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
================================================================
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.
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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 🙂
@ur momisugly 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.