by Judith Curry
It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims. – Fyfe et al.
A very important new paper has been published in Nature: Making sense of the early 2000’s warming slowdown [link to full paper]. Unfortunately the paper itself is behind paywall. The list of coauthors on this paper is particularly significant:
John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka and Neil C. Swart
Ed Hawkins’ blog post
Co author Ed Hawkins has a blog post on the paper, that includes the 3 figures from the paper. Excerpts:
The new Fyfe et al. paper is mainly in response to Karl et al. and Lewandowsky et al., who made the following statements in their abstracts:
“These results do not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature” – Karl et al., 2015, Science
“there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual” – Lewandowsky et al., 2016, BAMS
Firstly, climate scientists agree that global warming has not ‘stopped’ – global surface temperatures and ocean heat content have continued to increase, sea levels are still rising, and the planet is retaining ~0.5 days of the sun’s incoming energy per year.
I think there is also broad agreement that climate scientists have probably not chosen the right words (e.g. ‘hiatus’) to describe the temporary slowdown, especially when talking to the media and the public.
However, there has very clearly been a change in the rate of global surface warming. There are clear fluctuations in the rate of global temperature change in the past. We also expect similar fluctuations in future – global temperatures will not increase smoothly or linearly.
Just focusing on the observations, the most recent observed 15-year trends are all positive, but lower than most previous similar trends in the past few decades. This is a clear demonstration that the rate of change has slowed since its peak.
The absolute value of the trend is not really relevant for such an assessment – it is far more instructive to examine how global temperatures have changed relative to our expectations, as represented by the CMIP5 simulations, for example.
Observations should fall outside the simulated spread sporadically because of internal variability – we do not expect the observations to always match the ensemble mean. However, the recent observations are all continuously outside the ±1σ spread of the simulations for a lengthy period, which is obviously unusual. It is also not just global temperatures that have been unusual – the tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures & winds have also behaved well outside the simulated range.
These analyses all suggest that the early-2000s were indeed ‘particularly unusual’ – so we strongly dispute Lewandowsky et al.’s statement quoted above.
Reality has deviated from our expectations – it is perfectly normal (& indeed essential) to try and understand this difference. Oddly, Lewandowsky et al. seem to disagree, suggesting that trying to explain this event “departs from long-standing practice“, which I think is utterly bizarre and simply wrong.
Note that there are important issues with the radiative forcings used in CMIP5 (particularly solar & volcanic), which do not necessarily match the real world, especially after 2005. I hope that at least some CMIP5 models will be rerun with the updated CMIP6 forcings to determine the size of this effect. In addition, when an ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison is performed, the consistency between observations and simulations is much improved. This type of research has been valuable and is ongoing.
Finally, the issue of natural variability merits further discussion. The 1972-2001 period shows higher ratios (more warming per unit forcing) than the other periods. This period also corresponds to when the Pacific Decadal Oscillation was in its positive phase, suggesting that these variations in the Pacific have caused a large part of the difference between models and observations.
Overall, there is compelling evidence that there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming, especially when examined relative to our expectations, which can be explained by a combination of factors. Research into the nature and causes of this event has triggered improved understanding of observational biases, radiative forcing and internal variability. This has led to more widespread recognition that modulation by internal variability is large enough to produce a significantly reduced rate of surface temperature increase for a decade or even more — particularly if internal variability is augmented by the externally driven cooling caused by a succession of volcanic eruptions.
The legacy of this new understanding will certainly outlive the recent warming slowdown.
Nature News
Nature News has an article by Jeff Tollefsen entitled Global warming hiatus debate flares up again. The article is notable for quotations from several climate scientists:
Susan Solomon: Susan Solomon, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says that Fyfe’s framework helps to put twenty-first-century trends into perspective, and clearly indicates that the rate of warming slowed down at a time when greenhouse-gas emissions were rising dramatically. “It’s important to explain that,” Solomon says. “As scientists, we are curious about every bump and wiggle in that curve.”
Tom Karl: For his part, Karl acknowledges that it is important to investigate how short-term effects might impact decadal trends, but says that these short term trends do not necessarily elucidate the long-term effects of rising greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere. “What gets obfuscated is the goal of uncovering the warming due to persistent greenhouse forcing [by human emissions],” Karl says. “It is simply not possible to gain insight on that underlying trend from short, segmented 10- to 20-year periods.”
Gavin Schmidt: Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, is tired of the entire discussion, which he says comes down to definitions and academic bickering. There is no evidence for a change in the long-term warming trend, he says, and there are always a host of reasons why a short-term trend might diverge — and why the climate models might not capture that divergence. “A little bit of turf-protecting and self-promotion I think is the most parsimonious explanation,” Schmidt says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
JC reflections
Well, regular readers of Climate Etc. will not be surprised by the results of this paper:
- Causes and implications of the pause
- Hiatus controversy: show me the data
- Has NOAA ‘busted’ the pause in global warming?
- Hiatus revisionism
- Recent hiatus caused by decadal shift in Indo-Pacific heating
- Cause of the hiatus found deep in the Atlantic Ocean
- 2 new papers on the pause
- How IPCC forgot to mention the pause
The significance of this paper is1) the list of authors (many if not most whom are IPCC authors) and 2) the lucid explanation and context that is provided for the overall debate on this topic. The ‘hiatus’, ‘pause’ or whatever has been a dominant topic in both the scientific and the public debate on climate change since about 2012.
I don’t disagree with anything in this paper or in Ed’s blog post. A few specific comments:
- I agree that the preferred term is ‘slowdown’; this gets us away from details of the trends and disagreement among different datasets. I also agree that the main significance is the discrepancy between climate model simulations.
- I am a little surprised that they chose 1972 as the demarcation between the large hiatus during mid century and the late 20th century warming period. I would have chosen 1976, associated with the shift to the warm PDO/IPO.
- I think the issue of multi-decadal variability is more complicated than is portrayed by the paper, which focuses on PDO/IPO.
- The topic that didn’t receive sufficient attention in the paper IMO was solar, particularly the possibility of indirect solar effects.
Overall, the authors are to be congratulated for a very well done and important paper, that given the author list arguably redefines the consensus on this topic.
As for Gavin’s comment, it is totally bizarre. Gavin’s recent papers on the topic claim to explain the slowdown by forced variability. He is wrong; multi-decadal ocean oscillations play an important role. Calling this definitions and academic bickering is beyond bizarre.
JC message to Lewandowski et al.: (snip)
Maybe they published it so they can now claim it is not “settled” and keep chinging the taxpayers for more research dollars for more studies.
Quite right, as funding for research short-term natural variability is pouring out, and in, to explain away the pausing hiatusish slowdown. And these authors are among the top money-getters in the business.
What’s wrong with scientists making a living?
Climate consensus got the cloud feedback wrong. Water vapor amplification is largely nullified by it. ECS is at or below the lowest indicated by CMIP5 model ensemble at 1.2C – 1.5C. Reliable global temperature observations by satellite since 1979 bear this out. The slowdown reduced the average warming per decade over that period.
It’s not that complicated. Catastrophic global warming is dead. Nothing but scientist egos, political ideology, and vested interests keeping that boat afloat.
http://snag.gy/54A15.jpg
http://snag.gy/ffwm4.jpg
Any questions?
http://snag.gy/vDdKH.jpg
Its supposed to be an honest living. Mann and Schmidt clearly do not.
Is there some sort of program for funding for research into short term natural variability that undermines the pause? What are you basing your conclusion on? Do you have a problem with funding research related toshort term natural variability?
Joseph, The NSF grant program is “Climate and Large-Scale Dynamics.” Ihttp://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=11699&org=ERE&sel_org=ERE&from=fund
There is a great deal of work on relatively short term variability issues, from seasonal to decadal, but little or nothing on recent long-term natural variability, which NSF says does not exist.
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?WT.si_n=ClickedAbstractsRecentAwards&WT.si_x=1&WT.si_cs=1&WT.z_pims_id=11699&ProgEleCode=5740&BooleanElement=Any&BooleanRef=Any&ActiveAwards=true&#results
I will be writing this all up in the fullness of time.
Climate Dynamics program URL mis-pasted. It is
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=11699&org=ERE&sel_org=ERE&from=fund
It may be the CSIRO effect.
ristvan complained on February 24, 2016 at 1:55 pm |
Its supposed to be an honest living. Mann and Schmidt clearly do not.
_____
My grandma used to tell me ” you just make yourself look bad when you bad-mouth others.”
Max why then didn’t you listen to your grandmother? Accusing somebody of bad-mouthing others is bad-mouthing others.
Accusation? No, it’s a fact. Right there in black and white.
To me in order to draw the conclusion that you did, you would need to demonstrate that research on long term natural climate variation is somehow being discriminated against. Applications are made for grants, right? So what you need to do is determine if applications made for studying long term variation were disproportionately denied relative to studies on short term variation. Have you done this? Finding more search results related to short term variation might only mean that there were more applications for studying short term variation.
The second part has to do with some bias (or intent) on the part of NSF to explain away the pause. I am not sure how you are going to measure that or justify that conclusion.
Joseph, unfortunately grant applications that are denied are not available.
They might be worried because Australia (JONOVA) indicates that 320 climate “scientists” have been let go because the “science is settled”.
Heh, Climadora’s Box. Probably better they were concentrated.
===============
“Finally, the issue of natural variability merits further discussion.”
Gee…you think? These dangerous radicals!
You know the one who cannot be named, with the goatee, has been studying natural variability his whole career.
I believe that “natural variability” is an inventive new expression for “the actual climate”. The subject used to be studied, often outdoors, back in the days when goatees were non-ironic. That long ago.
JC message to Lewandowski et al.: (snip)
Self-editing?
Yeah, what’s that about?
It’s called a sense of humor.
She’s above writing a nasty comment, even though she would like to?
Are you really that dense ?
ian, I’m sorry for not knowing what JC was thinking. Please enlighten me.
Self-preservation. Good. Judith, we need you badly.
Transgressing the green’s dictatorship of virtue definitely poses a threat to one’s future career and livlihood.
And if the more fanatical environmentalists get their way, a transgression could land one on the wrong side of the law.
A bit of self deprecating humor perhaps?
If I challenge global warming claims I’m an ignorant denier because I’m not an accredited climate scientist. If Stephen Lewandowsky, a psychologist, promotes global warming claims it’s all hunky-dory. Odd.
NSF is pouring money into trying to explain the whatchacallit, so it must exist.
““there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual” – Lewandowsky et al., 2016, BAMS”
or indeed, the long over Late 20th Century Warm Period, eh, Lewy?
You gotta love the double standards.
When it comes to sea levels, as the last post showed, if in “the recent period” empirical data reveal an upward change in the rate at which the sea is rising, then it is deemed to be “unique and particularly unusual” and highly significant.
But, on the other hand, if empirical data reveal a downward change in the rate at which global temeraptures are rising, then it is deemed that “there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual,” and the empirical data is dismissed as being insignificant.
Really, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
http://imgur.com/9TvAL04
GS, read up on the uncertainty/accuracy/precision of Jason 2. Precise to 2mm, but not accurate, as proven by discrepancy to reasonably geostationary tide guages (there are 60-80 with century plus records, depending on your definition or reasonably geostationary), and by the closure problem: sat SLR >>sum ice sheet loss plus thermosteric rise. No closure problem with geostationary tide guages.
And, the spec for Jason 2 annual random instrument drift is 1mm/year. Explains the spurious downturn you did not circle, as well as the spurious upturn you did, both in an era when there has been NO palpable AGW (last Judith post).
Uncertainty monster bites again.
BTW, there were two separate peer reviewed explanations for the previous sudden equal magnitude downturn you did not circle. Both ridiculous and thoroughly debunked in essay PseudoPrecision. No geophysical explanation for design spec instrument drift is necessary. First, read the instrument spec.
Kool, point out the unusual down.
El Nino seems to raise sea level and La Nina seems to lower it.
That would predict 0 to negative sea level rise for the next three years.
We’ll see.
Ristvan,
I was under the impression that with all of our highly advanced and sophisticated instruments and measurement techniques that the more recent empirical data was reliable.
But you’re saying it’s not, and the empirical data has problems.
So the eprical data that all the dire predictions are built upon is not 24 kt. gold, but lead, or at best gold plate?
Really, you couldn’t make this stuff up. …
And then you went right out made stuff up. Too funny. I think there was a pause. That is why I bothered with saying it was about to go paws up, and that it is not completely, in the General Franco sense, dead.
JCH,
What stuff, pray tell, did I make up?
Can you be more specific?
It seems like if you are going to accuse someone of something, it is incumbent upon you to make your case, as in marshall evidence, and then follow that up with an argument to demonste that something I said was false.
Can you do that?
“the recent period” empirical data reveal an upward change in the rate at which the sea is rising, then it is deemed to be “unique and particularly unusual” and highly significant.
But, on the other hand, if empirical data reveal a downward change in the rate at which global temeraptures are rising, then it is deemed that “there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual,” and the empirical data is dismissed as being insignificant. …
JCH,
Can you marshall any evidence, and then follow that evidence up with an argument that demonstrates something I said was false?
Merely repeating what I said doesn’t cut it.
If you want to accuse and then convict someone, you must muster some evidence and make an argument.
Show me where and exactly what I said was false.
People are not guilty as charged. That sort of jurisprudence began going out of favor in the 14th century after the advent of Occam’s Razor.
JCH,
Your silence speaks volumes.
I went back and took a closer look at the Mengel study cited in JC’s last post on sea levels, and I must say I’ve never seen a more blatant example of purpose-driven science.
Where empirical data doesn’t conform to the authors’ pet theory (that sea-level rise is caused by global warming, and global warming is man-made, caused by CO2 emission), they merely “reconstruct” the empirical data using thier “semiempirical” methods (e.g., mathematical models), so that the newly constructed data does fit the theory.
The authors are not shy about stating their agenda, which is to “constrain” future sea-level rises with “long-term commitment.” So with that agenda firmly in mind, and given the empirical record on sea levels, they are confronted with two problems:
1) If sea-level rise continues on a more or less linear trend, then it’s not too scary. We’re talking a sea-level rise of only about 20 to 30 cm by 2100. This conclusion, of course, would be really bad. One doesn’t get write-ups in the NY Times or make oneself a scientific rock star of Team Green with such pedestrian predictions.
But a linear rise, with a slight accelleration in the past 20 years, is exactly what the “unreconstructed” empirical data shows.
2) If sea-level rise is caused by CO2 emissions, and the emissions are accelerating, then sea-level rise should be accelerating too.
But again, this is not what the “unreconstructed” empirical data shows. The empirical data does not fit the preconceived notions of the authors.
So there is great need on the part of the authors to “reconstruct” the empirical data such that it fits a hyperbolic cure. A linear cure (with no acceleration) would definitely be bad for the cause.
The only remaining objective of the authors at this point is how to turn a linear curve into a hyperbolic curve, and make it seem plausible.
http://imgur.com/y1oAnDV
This is what my silence speaks. Yesterday I closed on selling our second home. I met with a contractor is going to do some landscaping in one of our flower beds. I completed the purchase of a farm in Missouri.
De bonne chance and may the Lady be good.
============
Er, mebbe ‘de bonne shownce, and once shownce you, you can shownce us us!
==================
Glenn, cool down!
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2015_rel4/sl_mei.png
The connection between short-term up’s and down’s of SLR and ENSO as the University of Colorado it sees. As I recall there is an ElNino at work? Your red line to the roof top would show a permanent ElNino. Is it your opinion that this is reality or do you know too less?
frankclimate,
You’re telling me to “cool down”?
I think you got the wrong guy there.
It’s not me, after all, who’s predicting a sea-level-rise Armageddon.
Glenn, it was the response to the chart you posted. If it’s not your opinion and it was only a cautionary tale for alarmistic interpretations it’s okay :)
Your red line to the roof top would show a permanent El Nino.
No, it would not.
JCH: yes u r right. It would show an permanently increasing ElNino! When will cook the tropical pacific? :-D
Here’s a plot from the study. I have inserted the words “good” and “bad” to show which conclusions would be best for the agenda of the authors, given their stated objective of “constraining” future sea level rise by “long-term commitment.”
http://imgur.com/ABa8vJW
And here’s another graph from the study, with notations by myself showing where the authors “reconstructed” the empirical data with their mathematical models, so that the “semiempirical” data would fit the preferred theory, as well as the political agenda of the authors.
The authors have succeeded in turning a linear curve into a hyperbolic curve. The alchemists of old would be green with envy. (double entrendre intended)
So you see, when one can take such liscence with the empirical data, one can make the empirical data fit any theory. And that’s exactly what the authors have done.
And they call this “science”?
http://imgur.com/mucJA1M
Ah, verdigris patinannealed envy; thanks.
======================
Glenn: your observed trendline is showing a divergence from observations since ~1995.
Horst,
Exactly, as I noted in my comment above:
But a linear curve with a slight acceleration over the past 20 years is, notwithstanding, a long way from the defactualized speculations and the hyperbolic curve that the authors came up with.
Exaggeration and half-truth are, after all, far more useful implements in the activist scientist’s toolbox than outright lies.
It should also be noted that this acceleration took place at the same time the “pause” in global warming was occuring.
That also needs to be explained, and doesn’t seem to conform with the authors’ theory.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
JC Summary:
“The significance of this paper is1) the list of authors (many if not most whom are IPCC authors) and 2) the lucid explanation and context that is provided for the overall debate on this topic. The ‘hiatus’, ‘pause’ or whatever has been a dominant topic in both the scientific and the public debate on climate change since about 2012.
I don’t disagree with anything in this paper or in Ed’s blog post. A few specific comments:
I agree that the preferred term is ‘slowdown’; this gets us away from details of the trends and disagreement among different datasets. I also agree that the main significance is the discrepancy between climate model simulations.
I am a little surprised that they chose 1972 as the demarcation between the large hiatus during mid century and the late 20th century warming period. I would have chosen 1976, associated with the shift to the warm PDO/IPO.
I think the issue of multi-decadal variability is more complicated than is portrayed by the paper, which focuses on PDO/IPO.
The topic that didn’t receive sufficient attention in the paper IMO was solar, particularly the possibility of indirect solar effects.
Overall, the authors are to be congratulated for a very well done and important paper, that given the author list arguably redefines the consensus on this topic.
As for Gavin’s comment, it is totally bizarre. Gavin’s recent papers on the topic claim to explain the slowdown by forced variability. He is wrong; multi-decadal ocean oscillations play an important role. Calling this definitions and academic bickering is beyond bizarre.”
” agree that the preferred term is ‘slowdown’; this gets us away from details of the trends and disagreement among different datasets. I also agree that the main significance is the discrepancy between climate model simulations.”
_______
This seems to say differences between model simulations. I thought it was supposed to be the difference between observations and model simulations.
Anyway, I thought the difference over the forecast period was significant but not way wrong.
Now that I think about it, Hansen’s forecasts of global temperature may be looking better recently. The observed 2015 temperature should be inside the range of his three scenarios, somewhere between the low and middle ones, if my memory is right. But I could be wrong.
Why rely on memory when you can check for yourself.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts.txt
VS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen#/media/File:Hansen_2006_temperature_comparison.jpg
Anybody want to provide a more accurate or precise prediction?
Mind you they do not mean long-term natural variability, that might undercut AGW. See my latest:
http://www.cato.org/blog/nsf-climate-denial?utm_content=buffer2695b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Nice Bait and switch David. Some, not Horst, might call that lying.
Please provide a quote from the OP paper that supports your argument, not some 20-odd year old NSF pablum you pulled out of the bowels of your opposition research file.
Your being incoherent, Horst. What is the OP paper? The NSF Climate Research Overview which says that recent long-term natural variability does not exist is their present overview. My article provides a link to it.
Plus I have analyzed their grant awards on climate dynamics. There are several hundred awards on seasonal to decadal variability but none on recent long-term variability.
Perhaps you are referring to my quote from the 1998 NAS/NRC report, showing that the attribution problem, which NSF denies exists, has been well known for a long time. Sorry if my article was too complex for you.
If I read correctly the term “slowdown” had “temporary” in front of it.
David Wojick said:
Well, Team Green certainly doesn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Short-term natural variablity is OK.
Long-term natrual variability would be an apostasy from the one true faith.
Well, you’d need to show that natural (unforced) long-term variability existed. That’s the problem here; there’s just no evidence for it.
Certainly natural forced long-term variability exists; that’s the cause of the glacial vs interglacial transitions.
You know what kind of argument is made when you take a quote and argue that half of it is wrong?
I’ll answer at the end.
“The average pattern of weather, called climate, usually stays the same for centuries if it is undisturbed.”
But you then argue that they are claiming “The average pattern of weather, called climate, usually stays the same for centuries.”
when that is not what they said.
If there is one thing the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were not, is unforced variations.
It’s called a straw-man argument, well done.
Bob, you appear to have quoted their exact quote then said that is not what they said. How is that possible?
After that, your claim about the MWP and the LIA not being unforced variations is completely unsupported. They might well be unforced chaotic variations, caused entirely by nonlinear negative feedbacks acting upon a constant solar forcing.
My simple point is that we simply do not know what caused them and, unlike Obama’s NSF, I think we should try to figure this out.
David,
“Bob, you appear to have quoted their exact quote then said that is not what they said. How is that possible?”
No David, you chopped the last part of their quote and then argued against that position.
It is thought that volcanic eruptions had a lot to do with the MWP and the LIA, and those would be natural but forced variations. And if the Maunder and other solar minimums had anything to do with it, those would again be natural forced variations.
And how can feedbacks operate on a constant forcing?
WRT climate and other hyper-complex non-linear systems, “forcing”, “feedbacks”, and even “equilibrium” are myths.
Perhaps if you studied the subject before pontificating on it…
“The average pattern of weather, called climate, usually stays the same for centuries if it is undisturbed.”
This statement is as far as I can tell is correct, and irrelevant.
The climate has never been undisturbed in the planet’s history.
Many circuits have a constant output in response to a constant DC input (or constant AC input). That says nothing about their transient response.
The constantly changing solar input and plate movement means the climate is always in a transient response mode.
If you are going to follow climate, it’s worthwhile to have a copy of:
‘The Physics of Climate’ ( Peixoto and Oort ) ( also at the library ).
One of my favorite quotes:
“Thus, the whole climate system must be regarded as continuously evolving with parts of the system leading and others lagging in time. The highly nonlinear interactions between the subsystems tend to occur on many time and space scales. Therefore, the subsystems of the climate system are not always in equilibrium with each other, and not even in internal equilibrium.”
There’s really no good evidence either way. But by analogy with other very complex systems, the default assumption should be that it wanders chaotically (probably within broad limits) in the absence of any change to external conditions.
Of course, reasoning by analogy is always suspect…
I tend to agree with Schmitt, multi decadal ocean oscillations play a role in short term climate trends, but as for the long term greenhouse gas trends, not so much.
There is no reason that irregular multi-decadal oscillations should average out on a century scale. Quite the contrary, it is highly unlikely.
Right, no reason other than the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Highly unlikely to be exactly averaged out, but highly likely to be within the limit of detection, given a long enough period.
I have no idea what you are talking about. First law? Limits of detection? Nonsense. Irregular oscillation is irregular.
David: you are right and wrong. For the ocean oscillations, it may take up to several centuries before they average to zero.
Bob is almost correct, multi-decadal ocean oscillations play a role in short-term temperature trends. I say temperature, not climate because climate is a long term trend, therefore there are no short-term climate trends. That, of course, is not to say it’s inappropriate to make guesses about how short term trends are influenced by climactic trends, chaotic weather and ocean oscillations.
The new paper on the warming slowdown is an excellent example of this very issue.
David,
Can you detect a long term trend in global temperature (not climate as Horst points out, although my location has changed a couple of hardiness zones in a short period of time lately) based on irregular multi-decadal oscillations?
And you can’t create warming out of multi-decadal oscillations due to the First Law.
bobdroege, “And you can’t create warming out of multi-decadal oscillations due to the First Law.”
Not is a simple thermodynamic model assuming equilibrium, but a planet is a bit more complex open system in sort of a steady state. A simple shift in the timing of the rainy season at high latitudes can either increase snow cover or decrease it and since land has a lower specific heat capacity you would see a large change in temperature. Energy flows would change because of changes in the efficiency of the system.
see Capt, and thanks. Bob has an irrelevant model.
In the climate system how would the First law pick a period for the oscillations to average out? Why 100 years instead of 325 or 1216 years?
David Wojick said:
Oh, I think I know what he’s talking about. The narrative goes something like this:
There is no reason that irregular multi-decadal oscillations should average out on a century scale.
Right, no reason other than the First Law of Thermodynamics.
No.
You’re thinking that RF will express on a century scale as warming: I agree ( though much closer to instantaneously than century scale ).
But natural variability does not settle on a century scale.
On the contrary, natural variability increases from the annual to the centennial and multi-centennial scale, as you can see in this IPCC plot of variability:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/images/fig12-2.gif
This was also idealized by an interesting paper by Mitchell from the 1970s:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/TemperatureVarianceSpectrum.png
“Why 100 years instead of 325 or 1216 years?”
I don’t know David, why did you pick 100 years?
“There is no reason that irregular multi-decadal oscillations should average out on a century scale.”
We use 100 years as a time span because we have five fingers and two hands. Must be because a long time ago a frog decided to have five toes and survived.
If frogs had six toes it would still be 100 years.
short term is a bit tricky.
http://www.atmos.albany.edu/deas/faculty/howe/Langton%20et%20al.%20(2008).pdf
Capt: Thanks for the link. The very low frequency sampling interval is on the order of 100-years, that is smeared and averaged, etc. and the data is from an isolated ares in a very dynamic part of the west Pacific seems like a poor example to draw conclusions. This got me in the hunt of finding a better example and I found this interesting paper on some of the technical issues with ocean proxies in general:
http://www.guillaume-leduc.com/public/pdf/Lohmann2015Interdynamik.pdf
It sorta goes with TE’s linkage of insolation to SLR in the previous post.
Well, Rosenthal, Oppo and Linsen also have quite a bit of work in the indo-pacific warm pool that tends to back up that paper.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7259/full/nature08233.html
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-OvQHzJy8gFU/VLF3XHImAqI/AAAAAAAAMGM/lcW6ogEHxbA/s689-Ic42/oppo%252520over%252520mann.png
The majority of tropical SST reconstructions show about the same thing, but in most cases they are limited to 50 year or longer resolution except for corals.
Dr Curry –
I agree Ed’s post is eminently reasonable, with not much to argue about.
But. “…. the planet is retaining ~0.5 days of the sun’s incoming energy per year…..” which I suppose could be rephrased as ‘it’s the physics, stupid.’
Are sceptics generally conceding this, and what’s your view of the authority and importance of that figure?
Dr Curry –
I agree Ed’s post is eminently reasonable, with not much to argue about.
But. “…. the planet is retaining ~0.5 days of the sun’s incoming energy per year…..” which I suppose could be rephrased as ‘it’s the physics, stupid.’
Are sceptics generally conceding this, and what’s your view of the authority and importance of that figure?
I’m not too big on labels and groups, but I think you’ll find that Dr. Curry, Dr. Michaels, Dr. Lindzen, Dr. Spencer, and others have said all along that warming is likely.
But global average temperature doesn’t have much to do with climate.
Indeed, much of the presumed correlations ( tropical cyclones, drought, ‘severe storms’ ) have so far been proven false.
Global warming is relatively slow and still much smaller than day-to-day variation.
And the main determinant of RF, namely population, appears poised for decline soon.
US per capita CO2 emisisons have been declining for forty years.
US total CO2 emissions have been declining for nearly a decade.
Most of the developed world is following the same pattern.
Development leads to both efficiency and falling population, a better prescription for falling CO2 than artificial economic forcing.
And the benefits may very well outweigh the detriments of global warming far some time to come.
That’s all what I’d add.
I do not think that number is credible. Nor is it relevant to the cause of the pause. But I am curious as to how it is estimated, how long it is claimed to have been going on, plus how it varies year to year (although as stated it does not)?
0.6 Wm-2 imbalance per day times 365 days would be 210 Wm-2 per year. Not sure how useful that is, but it is about right.
I haven’t seen the imbalance phrased that way before, but it does illustrate how close to a fine balance it is, with minimal causes bringing significant changes, even though not varying much around neutral.
=================
Capt:
Since Wm^-2 is a power density, it makes no sense to express it on a per day or per year basis, as if it were an energy density.
john, “Since Wm^-2 is a power density, it makes no sense to express it on a per day or per year basis, as if it were an energy density.”
I wouldn’t use it but it is kind of entertaining, whether is it second, day or year you still only have the 0.6 +/- 0.4 Wm-2 to work with and Ed seems to like the ~0.5 day/year for whatever reason.
0.5 days in a year is about 0.13%. According to Wikipedia the Sun is a variable star and its visual light will vary about 0.1% during a solar cycle. Of course the visual light is a very narrow band oder the overall output spectrum.
No it lsn’t just the Sun, but…
For some reason, I have believed that the variability of the sun’s output was around a half percent. If so, does that include output other than visible, or have I just been in error?
============================
kim, “For some reason, I have believed that the variability of the sun’s output was around a half percent. If so, does that include output other than visible, or have I just been in error?”
0.1 percent is more like it which is interesting since the 22 year Hale cycle seems to show up in a lot of analysis. It is almost like surface temperature is more sensitive to analysis than it is to forcing :)
David W – it may not be relevant to the cause of the Pause, but it might be said to make the Pause irrelevant.
Cap’n D – sure, if that is derived from measurements, rather than theory, I see where it comes from, and I recall some discussion elsewhere about the provenance of the figure, and the error bars on the in/out measurements that lead to it, but I’d be interested to know how Dr Curry views this piece of the jigsaw.
Moth, Stephens et al. did a pretty good job and came up with 0.6 +/- 0.4 Wm-2 based on satellite observations compared with ocean heat uptake. They also showed there is huge uncertainty at the surface +/- 17.0 Wm-2 which makes the whole “global mean surface temperature anomaly” a bit silly.
Tear down this paywall! The paper is available here.
Thank you, Dr. Mann.
Thank you, HaroldW.
Reblogged this on The Ratliff Notepad.
These guys like Karl, Lewandowsky and Schmidt are a real piece of work.
They’ve even one-upped Milton Friedman in the mad drive to debauch science.
Friedman argued that scientific theories don’t have to be realistic in order to be legitimate. All that is required to make them acceptable is that they make accurate predictions.
Karl, Lewandowsky and Schmidt, on the other hand, take this one step further and argue that theories don’t even have to make accurate predicitons to be acceptable.
Citation 1 (1988, while the neoclassical economists were riding high):
Citation 2 (2007, after the predictions made by neoclassical economics lay in shambles):
The more economics I read, the more the climate controversies and the economic ones seem similar. Especially in the ‘mathiness’ factor.
And the all other things being equal part. In both cases an impossibility.
The paper is freely available from the link Judy provided at Nature. Sharing is caring.
I tend to agree with Gavin:
Gavin Schmidt: Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, is tired of the entire discussion, which he says comes down to definitions and academic bickering. There is no evidence for a change in the long-term warming trend, he says, and there are always a host of reasons why a short-term trend might diverge — and why the climate models might not capture that divergence. “A little bit of turf-protecting and self-promotion I think is the most parsimonious explanation,” Schmidt says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/best/from:1860/to:2015/plot/best/from:1860/to:2015/trend
There is no evidence for a change in the long-term warming trend,
???
Here are the 30 year trends through each year:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/Trends30.png
There is a small deceleration of the 30 year trends ( from ~1.9 to ~1.7 C/century ).
Theory predicts this slow down because the annual rates of radiative forcing increase has slowed by about 25% since 1989, so yes there’s a small slowdown, and yes, there should be one.
Also, there was a cooling trend from 1945 through 1975. Trends since 1975 are high because absolute temperatures in 1975 were anomalously low. Trends since 1985 are not as extreme, but perhaps more representative.
No error bars, though. I wonder how that chart would look if the error bars were included?
I.e., has there been a statistically significant change in the 30-year trends? Probably not.
30-year trends are by no means secular, as the persistently varying graph here clearly shows. Being completely determined by the data, they are not statistical estimates and no more require any “error bars” than would a unique filter output (which demonstrably they are in a mathematical sense). It’s only when we entertain notions of much longer, trans-centennial variations that questions of sampling uncertainty arise. Alas, we don’t have much basis in direct measurements for assessing that long-term climatic variability.
I would sell, personally.
Being completely determined by the data, they are not statistical estimates and no more require any “error bars” than would a unique filter output (which demonstrably they are in a mathematical sense).
I’m assuming by “trend” he means linear regressions on the 30-year periods. In which case, they are indeed statistical estimates of a linear trend on noisy data. It’s not just drawing a line between two points or calculating an average – it’s a way of saying “this is the best estimate for the rate of increase during this time period, according to a linear regression model”. Which will necessarily have an uncertainty.
Plus, there are uncertainties in the measurements themselves.
You have to look at these uncertainties before you can say “there is a small deceleration of the 30 year trends”.
I remember when I first started reading CE
kim wrote …
“we go mad as a herd and become skeptical one by one”
or something like that
looks like some of the IPCC herd is eyeing the hole in the fence
Wow
this is the craziest show I’ve ever seen
and I been to two barn dances and a out a town rodeo
It’s from “Delusion of Crowds”: Men go mad in herds, and only come to their senses slowly, and one by one.
This is how it came about:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
As far as I know that is the only current hypothesis that fits observations
Actually Nature made the paper freely available to the public at the link but only to read online (via ReadCube) ; it cannot be downloaded in pdf or printed out for free. But it can be done so under different payfor options given by ReadCube for renting, saving, downloading, etc.
Natural variability aside, warming should have slowed down (and did ), because forcing slowed down:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/AnnotatedRF10.png
Hei!… where did you get this graph from?… nice!
The data is of the RCP and NOAA RF data, the plot and annotations are from me.
Seems the do something now crowd aren’t keeping up with the BAU doings. China’s surge in coal build out was mainly due to getting more coal grandfathered in just in case. They should try banning nuclear power plants to get that ball rolling.
The CO2 growth from China’s MFN status seems to me to be a one off. India and African nations will continue to develop, but doesn’t seem to me that there are any more Chinas. The last two years’ El Nino have kept CO2 concentrations up, but with emissions falling since 2013, I think we’re past peak CO2 RF growth – and rate of warming is, by theory, related to the rate of RF increase.
Which reminds me to remind you there are gnomes hiding in a conference room describing the CMIP6 pathways and greenhouse gas concentrations to be used by climate models. Given the political environment and the people in charge, it’s likely they’ll have an RCP8.5 lookalike which will continue to be used in propaganda campaigns.
Since 1960 there is roughly a 23E22 joule increase in the top 2000 meters.
This is roughly a 0.3 W/m2 change in surface forcing of the ocean.
The net change in the global radiation budget is 0.5 W/m2.
Where is the other 0.2 W/m2, 40% of the energy, 66% of the amount they can account for, going?
None of those estimates are known to that accuracy, if at all.
That 0.3 W/m2 could not have been provided by greenhouse gases. Even if the numbers are representative of reality there are no heat transport mechanisms that can move heat from the troposphere into the oceans given the current temperatures.
All I know is something is fishy with the numbers. The land doesn’t have the heat capacity to absorb 0.9 W/m2 over the period without glowing cherry red like a tomato.
If the sea absorbed 0.3 W/m2 (their number divided by time*surface area) over the period, then the difference between outgoing and incoming was 0.3 W/m2. This means the satellite accuracy (absolute measurement) or their calibration, or the compensation for wavelength sensitivity, etc. is off.
Heat of fusion of the 10*1000 km3 of lost sea ice is 3 zettajoules, ignoring the gained southern sea ice. The antarctic ice sheet according to LOD and NASA is gaining ice… Don’t see any explanation but that either Argo or Satellite estimate is wrong.
Science stumbles forward! This is good news.
“Finally, the issue of natural variability merits further discussion. The 1972-2001 period shows higher ratios (more warming per unit forcing) than the other periods. This period also corresponds to when the Pacific Decadal Oscillation was in its positive phase, suggesting that these variations in the Pacific have caused a large part of the difference between models and observations.”
More like the surface warming 1972-2001 has been modeled to be all forced, when really a large proportion of the trend is the shift from a cold AMO to warm AMO. Meaning that the models were over-projecting all along.
They are just validating my previous comments here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/the-real-link-between-solar-energy-ocean-cycles-and-global-temperature/
inter alia:
“Before it is safe to attribute a global warming or a global cooling effect
to any other factor (CO2 in particular) it is necessary to disentangle the
simultaneous overlapping positive and negative effects of solar variation,
PDO/ENSO and the other oceanic cycles. Sometimes they work in unison,
sometimes they work against each other and until a formula has been
developed to work in a majority of situations all our guesses about climate
change must come to nought.
So, to be able to monitor and predict changes in global temperature we need
more than information about the past, current and expected future level of
solar activity.
We also need to identify all the separate oceanic cycles around the globe
and ascertain both the current state of their respective warming or cooling
modes and, moreover, the intensity of each, both at the time of measurement
and in the future.
Once we have a suitable formula I believe that changes in global temperature
will no longer be a confusing phenomenon and we will be able to apportion
the proper weight to other influencing factors such as the greenhouse effect
of CO2.
At the moment the weight given to the effect of CO2 in the models is just a
guess.”
Somewhere in Cambridge, Naomi Oreskes is sighing “et tu Michael”.
Out, out, cooked spot!
=============
RT, I coincidentally had lunch today with a Harvard major gifts recruiter. Their request, their timing, and they paid (unlike last time). Made the same point, plus that they will never get a nickel from me until address the Oreskes problem hire. Fed them some additional ‘scope’ on Oreskes transgressions. The Harvard lady was horrified, and promised to check my new (last twelve months) facts on Oreskes out. One small step at a time.
Highest regards.
But it looks like Sainte Naomi and others of her ilk have blessed this paper:
“Acknowledgements
We thank Thomas Karl, Susan Solomon, Jochem Marotzke, Stefan Rahmstorf, Steve Lewandowsky, James Risbey and Naomi Oreskes for their comments on earlier drafts. We acknowledge the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison and the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling
for their roles in making the WCRP CMIP multi-model datasets available. Portions of this study were supported by the Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program (RGCM) of the US Department of Energy’s O ce of Biological & Environmental Research (BER) Cooperative Agreement # DE-FC02-97ER62402, and the National Science Foundation.”
Astonishing. Why would someone who wanted to be taken seriously acknowledge asking them for comments?
Maybe the reviewers required them to. And how do we know that “Sainte Naomi and others of her ilk have blessed this paper”? Who knows whether their comments were even printable, much less approving?
Yeah, sure, we should have described it as a travesty.
I’m not sure how much of the public knows what “hiatus” means. It sounds like something you could get from lifting a very heavy object.
True, true, I took a hiatus this morning and probably will tomorrow too.
Here I pause, all broken hearted;
Warming tried, but barely started.
===========
It’s snowing outside, must be the ice age!
How do you know it’s and ice age?
“Because of all the ice!”
I like “eerie slowdown in average surface temperature increase”. By the way, where did it slowdown? Has anybody described the surface sectors which experienced reversals versus the ones which kept rising?
Interesting development. Karl’s effort to erase the pause backfired. So others say nope, its real but 10-20 years doesn’t matter for the long term. But they forget NOAA said that after 15 years, Santer said after 17 years, such a divergence would mean the climate models are wrong. Depending on data set and pause metric (simple slope, statistical significance) we are generally well beyond 17 years now. They perhaps do not recall this important consequence. All but perhaps the Russian GCM are now wrong. And that model has such low sensitivity that there is no C in CAGW.
Did they teach you what “at least” means at Havurd
Huh?
Yes. What part of McKitrick’s up to 26 years using ARIMA methods does not satisfy at least 17? You want 10 footnotes in a simple comment, you can get them if you ask nicely. Recommend less rhetoric, and more background literature and fact checking.
“But they forget NOAA said that after 15 years, Santer said after 17 years, such a divergence would mean the climate models are wrong. “
Completely garbled, and through not quoting properly, as usual. The NOAA reference is I presume to the 2008 state of the climate report, where they were talking about observed trend of ENSO-adjusted surface temperature. ENSO-adjusted is critical. Santer was speaking of satellite temperatures, and said:
“A single decade of observational TLT data is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”
He isn’t saying anything “would mean the climate models are wrong”. He’s talking about the minimum time to identify a signal.
“What part of McKitrick’s up to 26 years”
Again totally garbled. No-one was talking about a period during which a trend, though positive, might have a CI including zero. It would make no sense. They estimate probabilities of actual trends, not CIs. And certainly not McKitrick’s fancifully stretched CI.
Note.. After reading Santer it was clear the correct answer was around 25 years..
Well, try harder. 17 years was the abstract certain threshold. We can both read his paper. Inconvenient that back then (2011) warmunists could never imagine that Ma Nature would so brutally falsify their religion via a now near 19 year RSS pause. But she has.
The back scramble/climb down is quite something to behold. Including your new revisionist reading of Santer’s 2011 paper. Which we can all read, and then judge for ourselves in re your assertions.
25-years? not long enough. at least 70-years. We’ve got nearly 20-yers of divergence with another 20-years of cool cycle, that’s 40. Then it will take half of the next cycle to get back to even, then the second half of the next warm cycle to bump GAT to above the multi-model-mean to confirm.
Therefore, the model verification cannot be not the decider.
Are you people really so lame as to not see the limitations of the tools?
Actually, Horst, wrote about this at length in the ebook, essay Models all the way down, and again differently at a guestnblog post at WUWT. Read both, then get back with factual rebuttals if you can.
“Well, try harder. 17 years was the abstract certain threshold. We can both read his paper.”
You obviously dont understand his paper. I had the nice opportunity to listen to him present the results
You are wrong again Rud. But amuse me and give us some quotes.
You know evidence that he claimed what you claim he claimed.
he was discussing the emergence of a SIGNAL. Now, go look at the models he used to characterize the noise and you will see very clearly the fly in the ointment.
Rud’s “facts”: Comedy Gold! Can’t wait for the next installment on of how you stalked Naomi Oreskes through a long-suffering Harvard donation solicitor. Please have the next pitch video-taped so that we can read the poor woman’s uncomfortable body language as she pretends to listen to your recommendations.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/02/24/nature-making-sense-of-the-early-2000s-warming-slowdown/#comment-767591
Naomi Oreskes (born November 25, 1958)[1] is an American historian of science.
She is historian of science, she should have learned that in the past climate has gone up and down.
She knows nothing about the future of climate, she doesn’t have a “future of science” degree. Her interest goes in the other direction.
Mosher: “Note.. After reading Santer it was clear the correct answer was around 25 years..”
If things keep going the way they are, the brown stuff will hit the turning thing, and you better have a better excuse than “You don’t understand” or “It’s more complex than that”. If you have the excuse – as our host does – that “I tried, but got shouted down”, you should be OK. The politicians will, as ever, shift the blame to their advisers, and the MSM will throw anyone they feel like to the dogs to save their own “objectivity” – even the most left-leaning do it. Those who will wear the “blame” will be those who “made simplified statements, with no mention of any uncertainty”. Even those who simply accepted the mainstream will be targets and will be scrambling to show how they tried in vain to show the uncertainty.
Well, the solution is to terminate climate funding until the “hiatus” period limit is firmed up and expires.
That way if the deadline gets pushed to 30 or 35 years it doesn’t matter, the climate change funding is still cut off so it is a win-win.
The only way to deal with global warmers is to make uncertainty work against them.
errr that was supposed to read “climate change funding”.
The funding of the research of natural climate forces should continue unabated. We just don’t need the global warming studies or the rest of the “global warming” funding. This includes the models ’cause we can get good models from the Russians, and the global warming studies are works of fiction anyway..
If the US climate scientists knew how to fix the models they would have fixed them by now.
But they forget NOAA said that after 15 years, Santer said after 17 years, such a divergence would mean the climate models are wrong.
I don’t think that the global surface temperature is why the climate models are wrong.
The climate models are wrong because of the failure of the Hot Spot to appear and because the Eastern Pacific and Southern Ocean are cooling, not warming.
The Eastern Pacific is generally cool because of trade winds… Eastern Boudary Upwelling. Cool is its default state. It will only be warm in periods of EL Nino dominance, which is the upward ramp, the initial years of the positive phase of the PDO. It is cool during the majority of ENSO neutral.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCN_GISS_ERSSTv4_1200km_Trnd112_1976_1983_100__180_90_0__2__CE/amaps.png
JCH
Eastern Pacific cool? Presumably you are talking in relative terms? What sort of temperature would you expect them to be at various times through the year?
tonyb
The Eastern Pacific is generally cool because of trade winds… Eastern Boudary Upwelling. Cool is its default state.
You’re confusing absolute temperature – cool,
with trend – cooling.
There’s a cooling trend for the satellite era, though the most recent ENSO event has diminished the trend somewhat, but ENSOs do revert.
aGW would be more descriptive
LB, you have appropriated the ‘joke’ title to one of my Blowing Smoke essays. Permission granted to plagarize at will on that one.
“Reality has deviated from our expectations,” as we did not have parameters for nature spanking our models and proving to the public that climatologists have been pulling science out of their arses…
Recipe for legacy pie: slightly increase the rate of warming while whipping up expectations, add a dash of recognition and improve observational biases. Continue to look relevant while reducing the rate of warming for several decades and just keep dishing it out.
A question for you techie guys. Does this mean level 6 models will adjust down the CO2 knob, or will they keep it where it is and subtract the differences as natural variation. It is obvious that something is out of whack to get a 2X – 21/2X difference in temps. To me this is important in that sensitivity to CO2 may be about as much different as the upward temperature adjustments, which means that natural variation is being offset by temp change without any necessary CO2 sensitivity adjustments. If this is what is happening, any future offsets will either recur, or the only option left will be to reduce the CO2 knob. If natural variation is allowed to account for future differences in temps between model projections and observed, at that point natural variation should be able to overshadow any effect of CO2. If we enter a cooling period CO2 would disappear as a climate control.
A new parameter is inserted — an adjustment for virtual volcanic eruptions — so that the models reflect the ‘slowdown’ with just a minor modification of the blade of Mann’s hockey stick.
Fair’s become foul,
say, we got trouble,
… boil and bubble,
toss an apple or two
into the brew,
add Pacific Decadal,
some volcanoes too,
and a pinch of the natural
-variability could help do
the trick …
Well, yeah. This is the basic problem with global warming climate science.
There shouldn’t have been any funding for “killing the butterflies”, “killing the bees”, “flooding the future” types of studies until the basic values associated with “global warming” such as forcing were established within 5-10% accuracy.
The lack of attention to the basic science first, means we have wasted money on generating Greenpeace propaganda with tax payer dollars exploring scenarios that aren’t physically realizable.
The false urgency and nonsensical 100+ year lifetime of CO2 were used to railroad the science.
We should stop all global warming funding except for the basic science studies until all the parameters important for modeling are tightly constrained. This ensures the future scenarios studied will have some chance of actually occurring.
“the recent observations are all continuously outside the ±1σ spread of the simulations for a lengthy period, which is obviously unusual. “. How wrong that statement is. Observations have always been below simulations, right from the start of the simulations, so it is not “unusual”. That’s how the simulations are. The observations are not unusual, the simulations are wrong.
“Note that there are important issues with the radiative forcings used in CMIP5 (particularly solar & volcanic) “. Misdirection. There’s no particular reason to single out solar and volcanic instead of CO2 and “feedbacks”. Since “feedbacks” is far and away the largest warming factor in the simulations, this is the most likely place to look for an explanation. CO2 would be the second most likely place.
“This period [1972-2001] also corresponds to when the Pacific Decadal Oscillation was in its positive phase, suggesting that these variations in the Pacific have caused a large part of the difference between models and observations. “. Not exactly wrong, but misdirected again. In the 1972-2001 period, the PDO caused a large part of the correlation between models and observations. Putting it that way round gives a whole different perspective.
“there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming” and “externally driven cooling caused by a succession of volcanic eruptions “. Here, surely, they are just papering over some very large cracks and looking for excuses. The simple fact is that no-one knows if the slowdown is permanent, temporary, or the precursor for a decline. No-one knows whether volcanoes have actually had a larger effect recently than in the past, though I am not aware of any evidence which would suggest that they have.
This paper is a folorn (hopefully) attempt by the authors to remain in control of a situation that looks like it is spinning uncontrollably away from them. OK, they can be congratulated for recognising that the “hiatus” is not what they have been portraying it to be, but please – no more credit than that. The next step is to stop listening to these very misguided people, to stop giving any credence to their pretend models [weather models pretending to be climate models], and to start listening to the people who have all the time been saying it like it really is
I would like to point out that in 2007 I posted on this subject:
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/a-litmus-test-for-global-warming-a-much-overdue-requirement/
Part of the text reads
“The heat accumulation for the period from 2002 to the present and into the future needs to be a high priority. For example to sustain a global warming rate of 1 Watt per meter squared since 2002 for the following ten years requires the accumulation of 1.6 *10**23 Joules within the climate system.”
The Fyfe et al paper is finally recognition that we need such real world assessments.
The recent Riser et al paper show that ocean heating is confined primarily to the Southern Oceans, Not only does this illustrate the inadequacies of a global average surface temperature trend as a diagnostic for global warming, but it shows that the concept of “global warming” is much more complex than has been assumed up until now by the IPCC and others.
Roger A. Pielke Sr
“The recent Riser et al paper show that ocean heating is confined primarily to the Southern Oceans”
The OHC data certainly indicate this.
I wonder: Are the OHC measurements missing the cold water formation which takes place very close to the Antarctic continent? And is cold water formation actually increasing around Antarctica leading to increased advection of warmer waters southward?
I understand that ARGO floats will soon be able to operate beneath the sea ice and may give us a better understanding. But it also seems to me that 2000m is arbitrary and presumes knowledge of transports that are unmeasured ( or at least not measured well ).
I don’t think we know total OHC very well.
….”global warming is much more complex..”
Indeed. If more climate scientists admitted this obvious fact they would gain immense credibility with the public. I am more willing to have confidence in a scientist of any discipline when they freely acknowledge how little they really know rather than an air of arrogance that they have it aced.
Wow, having Mann and Santer signing off on this undermines Oreskes, and pretty much consigns Lewandowsky to quack status when you consider his paper essentially tried to depict climate scientist as having psychological deficiencies for even considering the “seepage” of skeptic voices who had pointed this out previously
To be fair, neither do long term trends.
Progress? Now if only the “scientists” would admit to the “public” the following:
1. We don’t have enough data to know anything about “long-term” trends, which would be trends over the order of hundreds of years.
2. The data we have is highly suspect for many reasons.
3. The “models” don’t agree well over they very-short-term with what highly-suspect data we have.
4. As a result of 1, 2 and 3 we really don’t much at all at this time and all of the hype is misplaced and hubris, at best.
We have more than enough data to know the future trends, they will be just like past trends.
The real data we have is no suspect. corrections and adjustments are highly suspect, but does not change anything important. Data stays in the same bounds.
Models don’t agree with each other and models don’t agree with real data.
We know plenty at this time and all of the hype is misplaced and hubris, at best.
They’re throwing Lewandosky under the bus!
*dances a little jig*
I also agree with Gavin Schmidt. But unfortunately, this bickering has no effect at all on peoples opinions because their opinions are not affected by facts. They are affected by their feelings. Here are some excerpts on the subject by Clive Hamilton “Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” Presented at Climate Controversies: Science and politics conference. A number of people might not like this.
“Those on the left are as predisposed to sift evidence through ideological filters; but in the case of global warming it happens that the evidence overwhelmingly endorses the liberal beliefs that unrestrained capitalism is jeopardizing future well-being, that comprehensive government intervention is needed, and that the environment movement was right all along. for neo-conservatives accepting these is intolerable, and it is easier emotionally and more convenient politically to reject climate science.”
“In these circumstances, facts quail before beliefs, and there is something poignant about scientists who continue to adhere to the idea that people repudiate climate science because they suffer inadequacy of information. In fact, denial is due to a surplus of culture rather than a deficit of information.”
That is pretty much what they should expect when they try selling climate change instead of communicating climate change. Culturally, we are used to aggressive sales tactics, well, some of us are anyway :)
timg56 said on February 25, 2016 at 3:32 pm |
Max,
Where does this stuff come from? It presents as gibberish. Blanket statements, that even when correct still do not make a point of any sort.
______
Well, that’s economics for you. It seems like pointless gibberish, unless you try really hard to understand, and sometimes it still seems like pointless gibberish. Try writing about economics to gain empathy.
in the case of global warming it happens that the evidence overwhelmingly endorses the liberal beliefs that unrestrained capitalism is jeopardizing future well-being, that comprehensive government intervention is needed, and that the environment movement was right all along.
I’d say that’s completely incorrect.
First, there is no basis that global warming is jeopardizing future well-being ( it certainly hasn’t to date – global GDP: increasing, longevity: increasing, infant mortality: decreasing, etc. etc. ), consequently government intervention is not needed.
Further, the environmental movement is completely wrong because the environment is significantly better in capitalistic societies than elsewhere.
Further, human footprint on the environment is a function of human population. Here is a chart of total fertility rates around the world:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/TFRMap.png
Notice anything? Free market nations have significantly lower fertility than areas which have not developed economically.
Here is another chart of nations whose year of peak CO2 emissions are in the past ( falling emissions for at least a few years ):
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/FallingEmissions.png
Notice similarity? Again, free market nations have decreasing CO2 emissions because economic development improves efficiency.
Further still, economic development coincides with urbanization which reduces human footprint ( rural existence is less efficient and more destructive ).
Yes this is ideological but capitalism has been the solution, not the problem.
Turbulent Eddie | February 24, 2016 at 5:02 pm | Reply
I’d say that’s completely incorrect.
Is “completely incorrect” the same as Balderdash?
Turbulent Eddie said: Free market nations have significantly lower fertility than areas which have not developed economically.
________
Eddie, many countries that “have not developed economically” have free markets and less environmental regulations than developed nations.
Being undeveloped also means lower use of energy and a smaller carbon footprint per capita.
Economic activity and standards of living in developed nations require high fuel usage and leave a large carbon footprint, and these countries do have economic systems that are capitalistic or a mixture of capitalism and socialism. Their fuel usage, however, may be more a reflection of state of development and wealth than economic system.
Eddie, many countries that “have not developed economically” have free markets
I’m pretty sure you can’t name any.
and less environmental regulations than developed nations.
Exactly, lack of economic development is bad for the environment and economic development is good for the environment! As Mao said ‘Morality is a luxury of the rich’, so too ‘The environment is a luxury of the rich.’.
Being undeveloped also means lower use of energy and a smaller carbon footprint per capita.
To some extent. the corollary is true. Not using energy means poverty and pollution and most importantly, increasing population of poor polluters.
Development does involve an increase in energy use, but upon development energy efficiency improves because of development which is why per capita CO2 and even per capita energy has been declining in the US and most developed nations for decades.
Economic activity and standards of living in developed nations require high fuel usage and leave a large carbon footprint, and these countries do have economic systems that are capitalistic or a mixture of capitalism and socialism. Their fuel usage, however, may be more a reflection of state of development and wealth than economic system.
You are arguing for poverty, ignorance, and exploding population, and I don’t think that’s moral.
Max,
Where does this stuff come from? It presents as gibberish. Blanket statements, that even when correct still do not make a point of any sort.
Clive Hamilton said:
The environmentalist faithful has struggled long and hard to portray itself as being the opposite of the neo-conservative faithful.
But that narrative is all wrong.
Lewandowsky, Schmidt and Karl are not the opposite of Cheney, Kissinger and Rumsfeld, but their mirror image.
Glenn, I don’t think so, but I’m open to your
explanation.
max10k,
The scare mongering.
The stating of one’s vision of truth as if it were self-evident and beyond dispute.
The take-no-prisoners, “Us” vs. “Them” rhetorical style in which dissenters or doubters are demonized. In the case of the neocons, skeptics are blasted as being “traitors,” “the enemy,” and “anti-freedom.” In the case of the environmentalists, skeptics are excoriated as being “anti-science,” “creationists,” or “conspiracy theorists.” As Bush infamously said: “Either you’re with us, either you love freedom, and nations which embrace freedom, or you’re with the enemy.” The same is the true with the environmentalist faithful: no middle ground to be found in that camp.
The conjuring up of nighmare scenarios based on the flimsiest of intelligence, knowledge, and information.
The manipulation, manufacture, and denial of empirical evidence.
The conviction that, if the will and the resolve are sufficient, factual reality can be shaped to confom to the party line.
The incompetence.
The corruption.
PA,
Montgomery County MD?
Grew up there. My dad and one of my brothers still live there.
Hansen rocks ! His critics should prepare to eat crow.
Glenn, thank you for your reply. I tend to agree with you about Cheney and Rumsfeld. I’m not sure I agree with you about Kissinger. I don’t agree with you about the others. Well, agreement on 2 out of 6 is better than total disagreement.
Glenn Steele,
Remember, Bush and Cheney made it possible for the oil and gas industry to give US cheap gas and lots more oil – thus making industry more competitive, regaining many of the industries and jobs that had been forced out of USA, and also reduced US’s dependence on oil from Iraq, Iran, and other unreliable foreign sources.
Bush and Cheney removed the important impediments that were blocking progress. Obama has spent much of his political capital reimposing impediments of cheap energy – i.e. blocking progress!
“Those on the left are as predisposed to sift evidence through ideological filters; but in the case of global warming it happens that the evidence overwhelmingly endorses the liberal beliefs that unrestrained capitalism is jeopardizing future well-being, that comprehensive government intervention is needed, and that the environment movement was right all along. for neo-conservatives accepting these is intolerable, and it is easier emotionally and more convenient politically to reject climate science.”
It is always funny how people on the left attack neo-conservatives. Apparently it pisses them off that they can’t BS and play the neo-conservatives the way they have steamrollered the oldo-conservatives. I’m not even sure what a “Matrix” style conservative is but they do irritate liberals for some reason.
The best explanation for why liberals believe in global warming (using Democrats as a proxy for liberal – like those bark thingies.) is mental illness:
https://i.imgur.com/vDEfHgr.jpg
There must be a lot of independents that believe in global warming because they are almost as crazy as the Democrats.
The trend in LOD since 1973 has been – 0.048 ms/Y. With the 3300 in Greenland ice loss,1500 or so in Antarctic ice loss, and the 0.017ms/y tidal drag It should have been a trend of +0.020 ms/Y. Not only is it the wrong value but the wrong direction.
The data on climate scatter plot as a featureless cloud with no discernable trend. There is some warming, but no accurate attribution. The scientists are still the in process of “rounding up the usual suspects”. The “facts” on global warming are cherry picked from the cloud and “adjusted” to fit mistaken assumptions. Hard physical evidence (MWP tree lines, LOD, etc.) refute the official story.
The lack of good historic data, inadequate scientific understanding of climate processes, and GCM models that are simply failures, have allowed “climate science” to be twisted into a political tool.
PA knows a lot about being crazy.
I live in a nest of liberals. Montgomery county is about as infested as it can get. So I am very familiar with crazy, “paralysis by analysis”, and other liberal idiosyncrasies.
However, when it comes to crazy I only have “observer” status.
” in the case of global warming it happens that the evidence overwhelmingly endorses the liberal beliefs that unrestrained capitalism is jeopardizing future well-being”
Just one piece of evidence, please.
I’m not aware of any developed country today that has unrestrained capitalism. It was fairly unconstrained in the 18th and 19th Centuries when it not only jeopardized the future well-being of Native American tribes but pretty much wiped them out, or at least played a large part in their destruction.
Wow. Was it Capitalism or pure hegemony that decimated the Native Americans? Was it Capitalism that drove the steppe nomads to sack the Mediterranean civilizations? Is it Capitalism that drives Isis?
No. Every organism that has ever lived would take over the universe and be expanding outward at the speed of light but for constraints. Don’t blame the impulse. Impossible. Manage it.
Corporations do not exist in a vacuum. The nature of democratic capitalism is that corporations are reflections of us. We enable everything they do.
One of the tenets of capitalism is private property, but in Native American cultures land was a shared resource rather than owned by individual members of tribes. By taking the land European settlers and their descendants destroyed Native American cultures. The idea of Manifest Destiny also played a role.
The notion of private property did not destroy Native American cultures. The Mississippian and other stationary, urban agricultural native cultures were gone before Jamestown.
The notions of private property and nationalism ultimately follow from fixed agriculture. The freed range cattle husbandry that first displaced the nomadic natives of the west was more akin to the shared resource ethic of the natives (even today on BLM land).
I’m just pointing out the irony that to the extent that environmentalist ( not everybody and not every policy ) act against economic development, the are bad for the environment.
Now, absolutes are a trap, and economic development means increased efficiency, and increased efficiency means less labor, and less labor means fewer jobs, and fewer jobs could mean worker revolt. Or it could mean even further reductions in births when people realize even less value of humans but increasing cost to raise and educate them.
These are the dark problems I worry about.
I worry about those things too, but do they result from unrestrained capitalism? Shouldn’t the public sector also strive for increased efficiency?
Today, as long as a worker is capable and has the will to work, even if it requires re-locating and/or accept reduced pay, he shouldn’t be unemployed long after being displaced by labor-saving efficiency. Not that this is easy to do.
I do see a potential problem in the future, however, if there is a growing mismatch between what employers need and what many young labor force entrants have to offer. It could become serious problem if the job market worth of more and more worker’s is insufficient for their support.
From the article:
…
Boston Dynamics’ new “Atlas” robot is a game changer, not just for companies, but for society, Insider.com CEO Jason Calacanis said Wednesday.
“This is really the end of manual labor. When you watch this video, he’s walking through the snow; he’s wobbly, but he gets back up,” the tech investor told CNBC’s “Squawk Alley.”
“Manual labor is going to end in our lifetime, and in this video you can see how close we really are. It’s a huge societal issue with jobs, but it’s going to be a huge lift in terms of efficiency of companies that nobody expected.”
…
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/24/google-robot-is-the-end-of-manual-labor-vc.html
Yeah, I was worried about that in the seventies, yet I have spent significant parts of my life doing manual labor. Willis too. There may be some phenotypes who can just be hydroponic brains; not me.
The robots can only assemble new things, they can’t fix old ones. Your brave new world will be a new, new new, disposable world.
Who is going to fix the robots? Methinks the same kids capable of fixing our cars today.
Interesting article on robots. Don’t know about manual labor being completely eliminated, but don’t doubt less an less will be needed.
gymnosperm on February 26, 2016 at 9:10 pm |
“The notion of private property did not destroy Native American cultures. ”
————–
No, the notion didn’t, but whites practicing the notion did. Putting the notion of Manifest Destiny in practice also helped.
Take these beads and leave. This land is my private property now, and you savages are trespassing. It’s God’s will.
The natives were certainly ruthlessly and brutally displaced. It was a process that began when the first agricultural civilizations displaced the predecessors.
The agricultural civilizations were themselves terrorized by nomadic pastoral civilizations from the steppes whose concept of private property was very different.
I do not believe Genghis Kahn was a capitalist, but he was every bit as brutal in his conquests as the colonists of the Americas.
Jerome (no relation I am sure),
Gavin Schmidt (who by the way works for NASA, the people that are responsible for our satellites) continues to ignore the satellite and balloon temperature data as do the authors of the paper.
Until the satellite data is factored into a “reconciliation” of the pause it is incomplete.
https://i.imgur.com/y6SQi8C.gif
That isn’t the solution. The Congress should amend the NASA appropriation language so that GISSTEMP is defunded and the staff RIFed, when the post-2008 CGAGW anomaly reaches 0.3°C.on historic data that only had a 0.45°C anomaly to begin with.
GISStemp is worse than BEST and BEST captures all the UHI and station aging.
There is no excuse for maladjusting dead data to an ever greater trend for 8 years in a row. In 4 years the NASA CGAGW anomaly will be greater than the real anomaly. We need to set in stone, a limit on how badly we will let NASA lie to us.
Turbulent Eddie’s challenge:
I’ll bet you can’t name any.
____________
max1ok’s response:
Ha !
Bangladesh
And a whole lot more in the listed countries in the linked article.
http://www.cityam.com/1412941112/developing-countries-are-most-supportive-free-markets
Good for them. I believe they deserve the right to develop and end human suffering.
Instead of creating confusion with the use of a word like ‘hiatus’ to describe every bump and wiggle, can we all just get along and accept that the global warming curve has become wooblesome in recent decades?
Calling it a “pause” (an even worse, a “pause in global warming”) seems to me to be a strange thing to do (if I were an activist,, I might be inclined to just call it “bizarre.”)
IMO, what makes sense is to calculate the trend extending over the entire period of significant aCO2 emissions – unless someone can provide a validated mechanistic explanation for why the current period should be distinguished from the previous decades. As such, to the extent that the trend in recent decades affects the long-term trend, so be it.
The surface temperature trends haven’t changed a great deal, but the last I checked, MSU trends since 2001 ( which is still short of the 17 years identified by many as significant ), are actually negative to which the word pause would apply.
MSU trends?
What is the mechanism that you propose to distinguish that less than 17 year period?
Why not just consider that period as part of the long-term trend? To the extent that the trend during that period is different than the previous period (or subsequent period), it will affect the long term trend.
But glad that you’re referring to surface temperature trends as opposed to “global warming,” because despite what certain activists testify to before Congress, surface trends
Does Not Equal Sign (clipped to polyvore.com)
“global warming.”
Trying again (last attempt didn’t turn out quite as I expected):
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/DoesNotEqual.jpg
you meant AMSU trends.. and yes.. there is a potential problem with the way MSU and AMSU are stitched together..
An expected result from fouling up the meaning of ‘global warming’ and also of obscuring the benefits of warming. Expect unintended consequences, too.
====================
“but the last I checked, MSU trends since 2001(…), are actually negative”
You should check again (data here). From Jan 2001 to Jan 2016:
UAH V6 TLT: 0.230 °C/Cen
RSS TLT: -0.023 °C/Cen (but check next month)
UAH V6 TMT: 0.315 °C/Cen
UAH V5.6 TLT: 1.044 °C/Cen
You should check again (data here).
Yes, I suspect the El Nino has had an impact.
RSS TLT: -0.023 °C/Cen (but check next month)
And check next year, also.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
http://www.thegwpf.org/statistical-forecasting-how-fast-will-future-warming-be/
There is another bear lurking in the woods. Statistical forecasting methods give a 2100 prediction that isn’t much different than today.
If the climate models aren’t fixed to more closely emulate reality, reasonable people will ignore them and seek more realistic and likely forecasts.
Two things,
Already been busted and doesn’t go to 2100.
If your prediction fails in a year or less, how good can it be for 84 years?
Apparently the Russian models are more accurate, but they predict little warming.
The new president (assuming Trump wins) should give the US modelers 1 year to get their act together and provide better results than the Russian models. Programs that fail to achieve the goal should be discontinued.
We should provide some funding to the Russian modeling program and run the Russian models on the NASA/NOAA supercomputers anyway. They may just let us use the models in exchange for a slice of supercomputer time.
Further, the realism of the RCP emissions assumptions should be examined by an pool of experts and the IPCC required to produce realistic RCPs as a condition of future US funding of the IPCC.
Just need to follow their lead; from memory it was better clouds, lower water vapour feedback, and better oceans.
If wishes were horses, models would provide.
=======================
Of course, sensitivity is lower and fear, panic and guilt evaporate like summer rain on hot asphalt.
=====================
So Kim,
You prefer models with oceans, clouds and water vapor feedback to models with statistical forecasting methods?
It’s nice when models predict. The Russians are on to something.
==============
Kim, can you show me that the Russians can beat Hansen?
I’ve worked with Russians and they are pretty tough and Hansen is pretty scrawny.
I’m betting on the Russians.
https://i.imgur.com/uYf9nkr.jpg
The Russian INM-CM4 model beats the pants off the US models. It isn’t even close.
So give me a link to these tough Russian models and I’ll check them against Hansen.
It’s a pencil fight, maybe the scrawny guy is the one you should bet on.
The satellite trends are 0.142 C/decade by UAH and 0.123 C/decade by RSS, so your chart there is busted as fraudulent, as it shows a much lower trend for the satellite data.
If the real UAH and RSS were graphed on that chart they would be at 0.46 to 0.52.
The Russian models are at about 0.3 so, off by about 0.16 to 0.22, not bad.
But Hansen predicted Scenario B to be 1.0 C in 2015, and the actual result using the met station data he was modeling was 2015 at 0.99.
So Hansen was closer.
But Hansen predicted Scenario B to be 1.0 C in 2015, and the actual result using the met station data he was modeling was 2015 at 0.99.
So Hansen was closer.
No need to guess:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/Hansen.png
All trends for the satellite era are less still lower than Hansen C ( the one in which CO2 emissions completely ceased in 2000 ).
bobdroege | February 25, 2016 at 4:24 pm |
The satellite trends are 0.142 C/decade by UAH and 0.123 C/decade by RSS, so your chart there is busted as fraudulent, as it shows a much lower trend for the satellite data.
The chart is by Dr. John Christy, the scientist behind UAH. Take it up with him.
The satellite trend isn’t 0.142 for UAH. Don’t know where you got that mistake from.
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/2/9/2148
“What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979?”
The same points were made in a peer revewed paper in the journal “Remote Sensing”.
It says the tropical troposphere layer has a warming trend of 0.09°C/decade. What is illustrated in the chart is consistent with his peer-reviewed paper published in a scientific journal.
It can’t be fraudulent because it is “peer-reviewed” and all that.
You seem to be a climate change tourist.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714000545
Climate change and tourism: Time for environmental skepticism
Tourism scholars tend to endorse the most pessimistic assessments regarding climate change, despite the fact that it is a highly controversial scientific topic. This research note provides the balance that is missing from the overly alarmist studies on climate change and tourism. Notwithstanding the common notion in the academic tourism literature, recent research provides evidence that the mainstream reports on anthropogenic global warming are vastly exaggerated, and that human-induced greenhouse gas concentrations do not play a substantial role in climate change.
Hansen rocks ! His critics should prepare to eat crow.
Turbulent Eddie,
So you have a chart, this one is missing the Met station data that Hansen modeled his work on, so you are not comparing the resulting temperature trends on the metrics Hansen was using to make his predictions.
Hansen didn’t make any predictions of what the satellites would do at that time.
Your mistake.
PA,
RSS is Christy, UAH is Spencer, again, your mistake.
I got the UAH trend here,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
is recent up to the latest published data
Your remote sensing paper published peer reviewed data for 20S to 20N, which are compared to global models, again your mistake.
RSS is Christy, UAH is Spencer, again, your mistake.
BD you need to learn to be correct when you correct people.
http://nsstc.uah.edu/users/john.christy/
Dr. John R. Christy is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he began studying global climate issues in 1987. Since November 2000 he has been Alabama’s State Climatologist. In 1989 Dr. Roy W. Spencer (then a NASA/Marshall scientist and now a Principal Research Scientist at UAH) and Christy developed a global temperature data set from microwave data observed from satellites beginning in 1979. For this achievement, the Spencer-Christy team was awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991
Carl Mears.is Vice President / Senior Research Scientist at Remote Sensing Systems..
Please sanity check your mis-corrections in the future.
Observations should fall outside the simulated spread sporadically because of internal variability – we do not expect the observations to always match the ensemble mean.
Duh. When you are wrong, you are wrong.
“Sigh”. It is their assumptions.
If climate scientists estimated the acceleration of gravity, the CO2 forcers would guess 15 to 45 m/s2
The Ice Melters would guess -10 m/s2.
For reference the acceleration of gravity (or acceleration due to gravity) is 9.803 m/s2 in New York City (it varies a bit from place to place).
In what aspect of human endeavor is success considered to be the result of basing the reasonableness of behavior today on statistical predictions about what the world will be like 100 years later?
If Judith has a Nature subscription, she can share the PDf of this artical-
http://www.nature.com/npg_/company_info/content-sharing.html
interesting. i don’t subscribe to nature but georgia tech does. I will contact them
Nice to see climate scientists from both camps finding common ground. This paper, when freely available, will be a must-read as far as I am concerned.
Along with their recipe for making climate sausage–e.g.,
… should be considered irrelevant given Mike Mann’s nature trick experience.
If you need a copy of anything just go here
http://sci-hub.io/
Yup seems to work well –e.g.,
“Our results support previous findings of a reduced rate of surface warming over the 2001–2014 period — a period in which anthropogenic forcing increased at a relatively constant rate.”
To bad it cannot correct the authors’ mistakes. The authors should have written –e.g., “a period in which anthropogenic CO2 increased at a relatively constant rate but did not result in the amount of forcing that we had hypothesized and during which time we continued to mislead the public and demonize scientific skeptics.”
Good data source- TY
Thanks Steven.
Scott
Mosher, that is a piracy site. Do you endorse piracy?
See http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/02/25/sci-hub-how-does-it-work/ and
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/02/25/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-oa/
So the cause of the “pause” or “hiatus” (as it was described in scores of p-r papers” was: many things.
Next: we get apologies from alarmists who had denounced (often in quite deranged fashion) folks who dared to quote these papers?
FYI: here’s a list of the four-score most-cited papers about causes of the pause, with abstracts and links (also with links to ungated pdfs, where available) — sorted into 12 explanations.
Chris Mooney picked it up: The ‘pause’ that was/is wasn’t: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/24/top-scientists-insist-global-warming-really-did-slow-down-in-the-2000s/
Maybe it was Mannopause.
Years and years ago I directly asked him, more than once, when he was going to write ‘Calm World’, and ‘The Democrats’ War on Science’.
=======================
Heh, and Spencer Weart ‘The Discovery of Global Cooling’.
====================
~Didn’t Spencer Wert write, Prose to Live By , My Life as a Mummy and, The Scientific Method and Logic Can Only Get In Our Way?
“My training as a physicist and historian of science has given me some feeling for where scientific claims are reliable and where they are shaky. Of course climate science is full of uncertainties, and nobody claims to know exactly what the climate will do. That very uncertainty is part of what, I am confident, is known beyond doubt — our planet’s climate can change, tremendously and unpredictably. Beyond that we can conclude (with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2007 report) that it is very likely that significant global warming is coming in our lifetimes. This surely brings a likelihood of harm, widespread and grave (see this summary of expected impacts). The few who contest these facts are either ignorant, or so committed to their viewpoint that they will seize on any excuse to deny the danger” ~Spencer Weart
Interesting comment from Ed Hawkins:
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/making-sense/#comment-2023
Thanks Judy – I do think there is some coalescing. Karl, Diffenbaugh and Lewandowsky are all on record suggesting they agree with what is in Fyfe et al.
cheers,
Ed.
Wow! Climb down in full force.
Uh, they’re saying different things that are not really very different.
One would, free falling. Sort of like having all of climate science pass before your eyes.
===================
I don’t know much about Ed Hawkins but his comments seem pretty reasonable.
Overall though I suspect that Karl, Lewandowski, Mann, Santer, etal are about protecting their gravy train after seeing what the CSIRO is doing in Australia.
Australia has discover the solution. If the next president is a Republican he should have an independent staff evaluate the various climate programs and data generation efforts and “thin the herd” of the most biased departments.
Less Greenpeace propaganda and less government spending is a win-win.
A Democrat president wouldn’t be interested in honest results, and will probably increase the NSF “CO2 is bad” science grant program.
If the NY Times editor has been imprisoned for allowing the publication of Andy Revkin’s 2014 article trying to explain the hiatus, he can now be released.
“There’s been a burst of worthy research aimed at figuring out what causes the stutter-steps in the process [global warming] — including the current hiatus/pause/plateau that has generated so much discussion. The oceans are high on the long list of contributors, […]”
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/a-closer-look-at-turbulent-oceans-and-greenhouse-heating/
I note that Andrew Dessler maintains skeptics dropped their arguments about the hockey stick and surface station record.
It is nice to learn that. Couldn’t prove it by me given what I read every day. Another warmist theory down the drain.
In 2011 Roger Pielke, Sr. discussed an article based on interviews with a dozen climate scientists who were asked
“Why, despite steadily accumulating greenhouse gases, did the rise of the planet’s temperature stall for the past decade?”
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/candid-comments-from-global-warming-climate-scientists/
Climate scientists with no agenda have publicly acknowledged the hiatus for some time.
“Karl, Diffenbaugh and Lewandowsky are all on record suggesting they agree with what is in Fyfe et al.”
Karl et al. PR release “These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.”
Diffenbaugh, “debunking the climate hiatus”
I guess you cannot be thrown under the bus when every one flies :)
I think there must be a very fascinating story behind the emergence of this paper.
My thinking is that Lewandowsky has insulted too many scientist in the field with his seepage theory. So while this “Making sense” paper does seem to throw Lewandowsky a conciliatory bone, saying that they understand and agree that he was only worried about the impression that climate had ‘stopped’, and that this was the ‘context’ he was working in, I think there is a sub-textual purpose to re-assert that the field can actually work like a science that develops outside of its comfort zone.
Since this is not what you would understand after you read Lewandowsky’s original “seepage” papers. You can easily see there’s so much more he that really talks about rather than a fear that scientist say that climate had ‘stopped’. He actually implies a pathological state of thinking among climate scientists, wedded to a rather strong implication that they should fall into some correct line. His papers are quite implicitly condemnatory of the whole field.
For example, Lewandowsky feels embolden to makes grand statements like this:
“In effect, scientists came to doubt their own conclusions, and felt compelled to do more work to further strengthen them, even if this meant discarding previously accepted standards of statistical practice.”
So I think part of the reponse the ‘Making Sense’ paper is making is that the climate field is actually robust to challenges, especially with statements like this that seem a litany of “questions” they are robust to:
“The recent decadal slowdown, on the other hand, is unique in having occurred during a time of strongly increasing anthropogenic radiative forcing of the climate system. This raises interesting science questions: are we living in a world less sensitive to GHG forcing than previously thought, or are negative forcings playing a larger role than expected? Or is the recent slowdown a natural decadal modulation of the long-term GMST trend? If the latter is the case, we might expect a surge’ back to the forced trend when internal variability flips phase”
It seems that Lewandowsky isn’t going to fight too hard in public against this paper, going as far to say in Mooney’s WP article:
““As far as we are concerned,” Lewandowsky said by email, “there is no discrepancy between us and Fyfe et al…”
However as captdallas says above, it seem highly unlikely that Lewandowsky can actually agree with the paper’s scientific conclusion since the paper is adamant there *had* been a slowdown and it was not something to be ignored:
“In all three observational datasets the most recent 15-year trend (ending in 2014) is lower than both the latest 30-year and 50-year trends. This divergence occurs at a time of rapid increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs)’. A warming slowdown is thus clear in observations”
Yet Lewandowsky had said in his AMI paper that this kind of talking was pathological thiking. i.e. here:
“Simply by being exposed to the pause meme for over a decade, and by explaining short-term fluctuations from a longer-term trend in the terms posed to them, scientists have accepted a contrarian frame, and this acceptance may in turn have subtly changed scientists’ way of thinking (Lewandowsky et al. 2015).”
To illustrate, we provide citations from some recent articles on the “pause” in Table 2.
(Santer et al. 2014,p. 185).“Despite continued growth in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, global mean surface and tropospheric temperatures have shown slower warming since 1998 than previously.”
(Sillmann et al. 2014,p. 1).“Despite increasing radiative forcing, the observed globally averaged annual mean surface temperature (Tmean) has only increased very slowly since the late 1990s (e.g., IPCC AR5 2013).”
In summary, my bet is that whatever the show of support there may from authors of this paper towards Lewandowsky, Lewandowsky has lost a lot of good will. I think he will quietly slip out of climate social science after this. His credibility has been exposed as utterly valueless.
“I think there must be a very fascinating story behind the emergence of this paper.”
Hopefully, this will lead to a little less emphasis on chasing GMST for press releases and more emphasis on longer term ocean SST/OHC relationships as Pielke Sr. mentions. If is wasn’t for no scientist left behind policy, the ocean imbalance would be closer to 0.4 Wm-2 +/- 0.25 Wm-2 and a fair portion of that would be related to solar precessional timing. There has already been at least one paper questioning the parameterization of solar forcing and a number recommending cloud parameterization changes that would bring models more in line with observations, provided observation interpretations stop jumping around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Lewandowsky
Stephan Lewandowsky (born 3 June 1956) is an Australian psychologist.
Stephan Lewandowsky is a climate scientist to the same extent a witch doctor (“head shrinker”) is a climate scientist.
Please explain the relevance of his opinion.
Heh, they all went mad at once and they’re all becoming skeptical one by one at once.
=============
Well, ‘slowdown’ won’t work.
The pause is killing the cause.
http://olatedogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/foxscauseforpaws.jpg
Thanks Glenn, I like that one.
I used it a long long time ago.
Fyfe? I’m reminded of the Concord crew, who rallied to meet the British coming from Lexington, and then turned around and escorted them back to town, with drum and fife.
=================
Pause, hiatus, even slowdown imply an inevitable resumption of warming. Crawl implies nothing. Be agnostic, as we know next to nothing.
We have few tools to separate human from natural warming. There is ample evidence from the past that warming far greater and faster has happened.
Most likely we are in a phase analogous to 1945 to76 that started a decade early for reasons unclear but probably related to the 1997 finale.(The current nino big on sensible but light on latent heat transfer).
Will the crawl continue up or slant down? All bets off in this quarter.
Yup, and the dangers to the cooling side, the benefits to the warming.
===============
But we need to dial it back a little to the peak in the temperature vs crop yield curve. We have passed the up slope part and are now going down.
http://snag.gy/rDztL.jpg
@Dr Curry:
“JC message to Lewandowski et al.: (snip)”
Thanks professor. I now have coffee spattered all over my ipad. :)
I missed the keyboard but my shirt took the brunt. JC made the perfect response to a man whose self-anointment as an expert in climate science has been made when he’s not even an expert in his own field.
Reminds me of the remark allegedly made by John Lennon about Ringo Star when asked if he was the best drummer in the world replied “He’s not even the best drummer in the band!”
So you believe everything John Lennon says as Gospel truth?
Ringo never even looks like he’s trying.
http://imageshack.com/a/img633/9295/rsQ8bD.png
Hi Telee. Cat got your tongue? Or are you trying to outdo Mosher in brevity?
I wouldn’t mind knowing your point.
Gaining cred
Has a head
Wot sees ahead
While still in bed.
=============
http://snag.gy/4be50.jpg
Michael Mann! Yeah! My hero!
Oh wait… Hmm. Now what do I do?
The above comment applies to both skeptics and AGW-believers.
Eerie.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/24/political-science-professor-odds-of-president-trump-range-between-97-and-99/
Do numbers above 97%, trump AGW now? It looks like it is time to augment your means or limit their desires. Settled already from the looks of things.
Gosh, this guy needs to get him a gig in climate science, where his crystal ball could catapult him into rock star status.
Well, gee, the global warmers have been consistently wrong. You can’t do much worse than consistently wrong.
He has a real shot at success (compared to global warmers.).
If Trump is elected he will have the pedigree to be appointed official climate predictor.
Spotted on twitter:
Dr. Lucas Bergkamp @lbergkamp Feb 25
“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing.” (Fyfe) twitter.com/MichaelEMann/s…
Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann Feb 25
@lbergkamp Yes, I’m taking issue w/ that, as other work of mine & othres shows that’s largely artifact of data sampilng & outdated forcings.
So, Mann is a coauthor on the Fyfe et al. paper. He apparently disagrees with the paper. How to explain this?
Do you believe in magic?
Maybe, at long last, we have found something that is truly unprecedented.
http://snag.gy/SJOyU.jpg
Maybe this bit is his contribution to the Frye paper
“Given the variability evident
in Fig. 1, it is obvious that the choice of start
and end dates will determine the extent to
which trends over one interval are larger
or smaller than those over another interval
(as shown in ref. 7).”
The short term trends with high uncertainty makes is difficult to make the case that the rate has changed when the range of the short term estimate includes the previous rate
Tamino as always is spot on
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/no-slowdown/
Thirty year trends indicate a slowdown also, though not great: from ~1.9C/century to ~1.7C/century.
The seventeen year trend ( reputed to be significant ) is around 1.4C/century.
So, yeah, there is a slowdown, but not cessation.
Again, there should be a slowdown, because forcing slowed down.
Thirty year trends, for example HADCRUT4
1986 to 2016 – 0.166 +/- 0.052 C/dec
1971 to 2001 – 0.174 +/- 0.056 C/dec
17 year trend also from HADCRUT4
0.133 +/- 0.114 C/dec
They all look different don’t they, but as you don’t know what the real value is, you are not providing evidence that they are different.
Scientifically speaking, one doesn’t say 0.133 +/- 0.114 is less than 0.174 +/- 0.056.
It’s still before breakfast, and I’m feeling extra credulous.
==================
Perhaps Mann didn’t get to read the final draft that was being submitted in detail. Lol. He went for the ride to increase CV. It is not the first time I see this type of things and collaborators in an article disagreeing with parts of it.
There is a value to never having to say: “I’m sorry.”
“So, Mann is a coauthor on the Fyfe et al. paper. He apparently disagrees with the paper. How to explain this?”
Credulity is all in perceptions. The question is: whose perceptions? To Mann, he has been right all the time, other’s just don’t see his correctness nor can read exactly what he has written. Others, i.e., the world outside of his establishment are the one’s impaired in their reasoning and expertise.
Michael and Gavin share this commonality: “we are the keepers of what is right and Biblical in word. It doesn’t matter if the data is old or new Testament, there is only one God: Climate Science as we espouse it.
Quit Apologizing! World Needs Fossil Fuels, Saudis Tell Oilmen
“We should not be apologizing,” al-Naimi said in a speech to the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston on Tuesday. “We must not ignore the misguided campaign to ‘keep it in the ground’ and hope it will go away.”
But he also says this:
Al-Naimi said he’s a big supporter of renewable energy, noting Saudi Arabia’s ambition to become a major producer of solar power. He said it’s “inconceivable” that clean energy suppliers can meet growing energy needs and that the oil industry needs to be more aggressive in putting across its point of view. He also went further than most industry executives by admitting that pollution from what they produce is damaging.
and this:
“The problem is the harmful emissions we get from burning coal, oil and gas,” al-Naimi said. “The solution is to work on technology that minimizes and ultimately eradicates harmful emissions. Some don’t accept this view, but I have faith in technology.”
Man’s use of fossil fuels is an immense boon, the Human Carbon Cornucopia.
===========
Not as important as wind. Fire and water also. How about chocolate?
Making sense of the paper, ‘Making sense of the early 2000’s warming slowdown,’ a list of authors that includes Michael Mann is what informs us most. The medium is the message and in this instance, Professor Lindzen spotted the real message before it this paper ever saw print –i.e., it is irrelevant:
The real problem with the climate narrative is there is no climate narrative.
Climate has gone up and down in the past.
Climate will go up and down in the future.
Climate by definition is the goes up and down part of the general weather pattern.
Global warmers have been provably wrong about the goes up and down part in the past and will be wrong about the goes up and down part in the future. Given the success of their past guesses, they don’t know why it goes up and down any more than anyone else.
What really angers me is the “warming is bad” part of the narrative. I can drive down to Williamsburg and see what 2°C warmer looks like. It looks wonderful and the German potato salad and beer are great!
Further, the CO2 rise is more a function of deforestation than emissions. Stopping CO2 emissions won’t bring back the trees – many of which were sacrificed for biofuel – the previous brilliant green idea.
Finally.the tab for “Cimate Change”, renewable energy, and Smartgrid comes to about a trillion dollars. For much less than that the government could have paid the coal burners the one or two hundred billion to upgrade emissions controls and we would have clean and cheap power, and not flushed the vast majority of the money and got nothing for it.
The paper says, “… there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming … which can be explained by a combination of factors.”
Why the pretense of closed minds actually being open to making an allowance for other factors, in combination or otherwise, that effect the weather and by extension the climate?
Richard Lindzen commented in the WSJ (2009), as follows:
“Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.”
More from MSM, and contains very specific and interesting quotes:
“The interpretation [the NOAA group] made was not valid,” said John Fyfe, a climate scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada and lead author of the commentary. “The slowdown is there, even in this new updated data set.”
” Fyfe and his colleagues think the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a natural variance in the climate system that switches between positive, neutral and negative phases, explains the recent slowdown.”
“There are other explanations for the slowdown and also for why climate models did not project it. It is possible that the world is not as sensitive to greenhouse gases as the models assume or factors that cool the planet are playing a bigger role than expected, Fyfe said.********
“These models are not perfect, and they might be overly sensitive,” he said.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-global-warming-slow-down-in-the-2000s-or-not/
******”This reduction arises through the combined effects of internal decadal variability, volcanic and solar activity, and decadal changes in anthropogenic aerosol forcing.” (from the Fyfe paper’s concluding remarks)
I disagree with Prof. Curry. I don’t think this article is important at all. It does not contain any new science and as usual it includes suspicious statistics to deliver what amounts to an opinion piece.
For some reason Michael Mann, Ben Santer et al. are backtracking on the Pause. That reason can only be damage control before next year’s La Niña. They think they have gone too far denying the Pause to the point they are damaging the Cause.
Instead of celebrating, true skeptics should scorn this new attempt at twisting science for their benefit. This is another bad article even if we agree with some of the conclusions. In reality they are trying to remain in control of climatology official line even if they have been proven wrong on the Pause.
The attempt to change the Pause to the Slowdown is Goebbelian. Those who control the language set the rules.
It is disgusting science and everybody should see that.
The symbolic importance is great.
This marks the end of the “pause denial” phase of global warmers. We had:
1. Denial and Isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
This is a sign we are entering the final stage:
5. Acceptance
Scientific articles should not be about symbolism. You have press editorials for that.
I don’t really give a tinker’s damn about the pause. I care about the decadal average warming figure since 1979 which is the earliest date we had instrumentation remotely capable of obtaining a Global Average Temperature with tenth degree precision.
David,
Why is one-tenth of such importance to you?
1. Satellites are not global coverage.
2. The errors are larger than surface temperatures
3. The structural uncertainty is enormous.
See the rss ATBD. Especially the sections about mismatch between msu and amsu.
Or read the rss error analysis.
Satellite measurements are calibrated with balloon soundings. They’re adequate for the task and miss only a very small percentage of the earth’s surface at the poles. The surface station instrument network is laughingly inadequate in comparison. No Stephenson screens on most of the earth’s land surface and none on the ocean. Very limited coverage on the ocean in shipping lanes only and then by several disparate incomparable methods. All volunteer with little discipline or training in taking and reading the instruments. Instruments that read in whole degrees not tenths. You know all these things so that makes you a lying POS doesn’t it?
“Satellite measurements are calibrated with balloon soundings. ”
Then why don’t they agree?
There’s a good match before 2000. Not after. Thousands of land thermometers wrong after that.
Imagine how that is possible. There might be other explanations. How about satellite calibration?
Here nalysis with RATPAC data since circa 2000.
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/compare_all.jpeg
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/diff.jpeg
Again smacks of calibration problems (with the new AMSU on noaa15)?
Well, the land temperature trends aren’t worth much and should not be a guide to anything.
They deliberately incorporate as much UHI as possible and have mastered catching all the instrument aging (warming) trends.
I am unaware of any effort by BEST to remove the CRS and MMTS age related warming. If they do compensate, some enlightenment as to the method from Mr. Mosher would be appreciated.
Until all the age-related warming and all the UHI are removed the warming trends are an interesting exercise in chart making for Greenpeace propaganda and don’t have a lot of other value.
The best solution is require by law, that instruments use anti-aging technology such as enclosures that bleach out over time. This would give a net cooling trend for all new and replacement instruments and would gradually balance out the existing station warming trend.
What is the provenance of those graphs? I can’t seem to find them anywhere except on a warmist blog.
That was a rhetorical question.
It appears Tamino is using lower stratosphere not lower troposphere. Can’t be sure because he doesn’t say what layer is represented. That’s what happens when you truck with blog science. Here’s both layers compared to RSS and UAH produced by the Met Office.. The radiosonde record of interest is HadAT2.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/tropical_upper_air.png
Don’t use blogs for primary references in the future. Write that down.
Even Stern is having doubts about climate science:
http://www.nature.com/news/economics-current-climate-models-are-grossly-misleading-1.19416
Why don’t you read before linking? His doubts are that economic models about climate risks costs are grossly underestimating potential risks from climate change. He says those models are wrong because they don’t include risks from the clathrate gun.
Heh, I have no problems when the alarmists like Stern are willing to become even more alarmist, it will only make the inevitable come sooner than ever: complete loss of credibility. Ergo, it’s nice to agree on something, that is the current models being rubbish, and even better that the alarmist are willing to make complete fools of themselves.
http://snag.gy/oFULC.jpg
Hawkins seems to be trying to make a case that the paper wasn’t, which is that he thinks the slowdown is longer than past instances. It isn’t. In fact the speed up just preceding it was the same length which is why the 30-year trend didn’t budge during this slowdown because they simply cancel each other. This is also why the paper doesn’t criticize Lewandowsky while Hawkins seems to make an attempt to disagree with the other authors.
The decadal trend since the start of the satellite temperature record budged a whole lot. Downward of course. It now stands, since 1979, at 1.2C/decade in the only decades in which we have instrumentation remotely capable of measuring a global trend with such precision.
1.2C/decade is not alarming. Thanks for playing.
Hawkins didn’t seem particularly interested in the satellite data, more in the way Lewandowsky was exonerated. See his point of clarification at the end, for example.
The sudden lack of interest in the only instrumentation designed to find the earth’s average temperature is revealing. There was no lack of trumpeting the satellite record amongst the usual suspects in from 1985 – 2005 when it showed decadel warming in excess of 0.20C. Now that the decadel average over its entire 37 year history is down to 1.2C/decade suddenly due to inclusion of a 21st century slowdown in warming it’s not of much interest anymore.
Do you really not see how dishonest this makes those people who embraced the satellite record when it confirmed their biases and dropped it like a hot potato when it didn’t?
David Springer:
Do you mean .12C/decade?
1.2C/century makes sense, but not 1.2C/decade.
Thanks for clarifying.
I meant to write 0.12C/decade.
PA
How does the Russia INM-CN4 model differ from the model the IPCC uses?
Maybe they are on to something.
I got lost in the code(cards for the 1620 were my high water mark), but from memory it was clouds, water vapour feedback, and oceans.
=================
Thanks, Kim. A study of their work might shed some light on natural variations and climate sensitivity.
I have only scanned the article being discussed here but found the general direction of it in accords with the analysis I have been doing with the New Karl Global temperature series.
First of all the importance of the recent warming slowdown is and should be with comparison of the latest CMIP5 model outputs and whether such a slowdown can be detected there. I have used Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA)and Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD)to show that there is a statistically significant slowdown in the periods 2000-2014, 2002-2014,and 1998-2014 when compared to the preceding periods of 1976-1999, 1976-2001, 1976-1997. SSA and EMD allow for nonlinear trends and turn out to have smaller confidence intervals than linear regression. Karl15 used linear regression.
Once that statistical significance for the observed temperature slowdown could be demonstrated the next step was to look for similar slowdowns in the CMIP5 extended Historical temperature series. There were none for any of the CMIP5 model runs for the 24 year followed by 15 year periods for the the periods starting in 1970 to 1980. It is well known that the timing of natural fluctuations in global temperatures are poorly timed to that the observed series. With that in mind I used the RCP60 and RCP85 beyond the 1980 start time to look for 24 year and following 15 year slowdowns similar to that found in the observed (New Karl Global). I found none even though in general the red and white noise in the CMIP5 models is more favorable than the observed series in producing these period warming slowdowns.
The paper is an attempt by sycophants of Michael Mann to lay the groundwork for marginalizing scientific skeptics by proving that a lack of global warming is actually proof of global warming.
Garner all authority nigh,
Masque of Climate Ball on high;
Tall the walls or all will die,
Never, ever, question why.
==================
I have been communicating my criticisms of the Karl15 with the authors of that paper and an upcoming one that has been submitted on the subject of whether the New Karl global temperature series shows evidence of a warming slowdown. If anyone is interested I have a link below to a Word document that I have recently sent to the Karl15 authors. It deals with using SSA and EMD to measure trends and CIs for trends of the New Karl temperature series, a difference series of the New and Old Karl global temperature series and the important comparison of the recent observed slowdown with CMIP5 climate models.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jqvu1j4k2w8i7an/Karl_New_EMD_Analysis.docx?dl=0
We see the fallacy of the Left’s logic in the analysis by Paul Mathews (Lewandowsky’s loopy logic). Leftist thinking boils down to this: government-funded climatists believe America’s CO2 is causing global warming (AGW) and also that America landed on the Moon. Accordingly, those skeptical of AGW also believe the moon-landing was faked.
Want an idea that makes sense?
Puerto Rico is going BK right?
Let’s get the Left out of the regulations, liberalize the anti-energy laws and give free enterprise a chance: let PR build a nuclear powerplant there that can provide lots of megawatts to their closest neighbor who wants and needs plenty of clean energy.
It would be like PR discovering oil only better. Win-win-win! If Iran can do it, why can’t we?
Heh, get the C’s involved; it’s close enough to Haiti for their kinda work.
==================
How about an international cooperative using illegal immigrants from Syria to build it and power it with Iranian nuclear fuel?
PR can employ Chinese expertise to make the island bigger.
After having red the article, i am not impressed.
Just one single point, are they not trying to coin “The Great Hiatus” (1950–1970) in realation to the current “Slowdown” (that just ended?) to make us all understand that this slowdown is in fact a sign of accelerating AGW.
Just like the MWP became MCA.
Electric cars ‘will be cheaper than conventional vehicles by 2022
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/electric-cars-will-be-cheaper-than-conventional-vehicles-by-2022/ar-BBq2sZk?ocid=spartandhp
http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/electric-cars-failed-experiment-1-original.jpg
Since 1905, electric cars only need a high-capacity cheap battery.
Doubtful. There’s not enough rare earth metals lithium (for the batteries) and neodymium (for electric motors and generators). As soon as demand increases the prices skyrocket.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_scarcity_of_rare_metals_is_hindering_green_technologies/2711/
Data:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CosmicRaysAndSunspotsMonthlySince195801.gif
More data:
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Recent-cosmic-ray-and-cloud-cover.jpg
Reblogged this on 4timesayear's Blog.
“Unusual” is not the appropriate term. It is not even a question of observations, recent or otherwise, falling outside the spread of a simulation ensemble. The proper thing to do is to determine error term of observations, then disqualify all members of the ensemble, whose predictions are outside these error bars. Not because they are “unusual”, but because they are wrong.
The next question is, for each computational climate model disqualified this way is why its predictions were wrong. That is, find the error in these models. Once identified, it can be rectified, and the lessons learned can improve all models. On the other hand, if structure of a model is so convoluted, that it prevents identification of specific errors, that flaw in itself is enough to disqualify that model permanently and defund &. discontinue its development.
Models remaining in the ensemble after this traditional procedure applied, would hopefully match reality a bit more closely.
The pause, or hiatus cum ‘slowdown’ can also be called a warm down. The slowing down of global warming is a tapering off or recovery from the physical effects of something over the 20th century. What could the cause be? An increase in atmospheric CO2 or…
• Was the sun not previously the most active in 3000 years?
The sun is at its least active for a century, but we are still at the warmest ever. Go figure.
I figure there will be a delayed effect. Let the ocean integrator integrate a bit less sunshine , partly due to low sunspots and partly to to more cloud cover due to more cosmic rays, for several years then we’ll see how it pans out.
The skeptics don’t want to use the observed dip in solar activity to explain the pause.
Jim D,
And what do those more climate concerned wish to do w/r/t/ ‘the pause’? Wait, what ‘pause’?
Either solar activity is or is not important to forcing changes on decadal scales. If it is (and quantitatively it is), it had a hand in the slowdown because it declined during it. Have “skeptics” ruled out solar activity or not as a significant part of the cause of the slowdown?
With a positive imbalance, the ocean retains more sun. There is no lag. You are seeing less in right now, and this is what it looks like:
https://andthentheresphysics.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/worldsoceans.jpg
Same old, same old…
Make bold supportable statements just before a big climate conference/climate treaty/pending legislation…then walk it back after the damage has been done to regain your credibility for the next time you stretch the truth for political reasons.
There is another temperature proxy which indicates that the “pause” is real, and the Karlized temperature record invalid. That is the measurement of the rate of change of atmospheric CO2, which in the modern era shows a striking affine similarity to temperature anomaly:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
The rate of change of CO2 has also ” paused” in the last two decades. It matches the satellite temperatures very, very well indeed:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2_zpsnp6z3jnq.jpg
CO2 goes up faster in warmer years because, while the source has no correlation (being emissions) the natural sink that removes about half of it is less efficient when it is warmer.
If I am given the temperature record, I can replicate the CO2 record to high fidelity simply by integrating it under the affine mapping above. Human emissions need not apply.
If they are not needed, then they have no significant influence. It is amazing the lengths to which otherwise intelligent people will go to deny this obvious fact.
Emissions are twice the atmospheric increase. It is clear that the surface is a net sink, and humans are a net source. Here is a correlation for you, and this one uses total amounts.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7409/images_article/488035a-f1.2.jpg
“It is clear that the surface is a net sink, and humans are a net source.”
Oh, Gawd, not that stupid pseudo-mass balance argument again. It is an argument put forward by a naive computer scientist who knows nothing of dynamic physical processes, and regurgitated by equally naive followers.
I showed the picture. The accumulated emissions and CO2 growth are proportional and started at the same time. Just coincidence, you say. Pull the other one.
See Dr. Murry Salby’s extensive, thorough, and recent video presentation on atmospheric CO2 available here:
Just acidification of the ocean, which he ignores, shows he has the sign wrong. Net CO2 is coming from somewhere else, not the ocean.
“I don’t disagree with anything in this paper or in Ed’s blog post.”
Really?
“Overall, there is compelling evidence that there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming . . .”
You don’t disagree that there is compelling evidence that the “slowdown” is “temporary”?
And where, pray tell, is the long-term trend? From a recent comment at RealClimate — relegated to the “Bore Hole,” natch:
There is in fact NO evidence of a long term warming trend during the 20th Century. Rather than quote any of the so-called “denier” sites in this regard, I’ll quote from the well known “warmist” site, Skeptical Science, at https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-mid-20th-century.htm:
“Although temperatures increased overall during the 20th century, three distinct periods can be observed. Global warming occurred both at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century, but a cooling trend is seen from about 1940 to 1975. As a result, changes in 20th century trends offer a good framework through which to understand climate change and the role of numerous factors in determining the climate at any one time.”
Note the implicit distinction between a temperature increase and a trend. Yes, temperatures were significantly higher at the end of the 20th century than at the beginning, but a continuously cooling period of ca. 35 years out of 100 is inconsistent with a long-term trend. And since CO2 levels were steadily increasing during the entire 100 years (now THAT was a trend for sure), it’s impossible to see a correlation there either. And speaking of correlations, how is the early warming trend from ca. 1910 to ca. 1940 to be accounted for on the basis of AGW, since the release of CO2 during that period was just a fraction of what it is today?
Unfazed by this inconvenient evidence, our author attempts to account for the cooling period by invoking “an increase in sulphate aerosols” due to increased industrial activities after WWII, and aerosols released by volcanic activity. And yes, an increase in aerosols might possibly be responsible for the 35 year cooling period. On a different page of the same Skeptical Science blog John Cook helpfully offers a very different explanation, due to a carefully chosen array of mostly natural “forcings.” (http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation-over-the-20th-Century.html) And he could be right as well. Maybe both are right, who knows?
But the fact that someone has offered a possible explanation (or two) for the absence of a long-term trend does NOT by any means produce an actual trend where none is apparent from the evidence. One can come up with ad hoc explanations for all sorts of things, and they can certainly be taken into consideration. However, it is misleading in the extreme to claim a long term trend exists where what we actually see is not a long term trend at all, but simply a hypothesis or two that’s been offered in lieu of such a trend.