UNISYS Current Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly Plot – click to enlarge
From the Georgia Institute of Technology
Climate change may alter natural climate cycles of Pacific
While it’s still hotly debated among scientists whether climate change causes a shift from the traditional form of El Nino to one known as El Nino Modoki, online in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists now say that El Nino Modoki affects long-term changes in currents in the North Pacific Ocean.
El Nino is a periodic warming in the eastern tropical Pacific that occurs along the coast of South America. Recently, scientists have noticed that El Nino warming is stronger in the Central Pacific rather than the Eastern Pacific, a phenomenon known as El Nino Modoki (Modoki is a Japanese term for “similar, but different”).
Last year, the journal Nature published a paper that found climate change is behind this shift from El Nino to El Nino Modoki. While the findings of that paper are still being debated, this latest paper in Nature Geoscience presents evidence that El Nino Modoki drives a climate pattern known as the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO).
“We’ve found that El Nino Modoki is responsible for changes in the NPGO,”said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The reason this is important is because the NPGO has significant effects on fish stocks and ocean nutrient distributions in the Pacific, especially along the west coast of the United States.”
The NPGO, first named two years ago by Di Lorenzo and colleagues in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, explained for the first time long-term changes in ocean circulation of the North Pacific, which scientists now link to an increasing number of dramatic transitions in coastal marine ecosystems.
“The ecosystems of the Pacific may very well become more sensitive to the NPGO in the future,” said Di Lorenzo. “Our data show that this NPGO is definitively linked to El Nino Modoki, so as Modoki becomes more frequent in the central tropical Pacific, the NPGO will also intensify.”
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From http://notrickszone.com/2010/10/15/climate-change-now-questioned-at-german-universities-professors-speaking-up/
3. The controversy and politics of climate change
Many meteorologists say about climate science: ” That’s political and has nothing to do with science.”
Dr. Kirstein: “Climate change? – That’s political and has nothing to do with normal science, it’s post-normal science.” With post-normal science, politics is at the forefront and science is just a tool to promote and drive “good” policy” by spreading fear and sticking to a dogma. In the early 1980s, “scientists” projected that all trees would die in Europe by 2005. Dr Kirstein then quotes Hans von Storch:
Climate science is not normal. It’s post-normal.
Post-normal science is always for a good cause or a political agenda. The target is to achieve de-industrialisation – The Green Economy – The Great Transformation. The modus operandi: by spreading fear. Kirstein then quotes Maurice Strong, John Houghton, Stephen Schneider, and explains some of the recent and infamous PR scare campaigns. There’s even a Climate Change Hotel and tourism in Greenland where you can actually “see climate change taking place”.
After viewing Dr Kirstein’s presentation, it is absolutely no wonder that Hal Lewis called “climate science” the greatest fraud he’s ever seen. Dr Rahmstorf, Dr Schellnhuber, your sham is up.
For those of you who speak German, watch the video at the link above and witness the first public discussion that sheds serious doubts on climate change in Germany.
Professor Kirstein was immediately attacked by the warmist lobby and was offered
price for bad presentation of facts because he dared to state that Greenland at the time of the Vikings was much warmer.
We all know that Greenland was warmer.
We found the remains of trees and an agricultural civilization that grew food crops in area;s now covered by snow.
The article above is just another attempt to link an event that doesn’t fit the IPCC agenda to climate change.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Bob Tisdale imo makes the correct assessment.
In the video Prof. Kirstein presents a diagram that makes it easy to identify post natural science, even for laymen.
I think this is a good development that will proof a strong tool in future discussions because it also sets a profile for the scientist involved in post normal science including the flow of money that is used to finance their “research”.
scientists now say that El Nino Modoki affects long-term changes in currents in the North Pacific Ocean.
I seriously doubt that climate effects ocean currents. In fact, I think it is the ocean currents that effect the climate. Of course when it comes to climate change, up is down and down is up.
“The reason this is important is because the NPGO has significant effects on fish stocks and ocean nutrient distributions in the Pacific, especially along the west coast of the United States.”
I wish the fellows who come up with the quotas for fishermen would frame this passage and put it up on the walls of their offices. All too often, when the populations of a certain fish crash, the fishermen get blamed for over-fishing. Then, when the population of the same fish booms, the fishermen (or hunters, or pesticides, or what-have-you,) gets blamed for reducing the population of whatever it is that preys on that particular fish.
The fact of the matter is that, if you live by the sea, you experience some wild swings in the populations of many sea creatures. In some cases you can identify why it happens. Perhaps you note off-shore winds created an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water. However in other cases no one has a clue why the drastic changes occurred.
During my boyhood I often rowed out to an island (Bassett’s Island in Buzzard’s Bay,) to fish and clam and be a boy. Clams were always few and far between on its sandier beaches. Then, in September of 1965?, I noticed the sand was jammed with tiny little clams. The following June I had an amazing, private supply of steamers. You could fill a bucket by turning only five shovelfuls of wet sand. Unfortunately word got around, and abruptly the shores were jammed with clammers, working nearly shoulder to shoulder. By July the island had reverted to its former state, with clams few and far between.
In the early 1970’s old-timers on the coast of Maine would wistfully tell me of the old days, when Bluefish visited their waters. (Bluefish are called “Snapper-blues” to the south, and are small, but the further up the coast they migrate the larger they get, and by the time they got to Maine they were called “Big-blues.”)
Then, on a pitch dark night late that summer, I heard an incredible rushing noise out in Harraseekett Harbor, as entire schools of herring went airborne in panic. The Big Blues were back! There was terrific fishing for about three weeks, and such mayhem occurred to the population of Menhaden that the water took on an oily sheen, and then suddenly, in September, the Big Blue simply vanished without a trace. It was as if they never had been.
Both of these population explosions occurred without a single “fisheries expert” telling clammers and fishermen how much they could harvest, and when they could harvest, and where they could harvest. It is simply in the nature of nature for such population swings to occur, just as it in the nature of nature for temperatures to change, and currents to change.
Currently “fisheries experts” are making life miserable for the fishermen of New England. The experts are certain cod populations are determined by bureaucrats nibbling erasers. They allow small quotas, and when populations don’t immediately rebound they allow even smaller quotas. It never occurs to them that things such as the AMO have a hundred times greater an effect than they ever will.
This is not to say I approve of over-fishing such as the Russians did, off the New England coast in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. However when a bureaucrat points a blaming finger at a small fishing boat, I think it is more a sign that he is ignorant of nature, (and also that he is slightly power-mad,) than it is a sign that he understands the sea as much as fishermen do.
OMG!
Has anyone investigated the stability criteria for the temperatures of the sea currents? May a disturbance of the temperature lead to the Ice Age?
Link to the abstract here.
I FREAKING HATE SPECULATION by scientists.
Cripes, do I want to rip into this one. They (literally: DiLorenzo was the one who came up with the name) only just decided 2 years ago that this NPGO existed as a specific feature. And now they are trying to assign it responsibility for all kinds of things. This is as much grandstanding as it is anything; DiLorenzo wants his new “discovery” to be important, so he is throwing all kinds of cause-and-effect speculation out.
ALL of this is based on their models.
Their logo’s motto is “CCE LTER — Observe Experiment Model.” See here for that and a description of what the NPGO is.
See? This is DiLorenzo trying to claim equal status for his second-level after-effect.
The PDO does not have a relationship to the ENSO. The PDO is on multi-decadal scales and ENSO’s cycle is half a decade, more or less, so there really isn’t any cause and effect, even between those two. The NPGO appears to just be a small part of the PDO.
But this paper is models and speculation. Note the bold text.
There is almost nothing to suggest that this NPGO is anything but a resultant of the PDO. They found sea level changes, whoop de doo. Give credit for that to the PDO. The salinity changes? My gosh, call out the National Guard and kick up the terrorism alert to orange.
Climate – including the ocean – have fluctuations. And this guy throws in the obligatory nod to “increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” They HAVE to tie it in to AGW in order to show they are on the bandwagon. Poppycock.
This paper is a big nothing. Models and speculation and mention of GHGs so they will get their next grant moneys.
tallbloke says:
October 18, 2010 at 4:33 am
Quite an intelligent forecast. Then we must not be too kind to forget what all the Global Warmers, then Climate Changers and now Climate Disrupters, told us; That because of the anthropogenic CO2, heat was being accumulated on the tropical atmosphere, and from there all kind of calamities would happen to us, if we do not followed their “faith”.
Now, I guess, they will be trying to concoct a new tale, but now based on the current and cyclical solar minimum. But this time we don’t care, as they have become an unbearable bad comedy.
So, moving on, we are indeed in times of changes, in interesting times, where, like in the semitones of a musical octave, resonate new fresh waves from the outside, changing for the better all we thought we knew and taking us back to the actual meaning of symbols, as Rene Guenon put it: To the “The fundamental symbols of the sacred science”.
It is wise for all readers to consider any major scientific publication as a political manifesto, rather than a cool, scientific analysis.
It is wise for all to assume that the statements made in the Title, Abstract, Introduction, Discussion and Conclusions to be pushing the political line desired by the authors and the Journal Editor, rather than being an accurate reflection of the body of data collected by the authors, their peers and their forebears in scientific history.
Finally, it is wise to assume that slipping in little assumptions without stating that that is what they are is the chief way to alter perceptions amongst the non-professional general public.
Not to put too fine a point on it, scientists should now be regarded on the same par sometimes as journalists i.e. a lot of them should be read with caution, whereas some of them represent the highest calling of science/journalism and research.
@ur momisugly DesertYote October 18, 2010 at 8:03 am
It’s all in the model. The whole thing is their model. Ergo, whatever they put into it, that is what they read out of it – self-fulfilling scientific prediction. They don’t even need the real world anymore.
Arno Arrak-
I like wave analogies–is a Super El Nino simply a Draupner or rogue wave?
A rogue wave far higher than scientists and engineers claimed possible slammed into the Draupner oil platform in 1995 allowing for direct measurement of the wave height. We had been floating, paddling and sailing on the oceans for millenia yet scientist thought these waves were simply another sailor’s wild tales that included sea monsters.
What does this teach us? Perhaps 3 things–1. Some times wild claims are true 2. Sometimes wild claims are just wild claims and 3. Measurement helps us distinguish between the two.
tallbloke said:
“Bob Tisdale has the best account of the tie-up between the slackening of the trade winds and the timing of the el nino vents I’ve read, but I think my insolation based thesis gives the overarching setting within which the order of events Bob describes takes place.”
Agreed that with regard to ENSO Bob is the expert.
However I also see a need for just such an overarching setting so that oceanic events netted out globally (not just in the Pacific) can be slotted into a scenario that encompasses the climate cycling from at least the Minoan Warm Period to date.
There has to be an insolation component despite the smallness of TSI variability and I see that tallbloke recognises the effects of clouds in that respect.
Cue my suggestion that insolation changes as the clouds shift latitudinally over time and that shifting is at least partly explained by the level of solar activity.
As Michael Mann once recognised:
“December 2001, nearly 9 years ago, Shindell, Schmidt, Mann co-authored a paper which looked at Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum. The Abstract reads:
We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th-century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are quite large . In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift toward the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiance decreases. This leads to colder temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere continents, especially in winter (1° to 2°C) , in agreement with historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures. ”
At that time Mr. Mann and his colleagues clearly accepted that a less active sun resulted in a more negative polar oscillation but he never seems to have followed through with the logical implications, not least that a more active sun might have caused the observed late 20th century positive polar oscillations and the observed poleward drift of the jets and that therefore the cause was not changes in anthropogenic CO2 and /or CFC quantities.
@Bob Tisdale
Bob,
Didn’t you make note that historically, a Modoki El Nino does not result in subsequent La Nina? Correct if wrong.
Friends,
UAH.
2010 2 0.61
2010 9 0.60
There is no reason related to the enthalpy for this to occur. (Except cycles associated with a hypersensitive climate … 2,3,4,5,6, 8,10,11, … 22 … 35 .. 40 .. 60 … 60 , 61,62,63,64 … 5 … 90 … 105 … 180 … 200,201.202, 2015 … .. 300 … 400 …. 1600. .. 2800 …. 5000 … 10,000 years).
simplifying:
delta (G) = delta (H) – T (delta S);
as delta (H) = 0
delta (G) = 0
Delta (S)
(La Niña or El Niño) are just particular solutions (particular solution has the consequence of feeling that the problem is under control).
I hope it has become clear (area Extent or area) that the ice cover is the result of an entropic solution of the Earth system.
IMHO ….. the best variable representing entropy is the wind.
Sorry for the English (it is very difficult to philosophize in that language).
Sorry
many Brahmas.
tallbloke says:
October 18, 2010 at 4:33 am
Yes indeed. All the heat of El Nino taken from the Pacific/Atlantic is crowded up to the Far Northern Hemisphere by the advancing La Nina, where winter will open the floodgates to release it to space. Then comes the big chill.
After which, it’s up to the Sun to recharge the batteries. What state will the Sun be in then?
Pat Moffitt says:
October 18, 2010 at 10:44 am
You are absolutely right: 3. Measurement helps us distinguish between the two.
Not MODELS (A.K.A. Wee games) in a conditioned air room, thousand of miles far, far away from reality.
Next time a cataclysm preacher speaks out his “truths” before us. we must ask him, where ON THE FIELD did he/she get the data, if nowhere then…..tar and feathers buddies!
“After which, it’s up to the Sun to recharge the batteries. What state will the Sun be in then?”
If the sun stays relatively inactive keeping the jets in a more equatorward position, thus covering more oceans with cloud then there won’t be much recharging going on.
rbateman says:
October 18, 2010 at 11:28 am
where winter will open the floodgates to release it to space. Then comes the big chill.
But, where….my guess is to the Moon, a charming satellite, above us, which sucks energy from the environment, see:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/39599960/Planets-Field
Alarmists’ “science” in effect contends that climate change is a driving force within natural systems that effects weather formation. This seems backward. I am informed that climate change are weather trends determined from compilation of local and regional weather events over several decades. Climate change is historical, not physical.
In a sense, weather is a major driving force. But, weather is not self-initiating. Numerous systems and phenomena, both internal and external, in our chaotic planetary environment cause weather? How this happens remains poorly understood.
My point is that the alarmists have high-jacked the term “climate change” in a way that advances their unproven hypothesis. Climate scientists need to become better wordsmiths in order to control the debate about AGW. This is a skill that can be learned from lawyers who are professional wordsmiths. I offer this advice from my perspective of a lawyer with 52 years of experience.
Paddy says:
October 18, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I agree, the statement below uses the term “climate change” in a very strange and almost meaningless way:
Last year, the journal Nature published a paper that found climate change is behind this shift from El Nino to El Nino Modoki.
This is rather like saying “we have found that a change in weather is behind the change from sunshine yesterday to rain today”.
The climate has changed. And what is behind it? Climate change!
Interesting. I used the same graphic in a posting about the Pacific too:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/pacific-cold-heart/
I’ve also got a live version, so you get an A/B along with links to an absolute temperature graph (where this is anomalies).
Went in a whole different direction in the text, though.
The “Modoki” is interesting… I’d expect the cold water coming up the Pacific coast of South America to be a key issue. Those pesky ocean currents 😉
But with the cold and snow in Australia, I think what we’re seeing is a cold South Pole starting to drift it’s influence north…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/wetting-australia/
And all that mass flow of water and steam is just beating the tar out of CO2. No matter how much the politicians make of it:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/where-co2-goes/
But I do like that Modoki word… and the ENSO application of it…
We are still waiting for AGW/climate change.
The only thing we experience is natural variability, nature rules.
Nature is the biggest opponent of the AGW/Climate change theory.
It has been an almost impossible task to link CO2 to a warming climate when we found ourselves in a period of a positive PDO/AMO and a major El Ninjo.
Now we have arrived in a period of cooling the claims made by the IPCC are loosing all validity. The distance between their graphs and the real world will show ever bigger gaps. Non of their claims will materialize.
All the warmist can do now is to produce the most extreme sorts of propaganda which will make their case even more doubtful.
All we have to do now is to tell the public how crazy it is for a politician to state that they are going to control the earth’s thermostat by shutting our societies and industry down.
‘Don’t cast your vote on a politician who believes we control nature’.
Any politician who thinks we can control nature belongs in a mental institution.
So here we are.
Our current governments in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are
run by mental patients.
I’m quite sure this assessment is not far from the truth.
I am quite sure they all paid a visit to the Climate Change Hotel on Greenland to watch the melting icebergs float by. ‘Yes, climate change s real, we have seen it with our own eyes’.
We can heel them very quickly by sending them to the same location in January.
It’s the quickest way to undo the IPCC brainwashing of the past decade.
Such a trip to that location mid winter will cool any warmist down for good.
I see that the October temps are finally starting to head down and meet the previous years values on Dr. Spencer’s monthly graph at 14,000 ft.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
The big chill is coming.
DR says: “Didn’t you make note that historically, a Modoki El Nino does not result in subsequent La Nina?”
From this post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/typical-average-el-nino-traditional-el.html
Referring to Figure 12, “Of the 10 El Nino Modoki, only 2 events transitioned into La Nina events, the 1963/64 and 1994/95 El Nino events. The SST anomalies during the ENSO season following the 2004/05 El Nino dipped below the La Nina threshold, but did not remain there long enough to be considered an official La Nina.”
That would now be 3 El Nino Modoki events have turned into La Nina events.
Stephen Wilde says: “However I also see a need for just such an overarching setting so that oceanic events netted out globally (not just in the Pacific) can be slotted into a scenario that encompasses the climate cycling from at least the Minoan Warm Period to date.”
Good luck on finding SST data to support your wants from 1450–1300 BC to present.
“Good luck on finding SST data to support your wants from 1450–1300 BC to present.”
Well we both know it doesn’t exist.
However, we do know that during the MWP the jets were far enough poleward to make Greenland more habitable than it is today and that during the recent period of poleward jets the oceans were also showing a multidecadal run of stronger than ‘normal’ El Nino events. Also that during the LIA the jets were more equatorward than today with generally lower SSTs.
It’s not a big leap to draw a conclusion that periods of more poleward jets are associated with warmer SSTs and more equatorward jets with cooler SSTs.
Nor is it hard to see from lots of regional data over the past 2000 years that local climate changes have been due to shifting of the air circulation systems overhead first poleward then equatorward.
I respect your reluctance to be drawn on issues of interpretation and logical extrapolation beyond that which can be demonstrated by actual data but it is unreasonable to try to prevent others from doing so and for global climate analysis I’d say it’s unavoidable unless we are determined to learn nothing from the evidence that is available.
Our Bureau of Meteorology is sticking its neck out and saying we are going to have several cyclones this summer.
My query is this: If the La Nina Modokai is very strong and there is so much cold water in the Pacific is there enough warm water for cyclones to form? We may continue to have plenty of rain (as we have over the past 3 months) but not necessarily cyclones.