Global Warming 'Pause' Could Last For 30 Years

The 39th Theory About The Global Warming ‘Pause’ (And Counting) See the full list here

 

In popular science journalism the latest is always the best. With all the explanations for the “pause” in global surface temperatures since 1997 – there are now over 30 of them – it is always the most recently published one that is the “answer.” This time it’s the Atlantic Ocean that’s to blame. A paper published in Science says that a 30-year periodicity warms and cools the world by sequestering heat below the ocean’s surface and then releasing it. You don’t have to look very deeply at the science to realise that, despite the headlines, no one has come up with an answer to the “pause.” –David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 August 2014

The “pause” in global warming may last another decade before surface temperatures start rising again, according to scientists who say heat is being stored in the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. A new study, published in the journal Science, suggests that a natural cycle of ocean currents has caused the phenomenon by drawing heat from shallow waters down almost a mile into the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. The cycle naturally produces periods of roughly 30 years in which heat is stored near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to warmer temperatures, followed by roughly 30 years in which it is stored in the depths, causing cooler surface temperatures, it suggests. –Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2014

Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth’s surface. At first this was a blip, then a trend, then a puzzle for the climate science community. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus,” said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. –Hannah Hickey, The University of Washington, 21 August 2014

The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research. A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy.  Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 3 November 2013

thepause-graphic

The American Meteorological Society has released updated polling results of their membership which shows only 52% agree with the so-called “consensus” that global warming is mostly man-made. The poll finds “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.” —The Hockey Schtick, 24 August 2014

h/t to Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF

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latecommer2014
August 27, 2014 8:06 am

48% of meteorologists believe in AGW? No data on what they believe the “danger level” is?

Reply to  latecommer2014
August 28, 2014 2:28 am

belief is subjective, everything is relative, until you ascertain the quantum nuances of the earths creative fields and know that all is one, you will be a slave to the system. there is no good, no bad, nothing exists. the only thing that exists is love and until you embrace love and cast off hate you will be causing disharmony. The transluscent discombobulations of the capitalist bourgeois oozes a materialist patriarchical nihilism that eats away at the core of the individual, oppresses all minorities/people of colour while abusing them and making them abuse the enviroment. This system of capitalist oppression can only be stopped by a revolution of spirit and love. We are love experiencing the universe, consciousness is love, bigotry, racism, xenophobia and homohobia are all crimes against love and hate manifest, we must destroy all that is hateful with violence if needed. The west if the cause of all the pollution and the wars ever, we need to destroy them. Don’t believe NASA’s lies, no white man has left this planet and they lie about our climate all the time, there is no cooling or “pause’ we’re only getting hotter and hotter and hotter and the western world is WAY more polluted than the third world, their maps are completely false. Their attempts to portray people of colour as bigger polluters are racist fabrications and so is their attempts to make them look like they are responisble for overpopulation, half the world is white and half that is male we have to force every white male to take sterility drugs so they don’t overpopulate and further destroy our planet. They are the biggest consumers and polluters and they lie constantly and never give aid to anyone in any situation, non-whites abolished slavery first and the ancient aztec landed on the moon.

james
Reply to  jezeus krishna
August 28, 2014 5:26 am

Is this person a refugee from the ‘Guardian’ newspaper?
In the PC world that we live in,this diatribe from this obvious racist should be reported to the police for them to take action!

ripshin
Editor
Reply to  jezeus krishna
August 28, 2014 9:40 am

LOL. That’s funny. Made my day! As I tell my kids, I never cease to delight in the absurd.
rip

Specter
Reply to  jezeus krishna
August 28, 2014 10:24 am

Just read it like the teacher from the Peanuts cartoons “wah wah wah wah wah”…

Bill
Reply to  jezeus krishna
August 28, 2014 10:38 am

I wanted to reply to this post, but, I just don’t know how to respond to insanity. This is the first time I have drawn a blank. You really need some help there poncho, you really do. . .

Neil
August 27, 2014 8:06 am

Meanwhile, over at Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-26/irreversible-damage-seen-from-climate-change-in-un-leak.html
(courtesy of Slashdot)
Irreversible Damage Seen From Climate Change in UN Leak
Humans risk causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there’s faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change, according to a leaked draft United Nations report.
Global warming already is affecting “all continents and across the oceans,” and further pollution from heat-trapping gases will raise the likelihood of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” according to the document obtained by Bloomberg.
“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft.
The study is the most important document produced by the UN about global warming, summarizing hundreds of papers. It’s designed to present the best scientific and economic analysis to government leaders and policymakers worldwide. It feeds into the UN-led effort drawing in more than 190 nations for an agreement on limiting emissions.
The report “will provide policymakers with a scientific foundation to tackle the challenge of climate change,” IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in a statement from the panel’s office in Geneva. “It would help governments and other stakeholders work together at various levels, including a new international agreement to limit climate change” that countries intend to broker by the end of next year.
The draft, dated Aug. 25, was obtained by Bloomberg from a person with official access to it who asked not to be further identified because it hasn’t been published yet. It’s subject to line-by-line revision by representatives of governments around the world, and a final report is scheduled to be published on Nov. 2 in Copenhagen.
Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC, declined to comment on the contents of the report. The draft “is still a work in progress, which will certainly change — indeed that is the point of the review — and so it would be premature to discuss its contents at this stage,” Lynn said.
Economic losses for a warming level of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels may reach 2 percent of global income, according to the panel, which acknowledged existing estimates are “incomplete,” and the calculation has “limitations.”
Temperatures have already warmed by 0.85 of a degree since 1880, it said. That’s quicker than the shift in the climate that brought the end of the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago.
The panel also acknowledged there are costs associated with keeping the temperature rise since industrialization below the 2-degree target. That’s the level endorsed by the nations negotiating on a climate deal. Doing so may lead to losses in global consumption of 1.7 percent in 2030, 3.4 percent in 2050 and 4.8 percent in 2100, according to the paper.
“Risks from mitigation can be substantial, but they do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from near-term mitigation action,” the authors wrote.
The 127-page document includes a 32-page summary and is filled with language highlighting the dangers from rising temperatures. Those include damage to crop production, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and more pervasive heatwaves. The report mentions the word “risk” more than 350 times; “vulnerable” or “vulnerability” are written 61 times; and “irreversible” comes up 48 times.
Possible permanent changes include the melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland. That would boost sea levels by as much as 7 meters (23 feet) and threaten coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok along with island nations such as the Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu.
The scientists said they have “medium confidence” that warming of less than 4 degrees Celsius would be enough to trigger such a melt, which would take at least a millennium.
Other effects the report flags include reduced food security as production of crops such as wheat, rice and maize in the tropics is damaged, melting of Arctic sea ice, and acidification of the oceans.
The report also shows the scale of the challenge in limiting global warming. To stand a two-thirds chance of meeting the temperature goal, cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since 1870 must be limited to about 2,900 gigatons, according to the study. Two thirds of that carbon already has been released into the atmosphere, they said.
The surface air temperature is projected to rise under all scenarios examined by the IPCC. It expects a gain of 0.3 degrees to 4.8 degrees for this century, depending on what policies governments pursue. That range would lead to a sea-level increase of 26 centimeters (10 inches) to 82 centimeters in addition to the 19 centimeters already recorded.
“Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases cease,” the researchers said. “The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.”
The pace of temperature increases slowed to about 0.05 of a degree per decade from 1998 through 2012 from 0.12 degrees per decade for the longer period spanning from 1951 to 2012. The IPCC said 111 out of 114 climate models predicted a greater warming trend than was observed from 1998 to 2012. And for the period from 1984 to 1998, most models showed less warming than was finally recorded, they said.
Over longer periods, the climate models seem to be more accurate. From 1951 to 2012, “simulated surface warming trends are consistent with the observed trend,” the IPCC researchers said.
The UN panel since September has published three separate reports into the physical science of global warming, its impacts, and ways to fight it. The study leaked yesterday, called the “Synthesis Report” intends to pick out the most important findings and present them in a way that lawmakers can easily understand.
In all, more than 800 scientists from around the world have helped write the four reports, an exercise the UN last completed in 2007. It also uses inputs from earlier studies by the IPCC into renewable energy and extreme events and disasters.

Gdn
Reply to  Neil
August 28, 2014 5:14 pm

“Possible permanent changes include the melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland. That would boost sea levels by as much as 7 meters (23 feet) and threaten coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok along with island nations such as the Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu.”
And that kind of thing is deliberately deceitful. Yes, the melting of the entire Greenland Icecap would raise sea-level that much; and No, even warming to the more extreme alarmist predictions wouldn’t cause anywhere near a complete melting.

August 27, 2014 8:07 am

“Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus,” said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung

But there’s never a new explanation for the late 20thC warming.
Although it may be that the two are related?

August 27, 2014 8:12 am

Uh,
“Global Warming ‘Pause’ Could Last For 30 Years”
but “Climate Change” is forever.

latecommer2014
August 27, 2014 8:13 am

Doesn’t ARGO go to this depth and what does it show?

commieBob
Reply to  latecommer2014
August 27, 2014 9:30 am

The heat stored in the deep ocean would produce a temperature change that is too small to measure. That’s because the specific heat capacity of water can be thousands of times that of air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity
IIRC, someone calculated the temperature change in the deep ocean and it was around 1/1000 degree.

latecommer2014
Reply to  commieBob
August 27, 2014 12:11 pm

So a very safe choice…..can’t be falsified, thus not scientific

lemiere jacques
Reply to  commieBob
August 27, 2014 1:25 pm

and this falsified the fact that global warming is a fact…because we can’t measure it acurately enough .

john robertson
Reply to  latecommer2014
August 27, 2014 6:33 pm

Argo will never plumb the depths that adherents of CAGW are prepared to sink to.

sabretruthtiger
Reply to  john robertson
August 29, 2014 12:14 am

Lol, well said! 🙂

Bill Marsh
Editor
August 27, 2014 8:13 am

M Courntey,
I believe that in this ‘study’, which substitutes model run ‘reanalysis’ for hard data, that the authors state that fully 1/2 of late 20th Century warming was due to the Atlantiic Ocean process that is now causing ‘the Pause’. Funny how the media is ignoring that little boomshell in the paper.

Scott Basinger
August 27, 2014 8:14 am

“The science is settled.” Heh.

Proud Skeptic
August 27, 2014 8:19 am

OK…So when does a “pause” stop being a pause and becomes climate?

mjc
Reply to  Proud Skeptic
August 27, 2014 9:59 am

I keep hearing over and over…30 yrs equals climate.

Jimbo
Reply to  mjc
August 27, 2014 2:28 pm

30 years of no warming falsifies their speculation. I keep pointing out that 30 years is regarded as climate. Sure the world will warm eventually but not as they told us in the beginning through to AR5. That is a fail.

latecommer2014
August 27, 2014 8:20 am

Is it computable to determine how much the temp of the deep oceans would need to rise to verify the possible evidence to support this hypothesis?

August 27, 2014 8:21 am

Tax-funded science: A marginal increase in opacity by a trace gas in the atmosphere communicates catastrophic warming to the deep ocean by a mechanism that bypasses the surface. What a mysterious age we live in.

August 27, 2014 8:26 am

I know that the quoted evidence for the heat sneaking past ARGO and into the deep ocean is that the water is expanding and so causing the seas to rise.
I also hear that there has been no acceleration of sea-level rise during the pause and so that evidence would need to be rejected.
But am I right in saying there has been no acceleration in sea-level rise this millennium? It could provide evidence that the heat has gotten down there, somehow.

Reply to  M Courtney
August 27, 2014 8:42 am

Yes.

Reply to  mkelly
August 27, 2014 8:44 am

I thought so.
In my mind, I’m always right.
But does anyone have a reference?

Reply to  M Courtney
August 27, 2014 7:35 pm

Can the science of getting ocean water to “expand” and “rise” be applied to a fine, single malt Scotch?

August 27, 2014 8:29 am

Survey was in 1/2012 with a 26% return-rate. Some water under the bridge since then.

john robertson
August 27, 2014 8:31 am

Perfect timing.
As the cost to the home owners skyrocket, due to dumb “Mitigation ” policies.
Reality is no CAGW.
No constant warming.
And excuse 39 just rewords what skeptics asked in the beginning.
If this 30 year cycle is natural, what makes the other 30 years anthropogenic?
I don’t know? Is this an acceptable statement from former zealots, who insisted in imposing insane policies and costs upon society, during the period of their absolute certainty?
What happened to the 97% consensus that the magic gas rules?

jeff 5778
August 27, 2014 8:33 am

Why are we required to use the terms hiatus and pause?

rogerknights
Reply to  jeff 5778
August 29, 2014 11:06 am

I use “plateau,” because it’s neutral about permanence.

Latitude
August 27, 2014 8:51 am

I have to wonder how much more “proof” do we need….that not one single person out there knows what they are talking about

August 27, 2014 8:54 am

The extremely long-term trend is that the Earth is growing steadily colder. The brief warm-up at the end of the twentieth century was the ‘pause’.

larrygeary
August 27, 2014 8:57 am

So there are now at least 39 factors that the model makers failed to take into account that prevent their models from accurately reflecting reality. But nothing alters their conclusion that “We’re all gonna die!” if we don’t shut down industrial civilization.

LogosWrench
August 27, 2014 8:58 am

Intellectually embarrassing.

August 27, 2014 8:58 am

Here is a quote from my 30 year climate forecast made in June 2010.
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2010/06/thirty-year-climate-forecast.html
“A general earth cooling is thus more likely as was the case from 1940 to 1970 when similar conditions prevailed. Concurrent changes in the Arctic Oscillation suggest a pattern of meridional atmospheric flow will be more common than the more latitudinal flows of warmer periods.
Policymakers may wish to note the following possible effects on earth’s climate for the next 20 – 30 years. A cooler world with lower SSTs usually means a dryer world. Thus droughts will be more likely in for example east Africa with possible monsoon failures in India. In California the PDO will mean less rainfall with more forest fires in the south. However in the Cascades and Northern Sierras snowpack could increase since more of the rain could occur as snow. Northern Hemisphere growing seasons will be shorter with occasional early and late frosts and drought in the US corn belt and in Asia repeats of the harsh Mongolian and Chinese winters of 2009 – 10 . In Europe cold snowy winters and cool cloudy summers will be more frequent .
There will be a steeper temperature gradient from the tropics to the poles so that violent thunderstorms with associated flooding and tornadoes will be more frequent in the USA, At the same time the jet stream will swing more sharply North – South thus local weather in the Northern hemisphere in particular will be generally more variable with occasional more northerly heat waves and more southerly unusually cold snaps. In the USA hurricanes may strike the east coast with greater frequency in summer and storm related blizzards more common in winter. ”
For the latest update of the cooling forecasts based on the 960 and 60 year periodicities in the temperature data and using the 10Be and neutron count data as the best proxy for solar activity see the latest post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com. ( Especially Figs 5 – 9 )
GCMs are worse than useless for climate prediction – they simply delude the modelers and the politicians into thinking they know what is going on and acting inappropriately. Any simpler semi empirical model that does not include an accounting for the quasi – millennial periodicity is also doomed to irrelevance.

Reply to  Dr Norman Page
August 27, 2014 3:16 pm

Thank You Dr. Page ….

August 27, 2014 8:58 am

OT but [SNIP no buts, yes, it is, please don’t pollute threads – mod]

August 27, 2014 9:11 am

Whether it’s the Pacific, Atlantic or something else that is causing those oceans to behave with a 30 year periodicity of warming, then cooling, one only needs to look at global temperatures to see the 30 year cycle is crystal clear.
Dr. Spencer had a good article on this 6 years ago, regarding the PDO.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-background-articles/the-pacific-decadal-oscillation/
Don Easterbrook, over a decade ago, had noted the significance of the PDO sign correlating with 30 year periods of (increased) warming, followed by cooling or, in the last decade+, suppressed warming.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/20/shifting-of-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation-from-its-warm-mode-to-cool-mode-assures-global-cooling-for-the-next-three-decades/
The 30 year signature in global temperature graphs is blatantly clear. The changes in ocean indices are also clear and line up with the global temperature changes…………as well as other measures.
So it’s clear that there is in fact something significant happening at the same time. It’s possible that the oceans are swallowing up heat, then releasing it in 30 year cycles. There are some things, not yet identified that are happening related to this relationship. For sure there are other factors, independent of this relationship that we still don’t understand.
It’s absurd for any climate scientist with objectivity and integrity to continue with the “science is settled” position.

August 27, 2014 9:14 am

Water has a very high heat capacity, such that the ocean floor of dirt and rock might as well be seen as a more prominant eventual target of ocean heating than the thin airy atmosphere. Given that the Earth is so massive, that’s a nearly eternal heat reservoir that can act as a negative feedback on human time scales. Heat transfer by liquid to solid is a lot more coupled than liquid to a thin gas! Assuming only ocean/atmosphere as a closed system sounds just like climate “science” at work.

August 27, 2014 9:16 am

“Whether it’s the Pacific, Atlantic or something else that is causing those oceans to behave with a 30 year periodicity of warming, then cooling, one only needs to look at global temperatures to see the 30 year cycle is crystal clea”
To be more clear, that should say: “causing those oceans to behave with a 30 year periodicity that coincides with global temperatures warming, then cooling”.

Jbird
August 27, 2014 9:17 am

If the ocean is capable of sequestering heat in the way that they say, apart from all if the other reasons for the “pause,” then why are we worried about warming at all?

richard verney
Reply to  Jbird
August 27, 2014 4:09 pm

No reason.
The energy is dissipated and dliuted over the vast volume of the ocean, and now finds itself living in layers of the ocean that have an average temperature of about 3degC.
It does not matter if that average is pushed up to 3.0001 degC, or 3.001degC, or 3.01 degC, because if that deep ocean comes back to the surface, it will cool the surface not warm it. We see this in La Nina when more cold water comes up from the deep, and this leads to cooler air temps. As we see when the shift is towards more La Ninas than El Ninos.
The extra expansion of the ocean is so small that there will not be greatly accelerated sea level rise.
In conclusion, problem is over as long as the oceans continue to gobble up all that extra DWLWIR energy.
This is the real problem behind their pet theory that energy is somehow hiding in the oceans. If it is, thats great because it is out of harms way.

BBould
August 27, 2014 9:18 am

If the ocean gave up its heat wouldn’t the ocean become cooler? And if the ocean becomes cooler wouldn’t the atmosphere?
It seems to me that the more warming of the ocean we see, the more the planet should warm. What am I missing?

steve oregon
August 27, 2014 9:20 am

How many times have we been told natural causes were ruled out?
That the warming of the last half of the 20th century could not be explained by anything other than human influences.
Somehow the petulant children of the corn at the IPCC could not be bothered to consider they simply had no idea how the climate works. Instead they decreed that their omnipotence must be the authority and the science was settled.
Now we see these same children of the corn behaving as expected with endless insistence they get their way.
They are in the foot stomping phase approaching the screaming on the floor grand mal tantrum.
Hopefully the current crescendo of ya buts, excuses and elevated decibels will soon be met with adult command ending their fit of fanaticism.

taz1999
Reply to  steve oregon
August 27, 2014 2:03 pm

Actually, for me the CAGW shrill tone is encouraging. It means they are getting less confident and the more they thrash about the less confidence they going to project. Back in 2004 we had a miserable hurricane season. I don’t remember any big push to equate that season to climate change; In fact I found this: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/05pielke.pdf . Fast forward to super storm sandy, which excepting a cool alliteration was totally unimpressive as storms go, and now you get a chorus of screaming doomsayers. I think it’s progress. Someday the data will win.

emsnews
Reply to  taz1999
August 28, 2014 6:25 am

That was a huge complex and dangerous storm. I was there. The damage was tremendous. It wasn’t caused by high winds but rather ocean turbulence, the timing with the moon and tides and the huge volume of rain that then destroyed bridges and flooded many places.
Here on my upstate NY mountain, most of our bridges were destroyed or damaged and for a week, there was only one half of one lane and shoulder to get in or out…anywhere! They used helicopters to bring in things here.

taz1999
Reply to  taz1999
September 1, 2014 8:41 am

My comment is merely a comment on the overall storm strength and climate alarmism. Damage is generally a function of preparation or lack thereof. I actually have a bit of sympathy noting that in FL, after the hurricane you don’t also end up with the possibility of freezing to death. (though getting snake bit is easily possible) Serious mistake to call (not so) super storm sandy as unprecedented. Dial back to 1938 Long Island Express Hurricane landing as a Cat 3. Or even the Colonial Hurricane of 1635 and now you’d be looking at Epic disaster.

taz1999
Reply to  taz1999
September 1, 2014 8:53 am

Large storms are not a matter of “if” but “when” and my best guess is the C02 contribution to climate change does not exceed the C02 concentration in the atmosphere. Tipping points are for cows.

August 27, 2014 9:26 am

If I leave the back door to my house open on a winter night, such that much of the natural gas generated heat (anthropogenic warming) rushes out into the 10deg C Arizona night, is my precious 24deg C heat “sequestered” into the climate system? Will it come back to me some day in the middle of the summer to make me even warmer?
Chen and Tung seemed to have slept through their undergraduate thermo classes regarding the 2nd Law. If not, then do they really think we should believe that when that slightly warmer water gets down to the great benthic ocean depths that it only gone “temporarily” as in sequestered? Now that that “heat” is chilled and dispersed in a non-compressible liquid, that it will somehow come back in 30 years?

John
Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
August 27, 2014 10:33 pm

It takes a climate scientist to bend all laws of nature and get paid for it.

tmitsss
August 27, 2014 9:35 am

Somewhere, Leona Marshall Libby smiles a knowing smile

August 27, 2014 9:46 am

“A general earth cooling is thus more likely as was the case from 1940 to 1970 when similar conditions prevailed. Concurrent changes in the Arctic Oscillation suggest a pattern of meridional atmospheric flow will be more common than the more latitudinal flows of warmer periods”
Dr. Norman Page,
This is exactly what I’ve been observing now for several years. We have had some extremely negative Winter values of the Arctic Oscillation(-AO), including a long stretch with it being at a record.
In Winter, this is always associated with meridional atmospheric flow as it flushes frigid Arctic air south from high latitudes to middle latitudes.
Note that for the eastern 2/3rd of the US, 2009/10 and 2013/14 were the coldest Winters since…………….the 1970’s, when we were exiting the previous 30 years of meridional flow and cooling globa temperatures.
Here it is:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/climate-ao.shtml
Note the how the extreme +AO dominated in the 1990’s………along with mild Winters and zonal flow that did not provide a mechanism for bitter cold to plunge south………very often.
As is always the case with weather, any season or year can be an exception to a particular rule/regime.
As an operational meteorologist, my forecasts are based on the 2 weeks ahead and weather models.
However, based on the state of the current climate and in view of the various indices lining up the way they did in the 1970s(last Winter-2013/14 was very similar/analog to the Winter of 1976/77)
with high confidence, I think we will see more Winters similar to the cold/snowy 1970’s for the next decade and far less mild Winters than the 1990’s.
In the early 1980’s, I leaned the value of something we call “nowcasting” in weather forecasting. Basically, we threw out the model forecasts for the next several hours and went with what our eyes and brains were telling us made sense based on radar images, winds, temperatures and other observations, then projected/extrapolated them downstream for that short period of time. A good nowcaster could whip the weather model forecast every time.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/cliff/BAMSNowcast7.11.pdf
In climate, we have a similar situation going on but with the time scales several orders of magnitude greater/longer. We are throwing out the climate model forecasts and using observations of various indices(AO, AMO, PDO and so on) as well as other empirical data that are actual measures of our atmosphere that show trends. We are just projecting them out/extrapolating based on what our eyes and brains are telling us, not what models using mathematical equations to represent the theoretical physics say should be happening.
All the nowcasters in climate science right now are whipping the global climate models.

bit chilly
Reply to  Mike Maguire
August 27, 2014 6:50 pm

speak to any commercial fishermen with a long family history in the industry and they will tell you all about oceanic cycles . in the north east atlantic the switch to a negative north atlantic oscillation results in huge increases in recruitment in the gadoid species along with herring and mackerel . this is currently evidenced by increasing recruitment of these species year on year since 2009 . for the uk this was accompanied by cooling in the late 60,s through the 70,s ,i would expect the same this time.

John Boles
August 27, 2014 9:50 am

Now we skeptics can watch with glee as the warmists backpedal, I knew it would happen some day.

Alx
August 27, 2014 9:54 am

I guess I should be thrilled that IPCC zeolots are acknowleding that global temperature is driven by natural causes other than humanity.
Unfortunately I am not.
It may be because I am older and it takes more to get me thrilled about anything or it could be I am still waiting for the explanation of why a warming of the earth is necessaily bad. Sure for some regions it may have a negative affect, but for how many more regions may it have a positive affect? If a person living in Moscow has milder winters, are they going to hit the streets wailing, “What a disaster! What a disaster!”?

PaulH
August 27, 2014 10:01 am

So there is no need to fund the global warming research gravy train for another 10 years. Nice! 🙂

PeterK
August 27, 2014 10:34 am

Doesn’t anyone see or understand how CO2 works.
CO2 is like a parathyroid gland. To much secretion from a parathyroid gland causes the bones to release calcium into the blood stream. The more CO2 we put into the atmosphere causes the heat to go deep into the oceans.

ironargonaut
Reply to  PeterK
August 27, 2014 11:44 am

Was that sarcasm?

Shawn from High River
Reply to  PeterK
August 27, 2014 12:14 pm

you forgot the sarc tag lol

August 27, 2014 10:56 am

I know Bob Tisdale reviewed Chen & Tung’s Science paper here at WUWT and on his own blog here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/will-the-next-el-nino-bring-an-end-to-the-slowdown-in-global-surface-warming/
Bob big beefs with the paper are that (1) it was a reanalysis and thus not really data. (2) the Southern Ocean data fed into the reanalysis is so sparse that it is meaningless, and (3) the authors wrongly dismiss the very obvious El Nino/La Nina ENSO-driven steps in SST data.
But I received my paper copy of the 22 August 2014 Science in yesterday’s snail mail, so I read through Chen&Tung to see what I could glean from it as an non-expert.
After my first read through, I was astounded at the POOR quality of the paper, especially coming in Science. There are a number of times the authors were allowed by the reviewers and editors to simply “hand-wave off” some very important assumptions as FACTS.
Here are just one (of several) passages that really had me gob-smacked.
“During, the current hiatus, radiative forcing at the TOA by an increasing green-house gas concentration in the atmosphere produces deeper and deeper ocean layers.” (p.899)
– Note there were no references in that statement. Looking back to their Introduction, they reference 1.(Trenberth, Fasullo, Balmaseda, JClim, 2010), 2. IPCC AR4’s SPM (not the WG1 science section), and, 4. (Trenberth, Fasullo, Science, 2010). So they lean exclusively on Trenberth-Fasullo’s assertions of radiative imbalance, but then go on to find that Trenberth and Fasullo were wrong in where the heat went.
– That is clear evidence they presumed an outcome, tuned their model to show it, and then falsified the source from which they got their starting input and assumptions.
Chen & Tung conclude with, “… the hiatus should continue on a decadal time scale. When the internal variability that was responsible for the current hiatus switches sign, as it inevitably will, another episode of accelerated global warming should ensue.”
The elephant in the room they are trying desperately to ignore is that the “current hiatus” could really be the beginning of a 15-20 year COOL-DOWN that completely erases the rapid +0.5 deg C warming of the 80’s-90’s. Then, their “accelerated global warming” commencing in 2035-2040 will be back at its 1970 global temperature starting point. So the ONLY thing they have observed with the better more completely observational technology, is the natural AMOC driven AMO fluctuation running as internal variations of a complex system.
My conclusion: The “radiative imbalance at the TOA” is what is really still missing-in-action, not the heat it would generate.

August 27, 2014 1:18 pm

From M Courtney on August 27, 2014 at 8:07 am:

But there’s never a new explanation for the late 20thC warming.

CO2, UHI, black carbon (soot), CFC’s, galactic cosmic rays (Svensmark etc), reductions in sulfurous emissions from power plants (less global dimming), natural change in cloudiness (Spencer et al), release of long-stored ocean heat from previous climate optimums, natural release of recent ocean heating by ENSO processes (Tisdale)…
And that’s without mentioning the nutty ones like you’d find at ShortSheila’s Gabfest.

richard verney
Reply to  kadaka (KD Knoebel)
August 27, 2014 3:55 pm

But has there actually been any late 20th century warming.
The satellite data suggests no consistent warming from 1979, just the one off isolated ‘climate shift’ caused byb the super el nino of 1998; it is flat before, and flat after that event.
The tree rings show no warming post the late 1960s so Mann ditched the tree data.
We have all seen the adjustments made by BOM and the like.
And as you mention there is UHI, which is not causing real warming (urbanisation of the planet is too small) but is distorting the temp record to give the impression of warming.
I am sceptical that there has been any significant warming as from the 1970s, with the exception of about 0.15degC caused by the 1998 super El Nino. The data is just too uncertain to say more than that.

Bart
August 27, 2014 1:44 pm

This has been obvious for some time now. And, once you remove the ~60 year cycle from the data, you are left with a rising trend which is A) relatively inconsequential and B) been steady since the exit from the LIA, and so not dependent on CO2 concentration. Hence, my prediction of the near future evolution of global temperatures.

Reply to  Bart
August 27, 2014 3:38 pm

There is no basis for your projection after 2042 to 2062. At this point in time, with our limited knowledge of Solar dynamics and One could just as well invoke mechanisms that invert your Trise into a Tfall.
Further you seem to show a small decrease between 2014 and 2022, then stable temps for another 20 years. The de minimis 2015-2020 Tfall you show as we head into this uncharted territory of Gleissberg solar minimum could actually induce a state of strong negative feedback from clouds and much more Tfall than you project.
We are in a state of ignorance about what the Climate will do from now to 2020, much less anything beyond that.

Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
August 27, 2014 4:32 pm

Bart .Joel Here is a piece of an earlier comment which is apropos.
“For the latest update of the cooling forecasts based on the 960 and 60 year periodicities in the temperature data and using the 10Be and neutron count data as the best proxy for solar activity see the latest post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com. ( Especially Figs 5 – 9 )
GCMs are worse than useless for climate prediction – they simply delude the modelers and the politicians into thinking they know what is going on and acting inappropriately. Any simpler semi empirical model that does not include an accounting for the quasi – millennial periodicity is also doomed to irrelevance.”
Reply

August 27, 2014 2:00 pm

Far from being inconsequential the underlying trend is part of the 960 year quasi- periodicity and is enough to account for all of the 20th century warming without any contribution from anthropogenic CO2 at all.

Chase
August 27, 2014 2:05 pm

Regarding the oceans as a heat sink. I guess the laws of thermodynamics does not apply to the oceans. Heat is transfered in three ways convection, conduction, and radiation. Heat is attracted to cool till temperature equalization. With that being said, how does the heat get pulled down to the ocean depths without a real large noticeable temperature increase on the ocean surface. And I guess the theory that heat rises does not work into the ocean depths as well

dedaEda
Reply to  Chase
August 27, 2014 2:54 pm

You did not hear about Maxwell’s demons? Atlantic is full of them. Problem solved!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_devil

angech
August 27, 2014 2:31 pm

National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) –for Southern HEMISPHERE SEA ICE EXTENT SHOWING DOZENS OF TINY HOLES AROUND THE EDGE OF THE LAND WHAT GIVES? COMPUTER ERROR or real melting?
TOO EARLY FOR MELTING.

bit chilly
Reply to  angech
August 27, 2014 7:07 pm

this is the explanation i was given for how the ice forms in antarctica , the offshore wind from the land moves the ice creating a gap . this then freezes causing growth in ice area. at times the ice sheet can be melting at the outer edge in warmer water ,but still growing in size depending on conditions close to shore. sorry i have no citation to link to. if you are interested i can have a look.

Benson
August 27, 2014 2:33 pm

Ocean surface water in the tropics is saltier and therefore more dense than at higher latitudes due to higher evaporation rates. Water near the poles is also less dense because land ice is melting. When currents go away from the equator, they tend to sink, taking heat with them.

James Abbott
August 27, 2014 2:46 pm

Beware taking seriously any “science” printed in the Daily Express, Daily Mail, or the Mail on Sunday.

Venter
Reply to  James Abbott
August 27, 2014 10:18 pm

In fact who should not taken seriously is any ” science ” being presented by the CAGW scientists as it has been pure bunkum all along as shown by the 39 different excuses on lack of warming. And also any comments by you totally ignoring these spectacular failures and coming here with lame comments.

Randy
August 27, 2014 2:46 pm

If the oceans were warming wouldnt sea level rise be increasing rather then the rate of sea level rise getting slower as it is??

Chase
August 27, 2014 3:10 pm

Im sorry Benson I cant wrap my mind around that theory. The dynamics of that theory to me does not hold water. (Pun) That would mean in some places the depths of the ocean could be warmer than surface temperatures. I would also think that the surface of the ocean would disemanate the heat long before any heat sinks into the obise, let alone be stored for a future release.

Shawn from High River
Reply to  Chase
August 27, 2014 3:21 pm
richard verney
August 27, 2014 3:48 pm

When discussing the ‘pause’ ‘plateau’ climate sensitivity, model projections, I usually remark that Julia Slingo the head scientist at UK Met Office, late last year at a conference aactually said ‘we are not out of the woods yet since there may be no return to warming before 2030’
This was an extraordinary comment in many ways. First one would imagine that one would be delighted that there may be no more warming before 2030. Second, it was an acknowledgment that she considers natural factors are going to be negative (ie., counter balance her views of CO2 warming, and she thinks high climate sensitivity). I took her comment to be based upon ocean cycles, and that they were in a cooling part of the cycle, but it might be that she considers that solar has a part to play.
The material thing is that the longer the ‘pause’ continues, the lower climate sensitivity must be.
If the ‘pause’ continues for just a couple more years, most of the climate models will have dropped out of the 95% band.
This means that it is almost impossible to see that there will be an AR6, since between now and the closing date for papers, we can expect to see more and more papers suggesting ever lower figures for climate sensitivity, and more papers suggesting that ocean cycles are a major driver of global warming, and played a much bigger role in the 20 year warming period between mid/late 1970s and mid/late 1990s. There could be more papers on the sun, but no one presently knows how the solar cycles will pan out, so I leave that issue aside.
So how can AR6 get off the ground. It will have to fess up that climate sensitivity is now seen to be lower than previously thought, perhaps there will be ‘consensus’ on a figure below 2.5deg C, with the bell curve making it look probably less than 2degC.
It will have to fess up that natural variation is stronger than previously thought and that it played a bigger role in the past warming.
It will have to fess up that the model projections are way off target, running too warm.
It is difficult to see how it can concede such ground and not be ridiculed. I consider it likely that the IPCC will not survive the next 4 years should the ‘pause’ continue, and heck, if the trend between 2000 and 2018 shows a cooling trend, even if modest say just 0.05degC per decade (which would be within error bands), their position will be even worse.
I think that the next 5 years is likely to be very critical, and I hope that there are no significant volcanoes to cloud the issue, since the Team will surely jump on that.

rogerknights
Reply to  richard verney
August 27, 2014 4:29 pm

They’ll find a way to fudge around it. Look at how AR5 dodged and weaved. Their motto is, “Don’t give up the sh*t!”

richard verney
Reply to  rogerknights
August 27, 2014 11:40 pm

I agree but at that stage, there are 3 important differeces. First, there not that many papers suggesting climate sensitivity below say 2.2degC, and the models were still with the 95% band, and the ‘pause’ was only about 16 years (a lot less on most data sets).
Things will be different if the ‘pause’ continues right through to AR6. As I say, I expect to see many papers betwen now and then on climate sensitivity, and all these new papers will, in the absence of finding hidden heat in the ocean, suggest that climate sensitivity s less than 2degC. as we go forward, these papers will be estimating even lower sensitivity. At the momemt papers suggesting climate sensitivity of about 1.3degC are viewed as outliers, but what if the vast majority of new papers suggest a range of 1.1 to 1.5degC. In AR5, they largely ignored the latest papers on climate sensitivity, but they were new and few in number. It will be different for AR6.
IT is not easy for them to fudge the model point, if all models are running outside the 95% band (and this could happen within the next 18 months if we do not get a significant el nino this autumn/spring next year – the ENSO meter is back up again so who know what might happen – well Bob obviously has a beeter view on that).
They were able to fudge things in AR5, but it was not an easy fudge, but certainly enabled the summary for policy makers to be drafted in a way that it did not reflect the ‘scientific’ stuff in the underlying WGs. But now matters are becoming much more stark, personally I do not see them being able to fudge things 2nd time round, especially if cracks appear in MSM, with MSM commenting more on the ‘pause’ and, more on scientiststs dropping out of the fold, and more on the scandals of temperature data adjustments.

John Francis
August 27, 2014 5:15 pm

See Mark Steyn’s hilarious take on this today http://www.steynonline.com/6540/settled-science-catches-up-with-steyn

tz
August 27, 2014 5:45 pm

Poor-relation is not Pause-ation.

1sky1
August 27, 2014 5:48 pm

What a kick to read David Rose’s paean to Wyatt&Curry–as if they led the way in recognizing the dominance, over human lifetimes, of natural multi-decadal climate oscillations.

Dr. Strangelove
August 27, 2014 7:59 pm

The 30-year cycle is natural. If they are saying despite our CO2 emissions, the cycle will prevail, then the logical conclusion is nature dominates the climate. Warmists are dancing around the ‘missing heat in deep ocean’ to avoid this logical conclusion. If the missing heat hypothesis is true, then we can forget about it because that’s a 1,000-year cycle.
AMO is in the warm phase so it’s not AMO. PDO is in the cool phase. Maybe the pause is linked to PDO.

August 27, 2014 9:17 pm

The upshot of the “temperature homogenization” scam, exposed (again) by Dr. Jennifer Marohasy in relation to the Australian BOM, is that the concept of a temperature pause or “hiatus” is pejorative. From the several examples Marohasy provides, it emerges that the longer term trend of temperatures in Australia has been downward since 1910. Thus, what is being seen since 1997 is a RESUMPTION of the established trend, not a hiatus. Given the pervasiveness of the “homogenization” scam in most other weather/climate agencies around the world (an incestious club if ever there was one), the downward trend will be found to be the general rule. The problem with general and normative climate models, relating to “what should be”, is that the assumption of a temperature increase sometime in the long distance future is projected back into the past so that all the base data needs to be homogenized downwards to fit the normative model. While most of the normative climate/temperature models were designed to hit reality in the late 1990s, the “real” physical data since was always going to be consistent with the longer term declining trend in temperatures and this could not be hidden or incorporated into the normative models by homogenization. Here, the normative climate modelers hit what they have termed a hiatus, but instead what has happened is that the subjective climate models have hit the hard world of empirical reality. Thus dogmatic subjective “modeling” (climate modeling could hardly be called a science) meets the reality of objective empirical driven Science. Hiatus is a subjective notation for the continuation of a normative modeling dogma, while “resuming” a downward trend is an empirical observation of objective “real” science. Homogenization is the scripture.

richard verney
Reply to  Harry Newman
August 27, 2014 11:48 pm

It sounds a good point, and one that might be said of the US. There is strong eveidence to suggest that the US has been on a downward path following the highs of the 1930s. That would be two continents. The UK (CET) merely shows a long term and gradual warming trend coming out of the LIA.
I suspect that the late 20th century warming is explained by two factors. One is that a large part of it is not real, being the result of polluted data from UHI and station drop outs etc. Second, to the extent that it was real, it was due to the ocean cycles which were predominantly in a warming cycle.

Kenny
August 28, 2014 4:49 am

Has the Atlantic sea level risen with the warming? These two things should go hand in hand correct?

jlurtz
August 28, 2014 7:12 am

What if the “Pause” turns into Global Cooling?? How will the “record adjusters” fix the data?

taz1999
August 28, 2014 7:28 am

In a sense, the climate of the last 17 years has cooperated with the CO2 skeptical viewpoint. It’s time to start the full court press. Temperature differentials based on cooling then driving increased storms/intensities (which I believe) could easily be on the horizon and co-opted as evidence of warming. 17 years has shown the CAGW zombie is awfully hard to kill and will become harder if warming predictions appear correct. The apparent data tampering is particularly egregious and somebody needs to call “BS”. From a systems test point of view the raw data is sacrosanct, nobody gets to change it for any reason. The data analysis decides how to use/manuipulate the data and then justifies it’s methods.

RMB
August 28, 2014 8:50 am

Have any of you guys actually tried to heat water through the surface. Try it.

taz1999
Reply to  RMB
August 28, 2014 9:13 am

Thank you. Reminded me of a question I’ve had. In FL and presume elsewhere, Lakes fed by Cypress swamps become the color of dark tea almost coffee. In the middle of this 4000 acre lake there was an almost uncomfortable warm layer on top to about 2 ft down below the surface with a thermocline to more temperate water underneath. I’m guessing near 94F on top to 85F ish underneath. Understanding the water wants to evaporate/cool being warmed from the top, I was wondering if there were any ideas on this effect. Maybe it’s hard but not impossible to heat through the surface?

richardscourtney
Reply to  RMB
August 29, 2014 1:10 am

RMB
I often heat water through its surface. I use my microwave oven to do it because it is a very effective way to reheat coffee.
If you don’t believe me and don’t want to try it yourself, then I remind that a similar effect heats the oceans.
Richard

Martin Hodgkins
Reply to  richardscourtney
August 29, 2014 1:48 pm

to richardscoutney your comment is worse than any that even i have done and that is really saying something.

richardscourtney
Reply to  richardscourtney
August 29, 2014 2:37 pm

Martin Hodgkins
Really? In what way?
Richard

Mark Bofill
Reply to  RMB
August 29, 2014 2:42 pm

RMB,
I understand what you’re saying. Still, as Dr. Spencer I think it was pointed out to me, the water heats somehow. The surface temperature of the ocean is demonstrably warmer than the temperature at the bottom. This is darn odd when you get right down to it, if it’s completely impossible to heat water through the surface. What’s happening, is the heat somehow coming from the bottom? That’s silly. It has to be heating through the surface. Waves and wind I guess, I don’t know.