Another Peer-Reviewed Paper Predicting the Cessation of Global Warming Will Last At Least Another Decade

A few days ago, the Georgia Tech press release for Wyatt and Curry (2013) included a quote from Marcia Wyatt, who said the stoppage in global warming “could extend into the 2030s”. (See the WattsUpWithThat post here and Judith Curry’s post here. The paper is here. Also see the SpringerLink-ClimateDynamics webpage.)

Now, there’s another paper predicting the cessation of global warming will last for more than another decade, with Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation-induced cooling in the Northern Hemisphere through 2027 (prompted by the North Atlantic Oscillation).

See TheHockeySchtick post New paper finds natural North Atlantic Oscillation controls Northern Hemisphere temperatures 15-20 years in advance. The paper is Li et al (2013) NAO implicated as a predictor of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature multidecadal variability. (Full paper is here.) The Li et al. (2013) abstract reads (my boldface):

The twentieth century Northern Hemisphere mean surface temperature (NHT) is characterized by a multidecadal warming–cooling–warming pattern followed by a flat trend since about 2000 (recent warming hiatus). Here we demonstrate that the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is implicated as a useful predictor of NHT multidecadal variability. Observational analysis shows that the NAO leads both the detrended NHT and oceanic Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) by 15–20 years. Theoretical analysis illuminates that the NAO precedes NHT multidecadal variability through its delayed effect on the AMO due to the large thermal inertia associated with slow oceanic processes. A NAO-based linear model is therefore established to predict the NHT [Northern Hemisphere Temperature], which gives an excellent hindcast for NHT in 1971–2011 with the recent flat trend well predicted. NHT in 2012–2027 is predicted to fall slightly over the next decades, due to the recent NAO weakening that temporarily offsets the anthropogenically induced warming.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a sea level pressure-based index. Sea level pressures are related to wind patterns. And wind patterns impact how, where and when warm waters from the tropical Atlantic migrate north…which, in turn, impacts the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic as a whole. Li et al (2013) are basically saying that multidecadal changes in the sea level pressure and wind patterns in the North Atlantic are a useful predictor of multidecadal periods of warming and cooling in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.

It’s time for the IPCC to start thinking about cutting back on their predictions of future global warming by at least 50%. The public is catching on to the fact that if natural variability can stop global warming for 2 to 3 decades, then it also contributed to the warming from 1975 to the turn of the century—something the IPCC failed to account for in its projections.

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John West
October 13, 2013 5:46 am

“something the IPCC failed to account for in its projections”
More importantly, they failed to account for in their attributions. They’ve massively overestimated the anthropogenic contribution to 20th century warming.

Sam The First
October 13, 2013 6:18 am

Like Ian Wilson, Piers Corbyn the British astrophysicist turned meteorologist has been predicting a cooling of the earth’s temperature for some time now, based on solar phases.
He also keeps making the point that there has essentially been no ‘global warming’ in living memory outside the falsified computer models, so the notion that there is a ‘pause’ is itself based on a misrepresentation.
This is his response to the IPCC report, with graphs and links:
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews13No39.pdf
Piers’ long term weather forecasts are the most accurate obtainable. His website is in dire need of a design overhaul, but he does know his stuff; and is in much demand at conferences of eg big business. The MET and the BBC of course refuse him any platform

lgl
October 13, 2013 6:30 am

Bill
Thanks, cool, but I don’t think it is.
“Its transport has thus been found to follow significant variations at ENSO timescale, with an increased (decreased) transport in La Niña (El Niño) phases”
which is the opposite of Bobs claim.

lgl
October 13, 2013 6:32 am

… and the link
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012EGUGA..1410485B

Big Don
October 13, 2013 6:40 am

“A NAO-based linear model is therefore established to predict the NHT [Northern Hemisphere Temperature], which gives an excellent hindcast …”
First of all, I have to believe that there isn’t much linearity in climate behavior. Secondly, hindcasting cannot validate a model. Only demonstrating the ability to make predicted future outcomes can validate a model.

October 13, 2013 6:52 am

Bill Illis says: October 13, 2013 at 4:34 am

I’ve played around with North Atlantic Oscillation (and there are only about 10 different methods of measuring this) and I have not found any correlation nor predictability. For the most part, the NAO is just a random set of numbers that goes up and down with no patterns.

Lot of my leisurely forays into science of ‘guesswork’ is one way or the other related to the AMO, for the NAO is less so, but correlation is there.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMO-NAO.htm
The NAO is really wrong long term index, what matters is the summer atmospheric pressure in the Nordic Seas http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/slides/large/04.18.jpg

Jimbo
October 13, 2013 7:16 am

Good. If the temperature standstill lasts another decade it should cover AR6. The only problem now is that they will say it was predicted. That is the issue with these new papers, it buys them more time while forgetting what they said about 15 years and 17 years being enough to force a re-examination of the assumptions built into the climate models. Falsify if you like.

Crispin in Waterloo but really in Beijing
October 13, 2013 8:43 am

@mwhite
>Have any of these people predicted a temperature fall? I don’t want to hear any retrospective predictions/projections after the event, not this time.
T Landscheidt predicted it repeatedly and also predicted a major drought in the US in 2018 and again in 2025. He died about 10 years ago. He method evolved over time but not much. It was similar to that proposed through (but not originally by) Dr Rodes Fairbridge. It centres on the rate of acceleration of the centre of the solar mass around the solar system barycenter. It is not quite as simple as is often portrayed. He felt the main predictor was the position of the centre of the solar mass relative to the physical centre of the sun (which position is moved by the change in the distance from the solar system barycenter. It changes solar activity – now about to be quiet for some years. Landscheidt predicted the El Nino of April 2003 more than 3 years in advance to within 4 weeks, having posted it publicly on John Dale’s website in 1999. He was at least partly right. The Farmer’s Almanac used this method, in part, as one of their three inputs for long range forecasts. Since they switched to ‘computer models’ their long range forecasts suck, however they were before.
Landscheidt was also a Canadian.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone north of the 49th!

Solomon Green
October 13, 2013 9:22 am

Is this the same Leo Geiger?
http://www.oai.org/OSSI/program/LaunchPad.pdf

October 13, 2013 9:23 am

About Wilson noticing
“For those who think that Marcia Wyatt’s claim that the standstill in the World’s mean temperature will last to 2030 is somehow new……. ”
I think that it is important to point out that the standstill was actually properly evaluated in my papers.
In fact, although Wilson and other have qualitatively conjectured a decrease of solar activity during these decades and other already knew about the 60-year cycle in the temperature record (e.g. Klyashtorin et al since 2001), to project a standstill one needs to quantitatively evaluate all relevant contributions and the result shown in some clear picture.
At my knowledge this clear pictures can be found in my presentation at EPA in Feb/2009
Climate Change and Its causes: A Discussion about Some Key Issues. At the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, DC USA, Feb. 26, 2009.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf/vwpsw/360796B06E48EA0485257601005982A1#video
And in my first full article on the topic (see figure 12)
Scafetta N., 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951-970.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682610001495
More developed models are in my following papers.
As Anthony knows well, I am keeping an updated figure of my forecast on my web-site
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
where the forecast stanstill is quite evident to any unbiased person.
About Wyatt and Curry’s claim about the standstill, note that their paper does not really demonstrate it because it focuses only on the quasi 60-year oscillation patter. As said, to obtain the standstill one needs to evaluate all components, not just the 60-year cycle. Wyatt and Curry’s claim about the standstill is indeed based on my own results that they know very well although if they have not referenced them.
Note that also the idea of a synchronization of the various climate subsystems advanced in Wyatt and Curry paper was indeed first hypothesized in my
Scafetta N., 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951-970.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682610001495
See the appendix section who title is “Collective synchronization of coupled oscillators” where the mathematical theory underlining this synchronization was discussed in some details.

October 13, 2013 9:44 am

Sam The First says:
“Piers’ long term weather forecasts are the most accurate obtainable.”
His temperature forecasts have gone particularly pear shaped over the last few years with an alternative analogue he is applying. Had you not noticed?

Ian W
October 13, 2013 9:53 am

So we have people who after assessing the atmospheric and oceanic oscillations, are forecasting a standstill or cooling, people using signal theory forecasting cooling, people studying the jetstreams who are forecasting cooling, and we have solar scientists and astrophysicists forecasting the Sun going quiet leading to cooling.
Looks like Harold Ambler was right – Don’t sell your coat !

October 13, 2013 11:04 am

Hi Mr Tisdale
it is here

October 13, 2013 11:42 am

Bob Tisdale says:
October 13, 2013 at 11:19 am
(Are we being formal because it’s Sunday?)
To the contrary, if there is possibility of difference in opinions addressing someone by Mr. or academic title (e.g. Dr. Svalgaard, never Leif) restrains my primordial instincts.

lgl
October 13, 2013 11:42 am

Bob
“When warm subsurface temperature anomalies caused by the thermocline deepening reach the east” does not mean “An El Niño takes a huge volume of warm water from below the surface of the western tropical Pacific and relocates it to the surface of the eastern tropical Pacific”
Repeating, “caused by the thermocline deepening”

Theo Goodwin
October 13, 2013 5:42 pm

Thanks again, Mr. Tisdale, for more brilliant, helpful, and informative work.

October 14, 2013 1:59 am

I am looking to be convinced that AGW is a myth or not a problem. I admit that currently I believe that on balance it isn’t a myth and is a problem. My background is in science, with a joint hons undergraduate degree in Math and Physics from the University of Nottingham, England and a post-graduate in applied statistics (operational research) from the London School of Economics.
Fire away – how can I be convinced? I’ve read “Climate – the Counter Consensus”, if that helps.

October 14, 2013 3:13 am

johnbelljubble,
Skeptics do not have the burden of proof. The onus is on those putting forth the AGW conjecture.
But alarmists have failed to make their case. There is no measurable, testable scientific evidence that AGW exists. It may. But if so, its effect is simply too minuscule to matter.
We do not have to convince you. You have to convince us. But so far, you have failed.

October 14, 2013 3:52 am

“Jubble”, first I must note that you are simply trolling, see http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=2205&p=2#98863 Second, you have posted in an old thread, so I would not expect much of a response in this thread.
But to answer your question, AGW is not a problem because it is not a problem.
There is some speculative science (e.g. Francis and Vavrus 2012) that blames extreme weather in North America on arctic amplification. That is actually contrary to a long held consensus that global warming would shift storm tracks north, speed up the polar jet and decrease overall Rossby wave amplitude. With the old consensus science there was a positive feedback from less storminess. It remains to be seen how that positive feedback may be reduced if Francis et al are correct. Or if Francis et al are correct at all.
There is currently about an inch per decade of sea level rise which one could argue is now mostly manmade. The mitigation for sea level rise is the same as without sea level rise: we need to build surge barriers for vulnerable locations like New York City. Without sea level rise the surge from Sandy would have been arguably 8.5 feet instead of 9. The barrier solution is rather obvious although political. Also not incredibly expensive compared to the savings. The barrier is necessary whether or not sea level rise continues or accelerates. Barriers are not sized to average sea level in any case, they are sized to surges.
My final response is that extra CO2 in the atmosphere is a potential problem for ocean acidification and potentially also warming. There is still a lot of uncertainty in both. I would note that both warming (e.g. manifested in drought and heat waves) and acidification (lowered pH) are well within natural variability (the extremes have precedent). The costs are also uncertain. There are some net savings in the next few decades from warming here in the US and probably worldwide as well. After that, potentially, some costs. But those are too speculative to worry about right now.