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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Yes, but they're trying to figure out if that's where we're at or if this is a temporary blip from the Honga Tonga Honga Ha'apai volcano.
Most volcanoes that size would cool the planet by ejecting a bunch of ash and sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere. But the Tonga volcano was underwater, so it threw a metric shitton of water vapor into the upper atmosphere instead, and this has a warming effect. This is part of the reason for the increase in precipitation on the West Coast of the US this year.
Add this volcano on top of the near simultaneous flip into an El Niño pattern, and they're just not sure how permanent the warming we saw this year is going to be. But any way you go about it, this is really not good. We've just experienced dramatic warming from two things that we can't predict and can't control, on top of the part where we're not doing nearly enough about the things we can control.