Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that some persons believe I ridiculed Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. in this post. That was not my intent and, on rereading this post, is far from the truth. I have the utmost respect for both climate scientists. I simply used Dr. van Oldenborgh’s blog post as a springboard for this one. Geert Jan has since written a follow-up post about lower troposphere temperature data. See Is there a pause in the temperature of the lower troposphere? And I referred to Dr. Pielke in this post for two reasons. First, he is known to skeptics, and, second, he agrees with Dr. van Oldenborgh about the importance of ocean warming. I simply put ocean warming into terms that are more familiar with most readers…deg C, instead of 10^22 Joules.
My apologies to Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Roger Pielke Sr. if they believed I was ridiculing them. I was not.
# # #
The blog ClimateLabBook is hosted by Ed Hawkins of NCAS-Climate at the University of Reading. A guest post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) has gained some attention in the past few days. Many of you will remember Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh as the scientist at KNMI who created and maintains the KNMI Climate Explorer. It is a marvelous tool that provides public access to numerous climate-related datasets, to the outputs of climate models stored in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives and to statistical analysis tools. I will once again thank Dr. van Oldenborgh for the Climate Explorer.
Please take a few minutes to read Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature. In it, he prefaces the discussion:
The old argument that the world is no longer warming was that the global mean temperature has ceased to increase after 1998.
He then provides a couple of interpretations of the hiatus.
The first is that there has been no warmer year than 1998.
He then goes on to discuss that surface temperatures have exceeded the 1998 value a couple of times in the 21st Century, so that definition of hiatus no longer works. Then Dr. van Oldenborgh adds:
The second, better, interpretation of the argument that the earth is no longer warming would be that a trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative.
Both are very strict definitions of “hiatuses in the rise of temperature”. I’m sure you can think of many others, including:
- the continued divergence between modeled and observed global surface temperatures, or
- a trend line starting in 1998 that shows a statistically insignificant trend, not necessarily a zero trend.
Dr. van Oldenborgh notes that a trend line of global land+sea surface temperatures starting in 1998 is positive so it does not comply with his second definition for the hiatus. He then states:
The new argument therefore is that the temperature has not risen over the last 10 years. This is indeed correct, both the GISTEMP series and the HadCRUT4 dataset in which missing areas have been interpolated by Cowtan & Way show a trend of 0.00 K/decade over 2005–2014. To investigate further why the trend has been zero since 2005 it is useful to consider the land and ocean separately.
Much of the remainder of Dr. van Oldenborgh blog post presents the problems associated with discussions of surface warming over that short a time period (2005 to 2014). His maps of surface temperature trends with starting years of 2003 and 2004, and his discussions of them under the heading of “Patterns” are very informative.
The first thing that struck me as I was reading the blog post was, there’s a dataset missing from the analysis—a dataset that is commonly used to represent global temperatures. That dataset, of course, is satellite-based Lower Troposphere Temperature, aka TLT, which is the temperature of the atmosphere from zero to about 12,500 meters (about 41,000 feet) above sea level, but dominated by samples at less than 3,000 meters (about 9,800 feet). Of the three satellite-based atmospheric temperature datasets, the lower troposphere data are nearest to the surface.
Figure 1 is a time series graph of the annual (November to October) lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the periods ending in 1980 to 2014. The two suppliers, RSS and UAH, are compared. The anomaly for the year ending in October 2010 was the same as 1998 with the UAH data but cooler with the RSS data, so both would pass the “no warmer than 1998” test.
Figure 1
Figure 2 compares the linear trends of the two lower troposphere temperature anomaly datasets starting with the year ending October 1998. The UAH data failed the “trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative” test while the RSS data passed. For the sake of argument, someone might want to average the two datasets. Because the UAH warming rate is comparable to the RSS cooling rate, the trend line for the average would basically be zero.
Figure 2
NOTE: I used the period of 1981 to 2010 as the reference years for anomalies in Figures 1 and 2, because the two suppliers use different base periods. [End note.]
Then Dr. van Oldenborgh moves on to deep ocean warming, presenting and discussing NODC ocean heat content data for the depths of 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. In doing so, however, Dr. van Oldenborgh changed topics of discussion from temperature to ocean heat content in term of Joules times 10^22. Ocean heat content is a useful metric if you’re a climate scientist looking for the missing heat—the ocean heat predicted by climate models that has not been found in observations. Along with Dr. van Oldenborgh, Roger Pielke Sr. has been an advocate of using ocean heat content as the primary metric of global warming for a number of years.
But while ocean temperature data (and salinity data) are used to calculate ocean heat content, ocean heat content is not a temperature dataset, and the topic of Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post is “Hiatuses in the rise of temperature”.
The NODC does have subsurface ocean temperature datasets at depths of 0-100 meters, 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. They have recently been added to the KNMI Climate Explorer, on their Monthly observations webpage. Figure 3 presents the vertically averaged temperature anomalies to depths of 0-2000 meters for the global oceans. The NODC depth averaged temperature data for the depths of 0-2000 meters starts in 2005 at the Climate Explorer, which is precisely the time period we’re looking for. Even the IPCC acknowledges there are so few measurements of the temperatures at depth in the oceans prior to the ARGO era that the datasets from 1955 to the early 2000s cannot be used for global warming attribution studies. See the post AMAZING: The IPCC May Have Provided Realistic Presentations of Ocean Heat Content Source Data.
Figure 3
As we can see, yes, the oceans to depths of 2000 meters (about 1.25 miles) have warmed according to the NODC data, but note the warming rate. It is only +0.03 deg C/decade. That’s read 3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade, which is a very tiny warming rate. It would be even tinier if we had data for the oceans from the surface to the ocean floor.
The oceans are deeper than the 2000 meters reached by the ARGO floats. So we have to look elsewhere to see if the deep oceans below 2000 meters have warmed. The title of Llovel et al. (2014) explains the findings of the paper Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade. “Not detectable” says it all. Phrased differently, there has been no detectable warming of the deep ocean (below 2000 meters) from January 2005 to December 2013, the time period covered by Llovel et al. (2014), which happily coincides to the period we’re discussing.
From the NOAA OceanToday webpage Deep ARGO, we learn that the depths of 0-2000 meters include only about one-half of the volume of the global oceans.
Based on those findings, we can assume the trend in the temperature of the oceans, from surface to ocean floor, from 2005 to present, is one-half the +0.03 deg C/decade trend calculated for the depths of 0-2000 meters, or a warming rate of +0.015 deg C/decade. That’s read 15 one-thousandths of a deg C per decade.
That minuscule warming rate of the oceans serves only as the background for the surface warming. It can’t magically come back to haunt us. That warming rate is trivial compared to the unrealized surface warming predicted by climate models. See Figure 4, which presents the temperature anomaly difference between the GISS global land-ocean temperature index data and the simulations of global surface air temperatures based on the multi-model mean of the climate models used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report. That graph is discussed in more detail at the beginning of the October 2014 Global Surface (Land+Ocean) and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly & Model-Data Difference Update.
Figure 4
CLOSING
Global surface temperatures in 2014 are very likely to be at record high levels in 2014. We are going to see that framed in many ways in months to come. However, we understand the reason for those record high levels to be the unusual warming of the eastern North Pacific. See the June sea surface temperature update and the post On The Recent Record-High Global Sea Surface Temperatures – The Wheres and Whys.
The climate science community has also acknowledged that the weather-related unusual warming of the eastern extratropical North Pacific was the reason for the record high global surface temperatures this year. See the post Axel Timmermann and Kevin Trenberth Highlight the Importance of Natural Variability in Global Warming…
On the other hand, as illustrated in this post, it is very likely that 2014 will not be at record high levels with another of the global temperature datasets, Lower Troposphere Temperature. Those are shown in Figures 1 and 2 above.
Ocean heat content during the ARGO era is a useful dataset, but when discussing global temperatures, the vertically averaged temperature data for the oceans is more appropriate. While the oceans continue to warm, based on the NODC data, in terms of temperature, that warming is trivial.
And as illustrated in the final graph, the record high surface temperatures this year hardly put a dent in the difference between the observed and modeled surface warming.
# # #
PS: Dr. van Oldenborgh’s discussions of the short-term surface warming (or lack thereof) from 2005 to 2014 will make a lot more sense to the average person than some statistical analysis.
The blog ClimateLabBook is hosted by Ed Hawkins of NCAS-Climate at the University of Reading. A guest post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) has gained some attention in the past few days. Many of you will remember Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh as the scientist at KNMI who created and maintains the KNMI Climate Explorer. It is a marvelous tool that provides public access to numerous climate-related datasets, to the outputs of climate models stored in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives and to statistical analysis tools. I will once again thank Dr. van Oldenborgh for the Climate Explorer.
Please take a few minutes to read Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post Hiatuses in the rise of temperature. In it, he prefaces the discussion:
The old argument that the world is no longer warming was that the global mean temperature has ceased to increase after 1998.
He then provides a couple of interpretations of the hiatus.
The first is that there has been no warmer year than 1998.
He then goes on to discuss that surface temperatures have exceeded the 1998 value a couple of times in the 21st Century, so that definition of hiatus no longer works. Then Dr. van Oldenborgh adds:
The second, better, interpretation of the argument that the earth is no longer warming would be that a trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative.
Both are very strict definitions of “hiatuses in the rise of temperature”. I’m sure you can think of many others, including:
- the continued divergence between modeled and observed global surface temperatures, or
- a trend line starting in 1998 that shows a statistically insignificant trend, not necessarily a zero trend.
Dr. van Oldenborgh notes that a trend line of global land+sea surface temperatures starting in 1998 is positive so it does not comply with his second definition for the hiatus. He then states:
The new argument therefore is that the temperature has not risen over the last 10 years. This is indeed correct, both the GISTEMP series and the HadCRUT4 dataset in which missing areas have been interpolated by Cowtan & Way show a trend of 0.00 K/decade over 2005–2014. To investigate further why the trend has been zero since 2005 it is useful to consider the land and ocean separately.
Much of the remainder of Dr. van Oldenborgh blog post presents the problems associated with discussions of surface warming over that short a time period (2005 to 2014). His maps of surface temperature trends with starting years of 2003 and 2004, and his discussions of them under the heading of “Patterns” are very informative.
The first thing that struck me as I was reading the blog post was, there’s a dataset missing from the analysis—a dataset that is commonly used to represent global temperatures. That dataset, of course, is satellite-based Lower Troposphere Temperature, aka TLT, which is the temperature of the atmosphere from zero to about 12,500 meters (about 41,000 feet) above sea level, but dominated by samples at less than 3,000 meters (about 9,800 feet). Of the three satellite-based atmospheric temperature datasets, the lower troposphere data are nearest to the surface.
Figure 1 is a time series graph of the annual (November to October) lower troposphere temperature anomalies for the periods ending in 1980 to 2014. The two suppliers, RSS and UAH, are compared. The anomaly for the year ending in October 2010 was the same as 1998 with the UAH data but cooler with the RSS data, so both would pass the “no warmer than 1998” test.
Figure 1
Figure 2 compares the linear trends of the two lower troposphere temperature anomaly datasets starting with the year ending October 1998. The UAH data failed the “trend line starting in 1998 would be zero or negative” test while the RSS data passed. For the sake of argument, someone might want to average the two datasets. Because the UAH warming rate is comparable to the RSS cooling rate, the trend line for the average would basically be zero.
Figure 2
NOTE: I used the period of 1981 to 2010 as the reference years for anomalies in Figures 1 and 2, because the two suppliers use different base periods. [End note.]
Then Dr. van Oldenborgh moves on to deep ocean warming, presenting and discussing NODC ocean heat content data for the depths of 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. In doing so, however, Dr. van Oldenborgh changed topics of discussion from temperature to ocean heat content in term of Joules times 10^22. Ocean heat content is a useful metric if you’re a climate scientist looking for the missing heat—the ocean heat predicted by climate models that has not been found in observations. Along with Dr. van Oldenborgh, Roger Pielke Sr. has been an advocate of using ocean heat content as the primary metric of global warming for a number of years.
But while ocean temperature data (and salinity data) are used to calculate ocean heat content, ocean heat content is not a temperature dataset, and the topic of Dr. van Oldenborgh’s post is “Hiatuses in the rise of temperature”.
The NODC does have subsurface ocean temperature datasets at depths of 0-100 meters, 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. They have recently been added to the KNMI Climate Explorer, on their Monthly observations webpage. Figure 3 presents the vertically averaged temperature anomalies to depths of 0-2000 meters for the global oceans. The NODC depth averaged temperature data for the depths of 0-2000 meters starts in 2005 at the Climate Explorer, which is precisely the time period we’re looking for. Even the IPCC acknowledges there are so few measurements of the temperatures at depth in the oceans prior to the ARGO era that the datasets from 1955 to the early 2000s cannot be used for global warming attribution studies. See the post AMAZING: The IPCC May Have Provided Realistic Presentations of Ocean Heat Content Source Data.
Figure 3
As we can see, yes, the oceans to depths of 2000 meters (about 1.25 miles) have warmed according to the NODC data, but note the warming rate. It is only +0.03 deg C/decade. That’s read 3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade, which is a very tiny warming rate. It would be even tinier if we had data for the oceans from the surface to the ocean floor.
The oceans are deeper than the 2000 meters reached by the ARGO floats. So we have to look elsewhere to see if the deep oceans below 2000 meters have warmed. The title of Llovel et al. (2014) explains the findings of the paper Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade. “Not detectable” says it all. Phrased differently, there has been no detectable warming of the deep ocean (below 2000 meters) from January 2005 to December 2013, the time period covered by Llovel et al. (2014), which happily coincides to the period we’re discussing.
From the NOAA OceanToday webpage Deep ARGO, we learn that the depths of 0-2000 meters include only about one-half of the volume of the global oceans.
Based on those findings, we can assume the trend in the temperature of the oceans, from surface to ocean floor, from 2005 to present, is one-half the +0.03 deg C/decade trend calculated for the depths of 0-2000 meters, or a warming rate of +0.015 deg C/decade. That’s read 15 one-thousandths of a deg C per decade.
That minuscule warming rate of the oceans serves only as the background for the surface warming. It can’t magically come back to haunt us. That warming rate is trivial compared to the unrealized surface warming predicted by climate models. See Figure 4, which presents the temperature anomaly difference between the GISS global land-ocean temperature index data and the simulations of global surface air temperatures based on the multi-model mean of the climate models used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report. That graph is discussed in more detail at the beginning of the October 2014 Global Surface (Land+Ocean) and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly & Model-Data Difference Update.
Figure 4
CLOSING
Global surface temperatures in 2014 are very likely to be at record high levels in 2014. We are going to see that framed in many ways in months to come. However, we understand the reason for those record high levels to be the unusual warming of the eastern North Pacific. See the June sea surface temperature update and the post On The Recent Record-High Global Sea Surface Temperatures – The Wheres and Whys.
The climate science community has also acknowledged that the weather-related unusual warming of the eastern extratropical North Pacific was the reason for the record high global surface temperatures this year. See the post Axel Timmermann and Kevin Trenberth Highlight the Importance of Natural Variability in Global Warming…
On the other hand, as illustrated in this post, it is very likely that 2014 will not be at record high levels with another of the global temperature datasets, Lower Troposphere Temperature. Those are shown in Figures 1 and 2 above.
Ocean heat content during the ARGO era is a useful dataset, but when discussing global temperatures, the vertically averaged temperature data for the oceans is more appropriate. While the oceans continue to warm, based on the NODC data, in terms of temperature, that warming is trivial.
And as illustrated in the final graph, the record high surface temperatures this year hardly put a dent in the difference between the observed and modeled surface warming.
# # #
PS: Dr. van Oldenborgh’s discussions of the short-term surface warming (or lack thereof) from 2005 to 2014 will make a lot more sense to the average person than some statistical analysis.
@Joe Kirklin Born November 29, 2014 at 5:24 am
For the benefit of those of us who are allergic to statistics, could someone explain in simple terms what “statistically insignificant” means in “a trend line starting in 1998 that shows a statistically insignificant trend” means?
Rule #1 if you need to use statistics to ‘prove’ or ‘show’ a show aspect of data in a real world measurement such as temperature, then you can be sure you are looking at the wrong thing.
If you can not draw a curve through the data and immediately ‘see’ the trend, then it does not exist.
Referring to your original point, if you are trying to ‘prove’ that your data is showing you a very small value, and it is not obvious, you use a variety of statistical methods to indicate how ‘good’ your answer is.
If your answers ‘goodness value’ is very poor, it means your answer (2 degrees/decade etc) is useless.
See point one above, if you need to use stats to ‘prove’ a point then you are already on a very ‘sticky wicket’.
If ‘Bob T’ put error bars on Fig 3, of perhaps +/- 0.5 degree then the trend becomes ‘insignificant’.
I see this as something a bit unique: A 20 year “Stable” point with very little average temperature change.
It would be a “Pause” only if temperatures do rise afterwards, but we don’t know that. That would be the same for “Hiatus” or similar points. Counter to that with a “Plateau” or related, with temperatures dropping.
We can’t properly label this period until we find out what happens here when the temperature changes, wither up or down. 😛
A 20 year ‘Stable’ or ‘Still’ period is of it’s own existence very interesting. Following a peak ‘spike’ year (1998) there has been neither much warming or cooling, and there is not much showing that there will be either warming or cooling after this point.
Interesting point – as if the world realized we are watching and decided to screw with the arguments on both side. 🙂
I was curious to know if ARGO equipment could measure temperatures accurately enough to detect 3 hundredths of a degree over a decade. Apparently, they claim that temperatures in the Argo profiles are accurate to ± 0.002°C. If that is true, then a temperature increase of 0.003°C per year (± 0.002°C) falls within a range of 0.001°C to 0.005°C per year. But I have to wonder if they can maintain that degree of accuracy in real world conditions.
Just for fun, let’s assume that the oceans continue to warm at an average rate of 0.03°C per decade. If the average temperature of the ocean surface waters is about 17 degrees Celsius, then it should only take about 29,000 years for the oceans to begin to boil. Too bad Hansen won’t be around to gloat.
You can get an average which is precise from data less granular.
The average European woman has 1.59 children over her lifetime. There is some inaccuracy in that average, of course, but that does not arrive from the fact that woman can only have whole numbers of children. You cannot legitimately argue that woman can only have one or two children, so the average cannot be 1.59.
Arguments over the precision and accuracy of the temperature measurements need a great deal more sophistication than arguing the average cannot be more precise than the measuring instrument. There is a great deal of shonkiness in the climate field, but they aren’t that amateur.
Nice try but not true.
The results of calculating of an average cannot meaningfully have more significant digits than the underlying data. The error in your example is that women have exactly an integer number of children (an integer followed by any number of zeroes). Your example of 1.59 average children/woman may be mathematically correct, but it is definitely not an example of the average being more granular than the data.
Please correct me if wrong, but IMO linear regression shows no statistically significant warming sine 1996, not since the super Nino year of 1998.
Warming lasted from c. 1977-96, so the no warming interval is nearing the duration of the late 20th century warming. Give it two more years.
But as Bob shows, in RSS, the current trend is actually statistically significant cooling.
I refer to RSS. UAH might not show cooling. It goes without saying that HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP are worse than worthless packs of lies, adjusted so as to bear no statistical relationship to observed reality.
Katherine, the statistically insignificant trend depends both on the method (OLS suffers from the fact that temperature time series are autocorrelated) and the temperature series used. Ross McKitrick has a recent paper using the most sophisticated method for temperature time series, and found 16, 19, and 26 years of no significant warming trend. See Open Journal of Statistics 4: 527-535 (2014). For the CMIP5 model falsification implications (why Oldenburgh is trying to shorten the statistical pause) see essay An Awkward Pause in Blokibg Smoke.
I’ve cited that paper myself, but I recalled it was about 18 years in the RSS data.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/01/new-paper-on-the-pause-says-it-is-19-years-at-surface-and-16-26-years-at-the-lower-troposphere/
When published in September, Ross found a slight down trend for 17 years, 10 months in the RSS series and flat for 19 years in HadCRUT4.
Thanks.
No doubt you’d rather have readers buy your book, but I found the review sections here rewarding:
http://books.google.com/books?id=2KPTBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT265&lpg=PT265&dq=An+Awkward+Pause+in+Blowing+Smoke&source=bl&ots=NlAqLvkYgY&sig=FXrFqfGI5XM2d8jouisOJA3-gQ0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6BV6VLEgjOGgBK_HgtgF&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=An%20Awkward%20Pause%20in%20Blowing%20Smoke&f=false
Bob,
You wrote: “That warming rate is trivial compared to the unrealized surface warming predicted by climate models.” I disagree. The fundamental quantity here is energy, not temperature. Changing the concentration of CO2 causes an imbalance between energy into the planet and energy out. The energy needed to warm the oceans by 0.015 deg/decade is sufficient to warm the atmosphere by 15 deg/decade. That is far from trivial. Small changes in the heat flow into the ocean can have a big effect on the atmosphere.
Of course, that means that variations in the oceans can easily produce significant variations in climate. The embarrassment the modellers are experiencing due to the hiatus is a result of their past minimization of that possibility. Now they are being forced to recognize natural variability; maybe some of them will even start to admit that a large chunk of what happened in the late 20th century was natural climate change.
You are correct that the heat in the ocean “can’t magically come back to haunt us.” What could happen is that heat transport into the deep ocean could once again slow, causing temperatures to once again rise.
Mike M.
Mike M. says: “You wrote: ‘That warming rate is trivial compared to the unrealized surface warming predicted by climate models.’ I disagree. The fundamental quantity here is energy, not temperature.”
You’re more that welcome to disagree, Mike, but this is a discussion of temperature, not energy. The role of the oceans in the theory of hypothetical human-induced global warming is to temper that warming. If 90+% of the heat from man’s emissions of greenhouse gases can only warm the global oceans (from surface to sea floor) at a rate of 0.015 deg C/decade, then the oceans are doing their job.
Mike M. says: “You are correct that the heat in the ocean ‘can’t magically come back to haunt us.’ What could happen is that heat transport into the deep ocean could once again slow, causing temperatures to once again rise.”
There’s no doubt that coupled ocean-atmosphere processes can either enhance global warming or suppress it, but (big but) according to Trenberth ENSO is a sunlight-fueled process.
Cheers.
Which should help Trenberth realize that the climate system is largely sunlight-fueled (modulated by orbital mechanics, plus solar magnetism), but it hasn’t.
Bob says: “The role of the oceans in the theory of hypothetical human-induced global warming is to temper that warming … the oceans are doing their job.”
True, but no one disputes that. Oceans tempering warming is the reason that transient climate response is much less than equilibrium climate sensitivity. And the very slow rate of increase in ocean temperature is the reason that it will take a millennium or more to fully realize the warming.
You can not ignore energy just because you are discussing temperature. The temperature increase is a result of the energy increase.
Mike M.
I’m not surprised at higher SSTs this year. We’ve seen solar F10.7cm flux at an average daily value for 2014 of 145 sfu/day, 22 sfu/day higher than last year (18% more), 25 sfu/day higher than 2012 (21% more), and 43 sfu/day higher than the daily average F10.7 flux for all of SC24 (42% more). Source: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/quar_DSD.txt
The major arctic blast we saw in the US several weeks ago was literally melted away by higher solar flux. The first half of Nov we saw the daily flux average 139; the seconf half of Nov it averaged 172 sfu/day, and for the whole month the average was 155.
The Sun always finds a way to teach us more lessons. We are still experiencing the solar maximum! The last three years of the Modern Maximum in solar activity had daily solar fluxes of 180, 181, and 180 sfu/day for the years 2000-2002, the solar max years of SC23.
This all can be seen here too: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/f10.gif
Warming of the oceans ====>>>> SUNLIGHT fueled!
Mike M:
You have been fed a loaf of baloney on CO2 heating the oceans. Absurd.
Mike M
I’d appreciate hearing how you explain the thermodynamics of cold ocean water passing heat to warmer ocean water.
For the moment, we’ll skip the discussion of how heat magically passed all the sensors to go hide in the ocean depths.
“I’d appreciate hearing how you explain the thermodynamics of cold ocean water passing heat to warmer ocean water.
For the moment, we’ll skip the discussion of how heat magically passed all the sensors to go hide in the ocean depths.”
I have no idea why anyone would believe such rubbish.
Mike M.
In terms of demonstrating an understanding of the climate this is the only one that matters.
And if you don’t understand why the temperature rose in the 20thC you can’t say if it will rise in the 21stC.
And you can’t say what to do about it anyway.
Even if you’re right, if you’re right for the wrong reason, you’re as good as being wrong.
Bob – I don’t like your figures 1 and 2. That is because the true shape of the temperature curve is distorted by your choice of sampling interval. You should do three things to improve this:
1. Use at least a monthly sampling interval. Go back all the way to 1979.
2. Instead of drawing a line to show the trend, use a transparent red marker and do it by hand.
3. The peaks on the left are all El Ninos. The valleys in between are all La Ninas. Put a yellow dot in the middle of every line connecting an El Nino peak with its neighboring La Nina valley. Those dots mark global mean temperatures. You should now be able to draw or fit a straight horizontal line through these dots. It marks a hidden hiatus that goes from `1979 to the beginning of the super El Nino, about 18 years. It is hidden because all ground based temperature sources cooperate to hide it and give it an upward slope. It amounts to a temperature rise of 0.1 degrees for the period in question. They used to call this temperature segment the “late twentieth century warming.” The middle one of these five El Ninos is the one what Hansen said was the highest observed temperature in 1988.
All these single values of so-called “global temperature” are physically meaningless. It’s really too bad that all these people with letters after their names can’t come to terms with that.
Posted to Climate Lab Book
ferdberple says:
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November 30, 2014 at 1:51 am
I agree with Mike on this one. “The Pause” is only being discussed here because the models predicted continued warming.
Had the models predicted that there would be no warming, “The Pause, Hiatus, whatever” would not exist as a topic.
Since no one knows for sure if warming will resume – perhaps we are at the end of the Interglacial – no one can say for sure – to call the deviation from model predictions A Pause of Hiatus is a matter of speculation not observation.
Until warming resumes the “Hiatus in the rise in temperature” is not an observation, it is a speculation. You are speculating that what comes next will be more warming.
rogerknights November 29, 2014 at 8:40 am
“It’s not quite exact, since there are substantial “jitters” from one year to the next”.
_________________________________________
Roger Knight’s one word descriptive “Jitters” sums up the whole current and probably the complete global temperature behaviour in both the very brief few days temperature excursions below and above the temperature base line right through to the century’s and millennium long climate “jitter” periods if you have the broadness of imagination to wrap your mind round such a concept.
An unpredictable, constantly changing, never going on excessive excursions beyond the recovery point before reversing it’s latest “jitter” or excursion to pass back through the central and average of all those
“jitters” trend lines. is the 4.5 billion long history of Planet’s climate and it’s temperatures,
The climate temperature “jitters” and everything else that either it creates or is a result of the fast excursions of temperatures, the climate “jittering” and all other climate related phenomena can be high frequency, at least from the human life perspective, to the decades and centuries and aeons and geological ages long large scale “jitters” of a world that is 4.5 billion years old.
“Jittering” is a very apt description to describe the global climate phenomena excursions that are centered around the incredibly stable climate that has maintained an extraordinary tight range of global temperatures within a few, at worst, tens of degrees excursions for all of those 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence.
The “jittering” of the global climate, the excursions to and from the average very long term planetary base line temperature regime has ALWAYS returned the planet’s temperatures back to that incredibly stable, incredibly narrow atmospheric water vapour controlled temperature range,. A temperature range that has been maintained between and below the boiling point of water and the complete freezing point of water for all of the 3.7 billion years that we believe life has existed on this planet.
And a water controlled temperature range which has enabled life can continue to exist and indeed to flourish until it has reached the current but arguably not the last by a long way, development in intelligence.
And that is “Man”. .
There is a constant moaning and howling in the Dark by the alarmists whose ability to comprehend that for all of our Earth’s existence the planet temperatures have NEVER fallen down close to absolute Zero,
minus 273 C, as some planets have done .
Nor has our planet’s temperature EVER reached the temperatures of Venus with it’s lead melting temperatures or ever come even close to those extremes.
For at least 3.7 billion years the planetary temperatures have been maintained within that exceedingly narrow range of the freezing and boiling points of water. and as such that has allowed life to exist and to flourish since it’s beginnings some 3.7 billion years ago.
Maybe the term “Jittering” has been used elsewhere to describe the current global temperature hiatus but certainly Roger Knight’s “Jitter” description is a far better and far more accurate and descriptive term to describe the way our global temperatures and our global climate is behaving right now, in the geological past past and no doubt long, long into the future when our species will just be dust upon the Earth.
can someone plot change in temp. vs. co2 in atmosphere. This is all that matters since trillions are spent on co2 mitigation when in atctuality co2 does not matter and the present models do not predict reality.
Here’s a recent plot by Monckton of Brenchley. He does include CO2 as a faint trace showing a steady increase. But you have to bear in mind that CO2 and temperature are not presented in comparable units.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/clip_image004.png
You can find his posts on the matter by searching this site for “Monckton pause”.
Since 2001 the CO2 level has increased by 31% of the increase 1800-2001.
The ancient philosophers and mathematicians had worked it all out while wandering around in the desert of lies, damned lies and statistics. It was immediately apparent to them that there existed the dromedary camel hump within the desert but in their incessant wanderings and musings they also became aware of the double humped camel-
http://www.desertusa.com/animals/camel.html
Ever since it has been most advisable that statisticians and modellers are not talking out their camelus bactrianuses and that we’re actually over their hump/s.
Whatever it’s called, I think it’s worth repeating, the models never saw it coming. Regardless of what happens next.
Obituary for a passing theory:
CAGW passed away at his home on the weekend, of a previously undiagnosed condition, he was found in his lounge laying on a recycled hemp rug. It appears he was, or had been clutching a limited edition Naomi Oreskes climate action figure doll, still in its biodegradable cellophane wrapper, when his heart failed him.
Close colleagues remarked, that despite the serious set backs he’d encountered, setting up his green business, he was in a remarkably positive mood.
One remarked, that his general attitude was between 4 and 6 points, trending upwards. Others in his office disputed this, saying that 6 was at the lower end of ‘Feel Good’, and that had he lived, it would of reached 10 points before the days end. Although, that rate was unsustainable, and in the future he might have to settle for a reduced ‘OK-ness’ factor of 2.5.
A funeral in a biodegradable, recycled cardboard coffin, is scheduled for Monday, beneath his beloved hand cultivated Proxy Tree.
Donations to his favorite charity, can be made c\o the EPA, he is survived by his fourteen children, all unwed Models.
From The Australian today (Dec 1st) spot the pea and thimble trick from the BOM-
“AUSTRALIA has had its hottest spring and its hottest November on record.
BUREAU of Meteorology climate monitoring manager Karl Braganza says 2014 was the latest in a long line of hot springs in the past decade.
The previous record was set only last year, he said.
“Really, it was only 2010 that had a cool spring in the past 10 years or so. Nine out of the warmest springs on record have occurred since 2002,” Dr Braganza told AAP.
Australia’s average seasonal temperature is derived by averaging the temperature data from weather stations, where records go back to 1910.
The figure is then compared with the long-term average temperature, which measures the period from 1961 to 1990.
The average spring 2014 temperature of 24.17C exceeded the mean by 1.67C, Dr Braganza said.”
What’s the measurement error on figure 3?
Hopefully the “average person” will read Dr. van Oldenborgh’s conclusions:
The ‘hiatus’ in the global mean temperature rise of the earth over the last 10 years is not a very sensible way to study global warming. Trends over such a short period are influenced heavily by (winter) weather over North America and Siberia, and by El Niño and La Niña. Over land the trend has not gone down to zero and 10-year trends are compatible with the long-term trend within the large uncertainty margins. Over sea there is also strong persistence from year to year, making the probability to obtain 10-year trends that are very different from the long-term trend very large. The best measure of whether global warming continues is the ocean heat content below the surface. This measure shows a very consistent rise, which is also expressed in sea level rise.
On top of the rising trend of the land temperature, much of Europe had warm weather for large periods this year. These two factors together, the long-term trend and a short positive fluctuation, caused the record-high temperatures that are expected this year.
The planet has warmed (with oscillations above and below the long-term trend) from the depths of the LIA until approximately 2001. The trend has been flat since before 2001. Claiming that it is warmest at the end of a warming period is not very profound.
Quote:
“As we can see, yes, the oceans to depths of 2000 meters (about 1.25 miles) have warmed according to the NODC data, but note the warming rate. It is only +0.03 deg C/decade. That’s read 3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade, which is a very tiny warming rate. It would be even tinier if we had data for the oceans from the surface to the ocean floor.”
Mr Tisdale.
Your are aware of the physics of heat capacity?
That the oceans have a mass ~1000x that of the atmosphere.
That the specific heat of water is 4x that of air.
Yes?
So Assuming the heat enteing the oceans by means of Solar SW (largely) is mixed evenly ( a large assumption granted).
Then we need to multiply your 0.03 deg C figure by 4000 to arrive at a figure comparable with *heat* added to the atmosphere.
That happens to be +120C.
IOW: comaparing temps in water to temps in air is as apples to oranges.
I did a study of the CRN top rated US surface stations. Most remarkable about them is the extensive local climate diversity that appears when station sites are relatively free of urban heat sources. 35% (8 of 23) of the stations reported cooling over the century. Indeed, if we remove the 8 warmest records, the rate flips from +0.16°C to -0.14°C. –
In order to respect the intrinsic quality of temperatures, I calculated monthly slopes for each station, and combined them for station trends.
See more at:
http://notrickszone.com/2014/08/20/analysis-of-23-top-qualty-us-surface-stations-shows-insignificant-warming-only-0-16c-rise-per-century/#sthash.NqWG4SbF.dpuf