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.”
Regarding Dr. A.’s post above. Here is global CO2 emissions from human activities for 20th century.
http://www.mongabay.com/images/2006/graphs/co2_global_1750-2000.jpg
1200 million Metric tons in 1950 versus over 700 million Metric tons now.
This leads to CO2 being the “Houdini of Gases”.
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Carbon_Dioxide_The_Houdini_of_Gases.pdf
And it all leads back to this extremely “simplistic” diagram which is at the hear of the matter. Forget about all the complexities discussed above. Because if this doesn’t make complete and total sense, then nothing else is right. (scroll 1/3rd down)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
The theory that 50% of man-made CO2 is taken back by a sink, just doesn’t make sense. It is a completely made up fictitious number that was created to make the parts fit, and they still don’t fit.
Paul K (14:35:19) “Tamino […] stuck to a proper mathematical treatment based on the method suggested by MFC”
Would you ever criticize Tamino?
Paul K (14:35:19) “[…] proper mathematical treatment […]”
Who is fooling who here? Be realistic. Tamino was having fun with that post. I admire his sense of humor.
I am not climate scientist but, to me this is an interesting way of looking at things.
Use the HADCRUT3 data from 1938-1979 and then use the UAH data from 1979-1998. (does not include the 1998 El Nino data).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1938/to:1979/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1998/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1938/to:1979/trend/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1998/trend
50 years of man-made CO2 skyrocking, and the Hadley data is in a slight downtrend from 38-78. Then pick up in 1979 with the more accurate satellite temps and that data continues to show a only very slight uptrend.
Certainly these 50 years of skyrocketing emissions are NOTHING remarkable WHATSOEVER in the history of temperature change in our planet.
But then we get to 1998 something happened and why would it be CO2 when CO2 had little or not effect for the prior 50 years? And if it didn’t have any effect from 1938-1997, then how could it be responsible for the rise from 1910-1940?? And so you are going to tell me it was ALL “natural variability”, except for this big step up in 1998, and the TV tells me the glaciers are melting and that proves it??? Temperatures haven’t even risen in many places where the glaciers are rising, like Glacier National Park.
Here is the step, the big whoop of climate change.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/to:2009/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2009/trend/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1997/trend
more – El Nino drives Global Temperature and global fleecing.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GlobalElNino.htm
And don’t forget about Alaska step up around 1997, was that CO2??
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html
We can only hope this will fade and recalled like a bad dream someday!
matt v. (16:52:41) “[…] the association […] is lagged […]”
It looks more like anti-phase.
matt v. (16:52:41) “[…] individual short term relationships may not all be valid”
…or perhaps they are simply conditioned by other variables. I note that Bob argued a point with you based on irradiance, but many around here will quickly point out the difference between insolation & irradiance. It is water (the hydrologic cycle) that we need to work harder to understand.
matt v. (16:52:41) “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.”
Agreed 100%.
The 1976 change-point is robust across a number of variables and across a wide range of filtering.
For interesting notes:
Trenberth, Kevin E.; Caron, Julie M.; Stepaniak, David P.; Worley, Steve (2002). Evolution of El Nino – Southern Oscillation and global atmospheric surface temperatures. Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres), 107(D8), AAC5-1.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/jgr2001b/jgr2.html
Excerpt:
“Before 1976, ENSO events began along the west coast of South America (TNI positive) and developed westwards. However, after 1977 the warming has developed from the west so that TNI with reversed sign prevailed some 3 to 12 months before the main peak in N34 and was followed by TNI itself some 3 to 12 months after the peak. Therefore, the evolution of ENSO events changed abruptly about 1976/77 [Wang, 1995; An and Wang, 2000; Trenberth and Stepaniak, 2001].”
–
You will find other interesting change-points if you look back further in the records. The change-points represent the most serious obstacle being faced by climate science. “Conventionally sensible” people will have a tendency to avoid [publicly at least] things they might not be able to figure out within their lifetime. Some will argue we need decades or centuries more data to tackle some mysteries, but I believe we have more than enough data to outline where the major shadows fall and establish a deterministic conditioning framework. It is impossible to predict how long it will take to resolve all of the boundaries, but my impression is that we are very close and that all that is missing is a spark.
There is no shortage of people who will dismiss the following as “pure coincidence”:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ChandlerPeriodAgassizBC,CanadaPrecipitationTimePlot.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ChandlerPeriod.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/1931UniquePhaseHarmonics.png
Note how 1931 & 1976 appear in Figure 2 of:
Trenberth, K.E. & Stepaniak, D.P. (2001). Indices of El Nino Evolution. Journal of Climate 14, 1697-1701.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/tniJC.pdf
An alternate (& consistent with the above) approach to untangling change-point complexity:
Tsonis, A.A.; Swanson, K.; & Kravtsov, S. (2007). A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts. Geophysical Research Letters 34, L13705.
http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/2007GL030288.pdf
It is the complexity that makes natural climate so interesting.
matt v. (16:52:41) “Thanks for the references”
No trouble.
Bob Tisdale, thanks for your many posts here and on your own site. Who needs peer reviewed journals? Many are not enhancing the reputation of the scientific method — they are crony publishing, with sloppy mathematics, methods, and data — and no one is checking. They used to be “prestigious” but are now becoming laughable.
The consistent building of scientific knowledge about ocean temperature and “behavior “, out in the open with many critics and assistant thinkers, is a remarkable scientific achievement. Anthony knows a fellow venturer into the heretofore unknown. I am a grateful and faithful reader.
Pamela Gray (14:30:19) :
It makes sense as long as that is all there is. If something comes along to continue the cooling, how would the corresponding El Nino then be expected behave?
To be more clear: PDO & AMO cold for the next 30 something years, cooling off the planet until equilibrium is reached under La Nina. What happens when the La Nina has ended and the planet is still not equalized? Something acts at times to take the baseline Sine Wave of El Nino/La Nina to a higher or lower state.
Keep going, Pam, this line is interesting.
Bob Tisdale (00:56:20) :
par5: You wrote, “So, a ‘la nina’ event will not take us from neutral to cool because it can only take us from warm to neutral?”
Not even close to a rewording of what I wrote. My sentence about La Ninas in the post , “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,” pertained to trade winds, currents, etc., in the tropical Pacific, not the impact of a La Nina on global temperature. It is explained in detail in the linked post. Here’s the link again:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/08/la-nina-events-are-not-opposite-of-el.html
Regards
Actually, I was not speaking of global temps- rather the conditions of the event. My fault for not making that clear. I have always wondered how heat dissipates in the oceans.
It makes sense as long as that is all there is. If something comes along to continue the cooling, how would the corresponding El Nino then be expected behave?
To be more clear: PDO & AMO cold for the next 30 something years, cooling off the planet until equilibrium is reached under La Nina. What happens when the La Nina has ended and the planet is still not equalized? Something acts at times to take the baseline Sine Wave of El Nino/La Nina to a higher or lower state.
Keep going, Pam, this line is interesting.
@Bob Tisdale
Thanks a lot for the explanation! Some people don’t read well the articles and, what is worst, don’t understand a word from those articles or give opinions without knowing what’s the main arguments in the articles.
Paul Vaughan: I’ve plotted the Trenberth TNI data but I don’t recall creating or posting any unsmoothed TNI data. Regarding creating your own using NINO4 and NINO 1+2, why not download the data from the KNMI Climate Explorer? It gives you a choice of datasets: HADSST2, HADISST, ERSST.v2, ERSST.v3, OI.v2, etc.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
My comment regarding the modeling paradigm presented in the 2001 paper on volcanic/ENSO forcing:
With all due respect:
Get Real.
Paul K (12:04:44) :
Jimmy Haigh (07:27:28) :
replying to
No. Absolutely definitely not. You think Newton, Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg and Schroedinger did no science because the “bastion of any science”, peer review, did not yet exist? I think not somehow. The bastions of science are adherence to the scientific method, free access to data for others to either replicate or find errors, free speech, free thought, and a dedication to truth.
The peer review process in science today arose after the greatest scientific advances in human history had already happened, and it has proved to be a terrible mistake. It is largely dysfunctional. The pressure to conform has overridden the search for truth. And in “climate science”, the system bears more resemblance to the henchmen of a master criminal ganging together to provide a false alibi than it does to honest evaluation of papers based on their merit.
Luckily, a new medium shows signs of seeking out a better method – scientific blogs.
Bob Tisdale
I think I qualified my figures with a comment ” very quick analysis” . not a detailed analysis that you are suggesting . I did include Mt Pinatubo . I also qualified my comments subsequently that I used the “net’ effect of all causes by noting the actual temperature changes due to all causes. I just wanted to note that during the last 9 El Nino events , the global temperature anomalies went up in 9 steps and during the last 5 L a Nina events the global temperature anomalies went down in 5 steps . In my opinion , this could account for a significant part of the warming that took place This is more than just coincidence. If anyone can give a better detail analysis and explanation , i would be pleased to read it. I don’t have a problem with the concept that EL Nino events impact a longer period than their main event but the main event can still be very significant which is what I noted.
Just thinking out loud here.
Most temp series that look at weather pattern variations resulting from different combinations of SST oscillations only focus on what happens to the temperatures over the continental US. I have seen the -PDO + -AMO condition and the expected dust bowl is present with cooler temps everywhere else. The other conditions related to one being positive and the other negative has cooler temps but in different places. The both positive condition shows a warmer US with isolated cold. The AMO is quite the driver of Gulf weather but that is due to the PDO weather patterns changing its weather related events to different locations and strengths. Of note is that when both are positive, not much happens in terms of broadly positioned storms over land. There are no catalysts. No fronts. And thus no place for the heat to rise up and get spewed out into the upper atmosphere. However, the minute one of them goes negative, then you have stormy heat dissipating weather. When enough heat leaves, the catalysts for storms between cold and warm fronts disappear and things calm down. It isn’t that the Sun does anything different, it is just that the storm fronts reflect heat till the cloudiness goes away and the Sun’s rays are once again allowed to heat the surface. I believe that this starts and stops the trade winds that allows the surface layer of warm water to stay or get blown away. Which then starts the whole thing over again. Calm and recharging condition: when one or both PDO and AMO are positive, more so when they are both positive. Stormy heat releasing energetic condition: when one or both PDO and AMO are negative, more so when they are both negative. These conditions then reset the trade winds to cause the flips to happen. There are other oscillations that enter into the equation and taken all together, these triggers of weather pattern variation simply bury any other signals such as CO2, Solar, soot, etc.
Steve Hempell (16:58:21) :
“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”!”
One could hardly be accused of cherry picking if one compares the first half of the century (representing a period of low CO2 emissions) with the second half (representing the modern world of high emissions). Interestingly, the Hadcrut3 trend for both is 0.1K/decade.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/to:2000
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1950
The same data on one graph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:2000/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1950/trend
“Peer review” was created for one purpose, and one purpose only – to protect the reputation of the journal and its editor of the day. Since journal editors and editorial boards were sufficiently astute to recognize that they were not experts in every field, they needed a mechanism to protect themselves from ridicule and other political, personal, and financial consequences of the printing of a paper that was either a fraud, charlatan, or just plain wacky. Hence, papers were farmed out to known (ie, trusted) colleagues or contacts to pass judgment on the acceptability of publishing the paper. It also was a means to favour certain groups and individuals with advanced knowledge of new discoveries of some import.
The rather silly idea grabbed by lay folk today that “peer review” is some kind of acid test to the science presented is just that – a silly idea. Preservation of reputation is what it always was about, and still is.
There is more substantive peer review occurring in one week here on Anthony’s blog than what occurs in a year at Nature, or any other journal.
Steve Hempell (16:58:21) :
“Actually Dr A Burns, you are correct. …– I can hear the cries of “cherry-picking”!”
Chris Schoneveld (08:40:49) :
“One could hardly be accused of cherry picking if one compares the first half of the century (representing a period of low CO2 emissions) with the second half (representing the modern world of high emissions). ”
Exactly what I was about to say Chris.
I should have posted my graph (hadrut3) and total global fossil fuel consumption (The error band is the IPCC’s claim):
http://www.q-skills.com/tmpvff2.jpg
I’d love to see alarmists try to argue against that one !
Re: Bob Tisdale (02:29:26)
Thanks Bob.
I have to use no fewer than 22 websites to get all of the data & info I need to reconstruct the raw monthly series accurately.
These institutions really need to get past these habits of:
a) only providing anomalies.
b) not being explicit about climatologies & base periods when only anomalies are provided.
c) chopping series at arbitrary dates like 1950 & 1991 (when 1866-2009 are available).
d) scrimping on decimal places for cosmetic reasons.
e) smoothing monthly data before posting it …and additionally still labeling it [misleadingly] “monthly”.
I’ve just consumed precious time pursuing tedious detective work (including splicing & cross-comparisons between files to discern exactly what processing has been carried out) and it is going to take yet more time to reconstruct high-quality raw series now that all of the necessary clues have been gathered.
Very Serious [rhetorical] Question:
Why can’t these institutions simply be straightforward in providing raw data (with all of the digits) on a plain-text webpage?
That way if people want to sloppily construct unspecified anomalies, apply unspecified filtering, and chop series into random fragments to be scattered all over the net, they can do so themselves – efficiently.
We have inherited ridiculously inefficient & backward conventions.
Pamela Gray (07:08:08) “[…] There are other oscillations that enter into the equation and taken all together, these triggers of weather pattern variation simply bury any other signals […]”
Not all of the “noise” is noise if ones looks at local extremes. A big part of the masking is due to spatial averaging (for one example: across the track of the jet stream – which can put even 2 near locations out-of-phase with one another …let alone global averaging). Another simple part of the masking is diurnal (night & day) averaging. You present a good thought exercise with your AMO, PDO brainstorming.
I’ve been digging into the references on “COWL” (cold oceans – warm land). In attacking McLean et al. (2009), Foster et al. (2009) cite Thompson et al. (2008) who cite Wallace et al. (1995) who make a statement that supports McLean et al. (2009). Wallace et al. (1995) acknowledge right in their abstract that ENSO has contributed to an upward trend in temperature anomalies since 1975. Interesting …as is this COWL concept.
Like a pendulum swinging on a wobbly base, I don’t believe there is equilibrium. If there was, how would it re-energize? It is possible to build a virtual simple pendulum that re-energizes itself. You have to include wobble so that energy does not bleed all away when everything is in equal balance. It is also possible to build one with many parameter variables and wobbles that affects the swing around the average center so that it moves farther away from the center on one side for quite some time compared to the swing back the other way before the swing becomes equalized again. But true balanced equilibrium cannot be reached or else the system has no way of re-charging. The chaotic system of Earth’s atmosphere and Earth’s wobbly orbit, its moving land masses, its slow building and wearing down of geological land structures, and its huge weather machine called the oceans, along with all the variables in that system, creates the perfect self-energizing but highly variable pattern of climate and weather. Industrial CO2 added or subtracted from GHG’s cannot statistically change the complex pendulum and the amount of energy it absorbs and releases. The climate trend attributed to CO2 cannot be true. It is a statistical artifact of a complicated but very natural pendulum.
I’ve just spent some time investigating the Trans-Nino Index (TNI). It is easy to see why the originators employ 5-month smoothing. With raw series, this index can easily be improved substantially. So now the question is: Why is full-record-length raw-data not easily-accessible? It appears that more time-consuming digging & auditing will be necessary. (It’s like these agencies are going well out-of-their-way to make it a hassle for us to see something…)
Nonlinear response to ENSO after 1976? …
–
Wu, A; & Hsieh, W.W. (2003). Nonlinear interdecadal changes of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. Climate Dynamics 21, 719-730.
http://www.ocgy.ubc.ca/~william/Pubs/wu_ClimDyn2.pdf
Excerpt from the abstract:
“Nonlinear interdecadal changes in the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon are investigated using […] nonlinear canonical correlation analysis (NLCCA) […]. The leading NLCCA mode between the tropical Pacific wind stress (WS) and sea surface temperature (SST) reveals notable interdecadal changes of ENSO behaviour before and after the mid 1970s climate regime shift, with greater nonlinearity found during 1981-99 than during 1961-75. Spatial asymmetry (for both SST and WS anomalies) between warm El Nino and cool La Nina events was significantly enhanced in the later period. […] According to the delayed oscillator theory, such an eastward shift would lengthen the duration of the warm events by up to 45%, but leave the duration of the cool events unchanged.”
–
Tang, Y.; & Hsieh, W.W. (2003). Nonlinear modes of decadal and interannual variability of the subsurface thermal structure in the Pacific Ocean. Journal of Geophysical Research 108(C3), 3084.
http://www.ocgy.ubc.ca/~william/Pubs/tym7.pdf
http://web.unbc.ca/~ytang/paper71.pdf
Excerpt from the abstract:
“The nonlinear principal component analysis […] is applied to the observed upper ocean heat content anomalies (HCA) in the Pacific basin from 1961 to 2000. […] The first nonlinear decadal mode goes through several notable phases. Two of the phases are related to decadal changes in the La Nina and El Nino characteristics, revealing that
the decadal changes for La Nina episodes are much weaker than the changes for El Nino episodes.”
–
Wu, A.; Hsieh W.W.; & Shabbar, A. (2002). Nonlinear characteristics of the surface air temperature over Canada. Journal of Geophysical Research 107(D21), 4571.
http://www.ocgy.ubc.ca/~william/Pubs/wu_sat.pdf
Wu, Hsieh, & Shabbar (2002) apply nonlinear principal component analysis (NLPCA) to Canadian surface air temperatures (SAT) and find strong nonlinearity for fall & winter after 1950 but not before.
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ClimateRegimeChangePoints.PNG