NOTE: As is typical these days, and in keeping with co-author Phil Jones tradition of not giving up anything, the publicly funded scientific paper is not included with the news, and is hidden behind a paywall. All we can get is the press release and abstract and this silly picture of the researcher grinning like a banshee. Speculate away with impunity. I wonder why he has the ozone hole in Antarctica next to the HadCRUT temperature series?
Caption: David W.J. Thompson, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, is the lead author of a Nature paper that shows sudden ocean cooling contributed to a global warming hiatus in the middle 20th century in the Northern Hemisphere. Credit: Colorado State University
FORT COLLINS – The hiatus of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere during the mid-20th century may have been due to an abrupt cooling event centered over the North Atlantic around 1970, rather than the cooling effects of tropospheric pollution, according to a new paper appearing today in Nature.
David W. J. Thompson, an atmospheric science professor at Colorado State University, is the lead author on the paper. Other authors are John M. Wallace at the University of Washington, and John J. Kennedy at the Met Office and Phil D. Jones of the University of East Anglia, both in the United Kingdom.
The international team of scientists discovered an unexpectedly abrupt cooling event that occurred between roughly 1968 and 1972 in Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures. The research indicates that the cooling played a key role in the different rates of warming seen in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the middle 20th century.
“We knew that the Northern Hemisphere oceans cooled during the mid-20th century, but the sudden nature of that cooling surprised us,” Thompson said.
While the temperature drop was evident in data from all Northern Hemisphere oceans, it was most pronounced in the northern North Atlantic, a region of the world ocean thought to be climatically dynamic.
“Accounting for the effects of some forms of natural variability – such as El Nino and volcanic eruptions – helped us to identify the suddenness of the event,” Jones said.
The different rates of warming in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the middle 20th century are frequently attributed to the larger buildup of tropospheric aerosol pollution in the rapidly industrializing Northern Hemisphere. Aerosol pollution contributes to cooling of the Earth’s surface and thus can attenuate the warming due to increasing greenhouse gases.
But the new paper offers an alternative interpretation of the difference in mid-century temperature trends.
“The suddenness of the drop in Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures relative to the Southern Hemisphere is difficult to reconcile with the relatively slow buildup of tropospheric aerosols,” Thompson said.
“We don’t know why the Northern Hemisphere ocean areas cooled so rapidly around 1970. But the cooling appears to be largest in a climatically important region of the ocean,” Wallace said.
Global temperatures 1850-2010 [Nature News]
An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature around 1970
David W. J. Thompson1, John M. Wallace2, John J. Kennedy3 & Phil D. Jones4
- Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
- Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1640, USA
- Met Office Hadley Centre, Met Office, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK
- Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Correspondence to: David W. J. Thompson1 Email: davet@atmos.colostate.edu
Abstract
The twentieth-century trend in global-mean surface temperature was not monotonic: temperatures rose from the start of the century to the 1940s, fell slightly during the middle part of the century, and rose rapidly from the mid-1970s onwards1. The warming–cooling–warming pattern of twentieth-century temperatures is typically interpreted as the superposition of long-term warming due to increasing greenhouse gases and either cooling due to a mid-twentieth century increase of sulphate aerosols in the troposphere2, 3, 4, or changes in the climate of the world’s oceans that evolve over decades (oscillatory multidecadal variability)2, 5. Loadings of sulphate aerosol in the troposphere are thought to have had a particularly important role in the differences in temperature trends between the Northern and Southern hemispheres during the decades following the Second World War2, 3, 4. Here we show that the hemispheric differences in temperature trends in the middle of the twentieth century stem largely from a rapid drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperatures of about 0.3 °C between about 1968 and 1972. The timescale of the drop is shorter than that associated with either tropospheric aerosol loadings or previous characterizations of oscillatory multidecadal variability. The drop is evident in all available historical sea surface temperature data sets, is not traceable to changes in the attendant metadata, and is not linked to any known biases in surface temperature measurements. The drop is not concentrated in any discrete region of the Northern Hemisphere oceans, but its amplitude is largest over the northern North Atlantic.
=============================
hmmm, maybe this graph from ICECAP will help them:
And this too:
The historical variability of the Arctic Oscillation. 1969-1970 was darned cold.
Also see this image from the Climate Prediction Center:
ALSO: Quote from Phil Jones: Reuters
Jones, at the centre of a furore over e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia in late 2009, was reinstated this year after reviews cleared him of suspicions of exaggerating evidence in favour of global warming.
Thursday’s paper is the first he has since published in Nature. “Maybe it will get them thinking,” he said, asked how climate sceptics would react to his involvement in a paper highlighting a cause of cooling, rather than warming.
——————-
I wonder how good that Southern Hemisphere SST data is back in the 1960s, which is used here to demonstrate “robustness”. From Physicsworld.com
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I think he is smiling because he can sit in judgement of data and say whatever he can think of while drunk/high whatever and gets payed by the tax-payer to come up with theories that rely on no outside information and therefore are impossible to prove incorrect. Post-modern science has once again eaten more money buy paying sub-standard scientists to come up with what is now called science.
I didn’t know that the oceans began cooling suddenly in the 1970’s, I thought it was much later, like the 90’s.
If it’s in Nature that tells me about all I need to know.
Can I translate that last bit there?
“Difficult to reconcile…” means, “I haven’t got a friggin’ clue. I got nothing.”
Hop that helps! 😉
Fantastic! Any year now we can expect the venerable Dr. Jones to discover the Pacific Decadal Oscillation! Such breakthroughs as our beloved Climate Science is making!
The important question is whether such cooling (or warming) events are generated by internal ocean variability which is largely independent of other factors such as events in the air.
I have proposed just that for nearly three years now – and rather tiresomely described some of the potential implications for the global energy budget and the actual climate observations.
The variations in TSI alone are clearly not enough to explain what we see and I’m with Leif Svalgaard on that.
However the effect on albedo and the energy flux generally from changes in the spectrum of energy received from the sun is a different matter.
This article has been referred to before but it is highly relevant :
http://iopscience.iop.or…9326/5/3/034008/fulltext
Not everyone agrees with Leif as to a lack of potential for solar variability to have a top down effect and that paper substantially supports my propositions about the effect of solar variability on the polar oscillation, jetstream positioning, speed of hydrological cycle and albedo changes.
As you will see in the article the effect only really comes to the fore on centennial time scales which is something I have been saying for quite some time.
Then one only has to introduce a bottom up oceanic forcing as observed here in this new paper and here:
http://esciencenews.com/…h.past.climate.anomalies
to see the beginnings of establishment support for my basic propositions
I know this is very OT, but “grinning like a banshee” doesn’t sound right. My Irish folklore is rustier than my old Chevy, I thought Banshees screamed when death was imminent. No grinning involved. Perhaps “grinning like a wolf” or “grinning like a Cheshire cat” would be a more apt simile.
Thanks for the indulgence… back now to our usual programming. 🙂
““We don’t know why the Northern Hemisphere ocean areas cooled so rapidly around 1970. But the cooling appears to be largest in a climatically important region of the ocean,” Wallace said.”
Well according to all their charts it started cooling back in the 1940’s. What rapid cooling is he talking about?
Bn D, I agree: falsificationism is no longer the gate-keeper of science, and we’ve all lost out.
My favorite quote is his co-author’s statement from the link Bill Illis posted on the Tips & Notes page (When the North Atlantic caught a chill):
Maybe that’s why Thompson’s grinning.
OK S.
I’m fascinated by the way-with-words of these warmists. (Mind you, that’s all that fascinates me.) Cooling is now to be called a warming hiatus. I really think it’s time for an all-out Peace Offensive on double-speak.
Just by the way, today I was checking the Elders Weather site because it’s the time of year I need thunderstorms to kick-start my bamboo with some nitrogen soup. I happened to notice that the lowest September maximum temp was in 2006 and the highest was in 1965.
To me this indicates absolutely nothing.
To a warmist this indicates absolutely nothing.
If those stats were reversed, so that the hottest september max was in 2006, and the lowest in 1965…
To me this would indicate absolutely nothing.
To a warmist it would indicate absolutely everything.
Well, circumpolar yacht-racing should thin out their ranks over the next decade. But there could be lasting damage to the English language.
Hockey stick – check, ozone hole over Antarctica – check, ‘post it note’ reminder to occasionally look outside at the real world- check
I posted this over at Revkinworld-
From Nature News come several precious statements about this article-
“…says co-author Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, “we spent a lot of time in trying to rule out possible data issues”.
LOL!!!!!!
“But Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, isn’t so sure… “I’m unconvinced they’ve shown that the model of an isolated brief event is a better fit to the data.”
LOL!!!!!!
Oh REALLLYYYY! Watch how El Nino warms, and then La Nina cools Pendleton!
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/climate/temp_graphs.php?stn=KPDT&wfo=pdt
Just so ya know, I’ve had two glasses of red wine and just finished making a bodacious venison stew, so if I typewe the wrorng letterssr, yaa nkows whys.
The rest of you typists, what’s your exscuse????
oops. Apparently I didn’t finsish reading. it said “ahaitus” int he tillte. My bad.
Again and again, these “climate scientists” can’t even see the flaws they uncover. Studying the meaning of this sentence reveals much:
“The hiatus of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere during the mid-20th century may have been due to an abrupt cooling event centered over the North Atlantic around 1970, rather than the cooling effects of tropospheric pollution, according to a new paper appearing today in Nature.”
Aside from the usual “may have been” so prevalent in this type of study, note that they are saying the coefficients in their computer models “may” be wrong. Yes, the computer models that have been teased out to at least 90 years into the future “may” have incorrect coefficients.
Never, ever do these kind of findings result in re-evaluations of the General Circulation Models upon which ALL their doom and gloom resides.
Did the press release include ” so this is why we tend to start all our calculations from this period, the cold (sorry lack of warm) spell makes the trend look better”
So Jones is right after all. Warming is CO2, cooling is naturalr.
Pamela-that Pendelton Data is what I call”The Green Tomato chart.”
Since when has 1972 been mid twentieth century?
We use WUWT for an abbreviation.
My teenager, alas uses, WTF (World Trade Federation) in his texting.
However, in this instance, I’d say “World Trade Federation” is probably appropriate.
WTF !!! The oceans just suddenly decided to “get colder”? Even if one RECOGNIZES the salient point that the oceans represent a “heat sink” which has ((6/7)*(8000/15)) or 457 times as much capacity as the atmosphere…and therefore should in the long run “damp” any atmospheric change by a factor of almost 500 (i.e., so that if extra energy is put in the atmosphere, say enough to raise the temperature by 10 C during a year, it may take 500 years before that complete rise in temperature is seen..), one still has to explain WHY they would engage in a massive “turn over” and decide to drop temperatures down (absorb significantly more energy than in previous years…)
And, in the final assesment, if the oceans CAN do this, until such mechanisms are understood, movements BOTH upward and DOWNWARD in tropopsheric temperatures CANNOT be attributed to a “single cause”, be that aerosols, CO2, or bovine belching.
These guys ARE a piece of work!
This is Jones’s rehabilitation piece, he can hardly do a first paper back after Climategate on warming so he picks cooling but with a twist.
Although the study has highlighted holes in our knowledge of past temperature trends, it hasn’t changed the fact that greenhouse gases are warming the world up, said Gabi Hegerl at the University of Edinburgh. “In my opinion, this research does not question our current interpretation of the overall causes of 20th-century warming.”
I’ll try again in the hope that the links work this time.
The important question is whether such cooling (or warming) events are generated by internal ocean variability which is largely independent of other factors such as events in the air.
I have proposed just that for nearly three years now – and rather tiresomely described some of the potential implications for the global energy budget and the actual climate observations.
The variations in TSI alone are clearly not enough to explain what we see and I’m with Leif Svalgaard on that.
However the effect on albedo and the energy flux generally from changes in the spectrum of energy received from the sun is a different matter.
This article has been referred to before but it is highly relevant :
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/3/034008/fulltext
Not everyone agrees with Leif as to a lack of potential for solar variability to have a top down effect and that paper substantially supports my propositions about the effect of solar variability on the polar oscillation, jetstream positioning, speed of hydrological cycle and albedo changes.
As you will see in the article the effect only really comes to the fore on centennial time scales which is something I have been saying for quite some time.
Then one only has to introduce a bottom up oceanic forcing as observed here in this new paper and here:
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/08/14/changes.net.flow.ocean.heat.correlate.with.past.climate.anomalies
to see the beginnings of establishment support for my basic propositions