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.
=============================
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
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And doom-sayers are always talking about a future that NEVER comes to pass.
I’ve seen that kind of grin before. It is the grin of someone who intends on tweaking someone else’s nose. Rule number two of “king of the hill”. Rule number one is to get there by any means. It is a no holds barred game. Rule number two has to do with sticking your tongue out once you gain the summit after kicking out the current occupant. The unrelated-to-CO2 web pic of the ozone hole was put there, along with the hockey stick, to tweak as many noses as possible. It is the game boys play when one of them is temporarily king of the hill. Most boys know their role is only temporary but the end game isn’t who stays on the top, but who gets to be there for a while (even if only for a moment). Once there, one must tweak the noses of those who are not at the top. There are no other rules. Only those two.
This is why I often go fishing during these times.
Sort of like this grin, Pamela?
I doubt if he fishes, either, lol.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/nyregion/thecity/02clim.html
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Oh please.
CLIMATE OVER PAST MILLENNIA – PD Jones & M Mann (2004)
Climatic and anthropogenic factors affecting river discharge to the
global ocean, 1951–2000 – PD Jones (et al) 2008
Proxy-Based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Method, Predictor Network, Target Season, and Target Domain – Mann, PD Jones (et al) 2005
etc etc etc
To say that Thompson is ‘grinning like a banshee’ is an adolescent-like personal slur and should not have been made. Just stick to the facts, and where possible, the science.
Cliff says:
September 23, 2010 at 1:40 pm
“Reply to Tenuc: Are you saying the cooling period is back in the data? Things have been pretty hot this decade. Maybe you can point me to that (not saying you’re wrong, I just don’t know where that is).
Maybe you’re saying it’s going to start real soon now – that’s fine, but is the basis for that expected lower solar activity? I keep reading there’s been no correlation between the recent warming since the 70s and solar activity. In fact I read that solar activity has been down while temperatures have been up. Or at best any solar activity cannot account for all of the warming. Do I have that wrong?”
Cliff, there has be no statistically significant global warming for the last 15 years, despite a large increase in CO2. Here’s a snippet from a BBC Q&A interview earlier this year with Professor Phil Jones answering questions from the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin:-
Question:
“Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Answer:
”…Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level…”
To find out about the link between low solar activity and climate, read Dr. John A. Eddy paper “The Maunder Minimum” (published1976) and the solar/Earth climate link will become clear.
Question for you Cliff. If you heat a cast iron kettle full of water on an electric radiant ring until it boils, does it stop boiling straight away once you turn off the power?
“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.
Uhh, what about sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere reacting with water vapor, creating sulfate ions (the precursors to sulfuric acid), which are very reflective? What about this making more clouds and also making them more reflective, so that more incoming sunlight is reflected back into space and less reaches the Earth’s surface. It seems you have avoided basic global dimming and it sure looks like there was a real good cause for that.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
Agung
Indonesia
1963 Feb 18 1964 Jan 27 VEI 5
Shiveluch
Russia
1964 Nov 12 1964 Nov 12 VEI 4+
Taal
Philippines
1965 Sep 28 1965 Sep 30 VEI 4
Awu
Indonesia
1966 Aug 12 1966 Oct VEI 4
Kelut
Indonesia
1966 Apr 26 1966 Apr 27 VEI 4
Fernandina
Ecuador
1968 Jun 11 1968 Jul 4 (on or before) VEI 4
Spaced out quite nicely with numerous puffs from VEI-3’s in between. Seeing as how one eruption’s sulfate aerosols can stay in the stratosphere for a couple of years or so I’d say there was plenty of dimming to bring on some cooling.
George E Smith said:
“7% increase in total global evaporation; a 7% increase in total atmospehric moisture content; and a 7% increase in total global precipitation.”
I’d call that either a larger or a a faster hydrological cycle, wouldn’t you ? Larger would involve more clouds but faster needn’t do so.
Now a 7% increase in total atmospheric moisture if reflected in cloud quantities would result in a change in global optical depth but apparently that doesn’t happen so instead the vapour from the increased evaporation must be getting shoved through the system faster for no significant increase in total cloud quantities.
Thus I felt the need for another factor to indicate whether we are dealing with a larger hydro cycle or just a faster one.
The latitudinal shift in the jets is just such an extra factor. The more poleward the jets go the faster the hydro cycle is working and the more equatorward the slower it is working. Throughout that the hydro cycle remains the same basic size (but there is bound to be some variability admittedly) because the optical depth of the atmosphere does not change significantly.
I aver that the size of the hydro cycle is initially set by the density, volume and pressure differentials between sea air and space acting with the phase changes of water.
If any other factor such as the speed of energy passing from oceans to air or from air to space or from sun to Earth changes then the size of the hydro cycle (and the total cloudiness) does not change much but the speed of the cycle does and the mechanism for changing that speed globally is the latitudinal shift of the jets.
It’s like boiling a kettle. As the heat is turned up the rate of boiling increases but the size of the space occupied by the boiling process does not. So it is with the Earth’s climate. Evaporation from the oceans and condensation into clouds is just a slow motion boiling process in a closed system so that all the water from that ‘boiling’ is returned back to the system as condensed water. If one had a supercooled lid on the top of a pan of boiling water it would work the same way. As one turns up the heat the speed of the phase changes would increase but at any given moment the amount of vapour between boiling water surface and supercooled lid would remain the same.
However the shape of the water circulation within the boiling pot would change commensurate with the speed of the process – thus the change in the shape of the air circulation around the globe with changes in the speed of the hydro cycle.
Space is that supercooled lid on our ‘boiling’ oceans and the height of the tropopause (which is a reflection of the temperature of the stratosphere) is the effective ‘lid’.
“The observed climate is just the equilibrium response to such variations with
the positions of the air circulation systems and the speed of the hydrological
cycle always adjusting to bring energy differentials above and below the
troposphere back towards equilibrium (Wilde’s Law ?).”
from here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5497
and also to be found in the archive of WUWT.
Stephen Wilde says:
September 23, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Phlogiston,
I repeated the post a bit later on with links that work. For convenience I’ll repeat it again here:
Both links work now, thanks!
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.
The BBC our dear old Auntie have picked up on the story – remarkable at first sight – of this 1970 Northern hemisphere ocean cooling event. And what title did they give this news article?
“Oceans divide over 1970s warming”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11391238
Perhaps they have a spell checker which automatically changes cooling to warming?
“The great tragedy of Science-the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Thomas Huxley
“”””” Stephen Wilde says:
September 24, 2010 at 1:08 am
George E Smith said:
“7% increase in total global evaporation; a 7% increase in total atmospheric moisture content; and a 7% increase in total global precipitation.”
I’d call that either a larger or a a faster hydrological cycle, wouldn’t you ? Larger would involve more clouds but faster needn’t do so.
Now a 7% increase in total atmospheric moisture if reflected in cloud quantities would result in a change in global optical depth but apparently that doesn’t happen so instead the vapor from the increased evaporation must be getting shoved through the system faster for no significant increase in total cloud quantities. “””””
Stephen, YOU can call it whatever you like; but NO, I would not, and do not. It simply is what IS.
Now if someone did a new study (not a revision of an old study) and made a discovery that a one Deg C rise in mean global surface Temperature now results in a 13% increase in total global evaporation and a 13% increase in total atmospheric water content, and a 13% increase in total global precipitation; then it MIGHT be appropriate to describe that as an “increased” hydrological cycle; after all the forward “gain” of the system has increased; but that also does not mean anything has “speeded up”; so in no way is anything speeded up just because the driving input signal has increased.
But as I said; you can call it whatever you like; however it fits into your new climatology theory; but don’t go reading anything into MY words, that is NOT specifically written into them.
I merely cited the Published scientific work of the authors (Wentz et al) and as I always do I cited the specific journal reference to that work; and to it I added my own PURELY CONJECTURAL observation that a similar order change in total global cloud cover should accompany what they observed. I have NEVER tested that; and I know of nobody else who has ever tested that so it remains an unproven conjecture.
And I am ALWAYS open to enjoying any rational explanation for how their results (Wentz et al) could be true; but MY conjecture be false. To me it is quite axiomatic; but I am here to learn and will gladly embrace any rational scientific argument that shows my conjecture to be likely false.
It doesn’t matter how fast water goes through the cycle of moving from some quite arbitrary location in the ocean, into the atmosphere, and returning to the ocean; perhaps via some land stopover; or directly; or how slowly it is a dynamic system but the disruptive effects on the solar radiation energy cycle depend on what quantities of reagents are where , at any time; not on their rate of turnover.
It’s the same situation as the mythology of the 200 year CO2 atmospheric residence time. It doesn’t matter if a given CO2 molecule resides in the atmosphere for 20 nanoseconds; or 20 million years; only the total number resent at any time matters not how long it takes to replace one serial numbered molecule with another indistinguishable but serial numbered molecule.
I’m sure that “Wilde’s Law” will gain wide recognition as more and more people become apprised of it, and it gets tested and found to be compatible with observations; or not as the case may be.
As for my simple stick in the sand observation from Wentz et al’s peer reviewed work; well somebody may disprove that this afternoon.
[typos fixed mod]
“”””” Tenuc says:
September 23, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Cliff says:
September 23, 2010 at 1:40 pm
…………………………
Question:
“Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Answer:
”…Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level…”
To find out about the link between low solar activity and climate, read Dr. John A. Eddy paper “The Maunder Minimum” (published1976) and the solar/Earth climate link will become clear. “””””
Even better I would read:- The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection ” by Wilie Wei-Hock Soon and Steven H. Yaskell, published by World Scientific. Soon is of course with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Atro-Physics. Yaskell is I believe a ghost writer. As many will know Dr Soon is an ESL person. ISBN 981-238-274-7 or 981-238-275-5 for the paperback edition. It’s the most extensive treatise on the Maunders; and the Maunder Minimum.
“”” Robuk says:
September 24, 2010 at 9:04 am
“The great tragedy of Science-the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Thomas Huxley “””
How true; and akin to the statement attributed to Albert Einstein that no amount of evidence can prove a scientific theory; but one single experiment can disprove it.
We should all be mindful of these truisms. How often do we read of; or ourselves criticise papers or statements that so-and-so “feels” or “believes” such-and-such. Where’s the proof; we demand.
Well get real; live with it; there is not and there never can be “proof” of the truth of any theory about anything; specially anything real like science and the universe. So we shouldn’t even try to prove anything in the scientific sense; and we don’t.
What we do is to construct in our heads out of base metals; a model that is a manifestation of our theory; it is pure fiction. But it has the advantage that we can manipulate that model using mathematics; which also is pure fiction; we made it all up in our heads. There is no reality in any of this.
BUT !! we can make observations of reality; the universe of science if you will, and we can compare those observations with the mathematically predicted behavior OF OUR MODEL !!
And if our model exhibits analagous behavior to the real system that we made observations of; THEN we say that WE BELIEVE that we have a good model.
We do not; and we cannot, say that we have proved how the real system works. The most we can say is that every time we use our model to make predictions or projections that we find those predictions agree with out observations; so WE BELIEVE that we have a good model.
So don’t kid yourself; Science is no more determinate than religion. We have no more assurance about our beliefs in the faithfulness of our models to emulate reality; than we do in the tenets of any religious belief.
We do (as Scientists) have a discipline, that says that if our model makes a prediction that disagrees with our error checked observations of reality; that we MUST change our models. We don’t necessarily discard our models; they may still work rather well for most needs; but we do note the boundaries of validity that must be respected. And then we construct new models to conform to our new observations.
The only difference that religion has, is that theire is NO compulsion to change one’s religious beliefs, simply because one encounters a discrepancy between our beliefs and our experiences.
Otherwise science and religion are quite the same.
We use our science theories and our mathematics; only because we BELIEVE that we get the best explanations of our observations by doing so.
George E Smith said:
“It doesn’t matter how fast water goes through the cycle of moving from some quite arbitrary location in the ocean, into the atmosphere, and returning to the ocean; perhaps via some land stopover; or directly; or how slowly it is a dynamic system but the disruptive effects on the solar radiation energy cycle depend on what quantities of reagents are where , at any time; not on their rate of turnover.”
I’m not sure that is correct in relation to the hydrological cycle because each evaporated molecule carries latent heat upward and each time a molecule of water condenses out at a higher level then that latent heat is released again and the net effect is to accelerate the upward energy flow. So more evaporation in a given period of time and more condensation into rainfall during that given period of time must result in a further acceleration of outgoing energy upwards. If an increase in the amount of evaporation over a period of say 12 hours results in a matching increase in the amount of condensation into rainfall during the same 12 hours then that seems to be a speeding up of the hydrological cycle and no more clouds would be required. Only if the precipitation failed to keep up with the development of more clouds would total cloudiness need to increase but that doesn’t happen if one accepts the evidence of a stable optical depth for the atmosphere as a whole.
The hydrological cycle involves both convective and radiative processes working in tandem very flexibly in terms of acceleration and deceleration.
and also George said:
“It’s the same situation as the mythology of the 200 year CO2 atmospheric residence time. It doesn’t matter if a given CO2 molecule resides in the atmosphere for 20 nanoseconds; or 20 million years; only the total number resent at any time matters not how long it takes to replace one serial numbered molecule with another indistinguishable but serial numbered molecule.”
It’s not the same situation because CO2 involves radiative processes alone and not convective processes. In that situation the number of CO2 molecules present at any given time is indeed what matters. CO2 molecules do not change phase, convert sensible heat to latent heat and then carry it elsewhere and then release it during another phase change. If CO2 could do those things then the rate of turnover would matter.
George E Smith said:
“Now if someone did a new study (not a revision of an old study) and made a discovery that a one Deg C rise in mean global surface Temperature now results in a 13% increase in total global evaporation and a 13% increase in total atmospheric water content, and a 13% increase in total global precipitation; then it MIGHT be appropriate to describe that as an “increased” hydrological cycle; after all the forward “gain” of the system has increased; but that also does not mean anything has “speeded up”; so in no way is anything speeded up just because the driving input signal has increased”
But George, one doesn’t need an increase in temperature to achieve a faster hydrological cycle.
All one needs is more evaporation per unit of time and that can come from a variety of causes such as more wind or more downward infra red radiation from more CO2 in the air.
The reason is that water vapour is lighter than air so more evaporation from any cause will increase convection without any rise in surface temperature being necessary. In fact unless compensated for in some other way there will actually be a surface cooling because evaporation is a net cooling process. Just wave a sweaty arm about to note the effect.
Pamela Gray says:
September 23, 2010 at 8:21 pm
I’ve seen that kind of grin before. It is the grin of someone who intends on tweaking someone else’s nose. Rule number two of “king of the hill”. Rule number one is to get there by any means. It is a no holds barred game. Rule number two has to do with sticking your tongue out once you gain the summit after kicking out the current occupant. The unrelated-to-CO2 web pic of the ozone hole was put there, along with the hockey stick, to tweak as many noses as possible. It is the game boys play when one of them is temporarily king of the hill. Most boys know their role is only temporary but the end game isn’t who stays on the top, but who gets to be there for a while (even if only for a moment). Once there, one must tweak the noses of those who are not at the top. There are no other rules. Only those two.
This is why I often go fishing during these times.
Great human socio-biology/psycology! Are you by any chance one of the great^x grandchildren of Leo Tolstoy? His perception of human deep inner motivations was astonishing to the point of spooky.