Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The long and model-unpredicted Great Pause of 18 years 8 months in global mean lower-troposphere temperature as recorded in the RSS satellite monthly dataset is inexorably driving down the longer-run warming rate, when the IPCC’s predictions would have led us to expect an acceleration.
The graph shows the entire RSS lower-troposphere satellite dataset for the 440 months January 1979 to August 2015, with the bright blue trend on the entire series equivalent to just over 1.2 C°/century. Overlaid graph in green is the zero trend in the 224 months since January 1997 – more than half the entire 440-month record.
| RSS anomalies (K/century equivalent),
Jan 1979 to Dec of the year shown |
|||||
| 1990 | 0.50 | 1999 | 1.45 | 2008 | 1.41 |
| 1991 | 0.89 | 2000 | 1.37 | 2009 | 1.36 |
| 1992 | 0.33 | 2001 | 1.46 | 2010 | 1.46 |
| 1993 | 0.12 | 2002 | 1.57 | 2011 | 1.36 |
| 1994 | 0.29 | 2003 | 1.66 | 2012 | 1.29 |
| 1995 | 0.66 | 2004 | 1.61 | 2013 | 1.24 |
| 1996 | 0.71 | 2005 | 1.66 | 2014 | 1.21 |
| 1997 | 0.82 | 2006 | 1.61 | 2015 | 1.21 |
| 1998 | 1.53 | 2007 | 1.58 |
As one would expect, the point (2007-8) where the long-run trend-line intersects the Pause trend-line is the moment from which the Pause begins to reduce the long-run trend. As the table shows, the trend had been below 1 K/century till the Great El Niño of 1998 lifted it suddenly above 1.5 K/century. It remained there till 2008, since when it has been dropping gently. From January 1979 to August 2015, the trend was just 1.21 K/century.
In 1990, the IPCC had predicted near-straight-line warming of 1 K to 2025, equivalent to almost 2.8 K/century. Of this warming, more than 0.7 K should have happened by now, but only 0.26 K has actually occurred. The IPCC’s central estimate in 1990, though made on the basis of “substantial confidence” that the models on which it relied had captured all the essential features of the climate system, has proven – thus far, at any rate – to be a near-threefold exaggeration.
In the run-up to the Paris world government conference, the climate Communists are making determined efforts to pretend that the Pause does not exist, or that the rate of warming since 1990 is exactly as the IPCC had predicted. Both pretenses are false. The UAH and RSS satellite data both show the Pause, though the terrestrial tamperature datasets have all been altered in the past year with the effect of concealing it.
Furthermore, the warming rate is now embarrassingly far below prediction. It is worth demonstrating this fact with the IPCC’s own graphs:
The above graph is interesting, because in pale blue it shows the IPCC’s current generation of models – 42 of them – making predictions on the assumption that drastic reductions in CO2 emissions are made. Yet observed temperatures, shown in black, are already visibly at odds with – and falling below – even the least the prediction, and a long way below the central prediction.
As a result of the IPCC’s admission that 111 of its 114 models had over-predicted the warming rate in recent decades, it produced the above graph in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, showing a considerable reduction in its near-term predictions.
Whenever the IPCC produces graphs to a tiny scale, it is worth enlarging them to see what is being hidden. The above graph is a considerable enlargement of a tiny corner of an IPCC graph from the Fifth Assessment Report, illustrating clearly (at this scale) the extent to which observed temperatures have failed to keep pace with the models’ exaggerated predictions. CMIP3 was the ensemble of models for the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report: CMIP5 is the current ensemble. Both over-predict, but the latest models (in red) over-predict less drastically than the earlier models (in blue), when compared with observed temperatures (in black).
The above graph shows how drastically the IPCC was compelled to reduce its near-term warming projections between the spaghetti-graph shown and the sharply downward-revised prediction zone between the two green arrows. The red arrows show where the medium-term predictions were in 1990. The observed trend, in black, is trailing along at the very bottom of the prediction zone.
The before-and-after graphs above show the change in the IPCC’s predictions between its pre-final and final drafts of the Fifth Assessment Report.
A point worth making to those who continue to deny that there has been a Pause or that the discrepancy between prediction and reality continues to widen with each passing year is that all of the graphs in this posting, except the first, are IPCC graphs. If even the IPCC is now admitting that the models had exaggerated, it is time for the climate Communists to adjust the Party Line to bring it closer to the real world.
What, then, would be a logical and rational policy for nations to adopt at the forthcoming Paris summit to establish a global government (for the time being this will be called the “governing body”):
1. A secession clause is a freedom clause. Given the failure of prediction that is self-evident in the IPCC’s “consensus” documents, nations no longer willing to spend trillions on the basis of further alarming but probably exaggerated predictions should reserve the right to give a short period of notice and then leave the entire treaty process, and all obligations thereunder, without penalty. The Kyoto Protocol had a secession clause at Art. 27. The Treaty of Paris should have a secession clause also. However, the draft secession clause which – after much work by me and others – was in the Bonn draft earlier this year may well be dropped on grounds of shortening the current draft, so pressure should be brought to bear on your governments to ensure that the secession clause is not dropped.
2. A sunset clause is also advisable, to take account of a possible widening of the discrepancy between exaggerated prediction and unexciting, harmless observed reality. The entire treaty process would be brought to an end, all nations’ obligations thereunder would cease, and the UNFCCC and the IPCC would be abolished, if for any period of at least 20 years during the 21st century the global warming rate, expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on any one of the five longest-standing monthly global surface or lower-troposphere temperature anomaly datasets, were to fall below 1 Celsius degree per century equivalent. In business, predictive failures are punished. In global government, let predictive failures be punished also, for the cost of the measures intended to address the non-problem of global warming is in any event disproportionate to the value any conceivable benefit.
Lord M, Great analysis!
As you may know, in my city of Christchurch NZ which you visited a few years back, is now fighting the local government who want to identify every property that will be in danger of flooding or inundation within the next 100 years. Incredibly, they are not using the IPCC predictions of sea level rising but some twisted exaggeration which allows 1 meter of sea level rise in that 100 years.
With your permission, I will use some of your analysis in my submission in an attempt to stop this madness.
Every property built within these zones will have to show what “mitigation” they are providing in order to get a building consent. (Building Consents are needed for additions as well) or apply for a “resource Consent” which can run into the 100’s of thousands!. It is expected that current properties will lose most of their value and insurance and therefore mortgages and loans will be impossible to get or be withdrawn. It is estimated 18, 000 properties will be affected.
I see this as an Agenda 21 initiative being foisted on us by dishonesty and back door political tricks.
A message to the rest of the world. Keep a close eye on your government!
Here are some links which may be of interest.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/63768303/Christchurch-mayor-demands-sea-level-action
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/effectsofsealevelriseforchristchurchcity.pdf
This change to the district plan is being pushed through under Earthquake legislation originally designed to speed up processes for rebuilding the city!
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Keep an eye on your government. To think we used to think such as the Michigan Militia were a band of idiots. How do I join?
“In global government, let predictive failures be punished also, for the cost of the measures intended to address the non-problem of global warming is in any event disproportionate to the value any conceivable benefit.”
This imaginary Government you dreamed up obviously doesn’t operate anything like the US Government does. Malfeasance never gets punished (IRS scandal, private servers containing classified data, EPA “secret science” in support of their Endangerment Finding, etc.). If anything they are allowed to retire with their overinflated, underfunded pensions in tact (and perhaps run for higher office).
Not only do the taxpayers lose the benefit of the money that was misspent, their children will also be on the hook to pay the actual cost down the road as the Government accelerates the printing of additional money to make up the exponential shortfall between current revenue and deficit spending.
After all, it is “for the children,” I’m sure they appreciate it when they get the final bill.
Sounds to me like the government of Christchurch is trying desperately to generate some local climate refugees who have all lost their beachfront property to man-made (up) global warming.
If you don’t get the sarcasm here, please read again, slowly.
The Press, Christchurch, headline (proposed): “Man-made Global Warming Responsible for Local Climate Change Refugees”
Hey, somebody has to be the first climate change refugee. Citizens of Christchurch, you win the honor.
If there are refugees from anyplace to anyplace anywhere on the planet, a way can be found to attribute their status to climate change that is just on the horizon and close enough that the refugees have seen it coming, thus fled the anticipated (predicted) onslaught of (you name the weather related malady they took flight to get away from.) Actually, in just about all cases, those who are fleeing as refugees are fleeing the effects being dumped on their backs by their incompetent governments. Now, could that not be said to be anthropogenically caused?
There is absolutely NO reason to call this a pause.
It’s more likely a Peak.
When you climb to the top of a mountain, would you not pause before climbing down again?
…except time marches on.
And if using Spencer & Christy’s dataset instead of RSS and then compare this to the surface record (by HadCRUt3), the “Pause” (or whatever, “Plateau”) becomes so ridiculously evident that it should be pretty hard to deny:
But they do it anyway …
Interesting question: “What would be temperature be right now if we were not in the El Nino phase?”
The definition of what is being calculated is more accurately identified as a decline: the longest period of time in which the trend line is BELOW zero. So if we want to be accurate, we would be calling it “The Decline”. But who wants to be accurate?
Not compared to the MWP, but wait maybe you are still believer in the Hockey Shitck?
Why do you think that the CET instrumental record with a guess spliced to it is relevant?
Hey Phil, its all the rage in consensus science.
Pico de Gallo
Sounds good. You may be interested in a Motion carried by my own Branch of the Liberal Party in June. It reads as follows:
“The Tweed River Branch of the Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) notes that the objective of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) to be held in Paris November/December 2015 is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world. As part of this process, nations are expected to submit their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions with a view to reducing an expected Global Temperature Rise to no more than two degrees Celsius.
Accordingly the Tweed River Branch of the Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) considers that the Australian government must ensure that important safeguards are contained in the proposed agreement. These are:
(a) that each nation shall determine its own proposed reduction in Carbon Dioxide emissions;
(b) that the agreement shall not come into force until ratified by nations which emit in total not less than 75% of the global carbon dioxide emissions;
(c) that each nation may, subsequent to the coming into force of the agreement, abrogate its ratification;
(d) that abrogation shall be effective immediately upon receipt by the UNCCC Secretariat;
(e) that no nation shall be required to provide finance to any other nation to assist such nation in reaching that nation’s proposed reduction;
(f) that no distinction shall be made between so-called “Developed” and “Developing” and “Less Developed” countries;
(g) that each nation may, subsequent to the coming into force of the agreement, modify its reduction target in the light of economic circumstances and new advances in scientific knowledge;
(h) that the agreement provide for scientific investigation into the benefits of a global temperature rise of two degrees Celsius or more, noting that overall more deaths are due to excessive cold than to excessive heat;
(i) that the agreement provide for scientific investigation into the benefits of increased carbon dioxide emissions for agriculture, noting that carbon dioxide is necessary together with water and photosynthesis for the growth of plants on which all life depends.”
If you are a member of a political party – as you should be, suggest you put forward a motion on these lines at your next Branch meeting. Good Luck!
I have a suggestion:
That should be all that’s needed. Forget (b) to (i).
There – fixed it for you.. 😉
The Motion above, carried at the June meeting, was followed up by this Motion at the July meeting. This Motion also was carried:
“The Tweed River Branch of the Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) notes that in the last 15 years, while the atmospheric concentration of Carbon Dioxide has increased by 9%, global temperatures have, within the limits of observational error, ceased rising and are now less than temperatures projected by approximately 95% of the IPCC climate models. Accordingly, the science supporting the theory of ‘Climate Change’ is widely questioned and is no longer regarded by all scientists as being settled.
The Tweed River Branch of the Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) therefore requests that as a matter or urgency before Australia commits to a Treaty proposed to be signed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) in Paris in November/December 2015, the Australian Government take the following actions:
(1) publish the computer models, which the climate scientists who support Global Warming have developed to ‘prove’ their theories of catastrophic global warming being caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions, for public scrutiny by other world scientists, statisticians and computer modellers in order to identify possible mathematical faults and/or scientific law contradictions.
(2) ensure that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology use and publish real Australian and world empirical temperatures (not ‘adjusted’, ‘homogenised’ or otherwise altered) from 1900, and this data shall be the only data used to project how much the temperature will rise or fall by 2100.
(3) request the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to assess whether yearly temperature changes from 1900 to date are within the range of natural variability or not.”
Go for it!
” and the UNFCCC and the IPCC would be abolished”
You wish.
Parkinson and Pournelle have taught us that organisations like these have lives of their own, regardless of the facts or of reality, and will NEVER be abolished whatever happens. Too many careers depend on them.
When CAGW finally dies a death, they will segue smoothly to whatever is the next scare.
Indeed UN bodies , which is what they are , do have zombie like qualities .
The International Panel on Ocean Acidification, IPOA. You heard it here, first.
“tamperature datasets”. Nice one.
Should be “tamperature sets”, since they are no longer DATA post-tampering.
The main output from climate simulations that the IPCC use global temperature.
As all IPCC general climate models are grid based, it would be good to see a listing of 10 years worth of simulation output containing the following:
Grid cells (with lat/long) that are:
a) hottest, coldest, wettest, driest;
b) Run length of a)
c) number of contiguous grid cells containing any of a) above.
Global average temperature is such a blunt measure, it would be helpful to see the above individual cell data used to make up the reported global averages.
Before modellers say this would be too much work, let me say, averages can only come from collections of data, lets just have the results of simple SQL queries to give us the above.
For a global average temperature prediction to be useful (if ever) the weather patterns that are produced by these simulations must be seen to be ‘normal’ for the subsequent average to have any value.
For the purpose of the above lets disregard the applicability of an average temperature.
Global mean surface temperature is a “blunt estimate”, not a “measure”.
“Normal” is not a concept that can be applied to climate or weather. Normal means conforming to a norm, or standard, verified by experiment or other reliable means. Normal body temperature for humans is 98.6, known for centuries, accepted worldwide, applicable to all people. As long as we retain normal temperature, that aspect of our health is good. Go 5 or 6 degrees F above that, though, and we court serious consequences, possibly death. The same is true for (I think) 7 or 8 degrees below normal, which can lead to catastrophic or fatal consequences. That norm is there for a reason, and people rely on knowledge of whether that norm is maintained for individual persons–or, if not, why not, and what to do to restore it. Another instance of the real meaning of “normal”: Playwright George Bernard Shaw, at the urging of friends, visited an oculist (now called an optometrist) to have his vision tested. After an exhaustive set of tests, Shaw was told that his vision was normal, “and that condition is very rare.” There are objective standards as to what the human eye should be able to see.
The weather is not like that. Even if we could go back to Eden and sample and record the conditions then, we could not set them as a norm. Certainly we can’t set something up as a norm now. We can record data and take averages. But an average is not a norm. This date in central Virginia, for example, has for the past 30 years (absurdly short span) averaged a high of 84 and a low of 63, for a mean of 73.5. Today it actually reached 85 after a morning low of 64, for a mean of 74.5, one degree above average. September so far has averaged a bit high, as did May; the other months have all been low, with February coming in at 12.5 degrees below average (28.5 actual vs 41 average).
Say the average temperature for a day is 75. The day begins at 60 degrees under a clear sky, but clouds roll in and a chilly rain begins by about 10 a.m. and persists until evening, dropping over an inch of precipitation, with a high temp for the day of 68 degrees F, Not only does the rain grossly exceed the daily average of a tenth of an inch, but the mean temperature is 64, eleven degrees below the long-term average. Is this day abnormal? Surely, a departure from normal can be termed abnormal; and yet, there is nothing abnormal about sudden drastic swings in temperature, wind, wind direction, rain, and all the other aspects of that chaotic system called weather. We can talk about departures from average; but since we cannot know what normal is in a chaotic system, we cannot correctly apply the term to it.
Ah yes. A temperature of 140F in middle Virginia would certainly not be abnormal. A freezing spell in the middle of summer would certainly not be abnormal. A tsunami could not be considered abnormal, nor 40 feet of rain in an hour. Why, gosh, when it comes to weather nothing can be abnormal.
The political process will continue.
All the countries in the developed world have ran up huge national debts. if energy costs continue to escalate and electricity becomes unreliable it will be impossible to service these debts and the entire capitatlist system will go belly-up. In my view this is the result that the warmists want, it is fortunate this pause (I think CodeTech is right; it’s a Peak) has occurred when it has.
I think that all measures to limit CO2 production should be stopped unless the global temperatures start to rise (using satellite readings NOT skewed and tampered with, historical readings) for a period of 10 years. In that time we should develop sustainable but reliable sources of energy, because the only thing that i agree with the warmists, is that fossil fuels will not last forever.
And…they hate humans and love polar bears but are too smart to hang out with beloved polar bears who are supposedly starving to death and desperately need food on the hoof since they enjoy tormenting their meals before dining.
There are plenty of global warmists to feed these poor bears and give them hours of amusement.
Fossil fuels will last for the next few hundred years, even at current increase in consumption.
That’s not forever, but in terms of lifetimes, generations and technological advance, it might as well be.
‘the RSS satellite monthly dataset is inexorably driving down the longer-run warming rate,’
Well my ‘model ‘ tells me that before long , following ‘adjustments’, this will no longer be the case, further my ‘model’ suggest that in fact before 30/11/15 it will actually turn out to be ‘worse then we thought ‘
And I would suggest that my models is a lot more accurate than ‘climate models’
Can somebody explain to me why that graph of the RSS temps. since 1997 look lopsided? Whenever I post it to any forum that is the first thing warmists say to me.
Two large volcanoes in the early part of the record (1982 and 1991) and then the 60 cycle in temperatures was cycling up from 1976 to 2000. These two features make the chart look like it was increasing in the early part of the record, but the underlying warming rate is extremely small.
…if real.
This is how I have the lower troposphere satellite temperatures (light blue) versus all the various IPCC/Hansen/Mann climate model predictions (browns and oranges) starting from the date the predictions were made.
http://s11.postimg.org/i2o555moz/RSS_UAH_vs_IPCC_Predictions_Aug_2015.png
What I find more interesting on the RSS graph is that as late as 2012 we have a below zero reading. 33 years after the records began and still getting below zero readings. Wonder when the next one will happen.
The RSS data set shows three temperature trends during the record.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss-land/from:1998/trend/plot/rss-land/to:1987/trend/plot/rss/from:1985/to:1998/trend
The first period showed global temperatures cooling until around the mid-1980’s. The main warming trend then occurred where all CAGW hype come from during the mid-1980’s until 1998. What a bunch of hypocrites as the so called pause is longer than this warming period in the first place. The warming phase using the RSS only lasted 13 years and yet the pause is now over 18 years.
Looking it this way it seem the warming trend was the pause from normal and now the planet is back to a recent normality where it has mainly cooled since the 1940’s. Just the short 13 year warming period distinguishes global temperatures from the 1970’s and the 2000’s.
When a trend lasts longer than a previous one it overrides it as the dominate one. We don’t have a pause any more, it is now the next 30 year plus cooling trend where the peak has now gone. The cooling and warming cycles observed throughout the planets history are resuming normally like they are today.
summer peak sea surface temperature has now passed in the north sea. 6 degrees c , yes 6 c, lower than last summer.coupled with north east atlantic surface temperature dropping like a stone it looks like the uk will be in for an interesting winter.
i strongly suspect there is some very interesting interpretation going on of the data coming from the satellite instruments to support the el nino notion .physical evidence is appearing that all those warm anomalies in the pacific may not be quite as warm as they seem.
i will take the physical evidence over some math nerds algorithm every single time.
Karl et al 2015 did away with the “pause” by creating evidence supporting a steady climb in temperatures. To do that they had to sacrifice some of the warming in the 1990s to add it to this century. The net effect is to claim that warming is still happening, hoping that people won’t notice they’re claiming only about 0.1C° per decade.
At that rate, it will take a couple centuries before we trip that magical 2C° rise and we’ll face our doom. Or whatever it is at that time.
I think the two century figure is a good thing to work into elevator speeches about Karl et al.
Based on RSS even claiming 0.1 c per decade seems too high.
The reason being during the ~30 year warming cycle only 13 years had any significant effect. During the ~30 year cooling cycle the trend per decade will be slightly negative at best.
Therefore at a rate of 0.2 c per decade, like the 13 year warming period, only bit more than a sixth of the full warming and cooling cycle showed this maximum rate. Hence over ~ 60 year period the trend per decade would only be about 0.043 c if using the cooling period being zero per decade.
My view is only see about 0.2 c /0.3 c rise by 2100 at the best, depending how quiet the solar activity over this period becomes. This is partly because over the next century they will likely be only one more warming cycle of about 30 years. (even this is dependent on future solar activity)
Theyve just reoriented their angle of attack. Instead of massive multi-degree warming causing certain devastation, theyve changed their tune to 1d warming causing all (and more) of the devastation that 4 or 6d was expected to cause. This lets them keep up their flagging narrative, but makes the indefensible hockey stick meme even more important. IE- our climate is naturally static and never ever strays more than about 1dC. This is obviously a bigger fairy tale than the original claim, but its easier to muck with the past than to fight the pause that seems so stubborn.
You realize, don’t you, that the purpose of Karl et al 2015 was to just do away with “the pause.” The lower rate of change will be ignored or forgotten. The original warnings of increasing temperatures will be retained and matched up with “the pause is gone” in the media. Rational, smational.
Yes, Karl et al does away with the pause, much as Mann et al did away with the Little Ice age. The difference is that it took a climate skeptic (or at least someone inquisitive) to expose Mann. Karl tossed Mann under the bus without even an apology.
My point is that we don’t need to use “our” data to say warming isn’t a problem now, we can use the warmist’s own data to show by their reckoning the current warming isn’t a problem now. After making that point, then we can mention that there hasn’t been any warming this century. Karl isn’t going to point out current warming isn’t a problem, we’ll have to help out with that.
Since the end of the LIA, have we not had a couple of “pause” times or even slight downturns? The only thing that really makes this one (assuming warming continues) different is that it does not agree with the projections/predictions of those who claim human CO2 emissions are the primary cause of a warming atmosphere.
A bit inconvenient that while we pump increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere the atmospheric temperature doesn’t rise, isn’t it?
Since the LIA there have been no pause periods above 8 years. Any pause from warming periods longer than 8 years have lead to 30-40 year cooling trends.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl
“The UAH and RSS satellite data both show the Pause, though the terrestrial tamperature datasets have all been altered in the past year with the effect of concealing it.”
I wonder how those investigations into data tampering are going – I heard about it a few months ago, but it all seems to have gone quiet. Nice use of a spelling mistake, BTW!
Hopefully, the people investingating it are just building up to a proper show-stopper in time for the Paris-ites’ next big fossil fuel-powered knees-up in December…
I agree. We should spread this new word ‘tamperature’ far and wide for it is most appropriate when discussing ‘climate scientists’ who mess around with the data endlessly to create false narratives.
They might have a tamper tantrum.
Splendid post!
This comment is a repetition of one I posted on Climate Etc. last week.
As an exercise in examining the interactions which occur among public policy matters and scientific matters, let’s take a quick look at a hypothetical scenario where the HadCRUT4 central temperature trend between 1998 and 2028 runs at +0.12 degrees C per decade; i.e., at roughly half the rate predicted by an average of 90 IPCC AR5 climate models.
The temperature extrapolation which forms the basis for this scenario is illustrated on the following graphic. It is derived, adapted, and extended from one produced by Dr. Roy Spencer.
http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag108/Beta-Blocker/Beta-Blockers-HadCRUT4-Scenario-1998-2028_zpsdlntpgou.png
Here are two questions concerning the implications of this scenario, if it were to occur approximately as illustrated on the above graph:
(1) Are the IPCC AR5 climate models verified — for all practical purposes, as viewed by mainstream climate scientists — if the postulated scenario occurs approximately as illustrated?
(2) Does a contentious debate over what to do about climate change continue unabated into the middle of the 21st Century, if the postulated scenario occurs approximately as illustrated?
Lord Monckton, in your opinion, (and please be fair!) is there actually ANYTHING of substance that alarmists have got right? Their projections aren’t right, thus it follows their climate sensitivity calls aren’t right either. If they’ve got both those things wrong then – and they have, then what else is there that’s material to AGW theory that they have got right?
A straight line trend through that data (graph in this post) is meaningless as are all the trends line in RSS or UHA data for that matter. Dr Spencer used to have a best fit curve which was to my mind the appropriate “trend” ie no warming with the beginnings of a down trend.
The question with the pause is not weather the global temperature has peaked but whether alarmists hallucinatory acid trip has peaked.
The Pause that Refreshes!
“The Pause that Refreshes!”
And the Cause that Represses.
Authors and commenters here routinely argue that you can’t measure global surface temperature to a tenth of a degree and thus all of the temperature records that are being broken monthly are meaningless, but here you are arguing that the observations are 0.2 degrees below the model predictions? I guess we can measure with that kind of precision when it fits your narrative. I notice that you conveniently left off 2013 and 2014 in your comparison chart as they are hotter than 2012. I guess “the great pause” has moved up its official start date again as well. Please stop arguing that you don’t cherry pick the start date and it is “calculated” based on the trend. Everyone knows that is a gross misuse of statistics and the reason it works so well is that you have a nice global temperature spike due to the 97 El Nino to play with. The old saying, “you can prove anything with statistics” rings true once again.
Your claim is baseless, the satellite data are not the ones that are broken monthly and meaningless. There is no cherry picking when the starting period is always current. Adding 2013 and 2014 makes very little difference to the overall picture.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss-land/from:2001/trend/plot/rss-land/to:1987/trend/plot/rss/from:1985/to:1998/trend
The El Nino was almost cancelled out with a strong La Nina after it and the cooling of global temperatures occurs with or without the corresponding El Nino and La Nina.
Even extending the trend a bit before the El Nino still shows global cooling.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss-land/from:1997/trend/plot/rss-land/to:1987/trend/plot/rss/from:1985/to:1998/trend
In the interest of accuracy, it is not that the “observations” are below the modeled scenarios, but rather that the “adjusted” temperature anomaly calculations are diverging from all of the modeled scenarios. The surface temperature anomaly calculations are all based on selected, estimated temperatures.
pd2413, in your opinion, has the rate of increase in global mean temperature slowed over the past fifteen years in comparison with the period of 1975 through 2000?
pd2413, in your opinion, has the rate of increase in global mean temperature which has occurred over the last fifteen years slowed in comparison with the rate that occurred between 1975 and 2000?
pd2413 says:
I notice that you conveniently left off 2013 and 2014 in your comparison chart as they are hotter than 2012.
I notice that you conveniently left off all the years that were warmer than 2012, 2013, and 2014:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_9549-Jun.-17-21.12.gif
PD,
No real records are being broken. GISS, NOAA and HadCRU are just faking the “data” ever more shamelessly.
The flatline linear regression starts before the super El Nino of ’97.
It won’t take many years of continued slight cooling for the anomaly to drop to no degrees C warming since 1979.
2013 & 2014 are ‘hotter’ than 2012 ?
Explain to me what is ‘hot’ about 14.6C
Thanks.
pd2413 is incorrect in its assumptiomn that the spike caused by the 1998 el Nino is the reason for the zero trend in the satellite temperature data. The statistical influence of that spike on the trend is more or less exactly canceled by the 2010 el Nino spike. Without both spikes, the trend would still be zero, or very close to it.
It is entirely legitimate to ask the question how far one can go back in the data and still obtain a zero trend. The fact that the trend is lengthening is entirely at odds with the predictions, which assume that the greater part of the influence of a radiative forcing on global temperature will occur within the decades following the forcing.
Accordingly, it is remarkable that, even though one-third of all anthropogenic forcings since 1750 have occurred since January 1997, there has been no global warming at all throughout the period since then. This ever widening discrepancy between prediction and reality does raise legitimate questions about whether the models are overstating climate sensitivity.
There are legitimate questions about model predictions that should be and are be asked. No climate scientist will pretend that the models are perfect. But you choose to focus on one data set (or two if you want to include UAH), while ignoring all the other temperature records which show continuous warming. We don’t need to debate that part though because you believe those temperatures are faked anyway. I find it interesting that the surface temperature record is ignored when it comes to the pause but then you compare HADCRUT4 to the models when they don’t even measure/calculate the same thing. You can’t simultaneously ignore the surface temperature data sets when arguing for a pause and then use them to argue against the validity of climate models.
While what you have done with the zero trend is technically statistically correct you do benefit from the 98 El Nino. It’s just as easy to show a positive trend (albeit small) by starting in 1999. In both cases it is a tenuous (at best) use of statistics.
pd2413:
You say to Lord Monckton
Nothing is “perfect”. At issue is whether the models are fit for purpose.
In consideration of this issue it is reasonable to compare the models projections to the global temperature data sets which are rarely altered. Those data sets are the RSS and UAH data sets obtained from measurements obtained by use of microwave sounding units (MSUs) mounted on satellites.
There is no agreed definition of average global temperature and the teams who provide surface temperature data sets from temperature measurements based on thermometer readings mostly made at weather stations (i.e.the data sets which you say “show continuous warming” each uses a unique definition of global temperature and changes the definition it uses almost every month. Hence those data sets change almost every month.
This frequent alteration of data from decades long ago has this effect. And this alteration of data is only possible because there is no agreed definition of the metric these data sets purport to be indicating, and there is no possibility of calibration standards for the metric.
I commend you to read this especially its Appendix B for explanation of these matters.
For the reasons I have stated here, the RSS and UAH data sets are the only appropriate data sets for assessment of the climate models. And they, too, have the problem of lack of a possible calibration standard for global temperature.
Richard
“For the reasons I have stated here, the RSS and UAH data sets are the only appropriate data sets for assessment of the climate models. And they, too, have the problem of lack of a possible calibration standard for global temperature.”
They are checked with balloon data to keep calibration standard and because they cover huge areas of the planet with the exception of parts of the poles there is nothing that comes even close. The so called climate scientists not using this data says a lot about their agenda then it does the science. Any scientist worth his/her weight in gold would used this standard always.
Even if the standard was only good as a surface station it annihilates just ~7000-4000 points scattered on the planet. The size of the Earth compared to measuring just 400000-700000 m2. (100 m2 per station is generous) Temperatures at the surface can be a lot different just 5 miles away, never mind the limitations with lack of coverage from surface data sets.
I like the way pd2413 prefers cooked data to real data.
Whatever it takes to make the data support the theory I guess.
pd2413 and Christopher Monckton are both correct in their assertions:
pd2413 says that the start date of the Pause in 1997 depends strongly on the large el Nino in 1998. Sure enough, if you replace 1998’s anomalies with those of 1997, the start date of the Pause jumps forward to 2000
But then Monckton replies that it is balanced by the el Nino of 2010, and, lo and behold, if you take this one out as well, the Pause reappears in 1997 (or even 1996, depending on what exactly you replace it with), in both RSS and UAH
But this is just an acacdemic exercise to illustrate the way the least-squares method of fitting a trend-line works. The el Ninos DID happen, and the trend line takes them into account.
One consequence of the 1998 el Nino will be seen next year sometime, unless there is some modest cooling in the next few months. The start date of the Pause will remain in 1997 (December 1997 has the best chance of surviving), but when (or if) that trend is no longer negative, all remaining possible start dates for the Pause will also have disappeared. The Start of the Pause won’t jump forward to 2000 or 2001. It will vanish.
This is especially true for UAH – RSS is slightly more resilient.
The El Nino was in 1998, a year after the beginning of the pause.
Is there anything you ‘know’ that is actually correct?
As to 2013 and 2014 being warmer than 2012, even if was true, so what, the pause continues to the present, regardless.
The El Nino began in the spring of 1997 (not long after your previous pause now begins). As I stated before you can run a linear trend from 1999 to present and get a small positive trend. My point being that the pause is largely a product of a massive El Nino. But you chose to ignore that point because it was correct. I also never said that we should not use satellite data. But I hope you recognize that even satellite data is highly adjusted and not nearly as straightforward as you are trying to make it sound. There has no doubt been a slowdown in global temperature increases in the past 15 or so years. Again this is not disputed. It also doesn’t mean that nothing is happening as the ocean heat content continues to rise, glaciers continue to melt, and the stratosphere continues to cool (all signs of a GHG induced warming).
My original point way back was that I find it funny that one week you are all decrying the surface temperature records as fake and stating that its impossible to measure global temperature to within a tenth of a degree (note that I wouldn’t really argue with the latter), and the next week you are using the surface temperature records to complain that the models are several tenths of a degree off from the observations. You can’t have it both ways.
pd2413 says:
My point being that the pause is largely a product of a massive El Nino.
Almost twenty years after that el Nino?? That’s real desperation.
And:
There has no doubt been a slowdown in global temperature increases in the past 15 or so years. Again this is not disputed.
Wake up! Of course that is being disputed! It is disputed by real world evidence. There isn’t a “slowdown in global temperature increases”. Global warming stopped almost 20 years ago. Even the IPCC now admits to the long term “pause” in rising temperatures. “Pause” = “stopped”.
And:
…the ocean heat content continues to rise, glaciers continue to melt, and the stratosphere continues to cool (all signs of a GHG induced warming).
There is no arguing with religious true believers. But for rational readers: if these are “signs” of global warming caused by the rise in CO2, then once again I challenge ‘pd’ or anyone else to produce a verifiable, testable, empirical measurement that quantifies the amount of global warming caused by X amount of rising CO2.
No one has ever measured the fraction of man-made global warming out of total warming from all causes, such as the planet’s natural recovery from the LIA. Therefore, everything said about it is simply an assertion.
The whole “dangerous AGW” scare is based on nothing more than opinions. There are no supporting measurements. At this stage, the “dangerous man-made global warming” scare is no more or less than a HOAX on the taxpaying public; a giant head fake based on nothing more than mostly paid for opinions.
For a long time, many of the TV-watching public would just head-nod along with the assertions of talking heads on the nightly news, accepting whatever they said without any critical thought.
Those days are ending. Even a few years ago many readers’ comments under media stories about “global warming” and “climate change” expressed concern about the alarm.
But no more. Now when there are wild-eyed stories about “climate change” this, and “climate change” that, most of the comments ridicule the alarmism. There are fewer supporters of that bogus narrative every day. After endlessly crying “WOLF!!” without seeing any global warming for nearly twenty years, the public is finally starting to turn on the climate alarmist crowd.
And once they lose the public, they will never get them back again. Every day there are fewer and fewer ‘pd2413’s’ who still believe the “dangerous man-made global warming” nonsense. It’s so obvious a scam that only those with a heavy emotional investment in the scare still try to sell others on it.
dbstealey said: “…such as the planet’s natural recovery from the LIA.”
There is no such thing as a natural recovery, emphasis on the word recovery. The planet is a state system that responds to internal (such as volcanoes) and external (such as orbital changes or changes in incoming solar radiation) forcings. If the net impact of those forcings is enough to cause warming, then the planet will warm. If not, it will stay cool or get colder. The planet does not “want” to be at a certain temperature.
Chris
You assert
“There is no such thing as a natural recovery,”??!!! ”
Say what?
What do you think is “natural” if internal (such as volcanoes) and external (such as orbital changes or changes in incoming solar radiation) forcings” are not “natural”?
What unnatural effects are you claiming cause the LIA and the recovery from it?
Unicorns? The whims of the Gods on Mount Olympus? Humans with time machines?
The LIA and the start of recovery from it, transitions between glacial and intergl;acial periods, and many other climate changes occurred long before humans could have been causative of them: they were “natural”. And there is no evidence – none, zilch, nada – which suggests the repeatedly precedented Present Warm Period is not “natural”.
Richard
Richard, it is not a recovery, it is a change. Recovery implies returning to a normal state. The planet has had periods of millions of years at much warmer, and colder temperatures, than those of today. What makes the temperatures of the last several hundred years the norm for the planet?
Chris says:
There is no such thing as a natural recovery…
Richard Courtney is right, Chris, it’s all natural as far as anyone knows. But if you prefer, you can use the term ‘rebound’. The planet is naturally rebounding from one of the coldest episodes of the entire 10,000+ year Holocene climate that we are currently in.
You’re just splitting hairs by complaining about which term to use. We are far from knowing everything about forcings, feedbacks, and/or other causes of global temperature fluctuations. But according to Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation is most likely the correct explanation: the planet has a preferred temperature range, and we are in the colder end of that range. There is no need for an extraneous explanation, such as CO2.
Yes, CO2 has an effect. But it is minuscule at current concentrations of ≈400 ppm. The warming effect of CO2 can be completely disregarded now, since almost all of it occurred below the first few dozen ppm:
The whole ‘carbon’ argument is a tempest in a teapot, useful only for scaring the public into opening its collective wallets. Ask yourself, “Cui bono?” and you will find the answer.
When viewed in perspective, all the wild-eyed arm waving, running around in circles and clucking that the sky is falling is nothing but climate alarmism:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPGChYUUeuc/VLhzJqwRhtI/AAAAAAAAAS4/ehDtihKNKIw/s1600/GISTemp%2BKelvin%2B01.png
statistics are not even half as obliging as the mathturbation and alogorerithms used by people claiming to be climate scientists . get them to go and physically measure some shit instead of extrapolating bollocks from a desk to create even more bollocks and they may be worth listening too. virtually every piece of “data” used by both sides is meaningless crap these days,so much spin and manipulation on both sides the entire debate is laughable. it is plain to see for everyone that any notion the world is warming catastrophically as a result of anthropogenic co2 has been dispelled .
It’s worth noting that pretty nearly all of the putative warming in the surface temperature record since the “pause” began is in the Northern Hemisphere. Kind of takes the “global” out of global warming.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temperatures_zpsk5yjxh2s.jpg
Interestingly, the SH surface record is pretty close to the satellite temps. Can anyone break out the NH and SH from satellite records?
Note: the plot above is of raw data. There is no detrend of the surface data (parameter was set to zero).
Very interesting. Not sure what to make of it yet. Thanks.
Not quite full SH and NH, but probably even better IMO as can compare to tropics.
UAH
http://www.climate4you.com/images/MSU%20UAH%20TropicsAndExtratropicsMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
RSS
http://www.climate4you.com/images/MSU%20RSS%20TropicsAndExtratropicsMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
Quick calculations from Summer 1980 until start 2014 (Difference from start and end, NOT a mean)
UAH
NH +0.35 c
Tropics +0.35 c
SH +0.125 c
RSS
NH +0.425 c
Tropics +0.25 c
SH +0.15 c
I have noticed between UAH and RSS in the northern hemisphere shows something interesting.
We had GISS and HADCRUT complaining that warming wasn’t happening due to not enough pole coverage.
Well talk about being wrong as usual as it seems nowadays.
The UAH shows less warming in the NH and SH than the RSS. The UAH covers more of both poles compare with RSS. Yet because of this difference LESS warming has occurred not more.
UAH and RSS have better coverage near the poles than do any other data sets.
It’s not a “pause”.
Especially based on only one source of data, with no margins of error shown.
If there were honest margins of error shown (much more than +/- 0.1 degree C., in my opinion), then the past 18 years could be an uptrend, flat period, or downtrend — data are not accurate enough to know for sure.
The word “pause” also implies the trend prior to the pause will soon continue.
No one knows that.
The mild warming since 1850 might continue.
Ice core studies suggest a few hundred more years of mild warming would be a good guess.
And that would be great news, since the only other ‘choices’ are mild cooling, or excessive glaciation.
The mild cooling since 1998 might continue.
Scientists who study solar cycles suggest a few more cool decades.
The cooling since the greenhouse ages might continue.
The warming since peak glaciation 18,000 years ago might continue.
Whether Earth is cooling, or warming, depends mainly on the starting and ending points of the measurements.
A “pause” will never be seen on surface data, since smarmy bureaucrats will just “adjust” the data to get the uptrend they want the general public to see on their chart.
Those bureaucrats will never present satellite data, since they don’t have control over it.
The result is the surface temperature data will always show a rising trend, whether it really exists, or not.
Eventually, after enough “adjustments”, the computer game projections and surface data will match.
I wish you, and everyone else, would present just ONE CHART — showing the lack of correlation of Earth’s average temperature and CO2 levels, since the era of manmade CO2 began in 1940 (showing the average temperature downtrend from 1940 to 1976, and the relatively flat temperature trend in the past 18 years).
Charts that include temperature projections of the next 50 or 100 years give respect to computer game projections that they do not deserve.
Charts that show meaningless 0.1 degree C. temperature changes as huge peaks and valleys, are propaganda charts:
a 0.5 degree C. change should be visible
a 0.1 degree C. change should not be visible — at a glance it should look like a flat line IF YOU WANT THE GRAPH TO COMMUNICATE how meaningless a 0.1 degree C. change is, with margins of error at least that large, and probably several times larger.
Other than your first chart, the remaining charts are too LOUD, annoying, and hard to read.
One simple black and white chart of average temperature and CO2 levels since 1940 would have conveyed a clear, concise message better than all of your charts combined.
The continued reluctance of almost all “deniers” to state that the warming and CO2 increase since 1850 has been good news for people, animals and plants … means almost all “deniers” are lost in climate minutia.
“Deniers” debating tiny changes in the average temperature of the past 18 years … will never be able to refute scary predictions of the FUTURE climate.
Especially when the “deniers” use a data source (satellites) ignored by the climate doomsayers, and never included in their NASA / NOAA press releases.
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When the climate STOPS changing , THEN we should start worrying !!! My 2 cents worth !!!!
Call me an Idiot if you want, but aren’t the IPCC global temperature scenarios with reference to surface temperatures?
What’s this obsession with comparing them to lower-troposphere (that is altitude around 14,000 ft) temperature estimates?
You surely know they are supposed to be proportional. Moreover, there is supposed to be enhanced warming of the upper troposphere, which can also be measured with the satellites, and it is running much lower than the model predictions, and even lower than tropical SST trends, when it is supposed to be 2X as large.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Upper-troposphere-vs-tropical-SST-sat-vs-CMIP5.png
Which is the satellite product which you term the ‘upper troposphere’?
The TLT from RSS includes a substantial contribution from the surface and includes contributions up to an altitude of 10 km.
The one that says “upper troposphere”. Read about it here.
Have we seen a change in the lapse rate?
The so-called “surface station data” series are totally bogus works of science fiction.
Since the surface data set is hopelessly inadequate and rife with unrecoverable data quality problems
(All of which have been extensively documented) the satellite data set is in reality the only game in town.
Satellite data is heavily modified due to changes in orbiting satellites as well as orbital decay. Don’t take my word for it, take that of Dr. Roy Spenser: “Since 1979 we have had 15 satellites that lasted various lengths of time, having slightly different calibration (requiring intercalibration between satellites), some of which drifted in their calibration, slightly different channel frequencies (and thus weighting functions), and generally on satellite platforms whose orbits drift and thus observe at somewhat different local times of day in different years. All data adjustments required to correct for these changes involve decisions regarding methodology, and different methodologies will lead to somewhat different results. This is the unavoidable situation when dealing with less than perfect data.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/04/version-6-0-of-the-uah-temperature-dataset-released-new-lt-trend-0-11-cdecade/
“Somewhat” being the operative word. No data are perfect, but the satellite data are far more perfect than the surface data.
We have two satellite datasets which don’t represent the same parameter as the surface sets, they no longer even cover the same part of the atmosphere, UAH 6.0 has a significantly larger contribution from the stratosphere than RSS. If you want to describe the temperature where we actually live the satellite sets are far from perfect.
The “surface data” aren’t even data. They are man-made artifacts, not observations. HadCRU has even lost their original “observations”.
Never said “perfect”. Said “more perfect”. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the Founding Fathers.
Bart said: “No data are perfect, but the satellite data are far more perfect than the surface data.”
What is the basis for your drawing that conclusion? Please don’t say “it’s ovbious”, that is not a scientific foundation.
Lady G said: “The “surface data” aren’t even data. They are man-made artifacts, not observations. HadCRU has even lost their original “observations”.”
And satellite data is a proxy of a proxy for surface temperature, and yet you seem to be perfectly ok with that – even though there are known problems with the data: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-013-1958-7
The surface data are sparse and non-uniformly distributed around the globe, with massively unequal coverage of the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, and the distribution has changed over time. Individual measurements are relatively inaccurate and relatively few, and reflect the daily median rather than the mean. Data are extrapolated over uncovered areas in contravention of basic sampling reconstruction laws. Selection of data to be included are arbitrary, and subject to the whims of those compiling the final product.
It is an indicator of pseudoscience that, whenever the measurements do not reflect the desired outcome, the method of processing is changed to produce a more congenial result. Adjustments to the satellite record have gone both ways, producing both relative warming and cooling. Adjustments to the surface data only in the direction of more warming.
It is a farce. If you know the surface data are dodgy and go along with it for “the cause”, then you have no scruples. If you truly believe the surface data are reliable, you have no marbles.
This article is comparing measured trend to IPCC projections. Didn’t the IPCC also state the trend thus far at the time of each report? What were those trends, and their time periods?
” The United Nations body that oversees greenhouse gas reductions is reeling from another cap-and-trade scandal that may have put 600 million tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere — roughly speaking, the annual CO2 output of Canada or Britain — while the emissions were ostensibly suppressed, according to an independent study.” Fox News…today !!
Technical quibble, but the truth is a bit stronger than one point, as stated. Specifically, this sentence isn’t quite right:
“As one would expect, the point (2007-8) where the long-run trend-line intersects the Pause trend-line is the moment from which the Pause begins to reduce the long-run trend.”
Actually, the “moment” the pause began to reduce the long-run trend was earlier. To demonstrate this, compute the long term trend as of, say, the end of 2004. Then compute it as of the end of 2005 and it’ll be lower.
The portion of the pause that is below the long term trend line is meaningful. I’m just not sure what the right words for that are — something with the word “contribution” in it, I suppose.
The Pause did not really begin to bring the long-run trend down until after the crossover-point in 2007-8. As you will see from the table of trend values from 1979 to successive years, it was in 2008 that the trend began to fall from its peak.
The inflexion point is best illustrated below.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gH99A8_0c6k/VexLL1zC7AI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/T50D6jG3sdw/s1600/trendrss815.png
The peak at about 2003 shows a 12 year delayed response to the peak in solar activity at 1991.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QoRTLG14Siw/VdOUiiFaI5I/AAAAAAAAAYM/NxQVb2LMefk/s640/oulu20158.gif
For estimates of the timing and amplitude of the coming cooling based on the natural 60 and 1000 year quasi-periodicities see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
Dr. Page, I’m just offering an opinion here, but global mean temperature must decline continuously for a period of perhaps thirty years — possibly even fifty years — before the mainstream climate science community ever begins to question the validity of the climate models.
If anything else happens — for example, if the trend in GMT is basically flat for thirty years, or if global mean temperature begins to rise at some statistically significant rate which is still well below what the IPCC AR5 models predict — the mainstream climate science community will not retreat from its basic position that man-made causes, mostly in the form of rising GHG emissions, dominate most temperature variation within the earth’s climate system.
Beta Blocker, See what I think about verification at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/31/the-epistemology-of-explaining-climate-forecasting-so-an-8-year-old-can-understand-it/
Here is a quote
“Remember ,I mentioned the 60 year cycle, well, the data shows that the temperature peak in 2003 was close to a peak in both that cycle and the 1000 year cycle. If we are now on the downslope of the 1000 year cycle then the next peak in the 60 year cycle at about 2063 should be lower than the 2003 peak and the next 60 year peak after that at about 2123 should be lower again, so, by that time ,if the peak is lower, we will be pretty sure that we are on our way to the next little ice age.
That is a long time to wait, but we will get some useful clues a long time before that. Look again at the red curve in Fig 3 – you can see that from the beginning of 2007 to the end of 2009 solar activity dropped to the lowest it has been for a long time. Remember the 12 year delay between the 1991 solar activity peak and the 2003 temperature peak, if there is a similar delay in the response to lower solar activity , earth should see a cold spell from 2019 to 2021 when you will be in Middle School.
It should also be noticeably cooler at the coolest part of the 60 year cycle – halfway through the present 60 year cycle at about 2033.
We can watch for these things to happen but meanwhile keep in mind that the overall cyclic trends can be disturbed for a time in some years by the El Nino weather patterns in the Pacific and the associated high temperatures that we see in for example 1998 and 2010 (fig 2) and that we might see before the end of this year- 2015.”
When dealing with a millennial cycle the verification period is inevitably long in human terms.
Dr Page’s use of trend-lines is non-standard. The correct comparison between the Pause and the longer-term trend is set out in the head posting. The table of values for the long-run trend from 1979 to successive years shows very clearly that the Pause did not begin to depress the long-run warming rate till 2007/89.
Monckton. There is no “standard” way of picking the starting points of trend lines. For example the start point of about 1980 is entirely arbitrary as far as the real world trends are concerned .What everyone does is to pick the start ends and inflexion points which best illustrates whatever working hypothesis one is trying to illustrate.
I’m trying to show that perhaps the most egregious error of the establishment is to make straight line projections of quasi- periodic processes as illustrated below.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/–pAcyHk9Mcg/VdzO4SEtHBI/AAAAAAAAAZw/EvF2J1bt5T0/s1600/straightlineproj.jpg
I picked 2003 because
1. if you eyeball the graph ( ignoring the El Ninos as temporary aberrations) successive peaks climb to this point and begin to generally trend very gradually down from there.
2. A peak at 2003 fits well with the overall idea of a solar activity peak at 1991 based on reported delay times between solar activity and climatic effects.
My interpretation is not therefor based simply on the temperature record alone but on the total picture.
You have to step back far enough to distinguish the wood from the trees
Dr. Page, I appreciate the work you’ve done in documenting the issues with the climate models; and of course you have your own body of analysis which documents your case that The Pause is an inflection point signifying a long-term cooling trend.
As a lukewarmer, I have my own opinions as to where GMT will go between now and the end of the 21st Century, based on my Parallel Offset Universe climate model, which is documented here in this graph:
http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag108/Beta-Blocker/GMT/BBs-Parallel-Offset-Universe-Climate-Model–2100ppx_zps7iczicmy.png
The graph represents my opinion that whatever the combination of causes for the long-term rise in GMT are, they will continue into the future for at least another hundred years, if not longer. My entire analysis is self-contained in the graphic. There is nothing more to it than what is presented in the lines and the words contained in the illustration.
Three alternative scenarios are presented, and all three scenarios assume some level of man-made warming resulting from GHG emissions, with Scenario 1 assuming the most influence from GHG’s and Scenario 3 assuming the least. Of the three scenarios presented, the +1 C rise in GMT between 2015 and 2100 is the one I suspect is most likely to occur.
In other words, when in doubt, assume that current trends will continue.
As for the interactions which occur between climate science matters and public policy matters, a robust public debate concerning the validity of mainstream climate science will not occur until and unless governments move beyond what is now mostly talk and begin to take strong action against GHG emissions in ways that directly and powerfully affect the life styles of middle class voters.
Here in America, we are not there yet, not even close. Whether or not we will ever go there is something which is yet to be determined.
Where we go depends entirely upon who controls the White House and how far the sitting President wants to go in using the EPA to its maximum possible effectiveness in legally and constitutionally enforcing strong anti-GHG measures. As for what is now being done by the EPA, the Clean Power Plan merely scratches the surface of what could be done by the Executive Branch in the absence of buy-in from the Congress.
That said, here on this WUWT thread we are getting a small taste of how that robust public debate might proceed if and when the impacts of government-imposed anti-GHG measures begin to directly affect the economic and social circumstances of a majority of middle class voters, something which has not yet happened.
Predictably, if and when a truly robust public policy debate over climate change begins to occur — i.e., once government-imposed anti-GHG measures are directly and powerfully affecting the life styles of middle class voters — mainstream climate scientists will continue to defend their climate model predictions using every argument they can muster, and they will also continue to defend their hockey stick for the simple reason that it forms a primary body of independent verifying evidence that man-made climate change is occurring.
Beta Blocker
You say
“In other words, when in doubt, assume that current trends will continue” Not so- when your current trends go back for too short period.
Obviously my view is that you are making the same fundamental error as the establishment and ignoring the 1000 year quasi – periodicity. See below – don’t you think it is blatantly obvious that we are approaching, just at or just past a millennial peak.?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mj4eZioh8C8/VdOHYKQnKrI/AAAAAAAAAX4/JU-PJhgqKEg/s1600/fig5.jpg
I am personally amazed at the capacity of so many to ignore the blatantly obvious for so long.
For more complete discussion of why I think we are just past the peak see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-epistemology-of-climate-forecasting.html
Monckton. There is no “standard” way of picking the starting points of trend lines.
================
as a general rule, if a change to the end points changes the trend, then what you have is not a trend, it is at best a sample.
the problem comes when people try and fit trend lines on X years of data, then are surprised when X+1 years of data shows a different trend.
Clearly, the fact that the trend changes when you add an extra years data is conclusive proof that the data is not following the trend, and thus the trend is not a true trend. It is simply a mathematical illusion. We call it a trend, but it is not. It is better called a “false trend”.
Dr. Page, my personal interest, as it concerns the issue of climate change, lies in examining the various interactions which occur between public policy matters and scientific matters.
Suppose for purposes of argument that your 1000-year periodicity theory has merit, but that the downward inflection point is still 100 to 200 years away as a result of some combination of warming caused by GHG emissions and other factors related to natural variation. (This may or may not be so, but let’s suppose your postulated inflection point is in the pipeline but has not happened yet,)
My basic points concerning the above supposition are twofold: (1) Mainstream climate scientists will not retreat one iota from their “warming is mostly man-made” narrative unless a long and statistically-significant downturn in GMT occurs; and (2) a robust public debate over the validity of mainstream climate science will not occur unless there is a powerful incentive for that public debate to occur.
If President Obama, or whoever the next president happens to be, begins using the full power of the Executive Branch to enforce a series of strong and effective GHG reduction measures, then a robust public debate over the validity of mainstream climate science will commence and you might get your opportunity to break out of the bounds of the CAGW Internet blogosphere into a larger audience venue.
But if President Obama, or whoever the next president happens to be, simply pursues the Clean Power Plan and imposes no further GHG reduction measures beyond the current plan, the public debate over the validity of today’s climate science will never reach critical mass and your 1000-year periodicity theory will remain simply one of a number of alternative predictions for where trends in GMT are headed.
Beta Blocker If you look at my various comments and links, I think that far from being 200 years away that we have just passed the millennial peak and that this argument may well be tested to some degree in the reasonably near future I read again my 4:18 post above.
I see little value in discussing unlikely scenarios “for the purposes of argument.” We should make policy on the basis of forecasts that we think most realistic based upon the time spread of data most appropriate to the quasi- periodicity involved. If the trend from 2003 is still negative in 2021 I do not think the warmists will be able to continue peddling their scary scenarios.
The GMT went up and down during the Phanerozoic eon. That could not happen if CO2 had an effect on climate.
Proof that CO2 has no effect on climate and identification of the two factors that do cause reported global mean temperature (GMT) change (sunspot number is the only independent variable) are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com (new update with 5-year running-average smoothing of measured GMT. This shows the near-perfect explanation of GMT since before 1900; R^2 = 0.97+). Use of V2 SSN changes some coefficients but has no significant effect on R^2.
While Hadsst3 just set a new August (and all time record) at 0.664, the August RSS value was only the fourth highest August anomaly.
Expected with the changes to data sets not comparable to previous years and was always altered with records broken in mind. Global surface temperatures and the new ocean set now would probably have to be around 0.1 c to 0.2 c cooler just to match what the previous data set showed. With so few measurements compared to the size of the world, it is very easy to tamper towards a warmer showing set.
Greetings Lord Chris, I have been waitiing for you to pop up again so I could address a part of the total scam as I see it, to you.
My issue is that both sides of the Global Warming/Climate Change/Oceran Acidification debate seem to revert to references to ill-defined and therefor un-measurable parameters. It seems to me that if it can’t be defined it can’t be measured. If it cant be measured then differences can’t be estimated credibly.
I respectfully note that you too seem to be guilty in the use of the unmeasurable global temperature in this essay. I mean that in a constructive way.
The following is a recent exchange related to Oceanic Acidification which outlines my problem.
I blogged as grumpyoldman22.
GOM22
” I have been trying to get someone out there to give me a scientific definition of global (surface) temperature. I could perhaps then see what relevance it could have to atmospheric heat content. The same info has also been sought for ocean temperature. If I could have definitions I could understand how it can be measured and consequently altered by some action.
It is this lack of proper definition and general lack of understanding of how a model-based term is applied to actual atmospheric or oceanic behaviour that invariably leads debate insidiously back to using terms that include ºC (or Farenheit or Kelvin) in the arguments of both sides. As soon as ºC appears in the debate there is the presumption that the quoted value has agreed validity unless challenged at each appearance.
My view is that we do not have the means to measure sufficient samples of atmosphere or ocean temperature simultaneously at any point of the time continuum to be somehow averaged and used meaningfully in a debate on climate. The same question can be asked of climate itself: define climate first then measure it and compare changes over time.
If the real parameter can’t be measured except from models how can we hope to propose causes and effects? ”
Reply 1:
Reply to grumpyoldman22 ==> A fair question — perhaps more appropriately asked in response to a essay or column dedicated to Global Temperature issues.
Reply 2:
“…define climate first…”
For what it is worth IPCC AR5 glossary defines climate as weather averaged over 30 years.
grumpyoldman22
To which I responded:
“There are definitions like this in Wikipedia too. They are not scientific in any way and consistently deflect giving an answer to my problem.
And— Reply (2)…… of 8:03am is also a deflection. I believe the OA addicts have entrenched the ficticious global temperature in their pseudo science about reduced alkalinity.”
Hope this reaches your desk before you are innundated by rising sea level.
Grumpy old man, I agree, not only that “global average temperature” cannot be measured using surface thermometry, but that it cannot be defined in a meaningful way.
I’ve said this before, and I would do it if I had the time and funding and a bunch of grad students to do it. To use surface thermometry to establish temperature-time trends, you should AVERAGE THE TRENDS, not TREND THE AVERAGES. First you would pick measuring stations that haven’t changed their environment over time (i.e. no UHI effect) and plot temperature-time for each station separately after you have normalized each one to its own average over a consistent long period (e.g. 1900-1960 for the sake of argument). You would also have to normalize against seasonal variations, and this might take some trial-and error to get right. Then you would have a set of numbers that you could average, or better yet, use a spatial-statistical approach like kriging to try and pick out how trends vary across the globe (and with altitude). It would still be a bit heavy-handed until you had broken it down into seasonal trends (winters getting warmer but summers staying constant?). Big job, but it might generate some real insight into how temperature has varied through time.
There are probably objections to this approach, but it seems to me that the results would have a bit more real-world meaning than these HADCRUT global averages (even without “adjustment”).
Quick-and-dirty approach might use monthly maxima and minima to define trends. Don’t know how useful that would be till you tried it.
Smart Rock
You seem very familiar, very demanding, with your skills about averaging and documenting variable “weather” data. OK, so here is my challenge.
I have some 38,000 hourly 2 meter air temperatures, dewpoint temperatures, wind speeds, and pressures over a period from 2010 through 2015 for one particular latitude.
I need the equations for air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and pressure for each of the 24 hours of the day for every day of the year.
What do I average and how do I get it?
Average each of the 5 years of data? Average each 5 years of each day’s and each hour’s data to create a best fit polynominal for each of the 24 hourly curves?
grumpyoldman22:
You say
It cannot be measure and has no possibility of a calibration standard.
I refer you to my above comment, to read all of it, and to use the link it provides when it says
Richard
grumpyoldman22
This is an aside to correct a reply that you report was given to you.
You say
No, the “IPCC AR5 glossary” does NOT define “climate as weather averaged over 30 years”.
That untrue statement confuses climate with the classical period for averaging climate variables .
The “IPCC AR5 glossary” is here and says
So, climate is an average over any period “ranging from months to thousands or millions of years” but the chosen period must be stated.
And, the “classical period for averaging these variables is 30 years”; i.e. when computing anomalies then the anomaly is started as a difference from an average value obtained from a 30-year period.
The various data sets for global temperature (e.g. HadCRUTx, GISS, RSS, etc.) demonstrate this. They each provide climate data for individual years but as differences (i.e. “anomalies”) from a 30-year period. And they each use a different 30-year period.
The World Meteorological Organization defined the purely arbitrary length of 30 years for the “classical period for averaging” in 1958 as part of the World Geophysical Year. This length was chosen because it was thought that there was not adequate climate data for before 30 years earlier (i.e. for before 1928).
It should be noted that the arbitrary period of 30 years is an unfortunate choice for comparison with climate data: 30 years is not a multiple of the length of the solar cycle, or the Hale Cycle, or etc.).
People demonstrate that they know NOTHING about climate when they make the untrue assertion that climate is weather averaged over 30 years.
Richard
Well done RichardSCourtney. It’s helpful when experts with experience oppose misinformation with correct facts and primary sources. Thank you.
In response to those who ask for new definitions of global temperature, let us begin by making it clear that there is nothing inherently wrong in trying to determine a global mean temperature.
For the terrestrial record, what is badly needed is a standard specification for the instrumentation, a more complete and less uneven coverage, an exclusion of all data contaminated by urban heat island effects, and a sufficient sampling frequency.
For the satellite record, more and newer satellites are also desirable.
My monthltpy temperature reports do not, on the whole, delve into these questions, and I go to some trouble to avoid interfering with the data as it is presented by the keepers of the datasets. I use the simplest of all trend analyses, least-squares linear regression, because everyone with some background in statistics understands it, and because it is the method recommended by the IPCC in its Fifth Assessment Report.
The most important thing about this monthly series is that no one else has systematically and regularly compared the data with the predictions. The shrieking, hysterical fury with which the results are treated by the climate Communists whenever they appear shows how frightened they have become at the ever-widening discrepancy between prediction and observation, particularly in the run-up to the attempt in Paris this December to set up a global government using global warming as the pretext.
Monckton of Brenchley:
I agree everything in your above essay but write to comment on a statement in a post you have made in this thread.
You say in this post
Whether or not you are right when you say, “there is nothing inherently wrong in trying to determine a global mean temperature” it is an important fact that there is no agreed definition of global mean temperature (i.e. mean global temperature: MGT).
As reported here a group of us considered MGT according to two interpretations of what it could be; viz.
(i) MGT is a physical parameter that – at least in principle – can be measured;
or
(ii) MGT is a ‘statistic’; i.e. an indicator derived from physical measurements.
These two understandings derive from alternative considerations of the nature of MGT.
And we discovered that the teams who generate the data sets of MGT each uses a unique definition of MGT that is not used by the other teams. And almost every month each team changes the definition of MGT that it uses so all the data sets of MGT change from month to month. The resulting effect is this.
Full explanation of these matters is provided by Appendix B of the link.
In summation, there is no need for “new definitions of global temperature” but there is need for
(a) a definition of global temperature which is agreed and applied by all
or, alternatively,
(b) each team needs to specify what climate effect its unique (and unchanging) definition is intended to indicate.
Richard
“…there is nothing inherently wrong in trying to determine a global mean temperature.”
Well, there is something inherently fuzzy about it, at least. An increase in average temperature gives an implication of increased stored energy, but it is not conclusive in that regard.
It will be interesting to see how the Climate Liars at the Paris Howlathon handle the “Pause”. My guess is that they’ll use every trick in the book, beginning with calling it a “slowdown” instead of “Pause”. They’ll haul out all the excuses, from “hidden heat” deep in the oceans and and all the rest, thus using the “muddying the waters” technique, to basically saying that it doesn’t matter, it’s just a “natural variation”, and the “evidence” is right before our eyes; at which point they’ll haul out everything, from “melting glaciers”, “melting icecaps”, “rising sea levels”, “more violent storms”, floods, fires, etc. etc. They have raised lying to an art form.
Dear Lord Monckton:
Several times I have tried to guide you about using temperature graphs correctly, to no avail. I recall putting out comments in May as well as during the last month (“The Pause lengthens yet again”) and getting bo response. Worse yet, you are still showing temperature graphs the old way, paying no attention to what I said. I am not doing this to show off but I simply want to bring out the information that is there but which you were too lazy to teach yourself. Let us start with your figure 1 in this article. It is a satellite representation of temperature sine 1979 by RSS. On the right you have drawn in the level of the current hiatus in green, which is commendable. The actual physical beginning of that hiatus is 2002, not 1997 because that is the end point of a short step warming that created the platform upon which that hiatus sits. The super El Nino you include is a random addition that conveniently extended it without being a physical part of the hiatus. But then you screw up because for whatever reason you draw an up-sloping straight line through the entire satellite era. This is non-sensica;’f. It belongs nowhere except in the wet dreams of warmists. The section to the left of the super El Nino is an ENSO wave train consisting of five El Ninos with La Ninas in between them. It was cut short by the arrival of the super El Nino of 1998 that is not a part of ENSO. It came and left very fast. In its wake there was a short step warming that started in 1999. In only three years it raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius, and then stopped. It was also the only warming during the entire satellite era since 1979. A third of a degree is not small if you consider that according to Hansen the total warming of the entire twentieth century was only 0.8 degrees, and other estimates are even lower. When the hiatus was ten years old Hansen suddenly noticed it and quickly grabbed it for the greenhouse effect. That is quite impossible because there was no increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide when the step warming started. Since that step warming stands alone in the middle of the satelite era we must expect that its ecological consequences, if any, will become visible in the twenty-first century. And now lets tackle the left side where ENSO rules. In a situation like that the global mean temperature is determined by the center point of a line connecting the top of an El Nino peak with the bottom of its neighboring La Nina valley. If As I explained in my book “What Warming” El Ninos and La Ninas come in pairs because they are generated by a harmonic oscillation of the Pacific basin. I put dots to mark the center points of these lines and found that the dots formed a horizontal straight line. The line was 18 years long, proving that for eighteen years there was no warming there. You will find it as figure 15 in my book. This means that there existed a hiatus of eighteen years in the eighties and nineties amd yet we did not know anout it. I have periodically drawn attention to this fact but have been ignored. I can see why warmists will want to ignore this but those opposing the global warming scam have remained equally ignorant. And this is why I give you a failing grade for doing your homework. You must fix it by getting rid of the up-sloping line in this and other graphs you made and putting in the the line showing the hiatus in the eighties and nineties. There is even more to this, however, because I also discovered that warmist thugs had covered up the hiatus with a fake warming called “late twentieth century warming.” It appears now as part of the official global temperature curve. I discovered in 2008 that HadCRUT3 was instrumental in cooking up this cover-up and even put a warming about it into the preface of my book. It was completely ignored. Later I found that GISS and NCDC were co-conspirators in the cover-up because they all had their outputs trimmed by the same computer and the computer left is footprints on their official output curves. Changing scientific data with intent to deceive is a scientific crime. It should be investigated and punished as appropriate. Arno Arrak
Arno, several times commenters have tried to guide you about the use of paragraphs, to no avail.
He fancies himself another James Joyce, I think.
I mentioned before the super El Nino makes no difference and is illustrated in the chart below.
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/RSSvRemovedElNino_LaNina1997-2001_zpsxgmb0osy.png
Removing the El Nino 1997/98 and La Nina after it makes no difference on the pause (actually not a pause, but a new cooling period). In fact on this example it shows a very slight cooling instead.
Correct link from above is here if does not work.
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/RSSvRemovedElNino_LaNina1997-2001_zpsc7piknah.png
Regarding the inflexion or cross over point, a 121 month filter always picks out a maximum or minimum in data that is decades long. It has shown below the peak of the 121 month filter occurs in 2005. So this rules out point 2003 and 2007/8, but they are still fairly close.
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/RSS%20Globalv13v121month_zpscmfmnhcm.png
I note sunspot activity is low for the new century. Could this contribute to the current cooling “trend”?
Astro-physicists and other experts might like to comment.
Thanks