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
There is only 3 things scientists need to piece together.
We……….. …………….were………………………… wrong.
We…………….were……………… wrong.
We…….were………. wrong.
We were wrong.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
“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.”
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”
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.
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.
Forgot to change the second link on the last post. It should be this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swell_%28ocean%29
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.
@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.
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.
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..
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 🙂
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?
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
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
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?
@Bob Schklumpfh – The lakes would drain out since they are higher than both oceans.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.