Tisdale on SST correlation with AGW

Bob, have you looked at how they tune the SST satellites?
When they do something “unexpected”, look at what they consider expected, and where that came from. SST’s staying the same or going down is “unexpected”, and obviously wrong. So they get re-tuned again……………

What is the time lag between ocean heat content changes due to the solar variability and the subsequent re-distribution of energy through the ENSO events, and the then measured impact on global air temperatures ?

If the sun goes “quiet” for an extended period (several decades at least) then would it be reasonable to assume that the radiative driver would favor La Nina episodes and that the step-wise graph would continue, but with the opposite slope?

The ocean is a denialist? Be still my heart!

Heat from a molecule of “greenhouse gas” can not warm the ocean and the reason is surface tension.The ocean will not accept physical heat only radiation.

“When El Niño events dominate a multidecadal era, indicating the tropical Pacific is releasing and distributing more ocean heat than “normal”, global surface temperatures rise. The opposite holds true during epochs when La Niña events dominate.”
Agreed but what about trends from one El Nino dominated multidecadal era to the next?
Or from one La Nina dominated multidecadal era to the next?
We have some evidence from 1600 to date that there has been a slow irregular tropospheric warming since the depths of the LIA so it is likely that there has been a background warming trend that imparted its effects from one El Nino dominated multidecadal era to the next.
Likewise from MWP to LIA there would most likely have been a background cooling trend that imparted its effects from one La Nina dominated multidecadal era to the next.
The only candidate for that sort of pattern since long before industrialisation is changes in solar activity.

Looking at figure 4, following the 1998 el nino, we never then went below (or got near) the previous baseline, the green line. Following the recent el nino, we are possibly going to go below the previous baseline (the brown line) – I say likely since Dr Roy Spencer’s solar reflection data strongly indicates another bout of ocean cooling is under-way. The other notable thing is that the previous major el ninos each maxed out higher than its predecessors, the 2009 event did not.
IMO we’re in the process of experiencing a step down rather than a step up, but this won’t be confirmed for some time yet.

having said that I see that on the smoothed data the 2009 event just pipped 1998.

It seems a discussion of the relationship between total ocean heat content and SST’s would be useful as the longer-term warming signal from increased CO2 would favor being seen more readily in total OHC. Also, as the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere over the oceans has been increasing over the years as clearly shown in SSM/I microwave analysis, The net energy this represents and causes (aside from the other effects) should be brought into the discussion. Finally, what does your analysis show for SST’s for the northern oceans, say north of 60 degrees?

The least squared trend re: total solar irradiance over the past 30 years is mildly negative. The least squared trend re: global SST over the past 30 years is strongly positive.

Re new step change in the post 2010 El-nino, Roy Spencer seems to think that SST hasnt rebounded – at least not yet? He is looking at whole of the world though….
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/07/global-sst-update-still-no-sign-of-resumed-warming/
Isn’t it too early to tell if we have another step change upwards in SST?

Sorry but I’m not buying that. If I cut just a few years from both sides on Figure 2 graph I can get a completely different slope and we can argue which of the two is cherry picking. In fact I can see the same steps on that graph as the ones you present on the ‘rest of the world’ one, but in my opinion it’s just too noisy to draw any conclusions. And if it’s El Nino what’s adding to the temperature, where’s the force that’s keeping it constant in between? Shouldn’t it be returning to ‘balanced state’ if there was no such force? Or is it rather like that a steps-like graph can be created as a sum of a see-saw graph and a slope?

Yes, but where’s the cooling in between the steps?

While this post asks some interesting questions, we don’t really understand what is going on here (yet).
If I may, for a moment, play devil’s advocate, let me hypothesise this:
1. A constant(ish) positive forcing exists (e.g. CO2)
2. While the new energy is entering the system, some unknown damping factor prevents it from warming the SST. The energy must be stored elsewhere (Where???)
3. At the end of an El Nino cycle, the damping temporarily releases and the stored energy warms the SST.
4. The damping then returns and the cycle continues.
Now the above is complete speculation but I propose it as a thought experiment to help us consider if Mr Tisdale’s work actually disproves AGW. Is such a system feasible? Can anybody improve upon it to make it feasible?
Of course feasible doesn’t mean true, but if we can imagine a situation where Mr Tisdale’s analysis could coexist with AGW, then we have not yet disproved it.

Michael J says:
July 10, 2011 at 11:39 am
While this post asks some interesting questions, we don’t really understand what is going on here (yet).
If I may, for a moment, play devil’s advocate, let me hypothesise this:
1. A constant(ish) positive forcing exists (e.g. CO2)
2. While the new energy is entering the system, some unknown damping factor prevents it from warming the SST. The energy must be stored elsewhere (Where???)
3. At the end of an El Nino cycle, the damping temporarily releases and the stored energy warms the SST.
4. The damping then returns and the cycle continues.
Now the above is complete speculation but I propose it as a thought experiment to help us consider if Mr Tisdale’s work actually disproves AGW. Is such a system feasible? Can anybody improve upon it to make it feasible?
Of course feasible doesn’t mean true, but if we can imagine a situation where Mr Tisdale’s analysis could coexist with AGW, then we have not yet disproved it.
____
Yes, there are many ways in which AGW can “coexist” with Bob’s analysis, and your thought experiment is headed in the right direction. Assuming there aren’t other flaws in Bob’s analysis, his underlying assumption is that AGW will be seen in the narrow range and conditional SST parameters he’s created, and furthermore, that no signal from AGW is part of the “stepwise” incremental increase in SST’s related to the EL Nino events. Finally, his analysis includes no discussion as to the association between SST’s, which fluctuate based on many causal factors, and total Ocean Heat Content, which, even though only currently measuring down to 700m, shows a much more steady rise over his period of analysis. You asked in question #2 if the energy must be stored somewhere, and the answer may be the deeper oceans. See:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1
In short, Bob’s analysis, while interesting, in no way disproves the contention that the rapid increases in CO2 over the past few centuries is affecting the earth’s energy budget, and until we see the expect step-wise decrease in SST’s that would have to occur if this is a natural cyclical phenomenon, we still have more heat even in the surface SST’s (not to mention the deeper warming as referenced above) than we had at the beginning of the analysis period.

Seems to me there is something going on here related to the thermohaline current (THC). ENSO could be driven by changes in the 1600 year flow starting in the North Atlantic. What was going on 1600 years ago in the North Atlantic in terms of temperature, and what effect might that have had on what we observe today? The time error bars are probably pretty big (1600 +/- 200 or more?). If many cubic km of water are spreading out on the surface, a slow deep current can affect a large area. It may be we are seeing the effects of faster versus slower THC, larger versus smaller volume, or perhaps warmer versus colder current. More cold water upwelling could keep the SST lower, i.e. a bigger La Niña. Less might make El Niño dominate. Perhaps we are seeing the delayed effects of reduced evaporation of the waters of the Atlantic during the Dark Ages.
I found a paper with excellent discussion of THC issues. It has models and IPCC (my first reaction was “ick”), but it also has GCRs. It discusses technology to get answers. It seems to be balanced, and looking for answers.
http://www.ifm.zmaw.de/fileadmin/files/images/Staff/Quadfasel/8MSFfE_meincke.pdf

Pamela Gray says:
Oceans heat up quickly and cool down slowly. The steps would follow this pattern. More frequent warming periods would lead to step increases. I would hazard a guess that when El Nino’s dominate, steps up without falling back to baseline would dominate SST data. When La Nina’s dominate, steps down to eventual baseline and below would dominate SST data.
+++++
Agreed, Pamela. Can we not use the movement of the solar barycenter and its correlation to solar activity to project back to the 1600 to gain some understanding of the time it takes for this to happen?
Suppose Svensmark is correct. The 10Be deposition rate yields the GCR intensity. The rate of change of the acceleration of the centre of gravity of the sun (not its diameter) around the barycentre correlates well with the magnetic activity (as I read it). So from two completely different inputs it should be possible to derive some general case formula that will predict El Nino’s. That was what Landsheidt did so well and Corbyn continues to do (with more resolution), but both forward and backward.
The El Nino ‘heat decay rate’ should then be extractable, and the gentle temperature rise out of the last ice age detected by simple subtraction. Any change from that final set of sums over the past 60 years would be the AG portion, minus any natural rise in CO2 other GHS’s as a result of ice age and mini-ice age retreat.
From the appearance of things now, if things go normally, Greenland will continue to melt slowly for perhaps 500,000 years and the Northern Forests, Fauna and Fisheries will return to their former glory.

Bob Tisdale says:
July 10, 2011 at 12:44 pm
So, the Satellite era does not give us any perspective on the La Nina dominated SST’s.
We’ll just have to wait some decades to see what that is like.
Some have put the ENSO change in 1998, some in 2007.
My take on when ENSO flipped is 2006/2007, so we are just now seeing the first effects.
The period of 1995 to present being globally flat temps is a result of the wane of the last ‘warm’ ENSO cycle, if the ENSO only flipped in 2006/7.
Your thought on this?

Crispin in Waterloo says:
July 10, 2011 at 1:35 pm
“and the gentle temperature rise out of the last ice age…”
_____
??? There’s been a “gentle temperature rise” out of the last ice age. Really? Please show your proof of this contention. Oh, perhaps you’re talking about the so-called “LIttle Ice Age” which was of course not an ice age at all? What are you talking about here??

In many of Bob’s posts on the SST of different ocean basins it can be seen that the entire South Pacific Ocean has been warming only gradually and the Southern ocean has not been warming at all.. To my eye it seems possible that the Southern Ocean SST has cooled slightly. So over the period from 1981 to present maybe one could say that there has been little or no warming in about 50% of the global ocean.
It would be interesting to see another posting from Bob showing essentially the same graphs as above but with the ocean surface areas reconfigured slightly to zero in on the areas that have warmed substantially and the areas that have not warmed significantly. Would this highlight the heat transfer process even more explicitly?

DirkH says:
July 10, 2011 at 3:04 pm
I’ll be checking your hypothesis!

Bob,
Thanks for your reply to my question. Much to read, and to think about here.
But just to clarify one more thing for me, it seems that you are arguing that re-distribution of heat in and of itself (that is, without the addition of energy), can affect the average sea surface temperature. This seems plausible, as energy can be exchanged between the surface layer and sub-surface regions. What is your take on the total thermal energy of the ocean during the ENSO cycle? You seem to be saying that ocean heat content is not much changed during El Niño, and increases during La Niña. Is that accurate?

Given the rate of charge in La Ninas over the past few decades, it would take a decrease in incoming shortwave radiation to recharge less. Otherwise, SST’s will continue to step up. Seems testable.

And I think Hansen was quantifying the land only total. Unless I read that wrong.

I have a few novel suggestions.
i) I think that the ENSO cycle is directly caused by the fact that the ITCZ is situated north of the equator and not exactly above it. That introduces a solar energy input imbalance within the oceans either side of the ITCZ.. Periodically that imbalance becomes large enough to become unstable and so to restore balance a pulse of warmth is periodically released by the warmer part of the ocean south of the ITCZ to the air and to the broader global oceans on either side of the equator. The fact that the pulse of energy release is spread out across the central Pacific is due to the Earth’s rotation.
ii) Additionally under the influence of solar variability the distance that the ITCZ sits north of the equator changes. It was closer to the equator during the LIA than it was during the MWP and today.
That distance sets the potential scale of the imbalance and the total energy that must be must accumulated before the release occurs so that if there is high solar activity the mid latitude jets move poleward and the ITCZ moves further north. That makes the energy input imbalance across the oceans either side of the ITCZ larger and makes it more difficult for the release to occur so that the pulses of warmth have a greater energy content when they are released hence a bias towards stronger El Ninos when the sun is active and a bias towards La Nina when the sun is less active.
iii) The change in energy input to the oceans when the level of solar activity varies is greatest outside of the tropics and of opposite sign to the change in energy input to the oceans caused by the ENSO cycle within the Tropics.
iv) If the ENSO cycle were not to occur then the north/south oceanic energy imbalance would increase directly in line with a more active sun and the ITCZ would move further and further north until the sun became less active but in fact it does not do so.The distance northward that it can move is limited by the solar induced position of all the other air circulation components via the solar influence on the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere especially at the poles. The energy imbalance can only increase until it reaches a limit set by the strength of the solar resistance to the northward movement of the ITCZ and then it ‘pops the cork’ in the form of an El Nino. As the El Nino dies away the recharge (La Nina) process takes over until the next time.
Thus the ENSO cycle modulates the bottom up oceanic effect on the atmosphere and the latitudinal shifting of the mid latitude jets modulates the top down solar effect on the atmosphere.
All climate change is a consequence of that constant interaction but the existence of the irregular equatorial release of solar energy from the oceans is a by product of the uneven landmass distribution between the two hemispheres. It is the predominance of ocean in the southern hemisphere that allows a greater accumulation of solar energy south of the equator and it is that landmass imbalance which allows the ITCZ to be pushed north of the equator in the first place.
Over geological timescales the strength and/or existence of the ENSO phenomenon would therefore be dictated by the extent to which the landmass distribution changes.

I believe Bob Tisdale’s work is profoundly important and increases our understanding of how the earth’s climate works in the multi-decadal time frame. It also provides evidence that the “consensus” view of “global warming” is probably wrong. The most striking thing this work shows is the proximate cause of the mid 20th century cooling. It was a cyclical period of La Nina dominance that leads the cooling and not the clumsy “sulphates” excuse that always seemed a case of clutching at straws. Similarly the two warming periods of the twentieth century are seen as been directly, if not ultimately, caused by two periods of sea surface temperature rises and these were of essentially equal magnitude.
See, from Bob’s website – http://i56.tinypic.com/343r903.jpg
The early 20th century sea surface temperature rises were certainly not caused by CO2 because concentrations of CO2 were then far too low to provide sufficient forcing. Bob’s work ties in nicely with “Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Natural Science, Vol.2, No.11, 1211-1224 (2010), doi:10.4236/ns.2010.211149”
“We learn that the recovery from the LIA has proceeded continuously, roughly in a linear manner, from 1800-1850 to the present. The rate of the recovery in terms of temperature is about0.5°C/100 years and thus it has important implications for understanding the present global warming. . . .
The multi-decadal oscillation of a period of 50 to 60 years was superposed on the linear change; it peaked in 1940 and 2000, causing the halting of warming temporarily after 2000. These changes are natural changes, and in order to determine the contribution of the manmade greenhouse effect, there is an urgent need to identify them correctly and accurately and re-move them from the present global warming/cooling trend.
On the recovery from the Little Ice Age, Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Natural Science,
Vol.2, No.11, 1211-1224 (2010), doi:10.4236/ns.2010.211149”
It is clear that our understanding of the causative processes that drive these sea surface temperature changes is very poor. It is certainly not adequate to explain how much, if any, of the late 20th century sea surface temperature changes, which directly caused the measured atmospheric warming, were caused by anthropogenic factors. The current “narrative” of CO2 caused warming simply doesn’t fit the data at all. I personally fail to see how CO2 can cause ocean temperatures to rise before causing atmospheric temperatures to rise which is absolutely necessary if the 20th century warming can even possibly be attributed to CO2. To be honest, I am not at all convinced that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere can materially affect ocean temperatures in any way, which means that CO2 cannot drive climate change, it simply adds a small warming signal on top of the existing, “natural” change.

I consider (for many reasons) that ocean temperature is the significant metric of global warming and because of this, I consider that the land based temperature record which has additionally been allowed to become so bastersized would be better ditched. I consider it necessary that more effort is made to see what extent there is any warming of the oceans and to better understand the processes involved. For my part, I consider that to the extent that there has been any significant warming in ocean heat content during the last 50 years this is overwhelmingly likely to be due to changes in cloud cover and thus the amount of solar energy reaching the oceans.
It seems to me that not enough thought has gone into the question whether the radiative warming theory/conjecture can actually work with respesct to the oceans. I say this since there is a fundamental difference between how the land and air over the land warms/can warm, and how the oceans and air over the oceans warm/can warm.
In this regard, it is necessary to bear in mind the following:-.
1. It is almost certainly impossible for DWLWR to warm the ocean. Due to the wave length of downwelling LWR, it can, at most, penetrate but a few microns and there is no sensible theory how energy that penetrates to that depth only can be mixed and absorbed into the first 10 to 30 m depth of the ocean (and thence down into the deep ocean)..
2. The first few microns of the ocean is in any case little more than windswept spray and spume and therefore the DWLWR does not even get to the surface skin. Such DWLWR that may make its way to the first few microns of the ocean skin merely heats this layer and is immediately ‘burnt’ off/carried away in evaporation and convection and therefore does not penetrate the ocean and can therefore not become well mixed into the deep ocean .
3. It follows from the above that it is overwhelmingly likely that all heat in the ocean is the result of solar energy (and not that of DWLWR).
4. But the warmists would argue that even if solar energy is the source of ocean heat, backradiation/DWLWR in the atmosphere above the oceans slows down the rate at which the oceans would otherwise give up their heat, ie., it slows heat loss. Whilst, this argument may have some validity with respect to how heat is lost from the surface land and how the atmosphere over the land behaves, it does not necessarily work with regard to the oceans.
5. The air temperature over land whilst influenced by the amount of energy received by the land, the latent heat capacity of the land/its ability to retain and give up its heat, is also signifiicantly influenced by atmospheric circulation patterns. There is usually a large diurnal temperature range over land.
6. Contrast the position with respect to the oceans. The air temperature above the ocean is usually very close to the ocean temperature. Usually, there is all but no diurnal temperature difference. The ocean is a huge heat reservoir and because of this almost limitless source of heat, it usually maintains a steady air temperature above it at all times during the day and night. Thus the air above the ocean does not insulate the heat loss from the ocean but rather the air temperature is the temperature that it is directly because of the amount of solar energy absorbed by the ocean (over time) and the heat loss from the ocean. .
7. Further to 6 above, it is easy to see the difference between land and ocean with an every day example. Over land a cloudy sky at night can insulate and reduce heat loss such that night time temperatures may ‘hold up’ on a cloudy night, so too possibly DWLWR can slow the heat loss from the land. However, over the oceans a cloudy sky at night does not make the night any warmer. It does not insulate the ocean or such insulating effect that it may have is completely dwarfed by the huge heat reservoir of the ocean itself. Likewise, the effect of DWLWR, if any, is completely dwarfed by the immense heat reservoir of the ocean itself.
8. Thus unlike the land/air above land (where there is significant difference between air temperature and the land, for example consider a tarmac road, or even hot sand verses air temperature and the significant diurnal range over land), the ocean/air above ocean is in equilibrium balance subject to convection and evaporation. Additionally, if so called ‘greenhouse’ gases were an important factor, again unlike the position over land, water vapour would dominate (the levels of water vapour being generally higher over water) and would dwarf the effect of CO2.
In summary, I consider there are many reasons to consider that CO2 has little (or very probably no measurable effect) on ocean temperatures.

Our rather rampant sun and the el Ninos of the of recent history has pumped a few calories into the oceans. This warmness of the waters is slowly but inexorably being depleted by the underside of the floating ice sheets, thus giving some a false impression of global warming when the reverse is true. The temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic melt very little ice, it is our thermostat kicking in to dump the heat. The ocean is both a heat bank and the source of our refrigerant, the phase changes of water in both ice and water vapour in the atmosphere are the thermostats that fight continually a chaotic open piped heat pump trying to balance itself, in the face of ever changing inputs and out puts, thus we have weather. Mr Tisdale the anthropological part of global warming is a fiction for control of people and not climate.

Very interesting to look at the western pacific warm pool right now. It doesn’t look warm at all after a fairly strong La Nina. I don’t think anyone has a definitive answer on this topic yet.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif

“Obviously if it was to continue tropical temperatures would soon rise beyond the rqange compatible with biology and ocean hypoxia would cause a mass extinction event. ”
Do you even have the slightest idea on how high temperatures would have to rise to fit that requirement?
Do we know that unidirectional warming has never occurred before? – IE before we started measuring things well…if it was of short duration, it probably wouldn’t even be seen.
That is a lot of conjecture Izen..and maybe there is something there, but I think you should rest easy and remember just because we have not seen something does not mean its a cause for worry, study yes, but panic later when we know that the panic is warrented….
As for stopping a process, good luck.
I don’t think there is anything here that is driectly scary or anything. Rest easy, it will be ok.

How do we know that anthropogenic greenhouse gases aren’t lessening the severity/extent of La Nina and increasing that of El Nino?
Changes in wind patterns are a large factor in whether ENSO is cooling, warming, or by how much. It would seem anthropogenic activities of various sorts could have an effect on wind patterns although I suspect land use changes have more effect than GHGs.
In any event you can’t just say ENSO exists in a vacuum outside of human influence and not offer substantiating evidence any more than the usual climate boffins can say it is influenced by human influence without substantiating evidence. No double standards please.

Tim Folkerts:
I need to comment on your two points responding to richard verney:
1)Conservation of energy. The lapse rate raises the height of the tropopause rather than warming the surface (though there is some surface warming-see next point).
2) UWLWR. Extra downwelling LWR in my humble opinion has a zero effect on the background energy flow from ocean to air because ALL of it gets converted to more upward flowing convection, conduction, radiation and evaporation. The only part of the ocean that gets any warmer is the region of interaction just a few microns deep. The ocean skin (1mm deep and 0.3C cooler than the ocean bulk below) then appears to provide a buffer so that the temperature differential between the skin (averaged out globally) and the ocean bulk below remains the same so that the energy flow from bulk to skin remains unchanged. Think of it like a tributary joining a river. There is no change in the speed of flow from the river upstream because that is dictated by gravity. In the ocean the energy flow from bulk to skin is dictated by atmospheric pressure which in turn dictates the energy value of the latent heat of vaporisation.
So all the extra energy from GHGs (whether human or not) goes not to warming the ocean bulk nor reducing the rate of cooling of the ocean bulk but rather to changing both the speed of the water cycle and the surface air pressure distribution from an effect on the height of the tropopause. But even so it is a miniscule unmeasurable effect compared to solar and ocean induced natural variability.

Bob, I’ve noted that you do not wish to extend your work to cover long past historical events such as MWP and LIA or global (as opposed to regional) cloudiness trends and I’ve accepted your recommendation that one should refer to Pacific Multidecadal Oscillations rather than PDO but I was hoping for your response to a couple of points I made above as follows:
i) I think that the ENSO cycle is directly caused by the fact that the ITCZ is situated north of the equator and not exactly above it. That introduces a solar energy input imbalance within the oceans either side of the ITCZ.. Periodically that imbalance becomes large enough to become unstable and so to restore balance a pulse of warmth is periodically released by the warmer part of the ocean south of the ITCZ to the air and to the broader global oceans on either side of the equator. The fact that the pulse of energy release is spread out across the central Pacific is due to the Earth’s rotation.
ii) Additionally under the influence of solar variability the distance that the ITCZ sits north of the equator changes. It was closer to the equator during the LIA than it was during the MWP and today.
Is there anything in your work which is inconsistent with either of those propositions?

Another way at looking at it is to consider that the La Nina state is the natural position of the Pacific. El Nino is a disturbance that interrupts the natural system which is triggered by the westerlies that occur over the warm pool in the west. This interaction moves the Walker pump further east which weakens the trade winds, and stops the upwelling of cold water off the South American coast which allows it to warm in the East with some sloshing back of what warm water is left in the West. The SOI index has tracked this trigger since the late 1800’s and basically measures the sea level pressure difference between Darwin and Tahiti. When Tahiti sea level pressure is lower than Darwin the trigger for El Nino is present, the state of the warm pool also being a factor. The SOI index is also very close to the PDO when comparing the 30 year trends, long term pressure differentials in the Pacific effectively could be a large part of the PDO cycle.
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/221
The PDO is the indicator/instigator of the ENSO predominant state over decadal time frames. The Pacific equator being the major variable in determining overall trends in global SST’s. PDO/ENSO either warms or cools depending on the balance of the cold water upwelling allowed in the eastern Pacific measured against the amount of solar warming. This balance is then redistributed to the remaining oceans with the Atlantic receiving last (explains why the AMO lags PDO). The upward step changes in world SST since 1981 is expected with a positive PDO along with solar activity being at the top of a wave not seen since the MWP. The solar influence being chemical with a hint of radiative. Negative PDO periods should show a step in the reverse direction, especially when coupled with decreasing solar. This all ties in very nicely with the solar powerwave concept.
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/218

Bob Tisdale said:
“But you should not expect me to have interest in your comments on those topics.”
My two points to which I was hoping for a response did not refer to the topics you have no interest in. I was directly addressing the very areas you are interested in. They were:
i) I think that the ENSO cycle is directly caused by the fact that the ITCZ is situated north of the equator and not exactly above it. That introduces a solar energy input imbalance within the oceans either side of the ITCZ.. Periodically that imbalance becomes large enough to become unstable and so to restore balance a pulse of warmth is periodically released by the warmer part of the ocean south of the ITCZ to the air and to the broader global oceans on either side of the equator. The fact that the pulse of energy release is spread out across the central Pacific is due to the Earth’s rotation.
ii) Additionally under the influence of solar variability the distance that the ITCZ sits north of the equator changes. It was closer to the equator during the LIA than it was during the MWP and today.
Is there anything in your work which is inconsistent with either of those propositions?
Point i) is especially pertinent since it proposes a physical cause for the basic ENSO phenomenon which has never been suggested before as far as I know.
Point ii) goes to the heart of the limits on the potential scale of the ENSO phenomenon at any given time.
I appreciate your expertise in all matters ENSO and so would appreciate your opinions.

Bob Tisdale says:
July 11, 2011 at 2:32 pm
In the ENSO graphs you linked I can easily pick out the dry and wet times in central Texas. The drought of record was in the 1950’s and corresponds perfectly with La Nina conditions that persisted through most of that decade.
The correlation is very good and reliable. If one wanted a record which goes back to before the industrial revolution which began in the 18th century I should think it might be dug up (maybe literally) in histories of central American and Southern Plains natives. One must go back to at least the 16th century or so to make any determination of whether or not industrialization had any significant effect on ENSO. The graph you produced has, since 1950, an easily seen trend of higher lows and and higher highs in SST which hasn’t abated. Any warmist will pounce on that and declare the correlation between industrial activity and less severe La Nina and more severe El Nino is not coincidental but rather causative. I quite agree with you that we can’t know for sure due to limited historical records but the data you produced for my edification only strengthened the case for anthropogenic influence given the trend during the past 60 years. A longer record is needed to clarify that as there are cycles of solar activity with periodicities measured in centuries, millenia, and possibly even longer periods.

@Stephen Wilde
“So all the extra energy from GHGs (whether human or not) goes not to warming the ocean bulk nor reducing the rate of cooling of the ocean bulk but rather to changing both the speed of the water cycle”
re; speeding up the water cycle
Bingo! No need to continue past that point. This is the thermostat which limits how warm a water world can become without signifcant change in the heat source (the sun) which drives it.
In basic terms we have a vertically oriented heat pump where the hot side is the ocean surface and the cold side is the cloud deck. The working fluid is water and the mechanism is the phase change between liquid and gas. It’s exactly the same principle used in artificial heat pumps that use working fluids such as freon. The extra energy on the hot side caused by non-condensing GHGs just makes the heat pump run faster and because the energy is transported from hot to cold side is latent heat of vaporization there’s no change in sensible temperature at the hot side. Evaporation, convection, and condensation rate rises instead. More work (physics definition of work) is being performed by the pump as the mass of water being lifted to the cloud deck increases.
An even happier consequence of this is that the speed of horizontally oriented heat pump also increases and the surplus in hot side energy from GHGs results in no sensible temperature change on the hot side (tropics) but rather heat pump speed increases and in the horizontal pump the cold side is the surface at high latitudes. So we get more even heat distribution from low to high latitudes. We’ll see this effect in arctic sea ice extent. This is also thermostatically controlled because as the temperature differential between tropics and poles lessens there is less potential energy to drive the pump. As well, as sea ice increases or decreases this modulates the effectiveness of the polar radiator. As ice extent decreases the ability to dump ocean heat into the atmosphere and from there out to space increases and vice versa.
This is physically how it must be on a water world. Two flies in the ointment are that the earth is 70% water world and GHGs interact quite differently with land surfaces which can and do have a surface temperature increase due to GHGs and the second fly in the ointment is water’s third phase – ice. If it ever gets cold enough for any reason for sea ice to increase in extent for long enough a positive feedback where sea ice breeds even more sea ice takes over. A water world is not a water world if the water’s surface is frozen. In that case the water cycle comes to a screeching halt and GHG influence becomes like over land except in this case the albedo of the “land” rises from the approximate 15% of dirt and rocks to the 90% of ice and snow which is what causes the positive feedback from increasing ice in the first place.
At this point in the earth’s history it is in phase where it is dangerously cold as far as the biosphere is concerned teetering on the edge of being a water world and an ice world. Any sane informed person should be worried, if they worry at all, about cooling not warming. Warming is good. Cooling is bad.

@Tisdale
The graph you said was the commonly used 121 month rolling average. The others are too noisy to eyeball much of anything.
http://i54.tinypic.com/dh9508.jpg
In this it’s easy to see the drought of record in the 1950’s and every other drought in south central Texas as well as the floods. Since 1950 there is a series of 3-4 higher lows and 3-4 higher highs and, interestingly, since around 1950 sunspot number plateaued at the highest level in the 400 year record of sunspot counts (Modern Maximum) and didn’t begin to retreat until last year or year before into what appears to be shaping up as a grand minimum.
Here’s a data base of the artificial lake I live on you can pull down and graph beginning in 1943. It was actually impounded almost a decade earlier but by 1943 was filled up to conservation pool level (681’MSL).
http://www.lcra.org/library/media/public/docs/histlvls/travis.xls
About a 24 month rolling average I should think would suffice and should look strikingly like the pattern in the 121-month rolling average of ENSO SST you posted.
La Nina and El Nino both wreak havoc here with drought and flood respectively but floods are easier to deal with than droughts. Optimal ENSO state is La Nada.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080627163156.htm
Maize first domesticated 10,000 years ago in Mexico.
This is probably ideal for estimating rainfall in the region of interest. It’s perfect for carbon dating and botanical experts very likely can tell from grain size or something like that whether it grew in a wet or dry year.
As far as that goes it probably doesn’t have to be cultivated crops but any wild plants that exihibit characteristic changes according to rainfall. I bet the results of that where I live will quite accurately reflect ENSO back to the beginning of the Holocene interglacial.
Sounds like an excellent area for a doctoral thesis for a University of Texas (Austin) post grad. Won’t even be any travel required.

Dave Springer said:
“GHGs interact quite differently with land surfaces which can and do have a surface temperature increase due to GHGs ”
True, but horizontal air movements take care of that since the oceans are the majority of the surface and remain in control.
and:
“the second fly in the ointment is water’s third phase – ice. If it ever gets cold enough for any reason for sea ice to increase in extent for long enough a positive feedback where sea ice breeds even more sea ice takes over.”
Not as big a problem as you would think because under cold dry air ice sublimates straight to vapour pretty fast and that involves even bigger energy transfers than liquid to vapour.

Bob Tisdale says:
July 12, 2011 at 5:06 am
I have no need to argue with you about this, especially when you refuse to document anything. When I ask you for documentation, you provide excuses.
Hi Bob, good to hear from you again, you must have missed the links I provided again. Read back, I believe there is some good documentation.
Nonsense. We’ve been through this time and again. The PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO, but it’s also influenced by Sea Level pressure and that accounts for the differencs in periodicity. I’ve illustrated it, described it, documented it, and animated it for you, and all you come back with is conjecture.
The ENSO cycle is driven by more than one factor which makes lining up the PDO index a moving target. Sometimes the PDO leads ENSO and vice versa which means the case is not clear, there are a lot of examples where the warming water is in the Pacific NW before the onset of La Nina, I think my graph clearly shows that. The PDO index is also very closely correlated with the Pacific NW SST’s. as shown earlier.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/pdo_enso.png
I have stated all along that ESNO might well be the driver of the PDO but maintain it is a useful tool for determining ENSO type/frequency and modulation. The important point is why do we have 30 year periods of one dominating the other… I think the jury is still out and am not convinced by your evidence.
But more importantly I believe your long held theory of La Nina driving the El Nino phase is flawed:
“Also during the La Nina, stronger trade winds reduce cloud cover, which allows more sunlight to warm the tropical Pacific to depth, and through that increase in sunlight, the La Nina recharges the warm water in the Pacific Warm Pool for the next El Nino.”
Perhaps we can discuss this in a calm and rational manner, Anthony permitting?

Matt G says:
July 12, 2011 at 2:44 pm
This data set shows quite clearly that since the 1900′s all ocean surface temperatures in ENSO regions (3.4), (3), (4) and (1.2) have warmed since the 1900′s
My plot uses the ENSO 3.4 data from HADSST and gets a similar result to you.
Bob Tisdale says:
July 10, 2011 at 7:54 am
An incease in Downward Shortwave Radiation from a La Nina event provides the fuel for the next El Nino. Example: Due to unusually strong trade winds over the western tropical Pacific, the 1995/96 La Nina provided a substantial increase in tropical Pacific OHC.
http://i56.tinypic.com/a5dhy0.jpg
That inreased in Tropical Pacific OHC fueled the 1997/98 “El Nino of the Century.” So the lag was less than two years. Keep in mind the solar cycle was at a minumum while the OHC rose in 1995/96.
Just wondering if this graph is correct, The area is over the whole pacific( should it be the warm pool only after La Nina?) and is 24S and 24S a reasonable area to consider or perhaps too large? The equatorial deep sea records taken at the equator and the 150m deep (taken over the area you use) at the BOM site do not seem to agree with your graph.
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/oceantemp/pastanal.shtml
Also when looking at 1996 Jan to Dec which is the main area of warm spike on your graph the ENSO 4.3 is actually in a slight El Nino state, the La Nina’s each side are not strong. Would it be worth while plotting the ENSO record over your graph and expanding it out to see the detail?
Looking at the warm pool 120E-150E in early 1997 there is no heat to speak of which would be quite common at the early stage of a big El Nino. I do no see any evidence of a build up of warm pool heat after La Nina before the monster 97/98 El Nino unless we differ on the area of the warm pool?
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/oceanography/wrap_ocean_analysis.pl?id=IDYOC007&year=1997&month=04
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/oceanography/wrap_ocean_analysis.pl?id=IDYOC007&year=1997&month=08

Bob Tisdale says:
July 10, 2011 at 7:54 am
Your graph is not out by a year perhaps?
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/sst_eq_long.png

Stephen Wilde says:
July 12, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Dave Springer said:
“GHGs interact quite differently with land surfaces which can and do have a surface temperature increase due to GHGs ”
True, but horizontal air movements take care of that since the oceans are the majority of the surface and remain in control.
Partially true. If it were completely true then continentality would not exist but continentality is a phenomenon that was first observed 200 years ago and still exists today. Seasonal temperature variation over continental interiors is far greater than same latitude over the ocean. Horizontal heat pumps lessen this to some extent but demonstrably do not eliminate it. The effect is primarily because the sun heats the ocean down to 30 meters or more and the heat cannot escape radiatively due to water’s almost complete opacity to LWIR. So basically the ocean gets heated to some depth at the speed of light but for that energy to escape from depth it must rely on convection which is nowhere the speed of light and at the surface it escapes primarily through evaporation not radiation or conduction. The net effect is the mixed layer of the ocean stores summertime insolation for many months and releases it in the winter when the air is drier and evaporation rate is commensurately higher. Land on the other hand only gets heated to a depth of about 1 meter and gives it up so quickly when the sun isn’t shining that you get large diurnal temperature variation to say nothing of being able to store it for months. Because land can be heated by downwelling LWIR and water cannot GHGs can and do effectively increase surface equilibrium temperature over land but not over water.

Wrong link for the movie. This is the correct link.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/SST_movie1.wmv
And that should be Kelvin wave not Rosby.

Bob Tisdale says:
July 14, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Before we go any further Bob, let me make one point very clear. I did not attribute any comment to you in the last post. The moderator changed my post by applying his own italics the first paragraph of my post.
I have a copy of my original post saved on my browser.
———————–
Bob Tisdale says:
July 13, 2011 at 6:19 pm
I have provided documentation showing that La Nina does not load El Nino and shown in fact a cooler warm pool is the norm before El Nino. If you wish to ignore this then so be it, the chances of reasonable dialogue seem bleak.
Your interpretation of the 1996 La Nina warming is very misplaced, the NODC data as specified earlier is too broad. If you look at the TOC data it is very clear that the 1996 warming is occurring in the Eastern Pacific with very little happening in the west that could be attributed to La Nina. I expect you to ignore this point.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/gif/compa_ew.gif
[Reply] After checking this, I’ve removed the italics from the post at 2011/07/14 at 5:51 am. Don’t know how it happened, looks like an assumption was made. RT-mod

Bob Tisdale wrote (July 13, 2011 at 2:27 am) “So HADISST is more of an observations-based SST reconstruction while ERSST.v3b is more statistics based.”
Is not HadISST also based on a raft of untenable assumptions that are NOT a foundation of ERSSTv3b? Reinserting spatiotemporally biased original measurements can’t compensate for the mess created by bad HadISST assumptions.

Geoff Sharp wrote (July 12, 2011 at 12:41 pm) “The important point is why do we have 30 year periods of one dominating the other”
Spatial distribution of martime-continent contrast & north-south asymmetry. See figure 10 here:
Carvalho, L.M.V.; Tsonis, A.A.; Jones, C.; Rocha, H.R.; & Polito, P.S. (2007). Anti-persistence in the global temperature anomaly field. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics 14, 723-733.
http://www.icess.ucsb.edu/gem/papers/npg-14-723-2007.pdf
Compare with:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/AMOTEMPS.jpg
It’s simple.

@Crispin in Waterloo (July 10, 2011 at 1:35 pm)
Some misunderstanding at play. Corbyn does NOT claim to use solar barycentric radial acceleration for terrestrial forecasting.

Bob Tisdale says:
July 15, 2011 at 5:45 am
Geoff Sharp: Excuse me for assuming the error in attribution was your fault. But it had been in place for 2 hours before I replied, and you apparently had seen no need to correct the error.
Some of my posts were not published, but it seems you have an inside knowledge?
Something smells around here. You have made a new friend Bob.
[Reply] Geoff: please clarify: have any of your posts still not been published, apart from the one complaining that one had been deleted when in fact is was just in the queue with everyone elses? TB-mod

Geoff Sharp says:
Your credibility is falling off you. But don’t worry I will probably be banned soon.
But if not I have a challenge for you. Lets go head to head with Anthony as a moderator so we can deal with things in a scientific matter.
A separate thread where we debate your theory on the La Nina heating that feeds El Nino? I have provided evidence that is in opposition, are you up to the task?
[Reply] Anthony doesn’t have the time for this. Take it to email or another venue. TB-mod

Geoff Sharp says:
July 15, 2011 at 7:01 am
[Reply] Anthony doesn’t have the time for this. Take it to email or another venue. TB-mod
Thanks tallbloke, an easy escape for the man that has no email contact point on his blog?

Bob Tisdale says:
July 15, 2011 at 1:06 am

Dave Springer: Further to my earlier comments, Wolter (the creator of the Multivariate ENSO Index) and co-author Timlin also note that the recent “surge” in El Nino strength is not abnormal. Refer to Wolter and Timlin (2011) paper “El Niño/Southern Oscillation behaviour since 1871 as diagnosed in an extended multivariate ENSO index (MEI.ext)”. They note in their abstract, ““Our effort is designed to help with the assessment of ENSO conditions through as long a record as possible to be able to differentiate between ‘natural’ ENSO behaviour in all its rich facets, and the ‘Brave New World’ of this phenomenon under evolving GHG-related climate conditions. So far, none of the behaviour of recent ENSO events appears unprecedented, including duration, onset timing, and spacing in the last few decades compared to a full century before then.” Link to abstract:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.2336/abstract

What part of “the industrial revolution began in the 18th century” don’t you understand?
I’ve stated several times now that looking at ENSO beginning in the 19th century (1871 in this case) is not outside the bounds of anthropogenic influence. Before you can even begin to say what’s within natural bounds and what isn’t you’re going to need at least a comparably long period of time before the industrial revolution as after to compare.
For instance, if we mark the beginning of the industrial revolution as the year 1750, which is the commonly used date, then we would need ENSO data going back to the year 1500 so that we may compare 250 years of pre-anthropogenic ENSO (1500-1750) to 250 years of post-anthropogenic ENSO (1750-2000).
I don’t know how to state this in any clearer way.