Global temperature update: no warming for 18 years 4 months
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Since December 1996 there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature – so far unaffected by the most persistent el Niño conditions of the present rather attenuated cycle – shows a new record length for the ever-Greater Pause: 18 years 4 months – and counting.
This result rather surprises me. I’d expected even a weak el Niño to have more effect that this, but it is always possible that the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will come through after a lag of four or five months. On the other hand, Roy Spencer, at his always-to-the-point blog (drroyspencer.com), says: “We are probably past the point of reaching a new peak temperature anomaly from the current El Niño, suggesting it was rather weak.” I shall defer to the expert, with pleasure. For if la Niña conditions begin to cool the oceans in time, there could be quite some lengthening of the Pause just in time for the Paris world-government summit in December.
Figure 1. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 4 months since December 1996.
The hiatus period of 18 years 4 months, or 220 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.
Given that the Paris summit is approaching and most “world leaders” are not being told the truth about the Pause, it would be a great help if readers were to do their best to let their national negotiators and politicians know that unexciting reality continues to diverge ever more spectacularly from the bizarre “settled-science” predictions on which Thermageddon was built.
The divergence between the models’ predictions in 1990 (Fig. 2) and 2005 (Fig. 3), on the one hand, and the observed outturn, on the other, also continues to widen, and is now becoming a real embarrassment to the profiteers of doom – or would be, if the mainstream news media were actually to report the data rather than merely repeating the failed predictions of catastrophe.
Figure 2. Near-term projections of warming at a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] K/century, made with “substantial confidence” in IPCC (1990), for the 303 months January 1990 to March 2015 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at less than 1.4 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Figure 3. Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to March 2015, at a rate equivalent to 1.7 [1.0, 2.3] Cº/century (orange zone with thick red best-estimate trend line), compared with the near-zero observed anomalies (dark blue) and real-world trend (bright blue), taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
The Technical Note has now been much expanded to take account of the fact that the oceans, according to the ARGO bathythermograph data, are scarcely warming.
Key facts about global temperature
Ø The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 220 months from December 1996 to March 2014 – more than half the 435-month satellite record.
Ø The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.
Ø Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to below 1.2 Cº per century.
Ø The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.
Ø In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of near-term warming was equivalent to 2.8 Cº per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction of 1.7 Cº/century.
Ø The global warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to below 1.4 Cº per century – half of what the IPCC had then predicted.
Ø Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 Cº warming to 2100.
Ø The IPCC’s predicted 4.8 Cº warming by 2100 is well over twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than ten years that has been measured since 1950.
Ø The IPCC’s 4.8 Cº-by-2100 prediction is almost four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950.
Ø The oceans, according to the 3600+ ARGO bathythermograph buoys, are warming at a rate equivalent to just 0.02 Cº per decade, or 0.2 Cº per century.
Ø Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming to speak of. It is as simple as that.
Technical note
Our latest topical graph shows the least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean lower-troposphere dataset for as far back as it is possible to go and still find a zero trend. The start-date is not “cherry-picked” so as to coincide with the temperature spike caused by the 1998 el Niño. Instead, it is calculated so as to find the longest period with a zero trend.
The RSS dataset is arguably less unreliable than other datasets in that it shows the 1998 Great El Niño more clearly than all other datasets (though UAH runs it close). The Great el Niño, like its two predecessors in the past 300 years, caused widespread global coral bleaching, providing an independent verification that RSS is better able to capture such fluctuations without artificially filtering them out than other datasets. Besides, there is in practice little statistical difference between the RSS and other datasets over the 18-year period of the Great Pause.
Terrestrial temperatures are measured by thermometers. Thermometers correctly sited in rural areas away from manmade heat sources show warming rates below those that are published. The satellite datasets are based on reference measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers, which provide an independent verification of the temperature measurements by checking via spaceward mirrors the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which is 1% of the freezing point of water, or just 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. It was by measuring minuscule variations in the cosmic background radiation that the NASA anisotropy probe determined the age of the Universe: 13.82 billion years.
The RSS graph (Fig. 1) is accurate. The data are lifted monthly straight from the RSS website. A computer algorithm reads them down from the text file, takes their mean and plots them automatically using an advanced routine that automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of the data window at both axes so as to show the data at maximum scale, for clarity.
The latest monthly data point is visually inspected to ensure that it has been correctly positioned. The light blue trend line plotted across the dark blue spline-curve that shows the actual data is determined by the method of least-squares linear regression, which calculates the y-intercept and slope of the line.
The IPCC and most other agencies use linear regression to determine global temperature trends. Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia recommends it in one of the Climategate emails. The method is appropriate because global temperature records exhibit little auto-regression.
Dr Stephen Farish, Professor of Epidemiological Statistics at the University of Melbourne, kindly verified the reliability of the algorithm that determines the trend on the graph and the correlation coefficient, which is very low because, though the data are highly variable, the trend is flat.
RSS itself is now taking a serious interest in the length of the Great Pause. Dr Carl Mears, the senior research scientist at RSS, discusses it at remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures.
Dr Mears’ results are summarized in Fig. T1:
Figure T1. Output of 33 IPCC models (turquoise) compared with measured RSS global temperature change (black), 1979-2014. The transient coolings caused by the volcanic eruptions of Chichón (1983) and Pinatubo (1991) are shown, as is the spike in warming caused by the great el Niño of 1998.
Dr Mears writes:
“The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.”
Dr Mears concedes the growing discrepancy between the RSS data and the models, but he alleges “cherry-picking” of the start-date for the global-temperature graph:
“Recently, a number of articles in the mainstream press have pointed out that there appears to have been little or no change in globally averaged temperature over the last two decades. Because of this, we are getting a lot of questions along the lines of ‘I saw this plot on a denialist web site. Is this really your data?’ While some of these reports have ‘cherry-picked’ their end points to make their evidence seem even stronger, there is not much doubt that the rate of warming since the late 1990s is less than that predicted by most of the IPCC AR5 simulations of historical climate. … The denialists really like to fit trends starting in 1997, so that the huge 1997-98 ENSO event is at the start of their time series, resulting in a linear fit with the smallest possible slope.”
In fact, the spike in temperatures caused by the Great el Niño of 1998 is largely offset in the linear-trend calculation by two factors: the not dissimilar spike of the 2010 el Niño, and the sheer length of the Great Pause itself.
Curiously, Dr Mears prefers the much-altered terrestrial datasets to the satellite datasets. However, over the entire length of the RSS and UAH series since 1979, the trends on the mean of the terrestrial datasets and on the mean of the satellite datasets are near-identical. Indeed, the UK Met Office uses the satellite record to calibrate its own terrestrial record.
The length of the Great Pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the far less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed. It remains possible that el Nino-like conditions may prevail this year, reducing the length of the Great Pause. However, the discrepancy between prediction and observation continues to widen.
Sources of the IPCC projections in Figs. 2 and 3
IPCC’s First Assessment Report predicted that global temperature would rise by 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] Cº to 2025, equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] Cº per century. The executive summary asked, “How much confidence do we have in our predictions?” IPCC pointed out some uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:
“Nevertheless, … we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change. … There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”
That “substantial confidence” was substantial over-confidence. For the rate of global warming since 1990 – the most important of the “broad-scale features of climate change” that the models were supposed to predict – is now below half what the IPCC had then predicted.
In 1990, the IPCC said this:
“Based on current models we predict:
“under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3 Cº per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 Cº to 0.5 Cº per decade), this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 Cº above the present value by 2025 and 3 Cº before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors” (p. xii).
Later, the IPCC said:
“The numbers given below are based on high-resolution models, scaled to be consistent with our best estimate of global mean warming of 1.8 Cº by 2030. For values consistent with other estimates of global temperature rise, the numbers below should be reduced by 30% for the low estimate or increased by 50% for the high estimate” (p. xxiv).
The orange region in Fig. 2 represents the IPCC’s less extreme medium-term Scenario-A estimate of near-term warming, i.e. 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] K by 2025, rather than its more extreme Scenario-A estimate, i.e. 1.8 [1.3, 3.7] K by 2030.
Some try to say the IPCC did not predict the straight-line global warming rate that is shown in Figs. 2-3. In fact, however, the IPCC’s predicted global warming over so short a term as the 25 years from 1990 to the present are little different from a straight line (Fig. T2).
Figure T2. Historical warming from 1850-1990, and predicted warming from 1990-2100 on the IPCC’s “business-as-usual” Scenario A (IPCC, 1990, p. xxii).
Because this difference between a straight line and the slight uptick in the warming rate the IPCC predicted over the period 1990-2025 is so small, one can look at it another way. To reach the 1 K central estimate of warming since 1990 by 2025, there would have to be twice as much warming in the next ten years as there was in the last 25 years. That is not likely.
Likewise, to reach 1.8 K by 2030, there would have to be four or five times as much warming in the next 15 years as there was in the last 25 years. That is still less likely.
But is the Pause perhaps caused by the fact that CO2 emissions have not been rising anything like as fast as the IPCC’s “business-as-usual” Scenario A prediction in 1990? No: CO2 emissions have risen rather above the Scenario-A prediction (Fig. T3).
Figure T3. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, etc., in 2012, from Le Quéré et al. (2014), plotted against the chart of “man-made carbon dioxide emissions”, in billions of tonnes of carbon per year, from IPCC (1990).
Plainly, therefore, CO2 emissions since 1990 have proven to be closer to Scenario A than to any other case, because for all the talk about CO2 emissions reduction the fact is that the rate of expansion of fossil-fuel burning in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc., far outstrips the paltry reductions we have achieved in the West to date.
True, methane concentration has not risen as predicted in 1990 (Fig. T4), for methane emissions, though largely uncontrolled, are simply not rising as the models had predicted, and the predictions were extravagantly baseless.
The overall picture is clear. Scenario A is the emissions scenario from 1990 that is closest to the observed emissions outturn, and yet there has only been a third of a degree of global warming since 1990 – about half of what the IPCC had then predicted with what it called “substantial confidence”.
Figure T4. Methane concentration as predicted in four IPCC Assessment Reports, together with (in black) the observed outturn, which is running along the bottom of the least prediction. This graph appeared in the pre-final draft of IPCC (2013), but had mysteriously been deleted from the final, published version, inferentially because the IPCC did not want to display such a plain comparison between absurdly exaggerated predictions and unexciting reality.
To be precise, a quarter-century after 1990, the global-warming outturn to date – expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies – is 0.35 Cº, equivalent to just 1.4 Cº/century, or a little below half of the central estimate of 0.70 Cº, equivalent to 2.8 Cº/century, that was predicted for Scenario A in IPCC (1990). The outturn is visibly well below even the least estimate.
In 1990, the IPCC’s central prediction of the near-term warming rate was higher by two-thirds than its prediction is today. Then it was 2.8 C/century equivalent. Now it is just 1.7 Cº equivalent – and, as Fig. T5 shows, even that is proving to be a substantial exaggeration.
Is the ocean warming?
One frequently-discussed explanation for the Great Pause is that the coupled ocean-atmosphere system has continued to accumulate heat at approximately the rate predicted by the models, but that in recent decades the heat has been removed from the atmosphere by the ocean and, since globally the near-surface strata show far less warming than the models had predicted, it is hypothesized that what is called the “missing heat” has traveled to the little-measured abyssal strata below 2000 m, whence it may emerge at some future date.
Actually, it is not known whether the ocean is warming: each of the 3600 automated ARGO bathythermograph buoys somehow has to cover 200,000 cubic kilometres of ocean – a 100,000-square-mile box more than 316 km square and 2 km deep. Plainly, the results on the basis of a resolution that sparse (which, as Willis Eschenbach puts it, is approximately the equivalent of trying to take a single temperature and salinity profile taken at a single point in Lake Superior less than once a year) are not going to be a lot better than guesswork.
Fortunately, a long-standing bug in the ARGO data delivery system has now been fixed, so I am able to get the monthly global mean ocean temperature data – though ARGO seems not to have updated the dataset since December 2014. However, that gives us 11 full years of data. Results are plotted in Fig. T5. The ocean warming, if ARGO is right, is equivalent to just 0.02 Cº decade–1, or 0.2 Cº century–1 equivalent.
Figure T5. The entire near-global ARGO 2 km ocean temperature dataset from January 2004 to December 2014 (black spline-curve), with the least-squares linear-regression trend calculated from the data by the author (green arrow).
Finally, though the ARGO buoys measure ocean temperature change directly, before publication NOAA craftily converts the temperature change into zettajoules of ocean heat content change, which make the change seem a whole lot larger.
The terrifying-sounding heat content change of 260 ZJ from 1970 to 2014 (Fig. T6) is equivalent to just 0.2 K/century of global warming. All those “Hiroshima bombs of heat” are a barely discernible pinprick. The ocean and its heat capacity are a lot bigger than some may realize.
Figure T6. Ocean heat content change, 1957-2013, in Zettajoules from NOAA’s NODC Ocean Climate Lab: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT, with the heat content values converted back to the ocean temperature changes in fractions of a Kelvin that were originally measured. NOAA’s conversion of the minuscule temperature change data to Zettajoules, combined with the exaggerated vertical aspect of the graph, has the effect of making a very small change in ocean temperature seem considerably more significant than it is.
Converting the ocean heat content change back to temperature change reveals an interesting discrepancy between NOAA’s data and that of the ARGO system. Over the period of ARGO data, from 2004-2014, the NOAA data imply that the oceans are warming at 0.05 Cº decade–1, equivalent to 0.5 Cº century–1, or rather more than double the rate shown by ARGO.
ARGO has the better-resolved dataset, but since the resolutions of all ocean datasets are very low one should treat all these results with caution. What one can say is that, on such evidence as these datasets are capable of providing, the difference between underlying warming rate of the ocean and that of the atmosphere is not statistically significant, suggesting that if the “missing heat” is hiding in the oceans it has magically found its way into the abyssal strata without managing to warm the upper strata on the way. On these data, too, there is no evidence of rapid or catastrophic ocean warming.
Furthermore, to date no empirical, theoretical or numerical method, complex or simple, has yet successfully specified mechanistically either how the heat generated by anthropogenic greenhouse-gas enrichment of the atmosphere has reached the deep ocean without much altering the heat content of the intervening near-surface strata or how the heat from the bottom of the ocean may eventually re-emerge to perturb the near-surface climate conditions that are relevant to land-based life on Earth.
Most ocean models used in performing coupled general-circulation model sensitivity runs simply cannot resolve most of the physical processes relevant for capturing heat uptake by the deep ocean. Ultimately, the second law of thermodynamics requires that any heat which may have accumulated in the deep ocean will dissipate via various diffusive processes. It is not plausible that any heat taken up by the deep ocean will suddenly warm the upper ocean and, via the upper ocean, the atmosphere.
If the “deep heat” explanation for the hiatus in global warming were correct (and it is merely one among dozens that have been offered), then the complex models have failed to account for it correctly: otherwise, the growing discrepancy between the predicted and observed atmospheric warming rates would not have become as significant as it has.
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But 97% of climate scientists have come to the conclusion that this non-warming is due to human activity.
My pull quote for the day!
It absolutely is warming if you look at the appropriate time frame instead of this miniscule timeframe.
“Appropriate time frame”. In other words if you cherry-pick, you get warming, which is what you want.
Got it.
So you can’t explain why it hasn’t warmed for over 18 years, so instead you will just ignore that inconvenient fact.
How warmist of you.
Using a different “appropriate time frame”, I can show that it is cooling.
Do you mean the bulk of warming which occurred prior to 1950, so couldn’t be anthropogenic according to the IPCC. Two nearly identical periods of warming, with a pause in between, one definitely not anthropogenic, the other most certainly? Now we have another pause. Why haven’t temperatures continued to rise? Is it because the warming referred to only happens in models, not even experimentation? Plus no other records anywhere in the geological history of this planet that showed CO2 rises causing warming. Yes, the pause argument cherry picks the data to show a flat line, but it correctly points out the warming trend has abated or stopped. I prefer to look at the full satellite record; instead warmists choose obviously corrupted ground measurements. Why?
@Matt Henderson
Please justify in scientific detail what “appropriate time frame” means to you.
Yeah, It was cooler during the Ice ages.
If that’s the case, I think the Antarctic could use a little more human activity. The Alarmists, Climastrologists and Warmists could all go down there and do their part. They’ll just need to check the boarding times for the Ship of Fools and dress appropriately. The current temperatures down there now.
South Pole…-86F
Vostok……..-92F
Davis……….-94F
NO it is 97% of the politicians that, 1992, have come to the conclusion that this non-warming is due to human Activity. They then established and Financed think tanks that look like climate sience to support their policy.
RSS dataset is not a good reference since it is known to be biased. UAH has been corrected for orbital decay,
The UAH dataset has problems of its own:
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/uah-need-to-adjust-their-tlt-product/
Yes, all data sets need adjusting, the models tell us that. Measurements will be deemed correct when they show what the models predict.
The data sets seem to track rather well since the orbital decay issue was reported [by RSS in Nature, July 7, 1998 http://images.remss.com/papers/MSU_Nature_Article.pdf ]. The comparison of the data sets is graphed here: http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature/validation
Taking the mean of the UAH and RSS datasets, which pull in different directions, gives quite a fair indication of the temperature trend, and you will find it in Figs. 2 and 3 of the head posting. The mean of the two trends is much the same as the mean of the three long-standing terrestrial datasets.
the average of right and wrong is not necessarily less wrong.
Averaging UAH and RSS is not guarranteed to get you anything.
#Steve Mosher
The averaging of global temperatures, or global warming models is not guaranteed either, to achieve anything useful. But the warmists still do it. Curious eh?
@ur momisugly Mosher…yet the averaging of 70 or 80 wrong models leads to what? All of them wrong to the high side. Some much worse than others. Whereas the 2 sat sets are close and are at the least consistently tracking real data.
yet, we have a “global” average temperature, which has less mathematical foundation than the averaging of two similar data sets.
Also, which is right and which is wrong?
Agree.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/global-temp-and-co2-1880-2009.gif
Your chart still shows no warming for the last 18 years.
Regardless, why start with 1880? Could it be that this was the coldest point of the little ice age?
If you go back further, you will see the planet getting warmer, even though CO2 is still low.
Your point being it’s 0.5 °C warmer than 1970? That’s sbout 1.2°C/century. How much IPCC told us to expect befiore 2025?
Maybe the ‘thing’ that was eating up all the CO2 around 1910 will come back. Eeeeeek!
Your CO2 concentration is out by more than 100 ppm for 1940. WUWT? There are measurements, you know.
MarkW,
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MW_NJp28Udc/VNS3EAEqpOI/AAAAAAAAAUs/hjhuLZFkdoM/s1600/hadcrut4%2Bhiatuses.png
Call me in 22 years.
Unless we agree to rule out magic, there’s not much point discussing any evidence whatsoever.
And …. ?
Brandon, it’s really pretty simple, unless your mind is closed to any evidence that doesn’t support what you want to believe.
The fact remains, temperatures rise and fall and have forever independant of the CO2 concentration.
In the last 100 years, temperatures have gone up while CO2 increased.
Temperatures have gone down while CO2 increased.
Temperatures have gone up while CO2 remained constant.
Temperatures have done nothing while CO2 has gone up.
CO2 is not the master element, as you have been taught to believe.
How do you account for the fact that temperatures were cooling in 1880, even though CO2 was increasing? A more fundamental problem is the cherry-picking of the data, which doesn’t show the earlier temperatures which make it fundamentally clear that there is no relation between CO2 and warming.
So Frederick, which data set should we use; one that is not biased of course ?? The surface based ones are useless of course since they don’t conform to Nyquist sampling requirements.
I should add that Lord Monckton omitted another key factoid about global Temperatures.
His fig 1 etc piddling little Temperature Scale of about 1.0 deg. C range is just a small part of the total global Temperature range available on any ordinary day, of typically 120 deg. C, out of an extreme range of about 150 + deg. C from a low of about -94 deg. C in the winter Antarctic highlands, to about +60 deg. C in the hottest North African and middle Eastern deserts.
Between those extremes of course there are an infinite number of places on earth that will register ANY value of Temperature between the high and the low. They lie on any line you can draw between the two extreme points.
So if RSS data set has a bias, that is a real ho hum for me.
Let me restate (in effect) the consequences of Christopher’s analysis.
For the past 18 years and 4 months, the biased RSS data set has not strayed statistically from its well known bias value, which has remained rock steady at its well known value.
There, that should fix it.
In 2013, IPCC acknowledged a “statistically non-significant” trend from 1998-2012 in the thermometer-based datasets: “Regardless, all global combined LSAT and SST data sets exhibit a statistically non-significant warming trend over 1998–2012 (0.042°C ± 0.093°C per decade (HadCRUT4); 0.037°C ± 0.085°C per decade (NCDC MLOST); 0.069°C ± 0.082°C per decade (GISS)).” [AR5, WG1, Chapter 2, p. 194.]
http://ipcc.wikia.com/wiki/152.4.3_Global_Combined_Land_and_Sea_Surface_Temperature
So is RSS. They use different satellites. Both have adjustments far more rational then the surface record.
An excellent post Christopher! What was the result of the previous 215 month satellite readings, because it might be interesting to put them together, if that is, platinum resistance thermometers were used for the 440 month period?
In answer to Mr Harding – and thank you for your kind words – the RSS data show 0.44 K warming since Jan 1979, equiv. to 1.22 K/century; UAH 0.51 K, equiv. to 1.39 K/century; mean 0.47 K, equiv. to 1.31 K/century.
Thank you for your reply. If solar activity is taken into account then these are the global temperatures that would be expected if the solar cycle is taken into account. I am more convinced that the Sun has a greater influence on the climate than man-made CO2
Thank you, Lord Monckton. I suspect the AGW faithful advocating stringent economy-destroying CO2 emission controls understand they are simply in race with nature to get out in front of a coming natural cooling cycle. If they can win the race against science and nature, they will claim a causal linkage to maintain the scam for generations.
You are aware searching thru a single global temperature dataset for a particular trend line is cherry picking?
You might be right, harry, so in this case, it is a good thing that it has not been done here.
harrytwinotter, the start date for this trend is now.
It then goes back until the trend is not statistically indistinguishable from zero.
It is not cherry-picking to startnow as now is special. It’s where we are.
Unless you’re living in the past and still see newsworthy AGW as a probable outcome.
Of course you’re correct.
If one asks “How long have you been smoke free?”
You would start with today’s date and add up all those days that you had zero butts back to the day you smoked one…that’s where you have to stop counting if you want to answer the question honestly.
No, it is definitely a cherry-pick.
– Only one dataset is used, one that is know to be noisy especially with monthly data.
– The large El Nino spike in 1998 is still throwing the underlying trend off.
– Searching backwards in time from the current month to find a zero trend line is the same as picking a starting point.
I have got nothing against the RSS dataset it measures what it measures. It reacts differently to El Ninos and Arctic warming compared to the surface datasets. But people should avoid playing games with the data.
MCourtney, you just cannot educate some people. harrytwinotter says:
No, it is definitely a cherry-pick.
The *ahem* ‘consensus’, including most of the warmists, now agrees that global warming has stopped [they say “paused”, but same-same].
But I suppose if harrytwinotter had to admit that, his head would explode from cognitive dissonance. So he continues with the debunked narrative that global warming is continuing as usual.
Some folks are living in their own reality-free bubble, and harry is a perfect example.
@MCourtney
Indeed. If the temperature at this point in time does not matter and if the change in temperature (or lack of) up to this point in time does not matter either, then what matters at this point in time?
By the way, thanks to Monckton for keeping up with these updates. The effort is appreciated.
Harrytwinotter is incorrect. To ensure comparability between one month and the next, I have long used RSS, not least because it is the first to report in most months. However, UAH and RSS are also averaged, for UAH tends to run hot and RSS cool. Their average, a reasonable indication of global temperature change, is shown in Figs. 2-3 of the post, and it is ever further below the interval of predictions made by the IPCC in 1990.
As if that were not enough, the technical note also has not one but two representations of the rate of global ocean warming. So don’t whine about cherry-picking.
OK, so the (no) trend found is shown to be justifiable.
That leaves the question of if it’s (not) found to be useful for planning?
That depends on if the difference is large enough to impact the costs that would be incurred anyway.
So if AGW is slower than the wear and tear on infrastructure then the extra cost is negligible.
MCourtney,
I’m of the mind that simple trend analysis on one and only one parameter in this application is of limited utility. That does put me at odds with some consensus literature, and certainly with popular consensus commentary, but nowhere near entirely.
Monckton of Brenchley.
You are making a claim of “No global warming for 18 years 4 months” using one dataset and a trend line you search for in noisy data.
My comment about cherry-picking stands.
@harrytwinotter:
No, your comment fails. Global warming has stopped, and all your alarmist comments cannot change that fact.
You can stop being a loser if you want to. Face the facts, the alarmist clique was wrong. Global warming has stopped. All you are doing now is digging your hole deeper and deeper. Really, what is the matter with you? Has the media colonized your mind with their false alarm, to the point that you can’t think for yourself?
“””””…..
harrytwinotter
April 7, 2015 at 1:37 am
Monckton of Brenchley.
You are making a claim of “No global warming for 18 years 4 months” using one dataset and a trend line you search for in noisy data…….””””””
So Harry, just what is your authority for making the assertion that the data used by Lord Monckton of Brenchley is “noisy.”
If you pick up any volume of any encyclopedia, and record the last letter of the last word on the top line of each page starting from the first page, and proceeding sequentially to the last page, you will get a record of letters that dance around all over the place.
That is not “noise”. That IS THE DATA.
And the Monckton algorithm searches for nothing. The output of his algorithm is predetermined by the data set, and is unique.
Repeating the algorithm on the same data set, will always produce the same result, because it is not “noisy”.
George E. Smith.
The data is noisy. If the data wasn’t so noisy it would be easier to determine statistically significant trends in it.
Do the calcs yourself if you are interested, I did.
The data doesn’t show what you want it to show. Ergo, it’s noisy.
Gotcha.
@harrytwinotter
April 7, 2015 at 10:52 am
“George E. Smith.
The data is noisy. If the data wasn’t so noisy it would be easier to determine statistically significant trends in it.
Do the calcs yourself if you are interested, I did.”
The data is the data, and it’s temperature measurements. What’s the noise in there? How would you remove the noise; by removing the measurements? A trend doesn’t have to be “statistically significant” to be a trend.
The calcs don’t tell you anything about the correctness of a method; the method is either right or wrong and if it’s wrong, you don’t need to calculate.
MarkW,
I say the data is noisy because the data is noisy, actually.
Benpal,
the trend does have to be “statistically significant”, otherwise you won’t be able to demonstrate that the trend didn’t occur by chance, to any level of confidence.
Do the calculations yourself if you don’t believe me.
MCourtney is right. But it never seemas to sink in:
The length of the current trend begins now, and is measured back to its beginning. Global warming has been stopped for 18+ years — beginning now, and measuring back to when it stopped.
(Snip. Fake sockpuppet impersonating the real Ron House — it is the banned “David Socrates” again. -mod)
That’s a fake Ron House posting here. IMHO.
The trick is to find a long enough run of data that appears to be statistically significant. I did a rough analysis and the run becomes statistically significant from 1990-2015. 25 years! Not surprising the climate people like 30 years.
Personally I would not use monthly data anyway, better to determine a yearly average and at least get rid of the annual cycle from the noise. RSS is biased somewhat around the seasons as it does not cover the entire globe and it covers the northern hemisphere more than the southern hemisphere.
Veritas,
If we go back to 1998 (thus eliminating the 1997 spike) we still see that global T is declining.
Also, RSS and UAH have been steadily converging. Soon they will be the same. But it doesn’t really matter, since they only differ by a minuscule fraction of a degree — and within error bars.
The alarmist crowd just cannot stand the fact that the most accurate global temperature measurements in existence show that global warming has stopped.
But it has, and that debunks their CO2=CAGW conjecture. It has been falsified by the only Authority that matters: Planet Earth. The alarmist crowd is flat wrong. Of course, they won’t give up. CAGW is their eco-religion.
@ronhouse, the same way you could try and explain this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2005/plot/uah/from:2005/plot/rss/from:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:2011/trend/plot/uah/from:2010/trend/plot/uah/from:2011/trend/plot/rss/from:2005/trend/plot/uah/from:2005/trend , oh the difference a single year can make!
One should take trends over at least a quarter of a century where possible, and – in order to avoid the cherry-picking that led the modelers to extrapolate a PDO-positive-phase trend – one must either center one’s period of study on a PDO phase boundary or do trends as multiples of 60 years, so as to encompass a full warming and cooling cycle of the PDO.
I am no statistician or math whiz (I’m a lawyer) but it seems to me that if there was warming, when you start now and work backwards to establish a trend, you would not find significant stretches of zero warming.
harrytwintotter: Personally I would not use monthly data anyway, better to determine a yearly average and at least get rid of the annual cycle from the noise.
Personally as someone has used signal processing techniques for profit, I’m horrified you confuse decimation with filtering, and that you consider a filter (averaging) that can alias up to 20% of the signal to a lower frequency and has non-linear phase a reasonable technique for filtering.
Are you implying that you are unable to explain the trend which you are showing us? Perhaps, you meant to show us how to make an invalid cherry pick. Nice going. Speaking of which, I just noticed that the IPCC likes to cherry pick to make their point. That “business as usual” graph states that their start point for realized temp rise is from 1765 to the present time. The year 1765 was a solar minimum. So they have cherry picked a low point to make their estimation. As such their argument is null and void as to any valid connection to nature. A slight move either way changes their entire premise.
All experimental data sets are finite. Ergo, use of ANY data set, is cherry picking. We should always use all possible numbers in reaching any conclusion.
Correct, George. When their only argument amounts to accusations of “cherry picking”, we know they’ve run out of credible arguments.
harrytwinotter says:
The trick is to find a long enough run of data that appears to be statistically significant. I did a rough analysis and the run becomes statistically significant from 1990-2015. 25 years! Not surprising the climate people like 30 years.
May I deconstruct? Thank you:
First, we don’t need harry’s “trick”. And he doesn’t name his “climate people”. So I will post a name for him: according to arch-Warmist Dr. Phil Jones, fifteen (15) years of no global warming is enough to be statistically significant. Global warming stopped 18+ years ago. So harryt.o. needs to go argue with Jones if he doesn’t like it.
It’s not suprising that harry “cherry pick” twinotter would want to go back to 1990. Why did he pick that year? Why not pick 1980, when the last natural warming cycle began?
I have to larf at the desperation of the alarmist cult posting here. If it weren’t for moving the goal posts, they wouldn’t have an argument at all. I’m not the only one amused by their desperation, either: Planet Earth is busy debunking everything they believe in. That must really hurt.
george e. smith,
I think that’s too broad a definition.
I agree with that. However, the system in question is massive and has been around for a very, very long time. We don’t have near as much data as we want. On the other hand, there is a limit to how much data we could reasonably process and use. As well, some data are simply crap.
dbstealey,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/04/an-engineers-ice-core-thought-experiment-2-the-follow-up-2/
J. Philip Peterson
April 4, 2015 at 1:51 pm
Would this be a good summary of your Thought Experiment #2”? –
So are you saying in so many words that the 800,000 year ice cores do not show spikes in the atmospheric CO2 such as we have seen in the last 50 to 100 years?
In other words are you saying that there have been spikes higher than 400 ppm in the last 800,000 years, but because of the way (method that) it is trapped in the ice, it doesn’t record these spikes (ie. spikes of less than 200 years)??:
dbstealey
April 4, 2015 at 2:37 pm
I’m not sure myself. But I am pretty sure that CO2 has been up to twenty times higher in the past. Selecting a time frame like ‘800,000 years’ reeks of cherry-picking.
I’m not sure further comment is required.
Gates says:
I’m not sure further comment is required.
Oh, but further comment is too juicy to pass by.
First: when a comment only <–[my qualification] uses cherry picking it is a fail. But when a comment uses cherry picking among other points like mine did, and explains the rationale, it reinforces the point: CO2 has been up to 20X higher in the past. That debunks the alarmists view, so as usual Gates nit-picks one tiny part of a statement that he in turn cherry-picked to try and win a losing argument. As always, Gates comes up short.
In his interminable fixation trying to rescue a debate that Gates lost a long time ago, he nitpicks small parts of an accurate statement. He does that with everyone, in his hopeless crusade to support the failed climate alarmist narrative.
The planet is making it clear that Gates and his ilk are flat wrong. Global warming has stopped. But Gates doesn’t argue because he’s right or wrong. He argues because his endless nitpicking gives him pleasure in some perverse way. After thousands of comments trying to be convincing and failing, it’s clear Gates has problems that go far beyond losing the debate.
Next, as Monckton points out, The hiatus period of 18 years 4 months, or 220 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.
In other words, global warming has stopped. Not one climate alarmist predicted that major event. If they were honest scientific skeptics, they would admit that their conjecture has failed so spectacularly that nothing can resurrect it now except runaway global warming and climate catastrophe (which they crave, haters of humanity that they are). Could they be any more despicable?
Finally, I invite Gates to go back to the alarmist blogs where he badmouths and insults WUWT and its readers, and apologize. A stand-up guy would do that. Gates won’t.
harrytwinotter says:
Searching backwards in time from the current month to find a zero trend line is the same as picking a starting point.
——
In fact, it is quite the opposite, since searching back, by definition, means that you don’t know the answer a priori
Here is a thought experiment for Harrytwinoter. If the pause were to last another 100 years, so if there were 118 years of no warming, would starting from the current year and working backward be cherry picking?
Tom Trevor,
If they have 118 years of data and the trend line is zero and the trend is statistically significant, then yes they would conclude there is no warming (or cooling) trend in that dataset.
But I do not think 118 years are required, the dataset shows a statistically significant trend after about 25 years (at least by the method I use for the analysis).
Harry, Phil and Tom are clearly correct. If a question contains no date, then it is futile to call it cherry picking. Also the models did not predict the pause.
Your complaint about it not being 30 years is mindless. ENSO cycle must be considered, and those take a minimum of 60 years to cycle. This means the warming period, 1979 to 1998, was cherry stuffed full with positive ENSO and increasing surface insolation seen via earth’s albedo changes and cloud cover flux.
On what basis do you claim that 18 years is not significant.
Only a few years ago, the modelers were proclaiming that 15 years without an increase would be significant?
MarkW
“On what basis do you claim that 18 years is not significant.”
The basis I claim is it is not statistically significant. Do the calculations yourself.
You will need to provide the citation for the modellers claim of statistical significance after 15 years. I do not see it in the RSS data. But it is possible the modellers used a different approach, or have better knowledge of the RSS dataset than I do.
Any result that you disagree with is not significant.
Gotcha.
Dr Mears has accepted that his data show no trend for the best part of two decades. Mr Twin-Otter doesn’t accept what Dr Mears accepts, on the basis that the data are “noisy”. Given that the data are constrained across quite a narrow interval, there is not so much noise as stochastic behavior across that interval. But there is no trend. Taking the mean all five datasets, there is a trend over the same period, but one cannot even begin to calculate any “statistical significance” – a questionable concept at the best of times – until one has first made allowance for the measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties, which in the terrestrial datasets are about a sixth of a Celsius degree. If the warming is less than that, then we do not even know that there has been warming at all, and if the warming is greater than that, then we know only that the fraction of warming beyond the measurement uncertainties may have occurred.
The problem is that on any and all datasets there has been so little warming that all one can really say is that the rate of warming is half of the rate predicted by the IPCC with what it called “substantial confidence” in 1990.
It is not a ‘pause’ it is an apex, climate N. Atlantic will be on downhill soon, Arctic ice will be first to move, Northern Hemisphere is heading for significant cooling.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sun-Earth.gif
Want to know more go HERE
Vuk
Unfortunately I suspect that you are right. I prefer the warmth. Although I suspect that California will be warm but a little drier than usual.
Natural variability will be the next big thing, subpolar gyre slowing down (cooling in another words), even the new NASA’s climate change supremo may have seen something in it, didn’t despatch my comment to the bore hole, as he often does.
slightly OT, bastardi webcast this weekend mentions CA should have above average precip for a few months then right back to dry if I read/listened correctly.
“It is not a ‘pause’ it is an apex, climate N. Atlantic will be on downhill soon”
For future reference, this is my suspicion as well.
You all might know who I am by then
Worrisome…that big hot thing in the sky seems to be having a cycle-thingy.
Cheers
Don’t you know who you are then?
“Global temperatures, ocean-based teleconnections, and solar variances interrelate with each other. A team of mathematicians (Tsonis et al., 2003, 2007), led by Dr. Anastasios Tsonis, developed a model suggesting that known cycles of the Earth’s oceans – the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, El Niño (Southern Oscillation), and the North Pacific Oscillation – all tend to synchronize with each other. The theory is based on a branch of mathematics known as Synchronized Chaos. The model predicts the degree of coupling to increase over time, causing the solution to “bifurcate”, or split. Then, the synchronization vanishes. The result is a climate shift. Eventually the cycles begin to synchronize again, causing a repeating pattern of warming and cooling, along with sudden changes in the frequency and strength of El Niño events. They show how this has explained the major shifts that have occurred including 1913, 1942, and 1978. These may be in the process of synchronizing once again with its likely impact on climate very different from what has been observed over the last several decades.”
From Relationship of Multidecadal Global Temperatures to Multidecadal Oceanic Oscillations:
Joseph D’Aleo and Don Easterbrook, September 2011
http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChangeBW.htm#D%27Aleo-Easterbrook
Hi
I have read the Tsonis et al., not sure that I fully understand all the works. According to some of my simple calculations, there is temporary and fundamental natural synchronisation, followed by 100-200 years of warm climate in the N. Hemisphere. Encouraged by Dr. J.Curry I have looked at two major processes: atmospheric pressure system the NAO and SST in the N. Atlantic (I am not very familiar with the Pacific), they run as two separate cycles and isn’t good news; back extrapolating the cycles it shows that the synchronisation happened at around 990AD and the last one around 1860.
Dr Norman Page, a WWUT commentator often mentions 900 year cycle, I usually didn’t pay much attention to it, then Steinhilber & Beer apparently found it in the reconstruction of the solar irradiance, and Chinese scientists in the Dongge cave stalagmites deposits. I could guess why, but that would be even more controversial than the link I posted above. For now I’ve got enough problems with Dr. Svalgaard as it is.
typo:
the last one around 1880
Thank you for that Mr Vukcevic, I would think that the Sun has more effect on the climate than 100 extra molecules of CO2 per million in the atmosphere. The graph coincided with colder weather during the solar minimum when Dickens was writing about very cold winters in London, in the 1970’s when I remember the colder weather and in the last 3 or 4 years. Your graphs certainly fit in with actual events, rather than beliefs..
Mr. Harding
Thanks, your comment is appreciated.
Not sure what Sun-Earth stands for but the AMO is the key and its irregular and long cycles apparently keep the policy fraud and failed models going for now. The truth is catching up slowly in the absence of definitive model replacement and acceptance. The old saying from Edward Markey is still on hold for this one as the final excuse—“Who could have known?”
for Sun – Earth graph see HERE detailed explanation .
Dear Vukcevic, very interesting material (!!) thank you. i hope i will understand i all…
Kind Regards, Frank
Mr. Lansner , thank you.
Are you saying that your Sun-Earth/AMO graph tracks climate’s “natural variability” (which is conveniently and popularly invoked whenever the models disagree with observations)? Or is it something else entirely?
It is something else entirely (see HERE , but happens to be coincidental with the AMO.
It is important to point (although Mann & co think that AMO has been going for at least 1000 years at the same rate) that this relationship must eventually break down sooner or later.
Number of comments, and I hope few more readers who didn’t comment.
Thank you all.
Excellent article. Thank you.
I love looking at the real trend line. My thought has been for some time that we are actually cooling due to the sun cycles. We peaked in 1998 and though it can be argued that the “average” is gradually (very gradually) rising it is thus far clear that taken from the peak in 98 during the great el-nino we are indeed cooling. We’re on the downhill side, but just as with any stock chart that has peaked there will be subsequent less-high rises such as in 2010 before further falling off. It will be interesting to see if it is even close this year with the el-nino to 1998 or 2010. I predict it will be slightly lower than 2010.
Holy Smokes Lord Chris! THAT was a mouthful! Great post.
Sorry for the length of the technical note, but explaining in detail how what look like very simple graphs are in fact carefully derived and plotted does head off much of the criticism that the graphs have been cherry-picked, etc.
Lord Chris,
Your apology is well received for its cordial intent, but as you know the verbose is preferred considering the sad state of science with researchers using cartoons and punch lines in lieu of proper presentation. I will hobble through the detail out of respect for you and the discipline of science. THANKS!
At the very least, if your efforts are to be considered a cherry pick by others, then at least you have made a valid cherry pick with a full explanation of how and why. The phrase “cherry pick” has become a prominent weapon for the warmists, despite that in their usage of the word it loses any meaning. If harryo could reply with an explanation of why there is no meaning or validity to your post then he would have an argument. He utters the phrase “cherry pick” as if that is all that needs to be said to refute another,s work.
As near as I can determine, “cherry picking” has been redefined to mean, choosing any dates that do not support the warmist position.
It is very very likely that C02 has no effect whatsoever on atmospheric or surface temperatures due to negative feedback. Also as I recall during glaciations C02 was 3000ppm or more? I really do not understand why everybody including skeptics keep on harping about C02 analysis ect.
“I really do not understand why everybody including skeptics keep on harping about C02 analysis ect.” It’s because there is a political movement to reduce CO2 emissions and the actions taken by politicians toward that end have a very real impact on people.
Eliza’s recollection is correct. During the Neoproterozoic era, CO2 concentration was at least 30% of the atmosphere (750 million years ago). Now, to the nearest tenth of one per cent, there isn’t any.
When ever I see a note about 3000 ppm or 30%, I have to recall one of my biggest puzzles. Yes, 3% or 30% —- of what total atmospheric pressure?
An astounding amount of CO2 was taken out of the air an sequestered by the Carboniferous Forests 300 million years ago. Even more CO2 is currently sequestered in carbonate reefs and limestone deposits formed over the past half a billion years. If even a portion of that carbon existed as CO2, then we must be looking at an atmosphere of 2-5 bar in the Paleozoic.
What kind of scientist uses the word ” pooh-pooh ” ?
The kind that realizes that alarmist claims are indeed poo and more poo.
“Crapologist”?
Dr. Winnie Wong-Ng
(NIST) Functional Properties Group,
Research Chemist, Ceramics Division
And a scientist named Christopher.
“What kind of scientist uses the word ” pooh-pooh ” ?”
A coprolitologist …
Mick
April 6, 2015 at 7:42 am
What kind of scientist uses the word ” pooh-pooh ” ?
One with a knowledge of children’s fiction?
Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming to speak of. It is as simple as that.”
And, even during a relatively flat atmospheric temperature period, we have had numerous changes in climate: less tornadic activity in the US, less hurricane activity in the North Atlantic, drought in California, severe cold in northeastern US, and more.
It might make one think that atmospheric temperature isn’t the driving force in a changing climate, wouldn’t it?
The heat has gone deep into the earth’s core. You know, it’s now several million degrees down there.
/sarc
Shouldn’t that be “several million degrees plus 0.5 C”?
Well, if anyone can nail down a million to within 0.5°C, it’s our saviors in the CAGW camp.
Good catch
@MichaelS
Actually, is not impossible to consider hypothically such a measurement as possible, even when the numbers involved are to impossible to work out if the method was a direct way to measure it.
But if the main cause of climate change happens to be the very variation of that very energy that is expressed in millions of degrees, then no mater how small that variation is, no matter how undetectable by direct measurements it could still be measured by its impact in the climate and atmosphere.
For example, if the full climate swing is at about 3C then compensating for CO2 warming, then the main cause of climate change will be associated with about of 2.4C of that swing, meaning that if that is due to the variation mentioned above, then we can see how much that variation is.
It will be an extremely small change, impossible to even contemplate it as real or measurably by any direct means, unless looking at its impact in the atmosphere. But still possible to be measured if it happens to be the main cause of climate change.
Please do not jump the gun, is only an hypothical argument showing or trying to show that some times even the most impossible may be somehow still contemplated as possible, at least hypothically…….:-)
cheers
Please do consider the obove error “hypothically” as meaning and corrected to “hypothetically”.
Thanks 🙂 .
Cheers
I first viewed this on Facebook and the following links were deemed to be related links.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-03-22/welcome-double-el-ni-o-and-more-extreme-weather
http://globalnews.ca/news/1901777/could-a-rare-double-el-nino-lead-to-record-high-temperatures-in-b-c/
Well then it is clear we should begin to call it the “great GREAT el-nino” of 2015! 😉
It is wrong to analyze the data like this, one must make adjustments to the data first. Now if you’d have made those adjustments then you’d know it’s worse than we thought. Brazil has already boiled over.
I believe NOAA does adjust the Argo data
Everything you need to know about Argo data
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Argo_date_guide.html
Excellent post, Lord Monkton.
I think this sentence would read much better;
“There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”
Like this;
“There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more “corrupt & adulterated” descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”
AtB
“the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will come through after a lag of four or five months”
Another possibility is that temperatures would actually be falling, except for the El Nino.
Bingo!!
Agreed!
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton.
This is an excellent post.
I think the current weak El Niño is a Niño Modoki; this may be the reason why it has not yet affected global temperature. The warm water from the west is not coming to the equatorial east Pacific Ocean, but to the northeastern Pacific Ocean.
We’ll need Bob Tisdale’s expertise to tell us whether this is a Modoki.
The climate alarmists had such high hopes for the 2014/15 El Nino to boost the global temperatures to “another” record high. Imagine, depending on natural cycles to warm the Earth, when we still have all that CO2 pouring into the atmosphere doing squat.
JimS, did you not get the e-mail? 2015 has already been declared the hottest year on record as has 2016 and 2017. Get with the program!
The solar activity driven millennial temperature cycle peaked in 2003 since when the earth has been in a cooling trend.See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend
This general cooling trend ( modulated by the 60 year and other solar periodicities ) will last until the depths of a future LIA at about 2650.- followed by a 350 +/- year warming to another millennial peak at about 3000.
For forecasts of the timing and extent of the coming cooling based on the natural 1000 and 60 year periodicities in the temperature data see.
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
There is about a 12 year lag between the solar driver peaks and the temperature peaks.
The shop drop in solar activity seen in Fig 13 in 2005-6 should result in a steepening of the cooling trend in 2017- 2018.
The solar activity peak corresponding to the 2003 temperature peak is seen in Fig 14 at about 1991.
Hi
I just mentioned your name, see my comment above at April 6, 2015 at 9:15 am
Vuk Hi . The climate models on which the entire Global Warming delusion rests are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year periodicities so obvious in the temperature record. The modelers approach is simply a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is exactly like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. They back tune their models for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial. This is scientific malfeasance on a grand scale.
The temperature projections of the IPCC – UK Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them have no solid foundation in empirical science being derived from inherently useless and specifically structurally flawed models. They provide no basis for the discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a foundation for Governmental climate and energy policy their forecasts are already seen to be grossly in error and are therefore worse than useless. A new forecasting paradigm needs to be adopted.
The 960 +/- and 60 year cycles are obvious in the temperature proxy time series. It is equally trivially obvious that we are just approaching, just at, or just past the latest millennial peak. The neutron monitor and Ap index data show clearly that we are now on the downslope. The simplest, most conservative, assumption is that the general trends from 1000 – 2000 will likely repeat from 2000 – 3000. In other words climate forecasting is really fairly simple and straight forward given a modicum of common sense, a proper perspective of the time scales of the various periodicities involved and a reasonably wide background knowledge of the various temperature and solar driver related time series.
Dr Page:
But have we really peaked in warming even now according to the 1,000 year cycle? Is it not possible that there is a century or more to go within a warming trend?
Jim S Check Figs 5-9 and 13-14 at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The length of the millennial cycle could certainly vary say between 960 and 1020 years. But we decide where we are now with regard to the solar driver peak by looking at the recent solar activity data. The activity peak ( low neutron count) seems to be very clearly at about 1991 ( Fig 14)
Then note the unusual drop in the Ap index in Fig 13 at 2005-6. . My suggestion is that there should be a notable cooling from present levels in about 2017 2018- we will see.
The recent decline in solar activity matches well with what we might expect after the peak of a millennial cycle.I would say that it is more likely than not that we are past the peak.see
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend
The 2003 temperature peak corresponds to the activity peak at 1991.
I’m a believer in “pay for performance”. I think the IPCC funding and salaries should be tied to the accuracy of their projections.
Unfortunately, the IPCC has already analyzed its own performance and determined that their performance was so extra accurate that they should give themselves a raise.
Guy goes in to talk to his boss.
Employee: “I need a raise.”
Boss: “OK, we will pay you what you are worth”.
Employee: “Are you nuts? I can’t work for free!”
Excellent.
No pause, merely a cessation – like the “pauses” in previous Ice Ages, and Interglacials.
“18 years 4 months – and counting”
…but, but, but,
:–)
We already had a long discussion regarding “pooh, pooh”, we don’t need another.
A good article and a good discussion of data. I particularly like the use of Zeta Joules ( instead of 2*10^23 Joules which is only good for obfustication) and the simultaneous conversion to hundredths of a degree K.
The ocean warming, if ARGO is right, is equivalent to just 0.02 Cº decade–1, or 0.2 Cº century–1 equivalent.
It if is right is an important caveat. As insignificant a rise as it appears to be, 0.022 deg C in 11 years, compared to an unstated uncertainty and error bar, it appears to be steeper than other charts I’ve seen recently.
My blood boils every time I see the Levitus charts. Prior to 2003, OHC was so poorly sampled in time, area and depth as to be unknowable. I view it as an exercise in plotting your line, then plotting your data. It is a political document, not a scientific one. Given the poor source of temperature data prior to 1990, there is no reason to expect the ARGO data trend to match the Levitus trend —- unless ARGO data is adjusted in processing to agree. But that’s just a crazy conspiracy theory — why would anyone adjust ARGO?
Given the accuracy of the Argo probes, and the fact that the number and placement of the probes comes nowhere close to being adequate, 0.02C is close enough to random noise as to be indistinguishable from it.
MarkW is correct. We simply don’t have good enough resolution to tell whether the ocean is warming or not. The rate of warming shown by ARGO (and even then only after the ever-upward adjustment that is the feature of almost all current temperature datasets on land or sea) is not distinguishable from the measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties.
Do the Argos probes even measure to that resolution?
From High School on, I would have received a big fat zero for reporting a result to more significant figures that my least accurate measurement.
And rightly so.
Whether the 0.02 degrees are significant or not, Argo agrees with RSS and UAH that there is no cause for alarm concerning the rate of global warming. It really doesn’t matter whether we a tiny bit of warming or none at all.
Menicholas; I believe the resolution of the Argos probes is 0.1C.
I believe that the ARGO data has been “adjusted” at least once and am cynical enough to believe that there will be additional “adjustments” forthcoming since we all know the extra heat is hiding deep in the ocean and a 0.02 per decade increase is not scary enough
Thank you Mark. So, if so, that puts at upper limit on the reliability of the result, assuming perfect calibration.
But then there is the issue of sparsely scattered probes in a very big and three dimensional ocean, with different temperatures at every location and depth, and with currents and such constantly stirring the pot.
And so taking a snapshot in time, all by itself seems like a problematic observation, no?
I am wondering if is perhaps akin to try and get an average value for the overall stock markets of the world by sampling of some of the stocks, but not all at the same moment?
Considering the thermal density of water, this would seem to make the problem of estimating the heat content of the troposphere by looking at the adjusted, smoothed, and homogenized surface data look simple by comparison.
There is some evidence in recent papers (Douglass etc) that apparent recent upper ocean warming may be at the expense of ocean bottom cooling ie zero sum game vertical heat redistribution. In terms of the ocean’s dominance of the global heat budget, it is easier to conceptualise the ocean’s huge thermal capacity as a negative heat dimension ie cold. Most ocean water is very cold. Vertical ocean mixing globally integrated is probably the dominant mechanism of climate change. It’s like a cold hand from below that can snatch away our temporary interglacial heat any time it wants. (Under the influence of weak nonlinear astrophysical / Milankovich forcing of course.)
I note that Figure T1 continues the game of showing model output looking like it was accurate for decades and only “recently” failed. Of course what Figure T1 lacks is a bright line for the date the models were run – sometime after 2008. That would highlight the fact the graph is mostly showing hindcasting and not projections.
+1.
I agree, that should be added. That hindcasting should not ever be forgotten.
And if tropospheric temperatures aren’t showing an increase during two El Nino years then the hiatus is likely a peak in temperatures and the cooling phase will be evident in just a few years. The CAGW ship is on fire and the rats will either jump ship or go down with it.
You can also throw in the fact that the current solar cycle has started on it’s down slope.