
🚨🚨UPDATE to the analysis about the role of the observed Earth's albedo decrease in the 21st-Century global warming published by Nikolov & Zeller (2024: mdpi.com/2673-7418/4/3/…). This update employs the latest CERES EBAF 4.2.1 dataset and the most recent timeseries of Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) anomalies provided by 3 surface-based and 3 satellite-based databases covering the period from Mar. 2000 to Dec. 2025. The attached slide compares observed GMST anomalies to modeled (predicted) GMST anomalies generated by Eq. 16 in Nikolov & Zeller (2024). This Equation represents an independent, physics-based model that converts observed changes of albedo and TSI by CERES into global temperature estimates. The CERES-driven GMST estimates are separately compared to both surface- and satellite-based observed GMST timeseries. The new results reaffirm the conclusions reached by Nikolov & Zeller (2024), i.e.: - The observed decrease of planetary albedo and the small increase of TSI explain 100% of the overall warming trend and 89% of the interannual GMST variability during the 21st Century. - There is no evidence for the operation of any "greenhouse-gas radiative forcing" or positive (amplifying) feedbacks in the real climate system. That's because our model (Eq. 16) does not include any GHG radiative forcing or positive feedbacks while fully explaining the observed warming. To our surprise, we found that CERES observations of decreasing albedo and increasing TSI agree much better with surface-based GMST estimates than with satellite-based ones. This is reflected in the correlation coefficients between modeled and observed GMST anomalies for different monitoring platforms shown below. Since CERES measurements of radiative fluxes are completely independent of the systems monitoring the global temperature, the above results suggest that the surface-based GMST datasets are perhaps more accurate than satellite-based ones, which is counterintuitive! This finding offers a new perspective to the long-standing debate about the accuracy of ground- vs. satellite-based measurements of global temperature... Working with real data always reveals surprises!🙂 These results will soon be submitted for publication.





















