![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
Mosher …. the 21st century starts in 2001. Try it again without the cherry picked La Niña and see what you get.
Robert Bissett says:
February 10, 2014 at 9:39 am
If global warming should resume, say, in 2034, the settled climate consensus then may be that the past 20 years of global cooling were caused by humans in general & capitalism in particular, threatening the world with premature descent into the next glacial phase. CACA “science” is in danger of becoming a laughingstock & dragging down the reputation of real science with it.
Re Barry Cullen says: February 10, 2014 at 9:44 am
Indeed, #38, Immaculate Convection, was overlooked. If you search “WUWT IMMACULATE CONVECTION” you will find the answer(s) to the cause of the pause, for example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/18/cowtan-and-ways-pausebuster-still-flat-compared-to-models/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/11/more-on-trenberth-and-fasullo-2013-an-apparent-hiatus-in-global-warming/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/07/the-computer-says-no-the-ipcc-2013-summary-for-policymakers/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/04/the-great-climate-shift-of-1878/
Box of Rocks says:
February 10, 2014 at 9:50 am
Design was pretty constant until the 18th century. There might have been important differences between the galleons used in 1620 & 1640, but IMO not enough on their own to account for the difference in sailing time. But I’m far from expert in the subject.
1. In 1997, the largest El Nino in known history created an area of very warm water in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. It was larger than the United States, and over two hundred meters deep.
2. Abruptly, it broke up and disappeared. Like the warm Gulf Stream waters, these waters SANK because the enhanced evaporation, due to their relatively higher temperature, made them saltier and hence heavier.
3. This water has stirred up the Central Pacific from 1998 until now, bringing colder waters to the surface. The ambient air cools, shrinks, and draws in winds. It probably has cooled the planet to some extent, but there was nothing anthropogenic about it.
Well Aerosols, are things like my Lysol disinfectant spray, which comes in a variety of flavors; scents from “smells like l’Hospital”, to pinus radiata.
I actually use it just to kill ants. Ain’t nothing like it for killing ants; stops them dead in mid step (with ANY leg).
But the house doesn’t get any cooler or warmer when I use it..
So we should pay more attention to the international trade news, to see which way the winds are blowing.
The trade winds don’t ever seem to cross the equator, which plays havoc with the Volvo Ocean Race.
Well in NZ, they call them “The Roaring 40s.”, and 40 deg S Lat goes about through Wanganui if I remember correctly; which is a tad north of Wellington.
Don’t see how southern hemi trade winds, could possibly affect northern hemi climate.
Interesting. When ever I see “University of New South Wales’, “University of Victoria (BC, Canada)”, “Andrew Derocher of University of Alberta”, “Penn”, “UEA/CRU” and the names of certain others like David Suzuki and a host of others, my “alert meter” gets pegged and I tend to have trouble looking for good parts in the article. It is hard to look objectively when your “BS meter” is screaming at you not to even bother. But bull manure is just processed grass, and it often has a good take away, even if it is just fertilizer for the brain in future discussion or grains of truth that can be used.
So now we have the deep missing heat and the heat that’s not so deep?
How deep is deep?
I think these folks are just getting deeper and deeper into trouble.
So what caused the change in the Trade Winds? Why does the paper not address this?
The reason the paper makes no mention of what caused the Trade Winds to decrease is that the Trade Winds are a result of temperature. Temperature differences lead to rising air at the equator (hot) and falling air in the sub-tropics (cooler). Since warming has stopped, the Trade Winds have slowed. As would be expected.
The paper confuses cause and effect. Which is not surprising. The paper’s author was until recently claiming that there was no pause in the warming and anyone that said otherwise was a liar. Now the author turns around and admits there is a pause, and then reverses cause and effect to explain the pause. It sure does look like someone is a liar after all. After all, the author has already called himself a liar for saying there is a pause. This paper simply proves it to the rest of us.
About the 37 (and counting) reasons, it strikes me that there are four possibilities:
1. They are all correct. I think we can dismiss this one as we’d be snowball earth with polar bears at the equator by now if they were.
2. They are all wrong. I think we can dismiss this one as well as we’d be hot house earth by now with alligators at the poles by now if they were.
3. Some of them are right and some of them are wrong and they roughly balance each other out.
4. One of the first three options is correct, but there are additional reasons of unknown quantity and magnitude that have not yet been studied and which need to be added to the list the cumulative effect of which is also to roughly balance out.
Other than that though, the science is settled.
At first glance, and that is all an abstract can supply, their paper seems reasonable. What is described in the abstract (I am interpreting for clarity sake) is that the increased trade winds cooled down the ocean area it traveled over which also contributed to cooling in adjacent ocean areas. It is not saying that the trade winds are heating the oceans, it is saying that the adjacent warmer ocean areas are sending their heat to the area cooled by the trade winds. It describes this as a mechanism which explains the ‘Pause’.
They do not describe the mechanism which caused the trade winds to increase in velocity – a key component to their proposed mechanism for the ‘Pause’. I am assuming that they will take a circular argument on this, proposing that AGW causes the trade wind velocity to increase which causes the cooling ‘Pause’, which causes the trade wind velocity to decrease, which allows AGW to resume, causing the trade wind velocity to increase and so on. This argument allows them to continue the AGW theme ad nauseum.
The only way anthropogenic CO2 can cause wind to increase is to cause a substantial differential in and location of large scale pressure systems. They know that would be a hard sell so they are sticking with natural variability for all cooling trends related to trade winds.
george e. smith says:
February 10, 2014 at 10:08 am
Easterly trade winds occur on both sides of the equator. The NH also has its higher latitude westerlies equivalent to the SH Roaring Forties, only usually not as strong. The Manila galleons used these westerlies to get back to North America, ie Alta California, then rode the California Current (trans-Pacific offshoot of the Kurushio) south to Baja..
Louis says: @ur momisugly February 10, 2014 at 9:14 am
“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.”
—
Can anyone post a link to the “step-shaped” hockey stick that scientists published long ago? ….Does anyone else remember this happening before the hiatus began, or is this another example of trying to rewrite history?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They have blatantly stolen Bob Tisdale’s work. He is the one who showed the “series of abrupt steps in between periods with more-or-less steady temperatures” right here on WUWT.
Posted on January 11, 2009 Can El Nino Events Explain All of the Global Warming Since 1976? – Part 1
There is a word for this. It is PLAGIARISM.
The more “explanations” the warmists publish, the clearer it is that they’re totally lacking in the clue department.
“Hide the decline” doesn’t work any more so they’ve moved on to the “excuse de jour for the decline”. And they’re all just wild theories with no hard data and no real research. These people are simply writing (very bad) science fiction novels.
It would be funny but for the fact that the MSM is swallowing them all, hook, line and sinker.
Plan A: Don’t admit that a pause has occurred.
Plan B: Shift the blame to (there must be a link to the Kotch brothers) deep ocean heating.
Plan C: When the public tires of the “deep ocean” theory; rename it “the not so deep ocean theory driven by the trade winds”.
Plan D: Following the abysmal failure of plans A and B; adjust climate model input at an increment proportionate to the deficit between past projections and actual temperatures. Sell this patent nonsense to the gullible public through fear and disinformation.
Plan E: Do whatever’s necessary to keep our cushy ‘climate catastrophe’ consultation scams feeding from the public trough.
Is there a demo with a bath full of water and a hair dryer??????
Who is financing the University of New South Wales? Aussie taxpayers?
Why???
Just another blow job from UNSW. They already shot their credibility with the coverup handling on Turney and the ship of fools.
“My dog ate my Global Warming”
Little Bo Peep Mann, has lost his global warming scam.
He has looked everywhere, for his missing hot air, but he’d be better rehabbing his career.
Soon the say Earth rotation has speeded up. Explains why one is so tired, mornings arrive faster!
And why one never have time for anything.
Oh golly gee I think I’ll just hold my breathe until the warming comes roaring back.
Steven Mosher says:
February 10, 2014 at 9:22 am
“hmm. Well, lets see.”
Well if you want to play that game…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1933/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1933/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1934/to:1939/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1934/to:1939/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:1984/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:1984/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1985/to:2000/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1985/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2014/trend
We have technically seen just 22 years worth of catastrophic man made warming since 1850, and 6 years of that came prior to the IPCC’s claimed “since 1950… CO2 … global warming.” The other 142 years add up to a rather perfect 0 trend
That leaves us with 12 years of CAGW. So between 1985 & 2000, CO2 apparently up and decided it would like to heat the planet? Of course, convenient of it to choose a time which happens to coincide rather perfectly with the extreme El Nino period of 1982-1998 that held not 1, but 2 Super El Ninos (1982/83 & 1997/98)
Going back to your statement
“One cannot say there has been “no warming” without qualifying the claim in an defensible manner ( many approaches are defensible, data never speaks for itself)”
You wanted one, here it is:
Qualifier: There has been no warming of the Globe except that caused by extreme El Nino periods
So even if one wants to claim CO2 only heats the deep oceans where we just cant really measure it well, and that it is only released during Super El Ninos (+2.0 on index,) you still cannot possibly predict any warming what so ever for the future as such events cannot be predicted. After all, we have gone extremely long periods without strong El Nino events; including the roughly 300 year period which brought us out of the MWP and eventually led to the Little Ice Age.
Based on that, a true IPCC/Model prediction of Global Warming should be absolutely nothing more than
“We predict 0 long-term warming for the rest of eternity, unless there is a Super El Nino in a ElNino/Positive phase”
As that is what the globe has seen since 1850
It’s amazing how the answer can be right in front of their face and these people not see it. Talk about tunnel vision. Talk about brainwashed. It’s like that study which showed a link that global heating corresponded with more EL NINOs and concluded that AGW was causing more el ninos. LOL.