UPDATE: There’s a response from the Met Office here
A report in the UK Daily Mail reveals a Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it:
By David Rose
- The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
- This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.
This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.
Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.
Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.
Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.
h/t to reader “Dino”
regarding the significance of the period from 1997, recall that Dr. Ben Santer claimed 17 years was the period needed:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/17/ben-santers-17-year-itch/
They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
MIT Professor Richard Lindzen said something similar in a WUWT guest post:
There has been no warming since 1997 and no
statistically significant warming since 1995.
Bob Tisdale did a 17 and 30 year trend comparison here
Here’s the HADCRUT4 4.1.1. dataset
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“… regarding the significance of the period from 1997, recall that Dr. Ben Santer claimed 17 years was the period needed:”
No. Santer claimed that at least 17 years was the period needed. That gives him the opportunity to ratchet that up on an annual basis.
That is one way of avoiding what he and his buddies should have done long ago: Define the criteria of falsifyability for their theory of climate, as represented by the models that they are using to scare the world into giving them money and power. He wont do it.
Neither will NASA GISS ‘scientist’ Jan P Perwitz.. In the comments to this WUWT post he runs from the question of falsifyability criteria like a frightened schoolgirl. He’s at at least 25 years before he even starts to ask those questions.
These guys won’t say how long the temps can fail to rise at all (much less at the rate they predict) before they will consider their theory failed. Because there is NO such period. Their beliefs are not scientific. They are religious. The problem for us becomes how this particular priesthood is going to handle its version of the Great Disappointment.
zootcadillac says: October 13, 2012 at 7:54 pm
“It looks like an anomaly graph to me ( although what 14c average seems to be a little arbitrarily chosen ) but it’s not the issue is it? “
Well, the issue is, what is it? And how is it related to the Met Office It’s attributed to someone called Weller. It doesn’t look to me like a regular global index. It has a huge spike in 2006, which was not a very warm year, and not much of the usual 1998 spike. I think skeptics should be skeptical.
Dale in Melbourne, did you get snow last week too? We did on the Northern Tablelands.
mbw says:
October 13, 2012 at 5:38 pm
“…..Why did you pick 1997 as your start year?….”
I’d guess they picked it because that’s the point at which the last warming period stopped.
ie: As per the article headline “Report: Global warming stopped 16 years ago”
Sometimes it is best to read everything, and concentrate.
Proof that mainstream solar & climate scientists have fatally impaired vision:
http://i46.tinypic.com/303ipeo.png + http://i49.tinypic.com/wwdwy8.png
= http://i48.tinypic.com/2v14sc5.gif (slow animation of preceding pair)
Show me the mechanism for removing them from office to make way for more aggressively driven solar-terrestrial-climate exploration.
mbw says:
October 13, 2012 at 5:38 pm “…..Why did you pick 1997 as your start year?….”
Here ya go: From the published article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29FIHW34X
Trenberth : ”With the links between weather and climate for instance – we know they are there, but the specific numbers need work”
I seen no mention in the news report that this was the same alarmist who had participated in a press conference in which the media and the public were led to believe that a link exists between global warming and more intense hurricanes. Chris Landsea who is a cyclone expert resigned from the IPCC over this.
Mr Trenberth! Show the world these so called “specific numbers”? You can not as those numbers are just a figment if your alarmist imagination.
He is an idiot!
Helluva an article really:
….except for that dang picture of steaming cooling towers:
Damage: Global warming has been caused in part by the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. This image shows smoke billowing out of a power station. …
Or, “reality is not consistent with the models”.
My mother has informed me that she saw on the tv news a chart with lots of red on it showing how the worlds oceans are turning acidic. Can’t alarm us about global warming so turning to other methods:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57531002/changing-climate-hurting-shellfish-market/
I noticed that the Daily Mail graph has no trend line. It appears no statistical analysis has been done.
I ran linear trends at woodfortrees for all the land/ocean data sets from Jan 1995 to Dec 2011 (17 years in total), in order to avoid any seasonal effects (plotting the annual instead of monthly data would have been an even better choice for that purpose, but I wanted a quick look).
All surface and tropospheric data sets show a warming trend.
HadCRUt3 – 0.08C/decade
HadCRUt4 – 0.14C/decade
GISStemp – 0.12C/decade
RSS – 0.05C/decade
UAH – 0.13C/decade
I haven’t run statistical significance tests, but I’d guess that HadCRUt3 and RSS trends are not statistically significant.
The wide variation indiactes to me that we are at the edge of getting a robust signal – “at least” 17 years, Santer et al say, in order to derive a climate forcing signal. You’d clearly need a longer period to get a more robust trend result.
Santer’s paper concludes:
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/18383638/1244615018/name/2011JD016263.pdf
I thought for catastrophic climate change the time needed to draw conclusions was 24 hours!
At least now they know they can’t draw conclusions on CCC until 2030 at the earliest.
Just remembered this handy dandy trend analysis tool at SkS.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
Of the warming trends for the recent 17 years for the 5 temp records I derived above, HadCRUt3, RSS and UAH are not statistically significant.
While there are more sophisticated analyses to derive statistically significant trends from shortish data periods, it is probably safe to say that 17 years is a bare minimum but not necessarily sufficient.
Where pray is a link to the source of the allegedly original authoritative graph?
The displayed graph seems to be very different from everything else?
For instance the 1997/8 El Nino is elsewhere shown as warmer in 1998 than 1997. (without knowing even if the x axis years start at Jan or end in December)
Is the whole report in the famous news source “News of the World” possibly a trick intended to embarrass sceptics who might get too excited about it?
What happens if you start in 1995 instead of 1997 which would be 17 years? Does it change that much? Doesn’t the chart show 15 years of data and not 16 years (1997 to 2012)?
barry:
In your post at October 13, 2012 at 10:44 pm you say
Please define what you and Santer mean by the word “robust“.
The Free Online Dictionary provides this set of definitions:
I fail to see how the definitions numbered 1 to 3 and 5 can apply to a statistical “signal” or to a “trend result”.
Hence, it seems you and Santer are claiming that
“The wide variation indicates to me that we are at the edge of getting a rough or crude signal – “at least” 17 years, Santer et al say, in order to derive a climate forcing signal. You’d clearly need a longer period to get a more rough or crude trend result.”
Personally, I do not want to obtain the “rough or crude” results you desire because I prefer the reliable results we have.
Richard
Whatever is happening with the climate it is very worrisome. See in the link for a 7C drop in temperature over a three hour period! ! !
http://www.milfordweather.org.uk/atmospheric.php
The worlds oldest instrumental data base shows not only the steep drop in temperatures over the last decade but that temperatures are much the same now as they were at least 16 years ago
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
tonyb
It is all too late, anyway;
http://www.scotsman.com/news/brown-fifty-days-to-save-the-world-1-779582
From the Daily Mail article quoting Jones : Yet he insisted that 15 or 16 years is not a significant period: ***pauses of such length had always been expected***, he said.
Oh really, professor ? I don’t recall you or anyone else linked to the IPCC having mentioned that before today. Is there anything else you forgot to tell us ?!
It’s very sad that the AGW whackos were fed so much money by idiot politicians like Obarmy fronting greedy carbon traders and renewables’ corporations. Yet all along the Trenberth- Hansen ‘science’ was so obviously flawed that any professional trained when slide rules reigned and you had to think instead of leaving it to the computers, could see the obvious errors.
To recap, they are as follows:
1. Assume the Earth radiates IR as if an isolated black body in a vacuum, increasing atmospheric IR absorption by ~5x, in turn creating the imaginary positive feedback. in reality the operational emissivity is ~0.16 [63W/m^2/396 W/m^2, 2009 ‘Energy Budget’ data], with most heat transfer by convection until above the cloud level when it switches to radiative..
2. Assume direct thermalisation when this is impossible because of quantum exclusion. In reality, kinetic factors take over; thermalisation must be indirect, mainly at clouds.
3. Assume DOWN emissivity at TOA =1 when it has to be zero because with no direct thermalisation, radiated energy pseudo-scatters into the sink of space.
4. Assume GHG warming is the sum of the individual,contributions when by ~10% RH at ambient, there is no variation of emissivity as CO2 increases, showing water vapour side bands mask CO2 IR emission and absorption. This means there can be no CO2-AGW except in arid regions.
5. Assume clouds with smallest droplets backscatter most light when high cloud albedo is a large droplet phenomenon. This means the net AIE is positive, probably the real AGW, now saturated.
6. Assume 33 K present net GHE when most [~24 K] is from lapse rate warming.
They got the title of the reports right and spelt their names correctly so they get a mark of 5%.
If UHI had an exagerating effect on the growth of global average temperature in the past then as cities/airports etc mature and and temperature measurements take more account of the UHI phenomena so UHI’s s affect on temperature growth would diminish. As growth in new cities/airports would lead to a smaller percentage growth in new UHI vs existing base and new weather stations would be better positioned. So what surprise is a flattening of global average temperature alongside natural cycles and changes in aerosol distribution from west to east. And we can only bounce back from the Little ice Age for so long. CO2 driven models fail miserably don’t they?
Tcha! I went and read the Daily Mail article. Big mistake. There is a picture there of an unnamed power generating station with the following caption:
“Damage: Global warming has been caused in part by the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. This image shows smoke billowing out of a power station”
The real ‘smoke’ is from two tall thin smoke stacks and is almost invisible. There are very strict laws governing ‘smoke’. The many cooling towers are venting clouds of STEAM which are a product of the cooling process in the power station. I hate this shoddy level of reporting which is all too common these days.
barry says: “You’d clearly need a longer period to get a more robust trend result.”
No, “trends” are never “robust”. Whenever you do fit a linear you are proposing that a linear model reasonably characterises the data. There is nothing “linear” about climate so one thing you can be sure of is that the model is fundamentally wrong.
As such, any result you get will be wrong and misleading and depends totally on where you start.
The decadal term variations are far larger that the numbers you are looking at, so until you have characterised and removed those you cannot hope to get anything meaningful from “trends”.
Don’t bother doing the stats, your results are not significant anyway.
If we banned the word “trend” from the discussion we might start to learn something about climate.
“Bottom line – the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before
we get worried.” ~ Phil Jones, May 7, 2009
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2208.txt