NOTE: As is typical these days, and in keeping with co-author Phil Jones tradition of not giving up anything, the publicly funded scientific paper is not included with the news, and is hidden behind a paywall. All we can get is the press release and abstract and this silly picture of the researcher grinning like a banshee. Speculate away with impunity. I wonder why he has the ozone hole in Antarctica next to the HadCRUT temperature series?
Caption: David W.J. Thompson, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, is the lead author of a Nature paper that shows sudden ocean cooling contributed to a global warming hiatus in the middle 20th century in the Northern Hemisphere. Credit: Colorado State University
FORT COLLINS – The hiatus of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere during the mid-20th century may have been due to an abrupt cooling event centered over the North Atlantic around 1970, rather than the cooling effects of tropospheric pollution, according to a new paper appearing today in Nature.
David W. J. Thompson, an atmospheric science professor at Colorado State University, is the lead author on the paper. Other authors are John M. Wallace at the University of Washington, and John J. Kennedy at the Met Office and Phil D. Jones of the University of East Anglia, both in the United Kingdom.
The international team of scientists discovered an unexpectedly abrupt cooling event that occurred between roughly 1968 and 1972 in Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures. The research indicates that the cooling played a key role in the different rates of warming seen in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the middle 20th century.
“We knew that the Northern Hemisphere oceans cooled during the mid-20th century, but the sudden nature of that cooling surprised us,” Thompson said.
While the temperature drop was evident in data from all Northern Hemisphere oceans, it was most pronounced in the northern North Atlantic, a region of the world ocean thought to be climatically dynamic.
“Accounting for the effects of some forms of natural variability – such as El Nino and volcanic eruptions – helped us to identify the suddenness of the event,” Jones said.
The different rates of warming in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the middle 20th century are frequently attributed to the larger buildup of tropospheric aerosol pollution in the rapidly industrializing Northern Hemisphere. Aerosol pollution contributes to cooling of the Earth’s surface and thus can attenuate the warming due to increasing greenhouse gases.
But the new paper offers an alternative interpretation of the difference in mid-century temperature trends.
“The suddenness of the drop in Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures relative to the Southern Hemisphere is difficult to reconcile with the relatively slow buildup of tropospheric aerosols,” Thompson said.
“We don’t know why the Northern Hemisphere ocean areas cooled so rapidly around 1970. But the cooling appears to be largest in a climatically important region of the ocean,” Wallace said.
Global temperatures 1850-2010 [Nature News]
An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature around 1970
David W. J. Thompson1, John M. Wallace2, John J. Kennedy3 & Phil D. Jones4
- Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
- Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1640, USA
- Met Office Hadley Centre, Met Office, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK
- Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Correspondence to: David W. J. Thompson1 Email: davet@atmos.colostate.edu
Abstract
The twentieth-century trend in global-mean surface temperature was not monotonic: temperatures rose from the start of the century to the 1940s, fell slightly during the middle part of the century, and rose rapidly from the mid-1970s onwards1. The warming–cooling–warming pattern of twentieth-century temperatures is typically interpreted as the superposition of long-term warming due to increasing greenhouse gases and either cooling due to a mid-twentieth century increase of sulphate aerosols in the troposphere2, 3, 4, or changes in the climate of the world’s oceans that evolve over decades (oscillatory multidecadal variability)2, 5. Loadings of sulphate aerosol in the troposphere are thought to have had a particularly important role in the differences in temperature trends between the Northern and Southern hemispheres during the decades following the Second World War2, 3, 4. Here we show that the hemispheric differences in temperature trends in the middle of the twentieth century stem largely from a rapid drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperatures of about 0.3 °C between about 1968 and 1972. The timescale of the drop is shorter than that associated with either tropospheric aerosol loadings or previous characterizations of oscillatory multidecadal variability. The drop is evident in all available historical sea surface temperature data sets, is not traceable to changes in the attendant metadata, and is not linked to any known biases in surface temperature measurements. The drop is not concentrated in any discrete region of the Northern Hemisphere oceans, but its amplitude is largest over the northern North Atlantic.
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hmmm, maybe this graph from ICECAP will help them:
And this too:
The historical variability of the Arctic Oscillation. 1969-1970 was darned cold.
Also see this image from the Climate Prediction Center:
ALSO: Quote from Phil Jones: Reuters
Jones, at the centre of a furore over e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia in late 2009, was reinstated this year after reviews cleared him of suspicions of exaggerating evidence in favour of global warming.
Thursday’s paper is the first he has since published in Nature. “Maybe it will get them thinking,” he said, asked how climate sceptics would react to his involvement in a paper highlighting a cause of cooling, rather than warming.
——————-
I wonder how good that Southern Hemisphere SST data is back in the 1960s, which is used here to demonstrate “robustness”. From Physicsworld.com
Easy question, difficult answer.
With global land temperatures, there are prominently hot years at about 1915, 1934, 1970, 1982, 1996 and 2008. Conversely, there is a rather cold year in 1997. The definition of a hot or cold land year is not only absolute: mostly, there is not a corresponding global oceanic equivalent. (NOAA data).
Example, look at that graph over years 2005-10. The NH is even, the SH is falling, but the NH-SH is even again. Where went the SH downward trend in the difference graph?
Even allowing for a more sluggish response in ocean temperatures, the question is, why do most of the really hot land years fail to show up at sea? And what happened at sea for the really cold land year 1997? Nothing. These conflicting incidents are not prominent on the lowest graph in the header to this thread, for either NH or SH.
I’m not going to attempt an explanation. It would be clouded by errors that others have made in the construction of various graphs. Example, look at that graph over years 2004-9. The NH is even, the SH is falling, but the NH-SH is even again. Where went the SH downward trend in the difference graph?
Ok, I’ll speculate away: Perhaps it’s Nature’s policy to only have the articles available for paid subscriptions (I don’t like it either). And perhaps Phil Jones has nothing to do with it.
Tenuc says: Makes me wonder if the mole behind the CRU Climategate leak held a very senior position???
Probably not.
Luboš Motl says:
September 23, 2010 at 12:42 am
“…If it were possible for other effects to beat the effect of CO2 emissions between 1940-1970 and achieve cooling, it is possible that the same thing happens in 2010-2040 or other periods. So we’re just far from knowing whether the temperatures in 2040 will be warmer than today or not. It may be somewhat more likely that 2040 will be warmer than 2010 – but why does it matter?…”
You’ve hit the nail on the head, Luboš, we just don’t know!
Weather/climate is controlled by many many complex interlinked mechanisms, some of which are known and understood, some of which are not. These energy transfer and storage mechanisms lead to the deterministic chaos which drives our climate and causes the quasi-cyclic oscillating behaviour we observe.
The effects of GHG’s is only one factor in this turbulent cauldron of energy movement and all evidence seems to indicate that CO2, which is only a minor GHG, has a very small part to play in climate change. Other driver, like the hydrological cycle and the sun for example, play a much more significant role.
As has always happened in the past, life on earth will change and adapt to the vagaries of our oscillating climate. As ever, these changes will favour some species to the detriment of others as habitat alters. Luckily Homo Sapiens is up there with the best in the adaptability stakes.
By the way, what’s hilarious about the the biggest wind park in the world off the coast of Kent is the fact that there is no wind at the day of the opening.
Watch the video here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-11395964
Who said wind mills are symbols for men’s stupidity?
Chris,
“The warmists are incompetent because they advocate a complete re-structuring of modern society on nothing more than a hypothesis. If the warmists just stuck to the science, it would only be an academic debate, versus the birth of the cap and tax montrosity that was passed in the US House.”
Scientists can only be incompetent if they do very bad scientific work. They don’t become incompetent by taking political positions you disagree with. Also, virtually all science is a hypothesis. It was or is a hypothesis that smoking causes cancer. That doesn’t mean we should keep smoking.
“Finally, the warmists are the type of people who argue until they are blue in the face that they are right, only to reverse their position 180 degrees about 5 years later than most other scientific disciplines.”
Most people hold their positions very strongly, particularly academics of all stripes. This is only human. Further, you admit they can change their position, which is all that really matters.
“I will give you an example. They are still touting their climate models even though the model assumptions are circa late 1990′s. My guess that future climate models will likely show only a 2C rise in global temps in the 21st century. Again, anyone without an agenda (i.e., need fantastic results for more grant money) could have produced the same result about 10 years ago. This is why they have no credibility.”
So all the assumptions used in all the current models are from the 90s? Nothing has been updated? That seems unlikely. And, even if the newer models show the same results that means continuing to confirm the results has no scientific value?
And aren’t these folks all tenured professors? Seems like they have job security no matter what their science shows. Sure they have come to certain conclusions and they are going to stick to those if there’s a scientific, plausible basis. That’s true of all academics. It’s true of the skeptics too. Individuals have a bias for their own notions. But science has a way of correcting for that. Specifically, other scientists can arise and challenge the mainstream view. Scientists have a big incentive to do that. It brings fame and accolades. So the whole process is self correcting. The problem you guys have is that the weight of scientific opinion supports AGW. Take the recent NAS report to Congress from this year. Did you guys cover that?
Stephen Wilde says:
September 23, 2010 at 4:07 am
Let me save everyone a lot of time and effort with this suggestion:
Because the advocates and promulgators of fear don’t know what they are talking about?
One further point. As I mentioned, science is self correcting. If some hypothesis is wrong, someone will point that out and convince scientists at large. It’s a process and takes time but ultimately the truth prevails. The main problem you guys have is that no scientists skeptical of AGW have been able to convince scientists at large that AGW is wrong. It’s the prevailing view. That doesn’t mean it won’t be proven wrong in the future but it hasn’t been so far in the eyes of most experts in this area. Sorry but that’s the simple fact.
tonyb: September 23, 2010 at 1:48 am
Well if the ozone hole over some year or two suddenly reverts back to October 1979, then we should know conclusively it was just a hyped sun and no satellites in the the prior years. Funny but on a graph I have here 1979 was the very year the sun went hyper. Oops, false alarm (but thanks for the billions)!
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/monthly/monthly_1979-10.html
“I wonder why he has the ozone hole in Antarctica next to the HadCRUT temperature series?”
Well, the hole is caused by humans and the temperature series shows the rising human caused trend. Looks to me like a plug for AGW (or GCD).
Cliff, you are correct that science is self-correcting and takes time. The concern though is that it may take so much time that it costs the taxpayers trillions of dollars needlessly.
The self-correcting has taken a longer time than usual because of the advent of government funding into research and by the gatekeeping that keeps skeptics from publishing. Climate researchers would typically rather get on the gravy train than try to go against the received wisdom. There are exceptions (Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Pielke Sr. etc.) but they have struggled to get papers published.
The real self-correcting started after researchers from other disciplines have started to look at it, specifically the statisticians led by McIntyre, the geologists and the physicists. It is much more acceptable for a scientist to voice his skepticism of catastrophic climate change now than ever.
Studying the sharp drop in ocean heat during the 1970s, a time period not confounded by a change in instruments (such as from buckets to engine inlets in the 40s), actually shows a real concern to understand the extent of natural climate variability.
The researchers should be commended for looking at this event closely. Perhaps Phil Jones wanted to be involved because he is trying to rehabilitate his reputation. I cannot help but wonder if Michael Mann has taken Phil Jones off of his Christmas card list.
This paper again demonstrates why CO2 cannot be the logical answer to any global warming as it is neither necessary or sufficient. The temperature went down while CO2 was going up.
# RField says: September 23, 2010 at 4:44 am
___(1) ”the graph shows a steady warming since 1910”
___(2) ”the drop from 1940”
(1) The warming during the early 20th Century only started in winter 1918/19 and in the Arctic, although it was felt all over the Northern Hemisphere for two decades until World War II commenced in September 1939. See : http://www.arctic-warming.com/poze/pozaAa.jpg , In detail: http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/
(2) There are many indications that a three decades global cooling started in winter 1939/40, at least in Europe. In 1943 the British scientist A. J. Drummond wrote: “The present century has been marked by such a widespread tendency towards mild winters that the ‘old-fashioned winters’, of which one had heard so much, seemed to have gone for ever. The sudden arrival at the end of 1939 of what was to be the beginning of a series of cold winters was therefore all the more surprising,” ( in QJoR Met. Society, 1943). more at: http://www.oceanclimate.de/A_Large_Scale_Experiment_with_Climate/A_Large_Scale_Experiment_with_Climate.html
Even J. Hansen et al (Science, 1981) does not object the mid century cold period : ‘In fact, the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere decreased by about 0.5°C between 1940 and 1970….’.
Although there are good reasons to assume that the oceans and seas played a major role in the cooling event since it commenced in winter 1939/40, http://climate-ocean.com/ , Thomson et al. identify only the time period from 1968-1972 for a significant oceanic contribution, but which marks only the very end of the global cooling period. This is a far to narrow approach, and any research should cover the full earth cooling period from 1940 to the mid 1970s from a maritime perspective. .
Ron,
“Cliff, you are correct that science is self-correcting and takes time. The concern though is that it may take so much time that it costs the taxpayers trillions of dollars needlessly.”
I’m not sure about “needlessly” given the other good reasons to reduce carbon fuels use. Plus any carbon reduction is going to be phased in over a long period. Nobody is talking about switching off all carbon fuels tomorrow. The costs are going to be phased in over decades, more than enough time for the skeptics to persuade scientists at large (if they can, which so far they have failed to do).
“The self-correcting has taken a longer time than usual because of the advent of government funding into research and by the gatekeeping that keeps skeptics from publishing. Climate researchers would typically rather get on the gravy train than try to go against the received wisdom. There are exceptions (Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Pielke Sr. etc.) but they have struggled to get papers published.”
“advent of government funding”? The government has been giving money to universities and researchers forever. Further, the funding wasn’t premised on any particular answer being given. A lot of the money goes to data collection, satellites, etc. as well.
On that gravy train, so you’re saying that if a young scientist could make his or her name and reputation (ie become known) by proving the majority view wrong, they would not do that? The fact is there are folks who are against the mainstream view, and you name a few of them. They seem not to have been forced into the majority view by the “gravy train”. The basic problem is that these minority scientists have been unable to convince scientists at large. Nothing is holding them back, nothing is stopping them from writing. It’s just that their ideas have not been persuasive.
“The real self-correcting started after researchers from other disciplines have started to look at it, specifically the statisticians led by McIntyre, the geologists and the physicists. It is much more acceptable for a scientist to voice his skepticism of catastrophic climate change now than ever.”
It seems that these folks have identified errors that required refinement and corrections of some of the details, but they have not undermined AGW in general in the eyes of the scientific community at large. See the NAS report from this year, for example.
Honestly, I see a lot of excuses being made for the failure of the minority scientists to persuade the majority scientists. That doesn’t mean the minority is wrong. But they are to be treated as wrong until they can convince science at large that they are right. So far they have failed to do so, pretty badly I must say.
I will speculate that since it is in Nature, the supporting data is likely either not supporting or non existent. It will certainly be non available and the method will be “proprietary” i.e. not related to scientific method in any way.
The author has another “peer reviewed” success to add to his CV. Though how one can peer review something without the publication of data nad method is a mystery.
I appear to have become cynical how did that happen?
I agree with Bill Illis and several others who have said similar. This is an astounding piece purely bacause its Phil Jones. If we take out this ‘sudden cooling’ then Jones is saying warming began way before man made CO2 could have any effect and apart from this ‘weird whatever caused it’ cooling period has increased at pretty much the same rate ever since.
If that does not drive a horse and cart through ‘unprecedented recent warmth’ I do not know what does.
Interesting departure from the agenda by Jones. He now has two pretty much opposing views with his name on them? If he takes the cooling factor out, then AGW CO2 has done diddly.
Ron Cram says:
September 23, 2010 at 4:57 am “I do not understand the anger towards this researcher.”
I would second this comment. I see no reason to make personal attacks on the researcher.
Repackaging and prettying up the lies, because there is just too much of your money at stake …
So when do we get to the truth, like what was said by Phil Jones under oath hearings? No longer operative?
Cliff, you mention “the other good reasons to reduce carbon fuels use.” What reasons might those be? As far as I know, atmospheric CO2 is plant food responsible for the greening of the Earth and for significant reduction in malnutrition around the world.
Do you really believe governments have been funding research “forever?” I suggest you do a little reading on the history of science with special attention on how alarmist scenarios can significantly increase government funding.
I am saying, in the case of climate change, that young scientists would not invest the time or effort to prove the majority wrong because the effort would be bad for their career. The evidences for this are too numerous to mention. There is a general fear of being blacklisted, not invited to speak at conferences, not able to publish papers on even noncontroversial topics. All you have to do is read the Climategate emails and you will see the vengeance and energy all skeptics were targeted with.
You are correct that AGW is still on top with the majority of scientists simply because the majority of scientists have not yet looked at the problem closely. But there is no question when scientists do look at it closely, they do not find it to be catastrophic. Physicists members of AGU are asking their organization to reevaluate their stated position on climate change. This will have to happen at some point and you can expect a much, much less alarming statement from AGU.
Arno Arrak says: “That is because PDO may be influenced by the terminus of the thermohaline circulation which starts in the North Atlantic and snakes south from there along the bottom of the ocean.”
Nope. The PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO that’s also influenced by the Sea Level Pressure of the North Pacific. Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/09/introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-3.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-difference-between-nino34-sst.html
And the variability of the North Atlantic and North Pacific run in and out of phase. This does not support your conjectures about thermohaline circulation:
http://i56.tinypic.com/t9zhua.jpg
Additionally, the North Pacific SST residuals (North Pacific SST anomalies MINUS Global SST anomalies) are inversely related to the PDO, meaning, on a decadal basis, the North Pacific contributes to Global temperatures when the PDO is negative, and subtracts from global temperatures when the PDO is positive.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/09/inverse-relationship-between-pdo-and.html
Holy Cow, Cliff. My view is the Polar opposite of yours. Having been very close to someone who has tried to be heard by the “consensus” scientists. Ask David Suzuki why he and Jim Hoggan have taken extreme steps to silence and marginalize a “minority” scientist. It has been a nasty struggle thanks to the control of canadian media (like the CBC), and the skill of PR man Hoggan. Their failure was that they have not stopped us. As some brilliant fellow said on WUWT? long ago; “The warm has turned.”
Ron Cram says:
September 23, 2010 at 4:57 am
“Anthony, this is beneath you. I do not understand the anger towards this researcher. He is saying the cooling was caused by a natural event and not man made. This is what we have been saying all along”.
Yes but at the same time he is keeping the hoax of AGW alive by ignoring well known facts. Read the title of the article and yo know all you need to know.
I would be humiliated if I had to publish a paper with Phil Jones name attached as a author. However, understand that once you get past second author on a science paper, the other authors are usually just filler and are added because you use a tiny bit of their data, or simply as a way of padding the other `authors’ publication record.
In with others, I would like to see an update on the ozone hole and it’s impact. After my industry (HVAC) spent billions on replacing CFC’s, I’m very interested in:
1. If the ozone hole has not healed, what’s the hold up?
2. If they don’t know if the hole has always existed, why didn’t we attempt to get a longer trend before making a global proclamation?
3. If healing the ozone hole actually leads to global warming, how are we to balance the affect with other efforts.
After all, I was told this science was “settled”.