by Judith Curry
Well here it is, the pause discussion is buried in Box 9.2 of the IPCC Working Group I Report.
The Final Draft SPM summed it up correctly as:
“Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.”
Which of course disappeared in the Final version of the SPM. Before your head starts spinning trying to make sense of the WGI Report text, here is the main summary point IMO:
This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error.
The IPCC draws the following conclusion:
In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle. However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of forcing trend in causing the hiatus, because of uncertainty in the magnitude of the volcanic forcing trend and low confidence in the aerosol forcing trend.
Here is the relevant text from Chapter 9 of the WG I Report, that attempts to justify their final conclusion:
Box 9.2: Climate Models and the Hiatus in Global-Mean Surface Warming of the Past 15 Years
The observed global-mean surface temperature (GMST) has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years (Section 2.4.3, Figure 2.20, Table 2.7; Figure 9.8; Box 9.2 Box 9.2 Figure 1a,c). Depending on the observational data set, the GMST trend over 1998–2012 is estimated to be around one-third to one-half of the trend over 1951–2012 (Section 2.4.3, Table 2.7; Box 9.2 Figure 1a,c). For example, in HadCRUT4 the trend is 0.04 ºC per decade over 1998–2012, compared to 0.11 ºC per decade over 1951–2012. The reduction in observed GMST trend is most marked in Northern- Hemisphere winter (Section 2.4.3, (Cohen et al., 2012)). Even with this “hiatus” in GMST trend, the decade of the 2000s has been the warmest in the instrumental record of GMST (Section 2.4.3, Figure 2.19).
Nevertheless, the occurrence of the hiatus in GMST trend during the past 15 years raises the two related questions of what has caused it and whether climate models are able to reproduce it. Figure 9.8 demonstrates that 15-year-long hiatus periods are common in both the observed and CMIP5 historical GMST time series (see also Section 2.4.3, Figure 2.20; (Easterling and Wehner, 2009), (Liebmann et al., 2010)). However, an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (augmented for the period 2006–2012 by RCP4.5 simulations, Section 9.3.2) reveals that 111 out of 114 realisations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble (Box 9.2 Figure 1a; CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend is 0.21 ºC per decade). This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error. These potential sources of the difference, which are not mutually exclusive, are assessed below, as is the cause of the observed GMST trend hiatus.
(a) Internal Climate Variability
Hiatus periods of 10–15 years can arise as a manifestation of internal decadal climate variability, which sometimes enhances and sometimes counteracts the long-term externally forced trend. Internal variability thus diminishes the relevance of trends over periods as short as 10–15 years for long-term climate change (Box 2.2, Section 2.4.3).
Furthermore, the timing of internal decadal climate variability is not expected to be matched by the CMIP5 historical simulations, owing to the predictability horizon of atmost 10–20 years (Section 11.2.2; CMIP5 historical simulations are typically started around nominally 1850 from a control run). However, climate models exhibit individual decades of GMST trend hiatus even during a prolonged phase of energy uptake of the climate system (e.g., Figure 9.8, (Easterling and Wehner, 2009; Knight et al., 2009)), in which case the energy budget would be balanced by increasing subsurface-ocean heat uptake (Meehl et al., 2011; Guemas et al., 2013; Meehl et al., 2013a).
Owing to sampling limitations, it is uncertain whether an increase in the rate of subsurface-ocean heat uptake occurred during the past 15 years (Section 3.2.4). However, it is very likely2 that the climate system, including the ocean below 700 m depth, has continued to accumulate energy over the period 1998–2010 (Section 3.2.4, Box 3.1). Consistent with this energy accumulation, global-mean sea level has continued to rise during 1998–2012, at a rate only slightly and insignificantly lower than during 1993–2012 (Section 3.7). The consistency between observed heat-content and sea-level changes yields high confidence in the assessment of continued ocean energy accumulation, which is in turn consistent with the positive radiative imbalance of the climate system (Section 8.5.1; Section 13.3, Box 13.1). By contrast, there is limited evidence that the hiatus in GMST trend has been accompanied by a slower rate of increase in ocean heat content over the depth range 0–700 m, when comparing the period 2003–2010 against 1971–2010. There is low agreement on this slowdown, since three of five analyses show a slowdown in the rate of increase while the other two show the increase continuing unabated (Section 3.2.3, Figure 3.2).
During the 15-year period beginning in 1998, the ensemble of HadCRUT4 GMST trends lies below almost all model-simulated trends (Box 9.2 Figure 1a), whereas during the 15-year period ending in 1998, it lies above 93 out of 114 modelled trends ((Box 9.2 Figure 1b; HadCRUT4 ensemble-mean trend 0.26°C per decade, CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.16°C per decade). Over the 62-year period 1951– 2012, observed and CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend agree to within 0.02 ºC per decade (Box 9.2 Figure 1c; CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.13°C per decade). There is hence very high confidence that the CMIP5 models show long-term GMST trends consistent with observations, despite the disagreement over the most recent 15-year period. Due to internal climate variability, in any given 15-year period the observed GMST trend sometimes lies near one end of a model ensemble (Box 9.2, Figure 1a,b; (Easterling and Wehner, 2009)), an effect that is pronounced in Box 9.2, Figure 1a,b since GMST was influenced by a very strong El Niño event in 1998.
Unlike the CMIP5 historical simulations referred to above, some CMIP5 predictions were initialized from the observed climate state during the late 1990s and the early 21st century (Section 11.1, Box 11.1; Section 11.2). There is medium evidence that these initialised predictions show a GMST lower by about 0.05–0.1 ºC compared to the historical (uninitialised) simulations and maintain this lower GMST during the first few years of the simulation (Section 11.2.3.4, Figure 11.3 top left; (Doblas-Reyes et al., 2013; Guemas et al., 2013)). In some initialised models this lower GMST occurs in part because they correctly simulate a shift, around 2000, from a positive to a negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO, Box 2.5; e.g., (Meehl and Teng, 2012; Meehl et al., 2013a)). However, the improvement of this phasing of the IPO through initialisation is not universal across the CMIP5 predictions (cf. Section 11.2.3.4). Moreover, while part of the GMST reduction through initialisation indeed results from initialising at the correct phase of internal variability, another part may result from correcting a model bias that was caused by incorrect past forcing or incorrect model response to past forcing, especially in the ocean. The relative magnitudes of these effects are at present unknown (Meehl and Teng, 2012); moreover, the quality of a forecasting system cannot be evaluated from a single prediction (here, a ten year prediction within the period 1998–2012; Section 11.2.3). Overall, there is medium confidence that initialisation leads to simulations of GMST during 1998–2012 that are more consistent with the observed trend hiatus than are the uninitialised CMIP5 historical simulations, and that the hiatus is in part a consequence of internal variability that is predictable on the multiyear timescale.
(b) Radiative Forcing
On decadal to interdecadal timescales and under continually increasing effective radiative forcing (ERF), the forced component of the GMST trend responds to the ERF trend relatively rapidly and almost linearly (medium confidence, e.g., (Gregory and Forster, 2008; Held et al., 2010; Forster et al., 2013)). The expected forced-response GMST trend is related to the ERF trend by a factor that has been estimated for the 1% per year CO2 increases in the CMIP5 ensemble as 2.0 ± 0.7 W m–2 °C–1 (90% uncertainty range; (Forster et al., 2013)). Hence, an ERF trend can be approximately converted to a forced-response GMST trend, permitting an assessment of how much of the change in the GMST trends shown in Box 9.2 Figure 1 is due to a change in ERF trend.
The AR5 best-estimate ERF trend over 1998–2011 is 0.23 ± 0.11 W m–2 per decade (90% uncertainty range), which is substantially lower than the trend over 1984–1998 (0.34 ± 0.10 W m–2 per decade; note that there was a strong volcanic eruption in 1982) and the trend over 1951–2011 (0.30 ± 0.10 W m–2 per decade; Box 9.2, Figure 1d–f; numbers based on Section 8.5.2, Figure 8.18; the end year 2011 is chosen because data availability is more limited than for GMST). The resulting forced-response GMST trend would approximately be 0.13 [0.06 to 0.31] °C per decade, 0.19 [0.10 to 0.40] °C per decade, and 0.17 [0.08 to 0.36] °C per decade for the periods 1998–2011, 1984–1998, and 1951–2011, respectively (the uncertainty ranges assume that the range of the conversion factor to GMST trend and the range of ERF trend itself are independent). The AR5 best-estimate ERF forcing trend difference between 1998–2011 and 1951–2011 thus might explain about one-half (0.04°C per decade) of the observed GMST trend difference between these periods (0.06 to 0.08°C per decade, depending on observational data set).
The reduction in AR5 best-estimate ERF trend over 1998–2011 compared to both 1984–1998 and 1951– 2011 is mostly due to decreasing trends in the natural forcings,–0.14 ± 0.10 W m–2 per decade over 1998–2011 compared to 0.0 ± 0.01 W m–2 per decade over 1951–2011 (Section 8.5.2, Figure 8.19). Solar forcing went from a relative maximum in 2000 to a relative minimum in 2009, with a peak-to-peak difference of around 0.15 W m–2 and a linear trend over 1998–2011 of around –0.10 W m–2 per decade (cf. Section 10.3.1, Box 10.2). Furthermore, a series of small volcanic eruptions has increased the observed stratospheric aerosol loading after 2000, leading to an additional negative ERF linear-trend contribution of around –0.04 W m–2 per decade over 1998–2011 (cf. Section 8.4.2.2, Section 8.5.2).
(Section 8.5.2, Figure 8.19; Box 9.2 Figure 1d,f). By contrast, satellite-derived estimates of tropospheric aerosol optical depth (AOD) suggests little overall trend in global-mean AOD over the last 10 years, implying little change in ERF due to aerosol-radiative interaction (low confidence because of low confidence in AOD trend itself, Section 2.2.3; Section 8.5.1, Table 8.6, Table 8.7; (Murphy, 2013)).
Moreover, because there is only low confidence in estimates of ERF due to aerosol-cloud interaction (Section 8.5.1, Table 8.6), there is likewise low confidence in its trend over the last 15 years. For the periods 1984–1998 and 1951–2011, the CMIP5 ensemble-mean ERF trend deviates from the AR5 best-estimate ERF trend by only 0.01 W m–2 per decade (Box 9.2 Figure 1e,f). After 1998, however, some contributions to a decreasing ERF trend are missing in the CMIP5 models, such as the increasing stratospheric aerosol loading after 2000 and the unusually low solar minimum in 2009.
Nonetheless, over 1998–2011 the CMIP5 ensemble-mean ERF trend is lower than the AR5 best-estimate ERF trend by 0.05 W m–2 per decade (Box 9.2 Figure 1d). Furthermore, global-mean AOD in the CMIP5 models shows little trend over 1998–2012, similar to the observations (Figure 9.29). Although the forcing uncertainties are substantial, there are no apparent incorrect or missing global-mean forcings in the CMIP5 models over the last 15 years that could explain the model–observations difference during the warming hiatus.
(c) Model Response Error
The discrepancy between simulated and observed GMST trends during 1998–2012 could be explained in part by a tendency for some CMIP5 models to simulate stronger warming in response to increases in greenhouse-gas concentration than is consistent with observations (Section 10.3.1.1.3, Figure 10.4). Averaged over the ensembles of models assessed in Section 10.3.1.1.3, the best-estimate greenhouse-gas (GHG) and other anthropogenic (OA) scaling factors are less than one (though not significantly so, Figure 10.4), indicating that the model-mean GHG and OA responses should be scaled down to best match observations. This finding provides evidence that some CMIP5 models show a larger response to greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic factors (dominated by the effects of aerosols) than the real world (medium confidence). As a consequence, it is argued in Chapter 11 that near-term model projections of GMST increase should be scaled down by about 10% (Section 11.3.6.3). This downward scaling is, however, not sufficient to explain the model-mean overestimate of GMST trend over the hiatus period.
Another possible source of model error is the poor representation of water vapour in the upper atmosphere (Section 9.4.1.2). It has been suggested that a reduction in stratospheric water vapour after 2000 caused a reduction in downward longwave radiation and hence a surface-cooling contribution (Solomon et al., 2010), possibly missed by the models, However, this effect is assessed here to be small, because there was a recovery in stratospheric water vapour after 2005 (Section 2.2.2.1, Figure 2.5).
In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle. However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of forcing trend in causing the hiatus, because of uncertainty in the magnitude of the volcanic forcing trend and low confidence in the aerosol forcing trend.
Almost all CMIP5 historical simulations do not reproduce the observed recent warming hiatus. There is medium confidence that the GMST trend difference between models and observations during 1998–2012 is
to a substantial degree caused by internal variability, with possible contributions from forcing error and some CMIP5 models overestimating the response to increasing greenhouse-gas forcing. The CMIP5 model trend in effective radiative forcing (ERF) shows no apparent bias against the AR5 best estimate over 1998–2012.
However, confidence in this assessment of CMIP5 ERF trend is low, primarily because of the uncertainties in model aerosol forcing and processes, which through spatial heterogeneity might well cause an undetected global-mean ERF trend error even in the absence of a trend in the global-mean aerosol loading.
The causes of both the observed GMST trend hiatus and of the model–observation GMST trend difference during 1998–2012 imply that, barring a major volcanic eruption, most 15-year GMST trends in the near-term future will be larger than during 1998–2012 (high confidence; see 11.3.6.3. for a full assessment of near-term projections of GMST). The reasons for this implication are fourfold: first, anthropogenic greenhouse-gas concentrations are expected to rise further in all RCP scenarios; second, anthropogenic aerosol concentration is expected to decline in all RCP scenarios, and so is the resulting cooling effect; third, the trend in solar forcing is expected to be larger over most near-term 15–year periods than over 1998–2012 (medium confidence), because 1998–2012 contained the full downward phase of the solar cycle; and fourth, it is more likely than not that internal climate variability in the near-term will enhance and not counteract the surface warming expected to arise from the increasing anthropogenic forcing.
JC summary
My original intention for this thread was to go through and try to map the IPCC’s logical argument. I quickly got dizzy owing to seemingly unwarranted assumptions and incomplete information (such as: did the climate models use the correct external forcing for the first decade of the 21st century, or not?). I was then going to illustrate how any reasonable propagation of uncertainty of individual assertions/arguments through their main argument would produce much lower confidence in their overall conclusions. For example, they seem to have eliminated high CO2 sensitivity as a problem. Not to mention high confidence in increasing trend following 2012 (this high confidence comes right after blowing the prediction of the previous decade). And of course not to mention the relevant journal articles that didn’t get mentioned.
Apart from these obvious flaws, reading that text and trying to follow it is positively painful. Can someone remind me again how and why all this is supposed to be useful?
This sums it up very nicely:
“However, it is very likely that the climate system, including the ocean below 700 m depth, has continued to accumulate energy over the period 1998–2010 (Section 3.2.4, Box 3.1). Consistent with this energy accumulation, global-mean sea level has continued to rise during 1998–2012, at a rate only slightly and insignificantly lower than during 1993–2012 (Section 3.7). The consistency between observed heat-content and sea-level changes yields high confidence in the assessment of continued ocean energy accumulation, which is in turn consistent with the positive radiative imbalance of the climate system (Section 8.5.1; Section 13.3, Box 13.1).”
_______
From the most wide and long-term perspective, including all components of Earth’s energy system, the “pause”, while exceptionally interesting from an ocean to atmosphere energy transfer perspective and when looking at natural variability, is not so important from an Earth energy system perspective as the system as a whole “very likely” continued to gain energy even during this period of the tropospheric “pause”.
RG,
You have that right, especially considering that the “hiatus” is completely explained by fluctuations captured by the Southern ocean Index (SOI). This index is bounded and reverts to a mean value, which means it has statistically no effect in the long term trend.
What’s that expression: “In the long term, we are all dead.”
WebHubTelescope (@whut) says regarding ENSO. “This index is bounded and reverts to a mean value, which means it has statistically no effect in the long term trend.”
You have once again expressed your complete failure to grasp the blatantly obvious fact that ENSO is a process, not an index.
It’s very easy to grasp ENSO’s function when it is expressed as a “chaotic sunlight-fueled recharge-discharge oscillator”. See, wasn’t that easy?
Have a nice day.
PDO = low frequency tail of ENSO accounting for significant part of the warming trend 1976-2005 and main cause of the pause
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2008b.pdf
“Because its [ENSO’s] spectrum has a long low frequency tail, fluctuations in the timing, number and amplitude of individual El Nino and La Nina events, within, say, 50-yr intervals can give rise to substantial 50-yr trends…”
“…It [The Pacific decadal oscillation or the interdecadal Pacific oscillation] is strongly reminiscent of the low-frequency tail of ENSO and has, indeed been argued to be such in previous studies (e.g. Alexander et al 2002, Newman et al 2003, Schneider and Cornuelle 2005, Alexander et al 2008)…”
“…it also accountd for an appreciable fraction of the total warming trend…” (see figure 9b )
“…In this paper, we have argued that identifying and removing ENSO-related variations by performing regressions on any single ENSO index can be problematic. We stressed that ENSO is best viewed not as a number but as an evolving dynamical process for this purpose…”
Bob Tisdale, do you have some explanation why your “chaotic sunlight-fueled recharge-discharge oscillator” was seemingly broken during the seven last millennia since the Holocene Climatic Optimum and only began to work again during the early 20th century?
Hey Waymon,
The SOI stands for Southern Oscillation Index and is the pressure difference between two geographical points, which happens to correlate to fluctuations in the average global surface temperature, with a lag between 6 and 7months.
This index by definition has a mean of zero because differences in sea-level atmospheric pressures cannot be maintained between two locations for too long a period of time.
So we can use this to characterize the noise riding on top of the global surface temperature and then apply it as a correction to reduce the variance in the underlying trend.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
I love to point out the blatantly obvious, because that reduces the uncertainty.
ENSO has a different mean over the period over the 1945-1976 period than the 1977-1998 period and different again between 1999-2013.
See for yourself – http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
The data is available at this link – http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
The Pacific – and it is a pacific wide pattern in which ENSO is an obvious part – is a process that varies over millennia but seems to be a robust part of climate.
Here is a red sediment proxy from a South American lake – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=145
The red shift depends on rainfall – El Nino floods and La Nina droughts. The 1998 El Nino had a red shift of 89 – and the values vary considerably over the Holocene.
Here’s the data – ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/paleolimnology/ecuador/pallcacocha_red_intensity.txt
A shift from La Nina dominant to El Nino dominant – and resultant drying of the Sahel – 5,000 years ago, mega-drought and mega-floods such as we have not seen in the last 100 years and quasi periodicity of about 1,000 years.
So what? That’s what red noise does. It can give the impression of different periodicities at various times.
All temperature time series are indices. SOI is another index and a combination of temperature time series and SOI a third one.
If a combination of two long time series defined using two free parameters (relative strength and lag) is much less noisy than either of the primary indices, it’s likely that the new index formed that way is useful in figuring out some other effects hiding in the original noisy time series.
On the other hand it’s very common that such an approach leads to faulty interpretations. We may end up concluding something about global temperatures when we should conclude something about SOI.
One attempt to explain the hiatus by ENSO and solar intensity TSI was published by Foster and Rahmstorf. When they did their analysis data was available to the end of 2010. They create a new temperature index in the same spirit WHUT is proposing. The whole period they considered was short. Therefore it was reasonable to ask whether their success was really significant. Later data has shown that it wasn’t. That can be seen from this graph based on extrapolation of their fitted trend and additional data from GISTEMP and ENSO and TSI indices. The curve that represents adjusted GISTEMP starts to fall rapidly in late 2011, when the new temperature values are significantly lower than the values 12 months before that are dropped from the moving average. (My curve starts in 2004, because the TSI data I found for my calculation does not extend further back.)
Of course the period of the discrepancy is short, but the point of the F&R paper was to tell that no real hiatus has occurred even in the short term data. The drop is strong and persistent enough to invalidate their conclusion unless I have made an error in my calculation. The agreement up to the end of their period makes such an error unlikely.
Cryin’ for you, Wayward Web.
==========
WebHubTelescope (@whut) says, “The SOI stands for Southern Oscillation Index…….”
Your rewording a foolish statement, WebHubTelescope, does not make it any less foolish. Again you have expressed a total failure on your part to comprehend what I’d written. Scroll back up and try reading it again.
Now, let me ask, why do you insist on calling me Waymon? Wayman Tisdale died a couple of years ago.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/Wayman_Tisdale.jpg/200px-Wayman_Tisdale.jpg
Is this just another way you intentionally expose your witlessness?
Pierre-Normand, please provide data that supports your conjecture that ENSO was “broken during the seven last millennia since the Holocene Climatic Optimum”. As far as I know, observations-based data does not exist for ENSO “during the seven last millennia since the Holocene Climatic Optimum”.
Pekka Pirilä wrote: “Of course the period of the discrepancy is short, but the point of the F&R paper was to tell that no real hiatus has occurred even in the short term data.”
The period of discrepancy in your data is only 1.5 years long. That’s indeed very short. Maybe F&R (and also WHT) meant that pauses are removed for periods as short as 10 years. WHT’s simple model also exhibits a small downtick at the end that may be as long as yours. It also displays two recent pauses about 5 years long (starting around 1990 and 2002). But he shows them in the context of 120 years while you show yours in the context of 9.5 years.
Shocking that such a short period could crank on the sensitivity so, but it does, it does.
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Sorry Bob. I didn’t know that your theory was that ENSO didn’t exist prior to the 20th century. I don’t have have any data showing that it did. I had just assumed it until now.
Shocking that such a short period could crank on the sensitivity so, but it does, it does.
Hyper Sensitivity to observations is a causal mechanism in responders eg.
http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2013-09-30/Wall-Street-Panic-Chart.jpg
P-N must be with the communications crew. Hello!?
===============
Pierre-Normand,
Reading the main message of the Foster and Rahmstorf paper the first thought was that their work was based an too short a period and that their conclusions are too dependent on the success of the fit to the very end. They are after all discussing only the hiatus based on a time series of 22 years total length including in the analysis multi-year phenomena like ENSO and TSI. Taking into account autocorrelations the amount of independent data is very small for drawing conclusions. On that scale the strong deviation during the following two years is enough to confirm the doubts on the justification of their conclusions as the 12 month moving average falls back to the earlier values. (Their hypothesis may remain true, but lacks proper justification.)
Concerning the argument of WHT my curve is just a short clip of what has happened most recently. For that analysis the paper of Lean and Rind that covers 118 years is more relevant. When the SOI or ENSO is considered it’s worthwhile to look also at TSI and volcanic activity.
Pekka, Thanks for the reference to Lean and Rind. I hadn’t seen that paper before.
Wayman had no comeback for this
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
130 years of noise removal thanks to a careful decomposition of SOI and volcanic disturbances.
Look at the physics interpretation. The SOI is a measure of sea level atmospheric pressure differences between two separate locations. Over time this has to integrate to zero as there can be no accumulation of pressure apart from some small effect related to gas law physics, but even this will disappear because it is differences that this measures.
It is thus clearly an oscillatory effect that has no long term impact on the climate and thus can be safely removed from the GMST. What is left is reduced uncertainty in the actual trend.
Isn’t that what this site is about, to tame the UNCERTAINTY MONSTER? Or is it about feeding the UNCERTAINTY MONSTER continual FUD?
The IPO added to temperatures between 1976 and 1998 – and has been a cooling influence since.
Red noise is not an explanation for physical processes in climate system.
The argument that all the missing heat is in the oceans is clearly contradicted by facts. As the text above says: “Consistent with this energy accumulation, global-mean sea level has continued to rise during 1998–2012, at a rate only slightly and insignificantly lower than during 1993–2012 “.
If there was more heat absorbed by the sea in the 2000s relative to the previous decade, the expansion of the oceans since 1998 should have been larger, not smaller, than in 1993-2012. The fact that the sea level rise did not actually accelerate but (albeit slightly) decelerated points to a faulty argument in this regard.
H.M.,
It is more complicated than you would suggest. Sea level rise in only one way to measure energy increase in the ocean, and even then of course only a portion of the sea level rise is due to thermal expansion. Other rises and falls in sea level due to actual changes in the mass of water in the ocean. We know from the Grace satellite observations that the prevalance of La Nina events during the period of 1998-2012 actually moved a large mass of water to land from the ocean, and this significantly impacted the sea level rise during this period. The underlying thermal expansion of the ocean at all depths continued and this movement of mass from ocean to land (in addition to taking a tremendous amount of energy) would serve to mask the underlying warming of the ocean if you were to measure it just by sea level rise.
Actually, water is densest at 4C; if the colder water at the bottom of the oceans (-1.8C …? ) warmed a bit, it would reduce in volume, making sea level drop.
Of course, I don’t believe the BS about the missing heat. It’s missing because it ain’t there, mate.
Gates can you embellish on your quote. Not sure I understand the mechanism.” We know from the Grace satellite observations that the prevalance of La Nina events during the period of 1998-2012 actually moved a large mass of water to land from the ocean, and this significantly impacted the sea level rise during this period.” thanks
“Not sure I understand the mechanism.”
The mechanism is precipitation. Lands get temporarily flooded.
Dennis A,
Read:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-262
“The argument that all the missing heat is in the oceans is clearly contradicted by facts.”
Quite so. Some of those facts would be the results of empirical experiment.
The IPCC fools have truly backed themselves into a corner from which there is no escape. There is no heat hiding in the oceans. Down welling LWIR slowing the cooling of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool is a physical impossibility.
Back in 2011 Willis at WUWT claimed that based on IR emissivity of liquid water it should absorb IR at the same frequency and this could slow its cooling rate. However, I showed by empirical experiment that incident IR does not penetrate the skin evaporation layer of liquid water and has no significant effect on the cooling rate of water below this. If a film of LDPE plastic is floated on the surface of the test samples, allowing radiative and conductive exchange while blocking evaporation, then incident IR does slow the cooling rate. The original 2011 experiment can be seen here –
http://i47.tinypic.com/694203.jpg
A cleaner version for other readers to build and run themselves can be seen here –
http://i42.tinypic.com/2h6rsoz.jpg
Basically the claims of climate pseudo scientists that the oceans would “freeze over” without downwelling LWIR are pure BS. Their further claims that missing heat has entered the oceans via LWIR are simply more of the same, only fresher and still steaming.
Downwelling IR in the 15 micron band can not slow the cooling rate of the oceans.
Konrad, Did you bring that contraption to school for show-and-tell?
Too funny.
Mr. Telescope,
Too funny? Perhaps you could give your clear and direct answer to the following simple question –
“Does incident LWIR in the 15 micron band have any significant effect on the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool?”
– then we can all have a laugh at your scientific illiteracy. ;-)
Konrad,
It would be better you would not make judgments on the scientific literacy of others. Otherwise we may end up laughing at you.
You are totally wrong in your comment. Reducing the heat loss from the skin by additional absorbed LWIR leaves more heat in the ocean. Leaving more heat in the ocean means warming the ocean.
Concerning what we can conclude from the ocean observations (OHC and sea level rise) on the nature of the recent hiatus, what I have understood from original publications and also from the AR5 report seems to tell that almost nothing. The data is too inaccurate and uncertain to either confirm or contradict the proposed explanations concerning the latest 10-15 years. There are papers by acknowledged scientists that present somewhat contradictory conclusions. Picking just one of them may “confirm” one view but taken together they do not seem conclusive at all.
Pekka pauses, and it’s about time.
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Pekka Pirilä,
I suggest you try the experiment, as others have. I think the results may surprise you.
Incident LWIR is absorbed by water, typically in around the first 10 microns. All this does is trip some water molecules in the skin evaporation layer to vapour state faster than they normally would. There is no measurable effect on the cooling rate of the water below the 3mm skin evaporation layer.
Climate models are no substitute of empirical observations. Maths is no substitute for empirical experiment.
You have claimed – “You are totally wrong in your comment.”
I challenge you directly. Produce a comparable lab experiment showing that incident LWIR has any significant effect on the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool or withdraw your claim.
Konrad,
This issue has been discussed very often on this site and innumerable other sites. The issue is also very well understood.
The correct laboratory experiment must resemble well enough the real situation in the oceans. The most important element in that is that what’s measured must not be warming by IR as the ocean is not warmed by IR but reduction in cooling by IR. The ocean is cooled by IR, not warmed.
The experiment might compare cooling of water when a plate is put on top of the water container leaving a large enough gap for the air to flow regularly. The plate would in one case have the room temperature of, say, 23 C and in the alternative the palte would be cooled by melting ice to the temperature of 0 C. The original temperature of the water in the container might be 30 C. Now follow the cooling, that’s a case more similar to the ocean.
An alternative would be to heat the container from the bottom by an electrical heater controlled by a thermostat that keeps the temperature of the water in the middle of the container at 30 C. Measuring the power of heating required for that would then give the results.
This kind of more relevant experiments would certainly tell that the temperature of the plate has an effect on the cooling.
Pekka Pirilä,
You have come nowhere close to answering my challenge.
To help you conduct the experiment shown in the second image here are the original instructions –
Experiment 1. Effect of incident LWIR on liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool.
Incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of materials. Climate scientists claim that DWLWIR has the same effect over oceans as it does over land, and this is shown in many Trenberthian energy budget cartoons. Does the ocean respond to DWLWIR the same way as land?
– Build two water proof EPS foam cubes 150mm on a side and open at the top.
– Position a 100mm square aluminium water block as LWIR source 25mm above each cube.
– Position two small computer fans to blow a very light breeze between the foam cube and the water blocks.
– Insert a probe thermometer with 0.1C resolution through the side of each cube 10mm below the top.
– Continuously run 90C water through one water block and 1C water through the other.
– Fill both EPS foam cubes to the top with 40C water an allow to cool for 30 min while recording temperatures.
– Repeat the experiment with a thin LDPE film on the surface of the water in each cube to prevent evaporative cooling.
Again I challenge you directly. Produce a comparable lab experiment showing that incident LWIR has any significant effect on the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool or withdraw your claim. By this I mean produce your own work or link to the empirical experiments of others. I have built and run these experiments. You have clearly not.
Please provide evidence of a comparable lab experiment conducted, or withdraw your claim.
Konrad,
Nobody claims that ocean areas behaves similarly as land areas. You mention Trenberth’s energy balance. His estimate is that evaporation is more than twice as large over oceans as over land (the numbers are 38.5 and 97.1 W/m^2). Later studies have revised these numbers significantly, but they remain inaccurately known. All other values are also different over oceans and over land.
When you have open surfaces and the computer fan, evaporation is likely to be so strong that the skin temperature of the water is determined mainly by the absolute humidity of the air blown over the surface. In that case more heating from IR has only the effect that rate of evaporation increases. (The skin temperature would in that case be close to the wet bulb temperature of the air with both block temperatures.)
Going to the case of real oceans, the skin temperature is again essentially the wet bulb temperature of the air near surface, but there’s an important difference to your experiment: More evaporation leads to higher absolute humidity and to a higher wet bulb temperature. Thus many things change together:
– more downwelling radiation reduces radiative heat loss
– less heat loss increases the skin temperature
– warmer skin leads to added evaporation
– more evaporation adds to the absolute moisture of air
– higher absolute moisture of the air limits the increase in evaporation
– ..
– ..
When all such effects are put together we find out that the skin temperature rises to some extent, air temperature near surface rises about as much as the skin temperature, evaporation increases to some extent, absolute moisture increases to some extent.
As the skin warms a little, less heat is transferred from below to the skin and the ocean warms also below the skin.
To make a valid experiment you must be able to simulate all the effects, not only a part of them. Another alternative is to do tightly controlled experiments to study, whether they are in agreement with the theory. That’s the approach of physics research, and that’s the way the laws of physics have been validated. The validated laws allow physicists to predict what will happen in many situations that have not been studied individually. A very large part of engineering is dependent on the power of that approach.
Pekka Pirilä,
Conjecture and handwaving and no empirical experiment. It won’t wash.
The Trenberthian energy budget cartoons clearly show incident IR having the same effect over water as land, representing the surface of the earth simply as “surface” with no distinction as to ocean or land. This is a matter of permanent record on the internet. It cannot be erased.
Yet again I challenge you directly. Produce a comparable lab experiment conducted showing that incident LWIR has any significant effect on the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool or withdraw your claim.
Konrad,
A comparable experiment is of no value, a much better experiment would be needed as I explained. I did also explain what I would expect from your experiment when evaporation is allowed and fans blow air over the surfaces.
You cannot study oceans with small scale laboratory experiments. Small scale laboratory experiments can be used to check details of physical understanding. To have value in that way, the experiment must be planned to allow for both accurate measurements of all relevant variables and for calculations based on existing theories. Only when both the empirical part and the theoretical part are well defined, can useful comparisons be made.
“Small scale laboratory experiments can be used to check details of physical understanding.”
Indeed.
And where are the small scale laboratory experiments supporting the claim that incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool in the same manner it affects other materials?
I have produced empirical experiments showing that LWIR does not effect the cooling rate of liquid water in the manner claimed by climate scientists. Despite your claims, you have produced absolutely no empirical experiments to counter this. None whatsoever.
It is time you looked at the reality. Climate scientists simply took the emissivity figures for liquid water to calculate the effect of downwelling LWIR on the oceans. They got it wrong because they never did an empirical experiment to check their hopelessly flawed calculations.
If you believe that I have a nice package of sub prime mortgage debt to sell you, but don’t worry its got a triple AAA rating from one of the best rating agencies out there.
This is sub prime science barely rising to the level of pseudo science.
We have been through this endlessly. There is a bottom line that the Pacific Decadal Variation added to surface temperature between 1976 and 1998 and have caused a cooler phase since. These regimes last 20 to 40 years.
This is abundantly clear – and the background rate of warming is at most 0.1 degree C/decade. This rate is not hugely concerning – and the only real climate risk over this century is from abrupt change.
There seems so much else wrong with this space cadet science. Even the much vaunted carbon dioxide records seem questionable with levels of 400 ppm seen at the last glacial transition.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Steinthorsdottir_CO2_stomata_2013_zps0180f088.png.html?sort=3&o=19
Prior to ARGO coverage to depth was some 15% – so that the data is questionable. Even so – the most recent reanalysis shows ocean heat peaking in 2003.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/LymnaandJohnson2013OHCA_zps703732d0.png.html?sort=3&o=4
Later data – CERES, MODIS, ARGO – is of most interest although of limited length.
ARGO shows a little warming. Steric sea level rise in 0.64 mm/yr – in a period where Ocean Freshwater Content (OFC) was falling. Net sea level rise must be less than 0.64mm/yr in ARGO. It is hard to reconcile that with satellite altimetry.
So here it is – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/vonSchuckmannampLTroan2011-fig5PG_zpsee63b772.jpg.html?sort=3&o=55
The warming – the missing heat – the so-called radiant imbalance – was all in shortwave.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=102
Clouds are net cooling. A recent cloud reconstruction uses both ISCCP-FD data and MODIS – intercalibrating using sea surface temperatures.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=31
The future seems likely to bring yet more cool SST – and more cloud – over a decade or three.
It is consistent with the TOA energy flux and the Lyman and Johnson OHCA – and should at last create some doubt in the minds of reasonable people. We seem well beyond that however – and have plunged down the rabbit hole.
It is not a rabbit hole if the SOI corrects the pause with precision.
But fake skeptics are not interested in reducing uncertainty. That’s why the Chief always does the bull-rush maneuver.
Chief,
You know full well that the last decade of ocean heat content data from Argo is the very best we have and we can be extremely confident that the oceans gained energy since 2003. Any suggestion of the opposite would require data that is a direct measurement of ocean heat content with the same 3600+ worldwide data points. You got that kind of data Chief?
Don’t think so.
Indeed the increase in ARGO shows in Lyman and Johnson. And I did link to the graph from von Schuckmann and Le Troan 2011.
Don’t know what you are complaining about gatesy. The bottom line here is that the increase was all shortwave. Where is that going to? Don’t know? Didn’t think so.
As for webster the dweeb. Something about the SOI? Something that we have been saying for a decade?
e.g. – http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html
The world is still cooling for a decade to three – extremely likely – 99%) – at least. Get used to it – move onto something interesting that isn’t just quibbling about things that are stipulated.
R. Gates;
“There remain substantial issues over balancing the global energy budget: achieving closure (Kevin Trenberth)”
“We cannot draw any conclusions about “missing energy” in the system on the basis of differences between interannual variations in satellite net radiation and upper ocean heating rates from the current record. This is predominantly due to large uncertainties remaining, in both observing systems, and which needs to be understood, and reduced.”
Clivar/ESA Scientific Consultation Workshop July 3-4, 2013
Norman Loeb, Richard Allen, Gregory Johnson, Karina von Schuckmann,
Anny Cazenave, Josh Willis, Kevin Trenberth, Magdalena Balmaseda,
John Lyman
Having to do with Ocean Heat Content.
http://www.clivar.org/sites/default/files/GSOP/resops/DISCUSSION_II_LOEB.pdf
A 72 page document bringing together and summarizing much of the current information on Ocean heat content in a not overly technical way.
Balancing the global energy budget, the missing energy, is analogous to saying, the accountants don’t know where the money (energy/heat) went. Until they can answer that, we are more free to speculate and explain things as, If our guess is right, then the books balance. The books also balance if the energy/went out of the TOA. Those would seem to be the two most likely cases, TOA and Oceans. There’s also the issue of the Oceans below 2000 meters. Do we understand them enough to know that they did nothing to the upper 2000 meters we have better data on? If the average depth of the Oceans are 4000 meters, that’s half the water. That answer seems to be to tighten the accounting in the Oceans and the TOA.
Chief,
I know you use more information than this, but your first paragraph says:
“We have been through this endlessly. There is a bottom line that the Pacific Decadal Variation added to surface temperature between 1976 and 1998 and have caused a cooler phase since. These regimes last 20 to 40 years.”
Now I don’t know if your arguing that this is always the case. I looked up on wiki and the 20th century PDO chart lines up or correlates pretty well with temperature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO.svg
However I end up having the same correlation problem as with CO2 over a long period. I don’t know if the charts are good but CO2 doesn’t correlate well with temperature long term:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/co2_temperature_historical.png
That chart came from this guy:
http://www.scotese.com/Default.htm
Well PDO doesn’t really do well lining it up with GMT in an even shorter 1000 year period:
http://s1275.photobucket.com/user/philipnord/media/pdogmtcor_zps24592405.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding what all your talking about but if you could explain it I’d appreciate it.
This is an ENSO proxy – http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
More salt is La Nina.
ENSO frequency and intensity is related to the PDO. La Nina are more frequent in cool PDO.
Thanks
Sorry – this was the ENSO proxy.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=86
Ah yes that helps
Ordvic,
This is what you want to see, a correlation of CO2 with the SOI-corrected GIS temperature anomaly
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/5131/kq0.gif
This TCR is 2.1C for transient temperature change with doubling of CO2.
Web
That does demonstrate the CO2 affect that JimD keeps talking about. I pretty much get that but that’s a nice graph that includes SOI. I’m more interested in long term. That Scotese graph I posted shows wild gyration of CO2 and no relationship to Temp. The Berkeley study show CO2 DROP significantly and level in places. I understand the carbon cycle and sinks and all that but how do those big drops occur. So two questions there: Is the Scotese graph reasonably accurate refuting CO2/temp correlation over the long term? How can CO2 drop so significantly and in the case of Berkeley so rapidly.
I gave the one example of how PDO does not match up with the medieval warming period as well. http://s1275.photobucket.com/user/philipnord/media/pdogmtcor_zps24592405.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0 It matches up with 20th century and could explain ‘pauses’ in temp rising. But as with CO2 it deviated wildly when looking at 1000 years. So I’m wondering about all the criteria used including Sun spots and volcanoes that are either not very predictable or not predictable at all. That all seems to point to uncertainty! I guess Dr Curry has a paper coming up relating to this? You seem to think variability smooths out in the CO2 induced upward trend? It seems neither CO2 nor natural variability or anything else can be separated and looked at alone.
The natural variable is used by IPCC along with Sun and Volcanoes to explain the pause: “In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle.”
Not having enough science background regarding this and seeing contradictory evidence (if that’s what it is) only adds to the confusion. The IPCC has a stamp of approval but apparently I can’t rely on it. Conversely anything else I read or look at could be construed as unreliable or outright propaganda. That also points to IPCC being a tool of some green agenda. I would like to see what science really comes out of all this aside from the politics.
What are you saying? You are stating that a nearly unmeasurable change in a part of the ocean we almost never measure the temp in somehow makes up for the fact that all the models are wrong because a magical transfer mechanism exists to gt heat below 700M while not heating the upper 700M of ocean. Really. If you believe that I have got some land in Florida and bridge to sell you as you are the biggest sucker on the planet.
Plus, this is the sanme crew making the argument that got the models utterly wrong to begin with. Stunning to hang you hat on this really.
Brad,
R. Gates isn’t the sucker. He is selling the snake oil, not buying it. He and the other warmists just think the voters are suckers and will believe anything if they keep repeating it often enough. And all too often, they have been right. But not in the long run I don’t believe.
“Climate science” is quite clearly not like a hard science. It appears to be just a load of unsupported assumptions and other related nonsense, wrapped in an incomprehensible language. Richard P Feynman will be turning in his grave.
+ Spot on:
:… unsupported assumptions and other related nonsense, wrapped in an incomprehensible language. …:
I believe the pause can be attributed to the increased melting of Arctic glaciers,(currently at a rate of one trillion tons a year). This will absorb 288x10E15 btus, or one half the annual rate of heat emissions from energy use.
…except that number is ferociously exaggerated to the point of comedy.
Project GRACE estimated that about 1/4 of that amount, total, melted between 2003 and 2010, from glaciers and ice caps COMBINED…
And the trend reversed this year up north, as they say.
WOW! A trillion tons, a third of a millimeter ocean rise per year! A 1-foot rise by 2100! START SANDBAGGING THE TOP FLOOR OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING!!!! And – Oh – cirby tells us it is only 1/4 of that – and over 7 years not 1, and from both glaciers and ice caps. Cancel doomsday alert. Sorry.
If you have the endurance to plow through it, they seem to be admitting that 1) the hotter models are actually running hot, 2) they underestimated the effect of the sun, 3) blame it on volcanoes (but contradicted by satellite data showing no increase in aerosol forcing), 4) blame it on internal variability (but ignore that internal variability could then also account for the warming of the 1980s-1990s), 5) blame it on ocean uptake, but there is no rise in ocean heat corresponding to a slowdown post-1997, and 6) never mention that the lower rate of warming is consistent with the lower empirical estimates of sensitivity. So, 2 correct conclusions (without follow-through) and 4 big inconsistencies that are glossed over. Brings to mind Lindzen’s comment about the incoherence of the report. They talk about all the details but are unable to reconcile the big picture, and just leave it at that.
Craig said:
“there is no rise in ocean heat corresponding to a slowdown post-1997…”
_____
What timeframe are you looking at and what data? Without exception, the experts on the subject of ocean heat content would tell you that the warming of the oceans has been pretty constant over the past 40+ years, with perhpas a bit of an acceleration in the later part of that period. The last decadal period when there was little gain in ocean heat content was most likely 1960-1970.
In order for the post-1997 atmospheric/SST slowdown (pause) to be explained by ocean heat uptake the ocean uptake must have been HIGHER during this period. The data I have seen look like a steady uptake with maybe even a surface level (0-700m) slowdown in uptake post-1997. Just the opposite of what is required. The movement of heat into the deep ocean is then claimed but data do not allow this to be proved or refuted.
True, true, The movement of heat into the deep ocean is then claimed but data do not allow this to be proved or refuted. In other words, the mechanism of the ‘missing’ heat is a Hail Mary pass by Trenberth, And they call this science and then stick us with the bill.
Craig,
Have a look at this recent post on this very subject:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/
RG,
You have that right, especially considering that the “hiatus” is completely explained by fluctuations captured by the Southern ocean Index (SOI). This index is bounded and reverts to a mean value, which means it has statistically no effect in the long term trend.
This is how the SOI compensates the warming trend, contributing to the majority of the “hiatus”.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
WHUT,
Have you sent a letter of complaint to the IPCC? How can they claim there is a hiatus in GMST when you have clearly proved beyond a reasonable doubt that there has been no pause, or hiatus even, when you properly control for the noise of El Ninos and La Ninas?
You and lolwot should start protesting outside Pachauri’s home until you force them to amend their climate denialistic ways.
Et tu Patchy?
As an engineer I just find it depressing that this deep ocean heat BS can even find itself on to paper. Climate science has completely lost its way unless this nonsense is eradicated forthwith. This has now plumbed such depths of scientific credibility that all science is now under great threat from a few desperate fools.
Jbenton,
Basic thermodynamics forbids heat flowing against a temperature gradient so the idea that heat passes through the warm surface to be absorbed by the cold deep ocean is indeed BS.
I suspect that they are trying to argue that the heat is somehow dragged down at the north pole by the meridional overturning circulation ( lower salinity water sinks ). However this also sounds very dubious to me and way to small to explain why the other 510 million sq km of the earth’s surface have not warmed.
The paper of Kosaka and Xie may give a partial answer. Their calculations indicate that cooling eastern tropical Pacific sufficiently may lead to a temperature pattern that agrees reasonably well with observations over most of the global surface.
That means that upwelling of cold deep water in eastern Pacific could drive also other changes. The answer is, however, incomplete because it doesn’t tell why such added upwelling would persist sufficiently long or even that such a situation were even possible. In their model the mechanism is definitely wrong as they just take a lot of heat from surface ocean and move it to “a black hole”. The deep ocean is large enough to possibly allow for an equivalent situation, but “to possibly allow” doesn’t mean that an explanation is given.
J. Benton,
Then explain away the Argo data we’ve been collecting for the past decade? Please, I’d like to hear why we should just discount what these 3600+ floats are telling us.
“Using only 2003–2008 data from Argo floats, we find by four different algorithms that the recent trend ranges from –0.010 to –0.160 W/m2 with a typical error bar of ±0.2 W/m2. These results fail to support the existence of a frequently-cited large positive computed radiative imbalance.”
(Knox, RS, and Douglass, DH. Recent energy balance of Earth. International Journal of Geosciences, 1:3 (Nov. 2010)
“Pekka Pirilä
That means that upwelling of cold deep water in eastern Pacific could drive also other changes”
So why not do an experiment?
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster released radioactive noble gasses including xenon-133.
Xenon is highly soluble in water, but moves very slowly. If there has been cold water rising up from below 700m, pushing down surface water, then 133Xe levels will be lower at the surface than below,
Why not measure the levels of 133Xe and prove the overturn?
Oh, that would mean getting from behind the computer monitor.
@Gates:
I was under the distinct impression that using RC as reference these days was akin to quoting the National Inquirer. Or the IPCC for that matter.
The Real Climate and nothing but the Real Climate, but not the Whole Real Climate.
================
It’s mostly real, 95% of it.
Craig, in chapter 8 of Draft AR5, their discussion of effective radiative forcing and radiative forcing indicates that the AR4 models should underestimate warming when taking aerosols into account. The bit about the sun’s changes in solar index and other comments would support them except for their previous discussion in AR4 where for 2030 they estimated the maximum of natural variability so that they could support the 0.2 to 0.3C/decade in that chapter.
With the decrease in aerosol and aerosol atmospheric reactions in draft AR5, and the difference assigned solar index, they ignore the falsification of the basis of AR4 attribution and its effects, such as that 2030 estimate.
I think the real issue is when people start comparing AR4 with AR5 and find that as it was developed, they did not leave themselves the wiggle room that is now being claimed.
By lowering the likely scenario to include 1.7C, the claims for 2030 are even worse in hindsight, in that the easiest explanation, is as you stated to assume the lower end towards 1.7C and throw out that .2-.3C/decade in AR4. Now the next issue will be to look at the probability distribution and density functions, and compare with the write-up of decreased aerosol, and “natural variability”.
Judith – I’m with you: “reading that text and trying to follow it is positively painful.”. They are thrashing around, desperately trying to explain away what is quite obviously a complete failure of the models. They are bringing in factors that they have completely dismissed before, such as the solar cycle, but in an obviously fact-free way (and it would obviously invalidate past model runs too). The very simple fact, which they hopefully will not escape from this time, is that they have absolutely no understanding of how the climate operates. They should, as you so correctly advised recently, be put down.
Not possible. I have heard from a very reputable source, who studied the report closely, that the IPCC “forgot to mention” the pause.
Surely, that source, if confronted with evidence that contradicted previous statements, would acknowledge the error and explain how it occurred.
Given that hasn’t happened, saying that the IPCC discussed the “pause” doesn’t make any sense.
“Not possible. I have heard from a very reputable source, who studied the report closely, that the IPCC “forgot to mention” the pause.”
They didn’t mention a pause. They called it a “reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years”.
Of course, a complete disappearance could be considered “reduction.”
They forgot to mention it in the SPM (and it WAS mentioned in the draft SPM but was removed).
“They forgot to mention it in the SPM (and it WAS mentioned in the draft SPM but was removed).”
What text was removed exactly? I just downloaded the approved version of the SPM from the IPCC website, and the discussion that I previously saw being quoted before still is there.
Now you see it,
Now you don’t;
You can talk about it,
But we won’t.
=========
Joshua – The original “IPCC forgot to mention the pause” claim was made when the SPM was released. The statement was also made then that “it will be fun to start digging through the WG1 report to find where all this is buried”. WG1 is now available. This article refers to WG1. So your claim that there was an error is incorrect.
Do bother trying to correct Josh, it only annoys him and results in paragraphs of attacks on reading comprehension and bias.
Yawn.
If the IPCC were a person, it’s name would be Joshua.
Joshie has embarrassed himself, again. I wonder why he thinks that his cute little gotcha misfires are going to discredit Judith. Pathetic.
my my, somebodies motivated reasoning is working overtime.
joshua questions Judith’s integrity.
So, he will go looking for stuff to confirm that. His own theories tell him that.
he doesnt pause to read carefully. Even though he believes that he is careful, we can see he has mistaken beliefs about himself.
As Judith wrote in the post he utterly misuderstands….
“Well, it will be fun to start digging through the WG1 report to find where all this is buried.”
And then the report comes out so she goes digging.
Can you spell SPM Joshua?
can you read?
or are you so keen to justify your own beliefs about Judith and about your yourself that you have developed a certain blindness that others can plainly see.
What would your pet theories say to explain your behavior?
perhaps those theories understand you better than you do yourself/
how is that possible when you have an “inside track’ to what you believe
I don’t think he will be back for a while. What will we do for laughs in the meantime?
“don’t think he will be back for a while. ”
I’m sure we’ll all keep a good thought, but I’ve not seen much evidence that ‘ol Josh has much capacity for shame. We’ll see. Hope you’re right.
Thanks Mosher, for laying it all out so neatly.
ur welcome poker.
I dont think he gets how well his behavior exemplifies the very theory he uses to beat up others.
to which he will reply ” of course it does”
+1
Yes thanks Mosher for evaluating so clearly.
Scott
Joshua,
Just say this, “Judith, I was wrong.”
Here, Fonzi will show you how it’s done.
God, you’re a wanker… Pleas go find the missing heat at 2000 meters.
Pwned, sealed, delivered
Except this one sentence where they agree with me.
lucia liljegren: Except this one sentence where they agree with me.
but they admit elsewhere that they do not actually know the “correct” forcing to use. They were unwilling (evidently) to do a calculation with the forcing low enough to match the GMST trend over the hiatus period.
So do you mean by this that for the models to accurately predict the pause, they would end up with a sensitivity too low to predict enough future warming to be alarmed about?
Because it still looks like they are blaming natural variability for the pause, without blaming it for the 1950-1998 warming. Do I have this right?
tomdesabla: So do you mean by this that for the models to accurately predict the pause, they would end up with a sensitivity too low to predict enough future warming to be alarmed about?
Maybe. That’s all I mean: maybe.
Well, I like more than maybe. Maybe, likely. Maybe very likely or even extremely so. We’ll see.
==================
kim, less than 95% certainty doesn’t count. That’s why the IPCC makes such great use of it.
They do use 95% a lot, but it’s not all that great. :)
It would have been pointless to do that since if would bring the models completely out of line with the longer term trend since e.g. 1951.
P-N, pick a number for sensitivity that frightens you and then calculate how cold the earth would now be without human GHGs.
========================
Look, when we say 95%, we don’t mean 95%, we mean it has
ter look like we mean 95% so the guvuhmint and sheeple think
we mean 95%. Get it?
Now you see the value of keeping your refutation of Easterling out of the peer-reviewed literature. Without it they’d have no way of running the story that pauses are to be expected. I don’t know how the authors kept a straight face when they wrote – I paraphrase – that the models were running cool (a little bit) compared to observations, running hot since 1998 (I’d prefer since 2001, to avoid cherry picking accusations), but as they were roughly right 1951-2012, they were therefore fine. Getting period 1 wrong, then period 2 also wrong by the same amount but different sign doesn’t persuade Bank supervisors your model is OK. They assume it doesn’t have useful predictive value. Why are climate models different? Is it because they don’t matter?
Lucia Liljegren wrote: “Except this one sentence where they agree with me.”
This sentence seems rather trivial. What do you make of it? The 10% downward scaling of sensitivity to radiative forcing might be insufficient to to bring the models back in line with observations over the hiatus period just because internal variability and uncertainties over actual forcing take up the rest of the slack.
Very not trivial. Likely very not trivial, perhaps even extremely likely, it, or not.
============
The primary difference between a ‘warming hiatus’ and ‘global cooling’ is a few billion in government funding.
And letting evil CO2 off the hook as a dangerous pollutant that will destroy the planet. And also letting us all off the hook from higher taxes, higher energy costs, and a lower standard of living. And when I say “all of us”, I literally mean every single human being that lives on the face of this earth.
“…I literally mean every single human being that lives on the face of this earth.”
Not true PD. What you said will apply to the proletariat (us), but the nomenklatura (the warmists and their political sponsors) will be inconvenienced not a whit.
Their smart meters and smart appliances will never be turned off by the load management computers. As essential personnel, they will have plenty of fuel for their armored SUV’s or, for the ones closer to the pointy end of the importance pyramid, they will flit about in govt furnished splendor, with the transport (and armed guards) furnished courtesy of us proles. THEIR lifestyle will be enviable. And we will be doing the envying.
Even the corpse economy of the Soviet Union was able to provide its party “elite” with dachas and special stores with quality western goods. Al Gore, James Hansen and Thomas Friedman would have have nothing to worry about.
Bob Ludwick
…and paying (unless we toss the bums out?)
Max
It’s from Solar and Volcanoes:
In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). @The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle.@ However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of forcing trend in causing the hiatus, because of uncertainty in the magnitude of the volcanic forcing trend and low confidence in the aerosol forcing trend.
Funny how solar and volcanoes had no effect in AR4. AR4 must have been all wrong – or perhaps the sun and volcanoes can choose when they affect climate and when they don’t.
Al Gore:
“‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!” Gore exclaimed.”
Al Gore:
‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.’ Bull___! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bull___! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bull___!” Gore exclaimed.
All the shock roars flickers call.
======================
This was an informative post. I have a comment about the following:
Although the forcing uncertainties are substantial, there are no apparent incorrect or missing global-mean forcings in the CMIP5 models over the last 15 years that could explain the model–observations difference during the warming hiatus.
If the forcing uncertainties are substantial, it follows that incorrect or missing global mean forcings would not be apparent. The following reaction of Prof Curry is natural: I quickly got dizzy owing to seemingly unwarranted assumptions and imcomplete information (such as: did the climate models use the correct external forcing for the first decade of the 21st century, or not?).
Well, on present evidence, the answer is unknown.
I have to credit Pointman for speculating that AR5 appears to be the IPCC’s rambling, incoherent suicide note.
More likely the death rattle of the IPCC.
IPCC: [my bold] “In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle.”
Now volcanoes are reputed to be a negative forcing. However, the magnitude of the volcanic signal since 1998 has been about 2% of the Mt Pinatubo eruption. Since 1951 there was also Mt Agung and El Chicnon, both major events too. So this represents a negative forcing trend when comparing the periods indicated.
Do they think we are all asleep or taking medication? Do they think they can just say black is white and no one is going to spot the “trick”?
This kind of disingenuous stupidity beggars belief and shows how desperately short of credible arguments they are.
“Do they think we are all asleep or taking medication?”
No they think we are anti-science morons.
AGREE! If it is volcanoes, where the hell are the giant eruptions to account for this? Make them cite a source, any source, as this is simply wrong.
oops
So this represents a reduction in a negative forcing ie a POSITIVE TREND when comparing the periods indicated.
Goodman, Don’t act so bewildered by it all. We all know that the “hiatus” is connected to the natural fluctuations which can be empirically described by the SOI.
Compensate the global temperature data by the SOI time series and the pause and most of the variability from the past 130 years can be explained.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
The SOI is bounded and has a strong reversion to the mean property, so we can expect the warming signal to resume if the history of the SOI is any indication.
WHUT,
Are you in the pay of big oil? Why have you become a climate denier? The IPCC has spoken. It is the consensus that global warming as to GMST has been on hiatus for 15 years. It’s kicked back on a beach in Cancun, drinking mai tai’s and chasing the cabana boys around.
What are you, a creationist?
WebHubTelescope: We all know that the “hiatus” is connected to the natural fluctuations which can be empirically described by the SOI.
Unless it was the warming that was the natural fluctuation, and the mean temperature will now regress to the mean of the last few centuries.
GaryM
It’s all pro bono.
Malo bono valo no no.
================
Web:
When did you “know” this? I’m positive someone as brilliant as yourself would have spoken up in 1999 and said: “we are at the beginning of a hiatus in warming, but the warming will resume”. Probably didn’t post it to the internet though. Good fortune for you though! You can correct that missed opportunity. Please tell us when the warming signal will resume. Give us a date with a variance and show your math. I await, in eager and humble anticipation, your brilliant answer.
Sorry Dr. Curry. Couldn’t resist.
JE
WebHub said: “it’s all pro bono”
You left out the “publica”
Ask GaryM the LAWYER or that liar SOLICITOR Stephen Wilde — who BTW is impersonating a Fellow of the Royal Met Society — what pro bono means.
They can tell you.
Billions wasted past 35+ years and not a shred of evidence the “Pause” is anything other then a routine natural fluctuation. “The Pause” is another feel good (or best they can) consensus conformist term for the losers of the issue. No co2 climate sensitivity evidenced in the real world, hypothesis failure. “The Pause” = AGW Hypothesis Failure by the standards established by the “consensus”.
What were the standards when there was a routine temperature increase coming out of an ice age?
As for the dog eating my homework ocean heat absorption what can be said? AGW is made up as you go.
Note that the hiatus box was not in the second order draft. This material was added in a very late stage, with limited external review.
Hmmm … Who would have been involved in this “limited external review”?
Perhaps they were hoping against hope that the Met Office July “triage” treatment would make it all go away! And when it did not succeed, could they possibly have added it during the (unadvertised except in progress report appended to June 2012 IPCC plenary “draft report”):
Whatever the case might be, their description is certainly not that of a pause that refreshes one’s confidence in the integrity of the IPCC.
The retardant is an accelerant.
===========
Spelling issue:
“I quickly got dizzy owing to seemingly unwarranted assumptions and imcomplete information”
Go ahead and delete this comment.
IMHO they now admit that the models are too sensitive to CO2 and need renormalizing by at least 10%. The main reason for this is that the models were tuned to explain all the observed warming from 1950 – 2000. The hiatus in temperatures post 1999 now show that something between 25% and 50% of late 20th century warming was actually caused by natural processes. They also know can’t have natural processes only working one way – cooling post 2000 – absent before 2000.
The one natural process they don’t address directly anywhere in the report is natural changes in cloud cover. The unfairly discredited ISCCP global cloud cover data explains about half the 1950-2000 warming and also the current hiatus, while agreeing with less sensitive models having constant TCR of ~ 1.5C
Clive,
If the SOI correction is implemented to compensate for the natural fluctuations about the trend line, the TCR value is approximately 2C.
However, the SOI is a measurement of what the Pacific is doing, not the measure of applied energy to the Pacific, so your attribution, curve-fitting and TCR estimates are all wrong; other than that you are spot on
It’s all correct because the SOI is the difference between absolute atmospheric pressures and that by definition has a mean of zero if both locations are at sea level.
So this turns into a perfect correction term for reducing the fluctuation variance in the global temperature time series. It adds zero bias and removes the pause leaving the secular warming trend as a result.
@whut
Yes you are right I get 2.5ln(2) = 1.7C. I also get a value for ECS of 2.5C see: http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=4923
However, if up to half the warming 1950-2000 is natural then ECS = 2C. The pause is going to last at least until 2025.
Clive,
This is my estimate after removing the SOI noise source:
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/5131/kq0.gif
TCR = 3.07 ln(2) = 2.1 C
with an R^2 = 0.95
The ECS is perhaps 50% more than this value based on land warming rates, or about 3C. This number hasn’t changed as a best estimate for ECS in years, at least since the Charney Report in 1979.
Clive
How could they?
The mere notion that clouds may be independently forcing our climate is an anathema to the dogma.
IPCC Scripture reassures us that clouds only act as “feedbacks” to forcing (from human GHGs, of course), and that this feedback, while poorly understood is, by definition, strongly positive.
Max
They coulda heard the thunderclap,
But o’er their ears, hands did slap.
================
IPCC has elevated hand waving to a fine art. As Richard LIndzen put it, “… the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence,”
It was expected that AR5 would be nuanced but it actually is more disingenuous, especially with its failure to admit AGW theory — the latest conversion religion — has lost many believers and is no longer, if it ever was, a consensus opinion.
With the complex uncertainties of the models I start to have the view that in the projections of the future average temperatures more weight should be given to more straightforward methods. Those methods would build on estimated TCR and some simple energy balance models to support projections over longer periods. That approach seems to be better than use of models, whose projections must be scaled by some corrective factor based on the observed tendency of those models to produce a higher TCR than the best present estimates.
Large GCMs can tell something about other changes in climate, although their capabilities in producing regional projections of changes in temperatures and precipitation are also limited. Even so they are likely the best tool for such more detailed projections.
Pekka,
I agree with you. Buying bigger supercomputers with larger 3-D grids and writing code for anything from aerosol to black carbon to photosynthesis to ENSO etc. seems not to increase our basic understanding of climate.
For the Earth to have stopped warming for 15 years needs another explanation. There has to be a large missing gap in our knowledge.
I think that is exactly the wrong way to go.
I think that we should examine what is happening, locally, to the actual daily temperature and not (Max+Min)/2.
You start on lighthouse records on either side of the US coast and examine what has happened, over time, and when you move N/S, E/W and move in altitude.
Do the Pacific and Atlantic coasts have different temporal profiles?
What happens in the center?
Do high altitude areas behave differently that low-laying regions.
When was the annual first and last frost recorded?
Do we get big changes in response to land use or irrigation?
Was the change in temperature following the 9/11 suspension of flights fully analyzed?
It starts with the ridiculous term “natural variability”. If we do not understand “natural variability”, then we do not understand climate sufficiently to make predictions.
That will never happen. Getting someone to sit down with the raw data and nut out what’s going on is baseline stuff. It’s no-where near being cutting-edge, or even state-of-the-art enough for CliSciTM. Good heavens man, it could be done with time, patience, paper and pencil, and a PC.
DocMartyn | September 30, 2013 at 7:49 pm |
+ Good inquiry list; another useful data-point:
large impoundments and irrigation developments.
You should have mentioned this 20 years ago, Pekka. But aren’t there complex uncertainties in estimating TCR?
TCR seems to be the easiest essential parameter to determine from empirical data with limited help from models. By “limited” I mean that the result is not highly sensitive to plausible changes in the models.
The Otto et al paper discussed by Nic Lewis and also by others is a good example of determination of TCR.
“With the complex uncertainties of the models I start to have the view that in the projections of the future average temperatures more weight should be given to more straightforward methods”
That only took you a decade or so.
You were until very recently, very much in favor of them as analytic’s despite their being little more than bastardized fitting programs.
My background is not in atmospheric sciences but first in physics and later in energy economics and systems analysis. I have learned more about atmosphere over the last couple of years after my retirement. My activities in energy economics and systems analysis where related but required only superficial knowledge on the mechanisms of global warming.
As I have worked for long with complex models, I’ve also been very aware of their generic problems. My view on the complex models is basically that they are very valuable tools of learning for scientists who develop and use them actively, but seldom capable of producing results that are directly suitable for application in decision making or even as input to further work by scientists of another field.
Possible plausible policy pause. Need another ‘p’, where could one be?
=====================
This fox news report is really interesting, check the quotes from Tsonis:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/09/30/un-climate-change-models-warming/
Tsonis strongly disagrees. He acknowledges that human activity is likely having an impact on climate, but adds “Nobody has ever proven for 100 percent that the long-term warming is man-made. In my educated guess I will think something like less than 30 percent.”
No one saw nature coming.
Tsonis ?
Fox appears to be going deep into the bench for this opinion.
Shouldn’t Tsonis deserve a little obeisance from the AGW alarmist faithful when to his research he is careful to add the usual obligatory caveats–e.g., “we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing”…?
‘We construct a network of observed climate indices in
the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective
behavior. The results indicate that this network
synchronized several times in this period. We find that in those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a
state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this
mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of the size and complexity of the climate system. Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007), A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34
A numerical demonstration of a fundamentally new paradigm in climate science? Must be worth a Nobel Prize.
You try and try and try webby – and still get it all arse backwards. Why is that? Frankly – I’d put it down to dumb as a door knob.
,
To those of us who have been following the climate debate for decades, the next few years will be electrifying. There is a high probability we will witness the crackup of one of the most influential scientific paradigms of the 20th century, and the implications for policy and global politics could be staggering. ~Ross McKitrick
Tsonis makes it way too complicated. All he has to do is subtract the lagged and scaled SOI value from the global surface temperature record to reveal the variability-reduced warming trend. That reveals the simple connection that Tsonis wants. In other words, subtract the noise from the raw data and one gets the signal:.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Surprise, No Pause !
Looking for synchronization in climate is mostly for the benefit of Leftist thumbsuckers who are unable to comprehend the concept of chaos. We could be headed into another Ice Age for all we know.
RE: WebRube (@whut) | September 30, 2013 at 4:10 pm |
“Fox appears to be going deep into the bench for this opinion.”
But not deep enuff to find you? Apparently your genius yet goes unnoticed . .
It’s great to see Michael Mann basking in the “noise.”
I hope he’s wrong about a continued pause/hiatus. I don’t care what the IPCC says. Cold weather sucks.
Got that right. So does wet.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/30/20755408-drenched-seattle-could-see-its-wettest-september-on-record?lite
Agreed. My first suspicion about global warming was the complete absence of anything positive in the MSM WRT to warming. Surely, a warmer world within limits had to be better for people living in parts of Russia, say. And where were the articles about a longer growing season?
It bothered me, and I started getting interested. The next thing I noticed was how profoundly nasty these people were. I kept thinking, trustworthy, dependable, sane human beings don’t act like this. There are scientists for crying out loud (went my thinking).
It was clear to me that something was amiss.
I hope it gets cold just to save us from the models. Let’s start back again with models that simulate observations and discoard those that do’t work rather than average them .
Scott
I didn’t see any quotes attributed to our joshie in that article. He must have been unavailable for comment. They should have noted that. Fox.
Agree that the best part of the Fox report are the quotes by our hostess.
Did Tsonis mean 30% of the warming or 30% certainty? And if the latter, 30% certain of what? That “most” of warming is due to man?
30% of warming seemed clear to me. Level of certainty: “an educated guess.” That is far better than the IPCC’s unsubstantiated 95% confidence.
Yes, good report. They give Tsonis a relatively extended amount of space.
‘I don’t understand what the IPCC WG1 text means but this Fox news report is really interesting.’ You’re hilarious, Dr. Curry. Don’t ever change.
“In short, this is advocacy, not assessment.” ~David Wojick
Climate models are missing the potential energy of the atmosphere in the calculations, which is 50% of the energy exchanged. They are simply wrong, period. The basic and fundamental energy equation is wrong. If the climate project were an airplane project, it would not take off, and project team members would be fired by now.
Climate projection back in 2007/2008 presented in in tables 1 and 6 of my book posted on global-heat.net showed surface water temperature trend of 0.05 to 0.07 degrees C/decade, which is observed. IPCC sea level projection has been revised to fall in line with my projection of 82 cm by 2100. Global warming has been on track, and the so called “pause” of surface temperature is on papers only, which were revised and surface temperature was reduced twice in 2005/2007 and 2010/2011. In the real world surface temperature ha not paused. Sea level has been steadily on the rise, in line with projection.
Real world temperature rise continues unabated, all evidence to the contrary is due to data manipulation.
Nice!
Yes David, ordinary people around the world will say the same. Farmers, fishermen, mountineers, and the like.
“Yes David, ordinary people around the world will say the same. Farmers, fishermen, mountineers, and the like.”
Right. Let’s ask a bunch of Europeans and Asians how they’ve enjoying their recent LIA style winters.
I do all the time and here are sample replies: It is warmer, snow is wetter and hevier, snow melts sooner, we no longer can ice skate on ponds as used to, less rain and aquifiers are depleting, we harvest wheat sooner. All these observations are in lines with mathematics and physics.
Nabil,
Of course the undue focus on sensible tropospheric heat has led many (including so called “warmists”) away from seeing the bigger energy picture. Even Pielke Sr. advocated we look at least at moist enthalpy for tropospheric readings, and in doing so we would find the pause not so much of a pause. But all added together, the energy of the atmosphere is but a tiny fraction of what the oceans have stored. Levitus has a nice chart for comparison in this presentation:
http://cicar.ei.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Levitus-Lamont-05.pdf
Check out page 4.
R Gates,
A change in the average height of the atmosphere by only 10 meter is equal to 5.1 E20 Joules, equivalent to our total annual consumption of energy. We know that the geopotentials of the atmosphere are decresing and this decrease cannot be ignored in the energy balance of the earth. The General Circulation Model ignores this large amount of potential energy in the energy balance of the climate, a mistake, that has yet to be corrected.
Nabil,
Geopotential is a perfect example, but there are many areas where energy of the system has not been fully accounted for. Consider the 5% expansion of green (vegetation) on the planet in the past 30 years. The energy this represents in the biosphere has not been accounted for, nor has the kinetic energy in enhancement of the Brewer-Dobson circulation, or how about “sprites”, those curious and only recently discovered upward directed lighting bolts dicharging energy directly to space. Or how about the geopotential energy involved in the increase in noctilucent clouds. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud). With these now seemingly on the increase, and representing water vapor very high in the mesosphere, the geopotential energy of mass up this high is yet one more thing to add. The list goes on an on. So much research to do and things to learn!
I would take Levitus paper with a grain of salt. First, there is no physical explanation of how heat can sink deep into the ocean. This defies gravity and what we learned at school. Second, Levitus has implemented large scale corrections of the data. This defeats the purpose of the data in the first place and render his publication worthless.
And R Gates, dont forget the green cheese the moon is made of, when it melts it takes alot of energy.
So your esssential argument is, at the top of the post, we have complete certainty that the oceans are heating below 700M in an area we almost never measure and at an almost imperceptible rate and that accounts for the pause, while in this part of the thread you argue we know nothing of the energy balance because it is too complex.
Anyone else see that this guy has an agenda and thus he is blowing smoke out of orifices instead of making cogent arguments?
justsomeguy said:
” in an area we almost never measure…”
____
You really have no idea how extensive the Argo floats are do you. Might want to spend some time investigating the coverage of the over 3600+ floats out there taking measurements and justify that to your “almost never measure” meme. Doesn’t quite fit your preconception.
We have about 3600 current floats covering the ocean “sparsely” according to ARGO (about every 3 degrees square) and only covering non-ice covered and oceans and many more floats are in oceans that are easily accessible.
R Gates-
See, for example, Figure 5 here: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Doesnt this ocean heat content show a pause, or a lsow down in heating, this century as well? Isnt your argument that the rate of change in ocean temp has to be greatly accelerating to account for the drop in atmospheric temp? But it isnt doing that…
Also see Figure 1, which shows the ame thing in energy (Joules).
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Justsomeguy,
Did you actually look at the Levitus presentation:
http://cicar.ei.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Levitus-Lamont-05.pdf
Despite some rather nasty ad Homs launched against him here by some rather ignorant folks, Levitus is probably one of the top experts on this subject. But go ahead and believe the nutters if you want.
Sure. Look at slides 12 and 19, for example. They show an inflection around 2005 and a lowering in the rate of increase exactly when the IPCC and friends need the rate to go the other way. Doesn’t this show the reason for the pause is not the oceans just soaking it up?
You presentation proves my point.
I would take Levitus paper with a grain of salt. First, there is no physical explanation of how heat can sink deep into the ocean. This defies gravity and what we learned at school. Second, Levitus has implemented large scale corrections of the data. This defeats the purpose of the data in the first place and render his publication worthless.
Nabil,
Thermal energy, otherwise known as heat, by itself does not respond to gravity. I am curious what they taught you in school.
Web, I was taught that hot water rises to the surface, against gravity, because it is bouyant and does not sink deep into the ocean, basic physics. In order to qualify Levitus assertion that heat sank from the surface into the deep ocean, you have to first revise the science books all over the world.
One word – teleconnections.
Nabil, That is not heat that is bouyant, it is a volume or parcel of thermally excited water.
An individually heated molecule will only diffuse, which is a directionless motion.
That’s what I was effin’ taught in school, not your garbage.
True,Web. And when the mass, m, floats, the heat it acquires floats with it, Q=m cp delta T.
@Nabil Swedan…
Yes there is, and it doesn’t.
No you don’t, all you have to do is stir it.
You say pause, I say hiatus.
Pause. Hiatus.
Pause. Hiatus.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
1pause: noun \ˈpȯz\
: a temporary stop : a period of time in which something is stopped before it is started again
hi·a·tus: noun \hī-ˈā-təs\
: a period of time when something (such as an activity or program) is stopped
Looks like the IPCC doesn’t expect the warming in reported temps to start again. Now THAT’s news.
Since the regressional trend of fixed length is operationally nothing more than a crude band-passes filter, no statement about the time-span required can be practically meaningful without a well-defined sense of the spectral structure of the signal at hand. IPCC doesn’t even begin to address that issue, relying instead upon model results viewed through the traditional prism of a 30-yr “base period.” As it turns out, the most reliable proxy data manifests not only strong multidecadal, but also multicentennial swings, which render such simplistic notions of trend quite misleading.
I had a copy of Box 9.2 ahead of time and spent some time parsing it in my post here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/09/24/two-minutes-to-midnight/. I entirely agree that the analysis is very defective. Part of their problem is that there has been negligible analysis in academic literature and that such analysis as exists e.g. Easterling and Wehner 2009 should not have been relied on (as set out clearly in the rejected comments by Liljegren and also Michaels et al.)
It is true that 20th century observations and models contain a hiatus as well, conventionally “explained” by precisely offsetting aerosols. The battleground issue is – as it has been for many years – whether the aerosol histories and impact have been tailored (inadvertently no doubt) to offset overheating GHG models – a lack of fit that is being exposed in the hiatus. Obviously, IPCC has been less than candid in discussing this possibility.
Steve, don’t they discuss this in Ch 8? Thanks for brining up the past explanations. My first reading of some of Ch 8 indicates that correcting for aerosols would call into doubt the histories and impact. I will read to see if this is mentioned. The section where they sum up consequences as part of the introduction does not include it.
‘inadvertently no doubt’
Quite.
By far the most interesting in this thread, IMHO, are our hostess’s remarks.
Not right on topic but close. I noticed two specific differences between the final and the SOD, specifically in Chapter 1.
Figure 1.4 was the one that hit the skeptic airwaves when the SOD was leaked with regard to models diverging from observations. The new figure 1.4 is much less damning (looking).
As well, the wording with regard to that figure changed from:
“In summary, the globally-averaged surface temperatures are well within the uncertainty range of all previous IPCC projections, and generally are in the middle of the scenario ranges.”
to:
“In summary, the trend in globally-averaged surface temperatures falls within the range of the previous IPCC projections.”
SOD, Chapter 1: http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/Ch1-Introduction_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch01_All_Final.pdf
Final, Chapter 1: http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter01.pdf
good catch
Figure 1.4 is here: https://twitter.com/AndreVanDelft/status/384815047391723521/photo/1/large
The caption text is:
Estimated changes in the observed globally and annually averaged surface temperature anomaly relative to 1961–1990 (in C) since 1950 compared with the range of projections from the previous IPCC assessments. Values are harmonized to start from the same value in 1990. Observed global annual mean surface air temperature anomaly, relative to 1961–1990, is shown as squares and smoothed time series as solid lines (NASA (dark blue), NOAA (warm mustard), and the UK Hadley Centre (bright green) reanalyses)
(…)
See Appendix 1.A for details on the data and calculations used to create this figure.
[End of caption quote]
The Appendix 1.A on page 33 contains:
The observations are shown from 1950 to 2012 as annual mean anomaly relative to 1961–1990 (squares). For smoothing, first, the trend of each of the observational datasets was calculated by locally weighted scatter plot smoothing (Cleveland, 1979; f=1/3). Then, the 11-year running means of the residuals were determined with reflected ends for the last 5 years. Finally, the trend was added back to the 11-year running means of the residuals.
[End of appendix quote]
Steve McIntyre discusses the First Order Draft and Second Order Draft versions of this figure 1.4 in “Two Minutes to Midnight”:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/09/24/two-minutes-to-midnight
Still looking to the answer to the question “How cold would it be without C02 using IPCC assumptions?”
realclimate states the new IPCC report indicates all but .1 degrees C is on account of folks. Given the .4 degrees below the projections, and all that other warming, oops. Perhaps that’s why they have lowered the climate sensitivity #s, to give some headroom. It seems without some serious warming over the next decade, it will become clear either there is a big battery storing heat somewhere, or the sensitivity numbers are wrong.
ed barbar September 30, 2013 at 4:16 pm: …”either there is a big battery storing heat somewhere…”
If someone finds that battery, please tell the solar power folks where it is.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/volc_forcing.png
To suggest a reduction in volcanic aerosols can “contribute” to the hiatus is completely back to front however they pump them up.
Undoubtedly both AGW and volcanic forcings are over-estimated in the models but this was not apparent while both were present. Now, with negligible volcanism to offset the supposed CO2 forcing, climate should be warming even faster than it was pre-2000.
A lesser magnitude of a the negative volcanic forcing is positive change in forcing. How can this “contribute” to the hiatus?
Good point!
Greg, “To suggest a reduction in volcanic aerosols can “contribute” to the hiatus is completely back to front however they pump them up. ”
If the only thing that aerosols did was reflect sunlight, that would be right. Aerosols are more fun though, they have indirect effects, like cloud condensation nuclei and SOx reacts with ozone. Then with stratospheric water vapor, SOx, O3 and a dash of solar nature can do all sorts of magic.
There is nothing in climate that is actually linear.
Heh!
So Judith is guilty of premature articulation, and I get attacked.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Same ol’ same ol’.
You have a bad case of Judithitis, joshie. Seek help.
A really bad case of Judithitis.. go back to humping keith’s leg. you were so much more effective there
Very cogent analysis of our little friend, pokerguy. Mosher has been trying to work with joshie on his pathological lack of self-awareness, but it ain’t taking.
So Joshua, will you admit you “jumped the shark”?
People with personality disorders almost never see it in themselves. That’s why they’re close to impossible to treat by professionals. It’s always everyone else’s fault, in this case everyone else’s bias, and everyone else’s motivated thinking. He see this in everyone but himself.
His obsession with Judith is interesting though. It’s plain that he needs to be noticed by her, and since he lacks the intellect to attract her interest in a positive way, he attacks her. Once in a great while she actually replies to one of his nasty, off the wall accusations, and that’s enough to reinforce the behavior. He’s like a desperate lab rat pressing a food bar over and over again for the occasional food pellet.
Poker, I know lab rats, and Josh is no lab rat.
They are quite nice and only attack when attacked.
Does this statement mean that the models are tuned for 20th century solar cycles with an 11 year cycle and amplitude to match those previously experienced?
They have an 11 year solar cycle, but they assume an overall amplitude for solar changes that is perhaps too low. In AR4 solar didn’t do anything, but now it (conveniently) has a cool period matching the pause and thus is working again. So solar only has an effect when needed and could not possibly have caused the warming of the 1980s-2000.
Also, note that of the past 70 years only 20 showed warming…
The solar cycle has been included in the fit of Lean and Rind (GRL, 2008) that covers the period 1889-2006. That fit should tell reasonably well, how strong the influence of the 11 year cycle is.
They considered also ENSO and volcanic aerosols in their fit.
The logic is fitting for Alice in Wonderland. Solar has no influence on warming but its absence has an effect on cooling. Only the IPCC could have such an absurd view. I dont understand why warmists are not embarrassed by this whole charade.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/lean_2008-2.gif.html?sort=3&o=130
Lean and Rind used multiple linear regression with some broadly estimated scaling factors. It works in obvious ways because ENSO and volcanoes are the major sources of variability. The assumption that the residual is entirely anthropogenic is however unsafe.
“Pekka Pirilä | September 30, 2013 at 5:01 pm |
The solar cycle has been included in the fit of Lean and Rind (GRL, 2008) that covers the period 1889-2006.”
Same old, same old. ‘but this particular model captures the sudden temperature change in Nebraska perfectly….and this model includes a estimate for the number of odd socks you will have after six laundry events’
It makes no damned difference if you average different models or cherry-pick one individual fro a match.
Craig Loehle wrote “So solar only has an effect when needed and could not possibly have caused the warming of the 1980s-2000.”
The trends for sunspot numbers or TSI are down over the 1980-2000 period. They’re also down over the 1970-2000 period. I can’t see how they would explain some of the warming over those whole periods.
Just in case Fan misses this opportunity:
Dr Curry, “Can someone remind me again how and why all this is supposed to be useful?”
Answer: “Descendants to inherit a planet”
Dr Hansen “Storms of My Grandchildren”
Hansen advised that if the leaders weren’t going to act, “they should spend a small amount of time composing a letter to be left for future generations. The letter should explain that the leaders realized their failure would cause our descendants to inherit a planet with a warming ocean, disintegrating ice sheets, rising sea level, increasing climate extremes, and vanishing species, but it would have been too much trouble to oppose business interests who insisted on burning every last bit of fossil fuels. By composing this letter, the leaders will at least achieve an accurate view of their place in history.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2010/01/nasas_prophet_will_give_you_nightmares.2.html
Ordvic:
And as our descendants retreat from the advancing ice sheets they will wonder . . . if they knew how to warm the planet, why didn’t they? “Climate change” is a tautology. It will be warmer and colder in the near and distant future. I’ve seen the evidence for climate change. A mile of ice used to be where I am right now. Tropical seas too. Today it is taiga. I prefer warm.
I was just using that as a joke (ie Fan reference) but thanks for the perspective.
Ordvic:
Sorry about that. I have only recently begun reading the comments here, so am not at all familiar with Fan.
Cheers!
JE
“expert judgment, medium confidence”.
What does this even mean? We plied our experts with drink, and they were still clueless?
cui, you must have been there!
Maybe their medium said she was confident.
I measured the temperature of the actual report and found between pages 678 and 1497, a warming trend of .01 degrees F.
;-)
(I’m only here for the laughs.)
IPCC – can’t see the forest for the leaves on the ground.
Which GCMs model MIlkanovitch cycles?
AR5-1 figure 5.3 on page 5-111 shows we are on the peak of CO2, sea level and sea surface temperature cycles and it is very likely the general trend for those parameters over the next 100,000 years will be downwards with a sea surface temperature drop of 2-4 degrees.
I’ll order in extra woollens for 102,013 AD. And stay out of the water.
I believe they are doing this to promote the UN’s Agenda 21. Read up on it. It is scary in it’s implications.
Support for the GaryM camp.
Faustino,
Support for my “camp” can be found in the news every day. Particularly in Brussels and Washington D.C.
Just as my skepticism comes from what I read that is written by the consensus scientists, my political views of progressivism comes from reading what they themselves have written. The movement progressives, not the default progressives around here.
Probably 90+ percent of progressives are default progressives, just believing what they were taught to believe. They have no ulterior motives other than feeding their own need to be part of an elite. They genuinely believe they are voting for “fairness” and “for the children.”
But the real, hard core progressives, who know what they are doing and why, are different. The Valerie Jarretts, the Van Joneses, the Hillary Clintons, Obama himself, and the rank and file activists on congressional staffs and in the bureaucracies, are all doing what they have said for decades they were going to do. But the default progressives know nothing more about genuine progressivism than they do of genuine conservatism.
Gary, I made that comment here in part because the next posted comment was by Theo, who had in an earlier thread decried your view (for which I have seen a lot of supporting evidence, as well as having in earlier years known a lot of left-wing activists and seen how they operate).
Faustino,
Oh I understood. I saw your comments on the other thread and agreed. I just took your comment as a chance to restate something I think bears repeating every once in a while.
Alls I can say is thanks god that some folks, like down-to-earth-regular-guy-salt-of-the-earth Gary, are around to stand up to those elitists who, in Gary’s view comprise the 90%? of the population (anyone who isn’t a rightwing extremist) and who are inferior to him morally, intellectually, or both.
Lets face it, the folks who read this board and respond are likely smarter than your average bear. All of us.
If you want to be taken seriously, at least accurately quote the comment you are criticizing. I won’t waste my time correcting your poor reading skills. It’s boring correcting such nonsense.
And I consider no one inferior to me. But there are many ideologies that are vastly inferior to the free market, strong defense, Judeo-Christian, conservative values that I hold. Progressivism, Islamism. fascism, communism, being the most obvious examples.
Gary –
You are on here, quite regularly, describing how “progressives” are intellectually and inferior to you. You are also on here, regularly, describing how anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun falls under your label of “progressives,” even those who describe themselves as “conservatives,” – descriptions which you condescendingly dismiss.
And that’s just a start in describing how, regularly, you display elitism.
It is what it is, Gary. Why would you express those views and then try to walk it back?
“In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle.”
If you hang out at WUWT, you are familiar with the posts of Dr. Leif Svalgaard who is a first tier solar scientist at Stanford. For years, he has explained that the belief in a connection between phases of the solar cycle and radiation arriving at the top of the atmosphere is purely mythological and has no basis in science.
Nope. It isn’t. It’s simply a lot of fancy verbiage to try to fog up the fact that the climate sensitivity predictions of the models have not worked out in real life over the past 10-15 years.
It looks and smells a lot like a scam, Judy.
Max
Dr. Curry writes:
“Apart from these obvious flaws, reading that text and trying to follow it is positively painful. Can someone remind me again how and why all this is supposed to be useful?”
There is no doubt that the text was designed to produce severe pains in the reader. This IPCC text is not an honest attempt to convey information. It defeats commentary because the organization, even at the sentence level, is so poor that there is no specific meaning to address.
It is meant to obfuscate, not to illuminate.
Figure 9.9 (Ch 9) highlights the reliance on models, rather than observations. The increase in tropical precipitation due to warming is 5.7 % / C. based on models.
Based on the observations, however, the relationship is around 22 % / C.
Three and half times reality….
The more it warms, the more it rains…3.5 fold, but that would mean less water vapor and warming feedbcak, so they hide the observations in model output.
for the big picture I sometimes think we should re-read Miskolczi. may be except changes in albedo that change the total heat that enters the atmosphere, the rest tend to that equilibrium. I sometimes make a menthal experiment, ¿what if you begin with a dry atmosphere charged with CO2 on an ocean. It will begin evaporation until a moment where it stops, that moment will be the same if you add the co2 later.
Pingback: The WUWT Hotsheet for Monday Sept 30th, 2013 | Watts Up With That?
As we ponder the few tenths of a degree “pause” of tropospheric temperature rise, here’s a bit of perspective from one of the leading authorities on ocean heat content, Sidney Levitus, who this past year wrote:
“If all the heat stored in the
world ocean since 1955 was
instantly transferred to the
lowest 10 km ( 5 miles) of the
atmosphere, this part of the
atmosphere would warm by ~
65°F.”
His full presentation from which this quote was dreived can be found here:
http://cicar.ei.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Levitus-Lamont-05.pdf
No one has any reliable empirical basis for estimating “all the heat stored in the world ocean since 1955,” because the requisite data at depth is simply not there. What is amply evident, however, is Levitus’ hyperbolic presentation, which fails to mention the more-than-thousand-fold difference in mass between ocean and atmosphere.
Tell me how your expertise stacks up against Levitus? Of course the error bars grow larger the further we go back, and Levitus is the first to point this out, and moreover, the need for expanding the Argo effort to deeper floats and lots more of them. But Levitus’ finding are in line with every other major ocean heat content study done in the past 5 years. His is hardly a “hyperbolic” presentation, but represents the best current data we have. Even if he is off by a factor of ten (very unlikely), we would stil have seen a 6.5 C rise in tropospheric temperatures had this energy not gone into the ocean.
Nonsense on several grounds. The coverage to depth is 15% pre ARGO. Nonetheless – the latest reanalysis shows an ocean heat peak in 2003. This is consistent with energy considerations.
Such a large increase in heat could not of course be retained in the atmosphere.
John S. Don’t you know climate scientists just make things up as they go along. They are actually that brilliant! They are smart! They are Statistics Wizards. They can divine the science of climate merely by batting their eye lashes. They are just that good. Yes Sir.
Chief said:
“Nonetheless – the latest reanalysis shows an ocean heat peak in 2003.”
___
Great, except there is no reanalysis that can accurately tell us what ocean heat content was back in 2003. But of course, it is convenient for you to try and suggest that reanalysis would be more accurate than actual in-the-ocean instruments with measured Argo data from 2003-2013, as it suits whatever cherries you’d like to sell us.
ARGO achieved full coverage in 2005 – hence the graph shown.
So the 15% coverage pre ARGO not sufficient? Pretty much guess work before then? Your whole argument shot down in flames?
Energy imbalances gatesy?
‘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.’ IPCC WG1 3.4.4.1
R. Gates, that is one of those, “If a frog had wings..” illustrations right? :)
Captn.,
Yep, but some people need some help imagining a frog with wings, so Levitus needs to draw them a picture.
“Great, except there is no reanalysis that can accurately tell us what ocean heat content was back in 2003.”
But we do have reasonable data since 2003 and Levitus’ graphs on p10 and p12 show 0-700m OHC has been flat.
Of course that still needs correction for SOI ‘noise’ LOL
R. Gates the Skeptical Warmist: Sidney Levitus this past year wrote:
“If all the heat stored in the
world ocean since 1955 was
instantly transferred to the
lowest 10 km ( 5 miles) of the
atmosphere, this part of the
atmosphere would warm by ~
65°F.”
So what?
a. There are not the requisite temperature data at all depths from around the world to estimate that heat;
b. It can’t be instantly transferred to the atmosphere.
c. As the lower troposphere warms up, the rate of radiative heat transfer to space will increase.
MattStat, “a. There are not the requisite temperature data at all depths from around the world to estimate that heat.”
The OHC estimates track SST pretty well and the distribution and timing of the increases makes sense. If you mentally include the error bars, the OHC data is not much worse than the surface data.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/–hk05PyzaUU/UkA6c9JVmlI/AAAAAAAAJnI/vo-1rzZCR2w/w927-h495-no/What+Uncertainty.png
No missing heat there. ‘Course that doesn’t exactly sing CO2 forcing, more like solar actually. You reckon they may have missed a little something in the models? :)
Matthew Marler,
Your simple dismissal of the importance of ocean heat content and its related effects on the climate indicates your general lack of knowledge in this subject. I would school you a bit…but it would be a waste of time as you obviously have your mind quite made up on the subject.
For me, an important thing is that here we have another very important factor not studied or not well included in the models. May be the error effect of this storage is in the order of magnitude of the whole possible influence of CO2, and then ¿which is the validity of the models” focusing in a only factor and simply parametrizing the others. The models simply respond to the parametrization it has been included on them, if it implies warming (to fit the data with the warmingo in the testing period), the model will respond with warming.
Oh – and it seems fairly obvious that the missing energy was in less reflected SW. Which doesn’t seem to register. Why is that gatesy?
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=102
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=133
popoff
In some way that storaged heat is the heat that can’t escape. So probably the whole solid earth will have storaged a vast amount of heat if the atmosphere has slighty warmed. But that heat ¿where comes it from? Probably a big part would be internal heat from the earth that can’t escape by conduction.
Help me understand the ‘hiding heat in ocean’ theory. So if my understanding about GHG is correct there should be a ‘open loop’ 1.2°c increase per doubling if CO2 and positive feedbacks in models increase this threefold leading to the catastrophic predictions of AGW alarmists. If then this heat can hide in the bottom of ocean then presumably it can no longer act in a way that creates positive feedback. So even if the oceans decide magically to give back this heat to the atmosphere later it will not contain the extra positive feedback forced energy content it would have hadgr. So any resumption in warming will not be back to where the models said they should be at and thus the average every century will be substantially reduced. This will happen each time the ocean decides to hide some heat so isn’t it critical that models for global temps include this in their estimates?
Why would you compare the trend during 1998–2012 to the trend during 1951–2012 and not to 1951-1997/8?
In some initialised models this lower GMST occurs in part because they correctly simulate a shift, around 2000, from a positive to a negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation
The pacific wide IPO ( folland) tends to capture the phase space of both the SOI and SPCZ.
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/climate/effects-impacts-may04/html/images/figure3-3.gif
Now the IPCC has acknowledged the following:
Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.
WebHubTelescope, could you do the same please?
That is what we skeptics have saying for years and it has now been acknowledged.
Science must tell only the truth
I have followed this issue for the last 4 years and the skeptics have been a lot more accurate about where we are today than the warmists have been for the last 4 years. I cant believe in just a few days so much has been thrown up into the air for still greater uncertainty.
If I had an electrical circuit in a noisy environment, I could not predict when the next shot noise spike would occur either.
Gadzooks, do any of these deniers understand anything?
Web
It is not a noise. It is a climate signal for drop in the GMST Trend from the maximum of 0.2 deg C per decade for the period 1975 to 2005 to about zero for the period 2005 to 2035.
It’s an unbiased noise source.
The equivalent of a fluctuating AC signal riding on top of a DC ramp. Remove the known AC and all that you have left is a ramp and a small bit of residual noise.
This is my preoccupation, trying to reduce these seemingly difficult concepts into something that is understood to first order.
Webster, “The equivalent of a fluctuating AC signal riding on top of a DC ramp. Remove the known AC and all that you have left is a ramp and a small bit of residual noise.”
Right, to puts you right up there with the cyclomaniacs. You come up with an unsustainable curve with no cause or inkling of what may cause it to shift.
If 50% of your ramp is due to something poorly considered, you can become an IPCC team member.
Cappy has never heard of the concept of tides.
Don’t have to completely understand their origin to be able to compensate for their behavior.
Like the SOI, the tides also lack a long term bias.
Sometimes I wonder if the Cappy is sea-worthy.
The possiblity that the models are wrong in principle does not seem to have occurred to anyone; over-damped deterministic models are being used in an attempt to emulate stochastic phenomena. The “multi-decadal oscillation” is not inconvenient noise tacked on to a deterministic climate. It IS the climate!
Judith,
“Painful” pretty well sums it up. I can’t say I am surprised, nor disappointed. The organization simply does not have a means to address anything which diverges from their mission (pretty much to shout ‘fire’ in a crowed theater). If ‘the pause’ continues for another 5-10 years, the IPCC will be toast….. and I can think of no bread which is more deserving.
I do wonder though: Can everyone involved in the IPCC AR5 process be so utterly tone-deaf and disconnected from reality? If so, it kind of boggles the mind.
Years ago, I decided that if I ever wrote a novel, it would be called “The Bog Mindles.” Still waiting the first word, though.
Subtitle (?): Sixed Mignals
This isn’t the global warming you’re looking for.
http://youtu.be/2I33k8vV3Sk
Dear sweet god.
With brackets:
“The AR5 best-estimate ERF trend over 1998–2011 is 0.23 ± 0.11 W m–2 per decade (90% uncertainty range), which is substantially lower than the trend over 1984–1998 (0.34 ± 0.10 W m–2 per decade; note that there was a strong volcanic eruption in 1982) and the trend over 1951–2011 (0.30 ± 0.10 W m–2 per decade; Box 9.2, Figure 1d–f; numbers based on Section 8.5.2, Figure 8.18; the end year 2011 is chosen because data availability is more limited than for GMST). The resulting forced-response GMST trend would approximately be 0.13 [0.06 to 0.31] °C per decade, 0.19 [0.10 to 0.40] °C per decade, and 0.17 [0.08 to 0.36] °C per decade for the periods 1998–2011, 1984–1998, and 1951–2011, respectively (the uncertainty ranges assume that the range of the conversion factor to GMST trend and the range of ERF trend itself are independent). The AR5 best-estimate ERF forcing trend difference between 1998–2011 and 1951–2011 thus might explain about one-half (0.04°C per decade) of the observed GMST trend difference between these periods (0.06 to 0.08°C per decade, depending on observational data set).”
With brackets excised:
“The AR5 best-estimate ERF trend over 1998–2011 is 0.23 ± 0.11 W m–2 per decade, which is substantially lower than the trend over 1984–1998 and the trend over 1951–2011. The resulting forced-response GMST trend would approximately be 0.13 °C per decade, 0.19 °C per decade, and 0.17°C per decade for the periods 1998–2011, 1984–1998, and 1951–2011, respectively. The AR5 best-estimate ERF forcing trend difference between 1998–2011 and 1951–2011 thus might explain about one-half of the observed GMST trend difference between these periods.”
With the best of intentions, I struggle to ascribe that to incompetence. I’ve used exactly that technique to hoodwink people myself.
If the the present “hiatus” is due to natural variation, then natural variation is of a size and scale equal to the models. In addition the 1910-1040 period of warming is equal and of similar scale to that of the 1970-2000 trend which so concerns the IPCC. The first was largely or wholly natural variation, the second is supposedly largely or wholly man-made.
Thus there is a total of 45 years of natural variation which is the same scale and extent as that of the 30 years of supposedly man-made variation.
So, there is plenty of evidence that natural variation is extensive and dominant in the climate even within the past 150 years. Indeed, it is completely untrue to say the 1970-2000 trend (after the global cooling scare) is “unprecedented”.
Hence I would be very confident in saying that it is likely that natural variation was responsible for the majority of climate change we have seen in the last 150 years. And to a lesser extent I would be confident that natural variation was responsible for the majority of warming in the latter half of the 20th century.
I think what they mean is that mass Chicken Little hysteria over a nice warming trend is “unprecedented”.
Thanks to Judith, readers of CE have been given much to think on over the next few days. The IPCC have demonstrated monolithic bias and motivated reasoning in their reports notwithstanding that contributions from so many climate scientists needed to be cobbled together.
This has made their report inconclusive and of little value for guiding policymakers. The “pause” will continue for quite some time to come and it will be increasingly self-evident that the political spin that the IPCC have placed on their conclusions are without foundation in the short to medium term.
In the meantime, the study of natural variability over much longer time scales continues to languish in the climate science literature. The forthcoming paper on natural variability, co-authored by Judith, will be of considerable topical interest now that the IPCC AR5 report is out of the way.
Is the Natural Variability Hiatus Hoax over yet?
Andrew
I am a skeptic who agrees with the reason for ignoring the pause in warming and for the reasons mentioned in AR5. Of course, I don’t accept either the initial premise of AGW either, that we are in for catastrophic warming.
My argument is that the definition of “climate” has been mis-specified as 30 years and should be redefined as the average weather for 60 years. That would mean all the little wiggles since 1953 have pointed to variability in weather patterns and tell us virtually nothing about climate.
We have had no global change in temperature in the last 15 years and some skeptics think this is significant because the climate models did not predict either a pause or cooling. I say that anything short of 60 years merely indicates variability in weather patterns and that neither warming, nor pausing, nor even cooling for a period shorter than 60 years amounts to more than a hill of beans. Zilch–nada—Kosong–null hypothesis not falsified.
A pause of 15 years is not worth arguing about. Just as 30 years warming is not significant either.
What’s wrong is our definition of climate, officially the average weather for 30 years. We know that there are 60-year cycles, “oscillations” in weather. Our definition of climate should be revised to state:average global weather for 60 years. A period of 60 years as the basis for climate would reflect our present knowledge of climate science, especially of the oceans which make up about 70% of the Earth’s surface and which absorb most of the heat reaching the surface from the Sun.
You can see this easily by looking at an infrared image from ASTER, an instrument that is flying on the TERRA satellite. Where the ocean is cloud-free the infrared image is black–meaning nothing is reflected or emitted back to the sensor. The ocean absorbs most of the energy falling on its surface. Warming water loses its CO2. The ocean-atmosphere flux is about 50 time what is emitted from terrestrial sources including burning of fossil and non-fossil carbon. A variation of (+/-) 2% in the ocean-atmosphere flux would be enough to reverse the direction of net absorption/ emission of CO2.
We should all hope that AGW is not falsified, that AGW will be strong enough at least to offset the millennial-scale cooling since the beginning of the Holocene, at roughly 0.3 degrees Celsius per millennium. We may be fortunate enough that the Earth will remain warm enough to avoid the next advance of continental glaciers. But then there is Svensmark’s supernova theory, which as Nigel Calder says is the “Cosmic Jackpot”.
Global cloud cover is about 50% on a typical day with flux among solid, liquid and gaseous forms of H2O. Water vapor is an invisible greenhouse gas that makes up, on average, about 45,000 parts per million (ppm) in the Earth’s atmosphere. [Compared to 400 ppm for CO2] The visible parts of clouds are ice and water droplets.
What Svensmark’s theory implies is that the variation in the amount and intensity of cosmic particles entering the atmosphere causes changes of state in H2O from vapour to liquid and possibly to solid. Liquids and solid forms of H2O reflect sunlight back into space and thus offset the greenhouse effect of H2O as a vapor. The negative feedback may enough to counteract the effect of CO2 and the positive feedback from water vapor in the lower troposphere (extending to the highest cloud level). The theory when applied to geologic-scale climate is extremely powerful in explaining much of Earth’s evolutionary history.
“Cosmic Jackpot”, is a good descriptor, because it would make climate change essentially as random on a multi-mega-year scale as plate tectonics. We know why the Earth’s plates move, just like the crud that rises when you boil a stew. However, the location and speed and direction of the bits of crud are mostly random. These parameters depend on the previous state of the crud, the properties of the pot and stove and the rate of energy added to the pot. The Earth is the pot, the stew is the mantle, and the bits of crud are the continents. The source of energy is radioactivity in the mantle and hysteresis in the core.
Svensmark is saying that on geologic timescales climate and therefore evolution is random, modulated only by plate tectonics and orbital geometry identified by Croll. [Elizabeth Vbra of Yale must love this validation of her own theory of the link between climate and evolution. So too Nigel Eldredge with the theory of punctuated evolution he developed with S. J. Gould.
A long article but well worth the effort is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
I count myself fortunate to have lived through these two great scientific discoveries about geophysics and climatology, as spectacular as those of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler. Since 1958 I had not accepted the theory of fixed continents because I did not accept the geosyncline hypothesis of mountainbuilding. I can’t quite remember when I rejected AGW or why.
Maybe on account of reading about “hubris” for which it is the reverse side of the coin. Or maybe it sounded too much like the prophets of old rejoicing in the doom to come, or maybe because it did not taste like science, did not have the texture of science and did not have the smell of science. Finally, it does not sound like science, but a religious cult.
For further reference to Svensmark’s theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/a-stellar-revision-of-the-story-of-life/
P. S. The theory refers to geologic scales greater than 20 million years. But we know that the whole solar system cycles up and down from the plane of the galaxy with a period of about 20 million years and there are claims of geological phenomena that correspond to this cycle.
On a shorter time scale we know that there are claims of climate cycles shorter than those identified by Jame Croll and Milankovitch. These claims of shorter cycles [1500 years?] have all to be reconciled with Svensmark’s theory. M. S theses. and Ph.D. dissertations anyone?
A good if somewhat long comment. I have always thought that climate evolves just like everything else in the universe and that the evolution and extinction of life forms have always been inextrictably linked to climate change.
solar thread coming tomorrow
Frederick, we could have saved an awful lot of cost and angst if your sensible 60-year period had been agreed in the 1980s. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
As for length (cf Peter Davies), if what you want to say takes longer than the median post, fine, better a long quality post than short passages of guff. Peter, good comment on evolution. Life in any form is a manifestation of constant change and response to changing conditions.
I once coined a snappy phrase which I can’t quite recall, but it was to the effect that if a rock is lifeless (granted that it is made of ever-changing particles), on the scale of being a rock to being a fully aware, fully alive human being, most of us are towards the rock end of the scale. But this too will change.
The world lost someone at the other end of the scale yesterday, with the death of S N Goenka.
Faustino thanks for your comments. I tend to find that lengthy comments in a blog tends to obscure rather than clarify a point or points to be made. OK in a head posting however and I agree that while short passages of guff are better than long passages of guff, they both are no substitute for quality postings.
While death is an inevitable culmination of any normal lifespan, the passing of a mentor and teacher is always one of regret but it also heralds the time when we need to pick up the reins, so to speak, and continue to live our lives in such a way that we have indeed received a legacy of lasting benefit.
We also know that there are cycles longer than ~60 years, such as ~200 years (de Vries) and longer.
“Water vapor is an invisible greenhouse gas that makes up, on average, about 45,000 parts per million (ppm) in the Earth’s atmosphere. [Compared to 400 ppm for CO2] The visible parts of clouds are ice and water droplets.” There is a mental experiment I like. If you put a dry atmosphere on a ocean (only one vertical dimension) with some CO2, the atmosphere will evaporate water until it reaches the thermodynamic equilibrium no means which CO2 content (if low) you include. I know it’s much more complicated, with much more factors and that this is could be the inside of the Miskolczi theory about optical depth and so on. But it is illustrative for me. And it was interesting for me to begin to “more or less” understand some concepts. (I apologise because English is not my mother tongue) (physics is not my mother tongue, either!!)
Thanks for that post. Very interesting. Indeed, I’ve also often asked myself over what timescale are meaningful climatic trends identifiable.
There are other examples from geology, for instance global sea level change and the associated sedimentary packages identified by sequence stratigraphy. It is claimed that we can attribute a principle cause to at least 3 of the 5 dominant frequencies, the biggest of all being modulated by plate tectonics, and ocean ridge volume.
It appears climate, even when looked at on such long time scales, may still not be easily understandable. I always get the feeling it remains a derivative of other earth surface processes anyway, which immediately makes it much more complicated.
Thank you. climate:
“… a derivative of other earth surface processes …”
Mikey’s hide the decline has morphed into hide the hiatus.
Still fraud no matter how you conceive the decieve.
The IPCC’s pause ‘logic’ is simply that they do not know what to say and make a list of conjectures without being able to demonstrate anything nor to see the big picture.
The standstill since 2000 is just one pattern of the problem and taken alone makes everything very misleading and obscure.
The big picture is that the climate is regulated in gran part by specific natural oscillations and that these oscillations are found among the astronomical oscillations of the solar system. Ergo there are astronomical forcings that are not taken into account by climatologists.
These oscillations can however be modeled and this has been done already in the scientific literature and by numerous studies in particular mine own. An extended general review is here
Scafetta N., 2013. Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs. Energy & Environment 24(3-4), 455–496.
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
The most likely climate sensitivity value is likely around 1.5 C.
New results are coming soon.
Visit my web-site for more details
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model
About specifically the hiatus look at the bottom where the astronomical empirical model is compared against the IPCC models:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
So you are saying that 40-50% of warming in recent decades was due to CO2, and you are projecting temperatures to keep rising till beyond 2060 despite two weak solar cycles (24+25) ?
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/fig_EE.png
That is the upper limit.
Anthropocentric forcing may have contributed up to ~50% of the warming in recent decades. This needs to be compared to the ~100% estimate of the IPCC.
Nice!!
Nicola, the reason that the IPCC “simply do not know what to say” is that they are driven by an agenda rather than a search for truth and caring for human well-being.
“The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle.”
TSI is not all in phase with the cycle:
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.html
and as usual they overlook the solar variability elephant in the room:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117713005802
“The causes of both the observed GMST trend hiatus and of the model–observation GMST trend difference during 1998–2012 imply that, barring a major volcanic eruption, most 15-year GMST trends in the near-term future will be larger than during 1998–2012 (high confidence see 11.3.6.3. for a full assessment of near-term projections of GMST). The reasons for this implication are fourfold: first, anthropogenic greenhouse-gas concentrations are expected to rise further in all RCP scenarios; second, anthropogenic aerosol concentration is expected to decline in all RCP scenarios, and so is the resulting cooling effect; third, the trend in solar forcing is expected to be larger over most near-term 15–year periods than over 1998–2012 (medium confidence), because 1998–2012 contained the full downward phase of the solar cycle; and fourth, it is more likely than not that internal climate variability in the near-term will enhance and not counteract the surface warming expected to arise from the increasing anthropogenic forcing.”
———————————————
So the IPCC wishes to inform that a Dalton or Maunder style solar minimum will increase solar forcing and that this PDO halfcycle will only last 15 years ? Are they nuts ?
JC
Thanks for an excellent post.
“Apart from these obvious flaws, reading that text and trying to follow it is positively painful.’
I’m glad to see you think so too, Judith. I’m starting to feel embarrassed for them.
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“Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.”
Calling Webby, Calling Fanny Fruitcake, Calling Joshie.
Here is my SOI model.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Note how well the top panel matches the pause. The SOI model includes noise. That is however not a model of the underlying warming trend, unless that noise term is removed.
Once the noise sources are removed from the actual temperature profile, you get the bottom panel. Wow, no pause, who would have thunk it?
Noise removal is what allowed us to communicate with the Voyager spacecraft as it left the solar system a couple of weeks ago.
I suppose you believe that is a hoax as well?
“No, I do not believe it, far too convenient for your argument.”
I do not believe it, in spite of the SOI and surface temperature data being readily available; far too damaging for my narrative.
The noise reduction idea is interesting. Now stop trying to guide the eye with your fitted line , whatever it is, exponential ? quadratic?
The slope from 1980-2000 is still about twice recent slope. So there is a significant change that totally goes against _reduced_ volcanic forcing and ever increasing CO2. Even after noise reduction, the problem is still there.
There is major deviation from your arbitrary model curve around 1910 and 1940. How does that curve fit the last 300 years? How does it fit early 19th century?
Your noise reduction may be informative your arbitrary model fitting is not.
Except, in the case of the Voyager, we know exactly what the signal looks like, and where to look for it.
Massive difference – as you well know.
Kinda like the modelers, the narrators can get all wound up twisting imagination into faith.
============
Webby, my quote, as you are aware, is directly from the IPCC. Did you try spinning your tale to them?
Bob you have a mild victory there! The quote was indeed from the IPCC but possibly out of context?
Greg, That’s the best you can do? Cry me a river, boo hoo.
ObeseOne, Sure we do, the signal is a strong growth curve, correlating to a huge rise in carbon emissions.
So you’ve got a few squiggly lines which look like they might fit – big deal!
All you have is a hypothesis which may or may not have any validity.
And your SOI hypothesis doesn’t really fit too well with:
now, does it?
Fitting squiggly lines is all that physicists and scientists do in the end.
PhatBoy lost this one … big time.
Let’s see your proof
wetloscope:
Perhaps, in the end, that’s what they do.
But some others do it right from the start, and never progress from there
RE: WebRube (@TWHAT) | October 1, 2013 at 1:48 am | Reply
”Wow, no pause, who would have thunk it?”
No Pause? Wow, indeed . . .
PhattieBoy,
Physics doesn’t deal with proofs. Mathematics does.
The trusty robot, Eureqa can analyze the pause:
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/5489/tvh.gif
Note how the SOI can reproduce the long pause starting in the 1940’s and the most recent pause.
You know, you are free to do this kind of stuff yourself.
You know, you’re quite free to be a jerk.
What do you call it when you subtract one data set from another? Physics, or maths?
Sure, 2+2=4, but so does 1+3=4. Or 0.1+3.9=4, 1+1+1+1=4, or an infinity of other values. Just because you have two sets of numbers that sort of correlate does not imply causation, as you well know.
Now address my other question.
I will write an extended blog post and link to it endlessly.
I hope that will answer any questions that you may have.
As a start, you may want to read the post and discussion here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pacific-ocean-global-warming-puzzle-Kosaka-Xie.html
What is your SOI model based on? Where is the original data?
No, I do not believe it, far too convenient for your argument.
Many people have shown this SOI to GMST relationship. I worked it from scratch myself. You too can do the same.
Use NCAR for the SOI data and GISS for GMST.
Good luck justsomeguy!
ENSO causes most interannual variation so it is easy to fit use ENSO to smooth the curve – but the assumption that the residual is all CO2 is incorrect.
The Left has gone from warning of a possible global meltdown if an American buys one more SUV to being 95% sure of it, while — going back to a brief moment of honesty when Phil Jones conceded there was no statistically significant global warming — the Earth has been in a global cooling trend for more one and going on two decades.
“This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error.”
Why is it that they have the cart before the horse here? They seem to think, in plain sight, that the model output (simulated trend) is ‘fact’ and that the observations are different because of something they missed. Judith, I see why your head spins from reading all of this. And then all the convolutions and machinations from commenters, in an attempt to ‘justify’ this outcome. The above quoted statement basically says NOTHING. Nothing at all. It’s just bizarrely fluffed-out verbiage trying to keep alive a horse that expired long ago.
Amusing to contemplate the wild celebration on the part of the warmists, if we get an el nino in the next year or two big enough to at last… with squinted eye and in just the proper dim light… discern a slight warming trend.
They’ll be dancing in the streets in ecstacies of relief. “Thank God! We’re all doomed after all!”
pokerguy
I thought you would enjoy Michael Mann’s attempt to resurrect the hockey stick on the Huffington Post.
…http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/climate-change-report_b_3999277.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change
“As some readers may know, the conclusion that modern warming is unique in a long-term context came to prominence with the temperature reconstruction that my co-authors and I published in the late 1990s. The resulting “Hockey Stick” curve, which demonstrates that the modern warming spike is without precedent for at least the past 1,000 years, took on iconic significance when it was prominently displayed in the “Summary for Policy Makers” of the 2001 Third IPCC Assessment report.”
Mike apparently didn’t get the memo that the hockey stick isn’t that important to the consensus. At least, that’s what the acolytes around here claim.
” took on iconic significance when it was prominently displayed in the “Summary for Policy Makers” of the 2001 Third IPCC Assessment report.”
… and has not been used since it was demonstrated to be a false result obtained by inverting some of the data.
What a jerk !
From iconic significance in TAR to ironic significance in AR5. Who could see what fate are?
=========================
What I would like is a transcript of the meeting in which the IPCC brahmins decided to focus on the word hiatus.
We have to admit there is a pause. We will look stupid or dishonest if we don’t.
But the pause was the argument of the deniers! We can’t admit they were right on anything, ever. Hell, we’re still defending the hockey stick and Hansen 1988.
What else can we call it?
How about hiatus!
Yeah, but a hiatus is when something stops and may or may not start again, A pause means it is temporary.
Well, what’s more important – accuracy, or denying the deniers anything that looks like the slightest victory?
…
…
OK, it’s unanimous. Hiatus it is.
Francis Zwiers, vice chair of the IPCC WG1 speaking on a local CBC radio show today about the latest report and is asked about “the pause” (at 37:44). His explanation is interesting. Apparently he thinks that the models being wrong are the least plausible explanation!
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/bcalmanac_20130930_57108.mp3
Ar5 “The AR5 best-estimate ERF trend over 1998–2011 is 0.23 ± 0.11 W m–2 per decade (90% uncertainty range), which is substantially lower than the trend over 1984–1998 (0.34 ± 0.10 W m–2 per decade; note that there was a strong volcanic eruption in 1982)”
Err what strong volcanic eruption in 1982? Mount St Helens was in May 1980. Was there another one?
A colder ocean temperature has changed the blue whale migration pattern off of Southern California.
It’s all pretty simple, from about 1940-1973 US min temps are flat, then increase till about 1997. Eurasia’s temp increase from the 40’s to the early 80’s. And South America and Africa warm from the late 70’s till mid 80’s. Australia is just flat.
Nothing global about the different areas increases. As Bob T says it all warming driven from the oceans cycles.
And some think cooling is coming globally, based on solar influences, which is about 99.97% of the earth’s earth thermal budget. But there is the .03% out there to account for this this CO2 stuff…right….
Remember early on when Gore compared us to Venus, which is one of the worst comparisons that can be made as our atmospheres are completely different? Well, I think ignoring the sun and the IPCCs discounting of solar forcing and it’s minimization over time is what has finally killed them as scientists. Hansen, Mann and their friends used to argue solar forcing, back when they were still scientists.
Another big difference is 3/5ths of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans of water compared to the surface of V Venus comprised of an ocean of dust swirling around at 400 mph.
Off topic Wagathon, but have you seen this picture of our blue marble taken from Saturn? Pretty cool.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/23/earth-saturn-picture-cassini_n_3638142.html
Pretty cool? Looks about 15C to me …
(not knocking, I downloaded the pics in July)
IPCC conveniently forgot about ”the pause”’ shell everyone do the same?http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/
> My original intention for this thread was to go through and try to map the IPCC’s logical argument.
Denizens’ logician David Wojick will soon help us out.
jeez, maybe if I get some time I’ll sketch it out.
one thing I will say about science prose is that it can be turgid. I’ve tried to imitate it, but with zero luck. I think it takes quite a bit of training.. maybe working under page constraints contributes.
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/02/14
Mosh
True that some, indeed many, academic scientists have a terrible writing style – some papers require so much re-reading to understand the points being made that it is sometimes questionable whether it is worth the effort.
The IPCC of course takes it a stage further, because each chapter is essentially written by committee, reviewed more generally and revised by a sub-set of the initial author committee, prior to agreement with a wider committee and further (in most cases minor) revision to ensure consistency with a summary document written by a third-party committee comprising mainly Government officials. All this to both a deadline for the papers reviewed (with most of the recent literature addressing the hiatus post-dating this deadline) and for the final document.
There should be a prize for anyone that can come up with a method less likely to produce a readable document.
One of the more amusing aspects for me is that this is supposed to be a document which supports policy action. However, since it fundamentally says nothing, it can be used to support almost any policy, or none at all. To have pulled off this feat, and to also be a fundamentally dishonest piece of work, seems amazing to me. This has been a wonderful creation of man.
===================
This is the most significant part in my view.
“During the 15-year period beginning in 1998, the ensemble of HadCRUT4 GMST trends lies below almost all model-simulated trends (Box 9.2 Figure 1a), whereas during the 15-year period ending in 1998, it lies above 93 out of 114 modelled trends ((Box 9.2 Figure 1b; HadCRUT4 ensemble-mean trend 0.26°C per decade, CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.16°C per decade). Over the 62-year period 1951– 2012, observed and CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend agree to within 0.02 ºC per decade (Box 9.2 Figure 1c; CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.13°C per decade). There is hence very high confidence that the CMIP5 models show long-term GMST trends consistent with observations, despite the disagreement over the most recent 15-year period. ”
This can also be seen from what I have plotted several times.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:0.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:-0.1
We are not in a major anomaly compared to the long-term trend as we see several equivalent dips to 0.1 below the trend due to natural variability over the last few decades, often followed by steep rises to positive anomalies. Additionally the long term trend here is 0.16 C/decade which corresponds to a transient sensitivity of 2 C per doubling (somewhat higher than those recent estimates by Lewis and others).
How about this one Jim D?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/trend/plot/uah/from:2008/trend/plot/uah/from:2003/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1993/trend/plot/uah/from:1988/trend/plot/uah/from:1983/trend/plot/uah/from:2010/trend/plot/uah/from:2005/trend/plot/uah/from:2000/trend/plot/uah/from:1995/trend/plot/uah/from:2006/trend/plot/uah/from:2009/trend/plot/uah/from:2011/trend/plot/uah/from:2007/trend/plot/uah/from:2004/trend
As the time lengths shorten we see a gradual slope change. In the shorter term looking back the lines flutter, indicating something I think.
It shows trends less than 20 years aren’t worth much, but it stabilizes at 20 years. In fact 20, 30 and 40 years look quite similar from HADCRUT4, and remember they include this “pause” thing, and the reason the pause didn’t do much is because it followed an anomalous acceleration that the models also missed, but you don’t hear much about that (see the IPCC text I quoted).
Ragnaar
Like the elevator operator said:
“going down!”
Max
Jim D, even the 50-year linear trend is peaking, the 30-year trend already peaked around 2005.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/HadCRUT4%2050yr%20AnnualTrendSinceDecember1899.gif
How the IPCC manages to transform the unknown into a certainty in three steps:
Step 1:
“Owing to sampling limitations, it is uncertain whether an increase in the rate of subsurface-ocean heat uptake occurred during the past 15 years (Section 3.2.4).”
Step 2:
“However, it is very likely that the climate system, including the ocean below 700 m depth, has continued to accumulate energy over the period 1998–2010 (Section 3.2.4, Box 3.1). ”
Step 3:
“Consistent with this energy accumulation…………..”
This is nothing but defending the money spent on their salaries, their failed computer models and modelers sitting inside multi-million dollar super computers and the money grants absorbed which would otherwise have resulted in alleviating human suffering if spent on research on diseases, food production and water desalination.
+ 10. We would have been far better off if the resources wasted on reducing GHGs for miniscule changes in potential temperature had been directed to enhancing our capacity to deal with whatever emerges in this uncertain, unpredictable world, with a focus on flexibility, innovation, individual enterprise and entrepreneurship.
Hopeful man creates the future world despite the money being spent on hopeless man.
===========
homo exspectandus versus homo desperandus
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I have advocated on behalf of Judith’s perspective, including this blog, her prior research and congressional testimony, with people working to respond to climate change in a manner reflective of the current estimates and uncertainties.
I believe that no human/group of humans is immune to group think, whether scientists or anyone else. This group think has created problems for scientists as they try to communicate their findings in the vast sea of research that becomes part of climate modeling/analysis.
That said, this blog and comment section, with the exception of a few contributors, appears largely dominated by vitriol, partial reading of the science and wild mischaracterizations of many people not personally known by the commenters.
It is embarrassing and I can no longer fathom how it provides any benefit, except perhaps to serve as a venting opportunity.
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The cause of the pause:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:756/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/from:1870/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1974/to:2004/trend/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.005/offset:-1.62/detrend:-0.1/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.005/offset:-1.35/detrend:-0.1/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.005/offset:-1.89/detrend:-0.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:756/offset:-0.27/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:756/offset:0.27/plot/hadcrut3sh/scale:0.00001/offset:2/from:1870/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1949/to:2005/trend/offset:0.025/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1949/to:2005/trend/offset:0.01
Perhaps you could state your point and say what you are assuming that graph shows.
Yes Peter, reading blog comments is a bit like looking for shells on the beach. Once in a while there’s something worth bending down to look at. Most of the time it’s sand, flotsam, broken shells and the occasional turd.
Best are the bottles in the message.
=============
To paraphrase the gobbledygook .
We are wrong.
We don’t know why we were wrong.
We don’t know when we are wrong.
So this means we were right all along.
Last line is incorrect. They do not claim they were right all along , just that they are more certain they are right, now they have realised they are wrong.
I think it’s some kind of Nietzschian duality thing.
It’s along similar lines as decreased volcanism explains the downward trend. A naive reading of the science would lead one to expect the opposite but that’s just because we are not on their level.
Let the last be first.. more is less… black is white.. yin and yang.
It’s more like metaphysical philosophy than the mundane science I was taught.
Greg, I had a friend who would argue that black was white, while I argued it was black. He was never wrong. At some point, he would argue that black was black and that I had claimed it was white. I’m sure he was totally oblivious to the fact that he’d diametrically shifted ground. It might be more common than I realised.
Bugs and Daffy cover the IPCC quite well
@ Wagathon, Knox and Douglass have been consistently inept and wrong. Citing non-climate scientists – especially those proven to be wrong time and time again – is the habit of one side of this debate. Papers that have been *retracted* still get cited by deniers.
Try to at least find credible sources.
I have more faith in non climate scientists to take the time to look at climate data than climate scientists.
If you have something specific to say about Knox and Douglass, I suggest you link it. I certainly give zero cred to someone who comes in here waving his arms and calling everyone “deniers”.
At least try to make credible claims.
Judith Curry wrote: “I quickly got dizzy owing to seemingly unwarranted assumptions and incomplete information (such as: did the climate models use the correct external forcing for the first decade of the 21st century, or not?)”
I think you may have missed this: “After 1998, however, some contributions to a decreasing ERF trend are missing in the CMIP5 models, such as the increasing stratospheric aerosol loading after 2000 and the unusually low solar minimum in 2009.”
The elephant is waving his trunk. Or is that his tale weaving?
============
Make sure you know which end before you tug on it.
Otherwise you’ll be inundated by an assessment report.
“After 1998, however, ”
Oh, so solar WAS correctly represented before 1998 (when it had no significant effect) and it is only since 1998 when the insignificant effect became smaller that it becomes a defect in the forcings used.
Like the reduction is the negative volcanic forcing somehow contributed to the lack of warming.
AR5 is like the incoherent rantings of a madman.
No. The solar-cycle always has a significant effect when you pick a short period that either starts close to a maximum and ends close to a minimum, or the reverse. For longer periods that cover complete solar cycles, the significant effect is the secular trend. The secular trend is negative since 1960, and strongly negative over the last complete solar-cycle. The TSI, therefore can’t account for a positive share of the trend since 1960.
Pierre-Normand
Yes solar activity (max. Wolf no.) reached its peak at ~190 in 1960 during SC19 (highest level in several thousand years). It remained high during most of the 20th C, through SC22.
Over the longer term, it increased by a linear 170% from ~62 in SC12 (1880-1890) to ~160 in SC22 (1986-96) and has decreased by around 58% since then, to ~120 for SC23 and a provisional ~67 for current SC24.
According to several solar studies it may have been responsible for most of the early 20th C warming and a bit of the late 20th C warming, or about half of the overall 20th C warming.
Conversely, the current “hiatus” in warming (actually a slight cooling trend) may be partly a result of the current solar slowdown.
But, then again, IPCC assumes that solar forcing is limited to direct solar irradiance only, and is therefore essentially insignificant.
Max
Pierre-Normand “No. The solar-cycle always has a significant effect when you pick a short period that either starts close to a maximum and ends close to a minimum, or the reverse.”
That sounds like “all of the time” and I doubt what you say is accurate. Can you point to something that substantiates your point. That will need to go back further than 1960.
I don’t need to do that Greg. I am pointing to a logical flaw in your reasoning. You were complaining that solar effects are invoked to explain part of the temperature trend reduction over the 1998-2012 period and not likewise used to reduce the CO2 attribution to the temperature rise over earlier periods. But CO2 never was used to explain upward noisy deviations from the trend — only the secular trend itself. The sun only contributes to the negative trend because the recent minimum is very low and the 1998-2012 period just happens to cover one and a half cycle, and therefore introduce a spurious short term trend. This spurious trend is eliminated when you consider periods that cover whole solar-cycles. And when one does so, the remaining effect comes from whatever secular trend there might remains when the purely cyclical component is removed. This secular TSI trend happens to be negative from 1960 to 1998 or from 1960 to the present. The TSI thus can’t explain any fraction of the total sustained warming since 1960.
” Can someone remind me again how and why all this is supposed to be useful?”
How quaint.
What do you believe is the desired use of IPCC Assessment Report?
Printed versions can be tossed on the fireplace to warm up a room that is suffering from the effects of the “hiatus”, or deposited on the outhouse floor next to the one-holer for…
Heh, the IPCC had the right to remain silent, so they mumbled.
============
Karl Marx was equally convoluted and unclear. Wonder if there is a connection?
OK. It’s clear that IPCC failed to grasp the significance (or even the existence) of the pause (or “hiatus”, as it calls it).
But what about the IPCC AR5 projections for the future?
“Worst case scenario” RCP 8.5 estimates that 62% of “equilibrium forcing” of 8.5 (= 5.3 W/m^2) would be reached by 2100, based on a CO2equiv of ~750 ppmv, and resulting in a mean dT above pre-industrial level of 4.9ºC. This is based on a high-forcing, high-coal, high climate change scenario with no mitigation actions.
This case is said to be close to SRES scenario A1F1, which showed similar warming.
The major difference between the two is that the new estimate projects an upper end SL rise of up to 84 cm, compared to 59 cm in AR4. The difference is said to be largely as a result of taking “rapid dynamic ice loss” into consideration this time, a concept that is not well understood at this time.
Three other scenarios are presented, but since this is the “worst case scenario”, it will be the one that gets the most attention in the media and by the politicians.
How realistic is this case?
Not very IMO, for these reasons:
It is based on a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity at equilibrium of 3ºC (essentially the same mean value as predicted by the computers in AR4), despite the fact that several recent observation-based studies have shown that this is likely to be exaggerated by a factor of about 2:1.
The ECS is still based on a net positive cloud feedback (in AR4 this contributed 1.3ºC to the overall mean ECS estimate of 3.2ºC and the contribution in AR5 is in the same order of magnitude).
It is based on atmospheric CO2 concentrations reaching a level of ~750 ppmv by 2100. This assumes a sharp acceleration in the exponential growth rate, which seems highly unlikely, in view of the projected sharp slowdown in population growth rates over the 21st century. A more likely “business as usual” projection would be around 640 ppmv.
If one reduces the anticipated CO2 level to 640 ppmv and the 2xCO2 ECS to 1.8ºC (rather than 3.0ºC), one arrives at a warming (above pre-industrial value) of
4.9ºC * (1.8/3.0) *ln(640/280) / ln(750/280) = 2.5ºC
Considering the fact that we have already seen around 0.8ºC warming today since “pre-industrial” days, this leaves added warming from today to 2100 of 1.7ºC for the adjusted “worst case scenario”.
(Yawn!)
Max
Me thinks that AR5 states that the 95%~100% certainty is on the (at least)50% of warming being of human origin. So, that 1.7ºC should actually read 0.85ºC.
(Yaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwn)
IPCC AR5:
Compare to AR4:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
MASSIVE FAIL
Why anyone is taking these bozos as competent anymore is beyond me!
Yes, we’re now colder than the various commitment scenarios.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/trend/detrend:0.68
Above is the referenced dataset and trend since 1950. GAT is up 0.68C in 6.375 decades or 1.066666C/decade. So the IPCC saying it was 1.1C per decade is actually rounding up a bit.
Anyhow, at this rate in the year 2100 total warming (presuming it’s ALL anthropogenic since 1950) will still be under the magic 2.0C where bad things might start to happen.
I love the Wall Street Journal editorial titled, “Climate of Uncertainty” (Oct. 1 2013) where their first paragraph makes it easier for all of us to understand that CO2 has nothing to do with global warming.
From 1998 to 2012 the global economy has doubled from 30 trillion GDP to 71 trillion GDP with 100 billion tons of CO2 added to the atmosphere. Why hasn`t the globe been warming?
It makes you wonder how long it will take the IPCC to start blaming CO2 for “the cooling world.” I borrowed the last 3 words from the front cover of Newsweek magazine in the mid 1970`s when they warned us of the coming ice age.
“through spatial heterogeneity might well cause an undetected global-mean ERF trend error even in the absence of a trend in the global-mean”
They explicitly show this level of awareness in the aerosol context but they dare not do so in the solar context. This proves we’re dealing with socially unjust deception rather than naive ignorance. (There are tactical implications.)
Not sure what caused the pause? That’s OK, just fake it.
So they admit we have no robust measurements of ocean temperature.
But as a proxy we look at sea-level rise, which has been rising at a similar rate to when temperatures +were+ rising.
Does of course assume all this sea-level rise is due to added heat.
And CO2-induced heat, to boot. Supposedly this is consistent with the radiation budget. But how accurate and calibrated is that?
“Depending on the observational data set, the GMST trend over 1998–2012 is estimated to be around one-third to one-half of the trend over 1951–2012 (Section 2.4.3, Table 2.7; Box 9.2 Figure 1a,c).”
An interesting comparison because the 1951-2012 period includes the first historical pause between1940-1970 when the observed GMST actually fell by more than 0,1C.. Now the IPCC’s past mistakes come home to roost. They never bothered to investigate the first pause; if they had the second would have been no surprise. But they have compounded their error by including data from about half-way through the first pause in their estimate of the GMST base. That suggests to me that they never did understand the phasing of the first pause, or indeed the preceding GMST rise of 0.5C 1910-1940.
The above is a good example of how errors can propagate when earlier climate cycles are ignored. These comments will be more easily understood if the reader looks at Figure one of my theoretical model underlined above..
Hundreds of exchanges and the only thing WebHub has learned is to correctly spell Wayman?……it’s a start.
Way, man!
Time for a clear out play. Any takers?
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With no general understanding of non reproducible quasi stationary nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems, to which class terrestrial climate belongs to, it is unreasonable to expect any computational model to have skill.
Therefore at this point one should go back to the basics and fill in one of the last grey areas of semi classical physics before giving another try to climate modelling.
This task is far from being straightforward in case of non reproducible systems, where different microstates belonging to the same macrostate can evolve to different macrostates in a short time.
Fortunately many members of this class, unlike the climate system, can be realized in the lab, so a wide avenue opens up for plain old fashioned experimental physics.
Until such time as statistics of multiple runs of several such systems are reproduced by their respective computational models successfully, climate modelling should be put on hold.
As a physicist-inventor, my immediate impression of the IPCC’s pause ‘logic’ was about how it resembles the mountainous guff that patent lawyers acting for big corporations fill 100s of Patent pages with, making any action by smaller inventors, even those with a very good case, unthinkable.
The “missing conclusion”:
told it all.
So it had to disappear.
But the IPCC “pause logic” (or lack thereof) merits a closer look, anyway.
Gone is the rationalization that Chinese aerosols may have caused a higher level of reflected incoming SW radiation back into space, thereby cooling the planet.
Why?
Because this rationalization isn’t scary enough. It pre-supposes that the heat is gone from our system forever (bye-bye!) and is, therefore, no future threat.
Also played down is the rationalization that a “weaker sun” has been responsible, for the same reason and also because this would beg the question regarding the impact of the much stronger sun in the late 20thC.
Short-term “natural variability” is a catch-all phrase, which provides a good ad-hoc rationalization, when there is no real scientific explanation, but it raises the question: “what about longer-term natural cycles covering several decades or even centuries?”
More ominous would be another rationalization that the heat isn’t REALLY gone, but it’s lurking somewhere (hidden out of sight – let’s say in the deep blue sea!)
This rationalization is fully unsubstantiated and the notion that, if it were true, the heat could jump back out of hiding some day in the future to fry us defies the laws of physics.
But it sounds scary enough to folks who don’t think too much about it or to policymakers, who are looking for a justification for a direct or indirect carbon tax despite the pause in warming.
So that’s the IPCC “pause logic”.
Simple.
Max
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This is inspired by Box 9.2 of AR5 and its abc-s.
That obfuscatory verbiage they lay down upon us points to only one thing: they pretend that they don’t know what is going on and are throwing up a smokescreen to hide the truth. There is more carbon dioxide in the air than ever before but it is simply not doing any greenhouse warming. The physics is simple. The earth emits OLR (outgoing long-wave radiation) in the infrared band that has to pass through carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to get into outer space. The greenhouse theory of IPCC tells us that part of that radiation is absorbed by carbon dioxide, converted into heat, and then warms the atmosphere. This is greenhouse warming. A very fine theory, going back to Arrhenius, except that it does not work. Clearly, OLR is a real phenomenon and it can’t get out without passing through CO2. But as it passes through carbon dioxide it does not produce the expected greenhouse effect. It is that simple but it has huge consequences. If there really is no greenhouse effect now this means that there never was any at any time. As they say, a leopard does not change its spots. It follows that all climate phenomena imputed to be caused by the greenhouse effect are thereby made false. But rather than allow this unthinkable thought to be uttered their report does everything they can to lead us astray. I have seen suggestions that the missing heat is hiding in the ocean bottom, or that the Pacific Ocean cooled and caused the hiatus etc., everything they can think of that does not point to the failure of IR absorption by CO2. And failure of CO2 to absorb in the infrared is exactly what the Miskolczi theory of greenhouse gases predicts. He published it first in 2007 and was shouted down in the blogosphere. By 2010 he had experimental proof. Using NOAA weather balloon database that goes back to 1948 he studied the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere over time. And found that the absorption was constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide went up by 21.6 percent. It follows that the addition of this substantial amount of CO2 to air had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. His finding is in exact parallel to the failure of the atmosphere to absorb IR today. It is worth noting down its consequences. First and foremost, absence of the greenhouse effect cuts the feet right out from under the claim that anthropogenic greenhouse warming exists. All doomsday warming predictions based on use of the greenhouse effect are simply invalid. And any emissions control laws and regulations passed with the help of such predictions were passed under false premises and must be voided. Furthermore, IPCC was set up to monitor human influence on the climate. Since there is none, they have nothing more to do and should be dissolved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey
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