We still need to study nature’s contribution to trend
Published Saturday, September 27, 2008, Fairbanks AK News-Miner
Recent studies by the Hadley Climate Research Center (UK), the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Alabama Huntsville show clearly that the rising trend of global average temperature stopped in 2000-2001. Further, NASA data shows that warming in the southern hemisphere has stopped, and that ocean temperatures also have stopped rising.
The global average temperature had been rising until about 2000-2001. The International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and many scientists hypothesize rising temperatures were mostly caused by the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide (CO2), and they predicted further temperature increases after 2000. It was natural to assume that CO2 was responsible for the rise, because CO2 molecules in the atmosphere tend to reflect back the infrared radiation to the ground, preventing cooling (the greenhouse effect) and also because CO2 concentrations have been rapidly increasing since 1946. But, this hypothesis on the cause of global warming is just one of several.
Unfortunately, many scientists appear to forget that weather and climate also are controlled by nature, as we witness weather changes every day and climate changes in longer terms. During the last several years, I have suggested that it is important to identify the natural effects and subtract them from the temperature changes. Only then can we be sure of the man-made contributions. This suggestion brought me the dubious honor of being designated “Alaska’s most famous climate change skeptic.”
The stopping of the rise in global average temperature after 2000-2001 indicates that the hypothesis and prediction made by the IPCC need serious revision. I have been suggesting during the last several years that there are at least two natural components that cause long-term climate changes.
The first is the recovery (namely, warming) from the Little Ice Age, which occurred approximately 1800-1850. The other is what we call the multi-decadal oscillation. In the recent past, this component had a positive gradient (warming) from 1910 to 1940, a negative gradient (cooling — many Fairbanksans remember the very cold winters in the 1960s) from 1940 to 1975, and then again a positive gradient (warming — many Fairbanksans have enjoyed the comfortable winters of the last few decades or so) from 1975 to about 2000. The multi-decadal oscillation peaked around 2000, and a negative trend began at that time.
The second component has a large amplitude and can overwhelm the first, and I believe that this is the reason for the stopping of the temperature rise. Since CO2 has only a positive effect, the new trend indicates that natural changes are greater than the CO2 effect, as I have stated during the last several years.
Future changes in global temperature depend on the combination of both the recovery from the Little Ice Age (positive) and the multi-decadal oscillation (both positive and negative). We have an urgent need to learn more about these natural changes to aid us in predicting future changes.
Syun-Ichi Akasofu is a former director of the Geophysical Institute and the International Arctic Research Center, both on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Recent studies by the Hadley Climate Research Center (UK), the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Alabama Huntsville show clearly that the rising trend of global average temperature stopped in 2000-2001.
Very odd. Hadley have this on their webpage :
Over the last ten years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped. It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming.
Not to mention “Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/warming_goes_on.pdf
Somebody has their wires crossed.
[…] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/27/former-director-of-international-arctic-research-center-says-g… […]
Mean while CO2 is increasing http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/carbon-dioxide-levels-rising-fast-scientists-surprised-we-arent-4596. Temperature down CO2 up, maybe the models are not as correct as thought.
Of course, Syun-Ichi Akasofu can only say this because he is a FORMER head of a Research Centre. If a CURRENT head said this sort of thing, he would out immediately.
As well as revisiting climate change ‘science’, we need to revisit the way we organise science, which lets it be hijacked by political interest groups…
John Philip,
Likely it’s you who has his wires crossed. Just because Hadley’s official statement is one thing doesn’t mean they haven’t conducted studies which show something contrary to the official position. Kind of like the Argo data vs. what you hear coming out of the Goddard institute.
I wonder how many more years of cooling/flat temps would be required until CAGW is generally accepted as having been discredited.
Same old same old!
If you don’t look to the ‘original data’ (whatever that means in this new supersophisticated world of double-speak) you simply don’t know what’s really going on.
First this expert says x, then this other expert says not x. And generally, people have become so intensely involved with protecting their reputation, their jobs and certainly their egos (see Richard Lindzen’s paper), that nothing will be admitted, nothing retracted, no position abandoned. Remember phlogiston. Remember the luminiferous eather.
I am driven to the conclusion that people are the same everywhere, and that they have always been this way.
Apparently the scientific method is only a veneer of respectability hiding a much deeper well of human nature, and it is human nature to win, to be right and never ever be seen to be wrong.
John Philip:
So it’s “John Philip” now, instead of “John Philips”?
OK. Whatever.
But I have to point out that by claiming GW has “paused,” it indicates a prediction. Which was, of course, avoided.
For how long will this ‘pause’ be? Six months? Sixty years? A century and a half? After millions have died from a cooling climate? What’s the length of this predicted ‘pause’?
They should have said, “Global warming has stopped, at least temporarily.” That would have at least been an honest statement.
If GW has only paused, please let us know when it will resume.
“BBC investigated after peer says climate change programme was biased ‘one-sided polemic’ ”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063110/BBC-investigated-peer-says-climate-change-programme-biased-sided-polemic.html
Note: The peer in question is WUWT’s good friend, the well respected Lord Monckton (unless you are the BBC). – Anne
Wow. This hits many of the same points I included in my little model.
http://users.vianet.ca/paulak2r/AGW/
I am glad someone agrees with me.
John M Reynolds
Likely it’s you who has his wires crossed
Always a possibility. I remain puzzled, though. The Professor asserts that there exists a Hadley Centre study showing the pause in warming. Hadley, however, tell us anyone holding this view has their head in the sand. Maybe the powers at WUWT, who after all, chose to cross-post the article, can enlighten us as to where the HC study was published? Thanks.
BTW not everyone holds the veracity of Viscount Monckton in such high regard … Arthur Smith, for one
http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
JP.
AGW crowd now left with Orwellian slogans:
COLDER IS WARMER
COOLING IS STILL WARMING
DOE data shows a pre-industrial concentration of atmospheric CO2 of 288 ppm. This concentration of atmospheric CO2 increased to 368.4 ppm in October, 2008, an increase of 80.4 ppm. The contribution by natural causes was 68.52 ppm and the man-made contribution was 11.88 ppm. The ratio of natural CO2 emission to man-made CO2 is 5.76.
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) report gives the yearly increases of CO2 as: During the years 1970-1079, the increase was 1.3 ppm per year; During the years 1980-1989, the increase was 1.6 ppm; During the years 1990-1999, the increase was 1.5 ppm; and during the years 2000-2007, the increase was 2.0 ppm. Given the ratio of natural emission to man-made emission of 5.76 (before the year 2000), man-made CO2 contributed 0.226 ppm per year during 1970-1979, 0.278 ppm per year during 1980-1989, and 0,25 ppm per year during 1990-1999.
Now it seems that everyone assumes that the CO2 concentration increase of 2.14 ppm per year (Mauna Loa Station) is entirely man-made (GCP). What happened to natural CO2 emissions after the year 2000?
Could there be a possible link where global warming and NASA are interlated?
Refering to each time a space adventure opens and tears through the protective layer of the atmosphere?
With the return entry of the radiation drag being pulled back into the atmosphere with the turbo thrust? Since the atmosphere does protect us from the radiation heat which would, under normal conditions burn to nothingness if something were to try to enter the atmosphere.
I am just wondering.
Mr. Philip:
Perhaps Hadley is being a bit disingenuous.
These are the Hadley numbers, from Hadley’s site. I used Hadley’s 2008 projected average temp, which is no danger of actually being reached.
If you plot and trend the data, its a negative trend since 1998. If you exclude 2008, its still slightly positive. If you start from 2001, its negative, regardless.
Just for giggles, plot and trend from 2005 to 2008 (4 years). It gives a negative trend of -0.5 deg/decade COOLING.
Using these 4 years, R2 = 0.9872, BTW.
1998 0.600291
1999 0.354782
2000 0.307351
2001 0.424473
2002 0.484325
2003 0.50359
2004 0.493032
2005 0.530529
2006 0.463274
2007 0.41
2008 0.37
This is the best photo since you added the trash burn barrel to the rural scene.
Simple and understated. Maybe next month you’ll need to use a reverse logo. 🙂
Les,
Its more usual to use a 5-year mean to smooth the inter-annual variability. If you do this I think the 2000-2007 and the 2001-2007 trends become positive? Anything under a 20 year time period is more properly described as weather than climate, however. A 4 year trend is certainly meaningless.
BTW, which data set are you using? I have HADCRUT4GL here and the numbers are subtly different to the ones you posted.
JP
> Former director of International Arctic Research
> Center says: “Global warming has paused”
It’s not paused! It’s passed on! This global warming is no
more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet
its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you
hadn’t nailed it to the perch it’d be pushing up the daisies!
Its meteorological processes are now history! It’s off the
twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil,
run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir
invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-GLOBAL-WARMING!!
Global Warming Theory really has become the paramount example of the adage that “something that explains everything ultimately explains nothing”. Everyday it seems that we are presented with new data that would appear to contradict aspects of Global Warming Theory, but it’s always somehow presented as something much less than contradictory. Present researchers always first pay homage to the Gods of Global Warming, and only then can they present their data and the lesser theories they have uncovered or are working on.
It reminds me such much of the Creationism-Darwinism argument from the 1920’s. If you think about, Al Gore really is becoming the William Jennings Bryan of our time. The man is telling the young and naive to engage civil disobedience to prevent power plants from being built. That really sounds crazy.
Superposition.
have been suggesting during the last several years that there are at least two natural components that cause long-term climate changes.
The first is the recovery (namely, warming) from the Little Ice Age, which occurred approximately 1800-1850. The other is what we call the multi-decadal oscillation.
Please explain why there should be a slow, long-term linear signal interpreted as recovery from the LIA.
It doesn’t matter what news releases Hadley et al publishes, the data speak for themselves. Global warming advocates (including many in the climate “science” community) have sold their souls and hinged their reputations on AGW and the IPCC so-called consensus. They will not go down easily.
Now that the Arctic did not meet its doom and the NH is approaching winter with indicators it will be gripped in brutal cold, what will these prognosticators of catastrophe have to offer us next year as reassurances it is only temporary? Ah, that’s right…..it’s the long term trend we are concerned with and must therefore wait 30 more years for confirmation of a cooling period and falsification of the modeling industry.
Hay Smokey
When I first hear about our planet cooling, the modelers said “CO2 induced warming” would be back in 2009. Now they say 2015.
Retired or alone
AGW ended for you
http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/medical-science/2008/09/16/social-isolation-makes-people-cold-literally.html
“Dr. Akasofu was born in Japan in December of 1929 in a village near an active volcano, inspiring his interest in geology. World War 2 took his father away for many years, leaving his mother in dire economic straits. He once offered to quit school to work as an interpreter for the US Military, but his mother would not allow him to give up his education.
He claims never to have been a good student, but to have taken pride in passing his exams without studying or attending class. Instead he spent his time mountain climbing. When he discovered that the magnetic effect of the Northern Lights could be measured on mountaintops in Japan, his interest switched from geology to astrophysics and he began to apply himself in school. In 1958, he wrote a letter to Sydney Chapman, the leading aurora expert at the time, asking questions he felt were not sufficiently answered by his masters’ degree. The response was that the questions were unanswered and would he like a job as a graduate student?
Akasofu’s most important find in aurora research was the concept of the auroral substorm. Originally, Journal of Geophysical Research rejected his research until he, with the assistance of a NASA jet, filmed proof of the exact events he predicted. Akasofu’s paper was published in 1964, and remains the standard explanation of the aurora today. He also co-published a paper first suggesting that a factor or factors other than solar wind controlled the intensity of the aurora. Dr. Chapman, Akasofu’s boss and mentor, advised him to drop the research to avoid endangering his (Chapman’s) scientific reputation. In the 1980s, scientists discovered that the Earth’s own magnetic field also altered the auroras intensity, proving Akasofu’s criticism of established theory correct again.
In addition to his continuing Arctic studies, Akasofu writes about his experiences overturning scientific dogma and encourages students to challenge the accepted explanations, even when many of them are his.”
http://gwd.wikispaces.com/Syun-Ichi+Akasofu#source_3
Cringe.
I am convinced that CO2-driven warming is probably too small to measure, and that there is still ZERO evidence of it, but it bugs the heck out of me when scientists make silly statements:
This is equivalent to saying “the warming is the cause of the climate change.”
I expect better of the former director of the International Arctic Research Center.