Reuters interviews Birkel about tweets sharing inaccurate conclusions drawn from Climate Reanalyzer images
Reuters interviewed Maine state climatologist and University of Maine faculty member Sean Birkel about tweets sharing inaccurate conclusions drawn from images from the Climate Reanalyzer, a platform for visualizing climate and weather datasets that he developed. Birkel, a research assistant professor at the Climate Change Institute and climate services specialist with University of Maine Cooperative Extension, explained how images from the renalyzer do not support false claims that the global temperatures have only risen by 0.1 degrees Celsius between 1979 and 2000. “The 1-day global mean temperature anomaly can fluctuate on the order of 0.1°C day-to-day depending on weather patterns,” Birkel explained. “The CR temperature anomaly map for Friday, Aug 19, 2022 shows the Arctic at +1.1°C and the Northern Hemisphere at +0.7°C — these values are well above the 1979-2000 climate mean. On that same day there are pronounced cold anomalies over the Antarctic (-2.7°C), implying that the global average temperature anomaly on that day was heavily influenced by the particular weather pattern over the Antarctic. But to determine a climate trend it is necessary to examine many decades of temperature data.” Climate Fact Check also reported on the issue.