UPDATE: The subject of this article, Mojib Latif, has challenged the Daily Mail article and it’s interpretation. In another story at the Guardian, Latif says the interpretation by the Daily Mail and a similar story in the Telegraph is wrongly interpreting his work.
Read the Guardian story here and decide for yourself. If anyone knows of a contact for Dr. Latif, please leave it in comments as I’ll make this forum available to him should he wish to elaborate further.
h/t to WUWT reader Werner Weber for notifying me.
UPDATE2: Werner Weber writes to me in email:
> I have send him an e-mail, pointing out what happened during the night
> and invite him to take the oportunity to present his views in one of the
> leading sceptics blogs.
=====================================
We’ve been covering a lot of the recent cold outbreaks under the “weather is not climate department” heading. This story however is about both weather and climate and what one IPCC scientist thinks is headed our way.
The cold this December and January has been noteworthy and newsworthy. We just posted that December 2009 was the Second Snowiest on Record in the Northern Hemisphere. Beijing was hit by its heaviest snowfall in 60 years, and Korea had the largest snowfall ever recorded since record keeping began in 1937. Plus all of Britain was recently covered by snow.
The cold is setting records too.
Oranges are freezing and millions of tropical fish are dying in Florida, there are Record low temperatures in Cuba and thousands of new low temperature records being set in the USA as well as Europe.
There are signs everywhere, according to an article in the Daily Mail, which produced this graphic below:
According to IPCC scientist Mojib Latif in an article for the Daily Mail, it could be just the beginning of a decades-long deep freeze. Latif is known as one of the world’s leading climate modelers.
Latif, is a professor at the Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University and an author of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Latif is a prominent scientist in the UN’s IPCC climate research group.
Latif thinks the cold snap Americans, Brits, and Europeans have been suffering through is the beginning of another cycle, this one a down cycle. He says we’re in for 30 years of cooler temperatures. While maybe it is a harsh prediction, he calls it a “mini ice age”. That phrase is sure to stick in the craw of more than a few people. His theory is based on an analysis of natural oscillations in water temperatures in the oceans.
According to his He believes our current cold weather pattern is a pause, a “30-years-long blip”, in the larger cycle of global warming, which postulates that temperatures will rise rapidly over the coming years.
At a U.N. conference in September, Latif said that changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation could mask over any “manmade global warming” for the next few decades. He said the fluctuations in the NAO could also be responsible for much of the rise in global temperatures seen over the past 30 years.
In a stunning revelation, he told the Daily Mail that:
“a significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 percent.”
Quite a revelation, and a smack down of much of the climate science in the last 30 years that attributes the cause mostly to CO2 increases.
In other news, Arctic sea ice is on the rise too.
According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007.I’m betting that summer 2010 will have even more ice retained.
Right now, there doesn’t appear to be much of that “rotten ice” that one Canadian alarmist researcher squawked about to the media just a few weeks ago. In fact, we aren’t looking bad at all compared to 30 years ago.
Note that 30 years ago, the technology didn’t exist to display snow cover on the left image, but today we can see just how much our northern hemisphere resembles a snowball.
Now, watch the warmists throw Latif under the bus.
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Vincent (09:37:21)
Yes I dealt with that in the previous article here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4433
In essence it may well be that the solar and oceanic phases are actually independent of one another and when they are in phase as now during an interglacial they offset one another to limit climate variability but when they go out of phase they then supplement one another and reintroduce a much less stable climate with huge swings leading to glaciations.
Here is a snapshot of the weather in Normandy. Usually we get cold weather around freezing, and after a few days, along comes an Atlantic low and after half an hour of snow, it starts drizzling. Now we’ve been well below freezing for 10 days, it’s currently 27F, an Atlantic low is pushing in, and we’re having a true blizzard. Huge amounts of snow have been falling for 3 hours, and the wind is picking up the 5-6 inches that was already on the ground and hurling it around, so the air is full of it. Some places are scoured almost bare. God knows how deep the drifts are already (it’s dark now). The snow is so powdery and fine, it’s blowing in under the door of my workshop, and settling inside. These are conditions I have only seen at altitude in Scotland, or skiing in the Alps. I’ve heard people saying there’s nothing exceptional about what’s occurring, but that’s rubbish. This is an order of magnitude beyond any winter weather I’ve seen for at least 20 years, and we’re not even halfway through January.
I know, I know, it’s weather not climate. But at some point, weather does become climate, doesn’t it?
“Tim Groves (21:05:37) said:
Any chance of an ice bridge forming this winter between Greenland and Iceland? That would certainly be a headline grabber. And it would be fun to hear the purveyors of the Hockey Stick trying to explain it away.”
It is not likely because the weather in Iceland hasn’t been unusually cold and the forecast looks quite mild.
Stephen Wilde (11:03:17) :Really a very interesting paper though that expression of “solar wind turbulence” corresponds to the “flintstones´ universe” vision. With a drecrease of solar activity it is expected a decrease in ions reaching the earth and changing fields, changing currents, etc. , all what you describe in your article. Everything fits.
JonesII (11:37:38)
Thanks for your interest.
I’m happy to amend terminology if it is helpful. Can you suggest an alternative ? I felt that the turbulence concept was needed to account for the increased surface area of layer boundaries in the atmosphere but one could get much the same effect from simple expansion and contraction.
Anyway it’s just a work in progress.
I know that I’ve created a scenario that fits rather a lot of observed phenomena but someone could still come up with something that invalidates the whole construction.
However I’ve been building it bit by bit for a while now and still nothing fatal 🙂
Stephen Wilde,
Sort of like higher frequency components of Milankovich forcings? I can buy that, since we know that the Milankovich picture is not complete.
FYI, Vermont has been average to mild so far. Just a couple sub zero days, and more days above freezing than below zero. But as they say around here, as the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.
TJA (12:11:22)
Yes it’s a nice supplement to Milankovitch given the doubts over the orbital changes being enough on their own.
It helps with sub 100,000 year glaciations quite a lot.
One test of a sound hypothesis is that as a side effect it fits observations that were not in one’s mind when it was formulated. I have been getting some of that ever since I first realised around 2000 that the significance of latitudinal air circulation shifts beyond seasonal variation as a climate modulating effect had never been adequately noticed or tracked.
Now if someone could come up with an observed phenomenon that doesn’t fit then that would be interesting. Either I will need to amend things or acknowledge defeat.
Stephen Wilde (12:00:51) :Vukcevik approach of changing magnetic fields, of course due to changing charges could be part of the view, and the risk of anathematization from settled science too.☺
Stephen Wilde,
I have been trying to think of ways in which the ocean cycles stay negative/positive when the sun is quiet/active. Is it possible that during the active sun, reduced GCR leads to less clouds, that lead to positive ocean cycles, and vice versa? Or is there no place for the GCR hypothesis in your model?
I would have thought as speculation (ie, without any data) that a dormant sun would lead to temporary – fairly signiicant warming with a decrease in precipitation, less cloud cover, and more sunlight. Whereas an active sun – more cloud cover, precipitation, both processes with lags, – around 6 years? as obviously a protracted dormant sun would eventually lead to less heat in the system over a long term.
Vincent (13:50:03) & JonesII (12:27:52)
I’m on record as being supportive of the GCR hypothesis but have questioned whether it is a primary driver or a second order influence.
Also I have left open the cause of the oceanic oscillations although I have suggested some sort of harmonic resonance linked to solar variability.
I have plumped for independence for the solar and oceanic cycles because a shift between their being in phase and out of phase at different times explains a lot of observations and especially the different scale of climate variability between glacial and interglacial periods.
In the end solar cycles have to predominate over long enough periods of time but there is no reason why the oceans should not vary independently most of the time due to a wide range of other influences which could acommodate the ideas of Svensmark or indeed Vukcevik or the ozonecentric ideas of Erl Happ amongst others.
For my part I am driven primarily by observations and the basic fact of a one way energy flow from sun to sea to air to space.
The essence of my construction is that the rate of energy flow appears to vary from one component of the Earth system to another with the troposphere merely along for the ride. The troposphere is the filling in a sandwich between various layers that are constantly changing the speed at which they transfer solar energy and we need to get a grip on the relative scales and speeds of the changes in each of those layers.
Even the ocean is multilayered as is the atmosphere but in the end the primary influences are solar variations in energy output (and the ‘turbulence’ of that output) as against the rate at which the oceans deign to release their energy to the air above.
The idea that sun and oceans are fixed (or relatively so) with the temperature of the troposphere determined by the composition of the air as per Arrhenius, Tyndall et al has been demonstrably falsified by the total predictive failure of the models based on their observations.
Conventional climatology has barely scratched the surface of reality.
I am building this one step at a time and if those other ideas can be induced to fit then I will be content.
It appears that this post has caused a sever case of Watts/Fox Derangement Syndrome to break out over at Climate Progress!
FoxNews, WattsUpWithThat push falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC
P Wilson (14:31:02)
Quite right that a dormant sun leads to less heat in the system over a long term.
However the length of that term is a real problem by virtue of the tiny changes in solar output over even millennia as Leif Svalgaard points out regularly.
What we need is some internal feature (or features) of the Earth system that produces the size of changes we actually observe over time scales of 10, 000 years or less (the current interglacial) and I think that is where I am making some progress.
As a side effect I have produced a hypothesis as to why climate variability could be so much greater during glaciations as compared to interglacials. I am not currently aware of any other suggestions as regards that observation.
It is because of the relatively small nature of the solar changes that I have chosen ocean variability in the rate of energy release to the air as the primary driver of the various phenomena that you mention.
If I have made a simple fatal error then I would appreciate being told as soon as possible.
I posted this comment over at Climate Progress… It never made it through moderation…
Stephen Wilde: You wrote, “I am not aware of any other sources of data tracking the latitudinal position of the air circulation systems beyond seasonal variability. That is why I asked you if you were aware of a source.”
First off, I asked for the data so that I could do some basic comparisons.
But now you’ve confirmed that there is no dataset to document your claims. Then all of your discussions on this subject are based on your memories of climate patterns, without data to support it. In other words, the majority of us can take what you write as speculation, at best.
Without data, you’ve got speculation, Stephen, nothing more.
Bob Tisdale (15:04:23)
I know you are not impressed so I’ll just have to live with it.
I assume you deny that there are any latitudinal variations in the air circulation systems beyond seasonal variability.
Funny that the Discovery Channel did a whole documentary about how the jets streams had moved anomalously poleward and it was all our fault (until they moved back again).
Funny how everyone is commenting that they are now anomalously far south in the northern hemisphere hence the recent global mid hemisphere coldness.
No, not speculation. A hypothesis informed by observations.
Best Wishes.
Latif’s work said nothing of the sort, and he has rebutted any such claim as made in this post of yours. I trust you will be making a public apology to Latif and retract this post. Your claims here are scandalously misrepresentative.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate-change-global-warming-mojib-latif
David Middleton
Good summary of the climate predictions associated with Professor Latif as presented to the public to date . I think the best thing that Professor Latif can do to clear up the confusion is to write his own article in his own words in a clear and simple way so that the public can understand his climate predictions . I must admit his climate statements and future predictions are not very clear and are open to many interpretations. That is why there is so much confusion about what he said or what he really meant. I have personally written to him but he does not seem reply or communicate with the general public .
Tarby (15:45:21) :
Latif’s work said nothing of the sort, and he has rebutted any such claim as made in this post of yours. I trust you will be making a public apology to Latif and retract this post. Your claims here are scandalously misrepresentative.
The Daily Mail article specifically mentioned in “UPDATE” above has no corrections, retractions, or apologies posted with the article. There are none with the similar Telegraph piece. The David Rose article at The Mail Online that formed the basis of the WUWT piece, has none of those either.
Therefore at this point, the underlying material has not changed, therefore no retraction or apology is necessary nor is any of such warranted.
Dr. Latif is being given the opportunity to respond, which is more than can be expected at any of the Old Media and is quite a generous offer. After he does so, then we can see exactly what claims he has rebutted and how, instead of merely taking your (outraged?) word that he has rebutted “any such claim.”
Tarby (15:45:21) :
Best bit of sarcasm I have read in a while. Pure comedy genius.
The intellectual dishonesty of WattsUpWithThat is breathtaking.
REPLY: Well don’t just shout words and run, explain why posting an article from the Daily Mail, then when it is challenged, linking to the challenge and then offering a guest post to Latif is “dishonest” – Anthony
kadaka
So Latif’s response in the Guardian that Tarby posted doesn’t count? He has to personally come here and do a “Guest Post”? Delusional dreams of grandeur prevail here.
REPLY: There’s no delusional dreams of grandeur, but the Guardian doesn’t have much of a US audience. If The Daily Mail made a mistake in interpretation, Dr. Latif can certainly benefit from a guest post due to the wide audience that WUWT has. The offer is genuine. – Anthony
As I said (earlier), I have noted at least 5 tipping points around 2003, clearly showing or telling us that it will get cooler. So I do not need this prof or whoever to tell me it will get cooler. Obviously, as always, there are none so blind as those that do not want to see.
The scientific record shows that between the 1600s and 1700s, sun spot activity was very low, as it is now, and the Earth was so cold that the period became known as the “little ice age.”
We know from the records that there were very few of these sunspots for very long periods, from about 1650 until about 1715. This particular period of low solar activity also correlates with a period where the climate at least in most of Europe and other places of the world was very cold.
It was also very cold in North America during the colonial period compared to today. Colonial art often shows deep snows and ice filled rivers during the winters. The winter of 1780 was so cold in Virginia that the Norfolk Historical Society says the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay froze solid and men walked across it. On the Virginia Beach oceanfront, ocean ice piled up 20 feet high and didn’t melt completely until May. That’s almost unimaginable in Virginia Beach today, where the ice on a typical winter’s day is lucky to make it past noon.
Another little ice age appeared again in North America in the mid-1800s along with a corresponding scarcity of sunspots.
It is clear from the above that as evidence of global cooling will become more clear, Svensmark’s theory will become the prevalent theory. Briefly, the Svensmark Cosmic Ray Theory goes like this.
The earth is constantly being bombarded with cosmic rays, high-energy particles from exploding stars. The Svensmark Cosmic Ray Theory says that when these cosmic rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they help create clouds.
An active sun strengthens a magnetic shield around the earth that lets fewer cosmic rays get through. If the sun is less active, more cosmic rays get through. And the more cosmic rays, the more clouds, and the cooler global temperatures will be.
What I am worried about now: suppose it will get so cold that we fall into a little ice age. How will this affect the various continents?
Stephen Wilde: You wrote in reply, “I assume you deny that there are any latitudinal variations in the air circulation systems beyond seasonal variability.”
I acknowldege that the tropics have expanded based on numerous metrics, but those who study and attempt to explain the expansion in scientific papers use one or more datasets to back their discussions. You, on the other hand, do not, and without data, it’s speculation on your part.