Guest Post by Steven Goddard
It appears that global cooling recognition may be starting to make headway in the scientific community. We have this Discovery/MSNBC article about a NOAA scientist titled “Warming might be on hold, study finds”
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970’s was due to a free variation in climate,” Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. “Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
And Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years.
Here’s the complete story from The Discovery Channel via MSNBC:
For those who have endured this winter’s frigid temperatures and today’s heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.But climate is known to be variable – a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.
“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”
Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a “super El Nino event.” It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.
How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.
The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science – identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snow storm) from human-induced change.
But just what’s causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun’s energy than usual back out into space.
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970’s was due to a free variation in climate,” Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. “Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it’s just a hiccup, and that humans’ penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.
“When the climate kicks back out of this state, we’ll have explosive warming,” Swanson said. “Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
© 2009 Discovery Channel
That is strange. We hear from highly respected authorities that we were in a period of “unprecedented warming.” How can it be both warming and cooling at the same time? Maybe those DC protesters didn’t need to stand out in the cold and try to shut down their primary source of energy today.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
May I suggest that this current cooling is caused by…
MANMADE CO2 !!!
And… in order to stop this horrible new ice age… we must stop emitting this horrible gas!
Yeah, okay, sorry, but I really get a laugh out of people who think they have it all nailed down, then are confounded when their certainty is shattered.
And the cause: “This current cooling doesn’t have one.”
I see that they still do not get out much. Maybe we should all club together to send them on a beach holiday so they can lie on their backs and look at the SUN.
…and here I thought that Mankind’s spewing of greenhouse gases was overwhelming a delicate natural climatic balance. Silly me!
What utter morons.
In fact, that is being disrespectful towards morons.
“Hey, guys, like, it’s not going to be warming, and maybe even cooling, for the next, um, 30 years (when I’m safely retired!), but this warming is coming back with a vengeance! Oh, yes! We need to immediately throw money, um, um, I mean FUND further research into this cooling aberation, because in 30 years time, it’s baaaack!”
The screams of anguish being heard around the world from the carpet-baggers and free-loaders of the AGW industry are extraordinary. Maybe they can see what happened to the Y2K industry, the Mad Cow Disease industry, and all the other fanciful public insanities over the last few years.
These people deserve to be on the unemployment scrap-heap for the rest of their tawdry lives……
Looks to me as if they are seeing the writing on the wall, and they are now putting in place a back door to bolt through.
No matter – it’s too late. The socialisation of America has irreversibly begun. Good luck in your new state-run country!
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970’s was due to a free variation in climate,”
A very PC statement !
Is there any way of quantifying scientifically this fraction ? because this is at the core of the debate
The AGW crowd will want to “proove” that its 99% agw 1% natural variation
As a sceptic I accept that human activity will have an effect that reflects the absorption bands of increased co2 and other gasses, I also accept that there is compelling evidence that a pattern of natural variations have always affected climate as distinct from weather.
A large dose of Carl Popper and the scientific method should help iin defining the fraction .
‘a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling.’
Surely the converse is true also.
…and thus the tiny pea of scientific rationality began to roll down the snowy slopes of Mount Climate Disaster.
That read to me to mean, “We’re right, even when it looks like we’re wrong. This cooling is just masking the warming.” Even if the cooling lasts 30 years (matching the 30 years of warming), it’s “just a hiccup.”
On one hand, Swanson says they don’t know what’s causing the cooling.
Yet on the other hand, Swanson is confident enough to predict what will happen when it goes away.
If this cooling lasts 30 years, I think people would welcome aggressive warming.
Seems a good way to maintain the scare while the evidence you were using goes to pot. And by putting the scare off by 30 years they’ve still got a safe career no matter what happens to the climate in the meantime.
Danish scientists have come to similar conclusions in recent days.
Yesterday the Danish Meteorological Institute published an article on their website: “The climate hockey stick is broken”.
(In Danish: http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/klimaets_hockeystav_er_braekket )
They describe findings from a recent published study:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008JCLI2301.1&ct=1&SESSID=fdb456bdab0ff3c077e4bd9594115b2e
The major finding in this study is that the natural variability in the global temperatures the last 600 years must have been greater than Michael Mann’s prior estimations.
I’m not sure if they are actually coming around. It seems to me that the proponents of AGW are just trying to make excuses for why reality doesn’t match the models. They haven’t really changed their story, but merely trying to state that the current cooling can not be used to dismiss AGW. Someone is trying to have their cake and eat it too!
“Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
Makes no sense. From 15,000 years ago until present the levels of atmospheric CO2 have doubled steadily over time and then rapidly. If we were going to see aggressive and catastrophic warming from greenhouse gas forcing why in 30 years and not now? Or even before present? Who knows exactly how much greenhouse gases there needs to be for aggressive forcing to occur?
And why during the last 8000 years have temperatures declined overall despite a doubling of CO2? Why has atmospheric albedo also declined with increased CO2 when theoretically the opposite should occur?
Think about the time when the pharaohs ruled Ancient Egypt and temperatures were warmer than today. It used to be more humid in those days. Egyptian literature and murals tell us they lived on a fertile land composed of black mud and that they had to travel out to the desert. Today cooler temperatures have lowered albedo and the desert has swallowed Giza and Cairo.
They used to have proper seasonal rains too, the Sphinx itself shows us erosion from rainfall.
Around the same time, Greenland had tribes living in the north and grapes grew in in the most northern parts of North America exactly where it is freezing cold today. When the Norsemen arrived over two thousand years later they called the area Vinland precisely because of the grapes they found growing made for good wine.
We see the same thing in Britain, where a thousand years ago there was a good climate for growing grapes all over the country. Nowadays it is too cool in the north to grow decent grapes for wine.
So Swanson needs to explain why we live in a dryer cooler climate now and what is the basis for believing “bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive” beyond purely guessing?
But just what’s causing the cooling is a mystery…
Yeah, I suppose it’s hard to see things clearly when your head is tightly inserted up your favorite computer model.
Interesting comment to close on….
Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
Such a strong comment with no supporting argument. Sounds like guess work is the order of the day once again !
“Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
Yes, assuming the interglacial continues. Otherwise, it might be in the realm of 90,000 years.
It is quite clear that current climate models don’t incorporate any natural cycle between 1 and 100 years. This is proven by the ocean heat content trends, compared to two major models, see Fig. S1 of Barnet e.a.:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/1112418/DC1/1
That insolation/clouds are involved also can be seen in the ocean heat content increase over the past 50 years, as the mayor heat content increase is in the subtropics, where the largest change in (low) cloud cover was measured, while increased GHGs should give a more evenly distributed warming see Fig. 2 in Levitus e.a.:
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat05.pdf
Baseline conclusion: as models used the last decades of the past century to attribute most warming to the increase of GHGs, and the current trend is flat, one can say that the warming was about 50% natural, 50% GHG induced (the current natural cooling is as strong as the supposed GHG warming). Thus current models with 3°C/2xCO2 are a factor 2 too high, and the real increase is 1.5°C/2xCO2 (or less)…
From the text :
What? No concensus?
Ahhhh… Any excuse is a good one.
Never heard of cycles?
Wow. The Discovery Channel still fell back on the tired old meme that “[s]inking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths” even though salinity is a minor effect as compared to cold water sinking. Warm water does not sink. We should be thankful that they are making baby steps toward the dark side of analysing real data.
John M Reynolds
Lindsay H (00:39:27), that fraction could even be 22/88 human to natural influence seeing as how 0.08C of the 0.37C 1930-1990 warming was unexplained. Those numbers are based on HadCRUT data for a full set of oceanic cycles. — John M Reynolds
Lindsay H (00:39:27) :
“Is there any way of quantifying scientifically this fraction ?”
If this fraction is able to neutrallize the effect of the much more CO2 in the coming up to 30 years, it’s percentage should be close to 100%.
Including these natural effects into the models would require CO2 feedbacks to be negative to match models to historical temperature data.
“When the climate kicks back out of this state,
we’ll have explosive warming,” Swanson said.
explosive warming?
How are they going to get any media attention,
if they continually understate the problem?
Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
This concept of shelved radiative forcing its something I can’t understand. OK, factor A is cooling our planet. Radiative forcing from CO2 counters the factor A, making the cooling flatter. It can’t be put into storage. Of course, absent factor A (after the suggested 30 years), higher CO2 might cause more forcing, but surely not as to unleash all these watts per m square accumulated during 30 years? Or am I missing something?
I like it, I like it.
“Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate.”
Yes conspiring to chill.
I take it that in the past 30 years there was been no climate alignment conspiring to cause warming?
Guess not.
What really gets me is that this will be reported as fact – NOAA Scientists say – and that since these people are experts they are beyond reproach.
This all called an old favourite to mind
“It was a press conference.
‘I’m afraid I can’t comment on the name Rain God at this present time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-Causal Meteorological Phenomenon.’
‘Can you tell us what that means?’
‘I’m not altogether sure. Let’s be straight here. If we find something we can’t understand we like to call it something you can’t understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don’t, and I’m afraid we couldn’t have that.
‘No, first we have to call it something which says it’s ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it’s not what you said it is, but something we say it is.
‘And if it turns out that you’re right, you’ll still be wrong, because we will simply call him a … er, “Supernormal … ” – not paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those mean now, no, a “Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer”. We’ll probably want to shove a “Quasi” in there somewhere to protect ourselves” – (Douglas Adams – “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish”)