The November AMO index goes negative, first time since 1996

It surely looks like those dips in the AMO index correspond to the cooling periods of the Earth’s climate. It seems like we will be revisiting another 1970’s style cooling in due course.

The Gore Effect hits the Big Time!

Hold on to your hat, or better yet, wear one… it could be a bit chilly this winter.

Joe
AMO went briefly negative in early 2009 for 5 months

The question I would like answered is whether the “interesting times” mean drought in California due to cooler – and thus drier – air masses moving over the state, or wetter times with heavier snow in the mountains, thanks to orographic effects.

This is similar to the dip in the mid 1950s after the second nina winter of 1955-1956. The amo will recover for a while in 2013-2016 ( should be neutral to negative for 2012) then go into its cold cycle after that. Dr William Gray has had this cycle pegged since the late 1970s when I saw him make his forecast on this matter linking it to the increase in hurricanes.
The turning of the amo along with the pdo forms the heart of my challenge to the Agenda driven AGW crowd to “take the test” ..that temps by objective satellite standards will return to the late 1970s value by 2030. Of course they want no part of it since it will render their god of CO2 as useless. Its part of the reason they are so vitriolic in attacks, the fear they will be exposed for some of them, and others, that already know what is coming.
BTW the cold pdo/amo la nina usually means a warmer than normal Jan/Feb in much of the east as the sinking in the means in the areas where the amo is cold, combined with the nina, leads to higher than normal pressures off the south atlantic coast and more southwest flow than normal in the east. Bad news: a late spring again for much of the north and east, but less tornadic activity. Studying all this to counter the warmingista’s has side benefits
note ( check out winters of mid 70s with la nina cold pdo/cold amo, but when the warm signal came with the 76-77, 77-78 el nino it was katie bar the door. Double ninas followed by a weak to moderate el nino in cold pdos can produce the nasty so many of us have earned after the past few decades and having to listen to the agenda driven drivel of the agw crowd

This is usually a 30 year leading indicator of next ice age articles in the “popular” press.

Anthony,
keep an eye on the the linked data file, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.data
-99.990 ?!?
PB

Obviously of the “trapped” heat deep in the ocean is pushing the cold water up via displacement
and the increasing CO2 air concentration is sinking more and more heat into the deep ocean which means AGW causes cold until it doesn’t.

Durr,
I am in agreement with you. This is NOT good, in any way, shape, or form.

Ruh, roh!

Now all we have to do is figure out how the monotonically increasing CO2 concentration is causing the AMO to oscillate. And by we I mean the Luddites.

Makes me think of that Tibetan tree ring study that was posted about yesterday. The one that said we would cool off until 2068.
Interesting times indeed.

Joe /Anthony
You may want to check your records again about who really wrote the original article ,AMO, THE KEY GLOBAL CLIMATE INDICATOR back in July 2009

Here is the AMO versus the RSS/UAH lower troposphere temps. Certainly, a semi-interesting close relationship.
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7660/rssuahvsamo.png
The AMO (which is a detrended index) versus Hadcrut3 on the same detrended basis. Also, a semi-interesting close relationship.
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/9449/hacrut3detrendedandthea.png
And here is last weeks numbers for the AMO (-0.111C) , ENSO (-1.13C) and global SSTs (+0.019C) and where I think they are going over the next 6 months.
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1716/weeklyenamosstnov3011.png

Jon Jewett says:
December 9, 2011 at 1:04 pm
…..I read somewhere that an estimated 220,000 children starved to death last year. One of the “root causes” of the revolutions in the mid-east was the high price of food. When you can’t feed your children, it tends to make one restive. And we turn some 40% of our corn production into fuel and burn it even though we have enough fossil fuels for maybe a couple of hundred years…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That probably would have been me.
A quick and dirty look at the politics (with much left out) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/13/borlaug-2-0/#comment-767575

Great research (grant) opportunities for anyone who wants to study how man-made CO2 emissions caused the AMO to go negative.
Or you can Hide The Decline, find The Missing Heat, and pre-declare 2012 though 2021 The Hottest Decade in the History of the Solar System! Could even turn into a BBC miniseries!

The Monthly value plot also shows the down cycle in progress, though this one is only updated to 2009:
———
Assuming the AMO is a real cycle the we would expect some degree of periodicity.
Comparing this peak with the last 2 peaks it’s clear we are only half way through the current peak.
So to say the current drop off is a sign of the end of the AMO is wrong. The current dropoff is just random variation. Which is very clear if you look at the rest if the series.

The graph below shows the relationship between AMO and GLOBAL [ land and marine] TEMPERATURE ANOAMLIES [Hadcrut 3]. AMO appears to be like a thermostat or predictor of global temperatures.
———–
And the graph shows no relationship.
Drawing a couple of trend lines on very noisy data over a short time span proves nothing whatsoever.
I could plot women’s skirt lengths and global temperatures on the same graph and maybe get “proof” that womens fashion affects climate or that women prefer being cold. It would be just as valid as what is presented here by Joe.

I’ll second what Durr said, and add that cooling really really sucks for anyone who was thinking of planting a small vineyard in one of the northern states. Oh well, time to buy a ski-doo.

ShrNfr says:
December 9, 2011 at 1:26 pm
This is usually a 30 year leading indicator of next ice age articles in the “popular” press.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
We are fine with a cold PDO, AMO, La Nina and lethargic sun… As long is we do not get some major volcanoes added to the mix.
YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO: “During the month of November 2011, 51 earthquakes were located in the Yellowstone National Park region… No swarms were recorded in November.
Yellowstone earthquake activity continues at relatively low background levels.
Slow subsidence of the caldera, which began in early 2010, continues….. http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/activity/index.php
56 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions during 2011 so far: http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
Alaska/Russian: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/avoreport.php?view=kaminfo
Icelandic earthquakes: http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/

Gives you the warm fuzzies doesn’t it.

Don’t sweat it… the models will have predicted this as soon as they finish tweaking them to match what happened. It will certainly be Worse Than We Thought™… and in the end we’ll all still be “deniers” and we still won’t get to eat lunch at the cool table.

Craig Moore says:
December 9, 2011 at 3:31 pm
I knew it!!!!! Explains why I caught one of these last summer in Glacier Park: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KgPP2jF_jdU/TgddIqCYiDI/AAAAAAAABUI/-bZpas7PAIQ/s1600/Fur-bearing-fish.jpg
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Did you catch one of these too? http://adage.com/images/bin/image/medium/jackalope2.jpg?1254258202

Tim Folkerts at12:49pm
Excellent point. There are several slight dips below in the prior positive regions.

The Pacific must be pretty cold too right now. In Sydney, we are getting max temps of between 3 and 8 Centigrade BELOW the average for this time of year. This is for the past two weeks, and projected for the next 10 days at least. A whole month with a maximum temperature average of 5 Centigrade below average, and I am sure we’ll be told it’s the warmest year EVAH once again!

I agree with the others who have suggested that it is too early to say that the AMO has turned negative and that what we are seeing this month (and may be for the mext few months) is nothing more than a temporary dip in what is still part of a positive cycle..
If the AMO has truly turned negative then the present positive cycle seems extremely short and it would be interesting to ascertain why it turned out to be so short.

Ummm….looking at that graph it seems to have gone sharply down like this a lot of times and sharply up a lot of times too without climate changes of any note.
Wake me up when you get something exciting.
Cheers
Peter

Jer0me says:
December 9, 2011 at 4:48 pm
The Pacific must be pretty cold too right now…
You are right – sea surface temperatures are more than 1 °C cooler than normal over most of the equatorial Pacific east of 160°W. But around Northern Australia they are relatively warm.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sst_monthly.gif
In November the area-averaged Australian maximum temperature was close to normal, with an anomaly of −0.08 °C (29th coolest of 62 years).
However the BOM national outlook December 2011 to February 2012 shows the following:
• Southeastern Australia more likely to have warmer days.
• Northern tropics and southern WA more likely to have warmer days and nights.
• Southeastern Queensland, northeastern NSW and central Australia more likely to have cooler days:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/temps_ahead.shtml
Long way to go yet but the BOM models haven’t started too well:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/sydneys-coldest-start-to-summer-in-50-years-20111205-1oe0i.html
Funny also how Weatherzone’s outlook in above article differ to that of the BOM:
“Mr Fisher also said summer would be cooler than average because of the influence of the La Nina weather cycle, which brings with it greater chance of clouds, rain and humidity.”
Whereas the BOM say:
“A persistently warm Indian Ocean is the main driver behind this outlook, cool conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean associated with the La Niña are also contributing.”
A bit of a stable following? Or is the BOM sticking with their horse with an saver bet on the outsider?

In the years to come, I will be eager to learn how Global Warming is leading to global cooling.

I saw some CO2 molecules pumping iron and watching Terminator. They are determined to defeat the AMO.
Another was trying to ring Al Gore but the phone kept ringing out.

Jenn Oates,
Yeah, I feel just the same. My son, studying mech engineering like I did, is sceptical. He promises to keep an open mind and consider the facts and think cause and effect, not the personas or the politics. He knows that if you can’t history match a model it might as well be thrown in the recycle folder. It’s good to know he will try to consider it all properly.

The warm part of the cycle may have been truncated early by the quiet sun.
Low solar activity causes more meridional jets, more cloudiness, less energy into the oceans for net system cooling.
I have a couple of charts from Wetterzentrale for the northen hemisphere showing temperatures for the same date and time where it is clear that there has been cooling over the period with a shift of the isotherms equatorward. It is a Word document. How can I post that here ?

The bottom graph above is marked 2005-2009. In fact it goes up to May 2009.
Why did it stop in May 2009 when both AMO and Hadcrut 3 values are current up to November and October 2011 respectively?
Could it be because the linear trends at May 2009 were respectively 6.5 and 5.4 times more steeply downward than they are if you use 2005-present?

R. Gates says:
December 10, 2011 at 5:47 am
Joe Bastardi says:
December 9, 2011 at 1:20 pm
The turning of the amo along with the pdo forms the heart of my challenge to the Agenda driven AGW crowd to “take the test” ..that temps by objective satellite standards will return to the late 1970s value by 2030. Of course they want no part of it since it will render their god of CO2 as useless. Its part of the reason they are so vitriolic in attacks, the fear they will be exposed for some of them, and others, that already know what is coming.
———
Joe, you may be a reasonably good weather forecaster, but horrible at understanding longer term forcings going on that are changing the nature of the short-term patterns and variability you are looking at. Your primary failure is your inability to fully recognize the full effects that a 40% increase in CO2 and large
Can R. Gates explain to me how it is that the CO2 proportion of the atmosphere ie. much less than one per cent of the atmosphere and then has the out of proportion effect on “global warming” considering that all the current satellite data is going cooler?

One of the issues is whether the multidecadal oscillations are driven by something else. As they are out of synch with each other it makes it difficult to see whether there is a larger primary source driving them. Since we do not know what causes them we really can’t say with certainty how long the cycles should be.
Going back to the information on the TSI, we may find out how much it drives the cycles with this AMO. If it goes back up for a while, as Joe Bastardi indicates above, we could assume that while the sun is the primary driver it has a delayed influence on the cycles. If the AMO stays down we would see that the sun would seem to have a more direct influence on the cycles.

Pascvaks,
the heels are thinner when the AMO is down. The thicker heel gives more area to slide on the ice. The thinner heel, eg. SPIKED, allows the heel to penetrate the ice for better traction.
You are welcome. 8>)

R. Gates,
you lambast Joe and others for their lack of understanding of long term forcings. i would suggest that you go back and do your homework before claiming others have a lack of understanding. Your BELIEF is based on projections by models. The outputs of those models do NOT match in any important way what has been happening over the last 15 years. In fact, they do not match anything but temperature to any degree in their hindcasts.
You are speaking from knowledge of a false GOD.

R. Gates;
Joe, you may be a reasonably good weather forecaster, but horrible at understanding longer term forcings going on that are changing the nature of the short-term patterns and variability you are looking at. Your primary failure is….>>>
Well, well, we have R. Gates lecturing yet again on radiative physics. Would this be the same R. Gates that was eager to bet that if Al Gore’s on air experiment was repeated as illustrated it would produce the results that were illustrated, and flat out lost that bet? Is this the same R. Gates that failed to understand that the experiment was done using IR heat lamps as the energy source, and as a consequence could not possibly produce the illustrated results? Is this the same R. Gates who suggested that the experiment could be repeated without the globes in the jars because they were “superflous”, demonstrating that he completely misunderstands the role of the globes in converting shortwave energy to longwave energy commensurate with GHG theory?
Really R. Gates? Was that you demonstrating your compete and total lack of understanding of radiative physics? Or was it some other R. Gates? If it was another R. Gates, why then my apologies. If you and he are one and the same however, you’ve adequatly demonstrated that your understanding of the physics is abysmal, and you lecturing Joe D’Aleo on the matter is sort of like me explaining Einstein’s E=MC^2 to Oppenheimer.

“This demonstrates clearly that the AMO is responding to temperature, not driving it.”
More likely AMO is responding to solar energy input. Volcanos that inject substantial material into the stratosphere reduce solar insolation.
If the AMO receives less solar energy it will then deprive an adequate supply of energy to the air above which will cool.
It looks as though ENSO is less susceptible to volcanic disruption than AMO. That supports my general view that ENSO is driven primarily by an imbalance between solar energy input to the ocean either side of the equator rather than absolute energy content.
With the mean position of the ITCZ being north of the equator there is a constant imbalance of energy input to the oceans either side of the equator.
That energy imbalance regularly buids up and is periodically discharged by an El Nino event.

Stephen Wilde “More likely AMO is responding to solar energy input.” I take your point. The fact that there is no consistent lead or lag between the exact timing of AMO and temperature peaks and troughs supports it. Either way it means the AMO probably has little predictive value.

“Either way it means the AMO probably has little predictive value.”
I wouldn’t go that far.
It implies that whatever the sun does will affect AMO before it affects PDO because PDO is more heavily modulated by internal ocean cycles than by solar activity.
Furthermore, whatever the AMO does will affect the weather downwind right around the globe.
Since the northern hemisphere varies more than the southern hemisphere due to the thermal inertia of the southern oceans it follows that AMO will have a disproportionate effect on global climate.
Or rather the size, intensities and positions of the permanent climate zones in the northern hemisphere.
I’m pretty sure that what we perceive as climate change is just shifts in the permanent climate zones with little or no change in system energy content (not temperature).
That is the problem with our sensors. Surface thermometers just record the energy content of the air passing them on its way to space. Satellites just record the energy content of outgoing longwave radiation as it passes them on the way to space.
Neither records the energy content of the Earth system as a whole. The Earth system can be losing energy whilst the sensors show high readings and gaining energy whilst the sensors are recording low readings.
Climatology is currently an incoherent mess.

Judging by Figure 2 it actually looks like there should still be just under 20 years of warm cycle left. That means no “down cycle” until 2030!

I too tend to think that the current negative AMO level is temporary and seasonal only. I think the durations of negative and positive AMO cycles are variable and the next sustained negative or cool phase for the AMO may not start until 2015. In my opinion ,a cooling will be first observable in the Arctic Ocean SST and in the Arctic atmosphere caused by more high altitude cold atmosphere tranferred to lower levels in the Arctic region . The cooler Arctic together with a negative AO will in turn cool the North Atlantic Ocean via currents and atmosphere links and eventually cool the land areas of the Eastern Coast of North America and Western Europe . The predictive value of the negative AMO is that once AMO does start to go negative for a more sustained period [and it can be as long as 30 years ], it can foretell of sustained and extra global cooling [especially Northern Hemisphere] and adds to the cooling already iniated by the cooler Pacific as indicated by PDO[ since 2007] . Such a period existed 1964 -1976[ and even to 1980] when both PDO and AMO were negative or cool .Different regions of the globe felt some of this cooling as early 1940’s and as late as the late 1980’s

matt v.
That is a plausible scenario but others are possible.
I see the North Atlantic as a ‘playground’ where the bottom up effects from the ENSO phenomenon meet the top down solar effects on the polar air masses.
The North Atlantic gets its energy both from the warm water flowing north which is ultimately influenced by ENSO in the Pacific and also from direct solar input.
We currently see a decline in ENSO activity during the recently started negative phase of the PDO but it is a bit early for it to have fed through the ocean basins to the North Atlantic. Normally I would expect the AMO to be positive for a few years yet as you point out.
However we have recently seen an exceptionally low level of solar activity and an exceptionally negative AO with more meridional jets, increased global cloudiness and therefore less solar energy into the North Atlantic.
So, whilst I agree with you in general terms the recent decline in solar activity could make this into more than a simple seasonal variation.
We shall see.

Alasdair Green says:
December 10, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Is there somewhere you can point me where I can read about the science that backs the claim that “this portends a cooler period, especially winters”. I’m not saying it’s not scientifically accurate, but let’s see the beef. It should, really, be included alongside your claim. Right next to it>>>
Uhm… you mean like maybe the main article and all the comments in the thread itself?
Alasdair Green;
More generally, I like Wattsup, I’ve been reading more or less daily for over two years now, it’s a good place to read up on what’s going on, but you guys have been really shrill lately. Can you tone down the screeching? >>>
What screeching? Can you quote the comment you consider screeching?
(not to mention that given what has been done to science by a cotery of misanthropists wrapped in a false cloak of morality, screeching is in order)

I’ve updated my “NOAA Eye Candy” poster graphic to include mention of this shift in the AMO:
http://oi43.tinypic.com/faztpj.jpg

“R. Gates says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:09 am
It is more likely the earth will be warmer on average in 2030 rather than colder than it is now. The shorter term variations in the AMO and other short term cycles are noise riding on this. They may mask or dampen the effects of CO2, but they can’t negate it.”
See: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
Things can of course change, but at the moment, it certainly looks like the sine curve is being followed and that 2030 will be colder and that the effects of CO2 are being totally negated.
Also see Phil Jones interview at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Note the answer to question A: A – Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
So the question is: Since 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940 had nothing to do with CO2, why should the years past 1975 have anything to do with CO2?

What information would one have to indicate that the world will be warmer in 2030 than now? And please don’t cite the discredited projections of CRU or GISS as observations have been constantly diverging from those models for over a decade.
The only indication I would have of any continued warming would be the possibility that we have no yet fully recovered from the LIA and we still have some more to go. Probably not very much more but I would not be surprised to see one more spate of warming at the same rate as the 1910-1940 and 1975-2005 periods of warming. I currently expect to see cooling temperatures from now until about 2040 or so and then a possible resumption of warming at the same rate as the previous episodes. We will, if the past pattern holds and barring any significant solar grand minimum, “give back” about half of the gain from 1975-2005 and then warm a bit. That will, in my opinion, likely be the end of the LIA recovery if we are not currently fully recovered.

The RSS satellite data are available for November and it comes in with an anomaly of +0.033 C which is down from October’s anomaly of +0.089 C. That means that October’s significant drop from September’s +0.287 C was not a blip. So global temperatures are currently very close to the average over time. Over time it looks like this:

2011 7 0.328
2011 8 0.286
2011 9 0.287
2011 10 0.089
2011 11 0.033

So we temperatures globally have fallen off the table in the past two months.

“crosspatch says:
December 10, 2011 at 4:43 pm
No “accelerating” warming to be seen.”
It is even flat (-0.000166176 per year) since March, 1997. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1997.16/trend
So in three months or less, it will show 15 years of no warming and we will not have to have any conditions such as 95% significance numbers. That used to be significant until the goal post was changed to 17 years.

Werner Brozek asks:
So the question is: Since 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940 had nothing to do with CO2, why should the years past 1975 have anything to do with CO2?
—
I would assume you actually know the answer to this question, but it seems the underlying assumption you are making is the all effects must have the same causes, which is of course one of the basic errors of logic to make. The anthropogenic fingerprint is clearly on a large percentage of the warming since 1976 or so, with other periods of warming having their own unique matrix of causations.

Smokey,
Could you please post your rebuttal to Lazy again, but substitute in R. Gates name throughout?
TIA!

“R. Gates says:
December 10, 2011 at 7:52 pm
The anthropogenic fingerprint is clearly on a large percentage of the warming since 1976 or so”
Not according to Dr. David Evans. See
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/no-smoking-hot-spot/story-e6frg73o-1111116945238
From this article:
“1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.”

Smokey says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:06 pm
davidmhoffer,
Thanks for the correction.>>>
Actually, it wasn’t a correction. I thought it was very appropriate for one of Lazy’s rather lazy arguments, and I just happened to think that it was appropriate for R. Gates as well. They’re so similar often times that I think their getting their material from the same places. anyway, the rebuttal appled to both of them.

Smokey says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Wrong again, Gates. You believe in models. But they are trumped by observations.
——-
I actually prefer a nice balance of both, as models can help us interpret what observation might mean…i.e. They give some possible context and science behind those observations.

“R. Gates says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:48 pm
If you want to debate the real science and the real issues of uncertainty (like climate sensitivity) then let’s do it”
I disagree with you on the hot spot as do others as we have seen. But let us talk about sensitivity now.
The median sensitivity from scores of studies using multiple different approaches is +3C according to warmists.
I will roughly assume that at the rate we are going now, the +3 C per doubling is close to +3 C per century which is 0.03 C per year.
Keeping the above in mind, I would like to compare apples with apples. This 2011 La Nina is the warmest La Nina. The anomaly according to Hadcrut3 is 0.357 for 2011 to the end of October and I will assume any change for the last two months will be negligible. Previously, we had a La Nina in 2000 where the anomaly was 0.271. We also had one in 1996 where the anomaly was 0.137. It has been 15 years since the 1996 La Nina and 11 years since the 2000 La Nina. Now if the +3 C were true, then according to the 1996 La Nina, the anomaly for 2011 should be 0.137 + 0.03(15) = 0.587. Likewise, according to the 2000 La Nina, the anomaly for 2011 should be 0.271 + 0.03(11) = 0.601. The anomaly for 1998 was 0.548. So this La Nina should be warmer than 1998 if the warming is indeed catastrophic and the 3 C is correct. Since 0.548 is lower than both 0.587 and 0.601, I can only conclude that the sensitivity from scores of studies using multiple different approaches is way too high.
Now having said the above, it still does not prove that the very slight warming that DID happen is due to CO2. Part or even all of it may be due to us coming out of the LIA. But one thing is clear to me. IF there is warming due to CO2, it is very minimal and NOT catastrophic. Do you agree?

Where is the AMO going?
First, the cycles in the AMO are not a regular up and down 30 years. The longer-term reconstructions show that it has multi-decadal cyles but they can be shorter than 30 years and vary by a greater amount.
Second, there is more variability in it than the above smoothed chart shows. It varies by +/- 0.6C. It has some large spikes (that seem to be associated with after-affects of large or long ENSO events so it is at least partially tied to the ENSO).
Third, If it is a natural oscillation up and down, it would have to also be tied to the Thermohaline Ocean Circulation, Atlantic winds, Arctic sea ice potentially (in addition to some clear association with the ENSO).
So, lets look at North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean Heat Content.
Looks like it is trending down now.
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/5997/ohcnatlpacific.png

Werner Brozek said:
“Now having said the above, it still does not prove that the very slight warming that DID happen is due to CO2. Part or even all of it may be due to us coming out of the LIA. But one thing is clear to me. IF there is warming due to CO2, it is very minimal and NOT catastrophic. Do you agree?”
———
First, I do think there are multiple factors at play in the overall warming of the later part of the 20th century, and that they have their root causes in two main categories: solar and anthropogenic. On the solar side, we saw the 188 year solar cycle length reach a minimum trough in 2000. The oceans were of course responding to this additional solar input, just as they will respond as the average solar cycle length is now increasing and will be for the next approximately 90 years and sunspots will be decreasing. On the anthropogenic side, we of course have the rapid increases in greenhouse gases. From all of my study of the research, I would say somewhere around 60% of the warming was anthropogenic. I do happen to think the 3C of warming for a doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm is a very good estimate when factoring in all fast and slow feedbacks, and that the anthropogenic signal will only increase it’s dominance over other natural forcings in the coming decades. This of course does not mean that short term forcings like volcanoes, ENSO, AMO, etc. might not mask the anthopogenic signal for periods, but in the long run, the anthropogenic signal will be the dominant signal. Will this be catastrophic? On that question I am currently uncertain. Humans have an amazing ability to adapt. So long as we can continue to grow our grains and the oceans remain healthy we’ll be fine. If things begin to deteriorate in these areas, there could be trouble, but then we’ll see a strong push for geoengineering, which may be a way out.

Well RG, at least you accept that the issue is between solar and anthropogenic.
However, you need to take a few more steps:
i) What do you think alters the rate of solar energy into the oceans when the sun is more active when the variations in TSI are too small to account for the observed effects?
I say it is increased jetstream zonality which widens the tropical climate zones,reduces total global cloudiness and albedo and lets more sunshine into the tropical oceans.
ii) What do you think the system response is to that extra solar input?
I say it is a faster water cycle acting via a poleward shift of all the permanent climate zones which is the system response in a negative manner to any forcing that tries to alter the global equilibrium energy content (not temperature) set by atmospheric pressure, solar input and the physical properties of water especially the forces required to break the bonds between water molecules (which are themselves pressure dependent).
iii) Why would the system response to more CO2 be any different and how far do you think the climate zones would shift as a result of our emissions?
I say it would be no different and the zones would shift hardly at all relative to the solar effect because from MWP to LIA to date the latitudinal shifting caused by solar variation was 1000 miles or more going by evidence of the observed climate changes in various regions worldwide over the period.
Also hardly at all because human emissions of CO2 are a miniscule fraction of the total GHG effect which is primarily water vapour and the evidence we have so far is that atmospheric humidity varies little due to the negative system response of a changed speed (or size) for the water cycle. There is no evidence that there is any water vapour amplification of the effect from more CO2.
So I think you, the IPCC and all warmist believers are way out on the proposed warming effect from a doubling of CO2. I think it is close to zero due to the negative system response from redistributing the climate zones and thereby changing the speed of the water cycle.
Instead all one sees is a faster flow of energy past our sensors (which then show a fractionally higher reading) for a zero effect on total system energy content.
The effect of CO2 is to slow down the rate of energy flow a fraction and the effect of the faster water cycle is to speed it up again for a zero net effect.
Unless you can show that latitudinally shifting the permanent climate zones has a zero thermal effect?

R Gates,
While I have always disagreed with your belief in the AGW hypothesis, I have always respected your considered and polite approach, as well as your willingness to take part in a global debate that has been having so many profound impacts on the finances and politics of the (mostly) Western world.
However, you posting a link to SkSc’s hopeless effort to explain away the lack of a hotspot has really brought you down in my estimation. The missing hotspot has been the Achilles Heel of the whole AGW hypothesis, and it leaves warmists (and you, it seems) stamping their feet, throwing their toys out of their prams, and clutching at straws.
There are some great moments in the SkSc piece that really need to be pulled apart. Namely:
“Although these attempts have managed to reconcile the observational data with theoretical and model expectations within overlapping uncertainty intervals, the real world behavior of the troposphere is still unclear”
i.e. they’ve massaged the data so that it agrees with the models, but it was still a pretty crappy effort.
” But we have to make do with what we’ve got, and that means working with problematic data and finding creative ways to work around them.”
Scientists don’t find ‘creative’ ways to ‘work around’ data – if they do, then they are merely becoming con-artists.
“When there is an apparent discrepancy between “models” and observations, that often (but not always) means there is a discrepancy between general, theoretical meteorological expectations and the observational data. It’s not a case of trying to reconcile the observations with climate models, but rather trying to reconcile observational data (which often have well known biases) with our physics-based understanding of the climate system.”
i.e. ‘if the data doesn’t fit the theory, then the data must be wrong’. This is the scientific method turned on its head!
If a skeptic had posted up such weak, hand-wavy, circular logic the warmists would have been onto it like a tramp on a sandwich. Come on RG, man-up and admit it, the warmists can’t find the hotspot that the models told them would be there.
(oh, and the stuff about measuring temperatures with wind-shear was laughable nonsense: “Can’t seem to find those pesky high temperatures? Ditch those thermometers and get your wind-sock out instead!”)

Wiki says that the AMO is de-trended for warming. If that were true then a significant part of the preceeding discussion has ignored this in a stampede to exult in the downfall of the warmists – so my question is:- how exactly is the AMO detrended for warming and is the detrending reasonable?

Smokey says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Wrong again, Gates. You believe in models. But they are trumped by observations.
===================================
Yeah. Prove thyself, Gates. You have nothing to stand on but spin…which I have gladly been disseminating since god know’s when.
Prove yourself. But you have to make a cogent argument.
The only one that you have made for me that I am grateful for is the Ron Paul candicacy for president.
And at that point, you have succeeded.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

“R. Gates says:
December 11, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Obviously, it is not quite that simple or dozens of PhD’s would not have written numerous papers on the subject of sensitivity.
the best average estimate for sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is about 3C in global temperature change”
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/24/moncktons-letter-to-the-journal-remote-sensing/
The last paragraph is “Remote Sensing, therefore, was right to publish [12], authored by two of the world’s foremost experts on the design and operation of satellite remote-sensing systems and on the interpretation of the results. The authors stand in a long and respectable tradition of reassessing not only the values of individual temperature feedbacks but of their mutually-amplified aggregate. Their results suggest that temperature feedbacks are somewhat net-negative, implying climate sensitivity ~1 K. In the context of the wider evidence considered in outline here, they may be right.”
Do you know what happened to the editor who allowed this paper to be published? He had to resign. I have an engineering degree and know how proper science should be done. If Trenberth thought the article had flaws, he should have submitted a rebuttal. As for who is right on sensitivity, time will tell. In the meantime, I am glad Durban delayed things for four years so others can be more sure that Spencer is right.

Several readers have pointed-out that the linked November AMO data was negative in 1999 and 2000.
How has this discrepancy happened?

Watched the UK Metoffice explain their medium-term climate model forecasting process at AGU and they are now using the AMO as one of their components describing it as “highly statistically significant”.

Bill Illis
Thanks for the AGU reference above . Yes the MET OFFICE is finally accepting the signifigance of AMO . They seem to have accepted the fact that AMO was involved in the cooling of 1965-1976 and in the warming 1977-2005 as I noted in my earlier post. This is the first time that I have noted that they have said that in the public . They also noted a 4 month [spread of 3-6] lead time for ENSO events to affect global temperatures and are calling for a global temperature anomaly for 2012 of about 0.46 C which is slightly warmer than they are calling for 2011.