By Dr. David Whitehouse The GWPF (video follows)
Warming Interruptus
What is the reason for the lack of warming observed at the surface of the Earth since about 1997? Many causes have been proposed, and with increasing frequency, but most only rep- resent partial explanations. There are clearly more putative causes than can possibly be the case.
The pause has given climate science several things. It has provided a reassessment of the importance of natural climatic variability and its relationship to human influences on the climate. It has also shed light on the role of so-called sceptics as well as the successes and failures of climate communication.
Here are the current explanations for what has been called the biggest problem in climate science.
There is no pause
Some argue that the pause does not exist and that the warming trend seen to commence around 1980 has continued linearly with predictable variance around the mean. Of course it is possible to draw a straight line through most sets of data and attempt to justify it. However the length of the pause – 17 years – means that it cannot reasonably be regarded as part of a linear trend since 1980, so this explanation no longer works.¹
Low solar activity
Placing the role of solar activity in recent climate has been problematical. It is obvious that that periods of low solar activity in the past have coincided with cooler climatic conditions. Examples include the Dalton solar minimum around 1800 and the Maunder minimum in the 17th century (now shown to undoubtedly be a global event). Prior to about 1960 solar ac- tivity played a major role in the Earth’s climate, but in recent decades the IPCC has declared that it plays only a minor part, being dwarfed by human influences on the climate. So what is to be made of the recent decline in solar activity from the relatively high levels in the late 20th century? Some believe that the sun is entering a lengthy period of low activity as it has done in the past. Curiously, the commencement of that low activity coincides with the pause in global surface temperature. There are indications that almost all climate models underplay the effect of solar activity. Some have asked how, if the slight increase in total solar irradiance over the past 30 years cannot cause the warming, it can have contributed to the pause. This effect is likely to be relatively short lived. ²
As one paper on the subject put it:
The purpose of this communication is to demonstrate that the reduced rate in the global temperature rise complies with expectations related to the decaying level of solar activ- ity according to the relation published in an earlier analysis Without the reduction in the solar activity-related contributions the global temperatures would have increased steadily from 1980 to present.
The IPCC Fifth Assessment report estimates that despite the decline in solar output since 2000, total warming influences have increased faster since 1998 than over 1951–1998 or 1971–1998.
The heat is in the oceans
The most cited explanation for the pause is that the warming has gone into the oceans, and indeed the oceans are expected to absorb far more energy from the greenhouse effect than the land. But while the oceans have warmed in the past few decades, the extent to which this is due to mankind is debateable and the ocean heat content data is not behaving as some expected.
The best data we have is from the ARGO project. It goes back ten years and shows no warming in the uppermost layers of the oceans, and only modest warming down to 1800 m. If more heat is there it must be at deeper levels, where it is far harder to detect, and where it may well be locked out of the way for a thousand years. ³
Pacific decadal oscillation/Atlantic multidecadal oscillation
The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) switches from warm to cool every 30 years or so. It went positive in 1976–98 and has been mostly negative since about 2000. Given the Pacific’s pos- tulated influence on global climate this might indicate that the pause will continue until the PDO changes again, which will be in 15–20 years. A similar effect has also been suggested for the 60–70-year Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. (4)
Stratospheric water vapour
A very interesting paper suggests that natural variations in stratospheric water vapour could be responsible for about a third of the 1980–98 warming phase. Lead author Susan Solomon, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said:
Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapour near the surface. But this is different – it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect.
Solomon and her co-authors concluded that decreases in stratospheric water vapor concentrations acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000–9 by about 25% compared to the warming that would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapour probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% compared to estimates neglecting this change. (5) However, the IPCC Fifth Assessment report shows very little warming from stratospheric water vapour over 1980– 2000 and no cooling from it over 2000–2010.
Chinese coal
Kaufman et al. (2012) suggest that the increased burning of coal in China is producing aerosols that are cooling the world. Others suggest this conclusion uses computer model data that has been cherrypicked to give the required result. It also does not include the latest solar data. (6,7) Moreover, the IPCC Fifth Assessment report does not support this finding.
The Pacific and the La Niñas
Some scientists suggest that recent cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific reconciles cli- mate simulations and observations. Although they consider only 8.2% of the global surface they maintain that their computer model reproduces the annual-mean global temperature remarkably well for 1970–2012, a period that includes the current hiatus and a period of ac- celerated global warming. They postulate that the pause is part of natural climate variability, tied to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, they say, the multidecadal warming trend is very likely to continue due to man’s influence on the climate. (8)
Stadium waves
In this idea the extent of sea ice in the Eurasian Arctic enhances or dampens the long-term trend in rising temperature. Such changes introduce a low-frequency climate signal, which propagates across the Northern Hemisphere through a network of synchronised climate in- dices. The tempo of its propagation is rationalised in terms of the multidecadal component of Atlantic Ocean variability – the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. The authors of the stadium wave paper say, ‘the Eurasian Arctic Shelf-Sea Region, where sea ice is uniquely exposed to open ocean in the Northern Hemisphere, emerges as a strong contender for generating and sustaining propagation of the hemispheric signal’. This explanation suggests that the pause should end in the 2030s. (9)
Arctic stations
Could it be that the pause is an artefact of poor spatial sampling? This is the suggestion from Cowtan and Way (2013). They compare different ways of accounting for the lack of weather- station data in various regions of the globe, principally the Arctic. They maintain that when the data are infilled the pause goes away and that the warming rate is similar to that seen in the 1990s.
The problem with this approach is that it involves creating a hybrid dataset using different infilling techniques for different regions, leaving it open to suggestions of cherrypicking. (10,11)
Pacific trade winds
According to some scientists a key component of the pause has been identified as the cool eastern-Pacific sea-surface temperature, even though it is not clear how this ocean has re- mained cool despite the long-term warming effect on the climate due to human activity. It is contended that there has been a strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades that has not been factored into climate models and that when these changes are made the effect is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substan- tial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake. The sci- entists who suggest this have used model-based ocean temperature ‘reanalyses’, not mea- surements, and the mechanism involved implies the heat uptake in the top few hundred metres of the ocean should have increased during the pause, but measurements suggest otherwise. (12)
Note also that a few years ago other scientists were suggesting the opposite: that weak trade winds were responsible for the pause. (13)
Volcanoes
Since Mt Pinatubo in 1991 there have been no volcanic eruptions sufficiently large to obvi- ously reduce global temperatures. However, it has been argued that there has been a num- ber of smaller eruptions, the cumulative effect of which might partly account for the pause. This is the argument of Santer et al. (2014). However, these authors estimate this is likely to have caused only a 15% reduction in the temperature trend since 1998, only a fraction of the actual reduction. (14,15)
A coincidence!
It has been suggested that the computer climate predictions are running too warm because they are not properly accounting for volcanic aerosols, aerosols in general, solar activity and the effects of El Niños. In a recent Nature commentary, Schmidt et al. suggest that, taking these climatic influences together, they can completely explain the pause. The problem with this approach is that other influences are ignored and a non-unique combination of factors has been cherrypicked to provide the explanation. (16)
Notes
1 http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2012/october/myth-that-global-warming-stopped-in-mid-1990s.aspx
2 http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=41752
3 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/2013EF000165/asset/eft24.pdf
4 http://www.pnas.org/content/110/6/2058.full.pdf
5 http://www.thegwpf.org/water-vapour-and-the-recent-global-temperature-hiatus/
6 http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/pnas-201102467.pdf
7 http://www.cawcr.gov.au/staff/jma/Decadal.trends.Meehl.JClim.2013.pdf
8 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html
9 http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/10/the-stadium-wave/
10 http://www.thegwpf.org/pause/. 11http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract. 12http://www.thegwpf.org/pacific-pause/
13 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7089/abs/nature04744.html
14 http://www.thegwpf.org/volcanoes-20-year-pause/
15 http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n3/full/ngeo2098.html.
16 http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n3/full/ngeo2105.html
These explanations are a distraction. The real answer is obvious.
THE MODELS ARE WRONG !
Did the oceans eat the 1910 to 1940 warming? Long live the pause.
You mean it’s not settled science that the missing atmospheric heat is hiding in the deep oceans, where it can’t be measured & for how it got there a good physical explanation not in violation of the laws of thermodynamics is lacking?
John: We know the models are wrong. The goal is to find out why and fix them or at least make them better.
Science marches on.
kenw says:
March 26, 2014 at 2:11 pm. If we know the models are wrong, why are climatologists still claiming they can be used to explain the climate? Experimenting with CGMs is one thing, though it seems to be about as successful as was seeking the Philosopher’s Stone by the pseudo-scientists of yore. Claiming wholly false skills for models is quite another.
Fake a chart showing temp and CO2 as a hockey stick…
…fake and lie about past and current temp records
lie about functions of CO2, etc etc
base computer games on fake temperature records, etc
Debate and discuss this “science” as if it wasn’t lies..
…and then wonder why no one can explain or predict anything
There is no cause for the pause or the trivial ups and downs in the last century. This is all just average weather and everyone is making a huge deal out of nothing. What do you expect that each date every year must have the exact same high and low temperature and precipitation; every year the same first and last frost date, same number of tornados and hurricanes, and if not there must be billions in research money to find the cause? What you are looking it is a stable climate, and it will remain so until it slides into the next ice age. But looking at it that way can’t justify requests for government grants.
typo, One r too many in the title. 😛
Prima facie, it would seem to be PDO, wouldn’t it? Same pattern as 1950-1975: Mild AGW counteracted by negative PDO, followed by positive PDO amplified by mild AGW. The latter of which led to the gross exaggeration of AGW, before the PDO was described by science (in 1996).
That even supports the so-called “97%” meme that “at least half the warming” from 1950-date is AGW of one variety or other.
This is entirely consistent with the lukewarmer position (i.e., Monckton, Spencer, Christie, Lindzen, both Pielkes, Curry, McIntyre, etc., etc.). It’s also the simplest, easiest solution.
If the Chinese burning coal causes cooling, shouldn’t the alarmists be rejoicing in this very clever (inscrutable!?) Chinese solution 🙂
There will be many more panicked excuses and much frantic hand flapping to come. What the fellow travelers are desperate for now is a “sciencey” sounding excuse to hide the fist-biting mistake at the foundation of every warming claim.
The problem is that adding radiative gases to the atmosphere cannot reduce the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability. Our oceans can accumulate a huge amount of solar energy were it not for atmospheric cooling. And how does our atmosphere cool? Radiative gases.
The problem for the fellow travelers is the Internet means that the foundation claim that our oceans would be frozen solid without atmospheric cooling or DWLWIR can never be erased. Every one can see that the maths at core of the false claims can’t cope with SW accumulation in transparent materials.
There is no warming since 1980. Just plot the data on a time scale that shows the “big picture” instead of with a microscope.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/scale:3/from:1880/plot/rss-land
Some have theorized that there are two primary climate trends 1) the first is a long term warming trend since circa 1750 which has maintained the virtually the same slope from circa 1750 through today. 2) The second trend is a 60-70 year cycle of warming and cooler (approx 23-35 years of alternating warming and cooling. (The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) switches from warm to cool every 30 years or so.)
Mesh these two trends together and it matches the warming, cooling and the current pauses of warming going all the way back to circa 1750.
There appear to be numerous shorter term trends, el nino, la nino, volcanic activity, etc. which seem to be only minor players.
Scientists, meteorologists, etc have known about the Pacific decadal oscillation/Atlantic multidecadal oscillation for more than a century and is common knowledge among meteorologists.
Why then – did our esteemed climate scientists – who are obviously smarter that the rest of us – not factor this into the models.
They should be trying to understand the ramp up in warming 1980-1998 rather than the “pause.”
To my mind, the advent of computer controlled gas engines with fuel injection explains the warm up – the skies clear as the auto population gradually changes over to clean engines, followed by the Chinese smog beginning near the end of that period and growing. Carbon was given credit for
much too large a portion of the warming trend. Warmists are all-too prolific in their speculations but very deficient in producing evidence.
17 years in which atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen from 364.09ppm (Feb 1997) to 398.03ppm (Feb 2014). That’s a 9% rise without any statistically-significant rise in global air surface temperatures.
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
The obvious cause for the pause is the one the warmists dare not utter……
Tgasloli, quite so! Just natural variations … which cannot be admitted to by the natural climate change deniers
Perhaps data follow Hooke’s Law. The more you bend them the harder they resist?
FWIW, I think that measuring the length of the pause in terms of CO2 rise (33.96ppm by my measure) would be a really simple and effective way of getting the skeptics message across.
The most absurd aspect of the pause/hiatus is the contention that it is:
“the biggest problem in climate science”
It ceases to be a problem — great or small — the instant climate scientists concede that the extra CO2 is in no way responsible for dangerous runaway global warming.
It always was an implausible hypothesis And, regarding this hypothersis as flawed, obviates any need for an explanation. So why not simply draw the obvious cloncluion that the demonization of CO2 is entirely misplaced.
.
-The heat is in the oceans
The most cited explanation for the pause is that the warming has gone into the oceans, and indeed the oceans are expected to absorb far more energy from the greenhouse effect than the land. But while the oceans have warmed in the past few decades, the extent to which this is due to mankind is debateable and the ocean heat content data is not behaving as some expected.-
Ocean certainly absorb more sunlight than land.
But I don’t see how oceans absorb more energy from greenhouse effect, as the ocean is transparent to sunlight and is not transparent to IR of greenhouse gases.
So more 90% of energy of sunlight warms beneath the surface of the ocean, whereas no IR reaches below the surface of the ocean.
It seems sunlight has most effect upon temperature of ocean and greenhouse effect has least effect upon ocean.
Some comments seem indicated and their authors think that alarmist climate “scientists” are trying to make the models better. Nothing could be further from the truth. The models exist to create alarm and panic so as to justify draconian government action. No more, no less.
A working climate model would be destroyed as heresy.
All are aware of the ever growing pauses in the cause
David Whitehouse’ brief elaboration of “the plateau” (as Nature dubbed it), will figure quite prominently this spring.
I give an annual global warming talk to Denver, Colorado, area “skeptics” – those who mostly lean gullibly Warmist, yet still harbor pretensions of being critical thinkers about scientific matters. This brilliantly summarizes the quandary that certain, settled global warming science has become – a lacunae for out time to Believers.
Real skeptics, of course, have long thought their pretensions of knowledge and claims of “science” were bunk. Just because something is fashionably labeled “science” doesn’t mean it is. And now the most pretentious chickens of all have come home to roost, because a re-think is so painfully called for.
Cynics of authority – now is out time to delight in our Schadenfreude.
Amen Lattitude amen.
Like it. It’s cheeky.
In fact very tongue in cheeky. 🙂
Brit humour. 🙂
Cloud changes due to shielding of galactic cosmic rays by solar magnetic fields from sunspots, as quantified by a proxy factor times the time-integral of sunspot numbers, track the global average warm up from the depths of the Little Ice Age until it stopped in about 2001. Ocean oscillations, with period 64 years and amplitude ± 0.18 K, dominated by the PDO, cause measured average surface temperature anomalies to oscillate above and below the global trend. R^2 > 0.9 since before 1900. Details at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/
Scientists, meteorologists, etc have known about the Pacific decadal oscillation/Atlantic multidecadal oscillation for more than a century and is common knowledge among meteorologists.
Some oscillations were known earlier than others. NAO, for example. But the PDO, the biggie, was not recognized (except by fishermen) until the late 1990s. That’s how a lot of the fundamental errors in climate science have occurred, such as the exaggeration of aerosol effect from 1950 to 1975.
Ascribing 1950-1975 flat-to-cool to aerosols allowed the alarmists to claim (incorrectly) that “true” AGW warming is the full rate of warming from 1976-2007, whereas half of that warming was natural.
Discovery of the PDO put a huge crimp in CAGW theory. It cuts the alarmist claims in half right off the starting block.
David;
There is always the thought that we placed too little emphasis on natural cycles as being responsible for part, or indeed just possibly the majority, of the ‘warming’ seen recently.
The data would seem to suggest that here is more than a slight possibility of that being the case.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-giss-rss-and-uah-global-annual-anomalies-aligned-1979-2013-with-gaussian-low-pass-and-savitzky-golay-15-year-filters-1979-on.png
I think we can cross the “hiding in the deep oceans” explanation off this list. As John Cook of Skeptical Science was quoted in the French Tribune — Climate Change Likened to Atom Bomb by Scientist :
Have you ever tried to hide four atom bombs going off per second anywhere without Mom finding out? If these were going off in the deep ocean we’d be up to our asses in Godzillas by now. Not buying it.
The future might call it a pause, but we can’t.
PAUSE 1 : a temporary stop
To call it a pause is to assume global temperature will resume climbing. We don’t know if it will or not. Therefore, it is accurate to say global warming has STOPPED, not PAUSED. Indeed, calling it a pause is warmist propaganda. By calling it a pause, they imply it will start going up again. They don’t know that.
“Missing heat hiding in the deep ocean” may be a misleading way of describing a genuine variability in surface temperatures. The sea-surface is warmed by the sun, and cooled by both the atmosphere and space and by the deep ocean. The former has probably been measured and modelled to death, probably not so for the latter.
The surface warming from above may be increasing, at roughly the same rate as the cooling from below, in which case the extra heat from above has not really jumped to the deep ocean.
Attempts to validate a theory lacking evidence by more theories without evidence. How long can this charade be maintained before people realize they’ve been fooled?
Gamecock says:
March 26, 2014 at 3:24 pm
IMO, it’s a plateau, since the next move could be up or down. If down, then the earth might warm at some later date, say in the 2040 to ’60s.
~1857-86 warming
~1887-1916 cooling
~1917-46 warming
~1947-76 cooling
~1977-2006 warming
2007-36* cooling
2037-66* warming
2067-96* cooling
*guesses
Oh it’s wore than they think and worse than they can face.
This website ran an article on the number of weather stations versus claimed averaged temperatures. There were a number of step-changes in the 1980’s to 1990’s. As they dropped the coldest stations, “temperatures rose.”
The reason for the pause is simply that they cannot do that again. We’d catch them.
The biggest problem in climate science is the climate modelers. Tim Ball’s got it right.
The pause is an illusion created by the random variation in reported average global temperature anomalies. Since approximately 2005, global average temperatures are actually in a down trend, soon to become apparent, of approximately 0.18 K per decade.
Coincidental, is it not, that the start of “the pause” coincides with the global temperature record being compiled in real time. This points to pre-1997 all having been adjusted downwards. The climateers must be maddened that they can’t adjust post-1997 temperatures downwards as well. When they figure out a way to do so (e.g. by switching from temperatures to an “energy budget”) and so can adjust the past two decades, then the pause will vanish once again — take that, deniers!
Humans are warming and cooling the entire planet. /sarc
LadyLifeGrows says:March 26, 2014 at 3:34 pm
This graph?
http://i27.tinypic.com/14b6tqo.jpg
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
March 26, 2014 at 3:15 pm
“I think we can cross the “hiding in the deep oceans” explanation off this list. As John Cook of Skeptical Science was quoted in the French Tribune — Climate Change Likened to Atom Bomb by Scientist :”
The “French Tribune” mistakes Cook for a scientist?
This doesn’t seem to be La Tribune.
About the author
“Pauline Beart
History
Member for
3 years 51 weeks”
Here’s her e-mail address.
http://frenchtribune.com/liste-journaliste
Please advice her respectfully that John Cook is a know-nothing cartoonist with a penchant for German uniforms.
If the science were being done honestly, I would expect the proponents themselves to at least float the idea that maybe the theory is fundamentally wrong.
26 March: Reuters: Alister Doyle: Extracting carbon from nature can aid climate but will be costly-UN
The process – called bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) – would make the power plants not only carbon-neutral but actively a part of extracting carbon dioxide from a natural cycle of plant growth and decay…
***It would be a big shift from efforts to fight global warming mainly by cutting emissions of greenhouse gases from mankind’s use of fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars, but may be necessary given the failure so far to cut rising emissions…
Apart from the high costs of BECCS, “the area you need is vast,” said Joris Koornneef, an expert at sustainable energy consultancy Ecofys in the Netherlands…
***He estimated that it would require 350 million hectares (864 million acres) – bigger than India – to be producing biomass for BECCS to make enough to suck 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air, which would risk taking land from food crops.
Erwin Jackson, deputy head of The Climate Institute, an independent research group in Australia, said governments and companies should do more to research BECCS technologies. “At the moment we’re ignoring them and that’s risky,” he said…
***The IPCC says it is at least 95 percent probable that climate change is mainly man-made, rather than caused by natural swings, but opinion polls show voters in many nations are unconvinced.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/26/climatechange-ccs-idUSL5N0MN30420140326
Steve Keohane says:
March 26, 2014 at 3:47 pm
According to Steven Mosher, climate “scientists” rely upon 40,000 stations.
He’s a very funny guy.
DirkH says:
March 26, 2014 at 3:57 pm
“The “French Tribune” mistakes Cook for a scientist?
This doesn’t seem to be La Tribune.”
The French Tribune also seems to be seriously in love with Venezuelan socialists.
http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/1316543-i-dont-want-die-said-venezuelan-president-last-moments
Checkmate! The King is dead.
The Warmists explanations noted above consist of 8 cases of natural factors, only one of human causation (evil Chinese coal), and 3 equivocations (no pause, arctic stations, “coincidence”)
This amounts to concession by the Warmists that natural forces govern climate change.
Let’s celebrate, publicize, and throw the Bums out!
I think it’s all the windturbines cooling the air, all the european ones are pointed at America.
The concept of a single global average temperature is pretty poor, as others have remarked. It may shed much more light on what is going on by looking at a set of regional temperatures, maybe one of the oceans or hemispheres is responsible for most of the temperature variation.
I’ve been pushing here for about a year for the use of that word as being the most neutral one available. Ditto, for two years, for “contrarian,” for the same reason. I’m glad both are getting traction.
Pat Frank says on March 26, 2014 at 3:34 pm:
“The biggest problem in climate science is the climate modelers. Tim Ball’s got it right.”
= = = = = = = =
Of Course, – Tim has got it right. – – It can be proved mathematically that CO2 has no “extra capacity” for saving, or storing atmospheric “temperature levels” or as we call it “Heat”
Here’s something to quote to them:
they have to make it global not local. Like they prefer global sea levels rather than regional because it hides the fact some have falling sea levels which means other processes are at work other than the co2 deathstar dogma. By making averages global they can ‘hide declines’. Which for me explains the recent thread on real climate looking looking for methods to make a global temps chart to blow away what they call the ‘misinformation’ on temps.
global means explanations do not have to be given for the regional differences. co2 must warm the whole earth not just one bit of it. Can’t sell co2 without making everything global averages.
Until a little child says, “ICPP”?
There is no Climate Science.
At best, there are scientists working on developing same.
Proving Anthropogenic influence is still very problematic.
You guys just gotta cut the team some slack.
For Pete’s sake – remember this is all settled science. It’s not like some big mystery…
As soon as the boys get finished with various libel suits, censoring colleagues, corrupting the peer review process, burning original climate records, revising their data (yet again), refusing debate invitations, studying tree rings, and saving the polar bear, they will tell us what the “settled science” answer is.
Do I REALLY need /sarc?
Remember a while back when Trenberth claimed the Null Hypothesis should be CAGW? We all poo pooed that, but right under our noses they have done just that.
The question of what is causing “the pause” or for that matter the existence of something called “the pause” presupposes truth of CAGW. It has become the Null Hypothesis. With that out of the way, now they have to develop hypothesis for why nothing is happening. Assuming CAGW is the Null Hypothesis is the only reason they cannot look for an answer in the only place it will be found.
Let’s put the Null Hypothesis back where it belongs. CAGW has never been proven. The Null Hypothesis is natural variation. There is nothing to explain, no reason to look for some cause for nothing happening.
Actually JohnM did hit the nail on the head. And while Dr. Whitehouse gets to it at the end, most of his short spiel is spent talking about what we already know.
But it is what we do not know that is most intriguing. And the reason the models are wrong. If you are looking around the corner for the money you dropped, you will never find it.
gbaikie says, March 26, 2014 at 2:51 pm:
“Ocean certainly absorb more sunlight than land.
But I don’t see how oceans absorb more energy from greenhouse effect, as the ocean is transparent to sunlight and is not transparent to IR of greenhouse gases.
So more 90% of energy of sunlight warms beneath the surface of the ocean, whereas no IR reaches below the surface of the ocean.
It seems sunlight has most effect upon temperature of ocean and greenhouse effect has least effect upon ocean.”
That’s the eternal mistake being done, treating the atmosphere as a second provider of energy to the surface, as if it adds an extra INput.
In the real world, the warm body (the ocean) receives no energy from the cold body (the atmosphere) at all. It delivers energy to it.
Radiation (EM waves) is of course being emitted in all directions, but the FLOW OF ENERGY between two bodies at different temperatures (not to say the least, where the one body actually heats the other one), ALWAYS and ONLY goes one way, from hot to cold.
This seems to be a very hard concept for people to grasp. Much easier then to naively imagine two opposite and distinctly separated ‘highways’ set up between the two bodies where energy in the form of ‘light particles’ is transported back and forth.
No, simply compare it with an electrical current or a flow of air (wind) between a high pressure and low pressure. It’s all about gradients/differences in POTENTIAL.
Individual electrons surely fly around in all directions, but the CURRENT moves only one way. Driven by the voltage across the circuit. Likewise, individual air molecules surely fly around in all directions, but the FLOW of air, the wind, moves only one way. From high to low pressure.
The size of the difference in potential, the gradient between high and low, whether it’s represented by voltage or pressure … or temperature, determines the strength of the flow (resistance disregarded).
You cannot accuse those on the ‘right’ side of the argument of cherry picking, only us ‘deniers’ cherry pick don’t you know?
Scientists, meteorologists, etc have known about the Pacific decadal oscillation/Atlantic multidecadal oscillation for more than a century and is common knowledge among meteorologists.
Why then – did our esteemed climate scientists – who are obviously smarter that the rest of us – not factor this into the models.
I’ve been an operational meteorologist for 32 years. These decadal oscillations were not common knowledge and used for widespread forecasting for nearly as long as you stated. I’ll guess that maybe the last 2 decades.
They were not taught at university’s up to the early 1980’s, which is when I graduated.
I strongly believe that one of the biggest problem with climate scientists and global climate models is explained by humans having a confirmation bias.
With regards to meteorologists, we live and die by the models. We use them for guidance. At the start of most careers, many of us gain a false sense of security and confidence in our forecast because we can interpret model data and weather charts so well.
It’s just a matter of time and busted forecasts, after we were correct interpreting the model projections but wrong about the weather to learn the lesson about models that climate scientists can’t learn as easily.
The reason has to do with the number of forecasts and time frame to judge skill.
A meteorologist makes a new forecast every day based on model guidance. Some time frames are longer of course but at the end of their first year, they’ve had at least 100 opportunities to see the models perform and bust numerous times.
This provides a reality check on the skill level of models to predict and the meteorologists limitations to forecast using this tool.
Take a climate scientist or global climate model going out 50 years. Let’s say Michael Mann made his first climate forecast, using global climate models in 1990, when he was 30 years old(just a guess on the numbers). He will be 80, in the year 2040 when the period that forecast covered is over.
Obviously, there “should” be numerous opportunities with time, to adjust the forecast based on new information(just like a meteorologist may update a day 7 forecast, each day as it gets closer). However, the point is clear that climate scientists, convinced that they have(had) it right and with 30 more years(of a 50 year forecast for instance) left for instance and without using climate models enough times to experience the daily reality model check of a meteorologist, they take a loooooooooong time to learn the lesson about having complete faith in models.
I realize that the mathematical equations representing the physics are much different in global weather models vs global climate models and these are 2 different animals in forecasting but if this were the year 2,100, with global climate models in use for over 100 years and not any better than the ones we have been using the last 2 decades, no question that climate scientists would be capable of much greater objectivity using empirical data to guide them towards proper adjustments vs confirmation bias because they are married to their forecast that is busting badly.
evanmjones says:
March 26, 2014 at 3:08 pm
My prior comment – Scientists, meteorologists, etc have known about the Pacific decadal oscillation/Atlantic multidecadal oscillation for more than a century and is common knowledge among meteorologists.
Evan’s response – Some oscillations were known earlier than others. NAO, for example. But the PDO, the biggie, was not recognized (except by fishermen) until the late 1990s. That’s how a lot of the fundamental errors in climate science have occurred, such as the exaggeration of aerosol effect from 1950 to 1975.
Evan – I think we agree on the broader point – which is that the climate scientists, who know so much more than us mere peons, ignored a lot of science
O H Dahlsveen, that wasn’t what I had in mind. The problem I see is how the modelers think, not necessarily what’s in their models. I’ve had a fair bit of personal experience over the last year. They don’t think like scientists.
27 March: Age: Peter Hannam: IPCC dispute simmers over economic costs of climate change
Richard Tol, a lead convening author of the chapter 10 in the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report due for release at the end of March, said he disagreed with the general findings that global warming will bring major disruptions to nations and nature.
“I think the [Summary for Policymakers] drifted too far to the alarmist side,” Professor Tol told Fairfax Media in an email…
Bob Ward, an expert reviewer of the chapter, complained to the IPCC that the additions, including clause 10.9.2., downplayed the economic costs of climate change and also contained errors. He also rejected comments by Professor Tol and co-chair of the entire Working Group II report Chris Field, that his complaints had been accepted outside the normal review process.
“There was no way within the IPCC’s official review processes for me or any other expert reviewer to see the final draft which was distributed to governments,” Mr Ward told Fairfax. “It is only because I bothered to download from a blog a leaked copy of the final draft of chapter 10 that I was able to see the changes and spot the errors.”
The spat sheds light on the relative paucity of economic research on climate change and also the difficultly of capturing the costs of extreme weather events or calamities such as conflict over food or water…
Andy Pittman, director of the University of NSW’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, said that while climate science “is scaffolded on phenomenally sound foundations”, economists dealt with competing assumptions of human behaviour .
Economics “does not have the luxury of those projections being anchored in something that is immutable like the laws of physics”, Professor Pittman said…
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/ipcc-dispute-simmers-over-economic-costs-of-climate-change-20140327-35jho.html
Lorenz’s Butterfly has gotten loose again!
Economic costs of climate change?
How convenient to use an unproven theory for high end speculation about economic costs of climate change that have yet to occur and underestimate the massive gains from the irrefutable law of photosynthesis that are known to be occurring with absolute certainty.
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/MonetaryBenefitsofRisingCO2onGlobalFoodProduction.pdf
What controls weather? The sun, galactic particles that can be deflected by solar activity, so less clouds, severe volcanic eruptions, jet streams, and seasonal changes. Well a huge meteorite or asteroid could too. Solar storms? Now why would human kind have a hand in? Only in cities that create their own micro-climates and UHI that also create pollution. It has been long known that water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas, and we can’t control that either. I have long thought that governments and these gravy train opportunists, have realised that a new ice age would affect human activities in the Northern Hemisphere. When they started a new ice age scare in the seventies, they were silenced and told to forget that! Even the late Carl Sagan suggested that human activities created a warmer earth and this could herald a new ice age. It is true that the earth has gone in climatic cycles, and warming preceded a colder period, but nothing to do with humans.
@ Pat Frank: Because they are not scientists, by any convoluted definition.
@ Mike Maguire: Not to mention the quantifiable suffering from food & energy poverty- epitomized by the tens of thousands of seniors in the UK perishing every winter.
In the world of finance, where non-disclosure of material facts jeopardizes one’s freedom, much less their job, most of these guys would be long gone.
I find it surreal. It’s as though Madoff’s schemes were revealed in documents leaked to the public and most others in the world of finance remained silent as Bernie continued to publicly brag about the validation of his models returning 15% annually. Further, the brave few that challenged the Madoff models were sued by Bernie for defamation.
The striking differences- Bernie, primarily targeting the wealthy, could only dream of the sums CAGW is sucking from those that can least afford it.
Jimbo says:
March 26, 2014 at 2:05 pm
Did the oceans eat the 1910 to 1940 warming? Long live the pause.
======================================================
I hope not. Warmer is better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Excuse 13.
Racist Magic gas.
Based on the data, CO2 of an Asian Ethnicity must cause global cooling.
While nasty capitalist CO2 causes global warming.
We have evidence..when western emissions dominated there was global warming, as Asian emissions have matched and then overpowered the efforts of the west, there has been stagnation and an indication of global cooling.
This is the only “logical” explanation.(Using UN IPCC logic ™)
All consensus loving climatologists Know that all climate is driven by the Magic Gas and only mans CO2 emissions have this magical potential, therefor the above is the only explanation.
Please send Nobble piece prize and cash, small unmarked bills.
kenw It is simple the models cannot be fixed. You cannot model chaos, chaos is weather and climate. you may be able to fit a curve for a while but in the long rung you model will eventually run off the rails big time. Believing you can ‘fix the models” comes under the category of “you cannot fix stupid”. Models will work with some degree of accuracy for a short period of time(hour to days) anything beyond seven days is doomed for failure. It the nature of chaos and you cannot “fix” chaos.
To all I erred I said “Believing you can ‘fix the models” comes under the category of “you cannot fix stupid”.” I meant to say Believing you can ‘fix the models” comes under the category of “you can fix stupid”. hope it clear up what I meant thanks and good luck to all.
Relative to the “Biggest Probllem in Climate Science”, here is my “entry” (from a Layman):
The claim is made that the pause cannot be related to aerosols since satellite measurements have shown essentially no change in the level of aerosols for many years.
Also, if aerosolls are involved, there should be cooling because of the massive pollution from the East, but that has not happened.
However, the cause of the pause actually IS due to aerosols.
According to the EPA, between year 2000 and 2012, annual emissions of SO2 due to the Clean Air Acts were reduced by 10 Megtons, with more occurring overseas. (The total of all pollutant emission reductions, in the US alone, is reported as 54 Megatons).
These figures represent the reduction in the atmospheric loading of aerosols, which will naturally increase surface warming due to greater insolation (as happens after the pollution from a large volcanic eruption settles out of the air). But, again, this has not happened.
The reason is simply that the expected warming due to aerosol reductions in the West is being offset by the aerosol emissions from the East. Because of this offsetting, satellite measurements will show little change in aerosol amounts. This offsetting is shown in the graph of “Global Anthropogenic SO2 Emissions”, (Smith, et al, 2011), beginning somewhat before year 2000.
It is unlikely that this offsetting can continue indefinitely. If the East cleans up its air, the expectation would be that warming would resume. However, the warming would be far from catasthrophic, with no concerns about runaway warming.
Solar irradiance has been decreasing since 1980, which could cause some cooling of the earth. An increase in warming, therefore, could actually be beneficial (and potentially be used as a “control knob” for the climate, if too much cooling occurs)
Comments?
The pause is due to the gradual waning effect of high solar activity in the 20th century combined with a negative PDO. It’s plain obvious. C02 is trying to counter it but can’t manage, showing climate sensitivity to co2 is low.
The whole argument that most late 20th century warming is due to humans is wrong, because they never took into account the delayed (multi-decadal) effect that high solar activity would have on the climate, (much the same as a delayed peak in summer warmth after the summer solstice, and a delay of several hours in daily temperatures after noon), combined with a positive PDO at the time. They are now gradually realising their mistake.
The next few decades will show just how much climate is (weakly) sensitive to c02, expect the next few decades to remain static or even decline as the negative PDO and weak sun over-ride the weak warming effect from c02 and other greenhouse gases.
The sad thing is the climate scientists have said that the global warming could not be explained by natural variation- however most excuses for the “pause” show natural variation can explain said “pause” .
‘Andy Pittman, director of the University of NSW’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, said that while climate science “is scaffolded on phenomenally sound foundations” ‘- Chris Turney’s Centre; how sad.
“In a recent Nature commentary, Schmidt et al. suggest that, taking these climatic influences together, they can completely explain the pause.”
—
On the other hand, by taking climatic influences together, they might completely explain the warming from 1976–98. You can’t make the claim that natural influences can prevent warming over an extended period without also acknowledging the possibility that they can cause warming over a similar time frame.
“john robertson says:
March 26, 2014 at 8:33 pm
Please send Nobble piece prize and cash, small unmarked bills.”
That’s funny (For me anyway) because this is exactly what the alarmists are trying to do, to “nobble” industry, energy and lifestyles with limits on CO2 emissions.
“The IPCC Fifth Assessment report estimates that despite the decline in solar output since 2000, total warming influences have increased faster since 1998 than over 1951–1998 or 1971–1998.”
—
Can anyone translate that sentence? What do they mean by “total warming influences,” green-house gasses? Given that global temperatures have not increased since 1998, are they admitting that the decline in solar output since 2000 has been enough to totally counteract increasing CO2? That would imply either a greater influence for the sun, or a diminished influence for GHGs than expected. Am I misunderstanding something?
While it is clear that the climate models have failed, the underlying reasons for the failure are not obvious. They are deeply rooted in the underlying concepts used to develop the basic climate model algorithms. The fundamental problem is that there is a complete disconnect between the real physics of the climate energy transfer and the mathematical algorithms used in the models. There are 3 levels of incorrect assumptions that have to be addressed.
First, the averaging assumptions used to simplify some of the complexities of the energy transfer are incorrect and produce erroneous results. The averaging removes the dynamic thermal gradients that are required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics to drive the heat transport through the climate system. The sun does not illuminate the Earth’s surface at night. There is no such thing as an ‘equilibrium average climate’.
Second, the original climate modeling concept of an abstract ‘blackbody surface’ was replaced by ocean heating. In reality, the small increase in downward long wave IR (LWIR) flux from the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is blocked at the ocean surface and dissipated by wind driven evaporation. There can be no ocean warming from the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Sun, wind and water determine the Earth’s climate without any help from CO2.
Third, the substitution of the climate record for the surface temperature is incorrect. There can be no ‘CO2 signature’ in the weather station record.
The global warming fraud is clearly revealed when these assumptions are examined in more detail.
The geometric ratio between the area of a sphere and a circle is 4. This mathematical construct is used to create a fictional ‘average solar flux’ at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) of ~340 W m^-2. An albedo of 0.3 is then used to create a fictional ‘surface average solar surface flux’ of 240 W m^-2. Using Stefan’s law, this corresponds to a blackbody emission temperature of 255 K (-18 C). An ‘average surface temperature’ of 288 K (15 C) is then assumed, using an average of weather station temperature data. Somehow 255 K is supposed to be the Earth’s average surface temperature without any atmospheric ‘greenhouse gases’ and heating by ‘greenhouse gas absorption’ produces the ‘greenhouse effect temperature’ of 33 K that mysteriously raises the average surface temperature to 288 K.
In reality, the peak tropical/summer solar flux is near 1000 W m^-2 which corresponds to a blackbody surface temperature near 364.4 K (91.4 C). There is no ‘equilibrium average climate state’. The climate system consists of a set of dynamically coupled thermal reservoirs. Heat is accumulated by these reservoirs during the day and dissipated through a series of rate limited heat transfer processes. At minimum, there are four coupled thermal reservoirs, the oceans, the land and a lower and upper tropospheric reservoir. Almost all of the downward LWIR flux that reaches the surface originates from the first 2 km layer of the troposphere. Similarly, almost all of the net LWIR flux absorbed by the troposphere is absorbed within this 2 km layer. In fact, a large fraction of the atmospheric LWIR flux, near 75%, is absorbed or emitted within the first 100 m layer or the troposphere.
The land and the oceans act as the hot reservoirs of an open cycle heat engine. The working fluid is moist air. Almost all of the heat that is coupled to the troposphere is converted directly or indirectly to convection. The heat engine operates mainly during the day and the thermal transport is determined by the thermal gradients at the surface. At night, the convection almost stops and the lower troposphere acts as a ‘thermal blanket’ that reduces the night time LWIR emission to space. At night, the surface cooling is limited to the LWIR emission through the atmospheric LWIR transmission window. The upper tropospheric reservoir cools continuously by LWIR emission to space. The dominant cooling process is LWIR emission by the water bands in the middle troposphere near 5 km. The average lapse rate or temperature profile assumed by the US Standard Atmosphere is -6.5 K km^-1. The so called ‘greenhouse effect temperature’ is nothing more than the average cooling produced by the climate heat engine as a convective air parcel ascends from the surface to 5 km.
The maximum ocean surface temperature near 303 K (30 C) is found in the equatorial ocean warm pools. This is produced by the net flux balance between the tropical solar flux and the ocean surface cooling. The dominant cooling term is wind driven evaporation from the ocean surface. The cooler water produced at the surface then sinks and cools the bulk ocean layers below. The minimum ocean surface temperature is near 271.2 K (-1.8 C) which is freezing point of sea water under normal salinity conditions. Over land, maximum surface temperatures for a dry surface under full summer/tropical solar illumination can easily reach or exceed 323 K (50) C. Minimum surface temperatures near the south poles may reach 173 K (-100 C). The concept of an average surface temperature is a mathematical construct that has almost no physical meaning.
Most of the IPCC global warming arguments are based on the concept of radiative forcing. This was introduced in its modern form by Manabe and Wetherald (M&W) in 1967. Starting from the observation that the Earth’s climate was stable, M&W introduced the concept of a ‘radiative-convective equilibrium climate state’ to describe a hypothetical, stable average climate. This is just a mathematical construct that produces a set of simplified steady state flux equations. These can be analyzed relatively easily using perturbation theory. The primary objective here was the development of more advanced radiative transfer algorithms for incorporation into climate models. In the mid 1960s, the available computer capabilities were very limited and the algorithms for atmospheric radiative transfer had to be simplified using band models to simulate the detailed line by line molecular energy transfer. However, even with these limitations, the atmospheric radiative transfer equations could be solved with reasonable accuracy and limited altitude resolution to give the steady state flux terms.
The assumptions made by M&W were clearly stated in their paper. [http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/sm6701.pdf]
1) At the top of the atmosphere, the net incoming solar radiation should be equal to the net outgoing long wave radiation.
2) No temperature discontinuity should exist
3) Free and forced convection, and mixing by the large scale eddies, prevent the lapse rate from exceeding a critical lapse rate equal to 6.5 C km^-1.
4) Whenever the lapse rate is subcritical, the condition of local radiative equilibrium is satisfied.
5) The heat capacity of the earth’s surface is zero
6) The atmosphere maintains the given vertical distribution of relative humidity (new requirement)
The primary objective of the M&W study of radiative convective equilibrium was the incorporation of radiative transfer into the general circulation model of the atmosphere. In particular they wanted to determine the following:
1) How long does it take to reach a state of thermal equilibrium when the atmosphere maintains a realistic distribution of relative humidity that is invariant with time?
2) What is the influence of various factors such as the solar constant, cloudiness, surface albedo and the distribution of the various atmospheric absorbers on the equilibrium temperature of the atmosphere with a realistic distribution of relative humidity?
3) What is the equilibrium temperature of the earth’s surface corresponding to realistic values of these factors?
It is important to note that the term ‘equilibrium’ is used rather loosely here. Strictly, equilibrium requires that the forward and reverse rates are equal. A more appropriate term is steady state in which the outgoing LWIR flux equals the absorbed solar flux and there is no further change in the outgoing LWIR flux with time as the model calculation time step is iterated.
To begin, M&W ignored the time dependence of the solar flux and the thermal storage effects. Instead they created a mathematical 24 hour average solar flux that must be part of an exact top of atmosphere flux balance. The Earth’s surface is treated as an abstract blackbody surface with zero heat capacity. The lapse rate is used as a mathematical constraint to force model convergence. This provides a suitable mathematical framework to facilitate the development of radiative transfer algorithms. However, they have already left physical reality behind and have entered the realm of computational climate fiction.
There is also another implicit assumption inherent in the exact flux balance requirement. This is that upward and downward LWIR fluxes are equivalent, which is not the case. The linwidths of the individual molecular lines are determined by the collision frequency through the application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The upward LWIR emission from the wings of the lines in the lower troposphere is not reabsorbed by the narrower lines at higher altitudes. The downward LWIR emission from the narrower lines at higher altitudes is reabsorbed at lower altitudes and does not couple to the surface. In the M&W model, increases in stratospheric water vapor concentration can cause an increase in the ‘equilibrium surface temperature’. This is just a consequence of the unrealistic equilibrium flux balance modeling assumptions and the neglect of the molecular linewidth effects.
M&W used a fixed distribution of relative humidity in their model. Any temperature increase in the model is accompanied by an increase in the water vapor concentration needed to maintain the relative humidity. This leads to a mathematical feedback artifact that amplifies any CO2 induced surface heating created by the model. In reality, the relative humidity is not fixed, particularly near the surface. During the day, the humidity is determined by the surface evaporation and the convective mixing of the solar heated air from the surface. At night, the cooling of the surface air layer and the related increase in relative humidity is determined mainly by the net LWIR emission through the atmospheric transmission window. Humidity levels also depend on the local weather conditions. An increase of 100 ppm in the atmospheric CO2 concentration increases the downward LWIR flux at the surface by approximately 1.5 W m^-2 or 0.13 MJ m^-2 per day. This is equivalent to the evaporation of a 57 micron thick layer of water from the surface. This is too small to make any measurable difference to the normal diurnal evaporation cycle. The whole concept of water vapor feedback has no basis in the physical reality of the surface energy transfer. It is a consequence of the mathematical averaging and other constraints used in the M&W model.
M&W used a 9 or 18 layer model of the atmosphere. The net LWIR flux absorbed and emitted in each layer was determined during each model time step and used to change the temperature profile. This was also constrained so as not to exceed a lapse rate of 6.5 K km-1. Here, the lapse rate is used as a mathematical model constraint. In reality, the lapse rate is determined locally by solar surface heating and convective mixing. Although the computer calculation time was much less, it required several months of simulated time steps to reach the ‘equilibrium state’. This was nothing more than a mathematical exercise to improve the radiative transfer algorithms used in the model. The small temperature changes over several months needed for the model to converge to ‘equilibrium’ are not measurable or physically meaningful when the normal diurnal and seasonal changes in the atmospheric temperature profile are considered.
The modeling results presented by M&W have no basis in physical reality and have no application to the Earth’s climate. The equilibrium flux equations do not apply to Planet Earth.
It is important to understand that once an atmospheric profile of temperature and species concentration has been defined, the LWIR flux can be reliably calculated from the radiative transfer equations. It is the mathematical constraints of a ‘climate equilibrium state’ and their use to determine changes in ‘equilibrium surface temperature’ that are incorrect. Instead of treating the M&W model as a failed hypothesis, subsequent researchers continued to try to improve the model within the framework of the original assumptions. Other IR active species were added to the radiative transfer algorithms and additional atmospheric layers and other features were added as the computer technology improved. The next level of incorrect assumptions was added when the atmospheric model of M&W was coupled to an ocean model.
The basic definition of a blackbody surface is that it absorbs all electromagnetic radiation at all wavelengths and emits radiation according to Planck’s Law. Water however is almost transparent at visible wavelengths. Approximately half of the solar flux is absorbed within the first meter depth of the ocean and 90% is absorbed within the first 10 m. In contrast, the penetration depth of the LWIR flux into the oceans is barely 100 micron. The dominant ocean cooling process is wind driven evaporation and this is also limited to a thin surface layer. The increase in LWIR flux from the 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is dissipated as a minute part of the evaporative cooling flux. Any changes in ocean surface temperature are simply too small to measure and the additional LWIR flux cannot penetrate below the surface and heat the ocean below. However, the need to create global warming required that the oceans were heated by the increase in LWIR flux from CO2. This approach of course has no basis in physical reality, but mathematically, an ocean heat capacity and a diffusion coefficient were used to create the heating. By 1980, the ocean cycles had entered a natural warming phase that was of course blamed on CO2. Ocean heating also provides a convenient mathematical excuse that can be used to delay the effects of global warming. The high ocean heat capacity requires a long time to reach ‘equilibrium’. There is no equilibrium. The ocean is indeed a large thermal storage reservoir that is always heating or cooling, depending on the flux balance. However, the upper limit to the heat capacity of the surface ‘skin layer’ is approximately 4 kJ K^-1 for a 1 mm x 1 m^2 layer. This layer responds rapidly to any change in LWIR/cooing flux. The solar flux heats the bulk ocean layers underneath.
The third and final level of the incorrect model assumptions is the ‘calibration’ of the so called ‘forcing constants’ using the measured climate record from the weather station data. It was assumed without any physical proof that the calculated increase in downward surface atmospheric LWIR flux of 1.5 W m^-2 caused by a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration produced an increase of 1 C in the weather station record. In reality, the net flux balance in the surface layer determines the surface temperature. The weather station temperature however, is the meteorological surface air temperature (MSAT). This is the air temperature measured in a ventilated enclosure placed at eye level, 1.5 to 2 m above the ground. At night, the minimum MSAT is an approximate measure of the base temperature of the air mass of the local weather system as it is passing through. During the day, the maximum MSAT is a measure of the convective mixing between the warm air rising from the solar heated surface and the cooler air at the weather station level. There can be no CO2 warming signal in the MSAT. The heat capacity of the weather system is too large. Instead, since most weather systems form over the oceans, long term changes in the minimum MSAT are a measure of changes in the ocean surface temperature in the formation region of the weather system. The climate models were ‘calibrated’ using ocean surface temperatures.
Simple inspection of the climate average weather station data sets such as HADCRUT4 reveals that the dominant climate trend is the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). This is the result of both the area averaging used to create the climate trend and the natural influence of the AMO over large areas of the Americas, Europe and Africa. Part of the S. Atlantic gyre is also diverted northwards along the coast of Brazil into the Caribbean where it is coupled into the AMO. The Earth has been warming since end of the Little Ice Age. The warming process is the gradual accumulation of solar heat into the oceans. Before the recent solar maximum, the average increase in the top of atmosphere (TOA) solar flux was near 0.4 W m^-2. From 1950 to 2010, the average increased to 0.7 W m^-2. In addition, the AMO was in its warming phase from approximately 1980 to 2010. These are the real sources of the observed ‘global warming’. A cooling phase has now started. The Earth’s climate system still obeys the basic Laws of Physics. The Earth itself has revealed the climate modeling fraud for all to see. The coincidence between the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, the warm phase of the ocean cycles and the modern solar maximum has ended. The climate astrologers are now trapped in a web of pseudoscientific lies of their own making.
richard says:
March 26, 2014 at 4:27 pm Wind turbines point INTO the wind. It’s all the hot air coming FROM the US. 🙂
“The problem with this approach is that it involves creating a hybrid dataset using different infilling techniques for different regions, leaving it open to suggestions of cherrypicking. (10,11)”
Huh,
1. they use a technique suggested by skeptics
2. they do essentially the same thing that Jeff ID, Ryan ODonnel and Steve Mcintyre did in their antartic paper.
3. Their prediction for unsampled areas was VALIDATED using out of sample data.
4. I’ve checked their work against another satillite data set which supports their work
5. Cosimo’s recently published trends in arctic surface temperature from AVHRR shows the same or even more warming
I understood that, as water heats, it expands and that this expansion is part of the sea level rise. Sea level rise has decreased recently. Surely this suggests that the oceans have not warmed?
Pat Frank says on March 26, 2014 at 6:04 pm:
“O H Dahlsveen, that wasn’t what I had in mind. —- — –. They don’t think like scientists.”
= = = = = = =
Thanks Pat, now that you have cleared that one up; I still think you’re right. – At least there is very little evidence (proof that I can find) that they think the way scientists ought to think.
About the stratospheric water vapor: Wasn’t the increase in the 80s and 90s partly (or fully?) caused by the El Chichon and Pinatubo eruptions? I really wonder if the role of large volcanic eruptions is well enough understood. What if the warming a caused by stratospheric water vapor is stronger than the initial aerosol cooling? That would be a serious blow to the “aerosol fudge factor” that the models so desperately need to make the “co2 control knob” work…
There is only one energy input to the earth system, the SUN.
models are wrong because they use the GHE as a cause of heating but this theory has yet to be validated empirically. It is a failed theory and should be consigned to the trash bin. Models based on reality might work but given the chaotic processes at work I doubt it. Weather forecasts are OK for a couple of days but there on they become progressively less accurate to downright wrong. Climate models suffer the same problem.
“Espen says:
March 27, 2014 at 3:34 am”
Nobody knows!
Trying to explain the “pause” is like trying to explain why there are no fairies.
There is no pause (the most simple explanation) because CO2 is not a climate driver.
“The pause has given climate science several things. It has provided a reassessment of the importance of natural climatic variability and its relationship to human influences on the climate. It has also shed light on the role of so-called sceptics as well as the successes and failures of climate communication.”
That these things would not have been looked at without the pause says something negative about what passes for science in this age of “expert” government.
Meanwhile the good old BBC is running a news item today from their special correspondent who has been sent to Papua New Guinea (no doubt at vast expense) to report breathlessly from a high speed boat that man made CO2 emissions are acidifying the Oceans….Which creatures will survive, which wont is the issue du jour?…..Fair enough I suppose, what with the Pause and everything, they need to catch their catostrophies where they can. To think I’m paying £150 quid a year for such carp….
When you say
The best data we have is from the ARGO project. It goes back ten years and shows no warming in the uppermost layers of the oceans, and only modest warming down to 1800 m. If more heat is there it must be at deeper levels,
you are providing inaccurate information. While the warming of the water is small in comparison with the amount of warming of land or air, the amount of energy needed to warm water is much greater than air or land. Since the amount of material you are talking about is 1000 times heavier than the total atmosphere (ocean 0-1800meter depth) then a fraction of warming of the ocean is equal to a massive amount of heat. So much so that the ACTUAL MEASURED warming of the ocean is enough to heat the global atmosphere by over 25 degrees Fahrenheit (and this is warming only since 2005)!
That’s not it
None ot it
Mostly
Start looking at changes in ozone
It has been said, “the pause in global warming is the greatest mystery in climate science”. I don’t think it’s a mystery at all. The answer is obvious, the climate scientists were wrong. That’s what happens when you try to substitute a consensus for data.
@Jai Mitchell, you said:
” So much so that the ACTUAL MEASURED warming of the ocean is enough to heat the global atmosphere by over 25 degrees Fahrenheit ”
I’ve seen this statement before from you. I’m really curious about what you think it means. Do you believe that CO2 has caused the Earth to retain the equivalent of 25F, but luckily it was deposited in the ocean? Do you have a reference to any study that shows that the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is capable of affecting the Earth climate on that scale?
If it’s not CO2 that caused all that extra heat to be added to the oceans, where did it come from? If the oceans can be heated to that level by some unknown mechanism doesn’t that indicate that our current understanding of the Earth’s climate is hopelessly inadequate?
If you really believe that we can measure the deep ocean temperatures accurately (and I presume that you do since you chose to say it in caps) then please do more than throw it out as a factoid. Describe how CO2 caused a massive influx of heat, at least 25 times greater than any projection from the most strident alarmist. How did it (fortuitously) wind up in the deep ocean leaving no trace anywhere else? How much of it, according to the laws of thermodynamics, might come roaring out of the ocean in the future?
“Prior to about 1960 solar ac- tivity played a major role in the Earth’s climate, but in recent decades the IPCC has declared that it plays only a minor part, ”
I cannot believe ANY scientist on the planet can read that statement and not laugh hysterically.
Folks, David only presents you his personal biased temp standstill selection. He left
out on purpose the CLASSIC ANALYSIS of Klyashtorin and Lyubushin [ask him why],
— here the abstract:
“On the coherence between Dynamics of the World Fuel Consumption and Global
Temperature Anomaly” on http://www.multi-science.co.uk. (2003) The paper is the earliest
prediction of the present global temp plateau, I could discover.
L.B. Klyashtorin, A.A. Lyubushin
Abstract
Analysis of the long-term dynamics of World Fuel Consumption (WFC) and the Global Temperature anomaly (dT) for the last 140 years (1961-2000) shows that unlike the monotonously and exponentially increasing WFC, the dynamics of global dT against the background of a linear, age-long trend, undergo quasi-cyclic fluctuations with about 60 a year period. No true linear correlation has taken place between the dT and WFC dynamics in the last century. Spectral analysis of reconstructed temperature for the last 1420 years and instrumentally measured for the last 140 years global dT shows that dominant period for its variations for the last 1000 years lies in the 50-60 years interval. Modelling of roughly 60-years cyclic dT changes suggest that the observed rise of dT will flatten in the next 5-10 years, and that we might expect a lowering of dT by nearly 1-0.15°C to the end of the 2020s.
Also to mention: Our works on 5 major climate drivers has also bee omitted on purpose, as well as all the works on the subject by Nicola Scafetta.
David, I really wonder, why Anthony let you enumerate all sorts of scap, whilst you reject
serious, classical studies. Cheers JS.
Gamecock says:
The future might call it a pause, but we can’t.
PAUSE 1 : a temporary stop
To call it a pause is to assume global temperature will resume climbing. We don’t know if it will or not. Therefore, it is accurate to say global warming has STOPPED, not PAUSED. Indeed, calling it a pause is warmist propaganda. By calling it a pause, they imply it will start going up again. They don’t know that.
Exactly right. “Pause” is a weasel word used by the alarmist crowd, to cover up the fact that they have been 100% wrong.
Not one GCM [computer climate model] was able to predict that global warming would stop for more than 17 years. Every one of them was wrong. So, a question:
Why should we rely on anything that either the models, or the manmade global warming crowd tells us?
They have been completely wrong. Skeptics have been correct.
…and it isn’t a “pause” unless/until global warming resumes. It may. Or it may not. But unless global warming starts again, this isn’t a “pause”. Global warming stopped, some time in the 1990’s. That is a long time.
jai mitchell, I’ve done that calculation. Levitus’ 10^22 J/year heat increase for the 0-700 m ocean works out to a temperature increase of 0.004 C per year. That value is about 100 times smaller than the ~(+/-)0.4 C systematic measurement error of the ARGO buoys.
As the ARGO buoys are likely more accurate than the prior XBTs and MBTs, that (+/-)0.4 C is a lower limit of resolution for the 20th/21st century ocean temperature record.
That means the temperature increase used to calculate the change in ocean heat content is below the level of detectability. They’re representing temperature numbers that are in fact buried in systematic noise. However they’re getting their numbers, it’s all false precision.
jai mitchell says:
March 27, 2014 at 7:12 am
“So much so that the ACTUAL MEASURED warming of the ocean is enough to heat the global atmosphere by over 25 degrees Fahrenheit (and this is warming only since 2005)!”
If the ocean warmed by 0.01 deg C, than that is enough to heat the atmosphere by 0.01 deg C, not more.
You can try it at home. Fill a bathtub with cold water. Heat up a liter of water to boiling point on the stove. This is enough heat to heat up the air above the pot to a noticeable degree, isn’t it.
Now take the pot and drop its contents into the bathtub.
Watch what happens. (Hint: nothing.)
Am I ever gonna be able to put away my bathroom heater in SC this summer??
Stupid eggheads…
– johnmarshall says:
March 27, 2014 at 4:11 am
There is only one energy input to the earth system, the SUN.
models are wrong because they use the GHE as a cause of heating but this theory has yet to be validated empirically.-
The GHE theory has premise that the Sun only warms Earth to average temperature of -18 C.
And that the only reason Earth is about 15 C is solely due to greenhouse gases.
Not only are model wrong but the theory states that only greenhouse gases can increase a world warmed to -18 C by Sun to higher temperature.
Which easily disproved.
Urban heat Island effect is not caused by greenhouse gases. And Urban heat island effect can increase average temperature by more than 10 C. So one has something which can cause considerable warming in addition to greenhouse effect and nothing to do with greenhouse gases.
So if theory is based upon the premise only greenhouse gases can earth to be warmer than what sun cause, UHI effect is proof this premise is wrong.
Another aspect of GHE theory is it’s based upon the idea that Earth average temperature is 15 C.
And most of earth history over last 500 million years indicates that earth average temperature
has been about 25 C.
So if the earth is only warmed by sunlight to -18 C, that requires that rather than greenhouse adding 33 C, they would required to 43 C. If one still clings to idea that only GHE adds to warming.
Another wrong premise is idea that only CO2 “causes” earth to remain warm, so without CO2
the world oceans would be completely frozen. Or without CO2 earth would become a snowball earth with an average temperature of -18 C. Or the CO2 gas is creator of the most significant greenhouse gas, water vapor.
This unscientific concept underlies runaway effects. It’s the reason why doubling of CO2 has wide
range of sensitivity- an uncertainly of 1 to 8 C.
It’s based upon the observation that water vapor can change daily. That air can hold only certain amount water vapor depending on air temperature. So that as air temperature changes so does
water vapor, and since CO2 doesn’t change with air temperature, this premise of causal factor of CO2.
A problem with this idea is CO2 has varied throughout the last 500 million year, and that recently in terms 1/2 million years, ice core record indicate that increasing levels of CO2 follow warming temperatures- that rather than causing warming increasing levels of CO2 are the result of warming. So over last 500 million year global CO2 level have increase and decreased by factor of 10.
Most Earth global water vapor is in the tropics. There is about 3 to 4% of atmosphere gases being water vapor in tropics. And tropics is 40% of global surface area. So 40% of Earth has 3 to 4% water vapor, and 60% remaining surface area has about 1% or less.
So that what it is in present 15 C average temperature world. In a normal world during last 500 million year where average temperature was around 25 C, this world would more surface surface in tropical like conditions. So rather only 40% of surface area have 3-4% water vapor, one could have 70 to 80% of surface being tropical [or having about 3-4% water vapor].
But my point is one couldn’t get much more a doubling of global water vapor at warmest global temperature is the past.
And during coldest periods during our current ice box climate [last, say 10 million years], it’s mostly been lower temperature in Temperate Zones, rather than tropics, and therefore global water vapor would be as effected, so perhaps as much as 1/2 of current global water vapor.
So range of global water vapor is 1/2 to about twice. Or on Earth over 500 million year global water has varied by as much as factor of 4. And CO2 has factor of 10 or more.
What can say is generally both CO2 and water vapor follows warming condition and neither are necessary the cause as much the effect of warming conditions.
Pachygrapsus
Newton’s law of heat transfer shows that the rate of energy exchange between two bodies is dependent on the difference in temperature. The amount of heat that has been directly measured is incontrovertible. The buoy network that was deployed in the early 2000s to do this work has a temperature sensitivity to .002C measuring the temperature of water accurately is not a difficult thing to do.
You need to brush up on your basic science if you don’t understand that CO2 absorbs spectrums of energy and re-emits them. This is why CO2 and water are greenhouse gasses.
The amount of heat energy taken up by the oceans (warming) has always been >90% of the total heat added to the earth over the last several decades. What has changed over the last 15 years is an increase in the amount of surface mixing which brings cooler water from depth to the surface, keeping the surface temperature cool. If you look at the globally averaged land temperatures you will see that they continue to increase.
the slight amount of extra heat taken by the oceans in this way has slowed the rate of GLOBALLY AVERAGED warming, along with a 14 years cool period of sun activity (about 5% of the pause) and extra emissions of air pollution from southeast asia (about 20% of the pause)
This is china’s smog problem today:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/beijing-pollution-reaches-dangerous-levels-105356973.html
DirkH
The amount of extra heat going into the ocean will not now go back into the atmosphere and warm it. It will stay in the ocean. However, the extra amount of heat going into the ocean shows that the amount of extra heat being taken up by the entire earth (air land AND oceans) is still very high and is being measured to increase.
When the PDO goes positive and the El Nino comes we will see another big jump in temperatures.
as a matter of fact, 13 of the last 14 years have been the 13 warmest years on record (with only 1998 breaking into the top 14 at 4th warmest)
“jai mitchell says:
March 27, 2014 at 3:32 pm
…is still very high and is being measured to increase.”
Too funny!
“The amount of extra heat going into the ocean will not now go back into the atmosphere and warm it. It will stay in the ocean. However, the extra amount of heat going into the ocean shows that the amount of extra heat being taken up by the entire earth (air land AND oceans) is still very high and is being measured to increase.”
Last interglacial period was had average ocean temperature a couple of degrees warmer than our current average ocean temperature. And during this time there was not billions of people nor were burning coal.
One can assume that ocean will warm during interglacial periods [and tend to cool in glacial periods] and it has nothing to do with CO2 levels [other than CO2 levels also tend to rise during interglacial periods- there is correlation rather than causation].
But if increased levels of present CO2 do increase ocean average temperature it will require thousands year to increase the average ocean temperatures which are around 3 C by couple degrees. Or in terms of next couple centuries warming the ocean is essential not having much effect upon Earth’s average temperature.
Mechanisms which cause ocean water to mix can seen as short term cooling and long term warming. If ocean were to be completely mixed, average global temperature would be lowered
significantly.
It seems to me that possible some mechanism of mixing oceans is a factor in causing or related the various cooling periods during our interglacial period. Therefore the latest cool period, known as Little Ice Age may have involved more mixing of the ocean, the warming of 20 century
can less ocean mixing and thereby slight increases in average air temperature. And in short term [centuries] CO2 level could nothing to do with the warming after the Little Ice Age [after 1850].. And instead average surface temperature could be controlled cycles of increased or decreased amounts of ocean mixing.
Or climate and global is in fact all about earth’s ocean and little to do with the atmosphere. Atmosphere is weather, and oceans are climate.
Steven Mosher says:
March 27, 2014 at 12:02 am
1. they use a technique suggested by skeptics
2. they do essentially the same thing that Jeff ID, Ryan ODonnel and Steve Mcintyre did in their antartic paper.
3. Their prediction for unsampled areas was VALIDATED using out of sample data.
4. I’ve checked their work against another satillite data set which supports their work
5. Cosimo’s recently published trends in arctic surface temperature from AVHRR shows the same or even more warming
Are you “cherry picking” your very own “skeptics” to ridicule out of spite, your alarmist palls have made an incredible amount of progress into fantasy land, there’s no reverse psychology allowed! Man made global warming alarmists are wrong it’s a fact.
By the way learn to spell “satillite” correctly. ffs.
Since the bulk of the reported warming is an artifact of corrupted records and station output (UHI), the Pause is really just business as usual that hasn’t been overwritten with fudged data.
Joachim Seifert says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/26/warming-interrruptus-causes-for-the-pause/#comment-1599850
e.g.
Spectral analysis of reconstructed temperature for the last 1420 years and instrumentally measured for the last 140 years global dT shows that dominant period for its variations for the last 1000 years lies in the 50-60 years interval. Modelling of roughly 60-years cyclic dT changes suggest that the observed rise of dT will flatten in the next 5-10 years, and that we might expect a lowering of dT by nearly 1-0.15°C to the end of the 2020s.
Henry says
Lower anomalies a bit confusing there for me. How much is it in T?
Time also disputed. I believe it might be until the end of the 2030s
My very own findings
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
seem to suggest a longer cycle time , at least looking at energy allowed through the atmosphere
(maxima)
My results suggest that earth is most likely on an 87 or 88 year A-C wave, the so-called Gleissberg solar/weather cycle, with ca. 44 years of warming followed by 44 years of cooling.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Indeed, I hope that this is the best fit for my data, because any of the other best fits that I could think of, would have us end up in much more global cooling. Other investigations confirm the very existence of the Gleissberg solar/weather cycle.
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/17/585/2010/npg-17-585-2010.htmlhttp://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/nilef-20070319.html
this 88 year solar/weather cycle was already calculated from COSMOGENIC ISOTOPES as related in this study:
Persistence of the Gleissberg 88-year solar cycle over the last ˜12,000 years: Evidence from cosmogenic isotopes
Peristykh, Alexei N.; Damon, Paul E.
Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), Volume 108, Issue A1, pp. SSH 1-1, CiteID 1003, DOI 10.1029/2002JA009390
Among other longer-than-22-year periods in Fourier spectra of various solar-terrestrial records, the 88-year cycle is unique, because it can be directly linked to the cyclic activity of sunspot formation. Variations of amplitude as well as of period of the Schwabe 11-year cycle of sunspot activity have actually been known for a long time and a ca. 80-year cycle was detected in those variations. Manifestations of such secular periodic processes were reported in a broad variety of solar, solar-terrestrial, and terrestrial climatic phenomena. Confirmation of the existence of the Gleissberg cycle in long solar-terrestrial records as well as the question of its stability is of great significance for solar dynamo theories. For that perspective, we examined the longest detailed cosmogenic isotope record—INTCAL98 calibration record of atmospheric 14C abundance. The most detailed precisely dated part of the record extends back to ˜11,854 years B.P. During this whole period, the Gleissberg cycle in 14C concentration has a period of 87.8 years and an average amplitude of ˜1‰ (in Δ14C units). Spectral analysis indicates in frequency domain by sidebands of the combination tones at periods of ≈91.5 ± 0.1 and ≈84.6 ± 0.1 years that the amplitude of the Gleissberg cycle appears to be modulated by other long-term quasiperiodic process of timescale ˜2000 years. This is confirmed directly in time domain by bandpass filtering and time-frequency analysis of the record. Also, there is additional evidence in the frequency domain for the modulation of the Gleissberg cycle by other millennial scale processes.
Note that the results of my plot suggest that this global cooling already started in 1995 as far as energy-in is concerned and will last until ca. 2038. Also, from the look at my tables, it looks earth’s energy stores are depleted now and average temperatures on earth will probably fall by as much as what the maxima are falling now. I estimate this is about -0.3K in the next 8 years and a further -0.2 or -0.3K from 2020 until 2038. By that time we will be back to where we were in 1950, more or less…
PS @Joachim Seifert
(belongs on the bottom of my previous comment)
I have no idea why Anthony rejects the older studies that were actually completely confirmed by my own studies, like this one here:
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
to quote from the above paper:
“A Weather Cycle as observed in the Nile Flood cycle, Max rain followed by Min rain, appears discernible with maximums at 1750, 1860, 1950 and minimums at 1670, 1800, 1900 and a minimum at 1990 predicted.
The range in meters between a plentiful flood and a drought flood seems minor in the numbers but real in consequence….
end quote
According to my table for maxima, I calculate the date where the sun decided to take a nap (that is just a figure of speech, in fact it is probably a “wake-up”), as being around 1995, and not 1990 as William Arnold predicted.
This is looking at energy-in. I think earth reached its maximum output (means) a few years later, around 1998/1999.
Anyway, either way, (a few years error is fine!), look again at my best sine wave plot for my data,
now see:
1900 minimum flooding – end of the warming
1950 maximum flooding – end of cooling
1995 minimum flooding – end of warming.
predicted 2035-2040 – maximum flooding – end of cooling.
There is a clear and pertinent correlation with the best fit sine wave that I proposed for the observed current drop in global maximum temperatures.
He (Arnold) further suggests that it is mainly the position of the two planets Saturn and Uranus that can be directly linked to the 22 year solar cycle. I looked at this again. At first the dates did not make sense.
Observe from my a-c curves:
1) change of sign: (from warming to cooling and vice versa)
1904, 1950, 1995, 2039
2) maximum speed of cooling or warming = turning points
1927, 1972, 2016
Then I put the dates of the various positions of Uranus and Saturn next to it:
1) we had/have Saturn synodical with Uranus (i.e. in line with each other)
1897, 1942, 1988, 2032
2) we had complete 180 degrees opposition between Saturn and Uranus
1919, 1965, 2009,
In all 7 of my own results & projections, there is an exact 7 or 8 years delay, before “the push/pull ” occurs, that switches the dynamo inside the sun, changing the sign….!!!! Conceivably the gravitational pull of these two planets has some special lob sided character, causing the actual switch. Perhaps Uranus’ apparent side ward motion (inclination of equator by 98 degrees) works like a push-pull trigger. Either way, there is a clear correlation. Other synodical cycles of planets probably have some interference as well either shortening or extending the normal cycle times a little bit. So it appears William Arnold’s report was right after all….(“On the Special Theory of Order”, 1985).
That the gravitational pull of the planets on the sun has influence on our weather here on earth brings us to an important point: what happens if for any reason the gravitation of our planets goes out of the current balance, for whatever reason?
Warming Interruptus!
Thanks for the good laugh, this pearl has potential to stick 🙂
Jai, thank you for the response. It makes no sense, but thank you.
First, I never questioned that water vapor and CO2 are greenhouse gases, so I’m not sure why you chose to speak to that instead of the question that I asked.
You said that the water in the deep ocean has retained heat equivalent to 25F of atmospheric warming. I asked for any reference that shows that CO2 is capable of trapping that much heat at today’s levels. If you’re saying that 90% of the heat was always expected to be sequestered in the ocean then prove that assertion with any citation.
If you’re not completely evading the question you have to admit that there’s a problem with finding that much extra heat anywhere. If you’re going to attribute it to CO2 then you have show radiative transfer calculations that show that GHG’s could have produced incredible surface/atmospheric warming, but that almost all of that heat (luckily) was mixed down to the deep ocean. If you can’t show that then you have another serious problem. Something created a whole bunch of extra heat and it wasn’t CO2. If that’s the case then we have a source of natural variability that utterly overwhelms GHG’s and makes any effort to reduce them irrelevant.
As you may have guessed, I’m skeptical about those measurements. Saying that the floats can measures temperature to an accuracy of .002C isn’t the issue. The problem is that you have to have adequate spatial coverage to know that the combined measurements retain that level of precision. I don’t believe that they do, but I’m willing to allow you that point for the sake of argument.
So, assuming that the data are correct, how does an additional 100PPM of CO2 retain that much heat? Cite something that shows that the heat distribution was well known and therefore no one worried that somehow a large part of the 25F would actually occur. If you can’t do that then explain why we should worry about CO2 at all when some other natural process is perfectly capable of creating heat that’s several orders of magnitude greater than the proposed effect of GHG’s.
(BTW, thanks so much for the information about China’s pollution problem. As long as we’re exchanging information that’s completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, here’s a link to some well-known chess openings:
http://www.chess.com/openings/)