Researchers find models must account for volcanic eruptions to accurately predict climate change.
From:MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
By the late 1990s, scientists had observed more than two decades of rapid global warming, and expected the warming trend to continue. Instead, despite continuing increases in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth’s surface temperatures have remained nearly flat for the last 15 years. The International Panel on Climate Change verified this recent warming “hiatus” in its latest report.
Researchers around the globe have been working to understand this puzzle — looking at heat going into the oceans, changes in wind patterns, and other factors to explain why temperatures have stayed nearly stable, while greenhouse gas concentrations have continued to rise. In a study published today in Nature Geoscience, a team of scientists from MIT and elsewhere around the U.S. report that volcanic eruptions have contributed to this recent cooling, and that most climate models have not accurately accounted for the effects of volcanic activity.
“This is the most comprehensive observational evaluation of the role of volcanic activity on climate in the early part of the 21st century,” says co-author Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT. “We assess the contributions of volcanoes on temperatures in the troposphere — the lowest layer of the atmosphere — and find they’ve certainly played some role in keeping the Earth cooler.”
There are many components of the Earth’s climate system that can increase or decrease the temperature of the globe. For example, while greenhouse gases cause warming, some types of small particles, known as aerosols, cause cooling. When volcanoes erupt explosively enough, they enhance these aerosols — a phenomenon referred to as “volcanic forcing.”
“The recent slowdown in observed surface and tropospheric warming is a fascinating detective story,” says Ben Santer, the lead author of the study and a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “There is not a single culprit, as some scientists have claimed. Multiple factors are implicated. The real scientific challenge is to obtain hard quantitative estimates of the contributions of each of these factors to the so-called slowdown.”
The researchers verified the cooling phenomenon by performing two different statistical tests to determine whether recent volcanic eruptions have cooling effects that can be distinguished from the intrinsic variability of the climate. The team found evidence for significant correlations between volcanic aerosol observations and satellite-based estimates of both tropospheric temperature and sunlight reflected by the particles off the top of the atmosphere.
“What’s exciting in this work was that we could detect the influence of the volcanic aerosols in new ways. Using satellite observations confirmed the fact that the volcanic particles reflected a significant amount of the sun’s energy out to space, and of course losing energy means cooling — and the tropospheric temperatures show that too,” explains Solomon, who is also a researcher with MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “There are still uncertainties in exactly how big the effects are, so there is more work to do.”
Alan Robock, a professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers University and a leading expert on the impacts of volcanic eruptions on climate, says these findings are an important part of the larger climate picture. “This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them when interpreting past climate and predicting future climate.”
“Since none of the standard scenarios for evaluating future global warming include volcanic eruptions,” Robock adds, “this paper will help us quantify the impacts of future large and small eruptions when they happen, and thus better interpret the role of humans in causing climate change.”
This research was led by a team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and builds upon work Solomon conducted in 2011, finding that aerosols in an upper layer of the atmosphere — the stratosphere — are persistently variable and must be included in climate models to accurately depict climate changes.
The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.
h/t to Roger Sowell
For reference, here is the associated paper; (h/t Greg)
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2098.html
Heads I win tails you lose .
If volcanic aerosols and debris are to be quantified and their impact on the climate determined, what about all the extraterrestrial debris that continuously enters the globe’s atmosphere? Is that a fairly constant amount – or highly variable? Or is it altogether insignificant?
Oh yes Susan Solomon.
So these small volcanic eruptions have changed how much?
We barely know where all the land based volcanos are,let alone an accurate measurement of their outputs, have no grasp on the number and size of the submerged volcanos, yet conveniently this background noise, rescues the “Models”.
Exactly as scientific as the concept of heat vanishing into the deep, explaining the lack of global warming, yet not explaining what this device was doing prior to the imaginary cause.
Obviously the modern solutions are not working.
Hence all the handwaving.
But we are chronically short of willing virgins today.
So who to cast into the maw of God?
Well I do detect a surplus of gullible or mendacious climatologists.
For the good of the cause and all…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/28/models-fail-land-versus-sea-surface-warming-rates/#comment-1432696
Reposted below regarding evidence of aerosol fudging of climate models, from DV Hoyt, for Pamela:
Best personal regards, Allan
Please also see
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/reactions-to-ipcc-ar5-summary-for-policy-makers/#comment-1431798
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/19/uh-oh-its-models-all-the-way-down/#comment-1421394
[excerpt]
…– the (climate) models have probably “put the cart before the horse” – we know that the only clear signal in the data is that CO2 LAGS temperature (in time) at all measured time scales, from a lag of about 9 months in the modern database to about 800 years in the ice core records – so the concept of “climate sensitivity to CO2” (ECS) may be incorrect, and the reality may be “CO2 sensitivity to temperature”
I think you would agree that the use of “CO2 sensitivity to temperature” instead of “climate sensitivity to CO2” (ECS) would require a major re-write of the models.
If you wanted to stick with the ECS concept, then you would have to (as a minimum) delete the phony aerosol data, drop ECS to ~~1/10 of its current values, add some natural variation to account for the global cooling circa 1940-1975, and run the models. The results would probably project modest global warming that is no threat to humanity or the environment, and we know that just would not do. Based on past performance, the IPCC’s role is to cause fear due to alleged catastrophic global warming, even if this threat is entirely false, which is increasingly probable.
Meanwhile, back at the aerosols:
You may ask why the IPCC does NOT use the aerosol historic data in their models, but rather uses assumed values (different for each model and much different from the historic data) to fudge their models (Oops! I guess I gave away the answer – I should not have used the word “fudge”, I should have said “hindcast”).
.
[excerpt from]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/15/one-step-forward-two-steps-back/#comment-1417805
Parties interested in the fabrication of aerosol data to force-hindcast climate models (in order for the models to force-fit the cooling from ~1940 to ~1975, in order to compensate for the models’ highly excessive estimates of ECS (sensitivity)) may find this 2006 conversation with D.V. Hoyt of interest:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=755
Douglas Hoyt, responding to Allan MacRae:
“July 22nd, 2006 at 5:37 am
Measurements of aerosols did not begin in the 1970s. There were measurements before then, but not so well organized. However, there were a number of pyrheliometric measurements made and it is possible to extract aerosol information from them by the method described in:
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. The apparent atmospheric transmission using the pyrheliometric ratioing techniques. Appl. Optics, 18, 2530-2531.
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occurring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and in other in Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends.
So when MacRae (#321) says: “I suspect that both the climate computer models and the input assumptions are not only inadequate, but in some cases key data is completely fabricated – for example, the alleged aerosol data that forces models to show cooling from ~1940 to ~1975. Isn’t it true that there was little or no quality aerosol data collected during 1940-1975, and the modelers simply invented data to force their models to history-match; then they claimed that their models actually reproduced past climate change quite well; and then they claimed they could therefore understand climate systems well enough to confidently predict future catastrophic warming?”, he close to the truth.”
_____________________________________________________________________
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
MacRae:
Re #328 “Are you the same D.V. Hoyt who wrote the three referenced papers?”
Hoyt: Yes
.
MacRae: “Can you please briefly describe the pyrheliometric technique, and how the historic data samples are obtained?”
Hoyt:
“The technique uses pyrheliometers to look at the sun on clear days. Measurements are made at air mass 5, 4, 3, and 2. The ratios 4/5, 3/4, and 2/3 are found and averaged. The number gives a relative measure of atmospheric transmission and is insensitive to water vapor amount, ozone, solar extraterrestrial irradiance changes, etc. It is also insensitive to any changes in the calibration of the instruments. The ratioing minimizes the spurious responses leaving only the responses to aerosols.
I have data for about 30 locations worldwide going back to the turn of the century.
Preliminary analysis shows no trend anywhere, except maybe Japan.
There is no funding to do complete checks.”
One can just see the headlines ten years hence:
“Coal Is Critical: U.N. Scientists Urge Countries to Burn More Fossil Fuels to Offset Volcanic Emissions, Stave Off Global Ice Age”
“Hard Quantitative estimates”.Wow!!! In the aerospace manufacturing world we have a term for that type of information: SWAG (for Simple Wild Assed Guess).
“From:MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change”
Are these the same clowns who created the idiotic climate roulette wheel?
If so, then the null hypothesis is that this study is specious drivel.
“… says Ben Santer, the lead author of the study…”
_____________________
Ben Santer, eh? That certainly is
reassur… nevermind.The dog ate my homework
There are uncertainties,so there is more work to do. IOW,more funding please. I thought “we” looked at volcanoes,and it’s not volcanoes.
What are the chances that some combination of ocean warming, volcanoes, wind pattern changes and other phenomena have so precisely offset supposed AGW? Is this more or less likely than CO2s effects being overestimated in the models?
So sorry about the format error in my post immediately prior.
[ REPLY: Fixed, I think. -ModE ]
“By the late 1990s, scientists had observed more than two decades of rapid global warming, and expected the warming trend to continue. Instead, despite continuing increases in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth’s surface temperatures have remained nearly flat for the last 15 years.”
The very large Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 has been credited with causing a decline in global temperatures in 1992. It would seem appropriate to use the observed forcing from this event to calculate quantity of volcanic forcing that would be required to create the “hiatus” we are now experiencing. How many “Pinatubo” events are needed to explain the difference between the model predictions and the actual temperature record of the last 16 years? What percentage of the volcanic activity that would be necessary to create the “hiatus” has actually occured ?
The answers to the above questions would provide some useful context for this paper.
” The researchers verified the cooling phenomenon by performing two different statistical tests to determine whether recent volcanic eruptions have cooling effects that can be distinguished from the intrinsic variability of the climate. The team found evidence for significant correlations between volcanic aerosol observations and satellite-based estimates of both tropospheric temperature and sunlight reflected by the particles off the top of the atmosphere…”
We have ways of making you give the answer we want….
Tortured data. Care to share the two different statistical test?
Because there’s been soooo many eruptions in the last 15 years?
Eyafjallajokull aside (and I apologise in advance for misspelling and lack of umlauts), which apparently wasn’t equatorial enough to have any effect in temperature at the time, we were told, have there actually been any decent eruptions in the last 15 years?
Guess the were all undersea and incapable of direct measurement…
It’s good to see even the most ardent warmists are now conceding the lack of warming for the past 15 – 20 years or so. Funny that none of them even considered the rather small amount of volcanism since Pinatubo in 1991 would have any significant effect … almost smacks of desperation! Of course, this isn’t the only major cause of cooling … clouds being the next most obvious factor NOT included in the climate models!
It was never about “settled” science; but rather settled politics to stampede the sheep into wasting trillions of dollars while the left congratulated themselves on their caring and sensitivity.
How about clouds? Seems that variations in cloud cover would cause wide swings in temperature, I’ve heard the models don’t take into account cloud variability, go figure, I guess the computations would get complex. Not to mention the monitoring, and quantifying of cloud variability would be tedious.
There have been large volcanic events in the past, even recent past, I would have thought the effect would already have been quantified.
Aren’t these the same guys that say they have it all figured out, it’s settled, and we better just start spending money on mitigation? I guess they must need some extra grant money.
Are these guys really saying that they are just now considering that the effect of huge plumes of gas and small particles on temperature, and that models never took this into account?
Extra! Extra! Climate scientists discover a new geomorphic feature. They have named it a “volcano” and are busy . . . etc.
Extra! Get your newspaper here. Something to read, something to sit one.
~~~~~
“Ben Santer, the lead author of the study …” [self snip]
For reference, here is the associated paper;
D. Sante et al., 2014 – Click the pic to view full size[/caption]
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2098.html
and the authors, “Benjamin D. Santer, Céline Bonfils, Jeffrey F. Painter, Mark D. Zelinka, Carl Mears, Susan Solomon, Gavin A. Schmidt, John C. Fyfe, Jason N. S. Cole, Larissa Nazarenko, Karl E. Taylor & Frank J. Wentz”.
Certainly some familiar names in there. What I found particularly interesting is their Figure 1, i.e.:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="550"]
“Subtraction of the ENSO, El Chichón and Pinatubo signals from the original TLT data yields” what appears to be a slight cooling trend from about 1993 to present.
Given Santer’s prior work;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/04/rss-reaches-santers-17-years/
he is surely aware of the implications, hence the desperation to find some explanation for the lack of warming…
Was it also volcanic activity that caused the cooling between the late 1940s to the late 70s? Maybe volcanic activity caused the LIA and the Dalton. Maybe the Sun has been unfairly blamed for those events. It was the volcano all along. Maybe. Maybe not, but maybe.These climate scientists need to get busy and check into this possibility.
Jeef says:
February 23, 2014 at 9:18 pm
—————————————–
Mt Kelub in Indonesia had a good size plast last week, 10 miles into the atmosphere. There have been a few others in recent months.
Chris Riley says:
February 23, 2014 at 9:15 pm
I was just thinking the same thing!
How many Pinatubo’s is that, exactly?
And nobody even noticed til now……..
“This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them when interpreting past climate and predicting future climate.”
Funny! Skeptics have been saying this exact same thing for decades and have been ridiculed endlessly for even suggesting that natural causes are responsible for some of the observed warming of the 20th Century. Once again, we are seeing the warmists ‘discover’ what the skeptics have known all along and try to claim it as their own brilliance and wisdom. Yet they still don’t quite get it, apparently believing that natural climate change factors have no ability to warm the atmosphere; only cool it: Massive volcanic eruptions cause cooling. We got that. But now they want us to believe that a reduction in massive volcanic eruptions also causes cooling.
Pathetic.
One day they will give up on the “CO2 causes warming” meme, then scrap all the models and get back to real science. Uhm when will that be? When Hell freezes over or when earth freezes over?
It is important to realise that what is being quoted isn’t the paper. It is the press release about the paper. Essentially it is just advertising designed to pump up interest in the paper. And as is so often the case, we find that the product doesn’t live up to the high expectations raised by the extravagant language in the advertisements.
Despite making stridently bold and dramatic claims about the importance of understanding the hiatus, the paper makes no conclusions about the hiatus. When you finally manage to get the darned thing out of the packaging, you find an anemic little piece of very ordinary research that says completely unremarkable and expected things about the effects of aerosols from volcanoes.
So, if the warming didn’t stop, no one would ever pay any attention to the effect of the volcanoes?
Their blaming resourcefulness is becoming noticeably thin…
I wonder, when they will start blaming Jews for “hiatus in global warming”?
By the late 1990s, scientists had observed more than two decades of rapid global warming … despite continuing increases in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth’s surface temperatures have remained nearly flat for the last 15 years … researchers around the globe have been working to understand this puzzle …
——————————————
It’s puzzling only if you cling desperately to the assumption that CO2 is the overwhelming post WW2 climate forcing factor.
Here’s another puzzle for them: the T linear trend c1910 – c1945 as CO2 went from ~ 300 – ~310 ppm is steeper than that c1975 – c2000 as CO2 went from ~330 – ~370 ppm (and now, of course, zero trend as CO2 goes from 370 – 395ppm).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1975/to:2000/trend
So, according to this paper, if you can’t predict volcanoes you can’t predict climate.
Not a single climate scientists or climate model can accurately predict volcanoes. Not one. Which means that not a single climate scientist or climate model can predict climate.
And it is Ben Santer and Susan Solomon that have established this. Unless and until Climate Science can predict volcanoes, they cannot predict climate.
Clearly all the money spend on climate science should instead be spend on volcano science. Until we solve the problem in predicting volcanoes there can be no reliable predictions of climate. Which means any money we spend on climate prediction is simply wasted.
Clearly, Volcanoes, not CO2 drive the climate.
Glad you asked this! I’ve been in an email discussion with Dr. Brian May (PhD in astronomy & former guitarist of the band Queen) about various climate forcings, and he suggested the extraterrestrial debris (interplanetary dust) forcing, which I had never heard of:
Sure enough, with enough digging, there is some interesting information available, including the possibility of meteor dust contributing to noctilucent clouds: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/07aug_meteorsmoke/
To summarize…there are far more forcings in action that the Hockey Team care to admit, and I’m very skeptical that they didn’t even include volcanic aerosols in their models!
It’s global dimming all over again!!! LOL!
As Gavin said”we looked at the sun. It’s not the sun,then we looked at volcanoes,it’s not volcanoes. We looked at the orbit. It’s not the orbit. Then we looked at funding.”…………….
The global pause/cooling for the past 17 years is not a unique event. It is part of a cyclic pattern of 25-35 yr warming/cooling (60 yr full cycle) that has been going on for at least 500 years and probably longer. Because there is no corresponding volcanic cycle, the volcanic heat idea is a nonstarter. Sounds like grasping at straws–until evidence of a corresponding volcanic cycle is presented (and that is highly unlikely) this idea makes no sense at all.
This is garbage. Name one significant eruption in the last 15-years? Little ones
are always erupting(and how would we even know about them in the past). The
pause cannot be quantified. Multiple “Unknown ” Factors!!
‘The team found evidence for significant correlations between volcanic aerosol observations and satellite-based estimates of both tropospheric temperature and sunlight reflected by the particles off the top of the atmosphere.’
Correlation = causation?
CRS, DrPH says:
February 23, 2014 at 9:58 pm
The link was quite amusing. Particularly enjoyed the bizarre nuclear chemistry where one carbon atom is converted to two oxygen atoms. So methane of all things is supposed to be responsible for noctilucent clouds? NLCs form over the poles. Is that where the methane is? Nope. Good try. Straws grasped at, but not caught.
Just The Facts says:
February 23, 2014 at 9:25 pm
For reference, here is the associated paper;
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2098.html
=============
Anthony , could you put this link at the end of the article, which currently has no references.
Can you say KLUDGE ? Sure you can.
Wikipedia: A kludge is a workaround, quick-and-dirty solution, clumsy, inelegant, difficult to extend, hard to maintain yet effective and quick solution to a problem, and a rough synonym to the term “jury rig”.
Can you say kludge? Sure you can.
Wikipedia: A kludge (or kluge) is a workaround, quick-and-dirty solution, clumsy, inelegant, difficult to extend, hard to maintain yet effective and quick solution to a problem, and a rough synonym to the term “jury rig”.
What absolute one eyed nonsense.
Most live volcanoes are beneath the ocean, pumping heat and CO2 into the water and causing general warming. Especially warming glaciers in West Antarctica and Northern Greenland.
http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/submarine
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/07/110715-undersea-volcanoes-antarctica-science-tsunamis/
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n7/abs/ngeo1473.html
http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Ocean-Floor/Undersea-New-Zealand/Submarine-Volcanoes
Why don’t they mention these things? Only trouble is that it is difficult to blame the current heating hiatus on undersea volcanoes because they are probably the biggest factor on global warming.
If these volcanoes are still active, and of course the rate of activity is unlikely to have slowed, then why has global warming stopped? Can it be that all other factors are cooling the place down?
It’s all a smoke screen. Read my blog where I show how the UN Agenda 21 has crept into yours and my country while we have all been busy debating AGW!
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Wiki list of ‘large’ volcanic eruptions in 21st century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_volcanic_eruptions_in_the_21st_century
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/ngeo2098-f1.jpg?w=550&h=500
Nice find , JustTheFacts.
One thing that is interesting in the lower panel where they have supposedly removed El Chichon and Mt Pinatubo, is that there is a notable bump throughout the 90s. and a very strong one just after the first eruption in the early 80s.
This is clear evidence that, far from under-estimating the effects of volcanism as this paper is
trying to suggest, they are already substantially over estimating it.
As my tentative assessment of the effects of major stratospheric erruptions shows there are notable differences between tropical and extra-tropical responses to volcanism.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=312
Tropics are almost totally oblivious to volcanism and even recover the lost heat and maintain a steady degree.day product (number of growth days) .
Santer has shown his credentials by altering the agreed science content of the chapter he was entrusted with in AR4. Anything he produces or is associated with must be regarded as propaganda, not science. You don’t get away with that sort of manipulation Santer, we know who you are now.
“The recent slowdown in observed surface and tropospheric warming is a fascinating detective story,” says Ben Santer…
You say ‘fascinating’ i say pot-boiler, even Darling Dame Agatha Christie would not resort to such absurd plot devices….get a bloody life – AND while you are at it benny boy, a real job…
Chris Riley said:
February 23, 2014 at 9:15 pm
“The very large Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 has been credited with causing a decline in global temperatures in 1992. It would seem appropriate to use the observed forcing from this event to calculate quantity of volcanic forcing that would be required to create the “hiatus” we are now experiencing. How many “Pinatubo” events are needed to explain the difference between the model predictions and the actual temperature record of the last 16 years? What percentage of the volcanic activity that would be necessary to create the “hiatus” has actually occurred ?”
Interesting questions Mr. Riley.
If you look at the following wikipedia page and associated links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index
It looks like the 1991 Pinatubo and Hudson eruptions ejected over 4 times the total volume of all major eruptions that occurred since the 1998 warming ‘pause’. But that includes an eruption in 2014, whose effects have probably yet to show up in the climate trend data. Leaving out 2014, Pinatubo and Hudson 1991 eruptions are more than 7 times the total volume of eruptions during the pause.
Consider that the current global temp seems to be running about 0.6C below the model predictions:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/20/a-must-read-why-secretary-of-state-john-kerry-is-flat-wrong-on-climate-change/
and also consider that the 1991 eruptions are credited with a global temperature drop in 1992 of about 0.4C:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo#Global_environmental_effects
Ignoring all other factors and assuming a linear relationship between volcanic ejection mass and global temperature and assuming all volcanoes are equal (unrealistic assumptions to be sure), the quick ‘back of the envelope’ math says that the 2014 temperature deviation from prediction would require a cumulative volcanic ejection mass about 50% greater than the Pinatubo ’91 eruption. That would equate to over 6 times the actual amount of eruption material that has actually been ejected during the pause, or over 10 times if the 2014 eruption is considered to not yet be an influence in the temperature data.
Grossly over simplified to be sure and full of unknowns, but the ROM (Rough Order of Magnitude) guesstimate looks like the volcano notion is short by about an order of magnitude in accounting for the ‘pause’. The devil is always in the details, but this ‘volcano’ theory doesn’t smell right without a substantial amount of quantified data that contradicts the ‘common sense’ guesstimate.
Not a direct answer to your questions, but at first glance at least, seems like ManBearPig better go back to looking in the bottom of the sea for his missing heat monster.
Now, now. Let us look at the ACTUAL atmospheric clarity since .. oh, maybe .. 1958 or so.
You know, look at real data, instead of a model. Maybe, if we see signs that atmospheric clarity have been decreasing since 1997, then we can start looking for those specific volcanoes that actually erupted and sent that dirt and gasses and aerosols skyward.
Maybe we “should” actually “look” at the actual atmospheric clarity indexes, then see if any large volcanic eruptions in the past match changes in the atmosphere records. No, it might be hard to see any trends or spikes, but it just “might” be possible to find relationships. Surely, if volcanoes erupted in the past, they could be erupting now unseen and unheard but still contaminating the atmosphere without publicity or notice.
Surely, if Pinatubo had any effect in 1992, and if any volcano anywhere had an effect in – say, 1982 (El Chincon) or in 1963-64, we “might” be able see any “spike” or “jump” in levels that “might” have caused temperatures the past 17 years to stay steady (despite 17 years of increasing CO2 levels). Surely, if the atmosphere were getting so dirty that the entire planet is cooling off, we would be able to see it, right? /sarchasm – That gaping whole between the CAGW religion and reality.
Right? Everybody agree? If volcanoes in the past caused specific cooling events in the past at specific times in the past, and volcanoes are causing today’s looooooooooooong cooling trend right now in the present, then we should be able to see the same levels of atmospheric dirt and debris in the present, right?
Hmmmn. Let’s look at WUWT Solar Data page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/solar/
Apparent Atmospheric Transmission of Solar Radiation at Mauna Loa, Hawaii
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/grad/mloapt/mlo_transmission.gif
Nope. Nothing. NOT EVEN A BLIP. They are now even lying to themselves. To the world.
So was there a dearth of volcanic activity during the warming period? Could it could equally be argued that this was the cause of the warming, nothing to do with CO2? 🙂
Yes,. of course, it’s the volcanoes, or the aerosols, or the Trade Winds, or the Polar Vortex, etc. The Warmistas are increasingly desperate to explain the complete failure of the CO2 models. When they get round to blaming the Jews, we will know that the end is at hand.
No. the long heating period from the mid-1650’s through 2000-2010 doesn’t match any long term change in volcanic activity.
why do i have nightmares that the CAGW crowd have a “book of everything” and they are ticking off one thing after another, with no end in sight, unfortunately.
more money wasted – the Christ Turney Exhibition:
24 Feb: Sydney Morning Herald: AAP: Antarctica cruise ship rescue cost $1.8 million
Australian Antarctic Division director Dr Tony Fleming said the rescue cost his division around $1.8 million and they were trying to recoup the bill.
“We’re having discussions with the insurance companies,” he told a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra on Monday.
“It’s a complicated process.”
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-incidents/antarctica-cruise-ship-rescue-cost-18-million-20140224-33cdt.html
“To summarize…there are far more forcings in action that the Hockey Team care to admit, and I’m very skeptical that they didn’t even include volcanic aerosols in their models!”
I think it’s there as a parameter, so and so many eruption over a certain time period.?
I posted below in the Greenwich data WUWT. Perhaps it is worth repeating here.
Extra volcanic activity in the 21st C is new straw that the warmistas are grasping to explain the 21st C warming hiatus. But there is no precise record of volcanic eruptions over the last few centuries to prove whether or not there is a 21st Century increase in volcanic activity. However there are very good records on the incidence of great (Cat 8 plus) earthquakes since 1950 and any increase in their incidence in the 21st Century would suggest that there would be a knock-on effect of higher volcanic activity. There were 18 of these earthquakes from 1950 to 2000 and 19 from 2001 until now. This suggests that there has been a significant increase in incidence.
Japanese scientists have also directly linked the increase in galactic cosmic ray activity to increased volcanic activity. Overall galactic cosmic ray activity has been high so far in the 21st Century due to the concurrent low solar magnetic storm activity.
So the question that the warmistas don’t want asked is: if nature is overriding man’s efforts to warm the planet in the 21st C could it also have also had a significant role in the warming that occurred in the 20th Century?
So far this century there hasn’t been any significant eruptions of the Tambora type that occurred in 1815, but if the sun has gone into a grand minimum and this one is true to form then there could well be one or two in coming decades. There were 2 in the Dalton Minimum (unknown in 1809 and Tambora in Indonesia). These produced the coldest decade in 500 years. Laki in 1783/4 was also significant because of its latitude it only had throw matter 6 or 7 kilometers up to get it into the stratosphere. There were a number of large volcanic eruptions in the Maunder Minimum but none as big as Samalas (also in Indonesia) in 1257.
I’m suffering from units confusion. What are the conversion factors between Pinatubos, Hiroshima blasts, and microwave oven-hours? Sounds like a job for Willis!
i swear the T at the end of Chris as in Turney was a typo, tho i like it now that i see it.
Tom O’Donnell says: “Hard Quantitative estimates”.Wow!!! In the aerospace manufacturing world we have a term for that type of information: SWAG (for Simple Wild Assed Guess).
I prefer the term “P.O.O.M.A.” That stands for Preliminary Order Of Magnitude Approximation.” Really, it does.
“Yes,. of course, it’s the volcanoes, or the aerosols, or the Trade Winds, or the Polar Vortex, etc. The Warmistas are increasingly desperate to explain the complete failure of the CO2 models. When they get round to blaming the Jews, we will know that the end is at hand.”
I think it will end with blaming witchcraft from sceptics?
This study is farcicle.
If they are under-estimating the effects of volcanism because previously tropospheric eruptions were not considered significant. Then they need to INCREASE the 20th century cooling effect too. Yet it’s already too strong as the lower panel in their own graph shows.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/ngeo2098-f1.jpg
When they remove what they consider to be effect of Mt P they get left with a warming bump. Current values are already too big!
This is just more stupid manipulation. They attempt to invoke an effect to explain post 2000 ‘hiatus’ without applying the same thing to pre-2000.
It’s just like other attempts to blame the hiatus on recent drop in solar activity without acknowledging that this also means the late 20th c. warming was in part due to a sustained period of high solar activity.
It’s amazing the way these so-called scientists are willing to throw the scientific method under a bus in order to save the planet from a non existent problem.
There is only one conclusion to be drawn from that: their primary motivation in this work is not one of science.
Santa Baby @ 10:51pm
Sorry, couldn’t resist;
The coincidence that these volcanoes spewed the right amount of ashes, the deep ocean absorbed just the right amount of heat at the same time is truly unprecedented… /sarc
Since the science that predicted warming was sold to the public as beyond question any explanation is a blatant fraud by any standards outside that of climate science. Lets face it , even the most basic Fourier analysis shows regular cycles which are not replicated in a single one of the models which are therefore by definition proven wrong before we even start to examine correlation. A correlation which fails so dismally that now even the distorted no change interpreted as no change at all rather than no change from the normal variability is now better than the computer models.
It is interesting to note how the surplus of explanations now has appeared on the warmist side. A couple of years ago sceptics seemed to produce a surplus of explanations for the warming, and now, we see the same happening to explain the lack of it.
Was there any student of climate who did not already know volcanic eruptions cause cooling? Where’s the news in this story?
This work is based on the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid.
A volcano’s impact on temp, wind shifts and the like are concepts simple enough to understand by the majority of those that grasp at straws so they keep it up with simple solutions
My wife keeps telling me that I have a problem with admitting fault when she was right and I was wrong. If I know that she is correct I usually don’t try and think of another reason why I was wrong but want to make it sound like I was right after all because it just makes me look even more like an ………. I just shut up and get on with it. Worked for more then 30 years now, not sure if those temp cycles work in a marriage also, we’ll see.
It seems to me that the CO2 bandwagon lead followers have a similar problem with admitting the hypothesis is wrong, but they keep on trying to justify their flawed position.
Hey fellas it is like marriage, when you are wrong you are wrong and you better shut up.
It seems there is a discontinuity (inadvertently?) factored into the algorithms at around 15 years ago: before this, the effects of volcanic eruptions were accurately accounted for, but not since that time.
–
Thankfully, the warming hiatus has brought it to the attention of the climate science aficionados. Hopefully, at last, the ‘science’ is ‘settled’.
Oh, how the stupidity burns…
Let me see if I’ve got this straight so far…..
If ONLY: volcanos stopped erupting, sunspot numbers stopped falling, trade winds stopped being too strong or too weak (apparently both phenomena cause cooling…LOL!), the PDO stopped its 30-year cool cycle, La Lina cycles stopped, China stopped emitting coal particulates, oceans stopped warming, clouds stopped reflecting solar radiation, ocean evaporation stopped its cooling effect, Antarctic ice extents stopped growing, the Arctic Vortex stopped…..vortexing and monkeys stopped flying out my butt.. well…then… CAGW climate model projections would be spot on…
Got it… Carry on…/sarc
Pass the Duck Tape… My head is exploding….
What a load of BS – known & certified warmists trying to defend the Pause. They have absolutely zero credibility amongst anyone who would be naturally skeptical of such claims. They have everything to gain & nothing to lose by defending their CAGW meme, even if the data doesn’t support it.
Guys, we are not buying it !
I think I should publish a paper stating that the bulk of the warming from 1975 to 2000 was due to the lower than normal volcanic activity in that period.
If any of the idiotic warmists challenge this I can then ask them to produce the volcano date that they must have to hand for the 20th century to disprove it as otherwise they could not make the claims they have made in this paper.
Without this data, this paper amounts to stating that volcanoes have a net cooling effect.
Who would have thunk it!
Alan
The Afar reagion in northern Ethiopia has been active and emiting particulates and gases since people first lived in the region. Is the factored in to the models? It will eventually become an in-land sea, and that event will be interesting for the climate and the world!
Santer thinks the hiatus is a detective story. I’d say climate science in general is like a detective story at this time while it’s still in its infancy as a science. And as usual The Gardener (CO2) gets blamed before all suspects have even been properly interviewed 😉 But even though their current purpose is to strengthen their case against the gardener, I think it’s good for the science that they at least have started interviewing the other suspects!
“This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them when interpreting past climate and predicting future climate.”
I wonder how much much reminding all the idiots require?.
Rather waste time modeling, it seems the focus should be on finding a standardize way
of measuring dust in the atmosphere.
That might reduce the hopeless bad guessing and it might encourage some people to be less
forgetful.
As to Steve B ‘s query , when will they scrap the models and get back to real science?
My guess is , when Hades reaches a tipping point ( Hell freezes over!)
I haven’t trademarked that joke, so feel free to use it.
SAMURAI @ 11:47pm
Alright, apart from;
volcanos stopped erupting, sunspot numbers stopped falling, trade winds stopped being too strong or too weak (apparently both phenomena cause cooling…LOL!), the PDO stopped its 30-year cool cycle, La Lina cycles stopped, China stopped emitting coal particulates, oceans stopped warming, clouds stopped reflecting solar radiation, ocean evaporation stopped its cooling effect, Antarctic ice extents stopped growing, the Arctic Vortex stopped…..vortexing and monkeys stopped flying out my butt.. well…then…
…what else have the Roman’s done for us?
I’ve just removed the affects of Krakatoa in 1883 from my Megabucks5 computer model thus eliminating the cooling it caused and I find that from 1883 until the start of the hiatus that the global temperature has only increased by only 0.06 dec C per decade. I’ve also projected forward using the Megabucks5 Astrological Future Probe Chaos Destroyer Model and that gives a further 0.06×8.5=0.5 deg warming between now and the 2100. The Logic Consolidator and Travesty Override module has asked what to do with the heat that should have gone into the ocean instead of being reflected away by the newly identified reflective volcanic aerosols and I have to admit I am struggling, which is my own personal travesty. I need more funding!
Just one thing wrong with this theory. There hasn’t been any major eruptions since Pinatubo in 1991. This is shown beautifully in this atmospheric transmission curve:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/mloapt.html
Note that this was actually measured at the Sacred Site of Mauna Loa, the only true fount of CO2 data.
From the abstract of Santer et al. (2014), they’re claiming the volcanos explain only 15% of the divergence between models and observations, with large uncertainties, and they had to limit their study to only two models, the ones with more realistic responses to volcanos (the others had unrealistic responses apparently):
“We show that climate model simulations without the effects of early twenty-first-century volcanic eruptions overestimate the tropospheric warming observed since 1998. In two simulations with more realistic volcanic influences following the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, differences between simulated and observed tropospheric temperature trends over the period 1998 to 2012 are up to 15% smaller, with large uncertainties in the magnitude of the effect. To reduce these uncertainties, better observations of eruption-specific properties of volcanic aerosols are needed, as well as improved representation of these eruption-specific properties in climate model simulations.”
What all you people have missed is the obvious- it’s worse than we thought.
Because of global warming, the terrestrial volcanoes have been more active than usual, causing particles in the atmosphere to stop sunlight getting through, and deep sea volcanoes (which don’t cause aerosol particles) have been less active, adding less heat to the oceans, which have nonetheless absorbed the excess heat from the surface and are getting warmer (mostly in places where there are no instruments to capture the phenomenon, but take my word for it).
Terrestrial (subduction zone) volcanoes produce much more CO2) than deep sea (spreading zone) volcanoes, so like I said- it’s worse than we thought.
I don’t know why it’s happening, I’m not a climate scientist.
Mark my words (he said portentously) – you’ll all be sorry when the grants stop and the warmists (who are all much smarter than you) come to take your jobs!
That is good advice. I would add to that and say that we should also recall that all (or almost all) of the multiple causes of climate change can make the temps go up or make the temps go down.
Case in point; I thought volcanoes produced a lot of CO2 which the warmists say increases the temperature of the earth. Now we have both up and down from the volcano. (of course, some alarmists say that only man-released CO2 can do magic warming but surely that is known to be ridiculous)
Give them a break. Soon they’ll run out of excuses and find out where the heat really went.
Then they’ll be in trouble.
Each year, global atmospheric concentrations of GHG are a little larger than they were the year before. So, each year, aggregate global volcanic aerosols are also a little larger than they were the year before, so as to keep pace with those AGW rises. With great precision, wise old Mother Gaia has balanced off these opposing forces in each of the past 16 years (although not before 1997). However, AR5 is very confident that all this is about to stop and volcanoes won’t affect any future temperature projections.
Trenberth will be very disappointed with this paper. If there is no missing heat, how can it be hiding in the ocean depths?
ferdberple on February 23, 2014 at 9:50 pm
So, according to this paper, if you can’t predict volcanoes you can’t predict climate….
————-
This was my first thought as well. I’m not sure if they know how much they’ve backed themselves into a corner.
Don’t worry though, the next paper will show the climate is in a cooling phase, spin the coming ice age death spiral (again 30 years later), and blame volcanoes that are now more active due to manmade CO2.
Espen says:
February 24, 2014 at 12:11 am
“Santer thinks the hiatus is a detective story. I’d say climate science in general is like a detective story”
=====================================
I agree.
From my detective skills, I’d say it was Dr. Hansen, in the halls of Congress, with Algore and the IPCC as an accomplices, with a hockey stick, of whodunnit….
Unfortunately, you have the Keystone Cops of the IPCC investigating the case of who murdered science and they are accessories after the fact…
Oooooor it was the sun causing changes in cloud cover and combined with oceanic oscillations, axial tilt/Lunar cycles and SOME volcanic activity.
damn those Volcanoes causing those ice ages.
“This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them when interpreting past climate and predicting future climate.”
yes CO2 and Methane, both green house gases emitted by volcanoes that WARM the planet that would somewhat counteract the particulates operating in the reverse manner.
Also an admission that there are a wide variety of factors and attempting to alter a minor component like CO2 is futile. However there is no evidence that humans cause climate change, at least non in any substantial discernible way.
seems they are willing to look at anything EXCEPT the co2=warming ‘equation’. Are they not Masters of the Universe who understand climate processes with 95% certainty? Upon whose settled science billions in not trillions of tax money bets are placed even tho almanacs and amateurs have better long range forecasts [so have more truth in their understanding].
U wait 1 warm year and the hockeystick team will claim we are ‘back on track’ and they will be backslapping again.
There is no co2 deathstar. There never was.
Hockeysticks are best left for the olympics.
Again, please inform the writer of the paper of this discussion.
I would just love to see Santer’s face as he reads all the comments. 🙂
there is no predicted heating because the co2=warming equation came out of the beerosphere?
AndyG55 @ 1:53am
I would just love to see Santer’s face as he reads all the comments
Oh I don’t know;
is this why global co2 has increased since the 1960s?
http://boards.cannabis.com/colorado-co/194289-need-co2-advice.html
There is a very disturbing pattern here. The scientists whose work has benn comprehensively demonstrated to be false are still the main spokespeople on climate. They flounder around trying to find new excuses, and NO-ONE in the MSM ever contemplates the possibility that they have got things wrong, and that maybe it would be worthwhile to consult other scientists. No, these incompetents are perched firmly at the apex of climate science, and nothing and no-one can shift them. Maybe it would be worthwhile for WUWT to start a campaign to remove some of them?
Have they studied how much all of the hand waving contributes to global cooling? Yet another factor that is not in the models.
To determine Man’s influence on the global temperatures first you must model the natural influences.
The Sun has been warming the planet since 1800. There is also a 60 year cycle of warming and cooling as a e result of interaction between the Sun and the oceans. Looking at a chart of global temperatures for the past hundred years shows how these two things completely dominate.So 1910-1940 [warming] 1940-1970 [flat/slight cooling] 1970-2000 [warming] 2000-2030 [flat/ slight cooling]. An example of this chart can be seen here :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/30/is-the-climate-sell-signal-imminent/
So global temperatures are behaving exactly as if Man has no influence. The ‘pause’ is as expected and is due to the 60 year cycle.
What is truly amazing is that neither of these major influences are in the models. And what is completely amazing is that the well established 60 year cycle is regarded as not existing!!! One can see why people regard climate ‘science’ as anti-scientific.
Also note that historical reconstructions of climate show CO2 levels as lagging indicators of global temperatures by around 600-800 years. So it is very possible that the current increases in CO2 levels are due to the Mediaeval Warm Period. Who knows? So little research is done on the real climate that we will remain in these Dark Ages for a while.
There is no hiatus. There is only a discrepancy between the virtual world of climate models and the real world of mother nature.
As there is no hiatus, there’s no need for it to be “explained”.
There is no hiatus
There is no hiatus at all
He who invented it is a fool
He who promotes it is knave
And he who believes it is a primitive.
(free after Periyar)
From a previous post – note the coldest CET in the Dalton was 1814, one year BEFORE Pinatubo.
For the record, the subject study is not credible.
______________
I have no Sunspot Number data before 1700, but the latter part of the Maunder Minimum had 2 back-to-back low Solar Cycles with SSNmax of 58 in 1705 and 63 in 1717 .
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/space-weather/solar-data/solar-indices/sunspot-numbers/international/tables/
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/solar/image/annual.gif
The coldest period of the Maunder was ~1670 to ~1700 (8.48dC year average Central England Temperatures) but the coldest year was 1740 (6.84C year avg CET).
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
The Dalton Minimum had 2 back-to-back low SC’s with SSNmax of 48 in 1804 and 46 in 1816. Tambora erupted in 1815.
Two of the coldest years in the Dalton were 1814 (7.75C year avg CET) and 1816 (7.87C year avg CET).
Now Solar Cycle 24 is a dud with SSNmax estimated at ~65, and very early estimates suggest SC25 will be very low as well.
The warmest recent years for CET were 2002 to 2007 inclusive that averaged 10.55C.
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, then global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner.
Best regards, Allan
when the state took over religion because it was the biggest source of money it became political and u had the inquisition and the settled religion. When the state took over science because its it is the biggest source money it became political and you have the ‘consensus’ and the settled science.
the current religion or way to extract money is unvalidated model worship. The climate models [why more than 1 if they have the truth?] cannot reproduce historical climate but we are locked into accepting their predictions for which you must pay through your bills [driving the poor into heat or eat decisions] to buy carbon credits from those who sit on the boards of carbon exchanges. Now who they might be….?
who would put an unvalidated air traffic control.model into real time and force people to fly in planes [ie to place huge bets] on its monitoring and projections?
So, now we have Santer with ‘aerosols ate our global warming’, Trenberth with ‘the ocean ate our global warming’ and Hansen with….. well I’m not sure exactly what Hansen say’s ate our global warming these days, he changes his mind so it’s difficult to know exactly what he thinks.
These people will say anything to keep the grant money flowing.
Ben Santer: “We have found a discernable volcanic influence on climate”.
Ed Zuiderwijk says: on February 24, 2014 at 2:55 am
There is no hiatus
There is no hiatus at all
_________
Ed, writing a poem about the hiatus is difficult, as there are few if any words that rhyme with hiatus.
A Scottish friend wrote a song extolling the virtues of haggis – same problem. 🙂
Well if it’s volcanoes, I seem to remember hurling virgins into the maw appeases them..
More scientific than the excuses lately from the rabid environmentalists masquerading
as neutral scientists..
There is now a whole new field of science that has thousands of researchers involved in it.
“Explaining the lack of global warming” science.
Keep them busy explaining the reasons for “nothing is happening”.
On a serious note, there is always a background level of small volcanoes going off every few days. They have no net change on the climate because they have been occuring at this background level for billions of years, every few days. Billions of years. It is a constant and has no net impact.
Heh. Turns out we do have plenty of data and they plainly contradict Ms. Solomon’s claim. Looks like climate parasites don’t even bother with consistency any more.
NASA AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) at MLO (Mauna Loa Observatory)
What does this program measure?
Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) – No units
Are there any trends in the data?
The trends are seasonal at MLO, with a maximum in spring (March-May) resulting from aerosols transported from Asia. No inter-annual long term trends have been detected at MLO.
— AERONET Data Display Interface
Complete bull$#!t.
Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 12, 8465-8501, 2012
doi: 10.5194/acpd-12-8465-2012
Global and regional trends of aerosol optical depth over land and ocean using SeaWiFS measurements from 1997 to 2010
N. C. Hsu, R. Gautam, A. M. Sayer, C. Bettenhausen, C. Li, M. J. Jeong, S. C. Tsay and B. N. Holben
actually this… CRS, DrPH says:
February 23, 2014 at 9:58 pm
It is that the incidence of interplanetary dust on the upper atmosphere is variable, and has a significant effect on cloud formation, which in turn changes the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere.
isnt so far outta the game.
the recent meteor showers we pass through every so many years? capsomething?? and geminid been quite a lot the last few months too. and its a fairly regular timeframe cycle I gather.
read somewher they reckon incoming dust is in the tons, would have some countable effects maybe?
I know I’ve read this before but have forgotten… what’s the smoothing range in years on all of the pre-1950s temperature data (you know, the hockey stick graph)
Found this on the wiki:
“Also shown, Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1998 40 year average used in IPCC TAR 2001 (blue), and Moberg et al. 2005 low frequency signal (black).”
So, possible that the temperature swings go up and down all the time, but the scientists smoothed it all out in the proxy data, then tacked on non-smoothed data to show the spike in temperatures? Now the temperatures may be on the downswing again so that the 40 year average is not that different from prior history.
Ie. have we been allowing them to compare apples and oranges?
@ Yom O’Donnell
As an engineer I always understood the term SWAG to be Scientific Wild Assed Guess as opposed to the more simple WAG, Wild Assed Guess.
I was unaware that we’ve had any major volcano eruptions this millennium (not since Mt Pinatubo) and that was before the ‘hiatus’. Still amazes me that they honestly believe the implication that all of these ‘natural’ causes (volcanoes, the sun, trade winds, etc) have somehow managed to exactly balance the temperature increases the models show ‘should have occurred’ for a period of 17 years. Maybe someone should do a statistical analysis to determine the probability that THAT would happen. I could see it happening for a year or two, but 17? Seems to push the bounds of believability.
Since the science is settled, I see no reason for Santer to explain the hiatus away at all. After all, it clearly shows up on climate models. Oh wait …
For once I would like climate scientists to admit that the science is NOT settled, and to acknowledge that the models have clearly NOT performed well in the short term and should be taken with a grain of salt in the long term. Honesty would go a long way, but alas there is a little thing called largesse granted by govts.
They are doing little more than admitting, the models, if otherwise usable don’t account for all the variables.
How many more missing variables are there? How many of these are random, unpredictable and uncontrollable, rendering even a (magic and unlikely) model capable of a 100% fit to historic data, totally incapable of prediction.
Anyone who has ever been betroth to a mad spouse knows full well the futility of prediction.
As useful as a fit to flawed data.
In my considered opinion which I humbly submit is as good as any man’s, the hiatus is undoubtedly due to the current vogue for white and silver coloured motor vehicles which reflect more solar energy than those more absorbent blue, red or black ones. I am sure the team could find a correlation between the increase in the number of reflective vehicles and the pause if they were to look and that despite the recent emergence of a counterbalancing burning of carbon fuel to drive around all day with your lights on.
I myself have successfully modelled this phenomenon with a tanning lamp and my collection of Dinky toys. Enlisting a local home-brewer to raise the CO2 content of the experimental space showed no measurable effect other than to compromise my ability to maintain proper records after prolonged exposure to the evil carbon source.
The CO2 effect is certainly worthy of further study I think.
My next project however is to build a one to one scale model of the earth and atmosphere together with the rearer parts of the known cosmos and observe it for the next thousand years. Such a strategy will definitely expose the short comings of those piddling but well funded computer programmes.
All donations of spare Lego and Meccano gratefully received.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/22/disappearing-excuses-aerosols-likely-not-behind-the-warming-pause/
It is easy to prove that aerosols aren’t doing it.
In a study published today in Nature Geoscience, a team of scientists from MIT and elsewhere around the U.S. report that volcanic eruptions have contributed to this recent cooling, and that most climate models have not accurately accounted for the effects of volcanic activity.
“This is the most comprehensive observational evaluation of the role of volcanic activity on climate in the early part of the 21st century,” says co-author Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT. “We assess the contributions of volcanoes on temperatures in the troposphere — the lowest layer of the atmosphere — and find they’ve certainly played some role in keeping the Earth cooler.”
1) Volcanic eruptions only affect global temperatures for a very limited time period, unless they continue for years.
2) Aerosols only affect global temperatures while in the stratosphere.
3) Aerosols last only a few days in the troposphere and have a regional affect where they are washed out with precipitation.
4) There is no observed scientific evidence that aerosols have played any role in keeping the Earth cooler longer, than a minimum number of years far shorter than the hiatus.
5) Calculating the change in stratosphere aerosols on global temperatures are far too small to represent the change or stability of global temperatures during the satellite era.
6) Sulfates were put into models to try and show how they cooled global temperatures during the 1940s and 1970s, but the change since then in aerosols and global temperature shows they were greatly overestimated and not the cause.
The graphs below show why this article is not supported with scientific evidence.
Conclusion
The change in aerosols during the 20th and 21st centuries are far too small and short to represent the changes and stationary periods in global temperatures.
“if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit” pretty much sums up every theory the Santer’s, Trenbarth’s, etc. come up with to explain the “hiatus.”
Allan M.R. MacRae says:
February 24, 2014 at 3:10 am
Ed, writing a poem about the hiatus is difficult, as there are few if any words that rhyme with hiatus.
——————————————————————————————–
If Ed can figure out where to insert platypus into the poem, then he may be on to something.
Scientists discover new excuse for funding.
Why not blame the cirro-stratus for the hiatus.
There’s only a mystery about the current cooling if you actully bought into the discredited climate models produced by the slow-witted catastrophic global warming crowd.
Could there possibly be a more convincing admission that the science ain’t settled?
“This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them when interpreting past climate and predicting future climate.”
In other words the Alarmists desperately run around in circles trying to find explanations as to why their climate projections are wrong. Funny, even during the peak of the Alarmists’ warning period (circa 2004-2008), anyone who could read a chart could clearly see that their projections were not only wrong, but extremely so. And as early as 2009 the Team (Gavin Schmidt, Trenbeth, and Mann et als) privately worried about the “missing heat”. First it was the deep oceans, and then some admitted that ENSO played a part. Now it is volcanoes. As they all wait and pray for the next Super El Nino they work feverishly to get their studies published.
AGW theory is supposed to be settled, yet here is yet another attempt to justify the humiliating pause they neither predicted nor can explain. Is it 9 different ‘explanations’ now, or just the 8?
The entire AGW thing – it’s a volcano-sized shambles, isn’t it.
@Robert of Ottawa:
“Why not blame the cirro-stratus for the hiatus.”
Because they would have to admit that the negative feedback of clouds (especially in the Tropics) is strong enough to negate the effects of that magical Greenhouse Gas – CO2. If they admit that, then their entire house of cards collapse.
And yet when convenient, CO2 from volcanism is cited as the cause of global warming. Remarkably, this is true even when actual geological evidence shows tropical ice at the time of the supposed GHG-induced warming, as during the Late Cambrian, when CO2 levels were several thousand ppmv. This excuse has also been trotted out to explain the end Permian & end Triassic mass extinction events. So volcanoes are used to account for both cooling & warming, whichever better supports CACA.
“Alan Robock, a professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers University and a leading expert on the impacts of volcanic eruptions on climate, says these findings are an important part of the larger climate picture. “This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them when interpreting past climate and predicting future climate.”
” all of them “? Good luck! Many of them are totally unpredictable with present technology or possibly never will be predictable. And OBTW, since 70% of the Earth is covered with water, what are we doing to estimate the heat put into the oceans by under sea volcanic activity which may have had an impact upon prior years heating of the environment? The overall system is what is called chaotic.
Anyone know how good this stuff is? Martin Casdagli: “Nonlinear Prediction of Chaotic Time Series”
What a mark of desperation. Rather than just admit the obvious, that their original hypothesis was wrong, they are going thru all sorts of contortions to prove they were right but that unforeseen intervening variables had changed the circumstances.
Look no further. I have the answer for why there is a hiatus. It is the hiatus of the Atlanta Falcons not having been to a Super Bowl since after the 1998 season. And there is a very high correlation coefficient as well, of 1.00.
The AMO index went negative in January 2014 at -0.039C.
Part of the reason for this is there a seasonal trend remaining in the numbers that they are using now (I don’t know why they let this happen and refuse to fix it but the index will naturally peak in the August and hit a low point in February now).
The Index, however, is certainly down from the peak in 1998 of +0.531C. You don’t need phony (and these are phony) aerosol or volcano forcings if you use the AMO Index cyclicality.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.long.data
Aside from the square pegs and round holes, did they just admit that albedo is completely unaccounted for and that they believe even small changes in albedo completely outweigh even smaller changes in a trace gas? If so, there is another Monty Python clip about Ann Elk for that.
I do not understand what is supposed to be new about this paper, except that the authors are claiming that there have been sufficient volcanic eruptions in the last fifteen years or so to lower global temperatures. If they really believed this then they should have shown how the number and/or strength of these eruptions had increased as compared with, say, the number and/or strength of volcanic eruptions in the previous fifteen years.
The fact that volcanic eruptions can lower global temperatures had been known for at least en years before Arrhenius came up with his hypothesis that CO2 could cause global warming. I cannot find my old schoolbook but here is an extract from one of the numerous articles on Krakatoa.
“The eruption also produced erratic weather and spectacular sunsets throughout the world for many months afterwards, as a result of sunlight reflected from suspended dust particles ejected by the volcano high into Earth’s atmosphere.
This worldwide volcanic dust veil acted as a solar radiation filter, reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the earth.
In the year following the eruption, global temperatures were lowered by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius on average. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.”
source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/k/krakatoa.htm
Sorry, that this is not as amusing as the post by son of mulder who has basically made the same point,.
Meanwhile, back in the Climate Science lab…FUDGE! MORE FUDGE! Is Luci back on the line again? Send her to break! MORE FUDGE!
WAIT! What?!! I thought all the heat was going into deep oceans, now they tell me it never got to the ocean surface at all? Can you believe these jokers?
Oh this pause in our warming won’t do
Lamented the climate scientist who
Grasped wildly at straws shouting
It’s for the Cause!
For warming we blame CO2.
Has the heat stopped hiding in the deep oceans?
Bottom line: “All warming is man-made and all cooling is natural fluctuations. It’s all right there in the models (except the natural part).”
Horse pucks. Aerosol load depends on where you measure it. The most important component of equatorial load comes from Africa. Ben has no idea what he is talking about. Am responding from my phone. There is plenty of research on this topic and I doubt Ben took serious stock of it. Will add comments later when I have a computer screen in front of me.
“Bill Strouss says:
February 23, 2014 at 9:22 pm
How about clouds? Seems that variations in cloud cover would cause wide swings in temperature, I’ve heard the models don’t take into account cloud variability, go figure, I guess the computations would get complex. Not to mention the monitoring, and quantifying of cloud variability would be tedious.”
Observed cloud cover over the period 2002-2014 is trendless.
I hate to point out the obvious, especially after pages of replies, but it’s simple logic… If there have been 15 years of little or no volcanic eruptions and this has ceased the warming trend, that suggests before this hiatus there were volcanic eruptions that were at least partially if not wholly responsible for the warming trend,,, Aha! Does this mean the warming of the 20th century was volcano driven and not CO2 driven? It seems you can’t have it both ways. There was either enough volcano driven heat to keep the warming trend alive, until it stopped, or there wasn’t enough and then volcano’s can’t explain the warming trend ending…
Haven’t they already claimed that global warming will increase the frequency and severity of volcanic eruptions? That makes this a NEGATIVE feedback mechanism.
“hard quantitative estimates …”
FFS.
“The recent slowdown in observed surface and tropospheric warming is a fascinating detective story,” says Ben Santer, … “There is not a single culprit, as some scientists have claimed. Multiple factors are implicated…”
Well then, Mr. Santer, could not multiple factors have been implicated in the increase in atmospheric temperatures that occurred prior to 1998? Or, did the bulk of the evidence suggest a discernible human influence back then and no further detective work was required in those good old days of world transformationdom?
Santer gives the game away when he says, ““There is not a single culprit, as some scientists have claimed. Multiple factors are implicated. The real scientific challenge is to obtain hard quantitative estimates of the contributions of each of these factors to the so-called slowdown.” [Bold mine]
The use of the word “culprit” in this context is interesting, It’s as if he’s off on a Holmesian search for the perpetrator of a crime- in this case, the crime of falsifying AGW.
He will find some way to confirm the theory in his eyes. Because the idea that the climate is self-adjusting or that greenhouse gases are far more benign than previously understood can’t enter into it. He’s got to find his culprit
It’s a set up for a new “volcano tax.” Sequestering volcanoes is going to be expensive…. 🙂
What are two well known gases that volcanos emit when they erupt (and often vent continually when they are not actively erupting)? Come on warmists….you can say them….methane and C02!
Good scientists! Now, here’s a toughie….if volcanos are ejecting enough particulate matter to actually affect the global temperatures negatively…is it possible that they can also eject enough GHGs to affect the global temperatures positively? In real science, “underestimations” cut both ways.
Oh, and if more sunlight has been blocked by particulates than we thought, then less sunlight was available to heat the oceans. Make sure you re-adjust your math “estimates” in the models there too.
Nice try, Hoser. It was a very simplified graphic that omitted other reactions for clarity, since carbon dioxide is not implicated in noctilucent cloud formation.
Anthropogenic compounds eventually migrate to the polar atmosphere, which is how CFCs ended up there, causing (or not causing) the “ozone hole.”
Methane from a wide variety of sources (manure, landfills, gas drilling/transport etc.) is widely distributed in the atmosphere including the poles. We observe high concentrations of chlorinated hydrocarbons in the Arctic, this may be due to reactions of chlorides from seawater (discussed on WUWT) with reactive methane.
http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/~lizsmith/SEES/ozone/class/Chap_10/10_3.htm
Allan M.R. MacRae says:
February 24, 2014 at 3:10 am
Ed Zuiderwijk says: on February 24, 2014 at 2:55 am
“Ed, writing a poem about the hiatus is difficult, as there are few if any words that rhyme with hiatus.
A Scottish friend wrote a song extolling the virtues of haggis – same problem. :-)”
Any poet worth his salt…. how about “high flatus” from Benny S. on arseho..er no .. aerosols. All this volcanic “flatus” will “dilate us”.
And haggis it will “gag us” because its really a “coprophagus” (slag us, bag us, drag us,..) I hope I have helped.
Oh and probably the aerosols from submarine volcanoes are largely “scrubbed” out by the sea water, so they shouldn’t be much help.
Climate…it’s just one damn thing after another, isn’t it?
Mr Santer may finally be realizing An Inconvenient Truth …
Actually all y’all have it backwards.
Volcanoes add to global warming.
1 – they inject large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
2 – they inject large amount of dust into the atmosphere. Dust that settles out on the white snow causing it to melt faster, changing the color of the earth from white to dark increasing the take up of electromagnetic radiation of the earth which causes more energy to be released which is then captured by the extra CO2. That is the process that add heat to the atmosphere.
Now, we are flushing more money down the toilet with “revelation” studies chasing after “the” reason or reasons for the stalled warming.
Everything continues to be based on the original theory of catastrophic global warming being right(and their reputations intact) and rather than just state, “OK, the global climate models and theory had some serious chinks” the response is to back up the theory with newly discovered science that not only will show they were right in the first place, but now, they are so smart as to be able to provide the world with the secret reason being the warming stall that nobody knew before.
The reality is that even if their reason is/was correct, it means their theory is wrong. If the natural response of the oceans, atmosphere and sun is causing temperatures to not go up for 15 years(after also cooling a bit for 30 years before the 80’s/90’s warming), then it’s clear that whatever the reason they give……………………..the system, for decades at a time is driven by whatever reason they give and during that time, CO2 takes a back seat.
In fact, if whatever reason they give is offsetting the warming right now, it means that the whatever reason they give was likely enhancing the warming(80’s/90’s) when it’s effect was the opposite as it is now.
That is proof that CO2 is not as powerful of a climate driver as theorized.
Good news for drought stricken California. Some hefty rains coming later this week.
Not drought busting but very welcome.
Maybe we should call this “The Obama effect”.
Like when Al Gore went to Washington to speak about global warming and the place got shut down by a blizzard, Obama’s recent visit to California to intensify the spell/brainwash in peoples minds that everything, including the California drought is from humans spewing carbon pollution(known to authentic scientists as a beneficial gas that is boosting plant growth and world food production by 15%)
Now we have rain on the way.
BTW, California had a severe drought also in the WInter of 76/77 which also featured the circumpolar vortex temporarily dropping extremely far south(into the US and S.Canada) bringing extreme cold to the Eastern 2/3rds of the US.
The PDO was near the end of its 30 year cycle when it was negative most of the time(followed by being positive in the 80’s/90’s).
The PDO, right on schedule has returned to being negative.
Expect more of these type of Winters.
Speaking of the Obama effect. Thanks to the EPA declaring CO2 as pollution, they can regulate it however they want. In this case, it means shutting down as many coal fired power plants as possible………..which is already happening.
Who thinks that our country needs MANY less power plants generating electricity for residential heating if the next couple of decades will have these type of Winters more often than we did in the 80’s/90’s?
This administration is aggressively taking complete control of our energy policy based on an agenda to fight global warming and make us believe in the human caused climate change boogy man that only exists in the minds of those that have fallen into the trans of an idea with no support from the real world and science.
Take note that these explanations for why the warming stalled are all coming AFTER the warming stalled. Not one of them was predicted or even considered BEFORE the warming stalled.
Take note also, that AFTER our Winters in North America took a turn towards increasing snow in the mid 2000’s, then they claimed that global warming puts more moisture in the atmosphere and caused bigger snowstorms and blizzards. Not one of them predicted or even considered this before hand(the prediction was that our future world would feature no snow for its children)
Take note also, the AFTER we had record breaking cold this WInter in the US, Obama’s climate science expert produced a marketing video to explain how we should expect more extreme cold because of global warming. Why were we never told this before hand?
Reason. None of it was predicted before hand, just like the theory of CAGW is being crushed by real world empirical data and authentic science. They were wrong about almost every prediction but hindsight is always 100%.
So the marketing brainwash is to use hindsight and come up with a convincing sounding explanation for why every extreme weather or climate event WAS caused by humans burning fossil fuels.
They already have a massive amount of people convinced. Once a person thinks they know something their brains will easily accept new information that confirms what they think they know and it gets stored in their brains as knowledge.
It’s 10 times harder to convince that person that they are wrong about what they think they know. They will reject things that contradict what they think they know…………..even if they are dead wrong about their belief and the evidence showing that they are wrong is compelling and placed in front of them.
“ALL-CLEAR IN THE STRATOSPHERE: Earth’s stratosphere is as clear as it’s been in more than 50 years. University of Colorado climate scientist Richard Keen knows this because he’s been watching lunar eclipses”
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=19&month=12&year=2010
“The lunar eclipse record indicates a clear stratosphere over the past decade, and that this has contributed about 0.2 degrees to recent warming.”
Did they just delete the two big events to make the aerosol release from 2000-2013 look big?
I went back and looked at 1950-1999 vs 2000-2013; more moderate ones recent but more big ones in the past.
Is this just doctoring the historical down to make recent data look big?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_volcanic_eruptions_of_the_21st_Century
Compare the reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions resulting from the implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act with the increase in SO2 from the eruption of Pinatubo.
Pinatubo – 17mm ton increase
Clean Air Act – 12mm ton decrease EVERY YEAR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/quarterlytracking.html
European environmental regulations preceeded ours by about 10 years, and caused similar decreases in SO2 emissions in the 1980s.
Let’s put it all together, if you are reading this blog you now know the answer. The EPA and Congress (and European regulators) caused all the global warming in the late 20th century. The global cooling in the 1960s and 1970s was caused by the gradual increase in SO2 as the world industrialized and electricity generation using coal increased. When we cleaned out the SO2 temperatures went back up. But now guess what?? China put 50 coal fired power plants online in the last year. The EPA wants to undo the effects of their prior regulation by regulating something else… and as our dear leader said, “under my plan electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket”.
OK, so where does this leave the previous “explanations” for the lack of warming?
It’s hiding in the deep ocean
It’s because we’ve not included the arctic properly
??????????????????????
I am waiting for Katla to cut loose as it sometime does, to add to the misery of a cooling climate.
Words and excuses from the officialists will have little meaning to the Europeans at that point.
I’m confused. Can someone tell me what puts more CO2 into the atmosphere people or volcanos? This must also be confusing to Santor.
People emit more than volcanoes. Look at the links. However we know the amount emitted by US plants, and European plants, but little about Chinese plants. If Pinatubo cooled the Earth by .5 degree based on 17mm tons SO2, what were we doing when we emiited 15mm tons annually, and when Europe was emitting 20mm tons annually? And when we added scrubbers and reduced emissions by 20-25mm tons annually, what was the likely result? It’s a no-brainer. The fact that hundreds of scientists can’t figure this out is the mystery.
Clean Air Act – 12mm ton decrease EVERY YEAR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/quarterlytracking.html
Human SO2 emissions compared with SAOT.
Notice none of the sulfur emissions reach the stratosphere and need volcanic eruptions with force to achieve this. Unless SO2 emissions reach the stratosphere there will be no global affect on temperatures.
The real reason for the hiatus is shown below, global clouds.
With the change in PDO complementing it well with weaker and less El Nino events, combined with stronger and more La Nina events.
It will only be matter of time when the AMO becomes increasingly negative (over the next decade) and increasingly difficult for a warming planet in future. The AMO has recently reached negative and is at what I call neutral values. (very close to zero)
Right and we know all this because… we sort of think so? You present 2 hypotheses neither of which is supported by any evidence. First you think “none” of it reaches the stratosphere, and it can’t have an effect if not in the stratosphere. Those are just convenient assumptions. Where’s the proof.
This is the correct link to the above post for global clouds.
The other is deliberately exaggerated by twice the forcing, to show a huge difference for comparison only. This type of forcing is the extreme range and very unlikely to be this much. Almost like the equivalent 4c global warming up to the year 2100 from the climate models.
Uh, people… do you realize what you all have done?
In one small thread, you’ve totally destroyed the whole “climate science” charade AND MIT.
Keep up the good work.
Just the Facts, I noticed the same thing you did. No warming since 1993.
Brodie Johnson says:
February 24, 2014 at 12:17 pm
“You present 2 hypotheses neither of which is supported by any evidence. ”
I have only presented observed data and the expected forcing on cloud albedo shown by satellite data and hadcrut3 global temperatures.
http://climate4you.com/images/TotalCloudCoverVersusGlobalSurfaceAirTemperature.gif
The scientific evidence supports declining global cloud levels with warming global temperatures and since global cloud levels have stabilized there has been no warming.
If global warming that occurred was caused by decreasing SO2 human emissions then why did almost all the rise occur in just 2 step ups? The global warming step ups occurred straight after strong El Nino events, hence the links above that I have shown. The PDO positive phase represents more stronger El Nino events and the PDO negative phase represents fewer weaker El Nino events.
None might not be the correct word, but negligible or unnoticed probably fairer. The scientific evidence shows the SAOT satellite data is not detecting the massively much bigger human SO2 levels. Hence, human SO2 levels are not reaching the stratosphere.
Brodie Johnson says:
February 24, 2014 at 12:17 pm
“it can’t have an effect if not in the stratosphere”
I was referring too it cant have a global affect and it does have a small localized regional affect. The problem being SO2 is very short lived in the troposphere with it being washed out and falls to the ground as acid rain.
The 2 step up in global temperatures link.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.5/trend/offset:-0.05/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:1996.5/trend/offset:-0.05
Virtually all the temperature rise down to just the 2 events.
Brodie Johnson says:
February 24, 2014 at 12:10 pm
Matt G says:
February 24, 2014 at 12:11 pm
There is a huge difference between SO2 injected in the stratosphere by volcanic explosions like the Pinatubo and SO2 injected by humans in the lower troposphere: the residence time.
Human SO2 emissions have an average residence time of 4 days before raining out or going down as dry deposit.
Stratospheric SO2 has an average residence time of 1-2 years, because the growth of water drops around the SO2-SO3-H2SO4 molecules is a lot slower in the stratosphere – far less water vapour.
That makes that the 0.5°C drop in temperature from the Pinatubo”s SO2 injection translated to the continuous human emissions gives near zero change in temperature. Anyway far less than what the climate models have implemented because they needed a scapegoat to explain the 1945-1975 temperature drop with increasing CO2 levels.
As the SO2 emissions dropped in Europe and North America and increased in SE Asia, there is hardly any change in human SO2 emissions and hardly any stratospheric injection in the past 1.5 decade by volcanoes. Thus this story -again- has no bearing in reality…
Like the Berlin Wall CAGW will suddenly collapse one day and then we will hear zilch about climate science. The progressives jump on something hype it till the point of manipulation then leave it for good. How much do we hear about home ownership and expanding loans to the disadvantaged anymore? Of course after the Liberal Media throw a brief tantrum and question the motives of scientists and even the validity of current science itself they will move on to the next issue. The average Joe still opens windows before a tornado so it will take quite a while for these myths to be tossed in the dumpster of history!
Hmmm….hang on. Why is it volcanic activity is capable of halting the 20thC temp rise when it was going up, but incapable of stopping it in the first place? Are volcanoes a new discovery, because I distinctly remember them in the 20th century.
/Derp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_volcanic_eruptions_of_the_20th_century
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
February 24, 2014 at 1:21 pm
Agreed,
The links I gave show stratospheric SO2 has an average residence time of about 2 years. Hence, even this is far too short for any long term climate affects.
I am not convinced that volcanic activity has even a tiny fraction of the effect of changes in solar irradiance. Even when Tambora in 1815 blew, releasing something like 60 cubic miles of debris and 3 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the climatic effects (cooling, incidentally, despite the huge CO2 emission, dozens of times more than ever released by human activuity) lasted only about two years. No trend there.
Well, if my almost ZEV Subaru Impreza, is a cause of climate change, then for sure the occasional volcano is. So just how occasionally erupting is Haleakala in Hawaii ? Anyone got a quick handle on just how many currently active erupting volcanoes there are on earth ??
I notice we now have more polluting carbon on earth than we used to have. In Sierra Leone, they dug up 153 carats of carbon in an unstable (room T&P) form. Not as big as the 969 all time largest alluvial diamond ever found and just a dust grain compared to the Cullinan 3107 carat stone.
Diamond is unstable at room temperature and pressure, and apparently prefers to be graphite. Luckily, the atoms are packed so tightly, that it takes a lot of temperature to agitate them enough to crumble down to soot. I dunno if bucky balls are also unstable at RT&P.
So be careful of your diamonds, lest the gat carbon taxed to death.
Professor Ian Plimer wrote a whole book called Heaven and Earth, listing many factors that could affect the climate, including volcanoes. The idea that climate scientists can identify, measure and model all these factors is just ridiculous. They are finally realising Prof Plimer was right.
http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Earth-Warming-Missing-Science/dp/1589794729
“the Earth’s surface temperatures have remained nearly flat for the last 15 years”. That’s a bit of an exaggeration; the temperature trend has been less steep, but certainly not flat. Fact is, the linear temperature trend in recent years is still positive, even if you take the unusually warm El Nino year 1998 as your starting point. 2000-2009 is the warmest decade in the instrumental record. 1998 now ranks third warmest in the instrumental record; 2010 and 2005 were both warmer.
Gerry Beauregard says: February 24, 2014 at 5:12 pm
That’s a bit of an exaggeration; the temperature trend has been less steep, but certainly not flat.
No, you are wrong, there has been no “Global Warming” since the late 1990s or early 2000s, The Pause, which has been acknowledged by all loosely credible news sources, i.e.:
In fact, looking at the Werner Broznak’s recent article, the Pause in each major temperature data set is as follows:
WoodForTrees.org – Paul Clark – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
For GISS, the slope is flat since July 2001 or 12 years, 6 months.
For Hadcrut3, the slope is flat since July 1997 or 16 years, 6 months.
For Hadcrut4, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 13 years, 1 month.
For Hadsst3, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 13 years, 1 month.
For UAH, the slope is flat since October 2004 or 9 years, 3 months. (goes to December using version 5.5)
For RSS, the slope is flat since September 1996 or 17 years, 4 months.”
Shown graphically, that looks like this:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"]
Hiding Co2 global warming is volcanoes activity. The “Hiatus”
Somehow, I knew the so called “Climate Scientists” would fall back on volcanoes when I saw a satellite photo of a active volcano in Chile. (WUWT). But there is one Big Problem with [their] “Hiatus” All of the recent volcanoes activity started after the recent decline of “world temperature reading” How will they spin that?
Big Problem with there……. should read Big Problem with their…..
Three words: Out Of Africa
Volcanic contribution to Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is extremely minor compared to the dusts of the African deserts. But then the group of scientists attached to the above research seem bent on studying tiny things while ignoring large things. Really large things. Like oceans and vasts deserts, and trade winds, and jet streams…
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.12.9025&rep=rep1&type=pdf
“This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them…”
—
There most certainly are multiple natural causes of climate change, and they keep coming up with new ones, like aerosols and volcanoes. Since the science is settled, why can’t they provide us with a definitive list of them all instead of inventing new ones whenever they need to explain why their models fail to match reality?
The contribution of volcanos to global cooling is exactly zero. I proved this in my book “What Warming?” that has been out since 2010. You will find the explanation on pages 17 to 21 and it is not complicated. I started by studying that Pinatubo cooling about much nonsense has been written. One article by Self et al. in the book “Eruptions and Lahars of Mount Pinatubo” in 1996 stands out. They report warming in the lower stratosphere at 16 to 22 kilometer height. When a volcano erupts that is where the hot eruption products immediately ascend. The stratosphere warmed at first but that was followed by cooling within the year. That is observation but then they jump over and transfer this stratospheric cooling to the troposphere because of a mistaken identity. They show an out of context segment of the satellite temperature curve that includes the 1991 El Nino peak followed by La Nina cooling. It so happens that by coincidence the Pinatubo eruption coincided with the 1991 El Nino peak. El Nino peaks are followed by La Nina valleys and it was only natural for these guys to think that Pinatubo caused cooling an appropriate that La Nina as Pinatubo cooling. You can’t argue with that because this is an example of one. Besides, he is an expert on volcanos and ought to know. But then he gives me a hint about what is going on. Not knowing anything about ENSO hethinks that Pinatubo just suppressed an El Nino and pontificate that ” Pinatubo climate forcing was stronger than the opposite warming of El Nino event or anthropogenic greenhouse gases…” But then he admlts to some puzzling observations and starts to wonder why surface cooling is “…clearly demonstrated after some eruptions (for example, Gunung Agung, Bali, in 1963) and not others – for example, El Chichon, Mexico, in 1982.” Interesting, isn’t it? What would you do with that? What I did was to look up El Chichon on the global temperature chart and discovered that its eruption coincided with a La Nina valley and was immediately followed by the 1983 El Nino peak. No sign that it even tried to overcome that El Nino, and no convenient La Nina valley in a location that could be appropriated for a volcanic cooling event. That was the clue. I checked out the locations of a number of other volcanic eruptions with reference to the El Nino peaks that are displayed in many global temperature curves. They are the teeth of the sawtooth pattern that some people want to disappear. It turned out just as I suspected: if an eruption was close to an El Nino peak they appropriated the La Nina valley that followed for its volcanic cooling. If the eruption was near the bottom of a La Nina valley there was no La Nina near to appropriate and they were stuck. Gunung Agung was followed by an abrupt descent into a La Nina valley that was appropriated for its cooling. But the greatest eruption of the twentieth century was Katmai (Novarupta) in Alaska. Its timing coincided with the beginning of an El Nino and it left no trace of any cooling whatsoever.There were also intermediate cases whose timing fell in the downward slope between an El Nino peak and a La Nina valley. They ended up with substandard cooling. Among them is Krakatao. From this it is quite certain that volcanic cooling simply does not exist and such “volcanic cooling” incidents marked on temperature charts are simply misidentifications of La Nina valleys that by chance happened to be where theory predicts a volcanic cooling ought to be.
“… aerosols in an upper layer of the atmosphere — the stratosphere — are persistently variable…”
—
“Persistently variable” sounds like an oxymoron to me. Something can be persistent or variable but not both. However, if people can refer to something as “constantly changing,” then I guess “persistently variable” could also be valid. Come to think of it, “persistently variable” is a good description for the theory of climate change. The theory has been changing faster than the climate, so it’s certainly not “settled science.”
To: Ferdinand Engelbeen
You are correct that the residence time of anthropogenic SO2 is too short to be comparable to volcanic SO2 “pound for pound”, and in fact must be an order of magnitude smaller. My speculation was therefore ill-informed. However, 1) global SO2 emissions are on the order of 100mm tons annually, taking into account petroleum as well as coal, and areas other than Europe and the US, and these emissions over 20 years are ~100 times greater than the emissions from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption (17mm tons); and 2) most of the emissions are in near populated areas, where most temperature records are taken 3) the paper below states that the “horizontal extent” of human SO2 emissions is “1000 to 2000km or more” so it is not unreasonable to speculate that a significant amount might end of 10 km higher than where it was emitted, and 4) there is the possibility of convection carrying emissions into the stratosphere. Also the paper referenced in this thread discusses post-Pinatubo eruptions where the amount of SO2 was an order of magnitude smaller (say 2mm tons, with less of it in the stratosphere since the plumes are not as high for smaller eruptions), and yet postulates this was enough to offset a 20% increase in CO2.
My instinct (admittedly with no scientific basis) is that in Beijing, the smog is bad enough that everyone wears a mask. When I am at the beach on a 75 degree day, and the sun goes behind a cloud, I put my shirt back on. The smog in LA was much worse prior to catalytic converters and emissions regulations. If you can see smog it is going to make it cooler. Just common sense. But by and large we have eliminated smog in the US and Western Europe. In St. Peterburg I saw more smog than in the last 40 years in any city in the US. These are all anecdotes and prove nothing. However they suggest something that needs to be investigated further.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/ClimateForcingAerosols1992.pdf
mwhite says:
February 24, 2014 at 10:50 am
“The lunar eclipse record indicates a clear stratosphere over the past decade, and that this has contributed about 0.2 degrees to recent warming.”
——————————————————————————-
Where do you see a recent warming of 0.2 in the last decade?
Here is a great link to recent photos of the 2/14 explosion at Mt Kelud, Wired had the link along with a post on the event…http://www.oysteinlundandersen.com/Volcanoes/Kelud/Kelud-Volcano-Indonesia-February-2014.html
To: Fredinand Engelbeen
I may not be so wrong after all. The article below from a researcher at Berkeley Earth, which I had not previously seen, stresses exactly the same point I was making – that EPA regulations on sulphur emissions have warmed the climate.
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2008/06/common-climate-misconceptions-why-reducing-sulfate-aerosol-emissions-complicates-efforts-to-moderate-climate-change
So, I have questions. How is it that aerosols and green house gasses can just hang in the atmosphere and not fall out due to , I don’t know , gravity? I understand that the atmosphere is not homogenous, it is stratisfied due to respective atomic and molecular weights of various gasses and compounds where they occur in the atmosphere. So does CO2 collect in a layer above the troposphere? Or does it fall out over time? My point is that there must be a quantifiable analogue for gasses heavier than oxygen-nitrogen air mix to measure the rate of fall-out against the rate of emission? Thus CO2 can not just stay “up-there”.
george e. conant says:
February 25, 2014 at 5:39 pm
Thus CO2 can not just stay “up-there”.
Yes, it can. Gases do not follow the rules of buoyancy like objects in water. The only gas molecules that are not more or less distributed evenly throughout the atmosphere are water vapour molecules and that is because they condense into liquid droplets in clouds. But even then, clouds can hang around for a long time until the drops get too large.
Allan M.R. MacRae correction of :February 24, 2014 at 2:55 am
From a previous post – note the coldest CET in the Dalton was 1814, one year BEFORE Tambora.
The cooling effect of sulfur aerosols – is important for the 1 – 2, up to 4 years.
How (very little) important?
“For example, when GCMs are used to best fit the 20 th century warming, they give a global temperature drop of about 0.4-0.5°C during the great eruption of Krakatoa.”
“Apparently, the global temperature decrease following these major eruptions is very modest, just over 0.1°C […], and barely overcoming the natural climate variations.”
“(Note that the large drop in 1981 took place a few months before El Chichón’s eruption).”
(Nir Shaviv – http://www.sciencebits.com/FittingElephants)
Stratospheric volcanic eruptions most likely, however, can significantly (?) warming climate.
Even small concentrations of sulfur aerosols can strongly and permanently reduce the level of stratospheric ozone for many years – have a significant impact on tropospheric clouds.
Let’s look at this figures of volcanic activity:
(http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/volcano_20th_century.gif, http://www.sciencebits.com/files/pictures/climate/volc/20thCenturyWithVolc.jpg)
For NH both strong warming 193? -4? and current (197? – 200?), preceded by a very high stratospheric volcanic activity – destroying ozone in the stratosphere.
Look at this figure: (http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/rate-of-change-of-global-average-temperature-1850-2007-in-oc-per-decade-2/image_preview) – period of rapid cooling (the Europe) 195? – 196?, was preceded by long period of exceptional peace of tectonic (an increase of ozone in the stratosphere, exceeded the hypothetical “the border” for initiating the rapid the cooling process – abrupt increase in global cloud cover?).