This article and graphic from David Rose in the UK Daily Mail has caused quite a stir as we covered it here over the weekend. The Met Office has responded exactly as one would expect they would and I repeat their response below.
From the Met Office WordPress blog:
An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’
It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here.
To address some of the points in the article published today:
Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.
We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.
Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.
You can see our full response to all of the questions Mr Rose did ask us below:
Hi David,
Here’s a response to your questions. I’ve kept them as concise as possible but the issues you raise require considerable explanation.
Q.1 “First, please confirm that they do indeed reveal no warming trend since 1997.”
The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.
As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.
Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.
Q.2 “Second, tell me what this says about the models used by the IPCC and others which have predicted a rise of 0.2 degrees celsius per decade for the 21st century. I accept that there will always be periods when a rising gradient may be interrupted. But this flat period has now gone on for about the same time as the 1980 – 1996 warming.”
The models exhibit large variations in the rate of warming from year to year and over a decade, owing to climate variations such as ENSO, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. So in that sense, such a period is not unexpected. It is not uncommon in the simulations for these periods to last up to 15 years, but longer periods are unlikely.
Q.3 “Finally, do these data suggest that factors other than CO2 – such as multi-decadal oceanic cycles – may exert a greater influence on climate than previously realised?”
We have limited observations on multi-decadal oceanic cycles but we have known for some time that they may act to slow down or accelerate the observed warming trend. In addition, we also know that changes in the surface temperature occur not just due to internal variability, but are also influenced by “external forcings”, such as changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions or aerosol emissions. Combined, several of these factors could account for some or all of the reduced warming trend seen over the last decade – but this is an area of ongoing research.
———–
The below graph which shows years ranked in order of global temperature was not included in the response to Mr Rose, but is useful in this context as it illustrates the point made above that eight of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.
Graph showing years ranked in order of global temperature.
=======================================================
One wonders what the Met Office would say about the data if the many circular adjustments and artificial biases were removed from the data.
Of course, the temp period I had in mind was 1945-1970. My bad
Argument “but our models show there is possibility for lull in warming up to 10-15 years” is pure BS: where it is? In the CMIP3 model ensemble mean it is not.
http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/310249/global1900.jpg
WHERE IT IS???
http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/310249/global2001.jpg
One has to look at the time scales to assess whether the climates temperature is increasing or decreasing. Climate is an average of the observed weather over a period of 30 years. Therefore one cannot make a statement that the climate has not increased or is leveling over a 15 year period. If this phenomenon persists for the next 15 years then one can say that the new climate regime will be of a higher average temperature than that experienced in the past, due to the fact that over the past two decades the observed temperatures have been higher than the norm. The reason why climate is assessed over a longer time period than 15 years is to account for the climate variations as well as the ocean-atmosphere coupling that have an effect on the weather experienced on a yearly basis. However, one cannot ignore that fact that the observed climate over the past couple of decades (30 years or longer) has not shown a stable climate variation around a “norm” and therefore the average climate for the current period cannot be estimated or stated to be “ leveling”.
“One has to look at the time scales to assess whether the climates temperature is increasing or decreasing. Climate is an average of the observed weather over a period of 30 years. Therefore one cannot make a statement that the climate has not increased or is leveling over a 15 year period. If this phenomenon persists for the next 15 years then one can say that the new climate regime will be of a higher average temperature than that experienced in the past, due to the fact that over the past two decades the observed temperatures have been higher than the norm. The reason why climate is assessed over a longer time period than 15 years is to account for the climate variations as well as the ocean-atmosphere coupling that have an effect on the weather experienced on a yearly basis. However, one cannot ignore that fact that the observed climate over the past couple of decades (30 years or longer) has not shown a stable climate variation around a “norm” and therefore the average climate for the current period cannot be estimated or stated to be “ leveling”.”
The problem with this analysis is that science is not that simple. If one is a particle physicist one can say that the probability of finding a particle is one in a million type interactions. Scientists then do millions and if they see a normal distribution around a million per instance they can say their predfiction has merit. Climate science has no repeatability. All the data in the past is suspect or error prone. No matter what reasonable time period chosen we can’t be certain that any prediction by itself says anything about how good our theory is. Also, it is awfully convenient for the theorizers to say that to “disprove” their theory we need 30 more years of data. That’s not the way REAL science works. Real science would say you haven’t proven anything until 30 years has passed, maybe 60 or 90 or 120 years so the experiment can be repeated and repeated. In a situation like this scientists need to find analogues to the 30 year problem. Fortunately there are some simple tests. The law of conservation of energy is an immutable law of physics. Every instant (not every 30 years) energy must be conserved. If the theory of AGW cannot ascribe where the heat went even if not into surface temperatures but can show how it shows the energy must go into oceans or under land or escape into space or go one place or another and we find that energy there then we know that at least the theory is internally consistent. Maybe temperatures on the surface aren’t going up. The AGW theory has to be able to explain where the heat went and we should be able to measure it. This will eliminate the problem with weather vs climate. If the theory accurately predicts the quantity and place that the heat can go and why then it is on much stronger ground. Unfortunately to my knowledge this is now the biggest problem. The lack of heating of the surface is trivial problem compared to the missing heat problem. Without explaining that AGW is not a consistent complete theory that could possibly be ascribed any merit whatsoever other than as a passing idea some people have. I believe that every scientist in the world would have to agree 100% with me on all of what I have stated here and if anyone has a clue how the models or the theory shows where the heat went you can write mr Hansen because he himself has not been able to explain it. He tried to show some of it went into the ocean. He got much less than half the energy accounted through some pretty questionable and error prone measurements. We don’t have to wait 30 years or 1 more year. Until the AGW folks can exaplin where all this heat over the last 16 years that is supposed to be created by all the feedbacks and co2 that we pour into the atmosphere then the theory is as good as dead on arrival.
Just a thought:
At October 16, 2012 at 6:30 am you say
NO! That is plain wrong, and the remainder of your post is based on it so is also wrong.
A ‘climate normal period’ has 30 years duration. A climate datum can be provided for any period if the length of the period is stated.
A climate datum is compared to a mean of similar data from a 30-year period that has been chosen as a ‘climate normal period’. So, for example, global temperature data are reported as “anomalies” (i.e. differences) from the average global temperature of a 30-year period chosen as the ‘climate normal period’. But the providers of the global temperature data sets (e.g. GHCN, HadCRUT, etc) each use different start and end years for their individual ‘climate normal period’.
The 30-year duration of climate normals was decided in 1958 as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). This duration was an arbitrary decision based on the general agreement that only 30 years of reliable climate data then existed.
The arbitrary 30-year length of climate normals is unfortunate for several reasons. For example, 30 years is not a multiple of the 11-year solar cycle, or the 22-year Hale cycle, or etc..
But a climate datum can be of any duration provided its start and end dates are stated. For example, the global temperature data are stated for individual years. And the 1994 IPCC Report used a series of 4-year periods to compare hurricane frequency. Indeed, the duration of the entire Holocene is often compared to the climates of earlier geological epochs.
The importance of the recent 15 year period is what it indicates concerning the validity of climate science as reported by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The 1997 UN IPCC AR4 Report predicted (n.b. predicted not projected) that global temperature would rise over the first two decades after 2000 at an average rate of 0.2deg.C/decade +/-20%. This rise was certain because it was “committed warming” which the climate models said must occur as a result of anthropogenic GHG emissions already in the system.
The IPCC prediction can be seen at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-4.html
In the graph the orange line represents the “committed” temperature increase the IPCC said would occur after 2000 if there were no additional CO2. Clearly, actual temps from 2000 until now are lower than the projected “committed” warming while CO2 levels have continued to rise.
There are only four possible meanings of the flat-line in global temperatures over the last 15 years; i.e.
1. The models are wrong.
Or
2. The global temperature estimates are wrong.
Or
3. Natural climate variation is sufficient to overwhelm anthropogenic warming.
Or
4. Some or all of the possibilities 1 to 3.
Richard
It’s even worse than what you say. Any climate theory I postulate may not be able to predict what the temperature at any time T is. However, if the temperature at time T for a period of substantial duration is different than the predicted value then the theory must explain why. If scientists say, a ball must have uniform motion, then if the ball doesn’t have uniform motion the science must be able to explain why, for instance the ball had resistance from X. If the temperature is not what the models say there should be an explanation. We shouldn’t get blank stares, “JUST BELIEVE US, IT”S COMING.” That’s NOT how science works. If the temperature is not what it is today they must be able to explain why it is deviating, at least qualitatively if not directly. They must be able to say, oh well, that’s possible if the oceans have cyclic patterns A and B. Without being able to explain at least qualitatively the motions and cycles and roughly WHY this is happening that we have 16 years of non-conformance with the CO2 heat that is supposed to be generating massive amounts of additional energy in the atmosphere then they must have a theory what IS GOING ON. If not, then why should we believe ANYTHING they say? That is for religion to say things like “Believe us”. It is for religion to say things like we don’t know why your father was murdered but he went to heaven. It is for science to say well, your father was murdered and here is the bullet and sorry we didn’t see it coming. The models must at least explain qualitatively why there is a 16 year haitus in temperatures. They cannot simply ignore it and say “don’t know what that is about but don’t worry, it will all come together soon.” That’s not science. That’s religion. Scientists should be saying, well it’s likely there is some cyclic thing going on with ocean currents we didn’t know about. Factoring that into our models we see that well, we overestimated the rate of temperature rising in the 1970-1999 period and therefore we may have overestimated the sensitivity of the atmosphere to CO2. A scientist would have to say that at the minimum “The fact that the data has not conformed to the theory for 16 years” reduces the probability our models are correct. It reduces the certainty that we stated earlier. That’s the minimum that can be said as a scientist. As a politician they can say anyhting they want. They can say the case is stronger than ever. However, scientists have to have a higher calling. We have to be able to call a spade a spade and if we run 4 billion experiments looking for a partical we expect to find in 1 billion interactions we can say that the theory hasn’t been disproven but we have to say it is not looking good for the theory. We have to say the probability the theory is correct is declining.
So what their saying is the last 16 years are the hottest on record.
This does not contradict the fact that there has been no warming for 16 years.
Seems the 1930’s got adjusted, just amazing !!!
I have a suggestion for the next cartoon: have you seen the episode of the “Modern Family”
where the kids surprised the parents, and little girl running down to the kitchen sink trying to wash the image out of her mind….. the cartoon should be Al Gore try to do the same after he saw the chart of no warming….. LOL
To those that claim that 1934 was the hottest year on record please be aware that the “record” high temperature at the time was only for the US. The global temperature for that year was the 49th on record (as of the end of 2011).
[snip . . OT . . post in Tips & Notes instead, thanks . . mod]
richardscourtney says:
October 16, 2012 at 7:37 am
“The 30-year duration of climate normals was decided in 1958 as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY).”
Yes, but there is additional history (back to 1935) to what you have written. Rather than repeat, see my comment here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/24/a-different-take-on-the-hottest-month-on-record/#comment-1064676
John F. Hultquist:
re your post addressed to me at October 16, 2012 at 10:00 pm.
Yes. Thankyou.
Richard
“We have limited observations on multi-decadal oceanic cycles but we have known for some time that they may act to slow down or accelerate the observed warming trend.”
They didn’t have anything to say about this while the warming trend was accelerating.
The appeal to various and vaguely specified natural forcings interfering with the CO2 signal would be more persuasive if any such effects, and their specific causes, had been forecast, and quantified even roughly. They were not. Which puts “paid” to the claim of having examined and ruled out the influence of such forcings in the past. Which renders the “remnant CO2 explanation” null and void.
there are now more comments on the Met Office response page:
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/
but all sane comments/questions are interspersed with multiple links to skepticalscience including skepticalscience /nuccitelli, or denierslist, or insults about sceptics having connections to coal & similar by a John Havery Samuel:
a lot can be learned about john amongst the following tweets, tho nothing scientific:
John Havery Samuel
http://twitter.com/_jsam
2 days from the DM article for the Guardian to come up with this? what a surprise?
16 Oct: Guardian: Dana Nuccitelli for Skeptical Science: Why the Mail on Sunday was wrong to claim global warming has stopped
Newspaper’s claim that ‘world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago’ is simply wrong, says Met Office
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/16/daily-mail-global-warming-stopped-wrong?newsfeed=true
16 Oct: Western Morning News, Cornwall UK: Met Office denies claims that latest data shows global warming slowdown
Reports suggesting that global warming stopped 16 years ago are “misleading”, the Met Office said yesterday.
It had been claimed that the Exeter-based Met Office “quietly released” figures which showed little rise in aggregate global temperatures from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012…
(Met Office spokesman) “We have limited observations on multi-decadal oceanic cycles but we have known for some time that they may act to slow down or accelerate the observed warming trend…
“Combined, several of these factors could account for some or all of the reduced warming trend seen over the last decade – but this is an area of ongoing research.”
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Met-Office-denies-claims-latest-data-shows-global/story-17088587-detail/story.html
so how did the Western Morning News come up with that headline?
John and Richard
I read John’s interesting link and by coincidence about three years ago i wrote something similar. I reproduce it below as it helps to put evolving climate into perspective.
“As I don’t like the concept of ‘global temperatures I tend to use national temperature data sets-the older the better. The Dutch ones go back (sporadically) about as far as CET. (Hubert Lamb –first director of CRU-stated that CET was a very good indicator for NH/‘global’ temperatures.)
I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try and smooth out the short term temperature trends that will make someone in their 30’s today say-‘it’s got warmer in my lifetime’- a point which their great grandparents might disagree with, having lived through the 1920’s and 30’s
Consequently I decided to see what temperature a person living a three score year and ten life span in England would experience (using CET to 1660)
This table is based on the average annual mean temperature enjoyed by the ‘British Everyman’ through each year of each decade. This assumed he was born at the start of a decade and died the last year of the decade seventy years later. These are the calculations;
Someone born in Britain in 1660 and living to 70- Average annual temp 8.87c
Someone born in 1670 and living to 70 Average annual temp 8.98
1680 9.01
1690 9.05
1700 9.19
1710 9.21
1720 9.17
1730 9.14
1740 9.04
1750 9.03
1760 9.08
1770 9.10
1780 9.07
1790 9.12
1800 9.15
1810 9.13
1820 9.14
1830 9.12
1840 9.10
1850 9.14 (Start of the Hadley global temperatures)
1860 9.17
1870 9.21
1880 9.30 Official end of the Little Ice Age-Start of GISS
1890 9.39
1900 9.40
1910 9.46
1920 9.497
1930 9.60
1940 9.70 (projected to 2009)
1950 9.76 Extrapolating current trends
1960 9.79 Using advanced modelling techniques.
I called the people born in the period from 1660 to 1880 ‘LIA Everyman’ in as much the person lived part or all of their lives during the little ice age. Those born born from 1890 to the present day I have termed ‘UHI Everyman’ for obvious reasons. No adjustments have been made to correct UHI, poor siting, change of instruments etc.
The depths of the LIA can be clearly seen, but what I find interesting is that temperatures have risen only some 0.6 degree C since the warmest period of the LIA, which does not suggest a runaway climate change scenario to me.
(The slightly cooler average temperatures in the LIA are primarily due to colder winters – summers were pretty similar)
Of course, were it possible, it would be most interesting to extrapolate this back to the MWP and Roman optimums, as it would put today’s very modest rises into a proper perspective.”
Of course since this piece was written there has been a downrurn in CET so the extrapolations would come down somewhat.
it would be interesting if anyone else living in a country with long records-Holland, Denmark, Sweden etc, would care to compile a similar chart on the same basis, that smooths out the short term noise.
Tonyb
(2 Pages) 17 Oct: Charleston Daily Mail: Dan Surber: The globe actually hasn’t been warming?
The British say temperatures have not risen in 16 years
GOOD news. Global warming ended 16 years ago, according to the Met Office, the British government’s weather department…
Climategate should have ended this nonsense.
Unfortunately, the media ignored its implications because most “environmental reporters” are true believers who spread their opinions in articles disguised as news reports.
For years I have opined, in clearly marked opinion columns, that weather is cyclical and what man knows about the causes and effects of it could fit in a thimble…
So it goes with global warming. Questioning the science – being skeptical – results in being labeled anti-science.To be sure, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and it can help the Earth trap heat.
But there are so many other variables when it comes to weather that it would be irresponsible to shut down coal plants simply out of fear of carbon dioxide releases…
Sir James Lovelock was the first to signal the global warming alarm back in the 1970s when fears of global cooling were en vogue.
Now 92, he is surprised to see that none of his predictions of gloom and doom came true, but he is philosophic about this outcome.
“One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything,” Lovelock told the Toronto Sun this summer.
“You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
Exactly.
The good news is once again, the sins of man will not end the world. The bad news is the charlatans who pushed this stuff will never be punished.
Come to think of it, they never did find the tailors who sold that poor emperor those “new clothes.”
http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/DonSurber/201210160177
no surprise here, MSNBC/Wynne Parry’s climate scientistS (plural) = Michael Mann.
read the rest if u can bear it:
16 Oct: MSNBC: Wynne Parry: Did Global Warming Really Stop in 1997?
Claims global warming stopped 15 years ago are based on “cherry-picked” data and don’t account for natural fluctuations in climate, according to climate scientists responding to an article that appeared Saturday (Oct. 13) in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail…
The Met Office has issued a response to the article. It does not dispute the trend Rose identifies, but says Rose’s article contains “some misleading information.”
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, called the latest story “just more dishonest cherry-picking and sleight of hand by Rose” and his go-to sources.
“This is just one in a continuing series of hit pieces by David Rose in The Daily Mail that completely misrepresents climate science and climate scientists. Global warming hasn’t stopped by any objective measure; it is proceeding right on schedule. In many respects (e.g. the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice this summer), it is well ahead of schedule,” Mann told LiveScience in an email. [ 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World ] …
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49434848/ns/us_news-environment/
16 Oct: Sun News Network Canada: Lorrie Goldstein: Climate data feeling the heat
Journalist David Rose argued it showed there has been no appreciable rise in global temperatures for almost 16 years, from early 1997 until August 2012.
He added that’s the same length of time global temperatures rose from 1980 to 1996 after being relatively stable, or slightly in decline, for 40 years prior to that.
(Recall the brief global cooling scare of the 1970s.)
So, does this prove the theory of man-made global warming – that global temperatures rise in lockstep with increasing man-made industrial carbon dioxide emissions – is a hoax?
No. The Met certainly didn’t say that…
Rose had criticized the Met for releasing the 2012 data “quietly on the Internet, without any media fanfare” in “sharp contrast” to its actions six months earlier when it released data up to the end of 2010, a very warm year, thus showing “a slight warming trend.”
What this shows is how politicized even the release of basic climate data has become.
Rose didn’t deny global warming exists…
Further, the theory there’s been a pause or hiatus in global warming – which early climate models failed to predict because they weren’t programmed to take into account natural factors affecting climate such as the sun and ocean currents – isn’t new.
As I reported in May 2008, for example, German climate scientists with the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences theorized at that time in a paper published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature that global warming had temporarily stopped due to the influence of ocean currents. They predicted global temperatures would not start rising again until at least 2015, when the underlying man-made warming would re-appear.
One problem with determining whether the Earth is warming is that it’s hard to measure…
Problem is, there are huge policy implications for the public right now if it turns out natural factors are having a greater influence on climate than previously believed.
This would call into question the value of government carbon pricing schemes such as cap-and-trade and carbon taxes, as well as the massive public subsidization of green energy.
Particularly since to date, none of them has significantly lowered greenhouse gas emissions, much less cooled the planet.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2012/10/20121016-085209.html
revkin is otherwise occupied so don’t expect a Met Office response from him:
16 Oct: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: A U.N. Discussion Seeks a New Set of Global Goals
Here’s the Twitter flow around a special session I’ve been running this morning at the United Nations, called Conceptualizing a Set of Sustainable Development Goals:..
COMMENT: Mike Mangan: I’m opposed to anything built on a sentence that contains both “conceptualize” and “sustainability.” It just begs parody and mockery. Sorry.
COMMENT: wmar: (anti-UN comment includes) How do we get the UN out from the climate discussion, so it might be conducted based in science? …
COMMENTS: Revkin: Despite the many deep flaws, I see the United Nations as a vital enterprise. Looking out at representatives of Latvia sitting elbow to elbow with those from Laos, as I got to do today, you get an extraordinary view of an incredibly challenging effort to build a constructive global conversation. A world without it would be worse off. Just my view.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/a-u-n-discussion-seeks-a-new-set-of-global-goals/#postComment
UN: Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform: Conceptualizing a Set of Sustainable Development Goals – A Special Event of the Second Committee of the UN General Assembly
ECOSOC Chamber, North Lawn Building, New York
The UN General Assembly will on 16 October 2012 hold a special event in order to provide an initial opportunity for all member states and other participants to engage in discussions on how to develop the SDGs, in light of the relevant terms agreed within the Rio+20 outcome document…
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgsevent.html
And so it begins. Past time, too.
“And many of the highest points on a sine-wave, will be near the crest of the wave. ”
OK, what does a sine wave have to do with the effect of greenhouse gases?
Clue: Nothing. You are using math which does not apply to the real world in the way you would wish.
So many strong opinions from people who don’t know their laws of thermodynamics from a hole in the ground.
Why is it that Rose has chosen denigrate the work of the scientists involved in ‘climategate’, and at the same time is relying solely on their data in an attempt invalidate..what, radiative physics? There are other sets of data around.
Anyway, here is what the bigger picture looks like:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/plot/pmod/scale:0.2/offset:-273.6/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend/plot/pmod/from:1986/scale:0.2/offset:-273.6/trend