UPDATE#2 I finally found a graph from Professor Akasofu that goes with the text of his essay below. I’ve added it above. You can read more about Akasofu’s views on climate in this PDF document here. (Warning: LARGE 50 megabyte file, long download) The two previous graphs used are in links below.
UPDATE: Originally I posted a graph from Roger Pielke Jr. see here via Lucia at the Blackboard because it was somewhat related and I wanted to give her some traffic. As luck would have it, few people followed the link to see what it was all about, preferring to question the graph in the context of the article below. So, I’ve replaced it with one from another article of hers that should not generate as many questions. Or will it? 😉 – Anthony
THE IPCC’S FAILURE OF PREDICTING THE TEMPERATURE CHANGE DURING THE FIRST DECADE
Syun Akasofu
International Arctic Research Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK 99775-7340
The global average temperature stopped increasing after 2000 against the IPCC’s prediction of continued rapid increase. It is a plain fact and does not require any pretext. Their failure stems from the fact that the IPCC emphasized the greenhouse effect of CO2 by slighting the natural causes of temperature changes.
The changes of the global average temperature during the last century and the first decade of the present century can mostly be explained by two natural causes, a linear increase which began in about 1800 and the multi-decadal oscillation superposed on the linear increase. There is not much need for introducing the CO2 effect in the temperature changes. The linear increase is the recovery (warming) from the Little Ice Age (LIA), which the earth experienced from about 1400 to 1800.
The halting of the temperature rise during the first decade of the present century can naturally be explained by the fact that the linear increase has been overwhelmed by the superposed multi-decadal oscillation which peaked in about 2000.*
This situation is very similar to the multi-decadal temperature decrease from 1940 to 1975 after the rise from 1910 to 1940 (in spite of the fact that CO2 increased rapidly after 1946); it was predicted at that time that a new Big Ice Age was on its way.
The IPCC seems to imply that the halting is a temporary one. However, they cannot give the reason. Several recent trends, including the phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the halting of sea level increase, and the cooling of the Arctic Ocean, indicate that the halting is likely to be due to the multi-decadal change.
The high temperatures predicted by the IPCC in 2100 (+2~6°C) are simply an extension of the observed increase from 1975 to 2000, which was caused mainly by the multi-decadal oscillation. The Global Climate Models (GCMs) are programmed to reproduce the observed increase from 1975 to 2000 in terms of the CO2 effect and to extend the reproduced curve to 2100.
It is advised that the IPCC recognize at least the failure of their prediction even during the first decade of the present century; a prediction is supposed to become less accurate for the longer future.
For details, see http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu
* The linear increase has a rate of ~ +0.5°C/100 years, while the multi-decadal oscillation has an amplitude of ~0.2°C and period of ~ 50-60 years, thus the change in 10 years is about ~ -0.07°C from the peak, while the linear change is about ~ +0.05°C.
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I’m somewhat befuddled by the concept of “recovering” from the Little Ice Age, what on earth does that mean? Are we not dealing with purely physical processes which require a cause as well as an effect? What caused the LIA to end and the earth to warm thereafter? It didn’t just happen by magic.
The article says one of the causes of of increased average temperatures has been “a linear increase which began in about 1800”. That is not a cause, it is an effect. What he is actually saying is that temperatures have increased because they have increased. It is complete nonsense.
re: sea level changes.
The 1990 IPCC forecast was much too high. Why is the base 1992? Has this graph been adjusted for 1990 to 1992 rises?
In 1995 they seem to have merely forecast a continuation of rate for the prior two years. This forecast proved too low.
But in 2001 they get the slope about right. It only looks low because 1992 is the year of origin. And in 2007 their slope again agrees well with the past, with the 1992 origin still making it look too low.
Overall the IPCC “forecasts” the past well when given enough data. And if the future is much like the past – as it has been after 1995 – they correctly foresee that too.
Joking aside. IMO those -evanm being one – who cite the difficulty of precisely measuring sea level change are correct. And Dennis pointed out that being right about the past isn’t forecasting.
Dennis also cited the article about how the financial industry misused and misunderstood a formula and used it to justify wild speculation.
The formula relied upon the past to forecast the future. For those who choose dead trees as media the article is also in the current Wired magazine.
Foinavon 10 50 33
Please tell me why you believe the concept of a single global temperature has any meaning, let alone one going back to 1850 based on tiny numbers of constantly changing, unreliable stations. I would really enjoy hearing a good explanation. Thank you
Tonyb
Smokey 11 03 22
That loose change is mine
Tonyb
Another global temperature trend line began well before the advent of the first SUV: click
The climate’s natural fluctuations always cycle around, and revert to its natural long-term trend line. There is no place in the historical record for CO2 to have a noticeable or measurable effect.
The AGW/CO2 hypothesis fails once again.
FatBigot (11:19:59) :
I’m somewhat befuddled by the concept of “recovering” from the Little Ice Age, what on earth does that mean? Are we not dealing with purely physical processes which require a cause as well as an effect? What caused the LIA to end and the earth to warm thereafter? It didn’t just happen by magic.
There is the consideration of perspective to take into account here. We have been in recovery since the ice age some 11,000 years ago, cause still to be really determined. Since then the earth has been warming.
The question might not be what caused the recovery of the LIA (as this was already happening as above) but what changed to cause the LIA itself. If that makes sense.
Why would you post a graph that ends in Dec. 2006?
That’s over 26 months, ago.
REPLY: I used one from Lucia’s website to give her a traffic boost. Yes it’s a bit dated but my time this mornign before work was limited. Feel free to offer up another one that shows the same things that is up to date or quit your whining. – Anthony
Paul S (11:17:28) :
I have to say, how any anarchist group called the Wombles can be taken seriously is beyond me. I mean, what are they going to do? Pick up litter and take it home?
Jim Hansen’s protest in Coventry yesterday was organised by that well known and feared desperado anarchist group Christian Aid. No word on how many attended.
Here he is posing next to a mock grave in the bombed out cathedral
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/Z_ltgztP91v/Protests+Held+Climate+Change+Day+Action/rt7__jtmH8m/James+Hansen
What is it with this guy and his morbid fascination with death and WWII?
Smokey [11:03:22] sez: “…exactly where in the pipeline [is] that hidden heat ’still to come’ hiding? It’s not under my bed, I’ve already looked there. And it’s not in my sofa either. But I did find some loose change under the cushions.”
Smokey, we’ll be checking everybody’s lunchbox on the way out. I already checked the trash. All I found was a rusty old stapler used to attach graphs where they don’t belong, a tattered book of pathetic ad hominem arguments, and a kayak in good condition except for some external scratches and a few spatters of what looks like red paint on the inside. Anyone want to claim these?
Here a graph with the Y axis graduated at 1°C steps:
0° C ——————————————————
This one is by far, more realistc.
Paul S (11:39:03) :
No, the Earth warmed up to around 7000 years ago as we “came out of” the last glacial period. Since then the Earth has cooled a tad if anything until the start of the 20th century.
We know very well why the Earth cam out of the ice age between 15,000-10,000 years ago. Google “Milankovitch cycles”.
FatBigot (11:19:59) :
I’m somewhat befuddled by the concept of “recovering” from the Little Ice Age, what on earth does that mean?
Study this image:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
After we came up from the last ice age,we are on a nice flat top that is varying +/- 1C about a stable temperature. We are coming out of one of those “small” variations that have occurred the last 10000 years .
It is not magic, and it does look like clockwork, but I do not think anybody can answer your why.
TonyB (11:26:24) :
Yes, the notion of a “single global temperature” is indeed silly. However that’s not how the Earth’s global temperature trends are assessed. The temporal temperature trend is determined as a temperature anomaly which can be assessed with a reasonable reliability even back to the mid-19th century given sufficient reliable continuous and overlapping temperature records.
Have a look at the UK Hadcrut website, or the NASA Giss website to learn how the temperature anomaly is determined.
Tallbloke.
If Hansen had only been born 45 years later, he would have made an awesome Emo.
Ok, so here is how I understand this.
Rain is caused by water evaporation, yes?
Increased temperature increases evaporation, yes?
At what point does water vapor saturate, and drop again as rain or snow?
If the atmosphere begins to saturate with water vapor, snowfall increases, right? Could this be the mechanism that causes the ice ages? I don’t have time to look and see if ever ice age has a temp. spike before it, but I am interested to know if it is possible that rising temps cause more snow to fall, which would reflect more sunlight.
Of course, I am majoring in business, not science, so a good answer from one of the scientist types around would be helpful.
Thanks.
Re: Tom in Florida
Yes, the IPCC temperature trend follows CO2 – that is, up. But it’s supposed to model climate (that is, over several decades), not short term weather variability (climate noise) such as the high and low outlier years. So you still have to observe over many decades, and do a long-term running average to clear out the noise. That’s why the IPCC publishes it as a linear trend (like degree/decade), as opposed to some of the individual models.
foinavon (12:09:15) :
No, the Earth warmed up to around 7000 years ago as we “came out of” the last glacial period. Since then the Earth has cooled a tad if anything until the start of the 20th century.
Oh, it cooled off a tad. Does this mean the 20th century isn’t the warmest in 7000 years? So why are we [you] so worried about current warming if we have been naturally warmer in the past? Care to wave your arms a little more?
We know very well why the Earth cam out of the ice age between 15,000-10,000 years ago. 11000 years is within that range…
Google “Milankovitch cycles”.
I’ve read all about them thanks.
Possibly the most amusing thing you can observe is how the Guardian hypes up every protest and then when nobody shows up the Guardian doesn’t report on how things went.
If enough petit fascists turn up at the G20 protests the Guardian will hail them as ‘the voice of the people’.
foinavon (12:09:15) :
the Earth warmed up to around 7000 years ago as we “came out of” the last glacial period. Since then the Earth has cooled a tad if anything until the start of the 20th century.
Missing a bit of climate history out there foinavon. From the very warm holocene optimum temps fell and then recovered to the warmer than now Roman Optimum. Then fell before recovering to the Medieval warm period, then fell to the little ice age. Then recovered and wimbled along until 1910. We’re not sure how much warmer the medieval warm period was than now, but the general trend has been downwards for 9000 years until this day.
Smokey 11 03 22
A friend of mine found God down the back of his sofa. Came as quite a shock. I wondered where he was hiding. I’ll ask my mate if he’s found any missing heat. I mean, it’s got to be somewhere.
Paul S (11:10:52) :
Not really Paul. The PDO seems to have become an unverified catch-all explanation! There are several ocean oscillations and one can’t just choose the PDO to “explain” temperature variations for convenience. What about the AMO, for example? If you chose the AMO to “explain” the temperature trend of the past 150 years you’d come to a different conclusion altogether.
If the ocean oscillations are assessed in relation to their overall effects (not just the PDO) there isn’t really a large net effect [***]. LIkewise analysis of the PDO itself indicates that its contribution to temperature variations is small [*****]
[***] Hoerling M et al. (2008) What is causing the variability in global mean land temperature? Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L23712
Abstract: Diagnosis of climate models reveals that most of the observed variability of global mean land temperature during 1880-2007 is caused by variations in global sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Further, most of the variability in global SSTs have themselves resulted from external radiative forcing due to greenhouse gas, aerosol, solar and volcanic variations, especially on multidecadal time scales. Our results indicate that natural variations internal to the Earth’s climate system have had a relatively small impact on the low frequency variations in global mean land temperature. It is therefore extremely unlikely that the recent trajectory of terrestrial warming can be overwhelmed (and become colder than normal) as a consequence of natural variability.
[*****] Chen, Y. et al (2008) The spatiotemporal structure of twentieth-century climate variations in observations and reanalysis. Part II: Pacific Pan-Decadal VariabilityJ. Climate 21, 2634-2650
(p. 2648) “Our PDV mode in both ST datasets has an extremely small global mean amplitude (~0.02K) because of cancellation between regional positive and negative anomalies, and in fact is of opposite sign in GISTEMP and ERSST.V, indicating that its global mean impact is negligible. For comparison, a typical ENSO event has a global mean temperature impact around +/- 0.1K.”
and:
(p. 2636) “As shown in Fig 1, because the PDV signals in high and low latitudes are out of phase and thus offset each other, the global mean temperature change (Fig 1, top) associated with the PDV phenomenon is in the range of +/- 0.02 K, which is negligible compared with the approximately 0.8-K value of GW trend mode and the approximately +/- 0.2-K value of the ENSO phenomenon”
(n.b. “PDV” is a designation of the PDO that comprises the full Pacific basin)
Foinavon
You’ve just confirmed my point when you said;
“reasonable reliability even back to the mid-19th century given sufficient reliable continuous and overlapping temperature records.”
‘Reasonable’ and ‘sufficient reliable’ are worlds away from the precise fractional temperatures that we are asked to believe we have access to, which to achieve came from someone looking at a temperature recorder-ie a thermometer.
not an anomaly .
Tonyb
foinavon (12:59:10) :
Not really Paul. The PDO seems to have become an unverified catch-all explanation!
Bit like CO2 and warming…
foinavon (10:50:33) : said
There isn’t a LIA “linear” recovery trend. It’s difficult to understand why Dr. Akasofu would suggest such an odd notion. Although the temperature record is sparse through the 19th century, the data indicates that the earth had “recovered” from the LIA by the mid 19th century so that the period from 1850 – 1900 was pretty flat temperature-wise:
According to the RURAL Armagh observatory it appears linear.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/armagh_air_temp2.jpg
Paul S:
“Bit like CO2 and warming…”
Game, set, match.