The journal Nature embraces 'the pause' and ocean cycles as the cause, Trenberth still betting his heat will show up

From the “settled science” department. It seems even Dr. Kevin Trenberth is now admitting to the cyclic influences of the AMO and PDO on global climate. Neither “carbon” nor “carbon dioxide” is mentioned in this article that cites Trenberth as saying: “The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,”

This is significant, as it represents a coming to terms with “the pause” not only by Nature, but by Trenberth too.

nature_the_pause

Excerpts from the article by Jeff Tollefson:

The biggest mystery in climate science today may have begun, unbeknownst to anybody at the time, with a subtle weakening of the tropical trade winds blowing across the Pacific Ocean in late 1997. These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America, resulting in a spectacular example of a phenomenon known as El Niño. Average global temperatures hit a record high in 1998 — and then the warming stalled.

For several years, scientists wrote off the stall as noise in the climate system: the natural variations in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere that drive warm or cool spells around the globe. But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field. Although there have been jumps and dips, average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998, in seeming defiance of projections of climate models and the ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Climate sceptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt. Climate scientists, meanwhile, know that heat must still be building up somewhere in the climate system, but they have struggled to explain where it is going, if not into the atmosphere. Some have begun to wonder whether there is something amiss in their models.

Now, as the global-warming hiatus enters its sixteenth year, scientists are at last making headway in the case of the missing heat. Some have pointed to the Sun, volcanoes and even pollution from China as potential culprits, but recent studies suggest that the oceans are key to explaining the anomaly. The latest suspect is the El Niño of 1997–98, which pumped prodigious quantities of heat out of the oceans and into the atmosphere — perhaps enough to tip the equatorial Pacific into a prolonged cold state that has suppressed global temperatures ever since.

“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,” says Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. According to this theory, the tropical Pacific should snap out of its prolonged cold spell in the coming years.“Eventually,” Trenberth says, “it will switch back in the other direction.”

…none of the climate simulations carried out for the IPCC produced this particular hiatus at this particular time. That has led sceptics — and some scientists — to the controversial conclusion that the models might be overestimating the effect of greenhouse gases, and that future warming might not be as strong as is feared. Others say that this conclusion goes against the long-term temperature trends, as well as palaeoclimate data that are used to extend the temperature record far into the past. And many researchers caution against evaluating models on the basis of a relatively short-term blip in the climate. “If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability. Much like the swings between warm and cold in day-to-day weather, chaotic climate fluctuations can knock global temperatures up or down from year to year and decade to decade. Records of past climate show some long-lasting global heatwaves and cold snaps, and climate models suggest that either of these can occur as the world warms under the influence of greenhouse gases.

One important finding came in 2011, when a team of researchers at NCAR led by Gerald Meehl reported that inserting a PDO pattern into global climate models causes decade-scale breaks in global warming3. Ocean-temperature data from the recent hiatus reveal why: in a subsequent study, the NCAR researchers showed that more heat moved into the deep ocean after 1998, which helped to prevent the atmosphere from warming6. In a third paper, the group used computer models to document the flip side of the process: when the PDO switches to its positive phase, it heats up the surface ocean and atmosphere, helping to drive decades of rapid warming7.

IPCC-AMO-PDO-Warming

Scientists may get to test their theories soon enough. At present, strong tropical trade winds are pushing ever more warm water westward towards Indonesia, fuelling storms such as November’s Typhoon Haiyan, and nudging up sea levels in the western Pacific; they are now roughly 20 centimetres higher than those in the eastern Pacific. Sooner or later, the trend will inevitably reverse. “You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again.

Read the full article here:

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525

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January 16, 2014 4:08 am

It’s sad that real science has to be pried from the alarmists clenched fists. But reality just will not be denied.

DirkH
January 16, 2014 4:10 am

“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability.”
No, that’s nonsense. The simplest explanation is that the theory is falsified, and that the models are wrong. In fact, EVERYTHING points at the models being wrong, false and useless. Not ONE thing points to the models being right, correct, or useful. There are simply no such reports. We should see thousands of triumphant papers confirming again and again that the models got this right and that right after many years of painstaking development, but we NEVER see any such report.
That’s like celebrating the 100,000th Lancaster bomber built and shipped over the Atlantic while not one of them ever made it through the Kammhuber line.

johnmarshall
January 16, 2014 4:12 am

Trenberth getting a reality hit?
One of his problems is a complete misunderstanding of latent heat which is where much heat has been used for in cooling at the surface and has stupid graphic in AR4 which uses a flat earth with 24/7 sunlight and no idea from where radiated energy comes from.

heinz57
January 16, 2014 4:12 am

How come El Nino is an input in to the system.
It’s an output.

January 16, 2014 4:13 am

Quotes:
“An analysis of historical data buttressed these conclusions, showing that the cool phase of the PDO coincided with a few decades of cooler temperatures after the Second World War (see ‘The Pacific’s global reach’), […]
…and that the warm phase lined up with the sharp spike seen in global temperatures between 1976 and 1998.″
——————–
Now if the cool phase causes global surface air temperatures to stall…
not a huge step to consider, does the warm phase cause them to rise….
and that this might be a cause (or a large proportion of)the late 80’s to 90’s warming..
they sort of acknowledge it in the graphic…
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/ipcc-amo-pdo-warming.jpg?w=640&h=293
—————-
When last year the Met Office released a new decadal forecast (with flat temps until 2017)
Sir Brian Hoskins said in response to a to New Scientist question:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23060-has-global-warming-ground-to-a-halt.html#.UtexAPRdV6Q
NS: Q – Are these cycles just something scientists have invented to explain away the lack of recent warming?
NS: A – No. The Met Office admits that we still know far too little about how these natural cycles work, and how big they are. And climate scientists are open to the charge that they ignored the potential impact of natural variability when it was accelerating global warming. According to Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London, it now looks like natural cycles played a big role in the unexpectedly fast warming of the 1990s.

Bloke down the pub
January 16, 2014 4:13 am

As long as they realise that the flip side of the argument is that the warming experienced prior to ’98 was exaggerated by the pdo and not some new normal.

January 16, 2014 4:14 am

No much coming to terms yet. The issue isn’t much that the warming has not happened, rather that the temperatures have been so remarkably stable for a number of years.
How on Earth can all the various processes balance each other out so perfectly?
This indicates there is something big we do not understand about taking measurements, or about the processes that regulate the climate.
Unless and until scientists try to take the pause head-on, they will only be able to accumulate epicycles upon epicycles, a veritable ocean of post-hoc explanations of zero scientific value.

Bloke down the pub
January 16, 2014 4:18 am

DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
That’s like celebrating the 100,000th Lancaster bomber built and shipped over the Atlantic while not one of them ever made it through the Kammhuber line.
What are you wittering on about?

January 16, 2014 4:19 am

Changes in the earth’s albedo and emissivity and the mechanisms that drive them are of course not up for discussion.

ROM
January 16, 2014 4:25 am

In a nutshell ; They haven’t got a bloody clue!
But hey! They’re Climate Scientists with a capital “C” and a capital “S” so the great fantastic parody called the Climate Warming Science show must go on and all the regular big time players must be seen to be still the most skillful scientific chappies around otherwise those conferences and free airfares to all those exotic paradises on earth could all dry up and devastation and depression would reign in the world of climate warming science and that would indeed be a travesty of Trenbarthian proportions [ /sarc]

Bruce Cobb
January 16, 2014 4:29 am

“Climate sceptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt.”
Yes, skeptics “seized” on them. A bit of psychological projection there. All skeptics have done all along is point out the truth. It is the climate “scientists” who seize and grasp at anything and everything to try to keep their fantasy alive, to the detriment of science and humanity. Fact: the warming has halted for some 17 years, despite ever-increasing CO2. Now, the warmologists grasp at straws, even trying to say that the “missing” heat is hiding in the deep oceans. It’s laughably absurd, and pathetic.

January 16, 2014 4:29 am

The smartest of these guys will be looking for an exit strategy and will eventually look the other way if anyone suggests they were once on the bandwagon beating the drum.

Stephen Richards
January 16, 2014 4:36 am

What I don’t want is for these guys to remain in place when this whole scam is exposed. Like Erlich they will just keep coming back with another scare for money scheme.

Chris Wright
January 16, 2014 4:37 am

Here’s the simplest possible explanation of the 20th century warming:
Whatever caused the 20th century warming is the same thing that caused the MWP warming. And the Roman period warming. And the 1500 BC warming.
This explanation is simple and completely natural – literally.
Chris

hunter
January 16, 2014 4:44 am

“Missing heat” is climate talk for “the dog ate my homework”.
Making ocean cycles the dog raises the question: is it heating or cooling, long term?

January 16, 2014 4:46 am

Not sure that this report does fully recognise the impact of natural cycles.
It seems to think that the cooling phase of the PDO exactly balances the warming from Greenhouse gases over several decades when the emissions have varied.
That raises two questions:
1 How come the balancing is so precise – are our emissions coupled to the PDO or is their effect swamped by the PDO?
2 If the PDO can match the magnitude of AGW on th ecool sided, can it match the magnitude of AGW on the warm side? If so, how do we know any of the 20thC warming was manmade?

TB
January 16, 2014 4:48 am

Barry Woods says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:13 am
Quotes:
“An analysis of historical data buttressed these conclusions, showing that the cool phase of the PDO coincided with a few decades of cooler temperatures after the Second World War (see ‘The Pacific’s global reach’), […]
…and that the warm phase lined up with the sharp spike seen in global temperatures between 1976 and 1998.″
——————–
Now if the cool phase causes global surface air temperatures to stall…
not a huge step to consider, does the warm phase cause them to rise….
and that this might be a cause (or a large proportion of)the late 80′s to 90′s warming..
they sort of acknowledge it in the graphic…
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/ipcc-amo-pdo-warming.jpg?w=640&h=293
—————-
When last year the Met Office released a new decadal forecast (with flat temps until 2017)
Sir Brian Hoskins said in response to a to New Scientist question:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23060-has-global-warming-ground-to-a-halt.html#.UtexAPRdV6Q
NS: Q – Are these cycles just something scientists have invented to explain away the lack of recent warming?
NS: A – No. The Met Office admits that we still know far too little about how these natural cycles work, and how big they are. And climate scientists are open to the charge that they ignored the potential impact of natural variability when it was accelerating global warming. According to Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London, it now looks like natural cycles played a big role in the unexpectedly fast warming of the 1990s.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Barry:
Yes, undoubtedly natural climate cycles play a big part in the decadal changes we see – most of these cycles however complete in 30 years (not all). Ocean cycles are undoubtedly the most significant as that’s where ~93% of the earth’s heat is stored. Vis – I suspect the Arctic melt is in part due to the +ve AMO.
However examination of the evidence shows these cycles to overly a general warming signal. The ocean’s heat can only come from the Sun and then store some of it and shift it around in a complex way.
The UKMO’s decadal model is an experimental one, and as such can and has come to a different conclusion to the ensemble mean of the GCM forecasts. The algorithms incorporated in it must be complex, but still, cannot capture a signal from something like the PDO/ENSO and AMO cycles when we cannot predict their wax/waning.

cnxtim
January 16, 2014 4:49 am

I am entering “sloshed” into my CAGW lexicon. In the Australian vernacular, it also means disgustingly inebriated – now that I can buy!

troe
January 16, 2014 4:59 am

I applaud this blog and those who have worked so hard to sustain it. When I came to this issue at the time of climategate your position on the role of natural variability was dismissed as unscientific. Now the wheel has turned in your direction. I stand amazed at your insight, courage, and persistance in the face of an incredible storm of unbridled criticism. Its the high stakes drama that keeps us tuned in.

Ivor Ward
January 16, 2014 5:02 am

So essentially he is saying that Bob Tisdale is right and he was wrong. Why does Trenberth not just say that and get it over with?
[This moderator liked the screen name “Disko Troop”. But not many knew where the name came from. ~ mod.]

jaffa
January 16, 2014 5:04 am

“[a] finding…in 2011…inserting a PDO pattern into global climate models causes…..”
What? 2011, what was in the model previously? a fudge factor? What else is missing?

Bill Marsh
Editor
January 16, 2014 5:04 am

The term ‘missing heat’ continues to bother me. It implies that something is there that does not exist. This idea creates a series of natural questions; 1) How much heat is ‘missing’?, 2) How do you know the answer to 1? The ‘heat’ isn’t ‘missing’, it isn’t there, it doesn’t exist. Belief in ‘missing’ heat is akin to belief in the Tooth Fairy and requires a great deal of faith.
To me it would be like a football coach talking about ‘missing points’ after a loss. The team actually scored enough points to win, its just that some of the points they scored are ‘missing’. When those points emerge from wherever they are hiding, the losing team will win.
Also, I hope I’m not around when all that water ‘sloshes’ back to South America. 🙂

philincalifornia
January 16, 2014 5:04 am

Dear Dr. Trenberth,
Do you recall if, as a small child growing up, your parents made you behave by threatening you with some future appearance of a made-up, mythical bogeyman ? In some cases, perhaps, could this mythical entity even be purportedly hiding under your bed ?
Yours sincerely.
pic

Henry Galt.
January 16, 2014 5:05 am

The Cl(imate/imatology)(P/C)ause.
My take on “The Clause”:
CS due to 2xCO² is ≤ 0.000°K à la Ferenc Miskolczi.
Back-pedalling grant seekers are barfing up lower and lower guesswork for CS as time passes, we get colder and the 0.000°K part becomes increasingly obvious.

January 16, 2014 5:05 am

Trenberth’s ‘explanation’ is not really an explanation, but an excuse. He and many other climate scientists are now so deeply influenced by the CAGW narrative that they cannot shake it off come what come may. Whatever happens in the real world, they still try to serve that narrative as faithfully as they possibly can. This by no means invalidates everything they say, but the warp to a single framing becomes much more obvious, and they are blind to a whole range of possibilities.

Hmmm
January 16, 2014 5:09 am

Barry- that is a fascinating link and quote! I also added the next sentence of the next paragraph in the quote below and my comment follows:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23060-has-global-warming-ground-to-a-halt.html#.UtexAPRdV6Q
“Are these cycles just something scientists have invented to explain away the lack of recent warming?
No. The Met Office admits that we still know far too little about how these natural cycles work, and how big they are. And climate scientists are open to the charge that they ignored the potential impact of natural variability when it was accelerating global warming. According to Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London, it now looks like natural cycles played a big role in the unexpectedly fast warming of the 1990s.
Even so, the fundamental physics about how greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere hasn’t changed.”
Follow the pea here they state that the fundamental physics of greenhouse gases isn’t changed bby the pause (which is true), but this is only speaking to the FIRST ORDER effects which most skeptics also agree with and which are not alarming to anyone. What they absolutely fail to mention is the fact that this may have DRASTIC impacts on their calculations of 2nd order effects/feedbacks/sensitivity and attribution. So they tell an incomplete truth leaving out the important part.

RichardLH
January 16, 2014 5:10 am

This falls into ‘there MUST be a rise in something soon or we all are doomed’ CAGW camp’s constant refrain.
On the verge of another La Nina currently.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png

Pethefin
January 16, 2014 5:10 am

Trenberth has recently also admitted the role of the PDO in the warming period of 1978-1998:
http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/10/oops-trenberth-concedes-natural-ocean-cycles-contributed-to-1978-1998-warming-after-all-co2-diminishes-as-a-factor/
and now admits the possible role of the PDO in the ending of the warming period. Amazing that he is unwilling to reconsider his belief in the CO2-dogma.

Bill Illis
January 16, 2014 5:11 am

If you accept Trenberth and Tollefson’s proposition here, the energy builds up (mostly in the Pacific, PDO), until it is released (the 1997-98 El Nino) and then it build up again (the current hiatus in the temperatures) …
… which is closer to reality than they have accepted before (but is really just an excuse) …
… then you get a much lower overall warming trend. You get some ups (1976 to 1998), some downs (1944 to 1976) and some flats (1998-2014) …
… but the average rate over all these swings is a small 0.05C per decade signalling a very low climate sensitivity.
Of course, Trenberth and Tollefson stop before they understand/communicate what the proposition really means as a conclusion.

Jim Cripwell
January 16, 2014 5:12 am

Unfortunately, what is written on WUWT carries little weight with our politicians and the MSM. Hopefully, one of these days, something approaching a miracle will happen, and an eminent scientist who has, in the past, been and out and out warmist, will have the integrity to say what is being said here; that adding CO2 to the atmosphere from current levels, has an insignificant affect on anything to do with climate. Who that person will be, I don’t know, but whoever it is will have her/his name written proudly in the annals of science.

James
January 16, 2014 5:13 am

Someone needs to alert SkS. They are convinced it has still been warming…

aaron
January 16, 2014 5:14 am

So, PDO in. That means Aerosol out for 40s, 50s.

hunter
January 16, 2014 5:20 am

Dr. Trenberth makes an important admission in the article:
He no longer claims the heat skipped own into the deep ocean, but is instead hiding somewhere near Indonesia, waiting to slosh back into an El Nino mode.

January 16, 2014 5:23 am

Still, we argue over fractional degrees of temperature “anomaly,” accepting that there is something special, normative, or magical about temps of the past 30 years, or of the past century.
The entire conversation, particularly in the MSM, takes the up-and-down anomaly discussion way too seriously. Does Kevin Trenberth really believe that the ups and downs of a few tenths of a degree represent hair-raising temperature swings rather than a self-regulating system displaying the minor fluctuations around something very close to homeostasis?
The realists will have to, eventually, argue the warmists down on this one, in the popular media. As long as New York Times readers, USA Today readers, and NBC Nightly News watchers believe that they’re seeing a roller coaster rather than a wiggle, the war will never be won.

graphicconception
January 16, 2014 5:24 am

The temperature graph is a kind of integration of the PDO Index graph.
(You need to add 0.6 to the Index, cumulate and then scale. Where do I collect my Nobel Prize?)
So as Bob Tisdale has been saying, if I understand it correctly, PDO variations are not just oscillations about a mean. They leave a resultant change.

January 16, 2014 5:24 am

At a Royal Society meeting in 2013, Julia Slingo of the Met office played devil’s advocate and posed the following question to Prof Jochen Marotzke of the German Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, see the 42:46 mark royalsociety.org/marotzke.mp3:
“…it’s a great presentation about 15 years being irrelevant, but I think, some of us might say if you look at the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and it’s timescale that it appears to work, it could be 30 years, and therefore I think, you know, we are still not out of the woods yet on this one. … If you do think it’s internal variability, and you say we do think the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a key component of this, and it’s now in it’s particular phase, but was previously in the opposite phase, could you not therefore explain the accelerated warming of the 80s and 90s as being driven by the other phase of natural variability?”
Simplifying Slingo’s incoherence: “If the current cooling is due to the negative PDO phase, then wouldn’t the warming of the 80s and 90s be a result of the positive PDO phase back then?”
via (and me) http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/10/oops-trenberth-concedes-natural-ocean-cycles-contributed-to-1978-1998-warming-after-all-co2-diminishes-as-a-factor/#sthash.tdBTxgt5.dpuf

catweazle666
January 16, 2014 5:26 am

Looks like the climate McScientist’s version of “the cheque’s in the post” to me.

Greg Goodman
January 16, 2014 5:27 am

Sooner or later, the trend will inevitably reverse. “You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again.
This is mainstream explanation and is a questionable as it’s “sloshing” language is silly.
While wind driven “piling up ” is well known in closed lakes, where the wind is in the same direction across the width of the lake, it makes a lot less sense when the trade winds act over a restricted latitude band and the water has several exits from where it is ‘piling up’.

Evan Jones
Editor
January 16, 2014 5:29 am

Yeah, they finally discovered the PDO. Sort of like a professional secretary discovering the Shift key. Bloody amateurs.
Now they need to “discover” that their panic was due to a positive PDO and, consequently, their “projections” were at least twice too high. Then maybe they can learn the rest of the alphabet . . .

Steve from Rockwood
January 16, 2014 5:30 am

Trenberth admits he doesn’t know (why the world hasn’t warmed according to the models) yet he’s doubling down at the same time (eg. the warmth is going to slosh back).
The issue continues to be the fact that scientists don’t know what the range of natural variability is, both in amplitude and time. They under estimate it (natural variability) and it makes their models over-sensitive to other things such as changes in CO2 concentration.
Natural variation is not limited to +/- 0.2 deg C and it doesn’t have to be entirely periodic with the AMO. In 100 years maybe we’ll know why.
In the meantime Trenberth hopes the world “spikes back up” to save his precious model.

January 16, 2014 5:31 am

missing heat is an excuse. if we see another warming period in 20 years they will immediately say the missing heat showed itself again.
they are using this term to give themselves an out and an excuse for the future.

Greg Goodman
January 16, 2014 5:32 am

Barry Woods: Simplifying Slingo’s incoherence: “If the current cooling is due to the negative PDO phase, then wouldn’t the warming of the 80s and 90s be a result of the positive PDO phase back then?”
What is incoherent about that? She was pointing out the duplicity of many attempted explanations that now suggest various other factors account for the pause without acknowledging they must, by inference, be accepted as a cause of warming.

January 16, 2014 5:34 am

The annotation on the graph says “After a sharp warming early in the 20th century….”. What is the explanation for that “sharp warming”, since it was prior to 1950 when we all started driving our SUVs. Are they saying that the PDO was its cause? If so, is there any reason why it shouldn’t also have been the cause of the “earth warmed rapidly” period in the late 20th century? If so, the job’s done and the climate scientists can move on.
I guess we do have to understand the reasons for the overall increase in temperature anomaly visible across the period of the graph (from about -0.2’C to +0.4’C). My feeling is that it’s due to a combination of post hoc adjustments to the records, UHI effects and systemic issues with thermometer locations.

January 16, 2014 5:44 am

Would love to hear the explanation as to why the 1920-40s increase (before CO2) is almost identical to the 1970-2000s increase (CO2 “caused”). Can Trenberth explain the missing CO2?

troe
January 16, 2014 5:45 am

Had a quick look around at the MSM reporting on this. Pretty predictable. No questions about the well-know previous certainty that natural variability could not explain current temperature trends. Suppose they are hoping that nobody will notice if they back down the ladder at sloth speed. The authoritative voice from on high is their most effective tool. Lose that and they lose it all.

Greg Goodman
January 16, 2014 5:45 am

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=750
Following El Chichon and Mt Pinatubo eruptions the temp of the stratosphere was raised by the blocking effect of the volcanic ejections absorbing incoming UV, leading to temporary surface cooling.
A few years later, when it cleared there was a permanent, net cooling below the pre-eruption temp in stratosphere. This implies MORE solar was getting through to the surface than before.
That is not what climate models do. They assume volcanoes have a net cooling effect on climate. A cooling effect that used to conclude the spurious positive feedbacks amplifying GHG warming.
It seems probable that the unusually large 1998 El Nino was because of the EXTRA incoming solar getting into lower levels of the climate system caused by the major eruptions. The sustained high level of global temps since then are matched by the sustained high levels of incoming UV energy witnessed by the cooling in the TLS record.

MattN
January 16, 2014 5:45 am

If the heat was never there, how can it ever be “missing”?

January 16, 2014 5:47 am

If that graph is anything to go by, we have 50years of ‘hiatus’, or more, to get through, by which time according to the peak oilers we will in any case have gone past ‘peak CO2’ and emissions will be falling because we have run out of _cheap*_ coal, oil and natural gas.
mating that with an ecosystem adapting to lovely CO2 by voraciously consuming it, and we get a a picture of falling CO2, just as the temperatures start to rise agan. Oh dear. that will be the final gold plated nail in the AGW coffin..
* I stress the cheap bit, no argument there’s lots more down there, just that in the end it ain’t competitive with e.g. nuclear power in the long term, so that’s where it will in fact stay…

January 16, 2014 5:51 am

Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.”
Golly. That phrase is so damned scientific it makes my eyers water. 🙂

Speed
January 16, 2014 5:55 am

These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America
Sun-baked water? Sloshed?

January 16, 2014 5:56 am

The graphic above shows that we have only just entered a new 30 year long cool period of the PDO. This means that there will be no further warming until ~2030. Warming may well then resume after 2030, but whichever way you look at it, climate sensitivity looks to be about one half of current IPCC estimates. How is the IPCC going to keep the egg off its face for the next 15 years ?

Peter Miller
January 16, 2014 6:00 am

“But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field.”
That’s like saying: “I am a little bit pregnant”,
The bottom line is increasing numbers of so called climate scientists are realising that the game’s up. Consequently, they are positioning themselves for the global trough smashing, which cannot now be too far away. Once that happens, the few survivors of today’s Global Warming Industry will be those who can point to the fact they were amongst the first to realise the ‘science’ was wrong.
Natural Climate Cycles 1 Pseudo-scientific Theories 0

Caz Jones
January 16, 2014 6:08 am

Jim Cripwell says:
January 16, 2014 at 5:12 am
Unfortunately, what is written on WUWT carries little weight with our politicians and the MSM. Hopefully, one of these days, something approaching a miracle will happen, and an eminent scientist who has, in the past, been and out and out warmist, will have the integrity to say what is being said here; that adding CO2 to the atmosphere from current levels, has an insignificant affect on anything to do with climate. Who that person will be, I don’t know, but whoever it is will have her/his name written proudly in the annals of science.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Maybe a chance for Turney to redeem himself? Not that I think he is ’eminent’. You did say a miracle though, didn’t you?

aaron
January 16, 2014 6:11 am

Hmmm, Exactly right!
These realizations mean that the feedbacks necesarry for warming to be higher than would be beneficial to society and ecology aren’t plausible.

January 16, 2014 6:11 am

Let us recall that in the 1990’s, these so-call climate scientists said they understood the climate system so well, that the only possible cause for rising temperatures was CO2. (They quickly dropped methane as a cause because they couldn’t tax it.)
So sad.
This house of cards will collapse. But, who will pick up the bill? Remember what happened when the financial house of cards collapsed in 2008? Who suffered? Not the politicians or the bankers who engineered and profited from that fraud.
And, the people who suffered? They voted back into office the politicians responsible for the mess, who let off the hook the bankers. The villains literally got away with the money and the girl.
There will be no happy ending. The perpetrators of this fraud will not be punished. And, the bill will be picked up by the stupid people who will vote back into office the politicians who have engineered this fraud.
The voters are abysmally ignorant. Look to your own salvation.

David Ball
January 16, 2014 6:13 am

“Now, after having wasted at least 30 years of public money and time due to our false ideology, we return you to your regularly scheduled viewing,…..”
Idiots.

DaveF
January 16, 2014 6:21 am

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but if the missing heat, which by now should have warmed the atmosphere by half a degree C, was going into the oceans instead, it will have warmed the oceans by, what, one ten-thousanth of a degree or so? There’s no way we can measure the temperature of the oceans so accurately, which is pretty handy for Dr Trenberth as he can just say that we have to take his word for it.

Box of Rocks
January 16, 2014 6:24 am

I just can’t see why ever one is in such a dither and getting their panties in a tight wad.
You see the key to the puzzle of the missing heat is here. ( No it is not hiding or missing …)
” ..These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America…”
I mean you have to think in 3 dimensions. Normally the warm water head west towards the Indian Ocean where it would normally lose it heat and sink. But hey when it sloshes back and goes east all that water has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is down.
The warm water sinks since it has no where to go but down, Think of all that heat is forces into the abyss. It just disappears before your eyes.
Utterly brilliant of Trenberth this box of rocks thinks.

Resourceguy
January 16, 2014 6:26 am

At some point the deadenders will attack the wavering warmists and excommunicate them from the treasure hunt known as carbon tax revenue. The only question is whether it will be a peaceful process or a North Korean-style purge.

Theo Goodwin
January 16, 2014 6:36 am

troe says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:59 am
“I applaud this blog and those who have worked so hard to sustain it. When I came to this issue at the time of climategate your position on the role of natural variability was dismissed as unscientific. Now the wheel has turned in your direction. I stand amazed at your insight, courage, and persistance in the face of an incredible storm of unbridled criticism. Its the high stakes drama that keeps us tuned in.”
Spot on. WUWT deserves the major credit for the fact that the importance of natural cycles is beginning to be recognized by Alarmists. Special kudos to Bob Tisdale on ENSO. At some point, all climate scientists must give credit to WUWT for this important change.

Clay Marley
January 16, 2014 6:38 am

First I’d heard the term “sloshing” is in Tisdale’s posts and book. It isn’t intended to be a scientifiky term. That Trentberth uses it probably means at least that he is reading Tisdale, which would be a good thing. But he is hoping/praying for another strong El Niño that would start the warming again.
Tisdale is saying that a strong El Niño will cause a rapid SST rise over much of the earth. After the event, SST’s cool slowly. If the El Niño events come frequently enough there isn’t enough time between them to cool completely. Thus we see a stairstep warming with slight cooling between events. This is what has been happening since around 1918.
It has to end though. We can’t keep getting strong El Niños until the oceans boil. So there must be some process that slows and weakens the El Niños and allows the rest-of-world to get back to lower temps.

R. de Haan
January 16, 2014 6:41 am

I wonder how long we have to bear Trenberth’s horse and pony show of climate nonsense and missing heat. He’d better worry about his missing reputation.

troe
January 16, 2014 6:43 am

Warmist sites are full of posts moaning about “poor communications” and the fecklessness of the MSM. Lots of effort being expended on the pause being cherry picked based on the start date. Of course no explanation that this is exactly what they have been doing for years. Still they seem confident that their economic agenda remains on track.

ponysboy
January 16, 2014 6:46 am

Once they get this far, can’t they extend the logic to postulate that maybe they were wrong back in the 90’s At that time, Instead of harking back to the Charney report and the “positive feedback” or “amplification” of the direct effect of CO2 as they did (refusing to accept natural cycles as any cause for the 80’s to 90’s T increase), they could have listened to those who suspected these natural cycles. Even now they resort to models where they can plug in their biased assumptions and present the results as science.
It can’t take long now for some of the open-minded ones among them to step back and take a fresh look at the claims of skeptical scientists during the past 15 years. Or can it?

January 16, 2014 6:46 am

well said @Theo Goodwin, I favourite that

DirkH
January 16, 2014 6:48 am

Amount of government money spent correlates negatively with scientific success.
Scientific contributions of government climate scientists are negative.
It amazes me that the state gets anything to work. (Weapons systems seem to be working)

DirkH
January 16, 2014 6:49 am

troe says:
January 16, 2014 at 6:43 am
“Still they seem confident that their economic agenda remains on track.”
They believe their own propaganda.

Resourceguy
January 16, 2014 6:50 am

Thank you WUWT and contributors. I’ve learned a lot over the past few years here.

RockyRoad
January 16, 2014 7:00 am

I hate to break it to Mr. Trenberth, but he’s a failed professional. He tied his “Climate Scientit” credentials to a bogus notion, and continues to beat a dead horse even when the carcass is nothing but bones.
It’s very applicable in his case that science progresses one funeral at a time. I’m sure he’ll take his bogus notions to the grave. Some people never learn, especially when their reputation is at stake.
Sorry to be so brutally honest, Mr. Trenberth (I know you’re reading this–I’m sure you can’t ignore this thread), but that’s the consequence of truth. Oh, and “have a good day”.

January 16, 2014 7:00 am

Probably mentioned already, but here goes: Scenario – El Niño is coming, and it will bring all the heat back to the atmosphere. What happens when the El Niño doesn’t heat _everything_ back up to the level in the models, (A weak El Niño) Trenberth and friends will do a net heat calculation and declare the rest of the heat has gone into the deep ocean, and that won’t be seen for fifty years. But in 50 years, _watch out!_
It’s the kind of logic that is hard to falsify.
First, why is this “pause” seemingly longer than the last pauses? If there’s more CO2 going into the atmosphere per year, the heat buildup per year has also to be higher, and should have swamped natural variability sooner. One might think the pauses would be shorter.
The sad thing about the deep heat into the ocean thing is that the parameters of the model for that must have a monster sized fudge factor. Any global model using the boogie man of “we don’t know how much heat is in the deep ocean” simply can’t be falsified without proving the negative on where the heat is going into the deep ocean.

Richard M
January 16, 2014 7:03 am

Folks should keep in mind that the pause only looks flat when you look at a full 17 year linear trend. It is actually the end of the PDO warming followed by the start of the PDO cooling around 2005.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:2005/to/trend
From looking at the data closely it generally appears the effect of the PDO is small within +- 7 to 8 years (1998-2012) of the peak. We should now see the full impact kick in for the next 15-20 years before the curve flattens at the bottom of the cycle. If this will occur along with the weak the sun the opportunity for significant cooling exists for the next 2 decades.

troe
January 16, 2014 7:08 am

DirkH. Agreed. It keeps the funds flowing so very rational behaviour.
US military is second to none in rationalizing funding. Once spent billions on the Pentomic infantry division. That was what all those soldiers were doing in the desert watching nuclear tests. They were developing a force that could survive on the nuclear battlefield. Of course it was a farce but it kept the money coming. The Pentomic division was also known as the “ashtray division” when Congressmen weren’t around.

Kev-in-Uk
January 16, 2014 7:09 am

Mark Besse (@MarkB1205) says:
January 16, 2014 at 5:44 am
“Would love to hear the explanation as to why the 1920-40s increase (before CO2) is almost identical to the 1970-2000s increase (CO2 “caused”). Can Trenberth explain the missing CO2?”
you’ve just given him another explanation – vis – the ‘recently’ raised CO2 is special or magic, in that it absorbs heat and sits there quietly in the atmosphere hiding amongst the ‘other’ CO2, awaiting ‘release’ when the time is right! 😉

Robin Hewitt
January 16, 2014 7:10 am

So if I read that right the warm West Pacific has become 20cm deeper, taking in water that should have gone to Indonesia and become colder. The difference between the temperature the water is at and the temperature it should be is the missing heat. When the wind drops the water will move back to where it should be and average global temperature will leap back in line with the model projections.
I am not usually in to betting but if the Warmistas are prepared to put their money where their mouthpiece is, even I might hazard a few bob.

January 16, 2014 7:12 am

Barry Woods notes the comment made by Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo at the Royal Society Meeting:

….. I think, some of us might say if you look at the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and it’s timescale that it appears to work, it could be 30 years, and therefore I think, you know, we are still not out of the woods yet on this one. …

I remember her saying that and thought it was a strange comment to make, because it demonstrates that group psychology is at work here. The IPCC team are beginning to fear that they have over-exaggerated global warming and may need an exit strategy.

Richard M
January 16, 2014 7:15 am

Trenberth doesn’t realize that El Niño events might not quite work the same during a -PDO. As Tisdale has demonstrated it is the after effects of the El Niño during a +PDO that have a lot to do with the step up warming that occurs even after the following La Niña. I have a feeling that the changes in circulation in a -PDO will eliminate that effect (didn’t see it during the 2009-2010 El Niño). That is probably why the global temperature falls during a -PDO.
I wonder how many copies of Tisdale’s books will find their way to NCAR? Or, should I say …. have found their way?

Mike Smith
January 16, 2014 7:16 am

“Records of past climate show some long-lasting global heatwaves and cold snaps, and climate models suggest that either of these can occur as the world warms under the influence of greenhouse gases.”
The BS is nauseating. Records of past climate show some long-lasting global heatwaves and cold snaps, period. It’s happened in the past and it will happen in the future. But notice the sly implication that somehow heat waves and cold snaps are evidence of AGW.
And this from a supposedly scientific journal. Sad.

Jim Clarke
January 16, 2014 7:24 am

“One important finding came in 2011, when a team of researchers at NCAR led by Gerald Meehl reported that inserting a PDO pattern into global climate models causes decade-scale breaks in global warming.”
Skeptics have been saying this for more than 25 years, over and over again. The very thought was ignored at best and ridiculed more often than ignored. Now, it is an ‘important finding’ by some Meehl-ee guy at NCAR in 2011! What a bunch of crap!
Why can’t they just be truthful and say: “Those skeptics may have been on the right track all along, and you know, we are kinda sorry for all the grief we gave them.”
I probably shouldn’t let it bother me, but when they start taking credit for ‘discovering’ what so many have known all along, it just makes my skin crawl!

rogerknights
January 16, 2014 7:25 am

Jim Cripwell says:
January 16, 2014 at 5:12 am
Unfortunately, what is written on WUWT carries little weight with our politicians and the MSM. Hopefully, one of these days, something approaching a miracle will happen, and an eminent scientist who has, in the past, been and out and out warmist, will have the integrity to say what is being said here; that adding CO2 to the atmosphere from current levels, has an insignificant affect on anything to do with climate. Who that person will be, I don’t know, but whoever it is will have her/his name written proudly in the annals of science.

Judith Curry already has that slot filled. (With an honorable mention for James Lovelock.) She should get a 3-percenter award. The shame of science is that so few rallied to her flag. (As I like to say, everyone’s a hero, as long as it’s not High Noon.)
What I think will actually happen is less dramatic. If 2014 is a significantly cooling year, contrarians will no longer be able to be marginalized in the MSM as deniers, but will be given a place at the table in media reports, interviews, etc. The “false balance” charge will lose its traction.
One important step in this direction would be a survey of scientists in climatology and in the neighboring disciplines asking well-thought-out (sophisticated) questions about many facets of this controversy, similar to those posed by the past surveys of the AMS and AGU (sp?) by George Mason U. This would cut the 97% consensus claim down to size.

January 16, 2014 7:25 am

The scientific incompetence of the climate establishment and their capacity to avoid the obvious at all costs is astounding. Having spent countless millions on their useless models they now amazingly discover the PDO. It has been obvious for many years that the IPCC models are structurally incorrect and that there is not sufficient computing power in the world to model future temperature trends in systems with multiple variables with any useful accuracy. All modelers should be forced to watch

Another forecasting method necessarily must be adopted. For forecasts of the timing and amount of the coming cooling based on quasi periodic – quasi repetitive patterns in the temperature and driver data see several posts at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
These forecasts are based on the simple working hypothesis that the recent temperature peak was the result of more or less synchronous peaks in 60 year (PDO) and 1000 year periodicities in the temperature data. This hypothesis is strengthened by the recent decline in solar activity – best seen in the cosmic ray flux ( neutron counts) which also suggests a coming cooling trend.

Richard M
January 16, 2014 7:27 am

For those of you who haven’t seen Dr. William Gray’s research this might be a good time to review it.
http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2012.pdf
He provide a slightly different view. He opines that changes in the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is responsible of the all the ocean cycles including the PDO/AMO and the 400-500 year changes that driven things like the MWP and LIA.
I’ve often wondered if the melt pulses from the last deglaciation could be the driver of the the long term changes. Huge amounts of fresh water found its way into the oceans within a few decades. The density of the fresh water would be less but it would be very cold. This could easily change the form of the MOC and depending on where this pulse was located in the global ocean circulation would affect the speed.

anvilman
January 16, 2014 7:28 am

My old John Deere tractor does not have a water pump. Hot water rises to the top of the radiator and the fan cools it. I am not as wise as those science guys but I would say that the oceans would be the same.

Resourceguy
January 16, 2014 7:29 am

The so called “piecing together an explanation” by scientists looks more like a scatter shot of excuses with each passing week. The wider the scatter and the longer the list of excuses the more ridiculous it becomes, especially as the AMO turns over and down and the solar minimum approaches.

mpainter
January 16, 2014 7:33 am

DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability.”
No, that’s nonsense. The simplest explanation is that the theory is falsified, and that the models are wrong. In fact, EVERYTHING points at the models being wrong, false and useless. Not ONE thing points to the models being right, correct, or useful. There are simply no such reports. We should see thousands of triumphant papers confirming again and again that the models got this right and that right after many years of painstaking development, but we NEVER see any such report.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As usual, DirkH is right. But some people have had global warming on the brain for so long that it has formed lesions.
The 1998 El Nino was coincidental but not fundamental to the end of the last warming trend, imho.

Don J. Easterbrook
January 16, 2014 7:35 am

There is nothing mysterious about the so-called ‘pause’ in global warming. It is a continuation of a consistent pattern of natural warming and cooling that has been going on for at least 500 years (and probably more) as a result of the switch from a warm PDO to a cool PDO in 1999, which, in 1999. led me to predict a period of global cooling beginning after 2000. In several, including papers, “Geologic Evidence of Recurring Climate Cycles and Their Implications for the Cause of Global Climate Changes: The Past is the Key to the Future” (2011) in the Elsevier volume “Evidence-Based Climate Science; Chapter 5 of the 2013 NIPCC Report; in several other papers, I spelled out the evidence for what we are seeing over the past 15 years. The crux of these papers is that the Greenland ice cores, with their excellent chronology and oxygen isotope record, show a recurring pattern of warming and cooling, including the 25-30-yr warming and cooling periods of the past century, the Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, Dark Ages Cool Period, Roman Warm Period, Bronze Age Cool Period, Minoan Warm Period, and others. I plotted ice core data since 1480 AD and found about 40 periods of warming and cooling with consistent recurring warm/cool intervals averaging 27 years (typical PDO patterns are 25-30 yrs). These overlap with known PDO cycles of the past century and simply a continuation of the recurring pattern over that past 500 years. The PDO-global temp correlation curves shown in the article above are nothing new–you can find them in most of the papers I mentioned above. Extrapolation of these recurring patterns into the future led me to predict in 1999 that we were heading for a period of global cooling after 2000. So far my 1999 prediction seems to be on track and should last for another 20-25 years. Time will tell whether or not my prediction was correct.
So the sudden ‘insight’ of Trenberth in explaining ‘the pause’ is nothing new–if he had read the literature over the past 15 years he would have known it long ago.

Jenn Oates
January 16, 2014 7:39 am

I know that the Earth’s cooling is in no way a joke, but I nevertheless cannot help but laugh at this slow-moving train wreck as the delayed feed finally reaches the cerebral cortex of those who have spent so much time and money (mine) screaming from the rooftops that the planet was heating and we’re all gonna die if we don’t change our bad ways RIGHT NOW.
The lengths and depths and widths that they are going through to explain away the “pause” are hilarious and oh-so predictable.

Dave in Canmore
January 16, 2014 7:39 am

So….natural variation makes it colder but never hotter? I see this new meme everywhere these days!

DirkH
January 16, 2014 7:40 am

troe says:
January 16, 2014 at 7:08 am
“US military is second to none in rationalizing funding. Once spent billions on the Pentomic infantry division. ”
Interesting story, thanks, I didn’t know that one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomic

Economic Geologist
January 16, 2014 7:42 am

I think Trenberth is reading Tisdale, but will never give him credit. The AGW crowd will slowly morph their scientific positions as their predictions continue to fail, and no-one will be held accountable for all the money wasted on useless, misguided research. And no-one in the skeptic camp will be acknowledged for having seen the weaknesses in the climate community’s science. There’s no justice in this world.

tango
January 16, 2014 7:43 am

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ changes everything

January 16, 2014 7:48 am

“Climate sceptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt. Climate scientists, meanwhile, know that heat must still be building up somewhere…”
Doesn’t that just say it all? The FACTS show that “global warming” isn’t. But the “Climate scientists” just KNOW …
When did “just knowing” become part of science?

luysii
January 16, 2014 7:52 am

The following comment appeared on the Nature Editorial about Trenberth’s article — Nature 505, 261–262 (16 January 2014) doi:10.1038/505261b
Physicists 100+ years ago were perturbed that the precession of the perihelion of Mercury as predicted by Newtonian mechanics was off by 38 arc seconds (roughly one part in 1/100,000). It took relativity to straighten things out.
None of the climate models mentioned in Science in 2009 [ Science vol. 326 pp. 28 – 29 ’09 (2 Oct ’09 ) ] predicted a pause this long, even when they were run for a total of 700 years. The longest pause found was 15 years. They should be run again for many more years with the faster computers of today, to see if they produce the present pause. If not, the models, and their recommendations should be abandoned.
Adding a new parameter to explain unexpected results is good science when the system being explained is complex. Consider the additions to the central dogma of molecular biology — introns, exons, microRNAs, ceRNAs, reverse transcription etc. etc. Certainly global climate is equally complex. More than a little humility is in order.

troe
January 16, 2014 7:55 am

Not to embarass him but speaking of couragous scientists…. Don Easterbrook stands tall in those ranks. Thank you sir.

Dubya G
January 16, 2014 7:56 am

Dr Trenberth really should move on to dispensing aspirin, with the usual request to “see me in the morning”, or perhaps in the next decade. Why cannot these “climate scientists” look at what is actually happening, and form their theories from that, rather than trying to justify the outputs from their failed model simulations? They have strayed so far from science now that I wonder if any of them are retrievable as “scientists”.

John Robertson
January 16, 2014 7:57 am

The whole problem with the “missing heat” theory is that it requires Maxwell’s Demon to explain it.

Bruce Cobb
January 16, 2014 7:58 am

Travesty Trenberth sings:
Some day my heat will come
Some day we’ll meet again
And away to the MSM we’ll go
To be funded forever I know
Some day when spring is here
We’ll find our Belief anew
And the birds will sing
And Alarmist bells will ring
Some day when my dreams come true
CAGW always was just a fairy tale.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 8:00 am

Chris Marlowe says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:29 am
The smartest of these guys will be looking for an exit strategy and will eventually look the other way if anyone suggests they were once on the bandwagon beating the drum.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dr. Judith Curry already beat them out the door.

January 16, 2014 8:00 am

I did a course on climatology at University of Aberdeen about 37 years ago and learned then that The Pacific Ocean controlled Earth’s climate. It is therefore incredible that climate science is only just awakening to this reality and to the reality of natural cycles. Accepting the Nature report as “fact” has consequence that all climate models are wrong (we knew that already) and their replication of past climate change as “fraud” – basically tuning variables to produce the desired outcome and calling it science. Without including natural cycles they can have no predictive power.
The PDO 60 year oscillation is only one of a number of natural cycles that climate models currently lack. A more important one is the 1000±500 year Bond / DO cycle. IF the Bond 2001 data are reliable (and they are contested) then what they describe is periodic ingress of the Labrador current into the N Atlantic and this truncates the Gulf Stream correlating with cold periods in NW Europe. A simplistic view of the consequence would be less evaporation from the Gulf Stream in the N Atlantic leading to reduced GH warming and regional cooling.
I discuss some of this in The Ice Man Cometh and a modified version of the key chart showing Bond cycles is here.

Hmmm
January 16, 2014 8:01 am

In the end of the article they state:
“Scientists may get to test their theories soon enough. At present, strong tropical trade winds are pushing ever more warm water westward towards Indonesia, fuelling storms such as November’s Typhoon Haiyan, and nudging up sea levels in the western Pacific; they are now roughly 20 centimetres higher than those in the eastern Pacific. Sooner or later, the trend will inevitably reverse. “You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again.”
Which is the definition of an El Nino, but we’ve had El Nino’s since 1998 so this has already been tested has it not? There were moderate El Ninos in 2002 and 2009, weak ones in 2004 and 2006. They set up this paragraph to say if the next El Nino brings a temprature spike that proves Trenberth’s theory, which it doesn’t. We all know every El Nino brings a temperature spike. It’s the long-term forecast of multiple El Nino/La Nina cycles which bears out who (if anyone) is corect. And no matter how you slice it, the fact that they ignored ENSO in previous years means they overestimated feedbacks, attribution, and confidence.

Fred
January 16, 2014 8:02 am

Dr. Trenberth, Chief Alchemist & Bogeyman Instigator, starts to come to grips with reality.
“Hello, my name is Kevin and I am a global warming fearmongerer”
“Hello Kevin”

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 8:03 am

Ivor Ward says: @ January 16, 2014 at 5:02 am
So essentially he is saying that Bob Tisdale is right and he was wrong. Why does Trenberth not just say that and get it over with?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Bob does not have a Dr. in front of his name and he doesn’t work in an ivory tower. Expect all his work to show up in some guy’s PhD thesis.

RichardLH
January 16, 2014 8:03 am

Trenberth is still in the 80s
“The only way is up, baby
For you and me, baby
The only way is up
For you and me”
Yazz – The Only Way Is Up

om in Florida
January 16, 2014 8:04 am

I wonder if there is a “how to get myself out of this without making those who gave me all that money look foolish for doing so” grant.

Chris B
January 16, 2014 8:05 am

Anthony,
I hope ALL the WUWT blog posts are quadruple backed up. WUWT is probably the most detailed documentation of the history of the CAGW boondoggle, and the Climate Science “community” climb down from the hysteria of the last 25 years that we are currently witnessing.
One of the low lights of this massive hoax is the numerous “investigations” into the Climategate emails. Apparently not all of us are as rational or civilized as we would like to think. But some have been more rational than others. Thank you for your perseverance.

Tom in Florida
January 16, 2014 8:06 am

Sorry, that was Tom in Florida, don’t know where the T went.

Alan Millar
January 16, 2014 8:07 am

Gail Combs says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:00 am
“Dr. Judith Curry already beat them out the door.”
That’s why they revile her so much. They can’t stand that she was cleverer than them in putting on her life jacket and abandoning ship.
Alan

KevinM
January 16, 2014 8:07 am

THe man has the class to say sceptics instead of deniers. Thanks sir.

aaron
January 16, 2014 8:09 am

The PDO was much more strongly negative 50s to 70s than the past decade, why does this one cause so much more cooling? The CO2 greenhouse contribution was about .018C per decate 1950-1970, temperatures were flat. CO2 contribution 2001-2011 was .067C. Yet, with the weaker PDO cool phase, we have the same/slightly more negative temperature trend.

Jean Parisot
January 16, 2014 8:10 am

I really don’t care what causes warming, I want to know what causes cooling. Sloshes back, really?

John Greenfraud
January 16, 2014 8:15 am

Trenberth is still desperately trying to keep up the pretense of ‘higher knowledge’ where none exists. His latest ‘guesses’ are what others have been pointing out all along, minus the phantom heat A tacit admission of defeat cloaked in unyielding arrogance.

cd
January 16, 2014 8:16 am

They’ve just changed the hypothesis. Convenient.

January 16, 2014 8:18 am

Thanks A. Good reporting.
At last. So even those who said it was CO2 that controlled Earth’s climate are now turning to find the PDO?
If they look harder they might even find ENSO.

Richard M
January 16, 2014 8:19 am

Here’s a possible mechanism for the MOC driving the PDO.
When the MOC speeds up we get more deep, cold water upwelling around Antarctica. I suspect this is the reason we have seen increased sea ice since the PDO flipped around 2005. This colder water then follows the prevailing current up the west coast of South America towards the tropics. Here it impacts ENSO.
We know that ENSO changes occur with changes to the trade winds. With colder air invading the East Pacific we should see a strengthening of the trade winds. More cold, dense air to rush towards the hot, light air over the Pacific Warm Pool (PWP). The net result will be fewer El Niño events. Nothing in the El Niño mechanism changes but the probability of one forming is reduced.
That’s not all. In the North Pacific we see the warmer surface waters driven faster towards the pole. Since they don’t remain on the surface as long they cannot heat and release as much energy. This changes the circulation pattern above the waters that we see when the PDO flips into negative territory. These circulation changes also lead to a more meridional jet stream that is characteristic of a -PDO.
Everything we see could be the direct result of a simple change in the speed of the MOC. Occam’s razor rules.

Richard M
January 16, 2014 8:21 am

aaron says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:09 am
The PDO was much more strongly negative 50s to 70s than the past decade, why does this one cause so much more cooling? The CO2 greenhouse contribution was about .018C per decate 1950-1970, temperatures were flat. CO2 contribution 2001-2011 was .067C. Yet, with the weaker PDO cool phase, we have the same/slightly more negative temperature trend.

Simple, they manipulated the data of the 50s-70s and disappeared the actual cooling. The raw data shows more cooling.

Richard M
January 16, 2014 8:24 am

Gail Combs says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:03 am
Bob does not have a Dr. in front of his name and he doesn’t work in an ivory tower. Expect all his work to show up in some guy’s PhD thesis.

Not so sure. Bob’s work is all published in his books. If someone plagiarizes his work it would be obvious and could lead to a career ending scandal for anyone who didn’t properly credit him.

G. Karst
January 16, 2014 8:28 am

Usage of the word “sloshed” merely indicates that Dr. Trenberth has been reading Tisdale’s writings on SSTs and now agrees, to the extent, he uses exactly the same language. Not only that but he now agrees that natural variation may account for all decadal warming. Even though he does every wiggle to avoid saying so. Quite a day! GK

Crispin in Waterloo
January 16, 2014 8:33 am

I agree with several posters above:
“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability. ”
No, the simplest explanation is that the models overestimate GHG forcing and feedbacks, underestimate negative feedbacks and are thereby programmed to run hot. Duh! When models and nature disagree, it is not nature that is wrong.
As for Trenberth’s water piling up in Indonesia and ‘sloshing back’ he should read everything Bob Tisdale has written and then come back with a better mental image. If the winds remain, so will the sloshing be prevented. It could sit there for 30 years. We don’t know.
Counting on ‘stored heat’ that no one can find to pop up in a few years like a dragon that breathes fire all over the world is to ignore climate history. The text in general promotes the view that everything was stable for millennia and we disrupted the gentle stasis of nature with our CO2. What bunk.

herkimer
January 16, 2014 8:35 am

Northern Hemisphere SST show a decline since 2003 or the last 10 years. It has been declining during every season and annually as well.
The Southern Hemisphere SST is flat.
The North Atlantic Ocean SST and AMO are declining, the Pacific Ocean SST is flat but the North Pacific Ocean SST has been declining since about 2005 . The PDO index is also declining but PDO is not a direct temperature indicator but only a pattern change indicator and this tells us that there is now colder water at the eastern side of the Pacific than in the western or central part of the Pacific than we had 10 years ago. There are also fewer strong El Ninos. I don’t see another strong El Nino for some time yet . There tend to be fewer strong El Ninos during cooling phases of the oceans and when they do happen , their short term warming is unable to overcome the long term stronger cooling due to deep ocean currents.
.
These factors all have combined to keep the global temperatures flat and now slightly declining as they did 1880 to 1910 and again 1945-1975. The decline in global temperatures is likely to continue as ocean cycles pole to pole tend to be long [65-70 years]
Looks like Professors William Gray and Don Easterbrook got right many years ago in my opinion .

Rud Istvan
January 16, 2014 8:38 am

Nice to see Trenberth beginning to understand Tisdale. But Nature dropped the ball on the more fundamental implication. The CMIP3 and CMIP5 models were are tuned during the ‘hot phase’ of the Nature PDO graph above. They cannot help but run hot in the future as a result. Which automatically says the ECS is too high, and any IPCC related prognostications about future AGW problems is significantly overstated.

scf
January 16, 2014 8:40 am

Even if what is being said is true… which is quite a stretch considering the lack of scientific evidence…
That only means that the alarmists are admitting they were wrong and their models are wrong. Previously they claimed the warming from the 80s to late 90s was entirely caused by greenhouse gases. Now they are claiming that the warming phase of the PDO was partially responsible, and in fact it must be responsible for at least half of all warming, because during the cold phase it stops all warming in its tracks.
So we know they were wrong and they admit it. However, all of this remains nothing more than theory, with very little in the way of evidence or successful predictive power. Yet they still remain wedded to their alarmist ways.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 8:43 am

Richard M says…
Bob’s work will be disguised under all the baffle gab and no one will bother to really look at it. Also Bob doesn’t have the finances necessary to sue or the clout to get the problem noticed.
Bob’s work is in e-books that are not in university libraries. Plagarism and cheating is alive and well in our universities: The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students’ papers tells his story
Think about Nutti and Dr. Linzen if you want another example. Honesty and integrity is not a hallmark of our university scientists. They have made that abundantly clear.
And yes I am a scientist and yes I have had my work stolen on a few occasions. I even went to a lawyer – No luck.

Lloyd Martin Hendaye
January 16, 2014 8:47 am

Absent context and perspective, the Green Gang of Jones, Hansen, Mann, Trenberth et al. will perpetually “shuffle off to Buffalo” as reality hooks them unceremoniously Stage Left. Memo to Klimat Kultists: This ain’t no pause but a 70-year “dead sun” Grand Solar Minimum likely presaging the 1,500-year overdue end of Earth’s current Holocene Interglacial Epoch.
As in Northern Europe’s Great Dearth of c. 1694 – ’66, when populations declined by two-thirds from Scots Highlands to the Polar Urals, Gaia’s coming “cold shock” will make Ireland’s 19th Century Great Hunger seem a ribald festival.
Having purposefully, willfully, sabotaged global coal, oil, nuclear energy economies over forty years; having done everything possible to degrade, immiserate Third World peoples benefited by Norman Borlaug’s seminal Green Revolution, creeps and thugs like Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Keith Farnish, Kentti Linkola and Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber have all the moral standing of an Auschwitz Commandant.

January 16, 2014 8:52 am

“That has led sceptics — and some scientists — to the controversial conclusion …”
A bit of a “tell” there about the role Nature thinks scientists should play.

John Peter
January 16, 2014 8:52 am

There are 111 replies, but not a single one from Bob Tisdale. I wonder if he is celebrating that his thinking has hit mainstream or commiserating because the mainstream is not acknowledging his sterling work, or perhaps he is working on a reply to appear here shortly.

mpainter
January 16, 2014 8:54 am

“You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Here we see the real reason for the article: Trenberth is staking out a claim for his “missing heat”.
Believe it. At the next El Nino, he will loudly proclaim that the missing heat is found. Then he will paint doomsday scenarios about ever more severe El Ninos. Anything to keep the ball up in the air.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 8:56 am

RichardLH says: @ January 16, 2014 at 5:10 am
…On the verge of another La Nina currently.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I noticed a few day ago Anthony’s meter dipped into La Nina territory and now its back to La Nada. (I guess La Ninja jumped out and assassinated La Nina)

milodonharlani
January 16, 2014 8:57 am

DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
I appreciate your point, but Lancs didn’t need to be shipped across the Atlantic, having been built in Britain, most at Avro’s Chadderton factory in the Manchester area.

Hmmm
January 16, 2014 8:59 am

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000165/full
Trenberth made a simple testable claim (and then didn’t test it). He said that the warming due to heat flux imbalance is manifesting itself differently under this new cool-PDO regime 1999 on. Less heating of the atmosphere 1999 on, more heating in the deep oceans 1999 on. This would show up in the ocean heat content record and the sea level record (especially added onto increased glacial melt rates), their RATE OF INCREASE should have increased from 1999 on. We don’t really have deep ocean data, and the heat has to first pass through the upper ocean and it didn’t show up there. So this is now more of a matter of faith in an unaccounted transport of heat through a place where we can monitor (upper ocean) to a place where we can’t currently monitor. Basically based on upholding the theory, clearly not based on observation. Which has long been the entire problem with this field.

Peter Plail
January 16, 2014 9:00 am

There is not long to go before the heating period might legitimately be referred to as the hiatus and the current climate considered the norm.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 9:02 am

Harold Ambler says: @ January 16, 2014 at 5:23 am
…The realists will have to, eventually, argue the warmists down on this one, in the popular media. As long as New York Times readers, USA Today readers, and NBC Nightly News watchers believe that they’re seeing a roller coaster rather than a wiggle, the war will never be won.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As long as skeptics are denied access to the MSM we are stuck with blogs. The fact we are being actively censored is not going to go over well if those suggesting we are looking at major cooling are correct.
We then become the ‘Davids’ who fought the Goliath of government. This is the greatest fear of those in government.

January 16, 2014 9:02 am

I’m sure Gavin will be disappointed with Kevin.
I see that the warm-mongers are quiet so far…

Hmmm
January 16, 2014 9:02 am

Thank goodness none of these natural cycling variations, which are apparently on par with global warming in order to cancel it’s effects (so far for almost two decades) never pushed us over a tipping point, which apparently only CAGW can do.

Henry Galt.
January 16, 2014 9:04 am

Please people, the words sloshes, sloshing and sloshed have been used by the WMO and others for many years (including posts and commentary on WUWT).
For example:http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/significant_natural_climate_fluctuations.php
This has been a public service announcement 😉

chris y
January 16, 2014 9:06 am

The Yale Forum on Climate last May had many bombshell proclamations from Trenberth, Santer and Pierrehumbert. My favorite was this-
“Any estimate of sensitivity requires all of the record and not just the last 20 years of it,” Pierrehumbert says. “The smaller the piece of it you take, the less certainty you have in your result.” Nonetheless, he agrees that earlier warming may have been deceiving.
“I think it’s true that some rather sloppy discussion of the rapid warming from the 20th century has given people unrealistic expectations about the future course of warming.”
Ray Pierrehumbert, May 2013
“Early warming may have been deceiving”
translation- Hansen was dead wrong when he stated with dead certainty that AGW had overwhelmed all natural forcings.
“…given people unrealistic expectations…”
translation- Me and my climate activist buddies wildly oversold the whole shambolic mess, tarnishing all of science in the process.

Jeff
January 16, 2014 9:10 am

Wait — Dana says the hiatus has been “debunked.” And I read that all the increasing heat that’s missing around the globe has been hiding up in the Arctic. Now Trenberth tells me all of the heat has been piling up in the Western Pacific and will soon “slosh” back into the atmosphere. Who am I to believe?

troe
January 16, 2014 9:11 am

US Senate hearing testimony now with many of the points made here being used. Understand that Judith Curry will testify. Science behind epa rulemaking is being questioned. Wonder if a Senator will ask epa chief if recently confessed fraudster had any role in the air quality work. Would like to hear that.

DR
January 16, 2014 9:13 am

I thought we were just told a few weeks ago the heat was hiding in the atmosphere.

Henry Galt.
January 16, 2014 9:21 am

Lloyd Martin Hendaye says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:47 am “”””
Don’t beat around the bush, say what you really mean?
herkimer says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:35 am “”””
Yes. Global rate of sea level rise should be accelerating as a result of all that heat entering the oceans since The Clause first occurred, surely?

Editor
January 16, 2014 9:22 am

John Peter says: “There are 111 replies, but not a single one from Bob Tisdale. I wonder if he is celebrating that his thinking has hit mainstream or commiserating because the mainstream is not acknowledging his sterling work, or perhaps he is working on a reply to appear here shortly.”
I’m on my lunch break right now. And tonight I’ll be finishing a post I will be publishing tomorrow morning.
I’ll try to work up something over the weekend about this, but there’s nothing really new to this so the post will include lots of links to past posts.
Regards

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 9:25 am

ponysboy says: @ January 16, 2014 at 6:46 am
.. It can’t take long now for some of the open-minded ones among them to step back and take a fresh look at the claims of skeptical scientists during the past 15 years. Or can it?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I do not have the pointer, but the number of scientists still part of the IPCC has dropped off quite a bit. Maybe another commenter has that information.

Radical Rodent
January 16, 2014 9:27 am

I might not have the qualifications for this, but let’s examine a few of these arguments:

…the warm water sloshed back…

This is a scientist speaking? Oceans don’t “slosh”; the waters pushed westwards (in what have been known for several centuries as “The Equatorial Currents” in all oceans) by the trade winds (so named for their reliability) feed the Pacific gyres – of which the Kuro Shio off Japan plays an important part for the North Pacific; in the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream plays a similar role. (I know that it is a lot more complex than that, but we have to keep it simple for these idiots.)

…scientists wrote off the stall as […] the natural variations …

Which is in direct opposition from the other thing these “scientists” claim: that CO2 is THE driving force behind global warming. Is it or isn’t it?

…El Niño of 1997–98, which pumped prodigious quantities of heat out of the oceans…

Now, you expect us to believe that a sea surface temperature of approximately 25~26°C “pumped” heat into the air (temperature probably 27°C or more)? How can this be done?

January 16, 2014 9:28 am

“It doesn’t add up… says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:19 am
Changes in the earth’s albedo and emissivity and the mechanisms that drive them are of course not up for discussion.”
Ignorant.
albedo measured since the early 80s.
The dataset you want is here
http://www.landcover.org/data/abd/
emmisivity
http://www.landcover.org/data/bbe/
you’ll note that they come in CMG projections. you know why?
If you thnk that changes in albedo and emissivity are related to the changes in temperature,
I’ve pointed you at the data to make your case rather than speculate. Do science and make your case.
If you think these are not up for discussion, then you have no clue why they are provided in a CMG projection do you?

Joe Chang
January 16, 2014 9:30 am

It is just astonishing that the GW alarmist have not realized that just by admitting natural variability sinks the entire CAGW argument. A doubling of CO2 by itself was always known to be only have a moderate impact, not enough to be large (which in turn was assumed to be catastrophic). So everything hinged on amplification. The amplification argument required natural variability to be very low. This was the critical reason that AR4 (or was it AR3) had to make the MWP disappear. It is not necessary for the 20th century warming to be unprecedented for the magnitude to be large. It is necessary to make the amplification argument. And now this argument is dead.

January 16, 2014 9:31 am

John Peter says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:52 am
“There are 111 replies, but not a single one from Bob Tisdale.”
I was thinking the same thing, but Bob has a new job now and he is probably at work.
I am anxiously awaiting for his comments.

Richard M
January 16, 2014 9:31 am

This is but another crack in the dam. There are now several of them. At some point the dam will burst and that will be the end. All we can do is continue to attack alarmism everywhere possible with the real facts. We are an army of ants but the combined effect is being seen. Keep up the good work.

DirkH
January 16, 2014 9:36 am

milodonharlani says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:57 am
“DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
I appreciate your point, but Lancs didn’t need to be shipped across the Atlantic, having been built in Britain, most at Avro’s Chadderton factory in the Manchester area.”
Noticed my mistake right after posting; so make it Liberators. 😉

Typhoon
January 16, 2014 9:37 am

The “Nature” article studiously avoids the simplest explanation: that the climate models are wrong and the “missing heat” is nothing more than an systematic artifact of these incorrect models.

michael hart
January 16, 2014 9:41 am

Chris Marlowe says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:29 am
“The smartest of these guys will be looking for an exit strategy…”

There is theory that many did, Chris, probably before 1990.

Rob aka Flatlander
January 16, 2014 9:48 am

DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability.”
No, that’s nonsense.
Actually it’s not, although I know what you are saying, BUT, the natural variability of the climate over 1000’s of years, as opposed to the relatively short earth data we have IS the simplest explanation. Human beings do not have enough data nor understanding to be able to model and then predict future climate. We know what we have been through in the last 150 years and 34 years of satellite data is well within the normal past variations of this planet. The system we are attempting to model is exponentially more complicated than the information we have now. And the ability to even begin to process this information is many years away in computation. The methodology for processing the satellite data is currently still in its infancy. We only have one satellite (Aqua) that so far has proven to be the most accurate. All other satellite info is analyzed and adjusted according to Aqua. Averaging 34 years of world wide data (which is sort of insane in it’s own right) has proven to be ZERO increase within the majority global temperature range of -65°C to +45°C. The data shows a 0.8°C variation in a 110°C range.
THAT’S 0.73% of the entire range. [0.00727]

brians356
January 16, 2014 9:48 am

>> “If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Ah, yes. Got it. Whew! Was worried about the 16-year flatline in the trend. Now three thousand more Climate Scientists can finish their careers and retire before the models they make a living from will be dusted off and given a second look. So let’s all just relax and get together again in, say, 50 years?
BTW Wouldn’t a real Climate Scientist, by definition, be a climate “skeptic”? Didn’t I learn in high school and college that true scientists are nothing if not skeptical? I recall first hearing the word “rigor” used in this context.
“Where has all the rigor gone? Long time passing.”

milodonharlani
January 16, 2014 9:48 am

DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 9:36 am
Lib for Lanc alliterates, but the US flew day missions, & the Kammhuber Line was night fighters, he said pedantically.

Neil
January 16, 2014 9:55 am

Typhoon says:
The “Nature” article studiously avoids the simplest explanation: that the climate models are wrong and the “missing heat” is nothing more than an systematic artifact of these incorrect models.
Because admitting that means the entire AGW scare was based on nothing more than an programming error in the models that can’t forecast yesterday. If they admit that, there is no possible way to back down with their grants and careers (in that order) intact.

Neil
January 16, 2014 9:57 am

brians356 says:
Where has all the rigor gone?
It’s hiding with Dr. Trenberth’s heat.

Andrew
January 16, 2014 9:58 am

Take the HadCRUT4, or any other, data set. Put it up in Excel. It’s trivially easy to see a 60yr oscillator – it dominates everything. And yet it took these geniuses till 2011, 11 years into the cooling trend to do that??
I model temp sensitivity at 1.3K per doubling – not surprisingly, that’s close to the real number known by physicists for 150 years. No one alive today will see 1K of warming in their lives.

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 9:59 am

Congrats Bob, You are right there is nothing new here.
This is mearly the acknowlegment that your analysis of ENSO describes the forces that are driving the surface temperatures, much better than their CAGW speculation does. They have destroyed the ‘C’ in CAGW, and the ‘A’ is now an ‘a’, that they will quibble over in an attempt to maintain their status. They can only “muddy the waters”, for so long, before it becomes apparent that if a negative PDO can stop the warming, the previous positive PDO contributed most of the warming, that they were selling, as the “edge of the tipping point”.
I hope you get the credit, you deserve. You have done more to explain how the Pacific stores and releases heat, and how that effects the surface temperature records, than all the $million dollar models.

Hmmm
January 16, 2014 9:59 am

Here is another decent test since we don’t have much data and only one world to run: if the 1940-1975 hiatus is nearly matched by this new one, in which we now have much higher anthropogenic CO2 concentration, then that more likely than not this disproves high climate sensitivity since we are (as much as possible) comparing one world to the same world with more CO2. After all AGW didn’t rear it’s head until the 70’s right? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/

phlogiston
January 16, 2014 10:00 am

Nice to see them showing the Lorenz attractor:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/ipcc-amo-pdo-warming.jpg
How long before they accept the obvious that its a butterfly attractor? OK its human beings we’re talking about so how long have we got … a billion or so years I guess till the sun goes red giant.

Resourceguy
January 16, 2014 10:00 am

Does this mean we get real science process back or will it continue to be The Peoples Glorious Democratic Republic of Science version run by dear leaders?

aaron
January 16, 2014 10:02 am

Richard M, Actually, I think the opposite happenend, they reduced the temperatures 1880-1970 to make the upward trend steeper.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/26/nasa-giss-adjusting-the-adjustments/

January 16, 2014 10:03 am

These quackademics still believe that the warm will return through the god of chance and magic – read the last paragraph. They just need to ‘discover’ why the heat is ‘being hid’ in the Ocean depths, where apparently the water gets colder as you dive deeper – except for the cagw ‘models’. They are not confessing to error, just that the black box needs to be opened and its secrets revealed.

aaron
January 16, 2014 10:04 am

They did decrease the amount of the adjustment over the time period though. I see your point.

TomRude
January 16, 2014 10:04 am

@ Don Easterbrook, agreed with your conclusion. However, I do not think that Trenberth and his minions did not read the available literature. Quite the opposite: I would contend that these people knew exactly what they were doing and that the urgency their UN handlers bombarded us with through ever alarmist articles in pal reviewed journals and media campaigns were a kind of Blitz supposed to convert the opinion fast in order to implement green money making policies and establish the preeminence of the UN bureaucracy. They knew very well they had a window to work with, hence those tipping points threats, especially toward the end of the “warming” window, as a desperation move.
On the scientific viewpoint, we all know these Hadcrut and other GISS are attempts to use one easily manipulated metric as a representation of climate. The statistical weighting of these temperature constructions in relation to the size and geometry of weather systems is a key issue, never addressed. Therefore, that their carefully designed measuring tool should show a pause is further testimony that their entire theory of climate is being falsified. Notwithstanding that as time goes by, chances to really understand short term variations and the true physical link between causes and effects are improving with better monitoring and tools.

January 16, 2014 10:05 am

Bob Tisdale:
Many thanks for your post at January 16, 2014 at 9:22 am which says

I’m on my lunch break right now. And tonight I’ll be finishing a post I will be publishing tomorrow morning.
I’ll try to work up something over the weekend about this, but there’s nothing really new to this so the post will include lots of links to past posts.

Please enjoy your lunch and go out to celebrate tonight.
You recently said you were retiring. Victors often do that when they have won.
Your article over the weekend is not important but your vindication is.
So, please don’t mince yours words in your article.
Congratulations and well done!
Richard

mpainter
January 16, 2014 10:05 am

Rob aka Flatlander says:
January 16, 2014 at 9:48 am
DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability.”
No, that’s nonsense.
Actually it’s not, although I know what you are saying, BUT, the natural variability of the climate over 1000′s of years, as opposed to the relatively short earth data we have IS the simplest explanation. Human beings do not have enough data nor understanding to be able to model and then predict future climate.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Human beings do not have enough data nor understanding to be able to model and then predict future climate”
This is what Dirk is saying, yet you object to his saying it.

Mickey Reno
January 16, 2014 10:06 am

Planetary warming signals impending doom, and a bitter cold spell equals proof of warming (or does not DISPROVE warming, anyway). Shrinking Arctic sea ice is proof, but growing Antarctic sea ice doesn’t count. A bad typhoon is probably caused by AGW, but fewer hurricanes during recent warm years is totally ignored. I’m so sick of this “heads I win, tails you lose” crap that alarmists keep peddling.
I’d allow Real Climate Scientologists to wait 50 or 100 years to evaluate climate models if they’d agree to wait 50 or 100 years before joining the coalition pushing CO2 reduction policies decisions based on those models. But you don’t get to have it both ways.

CaligulaJones
January 16, 2014 10:10 am

Seems to be a pattern:
1) “Real Science”, in the form of the IPCC, release its first report which basically ignores that big burning thing in the sky
2) Some say, “hey, nice binder, but where is all the good stuff about that big burning thing in the sky and how it relates to our climate?”
3) Others say “you are just a paid corporate shrill and a right-wing blogger, leave the science to scientists. They didn’t include that big burning thing in the sky because, duh, everyone knows it has no relation to our climate”.
4) IPCC can no longer ignore that big burning thing in the sky, and admit that perhaps, maybe, in some instances, we should kinda add it to our kewl models.
5) Some say, “nice catch, don’t worry about crediting us, take all the credit for doing what you should have done in the first place. BTW, ever hear of PDO?”
6) Others say, “you are just a paid corporate shrill and a right-wing blogger, leave the science to scientists. They didn’t include PDO because, duh, everyone knows it has no relation to our climate”.
7) Repeat as needed…

Jimbo
January 16, 2014 10:14 am

For several years, scientists wrote off the stall as noise in the climate system: the natural variations in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere that drive warm or cool spells around the globe. But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field. Although there have been jumps and dips, average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998,…

According to the Oxford English Dictionary ‘several’ means “more than two but not many”. One of the first people to some kind of pause was Dr. Phil Jones (in private only) in 2005 and 2009. After that many others noticed until it’s now a flood. How many more years until they wave the white flag?

Rob aka Flatlander
January 16, 2014 10:15 am

From WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
Solomonoff’s inductive inference is a mathematically formalized Occam’s razor: shorter computable theories have more weight when calculating the probability of the next observation, using all computable theories which perfectly describe previous observations.
Note:
Which PERFECTLY describe previous observation.
model says temp goes up
reality says temp remains flat
therefore computable theory (MODEL) is NOT simplest and does NOT carry more weight.

JP
January 16, 2014 10:18 am

It’s nice to see Trenbeth finally stating the obvious. However, I wonder how much ENSO plays in centennial variations (long term variations) in the global climate. For nearly 1000 years (400 year MWP and the 500 year LIA) the variations were such that not one oceanic oscillation could explain them all. Not ENSO, not the NAO, nor the AMO or PDO can explain these changes.
The problem is that the beginning or end of a long term climate epoch can take 2 or 3 generations. Our understanding of what drives long term climate variations (multi-centennial) is actually very small.

Tim Obrien
January 16, 2014 10:20 am

“…sooner or later…” Wow, sounds scientific. But please dump a few trillion tax dollars into carbon tax sin chits because, you know we understand what we’re doing…

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 10:20 am

The graph of “time” vs “magnitude of FUBAR displayed by NCAR”, has finally peaked and reversed its course. Lets hope that trend continues.

Editor
January 16, 2014 10:21 am

“If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, who studiously ignores the fact that the entire CO2-driven theory is premised on the claim that there can supposedly be no other cause for the 25 years of warming at the end of the 20th century.

Rob aka Flatlander
January 16, 2014 10:22 am

mpainter says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:05 am
Rob aka Flatlander says:
January 16, 2014 at 9:48 am
DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
MY point is Natural Variation IS the simplest explanation. The AGWs are attempting to say there is NO natural variation, and there is only UP for various false reasons.

NZ Willy
January 16, 2014 10:33 am

I reckon a major component of the “mysterious” pause is simply that they can’t adjust the recent temperatures because they’re too well documented. A new paradigm for heat quantification is needed every 10 years or so, to allow adjustments of the recent past and so keep warming on its course. /sarc still on

Taphonomic
January 16, 2014 10:34 am

Tom in Florida says:
“Sorry, that was Tom in Florida, don’t know where the T went.”
That’s okay, neither does Trenberth.

Jimbo
January 16, 2014 10:38 am

But none of the climate simulations carried out for the IPCC produced this particular hiatus at this particular time. That has led sceptics — and some scientists — to the controversial conclusion…

Can you be a sceptical scientist? Oh yeah, all scientists meant to be sceptics but we are dealing with the CAGW religion.

“If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Let me see strong warming from mid 1970s to 1988 and the alarm was raised by Hansen. Hysteria broke out and spread, windmill sales boomed, people cried, made threats, planted trees etc. and all for nothing. LOL.

aaron
January 16, 2014 10:38 am

During negative PDO, el Ninos are less common and la Ninas more common.
el Nino tends to release heat, traped during la Nina.
Hypothesis: During + PDO frequent el Ninos quickly release heat stored during la Nina. During – PDO, infrequent el Ninos mean that warm water is pooled in the west, deeper, and for longer periods of time, allowing heat to disipated to the deep ocean. So, during – PDO less heat from la Ninas make it back into the atmosphere during el Ninos. Much less.

NZ Willy
January 16, 2014 10:40 am

Does Trenberth really think that “trade winds” are piling the Pacific Ocean 20 centimeters higher in the West than in the East?!? Seriously? Houston, we have a problem, and it’s between the ears.

U. Thorvaldsson
January 16, 2014 10:41 am

Hey, one minute, what happened to the dust bowl years, in that “temperature” graph ?
That guy has the nerve to use an “adjusted” version of the temperature graph.
Worthless.

Bill Illis
January 16, 2014 10:44 am

The other thing about the hiatus is that those numbers “include” the warm water in the Indonesian area. So the surface may be warmer here but it has to be colder somewhere else for the flat temperature trend math to work.
Pro-warmers are not very good with numbers you know. That could be the reason why we got in this mess in the first place. Emotional non-math people should not be building climate models and developing feedback theories and explaining what it is happening to temperature numbers.

Editor
January 16, 2014 10:48 am

No mention that the sun is 10 years into performing the perfect natural experiment for distinguishing solar-driven from CO2-driven warming, and that the “hiatus” is strong evidence for the solar theory. All we get is:

Some have pointed to the Sun, volcanoes and even pollution from China as potential culprits.

No mention of what has been going on with the sun. Then when they discuss natural variability it is implicitly described as an internal oscillation, not externally forced:

For several years, scientists wrote off the stall as noise in the climate system: the natural variations in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere that drive warm or cool spells around the globe.

And:

The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability. Much like the swings between warm and cold in day-to-day weather, chaotic climate fluctuations can knock global temperatures up or down from year to year and decade to decade. Records of past climate show some long-lasting global heatwaves and cold snaps, and climate models suggest that either of these can occur as the world warms under the influence of greenhouse gases.

They are describing natural variability as weather, not climate, just on a longer time scale than actual weather, which would mean it is unforced, but a solar driver is an external forcing. They just pretend that the leading alternative theory does not exist and that natural variability (when they describe it in detail) is just about internal oscillations.

January 16, 2014 10:50 am

It is good that Nature and some IPCC scientist are realizing the existence of natural variability and are accepting the fact that this natural variability is not made of random noise but is characterized by cyclical behavior.
However, as DirkH says (January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am) also noted, they still do not get the point that if the models do not get properly the natural cyclical variability of the climate system then the only reasonable conclusion is that the IPCC GCMs are wrong and no useful prediction can be deduced from them.
The existence of a natural cyclical variability, ignored by the IPCC and by the AGW guys, has been addressed in very numerous papers not properly referenced in the Nature article. These include, of course, my own numerous papers since 2010 such as my latest review
Scafetta, N. 2013. Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. Earth-Science Reviews 126, 321-357.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825213001402
The physical issue it to understand the origin of these natural oscillations. While some people are trying to convince themselves that this is an “internal climatic variability”, the evidences that I have provided since 2010 is that this variability is astronomically induced because the observed climatic oscillations at multiple scales (not just the “iatus” of the last 15 years) can be linked to specific solar, astronomical and lunar harmonics.
For who might be interested, just yesterday I have published a new paper can clarify the scientific background of the astronomical theory of solar and climate oscillations:
Scafetta, N.: The complex planetary synchronization structure of the solar system, Pattern Recogn. Phys., 2, 1-19, doi:10.5194/prp-2-1-2014, 2014.
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/2/1/2014/prp-2-1-2014.html
Please, download the paper from this link:
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/2/1/2014/prp-2-1-2014.pdf
Abstract. The complex planetary synchronization structure of the solar system, which since Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 570–495 BC) is known as the music of the spheres, is briefly reviewed from the Renaissance up to contemporary research. Copernicus’ heliocentric model from 1543 suggested that the planets of our solar system form a kind of mutually ordered and quasi-synchronized system. From 1596 to 1619 Kepler formulated preliminary mathematical relations of approximate commensurabilities among the planets, which were later reformulated in the Titius–Bode rule (1766–1772), which successfully predicted the orbital position of Ceres and Uranus. Following the discovery of the ~ 11 yr sunspot cycle, in 1859 Wolf suggested that the observed solar variability could be approximately synchronized with the orbital movements of Venus, Earth, Jupiter and Saturn. Modern research has further confirmed that (1) the planetary orbital periods can be approximately deduced from a simple system of resonant frequencies; (2) the solar system oscillates with a specific set of gravitational frequencies, and many of them (e.g., within the range between 3 yr and 100 yr) can be approximately constructed as harmonics of a base period of ~ 178.38 yr; and (3) solar and climate records are also characterized by planetary harmonics from the monthly to the millennial timescales. This short review concludes with an emphasis on the contribution of the author’s research on the empirical evidences and physical modeling of both solar and climate variability based on astronomical harmonics. The general conclusion is that the solar system works as a resonator characterized by a specific harmonic planetary structure that also synchronizes the Sun’s activity and the Earth’s climate. The special issue Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts (Mörner et al., 2013) further develops the ideas about the planetary–solar–terrestrial interaction with the personal contribution of 10 authors.

Jimbo
January 16, 2014 10:54 am

Funny how the Sun, PDO and other natural climate changes can help us explain ONLY the hiatus.
Look at the Nature image at the early 20th century warming and PDO. Look at the late 20th century warming and PDO. Yet the PDO can ONLY explain the hiatus.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.14906.1389714879!/image/Warming.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/Warming.jpg

Adrian O
January 16, 2014 10:56 am

As a mathematical physics scientist, I find the idea of giving the “climate science” which had models fail with 95% confidence in less than 10 years,
I find the idea of giving “climate science” the status of science outrageous. Its record is certainly much worse than palm reading, which is not generally considered a science.
****
Modern science starts from measurements, builds models which explain these measurements, and makes falsifiable predictions, which are further checked against measurements.
Climate science has failed in each and every respect, with its models not even able to reproduce the last century, let alone the current one.
Climate science is not a science. It is a failed attempt to explain climate, ideologically and financially, through anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
At the mental level of a six year old child, it took the CO2 level curve and tried to read it as past, present and future temperatures. Which resulted in a spectacular failure.

Jimbo
January 16, 2014 11:00 am

Bob Tisdale is a lesson is persistence and common sense.

January 16, 2014 11:01 am

Quote ftom the original posting:
“Records of past climate show some long-lasting global heatwaves and cold snaps, and climate models suggest that either of these can occur as the world warms under the influence of greenhouse gases.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
Isn’t it wonderful when you can keep on changing your “batches” of “CO2 trump card” Climate Models (CMs) around to fit in with Climate Observations (COs) instead of having to scrap these CMs which are obviously faulty, useless etc.
And then; Walt Stone (@Cuppacafe) says on January 16, 2014 at 7:00 am:
“- – – – – – – – –. Any global model using the boogie man of “we don’t know how much heat is in the deep ocean” simply can’t be falsified without proving the negative on where the heat is going into the deep ocean.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
If the phrase; “heat is going into the deep ocean” means that the ocean’s warm surface water has sunk to the bottom (well, what else can it possibly mean?) then that situation must be a unique one, a bit like the rabbit pulling the magician out of the hat.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 11:05 am

NZ Willy says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:40 am
Does Trenberth really think that “trade winds” are piling the Pacific Ocean 20 centimeters higher in the West than in the East?….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You missed Bob Tisdale’s explanation: An Illustrated Introduction to the Basic Processes that Drive El Niño and La Niña Events

DrJohnGalan
January 16, 2014 11:13 am

What many people commenting here forget is that we are dealing with “post-normal science”.
The data and observations do not matter – it is a matter of fundamental belief. The so-called scientists believe they are saving the planet and nothing any sceptic can say will change that belief. The policy outcomes are the goal, and while people like David Cameron, Barack Obama (and Ed Davey) clearly show their support, there will be no change of direction.
The timescale has now been extended to 50 – 100 years, rather than the 17 originally suggested as a period difficult to explain – more than enough time for the doomsayers to reach a happy and well-remunerated retirement, having been to a few more conferences in 5-star hotels on first class flights in the interim.

Jimbo
January 16, 2014 11:17 am

My biggest gripe with this nature piece is that for years we were told that man’s greenhouse gases were now the main climate driver, capable of overwhelming natural climate drivers. The reality of observations says otherwise.

Skeptical Science‘ – 2010
Theory, models and direct measurement confirm CO2 is currently the main driver of climate change.
…………..Over the last 30 years of direct satellite observation of the Earth’s climate, many natural influences including orbital variations, solar and volcanic activity, and oceanic conditions like El Nino (ENSO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) have either had no effect or promoted cooling conditions.
Despite these natural oppositions, global temperatures have steadily risen throughout that time.
While natural processes continue to introduce short term variability, the unremitting rise of CO2 from industrial activities has become the dominant factor in determining our planet’s climate now and in the years to come.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-is-not-the-only-driver-of-climate.htm

I wonder whether this post will still be online in 2020?

Adrian O
January 16, 2014 11:18 am

NO SENSE WHATSOEVER
Trenberth’s main paper on oceans
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/full
in its main figure, Figure 1,
shows EXACTLY the same ocean warming slope
for 1983-1991, when the atmospheric temps were going up, as
for 2000-2008, when the atmospheric temps were NOT going up.
After 2008, the ocean warming SLOWS DOWN.
So the idea that oceans compensate for lack of atmospheric warming is total nonsense.

Manfred
January 16, 2014 11:21 am

Lest we forget…
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005

“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009

“Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.”
Dr Kevin Trenberth – CRU emails, 2009
“The fact is we can’t account for the lack of global warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can’t.”
Oh the odious desperation of politically driven settled science.

January 16, 2014 11:23 am

“At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” He really did say that … if we are talking a global record what does it matter where the warm water is … it should still effect the “global” average … “sloshes” is a good description on the warmists thought processes …

Rob aka Flatlander
January 16, 2014 11:27 am

Adrian O says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:56 am
Adrian please don’t insult six year olds.

KNR
January 16, 2014 11:29 am

Its far to late for Trenberth , he went all in for ‘the cause’ and was more than happy to attack and smear any that that dared to question his silly claims . His merchant of BS title is fixed for life and like Mann when the cause falls he will be lucky if he could get a job at a third rate college teaching basic English .
Lets make sure we never let him forget how happy was to ride AGW gravy train whilst all was going well.

January 16, 2014 11:30 am

Bob Tisdale writes:

The Pacific Ocean is awfully wide at the equator, so it takes a while, about 2 months, for the warm water to slosh to the east as far as the coast of South America.

That’s from his last post, ‘An Illustrated Introduction to the Basic Processes that Drive El Niño and La Niña Events’.
Nature writes in this article.

These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America, resulting in a spectacular example of a phenomenon known as El Niño.

Seems like a meeting of minds to me.

Birdieshooter
January 16, 2014 11:33 am

Can you spell vindication?
I have only been following this issue closely for about 5 years. In that time, as short as it is, the warmist crowd has grudgingly been forced to admit that much of what the skeptics have been saying is playing out. If the overwhelming evidence is going against the team now, I can only imagine the strident tones they took 15 years ago when their work was being questioned.
And just think, we may have another 15 years of the same hand wringing by the usual suspects.

Rob aka Flatlander
January 16, 2014 11:34 am

My question is:
How many Hiroshima LaBamba’s are now hiding in the ocean.
A little humor is needed
A little humor for me and for you
Faster and faster

January 16, 2014 11:35 am

Oh, Jimbo (January 16, 2014 at 11:17 am)…
Will anything from SkS still be extant on the internet in 2020?
The children will have had their toys tidied away by then

Rob aka Flatlander
January 16, 2014 11:36 am

“sloshed back”, modeled in the bathtub obviously

milodonharlani
January 16, 2014 11:36 am

KNR says:
January 16, 2014 at 11:29 am
Unfortunately Kiwi Trenberth is a US government employee, hence almost impossible to fire, no matter how wrong for so long. Maybe closing down NCAR would do it, but doubtful. Same goes for British subject Schmidt.

January 16, 2014 11:38 am

The whole argument that CO2 was causing climate change hinged on dubious subtraction. They claimed models that reproduced natural climates could not account for recent changes. Their hubris assumed that they had correctly modeled natural climate and by subtraction every other change must be due to CO2. Now they must admit, as we all knew, that their models failed to simulate natural variability. Failed models will always produce failed predictions.

troe
January 16, 2014 11:39 am

Senate hearing concluded. Dr. Curry held her own very well. Usual warmist scare tactics on full display. While the science is hashed out the fight for hearts and minds has to continue apace. Did not hear EPA Chief Gina McCarthy get asked the John Beale question. What was he was actually at work and has his work been reviewed in light of his fraud conviction? In a big TVA case which is costing us billions here his work and that of Stratus Consulting played a key role. We may be able to sue to get a reversal if we can show the evidence was corrupt or from a tainted source.

Pat Michaels
January 16, 2014 11:40 am

From Page 64 of my first printing edition of Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”
I”n science…novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumkstances where anomaly is later to be observed.”
Kuhn’s original manuscript was actually written in the late 1940s, so he did not appreciate how the massive amounts of federal money that poured into science would incentivize the Massive Resistance of Trenberth and his ilk.

January 16, 2014 11:41 am

So Nature is saying that Nature might have something to do with the weather?
Amazing!

Dr Burns
January 16, 2014 11:42 am

Who gives a damn about Trenberth ? After he lied to me blatantly in a series of emails, his true nature became evident. Don’t trust anything he says.

Peter Melia
January 16, 2014 11:43 am

Climate scientists, meanwhile, know that heat must still be building up somewhere in the climate system, but they have struggled to explain where it is going, if not into the atmosphere.
My question is:-As the AGM theory, is just that, “a theory”, how can they possibly “know” anything at all about it?

January 16, 2014 11:45 am

Dr Burns, would you care to provide more detail behind that strong accusation?

David Harrington
January 16, 2014 11:45 am

Occam’s razor, there is no missing heat, the models are wrong. Yes folks it is that simple.

January 16, 2014 11:49 am

DirkH says January 16, 2014 at 9:36 am

Noticed my mistake right after posting; so make it Liberators. 😉

Double-take experienced in these quarters too …
.

Seattle
January 16, 2014 11:52 am

Oh good, the “scientists” can explain the past perfectly now.
So when is it that their ex ante predictions will work?

Crispin in Waterloo
January 16, 2014 11:54 am

@Nicola
I saw the journal and its dozen articles a few days ago. Very interesting things going on in that space. The article on tides and super tides synchronizing with the seasons and starting or ending D-O events was fascinating.

Matt G
January 16, 2014 11:56 am

“These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America, resulting in a spectacular example of a phenomenon known as El Niño. Average global temperatures hit a record high in 1998 — and then the warming stalled.”
“Some have pointed to the Sun, volcanoes and even pollution from China as potential culprits, but recent studies suggest that the oceans are key to explaining the anomaly. The latest suspect is the El Niño of 1997–98, which pumped prodigious quantities of heat out of the oceans and into the atmosphere — perhaps enough to tip the equatorial Pacific into a prolonged cold state that has suppressed global temperatures ever since.”
Volcanoes and pollution from China definitely not culprits, but an El Nino is entirely formed by build up of solar energy heating and cant have one without the other.
“These winds normally push sun-baked water”
Already an hint there what causes the energy build up and yet oddly “Some have pointed to the Sun—–but recent studies suggest that the oceans are key” Both are the key in distributing solar energy around the ocean surface, cant have one without the other. The ocean redirects it, but ultimately the energy is solar based and the sun is responsible for warmer temperatures. Why is solar energy building up more than before? The reason being global low cloud levels have declined and any slight changed in solar activity will have an influence too.
Since when is noise solar energy distributed around ocean surface currents from the natural ENSO build up and disperse cycle? It is not noise, it is how the planet moves the build up of too much energy in the tropics to the rest of the world. It is natural thermostat that prevents the tropics warming too much. The reason why during major ice ages the tropics hardly changed and only cooled about 1c.
http://morriscourse.com/elements_of_ecology/images/ocean_currents.jpg
http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/plantsciences_Faculty/Bloom/CAMEL/Art/CurrentsOcean.jpg
The ocean currents above show how energy from the E equatorial Pacific move west with trade winds and spread into 3 different directions from the W equatorial Pacific. One warm current moves N toward the Arctic, the other moves S towards Antarctica and the main one moves energy towards the Indian ocean which joins surface currents that eventually reach the tip of South Africa and move up the Eastern side of North and South America until reach Europe and finally the Arctic. This is how the planet naturally removes energy from a hot tropical regions preventing it from positive feedback.
Only surface ocean water cant last that long before cooling can it? Yes it can and does because the surface ocean current varies between around 200m and 400m deep.
The diagram below shows how the warming in E equatorial Pacific formed back in 1997.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/mnth_gif/xz/mnth.anom.xz.temp.0n.1996.04.gif
How can it be noise when it causes a step up roughly half of the original El Nino in global temperature rise. Then stays flat with maybe a very slight cooling trend until the next strong El Nino appears. This shows that global temperatures are only rising when a strong El Nino occurs. When there isn’t one, global temperatures remain generally flat like recent years since the last strong El Nino back in 1997/1998.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.5/trend/offset:-0.05/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:1996.5/trend/offset:-0.05
The strong El Nino back in the early 1980s would have been larger on global temperatures if it had not been for a major volcanic eruption back then.comment image
“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability”
The simple explanation for the recent warming, the hiatus and discrepancy in the models is natural variability and this was caused by the failure of further strong El NInos. The planet cooling in this situation is caused by less energy build up in the tropics from solar energy, leading to less energy spread around the world with ocean surface currents..A cooling planet with less solar energy leads to more, stronger, frequent La NInas and less, weaker,infrequent El NInos. The weakened energy distributed around the world ocean surfaces eventually reach the poles and increase the risk of sea ice advancing once reached equilibrium.

January 16, 2014 11:58 am

So many great comments already – showing the great depth of knowledge this blog & it’s participants has. Kudos to all !
This is one small step as an exit strategy for alarmists – let’s not be too critical & impede that path for them – nothing would be better for all people if they got off their alarming position & more in line with a skeptical position of , warming but not catastrophic & a position of humility & uncertainty, a position where real science can occur.
I really hope there is some MSM reading this blog post so they can see & absorb the comments made on this thread, so they can see the depth of knowledge of the skeptical community & so they can see how the alarmist are slowly being forced into the skeptics camp by the data.

geo
January 16, 2014 11:59 am

Yet folks like Real Climate pretend that “the pause” will stop soon, AND NEVER REOCCUR.
Of course, the models are only in the ballpark if that is true. A 60 year cycle, half hot and half flat-to-cool, would cut their projections in half, and make them far less urgent and alarmist.

January 16, 2014 11:59 am

Science in the past:
– Look at data, come up with a theory. Iterate theory ideas.
Science today:
– Come up with theory, try to figure out why your data is wrong. Iterate data corrections.
What does Argo say? I haven’t seen Argo data summary in ages. The Argo site itself seems to be useless in the regard, or maybe I just have had bad luck finding the right page. Sure I can download 100MB of data and process it myself, but a summarizing graph would sure be nice.

January 16, 2014 12:00 pm

Jimbo says January 16, 2014 at 11:17 am

I wonder whether this post [re: SkS post] will still be online in 2020?

Have you checked to see how much of present-day or past currently resides in the ‘wayback machine’?
Don’t know if this will ‘come through’ correctly as a link in this thread, but here goes:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.skepticalscience.com
Looks like their earliest ‘capture’ was in late 2007:

Friday, 30 November, 2007
Empirical evidence for positive feedback
In our recent post …

.

Evan Jones
Editor
January 16, 2014 12:01 pm

“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,”
Do you now? Gosh. Who would have thought of that? What would we do without these mental giants?

john robertson
January 16, 2014 12:02 pm

John Daley.
If he was alive today, he would be snickering politely.
In the Climate gate 1 emails he tells the team just how idiotic they are.
They seem to have believed him as their reaction to his passing was classless to say the least.
Such resentment usually comes from truth.
I wonder if Trenberth wishes he had listened?
But the importance of John Daley’s advice to the team, is that they cannot say they were not warned.
They chose to whip the flames of hysteria, incite the mobs of political saviours and ignore the basic rules of science.
Now as the cycle progresses there is every reason to expect they will reap what they have sown.
For politicians always have an out, a scapegoat picked to take the blame.
Who better, for this role, than the high priests of certainty, consensus and calamity?
The “Team” useful to the “Cause” to their very end.

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 12:02 pm

After several more ENSO cycles with ARGO buoys we will have enough data to thoroughly analyze this process. They must know that the writing is on the wall. It is a tough sell to strangle the worlds energy use, if it is just to prevent, some theoretical difference, that is buried somewhere in the noise, of a chaotic system. “Catastrophe prevention” was the baited hook, that we were supposed to swallow, before the climate turned.

Evan Jones
Editor
January 16, 2014 12:04 pm

My feeling is that it’s due to a combination of post hoc adjustments to the records, UHI effects and systemic issues with thermometer locations.
There’s that, too. It accounts for a third to half the 1979 – 2008 warming, going by the USHCN trends.

brians356
January 16, 2014 12:05 pm

With a hat tip to Pete Seeger:
Where has all the rigor gone, long time passing?
Where has all the rigor gone, long time ago?
Where has all the rigor gone?
Shunned by Warmists, every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

NZ Willy
January 16, 2014 12:09 pm

I know this comment will get lost in the pile, but do some “scientists” *really* think that the oceans “heap up” in certain places because of trade winds? Isn’t it totally obvious that when surface waters flow one way, that there will be a deeper flow going the other way to make up the volume? This is not rocket science. These same scientists are proponents of “Eckman pumping” which holds that airborne action brings up deep waters. So how can you hold to that and profess ignorance about very basic deep-ocean circulation? Where’s the brains? Another example is the Sun’s “conveyor belt” which supposedly recycles sunspots over a full solar cycle. Do they really think that there are turgid physical structures which survive the Sun’s extreme conditions? Honestly, I despair sometimes.

Trev
January 16, 2014 12:13 pm

The regular implication in the report is that ‘sceptics’ cannot be ‘scientists’. This is pure bigotry.

January 16, 2014 12:18 pm

Trev,
The only honest scientist is a skeptic.
The un-skeptical ones are not being honest.

Louis
January 16, 2014 12:22 pm

Natural variability is a 2-edged sword. If it can stop warming, it can also cause warming. Until they understand natural variability well enough to accurately predict its effect, they can’t make any claims about the cause of climate change.

Lars P.
January 16, 2014 12:23 pm

“Some have begun to wonder whether there is something amiss in their models.”
Only some? and only begun? Those models were never really validated, and the first real test shows they are wrong.
All they had “valid” in the models was post-hoc validation of the 10-15 years warming. Nothing else.
“Now, as the global-warming hiatus enters its sixteenth year, scientists are at last making headway in the case of the missing heat.”
They needed 16 years to acknowledge the existence of the missing heat!
“…none of the climate simulations carried out for the IPCC produced this particular hiatus at this particular time.”
that bears repeating.
“some scientists — to the controversial conclusion that the models might be overestimating the effect of greenhouse gases”
hear hear. spectacular fail is for the others not good enough?
” palaeoclimate data that are used to extend the temperature record far into the past. ” rotfl. this pseudo science cannot explain any paleoclimate event.
” researchers caution against evaluating models on the basis of a relatively short-term blip in the climate” – but against the 10 years of warming and against the continuously faked history? That 150 years thermometer history has unfortunately so many irreversible adjustments in the data that is useless for science. The continuous barbarisation of the historical data is one major trait of this pseudo science.
This is not science, but pseudo science, where data is fit for theory:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/giss-busted-by-their-own-data/
“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability. ”
Welcome to the natural variability world. The simplest explanation for the 1980-1998 warming is natural variability.
“You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again.”
Well well, not fixing the models is good for skeptics. Keep running the failed models. The way “CO2 forcing” is modelled is wrong and it will not suddenly deliver good results. It is the net heat flows that are real and those are missing in the models.

Charlie Z
January 16, 2014 12:24 pm

If the rapid warming from 1976-1998 was positive PDO plus CO2 induced warming, then what was the nearly identical rapid warming between 1912-1944? Positive PDO plus ???
If you accept a PDO influence, then 1912-1976 becomes indistinguishable from 1976-now. Where is there room for a significant CO2 influence?

Matt G
January 16, 2014 12:26 pm

aaron says:
January 16, 2014 at 5:14 am
So, PDO in. That means Aerosol out for 40s, 50s.
Aerosols have never explained this period, they just wanted people to believe it. Sulfates in the lower atmosphere only last a few days and are washed out of the atmosphere by rain. Remember the acid rain scare too back in the 1980s?

Policycritic
January 16, 2014 12:29 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:50 am

Thank you so much for giving us access to your “The complex planetary synchronization structure of the solar system” paper. This time I am going to get FedExKinkos to print it off for me in living color so I can savor it. I read a Chinese paper a couple of years ago (can’t find it on my computer at the moment) that posited the same thing, and it rang true for me then as well. Again, thanks for thinking of those opus who can’t drop $40 every time a paper is cited.

January 16, 2014 12:30 pm

Ian Schumacher,
Here is the ARGO data from before they made their “adjustments”.
And here is the ARGO data vs models.
Here is the NH ARGO data.
And here is ARGO data from 65N to 65S, up to 2012 — the entire global ocean, for all practical purposes.
Finally, language matters: there is NO “Pause”. Global warming will only be seen to pause, if it resumes at some future time. But so far, global warming has stopped.
The planet may well resume warming. It may also begin to cool. At this point, we simply do not know. What we do know is that all the grant money is geared to global warming. There will have to be a lot of backing and filling if global cooling begins. But by now, the alarmist crowd’s credibility is shot.

Policycritic
January 16, 2014 12:30 pm

Bob Tisdale, take a bow.

noaaprogrammer
January 16, 2014 12:32 pm

“And many researchers caution against evaluating models on the basis of a relatively short-term blip in the climate.” In other words, the models may be wrong over the short term, but the models are correct over the long term – so we will extend this debate into the next century.
The models can’t be wrong, so ignore what the climate is actually doing so we can pick your pockets some more to prepare for catastrophic heating, which is always waiting for us in the distant future.

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 12:34 pm

NZ Willy:
Oceans pile up at every coast line, and on every tidal cycle. We call it waves or high tides.
The ENSO piling is a result of thousands of miles of trade winds, creating a massive fetch. It pushes the warm ocean surface water west, and it is eventually stymied, from continuing further west, by the land masses in the west Pacific.
We know the West Pacific Warm Pool exists, and we know that warm water is stored below the surface there. We also know that it is higher in surface elevation, than the East Pacific, during La Nina, and Neutral phases of ENSO. The only real question is do the phases cancel each other out, or can they add and subtract to the surface temps, over the time periods that were being analyzed?

Louis
January 16, 2014 12:37 pm

“Records of past climate show some long-lasting global heatwaves and cold snaps, and climate models suggest that either of these can occur as the world warms under the influence of greenhouse gases.”
What? As the world “warms,” either long-lasting global heatwaves or cold snaps can occur? Talk about covering all your bases. So if the world enters a new ice age, they will simply claim it’s just a long-lasting global cold snap caused by a warming world. If neither warming nor cooling happens and temperatures remain flat, they will claim it is the result of “natural variability.” In other words, they have designed their theory so that it cannot be falsified. That is a clear sign that they are promoting a hoax. True scientists, who are only interested in discovering truth, would point out what events would falsify their theory. Climate alarmists never do that.

NotTheAussiePhilM
January 16, 2014 12:38 pm

DirkH says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:10 am
That’s like celebrating the 100,000th Lancaster bomber built and shipped over the Atlantic while not one of them ever made it through the Kammhuber line.
Could there be a more fatuous and inaccurate ‘analogy’ in the entire history of the internet?

NotTheAussiePhilM
January 16, 2014 12:39 pm

Anyway, looks like us Luke-warmers are winning the argument!

Matt G
January 16, 2014 12:43 pm

“You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again.”
http://morriscourse.com/elements_of_ecology/images/ocean_currents.jpg
http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/plantsciences_Faculty/Bloom/CAMEL/Art/CurrentsOcean.jpg
The ocean currents above show how energy from the E equatorial Pacific move west with trade winds and spread into 3 different directions from the W equatorial Pacific. One warm current moves N toward the Arctic, the other moves S towards Antarctica and the main one moves energy towards the Indian ocean which joins surface currents that eventually reach the tip of South Africa and move up the Eastern side of North and South America until reach Europe and finally the Arctic. This is how the planet naturally removes energy from a hot tropical regions preventing it from positive feedback.
Yes you can keep piling warm water from solar energy in the w equatorial Pacific. This happens all the time when El Ninos don’t occur and the build up in the W equatorial Pacific doesn’t occur because as above. It is moved in ocean currents away from this region to other parts of the world where it warms them. Trenberth needs to learn the worlds surface ocean currents.

Goodlife1
January 16, 2014 12:47 pm

All one has to do is look at their PDO chart and see that the ocean controls the global temperature. What is so hard about that? From 1975-1998 we had warming with positive PDO, and it’s been neutral since with no warming. Prior to 1975 we had cooler temperatures with a negative PDO. Real scientists would simply explain this and move on, instead we waste billions and stupify the population.

Rob
January 16, 2014 12:56 pm

Finally, they are on the right track. Much is unknown. And that`s what academia and warmist won`t admit too.

Man Bearpig
January 16, 2014 12:59 pm

I get it!! It all makes sense now. When there is cooling or a ‘pause’ it’s completely natural, but when its warming, its man made CO2 ..

January 16, 2014 1:04 pm

NotTheAussiePhilM says January 16, 2014 at 12:38 pm

Could there be a more fatuous and inaccurate ‘analogy’ in the entire history of the internet?

He had the “+” and “-” terminals reversed; the resulting ‘short’ (aka ‘shot’) has been heard ’round the world …
.

January 16, 2014 1:05 pm

A do-over (on account of a formatting muff)

NotTheAussiePhilM says January 16, 2014 at 12:38 pm

Could there be a more fatuous and inaccurate ‘analogy’ in the entire history of the internet?

He had the “+” and “-” terminals reversed; the resulting ‘short’ (aka ‘shot’) has been heard ’round the world …
.

Frank Perdicaro
January 16, 2014 1:09 pm

The “piling up” and “sloshing” of water in bodies of water has a name: seiching.
You can get a good summary here: http://www.cayugafisher.net/pages/water/wind_driven_water.php

G. David S.
January 16, 2014 1:10 pm

Do the Trenberths fully comprehend the amount of water on this planet and the vast density difference between air and water? I truly wonder.

michael hammer
January 16, 2014 1:17 pm

“The latest suspect is the El Niño of 1997–98, which pumped prodigious quantities of heat out of the oceans and into the atmosphere — perhaps enough to tip the equatorial Pacific into a prolonged cold state that has suppressed global temperatures ever since”. So the oceans pumped out so much heat in 1 year it has taken the last 17 years to not yet replace it. Yet the temperature spike was what – a fraction of a degree? Then again the temperature did not fall and slowly rise back to its original level over those 17 years, it simply stopped rising. Hmmm!!!
Then again the cornerstone of AGW is rising CO2 reduces energy loss to space yet the NOAA data shows energy loss to space has been increasing since 1980 not reducing. Hmmm!!!
The cornerstone of CAGW is positive feedback from water vapour the signature of which, so they claim, is a hotspot in the upper tropical troposphere yet thousands of balloon flights have not found such a hotspot. Hmmm!!!!
“If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” yet the entire period used as the basis of the gloabl warming argument is 1980 to 1998 or 18 years. Between 1940 and 1980 the world was cooling while CO2 was rising and between 1900 and 1940 the world was warming while CO2 wasn’t particularly rising. So we have correlation only between 1980 and 1998 (18 years) with zero or negative correlation over the remaining 96 years but this is enough to prove CAGW deyond doubt? Hmmm!!!
The climate has a very long time constant because of the huge thermal mass of the oceans, so the CO2 already emitted will cause temperatures to continue to rise for decades. Yet the oceans can reverse all that heating in one El Nino year. So the time constant is hugely long when that suits and also extremely short when it suits – a time constant that is both long and short at the same time. Hmmm!!!
You know what, I start to smell a very large rat.

AlexS
January 16, 2014 1:26 pm

The new narrative now is:
Pause or Freeze :Natural Causes
Warming: Co2
Of course the answer is they don’t have clue.
This si just another PR operation of Damage Limitation.

Werner Brozek
January 16, 2014 1:26 pm

they are now roughly 20 centimetres higher than those in the eastern Pacific
And from:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/10/an-illustrated-introduction-to-the-basic-processes-that-drive-el-nino-and-la-nina-events/#more-100903
“With all of that warm water being piled up in the western tropical Pacific, and with all of the cool water being drawn from the eastern equatorial Pacific, the surface of the water—the sea level—in the west Pacific Warm Pool is about 0.5 meters (approximately 1.5 feet) higher in elevation than it is in Cold Tongue Region in the east.”
My questions are these:
Does the difference have to rise from 0.2 m to 0.5 m before the next El Nino occurs?
However should an El Nino start now, does that mean it will be a relatively weak one since the rise is only 0.2 m instead of 0.5 m? Thank you.

AlexS
January 16, 2014 1:30 pm

Notice also how Nature delays, destroy Science.
Nature only makes that article because they have an “answer” not because they have a question.

Matt G
January 16, 2014 1:30 pm

Russ R. says:
January 16, 2014 at 12:34 pm
“We also know that it is higher in surface elevation, than the East Pacific, during La Nina, and Neutral phases of ENSO. The only real question is do the phases cancel each other out, or can they add and subtract to the surface temps, over the time periods that were being analyzed?”
The ocean currents are always wanting to move the solar heated tropical oceans energy towards the poles. With a La Nina the energy in the tropics is quickly dispersed to other regions via ocean surface currents. With a El Nino it only delays this solar energy from reaching other regions, so that why we get a sudden jump once it is released. This is why it is impossible for them to cancel each other out due to both phases involve moving energy away from the tropical oceans.

David, UK
January 16, 2014 1:35 pm

Sorry, but it’s still just a stupid alarmist article. It differentiates between sceptics and scientists (surely an insult to all the real scientists out there), and it quotes someone stating in all seriousness that climate should be studied on timescales of 50-100 years. My arse! I mean, let’s not dare mention tens of thousands of years and longer, lest we draw attention to the fact our current times are not unprecedented. It’s a very pathetic article.

brians356
January 16, 2014 1:37 pm

To listen to these impromptu explanations for “where’s the heat?” reminds me very much of the lovable Professor Irwin Corey whose doublespeak gibberish act on The Ed Sullivan Show tickled our family no end. It’s now degenerated to a carnival shell game, and they don’t care if we (the “marks”) knows the game is rigged, they assume we will be fascinated and entertained all the same. I hear W.C. Fields’ voice: “Go away, kid, you draw flies.”

david dohbro
January 16, 2014 1:49 pm

Natural cycles, cycles, cycles. It’s been evident in the temperature data for years, but (deliberately!?) overlooked by many, until now. This is a key paper. It explains (most of) the LT trend in observed GSTAs: natural oceanic cycles. Not surprisingly since the Earth is 2/3rds ocean… The PDO clearly explains most of this cycling (trend). Now overlay the ENSO cycle, add the solar cycle and as a result there’s very little left for CO2 to explain the LT GSTA trend… Natural variability goes both ways: it cools and it warms our planet. It doesn’t go one way; cooling only… Similar cycles in time have been elegantly identified using a simple tool borrowed from the financial industry: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/01/if-climate-data-were-a-stock-now-would-be-the-time-to-sell/
The highs and lows in GSTAs identified in that post: 1911 to 1945: +0.0136°C/yr; 1945 to 1976: -0.0022°C/yr,; 1976 to 2007: +0.0186°C/yr; match those presented in this Nature paper’s plot “the pacific’s global reach”. It also means that from 1976 to 2007 the Earth warmed only 0.005 C/yr faster (37%) than during the previous warm-phase PDO. Add to this the in the Nature paper identified el-nino dominated ENSO cycle from 1976-1998 (Seager et al), and -as mentioned before- there’s little left for CO2 to explain any of the observed warming. Btw, the ENSO cycle can be easily identified by plotting a running-total of the ONI data: bottomed 1976, peaked 1998. It is in a decline since…. Given that this ~25yr cycle has also been identified by others (e.g Giesse and Ray, 2011), it is most likely that ENSO is now in a la-nina dominated 25yr cycle ending in the mid 2020s… Add to that that the PDO is now also in a cool-phase, and GSTAs will likely continue to decline (As identified in the MACD post). Of course el nino’s will occur even during a la nina dominated phase and the next el nino is likely around the corner, but any spike in GSTAs is thus due to the el nino and NOT due to CO2.

TRM
January 16, 2014 1:57 pm

Where does Bob Tisdale collect his Nobel?
Failing that we’ll award him one by buying his books and recommend it to your local library if they support ebooks.

Joe Chang
January 16, 2014 1:59 pm

regarding the interpretation of computer models over short or long terms. There are a number of known issues with the general circulation models. if the models cannot reproduce key elements of earth’s climate, example trade winds, Hadley cells, precipitation patterns, then there is no way to substantiate that the model is correct over either short or long periods. Furthermore claiming a discretization of the Navier-Stokes equation is accurate long-term but not short-term goes against everything that is known about propagation errors. Someone clearly started smoking weed before Jan 1 in CO?

NikFromNYC
January 16, 2014 2:05 pm

Just split at 1950 and de-trend to see that the song remains the same in our high emissions era:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1949/to:2012/detrend:0.35/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1895/to:1950/detrend:0.35/offset:0.35
Hey code warrior Steve Mosher, head over to Goddard’s blog to justify the official climate data’s non-peer reviewed yet utterly linear progressive adjustment to the data all of climatology relies upon:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/noaanasa-temperature-corrections-are-junk-science-at-its-worst/
Go peer review it, insider, as we are all waiting for you and yours to finally do so.

euanmearns
January 16, 2014 2:06 pm

@ Scafetta – I just looked at the pictures – awesome!

January 16, 2014 2:08 pm

dbstealey,
Thanks! I’ll take a look at those links. Yes I remember reading about ‘corrections’ for Argo. Let me guess the correction had the effect of increasing the temperature trend. Is there ever any other direction for corrections? Sad sad days.

January 16, 2014 2:12 pm

dbstealey,
So looking at ‘actual’ data, the warming is not hiding in the ocean (even given their ‘corrected’ data). How can they keep saying it is? It makes no sense.

RH
January 16, 2014 2:18 pm

How do we know that the “hiatus” is actually a hiatus? Maybe they just ran out of wiggle room in the data and are now left with reality. The only data that I really trust is the UAH satellite data from Dr. Spencer. Not because I trust Dr. Spencer, but because if there was something wrong with his data, the consensusarians would be out with pitchforks.

aaron
January 16, 2014 2:19 pm

So, the real question is, “what does Dr. Trenberth propose as the mechanism that will move this the heat lost to the deep sea back to the surface?” And, “What about feedbacks?”

aaron
January 16, 2014 2:27 pm

How do methane concentrations correlate with these quasi-cyclical ocean and weather patterns?

Steven Devijver
January 16, 2014 2:34 pm

The next El Nino was always going to be a serious battlefield.

January 16, 2014 2:36 pm

aaron
And also, how did that heat magically ‘beam’ there in the first place without being detected by Argo measurements?

ColdinOz
January 16, 2014 2:37 pm

Bob Tisdale says “I’m on my lunch break right now. And tonight I’ll be finishing a post I will be publishing tomorrow morning.”
Looking forward to it Bob.
Just add or rather to ask. Why does Trenberth speak as though recent ElNino’s are anomalous events, which they would have to be to support his assertion/prediction. Stochastic, or apparently stochastic they may be, but not anomalous

Steven Devijver
January 16, 2014 2:39 pm

They’ve misspelled denier.

Homer J. Simpson
January 16, 2014 2:40 pm

“Sun-baked water”…..mmmmmmm.

Homer J. Simpson
January 16, 2014 2:41 pm

“Sun-baked water”….mmmmmm….

GeneDoc
January 16, 2014 2:41 pm

When I first started looking at the validity of the CO2 hypothesis, I was floored to see statements of the type “We can’t think of anything else that could be accounting for the warming, so it must be the increased CO2.” Egads–made me realize how poorly developed this field really was, especially modeling such a complex chaotic system. Really? You accounted for _everything_ else?
At least the pause is forcing them to think a little harder and even to (maybe) collect some data. Progress, I guess. I wonder how hard they’ll think when the cooling starts? Sad to see people who think this way this labeled “scientists”.

Dale
January 16, 2014 2:44 pm

Congrats Bob Tisdale!

aaron
January 16, 2014 2:57 pm

Ian Schumacher, I don’t know. How deep does the pool get? Could there be a deep ocean current that brushes by it that ARGO can’t detect? Dr. Spencer proposed a mechanism for heat transfer to the deep ocean we wouldn’t detect and says there are others (IIRC).

January 16, 2014 2:58 pm

What Trenberth used to say:
“What about the future of El Nino? According to NCAR senior scientist Kevin Trenberth, ENSO’s impacts may be enhanced by human-produced climate change.”
What Trenberth says now –
“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,”
So global warming drove El Nino’s right up until the point where he decided El Nino’s drive global warming. Only in Climate Science can you flip your cause and effect and be heralded a sage. What will his theory be next year? 😉
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/kevin-trenberth-on-el-nino-a-tracking-of-the-evolution-of-his-perspective-on-this-issue-since-1997/

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 3:03 pm

Matt G says:
January 16, 2014 at 1:30 pm
“The ocean currents are always wanting to move the solar heated tropical oceans energy towards the poles. With a La Nina the energy in the tropics is quickly dispersed to other regions via ocean surface currents.”
I refer you to animation 1 in Bobs discussion of heat build up in the western pacific region, during La Nina:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/199798-el-nino-through-1998990001-la-nina-animations/
I suspect there is a large amount of heated tropical energy leaving the western pool. But I also think it is vast enough, and trapped by the land features, that force heated surface water down. If you have done river rafting, you know what happens when the river is squeezed into a narrow channel. That is happening in the South China Sea, and backing up the westward flowing river, forcing it northward, but also creating a pool of water waiting to exit the area. As long as the trade winds blow this will continue. When they stop, the bulge of water flows back east.

James Hein
January 16, 2014 3:16 pm

Cripwell
Sadly you are correct. When I tried to point one of our local media lightweights (in my opinion at least) in Adelaide, Tory Shepherd, to a well researched article here debunking some of her statements her resonse was “I think I’ll stick with the bureau over deluded online blogs” This is the same BOM that has been adjusting old temps down and modern temps up to support the political meme
This is an obviously adopted position based on what someone else has said and that as a journalist highlights where journalism has regressed to in the Post-modern era. We really need a Marc Morano here in Australia. Sadly we don’t have one nor the TV platform to make alternative arguments against the rubbish the publis here gets to see and here on a regular basis. Australia will be either the last or second last (after the UK) to finally admit it was all a farce.

January 16, 2014 3:17 pm

January 16, 2014 at 8:00 am | Gail Combs says:
“Dr. Judith Curry already beat them out the door.”
January 16, 2014 at 8:07 am | Alan Millar says:
That’s why they revile her so much. They can’t stand that she was cleverer than them in putting on her life jacket and abandoning ship.
———–
No lifejacket required, Dr Curry walks on water 😉

Matt G
January 16, 2014 3:37 pm

Russ R. says:
January 16, 2014 at 3:03 pm
That is correct, “With a La Nina the energy in the tropics is quickly dispersed to other regions via ocean surface currents.” I was referring to the W equatorial Pacific here and it is also directed towards the mid equatorial Pacific especially with depth, but much more slowly when against trade winds.
The ocean surface currents move N, move S and move W into Indian ocean, but also currents are forced down and help fuel the next El Nino. This then flows back east when the trade winds ease and resurfaces in the E equatorial Pacific.
Already linked a graph in a previous post that shows this behavior too.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/mnth_gif/xz/mnth.anom.xz.temp.0n.1996.04.gif
Thats why you can have many years with no El Nino and little surface warming in the W equatorial Pacific.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 3:38 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:33 am
I reckon a major component of the “mysterious” pause is simply that they can’t adjust the recent temperatures because they’re too well documented….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not to mention the fact warmists do not have control of the satellite records and they can no longer ‘fudge’ the surface records without it being blatantly obvious.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 3:42 pm

U. Thorvaldsson says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:41 am
Hey, one minute, what happened to the dust bowl years, in that “temperature” graph ?…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This is what happened: GISS graphs from 1980, 1987 and 2007 a side by side comparison (H/T Jo Nova.)

dyugle
January 16, 2014 3:46 pm

I think they need to look at their climate sensitivity argument as I seem to remember that it is based on the following, (as the atmosphere heats up it will cause the oceans to heat up and release more CO2 into the atmosphere which in turn increases the temperature of the atmosphere in a positive feedback loop)
Doesn’t this document bring the positive feedback loop argument into question and thus their climate sensitivity figures?

wayne Job
January 16, 2014 4:26 pm

Trenberth’s take on the water piling up is a tad simplistic, without a full blown La Nina it will not get any higher, nor will it store much heat. With neutral conditions I would be confident that the big tropical thermostat that Willis has described will keep the heat in check. Big La Nina will store heat, but what has been transpiring lately an El Nino would be a big disappointment to Trenberth.

observa
January 16, 2014 4:43 pm

As Bruce Cobb notes that classic line- “Climate sceptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt.”
when it was climate alarmists who pounced upon their treemometers and coremometers with a new kid on the block theory and made their catastrophist forecasts, whereas rational skeptics simply began to observe the real thermometers. It was then that alarmists seized upon disappearing or reducting particular thermometer readings.

January 16, 2014 4:43 pm

Nature article was fairly unbiased other than not understanding that “skeptic” and “scientist” are one and the same.

rob r
January 16, 2014 4:48 pm

Trenberth- obviously a genious. He will soon be rewarded with a big $$$ bearing prise for this latest “discovery”. Thereby the CAGW crowd can claim the whole idea as one generated in-house.

Bill Illis
January 16, 2014 4:56 pm

Regarding the word description “sloshes”, you know Bob Tisdale and I have used this description for a long time now.
It is more-or-less an accurate description of what occurs. When the trade winds are no longer blowing as fast as they normally do, they are no longer pushing/pulling the water surface from the eastern Pacific to western Pacific as much as they normally do. Then gravity takes over and the surface water moves backward from the western side to the eastern side, opposite to what normally happens .
Is the accurate description “sloshes back”? Well, when we are talking about water, it is just a quick short-version explanation. There is a much longer, perhaps more accurate description, but it takes many words to go through it. Sloshes sounds funny but it is close enough and most people will get the idea in one word, versus the textbook chapter it would normally take.
I’m pretty sure I used this term more than a dozen times going back 5 years.

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 4:58 pm

The one thing this paper is missing is a theme song. Since they failed to provide one, I am going to nominate my choice. Maybe the hockey team could consider this, consider this as a possible career move. I wonder if Gavin can sing?

Richard
January 16, 2014 5:23 pm

New Scientist: “The Met Office admits that we still know far too little about how these natural cycles work, and how big they are. ”
In other words they haven’t a clue. Then how come the science is settled? How come we are legislating and taxing ourselves into the dark ages in order to fine tune the Global thermostat?

1sky1
January 16, 2014 5:25 pm

In an oceanographic context, the term “sloshes” has a seiching (standing wave) connotation that is totally misleading when applied to equatorial ocean dynamics. Variantly wrong interpretations of that term are amply in evidence here. The simple phrase “drains eastward” is a far better description of what actually happens.

David L
January 16, 2014 5:25 pm

“If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
——————
If they believe this, then why do they constantly report yearly temperatures with their climate models? If yearly fluctuations are unimportant why not show global mean temperatures on a century or half century frequency?
They can report the average global temperature for the entire 21st century and we can all wait to see if they were right.

John M
January 16, 2014 5:33 pm

Will Nitschke says:
January 16, 2014 at 2:58 pm

What Trenberth used to say:
“What about the future of El Nino? According to NCAR senior scientist Kevin Trenberth, ENSO’s impacts may be enhanced by human-produced climate change.”
What Trenberth says now –
“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,”

Trenbeth was for global warming causing more El Ninos before he was for fewer El Ninos causing less global warming. It’s the modified John Kerry doctrine with a twist, applied to Climate Science.
I give it a 9.0 for degree of difficulty and a 6.5 for execution.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 5:43 pm

dyugle says:
January 16, 2014 at 3:46 pm
I think they need to look at their climate sensitivity argument as I seem to remember that it is based on the following, (as the atmosphere heats up it will cause the oceans to heat up and release more CO2 into the atmosphere which in turn increases the temperature of the atmosphere in a positive feedback loop)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually it was CO2 cause more IR to heat the oceans causing more water to evaporate. This allows the warmists to claim water as a feed back of CO2.
Here is the ‘BIG LIE’ straight from NASA:

Water Vapor Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change Page Last Updated: November 18, 2008
Water vapor is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change. [In other words water is what has a big effect on earth’s climate not CO2.]
Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere….
“Everyone agrees that if you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, then warming will result,” Dessler said. “So the real question is, how much warming?”
The answer can be found by estimating the magnitude of water vapor feedback. Increasing water vapor leads to warmer temperatures, which causes more water vapor to be absorbed into the air. [There is the twisting of cause and effect used to make CO2 increases catastrophic.] Warming and water absorption increase in a spiraling cycle. [Adding in the fear component just in case you need to be hit by a hammer and completely neglecting the fact that the temperature on earth has upper bounds as seen in the geological record.]
Water vapor feedback can also amplify the warming effect of other greenhouse gases, such that the warming brought about by increased carbon dioxide allows more water vapor to enter the atmosphere.
“The difference in an atmosphere with a strong water vapor feedback and one with a weak feedback is enormous,” Dessler said. [Well at least he has that part correct.]
Climate models have estimated the strength of water vapor feedback, but until now the record of water vapor data was not sophisticated enough to provide a comprehensive view of at how water vapor responds to changes in Earth’s surface temperature. That’s because instruments on the ground and previous space-based could not measure water vapor at all altitudes in Earth’s troposphere — the layer of the atmosphere that extends from Earth’s surface to about 10 miles in altitude….

Andrew Dessler has a great career ahead of him as a used car salesman.

Editor
January 16, 2014 5:53 pm

ColdinOz says: “Why does Trenberth speak as though recent ElNino’s are anomalous events, which they would have to be to support his assertion/prediction.”
A La Nina is simply an exaggerated ENSO-neutral phase. El Ninos are the anomalous phase of ENSO.
During El Ninos, trade winds reverse in the western tropical Pacific and become westerlies; and the equatorial counter current strengthens and carries huge volumes of warm water eastward. The relocation of that warm water one-quarter to almost halfway around the globe drastically alters the normal weather patterns.

Steve Garcia
January 16, 2014 5:54 pm

Gentlemen –
It may be of no consequence, but the “FICKLE OCEAN” image of two states of the Pacific – at least one of those is bogus. And I don’t mean bogus as in a model being bogus. If you look carefully at the lower image, it is a Photoshopped version of the upper image, just with the colors changed. To me that is as bad as the Photoshopped polar bear and ice flow image of a few years ago.

Steve Garcia
January 16, 2014 5:55 pm

“medel” should be “model”
[Fixed. ~mod.]

Steve Garcia
January 16, 2014 5:56 pm

…not my day… I failed to mention that the FICKLE OCEAN image is in the Nature article.

Frank
January 16, 2014 6:00 pm

Regarding the figure. Assuming that the pacific caused negative temp anomalies in the 50’s and 60’s and positive for the 80’s and 90’s, then their models need to be redone because the models assume the warming from the 60’s to the late 90’s was CO2 based. But their own chart shows a bunch of the temperature climb to be natural variablity

4 eyes
January 16, 2014 6:06 pm

It’d be a travesty if Bob T’s work wasn’t recognized as his.

January 16, 2014 6:13 pm

Harold Ambler says:
Still, we argue over fractional degrees of temperature “anomaly,” accepting that there is something special, normative, or magical about temps of the past 30 years, or of the past century.
The entire conversation, particularly in the MSM, takes the up-and-down anomaly discussion way too seriously. Does Kevin Trenberth really believe that the ups and downs of a few tenths of a degree represent hair-raising temperature swings rather than a self-regulating system displaying the minor fluctuations around something very close to homeostasis?
The realists will have to, eventually, argue the warmists down on this one, in the popular media. As long as New York Times readers, USA Today readers, and NBC Nightly News watchers believe that they’re seeing a roller coaster rather than a wiggle, the war will never be won.

^Repeated for effect.^
Prof Richard Lindzen writes:

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in 100-thousand year cycles for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present, despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat…
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans, where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface, provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century…
There is ample evidence that the Earth’s temperature, as measured at the equator, has remained within +/- 1°C for more than the past billion years. Those temperatures have not changed over the past century.

The climate alarmist camp has been scaring the public with their wild-eyed charts, which blow up 1/10th degree changes into scary looking runaway global warming. But as Lindzen writes, these are small changes with no need for any external cause.
Furthermore, it has been shown that CO2 has, if anything, a negligible effect on global T. It may have no effect at all. We simply do not know, because there are no testable measurements showing any effect from CO2: any effect, even if it exists, is simply too small to measure.
Finally, it is a perversion of the English language to call this a “pause”. It can only be a “pause” if warming resumes.
But as of 17 years ago, global warming has stopped. <–That is the correct use of the language. If Nature editors were honest, they would use the language correctly.

Steve Garcia
January 16, 2014 6:14 pm

“One important finding came in 2011, when a team of researchers at NCAR led by Gerald Meehl reported that inserting a PDO pattern into global climate models causes decade-scale breaks in global warming.”
No sh**, Sherlock. Actually entering in a real-world and connected phenomenon into the models made them act more like the real world?
Wow. Whodathunk?
The PDO was discovered in 1997. Ten years ago people were already saying that the timing of the PDO’s phases indicated that we were heading into a slowdown and a possible/probable cooling.
By 1990 we were all told that they knew what was happening with the climate and that it was CO2 causing the climate to warm – strongly implying that all the factors were known and all the factors were accounted for in the models and in their overall thinking. When the PDO was discovered, none of them came out and said, “You know, we need to incorporate the PDO into the models, don’t we?”
OBVIOUSLY, ALL of the factors should be in the models. Any twerp with half a brain would know that.
It has taken them since 1997 – coincidentally the beginning of the hiatus – to FINALLY even THINK of putting the PDO into the models. And when they did, VIOLA! the models began to act more like the real world!
Are these guys numb nuts or what?
This is a science with so little science in it that it boggles the mind. Or at least too few actual scientists with brains capable of logic instead of wishful thinking. Not to mention the blatant cherry picking of not only data but also cherry picking of FORCINGS.
Maybe in about 250 years they will figure out that Trenberth’s sequestered heat in the oceans is just a total wishful thinking speculation. For now, they are so illogical that they can’t tell the difference between speculation and evidence. His sequestered heat is an extraordinary claim – something never seen before or thought about before. He pulled it out of his butt, after all. And as an extraordinary claim, IT requires extraordinary proof. Yet, the editors at Nature cannot bring themselves to demand such extraordinary proof. Instead, they accept it at face value as if it is the truth of the matter.
So, once again, the skeptics who DO demand the extraordinary proof are themselves now the ones who will be required to DISPROVE Trenberth’s TOTAL GUESS.
Science, in other words, has been stood on its head.

Steve O
January 16, 2014 6:16 pm

If non-CO2 natural cycles can interrupt the trend, how do we know that natural cycles didn’t drive the original trend to begin with?

January 16, 2014 6:24 pm

Steve O,
Good point. How many natural ‘hockey stick’ shapes are in this chart? I count more than twenty as steep as Mann’s — during times when CO2 was much lower than it is today.

troe
January 16, 2014 6:35 pm

Good roll going. This blog is heating up. Guess that is why they felt the need to give us a swipe in the article. They knew we would crow a little. Hahahahaha. We’ve earned it. Our champions bested theirs, when they held every advantage. Truth keeps us fighting.

R. de Haan
January 16, 2014 6:37 pm

Climate Change, the case of missing brains: We now have idiots infiltrating the CAA
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/global-warming-to-compromise-aircraft-safety/#

rogerknights
January 16, 2014 6:41 pm

Gail Combs says:
January 16, 2014 at 9:25 am

ponysboy says: @ January 16, 2014 at 6:46 am
.. It can’t take long now for some of the open-minded ones among them to step back and take a fresh look at the claims of skeptical scientists during the past 15 years. Or can it?
>>>>>>>>>>>>

I do not have the pointer, but the number of scientists still part of the IPCC has dropped off quite a bit. Maybe another commenter has that information.

IIRC, the number was over 2200 for AR4 and over 800 for AR5.

brians356 says:
January 16, 2014 at 1:37 pm
To listen to these impromptu explanations for “where’s the heat?” reminds me very much of the lovable Professor Irwin Corey whose doublespeak gibberish act on The Ed Sullivan Show tickled our family no end. It’s now degenerated to a carnival shell game, and they don’t care if we (the “marks”) knows the game is rigged, they assume we will be fascinated and entertained all the same. I hear W.C. Fields’ voice: “Go away, kid, you draw flies.”

I have a message for all their regiments of well-drilled PhDs:
Everything you know is wrong.

January 16, 2014 6:47 pm

For best supporting role, I would like to give a tip of my hat to Joe Bastardi, who has endlessly pounded the drum saying the oceans were the primary drivers of weather and climate.
Thank you all, good sirs.

rogerknights
January 16, 2014 6:48 pm

Streetcred says:
January 16, 2014 at 3:17 pm
No lifejacket required, Dr Curry walks on water 😉

Her motto should be widely adopted: “What, me curry?”

Steve Garcia
January 16, 2014 6:55 pm

“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability.”
We can get much more specific than that.
The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability in the PDO, aloing with the general warming coming our of the Little Ice Age. The two together explain why each PDO cycle warm phase is slightly warmer, plus why the inclined temp slope is not consistently upward. In between the up phases are phases are flatter phases that would be cooling phases but for the incline in the slope since about 1800.

January 16, 2014 6:56 pm

Climate Science PhD defense:
cooling is natural
warming is man-made

SAMURAI
January 16, 2014 7:03 pm

The CAGW hypothesis is starting to run out of excuses, credibility and, more importantly, time.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious CAGW alarmists got the math WRONG and their absurd (and rapidly falling) ECS projections of: 6C, then 5C, then 4.5C, then 3C, then 2C then, “too complex to really know for certain”, aren’t working out.
Man’s very existence is proof that Mother Nature doesn’t like “tipping points”, “runaway positive feedback loops” and “worse than we thought” climate mechanisms that kick in every time some MINOR variable, which CO2 clearly is, happens to rise a few 100ppm. If nature was so sensitive to minor changes, we wouldn’t be here to debate the subject, we’d all be dead….
Certainly paleoclimatology shows periods when MAJOR variables such as Milankovitch cycles, Grand Solar Minima, or massive volcanic events can lower TSI for centuries/millennia and will overwhelm nature’s equilibrium leading to Ice Ages/Little Ice Ages, but CO2 clearly doesn’t fall into this category. But even with major fluctuations to major variables for long periods of time, Nature is still able to maintain an equilibrium of +-6.0C, which is impressive.
In nature’s search for equilibrium, an increase in one minor logarithmic warming variable (CO2 for example), effects changes in cooling variables (cloud cover/albedo for example), which cancels out a portion of the warming phenomena, and life goes on.
Bottom line, it’s Natural Equilibrium 1, CAGW 0.
Game over.

rogerknights
January 16, 2014 7:08 pm

Finally, it is a perversion of the English language to call this a “pause”. It can only be a “pause” if warming resumes.
But as of 17 years ago, global warming has stopped. <–That is the correct use of the language.

The only neutral word is plateau’d.

Gail Combs
January 16, 2014 7:11 pm

rogerknights says: @ January 16, 2014 at 6:41 pm
…the number [of scientists] was over 2200 for AR4 and over 800 for AR5….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks Roger, It is worth repeating.

Potter Eaton
January 16, 2014 7:16 pm

“But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field.”
And a major crisis in confidence everywhere else.

Keith Minto
January 16, 2014 7:20 pm

The western Pacific is not a dam wall, the shallow Indonesian Throughflow provides a resistance to flow but not a cessation, so there must be constant recharge of the system to maintain a difference in height between west and east Pacific. This height difference between east and west Pacific maintained by the trade winds sounds like the potential difference (voltage) in a circuit, the amperage being the resultant volume of this warm water through the resistive IT to the Indian Ocean.
But for a small current coming up Western Australia from the South, this Throughflow, to me, is the major injection of water from anywhere into the Indian Ocean, so, the volume must be substantial.

bushbunny
January 16, 2014 7:48 pm

We all need to keep writing letters to politicians, blind them with science, and tell them to stop investing in Green energy and put it into building defenses against extreme weather events. Flooding, tsuminis, bush fires, strong houses to combat cyclones or hurricanes, conservation of soils and water resources. And stop people building on the base of volcanoes and over tectonic faults. Might save some lives.

albertkallal
January 16, 2014 8:00 pm

So this is the FIRST article in Nature that points out no global warming for 17 years? I mean exactly WHEN did the magazine report OVER the last 17 years we not seeing any warming? I mean kind of a HUGE whopper of a detail the magazine left out for 17 years of reporting? I mean it not possible they LEFT OUT and have NOT reported this detail in 17 years, right?

January 16, 2014 8:00 pm

Chris Wright says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:37 am
This explanation is simple and completely natural – literally.
Chris
——
That is what my thoughts have told me after spending the time to look at a portion of the great work produced by so many good scientists.

Dave Worley
January 16, 2014 8:02 pm

Lack of warming is an anomoly?
Isn’t it the lack of anomoly?

vigilantfish
January 16, 2014 8:46 pm

I’d like to add my voice to those congratulating Bob Tisdale. Thanks for your focus, dedication and eagerness to educate. It seems ‘mainstream scientists’ might be doing a little learning at last but they need to study a little harder! I hope some of them develop the courage to give credit where it is due, and cite your comprehensive syntheses.

LT
January 16, 2014 9:04 pm

One would hope that eventually they would consider the approaching convergence of grand solar minimum, a phase change in the AMO and a negative PDO. This could send global temperature plummeting to pre 1900 levels and cause much more problems than warming.

john robertson
January 16, 2014 9:17 pm

Susan Solomon, 50-100 years?
Fine so there was no statistically significant, unprecedented warming then.
A maximum warming period of 18 years was somehow sufficient to get the madness rolling, but she will require 50-100 years of non warming before its significant?
The magic gas CO2.
Able to overpower natural cycles (recorded by man since written history) .
It warms the planet at certain concentrations, cools it at others, like at 400ppm?(sarc)
As seen by comparing the 150 year global temperature guess against estimated co2 concentration.
Or is it western sourced co2 warms the planet, eastern sourced co2 cools.
As seen by graphing Average global temperature( that same guess) against co2 ppm as measured at a volcano in Hawaii.(as China and India emissions have become dominant temps flatlined)
Is the point of origin a causative agent?(heavy sarc)
Or is it more likely co2 is falsely accused, increases as a result of warmer oceans and is essential plant food?
Our water world; what scientist would reason thus, the planet is 70% covered in water, heat flows from equator to poles, is it possible this fluid dominates the planets weather?
Would it be reasonable to wonder, is water weather?
After all dry air does not do much we consider exciting, thunder storms are not common in dry air masses.
Why does every pilot know this but the IPCC team do not?
I too suspect the team is cornered by their own adjustments to the temperature record,there is no room left to fudge, the climb down is in full swing, expect more vile and nasty ravings from these “experts”.
They are after all too petty to acknowledge other people ideas.
I find the predicament the team faces amusing, they were mistaken? Or they were deliberately misinforming their pay masters?
Their actions speak volumes.

philincalifornia
January 16, 2014 9:17 pm

vigilantfish says:
January 16, 2014 at 8:46 pm
I’d like to add my voice to those congratulating Bob Tisdale. Thanks for your focus, dedication and eagerness to educate. It seems ‘mainstream scientists’ might be doing a little learning at last but they need to study a little harder! I hope some of them develop the courage to give credit where it is due, and cite your comprehensive syntheses.
————————————–
I doubt that they will. In fact, I think their modus operandi of giving each other turdish awards for knowing where the missing heat went and fabricating the temperature record will continue until someone puts them out to pasture (as happens all the time in the private sector, and should have happened ten or fifteen years ago to these idiots).
The punishment for these scientifically incompetent nincompoops will, however, be appropriate in the world of science. They will go down in the annals of history (yes YOU Travesty Trenberth) as being scientifically incompetent nincompoops in reality, outside of fake award world.
They will never acknowledge Bob Tisdale’s work, but the annals of history will, as they will also acknowledge our great leader here.

Ben U.
January 16, 2014 9:25 pm

Dave Worley says:

Lack of warming is an anomoly?
Isn’t it the lack of anomoly?

Ovid’s Narcissus: [my] wealth made me poor! (inopem me copia fecit)
Or poverty of anomaly enriched the anomaly. Or sumpn.
The shimmering reflections from the water, Narcissus melting.
(Ovid is what they had instead of Peckinpah or the Twilight Zone).

Reed Coray
January 16, 2014 9:28 pm

Trenberth’s acknowledgment that natural phenomena just might have something to do with temperature is like your arriving at Trenberth’s ivory tower in a new Rolls Royce and having him greet you with the news that he just invented the wheel.

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 9:33 pm

Steve Garcia says:
January 16, 2014 at 5:54 pm
“the “FICKLE OCEAN” image of two states of the Pacific – at least one of those is bogus.”
Good catch. It is a bogus representation of the PDO, since the PDO is a ~60 year cycle process. The picture looks to be showing a La Nina and El Nino cycle, but that is even bogus, because they are not mirror images of each other. It could be they are trying to imply, that they are mirror opposites, and as such they can ignore them.
Or it could be, they are trying to show a temp distribution, over a complete PDO cycle. That would not be a mirror image, from positive to negative. Or it could be this topic, was so far off their radar screen, that they didn’t have any good images, and just had to go with whatever they could find.
I think that is the most likely reason. Either way, it is not what you would expect, for the money that is spent on climate research.
On an earlier post, I had left open the question of whether ENSO should be ignored, on the theory that the La Nina’s would be countered by the El Nino’s, and it would be a system in equilibrium, over the short-term of a cycle or two. I wrote that because that is what the models were doing, and as such, they were ignoring the real effect these cycles have on the temperature record. It is not a position I agree with, and I think that is why it has taken them so long to come to the realization that there is a large effect. So large, that it is responsible for the majority, of the warming, and additional CO2 produced by fossil fuel combustion, is a non-problem.
I think the PDO would be in equilibrium over longer cycles of 60 years, or 120 years, .. etc, but that is only theoretical, and I have no evidence for that.

mareeS
January 16, 2014 9:38 pm

Somebody had better tell the Pacific Ocean it is sloshing up against our local beach (western Pacific/eastern Australia), and had better slosh back to the eastern Pacific (Chile, USA) quick smart, or there will be trouble in climate science.
For the record, our beach has much the same profile as photographs 120 years ago, even 40 years ago when I was but a girl, and our local commercial port has tide records dating back to 1805 showing no discernible long-term sea level rise.
When anecdotal and empirical evidence tallies, the truth is there also. Computer models? Nah.

Brian H
January 16, 2014 9:41 pm

His missing heat is transiting the nearer stars right about now.

Rick Adkison
January 16, 2014 9:44 pm

I’m a dumb history major, but heat being trapped in the deep ocean? I know warm air rises.

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 9:58 pm

Wow, I am jealous. A local beach on the Pacific shores of Australia. Sounds really nice. You can’t tell the Pacific Ocean were it can slosh, and were it can’t. It is the “Big Dog”, and that is how it rolls. When it gets fat and lazy from hanging out in the west, it will head east and create mischief. Right now, it is intentionally making life difficult for some folks, that didn’t respect the “Big Dog”.

Manfred
January 16, 2014 10:04 pm

Sceptics have been saying this for … ever.
Giving credit to very-late-comer Trenberth is rather disgusting. There have been papers about this even in mainstream science for years, e.g. Compo et al 2009 or Tung et al 2013 just to name two.
And there is still a long way to go for the inner circle of the climate politbuero.
Accept the failure of the hockey stick. This is overdue for almost a decade.
Accept much lower climate sensitivity. Accepting PDO would almost neccessitate that, even if you missed the maths of Nic Lewis, James Annan and others.
Accept the failure of climate models almost everywhere now.
Accept that the second main reason of Arctic sea ice melt after positive AMO is black soot. Even Hansen knew that.
Accept Rosenthal et al 2013, that it takes hundreds of years of ocean warming just to undo the cooling of the little ice age. and that after hundreds of years, manmade CO2 will be mostly just gone and no problem any more.
Accept that heat waves today are mostly due to UHI, which is a order of magnitude stronger than any effect of greenhouse gases.
Accept a much larger role for the sun.

NZ Willy
January 16, 2014 10:06 pm

Oh, enough is enough. I know this comment is buried in the pile here, but time to state a few plain facts. Gail Combs thanks for your reply, but Bob Tisdale’s stance is irrelevant. The whole idea that trade winds are making ANY EFFECT WHATSOEVER on Pacific surface profiles is ridiculous, as follows. (partial disclosure: I publish in a physics-related field, i.e., a real science)
First of all, the tides show how rapidly the ocean waters respond to isomorphic gravitational changes. Move the Moon, the waters rush around in response. People, water is HEAVY. Try picking up a cubic meter — it weighs a tonne, precisely. There is no way on Gaia’s Earth that trade winds can offset masses of water from one side of the Pacific to the other — it can push surface waters, but only because waters beneath come the other way. How do I know this? Because of PHYSICAL LAW. Engineers use physical law to design our technology and structures, and I have (amongst my other chequered accomplishments) an Engineering degree. Trade winds DO NOT push the Western Pacific 20 cm higher than the Eastern, or 50cm, or even 1 cm. Forget it!!
So what causes ocean profiles? The tides of course, by which the waters simply follow the gravitational profile of the moment. Also the Earth’s rotational forces drive an ambient current structure — where such forces meet land masses there is a bulking up caused by inertia. Of course there are temperature gradients which also contribute, but the base power comes from the tides and the Earth’s rotation. The trade winds are trivial, they are a nothing.
I’m definitely on the skeptics’ side compared with the warmists, but bad science is bad science, and there’s plenty to be had on all sides. No matter what we do, physical law still holds sway! /rant off

Dr. Strangelove
January 16, 2014 10:19 pm

“Trenberth, for example, analysed their impacts on the basis of satellite measurements of energy entering and exiting the planet, and estimated that aerosols and solar activity account for just 20% of the hiatus. That leaves the bulk of the hiatus to the oceans, which serve as giant sponges for heat. And here, the spotlight falls on the equatorial Pacific.”
Anthony
Trenberth et al may not realize it but their recent study weakens the case for AGW. If PDO can counteract the greenhouse effect, then PDO could have also caused previous cool periods like 1977-1998 since it was in the warm mode at that time. He can’t have his cake and eat it too. PDO works both ways: cooling and warming. If we accept this hypothesis, then all the temperature trends last century can be explained by natural ocean cycles.

Dr. Strangelove
January 16, 2014 10:36 pm

Prof. Easterbrook
I agree with your prediction of cooling in 2000-2025. If not for greenhouse effect, we should have seen cooling in the past 15 years instead of warming pause. Still PDO dominates global climate. Solar astronomers are also forecasting cooler climate up to 2020s. The unusually cold winter in US is not a fluke.

norah4you
January 16, 2014 10:39 pm

How about the alarmists’ so called experts explaining: Where have all the money gone?
and
Greenpeace and WWF ought to rethink the need for ‘saving the Ice Bears’ and instead at least try to present where on Earth the collected money been used!

Dr. Strangelove
January 16, 2014 10:39 pm

Anthony
Sorry for the mistake I mean “then PDO could have also caused previous WARM periods like 1977-1998 since it was in the warm mode at that time.”

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 10:48 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Yes they do. When the wind pushes surface water it creates waves which physically moves water. If you put a float in the water, below the surface level so the wind did not contact it, it would still flow with the water, and move in the direction of the wind. The deeper the float, the less it would move. But the wind continually moves water across the ocean in a current, until the wind stops blowing. There is no dispute to this. They are called trade winds, because they moved the ships as well as the water. Think of the Hadley cells as great spiral tubes, circulating in opposite directions on each side of the equator. The NH tube is pushing water SW, and the SH tube is pushing water NW. The longer the wind pushes the water, the greater the volume of the water pushed. The term is fetch, and it means that a 30 knot wind over 1000 miles generates much bigger waves that the same wind over 300 miles. When you have 30 knots sustained over 5000 miles, you will pile up, a vast quantity of water.

Russ R.
January 16, 2014 11:24 pm

NZ Willy,
One quick way to think about this, that will help it make more sense. When a tsunami is traveling through open water, it is barely noticeable, because it is spread out on the surface with a long wavelength. When it approaches the shore the leading edge is slowed down first and the pile-up begins. Now think of the Hadley cells as threaded cylinders that are rotating and pushing water west. In the open ocean the waves are not huge, but they are on top of a spread out wave with a long wavelength. That is where the large quantity of water is. The surface waves are riding on top of the long wave, that is not obvious to you.

pat
January 16, 2014 11:35 pm

odds & sods:
16 Jan: Fox News: UN experts warn that delaying action on global warming will reduce options for dealing with it.
The findings were in the final draft of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.-sponsored body that provides the scientific basis for climate negotiations.
The report, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, says that global warming will continue to increase unless countries shift quickly to clean energy and cut emissions…
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/01/16/un-experts-warn-that-delaying-action-on-global-warming-will-reduce-options-for/
16 Jan: Washington Times: David Deming: DEMING: Another year of global cooling
Falling temperatures are giving climate alarmists chills
(David Deming is a geophysicist, professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, and the author of “Black & White: Politically Incorrect Essays on Politics, Culture, Science, Religion, Energy and Environment” (CreateSpace, 2011).)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/16/another-year-of-global-cooling/
16 Jan: Inquisitr: Patrick Frye: Global Warming Losing Support In US, Climate Change Considered A Hoax
Considering that less than half of all Americans believe in anthropogenic human warming specifically, it’s perhaps not surprising that Pew Research Center found only 28 percent believe “dealing with global warming” is a top priority, which has gone down from 38 percent in 2007. Interestingly enough, even among Democrats the political support for implementing policies based upon global warming has fallen down to 38 percent.
Besides the recent cold weather snap, it’s possible Americans have been influenced by the Climategate scandal, which claimed to show the scientists are “concealing” data, focused on politics instead of science, and are readily admitting internally that climate change “science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.” Some of the other predictions made about the United States also did not come about, with the major one being an increase in hurricane activity…
http://www.inquisitr.com/1097877/global-warming-facts-losing-support-in-us-considered-a-fake-climate-change-hoax/
15 Jan: Time: Denver Nicks: How to Reduce Greenhouse Gases? Everyone Inhale at Once
A new United Nations report says we may have to start sucking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to meet emissions targets
To meet United Nations targets for limiting global warming by 2100, governments may have to extract large quantities of greenhouse gases from the air and invest trillions in clean energy, according to a U.N. draft report seen Wednesday by Reuters.
Emissions will have to fall by as much as 70 percent between 2010 and 2050 to slow climate change, the 29-page report summary says. To meet the goal of keeping warming to under 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the world will have to not only start employing “carbon dioxide removal” technologies, but radically shift its energy investments, putting $147 billion toward low carbon energy sources, like wind, solar, and nuclear power, between 2010 and 2029, and reducing fossil fuel investment by $30 billion every year.
The world can also help meet its energy needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by building more energy-efficient cities.
“Most of the world’s urban areas have yet to be constructed,” the report says.
http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/how-to-reduce-greenhouse-gases-everyone-inhale-at-once/
——————————————————————————–

phlogiston
January 16, 2014 11:46 pm

Rick Adkison says:
January 16, 2014 at 9:44 pm
I’m a dumb history major, but heat being trapped in the deep ocean? I know warm air rises.
Your quite right, the idea of globally significant heat stored in the very deep ocean where temperatures are uniformly 0-4 C, dictated partly by the huge gravitational pressure, is illiterate nonsense. It shows the cynicism of the AGW practitioners, they couldn’t care less if it is true or false, its something that they can toss to the media as a reassuring “explanation” of why the planet is warming while at the same time not warming.

alex
January 16, 2014 11:50 pm

Stephen Richards says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:36 am
What I don’t want is for these guys to remain in place when this whole scam is exposed. Like Erlich they will just keep coming back with another scare for money scheme.
……………..
They took care not to “reamain in place”.
Did you read?
“If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
You know any medicine to prolong the life time of a “Climate Scientist” that long?
Deep freeze?

Charles Duncan
January 17, 2014 12:09 am

None of these include any allowance for energy absorbed by trees and turned into wood. Judging by the heat my wood burning stove puts out this must be something!

Dr. Strangelove
January 17, 2014 12:31 am

From Judith Curry’s Senate testimony today:
“If the recent warming hiatus is caused by natural variability, then this raises the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural climate variability. In a recent journal publication, I provided a rationale for projecting that the hiatus in warming could extend to the 2030’s.”
Trenberth et al are saying yes it is caused by natural variability. Can it also explain 1975-2000 warming? A negative answer is ridiculous. It means the cool mode of PDO can cause cooling but its warm mode cannot cause warming. For the sake logic and common sense, the answer must be YES!
The projected hiatus up to 2030s is consistent with cooling forecasts of Easterbrook and solar astronomers. Minus 50 C winter in US, cooler US annual temperature in 2013, Arctic sea ice grew 50% larger than last year. Naahh it’s all coincidences.

January 17, 2014 12:45 am

They will never believe it. They are quite willing to die of hypothermia first.

January 17, 2014 1:09 am

It seems to be a giant leap for Dr. Trenberth, but nothing new for the rest of the world. So PDO affects climate, Kevin realizes – and misses the big one: PDO and many other oscillations/energy transfers affect climate AS WE MEASURE IT. These mechanisms cannot input thermal energy directly from the Sun into the Earth’s climate system, nor can they output it into space, much less create or destroy it – they can only transfer energy from one subsystem to another. Since our network of temperature measurements is far from comprehensive, we have registered a global “pause” in temperatures because – courtesy of ENSO – thermal energy happens to be heaped in an area that is NOT well covered by our thermometers, pontificates Kevin (which begs the question about the reliability of homogenized global temperatures, the sine-qua-non of Kevin’s model predictions). But what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: since ENSO only transfers thermal energy, previous global warming AS WE MEASURED IT may have been caused by a similar energy transfer mechanism within the Earth’s climate system. It would seem that if Kevin manages to explain away the “pause”, he also explains away the warming.
Obviously, Dr. Trenberth would never accept such reasoning. The warming AS WE MEASURED IT (and homogenized, and faked a bit, …) is real because Dr. Trenberth’s models say so.

January 17, 2014 1:46 am

They lost the ability to continue with their scaremongering campaigns after they told us that the missing heat was in the deep oceans where it had caused deep ocean water to rise in temperature at a rate of .1 c per decade. This change (if you want to believe in it) is not a problem for the planet or our future.

January 17, 2014 1:59 am

troe says:
January 16, 2014 at 11:39 am
Senate hearing concluded.
———————————-
I am listening to the archived Senate hearing at the moment. I am listening to Sen. Booker and I would have to say that he brings up some important points and also makes a very good impassioned statement. The main thrust of his argument is to the damage to the land they live on, and the air/water systems that surround them. What Sen. Booker is missing is that all of the resources being used for the co2 policy stance, is taking away needed resources that could be used for reclamation purposes. Sen. Booker needs to learn the real science behind the warming story and that the warming is not the enemy.

Jack Simmons
January 17, 2014 2:03 am

Yet the Navy plans on patrolling an ice free Arctic:
http://tinyurl.com/kgg9alo

Jack Simmons
January 17, 2014 2:05 am

Maybe the missing heat can be found on the grassy knoll.

January 17, 2014 2:12 am

Steve Garcia:
I write to join Russ R. (at January 16, 2014 at 9:33 pm) in congratulating you on your important observation in your post at January 16, 2014 at 5:54 pm which says

It may be of no consequence, but the “FICKLE OCEAN” image of two states of the Pacific – at least one of those is bogus. And I don’t mean bogus as in a model being bogus. If you look carefully at the lower image, it is a Photoshopped version of the upper image, just with the colors changed. To me that is as bad as the Photoshopped polar bear and ice flow image of a few years ago. quoted text

It is much, much worse than that!
The figure is a fake. It is manufactured data. It misrepresents known reality.
Publishing it in a purportedly scientific paper is the worst kind of scientific fra*d.
I strongly suggest that you write to Nature GeoScience to point out your observation and to call for a corrigendum or – failing that – withdrawal of the paper.

You may also want to include mention in your letter that the paper fails to reference the prior work of Tisdale although it uses similar language (e.g. “sloshes” to Tisdale’s writings. (I am reminded of how medical science reviled the word “spasm” for decades but now accepts it).
Richard

January 17, 2014 2:20 am

If anyone gets this far in the thread, I could use a little help please. A friend asked me if any scientist has ever said that something like “we need to exaggerate” to convince the people (or the government). I know Al Gore is supposed to have said something like that and so have SOME activists, but a real scientist?
Can anyone answer this? Thanks in advance.
— Mark

Jack Simmons
January 17, 2014 2:36 am

markstoval says:
January 17, 2014 at 2:20 am

If anyone gets this far in the thread, I could use a little help please. A friend asked me if any scientist has ever said that something like “we need to exaggerate” to convince the people (or the government). I know Al Gore is supposed to have said something like that and so have SOME activists, but a real scientist?
Can anyone answer this? Thanks in advance.
– Mark

Mark,
Some might question his standing as a scientist, but Dr. Stephen Schneider earned great infamy when he owned up to exaggerating the case for environmental alarmism. See http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=108.

milodonharlani
January 17, 2014 2:39 am
phlogiston
January 17, 2014 2:50 am

unbeknownst !?
Since when was that a word?? Ugly or what?

Ben D
January 17, 2014 2:52 am

markstoval says: January 17, 2014 at 2:20 am
If anyone gets this far in the thread, I could use a little help please. A friend asked me if any scientist has ever said that something like “we need to exaggerate” to convince the people (or the government). I know Al Gore is supposed to have said something like that and so have SOME activists, but a real scientist?
Can anyone answer this? Thanks in advance.
——————————————————————-
Actually the scientists are singing for their tucker, the tune comes from the masters…check these quotes… http://www.green-agenda.com/

phlogiston
January 17, 2014 2:53 am

Talking about words, the copyright on the word “slosh” belongs to Bob Tisdale.

Angech
January 17, 2014 3:00 am

Agree with a previous comment of N Z Willie on the pause being due to the inability to fake changes in current temp measurements easily ( think of the truth coming out on tour de Frances after years of cover ups). Now we only need PIOMAS and Grace to cooperate and global warming will be over as if it never began.

Bob F
January 17, 2014 3:04 am

Slightly Off Topic: But did anyone see BBC Newsnight last night? This is a mainstream current affairs/news program on BBC2 in the UK, shown at about 10.30pm. It featured a 10-15 minute piece about the effect of solar changes on the climate. Sunspots, Maunder minimum, cooling implications.I sat and watched it open mouthed – it was presented from the ‘climate science’ point of view, but it was the most skeptical piece i can recall seeing on mainstream media.

Annyong
January 17, 2014 3:09 am

“but recent studies suggest that the oceans are key to explaining the anomaly.″
you sure you are looking at the correct [snip] anomaly [snip]?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1933/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1933/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1934/to:1942/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1934/to:1942/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1982/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1982/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1983/to:2000/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1983/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2014/trend
In the backwards world of Climate Change Land maybe you see the current trend as odd. In the real world the two time periods creating merely 25 years of rise on a 163 year graph would be the anomalies.
And that is being generous, giving you the ’97 El Nino and blindly accepting your data source. You’re welcome!
By the way, I am confident I can solve those real anomalies for you. But first thing’s first; where’s my government grant?

Bob F
January 17, 2014 3:15 am

On the off chance that anyone is interested, and you have access to BBC iPlayer, you can see the piece here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03qdqf1/hd/Newsnight_16_01_2014/
Starts at about 38m30s

David L
January 17, 2014 3:43 am

Rick Adkison on January 16, 2014 at 9:44 pm
I’m a dumb history major, but heat being trapped in the deep ocean? I know warm air rises.
—//—-
Sounds like you’re a smart history major…. Well at least smarter than Trenberth.
Old automobiles didn’t use a water pump to circulate the hot water from the engine block to the radiator, they used “thermosiphon” effect where the hot water from the block naturally moved to the top of the radiator as the cooler water in the radiator dropped and flowed into the engine block creating a natural circulation without a mechanical pump.
In Trenberth’s car the water would heat up in the radiator due to the CO2 emitted from the car in front and then flow backwards and hide in the hot engine block.

NotTheAussiePhilM
January 17, 2014 3:49 am

I don’t know if you can see the video for this globally, but it’s an interesting article from the BBC’s Newsnight, which is generally the serious end of the BBC’s news output
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510
Echoes very much what WUWT has been saying for years…
– it will be interesting to see if we do actually enter a 2nd Maunder Miniumum
– and if we do we’ll be thanking lovely CO2 for taking some of the sting out of it!

milodonharlani
January 17, 2014 3:52 am

phlogiston says:
January 17, 2014 at 2:50 am
unbeknownst !?
Since when was that a word?? Ugly or what?
————————————————————–
It’s a fine English word, with first use reported in 1636. Ugly, maybe, although of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

milodonharlani
January 17, 2014 4:17 am

NotTheAussiePhilM says:
January 17, 2014 at 3:49 am
Thanks. It worked in Chile.
It’s a step forward for the Beeb to admit that climate is complicated, I guess.
It is annoying that so much evidence of the global impact of solar variation on climate gets ignored. Cooling during the Maunder Minimum occurred in Asia as well as North America & Europe, & has been attributed to cosmic ray flux:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2996431/
If not for the MM itself, then for the Little Ice Age in general, the Southern Hemisphere has also been amply shown affected as well.

Gareth
January 17, 2014 4:21 am

@DirkH
“That’s like celebrating the 100,000th Lancaster bomber built and shipped over the Atlantic while not one of them ever made it through the Kammhuber line.”
Dirk, this is way off topic, I am just intrigued to know what strange alternative version of WWII history you have been reading to lead you to such an analogy. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Lancaster there were 7,377 Lancasters built during WWII. Of those 430 were built in Canada, and the rest in England. Many certainly made it through the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammhuber_Line .

Mindert Eiting
January 17, 2014 4:26 am

Ben D: Probably this one by late Stephen Schneider (Laboratory Earth, 1997, p. 67): ‘To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have’.

Alan Robertson
January 17, 2014 4:40 am

Ben D says:
January 17, 2014 at 2:52 am
markstoval says: January 17, 2014 at 2:20 am
If anyone gets this far in the thread, I could use a little help please. A friend asked me if any scientist has ever said that something like “we need to exaggerate” to convince the people (or the government). I know Al Gore is supposed to have said something like that and so have SOME activists, but a real scientist?
Can anyone answer this? Thanks in advance.
——————————————————————-
Actually the scientists are singing for their tucker, the tune comes from the masters…check these quotes… http://www.green-agenda.com/
____________—————————_____________
Mark, et al,
Here’s another extensive list of quotes:
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html

Gail Combs
January 17, 2014 4:43 am

Mišo Alkalaj says: @ January 17, 2014 at 1:09 am
…..Kevin realizes – and misses the big one: PDO and many other oscillations/energy transfers affect climate AS WE MEASURE IT. These mechanisms cannot input thermal energy directly from the Sun into the Earth’s climate system, nor can they output it into space, much less create or destroy it…..
You might want to take a look at what RACookPE1978 says because changes in oscillations/energy transfers CAN output energy into space at a faster rate.
Do not forget that thanks to the Milankovitch cycles the ..Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ~11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic… and the earth is near the possible end of the Holocene interglacial. Can we predict the duration of an interglacial? – 2012 “..We propose that the interval between the “terminal” oscillation of the bipolar seesaw, preceding an interglacial, and its first major reactivation represents a period of minimum extension of ice sheets away from coastlines… …thus, the first major reactivation of the bipolar seesaw would probably constitute an indication that the transition to a glacial state had already taken place….”
In light of the Milankovitch theory and the 2012 paper, here is his explanation:

Actually, right now, just look at real figures from today’s date for NSIDC’s sea ice plots: you “might” just find that 1.500 million km^2 “positive” above normal IS present around the Antarctic, while the Arctic is about 0.550 million km^2 below normal for this date. The sea ice deficit so often claimed by the CAGW theory (required by the CAGW theories!) is a POSITIVE at this date.
For the past two years, Antarctic sea ice has been consistently two std deviations ABOVE normal levels for sea ice, AND that sea ice extends around the continent to latitude 60 south at maximum extents in September. Arctic sea ice (through this year) been right at 1.5 to 2 std deviations low from normal. BUT! The Antarctic sea ice extents maximum is just under 20 Mkm^2, but the entire Arctic ocean is only 14 Mkm^2: There is much more Antarctic sea ice than Arctic. At minimum extents, the difference is more impressive: Antarctic continental ice (14 Mkm^2) is as large as the entire Arctic itself, but that rock-based icecap is in turn surrounded by 3.5 Mkm^2 of permanent ice shelves, and then by the ever-changing Antarctic sea ice. So even at today’s minimum Antarctic sea ice extents 2-3 Mkm^2 (and increasing!) the total southern ice is 14 + 3.5 + 2.5 = 20 Mkm^2. At maximum southern extents, those become 14.0 + 3.5 + 19.5 = 35 Mkm^2 is frozen. 2-1/2 times the maximum of what sea water is available up north.
On the other hand, Arctic sea ice lately (last 12 years) is only 3.5 – 4.0 million sq km AT ITS MINIMUM in September. We can lose AT MOST only another 3.5 million sq km2. That is it.
How much larger can Antarctic sea ice get? There is no limit. At today’s rate of Antarctic sea ice increase, Cape Horn itself could be closed to ship traffic due to sea ice within 8-10 years for months at a time every September and October. It probably won’t happen, but the trend is there: we have been seeing just under 1.0 Mkm^2 more sea ice each year for several years now.
To the specific point of open Arctic waters being a heat loss area from the earth. Notice that we are assuming far-north openings here, not a theoretical physics textbook ice mass of theoretical albedo = .95 floating off the ice-filled (Equatorial) waters of Polynesia where the sun is directly overhead (Air Mass = 1.0) with perfectly clear skies and no humidity. 8<)
But this little bit of remaining 3.5 Mkm^2 Arctic sea ice is actually in the water up between latitude 78 north to 83 north. At that latitude, in mid and late September when arctic sea ice is at its minimum extents, there is MORE heat lost from open waters due to more evaporation losses, more conduction losses, more convective losses, and more radiation losses from open sea water than can be gained from that exposed water getting heated by the ever-lower sun angles! At those latitudes, at that time of year, the HIGHEST the sun can get is 8 – 12 degrees above the horizon, air masses are 18 to 34. There simply is no solar heat penetrating the atmosphere at those low solar angles to be gained if the Arctic ice continues to melt.
The more the Arctic sea ice melts from today’s minimum extents in August and September, the more the planet loses heat energy to space and cools down ever more. Your CAGW’s religiously amplified but majestically feared “arctic amplification” due to sea ice meltdown is totally, completely backwards.
But it is worse than you think!
At today’s levels of BOTH minimum AND maximum extent in the Antarctic seas, today’s (and last year’s!) record breaking sea ice extents DO reflect much more solar energy than the exposed waters! At the edge of the Antarctic sea ice at 60 – 70 south latitude, ALL YEAR, every day, the record-breaking Antarctic sea ice extents IS reflecting MORE solar energy and IS cooling the planet down even more.
And thus we slide quickly into the next major ice age.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/31/polynyas-are-very-important-for-marine-life-and-cooling-the-oceans/#comment-1518956

Drake Passage is hardly ever mentioned but it may be a key to earth’s climate.

Effect of Drake Passage on the global thermohaline circulation
Abstract-
The Ekman divergence around Antarctica raises a large amount of deep water to the ocean’s surface. The regional Ekman transport moves the upwelled deep water northward out of the circumpolar zone. The divergence and northward surface drift combine, in effect, to remove deep water from the interior of the ocean. This wind-driven removal process is facilitated by a unique dynamic constraint operating in the latitude band containing Drake Passage. Through a simple model sensitivity experiment WC show that the upwelling and removal of deep water in the circumpolar belt may be quantitatively related to the formation of new deep water in the northern North Atlantic. These results show that stronger winds in the south can induct more deep water formation in the north and more deep outflow through the South Atlantic. The fact that winds in the southern hemisphere might influence the formation of deep water in the North Atlantic brings into question long-standing notions about the forces that drive the ocean’ thermohaline circulation….

Maheshwari et al, 2013, concluded that “… in general, the Southern Ocean as a whole is showing a weak interannual cooling trend in SST.” http://www.hindawi.com/isrn/oceanography/2013/392632/
One also has to consider what a continuing increase in Antarctic sea I could mean.

RACookPE1978 says: @ October 2, 2013 at 8:51 am
Antarctic Sea Ice Extents is now setting new record high levels at 19,000,000 sq km’s.
It is Antarctic Sea Ice Area that is greater than 16,000,000 km’s, but as you point out, all of the recent Antarctic sea ice areas over 16,000,000 have occurred in the most recent years.
Equally alarming, the 40 year trend of ALL Antarctic Sea Ice measurements (maximum, average, and minimum extents) continues their steady increases since 1979. At today’s rates of increase in southern sea ice extents, Cape Horn could be closed to ship traffic as soon as 8 to 12 years.

Drake Passage is the body of water between the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn, Chile and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean (Scotia Sea) with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean. WIKI

phlogiston
January 17, 2014 4:44 am

milodonharlani says:
January 17, 2014 at 3:52 am
phlogiston says:
January 17, 2014 at 2:50 am
unbeknownst !?
Since when was that a word?? Ugly or what?
————————————————————–
It’s a fine English word, with first use reported in 1636. Ugly, maybe, although of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It sounds better than it looks.
But the “st” at the end serves no purpose, the same as in “whilst” whose meaning is identical to “while”. Just “unbeknown” would be better, in fact “unknown” would also suffice.
Now I will wait (or is that “await”) for Willis to swoop by and call me a grammar Nazi (again).

phlogiston
January 17, 2014 4:49 am

Dr. Strangelove says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:36 pm
Prof. Easterbrook
I agree with your prediction of cooling in 2000-2025. If not for greenhouse effect, we should have seen cooling in the past 15 years instead of warming pause. Still PDO dominates global climate. Solar astronomers are also forecasting cooler climate up to 2020s. The unusually cold winter in US is not a fluke.

I think the AMO would have something to say about that statement.

Scott
January 17, 2014 4:53 am

NZ Willy says
January 16 at 10:06pm
“The whole idea that trade winds are making any effect whatsoever on Pacific surface profiles is ridiculous”
On the Great Lakes the effect of wind on water level is obvious. When the wind blows offshore (a west wind here on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan), the water levels drop, and on a strong wind water levels drop precipitously, up to a foot or two, exposing normally underwater rocks. Opposite for onshore winds, the levels rise.
WE get the El Niño and La Niña effects too on a smaller scale … Wisconsin is like the west pacific … If we get an east onshore wind for days the warm water will “pile up” on our shores sometimes being warm down to 100 feet deep a few miles offshore as indicated by our temperature probes. There seems to be a limit on how much heat will pile up, I imagine either the bouyancy of warm water has something to do with that or it eventually spreads out up or down the shoreline with the strong onshore currents that come with strong winds.

kramer
January 17, 2014 5:03 am

Speaking of the pause, I noticed in Dessler’s paper to the recent Senate hearing on climate change, he chopped up the 17 year pause into 3 smaller ones. See figure 5:
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=26edecac-2c6f-4f8e-ab90-962a7d074d06
I bet he did this because showing the long 17 year line on that graph would diminish this graph’s political usefulness.

Robertv
January 17, 2014 5:04 am

No problem for Big Government or The New World Order. They’ll find something else to scare the public. Maybe they just start WW III. Would be a good way to eliminate a lot of the opposition.

jbird
January 17, 2014 6:22 am

“The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is natural variability.”
The simplest explanation for both the hiatus and the discrepancy in the models is that the models have failed and aren’t worth the millions (billions?) we have spent on them.
I think I would have prefered to see the second statement above.

Robuk
January 17, 2014 6:30 am

Average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998,
Now that most weather stations are situated in urban areas or at airports there will be little rise in temperature after 2014, they can`t use their 0.01C UHI effect no more.

richard verney
January 17, 2014 7:22 am

What does the satellite sea height measurements show?
If we can dedect mm rises in sea level, surely we should be able to able to track the claimed 20cm of ocean sloshing both in time and in position.

Box of Rocks
January 17, 2014 7:51 am

Keith Minto says:
January 16, 2014 at 7:20 pm
The western Pacific is not a dam wall, the shallow Indonesian Throughflow provides a resistance to flow but not a cessation, so there must be constant recharge of the system to maintain a difference in height between west and east Pacific. This height difference between east and west Pacific maintained by the trade winds sounds like the potential difference (voltage) in a circuit, the amperage being the resultant volume of this warm water through the resistive IT to the Indian Ocean.
But for a small current coming up Western Australia from the South, this Throughflow, to me, is the major injection of water from anywhere into the Indian Ocean, so, the volume must be substantial.
***************************************************************************************************************************
So, on a average day, how many watts/m2 from the sum is used to sustain this potential differnce?

Steve Oregon
January 17, 2014 8:21 am

There is only 3 things scientists need to piece together.
We……….. …………….were………………………… wrong.
We…………….were……………… wrong.
We…….were………. wrong.
We were wrong.

Bruce Cobb
January 17, 2014 8:44 am

WRT unbeknown or unbeknownst, the former is an adjective whilst unbeknownst is an adverb. The trouble with grammar n@zis is that in addition to be annoying bullies, they are usually wrong.

James Smyth
January 17, 2014 9:31 am

1998 as “the beginning of the hiatus” doesn’t really jive w/ the 30 year cycles in the graph. It seems to start about 10 years early.

Werner Brozek
January 17, 2014 9:38 am

NZ Willy says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Trade winds DO NOT push the Western Pacific 20 cm higher than the Eastern, or 50cm, or even 1 cm. Forget it!!
To add to other responses so far, I think it is very important to look at the relative scale of things. For example it would take an extremely strong wind to raise the height of water at one end of a swimming pool 0.5 m higher than the other end. However with something the size of the Pacific, do we not have what Galileo called “diluted gravity”? Think of an inclined plane the length of the Pacific but 0.5 m higher at one end. If you were to roll a heavy round rock on a perfectly flat plane and then on this huge inclined plane over the Pacific, you would hardly notice the difference. So it seems to me that a steady trade wind could cause a small rise at one end of the ocean.

NZ Willy
January 17, 2014 9:50 am

Yes, Scott, the effect of wind on a lake show that “latency” is an effect. As with tides, it takes time for the water to find its way. The issue here is the effect of a sustained wind, how well it can hold the water in a state of inequilibrium. There is an answer, it is X. I think X is quite small for the oceans, but physics hold sway, not me. So I’ll check those satellite records, but dependency on the trade winds must be clear. Correlation is not causation. Cheers.

Matt G
January 17, 2014 9:54 am

During a La Nina ocean pattern in December 2008 warmer ocean temperatures are seen here in W equatorial Pacific.
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-081228.gif
Satellites show the ocean waters in the W equatorial Pacific were up to at least 180 mm around this time.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/312174main_jason_sealevel_HI.jpg
We have been cooling for more than 15 years using RSS, HADCRUT3 and HADSST2, but it is finely balanced and hiding the decline is still continuing.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1997.5/trend
Recent changes to HADCRUT4 and HADSST3 hide the decline and GISS behaves on its own thanks to many regular adjustments and interpolating. While there should be declining global temperatures during a negative PDO, well there are.
All demonstrated here show a decline since 2002 and that’s 12 years and counting. (not far off 15 years)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2002/trend

mwhite
January 17, 2014 10:43 am

“Has the Sun gone to sleep?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510
“Scientists are saying that the Sun is in a phase of “solar lull” – meaning that it has fallen asleep – and it is baffling them.
History suggests that periods of unusual “solar lull” coincide with bitterly cold winters.
Rebecca Morelle reports for BBC Newsnight on the effect this inactivity could have on our current climate, and what the implications might be for global warming.”

flyingtigercomics
January 17, 2014 10:49 am

This one’s for Bob Tisdale and the silent men like him:
Carol Maxwell: “What makes you think you can discover anything? Who are you?
Allan Maxwell: “Nobody. Nobody at all. But the secrets of the universe don’t mind. They reveal themselves to nobodies who care.”
The Outer Limits: “The Galaxy Being”

Matt G
January 17, 2014 11:04 am

Since 2002 the PDO has significantly declined, but the AMO has very slightly increased. Global temperatures still have declined despite the AMO remaining high. This represents the same period where it was shown in previous post that all global temperature demonstrated data sets had declined too.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/plot/esrl-amo/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/trend/plot/jisao-pdo/from:2002/trend
Since between 1997 and 2002 there are mixed signals in different global data sets and so, should they have declined too during this short period to now?
The answer is no despite the PDO declining because global temperatures were greatly affect by the strong El Nino and this energy was still having its affect. After a ongoing period with the slow loss of energy from this event, the negative PDO should have shown its influence eventually and since 2002 global temperatures have shown a decline with it.

Russ R.
January 17, 2014 11:10 am

re: NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 9:50 am
A picture is worth a 1000 words. An animation is worth at least 10,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_water_wave.gif
And this is how I interpret, the pileup reaching a temporary equilibrium, at a higher elevation on the west than the east, for the neutral phase, and even more so the La Nina phase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_water_wave.gif
The first swell is heading into shallower water, and needs to spread out to maintain equilibrium. It can’t move further west, because the sea floor is rising. Changing direction takes time, which causes it to pile up further. Before it can complete its change of direction, another swell in catching up to it, and so on. It creates a process that reaches equilibrium at a higher level, as long as the wind blows, and the swells keep coming.

Russ R.
January 17, 2014 11:15 am

Forgot to change the second link on the last post. It should be this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swell_%28ocean%29

KRJ Pietersen
January 17, 2014 11:18 am

I am asking myself, although without any evidence beyond what we read, whether old Kevin might be preparing to go rogue? He’s certainly gone off message here, and could this be a precursor to his jumping ship?
He’s evidently spent his Christmas holidays reading Bob Tisdale – he even lifts the exact terms from Mr Tisdale’s texts (“sloshed”), so that says he’s taken what he’s read to heart.
I am willing to bet that if Kev goes, Mike Hulme will follow swiftly after. He chose to go after the infamous Cook et al 97% thing with ice axe, flamethrower and sledgehammer.
Can we imagine the fallout among the Team from core members crossing to the sunny side of the street? Wow. Just wow. Obviously Mann and Jones will retreat to the bunker until the end of their days defending the Cause, but still…
We live in interesting times. None of which would have been likely without the constant pressure exerted by the enquiring minds here (well done Anthony and all of your contributors, but especially Tisdale, Easterbrook et al), and this light at the end of the tunnel is indeed a vindication of enquiring minds everywhere. And, on this Friday evening, I’ll raise a glass to that.

AJ
January 17, 2014 11:21 am

@Gail Combs – January 17, 2014 at 4:43 am
You might find Figure 5 of this link interesting:
https://sites.google.com/site/climateadj/argo-animations
In the southern hemisphere it shows tropical surface heat travelling westward, then sinking at the western boundary and moving poleward, eventually joining the eastward flow in the mid-latitudes. The Atlantic mid-latitude warm current rounds Africa to join the Indian warm current, which in turn rounds Australia to join the Pacific warm current. The Pacific warm current, however, doesn’t seem to round South America (i.e. the Drake Passage). I saw a chart once showing the waters off the coast of Chile as being an “Intermediate Water” formation. Seems to make sense to me.

NZ Willy
January 17, 2014 11:56 am

Thanks to all for your comments, but you are all wrong (citations follow). Trade winds and equatorial currents are caused by the Coriolis forces from the Earth’s rotation. These questions were all resolved in the 1950’s by researchers like Harald Sverdrup, Henry Stommel, and Walter Munk.
Sverdrup worked on wind-water dynamics, see the “Sverdrup balance” article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup_balance , which states “Sverdrup balance may be thought of as a consistency relationship for flow which is dominated by the Earth’s rotation”, in other words, both wind and water are driven by the rotation, or more specifically, by the Coriolis forces on either side of the Equator. Note that there is no Coriolis force *on* the Equator. Note also that there is an Equatorial counter-flow in the Pacific, going from West to East — this is the signature of that the Coriolis force is driving the dynamic. Bob Tisdale mentions this counter-flow but does not explain it — indeed, if trade winds were pushing the ocean waters, there would be no equatorial counter flow.
Henry Stommel developed a rigorous solution for Coriolis-driven ocean dynamics, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stommel which states: “Henry Stommel showed that the north-south gradient of the strength of the Coriolis force (the “beta effect”) was responsible for the observed fact that the return flow of the slow interior gyre circulations is concentrated in fast moving western boundary currents, such as the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio Current, a process known as western intensification. As a result, these western boundary currents have a larger and steadier transport than the corresponding boundary currents, such as the California Current and Canary Current, on the eastern side of the ocean basins. In subtropical latitudes, the western boundary currents are important in transporting the excess heat the earth receives in the tropics towards the poles.”
The point is as I said about physical law: The trade winds are too weak to push the oceans 50 cm higher in the West than the East. But the Earth’s rotation and the consequent Coriolis forces have the power — they drive both the winds and the water, and that’s how it happens. QED.

Matt G
January 17, 2014 12:06 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 11:56 am
“Trade winds and equatorial currents are caused by the Coriolis forces from the Earth’s rotation. These questions were all resolved in the 1950′s by researchers like Harald Sverdrup, Henry Stommel, and Walter Munk.”
So does the Earth stop spinning then when trade winds change? The Coriolis forces with the Earths rotation are constant, therefore there would be no change in the trade winds or equatorial currents. How can they be caused only by the Coriolis forces yet change behavior, not saying they is no affect, but to say it is the only affect is ridiculous..

KRJ Pietersen
January 17, 2014 12:07 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 11:56 am
“Thanks to all for your comments, but you are all wrong”
That’s the kind of thing we need 🙂

Werner Brozek
January 17, 2014 12:10 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 11:56 am
both wind and water are driven by the rotation, or more specifically, by the Coriolis forces on either side of the Equator
If this explained everything, then why does each side of the Panama canal have a different ocean level?

January 17, 2014 12:12 pm

Given the ~17 years of no GASTA increase (or decrease), we should anticipate and prepare for the likely new strategies for AGW exaggeration by the previous authors of the past 20+ years of fabricated CAGW stories (biased research).
Will the old CAGW story authors have one of the following new strategies?
1. Will they Ignore the ~17 yr no temp change period and instead refocus on advocating that AR6 should be 12 to 15 years from now, not ~5 years from now. This allows much more time for some warming to show up before the next mandatory requirement to report finding in teased danger of CAGW in the next IPCC assessment. Also it gives them time to make up some new alarming stories.
2. Will they claim that org’s like Nature and the IPCC are controlled by fossil fuel interests and therefore they are being told by those interests to minimize the reporting the real imminent danger of CAGW? They could say that the report of ~17 yr no temp change period is an artifact of bad fossil fuel pressure on Nature and the IPCC. And they also could say all good people know the earth is really heating up fast.
3. Will they say that they were always profoundly skeptic of CAGW all along and will they also claim the very critical skeptics were wrong about their being CAGW activists? This is the old “we are changing our science with new (no temp change) data just like objective scientists should” defense.
4. Or will they just smile sadly and turn away?
John

Matt G
January 17, 2014 12:25 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 11:56 am
“indeed, if trade winds were pushing the ocean waters, there would be no equatorial counter flow.”
There is no counter flow while this is happening, look at the sea level heights around the equator where the trade winds blow the water to the west. The levels are much lower (negative 100 mm>) around here because the water has been blown west.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/312174main_jason_sealevel_HI.jpg

Bob Schklumpfh
January 17, 2014 12:27 pm

Werner Brozek says:
“If this explained everything, then why does each side of the Panama canal have a different ocean level?”
If they opened all the locks in the canal, what would happen?

Reply to  Bob Schklumpfh
January 17, 2014 12:37 pm

Schklumpfh – The lakes would drain out since they are higher than both oceans.

Matthew R Marler
January 17, 2014 12:32 pm

The author also quotes Trenberth saying that the effect of warming on ocean evaporation is not well understood. That is a major hole in the knowledge base, given that oceans cover 70% of the surface. It is good to see the limits to knowledge identified (some of them) and described in public.

NZ Willy
January 17, 2014 12:51 pm

Anyone who doubts the power of rotation-driven circulation should check out Jupiter, which is 10x the width of Earth and rotates once per 8 hours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA02863_-_Jupiter_surface_motion_animation.gif . You know when you’re on a carnival ride and you’re “hanging on”? The Pacific Ocean is 50cm higher at the West end because it is “hanging on” from its ride on the spinning Earth.

GeeJam
January 17, 2014 2:06 pm

I doubt if anyone is reading this thread now. I read all the comments earlier this morning and it’s now at 399 x “somebody saids” much later on a Friday night. Carol, my wife, has a theory about how our skeptic community fare against the AGW brigade despite them starting to recognise ‘The Pause’. Warmists are like well known famous singers who, when you listen to them, actually cannot sing anymore – but they’ve made their money, have gullible followers, yet they’re crap at doing what they’re supposed to be good at. Elton John & Paul McCartney are good examples. Meanwhile, the skeptics are those brilliant singer/song-writers who have struggled all their lives to make their point, get noticed, they’re often ignored, put down, and yet they can actually sing extremely well. Here’s a brilliant example . . . . an elderly guy who has been trying to make his point for about 40 years . . . .
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t55xoP7DK08

Werner Brozek
January 17, 2014 2:40 pm

Bob Schklumpfh says:
January 17, 2014 at 12:27 pm
If they opened all the locks in the canal, what would happen?
The higher ocean would start draining into the lower one until equilibrium is reached and some present flow patterns would change slightly. For a more detailed answer, you would need to consult a geologist.
NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 12:51 pm
The Pacific Ocean is 50cm higher at the West end because it is “hanging on” from its ride on the spinning Earth.
Why would this “hanging on” just appear on the West end? The centripetal force would be the same everywhere on the ocean at the equator.

1sky1
January 17, 2014 2:54 pm

NZ Willy:
Your claims here provide a classic example of Wiki expertise, i.e., deeply wrong conception of physical dynamics based upon misguided reading of a verbal description. FYI, waves put water particles into orbital trajectories, but do not transport matter over substantial distances. Wind-driven currents are what transport water masses. The Coriolis effect merely steers winds and currents on a rotating planet, but does not provide the driving force. Until you grasp these basic dynamical differences, you’ll contribute only silly confusion to the discussion.

Russ R.
January 17, 2014 3:06 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 12:51 pm
Where to start?
The oceans are rotating at the same speed as the earth, so they are in equilibrium and will not move unless a force causes them to. Absent other forces, the ocean would sit there like a giant swimming pool. If you put an unattached bouy in the water, it would be in the same place tomorrow.
The Coriolis effect is a deflection of moving objects, when they are viewed in a rotating reference frame. The Coriolis effect is due to the rotation of the reference frame. The object does not change, if it is not moving in relationship to the reference frame. It is a force, that is used to describe the path of on object, from the point of view of the rotating reference frame. But the oceans are in the same rotating reference frame. The earth doesn’t rotate out from under them. If it did, it would leave them behind, and the movement would appear to be in the opposite direction to the rotation of the earth.
If what you are claiming is true, the same forces would be acting on the ocean, from surface to seafloor, 24/7. It would indeed create a lot of force.
The counter-current occurs because of the equatorial low that generates upward flow to the Hadley cells. The suns rays are at maximum watts/meter, so it generates up-flow in the trop.
Both sides of the equator are doing this, so the trade winds are weak to non-existant along this boundry. Except during El Nino, when they are reversed from the normal trade wind direction.

NZ Willy
January 17, 2014 3:26 pm

I appreciate your sentiment, Russ, but look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_current which further describes, with full math, the contribution of the Coriolis force. And I’ll not reply to posters like “1sky1” as the relevant saying in my trade is “when you argue with a fool, chances are he is doing the same”.

NZ Willy
January 17, 2014 3:51 pm

As my last posting in this thread, I quote from the above article:
“The solutions of (5) with boundary condition that \psi be constant on the coastlines, and for different values of \alpha, emphasize the role of the variation of the Coriolis parameter with latitude in inciting the strengthening of western boundary currents. Such currents are observed to be much faster, deeper, narrower and warmer than their eastern counterparts. … For a non-rotating state (zero Coriolis parameter) as well as an ocean state at which the Coriolis parameter is a constant, the ocean circulation does not demonstrate any preference toward intensification/acceleration near the western boundary. ”
The subject matter is the Coriolis-caused “Western Intensification”, which is to say, the pile-up at the Western end of the oceans. And now, I need say no more.

1sky1
January 17, 2014 4:04 pm

NZ Willy:
Q.E.D. Your contribution to the triumph of smug ignorance is colossal!

Keith Minto
January 17, 2014 5:04 pm

Box of Rocks says:
January 17, 2014 at 7:51 am
So, on a average day, how many watts/m2 from the sum is used to sustain this potential differnce?

The energy comes from the Earth’s rotation, the sun keeps the water liquid, the question is, why do the trade winds fail ?

Graham Cresswell
January 17, 2014 5:09 pm

Interesting that, in the warmist groupthink, the opposite of “sceptic” is “scientist”!

January 17, 2014 5:13 pm

Graham Cresswell says:
“Interesting that, in the warmist groupthink, the opposite of ‘sceptic’ is ‘scientist’!”
You make a good point. George Orwell would understand what they’re trying to do to the language.
In fact, the only honest kind of scientist is a skeptic. Scientist must be skeptics, first and foremost. Otherwise, they might as well be the acolytes of witch doctors.

Russ R.
January 17, 2014 5:43 pm

NZ Willy says:
January 17, 2014 at 3:51 pm
These are just descriptions of how the Coriolis effect causes the waves to move at an angle to the trade winds. The effect is stronger at higher latitudes and non-existent at the equator. It also causes the ocean currents to be deflected to the right in the NH. The last issue is the “Western Intensification”, which is an intensification of ocean currents on the western boundary of oceans, caused by the increase in the Coriolis effect as the current moves north. As it moves north Coriolis gets stronger, more water is turned right, current increases. This is all interesting, but it does not change the fact that the West Pacific Warm Pool is created by trade winds. And when the winds are no longer strong enough, the Pool starts moving back to the east.

Mike Kelly
January 17, 2014 6:52 pm

Note that you are either a “scientist” or a “skeptic”. Scientists are not allowed to be skeptical I guess.

NZ Willy
January 17, 2014 7:16 pm

Russ, rotation-impelled forces aren’t understood. They don’t know why Jupiter’s atmosphere does what it does, but its west-to-east equatorial current is like ours but much stronger — likely due to its faster rotation. Rotation means that at different altitudes and latitudes, elements of air and sea have different inertial quantities — this causes turbulence which are handles for the Coriolis force. This is how I reckon the currents arise and why the equatorial current goes west to east, and the “trade wind” currents go east-to-west — as the Coriolis force prescribes. Your scenario is good & fine if we had all the answers, but I don’t accept that the trade winds can pile up the ocean because the ocean would push back far too hard. So we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

January 18, 2014 9:42 am

Werner Brozek says:
If they opened all the locks in the canal, what would happen? Werner answers:
“The higher ocean would start draining into the lower one until equilibrium is reached…”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Werner, you are correct about almost everything.☺ But in this case, nothing would happen. The locks make it possible to raise ships over much higher ground. So if the locks were all opened nothing would happen, because the ground between the two oceans is far higher than the oceans on either side.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And to everyone: Global warming has stopped. If it resumes, then it will have been a “pause”!
But I give up. The inappropriate term has won.☹

1sky1
January 18, 2014 2:27 pm

Russ R:
You’re on the right track in recognizing that the western pile-up of equatorial waters is due to zonal wind-stress from the trades, without any appreciable influence from the Coriolis effect. The western boundary currents, on the other hand, flow poleward and Coriolis effects thus come into play. But the direction of Coriolis deflection is always away from the western boundary coast in both hemispheres! Without getting into the dynamical intricacies of their speed intensification (largely a momentum conservation effect), it should be obvious that Coriolis supplies no energy to drive the circulation per se and is irrelevant to any western pile up.

bushbunny
Reply to  1sky1
January 18, 2014 5:43 pm

I thought trade winds were seasonal. They are around the Pacific and S.E.Asia. That is why the Chinese c.1400 AD, only used them to expand into the Southern Pacific. Same as the Dutch and Macassans that visited Northern Australia to harvest sea cucumbers. They introduced tobacco to friendly Aborigines, steel fish hooks, and STD’s and smallpox. Well before the Europeans landed here.

Brian H
January 18, 2014 5:46 pm

If Trenberth manages to detect a miniscule rise in the deeps, that means the soonest it could affect the heat column in the atmosphere is hundreds of years from now, Crisis cancelled.

January 19, 2014 6:18 pm

NotTheAussiePhilM says:
“Anyway, looks like us Luke-warmers are winning the argument!”
Since ‘luke warmers’ tend to claim that human activity causes some global warming [not UHI, but overall warming], I would point out that there is still no scientific evidence to support that assertion.
That means the scientifc skeptics’ position of “AGW still hasn’t been proved” is actually winning the argument.
AGW might exist. But even if it does, its effect is necessarily so minuscule that for all practical purposes, any putative AGW must be completely disregarded for Policy purposes.

January 21, 2014 6:42 am

This phrase is so apropos: “That has led sceptics — and some scientists…:
Tells you everything you need to know about the warmmongers…
http://www.youtube.com/rcgladstone

January 24, 2014 7:58 am

great photos tammy….