No No to el Nino ( till 2012)By Joe Bastardi (from his WeatherBell blog)
I was going to write something about the dreaded back door front and how while it may be 90 at the masters this weekend it may snow in the I-90 corridor in the northeast but then Joe D Aleo sent me this:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/settled-science-masters-vs-masters-vs-hansen-vs-noaa/
knowing it would wave a red flag in front of me and off I go.
The amazing thing is that the high priests of high temps keep claiming co2 is the cause, then admit its not because of the obvious relationship of the enso to global temps! Its simple to see that when the nino comes on, the earth warms, the nina comes on its cool. I don’t understand why they can not, through simple deduction, understand that the warm PDO ( 1978 to 2007) leads to a warming of the globe, especially when there is part of that time the amo is warm) and the cooling will follow when the PDO turns colder, as it is now? In addition we have to remember that a lot of these folks ( NOT Dr. Jeff Masters who is trying to nail the forecast here though he does see different from me on AGW) but some of the non meteorologists in the field, simply don’t understand that its tough to sustain a warm enso in a cold PDO. And that the cold Enso is much more likely. Actually they WILL NOT SEE IT because it means they were wrong about the eternal warmth, the feedback, everything. More preposterous is the supposition that a trace gas needed for life on the planet, a very minor weight in the atmosphere as it is, would influence the ocean, which is far more important in total energy contribution to the planet than the atmosphere, or anything we are putting into the atmosphere. Do the math good friend.. take the weight of the ocean and atmosphere together and the energy implications of the gas and
the liquid and then stack co2 against it.
The only rout bigger than that is a wrestling match between me and Cael Sanderson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cael_Sanderson
not much of a chance either way.
But again, aren’t you admitting that the first leg of my triple crown of cooling ( oceanic cycles) is the main driver.
Lets just look at this folks. First the Multivariate enso index, which is
Wolters baby, shows the warmth from the late 70s till recently:
Warm PDO, ( then AMO) what do you think the result is. But look there is more! At 600 mb, which is a good measuring point for the troposphere we are near record cold, the most recent coldest in 2008 and way the heck under where we were. The blue line is last year, the red this year, the yellow 08 , the orange average the purple is the record low:
Now why would Hansen want the super nino, which he has been in a habit of forecasting since the 97-98 one? Well, let’s look at the ocean temps:
In this case, the red line is 08, the yellow last year, and you can see we are in the middle of the pack, biased low. But the amazing thing about the nino forecast is THE PROOF OF MY POINT THAT IT IS THE OCEANS, since we can see the warmth that developed as the nino roared on last year, and the cool that has responded this year to the cooling. What is interesting is how close we have been to 2008 at 600mb, when we are a bit less cool in the ocean. So here is what you have to believe.. Yes it is the oceans but their actions are being caused by a trace gas essential for life on the planet.
If you believe that, then when I go into wrestling practice later today, perhaps this is my day to end the 159-0 Gold medalists domination.
I don’t think so.
Now perhaps the NOAA model, which was forecasting a minor warming event a couple of weeks ago is still doing so. Two years ago, I had the nino called in Feb and predicted the non hurricane season. Last year again in Feb with the NINA, 18 STORMS, HOT SUMMER I dont see the hot summer this in the n plains and lakes, I see less storms, more US impact but most importantly to this post, I don’t see an el nino. neutral cool, yes like 08, but I don’t see the nino and I am not a model worshiper. The models are agreeing with me, because I said so before. There is no physical reason, in a cold PDO, to forecast a rapid return of enso warm conditions. Increased volcanic actions in the tropics could play a role, but that along with the sun are wild cards. And by the way, I have already been out publicly saying that the return of a weak to perhaps moderate warm event in 12-13 could lead to winters, because of solar and seismic considerations, that could rival the late 70s. So its not like I don’t see the chance of the warm enso, its just not coming now.
The CFS, the reactionary model, which I call it since it reacts after most should see what is going on, is colder with the bulk of the recent runs colder than the means ( recent runs in blue)
The JMA, and ECMWF, which when they agree with me, really pump me up
as I like their performance better
ecmwf
but they show this is backing off, but no nino.
Let me again be clear. Dr Masters has a site that has done well because he is good at what he does, so its Michigan vs PSU, met on met, honest disagreement ( I have no PHD in meteo though, just a Bachelors). But though I disagree with Dr Masters on AGW, this is an honest forecast disagreement. I do think Dr. Hansen, an outstanding astronomer, is
forecasting this like a couple of the others without looking at the same thing Jeff and I are looking at.. Jeff’s ideas seem measured and taking into account things I see, but I have the other reasons listed.
Hiding behind all this though its the admission that the enso drives global temps, and the implication for AGW has to then be that co2 emissions are causing the large scale cyclical changes in the ocean, which I just do not believe can be true, given what I know about gasses, liquids, and the fact that temps are a measure of energy and the composition and density of the measured gas or liquid increases as the amount of water vapor increases, or in the case of the oceans, a saturated body! But there is no malice intended here.
Actually it gives me hope that I can walk into that wrestling room at PSU and go after Cael:
A round robin with him and that bear is just what a 55 year old wrestling
wanted to be needs.
ciao for now
@RGates
while the deeper ocean (from what little measurements we do have) also is showing signs of warming.
The Argos float data showing OHC cooling down to 700m but a warmer measurement down to 2000m could be (given the limit to precision of the data) a signature of vertical mixing of the water column leading to downward movement of heat. Surface OHC is declinnig and the heat has to go somewhere; there is so much ocean heat that the only place that the surface heat can go, in the short term, is elsewhere in the ocean.
This is not necessarily Trenberth’s missing AGW heat, it could also be your (and his) worst nightmare – a mechanism of cyclical global climate cooling.
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:07 am
Tenuc says:
April 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
R. Gates says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
…I would be curious as to what he attributes the warmest water entering the Arctic in at least 2,000 years to? What natural cycle is this part of and where did all this energy come from?…
Interesting idea, but again…where is the data to support some kind of 2,000 year cycle?
Tenuc was quoting YOU when he mentioned 2000 years. He mentioned no cycle, 2000 years or otherwise.
Any you reply asking why HE IS SUGGESTING a 2000 year cycle??
Smoke and mirrors as always …
And continues… people strangely believe the temperature numbers.
phlogiston says:
April 6, 2011 at 9:58 am
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:07 am
Tenuc says:
April 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
R. Gates says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
…I would be curious as to what he attributes the warmest water entering the Arctic in at least 2,000 years to? What natural cycle is this part of and where did all this energy come from?…
Interesting idea, but again…where is the data to support some kind of 2,000 year cycle?
Tenuc was quoting YOU when he mentioned 2000 years. He mentioned no cycle, 2000 years or otherwise.
Any you reply asking why HE IS SUGGESTING a 2000 year cycle??
Smoke and mirrors as always …
___
Yes, he was quoting me, and responding to my question about some 2,000 year cycle. We keep hearing from Joe Bastardi et. al. that the warming over the last part of the 20th century was all part of natural ocean cycles, and so I ask the question: What cycle lasts 2,000 years since we are seeing the warmest waters in 2,000 years entering the Arctic?
Also, thanks for budding in…
pahoben says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:12 am
I never understand why el nino is termed a warming event for the Earth. I understand it as a warming event for the atmosphere. Maybe I do not understand something but el nino should increase radiative loss to the cosmic background and thus be a cooling event for the energy budget of the planet as a whole assuming all else remains equal.
____
The NET energy effect of a full ENSO cycle (La Nina + El Nino) is exactly zero on the earth’s energy budget…and it better be this way since the cycle has gone on for tens of thousands of years.
Gates, shouldn’t your comments be posted under “Climate Craziness Of The Week”? The Arctic has been ice-free before the first SUV rolled off the assembly line. Wild-eyed speclation that “this time it’s different” has no supporting evidence, only model conjecture.
Sorry for “budding” in.☺
Yes over a full cycle but the cooling part of the cycle is el nino and the heating part of the cycle is la nina.
@You’re welcome, buddy.
Butting in is what blogging is all about (I thought).
” The net energy effect of a full ENSO cycle … is exactly zero “
Except when its not. Your favorite oceanographer Bob Tisdale has documented how ENSO heat imbalances have resulted in several step-ups in global temperature such as in 1988 and 1998. Right now we could be seeing (for the first time in the instrumental period) the reverse – a step down. La Nina ending with no OHC recharge.
Joe… only two questions.
– Where’s the 50s like cooling … not there.
– Where’s the 2 years + la Nina … not there either..
Now what is it… No El Nino until 2012 .. What happened ? you read back what we told you last year and finally understand the situation of a neutral 2011 and warming 2012.
R. Gates says: “The NET energy effect of a full ENSO cycle (La Nina + El Nino) is exactly zero on the earth’s energy budget…”
It is? Where’d you read that? Tamino? Realclimate? Please provide a link.
The easiest way to show that hypothsis is wrong is to look at the average NINO3.4 SST anomalies for the global warming period from 1910 to 1944, the cooling period from 1945 to 1975, and the warming period from 1976 to present (2009, the following graph is from a 2010 post). And then compare the results to global temperature anomalies:
http://i55.tinypic.com/33cwt4j.jpg
R. Gates: Oops, I forgot to include the NINO3.4 SST anomaly graph that accompanies the one in my previous comment:
http://i56.tinypic.com/zxmsg8.jpg
Regards
phlogiston says: “Your favorite oceanographer Bob Tisdale…”
Thanks for the promotion, but I’m a blogger, not an oceanographer.
phlogiston says:
April 6, 2011 at 11:07 am
@You’re welcome, buddy.
Butting in is what blogging is all about (I thought).
” The net energy effect of a full ENSO cycle … is exactly zero “
Except when its not. Your favorite oceanographer Bob Tisdale has documented how ENSO heat imbalances have resulted in several step-ups in global temperature such as in 1988 and 1998. Right now we could be seeing (for the first time in the instrumental period) the reverse – a step down. La Nina ending with no OHC recharge.
_____
ENSO creates no NET heating or cooling of the planet. It does not generate energy, but simply redistributes that which was already in the system. It seems to me that even if Bob is right, or even remotely correct, it wouldn’t matter, as the longer term net heating of the planet is not explained through a the charge/recharge cycle of ENSO, either short term of longer PDO multi-decadal cycles. If there is a multi-decadal “step up” or “step down” it would amount to zero eventually, so we should expect OHC to not just flatten, but trend back to zero and then go negative to balance out these positive years. That is, IF Bob is correct. Fortunately, the next few years (between now and 2020 or so) will really begin to provide much more solid data from which to draw, and see if he is. This all doesn’t address the deeper ocean, which appears to be warming, and represents far more “storage capacity” than the upper 700m or surface waters.
Sorry, but Joe doesn’t get a pass just because he writes about something we might agree on. Technical writing as an important aspect of both communicating clearly and gaining respect. If you can’t write technical reports, and “stream of consciousness” is NOT good technical style, dictate to someone who can. Joe, you would flunk my writing class.
Bob,
You’re probably aware of this paper, and though it is very technical, I think the general notion of the ENSO as a ocean recharge oscillator is worth this read for others:
http://tiny.cc/0fulv
I will spend some time looking over your previous links. Thanks.
John Finn: You are cherry picking look over the entire dataset.
Overall trend is 0.25 degrees per decade consistently over the entire dataset. While you cherry pick 1900-2000 as a higher trend you can do the same over other large periods in the data set for other years prior to CO2 levels accelerating.
A simple example is the period up to the end of WW2 which has a trend greater than 1 degree per decade over 70 years. There are multi-decade periods which have trends far higher than that. However the more you chop the data up, the less credible the trends become. The most credible trend is the longest one.
The argument i am putting forward is that underlying the cyclical behaviour is a much longer term trend than the period of increasing CO2 emissions. What you have stated is not an argument against that. If anything it just shows the folly of cherry picking shorter period trends in long term data.
Bob Tisdale says:
April 5, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Hank Hancock says: “I can’t help but notice in the ENSO index chart that El Nino seems to dominate in a positive PDO phase whereas La Nina seems to dominate in a negative PDO phase. Am I seeing that right?”
Nope. You’ve got it reversed. When La Nina events dominate, the PDO is negative, and when El Nino events dominate, the PDO is postitive.
These statements look the same to me. So who’s got it backwards?
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I find it next to impossible to put any faith in theories and hypothesis that cannot predict what has happened to the SSTs the last year. Wasn’t the shame of the MET office blundered forecasts enough?
If you want to know what the next season will bring, you go to your premeire meteorologists, and you toss the failed GCM outputs in the trash.
pete says:
April 6, 2011 at 6:52 pm
John Finn: You are cherry picking look over the entire dataset.
Comparing 19th and 20th century (100 year) trends is not cherry picking. By simply “eyeballing” the CET graph it can be seen that the 20th century is differs from the previous 200 years – particualry after ~1970.
Overall trend is 0.25 degrees per decade consistently over the entire dataset.
I think you probably mean “per century” not “per decade”. However your point is irrelevant. If the CET contained data going back 1000 years the trend would be less – go back 10000 years it would be lower still. Trends are calculated using the best Least Squares fit. If you had 950 years where temperatures were flat followed by 50 years of rising temperatures the 1000 year trend would be weighted ‘flat’. As trivial example consider a 10 year period wjhere years 1 to 9 have anomalies odf exactly ZERO and Year 10 has anoaly of 1.0, the trend over the period would be ~0.05 deg per year NOT 0.1 per year.
While you cherry pick 1900-2000 as a higher trend you can do the same over other large periods in the data set for other years prior to CO2 levels accelerating.
The trend for 1700-1800 is -0.25 deg per century.
The trend for 1910-2010 is ~0.77 deg per century.
To get anything comparable you need to rely on the highly suspect data in the early part of the record.
Joe, You should challenge Cael to a contest writing about wrestling. Then it would be no contest. Thank you Dr. Bastardi.
Slacko says:
April 6, 2011 at 10:14 pm
These statements look the same to me. So who’s got it backwards?
Look at which item comes first. Slacko indicated the PDO controls ENSO while Bob is stating that ENSO controls the PDO.
John Finn says:
April 7, 2011 at 3:24 am
Comparing 19th and 20th century (100 year) trends is not cherry picking.
Sure it is. If some period starts in a cool mode and ends in a warm mode it will show more warming (or vice versa for cooling). Just because it happens to be century boundaries does not preclude cherry picking … and you are smart enough to know it.
rbateman says:
April 6, 2011 at 11:07 pm
R. Gates says:
April 6, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I find it next to impossible to put any faith in theories and hypothesis that cannot predict what has happened to the SSTs the last year. Wasn’t the shame of the MET office blundered forecasts enough?
If you want to know what the next season will bring, you go to your premeire meteorologists, and you toss the failed GCM outputs in the trash.
_____
You seem confused as to the function of GCM’s. They do not forecast weather or year to year fluctuations in SST’s. They are meant for modeling long-term climate trends, and even at that, are quite imperfect in that they use linear tools to try and model a nonlinear deterministic system exhibiting spatio-temporal chaos.
Richard M says:
April 7, 2011 at 5:29 am
Sure it is. If some period starts in a cool mode and ends in a warm mode it will show more warming (or vice versa for cooling). Just because it happens to be century boundaries does not preclude cherry picking … and you are smart enough to know it.
OK – let’s start from 1940.
The 1940-2010 (71 years) trend is …….. 1.2 deg per century.
Ooops!
R. Gates says:
April 7, 2011 at 7:15 am
I am not confused as to what purposes the GCMs are used for. The MET Office, NOAA and others have fumbled repeatedly by allowing climate model prediction outputs to bias their long-range forecasts. This is big egg on thier faces, and they should have known better than to insert untested forcings into thier forecast.
They put forth a test case, and it failed. Wrong venue for experimentation.
Not just once, but three times, ruling out the prospect of an isolated/outlier event.
Reputations are damaged.
How should they have handled experimental forecasts?
Take a look at volcanic and seismic geoscience. They have been careful not to spoil thier credibility. Reputations are intact and growing.