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
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 ?
“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
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?
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
well said @Theo Goodwin, I favourite that
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)
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.
Thank you WUWT and contributors. I’ve learned a lot over the past few years here.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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! 😉
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.
Barry Woods notes the comment made by Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo at the Royal Society Meeting:
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.