Click for larger image
Source: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html
h/t Arthur Glass
About a month ago I posted: La Nina is back…and was criticized by a few folks. Well compare the above to the image from that post below:
Click for larger image
cool phase
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
Just saw this on freerepublic.com: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/01/01/nasas-hansen-obama-use-global-warming-redistribute-wealth
It is a link on James Hansen’s letter to Barack and the Mrs. on a carbon tax redistribution scheme. Eco-socialism finally admitted as a reason for carbon worries.
As I was saying:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/01/01/nasas-hansen-obama-use-global-warming-redistribute-wealth
How long before we get a “big mother” of a La Nina – as a counterpart to the 1998 El Nino?
BTW: Wasn’t increasing El Nino’s a core prediction of the warmists?
I agree with anyone who says that multiple overlapping factors are at play, including C02 and other GHG’s along with solar & ENSO (and ?? that we haven’t noticed yet?).
I have a question: IRI has a “probabilistic ENSO forecast” at http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/currentinfo/figure3.html, along with an “Average Historical Probability” line. I couldn’t tell from their explanation page what they base their historical probabilities on. Past conditions, I assume, but how far back?
If only 30 years or so, then that line has got to be off since we’re coming out of a dominant El Nino cycle in which conditions like we have now were more likely to lead to ENSO neutral conditions than to La Nina conditions. Their archive page only goes back to 2002.
So I thought I’d ask, I didn’t spot the answer in my perusal of their site, I may have simply missed it.
Mary Hinge: Actually, the “present” weekly (centered on Wednesday December 24, 2008) NINO3.4 SST anomaly is 0.896 deg C, based on OI.v2 SST. I don’t recall that definition you used, that is, below 0.8 deg C. What’s your reference?
Phil
“Is this a joke? Or are they serious? I couldn’t make this up if I tried.”
It is an intresting spin on the Snowball Earth theory. There is a lot of evidence that 600 million or so years ago the Earth experienced total glaciation. As the story goes, the ice reflected too much sunlight for the planet to thaw. The freeze was so intense that even water vapor was frozen into the ice caps. With no precipitation, volcanic induced atmospheric CO2 built up into the atmosphere until there was enough of a greenhouse effect to start a thawing process that lasted about 1000 years. During that thawing process, rain again washed the CO2 from the atmosphere which settled on the surface. This is the explanation for cap carbonate rock sitting above glacial til in low lattitude deserts. You can google Snowball Earth if you want to learn more.
Mary Hinge and david,
Since I know that you are monitoring this post, I thought you might want to know about another here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/31/end-the-year-on-an-up-note/
If you dropped by there and said a couple of words of congratulations to Anthony and his team, it would go a long way toward your PR. Also you two have contributed to the success of this blog, so your presence there is missed.
Mike Bryant
The Multi-Variate ENSO Index (MEI) argues that we’re in La Nina again.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/rank.html
Speaking of (potential) internal forcing.
http://www.seablogger.com/?p=12524 provides an interesting story on the current seismic activity effecting the Yellow Stone Volcano.
If this baby blows we really have a problem.
Anthony: ” Ending the year on an up note” ?????
To win an argument and be able to say: “I told you so” and then to suffer the dire consequences of a colder world sounds more like Pyrrhic victory.
La Nina may be good news for global temps in 2009 but in NE Australia it will herald cyclones, floods, river run off into the sea, coral bleaching and everything else that will cause the death of the Great Barrier Reef.
Next to the Arctic Sea Ice melt, the GBR is the AGW movements’ biggest star that they are waiting for to die to prove their theory right. Stand by for media reports of forthcoming catastrophies.
Looks like Cryoshere has a problem, but it seems you can get a comparison with Jan 01, 2009:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=12&fd=20&fy=2008&sm=01&sd=01&sy=2009
“Tom Gall (08:25:47) :
Looks like its behind last year at this time. South America still has warm water off its western coast.”
Come and take a bath at the beach here in western South America. NOAA´s passion for oranges and reds is evident. During 98 el Nino here in Lima City we had 32°C, now Max.Temp. is 24°C and Min.Temp is 18°C; sea temperature probably 16°C.
Compare NOAA´s reds and oranges with BBC Weather blues.
More Arctic Outflows for Canada’s Wet (West) Coast and the US Northwest 😉 That we are in a cold phase of the PDO and back to back La Nina’s is just one more chalk mark for Solar forcing (with moderation and delay caused by the oceans). Once the Atlantic goes cold … and the last time I read anything on the subject it could be in a couple of years … we will get to see what the Arctic Ice Sheet looks like during a Grand Minimum. I hope Western Europe remembers how to deal with months of ice :D.
The only question I have is will the Columbia Ice Fields have enough time to even return to what I remember as a kid (between Banff and Jasper, Alberta, Canada) before its over in a few decades. From that famous picture of that French town at the toe of a ice flow in the Alps during the last Grand Minimum (and with Alaska’s Glaciers already growing again), it should be possible.
GISS Reporting to be Delayed for Data Quality Control.
On December 16, 2008 Dr. Hansen made the following announcement:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
2008-12-16: Please see our preliminary discussion (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/) of this year’s data.
Starting this month, the data will be held, investigated, and potential problems reported to and resolved with the data provider before making them public. However, as we noted in the “Data Quality Control” section of our 1999 paper: We would welcome feedback from users on any specific data in this record.
A few station data from Canada were reported as potentially incorrect and subsequently removed by NOAA.
Do we know which Canadian stations were incorrect?
Mike
Kevin Quickberg,
What Hansen was saying was that we should tax carbon rather than set up a cap & Trade system, which would only serve the interests of financiers making millions for some at the expense us common folk. If it is an either/or deal, I would much prefer to simply be taxed and have my money go to the public treasury which would be spent on public projects rather than for my money to go to buy green energy that I do not want. I do not want to pay taxes either, but hey I am a realist and taxes have to come from somewhere.
King of Cool
You’re right on the money!
see http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/02/2457903.htm
Chris Schoneveld (14:35:48) :
Anthony: ” Ending the year on an up note” ?????
To win an argument and be able to say: “I told you so” and then to suffer the dire consequences of a colder world sounds more like Pyrrhic victory.
Chris, I very respectfully disagree. This is not about winning an argument.This is about trying to discover truth…and then facing up to it. We appear to be headed into some seriously cold times….if so, then most here understand that there will be serious consequences…that may include a great many deaths…if we recognized what is coming, then we have a chance to prepare for the changing [colder!] conditions…if we insist on spending all of our resorces fighting non-existant warming, then more people will suffer…unnecessarily. It is not about who wins an argument…it is probably about who lives and who dies……cdl
Johnnyb (15:23:21)
‘I would much prefer to simply be taxed and have my money go to the public treasury which would be spent on public projects rather than for my money to go to buy green energy that I do not want. I do not want to pay taxes either, but hey I am a realist and taxes have to come from somewhere.’
Why settle for either one?
If our US, State and Local governments need more money, they could raise taxes in a number of ways with out creating a hold new tax system that would rival income tax in collections, size and bureaucracy!
All those green jobs that would be in federal, state, local governments, company compliance officers, green lawyers, green tax accounts and green lobbyist all of which DO NOT CREATE WEALTH.
I am not a religious person but the back to back flippin bleepin cold and then warm fronts coming off the Pacific coast has GOT to be someone upstairs trying to screw with our pet theories. First we get a warm November, then freeze our butts off in December, then during the Christmas break we get below freezing/negative temps and blizzards followed by wild and warm pineapple belt winds and rains, followed by another 1/2 foot of snow, followed by another warm blow, followed by another blizzard, etc. Is somebody trying to free the Jewish people from Egypt again or what????
Its global cooling folks and here are the reasons…wait…nope, its global warming because the ice is melti…uh…no, its global cooling because 70 inches of snow fell in less than a month in the…er…no, its global warming because the snow is melting and we have a spring thaw with floo…em…a…wrong again, its global cooling because…my head hurts and I have to crawl up on top of the roof to brush snow off the dish.
King of Cool (14:42:57) :
PeterA (15:47:54) :
Of course the MSM will go for coral reef stories, but what really annoys is that they report what suits them “Argghh! it must be global warming again”.
WHat the research actually reported was “Calcification increases linearly with increasing large-scale sea surface temperature but responds nonlinearly to annual temperature anomalies.”
The researchers speculate that temperature stress (seasonal fluctuations) and lower dissolved mineral content in the water may have something to do with it: “The causes of the decline remain unknown;….” Link to abstract below.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/323/5910/116
“Jeff Id (11:23:03) :
I got banned from Tamino again, apparently for pointing out the circularity of his trend argument. I was ‘confusing’ the issue.
It will be interesting how he and RC respond if temps stay low through 2009. The trends will become quite a bit stronger with two down years.”
As much as we would like it to be, this just isn’t an issue for “them”.
They have wiggled around this repeatedly already…saying it’s just a temporary condition, it’s a mask, etc. etc.
and then when all else fails, they throw the weather/climate dismissal into the mix.
Sad but true…
This needs a lawsuit, or someone with tons of funding to go loud and large in the press, and call out the specific arguments.
JimB
“Mary Hinge (12:30:46) :
Just for the record the ENSO is still neutral, the threshold for La Niña conditions is a NINO3 SST index of -0.8. Currently this is -0.68 so still a way to go yet. As I mentioned in the autumn a return to a La Niña of the strength of last year was extremely small, and that is still true. Compare the Pacific chart of this time last year to the maps above. http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomp.1.3.2008.gif”
“There are NO AMERICANS in BAGHDAD…NONE!”
Sound familiar?
JimB
Pamela: I don’t think we are witnessing the Plagues of Egypt, just evidence that God has a sense of humor. “Foolish humans, think you understand what I have created? Explain this!”
Or perhaps the Uncertainty Principle writ large.
Too bad we don’t know the daily weather just before the LIA set in.