By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I have now had the opportunity to study SteveF’s remarkable essay at Lucia’s Blackboard, to which Anthony kindly draws attention in his footnote to my earlier posting on the absence of statistically-significant global warming for 17 years 4 months.
SteveF’s conclusion is that once allowance has been made for three naturally-occurring influences – volcanic aerosols, the ~11-year solar cycle and the el Niño/la Niña cycles – the HadCRUt4 warming rate from 1979-1996 was six times faster than from 1997-2012. In the abstract, to allow for uncertainties, he cautiously reduces this to three times faster.
Even if one were to take the unadjusted HadCRUt4 data, the rate of warming from 1979-1996 was more than twice as fast as the rate from 1997-2012.
I decided to look not only at HadCRUt4, as SteveF did, but also at the two satellite datasets, RSS and UAH. RSS showed warming at 0.7 Cº/century from 1979-1996 and cooling at almost 0.1 Cº/century from 1997-2012.
UAH, however, in contrast to both HadCRUt4 and RSS, showed warming in the later period, 1997-2012, that was thrice as fast as the warming of the earlier period, 1979-1996.
SteveF’s essay takes no account of the most substantial medium-term natural cycle that seems to influence global temperatures: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The cycles of that great Oscillation tend to exercise a warming influence for about 30 years followed by a cooling influence for about 30 years. This cyclical influence is visible throughout the HadCRUt4 global temperature record since 1850.
There was a remarkably sharp transition from the “cooling” to the “warming” phase of the PDO at the beginning of 1976 and a transition back to “cooling” late in 2001.
The HadCRUt4 warming rate from 1976-2001 was equivalent to almost 1.8 Cº/century (compared with warming at just 1.1 Cº/century from 1979-1996), but from 2002 to the present HadCRUt4 shows cooling at a rate equivalent to almost 0.5 Cº/century (compared with warming at almost 0.5 Cº/century from 1997-2012).
Much of the fall in the warming rate identified by SteveF, therefore, appears to be attributable to the PDO. It would be interesting to adjust the global instrumental temperature anomaly record not only for volcanic aerosols, solar cycles and el Niños but also for the cycles of the PDO, but that is above my present pay-grade.
What is far from clear is the influence, if any, from CO2. Its influence must be very small, for it seems easily overwhelmed by natural influences such as the PDO and the three phenomena studied by SteveF.
During the three “warming” phases of the PDO that are visible in the HadCRUt4 instrumental record since 1850, the warming rates were as follows: 1860-1880 less than 1.0 Cº/century; 1910-1940 1.4 Cº/century; and 1976-2001 1.8 Cº/century.
Superficially, there appears to be an inexorable and strikingly near-linear increase in the warming rates during successive “warming” phases of the PDO. Might this increase be attributable to the monotonic increase in CO2 over recent decades?
If the increase in warming rates were to continue, perhaps as a result of the growing warming influence from CO2, the warming from about 2040-2070 might be equivalent to 2.2 Cº/century; and from 2100-2130 2.6 Cº/century.
It would not be until around 2160-2190 that the warming rate would reach the IPCC’s currently-projected central estimate of 3.0 Cº/century. And, even then, the mean centennial rate after allowing for the “cooling” phases of the PDO would be considerably less.
However, the apparently tidy 1.0 to 1.4 to 1.8 Cº/century-equivalent increase in the rates of global warming during the “warming” phases of the PDO may not be attributable to CO2 at all. The true cause may be another and more sinister man-made phenomenon: Orwellian data revisionism.
Late in 2009, after the first Climategate emails had been sprung on a naively unsuspecting world, Roger Harrabin of the BBC, an acquiescent true-believer in the global-warming Party Line, was told by his superiors that for the sake of what little is left of the BBC’s reputation he should – just for once – ask Professor Jones of the University of East Anglia some critical questions about the temperature record.
Harrabin had never before stopped to think about whether the Party Line was true. That is the trouble with the Party Line: as Orwell points out in 1984, it is intended as a substitute for independent thought – or for any thought.
So he did not know what questions to ask. He asked me for help in framing suitable critical questions.
I told him to ask Jones whether there had been any statistically-significant global warming over the previous 15 years. He thought that was an absurd question. The Party Line said warming was occurring at a rate unprecedented in human history.
I told him to ask the question anyway. To his astonishment, Jones – albeit testily – admitted there had been no warming statistically distinguishable from zero for 15 years.
I also told Harrabin to ask Jones whether the rates of warming during the three “warming” phases of the PDO in the instrumental record since 1850 were statistically distinguishable from one another.
Harrabin got a further surprise when Jones told him that the three rates could not be distinguished from one another, statistically speaking. On the then HadCRUt3 version of the global dataset, the rates of warming were equivalent to 1.0, 1.6 and 1.7 Cº/century respectively. The uncertainties in the data during the first of the three periods, 1860-1880, were so large that the rate could not be distinguished from that of the later two periods.
Our CO2 emissions could not have influenced the second period of PDO-driven warming, but we could in theory have influenced the third. Yet in the HadCRUt3 dataset the two periods showed warming within 0.1 Cº/century of one another: far too little an increase to be statistically significant.
At a climate conference in Cambridge a few years ago, I asked Jones whether, given that the global warming rates in the three “warming” phases of the PDO could not be distinguished from one another statistically speaking, any anthropogenic influence was yet discernible in the temperature record. He said there was a discernible influence, but did not say where or how large it was.
Not long afterwards, and perhaps not coincidentally, he produced HadCRUt4. Suddenly the rates of warming during the second and third PDO “warming” phases were changed from 1.6 and 1.7 Cº/century respectively to 1.4 and 1.8 Cº/century respectively.
As with other such instances of data revisionism in the terrestrial datasets, the later period was changed very little because the satellites were watching and prevented cheating. But the record in the earlier period was pushed downwards, artificially steepening the apparent warming over the 20th century. It is as though we knew better than those who took the earlier measurements what measurements they ought to have recorded, all over the world.
Disentangling the true contribution of CO2 to warming from not only the numerous natural influences but also from the effects of data revisionism is near impossible. We shall have to wait and see. The one fact that is already clear, however, is that the warming rate predicted by the models on whose output the climate scare is founded is proving to be a hefty exaggeration.
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Here, Nick. From Jonathan’s youtube video
Jonathan Overpeck said:
“:…but we’ve looked at a lot of those issues, I think all of them. Some of them raised like “this is just part of the natural cycle” or “it’s caused by the sun becoming warmer” – these are things the scientific community started looking at decades ago and really got our arms around about 10 years ago for most of them and we’ve been able to discount them as possible drivers…”
@Nick Stokes
“I don’t see the logic of that. In fact if the cooling since 2001 can be explained by the PDO, then removing its effect would enhance the role of GHG forcing.”
Removing its effect would also lower the pre-2001 temperatures and you know that very well.
You surprise me but not in a good way.
Eric, you are on the right path.
But we also need to include up to 40% from black carbon soot. Solar 15 % shown by reduction, through Mr Trenberth.
OOPS… it’s over-accounted for again. Thanks to Professor Lindzen for mentioning the overaccounting.
I think Nicks paid job yes paid I say is to go to sites like these and fight for AGW. The more I see his comments the more I am convinced of this
richard verney says:
June 16, 2013 at 2:26 am
Curious. I shall have to pay more attention to the speedometer in my car, I had been under the impression that it displayed the instantaneous speed. I wonder if I set the cruise control it will change the display from miles per second (x3600) to miles per minute (x60) to miles per hour which is what I thought it displayed.
In high school, physics was my favorite course. I distinctly recall equations for the vertical velocity of objects in a trajactory (assuming flat Earth and no atmosphere) had a 32t term and used units of feet per second. This produced very nice upside down parabolas in velocity vs. time graphs. (I’ve always liked parabolas.) Now I hear the graphs should have been in one second steps. Those won’t be nearly as pretty, the best I could do is look at trajectorys up to 59 seconds, after that I’d have to use feet per minute. Bummer.
Steven Mosher says:
June 15, 2013 at 10:40 pm
show your work
See E.M Smith
“Suppose there were a simple way to view a historical change of the data that is of the same scale as the reputed “Global Warming” but was clearly caused simply by changes of processing of that data.
Suppose this were demonstrable for the GHCN data on which all of NCDC, GISS with GIStemp, and Hadley CRU with HadCRUT depend? Suppose the nature of the change were such that it is highly likely to escape complete removal in the kinds of processing done by those temperature series processing programs? Would it be too much to ask that folks take just a bit longer to think about what they plan to do to the economy in the face of that kind of foundation of sand to the Global Average Temperature?
It is my opinion that the situation is exactly that way. And relatively easily demonstrated. “
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/summary-report-on-v1-vs-v3-ghcn/
And E.M. does show his work – now show yours.
Nick Stokes says:
June 15, 2013 at 10:46 pm
The difference is that they are cyclic; GHG forcing just goes on and on.
Warming from the depths of the Little Ice Age just goes on and on. Perhaps we will finally warm back to the levels of the Holocene Climate Optimum, where the Earth’s temperature should be.
richard verney says:
June 16, 2013 at 2:26 am
Lord Monckton observes: “I decided to look not only at HadCRUt4, as SteveF did, but also at the two satellite datasets, RSS and UAH. RSS showed warming at 0.7 Cº/century from 1979-1996 and cooling at almost 0.1 Cº/century from 1997-2012″
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Such a statement is erroneous; as a matter of first principle, one cannot extrapolate a data set over a period greater than that which it covers. RSS has only been going for just over 30 years, and therefore one cannot say what it provides on a centenial basis, but rather only on a decadel basis.
Let me give an example. I watch Ulsain Bolt run a 100 metre race, and I note that he runs this in about 9.5 seconds (my watch is only that accurate). 1 conclude that he is running at a speed of about 38km per hour. That statement over extrapolates the data that I have colected. I do not know whether he can run for as long as an hour (after all I have only seen him run for some 9.5 seconds and do not know whether he can keep it up), I do not know how far or at what speed he would run if he were to run for an hour. My data does not allow me to justificably make such assessments.
You are conflating two different things.
1. The current rate (or rate of change)
2. The possibility that the current rate (or rate of change) will be maintained.
Then there are exogenous revisions, like surprise discoveries of a whole biosphere that uses carbon in a surprise manner and has not been incorporated in any climate model, like this one:
Life found thriving deep under ocean floor
By Douglas Main
Beneath the seafloor lives a vast and diverse array of microbes, chomping on carbon that constantly rains down from above and is continually buried by a never-ending downpour of debris — some whale dung here, some dead plankton there.
For the first time, a study has shown that these microbes are actively multiplying and likely even moving around in the compressed, oxygen-devoid darkness beneath the abyss.
The finding, detailed in the June 12 issue of the journal Nature, is important because the sediments below the seafloor harbor most of the Earth’s organic carbon, as well a majority of its microorganisms, according to various scientific estimates. These microbes also play a vital but little-understood role in the cycle of carbon between the ocean and the seafloor, which impacts the entire Earth’s climate.
The study is the first to directly show these microbes are alive and kicking, said study team member William Orsi…
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/06/13/thriving-microbe-community-lives-beneath-seafloor/
Jones – albeit testily – admitted there had been no warming statistically distinguishable from zero for 15 years.
=====
and there still has not………..a fraction of a degree will not define a trend
Ian W says: June 16, 2013 at 5:12 am
“And E.M. does show his work – now show yours.”
Well, I’ll show mine. Here is a post by Zeke at Lucia’s comparing the major indices with calculations done independently by him and me, among others. We used unadjusted GHCN and HADSST2. Unadjusted is what it’s name suggests – historic records are basically as they were released on CD in the 1990’s, and more recently are exactly as reported by the Met Offices on CLIMAT forms. And they match very well.
You can read more about my own version here.
Thanks, Christopher. Good article!
The ocean circulations do it, the continents and the atmosphere come along for the ride.
ENSO seems to cause PDO, what causes ENSO? Not CO2.
Crispin in Waterloo says: June 16, 2013 at 4:36 am
“I don’t see the logic of that. In fact if the cooling since 2001 can be explained by the PDO, then removing its effect would enhance the role of GHG forcing.”
Removing its effect would also lower the pre-2001 temperatures and you know that very well.
Indeed it would. The proposition is that the PDO caused warming to 2001, then cooling. If you remove that effect you get less warming pre 2001 and more since, hence a more even trend.
Jones et al are lying, conniving cheats.
Fraudsters, pure and simple.
They should be in gaol.
Margaret Hardman says at June 15, 2013 at 11:24 pm…
Well, I’m a Labour party supporter. I read the Guardian. I used to post on the Guardian website until I was banned for linking to the MET office website and the temperature graphs that don’t support catastrophism.
Believing in theory over empirical evidence is not a left-wing / right-wing split. Look at Maggie Thatcher and her economic policies. It’s taken a quarter century to start rebuilding our manufacturing base (cars mainly).
In the case of AGW the empirical evidence says that we do not know if it is significant but we can tell already that it is not catastrophic in any plannable timescale. But some people believe the theory over the evidence. That is not a position that we on the left should adopt. It is wrong philosophically but it very wrong politically.
Why bet your whole economic plan on a weather forecast?
theBuckWheat,
Haven’t heard from you in a while. Glad to see you back.
Bottom line question here is; Would you prefer a month longer winter, the same as it is now, or a month longer summer?
Warm is good, as is change and CO2!
@ur momisugly Margaret Hardman. Do you still pay money for or read the Guardian ? I read on another post that sales were down 12.5% last year.
As beneficial co2 increases, catastrophic Guardian sales decrease. Long may that relationship continue.
The AMO provides a better explanation of the 60 year long cycles than the PDO does.
If you don’t include the AMO as one of the natural variables, then the reconstructions are just left with these periods when temps are going up or going down and the trendline shifts. If you use the PDO, you still get unusual trend changes.
But if you do put the AMO in, the trends move to more-or-less consistent throughout. I’ve been doing this for 5 years now so its not new to me.
http://s23.postimg.org/ev8t8p5zf/NCDC_Model_1880_2013.png
http://s22.postimg.org/strqg4eb5/NCDC_Hadcrut4_Warming_1856_2013.png
Monckton says:
“SteveF’s conclusion is that once allowance has been made for three naturally-occurring influences – volcanic aerosols, the ~11-year solar cycle and the el Niño/la Niña cycles – the HadCRUt4 warming rate from 1979-1996 was six times faster than from 1997-2012. In the abstract, to allow for uncertainties, he cautiously reduces this to three times faster.”
SteveF’s analysis is based on a deeply flawed premise that renders his entire ‘finding’ a mere statistical artifact and thus irrelevant to what actually happens in the real world.
The flawed premise is this: SSTa in the NINO3.4 region of the equatorial central/eastern Pacific Ocean captures all climatic effects induced by the ENSO process and can thus be used to fully represent the phenomenon. This is a laughable proposition. NINO3.4 is not ENSO.
As long as SteveF (or anyone else for that matter) keeps thinking he can remove the NINO3.4 signal from the global and thereby having removed the ENSO signal to end up with a leftover ‘radiative forcing signal’, he is deluding himself, simply inventing causes that aren’t there. The ‘radiative forcing signal’ does not exist. Only as a presupposed theoretical one. In reality, the global warming is caused by ENSO-processes that work outside the NINO3.4 region.
Also, including volcanic aerosols to obtain a climatic signal is ridiculous. Volcanic aerosols have no longterm climatic impact. They have an effect as long as they stay suspended, a couple of years. After that it’s all back to normal, no hint of their former existence.
Finally, there is no point including the 11 year solar cycle as a separate forcing factor. It is already baked into the ENSO signal.
There does not need to be a conspiracy. All those people from Mann and Hansen to Jones know what is required. Hansen is famous for adjusting past temps. Here are a few quotes to look at and then maybe take a look at there actions throughout this scandal and ask yourself “would such people carry out temperature revision favourable to the cause”??? I can’t answer the question for you – each person can draw their own conclusions.
Here is Dr. James Hansen and his temperature adjustment antics at Nasa giss.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/?s=hansen+giss
@ur momisugly Nick Stokes. I did not look very closely at the post the first time round and I will reread it and look more closely at the second time. But you ducked my question about making a guess about temperatures in some reasonable distance into the future. I’m sure Feynman would say that taking a guess is OK based on what ever model appeals to you most. Pick your own date 2020 ? 2030 ?
I like someone else’s model that suggests that one possibility is that temperatures are going to decline over the next 30 years to just above the Dalton, where they will stay for another 30 years and then decline to 2130 by which time it will be well below the Maunder.
Of course it will be wrong at some point (it’s a model) but when and by how much and in what direction remains to be seen. Maybe it will be wrong almost straight away and temperatures will increase once more, I certainly hope we get some decent warm, even hot summers soon.
Take a guess or at least give a reason why not.
Correction:
“…then maybe take a look at there actions…”
“…then maybe take a look at their actions…”
Nick Stokes says:
June 15, 2013 at 10:46 pm
GHG forcing just goes on and on.
========
while temperatures have not kept pace. which strongly suggests GHG is not forcing temperatures. which strongly suggests that the theory is wrong.
the entire basis of the assumption of positive feedback has been shown to be wrong. atmospheric moisture levels have not been increasing with temperatures.
the “tropospheric hotspot”, a fundamental prediction of AGW and confirmed in all the climate models does not exist. this single fact is sufficient to falsify AGW.
Image Einstein’s prediction for General Relativity had failed during the eclipse of 1919. Relativity would have been throw out on its ear.
The fact that AGW has not been thrown out, in spite of failure of two of its predictions. Namely increasing temperatures with increasing CO2, and the hotspot, demonstrates conclusively that we are not dealing with a scientific theory.
AGW is a pseudo science. A belief system. Belief does not respond to evidence, because it is conformational in nature. those observations that strengthen the belief are conformation that the belief is correct. those observations that contradict the belief are held by the belief system to be temporary. if one wait long enough they will be contradicted.
Thus warming from 1980-2000 is believed to be permanent, while lack of warming from 2000-present is believed to be temporary, that eventually warming will return.
Yet both the warming from 1980-2000 and the lack of warming from 2000-present are history, and thus are permanent, except of course if they are later revised by changes to the temperature records.