The current El Niño: still hanging on

It is already showing signs of weakening again,but actually this is common to have these waxing waning pulses in every cycles.
Here is a nice link to see:
http://www.eldersweather.com.au/climimage.jsp?i=nino34

Unless the heating is caused by volcanic activity as Joe Bastardi suggested in one of his blog articles!
If this really is the last “hurray” of the current El Ninjo observations from the past indicate a steep drop in temperatures as happened after the 1998 El Ninjo and every other El Ninjo for that matter. Let’s see and learn.

By and large, there has been a significant reduction in SSTs since the beginning of the year.
Jan 4: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.1.4.2010.gif
Mar18: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.3.18.2010.gif
BTW, would this event be classified as a mild, moderate, or major El Nino?

Of course, the longer the El Nino hangs on, the more likely 2010 will be the warmest year on instrument record. If 2010 does turn out warmer than 1998 (or 2003) this will be touted by AGW believers as proof that AGWT is correct, but will be just as quickly disputed by AGW skeptics, who will claim it is all due to El Nino, and nothing to do with AGW.
But here’s where both groups are right, and both groups are wrong. Certainly El Nino’s have an impact on global average temperature, for they release a lot of pent up heat from the oceans, and that seems to be one way they function, just as hurricanes, but on a longer scale . But the question, which is still unanswered, remains: could AGW make El Nino’s more frequent and more intense, as Trenberth et. al. have studied? Since El Nino’s are a frequent part of the earth’s natural variability, if 2010 becomes the hottest year on instrument record, unless this year’s El Nino become the most intense on record, than what other factors (if not GH gases) would have caused 2010 to become the warmest year, especially as we have just come through such a long and deep solar minimum?
To me, this is the central question that the skeptical part of me is asking right now: If the solar cycle and the El Nino event are more important in climate forcing than any AGW, then why would 2010 become the warmest year on record as the AGW believer part of me, and the Met Office believes is likely? In other words, what factors present in 2010 would cause this year to be warmer than 1998, if not the increased GH gases?
The answer to any El Nino/AGW connection will only come through more research.

“El Niño 2009-2010 just keeps hanging in there.” NASA JPL
In and of itself, this is not significant; it’s about a “weather maker” and not climate (as such) –though some would disagree I’m sure. It may offer some truly bright “scientists” some insights –I hope so. I’m sure it will offer Fat Albert and his Gang of Psyentists the opportunity to make several more million dollars in speaking fees and “contributions” from the faithful. I doubt that it will help Jones, Mann, and the like, in their persuit of redemption –but you never know, life is often not fair nor just. For Members of Congress, the current Administration, Members of Parlement and the #10 Mob, I’m sure it will be something they can jot up on the tot-boards as a few votes in the coming elections — people are funny little creatures aren’t they.
For my money, I’m watching this year’s hurricanes to see if there’s more of a tilt toward Europe: Western Ireland and Scotland and the Dutch Dikes.
The weather is something that you can see all day and overnight. Climate takes decades, scores, and centuries and changes soooooo slowly;-)

So, an El Ninyo means the oceans continue to lose heat?

MattN (10:11:55) :
You can see a chart of the past Nino index at this site:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
If the number gets to 2 the El Nino is considered to be strong. This one made it to 1.8.

There should be a precipitous drop in temperatures after El Nino ends just like in 1999 when the 1998 El Nino ended.
The bigger they are the harder they fall.

Isn’t El Nino continuing what we want if we want to see serious global cooling, Bob Tisdale did point out that the 1996 La-Nina did do all the work in getting the heat for the 98 event stored up. I
t could be that the uptick in temps by 2001 is due to increased SST’s due to the big heat retaining event which was the 99 La Nina. And for America at least, Joe D’Aleo wrote on Intellicast a month or so ago a note of correlation of very hot summers with very big El Nino decays. (for the first half of the year).

Adam from Kansas (12:30:22) : “Isn’t El Nino continuing what we want if we want to see serious global cooling, Bob Tisdale did point out that the 1996 La-Nina did do all the work in getting the heat for the 98 event stored up.”
Adam, have you ever wondered if instead of El Niño controlling the Climate is Climate that controls the El Niño?

C. James (11:37:06) : In response to MattN (10:11:55), you attached a link to the ONI index and wrote, “If the number gets to 2 the El Nino is considered to be strong. This one made it to 1.8.”
Do you have a link to a reference that says the ONI SST anomaly value has to reach 2 deg C in order for the El Nino to be considered strong? I believe I’ve also seen that temperature. But the CPC has 1.5 deg C as the dividing temp in this document, (second paragraph):
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_disc_oct2009/ensodisc.pdf
So according to it, the 2009/10 El Nino was a strong event.

The article states, “…a large-scale, sustained weakening of trade winds in the western and central equatorial Pacific during late-January through February has triggered yet another strong, eastward-moving wave of warm water, known as a Kelvin wave.”
And this eastward-moving wave of warm water can be seen in the animation of subsurface equatorial Pacific temperature anomalies here:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2nt8ao9.gif
You can see it forming early in February.
The most up-to-date version is here:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/wkxzteq.shtml

jorgekafkazar (13:03:45) : The ocean has 1200 times the heat storage capacity of the air. Atmospheric temperatures are transient and chaotic and have little, if any, significance vis-a-vis Global Warming.
Exactly! I would love to see 50 years with accurate Argo ocean data, I strongly suspect that these would be smooth and continuous and make much more sense than the wildly fluctuating air data. Then perhaps, we may see patterns due to PDO and other at present unknown ocean cycles that may give us much valuable insight.

R. Gates (10:43:33) : Of course, the longer the El Nino hangs on, the more likely 2010 will be the warmest year on instrument record. If 2010 does turn out warmer than 1998 (or 2003) this will be touted by AGW believers as proof that AGWT is correct
Since 2010 may be “warmer” than 1998 we strongly demand a daily update of ocean heat content based on Argo ocean data:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Argo_Data_and.html
For example something along the lines of the brilliant daily earth temperatures from satellites provided by John Christy and Roy Spencer:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
A couple of skilled SW engineers would implement a service like this in a couple of weeks! Full spead ahead!

For those interested, OI.v2 SST data is updated weekly on Mondays at the NOAA NOMADS website (The NOMAD1 server’s kinda slow today):
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
The weekly NINO3.4 SST anomalies for the week centered on March 10, 2010 are 1.22 deg C:
http://i44.tinypic.com/30j5tky.png
And the NINO3.4 SST anomalies 6 weeks before that was 1.23 deg C, so the decline has slowed considerably over the past month and a half. But as you can see, the rises and falls do pause.

I used to welcome El Nino events because the have a good influence on fishery in the Atlantic, but I have come to dread them – because, they allow for such nonsense as
“2009: The HOTTEST year in (exaggerated number) of YEARS!!!”
It is sure to follow, that this “extended” El Nino will be called the “worst” El Nino “ever” and all the result of “climate change”

This El Nino has caused huge floods in Australia, whereas they normally bring drought conditions. It has been suggested that it’s a Modoki El Nino – the same but different – as if it’s behaving like a La Nina.
ENSO needs more research dollars, I feel a strong La Nina coming on.

Bob Tisdale (13:34:44) :
I don’t think R. Gates will understand you.

Does anyone know if this “sea surface temperatures in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean” place is what is called the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool?I have only read one article about this IPWP and it did not mention if it is the place where the ENSO starts. Thanks

I agree pretty much with your forecast, Jim Clarke –
except, I don’t believe CO2 in the air has anything to do with anything that anybody can perceive.
I’m not alone

Sioned L (17:01:22) : You asked, “Does anyone know if this “sea surface temperatures in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean” place is what is called the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool?”
Nope. The Indo-Pacifc Warm Pool is also known as the West Pacific Warm Pool:
http://i33.tinypic.com/24xf0cw.jpg
Very briefly, during Non-El Nino periods (La Nina and ENSO Neutral months), trade winds blow warm surface water from east to west. The warm water runs into New Guinea and Indonesia and collects in the western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean to depths of 300 meters. The area where the warm water collects is called the Pacific Warm Pool, or Indo-Pacific Warm Pool. When the trade winds relax, that pool of warm water sloshes from the Pacific Warm Pool to the east, to the central and eastern tropical Pacific to cause an increase in sea surface temperatures there, and that’s called an El Nino.
Bill Kessler of NOAA has a relatively easy-to-read FAQ webpage on ENSO:
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html

R. Gates.
You adhere to the UAH measurements, I commend you.
However. I want to see the equivalent UAH measurements from the late ’40s & early ’50s when the Earth appeared to cool.
Oh, sorry, they’re not available.
It’s an interesting anomaly which actually proves nothing.
DaveE.

This is more or less OT, but of considerable interest … and really related.
Popular Science has 137 years of their magazine in an online archive.
http://www.popsci.com/archives
Type in “climate” and look at some old articles. October 1906 is of interest.
You can likely think of more climate-related keywords.
Clive

1. Examining the climatic record in accordance with the Galactic travels of the earth paint the recent Multidecadal Temperature changes of the Pacific Ocean as being very erratic and thus symptomatic of a Galactic cold signal.
2. It is a travesty that modern surface temperature records have become political tools that devalue their weather forecasting utility. The curious can find plentiful evidence supporting the conclusion that the most recent warm PDO obscured the ongoing trend to cold. If so there is every reason to expect that we should expect global temperatures to exceed the cold variance recorded as the peak of the 1940s -70s cold PDO/ cold AMO because the cold trends will flip the Atlantic’s Multidecadal Oscillation much sooner than previously recorded trends (those watching..KNOW that water temperatures in the Atlantic are definitely signaling a capacity for a quick turn).
3. I interpret the temperature analysis work of Spencer and Christy to be an excellent marker of (a) the changes to Earth’s Radiative Budget (1) higher tropospheric temperatures are an indicator of greater irradiative forcing
(b) the water vapor/ precipitation/ cloud cover potentials of the atmosphere that are all equal to the atmosphere’s capacity to cool the earth through the processes of determining the earth’s radiative budget.

1. Examining the climatic record in accordance with the Galactic travels of the earth paint the recent Multidecadal Temperature changes of the Pacific Ocean as being very erratic and thus symptomatic of a Galactic cold signal.
2. It is a travesty that modern surface temperature records have become political tools that devalue their weather forecasting utility. The curious can find plentiful evidence supporting the conclusion that the most recent warm PDO obscured the ongoing trend to cold. If so there is every reason to expect that global temperatures to quickly exceed the cold variances recorded as the peak of the 1940s -70s cold PDO/ cold AMO because the cold trends will flip the Atlantic’s Multidecadal Oscillation much sooner than previously recorded trends (those watching..KNOW that water temperatures in the Atlantic are definitely signaling a capacity for a quick turn).
3. I interpret the temperature analysis work of Spencer and Christy to be an excellent marker of (a) the changes to Earth’s Radiative Budget (1) higher tropospheric temperatures are an indicator of greater irradiative forcing
(b) the water vapor/ precipitation/ cloud cover potentials of the atmosphere that are all equal to the atmosphere’s capacity to cool the earth through the processes of determining the earth’s radiative budget.

David Alan Evans (18:32:11) :
R. Gates.
You adhere to the UAH measurements, I commend you.
For January and February of this year there is a reason why someone who advocates manmade global warming would stick to UAH. But in a few months that reason will be plunging down.

John F. Hultquist (19:13:38) :
Wasn’t too bad here in the mid-Pacific Northwest.
Shasta Res. is filling up, and the Trinity Alps look like somebody poured a giant bowl of ice cream on them. Snow levels stayed around 5,000′ most of the winter. Percip. about normal. December freeze caught most looking.

rbateman (19:58:35) :
You are correct. I generalized too much. I haven’t really mapped the pattern for this winter so I should not have suggested all of the PNW was less stormy than normal – just that the major storms mostly tracked south of the State of Washington and that was expected and is expected to continue. East-slope Cascade reservoirs in WA could use some of that water and snow you are talking about.
Some generalized information is here:
http://cses.washington.edu/cig/fpt/cloutlook.shtml
Specific snow information is here:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snotel/Washington/washington.html

Amino Acids in Meteorites said (to Bob Tisdale)
“I don’t think R. Gates will understand you.”
Actually, not only do I understand Bob, I happen to think he’s a pretty darn smart guy…but thanks for your vote of confidence!
Having said that though, nothing Bob has written or said has changed my position of being 75% convinced that AGWT is likely correct, and a 25% skeptic. Bob, like many other AGW skeptics has many interesting ideas, and certainly knows a great deal about climate. But there are many billiant people on other side with exceptional credentials as well, and were in not for people like Bob, I might be true believer in AGWT. So I appreciate the points he and other knowledgable AGW skeptics raise. It make me go back and check and double check my assumptions, and pepper my climate research friends with endless questions. Sometimes (okay, most of the time) their answers are way over my head, but generally I’ve studied enough to get the general drift.
So in short, to reply to your statement that R. Gates will not understand what Bob T. has to say– well, yep, I get it, at least most of it, and even agree with some of it, but the devil is indeed in the details in AGWT, and El Nino is one of those details that is still fairly poorly understood overall. The overall process in known, but the causes of that process, the triggers, the interactions, the “teleconnections” with other events are still not well understood.
My essential point about the current El Nino, which despite latency issues, and that it is not a linear process, remains unchanged, and not fully answered by AGW skeptics– if this year’s El Nino is not as severe as 1998, but 2010 turns out to be the warmest year on instrument record, then why? One reasonable and simple answer from a believer in AGWT would be: because less heat is able to escape during this El Nino because more heat is being absorbed and re-emitted in the troposphere because of the higher GH gases present now than in 1998. Furthermore, AGWT would say that future El Nino years will also have a high degree of probability of being record warm years for the same reason, and because of the linkages between the atmosphere and ocean and potential AGW and stronger El Ninos, it is worth watching El Ninos to see if they display some change in their length and intensity, though this will take decades of study.

R. Gates: You wrote in part, “…AGWT would say that future El Nino years will also have a high degree of probability of being record warm years for the same reason, and because of the linkages between the atmosphere and ocean and potential AGW and stronger El Ninos…”
El Nino events aren’t getting stronger.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/el-nino-events-are-not-getting-stronger.html
Also, there is nothing to indicate that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have any impact on Ocean Heat Content. Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-0-700.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html

R. Gates (23:12:32): You wrote in part, “even agree with some of it,” with respect to my earlier comment and the post linked to it.
What don’t you agree with? The ENSO-induced shifts in the temperature anomaly data exist. I haven’t manufactured them. I’ve just broken the global temperature data down into subsets to make those shifts visible.

Bob Tisdale (00:49:46) :
Also, there is nothing to indicate that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have any impact on Ocean Heat Content. Refer to:
link And link And link:
——————
There is evidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gases put 94.4% of their global warming heat into the oceans:
An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950 (Murphy 2009) showed that 94.4% of the global warming heat goes into the oceans (the rest into the land and atmosphere). If the ocean is absorbing 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2, this puts the total energy imbalance at around 0.82 ± 0.12 Wm−2. This is a slight underestimate as Murphy 2009 included ocean heat down to 3000m, not 2000m.
Earth’s Global Energy Budget (Trenberth 2009) examined satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation for the March 2000 to May 2004 period and found the planet accumulating energy at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.15 Wm−2.
You look at only the upper 700 meters of the entire ocean.
The deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas Trench, goes down 10,900 meters.
The top 700 meters of ocean heat content is a lot more variable than the top 2000 meters, which shows a steady absorption of energy at the rate of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2 for the years 2003 to 2008, inclusive (a time period when the upper 700 meters seems to halt its warming).
The important point is that Argo floats now allow us to look at the ocean heat content down to 2000 meter depths, not the 700 meters you are concentrating on:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/FrHow_Argo_floats.html
At this depth, there has been no stalling of the heat content rise, such as the 700 meter top of the ocean from 2004 to 2009:
http://tinyurl.com/yeurhn3
Global ocean heat storage is definitely rising, in the top 2000 meters of the ocean, during this time.
This graph is based on data from Schuckmann 2009, and a free pre-print version of that paper is here:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
From the paper:
5. Conclusion
During the six years of in-situ measurements [2003-2008], an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2 occurred in the upper 2000m depth of the water column.
Major advances in measuring the global ocean hydrographic changes have been made by the implementation of the Argo observing system
In addition to the rates of global hydrographic changes, the large-scale spatial patterns of temperature and salinity variability have been estimated. With our finndings it is possible to classify time scales of variability within different latitude bands, at least over the period of our in-situ field. These show large amounts of interannual and decadal fluctuations at northern mid-latitudes which reach deep into the water column.
And from the Introduction:
In addition, the long-term global warming trend is also largly caused by warming in the Southern Ocean that extends deep into the water column
It is hard to see the warming “deep into the water column” if you are not measuring there – 0 m to 700m measurements are not looking at 700m to 2000m ocean heat.
If the Argo network were more numerous and the floats went deeper, we would have an even better understanding of where all the extra heat from global warming is going – the vertical flows, the ocean currents involved and their oscillations, how deep the warming is penetrating, etc. But Argo is definitely a good start.

for this long-lasting El Niño

Where does the idea come from that this is a long-lasting El Niño? Sure, given the rather high (record) temperature anomalies – despite this moderate El Niño, just a few sunspots and a negative PDO – I can imagine that certain people who don’t want to Global Warming to be true, or at least for it not to be man-made, these past 8 months feel like an awful long time. If someone wants to influence public perception on AGW and delay action, I can imagine that person is thinking “the sooner it’s over, the better it is”.
But El Niños from 1950 onwards have lasted an average 10 months, with the Super El Niño from 1997-1998 lasting 13 months and the El Niño from 1986-1988 even lasting 19 months. La Niñas have been less frequent from 1950 onwards (12 events versus 19 Niño events), but lasted longer on average, almost 16 months. So 8 months so far isn’t that particularly long-lasting. It’s a bit too soon to say this.
If you add up the SST anomalies from each event (based on this chart) and divide them by the total months the event lasted, here’s what you get:
Highest Average
1997 1.738
1982 1.393
1972 1.318
1991 1.133
2009 1.125
1965 1.118
1986 1.111
2002 1.027
1957 0.993
1963 0.857
The average of the current El Niño will probably go down in the coming few months, unless it stops all of a sudden, which would make it the opposite of ‘long-lasting’.
Lowest average
1988 -1.292
1973 -1.111
1950 -1.067
2007 -1.044
1998 -0.988
1954 -0.976
1964 -0.930
1970 -0.905
1967 -0.720
1995 -0.629
I always thought the last La Niña event was extremely powerful, but it turns out from this (flawed) calculation that it was just powerful.
These are the highest peaks and deepest troughs in the Oceanic Niño Index:
Highest Peak
1997 2.5
1982 2.3
1972 2.1
2009 1.8
1991 1.8
1986 1.6
1965 1.6
Deepest Trough
1973 -2.1
1954 -2.0
1988 -1.9
1950 -1.7
1998 -1.6
2008 -1.4
1964 -1.2
What I would like to know: Will the next moderate El Niño cause the UAH dataset to break monthly anomaly records again? The sun is bound to be more active in a year or two, three.

rogerkni (09:41:12) :
Only one calendar year was warmer than 2009, 2005.
————
OK, quite right -I prefer calendar years anyway.
2009 was tied with 2007, and slightly warmer than 2002 and 1998, and warmer still than 2003 and 2006. And it made 2008 seem almost as cold as 1997.
I guess it was pretty warm.
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.
— Homer Simpson

Bob T,
Your contention that El Ninos have not grown stronger in the past few decades is partially backed up by looking at El Ninos prior to 1900, in so-called “Super El Nino events”. What is the source of your pre-1900 data, how has it been checked and verified? All my reading of the research puts very little credibility in any data prior to 1900, and really, prior to about 1914. What is the source of your pre-1900 data that makes you so certain that the past few decades of strong El Ninos is nothing unusual?
Also, please address the issue of the so-called 1976/77 “climate shift” related to both ENSO and the PDO. I’d be very curious to get your current take on this event (or non-event) as the case may be….

R. Gates (10:43:33) : “what other factors (if not GH gases) would have caused 2010 to become the warmest year, especially as we have just come through such a long and deep solar minimum?
To me, this is the central question that the skeptical part of me is asking right now: If the solar cycle and the El Nino event are more important in climate forcing than any AGW, then why would 2010 become the warmest year on record as the AGW believer part of me, and the Met Office believes is likely? In other words, what factors present in 2010 would cause this year to be warmer than 1998, if not the increased GH gases?”
Could it be that the world is warming naturally? If it is, then years will become the warmest on record, year after year. There is no need to hypothesize GH gases.

Iceman said:
“Could it be that the world is warming naturally?”
__________
“Naturally” would imply by natural causes and known cycles. Every known factor that affects the earth’s climate has been pretty thoroughly accounted for in AGWT, from solar cycles, astronomical, ocean heat, etc., and working together, these paint a pretty well understood pattern of climate variability. AGWT would posit that AGW, specifiically through the relatively rapid (geologically speaking) buildup on GH gases in the past few hundred years are now playing the role of the dominant signal in climate variability. From the long term decline in sea ice to the cooling of the stratosphere, AGWT posits very specific and observable signals that warming due to GH gases will create. These signals are now being observed (at least in the N. Hemisphere for arctic sea ice).
Again, simply saying that “natural warming” is the cause of the potentially warmest year on record is not a specfic answer to the question as to why 2010 may become the warmest year on record. AGWT would give a specific reason why…i.e. the build-up of GH gases. Skeptics must provide equally specific “natural” causes…be precise and explicit…WHAT natural causes?

R. Gates (10:56:43): You asked, “What is the source of your pre-1900 data, how has it been checked and verified?” and “What is the source of your pre-1900 data that makes you so certain that the past few decades of strong El Ninos is nothing unusual?”
The NINO3.4 SST anomaly data source was listed at the bottom of the post:
SOURCE
HADISST Anomaly data is available through the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
You’d have to read the papers that accompany the HADISST dataset to determine how it was “checked and verified.”
Rayner, N. A.; Parker, D. E.; Horton, E. B.; Folland, C. K.; Alexander, L. V.; Rowell, D. P.; Kent, E. C.; Kaplan, A. (2003) Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century, J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 108, No. D14, 4407 10.1029/2002JD002670
http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/hadisst/HadISST_paper.pdf
You wrote, “All my reading of the research puts very little credibility in any data prior to 1900, and really, prior to about 1914.”
I would agree that equatorial Pacific SST anomaly data prior to 1914 is questionable. Before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, there was little ship traffic in the NINO areas. However, Southern Oscillation Index data (based on sea level pressure data from Tahiti and Darwin, Australia) is available as far back as 1876 through the Australian Bureau of Meteorology:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soihtm1.shtml
I’ve inverted the BOM’s SOI data in the following graph so that El Nino events are positive:
http://i40.tinypic.com/24df191.png
There are significant El Nino events in the early decades of the SOI dataset as well. So there are two ENSO datasets based on different variables that illustrate major El Nino events in the early part of the instrument record.
Also, in paleoclimatological terms, current NINO3 SST anomalies are not unusual:
http://s5.tinypic.com/20b26p0.jpg
Now let me ask you, since you only believe data after 1914, how can you be sure that the increase in the frequency and magnitude of El Nino events is unusual?
You wrote, “Also, please address the issue of the so-called 1976/77 “climate shift” related to both ENSO and the PDO. I’d be very curious to get your current take on this event (or non-event) as the case may be….”
The phrasing of your request infers I had a prior “take” on the 1976/77 climate shift. And I’m not sure why you would imply that it was a non-event. There are numerous papers that acknowledge and illustrate its effect on the strength and evolution of ENSO events. My “take”? Personally, I believe the 1976/77 climate shift’s impact on ENSO resulted from the additional tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content that was made available by the 1973/74/75/76 La Nina.
http://i46.tinypic.com/2vja1z5.png
I don’t pay attention to the PDO. I’ve already posted links to three papers on this thread that show the PDO is a lagged aftereffect of ENSO, so I won’t bother to comment on it.

Anu quoting the Von Schuckmann study “During the six years of in-situ measurements [2003-2008], an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2 occurred in the upper 2000m depth of the water column.”
Maybe next time a skeptic points out that the atmosphere hasn’t warmed for six years (or a similar time period), you will admit that six years is long enough to detect a trend against detractors who say that six years (or similar period) is too short. That would seem to be consistent with your position on ocean warming.

Anu (08:44:04) : In response to my comment, “Also, there is nothing to indicate that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have any impact on Ocean Heat Content. Refer to…” you replied, “There is evidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gases put 94.4% of their global warming heat into the oceans:
An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950 (Murphy 2009) showed.”
The numbers 94.4 or 5.6 do not appear in Murphy et al. Please advise which paragraph or table or illustration in Murphy et al provides you with those percentages. And please don’t link ClimateProgress or SkepticalScience. Quote Murphy et al, please.
And when you’re done reading Murphy et al, please advise me how they account for ENSO, AMO, and sea level pressure in the form of NPI and NAO. The three posts I linked, which you referred to in your reply, illustrated the effects of those natural variables on individual ocean basin OHC subsets. Those posts also showed decadal to multidecadal declines in OHC for some ocean basins, and for other ocean basins there were multidecadal periods with little to no rise in OHC, followed by short-term rises that correspond to ENSO events or to shifts in the NPI or NAO. Does Murphy et al address those flat or declining multidecadal periods in ocean basin subsets or the short-term rises caused by those natural variables?
Curiously, in response to the three posts I provided, which illustrated the magnitude of the natural effects on OHC for individual ocean basins from 1955 to present, you wrote, “Earth’s Global Energy Budget (Trenberth 2009) examined satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation for the March 2000 to May 2004 period and found the planet accumulating energy at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.15 Wm−2.” Please advise how “satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation for the March 2000 to May 2004 period” contradicts what I’ve presented for OHC data from 1955 to present. You’re off by a few decades in your time span.
You wrote, “You look at only the upper 700 meters of the entire ocean.”
Of course. The only dataset that’s available to the public on an easy-to-use gridded basis is the NODC OHC data (0-700 meters) through the KNMI Climate Explorer. There’s a link to it at the bottom of each of the three posts. Do you have a link to another OHC dataset to 3000 meters from 1955 to present that KNMI could add to their Climate Explorer?
Also, Domingues et al, Levitus et al, Wijffels et al, and Ishii and Kimoto all present OHC to depths of 700 meters. So, I’ll have to ask you, if OHC to greater depths was so critical, why don’t these studies present data for the lower depths? Data availability maybe? Increased errors to depths of 3000 meters? The lack of resolution to 3000 meters? Have you noted that the 0-3000 meter data in Levitus et al (2005) ends with the 5-year period of 1994-1998 (effectively 1996), while the 0-300 meter and 0-700 meter data end in 2003? Have you noted that the 0-3000 meter data in Levitus et al (2005) is only presented in pentads while the 0-300 meter and 0-700 meter data are presented annually? The data I’ve plotted in my posts, which is associated with Levitus et al (2009) is presented in 3-month periods.
You wrote, “The deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas Trench, goes down 10,900 meters.” Thanks but I learned that in high school geography many decades ago.
You continued with link to an ARGO website and to a graph from von Schuckmann et al (2009):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
Please advise how OHC data for the period of 2003 through 2008 or your much quoted “During the six years of in-situ measurements [2003-2008], an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2 occurred in the upper 2000m depth of the water column,” contradicts the three posts I provided that covered the period of 1955 to 2009.
Last, downward longwave (infrared) radiation from greenhouse gases can only warm the upper few centimeters of the oceans. But the argument has been presented that DLR (infrared radiation), through mixing caused by waves and wind stress turbulence, would warm the mixed layer of the ocean. This in turn would impact the temperature gradient between the mixed layer and skin, dampening the outward flow of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. The end result according to the argument: OHC would rise due to an increase in DLR (infrared radiation) caused by increases in greenhouse gas emissions.
Consider this: the majority of the OHC datasets that I presented in the three posts do not show long-term increases in OHC that one would anticipate with anthropogenic greenhouse gases. They show decadal and multidecadal periods of little to no rise or decadal and multidecadal declines in OHC, followed by short-term rises, and as discussed earlier, these short-term rises were shown to correspond to ENSO events and changes in sea level pressure. So let’s assume von Schukmann et al were correct and OHC to depths of 2000 meters continues to rise. If the top 700 meters shows no signs of anthropogenic warming, how would the longwave radiation bypass the top 700 meters to warm the ocean below? It can’t. Warm waters from the top 700 meters that show no signs of anthropogenic warming would have to be subducted to warm the depths below, so the warming of the lower depths would have to be natural as well.
In short, your reply did not address the natural variables discussed in my posts and most of your reply did not even address the period of 1955 to present discussed in my posts. To save you the time needed to scroll up, here are the links to the posts again:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-0-700.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html

R Gates – have you considered that the long term temperature of the earth has been steadily increasing for centuries, with a 65 year zigzag cycle superimposed, and with the El nino / La Nina and shorter cycles on top of these again.
All three main influences pushed the temperature upwards in 1998.
In contrast, the zigzag was going down from 1943 to 1975.
If you chart these using NCDC data 1880 onwards, there’s nothing left for CO2. (Hadley-CRU can give you another ZigZag half leg upwards from the early 1850’s).
Each of the upward Zig legs are of the same order of magnitude, both as to degrees risen and time elapsed (32 or 33 years or so).
The downward zags cover similar time frames, but look more shallow than the upward zigs, because the zags oppose the long term upward trend. You can also see that enduring upward trend in the long term Central England series which covers many centuries of rising temperature.
The way to see this clearly is to detrend the NCDC data from 1880 onwards, by subtracting its linear trend, leaving the zigzag, El Nino’ La Nina and short term residuals.
The Zigzag term then stands out very clearly.
Again, there’s no space left for CO2.

Vuk etc.
You mentioned the geomagnetic effect and how the strengthening lines of magnetic force seems to mirror the rise of global temperature through quite a long time frame.
Have you any evidence that this is more than just a coincidence, like the correlation of CO2 levels with temperature?
I’m very interested, seeing how much the changing magnetic force lines are evident in the sun itself, the lines of force between earth and sun and the relationship with the cosmic ray theory of cloud formation.
Is there any established connection here or just a lot of common concepts without a causal relationship?

Eric (skeptic) said:
“The reason for most of the warming of the past few hundred years is (natural) recovery from the Little Ice Age…”
I tend to agree with this…to a point. I think it’s been a mixture up to the late 1970’s…then the I think the warming may begin to be more anthropogenic. But I’m a 25% skeptic, and I think the next few years will really tell.
If during the period 2010-2015 we don’t hit at least 1, 2 or 3 new record instrument high global temps, I will be shifting my opinion to 50/50.

“..Throughout the 1800s (1800-1900) CE temperatures are pretty much flat, i.e. there is no trend though a zig-zag effect can be detected.”
Mmmm… sounds rather Mannian to me (you know, flat temperatures until the late 20th Century). All things considered, the earth has been warming since the coldest decades of the LIA, and this warming began to accelerate right after the end of the Dalton Minimum. Most of the recent retreat of glaciers began in the middle of the 19th Century.

This northward emigrant El Nino has crossed the SA continent and reached the atlantic and even the African coasts, as it provoked recent floods in the portuguese islad of Madeira:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/21/madeira-floods-death-toll-rises

Enneagram,
I do of course get the distinction, and also more, following along Trenberth’s distinction as outlined here:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ost/climate/STIP/FY09CTBSeminars/jin_020409.htm
I would also suggest everyone read this little bit about the climate shift of 1976/77, when the character of Pacific Ocean (at least in recent times) changed:
http://horizon.ucsd.edu/miller/download/climateshift/climate_shift.pdf
Could this “climate shift” be related to AGW? Yes. And it also might not be. And certainly the warming of the Pacific Ocean n 2009-2010 could be as well.

Bob T,
Would the planet be a bit hotter without El Ninos (since heat would not be as efficiently transferred to the poles where it is more efficiently radiated to space)?
What I was getting at with the trade winds either blowing all the time or never blowing was just a mental experiment about how those (unrealistic) scenarios would affect climate (assuming everything else is equal). I’m guessing that the steady state situations (i.e. of either no wind or steady wind all the time) would produce a warmer world than the stormy weather produced by El Nino.
Is it true that stormy weather is more efficient at radiating energy to space than calm weather?

Steve Koch (13:55:39) : You asked, “Would the planet be a bit hotter without El Ninos (since heat would not be as efficiently transferred to the poles where it is more efficiently radiated to space)?”
Sounds logical, though I have never seen it presented that way.
You asked, “Is it true that stormy weather is more efficient at radiating energy to space than calm weather?”
Dunno. Sorry.

@Bob Tisdale (15:23:52) :
Do you find anything in my posts or in the accompanying graphs that imply that “large amounts of heat disappears for awhile?”
Yes, from the upper 700m of the ocean, for instance
http://i34.tinypic.com/1zgx284.png
The brown curve, Global Ocean Heat Content, goes down in part of the 60’s and 80’s – this heat either goes deeper into the ocean for awhile, or is transferred to the continent or atmosphere. The point is, what is described as “natural variability” could be described much more precisely, if the measurements were there. That is what Trenberth was talking about in his famous stolen email.
You wrote, “25% to 55% of the heat of the ocean sloshes across that 700 m layer boundary, according to Murphy 2009.”
Please clarify how you derived those percentages. They do not appear in Murphy et al.
For the purposes of this paper we estimate that from 1950 to 2003 the increase in the heat content of the ocean deeper than 700 m was 40 ±15% of the increase from 0 to 700 m.
Murphy et. al. page 2
If the top 700 meters shows no signs of anthropogenic warming,
I’m saying that the top 700 m of the ocean is warming:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
warming about 17 * 10^22 joules in 50 years, and that periods where it seems to be cooling might be explained by heat being sloshed to lower depths of the ocean. Yes, the Argo global-coverage measurements of this deep ocean level did not arrive till the early 2000’s, and so we cannot look at 5 decade trends for this more comprehensive data, but look at what it does show:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
(from the Schuckman et al 2009 paper, page 51)
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
During 2004 to 2010, when the OHC of the upper 700m of the worlds oceans seem to not warm, we see that if you look at the more inclusive upper 2000m, they do warm, showing the importance of vertical ocean currents in moving heat around the vast oceans. As Murphy et al said:
On the other hand, the error bars would underestimate the uncertainty if
most of the warming took place in poorly sampled regions such as the Southern Ocean.
Even in June 2009, with years of full Argo system operation, the Southern Ocean, with substantial vertical currents, remains “poorly sampled”.
I think von Schuckmann et al include the Willis corrections to the Argo and XBT data: it is 2 years after the errors are pointed out, and he cites the key Willis paper:
Willis, J., J. Lyman, G. Johnson, and J. Gilson (2007), Correction to ‘Recent cooling of the upper ocean’, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, doi:10.1029/2007GL030323.
I agree the ocean data is somewhat sparse, and recent. I would like to see 20,000 ocean sensors instead of 3200, more sampling of the Arctic and Southern Oceans, and sensors that could drift better with ocean currents, horizontally and vertically, for long periods before surfacing and downloading recorded data. But I wouldn’t be surprised if all the data was consistent with inexorably warming oceans. And I wouldn’t be surprised if such data, decades from now, is used to make predictions of phenomena like ENSO and PDO as precise as lunar eclipses.
Well, maybe a bit less precise.
Cheers.

Anu said “The Argo ocean sensors were only deployed in the early 2000’s, and did not reach its target number of 3000 sensors till 2006. Analyzing the data that one has is the best you can do”
If 6 years is not good enough for a surface temperature trend change, then it is not good enough for ocean temperature either. It doesn’t matter at all whether it is “the best you can do”.

Anu (20:15:28) : You replied, “Yes, from the upper 700m of the ocean, for instance
http://i34.tinypic.com/1zgx284.png
“The brown curve, Global Ocean Heat Content, goes down in part of the 60’s and 80’s – this heat either goes deeper into the ocean for awhile, or is transferred to the continent or atmosphere.”
Or there is less downward shortwave radiation reaching the oceans due to increases in cloud cover or increases in aerosols such as Saharan dust… Lots of potential reasons for the declines.
You replied, “I’m saying that the top 700 m of the ocean is warming,” to my statement, “If the top 700 meters shows no signs of anthropogenic warming…”
I did not say the global ocean was not warming. I wrote that it showed no signs of anthropogenic warming. There is a significant difference between your reply and what I wrote. I’ve shown that the warming can be explained as responses to natural factor such as ENSO and changes in sea level pressure.
You replied, “During 2004 to 2010, when the OHC of the upper 700m of the worlds oceans seem to not warm, we see that if you look at the more inclusive upper 2000m, they do warm, showing the importance of vertical ocean currents in moving heat around the vast oceans.”
And I advised that there have been multiple corrections to the ARGO data, including one as late as 2010, which could not have been included in von Schuckmann (2009), and that that correction changed the trend for the past few years from positive to negative. Here’s the gif animation again:
http://i48.tinypic.com/14e6wjn.gif
You quoted Murphy et al: “On the other hand, the error bars would underestimate the uncertainty if most of the warming took place in poorly sampled regions such as the Southern Ocean.”
The opening prepositional phrase in your quote, “On the other hand,” implies that they made the opposite point in the previous sentence.
And you quote Murphy et al, “For the purposes of this paper we estimate that from 1950 to 2003 the increase in the heat content of the ocean deeper than 700 m was 40 ±15% of the increase from 0 to 700 m,” to explain how you came up with the following in an earlier comment, “The OHC data from 2003 to 2008 for the upper 2000 m does not contradict your 700 m data, it just shows that ocean currents have vertical components that transfer heat below 700m, and sometimes up to 700 m layer. 25% to 55% of the heat of the ocean sloshes across that 700 m layer boundary, according to Murphy 2009.”
The 40 ±15% is a value assumed by Murphy et al. It was not a value they determined. Also as I discussed in my earlier comment, they calculate the heat content at depths below 700 meters as a lagged value of the top 700 meters even though an earlier study shows that there is no lag.
You made a number of references to von Schuckmann et al, including, “I think von Schuckmann et al include the Willis corrections to the Argo and XBT data”
They could not have accounted for the more recent (2010) corrections noted above, which was why I referred to those corrections in my earlier comment.
Regards

Anu,
Good stuff but maybe you could write a few words about why the missing ocean heat content is such a big deal. Back in 2005, Hansen predicted OHC would go up by (IIRC) 10^22 joules/year for several years. It did not come close to happening, in fact OHC leveled off and has even declined recently.
Isn’t it past the time for Hansen to be honest with the public and admit that this AGW hypothesis was falsified, that the GCMs still don’t have the ability to accurately model the climate, and that the science of AGW is not settled? Maybe at the same time he could define in public a new falsifiable hypothesis for AGW.

Steve Koch (08:53:50) :
Anu,
Good stuff but maybe you could write a few words about why the missing ocean heat content is such a big deal. Back in 2005, Hansen predicted OHC would go up by (IIRC) 10^22 joules/year for several years. It did not come close to happening, in fact OHC leveled off and has even declined recently.
——————
Yes, if the oceans were not warming, that would be a big problem for the AGW crowd, since their measurements and calculations of radiative imbalance caused by the buildup of CO2 require that the retained solar heat go someplace, and 85% to 90% of that heat would be in the oceans.
However, as I’ve said above in this thread, the Ocean Heat Content of the upper 2000m shows just that, whereas the upper 700m shows a recent stall in the decades-long, on-again, off-again warming of the oceans.
Figure 11 (page 51) of:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
shows a warming of 0.75 * 10^8 Joules/m^2 for Jan 2006 to Dec 2008.
Given an ocean area of 3.61 * 10^14 m^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean
this is a total warming of 2.7 * 10^22 Joules.
Hansen was correct.
Isn’t it past the time for Hansen to be honest with the public and admit that this AGW hypothesis was falsified, that the GCMs still don’t have the ability to accurately model the climate, and that the science of AGW is not settled? Maybe at the same time he could define in public a new falsifiable hypothesis for AGW.
Perhaps it is time for the people criticizing Hansen to step up their game and learn what’s actually going on, so they don’t become funny historical footnotes:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/22/the-guardian-sees-the-light-on-wind-driven-arctic-ice-loss/#comment-350967
I predict that one day, Dr. Hansen will be on a postage stamp, too:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Stamp-robert_h_goddard.jpg
There is already a TV show based on him:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3102/2827189481_d6edb26115.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ywdlrr

R. Gates (12:09:31) said in response to my “Could it be that the world is warming naturally?”:
“Naturally would imply by natural causes and known cycles. Every known factor that affects the earth’s climate has been pretty thoroughly accounted for in AGWT, from solar cycles, astronomical, ocean heat, etc., and working together, these paint a pretty well understood pattern of climate variability. ” Really! I am amazed. You mean you can predict an El Nino event? You can explain why the century on century standard deviation of temperature during the last glacial period was around 4 deg C, as opposed to 0.4 deg C during this interglacial? Could you provide some evidence for your success?