Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Richard Muller and the good folks over at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project have released their temperature analysis back to 1750, and are making their usual unsupportable claims. I don’t mean his risible statements that the temperature changes are due to CO2 because the curves look alike—that joke has been widely discussed and discounted, even by anthropogenic global warming (AGW) supporters. Heck, even Michael Mann jumped on him for that one, saying
It seems, in the end–quite sadly–that this is all really about Richard Muller’s self-aggrandizement 🙁
And if anyone should know about “self-aggrandizement”, it’s Michael Mann … but I’m not talking about Muller’s claim that humans caused the warming. No, I mean the following statement:
The historic temperature pattern we observe has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight and cool the Earth’s surface for a few years.
In support of this statement, Richard Muller offers up the following chart:
Figure 1. BEST claims about temperature and volcanoes. SOURCE
So what’s not to like?
Well, first it appears he has included and excluded volcanoes depending on whether they show up in his temperature record. If we look at big eruptions, eruptions with a “volcanic explosively index” (VEI) of 6 or above, since 1750 we have the following volcanoes:
Mount Pinatubo, 1991
Novarupta, 1912
Santa María, 1902
Krakatoa, 1883
Mount Tambora, 1815
Grímsvötn and Laki, 1783
So Muller has left off Santa Maria and Novarupta, and included El Chichon and Cosiguina. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that many of these occurred after or during the temperature drop that they are supposed to have caused … here’s the BEST data including all relevant volcanoes, without the style of overlay that they have used that obscures the actual timing:
Figure 2. BEST temperature data and dates of volcanoes. Red line is a four-year centered Gaussian average of the temperature data. Photo shows Mt. Redoubt in Alaska.
So let’s look at the volcanoes, one by one:
LAKI, 1783: Occurred near the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
TAMBORA, 1815: Occurred at the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
COSIGUINA, 1835: Occurred near the middle of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
KRAKATOA, 1883: Occurred at the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
SANTA MARIA, 1902: Occurred in the middle of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
NOVARUPTA, 1912: I can see why Muller omitted this eruption, which occurred just before a rise in temperature …
EL CHICHON, 1982: Occurred during the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
PINATUBO, 1991: This is arguably the only one of the eight volcanoes that could legitimately be claimed to cause a detectable fall in temperature … a whopping fall of 0.15°C or so.
So while volcanoes certainly may cause a minor drop in global temperature, the claim of Richard Muller and the BEST folks that there are “abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions” is simply not true. There are abrupt dips, but they don’t match up with the volcanic eruptions.
w.
[Update] Further reading:
Prediction is hard, especially of the future discusses the GISS analysis of Pinatubo.
Missing the Missing Summer is about the eruption of Tambora.
Dronning Maud Meets the Little Ice Age investigates a claim that the Little Ice Age was triggered by vulcanism.
Volcanic Disruptions plays the game “Spot the Volcano”
[Update] Another way to investigate the question is to look at the average temperature anomaly during the two years before and the two years after the eruption. Figure 3 shows that result.
Figure 3. Average temperature anomaly two years before and two years after the eruptions. Black lines show the standard error of the mean.
After some eruptions it cooled a bit, after some it warmed a bit, and after some there was no change … go figure.
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Willis,
As a layman climate skeptic (I have a decent scientific/engineering background, deeply burried in my resume now, which helps me follow what is said in different parts of the climate debate), I am astonished by the clarity, the simplicity and the soundness of your posts when you destroy a “Team” article (I particularly liked the review of Shakun). Keep up the good work, it’s really nice to read. Maybe only Steve McIntyre is capable of deploying more firepower, as far as I can tell.
More to the point, It’s nice to see some real physics reasonning for once and not some spurious claims derived from “only this blablabla could be explained by the model” and other “correlation proves causation” type of stuff I’ve read all over the IPCC reports…
I have been involved with highly complex models in another area in the past and I believe there is a real cultural problem with those now. The computer calculation superpower of the recent decades is being misused on a massive scale. People make assumptions they don’t test and then tweak parameters to make past history fit. More generally, people mix up data (which are scarce by nature) and assumptions. This leads to weak conclusions at best and systemic errors at worse. I’ve been contemplating this problem for a long time and I believe we should do a lot more pedagogy with regards to modelling in general.
jorgekafkazar says:
July 30, 2012 at 5:33 pm
Interesting, Jorge. I have replicated your figures for Lake Nyos, which gives about 2,800 tonnes C per year, but you can’t just multiply that by three million. The main issue is that most volcanoes on the planet are NOT emitting CO2, just the active volcanoes. Lake Nyos is a very rare phenomenon in that regard. There are scads of lakes in volcanic craters around the world, and only 3 of them are known to leak CO2.
And not all active volcanoes are emitting CO2, just the ones erupting and for a few years after the eruptions (e-folding times for the drop in CO2 production after an eruption are on the order of 6 years). Numbers are hard to come by, but on land only about one volcano in ten is classified as “active”, and only about 20-50 volcanoes per year are erupting. This is about 1% of total volcanoes.
As a result, rather than multiplying the Lake Nyos number by 3 million, you need to multiply it by about a hundredth of that, because most of those volcanoes are either tiny or dead. That gives you about 0.09 GtC per year … which is in line with the Gerlach estimate.
w.
PS—according to your citation, the researchers are counting as a “volcano” any conical shaped subsea hillock over 100 metres tall … so these are not even “Lake Nyos” size, they are very, very tiny. Just another reason why you can’t simplistically multiply by 3 million … the majority of them are dwarves. The researchers estimated that there are only a total 39,000 subsea volcanoes over a thousand metres tall (3,300 feet), which is still a small volcano by terrestrial standards …
Robert Clemenzi says:
July 30, 2012 at 6:02 pm
No clue, it’s Muller’s work, I have no expectation that it will be right.
My goodness, that’s hilarious. They’ve already coopered up the problem of the mis-identification of El Chichon. I love how they did it without any notice, or any thanks to the alert WUWT commenter for finding their problem. Typical lack of integrity for those bozos …
I am pleased, however, to find out that they read WUWT. It reinforces what I have always claimed, that everyone who is serious about climate science reads WUWT, no matter what side of the aisle they are on.
w.
The BEST temperature reconstruction when it comes to volcanic eruptions looks very much like the climate model hindcasts, which over estimate the effect of volcanic eruptions by a factor of 2 to 3.
Now Willis is throwing doubt on the accuracy of of the BEST reconstruction when it comes to effects of volcanic eruptions.
I smell a large rat here. Aerosol forcings are used as a ‘fudge factor’ in the models to maintain high GHG and CO2 forcings and it looks like the temperature record has been fiddled to make it come more into line with the model hindcasts.
Otherwise, I have been looking at the effects of volcanic eruptions on the Central England Temperature record. There is no clear volcanic signature I can see. In the link below the unusually cold winter of 1814/15 precedes the Tambora eruption in April 1815. The summer of 1816 was cool but not outside the range of summers for the period.
There was a series (4 or 5 from memory) of large volcanic eruptions that began in 1812 and preceded Tambora. But the series of cool summers starts in 1809.
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndVolcanoes.htm
Willis
There is a fundamental assumption built into your argument. That the temperature response to an eruption is closely tied to the time of the eruption. Now possibly this might be true around the immediate vicinity of the eruption.
But we are (and you argument) are about Global temperature responses. And these depend on different factors. How long does it take for the ejecta from an eruption to spead significantly around the world? Then how long does it persist for? How many months, or years later does the climate resonse to an eruption peak at? Many of the examples you give do show meaningful temperature drop withi a year or so of an eruption. About what one would expect. Even if temperatures had been rising when an eruption occurred, we would expect to see an impact from the eruption 6 months to 2 years after it occurred, depending on the circumstances of the eruption. Roughly what you have observed. The temperature impact happens 1-2 years after the eruption. Since your Gaussian average is of temperature, one would expect to see the maximum inpact 1-2 years after each eruption.
To produce a global temperature impact, a volcanic eruption needs to produce effects across a large part of the atmosphere. So the key question about an eruption isn’t just how big it was. It is also about things like what latitude it occurred at? Whether it was a short and very intense eruption or a somewhat more protracted but lower intensity eruption. Very important here is how high into the atmosphere the ejectate reached. If it only reached the upper Troposphere, then the normal hydrological cycle – rain may wash it out relatively quickly. But if it reaches the stratosphere, it may persist there for years. Because Altitude & Latitude are critical to how much the products of an eruption get distributed around the world. And for any given eruption, how big its climate impact is depends on how far and for how long its products stay up there. So a higher volume but lower energy eruption may not reach the stratosphere.
Look at the satellite data for temperatures after Pinatubo. One could see some impact for several years in the lower atmosphere data but not that strong. In contrast, the lower Stratosphere numbers went through the roof and stayed there for 3-5 years. Conversely the big El Nino of 1998 shows up strongly in the lower atmosphere, but is insignificant in the stratosphere. How much an eruption reaches to the stratosphere has a big impact on whether it has a sustained impact.
Next key issue is atmospheric mixing time. How long does it take for a change at one location to spread around the world? The common figure cited for intra-hemispheric mixing time – how long a change takes to propogate around the world in one hemisphere – is 1-3 months.
In contrast, inter-hemispheric mixing time – how long it takes for effects to cross the equator is more like 1-2 years.
And this is for the lower atmosphere!
Similar times for the stratosphere are again, several months for Intra-Hemispheric but typically 5 years for Inter-Hemispheric transfers.
What then is the relative impact of eruptions close to the equator vs at high latitudes? One can imagine that a high ejecta loading in the atmosphere, added close to the equator, may breach the inter-hemispheric boundary somewhat more quickly. In contrast, an eruption at very high latitudes may well take much longer to transfer to the other hemisphere. And thus diminish but extend the impact of the eruption.
You make particular reference to Novarupta as being a significant eruption that doesn’t ‘fit in’.
Novaruptna is in Alaska!!
What climate boundaries does the ejecta from this have to cross before it significantly impacts on Global climate? How does this contrast with big eruptions near the equator? Pinatubo, El Chichon, Santa Maria, Krakatoa, Tambora?
Where does the Polar Jet Stream travel relative to the Novaruptna eruption? Could that have contained the impacts of Novaruptna to high latitudes?
I dunno Wilis, but I suspect neither do you!
Which seemingly is secondary in a points scoring war between WUWT and BEST to determine who has the greater Anti-AGW street-cred.
Fairly sad really when you think about it. Has our paper been trumped by the other guys paper? Can we shoot some holes in it? Hey, lets mess about with the Volcanoes angle. Rather transparent and in the end rather childish.
If you and Anthony think your arguments have merit, publish the paper and await the response of your peers. Till then, put a sock in it!
Science has nothing whatever to do with dueling Blogs & Press releases at dawn.
Sience is about the contest of ideas, not press releases. Leave that for the media.
Willis Eschenbach says:
“Richard Muller and the good folks over at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project have released their temperature analysis back to 1750, and are making their usual unsupportable claims.
…
So while volcanoes certainly may cause a minor drop in global temperature, the claim of Richard Muller and the BEST folks that there are “abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions” is simply not true. There are abrupt dips, but they don’t match up with the volcanic eruptions.”
If one looks for the nature of the ‘dips’, they can be related to a bunch of solar tide functions from mostly all relevant planets in the solar system. The – heliocentric – solar tide functions can be shown as well in the – Earth – global sea level oscillations, but also in the – Earth – global temperature oscillations of the satellite measurements of UAH (Who, sorry, deals in 2012 with calibrated thermometers on land, and not on oceans, to understand the nature of the global climate, and why?)
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sea_level_vs_solar_tides_me.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/climate_curves.gif
The mind clamp on the Earth as the ‘center of climate dogmatism’ seems to me like the clamp of the people in Rome 400 years ago on the geocentric world view.
However, people like to have a position, independent of knowledge on the matter.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/agw_poll.jpg
The solar tide function of Mercury and Earth match up with the Earth sea level oscillations [ http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2012_rel3/sl_ns_global.txt ] after removing i.) a linear trend of 0.313 mm per year, which is accepted by some people as an effect of ice melting since the last ice age, and ii.) removing the seasonal effect.
It is one thing to find errors in weak theories, but it is a different thing to find relations to well known structures in the solar system.
V.
the cold episode started in 1809. yes. another large eruption of unknown location is thought to start the cold decade ( e.g. ). many station series in the BEST data show a strong signal in 1815/1816 especially in the US. Lord Byron disagrees with Philip Bradley ( Darkness ,wiki and the poem). The climatic effect of Tambora may have been muted as the climate was already in a rather cold spot. I clearly see the Tambora signature in Bradley’s plot.
[snip . . OT, but please repost it to Tips & Notes as it seems quite interesting . . kbmod]
Fred Fighter says: “Moreover, it is a principle that is applicable to thermodynamically closed systems, which climate is not.”
Please explain to me what boundaries you use to define the climate system and how there is anything but negligible mass flow across those boundaries.
They say a little knowledge is dangerous. Willis you have a little knowledge and you are dangerous. The link between large volcanic eruptions, particularly those with large amounts of debris being ejected high up into the atmosphere, and subsequent brief periods of colder climate is well established.
The laughable thing is that Richard Muller seems to claim that Berkley has discovered something important and this is extremely disingenuous and an insult to the many scientists who have gone before and written countless papers about this.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
July 31, 2012 at 3:11 am
Glenn, you misunderstand my argument. The problem is that the big drops are coming before the volcanoes, and no amount of assumed delay in the volcano’s effects could cause that.
w.
Volker Doormann says:
July 31, 2012 at 4:53 am
Yes, and they “can be related” to a host of other things as well … but are they related? Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, shown that abrupt dips in the earth’s temperature are caused by solar tide functions. The problem is that, given the sun, moon, and a host of planets, there are literally hundreds of possible “solar tide functions”. As a result, you can find a cycle that fits just about anything … but that doesn’t mean a damn thing.
w.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
July 31, 2012 at 3:11 am
Put a sock in it? Dang, Glenn, you are a nasty little man. I write some things for the journals and some things for the blogs. That won’t change, no matter how unpleasant you might be, so you might as well get used to it. No matter what I write, there’s always some jerkwagon like you who comes along to tell me I’m doing it all wrong. For the last three years, my work here has averaged about a million page views per year … and yours? I have had a peer-reviewed submission published by Nature magazine … and you?
You don’t deserve an explanation, but I’ll give you one anyhow. I write for the blogs because 1) my work is read by many, many more scientists here than it would be in the journals, 2) the peer review here is much more stringent than in the journals, 3) I am interested in swaying public opinion as much as I am in swaying scientific opinion, 4) journals are behind paywalls, cutting out many potential readers, 5) I learn much more from the readers of my blog posts than I do from the readers of my journal articles, 6) education, both of myself and my readership, is one of my objectives, and 7) I am interested in affecting the ongoing scientific discussions, whereas journal papers only appear six months after the discussion has ended.
Now, that’s the new reality of science. You can either get with the 21st century, or you can continue to marginalize yourself and get your vote cancelled by your asinine snarky comments.
w.
It would seem that Muller’s work rules out CO2 as a cause. He is showing temperatures increase in-line with the logarithmic increase in CO2. If CO2 was a primary cause, the temperatures should have been increasing linearly with a logarithmic increase in CO2.
Jeremy says:
July 31, 2012 at 8:27 am
Thanks, Jeremy. Actually, I have a lot of knowledge and you’re right, I’m dangerous … to folks who think that because something is “well established”, that perforce it must also be true.
Yes, volcanoes have an effect on climate. No, that effect is nowhere near as large as is claimed by the climate modelers and believed by credulous scientists.
See, the problem is that if the so-called “climate sensitivity” is as high as they say (3°C per doubling of CO2), then volcanoes should have a huge effect on the climate, because they make a large change in the forcing. So they believe, without evidence, that volcanoes do have said large effect.
But volcanoes don’t have a large effect on climate, they have a small effect despite having a large forcing … go figure. I say that this is because the climate system is not some rigid thing that slavishly follows changes in the forcing. It is a living system that reacts to changes in the forcing by making opposing changes in the other direction. These mute the claimed effects of the forcing, and result in volcanoes not changing the temperature all that much, despite changing the forcing a lot.
For example, after a volcanic eruption, the temperature begins to drop. When the temperature drops, we get less clouds. When we get less clouds, we get more sunlight striking the earth … which counteracts the cooling effects of the eruption.
Now, this is anathema to the “consensus”. The idea that the climate system reacts to a change in forcing by changing things like albedo is rank heresy to them, and possibly to you as well … but I have established it in a number of ways and in a number of areas of the world.
w.
Assuming local temps follow the global trend this would indicate that Scotland in the 1750s would be about 2 degrees cooler than now. This would give it an annual average of about 5.5 deg C. At these temps crop yields would be so poor that there would be would be mass starvation and there would be winters of exceptional severity. There are no records of any such thing. Of course there is no guarantee that any one area would follow the global average but if they had normal temps then some areas would have to have exceptionally low temps to bring the average to 2 degrees lower. There is no evidence of this. Local temperature records in the UK and China indicate the 18th century was relatively warm. In the UK 18th century summers were on average warmer than 20th century summers – honest – and there are figures to prove it.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 31, 2012 at 9:04 am
Volker Doormann says:
July 31, 2012 at 4:53 am
… So while volcanoes certainly may cause a minor drop in global temperature, the claim of Richard Muller and the BEST folks that there are “abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions” is simply not true. There are abrupt dips, but they don’t match up with the volcanic eruptions.”
If one looks for the nature of the ‘dips’, they can be related to a bunch of solar tide functions from mostly all relevant planets in the solar system.
Yes, and they “can be related” to a host of other things as well … but are they related?
There are well accepted methods and tools used in science, you know well, like to calculate a correlation coefficient of two functions. An other tool is algebra which can used to calculate a significance value, or the difference in the frequencies of the two functions or the grade of the phase coherence of the two functions. Whether functions are related, is in the end not to prove by science; it depends on the very own ability to recognize the truth of a relation.
A recognizable relation as the synodic solar tide function of the couple of Mercury and Earth and the oscillations superimposed on the measured sea level data can be recognized as significant from the given reasons.
To claim that the 2 or all 11 real solar tide functions from real planets in our solar system can be related to a host of other things as well, is meaningless, until you not show a relation with the same correlation values and the same significance. The argument is a fallacy, because it suggests a valid argument, but it is not.
Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, shown that abrupt dips in the earth’s temperature are caused by solar tide functions.
What are ‘abrupt dips’? On what base in climate science one can say this? To my knowledge nobody, except me, has shown (here in WUWT in many comparison graphs) that the global Earth temperature spectra are related to solar tide functions, not only for month or years, but also for two millennia.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/comparison_ghi_l.jpg
Until you have no scientific criteria to discriminate ‘abrupt dips’ in the (reconstructed!) global temperature spectra, its pure speculation, but not science.
The problem is that, given the sun, moon, and a host of planets, there are literally hundreds of possible “solar tide functions”.
As a result, you can find a cycle that fits just about anything … but that doesn’t mean a damn thing.
I have told you above that arguments like this are not valid arguments, because ‘anything’ means nothing. I have done a hard work on fitting the parameter of the relevant oscillators in a magnoto-optic material [ http://www.volker-doormann.org/jap6871990.pdf ]. It can show you that parameter fitting to experimental data of well known real structures in nature like oscillators or tide functions of real (!) solar objects is an accepted method in science. And the matter is based on real physical structures and geometries; not on generated fantasy formulas using cycles or circle functions.
Your result is a fallacy and bad science, because it ignores recognizable true relations in the solar system but gives no theory of your ‘anything’; nobody cannot verify ‘anything’.
The geometric relations between the global sea level and the solar tide function of the solar near bodies are easy to verify or to refute. But that is not performed by fallacious arguments.
V..
Willis Eschenbach says: “The idea that the climate system reacts to a change in forcing by changing things like albedo”
Willis, perhaps you can clarify what you mean by this. Based on things you have said earlier about the differences between the mechanisms you talk about and “feedback” it appears you literally mean that clouds etc. change in direct response to the forcing-rather than in response to temperature change caused by forcing. Put another way, and based on other comments of yours it appears you expect clouds to react to the temperature that “would be eventually” from physics of radaitive imbalance, in proportion so as to eliminate that potential, but never realized, temperature change. Is that about right?
Andrew says:
July 31, 2012 at 12:49 pm
An interesting question, Andrew. There are three concepts that are fundamental to understanding the response of the climate to changes. The first of these is the Constructal Law. It was discovered and first articulated by Adrian Bejan at Duke. Basically, it says that natural flow systems that are far from equilibrium (say a meandering rivers, or the climate) must evolve to persist. The system is constantly and perpetually approaching, but never achieving, some optimum form. Typically, this manifests itself as an oscillation around some value. For a meandering river, for example, it is the length of the river. The length of the river is constantly changing, but when it cuts off an oxbow here, it widens a bend there. As a result, the length of the river is constantly fluctuating above and below some fixed value. Note that it is not free do adopt any value … see the US Corps of Engineers versus the Mississippi River for a host of examples. It is important to realize that this is a vastly different basic paradigm from the “change the forcing, change the temperature” of the current climate paradigm.
The second concept that is fundamental to understanding the climate is the idea of self-emergent phenomena. The thunderstorm is the premier example of a self-emergent climate phenomenon. Given the proper conditions, it arises spontaneously wherever the surface is warmer than the surroundings, and cools off the surface in a variety of ways. Most importantly, thunderstorms can cool the surface down to below the initiation temperature. Note that this is different from simple feedback.
Finally, it is crucial to realize that both the climate as a whole, and the thunderstorms within the whole, are natural heat engines. They must be understood and analyzed as such. They follow the thermodynamic rules of natural heat engines.
So to return to your original question … in response to changes in the hourly, daily, monthly, centenary, and longer temperatures, the system changes and evolves in a direction that tends to increase the total sum of the work done by the overall and individual heat engines involved. The work done is the sum of the heat moved through the system plus the turbulence. This is why nature is always running at the edge of turbulence. It’s running as fast as it can given the physical constraints.
Hope that explains my perspective,
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 31, 2012 at 9:52 am
” When the temperature drops, we get less clouds.”
It looks like low level cloud increased in the cooler mid 1980’s and early 1990’s:
http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
Meanwhile, there is an El Nino at/from most of these large eruptions:
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/volcano.html
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/elnino.html
https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/Home/historic-el-nino-events
A number of sources say that the 1884 El Nino was very strong.
Ulric Lyons says: “It looks like low level cloud increased in the cooler mid 1980′s and early 1990′s”
The trend in cloud cover in that data may be spurious:
Evan, A.T., A.K. Heidinger and D.J. Vimont, 2007. Arguments against a physical long-term trend in global ISCCP cloud amounts. Geophysical Research Letters, 34:LO4701.
I generally don’t trust the ISCCP data as far as I can throw it.
Thanks Willis.
Once again, you write deftly, succinctly and clearly as always, this time lancing Muller’s Best puffery.
Andrew says:
July 31, 2012 at 1:38 pm
“The trend in cloud cover in that data may be spurious”
I’m looking at the peaks in low clouds at 1985-7 and 1991-3, not the trend.
Ulric Lyons says: “A number of sources say that the 1884 El Nino was very strong.”
On what basis? Going by average of monthly SOI values, 1884 ranks 40th out 136 years for most negative/least positive. That puts it in the top third, but not what I’d call “very strong” at all. By comparison, the ENSO conditions when El Chicon erupted (1982) and after (1983) rank 5th and 18th, respectively. That’s a strong ENSO event, and a much weaker volcano-the signal would be hard to discern. But it’s also hard to discern with a moderately strong ENSO event and a strong volcano. Because there just isn’t much signal there.
Andrew says:
July 31, 2012 at 2:39 pm
“On what basis?”
Fish deaths on the coast of Peru, but looking at SST’s I have to agree with you, at least though there was an El Nino episode then:
http://www.jisao.washington.edu/data/cti/