Note: Above graph comes from this source and not the paper below. Only the abstract is available. (Note from 2016: The link to the graph died, the image was recovered from the Wayback Machine and an edit made to restore it on Oct 31, 2016)
A new peer-reviewed climate study is presenting a head on challenge to man-made global warming claims. The study by three climate researchers appears in the July 23, 2009 edition of Journal of Geophysical Research. (Link to Abstract)
Full Press Release and Abstract to Study:
July 23, 2009
Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.
The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.
“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.
“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”
Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña. It is also well known that volcanic activity has a cooling influence, and as is well documented by the effects of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption.
The new paper draws these two strands of climate control together and shows, by demonstrating a strong relationship between the Southern Oscillation and lower-atmospheric temperature, that ENSO has been a major temperature influence since continuous measurement of lower-atmospheric temperature first began in 1958.
According to the three researchers, ENSO-related warming during El Niño conditions is caused by a stronger Hadley Cell circulation moving warm tropical air into the mid-latitudes. During La Niña conditions the Pacific Ocean is cooler and the Walker circulation, west to east in the upper atmosphere along the equator, dominates.
“When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950 the modellers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall,” says McLean.
“The IPCC acknowledges in its 4th Assessment Report that ENSO conditions cannot be predicted more than about 12 months ahead, so the output of climate models that could not predict ENSO conditions were being compared to temperatures during a period that was dominated by those influences. It’s no wonder that model outputs have been so inaccurate, and it is clear that future modelling must incorporate the ENSO effect if it is to be meaningful.”
Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.
“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”
“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”
—
McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.
This figure from the McLean et al (2009) research shows that mean monthly global temperature (MSU GTTA) corresponds in general terms with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) of seven months earlier. The SOI is a rough indicator of general atmospheric circulation and thus global climate change. The possible influence of the Rabaul volcanic eruption is shown.
Excerpted Abstract of the Paper appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research:
Time series for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and global tropospheric temperature anomalies (GTTA) are compared for the 1958−2008 period. GTTA are represented by data from satellite microwave sensing units (MSU) for the period 1980–2008 and from radiosondes (RATPAC) for 1958–2008. After the removal from the data set of short periods of temperature perturbation that relate to near-equator volcanic eruption, we use derivatives to document the presence of a 5- to 7-month delayed close relationship between SOI and GTTA. Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record. Because El Niño−Southern Oscillation is known to exercise a particularly strong influence in the tropics, we also compared the SOI with tropical temperature anomalies between 20°S and 20°N. The results showed that SOI accounted for 81% of the variance in tropospheric temperature anomalies in the tropics. Overall the results suggest that the Southern Oscillation exercises a consistently dominant influence on mean global temperature, with a maximum effect in the tropics, except for periods when equatorial volcanism causes ad hoc cooling. That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.
Received 16 December 2008; accepted 14 May 2009; published 23 July 2009.
UPDATE: Kenneth Trenberth of NCAR has posted a rebuttal to this paper. Which you can read here:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/FosteretalJGR09.pdf
Thanks to WUWT reader “Bob” for the email notice. – Anthony
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Mike Lorrey (15:20:23) :
Also, the thickness of the atmosphere is a factor: an atmosphere swollen up from a solar maximum and high solar winds, lots of geomagnetic flux, etc is a thicker sandwich to push heat through to radiate to space than one that is compacted from solar minimum/low solar wind conditions
One sees this argument again and again. But, the atmosphere has not gotten ‘thicker’. The mass through which the radiation has to pass is the same. The thermosphere up at 500 miles has moved a bit closer to the surface because of lower solar activity. We are also talking about perhaps a trillionth or less of the mass. The density decreases by a factor of 1000 for every 50 km you ascend.
Gary Pearse (05:50:36) :
John Finn (01:19:37)
“The other point worth noting is that this paper also leave little room for a solar effect.”
Anthony: Regarding the paper. The authors are happy that they have accounted for 70 to 80% of the warming. Might the other 20% or so because of selection of starting points and poor siting and maintenance of weather boxes?
Leaving even less room for a solar effect…
Gary Pearse (05:50:36) : I agree with you on the Sun. From what I have been able to find on the web WRT solar proxies, the proxies are not considered completely reliable. It is possible that that paleo record actually reflects a period when the Sun’s output goes up a little. Of course, the Earth’s history over which paleo record extends is littered with all kinds of changes including continental drift and the concomitant change in ocean circulation. I think the main problem the AWG scientists have is they won’t admit they do not have good data from which to draw conclusions or with which tweak models. It may be all they have, but in many cases it just isn’t good enough to do what they are attempting to do.
Leif Svalgaard (05:54:14) :” The density decreases by a factor of 1000 for every 50 km you ascend.”
Doesn’t this fact make the upper atmosphere a minor player in radiation exchange with space? The lower atmosphere will be throwing off lots more radiation than the upper atmosphere can absorb. This, plus the fact that the greater pressure in the lower atmosphere broadens the emission bands plus shifts the frequency a little, would make the upper atmosphere little more than a course sieve through which lower-atmosphere radiation would move through almost unimpeded.
Surely the SST of el Nino/Nina is driven by Willis’s trade-wind pumping cu-nims. I think the evaporation factor of trade-winds over cloudless oceans constitutes a major cooling of the tropics, indeed it the difference between this and insolation energies that determine the change in SST surely.
I speculate that ENSO events allow energy loss from time to time (as in through the poles and/or upper atmosphere in general), allowing the fairly constant solar energy source to rebuild the heat budget. It also closes off that heat loss window/route, causing heat build-up to occur. So it acts as a heat “shuffle” and also a heat vent that closes and opens in a somewhat unpredictable short term manner but also in an oscillating and more predictable longer term manner that allows swings from somewhat warmer to somewhat cooler.
Richard M (21:17:11) :
“Dave Wendt (18:18:35) : makes some very good points. Maybe this could lead to a guest post. I know many folks have questioned the geothermal impact in the comments. Maybe it’s time to review this topic in more detail”
Gentlemen, I’m one of the folks who have suggested this on a couple of posts. I don’t have time to redo the discussion but I will leave you with the following paper showing the coincident geothermal hot spot and the general broad high temp geothermal anomally in the east Pacific. You have to scroll down to the map:
http://geophysics.ou.edu/geomechanics/notes/heatflow/global_heat_flow.htm
and: http://esrc.stfx.ca/pdf/halifaxtalk.pdf
The latter paper discusses a startling increase in flux over the past 200 years. I hope someone with more time than me can research this and prepare a post. Like you guys, I think this factor, ignored because it is so “small” could be a major cause of El Ninos. Imagine in the map in paper no.1 – heating the water on the floor of the ocean (day and night) until the density of the water is reduced enough to cause the water to rise. Also imagine the currents proceeding toward the equator along the west coasts of the americas gathering up the warm water and pushing it along the equatorial zone westward. How are we going to keep this thing alive given that it is at the end of a dying post? It doesn’t seem to interest the atmospheric, oceanic or solar physicists.
Quite a good paper on PDO, AO and Enso here:
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/climvar/climate-paper.html
Sandy (08:09:35) :”Surely the SST of el Nino/Nina is driven by Willis’s trade-wind pumping cu-nims. I think the evaporation factor of trade-winds over cloudless oceans constitutes a major cooling of the tropics, indeed it the difference between this and insolation energies that determine the change in SST surely.”
I was wondering a few days ago why there would be such a delay in the temperature rise in the lower tropical atmosphere after the ocean surface warmed. Looks like the delay caused by the cooling provided by Hadley Cells. So the warm water in the tropics essentially must warm almost the entire atmosphere due to the good mixing of air in order for the tropical temperature to rise.
Re: michel (00:18:35)
michel, Can you provide links to the Tamino PCA series?
Re: Pamela Gray (08:09:37)
Good way of explaining.
Re: Jim (05:22:30)
Did you read his argument?
– – –
Important:
Say a variable in a simple linear model accounts for 88% of the variance and one adds a second variable that pushes r^2 up to 89%. This does NOT mean that the second variable accounts for 1% of the variance. This is a very widespread misunderstanding.
–
Ninderthana, The thing I’ve found interesting is that many who are making a fuss about trends appear to not have paused to consider whether indices like SOI & MEI, in light of the nature of their construction, would ever be likely to show a steep secular trend (on long timescales). Thanks for your comments. I will be launching new analyses without delay…
–
The following are equivalent:
a) annually-integrating & then differencing.
b) differencing & then annually-integrating.
(Do the math – it’s dead-simple.)
I make this note because I see some ‘distorted’ comments upthread & over at Tamino’s.
Wouldn’t you want to adjust the baseline for the ENSO events to determine the new anomalies?
Paul Vaughan (10:53:19) : “Re: Jim (05:22:30) Did you read his argument?”
All the different base periods do is offset the data by some quantity. This difference in base periods can be negated by adding offsets to each dataset, beginning each dataset in the same year, so that each begins at zero. Then you can see how closely they track each other.
No, on second thought, you would not. Forget I said that.
Gary, faulty media-ready reports about the plausibility (cough cough) of CO2 scorching the Earth does not mean that we should trample on that same poorly thought out path. Just because they do it does not mean that we can follow in their footsteps. In fact, I think that is the last place we would want to tread. Before I went to press with anything related to the Sun, I would want to do past correlation studies that demonstrates Sun variable with ENSO variables, and provide plausible mechanisms. That ENSO variables heat and cool land is a fairly basic mechanism based in a 5th grade Science text. What drives ENSO is much more complicated and deserves consideration and media-ready reports of a much higher quality than the history of CO2 AGW has presented to us.
Ninderthana (01:25:06)
I don’t have a problem with some sort of lunar/tidal effect on El Nino or La Nina frequency but at the end of the day it’s solar variability that controls the shortwave energy input to the oceans whatever mechanism then rations it’s delivery to the air.
My contention is that on the basis of real world observations the oceans have internal variability that affects the rate of stored energy transfer from ocean to air.
The climate is controlled by the solar shortwave input as varied by changes in the rate of energy emission from oceans to air.
How the oceans ration the flow of energy from ocean to air is currently unknown but however it is done the level of solar energy input remains a paramount background factor.
As regards step changes the fact is that if there are multi century (albeit small) variations in solar energy input to the oceans then the multi decadal shifts in the rate of energy release from oceans to air will always show a stepped pattern until the solar trend reverses.
I really don’t understand the apparent inability of the climate establishment or a number of sceptics to see such simple relationships.
I see a problem with any ideas that involve changes in the air alone affecting the climate system. Many sceptical opinions share that approach and I think they are wrong.
The rate of energy emission from the oceans clearly varies and drives the observed changes in the entire climate system.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/pca-part-4-non-centered-hockey-sticks/
tamino’s PCA series. This is part 4 with links to the others. I forget exactly where it was that Ian Joliffe joined the debate, think it was an open thread someplace.
MBH98 is a test case. A sincere, rational, objective warmist will admit that it was and is wrong for Mann to withold the algorithm (which was never released even to Wegman). He or she will admit also that the technique which was called PCA is in fact no such thing, and that it is illegitimate. In short, he will admit that Mann and MBH98 are totally discredited. But he will in conceding that probably still argue on other grounds that today’s warming is quite different in speed and amount from the MWP episode, and that may be right or wrong, but its at least defensible. Whereas the defence of MBH at this point is the province of party hacks.
What is rather hilarious about Tamino’s method is that it is exactly the same as McIntyre’s on MBH. Tamino claims to have shown that no matter what trend you inject, the method of the paper eliminates it. Yes, and McIntyre and McKittrick claimed to have shown, after they reconstructed the Mann algorithm, that when applied to even random number sequences, it produced hockey sticks.
Do you notice a pleasing irony in the similarity of the forms of argument? Of couirse Tamino will turn a delicate shade of pink if it is suggested that perhaps his method owes something to M&M, that actually the same general procedure applied to MBH as he has applied to the present paper, will reveal as distinct a lack of clothing as he claims to have discerned here….!
But it is what has happened. Perhaps we should demand this as a step in the peer review process for climate trend papers? The authors should be obliged to run their algorithms across various different sorts of data, and publish the results. It might be most enlightening. We could make a textbook of the results: an encyclopedia of methods of extracting non-existent trends from data.
michel (12:38:03) : “But he will in conceding that probably still argue on other grounds that today’s warming is quite different in speed and amount from the MWP episode, and that may be right or wrong, but its at least defensible.”
I would like to know what “other grounds” the warmist can stand on, other than it’s been warming since the LIA. The problem he and we have is that there is no long-term, reliable record. GISS has been show to be a joke and if we knew what the Met Office was doing, we would probably see it is garbage in/garbage out also. In any case, we should not depend on any data from the Met for which the methodology is withheld from the public. That leaves only satellite records as our candidate for a reliable temp record and we only have 30 years of those, not 100-150 years. That pretty much leave everyone with no good data from which to argue anything.
michel (12:38:03) : “What is rather hilarious about Tamino’s method is that it is exactly the same as McIntyre’s on MBH. ”
I wouldn’t say it’s the same. The correlation of variations was shown quite nicely and that holds up. Nothing in Mann’s Hockey Stick holds up. It is worse than useless in that it is very misleading.
marathon reading through this left me with one observation. That is there is little mention that ENSO is affecting cloud cover and albedo. The 1998 event corresponded to a drop of cloud cover which caused about a 10% drop in Earth’s albedo – the equivalent of over 10 W/m^2 world wide or almost 3 doublings of co2 which it recovered from much of it a little later. This is a phenomenal amount of variability which can have a tremendous impact on T – far more than supposing a small difference in regional SST might deliver.
The paper by McLean et al (JGR, 2009) does not analyse trends in mean global temperature (MGT); rather, it examines the extent to which ENSO accounts for variation in MGT.
The research concludes that MGT has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier and shows the potential of natural mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.
It is evident in this paper that ENSO (ocean-atmosphere heat exchange) is the primary driver of MGT (i.e. El Ninos cause global warming and La Ninas cause global cooling). The reason given is Hadley circulation (which affects convection, clouds etc) linked to changes in sea surface temperature (ocean heat supply) and the Walker Circulation (i.e. ENSO). These processes might be significant factors in affecting net solar heating as well as the transfer of heat from Earth to space.
Since so much of the criticism in the blogosphrere to date is about the failure of the McLean et al paper to detect trends, which was not the aim of the paper, these critics may be interested in a research paper that does.
Compo and Sardeshmukh (Climate Dynamics, 32:33-342, 2009) state: “Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.” (Sonicfrog (10:42:17) mentioned this here earlier)
Further regarding trends, the warming trend from 1965 to 2000 is the same as the pre-CO2 warming trend of 1900-1940. It is clear from this the climate models promoted by the IPCC have been tuned to extra warmth associated with ENSO as is apparent in the Mclean et al paper.
Re: cba (14:44:09)
…And let’s not forget Erl Happ’s “orgy of precipitation” over at …
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/climate-change-a-la-naturale/
It didn’t happen under clear skies.
“Angel (21:21:20) :
Ahh yes, ONE peer reviewed study vs thousands. Sounds convincing to me! *dripping sarcasm*. Even better, it’s from the Journal of Geophysical Research which is not a well respected magazine in the scientific community.”
First post from a complete non-scientist but I couldn’t let this pass. I don’t know whether Ferenc Miskolczi’s paper called “Greenhouse Effect in Semi-Transparent Planetary Atmospheres” published in 2007 has been discussed here but it was also peer reviewed and, if I understand correctly, far more closely tracks reality than the AGW hypothesis. His idea is that a rise in CO2 is offset by a drop in relative humidity (which is taken as a constant in the IPCC reports). I believe that relative humidity has, in fact, dropped over the past few years.
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
I just want to say that, even though I don’t understand much of the technical discussion, I visit WUWT regularly and love following the discussions.
Chris de Freitas says:
Thanks for the clarification, Dr. de Freitas. However, would you then ask Anthony to correct the title of this post which says “Surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean?” And, what about the last 3 paragraphs of the press release quoting your co-author Bob Carter? And, for that matter, your co-author John McLean’s statement certainly seems to imply that you have shown something that is directly relevant to the IPCC’s attribution of the overall trend to greenhouse gases. And, there are even some admittedly highly-qualified but still questionably-justified statements in the paper itself in regards to the trend.
So, in other words, I think the criticism of your technique being incapable of detecting trends has been brought on by the way that this paper has been marketed both in your press release and in the blogosphere.
As for the Compo and Sardeshmukh paper, it is important to note that it does not show that CO2 is not responsible for the warming. It merely claims to show that if you force the models with the observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) then you get much the same temperature distribution as is seen, which hardly seems surprising given that oceans are about 70% of the earth’s surface and contain most of the heat content of the ocean-atmosphere system. It begs the question of where that heat seen in the rising ocean SST’s is coming from.
Iren says:
That paper suffers from a variety of fatal theoretical flaws, one being the bizarre application of the virial theorem in a form that would imply that he thinks that the atmosphere is freely orbiting the earth (i.e., is not in anyway being supported by the earth itself): see http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:fDTradQ2R7sJ:www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Miskolczi.html+virial+theorem+Ferenc+Miskolczi&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
As for relative humidity, the moistening of the atmosphere has been verified through the water column and (more relevently for the water vapor feedback) the moistening of the upper troposphere in response to both short term temperature fluctuations (e.g., due to ENSO) and long term trends has been verified from satellite observations: See, e.g., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 , or http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;323/5917/1020 for a review.
There is apparently SOME weather balloon (radiosonde) dataset that seems to show the opposite (only for the longterm trends…it hasn’t to my knowledge been looked at for fluctuations) but, as the first paper I referenced notes, there are known serious issues in using this radiosonde data to assess such longterm humidity trends.
Ninderthana,
I’ve just been digging back into …
Keeling, C. D. & Whorf, T. P. (1997). Possible forcing of global temperature by the oceanic tides. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 94(16), 8321-8328.
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8321.full.pdf?ijkey=YjbRA3bMQaGic
… and reviewing figure 3 [head’s up tallbloke, if you are around – this will interest you – note the reference (3) dating to 1985 – this relates to our recent discussion about the 3 factors statistically-related to the ~1931 phase-reversal (which include terrestrial polar motion, LNC, & r”)].
I easily turned up this info …
http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q809.html
… and another site written by a fellow sea-kayaker who suggests the average period of the proxigean tide cycles is ~19 months? Is that right Ninderthana?… (If so, this is getting very interesting, particularly in light of what we already know about temperature ranges.) …And what is the range?