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
Wxmatt & all: keep in mind when hearing explanations about volcanism, pollution, etc for “the pause:”
If you’re going to invoke such “non CO2” forcings for cooling, you also have to be willing to accept that the same forcings acting in reverse (lower volcanism, lower pollution) must have been responsible for at least part of the observed warming. And the more warming attributed to such causes, the less warming attributable to CO2.
as I just said
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/18/may-2014-global-surface-landocean-and-lower-troposphere-temperature-anomaly-update/#comment-1666173
Matt says:
June 20, 2014 at 10:57 am
I think the deceleration he is referring too is broader in scope than the graph shows. The graph simply shows the pause, but if you look back further there is still an upward trend (just a slowing one).
Matt says:
June 20, 2014 at 10:57 am
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.
Well, it depends on the time scale. I suspect he was using the 2000-present timetable to show what’s happening lately, since it’s so visually impressive. However, on any longer scale (earlier than, say, 1997), the trend is still increasing, so the recent cooling would have a “decelerating” effect on that longer trend. I doubt many people would rely on just the last 17 years to make any grand pronouncement about where the climate is going (well, the warmists would, but only if going in an upward direction).
Good Evening, Anthony and all. I’ve just read an article from Financial Times regarding Putin’s role in EU’s anti-fraking movement.
It suggests that Putin, who wants and needs Europe dependant on Russian gas for reasons that will be obvious to most people in the western world has been involved with certain green movements. If proven true, it could severly damage cpecifically, the anti-shale gas movement, and the NGOs involved in deciminating Putin’s disinformation about the subject.
It’s definitly worth a read to anyone that’s interested. Obviously, everything tied to the current geo-political issues has to be taken with a pinch of salt, but this is something that I’ve suspected for a long while.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/20201c36-f7db-11e3-baf5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz35CgrHhh9
And in related news the Wash Po reconfirms that oxygen is not a toxin; and that water is wet. Thanks Po. Your warm propaganda, along with your other dialectical garbage ad-infinito, has been invaluable for brainwashed minds.
The graph is a change on the anomaly- not the actual data. The data itself is slightly warming (+0.01C). So the increases are slowing down or decelerating.
And yes many operational meteorologists I know and work with are skeptical of climate model projections mainly because they seem to be too sensitive to CO2 and disregard large scale influencers like ENSO, PDO, AMO, etc. We appreciate the chaos theory just a tad more.
Mark Stoval says:”I have read that working meteorologists … Are more skeptical …”.
About 9 years ago I attended a local Christian men’s association meeting. The guest speaker was a meteorologist from the local office of the US Weather Service. After his talk during the Q&A, someone asked him to comment on AGW. His answer was pretty cagey, but basically he intimated that it is impossible to get grant money to do any kind of research that might cast a bad light on AGW. He would not elaborate, and he ended the Q&A with that comment.
Looking back on it, I think he was a skeptic. But wouldn’t it be more natural for somebody who has more than a little knowledge about weather/climate to be skeptical, than it would be for an average person?
“Matt says:
June 20, 2014 at 10:57 am
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.”
Let’s face it Matt, if he had said “cooling,” the article probably wouldn’t have been printed. I thik he chose the right word. After all, it IS decelerating all the way passed zero.
As for reading the comments, yes, there were a few supportive comments, but not many. I also thought he did a fair job of fending off the worst of the attacks. I particularly loved the commenter that kept asking a question that was responded to, and when asked how long does a pause have to continue before he would consider that the models might be misleading ( my words here, not theirs), all he did for an answer was say that he answered that question, but the author hadn’t answered his. I am willing to bet that had God appeared before him with the truth, what ever that might be, if it wasn’t of the church of AGW, he would have denied the existence of God.
how long has it been since someone used the word “unprecedented” ?
My response to the WAPO article.
Why does any true scientist really believe that an accurate climate model can be programmed at this time considering the woeful lack of knowledge science has about the factors that influence climate in the long run? You don’t know all of those cyclic events that impact climate and you don’t know the impact of those cycles on other cycles and on the cycles that you are unaware of. Observational information available is generally for an insignificant time of reference and is often incomplete, unavailable or has been adjusted in a way to often make its reliability suspect. The equipment used to measure temperatures has not been uniform and the environment of sensing devices has not always been ideal for establishing an accurate record.
And yet, knowing this, many ascribe to calls for action, expenditures of vast sums of money and resources and disruption of billions of peoples lives based on what is, at best, responding to what if scenarios that cannot be confirmed or validated by the scientific community.
I agree with mpainter’ that this doublespeak is bad and doesn’t promote understanding. How long are people going to speak with forked tongues? It’s not that I don’t appreciate the work, this just minimises it a little bit, it in my view
I would have spent more time on the comments at WaPo, but it did not take long to see which way that wind was blowing.
My message to WxMatt is this: it does not make any difference what you believe or how you think. Post here at WUWT, and if you have a chance, check out JoNova also (I spend time there when able). You are welcome at WUWT, whether you are a “skeptic” or a “believer”.
That someone like me would be barred from SkS, “Real” Climate, et al, should speak volumes to you.
Mark H.
My interest in the whole AGW issue was ignited by two things: 1). “The debate is over”; and 2) “unprecedented extreme weather events”, none of which were unprecedented. When I heard the warmers say those thing, I felt that they were and are desperate people who will say anything to keep their scam going.
actuator,
I think of the predicting scientists like those two vultures sitting on a limb in the ’70s “head” poster. One vulture says to the other “Patience, my a_s! I’m going to kill something.” Some climate scientist proclaimed “Uncertainty my a_s! I’m going to predict something!” Then others, emboldened, jumped aboard. Then they “got relijun” and started praying that temperature tracked CO2. Worth the gamble, but hasn’t paid off.
To the detractors I say give the guy a break, he’s got this in WaPo FFS!
To WxMatt. Thanks mate.
Dave.
The Appendix he refers to is an opinion rag of talking points. So many spun graphs I don’t know where to begin a critique.
http://data.globalchange.gov/report/nca3/chapter/appendix-climate-science-supplement
WxMatt
Good for you. Not all skeptics are right wing nut jobs as they are frequently portrayed. I was agnostic 6 years ago when I took the time to really dig into the issue. At the very minimum, a reasonable person should be asking more questions than are generally being asked in the MSM. After one digests all the hysterical and cataclysmic projections and then compare them against the observational data, the divergence becomes troubling. I predict by 2020 there will be a lot of red faces and we will see a lot more robust scientific inquiry. The world will be a better place for it.
Q: What sound does a flat tire make, as you slow down and pull over to the curb?
A: WaPo WaPo WaPo WaPo WaPo WaPo WaPo WaPo WaPo …..
Thx Matt Rogers, Anthony Watts: open visor!
brg – Hans
12 years of data is not sufficient to show a “decelerating trend.” There was a large El Nino in 1998, and the trend will likely “accelerate” again after the next El Nino event. Also there have been “pauses” throughout the 20th century, but the underlying global temperature trend remains clear.
>One of the warmists theories on the pause…”more effective oceanic heat absorption”.
OK I’ll go with that. But someone tell me why the reason for the pause now is ocean currents/wind/El Nino, yet there is no way possible that the predominance of El Nino’s from the late 70’s through 1998 had anything to do with the “great warming” of .4-.6C. They ruled every single causative factor so a change of in 1 in 10,000 parts of the atmosphere to CO2 has to be the cause. It’s the oceans now, but it wasn’t the oceans then.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
Skepticism is simple.
Barium says:
June 20, 2014 at 1:13 pm
Well then, start from 1998, and include the el niño… It is really fair they didn’t, because the trend down would have been larger.
Hi Barium, there have been 4 El Niño events after 1998 already and that has not reversed it yet. You say 12 years is not sufficient. How many years do you need to see before you personally may question the modeling too?
Yes, Glenncz, they do make it so simple!
-Matt Rogers
Yes, the cooling is not deniable!!!! However, I stepped into a bucket of pee over at Thinkprogress.org , I been getting thrashed for saying that the Antarctic Sea Ice is at all time high extent , that polar bears are fine, that Arctic Sea Ice is with in historical norms and that May 2014 being the HOTTEST ever is non-sense …. Wow , I really angered some people there! A little off topic. SO two nights ago I had an inspiration, a way to get Warming Enthusiasts and Skeptics to get along with an informal survey of sorts, I would like to start a forum that is just a place for everyone everywhere to log in their daily / nightly High and Low Temps using commonly available thermometers. The idea being that we can all equally assess what’s being reported by NASA and NOAA et al. Just a thought… could be interesting.