Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
Multiple Wrongs Don’t Make A Right, Especially When It Comes To Determining The Impacts Of ENSO
This post does not discuss the analysis by Carter et al nor does it examine the methods used by Foster et al to critique it. This post lists the papers cited by Foster et al that determine “the connection between ENSO and large-scale temperature variability, particularly with regard to the role of ENSO in any long-term warming trends, that has been carried out over the past two decades,” and discusses the errors that are common to those papers.
THE PAPERS CITED BY FOSTER ET AL
Jones, P.D., (1989), The influence of ENSO on global temperatures, Climate Monitor, 17, 80–89.
(I have not found a link to this paper. Since I haven’t read it, I can’t comment about it. It is, therefore, excluded from my post.)
Santer, B.D., Wigley, T.M.L., Doutriaux, C., Boyle, J.S., Hansen, J.E., Jones, P.D., Meehl, G.A., Roeckner, E., Sengupta, S., and Taylor K.E. (2001), Accounting for the effects of volcanoes and ENSO in comparisons of modeled and observed temperature trends, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 28033–28059.
Link:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Santer_etal.pdf
Thompson, D. W. J., J. J. Kennedy, J. M. Wallace, and P. D. Jones (2008), A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature, Nature, 453, 646–650, doi:10.1038/nature06982.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7195/abs/nature06982.html
Trenberth, K.E., J.M.Caron, D.P.Stepaniak, and S.Worley, (2002), Evolution of El Nino-Southern Oscillation and global atmospheric surface temperatures, J. Geophys. Res., 107 (D8), 4065, doi:10.1029/2000JD000298
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/2000JD000298.pdf
Wigley, T. M. L. (2000), ENSO, volcanoes, and record-breaking temperatures, Geophysical Res. Lett., 27, 4101–4104.ENSO, volcanoes and record‐breaking temperatures
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2000/2000GL012159.shtml
COMMON ERRORS IN PAPERS CITED BY FOSTER ET AL
The authors of the papers used different statistical tools and ENSO indices to remove the ENSO signal from Global Temperature and TLT records, and they all failed to account for the multiyear aftereffects of significant El Nino events. This was discussed in detail in my post “Regression Analyses Do Not Capture The Multiyear Aftereffects Of Significant El Nino Events”. That post also appeared at WattsUpWithThat as “Why regression analysis fails to capture the aftereffects of El Nino events.” The post included a detailed discussion of the processes that take place before, during, and after significant El Nino events under the heading “EL NINO OVERVIEW”.
That overview was supplemented by my post “La Nina Events Are Not The Opposite Of El Nino Events.” Briefly, a La Nina event is an exaggeration of ENSO-neutral conditions that occurs when the coupled ocean-atmosphere processes attempt to return to “normal” after a traditional El Nino.
The statistical techniques used in the papers cited by Foster et al also do not address the differences between traditional El Nino events and El Nino Modoki. El Nino Modoki events were discussed in my posts “There Is Nothing New About The El Nino Modoki” and “Comparison of El Nino Modoki Index and NINO3.4 SST Anomalies.”
And the papers that Foster et al cite do not account for “The Reemergence Mechanism,” which should integrate the effects of ENSO events.
ALSO IN PREPRINT RELEASE: THOMPSON ET AL (2009) REPEATS THE ERROR
The 2009 Thompson et al paper “Identifying signatures of natural climate variability in time series of global-mean surface temperature: Methodology and Insights” has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Climate. In it, Thompson et al repeat the errors made by Thompson et al 2008.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2009JCLI3089.1
Preprint Version:
http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ThompsonPapers/TWJK_JClimate2009_revised.pdf
Thompson et al were kind enough to post the data that resulted from their analyses for those who like to review findings:
http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/~davet/ThompsonWallaceJonesKennedy/
CLOSING
As long as climate scientists continue to neglect the multiyear aftereffects of significant El Nino events, they will continue to incorrectly conclude, as Foster et al concludes, “the general rise in temperatures over the 2nd half of the 20th century is very likely predominantly due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Pamela Gray: You wrote, “La Nina is a re-setting of an overly energized system filled with heat that cannot take any more heat.”
But isn’t the eastern equatorial Pacific taking on more heat than normal during a La Nina? The trade winds increase then. This drives more cloud cover to the west, which cause higher than normal levels of downwelling shortwave radiation over the eastern equatorial Pacific.
Fernando (12:23:32) “But, the MJO activity is suppressed in El-Niño and La-Niña. however is very active in neutral periods (almost always). ENSO-neutral and La Niña. have different characteristics.”
Thanks for this note.
Can you provide links &/or references?
– –
Dave Andrews (11:40:23) “I’ve made a number of comments on different threads at Tamino relating to Steig et al and their corrigendum. None have been posted.”
I’ve encountered the same reaction (on another topic) despite objectivity coupled with genuine diplomacy. I honestly think he has a great sense of humor, judging by how thickly he lays on the distortion.
Pamela Gray (13:06:35) :
Yep, we got a dozen record low maximum on the 6th and two more yesterday (7th). Ground is soaked down a foot here. All that heat got blown off into space. I never though of Tstorms that way before. Long range forecast is all downhill from here. 1 heat wave of 2 weeks maybe 1 or 2 max-max records broken in the state (Ca.) . We wuz robbed, I tell ya.
Winter looks to be a doozy, Pam. I have to wear a sweater in the morning, in early August.
Frank Mosher: “Contrary ro conventional wisdom, when i look at ENSO 3.4 anomalies over the last 25 years, what jumps out at me is the very deep, prolonged La Nina of JJA 1998 thru JFM 2001. IMHO, that event is very significant. TLT temps also bottomed at that time, and have not cooled beyond those levels. Apparently i am the only person on the planet that sees that string of 35 months of continuous negative anomalies as significant.”
But that string of 35 months of continuous negative NINO3.4 SST anomalies has little apparent impact on the tropical heat that migrated to the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Refer to the top cell:
http://i44.tinypic.com/16leq39.jpg
Since it had little apparent impact on the TLT of the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, why is it significant?
Jimmy Haigh, please ask yourself, why is it than no significant alarmist talking points are surviving widespread scientific scrutiny?
Fixed.
If we consider the past 100 years, for which reasonable temperature data is availabe, a plot of global fossil fuel consumption shows about a 1200% increase in the rate of rise, after 1945. However, the rate of of global temperature increase between 1910 and 1940 is about twice as high as the period from 1945 to today.
How on earth could anyone possibly conclude from the graphs of fossil fuel use and global temperature that:
“the general rise in temperatures over the 2nd half of the 20th century is very likely predominantly due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.” ????
If anything, one might conclude that fossil fuel use has decreased the rate of global temperature increase … not that any correlation implies causation.
My reasoning started at the increased trade winds. Which is why it sounded confused. As the East to West winds increase, the warm surface waters are blown West up against the West side of the Pacific, causing upwelling of cold water over most of the Pacific equatorial belt, thus creating overall colder global temps as volatile storm tracks cool things down from the poles to the equatorial belt. As sea surface heat is finally lost and La Nina has been around for a while, the system calms down and heat is once again allowed to build on the sea surface. So it does seem to me that La Nina is the energetic state and El Nino is the resting state while the batteries are being recharged. Comments?
Paul Vaughan (13:25:25) :
Paul K (11:18:42) “Well, if the math was done correctly, the actual impact of SOI on global temperature variation is less than 4%.”
LMAO! Are you going to provide a link to help people see exactly where you are getting such comical distortion?
I provided the link to the analysis in the comment above. Please read more carefully before you laugh so hard your anatomy is damaged.
In the Trenberth rebuttal, they refer to papers that claim 15-30% of variation is due to ENSO, still significantly less than the 72% claimed by MFC. If I understand correctly, these numbers excluded impacts of volcanic eruptions.
Tamino left the volcanic eruption impacts in, and then stuck to a proper mathematical treatment based on the method suggested by MFC (which still isn’t likely to give the best estimate of ENSO impacts). He simply also ran an example where he looked at SOI, volcanoes, and a LT warming trend together, and still came up well below the 72% number MFC claimed.
“It turns out that all three influences combined account for only 51% of the variance in UAH TLT. Even including the effect of volcanoes and trend in addition to SOI, the actual fraction of explained variance is far less than that estimated by McLean et al. and claimed to be entirely due to SOI — that’s how strongly the filter they apply to the data distorts the results.”
Kevin Kilty: You wrote, “Thus in addition to time shifting previously stored energy, a powerful El Nino also enhances a forcing function temporarily–a positive feedback. Both effects, the direct and the feedback, will raise global temperature.”
And increase OHC, sea levels, etc.
matt v. (13:30:09) “One of the key reasons for Global warming seems to be the net temperature increases due to extra heating resulting from more frequent El Ninos and extra solar heating around solar maximums.”
Be careful with the latter line of logic. (You may need to adjust your message)…
Elaboration:
See Figures 7 & 8 here:
Abarca del Rio, R.; Gambis, D.; Salstein, D.; Nelson, P.; & Dai, A. (2003). Solar activity and earth rotation variability. Journal of Geodynamics 36, 423-443.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Abarca_delRio_etal_JGeodyn03.pdf
…And Figure 3 here:
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
Theories should be able to account for the phase reversal. I haven’t seen any that do yet. If anyone knows of any, please let me know.
This is not some trivial matter that can be swept under a rug; on the contrary, this is a MAIN effect demanding TOP priority.
Paradox is what makes natural climate so interesting; it stretches our capacity for conditional thinking.
One more thing guys, before I get slogged again. McClain, de Freitas, and Bob Carter (the authors of the paper being rebutted) are backing away from the claim that 72% of UAH TLT variation can be explained by SOI. They now claim that nothing can be said about long term trends from their analysis.
Even they apparently realize that something is seriously wrong with the analysis, and they are running away from the claims made in their press release issued in conjunction with publication.
OK; Pamela….I agree.
Vertical wind profile typically associated with (a) inactive Atlantic basin hurricane seasons and (b) active Atlantic basin hurricane seasons. Note that (b) has reduced levels of vertical wind shear.
the Atlantic Main Development Region (MDR) from 10-20°N, 20-70°W
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/921/windc.png
Nasif Nahle Sensei: You wrote, “Sorry for my ignorance… What the phrase ‘beating a dead horse’ does mean and when does it apply? Thanks!”
Refer to:
http://www.goenglish.com/BeatADeadHorse.asp
bigcitylib accused me of discussing a matter that was irrelevant, because the authors of Foster et al were not discussing the points I addressed in this post. But bigcitylib failed to note that this post was not about Foster et al. This post discusses the analyses performed by the papers cited by Foster et al.
matt v.: Thanks for the clarification in your 13:30:09 reply.
But adding and subtracting temperature anomalies during El Nino and La Nina years on the ONI index neglects the effects the tropical Pacific is having during the years and months in between. You need to look at all the data. You’re also overlooking the effects of volcanic aerosols which counteracted at least two of those El Nino events.
You wrote, “One of the key reasons for Global warming seems to be the net temperature increases due to extra heating resulting from more frequent El Ninos and extra solar heating around solar maximums.”
But the difference between TSI levels at solar maximums is minimal and has a negligible effect on global temperature. You’re also overlooking solar minimums and the periods in between for some reason.
Dr A Burns (14:29:09)
“However, the rate of of global temperature increase between 1910 and 1940 is about twice as high as the period from 1945 to today.”
Never seen this stated this way before – care to show how you came to this conclusion?
I have seen statements to the fact that the temperature change (warming) in the early part of the 20th century is statistically indistinguishable from the latter part (Mitchell – Climate of Extremes) but not the the rate of change you state.
Bob Tisdale (14:19:52) “[…] that string of 35 months of continuous negative NINO3.4 SST anomalies […] had little apparent impact on the TLT of the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, why is it significant?”
10 metres of snow makes for a lot of avalanches (including in places where they do not normally happen) in the Coast Mountains …and that’s a lot of runoff (floods, water supply). i.e. Let’s not forget the hydrologic cycle.
Dr. A Burns: Re fossil fuel consumption vs rate of temperature rise
…we should add to your point the possibility that the 30’s/40’s may actually have been the warmest decades in the last 150 years….. If not for the “adjustments” made to raw temperature records. Not to mention that those Raw records are horribly skewed upward in recent decades by UHI and siting errors.
I applaud all those with the skill to even attempt to extract the answer from more complex processes like el nino. But if there is a way to show we’re (globally) cooler today than we were 70 years ago, nothing else would matter.
Paul Vaughan
Thanks for the references . You are referring to the fact that the association between solar variability and climate is lagged and that there is also an oceanic tidal influence on global temperatures . I did not look into this level of detail . As I used a broad recent 33 year period , some of this may be already be incorporated in my numbers , but you are right that individual short term relationships may not all be valid . I was trying to make the point about the doubling of El Nino events compared to La Nina events especially when compared to a similar period just before 1976. This is just too significant to ignore.
Steve Hempell (16:28:20):
Dr A Burns (14:29:09)
Actually Dr A Burns, you are correct. I went back to a Hadcrutv3 graph and took the anomalies for 1911(-.573) to 1944 (0.099) and 1945 (-0.024) to 1998 (0.526) and the rates of change are as you stated. Interesting way of looking at it, but – I can hear the cries of “cherry-picking”!
Pamela Gray (14:30:19) “So it does seem to me that La Nina is the energetic state and El Nino is the resting state while the batteries are being recharged. Comments?”
I think I see what is going on here: oceanic-centric view vs. atmosphere-centric view (i.e. 2 ways of looking at the same thing).
For an interesting brain-twister, study Erl Happ’s Figure 4 & related notes (including the whole article) here:
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/climate-change-a-la-naturale/
–
Bob, thanks for the videos on your blog pages.
Question:
Do you know of any webpages providing:
1) unsmoothed monthly TNI series?
[The series I find via your blog-links suggests the authors only provide a 5-month smoothed series (which severely limits a responsible analyst).]
2) raw (not anomaly) monthly Nino1+2?
[Your blog links point to raw N4 (& N3.4), so with N1+2 I can construct unsmoothed TNI if necessary.]
It is interesting to note that the period of relatively mild & anomalous polar motion (Vondrak 1999) roughly coincides with the period of reduced volcanic aerosols. (I’m not making any statements about causation – just pointing out something we might keep in mind.)
Paul K (12:04:44) :
“Jimmy Haigh, please ask yourself, why is it than no significant skeptical talking points are surviving widespread scientific scrutiny? ”
OK Paul. Help me out here – which talking points are these?
And while we are at it maybe you could prove to us that a) the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is due to man’s activities and not, for example, the 800 year lag after the medieval warm period, and that b) CO2 from any source, natural or man made, is a driver of the globe’s temperature?
Toto (10:40:33) :
Regarding citations in science, read this article in the Guardian about bad science with AGW and IPCC in mind:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/08/ben-goldacre-bad-science-research
“Hit and myth: curse of the ghostwriters”
The article in Toto’s link references a study titled “How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network” by Steven A Greenberg, a professor of neurology at Harvard. IMHO, this is a landmark study. He focuses on the medical field, but the results apply to any field. Please read the entire study (or at least the abstract) at:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/jul20_3/b2680
From the Conclusions section:
“Through distortions in its social use that include bias, amplification, and invention, citation can be used to generate information cascades resulting in unfounded authority of claims.”
The findings of this study have profound implications. Note how those findings support some of the conclusions made in the Wegman Report, especially the one about the impact of a “social network of authorships.”
Nasif Nahle Sensei (12:32:35) :
Sorry for my ignorance… What the phrase “beating a dead horse” does mean and when does it apply? Thanks!
=======================
It means the recent ‘outlook’ of this blog.
It’s funny how we had a dozen of articles dedicated to metofficeUK not giving their data out for the public to see(which they have to if asked anyway), in the end they ended up having the data but they refused to expose it, so all that talk kinda backfired…
Which means,”he’s” not interested about finishing the story but rather beating it to death.I can handle it being young and all, but most of the users here are elders lol
rbateman (14:12:54) :
Pamela Gray (13:06:35) :
Yep, we got a dozen record low maximum on the 6th and two more yesterday (7th). Ground is soaked down a foot here. All that heat got blown off into space. I never though of Tstorms that way before. Long range forecast is all downhill from here. 1 heat wave of 2 weeks maybe 1 or 2 max-max records broken in the state (Ca.) . We wuz robbed, I tell ya.
Winter looks to be a doozy, Pam. I have to wear a sweater in the morning, in early August.
Agreed to both. Long Range forecast is cooler and wetter than normal.I live near the foothills in South LaGrande, Or.My Black Locust is turning and there is reddish leaves showing at the tops of what hills I see. Going to the Coast for business (Coos Bay)
It will be interesting to see if there is ANY sign of El Nino-I know a bunch of Coasties and Commercial Fishermen.They called the big Nino of ’97/98 before NOAA.If I have time, I’ll see my old ret.Coastie CPO friend who still fishes and works the USCG Aux. he keeps up with the Crabbasket scuttlebutt.(theCrabbasket is one of those places where if a meteor hit Charleston harbor a 5:00 am there wouldn’t be a
Crabber or Fisherman left…
Bob Tisdale (13:34:08) :
Thanks Bob, I have 500 quatloos riding on a weak to moderate Nino with and
an extra 200 riding it being neutral before the end of the year.This with a Warmist in my office who says that NOAA’s Nino earlier forecast is correct…
-And ABC News…
the_buther (18:07:51) :
I can handle it being young and all, but most of the users here are elders lol
Hope you keep young for ever….LOL