By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
HadCRUT4, the last of the five monthly global datasets to report its February value, shows the same sharp drop in global temperature over the month as the other datasets.
Our dataset-of-datasets graph averages the monthly anomalies for the three terrestrial and two satellite temperature records. It shows there has still been no global warming this millennium. Over 13 years 2 months, the trend is zero.
Start any further back and the trend becomes one of warming – but not of rapid warming. The Archdruids of Thermageddon, therefore, can get away with declaring that there is no such thing as a Pause – but only just. Pause denial is now endemic among the acutely embarrassed governing class.
This month Railroad Engineer Pachauri denied the Pause: yet it was he who had proclaimed its existence only a year ago in Australia.
However, it is no longer plausible to suggest, as the preposterous Sir David King did in front of the House of Commons Environment Committee earlier this month, that there will be as much as 4.5 Cº global warming this century unless CO2 emissions are drastically reduced.
More than an eighth of the century has passed with no global warming at all. Therefore, from now to 2100 warming would have to occur at a rate equivalent to 5.2 Cº/century to bring global temperature up by 4.5 Cº in 2100.
How likely is that? Well, for comparison, HadCRUT4 shows that the fastest global warming rate that endured for more than a decade in the 20th century, during the 33 years 1974-2006, was equivalent to just 2 Cº/century.
Even if that record rate were now to commence, and were to continue for the rest of the century, the world would be only 1.75 Cº warmer in 2100 than it was in 2000.
The fastest supra-decadal warming rate ever recorded was during the 40 years 1694-1733, before the industrial revolution began. Then the Central England record, the world’s oldest and a demonstrably respectable proxy for global temperature change, showed warming at a rate equivalent to 4.3 K/century. Nothing like it has been seen since.
Even if that rapid post-Little-Ice-Age naturally-driven rate of naturally-occurring warming were to commence at once and persist till 2100, there would only be 3.75 Cº global warming this century.
Yet the ridiculous Sir David King said he expected 4.5 Cº global warming this century. Even the excitable IPCC, on its most extreme scenario, gives a central estimate of only 3.7 Cº warming this century. Not one of the puddings on the committee challenged him.
Meanwhile, the discrepancy between prediction and observation continues to grow. Here is the IPCC’s predicted global warming trend since January 2005, taken from Fig. 11.25 of the Fifth Assessment Report, compared with the trend on the dataset of datasets since then. At present, the overshoot is equivalent to 2 Cº/century.
It is this graph of the widening gap between the predicted and observed trends that will continue to demonstrate the absence of skill in the models that, until recently, the IPCC had relied upon.
Finally, it is noteworthy that the IPCC’s mid-range estimate of global warming from 1990 onward was 0.35 Cº/decade. The IPCC now predicts less than half that, at 0.17 Cº/decade. At that time, it was advocating a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions. It is now transparent that no such reduction is necessary: for the warming rate is already below what it would have been if any such reduction had been achieved or achievable, desired or desirable.
Within a few days, the RSS satellite record for March will be available. I shall report again then. So far, that record shows no global warming for 17 years 6 months.
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Lord Monckton
“The answer is that over a sufficiently long period, at least on the half-century scale, regional changes at mid-latitudes will tend to be near-identical, for in the long run regional change does not indefinitely or significantly depart from global change at those latitudes.”
Granting that is true. There are problems with your estimate. The period is 40 years, less than half a century. The data are not good. Initially outdoor measurements then became indoor measurements. Mid-latitude temperature is near-identical to global change at those latitudes. What about the polar region and the tropics? They are not represented.
Global temperature during ice ages was about 12 C and London was covered by a kilometer-thick ice sheet. Today’s global temperature is about 14.5 C. In 1733 it was probably 13.5 C. If you believe CET is a good proxy for global temperature and 4.3 C/century warming is accurate, then the global temperature in 1694 must be 11.8 C. This is probably wrong. We’re pretty sure there was no kilometer-thick ice sheet in 17th century London.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 1, 2014 at 8:34 am
———————————————————-
According to NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) aboard Aqua, the “well-mixed” theory is a myth!
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/AIRS_CO2_Data/About_AIRS_CO2_Data/
Nice image here of un-mixed C02 in the middle troposphere:
https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/AIRS_CO2_Data/
Ian Dr Spencer’s model is not a GCM.
Dr Strangelove wrote “You say the “pause” is a statistical noise due to chance. ” actually no, I did not say that, the observations do not provide evidence that rules out the pause being “statistical noise”, but that is not the same thing. There may have been a change in the underlying rate of warming, or there may not, the observations are not conclusive either way.
If you want to determine the cause of the warming (i.e. attribution) you need to look at physics rather than statistics. Saying that there are cycles in the observations is (often) not even statistics, and it certainly isn’t physics.
Those R^2 values, thought oh you think the data doesn’t match the model. Well,R squared value of 0.002,so there! *heavy sarcasm*
dikran
Statistics apply to temperature data regardless whether they are cyclical or not. It tells you if deviations from a central value is random (internal variability) or non-random (externally forced) PDO is a physical phenomenon and a natural cycle. Was it Trenberth who claim the pause is caused by PDO? Being a physical phenomenon, certainly it is governed by the laws of physics.
Dr Strangelove, internal variability is not random, it is chaotic. The point I was making is that generally cyclic models fitted to data are not performed using statistics, but merely curve-fitting, there is a difference. Cyclic models do not tell you if the deviations from a central value is random or not because the cycles may be the result of internal variability or they might be the net result of changes in individual forcings (so they may also be the result of external forcing) or a bit of both (for example there was a clear lull in volcanic forcing during the middle of the 20th century, which all things being otherwise equal would be expected to result in warming and then cooling during the 20th century, which could easily be attributed to a cycle that isn’t actually there). As I said, for attribution, you require physics. I suspect the cause of the “hiatus” is probably a mix of things, ENSO is undoubtedly a component.
If “Chris” emails me, I’ll send him the data as a .pptx, which preserves the original detail quite well. A shame that WorDepress doesn’t do graphics better and a lot larger than it does.
Dr Cawley suspects the cause of the pause is a mix of things, including ENSO. In the chaotic climate object, where even the noise is prone to heteroskedasticity, modeling to try to distribute global warming quantitatively between natural and anthropogenic causes is unlikely to be successful. The Lorenz constraint, among others, makes the climate inherently unpredictable. We can say we expect some warming on the basis of theory and experiment, but trying to identify how much we can expect is quite another matter, which is one reason why the models have been so relentlessly wrong.
Perhaps the underlying reason for the Pause is that the models that near-universally failed to predict it are imagining that CO2 and other greenhouse gases have a much greater warming effect than is physically realistic, so that even modest negative forcings from, say, the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or the decline in the Nino/Nina ratio, or the recovery in cloud cover since late 2001, are enough between them to extinguish the rather weak warming signal from CO2.
Mr Bennett says CO2 is not a well-mixed greenhouse gas. Well, let us at least agree that it is a great deal more evenly distributed than water vapor. In the lower troposphere, detailed measurements from the south pole to the Arctic Circle show CO2 concentration to vary by little more than 5% from place to place. For some reason, the Taklamakan Desert in western China has one of the highest CO2 concentrations on Earth.
“Dr Strangelove” is under the impression that today’s temperatures are only a couple of Celsius degrees above those that prevail during ice ages. No: 5-6 Celsius, more like.
@Monckton
It can, if you provide the high resolution originals in addition to the column formatted size.
Monckton of Brenchley writes “Dr Cawley suspects the cause of the pause is a mix of things, including ENSO. In the chaotic climate object, where even the noise is prone to heteroskedasticity, modeling to try to distribute global warming quantitatively between natural and anthropogenic causes is unlikely to be successful. ”
Any attribution of changes in climate between internal variability and a forced response will inevitably involve assumptions about physics, the models are merely a way of encoding those assumptions so that the assumptions can be tested against the observations. An attempt to perform attribution without having some form of model would be merely physics-free curve fitting (c.f. Scafetta).
By the way, modelling data with heteroscedastic noise is not that difficult, Ive even developed statistical methods for that particular problem; the heteroscedasticity of the noise in GMSTs is not really a problem, for example the autocorrelation is more problematic. The Lorenz constraint does not make climate inherently unpredictable, it makes weather unpredictable, that is not the same thing. “Perhaps the underlying reason for the Pause is that the models that near-universally failed to predict it are imagining that CO2 and other greenhouse gases have a much greater warming effect than is physically realistic…”, no the pause is a feature of the observations that does not depend in any way on what the models say. “so that even modest negative forcings from, say, the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation,” the PDO is not a forcing, it is a mode of internal variability.
However, there are some correct statements in your post, such as “are enough between them to extinguish the rather weak warming signal from CO2.” It is true that the expected trend due to anthropogenic forcing is small compared with the effects of internal variability; it is *exactly* that that makes cherry picking so easy as e.g. ENSO will occasionally mask the warming trend and occasionally amplify it. If the effects of ENSO are taken into account (e.g. via regression), the pause largely disapears, which is a reasonable basis for suggetsing that ENSO is a cause of the pause. That is why climatologists tend to use 30 year+ trends because they are less susceptible to this sort of statistical legerdemain. The comments on CO2 and temperature difference since the ice age. We have known for a very long time that there is a hemispheric difference in CO2, but it is still effectively well mixed for the purpose of modeling climate.
I missed out an important point, it should be “It is true that the expected trend due to anthropogenic forcing is small compared with the effects of internal variability *over short timescales (e.g. a decade or two)*;”
dikran
That’s correct. Internal variability is chaotic. This is the subtle point I want to make. A chaotic event can appear to be random that we can assume it to be random without making a big error. Example, coin tossing is chaotic but we assume it is random. It is actually described by Lagrangian mechanics which is deterministic. Why assume it to be random when we know it’s chaotic? Because it is mathematically easier to deal with random functions. Chaos is often described by non-linear polynomial equations that are generally unsolvable.
I don’t want to lecture on statistics and probability theory so I will be brief. Deterministic functions have underlying deterministic (non-random) causes. A common misconception is the presence of a trend line is proof that the function is deterministic. In fact a random walk function can produce trend lines. Is climate change deterministic or random? I subjected the global temperature data to two tests of the null hypothesis. First, random events can be described by a random function. Second, the histogram of random variables follows the normal distribution curve. The data passed both tests. The null hypothesis is accepted. Chance alone is enough to explain the data.
What I did was to deduce the cause by studying the effect. I did not actually identify the cause. I agree you need physics for that. This much I can say. The cause appears to be random but is probably chaotic. It is probably described by non-linear equations of physics such as the Navier-Stokes equations in combination with the radiative heat transfer equations and thermodynamic equations of ideal gas.
Lord Monckton
It is not just my impression that today’s temperatures are only a couple of Celsius degrees above those that prevail during ice ages. I actually got it from your article “Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered” published in July 2008 by Physics & Society (Vol. 37, No. 3) Remember your Figure 7? It’s a temperature reconstruction by C. R. Scotese.
dikranmarsupial says:
April 2, 2014 at 10:21 am
the PDO is not a forcing, it is a mode of internal variability.
It could be either. However, I suspect it is a mechanism for the release of solar energy and does force a climate response.
If the effects of ENSO are taken into account (e.g. via regression), the pause largely disapears, which is a reasonable basis for suggetsing that ENSO is a cause of the pause. That is why climatologists tend to use 30 year+ trends because they are less susceptible to this sort of statistical legerdemain.
If climate is strongly forced than 30 years should not be necessary. If it is weakly forced then 30 years is not enough. It all depends on the size of the forcing. Making general statements without understanding the actual mechanisms is a good recipe for making big mistakes.
dikran
“the PDO is not a forcing, it is a mode of internal variability.”
How do you define forcing? A cause that is external to the climate system? Not a very useful definition because the climate can change by itself.
“If the effects of ENSO are taken into account (e.g. via regression), the pause largely disappears, which is a reasonable basis for suggesting that ENSO is a cause of the pause.”
You mean exclude ENSO as a cause of climate change? What if ENSO or other natural cycles are the cause of climate change? The implicit assumption is they are not. That needs to be empirically demonstrated, not merely assumed. Otherwise it is circular reasoning. Natural cycles are not the cause because we excluded them as a possible cause.
What should be obvious, but often doesn’t seem to appreciated on either side in this issue, is that one cannot predict the future. When planning in the face of uncertainty, one of the best approaches is therefore that of scenario planning. The concept is a bit like writing plays with alternative endings. One then looks at the consequences of plausible outcomes and what one can do to mitigate things in the scenarios where the outcomes are undesirable. The new report in essence adopts this rational approach.
Despite IPCC doom report, this dataset of datasets shows no warming this millennium neither any other moment:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/from:1996.6/trend/plot/rss/from:1986.9/to:1996.6/trend/plot/rss/to:1989.4/trend/plot/rss/from:1994.2/to:1997.8/trend
unless for instance XX century trend (1970-2001) compared with XX + XXI century trend (1970-2014 trend) – no change in the trend observed then:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/to:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/to/plot/gistemp/from:1970/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1970/to:2001/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1970
Dr Strangelove, I define forcing as something external to the climate system that causes a change in that system, which excludes modes of internal variability and feedback mechansims, which are both part of the climate system itself.
Also I know that things like ENSO and (potentially) PDO are chaotic, however neither of those things can cause a long term change in climate as neither significantly affects the planetary energy budget, but merely redistribute energy from one part of the climate system to another. Thus in the (sufficiently) long term, their effects average out. Climate is long term statistical behaviour of the weather, thus the Lorenz limit does not mean that climate cannot be predicted.
@dirkranmarsupial
I know you know that, but the main porblem of almost everyone here is they are unable to understand how trend stops should be proved. Let’s say we want to prove (or disprove) that “Warming stopped in 1998”. What should be done to prove that hypothesis? Something like this should be generated with data ending at 1998.0:
http://naukaoklimacie.pl/cdn/upload/53207c633f4cb_hadcrut4.png
and then it should be checked if later data fits “blue channel” (warming stopped) or “red channel” (warming continues). After adding later data to the above we see something like that:
http://naukaoklimacie.pl/cdn/upload/53207c658e8f4_hadcrut4v2.png
No one here ever did something like that do try to prove warming stopped in some specific date. And will never do it in the future. That’s why I’m always saying it’s pathological science blog.
Hi,
This sentence reads:
No one here ever did something like that do try to prove warming stopped in some specific date. And will never do it in the future. That’s why I’m always saying it’s pathological science blog.
I must say I believe you will need to improve your English grammar skills before posting, for me. That sentence is indecipherable.
dikranmarsupial says:
April 3, 2014 at 3:57 am Also I know that things like ENSO and (potentially) PDO are chaotic, however neither of those things can cause a long term change in climate as neither significantly affects the planetary energy budget, but merely redistribute energy from one part of the climate system to another.
A perfect example of biased thinking that pervades the climate establishment and why they will never get the correct answer. The ENSO/PDO processes could very well be a mechanism for releasing stored solar energy on variable time scales.
Splice says:
April 3, 2014 at 5:23 am
Let’s say we want to prove (or disprove) that “Warming stopped in 1998″. What should be done to prove that hypothesis? Something like this should be generated with data ending at 1998.0:
http://naukaoklimacie.pl/cdn/upload/53207c633f4cb_hadcrut4.png
and then it should be checked if later data fits “blue channel” (warming stopped) or “red channel” (warming continues). After adding later data to the above we see something like that:
http://naukaoklimacie.pl/cdn/upload/53207c658e8f4_hadcrut4v2.png
No one here ever did something like that do try to prove warming stopped in some specific date. And will never do it in the future. That’s why I’m always saying it’s pathological science blog.
The problem with your analysis is the warming did not stop in 1998 …. it stopped around 2005. It only appears to stop around 1998 because the warming from 1998-2005 has been cancelled by cooling from 2005 onward which creates a flat trend line across a peak of cyclic variation.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.66/plot/rss/from:1996.66/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:2005/to/trend
However, this is just as bad for cAGW as it still creates a period longer than acceptable (15 years) without any warming.
Dr Strangelove says the famous graph by Scotese, reproduced in my 2008 paper in Physics and Society, shows only 2 K between interglacial and glacial periods. No, it shows 10 K. And the graph of temperatures over the past 420,000 years, reproduced in the head posting, shows the current glacial-interglacial range to be 12 K.
@richard M
1998 was an example (as few years ago most entries on WUWT claimed that warming stopped in 1998). I realize that the “the date of stop” moves ahead as times passes – and currently is in range form 2001 to 2005 depending on entry on this blog. In the year 2019 most entries on WUWT will be claiming that the warming stopped about the the year 2010.
The problem is no one here ever tried to prove stop this way:
http://naukaoklimacie.pl/cdn/upload/53207c633f4cb_hadcrut4.png
http://naukaoklimacie.pl/cdn/upload/53207c658e8f4_hadcrut4v2.png
for any year – 1998, 2001, 2005 and never will, as this is pathological science blog and only pathological methods of “proving” are presented here.
Splice says:
April 3, 2014 at 7:40 am
@richard M
1998 was an example (as few years ago most entries on WUWT claimed that warming stopped in 1998). I realize that the “the date of stop” moves ahead as times passes – and currently is in range form 2001 to 2005 depending on entry on this blog.
Pure nonsense. Most people around here still use 1998 as the end of the warming. I’m one of the few that argues for 2005. If you can’t even get a simple thing like this correct then what are the chances you will get anything else right? You are simply in denial that the warming has stopped and cooling has begun. It’s pretty obvious when you ignore the very best data we have, satellite data, and reference the highly contaminated and adjusted surface data. All you are doing is fooling yourself.
Lord Monckton
You must be referring to a different chart. Here is the chart
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/monckton1.png
The timescale is in million years. The coldest global temperatures are about 12 C in the last 600 million years.
dikran
“Also I know that things like ENSO and (potentially) PDO are chaotic, however neither of those things can cause a long term change in climate as neither significantly affects the planetary energy budget, but merely redistribute energy from one part of the climate system to another.”
If this is true, then ENSO cannot be the cause of the “pause” since cooling in one part of the globe is offset by warming in another part. But this is contrary to observations. The ocean’s sensible heat capacity is 1,000 times greater than the atmosphere. The ocean can easily influence the atmosphere and climate. A 10% change in cloud cover induces a forcing as large as the CO2 forcing. Clouds moving from the tropics to mid-latitudes have warming effect even without change in cloud cover. This is not merely a redistribution of energy. It changes the incoming solar radiation.
“Thus in the (sufficiently) long term, their effects average out. Climate is long term statistical behaviour of the weather, thus the Lorenz limit does not mean that climate cannot be predicted.”
Yes the ice ages, glacial and interglacial periods are somewhat predictable. But their timescale is 20,000-100,000 years. The thermohaline circulation has a cycle of 1,000 years. So our observations of 30-year or 100-year climate are well within the influence of natural cycles. “Sufficiently long term” must be interpreted as 1,000 years or more.