Dr Ryan Maue of Weatherbell follows the data, wherever that data leads him. He’s not shy of telling it like it is. Yesterday he released what I consider the most important graph of the year.
For all those people that want to claim 2015/2016 “proves” that human caused global warming is at work (while at the same time ignoring a record El Niño event as seen above), this graph indisputably proves that the El Niño is the driver of record high temperatures, not carbon dioxide.
He wrote this on Twitter while providing the graph below.
Easy to see effect of El Nino on global temps by concurrently plotting tropical & global temp anomaly time series
And added:
Tropical temps increased relative to normal from April to Oct during El Nino onset. Global temps caught up in October. In sync since.
Pretty definitive, in my opinion.
Note: based on comments, the first ENSO event graph caption was updated to clarify it, and a second SST graph was added for those who prefer that representation of the ENSO event.
The GWPF ‘Sea Surface Height Anomaly’ picture is kind’a misleading.
Yes, I replaced it with a better representation of the 2015 ENSO event.
It’s worth noting that it is showing sea surface height, not temperature. and it is May 21, 2014, from here.
It could also be that, now that we have enough CO2 to give us a nice stable environment, El Niño causes steps in the temperature that is no longer being cooled by La Niña events.
Every El Niño simply causes a new stable step up without the La Niña step down.
The various graph data does kind of show this which would explain why the step down from 1880 to 1910 is about 0.2C and the step down from 1941 to 1977 is about 0.1C and the step down from 1997 to 2015 is essentially zero
But it also appears that the Stable Steps are getting less stable over time.
Here is a plot showing temperature, Nick, demonstrating why no record high will ever prove that climate is AGW-driven.
pat, you’d argue that no record temperature will prove global warming because the uncertainties in the measurements itself too large, or because we don’t really understand what causes that warming?
And it’s worth noting that your comment is pointless, since the graph was replaced. But it’s typical Stokes.
benben — short answer: yes. 🙂
It’s both: the instrumental record is too contaminated with systematic error — error the climate establishment studiously ignores — and, the climate models are so inaccurate they cannot resolve the effect, if any, of CO2 emissions on the climate.
For three years, I’ve been trying to publish a paper demonstrating the complete unreliability of climate models, but cannot get past the fear and loathing of an invested establishment.
[Our sympathies. Can anything be printed (here) without jeopardizing the paper itself? .mod]
“And it’s worth noting that your comment is pointless, since the graph was replaced.”
I’m referring to the replacement, unless my cache is doing something very strange. The full plot, from the animated GIF here, looks like this:
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/3/sealevel.png
Pat, thanks. If you’re ever up for it, I’d still be interested in hearing what you would consider to be the minimum accuracy of a hypothetical model, before you’re allowed to use it for informing policy. This keeping in mind that policy is always made with imperfect models and that the generally used economic models aren’t exactly the golden standard for reliable forecasting either.
benben, minimal accuracy is resolution of the effect of interest. If one doesn’t know what one is talking about, from where emerges the utility of an explicit policy? The fact that economic decisions are made using quantitatively useless models is no rationale for extending that practice elsewhere.
For climate models, I’d be satisfied with a full engineering-quality validation and verification test. There’s no doubt that the models would fail spectacularly (which is why modelers are so violently opposed to it). Following the certain engineering debacle of models, and in the face of no observably peculiar behavior by the climate, we’d be faced with having to muster the courage to do nothing about CO2 emissions. A tactic likely to cause politicians and virtue signalers to run screaming in fear.
mod thanks for your sympathy. Anthony has been very strong about that, and has published two of my essays on the complete unviability of climate models, the willful avoidance of critical analysis, and the scientific incompetence of climate modelers here and here.
Unfortunately, blog articles sink into oblivion with time, unlike published papers. So, those essays have not produced any of the desired and necessary return to sanity in climatology.
Nick Stokes
March 15, 2016 at 1:25 pm
Nick, go discuss with Ryan. I want to be there. He is three times the data man than you.
“Nick, go discuss with Ryan.”
It’s nothing to do with Ryan. He didn’t release that graph. It’s from a Bob Tisdale post in June 2014. He put it there to show the effect on sea level of the Kelvin wave that was crossing the Pacific at the time.
I see that a new plot has now been added below which is indeed of temperature, and is in 2015. But it would be useful to have some explanation of what the various graphs are and why they are included.
Stephen Richards,
“Nick, go discuss with Ryan.”
It isn’t Ryan’s plot. It was originally (June 2014) included by Bob Tisdale to show the effect of the Kelvin wave that was crossing the ocean at the time.
But I said “It’s worth noting that it is showing sea surface height, not temperature. and it is May 21, 2014”. I see that that has now been noted, with a revised caption, which is good. And there is an added plot which does show temperatures in Dec 2015.
Meanwhile I see my comments are now going to spam again. So it goes.
So what causes strong El Ninos?
Probability and the power law nature of stochastic natural phenomenona.
Sorry guys if I sound totally confused by the arguments above: To me the article deals with temperatures and El Nino according to graph, where did the Sea level Height comments come from.?? ( I am confused, is there a correlation between the two over the same time period or just a diversion of the topic?).
Sea level height is related to the winds that are part of the ENSO event. You can spot an ENSO event either by the winds, the sea height, and/or the sea temperature. They are all interconnected.
Nice, but based on which iteration of the data sets? Past temperatures seem to be getting colder in some “corrected” data sets, so how much warmer is it now that 1997 really?
Global temperature is increasing by around 1 C or less per century, since 1997 it’s been warming less than 1 C per century. Earth is mostly covered by ocean and most of increase in temperature occurs in ocean surface temperatures.
In terms of million years the tropical ocean and tropical land area remain around the same and most of the increases or decreases of earth’s average temperature occurs outside of the tropical regions.
Or 40% of entire Earth surface is the tropics- and about 80% of the tropics is ocean area- and it’s the remaining 60% of the Earth which is warming or cooling.
Most of the last 500 years have been a period of time called the Little Ice Age and many agree that the Little Ice Age ended at around 1850. Or starting around 1850, global glaciers outside of the tropics began retreating, rather advancing as they were doing during the Little Ice age.
So for last two hundred years the ocean outside the tropics have been increasing in terms of surface temperature. And also the ocean temperature beneath the surface has also been increasing during this time period or the bulk of the ocean as had a near immeasurable increase in temperature- but ocean temperature can be measured in terms an increase in sea levels.
Or since 1997 the increase in sea level has been about 2 mm per year, and significant fraction of this rising sea levels is related to thermal expansion of the ocean.
It is difficult to accurately measure sea level rise but a part of increase or decrease in sea level is the ocean thermal expansion or contraction due to it’s average temperature. And current entire ocean average temperature is somewhere around 3 C.
And in past interglacial periods, such as the Eemian: wiki:
“The Eemian (also Sangamonian, Ipswichian, Mikulin, Kaydaky, Valdivia, Riss-Würm) was the interglacial period which began about 130,000 years ago and ended about 115,000 years ago”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian
The entire ocean average temperature was couple of degrees warmer than our ocean temperatures presently. And it’s unclear whether during our current interglacial period will have as high sea levels as what happen during Eemian, which 4 to 6 meter higher than current.
But current our increase in sea level is about 8 inches per century: wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
And wiki graph:
I keep wondering when Mann or some other crackpot will try to erase/modify the embarrassing Eemian record.
“since 1997 it’s been warming less than 1 C per century”
Since 1 Jan 1997 to latest:
GISS 1.55°C/Cen
HADCRUT 4 1.07°C/Cen
NOAA 1.36°C/Cen
It’s been awhile, but I recall that water was at its densest at about 4C. As it cools from there it expands which is why ice floats. Could a warming from 3C to 4C result in less water volume? I guess some places the water would be expanding and others contracting.
Guy,
You are using/remembering for pure H2O. The oceans are about 35 – 37 pp thousand salt. That lowers all those colligative properties wrt T.
“since 1997 it’s been warming less than 1 C per century”
Since 1 Jan 1997 to latest:
GISS 1.55°C/Cen
HADCRUT 4 1.07°C/Cen
NOAA 1.36°C/Cen
I’m sorry, are these from the latest versions, or earlier versions. They change so much, I just can’t keep up. And I think you forgot the satellite temps (just to be complete).
gbaikie was addressing global T:
“Global temperature is increasing by around 1 C or less per century, since 1997 it’s been warming less than 1 C per century. ”
Nick was talking about three data sets.
Both are correct! /s 🙂
gbaikie was talking about surface temperatures and that is what I quoted. Latest version.
I can do the latest versions of the satellite temps:
RSS 1.21°C / Cen
UAH 1.85°C / Cen
From the data at WoodForTrees.
A sharp rise in temp cannot possibly be due to co². Now can it? How would that happen?
— Stephen Richards
March 16, 2016 at 1:23 am
A sharp rise in temp cannot possibly be due to co². Now can it? How would that happen?–
Well there is no scientific theory which can explain how this could happen.
There is an assumption that rising CO2 levels will result in warming,
There is evidence that rising CO2 levels follows periods of warming and declining CO2 levels follow
periods of cooling. Or there is lots of evidence of a correlation of global temperature and CO2 levels.
It’s known that a large amount of CO2 within earth oceans and that a rising temperature of the ocean
will make the ocean less able to retain CO2.
There is an hypotheses/theory that only greenhouse gases cause the Earth to be warmer, and this
theory is called the Greenhouse Effect Theory. And CO2 and H20 gas are considered to be some of these gases and these gases are called greenhouse gases. This theory doesn’t exactly explain how this would happen, other than idea related to this theory that one can have a runaway effect.
And this runaway effect “allows” many to imagine that there could be a sharp rise in temps.
But anyone with knowledge about global climate would know that this is not possible. Or perhaps
more importantly, there has been no evidence which supports this.
I should mention that a 1 C rise per century in global temperature, could be characterized as sharp rise in temperature. So it does matter what is meant by a sharp rise.
But during all known interglacial periods, one has patterns of centuries of warming and cooling and recent warming is no where near as warm as other periods of time within our present interglacial period- the Holocene period.
Or since the Holocene climatic optimum, we had very long term trend of gradual cooling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
Or within the entire Holocene period there has been much sharper increases and decreases than compare to 1 C per century.
But, but, El Niño was super fueled by evil fossil fuels!! It is unprecedented since the last big one on record and there could not have been any as big in the past where we do not have records, the tree rings prove this.
I am sorry, with this scam any and all excuses, no matter how far fetched they are, are fair game it seems.
Just have to wait and see if it is followed by a decent La Niña.
No one is saying that the current waning EN has not sent up GAT’s – they do that every time they appear.
The point is that each time they appear now we end up with a “warmest year on record”.
Whilst a La Nina spell only causes a “pause”.
They should take GAT’s back down to complete a cycle.
This in the absence of another driver.
The other driver is Anthro CO2.
It’s a modulation of the normal PDO/ENSO cycle.
A +ve slope…..
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20150116/graph_gis_2014_650.jpg
Look, it’s clear that an increase in CO2 causes an increase in GAT. Few would disagree with that. However, it’s not clear there is any sort of multiplier effect that makes temperature increases from CO2 3 – 4 times as large as they would be otherwise. That hypothesis is dead in the water.
Look, it’s clear that an increase in CO2 causes an increase in GAT …
===========================
I would add: ‘… all or other things being equal or held constant …’.
No-one knows the final effect on the climate system of increasing CO2.
A few hundredths of a degree over 18 years.
Yawn.
And out of 288 degrees yet !
G
Tiny, isn’t it? Global surface temps climbed by a mere 5K out of 288K from the bottom of the last glacial period to the current interglacial. A 1.7% difference removed kilometer thick ice sheets from Northern America and sea levels rose by 100 meters.
1C warming since 1900. A fifth of the warming in 116 years that took 5000 years. So about 10 times faster.
Exactly.
Impressive LINEAR trend… where is the ACCELERATION?
(a 12 years old would be able to replay that… all my answers are <12 years old worthy… this is getting boring)
The other driver is man-made alright, by the shameless “data” book cookers at GISS, NOAA and HadCRU.
Where was the AGW signal for the 32 years from 1945-77, during which the world cooled dramatically under steadily rising CO2? Then the PDO flipped and anti-pollution measures cleared the atmosphere. If there be any human influence, it’s removing the cooling effect of aerosols and particulates.
The Modern Warm Period is still cooler than the Medieval, Roman, Minoan, Egyptian and Holocene Optimum WPs. Should the post-LIA recovery ever get hotter than the Medieval WP, then maybe you can try to make a case for measureable AGW.
Tomeb. Please look closely at your posted WMO melange of three underlying ‘adjusted’ records. Ignore the OLS lines. NO warming from 1950 to ~1976. Clear warming from ~1976 to ~1998. NO warming since. Natural Variation is evident, since CO2 was monotonocally increasing the entire time (proven by the MLO Keeling curve starting 1957 IIRC). So OLS is inapplicable.
Now realize that the CMIP5 archive was, by peer reviewed ‘experimental design’ parameter tuned to best hindcast from YE 2005 back 30 years to 1975. A problem that resulted in model failure to predict the now ~19 year pause, resulting in model falsification. They failed because of their parameter attribution problem, which you have so nicely (if inadvertently) illustrated here. Previous guest post had the why and how.
So nothing else at all then? Just our nasty see-oh-toos!
What twaddle.
Toneb says:
The other driver is Anthro CO2.
Thanx for your assertion. But until you can produce verifiable, testable, empirical measurements quantifying the fraction of AGW out of all global warming, all you are doing is expressing an anonymous opinion.
It is clearly seen from the above figure that the linear trend has no meaning. The ENSO is superposed on PDO cycle. The data prior to 1990 was weak and because of this, the ENSO factor prior to 1990 is not correctly reflected. From 1950 onwards there is no component of the socalled global warming in the annual global temperature anomaly.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
That sounds pretty close to “I can’t think of anything else, so it has to be Anthro CO2.”
We’re still coming out of the Little Ice Age and temperatures haven’t yet matched the heights of the Roman Warm Period or the Minoan Warm Period. Of course temperatures will rise. And why can’t whatever caused the high temps back then be the same cause for the rising temps now?
Toneb, everything goes up but the kitchen sink when the oceans settle out the warm from the cold and go into net evaporation.
Note: If you look at the graphs in the link, it appears to me that CO2 indicators appears to degrade over time. If that is the case, current ice measures of CO2 are at a finer scale due to being newer, meaning everything is fine, nothing is out of wack, and oceans rule.
In summary, it appears to me that ocean out-gassing of HEAT in a cycling long, long, long term way is at work here, warming up the planet such that all kinds of chemicals get kicked into the atmosphere. So I think you beat a “CO2-rules” drum that is not supported by the data. It just seems to me that the oceans are out-gassing heat and when the balance of discharge/recharge switches, we jaggedly fall into another glacial epic. Till of course the oceans have absorbed enough heat to tip the other way again.
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/schilt09qsr0.pdf
http://www.climate4you.com/images/MSU%20UAH%20TropicsAndExtratropicsMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
So the warming’s not global then 😉
Because the antho CO2 never makes it to the antarctic. Contrary to the myth that CO2 persists in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, its lifetime is actually less than a year. In winter plant life goes dormant so that anthropogenic CO2 has persistence and there is a definite elevation of CO2 in the arctic which, in the absence of water vapor, produces the warming effect. In summer plants become active and the surplus disappears. Since there is little CO2 generated in the southern hemisphere and it is mostly ocean anyway, the southern hemisphere does not experience this effect. So “global warming” is largely confined to the arctic in winter and some to the northern extratropics. The tropics are affected by El Niño of course, but the southern extratropics do not experience “global warming” simply because there is no wintertime elevation of CO2.
Anthropogenic Local Warming.
The JASON sea level anomaly map appears to date from 21 may 2014, the more recent ones are interesting too:
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/latestdata/archive/index.cfm?y=2016
By focusing on April-October you missed the most important point, the temperatures are above the 30 yr mean for almost the entire year for both the tropics and the entire globe. That is the AGW signal.
If the AGW signal is all you’re looking for, that’s all you find. I suppose you believe natural variation is no longer a thing.
Luke, you are one of those guys who claim that wet sidewalks cause rain.
I see neither of you are addressing the point I made.
So, Luke, any temperature deviation from a short term baseline must be AGW?
How would your signal look any different than trends from pre-industrial warming events?
GW signal or AGW signal?
There is a difference.
The Temperature are, or the temperature anomalies are ??
One of those two is real. the other one is fiction. (not physically observable)
G
They’re both fiction. One is derived from the other, and that other is physically meaningless.
Luke says:
That is the AGW signal.
And you know this how, exactly?
You have never measured AGW. No one has. The only measurement is global warming.
What follows is your baseless assertion that natural climate variability must now be re-defined as ‘AGW’ — because you say so.
Nonsense. Until and unless you can produce verifiable, testable measurements quantifying AGW, all you are doing is expressing your unscientific opinion.
dbstealey
Actually, there is direct empirical evidence for AGW. From the abstract of a recent paper by Feldman et al. 2015 in Nature.
“Here we present observationally based evidence of clear-sky CO2 surface radiative forcing that is directly attributable to the increase, between 2000 and 2010, of 22 parts per million atmospheric CO2. The time series of this forcing at the two locations—the Southern Great Plains and the North Slope of Alaska—are derived from Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer spectra3 together with ancillary measurements and thoroughly corroborated radiative transfer calculations4. The time series both show statistically significant trends of 0.2 W m−2 per decade (with respective uncertainties of ±0.06 W m−2 per decade and ±0.07 W m−2 per decade) and have seasonal ranges of 0.1–0.2 W m−2. This is approximately ten per cent of the trend in downwelling longwave radiation5, 6, 7. These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.”
Here is the link.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14240.html
Now what is your explanation for the rapid increase in global temperatures over the past 35 years?
It isn’t clear what AGW means.
Luke point is when you compare the 3 main AMO and PDO driven warming cycles with the temperature record, you will find 3 episodes of so called “rapid increases”. did you know that in all the raw data the 30’s saw an even bigger increase then we see now?
I do speak of raw data available on KNMI explorer and also on GISS. that raw data does speak differently then the adjust… euhm tortured data…
i think it should be of some concern that a warm phase overlap of the pdo and amo along with the recent el nino dominated period has resulted in so little warming . the last 20 or so years is looking more and more like a plateau rather than a pause.
Luke says:
Actually, there is direct empirical evidence for AGW.
Nonsense. Just because someone’s result is close to their model, that isn’t the same as an empirical, testable measurement.
For one thing, if AGW was quantified with such measurements, the long disputed question of the climate sensitivity number would be answered. But it’s not; the guesstimates of sensitivity to 2xCO2 are all across the board, from the IPCC’s more than 3º – 6ºC, to ±1ºC, to ≈0.5ºC, and to Miscolczi’s 0.00ºC. There are even scientists who say that more CO2 cools the planet.
So there is no agreement whatever. Thus, there is no agreement that anyone has produced measurements quantifying AGW. If they had such measurements, that would have been trumpeted throughout the media. Furthermore, if we knew how much warming AGW caused, we could then predict future warming. But as we know, no one was able to predict the most significant global temperature event of the past century: the fact that global warming stopped for almost twenty years, while CO2 continued its steady and beneficial rise. They all got that one wrong.
And you ask:
Now what is your explanation for the rapid increase in global temperatures over the past 35 years?
Recovery from the Little Ice Age is certainly a major factor. The LIA was the second or third coldest episode of the entire 10,000 year long Holocene. Note that the recent rise in global T is no different than previous rises, before industrial CO2 was a factor.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening with global temperatures. You only believe there is because you made that assumption early on, and now you cannot bear to admit that the hated skeptics were right all along.
But don’t take my word for it. Pay attention to what Prof Robert Brown says:
http://www.clarewind.org.uk/events-1.php?event=48
Since we can not explain how fossil fuel CO2 emissions contribute to total CO2 with an exact formula, we have no idea what the AGW contribution is.
” … and to Miscolczi’s 0.00ºC. There are even scientists who say that more CO2 cools the planet. …”
Yes, and those in the CO2 cools the planet camp will be the winners when the CO2 madness is finally over. 🙂
@ Luke says:
“… between 2000 and 2010 … the time series of this forcing at the two locations—the Southern Great Plains and the North Slope of Alaska …”.
==============================
As Tallbloke has shown between dates of the paper (2000 – 2010) the temperature of Alaska actually fell by ~5C, so following AGW reasoning from that I suppose we must infer that CO2 is a negative forcing factor.
“Yes, and those in the CO2 cools the planet camp will be the winners when the CO2 madness is finally over. :-)”
Global cooling always was a much greater threat to humanity/civilization than global warming.
They bleat about the damage to property values caused by a 6 inch rise in sea levels. What do you think a mile-thick glacier is going to do to property values in Chicago?
If anything the purveyors of certain climate doom caused by mankind’s neglect of Gaia will only get louder and more shrill.
Luke as usual in climate science, no physically valid error bars or uncertainty estimate.
According to the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) documentation (pdf download), the instrumental calibration accuracy is ±1 K.
The typical estimate of climate sensitivity is about 3 K temperature rise per 3.7 Wm^-2 of GHG forcing. This gives the AERI a standard lower limit measurement uncertainty, i.e., accuracy, of ±1.2 Wm^-2 in derived forcing.
That uncertainty is ±6× larger than the 0.2 Wm^-2 trend reported in the paper. The entire paper is about a measurement that is well below instrumental nose. Now what?
Instrumental noise, but really “nose” has a certain metaphorical appeal. 🙂
DBS: “Recovery from the Little Ice Age is certainly a major factor”
The word “Recovery” doesn’t explain anything, What is the physical cause of such a recovery. If we don’t really know what caused the LIA how can we claim we understand the recovery from it? Unless, of course, if you believe the solar explanation (Maunder minimum) is unquestionable..
Chris S,
You assume that we know everything. We don’t.
We don’t know the cause of the LIA. We do know that it wasn’t industrial CO2 emissions. And if ‘recovery’ bothers you so much, you can replace it with ‘reversion to the mean’.
And yes, that was a major factor.
dbs,
‘reversion to the mean’.
Aha, so there is a “mean” the atmosphere is supposed to revert at? That is a bold statement considering climate is always changing. Are you referring to the mean temperature over the last 1000 years or the last 5000 years or of the whole of the Holocene or the mean of all the previous inter-glacials? Or what?
How do you know it’s an AGW signal?
Oh, I forgot, you don’t. It’s purely blind faith.
Exactly, he does not know it is an AGW signal, he wants it to be an AGW signal.
It seems to me that it is blind faith that leads the author of this article to say “this graph indisputably proves that the El Niño is the driver of record high temperatures, not carbon dioxide” with no available explanation or justification.
There is no identifiable AGW signal, Luke. That addresses your point, and shows you have no point. See also here.
The globe warms naturally, the globe cools naturally. What makes you think the baseline for natural warming/cooling is a flat line? Why can’t it be an upward sloping baseline?
The Warmists argue that they can’t explain the warming without CO2. But they can’t explain the warming from the 1910s to 1940s, with or without co2.
Their inability to explain natural phenomena does not prove co2 to be responsible for anything.
In the 1877-78 Super El Nino, temperatures rose by about 0.7C above the background temperature of the time, and 10 months later, temperatures had fallen back by the same 0.7C.
The 2015-16 Super El Nino is of the scale of the 1877-78 one. The 1877-78 one is probably slightly larger but not by much, and 2015-16 officially ranks as No. 2 on the El Nino scale, just behind the 1877-78 Super.
These two events will rank as the second and third highest level of short-term natural variability observed since the ice age ended (with the 8200 BCE cooling event being the largest at -2.0C over 50 years).
http://s7.postimg.org/3o5pf19l7/1877_78_Super_El_Nino.png
Thank you for yet another of your usual thoughtful, well-informed, analyses, Bill Illis. (in your ear … did you mean to type 1997/1998 and 1980-1990…??).
Oh, Bill, I should not even have tried… (blush) 1990-2000??
..Hi Janice….1877….
http://forums.accuweather.com/index.php?showtopic=15714
The Super El Nino of 1877-78 was the largest ENSO event on record, probably reaching +3.0C to +3.4C in the Nino 3.4 Index.
The numbers say that 2015-16 was the next biggest one at +2.95C in the monthly Nino 3.4; (but reaching as high as +3.1C in the week of November 18, 2015. So, the 2015-16 El Nino definitely rivaled the biggest El Nino of all time
The 1997-98 and 1982-83 Super El Ninos were both smaller than these two events.
Bill Illis
.. You are right.. I looked at NINO 3.4 readings which measures different temperatures and also found the 1877/78 significant
.5 HIGHEST NINO3.4 ANOAMLY READINGS
2015/16 ELNINO (2.95 ) NOV/2015 ( was 2.46 in Oct and started to decline in December 2015)
1877/78 EL NINO ( 2.51) DEC/1877 ( was the historical highest until November 2015)
1997/1998 EL NINO ( 2.5) NOV/ 1997
1982/1983 EL NINO (2.45) JAN/1983
1972/1973 EL NINO (2.22) DEC/1973
Hi, Marcus and Bill,
Thank you! I didn’t realize *blush* that we had the data to know that back that far. I learned something. Isn’t WUWT grand? 🙂
Thank you both for helping me.
Janice
And I am also relieved — “Poor Bill Illis,” I thought, “he’s not feeling good or something… all those typos… really bad ones, too…. I’d better tell him.” lol — so I did. Glad you are doing just fine, Mr. Illis!
#(:))
Bill,
Thanks once again for a very insightful post. Joe Bast is also predicting a cooling rebound on his weekly Weatherbell video. Two predictions from credible weather greybeards is enough for me – I am off to place my trades and hedges in the upcoming food price spike;
Article in ZH indicates a clear trend showing food prices increase with global cooling.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-15/global-warming-and-food-prices
Joe Bast or Joe Bastardi. Bast works at the Heartland
According to NOAA http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/
February was only the 6th warmest in the U.S. http://www.m4gw.com/images/2016/February.jpg
http://www.m4gw.com/images/2016/February.jpg
You are aware, aren’t you, the contiguous US is about 3% of the Earth’s surface. You knew that, right?
dcpetterson,
So you’re in agreement that we can dispense with all the wild-eyed arm waving over Arctic ice? Or cherry-picked receding glaciers, as opposed to advancing glaciers?
And to be consistent, you need to equally question every comment that refers to any local heat wave or other climatic event attributed to global warming or AGW.
Are we all together on that?
dcpetterson,
I should hope you are aware that he’s showing that arguably the best-maintained system in the world shows little-to-know warming over the past 60+ years (which doesn’t seem to fit the general narrative).
That aside, I get your point about the contiguous US not representing the entire earth. Then again, how much surface area is represented by “global data?” You’ve seen weather stations, I’m sure. You’ve seen the variance in temperature over short distances. CruTEM4 is based on data from 2,444 stations, for example…1,064 of which are in the contiguous US. How much land do you pretend that it covers? When one, few, or several stations are used to represent a 5 degree x 5 degree cell, are those stations covering more than 3% of the surface area? Hell no.
db,
Sorry, I don’t understand the leap you made between a graph dealing with 3% of the Earth’s surface, and the fact that nearly all the ice in the world is melting.
Michael Jankowski,
You missed the point. No, the fact that 3% of the Earth’s surface diverges from the overall trend does NOT go against the “overall narrative”. Can you understand how George Burns can live to be 100 years old, when the average life expectancy for American males is only 74 years? Think about it. Those two questions have the same answer.
I fixed your typos and deleted extraneous words. You’re welcome,
dcpetterson,
“Sorry, I don’t understand the leap you made between a graph dealing with 3% of the Earth’s surface, and the fact that nearly all the ice in the world is melting.”
Wherever did you get that idea?
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
The main graph shows that El Niño redistributes heat from the tropics poleward. I fail to see how the graph shows anything about sources/causes of heat input. The tropics absorb heat and the poles radiate it – this is not new.
What am I missing?
Rob, I think that you are missing the point that the tropics should be about at the constant temperature all the time. Because of El Nino, the tropics started to warm in March-April and thereafter the heat was distributed to the high latitudes.
Why would one expect the tropics to be at constant temperature despite ENSO, PDO, AMO, other mechanisms of natural variability, etc? Static temperatures in the tropics sounds like “Mann”ly logic to me.
The claim that this “One graph proves that record high year of 2015 and record months of 2016 are not AGW driven” has almost to value to it. El Nino years tend to be warmer than years preceding El Ninos. That’s what El Ninos do. An equivalent claim is simply “2015 was an El Nino year.” Given the near 20 year plateau in global temps at the highest ever recorded, of course a major El Nino would break records, whether or not AGW is happening with any magnitude.
Well, if I take another look, the warming in the tropics started in June…
[snip – don’t put words in my mouth not written – you are welcome to resubmit – Anthony]
“Pretty definitive, in my opinion.”
“this graph indisputably proves that the El Niño is the driver of record high temperatures, not carbon dioxide.”
Ummm – why?
Ed Miliband ex leader of the labour party said in the Houses of Parliament yesterday:
“”We know from recent scientific analysis that 2015 was the hottest year on record. The record for global temperatures has been broken in each of the past five months, with February’s record broken in shocking fashion. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are now higher—this is hard to get your head around—than they have been for at least a million years. That is what the scientists tell us and it highlights the necessary urgency, which is shared by Members on both sides of the House.””
That is the level of stupidity that we are up against. What is worse is the Tory Minister for Energy agreed with him. The entire British Economy is to be shut down by 2080. Delers has the story. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/03/15/uk-energy-minister-britain-must-commit-zero-carbon-suicide/
I wonder what they are going to do when the temps go down again 😉
Judging by the change in the SST anomaly, it’s going to be a cooler March for the U.K.
We need the world to jump on the bandwagon that Global Warming is caused by US indebtedness.
http://www.americanthinker.com/legacy_assets/articles/assets/Hoven%20-%20GW%20Melts%207.png
Once they insist that America start paying down debt to save the world from a warming planet, I’ll join them.
@ Ivor, March 15, 1:20 pm, “The entire British Economy is to be shut down by 2080. Delers has the story.
Phew, 2080 ? And here I thought we had to worry! But frankly Ivor, the way the world’s economy is crashing , it is going to well before 2080 but I hope not before 2035. ( that gives me the chance to reach 84. by 2080 I’d be well, long and gone).
I’m curious why there’s an implication that energy budget imbalances over time don’t play a role in the manifestations of natural oscillations. particularly the PDO …
pardon, ENSO …
Nice. But I’m sure there are plenty of idiots (leftist alarmists ) that think CO2 makes El Ninios. So a strong El Ninio event must be due to more human created CO2.
” I’m sure there are plenty of idiots (leftist alarmists ) that think CO2 makes El Ninios.[sic]”
Name three,
I’m also sure. But when someone adds a qualifier like “I’m sure”, it is an opinion, and not required to be researched.
Getting desperate, aren’t you?
dbstealey,
He claimed some exist. I await evidence.
dcpettersin,
More than 3 for sure. 14 morons in this one article alone:
dcpetterson,
You’re such a total failure. Skeptics have nothing to prove.
You do. But all your ‘proof’ consists of baseless, evidence-free assertions.
No wonder the alarmist crowd tucks tail and runs away from any fair, moderstaed debates. You’ve lost every debate you ever engaged in with skeptics.
So now you make your baseless assertions from the safety of the peanut gallery. It really must suck to be you, with zero measurements of what you’re trying to convince folks must be happening.
dbstealey said: “dcpetterson,
You’re such a total failure. Skeptics have nothing to prove.
You do. But all your ‘proof’ consists of baseless, evidence-free assertions.”
So let me understand. The world’s scientific organizations have concluded that AGW is real. As have the governments. As have the Fortune 1000 companies, including the oil companies. As have the vast majority of working climate scientists. All agree that AGW is real.
On the other side, there is a small group of scientists (and most readers of this site) who do not believe AGW is real, or large enough to cause problems. That’s fine, they are free to hold that position. But the “pro AGW” community doesn’t have to prove anything to the skeptics. Or what? What exactly will happen if the pro AGW community does not offer proof to your satisfaction?
Chris, may I deconstruct? Thank you:
The world’s scientific organizations have concluded that AGW is real.
Let’s disregard that appeal to authority logical fallacy, and agree: AGW is real. Obvious follow-up question: Is AGW a problem? Yes or No?
Next:
…the “pro AGW” community doesn’t have to prove anything to the skeptics.
Au contraire. The ‘Dangerous AGW’ conjecture is yours. You own it. Therefore, the onus is on you to produce, if not proof, then at least convincing evidence that AGW is a serious problem.
You have failed at that, me boi. I don’t think you are capable of showing any global damage, or harm, due to either AGW or the rise in CO2. Thus, they are ‘harmless’. QED
See, that was easy-peasy. The reason is due to the fact that you have no credible facts. Your DAGW scare amounts to nothing more than a big head fake.
You can keep the public alarmed for only so long. Then the public begins to lose interest. That is happening now. Climate alarmism is based on a combination of the little lying shepherd boy who falsely cried “Wolf!”, and Chicken Little.
Now it’s all politics, all the time. Any science is, at most, a thin veneer that is easy to see right through. All it takes is a little skepticism — the one vital element that is completely absent in the climate alarmist crowd.
Sorry all, I still have not seen any decent science that shows how CO2 can produce any significant warming at all, let alone global. Its a trace gas, no phase changes like water, no latent heat, sensible heat dissapates instantly to surrounding gases, and no measured hot-spot a few kilometres up where the theory predicted. Its all about sun and water IMO. also tired to death seeing “emissions ” from power plants as CO2 when its colourless and endless temperature charts from either dodgy sources or hidden raw origins. Bah. Thats my rant.
Macha,
“I still have not seen any decent science that shows how CO2 can produce any significant warming at all, let alone global.”
Take a look at the planet Venus. Carbon dioxide will raise a planet’s temperature if there is sunlight. The greater amount of CO2, the greater the effect.
“Its a trace gas”
Trace amounts of ricin or cyanide in your body can kill you. What matters is the strength of the effect.
The current “trace gas” amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (along with some other gasses such as methane and water vapor) is the reason the surface of the Earth is not a couple of hundred degrees below zero all the time, all over the planet. The presence of “trace” amounts of greenhouse gasses prevent nighttime temperatures from falling to -200 F every single night all over the world.
dcpeterson,
Use the search box; keyword ‘venus’. That bogus CO2 claim has been put to rest here time after time.
And enough with the cyanide arguments. Water will do the same thing in the right circumstances. And there is zero credible evidence that CO2 is anything but harmless and beneficial at current or projected concentrations.
Getting desperate, aren’t we? That’s to be expected when you try to peddle a measurement-free science conjecture.
dbstealey,
I don’t need to read about people who don’t believe in physics. I’m also not spending time at this site.
Let me know when astrophysicists accept some explanation for the temperatures on Venus that doesn’t involve greenhouse gasses. I’m not a physicist, but I accept the same explanations that physicists do. Let me know when they change.
In the meantime, explain what happens after greenhouse gasses absorb infrared radiation. Also explain what happens to the excess heat that the Earth absorbs from the Sun but doesn’t release into space. We know the Earth is absorbing more than it releases; the amount of sunlight falling on Earth is easily to calculate, and various satellites (including the ones used by RSS and UAH) tell us how much heat is released back out. There is a gap; more is absorbed than is released. Explain why that is, and what happens to that heat, without referring to greenhouse gasses, and without saying it causes the Earth to warm. I dare you.
@dcpetterson
If you go by “the great priests have spoken, Venus bla bla bla”, I wonder why you bother with WUWT.
Really.
Please explain why you come to this SCIENCE blog where people show ZERO respect to the great priests.
dcpetterson,
Since you believe that Venus is hot due to the 95%+ CO2 levels, why is Mars cold? It also has 95%+ CO2.
I tried to steer you in the right direction, but you deflected. For anyone else who may be interested in answers to those questions, here are just two articles, with a total of 900+ comments. The articles and comments will answer those questions:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/06/hyperventilating-on-venus
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy
Want more? Just put ‘venus’ in the search box, and you will find dozens more articles.
” Most of this heat cannot escape back into space because it is blocked by the very thick atmosphere of Venus. ”
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/38-Why-is-Venus-so-hot-
THICK CLOUDY atmosphere, not because it is CO2
And extreme pressure !
“Take a look at the planet Venus. Carbon dioxide will raise a planet’s temperature if there is sunlight. The greater amount of CO2, the greater the effect.”
But what can you tell us about Venus’s stratospheric temperature inversion compared to down here on earth? Diffusion is a two-way street, especially when there’s water about to draw a no parking zone.
dcpeterson:
I don’t need to read about people who don’t believe in physics.
Physics is a branch of science, not a belief system (religion).
Look up the meaning of the following Latin words;
scio
credo
“Take a look at the planet Venus. Carbon dioxide will raise a planet’s temperature if there is sunlight. The greater amount of CO2, the greater the effect.”
The atmosphere of Venus is about 90 times as dense near the surface as Earth’s, Mr. Apples N Oranges ; )
volcanism has not been ruled out, either.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150623-venus-volcanoes-active-space/
” Most of this heat cannot escape back into space because it is blocked by the very thick atmosphere of Venus. ”
And which gasses in the atmosphere of Venus prevent the escape of infrared radiation (i.e., heat) from the surface of the planet?
Care to venture a guess?
db,
“Since you believe that Venus is hot due to the 95%+ CO2 levels, why is Mars cold? ”
1) Mars is about 1.5 times further from the Sun than the Earth is, so it receives about 44% as much heat.
2) Mars is about 1/2 the diameter of the Earth, so it intercepts about 1/4 as much sunlight.
3) The atmosphere of Mars is about 0.6% of the Earth’s.
All told, if it were not for the CO2 in the atmosphere of Mars, it would be about 100 degrees F colder.
Thanks for asking.
“Mars is about 1/2 the diameter of the Earth, so it intercepts about 1/4 as much sunlight.”
That’s a good one.
At first I wanted to tell you: You. Are. Not. Welcome. Here.
I refrained from doing so. A wise move from me.
You are very welcome here.
Planet Venus again. I had a quick burst of LoL with that one. Mars ? 95% co². Explain that one too.
“Since you believe that Venus is hot due to the 95%+ CO2 levels, why is Mars cold? It also has 95%+ CO2.”
It’s not a matter of belief (in science) it’s a matter of observed facts.
From:
http://ccar.colorado.edu/asen5050/projects/projects_2001/benoit/solar_irradiance_on_mars.htm
“The solar irradiance at Mars’ mean distance from the Sun (1.52 AU) is 590 Wm-2. Note that this is about 44% of the Earth’s solar constant (1350 Wm-2)”
The atmospheric surface pressure of mars is ~6mb (Earth’s = 1013mb)
Venus’ surface atmospheric pressure is ~90bar (~90,000mb).
Now that should be explanation enough …. but – Even though still mostly CO2 that amount of atmosphere cannot possible retain the heat received at it’s surface.
You may care (or not) to look up these easily obtained facts from science sites such as NASA and to boot you may care to study what the Beer-Lambert law says about the attenuation of EM energy through an absorbing medium.
You will find 2 very important terms in it.
Path-length.
Concentration.
http://scienceofdoom.com/page/19/
Walt,
“Physics is a branch of science, not a belief system (religion).”
Precisely. Physics deals with facts. If you want to disagree with facts, you are in the realm of religion. People who think climate science isn’t real are religionists, and are not dealing with science.
Which are you? Do you claim facts aren’t real, or do you believe in conspiracy theories that hold climate scientists to be making things up? It’s got to be one or the other.
“do you believe in conspiracy theories”
Please entertain us about what those theories say.
dcpetterson says:
Mars is about 1.5 times further from the Sun
Hey, maybe now you’re starting to understand! Venus is much closer to the Sun. Do you think that might have something to do with it?
And:
Mars is about 1/2 the diameter of the Earth, so it intercepts about 1/4 as much sunlight.
You need to start thinking rationally…
The answers to your misinformation are in the articles I posted, and in the 900+ comments under those articles. But you have not had the time to read them. Instead, you emit your canned nonsense from ‘PseudoskepticalPseudoscience’, ‘Hotwhopper’, and ‘realclimate’ without putting your brain in gear.
Your problem is that you made up your mind early on, before you had sufficient information on the subject. And now you just cannot admit that the hated skeptics were right all along, so you keep arguing incessantly, even as Planet Earth is busy debunking your failed belief system.
You lost the debate long ago. Skeptics of the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare were right, and you alarmists were wrong. History will show that, in spades.
Good thing the internet never forgets, eh?
Physics deals in theories. As Feynman pointed to frequently and I learned as a solid stat physicist. Where are the facts in string theroy, quatum mechanics, higgs boson. Need I continue? They are founded on models. Models which are tested continously unlike climate models which fail at every level.
“Venus is much closer to the Sun. Do you think that might have something to do with it?”
Some, but not much. Venus is about 70% of the Earth’s distance (i.e., Earth is about 1.4 times as far from the Sun as Venus). The amount of difference is heat energy that impacts the two is not nearly sufficient to explain the vast difference in surface temperature. The difference can only be explained by the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus that is preventing most of that excess heat from being lost to space.
Mercury is much closer to the Sun than Venus is, yet the surface of Venus is hotter than the surface of Mercury. The difference is the vast quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus.
“The answers to your misinformation are in the articles I posted, and in the 900+ comments under those articles. But you have not had the time to read them.”
As I said, I don’t read the flat-earthers either. I might go there to do research if I want to write a fantasy novel, but other than that, it’s not worth my time.
dcpetterson,
Since you couldn’t possibly have read the articles and comments I linked, all you’re doing is posting your ignorance. Everything in your comment was discussed and answered there. But of course your mind is made up and closed tight, so you have nothing more to learn, right?
Since you’re comparing flat earthers with this award winning “Best Science” site, it’s obvious you’re out to lunch. There’s more than a little projection in your ‘flat earth’ comment.
You’re in way over your head here dc. You can’t keep up with the comments from folks who know far more about the subjedct than you do.
You refuse to learn, since you refuse to read the linked articles and comments, which completely demolish the claim that CO2 is the primary cause of Venus’ high surface temperature. You would also have learned that at the same barometric pressure as Earth (1 bar), the temperature of Venus’ atmosphere is almost identical to our own planet’s temperature.
Finally, you trot out the inverse square law when it’s convenient — but you reject it when it’s inconvenient.
You are an asset to this true Science site, because casual readers can follow both sides of this debate. They see whose mind is made up, and closed to any new information.
So keep posting. It’s fun knocking your misinformation out of the ball park.
— dcpetterson
March 16, 2016 at 8:15 am
dbstealey said: “Venus is much closer to the Sun. Do you think that might have something to do with it?”
Some, but not much. Venus is about 70% of the Earth’s distance (i.e., Earth is about 1.4 times as far from the Sun as Venus). The amount of difference is heat energy that impacts the two is not nearly sufficient to explain the vast difference in surface temperature. The difference can only be explained by the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus that is preventing most of that excess heat from being lost to space.–dcpetterson
At Venus distance from the sun, sunlight is about 2700 watts per square meter or almost twice the energy as at Earth distance from the sun.
“The amount of difference is heat energy that impacts the two is not nearly sufficient to explain the vast difference in surface temperature.”
That’s correct. If you were to place Earth at Venus distance, the surface of earth would not be anything like the surface temperature of Venus.
Earth distance has 1360 watts per square meter, with sun at zenith on clear skies it gets about 1000 watts per square meter [1120 watts per square meter if including the direct and indirect sunlight]
So Earth at Venus distance having 2700 watts, would be getting about 2000 watts rather than 1000 watts
when the sun was at zenith. This means that the ground rather than being about 70 C could closer to 120 C. Or one could easily fry eggs on the sidewalk.
And rather than highest air temperature being around 40 C, the air temperature could be around 60 to 70 C- in terms daytime high temperature.
But the oceans would not boil. On Earth land surface temperature can reach 70 C whereas ocean temperatures don’t exceed 40 C. So ocean surface temperature would be around 50 C at the highest and one would have much higher rate of evaporation- which would tend to cause more clouds reducing the chance of have clear skies when the sun was at zenith. So getting an ocean to 50 C would difficult or only in special circumstances. Instead average high temperature of ocean might be around 40 C during daytime tropics And having average tropical air temperature about 10 C warmer than our current tropical temperature- which reaches about 25 C average.
Now when sun is lower the 45 degree away from zenith, one would have a lot less than 2000 watts per square meter of solar flux reaching the surface. Or if in New York in winter and at noon and clear skies
one will not be able to fry eggs on the sidewalks. But you aren’t going to get any snow either- except one might get snow in the higher mountains.
Anyhow, Earth could be habitable, though portions of Earth’s land surface probably would not support plant and animal life as conditions would be too hot.
Which not at all like the surface of Venus.
In terms of average temperature, Earth would be more than 30 C. And places like Greenland or Antarctica could have still snow during the winter, and some glaciers, but it would not have an permanent ice cap.
And Earth’s Bond albedo from dramatic increase in clouds could go from about .3 to about .5.
And that Earth would be much brighter than Venus with it’s dense yellow clouds.
This blog entry is a brilliant textbook example of a straw man coupled with a red herring. No one actually believes the things you’ve set off to disprove. It’s entertaining, though.
The record high temperatures we’re experiencing now are the result of a very strong el Nino piled on top of the heating due to AGW. Neither one alone would currently result in the record high temperatures we are seeing. No one has claimed the 2015 and 2016 records are due solely to AGW. So the attempt to prove el Nino is involved is silly at best, since everyone is agreed on that already.
Nor does anyone say the record 2015 and 2016 temperatures “prove” the reality of AGW. Physics and chemistry prove the reality of AGW. The consistent long-term trendine is a symptom of (not a “proof” of) the physics behind climate science. The record-high temperatures of 2016 and 2016 are a result of a strong el Nino sitting on top of the high level to which the long-term trendine has brought us.
Some more meaningful questions: How long has it been since there was a record low global monthly or yearly temperature? How many global monthly or yearly record highs have there been since then? What does that tell you?
I notice at least some WUWT readers are beginning to acknowledge that the Earth is warming (which is a start) though they continue to question the cause. At least ya’all are moving in the right direction.
Physics and chemistry haven’t even defined AGW, let alone proven it.
Here are some other helpful questions: Were the LIA, MWP real things? If there are natural millennial time-scale processes, and we are in the upswing of a 500 year warm period, would you expect any new record lows right now? Do the records span even half of this cycle?
“You had the right to say that you had no f… idea, dude.”
So do you.
This will get you started. But you need to learn some basic mathematics if you’re going to swim in the pool, and I’m not a math teacher. You can have the last word; I don’t play insult games.
Rob Morrow,
My last comment was intended for simple-touriste. I apologize for putting it in the wrong place. (That sounds worse than I meant it.)
Good questions. In point of fact, many climatologists are now convinced that the LIA and MWP were regional events, and not global, and so shouldn’t be in this conversation at all. But in any case:
1) None of that touches on what is causing the current warming. If you get a flat tire because you ran over a nail, that doesn’t mean you can’t also get a flat tire because I slashed it with my knife. Likewise, if you have a cause for past events, that doesn’t necessarily prove the cause of current events.
2) If you want to claim that the current warming is due to whatever theoretical “cycles” caused the MWP and the LIA, you have to specify the causes of the MWP and the LIA, and show that they are still operative now. Otherwise you’re just invoking underpants gnomes. Can you quantify the underlying physical causes of the MWP and the LIA, or are you just describing a wiggly line on a graph?
3) We can calculate from physical experiments what the effects are of increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The observed effects match the calculation, so there is no need to hypothesize some otherwise unknown “cycles.”
dcpetterson says:
In point of fact, many climatologists are now convinced that the LIA and MWP were regional events, and not global…
In point of fact, most agree that the LIA and the MWP were in fact global events.
It is only due to the climate alarmist narrative that the LIA and MWP are presumed to be local.
That is contradicted by a mountain of empirical evidence. Just ask, and I will link you to that evidence.
Michael Mann attempted to delete the MWP and LIA from the record. Mann was being deceptive, and he was forced to write a Corrigendum admitting that he was wrong.
Again, just ask, and I will post Mann’s Corregendum.
Or, you can just continue to drink the purple Kool-Aid…
You can’t be my math teacher because you don’t understand math.
dbstealey and simple-touriste,
I note you did not address my points. Again,
1) If you have a cause for past events, that doesn’t necessarily prove the cause of current events. Show a connection or admit you don’t have one.
2) If you want to claim current warming is from the same cause as the MWP and the LIA, then describe the physical processes that caused those and show they are still in effect now. Show your work.
3) Since what we know of the physics of infrared absorption by greenhouse gasses matches the warming we see, there is no need to invent other processes for which there is no evidence.
Let me add:
4) Current temperatures are already higher than those of the MWP, so if there was some “natural cycle” involved, we’ve clearly broken it. AGW explains why.
Invoking “MWP and LIA” explains nothing unless you can address those issues. Otherwise, you’re just engaging in distraction and deflection, and it’s not worth my time.
“I note you did not address my points. Again,”
Again, we asked you precise questions which you refuse to answer. What is certainty? How do you explain past climate change? How do you know that the cause of past climate change isn’t at work now? What part of the warming is NOT natural? How do you measure it? What conspiracy theories do you know of? Etc.
You only posted extremely tired talking points. You have zero scientific argument. As a resident clown, you aren’t very entaintaining.
Bonus: Have you measured “acidification”(sic)?
dcpetterson: 3) Since what we know of the physics of infrared absorption by greenhouse gasses matches the warming we see, there is no need to invent other processes for which there is no evidence.
Physics and chemistry to date have been unable to predict what has been observed (that was and is the “travesty”, so labeled by Trenberth). They did not predict the early 21st century slowdown; the physics-based GCMs have consistently predicted more warming than has occurred. The standard theory predicts stratospheric cooling which has occurred, but it also predicts more tropospheric warming than has occurred, especially over the tropical oceans.
The evidence for a natural cycle with a period of around 950 years is not overwhelming, neither is it negligible. No particular hypothesized mechanism receives strong support from research (as far as I am aware), but that does not imply that it does not exist. If there is a persistent process that produced the earlier warm periods, then this warm period is happening just about “on time”; had this evidence been collected before the CO2 mechanism had been discovered, the usual “parsimony” argument would render the CO2 mechanism unnecessary. It is hardly the case that this historical ordering is a great guide to what is really happening..
–2) If you want to claim that the current warming is due to whatever theoretical “cycles” caused the MWP and the LIA, you have to specify the causes of the MWP and the LIA, and show that they are still operative now. Otherwise you’re just invoking underpants gnomes. Can you quantify the underlying physical causes of the MWP and the LIA, or are you just describing a wiggly line on a graph?–
Wiki:
“Large Quaternary eruptions
Since 1000 AD
Krakatoa, Indonesia; 1883, August 26–27; VEI 6; 21 km3 (5.0 cu mi) of tephra
Mount Tambora, Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia; 1815, Apr 10; VEI 7; 150 km3 (36 cu mi) of tephra;an estimated 200,000,000 t (220,000,000 short tons) of SO2 were emitted, produced the “Year Without a Summer”
The “Mysterious 1810 Event” VEI 6.5; discovered from ice cores in the 1980s.
Grímsvötn, Northeastern Iceland; 1783–1785; Laki; 1783–1784; VEI 6; 14 km3 (3.4 cu mi) of lava, an estimated 120,000,000 t (130,000,000 short tons) of SO2 were emitted, produced a Volcanic winter, 1783, on the North Hemisphere.
Long Island (Papua New Guinea), Northeast of New Guinea; 1660 ±20; VEI 6; 30 km3 (7.2 cu mi) of tephra”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_volcanism_on_Earth
And:
“1452-53 New Hebrides arc, Vanuatu; the location of this eruption in the South Pacific is uncertain, as it has been identified from distant ice core records; the only pyroclastic flows are found at Kuwae; 36 to 96 km3 (8.6 to 23.0 cu mi) of tephra; 175,000,000–700,000,000 t (193,000,000–772,000,000 short tons) of sulfuric acid”
Compare all listed above to the quite recent:
“Pinatubo, island of Luzon, Philippines; 1991, June 15; VEI 6; 6 to 16 km3 (1.4 to 3.8 cu mi) of tephra; an estimated 20,000,000 tonnes (22,000,000 short tons) of SO2 were emitted.”
I would say each of the five listed were far more significant than Pinatubo in terms of their effect upon climate. And it seems likely to me that there additionally were such significant major eruption that remain undiscovered which occurred within the last 1000 years.
Krakatoa was largest eruption in modern history. And the earlier Mount Tambora was larger and much more significant- but one might not call it within modern history.
And we have not had such an large volcanic eruptions within the last 120 years.
So I think these five eruptions [plus less noteworthy eruptions plus unknown major eruptions] had some
effects upon the cooler period of LIA. Plus it seems the solar activity during LIA could have had an cooling effect.
Plus I think timing of such events in addition to the “wiggly line on a graph” or “natural variation” or 60 year and centuries long cycles could played role.
Any ff these monster eruptions if they occur today would cause reporter to run around screaming that the end is near, but in terms larger and rarer eruptions, they are quite small.
And obviously even larger eruptions or fairly large rocks impacting from space could have caused larger effect upon earth climate during last few hundreds of thousands of years.
It is impossible to know the value and sign of the human contribution to global temperature because we don’t know how to calculate that. We haven’t any way to know if and humans have contributed anything at all to the climate. The best we can do is say we think so which is meaningless. I conclude then your second paragraph is impossible to prove and also meaningless. It does little else but describe your belief system.
Hey stupid, we are coming out of the little ICE AGE, of course it’s going to get warmer…NATURALLY !
Marcus.
Except that it is already warmer now than it was before the Little Ice Age. Your argument is unconvincing.
dp,
“It is impossible to know the value and sign of the human contribution to global temperature because we don’t know how to calculate that”
Yes it is possible. It’s called “physics.” We can look at what the factors are that contribute to terrestrial temperatures (sunlight, particulates in the atmosphere, albedo of ice and water and clouds etc., greenhouse gasses, orbital patterns, solar cycles, and so on). We can calculate it pretty exactly. We know, with about 98% certainty, what the contribution is of human activity.
“We know, with about 98% certainty”
Please explain us what “certainty” is.
“Please explain us what “certainty” is.”
No. Take a course in mathematics and statistics. If you don’t know what “certainty” is, you need to learn.
““Please explain us what “certainty” is.”
No”
You had the right to say that you had no f… idea, dude.
Why are we “coming out of” the little ice age? Why did it get warmer? You’re implying that the earth has some temperature it wants to be at, without providing any supporting evidence that that is the case.
@chris
Why cats are cats?
And why are they lovely?
dcpetterson says:
…it is already warmer now than it was before the Little Ice Age.
Where do you get your misinformation from??
dcpetterson says:
We last had a record cold global year over a century ago. The warming since then is not “natural”. If you disagree. then construct a detailed physical model… &etc.
Where do you get your misinformation from?? That is laughably wrong. You really have no clue, do you?
When you make an assertion here, the onus is on you to back it up.
But you never do. It’s all assertions, all the time with you; FAIL.
simple-tourist – Thanks for the analogy. You can study the evolution of cats to understand their traits, both wild and domesticated. Likewise, the climate of the earth does not just change randomly. There are external and internal forcings that cause it to change. So, once again, what caused the earth to come out of the LIA?
dcpetterson: No. Take a course in mathematics and statistics. If you don’t know what “certainty” is, you need to learn.
If you think you “learned” what “certainty” is from taking “a course” in mathematics and statistics then you were daydreaming throughout. Or “98 percent certainty”. You might have learned about “98 percent confidence intervals”, with the proviso that “confidence” remains undefined, and the “confidence coefficient” was taken by a sort of indirect “reasoning” from a conditional probability calculation.
“Physics and chemistry prove the reality of AGW.”
But unfortunately not quantitatively with any degree of empirically determined certainty.
AJB,
Yeah, we really do. There are people who claim otherwise, but yeah. we really do.
So, please tell us how much warming is not natural.
“So, please tell us how much warming is not natural.”
That part caused by greenhouse gasses.
We last had a record cold global year over a century ago. The warming since then is not “natural”.
If you disagree. then construct a detailed physical model that numerically describes the forces and effects that account for the warming of the Earth in the last century. If you want to say, “Well, we just don’t know,” then you are putting yourself in the realm of religion, not science.
“If you want to say, “Well, we just don’t know,” then you are putting yourself in the realm of religion, not science.”
No, it’s just the exact opposite, dude.
You know exactly nothing about science. Rather, you have negative knowledge.
And you can’t answer any question. You don’t even try.
@dcpetterson,
Professor Easterbrook’s predictions and models seem to do a great job of not only matching the past – but accurately predicting what’s gone on since his 2000 prediction. And it’s not based on CO2.
“How much warming is not natural?”
Slightly more than all of it. Natural forcing alone would have resulted in a slight cooling.
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/images/models/Mheel_Attribution-72-1200w.jpg
dcpetterson: If you want to say, “Well, we just don’t know,” then you are putting yourself in the realm of religion, not science.
That is false. All of the models/theories/curvefitting results are based on procedures that have liabilities (approximations, unknown parameter values, incompletely known mechanisms.) “We don’t know” is a pretty good summary. “We don’t know” for example, the sensitivity of Earth surface temperature (land or water) to a doubling of the CO2 concentration. “We don’t know” the net effects of the water vapor feedback.
There is very little evidence, if any, of “AGW” (assuming statistically significant human “climate” impact) either in the temperature records or indeed in physics or chemistry. And, which we should be thankful for, there is no evidence of “CAGW” at all. There is however, a myriad of extremely fascinating and beautiful natural processes involved in what we somewhat sloppily refer to as “climate”.
By all means, join the debate, but please refrain from making silly assumptions about the WUWT readership. Also, keep in mind that one cannot “set off to disprove” something that is yet to be proven.
Many people would say that AGW predicted an increase in global heat content. This would be exhibited in an increase in ocean heat content, which could be measured by sampling its temperature, or using the sea level as a proxy, and by increasing surface temperture.
Since these have been observed, many people would say that that is evidence.
You’ve heard of the greenhouse effect?
This term doesn’t appear in the scholarly literature of climate science. How is “CAGW” defined, in terms of things that can be measured?
“This would be exhibited in an increase in ocean heat content, which could be measured by sampling its temperature, or using the sea level as a proxy, and by increasing surface temperture”
So you are saying that AGW would cause acceleration of sea level rise.
So AGW is falsified – again.
simple-touriste wrote:So you are saying that AGW would cause acceleration of sea level rise.
No, thermal expansion wouldn’t necessarily cause an accelerating sea level rise, just a sea level rise.
But a consensus is building that it is accelerating.
simple-touriste wrote:So AGW is falsified – again.
1) I don’t think you can falsify AGW without a broad range of evidence showing that CO2 is not increasing or it’s not due to us putting CO2 in the atmosphere, or that it’s not a greenhouse gas. And that one of those also goes for CH4.
2) For a warming you don’t need acceleration. Warming can happen linearly, or even at decreasing rate, and still raise sea level enough to cause economic and agricultural hardship. In some places, displacement.
3) Sea level rise probably is accelerating.
4) Again? When do you think AGW was last falsified?
CAGW would entail something akin to “runaway global warming” or like nonsense. The end of the world as we know it due to trace gases in the atmosphere and such. It is mainly being peddled in several mainstream media outlets (the Guardian for instance) at a price of about five cents-a-headline. It is prominent in science fiction movie-making and has many believers in greenie “N”GOs. However, its primary domain is popular culture and politics and Seth is right to point out that it doesn’t belong in scholarly literature. It is, though, astonishingly enough sold by several high-profile climate modellers and career scientists.
(Yes, Seth, I have heard about the greenhouse effect. You deserve an equally silly question:
– Have you heard about water vapour?)
Some relevant questions:
– What is the exact relationship between the amount of “non-condensable greenhouse gases” and water vapour in the atmosphere?
– What is the effect of increased or decreased water vapour in the atmosphere?
Remember, the AGW idea was ditched a few years back by most scientific communities in favor of the more generic “climate change”, one of the reasons being that these complex relationships involving water vapour might produce either cooling/warming. The AGW theory has never been satisfactorily proven and the “human induced climate change” hypothesis is exceedingly difficult to completely disprove. It is a bit like hunting for ghosts, even if one doesn’t find any, one cannot positively conclude that there aren’t any.
@seth
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Gard R. Rise wrote: CAGW would entail something akin to “runaway global warming” or like nonsense. The end of the world as we know it due to trace gases in the atmosphere and such. It is mainly being peddled in several mainstream media outlets (the Guardian for instance)
That sounds unconscionable. Can you link me to such an article in the Guardian?
Gard R. Rise wrote: It is, though, astonishingly enough sold by several high-profile climate modellers and career scientists.
Do you have a link to any of these?
Gard R. Rise wrote: (Yes, Seth, I have heard about the greenhouse effect.
Then you’ll know that physics and chemistry support AGW. By that mechanism.
Gard R. Rise wrote: You deserve an equally silly question:– Have you heard about water vapour?)
Yes. What a strange question. Do you claim that the physics and chemistry don’t apply to CO2 in the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect because “water vapour”?
Gard R. Rise wrote: – What is the exact relationship between the amount of “non-condensable greenhouse gases” and water vapour in the atmosphere?
I don’t know, what is it?
Gard R. Rise wrote: – What is the effect of increased or decreased water vapour in the atmosphere?
It’s a greenhouse gas, it has a high specific heat, it condenses under certain conditions. Lots of things due to those.
Gard R. Rise wrote: Remember, the AGW idea was ditched a few years back by most scientific communities in favor of the more generic “climate change”, one of the reasons being that these complex relationships involving water vapour might produce either cooling/warming.
You might be mistaken about that.
Four thousand scholarly publications with the term “Anthropogenic Global Warming” in the last year alone.
Gard R. Rise wrote: The AGW theory has never been satisfactorily proven
You might be mistaken about that too. Increases in CO2 concentration being what they are.
Gard R. Rise wrote: and the “human induced climate change” hypothesis is exceedingly difficult to completely disprove. It is a bit like hunting for ghosts, even if one doesn’t find any, one cannot positively conclude that there aren’t any.
It’s not as hard as all that. You can measure the sources of radiative forcing, and know which ones are anthropogenic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing#/media/File:Radiative-forcings.svg
I’ll do this briefly, this thread is getting old.
1) You don’t need to pretend that you don’t know what CAGW or how it is being marketed. Stop pretending that you are living in a cave or something.
2) I think you know pretty well what scientists I am talking about, too. If not, ask James Hansen. He should be able to point you in the right direction.
3) No. Read my post again (or do a better job at reading this current post) and maybe you will get why there is no conclusive evidence for AGW in the greenhouse effect.
4) If you read my post, I explained to you why I asked a silly question. If you ask silly questions, you get silly questions back. I assume general literacy on your part; you are certainly able to write, so you should be able to read as well.
5) You acknowledge that you don’t know the exact relationship between non-condensable greenhouse gases and water vapour in the atmosphere, and in that you are in good company. If an increasing amount of non-condensable greenhouse gases increase water vapour in the atmosphere is it effectively warming or cooling the “climate”?
6) I’m sorry, I missed that we are rewriting the narrative again. Are we back to AGW now instead of climate change? My mistake. I thought that went out of fashion years ago when measured temperatures didn’t conform with the in vogue climate models at all.
7) Again, increasing CO2 in the atmosphere does not necessarily entail a warmer climate. At least, that is what the American Chemical Society is somewhat unsure about:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html
The dynamics behind cloud formation is a fascinating area of study, but here we have another critical aspect of global “climate” (or perhaps more accurately the global weather system) that is insufficiently well understood.
8) Again, increases in CO2 does not necessarily prove AGW, with an emphasis on the “W”.
9) “Climate change” is a hodge-podge of different hypotheses. It is like the mythological hydra; you chop one head off only to discover new ones popping out. Forcings are identified and then negative forcings must be located, practically or theoretically, to explain why modelled temperature does not correspond with measured temperature.
dcpetterson March 15, 2016 at 2:54 pm
“The record high temperatures we’re experiencing now are the result of a very strong el Nino piled on top of the heating due to AGW.”
Yet, there is no warming for the last 18 years prior to 2015. Why did AGW suddenly decide to pile on now? LOL!
Don’t you realize how ridiculous your argument is?
To quote you, “It’s entertaining, though.”
odcombe2007,
“Yet, there is no warming for the last 18 years prior to 2015.”
… only if you cherry-pick one (1) dataset, and ignore all the other available data (glacier melts, sea level increase, physical science, changing growing seasons, ocean acidification, ice sheet melts, surface temperatures, ocean temperatures, the difference between the amount of heat absorbed by the Earth and the amount emitted back into space, etc.)
Plus, you have to believe a now-obsolete version of that particular dataset. Remember, satellites do not give you temperatures. They give you a rough reading of infrared emissions at certain wavelengths and at a range of altitudes. It takes a complex series of analytical calculations to convert that to “temperature” — and even then, you get (at best, if you did the calculations right) the temperature high up in the atmosphere where airplanes live.
Plus, “18 years” is a blink of an eye. One needs to understand how long-term trends work, and the random noise that creeps into long-term trends. Try doing a trendline from any point other than Monckton’s cherry-picked starting point. Nearly every other month in the last 37 years (with about two dozen exceptions) gives an upward trend.
And that is not to mention that the faux “pause” is no more. There’s a reason Monckton hasn’t done an article this month about the February numbers. His false narrative is gone.
The error margin in satellite measurements does not allow you to claim there was no AGW for eighteen years, except by discarding all caveats. And with revision of the datasets, the ‘no global warming’ meme is dead. At the surface, data shows that there was no pausee, maybe a slowdown which means nothing in terms of climate, just shows what we already know about interannual and decadal internal variability.
“Yet, there is no warming for the last 18 years prior to 2015. Why did AGW suddenly decide to pile on now? LOL!”
No, you’re behind the curve my friend.
That was before RSS V4.0.
I do find it incredible that denizens think that a small but significant ongoing background forcing (anthro CO2 increases) would maintain a constant warming signal IN THE 3% OF THE CLIMATE SYSTEM that is the atmosphere, without being masked on occasion by the Earth’s natural climate cycles – of which PDO/ENSO is the primary one.
http://skepticalscience.com/graphics/Nuccitelli_OHC_Data.jpg
From:
http://www.clivar.org/sites/default/files/documents/prospectus_RF_OHC.pdf
“Energy stored in the climate system: ~ 93% ocean. ~ 4% melting ice (sea and land). ~ 3% warming of the atmosphere and land.”
“Don’t you realize how ridiculous your argument is?”
Only if you don’t understand the science – or don’t want to more probably given the (very) few knowledgeable people that can speak above the crowd on here. (Dr. Leif Svalgaard is one who regularly silences the “It’s the Sun lot”.
“To quote you, “It’s entertaining, though.”
Yep, sure is.
Short periods of time can have a zero or lower slope, and not be statistically significant to claim that they show that there has been no warming. The 18 years 1998 to 2015 did have a very low (although positive) slope, but this was not statistically significant from the previous 50 years of warming trend, when the El Nino is taken into account.
So AGW has not “piled on” now. It is merely that it has been marching onwards, and the state of the El Nino (primarily) has put the last few months above the long term trend, as the previous few years were below it.
“only if you cherry-pick one (1) dataset”
Using the data set with most coverage, most uniformity, and least arbitrary adjustments based on guesswork, is called “cherry picking” only in strange places filled with pseudo-scientists called “climate expert”.
Elsewhere is just common sense!
ToneB. ‘That was before RSS V4.0.’
Is relative humidity really near-constant? Although the models suggest it is so, evidence appears contrary,
simple-touriste wrote: Using the data set with most coverage, most uniformity, and least arbitrary adjustments based on guesswork* referring to the satellite temperatures.
Most uniformity is wrong, as it least arbitrary adjustments based on guesswork. There was a change in instrumentation with the ASMUs, and there is another one coming.
Instruments cannot have their calibration verified, have to be adjusted by guessing for orbital decay, wear to the calibration plate, and orbital path biasing measurements, and the model by which temperature from different parts of the atmosphere can be calculated by differences in measurement at different angles is complicated and intricate.
When a satellite is reading strangely there historically has been usually no way to check which one is wrong, because there are often two or fewer instruments in operation:
http://images.remss.com/figures/missions/amsu/satellites_used.png
I encourage you to learn a little bit more about how satellite temperature measurements are calculated, and the reasons why the major adjustments over their history have been made.
Nick: At the surface, data shows that there was no pausee, maybe a slowdown which means nothing in terms of climate, just shows what we already know about interannual and decadal internal variability.
Quantitatively, the size of the slowdown showed that “we” had underestimated the amount of internal variability, and showed the gcms to be unreliable as to forecasts of the future. That was “something”, not “nothing”, and stimulated much commentary in the peer-reviewed literature. Most recently, perhaps, by Mann and others in Nature.
dcpetterson,
The history of the earth is much longer than human history. The earth has been both much warmer and colder in its history. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been much higher in the past, and seldom lower. There is scant correlation between the earth’s temperature and CO2 levels in the phanerozoic eon. What correlation we do see in the Pleistocene epoch indicates that CO2 levels increase as a consequence of warmer temperatures. There is no historical evidence that CO2 in the atmosphere causes global warming.
Brent Wilson,
Exactly right… not that it will give dcpetterson a clue.
dcpetterson: The record high temperatures we’re experiencing now are the result of a very strong el Nino piled on top of the heating due to AGW.
that is a possibility that is not ruled out by today’s graph.
However, as the CO2 concentration has risen from 280 ppm to 400 ppm, the Earth surface has warmed by about 1C. A 1C increase in Earth surface temperature results in increases in the rates of radiative and non-radiative transfer of heat from the Earth surface to the troposphere. How much those increase put an upper bound on how much of the warming might have been due to the increased CO2. What is that bound? My calculation (I put it up here and on my ResearchGate page) put it at about 0.2C. So far, the most similar calculation that I have seen in the peer-reviewed literature was the widely publicized paper on lightning strike frequency by Romps et al, in Science about 15 months ago, which I cited in my calculation. With your knowledge of the science, maybe you can calculate this: considering dry thermals, the hydrological cycle, and radiation, how much faster does the Earth surface transfer heat to the atmosphere after a 1C increase in mean temperature. Support your claim that everything relevant is known accurately.
dcpetterson says:
The record high temperatures we’re experiencing now are the result of a very strong el Nino piled on top of the heating due to AGW.
This is far from record high temperatures. The geologic record shows far more warming — during times when CO2 was lower, thus falsifying the ‘dangerous AGW’ nonsense.
And:
How long has it been since there was a record low global monthly or yearly temperature?
Just prior to the Holocene, global T was far lower than anything recent.
And:
I notice at least some WUWT readers are beginning to acknowledge that the Earth is warming (which is a start) though they continue to question the cause.
That is insufferably naive. WUWT readers have always acknowledged that the planet is warming — naturally. It is only the always-wrong alarmist crowd that still believes that CO2 is the central cause. They believe that, without any credible measurements to support that failed argument. That makes their belief religious, not scientific.
Global warming has been ongoing, at the same general rate and within the same parameters, despite CO2 being low, or high. Therefore, anyone with the least bit of common sense will conclude that CO2 is not the primary cause of global warming. Of course, that eliminates the alarmist crowd, which never let their lack of common sense interfere with their religious belief system.
dcpetterson, the big problem is that the climate models are missing massive things that seem to be the major factors in climate. For instance they don’t model the oceanic variations of PDO/AMO or even ENSO at all. It is very clear that if the ENSO event hadn’t happened we wouldn’t have the high temperature recorded in February. We don’t know if it would have been a new high without AGW or not. It could have been. You simply don’t know because the excursion by El Nino is so much larger than all the AGW combined for 70 years is so small.
Second, since the satellites aren’t confirming the large warming of the major part of the atmosphere the higher temperature on the surface can’t be because of CO2 either. Both of these effectiively do what you could not. They prove that the high temperature cannot be because of CO2 unless a cause could be found for why CO2 caused the El Nino or the warming on the surface that is uncorroborated by the satellites.
Such an explanation is not available in current climate models therefore would represent another example of how climate science was not setled, is not settled and is completely being made up to suit the particular temperature of the moment or event of the moment. Like the Yale group and the Australian group all these climate modeleres should be fired. The models don’t work and apparently are missing things that would give us any clue of what is really happening in the climate.
Please see my blog on failures of Climate science here: https://logiclogiclogic.wordpress.com/category/climate-change/
Altogether now…”Global warming…er, climate change…is and/or will be making El Ninos more frequent and more extreme!
Michael Jankowski,
Probably neither more frequent, nor more extreme. I dare you to find someone who claims otherwise.
However, the overall average temperature of the Earth has increased. That means each successive major el Nino will likely produce a higher spike than the last one — just as this current spike is higher than all previous ones. The trendline of el Nino years is definitely up.
dcpetterson wrote: *Probably neither more frequent, nor more extreme. I dare you to find someone who claims otherwise.* (Referring to the El Nino)
?itok=U7fX-ThI
I agree that there’s no consensus showing increased variability of the ENSO, but more show a tendency towards El Nino conditions than La Nina.
I suspect that your correspondent probably could find someone who claims otherwise. There is evidence all over the shop on this one.
From here.
In short, if you are someone who wants more or stronger ENSO events in the future, I have great news for you–research supports that. If you are someone who wants fewer or weaker ENSO events in the future, don’t worry–research supports that too.
Seth,
Thanks for the info. Since there is an increasing amount of heat being pumped into the oceans due to AGW, it does make sense there might be more heat coming back out due to ENSO.
Since there is an increasing amount of heat being pumped into the oceans due to AGW…
Get the hook…
“The trend line of El Niño years is definitely up”
If it is only the El Niño years which produce the rising trend, separated by periods of little or no rising trend, then does that not indicate a natural source for the measured temperature change? Also, does that not make it somewhat disengenous to include the temperature increases during El Niño as part of the overall temperature rise attributed to AGW?
“I notice at least some WUWT readers are beginning to acknowledge that the Earth is warming (which is a start) though they continue to question the cause.”
Isn’t it logical to question the cause, since the Earth has measurably been warming, since about 1850, and CO2 didn’t start to measurably increase until the 1950’s? Although, I have noticed, that recently some have tried to expand the increase in CO2 back into the 1930’s to explain the increase in temperatures then.
[The 1650’s, not 1850’s, marks the beginning of the earth natural warming out of the Little Ice Age. .mod]
[The 1650’s, not 1850’s, marks the beginning of the earth natural warming out of the Little Ice Age. .mod]
Probably not:
Consult:
Change points and temporal dependence in reconstructions of annual temperature: Did Europe experience a Little Ice Age?
Kelly, Morgan and Ó Gráda, Cormac
The Annals of Applied Statistics Volume 8, Number 3 (September 2014), 1372-1394.
So let me get this straight.. The “No GW for 17 years” mantra, is predicated on starting the time sequence with the 97/98 El Niño (and that doesn’t skew the results) But we must discard the 2015/16 El Niño data, because, well.. everyone knows that El Niño years are hotter so it would be bad science to use an out-lier data point to infer a long term trend?
Or maybe we can just blame the dog for eating your collective homework… the resulting flatulence would be a potent GHG.
When would you like to start? 1850 or perhaps the height of the MWP.
What was ‘the height of the MWP ‘?…with error margins and best knowledge of global extent, please.
“The “No GW for 17 years” mantra, is predicated on starting the time sequence with the 97/98 El Niño”
NO
Can you at least invent NEW silly talking points?
Okay. How about this talking point: “The 17 year pause is entirely dependent on a piece of gray literature (aka Spencer ‘ s blog). Considering the anger and derision emanating from this blog over IPCC ARE using gray literature the double standards of Anthony and his followers are abject.
This
Not a talking point, but a fact.
Also, what’s wrong with “gray”?
LOL, you are full of it!
Why don’t you allow the “repost” option for sharing this story? I would love to repost this on my wordpress blog.
North/South graphs, all UAH based.
1. Anomalies
2. Rates
3. Global mean rate fidelity evolution
4. Vertically
5. Chaos
Current mean rates since 1979 (with no predictive skill whatsoever):
1. Northern Polar (60N-90N): +0.220 ±0.361 °C/decade
2. Northern Extratropical (20N-90N): +0.169 ±0.160 °C/decade
3. Tropics (20S-20N): +0.200 ±0.209 °C/decade
4. Southern Extratropical (20S-90S): +0.082 ±0.132 °C/decade
5. Southern Polar (60S-90S): -0.024 ±0.421 °C/decade
6. Global (90N-90S): +0.151 ±0.121 °C/decade
Lot’s of natural variability (autocorrelated to hell and back) but no discernable anthropogenic signal and nowhere near enough observations to determine otherwise. Come back in a millenium or so.
AJB,
I would add to your comment that almost all of these readings have error bars greater than the measurement and the one exception, Southern polar, has error bars equal to 80% of the measurement.
I am an engineer, not a “scientist”, but in my world when the measurement is less that the error bars it is meaningless.
We can’t even find the anthropogenic signal in the CO2 values, let alone in anything else.
“We can’t even find the anthropogenic signal in the CO2 values, let alone in anything else.”
Interesting assertion. Can you prove that statement?
I ask because climate scientists do in fact see the “anthropogenic signal in the CO2 values”. We know the effects of various natural forcings (atmospheric particulates, solar cycles, orbital cycles, etc.) and we also know the effects of greenhouse gasses (the amount of infrared radiation they block). We also know how much of these greenhouses gasses humans are producing. The resulting calculations match what we see.
Can you prove it doesn’t? (Answer: No, you can’t, because it does.)
Explain to me how the rate of increase of CO2 fell to almost zero some two years after the Pinatubo eruption when the claimed going rate of background human contribution was ~ 1.5ppmv/annum. Do volcanoes somehow swallow CO2, did all the vegetation suddenly die or termites become agitated? Measurement only please, hand waving and grotesque statistical smoothing not accepted.
http://s18.postimg.org/z07tpcxk7/CO2_Zero.png
Climate scientists see anthropogenic signals everywhere, it’s there raison d’être.
The resulting calculations match what we see.
Can you prove it doesn’t? (Answer: No, you can’t, because it does.)
If your claim was true then the models would accurately predict the climate, which they do not. If you disagree on this, you may take it up with the authors of IPCC AR5.
AJB: volcano-induced cooling. See, for example
http://www.biogeosciences.net/8/2317/2011/bg-8-2317-2011.pdf
AJB:
“Explain to me how the rate of increase of CO2 fell to almost zero some two years after the Pinatubo eruption when the claimed going rate of background human contribution was ~ 1.5ppmv/annum. Do volcanoes somehow swallow CO2, did all the vegetation suddenly die or termites become agitated? Measurement only please, hand waving and grotesque statistical smoothing not accepted.”
OK:
Another example of not thinking of the physics involved.
CO2 (natural and anthro) resident in Earth’s atmos is a product of the planet’s sinks and sources – their balance …… and this is the important bit – that balance is dependent on temperature.
A cooler Earth sinks more and a warmer one sources more …. with anthro CO2 now unnaturally tipping the balance to ongoing increases.
Half of Man’s CO2 is sunk and so there is a small incremental – which can still be slowed noticeably by a cooler ocean.
The Earth cooled after Pinatubo and the sinking part of the equation came more into play – and so the rate of increase fell for a time.
Atmospheric aerosols reduced incident TSI and so had a cooling effect on the Oceans – they then were able to absorb more.
You see the opposite on that graph when temps increased after the 97/98 EN – an acceleration in atmos CO2 .
From:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_impacts_on_the_oceans
“Volcanic aerosols from huge volcanoes directly reduce global mean sea surface temperature (SST) by approximately 0.2-0.3 °C, milder than global total surface temperature drop, which is ~0.3 to 0.5 °C, according to both global temperature records and model simulations. It usually takes several years to be back to normal.
Also….
http://www.biogeosciences.net/8/2317/2011/bg-8-2317-2011.pdf
dcpetterson says:
Can you prove that statement?
Translation:
“Can you prove a negative?”
Logic FAIL.
No measurement. Only modelling and gross assumption, tantamount to hand waving. Another example of simplistically assuming the physics involved with no empirical verification, modelling regarded as experiment.
Same old whoopie-do guff. You have no idea what the ratios are because there are no measurements of natural sinks and sources with any degree of certainty and that’s getting on for 96% of the carbon cycle. With sinks operating at one temperature, sources at another and massive natural variability “A cooler Earth sinks more and a warmer one sources more” is like playground chatter.
We can’t even find the anthropogenic signal in the CO2 values, let alone in anything else.
The combustion of fossil fuels will return to the biosphere carbon that has been trapped for hundreds of millions of years?
The increase in the atmospheric CO2 is less than the amount released by the combustion of fossil fuels. The oceans and land are sinking CO2.
Fossil CO2 is low in C13, compared to the atmosphere, and this creates a signal in the atmosphere of reducing C13/C12 ratio. Which has indeed been found:
So I think that you might be mistaken about being unable to find the anthropogenic signal in CO2 concentrations.
I recall reading somewhere that this C13 ratio was lowest over forests, like the Amazon and other Non industrial areas. Can’t find the link, but the paper did raise the question, why would forests give such a fossil signal…….hmmmmm. It seems there is more to learn yet grasshopper…
It was here at WUWT, Spencer, 2008. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/
Seth,
You assert two things.
1- Fossil fuel is low in C13.
This has been measured and proven to be true.
2- The change in atmospheric ratio of C12/C13 can only be caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The null hypothesis is that the changing ratios could be caused by any number of things. Can you prove that it is caused only by burnIng fossil fuels?
Ray H wrote:
2- The change in atmospheric ratio of C12/C13 can only be caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The null hypothesis is that the changing ratios could be caused by any number of things. Can you prove that it is caused only by burnIng fossil fuels?
Since 1751 approximately 337 billion metric tonnes of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production.
1ppm represents about 2.13 Gigatonnes of Carbon, so the increase of 130 ppm since pre-industrial times is about 277 billion metric tonnes of carbon.
So there’s no mysterious happening here. You put CO2 in the atmosphere, some of it dissolves in the ocean. You can measure that too:
An improved method for detecting anthropogenic CO2 in the oceans
To your question, other organic sources would do that. Burning a forest for instance. There’s been a bit of that lately too.
Seth,
Your big numbers are scaring me!
Not really. For perspective: the rise in CO2 — over the past century — has been only one part in 10,000. The other 9,999 parts in 10,000 are naturally occurring.
CO2 has gone up by one ten-thousandth.
You base your climate alarmism on that? Please.
I was reading an article a few weeks back about coral bleaching caused by El Nino’s on the Great Barrier Reef and the accepted belief that it takes approx 12 years for the coral reefs to recover from a major bleaching event. So I thought I would have a look into the El Nino years and strengths based on NOAA’s data since 1950. According to their data it’s clear that El Nino’s have not become more regular over the last 70 years. There is also an interesting trend though with the strong El Nino’s and whilst they appear to be getting stronger the occurrence of strong El Nino’s are getting further and further apart. The years between each strong El Nino since 1950 is 7,8,10,15 & 18 years apart which suggests the next strong El Nino will not happen until 2034 or later.
There’s different mechanisms that cause bleaching on the GBR.
The 1997-1998 bleaching event was related to the El Nino, but the 2001-2002 bleaching event was slightly worse, and fell on a fairly neutral ENSO time. The 2005-2006 bleaching event of the southern reef, especially around Keppel Islands affected a geographically smaller area, but was very devastating to that area, with 98% bleached on some reefs. That occurred during a moderate La Nina. The BOM attributes all those events to sea temperature.
The 2008-2011 bleaching events were climate related, but not warm water related. They were caused by extremely high rainfall in Queensland causing freshwater bleaching.
So as temperatures increase, you will increasingly see bleaching outside the El Nino years, and changes to rainfall are attacking the reef by a different mechanism.
So no global weather apocalypse until I’ve already decomposed? … wow … that’s a bit of a blow.
They’re doing an air survey of Townsville area reefs this week to try and find indications of any shallow water bleaching, if present. I doubt they’ll find much, it didn’t get anywhere near the 1998 event heat levels on the QLD coast this year, not even close. Nor have we had large flood rain plumes.
12 years recovery time sounds very overstated, recovery takes less than half of that time in my experience. And even if there was a problem with rising bleaching events corals propagate in water column and warm-adapted varieties will just move further south and will do so with greater benthic diversity than prior, as warmth tends to promote. 12 years would be about 11 years more than needed for that colonization to take place so plenty of time for mobile colonization of heat-adapted northern coral further south.
There’s a bit too much nonsense and hype emanating from AIMS and its reports these days.
Curious George.
It takes up to 50 years for coral to recover from total evaporation at 55,000 degrees, from Nuclear bomb, to growing like a forest and in pristine condition- Bikini Atoll.
Actually it may be much quicker but it was only in 2008 that a team of scientists went to have a look,
http://www.livescience.com/2438-bikini-atoll-corals-recovering-atomic-blast.html
With 42 species of coral having gone locally extinct.
“Locally extinct”?
That sounds like typical alarmism. Juvenile coral polyps drift throughout the ocean. No ‘local’ part of the ocean is going to have zero corals. At least, not due to the usual “carbon” claims.
I smell grant trolling — if there’s even a paper claiming corals are ‘locally extinct’. Or maybe it’s just another baseless assertion.
The graph of historical TSI (over the last 400 years) from SORCE suggests to me that most of the warming we’ve had is not from humans:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/data/tsi-data/
The graph of the historical TSI shows that we should have been cooling since the middle of the 1900s, unless there’s some other influence going on.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/files/2011/09/TIM-TSI-Reconstruction1.jpg
To most people that would suggest that humans a likely primarily responsible for the warming since then, in the absence of other explanations.
Five of the six TSI peaks greater than 1361.5 Wm-2 occurred post the middle of the 1900s. The sea with its great heat capacity is the main recipient. Seems to tell me a different story to your conclusion.
tonyM wrote Five of the six TSI peaks greater than 1361.5 Wm-2 occurred post the middle of the 1900s. The sea with its great heat capacity is the main recipient.
Lets then look at the oceanic heat content. Was it’s fastest increase in 1950, with lower increases occurring since then on the 11 year solar cycle?
Nope. Pretty much constant warming with no evidence of the 1 year cycle.
Is this to be expected? Well the change in solar irrandiance since 1750 represents a forcing of less than 10% of that represented by the enhanced greenhouse effect:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/ar4_fig_spm_2.png
So yes. Pretty much as expected.
Seth:
You say:
“Nope. Pretty much constant warming with no evidence of the 1 year cycle. ”
Nope, wrong and I don’t need glasses to see minima and varied positive slopes.
My response was to your claim that the:
“…historical TSI shows that we should have been cooling since the middle of the 1900s, ”
Note your word “COOLING!” Your claim does not hold water!! It is confirmed by your second set of graphs which shows an increase in T since the middle of the 1900’s. I said nothing about a fastest increase in the 1950 year nor about 11 year cycles. Nor did I say anything about linear relationships. In any case, you might do well to study some of Dr Evan’s work in this area if that is your problem.
It seems your approach is to conflate, obfuscate and distort comments as you have. Similarly for the boxed chart. Has nothing to do with my comment or 1750 but if you believe in your numbers perhaps you can go away and figure out why the models all fail and pass on your findings to the modellers.
tonyM says:
I said nothing about a fastest increase in the 1950 year nor about 11 year cycles. Nor did I say anything about linear relationships.
Seth does that all the time. It’s deflection, due to the fact that he has no credible answer.
These guys are desperatley searching for the “human fingerprint of global warming”, but they can never find a credible fingerprint. So they argue via assertions and beliefs.
I’m sure some of them believe in what they’re saying. But if they believe they’re doing honest science, they’re flat wrong.
Here lies the problem with this post. The claim is that the graph proves AGW not to blame. (One-graph-proves-that-record-high-year-of-2015-and-record-months-of-2016-are-not-agw-driven).
It has been claimed here that this last El Nino was not “super El Nino”. Yet temperatures were higher than after the last big El Nino in 97/98. This is evidence that there is an underlying temperature rise. Maybe not conclusive, but certainly supporting evidence.
Old seadog and others counter that this does not prove the rise is anthropogenic. True, but there is no way this graph can prove it is not, as claimed by the title.
The title of the post is wrong.
When you get your own blog, you can choose the titles.
Seems he was simply pointing out the absurd. I’m sure he’d back your right to be absurd …
So far nobody has offered any proof that the record 2015 ENSO event is not the main driver of record temperatures in 2015. Without that, the pause would likely have continued. Look at the first two years of Maue’s graph.
Anthony:
The “pause” was simply waiting for any EN to come along to end it .
But until modern times they didn’t move us into higher territory without a cyclic return via a Nina period..
it is in the record…..
http://www.scilogs.de/klimalounge/files/gistemp_nino_100.jpg
That plainly shows PDO/ENSO riding an underlying warming trend.
Toneb says:
That plainly shows PDO/ENSO riding an underlying warming trend.
An underlying natural warming trend.
Because the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified…
“So far nobody has offered any proof that the record 2015 ENSO event is not the main driver of record temperatures in 2015. Without that, the pause would likely have continued. …”
~ AW ~
?? And without the extraordinary spike of the ’97/’98 EN there would be no pause to begin with. Are you dismissively claiming the ’97/’98 EN caused the pause?
John@EF,
” And without the extraordinary spike of the ’97/’98 EN there would be no pause to begin with. Are you dismissively claiming the ’97/’98 EN caused the pause?”
Nonsense! We don’t need the 97/98 El Nino to demonstrate a pause. The pause is just as convincing if you take the data starting in 2001: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2016/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2016/trend
Besides:
“For a lot of the last 10 years the Global Worriers have been claiming that we can’t start a pause with an El Nino. So why is it OK to stop a Pause with one?”
This is a quote from Joanna Nova
The point is that it’s misleading, not that it’s unintentional.
Can anyone please locate the dog that isn’t barking, the global direct mapping of CO2 concentrations from the now nearly 2 year old OCO-2 satellite?
The mission to make “global measurements of atmospheric CO2 with the precision, resolution, and coverage needed to characterize sources and sinks on regional scales”, in other words to identify (and shame?) the anthropogenic sources of demon “carbon” seems to have gone into eclipse.
Is the data proving to tough to cook?
One graph proves that record high year of 2015 and record months of 2016 are not AGW driven
El Nino is one mechanism in the overall transfer/flow of energy through the system. Overall the mechanics are chaotic (or produce chaotic trajectories), and one graph can not “prove” much of anything. It is evidence that global warming events lag El Nino events, which is pretty much what you expect if El Nino entails the transfer of energy to the atmosphere from the oceans.
Somebody touched a nerve …
The Absurdists are Rising.
I’ve been reading here and elsewhere for some months now that the current el Nino is not as strong as the 97/98 one. Then February happened.
So, with a weak solar cycle, and by the reasoning in the article, the current el Nino is now considered the strongest on record?
A lot of people are going to be revising their opinions it would seem. I wonder if they’ll notice that they’ve done so.
barry,
So a one month blip in global T has you convinced it was caused by manmade emissions?
Really?
Who said that? Not me.
Do you think the current el Nino is stronger than 97/98?
DB: “So a one month blip in a physically meaningless global T has you convinced it was caused by manmade emissions?”
Fixed it for ya 😉
Thanx, that’s what I meant.
Most climate scientists agree in the consensus saying that human activities have probably caused most of the warming we have experienced in the last 2- 3 decades. We can discuss whether the majority actually is as high as 97%, but there is no doubt that a majority has that opinion.
On the other side, I don’t think you can find many scientists who think that the record high temperatures over a few months proves anything at all. I doubt that you can find any serious scientist at all who would say that.
El Nino has no doubt caused the warming in the recent months.
However, AGW has probably caused the temperature level
we have experienced in the last decades.
This temperature level was the starting point for the last El Nino, and that is the reason why a normal event like El Nino, now causes record high temperatures.
That is at least how I see it.
Regards
/Jan
I see it that way, Jan. Unless one is denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the globe will continue to warm. How quickly may be debated, but as long as the GHE is accepted no one should be surprised or shocked when a big el Nino brings record temps from occasional spikes over a long-term warming trend. We’ll see troughs and peaks, periods when warming seems to have slowed down or accelerated, but that’s just oscillations around the trend, and the long-term trend is what matters. The fertile ground for debate is the rate of that change. Anything else misses the woods for the trees.
I fully agree Barry.
As I see it, the AGW is real, the question is how large the climate sensitivity is and what consequences some warming will have. I think the debate would be more interesting if more people accepted this as the starting ground for the discussion.
I see that my link was broken. I tried to link to http://www.csens.org
I have generated some time series there which I think give an interesting overall picture.
/Jan
For all those people that want to claim 2015/2016 “proves” that human caused global warming is at work (while at the same time ignoring a record El Niño event as seen above)
These remarks are strange.
Pretty much every article I read, news and research, mentioned the lift to temps from the el Nino. Some even tried to quantify it. I’ve just googled “record global temperature” and every article of recent events more than 3 paragraphs mentions it. Comments here, prior to February, over and over referred to the attention the ‘opposition’ was giving to the el Nino. There was no “ignoring” of it. We were all talking about it. So was the press and research outlets.
For months prior to February, commenters here were scorning articles and mentions of a “Godzilla” el Nino. The narrative then was that the el Nino was being hyped, and Bob Tisdale was arguing that it was weaker than 1997/98.
So do people here now believe that this was a “Godzilla” el Nino after all, and that its strength eclipses the one in 97/98?
If you run a linear regression for RSS TLT from 1979 to 1997 (incl), the trend estimate is 0.08C/decade.
If you run a linear regression for RSS TLT from 1979 to 1998 (incl), the trend estimate is 0.15C/decade.
The trend is nearly twice as much just by adding one year.
The periods for those two trends are 20 and 21 years respectively.
Clearly, using such time periods to estimate a trend in the RSS data is specious, especially if one end of the trend sports a very high anomaly. Same goes for the 18 years 1997-2015 (incl). Not to mention that all these trends fail to achieve statistical significance.
All the talk about a pause, and the current rumblings about a warming trend since 1998 have always been, and still are, premature. You need more data, and not just from one slice of the climate system if you want to get a decent fix on global warming or not.
All the talk about [no] pause…
…began during the past few months with the newest talking points:
1. There never really was a ‘Pause’, and
2. Satellite data is NFG.
All the same data on both has been available for the past couple of decades. But until last year the overwhelming ‘consensus’ has been the universal attempt to explain why global warming stopped for so many years.
The number of attempts to explain why the warming stopped is around 60 now. They were suggested by the same alarmist crowd (IPCC) that accepted the fact that global warming had stopped.
But then, the new talking point #1 appeared. So now they are lying outright, claiming that global warming had never stopped.
Since the same data has always been available, the conclusion is obvious to even the most casual observer: the eco-lemmings have all turned 180º, and they now contradict what they were saying only last year — and the year before, and the year before that, etc.
The alarmist crowd has no credibility because they will ‘Say Anything’, rather than admit that the hated skeptics have been right all along.
If you say so db