Guest post by Pavel Belolipetsky
The IPCC, Bob Tisdale and others have presented hypotheses to explain 20th century warming. This article presents another. My co-workers and I call it the “Shifts” hypothesis. And we consider it to have advantages over other hypotheses in terms of simplicity, consistency over time, and homogeneity for the two considered regions. It is described in a submitted paper which can be read here
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1303/1303.1581.pdf
Its simplicity is that it uses only two factors to obtain an explanation of general features in each considered region. And it displays consistency over time because it provides the same explanation for the warming of the beginning and of the end of 20th century. This consistency enabled a fit of linear regression coefficients of data from first part of century (before 1950) to obtain similar reconstruction for the second part (after 1950). The homogeneity between regions means that shifts occur at similar times in the temperature time series of the tropics and of the north middle latitudes although the two time series differ. This homogeneity provides confidence that the Shifts Hypothesis applies globally.
It is an old idea that climate exists in “regimes” (or states) and that climate variations often occur in the form of shifts between them. Thus, regime shifts are rapid reorganizations from one relatively stable state to another. The idea gained in acceptance in the 1990s.
Many articles have been published [1-20], showing that climate shifts appear to be an essential feature of Earth’s climate system. Yasunaka and Hanawa [20] described a “regime shift” as an abrupt transition from one quasi-steady climatic state to another, and its transition period is much shorter than the lengths of the individual epochs of each climatic state. Kevin Trenberth [15] was among the first to characterize a climate shift and reported a “different regime after 1976”. Douglass and Knox [6] wrote that abrupt shifts in Earth’s climate system are common.
Lo and Hsu [10] provide a good illustration of climate shift in northern extratropical hemisphere at late 80th (Fig. 1)
Fig. 1. Time series of 9-year running-mean surface temperature anomalies (°C) in five chosen regions. Modified from Lo and Hsu (2010).
Importantly, the idea of quasi-stable regimes and sharp shifts between them is very different from the widespread view (e.g. of the IPCC) that the climate system is naturally in equilibrium and passively follows changes in radiation forcing. The existence of regimes and shifts between them suggests there may be strong negative feedbacks and buffering spaces holding the system in each regime. And there should be critical thresholds, after reaching which system moves from one regime to another.
The common feature of all studies concerning climate shifts is that causes of observed shifts are unknown. Or, in other words, there are no outstanding changes in known external forcing which induce climate shifts. For example, what extraordinary changes of forcing to northern extratropical regions are known which can produce the changes shown in Figure 1? And it is clear that IPCC climate models showing near constant feedbacks are unable to reproduce these features.
It seems that the only available mechanisms for the observed shifts are weakening of negative feedbacks or strengthening of positive feedbacks over short periods. Why and how the feedbacks would vary is not known, but there is clear need to determine this.
In our studies of regimes and shifts we considered sea surface temperature (SST) and not combined land-ocean temperatures: this was to diminish the level of variability which may mask the shifts. We compared two important regions; i.e. tropics (30S-30N), and the north middle latitudes (30N-60N). We found that probably there were three climate regimes in these regions from 1900 till now: the detected regimes were before 1926, from 1926 till 1987, and after 1988.
It seems that during each of the 1925/1926 and 1987/1988 shifts, the mean temperature rose to a new level around which natural oscillations occur. This assumption of shifts allows for an easy way to reconstruct SST anomalies at the tropics (30S-30N) and north middle latitudes (30N-60N). Of course there are some residuals between observed and reconstructed values, but they are quite homogeneously distributed during the century. This homogeneity of residuals is not the case for reconstruction by anthropogenic forcing.
Fig. 2. a) Blue line – SST in tropics, red line – linear regression on ENSO and climate regime, studied by 1900-2012 years b) ENSO influence on tropical SST; c) climate regime influence on tropical SST.
Figures 2 and 3 provide very simple linear regression models for SST dynamics in the tropics and north middle latitudes. Quite adequate reconstructions are obtained as linear combination of shifts with ENSO for tropical SST, and shifts with PDO for north middle latitudes SST. Correlation coefficients for monthly mean anomalies are 0.86 and 0.81, respectively. Is this simple? Yes, I think it is.
And the homogeneity is a remarkable feature. The temperature time series of tropics and north middle latitudes are very different, but the way of warming is common: they each exhibit shifts at near the same times.
Fig. 3. a) Blue line – SST in north middle latitudes (30oN-60oN), red line – linear regression on PDO and climate regime, studied by 1900-2012 years b) PDO influence on SST in this region; c) climate regime influence on SST in this region.
Symmetry allows fitting linear regression coefficients for data from only the first part of century (before 1950) and obtaining nearly the same reconstruction. In our paper we used the data from 1910 till 1940 (15 years to both side from shift in 1925/1926) and with almost the same quality reproduce the whole period from 1900 till now (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4. a) Blue line – SST in tropics (30oS-30oN), red line – linear regression on ENSO and climate regime with training period 1900-2012 years, purple line – the same linear regression with training period 1910-1940 years; b) the same as “a” but for north middle latitudes (30oN-60oN).
Various studies have indicated the existence of many shifts in the 20th century. And we are not the first to have observed shifts at 1925/1926 and 1987/1988. However, our working definition of shifts has some differences from that used by Yasunaka and Hanawa and many others. We define a climate regime as a quasi-steady state with known sources of variability. Additionally, we assess a climate regime shift as being significant and systematic changes that separate one climate regime from another and occur besides intra regime variability. For example, a step change of SST in the tropics in 1976 is clearly seen in time series, but the shift in 1987 is not obvious at all (Fig. 2).
The 1976 shift is, in general, associated with ENSO and could be almost reproduced by direct linear association with ENSO Nino34 index (Fig. 1b). Therefore, according to our definition, it should not be considered as a regime shift, because it is described by known intra-regime variability.
This is a fundamental difference between our work and that of, for example, R. Tisdale who considers ENSO to be a part of regime shifts.
We claim that our approach has advantages over others because – using our approach – we have shown that most of temperature anomalies produced by apparent shifts could be explained by known sources of variability (ENSO and PDO indexes) and only the shifts of 1925/1926 and 1987/1988 occur independently of known intra regime variability.
More detailed description of our hypothesis is in our preprints:
Belolipetsky PV, Bartsev SI, Degermendzhi AG, Hsu HH, Varotsos CA (2013) Empirical evidence for a double step climate change in twentieth century. Preprint. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1303/1303.1581.pdf
(Now under review in Climate Dynamics)
Belolipetsky PV, Bartsev SI (2012) Hypothesis About Mechanics of Global Warming from 1900 Till Now. Preprint. viXra:1212.0172.
All the calculations used for producing the figures were made in Excel by standard functions. Archive containing these files could be downloaded by following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kmvg6ccjy6iy7q2/Calculations2.zip
I want to thank Richard S. Courtney and Robin Edwards who helped to prepare this post.
References:
- Beaugrand, G., & Reid, P. C. (2003). Long-term changes in phytoplankton, zooplankton and salmon linked to climate. Global Change Biology, 9, 801–817.
- Chavez FP, Ryan J, Lluch-Cota SE, Miguel Niquen C (2003) From Anchovies to Sardines and back: multidecadal change in the Pacific Ocean. Science, 299, 217-221.
- Deser C, Phillips AS, Hurrell JW (2004) Pacific Interdecadal Climate Variability: Linkages between the Tropics and the North Pacific during Boreal Winter since 1900. Journal of Climate, 17, 3109–3124.
- deYoung B, Harris R, Alheit J, Beaugrand G, Mantua N, Shannon L (2004) Detection regime shifts in the ocean: data considerations. Progress in Oceanography, 60, 143-164.
- Douglass DH (2010) Topology of Earth’s climate indices and phase-locked states. Physics Letters A 374 4164–4168
- Douglass DH and Knox RS (2012) Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance. II. Relation to climate shifts. Physics Letters A. doi:10.1016/j.physleta.2012.02.027
- Fischer T, Gemmer M, Liu L, Su B (2012) Change-points in climate extremes in the Zhujiang River Basin, South China, 1961–2007. Climatic Change, 110:783–799 DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0123-8.
- Flint PL (2013) Changes in size and trends of North American sea duck populations associated with North Pacific oceanic regime shifts. Mar Biol (2013) 160:59–65 DOI 10.1007/s00227-012-2062-y
- Hare SR, Mantua NJ (2000) Empirical evidence for North Pacific regime shifts in 1977 and 1989. Progress in Oceanography, 47, 103-145.
- Lo TT, Hsu HH (2010) Change in the dominant decadal patterns and the late 1980s abrupt warming in the extratropical northern hemisphere. Atmospheric Science Letters, 11, 210–215.
- Mollmann, C., Diekmann, R., 2012. Marine ecosystem regime shifts induced by climate and overfishing—a review for the Northern hemisphere. Adv. Ecol. Res. 47, 1–46.
- Overland, J., Rodionov, S., Minobe, S., Bond, N., 2008. North Pacific regime shifts: definitions, issues and recent transitions. Progress in Oceanography 77, 92–102.
- Rial, J., R.A. Pielke Sr., M. Beniston, M. Claussen, J. Canadell, P. Cox, H. Held, N. de Noblet-Ducoudre, R. Prinn, J. Reynolds, and J.D. Salas, 2004: Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system. Climatic Change, 65, 11-38.
- Sarmiento JL, Gloor M, Gruber N, Beaulieu C, Jacobson AR, Mikaloff Fletcher SE, Pacala S, Rodgers K (2010) Trends and regional distributions of land and ocean carbon sinks. Biogeoscinces, 7, 2351-2367.
- Trenberth, K. E., 1990: Recent observed interdecadal climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 71, 988–993.
- Trenberth KE, Hurrell JW (1994) Decadal atmosphere-ocean variations in the Pacific. Climate Dynamics, 9, 303.
- Tian Y, Kidokoro H, Watanabe T, Iguchi N (2008) The late 1980s regime shift in the ecosystem of Tsushima warm current in the Japan/East Sea: Evidence from historical data and possible mechanisms. Progress in oceanography, 77, 127-145.
- Tsonis A., Swanson K., Kravtsov S. (2007) A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts. Geophys Res. Lett. 34 L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288.
- Veit RR, Pyle P, McGowan JA (1996) Ocean warming and long-term change in pelagic bird abundance within the California current system. Marine ecology progress series, Vol. 139, 11-18.
- Yasunaka S, Hanawa K (2002) Regime shifts found in Northern Hemisphere SST Field. Journal of meteorological society of Japan, Vol. 80, No. 1, pp. 119-135.
And absolutely no mention of CO2 in the original paper… clearly not a factor that matters a damn!
Very interesting. That something extraordinary happened in 1988 has long been noticed in European temperature records – it marked a shift to e.g. mild winters in Middle and Northern Europe. With the recent colder winters, this regime seems to wane. So now I wonder if we already have witnessed a new shift – or will soon witness it – this time to the colder?
“It seems that the only available mechanisms for the observed shifts are weakening of negative feedbacks or strengthening of positive feedbacks over short periods. Why and how the feedbacks would vary is not known, but there is clear need to determine this.”
Your paper shows a c.a. 60 year period between climate shifts in the Pacific which you link to ENSO and the PDO. In this respect, E.M. Smith (Chiefio) has suggested that the c.a. 60 year cycle of the PDO can be linked to the Saros cycle:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/why-weather-has-a-60-year-lunar-beat/
He states:
“I think it is the case that the reason the PDO/ AMO swaps on a quasi-3-Saros basis is that it takes 3 periods for the lunar tidal forces to be back over the same ocean at the same point in the Saros cycle. I think it likely that other resonances with lunar tidal cycles will be found.”
If he is correct then a similar “shift” analysis for the Atlantic Ocean based the ENSO AMO relationship should give similar results but out of phase by c.a. 18 years.
In this respect one should also look at the harmonic analysis studies of Lord Kelvin in devising the tide predictor machine.
http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/predhist.html#Up
An interesting paper by Kelvin on his work is here:
http://www.bartleby.com/30/16.html
Pavel:
Your post is up and you are getting responses in the thread.
See, Anthony Watts is one of the ‘good guys’. Provide an article with sufficient interest, clarity and content and he will give it a ‘fair crack’ in the competition for publication on WUWT.
Now, your your ideas and analysis will get true peer review in this thread. Be prepared for strong argument because people here have sufficient respect for ideas, studies and research to try to demolish them. If your work can withstand the criticisms it will become important. And if it cannot withstand the criticisms, then your article will have contributed to understanding and knowledge of all who participate in the debate of it.
Congratulations, you achieved what you wanted! Now, you have to live with it!
Richard
For more than 5 years I have been telling people that climate variation is 1/f noise. 1/f noise is “noise with memory” which tends to occur in systems where there is a shift in state.
1/f noise is also extremely difficult to model and tends to create false trends and cycles (particularly when averaged).
No one needs to prove to me that the climate “shifts state” because a simple analysis of the noise told me this was overwhelmingly likely over half a decade ago.
OK so if the predictions of this model are so good can we see a training period of 110 years and the predictions for 2013 to 2100?
Come on that is obvious and easy!
Stay cool!
I see shifts in temperature regimes but temperature is not climate. Your model doesn’t appear to address dry vs. wet along with warmer/colder. Did I miss that? It’s an early morning read for me. I’ll check later.
The correlation coefficient between “GHGs anomaly” and “Climate steps” is 0.88. Thus the “Steps” you describe are actually a little better at explaining the rise in CO2 rather than temperature.
Just saying…
Interesting how in figure 1 the Canadian shifts are almost directly opposite to the Eastern US & Europe.
It would also be interesting to see if the 2000-2010 period shows the same thing, I seem to remember that it might well do.
That’s very AMO: http://i37.tinypic.com/14ln95l.jpg
I’m sure I see a weakening of La Nina conditions for several years from 1925 and 1989:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/image34.png
X Anomaly:
Your post at April 26, 2013 at 2:50 am says in total
The article says
So the article specifically refutes the implication of your post.
Unless, of course, you are suggesting that the temperature rise has induced the CO2 rise?
Richard
I don’t see that this “explains” anything – it just adds an alternative description to the temp variables over most of the last century. Unless you can give details of why the regime shifts occured exactly when they occured, and predict when future shifts will occur, and of what maxnitude/sign, then this is a descrption, not an explanation.
Figure 2(c) shows two regime shifts. Can you demonstrate that this cannot be due to AGW influence moving the climate from one regime to another?
H.R.:
Your post at April 26, 2013 at 2:33 am says in total
Well done! That is the best example of ‘goal post shifting’ I have seen this week!
The article says
In other words, the analysis only considers sea surface temperature (SST).
It would have been silly to assess “dry vs. wet” because all of the sea surface is wet.
The article also does not consider, “combined land-ocean temperatures”, or land temperatures, or precipitation, or wind speed, or …..
Richard
eco-geek says:
April 26, 2013 at 2:14 am
OK so if the predictions of this model are so good can we see a training period of 110 years and the predictions for 2013 to 2100?
Come on that is obvious and easy!
—————————————————————————————-
Not until / unless we can predict any regime shifts that might happen in that period.
One part of this that I suspect will be attacked – assuming the whole idea isn’t simply ignored “because 97% of the world’s scientists already know exactly what’s happening” * – is the matter of “shifts = regime changes that can’t be explained by known factors” because it implies that they’re really just a form of variability that we haven’t found the drivers for yet.
IMHO that’s most likely true but it’s going to have a hard job gaining traction because of the mainstream’s propensity for dismissing what can’t be explained with current knowledge rather than looking for new knowledge to explain it.
*how’s that for a re-wording of “the consensus” to show how ridiculous it is?
Added: Got distracted by the postman while typing that and I see that steveta_uk has already proved me right 😀
AGW pundits take note – if you can prove your own assertions as quickly as steve just proved mine then we may start listening to you 😀
steveta_uk:
Your post at April 26, 2013 at 4:12 am provides Pavel with the impossible task of proving a negative.
Actually, Pavel’s article reports that their analysis does demonstrate that .
The article says
One regime shift was before 1950 (at 1926) and the other was after it (at 1987).
More than 80% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions were after 1950.
Richard
Joe, I’m not advocating this viewpoint at all – I just don’t see that the concept can be used to disprove it either ;(
But didn’t Marcott already show the uptick occured before 1950? (/sarc)
Many Moons ago I read an introduction to the branch of mathematics called chaos theory. I am sure everyone recalls chaos theory was born out of work to develop meteorological models. The discussion on bifurcated systems cited the Earths climate as a (possible) example of a bifurcated system, with one state glacial and one state warm.
This seems to build more detail on this approach. Intesting.
Interesting.
It seems my typoing is a bifurcated system with two states – right and wrong…..
Dr Paul, “typoing” is an interesting word. Was it [intentional]? It “right” typoing making errors?
Damn – where’s the edit function? intenational->intentional, It->Is. Typoing in action.
[Internally Internationally intentional? 8<) Mod]
steveta_uk says:
April 26, 2013 at 4:12 am
I don’t see that this “explains” anything – it just adds an alternative description to the temp variables over most of the last century. Unless you can give details of why the regime shifts occured exactly when they occured, and predict when future shifts will occur, and of what maxnitude/sign, then this is a descrption, not an explanation.
Figure 2(c) shows two regime shifts. Can you demonstrate that this cannot be due to AGW influence moving the climate from one regime to another?
—————————————————————————————————-
Steve, you along with many AGW supporters) seem to be missing a fairly important point about proper science – it doesn’t always involve “explaining things” in one go. Explaining things is always the ultimate goal, but there are steps before that which are absolutely vital in pursuit of the truth.
One of those steps is working out what questions to ask, and where to look for the answers. The AGW machine makes fundamental mistakes by answering those. Their appraoch is:
What to ask: “How can we fit this finding within the framework of CO2 driven warming?”
Where to find the answers: “By collecting more of the same data we always do and finding new ways to analyse it”
If there’s a flaw in your basic hypothesis then thats akin to beating your head repeatedly against the same brick wall in the hope that it will become a doorway.
What this post suggests is somewhere else (although not entirely new) to look. That’s the intelligent person’s way to do things – if something isn’t working quite right then step back and look from a different angle. It suggests the following alternative to developing a migraine:
What to ask: “Is something that we don’t know about, or know about but haven’t looked at right, causing the climate to undergo small step changes at fairly short intervals?”
Where to find the answers: “Possibly anywhere, so we really should start looking before we fracture our skulls”.
CO2 induced AGW seems an unlikely driver for this (though, being scientifically minded, I’m NOT ruling it out) for a couple of reasons:
(1) It appears from this initial piece that such steps may have occurred, with similar magnitude, at a time when CO2 couldn’t have been the cause
(2) on the initial analysis it appears that temperatures between the steps have remained essentially “flat” allowing for known variability. The only (known) mechanism for CO2 affecting climate is by warming so, if it was the driver of the steps, you would expect to see a step followed by a steady ramp-up (caused by CO2) followed by another step when a threshold was reached.
That doesn’t seem to be the case given the apparently very good fit (far better than AGW theory manages, and from a far simpler model) using the step-flat-step model suggested here.
steveta_uk@
“Figure 2(c) shows two regime shifts. Can you demonstrate that this cannot be due to AGW influence moving the climate from one regime to another?”
Perhaps more importantly, can any AGW proponent show that CO2 shifts the climate from one regime to another? They can certainly ASSERT it, loudly and often, but they clearly haven’t shown it.
When it comes to climate we are children playing in a puddle, oblivious to the ocean in front of us. But I did enjoy the read.
Science moves from discovering the what in sufficient detail to expose the why. The so called climate science moves from the why to discovering the what that follows the initially assumed why and ignores/adjusts/corrects the what that doesn’t. The amazing thing is that the “climate scientists” got away with as much as they did. Perhaps not so amazing if you consider the nature of the Salem Witch Trials.
I am curious as to why no mention of the jet stream. It is having a marked effect on the UK climate currently.
Is it just me, or is Figure 3 missing?
Lionell Grifith says climate science moves from the why to discovering
the what, a bit like ‘history’ for teaching a moral lesson or uncovering
laws of political destiny.
The existence of abrupt change points in climatic system is a puzzling reality, primarily because (as stated by Pavel Belolipetsky) a theory useful to explain these events and to forecast their occurrence is not available at present. For example European temperatures changed abruptly in 1987 due to an abrupt change in westerlies that strongly intensified (Werner et al., 2000; Mariani et al, 2012) but at present we don’t know why westerlies changed and why a similar change happened in the southern hemisphere (Miriani et al., 2009).
We have some references about these phenomena, primarily the seminal work of Charney and De Voore (1989), (cited by Holton, 2004) that with a simple mathematical model highlighted the presence of abrupt change points between regimes with high zonal flow and regimes with weak zonal flow and high amplitude waves (in this context the European change of phase of 1987 can be read as a transition between weak zonal flow and high one).
It is also important to consider that abrupt changes of phase are typical of turbulent systems affected by deterministic chaos. Systems of this kind, submitted to a increasing forcing (due for example to GHG gases or solar activity or …) show an abrupt regime transition as discussed for example by Peixoto and Oort (1992).
In my opinion research on breakpoints is substantially slowed by the idea that the final objective of people that speak about abrupt changes is to dismiss the AGW theory founded on CO2 (which increases gradually and so should give gradual changes in temperatures and so on, as shown by GCMs). We have seen that this is only a preconception because the existence of the deterministic chaos can change a linear behaviour of forcings in a behaviour in steps of effects (temperatures and other variables). Nevertheless in my experience many true AGW believers do not want to hear about abrupt changes.
References
Charney, J.G. and J.G. DeVore, (1979), Multiple flow equilibria in the atmosphere and blocking, J. Atmos. Sci.,. 36:1205-1216 (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0469%281979%29036%3C1205%3AMFEITA%3E2.0.CO%3B2)
Holton J. R., 2004. An introduction to dynamic meteorology, Elsevier, Academic Press, 535 pp.Bai J., 1994. Least Squares Estimation of a Shift in Linear Processes, Journal of Time Series Analysis, 15, 453-472.
Mariani L., Parisi S.G., Cola G., Failla O. (2012). Climate change in Europe and effects on thermal resources for crops. International Journal of Biometeorology, ISSN: 0020-7128, doi: 10.1007/s00484-012-0528-8
Mariani L, Parisi S.G., Cola G., 2009. Space and time behavior of climatic hazard of low temperature for single rice crop in the mid latitude. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, vol. 29, p. 1862-1871, ISSN: 0899-8418, doi: 10.1002/joc.1830
Peixoto J.P., Oort A.H., 1992. Physics of climate, American Institute of Physics, New York, 520 pp.
Werner, P. C., Gerstengarbe F.W., Fraedrich K, Oesterle K. Recent climate change in the North Atlantic/European sector, International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 20, Issue 5, 2000: 463-471.
@richardscourtney says:
April 26, 2013 at 4:17 am
Responding to H.R.:
“Your post at April 26, 2013 at 2:33 am says in total
[My comment & Richards response]
======================================
Thanks, Richard. I wasn’t kidding that it was early and I needed to go back and look again. As soon as you mentioned it, I recalled that it wasn’t including the response on land. D’oh!
Thanks, again. A good reminder to others at my expense to keep that in mind throughout.
Clearly….”extraordinary changes of forcings in the northern extratropical regions”…is NOT the result of a linear relationship of minute, human caused changes in a benign trace gas. To promote this false hypothesis is science racketeering. Climatology has been agenda hijacked to promote one, of the many, multilevel science fraud markets. Regardless of the level of funding, all empirical evidence is juxtaposed to this false paradigm. Anthony has done a great service to Truth and humanity by providing this original scientific method forum….thanks !
I enjoy the intelligence and openness presented at WUWT.
All this ties in with paleontologist Stephen J Gould’s “Punctuated Equilibrium” which he applied to evolution. In Punctuated Equilibrium Gould posited that species did no change gradually – that instead new species came in brief spurts separated by periods of steady-state plateaus. In biology these steady states lasted, of course, very long periods.
These steady state periods are equivalent to this paper’s regimes. Regimes are not new in this paper, but they latch onto a principle that does exist. The idea of linearity in global climate over long periods is MUCH too simplistic of idea. Nature does almost nothing linearly and looking for a straight line regression is pretty mind dead.
The PDO and ENSO themselves are 2-regime quasi-oscillations. Any climate theory – at least in the present continental-oceanic configuration needs to take these two into account and incorporate their regimes. And what that dictates is an understanding of relatively flat periods that step up or down periodically. No straight line regression makes any sense. To me this is all common sense, though common sense CAN lead one astray, so it means care must be taken to vet any common sense against reality. The Warmists believe in their own seemingly reasonable common sense, and if their principles were to be verified by reality, we skeptics wouldn’t have any reason to exist.
Coming out of the Little Ice Age, one would expect that for a good while the steps would tend to be a bit higher than earlier steps.
One thing to recommend the principles in this paper is that it all does test out against recent climate reality – something that the climate models in particular do not do.
This tying in with punctuated equilibrium suggests that such regime “thinking” should be one considered in perhaps all of the physical sciences. Straight-line regressions are fine for ultra-simplistic “look-sees” at progressions over time, but to think that the straight line tells anything but the most rudimentary direction might be going is science gone wrong. As I said, there is no straight line in natural processes over any length of time such as climate addresses..
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the next step on their “escalator” is DOWN to pre-1998 levels?!
Try your ideas on CO2 data. I think it is a more accurate indicator of climate change and is globally uniform. However, it lags SST and is not a force for the changes but the results of those changes. My curve fitting efforts on regions yield R^2 better than .95.
The satellite global temperature record shows a clear step change near the giant 1998 ENSO. It’s flat with noise before and after. The “noise” is small ENSOs. The 1998 ENSO was large enough to trigger a shift to a different state = attractor in the nomenclature of nonlinear dynamics.
On March 13, 1989 a severe geomagnetic storm caused the collapse of the Hydro-Québec power grid in a matter of seconds. This was probalby the largest such event of the 20th century.
This would seem to be the cause for the biggest increase of the lenth of the Arctic melting season in the satellite record.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=210
It is equally the major feature of both Arctic Oscillation index and hadISST surface temperatures over the same period.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=211
Since AO is known to affect the weather of much of the northern hemisphere, it seem likely that this event is the origin of the “1987/88” event refered to here.
The heavy 9 year filter used in figure 1 taken from Lo and Hsu obcurs the exact data but it would seem to be consistent with this interpretation.
Paul Linsay says:
“The satellite global temperature record shows a clear step change near the giant 1998 ENSO. It’s flat with noise before and after. The “noise” is small ENSOs. The 1998 ENSO was large enough to trigger a shift to a different state = attractor in the nomenclature of nonlinear dynamics.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/09/980928072950.htm
” a major geomagnetic storm began late on Sept. 24 [1998]… The geomagnetic storm measured 8.6 on a scale of 0 to 9 used to measure geomagnetic storm intensity. “
It can be found right there with your proofread-before-hitting-post function 😉
Pavel Belolipetsky:
Pls explain your “validation procedure” and validation statistics that lead to the identification of the two regime shifts. The paper leaves one with an impression of a partly subjective method based on eyeballing (you use the term “visually”).
Luigi Mariani:
Interesting work you have published. I documented similar regime shifts in 1987/88 in land surface temperature records in Europe on this blog at http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=abrupt
regards jens
Richard111 says:
April 26, 2013 at 5:31 am
I am curious as to why no mention of the jet stream. It is having a marked effect on the UK climate currently.
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Richard,
The jet stream also occurred to me as a possible contributor to the apparently out of phase eastern Canada series.
North American farmers are well aware of the effect of the stream’s movements on weather. A good example was the impact on atmospheric pressure of the Pinatubo eruption, leading to the stream’s stabilizing rather than constantly shifting position. Thus the same areas repeatedly got thundershowers.
John Tillman says: North American farmers are well aware of the effect of the stream’s movements on weather. A good example was the impact on atmospheric pressure of the Pinatubo eruption, leading to the stream’s stabilizing rather than constantly shifting position. Thus the same areas repeatedly got thundershowers.
A remarkable feature of Arctic ice coverage is that from 1997-2007 the annual variation was very stable and almost half what it was before or after. Do you have any reference for this jet stream – Pinatubo link?
My own experience, which could just be a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but some professional meteorologists drew similar conclusions:
http://www.uwec.edu/jolhm/EH3/Group1/Website/Strange%20Weather.html
http://www.smallgrains.org/springwh/winter94/swwin946.htm
But then:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/04/science/northeast-s-strange-weather-don-t-blame-it-all-on-the-volcano.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Luigi says: “In my opinion research on breakpoints is substantially slowed by the idea that the final objective of people that speak about abrupt changes is to dismiss the AGW theory founded on CO2 ”
You may have a point but in my opinion it is more to do with the fact that most of those being paid to do climate research seem to presume a priori that it is steady (AGW) rise plus internal “noise”.
In that case any “step” is just seen as a downward noise followed by upward noise. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
However, as you point out, neither way of viewing the data validates/invalidates AGW since step changes could be the system response to gradual warming. (Don’t try to tell that to our Bob though).
Mr. Goodman:
If a stepwise response be the earth’s climate system’s way of responding to gradual warming, through some threshold effect I presume, then what would account for the steps up prior to more rapid CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere after c. 1945, ie during the approximately century-long initial exit from the Little Ice Age?
Jens Raunsø Jensen:
re your post at April 26, 2013 at 7:30 am .
As you say, there does seem to be a relationship between the work of Pavel Belolipetsky et al. (as reported in the above article) and your work reported in your Guest Post at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/05/abrupt-changes-in-station-level-temperature-records-contradict-the-anthropogenic-global-warming-agw-claims/
You detect ‘shifts’ by analysis of GHCN station records.
Belolipetsky et al. detect ‘shifts’ in SST records.
There seems to be clear need for direct interaction between the two of you to enable progress of the work. In my opinion, such progress needs to focus on why the feedbacks of a regime alter to enable and/or induce a switch between regimes.
Clearly, it would be fun to watch you interact between you and Pavel Belolipetsky on WUWT. However, the interaction would be more efficient if you were to make direct contact with him: his email is on the paper by Belolipetsky et al.. I respectfully suggest that you email him with a view to integrating the work of you and him.
Richard
One explanation of CAGW is that there is a tipping point at which positive feedbacks take over and we get run-away warming. It’s the alarmists’ explanation for why, even if things are just fine now, they are going to get really really bad, really really suddenly, some time in the future. We won’t possibly be able to adapt. We’re all going to die. … etc. etc.
So, by the logic above, I think the alarmists actually rely on the possibility of abrupt changes.
The jetsream/Pinatubo and geomagnetic storm ideas are very interesting, whether or not one believes there is any AGW influence.
It’s interesting and a little surprising to me that the shifts seem to occur more or less simultaneously in both hemispheres. Some climatic phenomena are out of synch, as currently with polar sea ice extent.
With heat being moved around the world in the seas & air, radiation reflecting off of and being absorbed by land and sea surface, both spatially & temporally, I’d expect some observable lag time between hemispheres, if for no other reason the greater land area in the NH and highlands over the South Pole, with ocean over the North.
While major events like volcanic & solar eruptions surely affect earth’s climate, there must be some more regular forcing if cycles and/or steps objectively occur on some recurring basis. IMO there is evidence that cycles are genuine and not mere random fluctuations in a chaotic system.
There seems good reason to conclude that these repetitive forcings are primarily extraterrestrial, in some combination of solar variations and planetary orbital mechanics, if not indeed galactic as well.
milodonharlani says:
April 26, 2013 at 8:24 am
While major events like volcanic & solar eruptions surely affect earth’s climate, there must be some more regular forcing if cycles and/or steps objectively occur on some recurring basis. IMO there is evidence that cycles are genuine and not mere random fluctuations in a chaotic system.
There seems good reason to conclude that these repetitive forcings are primarily extraterrestrial, in some combination of solar variations and planetary orbital mechanics, if not indeed galactic as well.
Pavel,
I like your approach, you are removing some obvious influencing factors and exposing the underlying factors. If you continue, and remove some more of the remaining factors, such as indirect solar, and volcanic forcing, you might be able to produce a model which will more accurately reproduce the temperature means from the 20th century. This may, or may not, help explain the regime shifts you exposed.
Small editorial note: “a step function ‘witch’ equals zero” – Should be ‘which’ – unless you are suggesting witchcraft is involved;)
Joe Said:
“Steve, you along with many AGW supporters) seem to be missing a fairly important point about proper science – it doesn’t always involve “explaining things” in one go. Explaining things is always the ultimate goal, but there are steps before that which are absolutely vital in pursuit of the truth.
One of those steps is working out what questions to ask, and where to look for the answers. The AGW machine makes fundamental mistakes by answering those.”
Well Said Joe, One must be constantly vigilant that one’s premise is not corrupting their conclusions.
In the AGW case, it seems apparent that outside political influences are very much in play in this corruption.
.
milodonharlani:
Your post at April 26, 2013 at 8:24 am says
It seems useful for me to again post the following but I do not know how it ‘fits’ with ‘shifts’.
Observed climate changes in the holocene do not require the existence of any driver of climate change because an oscillating chaotic system can be expected to vary without any driver.
Chaotic systems vary, and purely harmonic variations may occur independently of any chaotic effects.
Please remember that global temperature rises 3.8 deg.C during 6 months of each year and falls by 3.8 deg.C during the other 6 months of each year. But global temperature only rose about 0.8 deg.C throughout the last century.
In other words, the rise in global temperature over the last century was about a fifth of the rise in global temperature which happens during 6 months of each year.
The trivial 0.8 deg.C rise throughout the last century could be an effect of harmonic oscillation because an oscillating system can be expected to exhibit harmonics over periods much longer than a single oscillation.
Indeed, the observed changes in global temperature with apparent frequencies of ~900 years and ~60 years could be harmonics.
So, both chaos and harmonics could each be expected to provide variations to global climate of the form and magnitude recently observed. Therefore, such variations do not require any driver and the observed variations may not have had any driver (although I think they do).
Richard
Joe says:
April 26, 2013 at 4:51 am
Joe has an excellent explanation of the value of this article. Different ways of looking at the data can be very helpful. In this moment, it is a tad early to complain that this way of looking at the data has not suggested a theory that explains the data.
Hmmm. As I read that I thought: Chaos Theory and bifurcations.
As the paper says there are climate regime changes – in chaos theory these would be called attractors. So what would drive the chaos and what kind of Poincare Section should we be looking at the ‘slice’ that shows ENSO is just one view.
Something is required that could provide a mechanism with multi-year effect as E.M. Smith has proposed such as the Saros cycle. The movement of the oceans is affected by large Rossby waves with potentially chaotic interactions. These waves initiated perhaps by the Saros cycle and the thermohaline circulation can be extremely slow moving 10cm/sec or less (see http://www.ocean.washington.edu/courses/oc513/Chelton.Science.1996.pdf ). As these waves propagate and are influenced by the rotation of the Earth and the topography of the ocean bottom it is probably not feasible to do a ‘simple’ Fourier analysis. However, several crossing Rossby waves with differing frequencies changing the transport of cold or warm water at the surface could alter the SST and therefore the weather above. The winds would counteract or support the Rossby wave flow, dependent on their own chaotic atmospheric movements, and the clouds or lack of them would moderate the warmth of the currents. But all as interacting chaotic systems with their own varying attractors.
This chaotic system of chaotic systems may show some kind of pattern but it would not be something that statisticians would be able to use as there would be only the occasional fortuitous linear relationships which would then break down after pseudo-random periods. The Rossby wave periods are so long that some of them possibly appear not as waves but as ocean currents to modern metrics – but they could provide the regime change engine.
Dear All,
Thank you for your responses to my post. They are very important for me. I was away for some time and not able to quickly answer on questions. Now there are so many questions. So I will try to provide only short responses on some of them.
Steve Garcia says: “..As I said, there is no straight line in natural processes over any length of time such as climate addresses..”
I quite agree with you that there are no straight lines in natural processes and suggested Climate regime index should be considered as approximating of some mode of variability. Possibly some index like Nino34 but with more long period could be find later. I even have some ideas there to seek, but it needs additional investigation.
There were many comments about the possibilty of CO2 to be the cause of hypothesized shifts. I think it is possible that CO2 is the cause. But also it is possible that cause is the Sun. And also it is possible that no reason is needed. Last opportunity is clearly explained by Richard S. Courtney:
“Observed climate changes in the holocene do not require the existence of any driver of climate change because an oscillating chaotic system can be expected to vary without any driver.”
Also figure 3 disppeared, but it can be seen in preprint.
Thanks for a fine post, reasoning given, data referenced and predictive test indicated.Did the authors run their extrapolated temperature numbers into the near future?
Acknowledging its early days, for this Shift Hypothesis, it seems a simple test is indicated.
Using 1910-1940 data to recreate temps from then to present is very interesting,yes other agents will effect future, but the shape of future temps should be dominant in in near future runs, if this twin state idea has strength.The bones should be exposed by the prediction and camouflaged by the noise.
Or am I getting ahead of the information available?
So are we finally returning to science?(Climatology TM)
@Peter Azlac, good point E.M seems to be onto something.The approximately 60 year signal is back, Chaos theory might get some respect and “I do not know” is becoming speakable.
It’s not clear to me how the climate shift dates were selected. Statistical evaluation? By eye? This needs clarification and justification in the paper. Also what justifies the apparently arbitrary selection of climate bands (e.g., 30S to 30N for the tropics. Why not something else such as the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn which at least have some astronomical basis?)? The methods section needs some work.
Gary says: “It’s not clear to me how the climate shift dates were selected. Statistical evaluation? By eye?”
Yes, by eye. Our eyes are good detectors. There are some uncertanities in months and lenghts of shifts. This needs additional investigation that was not performed yet.
Gary says: “Also what justifies the apparently arbitrary selection of climate bands..”.
You may select another regions, but it is better to consider regions with one dominating mode of variability (e.g. ENSO, PDO ..)
The only shifts that matter are between jetstream zonality or meridionality and climate zone movements latitudinally either poleward or equatorward.
I have long been contending that jetstream and climate zone shifting are a negative system response to any forcing element.
The amount of energy that an atmosphere can retain is set by mass, gravity and insolation.
If any other factor seeks to alter that amount of energy then jet stream and climate zone shifting occurs to negate the effect.
I am glad that others are now moving towards that point of view.
I have a lot of previously published work on that very point.
OK, So Global-warming-climate-change-extreme-disruption by CO2 is now found to be episodic. All of these shift anomalies rise. There is no refutation of the CAGW scare here, the run-away train of panic and mis-information.
Good article though, thanks.
“The common feature of all studies concerning climate shifts is that causes of observed shifts are unknown. Or, in other words, there are no outstanding changes in known external forcing which induce climate shifts”
Well here you go:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6645
“How The Sun Could Control Earth’s Temperature ”
The sun is the cause but the effect is significantly modulated by the oceanic response.
A shift occurs either when a poleward drift in the climate zones switches to an equatorward drift or vice versa.
Late 70s the climate zones began to shift poleward and jetstream tracks became more zonal with a reduction in global cloudiness.
Around 2000 the climate zones began to shift equatorward and jetstream tracks became more meridional with an increase in global cloudiness.
A poleward shift involves increasingly zonal jets and an equatorward shift increasingly meridional jets.
Zonal jets result in less global cloudiness for more energy into the oceans and system warming.
Meridional jets result in more global cloudiness for less energy into the oceans and system cooling.
(A lot of new or rarely seen names in this thread–good.)
Mr. Courtney,
I too think that there are drivers & that presumably observed fluctuations are not chaotic, although this opinion may not yet have been statistically confirmed.
“There is no refutation of the CAGW scare here,”
Yes there is.
In light of the scale of circulation changes between MWP and LIA and today of around 1000 miles latitudinally the effect of our emissions might contribute less than one mile which becomes insignificant unless you can show the greater distance that our CO2 emissions cause the circulation to shift.
Then there is the issue raised by Murry Salby that by far the majority of the CO2 rise is induced by ocean surface warming and nothing to do with us at all.
There is good reason to suspect that all our emissions are quickly absorbed by the local biosphere and that all the observed changes in CO2 amounts are a result of changes in the thermal balance between oceans and atmosphere.
See here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=9508
“Evidence that Oceans not Man control CO2 emissions”
Mike Haseler says:
April 26, 2013 at 2:08 am
For more than 5 years I have been telling people that climate variation is 1/f noise. 1/f noise is “noise with memory” which tends to occur in systems where there is a shift in state.
My collegues also showed this feature to me. But how to explain what does it mean to people who don’t understand what is 1/f noise?
Of all the acts performed in the service of anti-science across the years of the climate debates, the conscience effort to convince the world by force of fervor, repetition and outright trickery that earth’s interglacial climate is all but without significant natural variation (except of course when it is necessary to explain a pause in the warming!) is an excellent candidate for being both the most pernicious and the most damaging. Comparing and contrasting past shifts and variations with those of the present is obviously one worthwhile path of inquiry to any real believer of the scientific method. Maybe it’ll get you somewhere, maybe it won’t, but it’s obviously worth exploring. As has already been stated in this thread, however, the moment someone makes a good-faith effort to do so, it gains no traction due to what is essentially the AGW logic that ‘any past conditions are by definition similar in no meaningful way to recent conditions; therefore there is nothing to be learned from comparing the two. QED.’
You are no friend of reason when your actions force observers to think about just how insightful George Orwell was. I am not suggesting for an instant that “CAGW ~1984,” but when you wholeheartedly embrace the maxim that “…who controls the past controls the future,” and transparently engage in all manner of anti-science shenanigans in the effort, you declare intellectual war on that large swath of society that believes deeply in the scientific method and the vital contribution it makes to a more or less reason-driven coexistence. And well, that’s just not cool.
I know that was a rant, and I apologize for it, but I do think I feel better now ;^>
Stephen Wilde says:
April 26, 2013 at 10:30 am
““There is no refutation of the CAGW scare here,”
Yes there is.”
That warm ocean water can hold less CO2 than cold is one of those facts that is never mentioned by politically bent warmists and the main stream media.
This fact is one I often argue, to refute CAGW scare-ism.
Thanks.
All I see in this article is a description of shift changes, but the article clearly says the causes remain unknown.
The entrenched warmista will not be swayed.
> how to explain what does it mean to people who don’t understand what is 1/f noise?
That is easy enough to demonstrate acoustically – also the difference between 1/f noise and 1/f^2 noise. But much harder to understand why these things exist (and whether the correct representation of the phenomena should be 1/f^a where 0 < a < 2 – implying fractality). Wikipedia's entries on white noise and pink noise suggest that a lot of people in different fields are asking themselves this question.
RobRoy:
Your post at April 26, 2013 at 11:49 am says
Let us be clear: swaying warmunists is not the yardstick.
Entrenched warmunists would not be swayed by glaciation of the equator.
As I pointed out above in a previous post at April 26, 2013 at 4:32 am, the paper provides clear evidence that the AGW hypothesis is wrong. As I say there
If 80% of the anthropogenic emissions had made a significant difference to SST then the “similar reconstruction for the second part (after 1950)” would not have been possible.
Richard
Is Bob on vacation today?
Warmunistas would claim that another Snowball Earth was entirely consistent with their models.
richardscourtney says:
April 26, 2013 at 12:07 pm
“If 80% of the anthropogenic emissions had made a significant difference to SST then the “similar reconstruction for the second part (after 1950)” would not have been possible.
There is only one thing that will warm the oceans and any damp surface – 90% of the Earth – and that is short wave radiation from the Sun. Longwave radiation will cause extra evaporation from the wet surface and _cool_ the surface. Warm winds hold more water vapor so they will also cool the surface. Get a hair dryer on maximum with all the heating elements red hot and hold it half an inch from your wet hand. Your hand will feel cold _until_ your skin becomes dry at which point it will start to feel unbearably hot very rapidly. Any moist surface, plants and all water surfaces are the same – infrared and warm winds cool them by stripping off the energetic water vapor molecules which take the latent heat of evaporation with them.
There is no way that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm the oceans or most land surfaces. ‘Downwelling Infrared’ (if it exists) _may_ warm desert areas, rocks and urban developments but it will cool surfaces that are damp – this is how plants stay cool. For 90% of the Earth’s surface, once heat is in the atmosphere at long wavelengths it is on its way out of the Earth system.
QED raising the heat content of the Earth by increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is not feasible.
Pavel,
Perhaps you might test your hypothesis about the regime shift dates with the algorithm found here: http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/regimes/
I like to look at the climate system as a double pendulum from hell:
The double pendulum has a number of variables, but the climate system has an almost unlimited number.
In shorter timescales a complex system can express a somewhat regular, almost predictable behaviour. In longer time scales, the interactions of the myriad variables are bound to produce mode shifts that are impossible to predict.
We can look at the past and find patterns and make models, but the predictive power into the future is limited.
One can guess that the future will resemble the past, and it will be the best guess available, but still just a guess.
I am in favor of post-hoc modeling, but the test is always with respect to data not included in the modeling. In this case, two such come to mind: (a) do you have testable hypotheses about what caused the shifts to occur when they did — is there relevant evidence? (b) will your model make accurate predictions over the next couple of decades for the regions modeled?
On the whole, Vaughan Pratt’s model fit the extant data better, and it included noise (modeled post-hoc) and a CO2 effect. There is no reason to prefer this post-hoc model to Pratt’s post-hoc model. This does show what has already been shown — it is possible to model 20th century temperature increase without including CO2 in the model (contra IPCC). No model has been stringently tested against out-of-sample data.
Climate is clearly cyclical at Milankovitch resonances. Dansgaard-Oeschger events have been observed in glacial phases, while Bond finds cycles at similar periodicity in interglacials. Data such as GIS cores IMO confirm cycles rather than chaos. And the trend of their warm peaks & cool troughs is down, headed toward the next glaciation in one to a few more such cycles.
Matthew R Marler:
re your post at April 26, 2013 at 1:14 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/the-shifts-hypothesis-an-alternative-view-of-global-climate-change/#comment-1288868
You assert
Really? If true then that is interesting, but you only provide assertion. Please provide some evidence.
And you say
Untrue. The model of Belolipetsky only has two factors but the model of Pratt has more; e.g. it includes a CO2 effect which the model of Belolipetsky does not need.
Richard
“Really? If true then that is interesting, but you only provide assertion. Please provide some evidence.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/
And whats better is that he doesnt use regressors ( as this post does) which have collinearity issues.. eg you cant use enso and pdo to explain SST because they are in some sense — SST.
in short SST is used to compute ENSO and PDO.. is it any surprise that regressions of the latter against the former will show you a significant relation. as in duh.
The ontology of “explaining” global temperature via ENSO and PDO is wrong.
Richard, No.
I’m just pointing out that including ENSO in this analysis is a little stupid. Around r squared 0.5 for the climate steps, and around 0.2 for ENSO (is that all?). And then they are adding them together, so r equals around 0.86.
Why don’t you negate the noise in the SST record by applying an average or best fit, so you are only left with the signal (and forget about noisy ENSO)? And then match the signal to the steps. Remember the goal is not to have any residuals, ENSO is doing a terrible job getting rid of them so get rid of ENSO. Simple enough?
The residuals (signal minus steps) may then actually show you something useful, or not..
RobRoy says:
April 26, 2013 at 11:49 am
Stephen Wilde says:
April 26, 2013 at 10:30 am
“All I see in this article is a description of shift changes, but the article clearly says the causes remain unknown.
The entrenched warmista will not be swayed.”
Well, Rob, that is because Warmista argue in a tight little circle. They argue that the causes that make up natural variation have not changed but temperatures went up 1980-1996 and they have the explanation, increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
How is that a circle. It is a circle twice. They assume that natural variation cannot explain the warming 1980-1996. See that assumption in their premises.
They assume that the causes that make up natural variation are known. That too is in their premises. But no one knows the causes that make up natural variation. When intelligent people refer to natural variation, they are referring to the range of our data, top to bottom.
Warmista continually assert that their critics must produce their own theory of what caused the warming 1980-1996. They crow that skeptics have nothing to compare to their beloved CO2. But their challenge is based on their circular argument, not to mention other fallacies.
Steven Mosher and X Anomaly:
This is a brief response to each of you re your posts at April 26, 2013 at 3:27 pm and April 26, 2013 at 3:30 pm, respectively. I intend no insult by this: the time is midnight here and I checked in on my way to bed. This brief reply shows I have not ignored either of you.
Steven Mosher, sorry, but I fail to understand your point. You say
Belolipetsky says that ENSO and PDO explain SST within each regime but the regimes and shifts between them are not explained by ENSO and PDO.
As he says in the above article
Are you sure you read the article and/or the paper it reports?
X Anomaly, My reply to you is the same as that I have just written to Steven Mosher.
You say
But that is a clear misunderstanding of what Belolipetsky is saying. He says that ENSO does NOT explain the two regime shifts which he identifies.
Gentlemen, I am wondering if you glanced at the article and assumed it says the same as Bob Tisdale. It does not.
Tisadale says ENSO accounts for SST changes over the twentieth century.
Belolipetsky says ENSO and PDO account for variation in SST within regimes, but there are two regime changes – which he calls “shifts” – between different regimes during the twentieth century.
It would be interesting to read critique of what Belolipetsky does say.
Richard
Steven Mosher says:
April 26, 2013 at 3:27 pm
“The ontology of “explaining” global temperature via ENSO and PDO is wrong.”
How honest of you to use a philosopher’s word, ‘ontology’. Ontology is the study of what exists. Today it is known as science.
The greatest among the many virtues of Mr. Tisdale’s work is that he is doing the empirical research necessary to describe ENSO as a system of physical processes. He has made great progress even though he has no budget for research. Everything he gives us is a gift out of his own pocket.
Mainstream climate scientists will not touch empirical research with a ten foot pole. There is one exception. In desperation, they will delve into the empirical to save their beloved CO2 hypothesis from becoming a complete laughing-stock. (It was falsified long ago; now it is becoming a laughing-stock.) Trenberth has turned his attention to the warmth hidden in the deep oceans. Inevitably, he will be brought to empirical research to justify his work. He won’t like it.
If someone with the bucks to support Mr. Tisdale’s work made the bucks available to Mr. Tisdale, he could hire the researchers and equipment necessary to show that ENSO is a set of physical processes, along the lines of what he describes, and that those physical processes can explain much of what has been called “global warming.”
You claim that SST explains ENSO. But not as physical processes with their own integrity. In fact your claim that SST explains ENSO is yet another effort to dismiss the importance of describing physical processes.
Mainstream climate science and all funding agencies, including all US government agencies, will continue to refuse such research. In fact, they will do what they can to prevent it.
The recent regime shift was due to a 5% decrease in clouds between 1987 and 2000.
The ISCCP (international satellite cloud climatology project) has been running since 83 yet hardly any one on either side of climate science is even looking at the obvious diver of climate change,
Ole Humlum has all the details on his climate4you.com website under climate and clouds.
For instance the comparison between tropical cloud cover and global temp (hadCRUT3)
http://smu.gs/10itOV1 shows the 87 regime change
Also equilibrium is maintained in regime changes.
Equilibrium is the minimisation of all the different types of energy in the system (entropy maximisation/2nd law thermodynamics) Each regime represents a change in the make up of the different energy types. For instance you could have one regime with high thermal/low kinetic energy flip flow with another of low thermal/high kinetic.
Negative feedback is still preserved across the total energy (le chateliers principle) but you can have positive feedbacks due to internal cannibalisation of other energy types.
CAGW fails though because the increase in thermal energy was theorised to cause an increase in latent heat energy (water vapour positive feedback).
This is basically a violation of the 2nd law and would require an even greater decrease in energy in another part of the system to account for both increases.
Theo Goodwin.
While we shouldn’t need our own theory to falsify CAGW, it strengthens our case if we do!
The fact is that observed changes in cloud cover (5% decrease between 87 and 2000 corresponding to a 0.9w/m2 forcing) obviously drive climate change and matches other observation like increasing OLR at TOA. Its so obvious that the fact is was missed is bordering on criminal negligence!
Richard, Sleep tight.
Including ENSO in the analysis leaves a very nice zero trend in the residuals and there appears not to be a specific artifact from the step process, but is that a good thing? Not in the sense if you want to be skeptical about the effect of the steps on the residuals, it’s very difficult to see anything with all the noise. Why hide the potential effect of the steps on the residuals? I’m just trying to falsify (and make the paper more robust). It could be a dead end.
Rob JM says:
April 26, 2013 at 4:55 pm
I am all in favor of empirical research on clouds. But you will most likely have to do it yourself.. Our climate-socialist-media establishment will not discuss empirical research aimed at describing physical processes.
Thanks, Pavel.
Very interesting article that brought many interesting comments.
Your paper deserves reading.
Thanks, Anthony.
This WUWT at it’s best; Science!
Is there an Elevator Speech version of this somewhere?
I don’t think that geomagnetic activity can be left out of the equation. It would seem to be a significant factor.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=213
In particular the very sharp rise in 1957-58 and similar drop 1963-64 that stand out in temperature record, would seem to be almost totally explained by a similar change in geomagnetic AP* index.
Updated the geomag-sst plot with latest hadSST3, new link.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=214
I don’t think Bob Tisdale’s work is hypothetical. It’s observational, and it clearly shows where the heat comes from. Maybe I’m wrong here. But I give credence to his works.
Mario Lento says: I don’t think Bob Tisdale’s work is hypothetical. It’s observational
It is based on observation data rather than models which is a good point. However, his attributions and conclusion are hypothetical.
What he has pointed out is a mechanism, which I think is an important result. The asymmetry of El Nino / La Nina processes allows a means to get extra solar energy into the climate system. However he persists in calling this the cause which IMO is not justified and causes many people looking for an alternative cause to “the cause” to be mislead.
If ENSO oscillations are causing (at least a part of ) the global rise, that begs the question what is causing ENSO oscillations.
If they are just random oscillations then the world would be forever warming and it is not. On the millennial scale it is cooling. So for ENSO to be causing 20th c. (or post LIA) warming there must be something driving/modulating ENSO, ie. the real cause and not the mechanism.
As far as Pavel’s regression idea presented here, I’m afraid I have to agree with Mosh, using SST derived indices to explain SST is rather circular and does not actually tell us anything.
Greg Goodman says: “If ENSO oscillations are causing (at least a part of ) the global rise, that begs the question what is causing ENSO oscillations.”
Well it’s clear that CO2 is NOT causing the ENSO process for a number of reasons. This has been shown. Also ENSO is not cyclic… in that ENSO does not hover around some mean… La Nina and El Nino are not even and opposite. La Nina’s cool things off, but they also allow more warming of the ocean along the equatorial regions… CO2 has not been shown to cause this ocean warming, but sunlight has been shown to cause this warming.
The fact that you don’t know what causes ENSO processes does not mean that CO2 causes them.
It would appear that there is mileage in the idea of there being a step around 1925. I also detected such a step by comparing SST to accumulated cyclone energy (ACE).
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=215
I rather suspect that this is either a sampling issue or an incorrect “bias correction”.
Pavel may have detected the same issue by an independent means.
Richard111 says:
April 26, 2013 at 5:31 am
“I am curious as to why no mention of the jet stream. It is having a marked effect on the UK climate currently.”
Weather?
Mario Lento says: “The fact that you don’t know what causes ENSO processes does not mean that CO2 causes them.” A pointlessly obvious statement. I never suggested it did.
“Well it’s clear that CO2 is NOT causing the ENSO process for a number of reasons. This has been shown. ”
It is not “clear” , neither has it been shown. Instead of making pointless assertions perhaps show it or link to somewhere else that you think has shown it.
I’m NOT saying CO2 is the cause but there is nothing so far to say that ENSO cycle is not simply the climate mechanism for evacuation of the excess heat that has built up. Since ENSO is a non periodic oscillation such a release will happen in steps. How frequent anyone wishes to make those steps or whether they call it “stochastic” noise.depends on the way they look at the records.
X Anomaly:
At April 26, 2013 at 5:57 pm you say to me
You make a good point when you say,
“there appears not to be a specific artifact from the step process”.
It raises the obvious question, why not?
Clearly, there must be such an “artifact” but Belolipetsky does not report it.
Investigation of that “artifact” would be a useful comparison with magnitudes of possible explanations for the shifts; e.g. cloud effects as suggested by Rob JM at April 26, 2013 at 4:46 pm.
Belolipetsky could develop his work by investigating “artifacts”.
Richard
Greg Goodman:
I have been following your contributions and – to be polite – they are not constructive.
I will spell out what is happening and you are too blinkered to see.
We are observing the formation of a new understanding of climate.
The new understanding builds on the accepted idea of climate regimes. (In his above article Belolipetsky reports that Kevin Trenberth published his discovery of such a shift). But Belolipetsky et al. have redefined what is a regime shift in a way which enables determination of what is – and is not – an effect of ENSO.
This thread makes clear that the new understanding of climate behaviour is being acquired by people including
Bob Tisdale who studies effects of ENSO.
Jens Raunsø Jensen who observes regime shifts over land.
Pavel Belolipetsky who observes regime shifts over oceans.
On this thread others (including milodonharlani and Rob JM) are postulating possible reasons for the regime shifts.
And some people (e.g. X Anomally) are attempting the hard but necessary job of trying to find fault with aspects of the developing new understanding.
However, you are clinging to the failed AGW-hypothesis like a drowning man clings to a straw in hope of floating. You say,
Belolipetsky et al. show it in their paper, he reports it in his above article, and I quoted his report in two above posts at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/the-shifts-hypothesis-an-alternative-view-of-global-climate-change/#comment-1288393
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/the-shifts-hypothesis-an-alternative-view-of-global-climate-change/#comment-1288809
Your desperation is great when you say
As Steven Mosher has done in this thread, you seem to be so keen to dismiss the work of Belolipetsky that you have not bothered to read it and – instead – assume it is the work of Tisdale.
Belolipetsky says ENSO explains climate within each regime but does not explain the shifts between regimes. If your assertion were right then it would not address the point made by Belolipetsky. Indeed, in his above article Belolipetsky points out that such shifts are not consistent with the AGW-hypothesis as promoted by the IPCC (and I add is emulated by GCMs); he writes
As I said, you are being desperate when you write
One could also say that there is nothing so far to say that ENSO cycle is not simply the result of angels breathing on the ocean. But such assertions of what “there is nothing so far to say” are all equally pointless and without merit.
Richard
Ted Wagner:
At April 26, 2013 at 8:28 pm you ask
I think you may find what you want in my reply to Greg Goodman which is at April 27, 2013 at 2:31 am. It is just above this post.
Richard
Pavel: This is an interesting analysis. My concern: you are mixing two different types of reference indices. The NINO3.4 data represents the sea surface temperature anomalies of the NINO3.4 region in the equatorial Pacific. On the other hand, the PDO does not represent the sea surface temperature anomalies of the North Pacific, north of 20N. The PDO is ENSO related but it’s also influenced by the sea level pressure of the North Pacific. Therefore, the difference between the tropical and extratropical analysis is likely a function of the sea level pressure, the North Pacific Index possibly, which may also be the cause of the regime shifts. Refer again to one of the papers you cited, Trenberth and Hurrell 1994:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/jhurrell/Docs/trenberth.decadal_variations.climdyn94.pdf
Also, I note you used HADISST-based NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies. Did you note anywhere in your paper that from 1900 to present it has no long-term warming trend, which makes it a good reference? In effect, your tropical analysis is an attempt to explain the additional warming around the central equatorial Pacific (NINO3.4 region), which hasn’t warmed. That should answer the critics who are complaining about your use of a sea surface temperature dataset to explain a warming of sea surface temperatures.
I’m also wondering why you used the ERSST.v3b-based PDO data, when you’re using HADSST2/Reynolds OI.v2 data for your sea surface temperature data. The JISAO PDO data is based on an older version of the HADSST2 data and on two versions of the Reynolds OI data. On the other hand, the ERSST.v3b is a dataset that has been infilled using PC analyses, so the PDO index based on ERSST.v3b data is a PC analysis of a dataset created using PC analysis.
Regards
After reading the Belolipetsky’s paper and some of better inform comments, I’ll make few points:
– Neither sun nor the Earth globally are capable of sudden shifts, however particular regions of the globe are.
– Nearly 3 years ago I looked at the far North Atlantic geological records, and they display periodic shifts in the tectonic activity, which appear to be more or less coincidental with the underlining CET natural variability
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NVp.htm
– N. Hemisphere temperature and climate are affected by shifts in the polar jet-stream.
– In the far N. Atlantic semi-permanent atmospheric pressure (Icelandic Low) (from winters to summers it is moving from south to north of Iceland ) is generated by the unique warm currents down-welling
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/slides/large/04.18.jpg
intensity of the down-welling may be affected by the balance of warm and cold sea currents in the area; question is, if the periodic increase in the tectonic activity in the area could alter that ‘balance’. If so than at least there is a starting point for further investigation.
– Tectonic activity is usually accompanied by secular changes in the strength of magnetic field, diagnosis for this area is strongly positive
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LLa.htm
– However, currently there is an insurmountable physical obstacle, that the tectonic and solar magnetic activity appear to be correlating
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-NAP.gif particularly since 1880s (more accurate records?)
– Further physical obstacle in getting a complete picture is that combination of the two magnetic fields changes since 1880’s, produces ‘near perfect’ de-trended components of both N. Atlantic SST and N. Hemisphere’s temperatures.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
– All of the above could be readily rejected as a ‘nonsense’, as it has been done regularly by one of the resident experts, but NASA scientists are less reluctant to do so:
Dr. J. Dickey of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena: “One possibility is the movements of Earth’s core (where Earth’s magnetic field originates) might disturb Earth’s magnetic shielding of charged-particle (i.e., cosmic ray) fluxes that have been hypothesized to affect the formation of clouds. This could affect how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space and how much is absorbed by our planet. Other possibilities are that some other core process could be having a more indirect effect on climate, or that an external (e.g. solar) process affects the core and climate simultaneously. “
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20110309.html
If by now you’ve given up, I don’t blame you, since a climate hypothesis based on to the current science unknown physical processes, is not going to make much of an inroad, so let’s go back to another half baked CO2 hypothesis.
Bob Tisdale:
re your post at April 27, 2013 at 3:14 am .
Great and sincere thanks for your joining the thread (I know you have been busy coping with trolls on another thread).
Pavel resides in Siberia so time differences make rapid interaction on the thread difficult for him, and I have been trying to ensure that discussion does not stall. We needed you here.
I remind of an observation and a suggestion I have made in the thread, and I am writing to commend the same suggestion to you.
I wrote in my post at April 27, 2013 at 2:31 am
And in my post at April 26, 2013 at 8:05 am I wrote saying to Jens Raunsø Jensen
I make the same respectful suggestion to you.
We need the progress of the science which integration of the ideas of the three of you can hopefully provide.
Richard
richardscourtney says: “However, you are clinging to the failed AGW-hypothesis like a drowning man clings to a straw in hope of floating. You say,…”
LOL. Nice little rant. Seems like you are projecting your own desperation to find something else onto the those who make reasoned criticism. I will now explain what you are too blinkered to see.
Just because I happen to agree with Mosh (for once) does not I’m a fan of CAGW. It seems incontestable to anyone with a scientific mind that CO2 has some effect. The argument is about how much not “if”. It is clear that climate models are way off the mark and a new approach needs to be taken. That does not mean I will jump on the first half baked hypothesis that comes along with the huge relief of someone in denial or some anti-eco teabagger.
“…you seem to be so keen to dismiss the work of Belolipetsky that you have not bothered to read it and – instead – assume it is the work of Tisdale.”
BS, I have been in private communication with Pavel Belolipetsky the last couple of weeks before this was posted and any comment I’ve made about his article relate to it’s contents. My comments on Tisdales work deal with his work,
I criticise Mario for saying :“Well it’s clear that CO2 is NOT causing the ENSO process for a number of reasons. This has been shown. ”
That criticism stands, it is not “obvious” and it has not been “shown”.
Pavel’s article is interesting but is a long way from either proving what it suggests or from being accepted as such.
You are simply jumping to conclusions, pigeon-holing me according to your own prejudices and clearly have not read or tried to understand my comments otherwise you would be post back such rubbish.
I am sceptical in the scientific sense not in the tea-bagger fan club sense and that means it works both ways. May be you should try the same objective scepticism instead of sounding off at everyone.
richardscourtney says:
Pavel …. Now, your your ideas and analysis will get true peer review in this thread. Be prepared for strong argument because people here have sufficient respect for ideas, studies and research to try to demolish them.
So don’t flame those who do take the time and effort to criticise !
Greg Goodman:
Your post at April 27, 2013 at 3:33 am begins saying
I made no “rant”. I provided clear and logical argument supported by evidence.
Hence, I did not bother to read the remainder of your post on the assumption that it only contains illogical rationalisations similar to your previous posts in the thread.
Richard
richardscourtney says: Investigation of that “artifact” would be a useful comparison with magnitudes of possible explanations for the shifts;
READ:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/the-shifts-hypothesis-an-alternative-view-of-global-climate-change/#comment-1289329
Greg Goodman says, regarding the possible influence of greenhouse gases on ENSO: “It is not “clear” , neither has it been shown.”
The abstract of Ray and Giese (2012) ends with:
“Overall, there is no evidence that there are changes in the strength, frequency, duration, location or direction of propagation of El Niño and La Niña anomalies caused by global warming during the period from 1871 to 2008.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JC008031/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
Greg Goodman says: “I’m NOT saying CO2 is the cause but there is nothing so far to say that ENSO cycle is not simply the climate mechanism for evacuation of the excess heat that has built up…”
The ocean heat content data for the tropical Pacific disagrees with you. The “build-up” typically occurs only during 3-year La Ninas. But then there was the freakish 1995/96 La Niña that created the ocean heat content for the 1997/98 El Niño. And as I have been presenting for a while, without the 1973-76 La Niña and 1995/96 La Niña, tropical Pacific OHC cools over the long-term:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/03-trop-pac-ohc-w-n-w-o-la-ninas-4.png
So it’s pretty hard to claim there’s a CO2-based “build-up” fueling El Niños when the OHC data for the tropical Pacific shows long-term cooling over 55 years when you remove 4 years of data.
Greg Goodman:
Your post addressed to me at April 27, 2013 at 3:44 am says
I did. It is at April 27, 2013 at 12:09 am and says
I “rather suspect” you are making arm-waving assumptions to excuse your ignoring the evidence which you, too, have seen.
Richard
“Hence, I did not bother to read the remainder of your post on the assumption that ”
Your assuming and not bothering to read was what the rest said in a nutshell, so you’re bang on course pal.
Greg Goodman:
Your trolling is a nuisance.
Read the post to you from Bob Tisdale at April 27, 2013 at 3:48 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/the-shifts-hypothesis-an-alternative-view-of-global-climate-change/#comment-1289461
and my post to you April 27, 2013 at 3:52 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/the-shifts-hypothesis-an-alternative-view-of-global-climate-change/#comment-1289464
They hand your rear end to you on a plate.
Make substantive points and genuine criticisms or go away. At present your trolling is disrupting the thread.
Richard
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/03-trop-pac-ohc-w-n-w-o-la-ninas-4.png
Sorry Bob , OHC goes up and down. If you remove the bits where it goes up the rest goes down. I don’t wish to be unnecessarily critical but I don’t think you realistically remove one side of Nino/Nina like that. I don’t think you can assume that 1998 would have been the same irrespective of preceding La Ninas.
However, the OHC plot does show quite well how ENSO variations can pump energy into rest of the climate system. That is major factor that climate science does not seem recognise. It is NOT just ‘internal variability’ that can be assumed to be long term neutral. Once again I commend you on that finding.
Vuk, like much of your stuff this is interesting: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
However, I note that it does not follow well around 1925. Despite the earlier detail matching well there is a level shift in SST . It would seem to be further evidence , along with my ACE comparison of an error in SST record (either sampling bias or bad “bias correction”)
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=215
I think that is what Pavel has picked up here.
Do you have details anywhere explaining what your “Geo-solar cycle” is, what data it is based on and how to calculate it?
Greg Goodman:
In your post at April 27, 2013 at 4:46 am you say
OK. Please state your evidence for your claim of “an error in SST record (either sampling bias or bad “bias correction”)”.
There is a long history of AGW-supporters claiming,
“The data refutes AGW so the data must be wrong”.
On face value your assertion of “evidence” is merely another example of this claim.
So, please state your evidence. And please note that the hypothesis of vukcevic is not such evidence.
The importance of this matter to the subject of this thread cannot be overstated.
If observed “shifts” are errors in SST determinations then there is nothing to debate because nothing pertinent is known.
Richard
Paul Linsay says:
April 26, 2013 at 7:15 am
////////////////////////////////////
Paul
Your interpretation of the satellite data appears correct. There appears to be no first order correlation between CO2 and temperature in the satellite data set. That data set does not support the contention that CO2 drives temperature.
That said, why has the temperature increase that occurred around the super El Nino of 1998 not disippated? Why has the temperature anomaly not fallen back to pre 1997/8 levels? Why has the heat released remained in the atmosphere for so long?
Perhaps over the coming years, we will now see a fall in temperature anomaly back to the pre 1997/8 level, and if so, it is important to seek to understand why this occurs, in particular whether that is just a lag or whether it is the result of a change in forcing such as a consequence of low solar activity.
Bob says:
The abstract of Ray and Giese (2012) ends with:
“Overall, there is no evidence that there are changes in the strength, frequency, duration, location or direction of propagation of El Niño and La Niña anomalies caused by global warming during the period from 1871 to 2008.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JC008031/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
It’s difficult to comment on that paper since it’s behind a paywall.
However, you say that just two events were mainly responsible for the warming. They say there is “no evidence” that such events are caused by global warming. That is a negative finding, they did not find any evidence of… They do not report finding any other cause (at least not mentioned in abstract). This leaves an ambiguous situation. Either it was found to be “normal” ENSO which contradicts your idea that ENSO caused the warming, or it’s not normal but they could not find any other cause but refute it’s CO2.
If you have the full paper maybe you can fill out a bit what it does find.
I’m not against your idea that it’s ENSO but I think it needs to be challenged as firmly as many here would question the CO2 explanation.
The way I see it is that you have shown ENSO can get heat in and out of the ocean. The out part is a loss to the system since a lot will end up escaping to space. In the mean time this would cause some atmospheric warming. The heat input part is a net gain since it is additional solar energy captured. This means ENSO has the means to act as a negative feedback in both directions.
It has the means to be a primary regulator of Earth energy budget. That is significant.
Now, IF there was gradual extra heat input into the oceans (more correctly less loss) due to additional CO2, then a small change in the ratio of Nino/Nina would be able to dump that excess to atmosphere and eventually to space.
I don’t see any way so far to distinguish between a gradual heat input and a small change in Nino/Nina ratios (with as yet unknown cause or simply random) that would net the same extra heat increase.
The problem I see with what you have shown so far is that if you want to refute AGW and claim ENSO has caused late 20th c. warming you need to show it HAS done so , not just that it CAN.
Now that’s one tall order and I don’t knock what you’ve done so far if you can’t _prove_ the last step. But if you want to use it to refute AGW I think that’s what’s needed.
Please correct me if you think that’s faulty logic.
My very first post here showed independent reason to think there may be a shift in 1987.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/the-shifts-hypothesis-an-alternative-view-of-global-climate-change/#comment-1288510
The other shift is 1925 I suspect to be a data error since two totally independent physical datasets that correlate quite well over the record show a step change around that year.
That is based on observational evidence. It is different from saying I have a pet hypothesis about what causes or does not cause global warming and I want to adjust the data to fit the model.
I’m not even interested in whether this helps or hinders anyone’s pet idea. Before we can test any theory we need data to work with. If there is an apparent problem with a dataset that has had more adjustments applied than the signal we are supposed to be explaining then any physical evidence that does not tie in goes to the top of the list of things to look into and any hypotheses take second place.
If anyone would like to say those inconsistencies don’t exist or that there is some other “step” change in the climate system that would explain the evident dislocations then that would be interesting to hear.
Greg Goodman:
In your post at April 27, 2013 at 5:56 am you say
If one shift exists because of unknown and unspecified “data error” then – in absence of other information – there is no reason to suppose that both both shifts are not caused by similar “data error”.
Conversely, when there is no evidence for such a “data error” then there is no reason to doubt the data which indicates both shifts.
And when “two totally independent physical datasets that correlate quite well over the record show a step change around that year” then there is evidence which indicates the shift was real and was NOT a result of such a “data error”. But that is the shift which you are suggesting is caused by such a data error.
So, at present there is no explanation for your suggestion of an unknown and unspecified “data error” except assertion of a prejudice.
I repeat,
please state any evidence you have for the “data error” which you suggest exists.
There is a long history of AGW-supporters claiming the data must be wrong when the data refutes their assertions.
Richard
Richard, as far as I know you have not analysed any of this yourself, you have not posted anything of your own work, you’ve appointed yourself chief expert for the day.
I’m sick of your ignorance and attitude and stupid comments, take it somewhere else.
Greg Goodman says: April 27, 2013 at 4:46 am
Vuk, like much of your stuff this is interesting: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
However, I note that it does not follow well around 1925. Despite the earlier detail matching well there is a level shift in SST
richardscourtney says: April 27, 2013 at 5:00 am
And please note that the hypothesis of vukcevic is not such evidence. The importance of this matter to the subject of this thread cannot be overstated.
Good afternoon gentlemen
Let me stick to the facts as I understand them to be:
– The SST reconstruction graph is based on the combination of solar and the presumed Earth core’s magnetic field secular oscillations (Jackson -ETHZ & Bloxham –Harvard) data.
I am of the view that tectonics is affecting balance of the sea currents. Tectonic movements are strictly Earth’s lithosphere and very uppermost mantle processes, and its effects may not register further down at some 3-5000 km (the outer core) where the magnetic field is generated), considering mantle’s magma dumping. However as stated in my post, tectonic movements do cause local magnetic field to change, so what happened in 1925?
Let me elaborate further:
– Europe in 1920’s had already network of accurate geomagnetic stations, all of these in 1925 recorded sudden change in the Earth’s magnetic field with respect to time, better known as a ‘geomagnetic jerk’. The 1925 was the strongest ‘jerk’ ever instrumentally recorded (for more details see paper by Dr. Susan Macmillan of British Geological Survey http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/3979/1/3887C5F0.pdf page 2)
I do not see any particular contradiction with any part of my hypothesis or with the N.A. SST change in 1925.
Re: ‘geomagnetic oscillations’ data and related info: my article was emailed to Dr. L. Svalgaard (declared it absolute nonsense), Dr. J. Curry ( i did a quick read, looks very interesting. do you want to do a guest post at CE on this? would need to distill the argument into relatively simple points, show a few key figs, then link to the entire post. Judy, I politely declined the offer, on account of ‘there is a lot more to be worked out’), S. Mosher (didn’t object to calculations, relatively neutral) and Dr. RG Brown (rgb&duke, did not respond)
I think… my posts are getting far too long for my writing skills.
Greg Goodman:
re your post at April 27, 2013 at 6:33 am .
Your saying “as far as you know” displays your ignorance which would not have existed had you bothered to read the above article by Pavel.
STOP TROLLING.
I yet again repeat
please state any evidence you have for the “data error” which you suggest exists.
There is a long history of AGW-supporters claiming the data must be wrong when the data refutes their assertions.
Richard
vukcevic:
Thankyou for your post at April 27, 2013 at 6:44 am.
I write to draw attention of your statement which concurs with an observation I had made. You say
I agree.
Richard
Pavel,
In the submitted manuscript, which you ask us to comment on, you state: “We hypothesise that there were two major climate regime shifts in1925/1926 and 1987/1988 years. During these shifts the mean value of temperature rises, over which natural variability associated with ENSO, PDO and other factors occurs.”
But the 1925/26 shift is not readily observable in global SST records. Where is your socalled empirical evidence (title of manuscript)? I asked you earlier without reply. But from your answer to another comment I can see that – as I thought – you are effectively eyeballing (probably based on your expectation from the Yasunaka and Hanawa paper). Your shifts are assumptions, unless you establish objective criteria and tests for their identification. Autocorrelation in the SST data will complicate this.
The 1925/26 shift is what constitutes the normally accepted definition of the PDO as characterised by shifts in 1925, 1947 and 1977. The shift in 1925/26 was regional and generally accepted as representing internal variability, but in your analysis you are arguing that this shift was not part of internal variability. Is there an inconsistency in your analysis here?
regards jens
Hey Greg Goodman
“…someone in denial or some anti-eco teabagger. ”
Don’t speak of what you don’t understand.
The so called “tea- party” is a philosophical union of Conservatives and Llibertarians who believe in a constitutionally limited US Government. That’s it.
They harbor no hate.
The same cannot be said of you.
vukcevic says:
– Europe in 1920’s had already network of accurate geomagnetic stations, all of these in 1925 recorded sudden change in the Earth’s magnetic field with respect to time, better known as a ‘geomagnetic jerk’. The 1925 was the strongest ‘jerk’ ever instrumentally recorded (for more details see paper by Dr. Susan Macmillan of British Geological Survey http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/3979/1/3887C5F0.pdf page 2)
I do not see any particular contradiction with any part of my hypothesis or with the N.A. SST change in 1925.
===
Where is this ‘jerk’ in your plot , I cannot see it.
If it is not present , what I am seeing is a change of level in AMO , as noted in my AMO-ACE graph, that appears to show a dislocation between the two plotted datasets. Such a step change being unique in the both our graphs.
Now if there was a jerk that caused other physical climate effects that would be interesting and may give reason to regard the temperature shift as real, possibly a consequence of the magnetic ‘jerk’.
However, I do not see evidence of this in either plot under discussion. Do you see something that I do not?
Greg Goodman says: April 27, 2013 at 9:08 am
Where is this ‘jerk’ in your plot , I cannot see it.
No you will not see it, as I explained in the previous post, but let me try again:
– The SST reconstruction graph is based on the combination of solar and the presumed Earth core-mantle boundary magnetic field secular oscillations (Jackson -ETHZ & Bloxham –Harvard) data.
Tectonic movements are strictly Earth’s lithosphere and very uppermost mantle processes, and its effects are unlikely to register further down at some 3-5000 km depth of the outer core,
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfbdxa/earthfg.gif
where the magnetic field is generated. Tectonic movements do not reach the outer core due to the mantle’s magma dumping, however changes of the magnetic field at the core-mantle boundary are the main source of the secular variability of the earth’s field as perceived on the surface.
My SST reconstruction graph is based on the Earth core-mantle boundary magnetic field secular oscillations.
Thanks Vuk, so that brings me back to the very first point I made about your graph. You show something (whatever it is) that seems to follow AMO reasonably well throughout the record. With the exception of the pre-1925 segment being about 0.1 too low.
So either there is a dislocation in the relationship that you are trying to suggest at the time, OR there is a data sampling issue in one of the data sets.
This is VERY similar to what I had already noted a couple of years ago in AMO-ACE. A similar dislocation with a presumably unrelated physical quantity at exactly the same time against the same temp reconstruction.
That rather puts the suspicion on any data issue being with the notoriously problematic and probably over-corrected SST records.
I don’t know why it so hard to communicate this idea.
If someone has a reason to disagree and can account for it in some other way fine. But we don’t even seem to be talking the same language so far.
I hope I’ve explained it better.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PR.htm
Ah, I’m starting to see why don’t link or clearly state you data sources. As far a I can see from your description, Geo-Solar is SSN (as “proxy’ of solar field reaching earth’s surface) plus a simple cosine oscillation from a rather simplistic and speculative model of what happens at the mantle boundary.
So if there was some real magnetic event in 1925 your model would not show it anyway unless it was solar in origin.
The idea of your graph is interesting but it does not provide any information either way on the reality of the 1925 shift in AMO . By similar but opposite logic the shift is not a problem for your hypothesis either.
Greg Goodman says:
[I criticise Mario for saying :“Well it’s clear that CO2 is NOT causing the ENSO process for a number of reasons. This has been shown. ”]
[It is not “clear” , neither has it been shown. Instead of making pointless assertions perhaps show it or link to somewhere else that you think has shown it.]
++++++++++++++++++++++++
That you spelled “criticize” wrong, or haven’t been able to understand or know something, does not make it untrue. Your response to a lack of understanding is to criticize other people. Perhaps you could be more introspective instead eh? There are entire threads on WUWT that show CO2 could not have warmed the oceans.
If your goal is “science based on consensus and insult” Then, by all means continue to follow your own recipe in three steps.
1) tell everyone how you don’t know (as you did)
2) tell people who may know, that their statements are pointless claims (as you did)
3) say, I agree with Mosher (as you did)
There, now don’t you feel better?
Mario Lento:
re your post at April 27, 2013 at 10:57 am
The only “pointless claims” in this thread have been from Greg Goodman who has asserted that there must errors in the SST data because the data do not indicate what he wants, but he has refused to provide any evidence for this assertion.
I suggest not feeding the troll.
Richard
“That you spelled “criticize” wrong ….”. Brilliant science bongo. I speak English English. You can’t spell criticise ! You don’t even know that the past tense of spell is spelt. WoW. If you don’t jack about science at least you can pick out what you ignorantly think is a spelling mistake and criticise [sic] that instead.
” There are entire threads on WUWT that show CO2 could not have warmed the oceans.”
Duh , it must be true then. No one every posted anything that was wrong of WUWT now did they?
I haven’t seen such a stream of emotionally motivated drivel as I’ve seem here today. I might as well go and try to explain to Real Climate that CO2 does not matter , I’d get more sensible responses.
For once I managed to have a cordial and constructive exchange with Bob Tisdale and I agreed with some Mosh said, so all is not lost.
As for the rest of it….. Boing ! “Time for bed” said Zebedee.
Hi richardscourtney: I was thinking the same thing – but felt obliged. I thought my post would be amusing to Greg Goodman. And as well, I summarized his method in 3 steps.
richardscourtney:Untrue. The model of Belolipetsky only has two factors but the model of Pratt has more; e.g. it includes a CO2 effect which the model of Belolipetsky does not need.
There are models with high R^2 that have CO2 concentrations in them, and models with high R^2 that do not have CO2 concentrations in them. All the models with high R^2 are post-hoc, where now post-hoc includes the facility to choose which subsets to model, and which of zillions of functions to use for the models. If we start to find that some models have consistently made better predictions of out-of-sample data, then we’ll have some reason to prefer some models to others.
What we have here is a post-hoc model with Heaviside functions as predictors, with the rise times estimated by eyeball. At present those poorly estimated rise times do not correspond to any other processes or events that have been independently confirmed. If such processes or events are ever discovered to have occurred at those times ( but not other times), then the model will acquire credibility. For now, it’s just another contribution to the library of post-hoc models.
Matthew R Marler:
In your post to me at April 27, 2013 at 11:20 am you say
I agree. In that respect the model of Belolipetsky is similar to GCMs.
However, it has the advantage over GMS in that it is simpler, uses fewer variables, and what it does is known.
Like any such model, its value is its ability to indicate lack of knowledge.
The shifts model suggests that climate is a system of regimes which switch from one regime to another for no known reason. This may – or may not – be shown to be true. But investigation of the suggestion can be expected to provide useful information about climate behaviour.
Climate science has had no significant development for three decades because – without success – it has been focused on finding a ‘fingerprint’ of AGW. In my opinion, the work of Tisdale, Jensen and Belolipetsky provides a possibility of advancing the science.
Richard
OK, yes, there could be sudden steps indicating regime changes. However, these could be phantoms of inherent randomness, too. For example, here is a random walk, created by making a running sum of random numbers (well, OK, numbers from a pseudo-random number generator on my computer).
Obviously, there are times when the data appear to jump, e.g., at about 1200, 2000, and 8500 on the x-axis. The series is still stationary in the increments, and not particularly exotic.
Greg Goodman says: April 27, 2013 at 10:57 am
….from a rather simplistic and speculative model of what happens at the mantle boundary.
It is speculative since no-one ever will be able to measure magnetic field changes at the outer core-mantle boundary. It is far from simplistic, it is a standard model widely accepted, there are dozens and dozens of papers on the subject here is a <a link and you can pick your choice
Svalgaard accepts data from Jackson-Bloxham as the best approximation available,
richardscourtney says: April 27, 2013 at 12:10 pm
The shifts model suggests that climate is a system of regimes which switch from one regime to another for no known reason.
The CET 350 year long oscillating upward movement appear to be synchronized with the ‘up and down’ (mainly upwards) shifts in the frequency and intensity of the events of the far N. Atlantic.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NVp.htm
Could that be one of known reasons, it is not known, or it is a ‘known unknown’.
There I conclude my testimony, questions are acceptable, but the clear and concise answers may not be forthcoming.
Let’s get down to the brass tacks. Where the rubber meets the road. Where we put the peddle to the metal (thanks Mrs. Guillory – WW II Army sergeant – for your thick 6th grade ruler pointed right at me, and boy did I need that ruler – I was such a pill in school!)
The warming oceans of a La Nina clear-sky can be calculated and even modeled. Yes modeled. The amount of change in a La Nina-seasoned pool of equatorial warm water can be physically clear-sky calculated (and I am betting it already has been calculated) and modeled! Do you get that folks? That scenario can be calculated using past data. Second, its potential latent stored-heat release into the atmosphere in terms of where and how much can also be calculated (and I am betting it already has been calculated), and therefore modeled, again based on past data.
Given the MONSTER fickle nature and power of ENSO (a non-random monster that cannot be cancelled out of observational data), one can forget solar variation (insert hair-on-a-gnat’s-ass) cooling and warming effects, and one can ignore the (teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini) addition of CO2 warming. The BEST any climate model can hope for is to set up (statistical) model scenarios of potential medium term surface temperature (or if you prefer, climate disruptions for the weak minded) variations based on the past 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 year ENSO parameters. Needless to say, the further the prediction extends outward into the future the less we can count on the scenario actually happening.
My advice? 1. Wear layers. Too cold? Add a layer. Too warm? Strip. 2. Keep an umbrella in the car -good for shade or rain. 3. Pack on emergency blanket in your first aid travel kit. 4. Don’t ever go ANYWHERE, even down the street, without access to a flashlight, shelter, water and food for at least a 24 hr period.
Advice from a WW II Army sergeant . What’s not to like. That woman taught MEN how to fight!
vukcevic:
Thankyou for your post addressed at me at April 27, 2013 at 1:51 pm.
You say
Thankyou very much. That is a perfect example of what I meant when I wrote
Whether or not “clear and concise answers” are obtained about your hypothesis, investigation of it and other hypotheses is invited by the inferences of the works of Tisdale, Jensen and Belolipetsky.
It cannot be known whether one, some or all three of them will be found to be right in part or in whole. But finding out would remove climate science from the dead-end in which it has been stuck for decades.
Richard
@ Greg Goodman
a new paper from Nikolay Sidorenkov & Ian Wilson exploring southern hemisphere 9 year variations: http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V007/TOASCJ130415001.pdf
Mario Lento said @ April 27, 2013 at 10:57 am
And we should prefer your opinion in this to the Oxford English Dictionary that allows both -ize and -ise? If Greg is an Australian, then he would automatically use the -ise form since that is the correct Australian English spelling. What relevance does your opinion on how to spell a word have to an interesting discussion of climate change?
@pompousgit says:
April 27, 2013 at 10:32 pm
Mario Lento said @ April 27, 2013 at 10:57 am
And we should prefer your opinion in this to the Oxford English Dictionary that allows both -ize and -ise? If Greg is an Australian, then he would automatically use the -ise form since that is the correct Australian English spelling. What relevance does your opinion on how to spell a word have to an interesting discussion of climate change?
++++++
You’re right, –and I was not being nice, double bad on me.
As I said before:
A. “The 2 step-dates emphasized by Pavel Belolipetsky correspond with […]”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/11/enso-myth-5-enso-only-adds-noise-to-the-instrument-temperature-record/#comment-1273466
B. “There are very serious defense implications […] This certainly isn’t just about climate.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/11/enso-myth-5-enso-only-adds-noise-to-the-instrument-temperature-record/#comment-1272365
——-
Pavel,
Can you think of a reason why variations in the rotation rate of the sun would be far better synchronized with Jupiter-Earth-Venus (JEV) tidal cycles than with the sunspot cycle?
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tlatov_makarov_22a_jev_r_anim.gif
I’ve shared background info in comments volunteered here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/paul-vaughan-comparing-jupiter-earth-venus-alignment-cycles-with-variation-in-the-solar-rotation-period/
Best Regards
Some people would also propose that the rate of increase of global temperature, or even the rate of rate of increase are valid measures. But of course nowadays we speak of “climate change”; so, look at the number of possible indicators. The more indicators available, the more difficult it is to test hypotheses.
Taking a cue from Bob Tisdale, one night several years ago I decided to take the ENSO (3.4) index and phase shift its time integral against global temperature, and if memory serves right, a lag of the integral by less than a year did a respectable job of predicting global temperature. So, a linear equation with the coefficients representing integration is a pretty good, simple model without input of PDO at all. Now global temperatures are so polluted with “data reduction” that I no longer trust the assessment such a model.
Dear colleagues,
Thank you for your comments. At first I tried to respond to them but then there became plenty of them and I conclude that I’m not able to respond quickly. One of the reason is that I’m not experienced in internet conversations and another is that I have not so many free time during this weekend due to family activities. Thus I will try only to highlight main features.
This hypothesis was obtained from data analysis. I think it is interesting and your responses also suggest that it is interesting. Also it has some advantages over other existence. I don’t know how to reject or falsify it. In this situation I performed activities in order to inform as many other people as I can, who are interested in the topic. At last this post on WUWT was published. I think there are many people here who are better then me in statistics, who know more about physical processes in climate system, who can suggest possible explanations of shifts etc. I suppose this can help to reject or to find additional evidence for the Shifts hypothesis.
There were many good questions, suggestions and critique in comments. So I think I should respond and I have what to respond and what to add. But I need time to prepare, something about two weeks. When I’ll be ready I will publish my response.
Special thank to Richard S. Courtney. Because of him this post became interesting – my style is not so good.
Also I’m ready to perform joint survey. Who are interested can contact by email, which is available in preprint.
Best wishes,
Pavel