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.
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.”
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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