In a recent interview, Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist, from NCAR said the upcoming 2014/15 El Niño might shift global surface temperatures upwards by 0.2 to 0.3 deg C to further the series of upward steps. Curiously, Trenberth is continuing to suggest that the warming we’ve experienced since the mid-1970s resulted from naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled El Niño events and that we might get to experience yet another of those El Niño-caused warming steps as a result of the 2014/15 El Niño. So let’s take a look at what he’s suggesting and what the future MAY POSSIBLY hold in store…if Trenberth’s dreams come true.
Peter Sinclair of ClimateCrocks recently produced two YouTube interviews with NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth about the upcoming 2014/15 El Niño. See Part 1 here. At about the 9-minute mark in Part 2 (here), Trenberth speculates, sounding gleeful, that the upcoming El Niño may lead to another in the series of upward steps in global surface temperature:
One of the real prospects to look out for is whether we go back into a different phase of this Pacific Decadal Oscillation. And one of the potential prospects we can watch out for is whether the next whole decade will be distinctly warmer…uh, uh…and so, in terms of the global mean temperature, instead of having a gradual trend going up, maybe the way to think of it is we have a series of steps, like a staircase. And, and, it’s possible, that we’re approaching one of those steps. And we will go up, you know, two- or three-tenths of a degree Celsius to a next level, and maybe we won’t come down again. I think that’s one of the things we could possibly look out for.
Some of you may believe that Kevin Trenberth is actually looking forward to another upward step…not just looking out for one. So let’s take another look at the upward steps in global surface temperatures he was happily discussing.
Kevin Trenberth introduced his “big jumps” in global surface temperatures in an article last year, without stating their cause. We discussed those big jumps and identified their causes in the post Open Letter to the Royal Meteorological Society Regarding Dr. Trenberth’s Article “Has Global Warming Stalled?”. Please refer to that post for the detailed discussion. Figure 1 is an update of Figure 10 from that post with data through 2013. NCDC global land+ocean surface temperature anomaly data were used for consistency with Trenberth’s original article (Data source here.)
Figure 1
SUPPOSE TRENBERTH’S DREAMS COME TRUE
Trenberth is now suggesting that global surface temperatures might shift upwards 0.2 to 0.3 deg C again in response to the 2014/15 El Niño. So for illustration purposes only, let’s take the data from the 16-year period of 1998 to 2013 and shift them up those 0.2 and 0.3 deg C and insert them in the time period of 2015 to 2030. See Figure 2. The period-average temperature anomaly of 0.57 deg C for the period of 1998-2013 would shift up to 0.77 deg C or 0.87 deg C for 2015-2030.
Figure 2
WOULD AN UPWARD STEP HELP THE CLIMATE MODELS?
An upward shift in global surface temperatures would definitely help the models for a few years, but, because the global surface temperatures warmed in a step, the hiatus period that followed would again cause a continued divergence between the models and the real world. See Figure 3 for a model-“data” comparison starting in 1979 and running through 2030.
Figure 3
The graph includes the multi-model ensemble-member mean for the climate models stored in the CMIP5 archive, with two scenarios: RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. And the two sets of future “data” are created once again by taking the NCDC global surface temperature anomalies for the 16-year period of 1998 to 2013, shifting them up 0.2 to 0.3 deg C and inserting them in the time period of 2015 to 2030. Figure 4 includes the same model-data comparison but with the commonly used start year of 1998.
Figure 4
TRENBERTH’S CONFLICT
Kevin Trenberth appears to have conflicting causes for the global warming we’ve experienced since the mid-1970s. On one hand, for decades, Trenberth has been a true-blue proponent of the hypothesis of human-induced global warming, with the warming caused by the emissions of manmade greenhouse gases. On the other, for about a year, he has been promoting the “big jumps” in global surface temperatures, with the steps in the staircase of global surface temperatures being caused by El Niño events.
There would be no conflict if Trenberth was able to show that manmade greenhouse gases somehow contributed to the warm water that fuels El Niño events. But Trenberth has always noted that it is sunlight that provides the warm water for El Niños. In a recent post (see here), we presented two examples of this from his peer-reviewed papers, and for those of you new to this discussion, they’re worth repeating. The first is Trenberth et al. (2002). They write (my boldface):
The negative feedback between SST and surface fluxes can be interpreted as showing the importance of the discharge of heat during El Niño events and of the recharge of heat during La Niña events. Relatively clear skies in the central and eastern tropical Pacific allow solar radiation to enter the ocean, apparently offsetting the below normal SSTs, but the heat is carried away by Ekman drift, ocean currents, and adjustments through ocean Rossby and Kelvin waves, and the heat is stored in the western Pacific tropics. This is not simply a rearrangement of the ocean heat, but also a restoration of heat in the ocean.
The second paper is Trenberth and Fasullo (2011). They write (my boldface):
Typically prior to an El Niño, in La Niña conditions, the cold sea waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific create high atmospheric pressure and clear skies, with plentiful sunshine heating the ocean waters. The ocean currents redistribute the ocean heat which builds up in the tropical western Pacific Warm Pool until an El Niño provides relief (Trenberth et al. 2002).
And we confirmed in the post Open Letter to the Royal Meteorological Society Regarding Dr. Trenberth’s Article “Has Global Warming Stalled?” that it is sunlight that provides the warm water that serves as fuel for El Niños.
“….MAYBE WE WON’T COME DOWN AGAIN…”
Trenberth’s statement in the YouTube interview, “And we will go up two- or three-tenths of a degree Celsius to a next level, and maybe we won’t come down again,” is similar to one made in his August 2013 interview on NPR . There he is reported to have said:
…what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again…
Those are curious statements. Trenberth has never taken the time to explain that we would NOT expect the surface temperatures to go back down again. So his “never go back to that previous level again” seems to be a clear case of misdirection.
An El Niño…
- releases a tremendous amount of heat from the tropical Pacific to the atmosphere, and…
- it redistributes a tremendous amount of warm water within the oceans from the tropical Pacific to adjacent ocean basins, and…
- according to Trenberth and Fasullo (2011), an El Niño causes changes in atmospheric circulation that reduces the evaporation from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and allows more sunlight to penetrate and warm those ocean basins to depth, both of which contribute to the warming of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in response to an El Niño without the direct exchange of heat from the tropical Pacific.
Regarding 3, Trenberth and Fasulo (2011) includes:
Meanwhile, maximum warming of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans occurs about 5 months after the El Niño owing to sunny skies and lighter winds (less evaporative cooling), while the convective action is in the Pacific.
The upward steps are precisely what we would expect of ENSO if it is viewed, not as noise in the surface temperature record, but as a chaotic, sunlight-fueled, recharge-discharge oscillator.
It appears that El Niño events, combined with the heat uptake in the tropical Pacific during La Niña events, are major contributors to any radiative imbalance that may (or may not) exist.
CLOSING
The climate science community hasn’t bothered to properly account for the contribution of ENSO. And there’s no reason that we would expect them to do so. Any attempt by the climate science community to account for ENSO’s contribution to the warming of surface temperatures and the oceans to depth would detract from the hypothetical influence of manmade greenhouse gases.
EARLIER POSTS IN THIS SERIES
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 1 – The Initial Processes of the El Niño.
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 2 – The Alarmist Misinformation (BS) Begins
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 3 – Early Evolution – Comparison with 1982/83 & 1997/98 El Niño Events
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 4 – Early Evolution – Comparison with Other Satellite-Era El Niños
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 5 – The Relationship Between the PDO and ENSO
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 6 – What’s All The Hubbub About?…
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 7 – May 2014 Update and What Should Happen Next
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 8 – The Southern Oscillation Indices
And for additional introductory discussions of El Niño processes see:
- An Illustrated Introduction to the Basic Processes that Drive El Niño and La Niña Events
- El Niño and La Niña Basics: Introduction to the Pacific Trade Winds
- La Niñas Do NOT Suck Heat from the Atmosphere
- ENSO Basics: Westerly Wind Bursts Initiate an El Niño
FURTHER READING
My ebook Who Turned on the Heat? goes into a tremendous amount of detail to explain El Niño and La Niña processes and the long-term aftereffects of strong El Niño events. Who Turned on the Heat? weighs in at a whopping 550+ pages, about 110,000+ words. It contains somewhere in the neighborhood of 380 color illustrations. In pdf form, it’s about 23MB. It includes links to more than a dozen animations, which allow the reader to view ENSO processes and the interactions between variables.
I’ve lowered the price of Who Turned on the Heat? from U.S.$8.00 to U.S.$5.00. A free preview in pdf format is here. The preview includes the Table of Contents, the Introduction, the first half of section 1 (which was provided complete in the post here), a discussion of the cover, and the Closing. Take a run through the Table of Contents. It is a very-detailed and well-illustrated book—using data from the real world, not models of a virtual world. Who Turned on the Heat? is only available in pdf format…and will only be available in that format. Click here to purchase a copy. Thanks. Book sales and tips will hopefully allow me to return to blogging full-time once again.
I would love such an outcome but the PDO, AMO and weak solar flux (relative to where we are in the cycle) say it’s just a pipe dream. I would be happy for any sort of “normal” El Nino so I can keep my plant life alive.
Stephen Richards says: “In your figure 1, after the ninos we see the plateaux. Am i being silly in expecting some decay of the emerging heat during those plateau periods ?”
It depends where you look and what dataset you’re viewing.
With sea surface temperatures, the South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific subset shows long-term decays during the periods between the strong El Nino events.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/ssta-south-atlantic-indian-west-pacific-oceans.gif
With the AMO, the North Atlantic SSTa did not decay after the 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 El Ninos:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/07-n-atl-ssta.png
If this turns out to be a strong El Nino, we’ll have to keep an eye on the response of the North Atlantic.
And of course the East Pacific simply mimics ENSO with little long-term trend:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/03-east-pac-ssta.png
“It feels to me as if I have ‘stored’ some heat.”
It’s not as you ‘feel’ it. It’s as it is. Open a physics book and learn what heat means.
I have a problem discussing someone’s ‘science” ….. based on some temperature graph that the past has been adjusted down over 1/2 a degree
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/at-ncdc-if-the-present-refuses-to-get-warmer-then-the-past-must-become-colder/
tim says: “El Nino’s are cooling events where heat trapped in the ocean is released into the atmosphere which cause’s the atmospheric temperature to rise for a short period….”
You understandings of ENSO are incomplete. For a better understanding, start here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/an-illustrated-introduction-to-the-basic-processes-that-drive-el-nino-and-la-nina-events/
And here (42MB .pdf):
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/the-manmade-global-warming-challenge.pdf
I have a problem discussing someone’s ‘science” ….
Not you Bob!…..Trenberth
I think the comment about heat not being stored is a misunderstanding of terms. I think what he probably should have been saying is energy is stored, not heat, and as far as the thermos is concerned, as soon as you take that top off, the “heat” moves out of the bottle – of course it already always is, just faster now. I wasn’t aware that “heat” was transport, but I understand that some terms in popular use are not the same in the use within a scientific discipline – assuming, of course, there is a discipline to start with, which “climate guessing” doesn’t seem to have.
LT says: “It is just as likely this will be a weak El-Nino which will trigger a stronger La-Nina and global temperatures will drop next year as well as the PDO index.”
That would be nice, but, as a result of that downwelling Kelvin wave, there’s a lot of warmer-than-normal water below the surface of the eastern equatorial Pacific at this time, and it’s going to go somewhere.
Somebody says:
May 20, 2014 at 1:46 pm
“the heat is stored”
You physicists drive me nuts. This fixation with referring to heat as an energy transfer ignores hundreds of years of work. The energy transfer is “heating”, not “heat”. That type of energy, the change in which is measured by a change in temperature, has been called “heat” for a very long time. It is you physicists who have muddied the waters by deciding that heat should no longer refer to energy, as it had been for centuries and should now refer to energy transfer. If something is “hot”, it is hot because of the energy it has as a state property, not because it is transferring energy. There is a reason the symbol for enthalpy is H you know. Maxwell understood this. Plank understood this. Why is it that physicists today can’t accept this? Things like heat of formation, heat of vapourization, heat content, etc., refer to energy, not energy transfer.
This:
Bejan, Adrian; Kraus, Allan D. Heat Transfer Handbook. John Wiley & Sons., 2003
for instance uses the term “heat” for energy, NOT energy transfer.
NEWSFLASH
The predicted El Nino induced jump in global temperatures has been found to be unnecessary due to an increase in upward adjustments of the temperature record by climate scientists investigating the lack of warming over most of the past two decades. This redundancy in available scientific explanations means that the anticipated El Nino induced jump will be deferred until further notice.
(Or is that the other way round? I can never remember.)
Wishful thinking. With AMO cooling what is likely to happen is that after a weak to moderate el nino and spike, global temps will continue jagged fall as cold PDO resumes. Period very much like the 57-58 warm enso. I have been posting on weatherbell showing major physical differences including the fact, which Dr Trenberth ignores, that the SOI is not nearly as low as the super Nino years due to warm water surrounded Australia influencing the pressure that and preventing coupling. In addition there is much more extensive cold water surrounding the warming areas. Joe D Aleo’s studies on the cold pdo enso events, where you do get the 9 month spike of the pdo and mei, look to spot on. Expect an enso event similar to 02 and 09 ( again the weatherbell post today showed how close the SST was running vs the warm pdo events that trenberth treaures, he should look at the MEI site because it is the secret sauce
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
The super ninos are preceded by prolonged warm mei’s There is direct linkage also with the droughts in the US and wet periods and the following winter. Have the snow shovels ready and since the EPA is going to force more coal plants off line, be prepared to find other ways to heat your homes if the power is out
BTW I wonder if this is purposeful distraction from what is a mind boggling forecast of the CFSV2 for a positive arctic ice anomaly. huge given the cooling north atlantic, and the forecast for major mud in your eye rains the next 9 months in the great plains perma drought area. Its amazing, and perhaps this is the one they can strut their stuff on about being right, but every single point they make now is running opposite. Wildfires are below normal through may 19th in spite of the push there… the tornado season has tanked again. I think the two biggest climate/weather stories are the icemelt not being near what is has been and the coming 9 months of wet weather. The cfsv2 is in line with what Joe D and I have been thinking. The JAMSTEC is no where any super nino and in fact is looking like a classic Modiki ( renamed calamari by Joe and I, cause we are gumba’s and we like calamari) of course perhaps we are wrong and will provolone in our upon, but cheese what can you do.. all of this makes me squiddish
Sometimes you gotta lighten up
Bob, my understanding may not be complete but El Nino’s clearly result in a net cooling of the Pacific which I would classify as a cooling event. This is shown by sea level drops coinciding with El Nino events despite the corresponding increases in global surface temperatures.
WOW the UKMET is not impressed ( and by the way, most climate models have this more weak to moderate) http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/gpc-outlooks/el-nino-la-nina
Joseph Bastardi says:
May 20, 2014 at 3:06 pm
OK. El Nino spiked in 1998. La Nada’s and very weak El Nino’s since then, right?
Consider this, then think about it please:
Texas and Oklahoma suffered severely with drought conditions during the La Nada that was more-or-less stable five of the past six years. California is now suffering under a singnificant drought as El Nino conditions trend higher the past four months, but Texas and OK are “sort of” getting more rain now.
Is there a long-term, more accurate co-relation between actual El Nino and La Nina conditions with respect to droughts in various places: specifically California, Texas, and the mid-state plains?
@Joe Kirklin Bastardi,
Thanks, Joe. Greatly appreciate you bringing your superb forecasting skills (and Joe D’s) to the discussion. Not sure if all readers know who you are. For those who don’t, Joe’s widely recognized as one of the best long term forecasters out there.
Who needs an strong El Nino when we can create the step through another NEW IMPORVED algorithm version from GISStemp or HADcrut
“That type of energy, the change in which is measured by a change in temperature, has been called “heat” for a very long time” Are you talking about that long time while it was thought that heat is some kind of fluid? That now is pseudo science. You confuse thermal energy with heat, and that’s not good. Energy flow and energy is not the same thing.
Mr, Tisdale, you are truly the master of all matters ENSO. Your critical ability has flourished. I suggest we name the dilemma that your revealed “Trenberth’s Dilemma.”
” heat of vapourization, heat content, etc., refer to energy, not energy transfer”.
I hope you do realize that ‘heat content’ is not ‘heat’, but ‘heat content’ (although such naming is to be avoided when it creates confusion). Also ‘latent heat’ is not ‘heat’, but ‘latent heat’. Indeed, that can turn out to be heat at a phase transform (but one does not necessarily need that, in the system might occur a chemical reaction that gives the necessary energy for the phase transform, for example). Whence the naming related to ‘heat’, but not identical. With different meaning. Can you ‘feel’ the difference?
Joseph Bastardi says: The super ninos are preceded by prolonged warm mei’s
The last three steps that Bob denotes in figure 1 all occurred at the trough of the solar (SNN) cycle. Just saying.
RACookPE1978 says:
May 20, 2014 at 3:17 pm
———————————-
Regressions for an El Nino versus temperature and precipitation around the world at the link below. Various 3 month time periods are shown (keeping in mind there is a 3 month lag after an El Nino peaks that the peak impact on temperature and precipitation will be felt).
Temperature-wise; Texas-Oklahoma-US southeast are oppositely correlated to the ENSO, ie cooler in an El Nino. California is not much affected temperature-wise.
Precipitation-wise; California-Texas-US south are very positively correlated with the ENSO; ie much more rain when there is an El Nino. Much less rain when there is a La Nina. Why has there been so much drought in California to Florida in the last several years? Given the domination of La Ninas since 2010, this is expected. California is going to get flooding rains lagged 3 months after this El Nino’s timeline develops (fall and later) and so will Texas.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/ENSO/regressions/
Have I got this right? An El Nino raises global temperature by 0.2-0.3 deg, and the temperature doesn’t come down again. So, the El Ninos in 1976, 1987 and 1998 would have raised global temperature by 0.2 to 0.3 deg three times, and the temperature would stay up each time. The IPCC claims that the 20th- century global temperature rise was about 0.74 deg. Looks like it was all caused by El Ninos, not CO2.
—–
John Eggart – I understand your frustration, but English is a very flexible language. “Heat” is both a noun and a verb ( and the modern tendency is for all nouns to be usable as verbs)
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/figure-7-2.png
During the recent warming it is clear that the both max and min excursions were greater. Looks like you oscillator was pumping a bit harder.
“John Eggart – I understand your frustration, but English is a very flexible language. “Heat” is both a noun and a verb ( and the modern tendency is for all nouns to be usable as verbs)”
Physics is not English, though. It was allowable to use sloppy terminology until heat was defined rigorously.
One can use ‘trapping heat’ and ‘storing heat’ pseudo scientific terminology until he learns that mechanical work also exists. Oddly enough, it can act on a system… what would a pseudo scientist say? Is it ‘trapped work’ then? How does one differentiate between ‘trapped work’ and ‘trapped heat’?