![Hand%2BWaving[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hand2bwaving1.jpg?quality=83)
Well not exactly #37, but it sure seems like it with all the handwaving we’ve seen lately.
So far, we’ve heard from Climate Science that ‘the pause’ was caused by:
Too much aerosols from volcanoes, ENSO patterns, missing heat that went to the deep ocean, ocean cooling, low solar activity, inappropriately dealt with weather stations in the Arctic, and stadium waves, to name a few. So much for consensus.
Now, it’s trade winds going too fast that are causing abnormal cooling in the Pacific. A new paper from the University of New South Wales says that once the winds return to normal speed, well, look out, the heat is on.
One thing for certain, even though the media is going predictably berserkers over this paper, the paper clearly illustrates that natural variation has been in control, not CO2. So much for control knobs.
Pacific trade winds stall global surface warming — for now
The strongest trade winds have driven more of the heat from global warming into the oceans; but when those winds slow, that heat will rapidly return to the atmosphere causing an abrupt rise in global average temperatures.
Heat stored in the western Pacific Ocean caused by an unprecedented strengthening of the equatorial trade winds appears to be largely responsible for the hiatus in surface warming observed over the past 13 years.
New research published today in the journal Nature Climate Change indicates that the dramatic acceleration in winds has invigorated the circulation of the Pacific Ocean, causing more heat to be taken out of the atmosphere and transferred into the subsurface ocean, while bringing cooler waters to the surface.
“Scientists have long suspected that extra ocean heat uptake has slowed the rise of global average temperatures, but the mechanism behind the hiatus remained unclear” said Professor Matthew England, lead author of the study and a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.
“But the heat uptake is by no means permanent: when the trade wind strength returns to normal – as it inevitably will – our research suggests heat will quickly accumulate in the atmosphere. So global temperatures look set to rise rapidly out of the hiatus, returning to the levels projected within as little as a decade.”
The strengthening of the Pacific trade winds began during the 1990s and continues today. Previously, no climate models have incorporated a trade wind strengthening of the magnitude observed, and these models failed to capture the hiatus in warming. Once the trade winds were added by the researchers, the global average temperatures very closely resembled the observations during the hiatus.
“The winds lead to extra ocean heat uptake, which stalled warming of the atmosphere. Accounting for this wind intensification in model projections produces a hiatus in global warming that is in striking agreement with observations,” Prof England said.
Credit: For articles on this paper only. Credit: Nature Climate Change. Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus. Prof Matthew H England et al.
“Unfortunately, however, when the hiatus ends, global warming looks set to be rapid.”
The impact of the trade winds on global average temperatures is caused by the winds forcing heat to accumulate below surface of the Western Pacific Ocean.
“This pumping of heat into the ocean is not very deep, however, and once the winds abate, heat is returned rapidly to the atmosphere” England explains.
“Climate scientists have long understood that global average temperatures don’t rise in a continual upward trajectory, instead warming in a series of abrupt steps in between periods with more-or-less steady temperatures. Our work helps explain how this occurs,” said Prof England.
“We should be very clear: the current hiatus offers no comfort – we are just seeing another pause in warming before the next inevitable rise in global temperatures.”
###
The paper:
Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus
Matthew H. England, Shayne McGregor, Paul Spence, Gerald A. Meehl, Axel Timmermann, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Michael J. McPhaden, Ariaan Purich& Agus Santoso
Nature Climate Change (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2106
Abstract
Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing. Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake. The extra uptake has come about through increased subduction in the Pacific shallow overturning cells, enhancing heat convergence in the equatorial thermocline. At the same time, the accelerated trade winds have increased equatorial upwelling in the central and eastern Pacific, lowering sea surface temperature there, which drives further cooling in other regions. The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2 °C, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming observed since 2001. This hiatus could persist for much of the present decade if the trade wind trends continue, however rapid warming is expected to resume once the anomalous wind trends abate.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2106.html
And the simple message for Prof England is this –
“Fortunately, when the hoax ends, the inevitable public floggings look set to be vicious.”
“You should be very clear: this latest tripe offers no comfort – we are just seeing another frantic excuse before the inevitable rise in global rage.”
However, in his desperate attempts to find a “sciencey” sounding excuse for the utter failure of the AGW hypothesis, Prof England has got one thing right – the atmosphere cools the oceans.
– Only SW from the sun heats the oceans, DWLWIR has no effect.
– The net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is cooling of the oceans.
– The net effect of radiative gases in the atmosphere is cooling of the atmosphere.
In the end nothing Prof England and his fellow political activists try to engineer a “soft landing” for global warming is going to work. The role radiative gases play in cooling our atmosphere is double the work they do in heating it. The global warming hypothesis is essentially a claim that the atmosphere warms the oceans and adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability.
As an experimental physicist I was surprised and not impressed to see the methods section call the model running/tuning/twerking they did “experiments.” My notion of an experiment has a good bit more involvement of reality.
Ah yes, the University of New South Wales. Home not only to Prof Matthew England, but also to Prof Chris Turney from the Ship of Fools.
If the ‘lost heat’ has disappeared into the depths of ocean why have the ARGO buoys not detected the heated water as it passes them when descending into the ‘not to deep’ regions of the Eastern Pacific? Has this mythical heat developed stealth techniques to avoid detection by all of the Buoys?
RESnape
It’s interesting that Stephan Lewandowski and Chris Turney are also professors at UNSW.
“Birds of a feather” or correlation = causation?
of course, Matthew England is from the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre, which also boasts has Chris Turney in their ranks. anyone keeping up with the number of papers being published, involving UNSW in the past couple of months?
Australia may be a small country, population-wise, but when it comes to CAGW, we like to punch way above our weight….more illustrious-in-their-own-minds signatories at the link:
14 June 2011: The Conversation: Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community
Today, The Conversation launches a two-week series from the nation’s top minds on the science behind climate change and the efforts of “sceptics” to cloud the debate…
Like it or not, humanity is facing a problem that is unparalleled in its scale and complexity…
We will show that “sceptics” often show little regard for truth and the critical procedures of the ethical conduct of science on which real skepticism is based.
The individuals who deny the balance of scientific evidence on climate change will impose a heavy future burden on Australians if their unsupported opinions are given undue credence…
SIGNATORIES:
Signatories
Winthrop Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Australian Professorial Fellow, UWA
Prof David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne
Prof John Abraham, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, University of St. Thomas
Prof Matthew England, co-Director, Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, UNSW
Prof Steven Sherwood, co-Director, Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, UNSW
Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Global Change Institute, UQ
Prof Chris Turney FRSA FGS FRGS, Climate Change Research Centre and School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW
Dr Gab Abramowitz, Lecturer, Climate Change Research Centre,Faculty of Science, UNSW
Prof Andy Pitman, Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, UNSW
http://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-real-an-open-letter-from-the-scientific-community-1808
“the hiatus in surface warming” “the pause in global warming” ” the stall in global surface warming”
“slowed the rise in global warming” “slowdown in global warming”
Never let it be said that we mentioned no rise in 17 years, or that global warming might have stopped. These people make presumptions based on natural phenomena that are quite beyond the pale.
Jo Nova has a good post on this England study. This is from William Kininmonth at Jo’s site.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/02/do-winds-control-the-climate-or-does-the-ocean-control-the-wind-kininmonth-on-england-2014/#more-33302
The trade winds have been known for centuries and were instrumental in the expansion of trade by the Europeans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_wind
On what basis is this strengthening said to be unprecedented? The winds are consistent in their position but they waxed and waned in strength over the time that ships logs have been used to record sailing conditions.
Unfortunately this article is paywalled. Anyone have access and can confirm if the study has looked at historic ships logs to see if this strengthening is unprecedented or not?
tonyb
Correction: Lewandowsky was a professor at the University of Western Australia, not UNSW.
And what does ARGO data say? NO HIDDEN HEAT.
Actually there is an old Yiddish saying that Professor Matthew England may be aware of and that is when things don’t happen like you said any excuse is as good as another. But I am sure that students from the Uni of NSW probably know not to blame the dog when they haven’t done their homework but rather that the wind blew it away.
But I love these excuses from taxpayers of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the United Kingdom for not getting their tax return in on time:
1. My pet goldfish died (self-employed builder);
2. I had a run-in with a cow (Midlands farmer);
3. After seeing a volcanic eruption on the news, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else (London woman);
4. My wife won’t give me my mail (self-employed trader);
5. My husband told me the deadline was 31 March, and I believed him (Leicester hairdresser);
6. I’ve been far too busy touring the country with my one-man play (Coventry writer);
7. My bad back means I can’t go upstairs. That’s where my tax return is (a working taxi driver);
8. I’ve been cruising round the world in my yacht, and only picking up post when I’m on dry land (South East man);
9. Our business doesn’t really do anything (Kent financial services firm); and
10. I’ve been too busy submitting my clients’ tax returns (London accountant).
But how about these excuses from drivers when picked up by the Canadian Highway Patrol:
Ticketed driver – “My dad could buy you.”
Officer – “Get him to buy two of me, I could use the help.”
Driver – “I wasn’t speeding and you didn’t see a phone, it was a hamburger.”
Officer – “That you held to your ear and is gone?”
Driver – “I’m a lawyer.”
Officer – “Excellent, I’m a policeman.” Long silence.
Driver stopped by police exits car and says “I wasn’t driving”. Still seated passenger points at self and says “I was”.
School zone speeder – “You only stopped me because I’m in a Porsche!”
Officer – “No because you are a *&%$ in a Porsche.”
I don’t think Professor England is a *&%$ or drives a Porsche but we WILL be watching the Pacific trade wind speeds with great interest from now on.
“the paper clearly illustrates that natural variation has been in control, not CO2. So much for control knobs.”
The reason CO2 can not be a control knob is because ocean absorb most of sun’s energy, and CO2 has no control how much energy the ocean absorbs.
If a trace gas can have such a huge impact then what about microseconds .
by year 1973 the LOD (Length of day was aprox as 86400.0030 sec.
by year 1994 the LOD (Length of day was aprox as 86400.0025 sec.
by year 2005 the LOD (Length of day was aprox as 86400.0005 sec.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=343608
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Deviation_of_day_length_from_SI_day_.svg
It is the surface that collides with the air. It is a rotating Earth that creates ocean currents
I can certainly understand why Chris Turney from the Ship of Fools.would be interested to know that winds can suddenly pick up and have important effects on the weather.
The people that wrote this are making Celestial Spheres arguments. Every time a flaw is found add another Sphere. The design becomes more and more elaborate until it collapses when a simple and correct explanation is found.
I am not an expert in this area, but the full article does not seem to go back further than about 1900. As far as I can tell, the trade winds are obtained by “reanalysis” which seems to use model tuning to sea level atmospheric pressures and regression on IPO phases, all of which means very little to me. They do not mention historical log books or actual wind speed measurements as far as I can tell.
The reference they give for the wind trends, L’Heureux, M. L., Lee, S. & Lyon, B. Recent multidecadal strengthening of the Walker circulation across the tropical Pacific. Nature Clim. Change 3, 571–576 (2013), does not seem to support the reanalysis as described in full. The abstract of L’Heureux et al. is as follows:
“The Pacific Walker circulation is a large overturning cell that spans the tropical Pacific Ocean, characterized by rising motion (lower sea-level pressure) over Indonesia and sinking motion (higher sea level-pressure) over the eastern Pacific1, 2. Fluctuations in the Walker circulation reflect changes in the location and strength of tropical heating, so related circulation anomalies have global impacts3, 4. On interannual timescales, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation accounts for much of the variability in the Walker circulation, but there is considerable interest in longer-term trends and their drivers, including anthropogenic climate change5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Here, we examine sea-level pressure trends in ten different data sets drawn from reanalysis, reconstructions and in situ measurements for 1900–2011. We show that periods with fewer in situ measurements result in lower signal-to-noise ratios, making assessments of sea-level pressure trends largely unsuitable before about the 1950s. Multidecadal trends evaluated since 1950 reveal statistically significant, negative values over the Indonesian region, with weaker, positive trends over the eastern Pacific. The overall trend towards a stronger, La Niña-like Walker circulation is nearly concurrent with the observed increase in global average temperatures, thereby justifying closer scrutiny of how the Pacific climate system has changed in the historical record.”
I just wanted to see if they based this on actual observations, but ’cause the Nature paper costs, I scanned the references. Most are for model based evidence, so not much use but one (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL051106/abstract) seemed to be based on actual measurements and it says “The heat content of the World Ocean for the 0–2000 m layer increased by 24.0 ± 1.9 × 1022 J (±2S.E.) corresponding to a rate of 0.39 W m−2 (per unit area of the World Ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.09°C.”
Is that for real? Can our mobile instruments like the Argo buoys really make measurements with such accuracy that we can say 0.09C? Seems small to me but I guess the volume is massive so if true it represents a lot of heat.
It seems to me that this trade wind explanation is more model based evidence rather than based on actual measurements of heat in the ocean.
A peer reviewed paper on ocean atmospheric relationships, by scientists who don’t even understand the basics of ENSO? Where is genuine peer review?
As the carbon dioxide religion carries on its decomposing, the climate hysterics are getting more and more desperate. They are thrashing around for any explanation, no matter how ludicrous, to explain the failures of all their predictions and the failures of every climate model they have ever produced. This is their latest effort to keep the global warming gravy train running.
This is from a report from
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-10/scientists-find-explanation-for-global-warming-pause/5248456
I have added my own comments in order to point out their more ridiculous and absurd assertions, their weasel words (which remove the certainty of their predictions) and to make some points of my own. Any student of mine presenting such a paper would undoubtedly score an F.
*****
Global warming: Australian scientists say strong winds in Pacific behind pause in rising temperatures
By environment and science reporter Jake Sturmer
Over the past 15 years the rate of global warming has slowed – and more recently almost stalled. Sceptics say the slowdown suggests warming is not as bad as first thought, while most climate scientists say it is just a natural climate variability.
Now an Australian-led team of researchers has found strong winds in the Pacific Ocean are most likely to be behind the hiatus.
The study found that the winds were churning the Pacific like a washing machine, bringing the deeper colder water to the surface and pushing the warmer water below. [The laws of the universe being reversed when convenient to climate hysterics.]
But University of New South Wales (UNSW) researcher Matthew England, part of the team which carried out the research, said he did not expect the effect to last : “The phase we’re in of accelerated trade winds particularly lasts a couple of decades,” Professor England said. [Strange nobody mentioned it before.]
“We’re about 12 to 13 years in to the most accelerated part of the wind field. [Which field is this? The field you just made up?]
“It’s important to point out there’s a cycle we expect to reverse and when they do reverse back to their normal levels [What are these “normal” levels? You never commit a number by which you can be judged.], we’d expect global warming to kick in and start to rise.” [Great expectations?]
Professor England rejects the argument from sceptics that the slowdown suggests global warming is not as bad as first thought and that the climate models are not working : “We want the community to have confidence in the climate models,” he said. [Which models would that be? So far, despite the billions spent, all they have ever produced is garbage.]
“They are very good but in this instance the wind acceleration has been that strong and that much stronger than what the models projected.”
Scientists used satellite measurements and an array of floats in the Pacific to observe two-decades worth of temperature and current information. The CSIRO’s Steve Rintoul said understanding the oceans was the key to understanding climate change. [And I thought it was all about carbon dioxide! Isn’t that what you grant junkies have been preaching all along?]
“What’s not commonly understood is that when we talk about global warming, we mean ocean warming,” Dr Rintoul said. [So it’s nothing to do with atmospheric warming, after all? Does the IPCC know this?]
“Over the last 50 years, 90% of the extra heat that’s been stored by the earth is found in the ocean. [Where, exactly, in the ocean is this massive heat storage to be found? And how did it get there? Describe this mechanism and why it might suddenly reverse itself.]
“So if we want to track how climate is changing, we need to be looking in the ocean to understand it.” [Or better still, stop trying to solve a problem that never existed in the first place.]
The research is published in the journal Nature Climate Change. [Which should be ashamed of itself.]
“” Baa Humbug says:
…
How on Earth did this piece of crap pass review?”
Well, I suppose some call it “Pal Review” while others even think of
“PayPal’d Review”.
Everybody! Go outside, face North and wave your hands! We can offset the Polar Vortex and save the planet!!1!!!!!
So, err…….what you’re saying is that, err………you don’t know ALL there is to know about the Earth’s Climate System, then?
Amazing how a new discovery is made about the Climate system every now & then, that WASN’T included in the last model print out!!!!
The bottom line is the science isn’t settled. The CAGW model probably contained only what are called main effects and no interaction terms (aka feedback and feed forward effects). What’s an interaction term? Oh something like the combination of increased clouds or aerosols decreasing the effect of CO2. Therefore the model is incapable of prefidicting anything.
They don’t understand what’s causing the pause therefore they don’t know how long the pause will last which could be indefinitely long.
Unfortunately both verified and unverified computer models are called the same thing. When “model” is mentioned in something like this article, I read “calculation” which does not imply experimental verification. Once “model” is replaced in this way, it becomes a lot more difficult to move onto the usual conclusions.