The author of the recent SkepticalScience post Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends, Dana Nuccitelli, still misunderstands or misrepresents El Niño and La Niña processes. Either way, he’s missed something. The instrument temperature record indicates that La Niñas and El Niños serve as a natural recharge-discharge oscillator, with La Niñas acting as the recharge mode and El Niños serving as the discharge and distribution phase. As such, the data indicate that El Niño and La Niña events are responsible for the natural warming of global sea surface temperatures over the past 31 years and that they’re the cause of a portion of the warming of ocean heat content since 1955. If this subject is new to you, refer to my illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” [42MB]. Also, we’ve discussed time and again that an El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index only represents the impacts of ENSO on the variable being measured, and that an ENSO index does not represent all of the ENSO processes or their aftereffects, but the SkepticalScience author Dana Nuccitelli continues to present myths about ENSO indices—and, in turn, about global warming.
I have not read the recent post by Dana Nuccitelli in its entirety. Based on the opening paragraph, it looks to be a comment on the McLean et al (2009) paper Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature. This post is not a defense of that paper. It’s about the closing statement of Dana Nuccitelli’s post, which is clearly a falsehood. Nuccitelli writes:
If we remove the long-term warming trends, we can see once again that the short-term wiggles in the temperature data are strongly influenced by changes in ENSO. However, the long-term global warming trends are not – they are due to the human-caused greenhouse effect.
Here’s a challenge to Dana Nuccitelli and other bloggers from SkepticalScience. You and your associates at SkepticalScience claim to have analyzed more than 12,000 peer-reviewed papers about global warming and climate change. What I present in the following should be a really easy task, because lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere warmed in a very specific way. Surely, out of the 12,000 papers, a few of them must have addressed how lower troposphere temperatures have actually warmed.
If you believe that manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for the recent bout of global warming, please provide links to the climate model-based, peer-reviewed papers that explain:
1. How and why the lower troposphere temperature anomalies of the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere show upward shifts in response to strong El Niño events—without proportional cooling during the trailing La Niñas. That is, the RSS lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the latitudes of 20N-90N do not cool proportionally during the La Niña event of 1988/89, Figure 1, but they did warm in response to the 1986/87/88 El Niño, which caused a major portion of the long-term warming trend.
Figure 1
2. And how and why the RSS lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the latitudes of 20N-90N do not cool proportionally during the La Niña event of 1998-01, Figure 2, but they did warm significantly in response to the 1997/98 El Niño, which caused another major portion of the long-term trend.
Figure 2
It is blatantly obvious to anyone reading and comprehending those two graphs that there would be little to no long-term warming of the lower troposphere temperature anomalies for mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere if lower troposphere temperature anomalies had cooled proportionally during the La Niña events of 1988/89 and 1998-01.
I first discussed the warming of lower troposphere temperature data almost 4 years ago in the post RSS Time Latitude Plots Show Climate Responses That Cannot Be Easily Illustrated With Time-Series Graphs Alone. And I discussed why the lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere do not cool proportionally during the 1988/89 and 1998-01 La Niñas in the post The ENSO-Related Variations In Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE) SST Anomalies And Their Impact On Northern Hemisphere Temperatures.
Back to Nuccitelli’s closing statement: That was the same conclusion reached in a recent video by SkepticalScience, using surface temperatures. I responded to their video with the post The Blatant Errors in the SkepticalScience Video “Global Warming over the Last 16 Years”, which includes the following YouTube video:
DON’T FORGET SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE AND OCEAN HEAT CONTENT
Further to my challenge to Dana Nuccitelli and his associates at SkepticalScience: if you continue to believe that manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for the recent bout of global warming, please provide links to the climate model-based, peer-reviewed papers that explain how and why sea surface temperature and ocean heat content data have warmed (or not warmed) in the following ways (numbering continued from preceding section):
3. How and why the sea surface temperatures of the East Pacific (90S-90N, 180-80W) haven’t warmed in 31 years (Figure 3).
Figure 3
4. How and why the sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific Oceans (Figure 4) with the coordinate of 90S-90N, 80W-180, only warmed during the strong El Niño events of 1986/87/88, 1997/98 and 2009/10 and did not cool proportionally during the training La Niñas—and without those El Niño events, the sea surface temperatures there would show no warming.
Figure 4
That should be a simple task since the global oceans were only broken down into two subsets.
Moving now to ocean heat content of the tropical Pacific where the fuel for El Niño events is generated:
5. How and why the warming of the ocean heat content data for the tropical Pacific, Figure 5, is dependent on the 1973-76 and 1995/96 La Niña events, and without those La Niñas the ocean heat content for tropical Pacific would cool.
Figure 5
Still in the subject of ocean heat content:
6. How and why the warming of the ocean heat content of the North Pacific (north of the tropics) is dependent on a 2-year climate shift (1989-90), and without that climate shift, the ocean heat content for the North Pacific would cool (Figure 6).
Figure 6
I discussed the above four graphs and the natural processes that caused their warming in the illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” [42MB] and in the YouTube video series “The Natural Warming of the Global Oceans” Part 1 and Part 2. And I also discussed them in great detail in my ebook Who Turned on the Heat? which is available in pdf form for only US$8.00. Who Turned on the Heat? also discusses the warming of lower troposphere temperature anomalies shown in Figures 1 and 2.
CLOSING
There’s no reason to wait for links to peer-reviewed papers from Dana Nuccitelli and his associates at SkepticalScience—links that will offer climate model-based explanations for how and why the oceans have warmed in the fashions they’ve warmed and how the lower troposphere temperature anomalies warmed as they had. The warming is dependent on ENSO, and for the ocean heat content of the North Pacific, it depends on a change in wind patterns and sea level pressure. The first problem they’ll encounter is trying to find studies based on climate models that can simulate ENSO. As far as I know, there are a sum total of…How should I put this?…none. See Guilyardi et al (2009), discussed in the post here.
I used the phrases “if you believe” and “if you continue to believe” as part of the challenges to SkepticalScience. Sea surface temperatures, ocean heat content and lower troposphere temperatures have all warmed in very specific ways in response to ENSO. Unless there are climate model-based peer-reviewed papers that explain specifically how and why those variables have actually warmed in the manners in which they’ve warmed as responses to ENSO, then parties like SkepticalScience who are promoting hypothetical manmade global warming are doing so based solely on their beliefs.
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I haven’t bothered to get in more popcorn – my bet is that they won’t respond.
Dana Nuccitelli thinks he gets to choose what is a ‘short term wiggle’ and what is a trend. To me, most of his trends are short term wiggles. He also seems to think CO2 somehow saves itself up for very short, intense bursts of climate changing activity. Amazing stuff, CO2. I’m no expert, but it seems that if sea surface temperatures have warmed in the pattern shown as a result of anthropogenic influence rather than asymmetric transport of energy around the ocean basins and to the atmosphere over decadal periods, there must be some serious negative feedbacks at play to prevent warming during ENSO neutral times. What are these Nuccitelli? How can the models tell us anything about them when they cannot reproduce any short term fluctuations? These guys just come out with soap bubble science – it all looks pretty but evaporates into nothing when touched.
I think I’m missing something here. Sorry if it’s blatantly obvious.
If ENSO oscillations do not balance out, that is if the cycle results in net warming, then that either represents energy moving from one part of the planet to another (ie oceans to troposphere or some such) or radiative imbalance (ie the earth takes more solar energy in than it re-radiates).
I haven’t seen anyone suggesting that it’s energy transfer – have I missed this? Is there a theory that ENSO is releasing stored energy into the atmosphere?
If it’s radiative imbalance, isn’t that global warming? Anthropogenic or otherwise – there’s not enough information there to say why there is a radiative imbalance.
AFAICT Bob seems to be saying that warming that can be correlated with ENSO “Doesn’t Matter” – which is a technique patented by the Hockey Team, last I checked. But warming is warming, and if it really is net warming then it comes from radiative imbalance – no?
The list of things not understood or misrepresented over there is long and comprehensive, and starts with “Skeptical” and “Science”…
Tom says: “AFAICT Bob seems to be saying that warming that can be correlated with ENSO “Doesn’t Matter” – which is a technique patented by the Hockey Team, last I checked. But warming is warming, and if it really is net warming then it comes from radiative imbalance – no?”
The difference is that the warming is shown to be natural, and not a result of the increase in manmade greenhouse gas emissions. That is, sea surface temperature data and ocean heat content data show no impact from downward longwave radiation from manmade greenhouse gases. It sounds as though this discussion is new to you, Tom, so if you would, please refer to the following link, which was provided in the body of the post:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/the-manmade-global-warming-challenge.pdf
It provides a pretty good overview.
Regards
And for those who stopped by my website for the complete monthly sea surface temperature update for April 2013, sorry about the delay. I just posted it:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/april-2013-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/
Yesterday morning, there was a glitch in the data for last week, and I wasn’t sure if that glitch in the weekly data extended over to the monthly data. Sometime in the afternoon, NOAA fixed the problem with the weekly data.
Regards
You obviously do not have the same Higher Level of Understanding that Mr. Nuctelli has received. What we call “El Nino” is the manifestation of the Male Planetary Essence, and the “La Nina” phenomenon is the outwelling of the Female Essential Spirit. How can it be more obvious? We must throw Gold at them! Showers and showers of Gold, if they are to be appeased! Oh, and please don’t think you can just throw it anywhere. You must first give all of your Gold to Enlightened Beings such as Light Warrior Nucitelli, one of the True High Priests of our age.
Repent! Repent! Or ye shall all perish in Fire, and Flame, and Nasty, Pointy, Teeth!
Thanks for the link, it’s very interesting. It does a few things very well, but leaves me with some questions I feel should be really obvious.
It does really well at showing that climate models are rotten – which I think we all knew pretty well.
It does really well at explaining the mechanism of the El Nino – La Nina oscillation – that it *is* an oscillation and how heat moves around. I feel like I understand the flows in the oscillation while I only had a vague idea beforehand. Thanks for teaching me something.
It seems a bit like sleight-of-hand to present graphs with the warming portions of El Nino events removed and to then describe ocean heat content as cooling – after all, you are describing this as a recharge-discharge oscillator, so if you remove the warming bits of the oscillation then *of course* what is left will be cooling. But you say it like it means something, which smells a bit off. I know you’ve not just removed any warming but only the bits that are part of “official” El Nino events, but if you are right and the system is a recharge-discharge oscillator then it amounts to the same thing. You’ve removed the recharge bits and – shockingly! – found that what’s left is an average discharge. To put this another way, how would you respond to someone from the other camp who dismissed all the cooling sections of these graphs as “only caused by La Nina events” and presented a graph that kept stepping upwards – showing that, if you discount the cooling caused by La Nina, warming is even worse than we thought?
And, lastly, my question I’m left with: If the El Nino – La Nina cycle is a recharge-discharge oscillator, why isn’t it zero-sum? Oscillators either have something driving them, or they average to zero over a long enough course. Why do your graphs show an oscillator that averages to net warming – something that naturally leads to the conclusion that it is an oscillator that is not at its natural equilibrium but one that is being driven up by some external factor?
I can think of a couple of answers: We might have just got (un)lucky and had several warming cycles in a row by chance. In this case, we ought to expect either zero sum from here on, or perhaps slight cooling to redress the radiative imbalance. Or there might be a longer-term oscillation underlying the immediately apparent oscillation, in which case we should expect accelerating cooling over the coming three or four decades. The current temperature plateau would be consistent with either of these (another method TM the Hockey Team – I’d better watch out) and it’s too early to tell. I’m interested whether you subscribe to one of these theories or whether you have another explanation I’ve missed?
Thanks for responding!
I should point out I understand the bit about trade winds and reduced cloud cover – but that’s not an explanation, only moving the problem one step further away. Why have we had an unusual pattern of trade winds and cloud cover that’s persisted for over 50 years? What’s driving the unusual pattern?
I realise as well that we are getting to the point of trying to discern trends that are much longer than the dataset we have available – so the answer might well be just “we don’t know.”
I have to agree with Tom – there is a lot of interesting information about the details of the El Nino – La Nina oscillation as a transport mechanism, but I also don’t see where the extra energy comes from to cause a net temperature rise.
Warmists would say that “we” caused it and the oscillations are just moving the result around!
Please forgive me if I have missed the explanaion in the details, but perhaps others have as well, so it needs to be stated as simply as possible.
Tom,
As the planet has been warming since the Little Ice Age, the energy is coming from a combination of natural and anthropogenic sources. Since the rate of warming was similar (as a recent Monckton post showed) “from 1976-2001, warming was no greater than in 1860-1880 or 1910-1940” this would argue that most of it is natural. If now they claim that the heat is hiding in the deep oceans, this would argue for longer lag times so that any affects from man will be muted on very short time scales like 50 years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/04/monckton-asks-ipcc-for-correction-to-ar4/#comment-1296975
Réaumur says:
May 7, 2013 at 5:50 am
I have to agree with Tom – there is a lot of interesting information about the details of the El Nino – La Nina oscillation as a transport mechanism, but I also don’t see where the extra energy comes from to cause a net temperature rise.
_________________
That was my first thoughts way back when I first read what Bob was posting. Then I got to think about the fact that the models do not explain why we have warmed since the Little Ice Age.
Add to that my doubts about the ‘corrections” to the temperature histories.(I trust Central England, which shows nothing alarming at all recently)
And I conclude that the warming was natural, ie, probablly a result of Sun/planet interactions as per Scafetta, and that Bob Tisdale is quite right, there is no human CO2 signature evident in the records. Just hiccups on the longer term trend. Our CO2 had to ADD to that in a uniformly rising way. It did not.
CodeTech says:
May 7, 2013 at 4:17 am
The list of things not understood or misrepresented over there is long and comprehensive, and starts with “Skeptical” and “Science”…
Agreed.
An aptly named site, however, since once should be very skeptical of the science there.
… parties like SkepticalScience who are promoting hypothetical manmade global warming are doing so based solely on their beliefs.
True dat.
One possible answer to the questions raised about the ENSO creation recent warming is the mode of the PDO. For some reason when the PDO is in its cool mode there are fewer El Niño events than when it is in its warm mode. What drives the Pacific ocean to cycle between these modes would be the cause of the cyclic warming and cooling. I’m not aware of any explanations as yet.
Simple explanation:
1) Take any Solar Cycle and measure the area under the curve. Convert to Flux [not as noisy ].
2) Large area under the curve, El Niño will occur. Small area under the curve, La Nina will occur.
3) Check the strength of the trade winds and the size of the currents leaving Indonesia.
4) PDO follows as the currents move the warm water to the Northern/Southern Pacific.
5) Watch the heat leave the Northern/Southern Pacific during a small area under the curve.
Step 5) is happening now. In about two months, NOAA will declare a La Nina. This will be a great La Nina [very little solar input], and will last a long time.
The “Great Global Cooling” has been put on hold by this meager Solar Cycle 24. As the Cycle wanes, one should prepare for cold.
SkepticalScience: Authors, purveyors of FUD.
FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Known to be used as a scare tactic, in lieu of logic or cogently expressed ideas and thought, often accomplished by threat (prognosticating imminent doom) or making the opponent doubt his standpoint (through illusion or the presenting of works of outright f raud). A tactic often used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda.
FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information.
One might conclude, therefore, that FUD has _no_ place in science.
.
Tom says: “It seems a bit like sleight-of-hand to present graphs with the warming portions of El Nino events removed and to then describe ocean heat content as cooling…”
You’re missing part of the argument. One of the gospels according to the purveyors of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is that global temperatures respond proportionally to El Nino and La Nina events. It’s the only way that papers like Foster and Rahmstorf (2011)…
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf
…and Thompson et al (2008)…
http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ThompsonPapers/ThompsonWallaceJonesKennedy_JClimate2009.pdf
…can attempt to remove the impacts of ENSO through linear regression analysis and claim that the remaining warming trend is caused by manmade greenhouse gases.
And my argument is that they cannot do that because there are residuals from strong El Niño events (leftover warm water) that cause global sea surface temperatures to warm.
During the satellite era (the last 31 years), only the sea surface temperature anomalies of the East Pacific cool proportionally during La Nina events. Here, let borrow a few illustrations from past posts. Here’s a comparison graph of the sea surface temperature anomalies of the East Pacific compared to NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies, that latter of which is being used as our ENSO index:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-111.png
And here’s a graph of the sea surface temperature anomalies for the rest of the global oceans (the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific) oceans:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-12.png
Clearly, that dataset does not cool proportionally during La Niñas. To confirm that, we can detrend the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific data and compare it to our scaled ENSO index:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-13.png
So the warming of the sea surface temperature anomalies for the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific oceans…
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-12.png
…is caused by the failure of the sea surface temperature anomalies to cool proportionally during La Niñas. And the lack of cooling during the La Niñas that follow those strong El Niños results from the warm water that’s left over from the El Niños.
The above graphs are from the following post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/a-blog-memo-to-kevin-trenberth-ncar/
I recently carried the illustrations one step farther by removing the warming associated with the specific El Niño events to show that without them there would be no warming:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/figure-41.png
Tom says: “To put this another way, how would you respond to someone from the other camp who dismissed all the cooling sections of these graphs as “only caused by La Nina events” and presented a graph that kept stepping upwards – showing that, if you discount the cooling caused by La Nina, warming is even worse than we thought?”
They cannot justify doing so. I remove them based on the grounds that if those El Niños had not released the naturally created warm water then those upward steps would not exist.
Tom says: “And, lastly, my question I’m left with: If the El Nino – La Nina cycle is a recharge-discharge oscillator, why isn’t it zero-sum?”
Because according to the ocean heat content data for the tropical Pacific it’s not a zero sum. Keep in mind, Tom, that I’m presenting what the data shows. Based on the negative trends in tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content between the first two 3-year La Niñas of 1954-57 and 1973-76 and between the 1973-76 La Niña and the 1995/96 La Niña …
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/figure-61.png
…a typical La Niña that follows an El Niño only replaces part of the warm water released and redistributed by the El Niño—thus the negative trends for those multidecadal periods between them. But the 3-year La Niña events are capable of replacing more ocean heat than was lost over the preceding multidecadal period and that creates the positive trend. Note also in that graph of ocean heat content of the tropical Pacific that the 1995/96 La Niña effectively caused an upward shift in the ocean heat, and the 1998-01 La Niña simply replaced most of the warm water released by the 1997/98 El Niño. Tropical Pacific ocean heat content has cooled since then.
The last graph is from the following post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/untruths-falsehoods-fabrications-misrepresentations/
Tom says: “I can think of a couple of answers: We might have just got (un)lucky and had several warming cycles in a row by chance.”
Bingo. The 1995/96 La Niña was a freak, and when the 1997/98 El Niño released to the surface all of that warm water it created by the 1995/96 La Niña, it effectively raised the sea surface temperatures for the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific Oceans about 0.19 deg C—and land surface air temperatures and lower troposphere temperatures simply followed suit.
Tom says: “In this case, we ought to expect either zero sum from here on, or perhaps slight cooling to redress the radiative imbalance.”
We’ve experienced a cooling of tropical Pacific OHC since the 1998-01 La Niña, but if Mother Nature elects to create another freak La Niña like the one in 1995/96 or another 3-year La Niña like the ones in 1954-57, 1973-76 and 1998-01 then we would expect ocean heat content in the tropical Pacific to warm again.
Tom says: “I should point out I understand the bit about trade winds and reduced cloud cover – but that’s not an explanation, only moving the problem one step further away.
Also keep in mind that, due to the reduction of cloud cover, downward longwave radiation (infrared radiation) decreases during La Niñas, while downward shortwave radiation (sunlight) increases. Downward longwave radiation varies in the wrong direction for it to cause the warming. Downward longwave radiation also has another hurdle—it can only penetrate the top few millimeters of the ocean surface and that’s where evaporation takes place.
Tom says: “Why have we had an unusual pattern of trade winds and cloud cover that’s persisted for over 50 years? What’s driving the unusual pattern?”
No one knows what drives ENSO. Lots of hypotheses though. ENSO forecasting models still have problems with the springtime prediction barrier, so the ENSO event may be underway (first downwelling or upwelling Kelvin wave) when the models start focusing on the upcoming season. And the models used by the IPCC for hindcasting past and projecting future climate are so pathetic in their modeling efforts that they’re basically useless.
Regards
Réaumur says: “I have to agree with Tom – there is a lot of interesting information about the details of the El Nino – La Nina oscillation as a transport mechanism, but I also don’t see where the extra energy comes from to cause a net temperature rise.”
Tropical Pacific cloud cover drops during La Nina events due to the stronger trade winds and resulting cooler sea surface temperatures (less convection, cloud cover and precipitation in the tropical Pacific during La Ninas), and because the stronger trade winds simply push the cloud cover farther west. If there is less cloud cover, there is more sunlight penetrating the tropical Pacific and warming it to depth. On the other hand, less cloud cover means less downward longwave radiation (infrared radiation), so infrared radiation varies in the wrong direction for it to be causing the warming. As I also noted in my reply to Tom above, downward longwave radiation also has another hurdle—it can only penetrate the top few millimeters of the ocean surface and that’s where evaporation takes place.
Réaumur says: “Warmists would say that “we” caused it and the oscillations are just moving the result around!”
And as discussed above, they’d be wrong, and the data contradicts their assumptions.
Regards
Bob, you continue to post the same idea over and over again. I am starting to get the sense that you are simply promoting your book, since you haven’t provided any new information or ideas in quite a while.
I agree with Tom and some others that you are just explaining the natural process of ENSO without describing where the warming is coming from. It may be from the same natural processes that brought us out of the little ice age, it may be anthropogenic, or more likely a combination of both. But explaining ENSO to death and creating your own version of the escalator graph does nothing to discredit AGW.
To be fair, SkepticalScience has also posed questions to you that you have yet to support with peer-reviewed evidence:
1: Where’s the heat coming from?
2: What’s the physical mechanism?
3: Why is this mechanism unidirectional?
That said, I admire that you have gone to their site to have a civil discussion with them. That’s something I wish they would do more often over here. I believe scientific dialogue is much more beneficial than both you and Nuccitelli repeatedly calling each other’s ideas myths.
Richard M says: “One possible answer to the questions raised about the ENSO creation recent warming is the mode of the PDO. For some reason when the PDO is in its cool mode there are fewer El Niño events than when it is in its warm mode.”
It’s actually works the other way around. When ENSO is skewed to La Ninas, the PDO tends to be in cool mode, and vice versa when ENSO is skewed to El Ninos. Changes in the sea level pressure of the North Pacific and the resulting wind patterns can also impact the PDO, which is why the PDO’s variations are different that the multidecadal variations of ENSO.
The sea surface temperatures of the North Pacific of course feed back to the tropics, the North Pacific gyre assures that, but the PDO does not represent the sea surface temperatures of the North Pacific.
Regards.
Bob, thanks for your response. It’s always nice to see someone following the evidence rather than trying to fit it to a preconceived view.
You say above that you don’t know what drives ENSO modes but then you state that ENSO drives the PDO. Could you articulate a little more on this. Is there actual processes you can follow that demonstrate ENSO is driving the PDO?
Keep up the good work.
Brian says: “Bob, you continue to post the same idea over and over again.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve discussed lower troposphere temperature anomalies. So your complaint is unfounded.
Brian says: “I am starting to get the sense that you are simply promoting your book, since you haven’t provided any new information or ideas in quite a while.”
Sometimes I include links to my book in posts and other times I don’t.
Brian says: “I agree with Tom and some others that you are just explaining the natural process of ENSO without describing where the warming is coming from.”
Actually, if you had read Tom’s comments, he advised that he understood the relationship between cloud cover and trade wind strength in response to ENSO.
But for you and the others, refer to:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/untruths-falsehoods-fabrications-misrepresentations/
Brian says: “It may be from the same natural processes that brought us out of the little ice age, it may be anthropogenic, or more likely a combination of both. But explaining ENSO to death and creating your own version of the escalator graph does nothing to discredit AGW.”
Actually, I was first to illustrate the upward shifts in the sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific oceans. Maybe one of the reasons SkepticalScience created the escalator was to discredit my observations—just maybe.
Also, if you believe I’m simply repeating myself, then you don’t have to read my posts. Simple as that. But I reach new people each time I discuss ENSO.
Brian says: “To be fair, SkepticalScience has also posed questions to you that you have yet to support with peer-reviewed evidence:
“1: Where’s the heat coming from?
“2: What’s the physical mechanism?
“3: Why is this mechanism unidirectional?”
Your and SkepticalScience’s need for peer-reviewed evidence indicates you (plural) cannot read and interpret time-series graphs. I have answered their questions here and at my blog. I answered them repeatedly on the thread you’re discussing, starting at comment 40.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=1&t=182&&a=57
The fact that they didn’t or wouldn’t grasp my answers indicates they weren’t capable of doing so or they were unwilling to.
While at SkepticalScience, I was confronted with quotes taken out of context and nonsensical comments (if memory serves, some [sarc on] geography major [sarc off] comically tried to say that North America was comparable in surface area to the East Pacific with the coordinates of 90S-90N, 180-80W). Their intent was simply to add confusion for those reading the thread afterwards. Of course I had to waste time and respond to those comments. Then, when bloggers started to repeat or reword questions that I’d already answered, the moderator said that I could not refer the person with the new question to the earlier answer, so I simply cut and pasted the old answer in response to the repeated question. It was clearly a waste of time, and I advised them so. I left. I hadn’t been back until today, when I searched for the link I provided above.
But I did write the post that answered their questions titled “Untruths, Falsehoods, Fabrications, Misrepresentations” that I had linked earlier in this reply. And here’s a link again:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/untruths-falsehoods-fabrications-misrepresentations/
Brian says: “I believe scientific dialogue is much more beneficial than both you and Nuccitelli repeatedly calling each other’s ideas myths.”
As far as I know, Nuccitelli has never attempted to discuss ENSO processes in one of his posts. Not once. I’ve only seen him representing ENSO as noise. He may not understand those processes—or, just as likely, he may understand them and has chosen to intentionally mislead his readers.
Regards
Bob Tisdale says:
“He may not understand those processes—or, just as likely, he may understand them and has chosen to intentionally mislead his readers.”
ha.. so true. Nuccitelli can always show up here and post his superiour knowledge and debate those that disagree. What he can’t do is edit WUWT to create a false impression. His failure to show up says that Bobs description is correct. Thats easy enough for everyone to understand.
Richard M says: “You say above that you don’t know what drives ENSO modes but then you state that ENSO drives the PDO. Could you articulate a little more on this. Is there actual processes you can follow that demonstrate ENSO is driving the PDO?”
Zhang et al (1997) was the first to calculate the PDO:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/zwb1997.pdf
In it, the PDO was identified as “NP”, and they use Cold Tongue region (6S-6N, 180-90W) sea surface temperature anomalies (CT) as the ENSO index. Zhang et al (1997) note:
“Figure 7 shows the cross-correlation function between CT and each of the other time series in Fig. 5. The lag is barely perceptible for TP and G and it increases to about a season for G – TP and NP, confirming that on the interannual timescale the remote features in the patterns shown in Fig. 6 are occurring in response to the ENSO cycle rather than as an integral part of it…”
Then there’s Newman et al (2005):
http://courses.washington.edu/pcc587/readings/newman2003.pdf
Newman et al (2004) also found that the PDO lags ENSO. They describe cell d of their Figure 1 as:
“ENSO also leads the PDO index by a few months throughout the year (Fig. 1d), most notably in winter and summer. Simultaneous correlation is lowest in November– March, consistent with Mantua et al. (1997). The lag of maximum correlation ranges from two months in summer (r ~ 0.7) to as much as five months by late winter (r ~ 0.6). During winter and spring, ENSO leads the PDO for well over a year, consistent with reemergence of prior ENSO-forced PDO anomalies. Summer PDO appears to lead ENSO the following winter, but this could be an artifact of the strong persistence of ENSO from summer to winter (r = 0.8), combined with ENSO forcing of the PDO in both summer and winter. Note also that for intervals less than 1yr the lag autocorrelation of the PDO is low when the lag autocorrelation of ENSO (not shown) is also low, through the so-called spring persistence barrier (Torrence and Webster 1998).”
And the first sentence of the Conclusions of Newman et al (2004) reads:
“The PDO is dependent upon ENSO on all timescales.”
Both of those quotes are also presented in the following post about the PDO:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/yet-even-more-discussions-about-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation-pdo/
Regards
There may be nothing new here for Brian but I found the question and answer with Tom clarified a few things for me. A good question and thoughtful answer is why I come here.