Joe D’Aleo reports via email that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) Index has gone negative for this past month, see the graph below:
Source:http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.data
This is the first time the November value has been negative since about 1996. It appears the down cycle has started. This portends a cooler period, especially winters.
The Monthly value plot also shows the down cycle in progress, though this one is only updated to 2009:
The AMO index is correlated to air temperatures and rainfall over much of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, North America and Europe such as North Eastern Brazilian and African Sahel rainfall and North American and European summer climate. It is also associated with changes in the frequency of North American droughts and is reflected in the frequency of severe Atlantic hurricanes.
| Matt Vooro writes in this document: AMO, THE KEY GLOBAL CLIMATE INDICATOR |
The main climate indicator (in my opinion in the near term) is likely going to be the cool AMO, cool PDO. ENSO events and the changing polar jet stream which swings more often now north before coming south or heading east, bringing cold air to most of North America, and specially the western half and subsequently east, as the our climate moves from west to east.
The graph below shows the relationship between AMO and GLOBAL [ land and marine] TEMPERATURE ANOAMLIES [Hadcrut 3]. AMO appears to be like a thermostat or predictor of global temperatures. ENSO events if moderate or strong seem to modify, amplify or over-ride the AMO effects.
There are interesting times ahead.
Lazy Teenager: “I could plot women’s skirt lengths and global temperatures on the same graph and maybe get “proof” that womens fashion affects climate or that women prefer being cold.”
Or maybe you could make the same spurious connection with global temperatures and a trace gas ? 😉
Judging by Figure 2 it actually looks like there should still be just under 20 years of warm cycle left. That means no “down cycle” until 2030!
Is there somewhere you can point me where I can read about the science that backs the claim that “this portends a cooler period, especially winters”. I’m not saying it’s not scientifically accurate, but let’s see the beef. It should, really, be included alongside your claim. Right next to it.
More generally, I like Wattsup, I’ve been reading more or less daily for over two years now, it’s a good place to read up on what’s going on, but you guys have been really shrill lately. Can you tone down the screeching? You remind me of the death of Simon in Lord of the Flies.
I too tend to think that the current negative AMO level is temporary and seasonal only. I think the durations of negative and positive AMO cycles are variable and the next sustained negative or cool phase for the AMO may not start until 2015. In my opinion ,a cooling will be first observable in the Arctic Ocean SST and in the Arctic atmosphere caused by more high altitude cold atmosphere tranferred to lower levels in the Arctic region . The cooler Arctic together with a negative AO will in turn cool the North Atlantic Ocean via currents and atmosphere links and eventually cool the land areas of the Eastern Coast of North America and Western Europe . The predictive value of the negative AMO is that once AMO does start to go negative for a more sustained period [and it can be as long as 30 years ], it can foretell of sustained and extra global cooling [especially Northern Hemisphere] and adds to the cooling already iniated by the cooler Pacific as indicated by PDO[ since 2007] . Such a period existed 1964 -1976[ and even to 1980] when both PDO and AMO were negative or cool .Different regions of the globe felt some of this cooling as early 1940’s and as late as the late 1980’s
I don’t take this data as anything that just one more indication in a growing pile of indications that temperatures are more likely to fall than rise in the near future. The AMO has been trending generally downward for some time. That we should start to see negative months should come as no surprise as a part of that trend.
The indications are that generally speaking we are more likely to see colder winters ahead in the Northern Hemisphere. That is backed up with observational data.
matt v.
That is a plausible scenario but others are possible.
I see the North Atlantic as a ‘playground’ where the bottom up effects from the ENSO phenomenon meet the top down solar effects on the polar air masses.
The North Atlantic gets its energy both from the warm water flowing north which is ultimately influenced by ENSO in the Pacific and also from direct solar input.
We currently see a decline in ENSO activity during the recently started negative phase of the PDO but it is a bit early for it to have fed through the ocean basins to the North Atlantic. Normally I would expect the AMO to be positive for a few years yet as you point out.
However we have recently seen an exceptionally low level of solar activity and an exceptionally negative AO with more meridional jets, increased global cloudiness and therefore less solar energy into the North Atlantic.
So, whilst I agree with you in general terms the recent decline in solar activity could make this into more than a simple seasonal variation.
We shall see.
Like quite a few of the people posting comments here, when I eyeball the graph and look at the lengths of the cycles, it looks like the current downturn is just a blip (just like many blips that have occurred before). As others here have said, it looks to me like we won’t go truly negative until perhaps 2020 onwards.
NB Reading these comments confirms to me what healthy skepticism is all about: unlike the back-slapping warmists who would never dare to question other believers in the ’cause’, we skeptics are always prepared to question and doubt each other if we feel such doubts are necessary and such questions need to be asked. If, throughout history, people much greater than any of us had never asked questions, we would all still be living in the forests, believing the Earth was flat, and scared of the dark.
Alasdair Green says:
December 10, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Is there somewhere you can point me where I can read about the science that backs the claim that “this portends a cooler period, especially winters”. I’m not saying it’s not scientifically accurate, but let’s see the beef. It should, really, be included alongside your claim. Right next to it>>>
Uhm… you mean like maybe the main article and all the comments in the thread itself?
Alasdair Green;
More generally, I like Wattsup, I’ve been reading more or less daily for over two years now, it’s a good place to read up on what’s going on, but you guys have been really shrill lately. Can you tone down the screeching? >>>
What screeching? Can you quote the comment you consider screeching?
(not to mention that given what has been done to science by a cotery of misanthropists wrapped in a false cloak of morality, screeching is in order)
This explains the frantic desperation at Durban. Somewhere somehow they know time is running out but not in what they say about climate warming but in what they are not admitting to in climate cooling coming on. The window of reality and science fact of cooling is closing in and the chance for locking in payments before it becomes more obvious across more indicators is passing before them.
I’ve updated my “NOAA Eye Candy” poster graphic to include mention of this shift in the AMO:
http://oi43.tinypic.com/faztpj.jpg
Tim and Erik
That approach of judging the cycle length unfortunately sounds a lot like the warmist models that reduced the AMO to a constant and subtracted it from a warming trend to get a man made warming residual trend. Such handling of a complex multi-decadal cycle with a limited number of good data cycles is a bit much. This argument of caution in the data limitations works both ways but ultimately works against those that oversimplify it for purposes of massive misdirection of policy govt. and resources.
“R. Gates says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:09 am
It is more likely the earth will be warmer on average in 2030 rather than colder than it is now. The shorter term variations in the AMO and other short term cycles are noise riding on this. They may mask or dampen the effects of CO2, but they can’t negate it.”
See: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
Things can of course change, but at the moment, it certainly looks like the sine curve is being followed and that 2030 will be colder and that the effects of CO2 are being totally negated.
Also see Phil Jones interview at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Note the answer to question A: A – Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
So the question is: Since 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940 had nothing to do with CO2, why should the years past 1975 have anything to do with CO2?
I assume that the first graph has some sort of smoothing applied but not specified anywhere in the thread (I may have missed it). Would Joe or someone please clarify?
Thx
What information would one have to indicate that the world will be warmer in 2030 than now? And please don’t cite the discredited projections of CRU or GISS as observations have been constantly diverging from those models for over a decade.
The only indication I would have of any continued warming would be the possibility that we have no yet fully recovered from the LIA and we still have some more to go. Probably not very much more but I would not be surprised to see one more spate of warming at the same rate as the 1910-1940 and 1975-2005 periods of warming. I currently expect to see cooling temperatures from now until about 2040 or so and then a possible resumption of warming at the same rate as the previous episodes. We will, if the past pattern holds and barring any significant solar grand minimum, “give back” about half of the gain from 1975-2005 and then warm a bit. That will, in my opinion, likely be the end of the LIA recovery if we are not currently fully recovered.
Yes R Gates, it seems your Hockey team has finally figured out the long term trend is 0.16 C per decade–the same as long term trends: I am sick and tired of you and others of your foolishness. You get a gaggle of “climate scientists who are not held responsible for any of their antics, yet they are costing humanity Billions of dollars based on their video game simulations. If they worked for a drug company and had Climategate I&II emails such has been presented they would ALL be in jail right now
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/12/global-temperature-news/
It just so happens as Brozek above has shown this has been the same trend irregardless of CO2
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
The RSS satellite data are available for November and it comes in with an anomaly of +0.033 C which is down from October’s anomaly of +0.089 C. That means that October’s significant drop from September’s +0.287 C was not a blip. So global temperatures are currently very close to the average over time. Over time it looks like this:
So we temperatures globally have fallen off the table in the past two months.
Here’s the trend since 1979
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/climatechange/2011/590x189_12100149_sc_rss_compare_ts_channel_tlt_v03_3.png
No “accelerating” warming to be seen.
“crosspatch says:
December 10, 2011 at 4:43 pm
No “accelerating” warming to be seen.”
It is even flat (-0.000166176 per year) since March, 1997. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1997.16/trend
So in three months or less, it will show 15 years of no warming and we will not have to have any conditions such as 95% significance numbers. That used to be significant until the goal post was changed to 17 years.
Too bad woodfortrees doesn’t have the U. Colorado sea level data to play with.
Werner Brozek asks:
So the question is: Since 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940 had nothing to do with CO2, why should the years past 1975 have anything to do with CO2?
—
I would assume you actually know the answer to this question, but it seems the underlying assumption you are making is the all effects must have the same causes, which is of course one of the basic errors of logic to make. The anthropogenic fingerprint is clearly on a large percentage of the warming since 1976 or so, with other periods of warming having their own unique matrix of causations.
Observe Lazy’s textbook example of someone disregarding Occam’s Razor. The simple, elegant answer is that the planet continues its emergence from the LIA, along exactly the same trend line for the past 300+ years.
But Lazy chooses to ignore that simple and straightforward answer in favor of a nebulous, unquantifiable and unmeasurable “anthropogenic fingerprint”, for which there is exactly zero empirical, testable evidence. That is cognitive dissonance on a par with Harold Camping’s true believers.
Smokey,
Could you please post your rebuttal to Lazy again, but substitute in R. Gates name throughout?
TIA!
davidmhoffer,
Thanks for the correction. I’d just read a Lazy Teenager post and wasn’t thinking.
Gates, the ball’s in your court.☺
“R. Gates says:
December 10, 2011 at 7:52 pm
The anthropogenic fingerprint is clearly on a large percentage of the warming since 1976 or so”
Not according to Dr. David Evans. See
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/no-smoking-hot-spot/story-e6frg73o-1111116945238
From this article:
“1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.”
Werner Brozek says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:09 pm
“R. Gates says:
December 10, 2011 at 7:52 pm
The anthropogenic fingerprint is clearly on a large percentage of the warming since 1976 or so”
Not according to Dr. David Evans. See
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/no-smoking-hot-spot/story-e6frg73o-1111116945238
From this article:
“1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.”
——-
Are you seriously going to waste my time with this tired old (and completely untrue) skeptics textbook argument? If you want to debate the real science and the real issues of uncertainty (like climate sensitivity) then let’s do it, but don’t waste either of our valuable time with this nonsense. For those who want the background of why Werner’s appeal to the supposed missing hotspot is nonsense see:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot-advanced.htm