Guest essay by Christopher Monckton
As soon as the BBC/Maslowski forecast of no sea ice in the Arctic summer by 2013 has been disproven (see countdown on right sidebar), WUWT will need another countdown. May I propose the Santer countdown?
On November 17, 2011, Ben Santer and numerous colleagues, including researchers from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) that, as his press release said,
“shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. … tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”
In an earlier posting I demonstrated that for more than 17 years (now 17 years 7 months) the HadCRUt4 monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset had shown no global warming distinguishable from the combined 2 σ measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties published together with the data themselves.
However, there were those who said that, nevertheless, the HadCRUt4 data appeared to show some warming (albeit less than 1 Cº/century). Well, the first of the five principal datasets to show no warming at all for 17 years is likely to be the RSS dataset of Santer’s own colleagues. Today the data for August 2013 were made available:
The least-squares linear-regression trend on the data from the RSS satellites since November 1996 shows there has been no global warming at all for 202 months (16 years 10 months). In a few more months, unless an el Niño comes along in January, its favorite month, RSS may be the first dataset to show 17 full years with a zero global warming trend.
The NOAA’s 2008 State of the Climate report said 15 or more years without global warming would indicate what was delicately described as a “discrepancy” between prediction and observation.
Fifteen years without warming duly came and went: indeed, Professor Jones of the University of East Anglia was the first to admit this, in response to a question I had suggested to Roger Harrabin of the BBC (who had thought I was daft to suggest that there had been no statistically-significant warming for as much as a decade and a half).
So Santer moved the goalposts.
Taking the mean of all five principal global-temperature datasets (GISS, HadCRUt4, NCDC, RSS, and UAH), since the new millennium began on 1 January 2001 there has been no global warming at all for 152 months (12 years 8 months):
Therefore, those who are anxious to believe that the long pause in global warming is what the models expected, or at least allowed for, can take a crumb of comfort from that.
Two important caveats. First, linear trends are not predictions. They are only one way of representing the trend (if any) that has already occurred over a chosen period in a stochastic dataset such as the global mean surface or lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Secondly, a strong el Niño, or a resumption of stronger solar activity, or simply some hitherto-unexplained factor in natural climate variability, could cause a resumption of global warming at any time. The central consideration, then, is not whether there have been x years without global warming, vexing though this embarrassing statistic is to the true-believers and their models. It is the extent and the persistence of the discrepancy between predicted and observed global warming.
The monthly Global Warming Prediction Index keeps track of this discrepancy. The index number for September 2013, published today, is 0.22 Cº. That is how much the IPCC’s central projection of global warming over the 8 years 8 months from January 2005 to August 2013 has overshot the observed temperature trend.
Today’s index graph shows 34 models’ projections of global warming since January 2005 in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report as an orange region. The IPCC’s central projection, the thick red line, is that the world should have warmed by 0.20 Cº (equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century) since that starting date.
The mean of the RSS and UAH satellite measurements, in dark blue over the bright blue trend-line, shows global cooling of 0.02 Cº (–0.22 Cº/century). The models have thus over-predicted warming since January 2005 by 0.22 Cº (2.55 Cº/century).
The 18 ppmv (202 ppmv/century) rise in the trend on the gray dogtooth CO2 concentration curve, plus other ghg increases, should have caused 0.1 Cº warming, with the remaining 0.1 ºC from previous CO2 increases. No warming has occurred.
On its own, the CO2 increase since 2005 should have caused a radiative forcing of 0.24 Watts per square meter, or 0.34 W m–2 after including the influence of all other greenhouse gases. Even without temperature feedbacks, according to the IPCC’s methods this forcing should have caused 0.1 Cº warming. Adding in the IPCC’s temperature estimates of temperature feedbacks and of previously-committed global warming should have caused up to 0.3 Cº warming since January 2005. None has occurred.
Note how the temperature has failed to rise since 2005, notwithstanding that the CO2 concentration has risen quite rapidly. The usual suspects like to display what they call an “escalator graph” with many of Santer’s “hiatus periods” of 10-12 years without any global warming, but an overall rising trend nonetheless.
However, previous periods free of global warming did not occur while Man was putting more CO2 in the air anything like as rapidly as he is today. Now that CO2 concentration is rising, so should temperature be rising, if the IPCC were correct about how much warming we should expect as CO2 concentration increases.
The “escalator graph”, then, is meaningless, except to the extent that the frequency with which the “hiatus periods” occurs suggests that the probability of seeing anything like the 2.8 Cº warming this century that is the IPCC’s central projection is not very great.
Though the IPCC projects that the world should have warmed by 0.20 Cº (2.33 Cº/century) since 2005, the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite datasets shows cooling of 0.02 Cº (0.22 Cº/century). The predicted and actual trends are visibly diverging. Solar physicists expect significant cooling in the coming decades. If they are right, the divergence will become more than merely embarrassing.
Even as things stand, if the IPCC overshoot over the past 104 months were to continue for 100 years the IPCC’s prediction would exceed the measured trend by more than 2.5 Cº.
If Jeffrey Patterson’s harmonic decomposition of the past 113 years’ temperature records is correct, the world may actually be cooler in 2100 than in 2000.
A shame we shall not be there to see the baffled faces of the profiteers of doom.
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On November 17, 2011, Ben Santer and numerous colleagues, including researchers from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) that, as his press release said,
“shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. … tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”
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i would like to see the detail on this. In particular for each model that shows a 10 to 12 year “hiatus period”:
1. what level of CO2 existed in the model run during the period of ‘hiatus’
2. What CO2 forcing was the model running
3. What negative forcings existed in the model run during the “hiatus period” and how are these negative forcings broken down.
Obviously it is easier to have a 10 year period of hiatus than a 17 year period of hiatus.
Likewise, it is easier to have a relatively short period of hiatus when say CO2 levels are ~310 rising to ~330ppm than it is when CO2 levels are ~380 rising to ~400ppm
It is vitally important to know the climate sensitivity being used by these models. Is it only low sensitivity models that show a “hiatus period” and beyond what level for climate sensitivity do no models show a “hiatus period”?
It is also extremely important to know what negative forcings the model used to offset the positive forcing of CO2. Are these randomly generated, or are they based on prediction and/or data? What assumptions have been made with respect to the level of negative forcings employed by the models? A comparision of the negative forcings operative by the model during the “hiatus period” needs to be compared to those operative today which we know about as a result of fact based observation.
Without detail, Santer’s statement should be regarded as mere puff and carrying no weight.
given the issues highlighted by this very blog in regard to actual temperature measurements,land and ocean,the cynic in me tends to think there may well be net cooling over this period. if that is the case,and continues to be so,it really is going to be interesting to watch the warmist response over the next decade or so.
provided i do not die of hypothermia as scotland attempts to rely on 100% renewable energy by 2020 first.
I asked Walter Dnes the question below. Here is the question and his answer:
What is the maximum that September has to be and still allow 204 months to be reached? Thanks!
Note that 204 months will be October 1996 to September 2013.
I’ve played around with the series, and it looks like it would have to be 0.154, assuming no other months of the series are modified. The spreadsheet slope() function uses all the points in the range to calculate slope, which is why the caveat. This August was 0.167, and in May, we had 0.139. So 0.154 is definitely possible.
Walter Dnes
If Jeffrey Patterson’s harmonic decomposition of the past 113 years’ temperature records is correct, the world may actually be cooler in 2100 than in 2000.
A shame we shall not be there to see the baffled faces of the profiteers of doom.
It’s a bloody damn shame we won’t be there to insist on the return all of the wasted money and resources, with compound interest calculated after inflation adjustments! The lost opportunity costs are incalculable…..
In response to a commenter’s query, in the RSS dataset the difference between the 16 years 10 months without any warming and the 23 years without statistically significant warming is that for almost 17 years there has been no global warming at all.
Bruce Cobb,
I expect the IPCC will switch track to the dangerous extreme weather events line. This “argument” seems to be in vogue amongst the Warmistas.
And once again we are looking at changes in temp over a tiny time scale, graphs and all that. Please don’t get drawn into the joke of looking at what is weather or multi-decadal stuff. It’s meaningless nonsense encouraged by paid scientists who need in their next pay packet. It means roughly shit.
bit chilly says:
September 11, 2013 at 3:59 pm
provided i do not die of hypothermia as scotland attempts to rely on 100% renewable energy by 2020 first.
Is drying and burning peat an ‘approved’ renewable resource as yet, in The Land of the Scots?
MtK
Secondly, a strong el Niño, or a resumption of stronger solar activity, or simply some hitherto-unexplained factor in natural climate variability, could cause a resumption of global warming at any time
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But these are not CO2 driven events, and if one or more of them were to occur and if they were to drive temperatures upwards then this would not be the result of CO2 forcing. Rather, it would be the consequence falling under the umbrella of natural variation.
It is important to bear in mind that the satellite data (which extends for some 33 years) only shows a single and isolated one off warming in and around the super El Nino of 1998. Prior to that El Nino the temperatures were flat between 1979 and about 1996/7 and following that event, from about [1999] to date the temperatures have again been flat. There is no first order correlation between temperature and CO2 in the 33 year period of the satellite record.
The satellite record suggests that climate sensitivity is so low that it cannot be measured within the limitations imposed by the design, sensitivity, resolution and errors of our current best measurement devices. As matters stand, for the past 33 years, we cannot seperate the signal to CO2 from the noise of natural variation.
Further to my post above. The second sentence of the second para contained a typo. The reference to 1990 should have been 1999, ie.,
“Prior to that El Nino the temperatures were flat between 1979 and about 1996/7 and following that event, from about 1999 to date the temperatures have again been flat. “
J Martin says:
September 11, 2013 at 2:53 pm
I’m sure I had read on this site that the satellite datasets showed no warming for 23 years
That number is true for RSS and it is the time that SkS shows no statistically significant warming. Since August, 1989, SkS says “Trend: 0.123 ±0.125 °C/decade (2σ)”. (That would now be 24 years.) See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
On the other hand, Nick Stokes’ site at: http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p/temperature-trend-viewer.html?Xxdat=%5B0,1,4,48,92%5D
gives: “CI from -0.025 to 1.965” since January 1993. This would be 20 years and 8 months.
So, can we consider the 17＋year requirement to be the “Santer Clause”?
Using the oft flogged acidification of the ocean misrepresentation, a temperature trend of zero represents cooling because it isn’t getting hotter. In fact we’re 0.something degrees cooler than if the models were worth the money wasted on them.
My next question is, what percentage of the cooling is human-caused? How much more acidic, excuse me, cooler would it be if there were no human contribution to global cooling? What are the consequences of CAGC in the short and long terms? Should we start giving away coal to reverse this chilling new climate? Is this a good time to sell my carbon investments? Was Al Gore right that climate change is the greatest challenge to the human race ever? Was this cooling what he had in mind when he said that?
Ok – that was several questions, but once you have your tongue firmly in your cheek its hard to stop.
There is no discernible reason why a temperature estimate from microwaves sensed in a satellite should correlate 1:1 with sensors in MMTS shelters some arbitrary height above local ground level. I’m not really confident that the two types of record should be averaged.
Apart from that, I’d be cautious about excess jubilation, which could come back to bite the bum. Nature is rather unpredictable and the chance that a 1998-type year will repeat is finite.
Better to stick to the record than to ‘project’, eh? That’s what the other lot does, project from models.
My guess is that the warmists are praying for a nice big volcano, then they can model that and come to the conclusion that the heating has been hidden.
@mpaul,
Love it! You speak as if you’ve audited a few courses in Circular Logic at some Liberal uni…ever been to Townsville, Australia?
@richardscourtney says it well, and if ANYTHING has failed to be a “prediction”, it is all the GCM, which are nothing but expensive Ouija Boards. IF I create a program, give it a starting condition, let it run, any claim that because my initial conditions were a reconstruction of an actual day’s weather, that therefore the end state of my GCM’s run was a valid prediction is simply false.
The alarmists have conflated their models with reality.
The predictions of the alarmists have no basis in reality, the assumptions behind the programs no proven basis in fact, and the fallacy behind the notion that by taking the combined outputs of any number of such machines and by some magic analysis, produce a factual result applicable to the real world, even a trend should be obvious to anyone who can put together a truth table. That a computer program behaves a certain way is no proof that nature will, all assertions to the contrary. It is, after all, only a reflection of the biases of those who programmed it. If they knew enough to make a program that could ape the environment accurately, they wouldn’t need the program in the first place.
Models are abstrations, which can be useful. But they should not be mistaken for reality.
@Rud Istvan makes the very valid point that warming may well be real, regardless the lunacy of the alarmists. The takeaway point (which the alarmists are trying very very hard to take away from everyone, lest the world’s population do what should’ve been done long since: ignore them) is that alarmists have not proven their claims that increased CO2 level is a cause of warming (rather than a result), or that mankind is to blame for any changes in climate either way, or that the warming seen since the late 19th century has been caused by anything unnatural, or that any warming (or lack thereof) is anything other than the result of a natural process, and well within the natural variation for the Earth’s climate. Further, for all their alarmism, they have yet to prove—in contradiction of the vast history to the contrary—that if we ARE heading into a warm period similar to the Medieval Warm Period or Roman Warming, that it will be in any way harmful to mankind. It’s a matter of history that all previous warm periods have been a great boon to mankind (when live gives you lemons, the REALLY smart man asks for tequila and salt).
If the worst that happens is that a few rich elitist snobs have to retreat from their submerging seaside bungaloes, where’s the downside ?
(I only refrain from mentioning the inconvenience to the poor because a) they adapt, and always have; and b) I’ve yet to see any Greenie-treehugging-alarmist come to the aid of farmers whose land is currently a couple of fathoms under the Mississippi River, for example…so obviously they’re not important in the alarmists’ calculus…)
If Al Gore had won in 2000 – he would of forced a heap of stupid regulations on us then been declaring victory now how it worked — I thank God he did not win.
johnny pics says:
September 11, 2013 at 2:25 pm
May I propose a turbine tear down. Give gore et all a hammer and chisel to remove the tons of concrete holding up the bleebing things up.
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OH what a LOVELY IDEA!
Make the punishment fit the crime. All of the loud mouthed doomsayers in academia and the NGOs and the bureaucracies should be equipped with hammers, chisels and wheel barrows and be made to remover every last scrap of Wind turbines and Solar panels from the landscape. (Dutifully placing each piece in the correct recycling bin of course.)
This will be on their on dime of course.
Is this a global pandemic of anosmia? Can’t people smell the stench of a corrupting ideology? Will they have to be deprived of literally everything before they wake up and smell the roses again?
Bruce Cobb says:
September 11, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Have no fear though, the IPCC liars will have a smorgasbord of “explanations” for what they will call “the slowdown” later this month in Sweden.
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And with luck Mother Nature will have a lovely blizzard waiting to greet them. (Possible – Record low was 32F (0C) on September 23 1996)
mpaul says: @ur momisugly September 11, 2013 at 3:37 pm
…In a statement, the Union of Honest Scientists notes, “the evidence of the harm created by global warming to our computer infrastructure is now overwhelming, and while it is already too late, we call on lawmakers to immediately enact legislation that will begin to reverse the damage to our computers….
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GEE, I think I just read that statement with slight modifications over at FORBES a couple of minutes ago:
Perhaps they should hire that journalist to write their press copy. /sarc
“Solar physicists expect significant cooling in the coming decades.”
Some solar physicists . . .
OR: A number of sun watchers . . .
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Green Sand says:
September 11, 2013 at 3:20 pm
. . .“slosh” into extratropical areas?
If the Trade Winds never cease, one might suppose the warm pool in the western Pacific Ocean would leak heat to someplace other than the eastern Pacific. I have trouble imagining this would be a “slosh” in any same-sense as the release of water when the Trade Winds cease.
Sorry, left the slash out
You do realise that it’s only 201 months since November 1996? You can’t count both the beginning and end months in your number, so I’d hate to see everyone celebrating a month too early. After all, if you measure a fall of the average monthly temperature temperature of 0.1 degree starting in July and ending in August, that is a one-month fall, not a 2-month fall.
Martin Hodgkins says: @ur momisugly September 11, 2013 at 4:13 pm
And once again we are looking at changes in temp over a tiny time scale….
Then how about this?
The authors state that most glaciers in Norway didn’t exist 6,000 years ago, and the highest period of the glacial activity has been in the past 600 years.
Alternate: Norway Experiencing Greatest Glacial Activity in the past 1,000 year