Now that “the pause” has come of age, and has exceeded 18 years, it is time to revisit a post a made back in November 2011.
Bill Illis reminded me in comments of this spectacular failure of peer reviewed climate science:
Let’s remember several years ago when all the heavy-weights of climate science produced a paper that said the lower troposphere pause had to be at least 17 years long before a clear signal that human-made CO2 warming theories should start to be questioned.
Carl Mears was the second author on that paper along Ben Santer (lead) [and Tom Wigley, Susan Solomon, Tom Karl, Gerald Meehl, Peter Stott, Peter Thorne, Frank Wentz].
Well, that time has now been exceeded and they all have egg on their face.
http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-010-476.pdf
Alhough, if you read Carl Mears article carefully, he is starting the discussion that maybe the theories need to be revised. His use of the d’word may be needed just to keep him in the club and not being shown the door by his other compatriots who accept no questioning at all.
Here’s the current lower troposphere temperature from RSS:
Here’s the reminder press release boasting of their discovery. Emphasis mine.
Separating signal and noise in climate warming
LIVERMORE, Calif. — In order to separate human-caused global warming from the “noise” of purely natural climate fluctuations, temperature records must be at least 17 years long, according to climate scientists.
To address criticism of the reliability of thermometer records of surface warming, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists analyzed satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower troposphere (the region of the atmosphere from the surface to roughly five miles above) and saw a clear signal of human-induced warming of the planet.
Satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature are made with microwave radiometers, and are completely independent of surface thermometer measurements. The satellite data indicate that the lower troposphere has warmed by roughly 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of satellite temperature records in 1979. This increase is entirely consistent with the warming of Earth’s surface estimated from thermometer records.
Recently, a number of global warming critics have focused attention on the behavior of Earth’s temperature since 1998. They have argued that there has been little or no warming over the last 10 to 12 years, and that computer models of the climate system are not capable of simulating such short “hiatus periods” when models are run with human-caused changes in greenhouse gases.
“Looking at a single, noisy 10-year period is cherry picking, and does not provide reliable information about the presence or absence of human effects on climate,” said Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist and lead author on an article in the Nov. 17 online edition of the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres).
Many scientific studies have identified a human “fingerprint” in observations of surface and lower tropospheric temperature changes. These detection and attribution studies look at long, multi-decade observational temperature records. Shorter periods generally have small signal to noise ratios, making it difficult to identify an anthropogenic signal with high statistical confidence, Santer said.
“In fingerprinting, we analyze longer, multi-decadal temperature records, and we beat down the large year-to-year temperature variability caused by purely natural phenomena (like El Niños and La Niñas). This makes it easier to identify a slowly-emerging signal arising from gradual, human-caused changes in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases,” Santer said.
The LLNL-led research shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
“One individual short-term trend doesn’t tell you much about long-term climate change,” Santer said. “A single decade of observational temperature data is inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving human-caused warming signal. In both the satellite observations and in computer models, short, 10-year tropospheric temperature trends are strongly influenced by the large noise of year-to-year climate variability.”
The research team is made up of Santer and Livermore colleagues Charles Doutriaux, Peter Caldwell, Peter Gleckler, Detelina Ivanova, and Karl Taylor, and includes collaborators from Remote Sensing Systems, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Colorado, the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.K. Meteorology Office Hadley Centre, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
###
Source: http://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2011/Nov/NR-11-11-03.html
The lower troposphere temperature has been flat now for 18 years on one dataset, RSS. No human effects can be seen. What say you Dr. Santer?
- Ignore your own folly?
- Say your paper was mistaken and publish a new goalpost mover paper saying that we really need 30 years?
- Or, will you simply admit that the posited warming isn’t happening?
I’m guessing you’ll go with #2.
My apologies if the following was already mentioned.
One takeaway from Ben Santer’s (and colleague) letter to the WSJ is that he states that AGW has been his career. From his standpoint, just imagine admitting that ones entire career has been a mistake.
Now expand that thought to the entire gang (not so large) of gate keepers.
Reason number 53 for the pause!? We were mostly wrong. Hard to swallow for anyone. Integrity is often painful.
With respect to Ben Santer’s comment above: CMIP 3 runs show no internal variability whatsover. This is well evident in the multi-model ensembles from CMIP3 models where the average is just a flat straight line.
markl October 6, 2014 at 10:50 am
They aren’t “results”. They are poor projections based on faulty modeling. The pig headed approach by modelers is the models are correct and if the projections don’t fall in line then the variables/data are incorrect. ENSO, volcanoes, ice melt, etc. are always correct and the only noise is in the model. So far there’s been 100% proof I’m right for the past 20 years.
This is not a modeling paper, try reading it.
First sentence….”We compare global scale changes in satellite estimates of the temperature of the lower
troposphere (TLT) with model simulations of forced and unforced TLT changes.”
Not the paper I referred to, which starts:
“Abstract. We analyze five prominent time series of global temperature (over land and ocean) for their common time interval since 1979: three surface temperature records (from NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC and HadCRU) and two lower-troposphere (LT) temperature records based on satellite microwave sensors (from RSS and UAH). All five series show consistent global warming trends ranging from 0.014 to 0.018 K yr−1. When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/
Phil.
The adjustments to the data are a model: they are not empirical data.
However, I doubt you are capable of understanding the adjustments are a model so I accept that your post may be sincere.
Is the adjustment model correct? Probably not, but there is no way to tell if it is correct, and the adjustment model is not relevant anyway. The reason the adjustment model is not a scientifically useful excuse for the failure of climate models is as follows:
(a)
Assume the adjustment model is correct because it adjusts for hypothetical effects which are real.
(b)
In that case, the hypothetical but assumed – so modeled – adjustments are valid representations of real effects.
(c)
But those effects are not included in the climate models, and they have completely negated the ‘projections’ of the climate models.
(d)
And there is no method to predict the future variations of those effects.
In summation,
The climate models don’t work as ‘projectors’ of climate, and your argument only says they don’t work as ‘projectors of climate.
Richard
richardscourtney October 7, 2014 at 4:45 am
Phil.
The adjustments to the data are a model: they are not empirical data.
The adjustments are based on the empirical results as shown below, I suggest you read the paper.
“We characterize the ENSO by the multivariate el Niño index, or MEI (Wolter and Timlin 1993, 1998).Note8 For volcanic influence we use the aerosol optical thickness data from Sato et al (1993), or AOD.Note9 To characterize the solar influence on temperature we use the total solar irradiance (TSI) data from Fröhlich (2006). To test whether the results might be sensitive to these choices, we also did experiments characterizing el Niño by the southern oscillation index (SOI) rather than MEI, characterizing volcanic aerosols by the volcanic forcing estimate of Ammann et al (2003) rather than the AOD data from Sato et al, and using monthly sunspot numbers as a proxy for solar activity rather than TSI. None of these substitutions affected the results in a significant way, establishing that this analysis is robust to the choice of data to represent exogenous factors.”
Phil.
I wrote
And you have replied
QED
Also, mind your manners when addressing someone who has read the paper so could help you to understand it.
Your post has attempted – as you usually do – to nit-pick, but it makes no mention of my substantive point which I remind was
Richard
You asked:
“He says there are undefined “other negative external forcings”.
What are they?
What are their magnitudes?
How can we determine if we know them all?”
Apparently it was a rhetorical question since you didn’t want the answer which I gave you.
Your post has attempted – as you usually do – to nit-pick, but it makes no mention of my substantive point which I remind was
The climate models don’t work as ‘projectors’ of climate, and your argument only says they don’t work as ‘projectors of climate.
No what I and the paper I cited show is that the climate models do work as ‘projectors’ of climate but superimposed on that trajectory is the variation caused by short term exogenous factors. These exogenous factors, such as volcanos, aren’t predictable but over the long term will average out.
Phil.
Clearly, this subject is another which is beyond your intellectual capacity. I ask you to read the above comment addressed to you in this thread from mpainter which is here.
Richard
richardscourtney October 7, 2014 at 1:22 pm
Phil.
Clearly, this subject is another which is beyond your intellectual capacity. I ask you to read the above comment addressed to you in this thread from mpainter which is here.
It’s already been addressed, it’s nonsense.
I suggest you read up on multiple regression. Despite your protestations it’s clear you have not read the paper I cited, or if you did you did not understand it.
Phil.
No, it is clear that you don’t understand the paper because you are (deliberately?) incapable of understanding that a model is NOT data: a model is an interpretation of data and assumptions.
And that is my final word in response to your anti-scientific drivel.
Richard
You keep promising to end your nonsense but regrettably you keep coming back, hopefully this really is your last word.
Phil.:
The climate models have failed signally. You dispute that observation and in support you cite…climate models.
It is impossible to take you seriously.
mpainter October 8, 2014 at 7:15 am
Phil.:
The climate models have failed signally. You dispute that observation and in support you cite…climate models.
No I do not, I cite the application of a widely used analytical technique, multiple regression. The paper I cite uses this technique in a standard way to estimate the relationship between a dependent variable and several independent variables, this is not a climate model. The data used in the comparison are measurements of the various variables, not models.
mpainter
I suggest you don’t bother. The matter has been explained to the troll in several ways and – on its past performance – the troll can be expected to respond to any further information with a temper tantrum.
Richard
Courtney.
..
Do you call everyone that deviates from your point a view a “troll?”
beckleybud
I call out trolls. Whether they agree or disagree with me is not relevant.
Richard
Yes richard we have noticed your frequent temper tantrums, it’s even got you timeouts from this blog in the past.
@Phil
…
Do you consider all-caps as a “temper tantrum?”
.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/07/uah-global-temperature-report-september-2014/#comment-1757418
But NASA said 15 years was the threshold for deciding that models were wrong?
Do you have a citation for that?
Not NASA but IPCC, NOAA
““Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
PS the Heading for that citation:
Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions?—J. Knight, J. J. Kennedy, C. Folland, G. Harris, G. S. Jones, M. Palmer, D. Parker, A. Scaife, and P. Stot
Yes I’m familiar with that report, however the part you didn’t quote makes it clear that they are referring to ENSO adjusted data.
“however the part you didn’t quote makes it clear that they are referring to ENSO adjusted data”
It is not clear they are referring to ENSO adjusted data.
However what is the ENSO adjusted data?
According to the authors “The trend (for 1999–2008) after removing ENSO (the “ENSO-adjusted” trend) is 0.00°±0.05°C decade–1, implying much greater disagreement with anticipated global temperature rise.”
So what is the ENSO adjusted trend for 1999-2014?
Phil Jones once said that a ten year period of temperature stability was needed before they’d start to worry. When that happened he upped it to 15 years before they’d start to worry. After 15 he upped it to 17 before they’d start to worry. Finally recognizing a pattern of ineptitude, R Pachauri, head of the UN IPCC stepped in and stated it would be 30-40 years before they’d worry.
They were predicting more extreme weather, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, massive crop failures, wars, cities wiped out by sea level rise. Millions of climate refugees. Unprecedented levels of animal extinctions, massive fires, huge areas to become dustbowls and a myriad of other horrific fates.
The question begs, why were they anticipating worriying that these things were not happening?
“The question begs, why were they anticipating worriying that these things were not happening?”
Because “The prime indicator of global warming is, by definition, global mean temperature.” and thus the question arises “Do global temperature trends over the last [18 years] falsify climate predictions?”
I notice this Phil. fellow, who loves sarcasm and trying to trip up people, has gone very quiet over my question. Either he doesn’t know the answer or the answer is not to his liking, or, which is most probable, he doesn’t know the answer but suspects its not to his liking. Typical true climate “scientist”. Will cling on desperately to their hypothesis rather than dispassionately look at the evidence falsifying it.
Some of us have work to do, I guess you didn’t think of that?
It is not clear they are referring to ENSO adjusted data.
Since the models don’t include ENSO obviously they must be, but they explicitly compare with ENSO adjusted results so why isn’t it clear?
So what is the ENSO adjusted trend for 1999-2014?
Here is the ENSO trend since 2002 will that do, -0.16ºC/decade?
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/uah_enso.jpg?w=500&h=325
Here’s the effect of adjusting for ENSO and volcanos.
http://www.scilogs.de/klimalounge/files/Rah2012.png
“Some of us have work to do, I guess you didn’t think of that?”
A fleeting thought, summarily dismissed along with other unlikely scenarios, as your untimely demise. You are pretty quick to reply when you do know the answers. Part of your work seems to be to defend AGW at all costs, as that seems to be the reason for your job. More likely you were flummoxed as you searched for answers.
“Here is the ENSO trend since 2002 will that do, -0.16ºC/decade?”
I don’t know. You tell me O Oracle.
The ENSO adjusted trend for 1999–2008 is 0.00°±0.05°C decade and that from 2002-2014 is,-0.16ºC/decade, which probably indicates that the ENSO adjusted trend for 1999–2014 is in the negative.
When you couple this with the paper stating The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”, does this not mean that there is a “discrepancy” between real data and predictions made by the simulations?
My work has nothing to do with ADW so you were wrong.
The ENSO adjusted trend for 1999–2008 is 0.00°±0.05°C decade and that from 2002-2014 is,-0.16ºC/decade, which probably indicates that the ENSO adjusted trend for 1999–2014 is in the negative.
You have misunderstood what I posted, the ENSO trend is -0.16ºC/decade, therefore for an overall trend of 0.0 the ENSO adjusted trend would be +0.16ºC/decade.
Friends
I don’t understand why you continue to argue with the troll.
The issue and situation is as mpainter said
Richard