Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t The Register – the UK MET Office has published a report which suggests the pause in global temperatures might continue for many years to come. Or the pause might not continue. They’re not really sure.
According to The UK MET (talking about the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation);
Despite these signals it is not certain that there will be a shift towards cooler Atlantic conditions over the next few years. Temporary cooling has occurred in the past without leading to a sustained AMO shift. However, the current trends suggest that the chances of a shift in the next few years have increased.
…
The current warm phase is now 20 years long and historical precedent suggests a return to relatively cool conditions could occur within a few years (Knight et al., 2005). However, the short observational record precludes a confident prediction based on observations alone.
…
Observational (Folland et al. 2013) and model (Knight et al. 2005) estimates further suggest AMO shifts have an effect on global mean near-surface temperatures of about 0.1 ̊C. A rapid AMO decline could therefore maintain the current slowdown in global warming longer than would otherwise be the case.
Read more: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/8/c/Changes_In_The_Climate_System.pdf
Lets not forget, what we are dealing with is settled science.
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UK Met office is about OK 3-4 days ahead, 3-4 weeks 50-50, 3-4 months usually 75% wrong, 3-4 years just forget it.
Where I live 3-4 hours is OK, but then it’s usually just easier to look out of the window.
Predicting “the weather today will be about like yesterday” is good about 75 percent of the time.
Last 2 days they have been struggling at 6 hours. I keep saying it, but they can only forecast well when the weather is in what they euphamistically call a predictable mode.
The Met Office are about as useful as used toilet paper.
It’s good to see their previous confidence about continued global warming being shattered. Now they just hedge their bets.
Their models fail because they attribute greater powers to co2 than exists. FAIL
@charlie Martin. I had a student who actually tested the weather tomorrow is more likely to be the same as the weather today hypothesis. He kept track of weather for several months through the fall. It is somewhat problematic how to define “the same”, but he had about 70% the same which I believe was better than the weather forecast for the changeable fall period.
Can’t imagine why anybody pays any attention to climate predictions from the MET. Must be the same reason that news media always interview economists. Any filler is good filler.
Ok, call me confused. “It’s worth stressing that all the incorrect predictions are within the stated margin of error, but having said that, they have all been on the warm side and none have been too cold.”
Does that mean the error bars are wide and that the warming predictions [were all outside] the error bars. Then [when] the real adjusted data showed cooler than expected, but on the warm side of the error bars. Is that what they are trying to say?
After reading the section about the AMO in the their report ‘Big Changes Underway in the Climate System?’, the first impression is that the author(s) are not entirely clear what the AMO is about. Looking at de-trended signal could be misleading. From here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMOq1.gif
it can be seen that the N. Atlantic SST from 1955 to the present time is a more or less repeat of the previous ~100 years with one off 0.4C temperature jump around 1925. It can not be said with any degree of certainty that this indeed happen (rope and bucket measurements). The previous plateau lasted nearly 40 years, while current is less than 20 yeas long, thus if it is premature to expect the SST to rapidly fall.
If there is a fall in the local and global temperatures about to happen it is unlikely to be caused by the AMO, it is more likely that the CO2 is not doing the job expected.
typo: it should read “with one off 0.2C temperature jump around 1925”
Yes, indeed. Temperatures measured with an accuracy of +-1 degree or more, results in an accuracy of 1/50th of a degree. Settled data, as well as settled science….
Vukcevic,
I’ve never seen anyone compare the overlay of the two periods as you did. As a guy who spent most of my career identifying patterns in stock price data, the correlation is remarkable and I’m guessing not coincidence. The spikes around 1875, 1945 and 2008 are particularly interesting.
I suspect that 0.2C shift in 1925 is a data error or a misplaced “correction”. There is a strong similarity between accumulated cyclone energy and Atlantic SST . One thing that stands out is that jump (here 0.1C is removed to match the two).
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=215
Note that is labelled “AMO” but is also using actual SST, not a ‘detrended’ one.
M Scott
At first, I was inclined to think that it was a bit of ‘creative data adjustment, but comparing to two other events
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EAS.htm
it could be a case of ‘history-repeating-itself’.
Mike
Visual impressions using perspective, lot of colour and phoney 3D could be more persuasive when the correlation is not very convincing.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AHA.gif
Climate modellers should try it.
The MO web forecast, for a specific location are only 37% accurate (weather symbols) for the first 24.
Added to which they will have changed radically in detail in the 5 day period prior to the first day.
They say;
“our four day forecast is as accurate as our one day forecast was 30 years ago”
But we’ve only got their word for that.
Here’s Roger Harriban of the BBC’s take on the Met Office’s ‘forecast’ or whatever it’s called.
So there you have it. It could get hotter, pause or something else. We just don’t know but believe us.
Fancy that; not being sure about the future.
UK MET should check with Spencer Weart, who is quite sure that over the next century (that would be the 22nd Century by my calculations) the world will warm up by a few degrees.
If that is the one-couple-few-some- numeral system, that would seem to predict about a three degree per century rate of rise.
And he’s quite sure about that.
I’m not going to hang around and find out if UK MET or Weart, is correct.
g
G.
You never know, the heaven is small place, you might bump into Mr. Weart and find out.
vuk old soul,
I wouldn’t trust A N Y forecast about the UK to even 4 days.
50-50 – at best, I suggest.
4 weeks is fantasy land . . . .
Guided guesses, helped by unicorn droppings I believe.
Months, plural – ohhh *#”./%#, don’t even go there.
When I was a kid – about 8 or 9 – Upstill, Nancekevill, Dixon & me did weather forecasts to our class: basically – ‘Same as today’, plus a sneaky look at the weather systems {if any} coming in.
Over five days we were pretty close on three, IIRC, and not too bad on one other.
The Met – even then [early 1960s] – got about two days right.
Auto
Oh, Oh. The MET forecasts a continuation of the Pause . Watch it get a lot warmer or colder.
That’s it then. The science is settled. Debate over.
Yes, temperatures will rise. Or they will drop. Who can argue otherwise? So the debate is over.
Mike, I will accept that of they call a major press conference and get folk like the Guardian to run the story, and they also follow up with what such an event would mean for natural influence on the climate vs. CO 2.
And we are doomed either way.
The Pause may, or may not, continue….. That is the pause Tom Karl “proved” does not exist.
http://realclimatescience.com/2015/09/guardian-says-they-could-have-predicted-the-hiatus-which-never-happened/
Bingo.
One of the many ‘interesting ‘ features of climate ‘science’ is its heavy use of the , ironically anti-science, ‘tails you lose heads I win’ approach , therefore in this the MET office is merely carrying on has normal.
Actually, we should applaud the Met Office report. It is exactly what a scientific report ought to be : tentative theorising, meticulously presenting alternative predictions, humbly and honestly admitting ignorance. Long may they continue in that vein.
I agree. Unfortunately, conscientious dithering doesn’t provide the same psychic rewards as boldly prophesising.
“It is exactly what a scientific report ought to be : tentative theorising, meticulously presenting alternative predictions, humbly and honestly admitting ignorance …”.
==========================
Nonsense read the summary, the report assumes CO2 is the underlying climate forcing factor with an assortment of ad hoc hypothetical adjustments or metaphoric epicycles added to avoid falsification.
I agree with “me”! I remember during the heavy rains we got here a few years back, the Wet Office was very very good at doing, what Piers Corbyn called, “Nowcasting”! They were great at telling us when the next burst was going to arrive within hours & even a day or two, but that was it. Immediately afterwards, as we wrang out everything that was anything, Dame Julia Slingo was banging on about how brilliant their computer modelling had been at predicting the rainfall, only she forgot to mention that her team had predicted absolutely nothing more than 12-24 hours ahead only, no more! Personally, I am still awaiting the “ah but we never actually said it was going carry on warming, nothing of the kind…….” type of statement from them! tehn we can post all the statements they have made over the last 10 years to really rub the salt in!
When I read the title, I thought “Oh no, that means it’s over”. But I agree with AndyE: if you don’t know, don’t act like you do.
luca
My friend, you are SO right.
“if you don’t know, don’t act like you do”
– and plus shedloads for the UK.
24 hours – well – OK, Slingo’s super-counting-boxes should get pretty close most of the time.
96 hours – no. Random walks, plus you don’t really know where you started, sees to that.
Months ahead – you’re being STOOOOOOPID; it’s like getting a blindfold chimpanzee to throw darts at a dartboard the size of a barn door.
Years/decades ahead – sorry, I will swim through vomit to prove it’s like getting a drunken blindfold chimpanzee to throw darts at a dartboard the size of a v e r y large barn door (think Canaveral’s VAB doors).
Mods – this is not /sarc. This is for real.
I have lived in the UK for >60 years.
We have weather.
It is changeable.
Jolly changeable.
Auto
Funny how with one side of the mouth warmists ask “What pause??” and then proceed with the other side of the mouth proffer numerous excuses for the pause. Are we ever going to get off this merry-go-round… it’s dizzifying. GK
The last major pause was from 1940-1980 during which there were periods( 1964-1976 ) when both AMO and PDO were both in the negative or cool mode simultaneously . AMO is already slowly declining and PDO was in the negative phase since 2007 but it’s decline s was briefly interrupted by the El Nino and the ” blob” in the Pacific Ocean since 2014. By 2017 , the El Nino and blob will likely be both gone, and we could have the start of cooler weather for many l decades ( to 2035/45 at least ).During the latter part of this decade,the PDO pattern and AMO may both again go negative or cool for part of the upcoming cooler period of the climate cycle. . Karl et al manipulations will be shown to be just that with no ability to turn off the forces of nature.. The pause is clearly continuing on most global land areas.
• According to NOAA data, Annual temperature anomalies since 2005 or last 10 years for combined all GLOBAL LAND areas ( 149 million sq. km) have slight decline or flat trend at – 0.02 C/decade
.
• The pause is still real for global land with both land and satellite based measurements.
o It is clear that GLOBAL as in ‘GLOBAL WARMING” is meaningless as the warming is not global wide.
o The trend of North American annual land temperature anomalies has been steadily cooling whether you go back to 1998,2000 or 2005 at -0.20 C /decade, -0.05 C /decade and -0.41 C /decade respectively according to NOAA
o The trend of Northern Hemisphere annual land temperature anomalies has been slightly cooling or flat since 2005 at -0.05 C./decade
o The trend of Southern Hemisphere annual land temperature anomalies has been slightly warming or really flat at + 0.06 C /decade. Africa is also slightly warming or flat at -0.07 C/decade.
•
This plot of North American mean temperature changes from Berkley Earth is good model for the next 30 years for North America in my opinion . The temperatures peaked in 2005 like it did 1940 and are headed for cold trough by 2045 like it did in 1970’s.. Key climate factor to watch is first the PDO pattern as it turns mostly negative and later the same with AMO. as it also goes negative.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Regional/TAVG/Figures/north-america-TAVG-Trend.pdf
What I find interesting about the explanations offered about the pause from the warmisters is that they never, ever seem to say “we found this in our model that threw this off, and now the model has been corrected and actually does show the pause.” They always say “we found this bit of natural variability that is causing the pause in spite of our correct models, thus as soon as this natural variability ceases, our models will be correct.” Or at least, that is how I see their explanations. Am I missing something?
That’s how it always seems to come across to me too. They are fundamentally incapable of admitting the models just *MIGHT* be wrong.
Dr. Rowan Sutton, “Director of Climate” at Reading University, was on the BBC, talking about the report yesterday, and despite much prompting, was very vague on the subject and what it meant for Global and UK temperatures.
One prediction he did make was for cooler SUMMERS in Europe.
last time the atlantic was cool we had better summer weather in the uk and more well defined seasons .
Ask the volcanoes
http://virakkraft.com/AMO-Aerosol.png
“However, the short observational record precludes a confident prediction based on observations alone.”
However, this stock hasn’t been on the market long enough to make a confident prediction based on price history alone.
Exactly, one has to look at the internals of the issuer (the UK Met Office).
Take to some Dramamine first.
According to today’s Telegraph, the Met Orifice seem to think we (UK) are going to have another cold snowy winter due to a strong El Nino causing the Jet Stream over the Atlantic to move South. A few weeks ago they were predicting a mild, wet winter, in the Spring a hot dry Summer, by the law of averages they have to get it right at some stage (I think). Their attempts at forecasting the weather are so amateurish (the strong 2015 El Nino has been mentioned on WUWT fo at least a year) even the BBC has given up with them!
I’ve just consulted my bunnion and it confirms with a probability of 1 that the global average temperature will either rise, fall or be flat over any period of time into the future. Beat that Met Office.
It could just do a somersault though. Then you’d be wrong.
The Met Office is now substantially hedging its bets on the certainty of its long term forecasts .The conclusion of their report states
“Further long-term global warming is expected over the coming decades but variations of climate worldwide from year to year or decade to decade will always depend on the subsequent variations in the patterns of climate variability described in this report”
In other words we expect global warming unless it doesn’t happen because of “climate variability”
The billions spent in the UK on wind, solar and biomass subsidies and its policy of CO2 emission reduction rest on this fragile level of scientific certainty.
There has been no global warming at all since about 1997.
The climate models on which the entire Catastrophic Global Warming delusion rests are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year cycles so obvious in the temperature record. The natural 60 year temperature cycle shows up quite well in the AMO index – Fig 8 in the Met office report – but is not there identified as a temperature cycle. The Met scientists remain blind to the obvious millennial cycle which is ,as usual, completely ignored.
The modelers approach is simply a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is exactly like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. They back tune their models for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial. This is scientific malfeasance on a grand scale.
The temperature projections of the IPCC – UK Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them have no solid basis in empirical science being derived from inherently useless and specifically structurally flawed models. They provide no basis for the discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a foundation for the UNFCCC and Governmental climate and energy policy their forecasts are already seen to be grossly in error and are therefore worse than useless.
A new forecasting method needs to be adopted. For forecasts of the timing and extent of the coming cooling based on the natural solar activity cycles – most importantly the millennial cycle – and using the neutron count and 10Be record as the most useful proxy for solar activity check my blog-post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
For a simple summary see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-epistemology-of-climate-forecasting.html
~ 60 (actually 63) year and millennial (1008 years, 16 x 63) cycles appear to be of the same parentage (see here ).
So the Met Office is 90-95% confident that they don’t have the slightest idea what is going to happen.
So leon, if you are 95% confident that an event is going to happen; based on your statistical analysis of a steam of data which is never ever going to happen again; and when the time comes, your confidentevent simply did not happen, are you still 95% confident that you made the right call, or does your confidence drop to zero.
And if your prediction should actually come true and the event occurs; does that mean your calculation is wrong, and you should have got 100% instead of 95%.
It seems to me, that an event (any event) which can only happen once, or only not happen once, will either not happen or will happen. Those are the only choices.
So how do you put a probability on a prediction where the outcome will either be a zero or a one, but can never be anything but one of those two.
I think that all that one can say about tomorrow’s Temperature or other variable is that it is impossible to choose between it going up or going down or staying the same as today’s value.
Whatever statistical analysis you do on past events (data set) that result gives no information at all about ANY event that is not in that data set, and that includes all of the future.
I am surprised that the Met Office did not read the memo from NOAA that the Pause in global warming is non-existent. Talk about a confused lot they seem to be.
Oh, what tangled web…
The global temp. trend will be down before this decade ends.
What do you mean by that exactly, Salvatore?
Do you mean the 10, 20, 30 year trend? Do you mean there will be cooling relative to today or relative to some prior time?
It’s a rather ambiguous statement.
Some years ago (2007(?)) I did an experiment that I wish I had continued for several years. I noted that theweathernetwork.com forecasts for Ottawa, Canada were almost invariably too high and I suspected that that was the CAGW bias that they believed would be there. It was as much as 2C too, high. Also, their 14 day prognosis almost always rose up near the end of the period, only to be pushed back down again. My experiment was to take their 5 day forecast and knock off, IIRC, 1C average from the last 3 days if their first day had been estimated too high in the forecast 5 days previously and 0.5C where they were close.
My forecast record proved to be considerably superior to theirs. I should have made a permanent file out of my pencilings and continued it. I reckon someone with the time and patience could actually work out the CAGW factor that is multiplied by regularly determined forecast temps and use it to make better forecasts. Maybe you could sell it to the BBC!! That the MetOffice was diametrically wrong on 11 of the last 12 seasonal forecasts is actually usable data! It would make a good paper. Possibly the fudge factor is directly related to the ratio of temperatures of a climate sensitivity of 2:1.
Wait a minute, the headline to this that sprang up on Yahoo! stated that the Met Office had predicted the end of the hiatus…
“Temporary cooling has occurred in the past without leading to a sustained AMO shift.”
The last cool phase or pause of 1940-1980 in global temperatures did not start with a negative or cool AMO. Rather it started with a negative or cool patter of the PDO . AMO did not go negative until about 20 years into the cool cycle or pause . I think the key factor that starts and sustains the pause is the sign of PDO and when it goes and remains mostly negative (or cool pattern) A negative AMO makes the temperature trough worse or colder especially for the Atlantic provinces in Canada and primarily the North Eastern US States.
Here is a sequence of events leading into the pause of 1940-1980
PDO pattern starts to decline from mostly warm( positive ) phase pattern after 1936
• Arctic temperatures peak in 1938 and 1943 and start to cool after 1944
• Cooler temperatures start in western North America after about 1935/1940
• PDO fluctuates near zero 1937-1939, but positive 1940-1941 due to an El Nino and finally goes mostly negative in 1944
• North Pacific stays warm1940-1960 while PDO is in a negative pattern ( or cool mode)
• Cooler temperatures in Eastern North America after 1945/ 1950
• Eastern Canada starts to cool after 1950 ( almost 10 years after western Canada)
• AO goes mostly negative 1950
• Europe and Russia starts to cool by 1950 (except a brief cold period 1939/1942)
• Mexico temperatures start to decline after 1950
• AMO goes negative 1965
• Cold temperatures trough or coldest in the 1970,s
• No net warming( A PAUSE) between 1940’s and 1980’s
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1930/to:1976/plot/esrl-amo/from:1930/to:1976
All NH and global records showed substainal cooling from the 1940s high to the 1979 Ice age scare. Not a pause, but cooling.
David A
I agree that there was regional cooling for NH which bottomed about late 1970’s but by 1980 the temperatures had recovered , so no net warming during the period 1940-1980 . Globally there was more of a flat period than major cooling
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1980/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1980/trend
shows global and regional temperatures during 1940-1980.
https://www2.ucar.edu/news/how-much-has-global-temperature-risen-last-100-years
During the 1940’s and 1970’s the global temperatures showed significant cooling and the Arctic too.
The link is wrong and has been adjusted many times to remove the cooling.
The reason why the cooling has been increasingly removed through the decades is so it makes the difference between the 2000’s and 1940’s bigger. It is dishonest trick that has fooled many people.
Arctic temperatures showed significant cooling.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0485%281979%29009%3C0580%3AAAOASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
“Fig. 6 shows the time series (24-month running mean) of the area averaged surface temperature for the polar cap north of 60N. The plot was constructed by adding data for the years 1976 and 1977 to the temperature set described by Walsh (1977). The slope of the linear regression line fitted to the temperature series is negative, implying a net temperature decrease over the past 25 years;”
HADCRUT4 and GISS still show a little cooling, but it was much bigger in the past.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:1979/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:1979/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1979/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1979/trend
the met office and noaa are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. the bbc said last night the el nino would be enhanced by man made climate change . now if we count all the hiroshima bombs worth of heat added to the system since 1998 as a result of all the extra anthropogenic co2 (according to the morons at places like sks) ,it must surely overwhelm any natural fluctuation.
if i see anything less than a larger spike in satellite temps than the 1998 el nino i am going to visit the met office personally,find out if these clowns have the courage of their convictions in the physical sense. i have had enough of the complete and utter shite these cretins spout remaining unchallenged by the msm, and soundbyte politicians all over the developed world that are more interested in what to wear for their next press conference than actually achieving anything meaningful.
they said global warming at the outset, they do not get to change the rules now, the met can f*** right off with regional cooling bullshit.
You only have to look at the Met Office forecasts for any period longer than 15 days and they read like a horoscope. You can make whatever you want of it……. conveniently.
Horoscopes are significantly more science based (and accurate).