New El Niño type: worse than we thought

“These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific”
Eh… yeah. He’s got it backwards..

Recently Bob Tisdale posted here on WUWT showing from recent decades that the el Nino Modoki type was less likely than the “standard” el Nino to be followed hot on its heels by a La Nina event. This analysis, based on several closelyt spaced el Ninos recently (e.g. 1991-2, 1994-5, 2002-3, 2004-5), coming from one of the leading authorities on oceanic cycles, surprisingly has proved wrong this year. “As we speak” we are descending into a strong La Nina event immediately after the most intense recent el Nino Modoki.
This unusual turn of events which seems to be breaking the recent pattern may signify that something has changed. What could change influencing the pattern and succession of ENSO events? The answer is obvious – the PDO/AMO longer term multidecadal cycles. In fact we now know this very clearly following Roy Spencer’s recent WUWT post showing that the 20th century temperature curve could be tracked precisely as a function of the ENSO cycle.
The paper here, while useful and informative, shows the myopic cherry picking to give an alarmist AGW conclusion without which nothing can be published in scientific journals concerning climate. “Here is a trend over the last 3-4 decades which obviously is going to continue for ever and ever, Amen”.
A more raional take on this is that the ENSO is the mechanism by which global temperatures rise during the PDO/AMO upswings, e.g. 1970-2005. But now we are starting a downswing, so the rules change subtly. A second strong La Nina tightly sandwiching an el Nino Modoki is not supposed to happen. The regime has changed. We could call his year’s ocean temperature downswing as a “La Nina Modoki”.
( Sorry no WUWT links supplied, I’m writing from a mobile phone.)

So they “measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982.”
And “they found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.”
And “Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños”
And “These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño”
So they are sure that a bigger (or I guess a smaller) El Nino compared to a 28 year average is a big deal. If the cycle is 3 – 5 years, that would make it the biggest out of somewhere between 6 & 9 “El Ninos”.
Wow.
And there’s no doubt, I presume, that it is Climate Change (=all you guys driving SUVs) that is puffing up these El Ninos and not El Ninos that are changing the Climate.
Yeah. Just when we thought the Science Was Settled. Worse than we thunk.
Not only that, but “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting”.
Well that’ll be a blow, seeing how long-range forecasts are so accurate that we need urgently to change to a “low-carbon” economy (that doesn’t work) on the strength of them.

Oh, it’s obviously AGW – who could doubt it?

A recent study found many climate models predict such events will become much more frequent under projected global warming scenarios.
Lee said further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of these increasingly intense El Niños and determine why these changes are occurring.
Keywords: projected global warming scenarios, more frequent, further research is needed, increasingly intense El Niños.
Panic now? Or simply another case of “We haven’t a clue but blame it on Global Warming anyway, where are the grants?”

These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific

How unscientific. A statistical result (‘climate change’) cannot affect a real world phenomenon (‘El Niño’) as the causality link is reversed. Here is a more logical wording:

(I drop the word ‘change’ as it is a redundancy in this context.)

Andy Revkin has asked these researchers a couple of intelligent questions. (http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/pacific-hot-spells-shifting-as-predicted-in-human-heated-world/) Quoting from the replies:
“If all we had was data the interpretation would be ambiguous as to what causes what. However, we also have climate change computer models which are valuable guides to how the climate system will respond to greenhouse gas forcing.”
“We can’t be 100% certain that this interpretation is correct because the data are limited and the models are imperfect. But it provides us a plausible working hypothesis for further investigation into the nature and impacts of a changing face to El Niño.”
If it’s just a plausible working hypothesis, it’s hardly worth arguing about. But I have a plausible working hypothesis that it will be reported in the media as something more.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/07/el-nino-same-but-different/

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0423-kozloff_cochabamba.html
Nothing new under the sun, El Nino varies all the time

Yes, I paid for the study. $9.00 for a very simple statistical examination of NINO3 and NINO4 peak SST anomalies during El Nino and La Nina events. Oy!
The following is their Figure 3.
http://i38.tinypic.com/3004ktz.jpg
The first thing to note is the impact of the 2009/10 El Nino, which is one of the reasons for the study. But any short-term evaluation of the linear trends of ENSO events is skewed by the years included in the study. Second, the multiyear El Nino and La Nina events are not represented. They appear to have picked peak SST anomalies for ENSO events. Would this make a difference? I’m working on it. Then the question would be is the intensity of an ENSO event dictated by the peak, or the time spent above 0 deg C, or the actual change in SST anomalies from trough to peak and from peak to trough.

I though the whole PDO thing was only partially understood, and only recently at that.
In any case, an El Niño does not ‘warm’ anything, it is merely bringing warm water up, where it can happily release its heat and cool the world down. A nice negative feedback, if anything, not something to worry about, surely?
This ‘report’ (aka speculation) makes it sound really scary! I guess the “further research” needed may be the main cause, however….

“It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Niños are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions”
Would that, by any chance, be the punch-line of submissions for research funding by taxpayers? Just curious.

This article mentiones sea level rise as something that happens in conjunction with El Nino’s. If you download the sealevel data from the Colorado University website, then you can see that for the 1998 El Nino there was a clear sealevel rise in the Pacific in 1997, starting around the 2nd quarter with a peak somewhere in September. The amount of sea level rise, about 20 mm, suggests therefore that a large amount of heat has been introduced into the pacific before this particular El Nino. The atmospheric temperature rise follows El Nino’s, and this can therefore not have been causing the El Nino as well. A remixing of warm and cooler water does not cause a volume increase according to some simple sums I have made. Therefore, there must have been a large infusion of energy in the Pacific ocean before the El Nino occured.
The amount of energy involved and the time in which it must have been introduced -considering that thermal expansion is more or less instantaneous with a temperature rise- makes it virtually impossible that this energy was introduced via the ocean surface. For me it is obvious therefore that the source of this energy must have been geothermal.
If you look from this perspective to the historic sea level rise the question arises whether not all or most of this is caused by geothermal energy. This of course puts a different light on the global climate change issue.
I am very interested in your opinion.
Evert Jesse

The 1998 was supposed to have been a super El Nino. GISS had its peak anomaly at 0.80 C. Now the 2009-2010 was worse (GISS: 0.84 C) and our temperatures still did not blow 1998’s away over a decade later? Wow. — John M Reynolds

So this is absolute? 100% Accurate? To a T?
Ya right!!!

Is it just me , or do Lee and McFaden contradict themselves ? At one point they say that Pacific temps rise due to these intense “new” el ninos yet remain neutral at other times . They then claim that climate change could be causing these el ninos in the first place . Considering that the el nino phenomenon is a relatively recent discovery , how can they know that these intense el ninos are anything out of the ordinary ?

Again, this El Niño thing has been driving me mad. I have seen nothing in 50 years of study that has defined clearly and precisely the origins of the Niña/o familly. There is nothing here, either, that has explained the origines. I am also aware that NO GCM as yet been able to forecast a Niño more than 6 myhs before it’s arrival. So this is report has to be a sampler for gaining more money. You know the sort of thing by now, “I’m an AGW scientist therefore you can give me money to prove it”.

When the study is pre-hung on a warming meathook, it is only warming events that are considered.
No time spent discussing what changes in longitude that La Ninas are occurring.
Did the Ninas and Ninos swap places, or do they occur in the same longitudes?
30 years ago, I suppose it would have been considered mainstream to hang the study on a freezer meathook, rather than a smokehouse meathook.
I really do expect legitimate scientific inquiry to examine both sides of the coin.

Vukcevic
Maybe you are on to something. All of your graphs that you present have always made some sense out of a lot of unknown weather and climate events. Keep up the good work.

Who Discovered the El Niño-Southern Oscillation?
Gregory T. Cushman, Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX
Two giants of 20th-century meteorology, Gilbert Walker and Jacob Bjerknes, are usually given credit for discovering the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon. During the early 1920s, Walker empirically identified a periodic variation in atmospheric pressure over the Indo-Pacific which he christened the “Southern Oscillation.” During the 1960s, Bjerknes posited a physical mechanism to explain the atmospheric features of this phenomenon over the equatorial Pacific which he christened the “Walker Circulation.” Both men deserve recognition since they opened the way for our present understanding of the global climate system.

One thing’s for sure there’s an academic cottage industry around data mining modern instrument records for correlations. And if you can’t find any correlations then make some up. Then cherry pick sparse unreliable records from the more distant past and make up a narrative about those describing how they relate with the modern records. Begin and end with a gratuitous warning about the dangers of climate change. Include in the final paragraph, right after the CAGW warning, the critical need for further study before we all die and then you’re all ready to publish in the pal review literature.

I wonder if the position of the warmest water in the Pacific is in any way inversely proportional to tropical atorm and hurricane activity in the Atlantic. During an El Nino year, hurricane activity is supressed. Last year, activity was around average. Now I learn that the El Nino settled in the Central Pacific not the Eastern Pacific.
I realize that there are a lot of variables in action here but it would be interesting if there was a corellation between location of warmest water and storm activity.

A paper published 2 weeks ago in JGR found that there was no increase in El Nino event frequency or magnitude since 1856, and found a normal distribution instead:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/08/paper-no-increase-in-el-nino-events.html

“Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.
“These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific,” said McPhaden. “El Niño’s impact on global weather patterns is different if ocean warming occurs primarily in the central Pacific, instead of the eastern Pacific.
“If the trend we observe continues,” McPhaden added, “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century.”
The cart before the horses… Read “Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate” Springer 2010 2ed. by Marcel Leroux before believing that crap! El Nino is a consequence of circulation and these authors do not even know it…

In review of comments
Glaciers, Hurricanes, El Ninos and La Ninas may simply be temperature driven by ocean temperatures.
Formation temperatures:
Land Glaciers 22F Degrees
La Ninas need 40F degrees
El Ninos need 60F – 70F degrees
Hurricanes need 82F degrees 100 feet down.
I have only found numeric research back to 1899.
Warmer sunspot cycles tend to have about 8 of a 11 year cycle.
Cooler sunspot cycles; 3 to 5 of a 11 year cycle.
The 1964 to 1975 sunspot cycle was extraordinary. Chart wise flat, but working off of three preceding warm cycles, it had 121 named storms, 7 El Ninos and 7 La Ninas.
It eventually cooled the earth down and gave us a record Arctic Ice Sheet in 1979. Interesting climate lag there.
One scientist states El Ninos give rise to La Ninas.
La Ninas tend to stir up warmer waters needed for ocean food chains.
Paul

First: The El Niño from 1525 to present:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30810082/Ninos
Now, A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA
That it is not El Niño. The El Niño CURRENT was named as such by peruvian fishermen from the northern coast of Peru, in Piura, because this CURRENT appears around Christmas, opposing the most usual and cold Humboldt´s current which runs from south to north along the western coasts of south america.
In order to know something and not just describing facts, which is not science but a childish behaviour like saying: “mommy is dark in there!”, NASA s hould provide a ROBUST study pointing to the CAUSES why this is happening and not that, whatever it is. El Niño is a warm current in the pacific sea, running southwards, opposing the counterclockwise Humboldt´s current, which is driven by the pacific anticyclone (also called chilean anticyclone), and try to explain us, not so clever and funded people, what makes currents change direction. Is it the Moon?, is it the planets and the moon?, is it something “surprising and unknown”like antimatter or black holes?., is it Superman or Al Baby?. Please, tell us, because if you don´t we´ll get scared!

BTW Magnetic equator is at about 12 S latitude.

The difference between a regular El Nino and an El Nino Modoki needs to be explained. Any type of El Nino starts out as a mass of warm water at the beginning of the equatorial countercurrent near New Guinea and the Philippines. The countercurrent then normally carries it to South America where it washes ashore, spreads out, and thereby starts warming the atmosphere. The updraft from this may stop or even temporarily reverse the trade winds. Enough warmth is released this way to rise the global air temperature by half a degree. But any wave that washes ashore must also fall back. As that massive wave retreats for a return journey across the ocean water level behind it drops by half a meter or more, cool water from below wells up, and a La Nina has started. An El Nino Modoki happens if something stops the motion of the El Nino wave before it has reached the coast. A likely cause for this could be a storm surge from a typhoon. When this happens the warm water of the El Nino wave spreads out as though it had hit an obstacle like the coast, and its warm water again starts transferring heat to the atmosphere, but this time in the middle of the ocean. It has been reported that an El Nino Modoki sometimes may not be followed by a La Nina. This is understandable because once the El Nino wave that was held up does reach the coast and turn around it will have lost momentum and the drop in sea level behind it will not be as strong as usual.

Moderator: my early comment has been lost in the cyberspace, please rescue it.
REPLY: recovered – Anthony

stephen richards says:
August 28, 2010 at 5:12 am
It’s hardly surprising that Anthohy stopped responding to you [Springer]. After such prattish remarks such as this so have I and everyone else here, I guess.

That’s the first response you’ve ever made to me Stephen. That said, if all you have to say to me is as schoolyard as that I’ll just say thanks for promising to make it your last. Anthony can defend himself, by the way. What’s British slang for “brown noser”?

If the majority of the warming from human GHG’s has indeed been absorbed into the oceans, as NOAA stipulates, then it not unreasonable to think that this heat could cause some changes in natural ocean cycles such as ENSO, PDO, etc. This notion does not sit well with AGW skeptics, as can be expected.

“Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.
There would be one cause in the chain of warming, not two separate ones, as you are arguing.

“If the trend we observe continues,” McPhaden added, “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century.”
They should not have used such a small data set, i.e., “the latter half of the 20th century”, to draw conclusions from in the first place. ‘Global warming’ cannot be blamed for the “monkey wrench” rather their unscientific approach is to blame!

As pointed out on earlier posts, I had predicted a feverish rush of CAGW scientific literature pouring out after the Climagegate affair. The reason for this is only in part to rescue whatever the agenda they can. The feverishness however comes from the cooling signs that are upon us – even acknowledged by many of their stalwarts (Trenbreth and his remarks in a Climategate email that it was a travesty that there had been no warming in the past decade). They know that once things freeze up again: Arctic ice, glacier masses increase, UK elderly poor having to burn books again to keep warm ( http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth ), that the jig is up. The post on Nature and the cold in the SH above this post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/28/nature-notices-the-cold-global-warming-blamed/
along with this gobal warming El Nino is an escalation of the fever by pre-empting signs of the cooling to come (no mention of deepening La Nina) blaming it on global warming. This gives them more time when they can use cooling as a sign of warming. I hope someone is saving all these articles for a study of the anatomy of the crashing of a scientific theory.

I don’t understand how analysis of El Nino events can be meaningful without concurrently studying La Nina events. Are not the trends derived from the net differences between the two what matters?
I recall that the giant anchovy fishery along the west coast of south America crashed in the late 1960s due to a sudden and significant change in water temperature. The fish disappeared. I believe that subsequent investigation led to the discovery (or perhaps meaningful understanding)
We still remain largely ignorant of the causes and interrelationships of these phenomena, including their contribution to weather formation.

Gary Pearse,
You may be right.
I add, they may not be allowed to or know where to look for the cause and effect.
Paul

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 28, 2010 at 11:44 am
They are just lying again. I live in the El Nino 1+2 area, there was not any El Nino this year. A real one increases local temperatures above 35°C (Up to 38°C many times during 97-98 El Nino); the last summertime we reached just 30° only a few days in late february. BTW, in 97-98 El Nino, deserted hills around the city turned green, however with NO rain whatsoever. Again: Warm is good.

To Gary,
I add:
Plato believed that people sit in a cave facing down into the darkness. The enlightened try to take one-by-one each person and face them towards the light at the opening of the cave.
I knew they were deceiving us and had us looking down into the cave. One day I found a book titled, “Through Space and Time” by Sir James Jeans of the Royal Society.
He took all the classes of a liberal science degree and rolled them into one book. The book clearly rebutted the IPCC and Al Gore nearly 80 years ago.
We are in a global warming period that won’t happen again for 115,000 years. In the last 10,000 years we had 3 global warming periods.
We are in the latter part of this global warming period before we slide into the next ice age.
We are in another cooling period that happens every 100 years. That will last at least 30 years.
The people who will suffer the most are the elderly and the poor whom depend on big government much as those whom were dependent on the government in Katrina.
That showed up in an Ireland report just last week. This group feels the effects of winters the most and is reflected in higher death counts during winter months.
Like lambs they depend on the farmer. The farmer doesn’t know better to house them for the next 30 years.
Those who bought into the darkness of the cave such as Hollywood producers, stars and starlets, politicians, directors of our key government offices, liberals and intellects will be looking more into the darkness for answers as 30 years of severe winters come upon us.
Why? They want to believe they can answer the problem.
I was thinking today how rural we will be in 50 years as all our technical gains are lost.
If sunspot activity doesn’t begin to pick up in the next two years, another mini-ice age may be upon us.
Paul

Stephen Wilde says: “I’m sure Bob Tisdale has a lot to say on this thread.”
Just one comment before this. I was writing my comments up as a post. See below.
Bill Illis says: “I was waiting to see what Bob Tisdale had to say…”
I’ve just posted my comments of Lee and McPhaden and on the press release:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-lee-and-mcphaden-2010-increasing.html

Trucker Bob says: “Anthony, I admit my ignorance about sea surface temperature records, so I ask for your help here. A.R.G.O’s are very recent but do they indicate any warming outside what would normally be observed in the central Pacific as this study would indicate?”
You’re right. ARGO is recent. But their primary intent is measuring subsurface data and they spend most of the time away from the surface. There have been other floats with multiple sensors in the tropical Pacific since the late 1970s. Refer to the TOA project website:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/index.shtml
The Lee & McPhaden paper actually shows a decrease in the overall strength in El Nino events, though there has been a slight increase in Central Pacific El Ninos.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-lee-and-mcphaden-2010-increasing.html

R. Gates says: “If the majority of the warming from human GHG’s has indeed been absorbed into the oceans, as NOAA stipulates…”
This is not reflected in the NODC’s OHC data. Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-0-700.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html

Bob Tisdale:
Just a quick thanks for your help Bob, I’ll now take the time to explore your links.

I don’t think we can dispense with linear trends.
Civilization depends on farming and under The US house of Reps, Cap and Trade bill, farms and ranching that depends on a given temperature that are now coming on to the House radar.
In the coming minimum we will lose more than average inch of rain and that is already being felt around the world. Sir Richard Gregory proved around 1925 that the lake levels of Lake Victoria, that feeds the Nile matched the sunspot cycles.
We are now in a minimum. That will affect farming and ranching. Mongolia lost millions of livestock and Scotland lost 17,000 lambs last winter.
During the milder sunspot cycles of the early 1900s, the US was experiencing average winter temperatures well below freezing. On the other hand, from 1934 to 2007, we had some of the hottest sunspot cycles in 300 years.
Since 1984 average winter temperatures have been above freezing.
If one reviews the history of Europe during the Mini-Ice age, farms pretty much switched to the potato so their nations could survive. The French on the other hand did not wish to part with their cereal grains.
Parts of France lost 30% of their population.
Until our nations get off of this man-made global warming hoax and listen to the scientist that can address what I am talking about here and quit raking the good scientists across the coals in Congressional hearings,,,
We will not be prepared for what is coming.
Simply take the movie, “The Day After”, slow it down to five years, slow down the scenes, slow down the affects, throw in Winters without Summers, and take out the actors and put yourself in their shoes. Take the ice sheet out of the picture and replace it with some growing glaciers.
Next, show the lost of cattle and other livestock on US farms due to severe winters. Show farmers and ranchers being hauled in to court by animal rights groups and sympathetic or politically correct sheriffs.
Next, take the picture of Russia today and take out the Russians and put is US citizens fighting fires and 20% lost of grain crops.
I am not painting a linear picture, I am sketching what is coming so far.
Add to your email, the following Google News alerts.
Key in these newspaper key words after midnight
Drought
Winter Animal Deaths
Winter deaths
Global warming
Global warming hoax
Global cooling
Global cooling hoax
Sunspots
Sunspot activity
Glaciers
Glacier growth
Key in the cast of characters on both sides of the global warming hoax fight
Hurricanes
Hurricane Activity
Tree Ring Research
Farm losses
Herd losses
Deer losses
Copenhagen
Climate-gate
Climate hoax
Climate gate emails
This will give you about every newspaper report in the world each morning on these topics.
This is my morning report.
I will say this about that, after Copenhagen and climate-gate, the throne of the IPCC was shaken. The battlefield is a little more level now.
I find it a little humorous here in the US that Republicans are gaining an understanding of sunspots and what I am saying while Democrats and liberals still think an abundance of cows are killing us.
How many cows does it take to plug in a sunspot?
Cows died on their feet in the mini-ice age and peasants slept with them during the minimums in the early 1700 and 1800.
Is that the answer we are looking for, five cows per household?
Stack the wood a little higher and a little longer this year.
Something to think about.
Paul

Matt G says:
August 28, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Hence, the atmosphere above the ocean can’t warm the surface.

Correct.
But it can slow down how quickly the surface cools. Shortwave in from the sun heats the ocean, longwave out to cool it. Gases like water vapor, CO2, and methane let most of the shortwave through from the sun unattenuated but absorb the longwave that radiates back up from the surface. In other words they don’t slow down heating from the sun but they impede cooling back out into space. The net effect is the surface temperature rises which causes a greater temperature difference between the ocean and space. The greater temperature difference causes faster longwave heat transfer through the gases loss so that incoming heat and outgoing heat remain in balance.
Water in all its phases plays such a large role in determining equilibrium temperature that the atmosphere’s greatest role is simply supplying 14.7 psi pressure at the surface which allows liquid water to exist. The heat capacity of the global ocean is 1000 times that of the atmosphere. Moreover water largely controls the planet’s albedo through clouds and snow and circulates vast amounts of heat through both ocean currents and as water vapor which evaporates from the ocean surface carrying an enormous amount of latent heat with it and throws off that heat high in the atmosphere (where it is easier for the heat to escape into space) when it condenses into a cloud. Moreover if it’s during the day the cloud then reflects most of the shortwave radiation from the sun so the ocean surface gets far less daytime heating.
Greenhouse gases (other than water vapor) are mere details in comparison and CO2 has to increase exponentially to keep a linear insulating effect. There doesn’t appear to be enough fossil fuel on the planet to sustain exponentially increasing atmospheric CO2 for long enough to have anything but overwhelmining positive effect of raising global temperature by a couple of degrees C, speeding up the water cycle, and through fertilizing the atmosphere for plant growth along with longer growing seasons speeds up the carbon cycle. The only thing not to like is thermal expansion of the ocean which should continue to rise with temperature on the order of about 3-4 millitmeters per year. It’s risen an awful lot faster than that in both the distant and recent geological past. About the only species that is inconvienced much by a rising ocean is us and only because we built permanent stuff like cities and major ports very close to sea level or in some cases below sea level behind dikes and levees. That’s our fault for being so short sighted. The global ocean has been rising for thousands of years. Inability to easily relocate industrial age infrastructure is a problem of very recent origin. Even so, the projected rise is marginal (1 to 2 feet per century) and we’ll just have to deal with it – if it actually happens. Nasty things like the Little Ice Age aren’t going to be lessened in severity much by global warming, a huge volcano can wreak biosphere havoc for years afterward by blocking a lot of sun, a coronal mass ejection of size that happens once a century or so would destroy worldwide electrical grids, and so forth. So-called anthropogenic climate change is the least of our worries. If it’s real then great because it’s beneficial. If it isn’t real we should be prepared for global cooling. And we need a long term answer for an energy supply against the day when fossil fuel supplies get short and an electrical grid that will be shut down for years in the event of a big CME.
There’s a million things we should be investing in for the future but drastically raising the price of energy right now by discouraging fossil fuel CO2 production isn’t one of them.

Bob Tisdale says:
August 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm
R. Gates says: “If the majority of the warming from human GHG’s has indeed been absorbed into the oceans, as NOAA stipulates…”
This is not reflected in the NODC’s OHC data. Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-0-700.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html
____
With all due respect, this is not what NOAA seems to be saying.
They indicated that the vast majority of AGW is going into the oceans, which they did, quite clearly in their State of the Climate Report for 2009. Check out the nice graph on page 4 of the summary that can be found here:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/2009/bams-sotc-2009-brochure-lo-rez.pdf
The only point I was making is that according to NOAA, the bulk of AGW has gone into the oceans at approximately 93.4% according to their own graph. If this were even close to being accurate, it would not be unreasonable to postulate that such warming could alter the nature, frequency, duration, location, intensity, etc of natural ocean cycles such as ENSO, PDO, etc.
Of course, this gets back to Trenberth’s entire “travesty” comment, (used in the proper and accurate context). We simply don’t have enough measurements in deep enough water to fully know what is going on with the deeper OHC. Though, as we know, some recent research would seem to indicate that some OHC increases were being significantly underestimated, and may be revised upward by some accounts, perhaps accounting for a bit (but hardly all) of the missing ocean heat.

R. Gates says:
August 29, 2010 at 10:16 pm
The only point I was making is that according to NOAA, the bulk of AGW has gone into the oceans at approximately 93.4% according to their own graph. If this were even close to being accurate, it would not be unreasonable to postulate that such warming could alter the nature, frequency, duration, location, intensity, etc of natural ocean cycles such as ENSO, PDO, etc.
=================================
And it would not be unreasonable for me to postulate that you are officially mentally challenged.
But I am not going to do that.
It is so much better to let history play out on its own so you have a clear idea of who the charlatans and snake oil salesmen are, and who are not.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Commenting on one of the earliest posts here:
phlogiston says:
Recently Bob Tisdale posted here on WUWT showing from recent decades that the el Nino Modoki type was less likely than the “standard” el Nino to be followed hot on its heels by a La Nina event. This analysis, based on several closely spaced el Ninos recently (e.g. 1991-2, 1994-5, 2002-3, 2004-5),
….
Ah … but 2005 had a Nina follow. I know Officially that was NOT a La Nina by the Rules of TODAY, but the NOAA head had the DEFINITION of La Nina changed to require a longer period above ONI=0.5 – – 2005 hit = 0.8, WELL OVER the previous standard – – but it was a Brief event. – -so the Change meant the Late-2005 event would not be CALLED a La Nina – – thus allowing him to grab Headlines, in this Post-Katrina Era, by predicting an above-average hurricane Season ! – – Despite the Rule of Thumb that La Ninas make for smaller (if more numerous), storms.
>> Since then, NOAA has found some excuse to predict EVERY YEAR to be FAR ABOVE AVERAGE. And been WRONG.
But they get lots of Headlines. Politically that is = SUCCESS.
… but Science loses Credibility. What if a REAL Danger needs warning about ?

Charles Wilson: The definition of what a La Nina is is plain wrong. It should be defined as the cool period initiated by the retreat of an El Nino wave. Every El Nino before 1998 was followed by a La Nina as satellite records show. If it did not meet the fashionable definition at the time that is because those defining it have no idea what a La Nina is nor what an El Nino is, for that matter. Check out my entries above and read my book.

Charles Wilson says: “…the NOAA head had the DEFINITION of La Nina changed to require a longer period above ONI=0.5 – – 2005 hit = 0.8, WELL OVER the previous standard – – but it was a Brief event. – -so the Change meant the Late-2005 event would not be CALLED a La Nina…”
Do you have a link to the older version of the NOAA ENSO event definition?