Add it to the list of over 50 excuses for the pause from climate science now on record…this time its small volcanoes.
Small volcanic eruptions partly explain ‘warming hiatus’
The “warming hiatus” that has occurred over the last 15 years has been partly caused by small volcanic eruptions.
Scientists have long known that volcanoes cool the atmosphere because of the sulfur dioxide that is expelled during eruptions. Droplets of sulfuric acid that form when the gas combines with oxygen in the upper atmosphere can persist for many months, reflecting sunlight away from Earth and lowering temperatures at the surface and in the lower atmosphere.
Previous research suggested that early 21st century eruptions might explain up to a third of the recent “warming hiatus.”
New research available online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) further identifies observational climate signals caused by recent volcanic activity. This new research complements an earlier GRL paper published in November, which relied on a combination of ground, air and satellite measurements, indicated that a series of small 21st century volcanic eruptions deflected substantially more solar radiation than previously estimated.
“This new work shows that the climate signals of late 20th and early 21st century volcanic activity can be detected in a variety of different observational data sets,” said Benjamin Santer, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist and lead author of the study.
The warmest year on record is 1998. After that, the steep climb in global surface temperatures observed over the 20th century appeared to level off. This “hiatus” received considerable attention, despite the fact that the full observational surface temperature record shows many instances of slowing and acceleration in warming rates. Scientists had previously suggested that factors such as weak solar activity and increased heat uptake by the oceans could be responsible for the recent lull in temperature increases. After publication of a 2011 paper in the journal Science by Susan Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), it was recognized that an uptick in volcanic activity might also be implicated in the “warming hiatus.”
Prior to the 2011 Science paper, the prevailing scientific thinking was that only very large eruptions – on the scale of the cataclysmic 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, which ejected an estimated 20 million metric tons (44 billion pounds) of sulfur – were capable of impacting global climate. This conventional wisdom was largely based on climate model simulations. But according to David Ridley, an atmospheric scientist at MIT and lead author of the November GRL paper, these simulations were missing an important component of volcanic activity.
Ridley and colleagues found the missing piece of the puzzle at the intersection of two atmospheric layers, the stratosphere and the troposphere – the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where all weather takes place. Those layers meet between 10 and 15 kilometers (six to nine miles) above the Earth.
Satellite measurements of the sulfuric acid droplets and aerosols produced by erupting volcanoes are generally restricted to above 15 km. Below 15 km, cirrus clouds can interfere with satellite aerosol measurements. This means that toward the poles, where the lower stratosphere can reach down to 10 km, the satellite measurements miss a significant chunk of the total volcanic aerosol loading.
To get around this problem, the study by Ridley and colleagues combined observations from ground-, air- and space-based instruments to better observe aerosols in the lower portion of the stratosphere. They used these improved estimates of total volcanic aerosols in a simple climate model, and estimated that volcanoes may have caused cooling of 0.05 degrees to 0.12 degrees Celsius since 2000.
The second Livermore-led study shows that the signals of these late 20th and early 21st eruptions can be positively identified in atmospheric temperature, moisture and the reflected solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere. A vital step in detecting these volcanic signals is the removal of the “climate noise” caused by El Niños and La Niñas.
“The fact that these volcanic signatures are apparent in multiple independently measured climate variables really supports the idea that they are influencing climate in spite of their moderate size,” said Mark Zelinka, another Livermore author. “If we wish to accurately simulate recent climate change in models, we cannot neglect the ability of these smaller eruptions to reflect sunlight away from Earth.”
###
To see the full research, go to Geophysical Research Letters. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL061541/abstract?campaign=wlytk-41855.5282060185 and http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/2014GL062366/
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The question now is how many more years Santer thinks he can get away with adding onto his 17 year “rule”?
The question is how long will DOE keep getting funding to run Santer’s LLNL supercomputer and modelling group?
As long as he has funding to make garbage-out model runs, he will do so.
Time to de-fund the groups. IMO. Let them go work in finance or hedge funds on the private equity dime.
As long as the money keeps rolling in, he will keep trying.
This is Susan Solomon and Ben Santer’s group third bite at the same apple. And it is still wrong for the same reasons as previously, just like other non Solomon/Santer papers supposedly showing the same thing. (Pause cause aerosols.)
All eruptions are tracked by the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program. There are an average of 66 per year, with a surprisingly small variance. There has been neither an increase in eruption frequency nor in eruption VEI since 2000 compared to 1979-1999. And small eruptions (<VEI 4) do not have sufficient force for ejecta to reach the tropopause, let alone enter the stratosphere. (Even some VEI 5 do not, for example Mount St. Helens.) Ejecta are about 95% washed out within 3 months even in high latitude (lower tropopause) VEI 4. (peer reviewed result from Sarychev, the only such since 2000.) All covered with illustrations and references in essay Blowing Smoke in ebook of same name (but for different reasons).
“There has been neither an increase in eruption frequency nor in eruption VEI since 2000 compared to 1979-1999.”
And that puts the whole Santer argument well and truly in the dustbin where it belongs.
Yup. And all one has to do is to look at the Smithsonian GVP website, one click away.
So one gets the sense of increasing warmunist (essay Climatastrosophistry) desparation.
Rud, I know this is O/T but I haven’t seen you here since other night when you recommended a commenter use his vote and his voice. You may read my post at 2:02 above that I have been using my voice. Preaching to the choir is easy, but we have works in progress that are up to entrenched legislators in VT and I struggle with how to effectively communicate with them. Doubt I’d keep their attention very long with difficult concepts. I try to keep simple, but not working and a lot of press won’t publish what I write.
Would you be willing to help with effective climate communications? Maybe there’s a place for that I haven’t found?
One Crimson convict to another . . .
Bubba, ‘Crimson convict’, sure. Of course. Absolutely. (Now you have three legally binding commitments…HLS joke, maybe.) But VT? Oh dear, up against hard core CAGW irrationality.
AW has my various co-ordinates, as does most definitly Judith Curry. Plus I am on LinkedIn (but using some filters). Check out ‘Crimson convict’ class of 1972, fellow convict. You can find your way to me, and I will be glad to be of whatever communication service possible beyond my books.
I’ll find you. Thanks.
Yes, this is the test bed for effective climate communication given that we trail by decades of propaganda and, I think Bernie, former friend to people, has gone quite mad. Hoping he’ll run for POTUS.
There is some sanity over here in Northeast Kingdom, but they try best to ignore us.
Did the college back in 1970 so lacking grad jokes, plus was kind of a blur or what I used to tell my students before retired = best six or seven years of my life. Not really, but might have made a point?
60s in Cambridge was astounding and included real bad gas – tear kind. Stories, for sure.
Bubba, I have bequeathed my roughly 500 35mm Kodak colored slides of the SDS occupation of Mem Hall, taken from my roof top balcony freshman year at adjacent Weld Hall, to HU.
The bittersweet part you did not know is that I was there on a full Army scholarship, the alternative being a Supers appointment to West Point.
CAGW is worse. And I have learned how to fight better. Will help you, promise.
500! Yikes! That is a boatload of 35mm
I’m one of the guys who brought John Wayne to town in the tank for the Pudding. We threw snowballs back and forth. In tough times with war and assassinations, we somehow managed a sense of humor.
Got drafted – had taken a year away – but won the lottery while living in Kirkland.
CAGW is not funny in VT – only here, where it is ridiculous.
I just can’t believe some of the junk and unfathomable language masquerading as science and even more insane to me is what must be happening in graduate education that produces these loonies, grows those academic departments, absurd grants – it is as if reason has abandoned the building. Elvis had the decency to just leave. I’ve been traveling the wonderful world for better than a decade and I return to a devastated landscape.
Gary Trudeau was a student of mine at WSU – I will write him to urge him to finish his book and return to his cartoon series of myfacts.com where you could log in with your opinion and they’d create the facts to support it. Feel like I am in that cartoon.
Grasping at straws.
Just two words: ‘better estimates’
priceless
I understand why those with a clear case of ‘Save the World Syndrome’ and long term career worries write this type of BS, but are they so ashamed of its contents that they have to hide it behind paywalls?
It’s wonderful how the l&ér Santer tries hard not to sat plateaued, stopped and then reduces the period by rounding down to 15yrs. This halt in AGW is really sticking in their craw.
“They used these improved estimates of total volcanic aerosols in a simple climate model, and estimated that volcanoes may have caused cooling of 0.05 degrees to 0.12 degrees Celsius since 2000.”
===============================================
My Google BS to English app translates this as :
“We didn’t actually have any real-world data to support this, but we were able to play with our model until it supplied the answer we needed to back up our theory.”
Not a theory, since easily debunked. A pal reviewed paper from a junior member seeking admittance to their priesthood.
More funding is needed to show that small volcanic eruptions are caused by Anthropomorphic Global Warming…..
OOPS!
Forgot the sarc tag!
OK Ben, prove to me that there has been a significant-enough INCREASE in small volcano activity to QUANTIFY this allegation. With DATA, not models. What’s that you say? There isn’t any data? What, none that proves this half-arsed hypothesis?
Another Deus ex machina gambit. Eventually, even the opiated masses will begin to wonder whether the real fault is in the models. I think the bet is that warming will resume before that point and “the pause” will be re-titled “the burp”, and all the same old doomsayers will be back in business forecasting thermageddon to large adoring audiences.
Paul Ehrlich has made an entire career out of failed prophecies of doom.
Paul Ehrlich has made an entire career out of failed prophecies of doom.
==========
“… these simulations were missing an important component of volcanic activity.” Yet another physical mechanism that has, heretofore, been missing from the precious models. How many other mechanisms are missing? How many of them may actually be important?
The missing mechanisms are only important when they can be used to explain why the climate models failed and therefore can be trusted.
As Maxwell Smart would say, “Missed it by that much.”
But according to Obummer, the science was long since settled. Does that make Santer yet another ‘flat earther’?
Flat Climater. He thinks temperatures everywhere were nice and flat before nasty ole fossil fuels showed up, then everything went haywire.
It looks very much like hand-waving from people who are drowning.
So once again, the 1998 “man made” revision of 1998 vs 1932 being the hottest year. How can “historical” temperature change? Who do the voodoo?
How does this “study” account for the 1880-1910 and 1940-1970 pauses in temperature increase?
What pause?!?!? All the warmist bloggers keep telling me “The Pause” has been debunked. We just experienced the warmest year EVAH!! The last decade is the warmest decade EVAH!!! Now this guys comes along and tells me “The Pause” which didn’t exist was caused by volcanic eruptions. I’m sooooo confused!! It’s Friday. I’m going to go play hockey then have a amber beauty. It will all be be good then. 🙂
Ben, growing ever more desperate and despondent, grasps desperately at any and very passing straw man of an idea in his increasing futile attempts to delay his eventual moment of realization that he was just plain frik’n, dumbass wrong and has wasted an entire career on vanity science.
The only question now is how much smaller his chapter will be compared to the A Listers like Mann, Schmidt or Trenberth’s write-ups when the definitive book on the Great Global Warming Con, Scam Scheme & Swindle is eventually written.
Because he knows that day is coming.
Confession: I haven’t yet read this but does this paper present evidence that there has been an increase in volcanism over the past 18 years?
Robert… See post by Rud Istvan January 9, 2015 at 1:01 pm
Thank you for the small recognition concerning 2 years of research and writing.
The B.S. hypothesis is that these are teeny-tiny or “rotten” volcanoes, too small to detect under normal conditions. Only real smart sciency illuminati guys can see them. How they can do this despite their epidemic proctocraniosis, no one knows.
It’s not volcanoes.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_NH_2014.gif
Please explain. I’m biomedical and trying to learn.
The posted graphic (without explanation) is one of many ‘tropical troposphere hot spot’ GCM model refutations. For a simple laymans explanation, see several essays in Blowing Smoke.
I know the hot spot deal and thought that was what I was looking at. Thanks and I think I sent you a message through Google Hangouts, but who knows?
It is also not a volcano. Height of 45 km.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/01mb9065.gif
“A new Maunder Minimum will not necessarily affect the Earth in the same way it did during the 17th Century,” Giuliana de Toma of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s High Altitude Observatory told HuffPost in an email. “Volcanic eruptions (that have a short-term cooling effect) also played a role in the cold weather observed during the 17th century. Plus we are starting from a warmer Earth.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/24/solar-lull-little-ice-age-sun-scientists_n_4645248.html
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/John-Casey-climate-change-fraud/2014/12/17/id/613663/
Or maybe the models are just plain wrong?
The last decade may be the warmest since modern temperature records began in 1880 but it still is a decade of no temperature rise from beginning to end.
There has been no temperature rise over the last ~millenium. But the hiatus has been going for even longer than that, around 8,000 years.
One might think that the Climate Flockers would try to stop the…. bleating…..
It’s becoming quite obvious……that they are becoming …desperate…
So they’ve given up waiting for a big one to save their pet theory and now are trying to add a bunch of little ones up to say it’s the same thing. Bardarbunga just didn’t do what they wanted. Sort of like the temperatures over the last 14-18 years. Bummer for them.
Duster
Your theory:
“The really nice thing about a genuinely scientific view point is that one is not taken by surprise when nature acts naturally. There IS NO TIME SCALE at which you can point to either a trend or lack of one in climate data that does not terminate or reverse. We do not know what “normal” climate is in any sense but that of our own experience. There is not even evidence that such a thing as a “normal” climate, locally or globally, exists. At the very most, we observe temporary metastable periods during which our perceptions can convince us that this how things “are.” But they aren’t, they never were really, and they will change. Only the religious and the political will be taken by surprise.”
might apply to a world where scientific enquiry was in its infancy and we lived in ignorance.
However we actually have a pretty good handle on what “normal” is and was, both in the climate and biosphere and what mechanisms produce it – as we can measure them either directly or through proxies. So for example we can tell through archaeology what people were eating thousands of years ago and so reconstruct their environment and the climate where they were. We can use oxygen isotope ratios to reconstruct past temperatures. We can look at ancient shorelines to measure sea level. We can do hundreds of these things which put contraints on what past normal was and what current normal is and how that relates to the ice ages cycles and modern changes. These lines of enquiry also tells us that your theory that normal can lurch around randomly without cause is (obviously) completely wrong.
The cause of “normal”? Do we know that? Do we even know what “normal” is? “Average” over a given time, maybe, but “normal”? The “random” enters in because we don’t know. We make our best (hopefully) educated guess but we don’t actually know what is “normal”.
The problem today is that some are claiming what is happening is “abnormal” and they know the cause and (given enough cash and control) can return us to the undefined “normal”.
Cause of what? An undefined “abnormal”?
Please define what is “normal”.
James, your confidence level is way too high. RGBatDuke would likely have something to say about the certainty with which you make your assertions. You need to replace “measure” and “reconstruct” with “estimate by inference”, and “we can tell” with “we can make a reasonable guess”. Your use of “normal” reinforces the implication that you might just be a “true believer”. You might try a healthy dose of skepticism in all aspects of your life… I have found it a bit freeing, myself.
I agree with the last bit – a good dollop of scepticism is a good thing. However, you need cause. Just disbelieving everything around and randomly grabbing at alternatives is delusional. One of the strongest features of good science is the matching of conclusions from more than one line of enquiry. So we can reconstruct (with uncertainty bars of course) past climates from many lines of enquiry – and if they point to a similar conclusion for a given time period, that’s strong evidence.
I was at a meeting last year where a guy standing to be a member of parliament stated to the audience that palm trees grew on Greenland 2,000 years ago (as his evidence that the climate jumped around naturally). I asked him where he got that from and he said “I saw it on Sky TV”. That is an example of random disbelief – there was no cause because it is clearly tosh and completely at odds with all the credible scientific evidence.
James Abbot, again I would suggest that the certainty with which you assert exceeds the certainty of your underlying support. You seem very sure that you have everyone’s understanding categorized.
I suggest that you search (google/DuckDuckGo/yahoo/bing…) “rgbatduke site:wattsupwiththat.com” and read all of what he has to say before responding further. While Dr. Brown does not have all of the answers, he’s certainly asking some very pertinent questions.
Theo. January 9, 2015 at 4:49 pm
Thank you for your search tip on Google to find “rgbatduke”. Intrigued, I typed GeeJam:wattsupwiththat.com. It reveals every comment I’ve ever made on WUWT – but also shows other sites (such as ‘Hot Whopper) that have copied and published a specific comment..
I’ve learnt something today. You can’t hide. Frightening Really.
This is probably the link you are thinking of. It summarizes Dr Brown’s thoughts on the subject plus a great post he made on slashdot
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/
Normal? Cold with ice covering a lot of the northern hemisphere, ocean levels hundreds of feet lower. There that covers 90% of the time. The other 10% is our lovely little garden planet. Enjoy it while it lasts folks. No amount of CO2 will stop the next glaciation.
So please tell us what is normal. AFAIK, global temperatures have varied by 10-15 C over the past 400000 years. Can you point to the “normal” period please?
The answer is in your question. 400,000 years pre-dates modern humans ! It covers several ice age cycles – so clearly over such a long period there is not a “normal” in the context of the period over which modern human civilisation has developed.
Just a cop-out then – how about last 100000 or 50000 or 10000 years then. My point was that there is no “normal”. We don’t get to choose (or seriously affect) climate – but we can adapt. Modern humans (Homo Sapiens) have existed through the last glacial period as well as the Holocene optimum and other warm periods.
In all probability, warmer is better than colder. Otherwise we would all be living in Canada or Greenland.
James Abbot: why on earth would you limit what is ‘normal’ wrt earth’s temperature to that period over which modern human civilization has developed? What would earth’s ‘normal’ temperature be if we had the life span of a housefly? Just what does OUR history have to do with what is ‘normal’ for earth’s history? SMH.
JA, Duster’s words don’t comprise a theory; they are a commentary about the mismatch between expectation and scientific reality. And what he/she argues still has validity. ‘Normal’ is a perceptive term related to human experience; what people tend to expect their local seasons to do for as long as they live. It’s independent of what actually happens in the long term. Trend reversals occur eventually. Whatever we expect or prefer, the climate will do its own thing and we must adapt. ‘Normal’ is a fiction in that sense.
You are using ‘normal’ differently, to describe actual past climate performance within constraining limits and the mechanisms involved. That’s not being disputed here. However, bear in mind that since archaelogy and various proxies provide a fairly broad brush, low-res view of past climate with respect to the narrow time intervals we prefer today, the constraints on climate trends can’t in every case be measured accurately. More importantly, nor can they be used to accurately predict how they might behave in the future. We can’t even extrapolate the CET with a comparable level of detail back to say the year 1100, even if we have a broad idea of what the climate was like in those days. Uncertainty will always be with us, and no-one knows what the ‘ideal’ climate should be at any coordinate set on the globe.
At any rate, Duster did not say that “normal can lurch around randomly without cause.” AFAICT he/she implies that one people’s perception of the expected climate trends in their location may differ markedly once a few centuries have passed. People get used to the ‘big wet’ if it lasts decades. Then similarly droughts, if they endure. Each is perceived as ‘normal’ once people adapt over long time scales. Sure, there’s a cause behind changing trends; that wasn’t being challenged.
I am using “normal “as in what we can measure, not what people “feel” about their environment.
Anyway, you repeat exactly the same throw-away philosophy:
“Whatever we expect or prefer, the climate will do its own thing and we must adapt”.
No it will not, it is not a random system at the macro level. It is a physical system, linked to the biosphere. Now I would agree that the interplay of the many inputs and responses is complex, but that does not mean we cannot work towards understanding it – as we are.
Its obvious why sceptics like the random argument – they can dismiss the warming of recent decades as “natural” – part of nature’s ramblings. Science says it could be, but its highly unlikely to be, and far more likely is that the rising level of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere is substantially the cause of the warming.
See wapoo quote below James, the propaganda mill cranks up on a suspect “warmist evah”.
This is what you are a part of. You embrace it and your delight is to proclaim it.
You reject the satellite data because it is not grist for the propaganda mill.
Michael Mann to Ben Santer!
6 Jan: WaPoo: Chris Mooney: 2014 may set a new temperature record. So can we please stop claiming global warming has “stopped”?
So much for any “pause” in global warming…
The strange idea that global warming has paused…
The weakness of the “pause” argument …
I asked several prominent climate scientists this question. “The record-breaking temperatures should put to rest once and for all the silly claim by contrarians that climate change has somehow stopped or stalled,” observed climate researcher Michael Mann from Penn State. “In fact, the warming of the globe continues unabated as we continue to burn fossil fuels and increase concentrations of planet-warming greenhouse gases.”…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/06/2014-may-set-a-new-temperature-record-so-can-we-please-stop-claiming-global-warming-has-stopped/
Mooney uses a preliminary assessment (to November) by the Japan Meteorological Agency, on 2014 temps, to make his claims, while simultaneously writing about the “weakness” – not falsity – of the “pause” argument! go figure.
Careful not step on WaPoo.
This is from NAPS (Environment Canada – National Air Pollution Surveillance Program)
http://www.ec.gc.ca/rnspa-naps/5C0D33CF-B92B-41BF-BB74-0812341380A0/SO2graph_historical.jpg
As we all know, Canada is located as far away from the pole, as possible, wedged inconveniently between a furnace and a hot place, while its surface stations are located in the stratosphere. What is more, Canadian air never mixes with global air, so any sign of the early 21st century sulphur loading upsurge, produced by a plethora of small volcanoes elsewhere, is completely missing from measurement records of this abysmal country, who dared to vote conservative.
An incredibly credible story, is it not?
I would believe you completely but you seem to be glossing over the fact that Canadian air is transported across the border all the time in trains, planes and automobiles. Only rarely have I been searched and forced to throw away perfectly good Canadian air after leaving this great not hot and yet not tropical country.
I worked at Air Canada for 35yrs. You have no idea of the smuggling and laundering of air that goes on at YYZ. The Jamaican gangs smuggled in heat disguised as yams. The Nova Scotians sent cold disguised as lobsters.
All I know is that the roads up there SUCK! I went on a cycling tour of PEI about 13 years back, and the roads tried to kill me!!
I believe they are hiding in the deep ocean with the missing heat. That is the only place we haven’t searched.
/sarc for the intellectually challenged