New easy to use reference book for El Niño and global warming

I think readers will appreciate the point by point style that this book is written in. It enables you to zero in on argument rebuttals with graphs and data. Highly recommended – Anthony

Also see Roger Pielke Sr.’s Announcement and TallBloke’s Book Review of “Who Turned on the Heat – The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño-Southern Oscillation”

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Bob Tisdale announces: This Free Preview includes the Table of Contents; the Introduction; the beginning of Section 1, with the cartoon-like illustrations; the discussion About the Cover; and the Closing.

Have you searched the web, looking for information about La Niña and her big brother El Niño? You know, those colossal cooling and warming events in the tropical Pacific that cause flooding in some parts of the world, drought in others—heat waves here, cold spells there—blizzards and record snowfall in your driveway, but a snow-free winter at your favorite ski resort. Yup, those El Niño and La Niña. Scientists have given them that highfalutin name El Niño-Southern Oscillation or ENSO for short. Then, if you make a mistake and spell it ENZO with a “Z” in your search engine, you wind up watching a video from BBC’s Top Gear, of Jeremy Clarkson and The Stig driving a Ferrari F60 owned by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason in exchange for plugging Nick’s book. That’s a nice diversion, though. As your search continues, you keep finding technical web pages with very similar overviews, and, if you’re lucky, three schematics: one for El Niño conditions, one for La Niña and one for ENSO-neutral or “normal” conditions. Frustratingly, those three illustrations look the same to you, leaving you scratching your head. No matter where you turn, what you read, you still have no idea what they’re talking about. But you still want to know what those blasted El Niño and La Niña things are all about.

Who Turned on the Heat? begins with 29, not 3, cartoon-like illustrations, with text right there on the drawings, that explain the processes of ENSO with easy-to-understand terms.

After presenting some background information at the beginning of that section, the discussions of ENSO start with “normal” (a.k.a. ENSO-neutral) conditions in the tropical Pacific, then move on to the transition from ENSO-neutral to El Niño with an overview of what causes the El Niño to begin. That’s where the free Preview of that section ends. In the book, it continues with a presentation of El Niño conditions and the transition back to ENSO-neutral, then on to La Niña and eventually back ENSO-neutral again, providing readers with a complete overview of the ENSO phases in sequence. It discusses how La Niña is not the opposite of El Niño. The phases all fit together logically. Mother Nature’s pretty good about things like that, but she still has some tricks up her sleeves.

For those readers who haven’t looked at or read anything technical since high school, the next section discusses very basics things like how to read a graph. It presents the types of graphs used throughout the rest of the book, and a bunch of other introductory topics.

Section 3 of Who Turned on the Heat? is a more detailed overview of the phases of ENSO—it includes graphs of satellite-based sea surface temperature and other variables, color-coded maps, links to animations—all of which are furnished to support and confirm the naturally fueled processes of the ENSO-neutral, El Niño and La Niña phases. In other words, the fundamentals of ENSO are presented and documented in detail. That’s followed by a section that discusses topics that are still related to El Niño and La Niña but are beyond the basics, like what actually triggers an El Niño. Did you know that El Niño events are so big that sometimes it takes a couple of tropical cyclones (yup, the same things as hurricanes) in the western tropical Pacific just to kick-start one?

What may become your favorite section of Who Turned on the Heat? is next. In it, the sea surface temperature data presents how it accounts for global warming. The combined long-term effects of major El Niño and La Niña events are presented, discussed and documented—with satellite-based sea surface temperatures data, not climate models. Major El Niño and La Niña events are not like the smaller ones. Far from it. The big ones are responsible for the vast majority of the natural warming of the global sea surface temperatures for the past 30 years.

Yup. You’re right, that’s the time the climate models used by the IPCC say that only greenhouse gases could have caused the warming. Those scientists, who must have their heads immersed in climate models, apparently haven’t bothered to come out into the real world long enough to examine the sea surface temperature records for the last 3 decades. If they had, they’d find the data doesn’t agree with the models. All the modelers would have had to do is divide the global oceans into 3 logical subsets. Then they could see why sea surface temperatures have warmed and that Mother Nature’s two rambunctious children La Niña and El Niño were the primary natural culprits. Logically, those energetic natural siblings can explain most of the warming of land surface air temperatures, too, since temperatures there simply mimic and exaggerate the short- and long-term variations in sea surface temperatures. Of course, anthropogenic global warming exists; that is, there’s a small part of the land surface air temperature warming that can’t be explained by the natural warming of sea surfaces, and that small portion is likely manmade, with a host of contributing factors. But back to the oceans: natural variables can also explain their warming to depths of 700 meters—a dataset called Ocean Heat Content.

That would have been a great section on which to end Who Turned on the Heat?

– However –

Who Turned on the Heat? continues with three more sections. One presents links to additional animations so that you can watch the cumulative effects of an El Niño and La Niña as they took place. Remember, La Niña is not the opposite of El Niño—there are some not-so-subtle differences between the two phases. The next section presents the myths and failed arguments that proponents of manmade global warming have created to try to downplay the long-term effects of major El Niño and La Niña events. The last section is Q&A. Take a look at the Preview of Who Turned on the Heat? Scroll down through the Table of Contents.

Who Turned on the Heat? weighs in at a whopping 550+ pages, about 110,000+ words. It contains somewhere in the neighborhood of 380 color illustrations. In pdf form, it’s about 23MB. It includes links to more than a dozen animations, which allow the reader to view ENSO processes and the interactions between variables.

After reading Who Turned on the Heat? you should have a better understanding of El Niño and La Niña—AND—you should understand why global surface temperatures warm during multidecadal periods when El Niño events are stronger, occur more often and endure longer than La Niña events. The most recent period with ENSO conditions weighted toward the El Niño phase started in the late 1970s, and it’s no coincidence that global surface temperatures have warmed since then. Also not by coincidence, La Niña events dominated ENSO, but just a little bit, from the mid-1940s to the late-1970s, and global surface temperatures cooled slightly. Why did surface temperatures warm from the late 1910s to the mid-1940s? Yup, ENSO was skewed toward El Niño during that period, too.

Further to that, as you’ll find, this book clearly illustrates and describes the following:

1. Sea surface temperature data for the past 30 years show the global oceans have warmed. There is, however, no evidence the warming was caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases in part or in whole; that is, the warming can be explained by natural ocean-atmosphere processes, primarily ENSO.

2. The global oceans have not warmed as hindcast and projected by the climate models maintained in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives, which were used, and are being used, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their 4^th and upcoming 5^thAssessment Reports; in other words, the models cannot and do not simulate the warming rates or spatial patterns of the warming of the global oceans—even after decades of modeling efforts.

3. Based on the preceding two points, the climate models in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives show no skill at being able to simulate how and why global surface temperatures warmed; that is, the climate models presented in the IPCC’s 4^th and upcoming 5^thAssessment Reports would provide little to no value as tools for projecting future climate change on global and regional levels.

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The book is:

Who Turned on the Heat? – The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño-Southern Oscillation is now on sale in pdf form for US$8.00 – Please click here to buy a copy.

Bob Tisdale adds:

For those who would prefer a Kindle edition, I haven’t decided if I’m going to publish it in that format. Due to the massive number of color illustrations, the Kindle edition price would be somewhere close to US$16.00. Personally, I think that’s a little steep for an e-book. And since other electronic versions of a book have to be priced 20% higher than the Kindle edition, that would make the pdf version about US$19.00, and that’s way too high. Right now, US$8.00 sounds like a bargain for an easy-to-read, well-illustrated, well-documented book about El Niño-Southern Oscillation and its long-term effects on global surface temperatures.

Naturally, some readers will think the price is way too low, and they’ll want to pay more for the years of research that went into preparing this book, through a tip or donation to the author. (Wishful thinking on my part.)

If you have any questions about the content, please ask them on any thread at my blog Climate Observations.

Regards,

Bob Tisdale