Over at The Conversation Andrew Glikson asks Fact check: has global warming paused? citing an old Skeptical Science favorite graph, and that’s the problem; it’s old data. He writes:
As some 90% of the global heat rise is trapped in the oceans (since 1950, more than 20×1022 joules), the ocean heat level reflects global warming more accurately than land and atmosphere warming. The heat content of the ocean has risen since about 2000 by about 4×1022 joules.
…
To summarise, claims that warming has paused over the last 16 years (1997-2012) take no account of ocean heating.
Hmmm, if “…ocean heat level reflects global warming more accurately than land and atmosphere warming…” I wonder what he and the SkS team will have to say about this graph from NOAA Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory (PMEL) using more up to date data from the ARGO buoy system?
Sure looks like a pause to me, especially after steep rises in OHC from 1997-2003. Note the highlighted period in yellow:
From PMEL at http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/
The plot shows the 18-year trend in 0-700 m Ocean Heat Content Anomaly (OHCA) estimated from in situ data according to Lyman et al. 2010. The error bars include uncertainties from baseline climatology, mapping method, sampling, and XBT bias correction.
Historical data are from XBTs, CTDs, moorings, and other sources. Additional displays of the upper OHCA are available in the Plots section.
As Dr. Sheldon Cooper would say: “Bazinga!“
h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. for the PMEL graph.
UPDATE: See the above graph converted to temperature anomaly in this post.
@Bart: You remind me of a friend of mine. She majored in literature, loves it, has read extensively and reads incessantly, and can talk to you all day about Faulkner and Hemingway and Fitzgerald, what they did right and what they did wrong and what they should have done instead.
She’d also love to write “the Great American Novel,” and has started it perhaps a dozen times. But she never gets more than a chapter or two in before other things come up or she starts anew. I try to encourage her to put her work out there, but except for a couple of literary journals no one ever heard of, her work stays in draft form in her notebooks. I’ve never had the heart to tell her what I really think, except in the most general terms: that she’s afraid of putting her work out there because she’s afraid of getting rejected. As long as her work stays with her she can be sure about it’s genius, beauty and veracity. Putting it out for publication would risk rejection and the shattering of all that. It’s much easier for her to pretend she has all the answers in the world she’s constructed for herself.
Phobos says:
“…clicking on your name goes to a site of what looks to be science news.”
Interested in who is responding to you, eh? That’s pretty hypocritical, coming from an anonymous coward.
@MiCro: Yes, it’s fun to do backyard experiments and make some spreadsheets. (I guess that’s what you did — I’m not going to take much time to sort through it and figure it out.)
It’s not science.
Maybe you’ve never been exposed to real science, or done any of it. If you had, you’d know that a few spreadsheets aren’t science, and are no comparison at all the the decades and decades of careful, detailed work done by thousands of science, any more than stick figures compare to Picasso or an accountant is an expert on monetary policy.
You’re just looking for a reason to reject results you, for some reason, don’t like, and these few spreadsheets are your cover.
D.B. Stealey says: “You don’t get to determine how I answer a question.”
Sorry, you are clearly still avoiding them (and of course, I know why).
They are two simple questions, with relatively simple answers.
I think ‘Fat Cheque’ is what Glik was hoping for, not this. Do people know that SkS’s skipper is a cartoonist by trade?.
Mark Bofill says: “I don’t know, has Dr. Hansen heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?”
I am interested in the science, not in personalities. As soon as I see someone write “But so-and-so did it!” I know they don’t have a scientific answer. I get that — most people don’t have the scientific background to really understand climate science, and it’s easier to just spit and fume about James Hansen or Al Gore or Richard Lindzen. But I have absolutely no interest in engaging in debate on that level. Sorry.
Evan Bedford,
I rarely click on a name, but your comment sounded so silly I did in your case.
I found some stale old debunked propaganda showing a supposedly stranded polar bear on an ice floe. Really, you must be an Algore acolyte.
This is a science site. What are you doing here?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:20 pm
You’d guess wrong.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Joe says: “Say it warmed steadily through the 1990s. The average temperature for that decade will be roughly (start of 1990 temperature + end of 1999 temperature) / 2 .”
*IF* it warmed steadily. It rarely does.
For someone admonishing me about high school math, you’re is sorely lacking.
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The “warmed steadily” was just to keep it simple – clearly you need that!
If you have a value that increases over time then, regardless of the pattern of increase, the average value will be LESS than the end-value of the linear trend of the increase. If that’s not so then you simply don’t have a positive trend in the first place.
If the trend then changes to zero, starting at the end-value of the increasing trend (which it must start at unless there’s a step change), then the average of the next time period will equal that end value,. It will therefore be GREATER than the average of the time when it was increasing.
The average of the second time period will only become lower than the first if the second period has a DECREASING trend that is greater than the increasing trend over the first period.
So, the ONLY definite conclusion you can draw if a decadal average temperature is higher than the previous decade’s is that the temperature trend hasn’t become negative by more than the initial positive. In other words, from the “warmest ever” statement taken alone, all we know that it isn’t now cooling faster than it warmed during the 90s.
It really isn’t that difficult a concept!
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Let me add, why would anyone bother to even converse with you, if that’s all the more you’re willing to invest?
You’ve made up your mind, that’s fine, but why come here?
We don’t need missionaries, people willing to discuss science get a fair shake. Offer me a reason that explains why the data I’ve extracted is wrong, I’m actually looking for that kind of feedback. But what i get are responses like your, you don’t like it, and thousands have spent decades trying to turn lousy data into a trend, so they must be omnipotent. I don’t need that, go find someone else to proselytize to.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:13 pm
It’s more equivalently, I’d love to write such lighthearted fare, but after polishing off War and Peace, I am currently engaged in writing a tale involving a great white whale. I have rather more interesting and remunerative applications for my talents.
I have laid out everything for you, and am appealing to your own sense of logic. Work it out for yourself, without abdicating your capacity for thought to others whom you imagine are endowed with greater perspicacity. More than half the time, the guys with the greatest reputations got them because they had the mojo to make others believe, not because their ideas have particular merit.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:27 pm
II get that — most people don’t have the scientific background to really understand climate science
——————————————————————————————————
Says the person who can’t understand a very basic, very obvious, fact about averages over time.
Absolutely priceless! 😀
@Joe Kirklin: Of course I get your “concept.”
All you are saying is, if the short-term surface trend is zero, AGW has stopped.
I’ve responded to this criticism numerous times above: ocean heating, ice melting, sea-level rise, natural fluctuations, ENSOs, too short of an interval, cherry picked start and end points, massless surfaces, etc…. If you don’t get it by now, you aren’t trying or it’s beyond you.
As long as the average temperature of the current decade is significantly greater than the average temperature of the one before it, it’s absurd to claim warming has stopped. Just six years ago the 15-yr trend was 0.32 C/decade. What were you saying then?
@Bart: I have worked it out for myself, as best I can with the time I have. I find the science convincing, and your so-called reasoning superficial. And I have a lot more respect for people who spend their entire careers doing this and writing careful, detailed papers than people who spend all day commenting on all the blogs thinking hand-waving is science and that they’ve disproven absolutely everything.
MiCro says:”Let me add, why would anyone bother to even converse with you, if that’s all the more you’re willing to invest?”
Because you haven’t taken the time to say clearly, without jargon, what it is you’ve done. You just threw up a link to something that is, frankly, not very well written, and said, here, go figure it out for yourself.
My time, like everyone’s, is limited and you haven’t given me a reason to think you’ve done anything important that I should spend it on. Has this work, say, been published anywhere? If the result is so important, surely everyone in the field needs to know about it, right?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:04 am
1) Would you judge the climate changes of the MWP based solely on what was happening from 997 AD to 1012 AD?
So you agree there was a MWP and by extension it was warmer than today. If so why would think the warming of today is in anyway out of the ordinary as it happened in the MWP without being blamed on CO2?
@MiCro: For example, this is from your page:
“The methodology I used was to take the daily maximum temperature, and subtracted the morning low temperature. That provides the energy into the planet, I then took the Max temp, and subtracted tomorrow mornings low temp, which gives me the energy lost overnight.”
This is just nonsense. The planetary energy imbalance is not related to the simple temperature change you calculated. It’s absurd to equate the two.
Did you read Harries et al 2001? They’re trying to determine the global change in energy balance for clear sky conditions. You’ll notice they aren’t doing it by measuring temperatures on the surface a few times a day. Because you can’t.
Look. Like you, I love science and thinking about it. I also like playing with data, graphing it, testing out my little ideas. I suspect that you, like me, think that climate science is endlessly fascinating, especially at this point in time — we’re lucky to be living through this time when so much science is going on and everyone is struggling to find answers and understanding.
But I don’t think my little spreadsheets are science. They aren’t. Science is deep and complicated and requires careful data gathering and analysis. Even the experts have a hard time doing it, and make mistakes, take false steps, and so on. But little by little the field advances and the picture gets a little clearer here, and little less foggy there. It’s a slow process, and there seems no end to the complications one needs to consider. Frankly, the amazing thing is that science can tell us anything about not just climate, but the entire universe or some microscopic piece of it.
I read a lot of scientific papers, and know what it takes to write one. There is just no comparison between them and the spreadsheets I create. Or, I’m sorry to say, yours. I simply can not fathom why amateurs think they can counter the work of thousands, over decades, with a couple of spreadsheets.
mkelly says: “So you agree there was a MWP and by extension it was warmer than today. If so why would think the warming of today is in anyway out of the ordinary as it happened in the MWP without being blamed on CO2?”
No, I didn’t say that. As near as I can tell, there was an MWP in some places on the planet, but the science is still unclear as to whether it was a global phenomenon. (PAGES had an entire newsletter on this about 2 years ago.) And, if it was, what caused it. And, if it was caused by an increase in solar irradiance, that does not explain today’s warming, because there has been essentially no increase in solar irradiance since about 1950. And, if it was some kind of nonlinear fluctuation of the climate system, if that doesn’t make our current situation even worse, because we’d have to worry about the possibility of another one in addition to GHG heating. And, while the MWP did some nice things for Europe, it seems to have caused megadroughts in North America (see: Sand Hills, Nebraska).
So then, how about answering my question about the 997-1012 AD time period?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 1:02 pm
@Joe Kirklin: Of course I get your “concept.”
All you are saying is, if the short-term surface trend is zero, AGW has stopped.
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No, Phobos, that’s not what I’m saying at all.
YOU posted on 27th Feb at 10:43 am:
“The latest 10-year period is 0.14 C warmer than the previous 10-year period.”
as evidence that it is still warming.
When i asked you, at 10:34 AM today, whether you actually believed that the average for the 2000s being higher than the average for the 1990s was evidence of continued warming, you answered categorically “YES” (you even added “of course”)!
Since then I have simply tried to explain to you, using the simplest possible language and examples, why that fact is NOT evidence that it’s continuing to warm. Neither is it evidence that the warming has stopped or reversed. I have NOT suggested it means that in any of my posts.
Others here have suggested that you might work for NOAA or similar. Given that you have categorically stated above that you believe without question something that is easily demonstrated to be invalid, EVEN WHEN PRSENTED WITH THE DEMONSTRATION, I sincerely hope they’re wrong!
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 1:06 pm
“And I have a lot more respect for …”
Respect is not a part of the equation. They’re either right, or they are not. In this case, they are not.
But, I understand. You do not have enough confidence in your own faculties and abilities to make your own conclusions. That’s a shame. But, you’ll learn. I’ve done all I can.
D.B. Stealey says: “That’s the problem, the link says the greenhouse effect is “inferred”.
Here is the definition of “infer”: “Deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.”
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:04 am
2) What would you have said to someone in January 2007 who pointed out that the 15-year trend of the UAH lower troposphere data was 0.32 C/decade?
If I may jump in here, you raise a good point, however there are several things to note with your choice of UAH between 1992 to 2007.
There was a volcanic eruption that affected 1992 and satellites give more extreme values. So you are cherry picking with a volatile data set over a short period. And changing the date by three years from 1995 to 2007 makes a large difference. Using Hadcrut3, the difference between 1992 to 2007 and 1995 to 2007 is a difference from 0.0274 per year to 0.0195 per year.
Now let us compare this to Hadcrut3 from 1997.25 to date versus 2000.25 to date. It is flat both times. So while I agree that 1997.25 is a cherry picked time, there are cancelling affects due to the 1998 El Nino and the La Ninas that followed it. However there was no cancelling effect for the Pinatubo volcano.
See the four slope lines below to see exactly what I am talking about.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1992/to:2007/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/to:2007/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.25/trend
Furthermore, temperatures follow a 60 year sine wave. The 1992 to 2007 period was on the upswing of the sine wave. And now we are past the flat peak of the sine wave and heading down. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
@Mark Bofill: So I went ahead and looked at the Hansen links you gave about the runaway greenhouse effect. He says (in both):
“In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect.”
That is a VERY big if. The amount of coal on the planet is estimated to be 98.6e17 g C (Swart and Weaver, Nature Climate Change, 2012). That’s 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon! — we have emitted only 380 GtC so far from burning fossil fuels.
I don’t think anyone has a model that can simulate such an extreme scenario. It seems he’s making an educated guess, which is why he prefaces it with “In my opinion….”
As Hansen writes, the Sun is stronger now than when atmospheric CO2 was 4000 ppm. I’d have to calculate how much.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 1:26 pm
You’re right, I shouldn’t have used energy.
As I said, it’s behind a paywall, I did look at the graphs you sent though.
I’m not really trying to identify an imbalance, I’m trying to get real measurements of DLR, what I’m trying to do is figure out a way to separate the DLR from Co2 vs DLR from water vapor. One should be increasing based on increases of Co2, the other based on the variability of water vapor.
And yet, that exactly what is use to justify a warming problem, an increase in temperature of ~0.8C
What I did is based on the same data, it’s either a valid use of the data or it isn’t. Which is it Phobos? Valid, Yes or No?
But ignoring my poor choice of words, those “simple” spreadsheets are based on 120 million station records and about 224 million temp measurements.
BTW the temperature history all of AGW is based on is from a single temperature measurement a day, and prior to 1930 or so, a few thousand measurements/year. So, my graph has about 100 million more samples than the entire temperature history has, that the global warming trend is based on.
Phobos,
An inference is not measurable scientific evidence. I asked for measurable evidence. So far you are batting zero.
On the bright side, no one else has measurable evidence of AGW, either.
Phobos also speculates:
“As near as I can tell, there was an MWP in some places on the planet, but the science is still unclear as to whether it was a global phenomenon. (PAGES had an entire newsletter on this about 2 years ago.) And, if it was, what caused it. And, if it was caused by an increase in solar irradiance, that does not explain today’s warming, because there has been essentially no increase in solar irradiance since about 1950. And, if it was some kind of nonlinear fluctuation of the climate system, if that doesn’t make our current situation even worse, because we’d have to worry about the possibility of another one in addition to GHG heating.”
Where to start? First off, there is plenty of evidence that the MWP was global in extent.
Rather than wasting your time wondering why the planet is recovering from the LIA [which was also global in extent], you should be wondering what caused the anomalous LIA — one of the coldest episodes of the entire Holocene.
The planet has been warming from that cold period, and CO2 has either
a) little, or
b) nothing
to do with it.
Wake me when you can measure AGW. Then we will have settled the question of the sensitivity number.
Finally, anything would ‘make our current situation worse’. The past 150 years have been a true Goldilocks climate: not too cold, not too hot, but just right. During that time, harmless, beneficial CO2 has been both high and low, and it has not made a bit of difference. During the Holocene it has been unusual to go for 150 years with hardly a fluctuation in temperature. 0.7ºC is nothing compared with other times, when temperatures changed by tens of degrees over decadal time scales — and without changes in CO2.