by Judith Curry
Update: New comment from Xie
My mind has been blown by a new paper just published in Nature.
Just when I least expected it, after a busy day when I took a few minutes to respond to a query from a journalist about a new paper just published in Nature [link to abstract]:
Recent global warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling
Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie
Abstract. Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century, challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming. Various mechanisms have been proposed for this hiatus in global warming, but their relative importance has not been quantified, hampering observational estimates of climate sensitivity. Here we show that accounting for recent cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific reconciles climate simulations and observations.We present a novel method of uncovering mechanisms for global temperature change by prescribing, in addition to radiative forcing, the observed history of sea surface temperature over the central to eastern tropical Pacific in a climate model. Although the surface temperature prescription is limited to only 8.2% of the global surface, our model reproduces the annual-mean global temperature remarkably well with correlation coefficient r 50.97 for 1970–2012 (which includes the current hiatus and a period of accelerated global warming). Moreover, our simulation captures major seasonal and regional characteristics of the hiatus, including the intensified Walker circulation, the winter cooling in northwestern North America and the prolonged drought in the southernUSA.Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to aLa-Nina-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.
The authors used the GFDL coupled global climate model. They conducted three simulations:
The historical (HIST) experiment is forced with observed atmospheric composition changes and the solar cycle. In Pacific Ocean–Global Atmosphere (POGA) experiments, SST anomalies in the equatorial eastern Pacific (8.2% of the Earth’s surface) follow the observed evolution (see Methods). In POGA-H, the radiative forcing is identical to HIST, and in the POGA control experiment (POGA-C) it is fixed at the 1990 value [natural internal variability only]. Outside the equatorial eastern Pacific, the atmosphere and ocean are fully coupled and free to evolve.
The results in terms of global-average surface temperature are shown in Fig 1 below:
In Fig 1 a, you can see how well the POGA H global average surface temperature matches the observations particularly since about 1965 (note central Pacific Ocean temperatures have increasing and significant uncertainty prior to 1980).
What is mind blowing is Figure 1b, which gives the POGA C simulations (natural internal variability only). The main ‘fingerprint’ of AGW has been the detection of a separation between climate model runs with natural plus anthropogenic forcing, versus natural variability only. The detection of AGW has emerged sometime in the late 1970’s , early 1980’s.
Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998 (main warming period in the latter part of the 20th century) for both POGA H and POGA C:
- POGA H: 0.68C (natural plus anthropogenic)
- POGA C: 0.4C (natural internal variability only)
I’m not sure how good my eyeball estimates are, and you can pick other start/end dates. But no matter what, I am coming up with natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming.
Like I said, my mind is blown. I have long argued that the pause was associated with the climate shift in the Pacific Ocean circulation, characterized by the change to the cool phase of the PDO. I have further argued that if this is the case, then the warming since 1976 was heavily juiced by the warm phase of the PDO. I didn’t know how to quantify this, but I thought that it might account for at least half of the observed warming, and hence my questioning of the IPCC’s highly confident attribution of ‘most’ to AGW.
Although this was not a specific conclusion of the paper (the focused on the period 2002-2012), the conclusion jumps out from their Fig 1 (and my eyeball analysis).
Climate models are notoriously poor at simulating natural internal variability. My recent post Climate model simulations of the AMO provides some insights here. The bottom line is that if I were to pick a single climate model with which to conduct these experiments, I would choose the GFDL model. The interesting thing from a scientific perspective is that specifying the surface temperature in this region seems to anchor the coupled atmosphere/ocean circulations in a way that not only gives a better simulation of global average surface temperature, but also provides better simulations of the variability of key regional circulation features.
How might this anchor work? Well, this suggests a number of additional climate model experiments. But a recent paper by Marcia Wyatt entitled A secularly varying hemispheric climate signal propagation previously detected in instrumental and proxy data not detected in CMIP3 data base. I don’t want to go into this in any detail here since Marcia has a new paper that is almost published, which will be the topic of its own thread. But my idea here is that the network of connections is anchored in a few regions (notably equatorial Pacific, Norwegian Seas, Eurasian Arctic Shelf Seas), and numerically constraining what is going on in these regions can anchor the hemispheric circulations.
Checking in with Uncertain T. Monster
After my initial exuberance of reading this paper, I forced myself to step back and ask what might be wrong with this story? Here is what I came up with:
If you accept the following two premises:
- climate models are useful for untangling natural from anthropogenic climate variability/change
- the missing heat is being sequestered in the deep ocean for the past decade or so
then an inescapable corollary seems to be:
- the same natural internal variability (primarily PDO) that is responsible for the pause is a major and likely dominant cause (at least at the 50% level) of the warming in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Does this explanation rule out contributions to the pause from stratospheric aerosols, solar cooling, etc.? No, but I am not seeing the potential from these forcing mechanisms to dominate over the PDO given the ‘fingerprint’ evidence.
Are climate models useful for untangling anthropogenic climate change and natural internal variability? I have argued on a previous thread that the answer is no, i.e. climate models are not fit for this purpose. However, the POGA simulations, which seem to be successful at simulating natural internal variability, might be a better framework for interpreting AGW detection and attribution.
Apart from the actual results, the significance of this paper is the novel experimental design. Using climate models to understand how the climate system works is arguably the best use of climate models. Here is to hoping that this paper will stimulate some more interesting climate model experiments.
Update: new comment from Xie
Marcel Krok has obtained a comment from Xie: Xie reacts on Curry. Key comments:
Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998 natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming.
1975 was a La Nina year, and 1998 followed the strongest El Nino in the instrumental record. My estimate indicates that the El Nino-La Nina difference accounts for 0.2-0.3 C difference of her 0.4 C in POGA-C. So for multi-decadal trend, PDO accounts for only 0.1-0.2 C for the longer period of 1950-2010. El Nino and La Nina are part of the short climate cycle of ENSO, averaged out over several decades. Our paper noted that the warm phase of the tropical Pacific Decadal Oscillation contributed to the fast warming during the 1970s-1990s.
JC: I thought that it might account for at least half of the observed warming, and hence my questioning of the IPCC’s highly confident attribution of ‘most’ to AGW.
I have a different take on this. The IPCC conclusion applies to centennial warming from 1880. Much of the 0.8 C warming since 1900 is indeed due to anthropogenic forcing, because natural variability like PDO and AMO has been averaged out over this long period of time.
Our results concern the effect of tropical Pacific SST on global mean temperature over the past 15 years. It is large enough to offset the anthropogenic warming for this period, but the effect weakens as the period for trend calculation gets longer simply because it is oscillatory and being averaged out.
JC comments: I’m pleased that Xie has responded to what I have written. El Nino and La Nino don’t seem to me to be easily separable from the PDO. Picking ENSO neutral years at the beginning and end of the 30 yr period circa the 1970’s to 2000 still shows a strong increase during the period.
Also, I am interested that Xie seems to refer to the forthcoming attribution statement for the AR5, which apparently refers to the period since 1880. Which is different from the AR4, which referred to the latter half of the 20th century.
Natural variability: it happens. How can anyone be surprised?
The blunder is worse than it appears. CO2 is only responsible for about half the ostensible forcing with black carbon, methane, nitrous oxide, and CFCs making up the other half.
The moral of the story is that CO2 is plant food. :-)
“Using climate models to understand how the climate system
worksdoes not work is arguably the best use of climate models. ”Fixed that for ya!
If one believes HADSST2-SH, then between 1945 and 1946 the surface temperature of the southern hemispheres oceans dropped by 0.447 degrees. That is a lot of heat disappearing, oddly the HADCRU4-SH only shows a drop of 0.15 degrees on land.
Wigley and Jones already discussed that to fodge with the ocean climate data sets in order to interpret the change so that it still takes into account some variations of the PDO, but not enough to keep CO2 as the main forcing.
See Climategate:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.ca/2011/12/climategate-email-warmist-tom-wigley.html
I wonder if this particular penny will ever drop at the Guardian…..
Guardian: – Climate Change – Cooling Pacific has slowed temperature rise
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/28/cooling-pacific-dampened-global-warming
now, just possibly a warming Pacific caused a proportion of the temp rise in the 1980’s – 1990’s?
but no, John Abraham’s (his and Cook’s 97% consensus blog) is spinning it..
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/28/global-warming-oceans-known-unknowns
Time for a climategate email quote?
“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably “
That’s probably my favorite climategate quote.
I quote: “…
now, just possibly a warming Pacific caused a proportion of the temp rise in the 1980′s – 1990′s?”
No way, that warming does not even exist. You are among the multitude who does not know that this warming was faked because you did not read my book in 2010. I said so in the book and lo and behold – two years later GISTEMP, HadCRUT, and NCDC stopped showing this fake warming and adjusted their data to conform to satellites. It was done secretly and no explanation was given. Now what do you think caused them to act in unison about something they don’t want to explain?
As Judith points out, they did not actually say that the warming up to 2000 would have been juiced by the PDO. If they had done that, this paper may not have appeared in Nature. Or perhaps they had that statement and the reviewers made them soften it.
This is a very good sign that real science (minus most of the politics) will come back soon.
Time for another volcano.
If this 8.2% matches so well why don’t we see some sign of this in parts of the other 91.8%. People have been looking for a long time. Remember the Bristlecone was right for several hundred years.
Seems an important paper. Thank you for highlighting it.
The implications it carries seem inconsistent with the AGW narrative currently endorsed by most government institutions.
So the paper will either get a forceful debunking from the IPCC acolytes or it will be aggressively ignored.
This paper really tells us that the Earth system has continued to gain energy, but that energy is simply not been passed from ocean to atmosphere as readily over the past 15 years or so. It is not dissimilar that what Trenberth told NPR.
@r gates
‘Actually captn., it seems the oceans are at their warmest in several thousand years, and continue to warm’
Excellent.
Warm seas are good for living things. Cold seas less so.
R. Gates, yes it does, the oceans have been warming at a rate of about 0.8C per ~316 years for some time now.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0Ljwh9NTkS0/Ubx9dAfZtAI/AAAAAAAAInM/UROadZys8_k/s800/giss%2520and%2520ersst%2520with%2520ipwp%2520from%25200%2520ad.png
Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, century scale ENSO events. Little Ice Age.
Actually captn., it seems the oceans are at their warmest in several thousand years, and continue to warm:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110127/full/news.2011.52.html
Actually, the oceans have a seesaw where the SH oceans warm more during this phase of the precessional cycle. If you look at the EPICA CO2 reconstruction you can see CO2 reverse and start an increase ~7000 years ago. Personally, figuring out the past 2000 years kinda trumps the more distant past and the new IPCC report should have a paleo estimate for the past 2000 years that look a heck of a lot like the IPWP by Oppo.
You should also remember that there are more than this paper mentioning century and longer ENSO like variability.
Human Industrial activity can’t be blamed for making the Arctic ocean as warm or warmer a couple thousand years ago. This is rather plain evidence that natural cycles have caused warming before during the Holocene and the same natural factors may be at play right now too.
David;
Yes. If natural variation ever dominates, it always dominates.
Well, duh!
=======
Who turned on the heat?
The unsuspected global warming culprit, El Nino
Southern Oscillation. See Bob Tisdale 2012.
http://beththeserf.wordpress.com/
Beth, I hate to tell you that Bob Tisdale is wrong. ENSO is a periodic oscillation of ocean water in the equatorial Pacific powered by the trade winds. El Nino is its warm phase, La Nina its cool phase. As much as an El Nino warms the atmosphere a La Nina that follows cools it. It all balances out and no warmth is left over to create that imaginary warming of his. Read “What Warming?” pp. 23-29.
Dr. Curry, Are you saying that the ocean below the cool spot is absorbing the heat and that’s how the ocean retains heat? I’m only guessing here.
I like your perspective here Judith. The additional benefit of the pause is a point I’ve brought up a few times lately– it is making everyone really take a look at both the natural variabililty that could have lead to the pause, but also the real contribution of natural variability to the warming of the the last quarter of the 20th Century.
A few overall big take-aways for me:
1) This kind of study continues to reinforce the notion that natural cyclical changes in ocean to atmosphere energy transfers are a very signficant potential reason for both the pause (as the ocean has retained more energy) and part of the big warming during the 1976-1998 period. This really is exactly what Trenberth and others have been saying, though may may not so readily admit that at least 50% of the 1976-1998 warming was because of the warming.
2) There is no reason to assume (and some very good reason actually to think the opposite) that the underlying increases in Earth’s overall energy continued unabated during the past 15 years or so, but has been simply muted by the energy being retained by the oceans.
3) While we may like to settle on some figure (like 50%) of the warming being from these natural variations in ocean-atmosphere energy transfers, it only makes sense that this is a moving target as GH gases continue to increase. Thus, perhaps natural variations were 60% of the warming during the 70’s, and 55% during the 80’s, and maybe 50% during the 90’s. The increasing external forcing from GH gases would cause the contribution from anthropogenic forcing to make up ever larger percentages of the warming in future periods when the oceans are releasing more energy to the atmosphere.
In my point #2 above, the last sentence should have read:
“This really is exactly what Trenberth and others have been saying, though may may not so readily admit that at least 50% of the 1976-1998 warming was because of natural ocean-atmsophere energy flux cycles.
I also forgot to add that getting some real feel for the actual energy imbalance going on in the Earth system seems a better approach to talking about climate sensitivity than focusing on what we’ve now all recgonized are some very fickle tropospheric temperatures. This myopic approach can mislead many into believing that somehow the Earth system somehow magically stopped gaining energy over the past 15 years. It seems pretty likely that wasn’t the case at all. GH gases never sleep.
Right and the ocean energy flux has longer time scale natural variability. The GFDL models have been making progress instead of excuses.
Do you have formal certfication in prevarication or is just a hobby?
David Springer,
Anything of scientific value to add– to anything, anywhere?
Neither CERES or ARGO have long enough records to cover the 1998/2001 climate shift.
Project Earthshine and ERBS are suggestive.
e.g – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=16
The only way ‘get a feel’ for energy budgets is with data. It does look very much like the Earth ‘magically’ stopped gaining energy after 1998.
Chief Hydro said:
“It does look very much like the Earth ‘magically’ stopped gaining energy after 1998.”
_____
It might if you looked at the wrong data and from the wrong perspective. Despite your suggestions otherwise, the oceans gained somewhere around 0.5 x10^22 Joules/year of energy (down to 2000 meters) on average up unitl around 2000 or so, at which time, globally over the past decade they’ve gained somewhere around 1.0 x 10^22 Joules/year (down to 2000 meters). Not surprisingly (and quite related) this is exactly during the period of the troposheric “pause”. And as studies such as the one that is the topic of this post indicate, during this period, a sizable part of the Pacific was passing less energy off to the troposphere.
In ARGO from 2005 to 2010 – the increase is about 0.3E+22 J/yr. This is pretty much consistent with CERES and SORCE over the period – with the changes all in shortwave. I would suggest that earlier ocean temp data – especially to 2000m – might be a little lacking and that the splice between the old and new data looks horrendously unlikely. I suggest that the planet is again cooling with more recent increases in cloud shown in the Palle and Laken paper.
Oceans gained energy to 1998 – pretty much in line with changes in ERBS net radiant flux. Which again was all in shortwave as a result of cloud radiative forcing.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
The interesting bit however is the increase in cloud in the 1998/2001. Here it is in ISCCP-FD.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/SWupnotes_zps3f1ab841.jpg.html?sort=3&o=34
But it shows in Project Earthshine and ERBS as well. The 1976/77 shift shows in COADS – which again is consistent with ISCCP-FD
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/SWupnotes_zps3f1ab841.jpg.html?sort=3&o=34
We can in fact see what happened to ocean heat content in the critical period between 1998 and 2003 in the Wong et al Fig 7 – ocean heat content here is based on annual steric sea level changes. The ocean heat content was less in 2003 than at the peak in 1998. ARGO suggests that the rebound in heat content since is entirely insufficient to make up the decline.
So you see the actual data tells a story and it is a little more nuanced than simple minded narratives and wildly incorrect numbers.
Chief Hydro,
Rather than your upside down, wildly biased narratives, I’ll go with solid science, such as expressed in this quote:
“[17] The magnitude of the warming trend is consistent with observational estimates, being equivalent to an average 0.47 ± 0.03 W m–2 for the period 1975–2009. There is large decadal variability in the heat uptake, the latest decade being significantly higher (1.19 ± 0.11 W m–2) than the preceding record. Globally this corresponds to 0.84 W m–2, consistent with earlier estimates [Trenberth et al., 2009]. In an observing system experiment where Argo is withdrawn, the ocean heating for the last decade is reduced (0.82 ± 0.10 W m–2), but is still significantly higher than in previous decades. The estimation shows depths below 700 m becoming much more strongly involved in the heat uptake after 1998, and subsequently accounting for about 30% of the ocean warming.”
Which comes from this excellent paper:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/full
Your fictional causality is upside down there Chief Hydro, constantly mistaking the tail for the dog.
Found the missing heat in CERES? It is all in shortwave.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=118
Ocean heat content increase as I said in ARGO was fairly modest as was sea level rise. This is the best data available. Results for the last decade 3 and more times larger than ARGO are questionable. I’d question the XBT/ARGO splice for a start.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/vonSchuckmannampLTroan2011-fig5PG_zpsee63b772.jpg.html?sort=3&o=40
But really the interesting period is the 1998/2001 climate shift. Ocean heat content peaking in 1998 and declining since. Just like the surface. All in the shortwave.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
This is consistent with the pattern of cloud cover in the recent and excellent Palle and Laken paper. I recommend it highly.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=17
http://www.benlaken.com/documents/AIP_PL_13.pdf
The interesting bit is the climate shift of 1998/2001 I repeat. And it is – I repeat – covered by the Wong et al 06 paper which shows ERBS net and ocean heat content from Josh Willis.
So to summarise – you have an ‘excellent’ paper that on the basis of reanalysis show unlikely rates of ocean warming? Nothing in the way of attribution at all? And then you pompously pontificate about 1 bit of dubious science as opposed to the dozen reputable sources on multiple aspects of the problem I have linked to? RAOTFFL
R Gates the skeptical warmist: “This really is exactly what Trenberth and others have been saying, though may may not so readily admit that at least 50% of the 1976-1998 warming was because of natural ocean-atmsophere energy flux cycles.
NOT exactly. It might be what you or Trenberth wish he had said, but it is not what he said.
Chief Hydrologist: I’ve blogged your informative comments here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/ohc-cloud-and-the-infamous-2003-data-splice-between-xbt-and-argo/
Heh, Matt, ‘L’esprit d’escalier’. The stairway to hidden deep ocean heat, not to Heaven.
===========
“This really is exactly what Trenberth and others have been saying”
This is exactly what Trenberth has never said. The Thermogeddonists hate the idea of cyclical variations.
You obviously have not a clue what you are talking about.
R. Gates,
Anything of scientific value to add– to anything, anywhere?
Keep moving that goal post R. Sooner or later you’ll get it between the uprights.
R. Gates, the skeptical warmist: The additional benefit of the pause is a point I’ve brought up a few times lately– it is making everyone really take a look at both the natural variabililty that could have lead to the pause, but also the real contribution of natural variability to the warming of the the last quarter of the 20th Century.
I agree.
Matt, as long as “everyone,” including CAGW proponents, is indeed making an unbiased look at the role of natural variability.
Faustino. Everyone is biased, including scientists but climate scientists seem unable to allow for this when prognosticating on future climate trends and their hand in hand advocacy of carbon reduction policies.
R. Gates the Skeptical Warmist | August 28, 2013 at 7:25 pm |
You speak of “…big warming during the 1976-1998 period…” and thereby take in disparate temperature regions that need to be kept separate. First of all, the super El Nino of 1998 which you include is sui generis and does not belong into any temperature average. Its peak is twice as high as other El Nino peaks that precede it and is arguably the highest peak in a century. In 1976 there was a slight warming, yes, thanks to the PDO phase change from its cool to warm mode. It raised global temperature about 0.2 degrees Celsius and was over by 1980. There was no more warming after that until the super El Nino arrived but this is not what standard ground-based temperature curves showed. According to them the eighties and the nineties were a warming period called the “late twentieth century warming” where temperature rose at the rate of 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade. Comparing it to satellites I determined that it was a fake and said so when my book came out in 2010. Result: two years later GISTEMP, HadCRUT, and NCDC stopped showing this fake warming and aligned their data with satellites. It was done secretly and no explanation was given. This has one further consequence. The only warming during the entire satellite era since 1979 was a step warming that followed the super El Nino of 1998. In three years it raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius and then stopped. But it was impossible to even see it as long as that fake late twentieth century warming covered it up.The temperature history of your period now involves the short warming from 1976 to the beginning of the satellite era, followed by eighteen years of no warming at all until the super El Nino arrives. The super El Nino is the highest temperature point in a century but it must not be averaged in with anything. It is followed by the step warming of oceanic origin and that then initiates the current warming pause. While there is no warming now all twenty-first century years are warmer than any twentieth century years except for the super El Nino of 1998. There are fraudulent attempts to call this temperature differential a warming when these warm temperatures are nothing more than a consequence of the short-lived step warming at the turn of the century.
One of the other things this experiment did is to throw F&R out the window. They claimed that ENSO had a modest effect and wasn’t enough to bend the curve much. Their estimates of the effects of ENSO (as proxied by MEI) indicates that its cooling effects are modest and brief — 0.2 C at most, for a year or so.
By contrast, looking at the first graph, above, the addition of ENSO has had a sustained effect (eight years) on the model’s predicted temperature that has continued to increase to 0.3 C cooling at present. (Making the prediction more accurate.) Much different from F&R, and showing how ridiculously low the results of their simplistic calculation were.
F&R was a joke
Not really. It was along simliar lines– trying to take out natural variability to see what the underlying warming is and looking at ocean to atmosphere energy flux (i.e. ENSO) as one reason for much of that natural variability. This study just looks at a different part of the ocean-atmosphere energy flux. No one doubts that 1998 was such a warm year because the super El Nino.
What one ought to ask themselves is why was the last La Nina year the warmest La Nina year on record? What does this tell us about the underlying forcing causing the warmer temps duirng periods in which the atmosphere is in general getting less energy from the ocean?
No, it was a joke. Removing a “trend” after it has been detrended without knowing what response times may be applicable is mathturbation.
R Gates: Yes, F&R was a joke. They did a simplistic linear regression with questionable proxies and attributed everything other than their admittedly short-term proxies to “the global warming signal”. As I pointed out, this latest model experiment shows that their “estimates” were significantly off, both in terms of amount and sustained effect. F&R is science at the undergraduate sophomore level, not something that should have been published.
Climate deniers have been wrongly comparing global temperature in El Nino years with La Nina years for years without factoring in the fact La Nina years are biased cooler than El Nino years.
These climate skeptics then have the gall to complain that F&R, who bothered to factor in ENSO influence, had done it too simply, when the climate skeptics hadn’t even factored it in at all.
There’s a reason climate deniers attack F&R and it owes more to denial than a legitimate reason.
F&R was an extension of earlier work by Lean & Rind How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006.
Lean&Rind used a long enough period for reaching statistically robust results. F&R used too short a period that resulted to a fit that failed seriously immediately after the period used in the paper (they used all data available at the time). That’s direct evidence on the fact that F&R was based on overfitting to too little data. That conclusion could be made also from the paper itself.
Ah, a voice with timbre.
=========
lolwot | August 28, 2013 at 8:27 pm | says:
“Climate deniers have been wrongly comparing global temperature in El Nino years with La Nina years for years without factoring in the fact La Nina years are biased cooler than El Nino years.”
Just where do you dig up nonsense like this? I prescribe you to read my book “What Warming?” pages 23 to 29 and learn what ENSO is. That will be a gift to you from a climate denier so that you don’t have to make a worse idiot of yourself in the future.
We have been factoring it is for a decade at least and are now at least a decade past the space cadets who continue with the sport post hoc rationalisation.
Not warming numbnut? It is not warming for a decade to three more.
A very interesting post Judith. As you have said, lets not get carried away by any confirmation bias we might have, because the time period from 1970 to 2012 used for hindcasting is too short to allow for the influence of any natural cycles greater than decadel ones to be traced. Hence how confident can we be about any prediction of future climate from this model?
Good point. Half the warming since 1850 is rebound from the Little Ice Age which is cyclical in centuries not decades. The other half is an illusion resulting from a shorter term multi-decadal oscillilation which just happened to be on the warming side of the cycle concommitant with the beginning of the satellite temperature record which is the only source of data able to discriminate a global average trend measured in hundredth’s of a degree per decade.
CO2 is plant food.
Again David Springer, anything of any scientific value to add, or just the regurgitation of predigested denialist talking points?
More than half the warmth between 1976 and 1998 was added in 1976/1977 and 1997/1998 in ENSO. The rest was about 0.1 degrees C/decade and was the PDO.
Give it up gatesy – you are reduced to blathering nonsense.
Chief Hydro:
You have potential to grasp these things, but you simply seem incapable of overcoming your willful ignorance. The oceans have continued gaining energy through the past 4 decades of ENSO cycles, PDO, AMO, etc. These cycles simply dictate the rate of flow from ocean to atmosphere, even thought the net flow is always from ocean to atmosphere. Slight changes in the rate of flow from ocean to atmosphere affect tropospheric temperatures, but have no impact on the overall rate of accumulation in the system. The energy imbalance of the Earth remains set on accumulate, and to a very high degree of probability (less just say, around 95%) this accumulation is from increasing GH gases.
Reject reality and substitute your own? I guess that sums up space cadets.
Here is ocean heat content and ERBS.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
Ocean heat content – and surface temperature – increased to 1998 with declining cloud cover and fell somewhat after that.
So it seems you are – well – totally wrong. But that’s not totally unexpected.
R Gates the skeptical warmist: The energy imbalance of the Earth remains set on accumulate, and to a very high degree of probability (less just say, around 95%) this accumulation is from increasing GH gases.
the first part of your sentence remains to be seen, and the high degree of probability is merely your unsupported opinion.
Peter & Judith
How well can their method take half the data and forecast/hindcast the other half?
How much anthropogenic warming or climate sensitivity is required to so forecast/hindcast?
David Hagen your first question is a good one and would be worth doing in the context of verification of the results underlying the Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie paper.
Your second question is not clear as the GFDL coupled global climate model they used would have assumed values of these parameters plugged in?
Peter Davies
Thanks for the encouragement.
While there are numerous parameters, nominally climate sensitivity can be grouped into natural and anthropogenic components.
Presumably the relative proportion of these in the climate sensitivity will improve/worsen the forecast/hindcast fit from each half the data to the other half. Thus I would expect there to be a range giving the best fit while values away from those proportions would progressively worsen the forecasts. cf Willis Eschenback Climate Sensitivity Deconstructed
OMG! Say it ain’t so!
I always thought you were pretty smart.
This sounds like a somewhat “scruffy” approach–run the model according to first principles, but then stick in by hand one (nominally endogenous) variable trajectory for their specific equatorial Pacific zone. Presumably, then, the “free range” model does not accurately produce this localized cooling, which is why they have to insert it by hand. But then one wonders what happens if other non-predicted regions were instead hand corrected–is their Pacific spot special or could one pin down other parts of the surface and generate even better fits to the data?
And then the big question–what causes the anomalous oscillation in the first place? They’re basically treating it as if it were a forcing, but as Mosher likes to point out, it’s just a wiggle in the data without some causal story. Putting ad hoc restrictions on endogenous variables makes me itch, even though it may be pragmatically good for forecasting purposes.
Sure. This is just more curve fitting. All the smart people know the models overestimate warming because they don’t handle clouds correctly. A tiny change in global average albedo translates to a large change in global average temperature. Negative cloud feedback neutralizes CO2 warming except where it’s so cold and/or dry that there are few clouds.
It actually has a causal story in the GFDL models, They have up to 150 year ocean heat transport pseudo-oscillations, meridional and zonal impact due to ocean heat transport and shifting westerlies due to ITCZ drift. As far as re-calibrating a model for various initial conditions or shoving more aerosol forcing down its troat, it really comes down to which approach better represents reality.
You seem to be saying they ARE using equatorial SST as in input to the model. I find this a good use of a model – it establishes a link in a chain. Now, if they can only figure out, as you say, why the SST varies. That could be due to cloud modulation, I’m guessing. Could be something else. But still, it sounds like a step forward.
People have been looking at ECG’s for 100 years and test subjects have had their hearts monitored in 3D imagers at the same time the ECG is taken. Almost all diagnosis is based on phenomenology, rather than boot-strapping from first principles.
You can think of it as running a “chaotic” model but constraining the trajectory in a very minor way. running it through a knot hole. The fact you can do this, the fact that you can proscribe only 8% of the temperature and produce a much better result indicates, at least, that this particular area needs to be understood more systematically.
So its not “tuning” in the ordinary sense of the word used by modelers.
Steven Moshser: You can think of it as running a “chaotic” model but constraining the trajectory in a very minor way. running it through a knot hole. The fact you can do this, the fact that you can proscribe only 8% of the temperature and produce a much better result indicates, at least, that this particular area needs to be understood more systematically.
Well said. Or, in other words, “I agree”.
“The fact you can do this, the fact that you can proscribe only 8% of the temperature and produce a much better result indicates, at least, that this particular area needs to be understood more systematically”.
Spot on!
Lucia has a post up explaining the dubiousity involved. Basically there is a well spotted coincidence, nothing more or less. Hoping for it to be the climate pot of gold is wishful thinking.
There are thousands of other areas endlessly graphed. Put them all together with this and they are the global temperature. Take them away and this one area is representative if the whole?
I don’t think so.
When will Lucia be submitting her work to a peer reviewed paper? Or is she afraid to make it any more than an easy and trivial blog post?
When will the “Team” stop hindering papers that are not supportive of their ideas?
“When will Lucia be submitting her work to a peer reviewed paper? Or is she afraid to make it any more than an easy and trivial blog post?” Why do you have to talk like that? I recall Lucia has said that she is thinking of trying to submit this as a paper; obviously that takes a while and the delay is not a sign of cowardice. Will you apologize for your implied insults if she submits it?
But anyhow I have the reply I made to Michael Tobis when he made the same suggestion: So peer-review it. Bring your friends and let them review it too. If it’s wrong, refute it in the comments. If you can’t, then it’s probably right. Are you used to places like RealClimate where skeptical comments vanish? Lucia doesn’t do that; there are lengthy and detailed discussions there and I have never heard a complaint that a serious comment was deleted. Nick Stokes posts there all the time and fights with people, seems to do okay. He does the same at Steve McIntyre’s blog. If you don’t think Nick is expert enough, bring someone who is.
I don’t understand why the answer to skeptical blogs is: Your work doesn’t count unless you can get three of Us to sign off on it. That kind of nonsense ended with Climategate. We all read the emails where They were making sure that the bad guys wouldn’t get their stuff published.
There is an internet and anyone can publish, and if they are convincing, people will be convinced. But if you want to do away with all those evil deniers convincing people, there is a simple solution. it isn’t sneering at them without addressing their scientific points. It isn’t telling us we shouldn’t listen to them unless you okayed it. It isn’t even “refuting” them from the distance of your own blogs (I mean you, Tamino and Deltoid) where we all know that if they reply their comments will disappear. The solution is: Refute them on Lucia’s blog, or McIntyre’s blog. It shouldn’t be hard if their points are so bad.
I’ve been reading their blogs for a while now, and I haven’t seen that happen, mostly. People show up and argue, and they answer. Generally they do well. Sometimes the other posters do well also. I don’t come away with any impression that they are less expert than the ones who come to disagree, but rather that it is a discussion between equals. Therefore if I hear someone show up and say, “Her? She isn’t peer-reviewed, so she’s not really anybody”, I get exactly the opposite impression – you are the one who can’t recognize science, and are trying to suppress a scientist because you don’t like the message.
If you want to fix that impression, do it. Don’t tell me about peer review. Refute their work, in front of them where they can reply, and do such a good job that the rest of us can see it clearly. Sorry, but it’s a new world and those are the new rules.
@Miker613 – Thank you for an excellent comment.
David’s whole schtick is the Argument to Authority as represented by pal reviewed climate science. The argument is fallacious when the authority is wrong, as the settled consensus is.
And he broadcasts his fallacy on big block billboards. What’s the frequency look like, David?
=======================
Dang, I’m trying to beat you at tenderness, but all I find is tender points.
=========
> If you can’t, then it’s probably right.
This puts lots of responsibilities on those implied by the “you”.
This also presumes that scientists should abide by XCKD’s call of duty:
http://xkcd.com/386/
Finally, this excludes possibilities where nobody’s right.
***
Science is more a race than a boxing match. Blog science should be too. Display of formal power can be vulgar in both cases. Some auspices show more restraint.
That I don’t voice my opinion on other parts of miker’s comment might not mean that everything’s alright. It might mean that I agree with the gist of it. It might mean that there’s so much to do and so little time too.
***
When comes a refutation, it would be nice for it not to be sent into oblivion.
Lucia had not read the paper, and had only her first prejudices to tell (She made that fully clear). Thus her post adds very little to the discussion, the thread may grow to something more substantive in time.
“This puts lots of responsibilities on those implied by the “you”.” Willard, that’s true. What I meant to say is: If there is a contest taking place for the Hearts and Minds of the skeptical public, one of the main battlegrounds must be the skeptical blogs. Speaking as a denizen of climateaudit, judithcurry, Lucia’s blog, I’m trying to explain how my impression is formed, and how someone might be able to alter it, and what won’t work. If a believer in AGW wants to really make an impact, refuting Steve McIntyre _on his blog_ is the way to do it, a million times better than preaching to the choir at realclimate.
Again, what doesn’t work: my general impression is that McIntyre tends to make mincemeat of distant challenges, with his infinite documentation of all the details.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/10/evasions-and-fantasy-at-real-climate/
One example like that, with following the links and seeing who is reporting accurately, was enough for me to conclude that realclimate isn’t reliable – and it happens repeatedly. Of course, most commenters at those other blogs never read his counter-refutation, and one will continue to see links on how McIntyre is “refuted over and over”. None of it does anything to improve my impression of who are the real scientists.
They said variable climate and Pacific Ocean. also.
I’m not clear on something. Are they using SST as in INPUT to the model?
Yes – initialised modeling.
It seems to my casual reading that they are running the model as always, but are overriding (some of) the Pacific temperature predictions that are part of the model. Hard-wiring in the actual values, which is a standard way, in the software development world, to test the effect of one part of a complicated system on the whole.
My thoughts as well. GFDL ocean models have shown a variety of longer term ocean heat transport oscillation connected with atmospheric circulation changes and vice versa. You can’t predict both that well but by initializing both you can get a reasonable fit for some time period much like re-calibrating a weather model. Long past due in my opinion.
It doesn’t sound like they are just “initializing” that one region of the Pacific. It sounds like on each time iteration of the model they are overriding the inward causal arrows to that region and “prescribing” the observed temp anomaly, then allowing the outward causal arrows of the model from that region to operate normally.
If that is indeed the case, it would be interesting to know how the gap between calculated and prescribed values in that region behaved over the time steps of the model. It the gap seemed to be growing or exploding that would make me wonder what was going on; if it shrank a lot it would suggest that the model just need some “nudging” to fall back into a realistic basin.
Pingback: ‘Mind blowing paper’ blames ENSO for Global Warming Hiatus | Watts Up With That?
Pingback: One of the most important questions we face: when will the pause in global warming end? | Fabius Maximus
The whole purpose of climate models is to explore how well their results can emulate–based on known principles alone–the in situ observations. What we have here is the latter, albeit on a small spatial scale, effectively replacing those principles in an ad hoc fashion. That such a hybrid approach can produce high correlation with observations over a few decades should not come as a surprise to anyone acquainted with oceanic teleconnections.
First emulate, then predict. Both are critical to the models being useful.
It should be logically self-evident that any model that relies upon observations for its effectiveness cannot be very useful for making predictions.
True. First you determine the cause of the observation. Then you test with statistical modeling. If it accurately reflects observation and accurately predicts future trends based upon observing the causes, then you have a real model. Without the prediction part you have correlation without necessarily causation.
I don’t see how this contradicts the IPCC statement at all. It shows in the latter half of the 20th century, since 1950, most of the warming (about 80%) has been due to man…which isn’t that what the IPCC said?
The IPCC didn’t even say that was certain, just that it was very likely (close enough). But this research doesn’t contradict that.
“Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998 (main warming period in the latter part of the 20th century) for both POGA H and POGA C:
POGA H: 0.68C (natural plus anthropogenic)
POGA C: 0.4C (natural internal variability only)”
Seriously? You are comparing the absolute difference between single years? That’s a method of climate deniers. WTF.
You’ve also counted POGA H wrong. The climate denier method of comparing single years with each other shows 0.78C difference between 1975 and 1998 not 0.68C.
And why have you chosen 1975 and 1998 specifically? Surely not because 1975 was specially low that year and 1998 because was high so it exaggerates the difference?
If you had picked 1973 and 1996 you’d have only got 0.1C. That shows how unrobust this cliamte denier method is. Pick your start and end points to yield whatever result you want.
A better method would be to compare 5 year running means to iron out the spikes. The 5 year running mean since 1950, natural influence: less than 0.1C. Human influence: 0.6C.
LOLWOT!
Nice work. I’m thinkin’ the 0.68 is a typo, a reversal of 0.86.
IMHO, the 0.86 is pretty good for eyeball work, but my detailed scientific observations – honed to precision by decades of practice – yield 0.82.
The years JC chose actually yield the range -0.47 to +0.35, or 0.82. I think you have to squint pretty hard to chip another 0.04°C out of that.
With regards to JC using a “climate denier method”, the period is selected, I believe, because it captures the extremes of natural variability, which is the whole point of studying the variability, right? Obviously, if we choose to points on the mean, we’ll get the mean. But that wouldn’t tell us anything about natural variability, right?
If you mean to use the unqualified phrase “natural variability” to refer to short-term inter-annual variability — something that a 5 year running mean almost completely obliterates — then you can’t credit *this* variability as a natural contribution to the recent inter-decadal warming trend.
Pingback: Still good news: global temperatures remain stable, at least for now. | Fabius Maximus
Typo:
r = .97 not r50.97
I was very confused at first.
Thank you.
Here is another recent study with a different approach, but amazingly similar findings:
http://phys.org/news/2013-08-hindcast-capture-long-term-climate-fluctuations.html
Again, the ocean-atmosphere connection is central. From the article:
“What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of the Earth. Today we know that the cause is the interaction between ocean and atmosphere.”
Yes it is Gatesy, that couple ocean atmosphere central connection. Now do you think the 0.001 heat capacity relative to oceans is driving the bus?
Oceans drive the troposphere bud. Oceans are the dog, troposphere the tail.
Gates has been in the oceans camp for some time and should get credit for this.
Loehle & Scafetta nailed it perfectly:
Loehle, C. and N. Scafetta. 2011. Climate Change Attribution Using Empirical Decomposition of Historical Time Series. Open Atmospheric Science Journal 5:74-86.
http://benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V005/74TOASCJ.htm
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/25/loehle-and-scafetta-on-climate-change-attribution/
It’s within the realm of possibility (like a unicorn) that Gates may take his blinders off sometime and become objective. In the meantime the rest of you might want to have a look.
I have been quoting this new latif and colleagues paper for days. But unless gatesy puts it together with toa changes it makes little sense at all.
‘The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.‘
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
We need to remember that atmosphere includes clouds – negatively correlated with sea surface temperature.
The climate shifts in the Pacific suggest no warming for a decade or three more. Might they discover centennial and millennial change in another decade?
Gates has been in the oceans camp for some time and should get credit for this.
http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4801095965018855&pid=15.1&H=90&W=160
Pingback: Lessons about America to be learned from the Climate Wars | Fabius Maximus
I think we must also remember that ENSO is but one cycle, there are equivalent atlantic and indian ocean cycles. Should those cycles be also added it seems to me that the additive effects must be to increase the plausible contribution of ocean cycles to the GW signal and therefore reduce the potential for AGW attribution.
I would say the NULL hypothesis is not in danger here
The null hypothesis is not an option. You’ve been reading way too much denialist non-sense.
Again Gates, anything of scientific value to add, anywhere, ever?
The NULL is not in danger and never was. It’s just that the cargo cult is ending and the consensus is opening its eyes.
Quite the opposite there Edim. Studies like this combined with the rather robust ARGO data from the past decade indicate quite nicely why there likely was a tropospheric pause, and the fact that overall the planet continues to accumulate energy.
R. Gates, I strongly disagree. Rather robust? The fact? Do you also wish for the next El Nino to roll on?
What part of the ARGO data do you dispute?
In terms of the next El Niño, I don’t wish for anything to “roll on”. I am an observer.
R. Gates, I don’t dispute anything, I’m just skeptical. For example:
During 2006, the Argo Network was thought to have shown a declining trend in ocean temperatures.[10] In February 2007, the author of the paper, Josh Willis, discovered that there were problems with the data used for the analysis.[11] After eliminating incorrect data, the trend to that time remained cooling, but below the level of statistical significance.[3].
Hmm…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(oceanography)
No, Edim, you are a contrarian. If I were to say the sky was blue, you would say something stupid.
Webby, contrarian is better than sheep. Way better, especially regarding paradigms, dogmas and consensuses. Actually, I like to agree very much, I can’t agree with stupid and uncertain.
Ah, so EDim admits to being a contrarian – someone who automatically takes the opposite POV from the person to whom they are speaking.
Of course, you will now deny this, since you are in fact a contrarian.
EDim is the ingredient to Monty Python skits.
Whut, thanks. I only disagree about ‘automatically’, because, like I said, I like to agree and often do, but cannot agree with stupid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrarian
I would be more impressed if only the temperature DIFFERENCE between the eastern and western pacific was input, rather than actual SST values. Effectively this would constrain only the El Nino/La Nina state of the climate without giving the model clues as to the evolution of global temperature.
It is hard to be impressed with a model that accurately gives global temperatures when you know that actual temperatures were used as input into the model.
I don’t think that would work. One of the biggest problem with the GCM is they miss absolute surface temperature and the original SST was underestimated due to the bucket/engine cooling water intake measurements being lower than the actual SST. Since latent is extremely dependent on actual SST anomaly without a solid reference is garbage.
The not working of the model under those conditions is the point.
With regard to the bucket vs engine intake issue, differences should be much less effected by this than actual values. Indeed the use of actual SST as input makes this a big problem. The evolution of the model is clearly strongly influenced by the SST input. Any measurement bias in SST is going to end up driving the model.
Ian H, the models, most anyway, miss the absolute temperatures because they don’t have the ocean transport down well enough. Instead of just giving them a reference and anomalies they need a trajectory for the ocean thermal inertia/oscillations . They kind of need a running start in order to keep up. So I believe they would need more than a single reference and anomalies to predict much.
Hmm. If they’re only putting the rabbit in the hat for 8% of the surface, is it really so easy to pull rabbits out of the hat for the other 92%, including regional effects? But your idea about inputting the difference sounds like a good one.
So enjoyable to see wottie’s trollish, poison pen “you’re all a bunch of climate deniers” comments being roundly ignored. Wonder how long we can keep it up (excepting of course this one)….
Well come on we have climate skeptics all rushing about lapping up a study based on a climate model. And Judith has committed what appears to be a spectacular cherrypick of 1975 and 1998 using a ridiculously unrobust method that boils down to comparing a La Nina year with an El Nino year and remarking how much of the difference between those two years is natural!
And on top of that Juditth appears to be spinning away the fact this study does show most of the warming in the latter half of the 20th century is anthropogenic.
And on top of that we have people claiming this contradicts F&R when as far as I can tell, if pretty close to F&Rs result so if anything suggests a confirmation!
So ignore me if you want.
lolwot: Well come on we have climate skeptics all rushing about lapping up a study based on a climate model.
Fair enough. We need a lot more models and model development within lineages of models before we can have sufficient understanding and predictability. The news here is that the previously denied “pause” has been accepted as real by mainstream climate scientists, has forced open the bounds imposed by previous modeling, and has been openly, unambiguously acknowledged by a peer-reviewed paper in Nature.
Don’t worry lolwot,
we do.
“The news here is that the previously denied “pause” has been accepted as real by mainstream climate scientists, has forced open the bounds imposed by previous modeling, and has been openly, unambiguously acknowledged by a peer-reviewed paper in Nature.”
spot on.
lolwot | August 28, 2013 at 8:49 pm | Reply
“Well come on we have climate skeptics all rushing about lapping up a study based on a climate model.”
I welcome a model that has proven its skill by matching reality. The CMIP5 ensemble is broken. Everyone except a few hold-out morons have admitted as much at this point. The emsemble completely missed a pause that, as a random happenstance, should only happen every 500 years. Every day the pause continues the more obviously broken they become.
LOLLYPOP, you have been denying (pun intended) all this time that there is a pauze, the pauze in warming is nothing but a denialist fantasy, right?
So, why are you even acknowledging this DENIER paper in Nature which tries to explain this denialist fantasy of a pauze?
lolwot:
1. Judith knows more about climate than you do.
2. Judith knows more about statistics than you do.
3. This paper clearly confirms what has been said in this and other skeptic blogs for a long time: the models have not been properly debugged and instead have been overtuned with adjustable parameters far from reality compensating for fixed parameters far from reality. Look at the whole graph before and after correction: the volcano over-reaction is gone.
4. This paper clearly confirms what has been said in this and other skeptic blogs for a long time: the modelers have not followed basic engineering and software testing methodologies. The papers’ authors essentially used a basic software testing methodology and discovered an underlying problem that was causing a host of other problems (no pause, volcanic episodes wrong, etc).
“1. Judith knows more about climate than you do.
2. Judith knows more about statistics than you do.”
Both points are of course debatable. We wouldn’t want to appeal to authority would we!
“3. This paper clearly confirms what has been said in this and other skeptic blogs for a long time”
In which case it also confirms the IPCC statement that most of the warming since 1950 is human caused.
Which isn’t what skeptic blogs have been saying is it?
As for F&R, I just overlaid the F&R ENSO global temperature influence graph over the top of the natural internal variability only graph 1B.
They match.
Yes F&R shows about 0.4C difference between 1975 and 1998 too (tracking back MEI from which it is based). Because 1975 was a La Nina year and 1998 was an El Nino year. That is all. That’s really all Judith compared in that comparison.
El Nino years are warmer than La Nina years! My mind is blown!
Lolwot: if by “they match” you mean that -0.6 is the same as -0.2, and +0.6 is the same as +0.4, and count all movement within a year or so as being the same. Otherwise, as I’ve said, graph 1B indicates cooling 3x larger than F&R.
What are your numbers based on? There is no +0.6 in any graph? What I’ve done is overlaid F&R over graph 1b, and they match fairly good.
What are you basing 3x larger cooling on?
Oh I think I see what you’ve done, you’ve read graph 1b wrong. You’ve read from the axis on the right hand side of the graph. That isn’t global temperature influence. The axis on the left is the one you want.
So your -0.6 becomes -0.2
and your +0.6 becomes +0.2
Yes there’s about 0.4C variation in graph 1b. Which is about the same level of variation as in F&R ENSO influence.
lolwot: You’re right, I was matching the right numbers not the left. And I have to admit that if you scale it properly, and shift F&R back a year or so, they actually match reasonably well.
I would still argue that this is a tactical victory but a strategic defeat. F&R still use the trick of assuming that everything except the three short-term effects they considered is a “global warming signal” that will obviously continue “unabated” for “the next few decades”. It has not, and this paper gives us an idea of why it has not at a larger scale than a simplistic linear regression can do.
Did you acquire permission to use that expression?
T Monster = Trembath Monster ? just joshing
Judith writes: ” I have further argued that if this is the case, then the warming since 1976 was heavily juiced by the warm phase of the PDO. I didn’t know how to quantify this…”
All one has to do is account for all of that glorious warm water that’s left over and redistributed following strong El Nino events.
Apart from the actual results, the significance of this paper is the novel experimental design. Using climate models to understand how the climate system works is arguably the best use of climate models.
Not just climate models. Evidence has been growing in this best use of models for about half a century.
So the surface temperature.of the eastern Pacific is a goof proxy of global average temprtature? Seems too simple to be true, But an interesting result if confirmed
Too bad the authors don’t explicitly ‘remove’ the influence of the eastern tropical Pacific surface temperature from the historical record to reveal a “clean” GHG driven warming estimate. The (evil) Nature paywall keeps me from doing a careful analysis of the paper.
I do wonder if the authors were publicly funded, of course. If so, they should be defunded unless they agree to make their work available to the public.
That would be difficult. It is a non-linear system. That means you can’t simply subtract out the effect of one set of inputs and look at what is left.
True. But you should at least see a “signature” that looks like the CO2 signal if CO2 was “causing” any “effect”. Since pinning the model has the net effect of increasing the agreement to actual measured atmospheric temps, I would say, it comes closer to modeling “TRUTH” concerning average global air temps. The problem with this computational model of course is, not knowing what the future eastern pacifiic SSTs will be, limits its “predictive” value. IMHO this paper debunks the impact of the “cause/effect” relationship between CO2 and the 1990 spike in air temp. but does little to enable accurate prediction of near or long term prediction of future temps. Natural chaotic variability, the suns energy/magnetic variability, and the negative feedback effects of clouds (at both the condensation and sublimation boundaries) returning radiative energy to space will continue to dominate the regulated climate cycles on this blue (ie. water dominated) ball.
No mention of shift from Cold Tongue (canonical) El Nino to Warm Tongue (Modoki).
Not much new here. Certainly not mind blowing. Many previous publications noted the rather sudden and decisive change in the circulation patterns and upwelling characteristics in the Pacific that began around 1976 and continued to 1998. The Pacific was predominantly under El Niño conditions until 1998. According to McLean and Foster, this predominance of warm surface waters in the Pacific has heated the Earth, particularly in the NH, and generated a rather abrupt upturn in global warming after 1976. According to McLean:
“The abruptness of this change in upwelling appears likely to be related to some cataclysmic event in the region. Scientists would surely have noticed any shift in winds that was strong enough to cause a semi-permanent 25% reduction in the upwelling of eastern Pacific cold water so the answer is probably hidden in the ocean itself. The only cataclysmic event in the general region at that time was the Guatemala earthquake of February 1976 in which 250,000 people were killed, but any link is purely speculative at the moment.”
Further corroboration of the abrupt change in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation behavior around 1976/1977 was provided by other studies. For example, Meehl and Washington (1996) investigated possible causes for the effect:
“Sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean increased by several tenths of a degree during the 1980s and early 1990s, contributing to the observed global warming during this period.”
Trenberth and Hoar (1997) said: “… the tendency for more El Niño and fewer La Niña events since the late 1970s is highly unusual and very likely to be accounted for solely by natural variability.”
Frauenfeld et al. (2005) developed “a uniquely interdecadal Pacific signal [IPS] embedded in the Pacific Ocean–Northern Hemisphere atmosphere system that, by its statistical construction, is representative of the interaction between the large scale atmospheric circulation of the Northern Hemisphere and SSTs of the Pacific Ocean.” They said “the time series of the IPS from 1949–2000 [was] dominated by the Pacific Climate Shift with negative anomalies prior to 1976/77 and almost exclusively positive anomalies since…” Their plots of the time series of the IPS show a sharp step function around 1977.
Guilderson and Schrag (1998) said:
“Several studies have noted that the pattern of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability changed in 1976, with warm (El Niño) events becoming more frequent and more intense. This ‘1976 Pacific climate shift’ has been characterized as a warming in SSTs through much of the eastern tropical Pacific.”
Desler, Alexander, and Timlin (1996) said:
“A prominent decade-long perturbation in climate occurred during the time period [1970–1991] in which surface waters cooled by 1°C in the central and western North Pacific and warmed by about the same amount along the west coast of North America from late 1976 to 1988.”
DiLorenzo et al. (2007) said:
“Particularly dramatic physical and biological excursions occurred during the 1976–77 change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.”
Hare and Mantua (2000) said:
“It is now widely accepted that a climatic regime shift transpired in the North Pacific Ocean in the winter of 1976–77. This regime shift has had far reaching consequences for the large marine ecosystems of the North Pacific. Despite the strength and scope of the changes initiated by the shift, it was 10 to 15 years before it was fully recognized. Subsequent research has suggested that this event was not unique in the historical record but merely the latest in a succession of climatic regime shifts.”
Wu, Lee, and Liu (2005) said:
“The 1970s North Pacific climate regime shift is marked by a notable transition from the persistent warming (cooling) condition over the central (eastern) North Pacific since the late 1960s toward the opposite condition around the mid 1970s…This large-scale decadal climatic regime shift has produced far-reaching impacts on both the physical and biological environment over the North Pacific and downstream over North America.”
Kim and Miller (2007) studied “the 1976/1977 climate regime shift.” They concluded that the thermocline warmed but did not deepen. Power and Smith (2007) emphasized that “the lowest 30-year average value of the June–December SOI just occurred in 1977–2006” along with “the highest tropical sea-surface temperatures on record [in] what appears to be a concurrent period of unprecedented El Niño dominance.”
According to NOAA:
“El Niños are not caused by global warming. Clear evidence exists from a variety of sources (including archaeological studies) that El Niños have been present for hundreds, and some indicators suggest maybe millions, of years. However, it has been hypothesized that warmer global sea surface temperatures can enhance the El Niño phenomenon, and it is also true that El Niños have been more frequent and intense in recent decades. Recent climate model results that simulate the 21st century with increased greenhouse gases suggest that El Niño-like sea surface temperature patterns in the tropical Pacific are likely to be more persistent.”
“A rather abrupt change in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation behavior occurred around 1976/77 and the new regime has persisted… However, it is unclear as to whether this apparent change in the ENSO cycle is caused by global warming.”
Considering that almost all the warming of the 20th century took place in two steps: (1) prior to 1940 when CO2 was much less, and (2) 1976-1998 when El Niños dominated, it should not be a surprise that in the post-1998 era, temperatures have leveled off.
The mind-blowing part mayhap be the august journal where the admission of CMIP5 ensemble pooch screwing is published. Of course this is nothing new in nature but it’s new in Nature.
I agree with David S that for Nature to have published this paper is most surprising. The use of the paper quoted in the head post by Judith, however needs to be heavily qualified in that natural variation vs man made variation wrt to a trace gas such as CO2 might not easily be resolved.
There is no reason to believe that anthropogenic CO2 is identifiable from naturally derived CO2 and that the subtraction of all natural variability from anthropogenic forcing would be overly simplistic, especially when a non-linear dynamic system is at play..
How many things can you use to explain why you are always wrong?
Wow, this is one more!
Judith,
I would not get too worked up about this paper until people have had time to look very carefully at it. After all, the influence of ENSO (most of the Eastern Pacific temperature influence) is well worked ground. Accounting for so very much of the recent temperature trend seems unlikely based on earlier work. The entire idea of using a climate model to “determine” the true influence of eastern Pacific temperatures seems to me a bit of a stretch.. Certainly, any such analysis demands a much longer period to verify that the identified influence is consistent over longer periods. (My guess: it won’t be nearly so ‘mindblowing’.)
Limited to just detrended ENSO you are right, but there is that plowed under by CO2 assumptions secular trend, the pacific centennial oscillation, that makes the difference. If the ground wasn’t worked right to begin with it is work a proper look.
Doing a similar model, but with all the ocean oscillations would be interesting. I wonder how much CO2 forcing would be left then?
Judith writes: “However, the POGA simulations, which seem to be successful at simulating natural internal variability, might be a better framework for interpreting AGW detection and attribution.”
There are still lots of questions about how POGA simulates ENSO even with having sea surface temperatures as an input. Are cloud cover, DSR, DLR, thermocline depth, Kelvin waves, Rossby waves, etc., modeled correctly? If cloud cover, DSR and DLR aren’t simulated correctly, then ENSO is fueled improperly? And models are well known for their underestimation of DSR variability in their simulations of ENSO. If thermocline depth and Kelvin and Rossby waves aren’t modeled right, then warm water isn’t being distributed properly before, during and after ENSO events.
Judith, I wonder is the authors of the paper would agree with you on what it means. The following quote regarding the paper is from Shang-Ping Xie, its co-author.
“A cooler Pacific stuck in a La Niña rut may have restrained global warming for the past decade or so, Xie notes, but it is unlikely to last. “This effect of natural variability will be averaged out over a period of 100 years,” he says, “and cannot argue away the threat of persistent anthropogenic warming that is occurring now.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/
I bet they think it will average out over hundreds of years, not 3 months, not 3 years, but hundreds of years. Which makes a really big difference in sensitivity estimates.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/08/is-picture-worth-trillion-dollars.html
Won’t average out as long as there is a constant external forcing on the system.
“unlikely” seems to be the order of the day. This pause was unlikely to happen in the first place. Yet it did. The same people who say it was unlikely to happen in the first place now say it’s unlikely to continue. It’s unlikely that any smart people have any confidence in the further prognostications of the same wrong headed thinkers.
How does the Kosaka and Xie paper differ from James Hansen, et. al. GISS Surface Temperature Analysis from 2011, which comes to almost the same conclusion? See “GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects” by James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, and Ken Lo, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, January 18, 2012 at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/
2011 was only the ninth warmest year in the GISS analysis of global temperature change, yet nine of the ten warmest years in the instrumental record (since 1880) have occurred in the 21st century. The past year has been cooled by a moderately strong La Niña. The 5-year (60-month) running mean global temperature hints at a slowdown in the global warming rate during the past few years. However, the cool La Niña phase of the cyclically variable Southern Oscillation of tropical temperatures has been dominant in the past three years, and the deepest solar minimum in the period of satellite data occurred over the past half dozen years. We conclude that the slowdown of warming is likely to prove illusory, with more rapid warming appearing over the next few years.’
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/
Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
Not the same at all. Rather than a few years of La Nina – we are looking at decades of a cool Pacific Decadal Variation involving both ENSO and the PDO. It is by no means certain that the next mode will be to warming again.
You are about a decade behind the game – and post hoc rationalisation will not help. Hansen doesn’t seem close to leading edge.
Thank you for the clarification. It was illuminating. However, I think you were a little harsh when you said I am “about a decade behind the game.” I asked a simple question because Hansen et. al. were able to closely match the pause by putting in observed sea surface temperatures, and my reading of the Kosaka and Xie abstract indicated that they did the same. Your comment pointed me to the very different conclusions the various authors drew, and this seems to be the principal difference. Thank you for that. It seems to come down to this: do you believe that the cool La Nina conditions are temporary, as Hansen et. al. do, or do you believe they are part of the multidecadal PDO and are likely to last a long time, as Kosaka and Xie do. I guess time will tell who is right.
Chip, it’s naive, but I’m compelled by the same rate of rise of temperature three separate times in the last century and a half, in the beat of the oceanic oscillations. However, in only the last of these was CO2 also rising, and in none of these did the Eddy Minimum loom.
===============
Kim – Good point. I was not taking a position on natural variability vs. anthropogenic forcing. I was just asking about the degree to which two separate scientific papers agree, where they agree, and where they differ. Unfortunately, the Kosaka and Xie paper lies behind a paywall, so I can only read the abstract and Judith Curry’s excellent summary. I was just trying to understand.
The Chief:
“Rather than a few years of La Nina – we are looking at decades of a cool Pacific Decadal Variation involving both ENSO and the PDO.”
There’s always more for me to learn. Looking at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO.svg
The PDO index, thinking about 1910, 1940, 1970, and 2000 seems to lag the regime changes a bit. That is goes its own way but follows the new regime on average and significantly. In 1910 and 1970, it didn’t get the message right away. As if it has large momentum. I’d guess the PDO is both a cause and a result. A pretty stable indicator but with some lag.
Funny how so many of searches lead me right back here:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/14/predictions-of-climate-change-impacts-on-fisheries-can-be-a-mirage/#comment-312073
“The 1998/2000 El Nino/La Nina combination was a dragon-king.”
I’ve been wondering about that?
Signaling a change in the PDO.
_ _ _
Trust issue:
Natural multidecadal climate waves are NOT “internal”..
Details:
Multidecadal Solar-Terrestrial-Climate 101
_ _ _
The IPCC have usually done the attribution for the whole period since 1950. Here we see a run with fixed forcing and just natural variability having an average trend indistinguishable from zero between 1950 and 2010, while an identical run but with forcing added has a significant trend, all of which must be coming from the forcing. My conclusion is that the warming trend is 100% attributed to the forcing. It doesn’t surprise me that a 60-year average trend from natural variability is essentially zero. This is what to expect for any 60-year span, including in the future.
When I started looking into this years ago, among the first things I noticed were regressions, explaining most of the temperature history by AMO/PDO/Solar.
It took climate science a long time to partly catch up with sceptics.
equatorial surface warms / cools same as always – there isn’t any GLOBAL warming because warming is ALWAYS equal cooling and those two factors cancel each other
I’m not following exactly what they did too well. Why the eastern equatorial Pacific? Did they try other areas as well, and this works best (curve-fitting) or was this the first thing they tried and elsewhere would have worked just as well?
Judith, note as well that in the POGA -H the response to volcanos is also closer to observations. looking at the relationship between model sensitivity and response to volcanos we found no relationship, this experiment suggests something else at work.
I like the experimental design, it also gives some ideas for focusing future observations in that particular area and perhaps some initialization options for follow on work.
All that said, it will be interesting to read the criticisms
Global warming happened between 1976 and 1998 – and we have satellites for almost all of that. The data says that the warming was all shortwave.
Ocean heat peaked in 1998 – and fell somewhat since for obvious reasons. Cloud cover shifted with the 1998/2001 climate shift – and there are several lines of evidence for this.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
The implications of climate shifts include that little warming is likely for the next decade or three. And it is by no means certain that the next shift will be to warming again. The most ardent advocates are stuck a decade behind the scientific trend at least – and persist with odd post hoc rationalisations.
Considering CO2 is only part of the total forcing, that leaves less than a third of wearming attributable to CO2.
Perhaps much less, because this is derived from a model world, i.e. a world without UHI, without any solar influence beyond TSI or any other mechanism, explaing MWP or other climate variability of the past.
Actually it shows over 80% of the warming since 1950 is due to man
That is another goal post location.
80% since 1950 isn’t much different in consequence from 41% since 1976, because the warming rate since 1950 has been much smaller.
But lets see what that means:
Temperatures have increased approx 0.67 deg since 1950.
80% anthropogenic of which 70% is due to CO2 according to Ar5 forcings.
That gives a contribution of CO2 of 0.67 deg * 0.8 * 0.7 = 0.375 deg.
Sensitivity doubling CO2:
CO2 has increased from 315 to 400 ppm.
log(2) / log(400/315) * 0.375 deg = 1.09 deg for double CO2.
(Calculation within climate model world, no UHI, solar only TSI, no AMO, no mechanism explaining previous warm periods,…)
It pretty simple: when warming pauses or cooling begins, that’s due to natural causes; and, when warming begins again, that’s due to humanity’s CO2. ~Official Statement of the Government Climate Science Industry
Warming of the Earth has not paused. The only thing that has happened is variations in the flow of energy from ocean to atmosphere.
R Gates the skeptical warmist: Warming of the Earth has not paused. The only thing that has happened is variations in the flow of energy from ocean to atmosphere.
Did warming of the earth ever start, or was it just a variation in the flow of energy between ocean and atmosphere? The asymmetry of your thought is why warmists get parodied: “Warming is always climate but cooling is only weather,” and such.
Warming of the earth appears to have not paused since the end of the Little Ice Age.
Do you anything scientific to add, Gates, anytime, ever?
Ocean heat content peaked in 1998 along with surface temperature.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
OHC follows changes in TOA radiant flux as shown in the Wong et al 2006 paper – ocean/atmosphere heat transfer obviously occurs but the fundamental metric is at TOA.
Not by a long shot Chief Hydro. If anything, we see from the research that the ocean heat content increases were higher during the past decade than it was prior to 1998. You are just making stuff up now. ARGO data alone is good enough to say you are flatly misrepresenting what is happen. You should be ashamed of this sham and misleading those who might actually believe your nonsense.
Seriously – here’s the data.
Obviously ocean heat declining after 1998.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
Not enough accumulation in ARGO to offset it.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/vonSchuckmannampLTroan2011-fig5PG_zpsee63b772.jpg.html?sort=3&o=40
Don’t just babble on with your usual addled post hoc rationalisations. Work it out for yourself.
Anecdotal evidence: you didn’t need a wetsuit to ride a jetski off the coast of Southern California at Christmastime in 1998. As for the winter of 2013–14, the Farmers’ Almanac is warning most of the US and Canada (almost everywhere except the Pacific coast) to break out the wool socks and snow shovels.
R. Gates,
But how long as ARGO been sampling data, and over what area is measured on a regular basis?
R Gates should be forgiven the needs of his religion.
======
Pingback: That P-word | Who is da-boss?
With heat emissions from energy use melting one trillion tons of glaciers annually and the Arctic region becoming more open, perhaps the circulation of the Atlantic around the Arctic to the Pacific is the reason the ocean/s are cooling. This circulation is likely to increase and melt glaciers at an accelerating rate. You have a better guess?
You should actually try to link to reputable sources and peer reviewed science rather than repeat again a few lines of nonsense.
The silly chart from Wong et al 2006 – which was essentially the critical study for TOA radiation for AR4 – stops in 2004 because that’s when Josh Willis’ data runs out. It does cover the critical period of the 1998/2001 climate shift. Which ARGO does not of course. It clearly show a peak in ocean heat content in
1998 and a decline after.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
I linked to von Schuckmann a couple of times now. ‘A global ocean heat content change (OHC) trend of 0.55±0.1Wm^2 is estimated over the time period 2005–2010. Similarly, a global steric sea level (GSSL) rise of 0.69
±0.14mm/yr is observed.’
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/vonSchuckmannampLTroan2011-fig5PG_zpsee63b772.jpg.html?sort=3&o=40
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf
Your massive increase is rather modest and totally explained by a modest decrease in reflected shortwave in the period.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=118
It is you who are being utterly silly.
Chief Hydrologist, the ERBS Edition 3 data that you show display a reduction in energy flux for one single year after 1998. But it’s still positive over the whole period, so it doesn’t entail any cooling of the oceans. You may have confused the curve labelled “Ocean Heat Storage” for a representation of heat content. It’s not. It’s an energy flux. A reduced positive flux still represents warming. The short lived reduction in flux after 1998 just is the Plank response to the El Nino surface warming. Clearly, the ERBS data shows that it’s not strong enough to fully compensate for the prior GHG caused TOA energy imbalance.
You now quote from Willis 2004 to bolster your claim that Willis 2004 is reliable and refute my claim that it was faulty. But Willis himself discovered *after 2004* that the data and conclusions of his own study were faulty mainly because of a bunch a unreliable ARGO floats.
Sorry, my mistake. The curve labelled “Ocean Heat Storage” really represents heat storage and not a flux. The TOA flux, however, still is positive, and the context of later years (and updated data) shows the 1998 peak to be very short lived and hardly followed by any significant decline at all. Also, the heat storage data was based on surface measurements, not ERBS.
I have got no idea what you are talking about – and I suspect that neither do you.
The early issues with ARGO are well known. Willis doesn’t use this data is the data that is clearly labelled as 1993 to 2003 – before the ARGO start date.
Both ocean heat content and ERBS are in W/m^2. Watts x time is of course Joules. The flux shows Joules accumulating or dissipating as the line goes positive or negative – the rate of increase is negative or positive. The point of Wong et al is that the ocean heat content follows net radiant flux at TOA.
TOA flux are anomalies – only the direction of change is significant, there is no absolute negative or positive, the zero point is based on an average for a period – i.e. above or below the average.
If we have a closer look at ERBS – we find that there is cooling in the IR, and strong warming in SW between 1983 and 1999.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-3-23.html
I wonder why that is?
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=17
The reason for the cooling since the climate shift in 1998/2001 – an important term to remember – is evident.
The oceans are not cooling.
Well the oceans did cool after 1998. Have they warmed to a new high since? Seems unlikely.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
Jason & the Argos disagree, but I’m sure that won’t bother you
Don’t bother replying with a Trenberth evasion, nor your usual side-step 2-boot shuffle. I’ve been following the Argo data since these buoys started returning actual measurements
Chief, why does your silly chart end in 2003, just before the decade of a huge ocean heat content increase? You’ve been out picking some of those Tisdale Cherries? They are psychotropic you know.
The silly chart from Wong et al 2006 – which was essentially the critical study for TOA radiation for AR4 – stops in 2004 because that’s when Josh Willis’ data runs out. It does cover the critical period of the 1998/2001 climate shift. Which ARGO does not of course. It clearly show a peak in ocean heat content in
1998 and a decline after.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
I linked to von Schuckmann a couple of times now. ‘A global ocean heat content change (OHC) trend of 0.55±0.1Wm^2 is estimated over the time period 2005–2010. Similarly, a global steric sea level (GSSL) rise of 0.69
±0.14mm/yr is observed.’
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/vonSchuckmannampLTroan2011-fig5PG_zpsee63b772.jpg.html?sort=3&o=40
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf
Your massive increase is rather modest and totally explained by a modest decrease in reflected shortwave in the period.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=118
It is you who are being utterly silly.
If the oceans are cooling, explain why sea level is rising
Has melt from greenland and antarctic jumped to record levels?
It isn’t – Wong et al show that ocean heat content peaking in 1998 and the ARGO steric heat content is not sufficient to turn that around.
Levitus at the NODC looks distinctly different to von Schuckmann – which looks disturbingly different to JASON altimetry.
You figure it out. Karina von Schuckmann is consistent with CERES so I’m going with that.
lolwot-
Steric contributions are not the only thing going. Maybe we all left the garden hose on too long. What were the oceans doing during the LIA? Serious question.
Even if that were known, the answer to that serious question, it doesn’t answer to what the steric rise is from. Is it from the depths of the last glaciation? From the heights of the Holocene? Dunno, do we, dennis.
==============
Chief Hydrologist, you seem unaware that the obsolete Wong and Willis data that you are relying on was erroneous and it was Willis himself who discovered that the apparent ocean cooling was caused by some very faulty ARGO floats and a residual warm bias in XBT data. Google “Correcting Ocean Cooling” for the whole story about the weening out of those errors.
Wong et al’s ERBS Edition 3 is the definitive version of the ERBS data. ARGO is not used by Willis in this instance for the 1993 to 2003 data – this would seem to be obvious.
‘Despite recent advances in the state of the global ocean observing system, estimating oceanic variability on basin-wide to global scales remains difficult. Errors in such estimates can be large and often go unreported in the literature. In order to make the most accurate estimates of oceanic variability, it is necessary to combine different types of data into a single consistent field. In the present study, satellite altimetric height and historically available in situ temperature data were combined using the method developed by Willis et al. [2003], to produce global estimates of
upper ocean heat content, thermosteric expansion, and temperature variability over the 10.5-year period from the beginning of 1993 through mid-2003…
The set of in situ data was compiled from several different archives and includes temperature profiles from XBTs, CTDs, profiling floats, moored buoys (primarily from the TAO array), and autonomous pinniped bathyther-
mographs. Approximately 1,000,000 unique profiles were compiled from the historical archives for the period from 1993 through 2003. ‘ http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/387h/PAPERS/willis_jgr_04.pdf
So – Pierre-Normand – I suggest you Google talking through your arse before commenting further.
My reply appears a few posts above.
“The bottom line is that if I were to pick a single climate model with which to conduct these experiments, I would choose the GFDL model.”
You should be embarrassed by your use the word “experiment” in connection with this activity. No one trained in the sciences would consider playing with models an “experiment.” Attempts at modeling natural phenomena are not “experiments.”
Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century, challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming. Various mechanisms have been proposed for this hiatus in global warming, but their relative importance has not been quantified, hampering observational estimates of climate sensitivity.
So, …, the pause is real. It is necessary to hypothesize and test mechanisms that might account for it. Maybe those mechanisms operated in the past to produce … oh, warming comes to mind, and other measurable changes, like maybe the dust bowl.
AR4 said that the warming had to be caused by CO2 because they could not think of anything else that might have produced it. Now the scientists have enlarged the space of possible model mechanisms, as a few writers recommended they do.
I think that this is progress, whether the proposed mechanism survives future tests. I said “mechanism”, although the mechanism underlying the correlation is not completely specified. (I don’t have the paper, so I am not sure it is even partially “specified”.) Consistent high correlations usually are good evidence that there are mechanisms waiting to be discovered. Although logically “Correlation does not imply causation”, it is usually “pathognomonic”, to use a nice word that popped up here a few days ago.
Has the paper escaped from behind its paywall, does anyone know?
I would say “So pathognomonic doesn’t refer to wandering gnomes?” but will refrain as I don’t want to detract from your always valuable posts. Oh, wait …
Which one, willard…
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/08/28/study-link-found-between-losing-sports-teams-heavier-fans/
WHO knew?
I haven’t read the paper but am trying to infer what it is about from the various commentary.
In signal processing circles and engineering in general, there is a specific lingo that is used when talking about separating signal from noise.
The words “pause” or “hiatus” are rarely, if ever, used when describing an oscillating component that temporarily obscures a rising trend. The signal analyst would usually say that the rising signal is either “masked” by the oscillating component or that the the signal is being “compensated” by a signal that has the opposite sign.
The climate scientists really need to assert their theories of isolating and removing the noise from the masked signal or of describing the situation instead as a compensating effect.
To say that it is a “pause” or “hiatus” is laughable when they obviously have a theory to explain it.
Here is an example. Say that you had a radio signal that you were listening to. Periodically, the signal fades out and some other garbled static comes out of the speaker. One does not call that a “pause” or “hiatus” in the signal, but that the real signal is being “masked” or “compensated” or “interfered” with by another signal or by environmental effects.
The enduring truth is that over time, since the AGW temperature signal is a secular rising trend, eventually the signal will emerge from the noise, and it will be harder to argue with the rhetorical wording alone. Time will tell.
One way to pull the signal out is to integrate the data, which cancels out the oscillatory compensation. Already, the OHC signal is doing this and we can see unmasked global heating effect more clearly.
Web,
You’d be a very tough Climateballer if you’d increase the ratio of this kind of comment. And that’s nothwistanding the INTEGRITY you’ll gain by such process. You might even be more entertaining to the Denizens.
(Go Team!)
You’ll certainly be for one of them.
WebHubTelescope: To say that it is a “pause” or “hiatus” is laughable when they obviously have a theory to explain it.
What I wrote came from the abstract.
no, pogac=0.28°C according to that graph from 1975 to 1998.
it should also be considered that sst in that small regions may be forced and not necessarily 100% natural variability.
I think I am seeing the climate models now as a way to attack complex problems by taking many assumptions and variables and stringing them together. Keeping track of many things at once. In this case a question was asked, and the model gave an answer. They asked the right question, which in this case was, what happens when we force a section of the climate? I am still tentative on temperature predictions, but as a learning instrument, maybe.
We talk about the models, but I think we should consider getting one. We are still in ways criticizing them, but not creating them.
Here was a case of a model apparently leaning against AGW, though the paper has just arrived. What may have happened is Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie indicated what the skeptics should do. Get a model and use it they way they did.
Short of having to fund a new model, there’s building bridges with the modelers.
I’m not mind-blown, but as someone without relevant scientific background, I’m always encouraged by work which might contribute to a better understanding of climate and what drives changes than prevailed when the science first became “settled” perhaps 12-15 years ago. Carry on, chaps.
Another reason for not taking precipitate emissions-reduction action perhaps?
Sorry paper gets a bit fat ZERO due this statement (below) obviously forced on anyone trying to get something worthwhile published in that garbage Journal NATURE “though similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.” You just HAVE TO say AGW is happening!!!
Don’t throw it out just because it has the secret handshake required to get published in bandwagon science journals. The secret handshake is a gratuitous mention of how the paper still supports the ideas contained by the bandwagon. It also happens in evolutionary biology. No matter the finding of the article, in order to get published by a bandwagon journal it must explicitely state, however briefly and illogically, that it does not rock the bandwagon.
Finally recognizing decadal scale natural forces, still anesthetized to millenial ones. This is the tyrannical terror of the Piltdown Mann’s Crook’t Stick; the shaft has been straightened as in Procrustes machine.
=============
This study, by Rickaby & Halloran in 2005 was one that I had noted with interest back then, and given passing thought to what it might mean for tropospheric temperatures if they were correct in their La Niña like state coming to pass as GH gases continue upward:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/307/5717/1948.full
The title of the paper:
Cool La Niña During the Warmth of the Pliocene?
And a quote:
“Our data rebut the hypothesis that “hothouse” climates collapse onto an El Niño–like state, in agreement with Eocene hothouse studies (33), and indicate that the tropical upper-ocean structure during the warm Pliocene was indicative of a La Niña–like state consistent with the dynamical “ocean thermostat.””
Some you you will find this paper most rewarding.
I’ll read the paper tomorrow when I have library access. But as a matter of PDE solution, I’m very doubtful about prescribing the ocean surface temperature. In a coupled system, it isn’t a boundary, and it would normally be determined by the physics. Overriding that is generally bad.
To put it another way, those are extra equations being added, and existing equations expressing physics at the interface must be lost.
To people who are celebrating “natural variation”, that’s not what we have here. It’s artificial forcing in a computer model.
“It’s artificial forcing in a computer model.”
Welcome to the club.
So its the purity of the model, not the accuracy/utility of the results that concerns you? Better a ‘pure’ but lousy model than one that gives good results?
The ideal answer is a pure one that is accurate. But since that is is unavailable in any practical sense (30 years and zillions of blood and treasure have spectacularly failed to produce such a construct) I know which one I’d pay for.
Real life is full of compromises. Better a model that works, but offends the purist than one that is pleasing to the mathematicians love of theoretical elegance but is of less use than a chocolate teapot.
Especially when its being used to determine by children and grandchildren’s future economic opportunities. And my old Mum’s energy poverty.
LattieBoy, So I assume that the blokes down at the pub had a copy of the paper that you were passing around during your morning tea and crumpets.
Ahhh, so the paper had a section on the UK’s steep decline in offshore crude oil and natural gas production, and how that natural decline is causing increasing price pressure on the pensioner’s fixed incomes?
Since the paper is on the power of natural variability and its effects, it must have covered the very natural depletion of nonrenewable resources, eh?
All the forcings in a computer model are artificial. I swear you boys can’t tell the difference between what you see on a computer display and what you see though your kitchen window anymore.
Well, I can see climate from my kitchen window.
=================
That is the smartest comment on this thread that I have read so far.
What makes WUWT and CE such comical reading is the immediate feedback that arrives with a fresh post. With WUWT, it is a parade of “told you so’s”, which eventually mutate into a hedging of bets as others come online (such as Nick Stokes) who have actually thought about the situation a bit. With CE, it is the Aussie contingent who dominate the late night posts with oddball commentary and krank theorizing. The rest of the comment thread is dominated by a struggle to do damage control, as if it really matters.
The Redeniers soap opera.
Nick: I look at this as a standard software testing technique, and a standard experiment. You have a large complex system. Its individual subsystems seem to give reasonable results, but the whole system has multiple mismatches with reality. What do you do?
A software developer would test the interactions of the subsystems: replacing pieces with test cases and see how the overall results change. This also seems to me to be basic science: you do a controlled (meta-)experiment, varying something to see the results.
I’m impressed from the graphs because not only does the result reflect The Pause, but it also fixes the multiple volcanic overreactions of the unmodified model. To me, this indicates that they really have found a more fundamental issue, since it affects (positively) two seemingly distantly-related issues in one stroke: ENSO is not being well-modeled and this affects the length of plausible pauses and the magnitude and duration of volcanic effects.
Coming from another direction, I think analogously of a statistical model that includes one part that uses a Gaussian distribution to model a person’s weight. Unfortunately, this allows weights to be negative. So as a first cut, someone inserts an “artificial” constraint that any weights below 2 kg (including negative weights) will be set to 2kg. Suddenly the entire model is much more accurate.
Obviously, this is not the final solution, it’s a check, a confirmation. The final solution is to use a distribution that cannot be negative, and that when properly parameterized won’t result in tiny weights. Just an analogy, not saying that this is what’s happened — I assume the model is a very complex collection of coupled sub-models that may be beyond any one person’s mental grasp of its details.
I think your last sentence may be key, wayne; this modeling business grew like a beanstock on steroids and has gotten beyond the capability of any of those dedicated to the ’cause’ to fundamentally re-evaluate it.
Why wasn’t this study done ten years ago, or more?
=======================
Isaac Held works at GFDL.
From his blog, post #11: “if you fix the temperature, as over the ocean here, you have to let the flux adjust to be consistent with that temperature — if you fix the flux (which is effectively zero over land) you have to let the temperature adjust to be consistent with that flux.”
and
“Using a GCM, can we regenerate the land temperature record from the ocean record using observed SSTs and sea ice distribution as a boundary condition? This is not simply a question of “turbulent diffusion” by the atmosphere but also of wave-like “teleconnections” propagating away from regions of tropical convection that are altered by the pattern of tropical warming. …”.
Wayne,
It’s a bit like trying to check a matrix inverse by looking at the inverses of sub-blocks. Doesn’t usually work.
The thing is, surface temperature has a role to play – it moves to a level that balances fluxes. If too much heat is coming in, SST increases, and so does upward IR (and also evap). If you prescribe SST, then fluxes won’t naturally balance.
Nick one of the posts at Issac Held’s blog was about prescribing ocean temperature in GCMs, i forget the reason for doing it, I’ll try find it.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog/isaac-held/2012/11/25/32-modeling-land-warming-given-oceanic-warming/
It was actually just a question I asked Issac in the comments of this post but his response was quite detailed and seems to suggest that playing with SST in the way this paper has is a valid experiment.
Sorry BillC didn’t continue down to your reply.
Tanks, HR.
I think held confirms what I was saying. They prescribed SST everywhere, and ran just the atmospheric and land surface components. Ocean physics was abandoned, and SST became a real boundary condition.
I’m not sure how that works with just one part of the ocean.
Nick, I’m not sure what your point is. Prescribing T gives a well posed problem. If in fact, SST is a known boundary condition from actual data, then prescribing it would actually reduce uncertainty in the computation. You know of course that incompressible convection is an ill posed problem so the ocean model has no more “correct” equations than prescribing T.
So, I think your point is not really valid.
David,
It’s a well-posed problem, but determines a heat flux across the surface. But other things are also trying to determine that flux – notably insolation and DLWR. The surface temperature can no longer adjust to balance them.
OK, I’ve read the paper. They say:
“SSTis restored to the model climatology plus historical anomaly by a Newtonian cooling over the deep tropical eastern Pacific. The restoring timescale is 10 days for a 50-m-deep mixed layer. Figures 2b and 3b shows the region where SST is restored; within the inner box the ocean surface heat flux is fully overridden, while in the buffer zone between the inner and outer boxes, the flux is blended with the model-diagnosed one.”
They seem to have thought about it. They explicitly control the SST to the desired values by an added flux. That is the right way, but it does make the heat flux necessary to do that explicit. So the temperature comes out right, but the added flux will have impact, and it’s not clear how they take account of that in the discussion. Maybe I’ll find it.
In the supplementary material they add
Their comment that the paper builds on earlier work on global teleconnections of ENSO is also worth noting.
If I understand it correctly, it is a technique used all the time. For example in an airplane simulation, we don’t really know all the details of the interior of the engine flow, so we just take an average mass flux that the engine ingests and use that as a boundary condition for the rest of the simulation. It is very accurate for the rest of the flow field.
We’ve been here before with Smith of Hadley predicting a continued hiatus until 2009 then a rapid increase. Now he says he just doesn’t know what is happening. Theie only useful contribution is in admitting that there is a hiatus and that they didn’t predict it and that yes, this does challenge the orthodoxy. All the rest is nonsense. If the heat is hiding in the deep ocean it is not only unphysical, if true then it negates all arguments about runaway atmospheric warming anyway.
Well you won’t be surprised to see that the good old Guardian is spinning this as supporting AGW theory on the “pause”: unlike Judith they imply that the PDO has an effect in the cool phase but not in the warm phase.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/28/cooling-pacific-dampened-global-warming
Surprise, surprise.
lolwot pointed out that the comparison POGA-H: 0.68C vs. POGA-C: 0.4C was cherry picking.
Perhaps we should compare over the full period shown in the figures as that happens to agree rather well with the leaked comparison of AR5. Using the extreme points of the 5-year average curve POGA-C shows a warming by 0.1C, while POGA-H shows a warming of 0.7C. Thus about 85% is due to forcing, essentially to AGW.
I think Judith is pointing out the step from -0.4 to ~+0.3 that coincides with the 1976/77 and 2000/2001 climate shifts. That would be an ~0.7C step in the 1990s versus a 0.1 to 0.2 C rise projected for the period. The models didn’t project a 0.7C step, they projected ~0.15 C ramp.
Why don’t y’all just overlay a co2 forcing starting in ~1880 with 2C and 4C sensitivity and see which one hits the mean better?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s9UcLZabetQ/UgxFnv_AhXI/AAAAAAAAJNI/q6iyTSDS0B4/s640/BEST+CO2+Volcano+with+GISS.png
4C appears to be an overestimate, 2C is a fair fit assuming 1900 was “normal”, and 0.8 C may actually be the reality.
My prejudice agrees with Judith in considering it very likely that the rapid rise from 1975 to 2000 was to a significant degree natural variability, quite possibly over 50% of that. But then IPCC doesn’t appear to disagree as this is fully consistent with more than 50% AGW, when the period considered is extended to 50-60 years.
Assuming that AGW is linear as a rough first guess, only half of that (or a little less) would have occurred over the years 1976/77 – 2000/01.
Straws, Pekka; not strawmen, grasping at straws.
========
Pekka, “Assuming that AGW is linear as a rough first guess, only half of that (or a little less) would have occurred over the years 1976/77 – 2000/01.”
But if you back track the reference sensitivities you have to determine a reasonable baseline. Was 1900 normal? This paper considers just the Pacific ENSO region for calibration. I have used the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool paleo reconstructions along with Law Dome CO2 to extend the reference sensitivities.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_NyNYk1bKpU/UgqK0nPXhVI/AAAAAAAAJMY/qiCfBK-8ahI/s640/Tropical+SST+with+three+forcings+Law+Dome+0+start.png
Judging by the current rate of ocean heat uptake it takes centuries to recharge the ocean heat capacity. .
I think it’s tricky to make absolute quantitative judgements like that from these simulations. You could equally look at it another way and notice that the POGA-H runs are damped in comparison to HIST then conclude that internal variability has reduced warming since 1950 (i.e. AGW is responsible for more than 100% of warming).
It has to be kept in mind that the equatorial Pacific is part of the world and therefore will have been affected by forcing just like everywhere else, so the overall warming in POGA-C is very likely at least partly a forced response.
Where this kind of approach is useful is in assessing shorter decadal trends where variability dominates forcing. By coincidence I was looking at this myself recently (in a far less sophisticated way, comparing equatorial pacific observations to global series) and found that warming from the early-1970s to mid-1980s was probably largely a result of Pacific variability, warming from mid-1980s to mid-1990s was probably enhanced slightly by internal variability (albeit was then reduced by Pinatubo), but since then Pacific variability has acted to cool the climate.
I think the 1900-1910 cooling points the way to show how much Pacific variability could affect global trends over decadal periods.
Paul,
I didn’t mean that the number of 85% would indicate anything else than that this paper does not show evidence for a persistent enough trend form natural variability to contribute much to the change over 50-60 years, while there’s evidence for shorter term variability and it’s role in the present hiatus.
Whether the paper tells less directly something about long term variability and it’s role in the warming is more difficult to say.
I long believed the ocean is a key driver of the climate so I’m not surprised by this paper. It’s common sense. The heat capacity of the ocean is 1,000x greater than the atmosphere, ocean is over 70% of earth’s surface and earth is warmed by radiation from sun and GHE. So it’s logical that ocean will get a large proportion of that heat. We also know that the ocean ‘conveyor belt’ distributes heat around the world influencing local climates on land.
BTW Roy Spencer had a study suggesting PDO is the driver of 20th century global temperature trend. This is not new. I’m glad more scientists are now looking into it.
‘The climate is the continuation of the oceans by other means’.
H/t Arndt de Barents, at least 20 years ago. By God, the science has been anesthetized by CO2, society perilously close to asphyxiation.
=====================
Sorry to butcher your name, A; spelling is a continuation of the tongue by other means.
=========
Told you so.
“Although there are similar periodic oscillations in other oceans such as the Atlantic and the Arctic I believe that they follow the lead of ENSO and PDO. In effect they simply continue the distribution of the initial (solar induced) warming or cooling state around the globe and of course there are varying degrees of lag so that from time to time the other lesser oceanic oscillations can operate contrary to the primary Pacific oscillations until the lag is worked through.
I believe that this is a clear and simple theory of solar driven global climate change which should now be tested empirically”
May 7th 2008
from here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/global-warming-and-cooling-the-reality/
There are minor adjustments that I would now make to that article such as changing the emphasis on solar effects from the length of the solar cycle to changes in the mix of particles and wavelengths affecting stratosphere temperatures as per my later articles.
“But what drives the PDO?”
Solar variations alter stratosphere temperatures so as to alter the latitudinal positions of the climate zones and jet stream tracks resulting in global cloudiness and albedo changes which vary the amount of energy able to enter the oceans to fuel the climate system.
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
“The sun causes latitudinal climate zone shifting with changes in the degree of jetstream zonality / meridionality by altering the ozone creation / destruction balance differentially at different heights above the tropopause. The net result is a change in the gradient of tropopause height between equator (relatively high) and poles (relatively low).
The cause appears not to be raw solar power output (TSI) which varies too little but instead, the precise mix of particles and wavelengths from the sun which vary more greatly and affect ozone amounts above the tropopause.
That allows latitudinal sliding of the jets and climate zones below the tropopause leading to changes in global cloudiness and albedo with alters the amount of energy getting into the oceans.”
At its simplest, an active sun skews ENSO events in favour of warm El Ninos because more energy enters the oceans whereas an inactive sun skews ENSO in favour of cooler La Ninas because less energy then enters the oceans.
The PDO operates in the background as an independent internal ocean oscillation.
The bottom up ocean effect then modulates the top down solar effect.
Technically the ‘particles’ don’t come from the sun if you’re talking about Svensmark’s GCR hypothesis. They are from outside the solar system with energies far in excess of anything Sol can produce. Sol’s variable magnetic field deflects more or fewer of the particles away from the earth. Sunspots serve as a proxy for solar magnetic field strength – fewer or more sunspots with weaker or stronger field respectively. These particles impact and shatter in the upper atmosphere causing a shower of particles that ostensibly form nucleation sites for water condensation into clouds.
Interestingly, though, the shape of the peak of solar cosmic rays alternates from flattened to peaked in alternate solar cycles. Since three such solar cycles fit approximately into one phase of this great Pacific oscillation, there is a mechanism for alternating cold and warm phases in that great Pacific cycle. The magnificent Leif heself has told me this a lower order effect, and he’s probably right.
Nonetheless, the Holy Grail is the mechanism for the sun-ocean connection.
================
I’m referring only to the solar particles and wavelengths in so far as they are involved in ozone chemistry.
Mostly it seems to be a matter of wavelength changes which are large enough especially in the UV to achieve the desired result in the stratosphere and mesosphere.
Note that the inversion at the tropopause is entirely a result of ozone reacting with incoming solar radiation and particles so any change in the ozone creation / destruction balance is going to affect the air circulation below the tropopause.
The Svensmark effect may exist but I don’t consider it to be significant. Much more important is the circulation changes causing cloudiness changes by altering the length of the lines of air mass mixing around the globe.
JC
I suppose you have to start somewhere, but until you test these models outside their training sets in order to prove whether right/wrong they’ve no real value.
Let’s assume for the moment that all the warming since 1950, when it was -.35 below the baseline, is man made (from the above graph). And let’s further assume some natural cooling process took place to cool the planet .35 degrees (i.e., the models are correct, but missed some cooling process that is the delta between current and projected temperatures). That would mean without the man produced C02, the current temperatures would be .95 degrees below the 1950 level, or -1.3 degrees C below the baseline. Brrr.
Now, I realize IPCC isn’t saying “all,” simply “Most of the warming,” and they are 95% certain or something.
However, the longer the hiatus continues, the more pressure it will put on the IPCC. If the cooling forces are not man made, it is especially disastrous. The IPCC will need to abandon it’s models, or admit that C02 has circumvented a very bad catastrophe of very cold earth temperatures. Given the “Most,” they have wiggle room, but I doubt it can last too much longer.
A cold blued steel sword of Ockham hangs over climate science. The higher the sensitivity, the colder it would now be without HumanGHGs. We can but hope the temperature record is predominately from natural forces.
=================
Nice. Oh what a tangled web we weave…
But oh, how we improve our style
Once we have practiced for awhile.
H/t Emily Preyer.
============
Natch that correlation does not mean causation but
non-correlation, now that’s problem, as Einstein hisself
was wont ter say. Must give us pause.
Should that be “Damocles”, instead of “Ockham”?
Could be, Jim, and that is part of it. The logic in my point slices simply and cleanly, though. The Damocletian part is just the overhanging models crashing.
=============
The Black Swan.
Sound of beating wings.
Sword of Damocles event?
Hume’s problem or ours?
Kim, Kim, Kim. You misunderestimate the rhetorical resourcefulness of the Team. It’s done thusly: “the climate sensitivity isn’t a constant, but a monotonically increasing function of temperature. Therefore, as the world warms, the sensitivity increases. It’s worse than we thought”.
All fixed.
Its not a constant Harold. Agreed. I’m betting that entropy cuts in (2nd Law of TD) and that the CS vector will serve to dampen the series rather than to throw the series out of kilter.
Negative feedbacks predominate over positive feedbacks right throughout what has been determined from thepaleo records to the satellite data we have today.
Pingback: The Climate Change Debate Thread - Page 3056
Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie’s article continues a pronounced trend in which mediocre (but slowly improving) analyses of decadal-scale dynamical climate changes affirm the “best available” explanations of secular climate changes:
Thus Kosaka and Xie’s analysis is broadly consonant with — and thus broadly affirmative of — the conclusion from best available climate-change science that “Burning all fossil fuels, we conclude, would make much of the planet uninhabitable by humans.”
Is it any wonder that the great majority of young scientists are allying themselves with the best available climate-change science, and are ignoring flimsy Monckton-style denial-driven climate science?
Prediction Continued improvements in modeling decadal-scale dynamics — and longer, when ice-sheet and deep-ocean dynamics are included — will continue to affirm the multi-decade arc of strong climate science that concludes “Hansen’s worldview is right.”
As for flimsy, Monckton-style, denial-driven, purely statistical climate science, it’s destined for scientific irrelevance, isn’t it? That’s the real reason why young scientists are rejecting it, right?
Prediction: Best available climate science will continue the trajectory pioneered by one or another skeptic.
==========================
You mean like looking for the UHI in Antarctica??
I suspect your trajectory won’t reach orbit.
=======
Or proclaiming an earth shattering ‘publication’ of a paper……and publishing nothing.
Hey, this is a great idea koldie!
If you don’t like my ideas, I have others.
===================
Or more Monckton madness, with graphs and evidence free assertions.
This is the ‘skeptic trajectory’……down the toilet.
Get out of the toilet, Michael. Blame it all on the adjustment.
Heh, Michael projectiles. It is the settled catastrophic consensus science which is circulating the…., why the Pacific. What did you think it could circle?
===============
“Is it any wonder that the great majority of young scientists are allying themselves with the best available climate-change science.”
FOMBS, wrong again Fan. The truth is that these young “scientists” want a paycheck, while convincing themselves they are saving the world. Get used it FOMBS, it’s over for you and the rest of the alarmists.
The title of one of your linked papers is “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature”. Priceless! I need to start Googling “Hansen” once a week or so to catch these pearls.
Judith –
It seems possible that the PDO is not simply “natural variability” — that is, an unforced mode which adds “noise” to the temperature history — but is in fact a negative feedback mechanism. Can you comment?
The origin of the PDO is unknown; it is conceivable that this is a response to external forcing (Scafetta has hypothesized this). I have a new paper winding its way through the publication process that may shed some light on some of this
Thanks! Looking forward to enlightenment.
Hi Judy – does POGA-C inlude volcanic forcing? By eye it does not, whereas POGA-H, HIST and observations do. This will affect your ‘attribution’ numbers I think?
Certainly an interesting paper – will be great if it was taken further back in time and implemented in other models.
Ed.
Hi Ed, I don’t know if POGA-C includes volcanoes (I suspect not); the main implication for attribution is the large amplitude impact of internal variability on the global surface temperatures. The problem with going back further in time is that tropical pacific surface temperatures are very dodgy; pretty much non existent before 1920.
Agree that the amplitude of variability is potentially large, but I’m not sure the 0.68 and 0.4 numbers you quote are directly comparable because the forcings are not the same. The volcanoes would act to lower the 0.4 if POGA-C was rerun to include them, or raise the 0.68 if POGA-H was rerun without them.
Ed.
They write
.. in the POGA control experiment (POGA-C) [the radiative forcing] is fixed at the 1990 value.
There’s rather a broad maximum than a minimum after Pinatubo. Thus it seem clear that volcanic forcing is not included.
Bringing a comment made earlier out again.
@@@@@
philjourdan | August 28, 2013 at 8:33 pm | Reply
First emulate, then predict. Both are critical to the models being useful.
@@@@@
Surely, this is the key to the scientific method. If one produces a theory/hypothesis which seems to explain the observed empirical data, one should then use that theory/hypothesis to predict what will happen in the future. Then you observe what happens in the future, which, a la Fenyman, gives a further indication as to whether the theory/hypothesis is correct.
When can we hope to see this prediciton?
Looking a little more at the paper, it becomes clear that the model is a realization of the ideas Trenberth has been talking about,
Temperatures over part of Pacific are forced to the observed values by a heat flux from the atmosphere to the ocean (or from ocean to the atmosphere). The imbalance at TOA has been growing from about 0.5 W/m^2 in the 1950’s to more than 1.0 W/m^2 since 1995. OHC has been going up, everything in agreement with Trenberth.
That the model behaves as I write above is largely forced by input. What’s more remarkable is the success of the model in describing temperatures so well both on Global level and also regionally.
The paper provides direct support to Trenberth.
What’s still missing from the the modle as far as I can see is the explanation for the behavior of the Pacific.
One wonders if he wonders as you wonder.
==============
The paper mentions that in addition to ENSO, other possible causes of model errors include: Stratospheric aerosols (mild effect), the predicted but missing stratospheric water vapor decrease, errors in aerosol forcings, bias in the prescribed solar irradiance trend, CMIP5 transient climate sensitivity is too high, and other internal climate variability not considered.
As far as I understand it, the last two items are competitors to Trenberth’s current proposals, so the paper does prefer Trenberth over the Consensus, but not exclusively.
Two things I noticed that I’ve read on skeptical blogs for years now:
1. The modelers have not used common and obvious engineering and software development methods. This paper is an example of what any engineer or software developer would have done a long time ago: inject real-world data where one of your subsystems is currently making forecasts, and see how that affects everything else. There’s no other way to truly test subsystem interactions. The results are stunning.
2. Instead of fixing fundamental problems with the model, the modelers were allowing it to over-tune, with parameters taking on unrealistic values. What really catches my eye is not the reproduction of the pause in the experiment, but the disappearance of the volcanic over-reactions in earlier years. Obviously, some parameters had been allowed to grow way too large in an attempt to compensate for other parameters which were fixed at unrealistic values.
Wayne,
I don’t want to make claims on the views of the authors, nor did I comment on what they writ about uncertainties. What I did write, is that their model is a realization of the ideas of Trenberth (not only Trenberth, but many others have discussed similar ideas), and that it’s so successful that it gives some support to those ideas.
The success of one model is not evidence that other models based on different mechanisms would be worse, deciding on that requires a lot more work. Thus the evidence that the paper gives for the mechanism is not very strong, even so it’s evidence.
The way they force the Pacific temperatures to the observed values seems quite appropriate for the study of the atmosphere, it’s much more problematic for the study of the oceans as far as i can see. Oceans have the heat capacity to force atmosphere, not vice versa. Essentially more is needed to provide understanding on the processes that lead to the observed behavior of oceans.
Pekka,
True. From interviews and postings I’ve read by Trenberth, it appears that he wants the oceans to be a deus-ex-machina, explaining The Pause now that it’s exceeded the “easily up to 15 years in length” pauses he perceives in climate models. This mechanism allows him to not question any other mechanisms: not the posited amplifications of CO2’s effect, not external mechanisms (solar changes), not long-term cloud/moisture effects or any other changes in a complex system, but rather to posit a mechanism that only recently kicked in and which can only affect the future in bad ways.
That’s not based on his papers, just on what he says to the press. This isn’t proof one way or the other, of course, but it does sound like he may be pursuing the right path for the wrong reason, allowing confirmation bias to obscure the larger picture.
Pekka’s catching on. And what if there is a sun/ocean connection, and what if it has something to do with sunspots easing out of the visual spectrum, and becoming hemispherically asymmetric?
We have far worse catastrophes than mild beneficial warming and plant kingdom fertilizing to deal with, the ongoing expansion and the eventual bursting of the green bubble, and the coming cold.
===============
There should be a Playboy/girl for Kim and Judy. Every month the centerfold would be another picture of Trenberth. What jollies they could have.
Listen to the doctor boy…
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/28/5687619/climate-science-exploited-for.html
Re adjust.
Anyone can immediately see by adding a short visual gap in the latest HADCRUT global average data set how our postwar C02 era witnessed a variation in temperature that was no different than the one before it:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1955/to:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1895/to:1950
Im puzzled so what caused the Pacific cooling?
Even the rainbow was once nothing more than a natural reminder of what has come to pass…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Herbicides
WHO knew.
The major implication is that the positive feedbacks for GHG warming to much faster than we’ve experience simply aren’t plausible. Unless our ability to grow emissions increases greatly, which is unlikely due to constaints on our ability to produce and operate the productive capital, we can’t see warming much higher that the beneficial rate we’ve experienced.
Political Scientist: Oh, I just should have concentrated in my resources in FL for the 2000 election!
Finanical Engineer: Oh, I just should have scrutinized sub-prime mortgages and the rating agencies!
Climate Scientist: Oh, I just should have understood the dynamics of the eastern tropical pacific better!
None of these sciences are now “fixed” by learning from their failure. There are infinite number of confounding factors / “excuses” at play in any of these situations and out-of-sample prediction is always at high risk for being worse than the naive predictor.
P.S. “Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.”
Comment: That’s your (“mind blowing”) conclusion? Anything a bit more waffling would put this paper in the notorious 3%, no?
Pingback: Another Paper Blames ENSO for the Warming Hiatus | Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations
In my minds eye I can already see the emails:-
“I don’t know what Judith thinks she is doing, but she is definitely not helping the pause.”
Good one. Hyperpausecausity is sludging up the climate.
=======
What is mind blowing is that it has taken the grossly incompetent modelling community 30 years to incorporate the 60 year PDO cycle.into their entrail reading.How long will it take them to discover the millenial solar cycle?
Xie is qouted as saying.”We’re pretty confident that the swing up will come some time in the future, but the current science can’t predict when that will be,” said Prof Xie.
Presumably he hasn’t mastered the art of adding 60 to 1970 to make 2030.By then perhaps he might have found the millennial cycle and will be able to reproduce the forecast seen on the latesst post on my blog http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
Here are the conclusions
“To summarise- Using the 60 and 1000 year quasi repetitive patterns in conjunction with the solar data leads straightforwardly to the following reasonable predictions for Global SSTs
1 Continued modest cooling until a more significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and more CO2 would help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !!
The Solar Cycles 2,3,4 correlation with cycles 21,22,23 would suggest that a Dalton minimum could be imminent. The Livingston and Penn Solar data indicate that a faster drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures might even be on the horizon.If either of these actually occur there would be a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.”
It takes so little to blow some peoples minds. If brains were TNT Curry couldn’t blow her nose…
What a boorish lout. You must be an Alarmist.
“Climate models are notoriously poor .”
Fixed that misprint for you.
Pingback: Mind Blowing? Shocking News? PDO? ENSO? Effects Global Temps? Natural Variability? Wow. : | suyts space
I’m not a climate scientist, but I would have considered it good science to understand the effects of each of the major natural changes that are known to affect global temperatures, including the multidecadal ocean oscillations, long before I started looking at any anthropogenic effects.
Am I to understand that none of this was done? If that is the case, can someone please explain to me why the science seems to be conducted in an illogical way, i.e. claim an alarming increase then decades later, start to measure the effect of natural variability. It just looks like very bad science to me, so I assume there must be some explanation.
It looks like bad science because it is bad science, in fact so bad that people who have no science background like me can see how bad it is The IPCC’s assertion that they’re 95 percent positive man is the main cause of warming, is I’m sorry to say, no better than a lie. I put Muller’s statement, the supposed erstwhile skeptic who has somehow more lately seen the light, in the same category.
yet this study posits that man is the main cause of warming
95% certainty sounds about right, factoring in the size of the ghg forcing and unlikelihood that any natural factor can come close.
It looks like a bluff because it is a bluff.
It’s so obvious people who have no Poker background can see.
INTEGRITY ™ – It’s a Bluff
Willard (picture a little TM here)- A one trick pony.
Willard- The irony is so rarified he might not even exist.
Willard-He’s so quick witted he regularly laps himself.
Question, Why does Willard regularly lap his you know what?
Answer: Because he can. Plus, he has nothing else to do.
In climate science, you start with a conclusion, not a hypothesis, and then do all you can to validate the preordained conclusion, including trying to torpedo any and all findings that are not consistent with that conclusion.
In climate science, you start with a conclusion, not a hypothesis, and then do all you can to validate the preordained conclusion
Concoting lies doesnt’ help you case — it just shows you can’t compete on the science.
No it does not David. So I would suggest you stop. You have already been called out several times on the ones you posted.
I just tell the truth. it didnt take long to grasp the mentality of the climate science establishment. Your infatuation with the team and acolytes blinds you to how it really works.
The PDO was described in 1996. Since 1988 we have been looking at rainfall regimes in Australia – and this seems to be the first instance of identification of a climate pattern associated with these Pacific states. In the first instance it was a pattern without a cause however. It was obvious that it was ENSO related but without a clear idea of the nonstationary nature of ENSO time series – from long term proxies – there was little enough to hang a decadal (indeed centennial and millennial) causal effect on. Let alone a global warming influence.
This idea has been evolving over more than a decade – quantification of the impact on global energy dynamic depends on good information on top of atmosphere reflected shortwave. What existing data shows is that this is an order of magnitude bigger influence than greenhouse gases on temperatures in the satellite era. You can reject the evidence or take it as a qualified OMG.
What existing data shows is that this is an order of magnitude bigger influence than greenhouse gases on temperatures in the satellite era
The PDO is worth 15 W/m2? Baloney.
Where does all that heat come from? The PDO is cyclic. Where does all that heat come from, and what shows where it has left?
With this final correction, the ERBS Nonscanner-observed decadal changes in tropical mean LW, SW, and net radiation between the 1980s and the 1990s now stand at 0.7, -2.1, and 1.4 W/m^2, respectively, which are similar to the observed decadal changes in the High-Resolution Infrared Radiometer Sounder (HIRS) Pathfinder OLR and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) version FD record…’ http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
So cooling in IR and warming in SW – while the nominal increase in greenhouse gas forcing was about 0.6 W/m^2 in the period.
http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
You do understand that greenhouse gas ‘forcing’ is not a real world, physical quantity? It is calculated as the forcing from release of a slug of greenhouse keeping temperature constant? Warming is theoretically caused by the increase in CO2 not some unphysical metric of reduced emissions in a system that is actually warming and tending to energy equilibrium at toa?
willard,
Chapter 3.. you might enjoy
http://www.amazon.com/Geographic-Information-Mountain-Geomorphology-Geophysical/dp/354042640X
in which a philosopher gets to talk about ontology– whats a hill whats a mountain.
see.. it is a practical profession after all
JC wrote:
I didn’t know how to quantify this, but I thought that it might account for at least half of the observed warming
If you don’t know how to quantify it, how do you know it’s “at least half?”
She didn’t say “know” she said “it might account for” (emphasis added).
Is English not your fluent language, David?
If JC can’t quantify it, how does she know it might be “at least half” and not “less than 0.001” or “more than 90 percent?”:
Are we now doing science by intuition? Science was INVENTED precisely because intution is a lousy guide.
This idea of decadal variability has been evolving over more than a decade – quantification of the impact on the global energy dynamic depends on good information on top of atmosphere reflected shortwave. What existing data shows is that this is an order of magnitude bigger influence than greenhouse gases on temperatures in the satellite era. You can reject the evidence or take it as a qualified OMG.
e.g. ‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’
‘The most accurate of the data sets in Table 3.5 is believed to be the ERBS Edition 3 Rev 1 active-cavity wide field of view data (Wielicki et al., 2005). The ERBS stability is estimated as better than 0.5 W m–2 over the 1985 to 1999 period and the spatial and temporal sampling noise is less than 0.5 W m–2 on annual time scales (Wong et al., 2006).’
‘However, the decrease in reflected SW radiation from the 1980s to the 1990s may be inconsistent with the increase in total and low cloud cover over oceans reported by surface observations (Norris, 2005a), which show increased low cloud occurrence. The degree of inconsistency, however, is difficult to ascertain without information on possible changes in low-level cloud albedo.’
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html
‘This study examines variability in zonal mean surface-observed upper-level (combined midlevel and high-level) and low-level cloud cover over land during 1971–1996 and over ocean during 1952–1997. These data were averaged from individual synoptic reports in the Extended Edited Cloud Report Archive (EECRA). Although substantial interdecadal variability is present in the time series, long-term decreases in upper-level cloud cover occur over land and ocean at low and middle latitudes in both hemispheres. Near-global upper-level cloud cover declined by 1.5%-sky-cover over land between 1971 and 1996 and by 1.3%-sky-cover over ocean between 1952 and 1997. Consistency between EECRA upper-level cloud cover anomalies and those from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) during 1984–1997 suggests the surface-observed trends are real. The reduction in surface-observed upper-level cloud cover between the 1980s and 1990s is also consistent with the decadal increase in all-sky outgoing longwave radiation reported by the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS). Discrepancies occur between time series of EECRA and ISCCP low-level cloud cover due to identified and probable artifacts in satellite and surface cloud data. Radiative effects of
surface-observed cloud cover anomalies, called ‘‘cloud cover radiative forcing (CCRF) anomalies,’’ are estimated based on a linear relationship to climatological cloud radiative forcing per unit cloud cover. Zonal mean estimated longwave CCRF has decreased over most of the globe. Estimated shortwave CCRF has become slightly stronger over northern midlatitude oceans and slightly weaker over northern midlatitude land areas. A long-term decline in the magnitude of estimated shortwave CCRF occurs over low-latitude land and ocean, but comparison with ERBS all-sky reflected shortwave radiation during
1985–1997 suggests this decrease may be underestimated.’ Citation:
Norris, J. R. (2005), Multidecadal changes in near-global cloud cover and estimated cloud cover radiative forcing, J. Geophys. Res.
I remain unconvinced that the evidence is ‘equivocal’.
Sorry Skip. I didn’t notice that you had already pinned the tail on the donkey.
“If you don’t know how to quantify it, how do you know it’s “at least half?”
The same way Mikey constructed the phony Stick.
Clearly you know nothing about that science. The HS has been replicated by many different groups — most recently the PAGES 2k Consortium — some using completely different mathematical techniques, like Tingley adn Huybers.
Appell, we all look forward to the day when you have the wisdom to make a u turn in Mikey’s colon, part his anal sphincter, and proclaim to the world that your are free from his nonsense.
I accept your admission that you were wrong about the HS’s science and can’t compete on the facts.
What Facts David? So far, you have offered none.
Appell, forget the u turn. Keep climate forward and soon you will be his literal mouthpiece.
It’s the shaft that is both straightened and crookened, David. And check out the frayed end of the blade, hanging all sideways and all.
==================
David,
“eplicated by many different groups — most recently the PAGES 2k Consortium — some using completely different mathematical techniques, like Tingley adn Huybers.”
The issue isnt the techniques. The issue is the addiction to crack.
crack data. All you need is one rock, a bristlecone here, a foxtail there,
a upside down sediment over there. Or you need to drop a proxy here or there.
we can say with near certainty that the differences between methods are inconsequential relative to the differences you see if you do sensitivity tests with respect to data selection.
For example, in Tingley and Huybers, you’d want to look at dropping Mt Logan or retaining it.
You are an idiot, apple. “I thought that it might account for” is not the same as claiming to “know it’s at least half”. Why do you come here? Is it just to amuse us?
You admit my point, and then wonder why I’M here?
Why are you here?
Pages 2K Consortium, still with Gergis, oh, I fall on the flower and giggle.
=============
last I looked she wasnt making a science claim david, rather looking at a chart and eyeballing it. people do get to express there guesses and no we dont count them as science. but they do get to make them.
“We need updates to the forcings and a proper exploration of all the different mechanisms together,” says climate modeler Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “This has taken time but will happen soon-ish.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pacific-ocean-and-climate-change-pause
Susan Solomon admits being clueless and offers up WAGs instead…
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/29/216415005/a-cooler-pacific-may-be-behind-recent-pause-in-global-warming?sc=tw
you need to learn the rulz. Its ok to offer up various forms of unicorns to explain things. Its not ok to use the word uncertain.
sarc off
She instinctively throws in the Chinese pollution unicorn because they used aerosol pollution to try and explain the last negative PDO. I walked away from the article with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. ;)
I agree with Judith’s view that natural variability modulates the pace of climate warming over a decade or two.
> Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998
> natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming.
1975 was a La Nina year, and 1998 followed the strongest El Nino in the instrumental record. My estimate indicates that the El Nino-La Nina difference accounts for 0.2-0.3C difference of her 0.4 C in POGA-C. So for multi-decadal trend, the tropical Pacific Decadal Oscillation accounts for only 0.1 C for the longer period of 1950-2012. El Nino and La Nina are part of the short climate cycle of ENSO, averaged out over several decades. Our paper noted that the warm phase of PDO contributed to the fast warming during the 1970s-1990s.
1998-2012 minus 1950-1964 temperature difference between the current and previous hiatus events: 0.66 C in POGA-H, and 0.08 C in POGA-C.
> I thought that it might account for at least half of the observed warming, and hence my questioning of the IPCC’s highly confident attribution of ‘most’ to AGW.
I have a different take on this. The IPCC conclusion applies to centennial warming from 1880. Much of the 0.8C warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic forcing, because natural variability like PDO and AMO has been averaged out over this long period of time.
Our results concern the effect of tropical Pacific SST on global mean temperature over the past 15 years. It is large enough to offset the anthropogenic warming for this period, but the effect weakens as the period for trend calculation gets longer simply because it is oscillatory and being averaged out.
Shang-Ping Xie said:
“I agree with Judith’s view that natural variability modulates the pace of climate warming over a decade or two.”
____
I would still strongly suggest that we try to be as precise as scientifically precise in our terms so as to convey exactly what we intend by our statements. The Earth energy system is complex with lots of movement of energy in and out and around between parts of the system. If we speak in generalities about such a complex system, we are more likely to be wrong than right.
Natural variability might modulate the flow of energy between parts of the system, such as from ocean to atmosphere, but the “pace of climate warming”, as in the general gain in energy (or loss of energy) of the entire climate system, can only be dictated by some external forcing, such as somthing that changes the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface, volcanoes, or changes in GH gas concentrations.
‘…but the “pace of climate warming”, as in the general gain in energy (or loss of energy) of the entire climate system, can only be dictated by some external forcing, such as somthing that changes the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface, volcanoes, or changes in GH gas concentrations…’
You mean something that changes both incoming and outgoing energy? Like clouds?
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling/#comment-371641
If Anthro GHGs are responsible for most of the warming since 1880 think how cold it would now be without their effect. Then, gaze deeply at the sunspots before they disappear for awhile.
=============
Dr Xie the link is http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
sorry.
Dr. Xie is a scientist. Blog posts are not science.
David Appell wouldn’t know science if it up and blogged him one.
==========
“Blog posts are not science.”
Somebody better tell Gavin Schmidt and the Klimate Keystone Kops at Skeptical Science.
The underlaying trend from 1880 is first of all not a long period of time climatewise and secondly is reasonably likely due to a lower frequency millennial natural solar trend.The temperature peak in about 2003( Fig 1 in the link given later) can quite reasonably be attributed to a peak in both the 60+/- year PDO trend and a 1000 year solar cycle peak similar to that in the MWP.( Figs 6 and 7 in the link.)The resulting cooling if this is the case is given in an earlier comment (11.54) todayand supported in the latest post on my blog at http://climatesense norpag.com.Best Regards – Thanks for participating.
130 years is certainly a signficant period of time, with CO2 changing as fast as it now is.
This get’s to the issue of how changing GH gas concentration may actually alter the character of the natural ocean cycles, such as the PDO and AMO, etc. In other words, how would the PDO vary over the past 50 years had CO2, methane, and N2O have reamined constant (or fluctated within a tight range versus the large percentage increases that we’ve seen. This is a very difficult but important question.
The PDO, AMO, SAM, NAM, etc. etc. can be seen as network nodes on a chaotic Earth system. They system, the nodes and the chaotic variability exists independently of minor changes in warming – although warming may ultimately push the system past a tippling point and change the climate mode.
You start by assuming that the nodes will continue to behave in characterisitc ways into the future – and attempt to disentangle the influence of what seem like quite minor (at worst) anthropogenic changes on chaotic oscillators that have intrinsic extreme variability not seen in the 20th century.
You start by assuming that the nodes will continue to behave in characterisitc ways into the future
That is a lousy assumption. Just look at the PDO index — it has varied greatly in the last 20 years, and certainly not in some smooth 30-year cycle.
You are painting a simplistic picture, as if climate is made up of some easy, well-known cycles that just need to be added together. It is not.
‘The global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each
of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’ http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/PREPRINTS/Math_clim-Taipei-M_Ghil_vf.pdf
Complexity would seem to be the point – David.
Sensitivity – btw – is… wait for it… γ in the linked diagram.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Ghil_fig11_zpse58189d9.png.html?sort=3&o=0
Dr Xie the link is http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
sorry.
Not really, relative to part of a millenial cycle- which is probably what we are seeing in the warming from the LIA age.See Fig 7 in the link above
‘What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth.’ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
We know exactly what the 20th century trend is. Not terribly significant. Post the 1998/2001 climate temperature is quite likely to not increase – or even cool – for a decade to three more.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/lontermtrend_zpse9264a75.png.html
And attributing all or even most of the increase to greenhouse is nonsense.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling/#comment-371641
But as Latif suggests above these are abrupt, chaotic shifts in climate – the time series is nonstationary over decades to millenia. The Pacific Decadal Variation is not a stationary oscillation.
eg. – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=72
– http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=131
It is far from certain that the 20th pattern of natural warming, cooling and warming will be replicated going forward. .
Pingback: The Hiatus, Continued | Planet3.0
Judith,
Though the origin of PDO is unknown, is it safe to say that it is not anthropogenic or caused by CO2? I understand PDO has been reconstructed back to the Medieval era.
There is no mechanism for infra red back radiation to warm the oceans as IR cannot penetrate water by more than a few microns, any heat generated being instantly removed by convection providing the energy to generate storms. All oceanic warming is due to short wave solar radiation only and heavily dependant on cloud cover. There is no hidden heat from supposed AGW in the oceans as there is no way for it to transfer to the water and reach the ocean depths. Nature over the past 16 years has shown the supposed sensitivity of the atmosphere to CO2 to be virtually nil.
In my estimation, a virtual measurement.
==============
Necessary reading
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/
Take a leaf from David Appell who notes that “Blog posts are not science.”
0.002ºK (W/m2)-1?
Wow, just wow!
Theoretically so. In reality ocean heat content follows net toa radiative forcing – which peaked in 1998.
Shang-Ping Xie.
Thank you for commenting here. I’m perplexed at your confidence that recent warming is mostly CO2 forcing. I agree that the positive and negative phase forcings of ENSO and PDO probably cancel out over time, but there were similar 20 year periods of significant warming previous to the recent 1978-1998 one, when CO2 was not a factor. Similarly, previous centuries warmed about as much as the 20th century with no increasing levels of CO2. Your confidence that recent warming is a CO2 forcing implies a similar confidence that the natural variability (unknown forcings responisble for earlier periods of warming) is no longer operative. How do you justify that confidence?
I know, rising sun not middle kingdom, but it is kabuki. Don’t listen to the words, look at the action.
================
Germany learns a thing or two from China, on how to teach your inhabitants.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/police-storm-homeschool-class-take-children-by-force/
Free Kabuki for kids of the neo open mindedness movement who already can see our tomorrow, today
If we attribute 59% of warming to internal variation of the Pacific,
another 38% may be attributed to the Atlantic according to its smaller size.
That then leaves 3% for the rest, including, according to IPCC forcings, only 2% of warming attributable to CO2.
Cross posted at Blackboard Wish I had a more mathematical brain as I agree with your comments but will stumble on with 2+2 lower level logic.
You are making an extremely important point here with your analogy but it needs a little more.
The model is trying to say that what goes into the model is molding the larger observation. Whatever heat you put into or take out of the smaller model is then replicated in the observations.
But in other words [ in your analogy] they are putting the cart before the horse as the heat is not just put in or out at whim.
In a Ying /Yang model any change in one part of a component must affect the other half in a complementary way.
But here they are saying take the effect locally and extrapolate out and it matches.
In actual fact it works the other way. The world global temperature change [from radiative forcing] forces the sea surface temperature over the central to eastern pacific to behave the way it does because it is much larger and more complex.
The novelty is that this area unlike most others has at the moment an appearance of moving in unison over a short decadal time span with this mostly external forcing.
Pingback: Maximale spin de Volkskrant: "Dip in opwarming aarde hoort bij patroon" - Climategate.nl
Pingback: Judith Curry is blown away? | Wotts Up With That Blog
Pingback: Xie reacts on Curry « De staat van het klimaat
Check out the main post, i’ve added an update with comments from Xie.
Judy,
Dr Ben Santor and Dr. Celine Bonfils published a paper in 2010 Clim Dyn (2011037:1457-1468 DOE 10.1007/s00382-010-0920-1
Titled ; Investigating the possiblility of a human component in various pacific decadal oscillation indices
It is in open access in Springerlink.com
Could you look at this at help with reaction to the work compared to this one by Xie/
Scott
Judith Do you really think we have a precision of 0.1 or 0.2C? I tend to agree with Lambs belief that ‘we can follow the tendency but not the precision’ especially in remote areas or with imprecise instruments.
tonyb
“Also, I am interested that Xie seems to refer to the forthcoming attribution statement for the AR5, which apparently refers to the period since 1880. Which is different from the AR4, which referred to the latter half of the 20th century.”
That should be interesting. Black Carbon, land and water use would be more important factors prior to 1950 plus there is a 0.5 C +/- residual LIA/Volcanic temperature depression to contend with. Considering than most don’t disagree with Black Carbon impact and that BEST is finding land amplification a factor, this could get entertaining.
Cappy is ABC = Anything But Carbon Dioxide
Black Carbon is evidently OK, but CO2, no way.
He has some weird redneck fetish going on where he has to prove those guys from New Yawk City wrong (Hansen et al).
Webster, CO2 is a done deal, 0.8C to 1.12C simple, easy, no brain strain. It make a good tracer, but it does not explain everything. Current estimates have “everything” approaching 1.6C per CO2 equivalent doubling. Since 1880 there has been about 1.6C total temperature increase. Some estimates put the LIA depression at 0.9 C. Some portion of that is part of the ~1.6C total temperature increase. Once that recovery is complete, the response to CO2 equivalent forcing can be more accurately estimated, in my opinion, bringing it down to the lower 0.8C range. The question is how much of what when produced the temperature can. Attribution in other words.
Your typical childish ABC references and simplistic reasoning tend to go hand in hand.
Correction, that should be ~1C rise from 1880.
@WHUT – wouldn’t that be ABCD?
“ENSO, averaged out over several decades”
How many is several? I see ~5-decadal trends here, probably longer if we had the records.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/imei.png
“Much of the 0.8 C warming since 1900 is indeed due to anthropogenic forcing, because natural variability like PDO and AMO has been averaged out over this long period of time.”
This is evidently wrong. AMO, (not detrended) is warming, it actually correlates very well with the global temperature indices.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/AMO%20GlobalAnnualIndexSince1856%20With11yearRunningAverage.gif
“It is large enough to offset the anthropogenic warming for this period, but the effect weakens as the period for trend calculation gets longer simply because it is oscillatory and being averaged out.”
Multidecadal nad multicentennial natural variability is not rejected yet, not even close. In fact, it seems very likely, with maybe solar/orbital ‘forcings’.
I tried to “digitize via eyeballing” the picture b) with the “POGA-C” unforced index of the tropical east-pacific.:
http://www.dh7fb.de/reko/poga1.gif .
The interval 1975…1998 with the slope of POGA-C and HadCRUT4 global for this time:
http://www.dh7fb.de/reko/pogatrend.gif
From the slopes is to see: about 60% of the increase 1975…1998 is due to the variability of the east-pacific. In the long run ( 1950-2012) you see a slope of HadCRUT4 of 0,107 K/ decade, 25% is from the pacific, the result ist 0,08 K/decade, not 0,2 as the IPCC says.
When and where has IPCC said that about years 1975-98?
The chosen period makes all the difference.
In the AR4, the attribution statement is latter half of the 20th century (nominally since 1950). Then the detection arguments show an AGW signal emerging late 70’s/early 80’s. So choose different periods, under the constraints that they not go outside the bounds of 1950 and 2000. Similar story (slightly different magnitudes) as you choose different periods.
The AGW contribution almost doubles with double period. That makes 100% equivalent to 50% or 505 equivalent to 25%.
Personally I see strong evidence for well more than 50% for the 50 year period, but not for the 25 year period. That does make all the difference between a well justified and non-justifiable statement.
While I agree on very much with you, I tend to see strawman arguments, when you discuss IPCC.
OK, I choose, ta da, the last and next decades and halves.
================
Judy: “My mind has been blown by a new paper just published in Nature.” Relax, Judy, apply critical thinking. These people make overblown claims, they do not understand the data they use, and they use warming manufactured to prove that AGW exists. I collected their claims from USA Today, The Daily Beast, and their Letter in Nature magazine. Here they are:
” Cooling in the Eastern Pacific appears to be balancing out global warming…”
I have no idea what cooling they see. The Eastern Pacific is where the ENSO oscillation is played out when an El Niño wave arrives via the equatorial countercurent. It runs ashore at the equator, spreads north and south along the coast, and warms the water and the air above it. Eventually it will retreat, water level behind it will drop by half a meter, cold water from below will fill in the vacuum, and a La Niña cooling will start. This is periodic, and no long-term cooling is possible. If an El Niño wave does not make it all the way to South America it will spread out in the middle of the ocean and an El Niño Modoki is formed. That still does not create any cooling.
“The hiatus will probably end with a strong El Niño season in the Pacific…”
Now that is an absurdity. No way is an El Niño wave related to any global warming. He obviously knows nothing about the El Niño or about the “hiatus” either but wants to draw a connection to impress the ignorant.
“Our results strongly confirm the role that (man-made) emissions are having on the climate… says climate scientist Shang-Ping Xie…”
A pretty strong claim based on wishful thinking. He shows no connections at all. Someone ought to tell him that despite highest emissions and carbon “pollution” in history there is no warming whatsoever today and there has been none for fifteen years. It is not a freak or chance occurrence, it does not fluctuate, it is steady, long-term behavior. If you want to be called a climate scientist you should know some basic facts about the climate. Or is this too much to ask if your paper appears in Nature?
“…the ‘hiatus’ in global warming has left average surface temperatures lodged about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for the past century. The top 10 warmest years on record have all come since 1998 as a result…”
Here we have a demonstration of basic ignorance about the global temperature curve. First, there is no “normal” for the past century. Its warming history is divided into disjoint periods by changes in physical conditions and these segments must not be joined by a computer-generated curve. Starting from the beginning, the first ten years of the century were cooling, not warming. Then, in 1910, warming suddenly started. It kept going for thirty years, until 1940, and raised global temperature by half a degree Celsius. It is guaranteed not to be greenhouse warming because there was no corresponding increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. For those who wonder why, it is because the laws of physics do not permit it. If that is not enough, go back to school. It makes up most of that 0.8 degrees Celsius warming since 1880 that IPCC keeps referring to. It endeds in 1940 with an abrupt drop in temperature at the beginning of the Second World War. This sudden cooling is missing in official temperature curves which show a heat wave instead. There was no warming in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies that followed. In 1976 there was a slight warming thanks to the PDO phase shift from its cold to warm phase. This raised global temperature by about 0.2 degrees Celsius and was over by 1980. I know that because I used satellite temperature data from then on. But that is not what ground-based temperature curves showed. The eighties and nineties were shown as a warming, with temperature rising a tenth of a degree Celsius per decade. This contradicts satellites according to which there is no warming until the arrival of the super El Niño of 1998. This fact makes that “late twentieth century warming” of the eighties and nineties a fraud and I said so when I published my book in 2010. Result: two years later GISTEMP, HadCRUT and NCDC stopped showing this fake warming and aligned there data with satellites. But it was too late for the AR5 report and the present article, both of which show the original fake warming in the eighties and nineties. It shows up well in their Figure 1a about which they state “…you can see how well the POGA H global average surface temperature matches the observations…” It matches well the phony eighties and nineties and would be off the mark if the real temperatures were substituted. That same graph is also completely wrong about the twenty-first century temperatures which are all shown to be higher than the super El Niño peak in 1998. All of the twenty-first century years are in fact warmer than the twentieth century years that preceded them except for the super El Niño pf 1998. They got that way because there was a step warming immediately after the super El Niño appeared which raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius and then stopped. There has not been any additional warming since then.
“Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling.”
Sorry but your results demonstrate nothing about the “hiatus”. There is no such thing as a La Niña-like decadal cooling. La Niña is part of the ENSO oscillation and does not last for decades.
“…increasing radiative forcing permits heatwaves to develop in Northern Hemisphere continents and Arctic sea ice to melt….”
The claim that heatwaves are caused by global warming has not stood up to historical examination. The claim that radiative forcing permits Arctic sea to melt is factually wrong. Arctic is the only part of the world today that is still warming, no thanks to any radiative forcing or the greenhouse effect. It started suddenly at the turn of the twentieth century, after two thousand years of slow cooling. It paused in mid-century for thirty years, then resumed, and is still going strong. Greenhouse warming is ruled out because there was no parallel increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Its most likely cause is warm Gulf Stream water carried into the Arctic Ocean by North Atlantic currents.
“We focused on trends over the recent 11 years from 2002 to 2012, to avoid the strong 1997/98 El Niño event and the following three-year La Niña events.”
I can see that they could not handle the super El Niño and admit it, but the rest is nonsense. Three year La Niña events did not follow the 1997/98 El Niño event. And 2002 to 2012 included the strong La Niña event of 2008.
And finally, why am I down on this paper? It presents no scientifically acceptable hypothesis to explain “hiatus,” has numerous errors and misstatements of fact, and ignores the most direct explanation that Ferenc Miskolczi published in 2007, namely that there is no greenhouse effect at all. In 2010 he discovered that he could prove his theory by using existing data. NOAA has a database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948. He used it to study the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere and discovered that absprption had been constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time went up by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to air had no influence whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. This has consequences. First, all predictions of warming that use the greenhouse effect are invalid. Any predictions of warming by 2100, for example, are totally invalid. Since such predictions have been used to justify passing emission control laws these laws were passed under false premises and should be voided. And since IPCC no longer has any warming to study it should be dissolved.
Chief,
You have argued the (added?) ocean heat is from (direct from the sun) shortwave, not (indirect, CO2-downwelling) longwave.
How does one tell?
that’s the point, pogac is not just natural variability, sst in the enso regions are affected by radiative forcing too.
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2013/08/learning-from-the-hiatus/
John Nielsen Gammon has a post that he says refutes my analysis; his analysis makes no sense to me. Pls check it out and comment.
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2013/08/learning-from-the-hiatus/
John’s response and overall analysis is pretty strong. He does make the point that overall model sensivity to increasing GH gases could be a bit to high. Also, this bit of paleoclimate research from a few years back:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/307/5717/1948.full.pdf
Indicates a potential permanent La Niña like state in the Pacific, with increased advection of heat to higher latitudes as GH gases approach Pliocene levels. With the lower net ocean to atmosphere heat flux during this La Niña like condition, it means measuring the climate response to GH forcing based on tropospheric temperatures alone is a weaker and less accurate measurment tool.
…… And post 1998 and the El ninos of the 80’s the climate models were telling us we might expect stronger more frequent El Ninos. Isn’t the science fasinating!
Correct me if I am wrong but Gammon is saying that the Pacific SSTs are a forcing not natural variability.
This doesn’t make much sense to me unless the argument is the variations in the Pacific SSTs are in some way caused by greenhouse gases and are an amplification mechanism.
But I am a non-scientist so what do I know?
One more comment.
I could see that for the purposes of the models Pacific SSTs must be treated as forcings since there is no way to derive them from the model. If the model could derive them, then it could explain the PDO.
But whether that means anything for the real world I don’t know.
James Cross, What do you know? About as much as everyone else. The actual “forcing” for ENSO is solar, but ENSO is a defined “oscillation” and any “oscillation” in a system can create or amplify other “oscillations” or more appropriately damped recurrent decay responses. Every wiggle has some “cause” and as long as you assume you know every cause you will never discover interesting new things. The problem is the ones that “know” everything.
Prior to 2000, solar was a more potent forcing than it is now. The ones that know everything now assumed the ones that knew everything then were wrong, now it is time for the roles to be reversed since the ones that knew everything then dealt with the actual surface and the ones that know everything now have created a fantasy “surface” where only radiant physics apply.
“I have a different take on this. The IPCC conclusion applies to centennial warming from 1880. Much of the 0.8 C warming since 1900 is indeed due to anthropogenic forcing, because natural variability like PDO and AMO has been averaged out over this long period of time.”
Isn’t this another example of the typical Alarmist assumption that natural variability always “averages out?” Are there good empirical reasons for the claim? I will answer my own question. No, there are not. Alarmists have no interest in empirical research.
Correct, Theo, no empiricism.
I might be inclined to accept that over, say several million years things might average out. No ice ages, no interglacials….except that ice ages and interglacials are one example of natural variation, no? So on a shorter time scale of say, 5,000 years, the natural variations of going into and out of ice ages DON’T average out.
So on what grounds can anyone say that natural variations within a period of a bit over 100 years will even out?
What about the run up to the Medieval Warm period? Didn’t that take a few hundred years? That HAD to be natural variation, didn’t it? Goodness, it might even look a bit like the runup in the last 100 years or so!
What about the several hundred year descent into the LIA? Did natural variations average out between, say, 1100 AD and 1750 AD?
I do happen to believe that perhaps half or so of the temperature increases since 1970 or so are likely due to GHGs, and that climate sensitivity is likely between 1 and 2 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 and equivalents, but this sense is based upon the best empiricism I can attempt by reading as much as I can.
The measure of “climate” sensitivity by looking at only tropospheric temperature sensitivity might need to be examined a bit, especially, if turned out to be the case (as some research seems to indicate) that CO2 at 400 ppm induces a permanent La Niña state in the Pacific, while still allowing for rapid warming in other parts of the ocean and climate system.
Your post is far more instructive than mine and I thank you for taking the time to write it. Good work.
Here it is important to separate internal natural variability, which is basically ocean circulations from natural variability in the forcing, such as solar and volcanic effects. These external ones can affect long-term climate, and things like the MWP and LIA could be responses to those rather than ocean circulation changes (most skeptics would not deny this). In this last century, the solar increase in the early part may have helped the warming before 1940. There is no mechanism proposed by which internal natural variability can lead to any warming that does not average out over decades, and even then its magnitude can’t be more than tenths of a degree. This is an energy balance constraint due to the effectiveness of radiation in removing excess surface energy above the balanced state, seen for example just after El Ninos as the surface temperature anomaly cools within a year.
JimD, ” There is no mechanism proposed by which internal natural variability can lead to any warming that does not average out over decades, and even then its magnitude can’t be more than tenths of a degree.”
There are internal mechanisms that can lead to natural cooling which can require centuries or longer to recover from. In general, the consensus view is squat, the estimated “sensitivity” is reducing because without knowing what “normal” is you can’t determine abnormal.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rRs69Ekl9Zc/T_7kMjPiejI/AAAAAAAAChY/baz0GHWEGbI/s917/60000%2520years%2520of%2520climate%2520change%2520plus%2520or%2520minus%25201.25%2520degrees.png
But it is nice to see that you have completely solved the puzzle.
captd, you neglected to say what that mechanism was. The figure you linked gave no clue what you are talking about. The skeptics have drawn a blank on this important issue of oceans internally somehow causing global warming. The simple question is where does the heat come from?
Jim, the skeptics haven’t drawn a blank nor have the non-skeptics. I’ve pointed out many times that models indicate it is a change in albedo that allows internal variation to cause changes to the energy budget. That you refuse to aknowledge that there is a mainstream view out there that says this is the case doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
steven, the Arctic changes in ice albedo have proven to be far more powerful than anything the clouds can do by themselves, and are feedbacks not forcings.
@Jim D,
” steven, the Arctic changes in ice albedo have proven to be far more powerful than anything the clouds can do by themselves”
Prove it.
There is no internal variability of the system that will add energy to the system over the long-term. Wouldn’t it be nice if energy worked that way!
JimD, “captd, you neglected to say what that mechanism was. The figure you linked gave no clue what you are talking about. The skeptics have drawn a blank on this important issue of oceans internally somehow causing global warming. The simple question is where does the heat come from?”
From the sun and the surface. The surface of the oceans are always warmer than the depths of the oceans> If you change the mixing efficiency, by shifting atmospheric circulations with solar precessional cycle for example, the mixing efficiency changes and the regions where precipitation falls changes. You can have century and millennial scale climate shifts. Why the heck do you think I reference Toggwieler, Brierley, Stott, Neilsen, Oppo, Lawrence and the rest?
Numbnuts Webster even mentions “how” efficiency mixing can be, but he glosses over how inefficient it can be. This this reference one more time.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/jrt0901.pdf
Less Arctic sea ice, more Antarctic sea ice, more northerly ITCZ, warmer NH warmer land, land amplification. Earth is not a perfectly symmetrical sphere, it will have lots of states with varying mixing efficiencies.
Jim D writes:
Jim D | August 31, 2013 at 12:27 pm |
“captd, you neglected to say what that mechanism was. The figure you linked gave no clue what you are talking about. The skeptics have drawn a blank on this important issue of oceans internally somehow causing global warming. The simple question is where does the heat come from?”
You are employing the oldest Alarmist conceit: you insist on talking about causes only. That gives you a rhetorical advantage because you can berate others for not describing causes. Scientifically, you have your eyes closed. No one knows what causes ENSO or similar phenomena and no one will know until heavily funded Alarmists decide to get in boats, planes, whatever and do the empirical work necessary to understand ENSO.
When we talk about natural variability and reference examples such as the MWP and the LIA, we are talking about what Earth has achieved without human help (no manmade GHGs). We do not know what caused those things and only empiricism will ever explain them. Alarmists who claim that empiricism must stay within the boundaries set by radiation only theorists are just whistling past the graveyard.
captd, you need to get that out more because you are the only one saying that, or possible even understanding it. I certainly don’t. For example, if you mix the ocean more, you get surface cooling not warming, but that’s just a sign problem.
R. Gates writes:
“There is no internal variability of the system that will add energy to the system over the long-term. Wouldn’t it be nice if energy worked that way!”
Your reference to energy shows once again that Alarmist climate science has neither a comprehensive nor a consistent theory. You freely draw upon whatever isolated drib or drab of theory that can be used at the moment.
Are you aware that the fundamental evidence for Alarmist theory is stated in temperatures? Then why are you talking about energy? There is no practical way for converting claims about temperature into claims about energy in the context of the debates on climate science. So, what are you doing talking about energy?
There was this week a post by X Anonymous which explained that, in terms of energy, neither the PDO nor ENSO could have a role to play in explanations of climate change. He/she too overlooked the fact that all the fundamental evidence for Alarmist theory is stated in temperatures not joules. Yet in terms of the actual evidence used by Alarmists, temperatures, a role for ENSO and a role for the PDO make perfectly good sense. Alarmists are opportunists who are far more interested in fostering confusion than in doing empirical science.
R. Gates, “There is no internal variability of the system that will add energy to the system over the long-term. Wouldn’t it be nice if energy worked that way!”
You have a major issue with basic thermo, Efficiency. Take a blow driver and heat a pail of water from the top, while stirring and while not stirring, which way warms faster? Which way absorbs more energy? Opening the Drake Passage improved mixing efficiency which changed the “normal” state.
R. Gates, it works that way in models.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/91JD00009/abstract
Jim D, reference for increased heat transport not being able to melt ice. Thanks in advance.
Proof is the Ice Ages and Arctic amplification. Do skeptics doubt the effect of ice albedo feedback? You raise albedo, I say yes ice, you say no. What gives?
JimD, “captd, you need to get that out more because you are the only one saying that, or possible even understanding it. I certainly don’t. For example, if you mix the ocean more, you get surface cooling not warming, but that’s just a sign problem.”
And when it shifts, the sign changes, “pause” in surface temperature, increase in OH uptake. DUH! Only OHC has minor short term impact and major long term centuries plus impacts. When the mode shifts south, the ocean heat uptake will reduce and temperature will reduce because there is less land amplification. With precessional changes you have pulses at ~4000 years with recurrent decays of up to 1700 years, about one full mixing of the oceans. Along with the 4000 and 1700 there are ~1200, ~1000, ~400, ~210, ~100 ~60, 30, 11 and ~3 year pseudo-cycles that can combine to create a variety of “Oscillations” When they synchronize, bigger bang, when they de-synchronize, whimper. You can try to figure all that out or just look at the standard deviation, about +/-1.25 for the tropical oceans and about +/-4 C for the northern mid-latitudes.
Jim, you say ice albedo. I say show the change wasn’t due to changes in OHT. Just because there is a change in ice doesn’t mean it is from the mechanism you claim. As far as clouds vs ice goes, that depends on how much ice, how much cloud, and locations.
steven, ice albedo was mentioned in the context of a positive feedback. The Arctic amplification of global warming is a result of some particularly sensitive features of that region, namely sea-ice. I don’t know what OHC has to do with feedback, but if you say it causes melting, I of course would agree. OHC has been increasing due to the earth’s energy imbalance and this is causing sea-ice melting. There I said it. Maybe you think OHT is independent from OHC, and you need to make that case.
Theo writes:
“Are you aware that the fundamental evidence for Alarmist theory is stated in temperatures? Then why are you talking about energy?”
—–
Energy is the only logical and most comprehensive way to talk about externally forced changes to Earth’s energy balance. Sensible heat in the troposphere is highly variable and only a fraction of Earth’s total energy. No proof has been offered to me that it is a good proxy for overall changes to Earth’s energy budget.
Captn.,
Increasing surface area between two regions of different temperatures will increase heat flux between the two regions, but does not increase net energy of the system. I Understand basic thermodynamics quite well, thank you.
JimD, “steven, ice albedo was mentioned in the context of a positive feedback. The Arctic amplification of global warming is a result of some particularly sensitive features of that region, namely sea-ice.”
I love this logic, Sea ice retreats and is below the estimated average by about 2 million square kilometers for about 3 months of the year. How many square kilometers are there in the northern latitude devoted to wheat farming again?
R.Gates, “Increasing surface area between two regions of different temperatures will increase heat flux between the two regions, but does not increase net energy of the system. I Understand basic thermodynamics quite well, thank you.”
Well now, that is something you should take up with Webster, I just know that more efficient mixing increases the average temperature of the oceans which is increasing the total heat in the ocean system which has about 1000 times the heat capacity of the air that that heat would be lost to if the mixing didn’t take place as efficiently. Heat from the top you see creates convection opposite the direction of heat flow, that kills efficiency causing stratified layers known as inversions or thermoclines. Efficient mixing breaks down those layers.
In fact, the Drake Passage improved mixing so much that the northern hemisphere warmed by approximately 3 C while at the expense of the Southern hemisphere cooling by ~3C with a net “global” cooling of between 2 and 4 C. All that by just opening up a little ditch at the time.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/jrt9502.pdf
This is by Toggwielder et al. the same guy at the GFDL that wrote the shifting westerlies.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/jrt0901.pdf
While I am sure Dr. Toggwieler doesn’t have as much media experience as you do, I tend to think his thermoDYNAMICs experience is superior.
Jim, as I have linked many times here is a graph showing the Gulf Stream transport reconstruction. Does it look to you like it matches CO2 concentrations? Add to the chart that ARGO is showing no trend currently.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n6/fig_tab/ncomms1901_F5.html
Jim, just to be clear. Not ocean heat content. Ocean heat transport.
Capt.,
A major geological event like opening up the Drake passage is hardly comparable to natural variations. If you make an alteration in a system, such that it becomes a different system with a different ability to receive and store sunlight, then this is what is known as an external forcing. The system is forced into a different mode. Knowing Chaos theory as you do, I am sure you can appreciate this. ENSO, PDO and the like are natural variations that don’t bring more energy into the system, but just slosh it around between parts.
R. Gates, “Knowing Chaos theory as you do, I am sure you can appreciate this.”
One of the things most people tend to miss about chaos theory is that events are self similar over all scales. A change like the opening of the Drake passage is a large event, but likely to have similar events on smaller scales. The shifting westerlies is a smaller scale version of the huge shift in westerlies that would have occurred with the Drake Passage opening. A PDO is a smaller scale example of the same shift.
In the first paper Toggwieler et al. estimates the impact of changes in surface wind speed in the ACC and Antarctic convergence zone. A +/- 10 Sverdrup change is about like a 2/3rds shift in the Gulf stream. Then delay range is on the order of 150 years, surprise! surprise! Greenland Ice melt appears to have a roughly 150 year pseudo-oscillation and the western pacific a 100 to 120 year pseudo-oscillation.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-WJiDVg2R0KM/Ubx8SnnJOxI/AAAAAAAAIm4/ejLd98zWmpM/s800/giss%2520and%2520ersst%2520with%2520ipwp.png
SSW events based on the limited satellite data appear to also have pseudo-cyclic behavior in the NH linked to ENSO and QBO which relates to the hemisphere imbalance (shifted ITCZ) enhanced by the Drake Passage opening.
steven, I don’t think it takes the Gulf Stream to melt Arctic sea ice every summer. It is mostly because the atmosphere has warmed up especially over the surrounding continents. The land warming far outdoes anything the Gulf Stream may be doing in terms of temperature change recently. You will also note that a lot of melting occurs on the opposite side of the Arctic Ocean from the Gulf Stream.
Jim. back to the point in question. Is there a mechanism where internal variability could change the global temperature and the global heat content. The answer is yes if there is internal variability in ocean heat transport according to models. This can take place on centennial scales according to models. Your statement that started this conversation was incorrect both in that it was only skeptics saying it was possible and that there was no identifiable mechanism. You say why is it melting on the other side of the Arctic? Can you show me the reconstruction that shows OHT has been flat there? I’ve actually been looking for things like this and not finding much information. Winter/summer, yes, they seem to come regardless of CO2 also.
steven, in round numbers, you need 1 W/m2 sustained over the past century to account for how much the ocean volume has warmed. While AGW provides an explanation for the origin of such energy, internal circulations can account for zero heat content as they have no energy source. What is lacking is any theory for an internally produced energy source of this magnitude that can rival the changing CO2 in its effect on ocean heat content.
Jim, did you not read the abstract I linked to R. Gates?
steven, is that a 1991 paper? Has anyone done that with more recent models? If ocean circulation is a major feedback to climate forcing, we would have heard more about it by now from the newer models, so I am skeptical. It might be one of those dead-end non-repeatable studies.
Jim, people are playing around changing the OHT in models all the time. There are quite a few papers that discuss what happens when you change OHT. Perhaps you have one that supports your position that it can’t affect global heat content. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one. I like the 1991 paper because it makes it easy to say if a 15% increase would cause a 2C warming then a 1C warming from a 10% increase isn’t impractical. The 1991 paper was cited 3 times in 2013, so far.
steven, you probably noted that they didn’t consider this independent of the climate forcing of those periods of paleoclimate, more as a consequence. If current model oceans are responding this way, we should hear about it. I would not be surprised that a much warmer Arctic would result in a different ocean circulation with global consequences.
Jim, it doesn’t matter. What matters is they were isolating the effect of changing OHT.
steven, I agree that if the climate changes by several degrees, OHT could also change a lot in response. We need the models to tell us about this, because it can’t be figured out from just reasoning about circulation interactions. It can go in directions that enhance global change in some areas and reduce it in others.
Jim, maybe. And maybe if OHT changes the temperature could change by a lot. Rose has a model and it says the same forcing can produce both snowball earth and an ice free earth just by changing OHT.
Scroll to the bottom of this post
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/ocean-heat-content-model.html
I tried to apply Hansen’s model of thermal diffusion to his effective forcing and it seems to match the Levitus et al data very well.
That’s what is neat about many aspects of climate science — that it is often straightforward enough to do the verification on your own.
Jim D writes:
“There is no mechanism proposed by which internal natural variability can lead to any warming that does not average out over decades, and even then its magnitude can’t be more than tenths of a degree. This is an energy balance constraint due to the effectiveness of radiation in removing excess surface energy above the balanced state, seen for example just after El Ninos as the surface temperature anomaly cools within a year.”
This is simply a presumption of Alarmist climate modelers who adamantly refuse to do empirical research. It has been surrendered by some of the best among them. There is no way that some calculation involving the radiation fluxes among Sun, Earth, and GHGs can explain Trenberth’s “missing heat” in the deep oceans. Trenberth will find himself a hardcore empiricist in a very short time. Right now he continues to model but the limitations of models for his deep ocean project will be apparent very soon.
So far, the empirical research, also known as observations, supports the theory of AGW for the warming over the decades. But if you have other empirical research in mind, you need to let us know about it, because it is hard to guess what you mean by that term.
Jim D | August 31, 2013 at 1:20 pm |
Nothing in your post but bluster, Sir, nothing but bluster. You addressed not one word that I wrote.
What empirical evidence? Alarmists don’t do empirical investigation.
If someone can post, as several have, that radiation theory requires that phenomena such as ENSO must average out over long periods of time then they are ruling out the possibility of empirical investigation of ENSO, PDO, heat in the deep oceans, you name it. Now, why would a scientist do that?
Given that traditional Alarmists are radiation-only theorists, why have they made claims about temperatures? As X Anonymous has explained to us in a major post this week, radiation-only theorists are quite happy to rule out of climate science various phenomena such as ENSO, Trenberth’s ocean mixing that carries heat to the deep oceans, and similar phenomena. Why is that? I have an educated guess.
If all climate scientists had worked strictly within radiation theory then they would have published nothing about temperatures and the IPCC would have reported nothing about temperatures. Instead of reports about rising temperatures in the oceans or atmosphere there would have been reports about increased energy in oceans or atmosphere. The public would have greeted them with exactly the same interest that they greet the latest reports from physicists who study “dark matter.”
Pity Alarmist climate scientists. They cannot live with temperatures and they cannot live without them.
By the way, the non-Alarmist climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr., has for years called for using ocean heat content as the fundamental measure in climate science.
R. Gates aka Skeptical Warmist | August 31, 2013 at 3:21 pm |
Theo writes:
“Energy is the only logical and most comprehensive way to talk about externally forced changes to Earth’s energy balance. Sensible heat in the troposphere is highly variable and only a fraction of Earth’s total energy. No proof has been offered to me that it is a good proxy for overall changes to Earth’s energy budget.”
Fine, but among Alarmist climate scientist the evidence for AGW is offered in temperatures not joules. My question to you was why are you talking about energy when all of the scientists who support your position choose to present their evidence as temperatures. Would you please address my question if you reply?
Pingback: Can The IPCC Do Revolutionary Science? | Watts Up With That?
Pingback: Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup | Watts Up With That?
Taming comments on this post here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/el-nino-and-the-non-spherical-cow/#comments
“Tamino”, not “taming”. Sorry.
” El Nino and La Nino don’t seem to me to be easily separable from the PDO”: JC.
That is probably brcause neither is well enough understood to be modelled.
It appears that Xie made the same mistake as the IPCC by ignoring the first half of the 20th century. The world was simpler then because CO2 was a new phenomena, so modelling was so much easier, and made it necessary for the modeller to explain the first ‘pause’ between 1940 and 1970. The second ‘pause’ between 1998 and the present would have come as no surprise..
The 0.5C increase in globail atmospheric temperature and its subsequent propagation through the oceans would also be better understood. See my website underlined above.
.
Judith, Tamino makes some pretty strong points against your analysis, also suggesting that you would not respond to them. Would you comment here, or is it worth a new post?
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/el-nino-and-the-non-spherical-cow/
Did you really calculate a change on temperature from the difference between two separate years, instead of a smooth or regression? If so, how can this be justified? And what was the reason for picking those two particular years? Was it because the difference gave a particularly high value?
Are Tamino’s criticisms valid?
It looks like Tamino has been reading kim’s comments.
” In fact, if it weren’t for the continued warming due to human activity, natural variations (like ENSO) would have brought about a notable cooling over the last decade or so.”
“Are Tamino’s criticisms valid?”
Do you want them to be?
“..but that ENSO can still cause natural cooling for periods of a decade or more so that even though the man-made influence continues to cause warming, it is cancelled by ENSO cooling and results in a “hiatus” of global temperature increase:”
So ENSO causes cooling, man warming. Sounds familiar.
This one’s funny:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/diff.jpg
“The phrase “global warming” refers to climate change, including temperature increase, which is caused by mankind, and that has continued unabated.”
What? That Orwellian, wiesel “global warming”?
Edim,
“So ENSO causes cooling, man warming. Sounds familiar.”
Tamino said;
“When the ENSO is in its “high” state (called simply “el Niño“) our climate tends to be warmer, but when it’s in its “low” state (referred to as “la Niña“) earth tends to be cooler.”
The point, obviously, is about attribution and the last 30 years or so.
Me – “Are Tamino’s criticisms valid?”
captdallas – “Do you want them to be?”
Maybe someone else does, but I’m interested in hearing what Judith has to say, so I’ll check out her new post.
Tamino’s posting is related to the simple observation that I made in comment
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling/#comment-371349
and also to this
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling/#comment-371404
It’s also close to, what John Nielsen.Gammon has written, and that made no sense to Judith (she didn’t explain why, nor could I see what made her thing so)
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling/#comment-372392
While I do think that what John N-G and Tamino have written makes sense, I don’t think that these conclusions are based on strong analysis. The main issue is hiding in the methodology of the Kosaka & Xie paper. What their paper tells supports Trenberth and Tamino, not Judith, but what’s potentially problematic in their approach might change the conclusions when fully understood. The potential problem is in the way they forced the temperatures over the chosen region of Eastern Pacific to agree with the observed temperatures.
I don’t understand in full detail what they have done. Thus my thinking may be in error. My understanding is that they have added an artificial heat flux to that part of the ocean, whose strongest effect has been the recent removal of heat to force the surface temperature to the observed values of last 15 years. When heat is taken from the surface layer of a region it must go somewhere, but I cannot figure out where it actually goes in their calculation, and how this addition affects the rest of their calculation. Their descriptions are too cursory for me to figure out what they have done.
The deep sea has a large enough heat capacity to absorb all that heat, but just assuming that all the heat can be fed to deep ocean without changes in the rest of circulation is not realistic. That’s not necessarily what they have done, but if that’s not the way the heat is taken from the surface layer then they must affect directly the heat transport. That would affect the model significantly. When the strength of the additional mechanism is fixed by the requirement that the surface temperature much end up close to the actual observations they may end up in adding a strong enough additional forcing to really change the behavior of the Earth system.
Pekka, it is like arguing over a glass half full. Tamino and N-G assume that AGW amplifies the ENSO instead of the other way around. Hemispheres and ocean basins do not warm uniformly so when a differential limit is reached the path of heat flow changes internally to restore a “normal” internal heat flux. SSW events “paused” or became less intense during the 1988 to 1987 decade of rapid warming. After 1998, the events returned to “normal” releasing more energy.
If you compare NH to SH oceans there is a “normal” imbalance and there is a “normal” imbalance range between the northern Atlantic and northern Pacific. Since the three ocean “basins” warm at different rates, there are corrective events or oscillations on different time scales.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rluwWFP_b1Y/Ub4-dcefh1I/AAAAAAAAIoo/zIucJJpa8N4/s912/Equitorial%2520imbalance.png
That is north versus south indicating a century or more trend.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6oiYNBmPHQI/UiNBpoJAw0I/AAAAAAAAJUw/Wp_tSJsCGug/s640/solar+v+northern+boxes.png
That is the north Atlantic/Pacific imbalance with an indication of a solar driver.
Since Tamino and N-G don’t consider the internal imbalance due to asymmetry and Judith does, they can argue forever, but a glass half full kinda guy can find a “cause”, winning just depends on who gets the most press since the only way to “prove” anything is to predict a shift. That requires sticking your neck out a little.
I’m working on a new post on this topic, should be up this afternoon
New post coming later today
Since the Carbon Strategy Group finds your thoughts to be “incorrect” and explained what your opinion is, (they must be clairvoyant), I assume you hit another special interest group nerve.
http://www.carbonstrategygroup.com/carbon-market-news/the-pacific-ocean-fills-in-another-piece-of-the-global-warming-puzzle/
Pingback: another paper blames ENSO for global warming pause, calling it ‘… a major control knob governing Earth’s temperature.’ | Watts Up With That?
Another paper about natural signals:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/defreitas__mclean_ijg_2013_soi__mean_global_temp.pdf
“All other things being equal, a period dominated by a high frequency of El Niño-like conditions will result in global warming, whereas a period dominated by a high frequency of La Niña-like conditions will result in global cooling. Overall, the results imply that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to temperature variability and perhaps a major control knob governing Earth’s temperature.”
Roll on the next La Niña!
“Roll on the next La Niña!”
Cue the last 15 years, which have been La Nina-heavy. Also, unusually light for solar radiation.
The sun is clearly driving changes in global air circulation and thus global albedo as per my model:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
Anyway, there is now a plethora of recent papers which are consistent with my hypothesis but inconsistent with CO2 having the primary influence.
The fact seems to be that higher solar activity gradually skews ENSO in favour of warm El Ninos due to lower global albedo and more solar energy getting into the oceans.
The opposite when the sun is quiet.
And it operates in accordance with the millennial solar cycle as per the Roman Warm Period, Dark Ages, MWP, LIA and the Current Warm Period.
It is no coincidence that all those strong El Ninos of the recent warming spell have now faded away at the same time as the sun became less active, the jets became more meridional, global cloudiness increased, the tropospheric warming stalled and the stratosphere stopped cooling.
Pingback: The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle | Carbon Strategy Group | Carbon Market News
Pingback: Eco Saver » Eco News
Pingback: The Hiatus In Global Temperature Explained? | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)
“I’m not sure how good my eyeball estimates are, and you can pick other start/end dates. But no matter what, I am coming up with natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming.”
Perhaps eyeballs fail too often. The net ENSO forcing over the last few decades is neg, not positive. Look at the numbers.
ENSO was mostly negative in the 50s 60s and 70s (cooling), positive in the 80s and 90s (warming) and now it’s negative again (cooling).
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/imei.png
It’s a fourfer, phantom energy here, there, everywhere, and nowhere.
==========
Pingback: Natural internal variability: sensitivity and attribution | Climate Etc.
Pingback: Pause in Global Warming tied to Pacific Ocean flux « Political Blok
Yea, Edim, except a slight warm push from El Niño gave us significant warming while a stronger cool push only managed to nearly flatten temps for awhile. Look at the numbers. It just doesn’t make any sense to pin a significant fraction of warming on this.
I’m looking at the numbers and it makes sense to me.
Negative ENSO (or PDO) – cooling
Positive ENSO (or PDO) – warming
It was a very strong warm push in the late 20th century from a long run of powerful El Ninos.
Since 2000 there has been a weak push from a few weak La Ninas with an El Nino spell in the early 2000s.
Obviously so far only enough to offset the residual warming effect from the previous run of El Ninos thus far but if it continues with La Nina dominant then cooling will soon begin.
Pingback: Lukewarmism | The Ninth Law
Pingback: The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry
Pingback: Mezzo global warming grazie… anzi no, un quartino! | Climatemonitor
Pingback: Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of global warming puzzle | marketspace
Pingback: Dana Nuccitelli: The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle
Pingback: Arctic sea ice minimum? | Climate Etc.
Pingback: Seven Steps to Energy Policy Heaven - Energy Post | Energy Post
Hi Judith,
I am not sure if you ever read Will Alexander’s paper on Linkages between
solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development* http://anhonestclimatedebate.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/2982-journal-of-civ-eng-vol-49-no-2.pdf It really opened my eyes on solar variations
W, thanks for the reference.
Pingback: IF GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL, WHY ISN’T GETTING WARMER?
SSA analysis both of the Hadcrut3 and SST northern hemisphere data shows a persistent quasi-period mode of about .3 degC peak-to-peak. This variation plus a constant .5 deg/century trend accounts for all of the observed trend since 1850, the increase in slope during the 80s and 90s and the current flat temperature trend.
See the analysis starting here
Pingback: Climate Change – radiative forcing the driver of climate – what causes drives climate change – what if the gulf stream stops? | Cyberwaves's Blog
Pingback: OHC, Cloud, and the infamous 2003 Data Splice between XBT and ARGO | Tallbloke's Talkshop
Pingback: Judith Curry is blown away? | And Then There's Physics
What’s up to every one, it’s truly a good for me to visit this website, it
contains important Information.