Finally some recognition of all the anecdotal weather we’ve been talking about here – Anthony
World Meteorological Organization
Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:15am IST
LONDON (Reuters) – The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Wednesday.
The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average.
Global temperatures vary annually according to natural cycles. For example, they are driven by shifting ocean currents, and dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming, climate scientists say.
Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.
“We can expect with high probability this year will be cooler than the previous five years,” said Omar Baddour, responsible for climate data and monitoring at the WMO.
“Definitely the La Nina should have had an effect, how much we cannot say.”
“Up to July 2008, this year has been cooler than the previous five years at least. It still looks like it’s warmer than average,” added Baddour.
The global mean temperature to end-July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, the UK-based MetOffice Hadley Centre for climate change research said on Wednesday. That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.
“Of course at the beginning of the year there was La Nina, and that would have had the effect of suppressing temperatures somewhat as well,” Met Office meteorologist John Hammond said.
Didn’t the LaNina end LAST month???
From the Reuters story:
>…”But actually La Nina is showing signs of moving towards a more neutral state.”
The weakening of the La Nina effect over the last few months could see the global mean temperature creep up again in the latter part of the year, he added….<
But didn’t the La Nina end in July?????
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
El Niño-Southern Oscillation conditions continued neutral through July in the tropical Pacific Ocean, ending the La Niña event that began in mid-2007.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080815_ncdc.html
“Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.”
Uh … gee, don’t they just shoot themselves in the foot with this statement? They just linked any past warming to a natural event.
“For example, they are driven by shifting ocean currents, and dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming, climate scientists say.”
Do all climate scientists say that? Are they any that say anything else?
The “continued” link to read the rest of the article isn’t working. I found the complete article here:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2032/218/
REPLY: Fixed, thanks
Read the report carefully, very carefully.
They are saying global warming continues but is masked by a natural climatic event called La Nina. Warming is not over.
What they failed to say was that this cooling event totally overwhelmed the AGW warming of the last decade or so. They also did not elaborate further by saying what % of the warming this last 150 years was therefore AGW and due to all the poisons we humans put into the atmosphere, eg Co², etc.
They also say that the cooling is only partly caused by La Nina without going on to say what else had contributed to the cooling.
Interesting eh?
although temperatures remain above the historical average
They just can’t help themselves, can they. What historical average?
Very interesting….no mention of the quiet sun either (that I could see).
The Hockey Stick is looking more like a pool cue.
But still, some admission, however half-hearted of the facts about recent cooling, is a step forward. The Emperor has been butt-naked for years and finally they acknowledge he isn’t wearing a coat!
Finally some of the die-hards are begining to warm to the possibility of other reasons for cooling, even if it is a short term (5 years in their book) trend.
Time will tell the (absolutely) best what happens in the future.
We won’t.
No mention of the PDO or AMO turning negative either. If these two events are indeed strengthening then we will see a continuing of the cool climate phase for the next decade or two. According to the AGW crowd CO2 is such a powerful gas yet overwhelmed by the natural climate cycle? And if the sunspots keep disappearing watch out for a colder climate too. Energy demands will rise as the countries in the northern hemisphere will need to keep their citizens from freezing… bye bye Kyoto and Al Gore’s scheme to make millions from carbon trading.
“The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years”: OK, an apparently factual statement, inviting a reasoned debate on how measurements are made, averages are taken, and so on.
“The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years”: ruddy madness, in my view. Why not just wait a few months and then we’ll know? It’s reminiscent of the attention paid to all those barmy forecasts of how hurricaney a summer will be. Bin it! Wait for the facts.
Do all climate scientists say that? Are they any that say anything else?
I think most scientist admit there is a (very small) direct CO2 effect. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The amount of carbon in the atmospheric sink is increasing.
But this begs the question of whether positive feedback loops have been falsified. From what I can tell, they have been. If this is true, then CO2 has a real, but minuscule (and geometrically decreasing) effect on the longterm trend.
What they failed to say was that this cooling event totally overwhelmed the AGW warming of the last decade or so.
You know, I don’t think it has been a cooling event: Just a lacl of continuing warming events.
From 1977 to 2001 the “big 6” multidecadal cycles (PDO, IPO, AMO, AO, AAO, NAO) all flipped from cool to warm, one by one. By 2001 all of them were “on warm”, so levels remained highm, but there was no further warming.
Now the PDO has flipped to cool, the AO may be in the process of reversal (two decades ahead of schedule) and the rest have nowhere to go but down.
So, yes, I predict we are going into a reverse-process cooling trend.
(And then there’s the “dead sun” . . . )
darwin,
You say
Uh … gee, don’t they just shoot themselves in the foot with this statement? They just linked any past warming to a natural event.
See this 1998 NOAA statement:
Vice President Gore and NOAA scientists announced today that The 1997/98 El Niño, one of the most significant climatic events of the century, produced extreme weather worldwide.
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/stories/sir3.html
So you see scientists (and Gore) described the natural influences contributing to the 1998 peak just as they have described the natural influences contributing to a La Nina low. You should be sceptical about any claims made to the contrary, and look up the evidence.
There is a disagreement between the two sources in the article on a very simple point. The WMO says, “The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least 5 years,” while the Hadley Centre says, “That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.” Maybe the WMO qualified their statement with the use of “at least.”
I also enjoyed the next to last paragraph: “The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was “unequivocal” and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were very likely part of the problem.” …part of the problem.
The Hockey Stick is looking more like a pool cue.
Or a boomerang (with the MWP and Modern Optimum on each end and the LIA in the middle).
“Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.”
And what drives these and other global weather patterns that are cooling the globe?
This is actually a very significant story. Yeah, there are various cop-outs. But it looks as if it’s a NY Times/Tierney process of letting the readership down ever so gently. If they can do it delicately enough, the whole story will just slooooowly fade away.
But after all the sanctimony and the political shenanigans, I don’t think we intend to let the issue die quietly, do we? “Create” THIS, buddy! “Flatten” THIS!
Shouldn’t the models have predicted the changes due to La Nina/El Nino? All I see in the hockey stick is an increase.
Also, scientists have said that the warming due to CO2 has overwhelmed any natural variation. If this is the case, how can La Nina show any effect?
I’m confused.
My “denialist” spin on some of the article’s confusing statements: if, “The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years” [WMO/Reuters], and the first half of 2007 [when the whole year’s anomaly took a very drastic dive] was actually warmer than the first half of 2000, as implied by Hadley’s/Reuter’s, “That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000”, one would think that the GW “alarmists” ought to be getting pretty got dam alarmed right about now – if only in regard to their sine qua non contention that the Globe is “really” continuing to warm regardless of the cause, and despite Hadley’s/Reuter’s cherry-picked, possibly irrelevant factoid that, “The global mean temperature to end-July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average….”
Perhaps just as in the case when you are haltingly descending a mountain you have just climbed, when you also sometimes have to go up in order to go down, Global Cooling probably won’t occur all at once, either, right?
The Reuters article failed to mention the PDO flip to a cool phase.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/nasa-pdo-flip-to-cool-phase-confirmed-cooler-times-ahead/
BBC also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7574603.stm Unusual reporting (for him) from Mr Black there.
There are going to be more reports like this.
It’s a little difficult to hide the truth, no matter how the data are “adjusted.”
They’re still going to try to keep their dead god, “AGW” on life support, as this Reuters story shows.
The cold, you see, is just “masking” the warming.
So, um, it’s still getting warmer, but it’s just that it’s getting colder at the same time that it’s getting warmer, but the warming is really stronger than the cooling, so even though it’s colder, it’s actually warmer.
And all the scientists agree with that, except the kooks, and those being paid by Big Oil.
I think the work of Dr. Karin Labitzke, over more than 20 years
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/
clearly shows a well-established correlation between low solar activity… (which we have at present, though Cycle 24 just may, MAY have formed a tiny spot today –
http://sidc.oma.be/LatestSWData/LatestSWData.php
…a west-phase QBO (which we are now in), and cold climate in the northern hemisphere.
The fact that Cycle 23 is already more than 12 years old, in my opinion, (not necessary to say, “IMHO,” as my opinion is ALWAYS very humble) will mean we have a “price to pay” this winter.
I expect conditions this winter to be reminiscent of the harsh winters of the 1970s.
It will require increasing creativity to keep ‘weekend-at-bernies’ AGW propped up through a long, bitterly cold (quote me – RECORD cold) winter, but I have no doubt it will be seriously attempted.
Expect more news stories like this one, as well as not merely straight-faced, but SMUG pundits and talking heads ridiculing us rubes who are too stupid to understand that colder is still warmer, that nature has nothing to do with climate, or that (Ha!) AGW is “over.”
Beginnings of a sunspot appearing.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Is it a 23 or a 24?
REPLY: 23, and small so far.
Do I have this correct?
El Nino and La Nina events are heat tranfer mechanisms, they are not sources of thermal energy. The source would be the sun.
In El Nino cycles, more thermal energy is transfered from the ocean surface to the atmosphere than occurs during La Nina cycles.
If we are being heated by GHGs, yet the atmosphere is cooling due to a La Nina, then somewhere the thermal energy of the ocean must be increasing, so that that thermal energy can build up and then be released to the atmosphere during the next El Nino.
However, the ARGOS bouys have not shown enough increase in the ocean thermal energy to account for or support the GHG theory.
Do I have that right?
We can expect with high probability this year will be cooler than the previous five years,” said Omar Baddour, responsible for climate data and monitoring at the WMO.
As we used to say in grade school, NO SH*T SHERLOCK.
These jokers are wonderful at making predictions after the fact.