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.
Er, wasn’t 1934 warmer globally than 1998?
That’s the problem with small samples, they’re not really any good for worthwhile extrapoloation.
This may be a little off topic but I noted the Russian invasion of Georgia is finally rippling through the oil futures market. Yep, prices are climbing again. But if the climate trend continues to cool and if we are heading for a Maunder or Dalton Minimum the oil fields in Siberia won’t be worth squat as it will be too cold to drill. We ain’t seen nothing yet on rising oil prices when Russia’s oil fields become non productive in the near future.
Steve Talbot,
You mentioned the quality and predictions of the models. Based on your optimism and confidence in the models, do you honestly believe that we will have a 3 degree Celsius temperature rise by 2100 ( mid value of the IPCC projection ) ? ( Not that either one of us will be around to confirm it ). Carbon dioxide is rising monotonically, so he most likely value – assuming that all 20th century temperature rise was due to carbon dioxide alone would be 0.7degree celsius or less. To project more than that, the IPCC had to postulate to the existence of positive feedback. Learning about the fact that a positive feedback mechanism was used to predict temperatures greater than 1.4 degree celsius ( for doubling of CO2, 0.7 for the 20th and 0.7 for the 21st century ) turned me into a skeptic, as the existence of positive feedback is incompatible with a stable system like the climate.
Steven Talbot…
I noticed this blurb in that article you linked:
“During the past few decades, global temperatures have persistently broken previous record highs every few years, but never to the extent observed in 1998. Each month this year has set a new all-time record high global temperature (FIGURE 2). This is unprecedented and is not likely to occur in a stationary climate.”
Hmmm…so since they basically attributed the extreme warmth of 1998 to global warming in this statement (admitting the context of El Nino, but claiming that the magnitude of what was occurring basically proved AGW), doesn’t the fact that 1998’s records have not been broken since indicate that the climate has become more “stationary” since then? Using the same logic, yes.
The article also notes that “El Ninos continue to get stronger”, indicating that this is likely because of AGW as well. However, since 1998, El Ninos have been noticably weaker. What happened to being fueled by rampant global warming?
Mister Jones…
1934 was warmer in the U.S., but according to global records, 1998 was warmest.
We don’t need this blog’s ill tidings:
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/06/global-warming-new-sunspot-cycle-may-mean-the-iceman-cometh/#discussion
REPLY: Agreed, then why promote it by posting a link here?
Steven Talbot,
You can move the goalposts as much as you like but you know that the GCMs have been used to support the IPCC and Kyoto process, despite your, perhaps inadvertent, agreement with many posters here that the models are not based on any current real world conditions.
It seems to me you are, like many desperate AGWers at the moment, trying to rewrite climate science history . Or perhaps not, maybe you are a ‘second generation’ climate scientist who realises that a lot of overblown claims were made in the early bloom of the science and yet you can’t quite yet stand up and repudiate what has gone before.
I hope it is the latter.
Oops! The link works only if the “#discussion” is not included.
iceFree,
“97/98 was way above trend” on what time frame? Can you tell me with 100% certaincy an El Nino like that has never happened before? At some time in past history?
Certainly not – I’d put big money on a far greater natural short-term variation having occurred at some time in the past! By ‘above trend’ I simply meant above the trend projected from an assessment of forcings independent of internal (natural) variation, I didn’t mean above the range of what might be anticipated from such variations.
In other words, the projection of temperature trend effectively ignores the internal cyclical variations (actually they’re in the models, though not ‘timed’, but let’s not get too bogged down!). El Ninos/La Ninas will come and go. In the long term their effect can’t be net warming or net cooling unless there is some energy going in or out of the global system.
Some will argue that we have seen the combination of a number of cycles being positive. Well, we shall see, and shall see whether that proposed combination goes negative (as it would have to do, if it is an internal cycle). Either way, one can’t get away from the first law of thermodynamics. Energy has to come from/go to somewhere.
Regarding the new sunspeck pair, I couldn’t see them on the real time image, on may computer. I also couldn’t find the magnetic images; but they did appear near to the equator, so I suspect they are cycle 23 spots.
Steven Talbot said:
What concerns me are the assumptions that go into them – not so much that they exist, but that it seems no-one has bothered to see if real world data supports those assumption. For instance, one assumption is that relative humidity will remain constant as temps rise. While I don’t have a cite for you, it is my understanding that real-world measurements falsify this assumption. If this is indeed the case, and if, as seems likely, this would considerably alter the outcome of model projections, then you can no doubt understand that I am somewhat sceptical of such results! Given that we will never be able to project climate into the future without at least some simplifications and “rules of thumb” rather than direct numerical simulation, then I feel it’s well time that as many as possible of the assumptions that go into such models are documented and, where possible, tested against real-world data to ensure that they are at least consistent with that real world data.
I don’t think the dice analogy is the best. I’m not aware of any evidence that climate, on the time scale of 50 to 100 years, is predictable in the way that dice rolls are predictable when averaged over a long number of trials. During the Little Ice Age, global temps wandered downwards for more than 100 years for reasons which are still not understood.
That said, if we are going to use a dice analogy, the situation over the last 40 years is analogous to rolling 4 high numbers followed by 2 low numbers. Temps over the last 10 years may be very well be short-term variation. However the same thing can be said about temps over the previous 20.
Note to Steven Talbot
From your 21 August (13:56:44):
“GCM runs of future long-term climate are not even base-lined in any detail against current real-world conditions.”
But Steven, regardless of how you may have worded it, you’ll certainly have to admit that it is totally absurd to think that climate models can make meaningful projections (or predictions) up to the year 2300.
Or do you think they can?
Regards,
Max
A number of points addressed to me to respond to:
Tom Klein,
Based on your optimism and confidence in the models, do you honestly believe that we will have a 3 degree Celsius temperature rise by 2100 ( mid value of the IPCC projection ) ? ( Not that either one of us will be around to confirm it ). Carbon dioxide is rising monotonically…
I wouldn’t say that I had optimism! Projections depend upon the inputs that will prevail, and it’s not just a matter of CO2, of course. CO2, for example, may not continue to ‘rise monotonically’ (in fact, that’s not been the case over the past three decades anyway). I don’t know what the future holds, I don’t know whether or not there will be mitigation, I don’t know whether or not the sun will fall out of the sky. But yes, I have some confidence in the projections based upon presumed inputs. But getting to what I think is your real point –
the existence of positive feedback is incompatible with a stable system like the climate
I think the system has been relatively stable so long as nothing has changed substantially. I don’t understand why you think it should ‘hold onto’ its state of relative equilibrium if forcings do change? I think it is a system which will find equilibrium (eventually), but that will be in respect of inputs, and of feedbacks from such inputs. I’m a bit puzzled, really, since the notion of feedback seems so obvious in the case of, for example, a change in albedo….?
Jared,
It’s certainly the case that the 1997/98 high was seen as a combination of AGW warming effect with internal natural variation, but I maintain my view that it is simply not true to suggest that scientists neglected to mention the latter. One might make the same case today, by the way, that the recent La Nina low has exceeded the temperatures of previous La Ninas (so it’s a matter of considering higher highs and higher lows).
You then say –
However, since 1998, El Ninos have been noticably weaker.
Which El Ninos do you have in mind? There was a mild one in 2002/3….. If the article was suggesting that every phase of the ENSO cycle would be stronger then I agree with you, it was in error. I think the question of whether or not the ENSO is being affected by warming remains very speculative at the moment.
Dave Andrews,
You can move the goalposts as much as you like but you know that the GCMs have been used to support the IPCC and Kyoto process, despite your, perhaps inadvertent, agreement with many posters here that the models are not based on any current real world conditions.
There’s nothing inadvertent in what I’m saying. I don’t really understand your point – I’m not aware of anyone suggesting that GCMs were set up to predict short-term variations.
It seems to me you are, like many desperate AGWers at the moment, trying to rewrite climate science history .
I’m not feeling in the least bit desperate, so don’t worry! Possibly a little depressed, though 😉
Or perhaps not, maybe you are a ’second generation’ climate scientist who realises that a lot of overblown claims were made in the early bloom of the science and yet you can’t quite yet stand up and repudiate what has gone before.
Hmm. Well, consider the 1979 Charney Report, based on very basic models, which projected a temperature rise of mean 3C above pre-industrial for equilibrium following a doubling of CO2. And what is the IPCC 4th AR projection of this mean figure? Yup, 3C, exactly the same almost thirty years later. So, I really don’t understand what you mean!
Richard deSousa (15:26:35) :
“…if we are heading for a Maunder or Dalton Minimum the oil fields in Siberia won’t be worth squat as it will be too cold to drill.”
The Russians don’t believe it will be too cold to drill. Remember they planted their little titanium flag under the sea at the north pole, and argue that it’s Russian territory, because it’s actually part of a ridge that originates in Siberia.
There’s this – now quite old – story
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2006/08/25/Russian_scientist_predicts_global_cooling/UPI-75561156555554/
that the “consensus” within the Russian Academy of Sciences is global cooling – for more than 50 years.
Ever heard of Gazprom?
With what western Europe (and, regrettably, the US and Canada) is doing to itself in the name of “combatting global warming,” in a much colder climate, Russia looks to become a one-nation OPEC.
Don’t be too surprised if Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin listens to his own scientists, and laughs at ours.
manacker,
you’ll certainly have to admit that it is totally absurd to think that climate models can make meaningful projections (or predictions) up to the year 2300.
I think they can make projections which are useful (‘useful’ is not the same as spot-on accurate, of course!), but I don’t think they can make predictions, no way. Scientists can’t predict what will happen in the future if it’s subject to unpredictable events. We don’t know what governments will decide to do, we don’t know if there may be nuclear war, we don’t know if there may be another Maunder minimum type reduction in the solar cycle. But it is reasonable to say “If x then y”.
I think it is also reasonable to predict that, for example, if the ice sheets were to become unstable then it would take one heck of a long time (and a much lower temperature) to reestablish them. And so on.
Note to Steven Talbot
Browsing through the IPCC AR4 WG1 report can be rather dull and tedious work, as there is a large amount of repetition, rationalization, pseudo-scientific double-talk and model gobbledygook to shovel your way through.
But it can have its rewarding moments, if you’re looking for something both humorous and astounding.
One of my favorites is Figure 10.4 in Chapter 10 (which we’ve discussed). This is a multi-colored graph that shows various computer generated temperature projections to the year 2300 as extensions to the 20th century actual record.
Yes, I said 2300! This is no joke, although I am sure most rational observers would conclude that it must be something of the sort.
I still have not heard whether you think a projection of the global average surface temperature for the year 2300 is absurd or not, but I will tell you that it definitely is, because the unknowns between now and then are several hundred times more important than any CO2 projections cranked into the computers and exaggerated by assumed “feedbacks”.
But let’s talk about the projections.
We have a rather flat orange curve (that stops in 2100), called “constant composition commitment”, purporting to predict how our global average temperature anomaly would react to no further increase in human CO2 emissions, and a rapidly accelerating curve labeled “A4” (high greenhouse gas growth), which (sort of like Mann’s hockey stick as shown in Gore’s “AIT”) shoots off the chart.
More interesting are the (moderate growth) green “A1B” and (low growth) blue “B1” curves, both of which rise smoothly and inexorably to the year 2300, where they reach a level of 3.6°C and 2.2°C above the (1961-1990) baseline value.
Now IPCC missed the first 7 ½ years of the 21st century pretty badly in projecting a +0.2°C per decade linear rate of increase when all four temperature records show a net decrease averaging -0.08°C per decade.
So we have seen that the models have a hard time predicting the next 10 years, yet we are supposed to believe that they can project THREE HUNDRED YEARS into the future?
A good example of the folly of long-range forecasting can be found in the interesting study by Eric Morris entitled “From Horse Power to Horsepower”.
http://www.uctc.net/access/30/Access%2030%20-%2002%20-%20Horse%20Power.pdf
Morris describes the late 19th century dilemma posed by rapid urbanization and the use of horses for both intra-city human transportion and transport of goods. Reflecting that the horse population had increased more rapidly than the human population, Morris observes, “Horses need to eat”. He estimates that each urban horse consumed around 1.4 tons of oats and 2.4 tons of hay per year, adding, “and what comes in must come out”. Each horse is estimated to have “produced between fifteen and thirty pounds of manure per day” plus about a quart of urine daily.
As Morris puts it, “A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed”, adding, “And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years.”
This environmental problem makes AGW look like a casual stroll through the park.
“The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded [even without a supercomputer at hand] that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third story windows.”
These futurists of the time were looking less than 60 years into the future, during a time when things changed relatively slowly compared to today, yet (as we all know today) they got it totally wrong.
Yet IPCC is trying to tell us they have a clue as to what is going to happen 100 or even 300 years into the future!
Looks to me like arrogance and ignorance have reached an all-time high in this IPCC graph.
It should be posted on every rational skeptic’s wall as the epitome of absurdity. And hanging next to it on the wall a picture depicting a nine-foot pile of horse manure would give good perspective and add deeper meaning.
Regards,
Max
Do I have that right?
Yup.
Hi Steven,
Check the on-line dictionary for the word “projection”
http://www.wordwebonline.com/search.pl?w=projection
projection (pru’jekshun)
The first definition given:
“A prediction made by extrapolating from past observations.”
Call it by either name, doing it 300 years in advance is worse than pure conjecture, as the Morris study I cited points out very clearly.
Regards,
Max
And don’t forget to save copies of the webpage http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7574603.stm (World heading towards cooler 2008) before the BBC changes it.
Steven Talbot (13:29:34)
‘The dice analogy should do – if you throw the die fifty times then you can expect the average of your throws to approach the prediction. If you throw it another three times and get three low scores, does that ‘falsify’ the prediction?’
What would falsify predication? How about cooling oceans or non-positive water vapor feedback? So, what is masking CO2 induced global warming.
Do they want a real positive feed back? Although we could call it negative… If we are going into a cooling period, there will be less water in the air… less clouds!
What the Aqua Satellite seems to be showing is a dessication at all but the lowest altitudes.
But at low altitude there is not so much an increase of ambient vapor (which would cause warming), but in cloud cover (which causes increased albedo and cooling).
So what we have in not positive feedback loops, but negative feedback leading to homeostasis.
And then there are the “big 6” multidecadal oscillations just starting to flip to cool . . .
Not to mention the “dying sun” . . .
Just one more, Steven:
You wrote: “I think it is also reasonable to predict that, for example, if the ice sheets were to become unstable then it would take one heck of a long time (and a much lower temperature) to reestablish them. And so on.”
Yep. Just like it would be reasonable to predict that if a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his rear when he jumped.
The key word in both sentences is “IF”.
All predictions (or projections) are dicey, particularly those that start with “IF”.
The great American baseball player, Yogi Berra (who was also quite a philosopher) once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
And (as the IPCC and Hadley have found out based on the recent unexpected cooling trend), “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
It sure ain’t.
Regards,
Max
You seem to be very delighted to have confirmed that the models are not doing what nobody ever suggested they were supposed to do.
Well, heck, if that’s true, why in sam hill are be being strenuously urged to sacrifice half of world economic growth?
And the caveat seems to always be present, in one form or another: “[such cooling] dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming”
The fundamental thesis remains. I suspect that if cooling becomes protracted over several decades, it will still be held that CO2 warming is happening and that it’s being masked by natural cooling.
Whether the current cooling trend persists for a decade or several decades, at some time the natural warming will resume and will have very little to do with CO2 levels in the atmosphere, just as the warming that’s been happening since the LIA is itself natural and has little to do with a minor increase in atmospheric levels of CO2.
We need to move beyond this foolish experiment by computer programmers and their fanciful models and focus on uncorrupted science. Even a recent study of 1500 year drought cycles in North America:
http://news.research.ohiou.edu/news/index.php?item=503
made the obligatory bow to AGW: “The climate record suggests that North America could face a major drought event again in 500 to 1,000 years, though Springer said that manmade global warming could offset the cycle.”
Rather than a simple minded approach of seeing temperature changes from higher CO2 levels, the look ought to be to a more vibrant biosphere as plant growth is stimulated by higher levels of CO2. What is the effect of stronger plant life capturing and holding higher levels of moisture? Or of a larger area of such plant life? Since satellite measurements of the biosphere began they’ve measured an increase of 6-7% greening of the planet. What impact would this have on precipitation and, ultimately, the climate? And this is but the tip of the complexities impacting climate, all interrelated in ways barely guessed at. To say that mankind is bringing on the moderate warming we’ve experienced over the past 150 years is highly arrogant.