Guest Post by Steven Goddard
It appears that global cooling recognition may be starting to make headway in the scientific community. We have this Discovery/MSNBC article about a NOAA scientist titled “Warming might be on hold, study finds”
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970’s was due to a free variation in climate,” Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. “Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
And Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years.
Here’s the complete story from The Discovery Channel via MSNBC:
For those who have endured this winter’s frigid temperatures and today’s heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.But climate is known to be variable – a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.
“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”
Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a “super El Nino event.” It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.
How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.
The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science – identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snow storm) from human-induced change.
But just what’s causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun’s energy than usual back out into space.
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970’s was due to a free variation in climate,” Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. “Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it’s just a hiccup, and that humans’ penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.
“When the climate kicks back out of this state, we’ll have explosive warming,” Swanson said. “Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
© 2009 Discovery Channel
That is strange. We hear from highly respected authorities that we were in a period of “unprecedented warming.” How can it be both warming and cooling at the same time? Maybe those DC protesters didn’t need to stand out in the cold and try to shut down their primary source of energy today.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
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Leif Svalgaard (17:44:40) :
3×2 (16:52:42) :
“Indeed it will. In some 5 billions years it will fry the Earth to a crisp.”
Collision of galaxies have no effect on the stars in them because of the vast distance between each star.
Um, wasn’t there a stir about us presently being in a collision with dwarf Sagittarius and maybe earth being from it, not the Milky Way and that’s why the MW is not on the ecliptic? As in this article:
http://viewzone.com/milkyway.html
That would kinda be an existence proof of Leif’s point… and… We’re space aliens from another galaxy!
Obama replaces Merkel as planet saver
The irony of AGW history is that the first political leader who discovered planetary doom fear and panic as a strong propellant for a political career – Mrs. Merkel – has become absolutely silent about this topic and has stopped using even the words “global warming” (or, as we are in Germany, where problems become catastrophes very soon, “clima catastrophe”) since Lehman Brothers Day, 4 months ago. It´s the economy, now. As we like to say:”The jammed penny has finally fallen.”
But now Obama is taking over this part – with the same intention as Merkel. He will have to cut the curve like Merkel did, of course. I estimate his time constant to be about 6 months. But don´t be sad – you still have Al Gore. His time constant is much longer than the PDO.
I have a question to the forum:
Would you consider it true that the biosphere is a system that is set up with the express purpose of managing carbon?
It is after all the foundation of life on the planet. To me the notion connotes that we have a planet that has a robust capability to deal with fluctuations in CO2.
Are there any scientists out there that look at the world in this way?
I am not trying to be another little Goebbels here, but it seems to me a pretty powerful organizing principle for explaining to a semi-interested, semi-aware public why an increase in our current low atmospheric CO2 concentration is going to be handled just fine by the planet.
I feel a need to expand and clarify the question:
I said “express purpose.” Perhaps that should be “inherent functionality.”
I think my argument goes as follows: “Are we trying to manage something that the planet manages already?”
Could it even be postulated that global temperature increases are a part of that management scheme (higher temperatures and available carbon= more plant growth, hence stronger negative feedback?)
I am perfectly ready to be corrected on this.
SFTor (16:22:08) : Not a scientist, but ill answer to best o my ability til a better answer comes along eh 😉
Yea co2 is what limits the biosphere, Plant growth isnt really burial though, but a raised level of co2 will expand the biosphere, shell/ocean sediment is probably the largest biological burial at a guess…
So a raised level of co2 will increase the amount of life the planet is able to sustain, yes.. But its not going to cause a “negative feedback” as such. Water vapor very possibly does that all on its own. A negative feedback would be say more co2=more h2o vapor=more cloud=less energy in the system. What youre saying, is the biosphere going too increase burial… i dont know.
The question is whether raised co2 is going to cause a run away green house effect? Probably not, considering in the past it has been many times higher, and for that matter the climate has been warmer since the last ice age than present with low co2, which points too greater climate variability than the AGW crowd would acknowledge. Or are the climate implications from the raised co2 level going to be adverse to life on the planet? I dont see any evidence of it. It certainly hasnt worked that way in the past.
End of the day the only real constant in the climate is change, and life adapts to the climate…
Do you know which study by Swanson and Anastasios this post refers to, and if so, do you have a link for it? The title of the study will be fine otherwise, if you know it.