By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
As Anthony and others have pointed out, even the New York Times has at last been constrained to admit what Dr. Pachauri of the IPCC was constrained to admit some months ago. There has been no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero for getting on for two decades.
The NYT says the absence of warming arises because skeptics cherry-pick 1998, the year of the Great el Niño, as their starting point. However, as Anthony explained yesterday, the stasis goes back farther than that. He says we shall soon be approaching Dr. Ben Santer’s 17-year test: if there is no warming for 17 years, the models are wrong.
Usefully, the latest version of the Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly series provides not only the anomalies themselves but also the 2 σ uncertainties.
Superimposing the temperature curve and its least-squares linear-regression trend on the statistical insignificance region bounded by the means of the trends on these published uncertainties since January 1996 demonstrates that there has been no statistically-significant warming in 17 years 4 months:
On Dr. Santer’s 17-year test, then, the models may have failed. A rethink is needed.
The fact that an apparent warming rate equivalent to almost 0.9 Cº is statistically insignificant may seem surprising at first sight, but there are two reasons for it. First, the published uncertainties are substantial: approximately 0.15 Cº either side of the central estimate.
Secondly, one weakness of linear regression is that it is unduly influenced by outliers. Visibly, the Great el Niño of 1998 is one such outlier.
If 1998 were the only outlier, and particularly if it were the largest, going back to 1996 would be much the same as cherry-picking 1998 itself as the start date.
However, the magnitude of the 1998 positive outlier is countervailed by that of the 1996/7 la Niña. Also, there is a still more substantial positive outlier in the shape of the 2007 el Niño, against which the la Niña of 2008 countervails.
In passing, note that the cooling from January 2007 to January 2008 is the fastest January-to-January cooling in the HadCRUT4 record going back to 1850.
Bearing these considerations in mind, going back to January 1996 is a fair test for statistical significance. And, as the graph shows, there has been no warming that we can statistically distinguish from zero throughout that period, for even the rightmost endpoint of the regression trend-line falls (albeit barely) within the region of statistical insignificance.
Be that as it may, one should beware of focusing the debate solely on how many years and months have passed without significant global warming. Another strong el Niño could – at least temporarily – bring the long period without warming to an end. If so, the cry-babies will screech that catastrophic global warming has resumed, the models were right all along, etc., etc.
It is better to focus on the ever-widening discrepancy between predicted and observed warming rates. The IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report backcasts the interval of 34 models’ global warming projections to 2005, since when the world should have been warming at a rate equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century. Instead, it has been cooling at a rate equivalent to a statistically-insignificant 0.87 Cº/century:
The variance between prediction and observation over the 100 months from January 2005 to April 2013 is thus equivalent to 3.2 Cº/century.
The correlation coefficient is low, the period of record is short, and I have not yet obtained the monthly projected-anomaly data from the modelers to allow a proper p-value comparison.
Yet it is becoming difficult to suggest with a straight face that the models’ projections are healthily on track.
From now on, I propose to publish a monthly index of the variance between the IPCC’s predicted global warming and the thermometers’ measurements. That variance may well inexorably widen over time.
In any event, the index will limit the scope for false claims that the world continues to warm at an unprecedented and dangerous rate.
UPDATE: Lucia’s Blackboard has a detailed essay analyzing the recent trend, written by SteveF, using an improved index for accounting for ENSO, volcanic aerosols, and solar cycles. He concludes the best estimate rate of warming from 1997 to 2012 is less than 1/3 the rate of warming from 1979 to 1996. Also, the original version of this story incorrectly referred to the Washington Post, when it was actually the New York Times article by Justin Gillis. That reference has been corrected.- Anthony
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Thomas says:
June 13, 2013 at 7:29 am
RichardLH, the context of the discussion is Monckton’s statement that “On Dr. Santer’s 17-year test, then, the models may have failed. A rethink is needed.”
I suspect that if you vist the link provided then you might discover that there is indeed some supporting evidence from the sattelite record for his observation.
Do not be for-lone deniers. From a Solar Cycle peak to the valley typically causes a global temperature reduction of -0.1C.
Unfortunately, we will all suffer if the global temperature decreases. Paradoxically, fewer hurricanes [cooler ocean temperatures] but greater crop damage due to cold temperature swings.
This is one case where I really wish that I was wrong. Heat bothers me, cold scares me. I’m too old to transition my life style and become an Eskimo.
Warmers went full stupid on predictions and pay the price now, skeptics shouldn’t emulate the behavior. By doing so it validates the junk nature of the temperature stats as being linked to human co2 and carbon. Which is total speculation and not supported by long-term proxies.
AGW is an emotional political argument, by playing make believe “it’s about science” meme only helps continue what should be dead on arrival in the first place. A hundred year temp chart given the tiny scale involved is fundamentally meaningless from the science view. That the models failed
isn’t a surprise and is a cost to advocates but making claims about co2 impact or no based on the temp stat is validating the canard of AGW at the same time it is trying to be critical of it. The stat has nothing to say about “cause” one way or the other. It’s o.k. to point out warmer failure and manipulation on the topic but it has nothing to say about “why” things are the way they are in climate.
I thought the mitigation film support from Monckton suffered the same flaws, why validate mythology of your opponent as a tactic? Looks like a rabbit hole.
rgbatduke said in part
‘So I would recommend — modestly — that skeptics try very hard not to buy into this and redirect all such discussions to questions such as why the models are in such terrible disagreement with each other, even when applied to identical toy problems that are far simpler than the actual Earth..’
I live 15 miles from the Met office who constantly assure us that their 500 year model projections of future climate states are more accurate than their two or three day forecasts. Why this is not challenged more I don’t know, because we see the results of modelling every day in the weather forecasts and that even during a day of feeding in new information the output-the forecast-has changed considerably and bears no relation to the original.
We have a met office app and the weather it will give us for the weekend will have changed twenty times by the time we actually get there. The ‘likely climate’ in 20 50 or 500 years time is infinitely more difficult to know than what is going to happen in two days time at a place 15 miles from their head office. The simple answer is they have no idea of all the components of the climate and their models are no more able to forecast the climate in future decades as they can the weather of the future month.
tonyb
Latitude is quite right.The models are all stuctured wrongly and their average uncertainties take no account of the structural uncertainties .In order to make the anthropogenic climate change a factor important enough to justify their own existence and to drive government CO2 policies the IPCC and its modellers had to perform the following mental gymnastics to produce or support a climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 of about 3 degrees.
a) Make the cause follow the effect . ie, even though CO2 changes follow temperature changes ,they simply assume illogically that CO2 change is the main driver.
b) The main GHG – Water vapour – also follows temperature independently of CO2 yet the effect of water vapour was added on to the CO2 effect as a CO2 feedback for purposes of calculating CO2 sensitivity.
c) Ignore the very serious questions concerning the relaibility of the ice core CO2 data. From the Holocene peak temperature to the Little Ice age CO2 ice core data for example one might well conclude that if CO2 was driving temperature it is an Ice House not a Greenhouse gas on mult-millenial scales.
The temperature projections of any models based on these irrational and questionable assumptions have no place in serious dicussion.All the innumerable doom-laden papers on impacts in the IPCC reports and elsewhere (eg Stern report) which use these projections as a basis are a complete and serious waste of time and money.Until you know within well defined limits what the natural variability actually is it is not possible to estimate the sensitivity of global temperatures to anthropogenic CO2 with any useful accuracy as far as policy is concerned.
Unfortunately the establishment scientists have gambled their scientifc reputations and positions on these illogical propositions and are so far out on the limbs of the tree of knowledge that they will find it hard to climb back before their individual boughs break.
My understanding is that we are slowly rising out of the Little Ice Age, so the ‘natural’ temperature condition should be a slight upwards slope – about 0.5 deg C per century.
If this rise is subtracted from the record, how long does the ‘flat’ period then become? A quick eyeball using woodfortrees suggests that it starts around 1995 – giving us 18 flat years so far….
That’s the life cycle of the 17-year cicada.
dodgy geezer
CET has been shown to be a reasonable proxy for global temperatures and here it is from 1538 (my reconstruction) with the Met office instrumental period commencing 1659. It shows a steady rise throughout.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/08/the-curious-case-of-rising-co2-and-falling-temperatures/
There has been a substantial downturn here over the last decade which presumably will eventually be reflected in the global temperature
tonyb
What’s the purpose of using Hadcrut 4 when it is obvious what is going on, they are trying to artificially warm it up in the later period as compared to Hadcrut 3?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/trend/plot/none
Thanks Christopher, great post.
Thanks, rgbatduke; great comment.
Look at the satellite data sets gives 23 years. Remove the ENSO spikes and there jhas been a cooling since 1880.
Reblogged this on RubinoWorld.
I suspect that the inability of climate science to cross calibrate the various global estimated temperature data sets (sattelite, ballon, thermometer) or reconcile any of them to their models is at the heart of the problem.
It does not bode well that the trends distribute Sattelite – Termometer – Model.
“From now on, I propose to publish a monthly index of the variance between the IPCC’s predicted global warming and the thermometers’ measurements…In any event, the index will limit the scope for false claims..”
What a beezer wheeze, Sir Christopher. That’ll defrock the rank amateurs, charlatans and criminals… 🙂
rgbatduke says:
June 13, 2013 at 7:20 am
You…uh, erm…you mean the science ISN’T settled? :0 Nice! Great idea on sorting out the models.
[snip – Greg House under a new fake name. Verified by network path. Mr. House has been shown the door but decided to come back as a fake persona preaching the Slayer/Principia meme. -Anthony]
“But if it’s colder than normal, that’s proof of warming.”
We know they say that, but just now in this video a UN Climate delegate at Bonn says it so explicitly and idiotically that it almost blows your mind. Here the delegate insists that the freezing German summer weather is proof of warming. Insane:
RGBATDUKE says: “…it looks like the frayed end of a rope,” Ahhh, that’ll be the rope that we give ’em enough of to hang themselves…
@Dodgy Geezer
The idea that we are still coming out of the last ice age is a common misperception. The end of the last ice age happened at the beginning of the current Holocene period about 12,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have actually gone down a bit and we have been very stable for the last 6000 years or so.
unless you live in Greenland, of course. . .
cwon14: I agree totally C02 has NO effect whatsoever on temperature confirmed by Salby et al and many others. To continue to argue with warmists that there is no correlation and put up graphs ect I believe is a waste of time and is just pandering to them which is exactly what they want
[snip – Greg House under a new fake name. Verified by network path. Mr. House has been shown the door but decided to come back as a fake persona preaching the Slayer/Principia meme. -Anthony]
“””””…..Mark Hladik says:
June 13, 2013 at 6:02 am
If memory serves, it seems that the Meteorological community has used the ‘thirty-year’ time frame for standardizing its records, in order to classify climate and climate zones. I suspect that meteorologists might soon suggest that a ‘fifty-year’ or even a ‘sixty-year’ time frame become the standard reference frame.
That would be one way to get around Gavin’s “… seventeen year …” test.
Or, we could just adjust the data some more, to make them fit the models … … … “””””
Well there’s a very good reason for that “thirty year time frame” for climate results to become “real”, and also a good reason it should increase.
A recent study published in (I believe) Physics Today, analyzed the career outcomes for USA PhD in Physics, “graduates”.
The basic bottom line is that one third of US Physics PhDs eventually land a permanent real job, that utilizes their (limited) skill set. About 5% found temporary work. Bur 2/3 of all of them end up as lifelong post-doc fellows at some institute or other; never ever using their science learning for anything useful.
By going into the “climate field”, with its 30 year “payoff” time scale, these folks can live off grants for their full career, and really never need to show any believable results, before the next generation of unemployable post-doc fellows, take their place.
As current socialist programs slowly strangle the American economy, making it increasingly difficult for the “middle class” to ever achieve a viable retirement state, the mean career length, must necessarily increase, so the time base for “meaningful” climate results, will have to increase.
Recent articles about the fortunes; or lack thereof, of the LL NIF, so called National Ignition Facility, are hinting that this much ballyhooed boondoggle will never ever achieve ignition break even.
We were told it had a 70% chance of igniting, when the project was approved; now they are saying less than 50%. There is a suggestion that they need to go to a somewhat larger DT fuel pellet.
Oh but that is going to require about a 5X increase in the size and power of the laser. Well think how many post-doc fellows that can keep busy.
We already know just how big a Thermo-nuclear energy source has to be to work properly; and also how far away from human habitation it needs to be for safety; about 93 million miles.
Greg Mansion says (June 13, 2013 at 9:32 am): “It has been tested already…”
For a different perspective on the R W Wood Experiment:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/06/the-r-w-wood-experiment/
Even taking things down to the very simple basics, one cannot dissuade the warmists.
If you have a theory that rising man made co2 is causing glaobal warming, and you go ahead with models to show that this is possible/true, than you figures MUST be in agreement with observations. Global warming is at a standstill, but co2 levels rise ….therefore your theory is WRONG.
@ur momisugly rgb@ur momisuglyduke. I took the liberty of sending an email to Judy Curry asking that she take a look at your comment and consider asking you to write a tightened up version to be used as a discussion topic at ClimateEtc. Please give this some thought and ping her at her home institution to the Southwest of you. (Okay, West Southwest.)
Thank you,
RayG