The 39th Theory About The Global Warming ‘Pause’ (And Counting) See the full list here
In popular science journalism the latest is always the best. With all the explanations for the “pause” in global surface temperatures since 1997 – there are now over 30 of them – it is always the most recently published one that is the “answer.” This time it’s the Atlantic Ocean that’s to blame. A paper published in Science says that a 30-year periodicity warms and cools the world by sequestering heat below the ocean’s surface and then releasing it. You don’t have to look very deeply at the science to realise that, despite the headlines, no one has come up with an answer to the “pause.” –David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 August 2014
The “pause” in global warming may last another decade before surface temperatures start rising again, according to scientists who say heat is being stored in the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. A new study, published in the journal Science, suggests that a natural cycle of ocean currents has caused the phenomenon by drawing heat from shallow waters down almost a mile into the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. The cycle naturally produces periods of roughly 30 years in which heat is stored near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to warmer temperatures, followed by roughly 30 years in which it is stored in the depths, causing cooler surface temperatures, it suggests. –Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2014
Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth’s surface. At first this was a blip, then a trend, then a puzzle for the climate science community. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus,” said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. –Hannah Hickey, The University of Washington, 21 August 2014
The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research. A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy. Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 3 November 2013
The American Meteorological Society has released updated polling results of their membership which shows only 52% agree with the so-called “consensus” that global warming is mostly man-made. The poll finds “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.” —The Hockey Schtick, 24 August 2014
h/t to Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF
How many times have we been told natural causes were ruled out?
That the warming of the last half of the 20th century could not be explained by anything other than human influences.
Somehow the petulant children of the corn at the IPCC could not be bothered to consider they simply had no idea how the climate works. Instead they decreed that their omnipotence must be the authority and the science was settled.
Now we see these same children of the corn behaving as expected with endless insistence they get their way.
They are in the foot stomping phase approaching the screaming on the floor grand mal tantrum.
Hopefully the current crescendo of ya buts, excuses and elevated decibels will soon be met with adult command ending their fit of fanaticism.
Actually, for me the CAGW shrill tone is encouraging. It means they are getting less confident and the more they thrash about the less confidence they going to project. Back in 2004 we had a miserable hurricane season. I don’t remember any big push to equate that season to climate change; In fact I found this: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/05pielke.pdf . Fast forward to super storm sandy, which excepting a cool alliteration was totally unimpressive as storms go, and now you get a chorus of screaming doomsayers. I think it’s progress. Someday the data will win.
That was a huge complex and dangerous storm. I was there. The damage was tremendous. It wasn’t caused by high winds but rather ocean turbulence, the timing with the moon and tides and the huge volume of rain that then destroyed bridges and flooded many places.
Here on my upstate NY mountain, most of our bridges were destroyed or damaged and for a week, there was only one half of one lane and shoulder to get in or out…anywhere! They used helicopters to bring in things here.
My comment is merely a comment on the overall storm strength and climate alarmism. Damage is generally a function of preparation or lack thereof. I actually have a bit of sympathy noting that in FL, after the hurricane you don’t also end up with the possibility of freezing to death. (though getting snake bit is easily possible) Serious mistake to call (not so) super storm sandy as unprecedented. Dial back to 1938 Long Island Express Hurricane landing as a Cat 3. Or even the Colonial Hurricane of 1635 and now you’d be looking at Epic disaster.
Large storms are not a matter of “if” but “when” and my best guess is the C02 contribution to climate change does not exceed the C02 concentration in the atmosphere. Tipping points are for cows.
If I leave the back door to my house open on a winter night, such that much of the natural gas generated heat (anthropogenic warming) rushes out into the 10deg C Arizona night, is my precious 24deg C heat “sequestered” into the climate system? Will it come back to me some day in the middle of the summer to make me even warmer?
Chen and Tung seemed to have slept through their undergraduate thermo classes regarding the 2nd Law. If not, then do they really think we should believe that when that slightly warmer water gets down to the great benthic ocean depths that it only gone “temporarily” as in sequestered? Now that that “heat” is chilled and dispersed in a non-compressible liquid, that it will somehow come back in 30 years?
It takes a climate scientist to bend all laws of nature and get paid for it.
Somewhere, Leona Marshall Libby smiles a knowing smile
For those who may not be familiar with Children of The Corn.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/mobile/m/1004047-children_of_the_corn/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=bQn-U_WoCsqjigLRyoCgBQ&url=http://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DdTmMiueFHb8&cd=9&ved=0CEEQtwIwCA&usg=AFQjCNG6drc1hEGnlCIem0zOYWwvkJMzGA&sig2=icG5gsIUrH7KWvdZFB_KLA
“A general earth cooling is thus more likely as was the case from 1940 to 1970 when similar conditions prevailed. Concurrent changes in the Arctic Oscillation suggest a pattern of meridional atmospheric flow will be more common than the more latitudinal flows of warmer periods”
Dr. Norman Page,
This is exactly what I’ve been observing now for several years. We have had some extremely negative Winter values of the Arctic Oscillation(-AO), including a long stretch with it being at a record.
In Winter, this is always associated with meridional atmospheric flow as it flushes frigid Arctic air south from high latitudes to middle latitudes.
Note that for the eastern 2/3rd of the US, 2009/10 and 2013/14 were the coldest Winters since…………….the 1970’s, when we were exiting the previous 30 years of meridional flow and cooling globa temperatures.
Here it is:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/climate-ao.shtml
Note the how the extreme +AO dominated in the 1990’s………along with mild Winters and zonal flow that did not provide a mechanism for bitter cold to plunge south………very often.
As is always the case with weather, any season or year can be an exception to a particular rule/regime.
As an operational meteorologist, my forecasts are based on the 2 weeks ahead and weather models.
However, based on the state of the current climate and in view of the various indices lining up the way they did in the 1970s(last Winter-2013/14 was very similar/analog to the Winter of 1976/77)
with high confidence, I think we will see more Winters similar to the cold/snowy 1970’s for the next decade and far less mild Winters than the 1990’s.
In the early 1980’s, I leaned the value of something we call “nowcasting” in weather forecasting. Basically, we threw out the model forecasts for the next several hours and went with what our eyes and brains were telling us made sense based on radar images, winds, temperatures and other observations, then projected/extrapolated them downstream for that short period of time. A good nowcaster could whip the weather model forecast every time.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/cliff/BAMSNowcast7.11.pdf
In climate, we have a similar situation going on but with the time scales several orders of magnitude greater/longer. We are throwing out the climate model forecasts and using observations of various indices(AO, AMO, PDO and so on) as well as other empirical data that are actual measures of our atmosphere that show trends. We are just projecting them out/extrapolating based on what our eyes and brains are telling us, not what models using mathematical equations to represent the theoretical physics say should be happening.
All the nowcasters in climate science right now are whipping the global climate models.
speak to any commercial fishermen with a long family history in the industry and they will tell you all about oceanic cycles . in the north east atlantic the switch to a negative north atlantic oscillation results in huge increases in recruitment in the gadoid species along with herring and mackerel . this is currently evidenced by increasing recruitment of these species year on year since 2009 . for the uk this was accompanied by cooling in the late 60,s through the 70,s ,i would expect the same this time.
Now we skeptics can watch with glee as the warmists backpedal, I knew it would happen some day.
I guess I should be thrilled that IPCC zeolots are acknowleding that global temperature is driven by natural causes other than humanity.
Unfortunately I am not.
It may be because I am older and it takes more to get me thrilled about anything or it could be I am still waiting for the explanation of why a warming of the earth is necessaily bad. Sure for some regions it may have a negative affect, but for how many more regions may it have a positive affect? If a person living in Moscow has milder winters, are they going to hit the streets wailing, “What a disaster! What a disaster!”?
So there is no need to fund the global warming research gravy train for another 10 years. Nice! 🙂
Doesn’t anyone see or understand how CO2 works.
CO2 is like a parathyroid gland. To much secretion from a parathyroid gland causes the bones to release calcium into the blood stream. The more CO2 we put into the atmosphere causes the heat to go deep into the oceans.
Was that sarcasm?
you forgot the sarc tag lol
I know Bob Tisdale reviewed Chen & Tung’s Science paper here at WUWT and on his own blog here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/will-the-next-el-nino-bring-an-end-to-the-slowdown-in-global-surface-warming/
Bob big beefs with the paper are that (1) it was a reanalysis and thus not really data. (2) the Southern Ocean data fed into the reanalysis is so sparse that it is meaningless, and (3) the authors wrongly dismiss the very obvious El Nino/La Nina ENSO-driven steps in SST data.
But I received my paper copy of the 22 August 2014 Science in yesterday’s snail mail, so I read through Chen&Tung to see what I could glean from it as an non-expert.
After my first read through, I was astounded at the POOR quality of the paper, especially coming in Science. There are a number of times the authors were allowed by the reviewers and editors to simply “hand-wave off” some very important assumptions as FACTS.
Here are just one (of several) passages that really had me gob-smacked.
“During, the current hiatus, radiative forcing at the TOA by an increasing green-house gas concentration in the atmosphere produces deeper and deeper ocean layers.” (p.899)
– Note there were no references in that statement. Looking back to their Introduction, they reference 1.(Trenberth, Fasullo, Balmaseda, JClim, 2010), 2. IPCC AR4’s SPM (not the WG1 science section), and, 4. (Trenberth, Fasullo, Science, 2010). So they lean exclusively on Trenberth-Fasullo’s assertions of radiative imbalance, but then go on to find that Trenberth and Fasullo were wrong in where the heat went.
– That is clear evidence they presumed an outcome, tuned their model to show it, and then falsified the source from which they got their starting input and assumptions.
Chen & Tung conclude with, “… the hiatus should continue on a decadal time scale. When the internal variability that was responsible for the current hiatus switches sign, as it inevitably will, another episode of accelerated global warming should ensue.”
The elephant in the room they are trying desperately to ignore is that the “current hiatus” could really be the beginning of a 15-20 year COOL-DOWN that completely erases the rapid +0.5 deg C warming of the 80’s-90’s. Then, their “accelerated global warming” commencing in 2035-2040 will be back at its 1970 global temperature starting point. So the ONLY thing they have observed with the better more completely observational technology, is the natural AMOC driven AMO fluctuation running as internal variations of a complex system.
My conclusion: The “radiative imbalance at the TOA” is what is really still missing-in-action, not the heat it would generate.
From M Courtney on August 27, 2014 at 8:07 am:
CO2, UHI, black carbon (soot), CFC’s, galactic cosmic rays (Svensmark etc), reductions in sulfurous emissions from power plants (less global dimming), natural change in cloudiness (Spencer et al), release of long-stored ocean heat from previous climate optimums, natural release of recent ocean heating by ENSO processes (Tisdale)…
And that’s without mentioning the nutty ones like you’d find at ShortSheila’s Gabfest.
But has there actually been any late 20th century warming.
The satellite data suggests no consistent warming from 1979, just the one off isolated ‘climate shift’ caused byb the super el nino of 1998; it is flat before, and flat after that event.
The tree rings show no warming post the late 1960s so Mann ditched the tree data.
We have all seen the adjustments made by BOM and the like.
And as you mention there is UHI, which is not causing real warming (urbanisation of the planet is too small) but is distorting the temp record to give the impression of warming.
I am sceptical that there has been any significant warming as from the 1970s, with the exception of about 0.15degC caused by the 1998 super El Nino. The data is just too uncertain to say more than that.
This has been obvious for some time now. And, once you remove the ~60 year cycle from the data, you are left with a rising trend which is A) relatively inconsequential and B) been steady since the exit from the LIA, and so not dependent on CO2 concentration. Hence, my prediction of the near future evolution of global temperatures.
There is no basis for your projection after 2042 to 2062. At this point in time, with our limited knowledge of Solar dynamics and One could just as well invoke mechanisms that invert your Trise into a Tfall.
Further you seem to show a small decrease between 2014 and 2022, then stable temps for another 20 years. The de minimis 2015-2020 Tfall you show as we head into this uncharted territory of Gleissberg solar minimum could actually induce a state of strong negative feedback from clouds and much more Tfall than you project.
We are in a state of ignorance about what the Climate will do from now to 2020, much less anything beyond that.
Bart .Joel Here is a piece of an earlier comment which is apropos.
“For the latest update of the cooling forecasts based on the 960 and 60 year periodicities in the temperature data and using the 10Be and neutron count data as the best proxy for solar activity see the latest post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com. ( Especially Figs 5 – 9 )
GCMs are worse than useless for climate prediction – they simply delude the modelers and the politicians into thinking they know what is going on and acting inappropriately. Any simpler semi empirical model that does not include an accounting for the quasi – millennial periodicity is also doomed to irrelevance.”
Reply
Far from being inconsequential the underlying trend is part of the 960 year quasi- periodicity and is enough to account for all of the 20th century warming without any contribution from anthropogenic CO2 at all.
Regarding the oceans as a heat sink. I guess the laws of thermodynamics does not apply to the oceans. Heat is transfered in three ways convection, conduction, and radiation. Heat is attracted to cool till temperature equalization. With that being said, how does the heat get pulled down to the ocean depths without a real large noticeable temperature increase on the ocean surface. And I guess the theory that heat rises does not work into the ocean depths as well
You did not hear about Maxwell’s demons? Atlantic is full of them. Problem solved!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_devil
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) –for Southern HEMISPHERE SEA ICE EXTENT SHOWING DOZENS OF TINY HOLES AROUND THE EDGE OF THE LAND WHAT GIVES? COMPUTER ERROR or real melting?
TOO EARLY FOR MELTING.
this is the explanation i was given for how the ice forms in antarctica , the offshore wind from the land moves the ice creating a gap . this then freezes causing growth in ice area. at times the ice sheet can be melting at the outer edge in warmer water ,but still growing in size depending on conditions close to shore. sorry i have no citation to link to. if you are interested i can have a look.
Ocean surface water in the tropics is saltier and therefore more dense than at higher latitudes due to higher evaporation rates. Water near the poles is also less dense because land ice is melting. When currents go away from the equator, they tend to sink, taking heat with them.
Beware taking seriously any “science” printed in the Daily Express, Daily Mail, or the Mail on Sunday.
In fact who should not taken seriously is any ” science ” being presented by the CAGW scientists as it has been pure bunkum all along as shown by the 39 different excuses on lack of warming. And also any comments by you totally ignoring these spectacular failures and coming here with lame comments.
If the oceans were warming wouldnt sea level rise be increasing rather then the rate of sea level rise getting slower as it is??
Im sorry Benson I cant wrap my mind around that theory. The dynamics of that theory to me does not hold water. (Pun) That would mean in some places the depths of the ocean could be warmer than surface temperatures. I would also think that the surface of the ocean would disemanate the heat long before any heat sinks into the obise, let alone be stored for a future release.
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coldocean.html
When discussing the ‘pause’ ‘plateau’ climate sensitivity, model projections, I usually remark that Julia Slingo the head scientist at UK Met Office, late last year at a conference aactually said ‘we are not out of the woods yet since there may be no return to warming before 2030’
This was an extraordinary comment in many ways. First one would imagine that one would be delighted that there may be no more warming before 2030. Second, it was an acknowledgment that she considers natural factors are going to be negative (ie., counter balance her views of CO2 warming, and she thinks high climate sensitivity). I took her comment to be based upon ocean cycles, and that they were in a cooling part of the cycle, but it might be that she considers that solar has a part to play.
The material thing is that the longer the ‘pause’ continues, the lower climate sensitivity must be.
If the ‘pause’ continues for just a couple more years, most of the climate models will have dropped out of the 95% band.
This means that it is almost impossible to see that there will be an AR6, since between now and the closing date for papers, we can expect to see more and more papers suggesting ever lower figures for climate sensitivity, and more papers suggesting that ocean cycles are a major driver of global warming, and played a much bigger role in the 20 year warming period between mid/late 1970s and mid/late 1990s. There could be more papers on the sun, but no one presently knows how the solar cycles will pan out, so I leave that issue aside.
So how can AR6 get off the ground. It will have to fess up that climate sensitivity is now seen to be lower than previously thought, perhaps there will be ‘consensus’ on a figure below 2.5deg C, with the bell curve making it look probably less than 2degC.
It will have to fess up that natural variation is stronger than previously thought and that it played a bigger role in the past warming.
It will have to fess up that the model projections are way off target, running too warm.
It is difficult to see how it can concede such ground and not be ridiculed. I consider it likely that the IPCC will not survive the next 4 years should the ‘pause’ continue, and heck, if the trend between 2000 and 2018 shows a cooling trend, even if modest say just 0.05degC per decade (which would be within error bands), their position will be even worse.
I think that the next 5 years is likely to be very critical, and I hope that there are no significant volcanoes to cloud the issue, since the Team will surely jump on that.
They’ll find a way to fudge around it. Look at how AR5 dodged and weaved. Their motto is, “Don’t give up the sh*t!”
I agree but at that stage, there are 3 important differeces. First, there not that many papers suggesting climate sensitivity below say 2.2degC, and the models were still with the 95% band, and the ‘pause’ was only about 16 years (a lot less on most data sets).
Things will be different if the ‘pause’ continues right through to AR6. As I say, I expect to see many papers betwen now and then on climate sensitivity, and all these new papers will, in the absence of finding hidden heat in the ocean, suggest that climate sensitivity s less than 2degC. as we go forward, these papers will be estimating even lower sensitivity. At the momemt papers suggesting climate sensitivity of about 1.3degC are viewed as outliers, but what if the vast majority of new papers suggest a range of 1.1 to 1.5degC. In AR5, they largely ignored the latest papers on climate sensitivity, but they were new and few in number. It will be different for AR6.
IT is not easy for them to fudge the model point, if all models are running outside the 95% band (and this could happen within the next 18 months if we do not get a significant el nino this autumn/spring next year – the ENSO meter is back up again so who know what might happen – well Bob obviously has a beeter view on that).
They were able to fudge things in AR5, but it was not an easy fudge, but certainly enabled the summary for policy makers to be drafted in a way that it did not reflect the ‘scientific’ stuff in the underlying WGs. But now matters are becoming much more stark, personally I do not see them being able to fudge things 2nd time round, especially if cracks appear in MSM, with MSM commenting more on the ‘pause’ and, more on scientiststs dropping out of the fold, and more on the scandals of temperature data adjustments.
See Mark Steyn’s hilarious take on this today http://www.steynonline.com/6540/settled-science-catches-up-with-steyn
Poor-relation is not Pause-ation.
What a kick to read David Rose’s paean to Wyatt&Curry–as if they led the way in recognizing the dominance, over human lifetimes, of natural multi-decadal climate oscillations.
The 30-year cycle is natural. If they are saying despite our CO2 emissions, the cycle will prevail, then the logical conclusion is nature dominates the climate. Warmists are dancing around the ‘missing heat in deep ocean’ to avoid this logical conclusion. If the missing heat hypothesis is true, then we can forget about it because that’s a 1,000-year cycle.
AMO is in the warm phase so it’s not AMO. PDO is in the cool phase. Maybe the pause is linked to PDO.
The upshot of the “temperature homogenization” scam, exposed (again) by Dr. Jennifer Marohasy in relation to the Australian BOM, is that the concept of a temperature pause or “hiatus” is pejorative. From the several examples Marohasy provides, it emerges that the longer term trend of temperatures in Australia has been downward since 1910. Thus, what is being seen since 1997 is a RESUMPTION of the established trend, not a hiatus. Given the pervasiveness of the “homogenization” scam in most other weather/climate agencies around the world (an incestious club if ever there was one), the downward trend will be found to be the general rule. The problem with general and normative climate models, relating to “what should be”, is that the assumption of a temperature increase sometime in the long distance future is projected back into the past so that all the base data needs to be homogenized downwards to fit the normative model. While most of the normative climate/temperature models were designed to hit reality in the late 1990s, the “real” physical data since was always going to be consistent with the longer term declining trend in temperatures and this could not be hidden or incorporated into the normative models by homogenization. Here, the normative climate modelers hit what they have termed a hiatus, but instead what has happened is that the subjective climate models have hit the hard world of empirical reality. Thus dogmatic subjective “modeling” (climate modeling could hardly be called a science) meets the reality of objective empirical driven Science. Hiatus is a subjective notation for the continuation of a normative modeling dogma, while “resuming” a downward trend is an empirical observation of objective “real” science. Homogenization is the scripture.
It sounds a good point, and one that might be said of the US. There is strong eveidence to suggest that the US has been on a downward path following the highs of the 1930s. That would be two continents. The UK (CET) merely shows a long term and gradual warming trend coming out of the LIA.
I suspect that the late 20th century warming is explained by two factors. One is that a large part of it is not real, being the result of polluted data from UHI and station drop outs etc. Second, to the extent that it was real, it was due to the ocean cycles which were predominantly in a warming cycle.