From: The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 9 November 2010
It seems probable that 2010 will be in terms of global annual average temperature statistically identical to the annual temperatures of the past decade. Some eminent climatologists, such as Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, suggest the global annual average temperatures haven’t changed for the past 15 years. We are reaching the point where the temperature standstill is becoming the major feature of the recent global warm period that began in 1980. In brief, the global temperature has remained constant for longer than it has increased. Perhaps this should not be surprising as in the seven decades since 1940 the world has gotten warmer in only two of them, and if one considers each decade individually the increase in temperature in each has barely been statistically significant. Only when the warming in the 1980’s is added to that of the first half of the 1990’s does the change exceed the noise in the system.
But what does this 10-15 year temperature standstill mean?
For some it means nothing. Ten to fifteen years is too short a time period to say anything about climate they would argue pointing out that at least thirty years is needed to see significant changes. They also point out that this decade is warmer than the 1990’s and the 1990’s were warmer than the 1980’s and that is a clear demonstration of global warming.
I know few who would argue that we don’t live in the warmest decade for probably a millennium and there are now few who would argue that the period of warming ended about a decade ago leaving us with a plateau of annual temperatures. However, there is information in the decadal structure of the present warming spell that can say something about what is happening.
All would agree that the global climate is changing constantly within certain limits due to the combination of anthropogenic and natural factors. The manmade factors are postulated to be responsible for climate change whereas the natural factors are taken to be agents of climate variability. The additional greenhouse effect caused by mankind’s emissions is a unique climatic forcing factor in that it operates in one direction only, that of increasing the temperature. If that is the case then something has been cooling the planet. We can say something about what is cooling the earth. The key point about the greenhouse effect in this context is that it depends upon one factor – the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
In the past decade the atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from 370 ppm to 390 ppm and using those figure the IPCC once estimated that the world should have warmed by at least 0.2 deg C. The fact that the world has not warmed at all means that all the other climatic factors have had a net effect of producing 0.2 deg C of cooling.
But there is more. The counterbalancing climatic factors have not only compensated for the postulated AGW at the end of the decade they have kept the global annual average temperature constant throughout the past 10-15 years when the AGW effect wants to increase it. The key point that makes this constancy fascinating is that for every value of CO2 there is an equilibrium temperature that is higher the greater the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In other words, the higher CO2 concentration at the end of the decade exerts a stronger climate forcing than at the beginning of the decade.
Mirror Image
This makes what has happened in the past decade all the more remarkable. Because the greenhouse effect wants to force the temperature up which in the absence of a cooling influence is what would have happened, the fact that the temperature has remained constant indicates that whatever has been cooling the planet has had to increase in strength at precisely the same rate as the CO2 warming in order to keep the temperature a constant straight line.
This means that for 10-15 years the combined effect of all the Earth’s climate variability factors have increased in such a way as to exactly compensate for the rise in temperature that the increased CO2 would have given us. It is not a question of the earth’s decadal climate cycles adding up to produce a constant cooling effect, they must produce an increasing cooling effect that increases in strength at exactly the same rate as the enhanced greenhouse effect so as to keep the earth’s temperature constant.
Can it really be the case that over the past 15 years the sum total of all the earth’s natural climatic variables such as changes in solar irradiance, volcanoes, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Arctic Oscillation, all of which can change from cooling to warming over decadal timescales, have behaved in such as way as to produce a cooling effect that is the mirror image of the warming postulated by the anthropogenic climate forcings from CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, from the changing water vapour, from tropospheric ozone, and from a clearing aerosol burden?
Am I alone in thinking that in the dynamically changing global climate this looks like a contrived, indeed scientifically suspicious, situation?
Is it a coincidence that the human and natural factors balance out this way? I am reminded of a line written by Agatha Christie: “Any coincidence”, said Miss Marple to herself, “is always worth noticing. You can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence.”
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
The whitehouse article is nonsensical. Souther hemisphere people know that it’s cooler, something that northern warmists don’t know and apparently don’t want to know.
Charles Higley says:
November 9, 2010 at 1:13 pm
I think you have it. Take only proven, reliable, sites with 1st class metadata and scrap the rest. Create a new network of surface stations and calibrate with the existing 1st class stations and satelite data and provide funds to support that network and finally cease all government climate funding and hand it to private sources with the govs buying the data collected. Then sack, Mann, Hansen, Steig, Schmidt et al.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/CETTEMPfrom1659.jpg
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/ThesunNOAA.jpg
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/400yearsofsunspots.gif
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/pdo.jpg
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Illecillewaetglacier.jpg
And then there is the UHI effect, is there room for CO2.
David,
Perhaps you would care to share the numbers you use when you claim that temperatures have not increased in the last 15 years? The numbers I see show a measurably increased temperature. These numbers are NOAA’s data for the last 15 years, not including 2010 because, well, it ain’t over yet. Rounded to hundredths.
1995 anomaly: .40
2009 anomaly: .56
1995-1999 average anomaly: .42
2005-2009 average anomaly: .55
decade of the 1990s anomaly: .35
decade of the 2000s anomaly: .53
That looks like warming to me. Of course, you may be playing the ‘statistically significant’ angle, in which case you should include a longer data set and have a more robust discussion of the overall trend.
It’s also worth noting that the anomaly for this year, if it holds, would be a record temperature in the NOAA dataset. Currently it stands at .65. And in the last few months we’ve set the record for the warmest 12 month span in modern history (since late 1800s).
Finally, your statement that since the decade of the 1940’s only 2 decades have showed warming is interesting. Again, what data did you use and how do you count? If you are counting decade over decade warmth (ie was the decade in question warmer or cooler than the previous decade) then NOAA shows that 6 decades have been warmer than the previous (only the 1950s were cooler). If you are using absolute anomaly by decade then the count is 4 decades.
From a casual observer it seems your conclusions are highly dubious if not worthless and your methods need some explaining.
re: Tim Williams,
The instrumental records, HADCRUT3, GISTEMP or Central England….
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/cet-1659.gif
…all show a warming trend, but it is only the post WWII period which is relevant to any significant anthropogenic influence…..
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/global_ff_1751_2006.jpg
There has only been one approx. 20 year period post war, when there has been a sustained period of net warming despite the continuous monotonic rise in CO2 concentration, supposedly the overwhelming climate driver during that period…
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1945/mean:13/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1945/to:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend
Why is the temperature unchanging?
more interestingly, why is the precipitation unchanging?
since 1766
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadukp/data/monthly/HadEWP_monthly_qc.txt
talk about climate change !
Have you taken at look at this paper?
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kswanson/www/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf
Also, I continue to have some suspicion about solar influence but I really have nothing concrete to base it on.
Mark S
Data that shows world has not warmed in the past 15 years and the impeccable sources that say so.
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/1626-nothing-wrong-with-our-graph.html
It was Phil Jones who, this year, said there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995.
Accordingly, I have ordered extra suncream and given my warm clothing to the poor.
Maybe the theory is wrong.
Well, I’m glad I made another run at it; must have missed the sarc flag the first time and ended up off the trail.
Malcolm Miller says:
November 9, 2010 at 1:54 pm
“Southern hemisphere people know that it’s cooler, something that northern warmists don’t know and apparently don’t want to know.”
And N.H. warming barely exists in high summer, at mid/high latitudes or the Arctic.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/_sgg/m2m1_1.htm
In my business (software engineering), we have a term for bugs that disappear when you try to look for them: Heisenbug (after Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle). I think perhaps what we have here should be called Heisentemperature :p.
How many years of a standstill will it take for AGW proponents to start abandining their theory ?
johnd:
Your impeccable source was the same person that wrote this article. I hardly think that counts as a second source! Indeed the article you reference is just a rehash of this one (or vice versa). It more specifically details the meme of ‘it hasn’t warmed since 1998’, which is just cherry-picking nonsense.
“Am I alone in thinking that in the dynamically changing global climate this looks like a contrived, indeed scientifically suspicious, situation?”
Interesting premise and one that could well be correct. I think Charles Higley hit the nail on the head in the post above:-
Charles Higley says:
November 9, 2010 at 1:13 pm
“Three, five, no, six things:
1) The assumed 0.2 deg of warming due to CO2 for such a small CO2 increase indicates that Beer’s Law is being ignored. The IPCC wrongly assumes a linear effect when in fact CO2′s effect plateaus and is >90% exhausted…”
All six of Charles’s detailed points are worth a re-read. True science demands hard proof from experiment or solid observation, not assumptions based on glossing the facts.
I’m also aghast about some of the big ‘elephants in the room’ which the current cabal of IPCC climate scientists don’t want us to see, let alone question. How can 30y be considered a suitable climate period when this is much shorter than natural climate oscillations as seen in the historic record? Any period shorter than the 200y de Vries solar cycle, say, will clearly lead to variations to climate metrics like temperature, for example. It is then possible by picking the correct period of the cycle to highlight a warming or a cooling ‘trend’.
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity(LSA?)-(Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity(HSA?)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010-2100 (cold???) – (LSA???)
It has been known that climate acts very much like a forced pendulum, and exhibits deterministic chaos which is responsible for the quasi-cyclical behaviour we see (example above). It also leads to an effect called maximum entropy production (MEP), which means that a complex non-linear system will select the trajectory (or assemblage of trajectories) out of those available which maximise the dissipation of energy.
So as climate warms due to the myriad of observed quasi-cycles, the total system changes to become more efficient at losing energy (mainly through turbulence and changes to boundary conditions). The reverse happens when cooling occurs, but it is important to remember that there will be over-shoot (like the 1998 temperature peak) and undershoot as the system is constantly, but unsuccessfully, forced to find thermal equilibrium.
Current science tries to deal with this complex, highly interlinked system as if it were a simple linear one. It makes too many invalid assumptions. It refuses to acknowledge the ‘elephants in the room’. Because of this situation it will continue flounder, with no real worthwhile progress made.
Wondering Aloud says: November 9, 2010 at 12:02 pm
“In other words the entire claim of warming rests primarily on sea temperatures taken by wildly different methods…”
Species migration and glacial ice melt are other indicators.
You do your case no good by selective misquoting. Phil Jones did not say there has been no warming since 1995. He said,
“Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
“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. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods. ”
The quote is from an interview with the BBC in February this year http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
His reply is a little more nuanced than your article indicates.
johnd says:
November 9, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Mark S
Data that shows world has not warmed in the past 15 years and the impeccable sources that say so.
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/1626-nothing-wrong-with-our-graph.html
What happens, do you think, if you average those global temps over periods of decades to help remove some of the year to year variability? Oh I know …”Global average surface and lower-troposphere temperatures
during the last three decades have been progressively
warmer than all earlier decades, and the 2000s
(2000–09) was the warmest decade in the instrumental
record.” http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2009-lo-rez.pdf
http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/
Lets just keep counting on really tiny time periods to try and give the illusion that the long term trend has ceased. Also it’s probably best to have this misleading information seep into the consciousness before the 2010 calender year summary (possibly) confirms what we already know, that the 12 month running mean record temperature in the instrement record has already being set in 2010. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0803.pdf
Theodore said: “Do you think it is merely a coincidence that the warming stopped at the same time that sceptics started looking at the data?”
Another possibility is that it stopped after they made the adjustments (homogenisations) that showed the upward trend in the first place.
Mark S
why dont you read the gwpf article and you will see its referenced and is the opposite of cherry picking. It might be written by the same person but look up the references and links. Wouldn’t that be a good thing to do!
This article is quite amazing. There are N natural forcings, some are known and some/many/most are unknown, finally we have the CO2 forcing.
This article seems to say: We’ve had constant temperature over the last 15 years and for this to happen, assuming AGW is true, the N natural forcings would have to exactly cancel out the CO2 forcing. Since this is highly improbable, therefore, AGW is false. QED
OK, so let’s assume AGW is false and CO2 forcing is essentially zero, and then go through this cunning argument again. Now, instead of (N+1) forcings canceling each other out we instead have only N forcings canceling each other out. And THAT is supposed to somehow be more probable?
Do you see how utterly brain dead this article is, the whole premise is BS. Embarrassing.
Look, I really like this site, but some of the stuff you post is just complete junk. Why don’t you reduce the posts and keep only the good stuff (yes, I know you didn’t personally write this piece).
Theodore says:
November 9, 2010 at 11:02 am
Do you think it is merely a coincidence that the warming stopped at the same time that sceptics started looking at the data?
——————————————————
If the skeptics stop looking at the data then warming would start again.
Or we can sit back and watch the mighty battle take place for temperature trend supremacy: In the red corner we have the elusive IPCC’s CO2 induced warming and in the blue corner the more tangible downward trending natural climate variables. Place your bets.
Yer, Tim Williams the temp trace up and downs and standstills follow solar-nino-ocean -volcanic trends, as does the current 10 to 15 year standstill. None or extremely little CO2 is needed for that!
pax says:
November 9, 2010 at 3:38 pm
“Now, instead of (N+1) forcings canceling each other out we instead have only N forcings canceling each other out. And THAT is supposed to somehow be more probable?”
Uh… yeah. Talk about junk. CO2 is no passive bystander in the CAGW scenario. It requires a counterbalance for there to be stasis. Otherwise, it’s just a random equilibrium, which is far more likely. Allow me to introduce you to William of Ockham.