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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Foinavon, quoting a GWr: “Abstract: Diagnosis of climate models ”
I would suggest Models be included in cell phones software (of course after the “games” icon)
Smokey (11:03:22) :
I’m not “promoting” “scary” Smokey. Please read posts more carefully. Dr. Akasofu is “promoting scary” if anyone is. He seems to be suggesting that we are still “recovering” from the LIA. Moreover he asserts that we’re still in the “linear” phase of the “recovery”. That does seem pretty scary since it indicates (according to Akasofu) that the Earth’s temperature takes centuries tro come to equilibrium with a change in forcings. That would indicate that we still have a large amount of warming still to come from the enhanced greenhouse forcing from raised greenhouse gas levels.
“In the pipeline” refers to the heat (or surface temperature which is of more specific interest) that accrues at equilibrium once the elements of the Earth’s climate system have fully responded (come to equilibrium) with the enhanced forcing. It contrasts with the “transient response” which is the warming so far, on the way towards the equilibrium response. Analysis of the Earth’s temperature response to enhanced greenhouse forcing in the past indicates a temperature response of the order of 3 oC of warming per doubling of enhanced CO2. However this indicates that the Earth’s surface temperature should come close to equilibrium with the enhanced forcing on the timescale of several decades (with a very slow ocean response to achieve full equilibrium). Akasofu is suggesting that the Earth’s response to enhanced forcing occurs much more slowly. That’s pretty scary since it suggests a temperature response to enhanced forcing significantly larger that 3 oC per doubling of [CO2]. Let’s hope that Akasofu has got this wrong too!
Smokey (13:11:14) :
Paul S:
“Bit like CO2 and warming…”
Game, set, match.
Lol, thank you gentlemen. Here in the UK it is that time on a friday night when the pub is calling. I shall rejoin you later for the next stage of the tournament.
Here’s a nice page on pleistocence sea temperatures and ice ages to be going on with.
http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/ees123/iceages.htm
Paul S (13:06:29) :
Not really Paul. The effects of ocean currents on surface temperature have been studied in detail and their effects analysed (see abstracts in [foinavon (12:59:10) ], for example). One can’t understand the surface temperature anomalies for the past 150 years in relation to invented effects of a single ocean oscillation, when the evidence indicates that the ocean oscillations en masse have litte net effect.
On the other hand the greenhouse effect is pretty well understood and the contribution from raised [CO2] is quite well characterized (not prefectly ‘though!). So our basic physical understanding of surface responses to enhnaced atmospheric forcings, together with empirical data from past relationships between [CO2] and temperature indicates that the Earth responds to enhanced [CO2] with a wartming near 3 oC. One can take everything we know about the contributions to the Earth’s surface temperature (solar, greenhouse, volcanic, oceans, aerosolic…) and interpret the historical record with a reasonable reliability. It just doesn’t work if one attempts to interpret everytihn in terms of a since ocean oscillation that we know categorically can’t have made mucxh of a contribution!
It’s all about the evidence, Paul…
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 Amagh RURAL observatory the trend looks linear.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/armagh_air_temp2.jpg
Feel free to offer up another one that shows the same things that is up to date or quit your whining. – Anthony
Ouch. 🙁
Nope I too don’t get it. The graphs show quite a good correlation between IPCC 1995+ predictions and measured temperature.
On the other hand, the measurements don’t seem to match (by eye) with the monthly plot since 2002 (blog pimp!)
@ur momisugly 42125
Of course. And each ensemble member does not correspond to the mean.
In Akosofus logic that means each member of the ensemble is falsified. This is completely screwed logic.
@ur momisuglyIllis
http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/about_ipcc.php
publicly available.
Each member of the ensemble fails Akasofus test against the mean. That should tell you something how sensible such an approach is.
Simple scientific test to flaw climate model predictions could be as: if linear fit gives x years’ decreasing temperature trend, model predictions can be regarded as flawed. So, what value would you give to x? I would say that 15 maybe is enough (now there can be found 11-year decreasing trend 1998-2008 from all other datasets except GISS).
Protestors using children as shields
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23665011-details/3%2C000+police+on+alert+for+sand-pit+protests+to+block+summit/article.do
“Senior police sources say the protesters plan to bring children to play in the giant sand pits, making it impossible for officers to use force to remove them.”
Ah right I think I see; the graphs include GISS which is rising much faster than Hadley, and the black line is presumably the average of the various measurements.
It still looks like the 2002-2007 ‘stop’ in warming could be simply ‘regression to the mean’. 2008’s anomaly is just an anomaly.
As an interested layman I also had concluded that there was a linear trend with a multi-decadal oscillation overlain. But my examination of the data suggested the trend started in 1900, not 1800, and was closer to 1 degree per century than half a degree per century. I blogged all this six weeks ago. So I have two problems with Dr Akasofu’s arugments.
1 – I can’t see the justification for going back to 1800, and doing so seems to halve the trend estimate.
2 – He doesn’t offer a casual explanation for the trend. If you take it from around 1900 there is a clear casual explanation – carbon emissions from coal, followed by carbon emissions from oil.
I think that is the key challenge for climate skeptics – what is the cause of this ‘natural warming trend’. There is a competing causal explanation being offered – to knock it down, you need to offer something with genuinely explanatory and predictive power.
Wombles?!! Are you referring to Jim Hansen… or Jim Henson?
Paul S (12:43:03) :
Not really Paul. The evidence indicates that the Earth’s surface may have reached a maximum temperature (for the pre-20th century Holocene) somewhare around 7000 years ago. The temperature maximum was a result of Milankovitch cycles that were a bit more optimal for N. hemsphere warming that now:
e.g. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/holocene.html
Otherwise the evidence indicates that the temperature has been dropping very slightly overall since then until the mid-19th century/beginning of the 20th century. However, despite the fact that we’re in the relatively early days of enhanced greenhouse-induced forcing, the evidence indicates that we’re already warmer now than during the warmest period of the Holocene. I can direct you to some of the scientific literature on this. A decent-ish summary can be found on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
I didn’t say that the 20th century is “the warmest in 7000 years”. Read more carefully if you can. The evidence indicates that we’re likely warmer now (late 20th/early 21st century) than in the last 7000 years. Of course the evidence is somewhat limited concerning temperatures further back in time than a couple of thousand years. But if we’re going to make interpretations based on science we may as well look at the evidence! In terms of the subject of this thread, it’s not really possible to make a case that the warming of the last 150 years is the result of Akafosu’s “linear” “recovery” from the LIA (with PDO contributions)….it just doesn’t accord with the evidence..
foinavon (12:59:10) :
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.
AMO is warm for the time period
ENSO is overall neutral for the time period
Fast forwards to today, PDO cold, AMO warm, ENSO neutral, 10 years static to declining temps. Correlation (not implied causation!)
[***] 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.
1) Paper is dismissed due to the use of climate models. Unreliable data
2) Abstract states “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.” This is nonsense. Think LIA, Roman Optimum, ice ages etc etc where clearly natural variation had a significant impact.
3) Abstract states “most of the variability in global SSTs have themselves resulted from external radiative forcing due to greenhouse gas, aerosol, solar and volcanic variations” Also nonsense. Oceanographers are still getting to grips with the way SST’s vary. If oceanographers (experts in their field) are having trouble with this, how can a climate scientist understand it?
[*****] 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”
Study is based on the 1990’s shift of the PDV and surmises the effect of SST’s vs the troposphere temperatures is minimal. However, given the timing of the release of this study (late 2007), the work being carried out and, yet again, based on unreliable climate models, I doubt they have given sufficient time to see the true effects upon publication. That’s just a personal opinion of course. All in all, I think these papers have been chosen to defend a tenable position. Also a personal opinion.
TonyB (13:04:07) :
An anomaly is the result of a whole series of thermometer readings. Have a look at the UK Hadcrut or US NASA Giss to learn how the temperature anomalies are determined. There are extremely detailed papers available that outline the methodologies. They aren’t attempting to determine the Earth’s “global temperature”. It’s a fallacy to consider that temperature anomalies are measures of the earth’s ” global temperature”.
My personal faith (as a Sun guy) that we’re ten years into the ~30 year cooling phase before the next ~30 year warming phase isn’t bolstered by the graph.
I have to come down on Flanagan(08:21:43) ‘s side. The curves look like unexceptional bobbing around the projections. Ignoring the willful
HansenizedHomogenized GISS curve, which underplays 1998 and overplays 2005, the current downward drift could easily be just a another oscillation around the predictions.The sea level chart proves only that if the IPCC has a forte, it isn’t sea level . SL rise continues along at the usual pokey 3.2mm/yr, though it looks to be levelling in the past 3 years. Average since the ice age ran around 10mm/yr, so we’d have to exceed that rate if we’re to realize the promised huge rises by the end of the century. Even at that rate, a snail could outrun the encroaching shoreline.
tallbloke (12:54:04) :
That’s an odd scenario. There isn’t a single paleotemperature reconstruction that suggests that the MWP was within 0.5 oC of current temperatures even in the Northern hemisphere where the MWP was predominant. And we’re likley in the very early days of enhanced greenhouse-induced warming:
Wikipedia has a decent depiction of the science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
or for a fuller analysis:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html
“Roman Optimum”? I don’t know that one. Can you give me a scientific source please….
Anthony
I am puzzled by this post. The graphs immediately under the heading of the post were prepared by Roger Pielke Jr and first published on Lucia’s web site on 2 April 2008 – nearly 12 months ago. The graphs are not included in Syun Akasofu’s very detailed and comprehensive paper, which runs to over 50 pages, but he does seem to be getting a lot of flak about them in some of the comments above. Is the post misleading or am I missing something?
Mike Bradbury
Paul S (13:53:09) :
You don’t present any evidence for your PDO “notion”. Nor does Akasofu for that matter. When shown some of the science on the subject you assert that it’s “nonsense” (no evidence for that assertion) and make a couple of other unsupported asertions that you at least admit are “personal opinions”.
That’s fine. However in my personal opinion these issues should be addressed in relation to scientific evidence and not unsupported assertions even if these are from apparently distinguished scientists.
Incidentally Chen et al 2007 is based on measurements of sea surface temperatures and isn’t from “models”. One should at least look at a paper before attempting to trash it!
Am I missing something? I’m really puzzled. I’ve read Akasofu’s excellent original material, and the graphs he uses are far clearer detail than the two here, and from many different areas and disciplines; all together are suggestive of a continuing recovery from the LIA. He really convinced me. This article, without Akasofu’s full backup of evidence, seems to say very little.
However, I take issue with Akasofu on one issue. Though we do not know the mechanisms (the TSI link is too weak), both commonsense and correlation suggest an oscillating solar power has to be ultimately behind all global temp. changes (after subtracting UHI and buffering of fluctuation due to oceanic thermal inertia translated into ocean currents). We know that CO2 can lag temperature by 800 years, which time lag appears to correspond to the long thermohaline cycle; however Akasofu does not allow for a longer term solar oscillation that, while still allowing LIA recovery, may have started to go downhill towards another LIA. Think annual: August (February in Australia) is hot but the sun has already started to dip.
Akasofu’s updated paper is a large pdf file, slow but worth waiting for IMO.
That is a contradiction in terms.
As is the NOAA link.
Sorry, foinavon, but you need to understand that YOUR links are just plain not credible.
Rob (13:34:31) :
Very nice Rob. However that’s one location on earth. One can’t interpret global temperature from one spot!
In any case the Armagh data doesn’t really accord with Akasofu’s interpretation. After all Akasofu has the supposed “PDO effect” mixed in. The very nice Armagh data you link to has the warming oscillations apparently out of phase with the PDO (e.g. warmest excursions in Armagh centered around 1950’s when the PDO was in its negative phase and coolest PDO excursion centred around 1920 and 1980 when the PDO was supposed to be positive.)
Something’s wrong Rob! Either Akasofu has messed up, or your Armagh data is not giving a proper representation of global temperature.
(a bit of both most likely)
The argument that we are merely seeing a recovery from the Little Ice Age is not sufficient. The Earth is gaining heat; therefore, there must be an energy imbalance. Increasing solar radiation? Decreasing cloud cover? Increasing greenhouse effect? Those are valid explanations; “recovery” is not.
“I think that is the key challenge for climate skeptics – what is the cause of this ‘natural warming trend’. There is a competing causal explanation being offered – to knock it down, you need to offer something with genuinely explanatory and predictive power.”
Why does CO2 lag temp?
And, foinavon, if you are not after a global temperature, what sense does it make to net the ocean effects?