Early 20th century global warming

Posted on January 23, 2019 by | 377 Comments

by Judith Curry

A careful look at the early 20th century global warming, which is almost as large as the warming since 1950.  Until we can explain the early 20th century warming, I have little confidence IPCC and NCA4 attribution statements regarding the cause of the recent warming.

This is an issue that has long interested me.  Peter Webster wrote a previous post Mid 20th Century Global(?) Warming, which focused on the warm bump that culminated in the 1940’s.  My interest in this period was reignited while working on my report Sea Level and Climate Change.  Then, the recent paper by Zanna et al. discussed in Ocean Heat Content  Surprises further made the wheels turn.

In response to the Ocean Heat Content thread, David Appell posted a link to this paper on twitter:

The early 20th century warming: Anomalies, causes and consequences

Gabi Hegerl, Stefan Bronniman, Andrew Shurer, Tim Cowan

Abstract:  “The most pronounced warming in the historical global climate record prior to the recent warming occurred over the first half of the 20th century and is known as the Early Twentieth Century Warming (ETCW). Understanding this period and the subsequent slowdown of warming is key to disentangling the relationship between decadal variability and the response to human influences in the present and future climate. This review discusses the observed changes during the ETCW and hypotheses for the underlying causes and mechanisms. Attribution studies estimate that about a half (40–54%; p > .8) of the global warming from 1901 to 1950 was forced by a combination of increasing greenhouse gases and natural forcing, offset to some extent by aerosols. Natural variability also made a large contribution, particularly to regional anomalies like the Arctic warming in the 1920s and 1930s. The ETCW period also encompassed exceptional events, several of which are touched upon: Indian monsoon failures during the turn of the century, the “Dust Bowl” droughts and extreme heat waves in North America in the 1930s, the World War II period drought in Australia between 1937 and 1945; and the European droughts and heat waves of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Understanding the mechanisms involved in these events, and their links to large scale forcing is an important test for our understanding of modern climate change and for predicting impacts of future change.”

HELLOOOOOO!

This paper ‘shocked’ me for several reasons.  First, I can’t imagine how I missed this paper when it was first published in Oct 2017 – apparently it received no publicity (oops now I remember, this was when i messed up my neck/shoulder/hand). Second, every time in the context of an attribution argument that  I say ‘but the early 20th century global warming (not to mention the mid century cooling) and all those heat waves and droughts,’  I (along with my argument) am dismissed.  I will paraphrase something I recall Gavin Schmidt saying: “We understand the late 20th century warming and have good forcing data, so no point to paying attention to the early warming where the data is far inferior.”  And last but not least, the AMO and PDO are explicitly considered in Hegerl et al.’s attribution argument.

The Hegerl et al paper is actually pretty good (as far as it goes).  Lets take a closer look at their analysis and argument, then I will take it a bit further.

Hegerl et al. provides a summary of forcing from CO2, volcanoes and solar (Figure 4, below).  In 1910, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has been estimated to be 300.1 ppm; in 1950 it was 311.3 ppm; and in 2018 it is 408 ppm. So, the warming during the period 1910-1945 was associated with a CO2 increase of 10 ppm, whereas a comparable amount of warming during the period 1950 to 2018 was associated with a 97 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration – almost an order of magnitude greater CO2 increase for a comparable amount of global ocean warming.  Back when CO2 concentrations were lower, each molecule had a greater radiative impact – but not THAT much.

Clearly, there were other factors in play besides CO2 emissions in the early 20th century global warming. In terms of external radiative forcing (Figure 4, above), a period of relatively low volcanic activity during the period 1920-1960 would have a relative warming effect, although the period from 1945 to 1960 was a period of slight overall cooling. Solar forcing in the early 20th century is uncertain, with estimates of warming of varying magnitude, although the magnitudes are insufficient for solar to have been a major direct contributor to the early 20th century global warming.

Exactly how Hegerl et al.come up with 40-54% attribution to external forcing isn’t clear.  My own back-of-envelope calculations suggest a smaller number.

Hegerl et al. analyzed the internal variability associated with ocean circulations during the period since 1900. They found that the unusual cold anomaly circa 1910 originated in the South Atlantic, and then spread globally in the subsequent decade, leading to cold anomalies in both Atlantic and Pacific.  This is very interesting, and something I hadn’t seen before.

This rarely discussed cold period was followed by strong warming in the Northern Hemisphere, which was particularly pronounced in high latitudes. Hegerl et al. summarized some previous research that might account for mechanisms of the strong high latitude warming in the Northern Hemisphere, including multi-decadal ocean oscillations.

Hegerl et al. focus their arguments regarding internal variability associated with large-scale ocean circulations on the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Warm phases of the both the AMO and PDO contributed to warming particularly during the 1930’s and 1940’s. They also consider atmospheric circulation impacts from the Pacific Walker cell, North Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Dipole Model.

Concluding statement:

“These anomalous events occurred during a period of strong global-scale warm- ing, which can be attributed to a combination of external forcing (particularly, greenhouse gas increases, combined with a hiatus in volcanic events) and internal decadal variability. The exact contribution of each factor to large-scale warming remains uncertain, largely due to uncertainty in the role of aerosols in the cooling or stabilization of climate following the middle of the 20th century.”

The data

Let’s look at the data.  First the surface temperature data.  It is instructive to consider land and ocean separately, and also to look at the hemispheres separately.

Looking at the land surface temperatures, the various data sets show discrepancies during this period, as per this image from Berkeley Earth:

Note, Berkeley Earth land values are lowest circa 1910 (of the values plotted above, I suspect Berkeley Earth is most reliable over land in early 20th century).  I would be interested in a better diagram that also includes Cowtan and Way (the Arctic was very warm in the 1920’s and 1930’s), but I am not seeing much in the way of land-only comparisons.  Perhaps Zeke, Cowtan, or Robert Rohde has a better diagram.  Note: over land, the recent warming is substantially greater than the early 20th century warming.

And now the ocean temperatures, from HADISST:

The 1910 cold anomaly is larger in the SH, but seems coincident with the timing of the NH cold anomaly (I have NO IDEA what kind of data ‘adjustments’ were made during this period, but i do know that data was very sparse in the Pacific and SH oceans during this period).  But globally, you can see that  the ocean warming between 1910 and 1945 was about the same magnitude as the warming from 1976 to present (recent warming is smaller in the SH).

Now, compare the ocean surface temperatures with the Zanna et al. global ocean heat content (note: inflection points in the Atlantic are generally the same as for global ocean):

The dip circa 1910 starts at the surface, and is seen in the deep ocean circa 1925.

Now take a look at sea level and sea level rise data. Klaus Bitterman’s post at RealClimate provides a useful summary:

The recent sea level rise is believed to have started in the mid-19th century (prior to these graphs.  Consideration of the rates of sea level rise in the early 20th century shows an increase in the rate of sea level rise starting in 1920 and peaking in the 1940’s.

Clearly, ocean heat content is not the only thing driving sea level rise.

Things really get interesting when we look at the Arctic. The warming in the Arctic during the early 20th century is described by Polyakov et al:

The Arctic warming began in 1915, with an increase of about 1.6 C between 1915 and 1940.

The mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet provides an additional line of evidence for Arctic warming, that also has direct relevance to sea level rise.  The following figure is from Fettweis et al. (2008) (note Fettweiss et al. have more recent analyses that are generally consistent with the 2008 paper, but I think the 2008 figure is best):

The impact of the early 20th century Arctic warming is seen in the negative mass balance for Greenland, from the 1920’s to mid 1950’s.  This Greenland mass loss is consistent with the increase in the rate of sea level rise circa 1920 – 1950.  While early estimates of Greenland mass balance are associated with substantial uncertainty, the early century mass loss is consistent with the early 20th century Arctic warming and increasing rate of sea level rise.

LeClerq et al. (2014) developed a new data set of worldwide glacier fluctuations.  The data set shows relatively small fluctuations until the mid-19th century, followed by a global retreat that was strongest in the first half of the 20th century. (note: the paper doesn’t include a diagram that is useful the purpose here).

“Despite increasing global temperatures in the 20th century, this retreat is strongest in the period 1921– 1960 rather than in the last period 1961–2000, with a median retreat rate of 12.5 m/yr in 1921–1960 and 7.4 m/yr in the period 1961–2000.”

There are too many independent lines of evidence to ignore the early 20th century global warming.

Attribution

The underlying reasoning behind their detection and attribution approach seems to be this:

1) an estimate of internal variability is derived from multi-century to multi-millennial climate model simulations without external forcing.  However the climate models have substantial deficiencies in simulating multi-decadal internal variability (e.g. Kravtsov et al) with regards to magnitude, spatial patterns and their sequential time development (and this is not to mention centennial to millenial scale internal variability).

2) Based on these model calculations of internal variability, they infer that the warming since 1950 exceeds the magnitude of natural internal variability . Therefore you cannot explain this warming from natural variability alone.

3) They then look at climate model simulations for the 20th century, with internal variability averaged out, so all you see is the forced response.  And ‘miraculously’, the forced response ‘sort of’ agrees with observations.  Therefore we are justified in assuming that all the warming is ‘forced’ (oops spot the flawed logic 2 –> 3).

The “fingerprinting” approach used by Hegerl et al. ignores the fingerprints of multi-decadal variability; multi-decadal variability is only invoked when the forcing is insufficient to explain the observations.

This attribution ‘sort of’ works, according to the principle that two ‘wrongs’ make a ‘right’ – neglect of multidecadal and longer internal variability plus climate model sensitivity to CO2 that is too high = 100% attribution of recent warming to anthropogenic causes.

As a case in point, from the 4th U.S. National Climate Assessment (p 118 and ff):

“Multi-century to multi-millennial-scale climate model integrations with unchanging external forcing provide a means of estimating potential contributions of internal climate variability to observed trends. Based on multimodel assessments, the likely range contribution of internal variability to observed trends over 1951–2010 is about ±0.2°F, compared to the observed warming of about 1.2°F over that period.”

“A recent 5,200-year integration of the CMIP5 model having apparently the largest global mean temperature variability among CMIP5 models shows rare instances of multidecadal global warming approaching the observed 1951–2010 warming trend. However, even that most extreme model cannot simulate century-scale warming trends from internal variability that approach the observed global mean warming over the past century. Thus, using present models there is no known source of internal climate variability that can reproduce the observed warming over the past century without including strong positive forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

Circular reasoning at its ‘finest.’

Additional insights are provided by this paper:

Early 20th-century Arctic warming intensified by Pacific and Atlantic multidecadal variability

Tokinaga, Xie, Muk

Abstract: “With amplified warming and record sea ice loss, the Arctic is the canary of global warming. The historical Arctic warming is poorly understood, limiting our confidence in model projections. Specifically, Arctic surface air temperature increased rapidly over the early 20th century, at rates comparable to those of recent decades despite much weaker greenhouse gas forcing. Here, we show that the concurrent phase shift of Pacific and Atlantic interdecadal variability modes is the major driver for the rapid early 20th-century Arctic warming. Atmospheric model simulations successfully reproduce the early Arctic warming when the interdecadal variability of sea surface temperature (SST) is properly prescribed. The early 20th-century Arctic warming is associated with positive SST anomalies over the tropical and North Atlantic and a Pacific SST pattern reminiscent of the positive phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation. Atmospheric circulation changes are important for the early 20th-century Arctic warming. The equatorial Pacific warming deepens the Aleutian low, advecting warm air into the North American Arctic. The extratropical North Atlantic and North Pacific SST warming strengthens surface westerly winds over northern Eurasia, intensifying the warming there. Coupled ocean–atmosphere simulations support the constructive intensification of Arctic warming by a concurrent, negative-to-positive phase shift of the Pacific and Atlantic interdecadal modes. Our results aid attributing the historical Arctic warming and thereby constrain the amplified warming projected for this important region.”

As summarized in my sea level report:  In general, years with positive AMO index are associated with relatively high Greenland runoff volume and vice versa (Hanna, 2013; Mernild and Liston, 2012; Mernild et al., 2017). Hofer et al. (2017) found that the reduction in Greenland’s mass balance since 1995 is caused by decreasing summer cloud cover, which has a warming effect from increased solar radiation. The observed reduction in cloud cover is strongly correlated with a state shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), promoting high-pressure conditions in summer that inhibits cloud formation and also reduces precipitation.

So what we  have is some very fine research on multi-decadal to millennial scale internal variability by Xie et al., Kravtsov, Huybers et al., Meehl et al and others.  And it all gets ignored by the circular reasoning of formal attribution studies.

JC reflections

In order to have any confidence in the IPCC and NCA attribution statements, much greater effort is needed to understand the role multi-decadal to millennial scales of internal climate variability.

Much more effort is needed to understand not only the early 20th century warming, but also the ‘grand hiatus’ from 1945-1975.  Attempting to attribute these features to aerosol (stratospheric or pollution) forcing haven’t gotten us  very far.  The approach taken by Xie’s group is providing important insights.

Once we do satisfactorily explain these 20th century features, then we need to tackle the 19th century — overall warming, with global sea level rise initiating ~1860, and NH glacier melt initiating ~1850.   And then we need to tackle the last 800 years – the Little Ice Age and the ‘recovery’. (See my previous post 400 years(?) of global warming).  The mainstream attribution folk are finally waking up to the importance of multidecadal ocean oscillations — we have barely scratched  the surface re understanding century to millennial scale oscillations, as highlighted in the recent Gebbie and Huybers paper discussed on Ocean Heat Content Surprises.

There are too many climate scientists that expect global surface temperature, sea ice, glacier mass loss and sea level  to follow the ‘forcing’ on fairly short time scales.  This is not how the climate system works, as was eloquently shown by Gebbie and Huybers.  The Arctic in particular responds very strongly to multidecadal and longer internal variability, and also to solar forcing.

Until all this is sorted out, we do not have a strong basis for attributing anything close to  ~100% of the warming since 1950 to humans, or for making credible projections of 21st century climate change.

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377 responses to “Early 20th century global warming”

  2. Roy W. Spencer | January 23, 2019 at 10:18 am |

    at least for the global oceans, a time dependent 1D model with ENSO forcing/feedback optimized to match CERES data since 2000 can produce the early 20th Century warming (it also uses the RCP forcing scenario). The warming is due to a transition from stronger La Nina activity to stronger El Nino activity. The early 20th Century response is an independent result of the model, not an exercise in curve fitting. http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/1D-model-1880-2017-results-Tsfc-plot-revised-1.jpg

    • matthewrmarler | January 23, 2019 at 1:28 pm |

      Roy W. Spencer: The warming is due to a transition from stronger La Nina activity to stronger El Nino activity.

      Is that transition “due to” something?

      • James Cross | January 23, 2019 at 5:55 pm |

        It could have been due to the graph I posted below. Additional greenhouse gas forcings.

      • Roy W. Spencer | January 23, 2019 at 6:18 pm |

        Of course it’s due to “something”… but in a nonlinear dynamical system that “something” might not be periodic enough for us to give it a name. Or, maybe it’s the Pacific (multi-)Decadal Oscillation, which some consider to be a low frequency manifestation of ENSO. What causes the sun to have an 11-year sunspot cycle? Is that “due to” something?

      • JCH | January 23, 2019 at 6:55 pm |

        Is that transition “due to” something?

        It’s due to ABCOTWO.

      • matthewrmarler | January 23, 2019 at 7:55 pm |

        Roy W. Spencer: Of course it’s due to “something”… but in a nonlinear dynamical system that “something” might not be periodic enough for us to give it a name.

        I thought that your sentence was as vacuous as if you had written that the warming was caused by one of its symptoms. Or “the transition from stronger La Nina activity to stronger El Nino activity was caused by the warming.” In a system of coupled high dimensional nonlinear dissipative dynamic oscillators, such an apparent transition might not indicate any change at all in the underlying dynamics.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2019 at 9:20 pm |

        Matthew is one who focuses on the form of words rather than the content of ideas. And his choice of words – such as vacuous – are often unfortunate, unfair and unnecessary.

        The perturbation may be small or even stochastic but it is undoubtedly there at many scales in the dynamic spatio-temporal chaos of the Earth system. .

        “You can see spatio-temporal chaos if you look at a fast mountain river. There will be vortexes of different sizes at different places at different times. But if you observe patiently, you will notice that there are places where there almost always are vortexes and they almost always have similar sizes – these are the quasi standing waves of the spatio-temporal chaos governing the river. If you perturb the flow, many quasi standing waves may disappear. Or very few. It depends.” Tomas Milanovic

      • matthewrmarler | January 24, 2019 at 12:34 am |

        Robert I Ellison: Matthew is one who focuses on the form of words rather than the content of ideas.

        The most important word missing from Roy W. Spencer’s post was “maybe”, as in “maybe the warming was due to a transition from a stronger La Nina activity to a stronger La Nina activity.” As he noted, there might have been an external perturbation than prompted that transition. However, it may be true, as I suggested, that the transition was caused by the warming; causation of such observed past co-occurrances usually can not be clearly ascribed. And maybe there is in the dynamics of the Earth climate system such non linear transfers such that the appx thousand -year periodicity can occur without a [quasi-] periodic forcing.

        I do often point out the loose use of language which obscures the “contents” of the ideas; and other stylistic or personalistic details such as absolutes and overconfidence. Sure you can observe chaotic behavior in creek flows; what you can deduce about the climate from that and most of your other citations is vague or obscure (or both), such as your repeated “suggestion” (my word, you tend to be more sure) that something somewhere will change in the time span of 2018 – 2028.

      • matthewrmarler | January 24, 2019 at 12:36 am |

        oops! “to a stronger El Nino”

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 24, 2019 at 12:54 am |

        Yawn… the 20 to 30 year periodicity in the Pacific state – btw – is observed in proxies over millennia. The Pacific state will shift again soon – if it hasn’t already.

      • matthewrmarler | January 24, 2019 at 5:42 am |

        Robert I Ellison: if it hasn’t already.

      • JCH | January 24, 2019 at 9:09 am |

        Some parts of the government are still open. One is the NOAA ENSO ONI page: Oceanic Niño Index. You can easily analyze all the data since whatever, ~1950, and arrive at a number that nets ENSO activity to a single plus-or-minus number.

        It’s going to be close to zero.

        The notion that a period of La Niña dominance is going to flattened the GMST trend is so yesterday. Da Paws died a violent and horrible death, and these misguided folks are trying to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on its dead fetid blue lips. The effect of La Niña dominance, the negative phase of the PDO, is completely temporary, likely visible in a graph for less than 10 years, and any moderate-to-strong El Niño knocks the stuffing out of it and the GMST is right back to .2 ℃ per decade over the first two decades of the 21st century.

        And then it will get bigger. Why? Because CO2 is the control knob of this climate.

      • JCH | January 24, 2019 at 3:13 pm |

        MEI is no ONI. You like it; I think it’s worthless.

      • afonzarelli | January 24, 2019 at 8:33 pm |

        http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000

        We are no warmer than we were exactly 17 years ago, hence the pause is back. (da news of de demise of da paws is premature)…

      • JCH | January 24, 2019 at 8:44 pm |

        Udderly stoopudd.

      • Turbulent Eddie | January 25, 2019 at 10:00 am |

        And then it will get bigger. Why? Because CO2 is the control knob of this climate.

        Where we agree is this: CO2 tends to lead to the accumulation of heat within the atmosphere, indicated by global annual mean temperature.

        Unfortunately for your thesis, global annual mean temperature doesn’t have much to do with climate, indicated by the fact that global annual mean temperature is not a term in any of the equations of motion of the atmosphere.

        And strangely, your supposition that ENSO ( indicated by ONI, but not MEI ) hasn’t changed much contradicts your statement the CO2 is the control knob. ENSO variation does correlate strongly with climate variation ( regional temperature and precipitation fluctuation ). But you believe this strong correlate hasn’t changed much, consistent with climate not changing much, in spite of increasing CO2.

      • Turbulent Eddie | January 25, 2019 at 10:05 am |

        “MEI is no ONI. You like it; I think it’s worthless.”

        Your opinion could worth, but only if you could offer some substantiating reason, which you haven’t, though you intimate that you like it because it confirms your pre-existing ideas.

        ONI is temperature only and only for a certain equatorial strip.
        MEI is multi-variate, including wind and pressure, so, perhaps, for a circulation change effecting far removed portions of the planet, wind and pressure are important.

      • afonzarelli | January 25, 2019 at 11:33 am |

        Udderly stoopudd

        You know what’s utterly stupid? Waiting for a bunch of eggheads fiddling with trend lines to tell us when the pause is back. There has been no net warming for seventeen years. (the pause IS back)…

    • David Wojick | January 23, 2019 at 5:38 pm |

      If it is a longish term chaotic oscillation then there is no discernible cause. The butterfly effect applies to explanations as well as to predictions.

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2019 at 6:15 pm |

      “Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.”
      NAS 2002.- Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, p14

      Solar activity may be implicated on centennial scales in the early 20th century ENSO transition. 20 to 30 year periodicities are a bit of a mystery.

    • Olof R | January 24, 2019 at 5:06 am |

      Dr Spencer says that: “The [early 20th Century] warming is due to a transition from stronger La Nina activity to stronger El Nino activity.”

      A look at relative Nino 3.4 temps from KNMI Climate Explorer tells the exact opposite: (green line is 10y average)

      http://postmyimage.com/img2/381_tsiersst_nino3.4a_relyr0.png

      So I suggest to scrap the model and go back to the drawing-board, or rethink/rephrase:
      “The [early 20th Century] warming is due to a transition from stronger El Nino activity to stronger La Nina activity.”

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 24, 2019 at 5:48 pm |

        You can’t eyeball in frequency and intensity from this.

      • Turbulent Eddie | January 25, 2019 at 10:10 am |

        Nino3.4 is temperature only, and only for a small region.

        The MEI clearly indicates a decrease of strong La Nina and an increase in strong El Nino, particularly with respect to modern warming:
        https://turbulenteddies.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/extended_mei_change_2017.png

        This does not obviate CO2 based radiative warming.

        But it also contradicts a static climate where only CO2 is changing.

      • Olof R | January 31, 2019 at 11:49 am |

        Unfortunately the MEI itself has a trend, or a drift, which makes it less useful for comparison over long periods. It must be detrended first.

        However, it doesn’t matter if one looks at Nino3.4 SST, SOI, or MEI, detrended or not. There is simply no compelling evidence of a shift from la Nina to el Nino dominance between 1900 and 1940.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 31, 2019 at 4:47 pm |

        Multi-decadal variability in the Pacific is defined as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (e.g. Folland et al,2002, Meinke et al, 2005, Parker et al, 2007, Power et al, 1999). IPO is an expression of coherent Pacific states – a cold IPO and and an increase in the frequency and intensity of La Nina and vice versa.

        The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947). The suggestion is that SAM and NAM is solar modulated.

        So here’s Olaf’s Nina 3.4. It shows an early 20th century increase in Pacific SST. Entirely consistent with a transition to greater El Nino frequency and intensity.

        http://postmyimage.com/img2/381_tsiersst_nino3.4a_relyr0.png

        “ENSO causes climate extremes across and beyond the Pacific basin; however, evidence of ENSO at high southern latitudes is generally restricted to the South Pacific and West Antarctica. Here, the authors report a statistically significant link between ENSO and sea salt deposition during summer from the Law Dome (LD) ice core in East Antarctica. ENSO-related atmospheric anomalies from the central-western equatorial Pacific (CWEP) propagate to the South Pacific and the circumpolar high latitudes. These anomalies modulate high-latitude zonal winds, with El Niño (La Niña) conditions causing reduced (enhanced) zonal wind speeds and subsequent reduced (enhanced) summer sea salt deposition at LD. Over the last 1010 yr, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below-average (El Niño–like) epochs, 1000–1260 ad and 1920–2009 ad, and a longer above-average (La Niña–like) epoch from 1260 to 1860 ad. Spectral analysis shows the below-average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2–5 yr, while the above-average epoch is associated more with variability around 6–7 yr. The LDSSS record is also significantly correlated with annual rainfall in eastern mainland Australia. While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910–2009 ad) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and southeastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.”

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vance2012-antartica-law-dome-ice-core-salt-content-e1540939103404.jpg

    • astroclimatelink | January 24, 2019 at 6:11 pm |

      Roy Spencer,
      It is often claimed that the PDO is a low-frequency manifestation of the ENSO. I believe that the ENSO and the PDO are both just the natural responses of the atmosphere/ocean system to external forcing. The PDO is the response on inter-decadal timescales or longer (i.e 10 to 100’s of years), while the ENSO is the response on inter-annual to decadal timescales.

      I believe that the primary external forcing factor that contributes to the (natural) decadal to centennial changes in the global mean temperature is associated with the alignment of the 31/62 year Perigean Spring Tidal cycle with the seasons.

      For what its worth, I refer you to my recent blog post that cites one of my Energy and Environment papers from 2013. I am sorry but this paper is behind a paywall, however, I can send you a copy off-line if you can give me an email address. The pertinent graph from this paper (graph 3) is posted at:

      http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2019/01/why-are-scientists-actively-ignoring.html

      The papers main conclusion is that:

      whenever the relative strength and/or frequency of the El Niño events are greater than that of the La Niña events (i.e. the cumulative MEI is trending positive) then global mean temperatures increase, and that whenever the relative strength and/or frequency of the La Niña events are greater than that of the El Niño events (i.e. the cumulative MEI is trending negative) then global mean temperature decreases.

      Since I am claiming that the lunar tidal changes associated with the alignment of the 31/62 year Perigean New/Full Cycle with the seasons are responsible for the onset of El Nino events, I believe that it is this external factor that is driving much of the observed warming in the early 20th century.

      • astroclimatelink | January 24, 2019 at 6:43 pm |

        The Perigean New/Full moon cycles have natural 31/62 year tidal cycles that start in 1870, 1901, 1932, 1963, 1994 and 2025.

        If there is a phase lag of 13 years between the lunar tidal cycles and the start of a warming/cooling of the global mean ocean temperatures then:
        (Note: this just happens to be a dominant tidal pseudo-cycle that is equal to the difference between 31-year Perigean New/Ful moon cycle and the 18-year Saros cycle.)

        Perigean__+____ 13 yrs = Start_of_Warming/Cooling

        1870_____+____ 13 yrs = 1883
        1901_____+____ 13 yrs = 1914
        1932_____+_____13 yrs = 1945
        1963_____+_____13 yrs = 1976
        1994_____+_____13 yrs = 2007
        2025_____+_____13 yrs = 2038

        The first five of these dates (i.e. 1883, 1914, 1945, 1976 and 2007) seems to coincide well with the starting dates of the periods of global warming/cooling seen in figure 3.

    • jimeichstedt | January 23, 2019 at 11:06 am |

      Just because you only show graphs of two greenhouse gases doesn’t mean only greenhouse gases are responsible for temperature.

      • Scott Koontz | January 23, 2019 at 11:31 am |

        Agreed, but what does this site and it commenters offer as the other forcings? Most everything I have read here concentrates on the natural breathing of the earth, like El Nino and La Nina. Point is that natural warming forcings would make for a sine-like graph of temps with a little variation thrown in, but in the long term would show no warming and possibly cooling because of the sun. CO2 tipped the graph up.

        So what, besides the obvious CO2, is causing the long-term increase?

      • James Cross | January 23, 2019 at 11:59 am |

        Just coincidence that the curve of the greenhouse gases starts to move upward from the LIA and then more sharply at the start of the 20th century?

        What changes were going on? Population growth. Industrial Revolution. Expansion of agriculture and cattle farming. Automobiles and trains.

        What other changes in land use might these have caused in addition to increasing greenhouse gases.

      • matthewrmarler | January 23, 2019 at 1:35 pm |

        Scott Koontz: Point is that natural warming forcings would make for a sine-like graph of temps

        How do you know that? The climate system is composed of multiple linked high dimensional dissipative dynamic systems. Without much more quantitative knowledge, we can not say what shape the oscillations would produce in the temperature graphs. As I often write, consult the later chapters of the book Modern Thermodynamics by Kondepudi and Prigogine for a short introduction to such dynamical systems. For more depth there is the superb book Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, 2nd edition, by Steven Strogatz; and many others.

      • Scott Koontz | January 24, 2019 at 6:31 pm |

        Matthew, I have the math background and know enough about dynamic systems to know we are discussing a bounded one, not some crazy number plug that can result in sudden warming. You don’t magically get more energy from nothing, and we’re not receiving more from the sun. It’s the blanket.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 24, 2019 at 6:53 pm |

        Sin curves and bounded chaos?

        In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’

      • afonzarelli | January 24, 2019 at 8:04 pm |

        https://i.imgur.com/9mwzJmV.png

        (graph swiped from javier)

      • afonzarelli | January 24, 2019 at 8:06 pm |

        ‘ceptin koontzie we are getting more energy from the sun…

      • afonzarelli | January 24, 2019 at 8:41 pm |

        JCH, can’t you read the word pause on Javier’s graph? (or does he have to spell it paws just for you?)…

      • Scott Koontz | January 25, 2019 at 8:08 am |

        Yes Robert, the temps can head off in one direction or another without notice. Because… random chaos?

        Energy has to come from somewhere, and it seems the basics are being missed by many here.

        Also, what’s with the childish “‘ceptin koontzie” from afonzarelli? Is this typical banter on this site?

      • JCH | January 25, 2019 at 10:08 am |

        According to Tamino, there was no pause in warming. Calling him names is not an argument.

      • JCH | January 25, 2019 at 10:15 am |

        Until they explain why, after 1945, the GMST did not go back down to 1900 levels, there is no reason to take their arguments against attribution of post 1970 warming being more than 100% seriously:

        https://i.imgur.com/nRTrSBt.png

      • afonzarelli | January 25, 2019 at 11:53 am |

        Is this typical banter on this site?

        Have you read some of the bile that comes out of JCH’ mouth? The answer is yes, this IS typical banter on this site. Sad, i know, but i think my comments are rather tame compared to his. (so go ride his backside, not mine)…

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 25, 2019 at 2:19 pm |

        “Yes Robert, the temps can head off in one direction or another without notice. Because… random chaos?

        Energy has to come from somewhere, and it seems the basics are being missed by many here.”

        There is very little math of spatio-temporal chaos. Slowing down – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567225/ – dragon-kings – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567225/ – stadium waves – https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-011-1071-8 – and very basic network math – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007GL030288 .

        But it is not ‘random’ – a comment that shows Scott has not a freakin’ clue at all. Complex dynamical systems shift as regimes in means and variance through internal dynamics. Energy comes from the sun in the Earth system. What changes in the system with climate shifts is emitted and reflected energy.

      • cerescokid | January 26, 2019 at 3:52 am |

        Eskay

        “I have the math background…”

        The mathematical representation of reality will still be the mathematical representation of and not ever reality itself, regardless of how many times you close your eyes and wish upon a Star. This illusion that they are the same is especially pronounced in climate science.

        I understand that pharmacological studies are underway to address the cognitive debilitating effects of hubris. This Two A Day pill, while potent, reaches its optimum efficaciousness when coupled with 60 years of observations of falsified theories and unreplicated studies. But don’t let that stop you from punching in those textbook equations into your Texas Instrument hand held.

      • CMS | January 26, 2019 at 2:31 pm |

        JCH Why do you end your graphs in 2016, instead of 2018. Oh, I get it the last two years showed a marked decline from a Super El Nino spike down to the level of the pause.

    • Willis Eschenbach | January 23, 2019 at 3:03 pm |

      James Cross | January 23, 2019 at 10:31 am |

      Best to keep the explanation simple. It really is human influence.
      https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ContentFeature/GlobalWarming/images/greenhouse_gases_1750-2008.png

      From your graphic, CO2 went from 300 to 310 ppmv, with a corresponding forcing increase of 0.175W/m2. Methane went from 875 to 1140 ppbv, with a forcing increase of 0.05 W/m2. Total is 0.225 W/m2.

      Per the IPCC, equilibrium warming is 0.8 °C per W/m2, which would put transient warming on the order of 0.8 / 1.2 = 0.67 °C per W/m2.

      This would put the expected warming from the .225 W/m2 at 0.15°C … so no, James, your own figures show it really ISN’T human influence.

      w.

      MATH NOTES: The generally accepted formulas for forcing are:

      fMN=function(M,N) {
      0.47* log(1 + 2.01e-5 * (M * N) * 0.75 + 5.31e-15 * M * (M * N) * 1.52)
      }

      fch4=function(M, M0 = 722, N0=270) {
      .036 * (sqrt(M) – sqrt(M0)) – (fMN(M,N0) – fMN(M0,N0))
      }

      fco2 = function(C,C0 = 278) {
      5.35 * log(C/C0)
      }

      https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/aggi.html

      # Trace Gas Simplified Expression
      # Radiative Forcing, ΔF (Wm-2) Constant
      # CO2 ΔF = αln(C/Co) α = 5.35
      # CH4 ΔF = β(M½ – Mo½) – [f(M,No) – f(Mo,No)] β = 0.036
      # N2O ΔF = ε(N½ – No½) – [f(Mo,N) – f(Mo,No)] ε = 0.12
      # CFC-11 ΔF = λ(X – Xo) λ = 0.25
      # CFC-12 ΔF = ω(X – Xo) ω = 0.32
      # *IPCC (2001)
      #
      # The subscript “o” denotes the unperturbed (1750) abundance
      #
      # f(M,N) = 0.47ln[1 + 2.01×10-5 (MN)0.75 + 5.31×10-15M(MN)1.52]
      #
      # C is CO2 in ppm, M is CH4 in ppb
      # N is N2O in ppb, X is CFC in ppb
      # Co = 278 ppm, Mo = 722 ppb, No = 270 ppb, Xo = 0

    • CMS | January 26, 2019 at 2:01 pm |

      Perhaps your graph is in accord with the divergence between the Hemispheres lately.
      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4nh/plot/hadcrut4sh

  4. popesclimatetheory | January 23, 2019 at 10:53 am |

    During the little ice age, Arctic polar oceans were cold and frozen, ice on Greenland and other cold places was still flowing and thawing and depleting. The warming out of the little ice age started occurring and is still occurring because the ice extent around Greenland and other places where ice was sequestered during the Medieval Warm Period increases snowfall, was depleted to the point that it was retreating. Ice extent always does correlate with temperature. This is longer term correlations and climate scientists want instant gratification correlations. Roy Spencer told me he is only concerned about ten years ahead. He does not even consider cycles that take hundreds of years. Other climate scientists clearly suffer from this same need for instant correlations.
    We are warm now and thawed Arctic polar oceans are producing increased evaporation and snowfall. Ice volume is growing on top even as ice is being lost at the extremes, some extent is still retreating. The retreat has slowed and has caused the pause in warming. Sea Level will start to drop in the next few decades. Study the longer term correlations in ice core data and history. It took multiple Milankovich cycles to start or end and ice age because it did not really happen until ice volumes were sufficiently replenished or depleted. Ice volume causes ice extent, ice extent cycles cause temperature cycles. Ewing and Donn published this in the 1950’s and corrected some problems and published that in the 1960’s. We are now measuring enough to understand the next ice cycles and prove that the important parts of their theroy is correct.

    • popesclimatetheory | January 23, 2019 at 11:13 am |

      CO2 is one of the immediate correlations that got credit for warming that it really had nothing to do with. Consensus and Luke-warm scientists jumped on the correlations and even gave the ice extent loss over to CO2. The ice extent loss was responsible for causing the warming, it was not a result. Well the ice extent decrease is almost over and the warming will not increase much. The Arctic has opened enough to maintain the ice evaporation and snowfall on Greenland and other cold places.
      Snowfall is always rebuilding the old ice on top. Ice is always flowing and thawing and breaking off the edges and tails of ice fields and glaciers. For little ice ages the responses are hundreds of years later. For major ice ages the responses are thousands of years later. Scientists don’t think in terms of long term cycles, they only look at the closest correlations. Many things that happen in climate and weather are immediate. Those things have been studied by many. Earth internal ice cycles take hundreds and thousands of years, those things have only been considered by a few. Ice core data is available for 800 thousand years from the Southern Hemisphere and for over a hundred thousand years from Greenland. Ice is these cold places did accumulate most in warmest times and the warmest times are the reasons that ice did sequester in cold places. Cold times is when the ice continued to flow and deplete. Warm times end because the excess of ice advances and causes colder. Cold times end because the depleted ice retreats and causes warmer.

  5. Bob Tisdale | January 23, 2019 at 10:54 am |

    Hi Judith, in my monthly global temperatures updates, which I haven’t published in a couple of years, I used to include a model-data comparison of 30-year trends in global mean surface temperature. It clearly showed how poorly the CMIP5 models simulated the early 20th Century Warming.

    That one’s from the post here:
    https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/october-2016-global-surface-landocean-and-lower-troposphere-temperature-anomaly-update/

    Regards,
    Bob

  6. Bob Tisdale | January 23, 2019 at 11:14 am |

    Judith, you wrote, “And last but not least, the AMO and PDO are explicitly considered in Hegerl et al.’s attribution argument.”

    Unless they’ve redefined PDO, Hegerl et al.’s attribution argument is fatally flawed.

    The AMO captures the multidecadal variations in the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic because the AMO is detrended sea surface temperature anomalies of the North Atlantic. The PDO does not capture the multidecadal variations of the sea surface temperatures of the North Pacific, because it is NOT detrended sea surface temperature anomalies of the North Pacific. In fact, when I compared the PDO data to detrended North Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies, I inverted the detrended North Pacific SSTa data to make them align better:
    http://i56.tinypic.com/lzn0p.jpg

    From the post here:
    https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/yet-even-more-discussions-about-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation-pdo/

    Regards,
    Bob

    • JCH | January 23, 2019 at 11:16 am |

      The PDO is a pattern.

      • popesclimatetheory | January 23, 2019 at 11:25 am |

        More immediate correlation obsession.

      • astroclimatelink | January 25, 2019 at 9:19 am |

        JCH,
        As much as I love Bob and support his work, Bob is fixated on the paper-tiger argument that the PDO does not represent the Nth Pacific ocean surface temperatures anomalies. He ignores the fact that almost no one in climatology claims that the PDO is a direct measure of sea surface temperature anomalies. They all realize that it is an index that quantifies the spatial distribution of sea surface anomalies in the Nth Pacific. However, this does not stop Bob from getting out his paper tiger and destroying it with a baseball bat.

  7. popesclimatetheory | January 23, 2019 at 11:24 am |

    Ice extent is treated solely as a result of temperature changes. This is wrong.

    Ice extent is a primary cause of temperature changes. Get this right or give up.

    • bigterguy | January 24, 2019 at 6:48 am |

      It seems as if the climate behaves like a buffered system, with water/ice/clouds doing the buffering. Warmer temperatures increase cloud cover and precipitation, both of which act to reduce the temperature. All the ocean currents and irradiation are perturbations on the system that slowly readjusts to keep it within its steady state range. From a planetary perspective the temperatures over the last few million years have stayed in a rather narrow range.

  8. ristvan | January 23, 2019 at 11:26 am |

    Excellent post.
    Prof. Lindzen has made the same first half of 20th century attribution point several times.
    So did, in a very backhanded way, AR4 WG1 SPM figure 4.
    Blows the AR5 second half of 20th century ‘confident’ AGW attribution out of the water.
    And, there is another way to scuttle it. Except for the now cooled 2015-16 El Nino warming blip, there has been no statistically significant warming in this century (2000-2018). Yet that time period comprises about 35% of the total increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1958 (Mauna Loa Keeling curve). So ‘the AGW control knob’ cannot be attributed to CO2.

    • edimbukvarevic | January 23, 2019 at 1:35 pm |

      Yes, and it looks even worse for the CO2 control knob if instead od the atmospheric concentrations, anthropogenic emissions are taken into account. In 1958 emissions were about 9, in 2000 about 25 and in 2018 about 37 Gt CO2/year. So, this century comprises about 43% od the total increase on CO2 emissions since 1958.
      https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Global-CO2-emissions-by-region-since-1751.png

      • jeffnsails850 | January 23, 2019 at 5:08 pm |

        That’s a neat graph.
        It reminds us that Global Warming is almost entirely a China problem at this point. The US and EU are trending down.
        Check out the timing of that big drop in emissions for “Europe Other.” That had to be the conversion of eastern Europe to post-communism after the fall of the Berlin Wall. When capitalist nations cleaned up the mess the made by all those non-greedy socialists.
        Then look at the rapid rise of China- where a communist nation decided it wanted a bunch of dollars and used the cheapest path toward it. That would be the giant increase in emissions that the so-called climate concerned have insisted on formally inviting China to accomplish from the 1992 Rio summit until today.

        But sure, capitalism, democracy, Trump. All problems!

  9. popesclimatetheory | January 23, 2019 at 11:33 am |

    There would be little or no significant ice on Greenland if the Arctic was always frozen.,
    There would be little or no significant ice on Antarctic if the southern oceans were always cold and frozen.
    Sequestered ice in cold places did not happen much fifty million years ago.
    As continents drifted and ocean currents changed to circulate tropical warm water into polar regions, more evaporation and snowfall occured in cold places and sequestered ice increased as average temperatures fell.
    This maxed out with the major ice age cycles and now enough ice is sequestered that the new normal ice cycles are smaller. Less ice and water take part in these new ice cycles. We have an new normal.

  10. Javier | January 23, 2019 at 11:44 am |

    Solar forcing in the early 20th century is uncertain, with estimates of warming of varying magnitude, although the magnitudes are insufficient for solar to have been a major direct contributor to the early 20th century global warming.

    Don’t be so quick in discounting the Sun, Judith.

    Solar activity experimented a major increase from the 1920s to 1950.

    https://i.imgur.com/9mwzJmV.png

    This graph is made by adding the average monthly sunspot number for every month in the solar cycle and plotting the result on the central month of the cycle. It doesn’t depend on a correct identification of the solar minimum, as months close to the minima barely contribute. It gives a correct intuitive vision of how active were different solar cycles. Among other things it shows the reality of the Modern Maximum concept. The early 20th century warming started with the start of the Modern Maximum.

    The coincidence between solar activity and climate is extraordinarily good over the last 10,000 years. Periods of low solar activity almost always correspond to colder periods. In the figure, the last three cold periods and the Pause are shown to correlate to low solar activity periods. This can be extended over the entire Holocene.

    Yet, we discard the best correlation we have between climate and a forcing because it doesn’t match our assumption of how it should happen. We refuse to learn how solar activity affects climate because it doesn’t correspond to changes in TSI. That’s ridiculous.

    Internal variability appears to be the resonance of the climate system to the periodic variations in external forcing. We have the perfect example in tides. They are the product of an external forcing, but their variation resonates according to geographical constrains into an unpredictable, chaotic-looking result. Internal variability is the climatic equivalent of luni-solar tides.

    Do you want to read the most important paper that has been published on climate this last decade? Here it is:
    Davis, B. A., & Brewer, S. (2011). A unified approach to orbital, solar, and lunar forcing based on the Earth’s latitudinal insolation/temperature gradient. Quaternary Science Reviews, 30(15-16), 1861-1874.
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379111001181

    They very carefully clarify what drives climate change on this planet. Sadly, nobody is listening.

    • curryja | January 23, 2019 at 12:02 pm |

      Extremely interesting paper. Unfortunately the paper is behind paywall, with no publicly available versions.

    • cerescokid | January 23, 2019 at 1:35 pm |

      There are a number of papers on Sea Level Rise that were not included in IPCC 5, and in my opinion should have (could have) but were apparently omitted because they didn’t show acceleration.

      In your research of solar papers, did you identify some papers that you thought should have (could have) been included in IPCC 5, but were omitted because they didn’t fit the CO2 narrative?

      A couple of years ago, just out of curiosity I wanted to see how many recent solar papers had been published. I was surprised to find over 200 published in a couple of years. Not all of them could have been paid for by Big Oil. I’m not qualified to judge the quality of those papers but there can’t be that many cranks out there, and most papers found a strong correlation to temperature trends. In my opinion it’s premature to write off this vast body of research on the Sun’s impact on our climate.

      • Javier | January 23, 2019 at 2:11 pm |

        Cerescokid,

        My solar-climate folder contains 297 articles and it is very far from exhaustive, as I am very selective in what I download. I doubt more than a dozen of them are in the IPCC bibliography.

        What is really surprising is that as we know more and more about the climatic effect of solar variability, there’s less and less interest by IPCC and publishers. From TAR to AR4, and to AR5, solar forcing of climate and indirect effects of solar variability has had a decreasing importance to the point that AR5 completely dismisses it.

        In the 80s and 90s there were lots of science books on solar variability effect on climate. They have become very rare nowadays. A 2013 NRC report: “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” was completely ignored by the IPCC.
        https://judithcurry.com/2013/10/01/ipcc-solar-variations-dont-matter/

        For historical (it was always proposed but never demonstrated), and political (it does not fit the official narrative) reasons the sun is neglected (as Vahrenholt and Luning would say), but as Milankovitch would have said, “He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best.”

        No warming until 2030s-2040s due to low solar activity. Let’s see if the movement can survive to that.

    • Ulric Lyons | January 23, 2019 at 2:13 pm |

      Javier writes:
      “Periods of low solar activity almost always correspond to colder periods.”

      On land regionally, but not for the oceans. El Nino episodes are known to roughly double during centennial solar minima. With the current solar minimum there is a warm AMO phase, as there also was in the Gleissberg solar minimum, and each previous minimum.
      https://media.springernature.com/m685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-017-13246-x/MediaObjects/41598_2017_13246_Fig2_HTML.jpg

      • Javier | January 23, 2019 at 2:44 pm |

        Greenland gets warmer during prolonged low solar activity. This is well known, and a result of a weaker sub-polar gyre, weak polar vortex, meandering jet stream, and invasion of northern high latitudes by cold polar air masses that are substituted by warmer air.

        https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/figure-67.png

        Very consistent with the paper you got that figure from.
        “We show that multidecadal to centennial increases in alkenone-inferred Atlantic Water SSTs on the shelf occurred at times of reduced solar activity during the Little Ice Age, when the subpolar gyre weakened and shifted westward promoted by atmospheric blocking events.”
        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13246-x

      • Willis Eschenbach | January 23, 2019 at 11:48 pm |

        One solar cycle? Solar output has been dropping since 1980 and despite that temperatures have been rising … go figure.

        w.

        https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/standardized-sunspots-hadcrut-1978-on.png

      • Javier | January 24, 2019 at 4:00 am |

        Willis why do you continue using a semi-quantitative, human-error-prone method of measuring solar activity when quantitative data is available? Perhaps because it allows you to continue using fake memes that reveal your bias?

        https://i.imgur.com/QDsytea.png

        10.7 cm flux shows that what you say is wrong. Solar output has not been dropping since 1980. It was above the long-term average until ~ 2000, when it declined in coincidence with the pause.

      • afonzarelli | January 24, 2019 at 11:25 am |

        go figure

        Yes, Willis, puh-lease go do that. (go figure) We all all know that you’ve got one helluva head on your shoulders. Be charitable and go figure the argument for the opposing side. (it ain’t that hard) It’s as though you’ve never boiled an egg before. Or never turned the flame up too high on a stove only to turn it down a bit (and observe the pot continuing to warm). i see you doing here the same maddening thing to others that you can’t stand when others do unto you. Yer waaay better dan dis, bro’! (jus’ like dem damn referees is way better dan dat dere no call in da dome)…

      • coolclimateinfo | January 24, 2019 at 1:29 pm |

        One solar cycle? Solar output has been dropping since 1980 and despite that temperatures have been rising … go figure. – w.

        Sunspots are a visual indice, just one manifestation of the sun’s magnetic field, that when evaluated with TSI yields key insights.

        #1. Sunspots and TSI aren’t linear at high sunspot numbers:

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2s4t6tohewqrbk/AGU%20Fig6.JPG?dl=0

        #2. TSI during high solar activity creates significant downward spikes.

        SC24 exhibited far fewer such downward spikes as a result of sunspots not being so large, and this led to more continuous high solar forcing that led to the 2014/15/16 El Nino.

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/brjmi3gixj9gwyf/AGU%20Fig7.JPG?dl=0

        The solar magnetic mean field varies over time in timing and magnitude so much that it creates a large number of possible solar cycle TSI permutations via sunspot activity, referring to both Fig. 6. & 7.

        #3. Since 1980, solar output, TSI, didn’t drop much until SC24

        You are factually incorrect about the solar output as TSI was highest during 2000-02, the top of solar cycle 23.

        https://i.postimg.cc/DfBBsqdD/Top-10-TSI-years-since-1979.jpg

        The sunspot and solar flux averages for those years weren’t the highest on the list. They were at the sun’s ‘sweet spot’ in terms of TSI output, due to the non-linear relationship from Fig. 6, which is caused by large sunspot area competing with surface flux, ie TSI saturates.

        The El Nino “steps” Bob Tisdale talks about were powered by high enough long enough TSI over the decadal warming threshold since 1976.

    • James Cross | January 23, 2019 at 2:13 pm |

      TSI reconstructions do not show large variations in solar forcing.

      https://leif.org/research/TSI-Reconstruction-2014.png

      • Javier | January 23, 2019 at 2:30 pm |

        TSI reconstructions do not show large variations in solar forcing.

        Who says that solar forcing depends mainly on TSI changes? How do you know it is not UV changes, magnetic changes, solar wind changes or any other of the many things that change with solar activity?

        Do you know that the speed of rotation of the Earth changes during the winters depending on changes in solar activity with the 11-year solar cycle? How much change in TSI is required to alter the Earth’s speed of rotation?

      • James Cross | January 23, 2019 at 2:40 pm |

        If we use your graph and assume solar is the main driver then climate now should be like the Dalton Cold Period.

      • Javier | January 23, 2019 at 2:55 pm |

        If we use your graph and assume solar is the main driver then climate now should be like the Dalton Cold Period.

        That’s very simple thinking. The world has a huge thermal inertia. Think abut a large pot of water over a low fire. You increase the fire for 10 minutes to high and then decrease it back. Do you expect water to be at the same temperature as before the 10 minute warming just because you reduced the fire to the same position?

        Higher than average solar activity promotes warming. Lower than average solar activity promotes cooling. More time warming than cooling => overall warming.

      • James Cross | January 23, 2019 at 5:19 pm |

        Simple like your graph.

      • afonzarelli | January 23, 2019 at 7:47 pm |

        (javier, do you find it as painful to rebut simplistic arguments as i do just reading them?)

      • James Cross | January 23, 2019 at 8:16 pm |

        Sorry but I grew disillusioned with the solar hypothesis as year after year passes with no sign of the cooling it predicts.

      • afonzarelli | January 23, 2019 at 9:10 pm |

        So you’re basing your disillusionment on one solar cycle?

      • afonzarelli | January 23, 2019 at 9:16 pm |

        (and one cycle that has yet to run its course at that)…

      • Javier | January 24, 2019 at 4:05 am |

        I grew disillusioned with the solar hypothesis as year after year passes with no sign of the cooling it predicts.

        The solar hypothesis does not predict cooling.

        This is what it predicts:

        https://i.imgur.com/vnLmL0y.png

        And this is what it gets:

        https://i.imgur.com/Y5LVxLK.png

        What is not happening is the warming that the CO2-hypothesis predicts “as year after year passes”

      • James Cross | January 24, 2019 at 5:37 am |

        Your graph shows three “Cold” periods associated with low solar activity. Solar activity has been down for almost two decades at least and you are saying now the solar hypothesis doesn’t predict temperatures will drop with low activity. So apparently the “Cold” periods were not caused by low solar activity and the graph is meaningless.

      • Javier | January 24, 2019 at 7:30 am |

        Solar activity has been down for almost two decades at least and you are saying now the solar hypothesis doesn’t predict temperatures will drop with low activity. So apparently the “Cold” periods were not caused by low solar activity and the graph is meaningless.

        Solar activity has been down since around 2005, as solar cycle 23 ended in 2009, so less than a decade and half.

        Solar hypothesis predicts a temperature effect proportional to the missing solar activity. The Maunder Minimum was a grand minimum, with a huge loss of activity. The Dalton minimum affected three cycles, two of which had lower activity than SC24. That was almost 40 years of greater activity decrease. The Gleissberg minimum affected five cycles (SC12-16), so that is 60 years of solar decrease.

        So far the missing solar activity from SC24 is not enough to cause a noticeable temperature decrease, particularly with the big 2015-16 El Niño. I expect SC25 to be somewhat more active than SC24. That should give us some cooling, 0.1-0.2°C at least for the next decade, but not much more.

        And then people arguing against solar effect on climate forget that temperature is the result of multiple factors. Unless you assume that the increase in CO2 has no effect on temperature, the increase in CO2 should combat the cooling effect of reduced solar activity. That’s another reason I don’t expect much cooling. Yes, anthropogenic warming. Do you believe in that? Then put it in the equation.

        That’s why the solar hypothesis, considering all factors should predict a 0.0 to –0.3 °C change by 2030-35. Could be a bigger cooling if volcanic activity is high.

        The problem for you is that the CO2 hypothesis predicts +0.2°C per decade, and that ain’t happening.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 24, 2019 at 2:14 pm |

        The AMO changes inversely with the solar wind strength. Cold AMO anomalies in the early to mid 1970’s, mid 1980’s, and early 1990’s were during stronger solar wind states, and AMO warming since the mid 1990’s corresponds to a weakening of the solar wind.
        We can then extrapolate that the cold AMO anomalies around 1904. 1914, and 1924, had stronger solar wind states, regardless of sunspot numbers.
        SW temperature, density, and pressure:
        https://snag.gy/d2v3aJ.jpg

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2019 at 2:58 pm |

      “Insolation represents the first order forcing on the latitudinal distribution of surface temperatures on Earth, but forcing from the long-term variability in insolation remains small compared to other local and regional scale
      influences on the radiative balance such as vegetation, clouds, aerosols, snow and ice, as well as thermodynamic processes that influence the advection of latent and sensible heat between latitudes (Beer et al., 2009; Lindzen, 1994).”

      “… although the magnitudes are insufficient for solar to have been a major direct contributor to the early 20th century global warming.

    • Ulric Lyons | January 24, 2019 at 6:00 am |

      “Greenland gets warmer during prolonged low solar activity.”

      More importantly the AMO is warmer during solar minima.

  11. Paul Roundy (@PaulRoundy1) | January 23, 2019 at 11:57 am |

    A side point: The NAO does not promote ridging in Greenland. It is a pattern expression of anomalous ridging (or the opposite) in Greenland. It is not clear the the NAO is a cause–instead, as a pattern index, it is a tracer.

  12. udoli | January 23, 2019 at 12:02 pm |

    In 1998 there was a paper by Cliver at al. correlating the temperature to certain properties of the magnetic field (aa-index)
    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/98GL00499

  13. coolclimateinfo | January 23, 2019 at 1:24 pm |

    Solar forcing in the early 20th century is uncertain, with estimates of warming of varying magnitude, although the magnitudes are insufficient for solar to have been a major direct contributor to the early 20th century global warming.

    Dr. Curry, the real problem is people don’t understand solar forcing.
    Hegerl etal’s solar forcing is incorrect for starters.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/a5f9f61xrx7hx8b/AGU%20Fig17.JPG?dl=0

    Note, Berkeley Earth land values are lowest [20th cen.] circa 1910

    No surprise there, as 1910 was during the solar minimum of the third smallish solar cycle in a row, SC14. Hint: Weather and climate extremes are limited by the duration of solar irradiance extremes.

    There’s more to it; and all the issues mentioned are related to solar activity.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/74c6xxrxn1kjwqm/AGU%20Fig12.JPG?dl=0

    CO2 is produced by solar-warmed ocean, it doesn’t drive ocean temperatures. UAH shows ‘the globe’ correlating with ‘the ocean’ at 97%. The Ocean drives the Atmosphere. Since CO2 is a product of ocean warming, CO2 therefore is not a climate driver of the ocean or atmosphere.

    Apologies if the graphics are outsized here. This is the only blog that doesn’t auto-size them. What is the recommended size for this blog?

    • matthewrmarler | January 23, 2019 at 2:11 pm |

      coolclimateinfo: Apologies if the graphics are outsized here.

      Graphs are fine, on my screens at least.

      How did you estimate the “warm line”, and what are the terms in the equation pmod tsi model?

      • coolclimateinfo | January 23, 2019 at 6:23 pm |

        Matt, thanks for asking. I derived the warm line empirically, first with F10.7cm flux at 120 sfu and v1 SSN at 66, then with v2 SSN at 94, then correlated those values with SORCE TSI to arrive at 1361.25 W/m2, which is offset from PMOD by +.25, and the warm line has also been real world tested with skillful predictions.

        The v2 SSN-PMOD TSI model is the scatterplot 2nd order trendline equation (e) using monthly data from 1979-2017. This equation was then applied to v2 SSN further back in time to arrive at the plot (f) above.

        I’m writing the pre-print paper of my work which I presented in poster form at the 2018 AGU fall meeting, which included the images shown today.

        The first assumption I made in 2014 was solar activity was responsible for both the cooling and warming in HadSST3 from May 1960 to 1985-86, and that the average value of solar activity between those date(s) represented the threshold of solar activity sufficient to just maintain the temperature over those 26 years, ie a breakeven level of solar energy.

        The first step is represented in the Fig. 1:

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ikryqhpi2dgze2/AGU%20Fig1.JPG?dl=0

        This is as far as I’m going to go with it today.

      • coolclimateinfo | January 23, 2019 at 6:29 pm |

        Matthew, the terms of the equation using monthly data:
        y is estimated PMOD v1709 TSI and x is v2 SSN.

      • matthewrmarler | January 23, 2019 at 8:03 pm |

        coolclimateinfo: Matthew, the terms of the equation using monthly data:
        y is estimated PMOD v1709 TSI and x is v2 SSN.

        Thank you for the responses. What is E?

      • coolclimateinfo | January 24, 2019 at 12:01 am |

        It means exponent base 10, ie, the first term’s coefficient is -2*10^(-5).

  14. matthewrmarler | January 23, 2019 at 1:29 pm |

    Judith Curry, thanks again for a good essay.

  15. Ulric Lyons | January 23, 2019 at 2:02 pm |

    The AMO is not internal variability, it acts as an amplified negative feedback to changes in the solar wind via the NAO/AO. Cold AMO anomalies around 1903, 1913, and 1923, would have had stronger solar wind conditions like in the mid 70’s, mid 80’s, and early 90’s. The increase in negative NAO/AO from the mid 1920’s driving the warm AMO phase must mean that the solar wind weakened, like from the mid 1990’s. Negative NAO/AO is also associated with El Nino, which supports a lagged positive feedback to the warm AMO phase.

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/association-between-sunspot-cycles-amo-ulric-lyons

  16. Ulric Lyons | January 23, 2019 at 2:26 pm |

    “the “Dust Bowl” droughts and extreme heat waves in North America in the 1930s, the World War II period drought in Australia between 1937 and 1945; and the European droughts and heat waves of the late 1940s and early 1950s.”

    1934 and 1948-49 had the same drivers as the 1976 and 2003 European heatwaves. The US heatwave of 1936 was the same type as in 2006.

    MAJOR HEAT AND COLD WAVES DRIVEN BY KEY HELIOCENTRIC ALIGNMENTS OF THE GAS GIANTS

    Extreme hot and cold weather events regularly occur at syzygies and quadratures of the four gas giants, with greater extreme events involving configurations of 3-4 bodies. The logic of two body configurations of superior conjunctions and either quadrature, derived from correlations with many centuries of weather records, is as follows.

    Jupiter opposite Neptune = cold.
    Jupiter square Neptune = hot.
    Saturn opposite Neptune = hot.
    Saturn square Neptune = cold.
    Jupiter opposite Uranus = hot.
    Jupiter square Uranus = cold.
    Saturn opposite Uranus = cold.
    Saturn square Uranus = hot.
    Uranus opposite Neptune = hot.
    Uranus square Neptune = cold.
    Saturn opposite Jupiter = cold.
    Saturn square Jupiter = hot.

    According to these rules, the 1976 Jupiter opposite Uranus and both square to Saturn (pictured), is one hot opposition, and two hot quadratures. The same configuration type occurred in the warmth of 1686 in the Maunder Minimum, and in the 1934, 1949, and 2003 heatwaves.

    The hottest known European heatwaves of the last 800 years all occurred on the configuration of Saturn opposite Neptune, square to Jupiter. In 1252, 1361, 1540, 1757, and July 2006. (and the US heatwave of 1936)

    The apparent logic dictates that 3 body peak hot and cold events have to occur on T-squares.

    Mechanisms would likely involve interaction of the magnetic connections from the Sun to each body, with the solar equatorial quadrupole magnetic moment, which is ordered N S N S. Driving changes in the solar wind strength.

    https://snag.gy/d06nhW.jpg

  17. Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2019 at 3:22 pm |

    Surface temperature ultimately responds to Global Energy Content (GEC) – energy mainly stored in oceans. The change in GEC in a period is defined at top of atmosphere (TOA) in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics – in the first differential global energy equation.

    d(GEC)/dt = energy in – energy out

    Energy in changes very little. Energy out varies with cloud, ice, biology, dust, volcanoes, water vapor and anthropogenic greenhouse gases. You may rabbit on about solar winds or latitudinal insolation gradients – but unless one or more of these internal factors change it means sfa.

  18. GOFOSSIL (@gofossil) | January 23, 2019 at 3:40 pm |

    What about major wars and their affect on climate variability? Surely the massive increases in human activity and resource and energy use would have a measurable effect during and for some time after. WW I, WW II, KOREA, VIETNAM ETC.

  19. Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2019 at 5:33 pm |

    I am inclined to think that La Nina is associated with low solar activity. More salt in a Law Dome ice core is La Nina.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vance2012-antartica-law-dome-ice-core-salt-content-e1540939103404.jpg
    https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1

    Fewer cosmogenic isotopes is lower solar activity.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/isotopes.png

    The source of ENSO and PDO is variability in polar annular modes driving sub-polar gyre circulation and thus eastern Pacific abyssal upwelling.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/gyre-impact-e1532565836300.png
    https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/gsofacpubs/140/

    ENSO and PDO have the same periodicities – warm decadal sea surface temperature (SST) modes in the early 20th century, cooler mid century and warmer again post the ‘Great Pacific Climate Shift” in 1976/77.

    A SST/cloud connection is unmistakable in satellite data.

    “We find a marked 0.83 ± 0.41 Wm−2 reduction in global mean reflected shortwave (SW) top-of-atmosphere (TOA) flux during the three years following the hiatus that results in an increase in net energy into the climate system. A partial radiative perturbation analysis reveals that decreases in low cloud cover are the primary driver of the decrease in SW TOA flux. The regional distribution of the SW TOA flux changes associated with the decreases in low cloud cover closely matches that of sea-surface temperature warming, which shows a pattern typical of the positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.” https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62

    The geophysics involved are nonlinear cloud and rain dynamics.

    e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973593

    ENSO+PDO is the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). The IPO is the main source of global cloud variability (Clement et al 2009) that modulates global energy content on millennial scales,

    It is suspected that solar activity is one factor in polar annular mode variability.

    e.g. – https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535 – http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta

    Clearly internal dynamics in the coupled atmosphere/ocean system drive decadal and longer surface temperature variability.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations.png

    The role of solar activity as a control variable in abrupt and perpetual change in system state seems through nebulous atmospheric pathways. Small changes in control variables – orbits, TSI, greenhouse gases – pushing the system past a threshold at which point emergent properties of the system result in a new climate state. The very definition of mathematical chaos.

    • Ulric Lyons | January 24, 2019 at 7:22 pm |

      “I am inclined to think that La Nina is associated with low solar activity.”

      El Nino episodes are known to roughly double their mean frequency during centennial solar minima.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 25, 2019 at 5:18 am |

        No not only by me. Think about it, increased negative NAO during solar minima is associated with slower trade winds.

      • Tony Banton | January 25, 2019 at 9:11 am |

        “What we’re saying is, the theory was basically a mirage,” said Polvani.
        “We had a hunch that some of the theories out in the literature were not really robust, so we revisited using four more sophisticated reconstructions of different data farther back in time than what people have done so far, and used reconstructions that go back to the 19th Century, and we see that these correlations go away. These apparent comings and goings of correlation are really due to atmospheric variability, and not the sun said Chiodo.”

        Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-debunking-solar-cyclenorth-atlantic-winter-weather.html#jCp“

      • Ulric Lyons | January 25, 2019 at 9:44 am |

        That is because at solar cycle scales the NAO/AO anomalies follow the solar wind strength, which shifts in and out of phase with sunspot cycles. Moreover, solar wind changes drive NAO/AO anomalies at less than weekly scales.

      • Tony Banton | January 25, 2019 at 2:03 pm |

        “Moreover, solar wind changes drive NAO/AO anomalies at less than weekly scales.”

        Does it really.
        Where can I find your peer-reviewed and published paper on it then?

      • Ulric Lyons | January 25, 2019 at 8:55 pm |

        Effects on winter circulation of short and long term solar wind changes
        http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117713005802

      • astroclimatelink | January 25, 2019 at 11:43 pm |

        Robert, you keep showing the “Core Findings on Rainfall” graph as though it is a valid graph. It is not. The annual sea salt values in this graph clearly show a linear decrease in annual sea salt with time from the 1850’s onward. This is supposed to correspond to a decrease in total rainfall over SE Australia as the world moved from La Nina to El Nino dominated condition. The BOM data for SE Australia shows that there was no overall systematic decrease in rainfall from the period 1850-1925 compared to 1925-2000. The graph that you quote is not verified by the data!

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 26, 2019 at 12:56 am |

        I have been an Australian hydrologist for decades and it is not clear to me where you source your rainfall data before 1900. The graph I show – and the study I link – is an ENSO proxy – it is not linear – read the text. South East Australia is not the region influenced directly by ENSO. It is most strong in the summer monsoon season in the north east of the country. The transition from more La Nina like to more El Nino like conditions after 1900 is not at all controversial.

        Last century’s rainfall follows the patterns of multidecadal Pacific states as it must.

        http://www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/R__1.41392.png

        To go beyond that requires more digging.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/ipo-proxy-vance.png
        “(a) LD summer sea‐salt record Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) annual (January–December) rainfall correlation for IPO positive phases (1924–1941 and 1979–1997) (significance at contour r = 0.325, p < 0.05, unreliable data masked [Gallant et al., 2013]). M, S, T, and W denote long‐record rainfall stations [Vance et al., 2013]; (b) 13 year window sliding correlations for LD summer sea‐salt rainfall station data (p 0.5 for both reconstructions) highlighted (blue banding). (e) Annual LD summer sea‐salt time series [Vance et al., 2013] (grey) with 13 year Gaussian smooth (thick black) and drought periods (>5 year duration, >0.5 for both IPO reconstructions) identified (pink banding).”

        “When the previously published LD summer sea‐salt rainfall proxy and the new IPO reconstructions are combined, the three major epochs (two dry, A.D. 1000–1260 and A.D. 1920–2009, and one wet, A.D. 1260–1860) previously identified in Vance et al. [2013] are confirmed. Eight IPO positive phase megadroughts are observed, five during the first dry epoch (Figure 4e) and six prior to A.D. 1320. The longest megadrought, of 39 years duration (A.D. 1174–1212), occurred at the end of a century of pronounced IPO positive drought conditions, with 80 of the 111 year period A.D. 1102–1212 in drought. There is some indication droughts still occurred throughout the wet epoch (A.D. 1260–1860), e.g., during the early sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. However, the conservative criteria used here to identify megadroughts (simultaneously IPO>0.5 for both reconstructions and below average sea salts for >5 years) means that these possible droughts are not identified. Nonetheless, it is clear that this study identifies far fewer megadroughts during the long, wetter middle epoch of A.D. 1260–1860.” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL062447

        The suggestion is that it is driven by solar modulation of the polar annular modes through spinning up of sub-polar Pacific Ocean gyres – and resultant changes in upwelling on the eastern margin. With a dimming sun we may be heading for a cooler and wetter multi-centennial epoch in Australia.

      • cerescokid | January 26, 2019 at 3:32 am |

        “Eight megadroughts are identified including one 39 year drought (A.D. 1174–1212), which occurred during an unprecedented century of aridity (A.D. 1102–1212).”

        Nice.

        My bookmarks of stuff happening pre 1950 is becoming overwhelming.
        The use of the word “unprecedented “ has an especially nice ring to it, given it’s associated with the NON MWP period.

      • astroclimatelink | January 26, 2019 at 7:37 am |

        Robert,

        Since you are a hydrologist you must realize that there are many sites in Eastern Australia that have measurements of rainfall prior to 1900. Just because BOM does not post them on the web does not mean that they don’t exist. If you combine the data from a representative sample of these sites, it is easy to show that the mean rainfall in the period from 1850 to 1925 was not noticeably more than the mean rainfall between 1925 and 2000. This is in direct contradiction to your sea salt proxy (and this conclusion it is not affected by the non-linearity of the sea salt index).

        You are justifying your sea salt proxy by using another proxy index for the IPO – this is nowhere near as good as actually looking at the rainfall in regions of Eastern Australia that are directly affected by the ENSO cycle.

        I challenge you to take the rainfall records of a dozen sites that lie in the regions of eastern Australia {which, by the way, is where I live) between about 1870 and 2000 and see if the rainfall was noticeably higher before 1925.

      • astroclimatelink | January 26, 2019 at 7:55 am |

        Robert,

        You said that: “The transition from more La Nina like to more El Nino like conditions after 1900 is not at all controversial.”

        It may not be controversial amongst those who think that “near enough is good enough” but it is controversial amongst those who actually look at the real world data.

        If you look at the graph of the cumulative sum of the MEI index which I have posted earlier in this discussion [i.e January 24th 6:25 p.m.], you will see that there is a distinct 30-year cycle in the cumulative sum, starting in the mid-1880s, and it is very likely that this 30-year pattern continues prior to this date.

        Hence, it is very likely that the dominance of La Nina events over El Nino events goes up and own every 60 years in much the same manner as the Equatorial trade winds and the Indian Monsoons.

        https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pPhOIijfUrE/WdzjbQQJm4I/AAAAAAAABJo/4-ASQfxgkoYVyyVgERdS3Teg3roPw5mNACLcBGAs/s400/60years_a.JPG

        http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2017/10/world-wind-speeds-have-slowed-down-over.html

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 26, 2019 at 12:47 pm |

        You mean like this?

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/mei-v-hadcrut1.png

        I am not one to eyeball such as this below and draw any hard and fast conclusions. Stratified stochastic statistical analysis of 20 to 30 year climate shifts requires hundreds of years of data.

        http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/images/announcements/ballarat-history-graph.png

        Yet lower frequencies require even longer data.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/tsonis-2009-figure-1.png
        Figure 1: Laguna Pallcacocha, ENSO proxy – greater red intensity shows El Niño conditions (Source: Tsonis, 2009)

        Moy et al (2002) present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by ENSO variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation and greater red intensity is associated with El Niño. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 12,000 years. It shows periods of high and low El Niño intensity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high El Niño intensity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). Red intensity then was in excess of 200 at times. For comparison, red intensity in the 1997/98 El Niño was 99. It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.

        What we have is 20 to 30 year regimes that sum to perpetual change over millennia. The Nile River is one of the globally coupled subsystems. In instrumental as opposed to proxy data.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/nile-e1527722953992.jpg

        Understanding Nile River Hurst dynamics is a key to unlocking climate internal variability.

        e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep09068

        So here we have another climate enthusiast – lots of words and little to say – with paradigm shifting insights into something or other. You can tell them by the rejection of dissonant data.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 26, 2019 at 8:42 pm |

        “Understanding Nile River Hurst dynamics is a key to unlocking climate internal variability.”

        That isn’t internal variability, the wettest periods are during the deeper centennial solar minima, the 1120’s and from the 1430’s. The very dry late 8th century was the warmest part of the MWP in W Europe (Esper 2014).

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 26, 2019 at 9:47 pm |

        “In addition to the Hurst exponent, Mandelbrot also coined two more terms useful in describing the long-term memory of a time series. He called the first one the Joseph Effect and the second one the Noah Effect. The Joseph Effect tells us whether movements in a time series are part of a long-term trend and refers to the Old Testament where Egypt would experience seven years of rich harvest followed by seven years of famine. The Noah Effect is the tendency of a time series to have abrupt changes and the name is derived from the biblical story of the Great Flood. Both of these effects in a time series can be inferred from the Hurst exponent…

        In a Brownian time series (also known as a random walk or a drunkard’s walk) there is no correlation between the observations and a future observation; being higher or lower than the current observation are equally likely. Series of this kind are hard to predict. Figure 1 provides an example of a Brownian time series and its estimated Hurst exponent. The Hurst exponent for the data plotted above was estimated to be 0.53 – a Hurst exponent close to 0.5 is indicative of a Brownian time series…

        In a persistent time series an increase in values will most likely be followed by an increase in the short term and a decrease in values will most likely be followed by another decrease in the short term. Figure 3 provides an example of a persistent time series and its estimated Hurst exponent.” http://analytics-magazine.org/the-hurst-exponent-predictability-of-time-series/

        http://analytics-magazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/julaug12_hurst-fig3.jpg
        “Figure 3: A persistent time series (H = 0.95).”

        The roulette wheel in the Koutsoyiannis graphic is an example of brownian motion that sums to zero. The Nilometer data is an example of a persistent series such as is found everywhere in climate, economics, biology, physiology, etc. It is diagnostic of dynamical complexity in a system. It is deterministically chaotic because it behaves – persistence in regimes, sudden shifts and returns to previous conditions in a finite state space (ergodicity) – like a chaotic system.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations1.png

        Small changes – solar, orbital, greenhouse gases – push the system past a threshold and the scope and pace of system change is then determined by ice, cloud, biology, dust and quasi standing waves – ENSO, PDO, AMO, etc. etc. – in Earth’s globally coupled, spatio-temporally chaotic. turbulent flow field.

        And then it rains in Egypt – and like Joseph advised Pharaoh we need a wise person to manage in the fat times to provide for lean times. Occasionally we might need an Ark.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 27, 2019 at 12:38 pm |

        ENSO and the AMO responding to changes in the solar wind via the annular modes is about feedbacks not chaos.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 27, 2019 at 1:46 pm |

        The polar annular modes are influenced by any of a number of factors and the resultant turbulent ocean and atmospheric circulation determines the behavior of the system that shifts between cooler and warmer Pacific states etc.

        It is a difficult idea that you may catch up with some day.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 27, 2019 at 6:51 pm |

        Any of a number of factors is certainly a difficult idea, and is nothing to catch up with.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 27, 2019 at 7:56 pm |

        The annular modes change almost daily.

        https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html
        http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao_index.html

        Now things get very complicated. The factors are all those that influence polar surface pressure fields including global temperature gradients, Brewer-Dodson circulation, ice extent, a baroclinic atmosphere, Rossby waves and sudden stratospheric warming. There may be a solar influence in UV/ozone chemistry or other less immediately obvious physical links to solar winds, cosmogenic cloud, solar magnetic reversals or lunar tides.

        http://homepages.uc.edu/~hansonmm/ASTRO/LECTURENOTES/F03/Earth/coriolisaircirculation.gif
        http://homepages.uc.edu/~hansonmm/ASTRO/LECTURENOTES/F03/Earth/Page29.html

        Then there is the resonant ocean response. Multi-decadal variability in the Pacific is defined as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (e.g. Folland et al,2002, Meinke et al, 2005, Parker et al, 2007, Power et al, 1999) – a proliferation of oscillations it seems. The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947).

        In the Pacific Ocean these gyre variations bias the system to more or less eastern margin upwelling which sets up more than basin wide feedbacks across the tropics and subtropics. In the Atlantic the variation in heat transport results in changes in northern sea surface temperature and in overturning circulation. The latter is linked to major paleo climate transitions – and it is changing.

        https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076350
        https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1890/11-0902.1

        How close we are to a tipping cascade is inherently unknowable despite any and all crude and eccentric skeptic – or indeed simplistic alarmist – prognostications.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 28, 2019 at 7:52 pm |

        “We note that the Arctic Ocean is characterized by large amplitude multi‐decadal variability in addition to a long‐term trend, making the link of observed changes to climate drivers problematic. However, the exceptional magnitude of recent high‐latitude changes (not only oceanic, but also ice and atmospheric) strongly suggests that these recent changes signify a potentially irreversible shift of the Arctic Ocean to a new climate state.”

        So they have no idea that the AMO is normally warmer during centennial solar minima. It’s the group think of ecologists that exhibits a potentially irreversible shift to a new state.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 28, 2019 at 9:08 pm |

        I would take Polyakov over Ulric’s simplistic memes and misguided eyeballing any day and twice on Sundays.

        “We show that ocean circulation responds to the first mode of Atlantic atmospheric forcing, the North Atlantic Oscillation, through circulation changes between the subtropical and subpolar gyres—the intergyre region7. These circulation changes affect the decadal evolution of North Atlantic heat content and, consequently, the phases of the AMO. The Atlantic overturning circulation is declining8 and the AMO is moving to a negative phase. This may offer a brief respite from the persistent rise of global temperatures4…” https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14491

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-72-e1518284539722.png
        https://www.ocean-sci.net/10/29/2014/

        This is how it is working – and I showed this before.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-72-e1518284539722.png
        https://www.ocean-sci.net/10/29/2014/

        The NAO looks to be moving more negative and – with reduced AMOC and northern heat transport – a cool AMO – associated long term with a less active sun.

        If Ulric actually read science instead of rejecting it on spurious and superficial grounds he might make some progress.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 29, 2019 at 6:06 am |

        Arrogantly demeaning while getting the science backwards yet again. First you were “inclined to think that La Nina is associated with low solar activity”. And now your ridiculous assertion that a cool AMO is associated with a less active sun. Try to grasp the simple logic this time: low solar = negative NAO/AO, which is associated with a warm AMO phase, and with slower trade winds. Note the warm AMO during the last solar minimum, and that it is not yet moving to a cold phase.
        http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo

      • JCH | January 29, 2019 at 7:26 am |

        The AMO is not about to go negative; in fact, it’s looking sort of like it no longer – annualized, has stay north of zero throughout the 21st century despite the emergence of the big blue blob south of Greenland – can go negative:

        https://i.imgur.com/Hb11rYf.png

        https://i.imgur.com/mFOGuVT.png

        https://i.imgur.com/Ml4WOej.png

      • JCH | January 29, 2019 at 7:32 am |

        The big blue cooling blob:

        https://i.imgur.com/qE4Kyh8.png

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 29, 2019 at 5:00 pm |

        The cumulative NAO of Smeed et al 2014 tells another story.

      • JCH | January 29, 2019 at 6:09 pm |

        The AMOC and the AMO are not the same thing. A slowdown of the AMOC and a shutdown of the AMOC are not the same thing.

        The error bars on the hydrographic estimates are too large to draw any conclusions about the association of the AMOC with the NAO or AMO.

        – Smeed 14

        Therefore, the AMV in itself emphasises the role of the AMOC in the climate system.

        However, the role of the AMOC in driving the AMV has itself been challenged. As mentioned, direct observations of the AMOC of sufficient length do not exist to prove this link and so we rely on numerical models and proxy data for support. Booth et al. (2012) challenged the role of ocean heat transport in decadal variability, which they said could be explained by indirect aerosol effects with no need for a dynamic ocean. More recently, Clement et al. (2015) looked at experiments with slab ocean models and found that AMV patterns could be reproduced, again without a dynamic ocean. Both of these challenges have already had responses defending the role of the AMOC (e.g. O’Reilly et al., 2016) but the arguments are worth bearing in mind. …

        2.2 A new cold Atlantic phase
        Based on observations from the first 8.5 years of the RAPID programme, Smeed et al. (2014) published the first observations of a multiyear decline in the AMOC. The record now stretches to 11.5 years and while the AMOC is still weak, it appears that the rate of decline has not continued (Smeed et al., 2016). SSTs in the subpolar North Atlantic have been strikingly cold in the past few years (Figure 3). Some of the most extreme cold SSTs were associated with extreme air- sea heat fluxes (Duchez et al., 2016) and are have already diminished. Robson et al. (2016) and Jackson et al. (2016) highlight that the Atlantic has been shifting to a cool phase since 2005. A number of authors had predicted this shift to cooler Atlantic temperatures e.g. Klower et al. (2014) and Hermanson et al. (2014). The cooling of the Atlantic is consistent with entering a negative AMV phase, although it is too early to definitively say the conditions represent a negative AMV. The impacts of a negative AMV have already been described and there is some evidence that these are being borne out. Hurricane activity has declined (Klotzbach et al., 2015) and, in spite of 2015 being the warmest year on record globally, Ireland, where the impact of Atlantic changes are often first felt, experienced a cooler year than the 1980-present average (Met Éireann, 2015). …

        – McCarthy, Smeed 17

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 29, 2019 at 7:16 pm |

        “The AMOC and the AMO are not the same thing. A slowdown of the AMOC and a shutdown of the AMOC are not the same thing.”

        Meaning less piffle.

        https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1890/11-0902.1
        https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076350

        i have cited both studies in this thread.

        “The error bars on the hydrographic estimates are too large to draw any conclusions about the association of the AMOC with the NAO or AMO.

        – Smeed 14”

        Irrelevant piffle. The hydrographic estimates are shown in black.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-72-e1518284539722.png

        “However, the role of the AMOC in driving the AMV has itself been challenged. As mentioned, direct observations of the AMOC of sufficient length do not exist to prove this link and so we rely on numerical models and proxy data for support. Booth et al. (2012) challenged the role of ocean heat transport in decadal variability, which they said could be explained by indirect aerosol effects with no need for a dynamic ocean. More recently, Clement et al. (2015) looked at experiments with slab ocean models and found that AMV patterns could be reproduced, again without a dynamic ocean. Both of these challenges have already had responses defending the role of the AMOC (e.g. O’Reilly et al., 2016) but the arguments are worth bearing in mind…”

        Selective quoting far from supporting his piffle.

        “Based on observations from the first 8.5 years of the RAPID programme, Smeed et al. (2014) published the first observations of a multiyear decline in the AMOC. The record now stretches to 11.5 years and while the AMOC is still weak, it appears that the rate of decline has not continued (Smeed et al., 2016). SSTs in the subpolar North Atlantic have been strikingly cold in the past few years (Figure 3). Some of the most extreme cold SSTs were associated with extreme air- sea heat fluxes (Duchez et al., 2016) and are have already diminished. Robson et al. (2016) and Jackson et al. (2016) highlight that the Atlantic has been shifting to a cool phase since 2005. A number of authors had predicted this shift to cooler Atlantic temperatures e.g. Klower et al. (2014) and Hermanson et al. (2014). The cooling of the Atlantic is consistent with entering a negative AMV phase, although it is too early to definitively say the conditions represent a negative AMV. The impacts of a negative AMV have already been described and there is some evidence that these are being borne out. Hurricane activity has declined (Klotzbach et al., 2015) and, in spite of 2015 being the warmest year on record globally, Ireland, where the impact of Atlantic changes are often first felt, experienced a cooler year than the 1980-present average (Met Éireann, 2015)… – McCarthy, Smeed 17”

        Selective quote flat out contradicting his piffle.

        The North Atlantic Ocean Is in a State of Reduced Overturning – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076350

  20. manicbeancounter | January 23, 2019 at 6:37 pm |

    Before trying to attribute causes to warming early and late twentieth century warming phases we must make sure that the temperature data anomalies are a true and fair best estimate of what they would be with high quality and evenly-spaced coverage. My puzzle with HADCRUT4 (replicated by NOAA and GISTEMP) is a discrepancy in the two warming phases. In the earlier warming phase land and sea warming are of about the same magnitude. In the late twentieth century land warming is much greater than sea surface warming. For HADCRUT4 then reason that global warming in the later period is greater than the earlier period is down to land warming. This suggests the cause is due to a problem in the data rather than a physical problem.
    https://manicbeancounter.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/hadley-global-land-ocean-7yr.jpg
    https://manicbeancounter.com/2018/04/21/does-data-coverage-impact-the-hadcrut4-and-nasa-giss-temperature-anomalies/

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2019 at 8:54 pm |

      I suspect that at least part of late century land ‘warming’ is due to changes in latent and sensible heat partitioning at the surface due to increasing aridity.

      https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/spei-e1527825601176.jpg

    • Javier | January 24, 2019 at 6:53 am |

      For HADCRUT4 then reason that global warming in the later period is greater than the earlier period is down to land warming. This suggests the cause is due to a problem in the data rather than a physical problem.

      Much simpler than that. CO2-induced warming cannot warm the oceans directly, as solar does. The difference between land surface and ocean surface warming is mostly due to the CO2 contribution to warming.

      As the atmosphere has a very low capacity to store changes in enthalpy, long-term climate changes are down to cryosphere and ocean enthalpy changes. All those apocalyptic future scenarios denote a poor understanding of how climate changes in this planet. The planet has a tremendous inertia to climate change and requires extraordinary constant forcing for millennia (Milankovitch forcing). Outside of that multi-millennial climate change, every abrupt climate event gets reverted in a few centuries and this one will too. CO2 warming effect is nice, but can’t compete in the big league of climate changers. Climate is decided by how much energy leaves the planet at the poles during the dark winter, and even 4,000 ppm of CO2 could not prevent heat escaping to space during the dark winter. Nearly all the energy transported to the poles in winter leaves the planet.

      The planet will leave its present ice-house condition when it is sufficiently warm at the poles to have clouds during the winter to limit energy loss. It will take millions of years to warm the ocean to that point. We have ice age for a while.

      • Ulric Lyons | January 24, 2019 at 8:03 pm |

        Even simpler is that reductions in low cloud cover warm the land more than the oceans. The divergence between land and sea surface temperatures accelerates from the mid 1990’s with the AMO warming.

      • popesclimatetheory | January 29, 2019 at 11:04 am |

        Nearly all the energy transported to the poles in winter leaves the planet.
        That is backwards. The most energy that travels to the poles is in warm tropical ocean currents that travel to the poles in winter, which are underneath and protected by sea ice and ice shelves, there is little evaporation and cooling from that. The salt water contacts the underside of the ice and does cool but IR out to the sky is a function of temperature squared and is not a max in coldest times. The most IR out from the poles is during warmest times when the polar oceans are thawed and evaporating. The IR out does not make it cold then, it is used to produce snowfall that replenishes the sequestered ice for more cooling later.

      • popesclimatetheory | January 29, 2019 at 11:08 am |

        when it is sufficiently warm at the poles to have clouds during the winter to limit energy loss.
        When it is warm at the poles the IR out from the clouds as a result of the evaporation does rebuild the ice in cold places. Ocean effect snow comes from thawed oceans. If it did not get warm the oceans would stay frozen and ice in cold places would deplete. Look at ice core data. Ice accumulation is most in warmest times.

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 25, 2019 at 2:46 pm |

      Surface temperature is a measure of sensible heat at 2 m. But total energy involves both latent and sensible heat and the partitioning varies with soil moisture.

      https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2004EO210004

  21. afonzarelli | January 23, 2019 at 8:53 pm |

    Here’s conjuring up ghosts of Jim D past…
    Our Jim D(ear) was always stating that SSTs were not rising as fast as they should be because ocean temps were far from a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. There may be some truth in this. According to Dr Spencer (who graces the top of this comment page), the oceans have a top to bottom temperature gradient. Change any part of that gradient and the whole ocean must equilibrate to a new temperature gradient. In the case of warming SSTs, when the ocean is closer to an equilibrium state less energy is required to re-establish the temperature gradient. Thus the result is greater surface warming. And when the ocean is further from equilibrium, the opposite occurs. More energy is required to establish a new temperature gradient and thus there is less surface warming. This seems to be consistent with the data as presented in this post by our (lovely) hostess Dr C. Note especially the SH SST data which, containing 80% ocean, shows considerably more warming in the early twentieth century than in the later part of the century. (this even though land warming exceeds in the later part of the twentieth century) Now i know that this is a very contentious subject. There have been times at this blog when our little Jimmy D stood as a minority of one on this very subject. (that being that the ocean is not in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium) So i know that i may be taking a baseball bat to a beehive here. But, that may be the cause of our early twentieth century warming or at least a major part of it. And may even exonerate Jim’s position that warming all the way back to the mid nineteenth century was anthropogenic. (too bad he isn’t around to read this… ☹️)

  22. Mike Roberts | January 23, 2019 at 9:01 pm |

    It’s a shame an actual surface temperature anomaly graph wasn’t shown. For example:

    How can an early 20th century warming be characterised as “almost as large as the warming since 1950” when the ratio is 2.04? Warming at half the amount is most definitely NOT almost as large as the other. How can Judith Curry be taken seriously when she starts off her post that way?

    • Mike Roberts | January 23, 2019 at 9:03 pm |

      For some reason, the graph I included is not shown. I’ll include the address below but, if it doesn’t appear, just look for the Cowtan and Way data on surface warming.

      https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/cow.jpg?w=500&h=333

    • afonzarelli | January 23, 2019 at 9:28 pm |

      Lighten up, Mike (using tamino merely reveals you as a hack)…

      • Mike Roberts | January 26, 2019 at 4:22 am |

        Lighten up? I’m merely showing that this post starts of with a mischaracterisation (that’s a polite way of saying it) of the warming data. It doesn’t really matter if the graphic came from Tamino’s site, the point is that Judith Curry is wrong to state that the warming in the early part of last century is almost as great as we’ve seen since 1950. It is just plain wrong, which puts her whole post in doubt.

    • Javier | January 24, 2019 at 6:26 am |

      Your figure doesn’t show because the link has to end in png gif or jpg after a dot and be in a separate line. And I see you are as ignorant about temperature records as about posting.

      Prof. Phil Jones, former head of the Hadley Climate Research Unit of the UK MetOffice recognized in a BBC interview that the early 20th century warming was statistically indistinguishable from the late 20th century warming:

      “As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different”.
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

      As you might not know who Phil Jones is, he has been a co-author of Michael Mann on several occasions, and became infamous for one of his e-mails in the Climategate:
      “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature Trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years ( ie 1981) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
      Hardly a suspect of skepticism.

      Tamino is a known data torturer. He has no clue about climate. I already had an article of his dedicated to me about Arctic sea-ice. Every passing year is proving him wrong and me right.

      • bobdroege | January 25, 2019 at 12:48 pm |

        Hasn’t the late trend gotten a little longer and a little stronger?

        Like 1975 to 2019 is 0.179 C/decade for almost 45 years, so the trends are no longer similar.

        the pause that never was

      • Javier | January 25, 2019 at 12:56 pm |

        the pause that never was

        You mean like this?:

        https://i.imgur.com/Y5LVxLK.png

        +0.1°C in 17 years, and since uncertainty is ±0.1°C it means we cannot say if the surface has warmed or not.

        Yeah, terrible warming!!!

      • JCH | January 25, 2019 at 2:02 pm |

        ~50-year warming trend of .18 ℃ per decade:

        https://i.imgur.com/Y94NoXE.png

      • Javier | January 25, 2019 at 2:44 pm |

        BEST is really WORST. I’ll stick to Had CRUT.

      • Michel | January 25, 2019 at 8:06 pm |

        Looking at the warming rates instead of trying to detect pauses:
        https://www.dropbox.com/s/pudg0352s6zhz4l/warming-rates-HADCRUT4.png?dl=0

      • Javier | January 25, 2019 at 8:56 pm |

        Yep, the ~ 60-yr oscillation. Looks like reduced warming ahead.

        Also, tiny acceleration despite massive CO2 increase from 1960.

      • Michel | January 25, 2019 at 9:21 pm |

        @Javier
        As say financial advisors, performances of the past are no predictor of the future
        Look also at the 7 yr filter and a possible association with sun spots cycles

      • bobdroege | January 26, 2019 at 10:50 am |

        Javier,

        The Hadcrut4 trend for the period on your chart is 0.137 C/decade =/- 0.125 C/decade.

        I don’t think that’s a pause, however, I am still waiting for a definition of what a pause is.

        I use a trend of < 0.05 C/decade with an uncertainty < 0.05 C/decade.

        What's your definition?

      • Javier | January 26, 2019 at 1:02 pm |

        My definition is the c. 30 year period of lower warming rate within the c. 60 year temperature oscillation. As such it started ~ 2005 and should last until ~ 2035. Once completed it should show a warming rate much lower than the 1975-2005 period.

        Saying that it doesn’t exist or that it ended because a strong El Niño took place in 2015 is silly.

        The name Pause wasn’t chosen by me and is inadequate. Previous comparable periods were 1945-1975, and 1885-1915. It is just the descending phase of a quasi-periodicity.

      • bobdroege | January 27, 2019 at 9:50 am |

        Javier,

        You are saying a pause is a lower warming rate.

        Of course you can find quasi periodicity as the PDO and other oscillations move stuff around, but is it real?

        Can you establish that the warming rates change when you take the uncertainty in the measurement into account?

      • Javier | January 27, 2019 at 10:28 am |

        Yes and yes. The c. 60-year oscillation for the past 170 years is present in too many indices to not be real. When you have different indices saying the same uncertainty craters.

        https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/figure-102.png

        The pause is then part of a multi-decadal oscillation, and as such does not depend on an El Niño taking place in 2015. Statistical and dataset shenanigans to deny it will be met with failure as it continues until the decreasing phase of the oscillation is over.

      • bobdroege | January 27, 2019 at 2:31 pm |

        I don’t see any 60 year periodicity in any of your charts.

        Anyway, you would need 300 years of data to establish an oscillation with a 60 year period.

        You have more noise than signal.

      • Javier | January 27, 2019 at 3:49 pm |

        Read a little bit more. The c. 60-yr oscillation is very well established in the literature. Whether you accept the evidence or not is up to you, but it is not my work to convince you.

        you would need 300 years of data to establish an oscillation with a 60 year period.

        Right, tell that to Heinrich Schwabe, that discovered the 11-year solar cycle with 17 years of data.

      • Willis Eschenbach | January 27, 2019 at 4:48 pm |

        Javier | January 27, 2019 at 3:49 pm |

        you would need 300 years of data to establish an oscillation with a 60 year period.

        Right, tell that to Heinrich Schwabe, that discovered the 11-year solar cycle with 17 years of data.

        Not quite. Schwabe discovered the PROBABLE existence of a “certain periodicity” in sunspots, and was rightly cautions in his announcement, viz:

        From my earlier observations, which I have reported every year in this journal, it appears that there is a certain periodicity in the appearance of sunspots and this theory seems more and more probable from the results of this year.

        w.

      • Javier | January 27, 2019 at 8:28 pm |

        Thank you for confirming what I said. According to Schwabe going from 16 to 17 years of data made the periodicity “more and more probable”

        Compared to that we have a wealth of data on the 60-yr oscillation.

        Ach! modern science is very skeptical of certain things and amazingly gullible of others supported by a lot less evidence.

      • Peter Lang | January 27, 2019 at 4:55 pm |

        Javier,

        You said:

        The c. 60-yr oscillation is very well established in the literature.

        Can you please remind me what is the probable cause of c. 60-yr oscillation?

      • Willis Eschenbach | January 27, 2019 at 9:10 pm |

        Javier | January 27, 2019 at 8:28 pm |

        Thank you for confirming what I said. According to Schwabe going from 16 to 17 years of data made the periodicity “more and more probable”

        I did NOT confirm what you said. You falsely claimed that Schwabe “discovered the 11-year solar cycle with 17 years of data.” He did not. He said it was “probable” that there was “periodicity” in the data, which is a very different thing.

        w.

      • Javier | January 27, 2019 at 9:11 pm |

        Xactly. He defended the existence of the cycle on 17 years of data. He was lucky you weren’t around to show him.

      • popesclimatetheory | January 29, 2019 at 11:14 am |

        performances of the past are no predictor of the future

        In Climate, past cycles have repeated, the cycles of the recent ten thousand years are the new normal and will continue. It is warm now because it is supposed to be warm now. This warm period will last a few hundred years and then we will have another little ice age.

    • JCH | January 25, 2019 at 1:54 pm |

      You’ve created a definition for a pause that is utterly and completely useless for anything other that personal self-deception.

      • Dave Hayes | January 25, 2019 at 2:21 pm |

        If you cannot explain every little temp burp across the Holocene, why should we believe CO2 caused this one? You really think our puny human CO2 adder is going to change the temp trajectory of the Holocene? Are you really saying our current enjoyable amazingly constant livable temperatures for the last 10k years is the earth’s norm? I think we might all need just a tad more data to believe that one.

      • Javier | January 25, 2019 at 3:05 pm |

        a definition for a pause that is utterly and completely useless

        Warming is only useful if you can extract energy from it. Otherwise it is just an observation, and the observation that the average GSAT for the past 13 months has not been statistically different than for the 13 months going from March 2001 to March 2002 in the Had CRUT dataset is evidence of lack of warming.

        Starting in 1976 you cannot find a period of 17 years when there has been no significant warming in that dataset until reaching the late 1990’s, so it is clear that the former warming ain’t no more. You can call it what you want and define it as you want, but something has changed in the way the planet warms in the 21st century. It warms LESS when according to certain hypothesis it should warm MORE.

      • JCH | January 25, 2019 at 6:24 pm |

        the observation that the average GSAT for the past 13 months has not been statistically different than for the 13 months going from March 2001 to March 2002 in the Had CRUT dataset is evidence of lack of warming. …

        It’s evidence you know how to fool yourself.

      • afonzarelli | January 25, 2019 at 6:25 pm |

        It stopped warming at a certain temperature anomaly. And now, 17 years later, we are still at that anomaly. That’s no net warming for seventeen years. (it’s called a pause and calling it anything else is self deception)…

      • afonzarelli | January 25, 2019 at 6:33 pm |

        (who’s foolin’ who?)…

      • Javier | January 25, 2019 at 9:18 pm |

        It’s evidence you know how to fool yourself.

        Not as well as the IPCC is fooling everybody else.

      • Mike Roberts | January 26, 2019 at 4:28 am |

        The five warmest years on record are … the last 5 years. And some here think warming may have stopped.

      • Javier | January 26, 2019 at 5:34 am |

        The five warmest years on record are … the last 5 years.

        Since you are keeping records, keep this one too:
        We are experiencing the biggest cooling in record since the 1973-1976 cooling, and top 4 since 1950.

        https://i.imgur.com/LhX1Uqb.png

        Amazingly it is not being driven by a big La Niña or a large volcanic eruption as all the previous ones. What is cooling the planet since February 2016?

      • JCH | January 26, 2019 at 6:27 am |

        That definition of a pause is stewpudd. It did not work last time; it won’t work next time. It’s obviously for people who want to fool themselves. They want that. Don’t know why; not my problem. On the fly, Gavin Schmidt created a pause definition in a response on RC. At least it made a lick of sense. Yours does not.

      • Tony Banton | January 26, 2019 at 7:16 am |

        “What is cooling the planet since February 2016?”

        Natural variation.
        It is still above it’s long-term trend…..

        http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/uah6/from:1978/to:2018/plot/uah6/from:1978/to:2018/trend/plot/uah6/from:2016/to:2018/trend

      • JCH | January 26, 2019 at 8:15 am |

        Before child safety became a national obsession, we had a diving platform that was three stories tall. You could take a 10′ dive, a 20′ dive, and a 30′ dive. This apparently confuses you. The 2016 diver apparently brought along a 12-foot stepladder. You call yourself a scientist? Buddy, I’m genuinely not impressed. Junk.

      • Javier | January 26, 2019 at 10:11 am |

        That definition of a pause is stewpudd.

        A rose is a rose, and lack of warming is lack of warming.

        Temperature is falling like a lead zeppelin.

        https://i.imgur.com/yFrUbjs.png

        Natural variation.

        The same natural variation that doesn’t exist according to the IPCC.

        https://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figure_1.9.png

      • Tony Banton | January 26, 2019 at 12:55 pm |

        “Temperature is falling like a lead zeppelin.”
        Yep, correct – like I showed above.
        BUT it still remains above the long-term average.

        “The same natural variation that doesn’t exist according to the IPCC.”

        Bless.
        Ever heard of DRIVERS of climate change?
        NV is not a driver.
        Averages out to “0” … just as the IPCC shows.

        As In ….
        “Contributions to observed surface temperature change over the period 1951-2010”
        That’ll be – 60 years
        NOT 2 years or even his Lordship’s 18 (or whatever).

      • Javier | January 27, 2019 at 10:40 am |

        it still remains above the long-term average.

        Of course it does. The planet is still warming in case you didn’t notice. But the important question is that is not warming as predicted by the CO2-hypothesis, and the huge increase in CO2 should make cooling periods less frequent and less profound according to theory and in disagreement with observations. The present cooling is very profound. 0.3°C in HadCRUT 13-month average and counting.

        NV is not a driver.
        Averages out to “0”

        When was that demonstrated? I might have missed that demonstration. Milankovitch forcing gives NV a bias, so the idea that it averages to zero is an undemonstrated assumption, as usual. Do you know that ENSO displays long-term changes in frequency that demonstrate that it doesn’t average to zero? IPCC’s building is raised over false premises and it will eventually crumble to ruins.

      • climatereason | January 27, 2019 at 2:36 pm |

        JCH

        Back in 2014 the Met office convened a conference of many involved in climate science to discuss the ‘Pause’..

        https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/2013/recent-pause-in-warming

        I happened to visit their offices a couple of times in that period to speak with David Parker and Richard Betts. They accepted the existence of a pause but believed they knew the reasons for the pause. If they accepted it I don’t know why you won’t.

        Tonyb

      • Tony Banton | January 27, 2019 at 2:52 pm |

        “Milankovitch forcing gives NV a bias, so the idea that it averages to zero is an undemonstrated assumption, as usual.”

        Bless again.
        I was not aware the MC’s are a forcing on ‘human’ time scales.
        But I bow to your superior knowledge (sarc BTW).

        “IPCC’s building is raised over false premises and it will eventually crumble to ruins.”
        Bless x3.

      • Tony Banton | January 27, 2019 at 3:02 pm |

        “They accepted the existence of a pause but believed they knew the reasons for the pause. If they accepted it I don’t know why you won’t.”

        Depends on the definition of “pause” Tony.
        Not, as in no warming.
        I do not accept the validity of UAH V6, or for that matter RSS V3.3, upon which the great snake-oil seller Monckton originally drew it.
        The Trop Sat temp series are not fit for purpose, especially so post 1998, when the AMSU on NOAA15 took over.
        (Research the mismatch vs RATPAC and reanalysis data).
        The science concerns surface temps.
        Apart form the above, trop temps miss greatest warming due the increasing GHG forcing – that is warming under land-based nocturnal inversions.
        That the “pause” was caused primarily due to a prolonged -ve PDO/ENSO seems a pretty reasonable explanation.

      • JCH | January 27, 2019 at 3:53 pm |

        Wiggles happen. No need for a new name.

      • JCH | January 27, 2019 at 4:10 pm |

        Da Paws/pause/hiatus/slowdown/wiggle was the 2nd coming of the incredibly anemic mid-century cooling (the weakness of which actually does require an explanation.) Given that NV pansy barely depressed the GMST, is it any surprise one can barely see Da Paws?

        https://i.imgur.com/zinkhd8.png

      • Javier | January 27, 2019 at 9:09 pm |

        I was not aware the MC’s are a forcing on ‘human’ time scales.
        But I bow to your superior knowledge

        Just an example of why natural variability should not and will not average to zero. There is no reason why that doesn’t apply to all temporal scales. Absolutely no evidence that natural variability averages to zero, and the paper that Judith shows at the beginning of the article defends natural variability contribution to early 20th century warming. Is that human scale enough for you?

        Having superior knowledge has little merit depending on who one chooses to compare with.

      • Javier | January 27, 2019 at 9:16 pm |

        Da Paws/pause/hiatus/slowdown/wiggle was the 2nd coming of the incredibly anemic mid-century cooling (the weakness of which actually does require an explanation.)

        How is that Niño you have been menacing with coming along, JCH? I just checked today’s BoM page and oh boy does it look bad for you.

        http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png

        Don’t worry. I also think an El Niño will eventually show up, even if a weak and small one. The solar minimum is upon us.

      • climatereason | January 28, 2019 at 5:53 am |

        jch

        with your graphic you have at last admitted the existence of the pause, a matter which occupied ,many climate scientists time and caused conferences and learned papers. we all knew it happened, why you wouldn’t admit the evidence of your own eyes I don’t know/

        tonyb.

      • JCH | January 28, 2019 at 7:47 am |

        It’s too short to be anything other than a wiggle. Come back when you have a contender.

      • JCH | January 28, 2019 at 7:51 am |

        How is that Niño you have been menacing with coming along, JCH? I just checked today’s BoM page and oh boy does it look bad for you.

        I embrace ENSO, all of it, So it does not matter to me at all what it does. It can’t look bad for me.

        Yes, you’re bone-in-the-nose sun worshipper.

      • cerescokid | January 28, 2019 at 10:11 am |

        If there is (was) no hiatus (pause) then someone should have sent a memo to the innumerable (countless) authors who have cited same in their papers. The non-change in the rate of warming is becoming as ubiquitous as the non-MWP and non-LIA.

        Maybe some online courses on how to sing from the same hymnal would help. Gotta keep up appearances you know.

      • afonzarelli | January 28, 2019 at 11:41 am |

        Ha! Jus’ look at the mouth of the south crawfishin’ away from his gloom ‘n doom nino predictions that he’s been pushin’ all year long. (The resident ensobssessive compulsive commenter of Climate, etc thinks we all have short memories)…

      • Javier | January 28, 2019 at 12:21 pm |

        Yes, JCH is hilarious. I remember your comment of him/her being Estragon, “waiting for El Niñot”, Afonzarelli. Now he/she is embracing anything that comes from ENSO. Be careful with what you wish for, JCH, you might get it. You keep using that ENSO word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

      • Mike Roberts | January 29, 2019 at 2:12 am |

        climatereason,

        Back in 2014 … I happened to visit their offices a couple of times in that period to speak with David Parker and Richard Betts. They accepted the existence of a pause but believed they knew the reasons for the pause. If they accepted it I don’t know why you won’t.

        So, do they accept it now (5 years later), with at least two recent papers showing that there was no statistically significant slowdown?

      • JCH | January 29, 2019 at 6:42 am |

        Karl2015

    • dpy6629 | January 26, 2019 at 12:37 pm |

      Well Mike, Depending on how you define the beginning and ending periods it is almost as great.

      https://cliscep.com/2019/01/24/january-2019-update-the-science-still-isnt-settled/#comment-32758

      is a good and detailed look at the issue.

      This discussion by you and Tamino is minutae and is a perfect example of the political opposition research tactic of quote mining for some isolated sentence that can be attacked as wrong. On the whole Judith’s post here is pretty good I think and worth thinking about.

  23. HaroldW | January 23, 2019 at 9:27 pm |

    If you read further than the first paragraph, you will find the following quotations…
    “It is instructive to consider land and ocean separately, and also to look at the hemispheres separately.”
    “Note: over land, the recent warming is substantially greater than the early 20th century warming.”
    “globally, you can see that the ocean warming between 1910 and 1945 was about the same magnitude as the warming from 1976 to present (recent warming is smaller in the SH).”

  24. Wagathon | January 23, 2019 at 9:31 pm |

    Warming before 1940 accounts for 70% of the warming that took place after the Little Ice Age ended in 1850. However, only 15% greenhouse gases that global warming alarmists ascribe to human emissions came before 1940. Obviously, the cause of global warming both before and after 1940 is the same: solar activity during that period was inordinately high.

  25. Robert Lewin | January 23, 2019 at 11:12 pm |

    This recent article quotes- “Professor Daniel Rosenfeld shows that the degree to which aerosols cool the earth has been grossly underestimated”
    Perhaps all the cooling after mid 20th century could be attributed to aerosols.
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190122104611.htm

  26. sheldonjwalker | January 24, 2019 at 2:17 am |

    .
    ❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶
    ❶①❶①
    ❶①❶① . . . An open letter to RealClimate.org . . .
    ❶①❶①
    ❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶
    .

    Gavin Schmidt from RealClimate.org is a wise person.

    He gives good advice.

    If Gavin gives you some advice, then I suggest that you take it.

    Gavin recently gave all Deniers some good advice.

    If Deniers don’t want to be rightly accused of climate denial, they don’t go around denying climate science.

    That bit of advice is beautifully simple. It can’t be argued with. It is logically sound. It is a statement that Yogi Berra would be proud of.

    But Gavin is a busy person. He doesn’t have time to give everybody the advice that they deserve.

    To solve this problem, I have managed to “get inside Gavin’s head”, so that everybody can benefit from Gavin’s wisdom.

    First, some advice for Alarmists.
    ———————————

    Alarmists, if you don’t want to be called a stupid arrogant jerk, then don’t act like a stupid arrogant jerk.

    Now some advice for climate scientists.
    —————————————

    Climate scientists, if you don’t want to be called an undemocratic third world dictator, then don’t act like an undemocratic third world dictator.

    Even Gavin could benefit from some “Gavin” type advice.
    ——————————————————-

    Gavin, if you don’t want to be called an obnoxious Tamino-like character, then don’t act like an obnoxious Tamino-like character.
    .

    I think that I am getting the hang of giving out wise advice.

    I think that I will quit while I am ahead, with one last piece of advice for Gavin.

    Gavin, if you want to “weasel” out of answering any difficult climate questions, then call the questioner a Denier. Because nobody is expected to answer questions from Deniers.

    Sorry, Gavin. I can see that you already knew that last piece of advice.

    Keep up the good work !!!

    ====================

    An open letter to RealClimate.org

    Anybody who would like to read the conversation that I DIDN’T have with Gavin, should click this link:
    https://agree-to-disagree.com/an-open-letter-to-realclimate-org

  27. John Reid | January 24, 2019 at 4:04 am |

    Like racing tipster and stock market analysts, climate scientists seem to place a lot of faith in their analysis of what is really just red noise. See: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/climate-policy/science-and-policy/john-reid-2017-1.php

  28. aporiac1960 | January 24, 2019 at 7:31 am |

    Interesting article.

    I wish more climate scientists would be circumspect in their claims along the lines of: –

    1) Although we don’t know everything about the climate, we don’t know nothing, and so we’d like to explain our knowledge – including the gaps and uncertainties – and what COULD be implied despite those gaps and uncertainties.

    2) We know almost nothing about politics, economics, business, psychology, sociology, law, governance, and pretty much every other field that considers critical issues that have a bearing on the quality and quantity of human life in the present and the future, and that are also fields in which our concerns must be considered and weighed in the hierarchy of all other concerns.

    3) On this basis we put forward our preoccupations for consideration alongside all other preoccupations about which we are almost entirely ignorant, and so cannot judge the importance and priority with which our concerns should be treated.

  29. Javier | January 24, 2019 at 10:39 am |

    Fun graphic from a discussion at WUWT with somebody that doesn’t believe there has been a modern maximum in solar activity.

    Run an 840-month average over the sunspot record at SILSO and there it is the Modern Solar Maximum in all its glory.

    https://i.imgur.com/SXGv5lm.png

    It is highly relevant to this article discussion, as the early 20th century warming coincides with the early part of the Modern Maximum.

  30. Pingback: January 2019 Update: The Science Still Isn’t Settled | Climate Scepticism

  31. 4TimesAYear | January 24, 2019 at 3:56 pm |

    Reblogged this on 4TimesAYear's Blog.

  32. Willis Eschenbach | January 24, 2019 at 4:05 pm |

    Javier | January 24, 2019 at 4:00 am |

    Willis why do you continue using a semi-quantitative, human-error-prone method of measuring solar activity when quantitative data is available? Perhaps because it allows you to continue using fake memes that reveal your bias?

    First, “fake memes”? You can’t attack the science in my graph because it is hard fact, so you just call it “fake”? I thought you were a scientist, no? Stick to the science.

    Next, why use sunspots as an indicator of solar activity? Because a) they are very highly correlated with other solar indices like say 10.7 cm flux (see below), and b) they extend back a couple of centuries, which the 10.7 cm flux records do not do.

    Here is the relationship between monthly sunspot numbers and monthly F107 values:

    Call:
lm(formula = flux107 ~ sunspotnum)

Residuals:
    Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
-32.542  -5.012  -0.327   4.047  60.379 

Coefficients:
             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept) 55.602567   0.559638   99.36   <2e-16 ***
sunspotnum   0.581219   0.004285  135.62   <2e-16 ***
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 9.238 on 743 degrees of freedom
  (1 observation deleted due to missingness)
Multiple R-squared:  0.9612,	Adjusted R-squared:  0.9611 
F-statistic: 1.839e+04 on 1 and 743 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

    Next you say:

    https://i.imgur.com/QDsytea.png

    10.7 cm flux shows that what you say is wrong. Solar output has not been dropping since 1980. It was above the long-term average until ~ 2000, when it declined in coincidence with the pause.

    Whether it is above or below the long-term average is immaterial to whether it is dropping or not.

    Your own graph shows that the F107 flux has about the same average value in the 1980 and 1990 peaks, and has been dropping since then. Meanwhile, take any dataset, say the UAH MSU lower troposphere. Trend for the lower troposphere temperatures from 1990 to present is +0.12°C per decade …

    Or we could use HadCRUT, +0.17°C per decade 1990-present …

    According to your own graph, F107 has been DROPPING since 1990. MSU TLT has been RISING since 1990. So have HadCRUT all all the other major global temperature datasets. Nice try, Javier, but your lovely theory runs aground on a hard reef of facts.

    w.

    • Javier | January 25, 2019 at 1:39 pm |

      they extend back a couple of centuries

      We are not discussing back a couple of centuries. We are discussing the level of solar activity between SC21 and SC22, that showed no decline according to:
      a) 10.7 cm solar flux.
      b) Greenwich sunspot area database.

      https://i.imgur.com/lt3RqCR.png

      It appears some of those sunspots were smaller. That’s the problem with semi-quantitative methods.

      Considering that temperature increased from 1976, it turns out that solar activity did not decline between 1976 and 2005.

      Your chart has been carefully cherry-picked. If you draw it between 1976 and 1998 it will show solar activity increasing, not decreasing. In reality solar activity was almost flat for SC21-23, but at above long-term average, so it was flat but quite high, in what has been termed the Modern Maximum of solar activity. Perfectly capable of producing warming.

      So yes, this “solar activity and temperature have been going opposite ways” is a fake meme. It is not supported on evidence. The reality is that long periods of above average solar activity coincide with periods of warming and long periods of below average solar activity coincide with periods of cooling.

      Solar activity has been below its long term average since 2005, coinciding with the pause. No further warming is possible until solar activity goes above average again.

      https://i.imgur.com/9mwzJmV.png

      The long-term average corresponds to the 9000 level in that graph. Whether is going up or down appears to be of little importance. As for a fire below a large pot, what matters is whether it is high or low.

  33. Robert I. Ellison | January 24, 2019 at 5:41 pm |

    Far be it for me to suggest that early 20th century warming doesn’t show something other than CO2 knobs – you know who you are – like solar knobs – again you know – with a buffoonery – ①❶①😎❶①❶ – sidebar

    I have discovered some new tipping points in the Earth system correlated (0.99) with the amount of idiosyncratic cr@p repeated endlessly with such dogmatic certainty about the impacts of human emissions of greenhouse gases on climate.

    https://contentedcows.com/media/k2/items/cache/62fb5f1024529266c6e71c0c0c9ddb3c_XL.jpg

    https://contentedcows.com/media/k2/items/cache/62fb5f1024529266c6e71c0c0c9ddb3c_XL.jpg

    It is very sad that innocent cows and smart cars are the victims of such catastrophic events. Is it natural or anthropogenic? Does it matter? Think of the cows people.

  34. Pingback: Judith Curry On The Causes Of Recent Warming | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

  36. Atomsk's Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | January 24, 2019 at 10:32 pm |

    You’re just repeating the same fallacious reasoning that people have corrected you (and other contrarians on) for almost 10 years. Once again:

    “Your statement is equivalent to stating that we can’t find someone guilty of a crime today because some other cases in the past are still unsolved. It is a non sequitur. It is precisely because we have more information about changes today than we have about changes longer ago that attribution gets easier. We know for the recent period that ocean heat content went up, not down. We don’t know that for 1910-1940. We know for the recent period that the stratosphere has been cooling. We don’t know that for 1910-1940. We know for the recent period that solar has been flat. We don’t know that for 1910-1940. Etc. …”
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2010/08/03/the-curry-agonistes/#comment-790767444

    “For example in discussing the IPCC’s attribution of late 20th century climate change she has stated multiple times that she believes if we can not confidently attribute early 20th century climate change then we can not confidently attribute late 20th century climate change. I’m sorry to be blunt and with all due respect to her CV, this is grossly illogical and utterly simple to explain. The observations we have over the last decades are hugely better that those we have for pre-1950s, isn’t that obvious? The simple fact is we know more about the climate of the lastest decades than we do about any other past climate. And the idea that if you can’t explain an event you were not around for, you therefore can not explain a similar event you witnessed, is gradeschool reasoning (um, yes, it’s wrong too).”
    https://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/11/judith-curry-plants-her-flag

    “These examples illustrate that different climate changes in the past had different causes. The fact that natural factors caused climate changes in the past does not mean that the current climate change is natural. By analogy, the fact that forest fires have long been caused naturally by lightning strikes does not mean that fires cannot also be caused by a careless camper.”
    https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-1.html

    “As has been explained ad nauseum: you can’t rebut anthropogenic attribution by claiming there were larger natural changes in the past. Otherwise, every murderer could go free by claiming there were lots of deaths by natural causes in the past. Instead, you need to look at specific aspects of that death (ex: the presence of fingerprints) to see what caused the death.
    Similarly, you need to look at specific aspects of post-1960s warming to see what caused the warming. Those aspects (or “fingerprints”) point to increased greenhouses as the primary cause of the warming (ex: cooling of the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere). Other scientists have explained this to you before.”
    https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/27/special-report-on-sea-level-rise/#comment-885389

    “And if you think that this somehow means that current global warming is not caused by humans, I guess you agree with this: Barcelona scored goals all through their history, even before Lionel Messi was born! Therefore Lionel Messi can’t score goals. (Or for American readers: the Rams scored touchdowns all through their history even before they signed Todd Gurley. Therefore Todd Gurley can’t score touchdowns.)”
    https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/friends-of-science-video-promoted-by-youtube-presents-long-list-of-climate-myths-steve-goreham/

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 24, 2019 at 10:41 pm |

      How many logical fallacies can one fit on the end of a pin?

    • dpy6629 | January 24, 2019 at 10:50 pm |

      Lots of fallacies here of course. Sanakan pulls quotes from past erroneous posts and comments. The fundamental error in all of them is conflating a yes/no decision such as whether a defendant is guilty with a fuzzy scientific question that has all kinds of shades of grey.

      The question here is that if natural climate change happened in the past without much change in “forcing” then you can’t rule it out in the recent past either.

      The innocence project shouldn’t make us refuse to convict those on trial. It should provide strong elements of caution about insisting on highly convincing evidence not open to multiple interpretations. Just an example, if ocean heat content was just as high a thousand years ago as now, it should make us very cautious about attribution.

      I’m surprised that Judith doesn’t just delete this kind of mining of irrelevant seams of very low grade ore.

      • matthewrmarler | January 24, 2019 at 11:08 pm |

        dpy6629: I’m surprised that Judith doesn’t just delete this kind of mining of irrelevant seams of very low grade ore.

        It’s good to have them collected and presented for discussion. It is perverse to call these fallacious concoctions “corrections”

      • Atomsk's Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | January 25, 2019 at 6:48 pm |

        Re: “The fundamental error in all of them is conflating a yes/no decision such as whether a defendant is guilty with a fuzzy scientific question that has all kinds of shades of grey.”

        Nope. A specific anthropogenic attribution claim (ex: >50% of the post-1950s warming is caused by humans) is a yes/no claim, with an associated probability of it being true. Similarly, a specific claim regarding that the defendant committed the crime is a yes/no claim with an associated probability of it being true. That’s how anthropogenic attribution works, regardless of whether the context is anthropogenic attribution for climate change, a death, a fire, etc. To say otherwise is simply special pleading.

        Now, you can choose to follow Curry’s claims on probabilistic reasoning. But they’ve already been debunked for years, and they lead to clear contradictions+conflations. For instance:

        “The issue is that Judith Curry, in unveiling her new intellectual tool with great fanfare and off-key notes of false modesty, conflates confidence in a hypothesis with weighting.”
        http://archive.is/qimrq#selection-681.176-687.1

        “If you want more detail, then yes, I agree with mt that her approach to probability is pretty dodgy too.
        […]
        However, I don’t think the “Italian flag” analysis – at least JC’s interpretation of it – is a useful or even coherent contribution. The rot sets in right at the outset, where she apparently conflates the concept of evidence for and against the proposition “most of the observed warming was very likely due to the GHG increase” with an estimate of the proportion of warming that was due to anthropogenic vs natural factors. This seems like a rather elementary point to get confused over.”
        http://archive.is/qimrq#selection-681.176-687.1

        ““The high likelihood of the imprecise “most” seems rather meaningless”: We disagree. The likelihood describes the assessed probability that “most” (i.e., more than 50%), of the warming is due to the increase in greenhouse gases. This statement has a clear meaning and an associated uncertainty, although explicitly listing “>50%” in the text to ensure that no misunderstandings are possible could be helpful in future work.”
        https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1

        “Here Judith makes the same mistake that I commented on in my 2012 post – assuming that a statement about where the bulk of the [probability distribution function] lies is a statement about where it’s mean is and that it must be cut off at some value (whether it is 99% or 100%). Neither of those things follow. I will gloss over the completely unnecessary confusion of the meaning of the word ‘most’ (again thoroughly discussed in 2012).”
        http://archive.is/KAvAK#selection-295.0-299.335

        I consider that third quote to be a classic, since it shows that Curry will act as if the meaning of English words like “most” is unclear, in order to launch spurious objections to anthropogenic attribution.

        Re: “The question here is that if natural climate change happened in the past without much change in “forcing” then you can’t rule it out in the recent past either.”

        Of course you can rule it out as the primary cause, as folks like the IPCC, Gavin Schmidt, etc. have been explaining for over a decade. To say otherwise is as ridiculous as saying:

        “The question here is that if deaths by cholera happened in the past without much change in the number of guns then you can’t rule cholera as a cause of a recent death”

        The mistake here is obvious, and was pointed out in the post you’re responding to: you can have clear evidence to rule out a causal factor in the recent past, even if you don’t have that same level of evidence to rule out that factor for every event in the more distant past.

        For instance, I can have clear forensic evidence that someone recently died by a gunshot wound, not cholera, even if I can’t rule out cholera as a cause of death in the more distant past. Similarly I can have clear evidence pointing to CO2 as the primary cause of recent warming (ex: strastospheric cooling that increases with increasing height, mesospheric cooling, thermospheric cooling, etc.), even if I can’t rule out natural variability as a factor for warming in the more distant past.

        Re: “I’m surprised that Judith doesn’t just delete this kind of mining of irrelevant seams of very low grade ore.”

        Maybe because it gives people like you the opportunity to make the type of transparently fallacious responses you made above. But I understand why you would prefer to have criticisms removed, rather than have them addressed (makes it rather ironic when various political conservatives start whining about being censored in climate science discussions, but whatever).

        Let me know when you can muster a cogent, non-fallacious response.

      • dpy6629 | January 25, 2019 at 7:11 pm |

        Just doubling down on the fallacy I see. If many recent New York deaths were caused by tuberculosis, then you can’t rule it out even in the case of someone falling and dying. Someone very sick from an infection is much more likely to fall. It’s not a black and white thing. There can be more than one cause of a single event.

        One of the paper referenced above in comment shows that in fact there is no evidence that the tropopause has gotten higher over the last 40 years. That’s also supposed to be a fingerprint of greenhouse warming. You need to look at evidence that might contradict your theory, not just the evidence you like on stratospheric cooling.

        You are aware that no one is going to read your comments because of their length and very heavy repetition. This is not like your assumed method of just rudely talking over someone else you are arguing with in person. That doesn’t work in this format. The blog owner can always remove clutter if she wants to.

      • Atomsk's Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | January 25, 2019 at 8:01 pm |

        Re: “If many recent New York deaths were caused by tuberculosis, then you can’t rule it out even in the case of someone falling and dying.”

        Of course you can rule it out as the cause of death. Do you know understand how forensic science and medical science work? A pathologist can perform an autopsy to see the mechanism underlying death, and contrast that mechanism with trauma from a fall vs. the pathology typically associated with death by Tb.

        Re: “One of the paper referenced above in comment shows that in fact there is no evidence that the tropopause has gotten higher over the last 40 years.”

        We’ve been over this, dpy:
        I expect you to cite evidence for your claims. I have no interest in your usual practice of making stuff up without evidence. So please let me know when you actually have some evidence for what you claimed.

        Tropopause height increased over shorter time-periods and multi-decadal time periods, as shown in a number of studies, including:

        “Contributions of anthropogenic and natural forcing to recent tropopause height changes”
        “Response to Comment on “Contributions of anthropogenic and natural forcing to recent tropopause height changes””
        “Variability and trends in the global tropopause estimated from radiosonde data”
        “A global blended tropopause based on ERA data. Part II: Trends and tropical broadening”
        “Trends in the global tropopause thickness revealed by radiosondes”
        “Global tropopause height trends estimated from GPS radio occultation data”
        “Distribution and trends of the cold-point tropopause over China from 1979 to 2014 based on radiosonde dataset”
        “Tropopause trend across China from 1979 to 2016: A revisit with updated radiosonde measurements”

        I’ve checked this myself awhile back. For instance, the first source listed below gives notes that the lower edge of the tropical tropoause is at 150mb (150hPa). The second source allows one to easily check that this level increased with height:

        “Tropical Tropopause Layer” [doi:10.1029/2008RG000267]
        https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.pl

        Re: “You are aware that no one is going to read your comments because of their length and very heavy repetition”

        We’ve been over this, dpy:
        Just because you’re unable/unwilling to read anything long, doesn’t mean everyone else suffers from that problem. Some of us actually read long things, like peer-reviewed papers and scientific textbooks. And I already know that no amount of evidence is ever going to convince you, anymore than my citing evidence would convince a flat-Earther. So my responses are not for your benefit.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 25, 2019 at 8:43 pm |

        It is apparent that aerosols are poorly constrained and internal variability poorly modeled.

        For the former:

        https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/16/4243/F2.medium.gif
        https://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/4243

        http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/01/16/science.aav0566

        For the latter:

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0256-8?WT.feed_name=subjects_cryospheric-science

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6

        My feeling is that the literature on internal variability far outweighs the few poorly quantified claims of mid century aerosol cooling.

        https://people.uwm.edu/kravtsov/publications/

        https://academictree.org/physics/publications.php?pid=349044

        https://people.uwm.edu/aatsonis/research/

        http://scrippsscholars.ucsd.edu/gsugihara/publications

        Many people in different but related fields with ideas that are as far beyond atomski as bicycles are for fish.

        Atomski purpose is not science discourse but the use of selected science as a blunt instrument with no regard for error or uncertainty in support of motivated memes and egocentric gratifications. Pointless and tedious.

      • matthewrmarler | February 3, 2019 at 1:08 pm |

        Atomsk’s Sanakan: you can have clear evidence to rule out a causal factor in the recent past, even if you don’t have that same level of evidence to rule out that factor for every event in the more distant past.

        Yes you can, but is there in fact any evidence that the process that initiated the late 19th and early 20th century warmings ever ended?

        A specific anthropogenic attribution claim (ex: >50% of the post-1950s warming is caused by humans) is a yes/no claim, with an associated probability of it being true. Similarly, a specific claim regarding that the defendant committed the crime is a yes/no claim with an associated probability of it being true.

        Jury verdicts are “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” or else “not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”. Juries do not report that they are 90% confident that the defendant is no more than 90% guilty (or at least 90% guilty), or anything like that. Here the questions are: What is the climate sensitivity to a doubling of the concentration of CO2?; did CO2 increase cause the same amount of warming in the early 20th century than in the late 20th century? What are the relative contributions of CO2 increase, other anthropogenic effects, and natural oscillations independent of humans to the 3 warming periods since the end of the Little Ice Ages? And what are the evidences for proposed answers to these questions, and how confident can we be in any of the proposed answers?

      • matthewrmarler | February 3, 2019 at 1:26 pm |

        Atomsk’s Sanakan: Maybe because it gives people like you the opportunity to make the type of transparently fallacious responses you made above.

        dpy6629’s comments on your comments are not in fact “transparently fallacious”, though I think he made an error in writing the following,

        dpy6629 If many recent New York deaths were caused by tuberculosis, then you can’t rule it out even in the case of someone falling and dying.

        What I think dpy6629 meant, and would be true had dpy6629 written it, is that you can’t rule out TB a priori, but only after collecting pertinent evidence. That is the analogy to the case of early 20th century warming: its cause can not be ruled out a priori as the cause of the late 20th century warming and it can not be ruled out without evidence that it ended.

      • JCH | February 3, 2019 at 1:45 pm |

        A process not mentioned in the paper, or the processes that are mentioned in the paper. Obviously the processes that are mentioned never end, just vary.

  37. Robert I. Ellison | January 24, 2019 at 10:34 pm |

    “Here we show that distinct large‐scale patterns of SST and low‐cloud cover (LCC) emerge naturally from objective analyses of observations and demonstrate their close coupling in a positive local SST‐LCC feedback loop that may be important for both internal variability and climate change. The two patterns that explain the maximum amount of covariance between SST and LCC correspond to the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, leading modes of multidecadal internal variability. Spatial patterns and time series of SST and LCC anomalies associated with both modes point to a strong positive local SST‐LCC feedback.” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL077904

    https://wol-prod-cdn.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/55baa0fc-db4e-47ee-8ffe-954404f76903/grl57348-fig-0001-m.jpg
    “(a) HadCRUT4 global mean surface temperature time series with a 10‐year smoothing applied. For each decade, a 15‐year trend is calculated. The red triangles correspond to warming trends and the blue triangles to cooling trends. (b) Map of local surface temperature trends between 1960 and 1990. (c) The same as (b), but for 1985–2015.”

    Global warming is quite obviously neither directly solar or notably infrared warming – although you may note that they expect these natural geophysics to be overwhelmed by AGW in due course.

    Here we see SW warming and IR cooling – with SW dominating.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/wong-et-al-2006.gif
    https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI3838.1

    In terms of mode of operation of the system – I’m expecting something real. Regimes shifts in means and variance over millennia.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/ghil-sensitivity-e1529103720204.png

  38. Godwin T. Ihagh | January 25, 2019 at 4:13 am |

    abrupt rise in global warming, especially in this age, points to only one thing: the increase in private and industrial use and dependency on nonrenewable fossil fuels is heating up the planet beyond previous rates of heating, and this would likely continue till mankind turns away from depending on fossil fuels.

  39. Jaime Jessop | January 25, 2019 at 4:24 am |

    Judith, here is a 2013 study which would appear to confirm what you are saying re. attribution of modern warming:

    “Although there is a competing theory that the observed multidecadal variability is forced by anthropogenic aerosols during the industrial era (33), our present work showing that this variability is quasi-periodic and extends at least 350 y into the past with cycles in the preindustrial era argues in favor of it being naturally recurrent and internally generated. This view is supported by model results that relate the variability of the global-mean SST to North Atlantic thermohaline circulation (30, 31, 35) and by the existence of an AMO-like variability in control runs without anthropogenic forcing (28). If this conclusion is correct, then the following interpretation follows: The anthropogenic warming started after the mid-19th century of Industrial Revolution. After a slow start, the smoothed version of the warming trend has stayed almost constant since 1910 at 0.07–0.08 °C/decade. Superimposed on the secular trend is a natural multidecadal oscillation of an average period of 70 y with significant amplitude of 0.3–0.4 °C peak to peak, which can explain many historical episodes of warming and cooling and accounts for 40% of the observed warming since the mid-20th century and for 50% of the previously attributed anthropogenic warming trend (55). Because this large multidecadal variability is not random, but likely recurrent based on its past behavior, it has predictive value. Not taking the AMO into account in predictions of future warming under various forcing scenarios may run the risk of overestimating the warming for the next two to three decades, when the AMO is likely in its down phase.”

    https://www.pnas.org/content/110/6/2058

    • cerescokid | January 25, 2019 at 11:01 am |

      “Not taking the AMO into account in predictions of future warming under various forcing scenarios may run the risk of overestimating the warming for the next two to three decades, when the AMO is likely in its down phase”

      Many seem to be oblivious to or are in a state of denial about this advice.

      There is no evidence that oscillations, of what ever form, take a vacation just because of AGW. If the AMO is true to form, the declining Arctic Sea Ice narrative will have to be retired for a few decades. And maybe a few apocalyptic journalists will have to consider early retirement as well. Of course, given the sea saw relationship between the poles identified in some papers, those journalists can just reorient their attention to the south and warn of impending doom because of the Antarctica Sea Ice being in decline.

    • JCH | January 25, 2019 at 11:39 am |

      Michael E. Mann recommended it be included.

      Its down phase? Too funny.

    • nobodysknowledge | January 26, 2019 at 3:28 pm |

      A very important reference J Jessop.
      There are cycles of warming and cooling of global dimensions. So AMO can account for much of the warming in early 20th century. And it is further linked to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and further to Thermohaline Circulation (THC).
      Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records. Ka-Kit Tung and Jiansong Zhou, 2013.:
      ” presence of multidecadal internal variability superimposed on the secular trend gives the appearance of accelerated warming and cooling episodes at roughly regular intervals. Below we give a consistent explanation of the four centuries of climate variation based on the assumption that much of the AMO is natural and recurrent.
      Almost no sunspots were observed during a 70-y interval (1645–1715) called the Maunder Minimum. Large volcano eruptions—Huaynaputina (1600), Parker (1641), and Long Island (1660)—contributed to the cold LIA at the beginning of the CET record. An unusual series of five large volcano eruptions from 1660 to 1680 probably prolonged the cold into the Late Maunder Minimum. A negative phase of the AMO accentuated the cold further in Late Maunder Minimum, reported in Europe, although it was thought that the cold CET was only “locally representative”. Our current work argues that it is probably global because the AMO has in-phase global manifestations. There were no major known volcanoes from 1680 to 1707 [although there were some unknown ones, and it started to warm. Although commonly attributed to the Sun, the rapid warming of ∼1 °C at the end of Maunder Minimum is 10 times greater than our understanding of the solar radiation change can explain but is within the range of a speculative theory if we remove 0.4 °C as due to the AMO. The timing of the warming, however, appears to precede the increase in total solar irradiance (TSI) by 20–30 y and favors the reduced volcanic aerosol loading as the main cause for the warming—the rebound. The 20-y small dip in temperature near 1810 coincides with the solar Dalton Minimum, but is probably caused by a negative excursion of the AMO. The rising AMO cycle in the first half of the 19th century produced a warming, despite the eruption of Tambora (1815), the largest in the past four centuries. The next rising phase of AMO led to the often cited early 20th-century warming in the global mean (1910–1940) of 0.4 °C, but it happened to occur during a period of increasing mean solar irradiance, leading some to attribute it, incorrectly, to solar forcing. The observed warming rate for that period lies above the range of all model responses to combined anthropogenic and natural forcing compiled by IPCC AR4, even after correcting for a discontinuity in the wartime data, corroborating the suggestion here that it is mostly caused by internal variability. The cooling experienced in the 1960s and 70s is seen as occurring in the negative phase of the AMO. The period after the 1970s shows a secular increase in global-mean temperature. The rising AMO half-cycle gives the appearance of an accelerated warming that lasted until 2005 (discounting the warm El Niño of 1998). Recently, there have been debates about the slowing of the warming rates since 2005, with explanations (44⇓–46) ranging from increases in stratospheric water vapor and background aerosol to increased coal burning in the emergent economy of China of the past 20 y. If one accepts the conclusion that the AMO is recurrent, and because this period coincides with the start of the descending phase of the AMO, one can suggest that the AMO is a more likely explanation.

  40. craigm350 | January 25, 2019 at 9:54 am |

    Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
    Good read

  41. Atomsk's Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | January 25, 2019 at 11:07 am |

    Re: “The mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet provides an additional line of evidence for Arctic warming, that also has direct relevance to sea level rise. The following figure is from Fettweis et al. (2008) (note Fettweiss et al. have more recent analyses that are generally consistent with the 2008 paper, but I think the 2008 figure is best)
    […]
    The impact of the early 20th century Arctic warming is seen in the negative mass balance for Greenland, from the 1920’s to mid 1950’s. This Greenland mass loss is consistent with the increase in the rate of sea level rise circa 1920 – 1950.”

    This is the 2008 paper you’re citing:
    “Estimation of the Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance for the
    20th and 21st centuries”

    The paper is covering surface mass balance (SMB), as is the graph you’re citing from the paper; hence the “SMB” in your cited graph’s y-axis. Also, your cited graph is using a combination of observational analyses and observationally-based model simulation via MAR. You claim Fettweiss et al. have a recent analysis showing something “generally consistent” with this. But Fettweiss et al. 2017 doesn’t show a robust decrease in Greenland SMB from 1920s to mid-1950s, though it does show a robust decrease recently. So despite what you said, Fettweiss et al.’s recent work undermines your case, as opposed to supporting it:

    https://archive.is/zaEUE/ea6b91c800ad99e31cbba0e037437373f8cb5a1c.jpg
    (Figure 8 of: Fettweiss et al. 2017, “Reconstructions of the 1900–2015 Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance using the regional climate MAR model”)

    Moreover, SMB is not equivalent to the total mass balance (TMB) of Greenland. For instance, the Danish Meteorological Institute notes:

    “The calving loss is greater than the gain from surface mass balance, and Greenland is losing mass at about 200 Gt/yr”
    https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/

    Your cited graph covers Greenland’s SMB, not Greenland’s TMB. Here’s a depiction of Greenland’s TMB from a 2013 paper:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dxpo1ZCX0AAJWKD.jpg
    (Figure 6 from: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00546.1 )

    That shows an oscillation in Greenland’s TMB during the 1920s to mid-1950s, in contrast to the sharp post-1980s drop. It’ll be interesting to see how (or even if) you square that with your aforementioned claims on the 1920s to mid-1950s period.

    Re: “The warming in the Arctic during the early 20th century is described by Polyakov et al:”

    I find it funny how many contrarians habitually abuse Polyakov’s older work, while ignoring any of Polyakov’s later work on causal attribution. Polyakov’s more recent work attributes much of the Arctic sea ice melt to anthropogenic forcing:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsWkyUeXoAE_Hlj.jpg
    (Figure 5 from: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071941 )

    Re: “Circular reasoning at its ‘finest.’”

    You’ve been rebutted on that talking point of your’s for years. For example, in point 1 of:

    “Comment on “Climate science and the uncertainty monster” JA Curry and PJ Webster”
    https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1

    • popesclimatetheory | January 27, 2019 at 8:45 pm |

      The impact of the early 20th century Arctic warming is seen in the negative mass balance for Greenland, from the 1920’s to mid 1950’s. This Greenland mass loss is consistent with the increase in the rate of sea level rise circa 1920 – 1950.”

      Again and again, the depletion of ice volume during the little ice age promoted the ice retreat and the warming. It is cause and not result. The correlations are correct, they are not understood. The ice loss is consistent with sea level rise, the ice loss and the sea level rise is the result of lack of snowfall during the little ice age, the polar oceans were frozen, there was no evaporation and snowfall to maintain ice volume on Greenland and other cold places like glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere. Ice depletes when oceans are more frozen and there is less evaporation and snowfall.

      It does go against consensus and luke-warm theory and is not considered.
      It is real and it is supported by actual data.

  42. Jaime Jessop | January 25, 2019 at 12:14 pm |

    A Sanakan,

    “I find it funny how many contrarians habitually abuse Polyakov’s older work, while ignoring any of Polyakov’s later work on causal attribution. Polyakov’s more recent work attributes much of the Arctic sea ice melt to anthropogenic forcing:
    (Figure 5 from: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071941 )”

    I find it funny how you refer to a study which says absolutely nothing about the attribution of early 20th century warming and sea-ice melt in the Arctic, which is partly the subject of Judith’s post and the subject of her comment which you quoted. Merely pointing out that, in an earlier study, Polyakov DESCRIBED this early 20th century Arctic warming is not an ‘habitual abuse’ of his older work. Trying to justify this absurd opinion by then referencing a later work, where he was co-author, which attributes the COOLING and sea-ice EXPANSION during 1950-75 (immediately AFTER the 1910-40s rapid warming) to anthropogenic aerosols doesn’t seem like a very rational thing to do.

    • Atomsk's Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | January 25, 2019 at 6:17 pm |

      Re: “I find it funny how you refer to a study which says absolutely nothing about the attribution of early 20th century warming and sea-ice melt in the Arctic, which is partly the subject of Judith’s post and the subject of her comment which you quoted. “

      False. The paper attributes most of the sea ice melt to anthropogenic forcing from greenhouse gases, as I clearly said. It also attributes much of the mid-20th century increase in sea ice, to a cooling effect from anthropogenic aerosols. I even showed a graph in which the paper did that:
      https://judithcurry.com/2019/01/23/early-20th-century-global-warming/#comment-888301

      That runs contrary to claims Curry has been making for years, where she’s tried to ascribe most of the cooling to factors like the AMO. It also runs contrary to her claim of not having strong attribution of the warming to anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases. Here is the paper again:

      “Aerosol‐driven increase in Arctic sea ice over the middle of the twentieth century”
      https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071941

      I cited figure 5 from that paper. I suggest you actually read the paper before misrepresenting it again. Here’s figure 5 again:

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsWkyUeXoAE_Hlj.jpg

      If you’re having trouble understanding it, then here’s some help:
      “GHG” means “greenhouse gases”
      “NAT” means “natural, non-anthropogenic factors”
      “AER” means “aerosols”

  43. aaron | January 25, 2019 at 3:12 pm |

    Judith, tried to share this with you on twitter, but activty is low on my tweets and I think they’re largely going unseen.

    New paper says solar effects on NAO insignificant. It’s paywalled, so I haven’t looked into it.

    https://twitter.com/aaronshem/status/1087394593275027457

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 25, 2019 at 4:41 pm |

      “It is well established that an increased ultraviolet absorption around solar cycle maxima causes warming and increased ozone in the upper stratosphere9. Solar-induced changes in stratospheric temperatures produce circulation anomalies, which may induce a change in the polarity of the NAO via a ‘top-down’ mechanism3,10–12.”

      Separating subtle solar effects from internal feedbacks in a very changeable subsystem using reductionist science seems unlikely. There is an apparent link between temperature – especially in the NH – and solar activity. But for that there needs to be an amplifying mechanism in the terrestrial system. The impact on polar annular modes is a strong contender. Thanks for the link.

  44. aaron | January 25, 2019 at 3:35 pm |

    I remember many years ago there used to be a great graph, I think on the NSIDC home, that showed changes in glacial extent and estimated ice mass going back to the 1800s for the NH. The rate of melt plumetted after 1950. Melt rate now is tiny compared previous hundered years.

  45. Robert I. Ellison | January 25, 2019 at 3:59 pm |

    The tedium of atomski is an archive of motivated memes rehashed endlessly. Including the irrelevant conflation of aerosol and model circular reasoning. What he willfully neglects is that there is robust internal variation as any broad reading of the literature – as opposed to a few poorly quantified claims of aerosol mid 20th century cooling – shows.

    “This simulated internal variability shows a strong similarity to the observed Arctic atmospheric change in the past 37 years. Through a fingerprint pattern matching method, we estimate that this internal variability contributes to about 40–50% of observed multi-decadal decline in Arctic sea ice.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0256-8?WT.feed_name=subjects_cryospheric-science

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL060184

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL061416

    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1326.2

    https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/2010JCLI3347.1

    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2bda/61da6b35747b9dfc3617a906634643add60a.pdf?_ga=2.227854239.322884228.1548446714-1304181536.1542061321

  46. Jaime Jessop | January 25, 2019 at 6:49 pm |

    @AtomsksSanakan,

    The paper you quote from:

    “Our analysis therefore starts in 1950 and ends in 2005 to match the model simulations.”

    1910-1945 precedes 1950. It says nothing about anthropogenic forcing of ice melt in the early 20th century.

    The text accompanying fig 5:

    “In Figure 5, we show a summary of the simulated sea ice extent trends due to combined (ALL) and separate anthropogenic and natural forcings for the 1950–1975 and 1975–2005 periods. The simulations indicate that the positive trend in sea ice extent over the 1950–1975 period was mainly due to anthropogenic aerosols, and with a smaller positive contribution from natural variability”.

    I suggest you read the paper rather than misrepresent it..

    • Atomsk's Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | January 25, 2019 at 7:36 pm |

      Re: “1910-1945 precedes 1950. It says nothing about anthropogenic forcing of ice melt in the early 20th century.”

      To explain this to you for the third time:

      Curry (falsely) claims that anthropogenic attribution for post-1950 trends is unsound/unreliable unless one can explain pre-1950 trends. Polyakov’s recent work undermines that by doing post-1950s anthropogenic attribution, without needing to explain pre-1950 trends. Yet Curry conveniently avoids citing this recent work from Polyakov, instead citing an older paper from Polyakov.

      Re: “I find it funny how you refer to a study which says absolutely nothing about the attribution of early 20th century warming and sea-ice melt in the Arctic, which is partly the subject of Judith’s post and the subject of her comment which you quoted.”

      If you don’t understand that Curry is using early 20th century attribution to object to post-1950 anthropogenic attribution, then you haven’t understood her post. It would mean you didn’t understand the first paragraph even.

      Re: “I suggest you read the paper rather than misrepresent it..”

      Nowhere did you show I misrepresented the paper, since the paper showed what I claimed it did. If you think otherwise, then feel free to show a specific claim of mine that misrepresented the paper.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 26, 2019 at 1:23 pm |

        Polyakov nowhere rejects internal variability.

        e.g. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0014/5685ac647ec2940cddcb47998220d6d30c44.pdf

        The key idea of course is that processes that caused earlier comparable changes with a smaller anthropogenic factor are quite likely still in play.

        Atomski resorts to flat out misrepresentation of science.

      • Jaime Jessop | January 26, 2019 at 6:27 pm |

        Tedious, but here we go:

        “Re: “I find it funny how you refer to a study which says absolutely nothing about the attribution of early 20th century warming and sea-ice melt in the Arctic, which is partly the subject of Judith’s post and the subject of her comment which you quoted. “

        False. The paper attributes most of the sea ice melt to anthropogenic forcing from greenhouse gases, as I clearly said.”

        You replied “False” to my statement that the study you referenced says nothing about attribution of sea-ice melt before 1950. I was merely demonstrating that my statement was not false. Had you said ‘Ah yes, but Curry is using the earlier (natural) warming to argue the case that the mid 20th century cooling and subsequent rapid warming may also be partly natural’ – citing just ONE study which you claim somehow demonstrates conclusively that anthropogenic forcing has dominated changes in the Arctic post 1950 – we wouldn’t be having this ridiculous back and forth conversation. Of course, I could throw any number of peer-reviewed studies back at you claiming a significant role for internal decadal variability in Arctic climate change post 1950, but I suspect you would ignore such conflicting research in favour of traducing Prof Curry’s sensible and logical suggestion that natural internal variability did not suddenly stop in 1950 (after having played such a significant role in 1940s warming) to allow anthropogenic aerosols and anthropogenic GHGs a subsequent starring role in Arctic climate change.

      • aaron | January 26, 2019 at 11:01 pm |

        Everyone also glosses over the fact that the large ice melt prior to 1950 implies a huge forcing.

      • Atomsk's Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | February 3, 2019 at 8:22 am |

        Re: “You replied “False” to my statement that the study you referenced says nothing about attribution of sea-ice melt before 1950. I was merely demonstrating that my statement was not false. Had you said ‘Ah yes, but Curry is using the earlier (natural) warming to argue the case that the mid 20th century cooling and subsequent rapid warming may also be partly natural’ – citing just ONE study which you claim somehow demonstrates conclusively that anthropogenic forcing has dominated changes in the Arctic post 1950 – we wouldn’t be having this ridiculous back and forth conversation.”

        Actually you began this back-and-forth by saying that:

        “I find it funny how you refer to a study which says absolutely nothing about the attribution of early 20th century warming and sea-ice melt in the Arctic, which is partly the subject of Judith’s post and the subject of her comment which you quoted.”
        https://judithcurry.com/2019/01/23/early-20th-century-global-warming/#comment-888306

        So it was you who insinuated that the study wouldn’t be pertinent unless it dealt with early 20th century trends. I corrected that mistake of your’s by showing that the study attribution most of later 20th century melt to humans, without needing to explain early 20th century trends, undermining Curry’s claim that early 20th century attribution undermines later 20th century attribution.

        Re: ” Of course, I could throw any number of peer-reviewed studies back at you claiming a significant role for internal decadal variability in Arctic climate change post 1950″

        Then cite them. The paper I cited already allowed for a significant role for non-anthropogenic factors, without those non-anthropogenic being the primary drivers for recent trends.

        Re: “but I suspect you would ignore such conflicting research in favour of traducing Prof Curry’s sensible and logical suggestion that natural internal variability did not suddenly stop in 1950 (after having played such a significant role in 1940s warming) to allow anthropogenic aerosols and anthropogenic GHGs a subsequent starring role in Arctic climate change.”

        Nice straw man you’ve erected there. Natural internal variability does not need to “suddenly stop in 1950” in order for anthropogenic forcing to become a primary cause, anymore than non-smoking causes of lung cancer need to stop randomly at some point in order for smoking to become a primary cause of lung cancer.

        Anyway, I’m well within my rights to cite Polyakov’s more recent research, when Curry cites Polyakov’s older research to make her point.

  47. Michel | January 25, 2019 at 8:40 pm |

    We are told that climate science is settled: warming is on-going; it is almost exclusively anthropogenic; and therefore, total and urgent decarbonation must be undertaken. This post shows at least one thing: we still are struggling to understand temperature series.
    With multivariable regression analysis, including some delaying tricks, excellent correlations can be found with at least one oscillating parameter (e.g. AMO or PDO) and one steady change over the past couple of centuries such as CO2, magnetic field declination, global sea level, or, as Javier is showing on a long trend, solar activity (can he post the data behind his spot cycle graph?).
    Without plausible causality, these correlations remain worthless. One causal explanation is given for CO2 and the corresponding radiative forcing; others are still lacking, probably because they are not obvious and not sought after in the research programmes.
    To attribute to CO2 (or CO2-eq) most or all of the observed warming since the mid of the 20th century is quite a leap of faith.

  48. Geoff Sherrington | January 25, 2019 at 9:03 pm |

    Might I please suggest that it is an appropriate time to look back to some fundamentals, to agree upon the type of data presented to us and to agree on which of the many available methods of interpretation are invalid and which are rewarding?
    For example, if we wish to compare 20 years of global warming from early in the 20th Century with 20 years later, we often resort to aggregates of individual weather station temperatures. Do we still question whether we can average this spatio-temporal data? This factor hit home here in Melbourne yesterday, when air temperature dropped 11.5 deg C (20F) in 10 minutes. There was a coincident change from hot northerly to cooler SW winds, so the Melbourne weather station was not registering the Melbourne geographical coordinates so much as some from a few tens of km north, then a few tens of km to the S-W. Temporal and spatial were intermixed, leading to questions of the validity of use of either temporal or spatial data, when both might be needed.
    Further, these daily temperatures are highly autocorrelated. I’ve just finished comparing Perth Tmax daily 1995-1998 incl, to find a conventional correlation coefficient of 0.9916 between all temperatures one day apart.. Here is the conventional geostatistical semivariogram.
    http://www.geoffstuff.com/semiv_per_ap_metro.jpg
    It seems that there are problems being grossed over at a fast pace. Problems like intensive/extensive qualities of these temperatures. Their detailed spatio-temporal relations. Their overall measurement accuracy. Their autocorrelation.
    Are these temperature/time series a class of random walk and thus not amenable to many of the assertions made here about prediction?
    Comments on this Paper by Reid, 2017, or its more formal parent?
    http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/climate-policy/science-and-policy/john-reid-2017-1.php
    Geoff.

  49. Dr. Strangelove | January 26, 2019 at 5:27 am |

    Dr. Curry,

    Let me share my reply to Dr. Pielke re. deep ocean warming
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/23/deep-ocean-warming-in-degrees-c/

    Based on my computation of deep ocean warming in W/m^2, only 32% can be attributed to CO2
    world’s ocean area = 3.619 E+11 m^2
    depth = 2000 m
    volume = 7.238 E+14 m^3
    mass = 7.238 E+17 kg
    warming trend = 0.048 K/decade
    change in temperature (2005-2018) = 0.048 (1.3 decades) = 0.0624 K
    specific heat water = 4191 J/kg-K
    heat energy = 1.89 E+20 J
    time = 13 yrs (365 x 24 x 3600) = 4.1 E+8 s
    power = energy/time = 4.62 E+11 W
    flux = power/area = 1.28 W/m^2

    CO2 forcing:
    2005 = 380 ppm
    2018 = 410 ppm
    5.35 ln (410/380) = 0.41 W/m^2

    Warming attributed to CO2
    0.41/1.28 = 0.32

    I used this deep ocean temperature data to calculate thermal expansion of seawater, which is the main cause of sea level rise. My calculated sea level rise of 0.84 mm/yr is much lower than 2.9 mm/yr from satellite altimetry. https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries_global.php

    ocean area = A = 3.619 E+11 m^2
    volume = V = 7.238 E+14 m^3
    coefficient of themal expansion at 10 C = o = 0.88 E-4 K^-1
    change in temperature = dT = 0.0624 K
    time interval = dt = 13 yrs

    change in volume = dV = o dT V = 3.97 E+9 m^3
    change in depth = dx = dV/A = 0.011 m = 11 mm
    trend = dx/dt = 0.84 mm/yr

    I think the altimeter data are wrong. It is physically impossible unless we attribute sea level rise to melting glaciers.

    The original Envisat altimeter data had a trend of 0.76 mm/yr before it was ALTERED. The original trend is close to my calculated 0.84 mm/yr

    Anthony Watts talked about it back in 2012
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/12/envisats-satellite-failure-launches-mysteries/

    Jo Nova too in 2012
    http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/man-made-sea-level-rises-are-due-to-global-adjustments/

    I think we have a case of data manipulation

    • popesclimatetheory | January 26, 2019 at 4:38 pm |

      The surface area of the oceans is huge compared to the areas at different depths. If expansion causes the oceans to rise, the surface area increases and the height increase is much less than if the ocean bottom area equaled the surface area. I do not see where this was considered in your calculations.

      • popesclimatetheory | January 26, 2019 at 4:45 pm |

        Thermometers have a bulb at the bottom and a small surface area to amplify the measurement. Oceans have a small area at the bottom and a large surface area at the top that increases as ocean volume increases and that damps the measurement.

      • Dr. Strangelove | January 26, 2019 at 10:38 pm |

        Thermal expansion is by volume. We are interested in average change in height. The formula is total volume divided by total area equals average height

      • popesclimatetheory | January 27, 2019 at 8:32 pm |

        The formula is total volume divided by total area equals average height

        Again, the area at the top grows and reduces the increase in height.
        some water flows into bodies of water that are not even considered in ocean area. Some water flows into areas that were dry, that is why people are scared of sea level rise. Your calculation only works if the area surface area does not increase. This is very complicated, and totally not considered. Whatever you calculate your way, it is too large.

      • Dr. Strangelove | January 28, 2019 at 8:31 am |

        Your concern is true only near the shoreline. 50 km from the shore the depth is 2000 m. It is negligible compared to total area of ocean. Remove that 50 km and you get a box of water at least 2000 m deep

    • popesclimatetheory | January 28, 2019 at 11:15 pm |

      50 km from the shore the depth is 2000 m. It is negligible compared to total area of ocean.

      The upper ocean area expands a huge amount as sea level rises, it is not negligible. It is like a thermometer with the bulb at the top. Thermal expansion is not significant in sea level rise, the temperature is not much different and the thermometer bulb is at the top. You should throw that out as something to consider. Temperature measurements of the different volumes of the ocean are not available and all we have is model guesses and you can forget model output as reliable.

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  51. Arno Arrak (@ArnoArrak) | January 26, 2019 at 11:47 am |

    Aeho/0.1
    Judy. Y,ou are like aa chivken. You do not think like a scirentisdt, upi think liker a techniutian. Brelow is what you sgould habe printed. Not hidden. Your attitude allows outrageous lies to appear as approved Like a Nobel Prioze fot Gore. By preventing the truth from appearing you promote falsehood like the fout hprsemenof ypirs now stuck on dry land.

    ***********************************************************************Furst, the oscillation shown in “ Decadal Land-Syrfaceavewrage remperature” kas nothing whatsoever to do eith land surface. It is a pure oceanic osxillation caused be a giasnt oceasnic asteroid hit at a location still to be determined. Simply because those with the tools vtodo it were asleep atb the plough.Five oscillation peaks of period approximately 250 years aree cleatly bvisible. I have bee\n waiting ever since it came out for someone to pin it down, butb no – it has not happened. Here we have the cream of climate sxciebce – NASA GISS, NOAA/VCDC,Hadley/CRUand Berkeley Eatyh all out on a wild goose chase,, ignorant of ewhat they are taslking about.Arno Arrak

    • curryja | January 26, 2019 at 5:45 pm |

      Arno I will let this one through with comment. Your comments are incomprehensible, which is why they are not approved. Proof read them, learn how to spell or type or whatever the problem is. And stop insulting people.

  52. Javier | January 26, 2019 at 1:14 pm |

    Judith,

    Figures that misbehave are coming from dropbox and carry a query tag at the end “?dl=0” that prevents WordPress from giving them the stipulated size. The query can be removed from the link by you, and people that use dropbox can be taught to place the link to the figure without the query tag, and that should correct the problem of oversized figures.

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  54. Esa-Matti Lilius | January 26, 2019 at 3:50 pm |

    Robert Ellison: black carbon in the atmosphere blocks the insolation. Doesn’t it cool the atmosphere? On the snow and the ice it increases melting. Doesn’t it cool the air above? After the arctic ice has melted the warmth of the water escapes more easily to the space. Doesn’t it cool the arctic ocean?

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 26, 2019 at 6:13 pm |

      It is all about energy absorption and reflection in Earth’s far from equilibrium energy field. The Earth receives energy from the Sun. warms and emits or reflects all that energy to space. Small imbalances in energy in less energy out at top of atmosphere result in transient planetary warming or cooling. But ultimately it all balances out – maximum entropy production – largely in response to a large negative feedback in the blackbody Planck response of exponentially greater emissions from a warmer body.

      If there are more dark particles in the atmosphere or on the surface more solar radiation is absorbed rather than reflected and the planet warms a little more.

  55. Pingback: The Early 20th Century Warming Still Not Understood | Naval War changes Climate

  56. Esa-Matti Lilius | January 27, 2019 at 4:38 am |

    Dear Mr Ellison: unfortunately it seems to me that you did not answer my questions. Maybe I was too unclear. I try once again. I´ve been told that volcanoes, hit of asteroids, nuclear bombs, etc cause the spreading of particulate material to the atmosphere dimming the sun and cooling the atmosphere. I guess the black carbon is not different. Melting of ice is an endothermic reaction. It takes the heat from the air above cooling it. Finally, the warmth escapes to the space from the open water more easily than from the ice covered water. Thus, it seems to me that black carbon must have overall cooling effect.

  57. Bob Wert | January 27, 2019 at 6:00 am |

    According to Wikipedia coal production in the United States started to accelerate in 1880, rising rapidly until the Great Depression. Consumption in the rest of the world would have also increased in the same time frames.
    The use of automobiles grew in the first half of the the 20th century. So CO2 would have increased leading to at least some some anthropogenic warming.

  58. Harry Twinotter | January 27, 2019 at 5:33 pm |

    “Until we can explain the early 20th century warming, I have little confidence IPCC and NCA4 attribution statements regarding the cause of the recent warming.”

    That sounds like an Argument from Personal Incredulity. Still pushing FUD I see.

    • cerescokid | January 28, 2019 at 7:45 am |

      As opposed to TCC, Total Certainty of Catastrophe.

      I would take the FUD of adults versus TCC of adolescents and adults with adolescent brains, to wit, AOC.

      • Harry Twinotter | January 28, 2019 at 9:14 pm |

        So the best counter argument I get is a straw man. Oh well.

      • cerescokid | January 28, 2019 at 11:03 pm |

        Why waste any brainpower to counter a brainless thought. You need to check about your premiums being paid for grief counseling once the AMO flips. Many will not be able to adjust to the new cold reality. Collateral damage from being brainwashed.

    • dpy6629 | January 28, 2019 at 9:35 pm |

      No its not, its an argument that warming can have multiple causes and we don’t have good tools to disentangle forced warming from internal variability as even Andrew Dessler says. The best tools are climate models, but we know those lack skill even on time scales 40 years as Dessler also recently pointed out.

      • popesclimatetheory | January 28, 2019 at 11:03 pm |

        It is very clear, at this point in time, that climate models are the worst tools to use to understand anything. The climate models lack skill on all time scales that there is actual data to compare. Andrew Dessler is an extreme, extreme, alarmist and when he says climate models lack skill, he is being conservative. Climate models are based on flawed theory and are totally wrong.

      • Harry Twinotter | January 29, 2019 at 10:53 pm |

        dpy6629. I should ask you for citations, but I think you are just trying to make some sort of rhetorical argument so I won’t ask for citations. The thing about Dr Curry is she makes LOTS of claims she rarely backs up – her fans seem to give her a free pass on this one. Me I peek behind the curtain and see her stuff for what it is, a political statement.

      • dpy6629 | January 30, 2019 at 9:27 am |

        Dessler made this point in a comment at the Science of Doom blog about internal variability. It’s an obvious one if you think about it.

      • JCH | January 30, 2019 at 10:47 am |

        A comment at SoD is not a scientific reference.

      • Jaime Jessop | January 31, 2019 at 6:56 am |

        Internal variability does not exist in isolation as some cycle that can be conveniently ignored when summing up climate forcings. Internal variability itself is likely forced by external variability. Not much evidence for CO2 having an effect, but plenty of research suggesting an impact from solar variability.

      • Harry Twinotter | February 2, 2019 at 12:21 am |

        And it is clear Ellison did not read my post.

        I like the unicorn hypothesis. Who knows unicorn belches might be a potent greenhouse gas.

      • Robert I. Ellison | February 2, 2019 at 1:02 am |

        He quotes the opening statement – something that is the simplest of science – but that echoes the first reference. Ans calls it incredulity.

        Mosh evokes Hume to express ignorance of internal variability – Harry is not even that sophisticated,

    • matthewrmarler | January 30, 2019 at 2:42 pm |

      Harry Twinotter: “Until we can explain the early 20th century warming, I have little confidence IPCC and NCA4 attribution statements regarding the cause of the recent warming.”

      That sounds like an Argument from Personal Incredulity. Still pushing FUD I see.

      No. Whatever caused the early 20th century warming may have persisted and contributed to the late 20th century warming. Without more evidence than we have now (basically none) that the process ended, there is no reason to conclude that assessments omitting it entirely can be accurate.

      It is not “personal incredulity”, it is a lack of shared scientific information.

      • Steven Mosher | January 31, 2019 at 9:23 am |

        so the unicorn may still be alive!!!!

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 31, 2019 at 1:55 pm |

        Well perhaps unicorn but the monkey on his back.

      • Harry Twinotter | February 1, 2019 at 12:05 am |

        matthewmarler.

        You are getting into “argument from ignorance” territory.

        But OK. Climate scientists who think that earlier period of warming is significant to the current period of warming can do a study and present the details in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. This is much better than just speculating about it on a personal blog.

        To quote Dr Michael Mann, uncertainty is no one’s friend. It might be the finding about that earlier period of warming shows the climate sensitivity is higher than estimated, and the world is in even more trouble. See – I can FUD as well and I am not even a climate scientist!

      • Robert I. Ellison | February 1, 2019 at 12:24 am |

        It seems clear that Harry didn’t read the post.

        “The most pronounced warming in the historical global climate record prior to the recent warming occurred over the first half of the 20th century and is known as the Early Twentieth Century Warming (ETCW).” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wcc.522

        And that emperor mosh has confused flying monkeys with unicorns.

      • Steven Mosher | February 1, 2019 at 2:44 am |

        No robert

        here

        ‘No. Whatever caused the early 20th century warming may have persisted and contributed to the late 20th century warming. ”

        a clear appeal to unicorns.

        The simple fact is we have an explanation that works for the whole of earths history. Temperature is a function of radiative forcing. not pressure, not some chimerical “whatever”

        The explanation works. Of course one can always argue in the abstract

        ‘No. Whatever caused the X warming may have persisted and contributed to the late Y warming. ”

        But until Judith or someone else names a quantifiable testable “whatever”
        the whatever folks are just appealing to the logical possiblity of alternative explanations. They are restating, in an obscure way, what hume taught us about the obervability of causation and what modern philosophy recognizes and the the underdetermination of all theory.

        it could be unicorns.

      • Robert I. Ellison | February 1, 2019 at 5:56 am |

        The post hiatus warming was mostly cloud changes anti-correlated with SST.

        https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wcc.522

        Observations.

        https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wcc.522

        Nonlinear rain and cloud equations.

        https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973593

        Models do a great job.

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6

        And the Arctic is melting.

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0256-8?WT.feed_name=subjects_cryospheric-science

        No Mosh – it is not unicorns – it is your flying butt monkeys.

      • matthewrmarler | February 1, 2019 at 1:49 pm |

        Steven Mosher: ‘No. Whatever caused the early 20th century warming may have persisted and contributed to the late 20th century warming. ”

        a clear appeal to unicorns.

        The simple fact is we have an explanation that works for the whole of earths history. Temperature is a function of radiative forcing. not pressure, not some chimerical “whatever”

        It would be helpful to have more detailed evidence about what caused the early 20th century change in TOA radiative imbalance, and whether it ended before the late 20th century imbalance began. Probably not fluctuations in the unicorn population, but … whatever floats your boat.

      • matthewrmarler | February 1, 2019 at 2:14 pm |

        Harry Twinotter: You are getting into “argument from ignorance” territory.

        First you called it personal incredulity. You have changed your tune. I did not argue “from” ignorance, I asserted straight out that there isn’t evidence about whether the cause of the early 20th century warming has ended or persisted.

        “Ignorance is nobody’s friend” is a good motto. But it should be recognized instead of glossed over. Whether the cause of the early 20th century warming has ended or persisted is not known. It is necessary for us to have good evidence of the persistence or non-persistence in order to estimate the effect of CO2 increase on late 20th century warming.

        Perhaps you endorse the proposition that “The cause of the early 20th century warming can be ignored when estimating the effect of CO2 in late 20th century warming.” You might be right!

  59. Michel | January 28, 2019 at 3:37 am |

    @Javier on Sun Spot Numbers
    Thanks for the file.
    A regression analysis shows a ~100 years cycle superposed over the one of 11 years. See the following figure (this time without the “?dl=0” that dropbox adds to the link)
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/4kt5ni6d2czy7qr/SSN-time-regression.png
    The r2 regression coefficient is 0.57. It’s not very useful except for this period identification.
    An 11 years running average of the monthly series gives a graphs with a similar pattern as yours.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/fy2u1dmy0pcawgz/SSN_11yr.png
    Apparently the Sun is presently ending a multi-decadal or centennial cycle.
    It remains to be understood if and how such cycle has any influence on warming rates or on superimposed disturbances other than GHG forcing.

    • Javier | January 28, 2019 at 5:36 am |

      Michel,
      I call the centennial cycle the Feynman cycle for the astrophysicist (sister of the famous Feynman) that has been studying it since the 1980s. See for example:
      Feynman, J., & Ruzmaikin, A. (2014). The Centennial Gleissberg Cycle and its association with extended minima. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 119(8), 6027-6041.
      https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2013JA019478

      Solar dynamo models are unable to explain secular periodicities in solar activity, indicating we don’t understand how solar variability is generated.

      The climatic effect is clear and we are already noticing it. No global warming is possible while the sun is in an extended minimum. The contribution from the 1935-2004 Modern Solar Maximum to Modern Global Warming has been ignored.

      Regarding possible non-linear mechanisms, I am researching that and have already found some interesting correlations that make sense, and I will make it into an article some time in the future.

      • Javier | January 28, 2019 at 5:45 am |

        I have also made a model of solar variability based on the spectral properties of six different solar periodicities that interact with each other, and projected it into the future.

        https://i.imgur.com/2F5WH2Q.png

        The only problem is lasting enough to see how well it works.

      • climatereason | January 28, 2019 at 6:30 am |

        Javier

        you should know by now that you need to make the direst predictions that are set well in the future, so no one can say you were wrong whilst you are still alive.

        Promising climate catastrophe in the form of severe warming or severe cooling is best done for 100 years ahead.

        tonyb

      • Javier | January 28, 2019 at 8:23 am |

        Tony, I am predicting more of the same, which is always the safest of predictions.

      • afonzarelli | January 28, 2019 at 11:28 am |

        i just met a man on a streetcar here in New Orleans who is going to turn 99 years old this year. He was headed uptown to visit his 100 year old brother. (anything’s possible… ☺️)

      • popesclimatetheory | January 28, 2019 at 11:48 am |

        The Solar cycles repeat the same sequences during major warm periods an during major ice ages. The difference in climate is that the warm periods have less ice extent and the cold periods have more ice extent.
        It snows more in warm times when oceans are thawed and cold periods follow. It snow less in cold times when oceans are frozen and warm periods follow. This causes longer term internal cycles that are not studied because everyone wants instant correlations and only look for those.

      • climatereason | January 28, 2019 at 11:57 am |

        Javier

        I am also predicting more of the same, except for unspecified times when it will deviate from this recipe.

        tonyb

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  64. john321s | January 31, 2019 at 7:15 pm |

    Aside from the usual lack of analytic insight into the difference between external forcing, internal capacitance and response, what caught my eye is the nearly equal variance of land and ocean temperatures shown in Figure 1, with nether showing any strong cooling during the third quarter of the century. No credible science can be based upon such incredible data.

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  66. nobodysknowledge | February 1, 2019 at 5:32 am |

    The warming and cooling periods would be impossibe without changes in the strength of ocean currents and overturning: Professor Bill Gray had his wiev on this:
    “A slowing down of the global ocean’s MOC (MOC = THC + SAS) is the likely cause of most of the global warming that has been observed since the latter part of the 19th century (Rahmstorf et.al. 2015). I hypothesize that shorter multi-decadal changes in the MOC (McPhaden and Zhang 2002) are responsible for the more recent global warming periods between 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 and the global warming hiatus periods between 1945-1975 and 2000-2013. Figure 13 shows the typical parameter circulation features which accompanies periods when the MOC (or THC) is stronger than normal and when it is weaker than normal. In general, a strong MOC (or THC) is associated with a warmer-than-normal North Atlantic, increased Atlantic hurricane activity, increased blocking action in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific and weaker westerlies in the mid-latitude Southern Hemisphere.
    When the MOC (or THC) is stronger than average, there is more upwelling of cold water in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, and an increase in global rainfall of a few percent occurs. This causes the global surface temperatures to cool. The opposite occurs when the MOC (or THC) is weaker than normal. The MOC (or THC) average strength over the last 150 years has likely been below the multi-millennium average, and that is the primary reason we have seen this long-term global warming since the late 19th century. The globe appears to be rebounding from the conditions of the Little Ice Age to conditions that were typical of the earlier ‘Medieval’ and ‘Roman’ warm periods.”
    https://tropical.colostate.edu/media/sites/111/2018/01/Bill-Gray-Climate-Change.pdf
    I know that he was heavily criticized for this by Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Ray Pierrehumbert and Stefan Rahmstorf. But I doubt that they really understood his ideas.

    • nobodysknowledge | February 1, 2019 at 5:43 am |

      And I know that I don`t know the truth about this. But I see the plausibility of many of Prof. Gray`s thoughts, even if some of them may be wrong. Klotzback said in an interwiev that he had some disagreement and discussions with his mentor Gray.

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  69. Vaughan Pratt | February 2, 2019 at 2:22 am |

    The World Meteorological Organization defines climate as global mean surface temperature (GMST) averaged over 30 years. Using HadCRUT4 since 1850 for GMST yields the blue curve in the following graph.

    http://clim8.stanford.edu/WMOClimate.jpg

    (Ignore the fuzzy red curve.)

    The blue curve has only two obvious features, a 60-70 year oscillation superimposed on a concave-upwards curve. The former is popularly referred to as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO. But what caused it?

    Grant Foster (ako Tamino of Open Mind) insists that it is caused by aerosols (my talk at http://clim8.stanford.edu/GC53C-06.pdf argues on slide 11 that this can’t be the explanation). Marcia Wyatt’s thesis offers the Stadium Wave Hypothesis as the explanation. A number of authors have pointed out the striking correlation between LOD and the AMO, which raises the question of what mechanism if any could account for this correlation.

    My AGUFM2016 presentation http://clim8.stanford.edu/GC13G-1265.pdf proposed the centrifugal volcanism hypothesis as a possible mechanism (h/t to whoever on CE first suggested the CV moniker). Slide 1 illustrates the basic correlation. Slide 2 lists one argument for a connection (the correlation itself) and four arguments against, namely LOD is too weak, no one has ever seen thermals from the ocean floor to the surface, climate continued to climb after the LOD reversed in 1930, and the amplitude of the AMO did not weaken when that of the LOD did. The rest of the presentation looks at the four arguments against to see which if any are fatal for the hypothesis.

    The second was addressed to my satisfaction in that presentation. These days I would address the other three as follows.

    1. Yes the impact of LOD is tiny. However these minuscule fluctuations in gravity differ from other influences on climate in that they act not just on the surface but on the entire crust (and much deeper but the crust will suffice). The mass of the crust is about 2E22 kg (20 billion billion tons). On slide 4 I calculated 1E15 kg (a thousand billion tons) of magma needed to account for the AMO. The mass of the crust is twenty million times that, so this is not an unreasonably large amount of magma to hope for in the crust.

    2. Magma close to the surface will influence surface temperature much sooner than deeper magma, whose influence will take longer to reach the surface. When the LOD reverses the deeper heat from earlier will keep coming up to offset the cooling of the shallower magma. Because of this delay of the deeper heat we should not expect an instantaneous response of temperature to LOD reversals. This also could account for the thermal oscillation decaying more slowly than the LOD oscillation.

    In 2017 it occurred to me that magmatic volatiles, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatiles#Volatiles_in_magma, could amplify the minuscule LOD fluctuations. I addressed this in my AGUFM2017 presentation, http://clim8.stanford.edu/IN43D-0108.pdf.

    I don’t claim this as anything more than yet another possible mechanism for the AMO, in competition with the other mechanisms people have proposed. I leave it to others to compare them all and decide the relative plausibilities of each. Personally I find centrifugal volcanism, amplified by magmatic volatiles, to be far more convincing than the others, but as the proposer of CV I should recuse myself as judge.

    • Peter Lang | February 2, 2019 at 4:43 am |

      It’s all irrelevant because any global warming we are likely to get this century will be beneficial, not damaging. Therefore, any policies that reduce global warming will be harmful.

      Time to move onto the next scare campaign.

      • Robert I. Ellison | February 2, 2019 at 6:38 pm |

        This seems to me to be what is irrelevant. The future is unpredictable but will include abrupt transitions to more or less extreme states. Whether this is anthropogenic or natural is immaterial.

        Global social and economic progress requires decreases in carbon intensity in many sectors along with reductions in emissions of nitrous oxides, particulates, CFC’s and metals. Business as usual in other words. And the conservation and restoration of organic carbon stores in soils and ecosystems for many reasons including food security.

        This oft repeated mantra from Lang would lead to unproductive and unpersuasive public policy. What is needed is a much more positive message from the perspective of Hayek’s liberal (in the classic sense) utopia.

      • Peter Lang | February 2, 2019 at 11:37 pm |

        This seems to me to be what is irrelevant.

        Definitely not irrelevant. It is critically important. It’s crucial to justifying rational policy.

        The future is unpredictable but will include abrupt transitions to more or less extreme states. Whether this is anthropogenic or natural is immaterial.

        “Extreme states” is an exaggeration using emotive, alarmist language. Climate variability and volatility is less when warmer and more when colder. Warming is beneficial, cooling is detrimental to the global economy. I’ve posted the evidence with references in comments on previous threads. The key points have not been refuted.

        Global social and economic progress requires decreases in carbon intensity in many sectors along with reductions in emissions of nitrous oxides, particulates, CFC’s and metals.

        Not true for the GHG emissions if global warming is beneficial.The polutants that have negative health consequences need to be reduced, but not because of global warming.

        And the conservation and restoration of organic carbon stores in soils and ecosystems for many reasons including food security.

        Reasons other than effects on global warming are irrelevant to the point I made in my comment.

        This oft repeated mantra from [Ellison] would lead to unproductive and unpersuasive public policy.

        What is needed is a much more positive message

        about the benefits of global warming and damages of cooling from unbiased scientists, economists, policy analysts, media and the entertainment industry. And refutation of alarmist scaremongering.

      • Robert I. Ellison | February 3, 2019 at 1:39 am |

        I have recently been reading about freshening in the Arctic and declining Atlantic meridional overturnning. This is the region of most interest for more extreme changes in the Earth system. But I did say more or less extreme and the planet has seen Holocene changes in drought and flood that has seen civilizations fall. It is not exaggeration but a realistic assessment of past change in the practical expectation that the future will bring more of the same. The future is unpredictable but will include abrupt transitions to more or less extreme states. Whether this is a response to greenhouse gas, solar or orbital control variables is immaterial – tipping points are the natural mode of the Earth system.

        Decreases in carbon intensity have been occurring for decades – and are part and parcel of productivity and efficiency gains. Pollution reduction has also been happening for decades in industry – and turning back the clock would be counter productive. The other source productivity is innovation including on cheap and abundant energy. Whether that is HELE coal in emerging economies – and Australia – modular nuclear ramping up in the next decade or any of dozens of other technologies either in or approaching commercialization. Innovation brings a productivity dividend that will transform in short order productive systems. Fundamentals of economics.

        “Reasons other than effects on global warming are irrelevant to the point I made in my comment.”

        And as I have said to Lang before – I am not here to be constrained to the severe limits of his capacities. Carbon is much better conserved and restored to soils and ecosystems than accumulating in the atmosphere. Skeptic theories of the benefits of carbon dioxide to plants are incomplete and the science of simple cause and effect is inadequate. Perhaps even worse is that they are socially unsalable and politically counter productive.

    • climatereason | February 2, 2019 at 7:07 am |

      Vaughan

      Welcome back! I contacted you several times at your request regarding extended CET but got no reply. Perhaps your spam filter is set to exclude us nuisances?

      Hope you will call in here again more frequently than you have done the last couple of years and in the meantime I will read your various links

      tonyb

    • cerescokid | February 2, 2019 at 8:51 am |

      Whether your hypothesis turns out to have merit is almost immaterial. What is valuable is that this should provide more food for thought in this incredibly complex field. For me, it’s an entirely new arena. Thanks.

    • matthewrmarler | February 2, 2019 at 10:43 am |

      Vaughan Pratt, welcome back!

      • Vaughan Pratt | February 2, 2019 at 6:48 pm |

        Thanks, I appreciate the welcome-backs. Most of my comment time up to now has been spent on Quora. However I’m going to have to cut back in order get some of my work written up for something more archival than online comments.

        Regarding the blue WMO 30-year curve in my comment, in retrospect I should have given the detrended version in order to keep AGW out of the AMO, which looks like this.

        http://clim8.stanford.edu/WMOdet.jpg

        The figure includes the MATLAB code that plotted the blue curve. ma(x,30) smooths x to a moving average of 30 years, the definition of WMO climate. 327 ppm is the average CO2 level during the 30 years 1961-1990, the reference period for HadCRUT4 anomalies. 1.85 is my estimate of the climate response to a doubling of prevailing CO2, which has been growing more slowly than the 1%/yr on which the IPCC’s notion of transient climate response is based.

        Tony, a while ago I switched from Thunderbird to G Suite, which sends more mail to spam but not yours as far as I can tell. Will write separately.

    • edimbukvarevic | February 2, 2019 at 1:42 pm |

      Vaughan, interesting presentations!

    • Robert I. Ellison | February 2, 2019 at 6:11 pm |

      The stadium wave is no explanation for the AMO. It traces a signal through the globally coupled, spatio-temporal chaotic system. The Earth system is fluid flow problem. It can be seen in the atmosphere at least. Here is the wavy polar annular mode at 70 hPa currently bringing cold conditions to the eastern US.

      https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/70-hpa-nam-3-2-19.png
      https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-26.54,83.55,419

      The proximate cause is a negative Arctic nonlinear oscillation that may be – inter alia – solar modulated (Ineson et al 2016, Lockwood et al 2010).

      https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.obs.gif

      This spins up gyres in all the worlds oceans influencing heat transport in the Atlantic and upwelling in the eastern Pacific. The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947). Heat transport is very broadly considered the major source of AMO variability.

      e.g. https://usclivar.org/research-highlights/central-role-ocean-dynamics-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation

      https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-72-e1518284539722.png

      The Coriolis force causes flow to converge in easterlies at the equator. Variations in atmospheric momentum at the equator has been broadly considered as the source of decadal LOD variation.

      But the fact remains that to explain temperature variation a source of energy is required. This is found predominantly in the tropical and sub-tropical Pacific with a nonlinear, positive SST/cloud feedback. Nor would I consider the periodicity of the 20th century likely to carryover into the 21st.

      https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/mei-v-hadcrut1.png

      I am far from dismissing centrifugal volcanism – but there may be far more direct physical causes of decadal to millennial climate change.

    • john321s | February 6, 2019 at 7:20 pm |

      While the usually dismissed geothermal effects upon surface temperatures may deserve reconsideration, the impression of “striking correlation” between inverted LOD and HADCRUT is disabused by the results of more-incisive analysis. None of the expected features of the cross-spectral relationship between CV system forcing and response are strongly manifest. The driving physical mechanism of the AMO almost certainly lies elsewhere.

  70. bfjcricklewood | February 2, 2019 at 4:11 am |

    Steve Koonz
    It does not detract in any way from criticism of a theory, that no better theory is on offer. The answer to bogus confidence is not some alternative bogus confidence.

  71. natalyarum | February 3, 2019 at 9:37 am |

    Nataliya
    Climate change is an obvious fact which anyone can see. This topic is very urgent right now, it’s important for understanding what’s happening these days. After all, history has a tendency of repeating itself. This article helps take an alternative view at climate change that can help considerably in solving these problems https://allatra.tv/en/article/why-is-the-climate-changing

  72. Hifast | February 5, 2019 at 1:25 am |

    Reblogged this on Climate Collections.

  73. JCH | February 6, 2019 at 9:38 am |

    Four decades of Antarctic surface elevation changes from multi-mission satellite altimetry

    … The spatial and temporal resolution of our result allows for the identification of when and where sig- nificant changes in elevation occurred. These time series add detailed information to the evolution of surface elevation in such key regions as Pine Island Glacier, Totten Glacier, Dron- ning Maud Land or Lake Vostok. After applying a density mask, we calculated time series of mass changes and found that the Antarctic Ice Sheet north of 81.5◦ S was losing mass at an average rate of −85±16Gtyr−1 between 1992 and 2017, which accelerated to −137 ± 25 Gt yr−1 after 2010.

    https://i.imgur.com/NSQUSZs.png

  74. nickreality65 | February 6, 2019 at 8:45 pm |

    Just in case you missed earlier missives, allow me to summarize this science yet again.

    1) 288 K – 255 K = 33 C warmer with the atmosphere is rubbish. 288 K is a WAG pulled from WMO’s butt. NOAA/Trenberth use 289 K. The 255 K is a theoretical S-B temperature calculation for a 240 W/m^2 ToA (w/ atmosphere!!) ASR/OLR balance (1,368/4 *.7) based on a 30% albedo.

    By definition no atmosphere includes no clouds, no water vapor, no oceans, no vegetation, no ice, no snow an albedo perhaps much like the moon’s 0.15. 70% of the lit side would always be above freezing, 100 % for weeks due to the seasonal tilt, not that it matters since there would be no water to freeze.

    Without the atmosphere the earth will get 20% to 40% more kJ/h depending on its naked albedo. That means a solar wind 20 to 30 C hotter w/o an atmosphere not 33 C colder. The atmosphere is like that reflective panel behind a car’s windshield.
    https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6473732020483743744

    2) The 396 W/m^2 upwelling ideal BB LWIR that powers the RGHE is, as demonstrated by experiment, not possible. If this upwelling energy does not work – none of RGHE works.
    https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/

    3) The 333 W/m^2 up/down/”back” GHG energy loop is thermodynamic nonsense, i.e. it’s calculated energy appearing out of nowhere, a 100% efficient perpetual energy loop, energy from cold to hot without work. (396 – 333 = 63) “net” radiation is thermodynamic nonsense.
    https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6457980707988922368

    4) 1) + 2) + 3) = 0 RGHE & 0 GHG warming & 0 man caused climate change.

    I’ve got the science. If you have some anti-science, BRING IT!!

    Nick Schroeder, BSME CU ’78, CO PE 22774

    P.S. According to NOAA the current rate of sea level rise is 3 mm/y. That’s not even a foot per century.

    P.P.S According to JAXA and DMI the sea ice and ice cap volumes have not deviated significantly from decades of natural variability.

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