Clarifying a classic experiment to show science is careful, not confused.

Headline writers are fond of using the accusation that all scientists are “baffled” by some as yet unexplained phenomenon. In truth, it seems more likely that it is the headline writer who is baffled. In the words of Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” “all the science, I don’t understand, it’s just my job five days a week….”

I had reason in August 2024 to examine some research produced by NOAA on daily sea surface temperature readings, which was highlighted early in August 2023 in a BBC news article reporting that average sea surface temperatures had just broken all records. I wondered how things were a year further on and found that since August 2023 the gap between current and previous readings not only remained high but had widened to a peak of about 0.4°C (0.7°F) above the previous year’s recording. The readings were, in fact, the highest ever recorded from March 13, 2023, onward and remained so until mid July 2024 when the 2024 readings finally dropped below the 2023 levels—but only just, and still remained much higher than all the previous years, back to 1981. This clearly warranted further analysis.

As I dug deeper into the data I found that the average of the years 1981 to 2010, shown as the dotted blue line in the figure, was around one third of the way up the full data set and the band covered by two standard deviations (SD) around this average matched the bottom two-thirds of the set. Every year since 2011 had been above the two SD band. On March 13, 2023, the readings took a sharp upward turn and at the time of writing, more than 21 months later, have still not come back down.

This seemed very odd. It is like looking after an old car. If it starts making an unusual whirring noise you might at first want to have a mechanic take a look at it but you may quickly get used to it and soon treat it as the new normal. Later, when it starts with a heavy clunking sound, you are remotivated to visit the shop and have it seen to. It struck me that the sharp upward turn of March 2023 was like the heavy clunking sound, a serious warning that demands action. Yet, the sea surface temperature data had been whirring since 2011 and we had ignored it.

For more than a decade many writers have highlighted a statistic originating in 2004 and reaffirmed in 2013 that states that 97% of “climate scientists” accept that human activities are adversely affecting the Earth’s climate. An update of the 2013 paper raised that figure to “more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers,” based on analysis of more than 88,000 papers published between 2012 and 2020. Despite this, apparently less than 70% of the American public accept that climate change is caused by humans and less than 30% think that almost all climate scientists are in agreement on the issue.

I suspect that the only thing likely to baffle scientists in this regard is why the public can’t see the evidence that is so plainly in front of them.

*Visit www.climatereanalyzer.org for more details, a website provided by the Climate Change Institute of the University of Maine.