No No to el Nino ( till 2012)By Joe Bastardi (from his WeatherBell blog)
I was going to write something about the dreaded back door front and how while it may be 90 at the masters this weekend it may snow in the I-90 corridor in the northeast but then Joe D Aleo sent me this:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/settled-science-masters-vs-masters-vs-hansen-vs-noaa/
knowing it would wave a red flag in front of me and off I go.
The amazing thing is that the high priests of high temps keep claiming co2 is the cause, then admit its not because of the obvious relationship of the enso to global temps! Its simple to see that when the nino comes on, the earth warms, the nina comes on its cool. I don’t understand why they can not, through simple deduction, understand that the warm PDO ( 1978 to 2007) leads to a warming of the globe, especially when there is part of that time the amo is warm) and the cooling will follow when the PDO turns colder, as it is now? In addition we have to remember that a lot of these folks ( NOT Dr. Jeff Masters who is trying to nail the forecast here though he does see different from me on AGW) but some of the non meteorologists in the field, simply don’t understand that its tough to sustain a warm enso in a cold PDO. And that the cold Enso is much more likely. Actually they WILL NOT SEE IT because it means they were wrong about the eternal warmth, the feedback, everything. More preposterous is the supposition that a trace gas needed for life on the planet, a very minor weight in the atmosphere as it is, would influence the ocean, which is far more important in total energy contribution to the planet than the atmosphere, or anything we are putting into the atmosphere. Do the math good friend.. take the weight of the ocean and atmosphere together and the energy implications of the gas and
the liquid and then stack co2 against it.
The only rout bigger than that is a wrestling match between me and Cael Sanderson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cael_Sanderson
not much of a chance either way.
But again, aren’t you admitting that the first leg of my triple crown of cooling ( oceanic cycles) is the main driver.
Lets just look at this folks. First the Multivariate enso index, which is
Wolters baby, shows the warmth from the late 70s till recently:
Warm PDO, ( then AMO) what do you think the result is. But look there is more! At 600 mb, which is a good measuring point for the troposphere we are near record cold, the most recent coldest in 2008 and way the heck under where we were. The blue line is last year, the red this year, the yellow 08 , the orange average the purple is the record low:
Now why would Hansen want the super nino, which he has been in a habit of forecasting since the 97-98 one? Well, let’s look at the ocean temps:
In this case, the red line is 08, the yellow last year, and you can see we are in the middle of the pack, biased low. But the amazing thing about the nino forecast is THE PROOF OF MY POINT THAT IT IS THE OCEANS, since we can see the warmth that developed as the nino roared on last year, and the cool that has responded this year to the cooling. What is interesting is how close we have been to 2008 at 600mb, when we are a bit less cool in the ocean. So here is what you have to believe.. Yes it is the oceans but their actions are being caused by a trace gas essential for life on the planet.
If you believe that, then when I go into wrestling practice later today, perhaps this is my day to end the 159-0 Gold medalists domination.
I don’t think so.
Now perhaps the NOAA model, which was forecasting a minor warming event a couple of weeks ago is still doing so. Two years ago, I had the nino called in Feb and predicted the non hurricane season. Last year again in Feb with the NINA, 18 STORMS, HOT SUMMER I dont see the hot summer this in the n plains and lakes, I see less storms, more US impact but most importantly to this post, I don’t see an el nino. neutral cool, yes like 08, but I don’t see the nino and I am not a model worshiper. The models are agreeing with me, because I said so before. There is no physical reason, in a cold PDO, to forecast a rapid return of enso warm conditions. Increased volcanic actions in the tropics could play a role, but that along with the sun are wild cards. And by the way, I have already been out publicly saying that the return of a weak to perhaps moderate warm event in 12-13 could lead to winters, because of solar and seismic considerations, that could rival the late 70s. So its not like I don’t see the chance of the warm enso, its just not coming now.
The CFS, the reactionary model, which I call it since it reacts after most should see what is going on, is colder with the bulk of the recent runs colder than the means ( recent runs in blue)
The JMA, and ECMWF, which when they agree with me, really pump me up
as I like their performance better
ecmwf
but they show this is backing off, but no nino.
Let me again be clear. Dr Masters has a site that has done well because he is good at what he does, so its Michigan vs PSU, met on met, honest disagreement ( I have no PHD in meteo though, just a Bachelors). But though I disagree with Dr Masters on AGW, this is an honest forecast disagreement. I do think Dr. Hansen, an outstanding astronomer, is
forecasting this like a couple of the others without looking at the same thing Jeff and I are looking at.. Jeff’s ideas seem measured and taking into account things I see, but I have the other reasons listed.
Hiding behind all this though its the admission that the enso drives global temps, and the implication for AGW has to then be that co2 emissions are causing the large scale cyclical changes in the ocean, which I just do not believe can be true, given what I know about gasses, liquids, and the fact that temps are a measure of energy and the composition and density of the measured gas or liquid increases as the amount of water vapor increases, or in the case of the oceans, a saturated body! But there is no malice intended here.
Actually it gives me hope that I can walk into that wrestling room at PSU and go after Cael:
A round robin with him and that bear is just what a 55 year old wrestling
wanted to be needs.
ciao for now
Hi Joe. Missed you… in a man hug sort of way
There are two persons I really respect re: forecasts: that is Joe D’Aleo and David Archibald. So far they have been spot on. Of course, there are others, Corbyn Etc but I can’t remember all of them. LOL
But, I don’t want winters like we had in the 70s!!!!! Can’t we find something that actually warms the planet?
An interesting read. I can’t help but notice in the ENSO index chart that El Nino seems to dominate in a positive PDO phase whereas La Nina seems to dominate in a negative PDO phase. Am I seeing that right? If so, then this seems good evidence to how strong of an effect the PDO has on global temperatures.
Agree with Joe’s forecast-that coupled the pronounced cooling , and,we are foolishly converting food acreage to fuel. The 70’s set of the global cooling scare.
Now the cool is the warm, we still are to blame…
PDO and ENSO are flat over the 20th century. But it warmed. Therefore there has been warming independent of ENSO and PDO.
The contribution from PDO is much speculation anyway. PDO index has actually trended downwards since 1980, so there’s a good argument there that PDO, if it has any significant effect on global temperature, has actually had a cooling effect since 1980.
ENSO is temporary noise over the record. During El Ninos that noise adds to the background warming. During La Ninas it takes away from it. A new record year will always occur during an El Nino. That’s why we look out for El Ninos. But the expectation that records will be broken is based on the background warming trend, not simply ENSO.
Over time with a background warming trend it should take less and less strong El Ninos to break a previous record. For example the 2010 El Nino was weaker than the 1998 one. Yet 1998 and 2010 are tied warmest years on record.
ENSO has trended negative since 2002. So has the solar cycle. There has not been enough of a temperature drop if those were the only factors in play (especially if you also think PDO has had a cooling effect too – I think that’s just double counting the ENSO trend personally). So there must be something still causing warming since 2002.
Bastardi argues that because CO2 is a trace gas that is required for life, it cannot also act as a green house gas with substantial effects on the climate. This agument just makes no sense. It should not take a Ph.D. in meteorology to understand how green house gases affect climate. I do agree that it’s not easy to predict shifts in el nino/la nina. It will be interesting to see if we get the sift this summer, or next year as Bastardi expects.
“The studies of historical data show that the recent El Niño variation is most likely linked to global warming.” straight out of Wiki. so must be true.
It seems this year may be the critical test for all these ideas.
The only way we would be able to influence the planet’s temperature/weather would be to construct a solid sphere around it and put up programmable lights to replace the sun. Those lights could be fed using space arrays. Of course if we use CFL we will all freeze to death!
PDO matches with global brightening/dimming/brightening, which matches with extra bright sunshine which matches with more W/sqm.
onion2 says:
“So there must be something still causing warming since 2002.”
White is black, evil is good, and there has been warming since 2002.
There is a new cold upwelling taking place off the Equatorial coast of S. America.
More like a long wall of cold water than a simple spot.
What do you make of it?
It will be interesting to see if indeed we get an El Nino in 2012 (I see it more likely in 2013, with ENSO neutral conditions existing between now and then). But be that as it may, to discuss shorter-term natural variations such as solar cycles and ENSO, and medium term variations such as the PDO, and then bring CO2 into the mix is like discussing apples and oranges…or more accurately, apples and the apple cart. For the long-term CO2 forcing is something seen over many decades, and solar cycles and ENSO events can clearly be seen in the temperature record over the past several decades. But both ENSO events, solar events, PDO, and the rest have no NET forcing (or cooling) over the long term (at least they’d better not, or we’d be in trouble). Increases in CO2 however, should have, by physics, a long term NET forcing action over the long-term, and, there are specific verifiable long-term results of such a forcing– and these will be most easily seen in the areas most sensitive to such a NET forcing– namely the reduction of sea ice (mass, volume, and extent), the melting of arctic permafrost, the loss of continental ice mass in Greenland and Antarctica, melting of glaciers, etc. All these are happening and have been happening for many decades, despite the ups and downs of solar cycles, PDO, ENSO, etc.
Now Joe has pretty much put it on the line in terms of what he thinks will happen with the Arctic Sea Ice over the next few years. He’s stated many times he thinks it going to start a long term recovery. It would have to (in his world view) because everything (in his world view) comes down to the multi-decadal cycles in the oceans, and so what goes down (or up) must then do the reverse, as, (in his world view) there has been no NET long-term warming of the planet, but only natural cycles, and the 40% increase in CO2 that humans have created over the past few hundred years has no (or very very little) effect. I would be curious as to what he attributes the warmest water entering the Arctic in at least 2,000 years to? What natural cycle is this part of and where did all this energy come from? See:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/01/arctic-waters-warmest-2000-years/1
Certainly, those who think CO2 could be having a long-term NET forcing on the climate know where this heat might have come from, but regardless, the GCM’s say one trend will exist as one of the most visible signs of AGW (i.e. the long-term decline in Arctic Sea ice), and Joe says it ain’t gonna happen that way. We shall see…
I’m going with an El Nino developing (and have been since November).
The Pacific equatorial upper ocean temperatures have moved strongly into positive territory and it is the best indicator of what is going to happen.
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/3158/ensoepuothamar11.png
The current cross-section is strongly indicative of El Nino.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/weeklyenso/wkteq_xz.gif
Lots of warm water is now surfacing at the Galapagos Islands where the ENSO ocean current starts its journey across the Pacific.
http://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/AMSR/elnino/201104/P1AME110404SST000500ANOML.png
In related news:
“El Nino cheerleaders will be disappointed” [Joseph D’Aleo]
http://www.weatherbell.com/jd/?p=576
Smokey look:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2002/plot/uah/from:2002/trend
Joe,
I noticed a typo between the second and third graphs:
“Now why would Hansen want the super nino, which he has been in a habit of forecasting since the 97-98 one? Well looks( look at the ocean temps:” “looks” should be lets, I think.
[Fixed, thanx. ~dbs.]
Don’t normally comment but must say -Love this website. Major kudos. Awards are much deserved. Thanks for all the efforts.
PDO negative (and ENSO):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:2002/plot/jisao-pdo/from:2002/trend/trend
Solar negative:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:2002/plot/pmod/from:2002/trend/trend
Yet, temperature up:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2002/plot/uah/from:2002/trend
Now I know that woodfortrees is still stuck on the UAH 5.3 dataset and so UAH data doesn’t include the last 4 months. But it isn’t going to make a lot of difference to that trend.
If you take into account the impact of the solar cycle (about 0.1C from max to min) and the post 2002 ENSO decline influence (about the same) you have a total cooling influence between them of about 0.2C.
Yet temperature is flat. Think about it.
X – 0.2C = 0C
What’s X?
onion2 says:
April 5, 2011 at 4:22 pm
So, in your theory, nothing ever happens in weather with a periodicity greater than PDO/ENSO/11-year solar cycle?
onion2, look:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:2002/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:2002/trend
Isn’t WFT fun?
Hank Hancock says: “I can’t help but notice in the ENSO index chart that El Nino seems to dominate in a positive PDO phase whereas La Nina seems to dominate in a negative PDO phase. Am I seeing that right?”
Nope. You’ve got it reversed. When La Nina events dominate, the PDO is negative, and when El Nino events dominate, the PDO is postitive. But the PDO is also impacted by North Pacific Sea Level Pressure.
You continued, “If so, then this seems good evidence to how strong of an effect the PDO has on global temperatures.”
The PDO is an abstract representation of the Sea Surface Temperature anomalies of the North Pacific. The sea surface temperature variations of the North Pacific north of 20N (the area used to calculate the PDO) are actually inversely related to the PDO on decadal bases.
For more on the PDO refer to:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/an-introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-3/
And for illustrations of the inverse relationship between the PDO and the SST anomalies of the North Pacific, refer to:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/an-inverse-relationship-between-the-pdo-and-north-pacific-sst-anomaly-residuals/
Regards
R. Gates says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
I will agree with you on one thing and one thing only:
If the Sun is a long-term forcing agent, then we are in much bigger trouble than all the AGW models have previously thought. Why? It’s external to Earth, and is not affected by anything that happens here.
But you missed a game changer: The physics of Earth’s atmosphere cannot be constant given a shrunken outer atmosphere during Deep Solar Minimum.
R. Gates says: “For the long-term CO2 forcing is something seen over many decades, and solar cycles and ENSO events can clearly be seen in the temperature record over the past several decades.”
Unfortunately for your hypothesis, there’s no evidence that your “long-term CO2 forcing” has any impact on Sea Surface Temperature or Ocean Heat Content.
It’s flat smokey. Both UAH and HadCRUT are essentially flat since 2002 (and of course RSS http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2002/plot/rss/from:2002/trend)
My point is not which side of the zero the trend insignificant falls.
My point is that given the ENSO decline since 2002, the solar decline since 2002 and the PDO decline since 2002, we should have quite a decline. Not flat. Unless something else is producing quite a warming effect and so is masking the decline.
Today I recognize again, how fair the discussion goes back and forth.
What a great place to be … and learn.
Onion2: There has been a consistent warming trend independent of cyclical behaviour for centuries now, long-term temperature records such as the CET show it clearly.
Unfortunately that also shows that CO2 is responsible for bugger all of the current warming. Unless you wish to reason that the previous trend stopped, and was replaced by a CO2 driven trend?
The PDO/AMO are a more important driver of climate than the underlying centuries-long warming trend because they have a far greater impact on the intensity of extreme events. Focusing on the global temperature anomaly (which has no physical basis) is foolish.
Global warming theory depends on strong water vapour feedbacks.
Well, it turns out the ENSO controls global water vapour levels and the ENSO has no trend (up or down) over time so this most important part of theory is not working as predicted. [More decline in water vapour can be expected in the next month or two before stabilizing and then going up in the fall].
All the global warming studies which try to say water vapour levels are increasing (including the last IPCC report and those by Dessler) have taken advantage of the trends that the ENSO leaves in water vapour levels (start at La Nina dips and stop at El Nino peaks and viola, increasing water vapour).
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/1916/ensovstcwv1948mar11.png
If an El Nino develops into 2010, there will be less precipitation and warmer temperatures. What this means for crop production is that the summer will be pretty good although there will be drought going into the fall months. Production will be high overall (growing conditions will be okay and harvesting conditions will be very good. Prices will come down). Then the year after, drought conditions will take hold and production will be down.
onion2,
Thanx for your parameter-free speculation. However, the natural warming of the planet since the LIA isn’t a problem. In fact, it is a net benefit. More is better.
You’re still stuck on the misguided belief that a warmer, more pleasant world is bad. It isn’t. It’s all good.
Bob Tisdale says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:34 pm
R. Gates says: “For the long-term CO2 forcing is something seen over many decades, and solar cycles and ENSO events can clearly be seen in the temperature record over the past several decades.”
Unfortunately for your hypothesis, there’s no evidence that your “long-term CO2 forcing” has any impact on Sea Surface Temperature or Ocean Heat Content.
___
Bob, you know as well as I do that that SST’s and OHC are very different metrics, with one having ENSO variability while OHC has indeed increased over the past three decades, (though not enough to account for poor Dr. Trenberth’s missing heat!), while the deeper ocean (from what little measurements we do have) also is showing signs of warming. See:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100920_oceanwarming.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110127141659.htm
I highly respect your expertise, but I must disagree with you on this point.
so smokey as far as you are concerned the science is settled? that we know for 100% certainty that a 2C warmer world will be much better? No shadow of any doubt in your mind? Personally I dont think we have anything to compare 2C warmer with to know what will happen!
Good to see someone who gives credit to ENSO. My book (What Warming?) gives you a full understanding of how ENSO works and it has nothing to do with the PDO. ENSO is a climate oscillation involving the trade winds, the equatorial currents, and the equatorial countercurrent. The trade winds push the equatorial currents across the ocean and the water gets warmed on the way. At the west end their flow is blocked by New Guinea and the Philippines and warm water piles up. This is the origin of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, the warmest water in the world. Some of it leaks out into the Indian Ocean through gaps between the islands but the bulk returns east along the equatorial countercurrent and splashes ashore in South America. Physically, this flow takes the form of an El Nino wave, visible on satellite views as a Kelvin wave. The Nino 3.4 region is located smack in the middle of this equatorial countercurrent and watches the El Nino waves go by. The lag time between Nino 3.4 and overt manifestations of El Nino is due to the fact that Nino 3.4 sees it before it has hit the coast. El Nino flow is intermittent because wave resonance is involved. If you blow across the end of a glass tube you elicit a resonant tone whose frequency depends upon the dimensions of the tube. Trade winds are the equivalent of blowing across the end of a tube and the ocean answers with its own resonant tone – one wave every four-five years. This has been going on since the Panamanian Seaway closed and will likely outlast the human race. When the El Nino wave hits the coast its water spreads out in both directions about 15 degrees or more. Exposure of this large area of warm water warms the air above it, warm air rises and stops the trade winds, not the other way around. Prevailing winds then carry it over the continent, it mixes with global circulation, and an El Nino has started. There is enough heat involved in this to raise global temperature by half a degree Celsius each time an El Nino wave arrives.But every wave that runs ashore must also pull back. When the El Nino wave retreats sea surface drops in its wake by half a meter or more, cold water from below wells up, and a La Nina has started. As much as the El Nino raised global temperature the La Nina that follows will lower it. This global heat exchange between the oceans and the atmosphere is very precise as can be seen from a sequence of ENSO oscillation displayed in the satellite record of the eighties and nineties. The global mean temperature stays the same and the ENSO contribution to warming is zero. It is that simple. But due to the long transit time things can happen that distort the basic pattern. The most obvious interruption of ENSO oscillations was in 1998 when a super El Nino that was not part of it appeared. Its origin was probably a storm surge that deposited a large amount of warm water at the start of the equatorial countercurrent near New Guinea. In its aftermath global temperature rose by a third of a degree Celsius and then stabilized for the next six years. This, and not some greenhouse effect is the origin of the very warm first decade of our century. This period ended with a La Nina in 2008 which re-introduced the oscillatory climate which the super El Nino had temporarily disrupted. It was followed by the El Nino of 2010 and we are now half way through the next La Nina that followed it. Expect these oscillations and not a temperature rise to be in our future. I notice also that Hansen whose 1988 climate predictions featured a monotonic rise of temperature out to 2019 has now started talking about temperature fluctuations without using the word El Nino in his latest temperature article in Reviews of Geophysics [RG 4004/2010 RG000345]. Must have secretly read my book but does not want to admit it.
James Sexton says:
April 5, 2011 at 4:06 pm
But, I don’t want winters like we had in the 70s!!!!! Can’t we find something that actually warms the planet?
——————————————————-
Unfortunately, in that regard, it appears that we have found “The Little Molecule that Couldn’t”.
It’s been a good, albeit expensive stepping stone to finding a potential solution to humanity’s upcoming and inevitable life killer.
Gates, one of the predictions of the global warming science is that sea levels will increase because warming seas expand….
If, as you say, OHC has increased and you say there is evidence that the deep ocean is also warming…..
Why are sea levels falling?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/sea-level-may-drop-in-2010/
Given the relative densities, masses, and specific heats of ocean and atmosphere, the oceans have about 1100 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere. Monitoring air temperatures and claiming they can show a net global warming effect is stupidity, lunacy, or malice.
But, how can we trust the “authorities”, they made the wrong call on Arctic ice in 2008. They predicted an ice free summer arctic in 2013. We know now that is sheer nonsense! But do they care?, they will move on to the next thing. Completely ridiculous to have predicted an ice free summer arctic in 2013.
Bastardi is baaaaack.
Dammit, Joe, I cancelled my Accuweather Pro Subscription in protest…then I found out you and D’Aleo (I will call you Joe Squared….watch out) are forming your own long-range company.
Great to hear from you ranting about things ENSO PDO and AMO.
Keep speaking. When you do, I always listen.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Bob Tisdale says:
“Unfortunately for your hypothesis, there’s no evidence that your “long-term CO2 forcing” has any impact on Sea Surface Temperature or Ocean Heat Content.”
R. Gates says:
“I highly respect your expertise, but I must disagree with you on this point.”
========================
Oh really?? Just HOW… R?
Besides the fact that comparing your opinion to Tisdale’s is like comparing apples….to planets [read…both are spheres….but the resemblance ends there]…
You go on with the arrogance to show disagreement with two lame lame LAME references from….ooh who would have guessed: Science Daily and NOAA.
And on top of that they don’t even really specifically support your magical, mystical, unknowable “CO2 forcing” hypothesis on the oceans, that you describe.
Pathetic.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I am just basically a ‘lurker’ here as well as several other similar sites. There seems to be a major player with regards to ocean temps that has not been addressed here or anywhere else that I have seen and that is: the heat created from the movement of the tetonic plates. There is a tremendous amount of heat created and much under the Pacific Ocean. From a simple mind as mine, I have noted that when removing a screw from a board it will get pretty hot, friction anyone? Maybe someone could apply for grants to study using CO2 to grease the joints on the plates to stop global warming.
onion2 says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:36 pm ~~~~~ “and the PDO decline . . . ”
What exactly does that mean? Are you trying to say that a negative PDO index represents colder North Pacific Ocean surface temperatures?
onion2 says:
April 5, 2011 at 6:30 pm
“So smokey as far as you are concerned the science is settled?”
=====================
What science is settled where….huh??….what???
Science is an evolving process…a product of what is found out.
The only person that has ever…EVER said…to my knowledge….that the “science is settled” [interject Tennessee accent]….is that good-for-nothing lamebrain, the former vice president [and extreme embarrassment to humanity]….Mr. Al Gore.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Thanks for straightening me out on that one. I must have been looking at the chart wrong. Also thanks for the links. They’re very helpful to this medical researcher who wants to understand the whole AWG can of worms.
I’m sorry, but I found this article torturous to read. Please request that Joe submit his written work to the correcting eye of a technical editor before it is published here. How embarrassing.
Arno,
Joe D’Aleo connects La Nina’s and El Nino’s to PDO’s. La Nina’s are favored in cold PDO’s and El Nino’s are favored in warm PDO’s.
http://www.weatherbell.com/jd/?p=576
I wish there were more data, especially from the 1860-1900 Warm AMO phase. No one ever seems to mention that 1887 and 1893 are both in the top ten for highest ACE’s ever recorded and that happened well before satellites.
So we’re back to CO2, except for being vital for plant life, does nothing?
Good work Joe. Just wanted to make 2 comments. Looking at the Multivariate ENSO Index, the period from 77 to 98 jumps out as being a warm PDO. But from 98 on the pattern is less clear. Yes, it looks like we may have switched in 2007, but it seems a little early to tell. In contrast to the 77 to 98 period, you can also see that from 1950 to 1977 a cold PDO dominated.
But I also think that the PDO cycles themselves are externally influenced. I find Svensmark’s cosmic ray theories compelling; and I think the correlation between long term temperature trends and the strength of solar cycles is too good to be accidental.
Good luck to you.
Pamela,
The written material is the same as when he does a video report. These pieces may even be transcripts. I’ve read many university student essays and often the message can be found with a bit of effort. Same here.
Pamela: “I’m sorry, but I found this article torturous to read.”
Pamela, our brains have an area called the Wrenicke’s area and another called the Broca’s area. With regard to speech, the Broca’s area is responsible for structure and syntax. The Wrenicke’s area is responsible for meaning. As long as the Wrenicke’s area is functioning well, the Broca’s contribution is just the paint job. Don’t worry too much about the paint job.
Anthony
The above is description a fact in words.
The following is what the data says supporting the above description.
http://bit.ly/hUSDD0
They deny the data, but they call us deniers.
Bizarre.
onion2 says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:36 pm
My point is that given the ENSO decline since 2002, the solar decline since 2002 and the PDO decline since 2002, we should have quite a decline. Not flat. Unless something else is producing quite a warming effect and so is masking the decline.
Surfacestation monkeywrenchen und gefingerpoken.
A highly technical shell game.
All I gotta do is look up at 8000 foot peaks smeared with crushing snows not seen since 1983, which were supposed to be ‘things of the past’.
AGW is in a 13 year long penalty box. That’s got to hurt, but they got what was coming to them.
@onion, smokey, chris
The “science is settled” phrase is in this March 21 2007 story on Gore’s testimony to Congress, but without quotation marks, so was it really said?:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9047642
“All I gotta do is look up at 8000 foot peaks smeared with crushing snows not seen since 1983, which were supposed to be ‘things of the past’.”
But surely more relevant is UAH, RSS, HadCRUT and GISTEMP which do not show a significant decline in global temperatures since 2002. That’s despite ENSO, the Sun (and presumably) the PDO having a cooling influence. When 3 factors are supposed to produce a large cooling effect and a large cooling effect doesn’t happen isn’t it logical then that something else is producing an equivalent warming effect?
@onion2 says: April 5, 2011 at 6:30 pm
“so smokey as far as you are concerned the science is settled? that we know for 100% certainty that a 2C warmer world will be much better? No shadow of any doubt in your mind? Personally I dont think we have anything to compare 2C warmer with to know what will happen!”
And you have “no shadow of any doubt” that it makes sense to pour Trillions of pounds into “alternative energy” scams that demonstrably don’t work and to hugely inflate the cost of reliable and affordable energy desperately needed by the world’s poor? Even when the net effect on global temperatures of those Trillions, based upon the IPCC’s worst “projections”, will be the square root of bugger all?
Really?
“I don’t understand why they can not, through simple deduction, understand that the warm PDO ( 1978 to 2007) leads to a warming of the globe”
My take on it is this. PDO was warmer in the 1980s than in the 1990s and warmer in the 1990s than the 2000s:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1980
So my thinking is that, like a fading El Nino, PDO since the 1980s has had a cooling effect.
Onion 2
Your education obviously was lacking in history ( that’s not climate history, but the crusader type were it snowed on the game ) if you have some time to spare, try reading Smokey’s older posts and get the education you missed.
Dear Mr. Bastardi,
Your quote: “Do the math good friend.. take the weight of the ocean and atmosphere together and the energy implications of the gas and the liquid and then stack co2 against it.”
I totally agree with you. I made the comparison once in a comment on another blog, that the manmade CO2-based global warming theory is like trying to heat the water of your bath by heating up the air in your bathroom. The warmists overthere thought I was nuts. Now I know for sure that I was right.
Thanks for this blog post! With people like you we will make logic prevail over superstition.
Kind regards,
Scarface
‘My point is that given the ENSO decline since 2002, the solar decline since 2002 and the PDO decline since 2002, we should have quite a decline. Not flat. Unless something else is producing quite a warming effect and so is masking the decline. ‘
From a laymans point of view don’t we get told that the oceans depths provide an estimated 10 year buffer to the measured global average temperature which would mean a downturn in temperatures around now or the next couple of years?
Has the last decade of flat temperature been the expelling of energy from the oceans with a lowered external input which will now try and equilibriate to the new level of external input thus bringing a lower average temperature for at least 10 years or longer dependent upon when the external input starts to ramp up again?
Maybe someone with technical ability could explain this to us.
Pamela, I agree with you that Joe’s written-down speech is tortuous, but if one ‘goes with the flow’ the meaning becomes clear. In my view, Joe’s stream-of-consciousness style is uniquely entertaining and his forecasts are usually accurate so, to me, anything from Joe Bastardi is very welcome.
I don’t find Joe’s arguments very compelling simply because they are too loosely framed. However when I read R Gates’s lame arguments I felt that we had the balance (or lack of it) restored. Gates’s criticism is fair enough: you do need to look at long term trends. However when you smooth over the longer term you realise that the sea rise and ice melt of the late 20th century (that he says is unexplained) is only a continuation of the recovery from the little ice age and does not need an explanation. If he thinks it does perhaps he can explain the original cooling. And if you look over a longer period still you see periods of warmth similar to now; this was one of Courtillo’s message yesterday. So I do not agree with Joe when he says that CO2 cannot have an effect I just don’t think we need to postulate one to explain the data. I am still waiting for someone to do some proper science to prove that a significant CO2 effect (that is one with positive feedback) really exists in the real world. In the meantime Joe does not make me any more or less convinced.
R. Gates says: “Bob, you know as well as I do that that SST’s and OHC are very different metrics, with one having ENSO variability while OHC has indeed increased over the past three decades, (though not enough to account for poor Dr. Trenberth’s missing heat!), while the deeper ocean (from what little measurements we do have) also is showing signs of warming.”
There is nothing in the long-term OHC data that confirms that the rise was been caused by an increase in anthropogenic greeenhouse gases. If greenhouse gases were the primary driver, OHC would not have plateaued since 2003. The global OHC linear trend since 2003 is approximately 12% of the rate it had been from 1993 through 2002. The two ocean basins with the decreases since 2003 are the South Pacific and the North Atlantic, and both are cooling at mid to low latitudes as well as high latitudes.
There seems to be an Alarmist talking-point which suggests there is less-cooling-than-expected. Expected? Well, we have a (formerly) quiet sun and a (somewhat) cool PDO, and therefore the earth should be really, really cool. Instead it is only a little bit cool. Therefore the cooling is actually “masked warming,” according to their logic.
This talking point was effective last August, when the daily world-temperature anomalies, (which had been slowly settling down, as the La Nina came on,) surprised many by shooting up from -0.2 of normal to nearly +0.4 of normal, in only ten days or so.
It plunged down to -0.05 in October, but the upward trend continued in a yo-yoing manner until early Novemeber, when the temperature anomaly peaked at nearly +0.6 of normal. There was wild cheering from the Alarmist peanut-gallery, as the Skeptics scratched their heads in baffled wonder, for this upswing truely wasn’t expected by those who were focused on the cool PDO and the “quiet sun.”
This is what lead to the Alarmist talking-point. However what followed is not mentioned by Alarmists.
Last November the daily world-temperature anomalies took a nose dive, falling from +0.59 to -0.25 in only twenty days.
This was a real eye-opener to me, because:
A.) Twenty year’s worth of “warming” vanished in twenty days.
B.) The Alarmist talking-points stayed stuck in September.
Dr. Ryan N. Maue has a really neat chart of how wildly the daily anomalies swing, at:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/jra25/global_temperature_anomalies.jpg
The chart shows how fickle air temperatures are, (or perhaps I should use the word “responsive.”) Bastardi seems correct, when he sees such temperatures as driven, rather than a driver.
temperatures change, climates change, but CO2 does not cause either.
@BillD
“Bastardi argues that because CO2 is a trace gas that is required for life, it cannot also act as a green house gas with substantial effects on the climate. This agument just makes no sense.”
Maybe because that is not what he said, but what you interpreted what he said and that is why the argument doesn’t make sense. So, essentially, you just stated that your argument doesn’t make any sense. :p
onion2 says:
April 5, 2011 at 4:22 pm
PDO and ENSO are flat over the 20th century. But it warmed. Therefore there has been warming independent of ENSO and PDO.
Quite. There is no trend in PDO or ENSO but there is a warming trend. This illustrates the point.
Mean UAH Jan-Mar 2011 (LA NINA peak) anomaly is -0.04 deg
Mean UAH Jan-Mar 1987 (EL NINO peak) anomaly is -0.02 deg
The temperatures during 3 months of an EL NINO 20 odd years ago are just a two hundredths of a degree warmer than the most recent La Nina-affected 3 month period. I think Joe should take a closer look at the data.
pete says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Onion2: There has been a consistent warming trend independent of cyclical behaviour for centuries now, long-term temperature records such as the CET show it clearly.
The CET record does not show a “consistent warming trend” over centuries. CET temperatures during the 19th century were basically flat. Trends are as follows:
1800-1900: 0.03 deg per century
1900-2000: 0.65 deg per century
The 20th century warmed at more than 20 times the rate of the 19th century.
>>Onion2
>>Yet 1998 and 2010 are tied warmest years on record.
The only difference being, that nobody believes the 2010 warm record has any basis in reality.
.
R. Gates says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
…I would be curious as to what he attributes the warmest water entering the Arctic in at least 2,000 years to? What natural cycle is this part of and where did all this energy come from?…
Not to put words into Joe’s mouth, but here’s my take on why a warmer Arctic ocean means the world is moving to a cool weather regime rather than warming.
The poles provide the same cooling function for our climate heat engine as the radiator does on a car and both use the same heat exchange fluid to do this – water.
As in a car engine, little cooling happens until the oceans have been headed. The high levels of solar activity seen during the 1980/90’s heated the ocean, then when the warmer water arrives in the Arctic the thermal energy is efficiently radiated out into space.
Over the next few years ocean water arriving in the Arctic will cool once more as solar activity continues at lower levels for the next few cycles. I estimate that there is ~8 to 10y lag between solar activity and warm water arriving in the Arctic. Expect levels of Arctic sea ice to start increasing again over the next few years.
What I see is there was essentially a step change after the 1998 El Nino and following La Nina, of about +.2C. 2002-2007, you’ve got a relatively stable period that is +.2C higher than temps before the ’98 El Nino.
Of course that is a short period. Still, to me the interesting thing will likely be late this year (after La Nina effects fade) and next year (assuming we don’t get another immediate El Nino). Will we return to 2002-2007 levels, or will we settle in at a lower level?
Some of the comments seem to promote the “Melting of the Arctic scare” because it is so unusually warm NOW. For those who still do not believe there was an even warmer medieval period, read this report:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp04/mq22551.pdf
I find it hard to believe that the archeologists writing this had a second (Climate skeptic) agenda.
If you still do not believe – take a trip to visit some of the places described in the report, and live there like the settlers did – for a year or two. (They lived there close to 500 years)
And one more thing. The place from where Leiv Eriksson set out to discover America around the year 1000 is in the middle of downtown Trondheim, Norway. Today, it is located ca 2 metres above sea level, just as expected due to the lifting of entire Norway since that year due to unloading of the ice cover during the ice age. Other than that, no dramatic sign of changing sea level can be observed in Trondheim or in Greenland. The ruins of the Greenland settlements are still relatively close to the sea, as they must have been a thousand years ago. If the warmth of the MWP had resulted in extraordinary sea level rise, both the farms and the Leiv Eriksson harbour in Trondheim would have been inundated during MWP. This was truly not the case. Something must be rotten in the state of Denmark.
I still think we have it arse about. When el nino’s happen it is actually the globe cooling , even though the atmosphere heats up, as the oceans release heat to the atmosphere , which eventually gets lost to space.
This is the only way I can see that the OHC can reduce.
Ralph says:
April 6, 2011 at 4:29 am
>>Onion2
>>Yet 1998 and 2010 are tied warmest years on record.
The only difference being, that nobody believes the 2010 warm record has any basis in reality.
So you’re questioning the UAH satellite record are you? On what grounds?
If you heat the air over water it will cause an increase in evaporation of the water (Air will absorb more water to preserve the same relative humidity). This means then that the water will be cooled due to evaporation losses, as the latent heat will be taken from the water. So as an engineer I can predict that a hotter atmosphere will produce a colder ocean. This is very trivial analysis due to the actual mechanism of convection at the interphase is not clearly understood, but is counterintuitive.
Tenuc says:
April 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
R. Gates says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
…I would be curious as to what he attributes the warmest water entering the Arctic in at least 2,000 years to? What natural cycle is this part of and where did all this energy come from?…
Not to put words into Joe’s mouth, but here’s my take on why a warmer Arctic ocean means the world is moving to a cool weather regime rather than warming.
The poles provide the same cooling function for our climate heat engine as the radiator does on a car and both use the same heat exchange fluid to do this – water.
As in a car engine, little cooling happens until the oceans have been headed. The high levels of solar activity seen during the 1980/90′s heated the ocean, then when the warmer water arrives in the Arctic the thermal energy is efficiently radiated out into space.
Over the next few years ocean water arriving in the Arctic will cool once more as solar activity continues at lower levels for the next few cycles. I estimate that there is ~8 to 10y lag between solar activity and warm water arriving in the Arctic. Expect levels of Arctic sea ice to start increasing again over the next few years.
___
Interesting idea, but again…where is the data to support some kind of 2,000 year cycle? The heat in the deeper ocean moving into the Arctic was not created by the oceans, so some kind of theory would need to account for where the energy may have come from. Of course the original source was the sun, but looking at earth’s energy balance, that “extra” heat now trapped in the earth’s energy system causing the deeper ocean water moving into the Arctic to be the warmest in 2,000 years must have been trapped by some mechanism. I think the AGW skeptics know where I’m going with this, and certainly the GCM’s would expect such a warming to occur when factoring in all the effects of the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s, and the simple physical fact that most of the heat trapped by this CO2 must have gone in the oceans.
As we get better and better metrics for the warming going on in the deeper oceans, expect more studies to confirm that the deeper ocean current worldwide will be showing a net warming in alignment with some of the results we already are seeing.
I never understand why el nino is termed a warming event for the Earth. I understand it as a warming event for the atmosphere. Maybe I do not understand something but el nino should increase radiative loss to the cosmic background and thus be a cooling event for the energy budget of the planet as a whole assuming all else remains equal.
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:07 am
Reply to Tenuc:
“Interesting idea, but again…where is the data to support some kind of 2,000 year cycle?…”
Even our current Arctic ocean temperature measurements are far from accurate, and I dread to think what errors exist using proxies for ocean temperatures 2000y ago, and one swallow does not a summer make. However, there is a strong long-term 2000y quasi-cycle which does show climatic cooling and warming as shown below – exact start/end dates vary for each iteration…
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity(LSA?)-(Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity(HSA?)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010-2100 (cold???) – (LSA???)
@RGates
while the deeper ocean (from what little measurements we do have) also is showing signs of warming.
The Argos float data showing OHC cooling down to 700m but a warmer measurement down to 2000m could be (given the limit to precision of the data) a signature of vertical mixing of the water column leading to downward movement of heat. Surface OHC is declinnig and the heat has to go somewhere; there is so much ocean heat that the only place that the surface heat can go, in the short term, is elsewhere in the ocean.
This is not necessarily Trenberth’s missing AGW heat, it could also be your (and his) worst nightmare – a mechanism of cyclical global climate cooling.
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:07 am
Tenuc says:
April 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
R. Gates says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
…I would be curious as to what he attributes the warmest water entering the Arctic in at least 2,000 years to? What natural cycle is this part of and where did all this energy come from?…
Interesting idea, but again…where is the data to support some kind of 2,000 year cycle?
Tenuc was quoting YOU when he mentioned 2000 years. He mentioned no cycle, 2000 years or otherwise.
Any you reply asking why HE IS SUGGESTING a 2000 year cycle??
Smoke and mirrors as always …
And continues… people strangely believe the temperature numbers.
phlogiston says:
April 6, 2011 at 9:58 am
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:07 am
Tenuc says:
April 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
R. Gates says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
…I would be curious as to what he attributes the warmest water entering the Arctic in at least 2,000 years to? What natural cycle is this part of and where did all this energy come from?…
Interesting idea, but again…where is the data to support some kind of 2,000 year cycle?
Tenuc was quoting YOU when he mentioned 2000 years. He mentioned no cycle, 2000 years or otherwise.
Any you reply asking why HE IS SUGGESTING a 2000 year cycle??
Smoke and mirrors as always …
___
Yes, he was quoting me, and responding to my question about some 2,000 year cycle. We keep hearing from Joe Bastardi et. al. that the warming over the last part of the 20th century was all part of natural ocean cycles, and so I ask the question: What cycle lasts 2,000 years since we are seeing the warmest waters in 2,000 years entering the Arctic?
Also, thanks for budding in…
pahoben says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:12 am
I never understand why el nino is termed a warming event for the Earth. I understand it as a warming event for the atmosphere. Maybe I do not understand something but el nino should increase radiative loss to the cosmic background and thus be a cooling event for the energy budget of the planet as a whole assuming all else remains equal.
____
The NET energy effect of a full ENSO cycle (La Nina + El Nino) is exactly zero on the earth’s energy budget…and it better be this way since the cycle has gone on for tens of thousands of years.
Gates, shouldn’t your comments be posted under “Climate Craziness Of The Week”? The Arctic has been ice-free before the first SUV rolled off the assembly line. Wild-eyed speclation that “this time it’s different” has no supporting evidence, only model conjecture.
Sorry for “budding” in.☺
Yes over a full cycle but the cooling part of the cycle is el nino and the heating part of the cycle is la nina.
@You’re welcome, buddy.
Butting in is what blogging is all about (I thought).
” The net energy effect of a full ENSO cycle … is exactly zero “
Except when its not. Your favorite oceanographer Bob Tisdale has documented how ENSO heat imbalances have resulted in several step-ups in global temperature such as in 1988 and 1998. Right now we could be seeing (for the first time in the instrumental period) the reverse – a step down. La Nina ending with no OHC recharge.
Joe… only two questions.
– Where’s the 50s like cooling … not there.
– Where’s the 2 years + la Nina … not there either..
Now what is it… No El Nino until 2012 .. What happened ? you read back what we told you last year and finally understand the situation of a neutral 2011 and warming 2012.
R. Gates says: “The NET energy effect of a full ENSO cycle (La Nina + El Nino) is exactly zero on the earth’s energy budget…”
It is? Where’d you read that? Tamino? Realclimate? Please provide a link.
The easiest way to show that hypothsis is wrong is to look at the average NINO3.4 SST anomalies for the global warming period from 1910 to 1944, the cooling period from 1945 to 1975, and the warming period from 1976 to present (2009, the following graph is from a 2010 post). And then compare the results to global temperature anomalies:
http://i55.tinypic.com/33cwt4j.jpg
R. Gates: Oops, I forgot to include the NINO3.4 SST anomaly graph that accompanies the one in my previous comment:
http://i56.tinypic.com/zxmsg8.jpg
Regards
phlogiston says: “Your favorite oceanographer Bob Tisdale…”
Thanks for the promotion, but I’m a blogger, not an oceanographer.
phlogiston says:
April 6, 2011 at 11:07 am
@You’re welcome, buddy.
Butting in is what blogging is all about (I thought).
” The net energy effect of a full ENSO cycle … is exactly zero “
Except when its not. Your favorite oceanographer Bob Tisdale has documented how ENSO heat imbalances have resulted in several step-ups in global temperature such as in 1988 and 1998. Right now we could be seeing (for the first time in the instrumental period) the reverse – a step down. La Nina ending with no OHC recharge.
_____
ENSO creates no NET heating or cooling of the planet. It does not generate energy, but simply redistributes that which was already in the system. It seems to me that even if Bob is right, or even remotely correct, it wouldn’t matter, as the longer term net heating of the planet is not explained through a the charge/recharge cycle of ENSO, either short term of longer PDO multi-decadal cycles. If there is a multi-decadal “step up” or “step down” it would amount to zero eventually, so we should expect OHC to not just flatten, but trend back to zero and then go negative to balance out these positive years. That is, IF Bob is correct. Fortunately, the next few years (between now and 2020 or so) will really begin to provide much more solid data from which to draw, and see if he is. This all doesn’t address the deeper ocean, which appears to be warming, and represents far more “storage capacity” than the upper 700m or surface waters.
Sorry, but Joe doesn’t get a pass just because he writes about something we might agree on. Technical writing as an important aspect of both communicating clearly and gaining respect. If you can’t write technical reports, and “stream of consciousness” is NOT good technical style, dictate to someone who can. Joe, you would flunk my writing class.
Bob,
You’re probably aware of this paper, and though it is very technical, I think the general notion of the ENSO as a ocean recharge oscillator is worth this read for others:
http://tiny.cc/0fulv
I will spend some time looking over your previous links. Thanks.
John Finn: You are cherry picking look over the entire dataset.
Overall trend is 0.25 degrees per decade consistently over the entire dataset. While you cherry pick 1900-2000 as a higher trend you can do the same over other large periods in the data set for other years prior to CO2 levels accelerating.
A simple example is the period up to the end of WW2 which has a trend greater than 1 degree per decade over 70 years. There are multi-decade periods which have trends far higher than that. However the more you chop the data up, the less credible the trends become. The most credible trend is the longest one.
The argument i am putting forward is that underlying the cyclical behaviour is a much longer term trend than the period of increasing CO2 emissions. What you have stated is not an argument against that. If anything it just shows the folly of cherry picking shorter period trends in long term data.
Bob Tisdale says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Hank Hancock says: “I can’t help but notice in the ENSO index chart that El Nino seems to dominate in a positive PDO phase whereas La Nina seems to dominate in a negative PDO phase. Am I seeing that right?”
Nope. You’ve got it reversed. When La Nina events dominate, the PDO is negative, and when El Nino events dominate, the PDO is postitive.
These statements look the same to me. So who’s got it backwards?
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I find it next to impossible to put any faith in theories and hypothesis that cannot predict what has happened to the SSTs the last year. Wasn’t the shame of the MET office blundered forecasts enough?
If you want to know what the next season will bring, you go to your premeire meteorologists, and you toss the failed GCM outputs in the trash.
pete says:
April 6, 2011 at 6:52 pm
John Finn: You are cherry picking look over the entire dataset.
Comparing 19th and 20th century (100 year) trends is not cherry picking. By simply “eyeballing” the CET graph it can be seen that the 20th century is differs from the previous 200 years – particualry after ~1970.
Overall trend is 0.25 degrees per decade consistently over the entire dataset.
I think you probably mean “per century” not “per decade”. However your point is irrelevant. If the CET contained data going back 1000 years the trend would be less – go back 10000 years it would be lower still. Trends are calculated using the best Least Squares fit. If you had 950 years where temperatures were flat followed by 50 years of rising temperatures the 1000 year trend would be weighted ‘flat’. As trivial example consider a 10 year period wjhere years 1 to 9 have anomalies odf exactly ZERO and Year 10 has anoaly of 1.0, the trend over the period would be ~0.05 deg per year NOT 0.1 per year.
While you cherry pick 1900-2000 as a higher trend you can do the same over other large periods in the data set for other years prior to CO2 levels accelerating.
The trend for 1700-1800 is -0.25 deg per century.
The trend for 1910-2010 is ~0.77 deg per century.
To get anything comparable you need to rely on the highly suspect data in the early part of the record.
Joe, You should challenge Cael to a contest writing about wrestling. Then it would be no contest. Thank you Dr. Bastardi.
Slacko says:
April 6, 2011 at 10:14 pm
These statements look the same to me. So who’s got it backwards?
Look at which item comes first. Slacko indicated the PDO controls ENSO while Bob is stating that ENSO controls the PDO.
John Finn says:
April 7, 2011 at 3:24 am
Comparing 19th and 20th century (100 year) trends is not cherry picking.
Sure it is. If some period starts in a cool mode and ends in a warm mode it will show more warming (or vice versa for cooling). Just because it happens to be century boundaries does not preclude cherry picking … and you are smart enough to know it.
rbateman says:
April 6, 2011 at 11:07 pm
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I find it next to impossible to put any faith in theories and hypothesis that cannot predict what has happened to the SSTs the last year. Wasn’t the shame of the MET office blundered forecasts enough?
If you want to know what the next season will bring, you go to your premeire meteorologists, and you toss the failed GCM outputs in the trash.
_____
You seem confused as to the function of GCM’s. They do not forecast weather or year to year fluctuations in SST’s. They are meant for modeling long-term climate trends, and even at that, are quite imperfect in that they use linear tools to try and model a nonlinear deterministic system exhibiting spatio-temporal chaos.
Richard M says:
April 7, 2011 at 5:29 am
Sure it is. If some period starts in a cool mode and ends in a warm mode it will show more warming (or vice versa for cooling). Just because it happens to be century boundaries does not preclude cherry picking … and you are smart enough to know it.
OK – let’s start from 1940.
The 1940-2010 (71 years) trend is …….. 1.2 deg per century.
Ooops!
R. Gates says:
April 7, 2011 at 7:15 am
I am not confused as to what purposes the GCMs are used for. The MET Office, NOAA and others have fumbled repeatedly by allowing climate model prediction outputs to bias their long-range forecasts. This is big egg on thier faces, and they should have known better than to insert untested forcings into thier forecast.
They put forth a test case, and it failed. Wrong venue for experimentation.
Not just once, but three times, ruling out the prospect of an isolated/outlier event.
Reputations are damaged.
How should they have handled experimental forecasts?
Take a look at volcanic and seismic geoscience. They have been careful not to spoil thier credibility. Reputations are intact and growing.
John Finn says:
April 7, 2011 at 10:42 am
OK – let’s start from 1940.
The 1940-2010 (71 years) trend is …….. 1.2 deg per century.
Ooops!
Compared to Vostok Ice Core temp. fluctuations
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/Vostok.JPG
1.2 C/Century is not a significant departure from normal variance.
Ooops! is right.
John Finn: And 70 years to 1949 is 1.4 deg per century.
70 years to 1945 is 1.1 degrees.
Oops indeed.
Richard M says:
April 7, 2011 at 5:26 am
“Slacko indicated the PDO controls ENSO while Bob is stating that ENSO controls the PDO.”
I said nothing of the sort. I simply pointed out that Hank Hancock and Bob Tisdale said exactly the same thing, yet Bob claims Hank has got it backwards:
@Hank Hancock says: “El Nino seems to dominate in a positive PDO phase”
@Bob Tisdale says: “when El Nino events dominate, the PDO is postitive.”
Both say ENSO is dominant, and they give the same phase indications of PDO with respect to Nino/Nina. So what is Bob Tisdale saying Hank got reversed? That’s all I’m asking.
Slacko;
Hank noticed that “El Nino seems to dominate in a positive PDO phase”
Bob disagreed, saying “when El Nino events dominate, the PDO is postitive.”
Bob is saying that El Ninos make the PDO positive, rather than a positive PDO causing more El Ninos. The cause/effect relationship is reversed.
Meanwhile, Dr. Wolter’s new MEI report is out with little change from last month:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/
“John Finn says:
April 6, 2011 at 3:56 am
Mean UAH Jan-Mar 2011 (LA NINA peak) anomaly is -0.04 deg
Mean UAH Jan-Mar 1987 (EL NINO peak) anomaly is -0.02 deg
I think Joe should take a closer look at the data. ”
These are very interesting observations! After verifying what you said and giving it some serious thought, I would explain them this way. See page 21 of
http://sciencespeak.com/MissingSignature.pdf
As can be seen, temperatures go in rough 60 year sine wave cycles. And 1987 was lower down on the sine wave relative to the black line than 2011. As a result, the net effect of a La Nina on a higher part of the sine wave has about the same temperature anomaly as an El Nino on a lower part. Make sense?
pete says:
April 7, 2011 at 4:30 pm
John Finn: And 70 years to 1949 is 1.4 deg per century.
70 years to 1945 is 1.1 degrees.
You are still using trends that end in (and predominantly cover) the 20th century. Thus reinforcing my original point that the 20th century trend is completely different from earlier centuries. Another key point you have ‘forgot’ to mention in your analysis is that in response to Richard M, who accused me of cherry picking start and end dates, I used a start date in a ‘warm’ period and an end date in a ‘warm’ period. You, on the other hand, chose a start date in a ‘cool’ period and an end date in a ‘warm’ period.
I think that’s what Richard M meant by cherry picking.
rbateman says:
April 7, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Compared to Vostok Ice Core temp. fluctuations
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/Vostok.JPG
1.2 C/Century is not a significant departure from normal variance.
Ooops! is right.
It is significant when you consider that both the start and end dates are in recognised ‘warm’ periods. I can check but, as far as I remember, 1940 was not part of any ice age (Little or otherwise).
Werner Brozek says:
April 7, 2011 at 9:21 pm
…. As a result, the net effect of a La Nina on a higher part of the sine wave has about the same temperature anomaly as an El Nino on a lower part. Make sense?
Hmmm. I feel yours may be a bit of a circular argument. The key features of of warm/cool phases of the PDO are more El Nino and less La Nina events in the warm phase and the reverse in the cold phase. Yuo seem to be saying that because there are more El Ninos then La Ninas will be warmer and as El Ninos increase La Ninas will be come warmer than previous El Ninos. The problem I have with this is that during an El Nino event the earth’s oceans actually loses heat to the atmosphere (see the LT spike).
Anyway the next 10 years or so should tell us one way or the other. The current temperature ‘plateau’ is far from a decisive swing towards cooling and if, as some say we are now in the ‘cool’ phase, then we can expect a significant ramp up in temperatures further down the line.
John Finn says:
“You are still using trends that end in (and predominantly cover) the 20th century. Thus reinforcing my original point that the 20th century trend is completely different from earlier centuries.”
That’s completely wrong; the current trend is nothing unusual, and it is no different from numerous past trends over the Holocene. The extremely *mild* and natural 0.7°C rise since the 1800’s is both welcome and continuing. A return to the LIA would be devastating.
There is no empirical evidence showing any harm from the increase in the minor trace gas CO2. In fact, the rise has been entirely beneficial.
Given these facts, everyone in science and engineering would in normal times agree that CO2 is both harmless and beneficial. But the “carbon” scare is fed with many $billions every year, and scientists are paid to misrepresent the truth, or they simply keep silent in fear of losing their next raise, their next promotion, or even their job.
Only in the highly politicized world of double-think climate “science” would people improbably conclude, with zero evidence of any global damage from CO2 – and with increased agricultural productivity rising in line with the added CO2 – that more CO2 is somehow bad. The people who belive that are not using the scientific method, they are simply captive to their evidence-free belief systems dictating their emotions. And as we know, fear is a powerful emotion. Even verifiably baseless fear.
Smokey says:
April 8, 2011 at 3:36 am
You haven’t followed the discussion. We were referring to the CET record.
Only in the highly politicized world of double-think climate “science” would people improbably conclude, with zero evidence of any global damage from CO2 – …..
I haven’t mentioned “global damage from CO2”. I’m not sure why you have.
rbateman says:
April 7, 2011 at 1:15 pm
R. Gates says:
April 7, 2011 at 7:15 am
I am not confused as to what purposes the GCMs are used for. The MET Office, NOAA and others have fumbled repeatedly by allowing climate model prediction outputs to bias their long-range forecasts. This is big egg on thier faces, and they should have known better than to insert untested forcings into thier forecast.
They put forth a test case, and it failed. Wrong venue for experimentation.
Not just once, but three times, ruling out the prospect of an isolated/outlier event.
Reputations are damaged.
How should they have handled experimental forecasts?
Take a look at volcanic and seismic geoscience. They have been careful not to spoil thier credibility. Reputations are intact and growing.
______
Much could probably be learned by climate scientists in looking at the uncertainty in volcanic and seismic geoscience. They all deal with system displaying deterministic chaos and it’s quite possible that their levels of uncertainty are similar. But make no mistake…when a geologist says an eruption is “likely” he surely can’t tell you the exact time it will occur, and so so, when a collection of GCM’s say an ice-free summer arctic is likely by the end of this century…both are dealing with probabilties and large “event windows”.
John Finn says:
“I haven’t mentioned ‘global damage from CO2’. I’m not sure why you have.”
Because that is the central question in the entire debate! If CO2 is harmless, we should immediately stop wasting any more tax money on it, and spend the money on worthwhile areas of science instead.
Slacko says: “These statements look the same to me. So who’s got it backwards?”
They’re not the same. Hank Hancock’s statement/question implies that the PDO sign is what’s causing the dominance of El Nino or La Nina events. But the PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO.
R. Gates says:
April 7, 2011 at 7:15 am @ rbateman
“You seem confused as to the function of GCM’s.”
========================
Coming from a person who called a “GCM” an “AGW Model” a few months back [busted!!!] , I would say it is YOU who are confused, R Gates.
Also…taking on somebody with RBateman’s pedigree with your nonsense, is entertaining at most.
Hell…I can pop popcorn….so go right ahead.
Remember: A few months back….you were calling them “AGW Models”.
What are “AGW Models”, R???
Tell me….what are they?
I rest my case.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
FergalR says:
April 7, 2011 at 8:43 pm
“Bob is saying that El Ninos make the PDO positive, rather than a positive PDO causing more El Ninos. The cause/effect relationship is reversed.”
Bob Tisdale says:
April 8, 2011 at 2:06 pm
“Hank Hancock … implies that the PDO sign is what’s causing the dominance of El Nino or La Nina events. But the PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO.”
Thanks guys. I have no way of knowing if you’re right, but it does seem this issue is about as clear as mud. (Well, what can you expect from unsettled science?) Take for example the following comments I dragged over here from the thread on “Solar Warming and Ocean Equilibrium” where:
Roy Clark says:
April 7, 2011 at 12:35 pm
“Every few years, the subsurface heat stored in the Pacific ‘pops up’ and gives rise to the characteristic ENSO oscillations.”
Jim Steele says:
April 7, 2011 at 8:40 pm
“Winds in positive PDO favors more El Ninos fewer La Ninas. While negative PDOs favor La Ninas and fewer El Ninos.”
and
“When The PDO went positive in the late 70’s it generated more El Ninos …”
So Jim Steele obviously accepts that La Ninas can take place while the PDO is positive, whereas Bob Tisdale maintains that a La Nina would stipulate negative PDO.
Bob, perhaps you’d like to go over and straighten those guys out while I make some popcorn. 🙂
Then again, I’m wondering if maybe the only difference here is a consideration of the lag time. i.e. If an ENSO phase is short or weak, might it fail to reverse the PDO? I’m not aware of any graph showing how PDO responds to ENSO, or vice versa. Nor is anyone else here, judging by the apparent confusion.
Well Mr Tisdale,
it seems you are the only one here who thinks ENSO drives the PDO. And since you offer no reason for your position, I guess I’ll just have to go along with Joe like everyone else does. So PDO drives ENSO, OK?
@Bastardi: “…the warm PDO … leads to a warming of the globe, especially when there is part of that time the amo is warm) and the cooling will follow when the PDO turns colder”
OK.
Question: What are the chances 4 (CO2) molecules in 10,000 air molecules (i.e. same ratio as 400 PPM) significantly influence our climate? (150 years ago it was 3 in 10,000)
Answer: About 4 in 10,000
P.S. If you read the IPCC’s technical report it notes that the Global Warming Potential of CO2 is “1”, “unity”, which happens to be the lowest and the index reference for all trace gases which all together constitute only 1% of the atmospheric total. Oxygen and Nitrogen together make up the other 99%. Again, what are the chances a trace gas (any trace gas) which constitutes 4 one-hundredths of one percent (.04%) of our atmosphere has any significant influence on our climate. “Nil” of course. Is any of this sinking in? AGW is propaganda and that is all it is, and always has been from day one.