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.
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.
…
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
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.
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/#
IIRC, the number was over 2200 for AR4 and over 800 for AR5.
I have a message for all their regiments of well-drilled PhDs:
Everything you know is wrong.
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.
Her motto should be widely adopted: “What, me curry?”
“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.
Climate Science PhD defense:
cooling is natural
warming is man-made
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.
The only neutral word is plateau’d.
rogerknights says: @ur momisugly 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.
“But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field.”
And a major crisis in confidence everywhere else.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Lack of warming is an anomoly?
Isn’t it the lack of anomoly?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dave Worley says:
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).
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.
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.
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.
His missing heat is transiting the nearer stars right about now.