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> Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this year.

Was there an outright study of the "main culprits" part of this? As I recall there was some evidence but then the main discourse was based on a lot of extrapolation by a viral tweet.

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Not to my knowledge, which is why I used the word "suspected" since I think this falls on the "makes intuitive sense, but would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to be completely incorrect" category of hypotheses.

I consider "suspected" to be the least level of evidence while still taking something into consideration as a potential cause. A suspected murderer might not even have been arrested, let alone convicted.

We do know that sulphur emissions have a global cooling effect, and we do know that sulphur emissions recently were reduced, so it's a reasonable hypothesis from first principles.

This is a good overview if you haven’t read it already: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...

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