Add it to the list of over 50 excuses for the pause from climate science now on record…this time its small volcanoes.
Small volcanic eruptions partly explain ‘warming hiatus’
The “warming hiatus” that has occurred over the last 15 years has been partly caused by small volcanic eruptions.
Scientists have long known that volcanoes cool the atmosphere because of the sulfur dioxide that is expelled during eruptions. Droplets of sulfuric acid that form when the gas combines with oxygen in the upper atmosphere can persist for many months, reflecting sunlight away from Earth and lowering temperatures at the surface and in the lower atmosphere.
Previous research suggested that early 21st century eruptions might explain up to a third of the recent “warming hiatus.”
New research available online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) further identifies observational climate signals caused by recent volcanic activity. This new research complements an earlier GRL paper published in November, which relied on a combination of ground, air and satellite measurements, indicated that a series of small 21st century volcanic eruptions deflected substantially more solar radiation than previously estimated.
“This new work shows that the climate signals of late 20th and early 21st century volcanic activity can be detected in a variety of different observational data sets,” said Benjamin Santer, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist and lead author of the study.
The warmest year on record is 1998. After that, the steep climb in global surface temperatures observed over the 20th century appeared to level off. This “hiatus” received considerable attention, despite the fact that the full observational surface temperature record shows many instances of slowing and acceleration in warming rates. Scientists had previously suggested that factors such as weak solar activity and increased heat uptake by the oceans could be responsible for the recent lull in temperature increases. After publication of a 2011 paper in the journal Science by Susan Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), it was recognized that an uptick in volcanic activity might also be implicated in the “warming hiatus.”
Prior to the 2011 Science paper, the prevailing scientific thinking was that only very large eruptions – on the scale of the cataclysmic 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, which ejected an estimated 20 million metric tons (44 billion pounds) of sulfur – were capable of impacting global climate. This conventional wisdom was largely based on climate model simulations. But according to David Ridley, an atmospheric scientist at MIT and lead author of the November GRL paper, these simulations were missing an important component of volcanic activity.
Ridley and colleagues found the missing piece of the puzzle at the intersection of two atmospheric layers, the stratosphere and the troposphere – the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where all weather takes place. Those layers meet between 10 and 15 kilometers (six to nine miles) above the Earth.
Satellite measurements of the sulfuric acid droplets and aerosols produced by erupting volcanoes are generally restricted to above 15 km. Below 15 km, cirrus clouds can interfere with satellite aerosol measurements. This means that toward the poles, where the lower stratosphere can reach down to 10 km, the satellite measurements miss a significant chunk of the total volcanic aerosol loading.
To get around this problem, the study by Ridley and colleagues combined observations from ground-, air- and space-based instruments to better observe aerosols in the lower portion of the stratosphere. They used these improved estimates of total volcanic aerosols in a simple climate model, and estimated that volcanoes may have caused cooling of 0.05 degrees to 0.12 degrees Celsius since 2000.
The second Livermore-led study shows that the signals of these late 20th and early 21st eruptions can be positively identified in atmospheric temperature, moisture and the reflected solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere. A vital step in detecting these volcanic signals is the removal of the “climate noise” caused by El Niños and La Niñas.
“The fact that these volcanic signatures are apparent in multiple independently measured climate variables really supports the idea that they are influencing climate in spite of their moderate size,” said Mark Zelinka, another Livermore author. “If we wish to accurately simulate recent climate change in models, we cannot neglect the ability of these smaller eruptions to reflect sunlight away from Earth.”
###
To see the full research, go to Geophysical Research Letters. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL061541/abstract?campaign=wlytk-41855.5282060185 and http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/2014GL062366/
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Wrong does not hold water.
The new website http://whyitsnotco2.com is now being visited at a rate of over 1,000 a week, because it has correct physics and valid evidence supporting that physics. The 21st century new paradigm shift in climate science is explained therein.
Spam
Doug Cotten
Smoke signals; that’s what they are !
so has the rate of small volcanic eruptions increased over the past 15 years? that hardly seems likely, unless there has been some change in the volcanic forcings. are we now to believe that CO2 causes volcanoes?
while large eruptions are less common, there are probably small eruptions occurring all the time, so why would they suddenly have an effect over the past 18 years, and not have an effect before then? what caused the change in the rate of eruptions, if indeed there was a change. maybe there was only a change in the satellite coverage to detect small volcanoes. or some other form of bias.
See this image of the past 22 years of actual atmosphere clarity as measured in HI. (If one HI observatory can sample CO2 accurately for the whole world, obviously a single observatory at the same place can specify atmospheric clarity as well, right?)
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/grad/mloapt/mlo_transmission.gif
There has been NO CHANGE in atmospheric clarity since Pinatubo. Anyone claiming “volcanoes” have caused today’s 18 year-long “pause” is lying.
“The scientific concensus is that there has NOT been a recent increase in volcanic activity. ”
http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/has-there-been-increase-volcanic-activity-past-few-decades
However, the data sometimes seems to disagree:
http://breakfornews.com/anewspic3/wobble/volcanism.gif
http://www.preparingforthegreatshift.org/Volcanic%20Activity%201950%20to%202008.jpg
http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthchanges/gallery/a_powerpoint_intro/volcanism_world_1875-2005.gif
And other times agrees:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/MeehlVolc.jpg
Okay, to be fair, that is the only one I saw that agreed with the claimed scientific consensus… but the consensus is still probably right – just a data collection signal akin to the tornado observation uptick.
But the eruptions as of late may be rather small compared to earlier times.
http://photos.mongabay.com/j/berkeley.earth.results.tempgraph.568.jpg
What I find interesting here is how the temperatures always seemed to have jumped in the 18th century to near modern temperature before plummeting… also that you can make out a growing warming trend all the way from 1750, with volcanoes interrupting the trend. When the volcanoes begin to have a reduced impact the trend increases. By the rules of CAGW theoreticians, this correlation is all the proof we would need to blame the reduced intensity of volcanic eruptions … if humans somehow caused a decrease in volcanic eruptions.
Seems the only possible conclusion. We must act quickly to control CO2 emissions or we will all be up to our necks in red hot lava. Science marches on … (To the beat of a distinctly peculiar drummer)
RACookPE1978,
One observatory at Hawaii is enough to measure the global CO2 trend, as the 70+ other well situated stations (of which 10 owned by NOAA) show the same trends…
But there is definitively a difference in the spread of volcanic aerosols over the latitudes and between the hemispheres. For the large eruptions like Pinatubo, that makes hardly a difference.
Even the Pinatubo (VEI 6) had little, temporarily (1-2 years) influence on temperatures. As the VEI (volcanic explosion index) is logarithmic, you need a lot of small volcanoes to reach the same amount of SO2 and most of it doesn’t even reach the stratosphere for less explosive eruptions which makes that SO2 is washed out in a few days by rain or as “dry” deposit…
As already said by others, all what the researchers have done is adding some more SO2 to the calculations from a part of the atmosphere near the poles which wasn’t monitored. But nobody measured if there was a trend in total volcanic SO2 over the years…
“CO2 causes volcanoes?”
Sure.. When GAIA sees too much CO2 in her upper atmosphere, she sets off some small volcanoes to cool things down.
My point exactly Mr. Berple
Somebody help me with this:
Recently there have been a rash of “documentaries” on Earth’s history bluntly stating that there was a rash of volcanic activity during the Permian that caused volumes of CO2 to overheat the atmosphere, causing the Permian extinction. Also, a rash of volcanism and resulting CO2 that caused the planet to exit snowball Earth.
But what we actually observe following major eruptions is cooling (Laki, Tambora, Cosiguina, Krakatoa, El Chichon, Pinatubo et.al.). So what’s the real truth? My money’s on these recent “documentaries” telling porkies.
Anyone?
Why would anyone even read what Santer says…. He has zero credibility
So why has there been an ‘increase’ in small volcanic activity? Blame co2. Comedy gold!
Willis has nailed it. Dismiss the paper.
Small pre- and post-2000 volcanic eruptions
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/09/volcanoes-once-again-again/
Well, according to Prof. Thomas Stocker, a leading IPCC exponent, this small volcanic eruptions must have stopped quite suddenly after the “heat record” in 2014. In an interview with the swiss newspaper “Schweiz am Sonntag” (on the 28th of December) he says:
“I am glad about the heat record of 2014 because the term warming hiatus is now disproved” (my translation of ” froh über das Rekordjahr 2014, denn der Begriff Erwärmungspause ist nun vom Tisch “).
See! The hiatus is over now and small volcanos are not needed any longer… 🙂
Well, isn’t it funny that people like Stocker said the pause is not long enough to disprove AGW by CO2 but now claim the pause is over after only one and very questionable “record” year, given the contrary satellite data results and given the very tiny differences within the measuring error in the used “record” temperature datasets… ???
A Mosher driveby with Stokes timing. Excellent.
And delivered by a sun-worshipper with an exotic, sacerdotal moniker!
Those other two need to up their game.
I am still learning about CAGW, but I do have one data point to add, which may be relevant. I was working in Spokane, WA in 1980, and Mt Saint Helens erupted on a Sunday. I believe it was May 20th. When the fallout reached Spokane around noon, it turned the day to pitch black night, because of the dust, which was like talcum powder in Spokane. The 2 inches of dust fallout continued to be stirred up during the rest of the year, and I do not believe the temperature ever approached the temperature on May 20th, before noon. This is all from memory, and as such it may be somewhat in error. There was a lot of fallout from this erruption and a very extensive fallout pattern.
but
does?
Looks like we have moved on since the days of “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
This conventional wisdom was largely based on garbage being put into climate model simulations – fixed.
Sounds like the Clean Air Act deprived atmosphere of needed sulphur dioxide which would have nullified effect of carbon dioxide, Law of unintended consequences indeed, ;0)
Which pause is this? Or (silly me) you surely mean the slowdown
Idiot,
No, we’re discussing the ‘pause’, AKA: global warming stopping many years ago.
http://tiny.cc/3vo7rx
Even Ben Santer admits that global warming has stopped. Why can’t you?
Oh, an appeal to authority.
Huh….Just me getting confused, what with 2014 weighing in as the warmest surface year
Bill 2
No, there was no appeal to authority.
dbstealey asked a question and justified the question by saying he was asking why there was a disagreement.
There are far too many unfounded assertions of ad homs. and of appeals to authority on WUWT, and they reduce the importance of correct accusations of such logical fallacies.
Richard
dbstealey
What are you going to say if and when we get significantly warmer years than the last 12 – when agreed there has been a pause. You may need to get the excuses ready soon.
Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can download the data from several different sources and find the “pause.” They can even download free world class software like R and then plot and analize the “pause.” The learning curve is steep, but it stretches one’s mind, so a good thing generally. So, no it was not an appeal to authority. Instead the point made was that Santer, who is typically seated on the opposite side of the aisle is trying to work the “pause” into a world view where it doesn’t fit well at all.
No Bill2. It’s an appeal to another idiot. If one idiot can see the problem than another might be able unless, of course, he is a bigger idiot than the original. See what I mean ?
James Abbott,
The really nice thing about a genuinely scientific view point is that one is not taken by surprise when nature acts naturally. There IS NO TIME SCALE at which you can point to either a trend or lack of one in climate data that does not terminate or reverse. We do not know what “normal” climate is in any sense but that of our own experience. There is not even evidence that such a thing as a “normal” climate, locally or globally, exists. At the very most, we observe temporary metastable periods during which our perceptions can convince us that this how things “are.” But they aren’t, they never were really, and they will change. Only the religious and the political will be taken by surprise.
There are far too many unfounded assertions
=========
that is an unfounded assertion.
Some call it a pause (hiatus – OED), some call it a plateau, I call it a standstill but we do know that it’s STOPPED. It is not kicking.
Ben Santer says:
Here are others on the matter.
James Abbott
..speaking of excuse’s, what does Ben Santer and his collegues use for an excuse when asked why they have been misleading the public and media for those 12 yrs. by claiming it was getting warmer? They get to claim warmer and warmer every year, now they can agree that there was a “pause” but no one in the media, or academia is questioning their flip flop
Village intellectually impoverished person,
I feel your pain! All these pauses and hiatuses and cessations and ends; it’s hard to know what to make of it.
Especially when your main man, Ben, (yup, Benjamin Santer, the famous pugilist wannabe, denizen of dark alleys), calls it a STASIS.
After you’ve looked that word up in the dictionary, drop Ben a line and let him know how coming to a halt differs from slowing down.
Silly you!
….and the usual speculative language. “Previous research suggested that early 21st century eruptions might explain up to a third of the recent “warming hiatus.””. Note that they hold onto the “warming” aspect as well. Not “flat temperatures”, but “warming hiatus”, which “suggests” that it’s not over yet, folks.
Once again: “If the natural forcings are enough to “cause a pause”, how are they not enough to cause the late 20th century “warming”?
first they trick you into believing the LIA ended in 1850…………
Well it is a matter of faith.
Depending on your faith you will believe it is either God (due to the evilness of men), men (of their own doing with CO2), or natural forcing (evolution has its own game to play) that brings the world as we know it to an end.
What is unfortunate is that in Climate Science faith is so easily confused with science.
Volcanos heat the stratosphere as is clearly visible in the el chchon and pinatub events. The stratosphere has been cooling since pinatubo.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V6/images/santerfig.jpg
Hans Erren:
You need to get up to speed on volcanoes.El
Chincon and Pinatubu were category 5.
None since Pinatubo have been category 5.
It takes a 5 volcano to eject aerosols into the stratosphere, where it lingers for a year or so.
Aerosols are quickly removed from the troposphere. Read up, Hans.
That is why the small volcano theory is busted
Hans,
I mistook your comment. Please disregard mine.
Hans, so the small volcano excuse is used to avoid the stratosphere evidence? Again, my question: Has there been a marked increase in small volcano activity in the past 18 years?
Hans Erren,
Make sense, stratospheric volcanic aerosols abosrob incoming sunlight, thereby warming up the surrounding atmosphere.
Consistent with rising CO2 levels in the stratosphere, yes?
mpainter then says, It takes a 5 volcano to eject aerosols into the stratosphere, where it lingers for a year or so. Aerosols are quickly removed from the troposphere.
to which you reply,
However the cited paper is still talking about the stratosphere, not the troposphere. I’d also like to know where it’s written that VEI 5 or higher is required to get aerosols into the stratosphere, and why we’d be disposed to believe those citations but not the paper currently being discussed.
For the record, I’m not convinced the small volcano hypothesis has been either confirmed or busted. I do have my leanings of course.
By the look of that graph, the stratosphere seems to have a very slight warming trend since 1995. But global warming theory says the stratosphere will cool. If it doesn’t cool then CO2-induced warming theory is simply incorrect, yes?
Exactly!
Yes Big Jim, except when it doesn’t and then it is ignored.
“Volcanos heat the stratosphere as is clearly visible in the el chchon and pinatub events.”
==========================================
Well,yes and no.
Yes, there is undoubtedly a short-term warming effect while the aerosols persist in the stratosphere, but look what happens when the aerosols clear out and return to their previous levels : The temperatures don’t follow all the way back up again, and there is a “step-down” cooling of about (eyeball test) 0.3C.
On that basis, you could reasonably argue that large-scale volcanic events actually cause longer-term stratospheric cooling. Which is interesting to say the least……….
Anything:
Yes, the stepdown cooling of the stratosphere after El Chinchon and Pinatubo is significant and tells us something. Note also the lower troposphere warming that followed the initial cooling. Could be that the volcanic aerosols helped clear the stratosphere and increase insolation.
A chain of events like this:
V aerosols—>warm stratosphere/cool troposphere;
Then,
V aerosols remove previous aerosols increasing clarity of stratosphere, —>stratosphere cools/troposphere warms.
So possibly the volcanic aerosols somehow effectuated the removal of previous aerosols of the stratosphere.
Nice work Hans. And don’t worry. We’ll catch up to you.
Here are the daily UAH temps for the lower stratosphere and the lower troposphere. There is no volcano signal either than Pinatubo and El Chicon. Note there is a step change down by 0.5C or so after the effects of the volcanoes dissipate. Ozone destruction is the reason and it appears to take up to 25 years or more for the Ozone to rebuild. Its a good thing the large volcanoes don’t happen very often because if there was more than 10 per century, there would be no Ozone layer.
http://s13.postimg.org/80nn8so8n/UAH_Daily_TLS_TLT_1978_2014.png
Santer is a faker. He was the lead author (along with all the heavy-weights in climate science) on a paper in 2011 that said a pause lasting more than 17 years in the lower troposphere would indicate there was little human-induced global warming. We are now at 18 years, 3 months.
http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-010-476.pdf
Hmm, seems everyone has trouble spelling Chichon.
There is also a temporary drop in precipitation. http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/pics/1212_figure_appell.jpg despite a slight jump in stratospheric humidity.http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/hurst_figure2.png. and no noticeable drop in tropospheric humidity.http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3165/2969626920_2fb2aa74fd_z.jpg?zz=1
There is no change in O3 at the South Pole http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/iadv/ozwv/graphs/ozwv.SPO.o3.12.none.discrete.all.png after 1992 and just a small change at the Arctic surface for a short time.
Its something to do with cloud formation rather than ozone.
The stratosphere has been cooling since 1980. The volcano events [are] blips.
are, not “at”.
NO! It WAS cooling, but then it stopped cooling. The graph by Hans Erren clearly shows even a very slight warming since 1995. This explodes CO2-induced warming theory. For CO2 to warm the planet, the stratosphere must cool. It was doing so, but that cooling stopped 20 years ago!
Clearly, the only cooling of the stratosphere is the stepdown cooling associated with the two big volcanoes.
sulfur dioxide = acid rain = man’s fault
…damn I wish they would make up their minds
hiatus = ~15 years = China has increased sulfur dioxide emissions 50% since 1999
http://www.epa.gov/ttnchie1/conference/ei19/session5/lu.pdf
Paywalled.
I don’t see in the abstract that actual eruptions were counted during the study period or before, nor that outgassing measurements of these alleged increased eruptions were made and tabulated to back the models. Is this just not mentioned? Is this information available somewhere, especially from before the period of study so an evaluation can be made as to whether the modeled increase in volcanic aerosols is unprecedented or abnormal?
How many more excuses will they come up with? It is so embarrassing reading all this pseudo-science.
This is precisely why aliens won’t ever land here while this pathetic corruption is going on. There’s a big “No parking” sign in orbit somewhere.
They only hit trailer parks anyway.
This one is so lame I can’t poke fun. It would be like kicking a mentally challenged kid.
I know it’s not PC, but go ahead….you know you want to !!
” It would be like kicking a mentally challenged kid.”
Not even close, the kid has no say in the matter.
I say that Ben S is mentally challenged if he believes that BS.
Yes, except that the mentally challenged kid is making policy for everyone.
Every time these warmists open their mouths or graphing software, rather than using accepted scientific rules, they commence with their patent belief in the fallacious theory of AGW. BTW what has happened to the 97% “consensus” is that still being heard around the pulpits?
Metaphorically adding more epicycles.
Vermont Governor used it yesterday at 1st legislative meeting of 2015 and declared, actually quite a loud desperate voice, “We have to go forward with renewables and implement carbon taxes”. I think too many of our Dems have fallen for the bait and switch or, and I do wonder about this, are they just too ignorant to get it? In fairness, although I’m not feeling particularly fair and have just submitted my latest climate bomb to local paper – which has the decency to publish them – the idiots are not qualified to learn about this. Not in their educational toolkit, but don’t get me started on that.
Obfuscated by the truth that much of this is very complex – chaos doesn’t mean the same thing to us and them – and their advice comes from an interim dean of the College of Environmental Science, of course wanting to become pertinent, from University of Vermont who has a degree in economics.
Of course this is the home of three fifty dot org and they seek that scientific advice too.
I listened to that broadcast; it seemed like half of his address was Climate Change Catastrophe Cash Campaigning.
Yup, the fix is in. Discouraging, but Rud has agreed to help me with some attempts at compelling communications about climate reality.
Unfortunately, and I’ve learned the hard way, logic and facts cannot sway beliefs. Requires a religious like conversion. Going to try anyway, but also contemplating moving.
There is no such thing as a “carbon” tax, there are just “new” taxes.
The problem with new taxes is that they need a rational and a victim to target the taxes towards. The rational is save the planet, the targets are fossil fuel companies. The political thinking is who does not want to be responsible to their environment, and fossil fuel companies are making too much money in supplying the energy that supports 99% of civilization.
The problem is many people can tell the difference between laws that prevent local rivers from being polluted and hair brained schemes to save the planet a century from now. Many also recognize any hurt put on energy companies trickles down to them hurting them individually.
Models prove that the GW pause is caused by volcanoes… so you know it has to be true.
cnxtim,
It appears as if the ‘97%’ nonsense has been beaten into submission by facts and logic. Some folks still cling to it, but you’re right. They aren’t preaching it like they used to.
not yet universal and logic and facts aren’t working here – look above for my comment
“97%” is like an urban myth, it will never die, hopefully though it will stop being used in scientific circles.
” They used these improved estimates of total volcanic aerosols in a simple climate model”
#####
and got more estimates. Where is the comparison with the past?
Without that, this is just more garbage.
Here is another item on the intelligence test.
It may be concluded that this is meant to hoodwink the gullible. Let’s see who shows up to defend this.
My only question: how could this hypothesis be disproved?
dangerdad
The improbable hypothesis does not need to be disproved.
Even if the hupothesis were true then the model only manages to explain a third of the so-called “pause”: there still remains no explanation for two thirds of the AGW which was predicted but has not happened.
So long as most of the “pause” remains unexplained then an explanation for a bit of the “pause” can be ignored until AGW is forgotten.
Richard
I should have stated, how is this falsifiable? Typical of non-science, this stuff is just “hey, I bet this works — plug these numbers from my ass into an algorithm from someone else’s ass and boom! proven”
“up to one third” includes zero doesn’t it?
Easily disproved by tracking past temperature records vs volcanic activity. WIllis E has already done it here. Little if any correlation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/24/volcanoes-erupt-again/
Yes we have moved past causation to way past correlation is not causation, to if I can think it, it must be.
Quick we need to start burning more coal, to raise atmospheric sulphate aerosol levels! 🙂
Sulphur is bad. No 2 ways about that. HF (hydrogen-fluoride) is also very bad. Both quite acidic and very detrimental to life.
But, CO2 though is good. Feeds our plants, which feeds us. Makes the wheat and barley which makes my beer… even better. CO2 is our friend.
Sulphur is not bad. Sulphur like many acids are a component of life and has it’s uses. CO2 is essential to life, but I wouldn’t want to be locked in an airtight room with the only thing to breath being CO2. Labeling various components as good or bad is gross generalization by selectively picking out negative properties of those components.
Life is a dance of life and death.
Wrong! (Channeling smoosher here)
LOL…………
I detect some insincerity here.
LOL
How did it feel to do that?
I dare you to do Willis.
My reading must be running together because I swore this was already one of the 52. Guess I read it elsewhere (and I apologize for not bringing it up).
But the important part is that he DOES recognize the pause. Which makes some of the fruit bats posting around who deny it outliers even on their own team.
Um… So I should infer from this that small scale eruptions never happened until the late 20th century?
Oh. Wait. Someone did make that claim. So nasty humans made global warming that triggered volcanoes that stopped global warming… except cooling anthropogenic sulfur dioxide should have countered the warming anthropogenic CO2, preventing the warming that caused the cooling that…
If they weren’t hell-bent of destroying civilization, it would be hilarious.
‘Pause’ was suppose to be 18 years long, but NOAA’s land temperatures (ocean’s are far too uncertain) for either hemisphere or global, shows no such thing. ( just sayin’ )
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NOAAlandNSGt.gif
vukcevic
No. You are not “just saying”: you are just cherry picking.
The data sets show a cessation to warming.
You have chosen parts of the data sets which show warming.
The other parts show cooling.
Saying the parts you have not cherry-picked “are far too uncertain” does not cut it. I think the complete data sets are far too uncertain, but one accepts them or rejects them. Choosing the parts of a data set which fits an argument is not acceptable.
My point has especial importance when discussing an analysis by Ben Santer. In the 1990s he claimed to have found a ‘fingerprint’ of AGW but his claim was soon rejected because the ‘fingerprint’ was determined to be an effect of his having selected a part of a data set and not the entire data set.
Richard
Hi Mr. Courtney
Nice to see you are back, I always read your very informative CO2 comments. I did indeed ‘cherry pick’ on purpose:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/clip_image002.png
Most of the indicators I look at (solar, Arctic atmospheric pressure, N. Atlantic tectonics) imply that the land temperatures should be falling already. My ‘explanation’ is that the ocean’s inertia is keeping land temperatures up, but that appears not to be the case. Since land is only 25% of the global surface, the land’s rise may be ‘swamped’ by the longer term ‘constancy’ of the oceans, but that can’t be correct either, since in the previous decades oceans’ temps were rising at a rate similar to the land’s.
My comment in a sense was ‘provocative’ with a purpose, perhaps someone might come up with a plausible explanation of above (as I see it) dichotomy.
if that graph is correct, shouldn’t 1998 be much higher than the rest of the temperatures?
Yes, global temperatures did peak in 1998 ( I added GT to the graph), but not for land, so it must be the oceans. Question is why oceans would go high in a single year but not the land, which is far more responsive (i.e. land has far less inertia)
If there were a global temperature you might be correct. There isn’t, so you’re not.
By far the largest temperature excursions are seasonal i.e. summer to winter, and since there is no global summer or winter, global temperature is nonstarter.
In same way annual temperatures are also statistical sludgepool, clearly shown by case of the CET, with no summer warming whatsoever for whole of its 350 year long record. (see HERE )
The black line is all that matters.
Whoa!
“The “warming hiatus” that has occurred over the last 15 years…
There you have it, it is a “hiatus” (Dictionary dot com – “a break or interruption in the continuity…”).
Global Warming will resume, so sayith Santer.
That is good to know since it has been getting awfully cold around here lately.
He’ll be back in the summer.
Simply wrong AFAICT. I’ve spent personal energy — as has Willis IIRC — trying to find a climate signal in “notable” volcanic activity. The scale is VEI (volcanic explosivity index) which is a log scale, so each number is another power of ten. I’ve compared to both Mauna Loa atmospheric transparency, where really large volcanoes do indeed produce a signal, and to the climate record looking for thermal bobbles in association with volcanoes large and small.
There isn’t the slightest trace for VEI <= 4. VEI 5 events — things like El Chichon and Mt. St. Helens, major explosions — produce a tiny visible effect in Mauna Loa data and a tiny, tiny signal in the temperature record, one that isn't even terribly consistent and that has a very short lifetime. VEI 6 — Mt. Pinatubo — has a clear effect in transmission at Mauna Loa and still has a barely discernible influence on temperature, one that lasted about two years and was still not really discriminable from the background of natural fluctuation and change.
It takes 100 VEI 4 events to equal one VEI 6 event, and from 1800 to the present there have been only 129 recorded events 4 or higher. It takes 1000 VEI 3 events to equal one Pinatubo, and there are thought to be only around 500 active volcanoes worldwide, and the vast majority of them sputter along at VEI-almost-nothing.
So this fails the common sense test. The numbers just don’t add up. In fact, volcanoes are a major null factor in the climate in general — if you try to actually fit events as a function of their VEI as CORRECTIONS to any sort of general background behavior of T, the best fit sucks and suggests that (as I said) under VEI 5 you are wasting your time, there is a tiny effect of VEI 5 volcanoes larger or smaller in sync with their sulfur content, and VEI 6 volcanoes still only produce a SMALL effect. Maybe Mt Tambora (the only 7 event of the last 200+ years) would have a noticeable effect, but HADCRUT4 doesn’t really get there. Krakatoa, like Pinatubo, is almost nothing, a 1-2 year dip no larger than natural fluctuations on the same timescale.
So Santer is probably off by a factor of 100 to 1000 in what would be needed to explain “the pause”. And if you look directly at the Mauna Loa transmission data, it just isn’t there. ML is all but flat over the last 15 years — noise and tiny spikes uncorrelated with temperature drops.
rgb
Could it be that smaller VEI events don’t directly affect temperature, but affect something that does have some temperature authority? Clouds, rain, other?
If volcanism were the driving factor in the pause or hiatus, then, contrary to the Smithsonian’s, USGS’s, and other efforts to measure global volcanic activity, the rate of volcanic events had to have increased since the early ’90s. I can’t find any data to support that.
Right. See my referenced post below.
from the abstract: “A vital step in detecting these volcanic signals is the removal of the “climate noise”
That’s what set off my BS detector!
As soon as I saw who the lead author was, I immediately thought, “That’s BS!”
I agree about removing the climate noise.
rgb,
Thanks for the clear summary!
Mac
Perhaps you should read this paper which showed that the AOD (Aerosol Optical Depth- mostly due to volcanoes) was an important contributor to the variability of the temperature record.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
They did not say this caused the pause, I read it that they said it was yet another thing that has been neglected by climate modelling.
William Handler
Whatever you think, the press release quoted above begins
Richard
If they are claiming that small volcanoes are causing the pause (or the lack of man-made warming) do they have data showing that the number of “small” volcanoes is now much more than the number of “small” volcanoes (or volcanoes of any size) during the period where there was actual warming. Or cooling (when global cooling was the latest hysterical rage)?
I think the best response is just to state flat-out that the number of small volcanoes per year has not changed in recorded history, then let them dig up any evidence otherwise. Let them do the nitty-gritty research on what the actual record shows, which is what they needed to do to begin with.
This study suggests that there were no small volcanoes before the ozone hole was created. Now there’s an exciting new line of research…..
The climate models are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year periodicities so obvious in the temperature record. This approach is a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. The models are back tuned for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial.
The entire UNFCCC -IPCC circus is a farce- based, as it is, on the CAGW scenarios of the IPCC models which do not have even heuristic value. The earth is entering a cooling trend which will possibly last for 600 years. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend.
For the cooling forecasts and methods see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The entire UNFCCC -IPCC circus is a farce- based, as it is, on the CAGW scenarios of the IPCC models which do not have even heuristic value.