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.
Gary asked
‘Stll, shouldn,’t the ocean thermal energy content increase during La Nina events, like the current 6+ year long decline in atmospheric temperature?
‘
I would expect that you are correct and that ocean energy content would increase during a la nina. I would also expect heat content to decrease during an el nino.
The only Argo measurements showing decreasing ocean heat contents that I have seen were between 2003 and 2005, which was after an El Nino (2003).
Er, wasn’t 1934 warmer globally than 1998?
Only in the US.
(OTOH, I trust pre-satellite global data about as much as I trust Pap Finn turning over a new leaf.)
Max,
I think we may have posted at the same time. You’ll see that I have said that I think models can be useful, but have stressed myself the fact that we cannot predict the unknown, a point that you have rightly made yourself.
I think there’s a muddle over the words prediction/forecast and projection, tbh. Projections work on the basis of a set of determined premises. Of course, those premises may turn out not to pertain. Projections are not meant to be predictions (at which point some may sneer that the IPCC are avoiding predictions, but I think that’s a low-level objection which I really can’t be bothered with). [Edit – have just seen your dictionary definition. Get a better dictionary, I’d say! ;-)]
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.
The IPCC did not predict what would happen over that period. They’ve projected about 0.2C for all scenarios over the next two decades. We’ll see whether or not that projection was useful when enough time has passed to judge the signal from the noise. I’d suggest that may not be too long – for example, if we experience a strong El Nino which does not correlate with a rising temperature trend (five year mean, say), then I think there will be firm cause to challenge the projection (presuming there are not other obvious factors to be taken into account).
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?
I’m sorry to go on being pedantic, but they don’t set out to predict the timing of internal variation! As for the usefulness of 300 year projections, I’m inclined to agree with you that it is unlikely to be accurate, but that applies both ways.
I agree that long-range forecasting is of limited usefulness, in terms of the absolute figures it throws up. I’m not quite sure what we’re disagreeing on, really!
I enjoyed your bullfrog and Yogi Berra references 😉
Tired now 🙂
What MattN posted:
“I have 2008 so far in ~20th place out of the last 30, according to UAH and RSS data.”
Is correct. The first 6 months of 2008 are the 20th warmest of 30 years of satellite data. What MattN didn’t say is that the first 6 months of 2008 is the coldest in 11 years (since 1997) not just 5 years.
Once again there are differences between the satellite and surface data and once again the surface data is warmer.
Reuters also claims that reliable records date back to around 1850. Reliable surface records don’t date back to last week.
John-X says:
No, that was not a consensus within the Russian Academy of Sciences. In fact, the view of the Russian Academy of Sciences is expressed by their signing on to the recent letter issued by the academies of all of the G8+5 nations: http://www.lincei.it/files/dichiarazioni/G8+5_Academies_Statement-Climate.pdf
Neil Fisher says:
Scientists are in fact testing the climate models constantly against real world data. As for your specific example, concerning relative humidity. First of all, constant relative humidity is not an assumption of the climate models. It is, however, what they seem to approximately predict given the physics and assumptions that do go into them. And, contrary to what you may have heard, real-world data is in good agreement with this assumption. See, for example, this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 or the more indirect test in this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci For more discussion, see this blog post by a climate scientist at University of Maryland: http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-on-water-vapor-feedback.html
Steven Talbot (16:41:58)
‘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!’
Do to water vapor being a positive feedback and assumed amplification number of 2.5
Again, I ask what has been the ampification number for the last 8 years? Put pencil to paper and solve for it. Oceans aren’t warming and temperatures are flat. If is still 2.5, where are you dumping the heat?
John-X says:
No, that was not a consensus within the Russian Academy of Sciences. In fact, the view of the Russian Academy of Sciences is expressed by their signing on to the recent letter issued by the academies of all of the G8+5 nations: http://www.lincei.it/files/dichiarazioni/G8+5_Academies_Statement-Climate.pdf
Neil Fisher says:
Scientists are in fact testing the climate models constantly against real world data. As for your specific example, concerning relative humidity. First of all, constant relative humidity is not an assumption of the climate models. It is, however, what they seem to approximately predict given the physics and assumptions that do go into them. And, contrary to what you may have heard, real-world data is in good agreement with this prediction. See, for example, this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 or the more indirect test in this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci For more discussion, see this blog post by a climate scientist at University of Maryland: http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-on-water-vapor-feedback.html
Steve Talbot,
Unfortunately, you learnt your concept of feedback from climatologist, who took feedback, which is a perfectly simple engineering concept, did not take the trouble to fully understand it and proceeded to misapply it, at least conceptually. Feedback in its original form was merely a coupling between the output and the input of a system. This coupling helped engineers to understand and correct some misterious instabilities that they encountered. Very simply put, when the feedback times amplification is greater than one, the system has ” positive feedback ” and it is unstable. This condition is postulated to occur in the climate when heating causes waper to evaporate causing further heating etc. with the resultant temperature being much higher than the initial one caused by the forcing alone. The point is that there is no predictable endpoint to this process and the system is ” unstable ” ( tends to go in an ever increasing runaway mode ). The climate has never behaved this way -this does not mean that it did not have large fluctuations – at least not on the Earth. Venus may have experienced something like this – this seems to be what Gore worries about -, but conditions there are sufficiently different that do not apply to the Earth’s climate. By the way Climate Sceptic, a blog you can access from this website has an extensive discussion of feedbacks.
Tom Klein,
Unfortunately, you learnt your concept of feedback from climatologist, who took feedback, which is a perfectly simple engineering concept, did not take the trouble to fully understand it and proceeded to misapply it, at least conceptually.
Thanks, but I do think I understand feedback in engineering terms :-). FWIW, I don’t particularly like the adoption of the term in climatology – very obviously, the concentration of GHGs has no effect whatsoever upon solar energy input. But then, I also don’t like the use of the term ‘greenhouse’ very much, so there you go.
The point is that there is no predictable endpoint to this process and the system is ” unstable ” ( tends to go in an ever increasing runaway mode ).
Do you mean in engineering terms or in terms of the postulated climate effect? In the case of the former, feedback will be restricted by the limitations of the physical system. In the case of the latter, there is an ultimate limit to IR absorption.
Tom Klein says:
This is incorrect. If the feedback is sufficiently strongly positive, there is instability. However, if it is less than a critical value, it yields amplification without instability. The mathematical representation is found in the concepts of a diverging infinite series (instability) or a converging infinite series (stability). As an example of the latter, consider the case where a warming of 1C caused by some forcing like a rise in CO2 then leads to an increase in water vapor that causes an additional warming of 1/2 C. The feedback from this warming will then cause an additional 1/4 C of warming…and so on. You have the infinite series 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + … which converges to 2, i.e., the feedback amplifies the warming by a factor of 2.
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?
Pinatubo released more Sulfur into the Atmosphere than man has released in the history of Man. Look at the link on the large Amounts of SO2 being injected into the stratosphere. Substantial changes?
I used to think you were sincere, but you have on some dark and narrow blinders.
Pofarmer says: “Pinatubo released more Sulfur into the Atmosphere than man has released in the history of Man. Look at the link on the large Amounts of SO2 being injected into the stratosphere. Substantial changes?”
I’m suspicious of the claim that the amount released is larger than in the history of man. (Maybe it released more into the stratosphere, since I don’t think much of the human aerosol emissions make it up into the stratosphere.) But regardless of whether or not that is so, what I do know is that climate models were able to model the effect from Mt. Pinatubo quite well…but only if they included the positive feedback from water vapor. See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;296/5568/727 (By the way, this is the paper that I tried to link to in a post above but accidently didn’t give the whole URL for.)
“BREAKING NEWS”
IPS, the Australian Space Weather Agency, has changed its forecast for Solar Cycle 24.
http://www.ips.gov.au/Solar/1/6
“CYCLE 24 PREDICTION MOVED AWAY BY 6 MONTHS
Due to the proximity of the IPS predicted rise of solar cycle 24
to observed solar cycle 23 solar minimum values, and the apparent lack
of new Cycle 24 sunspots, IPS has again moved the predicted solar cycle
away by 6 months.”
REPLY: Thanks I’ll write it up – Anthony
I’m suspicious of the claim that the amount released is larger than in the history of man,
Well, of course I can’t find the direct link. The point is, that folks like Steven Talbot and others claim that without man the earth would be stable, never changing system, which is just not true. There are plenty of large scale forcings.
Nature doesn’t even follow God’s predict…projections. How in the heck do you guys think it will follow yours??????
Sorry. My bad. Just….couldn’t….help…..it!
Joel Shore (18:08:07) :
“…the recent letter issued by the academies of all of the G8+5 nations: http://www.lincei.it/files/dichiarazioni/G8+5_Academies_Statement-Climate.pdf …”
Wow, thanks for this link, which I reiterate here
http://www.lincei.it/files/dichiarazioni/G8+5_Academies_Statement-Climate.pdf
Unfortunately, if you meant to imply that this represents some kind of “consensus” of international scientific opinion, then no, you are wrong again. This is all politics.
A “Low Carbon Society?”
Please.
“We urge all nations, but particularly those participating in the
2008 G8 Summit in Hokkaido, Japan, to take the following actions…”
Not just political advocacy, but political advocacy timed for a specific political event, the most recent G8 summit (where the participants gratefully accepted the advice of the societies of wise men of the world, and promised to change their ways and meet their targets and…oh wait, that didn’t happen, and the G8 kinda paid lip service or blew it off, didn’t they?)
But thanks again for the link.
EVERYBODY needs to see this. This is the international “synthesis” document – short version.
I looked for the phrase, “the future is in our hands,” but apparently that Laurie David/Susan Hassol phrase was not focus-grouped for this political document.
I did find the phrase, “effect changes in individual and national behaviour.”
Can’t wait to find out how my government will “effect changes” to my behaviour, and what happens if I like my behaviour just the way it is, and prefer not to have it “effected” by people I hire to serve me.
Al Gore for one can NOT be happy with this document – all the open talk about “Adaptation.”
“Adaptation” = “Sellout” in the AGW faith.
“…coal … will continue to be a primary energy source for the next 50 years” ???
AGW Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
No mention of where they got the “reach the desired target by 2050,” or what’s supposed to happen if the G8+5 are not a happy “Low Carbon Society” by that year. Guess it’s just one of those numbers that sounds good, like, “we only have 10 years.”
I happen to agree with Dr. Abdusamatov and his colleagues – IN THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES –
http://www.physorg.com/news75818795.html
the ones who didn’t get the memo that changes to their opinions were being “effected” by a politically motivated group – that in 2050, we had better be a High Carbon Society, because being a Low Carbon Society in 2050 will really suck.
This document is only a two-page screed, compared to the _volume_ which was recently offered up to us a a “synthesis” – no pictures of children holding hands and caring for the earth, no photoshopped (i.e., faked) images of floods. Just two pages of political advocacy, unfounded assertions, a false sense of urgency based on nothing, and several pointless and very wasteful recommendations.
As I said, EVERYBODY needs to see it – but no one will be too surprised.
Hi Steven,
I believe we have gotten to the root cause of our disagreement on the validity of climate model predictions (or projections), in your sentence, “We’ll see whether or not that projection was useful when enough time has passed to judge the signal from the noise.”
Steven, it is my contention that what you call “the noise” (i.e. impact on climate from as yet undefined non-AGW drivers) is several orders of magnitude more significant than what you call “the signal” (i.e. impact from assumed AGW drivers on climate).
This contention appears to have been recently validated by the various temperature records starting in around 1998 (or 2001), i.e. record CO2 emissions occurring simultaneously with global cooling.
In my opinion, this is because we (“science”) know much less about what causes climate change than we do not know. And it is precisely what “we do not know” that causes our projections (or predictions) to be totally wrong.
To get an idea why long range projections of something as complex as our planet’s climate are by definition even less valid than short term weather projections, I can recommend you read “The Black Swan”, by Nassim Taleb.
The author addresses the problem of long-term predictions (or forecasts). While his book has nothing to do with “climate change” per se it explains why “long-term expert predictions” are more often wrong than right.
It’s a good read.
Regards,
Max
Tom K
Joel Shore (19:12:46)
‘As an example of the latter, consider the case where a warming of 1C caused by some forcing like a rise in CO2 then leads to an increase in water vapor that causes an additional warming of 1/2 C.’
Or, as an example, warming of 1C caused by CO2 leads to an increase in water vapor which didn’t produce heat trapping clouds and allows heat from the oceans to escape into space which doesn’t result to additional warming of 1 / 2 C.
I can second manacker’s Nassim Taleb recommendation. I don’t work in climate science, but I do use statistics just about every day to perform market analysis. His writings are quite insightful, although he can come off as a bit pompous at times. I caught a good radio interview with him last year. Here is the link: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/04/taleb_on_black.html
KW (14:19:08)
“…and all that they do on a planet for an infinitely insignificant speck of time.”
This ‘insignificant speck of time’ is the most important piece of time that has passed for all of us, the next ‘specks in time’ for our children and grandchildren. Please don’t dismiss our time as insignificant, unless you are off course a lump of rock!
It doesseem I have stepped into a time machine and gone back to the 70’s with all this talk of ice ages and frozen earths. That showed the folly of taking short term trends to this level of argument, still “Plus ca change….”!
The manmade part of global cooling is that whereas we used to warm to good ideas, now good ideas are “cool”.
Joel Shore (19:12:46) :
While I’m ashamed to say I’m not certain of the following, as I have a BSEE degree (but my career has been a OS software engineer). The system you describe has a feedback of + 1/2. 1/2 of the output is fed back to the input of an amplifier stage with a gain of 1. Had you fed back more than the full signal, then the output would peg at either the high or low input.
Chapter two of feedback entails phase shifting, i.e. the feedback loop has a delay going back into the input, this is why audio feedback generates a loud tone that gets louder. Climatologically things like ocean levels, icecaps, etc provide the delay, though mathematically it’s something that can’t be described by an equation. That’s one reason why models become important. That’s chapter three.
Given that current models start at a state that does not reflect current conditions (i.e. garbage in) the best we can hope for is that negative feedback produces accurate projections (prognostications? gotta check the dictionary on that). Somehow we’ve gotten to “Garbage in, Gospel out.” Thankfully, the sun is taking a break so we can begin to distinguish the solar vs. GHG effects (and all the various Oscillations, e.g. PDO, AMO, AO, ENSO, MJO, which are still more systems with feedback).
I get the sense that the IPCC calls the model output projections so that if they’re right they can claim success and if they’re wrong they can say they didn’t predict anything. Otherwise ethics would call for a disclaimer in a black box warning that belief in the projections could lead to a decline in gross global product. Like what we have on cigarette boxes.
Pofarmer says: “The point is, that folks like Steven Talbot and others claim that without man the earth would be stable, never changing system, which is just not true. There are plenty of large scale forcings.”
I don’t think Steven Talbot says that. Clearly, the history of the earth is one of significant climate changes. However, it has to do with issues of timescales. Volcanic eruptions like Mt Pinatubo can cause some cooling but that tends to only last for a few years. On the other extreme, Milankovich orbital oscillations coupled with feedbacks (which include changes in greenhouse gas concentrations) can cause the ice age — interglacial cycles that the earth has been experiencing over the last few million years. These, however, tend to operate over longer timescales. In particular, the last glacial period ended about 12000 years ago and I think the best estimates are currently that, left to its own devices, the earth would likely not descend into another glacial period for another ~30,0000 years. At any rate, the descent into the glacial periods is pretty slow, taking thousands of years.
However, the evidence (including our understanding of forcings and response gleaned from these natural climate changes in the past) is that on the scale of the coming decades to few centuries, the dominant forcing on the climate system will not be any of the natural forcings but rather the forcing due to increasing greenhouse gases caused by our emissions. And, this is likely to quite rapidly (e.g., on the order of a century) take the earth to a state of warmth not experienced in millions of years.
Pofarmer,
The point is, that folks like Steven Talbot and others claim that without man the earth would be stable, never changing system, which is just not true. There are plenty of large scale forcings.
I think you’ve misunderstood me there – I was agreeing that the system had been relatively stable (over the Holocene, say), but I certainly don’t think it’s a “never changing system”. For example, a good part of the early 20th century warming can be attributed to solar variability.
Max,
…it is my contention that what you call “the noise” (i.e. impact on climate from as yet undefined non-AGW drivers) is several orders of magnitude more significant than what you call “the signal” (i.e. impact from assumed AGW drivers on climate).
Once again I agree, over the short-term at least (not sure of several orders of magnitude, though). Evidently, if we simplified the projected warming as being 0.02C per annum, say, we can see far greater natural variability than that on a monthly basis.
Going back to your concern with 300 year projections, and the IPCC figure 10.4, those curves beyond 2100 are assessments of climate commitment (mostly a matter of the thermal inertia of oceans) after stabilising emissions at 2100 levels – so they’re not projections of further changes in inputs beyond that date (that assessment of commitment could be done at any date, but we’re not looking like achieving stabilisation any time soon). So, I don’t think they’re presented as anything more than theoretical projections based on certain assumptions that may not apply (who’s to say, for example, whether or not GHGs would be stabilised by 2100?). In the meantime, of course, we might get hit by a black swan in the form of an impact event!
Ric Werme,
I get the sense that the IPCC calls the model output projections so that if they’re right they can claim success and if they’re wrong they can say they didn’t predict anything.
I know a lot of people feel that, but science can’t predict without knowing the inputs over time. If they’re not known (for example, mitigation measures that may be taken in the future, or varying output of GHGs) then the best that can be done is to posit “If a,b,c, then x”. It’s then useful to consider what the effect is on the value of x if we vary the values of a, b & c. Assumed values for a,b & c are the IPCC scenarios, the value of x is then expressed in their projections. If they’re wrong in their assessment of the relationship between a,b,c and x then this will be evident.
Ric Werme, I pretty much agree with what you say about feedbacks. Note that noone is proposing that the feedback is large enough to lead to instability. That is what happened in the case of Venus but is apparently not in the cards for earth.
The closest scientists get to this is some of the talk about “tipping points”…i.e., the climate system reaching a point where it runs off to some different state (although not a Venus-like state of ever-increasing temperatures). However, the term “tipping points” has become overused as of late, so it seems only some uses of the term refer to such instabilities in the true sense of the word. At any rate, since the earth’s climate system is highly complex and non-linear and has apparently undergone rapid changes in the past, so there is some justifiable concern that we could push this system too far and end up with some sort of rapid nonlinear change in climate. All the more reason to be concerned about the vast global climate “experiment” we have undertaken!
I am not sure why you say that the “current models start at a state that does not reflect current climate conditions”. In fact, while they are certainly not perfect, the current models reproduce the current climate reasonably well, including having the same basic modes of internal variability as are seen in the real climate system.
If you are complaining about the fact that they do not predict the timing of particular El Nino events…and other such internal variations…I don’t think this is relevant to the long-term predictions. By perturbing the initial conditions in the models, scientists can see that these internal variations are sensitive to the initial conditions…i.e., they get a different pattern of up-and-down jiggles in the global temperature. However, the prediction for the general trend in the global temperature over the timescale of decades to a century or so remains unchanged.