Guest post by Joe Bastardi
I did not say boo at some of the “shoot the messenger posts” on my “Say No to El Nino”, including one person who wanted to throw out everything I said simply because of my writing style. For the record, I excelled at my technical writing courses in college, but I had a week to prepare a paper.
In the blogs, which I shared a post with you all on this matter, I try to get info out lightning fast, which is what I did with the No no to Nino post. I realize my writing is less than perfect, ( my dad actually “corrects” my writing, there are stacks of blogs at home with more red ink than the national budget) but it doesnt take a genius to see the forecast was made, and anyone objective about it can see the modeling is turning my way. And with good reason, that is what is going to happen ( the cold event will strengthen again, much like late 2008 into 2009, but not to the extent of the first part in 10-11).
This is what happens in cold pdo’s, there tends to be longer cold events, and it has an effect on the global temp. BTW the AMO may turn cold next year and we may have a cold AMO/PDO for the first time since the 1970s. 2012 globally could average below normal.
In any case, keep an eye on this and see if I am correct, okay?.. The SST will fall, as it did in the cold event of 08-09 back to levels that will spur even a greater global temp drop. The forecast for a return to normal for the spring of last year was right, there was a bounce up, that will also end, and the forecast now is for global temps as measured by objective sats to fall as low as -.25 C by March. And the models are now showing it, both the fall of ENSO3.4 temps and global temps.
But the point was to again call attention to the Hansen super nino idea because he knows there is a global temp response to warmer after a warm event. And he keeps doing this, ( this will be number 3 since the 97-98 event.) The very fact he does is an admission that it is the ocean, absent solar and volcanic activity, that drives the global temp. In addition one can argue the warming the last 200 years overall was simply us pulling out of a very cold period.
But there is major disconnect now between CO2’s continued rise and the overall leveling off of the temp, and the response to the global temp to the enso3.4 antics and the PDO overall is there for all to be seen.
So get out the red pens, you Bastardi Bashers and let the public know about my less than perfect off the cuff writing skills. In the meantime, people of goodwill in this debate are watching to see what right or wrong is, and certainly the article written before expressing where this was going has more merit than the wishful thinking of someone wishing to see pre-conceived global temperature notions come to pass.
Just Say No to El Nino, at least till 2012
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Bruce of Newcastle says: “Bob – Yes you are correct, I should use terminology like ‘the process underlying ENSO, the PDO, and the AMO which is linked to a ~65 year sinusoidal cycling in the temperature record’, however we lack a simplified name for the process, hence the shortening ‘PDO/AMO’. “
The PDO is inversely related to the detrended SST anomalies of the North Pacific , but the AMO is detrended North Atlantic SST anomalies and NINO3.4 SST anomalies are the “undetrended” SST anomalies of the NINO3.4 region. There’s no way to combine the three and come up with an underlying process unless you reverse the sign of the PDO. Wouldn’t it then be best to detrend the SST anomalies of the North Pacific so that you’re comparing apples to apples and forget about the PDO?
The CFS forecast was updated yesterday and increasingly supports no El Nino at least for this year.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/nino34SSTMon.gif
This run is increasingly negative with only one almost touching the mean, whereas before there were far more. Hence, suggests La Nina returning for the Autumn season.
Not only is the AMO on a significant fall, but North Atlantic SSTs shows this significant change from the beginning of the year until recently, very clearly.
Atlantic surface ocean temperatues mainly above average.
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-110116.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-110213.gif
Significant decrease in surface Atantic ocean temperatures.
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-110515.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-110612.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-110717.gif
.Gates, this post is not on sea ice. Quit the hijacking of the thread.
I am very interested in Tisdale’s observations, and have great respect for his ability to stick to the facts. It is very interesting that a “cold” PDO is actually warmer, in the totality of the Pacific, than a “warm” PDO. However, with so much cold water just off California, the “local” effect seems cold.
I’m not sure I agree that the PDO is merely a reaction to El Ninos and La Ninas. The signature I look for is a backwards letter “C” in the map of the Pacific anomalies, above the equator. The “C” is red in a “warm” PDO and blue in a “cold” PDO, with the curve of the “C” pressing against California.
During the last El Nino the “cold” signature did weaken and even break into fragmented blobs of blue, however it never entirely vanished, and there was most definitely never the red backwards letter “C,” which I see as a proof of a “warm” PDO. Therefore, no matter what numbers Tisdale saw on his highly accurate spreadsheets, the “cold” signature endured despite a “warm” El Nino.
I think a fellow like Bastardi focuses on the effects of the pattern, in terms of its ability to shift the jet stream, pump up high pressure, and dig trofs. One of the major effects of the cold water off California is that a high pressure ridge is more likely to be established at that spot, which re-routes storms and jet streams, and can lead to major changes in weather patterns. (For example, during the winter of 1976-77 a ridge locked in there, bringing drought to California, warmth to Alaska, and a brutally cold winter in the east of the USA as arctic air steadily drained down the east side of the locked-in ridge.)
It is a pity that the winter of 1976-77 is just before we have satellite data. The thermometer data we have suggests it was cold, and most who lived in the east of the USA would agree that the “cold” PDO was cold, that winter. (People in Alaska might differ.) However if Tisdale is correct, there might have been a great deal of warm water in the central Pacific that went unmeasured, that year.
I think the pattern matters more than a bland average of world-wide temperatures. I have seen maps of “average” patterns for El Ninos and La Ninas. I would like to see that expanded, and see maps of average patterns for El Ninos during warm PDOs vs cold PDOs, and for La Ninas during warm PDOs vs cold PDOs. I think the differences in the patterns might be enlightening.
Bruce of Newcastle says: “Bob – Yes you are correct, I should use terminology like ‘the process underlying ENSO, the PDO, and the AMO….
Current state:
The nature and origin of the AMO is uncertain, and it remains unknown whether it represents a persistent periodic driver in the climate system, or merely a transient feature.
The PDO goes through warm and cool phases of the cycle with phases typically lasting about 30 years. It is closely related to the (inverted) SOI / ENSO. The causes of the oscillation are currently unknown.
Sooner or later the above ‘known unknowns’ will become ‘known knowns’.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AP.htm
“The causes of the oscillation are currently unknown.
As regards ENSO I think the cause is the fact that due to the current ocean/landmass distribution the ITCZ is always situated north of the equator.
As a result there is an imbalance of solar shortwave input to the oceans either side of the equator.
Periodically that imbalance leads to a temperature differential which is released in the form of an El Nino event.
As regards AMO I think that is a delayed response to ENSO as the warm water spreads through the ocean basins towards the north pole. The response time is further extended by the narrowing of the access point around Spitzbergen which slows the passage of warm Atlantic surface waters into the Arctic Ocean.
Thus although we have been in a negative PDO for a while now the north Atlantic remains on the warm side with a continuing effect on Arctic summer ice cover. That should change when AMO turns negative over the next year or two.
Caleb says:
July 24, 2011 at 7:47 am
As for that massive blocking ridge that formed over the Pacific Northwest 1976-77, that was directly after the massive cloud-seeding effort conducted in the Sierra in 1975. The kicker was that Nevada County, the center of the cloud seeding program, ended up being the center of the drought out West.
I won’t say that the cloud seeding caused the blockage, but they sure hit a nerve.
Vuk at July 24, 2011 at 8:37 am
Vuk – When Kepler developed the orbital mathematics of the planets they didn’t know what gravity was, which didn’t prevent empirical models from being developed. This is a similar example. Statistical methods clearly show apparently coupled roughly 65 year oscillations in the ENSO, AMO and HadCRUT datasets which persist over at least two wavelengths in the latter two, which is as far as the data goes. The hypothesis is that these oscillations, which appear sinusoidal, are linked. I think this is a very reasonable hypothesis, which if true appears by quantification to have caused about 0.27 C of the apparent temperature rise during the 20th Century – as an artefact of the choice of endpoints 1900 and 2000.
I also submit that solar magnetic effects as illustrated by the correlation of previous solar cycle length and temperature can be quantified as about half of the temperature rise in the century. Interestingly this is supported by Prof Rao the past head of the Indian Space Agency and a GCR physicist – which adds a link between pSCL and GCR’s which has had little examination by climatology until recently.
Then 2XCO2 after Dr Spencer etc fairly neatly explains the roughly 0.15 C of residual, with a little room remaining for all the other usual suspects – aerosols, soot, UHIE etc.
What I would ask of Bob Tisdale is to develop a catchy name for the unnamed process (the great ocean conveyer belt?) which seems to be behind the oscillations. It could be a choice of which he hates more: a name like ‘Tisdale oscillations’ or impolite people like me misusing ‘PDO/AMO’.
Stephen Wilde at July 24, 2011 at 2:40 pm
The reason I think that ENSO cycles (and possibly ENSO as a climate pattern) is derived from an underlying process is the statistics of el Nino and la Nina events which is quantified by Joe D’Aleo here. As he says, in the downwards cycle there are more and longer la Nina’s, and the converse in the upwards cycle. That suggests something driving ENSO rather than ENSO driving the 65 year coupled cycles, although a feedback modulation of it by ENSO would be reasonable.
Ask and you shall receive. I asked earlier in this thread (Kevin Kilty says:
July 23, 2011 at 9:05 am ) for some evidence via geographic pattern to demonstrate that China burning coal is, or is not, the cause of the recent non-warming. Well find some right here. It appears the answer is “not”.
rbateman says:
July 24, 2011 at 3:43 pm
“……I won’t say that the cloud seeding caused the blockage, but they sure hit a nerve.”
Ha! If I were a scientist involved in cloud-seeding experiments, and it was promptly followed by a major drought, I might be tempted to leave town fast, and to change my name.
I wonder if that might happen to the people attempting to stop global warming, if global temperatures plunge over the next decade. I can imagine a furious crowd carrying burning torches marching up to Hansen’s house, shouting, “You’re to blame for this mini ice-age!”
The question is, “What would I do?” Would I explain to the crowd that Hansen is not a witch doctor, and has no control over the weather? Or would I just shrug, and tell Hansen, “Before you control the climate, let’s see you control this crowd.”
Kevin Kilty says:
July 24, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Ask and you shall receive. I asked earlier in this thread (Kevin Kilty says:
July 23, 2011 at 9:05 am ) for some evidence via geographic pattern to demonstrate that China burning coal is, or is not, the cause of the recent non-warming. Well find some right here. It appears the answer is “not”.
===========================
Yep.
Anthropogenic carbon dioxide single-handedly causes global warming but, amazingly, post-1998 anthropogenic aerosols miraculously have the exact opposite effect, all of a sudden.
They’ve gone from Bozo the Clown science to Bozo the Clown Science squared, since I think that Bozo the Clown science is measured on a logarithmic scale. If not, it should be.
China burning more coal causes global cooling, ha ha ha. What percentage of the sheeple will buy that one ?? Given that R. Gates bought it (allegedly), I’d say a high percentage, although it is a bit unfair to pick on someone who’s in the sin-bin.
I dunno, I listened to the Bastardi forecast last year, where we were in for temps back to 1970 levels, and ice packing the arctic. I have a hard time buying it again.
JK says:
July 24, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I dunno, I listened to the Bastardi forecast last year, where we were in for temps back to 1970 levels, and ice packing the arctic. I have a hard time buying it again.
=====================================
Bull****. He never said any of that.
You are painting with a very very VERY broad brush.
And with preschool / toddler painting abilities at that.
I am calling you out on a complete misrepresentation.
Beyond that, and for example, he nailed the US winter forecast for 2009-2010…in July of 2009, far before the CFS or anyone else caught on.
What are your qualifications to actually give a critique?
I thought so (not).
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Caleb says:
July 24, 2011 at 6:19 pm
Weather modification (enhancement as they call it) is dangerous and foolish. You don’t know what will come next naturally, and you don’t really know what you might cause downstream either.
I suspect, from the limited cases I have been able to find, that nature tends to snap back abruptly in response. The behavior is consistent with an “Irresistable Force”.
Dr Bastardi
Whether your writing is good bad or indifferent (I think it’s fairly engaging for what it’s worth) is as nothing compared to whether your arguments are reasonable and cogent.
One of the expressions I picked up during a low key science career was from a fairly ascerbic Professor in the US who asked a straight question, got some wiffly waffly back about this theory and that and so he interrupted fairly rudely and said: ‘I know all the theories, show me the data!’
An expression which could be considered valuable by BOTH sides of the climate debate……
R. Gates says:
July 22, 2011 at 9:56 pm
but to not mention the increase in sulfur aerosols over the past decade (regardless of cause) is to miss a big part of the story.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=87#comment-4663
“Schwartz claims that aerosols are masking about half the warming which would be 1.4 C in the twentieth century vs the 0.6-0.7 C observed warming. We dispute this claim on several grounds.
Measurements of aerosols did not begin in the 1970s as some people claim. There were measurements before then, but not so well organized. However, there were a number of pyrheliometric measurements made and it is possible to extract aerosol information from them by the method described in:
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. The apparent atmospheric transmission using the pyrheliometric ratioing techniques. Appl. Optics, 18, 2530-2531.
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models for anthropogenic aerosol increases show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occurring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and Marvin in the Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends and all the astronomical observations show no trends.
A second argument against aerosols being a cooling agent that masks warming is that the claimed aerosol increases occur where the strongest warming is being observed, namely the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes and Europe. If anything, aerosols are an additional source of heating through soot which warms the atmosphere or soot on snow that will also warm.
Finally the Northern Hemisphere where the aerosols presumably are located is warming faster than the Southern Hemisphere where there are fewer aerosols.
In short there is no experimental evidence that increasing aerosols are masking any greenhouse warming or that they caused the 1940-1975 cooling.”
Stephen Wilde & Bruce of Newcastle
For our ‘pet hypothesis’ for the natural climate change be it TSI, UV, planetary, solar-lunar, geomagnetic or whatever, in the final analysis reliable data and the underlining physics will decide. To prove any of the above including the ‘whatever’, is going to be hard slog unless it comes with a (sought-after) endorsement from a well known name or institution, but the ‘enlightened’ do not take kindly to intrusions from the trespassers and even less to a ‘game poacher’.
Rhys Jaggar says: ….ascerbic Professor in the US…: ‘I know all the theories, show me the data!’.
Absolutely : http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AP.htm
G’d morning tb
All ‘known suspects’ listed in here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7195/full/nature06982.html
Bruce of Newcastle said:
“in the downwards cycle there are more and longer la Nina’s, and the converse in the upwards cycle. That suggests something driving ENSO rather than ENSO driving the 65 year coupled cycles, although a feedback modulation of it by ENSO would be reasonable”
Agreed. I think the basic ENSO phenomenon is driven as I said by the latitudinal position of the ITCZ causing an imbalance of solar shortwave input either side of the equator.
However other factors then alter the relative dominance of El Nino and La Nina over time.
I think the 60/65 year cycle is probably internal oceanic but the 1000 year peak to peak cycles of MWP to LIA to date is most likely solar induced.
savethesharks says:
July 24, 2011 at 9:03 pm
JK says:
July 24, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I dunno, I listened to the Bastardi forecast last year, where we were in for temps back to 1970 levels, and ice packing the arctic. I have a hard time buying it again.
=====================================
Bull****. He never said any of that.
Well, sorry to burst some bubbles, but JK is right and Bastardi actually did (make that forecast) :
http://www.statecollege.com/news/columns/hurricanes-global-warming-or-cooling-the-weather-year-of-a-lifetime-458526/
“The coming cooling of the planet overall will return it to where it was in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.”
and regarding ice extent (for the 2011 Sept minimum) :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/23/joe-bastardis-2011-arctic-sea-ice-prediction/
My forecast for next year is for sea ice to melt only to levels we saw back in 2005, or 06. If I had to put a number on it, I think it would be around 5.5 at its lowest.
Now, to remind you, ice extent is running almost exactly on the 2007 line, which led to a 4.3 million km^2 minimum, or more than a million km^2 below Bastardi’s projection.
Even WUWT, with the latest (July) 5.1 million opinion seems laughable, let alone Bastardi’s 5.5.
ThinkProgress did a reasonable piece on some of the other rather unorthodox exclamations by Bastardi
I actually am not so concerned about Bastardi’s projections. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and reality has a way of showing who is right and who is simply wishing.
But at least anyone claiming to make a prediction should define it.
So when Bastardi claims “2012 globally could average below normal”, it would be nice if he would define what “normal” actually is.
Otherwise, he is just using rhetoric to vent his opinion, without saying anything of substance.
M.A.Vukcevic says:
July 25, 2011 at 12:38 am
G’d morning tb
All ‘known suspects’ listed in here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7195/full/nature06982.html
Hi Vuk. It’s still an open question for me. There was probably some instrumental error (bucket adjustments etc) but also it seems something solar was going on around the same time too.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0507269 discusses a phase reversal in the correlation between solar rotation and motion relative to the COM. Worth a read. Discussion here for those interested:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/long-term-variability-in-the-length-of-the-solar-cycle/
Quite honestly I hope Hansen is right about the El Nino and Bastardi wrong. The drought here in Texas is bad enough already and we need an El Nino to break it. Locally a nice big hurricane hitting the Texas Gulf Coast and pushing some juicy rain bands 150 miles inland to me would be nice too but those are rare and only drench a fraction of the state.
I’m beginning to wonder if ENSO is being washed out by something with a longer wavelength (e.g. GCRs begotten by a sleeping sun).
u.k.(us) says:
July 23, 2011 at 1:08 pm
David, UK says:
July 23, 2011 at 12:06 pm
=========
“phlogiston”, never said that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe the mods can fix your mistake ??????????
David, UK was actually quoting not my words but R Gates’ response to them.