Guest post by Frank Lansner
A global temperature stagnation despite warm El Nino year 2010?
After the warm El Nino period 2009-2010, global temperature trends starting 1998 has generally turned positive: 
The period starts out with a strong El Nino in 1998, however a strong La Nina lasting 3 times longer also has a strong effect on temperature trends starting 1998.
Temperature trends from 2002:
Thus removing the 1998 El Nino and 1999-2001 La Nina significantly cools the trends. The overall picture is now temperature stagnation 2002-2010 9 years.
The global warming theory generally suggests heating, but one can say that a period of roughly a decade with no temperature rise might be an expected deviation from the general trend.
However, things get worse for the global warming idea. Problem is that 2010 in the very end of the shown period is in fact a rather warm El Nino year. And still, the trends 2002-2010 are just… flat. Even now after the warm 2010. As if the global warming idea just barely holds on in the months just after a warm 2010.
However, things get even worse for the global warming idea. The powerful La Nina is now showing its strength as we have witnessed temperature dive in the latest months. The NCEP prognoses roughly indicates a further drop of probably more than 0,1 K from dec 2010 to jan 2011. And the La Nina – allthough predticed to weaken during spring time – is by many predicted to match the 1999-2001 La Nina.
IF the present La Nina will resemble the magnitude and effect of the 1999-2001 La Nina, how would this affect the temperature trends from 1998 that already seems to have stagnated for a decade?
A “simulated” La Nina 1999-2001 by just assuming the same temperature flow repeated starting Januar 2011 to get a rough idea. Now suddenly we have a full 16 years period of no warming. In fact we mostly see cooling trends. (If we imagine yet an El Nino to occur thereafter, then after 17 – 18 years, perhaps we will still just have a flat curve??)
And “Uhh Ohh” whats going to happen if we simulate a 1999-2001 La Nina on the graph starting at 2002??
In this view, we see 12 yeas of strongly falling temperature trends.
La Nina is upon us, and that it won’t help the global warming message.
—– * ——
Method used above is basically saying:
“How many years can we go back and still see temperature trend stagnation or trend decline?”
If we want to have an answer to this question, typically the year 1998 or 2002 will be the start year of the new stagnating (or falling) temperature trend.
The classic alarmist argument is then: But we have had 5 year, 7 year and 8 year trends before without the longer warm trend has changed.
This is true, however, these dives in temperatures are almost always connected with the large volcanic eruptions as Lucia from the Blackboard here shows:
So, when we use 1998 or 2002 as start years, and only thereby can read the length of the present stagnating/falling temperature trend, we have to know: This time there are no volcano to blame.
And when the result – for example after the La Nina prognosis shown above – may give us 12-15-18 years of stagnating/falling trends – without the help of volcanoes – then this IS something significant against anything we have seen in the last decades of warming.
And without using start years 1998 or 2002 we cant tell how many years the falling trend this time is. Therefore its perfectly relevant to use 1998 or 2002 as start years.
And as fig 2 here indicates
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/usgcrp-report-global-climate-change.html
the 1998 El Nino may have lifted the whole temperature level (perhaps by warming the Arctic) and in this context, it is definitely relevant to analyse using start point 1998.
There are many ways of defining how the temperature trend is best described, but the idea that we had a level shift in temperature 1998 too makes it relevant to checkout trends after 1998 red dotted line:
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Don’t worry. We have more CO2 in the air now, that’ll keep us warm. /sarc
ENSO makes havoc with short-term trends. When using northern extratropics as warming metrics, which somehow dictate the global trend, one can see the downturn has begun
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_30-90N_n_su_1990:2011.png
Oh, and since NH is back on the 1990 level, i declare all those “extreme weather events due to AGW” completely irrelevant.
Let’s hope Yellowstone doesn’t blow. Or we’re really in the deep mire. I don’t want cold, I want warm.
“In this view, we see 12 yeas of strongly falling temperature trends.
La Nina is upon us, and that it won’t help the global warming message.”
But Hansen was able to declare total run-away warming with just 10 years of change. From his graph, low point around 1978, to his famous 1988 Congressional meeting.
Forget about 30 years to see a climate shift.
You don’t need a Yellowstone. There are any number of volcanoes that are at or near the “pop the cork” stage. Grímsvötn, in Iceland tends to go off every 4 to 6 years and has inflated to the levels equal to or higher than it’s last eruptive event. A moment tensor plot for that one:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/vatnajokulsvoktun/grf_uppsafn.html
Grímsvötn along with Bárðarbunga, are the two dominant central vent volcanoes that sit under the Vatnajökull icecap with the five other volcanoes quietly biding their time.
Then there are the ever prolific Kamchatka peninsula volcanoes, they seem to erupt at the drop of a hat.
Add to that the rest of the ones around the world… well, there are enough out there to ruin your day if the timing gets bad.
We did have the Eyjafjallajökull eruption last year, so that may have some cooling influence, unless it was a local phenomenon like the MWP.
Dr Hansen’s GISS line on the charts is so, fer shure, like totally bogus.
It keeps leaping up, trying to set new records, then dropping back to gather strength for the next attempt. It’s like one of those spawning salmon trying to leap the falls.
Thanks for this. Bad news for those betting on yet a warmer decade befalling us.
Trends which are so hard to detect are not trends – they are noise.
There may or may not be a trend, but if there is a trend, it is so small as to be undetectable.
You can choose endpoints to make it go up, or down or horizontal.
Why is anybody claiming that there is a dangerous trend here? It is a noisy signal that happens to be a bit higher at some recent points. It is not massively higher and if we look back even further, it has been higher without humans. What is all the fuss about?
How is it that politicians and greens both have the same problem, maybe its that there problem is a birth defect, or perhaps its those that have the ability to inquire and question the results that upset the green Utopia.
Very interesting data demo. Am currently reading Robert Bryce’s latest book “Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green Energy” and the Real Fuels of the Future.” Given the apparent lack of meaningful correlation between increasing carbon dioxide levels and global mean temperature one can only wonder what “angle” the “green” energy proponents will use to continue to sway political opinion in their favor.
If the ratio of El-Nino to La-Nina changed recently from the positive side towards the negative side.Then Global warming is indeed going to stop.
But Global Warming has never been global for at least the last 32 years anyway.
It has been mostly confined to the Northern Hemisphere since the 1970’s.
Forget the volcanos, it is much more interesting to speculate on the explanations the warmistas will come up with to explain the coming cooling (that has already started). This year they came up with warmcool — Europe is cold because the Hudson Bay did not freeze. What will it be next year!
This time there are no volcanoes to blame? Hah! Look see…
http://www.poetpatriot.com/timeline/tmlndisvolcanos.htm
What about cumulative effects? Or northern transport theory?
There is a good chance of a nor’easter coming up the Atlantic coast and throwing more snow at all the folks on the east coast. This is starting to feel link 1978. For those who have forgotten, there were a couple of big snows that did not melt in 1978 before the blizzard hit. The blizzard would have been just your average severe storm except for the fact that the earlier ones left no place to put the snow.
Just some more relevant stuff you won’t see in the next fantasy report from the IPCC.
Alarmists revel in El Ninos, as it supposedly proves their point, while La Ninas are either ignored or dismissed as irrelevant aberrations.
This post should generate more than the normal amount of rants from the AGW faithful.
Frank Lansner wrote, “And the La Nina – allthough predticed to weaken during spring time – is by many predicted to match the 1999-2001 La Nina.”
Please provide links to the web pages of the official government forecast models that predict a repeat of the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña.
Also how did you “simulate” the effects of a new multiyear La Niña? Splicing some new wiggles onto the spreadsheet is meaningless without an explanation. Please explain using one dataset.
Re: Mike McMillan says:
“…We did have the Eyjafjallajökull eruption last year…”
Funny that. On at least three occasions, Eyjafjallajökull has gone off pretty much in conjunction with it’s neighbor, Katla. The idea being that one triggers the other. This lead to a lot of press screaming about a looming catastrophe. Sure, it was bad enough to the air travel industry, but the tie in with Katla deserves a closer look.
In the geologic record, Eyjafjallajökull has erupted four times… add the most recent and that makes it five. In the same period, Katla has erupted 131 times. On average, about every 64 years. Eyjafjallajökull’s average is 423 years. So, it’s pretty hard not to have an eruption of Eyjafjallajökull that is not closely spaced in time to a Katla event. I think the largest offset is 10 years, and in that case Katla preceded Eyjafjallajökull. (Katla again erupted 40 years later.)
Humor is where you find it.
If the sun’s magnetic field continues to weaken, and we’re entering a repeat of the Maunder Minimum, then another trend would need to be imposed on top of the El Nino/La Nina. It could be much more significant. Hansen would need to make Herculean efforts to “adjust” that sort of cooling away.
Doesn’t matter. Hansen and others, the keepers of the sacred data, fiddle with the numbers. So regardless of what nature is doing, they’ll keep fiddling to their benefit. All the global warming is “happening” where nobody lives (like the arctic) so it’s impossible for the average person to know for sure.
I hope the drop from now is only to -0.3 before the bounce. It all depends what that big deep mysterious ocean does. I calculate it will bottom out at around -0.32 +/-0.05C towards the end of 2011 according to Roy Spencers metric/ I think it may fall further than that, but it’s only a hunch.
When the sun’s activity is low, as in the Maunder Minimum and the Dalton Minimum, does that change the SOI to more of the cool La Nina and less of the warm El Nino? Are there records of El Nino/La Nina going back that far?
Interesting post. Although, I like the warm and would not be troubled of the world were to warm, I am looking forward to seeing the extent to which 2011 will cool and what bounce back there will be following La Nina. I think that this will tell us quite a bit, and it is the best prospect of some reality filtering into this debate.
One thing is sure, we do not want a volcano eruption since that will confuse the issue. The warmist will argue that the eruption caused the cooling (assuming that 2011 and 2012 will show some cooling) and we will never know to what extent that claim may be correct. We want to be able to witness a natural cycle without some further forcing.
The GFS 2m chart already supposes an anomaly of under -.24, with an anomaly in the 18 hour forecast of nearly -.30, before it bounces back up towards normal. (And I think the bounce-back is partly due to the fact the long-term modeling is based on “norms.”) (You can’t really trust the GFS, in the long term.)
The Global anomaly is shown in small red writing just above the right side of the map at:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/extreme/gfs/current/raw_temp_c.html#picture
This is a neat map to check out on a regular basis, just to see what the GFS computer is up to. Also the “current” map gives you a rough idea of what the global temeperatures are up to. They have really been plunging the past couple of months.
Cold is hot, warming causes freezing, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, …
I havbe been trying for about 3 weeks to find a way to submit this: http://agwnot.blogspot.com/2011/01/chaotic-climate-and-next-ice-age-four_23.html
as a guest post. It follows logically several items that have been posted recently, and might stumilate some interesting discussion.
[Reply: Submit it to Tips & Notes. ~dbs, mod.]