Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that some persons believe I ridiculed Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. in this post. That was not my intent and, on rereading this post, is far from the truth. I have the utmost respect for both climate scientists. I simply used Dr. van Oldenborgh’s blog post as a springboard for this one. Geert Jan has since written a follow-up post about lower troposphere temperature data. See Is there a pause in the temperature of the lower troposphere? And I referred to Dr. Pielke in this post for two reasons. First, he is known to skeptics, and, second, he agrees with Dr. van Oldenborgh about the importance of ocean warming. I simply put ocean warming into terms that are more familiar with most readers…deg C, instead of 10^22 Joules.
My apologies to Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Roger Pielke Sr. if they believed I was ridiculing them. I was not.
# # #
The blog ClimateLabBook is hosted by Ed Hawkins of NCAS-Climate at the University of Reading. A guest post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) has gained some attention in the past few days. Many of you will remember Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh as the scientist at KNMI who created and maintains the KNMI Climate Explorer. It is a marvelous tool that provides public access to numerous climate-related datasets, to the outputs of climate models stored in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives and to statistical analysis tools. I will once again thank Dr. van Oldenborgh for the Climate Explorer.
Please take a few minutes to read Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature. In it, he prefaces the discussion:
The old argument that the world is no longer warming was that the global mean temperature has ceased to increase after 1998.
He then provides a couple of interpretations of the hiatus.
The first is that there has been no warmer year than 1998.
He then goes on to discuss that surface temperatures have exceeded the 1998 value a couple of times in the 21st Century, so that definition of hiatus no longer works. Then Dr. van Oldenborgh adds:
The second, better, interpretation of the argument that the earth is no longer warming would be that a trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative.
Both are very strict definitions of “hiatuses in the rise of temperature”. I’m sure you can think of many others, including:
- the continued divergence between modeled and observed global surface temperatures, or
- a trend line starting in 1998 that shows a statistically insignificant trend, not necessarily a zero trend.
Dr. van Oldenborgh notes that a trend line of global land+sea surface temperatures starting in 1998 is positive so it does not comply with his second definition for the hiatus. He then states:
The new argument therefore is that the temperature has not risen over the last 10 years. This is indeed correct, both the GISTEMP series and the HadCRUT4 dataset in which missing areas have been interpolated by Cowtan & Way show a trend of 0.00 K/decade over 2005–2014. To investigate further why the trend has been zero since 2005 it is useful to consider the land and ocean separately.
Much of the remainder of Dr. van Oldenborgh blog post presents the problems associated with discussions of surface warming over that short a time period (2005 to 2014). His maps of surface temperature trends with starting years of 2003 and 2004, and his discussions of them under the heading of “Patterns” are very informative.
The first thing that struck me as I was reading the blog post was, there’s a dataset missing from the analysis—a dataset that is commonly used to represent global temperatures. That dataset, of course, is satellite-based Lower Troposphere Temperature, aka TLT, which is the temperature of the atmosphere from zero to about 12,500 meters (about 41,000 feet) above sea level, but dominated by samples at less than 3,000 meters (about 9,800 feet). Of the three satellite-based atmospheric temperature datasets, the lower troposphere data are nearest to the surface.
Figure 1 is a time series graph of the annual (November to October) lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the periods ending in 1980 to 2014. The two suppliers, RSS and UAH, are compared. The anomaly for the year ending in October 2010 was the same as 1998 with the UAH data but cooler with the RSS data, so both would pass the “no warmer than 1998” test.
Figure 1
Figure 2 compares the linear trends of the two lower troposphere temperature anomaly datasets starting with the year ending October 1998. The UAH data failed the “trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative” test while the RSS data passed. For the sake of argument, someone might want to average the two datasets. Because the UAH warming rate is comparable to the RSS cooling rate, the trend line for the average would basically be zero.
Figure 2
NOTE: I used the period of 1981 to 2010 as the reference years for anomalies in Figures 1 and 2, because the two suppliers use different base periods. [End note.]
Then Dr. van Oldenborgh moves on to deep ocean warming, presenting and discussing NODC ocean heat content data for the depths of 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. In doing so, however, Dr. van Oldenborgh changed topics of discussion from temperature to ocean heat content in term of Joules times 10^22. Ocean heat content is a useful metric if you’re a climate scientist looking for the missing heat—the ocean heat predicted by climate models that has not been found in observations. Along with Dr. van Oldenborgh, Roger Pielke Sr. has been an advocate of using ocean heat content as the primary metric of global warming for a number of years.
But while ocean temperature data (and salinity data) are used to calculate ocean heat content, ocean heat content is not a temperature dataset, and the topic of Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post is “Hiatuses in the rise of temperature”.
The NODC does have subsurface ocean temperature datasets at depths of 0-100 meters, 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. They have recently been added to the KNMI Climate Explorer, on their Monthly observations webpage. Figure 3 presents the vertically averaged temperature anomalies to depths of 0-2000 meters for the global oceans. The NODC depth averaged temperature data for the depths of 0-2000 meters starts in 2005 at the Climate Explorer, which is precisely the time period we’re looking for. Even the IPCC acknowledges there are so few measurements of the temperatures at depth in the oceans prior to the ARGO era that the datasets from 1955 to the early 2000s cannot be used for global warming attribution studies. See the post AMAZING: The IPCC May Have Provided Realistic Presentations of Ocean Heat Content Source Data.
Figure 3
As we can see, yes, the oceans to depths of 2000 meters (about 1.25 miles) have warmed according to the NODC data, but note the warming rate. It is only +0.03 deg C/decade. That’s read 3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade, which is a very tiny warming rate. It would be even tinier if we had data for the oceans from the surface to the ocean floor.
The oceans are deeper than the 2000 meters reached by the ARGO floats. So we have to look elsewhere to see if the deep oceans below 2000 meters have warmed. The title of Llovel et al. (2014) explains the findings of the paper Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade. “Not detectable” says it all. Phrased differently, there has been no detectable warming of the deep ocean (below 2000 meters) from January 2005 to December 2013, the time period covered by Llovel et al. (2014), which happily coincides to the period we’re discussing.
From the NOAA OceanToday webpage Deep ARGO, we learn that the depths of 0-2000 meters include only about one-half of the volume of the global oceans.
Based on those findings, we can assume the trend in the temperature of the oceans, from surface to ocean floor, from 2005 to present, is one-half the +0.03 deg C/decade trend calculated for the depths of 0-2000 meters, or a warming rate of +0.015 deg C/decade. That’s read 15 one-thousandths of a deg C per decade.
That minuscule warming rate of the oceans serves only as the background for the surface warming. It can’t magically come back to haunt us. That warming rate is trivial compared to the unrealized surface warming predicted by climate models. See Figure 4, which presents the temperature anomaly difference between the GISS global land-ocean temperature index data and the simulations of global surface air temperatures based on the multi-model mean of the climate models used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report. That graph is discussed in more detail at the beginning of the October 2014 Global Surface (Land+Ocean) and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly & Model-Data Difference Update.
Figure 4
CLOSING
Global surface temperatures in 2014 are very likely to be at record high levels in 2014. We are going to see that framed in many ways in months to come. However, we understand the reason for those record high levels to be the unusual warming of the eastern North Pacific. See the June sea surface temperature update and the post On The Recent Record-High Global Sea Surface Temperatures – The Wheres and Whys.
The climate science community has also acknowledged that the weather-related unusual warming of the eastern extratropical North Pacific was the reason for the record high global surface temperatures this year. See the post Axel Timmermann and Kevin Trenberth Highlight the Importance of Natural Variability in Global Warming…
On the other hand, as illustrated in this post, it is very likely that 2014 will not be at record high levels with another of the global temperature datasets, Lower Troposphere Temperature. Those are shown in Figures 1 and 2 above.
Ocean heat content during the ARGO era is a useful dataset, but when discussing global temperatures, the vertically averaged temperature data for the oceans is more appropriate. While the oceans continue to warm, based on the NODC data, in terms of temperature, that warming is trivial.
And as illustrated in the final graph, the record high surface temperatures this year hardly put a dent in the difference between the observed and modeled surface warming.
# # #
PS: Dr. van Oldenborgh’s discussions of the short-term surface warming (or lack thereof) from 2005 to 2014 will make a lot more sense to the average person than some statistical analysis.
The blog ClimateLabBook is hosted by Ed Hawkins of NCAS-Climate at the University of Reading. A guest post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) has gained some attention in the past few days. Many of you will remember Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh as the scientist at KNMI who created and maintains the KNMI Climate Explorer. It is a marvelous tool that provides public access to numerous climate-related datasets, to the outputs of climate models stored in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives and to statistical analysis tools. I will once again thank Dr. van Oldenborgh for the Climate Explorer.
Please take a few minutes to read Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature. In it, he prefaces the discussion:
The old argument that the world is no longer warming was that the global mean temperature has ceased to increase after 1998.
He then provides a couple of interpretations of the hiatus.
The first is that there has been no warmer year than 1998.
He then goes on to discuss that surface temperatures have exceeded the 1998 value a couple of times in the 21st Century, so that definition of hiatus no longer works. Then Dr. van Oldenborgh adds:
The second, better, interpretation of the argument that the earth is no longer warming would be that a trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative.
Both are very strict definitions of “hiatuses in the rise of temperature”. I’m sure you can think of many others, including:
- the continued divergence between modeled and observed global surface temperatures, or
- a trend line starting in 1998 that shows a statistically insignificant trend, not necessarily a zero trend.
Dr. van Oldenborgh notes that a trend line of global land+sea surface temperatures starting in 1998 is positive so it does not comply with his second definition for the hiatus. He then states:
The new argument therefore is that the temperature has not risen over the last 10 years. This is indeed correct, both the GISTEMP series and the HadCRUT4 dataset in which missing areas have been interpolated by Cowtan & Way show a trend of 0.00 K/decade over 2005–2014. To investigate further why the trend has been zero since 2005 it is useful to consider the land and ocean separately.
Much of the remainder of Dr. van Oldenborgh blog post presents the problems associated with discussions of surface warming over that short a time period (2005 to 2014). His maps of surface temperature trends with starting years of 2003 and 2004, and his discussions of them under the heading of “Patterns” are very informative.
The first thing that struck me as I was reading the blog post was, there’s a dataset missing from the analysis—a dataset that is commonly used to represent global temperatures. That dataset, of course, is satellite-based Lower Troposphere Temperature, aka TLT, which is the temperature of the atmosphere from zero to about 12,500 meters (about 41,000 feet) above sea level, but dominated by samples at less than 3,000 meters (about 9,800 feet). Of the three satellite-based atmospheric temperature datasets, the lower troposphere data are nearest to the surface.
Figure 1 is a time series graph of the annual (November to October) lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the periods ending in 1980 to 2014. The two suppliers, RSS and UAH, are compared. The anomaly for the year ending in October 2010 was the same as 1998 with the UAH data but cooler with the RSS data, so both would pass the “no warmer than 1998” test.
Figure 1
Figure 2 compares the linear trends of the two lower troposphere temperature anomaly datasets starting with the year ending October 1998. The UAH data failed the “trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative” test while the RSS data passed. For the sake of argument, someone might want to average the two datasets. Because the UAH warming rate is comparable to the RSS cooling rate, the trend line for the average would basically be zero.
Figure 2
NOTE: I used the period of 1981 to 2010 as the reference years for anomalies in Figures 1 and 2, because the two suppliers use different base periods. [End note.]
Then Dr. van Oldenborgh moves on to deep ocean warming, presenting and discussing NODC ocean heat content data for the depths of 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. In doing so, however, Dr. van Oldenborgh changed topics of discussion from temperature to ocean heat content in term of Joules times 10^22. Ocean heat content is a useful metric if you’re a climate scientist looking for the missing heat—the ocean heat predicted by climate models that has not been found in observations. Along with Dr. van Oldenborgh, Roger Pielke Sr. has been an advocate of using ocean heat content as the primary metric of global warming for a number of years.
But while ocean temperature data (and salinity data) are used to calculate ocean heat content, ocean heat content is not a temperature dataset, and the topic of Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post is “Hiatuses in the rise of temperature”.
The NODC does have subsurface ocean temperature datasets at depths of 0-100 meters, 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. They have recently been added to the KNMI Climate Explorer, on their Monthly observations webpage. Figure 3 presents the vertically averaged temperature anomalies to depths of 0-2000 meters for the global oceans. The NODC depth averaged temperature data for the depths of 0-2000 meters starts in 2005 at the Climate Explorer, which is precisely the time period we’re looking for. Even the IPCC acknowledges there are so few measurements of the temperatures at depth in the oceans prior to the ARGO era that the datasets from 1955 to the early 2000s cannot be used for global warming attribution studies. See the post AMAZING: The IPCC May Have Provided Realistic Presentations of Ocean Heat Content Source Data.
Figure 3
As we can see, yes, the oceans to depths of 2000 meters (about 1.25 miles) have warmed according to the NODC data, but note the warming rate. It is only +0.03 deg C/decade. That’s read 3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade, which is a very tiny warming rate. It would be even tinier if we had data for the oceans from the surface to the ocean floor.
The oceans are deeper than the 2000 meters reached by the ARGO floats. So we have to look elsewhere to see if the deep oceans below 2000 meters have warmed. The title of Llovel et al. (2014) explains the findings of the paper Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade. “Not detectable” says it all. Phrased differently, there has been no detectable warming of the deep ocean (below 2000 meters) from January 2005 to December 2013, the time period covered by Llovel et al. (2014), which happily coincides to the period we’re discussing.
From the NOAA OceanToday webpage Deep ARGO, we learn that the depths of 0-2000 meters include only about one-half of the volume of the global oceans.
Based on those findings, we can assume the trend in the temperature of the oceans, from surface to ocean floor, from 2005 to present, is one-half the +0.03 deg C/decade trend calculated for the depths of 0-2000 meters, or a warming rate of +0.015 deg C/decade. That’s read 15 one-thousandths of a deg C per decade.
That minuscule warming rate of the oceans serves only as the background for the surface warming. It can’t magically come back to haunt us. That warming rate is trivial compared to the unrealized surface warming predicted by climate models. See Figure 4, which presents the temperature anomaly difference between the GISS global land-ocean temperature index data and the simulations of global surface air temperatures based on the multi-model mean of the climate models used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report. That graph is discussed in more detail at the beginning of the October 2014 Global Surface (Land+Ocean) and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly & Model-Data Difference Update.
Figure 4
CLOSING
Global surface temperatures in 2014 are very likely to be at record high levels in 2014. We are going to see that framed in many ways in months to come. However, we understand the reason for those record high levels to be the unusual warming of the eastern North Pacific. See the June sea surface temperature update and the post On The Recent Record-High Global Sea Surface Temperatures – The Wheres and Whys.
The climate science community has also acknowledged that the weather-related unusual warming of the eastern extratropical North Pacific was the reason for the record high global surface temperatures this year. See the post Axel Timmermann and Kevin Trenberth Highlight the Importance of Natural Variability in Global Warming…
On the other hand, as illustrated in this post, it is very likely that 2014 will not be at record high levels with another of the global temperature datasets, Lower Troposphere Temperature. Those are shown in Figures 1 and 2 above.
Ocean heat content during the ARGO era is a useful dataset, but when discussing global temperatures, the vertically averaged temperature data for the oceans is more appropriate. While the oceans continue to warm, based on the NODC data, in terms of temperature, that warming is trivial.
And as illustrated in the final graph, the record high surface temperatures this year hardly put a dent in the difference between the observed and modeled surface warming.
# # #
PS: Dr. van Oldenborgh’s discussions of the short-term surface warming (or lack thereof) from 2005 to 2014 will make a lot more sense to the average person than some statistical analysis.
Thank you Bob. Informative as always.
The essential message from this post is (quite correctly) that we have absolutely nothing to worry about, the ocean ‘warming’ is virtually undetectable, and the models have been useless.
They’ll be annoyed over at Hot Whopper.
You’re right, David. You even got an honorable mention. This is one of the posts that Sou (Miriam O’Brien) has chosen to comment on at HotWhopper. See my post at MoreOnMiriamO’Brien’sHotWhopper:
https://moreonmiriamobrien.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/miriam-obrien-says-why-did-the-water-in-the-kettle-boil-because-it-got-hot/
Please put down your coffee before you click on the link.
Miriam apparently doesn’t think it’s appropriate to present deep global ocean warming in terms of temperature in a discussion of global temperatures.
Hi.
It’s serious.
Saw this today:
“Save the planet! It’s the only place in the universe that makes wine.”
Have a great weekend!
Auto
Good slogan, but is it true?
And even if we lose the wine, there is still that Old Janx Spirit. That isn’t made here.
Think I’m going to be sick .
Based on the double humped camel shape of the UAH and RSS temperature records, I’d probably put some money on cooling in the next couple of years, then three years of up ticks, then … ah, well just count the up and down ticks. Not very scientific, but quite visual.
“Oh don’t give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit
No, don’t you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit
For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die
Won’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit”
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Hot Whopper is a boil on the cancer of climate science. It is a zone of negative intelligence, that sucks the brains out of all that visit.
Can I vote we discourage the pretentious Latin term ‘hiatus’. It ‘s not a gap in the warming, it’s a slowing and stopping, which might be a pause.
Or a peak.
Or a puke, as in when they saw that the data didn’t match their agenda they puked and well it got on the data and now it’s not readable, so well just make up numbers to fit our mandate to show rising temperatures.
I’m beyond fed up with what passes for data and research. I saw on accuweather today they posted the article on small volcanos causing the pause in global temperatures.
Faulty, adjusted and cherry picked data for research seem to be the norm these days. They either profit from grants and/or keeping their jobs depend on following the CAGW mandate.
Why not another pretentious but neutral word?: “Stasis”
It’s none of those, it is a plateau. It’s actually a FALL since 2001.
I like the word ‘Strike’. CO2 is on STRIKE! Strike is a word very common in the vernacular of the Global Warming Proponent.
Smoko.
The term “hiatus” has only meaning in the context of predictions by climate models and because those are fundamentally flawed the term is meaningless.
Suppose we never had heard the phrase “global warming” and did not have any model predictions, then just looking at the data would lead us to think that the temperature has reached a plateau and we would just take that at face value and observe that that’s what the climate system does.
It is unscientific to use the term Hiatus or Pause. Both imply that we know for certain that warming will resume. No one knows this. The IPCC has admitted that the models cannot predict the future. That is why they use the term “projections”.
The scientifically correct term is cessation or halt or reduction in warming. However, the chicken little of the world cannot bring themselves to use correct terminology as it would reveal the sky is no longer falling.
For the benefit of those of us who are allergic to statistics, could someone explain in simple terms what “statistically insignificant” means in “a trend line starting in 1998 that shows a statistically insignificant trend” means? A layman might be forgiven for expecting it to mean that, based on some assumption, the probability of a trend that exceeds the observed trend is greater than, say, 5%.
If that’s the meaning, what is the assumption on which the >5% probability is based? If not, what does that expression mean? I assume that most readers here know, since that expression almost never attracts attention on this site despite is very common use.
It has to do with the variability in the data measurements versus the amount of observed change. Any time someone generates a trend line, they should also provide a probability or p-value for that line (not to mention an r2 term). P-values less than or equal to 0.05 are typically considered statistically significant, while p-values greater than 0.05 are not statistically significant. http://blog.minitab.com/blog/adventures-in-statistics/how-to-interpret-regression-analysis-results-p-values-and-coefficients
The primary assumption here is that the Y and X data have some relationship that can be described using linear regression. The better the data conforms to this assumption, the smaller the p-value.
Thanks a lot–and pardon me for posting in the midst of a brain cramp. Of course the term was intended to mean nothing more than what you explained..
That is, the assumption was that the data are produced by a random process whose standard deviation is the one the data exhibit. Significance is determined by whether the probability, based on that assumption, of a trend greater that the observed trend exceeds 5%.
I had for some reason been looking for a more-meaningful criterion, such as the probability of such the observed trend if the sensitivity to carbon-dioxide concentration were as great as what has been claimed.
Thank you again for indulging the dumb question.
CAUTION: p= 0.05 is 5%; this is generally considered “significant” by “observation” so-called sciences (psychology, economics, sociology); physicists use a much more rigorous standard of 5 sigma, or roughly 1 in 3,000,000 (0 .00003%).
Adherence to the 5-sigma standard essentially explains of why physicists don’t publish a lot of bogus crap. Observational “scientists” generally are not mathematically trained statisticians and haven’t a clue why they use the 5% threshold. That, and poorly designed experiments, goes long way to explain why their work is frequently disputed.
The layman’s description would be that a ‘statistically insignificant’ trend might arise just from some minor random noise in the data. Samples taken without perfect coverage. Samples taken with less then ideal perfection instruments. Samples that are only covering part of the needed time period. Or just too few samples. In those cases, the error can be larger (sometimes much larger) than the “trend” found. It isn’t possible to know if the “trend” is real, or just an artifact of some error terms.
A “statistically significant’ trend comes from a large enough data set ( I learned it as 1200 samples, but I’ve noticed some newer fancier techniques claim that less, even 900 or so, is enough) with sufficient coverage and good enough instruments the the error term ought to be much smaller than the discovered trend. It is typically put at the 95% “confidence level”; meaning that 95 out of 100 times you do that data collection and calculation, the result will be accurate enough to show that trend as real (and only 5% of the time will a random range of the error terms cause the result to be spurious … i.e. wrong.) Yes, you got that right. Even a statistically significant trend can be wrong. Just not very often… Such is the nature of statistics as “proof”. They are not proof, only evidence. Sometimes better than others.
By convention, we all just agree to accept that 5 out of 100 times wrong is good enough… For most things. Sometimes other bounds are used when the need to be more certainly right is stronger or weaker.
One misunderstanding in your question is the idea that 5% means “the probability of a trend that exceeds the observed trend is greater than, say, 5%.” Under “normal” assumptions (as in, the divergences from the trend line have a normal probability distribution) there is a 50% probability that the real trend is above the observed trend, and a 50% probability that it is below the observed trend.
Statistically significant at the 5% level means there is less than a 5% probability that the real trend could be zero (or less). In other words, once the variations in the observed data are considered, the slope of the observed trend line must be large enough that we are 95% certain that the real trend cannot be zero.
Thanks, Bob. An excellent post.
To me. a horizontal average line in a temperature graph is all it takes for a hiatus in a context of global warming expectations and forecasts and failed climate models.
Global warming stopped after the 1998 El Niño.
It is a change, a change from warming to ‘no change’ in temp that has three possible future trends, to start warming again, to stay even, or to start cooling. Until it is known why it warmed in the first place (and was cooling before that), no-one knows which of the three futures it’s gonna be. The only thing I’m personally sure of is that the ‘why’ has nothing to do with CO2
It always depends where you start. Since 2001, there has been a fall in temperatures – despite the ‘forcing’ of CO2.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=global+surface+temperature+since+2001&source=images&cd=&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsppiblog.org%2Fnews%2Fthe-agu-climate-policy-statement-as-redrafted-by-monckton&ei=KMx5VJrYDdLoaLC3gLAH&bvm=bv.80642063,d.ZGU&psig=AFQjCNFLVAu0qWkmrSpGor9FsRMCG3gN2g&ust=1417354545364084
Sorry, that was meant to be a pic of a graph.
Lucia had a blog on the pause or hiatus early this month.
I suggested a simple definition of a pause was “that it defines a period where the baseline is absolutely flat. There is no warming more slowly or quickly or freezing more slowly or quickly. There is no trend, no increase or decrease or it would be no hiatus.”
Apropos this discussion a statistically insignificant trend would not be a hiatus as it still has a trend, it is not zero.
Also the continued divergence between modelled and observed global temperatures would not be a pause because you cannot have a pause when you have a positive or negative trend.
There was a lot of, in my opinion, semantic argument about the dictionary meanings of the word pause, which would allow this second comparison to be wrongly called a pause.
I feel the definition above is obvious, correct and simple and avoids warmists using short cherry picked intervals of positive trend which slow down to be described as a pause.
This only confuses the idea of a pause and allows them to argue that there is no real pause or that the pause is cherry picked.
Hence I would appreciate Bob not using any definition of a pause as having a positive or negative trend whether it is Van Oldenburgh’s second definition or Bob’s two suggestions as it opens a door that should be left closed.
Note, please nobody use a dictionary definition as an argument as I am tone deaf and music, not temperature, is the only place a pause can have a different meaning to what I have ascribed.
Angech, thus the term that I try to remember to use: slowdown.
Even RClimate has acknowledged the rate of temp increase should have gone up by now and it hasn’t. A warm 2014 won’t change any of that.
“Slowdown” implies to me that the pre-existing trend continues but at a lower rate.
“Halt” on the other hand seems to accurately describe what is happening and does not carry an implied continuation or change.
I’m going with “natural variability.”
Cessation?
Thanks Bob, good stuff once again.
Let’s just hope this trend doesn’t reverse as I shiver typing this on my porch in Sarasota….
I always found this NOAA image enlightening.
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pr/pr_images/glacier.jpg
Yes, a mere 7,000 years ago which was just 2,000 years before the warmest era, the Minoan Warm Period, happened!
Yes, we still had glaciers in North America and parts of Europe back then. We are always one year away from another Ice Age. When this will happen and there is a 100% chance this will happen in the future, when the next Ice Age hits we will have little warning. It will simply begin with the snow not melting one year.
The Minoan Warm Period was about 3300 years ago. One of the peaks of the Holocene Climatic Optimum occurred around 7000 years ago:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01901ead3a7a970b-pi
When you’re reduced to using hundredths of a degree to illustrate “deep ocean” heat you’re grasping at straws. The rate of global warming has obviously slowed; and now the Alarmists are changing the goal posts yet again
Starting around the 9 minute mark some information on Ocean heat content.
Part 1, if you’re interested
Whenever someone claims that the slowdown is insignificant in the long term, I try to point out that the same holds true for the late C20th rise.
Thanks, Bloke down the pub.
The issue is all these AGW pundits start with the founding premise that there is such a thing as Global warming (or Global Cooling) with the root cause being human activity.
From this point onwards, they can examine the entrails of the beast in as many ways or perspectives as the ever expanding datasets and their individual and group-think imagination allows.
Like fractal images or the kaleidoscope, the image and results keep changing the more they run their models then produce graphs and papers ad infinitum.
The well-funded AGW bandwagon rolls on, and on and on..
Like Newton trying to “crack” the mystery of the Philosophers Stone, their basic credo will simply result in reams of wasted paper, ink and years of their precious time.
Do they actually ask the question, “is AGW real?” every time they get an inconclusive result?
I think not, that brick wall has a lot of human forehead tissue on its surface.
3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade does seem infinitesimal when measuring a body as large as oceans and I do have to wonder the margin of error in those fractions of a degree.
Whats most interesting the graph in the article shows a marked increase, if you were not paying attention to how the X axis was set would think the oceans were about to reach the boiling point in a matter of decades. Bob was being informative as always with the graph, but in less scrupulous hands is used to frighten the public.
The surface station datasets are infested with poor data quality, homogenizations, unaccounted-for UHI, station dropouts and at best dubious corrections. The resulting error bars should disqualify them at this point from consideration as a reliable data source.
Assuming the temperature peaked 10 years ago and has been flat since, it makes sense that every year will be one of the top ten years. It might give the warmists a talking point, but otherwise is a big “so what”.
Looks like he took the 101 course in Cherry-Picking, Straw Manning, Torturing the data, and Spin, and passed with flying colours. Good job.
Hard to pick cherries when one can’t see any. Care to show us the cherries Bruce?
Step one towards better vision would be to remove the CAGW goggles.
Well, for starters, HadCRUT4 was implemented because 1998 was the warmest year on record acording to the previous hadCRUT3. So they modified the way global temperatures were calculated and, voilá, now 2005 and 2010 are slightly warmer.
But the main point is that this article is just another smokescreen. Temperatures do not follow CO2 levels during these last 15 years the way the used to follow during the previous 15 years. The foregone conclusion is that CO2 levels and temperatures are not correlated. (if they were, then what is the correlation constant?)
urederra, I like that – that should be used much more often. In fact, I think those that argue on climate forums (I don’t) should use that again and again. They don’t like it up ’em.
unrederra has the kernel of the nut. The hypothesis that carbon dioxide could increase global temperature was only plausible while temperatures were rising as carbon dioxide was rising. (that would be the c-pick) Once any evidence of coupling stopped, where temperature data no longer showed a rise but carbon dioxide concentration data continued to show an increase, the hypothetical relationship is no longer plausible. End of supposed relationship. The trajectory of global temperature data is not predictable using carbon dioxide concentration data. This too has been proven since the modeling, that utilized whatever mystery math, has not predicted the observed temperature data at the current carbon dioxide concentration. You can wish for whatever but from where I sit you have to conclude the changes observed in carbon dioxide concentration since 1950 has no effect on global temperature. I don’t care if we all fry or freeze tomorrow, carbon dioxide won’t be the cause.
I think I’ve found the missing heat: it’s in my mother-in-law’s apartment.
Since 1998 (possibly earlier) she has steadily but imperceptibly raised her thermostat such that her home is now sweltering, not only to me but as reviewed by my peers. While I recognize that she is but a single cherry-picked data point, the consensus among 97% of son/daughter-in-laws is that this man made phenomenon is universal. This can thus be extrapolated to billions of homes – a number that increases as the population ages.
I am seeking funds to populate a Billion-Residences-Of-In-Laws (BROIL) database to establish the magnitude and trend of this important effect.
Nice
You may not get any funds though, because you have omitted that all important word, Unprecedented!’ 🙂
How about Stand Still to describe the trend in the temperature anomaly.
It’s not quite exact, since there are substantial “jitters” from one year to the next.
According to NOAA by their land based thermometers 2014 is headed towards being the warmest year on record. But according to satellite measurements 2014 is nothing special in regards to temperature:
Why 2014 Won’t Be the Warmest Year on Record.
October 21st, 2014
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Yearly-global-LT-UAH-RSS-thru-Sept-2014.png
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/10/why-2014-wont-be-the-warmest-year-on-record/
That is a very serious discrepancy, yet there has been no great desire among climate scientists to resolve it. It would be like physicists simply accepting two divergent methods for measuring lengths, and different groups of physicists using which measured length they like.
In such a scenario don’t you think there would great skepticism in calling physics an “exact” science?
Bob Clark
“That is a very serious discrepancy, yet there has been no great desire among climate scientists to resolve it.”
There is no problem resolving it. They are measuring different places. SST is warming faster than the troposphere.
Science certainly is easy for you, isn’t it Nick. For you, there is always an obvious explanation, and viola! It always happens to confirm the conclusion you wanted to reach in the first place!
So as the years pass and the surface record, composed of millions of highly adjusted and massaged data points, diverges ever further from the satellite record as the adjusters warm the present and cool the past, you will just choose to ignore the satellite data. Perfect! Problem solved!
Nick Stokes: So there IS a discrepancy, but different vast areas of earth means they must be different? Or must they? Why must they be different? Climate Scientists sure are an incurious lot.
“SST is warming faster than the troposphere.”
Except climate models predict exactly the opposite trends. Whenever I see a Nick Stokes post appear in the comment section I always have an image of a weasel forming in my head.
For me, it looks like a classical inflection point in a slow cycle. In stock markets (and some other places) you tend to get a spike, sometimes in a pair, at the inflection point. Stock traders call this a ‘blow off top’. The cycle rises into it, make a spike, falls, sometimes tries a second spike that is lower or at most equal to the first, then the long decline side of the cycle begins.
For stock prices, I can explain it (based on human nature and the desire to see a trend continue, while ‘smart money’ swaps sides), but for climate cycles I can’t. (Best I could do is rabid speculation that, for example, some lunar tidal process has a reversal then and you get ‘sloshing’ in the oceans / tides). Yet the effect is often seen.
So I’d call this a ‘temperature inflection’ in the natural temperature cycles.
Also, the use of an average of temperatures as a proxy for heat content is just Soooo broken. To do proper calorimetry you simply MUST account for mass, specific heats, phase changes, heats of fusion and vaporization, and such. Oh, and you are supposed to NEVER screw around with the thermometers as changing the instruments makes it neigh on impossible to detangle the now dirtied temperature series and effects of location in the calorimeter where you take the temperatures. “Climate Science” violates all those rules. Not to mention that the average of a bunch of temperatures is NOT a temperature. It is a largely meaningless statistic (in terms of real world meaning). You simply can not average an intrinsic property and get a meaningful result.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/intrinsic-extrinsic-intensive-extensive/
I see no reason to trust science done by ‘scientists’ who can’t even get the fundamentals right.
Take the yearly trend from each stations max and min temperatures, separately. Average the lot, grid, and/or weight this. You can remove any outliers (>2.6XSD assuming 1 year in 100 is completely stuffed due to change in measuring temp) and hope all other measurement errors even out. This is then an index of global (land) temperature change. At least do this and compare with the homogenised/adjusted data.
The CLOSING
Global surface temperatures in 2014 are very likely to be at record high levels in 2014. We are going to see that framed in many ways in months
This statement is NOT correct. I will send data that suggest this is indeed the case.
http://models.weatherbell.com/temperature.php
This data is supplied by Weatherbell who are objective when it comes to reporting the data.
State College, PA
Joe Bastardi @BigJoeBastardi
· Nov 15
NCEP CFSR/CFSV2, IMO, most accurate sat era temps, has globe plus .11C since 1981. Not near warmest on record
My reply
I AGREE WITH THIS 100%.
There would have been a fight at that dinner party if I was there.. I swear you guys are losing it.. too sad now, can’t talk 🙁
There was a fight at my works Christmas party last year. I’m self-employed.