Jason Samenow sends word of a new article in WaPo that does some of the same sort of surface temperature analyses we see right here on WUWT. Seeing what a good job Matt Rogers did in his defense against claims of cherry picking, statistical significance woes, and Trenberthian masking, it made me wonder; “How long before he gets called into the chief editors office at WaPo and reassigned to be the correspondent covering Botswana?”
Global warming of the Earth’s surface has decelerated – Matt Rogers, Capital Weather Gang
The recently-released National Climate Assessment (NCA) from the U.S. government offers considerable cause for concern for climate calamity, but downplays the decelerating trend in global surface temperature in the 2000s, which I document here.
Many climate scientists are currently working to figure out what is causing the slowdown, because if it continues, it would call into question the legitimacy of many climate model projections (and inversely offer some good news for our planet).
An article in Nature earlier this year discusses some of the possible causes for what some have to referred to as the global warming “pause” or “hiatus”. Explanations include the quietest solar cycle in over a hundred years, increases in Asian pollution, more effective oceanic heat absorption, and even volcanic activity. Indeed, a peer-reviewed paper published in February estimates that about 15 percent of the pause can be attributed to increased volcanism. But some have questioned whether the pause or deceleration is even occurring at all.
Verifying the pause
You can see the pause (or deceleration in warming) yourself by simply grabbing the freely available data from NASA and NOAA. For the chart below, I took the annual global temperature difference from average (or anomaly) and calculated the change from the prior year. So the very first data point is the change from 2000 to 2001 and so on. One sign of data validation is that the trends are the same on both datasets. Both of these government sources show a slight downward slope since 2000:
You can see some of the spikes associated with El Niño events (when heat was released into the atmosphere from warmer than normal ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific) that occurred in 2004-05 and 2009-10. But the warm changes have generally been decreasing while cool changes have grown.
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Read it all here, well worth your time – Anthony
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Commenters here often, rightly, mention the old practice of adding an epicycle to explain some divergence of observation from theory. The use of ad hoc hypotheses is clearly a weakness in a scientific theory, but it’s not always the fatal error that we sometimes think. The Ptolemaic theory had a kind of elegance to it, in that if a planet were found to misbehave, a correction could be added in the form of an additional circular or spherical motion. There was a uniformity in the corrections, and to that extent the theory was rather elegant, even if wrong. But now, look at the corrections that have been introduced into the CAGW theory, according to the Post’s writer Matt Rogers:
“Explanations include the quietest solar cycle in over a hundred years, increases in Asian pollution, more effective oceanic heat absorption, and even volcanic activity.”
And of course this is only a small sample of the theoretical tinkerings that have been proposed. They are multiple in kind and sometimes even in contradiction with each other. What this suggests is a theory flailing for support and grasping at anything that could possibly help.
Props to Matt Rogers and The Washington Post for writing and publishing an honest look into the details of the current pause. I wonder if they will take a large hit similar to the one FiveThirtyEight did for publishing Pielke, Jr. I can only hope enough people in WaPo’s circle of readership continue to read beyond the opening sentences – merely evidence of an open mind as opposed to a fundamentalism.
Good news, but there’s a long way to go. The “Global Warming” juggernaut isn’t going to go gently into the night anytime soon..
We need deep ocean thermometers so we can measure the water coming from rifts and mantle aquifers.
Opening the door to an escape route . The smart ones will take advantage of it ,the Zealots won’t …
That is unsettling. 🙂
I just paid 500 English pounds car tax to run my 4.2 litre jag for another year. I’m told that’s to stop global warming so it must be that.
Seems to me an attempt to square himself with the scientific truth without tooooo very much casting doubt on the AGW theory. In other words, Rogers wants it both ways- one foot in the truth camp and one foot in the fiction camp. This does not increase my regard for the wp.
I agree Gregory.
I have a question along those lines for anyone here with the knowledge/skills to give me the answer.
Supposing that the inner workings of the core of our planet are at least basically understood, how much C02 and other gases are generated by the “burning fossil fuels” in there…and how much of that pent up gas would HAVE to “vent” to the surface in order to keep the planet from expanding….and absent any venting…exploding? I mean obviously there has to be naturally occurring pressure valves, mechanisms at work, and there has to be at least some reasonable speculation on how much pressure they’d have to release. Any guesses or calculations that can be applied to a timescale?
Obviously hot springs, volcanoes, submarine trenches etc are evidence that heat and gas IS escaping. I guess my question is, can we quantify the amount that would HAVE to be being released, and then SUBTRACT from that amount the known/measured venting occurring on the surface to establish how much we have not found to measure?
Hey mpainter, I believe I needed to present the data- which shows the pause/deceleration- in a very balanced way to have the best chance of it being understood and actually seen by both sides. -Matt Rogers
Did the labeling function fail to put “La Nina” on the graph?
Kudos! Of course, he was obliged to provide a link to a denial that warming has paused at all. Would that he had also included a link to evidence a 17+ year lack of warming, just for balance you see. Probably the editors insisted he toss a bone to the warmists.
Looks more like he is squirming. The datasets are not the same, and that is worth investigating.
One of the warmists theories on the pause…”more effective oceanic heat absorption”.
Well, since water has obviously evolved into becoming more effective at trapping heat, all the warmists need to do is figure out how to effectively release that heat, then they can have their warming continue.
Actually, come to think of it, there must be tremendous energy savings, if I can do something to water to make it more effective at trapping heat. After all, if I have a pot of water on the stove, just think of the energy saved, if I can do something to the water to make it boil faster. Any ideas? We could save tons of emissions.
Listening to: Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship– “Blows Against the Empire”
Jorma is my hero!
Oops, Jorma wasn’t on there, it was Peter.
“…(and inversely offer some good news for our planet).”
In acknowledging this publicly, Matt Rogers places himself on the side of the angels.
Beware those for whom verification of CAGW or falsification of “the Pause” would be good news.
WaPo has an article worth reading. Wow.
Did DC freeze over?
That’s a pretty bold article. Look at what has happened to others who suggested that there isn’t a looming disaster, like Caleb Rossiter and Lennart Bengtsson. Kudos for a little balance in the press if WxMatt is the author and still paying attention to these comments.
FYI:
@ur momisugly Anyone coming here to verify facts of WaPo article: The article GROSSLY UNDERSTATES THE CASE AGAINST AGW.
“… the
slowdownstop in warming, {} if it continues, {} would call into question the legitimacy of many climate model projections… .”(above WaPo article)
{edits mine — statement still grossly inaccurate, though}
To address just one of the WaPo’s mistakes….
…. contrary to what was timidly put forth above,
Climate Models ARE Complete Failures
1. “The discrepancy between models and observations is not a new issue…just one that is becoming more glaring over time.”
Dr. Roy Spencer, Here: (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/)
Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/06/climate-modeling-epic-fail-spencer-the-day-of-reckoning-has-arrived/
2. “New peer reviewed paper finds the same global forecast model produces different results when run on different computers.”
{See thread Comments for some EXCELLENT ANALYSIS}
Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/27/another-uncertainty-for-climate-models-different-results-on-different-computers-using-the-same-code/
3. “… climate models being used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report have very little practical value because they cannot simulate critical variables of interest to the public and policymakers. … model outputs bear little relationship to the data. … climate models create imaginary climates in virtual worlds that exhibit no similarities to the climate of the world in which we live.
Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/25/new-book-by-bob-tisdale-climate-models-fail/
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
******************* Game Over ******************
Thanks and per that other commenter, yes I should have shown the La Niña years too. Big ENSO influences in there. -Matt
Want some fun? Read the voluminous and vociferous comments to the WaPo story. To paraphrase Dear Leader – “clinging to their warming” for dear life.
I see from the bio in the article that Matt Rogers is a “meteorologist/forecaster”. I have read that working meteorologists, especially weather forecasters, are more skeptical of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming than those who are “climatologists” and that may be because they actually look at past weather patterns as part of their forecasting job. After all, any honest look at the unadjusted real world data would show a fellow that we have seen nothing unusual at all over the last 40 years.
I am surprised that Mr. Rogers was able to see this article published by that propaganda outfit; but then crazy things do happen. I wonder what his readers thought.
Read the article at WaPo. He keeps using the word “decelerating”. I don’t think it means what he thinks it means. lol The trend line in his own graph goes DOWN. That’s not a deceleration, that’s a cooling trend.