As you have no doubt heard, 2023 was the planet’s hottest year on record (a “record” that only goes back about 150 years, with more and more uncertainty and unreliability the farther back you go). Certain it is accurate to say last year was the hottest since we started measuring more precisely by satellites—starting 45 years ago. One of my gurus on this subject, Dr. Roy Spencer (who helped design the NASA temperature tracking satellites) agrees with the NASA result that last year was the hottest of the last 45 years.

But as we reported here last summer, a temperature spike was expected in the aftermath of the huge Hunga-Tonga volcano eruption in the Pacific, so there is reason to have some doubt about whether this new record is a smoking gun for climate change hysterics. Moreover, as Judith Curry notes, there is a variance of 0.2 degrees among the various temperature assessment projects, which is rather large for something considered “settled.”

See this excellent Twitter thread on what it all means from Dr. Robert Rodhe of the BerkeleyEarth Project. Here’s just one entry: