UPDATE: Chris de Freitas responds to comments with an addendum below – Anthony
Readers may recall the recent paper that blamed “the pause” in global temperature on ENSO changes in the Pacific Ocean.
Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling
Yu Kosaka & Shang-Ping Xie Nature (2013) doi:10.1038/nature12534
Dr. Judith Curry called the paper “mind blowing”
Now there’s another paper that reaches a similar conclusion:
Update of the Chronology of Natural Signals in the Near-Surface Mean Global Temperature Record and the Southern Oscillation Index
de Freitas and McLean, 2013, p. 237 (Int J Geosciences – open access):
“All other things being equal, a period dominated by a high frequency of El Niño-like conditions will result in global warming, whereas a period dominated by a high frequency of La Niña-like conditions will result in global cooling. Overall, the results imply that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to temperature variability and perhaps a major control knob governing Earth’s temperature.”
ABSTRACT
Time series for the Southern Oscillation Index and mean global near surface temperature anomalies are compared for the 1950 to 2012 period using recently released HadCRU4 data. The method avoids a focused statistical analysis of the data, in part because the study deals with smoothed data, which means there is the danger of spurious correlations, and in part because the El Niño Southern Oscillation is a cyclical phenomenon of irregular period. In these situations the results of regression analysis or similar statistical evaluation can be misleading.
With the potential controversy arising over a particular statistical analysis removed, the findings indicate that El Nino-Southern Oscillation exercises a major influence on mean global temperature. The results show the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for mean global temperature variation, although the extent of the influence is difficult to quantify from among the variability of short-term influences.
Since the paper is open access, and available here: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=27382
Here is the link to the PDF:
deFreitas_&_McLean_IJG_2013_SOI_&_Mean_Global_Temp
This figure is interesting:
Figure 1. Four-month shifted SOI anomalies with monthly MGT anomalies shown for periods 1950 to1970 (a), 1970 to 1990 (b) and 1990 to June 2012 (c), where the Y-axis scale is identical in each case. The dark line indicates SOI and light line indicates MGT. Periods of volcanic activity are indi-cated (see text).
Discussion and Conclusions
The results show that, by and large, the Southern Oscilla- tion has a consistent influence on mean global tempera- ture. Changes in temperature are consistent with changes in the SOI that occur about four months earlier. The rela- tionship weakens or breaks down at times of major volcanic eruptions. Since the mid-1990s, little volcanic activity has been observed in the tropics and global average temperatures have risen and fallen in close accord with the SOI of four months earlier; although with the unexplained divergence of NH and SH average temperature anomalies modifying the earlier relationship.
The strength of the SOI-MGT relationship may be indicative of the increased vigor in the meridional dispersal of heat during El Niño conditions and the delay in the temperature response is consistent with the transfer of tropical heat polewards. The mechanism of heat transfer is likely the more vigorous Hadley Cell Circulation on both sides of the Intertropical Convergence Zone distributing warm air from the tropical regions to higher lati- tudes. The process of meridional heat dispersal weakens during La Niña conditions and is accompanied by a lower than normal MGT. Hadley Cell Circulation is weakened when the Southern Oscillation is in a state associated with La Niña conditions (i.e. positive Troup SOI values), but strengthens as the Southern Oscillation moves to a condition consistent with El Niño conditions (that is negative SOI values) [6,7].
The precision of the 4-month lag period is uncertain, but the credibility of a lag of some length is not in dispute. Researchers [31] found that mean tropical temperatures for a 13-year record lagged outgoing longwave anomalies by about three months, while [32] found warming events peak three months after sea surface temperature (SST) in the Niño-3.4 region. On the same theme, [33] found lags between 1 – 3 months with SST in the Niño-3.4 region for the period 1950-1999. Along the same lines [14] determined that the correlation between SST in the Niño-3 region and the MGT anomaly was optimum with a time lag of 3-6 months. The sequence of the lagged relationship indicates that ENSO is driving temperature rather than the reverse. Reliable ENSO prediction is possible only to about 12 months [34], which implies that improved temperature forecasting beyond that period is dependent on advancements in ENSO prediction.
The reason for the post-1995 period shift in the SOI- MGT relationship illustrated in Figure 1(c) is puzzling. An explanation may lie in changes in global albedo due to changes in lower-level cloud cover. In an analysis of Australian data, [34] found positive values of SOI anomalies to be associated with increased cloudiness and decreased incoming solar radiation. Data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) indicate that, from 1984 to 2005, mid-level cloud cover in the tropics was relatively constant but both lower and upper level cloud cover declined slightly. In the exotropics (latitude > 20 degrees, low-level cloud progressively decreased from 1998 onwards. It is not clear whether the change is a cause or an effect of a parallel temperature change [35]. The post-1995 shift appears unrelated to carbon dioxide increase because it occurred long after atmospheric CO2 was known to be rising. It is important to see the shift as more of discrete (i.e. step) change rather than a divergence, with the relationship reestablished after 2 – 3 years. Another possibility is that there are problems with the HadCRUT4 1.1.0 data. For example, we note that the published monthly average global temperature anomalies are not equal to the mean of the two published corresponding hemispheric values.
The approach used here avoids a focused statistical analysis of the data, in part because the study deals with smoothed data, which means there is the danger of spu- rious correlations, and in part because the ENSO is a cyclical phenomenon of irregular period. In these situations, the results of regression analysis or similar statisti- cal evaluation can be misleading. With the potential con- troversy arising over a particular statistical analysis re- moved, the findings reported here indicate that atmos- pheric processes that are part of the ENSO cycle are col- lectively a major driver of temperature anomalies on a global scale. All other things being equal, a period dominated by a high frequency of El Niño-like condi- tions will result in global warming, whereas a period dominated by a high frequency of La Niña-like condi- tions will result in global cooling. Overall, the results imply that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to temperature variability and per- haps a major control knob governing Earth’s temperature.
================================================================
UPDATE: 9/5/13 4:15PM PDT Chris de Freitas asked for this addendum to be posted in response to comments/discussion – Anthony
I understand concerns of the global warming alarmists. I too have been looking high and low for evidence that human-caused carbon dioxide increase is a major driver of mean global temperature. Our current is not part of that quest.
The intention of the work reported in the paper (de Freitas and McLean, 2013) was to stay as far away as possible from statistical massaging of the data. The reason is that, in our earlier 2009 work (McLean, de Freitas and Carter – references below), we were roundly criticised for the statistical methods we used. It detracted from the main finding of the work (i.e. Fig 7), which was free from statistical massaging; namely, that ENSO accounted for a great deal of the variability in mean global temperature; similar to that reported in the more recent paper in Nature (Kosaka and Xie, 2013).
In de Freitas and McLean (2013) we also stayed away from looking for trends. Determining trends and implementing detrending procedures can be important steps in data analysis. However, there is no precise definition of ‘trend’ or any ‘correct’ algorithm for extracting it. Consequently, identification of trend in a time series is subjective because a trend cannot be unequivocally distinguished from low frequency fluctuations. For this reason, a variety of ad hoc methods have been used to determine trends and to facilitate detrending methods (which are also subjective). As regards the correlation routine (Table 2 of our IJG 2013 paper), the idea there was to look for guidance in aligning the X-axis of Figures 1 and 3. It could have (even) been done by eye.
The overriding message is this. Climate is never constant; it is always cooling or warming. Various things cause these trends. Ever since I began studying climate 40 years ago I have been looking for patterns along with possible mechanisms and explanations. I have not had great success; if fact nobody has, and we have all been wrong once or twice. Notwithstanding that, our IJG (2013) paper shows that ENSO correlates well with global temperature. A possible reason (as described) is enhanced (or reduced) Hadley circulation, which increases (or decreases) the effectiveness of meridional heat transfer from the vast tropical zone of surplus towards the poles. It could be that the same process causes vast amounts of stored ocean heat to be fed into the atmosphere over extended periods (or moved back into the ocean over lengthy periods) The result is planet-wide warming (or cooling). If this persists, we get decadal scale global warming (or cooling) trends.
Like the work of Kosaka and Xie (2013), our IJG (2013) and earlier work (2009) shows that the current (or past hiatus), or multi-decadal-scale cooling or warming (‘climate change’), are possibly a reflection of natural climate variability tied specifically to ENSO decadal-scale processes. I assume these are superimposed upon what seems for the moment to be the less potent CO2-caused warming, and likely other less potent mechanisms as well.
Whether the ENSO-caused multi-decadal trends are internal or forced is unknown. My guess is that cooling and warming trends we see, or hiatus, are probably due to natural internal variability rather than a forced response. But we don’t know.
Chris de Freitas
de Freitas, C.R. and McLean, J.D., 2013. Update of the chronology of natural signals in the near-surface mean global temperature record and the Southern Oscillation Index. International Journal of Geosciences, 4(1), 234-239.
Open access at:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=27382&
McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter, 2009b. Correction to ”Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature”, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D20101, doi:10.1029/2009JD013006. ISSN 0148-0227
McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter, 2009a. Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637. ISSN 0148-0227
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Richard, the “all other things being equal” makes it a truism but don’t jump so high. What I see here is that ENSO is a very strong driver of world temps, even though all things are NEVER equal. “Ceteris parabus” is used so much in economics that it has spilled over into this paper. The authors are being unnecessarily pedantic here. You should be aware of the ceteris parabus fallacy.
“A ceteris paribus fallacy is based on an assumption that all else is equal in a particular analysis or will remain equal if a particular variable is changed. An “all else is equal” reduction is sometimes a useful way to predict the impact of making a particular change, but in the real world, there are many times when it can’t even assume a hint of a shade of a glimmer of validity. There are simply too many variables with inter- and co-dependencies. One example is comparing the events of two different slices of time to come to the conclusion that one person was a better President than another.”
http://boards.fool.com/ceteris-paribus-fallacy-26270295.aspx
Ah, well said indeed. Not that skeptics have the market cornered on ceteris parabus — it is the very foundation itself of the GCMs and every single picture ever portrayed of a curvilinear trend fit to e.g. temperature. Indeed, when watching climate science it is useful to keep a logical fallacy bingo sheet handy:
http://lifesnow.com/bingo/
Sadly, ceteris parabus doesn’t seem to be on the list for LFB — you should send a note to the authors asking them to add it and pointing out that it is needed for those seeking to play the game in climate science. Ceteris parabus is indeed perfect for those who seek to omit variables, linearize and otherwise oversimplify the solution to a set of two coupled Navier-Stokes (nonlinear, chaotic) partial differential equations describing a thermally driven non-equilibrium environment on the surface of an oblate spheroid in an highly eccentric orbit around its primary heat source while it rapidly rotates on an axis tipped by some 22 degrees relative to the elliptic plane so that coriolis forces deflect the air and water flowing over its rough and textured surface to generate an ever changing pattern of clouds that may or may not be coupled in some speculative way to the every changing pattern of activity in the magnetohydrodynamic solution in the convective/radiative zone of the heat source itself, a pattern laid down by fusion activity in its core several hundred thousand years ago plus a most complex non-Markovian time evolution ever since. And oops, I forgot to mention precession of the axis of the spinning spheroid, the bobbing of that spheroid up and down across the ecliptic plane, the effect of its surprisingly nearby satellite, its passage through galactic arms, or a variety of chemical, biochemical and geological drivers that act on timescales ranging from daily through geological time.
None of the hundreds of hands of Mr. Clock stand still, and all of them affect climate, most of them in unknown or strictly speculative ways. The very presentation of a global temperature anomaly is the embodiment of ceteris parabus — pretending that the anomaly captures the aforementioned linearizable trends because (obviously) everything else is equal or ignorable.
Sigh
rgb
Stephen Wilde says: “I believe that both ENSO and PDO are manifestations of the same process…”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO. The PDO simply portrays how closely the spatial pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies in the North Pacific resembles the pattern created by ENSO. The reason for the difference in multidecadal variability of ENSO and the PDO is the spatial pattern of the SSTs in the North Pacific is also impacted by the sea level pressures and related wind patterns in the North Pacific.
Additionally, (and I’ll present a post about this next month) it would be best to use the sea surface temperatures of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension to represent the dominant variations in the sea surface temperature of the North Pacific. Note the difference in the statement. The PDO represents the dominant spatial pattern in the North Pacific, while the KOE-SST represents the dominant sea surface temperatures. And by no strange coincidence, the two datasets are anti-correlated (correlation coefficient of monthly data -0.82):
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/figure-7-41.png
Or with the KOE data inverted:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/figure-7-40.png
Or on a multidecadal basis:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/figure-7-39.png
And with the KOE data inverted:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/figure-7-38.png
I’ve only detrended and standardized (and inverted) the KOE data in the above graphs, while for the PDO, JISAO goes through a very elaborate process using 3 sea surface temperature datasets, two of which are obsolete.
The PDO is a very abstract form of the North Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies, and as a result it is very confusing to most people. The sea surface temperatures of the KOE are not an abstract.
Regards
Bob said: A step in the right direction! Let’s see if The Team jumps all over this as they did with McLean et al (2009). That would be more difficult now since the same thing is implied by Kosaka & Xie (2013) and the two recent Meehl et al papers.”
———————————————
I am reminded of a quote by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Richard,
I am very sorry but as far as know Arthur Rörsch is still alive and well. In the rush to post my comment I did not notice that I had be the words “the late” in front of the wrong name. It is actually Peter A. Ziegler who recently died. Again, I am very sorry for the mix up.
Both Arthur and Peter where excellent editors and they did an outstanding job with compiling the special edition for E & E. I do not fault them one bit. They are/[were] men of integrity and great scientists in their own fields. The leak did not come about because of any direct actions on their part. It was caused by an unintended intrinsic flaw in the review process which I cannot discuss on-line.
I too am not that worried about who get the credit for correcting our misconceptions about the role played by the ENSO phenomenon in regulating world temperature. However, Bob Tisdale has done most of the hard yards.
“The approach used here avoids a focused statistical analysis of the data, in part because the study deals with smoothed data” and also because last time we dealt with this subject we got taken to school.
Bil Illis writes “But it does not have an accumulating impact or step changes. An El Nino or a La Nina phase only lasts for 3 months to 12 months at a time. After which, the opposite phase often occurs.”
I take issue with this logic. The ENSO may well have a impact on global temperatures on a time scale of centuries. The full PDO cycle lasts about 60 years. Half of this time there is a predominance of El Ninos and the other half a predominance of La Ninas. So there is at least a 60 year cycle, when residuals from the PDO could be noticable in global temperatures. But we have no data as to whether the intensity of every PDO is the same. To take an analogy from solar cycles, each Schwab cycle is about 11 years, but these combine into 22 year Hale cycles. But the value of Rz of each cycle varies from 0 to over 150 on a time scale of centuries or even millenia.
I can see no reason for supposing that the effects of ENSO cancel out as noise on a time scale measured in decades
Please avoid putting your email addresses on the web. If need be beg the moderators to put you in contact.
Even if the address is a simple as me @ur momisugly aol.
This lack of security over email addresses has casused problems in the past.
Ian Wilson:
Thankyou very much for your post at September 3, 2013 at 6:27 am which says
Whew! Thankyou.
Your message gave me a shock and I was trying to find out why I had not be told the sad news when your post came through to say it was merely displaced words.
Thankyou.
Richard
Stephen Wilde said:
September 3, 2013 at 5:42 am
Yes indeed but it doesn’t do anything for the longer term cycling from before the Roman Warm Period to date.
Stephen,
It is possible that the longer term warming and cooling spells are solar driven but the shorter term 60 year ripple superimposed upon the longer term cycles is modulated by the lunar perigee cycle. One does not preclude the other.
How else can you explain why there is much greater than chance probability of finding an extreme perigean spring-tide in the year prior to or the first year of an El Nino event than there is at other times.
It would seem that the rather shaky science of the AGW is being busted, the faith and the politics of man made global warming is another matter and will take a decade at least to destroy.
Mean while we just pay the price and vote out the idiots. Real science will prevail but snake oil salesmen seem to have a charmed life.
In the hmmmmm category I searched up this older story on WUWT about ocean floor volcanoes affecting ENSO
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/do-underwater-volcanoes-have-an-effect-on-enso/
So has any research been planned for the next el-nino to monitor the ocean floor? It would seem the obvious thing to do given that the ocean current flows from South/Central America and the heat starts there and it is on the ring of fire. I know correlation does not equal causation but it’s a darn good place to start.
If there is a cyclic movement of magma under the planet it would be handy thing to know.
The ENSO meter is pegged at ‘0’ – no trend. It has waffled back and forth in the neutral range for the last half year.
Meanwhile Alaska is recording some very chilly temps for this time of year….
http://ak-wx.blogspot.de/2013/08/record-cold-in-northern-interior.html
Gary Pearse says:
September 3, 2013 at 3:03 am
Excellent suggestion. Let us refer to the “Tisdale Effect” and the “Eschenbach Effect” and point out that their hypotheses are testable. Also, point out that the “Eschenbach Effect” could be initially confirmed simply by setting up some cameras on the Virgin Islands.
The “radiation-only” theorists will be along shortly to explain that ENSO cycles must average to zero over a long period of time. But notable Alarmist climate scientists, most notably Trenberth, have bolted from the “radiation-only” herd and have need to investigate processes of ocean mixing in support of the hypothesis that the “missing heat” is in the deep oceans.
Radiation-only theorists have done their best to suppress empirical investigation of natural regularities such as ENSO and the AMO. Their day is over.
Every time I see one of the temp graphs with volcanic events marked, I see no difference between those events and the noise already apparent. I don’t think volcanoes have much of an effect globally, unless it’s something like Tambora or Yellowstone, something REALLY big, The little popguns of El Chichon, Pinatubo, etc don’t seem to really do much.
Stephen Wilde says: “I think Bob has avoided stretching the thermal effects of the ENSO phenomenon to longer multidecadal periods of time…”
I haven’t avoided anything, Stephen. I’m not sure why you insist on continuing to make this erroneous statement. We’ve been over it a multitude of times.
My detailed analysis is limited by the availability of spatially complete sea surface temperature data, and that only exists from 1982 to present. Before the satellite era, the source data are too sparse to be of much value.
Additionally, I have performed a very limited analysis back to the early warming period, using HADSST3 data for the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans (60S-65N, 80E-180). They appear to exhibit similar upward shifts in response to the 1918/19/20 El Niño and the 1939/40/41/42 El Niño. The sea surface temperatures there then remained flat until the 1986/87/88 El Niño.
Ian Wilson says: “In my paper, I gave full recognition to Bob Tisdale’s important work.”
Thank you.
Consistently warmer Sea Surface Temperatures leads to greater atmospheric heat transfer leads to higher overall land temperature shock.
I must have missed something along the way: I thought that a correlation between higher frequency el Nino and higher temperatures had been agreed years ago. Clearly it was just folks expressing common sense opinions.
Anyway, now we’ve proved something that makes sense perhaps we’d like to do another thing which makes sense: compare frequencies of el Nino and la Nina in PDO warm and cool phase.
Will this explain the link between PDO index and temperature reported a year or so ago by d’Aleo??
It’s not rocket science you know.
rgb wrote: “Ceteris parabus is indeed perfect for those who seek to omit variables, linearize and otherwise oversimplify the solution to a set of two coupled Navier-Stokes (nonlinear, chaotic) partial differential equations describing a thermally driven non-equilibrium environment on the surface of an oblate spheroid in an highly eccentric orbit around its primary heat source while it rapidly rotates on an axis tipped by some 22 degrees relative to the elliptic plane so that coriolis forces deflect the air and water flowing over its rough and textured surface to generate an ever changing pattern of clouds that may or may not be coupled in some speculative way to the every changing pattern of activity in the magnetohydrodynamic solution in the convective/radiative zone of the heat source itself, a pattern laid down by fusion activity in its core several hundred thousand years ago plus a most complex non-Markovian time evolution ever since.”
Yes, that’s one sentence. 😉 But a very cool one.
The evidence suggesting more El NInos warms the earth has been obvious for at least a decade. I argued the exact same thing in my book and Tisdale has been blogging it forever. Great to see it is finally getting more attention in the peer reviewed literature.
Not if there’s a sharp temperature drop starting a few months after AR5 comes out (a global Gore effect). I’m getting a strong feeling that that will happen. chaos vult!
Bob Tisdale has changed the paradigm of climate science, his detailed explanation of how ENSO drives global temperature is on its way to becoming settled science, while CAGW is moving in the opposite direction. I cant download the paper here – painfully slow and unreliable internet access in this hotel – I would like to know if the great man is acknowledged in the paper? “Control knob” is I think Bob Tisdale terminology (and / or Willis Essenbach).
The driver of global temperature is ENSO, the driver of climate science is now WUWT. Not the way it should be, but the way it is until the salaried and pensioned climate community snap out of their CO2 trance.
richardscourtney says:
September 3, 2013 at 3:47 am
“On this I think we disagree.
I don’t care who gets the credit for correcting the science.
I care that the science gets corrected.”
These are not exclusive statements. Couldn’t we have both? Imagine someone like a member of the Hockey Team stealing General Relativity or E=mc^2, or others of your choosing.
“Spurious correlation” when using smoothed data is something solar folks should hang on their wall. Or maybe even sticky note it to their foreheads.
Richard, I didn’t know you swam with the sharks. I’m just an armchair weather geekess and you waded into the interesting conversation I was having with Ulric. Thanks!
Jeff Alberts says:
September 3, 2013 at 7:44 am
Yeah, that is one of the good reasons for attending Duke or some equally good university, in my humble opinion.