UPDATE: There’s a response from the Met Office here
A report in the UK Daily Mail reveals a Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it:
By David Rose
- The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
- This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.
This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.
Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.
Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.
Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.
h/t to reader “Dino”
regarding the significance of the period from 1997, recall that Dr. Ben Santer claimed 17 years was the period needed:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/17/ben-santers-17-year-itch/
They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
MIT Professor Richard Lindzen said something similar in a WUWT guest post:
There has been no warming since 1997 and no
statistically significant warming since 1995.
Bob Tisdale did a 17 and 30 year trend comparison here
Here’s the HADCRUT4 4.1.1. dataset
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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Yet, Poor Phil’s co-believer, Kevin Trenberth, has no qualms whatsoever about “drawing conclusions” from a much, much shorter period. Just a few days ago Trenberth had declared:
It would seem that in CliSci, the “correct” lapse of time from which one might draw conclusions must depend on the direction to which the “conclusions” are pointing!
Amazing. Simply amazing.
“15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.” Wait til next year.
I understand the need to look at long term trends and 16 years does not fit what we might call “Long term”. If anything, the data from the last 16 years does show that the, “We must do everything today or else!!!” idea was overblown. It looks like the world didn’t end after all.
Typical Phil Jones. When you don’t get the results you expected to see, want, or need to see for future funding…move the goalposts. Wasn’t ten years enough to see a trend regarding a rise in temps, but of course he has to double down on anything else being a trend. He’s not a scientist, he’s a gambler. And a cheating one at that.
Devastating for activist “scientists” when a convenient hypothesis (based upon wishing rather than observation) is extinguished upon collision with stubborn, inconvenient facts.
“Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.”
And yet they drew CO2 causation conclusions much earlier in the slight URBAN warming period between 1980 – 1997..
I do wish they would stop changing their hypothesis and the rules behind it, but, well…. its all they have..! 😉
I suspect James Dellingpole will give this report a lot more attention. 🙂
Ah, HADCRUT 4. UAH shows plenty of warming since 1997, from about -0.8 to +0.34. HADCRUT doesn’t show the 1998 El Niño, how come?
Why did you pick 1997 as your start year?
Personally, since I regard the “annual average anomaly” as less precisely indicative as it is being reported, I also don’t much regard either trend; one that shows warming from the 1970’s thru the 1990’s or one that shows stable from the 1990’s to now.
It’s as if I’d been warned I was getting ill because my body temperature had been, this morning, rising from 98.4 F, to 99.6 F, but had lately by evening stabilized at above 98.6 F, plus or minus 0.3 F. Since I don’t regard the measurements as meaningful, I don’t regard them as having much diagnostic, or predictive, value.
Still, it’s somewhat nice to have the quacks exposed.
Anthony, that comment of Phil Jones’s sits ill with his professed 95% “standard” certainty rate as discussed in his Richard Black BBC interview of June 2011. That was when the 16th year of data since 1995 had just come in to allow him to give the 95% certainty nod to a warming trend. Now, two years later he’s hoisted on his own petard but won’t admit it. Maybe we should remind him of the interview….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13719510
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13719510
One more year until Ben Santer has to eat crow (whatever that means).
“Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.”
===========
It wasn’t too short a period to draw conclusions when temp were going up, immediately on the heels of the “global cooling” scare of the 1970’s.
At one time the folks walking around proclaiming the “end of the world” were regarded as nut cases. Dressed up in lab coats and business suits, we now call them climate scientists and politicians.
mbw says:
October 13, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Why did you pick 1997 as your start year?
nbw you should address your question to the (warmist) UK Meteorological office – it is their report.
too short a period to be draw conclusions?
Yet back in the antediluvian past, (2006&2007) the MET office were issuing warnings of the hottest year will be the next and the next even hotter, which will be th ehottest years in recorded history….. such is the selective nature of Phil Jones’ assessment, who is nothing more than a temperature measurer than a climatologist.
If he wants a long term trend then according to the CET we are, today, back at the temperatures during the 1690’s-1730’s, or the earlier half of the 18th century
mbw says:
Why did you pick 1997 as your start year?
Not sure who you are directing that at as this is from an article in the Daily Mail ( which in the interest of fairness and honesty is one of the most politically far-right and alarmist [in many areas] tabloids in the UK ) written by David Rose based upon a quietly-released report by the UK MET office. The reason for starting at 1997 is simple. That is the point at which recent warming ( natural recovery from the LIA ) has appeared to have plateaued and that’s the assertion being made.
Sure we could start 13 years earlier and show a slight positive trend however the point being made is that it could have stopped rising before it actually starts to trend negative for a few decades. That’s a position a number of people, myself included, are adopting.
This is not to say that we won’t see warm summers again in the next few years or even warm winters. That’s the beauty of a little understood chaotic system. The smart people don’t try too hard to second-guess it.
Call me clueless but didn’t the temps on Dr. Spencer’s graph stay relatively stable from 1979 to the 1997 El Nino. Shouldn’t we wait till 18-20 years before we say the temp is stable. M
aybe wait 22 year for a full Sunspot cycle?
Surely we would have been told by the government and the MSM if this were true. sarc/
Well a few days ago they forecast that Australia was in for a sizzler summer with 4 C degree increase, etc., a few days ago we had snow in parts of Oz. There goes that assertion, some still want to believe it, and let’s face it, ABC weather forecaster suggested there was no snow on the way, although other TV stations were forecasting it. ABC is owned by the government? About 40 years ago snow arrived in Oz all along the east coast up to the Qld border. And on some higher altitudes in Qld i.e., Toowoomba. I remember I sent the cutting to my late sister-in-law in UK and said ‘See we have snow before you?’ Twenty years ago on the Northern Tablelands, we had snow just before Christmas. Thirty years ago we had snow again that even hit the lower slopes, stopped all traffic on the higher altitudes, electricity cuts for 48 hours in Moonbi, just outside Tamworth. Other unusually cold weather has caught us by surprise sometimes, killing fruit tree blossoms and usually hardier native plants. We have no control, just have to go with mother nature and feed the birds who are now hatching their babies in such cold cold conditions.
There’s also been no stratospheric cooling (GHG warming fingerprint) in the last decade an a half.
If you want to say “The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago” you’re pretty much stuck with that year. 😉
The more serious answer concerns what kind of data it would take to falsify the CAGW hypothesis. ie. How many years of non-warming would it take? Dr. Ben Santer seems to think seventeen years would do it. We’re getting close. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/17/ben-santers-17-year-itch/
The CAGW paradigm is slowly collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.
The predictive value of the climate models is being shown to be laughable.
And the assumptions and hypothesizing going into those models are equally suspect.
“15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.”
Yes, and so is 100.
We seem to have reached Stage 3 of JBS Haldane’s “Four stages of acceptance”:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so.
Hmm, hold on guys, isn’t this the data set you claim was faked?
Does this mean you believe it, now that is gives the answer you want?
Does this mean you no longer believe that Phil Jones is a cheat?
But it’s the hottest year eva! (in the USA of course) /sarc