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
I’m a dumb history major, but heat being trapped in the deep ocean? I know warm air rises.
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”.
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.
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
“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.
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.
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!
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.”
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.
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.
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/
——————————————————————————–
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.
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?
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!
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.
They will never believe it. They are quite willing to die of hypothermia first.
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.
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.
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.
Yet the Navy plans on patrolling an ice free Arctic:
http://tinyurl.com/kgg9alo
Maybe the missing heat can be found on the grassy knoll.
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 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
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
Maybe this link will work:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303330204579250522717106330?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303330204579250522717106330.html
markstoval says:
January 17, 2014 at 2:20 am
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.