Despite recent claims by Justin Gillis in this NYT piece that the plateau in surface temperatures is misunderstood by scientists…
…given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.
…and that it is just some start point issue…
As you might imagine, those dismissive of climate-change concerns have made much of this warming plateau. They typically argue that “global warming stopped 15 years ago” or some similar statement, and then assert that this disproves the whole notion that greenhouse gases are causing warming.
The starting point is almost always 1998…
It can be shown that the plateau may extend further back than that, and that nature still rules the climate system, more so than man. I’m not sure why Gillis thinks 15 years is the number people use starting at 1998, I don’t know of anyone making that claim recently. Even CRU’s Phil Jones admitted in a BBC interview that there had been no “statistically significant” warming since 1995, a point also brought up in 2008 by Dr. Richard Lindzen at WUWT when he said: “Why bother with the arguments about an El Nino anomaly in 1998?”
More importantly, the kickoff point for this most recent discussion by The Mail’s David Rose started 16 years ago, in 1997. The 15 year/1998 choice seems like a purposeful misdirection by Gillis. Using 1997 as preferred by Rose, we are fast approaching Dr. Ben Santer’s 17 year test, and if we use Jones and Lindzen’s 1995 start point, we’ve passed it. What will Gillis say then? – Anthony
More here in this essay By Dr. David Whitehouse via The GWPF
The absence of any significant change in the global annual average temperature over the past 16 years has become one of the most discussed topics in climate science. It has certainly focused the debate about the relative importance of greenhouse gas forcing of the climate versus natural variability.
In all this discussion what happened to global temperature immediately before the standstill is often neglected. Many assume that since the recent warming period commenced – about 1980 – global temperature rose until 1998 and then the surface temperature at least got stuck. Things are however not that simple, and far more interesting.
As Steve Goddard has interestingly pointed out recently using RSS data going back to 1990 the Mt Pinatubo eruption in 1991 had a very important effect on global temperatures.
The Pinatubo eruption threw more sunlight-reflecting aerosols into the stratosphere since the Krakatoa outburst in 1883. Its millions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide reduced incident sunlight and had a maximum of 0.4 deg C cooling effect on global temperatures and an influence that lasted for several years.
The result of this temperature decrease is to increase the difference between the global temperatures of the 1990s and the 2000s. Removing this volcanic dip reduces quite significantly the temperature increase seen over the 1990 – 2013 period. When the errors are taken into account it is not impressive.
There was another very important volcanic eruption in the 1980s – El Chichon in 1982 – whose aerosols actually reduced solar irradiance by an even greater extent than Pinatubo.
Removing this volcanic signal also reduces the statistical significance of the rise in temperature seen since 1980. (In fact, statistically speaking, one is hard-pressed to find any statistically significant warming between 1980 – 1995.)
The El Chichon eruption is interesting because one of the strongest El Nino events, some say the strongest ever, occurred just after it. These two events had an interesting interplay for it seems that the global temperature rise induced by the warm water of the El Nino was offset by the cooling effect of the stratospheric aerosols from El Chichon. It is interesting to speculate what might had happened if El Chichon had not gone off. Would the 1982 El Nino have been as dramatic as the 1998 one? And would it have left in its wake elevated global temperatures, as 1998 seems to have done? What would have been the impact on environmental thinking, and on James Hansen’s global warming warning in 1988?
In the post-1980 global temperature data the effects of the El Ninos and La Ninas are obvious both as discrete events and as a source of ‘noise’ in the temperature of the past 16 years. The statistically significant increase in global temperature since 1980 occurred in the years after the Pinatubo eruption’s dip had ended, and before the onset of the strong 1998 El Nino. If strong El Ninos are a mechanism for changing global temperatures in a stepwise fashion we may have to wait for another strong one before the current temperature standstill ends. Perhaps we should also be looking at the link between the lifting of the post-volcanic aerosol burden and its possible effect on the initiation of El Ninos.
The Unthinkable
One of the interesting aspects of the current temperature standstill is that it persists despite several El Ninos and La Ninas.Since 2006 the influence of these events has been more pronounced in satellite data; El Ninos in 2007 and 2009-10, La Ninas in 2008, 2010–2012. These events have increased the ‘noise’ of the global temperature data in recent years.
(Courtesy Dr Roy Spencer – www.drroyspencer.com)
Removing this noise is tricky, but without it there is a hint, just a hint, that sans El Nino/La Nina effects and volcanic dips, the global temperature might be reducing. As usual, five more years of data will be fascinating to analyse.
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DirkH: Can you substantiate your allegation? Perhaps email the authors and ask before jumping to conclusions? Perhaps redo the analysis yourself with UAH to demonstrate your implied meaning?
I do agree it would be interesting to see the analysis with all appropriate data sets.
Nonetheless, however you feel, I would love to hear Dr. Whitehouse give a response here.
Not to mention the Hansenian finger on the scale, fudging data downward in the 30’s and 40’s, upward recently, to create/increase any heating rate. And UHI, which does much the same thing, over time. And possible changes in the ionosphere from solar UV fluctuations, affecting the black body temperature of the sky, giving more exogenic heating.
We often drift away from this core issue. On the other hand NOAA and Santer give us 15 and 17 year tests respectively.
How much longer does this need to go one before we see a white flag? Someone on their side needs to step up to the block and say ‘we were mistaken. It’s not as bad as we thought. Draconian measure no longer required.’
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says, June 12, 2013 at 2:31 am:
“Rather than CO2 causing steady rises in temp, what we appear to get are ‘hike-ups’. (…) What causes these rather sudden ‘hike-ups’? (…) Is this what you would get if CO2 is forcing – it seems odd to me. (…) I would have expected a steady forcing up if the physics is accurate. Hikes seem attributable to something else.”
Heard of a guy called Bob Tisdale? He posts regularly on this blog. The answer you’re looking for can be summed up in one word, four letters: ENSO.
I can’t but laugh when reading about the bewilderment and desperate ‘ad hoc‘-ing of the ‘climate scientists’: “…given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.”
Indeed, if believing steadfastly that the rise in CO2 is and must be what controls the evolution of global temperatures, of course you will be somewhat flailingly at a loss by now. If your inclination is rather towards actually looking at what the real-world observational data is telling us, the answer is right there in front of you. It’s as obvious as it’s simple: ENSO. CO2 since the 1970s? Zilch:
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r565/Keyell/HadCRUT3vsNINO341970-2013b_zpseeb92025.png
The temperature plateau after 2000 has been predicted by the astronomical harmonic model of climate change that I proposed in my peer review literature.
Essentially, there are large decadal and multidecadal cycles of astronomical origin that the models do not reconstruct and, because of this, the models overestimate the anthropogenic effect to fit the data.
see here for more information
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model
At the bottom page is my model with the updated temperature
The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system
There is no gap in our knowledge. The problem was because IPCC assumed the 30-years warming trend from 1974 to 2004 of 0.2 deg C per decade as a secular climate signal instead of a transient climate signal. The IPCC models do not take into account the multidecadal oscillation.
In a paper that includes Mann as a coauthor the above has been explicitly stated:
http://lightning.sbs.ohio-state.edu/indices/amo_reference/knight2005.pdf
… the
AMO is a genuine quasi-periodic cycle of internal climate
variability persisting for many centuries, and is related to
variability in the oceanic thermohaline circulation (THC).
This relationship suggests we can attempt to reconstruct
past THC changes, and we infer an increase in THC
strength over the last 25 years. Potential predictability
associated with the mode implies natural THC and
AMO decreases over the next few decades independent
of anthropogenic climate change
….
The quasi-periodic nature of the model’s AMO
suggests that in the absence of external forcings at least,
there is some predictability of the THC, AMO and global
and Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures for several
decades into the future. We utilise this to forecast decreasing
THC strength in the next few decades. This natural
reduction would accelerate anticipated anthropogenic THC
weakening, and the associated AMO change would partially
offset expected Northern Hemisphere warming. This effect
needs to be taken into account in producing more realistic
predictions of future climate change.
So they knew about the current plateau but it was not included in the fourth assessment report.
If these people can’t explain the slowdown, then why in the world would anyone believe that they can explain or predict the warming?
That hint you are talking about above may just be starting to have some sort of an effect ie solar or albedo or both?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Warming starts with a La Nina, not the peak of al El Nino. It is an equatorial oceanic clear sky solar heating phenomenom, not an air temperature phenomenom, and starts before the El Nino peak of 98. Why we talk of the heat associated with the 1998 El Nino, I don’t get. El Nino’s cool the planet, eventually. Heat is released, not taken in (granted the released heat moves through the atmosphere on its way out). Without the heat releasing thus cooling El Nino’s we would indeed become a cooked planet.
I’ve been pulling the natural drivers out of the temperature series for a long time now. Its not difficult and can be reasonably accurate (although there is stil a +/- 0.2C random noise error in this process – the weather and the climate is variable of course).
Here is the model of the average of UAH and RSS.
http://s24.postimg.org/rl72m623p/UAH_RSS_Modelled_May13.png
This is how the various components such as the ENSO, the AMO and the Volcanoes affect the temperature trend. Its a busy chart but might be interesting. One can see that the different components are sometimes amplifying each other, sometimes dampening each other.
http://s21.postimg.org/75lqf2fpj/UAH_RSS_Model_Components_May13.png
Solar by itself. I’m tempted to take this out now because there is just no solar cycle signal in the residual when the other drivers are removed. A hint or there, but that is it.
http://s13.postimg.org/i8gd8mosn/UAH_RSS_Model_Solar_Cycle_May13.png
So that leaves a warming trend in UAH and RSS of just 0.052C per decade since 1979. I see it as continuing over the whole period although it is just so small, one could call it stable over the whole period as well. Naturally, the climate models are far off the trend (on the same baseline) now.
http://s8.postimg.org/xxj6wjhxx/UAH_RSS_Model_Warming_May13.png
Kristian:
The only flaw in your analysis is that it requires LOGIC!
(Do I need to put the /sarc?)
Mark H.
Whatever the actual effect of CO2 and co-amissions — I don’t think they are zero, but they are likely much less than the IPCC says, more like what Pat Michaels and all the new articles about climate sensitivity say — Gillis’ piece is propaganda. Here is why:
In the second paragraph, Gillis says:
“True, the basic theory that predicts a warming of the planet in response to human emissions does not suggest that warming should be smooth and continuous. To the contrary, in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.”
Two problems with this:
1. That isn’t what Gillis and the people this article represents were saying a couple of years ago, they were denying there was any significant flattening of temperatures, while they denigrated the people who pointed out the diversion between model and reality; and
2. The models say this shouldn’t be happening, contrary to Gillis’ new spin about natural variability.
So this is more propaganda: deny anything is wrong with the models (who is the “Denier”?} until it gets too obvious that there is an issue, relative to reality. Then and only then do you admit to the obvious, fail to apologize to those you denegrated or acknowledge that they were right, and say that, OK, the models and reality aren’t exactly in sync, but you wouldn’t really expect them to be in sync. The opposite of what you said a few years ago.
These are standard tools of a politician, not of a reporter (especially a science reporter), or of a scientist.
Deeper into the article, Gillis says:
“So the real question is where all that heat is going, if not to warm the surface. And a prime suspect is the deep ocean. Our measurements there are not good enough to confirm it absolutely, but a growing body of research suggests this may be an important part of the answer.”
Note how this sentence silently slides by another, very likely possibility: that because we don’t understand how clouds work at the microphysics level, it is possible that more of the heat that Gillis asserts must be building up somewhere might actually be escaping to space. In other words, he still implicitly assumes the models are right in every important way, but doesn’t say this explicitly, or his readers might actually think for themselves and recall the issue of modelers not understanding cloud microphysics.
Does Journalism school now teach propaganda as a vital part of the curriculum?
I can certainly understand why the NY Times wouldn’t allow comments on this article. Their intelligent but easily herded followers might be exposed to ideas that might open their eyes!
“The starting point is almost always 1998…”
NO.
In the various calcs of the length of the stable temperature period we are currently enjoying, the starting point is never 1998. The starting point is always the present. The length of the model-falsifying plateau is then calculated by answering the question “How far back can we go without a slope to the linear regression of temperatures.”
By pretending that the ending point of such analysis is the starting point, Justin Gillis and other similarly dishonest warmist propagandists attempt to dismiss the lack of their predicted warming with a false charge of cherry picking. .Starting at the present is not cherry picking. The present is the necessary starting point for analyzing current trends. The stopping point, whether that is 1998 or some other year, is not picked – cherry or otherwise. Instead, it is the result of the dataset that is used and the criteria of significance (the degree of warming, flat, or cooling) that is applied.
Starting at the present, the period of flat temps extends back to 1995-1998. Starting at the present, the period of warming extends back to well before CO2 could have been a measurable factor in the rise. For the near future, any assessment of the length of the period of insignificant warming will end in the vicinity of 1998. This result demonstrates that the vicinity of 1998 is when the trend of the surface temp of the earth flattened. According to ‘global warming’ theory, in the vicinity of 1998 and since, the trend of the surface temp of the earth should have been accelerating. These are very inconvenient facts for adherents of the ‘global warming’ religious/political belief system.
If Mr Gilis really believes in co2 forcing then he should acknowledge that co2 has saved us from calamitous natural cooling.
There is a fundamental flaw (well… many, really) in the way people like Gillis address the Skeptical argument. They seem to think that we don’t believe that CO2 is a green house gas, or that the planet hasn’t warmed since the end of the LIA. This is absurdly false.
The problem is that I can argue that CO2’s greenhouse effect contributes to Global climate in direct proportion to it’s atmospheric concentration of GHGs, or about 1.6% of total warming and be called a “denier” while agreeing that CO2 is a GHG.
We are skeptical of their “forcing” hypothesis, we are skeptical of their adjustments to the climate record… in short, we are skeptical of all those claims that they assert that CO2 warms the atmosphere beyond it’s chemical capacity to trap heat.
Nicola Scafetta says:
June 12, 2013 at 6:09 am
The temperature plateau after 2000 has been predicted by the astronomical harmonic model of climate change that I proposed in my peer review literature.
Your model predicts 0.15C warming from 2011 to 2015…
In the face of continuing increases of CO2 in the atmosphere, for how many years of stable or falling temperatures do we have to wait before scientists begin to ask themselves if there can possibly exist a “greenhouse effect”? Statistics are so readily abused because people concentrate on esoteric numeric manipulations and ignore the most basic and easily learnt foundations of the craft. If inaccurate and poorly representative data is combined with an effect that has no properly stated paradigm nor demonstrated existence, then where is the claim for ‘science’?
fredb
Dr Whitehouse has discussed Grant and Foster’s attempt to remove transient ‘signals’ from the global temperature series. he mentions it in his GWPF report “The Global Warming Standstill.” I think it’s fair to say that Dr Whitehouse was rather underwhelmed by what Grant and Foster had actually achieved as opposed to what they had said they had done.
And so am I.
The Foster & Rahmstorf paper is a cherry picking nightmare starting close to the end of the last cooling period and ending in 2010 with a strong El Niño. In addition, it does nothing to determine the actual cause of the warming (80% concurrent with PDO warming period).
fredb says:
June 12, 2013 at 5:48 am
“DirkH: Can you substantiate your allegation?”
Yes. Rahmstorf is the chief warmist drone of Schellnhuber who craves the Grand Transformation of the entire world’s society. These people are mad.
” Perhaps email the authors and ask before jumping to conclusions?”
Rahmstorf has produced so much pseudoscience, specifically the most ridiculous hockeystick imitations that I don’t feel terribly inclined to.
“Perhaps redo the analysis yourself with UAH to demonstrate your implied meaning? ”
My implied meaning that the global warmist movement hates, hates, hates UAH and RSS? Well of course they hate it as they can’t fudge the past cooler with the GISS homogenization tricks.
NASA originally set to goalpost in 2008 at 15 years. Santer mover them to 17 years. Depending on which data set and definition of statistical significance, the pause is not exceeding that. The cheery picked endpoint argument is only because (2013-15) is 1998. Use 17 years, it goes away, and the point is still carried. The models are falsifying themselves by the modelers own criteria. Fun to watch them wiggle. “missing heat” skipped surface layers and hiding below 700 meters (Trenberth) is the most sophisticated and disingenuous of the lot. Expect more temperature homogenization adjustments, also.
Well said, JJ. Thanks!
DirkH: sorry, but thats a load of opinion. Which of course you are entirely entitled to. I’ll rather wait for a substantive response from Dr Whitehouse (or someone who’ll do the analysis … not sure I’m comptetent to do it myself).
The lack of warming is only one of the many anomalies that the warmists have ignored. One of the reasons the fundamental errors concerning atmospheric processes and the sun-climate connection has not been resolved is no one has summarized the problem situation which presents the anomalies and observations as a set noting how logically certain key anomalies and observations have eliminated hypotheses and point to the correct solution. When the problem situation is written out the solution drops out. The observations and anomalies fit together similar to a physical puzzle to form one image, one solution. (i.e. This is constrained problem. There is a physical explanation for all events in the past and the future. The correct solution explains all anomalies.)
The latitudinal anomaly in planetary warming, points to what truly caused the warming in the last 70 years. The CO2 warming mechanism based on its theory should have cause a specific warming pattern. That pattern is not observed. The mechanism that caused the warming in the last 70 years must explain the pattern of warming.
CO2 concentration varies less than 4% with latitude. Therefore the potential (the word potential is used as the actual forcing is determined by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the amount of long wave radiation that is emitted to space at the latitude in question prior to the increase in CO2) for CO2 forcing with latitude should be roughly constant.
In the tropics the actual forcing due the CO2 increase (based on the warmist theory not on observation) should be proportionally larger than other latitudes on the planet, as the potential for forcing due to the increase in CO2 is roughly the same in the equatorial region and there is the largest amount of long wave radiation (the multiplier that determines the magnitude of forcing before feedbacks) that is emitted off to space in the tropics and as there is amply water in the equatorial region to amplify the CO2 forcing based on the warmist theory.
The observations do not support the assertion that warming in the last 70 years was caused by increases in atmospheric CO2.
The temperature anomaly in the Northern hemisphere ex-tropics (not including the tropical region) is 4 times greater the temperature anomaly of the tropics and twice the temperature anomaly of the planet as whole. This same temperature pattern occurs during a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle. The Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles where not caused by changes to CO2. The same forcing function (modulation of planetary cloud cover by solar magnetic cycle changes) caused the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and caused the warming in the last 70 years.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
As the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted (the same pattern of solar magnetic cycle changes occurs to create the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and more sever Heinrich event.)
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth
If the climate forcing were only from CO2 one would expect from property #2 a small variation with latitude. However, it is noted that NoExtropics is 2 times that of the global and 4 times that of the Tropics. Thus one concludes that the climate forcing in the NoExtropics includes more than CO2 forcing. These non-CO2 effects include: land use [Peilke et al. 2007]; industrialization [McKitrick and Michaels 2007), Kalnay and Cai (2003), DeLaat and Maurellis (2006)]; high natural variability, and daily nocturnal effects [Walters et al. (2007)].
We have examined the temperature anomalies at the various latitudes enumerated above for three data sets: HadCRUT3v, and MSU_LT from UAH and from RSS. All show similar behavior. However, as explained above, we only present the results from MSU_LT_UAH.
Figure 2 shows the UAH_LT anomalies for NoExtropics, Tropics, SoExtropics and Global. The average trends over the range 1979-2007 are 0.28, 0.08, 0.06 and 0.14 ºK/decade respectively. If the climate forcing were only from CO2 one would expect from property #2 a small variation with latitude. However, it is noted that NoExtropics is 2 times that of the global and 4 times that of the Tropics. Thus one concludes that the climate forcing in the NoExtropics includes more than CO2 forcing.
Latitude bands. The temperature anomaly data can be partitioned into averages over latitude bands that are used in this paper. There are the familiar global (85S-85N) and tropical (20S-20N) latitude bands. North of the equator there are: NH(0-85N), ExTropics (20N-85N), and NoPol (60N-85N). There are corresponding latitude bands south of the equator.
The AGW fanatics and doomsayers love to use strawman arguments instead of discussing the real concerns of the skeptics. It’s another tactic they use to marginalize the dissidents.
BTW: You will find some people posting on this blog that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. This is not a mainstream skeptical argument, however.