model predictions and observations.
3/ the pattern of warming matters for estimate of climate sensitivity, with the observed pattern leading to “low” estimates as inferred from historical. So the pattern being internal variability, not a forced (my null anyway) doesn’t much other than for the bias in sensitivity
Academics decide (After the revolving door of an idea exceeds a certain # of iterations). It’s fine to say an asteroid might be a UFO or the Earth is 6,000 years old. At least initially. At some point academics move on from bad ideas. An academy open to ideas isn’t a free for all
Chris Colose retweeted
The rise in Niño 3.4 region sea surface temperatures over the past few weeks has been nothing short of astonishing.
We are now hotter than any days during the 1997/1998 super El Niño event, and we are still many months from the peak.
It’s true that “X is warming faster than the global mean” is almost never interesting, since land warms more than water. But it’s not just “warming faster” due to heat capacity. Even at equilibrium land warming is more than the ocean warming, especially the more dry the land is.
Everywhere, it turns out, is warming faster than the rest of the world. You may sense a slight problem with this. The headlines are real, the papers are real, and yet something doesn't add up. Let's take a look. youtube.com/watch?v=j9cDpdTl…
Periodic reminder that science works iteratively through community efforts and convergence/consilience of evidence, not through email exchanges, initial impressions, what one guy “admitted,” etc.
Privately, in his diaries, Doctor Fauci admitted he no longer believed the wet market was the origin of covid. A week later, he convenes a call with 12 scientists, and only two of them think it's definitely animal spillover.
Publicly, he comes out against lab leak and presses the Proximal Origins paper to find in favor of animal spillover. Seems bad.
Chris Colose retweeted
Musk continues to peddle the lie that no one has died from USAID’s cuts. His latest excuse? Private donors and NGOs could’ve filled the gap. But DOGE abruptly terminated 83% of USAID programs, leaving no time for a responsible handover. They didn’t care.
.@elonmusk says zero people died from DOGE cuts to USAID. The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, in his own words, helped feed the policy to the woodchipper last year, when he was the head of America’s Department of Government Efficiency. In an exclusive interview, @zannymb, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, challenges his claims: bit.ly/3RNqFnH
This administration does things everyday that would be impeachable by any normal standard, but we’re so numb to the corruption now.
BREAKING NYT:
Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states "based solely" on whether they backed Trump in the 2024 election.
nytimes.com/2026/07/24/busin…
What “viewpoint diversity” really means outside the normal scope of what already occurs in academia.
Of all the nonsense Chris has peddled this is likely the most prominent, and he’s been told of these issues before. A telling response of how science works is how one responds to such critiques, and corrects the record, or if the improper analysis continues to be recycled.
There are serious issues here but not straightforwardly related to enhanced political diversity in the form of more conservative views. Unfortunately, human nature is tribal and people make hiring decisions based on worldview, looks, humor, “fit.” 1/
5/ it’s not clear, for example, why astronomy needs more conservatives or Marxists or Trumpists or Antifa members. You get credit for publishing on some signal you found with James Webb. Maybe sociology can benefit more, I don’t know, but it’s a pretty narrow range of relevance.