Global temperature update: no warming for 18 years 6 months
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
For 222 months, since January 1997, there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature – now beginning to feel the effects of the current el Niño, which will eventually cause temporary warming – shows the Pause sticking at 18 years 6 months, with a global temperature anomaly higher than for two and a half years.
It is becoming ever more likely that the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will begin to shorten the Pause somewhat, just in time for the Paris climate summit, though a subsequent La Niña would be likely to bring about a resumption and perhaps even a lengthening of the Pause.
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 6 months since January 1997.
The hiatus period of 18 years 6 months is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend. Note that the start date is not cherry-picked: it is calculated. And the graph does not mean there is no such thing as global warming. Going back further shows a small warming rate.
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, continues to widen. If the Pause lengthens just a little more, the rate of warming in the quarter-century since the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990 will fall below 1 C°/century equivalent.
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 305 months January 1990 to May 2015 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at just 1 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH v.6 satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Figure 3. Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to May 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 v.6 satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
The Technical Note explains the sources of the IPCC’s predictions in 1990 and in 2005, and also demonstrates that that according to the ARGO bathythermograph data the oceans are warming at a rate equivalent to less than a quarter of a Celsius degree per century.
Key facts about global temperature
Ø The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 222 months from January 1997 to June 2015 – more than half the 438-month satellite record.
Ø The entire RSS dataset from January 1979 to date shows global warming at an unalarming rate equivalent to just 1.2 Cº per century.
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 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 The fastest warming rate lasting 15 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 warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to 1 Cº per century. The IPCC had predicted more than two and a half times as much.
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 15 years that has been measured since 1950.
Ø The IPCC’s 4.8 Cº-by-2100 prediction is 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 of just 0.02 Cº per decade, equivalent to 0.23 Cº per century.
Ø Ocean warming over the 11 full years of ARGO data from 2004-2014 inclusive, is equivalent to just 1 C° every 430 years.
Ø Recent extreme-weather events 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 satellite datasets are arguably less unreliable than other datasets in that they show the 1998 Great El Niño more clearly than all other datasets. The Great el Niño, like its two predecessors in the past 300 years, caused widespread global coral bleaching, providing an independent verification that the satellite datasets are better able to capture such fluctuations without artificially filtering them out than other datasets.
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 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, since summer temperatures in one hemisphere are compensated by winter in the other. Therefore, an AR(n) model would generate results little different from a least-squares trend.
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 almost entirely 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. The UK Met Office, however, 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 medium-term Scenario-A estimate of near-term warming, i.e. 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] K by 2025.
The IPCC’s predicted global warming over the 25 years from 1990 to the present differs little 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.
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. Here, too, all of the predictions were extravagantly baseless.
The overall picture is clear. Scenario A is the emissions scenario from 1990 that is closest to the observed CO2 emissions outturn.
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 0.26 Cº, equivalent to 1 Cº/century. The IPCC’s central estimate of 0.71 Cº, equivalent to 2.8 Cº/century, that was predicted for Scenario A in IPCC (1990) with “substantial confidence” was two and a half times too big. In fact, 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 takes just three measurements a month in 200,000 cubic kilometres of ocean – roughly 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.
Unfortunately ARGO seems not to have updated the ocean dataset since December 2014. However, what we have 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, equivalent to 0.2 Cº century–1.
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” of which the climate-extremist websites speak 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 Kelvin that were originally measured. NOAA’s conversion of the minuscule warming 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 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 Pause were correct (and it is merely one among dozens that have been offered), 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.
Why were the models’ predictions exaggerated?
In 1990 the IPCC predicted – on its business-as-usual Scenario A – that from the Industrial Revolution till the present there would have been 4 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing caused by Man (Fig. T7):
Figure T7. Predicted manmade radiative forcings (IPCC, 1990).
However, from 1995 onward the IPCC decided to assume, on rather slender evidence, that anthropogenic particulate aerosols – mostly soot from combustion – were shading the Earth from the Sun to a large enough extent to cause a strong negative forcing. It has also now belatedly realized that its projected increases in methane concentration were wild exaggerations. As a result of these and other changes, it now estimates that the net anthropogenic forcing of the industrial era is just 2.3 Watts per square meter, or little more than half its prediction in 1990:
Figure T8: Net anthropogenic forcings, 1750 to 1950, 1980 and 2012 (IPCC, 2013).
Even this, however, may be a considerable exaggeration. For the best estimate of the actual current top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance (total natural and anthropo-genic net forcing) is only 0.6 Watts per square meter (Fig. T9):
Figure T9. Energy budget diagram for the Earth from Stephens et al. (2012)
In short, most of the forcing predicted by the IPCC is either an exaggeration or has already resulted in whatever temperature change it was going to cause. There is little global warming in the pipeline as a result of our past and present sins of emission.
It is also possible that the IPCC and the models have relentlessly exaggerated climate sensitivity. One recent paper on this question is Monckton of Brenchley et al. (2015), which found climate sensitivity to be in the region of 1 Cº per CO2 doubling (go to scibull.com and click “Most Read Articles”). The paper identified errors in the models’ treatment of temperature feedbacks and their amplification, which account for two-thirds of the equilibrium warming predicted by the IPCC.
Professor Ray Bates will shortly give a paper in Moscow in which he will conclude, based on the analysis by Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2011) (Fig. T10), that temperature feedbacks are net-negative. Accordingly, he supports the conclusion both by Lindzen & Choi (1990) (Fig. T10) and by Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011) that climate sensitivity is below – and perhaps considerably below – 1 Cº per CO2 doubling.
Figure T10. Reality (center) vs. 11 models. From Lindzen & Choi (2009).
A growing body of reviewed papers find climate sensitivity considerably below the 3 [1.5, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling that was first put forward in the Charney Report of 1979 for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and is still the IPCC’s best estimate today.
On the evidence to date, therefore, there is no scientific basis for taking any action at all to mitigate CO2 emissions.
Oh noes. Too bad they did away with the Pause. Now they can’t celebrate this pause in the Pause.
Indeed it may well be merely a pause in the pause.
In order to run the short term models used for actual forecasts, the people in charge don’t want to use “adjusted” data, and instead plug in the most honest data they have available, which I suppose is called “raw” data. (I suppose they recognize that honest data will give you an honest forecast.)
Dr. Ryan Maue gathered that “raw” data and created a chart of world temperatures as they are actually recorded and actually used by short-term computers. Not only do the resultant graph show that recent months are not even close to being “the warmest ever”, but they show that every recent El-Nino-caused up-tick in temperatures has been followed by a greater post-Nino down-tick.
Some Alarmists are taking the view that the coming El Nino will result in step-up of world temperatures to a new and higher plateau, however Dr. Maue’s graphs suggest recent El Ninos have done the opposite, and each led to a step-down to a lower plateau.
I did a recent calculation using Hadcrut4 and RSS to compute the trend since 1950 (the date the IPCC uses in a lot of their charts and what has often been stated as when humans started to have a major impact). It came out to just under .9 C/decade. And, if we assume that humans are only responsible for half the warming because of the pause, then the actual GHG created warming is around .45 C/decade which would keep us well under the 2C threshold in 2100.
As for the end of the El Nino, that usually depends on when the trade winds pick up. There’s a cool anomaly under the Pacific Warm Pool that would head east as soon as that happens. This would combine with upwelling cold water off of S. America to fill the void. At that time the start of the pause would begin to move back and could even go back as far as June 1996 in a rather short time. That means the pause could reach 20 years by next summer but no later than 2017.
Whoops …. got my decimal points off by one digit. S/B .09/decade and .045/decade.
Not to worry my friend, in climate science being off by a mere factor of 10 is considered being “spot on” most of the time. 🙂
From a NOAA press release July 4 2115:
As The Global Warming Pause enters it 120th Year scientists warn the public not to get too comfortable. Despite the growth of Alpine glaciers and shorter growing seasons the IPCC warns that Global Warming will explode upon the world. The IPCC says its models predict the coming of hidden heat sometime around 2250 and 2450…
Hold the front page!
Curiously, Dr Mears prefers the much-altered terrestrial datasets to the satellite datasets.
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cherry pick.
Let me guess…. Inaccurate readings?
Hot
Barrow, Alaska: Record warmest June; previous record was in 2013; followed a record warm May
Bishop, California: Tied record hottest June with 1960; 17 days in 100s a record for June, topping 14 such days in 1961.
Boise, Idaho: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1918.
Burns, Oregon: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1961.
Charlotte, North Carolina: Record number of June 100-degree-plus days (6); previous record (3 days) was in 1959 and 1952. Also, the earliest in the calendar to have three straight 100-degree-plus days.
Ely, Nevada: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1900
Eugene, Oregon: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1926.
Helena, Montana: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1961.
Kalispell, Montana: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1898.
Kingman, Arizona: Tied record number of June 100-degree-plus days (15) with 1981, 1936 and 1915.
Las Vegas: Record hottest June; previous record was in 2013.
Lewiston, Idaho: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1940.
Medford, Oregon: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1926.
Miami: Record hottest year-to-date (January-June), according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center; previous hottest January-July was 2008.
Missoula, Montana: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1903.
Moses Lake, Washington: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1958.
Olympia, Washington: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1969.
Orlando Utilities Commission: All-time peak power use record on June 22.
Pendleton, Oregon: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1961.
Portland, Oregon: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1992.
Provo, Utah: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1994.
Raleigh, North Carolina: Record streak of 95-degree-plus highs (12 straight days) from June 13-24; previous record (9 straight days) was from July 13-21, 1977.
Reno, Nevada: Record hottest June; previous record was in 2006.
Salem, Oregon: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1926.
Salt Lake City: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1988.
Seattle: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1992; also the record warmest January-June.
Spokane, Washington: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1922.
The Dalles, Oregon: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1977.
Walla Walla, Washington: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1992.
Wenatchee, Washington: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1992.
Winnemucca, Nevada: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1918.
Yakima, Washington: Record hottest June; previous record was in 1948.
(MORE: All June Calendar-Day, All-time Northwest Heat Records | Spain’s Record Heat)
Likely UHI-influenced, plus normal weather variation combined with the usual Alarmist hype.
Do you have evidence of UHI influence for these particular locations? For example, The Dalles, population 15,000. I doubt there could be much of a UHI factor there.
You call it “normal weather variation.” Normal weather variation is not breaking all time high records by 13F, as is clear from the data Anthony posted on highs for some PNW cities on June 28.
I see. Temperature records should never be broken. That would be a normal world in your book?
have you ever had a look at the list of record low temperatures chris ?
bit chilly, if you have a link to the setting of record lows for these same cities, I’m happy to look at them. I would be extremely surprised if record lows are being set by 13F, the way some of the highs are.
All the temperature data were compiled DURING a natural warming trend that started about 1850.
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New records, that seem to have you so excited, will be very common until the warming trend ends and a cooling trend begins.
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The definition of an uptrend — new highs are set again and again — this only means the uptrend is still in progress — it means nothing else.
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In addition, economic growth creates global warming — cities are warmer than suburbs, and suburbs are warmer than green fields with trees.
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As economic growth changes the environment around a thermometer (more bricks, cement asphalt, fewer trees, etc), the average temperature goes up.
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Look up the urban heat island effect, which has nothing to do with CO2.
I think that a lot people here are stuck in the view of world temperature trends as either going up or going down. In fact, the real significance is found in the fact that, statistically, THEY ARE GOING NOWHERE. Movements of fractions of a degree over whatever time intervals you choose, MEAN NOTHING. People who do not support the global warming paradigm should not allow themselves to become sucked into it by arguing over meaningless data. It is a waste of energy, and it is plain that the models have failed in their predictions.
Yet one of the clearest ways to show that there is little warming is to show that, over a sufficiently long period, there is none at all. That’s quite hard to argue against, which is why they’re now reduced simply to making up datasets to prove that the warming not shown by the real ones exists after all. They can wriggle till Paris, but once they get their world government the science will implode on them quite quickly.
Based on the (unstated) margins of error in the measurements, the past dozen years could really have a warming trend, a cooling trend, or a flat trend — the data are not accurate enough to be certain.
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Also, there is no reason to believe the warming since the last ice age peaked 15,000 years ago has ended … or the cooling since the greenhouse ages has ended.
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Whether Earth is cooling or warming depends mainly on the starting and ending points of the period you want to study.
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You are absolutely correct that average temperature movements of a fraction of a degree MEAN NOTHING — yet they get a lot of attention at this website, and are usually shown on charts designed to make them look like scary mountains and valleys.
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I would add that average temperature movements of several degrees C. in either direction also mean nothing (they are likely to be natural climate variations completely unrelated to human actions)
Keep up the pressure, Lord Monckton. Mears has at least finally admitted that there has been a slow down. How he’s avoided it before now I don’t know. Let me show you another decline that is being hidden because they want to continue to milk polar amplification for what it’s worth. I’ve been watching the Temp above 60N quietly flatten and decline. The 1979 to present linear used by RSS in their ‘above 60N’ graph is coming down slowly is response to what is an actual decline in arctic temps from about 2006. Last year the linear showed 0.323C per decade, whereas it is 0.321C per decade today – not large but, since 2006 it is <0C/decade. I think this graph is also worthy of your attention. It may be more of a boil on their bottoms than the 'pause' if it continues down.
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_northern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
An excellent point. They really, really won’t want to admit that the “warming” Arctic is cooling.
Particularly since the greatest warming is supposed to be at the poles. Uh Oh.
Speaking of polar (in this case bears) being threatened is back in the MSM again. Always threatened but never any numbers. Is there a reliable data set for polar bear counts. Doesn’t mean anything, but might be fun to superimpose polar bears vs sea ice graph.
mon dieu
Wake me up when Paris ends….. (to the Green Day tune)
It sure doesn’t appear like the Arctic is cooling: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Thank-you Lord Monckton
As for el Nino, the Peruvian anchovy fishery seems to be going just fine, not consistent with a true el Nino event:
http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2015/06/30/peru-extends-anchovy-season-until-july-31/?utm_source=Undercurrent+News+Alerts&utm_campaign=dcb3fe13e9-Pelagics_roundup_Jul_03_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_feb55e2e23-dcb3fe13e9-92440397
That’s a very interesting observation, but it cuts both ways. Either this el Nino is an el Non-event or it has yet to reach its peak, in which case the slow buildup could make it a lulu. We’ll see: I’m no expert, and can’t predict which will happen.
A powerful influence on the weather that we experience on the ground can be exerted by the stratosphere. This highly stratified layer of Earth’s atmosphere is found 10 to 50 kilometres above the surface and therefore above the weather systems that develop in the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. The troposphere is dynamically coupled to fluctuations in the speed of the circumpolar westerly jet that forms in the winter stratosphere: a strengthening circumpolar jet causes a poleward shift in the storm tracks and tropospheric jet stream, whereas a weakening jet causes a shift towards the equator. Following a weakening of the stratospheric jet, impacts on the surface weather include a higher likelihood of extremely low temperature over northern Europe and the eastern USA. Eddy feedbacks in the troposphere amplify the surface impacts, but the mechanisms underlying these dynamics are not fully understood. The same dynamical relationships act at very different timescales, ranging from daily variations to longer-term climate trends, suggesting a single unifying mechanism across timescales. Ultimately, an improved understanding of the dynamical links between the stratosphere and troposphere is expected to lead to improved confidence in both long-range weather forecasts and climate change projections.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n6/full/ngeo2424.html
The RSS data is still showing the declining trend from the possible quasi- millennial temperature peak at about 2003.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uR560jemtS4/VZaybeL3g4I/AAAAAAAAAXI/ruYRKUX0CFc/s1600/trendrss615.png
For forecasts of the coming cooling based on the natural 60 year and millennial cycles in the temperature data see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
Engineering science proves CO2 has no significant effect on climate. The proof and identification of the two factors that do cause reported climate change are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com (now with 5-year running-average smoothing of measured average global temperature (AGT), the near-perfect explanation of AGT, R^2 = 0.97+ since before 1900).
The ongoing average global temperature trend is down. Monthly reported temperatures are being temporarily propped up by el Nino.
You are not doing it right, Christopher, and are missing an entire hiatus as a result. Your figure 1 is a stupid way to show the data, with straight line projections emanating from a point. It includes parts of two hiatuses that no way can be fitted to this strange construct. Instead of a bundle pointing up you need to show two horizontal lines – one for the twenty-first century hiatus that starts approximately in 2002 and one for the eighties and nineties that precedes the 1998 super El Nino. It runs from 1979 to 1997, a stretch of 18 years. It is invisible in ground-based temperature curves because it has been over-written by a fake warming called the “late twentieth century warming”. I discovered the hiatus of the eighties and nineties in 2008 while using satellite data to do research for my book “What Warming?” The word hiatus had not yet been invented for stoppage of warming so I simply showed the hiatus graphically in my figure 15. I quickly discovered that HadCRUT3 had over-written it with a fake warming and showed their method in figure 24. Later it turned out that GISS and NCDC were co-conspirators when footprints of common computer processing turned up in all three data-sets. Ground-based temperature sources have pretty much made that fake warming their own and it appears both in IPCC and Berkeley temperature sources. Fortunately they still don’t control the satellites and you can download the data-set for the hiatus of the eighties and nineties both from UAH and from RSS satellite sources. If you wondered why the official temperature sources shy away from satellite data, this is the reason for it. Now that we have two hiatuses, not just the present one to use, let us work out the consequences. First, all the dozens of papers aimed at proving the non-existence of a hiatus are all missing their mark by being ignorant of the eighties and nineties. The very latest one, the one, by Karl et al., is actually so stupid that it misses its mark from the beginning. They simply do not include proof that there was an actual temperature increase in the twenty-first century. And their data are laughable – there are only two data points that show warming and they are both from the ocean temperature increase that NOAA has conveniently set up for them. Their land temperature increase is negligible. Now that we are dealing with two hiatuses we should consider their joint effect. They are both included in the satellite era that began in 1979 and jointly they have stopped 80 percent of the warming that should have taken place during his period. The remaining twenty percent includes the super El Nino of 1998 and a short warming from 1999 to 2002. This is the one and only warming during the entire satellite era. It raised global temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius in only three years and then stopped. Considering that the temperature rise for the entire twentieth century was only 0.8 degrees this is a sizable amount. If there are any observed ecological changes expect them all to start no sooner than the twenty-first century. Neither the super El Nino nor the warming of 1999 are caused by the greenhouse effect. Hence, we can say that there has been no greenhouse warming whatsoever during the entire satellite era. With that, AGW dies. Close down the IPCC and defund any and all “Mitigation” efforts that are now completely worthless.
I have not read Mr Arrak’s message and will not read future messages unless he inserts paragraphs.
Naw, good exercise, often difficult.
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It’s easy to assume he’s wrong, because he details a slam-dunk case, and no one else has taken up the banner. What a shame it would be if he’s right, but unread.
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Figure 2, not Figure 1. Sorry about the typo.
From the above article:
“Professor Ray Bates will shortly give a paper in Moscow in which he will conclude, based on the analysis by Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2011) (Fig. T10), that temperature feedbacks are net-negative. Accordingly, he supports the conclusion both by Lindzen & Choi (1990) (Fig. T10) and by Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011) that climate sensitivity is below – and perhaps considerably below – 1 Cº per CO2 doubling.”
Agreed. We suggested an ECS of about 1C in our 2002 PEGG paper. Since then I have said at most 1C and probably much less.
I wrote this in 2013:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/14/breaking-ipcc-ar5-report-to-dial-back-climate-sensitivity/#comment-1416909
Specifically, the draft report says that “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur—is “extremely likely” to be above 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), “likely” to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and “very likely” to be below 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was “likely” to be above 2 degrees Celsius and “very likely” to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit.
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I reject the (alleged) IPCC estimates of ECS in AR5 as scientifically untenable.
Alternative A assumes that the conventional IPCC climate science hypo (that CO2 primarily drives temperature) is broadly valid:
Conclusion: These IPCC ECS estimates are “extremely likely” to be higher than reality.
Why?
An ECS of ~1C is the hypothetical equilibrium figure with no feedbacks.
An ECS greater than ~1C assumes positive feedbacks and an ECS less than ~1C assumes negative feedbacks.
Based on the evidence, the feedbacks are negative.
Therefore It is “extremely likely” that ECS will be less than ~1 degree C.
Alternative B assumes that net ECS is effectively near-zero or non-existent, because of clear evidence that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales:
Same conclusion: These IPCC ECS estimates are “extremely likely” to be higher than reality.
Why?
Because, it is “extremely likely” that the future cannot cause the past.
I further suggest that the IPCC’s estimates of ECS are more political than scientific in origin. This reduction in ECS from previous IPCC estimates is a structured political retreat from an untenable extremist position. The IPCC are now admitting that they were half-wrong. We will have to wait for AR6 for them to admit they were fully wrong.
“We will have to wait for AR6 for them to admit they were fully wrong.”
Depends entirely on the political climate of the day. We have two generations of indoctrinated useful idiots in train. Don’t expect this nonsense to be over anytime soon. Besides, there’s too much money attached.
What if Global Cooling is apparent by 2020? This is our last remaining prediction from 2002, the only one that has yet to be realized.
Will warming alarmists mutate seamlessly into cooling alarmists? Yes, I suppose they will, and many of our fearless leaders will say they knew it all along, and the multitudes will follow them.
After all, with a non-falsifiable hypothesis like “Climate Change”, all the bases are covered.
I liked it better when they talked about very-scary Global Warming – at least then we could say “Hey – there has been NO global warming for umpteen years!” – I guess that’s why they changed the terminology to Climate Change, and now the even more vague term “Sustainability.”
One question bothers me about Sustainability – what happens when atmospheric CO2 drops below ~100-200ppm, as is probable during one of the next Ice Ages, and terrestrial photosynthesis shuts down? Maybe someone would care to explain to me again why atmospheric CO2 is dangerously high, when I suggest it is too low to be Sustainable.
0.1 and 0.2 degree C. variations of a very roughly estimated average temperature are likely to be measurement errors, or meaningless random variations, that have no consequence in the long run.
The average temperature might be a degree or two F. warmer than in 1880, or perhaps because of measurement errors, the two years might be almost the same. So what?
Presenting charts that show a range of less than one degree C., grossly exaggerates the importance of 0.1 degree C. changes … and having no error bars on the chart is bad science too – that means I’m accusing the author of bad science.
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A debate on the accuracy and margins of errors of the measurements would be real science — I’m afraid there is not much real science left in the study of the climate if the focus is on 0.1 degree changes based on inaccurate measurements (even worse when NASA presents the average temperature of Earth in hundredths of a degree C.)
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The best I can say about the article is computer models are not taken seriously — computer models are not data, and without data there is no science at all. Computer models are not science.
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So we have one side treating computer games as the climate gospel … and the other side seems to be taking climate measurement data extremely seriously, even though they know the agencies supplying the data have been “adjusting” their source data for decades so the data better match their beloved climate models.
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If anyone here really wants to refute the “warmists”, I think the best way is to re-publish their scaremonger predictions, starting with DDT warnings in the 1960s — republish and ridicule their failed predictions until they become the butt of late night TV monolog jokes.
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It’s very difficult to refute predictions of future catastrophes … unless the predictors have been providing incorrect predictions for decades — well, they have been doing exactly that, so its the job of climate catastrophe deniers to point out all the wrong predictions in prior decades, again and again, while laughing out loud.
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People who make catastrophic environmental predictions that are wrong, will never admit to their errors on their own — it’s not a typical an obnoxious (left wing-style) direct character attack to point out that someone’s past predictions were grossly inaccurate.
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Please post some of the environmentalist’s wrong predictions from past decades, and lets laugh at them!
Maybe someone could submit an article for publication on this website?
Every six months, when all the five datasets are in, I do a roundup which, among other things, shows the error bars for the HadCRUT4 dataset, the only one that actually publishes them.
The value of demonstrating that there has been no global warming for n months is that it helps to show why it is that there is a very large discrepancy between what was predicted and what has been happening. Graphs 2 and 3 of the head posting do exactly what Mr Greene asks – they show what the IPCC predicted back in 1990 and 2005 respectively, and then they compare those predictions with what actually happened.
No one else, anywhere, seems to be doing the obvious – actually checking to see whether the predictions have been coming true. They haven’t been coming true. If Mr Greene does not find these monthly analyses helpful, I very much doubt that he will find anything so comprehensive anywhere else.
I agree Sir.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/#comment-1969461
I don’t use the term “settled science” – that is Al Gore’s department – and he and his IPCC friends have a negative predictive track record – the only thing that is truly settled is that every scary scenario the IPCC and Gore predicted has been a false alarm.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/#comment-1965568
One’s predictive track record is perhaps the only objective measure of one’s competence. Warmists and the IPCC have a negative predictive track record, because ALL of their scary predictions of the past several decades have failed to materialize, so they have NO credibility (actually NEGATIVE credibility, to be mathematically correct). 🙂
“If Mr Greene does not find these monthly analyses helpful, I very much doubt that he will find anything so comprehensive anywhere else.”
Not only that; if Mr. Greene does not find these analyses helpful he does not have to read them. He can spend his time doing the analyses himself. The math is not all that hard, nor is the mythology hidden by Mr. Monckton in any way.
Imagine it! The data sources and methodology is open and transparent. I wonder if such might someday catch on in science? (do I need a sarc tag?)
~Mark
I don’t read anything that is not useful.
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I appreciate you using “Mr. Greene” as that’s unusually polite for the internet.
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The article is okay, but can be improved – I suggested how.
There is not much analysis in the article except for comparisons of models vs. reality.
It is mainly a presentation of data from recent years.
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The data are presented in a way that grossly exaggerates the importance of average temperature, and tiny 0.1 degree C. changes in average temperature.
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The climate models are implied to be wrong mainly because of the pause … but in fact they are wrong because they assume CO2 is the primary driver of average temperature, and it is not.
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We all know there has been warming for 15,000 years, and minor warming since about 1850.
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We don’t know if the 1850 warming is still in progress, or ended ten years ago and a new cooling trend started.
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If there is more warming in the next ten years, does that mean the climate models are “right”, and the criticism of the models in the article (they didn’t catch the pause) was wrong?
@ur momisugly Mr.Greene
“We all know there has been warming for 15,000 years, and minor warming since about 1850.”
No, we do not all know that. We all should know that it is warmer now than before the present interglacial, known as the Holocene, began about 11,700 years before the present but that is different than saying it has been warming for the whole period. We do not know that it has been warming the whole time of the interglacial. In fact, one would have to be very misinformed to think that.
Consider: “Review of Holocene ‘Climate Optimum’ shows Temperatures 2°C hotter than Present”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/11/review-of-holocene-climate-optimum.html
In the present circumstances, I see a bit of a problem with this, namely the three surface data sets are highly skewed in one direction and the two satellite data sets go in the opposite direction. So averaging the two satellite data sets with any two of the others gives a certain “fair” average, ignoring all adjustments, etc. But averaging the two satellite data sets with all three of the others gives those three an unfair weighting.
Perhaps the three can be averaged and the other two can be averaged and then split the difference?
A good idea.
I suggest the three surface temperature datasets should be discarded, because they have no credibility.
If one can locate the original surface temperature datasets as collected, before they were repeatedly “adjusted” to bias the data towards more warming, then perhaps some information can be salvaged, especially pre-1979.
Humlum et al, in their latest Climate4you Update May 2015, state:
“Diagram showing the adjustment made since May 2008 by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), USA, in anomaly values for the months January 1910 and January 2000.
Note: The administrative upsurge of the temperature increase between January 1915 and January 2000 has grown from 0.45 (reported May 2008) to 0.68oC (reported June 2015), representing an about 51% administrative temperature increase over this period, meaning that more than half of the apparent temperature increase from January 1910 to January 2000 is due to administrative manipulations of the original data since May 2008.”
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_May_2015.pdf
See also:
http://www.knuta.no/GISS_en_studie_i_endringer-10151s.html
The satellite datasets are credible and can be retained.
A little piece of rat shit spoils a large bowl of soup.
A reply to markstoval
I wrote:
“We all know there has been warming for 15,000 years, and minor warming since about 1850.”
You wrote:
“No, we do not all know that.”
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My reply.
We know with high confidence that my home state of Michigan was covered with a mile or more of ice 15,000 years ago.
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Michigan is no longer covered with ice.
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That means it is significantly warmer today than it was then.
I did not say there was warming for every year of the past 15,000 years, or even for every century.
You decided to put those words in my mouth so you could tell me I was wrong, and make yourself feel superior.
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It is true the minor warming since 1850 could be mainly measurement error, as +1.5 degrees F. warming is claimed since 1880, and I suspect the margin of error is at least +/- 1 degree F.
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No one knows the average temperature of Earth prior to 1850, and the data since 1850 are shaky even before all the “adjustments”.
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Therefore, anyone who says the temperature in some period before 1850 was 2 degrees C. warmer than it is now, as you seem to believe, is merely wild guessing the numbers — climate proxies do not provide precise data on the average temperature of the whole Earth.
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There is enough evidence to guess our planet today is not the coldest it has ever been, or the warmest.
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We do not KNOW 4.5 billion years of climate history precisely — there are only very rough estimates from climate proxies, each of which reflects one point on our planet — not the average temperature or the average CO2 levels for the whole planet.
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Earth’s climate is ALWAYS changing — everything else is speculation with no data (speculation about the future climate), or speculation with limited data (speculation about the past climate).
The good news is your article IS one of the best.
The bad news is it needs improvement, so it will still be useful if read next year, and useful five years from now, even if we have global warming in each of the next five years.
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You focus on average temperature, and present tiny 0.1 degree C. variations, with no error bars, on charts that make 0.1 degrees look like huge mountains and valleys, so you do EXACTLY what the warmists do:
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(1) You imply that average temperature is a very important statistic.
I believe it is not useful, since no one knows what normal is, or it there is such a thing as a normal average temperature. So no one even knows if warming is good news, or bad news.
(2) You imply the average temperature data are accurate.
They are not accurate.
For example, I would be shocked if the NASA claim of +/- 0.1 degree C. accuracy for surface data was anywhere close to being true.
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(3) You do point out how wrong the computer game simulations have been … but you don’t point out that they have no predictive ability, because they assume CO2 is the primary driver of climate change, and it is not.
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You fail to point out that even if the models and reality happened to match for a whole decade, that would be nothing more than a coincidence, because the theory behind the models is wrong.
The chart below presents average temperature (GISS) data in a way that is visually honest — the chart does not show margin of error, but the scale is chosen to reflect the true importance of 0.1 degree F. changes, … while your charts grossly exaggerate the importance of 0.1 degree C. changes.
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSi3bNYsA8izvjRKw5yNjC_1hOHFTwm1MQxxK3qrwjRXjxEqzOA
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I seem to recall reading somewhere that 30-year periods are climatically significant, so I looked at trends in average temperature for a few multiples of 30 using the May 2015 NASA LOTI dataset. Trends are in degrees Celsius per decade.
Periods leading up to 2015:
1985–2014: +0.166
1955–2014: +0.136
1925–2014: +0.088
1895–2014: +0.079
Periods extending from 1895:
1895–1924: −0.017
1895–1954: +0.065
1895–1984: +0.055
Intermediate 30-year periods:
1925–1954: +0.058
1955–1984: +0.081
Consecutive periods with the most dramatic trend change:
1881–1910: −0.069
1911–1940: +0.136
Greatest warming trend in the first half of the last century:
1916–1945: +0.157
Greatest warming trend in the last half of the last century:
1970–1999: +0.165
Greatest warming trend in the dataset:
1976–2005: +0.190
Make of it what you will, but it seems to me even the “corrupted evidence” isn’t very alarming.
Please see pages 35 & 36 at
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_May_2015.pdf
You will see that temperature correlated negatively with atmospheric CO2 from 1958 to ~1978 (global cooling), positively from ~1978 to ~2002, and flat-to negative thereafter (the “Pause”). This data refutes the warmists’ hypo that Earth temperature is sensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2.
Verdeveiwer’s summary of the data makes a valuable point: that very little warming is going on whichever way you slice it. The fastest warming coincided with the warming phase of the PDO. Correlation of the ups and downs of temperature is good, but correlation with the monotonic increase in CO2 concentration is poor, as Allan MacRae points out. However, the data are consistent with what unprejudiced theory would lead us to accept: that the warming caused by CO2 is small enough to be temporarily negated in whole or in part by negative PDO phases.
NINO index # 5 (5=3.4) from CPC, interpolated from weekly to daily values, SSTa [Celsius].
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/inino5_daily.png
Lord Monckton
thanks for the interesting post. Just a question, in your figure 2 and 3, do you use the global average model temperature at the surface? I mean, do you compare RSS/UAH, which is data for the lower troposphere, with the model output for the surface?
Marcel
Yes. Every six months I do a round-up of all five major datasets. The next round-up will be in August, once the always tardy HadCRUT4 data for June are in.
Even comparing RSS with UAH isn’t as straight forward as it once was since the new version of UAH (version 6) now has a different profile, including more stratospheric data.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/MSU2-vs-LT23-vs-LT.gif
Sorry the RSS profile apparently doesn’t show, it is fairly similar to UAH’s ‘old “LT”‘.
Also UAH is cold biased because of its polar coverage.
The temperature of the eastern Pacific.
http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/Loops/GRTOFS/sst/GRtofs_sst_Wcst_03_Day_flash.shtml
The temperature of the North Atlantic.
http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/Loops/GRTOFS/sst/GRtofs_sst_Atl_03_Day_flash.shtml
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton.
Excellent summary.
Thank you, Lord Monckton. I became a confirmed AGW skeptic years ago when I read “The Deniers”. Today I read the Wikipedia article about the UAH satellite temperature data set. It lists all the corrections made to the temps over many years, the largest being due to orbital decay of the MSU satellites. So my question to you is this. Do you have confidence in the temperature data sets now available from RSS, UAH? I assume the data, including observations made before the orbital decay correction, have all been adjusted properly. True? thanks again for all your great postings on WUWT, Ken Gray
It has been proven that CO2 has no effect on climate. Tough times ahead.
[reply: “skydragon slayer science” isn’t proof of anything. CO2 most certainly has an effect, just not as much as many would have us believe. -Anthony]
I had barely heard of “sky dragon”. I looked into it now very briefly and consider nearly everything I saw as nonsense inconsistent with credible prior knowledge. Prior knowledge includes using radiocarbon dating and the observation that water vapor (a ghg) absorbs terrestrial radiation producing the misleadingly named greenhouse effect.
A very brief description of the proof (mine) that CO2 has no effect on climate:
Atmospheric CO2 has been identified as a possible climate change forcing. Forcings, (according to the ‘consensus’ and the IPCC), have units of J s-1 m-2. A forcing (or some function thereof) acting for a time period accumulates energy. If the forcing varies (or not), the energy is determined by the time-integral of the forcing (or function thereof) Energy, in units J m-2, divided by the effective thermal capacitance (J K-1 m-2) equals average global temperature (AGT) change (K). Thus (in consistent units) the time-integral of the atmospheric CO2 level (or some function thereof) times a scale factor must closely equal the average global temperature change.
When this is applied to multiple corroborated paleo estimates of CO2 and average global temperature (such as extant examples from past glaciations/interglacials ice cores, and proxy data for the entire Phanerozoic eon), the only thing that consistently works is if the effect of CO2 is negligible and something else is causing the temperature change.
A somewhat less brief description is in the section titled ‘Proof that CO2 has no significant effect on AGT’ at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com. This link also shows a 97+% match between calculated and measured average global temperatures since before 1900.
I doubt anyone posting this pseudo science actually read the article. There is factual data indicating consistent global warming across the planet. It’s not about how much snow you received this winter. Try some adult science and maybe you’ll learn something.
Jai Mitchell said, on July 3, 2015 at 10:21 am
“Please re-review the the Stephens et. al. (2012) paper: … They are extremely accurate.”
Take the “Long-wave” cloud effect in Stephens 2012. 3W/m plus or minus 5 w/m … Isn’t that a hint? For a +0.60 W/m “global warming” when, within the stated tolerance of just one parameter, it could be 3-5= -2W/m of …warming? That’s actually COOLING…
Take another parameter from Stephens 2012 – the albedo of the Earth. A 0.6% error in the way the albedo is calculated, and *poof* – no more “Global Warming” … 0.006×100= 0.60W/m
…or, take the latent heat of water vapour, travelling up to form clouds … 88W/m … Just a 0.7% error in the way that clouds form, and that more than eats up the 0.6W/m left over for “Global Warming” …
All of these are the effects of clouds – Long wave sent back down, short wave reflected, or latent heat transfer. So, how well do the models (that perform the calculations that yield Hansen’s 0.58W/m or Stephens 0.60W/m?
”There is no consensus among the climate models on the sign of the longwave cloud feedback, after accounting for both issues.”
snide comment: They cannot agree on whether it is positive, or negative, let alone the magnitude!
Huang, Yi 2013. “On the longwave climate feedbacks.” Journal of Climate
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00025.1
Dolinar et al. 2014 took the latest climate models used by the IPCC, twenty-eight of the 5th generation of the “Coupled Model Intercomparison Project” (CMIP5) models, “and compared [them] with multiple satellite observations”
The author states, “A large degree of uncertainty in global climate models [General Circulation Models] can be attributed to the representation of clouds, and how they interact with incoming solar [short-wave radiation], and outgoing longwave radiation.”
”Total column cloud fraction is under estimated, on average, by the 28 model ensemble by 12.2% in the Southern mid-latitudes over the ocean”
”Cloud fraction is under estimated by ~20% in the low-levels (~850 hPa) (23/28 models)”
”Relative humidity is over estimated at all levels (with the exception of one model below 900 hPa)”
Variable Observed Mean* Ensemble Mean Mean Bias**
Cloud Fraction 81.5 69.3 ± 8.0 −12.2
Cloud Water Path 190.3 134.5± 47.0 −55.8
TOA Reflected SW 105.3 103.6 ± 8.1 −1.7
TOA Outgoing LW 223.8 222.5 ± 3.9 −1.3
TOA SW CRF −63.1 −60.8 ± 8.9 −2.3
TOA LW CRF 28.9 27.0 ± 5.2 −1.9
TOA Net CRF −34.2 −33.8 ± 5.8 −0.4
“In this study, the simulated total cloud fraction (CF), cloud water path (CWP), top of the atmosphere (TOA) radiation budgets, and cloud radiative forcings (CRFs) from 28 CMIP5 AMIP models are evaluated, and compared with multiple satellite observations from [Clouds and the Earth’s Energy System, Energy Balance and Filled (CERES-EBAF)] CERES, MODIS, ISCCP, CloudSat, and CALIPSO.”
“The multi-model ensemble mean [total cloud fraction] (57.6 %) is, on average, underestimated by nearly 8% (between 65°N/S) when compared to CERES–MODIS (CM) and ISCCP results…”
“…while an even larger negative bias (17.1 %) exists compared to the CloudSat/CALIPSO results.”
“[Cloud water path] bias is similar, in comparison, to the [total cloud fraction] results, with a negative bias of 16.1 gm−2 compared to [CERES and MODIS satellite data].”
“The model-simulated, and CERES [Energy Balanced and Filled] observed [Top of the atmosphere] reflected [short-wave radiation] and [outgoing long-wave radiation] fluxes, on average, differ by 1.8 and −0.9 Wm−2, respectively.”
“The averaged [short wave radiation], [long wave radiation], and net [cloud radiative forcings] from CERES [Energy Balanced and Filled] are −50.1, 27.6, and −22.5 Wm−2, respectively, indicating a net cooling effect of clouds on the [Top of the atmosphere] radiation budget.”
“The differences in [short-wave radiation] and [long-wave radiation] [cloud radiative forcings] between observations, and the multimodel ensemble means, are only −1.3 and −1.6 Wm−2, respectively, resulting in a larger net cooling effect of 2.9 Wm−2 in the model simulations.”
“A further investigation of cloud properties and [cloud radiative forcings] reveals that the General Circulation Models biases in atmospheric upwelling (15°S–15°N) regimes are much less than in their downwelling (15°–45°N/S) counterparts over the oceans. Sensitivity studies have shown that the magnitude of [short-wave radiation] cloud radiative cooling increases significantly with increasing [total cloud fraction] at similar rates (~−1.25 Wm−2 %−1) in both regimes. The [long wave radiation] cloud radiative warming increases with increasing [total cloud fraction] but is regime dependent, suggested by the different slopes over the upwelling and downwelling regimes (0.81 and 0.22 Wm−2 %−1, respectively). Through a comprehensive error analysis, we found that [total cloud fraction] is a primary modulator of warming (or cooling) in the atmosphere…”
Dolinar, Erica K., et al. 2014 “Evaluation of CMIP5 simulated clouds and TOA radiation budgets using NASA satellite observations” Climate Dynamics
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/socrates/presentations/SouthernOceanPresentations/Session3/Dolinar.pdf
IF they even get close, it seems that they have compensating errors:
“…multimodel mean biases of -3.6 W/m^2 for shortwave CRF and -1.0 W/m^2 for longwave CRF, are, however, a result of compensating errors over different dynamical regimes. Over the Maritime Continent, most of the models simulate moderately less high-cloud fraction, leading to weaker shortwave cooling and longwave warming and a larger net cooling. Over subtropical strong subsidence regimes, most of the CMIP5 models strongly underestimate stratocumulus cloud amount and show considerably weaker local shortwave CRF. Over the transitional trade cumulus regimes, a notable feature is that while at varying amplitudes, most of the CMIP5 models consistently simulate a deeper and drier boundary layer, more moist free troposphere, and more high clouds and, consequently, overestimate shortwave cooling and longwave warming effects there. While most of the CMIP5 models show the same sign as the multimodel mean, there are substantial model spreads, particularly over the tropical deep convective and subtropical strong subsidence regimes. Representing clouds and their [top of the atmosphere] radiative effects remains a challenge in the CMIP5 models.”
Wang, H., & Su, W. 2013. Evaluating and understanding top of the atmosphere cloud radiative effects in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models using satellite observations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=27667143
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
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