Our sceptical connection in Germany, Pierre Gosselin, has taken notice of an article in Der Spiegel that speaks of the link to ocean cycles for climate. Of course we’ve known this for some time, but like with the New Scientist catching up to solar recognition, the previous denial of natural variability in climate seems to be weakening. BTW if you want to track the status of ocean cycles, our WUWT ENSO/Sea Level/Sea Surface Temperature Page has a lot to offer. Right now the Niño 3.4 index continues to drop, and looks to rival 2008’s plunge.
Der Spiegel: The Ocean’s Influence Greater Than Thought
By Pierre Gosselin
Alex Bojanowski at Germany’s online Der Spiegel reports here on a new paper appearing in Nature that shows climate change in the 1970s was caused by ocean cooling. Climate simulation models once indicated that the cooling in the 1970s was due to sun-reflecting sulfur particles, emitted by industry. But now evidence points to the oceans.
I don’t know why this is news for the authors of the paper. Ocean cycles are well-known to all other scientists. The following graphic shows the AMO 60-year cycle, which is now about to head south.
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Source: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle.htm
Computer models simulating future climate once predicted that it would soon get warm because of increasing GHG emissions, but, writes Der Spiegel, citing Nature:
Now it turns out that the theory is incomplete. A sudden cooling of the oceans in the northern hemisphere played the decisive role in the drop of air temperatures.
The paper was authored by David W. J. Thompson, John M. Wallace, John J. Kennedy, and Phil D. Jones. The scientists discovered that ocean temperatures in the northern hemisphere dropped an enormous 0.3°C between 1968 and 1972. Der Spiegel writes:
A huge amount of energy was taken out of the oceans. The scientists said that it was surprising that the cooling was so fast.
This shows, again, that the climate simulation models used for predicting the future are inadequate. It’s not sure what caused the oceans to cool. But scientists are sure that aerosols were not the cause. Der Spiegel describes a possible scenario how the oceans may have cooled:
Huge amounts of melt water from Greenland’s glaciers poured into the Atlantic at the end of the 1960s, and formed a cover over the ocean. The melt water cooled the ocean for one thing, and acted to brake the Golf Stream, which transports warm water from the tropics and delivers it to the north. The result: the air also cools down.
But, as Spiegel reports, that hardly explains why there was also cooling n the north Pacific. Der Spiegel:
The scientists will have to refine their climate simulations. The new study shows one thing: The influence of the oceans is greater than previously thought.
I’d say that’s a very polite way of saying: Your models have been crap, and it’s back to the drawing board. This time don’t forget to properly take the oceans and every thing else into account. Yes, there’s a quite a bit more to climate than a single trace gas in the atmosphere. Hooray – the warmists are finally beginning to realize it! (Maybe)
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There is a natural source for the Atlantic and Pacific quasi-cycles but they are not synchronised with each other, or with the solar cycles either.
For the North Atlantic:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETnd.htm
For the Pacific:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PDO.htm
And for those new to discussions of ocean cycles, I’ve prepared three introductory posts. The first presents El Niño and La Niña events:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/08/introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-1.html
The second discusses the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO):
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/08/introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-2.html
And the third covers the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO):
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/09/introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-3.html
truly a red letter day:-)
they admit both the oceans and the sun…have an effect on the planet.
I need a Bex and a cuppa..
The modelers will just replace the aerosol cooling algorithms with some new ocean cooling algorithms, and hey presto! the late 20th century warming is recreated.
“The Golf Stream” – thats a new one. Is that the one that brings all those golf balls from Florida to the beaches of Western Europe?
I don’t say ‘Hooray’ the climate consensus is starting to get it. The climate consensus is starting to steal it! We need a sang froid accounting of who we should be thanking for these new discoveries – don’t forget, if they are not in peer-reviewed journals they are fair game for the plagiarists. Phil Jones has been gradually getting his feathers cleaned of CAGW sludge and will be preening and spreading his wings once again. I note he is the 4th author behind a string of newbies. Watch him move up and start presenting more “sceptical science” and also watch is biography development into the vanguard of the new climate science.
Anthony,
you wrote that ocean cycles finally causes recognition in media. But you don’t live in Germany and you perhaps don’t know that the German government depends on the industrial lobby.
Best greetings from Germany.
That Greenland melt water sounds like fiction. Want to be that human soot will be blamed for that? You see, there’s a new ice age coming, and wouldn’t ya know it, profitable industry is responsible and must be stopped.
I am thinking of all the people who have been saying this exact same thing for the last 10 to 20 years (Prof. Bill Gray leading the pack) and how much they have been vilified for speaking the obvious truth. God bless them all!
Still, there is a lot of spin at play in the above article. This statement: “Climate simulation models once indicated that the cooling in the 1970s was due to sun-reflecting sulfur particles, emitted by industry. But now evidence points to the oceans.” is simply a lie. The sulfur particle theory was never “indicated” by the models. It was an extremely poor assumption forced into the models to take natural climate variability out of the man-made global warming equation. It was a con; a ruse. There was never any evidence for it and the fact that the ‘sulfur free’ Southern Hemisphere cooled in lock step with the north, was very strong evidence against it.
This article makes it sound like the models were to blame for throwing us of the scientific track. Models are the innocent pawns of the modelers. The sulfur particle theory was a deliberate attempt to derail climate science in favor of environmental activism.
“The idea that changes in the sun’s activity can influence the climate ……. major advances in our understanding of the atmosphere.” “The oceans’ influence greater than thought.”
And the claimed effects of anthropomorphic CO2 that were so robust are now what exactly?
Next headline;
The idea that man’s emissions of CO2 can not influence the climate is making a comeback, after years of sceptical vilification, thanks to major advances in our understanding of the atmosphere.
Oops, scientific vilification! Although vilification of sceptics also applies.
Well, we’re getting there. How long, I wonder, before they grudgingly concede that CO2 isn’t the demon it’s portrayed to be, and quite useful, really…
Taking this thread with the earlier one about solar effects I see complete vindication for my oft expressed view that the observed climate is a consequence of a complex interplay between top down solar effects and bottom up oceanic effects with the latitudinal position of all the air circulation systems shifting as necessary to try and retain equilibrium between those two forcings.
I am not aware of any recorded or observed climate change anywhere on Earth that cannot be explained by a simple change of a location’s geographical position in relation to the nearest components of the global air circulation system.
See this:
“Unfortunately we know too little about the flow of ocean currents and the thermal behaviour of the oceans to be able to draw any helpful conclusions from oceanic features. I have my own theory on that point which I’ve expressed in my earlier articles so that it may be possible to use the more recently discovered decadal oceanic oscillations as a diagnostic tool but this article is about weather so I will leave the oceans to one side in this article.
We have to look at the flow of air in the atmosphere to see if we can find anything that helps.
The most noticeable airflow phenomenon in the atmosphere is the jet stream. It guides the movement of mid latitude depressions and effectively marks an interface between warmer equatorial air and colder polar air. The intensity of the flow affects the depth and speed of the depressions and the speeds of the winds around them.
My submission is that one needs only to observe whether the net movement of air over the entire globe at the surface is either from poles to equator or vice versa.”
from here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1458
(June 18th 2008)
Be aware
The reason, and only reason, why AGW now say sun and ocean cycles do have an impact on climate are because they need it to defend the lack of CO2 heating.
If the global temperature goes up is it because of increased CO2.
If the temperature goes down is it because of natural reason as solar and ocean cycles.
As usual Der Speigal misses the point of the paper, and their claim: “The influence of the oceans is greater than previously thought.” are without merit if one actually reads the paper.
The opening paragraph the paper discusses the significant influence ENSO in particular has on the exchange of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean.
The paper goes on to conclude:
“The spatial and temporal structures of the drop in NH − SH sea-surface temperatures suggest that the hemispheric differences in surface temperature trends during the mid-twentieth century derive not from hemispheric asymmetries in tropospheric aerosol loadings or oscillatory decadal variability in the ocean Rather, the hemispheric differences seem to derive in large part from a discrete cooling event in the Northern Hemisphere oceans that was not geographically localized, but had its largest amplitude over the northern North Atlantic.”
The facts that SSTs influence global temps, and that there are oscilations in SSTs are givens by the authors, and have been well established in the literature. The point is the SST anomoly itself that is not explained by oscilations.
–Der Speigel– is called: Der Spiegel
(like mirror)
REPLY: Thanks for the spell check, fixed
“Climate simulation models once indicated that the cooling in the 1970s was due to sun-reflecting sulfur particles, emitted by industry. But now evidence points to the oceans.”
Dumb
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
Just like what’s happening now only squeezed into 3 years.
Let’s hear it for the Gurus and mucky-mucks , for recognizing reality, at long last .
Just remember folks, when you say something it is anti-science skepticism.
When they say it , it is received wisdom
Not quite. The Golf Stream is what brings golfing weather to Northern Europe. Without it Scotsmen would have had to discover fluorescent orange balls before they could invent the sport.
Well, “the influence of the oceans is greater than previously thought” by ‘climate scientists’, perhaps, but most of us here on WUWT have known this all along.
Yuba Yollabolly says:
“The facts that SSTs influence global temps, and that there are oscilations in SSTs are givens by the authors, and have been well established in the literature. The point is the SST anomoly itself that is not explained by oscillations.”
No, that is not the point. The SST anomaly you are referring to took place from 1968 to 1972 and may very well be a part of the larger ocean oscillations. That singular event is certainly not responsible for the mid-20th Century cooling that started decades before.
While the paper may want to extract that singular event from the decadal oscillations, they do so only with a magic wand. Natural oscillations are rarely smooth transitions. One can not look at the gradual temperature decline from summer to winter and exclude a strong fall cold front and proclaim that it is separate from the annual oscillation. Likewise, proclaiming that a sudden drop in the SST of the Northern Hemisphere is not part of the larger, recognized oscillations is arbitrary.
Nonetheless, the most important point here remains the fact that sulfur aerosols are not responsible for the mid-20th Century cooling. The oceans are responsible. Which means that the oceans have a larger impact on global surface temperatures than increasing CO2. There is no other conclusion possible and the models must be re-initialized with a climate sensitivity to CO2 much below the current value.
There is no crisis!
That is the significance of the study!
Wow! Tells me something WUWT has been on to for years. It’s about time! Better late than never, I always say. So, who are the “denialists” now?
Gee, Phil D. Jones, what did you know and when did you know it?
What took you so long to tell the rest of us?
Ah, that silly old GCM warming output from those hot mega-processor banks, that’s whut dunnit.
Better late than never, still.
Now, if a cooling AMO will slow down the Gulf Current, so too will a cooing PDO slow down the Japan Current.
Right?
So let’s see a similar graph of the PDO just below the AMO, and that should tell us how much lag is in the lockstep gait.
Anybody else thinking that the “CO2 must explain everything” mentality which has afflicted most climatologists since the early 90’s has set the whole science back about 20 years ?
They remind me of the 14th & 15th century astronomers who devised all sorts of weird and wonderful plenetary orbits to corroborate observations with the article of faith that the Earth was the centre of the Universe.
Can somebody PLEASE step forward and play the role of modern-day Copernicus..
It is interesting to me that the 1970 sunspot max was something of a wimp in comparison to the ones surrounding it. I wonder how much of a pile on effect that caused?