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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Bob says: “It’s been a long time since I’ve discussed lower troposphere temperature anomalies. So your complaint is unfounded.”
You have two paragraphs about lower troposphere temperature anomalies, which make the same basic point about step changes resulting from ENSO. The rest of your post in its entirety is regurgitated from your other posts.
Bob says: “Sometimes I include links to my book in posts and other times I don’t.”
5 of your last 6 posts (minus the open letter) promote your book. Not that there is anything wrong with promoting your work, but many posts seem to serve only that purpose.
Bob says: “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.”
Yes, he did say that, but it’s a strawman. Nowhere in that statement do I see any reference to a long term net warming trend. I’m not talking about the warming within a single El Nino, I’m talking about the net warming over the last 5 decades or so. Here’s his full comment, which I agree with: “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.””
Regarding your experience at SkepticalScience, I agree that many will attack out of context qoutes and that there is a lot of time wasted correcting uninformed opinions. But there are just as many of those kind of people here, just from the opposite point of view. For instance, Dr. Lurtz above seems to think he can predict a deep prolonged La Nina in two months. Why does that comment get a pass here? So I commend you for arguing your case over there and dealing with those with predetermined conclusions.
Bob says: “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.”
That’s just a ridiculous statement. You seem to imply that anyone who disagrees with what you say is either dumb or stubbornly wrong. I think many commenters there (such as Tom Curtis and KevinC) had legitimate concerns with your hypothesis and methods.
Bob says: “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.”
Replace Nuccitelli with yourself, replace ENSO with AGW, and preplace noise with natural. It’s a reversible argument. I don’t believe it is valid from either side.
Bob, many thanks for your beautifully clear, understated and articulate explanation of 1. the episodic ENSO oceanic warming process and 2. the absence of any monotonously-rising, industrial CO2-induced warming signal in either the SST or ocean heat content records. Your Global Warming Challenge is a much appreciated education, and a very enjoyable read, which I shall pass on to various associates from either side of the discussion (which here in Australia, is often a very political, opinionated, scientifically ignorant discussion).
And thanks too to some other commenters and yourself in clearing up the question that was niggling at the back of my mind as I was reading your presentation: “But surely this is showing net warming? And why is that happening right now? And what does it all mean? etc., etc.”
I can see from your responses that such digressions simply miss your intended point. You are completely aware that there is net warming, it is blindingly obvious, but you don’t pretend to know why, or what longer term pattern that may be part of, and it wasn’t the point of your presentation to address that. You weren’t disputing that there was warming. You were simply showing that the warming couldn’t be due to ‘anthropogenic’ CO2 emissions. All you were intending to demonstrate was the fact that this warming is brought about by clearly understood, completely natural, episodic mechanisms, and that aside from the effects of these, there is no other warming signal in the data. There is certainly no monotonously increasing warming signal of the sort that could possibly correlate with the monotonously rising ‘Keeling Curve’ of trace atmospheric carbon dioxide content.
(Your description of these natural oceanic warming mechanisms are very thought provoking though. Do we know what ultimately controls the position and strength of the trade winds and how they may have varied over time?)
I wonder if perhaps some audiences need an additional slide at some point in the Global Warming Challenge, for the numerous influential people that may read it, who will be coming from a position of only superficial familiarity with the subject. Something that clearly informs them that:
1. ‘Only ocean heat content and temperature measurements count in any consideration of ‘global warming. The heat capacity of the air over the small area of the planet’s surface that is land mass is insignificantly small and is of no consequence. It is barely worth measuring it from a Global Warming perspective’, and
2. ‘Yes, the data does show that the oceans have warmed overall during the past 30 years of satellite and ocean buoy measurements, but the crucial point is that all of this warming has been due to localised, intermittent and entirely natural oceanic phenomena. If you remove the effects of these natural phenomena from the global data there has been no other warming. So the world is not being warmed by anything else, and not therefore by CO2. It is simply warming naturally, and will eventually also cool again naturally at some point. The climate has always varied like this, throughout geological time and throughout recent history. The earth’s climate is continually variable over time. It is not naturally stable and never has been’.
As an incidental aside, anybody in search of a perfect small-scale demonstration of the El Nino effect, only has to go swimming here at one of Western Australia’s beaches in the height of summer. We have a west-facing, north-south coastline, and daytime midsummer temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s (C). The ocean is warm enough to swim all year round, and on the hot summer mornings there is an oven-like, dry easterly wind that blows in from the interior. Then in the afternoons, with luck, we get a cooling sea breeze that comes in from the west, cools down the city, and eventually drives everyone off the beach with whipping sand and choppy surf. The thing is though, when you get into the ocean on a day with a strong, hot, offshore easterly wind behind you, it is usually surprisingly chilly, but if there is an early onshore sea breeze you find yourself in warm summer water instead. The easterly winds obviously drive the warm surface water out to sea, and much colder, deeper waters rise up along the shoreline to replace them. Whereas the westerly sea breezes pile up the warm surface waters along the beach for people to enjoy. I don’t know what this summertime diurnal coastal heat pump does to overall coastal water temperatures. I imagine it warms them, as that shallow cold water then spends half the day being warmed by a blazing sun under a cloudless blue sky. But perhaps the late afternoon sea breeze increases evaporative cooling and mixing enough to compensate for the morning’s warming.
Pardon excessive my late-night rambling!
With regards,
Brian, at 0819 on 5/7/13: “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… .”
Setting aside the fact that, as he pointed out above, Mr. Tisdale has not addressed this particular aspect of his work for some time, there are many people who come to WUWT who, apparently, still do not understand what he is saying. Given that MANY of the above criticisms or questions could easily be answered by reading Mr. Tisdale’s analyses, including his book, he is extremely generous to devote so much of his time to, once again, try to teach what he has learned.
Bob Tisdale has donated hundreds of hours to teaching on WUWT and essentially GIVEN us all of his work (you don’t need to buy his book) in his many posts and by his patient, thorough, answers. He deserves our unqualified gratitude and praise.
If you agree that Mr. Tisdale has conferred a substantial benefit on you by his teaching for free, it seems that buying his book, if you can afford it, would simply be the decent thing to do.
*************************************************************************************
“… parties like SkepticalScience who are promoting hypothetical manmade global warming are doing so based solely on their beliefs.” [Tisdale]
Dear Bob Tisdale, you are too generous to the SS gang. They don’t have a sincerely held belief in AGW. They are either prideful to the point of insanity or out for money. The End.
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR FREE TEACHING AND FOR SO GENEROUSLY SHARING YOUR YEARS OF HARD WORK, Mr. Tisdale.
You are a scientist in the George Washington Carver tradition — the finest tradition.
@Bob T
I really appreciate Figure 4. It is a direct explanation and to me, a proof that the mechanism you have so clearly identified is tangible, quantifiable and validated.
Bob Tisdale says:
May 7, 2013 at 8:07 am
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)…
…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.
Bob,
Thanks for the explanation! I also needed that reminder….
MtK
Thanks you, Bob. You certainly do reach many and there are always new people at WUWT. I have learned a lot through your words.
As for Brian’s comment about your book, it comes across to me as a deliberate attempt to have readers here question your motives, which frankly makes me question HIS motives. With apologies to Brian if I am wrong, I can’t help but wonder if he is a troll. He seems to be going after the man when he can’t take on the science.
Brian, if you are not a troll, please stop fretting about whether Bob promotes his book or not. Who cares? Pay attention to the subject matter and keep your questions there, on observations and science. As for Bob’s book, I think it’s excellent that he promote it. He should. It’s the best way to get the information into the hands of the general public in a copy they can own and share. This is hugely important stuff Bob is talking about, and the more people who understand it, the better.
Cheers.
Hm. Have you considered that the stepwise progression in global temperatures might simply be the result of applying a quasi-sinusoidal pattern (the oscillating shifts between El Nino and La Nina, in other words) to a continually rising trend in temperatures? During periods where the oscillation was rising, the increase in temperatures would be magnified to produce an apparent leap upwards in temperatures, and during periods when the oscillation was falling the underlying rising trend would more or less cancel out the descent, producing a plateau or a slow descent–which, as it happens, is more or less exactly what is seen in the global temperature record. How would you respond to that criticism?
On another note, I’d just like to be absolutely sure I understand you; your argument is that, in effect, the extra heat that has accumulated in the Earth system over the past ~50 years has been due to a string of unusually strong La Ninas, which have resulted in an excess of energy (thanks to low cloud cover and a consequent increase in downwelling shortwave radiation) being plonked into the oceans, yes? Or am I misrepresenting that?
A.D. Everard, I’m certainly not a troll. I have commented on many of Bob’s posts recently, and this is the first time I have said anything at all about the promotion of his book, and it was just one sentence (I’m not exactly fretting about it). In fact, I’m trying to keep the emphasis on the science in a way that is fair to all viewpoints. I have learned a lot from Bob’s explanations of the natural processes of El Nino. And I have made multiple scientific objections, which Bob has answered to various degrees. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the observations and science that I pointed out, and not so much emphasis on one statement I made.
Personally, I have an issue with making the jump from “ENSO causes the oceans to warm naturally” to “ENSO proves that there is no AGW”. I understand that this is an oversimplification, but I think it’s the essential stripped-down argument Bob is making. By removing El Nino warming (or a lack of La Nina cooling), he is also removing a possible way for AGW to manifest itself. I don’t think this kind of thing would fly in the peer-reviewed literature. Of course a large component of every ENSO cycle is natural, and some warming may be explained by trade winds and cloud cover. But I think Bob has yet to disprove that some degree of the strength of recent El Ninos may be AGW induced warming.
I think it is very ironic that Bob demands peer-reviewed evidence in this post, and then says this: “Your and SkepticalScience’s need for peer-reviewed evidence indicates you (plural) cannot read and interpret time-series graphs.”
Thanks, Bob.
I always learn something about ENSO when you share your observations and comments.
Bob, does your delayed oscillator model of ENSO presented in your book agree generally with this mini-review by Fiona Eccles? I confess I still havent read all of the book. I noticed that your thoughts on El Nino and La Nina being discreet events rather than a continuous oscillation receive support from Kessler who also sees interrupted events and intervening neutrality. The key ingredient seems to be intermittency, e.g. Tadokoro et al 2011.
There is enough knowledge out there on nonlinear/nonequilibrium oscillatory systems in the “chaos” community to really take ENSO by the scruff of the neck and sort it out once and for all. That no-one does this probably is due to political intimidation – if anyone pinned down ENSO in a working intermittent delayed nonlinear oscillator model, they would be accused of supporting AGW “d***ers”, so they are being scared off – only making non-committal statements from afar. This is a depressing state of affairs and shows how AGW thugs like Cook and Nutticelli are holding back science by decades.
Brian says: “You have two paragraphs about lower troposphere temperature anomalies, which make the same basic point about step changes resulting from ENSO.”
You, Brian, have presented an argument that can easily be found to be wrong by anyone who has read this thread. Specifically, you’re using a time-wasting tactic called misdirection, which is one of the tactics employed by your brethren at SkepticalScience. Excluding the quote from Nuccitelli, out of the first 8 paragraphs, the word troposphere or tropospheric appears in 6. And it appears in the two closing paragraphs.
Brian says: “The rest of your post in its entirety is regurgitated from your other posts.”
As I noted earlier, if you believe I’m simply regurgitating cud then why are you bothering to read my posts? Move on. Why are you wasting your time and mine?
Brian says: “Not that there is anything wrong with promoting your work, but many posts seem to serve only that purpose.”
If there’s nothing wrong with promoting my book, why are you belaboring this?
Brian says: “Yes, he did say that, but it’s a strawman.”
You originally stated and I quoted, “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.” And I replied, “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”
The reduction in cloud cover (and the implied increase in sunlight) explains where the energy to warm the water is coming from—or are you intentionally overlooking that? And if you had bothered to read my reply to him, I expanded on the relationship, as I did in my reply to Réaumur. But giving you the benefit of the doubt, my replies to Tom and Réaumur appeared only a few minutes before you posted your original comment, so you may have started writing that comment before I posted my replies and we simply cross paths. Then again, you’re repeating your questions/concerns now—well after I answered Tom and Réaumur.
Brian says, “Nowhere in that statement do I see any reference to a long term net warming trend. I’m not talking about the warming within a single El Nino, I’m talking about the net warming over the last 5 decades or so.”
In the numerous posts that, according to you, are regurgitated, I’ve explained the warming of sea surface temperatures during the satellite era (the last 31 years), by discussing multiple strong El Niño events, not “the warming within a single El Nino.” My presentation on ocean heat content for the tropical Pacific extends for 55+ years, and for the ocean heat content, I present multiple La Ninas, so with it we’re definitely not discussing “the warming within a single El Nino.”
Brian says, “Regarding your experience at SkepticalScience, I agree that many will attack out of context qoutes and that there is a lot of time wasted correcting uninformed opinions. But there are just as many of those kind of people here, just from the opposite point of view. For instance, Dr. Lurtz above seems to think he can predict a deep prolonged La Nina in two months. Why does that comment get a pass here?”
Because (1) Dr. Lurtz in not complaining about my post, (2) he’s not asking questions, and (3) I haven’t had time to read his comment to see if I want to respond to any portions of it, because I’ve been busy answering questions from a number of bloggers and responding to your continued complaints.
Brian says: “That’s just a ridiculous statement.”
Actually it’s not. I presented an opinion. You obviously don’t agree with it, but your disagreement doesn’t make it ridiculous.
Brian says: “You seem to imply that anyone who disagrees with what you say is either dumb or stubbornly wrong.”
You appear to be forgetting what I do, Brian. I present data, and I describe what the data presents. I’ve confirmed the processes of El Niño and La Niña events with numerous different datasets in blog posts over the past 4 years—including sea surface temperature, ocean heat content, trade wind strength and direction, cloud amount, downward shortwave radiation, downward longwave radiation, precipitation, lower troposphere temperature, warm water volume, depth averaged temperature of the equatorial Pacific, sea level, sea level pressure, etc.—and I’ve animated maps of most of those datasets and others (like ocean current and direction maps) so that readers could watch the processes of ENSO and the interactions between datasets. Many of the bloggers at SkepticalScience were therefore disagreeing with data, not me.
And you’ve overlooked another explanation—that I was implying that the bloggers at SkepticalScience refuse to accept the data because it contradicts the hypothesis of CO2-driven human-induced global warming. The telltales of that are the misdirection, fabrications, misinformation, disinformation, etc., the bloggers from SkepticalScience employ when discussing my observations.
Brian says: “I think many commenters there (such as Tom Curtis and KevinC) had legitimate concerns with your hypothesis and methods.”
And I responded to their concerns with data. They may not have liked the answers the data provided, but I presented data that answered questions.
Brian says: “Replace Nuccitelli with yourself, replace ENSO with AGW, and preplace noise with natural. It’s a reversible argument. I don’t believe it is valid from either side.”
This is the most telling of your comments. It’s not reversible. Over the past 4 years, I’ve presented ENSO processes in minute detail; on the other hand, Nuccitelli presents a wiggly index and calls it ENSO. If you don’t believe my observations are valid, you haven’t bothered to attempt to understand them.
You, like those at SkepticalScience, would rather try to argue trivialities and provide misleading comments than attempt to understand the somewhat complex interactions between multiple variables. It’s that simple.
Adios.
phlogiston says: “Bob, does your delayed oscillator model of ENSO presented in your book agree generally with this mini-review by Fiona Eccles?”
Thanks for the link. Fiona Eccles’s description of the delayed oscillator theory of ENSO (the first paragraph under the section “3 The delayed oscillator”, page 3) agrees with my description, though I went into more detail in my chapter 4.9 in an attempt to make it easier for those without technical backgrounds to understand. The description from the following IRI webpage also agrees.
http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/theory/index.html
phlogiston says: “This is a depressing state of affairs and shows how AGW thugs like Cook and Nutticelli are holding back science by decades.”
Cook and Nuccitelli simply parrot the findings of the mainstream climate science community. It’s the scientists/modelers/statisticians who have either failed to examine and understand ENSO or they’re intentionally misrepresenting it. I would prefer to believe the former—that they’ve simply overlooked it because they couldn’t model it. On the bright side, according to one of the lead authors of the upcoming IPCC AR5:
“Yes there is a need to do more on improving ENSO, and indeed this will help improve the ability to forecast regional climate variability on season to decadal timescales and beyond. Again this is an area where there is a lot of research going on at the moment.”
See my exchange with Richard Betts here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/major-change-in-uk-met-office-global-warming-forecast/comment-page-1/#comment-40242
Regards
Brian says: “Personally, I have an issue with making the jump from ‘ENSO causes the oceans to warm naturally’ to ‘ENSO proves that there is no AGW’. I understand that this is an oversimplification, but I think it’s the essential stripped-down argument Bob is making.”
You’ve personally made a jump that I don’t make. I state that there is no evidence that manmade greenhouse gases have had any impact on the warming of the global oceans. That is not the same as “ENSO proves that there is no AGW”. In fact, in my videos and essays I present the multiple anthropogenic factors that cause land surface temperatures to warm above and beyond the warming there caused by the natural warming of the oceans–including but not limited to the increased emissions of manmade greenhouse gases.
Sam Yates says: “Hm. Have you considered that the stepwise progression in global temperatures might simply be the result of applying a quasi-sinusoidal pattern (the oscillating shifts between El Nino and La Nina, in other words) to a continually rising trend in temperatures?”
Yes, that’s the basic argument made by those promoting the hypothesis of human-induced global warming. They claim that ENSO is simply noise overlaid on top of the global warming signal. That hypothesis fails to account for the naturally created warm water released and redistributed by strong El Nino events. That warm water is reason for the long-term trend in global sea surface temperatures during the satellite era, not greenhouse gases. For a quick overview, refer to the YouTube video linked in the post…
…and to the essay;
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/the-manmade-global-warming-challenge.pdf
Regards
Mac the Knife says: “Thanks for the explanation! I also needed that reminder….”
And that means I need to include that reminder when I present those graphs.
Thanks.
Bob, in your lengthy hypocritical response, I don’t think you have really answered any of my concerns. You quote me, then twist my words into something that you can easily rebut, thereby arguing against something different from what I actually said. I would explain each (and I will if anyone would like), but I’m sure you’ll just say I’m using “time-wasting tactics”. So I’ll sum up my major concerns succinctly in a few lines:
1. No one is disputing your data or observations. Myself and others have disputed the conclusions that you draw from the data (that ENSO can explain away AGW).
2. Reduced cloud cover is one of the causes of each step change. You have yet to explain why there have been more steps up in temperature, creating a decades-long net warm trend.
3. Removing El Nino from a temperature plot is misleading, as it removes a possible mechanism for AGW to manifest itself.
4. Your hypothesis has not been reviewed by scientists. The following statement casts considerable doubt on it, especially given your demands for peer-reviewed evidence in this post: “Your and SkepticalScience’s need for peer-reviewed evidence indicates you (plural) cannot read and interpret time-series graphs.”
These are major concerns, not trivialities.
Bob, you have a problem with my statement “‘ENSO proves that there is no AGW’. I understand that this is an oversimplification, but I think it’s the essential stripped-down argument Bob is making.”
Then you say this:
“They claim that ENSO is simply noise overlaid on top of the global warming signal. That hypothesis fails to account for the naturally created warm water released and redistributed by strong El Nino events. That warm water is reason for the long-term trend in global sea surface temperatures during the satellite era, not greenhouse gases.”
So you seem to admit there may be an AGW signal over land, but absolutely not in sea surface temperatures. Fine, that’s part of the oversimplification I was referring to. It doesn’t change what I was saying whatsoever, but that’s the only sentence you responded to. How can you accuse me of belaboring trivialities when you continually skip the main components of my arguments?
Here’s my comment again with your trivial complaint corrected:
Personally, I have an issue with making the jump from “ENSO causes the oceans to warm naturally” to “ENSO proves that there is no GHG signal in the satellite era SST trends”. I understand that this is an oversimplification, but I think it’s the essential stripped-down argument Bob is making. By removing El Nino warming (or a lack of La Nina cooling), he is also removing a possible way for AGW to manifest itself. I don’t think this kind of thing would fly in the peer-reviewed literature. Of course a large component of every ENSO cycle is natural, and some warming may be explained by trade winds and cloud cover. But I think Bob has yet to disprove that some degree of the strength of recent El Ninos may be AGW induced warming.
I think it is very ironic that Bob demands peer-reviewed evidence in this post, and then says this: “Your and SkepticalScience’s need for peer-reviewed evidence indicates you (plural) cannot read and interpret time-series graphs.”
FYI, Roger Pielke, Sr. with lengthy comment at Climate Etc. (the full text of his email to David Appell):
http://judithcurry.com/2013/05/07/more-on-the-pause/#comment-319450
Brian, you are a troll. Bob answered you straw man statement with:
“You’ve personally made a jump that I don’t make. I state that there is no evidence that manmade greenhouse gases have had any impact on the warming of the global oceans. That is not the same as “ENSO proves that there is no AGW”. In fact, in my videos and essays I present the multiple anthropogenic factors that cause land surface temperatures to warm above and beyond the warming there caused by the natural warming of the oceans–including but not limited to the increased emissions of manmade greenhouse gases”
Brian says:
May 7, 2013 at 2:04 pm
“A.D. Everard, I’m certainly not a troll.”
Actually, Brian, you are a Troll. However, I will explain your (pretended) misunderstanding of Mr. Tisdale’s work.
In writing about ENSO, Mr. Tisdale uses the published data about ENSO in an effort to describe the natural processes that make up ENSO. That is what he is doing. He sticks to the observations. He has never offered a scientific explanation for ENSO.
His work is not intended as a direct criticism of AGW or Alarmist climate science. However, his work is a powerful indirect indictment of Alarmist climate science because it shows that ENSO does consist of natural processes that have been described to some extent. Because he is not a rich institution, he has not found all the natural processes that make up ENSO and he has not followed any natural process to its ultimate cause. As you no doubt know, Alarmist climate science does not treat ENSO as a natural process at all. In fact, they deny that it is a natural process.
Mr. Tisdale might seem to repeat himself because such repetition is the very nature of describing natural processes as one’s knowledge of the process is growing and being refined.
When you ask him for causes or explanations, you show that you have not a clue what he is doing or what he has achieved in his work. When you berate him for not answering your questions about causes or explanations, you are simply compounding your error.
Brian
I don’t think you’re a troll but I am pretty sure you have no intention of accepting the conclusions of any argument or sets of data that contradict the idea that the warming, stepped or not, depending on how you wish to draw the trend lines, is not primarily caused by AGW. It is clear though all your posts that you are scurrying around the essential arguments looking for a way to hide AGW behind every tree and I am getting tired of reading it. You are being out-classed.
For your putative ‘AGW signal in the ENSO warming’ or AGW from CO2 to be a large contributor to long term warming (I noted your very carefully worded #2 above so don’t think we are not considering your statements carefully) you will have to provide some alternative explanation for the warming that has something to do with CO2. Central to this need is some mechanism for CO2 to heat the oceans. How on earth do you explain that back-radiation is going to heat the oceans?
I know there is no such mechanism because the physics are dead set against it. So, what does that leave? It leaves you a very weak argument that somehow warmer air is damping the heat loss from a natural ENSO heating event and the result is a ‘stronger El Nino’. Poppycock, I say.
If such a mechanism existed, and it was primary caused by AGW induced by CO2, there would be a continuous influence that would smooth the rise along with the CO2. There is clearly no such rise in the data. It is a stepped signal and it only steps up with solar-induced El Nino events. I expect some rebuttal from you about ocean heat content and yatta yatta about how it could be happening in some as-yet-undiscovered cyclical way in which ocean heat content is driven up (again by either having back-radiation heat the oceans or limiting heat loss) that just happens to match the rather obvious El Nino heating. Well, it could be a large number of mice running on tiny treadmills connected to friction brakes with water cooling systems connected to the ocean floor. Or not.
I find Bob’s rather specific complaints about the poor quality of discussion at SkS to be believable. The main points Bob makes are well documented, well presented and alternative explanations are, so far, simply not viable – make that ‘not believable’. I think your treatment of him here is shabby and poorly intended, perhaps for an external audience that is not contributing at all. I find your analyses intent only on showing that he has not shown that AGW is disproved. To what end? If you understand this subject so well, why not just present your view on how the data shows that CO2 can create step-wise increases is ocean temperatures so we have an alternative to consider?
After you do that, you can write to SkS and point out that the single-slope-trendline graph is bunk, not because the very real ‘stepped’ nature of ocean heat content is caused by El Nino events, but because it is actually caused by your newly discovered CO2-related mechanism with its clear tie to human emissions of fossil CO2. Until then I encourage to adopt a silent key approach to this subject. As Victor Borge so wisely said, “If you have nothing to say, the least you can do is shut up.”
I’ll respond somewhat briefly, as I don’t want these discussions to become overly verbose and lose sight of the science. Still, I would like to try to respond to each poster who addresses me.
Theo, I have never said that Bob offers an explanation for ENSO, but he certainly does claim that his observations indicate that there is no GHG signal in the oceans. This is a claim, more than just showing data. I understand that he doesn’t have substantial resources to work with, but he is putting his work out there on a widely read blog, and I think he handles rebuttals quite well. He very rarely resorts to ad hominem attacks, and does a great job of answering many comments. Overall, I have great respect for Bob and his work. I don’t think I am berating him, but rather giving point by point responses in civilized dialogue.
Crispin, you have come to the conclusion that I subscribe to CAGW, or that I’m some sort of SkS crony. I am neither of those. I’m in the camp that says we don’t know nearly enough about climate yet to either prove or disprove the precise impact of any possible forcing. As such, your first 4 paragraphs are generally falling on deaf ears for me. You do make a very valid point when you say “I find your analyses intent only on showing that he has not shown that AGW is disproved. To what end?” I suppose it is because many commenters here seem to think that Bob has indeed disproved AGW, and there are very few dissenting opinions. I think dissenting opinions are necessary to avoid confirmation bias. Believe me, I don’t like the way SkS handles dissent either. They will fit any forcing imaginable into their GHG framework without acknowledging any shortcomings.
Looking back, I see that I got off on the wrong foot by (unintentionally strongly) accusing Bob of self-promotion. Bob, I apologize for that, and I appreciate that you respond to rather than ignore criticism..
The paper: Pavlakis et al. (2008) “ENSO surface shortwave radiation forcing over the tropical Pacific”, referred to by Bob Tisdale, is quite interesting. I was unaware of this cloud induced amplification of the ENSO induced effect on ocean heat content.
This paper (Pav. 2008) also refers to their earlier Pavlakis et al. (2007) “ENSO surface longwave radiation forcing over the tropical Pacific” where they present evidence for longwave forcing about twice as large as the shortwave forcing. This forcing is partly caused by the SST variation between La Nina and El Nino. They define NSL (the net surface longwave downwelling) as the difference between the downward longwave radiation (DLR) and the surface thermal emission. This latter term is εσT^4. The variation of that term accounts for much of the La Nina induced forcing (and the corresponding El Nino dampening). (See figure 7 in the paper; available online).
Bob Tisdale makes no mention of this longwave forcing, but it seems that it could potentially change the strength of his La Nina ‘recharge’ mechanism. He seems to be dismissing such effects on the ground that longwave radiation can’t penetrate much beyond the ocean skin layer. However, if the effect of this forcing merely is to slowdown the rate of longwave surface cooling that compensates the rate of (deeper) shortwave warming, then this objection is irrelevant. (This objection was put to some Sky Dragon Slayer, and I can’t remember hearing a convincing response). Second, it doesn’t seem to me that an increase in latent heat flux can neutralize this forcing (as Bob Tisdale suggested it could). There are both a theoretical and an empirical objection to this proposal. The theoretical objection is that the forcing can hardly cause a large increase in the latent heat flux when the air above the surface already is saturated (or nearly saturated) with water vapor. The empirical objection is that the sensible heat flux actually seems larger over much of the Tropical Pacific during the El Nino phase of ENSO than it is in the La Nina phase. I am wrong about this?
Brian says: “Personally, I have an issue with making the jump from ‘ENSO causes the oceans to warm naturally’ to ‘ENSO proves that there is no GHG signal in the satellite era SST trends’. I understand that this is an oversimplification, but I think it’s the essential stripped-down argument Bob is making. By removing El Nino warming (or a lack of La Nina cooling), he is also removing a possible way for AGW to manifest itself.”
Then you’ll have to wait around until climate models can simulate ENSO properly. Until they can, there is no way to even suggest that manmade greenhouse gases have had any impact on the warming of sea surface temperatures and ocean heat content.
Brian, you’re overlooking the obvious. According to IPCC, only anthropogenic forcings can explain the warming over the past 30 years:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
The assumption there is that the climate models simulate natural ocean-atmosphere processes. But it’s well known that climate models don’t. In fact, ENSO is neutered in most climate models, meaning ENSO in models is skewed to zero (El Niños and La Niñas balance out over multidecadal periods), so that ENSO cannot contribute to the warming or cooling.
Then there are studies 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
… that continue the myths about ENSO and attempt (and fail) to remove the impacts of ENSO through linear regression analysis and then claim that the remaining warming trend is caused by manmade greenhouse gases.
I’ll repeat now what I wrote to Tom:
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.
Now, Brian, how do we know that leftover warm water exists?
Because we can see it. It’s there. It exists. For example, the leftover warm waters can be seen in the following sea level animation from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Rossby wave appears just west of Central America at about 10N, right after the peak of the 1997/98 El Niño. And the Rossby wave carries the warm leftover warm water back to the western tropical Pacific, where there then appears to be a secondary El Niño event taking place in the northwestern tropical Pacific, while the La Niña is taking place in the eastern tropical Pacific:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/animation-3-1.gif
All of that leftover warm water in the western tropical Pacific is redistributed with time, but it also counteracts the effects of the 1998-01 La Niña on land surface temperatures and on remote ocean basins like the North Atlantic.
Do studies like Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) and Thompson et al (2008) account for that easy-to-see leftover warm water? No!
Brian says: “I don’t think this kind of thing would fly in the peer-reviewed literature.”
It’s not intended for peer-reviewed literature. It’s intended for consumption the general public who can read and interpret time series graphs and who can look at an animation and understand how we know the leftover warm water exists. The climate science community would never think of changing their mindset unless the general public understands the flaws in the hypothesis of manmade global warming and insists the climate science community cleans up its act.
Brian says: “Of course a large component of every ENSO cycle is natural, and some warming may be explained by trade winds and cloud cover. But I think Bob has yet to disprove that some degree of the strength of recent El Ninos may be AGW induced warming.”
Refer to the abstract of Ray and Giese (2012) Historical changes in El Niño and La Niña characteristics in an ocean reanalysis:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JC008031/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
Their abstract 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.”
Brian says: “I think it is very ironic that Bob demands peer-reviewed evidence in this post, and then says this: ‘Your and SkepticalScience’s need for peer-reviewed evidence indicates you (plural) cannot read and interpret time-series graphs.’”
Once again, you miss the obvious. You asked me for peer-reviewed literature earlier in the thread, and the bloggers at SkepticalScience will accept a discussion of data only if it appears in peer-reviewed literature. Yet, you as a group can’t provide peer-reviewed papers that explain how and why the oceans (sea surface temperatures and ocean heat content) warmed in the fashions in which they’ve warmed. That’s why I asked in the post. That’s the irony.
Regards.
Pierre-Normand, regarding Pavlakis et al. (2007) “ENSO surface longwave radiation forcing over the tropical Pacific”:
I haven’t overlooked it. Please note the sign of the variations in downward longwave radiation for eastern and central tropical Pacific . Downward longwave radiation increases during El Ninos and decreases during La Ninas. In order for downward longwave radiation to contribute to the recharge of ocean heat during La Ninas, it would have to increase, not decrease. Downward longwave radiation may increase during El Ninos, but the tropical Pacific is releasing heat then.
Then again, downward longwave radiation has the other hurdle–it can only penetrate the top few millimeters of the ocean surface (where heat is released through evaporation), while downward shortwave radiation (sunlight) penetrates to depth. Even if we assume the majority of the sunlight is absorbed in the top 10 meters, it’s contribution is many orders of magnitude greater than any of the effects of infrared radiation that remain after the loses through evaporation.
Regards