The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is quite certain Earth will be in trouble if the global temperature exceeds pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius or more.
How can anyone know? According to university research, "Global temperature" is a meaningless concept.
"Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility," says Science Daily, paraphrasing Bjarne Andresen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, one of three authors of a paper questioning the "Validity of a 'global temperature.'".
Science Daily explains how the "Global temperature" is determined.
"The temperature obtained by collecting measurements of air temperatures at a large number of measuring stations around the globe, weighing them according to the area they represent, and then calculating the yearly average according to the usual method of adding all values and dividing by the number of points."
While it's "Possible to treat temperature statistically locally," says Science Daily, "It is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless."
"There are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications."
https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/16/global-temperature-how-can-we-trust-a-statistic-that-might-not-even-exist/
How can anyone know? According to university research, "Global temperature" is a meaningless concept.
"Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility," says Science Daily, paraphrasing Bjarne Andresen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, one of three authors of a paper questioning the "Validity of a 'global temperature.'".
Science Daily explains how the "Global temperature" is determined.
"The temperature obtained by collecting measurements of air temperatures at a large number of measuring stations around the globe, weighing them according to the area they represent, and then calculating the yearly average according to the usual method of adding all values and dividing by the number of points."
While it's "Possible to treat temperature statistically locally," says Science Daily, "It is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless."
"There are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications."
https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/16/global-temperature-how-can-we-trust-a-statistic-that-might-not-even-exist/
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