Yesterday, in response to the thread on “3 of 4 global metrics show nearly flat temperature anomaly in the last decade” I got a short note from MIT’s Richard Lindzen along with a graph. I asked if I could post it, and he graciously agreed:
Look at the attached. There has been no warming since 1997 and no
statistically significant warming since 1995. Why bother with the
arguments about an El Nino anomaly in 1998? (Incidentally, the red
fuzz represents the error ‘bars’.)
Best wishes,
Dick
==================================================
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
Graph: HadCRUT 1993-2007 – click for larger image
The man has a point.
I appreciate the note, Dr. Lindzen.
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Excellent point by the Prof. – the 1998 “spike” is irrelevant because it was immediately followed by an equivalent cooling. It is of no significance what so ever.
If you look at the RSS/UAH graphs from the start to today. The actual statisticaly measured warming over the whole period is something like 0.1-0.2 of a degree from 1979 to today.
0.1 of a degree warming over 20 years when CO2’s influence should be the STRONGEST !! Remember that CO2’s heat effect is logarithmic. The more you add, the less it`s impact. Most of the the evil warmening doom should have already been happening.
Error bars!
Posh. Who heard of such nonsense.
[It does look like there is some statistically significant warming since pinotoba though.]
Lindzen evidently reads Watts Up With That? and The Reference Frame (he referenced Lubos’s “Global Warming: The 1958 Edition” recently. I wonder, what else does he read?
The difficult concept that global temperature is not increasing gathers steam; thank you Dr. Lindzen.
Another difficult concept, that of solar dominance of Earth’s climate, (in the absence of unusual stellar events) may also gain some momentum soon. Maybe not. But if so, at what cost?
chillguy33, I fear that people will concede solar influence, but then say “Since this influence can only be through TSI (We are close-minded to other possibilities) climate is even MORE sensitive than we thought and even MORE of the catastrophe is being “masked” by dimming than we thought, therefore it is MORE vital than EVER to act NOW or the Polar Bear gets it!” The excuses for AGW are so contrived as to allow for anything they desire…
That looks like annualized data, which greatly attentuates the effect of the 98 El Nino. I like the graphic though. I wish I knew what software was used to produce it (and the fuzz).
Magnetic influence of the Sun seems obvious (based on history); I cannot imagine a hominid rejecting it (let alone PhDs). The exact mechanism will be found by the survivors; or maybe it has already been found and ignored.
I am somewhat concerned with stocking the root cellar at the moment!
On the other hand, maybe cycle 24 will start this month as guaranteed by AGW share owners. What are the odds, though.
I used this data from a previous post
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
plunked the whole works into Excel, added 14 Deg C to to the JD anomalies.
I then took the period 1917 (13.61 deg C) to 1944 (14.21 Deg C) for a global warming of 0.60 Deg.
I did the same thing for 1978 (the 1st time the temperature remained above 14 Deg C and after the “cooling” – 14.01 Deg C) to 2005 (14.62 Deg C) for a global warming of 0.61 deg C. Both periods are 27 years. A 0.01 deg difference.
Am I missing something here? We seemed to survive the great global warming of 1917 to 1944. I seems a good bet we will survive this one too. I am beginning to doubt it has anything to do with CO2.
I recommend this post from Lucia’s blog:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-projections-overpredict-recent-warming/
She is trying to do some pretty rigourous statistical analysis to determine whether the actual temperature trend is consistent with the IPCC predictions.
This is the first time that I have seen someone take autocorrelation into account (temperature is not white noise since future values are correlated with past values). The results are surprising.
Man…
Just saw a weird sunspot when I enlarged the sunspot link at the top of the page… wait… no just a fly… sorry.
Nice to see that someone of Prof Lindzen’s stature is reading your blogs.
The 1998 temperature is irrelevant in the “global warming” trend. But it has not prevented the IPCC to say in its 2001 Summary of Policymakers :
“It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year” without mentionning it was due to el Nino.
I wonder why an absence of warming or even a rapid cooling is due to natural variability but a warming IS manmande.
Call me ‘Alarmist’, but I still see a rising trend.
Anyone care to dispute?
We are speaking about only a 13 year period here. I’m not sure I’m ready to call this a trend.
But, the CO2 theory predicted accelerated temperature rises, and that we are not seeing right now.
Problem here is, despite that you may be *technically* correct that there is no statistical warming the last 12 years, put that graph in front of 100 people and at least 99 of them will see a clear warming trend.
Peter C:
Warming trend from when to when? Depends on your starting point doesn’t it?
Andrew,
the argument:
climate is even MORE sensitive than we thought and even MORE of the catastrophe is being “masked” by dimming
is defeated by refering to the warmers’ own claim that the CO2 effect is being masked by dimming, as they would state.
Response: OK So you admit the Sun affects the climate more than CO2.
Also, once again they cherry pick. When the TSI was increasing, they poo-pooed it’s effect as negligable; now if it’s decreasing (?) the effect is suddenly important?
Hi,
Robert Wood, Don’t worry the cooling will next be caused by China and all of their coal burning (sulfur aerosols) power plants.
Calculating a highly significant trend from the data Dickie here present can be carried out wiht math of a seventh-grader.
It is a little thing called math. Anyone of you heard of that?
0.2 of a degree is not statistically significant. Just because someone sees a visual upward trend doesn not mean that it’s “significant” statistically. The hockey stick had to be massaged enormously to make it appear cataclysmic (what log was it calculated against? 10? 20??) on a standard graph it falls well below the threshold of statistical significance.
The focus has to be on what drives climatic change. We ought not be reduced to cheering or booing whenever the global temperature moves a tick or two in one direction or the other every month. This all seems to have evolved into a some sort of spectator sport.
But I guess I can understand a scientist’s impatience in waiting to see whether or not unfolding events will confirm his theory.
REPLY: Well as with any popular spectator sport, next comes the betting. Now where can I find a good climate bookie? 😉
The more one looks at data, and thinks about it, the more it appears CO2 has only a minor forcing effect.
@ur momisugly Jim Arndt
Yes, but the UN and Gore will claim it is mainly due to auto exhaust (not 3rd world factories), thus providing the basis for going after the US car driver.
We’re screwed no matter what happens! 😉
Lee says:
“A trend line fit through data with 0.2C error bars can have much lower than 0.2C error itself. This is REALLY basic statistics – the impact of repeated measures is taught in about day three, I think, of an intro statistics class.”
It is not that simple. Proper trendlines for temperatures must take autocorrelation into account. This will result in wider error bars. See the link to Lucia’s blog if you want more information.