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
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.
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.
brians356 says:
Where has all the rigor gone?
It’s hiding with Dr. Trenberth’s heat.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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?
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/
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.
They did decrease the amount of the adjustment over the time period though. I see your point.
@ur momisugly 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.
Bob Tisdale:
Many thanks for your post at January 16, 2014 at 9:22 am which says
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
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.
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.
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…
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?
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.
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.
“…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…
The graph of “time” vs “magnitude of FUBAR displayed by NCAR”, has finally peaked and reversed its course. Lets hope that trend continues.
“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.
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.
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
Tom in Florida says:
“Sorry, that was Tom in Florida, don’t know where the T went.”
That’s okay, neither does Trenberth.