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.
Does the concept of “Climate Sensitivity to CO2” even exist at current atmospheric concentrations?
Please consider my statement from earlier threads that:
“Atmospheric dCO2/dt varies almost contemporaneously with global temperature T, and CO2 lags T at all measured time scales, from about 9 months in the modern data record to about 800 years in the ice core record. Is there any logical explanation for this factual observation, other than the conclusion that Temperature DOES Primarily Drive CO2, and CO2 DOES NOT Primarily Drive Temperature?”
As supporting evidence, I suggest with some confidence that the future cannot cause the past.
I further suggest that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 could be primarily humanmade (from one or more sources including the combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation, etc.) or it could be primarily natural, but the evidence suggests that the climate system is indifferent to increased atmospheric CO2 – it is only a certain subset of humanity that is all fussed about it. Clearly, the plant community loves more CO2 and they vastly outnumber us. 🙂
I further suggest that atmospheric CO2 is at or near dangerously low concentrations. Over geologic time, atmospheric CO2 has been sequestered and continues to be sequestered in carbonate rocks, peats, coals and petroleum. Carbonate beds thousands of feet thick are distributed all over our planet.
Is it not probable that all carbon-based life on Earth will cease when, due to natural sequestration, atmospheric CO2 concentration drops below certain critical levels?
Could T. S. Eliot have been thinking about CO2 starvation when he wrote:
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Regards to all, Allan
James Cross:
I do not know if the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is natural or anthropogenic in part or in whole, but I want to know.
Resolving this issue is hindered by the spread of untrue myths such as you provide in your post August 30, 2013 at 3:35 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1403584
where you mistakenly assert
No, the isotope evidence does NOT show that.
The change in the isotope ratio is in the direction expected if it is caused by the human emission. There is a 50:50 chance that the change would be in that direction or the other.
Importantly, the magnitude of the change is NOT as expected if it is caused by the human emission: the magnitude differs by a factor of 3 from what would have occurred if it were caused by the human emission. This indicates that most of the isotope change must be from some undetermined cause which is NOT the human emission.
The undetermined cause other than the human emission could be responsible for ALL the isotope ratio change when most of the change is known to be from that undetermined cause.
This does not mean the human emission has not induced some of the isotope ratio change, but there is no reason to think it has.
Richard
* Janice Moore says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:59 pm
“@ 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”
My reply to you was:
“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.”
Concise, coherent, and because I can see that ENSO is externally forced, and behaves as a negative feedback, I can predict it too. I am forecasting a very cold ~7 weeks from around January 7th 2014, going by the very simple rules above, you’ll see the AO/NAO go negative, and ENSO shift towards weak Nino conditions.
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.
I think that a much more practical approach to the same problem would be to set up an open source global climate model project (note that I did not say general circulation model). Without analyzing the problem a lot more than I have I could not say whether or not it is sufficiently granular and/or loosely coupled that a crowdsourced compuational resource would work, but if one ended up with a model that would run on a normal personal computer (even over a few days) then one could certainly distribute a monte carlo perturbation of initial conditions and have a master collect back the results once a day or thereabouts to accumulate them and do the statistics. That, in turn, would probably depend on how the problem was coded.
There are lots of things I’ve wanted to do IN such a project, such as cover the earth not with latitude/longitude, which is a terribly nonuniform mapping of S_2 (the surface of a sphere) for purposes of unbiased quadrature or interpolation, but rather with a scalable icosahedral tessellation. By scalable, I mean that if the code were appropriately written one could e.g. divide the scale by two and rerun it to see if the granularity matters and to seek convergence. However, I absolutely, positively do not have time to either set it up or participate in it. I am heavily overcommitted and have multiple projects (not the least of which is making a batch of ale) that are languishing because of lack of time. Climate is a hobby, not a profession, for me, and the current “climate” of its funding pretty much ensures that I wouldn’t get any funding to pursue it more deeply. In the meantime, I gotta eat (and brew, and support kids in college, and teach a huge, very time consuming class, and help support my startup company, and keep dieharder afloat, and write/finish my many book projects that are underway). I shouldn’t even be posting on WUWT, but I view my participation as a sort of contribution to public education in physics and science.
Still, even with all of that, I would be willing to help SET UP an open source climate model project, simply because I have some experience with it, and perhaps provide a development template for the code as long as it were to be written in C as I have no interest in working in anything else. Somebody else — in particular somebody else with some mad programming skills and a serious knowledge of physics, at least — would need to spearhead the actual programming. There would also need to be some ground rules, or the project will quickly devolve into people seeking to “prove” AGW, or “disprove” AGW, instead of developing a swiss-army-knife universal global climate model that can, by altering its parameters, explore a vast terra incognita of input variable terrain to answer “what if” questions while recognizing the non-uniqueness of its answers.
rgb
James Cross says: @ August 30, 2013 at 3:35 am
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…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The problem with CAGW/AGW is the arguments are superficial and once you dig they fall apart. So here are some of the results from the digging.
Re: the isotope evidence. I suggest reading this The Trouble with C12 – C13 Ratios This rather long article then goes into lots of ways the C12/C13 ratio is different from different sources natural and petrochemical showing the C12/C13 ratio pointing fingers at mankind does not stand up under close scrutiny.
………….
One of the big problems with the CO2 theory is trying to make the influence on climate bigger by bundling the effects of water into the CO2 Forcing by calling them ‘Feedbacks’ of CO2. This triples or more the effect of CO2.
Unfortunately for that conjecture CO2 FOLLOWS temperature so the oceans effected by that temperature are going to determine the CO2 level. CO2 dissolves in rain droplets and is continually washed out of the atmosphere (This is why caves form) The energy going into the oceans (and raising the surface temperature) is not from CO2 but from a combination of ozone, cloud cover and sunlight. graph Solar Energy (NASA disappeared the graph I actually wanted) and graph: Solar Radiation Intensity at various ocean depths and graph: Global Cloudiness
From Bob Tisdale: A graph of Modeled Precipitation vs Observed shows the amount of Precipitation has DECLINED from 1980 to 2010 not increased as the theory that CO2 drives water mandates. It also shows the decline is in no way linear as the graph of CO2 is.
This study also says there was a decline in cloud cover from 1979 to 2009 and a poleward shift in the jets. This would allow more solar energy into the oceans.
And this study says that change in cloud cover is due to Cosmic Rays (not CO2)
Graph of Short Wave Radiation and Graph of Long Wave Radiation
Discription:
Note that the graphs show the long wave (IR from earth?) is decreasing while the short wave (Solar?) is increasing until about the year 2000 where it levels off/(decreases?)
And then there are the humidity graphs that blow the whole notion that CO2 is connected to water completely out of the water. (pun intended.)
Earth Albedo from the Earthshine project from Project Earthshine
GRAPH: Global Relative Humidity
GRAPH: Specific Humidity at different pressures
WUWT: NASA satellite data shows a decline in water vapor
Janice Moore, Ulric Lyons
You are looking at a massive system with many forcings (I really hate that word) and feedbacks. The oceans alone act as a huge capacitor/dampener (Thank goodness)
Pamela and Svalgaard do not ‘see’ a solar mechanism for that reason and the fact the mechanism is not straight forward and direct. As I said, you have clouds, ozone, cosmic rays, wind (solar and earth), the movement of the jets, the amount of energy at various wavelengths going into the oceans at different latitudes…. And that doesn’t even take into account the gravitational pull of the sun/moon. Think of Sandy and the problems caused by the King Tide “King Tides occur when the Earth, Moon and Sun line up and maximize the gravitational forces that produce tides…” Then search all the papers on lunar cycles climate change
Here is another paper:
I think of it as a ‘child on a swing’ once the ocean oscillations get going it only takes a little bit of energy to keep it going and it is a combination of factors not just the sun that does the influencing.
Right now we are no where near ‘finding a mechanism’ we are still looking for all the pieces of the puzzle and the CO2 greenhouse effect is just a tiny piece. That is why the information on Drakes Passage intrigues me. It is another piece of the puzzle.
Pamela and Svalgaard never go the step further to ask what is causing the ocean oscillations or they put it down as ‘Chaos’ or maybe they just believe in perpetual motion machines. Me? I want to know where the energy comes from that fuels those oscillations. Sun, Moon, unicorn farts?
This is soooo simple anyone could see it years ago after the discovery of the PDO, AMO cycles it became apparent that if this accounts for the pause as seemed the most likely explanation long ago then it must also be a portion of the increase. The IPCC more or less admitted this when it said that natural variability was more pronounced than they had previously thought (duh, 18 years of pause…) last year. It’s impossible to escape the conclusions.
1) They concluded in 2000 that since their models accounted for the temperature record so accurately that natural variability was not significant effect and they had 98% certainty CO2 was responsible for the temp increase from 1979-1998. When the models no longer accurately account for the temperature record (post 2000) then obviously that means that their surety about the predictions declines. So, then the accuracy of the models is clouded significantly. It’s no longer 98% and is much lower.
2) It’s clear they had modeled the period 1979-1998 without PDO AMO and when you put that in it halves the contribution from co2. Halving the contribution from co2 means the short term response from co2 is halved. Instead of 3C by 2100 it is more likely 1.5C by 2100.
The above article simply states what was obvious from the data years ago.
1.5C is definitely more in line with how things are moving and have moved over the last 2 centuries. We don’t see 3C happening. For it to happen now would require the disappearance of the PDO AMO cycle. I asked a climate modeler from Lawrence Livermore and he said he believed AMO PDO cycles would disappear with rising temperatures. I asked what is the basis for such a prediction and he couldn’t provide an answer. So, they don’t believe the PDO AMO will continue. It’s going to disappear however I’ve never seen a paper that would explain why the PDO AMO would disappear. The fact it is currently blunting all increase from CO2 is showing that it is not currently in the process of lessening or disappearing that is obvious.
1.5C for a doubling of CO2 is the most logical and for me seems the only possible conclusion. To continue to predict 3.0C or higher sensitivity to a doubling presumes what seems like an impossible scenario which is temperatures climbing at double the rate of the 1979-1998 period for 8 consecutive decades without halt. Considering we are now in a halt that has gone on for 18 years predicting the end of halting is highly speculative and I’ve seen no scientific argument for why the cycles would change. If we take the data from the article the increase in temperature over the two decades from 1979-1998 attributable to CO2 is .28 or .14C/decade. For 80 years at .3C/decade we could get to 3C for the record rolling in the previous gains last century. However, getting double the increase rate we got during the 1979-1998 period for 8 consecutive decades seems like an outlier prediction to me. The more likely scenario is we get the .14C more or less continuously over the next 8 decades (removing the ENSO part) and that translates to about 1.8C by 2100.
The problem with this is it assumes that the .14C is entirely caused by CO2. Again, we don’t know this. It is an assumption based on removing the ENSO portion from the record. We also know the sun was at a high amplitude during the period of the 20th century in question. Other factors unknown may have contributed. If it turns out we find that other factors contributed to that .14C increase from 1979-1998 then the increase could be less than 0.14C. I personally believe .14C is the HIGH end possibility of what CO2 is doing. It is very likely that the sun had some effect as well independent of ENSO.
People will argue that other data show that CO2 doubling should have this high 3C impact. However, I have found those analysis to be flawed because I don’t know how they attribute CO2 and other factors. Looking at the historical record it is not clear to me without having more data how you can be sure that CO2 had the majority of the impact for past oscillations. This is because that depends on assumptions about the impact of everything else. With ENSO we clearly see that the modelers don’t understand the impact of everything therefore the argument about historical sensitivity is a circular logic argument. If we assume CO2 is the main and only cause of such possible variations then we calculate the effect as being the main cause. Surprise surprise.
Gail Combs says:
“Right now we are no where near ‘finding a mechanism..”
I am regularly forecasting the state of the NAO/AO at the scale of weather, so I would search for a relevant solar metric, also at the scale of weather. The next step is to identify what phenomena leads, does the jet stream move first, or does the AO change pressure first, or do tropical stratospheric winds alter first. I would suspect the solar wind speed has a direct influence on polar air pressure.
Stephen Wilde (August 29, 2013 at 1:13 am) wrote:
“[…] 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 […]”
Observation corrects a widespread, persistent solar-terrestrial-climate misconception:
The Sun CHANGES Earth’s Ozone: Terrestrial total column Ozone CHANGE (NOT ozone) is coherent with the solar activity cycle. In other words: The solar activity cycle is 1/4 of a cycle ahead of the terrestrial total column ozone cycle.
Externally governed equilibration opportunity limits Earth’s degree of progression towards equilibrium via circulatory pattern persistence. At interdecadal timescales, the Sun changes the amount of time Earth has to equilibrate. Equilibration opportunity is governed by changes in the length of time-streaks during which solar activity persists above and below critical thresholds.
The “internal” decadal & multidecadal variation narrative is based on patently false inferential assumptions that thoroughly & completely fail diagnostics. Specifically it catastrophically fails implicit assumptions of uniformity & symmetry. There’s only one sensible option: It must be abandoned.
@ Richardscourtney Thanks for the reply – the implication is rather troubling though:
a natural cooling phenomena that happens to near-perfectly match the claimed CO2 warming? Goldilocks comes to mind.
Ulric (8:45 am), Earth responds as a unit. The spatial differential is multi-axial. The (long-run central limit) attractor is a simple case that clarifies what we know from common sense: The primary axis is equator-pole. I’m not willing to discuss this further with you here & now. No offense intended.
The chart Peter Vaughan shows the solar /ozone thus climate relationship quite well.
SOLAR/CLIMATE RELATIONSHIPS: The CATCH is the degree of magnitude change of solar activity and duration of time of solar activity has to reach certain critical LEVELS, in order to overcome random earthly climatic changes and or influence these random earthly climatic items.
This is why correlations with solar activity are hard to come by when the sun is in a regular rhythmic 11 year sunspot cycle with peaks and lulls.
However this current prolonged solar minimum should prove their are indeed correlations between solar changes and climate if the solar changes are strong enough and sustained enough over time.
Excellent blog post on this by Lubos:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/08/pacific-waters-as-excuse-for-warming.html#more
People that can’t see a climate /solar connection are very short sided.
@Salvatore Del Prete – sighted – “short sighted”.
Johnnie says:
August 30, 2013 at 7:03 am
The facts behind modelers’ assumptions have never been in evidence. They just assumed the feedback effects they needed to get the results they wanted. GIGO, pure & simple. The models are worse than worthless.
Ironically, discovery by a fisheries researcher, not a climatologist, of the PDO was published in 1997, at the end of the 20-year warming phase.
Author quoted on Scripps IoO report on paper:
http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/solving-the-mysteries-of-hiatus-in-global-warming/
“That speaks to the challenge in predicting climate for the next few years,” said Xie. “We don’t know precisely when we’re going to come out of [the hiatus] but we know that over the timescale of several decades, climate will continue to warm as we pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
My comment:
No one can possibly “know” any such thing. The naturally-changing climate might well cool over the next several decades, or both cool & warm.
The GIGO models are worse than worthless, based upon feedback assumptions for which no evidence exists, indeed which have been shown false.
Exactly Mioldonharlani the models are worthless.
Sleepalot:
Your post at August 30, 2013 at 10:31 am says in total
That is the second time in this thread where you have asserted I said other than I did.
Read what I wrote and comment on that.
“CO2 warming” may not have sufficient magnitude for it to be discernible. In that case the “cooling” is an interruption to natural warming. Your “Goldilocks” assertion is merely an assumption concerning the magnitude of “CO2 warming”.
You are making assumptions and each time I point out you have made one then you replace it with another while claiming I said other than I did.
Richard
Paul Vaughan says:
August 30, 2013 at 10:31 am
“Ulric (8:45 am), Earth responds as a unit.”
The point being that the solar wind has the greatest effect in the polar regions.
@ Salvatore Del Prete
There’s actually another layer (2nd order) to the solar-ozone phase-relations I mention in my reply to Joe Bastardi, but people need a chance to catch up by first learning the methods outlined by Donner & Thiel (2007).
Once people get that far, I’ll be able to efficiently outline how to:
a) easily overcome the systematic biases in Donner & Thiel’s phase estimates.
b) take the sun’s multidecadal pulse using a wavelet tachometer.
Donner & Thiel’s scale-resolved methods are beautiful even without improvement, but it’s a breeze to refine them for precision and extend them to the more generalized case.
If ever / whenever I have sufficient time & resources via the support of the local university, I’ll be willing and able to write all of this up formally. Before then it’s not even remotely feasible given the hard constraints under which I currently operate, so informal communication is all I’m volunteering at this time. Frankly, I don’t value formality (it’s unnecessary), but I do respond to paychecks…
Regards
Correlation again. What is with the correlation? If you can’t match the energy required to overcome natural variation (which is very, very powerful) with the energy available from solar changes (which is very very tiny), you have nothing more than tea leaves. Why would you be pushing tea leaves on a gullible public? Isn’t that what AGWers have done?
Of all the entities that have the capacity in stored energy to release it into the sources of Earth’s weather patterns (the semi-permanent pressure system cells and jet streams) to the extent that these systems are forced to change to another pattern, the oceans are the only ones that rise to plausible consideration. And that is it in a nutshell. The solar game is just playing with data to find wriggles that match without ever considering this very important issue: the driver of the change has to be plausibly capable of doing it.
Pamela, the solar-terrestrial-climate weave is observed. It’s not a correlation. It’s not a theory. It’s an observation. You can no more sensibly deny it than you can deny 1+1=2. Observation takes precedence over your abstract theories, which are based on false &/or distorted assumptions that flatly fail empirical diagnostics. My patience with your ignorance &/or deception has expired. The false premises & harassment you’re attempting to direct my way are not welcome.
– – –
I dare all who fancy themselves serious contributors to:
a) attempt to reproduce Donner & Thiel’s (2007) Figure 4. (I suspect that not a single WUWT regular can do it, even though it’s easy to do from scratch in just a few spreadsheet columns.)
b) attempt to substantively disparage Donner & Thiel’s (2007) methods. (Good luck with that as the methods are rock solid & beautiful.)
Pamela Gray says:
“Correlation again. What is with the correlation? If you can’t match the energy required to overcome natural variation (which is very, very powerful) with the energy available from solar changes (which is very very tiny), you have nothing more than tea leaves. Why would you be pushing tea leaves on a gullible public? Isn’t that what AGWers have done?”
In fact you are repeating what the AGWers have done, by assuming natural variation is internal, and by overlooking the very large changes in solar plasma speed. Looking for correlations is the right approach, spot the El Nino’s: http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg
“Of all the entities that have the capacity in stored energy to release it into the sources of Earth’s weather patterns (the semi-permanent pressure system cells and jet streams) to the extent that these systems are forced to change to another pattern, the oceans are the only ones that rise to plausible consideration.”
Changes in the jet streams and the trade winds lead and drive the oceanic modes.
Paul Vaughan says: August 30, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Hello Paul.
Thank you for your comments, which are most interesting.
Regards, Allan
Richardscourtney wrote: “That is the second time in this thread where you have asserted I said other than I did.”
This is my third post in this thread. My first post contained my own original thoughts.
My second post contained my impressions drawn from your kind reply: you quoted it in its enitirety. At no time have I asserted that you have said anything _at all_ !
(I think you must have me confused with someone else. Still, no harm done. Least said, soonest mended.)
Richardscourtney wrote: “Read what I wrote and comment on that.”
Done.
Sleepalot:
I write to offer you an apology.
Yes, as you suggest in your post at August 31, 2013 at 3:53 am, I did confuse you with someone else (i.e. ironargonaut) and I responded to your reasonable comment as though it was another in the series from him/her/them.
That was wrong of me and I have no excuse: I made a mistake and so I made an unfounded and untrue accusation against you.
Thankyou for pointing out my error.
I withdraw my misdirected – so untrue – accusation, and I provide this complete and public apology.
Richard
No problem, I’m English – I’m not afraid to be called an idiot, I’m afraid of embarrassment – please don’t appologise. Didn’t you see that “least said, soonest mended?” Please don’t reply.
Ulric Lyons says:
August 31, 2013 at 1:06 am
Pamela Gray says:
“Correlation again. What is with the correlation? If you can’t match the energy required to overcome natural variation (which is very, very powerful) with the energy available from solar changes (which is very very tiny), you have nothing more than tea leaves. Why would you be pushing tea leaves on a gullible public? Isn’t that what AGWers have done?”
In fact you are repeating what the AGWers have done, by assuming natural variation is internal, and by overlooking the very large changes in solar plasma speed. Looking for correlations is the right approach, spot the El Nino’s: http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg
There is an approach that reconciles solar forcing (little energy) with natural oceanic driven cycles (large energy). It is to regard the ENSO cycles, and the epiphenomena thereof, the PDO, AMO and other such multidecadal cycles, as weakly forced nonlinear oscillators interacting with eachother. There is a long and well established science and literature on such systems.
So there does not need to be a hostile standoff between a solar forcing camp and an internal cycle camp.
Scientists looking at ENSO have long suspected that it is a kind of nonlinear oscillator, although an intermittent, not continuous one. A post here a couple of years ago showed an analogy between ENSO and the classical widely studied model of nonlinear oscillation, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. The conditions needed for a nonlinear oscillator include positive feedback in a dissipative far-from-equilibrium system; these conditions are met in the ENSO where the positive feedback takes the form of the well-established Bjerknes feedback (fig 5.3) in which Peruvian upwelling and trade winds alternately reinforce or cancel mutually.
Nonlinear oscillators come in three types: strongly forced, weakly forced and unforced, the latter driven by internal cycling only. Pushing a child on a swing is a strongly forced oscillator – forcing and forced frequencies are the same although the system develops chaotic instabilites. In a weakly forced nonlinear oscillator, the emergent frequency of the oscillator has a complex relationship with the forcing frequency (or frequencies), such as in the complex tidal oscillations in a coastal bay with one or more narrow inlets to the sea. The heartbeat is an unforced nonlinear oscillator. The propagation of action potentials between helically patterned myotomes represents such a strong positive feedback that a highly regular pulsation (contraction starting at the left ventricle) with monotonic frequency results. Note that this is the case in the healthy heart – in heart disease factors interfering with intermyotome propagation result in cardiac irregularity, and a pacemaker is needed to set an even beat: here an unforced nonlinear oscillator needs to be replaced by a strongly forced nonlinear oscillator.
It is possible that ocean cycles are type 3, internally driven only. However it is also possible that ocean-driven climatic cycles such as ENSO and the PDO could be the second type, a weakly forced nonlinear oscillator, and that the weak periodic forcing could come from solar-associated cycles of various time periods.
It is also well understood that longer, century and millennial scale cycles in oceanic circulation can affect climate on these time-scales, involving phenomena such as the bipolar seesaw and interhemispheric heat piracy. Many papers on this can easily be found, such as:
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/sites/www.geo.arizona.edu/files/web/Cohen/pdf/80%20Brown%20et%20al%202007%20GRL.pdf
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/38/4/383.full.pdf+html
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/7/397/2011/cpd-7-397-2011.pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7233/full/nature07770.html
I agree with Pamela Gray that the most powerful and direct driver of climate is the oceanic natural cycles, and that the atmosphere only approach taken both by the CAGW and the solar forcing camps make the profound mistake of treating the oceans as a passive puddle, responding in real time to surface input. However Paul Vaughan has clearly identified a compelling linkage between solar and atmospheric phenomena such as ozone. Also, associations between historic cool periods and sunspot minima (Maunder, Dalton) are recognised widely even by AGW scientists.
Thus I feel it makes most sense to look at a paradigm of ocean-driven systems of various time scale as weakly forced nonlinear oscillators, forced by several external periodically altering inputs such as solar oscillations and solar-atmospheric spatio-temporal patterns.
phlogiston said:
“However it is also possible that ocean-driven climatic cycles such as ENSO and the PDO could be the second type, a weakly forced nonlinear oscillator, and that the weak periodic forcing could come from solar-associated cycles of various time periods.”
The solar wind is often slow a year or two after solar cycle minimum’s and around maximum’s, but such events are of course not confined only to these points:
http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg
Phlogiston, you make the mistake of jumping to your second possibility without ruling out the null hypothesis. The entirely intrinsic global oceanic/atmospheric random -not chaotic- circulating set of systems is strongly teleconnected and strongly maintained in the larger sense by the axial tilt and path around the Sun, the Earth’s Coriolis effect, and its land barriers. Solar shortwave IR provides a fairly steady stream of energy at the outer surface of the atmosphere. But by the time the SWIR makes it to the planet’s surface the amount can be substantially changed by oceanic/atmospheric conditions entirely intrinsic to the Earth. This internal set of systems builds regime shifts, brings them up and down, releases regime shifts, sets up a dive into a different one, brings that one up and down, provides for stable periods, is random so hard to predict on a longer term basis, and hardly ever cancels out to zero within any kind of adequately measured string of data, even with proxy data to extend the string. That ladies and gentlemen is the null hypothesis and is a very plausible -because it is very powerful- reason for weather pattern variations, of which some are good, some are bad, and some are just so-so.
Why look for external drivers while the internal one is so powerful? You would only do this if you are emotionally invested in a pet theory. Pursuing a pet theory while ignoring the null hypothesis, which has not been adequately researched even to this day, exposes you as a poor excuse for a scientist, regardless of your credentials.
Pamela Gray says:
August 31, 2013 at 9:10 am
I did not in fact rule out the null hypothesis of unforced nonlinear oscillation. I was just pointing out that nonlinear oscillators can be either unforced (generate oscillations internally) or forced – weakly or strongly.
There is one timescale where external astrophysical forcing of climate is undeniable. Look at the temperature history of the last 3 million years, our current glacial period. From 3-2 million years ago, interglacials pop up regularly every 41,000 years, in time with the Milankovich precession wobble cycle. Then about a million years ago we have the mid-Pleistocene revolution and interglacial timing changes to match the longer 100,000 year eccentricity cycle. The temperature trace is not however a neat series of upticks but a quasi chaotic saw-edge in which some interglacials are double-headed (the ones occurring at nodes of maximal eccentricity oscillation). Here there can be no serious doubt that the system is an externally forced quasi-chaotic nonlinear oscillator in which “glacial” and “interglacial” are alternate stable attractors.
The fractality of nature implies that natural patterns that we see on long or large scales can sometimes be repeated on smaller scales. So it can be conjectured that climate oscillations that are observed over millenial, century and decadal scales might also be weakly forced by astrophysical stimuli. This is a reasonable extrapolation from what we already know about Milankovich glacial-interglacial forcing.
But equally, they might not be.
Pamela Gray says:
“Why look for external drivers while the internal one is so powerful?”
In fact you could compare El Nino’s following cooling from big volcanic eruptions, to El Nino’s that occur at low solar wind speeds, that would give some idea of the level of external forcing. I personally cannot possibly doubt the external forcing as I forecast at the scale of weather with planetary ordered solar theory, and hind-cast a very long way back too. For me it’s just a matter of pinning down the solar metric responsible.
Those cycles are thought to be caused by Earth’s wobbly path around the Sun (which changes its tilt which causes SWIR input to be less centered equatorially) which is thought to be caused by gravitational tugs on that path secondary to cyclical planetary positions. It has nothing to do with a changing TSI Sun nor any of its weakly variable sub-outputs.
So Ulric, your solar parameter has yet to be discovered? Which means its mechanistic connection you seek has yet to be discovered? Which means you have no clue as to how it works? Good theory.
Pamela Gray says:
“So Ulric, your solar parameter has yet to be discovered? Which means its mechanistic connection you seek has yet to be discovered? Which means you have no clue as to how it works? Good theory.”
If you had read my comments you would have noted that I am looking at correlations between low solar wind speed and negative AO/NAO, resulting in ENSO tending towards Nino conditions. Which is interesting, as thinking about it systematically, it may provide answers as to why ENSO phases peak around late December rather than at the equatorial summers at the equinoxes. My line of thinking is that a jet stream positioned at lower latitudes may inhibit the trade winds. Can you show me any other solar metric that has such correlations to ENSO?: http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg
It’s your theory. Show the solar metric and then explain the mechanism. First the correlation- 1. Low solar wind speed and negative AO/NAO, 2. plus your low AO-NAO and Nino conditions and 3) temperature with all of the above. All metrics go back quite a few years. But you are only a third of the way done. You must then explain the mechanism of low solar wind speed on a very powerful semi-permanent pressure system, and then test it in all possible ways it can be wrong.
Equator-pole absolute (not anomaly) temperature gradients drive powerful wind.
That wind drives ocean evaporation, ocean currents (including the major gyres), ocean welling (up & down), & coupled mechanical processes more generally. (Temperature, mass, & velocity are coupled. That’s why there’s coherence.)
It starts with the equator-pole gradients. That’s primary.
Ignoring that (as underhanded stealth political activists do here) is a non-starter.
The “internal” multidecadal narrative is completely inconsistent with HARD evidence from earth orientation records (which are rigidly constrained by the law of conservation of angular momentum).
Earth orientation records clarify that it’s STRICTLY UNPHYSICAL to suggest solar cycle frequency does not play a key role in limiting terrestrial climate.
I won’t be surprised if we see a “political reconstruction” of earth orientation records.
Why? Because it’s clear that we’re dealing with naked hubris.
We see chronic, intransigent refusal to accept hard evidence and repeated assertion of the logical equivalent to 1+1≠2.
What effective strategies does that leave for dealing with these fatally difficult people?
The question needs to be asked.
Religion is one possibility.
@Pamela Gray at 10:55 am
At least two thirds done as I’ll be forecasting the NAO changes at the scale of weather for the UK like I have for the last 5 years. Of course it would nice to prove beyond doubt that the solar wind speed directly effects polar air pressure, but what use would that be if you could not forecast it.
phlogiston says:
“So there does not need to be a hostile standoff between a solar forcing camp and an internal cycle camp.”
I would have thought that proving external forcing of ENSO would make things really tricky for the IPCC. That and the fact they don’t seem to understand the Arctic too well, or solar forcing for that matter:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/23/the-medieval-warm-period-in-the-arctic/#comment-1398577
Ulric Lyons says:
August 31, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Proving that ENSO is a real phenomenon at all and not just “noise” is also tricky for the AGW / IPCC position in which the only forcer is CO2.
Trying to ascribe astrophysical forcing to every ENSO event is going too far, the “correlation” in your figure: http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg is far from convincing, it looks almost random. I’m with Pamela on ENSO being an oscillation driven by its own internal dynamic – the Bjerknes feedback. But there is a degree of weak forcing which determines the timing of ENSO – why is el Nino called en Nino? Because it always peaks in winter, near Christmas, “El Nino” in Catholic Peru alludes to the Christ child.
Ulric, you and the many papers you are obviously relying on (some of which have already been retired to the “I was wrong bin”) may soon be in for a well-publicized adjustment to solar parameters that will leave a lot of those papers you are counting on wondering where their correlation went. This soon to occur embarrassment should remind us all that correlations are seductive, but mechanisms are where it counts.
Pamela Gray said:
” the many papers you are obviously relying on ”
Just one on CME’s lowering surface pressure in the Antarctic.
“mechanisms are where it counts.”
If the quantity of correlations is large enough and they are consistent then a connection can be assumed, as I can with my forecast method. No one can tell that the NAO/AO is not solar forced if I’m regularly forecasting it directly from solar factors.
phlogiston says:
“the “correlation” in your figure: http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg is far from convincing, it looks almost random.”
Looks like you need some help, start with the big Nino’s, 72/3, 97/8, 09/10, and then look at the big Nina’s: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
Observation of solar-terrestrial-climate attractors is robust against the following:
1) switching summary methods.
2) changing the resolution of the data (e.g. from monthly to annual).
3) substituting atmospheric angular momentum data for earth orientation data.
4) substituting the famously “ironed flat” TSI reconstruction for sunspot numbers.
5) converting sunspot numbers to simple “low” (-1) & “high” (+1) values. (The proposed comparatively tiny adjustments to solar records also have no effect.)
#5 is the clincher that underscores the physical importance of frequency shift.
Add the new proposed solar wind reconstruction and the entire premise Ulric is peddling is gone. That begs the question, which should we trust? The old solar set that Ulric is relying on from the papers he is using to undergird his argument, or the new proposed reconstructed one? We know the old set is filled with inconsistencies. But thanks to all the ways that the Sun tells us it is still there, still shining, and still doing its relatively stable work, the reconstruction will likely be far more accurate than the old one. From my own reading of how that reconstruction is coming about, and the problems with the old one, my money is on the new one. But even before the new one was put to paper, I began to question my own belief that the Sun and not CO2 was responsible for warming and cooling trends. Why? Not enough power to change the very powerful systems on Earth that set up temperature trends.
To be sure, anthropogenic CO2 doesn’t have the chops either.
Then show us the hindcast as well as your forecasts along with the solar parameter you use (and not some 4th order affect on Earth’s atmosphere). I want the solar parameter.
phlogiston, one of the links you gave reminded me of this.
This study can be refined, improved, & made an order of magnitude more succinct:
Soon, W.; & Legates, D.R. (2013). Solar irradiance modulation of equator-to-pole (Arctic) temperature gradients: empirical evidence for climate variation on multi-decadal timescales. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 93, 45-56.
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/soon_legate.pdf
Nonetheless it successfully highlights one of those really egregious implicit assumptions that are so often lurking behind ugly climate discussion misunderstandings:
“[…] implicit assumptions of the Bjerknes compensation, which assumes the maintenance of a constant total poleward energy transport that then provides an internally self-regulating inverse relation between oceanic and atmospheric heat transport fluxes”
This is a routine trick in academic modeling.
I saw it pulled so often in the dozen years I spent in academia that I gave it a name:
CDO = convenient dramatic oversimplification
The CDO is always chosen to make some unwanted terms “go away” in otherwise burdensome & often intractable derivations. Announcement of clever CDOs comes with big smug grins, often followed by bad-*ss-supporting giggles from a stimulated audience.
The reasoning always goes that it will be easier expending time & effort defending the bad assumption — even against harsh skeptics — than trying to deal with burdensome or intractable math.
And this is true if colleagues give in on the ridiculous assumptions, which is usually what happens due to collegiality, a sense of humor, and a sense that “well, we have to do something”.
Even if that something is strictly inconsistent with observation, it usually gets done to avoid arguments, intractable math, & difficult modeling – while also seizing an easy opportunity to have a fun laugh.
In the case highlighted by Soon & Legates (2013), we see that the assumption just happens to have the nice effect of changing some very formidable field math into a simple 0.
Now how cleverly convenient is that?!!
Give the bad-*sses an applause for being so clever.
My there are a lot of papers coming out using old solar indices. I wonder why. Are they justifying their pay prior to final reconstructions being “journalized” by getting these papers out now? They have to know about the group that is working on the new reconstruction. The proposed reconstructions are public and the working group well-known.
For sure there’s serious controversy with TSI reconstructions.
That’s why I say Soon & Legates (2013) can be “improved”.
I’m holding in reserve some recent insights on TSI reconstructions that are sure to stoke an already nasty controversy. This isn’t something I relish; quite the contrary. Some people are really not going to like what I’ve found. It’s of the 1+1=2 variety. It’s not a shade of grey. There are some black & white issues in the solar/climate discussion. (The intransigent stealth-activist thought-police types just won’t admit it. They deny.)
It all started with a rather innocent request for help from a climate scientist (who I guarantee will remain anonymous). Otherwise I would not have been bothering to compare those datasets, as I know they are thoroughly steeped in absolutely intractable controversy that no one can resolve, whether by authority or by any other measure including extreme religious faith (same reason I don’t make time for the hockey stick controversy).
In the spirit of the politics of deterrence, I will exercise restraint, holding the controversial findings in reserve. Until what or when? I don’t know. I’ll know if & when I see it. I really have very little natural interest in this, so I may delay indefinitely.
Meanwhile, the equator-pole-temperature-gradient (EPTG) issue brought up by Soon & Legates (2013) is prescient, but I wouldn’t use the solar data they chose (at least not without fundamentally re-interpreting it…)
So in summary:
solar-terrestrial EPTG issue = rock solid issue demanding very serious attention — one of the very most crucial issues by far in the whole climate discussion
but
TSI reconstruction issue = ugly can of worms to steer clear of for now by sticking to less controversial solar data to explore EPTG issue
James Cross says:
“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, James, James…
Scientific skeptics do not predict the future. That is what climate alarmiststs do, with their universally wrong computer model-based conclusions.
As many of us regularly point out: AGW may exist. But if so, it is simply too minuscule to measure. If something is too small to measure, it begins and ends at the Conjecture stage of the Scientific Method. AGW is an Opinion, nothing more [I happen to agree that AGW has a very minor effect. But it is nothing worth worrying about].
There is no verifiable, testable, replicable scientific evidence for AGW. None. There just isn’t. If there were, the alarmist crowd would be bashing us over the head with it 24/7/365.
Thus, the True Believers in AGW have bought into the “carbon” scare, hook, line, and sinker. Their Belief is total, emotional, and it cannot be corrected using Reason.
The only answer to that affliction is a full and complete acceptance of the Scientific Method. Ony by replicability and testability will scientific truth emerge. So far, there is no scientific evidence or proof whatever that catastrophic AGW exists. It is a Belief, nothing more.
True science sites like WUWT try to educate readers in the Scientific Method. Some have the scales fall from their eyes on their road to Damascus — but some are no more or less than religious cultists, who will never accept the Scientific Method.
The choice is in each one of us. Whether we know it or not, we are each the masters of our own destiny, and whether we accept verifiable truth, or the latest religious craze, is entirely up to us.
So make your choice: verifiable, testable truth — or Belief. The choice is yours alone.
Ulrich Lyons, Paul Vaughan
You should think carefully about what you are saying. To insist that all climate marches in lockstep with astrophysical forcing and deny any internal dynamic and oscillation is to make yourselves look extremely foolish, and the arrogant and superior airs you put on make this doubly so. You also make WUWT look silly and give the AGW camp a big straw man to attack. They can justifiably mock skeptics as “astrologers” – indeed your solar posse contains one real astrologer, Volker Doorman. That a solar authority like Leif Svalgaard sees only a marginal possible solar effect should carry some weight. Paul Vaughan has already a history of flourishing regularly what is supposed to be a killer graphic accompanied by terse, disdainful text, expecting us all to fall at his feet. But it has never quite worked out that way. His latest grandiose claim here (complete with threat to march off in a sulk like Ivan the Terrible expecting us to come supplicating after him) will prove just the same empty distraction.
Pamela Gray says:
“Add the new proposed solar wind reconstruction and the entire premise Ulric is peddling is gone. That begs the question, which should we trust? The old solar set that Ulric is relying on from the papers he is using to undergird his argument, or the new proposed reconstructed one?”
The measurements are unchanged:
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/form/dx1.html
“But thanks to all the ways that the Sun tells us it is still there, still shining, and still doing its relatively stable work,”
Artlessly ignoring the large drop in activity in this cycle.
phlogiston says:
“You should think carefully about what you are saying. To insist that all climate marches in lockstep with astrophysical forcing and deny any internal dynamic and oscillation is to make yourselves look extremely foolish, and the arrogant and superior airs you put on make this doubly so. You also make WUWT look silly and give the AGW camp a big straw man to attack.”
Straw man fabrication is so boring, you should think more carefully about what you say. Nowhere did I say that “climate marches in lockstep” with the solar signal, I actually discussed the differentials between the torrid, temperate and frigid zones.
“They can justifiably mock skeptics as “astrologers” – indeed your solar posse contains one real astrologer, Volker Doorman.”
I’m not an astrologer, astro means stars, I do what I call Planetary Ordered Solar Theory, it’s here to stay, as I have very good weathermen queuing up to learn about it since they have seen how effective my long range forecasts are. As for Volker, I thought he was a standing joke around here? And I’m definitely not in any solar posse, most of it is tidal mathurbation, which only gives the field a bad name.
Pamela Gray says:
August 31, 2013 at 4:39 pm
“Then show us the hindcast as well as your forecasts along with the solar parameter you use (and not some 4th order affect on Earth’s atmosphere). I want the solar parameter.”
Entirely feasible, but you would have to learn all about the principles involved in the system to make any sense of the configurations, which would take a large article.
Pamela Gray says…
“But even before the new one was put to paper, I began to question my own belief that the Sun and not CO2 was responsible for warming and cooling trends. Why? Not enough power to change the very powerful systems on Earth that set up temperature trends.”
————————————————————————————————————-
In general I admire a sceptics row. Why? Because it shows a distinct lack of “group think” with many different possibilities discussed, whereas the warmist have one answer for every question, and that answer is CO2, requiring funds and political change.
I am going to share a law of physics with you that I would like you to consider. It is my own, and I am not a scientist, but I think it holds; “Only two things can affect an energy change in a system in a radiative balance, either a change of input, or a change in the residence time of some aspect of that energy within the system.”
So suppose we place 144 thermometer one inch apart to meausre the mean T in a one sq’ area starting one inch above above a gas stove set at low, and measure the T. (In this simplifed case the exact location of the thermometers is “the system” we are meausring.) Now we turn a fan on under the stove, we get a lower mean T due to the reduced residence time. How much do we have to turn the stove up, to get the same T we got before we turned the fan on? How much the residence time is reduced, is in exact correlation to how much the input must change to maintain the same reading. Now let us turn the stove down, but place a thick walled, but thin bottomed, especially in the middle, also with convex shaped bottom pot, with a thick sealed top. Our pot is one sq’ covering our system perfectly. Fill the pot with water. Now, over time, our system reaches a radiative balance. Now how much energy is within our system? How small can the flame be, to equal the energy of the system with the fan on?
Thanks for your time thus far, now to earth. What is the residence time of each spectrum of solar energy reaching the surface at each latitude? What is the residence time in the atmosphere at each laditude and altitude? Does this residence time of energy within the earth, as defined by all the land, oceans and atmosphere, vary by many many orders of magnitude, from fractions of a second, to centuries for that energy which can penetrate up to 800′ into the oceans.
So can we take a small area of the earth with the same TSI, as in no change, and get a different energy accumalation that will take centuries to fully manifest? Yes, it is fairly simple. Move a cloud in and basically stop the deep penetrating solar spectrum from entering the ocean. This one change, with no change in input, can take centuries to manifest and fully accumalate within our system.
We know jet streams, and therfore weather systems and clouds move dramatically. This movement affects the residence time of energy within our system dramatically, with cloud cover location having a dramatic affect that may accumlate for decades, and not fully manifest for centuries. TSI changes vary strongly according to the different solar spectrum, and the residence time of each spectrum varies dramatically.
My point is I think it is to early to tell what affect decades long changes in disparate solar spectrum have. At this point I do not think we can rule out minor changes having a major affect over decades.
As a side note I often wonder about volcanos, when we are told a St Helens going off in the deep ocean has no affect at the surface. Suppose that goes on for months. Energy is not lost, it goes somewhere. Each and every day it does not leave the ocean, it accumalates within the ocean. How much does tectonic activity change over time? Just thoughts, which are fun and purely academic, when one does not wish to change and or rule the world because of them.
Cheers
David
I suggest there is little to be gained in this discussion by being rancorous.
If you have a hypothesis, state it clearly and show all your work – publish on icecap.us including an Excel spreadsheet.
Do not expect people to independently duplicate your work from original data – many here have the skills but few have the time.
Do expect plenty of criticism, even if you are correct.
🙂
phlogiston (September 1, 2013 at 12:14 am)
You’ve conflated different people with completely differing ideas and severely misinterpreted what I have written about “internal”.
That’s not helpful.
David, the anthropogenic addition to naturally occurring CO2 is also not strong enough to measurably change temperature trends. And its water vapor amplification fudge factor is just that, a fudge factor.
The only entity that is able to store and release the energy needed to shift weather patterns from one regime to another is the ocean. Yes the Sun, via shortwave IR supplies the external source of energy but it is Earth’s own highly variable atmosphere that varies the amount of IR getting into the oceans.
Folks, when I talk about amount of energy needed to produce global warming, I am talking about the energy it takes to force the huge semi-permanent pressure systems and jet streams that create weather on our planet to shift to a state that brings about a sustained temperature trend up or down, or to reach a plateau and keep it there. Here is a great site that explains the systems I am talking about. Read through the whole thing. You will get a sense of the massive amounts of energy required to change these systems beyond their natural noise.
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect14/Sect14_1c.html
For global warming (or cooling) to occur one can imagine the amount of energy needed to force such a change and maintain it on a global scale. Until those calculations are done, all such theories about any single entity or set of entities functioning as a new driver is a wild ass guess.
Pamela Gray says:
” You will get a sense of the massive amounts of energy required to change these systems beyond their natural noise.”
The solar signal is the natural noise. I forecast intense cold for at least 3 weeks for this March, so no surprise to me that the jet was about 1000 miles south of normal, and it moved back up again in a week at most.
david (September 1, 2013 at 4:03 am) wrote:
“So can we take a small area of the earth with the same TSI, as in no change, and get a different energy accumalation that will take centuries to fully manifest? Yes, it is fairly simple. Move a cloud in and basically stop the deep penetrating solar spectrum from entering the ocean. This one change, with no change in input, can take centuries to manifest and fully accumalate within our system.
We know jet streams, and therfore weather systems and clouds move dramatically. This movement affects the residence time of energy within our system dramatically, with cloud cover location having a dramatic affect that may accumlate for decades, and not fully manifest for centuries.”
_ _
You are correct to point out the egregious, totally false, severely misleading assumption repeated deliberately many thousand times here at WUWT that constant TSI means constant surface insolation (tolerating that endlessly repeated bold-faced lie is certainly sharply at odds with dbstealey’s romanticized notion of science), but the data we have do not give the level of specificity to pinpoint clouds alone. Assertions that it’s clouds alone are based on conjecture.
The well-constrained data we have only enable us to say something about coupled solar-paced mechanical processes as a group. This includes ocean gyres, welling (up & down), evaporation, ice-transport — all wind-driven and all originating in equator-pole gradients. We know this from earth orientation observations well-constrained by the law of conservation of angular momentum.
People like PG keep rudely repeating the same bold-faced lie that TSI = surface insolation while demanding an energy calculation based on some mythical dataset that does not exist.
*
So far as I’m aware, there’s no uncontroversial multidecadal dataset representing Earth’s surface energy balance and such a thing is not even on the visible horizon moving forward.
*
That’s why it’s necessary work deductively using HARD observational constraints from the laws of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum. Then when people object, their dark ignorance &/or deception is nakedly clear, as they’re IMPLICITLY (they haven’t thought it through carefully enough to realize this) asserting that a law does not hold. (It’s not just about exploring climate. It’s about exploring human nature.)
Simple exploration is vastly superior to comically-romanticized notions of “science” (which in solar & climate arenas today actually means a toxic mixture of politics & false modeling assumptions, certainly not a worthwhile ideal towards which to aspire – quite the opposite). Formality is severely overrated, as 1+1=2 whether stated formally or not.
No where have I ever said TSI equals surface insolation. Utter nonsense. In fact our atmosphere guarantees that TSI does not ever equal surface insolation.
Ulric, the solar wind correlations with interannual terrestrial oscillations are complex, partial, & multiaxial and therefore not reliable for prediction everywhere on Earth until the multiaxial differential and transient background state are both well-characterized.
I suspect some readers are not familiar with the concept of mirage correlations, which (be careful to understand this) are physically real and arise in the simplest of coupled systems (e.g. see figure 1).
I estimate empirically that the best data reduction achievable will involve a network of 5 to 6 axes (based on equator-pole & land-ocean temperature-gradient geometry and consequent ocean gyre geometry), depending on the time of year (the north indian ocean accounting for the annual change from 5 to 6). I’m confident that a capable team with the right resources could get the job done in a few years.
WUWT is not a good place to discuss this. The primary value here — even if it often flies in the face of what is true — is not raw exploration but rather the appearance of administrative defensibility. I respect this. We can discuss further elsewhere if/when limited time permits.
PG it’s implicit in your narrative.
Paul Vaughan says:
“Ulric, the solar wind correlations with interannual terrestrial oscillations are complex, partial, & multiaxial and therefore not reliable for prediction everywhere on Earth until the multiaxial differential and transient background state are both well-characterized.”
Obviously if you correlate global and inter-annual but that misses all the essential detail that is forecast effectively so your point is spurious.
Oh trust me boys, I much prefer you hang it all out right here. If you want trial by fire -aka raw exploration-, this would be the place for it, not in some mancave where you get to say anything you want to an adoring audience. If your stuff is worth anything at all, it should be able to survive the fire. Leaving because you don’t like scrutiny exposes a significant weakness in your willingness to be taken seriously based solely on the merits of your proposed mechanism. However, if you stay, you would get further down the road to the merits of your arguments if you put some calculations to your work and explain your mechanisms in clear cause and effect language, followed by data analysis where you scrupulously seek observations that falsify your premise. -Word to the wise: In showing us the way you correlate data and connect to the mechanism, avoid making the elephant’s trunk wriggle- That way your work can be tested. Unless you don’t want it tested. In that case, take your ball and retreat to the home mancave.
Paul, how is it implicit? I see nothing implicit in my contention that atmospheric/oceanic teleconnections can produce weather pattern variations on short and long term time scales (well accepted and based on observations) such that SWIR is acted on by the atmosphere to allow in/reflect away different radiation amounts to the ocean surface (also well accepted and based on observations). I explicitly contend, as an extension to these well established systems -1. atmospheric variables acting to vary surface insolation and 2. weather pattern variation over short and long term time scales- that there is a powerful mechanism that guarantees TSI will not equal surface insolution and that this intrinsic natural mechanism can create both short term noise and long term trends in temperature data which I believe is being misinterpreted as being related to anthropogenic CO2. Clear?
To wit: this ancient old article about tropical insolation measurement demonstrated quite clearly that clear sky insolation models did not compare well with observed insolation. However, opaque sky models got within 8% of observed tropical insolation. Imagine that. Putting something that is opaque in your calculation manages to capture real observations as to how much “stuff” in the sky reflects away SWIR. The next best one was inputting precipitation independent variables into the models which resulted in output that came within 12% of actual observations. My, my, our atmosphere is very powerful! It can affect TSI to a MUCH greater degree than the Sun itself can!
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450(1969)008%3C0205%3AASOSAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
No, Ulric. The same is observed at high frequency (things move and there’s multi-axial turbulence in the coupling). With more computing resources and a capable team (things I don’t have) it might be possible to isolate the differentially balanced multi-axial attractors.
Okay then. Wriggle that trunk!
Pamela,
The only conclusions I can draw based on your many writings in this thread & elsewhere are:
1. You must be implicitly making some unstated false assumptions that are at sharp odds with observations.
2. You can’t see that your narrative requires violation of at least one of the laws of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum.
Pamela Gray says:
” explain your mechanisms in clear cause and effect language ”
All I can do is to point to the suitable solar metric that satisfies the scale and direction of the changes. Explaining the atmospheric physics takes local observations. I can best prove a solar case with the wealth of correlations from my forecast method, but currently there is a D-notice on planetary talk here. Which is a shame as it opens up a big can of worms on planetary-solar mechanisms.
Paul Vaughan:
I have been following this discussion with interest, but you have completely befuddled me with your post at September 1, 2013 at 11:16 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1405601
You say to Pamela Gray
Say what!?
Where did those assertions come from?
What “unstated false assumptions” are you claiming she “must be implicitly making”? In this thread she has stated the empirical observations which support her argument.
And I am at a complete loss to understand how anything she has said in this thread violates “at least one of the laws of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum”. Which laws and how?
Please explain because you are having a public conversation and we observers need to be given at least the minimum information to understand what you are claiming.
Richard
Paul Vaughan says:
“No, Ulric. The same is observed at high frequency (things move and there’s multi-axial turbulence in the coupling).”
Nonsense, else my forecasts would fail more often.
Ulric, are your forecasts accurate for every point on Earth?
If you review my comments, you’ll find the word “everywhere”.
We don’t all live in the UK. For example, where I live NPI (not NAO) rules. Piers’ forecast for Vancouver July 2013 was a horrendous failure. I warned that he was forecasting something I’ve NEVER seen happen in July here …and it didn’t happen again this year. He was forecasting cool & showery for the whole month and in reality we set a record for number of consecutive dry days on record. The grass was brown everywhere. A year earlier his forecast for that time of year had gone very well and I noted that in comments at WUWT. As I’ve pointed out before, when the methods go wrong they tend to go exactly wrong — that’s an expected feature of the observed nature of the differentially multi-axially-balanced coupling. As I understand, you do forecasting for Piers (but maybe I don’t have accurate info on that).
You bring interesting items to the discussion, but you also sometimes overplay your hand.
Everywhere??
Richard, precisely because they’re unstated there’s no way to know what assumptions are being made implicitly. In sharp contrast to what you say, PG’s abstract assertions are at sharp odds with observations rigidly constrained by the laws of large numbers & angular momentum. The minimal amount of information you need to see this has been given. You are a few columns of assumption-free spreadsheet calculations away from the enlightenment you claim to seek.
The more general problem going on here is that people attempt to reason from abstract theory based on false assumptions rather than being willing and able to duly appreciate and respect assumption-free observations.
Paul Vaughan says:
“Ulric, are your forecasts accurate for every point on Earth?”
You are tiresome Paul. You know that I had to look at your local temperature series to have any clear idea how to forecast for your local region, we discussed this by mail a few years back. Also if the jet moves north, not everywhere may be warm, as we saw in the U.S. this summer, skilful use of analogues can identify these variances.
“As I understand, you do forecasting for Piers”
Not any more since last year. He forecast a cool wet July for the UK too, while I have been talking about this summer being good from four years ago, and specifically said it would be hot from 6/7th July. My forecast was deterministic.
Paul Vaughan:
re your post addressed to me at September 1, 2013 at 12:40 pm.
I understand that answer to say that you cannot justify your assertions.
If you could justify them then you would have answered my questions concerning e.g. which laws were contradicted and how..
I did seek information and – as I have said here – I have obtained it from your answer.
Richard
I also believe the more talk that happens here, the more information about the plausibility of proposed connections, correlations, and mechanisms are exposed for the reader to clearly discern which theories are clear to agree with or disagree with, and which ones are muddled and fuzzy.
No theories.
Just straight observation.
Richard my assertions are solid.
Your understanding of them?
Needs some work.
Stratospheric warming and cooling, along with expansion and contraction and jet movement is sometimes attributed to solar variations and its various outputs. However, care must be taken when thinking along these lines. Why? Disturbances in the troposphere can propagate up into the stratosphere. So when a solar/climate believer uses stratospheric data, which is poorly studied anyway, to somehow “show” that there is a solar connection, challenge that assumption. The stratosphere can and does echo intrinsic weather pattern variations propogated from the bottom up.
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/users/isavelyev/GFD-2/Rossby%20waves.pdf
Love the maths. Now that’s what I’m talkin about!
Bob Tisdale says:
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/
This is the post where you made an absolute mess of the statistics. It certainly isn’t a refutation to Foster & Rahmstorf.
Much of what we call micro weather noise has been torn apart, studied and modeled with fairly straightforward maths. And since “climate” data is daily weather averaged, it stands to reason that day after day, month after month, and year after year of the same seasonal weather pattern variation regime can result in a trend that appears when weather is averaged. This trend can be noisily flat, rising, or falling. There are no assumptions here. There are no laws broken. There are decades of meteorology studies that demonstrate the work, passed peer review, and are still cited in college level texts.
Within the broader global view of macro weather pattern variations, these have likewise been studied and can be modeled with fairly straightforward maths. It is also known that these macro systems shift. And when they do, a new regime sets up till they shift again. Again, no assumptions are made. No laws are broken. There are decades of climatological studies that demonstrate the work, passed peer review, and are still cited in college level texts. In fact, some of the “new” stuff we are reading can be found in old text books.
Add to that our oceans and their ability to absorb IR which heats deeply, and send it around the globe via the various surface and below the surface oceanic currents, it is plausible that these systems have worked to bring about any trend we have seen in the modern era. Again, no assumptions are made. No laws are broken. There are decades of oceanic studies that demonstrate the work, passed peer review, and are still cited in college level texts. New things are being discovered all the time about this part of our global weather systems and is very exciting. For example, there are probably more than two areas on the globe where deep water makes it to the surface. Why is this proposed? The observed age of the deep water is younger than it would otherwise be if it only overturned at the poles.
The case for anthropogenic CO2 or solar output being the source of the recent weather pattern variation referred to as global warming, and now the stable period, is a lonnnnggg stretch in the face of such a powerfully variable planet.
Pamela Gray says:
“Add to that our oceans and their ability to absorb IR which heats deeply, and send it around the globe via the various surface and below the surface oceanic currents, it is plausible that these systems have worked to bring about any trend we have seen in the modern era. Again, no assumptions are made.”
That’s a huge assumption and akin to saying that La Nina drives the trade winds. or that SST’s dictate the AO/NAO. Only the changes in the noise at the scale of weather can cause a regime shift. And it is blue light that heats the ocean deeply not IR.
Ulric Lyons:
In your post at September 2, 2013 at 3:38 am you quote Pamela Gray having made the acxcurate and factual statements saying:
You reply to that saying in total:
Say what?!
As she says, she made no assumptions and you state none which you think she made. She provided a plausible hypothesis which cannot be refuted by existing data.
Her hypothesis is a possibility and it is NOT an assumption. But your only reply is to claim her statements which you quoted are “a huge assumption” when they are not.
Please make your case and stop making assertions about the views of others which you cannot substantiate. Your assertions are not helping onlookers (e.g. me) to consider your views.
Richard
Sedron L:
Your post at September 1, 2013 at 7:48 pm quotes Bob Tisdale as having said:
and replies saying in total:
Your reply is merely assertion with no substantiation in a blatant attempt to disregard information that you do not want to be considered.
Perhaps you can help me out.
What is it about this thread which is attracting trolls to come and smear information like flies are attracted to despoil good meat?
Richard
richardscourtney says:
“She provided a plausible hypothesis which cannot be refuted by existing data.”
There’s no case for Ekman Transport in the East Central Pacific driving the trade winds.
What she is saying is that the sum of weather is climate, and that the trend in climate due to oceanic circulation patterns, is effecting the weather, which the sum of, is climate, thereby effecting the trend. Which is the kind of knot one gets into, with nothing to account for the atmospheric changes that actually lead the oceanic mode phases, or what is driving these atmospheric changes.
Ulric Lyons:
At September 2, 2013 at 6:41 am you say
Aha! Now I understand why you think Pamela Gray is making an unstated assumption!
You are making an assumption so you think she must be, too.
You are assuming there is something “driving these atmospheric changes” but there may not be.
The climate system is never in equilibrium but is constantly adjusting towards a constantly changing equilibrium state. For example, average 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 because the northern and southern hemispheres have different coverage of land and sea. A chaotic system subjected to such forced oscillation could be expected to exhibit harmonics and other variations.
I think there probably are climate drivers, but there may not be.
If you can provide conclusive evidence of a climate driver then it needs to be considered as to whether or not that driver has sufficient influence to overcome the chaotic and harmonic variations in the climate system. Otherwise, that driver would have no discernible effect.
Your assumption of significant climate drivers may be correct. But you have no right to demand that Pamela Gray must make the same or any other such assumption.
I repeat, argue your case and let her argue hers. Then we onlookers can assess your cases. Your attempts to misrepresent her case inhibits our ability to assess your case.
Richard
I would be asking questions like, why does more warmer sea water get transported north when the AO/NAO are negative? is it the jet or the Ferrel Cell moved south, or both?
The signal is clear enough in the UAH north pole ocean data:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/temp-and-precip/upper-air/uahncdc.lt
Ulric, pools of water, warmed or less warmed, move with currents and winds. There are surface, mid, and bottom oceanic “rivers” that meander within the broader restrictions of these fairly well known paths. There are also surface winds that meander within the broader restrictions of their fairly well known paths. Any change in large scale, and even small scale atmospheric pressure systems, such as the Arctic/North Atlantic systems, will change wind directions and speed. We can see this with ice movement quite clearly. It stands to reason that changes in surface wind patterns would be the culprit as well as surface current patterns under the atmospheric pressure system condition you propose.
Anecdotally, I was in New York state during spring break and saw/heard the sea ice off of Lake Ontario being pushed on shore, across expansive yards, and into houses, breaking down doors and picture windows. The relentless wind was the culprit, set up by a pressure system that caused it to move from a high pressure area to a low pressure area. This ice was quite solid in the sense that you would be hard pressed to shovel it away from your house. Wind is a very powerful driver and capable of relentlessly moving very heavy objects. I therefore think it capable of moving water.
But you ask what causes this, and then what causes that “this”, and then what causes that this “this”. A system that is steadily charged with energy (which has been observed) at one end and leaks out of the system on the other (which has been observed) with random amounts of the “charge” allowed in and random amounts allowed to leak (which has been observed), combined with random storage and release of that energy within the entire system (which has been observed) will have quite a bit of “noise” and short and long term pattern variations demonstrated (which has been observed).
richardscourtney says:
“You are assuming there is something “driving these atmospheric changes” but there may not be.”
There has to be, as I keep on forecasting them, like this March when the jet was about 1000 miles south of normal, and those nice bump ups in June and July. The pressure changes look like they lead the jet stream shifts:
ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/cwlinks/norm.daily.ao.index.b500101.current.ascii
There’s no way I could call it chaotic.
Ulric Lyons:
I said to you and I EXPLAINED
Your answer to my explanation is at September 2, 2013 at 8:02 am and says in total
Of dear. The fact that you can extrapolate a sequence of events on the basis of past sequences does NOT necessitate a driver: it only indicates that the sequence tends to progress if it is initiated perhaps by chance.
When somebody says, “I interpret X to indicate Y” then I consider their science.
When somebody says, “There has to be Y because I can infer X from it” then I ponder if they are doing science.
I copy something I have very recently written on another thread:
Science is an attempt to seek the closest possible approximation to truth by attempting to find information which falsifies existing understanding(s) so the understanding(s) has to be rejected or amended.
Pseudoscience is an attempt to justify an idea as being true by attempting to find information which supports the idea while ignoring or rejecting information which conflicts with the idea.
Richard
Ulric you are right. It is not chaotic. It is random. I think of it like this: The system contains variously connected randomly working components. Think a set of old discordant school bus windshield wipers each run on separate motors with a not well connected impedance component that allows in various amounts of relatively stable energy. Now add thousands of these windshield wipers and take data on the times any two or more of them run together and the times they don’t.
-I used to be mesmerized by windshield wipers on the old hill bus, equipped with off rode tires and a front snow plow, we rode every morning to catch the big bus to school. I would watch these wipers cycle in and out of tandomness and wonder why-
Put into place a few wipers that connect up but with various time lags and various amounts of connectivity. Take data again. Yep. randomly cordant and randomly discordant with random stretches of time when several are working tandomly.
There’s no way I could call it chaotic.
By the way, I have worked with sound equipment that produces tones and white noise. With gating and impendance controls, I made frequency specific tones with sudden onset volume and made them “click” at regular intervals. I can make it work randomly too. The elegance of pure sound mixing is fun and I love the frequency response readout as it changes from sinewave to harmonic waves randomly moving through dance like changes from one kind of wave to another. To be sure, the energy source is constant. The sound generating equipment impedes, gates, broadens or narrows the frequency, and mixes. So too the elegant dance of Earth in my thought experiment.
richardscourtney says:
” The fact that you can extrapolate a sequence of events on the basis of past sequences does NOT necessitate a driver:”
As the results are consistent, it does. My arbiter is the weather, it is plain to see if a forecast fails or not. I would hardly engage in pseudoscience if I wanted to improve performance.
Pamela Gray says:
“To be sure, the energy source is constant.”
Rubbish, there are always low land temperatures in the temperate zones when the solar wind is slow: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
Ulric Lyons:
I am replying to your post at September 2, 2013 at 9:23 am so you know I have not ignored it.
You have evaded every question I put and ignored every point and explanation I made.
I assume my experience is typical of interactions with you, so I will assess all your posts accordingly and I will not waste effort on further interaction with you.
Richard
Ulric you say that the final “this” is solar. Then predict on that parameter alone. You say you cannot? Then what other factors are you using? By the time you have added the other variables, you are may be making the trunk wriggle and wrongly ascribing “driverness” to non-driving variables, especially those with as yet to be explained by you plausible mechanisms. There are LOTS of things that seem to work on the same clock in our Universe but are not connected, as in does not drive the other. Proper technique would be to bleed off your so-called drivers up stream and see if the predictions are still significantly correlated with your “full Monte”. Eventually you will stop wriggling the trunk and discover that just a few variables perform as well as the “full Monte”. Therefore you will be able to say that either a solar factor set (IE less than 4), or an intrinsic set (IE less than 4), predict weather as well as the “full Monte”. I think the error you make is related to statistically over massaging the data to make it sing, when in reality it can’t hold a tune.
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
Stephen Wilde – your New Climate Model looks very interesting
Please see the following re falling relative humidity in the atmosphere from 300 to 700 mb.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/GLJ_May2010_AGW.pdf
Please see slides 21 and 22.
To my knowledge, Ken Gregory first pointed out this declining RH trend in 2008.
Psuedo-correlation otherwise known as wriggle matching. Noisy data compared to noisy data is fraught with such false positives and drove (still does) mythological religious practices since the beginning of humankind. You prove nothing by referring to the reconstructed solar wind data and reconstructed temperatures. It is driving a myth.
richardscourtney says:
“You have evaded every question I put and ignored every point and explanation I made.
I will not waste effort on further interaction with you.”
I addressed every one, and I bet you carry on anyway.
Pamela Gray says:
“Noisy data compared to noisy data is fraught with such false positives and drove (still does) mythological religious practices since the beginning of humankind. You prove nothing by referring to the reconstructed solar wind data and reconstructed temperatures. It is driving a myth.”
Firstly you no idea whatsoever of the nature of my forecast data, and secondly I forecast the noise, reliably and regularly.
Stephen describes Sun-driven ozone changes in the stratosphere as the driver of everything downstream. The reader is encouraged to look at stratospheric ozone at the poles versus ozone in other atmospheric layers at the poles. The reader is also encouraged to look at how clouds filter out equatorial SWIR (or on cloudless days lets it all in) to determine which route of incoming solar output has a statistically significant affect on incoming energy of the amount necessary to change powerful macro-atmospheric pressure systems. Anything that reflects sunlight (such as ozone) is to be compared based on the angle of that sunlight and what it is hitting. Not just on the fact of removing the reflecting substance alone. My plausible hunch is that changes around the equator are for more powerful in terms of driving changes in global intrinsic macro and micro weather pattern parameters than changes at the poles when considering solar output of whatever parameter of that output you are measuring. Look there for ozone issues. So far, changes in equatorial ozone have not been demonstrated to correlate with cloud changes there.
Stephens argument is similar to Ulric’s. They both are unknowingly making the elephant’s trunk wriggle through the sheer number of tiny and large variables (mistakenly treated equally) and backed up with magical amplifications/connections yet to be plausibly described.
Pamela Gray says:
“..You prove nothing by referring to the reconstructed solar wind data and reconstructed temperatures.”
Not reconstructed temperatures, instrumental measurements, and I stand by what I said, all those lows in solar wind are when the lowest land temperatures for the temperate zones are:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
Pamela Gray says:
“Stephens argument is similar to Ulric’s. They both are unknowingly making the elephant’s trunk wriggle through the sheer number of tiny and large variables…”
Oh sure, solar wind speed polar air pressure, which shifts the jet stream, which when south inhibits the trade winds.
Ulric Lyons:
At September 2, 2013 at 10:00 am you say to me
No, I will not bite.
I will “carry on” only if and only when you answer any of the points or questions I put to you. Otherwise I will not waste effort on your arm-waving assertions.
I am now writing to draw the attention of others to your evasiveness.
Richard
Ulric Lyons says:
September 2, 2013 at 10:27 am
My last comment the symbols didn’t post; “solar wind speed *dictates* polar air pressure”.
@richardscourtney
I dealt with all your points.
Ulric, was it you that pointed readers to the solar wind data and you contention that low temperatures are part and parcel of low solar wind? Were you referring to a random non-connected observation, not uncommon with two noisy sets of data, or implicitly telling the reader that one drives the other? If the later, I assume you use such proposed connections consistently in your forecasts. Correct me if I am wrong. And while we are at it, want to describe your forecast methodology?
Then solar wind speed should dictate air pressure in other places as well. There are several macro semi permanent pressure systems around the globe. Does it?
“..or implicitly telling the reader that one drives the other? If the later, I assume you use such proposed connections consistently in your forecasts.”
Yes, but the connection is the result of the forecast, it is not used in it.
“Then solar wind speed should dictate air pressure in other places as well. There are several macro semi permanent pressure systems around the globe. Does it?”
Yes, ENSO.
“And while we are at it, want to describe your forecast methodology?”
Not in comments, I would need to present a full case, and seeing there is still a planetary talk D-notice in effect here, I really would not want to get cut off in mid stream.
To consider:
The reader is cautioned regarding stated connections in proposed solar-atmospheric pressure systems. The commentators proposing these connections should link to papers, readily available and not behind paywalls, they use to support their thesis.
The reader is also cautioned regarding these papers, that solar parameter data sets are currently under broadly supported and well-qualified efforts to reconcile disparate data sets. It is likely that “recent increased solar activity” data sets will be reconciled to solar indices that do not show such an increase, thus calling into question papers that demonstrate correlations using these pre-reconciled data sets. A case in point, highly regarded scientists whose previous papers depended on pre-reconciled data sets are now highly engaged and supportive of the very endeavor that will call into question their interpretations made earlier.
The reader should also regard efforts to expand the well-known and mathematically plausible but observationally undetectable relationship between the approximate 11-year solar cycle and Earth temperature, to long term temperature trends with equal caution.
In other words, think.
Pamela Gray says:
“The commentators proposing these connections should link to papers, readily available and not behind paywalls, they use to support their thesis.”
No, I’ll link straight to the OMNI solar data thanks as I did earlier, and you’ll see that the plasma speed graph that I linked to earlier was direct from here and not from a “paper”: http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/form/dx1.html
And show me where there are “disparate data sets” of solar wind measurements.
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar%20Wind%20at%20Earth%201883-2007.pdf
Ulric, proper citation of papers pro and against is a requirement of any introduction of a proposed hypothesis. What papers are you citing please?
To be clear, we are talking about extended temperature trends and their connection with solar parameters, not the well-known reactions to solar blasts, which are temporary affects (out to 4 or 5 days post-impact) rising above a constant stream of buzzy noisy little waves of background solar wind.
Pamela Gray says:
“What papers are you citing please?
I am citing original OMNI data, Leif’s Ap index from 1844, and original AO/NAO/ENSO data.
“To be clear, we are talking about extended temperature trends and their connection with solar parameters, ”
I’m not, I am mapping the noise that makes the trend.
“not the well-known reactions to solar blasts, which are temporary affects”
What effects?
Temporary changes in atmospheric pressure systems on Earth, clearly documented and widely accepted, even down to sea level. And it is tiny though measurable. Which begs the question: Does it drive weather pattern variations for days, weeks, months, years, decades? Not above natural variability entirely intrinsic in Earth-bound systems. In other words, these rare solar-atmospheric pressure events pale in comparison to pressure changes seen when the solar wind is doing anything else. Which is what it does most of the time. Only rarely does it ahhchooo!
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424665/solar-wind-changes-atmospheric-pressure-over-south-korea/
Temperature trends are statistical averages of daily noise. They are not two separate systems. Go ahead and study the noise. It is what I would do.
“Not above natural variability entirely intrinsic in Earth-bound systems.”
All the dominant stuff like daily/weekly AO and hence jet stream displacement is solar forced, otherwise I would not be able to forecast and hindcast at such scales.
Here is the South Korea study pdg. Critical analysis of contents required.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.1841.pdf
Again, papers please. I can readily find papers. How come you can’t or won’t?
Pamela Gray says:
September 2, 2013 at 12:31 pm
“Again, papers please. I can readily find papers. How come you can’t or won’t?”
Because I can make better sense of the raw data myself.
Okay, so you say that you are using the AO to forecast (I am assuming so correct me if I’m wrong). Who doesn’t. But you are “investigating” what causes the AO system to vary in SLP and probably also to split and shift. Everyone knows that all of these changes can be used to predict weather with a rather high, IE about .8 correlation out to about 7 days, degree of accuracy. Again who doesn’t use it. But you are saying that its parameters (SLP, shape(s), and location) are primarily solar driven even to the level of its daily noise. Correct?
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climate/patterns/NAO.html
Goodness this is fun!
Hell, I’s still in my jammies!
Some food to eat while we discuss. By the way large wave 1 and 2 Rossby Waves propogate up into the stratosphere so be careful when you attribute stratospheric changes to top down solar influences.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/AO_Regime.htm
Gotta go to town in a bit. Clearly we have lots to chew on with my last reference and many papers so step up to the plate Ulric. Papers please. Delivered on a silver platter no less.
Pamela Gray says:
“Okay, so you say that you are using the AO to forecast (I am assuming so correct me if I’m wrong).”
Yes wrong, the forecast tells me what the AO will do, not the reverse. I am looking at largely negative AO conditions from around January 7th 2014, severe at times, till at least February 20th.
I have not missed a single significant individual cold shot in the last 3 winters, and have not over forecast a single one either.
Solar then?
Pamela Gray says:
“Solar then?”
Planetary Ordered Solar Theory
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/another-paper-blames-enso-for-the-warming-hiatus/#comment-1404675
Now don’t go presuming that you already know all about how the planets could possibly effect solar activity.
Being a woman, I know all about cycles and what used to be “divined” through them. I also (background in Audiology) know about harmonics and subharmonics (make my day). I can match a subharmonic of the lunar cycle or tidal cycle with my period. That does not make it connected, though many a women’s retreat tried to connect them. Not sure why they never tried to connect it with solar parameters, possibly because the moon was considered to be female and the Sun male. But back to the debate. This all you got? Come on!
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
Good godamighty I feel like I’m at a cowboy shoot and you have a peashooter toy gun holstered in a plastic belt against my Henry’s Golden Boy.
So if you consider yourself to be a scientist, tear the above linked paper apart and try to falsify it. Always, when proposing a theory, you must burn the midnight oil trying to falsify it. What did you do to do that? Please don’t tell me you tried not to falsify your premise. If you did not do that essential step, this proposed theory is being trumpeted by a lightweight.
@Pamela Gray
You are jumping the gun. I can show you many many more cycles than in your link, and do you know what, it’s all completely meaningless unless you can actually show what the planets do at weekly to inter-annual scales, and properly track the sunspot cycles, repeatedly and consistently. All else it is just numerology. I’ll prime you with the fact that what matters is configurations, some augment solar activity, some diminish it, and that a periodic return of a given configuration is not a cycle in effect, but an event string of a variety of configurations. Then by the time I have run you through all my observations on the nature of these configurations, you will have noted that me and my pea shooter were a hologram and no way are you running away from my ICBM lol
Pamela Gray says:
“So if you consider yourself to be a scientist, tear the above linked paper apart and try to falsify it.”
Is that how you waste your time, falsifying others work rather than working on your own research?
I’m definitely not wasting my time on it, it’s archaic. What I do is forecast the weather, I have to explain every mistake and exception, without exception, there is no way I could make the test more severe, it’s scary, are you brave enough for that?
So what we have here is a proposed mechanism without an initial literature review and without an unbiased search for instances where the premise does not hold true. Ulric you have a belief. That is all. No wonder you avoid discussions.
I desired a scientific discussion of the methods known to produce advances in the search for weather pattern variation drivers. Those that join that search must follow standard research practice. Introduction, literature review, problem (something is unsolved), method, results, discussion, conclusion, and future direction. All others are snake oil sellers.
Game. Set. And match.
Pamela Gray says:
“..without an unbiased search for instances where the premise does not hold true.”
Pure fabrication, as I have said the complete is opposite true in my previous comment. You are wasting my time.
“Ulric you have a belief. That is all.”
I have the only deterministic forecast system that exists on the planet, it is the future of long range weather and climate forecasting.
“No wonder you avoid discussions.”
Are you sane? look at the number of comments of ours above! If Anthony changes his mind on planetary discussion, I will present my case fully.
“Game. Set. And match.”
You are trigger happy aren’t you, and I haven’t even shown you the target yet.
I have a comment on the Nature editorial on the paper –http://www.nature.com/news/hidden-heat-1.13608. If you subscribe you should be able to comment as well. Here it is in case you don’t subscribe.
A few years ago, when the temperature hiatus was first seen, the modelers ran their models over and over to see how often 10 year stasis would recur (Science 2 October ’09 pp. 28 – 29). They ran their model 10 times for a total of 700 years and found 17 episodes of stagnating temperature, the longest of which was 15 years — which we now appear to be exceeding. Have they gone back and run the models to see how often such periods occur? If each run was for 70 years any stasis at the beginning and end of the run could have gone on longer (or have been present longer), but they’d never see it.
The paper explaining the stasis using the Pacific as a heat sink is all very nice, but it does raise the question of whether the model is falsifiable, and if so by what.
Ulric, unless you want to discuss your review of the literature that supports and refutes your premise, and your own attempt to falsify your hypothesis (and it sounds like that has happened when you have to explain why a forecast did not come true), then this discussion is done with me. We either stick to discussion of standard scientific method -which you have clearly indicated is archaic- or you are a snake oil seller. Game, set, and match.
Pamela Gray says:
“..unless you want to discuss your review of the literature that supports and refutes your premise..”
There isn’t any, my findings are too unique, though they do stand to refute all other planetary-solar theories.
“We either stick to discussion of standard scientific method -which you have clearly indicated is archaic..”
No it was the research cycles institute paper that you linked to that is archaic. I know all about scientific method, I got my science lessons from age 3 with Dad in the bath: http://bit.ly/17doqb4
So, list your literature review. I easily found one paper. I am sure that you have a list since you have just stated you know all about the scientific method. There are lots of papers. I found one and don’t have one drop of belief in your premise. It doesn’t matter if they support or reject your premise. A proper literature review would highlight both sides of the issue in proposing the problem. So cough it up. Last time I am going to ask you.
Pamela Gray says:
” I easily found one paper. […] There are lots of papers.”
On wiggle matching and numerology, that is not what I do, there are no papers that relate to my findings.
“A proper literature review would highlight both sides of the issue in proposing the problem.”
Look, when I present my findings, that is all I shall do, I’m not wasting pages on discussing other peoples failed hypothesis.
“Last time I am going to ask you.”
And the last time I will tell you the same.
Good luck getting published. What a crock.
Pamela Gray says:
“Good luck getting published. What a crock.”
Oh thanks! and for the emotional projection too. This is what I call crock:
“A system that is steadily charged with energy (which has been observed) at one end and leaks out of the system on the other (which has been observed) with random amounts of the “charge” allowed in and random amounts allowed to leak (which has been observed), combined with random storage and release of that energy within the entire system (which has been observed) will have quite a bit of “noise” and short and long term pattern variations demonstrated (which has been observed).”
It’s so wrong that the only thing that makes any sense is that it describes you rather than the Earth. A different kind of projection, it happens a lot in sciencey things.
Add in a dash of GCR cloud forcing and the wiggle-matching starts to put a real squeeze on the AGW remnant.