Note: Dr. Judith Curry also has an essay on this important paper. She writes:
My mind has been blown by a new paper just published in Nature.
Just when I least expected it, after a busy day when I took a few minutes to respond to a query from a journalist about a new paper just published in Nature [link to abstract]:
This has important implications for IPCC’s upcoming AR5 report, where they will attempt to give attribution to the warming, which now looks more and more like a natural cycle. See updates below. – Anthony
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Guest essay by Bob Tisdale
The recently published climate model-based paper Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling [Paywalled] by Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie has gained a lot of attention around the blogosphere. Like Meehl et al (2012) and Meehl et al (2013), Kosaka and Xie blame the warming stoppage on the recent domination of La Niña events. The last two sentences of Kosaka and Xie (2013) read:
Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.
Anyone with a little common sense who’s reading the abstract and the hype around the blogosphere and the Meehl et al papers will logically now be asking: if La Niña events can stop global warming, then how much do El Niño events contribute? 50%? The climate science community is actually hurting itself when they fail to answer the obvious questions.
And what about the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)? What happens to global surface temperatures when the AMO also peaks and no longer contributes to the warming?
The climate science community skirts the common-sense questions, so no one takes them seriously.
UPDATE
Another two comments:
Kosaka and Xie (2013) appear to believe the correlation between their model and observed temperatures adds to the credibility of their findings. They write in the abstract:
Although the surface temperature prescription is limited to only 8.2% of the global surface, our model reproduces the annual-mean global temperature remarkably well with correlation coefficient r = 0.97 for 1970–2012 (which includes the current hiatus and a period of accelerated global warming).
Kosaka and Xie (2013) used the observed sea surface temperatures of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific as an input to their climate model. By doing so they captured the actual El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal. ENSO is the dominant mode of natural variability on the planet. In layman terms, El Niño and La Niña events are responsible for the year-to-year wiggles. It’s therefore not surprising that when they added the source of the wiggles, the models included the wiggles, which raised the correlation coefficient.
Table 1 from Kosaka and Xie (2013) is also revealing. The “HIST” experiment is for the climate model forced by manmade greenhouse gases and other forcings, and the “POGA-H” adds the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature data to the “HIST” forcings. For the modeled period of 1971-1997, adding the ENSO signal increased the linear trend by 34%. Maybe that’s why modeling groups exclude the multidecadal variability of ENSO by skewing ENSO to zero. That way El Niños and La Niñas don’t contribute to or detract from the warming. Unfortunately, by doing so, the models have limited use as tools to project future climate.
UPDATE2 (Anthony): From Dr. Judith Curry’s essay – she writes at her blog:
The results in terms of global-average surface temperature are shown in Fig 1 below:
In Fig 1 a, you can see how well the POGA H global average surface temperature matches the observations particularly since about 1965 (note central Pacific Ocean temperatures have increasing and significant uncertainty prior to 1980).
What is mind blowing is Figure 1b, which gives the POGA C simulations (natural internal variability only). The main ’fingerprint’ of AGW has been the detection of a separation between climate model runs with natural plus anthropogenic forcing, versus natural variability only. The detection of AGW has emerged sometime in the late 1970′s , early 1980′s.
Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998 (main warming period in the latter part of the 20th century) for both POGA H and POGA C:
- POGA H: 0.68C (natural plus anthropogenic)
- POGA C: 0.4C (natural internal variability only)
I’m not sure how good my eyeball estimates are, and you can pick other start/end dates. But no matter what, I am coming up with natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming.
The paper abstract:
Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling
Yu Kosaka & Shang-Ping Xie Nature (2013) doi:10.1038/nature12534
Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century1, 2, challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming. Various mechanisms have been proposed for this hiatus in global warming3, 4, 5, 6, but their relative importance has not been quantified, hampering observational estimates of climate sensitivity. Here we show that accounting for recent cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific reconciles climate simulations and observations. We present a novel method of uncovering mechanisms for global temperature change by prescribing, in addition to radiative forcing, the observed history of sea surface temperature over the central to eastern tropical Pacific in a climate model. Although the surface temperature prescription is limited to only 8.2% of the global surface, our model reproduces the annual-mean global temperature remarkably well with correlation coefficient r = 0.97 for 1970–2012 (which includes the current hiatus and a period of accelerated global warming). Moreover, our simulation captures major seasonal and regional characteristics of the hiatus, including the intensified Walker circulation, the winter cooling in northwestern North America and the prolonged drought in the southern USA. Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.
Correlation does not mean CAUSATION…
….and then they forget to ask the very basic questions about everything else in concert… These warmists cant see the forest through the trees…
Now all they have to do is figure out what are the factors influencing the AMO and PDO.
They’re going for “Forget the cooling, it’s just nature, warming will resume shortly – and that’s all anthropogenic.” They’re hoping to postpone the collapse of the meme until retirement.
It helps give an “out” to some scientists, but also harms the talking points that all climate change recently is man-made.
What the approach of AR5 gives us the best, I think, is the chance (and need) to refocus on the near alchemy of “positive feedbacks” to achieve scary temps scenarios. The PR peeps already tried narratives getting their suckers to argue for the positive feedbacks. It failed, their best avenue is to ignore that aspect–actually, the most important element of the pseudo-science.
Another enjoyable performance–sure to come–will be the dance how the IPCC “scientists” will try to cautiously save and keep face in their docs, while the pr wordsmiths manipulate the “executive summaries” to say much more, and in scarier ways. IPCC scientist-authors should be held responsible for executive summary accurateness too this time. No more excuses.
Cold AMO + quiet sun = disaster?
Mainstream climate scientists using a computer model have taken account of ENSO. I knew this would happen someday. I knew that even modelers would someday recognize that science should take seriously the natural regularities, such as ENSO, that make up the phenomena of temperature change that they study. This is the beginning of the study of natural variability by modelers and the beginning of serious climate science.
So the world’s largest ocean may have an effect on global temperatures? Wow, that seemed rather obvious.
CO2 causes the planet to warm (since, as everyone knows, CO2 molecules are like little heaters—sarc), then the warmth causes BELOW normal equatorial Pacific SST’s (La Nina), then the La Nina causes the planet to cool off.
Just how many laws of physics and thermodynamics are being broken here?
Oh, I forgot, it’s Climate Science….
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. How does moving it from one location one the planet to another remove the energy?
What this does show is that when you moderate the GCNs with the influence of the big water buffers that the observed looks like the modelled….LOL
So what do the projections look like when you project it out to 2100?
Nothing like a planetary emergency I expect.
Will the pseudo-scientists swallow this rat? Get the popcorn out.
I am still trying to understand as to how all the warmth is supposed to be hiding in the oceans, whereas these guys are actually acknowledging La Nina which contradicts the warmth hiding in the oceans. Is CAGW simply a system which will collapse all on its own because it will not be able to cope with all of the contradictory scenarios to which it must adhere?
philjourdan says:
August 28, 2013 at 5:25 pm
“Now all they have to do is figure out what are the factors influencing the AMO and PDO.”
Right. They will have to discover the natural regularities that underlie the AMO, the PDO, ENSO and many other phenomena. We will have a mature climate science by the year 2100. No serious scientist expected anything different. Alarmists, some of whom are scientists, thought they could provide enough evidence for CAGW to move the public without actually doing the science. Now the real science can begin.
The significance of this, is that GHG theory predicts GHGs warm the ocean surface. Hence increasing GHGs must increase SSTs, except to the extent that warming gets transferred to either the atmosphere or the deeper ocean.
With GHGs increasing, and SSTs and atmospheric temperatures not rising, the only place for the predicted warming is in the deeper ocean. Hence Trenbeth going about the missing heat in the deep oceans.
What this paper does is close off alternative explanations to deeper ocean warming.
The Guardian now sees the oceans. The oceans ate my global warming.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/28/cooling-pacific-dampened-global-warming
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/28/global-warming-oceans-known-unknowns
As they say: The truth will out.
A.D. Everard says:
August 28, 2013 at 5:26 pm
“They’re going for “Forget the cooling, it’s just nature, warming will resume shortly – and that’s all anthropogenic.” They’re hoping to postpone the collapse of the meme until retirement.”
They will have to back off on the amount of warming. On this model, ENSO accounts for over half the warming.
Maybe I should have emphasized “The truth will OUT” more.
Ok, I’m confused. The oceans which are hiding the heat, except when there is a roving hot spot, are causing the cooling which is preventing the warming? Lord help us all.
So by finally including Earth’s major atmospheric/oceanic climate cycles, standard-issue Green Gang devotees are surprised to find that –yes– Luddites’ “anthropogenic CO2” is a virtually homeopathic factor in long-term global temperatures. Who’d a-thunk it?
Next up: Breathing causes cancer in rats. As a precautionary principle, best stop breathing NOW.
OK…so here is the dumbed down version:
The oceans ate the heat, so the scientists will have to choke on dead rats.
Let’s see — the cooling is natural but the warming is caused by humans. Seems like I already have that paper somewhere…
(from) The paper abstract:
“……Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.”
===========
So, we’ve got “similar”, “may occur”, and “very likely” all used in the same sentence.
I get it… it is an opinion piece.
Which justified the funding received, or the hope for more.
I suppose if you start with a pre-conceived notion and the go looking for it, you will always find something. Not exactly the scientific method – we know that warming is real and should be carrying on unabated so lets look for something to explain why it isn’t.
How long do you have to go before you realise that the modelling that you based your pre-conception on is patently inadequate?
this has been being discussed at arstechnica all day:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/08/recent-slowdown-in-atmospheric-warming-thanks-to-la-nina/
of course, their conclusion is that…
“Also in accordance with reality, energy trapped by greenhouse gases continued to increase in the model, with ocean heat content rising apace. The modeled climate system didn’t cease warming; it just didn’t show up strongly in the atmosphere.
It adds up to a pretty coherent picture pointing to a cluster of La Niñas as the cause of the slowdown in atmospheric warming. But why all the La Niñas? The researchers chalk it up to natural variability—a lot of coin flips have simply come up La Niña lately. If that’s the case, the researchers write, “the hiatus [in atmospheric warming] is temporary, and global warming will return when the tropical Pacific swings back to a warm state.”
the comments are also depressing to read
Ahhh, what?
“Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century…”
Someone in the Matrix now dares to admit this?
This is news to me. I keep coming across violent denials of it everywhere.
Either way it seems to me that even if atmospheric forcing is important, this paper supports a view that the rate of temperature rise is not going to be as quick as the models suggests.
OK. So how well would this model simulate the CET temperature during the latter part of the 17th and early 18th Century when the temp rose by about 2 deg C when there was no “human warming due to CO2”. I am skeptical that even half of the more recent temps are due to AGW given the model is again one that is driven primarily by CO2. The model output, without changing any of the no doubt vast number of “fitting” parameters, will therefore need to be validated from this point on.
UK US…..opinion piece? You’re being too nice. It’s mere speculation. If you want the pats on the back all you have to say is:
Cooling is a temporal fluke
Warming is the truth
Repeat, try to keep those checks coming in a few more years…
So what I am getting out of this they now have a working model that “proves” your book as much as one of their models can. Congratulations when will you get the due credit I wonder.
Wow, ENSO has a massive influence on global temperature? Thank you, Captain Obvious! You can be paid for telling people this? This is getting more and more like the ‘battle’ against Heliocentrisim centuries ago; the proponents of AGW are pouring forth increasingly ludicrous reasons and theories as to why none of the warming the ‘holy’ models prophesied has occurred, never daring to admit the blindingly obvious – the models are wrong – ’cause that’d be heresy.
It seems we have crossed the threshold into Pathological Science.
Good eyes, Judith. And thanks for posting that graph. It wasn’t readable in the Nature preview.
Add to this the Eschenbach Effect, which caps the tropical SSTs at a max of 31C, and we have another constraint on CO2 warming. The radiative effect of increasing CO2 pushes against the development of clouds and thunderstorms in the ITCZ which “chimney” the heat up into the upper atmosphere where it escapes to space.
What I gather from those charts is this: We are due for a volcano.
Is it the “d”…or the “u”…or the “h” that is confusing or surprising? So giving the computer model the observations of the very thing that holds onto or coughs up heat onto land “surprisingly” traces the land temperature data. Who would have thought that a trained model could do that? I am boggled. Just boggled.
Reported in The Guardian, but they don’t bother showing the POGA C chart; focus is all on the “hiatus”.
Still, next time some alarmist tells you there is no pause in the surface temperature you call label them a denier and state that “even The Guardian acknowledges a hiatus in warming”.
Actually we haven’t had “freakish” (cool word Bob) La Nina’s. It’s been more like La Nada. So I don’t think the oceans are soaking up heat like they did before. When we return to El Nino’s and the belching up of all that heat, we won’t get much more than a gag here and there.
_ _ _
Multidecadal Climate (including AMO) is simple.
Details:
Multidecadal Solar-Terrestrial-Climate 101
_ _ _
Sorry can’t edit, Guardian again. This seems to be the closest they come to acknowledging the warm period (by implication)…
Now lets see, 40s to 70s was cooling. 2000+ was more cooling, the “hiatus”.
Hmmmm, that leaves an unmentioned period of 2 decades or so; a period between two cooling periods; a period where the cycle was on the other side of cooling, the uncooled phase of the cycle, better known as… as… head… in… sand…
This is not rational, in two respects. Using only the local measure of ENSO is arbitrary as the effects of a Nino will reach further afield to regions where there is no Nina effect to force such a return swing. It’s like saying that now ENSO is the sole measure of natural variation. And secondly, how can such multi-decade trends in natural variability, be internal variation, when naturally, Earth’s ocean-atmosphere systems tend to work towards stability?
La Nada…..(LOL)……let me say it again…Pathological Science.
Remember they made the recent La Nina episodes deeper and longer:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
The thing is though, the big up steps in global warming arise out of multi-year La Nina episodes, I hope these folks don’t think we are really in for such a rise just round the corner, I’ll be surprised if the Nino’s can keep pace with falling global temp’s through the next four years.
Alarmists seem to have the same problem as the Labour party does in Australia, something is only correct when they say it, despite skeptics saying it already for years.
at the end of your paper you said,
“I’m not sure how good my eyeball estimates are, and you can pick other start/end dates.”
ok, then I will.
from 1960 to 2010 the 5-year running mean variability is negative .02 (-.02) global
compare that to
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:500/mean:13/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:500/trend/plot/rss/last:500/mean:13/plot/rss/last:500/trend
Hmmmmm Would Michale Mann be considered a pathological scientist?
“Pathological science, as defined by Langmuir, is a psychological process in which a scientist, originally conforming to the scientific method, unconsciously veers from that method, and begins a pathological process of wishful data interpretation (see the Observer-expectancy effect, and cognitive bias).”
Kosaka and Xie describe their approach as being novel. A paper that explores the heart of this issue was published back in 2008 by Compo et al.
Compo,G.P., and P.D. Sardeshmukh, 2008: Oceanic influences on recent continental warming. Climate Dynamics, in press.
The abstract reads
“Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. The oceanic influence has occurred through hydrodynamic-radiative teleconnections, primarily by moistening and warming the air over land and increasing the downward longwave radiation at the surface. The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences.”
Ulric you are joking right? If Earth’s ocean-atmosphere systems tended to work towards stability it would stop working the way it does, which is similar to the atmosphere. The atmosphere thankfully moves around because it is in a pressure system battle that waxes and wanes. Oceans are no different. Warm and cold water flow up and down and around like a lava lamp, fighting each other for space, as the entire system waxes and wanes its heat content via the conveyor belt currents beneath, and on the surface through calm or choppy seas, keeping it quietly just below the surface or peeling it off and shoving it elsewhere. Stable? Hardly.
I think JC has a typo in her statement:
■POGA H: 0.68C (natural plus anthropogenic)
That probably should read: “POGA H: 0.86C”
By my estimate, it’s from -0.47°C (1975) to +0.35°(1998), which is delta T of 0.82°C – close enough for eyeball work to 0.86°C.
That’s how she gets natural internal variability being “significantly more” than half the observed warming (0.68 is NOT significantly more than half of 0.4, right?).
If one looks at the history of ENSO over the past 60 years, there were more La Ninas (blue) by far during the 1960s to mid-1970s global cooling scare period than during the 1980s-1990s foundation of the global warming scare.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
As I was just commenting in another thread, El Ninos (/ La Ninas) are largely how temperature change is expressed in the climate system. High solar forcing charges up and allows a strong El Nino afterwards. Weak does not, like I can already tell that no El Nino in the latter part of this decade will exceed the warmth of the 1998 El Nino (short of data fudging) as this cycle wasn’t as strong as the solar cycle preparing it.
Back in 1997, warmists were predicting more frequent El Ninos from warming, and the 1997-1998 El Nino was supposed to be exceeded by still stronger ones, with La Ninas supposed to go away, as implied in an article published at the time: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/25433.stm . That didn’t happen, so now they are trying to change their story.
Regarding these two sentences of Kosaka and Xie:
“Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.”
The first sentence is true in itself, although it neglects why there have been more La Ninas (the reason being reduced solar activity and GCR change, although the small percentage difference so far is minor compared to the tens of percent difference in GCR levels which occurred during the Little Ice Age and which may soon occur again in coming decades).
The second sentence is just kowtowing to what is politically in favor, helping the article get published but not likely true. Rather the end of the Modern Maximum of solar activity and a Grand Minimum comes in all probability.
The Kosaka and Xie paper implied estimate of only 0.4C of 0.68C or thus only 60% of global warming being from natural causes is from models treating the effect of cosmic ray variation as 0%, rather than what is seen in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif
(As strong as the preceding link is for all from temperature to clouds / humidity / sea level, extra exactness on still smaller timescales neither I nor apparently anyone else has managed, although I have a hypothesis, needing more work, that the ENSO oscillation’s El Ninos & La Ninas could be closely predicted, if solar activity could be guessed in advance, via modeling the ENSO as a semi-independent oscillation where an oscillation occurs in any case but its amplitude and timing is determined by prior external solar/GCR forcing).
Bob Tisdale,
Your articles are always worth reading. I’ve watched over the years as you have mastered the subject, and surpassed all but a very small handful of specialists. You are a real asset to the knowledge base.
What I don’t understand is why all readers don’t give your articles 5 stars. The reason must be that there is always a grumpy True Believer who is the fly in the ointment.
Anyway, keep ’em coming. I always learn something that I didn’t know before I started reading.
@John Blake –
I’d extend that invitation to stop breathing specifically to the alarmists. Don’t they know each one of them emits 500 kg of CO2 every year? Unconscionable of them. /sarc
We are still with the Solar stuff. And absolutely no mechanism. The Earth itself allows/blocks a relatively steady state Sun to shine on us. The cool waters of wind-blown La Nina/La Nada keeps clouds at bay allowing deep penetration of full strength shortwave IR radiation. The warm still waters of El Nino/El Nado builds clouds to block some of the radiation. It is the Earth that varies the input of the relatively stable sunshine.
dbstealey says:
August 28, 2013 at 8:17 pm
…”I’ve watched over the years as you have mastered the subject, and surpassed all but a very small handful of specialists.”
===============
I totally agree with you, except can you give me the names of the specialists 🙂
@ D. B. Stealey, I’ve often wondered the same thing (about the stars rating). Ho hum ratings for highly controversial or dubious articles are one thing, but, even when an article is EXCELLENT (as all of Bob’s are), it appears that nearly always someone has voted “Poor” or something low, for, from the comments which are nearly 100% complimentary, there could not have possibly been a commenter who would vote that way. I think there is some jerk who does that because he or she just thinks that’s a fun thing to do.
Or… perhaps you and I are in the minority here and most of the complimentary commenters only give an “Excellent” once a year or so and consider “Good” a good grade. Hm.
Related Thought: Sometimes, when the article is inherently poor but the fact that the article was brought to our attention was excellent , it’s impossible to tell how to vote (so I don’t).
Pamela Gray says:
August 28, 2013 at 8:09 pm
!Ulric you are joking right?”
Not at all. With a strong solar signal you have positive AO/NAO/AAO, warm temperate zones, less warmer sea water transported to the frigid zones, and La Nina conditions/episodes, and the complete opposite with a weak solar signal, simples.
@Niff –
The Wikipedia entry doesn’t include CAGW in its list of “pathological sciences” . . . for shame.
Thanks Bob, always a great analysis, have to agree with dbstealey says:
August 28, 2013 at 8:17 pm
@Janice Moore –
Yes, I find Bob Tisdale’s posts consistently excellent. Mea culpa for not saying so more often. Ditto for pieces by Willis Eschenbach, and others I’m not at the moment remembering.
I could say the same thing for a lot of the posts here at WUWT by frequent commenters, and for Anthony also of course. I’ve learned a great deal here from all concerned.
Bill H (8:05pm): “Would Michale Mann be considered a pathological scientist?”
Nope.
Is Mann:
A. Insane
B. Lying
C. Stupid
Answer: B and C
CAGW Quote of the Day:
“Although the surface temperature prescription is limited to only 8.2% of the global surface, our model reproduces the annual-mean global temperature remarkably well … .”
LAUGH – OUT – LOUD.
It’s just the drugs are talking again.
If we were to roll the clock back 20 years, the models (at that time) replicated the previous 20 years just fine. It was the 20 years into the future (our current present) that they got completely wrong. While there might be merit to this (not so new) approach, I’ll be impressed only when they publish their forecast for the next 20 years, and 20 years from now it is still correct.
Producing a model now that mimics the temperature record as it exists now is rather trivial. It has to stand the test of time before it deserves any more (or any less) credibility/condemnation that do any of the other models/methodologies.
Jon Gebarowski says:
August 28, 2013 at 6:54 pm
What I gather from those charts is this: We are due for a volcano.
—-
A possible candidate was reported on ABC TV (Australia) yesterday, Sakurajima in Japan. Estimates of 100,000 tonnes of ash were blown up to 5000 metres high during a recent eruption.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-28/japanese-brave-terrible-temper-of-sakurajima-volcano/4919406
===Warren, Sydney, Australia
Ulric Lyons (not joking at 8:40pm),
Would you please provide some Leif Svalgaard-proof data proving your assertion that there is a “Sun signal”? What data shows it was “strong” and over what time period(s)? What data shows it was “weak” and over what time period(s)?
Until you do, most of us (I think) will not highly value your assertion much as we might want to. Dr. Svalgaard (and Pamela Gray and many others, here) have done a fine job of convincing many of us that there is no meaningful mechanism that shows that the Sun drives global temperature. We (I, anyway) would be very interested to see your data and proofs of a Sun-driver mechanism.
Thanks for responding. I won’t, BTW, be responding to you, for I am not a scientist, but, Pamela Gray and Dr. Svalgaard and others will if you present your case clearly and completely. Then, people like me can learn!
Waiting for your evidence.
Janice
I’m a bit dismayed about how computer models have come to be more important than actual observations and so I offer a formal statement of the Scientific Computer Modeling Method.
The Scientific Method
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a hypothesis that possibly explains the phenomenon.
3. Perform a test in an attempt to disprove or invalidate the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is disproven, return to steps 1 and 2.
4. A hypothesis that stubbornly refuses to be invalidated may be correct. Continue testing.
The Scientific Computer Modeling Method
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a computer model that mimics the behavior of the phenomenon.
3. Select observations that conform to the model predictions and dismiss observations as of inadequate quality that conflict with the computer model.
4. In instances where all of the observations conflict with the model, “refine” the model with fudge factors to give a better match with pesky facts. Assert that these factors reveal fundamental processes previously unknown in association with the phenomenon. Under no circumstances willingly reveal your complete data sets, methods, or computer codes.
5. Upon achieving a model of incomprehensible complexity that still somewhat resembles the phenomenon, begin to issue to the popular media dire predictions of catastrophe that will occur as far in the future as possible, at least beyond your professional lifetime.
6. Continue to “refine” the model in order to maximize funding and the awarding of Nobel Prizes.
7. Dismiss as unqualified, ignorant, and conspiracy theorists all who offer criticisms of the model.
Repeat steps 3 through 7 indefinitely.
I think I like the old-fashioned kind of scientific method that dealt with falsifiable hypotheses and predictions had to conform to actual experimental data.
At her blog, Judith Curry clearly stated the implications of the “Nature” article for climate science. Anthony posted part of her statement above. From the comments, it seems that most have not understood the importance of the article. If Anthony will permit, I will quote Dr. Curry again and emphasize the important points. Dr. Curry writes:
“Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998 (main warming period in the latter part of the 20th century) for both POGA H and POGA C:
POGA H: 0.68C (natural plus anthropogenic)
POGA C: 0.4C (natural internal variability only)
I’m not sure how good my eyeball estimates are, and you can pick other start/end dates. But no matter what, I am coming up with natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming.”
The big point here is that modelers have shown that a model of natural variability alone (that incorporates the observed data for ENSO) shows a 0.4C increase in temperature while the CAGW traditional model of natural variation (without observed data for ENSO) plus anthropogenic warming shows only 0.68C increase from 1975-1998. In other words, on the model discussed in this article, most of the warming is natural and not anthropogenic.
If you read only Alarmist commentary on the article, such as what you find in the “Guardian,” you will not be told what Dr. Curry just told us. Instead, you will be pointed to the years 1998-2013 and told that the importance of the article is that it shows that natural variability explains the “pause” in warming and that warming will resume once this natural variation is complete. Such Alarmist authors will never make the obvious point, obvious to many, that if ENSO explains the pause then it also must explain at least a proportionately large part of the warming that preceded the pause. The conclusion must be that warming is less than Alarmists had thought and less by at least half.
Dr. Curry writes:
“Like I said, my mind is blown. I have long argued that the pause was associated with the climate shift in the Pacific Ocean circulation, characterized by the change to the cool phase of the PDO. I have further argued that if this is the case, then the warming since 1976 was heavily juiced by the warm phase of the PDO. I didn’t know how to quantify this, but I thought that it might account for at least half of the observed warming, and hence my questioning of the IPCC’s highly confident attribution of ‘most’ to AGW.”
The really important point for the long run is that mainstream climate modelers have finally recognized the importance of natural variation and included one important natural variation, ENSO, in their climate model. They did so by writing the numbers for ENSO into their model so that runs of the model must conform to the observed temperature readings associated with ENSO. Then the model generated numbers that fit the historical observations 1976-2013 unusually well. The barn door is open and the mules are gone.
We empiricists have argued for years that the great shortcoming of mainstream climate science is that they focused on the processes of radiation alone and did not take account of the natural variations in oceans, clouds, water vapor, and the whole host of natural phenomena that make up our dearly beloved Earth. Bob Tisdale has been onto ENSO and natural variation for years. I am sure that the prodding from his excellent articles on WUWT and his ebooks has caused climate scientists to attend more closely to ENSO.
I’m not sure why picking the extremes was done, but I see the POGA H endpoints as -0.47 and +0.3, for a difference of 0.77C (or 0.78C). Mental math error?
I am coming up with natural internal variability associated accounting for close to half of the observed warming.
You can be sure that the paper will add weight to the obvious alarmist conclusion that any warming is caused by man and any lack of warming is natural.
Janice Moore:
Look at http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif which enlarges on click (reference links given there, and I can provide any in text form for easier copying and pasting if requested).
Pamela Gray:
The prime mechanism is:
* Cosmic ray flux, as in neutron count, is measured and observed to vary by a substantial amount, several percent, over each solar cycle, and it varies by a much larger amount over past history like the Little Ice Age versus now in isotope reconstructions (as plotted in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif with reference links given there)
->
* Extra cloud condensation nuclei form under extra ionizing radiation, as tested in the CLOUD experiment (a fancier analogue of a common tool: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber )
->
* Tropospheric ionization is observed to change by a relatively large amount, 5%, over a solar cycle ( http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/sensitivity.pdf )
->
* Low cloud cover is observed to change by 2% in sync with that during an ordinary solar cycle, while it would change more over the difference between a Grand Minimum and the recent Modern Maximum of solar activity ( http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf )
->
* The above leads to a change in planetary albedo, average reflectivity of the planet, by up to multiple percent (such as a Grand Minimum versus recent times), which might superficially seem small but is actually relatively huge in climate terms, not because it is large in itself but because all of modern global warming is just about tiny minuscule tenths of a degree (like 0.6K in a total average temperature near 15 degrees Celsius or near 298K over the past century … or thus merely a very tiny 1 in 500 parts change in temperature).
That is the mechanism, and there is the observed match with sea level, humidity, cloud cover, and temperature patterns seen in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif ; the ENSO is semi-independent in the sense an oscillation always occurs, but its amplitude is influenced by prior history.
One of the most common online argumentative tactics is just to continue claiming something repeatedly (solar variation has no effect and no mechanism exists for it to have an effect) without any supporting links, numbers, or evidence, ignoring what is presented, figuring that at least some readers will fall for the sheer superficial confidence seeming to be presented … an old classic of repeat something often enough until (naive) people believe it. That is what I expect you to do, and it may work on some.
It does not work, though, if honest unbiased individuals click on http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif and see for themselves how much would have to be ludicrously claimed to be all sheer coincidence.
I expect your next post will show no evidence whatsoever of having actually clicked on that link; feel free to prove me wrong there if you can.
We have seen this before, haven’t we. But when “they” do it, it’s ok,
“Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature”
“Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008JD011637/abstract
Pamela Gray:
The prime mechanism is:
* Cosmic ray flux, as in neutron count, is measured and observed to vary by a substantial amount, several percent, over each solar cycle, and it varies by a much larger amount over past history like the Little Ice Age versus now in isotope reconstructions (as plotted in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif with reference links given there)
->
* Extra cloud condensation nuclei form under extra ionizing radiation, as tested in the CLOUD experiment (a fancier analogue of a common tool: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber )
->
* Tropospheric ionization is observed to change by a relatively large amount, 5%, over a solar cycle ( http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/sensitivity.pdf )
->
* Low cloud cover is observed to change by 2% in sync with that during an ordinary solar cycle, while it would change more over the difference between a Grand Minimum and the recent Modern Maximum of solar activity ( http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf )
->
* The above leads to a change in planetary albedo, average reflectivity of the planet, by up to multiple percent (such as a Grand Minimum versus recent times), which might superficially seem small but is actually relatively huge in climate terms, not because it is large in itself but because all of modern global warming is just about tiny minuscule tenths of a degree (like 0.6K in a total average temperature near 15 degrees Celsius or near 298K over the past century … or thus merely a very tiny 1 in 500 parts change in temperature).
That is the mechanism, and there is the observed match with sea level, humidity, cloud cover, and temperature patterns seen in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif ; the ENSO is semi-independent in the sense an oscillation always occurs, but its amplitude is influenced by prior history.
Bob, what about the Antarctic ice (ocean). We have now had several years of above average ice in the Antarctic, the last two years almost a million square km more. This has got to have some influence on the larger pacific as it takes a LOT of energy to melt all that ice. Do you think that this is having some effect on cooling the eastern Pacific and eastern Atlantic (south).
The reason for saying this is that there is a lot of cold water on the west coast of South America and the West coast of Africa along the route of the pacific and atlantic currents. However, in looking at the graphics of ocean currents I don’t see one going north up the coast of South America though it sure seems that way from looking at the satellite data.
What is mind blowing is that it has taken the grossly incompetent modelling community 30 years to incorporate the 60 year PDO cycle.into their entrail reading.How long will it take them to discover the millenial solar cycle?
Xie is qouted as saying.”We’re pretty confident that the swing up will come some time in the future, but the current science can’t predict when that will be,” said Prof Xie.
Presumably he hasn’t mastered the art of adding 60 to 1970 to make 2030.By then perhaps he might have found the millennial cycle and will be able to reproduce the forecast seen on the latesst post on my blog http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
Here are the conclusions
“To summarise- Using the 60 and 100 year quasi repetitive patterns in conjunction with the solar data leads straightforwardly to the following reasonable predictions for Global SSTs
1 Continued modest cooling until a more significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and more CO2 would help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !!
The Solar Cycles 2,3,4 correlation with cycles 21,22,23 would suggest that a Dalton minimum could be imminent. The Livingston and Penn Solar data indicate that a faster drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures might even be on the horizon.If either of these actually occur there would be a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.”
I still give this paper a rating of 0. Obviously no one here read read the last sentence of the abstract. They were forced again to say that AGW is ongoing to even be considered for publication, so yes ZERO to NATURE magazine. This statement alone invalidates any science done by these fellows. Shame on you
Janice Moore: The climate turned colder during the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton minima. Granted there is sparse data, but it’s the only data we have. I assume that you and others have dismissed the GCR/cloud creation mechanism for whatever reason, but it doesn’t matter. I doubt if you can find an agreed-upon mechanism for gravity, either, but I know if I drop something heavier than air it will fall. Unless we have a solar minimum similar to one of those three during which temps don’t fall, then we should keep open the possibility that there is something tying those anomalies with colder temps. Our inability to explain something is not evidence, much less proof, that something does not exist.
Chad,
Indeed the original definition by Langmuir in 1953 was prescient of CAGW…
Pathological science, as defined by Langmuir, is a psychological process in which a scientist, originally conforming to the scientific method, unconsciously veers from that method, and begins a pathological process of wishful data interpretation (see the Observer-expectancy effect, and cognitive bias). Some characteristics of pathological science are:
– The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
– The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
– There are claims of great accuracy.
– Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
– Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
– The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.
Langmuir never intended the term to be rigorously defined; it was simply the title of his talk on some examples of “weird science”. As with any attempt to define the scientific endeavor, examples and counterexamples can always be found.
I’ll try adding it to wikipedia….watch the sparks fly!
Ad hoc simulation rehashing the very tenet of AGW yet introducing some twist in order to fit the HadCRUt curve which magical formulae is well kept, and suddenly this study is mind blowing? Woaw, science has left the building…
Go, Niff, go! #(:))
*******************
Eliza, I was so glad to see you’ve posted here. After your remark a few days ago about CAGW being over (which, indeed, it is) and not coming round to WUWT (or so I took your remarks) anymore for now pointless discussion, I was sad. You would be missed. To me, “Eliza” is a straight-talking, witty, well-informed, commenter (with such a unique historical perspective, too, given your dad’s remarkable career) whose absence would leave an irreplaceable gap at WUWT. Hope all is well in South America (or wherever you are these days).
I wonder how long the comments in wikipedia will last…any guesses?
“eyeball Mk.1 estimates”
I’ll guess they last a long time on ‘ol rickety-wikity (okay, more precisely, 3 months) because you are writing at an intelligence level far above most of the toadies who would rip them down. GOOD LUCK!
Authors Kosaka and Xie have an article summarising their paper at The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/warming-slowed-by-cooling-pacific-ocean-17534).
It doesn’t resolve any of the contradictions in their findings but includes some terminology that makes me question their objectivity re AGW: “In May 2013, carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million in the atmosphere for the first time in human history.” and “In summer, the equatorial Pacific’s grip on the northern hemisphere loosens, and the increased greenhouse gases continue to warm temperatures, causing record heat waves and unprecedented Arctic sea ice retreat.”
Objectively, those sentences should finish ” … for the first time since Mauna Lao records began in 1958.” and “… causing heat waves and Arctic sea ice retreat greater than records began.”
They point out the last cooling PDO phase lasted from around 1940 to the early 1970s, cooling again since 1998, and conclude: “We do not know if the current cooling phase will last as long as the last one. Predicting equatorial Pacific conditions more than a year in advance is beyond the reach of current science. But we know that over the timescale of several decades, climate will continue to warm as we pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
So the academics haven’t got a clue but greenhouse gases explain everything, leaving unanswered the question of whether anything needs explaining in the first place.
It all reminds me of the adding of epicycles to the Ptolomaiv model of the Universe to keep it going for a few more decades//centuries. Sadly Ptolomaic Science lasted quite a long while, 140 AD to about 1551 AD. I hope that we can all speed up this one’s collapse to under 1,400 years.
Looks like natural variations have finally gobsmacked some of the Warmistas aside the head.
We’ll see how long the impact lasts.
Dr Norman Page says:
August 28, 2013 at 9:34 pm
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
All thumbs up!
Study co-author Shang-Ping Xie told Climate Central that by running computer models with observed ocean temperatures from the 1940s onward, with a particular emphasis on the recent 15-year period, “We got very good agreement with the observed record, including the current hiatus that started in the late 1990s.” In fact, not only did the models reproduce the overall warming plateau, but they also showed continued warming during the summer months, and a lack of warming during the winter, which has also been shown by observations.
“This was a remarkable result telling us that we are on the right track,” Xie said in an interview. ..
Xie said that for now, Pacific Ocean temperatures are dampening the increase in global temperatures, but that will change soon, perhaps even in the next several years. “Now it is swinging down, eventually it is going to swing up, and when it swings up we are going to see much, much stronger warming” on par with the accelerated warming seen during the period from the 1970s to 1990s, “if not bigger,” Xie said. “When it swings up we’re going to be in big trouble.”
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/new-study-ties-global-warming-hiatus-to-a-pacific-cooldown-16405
Whah, ain’t been non’o dem ninos lately. Bin messin’ wid ahr predilictions,
Your basic NATURE climate abstract these days.
Mind-blowing paper of the day for me was David Deming 2002. It postulates a thermochemical ocean circulation through the oceanic crust larger than the thermohaline circulation that cools the midocean ridges. This cooling would cause us to underestimate the actual heat output at the ridges. It would also warm the oceans.
David Sanger (@davidsanger) says: August 28, 2013 at 11:09 pm
‘Xie said, “When it swings up we’re going to be in big trouble.”’
“When it DOES NOT swing up we’re going to be in big trouble.”
……….Corected for Dr. Xie.
With sufficient variables in the model, any set of data can be matched. So matching what has happened provides no skill for predicting what will happen. They really need to get down to understanding the mechanisms and stop trying to predict from models and stats. Anything can happen in an open system but they’d prefer to pretend it’s closed.
Henry Clark says:
August 28, 2013 at 8:13 pm
Henry,
You beat me to the punch. Solar activity drives ENSO or some other factor drives both solar activity and ENSO.
Nice post.
Pamela Gray says: “We are still with the Solar stuff. And absolutely no mechanism. The Earth itself allows/blocks a relatively steady state Sun to shine on us. The cool waters of wind-blown La Nina/La Nada keeps clouds at bay allowing deep penetration of full strength shortwave IR radiation. The warm still waters of El Nino/El Nado builds clouds to block some of the radiation. It is the Earth that varies the input of the relatively stable sunshine.
My pet theory is this, Pamela: Although TSI is essentially constant, solar UV content varies over a range of several percent. At its peak, solar UV raises the temperature and thickness of the thermosphere significantly. I believe this raises the effective black body temperature of the sky enough to affect the heat balance of the Earth. Although Leif has assured me this is not possible due to the tenuous nature of that layer, note that the thermosphere is so thick that a photon can’t pass through it without hitting at least one gas molecule.
Dr Norman Page says:
August 28, 2013 at 9:34 pm
Thank you. Link bookmarked.
Interesting that you feel strongly enough to actually make “predictions” based on “conclusions” using information and evidence from your work. See, the IPCC and K. Trenberth have declared that their billions of dollars and hundreds of employees in dozens of high-priced secretive labs can’t yield anything so obvious as even a simple “prediction”.
Though they demand 1.3 trillion in deadly taxes to prevent what they aren’t concluding.
jorgekafkazar says:
August 28, 2013 at 11:28 pm
So, how much of an increase in height of the atmosphere? What would be that effect of the increase on atmosphere “height” on air mass?
Satellites get dragged out of orbit by an atmosphere doing things we can’t predict, and fools say the science is settled.
It is a lack of data, not to mention the chaotic nature of the “fluids” and their interactions.
The only reason we have so much weather data, is because we’ve been trying to find patterns, it is in our genes.
There is no pattern, it is chaos.
Wars need to be won.
JC: ” I have long argued that the pause was associated with the climate shift in the Pacific Ocean circulation, characterized by the change to the cool phase of the PDO. I have further argued that if this is the case, then the warming since 1976 was heavily juiced by the warm phase of the PDO.”
I’ve been saying that for over 11 years now.
There USED TO BE a thing called “the Great 1976-77 Climate Shift.” That was when the PDO shifted regimes THE PREVIOUS TIME. It seems that at about 1998-99 it shifted back, although that wasn’t obvious at all for at least five years. Most of the warming of the 1970-1997 period happened in that one step (which was covered here long, long ago, I believe).
In math’s Catastrophe Theory (which I am not any expert on, so if I am wrong someone please correct me), “catastrophe” doesn’t mean a disaster; it means a change of sign of the slope of the curve, either in sign or to zero. The climate does THAT kind of catastrophe when the PDO shifts its sign. If they have definitively determined what causes that PDO regime shift (catastrophe) I have not heard about it. It might be a resonance thing whose feedback throws it all out of whack. But if so what is it that is resonating and feeding back? I think oscillating systems have to have such a resonating that builds to a peak and then releases from feedback overload.
This is quite a cool development. Between this and Steve McIntyre’s running the Callendar formula from 1938, (which also trended well, even with antiquated maths and low sensitivity), the modelers and Trenberths of the world should be red-faced over their code and their missing heat.
“Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998 (main warming period in the latter part of the 20th century) for both POGA H and POGA C:
POGA H: 0.68C (natural plus anthropogenic)
POGA C: 0.4C (natural internal variability only)”
Natural warming is 0.40C.
Anthropogenic warming is maximum 0,28C
IPCC in leaks are claiming with “95%” certainty that most of the “climate change” is anthropogenic but this report finds that 59% is natural and up to 41% could be anthropogenic?
If this stands the test it means the models are more worse than we have ever thought?
Notice the bone they throw to CAGW at the end:
“Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.”
As far as what we see in their abstract and JC’s post and Anthony’s comments, it doesn’t sound like there is any BASIS established in the paper for them to make that statement.
This is the very kind of bone commonly thrown to warming. It is also what Cook 2013 was counting in order to get his 97%. But he missed the point. The point is that no matter what they put in their paper, they want to be able to get next year’s grant moneys, so they HAVE to do homage to the warming meme. Yes, it’s pretty much gag me with a spoon when they do this, but one can easily see why they do it. For Cook to count them as supporting the anthropogenic warming disaster on the horizon is ridiculous and pathetic, however.
@Steve from Rockwood:
“So the world’s largest ocean may have an effect on global temperatures? Wow, that seemed rather obvious.”
It is the elephant in the room. Please, PLEASE, don’t anyone mention its presence… Oops!
I am involved with 3D (CAD) modelling, but in the process plant design world. One of my recent hand sketches (let’s call it, “X”) was modified by the design team in Beijing because the software was not able to reproduce my intent. I know, from experience, that “X” can be done, but because this possibility was not pre-programmed into the software we all of a sudden had a lot of extra expenses trying to “fix” a non-problem. Now corrected, hopefully.
“Janice Moore says:
August 28, 2013 at 8:54 pm”
It’s more than a LOL moment, it’s *remarkably* side splitting funny! Sadly however, people will read this as a true measure of a global mean.
Any engineer looking at the global temperature signal would start from the premise that it was all natural variation and then try to determine whether any of it can be attributed to known influences (which it can’t with any certainty … FACT).
But these theoretical arrogant nutcases who have failed with every major prediction, start from the premise that they have some god given insight into the climate and so they know what is causing the global temperature signal … and then having stated with total confidence that they know what causes the global temperature they then adjust hidden variables in their models with no real justification in a vain attempt to match their theory to reality … and when there is no more leeway to adjust these parameters and their theory has failed completely to match reality (i.e. the pause) … they first try to change reality (by adjusting the historic temperature data) and when that ploy fails they deny reality (like the way they have denied the fact it has not warmed for over a decade).
And finally … they invent excuses like the above one … in another vain idiotic attempt to suggest they understand what any engineer can see by a quick glance at the temperature record is a massive amount of standard … boring tedious normal noise which it would be stupid to try to model and only idiots in academia would try.
Engineers, weather forecasters like Anthony and all the other practical real-world skilled people who make up us know how to tackle real world problems and we know how to apply theoretical scientific knowledge to understand and solve real world problems.
Theoretisians don’t.
We know this theoretical junk is just that … junk. We know they can’t predict the climate.
But no, time and time and time again these idiots in academia tell us they can predict the climate … but there is just one more thing for them to add to their equation.
This debate isn’t one between sceptics and scientists …. it is between those with real world experience outside academia and those without..
And the reason many of us read these academics pontiffs is to laugh at their latest excuses for why their theories don’t work.
My eyeball tells me around 0.15 deg C (figure 1 b), leaving AGW at around 0.5 deg C since 1950….
Sorry, but why is this paper “mind-blowing”? Because it appeared in Nature? I suggest that Nature has demonstrated a remarkably unscientific bias that promotes the lame=or-discredited hypo of CO2-dominated global warming, and is not to be taken seriously.
Serious scientists came to a similar conclusion years ago = that Earth’s temperature is dominated by natural cycles such as the PDO.
The real question is what drives the PDO, AMO etc.
The PDO cycle is irregular but is approximately 60 years in duration – say 30 years of warming dominated by El Nino’s and 30 years of cooling dominated by La Nina’s. And that not in phase with the solar Gleissberg Cycle which is approximately 90 years in duration.
PDO was in a “warm” phase up to about 1945, when it changed to a “cool” phase that lasted until 1976-77 (there was a global-cooling scare of the mid 1970’s). Then the PDO shifted to “warm” phase circa 1976, resulting in the current global warming hysteria. NASA announced that the PDO shifted back to “cool phase” in 2008. In 2002 we predicted a return to global cooling by 2020-2030..
The Nature paper pays the usual lip-service to the alleged significant role of CO2 in the global warming observed during the last warming phase of the PDO, but has the authors not done so, Nature would not have published it.
This paper’s conclusions are not new – the PDO was first named in 1997. But what drives the PDO?
“Although there are similar periodic oscillations in other oceans such as the Atlantic and the Arctic I believe that they follow the lead of ENSO and PDO. In effect they simply continue the distribution of the initial (solar induced) warming or cooling state around the globe and of course there are varying degrees of lag so that from time to time the other lesser oceanic oscillations can operate contrary to the primary Pacific oscillations until the lag is worked through.
I believe that this is a clear and simple theory of solar driven global climate change which should now be tested empirically”
May 7th 2008
from here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/global-warming-and-cooling-the-reality/
There are minor adjustments that I would now make to that article such as changing the emphasis on solar effects from the length of the solar cycle to changes in the mix of particles and wavelengths affecting stratosphere temperatures as per my later articles.
“But what drives the PDO?”
Solar variations alter stratosphere temperatures so as to alter the latitudinal positions of the climate zones and jet stream tracks resulting in global cloudiness and albedo changes which vary the amount of energy able to enter the oceans to fuel the climate system.
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
“The sun causes latitudinal climate zone shifting with changes in the degree of jetstream zonality / meridionality by altering the ozone creation / destruction balance differentially at different heights above the tropopause. The net result is a change in the gradient of tropopause height between equator (relatively high) and poles (relatively low).
The cause appears not to be raw solar power output (TSI) which varies too little but instead, the precise mix of particles and wavelengths from the sun which vary more greatly and affect ozone amounts above the tropopause.
That allows latitudinal sliding of the jets and climate zones below the tropopause leading to changes in global cloudiness and albedo with alters the amount of energy getting into the oceans.”
At its simplest, an active sun skews ENSO events in favour of warm El Ninos because more energy enters the oceans whereas an inactive sun skews ENSO in favour of cooler La Ninas because less energy then enters the oceans.
The PDO operates in the background as an independent internal ocean oscillation.
The bottom up ocean effect then modulates the top down solar effect.
denniswingo says: “Bob, what about the Antarctic ice (ocean).”
I illustrate the seas surface temperature anomalies of the Southern Ocean in each of my monthly updates.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/14-southern.png
It has a cooling trend over the past 31 years.
The July 2013 update is here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/july-2013-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/
CO2 molecules mutated by nuclear fallout made Carbonozilla, who lives in the deepest ocean and eats Arctic icebergs. Carbonozilla’s internal fires are millions of degrees. Carbonozilla will rise one day, and destroy New York.
Allan MacRae says: “Sorry, but why is this paper mind-blowing’?”
“Mind blowing” is a quote from Judith Curry’s post. She noted that the control run of the model, forced only by the ENSO signal, produced more than 50% of the warming in the model that was also forced by greenhouse gases.
There’s a good summary on the AMO from NOAA.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/faq/amo_faq.php
Warm AMO seems to add about 0.1C to 0.2C to global temperatures.
Okay so logically following on from here it means that the temperature rise in the 80’s and 90’s was caused by enso and El nino’s and not by CO2
Just a couple of semantic notes…
It is not a pause until it resumes.
The temperatures at the end of the last century are looking like an anomaly (blip.)
ironargonaut says:
At August 28, 2013 at 5:42 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1402368
you ask
I write to provide a brief answer.
1.
All the energy which leaves the planet is ‘removed’ by radiation.
2.
The rate at which energy is radiated from a surface is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature (T^4) of the radiating surface.
3.
A ‘warm’ region of the Earth radiates much, much more energy to space than the same area of a similar but cooler region (because energy is radiated in proportion to T^4).
4.
If heat is transferred from the ‘hot’ to the cooler area then
(a) the temperature of the ‘hot’ region will fall by an amount
and
(b) the temperature of the cooler region will rise by the same amount.
5.
The temperature changes of (4) will reduce the rate at which energy is radiated from the total of the two areas (because the total radiated energy is the sum of energy radiated by each area and is proportional to T^4 in – n.b. not T – in each area).
6.
In reality, oceans transfer heat from the ‘hot’ tropics to cooler regions.
7.
Any variation in the heat transfer from ‘hot’ locations to cooler locations will alter the removal rate of energy from the Earth (because the rate is proportional to T^4 at every location).
I hope this answer is sufficient and clear.
Richard
Bob (August 29, 2013 at 1:33 am)
I guess the take home message is that the models suggest that more 50% of the late 20th century warming was due to natural variability is good news. But surely, these models have all the same limitations set out by Prof. C Essex. Therefore, unless we actually test these models outside their training sets they have no real value – they’re just a hypothesis. Why should there be any excitement whatsoever.
WOW! This has been reported on SBS news here in Australia, another alarmist publically funded media outlet similar to the ABC. This will not sit well with alarmists, and perfect timing for a federal election.
ironargonaut says:
What if I use a flow of water to move heat energy from my car’s engine block to my car’s radiator? The planet is like that.
Too much to read here but it seems to me that the authors are comparing model prediction with sea surface temperatures when the model actually seems to be sea surface temperatures.
I am not sure what the point of this is. Surely autocorrelating a signal with itself will give a very high correlation coefficient.
What seems to be left is that there is something else going on. Perhaps for example the sea has temperature because it is heated by something? They do not seem to me to have demonstrated what this something is however I do realise that the obvious answer – CO2 will result in more research funding. They have to hold this position in public just to keep going.
My belief is that sea surface temperatures while internally modulated through current flows and overturning on average are as a result of heating by the Sun rather than heating by the atmosphere. In fact I hold the radical position that the heat energy in the atmosphere is mainly caused by heating from the Earth’s surface, itself warmed by the Sun.
eco-geek
I’m a but confused by your opening point. Not sure what this refers to or what you mean.
But your last point is not radical at all. It is pretty much correct and well established science for much of the troposphere.
Bob Tisdale:
It seems that several readers have failed to understand the importance of Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie both for understanding climate change and – importantly – for the forthcoming IPCC Report (AR5).
The paper of Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie destroys the main assertion in the draft AR5 which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in process of publishing.
The draft AR5 has been (deliberately ?) leaked
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/20/when-somebody-hits-you-with-that-new-ipcc-is-95-certain-talking-point-show-them-this/
That assertion of “the main cause of warming since the 1950s” is derived from computer emulations of “warming since the 1950s” and the finding of Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie is that a computer emulation demonstrates that ~50% of “warming since the 1950s” can be attributed to one natural variation (i.e. ENSO) alone.
The only ways available for the IPCC to deal with this refutation of its main finding are
(a) to withdraw its main finding and to rewrite the draft AR5
Or
(b) to ignore the paper of Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie because it was published after the closure date for papers to be considered in the AR5.
But if the IPCC adopts (b) then it is open to criticism because when preparing previous reports the IPC has considered papers published after its consideration closure dates.
And – as AGW-sceptics have been saying for decades – there is no reason to assume there is ANY discernible human effect on climate change (i.e. the null hypothesis applies).
Richard
In an ABC radio interview (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-29/scientist-says-climate-mystery-is-solved/4922424), Professor Xie nominates the difference between natural variation and AGW influence. ABC transcript:
“SIMON LAUDER: So what do you think conditions would be like for the climate if it weren’t for this cooling trend?
SHANG-PING XIE: Oh, it would be much warmer according to our calculation. Something like one, two degree Celsius warmer at this time. That’s a significant number.”
Listen to the audio and it sounds as though Xie says “Something like point two degree Celsius warmer at this time.”, not “one, two” degree.
Maybe the ABC is just wishing for the best. I may be wrong, but it sounds like the authors go for a .2C difference rather than the .28C eyeballed by Judith Curry.
This is just ad hoc adjustment of the models. Another way of looking at this is that it demonstrates the inadequacy of current models. My question is, what does this mean for climate sensitivity and the uncertainty thereof?
jai mitchell says: August 28, 2013 at 7:56 pm …
Jai, you’ve missed the point.
The eye-ball estimates referred to are about the comparison of figure 1a and figure 1b – you cannot get any information about this from other sources.
I’m confused at this point in the thread: are the warmists going to love or hate this paper? Seems to go either way.
The funny thing is that the deep sea temperature is around 0-4 C. It this water (that has absorbed all the missing heat) surfaces the result will not be a thermageddon, rather it could be described as a deep freeze.
I am with Willis on his tropical thermostat and no matter what happens the imput to the tropical waters is moderated. The poles are long term thermostats that dump ocean heat, these are also very efficient. The least understood thermostats are the temperate ocean zones, they are modulated in divers ways that are solar magnetic and cosmic in nature, small changes in UV and cloud cover will change global temperatures and ocean heat content. The small increases up and down will effect both tropic and polar sea temperatures, what I see now is not a hiatus in warming but a long term cooling from a previous period of rampant solar activity.
Excellent comment from Henry Clarke above.
Bob, we need appropriate analogies to communicate this idea about the claim being all warming is caused by AG GHG’s and cooling is caused by ENSO.
We hear the sound of applause behind the curtain. We send an investigator to see what is creating it. They peek round the curtain and report that it is the sound of one hand clapping. There is no other hand.
I suggest that this paper’s claim is that global temperature changes are caused by the climate equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping.
So ENSO is 60%. The AMO will be 30% at least. The AO will be another 20%. Something Antarctic will be an extra 25% and a number of other contributions will bring the total to 200%. At some point, at some level, they will have to admit there are two hands clapping. When that happens AGW is history – the sort of history that is omitted from books in embarrassment. What a sad chapter in the history of human endeavor.
This is absolutely in line with what we have postulated here on WUWT for years. No one is surprised by this, except those not paying any attention. Kudos to Bob for teaching us all more about the oceans/ENSO through the years.
I think that we are observing the warmists between volte and face.
Wow. I had thought we were many, many years away from an actual, meaningful science on the climate appearing in any of the usual journals, but this is a big step along that road. Obviously it raises more questions that answers (which the authors have clearly shied away from asking) but this is important stuff, for two reasons:
1. There has been no warming this century. Stated quite clearly in a paper published in Nature. No more quibbling from alarmists can be accepted now. They are the data deniers, not us.
2. At least 50% of the warming is not man made (possibly, with due respect to the usual caveats about models, but the alarmists have always loved models so they can’t reject this one out of hand now), again published in Nature.
I see a lot of alarmists being referred to this paper from now on, especially by me.
So my 60 year cycles for predicting droughts, floods, wild fires, tornadoes hurricanes, etc. is still okay? Bob Tisdale and others have explained the ENSO, PDO, AMO distribution of heat for years and these guys are blowing everyone away with this? Did your book get referenced, Bob (not a chance!)?
We can but hope the temperature record reflects predominately natural forces. The higher the sensitivity to AnthroGHGs, the colder it would now be without their effect.
==============
“Gary Pearse says:
August 28, 2013 at 6:52 pm
Add to this the Eschenbach Effect, which caps the tropical SSTs at a max of 31C, and we have another constraint on CO2 warming. The radiative effect of increasing CO2 pushes against the development of clouds and thunderstorms in the ITCZ which “chimney” the heat up into the upper atmosphere where it escapes to space.”
Looks like God is better at Climate Science than the IPCC!
We will not throw away all our efforts to make the case for AGW and that;s why we have written this paper to explain why we still need a carbon tax to prevent thermogeddon in the future.
Janice Moore says:
August 28, 2013 at 9:04 pm
“Ulric Lyons (not joking at 8:40pm),
Would you please provide some Leif Svalgaard-proof data proving your assertion that there is a “Sun signal”? What data shows it was “strong” and over what time period(s)? What data shows it was “weak” and over what time period(s)?”
Plasma speed, El Nino conditions and negative AO/NAO occur at lower speeds, La Nina conditions and positive AO/NAO at higher speeds. The solar wind speed has a direct effect on polar lower atmospheric pressure. This has been studied at least in the Antarctic following CME impacts.
http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg
I would even suggest that part of the upper atmospheric heating is due to solar plasma speed, and this may also have an effect on Earth’s energy budget, either directly and/or though circulation changes forced down through the atmospheric levels.
I also do solar based forecasts at the scale of weather, which show the short term changes in Arctic pressure that are causing the latitudinal shifts in jet stream must be directly solar forced. The sheer volume alone of hindcasts that I can provide at weekly to monthly scales, e.g. 350yrs worth through CET by itself adequate to show that the solar linkage must be there at these scales. I know that the correlations are easily robust enough to be taken seriously by Leif if he were to take a look, including my latest findings on solar cycle phase catastrophe every 10 solar cycles, which does agree with his periodic analysis.
Any one can immediately see by adding a short visual gap in the latest HADCRUT global average data set how our postwar C02 burst witnessed a variation in temperature that was no different than the one before it:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1955/to:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1895/to:1950
“Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.”
Technically true, but totally worthless. This kind of statement should not be allowed in a serious journal, but I guess that’s why it’s in Nature.
How about some numbers, what is the trend in warming they expect to continue?
I and many other have been saying this for years. That this quasi-cyclical warming means that feedbacks to warming can’t be nearly as high as believed. Probably half.
That is what can easily be inferred from this paper, but not only do they seem to avoid it, they use language that suggests the large warminging will happen. But warming much higher that the very benificial warming we’ve experience already is all but impossible.
That is the hope. But even now I see them trying to weasel out of it.
Natural variability accounting for half to somewhat more than half actually makes perfect sense. CO_2 probably does not have zero warming effect (and what effect it has is still swamped by the error bars the authors give honestly enough on the right) but it was always clear that it was (probably) not responsible for most of it. 0.2 C plus or minus 0.2 C over forty years would seem about right, suggesting moderate negative feedback, which is just the ticket to create a reasonably stable climate system. Of course this small a rise is literally lost in the noise of natural variability and could be anywhere from 0 to slightly OVER half the warming and still easily be within error bars, especially when all sources of natural variability are not taken into account.
Now, of course, warmistas will assert that this is just one model, while there are thirty or forty GCMs that show extreme CO_2 linked warming and that also agree decently with at least part of this data (but which, perhaps, do not account for ENSO correctly). Surely with (say) forty to one showing warming, warming wins, right?
Not at all. As I’ve been hammering home on this blog ever since I read AR4’s summary for policy makers in some detail, the average of 40 models that individually fail and hence can be rejected in favor of the null hypothesis when compared to actual data is a statistically meaningless average of 40 failed models. One successful model is worth more than 40 thousand failed models, no matter how small the “standard deviation” of the failed model average gets.
We can now get out the popcorn and watch the proponents of the failed models try to convince the general scientific community (and themselves!) that even though the entire ensemble of results produced by their model(s) one at a time lies 95% or more outside of reality, those models are correct where a model that also contains the same physics but happens to agree with the data is incorrect. An excellent test for the honesty of the community compared to its political and economic polarization.
Note well, even the model above almost certainly fails to capture the climate. We are well into von Neumann’s trunk wiggling regime, and there are factors such as the hypothesized magnetic solar connection that are omitted from the GCMs (and, I imagine, from the models above) that could have a further effect. For example, it is by no means impossible that these effects are responsible for some fraction of the residual rise, say another 0.1 to 0.2 C. That doesn’t make the fractional split of 0.2 CO_2 to 0.4 C natural wrong per se, because all of these components are smaller than the error bars and model dependent, and there are many ways to fit the data, but it is just another way that the “natural component” could either be underestimated or be multivariate — perhaps ENSO is in some roundabout way driven by the solar magnetic state and associated cloud cover.
The truly amazing thing is that the paper is published in Nature. What a turnaround! It will be very, very difficult to ignore, and given that the climate community is in a state of shock as it is trying to pretend that the current neutral trend doesn’t really exist, given that (in my opinion) most scientists really do try to be honest, although as humans they can be honestly mistaken, honestly allow bias into their considerations, honestly give too much weight to the voice of the herd, it is quite possible that we will see rapidly widening cracks in the facade of unanimity.
rgb
The climate liars needed a way to explain the warming “pause”. For them, CAGW has simply been postponed, giving us a bit of time to work on what they will claim is still a serious problem. My guess is that they will use a kitchen sink approach, throwing in volcanoes, manmade aerosols, and even the “hiding heat” in addition to ENSO. In the meantime, they still have the extreme weather, melting arctic, hotspots, and other climate nonsense with which to try to keep the CAGW anti-science alive.
The science is slowly becoming more objective.
This result has always been obvious to anyone who looked at the issue objectively.
But whenever a climate scientist took this step, they found global warming was only 25% to 50% of what they projected so they just had to drop it and move on to some other disaster scenario/projection.
This movement actually prevents the scientists involved from facing the facts.
If we take this paper at face value, we can only conclude that we’d currently be in another Little Ice Age but for global warming.
So thank God for global warming. 😉
Look, I am not a climate modeler, and I don’t even play one on TV, but I am an environmental chemist….
It seems to me that someone here would have sufficient expertise to design a climate model that would incorporate the following factors:
1. ENSO variations from 1950 to present.
2. Solar cycle amplitude variations from 1950 to present.
3. Aerosol and other fine-particulate variations from 1950 to present (whether natural [volcanic], or anthropogenic).
4. AMO variations from 1950 to present.
This model would NOT EVEN INCLUDE (to begin with), CO2 variations from 1950 to present AT ALL.
In my humble opinion, a model simply incorporating the 4 main factors I listed above would probably give a correlation coefficient of > 0.95 to the actual temperature variations that we have seen from 1950 to present, thus showing that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are statistically insignificant. I am sure that someone more knowledgeable than I could easily come up with a few more minor (non-CO2) factors to refine the model even further, but I suspect the 4 factors I mentioned might even be sufficient.
If such a model could be designed, and it could be accepted for publication in a reputable journal, it would be an instantaneous death-blow to the whole CAGW meme. Frankly I am shocked that some reputable scientists have not attempted to do this, but then again, coming up with the necessary funding would probably be extremely difficult if not impossible. Also, getting such a paper through the “peer review” (lol) process at any “reputable” (lol again) journal might also be extremely difficult if not impossible due to the current sad state of “science” when it comes to anything climate-related.
I am suddenly reminded of Aaksofu:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
The equatorial Pacific ocean is the same temperature today that it was 1850.
It has an oscillation of +/- 2.5C but the neutral temp level of 27.5C (Nino 3.4 region) has not changed in 163 years.
Why is that? It only happens to be the most important region on the planet in terms of influencing the climate so it is an important question.
I still like Stephen Wilde’s “NCM” the best. It just seems logical and realistic.
I would like to see someone scientifically debunk it.
There is a great deal of excellent discussion/hypothesis’ brought forth here in the comments.
There are many possible/likely factors that contribute to changes in climate and likely all brought up here have varying magnitudes of influence at different times. It’s a completely chaotic environment. It will most likely never be “modeled” with any degree of accuracy as claimed by the so-called “climate scientists”. But it is fascinating to follow the various hypothesis that are presented. Let me toss in Willis’ thermostat hypothesis to the mix for good measure.
CO2 doesn’t seem to play much of a role here, even the trolls tread lightly with that regard. It may eventually be concluded that its radiative properties toward the earth surface are offset by the same amount to space and therefore a wash.
I don’t know the answers and I don’t think anyone does but the discussion certainly takes up a lot of my time. Inquiring minds need to know!
“…natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming.” Well, who would of thunk it? The AGW Skeptics, that’s who. Haven’t we been saying this for over 20 years now? I know I have! The evidence for it has been there all along.
Let us warmly welcome all mainstream climate scientists back to reality.
Question for everybody out there that thinks greenhouse gases have little or no effect.
When will the cooling start?
Right now I agree we are paused and this paper points to why; however, shouldn’t we really be cooling if there no AGW?
James, what has been the average decadal warming, globally, for the past 90 years? I’ve dropped the cyclical low period of the 1880s and chosen a cyclical high period. Just cherry picking like alarmists.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/figure-37.png
PeterB and Correction to comment on 28/9.34pm
The first part of the quote from the conclusions from my blogpost at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
should read
“To summarise- Using the 60 and 1000 year quasi repetitive patterns in conjunction with the solar data leads straightforwardly to the following reasonable predictions for Global SSTs”
Peter at this time we need to abandon the modelling approach for a pattern recognition method linked to in the earlier comment.Further modelling just leads to epicycle type adjustments to preserve the basic assumptions of the model- in this case the idea that CO2 is the main climate driver.
OK, so if the HIST trace is supposed to be just the CO2 forcing, without the ENSO, why does it only diverge in the last 15ish years. It should also diverge on the low side in 1998 dramatically. Since it doesn’t I can’t really give any credibility to this paper.
ENSO has not caused the recovery from the LIA since this recovery is an oscillation of century timescale, while ENSO is a decadal scale oscillation. The LIA recovery must be tied to a different oscillation related to deep ocean THC. Maybe linked to bipolar seesawing and interhemispheric heat piracy.
What if the century scale (MWP-LIA-now) oscillation and the ENSO-linked PDO/AMO oscillations both peak at about the same time, i.e. now? We could be at the crest of the big drop on the roller-coaster.
(But we might not be.)
Judy’s numbers are almost identical to a computation I made a few days ago (.28 vs .30 net warming from GHGs).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/20/when-somebody-hits-you-with-that-new-ipcc-is-95-certain-talking-point-show-them-this/#comment-1395786
The bottom line is ENSO is the reason we have seen the most recent warming and the switch to the cool PDO has led to more La Niña events and now we are cooling. This is what Bob Tisdale has been describing for years. He has explained that La Niña is a recharge mode while El Niño is a heat release mode.
What happens over many decades is an extension of this short term phenomena. When you have predominately El Niño episodes the oceans are releasing heat on average for the entire period. This occurs during a +PDO cycle. The opposite occurs during -PDO cycles. The oceans start storing up heat for the next cycle. This means we should be seeing an increase in ocean heat content for many years. The alarmists will scream that this is part of climate change. However, what they don’t realize is that the oceans have been releasing heat during the recent +PDO cycle.
It’s too bad we don’t have any reliable data of historic OHC. I think it would allow a much better analysis of the heat flow.
We all seem to have different dates for when the PDO modes have ran. I prefer 1975-1976 as the start of the warm mode and 2005-2007 as the end. This would mean a cool PDO until at least 2035. However, there will be a few El Niño events during this stretch. The alarmists will jump on the first one as proof of man made global warming.
Phlogiston The suggestion that the current peak possibly marks a conjunction of the 60 and 1000 year cycles is the basis for the forecast referred to in my earlier comments and on various posts at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
eyesonu says:
August 29, 2013 at 6:34 am
…
CO2 doesn’t seem to play much of a role here, even the trolls tread lightly with that regard. It may eventually be concluded that its radiative properties toward the earth surface are offset by the same amount to space and therefore a wash.
Indeed – in this context it may be significant that while AGW radiative models typically employ a Narnia-Diskworld flat earth disk, taking account of the earth’s sphericity leads to more outward than inward radiation from any atmospheric radiation sources.
James Cross says:
August 29, 2013 at 6:35 am
Question for everybody out there that thinks greenhouse gases have little or no effect.
When will the cooling start?
Right now I agree we are paused and this paper points to why; however, shouldn’t we really be cooling if there no AGW?
The cooling has already started as is evident in the RSS data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/to/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend/plot/rss/from:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/to:2005/trend
Notice the blue line going down since 2005. We have just started going downhill. BTW, this is also verified by CERES and AIRS that have measured a reduction in OLR (another proxy for temperature).
James Cross says:August 29, 2013 at 6:35 am
Question: if greenhouse gases have little effect, why do you expect it to be cooling? That assumption merely ascribes cause to something else. We don’t have to know the alternative if it is not GWG, but we might figure it out. One can’t solve a problem if one assumes it is what it is not.
@ Dr. Norman Page,
I agree that pattern recognition is perhaps the most obvious method for predicting “what the climate will do” since it is a quasi-cyclic non-linear coupled chaotic system. The nature of the system does make it quite difficult to model; however, simply in recognizing that there are patterns which can be recognized and these patterns seem to be repetitious over various cycle periods, it leads me to believe that the system could be modeled with a somewhat reasonable degree of accuracy, were the model to be well-designed (which I don’t believe that the current models are).
All of that being said, as I said in my previous post, I am not a climate modeler, nor really do I have any expertise in any area of modeling, so I may be “talking out of my a**” here, although I certainly don’t intend to be doing so.
If you throw in variations in Earth’s orbit and variations in Earth’s axial tilt, along with the four factors I mentioned in my previous post, I think the patterns which are “recognizable” could potentially be modeled pretty accurately, but my thinking so does not necessarily equate to the reality of being able to do it.
I guess I am curious, if you recognize the patterns, and believe that the patterns have predictive value, do you believe that the patterns could at least be potentially modeled with some accuracy?
@ phlogiston
” interhemispheric heat piracy”
I am pretty sure that the World Court at the Hague has declared that to be against international law.
Richard M.
Reminds me of a deer scarer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishi-odoshi
Heat accumulates like water in the bamboo tube. When it reaches a certain level, the tube tips and empties the water.
If AGW is correct, I would expect the cycles to be faster and some accumulated warming to persist while the cycle is recharging. We would get a overall warming if we look over many cycles but nothing like the extrapolation of the last warming cycle as it seems most of the models do. This would be like the low sensitivity model that Steve McIntyre posted about a month or so ago.
rgbatduke says:
“Natural variability accounting for half to somewhat more than half actually makes perfect sense. CO_2 probably does not have zero warming effect..”
Putting figures to that depends on how much that water vapour already saturates the CO2 LIR absorptions bands, and also not forgetting CO2 has less heat capacity that dry air, and absorbs solar near infra-red in some bands.
Dr Norman Page says:
August 29, 2013 at 7:13 am
Phlogiston The suggestion that the current peak possibly marks a conjunction of the 60 and 1000 year cycles is the basis for the forecast referred to in my earlier comments and on various posts at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
Oh. Thanks. I need to get out more (blog-wise). BTW I’m in China and I can access WUWT but not your page – WUWT?
Richard M and Bruce Hall,
I am asking for a prediction and I don’t just mean a downturn of a trend line. I want to when we will see temperatures back to something like 1910 levels if we want to use the Bob Tisdale graph linked above. If there is no AGW, then I would expect it in 5-10 years, wouldn’t you say?
I am a luke warmer, I think there is some AGW but it has been overestimated by most climate scientists.
Jim Cross et al The warming trend peaked at about 2003.Check the cooling SST trend since then in Fig1 of the latest post at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
For an estimate of the timing and amount of cooling see earlier comments at 28/9.34 and correction at 29/7.13
James Cross says:
August 29, 2013 at 7:36 am
I am asking for a prediction and I don’t just mean a downturn of a trend line. I want to when we will see temperatures back to something like 1910 levels if we want to use the Bob Tisdale graph linked above. If there is no AGW, then I would expect it in 5-10 years, wouldn’t you say?
No, I would expect about a net global cooling around .1C in the next 5-10 years. We should also see an increase in Arctic sea ice as the AMO falls back toward the zero anomaly line. The big question mark is the sun. We will also cross a solar minimum during that period which could add a little more cooling. We also had a weak sun around the 1910 cool period. Also keep in mind that we don’t really know the reasons for the recovery from the LIA. If those mechanisms are still in place we will not reach the 1910 temperatures. There’s been over a century of warming to overcome.
Finally, there may be a very small warming due to increased GHG emissions. I think this latest work caps it at 1C/doubling of CO2. However, it is probably smaller. Overall there are still too many unknowns to make any firm predictions.
Bob Tisdale wrote:
The climate science community is actually hurting itself when they fail to answer the obvious questions.
Of course, they have, in work such as
Global temperature evolution 1979–2010
Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf 2011 Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044022
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
The current “La Nada”/ La Nina has driven Texas into a multi-year drought period. I hope it passes soon.
Although this Nada/Nina phase seems to be pretty darn good at suppressing hurricane activity……
PeterB The key is your statement about the models being well designed.They could be designed much better than the current IPCC Met Office set- but I don’t think the current crop of modellers are psychologically and professionally able to acknowledge their gross errors of judgement and start over .Therefore for the next 5 years or so other approaches are the better way ahead.
PeterB in Indianapolis says:
August 29, 2013 at 7:20 am
@ phlogiston
” interhemispheric heat piracy”
I am pretty sure that the World Court at the Hague has declared that to be against international law.
South-North ocean heat piracy is currently conducted by Atlantic Equatorial Counter-current which becomes the Carribean current. Will the Hague join the pursuit of Jack Sparrow?
Seidov, D. and Maslin, M. (2001), Atlantic ocean heat piracy and the bipolar climate see-saw during Heinrich and Dansgaard–Oeschger events. J. Quaternary Sci., 16: 321–328. doi: 10.1002/jqs.595
Abstract
The millennial-scale asynchrony of Antarctic and Greenland climate records during the last glacial period implies that the global climate system acts as a bipolar see-saw driven by either high-latitudinal and/or near-equatorial sea-surface perturbations. Based on the results of recent modelling of generic Heinrich and Dansgaard–Oeschger scenarios, we discuss the possibility that oscillations of the deep-ocean conveyor may have been sufficient to cause this bipolar see-saw. The bipolar climate asynchrony in our scenarios is caused by the toggle between North Atlantic heat piracy and South Atlantic counter heat piracy. Ocean circulation has an enhanced sensitivity to the northern deep-water source as the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) cannot enter the Southern Ocean at depths shallower than the bottom of the Drake Passage. Any shoaling of the NADW can, therefore, increase the northward incursion of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), and trigger an interhemispheric climate oscillation. As hundreds of years are required to warm the respective high latitudes, the observed climate lead and lags between the two hemispheres can be explained entirely by the variability of the meridional overturning and by the corresponding change in the oceanic heat transport. Accordingly, it is entirely feasible for the global climate to work like a pendulum, which theoretically could be controlled by pushing at either of the deep-water sources. Our model scenarios suggest that it is entirely feasible for the bipolar climate see-saw to be controlled solely by variations in NADW formation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
James Cross says:
August 29, 2013 at 7:36 am
If there is no AGW, then I would expect it in 5-10 years, wouldn’t you say
====
Why would it be any different……normal uptics…when the overall trend is down
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo3.png
rgbatduke says:
August 29, 2013 at 5:29 am
Going to have to disagree with you there: I can’t say that I’ve read every one of your replies the past three years, but I have missed very few.
You may have “been hammering on” this topic for a while, but, no, you have never expressed a summary of the fundamental problems with the CAGW models so thoroughly, so directly and so clearly as you have above!
Excellent and very effective explanation of the major points involved.
Great graph you got there, Latitude.
Numbers on the bottom, numbers on the side, and a squiggly line. No labeling of what the numbers represent (years and temperature, maybe?) or where the data came from.
James Cross says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:00 am
Great graph you got there, Latitude.
Numbers on the bottom, numbers on the side, and a squiggly line. No labeling of what the numbers represent (years and temperature, maybe?) or where the data came from.
===============
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
James Cross:
I am responding to your series of posts at
August 29, 2013 at 6:35 am
August 29, 2013 at 7:21 am
August 29, 2013 at 7:36 am
August 29, 2013 at 9:00 am.
The content of that series induces me to think you are attempting to divert the thread from its subject; i.e. you are trolling.
However, the first post in your series does slightly relate to the subject of this thread so I will address that with a view to avoiding further distraction from the subject.
Your post at August 29, 2013 at 6:35 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1402796
says in total
NO!
The lack of any discernible AGW provides no reason to assume we should “really be cooling” or that cooling will “start”, although it may.
The world has been warming from the Little Ice Age for centuries at a rate of ~0.8°C per century for centuries. The cause of this warming is not known but it certainly cannot be anthropogenic (i.e. from human) emissions of greenhouse gases.
There is no observed alteration of that warming from the LIA so it may be continuing. If so, then warming will resume until global temperature becomes similar to the global temperature of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP).
Can we now return to the subject of the thread, please?
Richard
The Cause that represses.
Given the strong correlation, any chance ENSO influence can be removed to show the true impact of man made green house gas emissions? Or are they claiming some sort of feedback loop between the two?
pworam says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:48 am
Given the strong correlation, any chance ENSO influence can be removed to show the true impact of man made green house gas emissions? Or are they claiming some sort of feedback loop between the two?
That is what Judy Curry did to come up with the .28C value. Or, around .05C/decade. Note this very close to the basic physics of Co2 without feedbacks.
Oh – Okay, thanks! So it’s pretty much nothing, or something that would get lost within the noise anyway?
@ Dr Norman Page
“PeterB The key is your statement about the models being well designed.They could be designed much better than the current IPCC Met Office set- but I don’t think the current crop of modellers are psychologically and professionally able to acknowledge their gross errors of judgement and start over .Therefore for the next 5 years or so other approaches are the better way ahead.”
Ok, I get that, but the point of my original post was to try to cajole someone here that had a modeling background into designing their own model – thereby avoiding the gross errors in judgement and effectively starting over. Rather than wait for the next 5 years or so, I would certainly think that someone reading this blog would have the willingness and expertise to completely design a new climate model and attempt to do so properly 🙂
@Colin Aug 28, 2013 at 6:40 pm:
“Wow, ENSO has a massive influence on global temperature? Thank you, Captain Obvious! You can be paid for telling people this? This is getting more and more like the ‘battle’ against Heliocentrisim centuries ago; the proponents of AGW are pouring forth increasingly ludicrous reasons and theories…”
You can tell how wrong someone’s premise is by the size of the crowbar used to keep their paradigm in the game. In a formal debate it would be measured by how bizarre their logic gets.
Janice Moore says: @ August 28, 2013 at 9:04 pm
Ulric Lyons (not joking at 8:40pm),
Would you please provide some Leif Svalgaard-proof data proving your assertion that there is a “Sun signal”?….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How about Dr. Richard Feynman’s sister, Dr. Joan Feynman’s paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research?
NASA even had that paper as a pop article NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
Or how about another physicist, Niv Shaviv?
Actual paper: Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing
( Journal of Geophysical Research)
Articles at his website:
The oceans as a calorimeter
His articles on Cosmic Rays: link
His articles on solar ‘Forcing’ link
Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing?
There are plenty of other papers too: look at Pop Techs 1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm under the catagories of:
Solar
Cosmic Rays
Clouds
…….
Just because Svalgaard controls the conversation here at WUWT does not mean there is no other research or scientific opinions out there.
PeterB in Indianapolis:
In your post at August 29, 2013 at 10:10 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1402944
you say
Models are essential to the conduct of science so every scientist has “a modeling background”.
The model you suggest requires a supercomputer.
Do you have a supercomputer that can be used?
And can you fund the work?
If your answer to those questions is, yes, then many – including me – would do it.
Richard
@Theo Goodwin Aug 28, 2013 at 9:09 pm:
To be honest, this is the very first paper (or blog post even) I’ve seen that has attempted to determine the proportions of natural vs anthropogenic. Pardon the emphasis, but: This sort of determination should have been done way back in the late 1980s.
It is utterly pathetic – for their side – that this has never been done before. Almost everybody on the skeptics’ side has understood this from the first pitch of the top of the first inning:
YES, humans have contributed – but you dolts over there imagining that natural variation wasn’t part of it – what were you THINKING?
Anthony –
Not being able to read the paper, I have to ask:
How the authors were able to separate human CO2 from natural CO2 increases/variations?
The Mona Loa CO2 curve is essentially a straight line (allowing for its zigzags), while human CO2 is NOT. With global temps weaving up and down, the overall CO2 increase cannot be read as solely anthropogenic within what this paper seems to be looking at.
“ Janice Moore says:
August 28, 2013 at 9:04 pm
Ulric Lyons (not joking at 8:40pm),
Would you please provide some Leif Svalgaard-proof data proving your assertion that there is a “Sun signal”? What data shows it was “strong” and over what time period(s)? What data shows it was “weak” and over what time period(s)?
Until you do, most of us (I think) will not highly value your assertion much as we might want to. Dr. Svalgaard (and Pamela Gray and many others, here) have done a fine job of convincing many of us that there is no meaningful mechanism that shows that the Sun drives global temperature. We (I, anyway) would be very interested to see your data and proofs of a Sun-driver mechanism.
Thanks for responding. I won’t, BTW, be responding to you, for I am not a scientist, but, Pamela Gray and Dr. Svalgaard and others will if you present your case clearly and completely. Then, people like me can learn!
Waiting for your evidence.
Janice
Janice, I would refer you (and Pamela and Leif et al) to Nir Shaviv’s paper:
“Using the Oceans as a Calorimeter to Quantify the Solar Radiative Forcing
“Abstract.
Over the 11-year solar cycle, small changes in the total solar irradiance (TSI) give rise
to small variations in the global energy budget. It was suggested, however, that different
mechanisms could amplify solar activity variations to give large climatic effects, a
possibility which is still a subject of debate. With this in mind, we use the oceans as
a calorimeter to measure the radiative forcing variations associated with the solar cycle.
This is achieved through the study of three independent records, the net heat flux
into the oceans over 5 decades, the sea level change rate based on tide gauge records over
the 20th century, and the sea surface temperature variations. Each of the records can
be used to consistently derive the same oceanic heat flux. We find that the total radiative
forcing associated with solar cycles variations is about 5 to 7 times larger than just
those associated with the TSI variations, thus implying the necessary existence of an
amplification mechanism, though without pointing to which one.”
http://www.sciencebits.com/files/articles/CalorimeterFinal.pdf
Denying something exists due to ignorance of a mechanism is as bad as blaming changes in atmospheric temperature on CO2 due to ignorance of any other mechanism.
@richardscourtney,
Well, I am an environmental chemist, but my background is more analytical and less theoretical, so modeling is definitely not my thing, although I do have an understanding of modeling in the sciences, of course.
As to the supercomputer and the funding – alas, no, I have none of these things, and as I said in my original post from this morning, I strongly suspect that funding for the research and a “reputable” outlet to publish the results would be difficult to come by given the current state of “climate science”, which is, of course, a shame.
jorgekafkazar says: @ August 28, 2013 at 11:28 pm
My pet theory is this, Pamela: Although TSI is essentially constant, solar UV content varies over a range of several percent. At its peak, solar UV raises the temperature and thickness of the thermosphere significantly….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Do not forget that UV changes are linked to ozone changes too. I went through the information in two comments to Pamela on August 18th. link 1 and link 2 However Svalgaard’s (and Pamela’s) reply was This shows your failure to communicate effectively. Oneself is the poorest judge of such things. If your audience does not get it, it is your fault, not theirs…. so I hope you can follow the linked information.
Oh and just to put the cat among the pigeons, this paper was mentioned further down the comments:
That rug is really really getting lumpy and the lumps just refuse to stay under the rug too. (Here kitty, kitty, kitty…)
Thank you Bob and Richard for your comments,
I concede that this paper may be socially important because it appeared in Nature, which has credibility with the global warming alarmist camp but, I submit, the paper has limited scientific credibility with those who bring a moderate degree of objectivity to the global warming debate.
I suggest that previous papers in Nature on CAGW science have been almost completely wrong, and this paper is only about half-wrong. 🙂
Specifically, I submit that the evidence indicates that CO2 is responsible for much less than 50% of the observed global warming from about 1975 to about 2000.
So I remain unimpressed by this paper – it is significant only as a political event, a change in Nature’s political position, and is not of scientific significance.
Best personal regards, Allan
Stephen Wilde says: August 29, 2013 at 1:18 am
Thank you Stephen for your reply.
How to you explain the following lack of congruity between the Gleissberg and the PDO?
I wrote above:
The PDO cycle is irregular but is approximately 60 years in duration – say 30 years of warming dominated by El Nino’s and 30 years of cooling dominated by La Nina’s. And that not in phase with the solar Gleissberg Cycle which is approximately 90 years in duration.
Regards, Allan
Allan MacRae:
I am replying to your post at August 29, 2013 at 11:07 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1402998
I admit that I am using this reply to your post as an excuse to emphasise why I think the paper of Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie is important both for understanding climate change and – importantly – for the forthcoming IPCC Report (AR5).
Your post begins saying
Actually, my post you are replying agrees with both your opinions I have here quoted.
My post you have replied was at August 29, 2013 at 2:45 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1402693
It made and explained these two statements which – in my opinion – AGW-skeptics need to consider.
And
Richard
Steve Garcia,
Apparently, Alarmists believed that they could produce enough seemingly relevant research to persuade the public to tax air and they believed they could do it without first doing the science.
On the other hand, maybe they have been truly obsessed with radiation. They seem to think that the only natural processes that matter are those involving radiation among the sun, the earth, and CO2 in earth’s atmosphere.
Yes, the recognition of natural processes such as ENSO by climate modelers is a game changer.
Hmmmmmmn.
So, Dr Svallgaard:
You state above – very firmly I might add – that
But the pdf file you linked supporting this argument doesn’t know the values of ANY constants they assign in their model within little more than an entire order of magnitude!
Worse, they “blindly accept” the IPCC’s assigned feedbacks and CO2_warming forcing as a basic in their calculation. Now, who were the pal-reviewers in this chain of assumptions? Is this paper worth more than the CAGW-induced, inflation-reduced value of the 4×4 squares of paper in my other room?
Gail Combs The Shaviv paper you linked to in your 10.16 post above should be required reading for Leif and Pamela and all who doubt the sun climate connection.
Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing
Sedron L says: “Of course, they have, in work such as
Global temperature evolution 1979–2010
Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf 2011 Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044022”
You’ve presented the much-flawed Foster and Rahmstorf as proof of something? First, the above paper contradicts Foster and Rahmstorf. Obviously, you didn’t understand that. Second, years ago, we discussed why ENSO cannot be removed after determining coefficients through regression analysis:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/revised-post-on-foster-and-rahmstorf-2011/
Even your beloved SkepticalScience now argues against Foster and Rahmstof (2011):
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/skepticalscience-now-argues-against-foster-rahmsorf-2011/
Have a nice day.
James Cross says: “I want to when we will see temperatures back to something like 1910 levels if we want to use the Bob Tisdale graph linked above. If there is no AGW, then I would expect it in 5-10 years, wouldn’t you say?”
How would the oceans release that much heat in 5-10 years, James Cross? It took them more than 100 years to store it and the oceans primarily release heat through evaporation. Are you expecting a lot of rain over the next 5-10 years?
Waclimate …the ABC (Australia) clearly states “point two degrees” …..the ABC clearly can’t help itself ……
cd says: “I guess the take home message is that the models suggest that more 50% of the late 20th century warming was due to natural variability is good news. But surely, these models have all the same limitations set out by Prof. C Essex. Therefore, unless we actually test these models outside their training sets they have no real value – they’re just a hypothesis. Why should there be any excitement whatsoever.”
The reason for the excitement is that, as far as I know, this is the first paper that has reported (indirectly) that ENSO may have contributed a large portion to global warming. The two Meehl et al papers only noted that it can retard it. I haven’t read Kosaka and Xie (2013) because of the paywall, so I don’t know how, or of, they addressed the AMO as well.
Granted, all climate models are flawed, but this is a step in the right direction.
James Cross says: … August 29, 2013 at 6:35 am
Right now I agree we are paused and this paper points to why; however, shouldn’t we really be cooling if there no AGW?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How the heck would we know if we have started cooling with the historical data mucked-up?
There are some other indications of possible cooling:
Koppen Climate Boundaryfor Midwest USA
Recovery of Arctic Ice:
DMI Temp
DMI Sea Ice
Long term Glaciation (articles about papers)
Himalaya Glaciers Growing
Norway Experiencing Greatest Glacial Activity in the past 1000 years
Volume changes on Pio XI glacier, Patagonia: 1975–1995… During the period 1945–1995 it experienced a net advance of ca. 10 km
Partial list of the specific glaciers that are growing
Greenland Snow Accumulation (Graph)
Northern Hemisphere Snow (graphs 1965 till last winter)
October 2012
November 2012
December 2012
January 2013
February 2013
USA Record Temperatures:
2899 record cold vs 667 record high in USA from 7/24 to 8/21/2013
2/3 of USA below normal temperature 1/01/2013 to 8/04/2013
Mildest US Summer In A Century
This is why the
Propaganda OutletsNews Media had to finally own-up to ‘The Pause’ If they did not they would have lost all credibility especilly given the internet can tell you that the cold at home is not a one off because this is the coldest July on record in Anchorage, Alaska and More than 250,000 alpacas die of cold and snow (Peru) and 24,142 animals and 50 people killed due to excessive rain and snow (India) and Rare summer snowfall in Xinjiang, China and Tasmania – Coldest August day in 41 years and New Zealand – Heaviest snowfall in years closes main road thru central North Island Not to mention the UK has had the Coldest Spring in 50 years, according to the Met Office. Ireland – 43,000 carcasses found in snowBob Tisdale says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:24 pm
“How would the oceans release that much heat in 5-10 years, James Cross? It took them more than 100 years to store it and the oceans primarily release heat through evaporation. Are you expecting a lot of rain over the next 5-10 years?”
Virginia and the region have had that much rain this year. I swear it has rained every day. Our bumper crop is mold. (I am not trying to offer actual evidence.)
@Theo Goodwin – I can show you some awesome mushrooms! 😉
Roy Spencer beat them to it by a year or so. Of course, he’s persona non grata, so he was ignored:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008YWJMPA/ref=oh_d__o08_details_o08__i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
They are saying a natural event such as ENSO has been responsible for almost all of the temperature variations, which proves (sorry AGW theory) AGW theory is invalid.
According to AGW theory not only are natural causes not to be the prime movers of the climate but actually the man made co2 /watervapor positive feedbacks would create a condition that would favor more El Ninos going forward adding to the warmth.
So this study shows natural forces not man made co2 drives the climate and further it proves AGW theory wrong once again, which said one of the results from man made global warming would be a siginificant increase in El Ninos, due to the positive co2/water vapor feedback which they contended was tied into their missing lower troposheric hot spot near the equator, which is also missing in action.
Wrong again as usual.
Steve Garcia writes:
“To be honest, this is the very first paper (or blog post even) I’ve seen that has attempted to determine the proportions of natural vs anthropogenic. Pardon the emphasis, but: This sort of determination should have been done way back in the late 1980s.
It is utterly pathetic – for their side – that this has never been done before. Almost everybody on the skeptics’ side has understood this from the first pitch of the top of the first inning:
YES, humans have contributed – but you dolts over there imagining that natural variation wasn’t part of it – what were you THINKING?”
It seems to me that Steve’s point is incredibly important. The climate modeling community has some serious explaining to do. I hope that Willis Eschenbach or some regular will do a major post on this topic.
PeterB in Indianapolis says….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Don’t forget the effects of the moon’s tidal pull. It is not just East-West.
http://ansatte.hials.no/hy/climate/defaultEng.htm
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/can-the-moon-change-our-climate-can-tides-in-the-atmosphere-solve-the-mystery-of-enso/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/lunar-resonance-and-taurid-storms/
Henry Clark says: August 28, 2013 at 9:17 pm
http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif
In the “correlation does not equal causation but it’s one heck of a good place to start” I side with you. The correlation is obvious to me at least. I’ve read both sides of the debate on this site and find it very interesting (and scientific method following).
There may be some test that disproves the galactic cosmic ray model but so far it is in the lead (IMHO) as to explanations of climate.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Of course you’re correct that back in the 1980s, “climate scientists”, in order to behave like real scientists, should have shown false the null hypothesis that climate change remained primarily natural, as had been the case for the previous 4.55 billion years of earth history.
Then as now, I was unable to find any actual scientific evidence supporting a large anthropogenic fingerprint, let alone the 90% imagined by IPCC fantasists.
Here is cosmoclimatologist Dr. Nir J. Shaviv’s 2006 attempt to separate man-made from natural warming over the past century:
http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolarHYPERLINK
IMO there is little or no reason to assume that the human component will dominate over the next century, as he did. But observations, if they can be made objectively without books-cooking “adjustments”, in coming decades will show whose predictions are valid.
But in any case, should global warming or cooling resume later this century (from flatness of recent past), its degree won’t be catastrophic, whether the man-made contribution be ten percent or ninety. Assuming such presumptive warming or cooling can even be measured within margin of error.
Thank you Richard for your excellent comments.
Steve Garcia says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:21 am
YES, humans have contributed – but you dolts over there imagining that natural variation wasn’t part of it – what were you THINKING?
————————————————————
ka-ching ka-ching
Theo Goodwin says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:40 pm
YES, humans have contributed – but you dolts over there imagining that natural variation wasn’t part of it – what were you THINKING?”
=====
Theo, don’t berate them for finally discovering the PDO….
..they might dig their heels in and never discover the AMO
milodonharlani says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:54 pm
Very well said. My simple opinion is that the Alarmists thought they could persuade the public of CAGW without doing the science. As inevitably happens, they are being hoisted on their own inconsistencies. Their investigation of natural regularities has been sorely lacking from the very beginning and remains so. In my humble opinion, there has never been evidence for dangerous global warming.
Latitude says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:19 pm
Cute. Try this one: after some reflection and consultation with the like minded, they throw Kosaka and Xie under the nearest bus.
…and no fair giving them clues either!….LOL
richardscourtney
Re your comment at
August 29, 2013 at 10:21 am
About needing a super computer, yep we do. But what if we do it the same way as say seti@home has been via distributed computing effort. Perhaps via BIONC?
Theo Goodwin says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:21 pm
CACA was also a convenient for statists conclusion jumped to without even the still highly limited understanding of the earth’s air, sea & land climate systems. The question was declared “settled” long before even the PDO & AMO were discovered for instance, by real scientists not consensus GIGO model climate scammers.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
They are saying a natural event such as ENSO has been responsible for almost all of the temperature variations, which proves (sorry AGW theory) AGW theory is invalid.
In fact, they aren’t saying that at all.
HarveyS:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at August 29, 2013 at 1:34 pm
It says in total
OK. I will give my answer and I ask you to recognise my answer is an honest statement of my ignorance: it is not an attempt to avoid your suggestion.
Replicating what has been done but adopting different understandings and assumptions is clearly possible. Many people (including me) could do it if provided with the needed supercomputer and the funds to employ relevant and competent programmers. System development and testing could be modular and progressive.
However, establishing a distributed computing operation is a very different enterprise. It requires much specialist computer science (that e.g. I don’t have) and little testing would be possible prior to initiation of the system but the entire system would need to work first time. That is very ambitious and, for example, the BBC failed in the attempt when the BBC used its university and Met. Office contacts to do something similar.
Hence, I lack knowledge to give serious consideration of your suggestion, but the little I do know tells me your suggestion would not be easy.
I would welcome comment from people knowledgeable in computer science because I think your suggestion may have merit if it could be done. Also, the existence of the WUWT ‘community’ affords the possibility of such a distributed activity.
Richard
Ian W says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:31 am
“Janice, I would refer you (and Pamela and Leif et al) to…”
You probably missed my point, which is correlations to the solar signal at the scales of weather. At this scale we can get very convincing evidence of solar forcing, with huge volumes of hindcasts available. And also show solar forcing of teleconnections that are assumed to be internal variations.
to richardscourtney
August 29, 2013 at 1:57 pm.
Thank you for your response. I think it it was more of a thought rather than a suggestion. As much to remove the need for the supercomputer.
I did for a living work as DB admin/designer and wrote for the front ends for those DB’s. So do have some experence 🙂
What we would need as far I understand it.
“The main requirement of the application is that it be divisible into a large number (thousands or millions) of jobs that can be done independently.
The BOINC server software is extremely efficient, so that a single mid-range server can dispatch and handle millions of jobs per day. The server architecture is also highly scalable, making it easy to increase server capacity or availability by adding more machines.
BOINC supports applications that produce or consume large amounts of data, or that use large amounts of memory. Data distribution and collection can be spread across many servers, and participant hosts transfer large data unobtrusively. Users can specify limits on disk usage and network bandwidth. Work is dispatched only to hosts able to handle it. ”
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/BoincIntro
So the basic question would be could we ( not me not that good i dont think), write a model so that the processing is split into chunks?
HarveyS:
Thankyou for your post at August 29, 2013 at 3:08 pm.
You conclude
Well, I certainly could not, and it is up to other members of the WUWT community to offer if they could and are willing.
However, i and others (rgb@Duke comes to mind) could define the requirements of the model.
Richard
CO2 doesn’t seem to play much of a role here, even the trolls tread lightly with that regard. It may eventually be concluded that its radiative properties toward the earth surface are offset by the same amount to space and therefore a wash.
Indeed – in this context it may be significant that while AGW radiative models typically employ a Narnia-Diskworld flat earth disk, taking account of the earth’s sphericity leads to more outward than inward radiation from any atmospheric radiation sources.
The fact that it radiates the same amount to space and back to earth don’t make it a wash, that IS the greenhouse effect. It’s the “back to earth” bit that doesn’t happen without the absorptive gas layer. On the moon, for example radiation leaving the moon’s surface simply is gone, next stop infinity. Radiation leaving the earth’s surface in the LWIR bands associated with the earth’s surface temperature has a significant probability of being returned to the surface, sufficient that any IR radiometer, pointed up near the earth’s surface, will register hundreds of watts per square meter coming back down at any hour of the day or night (in addition to direct sunlight during the day). On the moon the same IR radiometer, pointed up, would read zero (in addition to direct sunlight during the day).
The direct sunlight during the day would be more intense on the moon, so it would be and is hotter in the middle latitudes. However, the AVERAGE temperature of the moon is much colder. In some part this is because of the T^4 variation Richard ably described up above — the moon also lacks active lateral transport of heat and its temperature is a lot more non-uniform than the earth’s which favors more efficient cooling. Thermal mixing by heat transport in the ocean and atmosphere contributes to warming, because the rate at which a planet cools can vary tremendously at a fixed average temperature. The rate of cooling is related to the fourth order cumulant of the temperature, where the mean is a the first order average.
There is almost no contribution from spherical geometry in a 9 km layer on top of a 6400 km radius, and what little there might be is more than offset by the DALR that is what SUPPRESSES net radiation from the CO_2 band outward. That is the gas at the top of the troposphere where it thins enough that LWIR photons have a good chance of escaping is much colder than the gas at the bottom, so its radiation rate is strongly suppressed (T^4) again.
Don’t go picking on the GHE itself, now, just because there is data suggesting that the partial derivative of the greenhouse trapping of heat with respect to CO_2 concentration may be zero to very weakly positive instead of comparatively strongly positive. There really is little doubt that the GHE is real, but it is also complex and feedbacks from increased CO_2 can easily be all or mostly negative as easily as positive. Because the problem is not separable — as this paper demonstrates if nothing else — it is very, very difficult to apportion a split between natural variations that we do not know how to a priori calculate, direct effects from increased CO_2, feedback effects from the mix of natural effects and increased CO_2, other effects from aerosols and particulates natural and otherwise, internal feedback effects that have effectively stabilized the system within a range of plus or minus perhaps 10C over hundred million year timescales while even the strength of the sun itself has varied, geographical effects, effects from the slowly varying orbital parameters of the earth, slowly varying effects from the sun itself (that may or may not have a significant impact on some subset of the above) in a nonlinear, chaotic system with highly variable timescales in non-Markovian terms that contribute to its local time evolution (that is, heat that is stored and re-released on timescales ranging from seconds to centuries acting within the system).
This one paper does not mean that we suddenly understand the climate system, in other words. There are probably dozens of models one can build that fit any sufficiently small fraction of the temperature timeseries within its (honestly computed) uncertainty. It’s the future that is the problem:
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it is about the future.” — Niels Bohr
rgb
rgb
This is why the Propaganda Outlets News Media had to finally own-up to ‘The Pause’ If they did not they would have lost all credibility especilly given the internet can tell you that the cold at home is not a one off
Impressive collection, Gail, thanks!
Not that it is a surprise. The interesting thing is that it really looks like it is a global phenomenon. One does indeed have to wonder if they haven’t finally added too many tenths of a degree C to the real temperature “anomaly” to make the absolute temperature believable.
rgb
Gail Combs,
I have never considered glaciers to be particularly good evidence for either side of the argument since they can be affected enormously by precipitation as much as temperature.
My general point is that there is some AGW effect. It might be less than many thought but it might not be completely negligible. If someone thinks it is negligible then, indeed, they need to explain when we will actually begin to cool or have a good explanation for why we are not. A pause in warming or some cold weather in various parts of the world is not evidence of cooling.
So all I was doing was to challenge anyone who thinks AGW is completely negligible to give a prediction or an explanation. I haven’t seen anyone give a solid prediction of when we will be back to close to 1910 temperature levels and some who think AGW is negligible actually seem to think warming will continue because of some unknown warming factor in a rebound from the LIA.
James Cross says:
August 29, 2013 at 4:33 pm
You wrote:
“My general point is that there is some AGW effect. It might be less than many thought but it might not be completely negligible.”
If you could demonstrate this phenomena with reproducible results, you would be on to something.
I think that rgb’s comment at 3:41 pm, neatly sum’s up why we or anyone cant model the earths climate system.
Since there is so much we dont know and much we think we know and have wrong.
We will be ever be able to model even close?, i am not sure we will, the MO cant even get a 3 day forecast correct.
philjourdan says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:34 pm
“@Theo Goodwin – I can show you some awesome mushrooms! ;-)”
Ours are the size of footballs and they pop up overnight. Mold is everywhere. Everything has a pale green patina.
richardscourtney (to HarveyS)
So the basic question would be could we ( not me not that good i dont think), write a model so that the processing is split into chunks?
Well, I certainly could not, and it is up to other members of the WUWT community to offer if they could and are willing.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Pretty much any compute problem can be broken up into “chunks” and solved through parallel processing. The techniques are well documented and they work. rgb has some background in this, he was one of the pioneers of the “beowolf cluster” and his online commentary during the formative years was so prolific that many in the HPC community theorized that he was actually someone’s artificial intelligence experiment and that no such person actually existed.
That said, crowd sourcing a supercomputer for this task is likely not practical. Massive compute tasks, ones of this type in particular, are bound not so much by the processor speed as they are by the speed at which data can be accessed from a central storage repository by the processor. When we design large compute clusters, we’re aiming for latency on the order of microseconds. A compute load spread across the internet would have latency in the dozens of milliseconds at best, thousands of times as high as what would be required for the processors to work efficiently. Same goes for MPI (message passing interface) which coordinates the workload between parallel processes…it has to be very fast or the processors wind up twiddling their thumbs 99% of the time.
Of course I could be over estimating the complexity of the model that Richard proposes to build. But anything similar in complexity to the existing models, regardless of the underlying physics, would be problematic to run across the internet.
Anthony Maybe You should do a [poll] on what people/readers feel is the biggest Climate alarmist and have the most political gain.
Just Like the one you did on the new name for climate change..
I am calling the climate alarmist a new name in my book since they call anyone a denier with a valid point, data on current/past data. New Name for the Name callers is “Anti climate evolutionist”. The earth has been going through cycles for billions of years and there is nothing they can do about it. Species, plants have all evolved for millions of year to years with the changes.
James Cross Just read my comment above at 28/9.34 and check the complete forecast at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
Pamela Gray says:
August 28, 2013 at 8:32 pm
We are still with the Solar stuff. And absolutely no mechanism. The Earth itself allows/blocks a relatively steady state Sun to shine on us. The cool waters of wind-blown La Nina/La Nada keeps clouds at bay allowing deep penetration of full strength shortwave IR radiation. The warm still waters of El Nino/El Nado builds clouds to block some of the radiation. It is the Earth that varies the input of the relatively stable sunshine.
Pamela, this begs the questions, what is the mechanism for decadal shifts in the prevalence of El Ninos? What was the mechanism for the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? What is the mechanism for long ice ages with short warm periods in between? Are these all due to a variable Earth? How can you say that with absolutely no proven mechanism?
It seems to me that the GCR Theory is more of a mechanism than anything we know about the ‘variable Earth’. It is illogical to disregard it in favor of a ‘variable Earth theory’, when we do not have a proven mechanism for either one of them!
Chances are that both the sun and the variable Earth are playing a role in our climate history. We don’t understand either one of them enough to rule out the other.
rgbatduke says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Excellent little essay. Now tell us which items among those you listed have the Alarmists chosen not to study. And why wasn’t the Kosaka and Xie study done decages ago? Unless the Alarmists throw Kosaka and Xie under the bus they have a lot of explaining to do. They could have focused on natural regularities such as ENSO decades ago and they could have come to some reasonable assignment of a fraction of warming to natural variation. They must explain why they chose not to do so.
James Cross says:
” I haven’t seen anyone give a solid prediction of when we will be back to close to 1910 temperature levels and some who think AGW is negligible actually seem to think warming will continue because of some unknown warming factor in a rebound from the LIA.”
You have to be a troll. First, you are way way off topic. Second, your statement above is really dumb. Of course warming will continue from the LIA, until it doesn’t. No one can predict anything more illuminating than that,because we still have no explaination for why it is warming. So.. one might as well accept the trend.
Just to report back on my contribution to Wikipedia on Pathological Science my comments regarding CAGW, while conforming to the definition, only lasted about 8 hours before being disappeared…..no real surprise there but this particular backwater of pseudoscience does appear presciently apt.
I admit I’m not the sharpest tool in the box, but I think I see a problem…
How can they claim that large natural cooling now (since 2000) defeats large CO2 warming now when the previous natural cooling period (1950 – 1975) (with less CO2 warming) doesn’t show any cooling?
James Cross says:
August 29, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Gail Combs,
I have never considered glaciers to be particularly good evidence for either side of the argument since they can be affected enormously by precipitation as much as temperature.
My general point is that there is some AGW effect….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First I threw in the glaciers since that, like polar bears is one of the emotional tugs. And yes precipitation as well as temperature effect growth. In that way they are like tree rings as proxies of temperature, poor. Unless they are sitting a mile high on top of NYC.
As far as an AGW effect. I think it is minor.
First I do not trust the CO2 numbers any more than I do the temperature numbers. The first ASSumption ‘Well mixed in the atmosphere’ rings my B.S. alarms since I spent a lot of my career as an industrial chemist trying to get the @#$^& blasted chemicals in batches/ continuous processes to mix and the rest of my career trying to figure a way get a representative sample.
Second the amount of CO2 from human processes is small compare with the amount going into and coming out of nature. Therefore while I can see CO2 having a greenhouse effect the human component is minor. Second it is WATER that is the elephant in the climate room not CO2. If you want to talk human influences then talk farming, irrigation, cutting down forests, paving over land for cities. My SWAG is those have a much larger effect than human generated CO2.
Last we are at the tail end of the Holocene. The solar energy hitting the earth has been reduced by ~10% compared to the Holocene optimum. link The only real question that should be asked is do we head into glaciation or are we going to luck out with a double long interglacial. “Catastrophic Global Warming” is just not on the table.
With papers like those why in heck would anyone in their right mind not want to produce more CO2?
Jim, there are lots of oceanic/atmospheric oscillations that have decades-long varying time spans. Heck, the Antarctic Circumpolar Wave takes 8 years to go around the Antarctic. And when these various oscillations rarely coincide such that they amplify each other, you can have even longer, more extreme regime shifts. That is till the energy required to maintain that double whammy shift gets bled off and we move into another regime of some kind.
And no I don’t think it violates conservation of energy to say that. We have a complicated planet with life in many layers with a leaky roof. Energy gets transferred into the ground, into the oceans, up into the atmosphere, and even escapes Earth altogether. The cartoon models of how solar energy transfer works plus weather and thus climate work are just that, cartoons. It is way more complicated and variable. That’s why I believe the null hypothesis is still King. The highly variable planet we live on has not been ruled out as the source of long and short term weather pattern variation. Heck even the ice ages are theorized to be caused by a wobbly Earth (granted, caused by gravitational pulls). The Sun just keeps beaming.
@ Niff — Bummer, but good for you to try. Yes, indeed (only EIGHT HOURS?), it does appear that someone’s beady little eyes are either constantly on that Wiki thing or….. they are lurking about WUWT (Good — hope they learn something!).
richardscourtney
While I understand and generally accept your explanation, I strongly disagree with this point.
“4.
If heat is transferred from the ‘hot’ to the cooler area then
(a) the temperature of the ‘hot’ region will fall by an amount
and
(b) the temperature of the cooler region will rise by the same amount
”
That has no basis in science as temperature is not equal to heat nor is it a measurement(unit) of heat, furthermore there is not even a linear correlation between the two.
This to me is where the whole AGW fails. When CO2 is discussed it is in regards to heat retention, and AGW is about “warming” which again is heat, however, the heat is being measured using temperature, which is not a measurement of heat, as if the entire earth is a sealed system and always at standard and uniform pressure, humidity etc. Worse, now that the chosen measurement i.e. temperature is no longer rising, all of a sudden the climate scientist want to discuss heat instead. Logic dictates that if the climate system can change the “heat” of the earth in one direction by creating a more uniform temperature gradient, that it can change the “heat” of the earth in the opposite direction by creating a less uniform one.
“7.
Any variation in the heat transfer from ‘hot’ locations to cooler locations will alter the removal rate of energy from the Earth (because the rate is proportional to T^4 at every location).”
So what you are saying then is that the temperature of the earth is controlled by the weather, not CO2, since a simple change in the weather patterns can so drastically effect heat lost to space.
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:31 am
ironargonaut says:
August 28, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. How does moving it from one location one the planet to another remove the energy?
What if I use a flow of water to move heat energy from my car’s engine block to my car’s radiator? The planet is like that.
Earth’s radiator is the atmosphere, are you saying moving water from one location in you radiator to another changes the energy content? Where not talking about moving the atmosphere from the sun(engine) to the earth. We are talking about the water that is already in the radiator.
@ Gail Combs — THANK YOU for all your great research cited above at 10:16am, today. You were much more responsive and more meaningfully and coherently so than Ulric with his “solar signal”s and “teleconnections,” lol.
I was actually hoping to see Svalgaard come over here and debate Ulric, but, now, I can see why he did not! Others above have made meaningful arguments that I’m sure Svalgaard would willingly address, but I only quoted Ulric in my “Clean-up on aisle Mind-Blowing!” call for help (on another thread) and Dr. S. knew U. wasn’t worth bothering with.
Thanks, Ian W for trying to help me understand. I don’t deny there may be a solar mechanism, but, I haven’t (yet) seen it proven to a degree that I feel at all confident that it exists. It SOUNDS logical, but, truth is so often counterintuitive that I’m not at all certain (given Dr. Svalgaard’s convincing though not absolutely conclusive arguments).
Of one thing I am CERTAIN. There is NO KNOWN EVIDENCE (only conjecture) that human CO2 emissions cause ANY change in the climate of the earth.
The ABC have been informed in an email about their probable transcript error.
Same certainty crap as the warmists. We don’t know how and how many variables has the climate(s).
davidmhoffer:
Thankyou for your informative comment at August 29, 2013 at 5:44 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1403295
I write to correct a misunderstanding.
You say
I genuinely appreciate your advice that “anything similar in complexity to the existing models, regardless of the underlying physics, would be problematic to run across the internet.”
That is a clear answer to my request that you have quoted from my post at August 29, 2013 at 3:23 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1403194
However, I was answering a suggestion from HarveyS (n.b. not me) which – as I repeatedly said – I lack sufficient pertinent knowledge to assess.
In the – you say unlikely – event that the suggestion were to become reality then I would not want it thought I was its originator when the credit for the original suggestion belongs to HarveyS.
Richard
Sleepalot:
Your post at August 29, 2013 at 8:13 pm says in total
Their “claim” may or may not be right, but your question does not falsify it.
You are assuming the magnitude of the cooling effect was the same in the two cooling periods. There is no reason to assume this.
Richard
ironargonaut:
I am sorry that my attempt at an explanation for you at August 29, 2013 at 2:14 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1402675
was not adequately clear.
Your reply at August 29, 2013 at 9:44 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1403424
says
It seems you missed my having written
If the two regions have “the same area” and are “similar” (e.g. they are both ocean surface layer) then my statement which you dispute is correct (e.g. because the thermal capacity of sea water is the same in both places).
And you say
No, I did not say that and I did not imply that!
Weather will have some effect notably by altering cloud cover which alters albedo. But nothing I said in reply to your question suggests that “the temperature of the earth is controlled by the weather” or suggests that “weather patterns” … “drastically effect heat lost to space”.
Surface radiative absorbtion and emission do have large effect on global temperature. For example, global temperature rises by 3.8°C from January to June each year and falls by 3.8°C from June to January during each year. And this fluctuation results from the different areas of land and ocean over the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
I hope I have clarified matters.
Richard
Gail,
Generally agree with solar energy assessment and fact we are well past peak of the Holocene.
Regarding CO2, of course, the cycles are complex and not all of the increase is from human activity. A good bit, however, is from humans as the isotope evidence shows. Water vapor and clouds are the big feedback mechanisms that will determine whether we have low, medium, or high sensitivity.
I don’t consider my posts to be off-topic at all.
A key finding of this paper is that much variability is accounted for by natural cycles in the oceans, especially the Pacific. The PDO is shifting back to a cool phase. For anyone who wants to make a solar argument, the sun is in or is shifting to a low sunspot number phase. In other words, for the two most popular alternative explanations of late 20th century warming, the conditions are changing to states that should produce cooling.
If we do not cool and temperatures continue to rise (what is not happening), then this would suggest high sensitivity.
If we cool significantly, this would suggest very low or negative sensitivity.
If we cool slightly or pause, this would suggest low or medium sensitivity.