By Joe Bastardi, Weatherbell Analytics
When the PDO turned cold, most of the meteorological and climate community understood that the pattern was turning very similar the last time of the PDO reversal, the 1950s, and it was a matter of time before the global temperatures, which have leveled off, would start falling in the same herby jerky fashion they had risen when the PDO turned warm at the end of the 1970s. I am not going to rehash the sordid details of how the AGW crowd simply ignores the major drivers of a cyclical nature. We all know that. Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like CO2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth’s temperatures. Instead I am going to drive home points I have been making since 2007 and are now dramatically validating.
The La Ninas of 2008-09 and now this one had rapid mid level temperature drops that followed their onset and this years was nothing short of the most dramatic mid tropospheric drop since the start of the millennium. It is much more plausible to believe that rapid cooling in the mid levels would have an effect at leading to extremes, rather than what the warmingistas claim, which of course is anything that happens. In any case, one very interesting level that cooled to record cold levels was 400 mb, the very levels that the so called trapping hot spots were going to show up because of CO2…again a neat trick since somehow CO2 was going to defy the laws of Gravity, since, as mentioned above, its specific gravity is higher than the atmosphere (of course even if it was, it a) has not been proven to cause warming and b) man’s contribution is so tiny as to render it a non item anyway in climate considerations.
However first came the flip in the PDO, seen nicely here on the Multivariate Enso Index chart, which clearly illustrates the colder Pacific when the earth was colder, the start of the warming period coinciding with the satellite era, and now.
Now from the AMSU site, the amazing one year drop in temperature, the orange tan line being after the El Nino of 2009/10, the purplish line this past year and one can see the green this year, we are near record cold levels again.
600 mb (14,000 feet) (enlarged)
And oh my my, the trapping hot spot itself.. 400mb or 25,000 feet… coldest in the entore decade
But the 2 meter temperatures, being in the boundary layer, do not respond as fast as the ocean, or a transparent atmosphere above
Nevertheless three downturns in a jagged fashion started predictably after the last El Nino now falling again in fits and spurts through December.
From Dr Roy Spencer’s site:
(enlarged)
In May, I forecasted the global temperatures to fall to -0.15C in one of the months – Jan, Feb or Mar this year, and perhaps as low as levels we saw in the 2008 La Nina. A rapid free fall has begun. Dr. Ryan Maue at his site (http://policlimate.com/weather/) maintains a plethora of useful forecast information including GFS global temp projections over the next 16 days.
They have been routinely reading greater than 0.2 C below normal and I suspect the Jan reading will plummet quite a bit from December with February even lower. An example of this can be seen with these two charts off Ryan’s site,
-0.258 C globally for 2 meters. (enlarged)
Day 8.5-16 a whopping -0.352 C (enlarged)
The reason the arctic looks warm is that it has been stormy, and when it’s windy the air is well mixed and so the temperatures are not as low as if it’s calm, but it’s still frigid. Notice in the second map, that the arctic cools because the arctic oscillation is starting to go negative, leading to higher pressures and lighter winds. But the most astounding aspect of this is the northern hemisphere mid latitude temperatures, at -2.1 C.
Currently, with gas so high because we are being handcuffed by an administration that won’t drill (if gas was a 1.50 lower, it would be worth a half trillion dollars to the economy) and an EPA that is causing untold economic damage (I would conservatively etiolate a half trillion dollars, from jobs lost to burdensome regulations) along with a 100 billion dollar subsidy to fight global warming world wide, it is costing each ACTUAL TAX PAYER close to 7000 dollars (1.1 trillion divided by 150 million tax payers).
One has to wonder, how even the most dogmatic of them don’t look at the actual facts, how they can continue to carry on their denial while the results of such things handcuff the American economy and cause untold misery for many as our wealth is not only redistributed, but dwindles. One can only conclude this is being done on purpose, and with purpose.
See PDF with enlarged images.
UPDATE: Bob Tisdale disagrees with portions of this analysis and has an essay here.
CodeTech says:
January 19, 2012 at 9:26 am
the reality is that only a portion of what we emit actually mixes and travels higher
That is right, but irrelevant: it doesn’t matter if a molecule of CO2 emitted by humans is captured within a few seconds by the next green leave, or flies around for the next 100 years before being captured by the oceans. What matters is that the total amount of CO2 increases due to the human emissions. If a tree captures some “human” CO2, that means that happens instead of some “natural” CO2 that therefore is not captured, thus the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases anyway.
Only if the total amount of CO2 increases with more than the human emissions, then nature has some contribution. But we see that the increase in the atmosphere is about 50% of the human emissions, thus nature as a whole is a net sink for CO2, regardless if that is original natural or human CO2.
steven mosher @ur momisugly 07:24 left a link to a video by Dr Ian Stewart. So, just what are Stewart’s recent pronouncements on ‘global warming’? From a 2008 BBC press release relating to his series, ‘Earth – the Climate Wars’, here are a few snippets demonstrating from which perspective he views the ‘science’ of the ‘problem’ and his consensus-backed plan for ‘fixing’ the ‘problem’:
“Until a few years ago, I was a bit of a climate sceptic.”
“What is truly scary about climate change is not any of the specific scenarios of rising seas or melting ice, but the sense that our planet’s climate exists on a knife-edge balance and we really don’t understand what pushes us over the edge, which makes our great chemistry experiment with the world’s oceans and atmosphere all the more short-sighted.”
“If society is to make any progress on effectively dealing with climate change at a regional or global level, what is imperative is that ordinary people help build a political climate at grass-roots level that accepts the problem exists and demands some serious actions by business and government. For me, that begins with people accepting that there is no hiding place left in the science – the overwhelming consensus of the vast body of scientists that study climate is that the trends we are seeing in the air, the oceans and in our ecosystems are entirely consistent with the theory of global warming, while the alternatives offered by sceptical scientists – even the much heralded role of the Sun – so far fail that test.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/wk38/feature_earth.shtml
________________________
Same old appeal from authority arguments – incorporating all the usual suspects…..
Excellent post! (puts hands in his pocket and kicks the dirt, stirring up clouds of CO2) – now that we know what all that CO2 is doing (insulating the earth from the atmosphere of course) we can get back to the big picture!
If you on this side of the debate will just STICK to this position – that we are now, FINALLY in the cooling PDO – as we move through La Ninas and El Ninos and the current trend – overall warming, caused by man -continues – will you finally lay down your rhetorical arms and get busy solving global warming?
you can see the writing on the wall – we are in a La Nina, coming out of a strong La Nina – the sun is quiet (and those pesky cosmic rays are NEVER going to amount to anything) and it STILL warming.
But by all means, wait until the dust settles and we get the climate signal through the noise. Now 30 years is the definition of climate – but you surely won’t want to wait that long to be proved RIGHT for once and for ever. So how long? How long do we have to wait for the cooling trend to erase the warming of the 1980s, 1990s and 200s? (To prevent your obvious appeal to your most hated record – no Hadcrut3 here – those guys manipulate data!). Nope It is GISS for us.
And please! THIS time – no reneging on the deal (give it your BEST shot!)
BAU!! (with a nod to the poor, persecuted Mr. Michaels)
Joe, I have to correct you on “…it was a matter of time before the global temperatures, which have leveled off, would start falling in the same herby jerky fashion they had risen when the PDO turned warm at the end of the 1970s.” There was no warming whatsoever in the eighties and nineties that you are talking about – it was all faked. Satellite temperatures cannot see it. What they do see is a series of ENSO oscillations about an average temperature that remained constant for twenty years, until the super El Nino of 1998 arrived. That was the start of real warming, ten years after Hansen’s 1988 testimony that global warming was here and we were to blame. Take any temperature curve that shows that warming, say HadCRUT3, and plot it on the same coordinates as the satellite curve. You will see the same El Nino peaks that satellites show and in between the peaks are cool La Nina intervals. But what strikes you is that the El Nino peaks, at least the four first ones, are all in the same positions in the two curves but La Nina valleys in between have all been made shallow. This gives their curve an upward slope they call the late twentieth century warming. You find the same thing with GISTEMP and worse with NOAA. This manipulation has been going on since the late seventies and continues in the twenty-first century. An example is the absurdity of claiming that 2005 and 2010 were warmer than the 1998 super El Nino. The question is, what changed in the late seventies? For one thing, 1978 was the year when James Hansen, an astronomer on the NASA Pioneer Venus Probe, suddenly transferred to GISS because “The composition of the atmosphere of our home planet was changing before our eyes…” I lived through that period but my eyes somehow missed it. His first task at GISS was to define “The basic GISS temperature analysis scheme … when a method for for estimating global temperature change was needed …” And lo and behold, global temperature started to rise when his method was put to use. They have never published the actual details of how they estimate global temperature change but Climategate tells us that they manipulate temperature and throw away the original data. But they have resolutely refused to use any satellite temperature measurements since the beginning and they still do. The only hint I have is a popular article I read in the nineties which stated that temperatures go up and down but the high temperatures are the real temperatures. I had no interest in any details at the time and Google cannot find the article now. Bur it does not matter because the manipulation of temperatures is there for all to see. See figures 24, 27 and 29 in my book “What Warming?” (Amazon).
Sir, The observation that there must be a global warming cabal is both correct and obvious, in my view. It’s of course difficult to point to the real conspirators among the pure opportunists (scientists and journalists et al). I simplify it this way: Green is the new Red. Those who would have ever wanted the West to go communist is now using AGW/ACC as their vehicle. With plenty of “useful idiots” along for the ride. Our freedom in the US is indeed being threatened. To believe all is well is to whistle past the graveyard.
John Cooper says: “…since “specific gravity” is by definition related to the density of water, wouldn’t “relative density” be the proper term?”
Specific gravity of gases is always with respect to air.
richard verney says:
January 19, 2012 at 9:57 am
However, man only contributes about 3% to the annual CO2 emissions (about 97% of which are natural). It appears that most of the increase in CO2 is simply a consequence of outgasing from warming oceans. It appears that even if man had not been burning fosil fuels much of the 40% increase would in any event have occurred.
Some problems with this: the 97% natural CO2 is only going in AND out the atmosphere. If ins and outs are equal, that doesn’t change the total amount in the atmosphere. In reality it is 97% in and 98.5% out. Thus there is zero net addition from nature to the measured increase as the natural sinks are larger than the natural sources. Only the 3% emissions are the cause of the 1.5% increase in total CO2 per year…
Further the oceans are not the cause, as Henry’s Law gives only 16 microatm more CO2 pressure for 1°C average temperature increase of seawater. Thus an increase of ~16 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere is sufficient to counter the increase in temperature by the oceans. But the increase is already over 100 ppmv (60 ppmv since the South Pole and Mauna Loa measurements started). In reality the effect of increased temperatures is even less, as the biosphere reacts in opposite way to temperature changes. The real response of the carbon cycle to temperature over the past 800,000 years is about 8 ppmv/°C.
And the oceans have the wrong isotopic composition: quite high in 13C, compared to the atmosphere. Thus any huge release of CO2 from the oceans would give an increase of the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere, but we see a continuous, faster and faster decrease in ratio to the human emissions…
See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#The_mass_balance
Joe, I agree with your sentiments, but atmospheric gas layering? I’m at ground level and still breathing…
Hmm. Looks like DaveR (January 19, 2012 at 11:08 am) somehow turned on the italics. Neat!
Sigh…
Missing the point, some of you are…
Contrary to the positive, condescending assertions I’ve just seen two of, No, there is no actual proof or even compelling evidence that human activity is increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. What you have there is a hypothesis bolstered by a belief.
In fact, the more CO2 there is, the more plant life eats it. Plants do this thing, maybe you’ve heard of it… they GROW… and multiply. Plants can be microscopic. Plants and plant life will remove as much CO2 as all human activity can possibly provide. Then, once they’ve consumed as much as they can, they do this other thing common to life: they die.
Nobody’s arguing that there is measurable concentration of CO2 that is human contributed. But it’s rather childishly naive to believe that an increase in CO2 is caused by human emissions.(Correlation != causation). The planet is self-regulating for CO2 concentration, always has been, always will be… otherwise the conditions required for complex life would never have been maintained long enough for us to appear on the scene.
If I do a single will it turn the italics off?
[Turn italics on with: <i>. Turn off with this: </i> ~dbs]
Latest GISS figures: Dec.: 0.45, down from 0.48 in Nov. and 0.54 in Oct.
2011: 0.52, down from 0.63 in 2010.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Really?
I’d like to believe Joe, I really would; I’d be among the happiest people on the planet if AGW somehow reversed itself, or–better yet–turned out to be wrong in the first place.
If Joe, or Anthony, or this site’s many users, don’t like the idea of mitigating fossil fuel CO2 and other pollutants for ideological reasons, that’s completely understandable. But shouldn’t people at least try to remain honest and unbiased where actual scientific facts are concerned?
CO² is not a pollutant. There does that help.
Atmospheric temperatures are responding exactly as expected for a double-dip La Nina. The energy that is not being released from the ocean to the atmosphere is…staying in the ocean! Ocean heat content is at record high levels when looking over the past 30+ years. Very high probabilty of seeing record instrument global atmospheric temps by 2013-2015, as the next El Nino cycle releases that energy and occurs near Solar Max 24.
That is good advice for everyone.
I have switched to “skeptics” and “nonskeptics” — having observed that most other terms serve only to muddle the debate … and said muddling is (obviously) no service to our nation, to our planet, or to our children’s future.
Ian Wi says:
January 19, 2012 at 9:02 am
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
That was a good read Ian.
CodeTech says:
January 19, 2012 at 11:52 am
Plants and plant life will remove as much CO2 as all human activity can possibly provide.
Sorry, but that is not true on shirt term: plants do grow better with increased CO2 levels: greenhouse growers inject up to 1000 ppmv into their greenhouses to boost growth, but this triple level of CO2 doesn’t tripple the growth. For a doubling of CO2, the average growth of all crops is about 50%, not 100%. Thus while the human emissions are nowadays around 8 GtC/year, the increased CO2 levels only push half of that amount into plants and oceans, not the full 8 GtC/year. About 1.5 GtC extra is absorbed by biolife, about 2.5 GtC extra by the oceans, for about 100 ppmv above the “old” equilibrium (figures extrapolated from the following paper). See:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
If we should stop all CO2 emissions today, yes the CO2 levels would sink, but slower than most here expect (but much faster than what the IPCC expects…). A half lifetime of about 40 years to get rid of the extra 100+ ppmv…
This is not going to end well. We may have both megadrought and crop destroying freezes / delayed spring / summer warmth.
Well, Ferdinand, again you’ve missed the point, but that’s okay.
Since you’re so certain I’ll try to avoid stepping on your belief system.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
January 19, 2012 at 12:28 pm
==============================================
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/nhk-world-jaxa-co2-chart.jpg
The body for all posts is in italics
[Fixed, thanks. This is an occasional WordPress glitch. ~dbs, mod.]
Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like CO2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth’s temperatures.
———
What’s this confused hand waving about?
We know damn well how CO2 varies with height because it is measured.
The theory of this is also simple and agrees with measurement.
And the result is —- CO2 does NOT vary much with height at all despite it’s specific gravity.
So Joe makes a claim that is wrong and which also even if correct would have a tenuous relation to the greenhouse effect.
Here Robbie, let me take a stab at this one. NO … A gas (any gas) cannot trap anything! … GHE does not exist! … is impossible! … no matter how much CO2 or pixie dust you add, you will not warm, not 1C, not 1.5C .. not even 0.00001C .. none, notta, nothin’ … case closed
“Face it Mr. Bastardi: CO2 is having some effect on climate. Even Roy Spencer acknowledges that. So in fact we are already looking at the human signal when staring at Roy’s graph.”
Robbie,
Not sure what “signal” you are referring to. If in fact scientists have found thier signal (AGW signal), there would be partying at the IPCC.If such a signal in fact was found, the implications would be enormous, and if that signal could be directly tied to CO2, one would think a group of scientists would be picking up thier Nobel Prize for Science.
Like many Alarmists, you get caught up on short term (12-18 months) weather phenomena. You end up playing wack-a-mole with signals, ice melts, droughts, blizzards, and heat waves. The minute some “extreme” weather event occurs, you wack it over the head and tag it as proof of CAGW (or Climate Change, or Climate Disruption).
Joe Bastardi does have a tendency of getting overly excited at times. But Bob Tisdale’s critiques aside, Bastardi’s points should be listened too. A shift in the PDO represents a long term (30-40 years) shift in global temperatures and weather patterns. But, taken as a whole, the earth doesn’t cool or heat evenly. And as we know with the Little Ice Age, there were plenty of droughts and heatwaves around the world, even as the global temperatures were heading steadily downward (check-out Europe in the 14th and 15 Century). The earth doesn’t normally warm or cool in such drastic fashions as you may allude to. The PDO officially went negative 3 years ago. I seriously doubt the global temps will crash as such as to erase 35 years of warming overnight.
Stephen Mosher: Please help me understand your meaning of the following:
“As we add more GHGs we fill up the holes over time and the atmosphere becomes more opaque. This means the effective radiating height of the atmosphere will increase. Energy still escapes back to space, but the earth radiates from a higher and colder altitude. This latter factor is important. With more GHGs the atmosphere is more opaque. Earth then re radiates from a higher colder altitude. The rate at which energy is lost back to space is thereby slowed and the surface is warmer than it would be otherwise. You see GHGs dont warm the planet by getting hot themselves, they slow the cooling of the surface. Slowly, bit by bit, over very long stretches of time”
It appears that you imply that CO2 emissions will be retained in the atmosphere indefinitely, that is for centuries. I seem to recall several peer reviewed research papers that conclude that retention of atmospheric CO2 is a few years, approximately 7 to 12 years, before it is absorbed and stored by oceans, forests and plants, and soils. This research was based upon empirical data and experiments rather than modeling.
Can you explain the apparent contradictions. What is the period of CO2 emission retention in the atmosphere used in the CAGW theory?