No global warming at all for 18 years 8 months
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Paris agreement is more dangerous than it appears. Though the secession clause that this column has argued for was inserted into the second draft and remained in the final text, the zombies who have replaced the diplomatic negotiators of almost 200 nations did not – as they should have done in a rational world – insert a sunset clause that would bring the entire costly and pointless process to an end once the observed rate of warming fell far enough below the IPCC’s original predictions in 1990.
It is those first predictions that matter, for they formed the official basis for the climate scam – the biggest transfer of wealth in human history from the poor to the rich, from the little guy to the big guy, from the governed to those who profit by governing them.
Let us hope that the next President of the United States insists on a sunset clause. I propose that if 20 years without global warming occur, the IPCC, the UNFCCC and all their works should be swept into the dustbin of history, and the prosecutors should be brought in. We are already at 18 years 8 months, and counting. The el Niño has shortened the Pause, and will continue to do so for the next few months, but the discrepancy between prediction and reality remains very wide.
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 8 months since May 1997, though one-third of all anthropogenic forcings have occurred during the period of the Pause.
It is worth understanding just how surprised the modelers ought to be by the persistence of the Pause. NOAA, in a very rare fit of honesty, admitted in its 2008 State of the Climate report that 15 years or more without global warming would demonstrate a discrepancy between prediction and observation. The reason for NOAA’s statement is that there is supposed to be a sharp and significant instantaneous response to a radiative forcing such as adding CO2 to the air.
The steepness of this predicted response can be seen in Fig. 1a, which is based on a paper on temperature feedbacks by Professor Richard Lindzen’s former student Professor Gerard Roe in 2009. The graph of Roe’s model output shows that the initial expected response to a forcing is supposed to be an immediate and rapid warming. But, despite the very substantial forcings in the 18 years 8 months since May 1997, not a flicker of warming has resulted.
Figure 1a: Models predict rapid initial warming in response to a forcing. Instead, no warming at all is occurring. Based on Roe (2009).
The current el Niño, as Bob Tisdale’s distinguished series of reports here demonstrates, is at least as big as the Great el Niño of 1998. The RSS temperature record is now beginning to reflect its magnitude. If past events of this kind are a guide, there will be several months’ further warming before the downturn in the spike begins.
However, if there is a following la Niña, as there often is, the Pause may return at some time from the end of this year onward.
The hiatus period of 18 years 8 months is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend. 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 rate on the RSS dataset since it began in 1979 is equivalent to 1.2 degrees/century.
And yes, the start-date for the Pause has been inching forward, though just a little more slowly than the end-date, which is why the Pause has continued on average to lengthen.
The UAH satellite dataset shows a Pause almost as long as the RSS dataset. However, the much-altered surface tamperature datasets show a small warming rate (Fig. 1b).
Figure 1b. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the GISS, HadCRUT4 and NCDC terrestrial monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly datasets shows global warming at a rate equivalent to 1.1 C° per century during the period of the Pause from May 1997 to September 2015.
Bearing in mind that one-third of the 2.4 W m–2 radiative forcing from all manmade sources since 1750 has occurred during the period of the Pause, a warming rate equivalent to little more than 1 C°/century (even if it had occurred) would not be cause for concern.
As always, a note of caution. Merely because there has been little or no warming in recent decades, one may not draw the conclusion that warming has ended forever. The trend lines measure what has occurred: they do not predict what will occur.
The Pause – politically useful though it may be to all who wish that the “official” scientific community would remember its duty of skepticism – is far less important than the growing discrepancy between the predictions of the general-circulation models and observed reality.
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 311 months January 1990 to November 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 September 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. In a rational scientific discourse, those who had advocated extreme measures to prevent global warming would now be withdrawing and calmly rethinking their hypotheses. However, this is not a rational scientific discourse.
Key facts about global temperature
These facts should be shown to anyone who persists in believing that, in the words of Mr Obama’s Twitteratus, “global warming is real, manmade and dangerous”.
Ø The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 224 months from May 1997 to December 2015 – more than half the 444-month satellite record.
Ø There has been no warming even though one-third of all anthropogenic forcings since 1750 have occurred since 1997.
Ø The entire UAH dataset for the 444 months (37 full years) from December 1978 to November 2015 shows global warming at an unalarming rate equivalent to just 1.14 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 0.75 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 Compare the warming on the Central England temperature dataset in the 40 years 1694-1733, well before the Industrial Revolution, equivalent to 4.33 C°/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 little more than 1 Cº per century. The IPCC had predicted close to thrice as much.
Ø To meet the IPCC’s original central prediction of 1 C° warming from 1990-2025, in the next decade a warming of 0.75 C°, equivalent to 7.5 C°/century, would have to occur.
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 buoys, are warming at a rate of just 0.02 Cº per decade, equivalent to 0.23 Cº per century, or 1 C° in 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 fact of a long Pause is an indication of the widening discrepancy between prediction and reality in the temperature record.
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 than the rest to capture such fluctuations without artificially filtering them out.
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 as 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. The headline graph in these monthly reports begins in 1997 because that is as far back as one can go in the data and still obtain a zero trend.
Fig. T1a. Graphs for RSS and GISS temperatures starting both in 1997 and in 2001. For each dataset the trend-lines are near-identical, showing conclusively that the argument that the Pause was caused by the 1998 el Nino is false (Werner Brozek and Professor Brown worked out this neat demonstration).
Curiously, Dr Mears prefers the terrestrial datasets to the satellite datasets. The UK Met Office, however, uses the satellite data to calibrate its own terrestrial record.
The length of the Pause, 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.
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 0.27 Cº, equivalent to little more than 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 approaching three 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.
Figure T7. Near-global ocean temperatures by stratum, 0-1900 m, providing a visual reality check to show just how little the upper strata are affected by minor changes in global air surface temperature. Source: ARGO marine atlas.
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.
In early October 2015 Steven Goddard added some very interesting graphs to his website. The graphs show the extent to which sea levels have been tampered with to make it look as though there has been sea-level rise when it is arguable that in fact there has been little or none.
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. T8):
Figure T8. 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 (Fig. T9):
Figure T9: 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. T10):
Figure T10. 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 gave a paper in Moscow in summer 2015 in which he concluded, 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. T11) and by Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011) that climate sensitivity is below – and perhaps considerably below – 1 Cº per CO2 doubling.
Figure T11. 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.
Finally, how long will it be before the Freedom Clock (Fig. T12) reaches 20 years without any global warming? If it does, the climate scare will become unsustainable.
Figure T12. The Freedom Clock edges ever closer to 20 years without global warming
How much of the 1.1°C per century rate of warming is attributable to El Nino’s. Alarmists will agree that global warming is down to co2 and El Nino’s. If we tale El Nino:s out then what have they got left to attribute to co2, not a lot I would think.
I do not know if a program can be written, but there is a very easy way to do it using Nick’s program here:
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p/temperature-trend-viewer.html
There are different ways to approach this. If you know the start time last month was May 1997 and the end was December 2015, then
Click RSS
Choose: 1989-now
Use the blue to make the period end at December 2015.
Use the red to make the start point at May 1997. If you were to do this, you would see:
Temperature Anomaly trend
May 1997 to Dec 2015
Rate: -0.038°C/Century;
CI from -1.064 to 0.988;
t-statistic -0.073;
Temp range 0.252°C to 0.244°C
Clicking a start of April 1997 gives a positive slope.
When the January 2016 number comes in, use the blue to make the period end at January 2016. Use the red to make the start point at May 1997. If the trend is negative, then see what happens a month earlier, etc. If the trend from May is positive, see what happens with a start month one month later, etc.
However if you have absolutely no clue what the pause length might be, put the blue dot at the latest month and the red dot at the month before the last. Then click the red < to go back a month at a time and see if the trend is negative. With RSS, the trend will switch from positive to negative to positive to negative until May 1997 is reached. Before May 1997, you will never see a negative slope at the present time.
For a good break-down of the ‘pause’ in UAH regions, kenskingdom is a good place to go: https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
UAH global: 18y; 6m.
UAH SH: 19y; 6m
UAH Tropics: 19y
UAH Tropic Oceans: 22y; 10m
UAH North Polar: 14y; 8m
UAH South Polar: 37y; 1m (the entire length of UAH record)
UAH Australia: 18y; 1m
UAH USA (49 states): 18y
The UAH NH is a strange one, the pause appears to be ‘hiding’ in the oceans (see Ken’s site).
BruceC — Please see some of my opinions on your points — I have gone through the website. I worked on Northeastern Rainfall [the government wanted commercial agriculture but failed] for my Ph.D [CSIRO & ANU] with the TheAustralian National University, Canberra . Through my analysis found there is wide variation in rainfall with space and time [in terms of amount,distribution, starting time — highly variable]. I also subjected the data for soil-water balance model and compared with the historical Sorghum crop yields.
I used the concept of cube root of rainfall as a function of global solar radiation and net radiation and evaporation for the northeast Brazil and later to Mozambique & Ethiopia — which indirectly reflect the temperature.
Even in India, the annual rainfall deficit and surplus followed the opposite to annual average at all India level — 2002 & 2009 were drought years at all India average and the corresponding temperature rise is 0.7 & 0.9 oC. Based on such experience I looked at the rainfall 60-year cycle [souhwest monsoon] with temperature — followed a riiverse pattern. This is indicated in my book on Climate Change: Myths & Realities [2008].
Regarding the satellite and ground data — the website looked in to one country [Australia]. At global scale ground based data covers only 20 to 25% of the globe and that too periods differ. Also, majority of the met stations are located in urban areas for convenience of measurements. Rural areas are not covered with such density. The averaging part is trial and error — interpoation& extrapolation. Also, there are several other lacunae in ground based data. In the case of satellite data this is not so. Naturally the satellite data should be lower than the surface data as it gives equal weightage to all areas. That is exactly what is now seen. If we have good network of met stations covering climate system, the ground based temperature as such should be lower and matching the satellite data.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
CO2 emissions are up sharply, agricultural production has boosted noticeably and temperatures have been the same for 18 years 8 months while the oceans have warmed insignificantly. No big temperature change has occurred for 8,000 years. What’s not to like about all that?
It just starts a bit later, but it is still over 15 years:
Temperature Anomaly trend
Nov 2000 to Dec 2015
Rate: -0.011°C/Century;
CI from -1.124 to 1.103;
t-statistic -0.019;
Temp range 0.250°C to 0.248°C
The above is from:
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p/temperature-trend-viewer.html
Why are we and the Alarmist so concerned about the “cherry pick” of 97/98???the only reason there is a spike there is because it was a very strong El Nino! Which is entirely natural event! The debate is about Man Made Global Warming…..which has no effect on the ENSO events…or have i missed somethingalong the way???
Mycroft wrote:
Why are we and the Alarmists so concerned about the “cherry pick” of 97/98?…
Arch-Alarmist Dr. Phil Jones was the one who first established the benchmark year of 1997-98. In a later interview, Jones stated that global warming had only been stopped for a short time, and that at least 15 years would be necessary to show in a statistically meaningful way that warming had stopped. Jones designated the ’97 – ’98 season as the starting date.
Well, that 15 year time frame has come and gone. No doubt Jones felt confident at the time that warming would resume shortly. He was wrong, and he should acknowledge it.
Instead, Jones and most of the alarmist crowd is still trying to argue ‘dangerous AGW’, as Nick Stokes keeps trying to do here. Nick was also wrong. But he can’t admit it any more than Michael Mann can admit that he fabricated a bogus chart that erased the MWP and the LIA.
At this point, they’ve all gone way beyond simply being in error.
Forrest, if I may – we are missing the tree because of the forrest.
The current pause, labeled “The Pause” by MoB can certainly be considered a new “The Pause” since it is a just slightly overall warmer pause than the previous “The Pause”. These “The Pause”-es will continue to fluctuate, it would seem.
If there is a resumption of warming or we begin to cool for a long enough period that a new trend is proclaimed, what was called “The Pause” will then be shown as the longest time of statistically flat temps before either that warming or cooling trend began.
Well, that make sense to me anyway.
BTW, if the pattern holds similar to past El Ninos, can now exact 3 to 4 years of cooling.
Does anyone know how well this correlates with atmospheric temperatures?
http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.jpg
NOAA’s ONI is of only the Nino 3.4 region. The 1997-1998 El Nino was stronger east of the Nino 3.4 region than the current El Nino.
Something else that intrigues me. We talk glibly about trends in the global average temperature but look more closely at the peak in 1998. In just 1 year the GLOBAL average temperature rose by 0.7C equivalent to 70C per century. Temperature is simply a measure of the internal energy of a system and an 0.7C rise means a heck of a lot of energy and there must be a mechanism to explain it. It cant come from a change in energy distribution because by measuring global temperature we are measuring global energy. It has to be coming from outside the measured system. I can think of three possibilities, two internal to the planet and one external.
Firstly (internal to the planet) a change in ice and snow levels, since that releases the latent heat of fusion without appreciable change in temperature it would explain the observation but that implies that during an el nino the amount of ice on earth would have to increase (to release the energy that caused the warming). When I look at the WUWT plot of global ice levels I dont see a rise in the 1997/8 time frame. Too small to measure? Maybe but I do see clear changes in other years eg: a rise in 2003 and a drop in 2006/7 so ice levels can change fast enough to be visible on a 1 year time frame. If the impact of the el nino was so large and ice was the source of the energy change I would expect to see a peak.
Secondly (internal to the planet), that the heat is coming from the oceans. Since their thermal capacity is so much greater than that of the air/surface a small change in their temperature could lead to a much larger change of atmospheric temperature. But it would mean that during an el nino the oceans would have to cool – giving up energy in order to warm the atmosphere. It could be either the surface ocean (increased evaporation) or the deep oceans (reduced convection). When I look at the NASA GISS global ocean temperature it shows a peak during the el nino not a dip, hmm suggests the heat is not coming from the ocean surface in fact quite the opposite, the change in ocean temperature adds to the energy abnormality. Could be the deep oceans and indeed I have read about this as an explanation. But that would mean the planet is pumping more energy OUT of the deep oceans not putting more energy into it, at least during an el nino. Remember the deep oceans are surrounded on all sides by warmer regions so there must be an active heat pump in operation keeping the deep oceans cold which is exactly what Earth’s weather system does.
Thirdly (external) an el nino could increase the fraction of solar energy absorbed by reducing Earth’s albedo (by reduced cloudiness for example) or reduce the long wave energy loss to space. A reduction in albedo would increase the long wave energy loss to space but the change in absorbed solar energy would be significantly larger.
My main point however is that here is a clearly natural phenomenon that can change Earth’s temperature at a rate of 70C/century yet warmists claim that AGW must be true because there is no other possible explanation for the “unprecedented” warming of about 1-2C/century we have been seeing. How do we know for example that the same instability that causes el ninos does not have a much longer time constant component (eg: pacific decadal oscillation) which is doing the same thing over longer time periods. Or maybe many components with a range of time constants. For example, if that natural phenomenon had the same overall magnitude but with a 20 year time constant instead of a 1 year time constant the rate of rise of temperature would equate to 70/20= 3.5C per century. What el ninos are showing is that an entirely natural phenomenon is capable of generating effects 30-50 times larger than the changes we insist “prove” AGW. To me that makes a mockery of the claim that AGW must be true because there is no “natural” explanation for a 20 year period of warming.
Is there evidence of a geothermal cycle?
If by geothermal cycle you mean one involving heat transfer from the hot core of the Earth I don’t know but it would anyway serve to warm the deep oceans. My point was that the deep oceans are surrounded by the hot core of the Earth below and the warm surface above both of which are warmer than the deep ocean itself yet the deep ocean remains cold and have remained cold for an extremely long time. This can only be the case if there is an active heat pump keeping it cold and indeed there is. Warm surface water flows to the poles where it cools due to the very low solar influx at the poles ie: it radiates its energy away to space. This very cold water descends to the depths while some of the deep water which has warmed a bit circulates back to the surface – conventional convective overturning. It may not seem like it at first but its pretty close to a refrigeration cycle. Net effect (although I admit it may not seem so) is that the deep ocean convection pumps net heat OUT of the deep oceans keeping them cold. If you need further explanation – the descending water is colder than the upwelling water even though both are cold relative to the surface water near the tropics. Given that, its a little surprising that AGW supporters are claiming the missing heat during the “pause” is flowing INTO the deep oceans (that would mean the descending water at the poles was warmer but that would reduce the deep ocean circulation by reducing the convective driver) while at the same time they claim that the warming during an el nino is due to reduced deep circulation so less cold upwelling water cooling the surface. This reduced deep ocean circulation both warms the surface and cools the surface depending on what effect one is trying to explain. To me that’s rather a conundrum.
I know their explanations look entirely plausible but when looked at in the above light, the fact that the deep ocean remains cold generates a serious conflict and suggests their explanations are somewhat superficial.
Michael Hammer:
You say
No. In just 1 year the GLOBAL average temperature ANOMALY rose by 0.7°C.
In each year the GLOBAL average temperature rises by 3.8°C during 6 months (January to June) and falls by 3.8°C during the other 6 months (June to January).
And global temperature is highest when the Earth is most distant from the Sun during each year.
The seasonal effect is because water is a better heat sink than land so oceans vary temperature less than land with the seasons. There is more land in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) than the Southern Hemisphere (SH)
Therefore, NH summer average temperatures are hotter than SH summer average temperatures.
And
NH winter average temperatures are colder than SH winter average temperatures.
But global temperature is the average of NH and SH average temperatures.
Use of anomalies hides much information.
For example, alarmists often say ‘global temperature rise must be kept below 2.0°C’ and they are shocked to discover that global temperature rises by nearly double that during each year while nobody notices.
Richard
Richard Courtney, as always, makes a fascinating point. The fact that global temperature varies but about twice as much each year as the UNFCCC’s 100-year 2 C target is one that should be replayed often to put things in perspective.
Monckton of Brenchley:
Yes, I agree. And the seasonal variation of global temperature also puts another matter “in perspective”.
Global temperature is highest when the Earth is most distant from the Sun (i.e. when radiative forcing is lowest) during each year. This suggests that variations to global temperature are more powerfully determined by internal variability of the climate system than by variations to radiative forcing.
Richard
Yes, variations of some 70 plus watts per sq meter increased radiaton resulting in atmospheric cooling. I wonder how the IPCC models handle this??
1) CO2 blankets the globle, so it is hard to blame CO2 for a temperature differential. CO2 400ppm both N and S Hemi, yet there are different temperature variations. In every model I’ve ever created or regression I’ve run, constants don’t cause variations, that is why they are called constants.
2) We’ve put plenty of huge black body radiators in the N Hemisphere called an Interstate highway system. While the urban heat island effect is well known, I’m pretty sure highways in the deserts store a lot more heat than the surrounding sand.
3) Instead of CO2 trapping heat, we should be looking at how many more heat radiators we’ve been adding to the N Hemisphere.
If we truly want to stop global warming, we should be painting our roads and rooftops white.
Richard Courtney suggests that global temperature is greatest when the Earth is farthest from the Sun each year: however, my own tests for seasonal autocorrelation do not show very much month-to-month variability.
Monckton of Brenchley:
You say
I suspect you have tested monthly global temperature anomaly data and not monthly global temperature data.
The monthly variation of the global temperature data is very marked. Please read this and take especial note of its graph of monthly hemispheric and globval temperatures.
Richard
Regarding: “The current el Niño, as Bob Tisdale’s distinguished series of reports here demonstrates, is at least as big as the Great el Niño of 1998”:
It appears to me that Bob Tisdale says otherwise in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/17/is-the-current-el-nino-stronger-than-the-one-in-199798/
especially with figure 4.
Australia’s BoM regards the current El Niño, one of the top three strongest El Niño events of the past 50 years.
They also state;
They expect neutral ENSO conditions around May.
4 of the 5 NINO regions have fallen since their peak in Dec 2015. NINO 1 has been falling since July 2015 (from a peak of ~2.3C to 0.63C).
MoB (hope you don’t mind the abbreviation), can you supply a RSS+UAH+CO2 graph like your figure 1b?
To the best of my knowledge, this is where the AGW signal should be the strongest (even Gavin Schmidt admits this, and AFAIK, the IPCC).
M’dear Lord Monckton, awesome hero:
No Paris was NOT worse than we thought. Oh yes, it has the expected emissions garbage in it and no sunset. None of that matters. It’s not binding. We aren’t getting rid of this hellish nonsense until they let go of it, anyway. And Paris contained the road to that.
The environazis went home from Paris very happy with a breakthrough: an agreement to work toward fixing carbon in the soils through Regenerative Agriculture. And THAT is a life-enhancing and very positive thing.
One thing Climate Alarmists and skeptics agree on is the Keeling curve. We know that more carbon dioxide means more plants and more total life. The alarmists would seem to hate Life, and most of them admit that they do indeed hate human life–“overpopulation.”
Now, everybody is attached to what is best in themselves, and you have a marvellous scientific and mathematical mind combined with formidable wit. When you are that good, it is hard to let go of it and do something else. But the alarmists are fighting the very basis of Life as well as the economy and WINNING is much more important than proving for the 17,243rd time how smart you are.
PARIS LETS US WORK ALONGSIDE THE ALARMISTS. They have figured out that Regenerative Agriculture will sequester the carbon dioxide into the soil–where it really came from in the first place. The loss of soil organisms due to poison-based agriculture is enormous, and it is not really controversial that this threatens our existence and civilization. Everybody knows about earthworms, in particular. If you drop the subject of temperatures, they can drop it, too, and become much more useful and productive.
Well, there is a use for that keen intelligence–learning about the various forms of agriculture. Start with Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” then read a book or two by Joel Salatin, one by Elliott Cole. I am sure a Viscount has estates to try things on. Here is a vital one that improves nutrient levels as well as yields: http://www.originalsonicbloom.com which is a ton of fun and has an inexpensive kit you can buy and see for yourself. Then websearch permaculture and read Schwartz’s “Cows Save the Planet.”
And if you love to attack evil, there are corporations making money poisoning the planet. Try telling the truth about those and suddenly many alarmists may love you as much as we do.
Lets try 20 years no significant global warming …..
It is not just mathematically estimating that you go back with 18 years and 8 months of RSS data to get a zero or negative warming coefficient by single variate linear regression. Confidence matters. I would guess it goes back further in time if looking for a coefficient statistically significant from zero as opposed to zero or negative coefficient. It is like flipping coins and saying a coin is weighted based on 2 of 3 tosses heads versus same with 33 out of 99 flips heads, same coefficient, former is insignificant abet with a non-zero correlation, yet idiots will think global warming exists if you poll them on a above average hot day which is also the former. Curious how many years back need to go if run regression with data till t-ratio pops above 2 for 95% confidence, likely more than 18 years and 8 months.
Note as said, “The hiatus period of 18 years 8 months is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.” and “The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 224 months from May 1997 to December 2015”
OK – I just ran the RSS TLT temperature numbers from http://data.remss.com/msu/graphics/TLT/time_series/RSS_TS_channel_TLT_Global_Land_And_Sea_v03_3.txt myself which go Jan. 1979-Dec. 2015.
I can verify. I get an insignificant coefficient of -0.00038 (or -0.0038 Cº per decade) with a t-ratio of 0.19 if starting with May 1997 RSS temp data (224 months). And also from 1979 onward for full data set get +0.01228 (or +0.12 Cº per decade) with 95% significance by t, however we know it was a tad on the cold side in Jan. 1979 (same for sea ice area anomaly data by satellite being above average in 1979 when the accurate satellite data series starts cherry picking by accident http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg ), and yet for 1979 on temperature trend as Christopher Monckton correctly contends, “global warming at an unalarming rate” which i would concur since just a tad above 1 degree C per century rate based on data sets, not a hill of beans nor catastrophic [and still not any evidence of AGW, and aside I would contend GW if it exists, natural or AGW, such would be beneficial and global cooling would be the catastrophic at polar opposite of group think, mindless politicians, and IPCC], not that worried.
However, also I did the regressions for prior years to May 1997, the coefficient for “warming” does go positive but still insignificant past the last 18 years and 8 months now so called “hiatus” or “pause.”
If I look at t-ratios, get them under 2 until end of 1995.
Thus running the data set from January 1996 to December 2015, get a “warming” coefficient of +0.00372 (+0.372 Cº per century) with a standard error of 0.00186 on it for a t-ratio of 1.996 (R sq of .12).
Thus instead of saying “no global warming for 18 years and 8 months,” I can say with standard 95% confidence that there has been no statistically significant global warming for 20 years [and zero months]. Adding the qualifier, “statistically significant,” pushes it back 16 months.
Anyone can run the same numbers, and RSS data set link above.
It is not just how far back you go for a negative (cooling trend) coefficient to document the “pause,” it is how far back you go for a statistically significant coefficient, and that is exactly 20 years.
…… …
[And also could throw in other variables like El Niño Index, particulates in upper atmosphere (or at least crude dummy variables for volcanoes and ENSO years/months), cloud cover, variations in solar irradiance, and CO2 (logarithmic transformation better due to saturation and electromagnetic wavelength band absorption ability), etc. or all the likely suspects, even better break up by latitudes as opposed to global, yet more noise in pole data aside. I have not done the statistics, but would suspect by adding variables and looking at our real world data which is a true experiment, that there is weak or little evidence going past 20 years for any CO2 link with warming (except for ice core data in very long series before humans where there is a lag as warmer oceans can hold less CO2 after natural warming due to other natural causes). As for IPCC theoretical scare forecasts now proved incorrect, they do not hold up to science. We have data which is better than hypothetical theories which let some feed at the AGW gov. funding/propaganda trough. I would even go past no statistically significant warming for 20 years, and say likely no pause or hiatus since nothing from which to pause, it is colder today than 1,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago, Ok cherry picking, but how long the natural “pause” from global cooling? I like the warm weather more than an ice sheet which reaches all the way into Pennsylvania and covers Chicago with a mile of ice. Amazing how much people will read into a very short temp record and just ignore the many natural variations and cycles jumping to conclusions on spurious correlations where there is no causality, you might as well do a statistical analysis of global warming and organic food consumption as opposed to CO2.]
http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1WZ6h.png
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-emPQTP4zI84/VWCtR3UFvqI/AAAAAAAABkk/DPHybYgMxKY/s1600/clip_image006_thumb1.jpg
From:
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p/temperature-trend-viewer.html
Temperature Anomaly trend
May 1993 to Dec 2015
Rate: 0.772°C/Century;
CI from -0.030 to 1.574;
t-statistic 1.886;
Temp range 0.125°C to 0.299°C
That is 22 years and 8 months of no statistically significant warming for RSS.
Werner,
Thanks for checking significance too.
I ran the RSS TLT data May 1993-Dec 2015, and get
Rate: +0.771421523 °C/Century; that correlates with you perfectly, must be same.
Standard Error on yearly rate coefficient is 0.001544126,
thus t-ratio or statistic is 4.995846245.
R Squared: 0.084616925, 272 monthly observations.
Rate same, but not significance by t-ratio for same series.
Are you doing a one sided test? Null to reject is rate = 0 versus rate > 0?
[Or did Bill Gates do something since I am using MSFT Excel and he supports AGW?]
Is it May 1993 – 22 years and 8 months of no statistically significant warming as you stated, or just 20 years and since January 1996 to December 2015 as I calculated?
[Late night anthropogenic heat in Cologne Germany on NYE by harassment and fireworks and high metabolism rates does not count since half in 2016 by a hair, RSS TLT data set rises a bit above those low standards by hPA, and do not know how far the thermometer is from the train station or cathedral or if “adjusted” by Galvin at GISS and not in RSS data despite, but I guess others have blamed EU migration crisis on AGW.]
Different people may do things differently. I am just using Nick’s program. Perhaps he will answer you.
The test for significance takes account of the autocorrelation of the monthly data. It uses an Ar(1) noise model, as explained here, for example.
Let me correct myself ..
It is not “20 years no significant global warming,”
but current state rather is
20 years [exactly] no significant change in global temperature.
For statistical purposes, neither warming nor cooling at 95% confidence.
Nick Stokes wrote upthread:
I’ve just drawn a graph.
Then Nick goes on to argue his conclusions. Can I do the same thing?
(I would like to interrupt myself for a moment, and say that Michael Hammer has made some excellent comments here. So have many others.)
Nick S. thinks the so-called “pause” will un-pause by May. It may. But that’s predicting the future, which is always risky. Nick avoids the fact that we’ve just observed close to 20 years of contrary indications that demolish all the endless predictions of ‘dangerous AGW’ that infested the media in the late ’90’s. In alarmist land, the ‘pause’ doesn’t count.
The planet has never warmed or cooled smoothly. But it would warm steadily if human CO2 was the cause of the pause. And interestingly, we’ve observed almost exactly the same pattern before man-made CO2 was a factor:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
I argue with Nick that human CO2 emissions cannot be a measurable factor now. The reason is made clear in the radiative physics calculations, which show that even if CO2 doubled from the current ≈400 ppm level, any global warming from that forcing would still be too small to measure. This chart (which I didn’t draw myself) shows it clearly:
Extrapolate out from the current 400 ppm to where you think 800 ppm would be. How much warming would result? It would be too small to measure with current instruments.
Nick Stokes must be aware of these facts, and those posted by Mike Hammer above. I’ve asked him before without getting a specific reply (or any reply), but I’ll try again: Nick, what would it take for you to admit you’re basically wrong about your “dangerous AGW” argument? Would mile-thick glaciers have to cover the US midwest again? Or, can you never accept the possibility that your argument is all blown out of proportion, and that human CO2 emissions are a net benefit to the biosphere?
Some folks complain (correctly) that there are no error bars in many charts, so here’s one that should make them happy:
(OK, they’re not exactly error bars, but they make the point that there’s nothin either unusual or unprecedented happening.)
If there was truth to the claims that human CO2 emissions will cause runaway global warming (or even regular strength global warming), the onus is on them to prove it, or at least, to produce some convincing evidence. But they haven’t. Their argument, like Nick’s, is based mostly on assertions.
Everything the alarmist crowd claims and predicts is contradicted by observations. Nick is certain that human CO2 matters. Show us in this chart where you see it, Nick:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/de/temp-emissions-1850-web.jpg
Really, Nick, show us where human CO2 begins to have a measurable effect:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPGChYUUeuc/VLhzJqwRhtI/AAAAAAAAAS4/ehDtihKNKIw/s1600/GISTemp%2BKelvin%2B01.png
Because with all the (harmless, beneficial) CO2 being emitted, surely global T should be skyrocketing if you’re anywhere near correct. But…
http://www.co2web.info/C-atm-vs-human.jpg
Show us the CO2 warming, Nick. Where is it?
Very grateful to DB Stealey for his interesting graphs, which reinforce the central message of these monthly updates: the rate of global warming is so far below prediction as to discredit the models.
It seems that arguing for catastrophic has been replaced with arguing for microscopic. Now CO2 is credited with causing severe weather, or abnormal weather, without any scientific justification as to how this might occur. There seems to be no effort to try to separate out what changes are occurring naturally.
One technical question:
If you start at the beginning of the satellite data, what trend is shown up until the point where the 1998 El Nino kicks in?
If you ignore the El Nino data points in 1998, it would seem that the whole series could be modeled by no trend, followed by a jump, then no trend after the jump.
Here is another interesting scientific paper,
which in my opinion calls into doubt exactly
what the IPCC are saying about these “Mauna Loa”
measurements of the Scrips institute, because in
this 2001 paper, we see that they are saying the CO2
measurements are meant to show the Volcano’s Outgassing.
Ryan, S. (2001), Estimating volcanic CO2 emission rates
from atmospheric measurements on the slope of Mauna Loa,
/Chem. Geol., 177/, 201-211.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/volcanicco2/Estimating%20Volcanic%20CO2%20Emission%20Rates%20from%20Atmospheric%20Measurements%20on%20the%20Slope%20of%20Mauna%20Loa%20(2001).pdf
So is this really what we are seeing – MAUNA LOA’s emissions !
It is what they set out to measure in the first place, and no doubt
convenient then to subsequently pretend it was about the IPCC
AGW pseudo-science project, because that is very convenient
when it comes to asking for Government funding.
This CO2 measurement was meant to be part of the early warning
system for residents of Hawaii, and this chart shows the location
of all the seismometer & etc the position of the CO2 sensor is shown.
Do any of you really think this sensor measures Global Average CO2 ?.
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/maunaloa/current/monitoringNetwork.jpg
In reply to Climate Change Chronicle, Mauna Loa is by no means the only site at which atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured. There are now sites all over the world, and they are quite well inter-calibrated. For instance, a test that I performed some years ago showed that the amplitude of the seasonal variation tended to increase the farther from the South Pole the measurements were taken. My conclusion is that the CO2 concentration is respectably measured at Mauna Loa and elsewhere, and it is rising. And, pace Murry Salby, the most likely reason for the increase is the rate at which we are emitting CO2.
Monckton of Brenchley remarked :
“Mauna Loa is by no means the only site at
which atmospheric CO2 concentration is
measured. There are now sites all over the
world, and they are quite well inter-calibrated. ”
Here is the official map of CO2 monitoring sites by Scripps :
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/sampling_stations_scripps_o2_co2.png
We can see from this map that though there are
more than one measuring point, these are not by
any stretch “all over the world”. They are in a line
mostly vertical from the South Pole to Alaska in the
north, and with a few outliers on the edge of the
Pacific rim. In fact only one out of the eleven cited
staions is NOT in what could be described as the
Pacific Ocean region, and that is the flask collection
station at “Alert”, in the Nunavut territory.
Actually the explanation at the Scripps website
makes it plain that at many of those sites the gas
is not measured as such, and in their own words :
“The primary (in situ) record from Mauna Loa is
based on measurements made with an analyzer
at the site. At all other stations, the records are
based on flask samples returned to our La Jolla
laboratory for analysis.”
So then these are not worldwide measurements.
These are not instantaneous or even synchronised
analyses. Mauna Loa remains the sole continuous,
in situ 24hrs per day 365 days per year measurement.
The other “worldwide” collection points, are a poor
representative sample of “the World”.
See the full explanation at Scripps website :
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/research/atmospheric_co2
There are however a vast number of observation sites
which are really “Worldwide”, though with a predominance
in western and developed nations, and in populated areas.
Though very many of those sites do also collect flasks of
gas, these are never analysed by Scripps or included in
the official IPCC statistical record for CO2 gas concentrations,
and they still do always only show the chart for Mauna Loa alone.
This business of saying that, the eleven official CO2 “points”
are a good proxy for the entire planet, and then saying that
these eleven are only a test to see whether Mauna Loa is a
good proxy for all of those, and thus then only showing the
Mauna Loa “in situ” measurement to the public and generally,
is a deception in my earnest opinion.
So in conclusion M of B has been duped in to believing that
because NOAA has 214 sites in 51 countries, that these are
all in fact used to measure CO2 for the official record, but alas
this is not the case as we have seen. Even so the vast majority
of those 214 sites are in and around the Pacific Ocean, with
just a few in Continental Europe, Russia and elsewhere.
See the official table, but note that just the eleven stations
marked on the map were actually only used to verify the “in situ”
record at Mauna Loa, which is still the sole official live record !
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/site/site_table2.php
How many people understand that this is the contorted process
which is used to create the Man Made CO2 hypothesis of “CAGW” ?
Where on earth did you get this nonsense graph from?
http://www.co2web.info/C-atm-vs-human.jpg
So 600GT of atmospheric C out of the total 800GT was human emissions?
Note in the graph of total atmospheric carbon and human emissions, the human emissions (whose flatline should be zero) is the annual figure.
[Reply: Thanks for helping ‘Phil.’ understand that chart. –mod]
Of course, if somebody didn’t already mention it in the comments,
in just a couple of years when the 1998 el Nino disappears off the
left hand side of the chart, there will then be a cooling trend, even
if the planet cools no further, due to la Ninas or whatever reason.
Many people do however expect that we shall see temperatures
fall much further, in line with the predicted grand Solar minimum.
Whatever the case this has virtually nothing to do with human
CO2 emissions. We are still using the “measurements” from the
side of Mauna Loa volcano, and extrapolating this to be the same
as an average of all atmospheric measurements from around the
entire globe, monitored 24 hours a day (even if that were possible).
Plainly that is not the same, I pronounce the Scrips Mauna Loa
standard is therefore utter balderdash – so there !
Keeling, yah, boo, sucks !
What if the 1998 El Nino doesn’t disappear from the graph and it remains the highest point in sat records?
BruceC …
The 1998 el Nino MUST disappear off the left hand side of the chart,
if the chart measures only the past 20 years, since this is the goal
as declared by Lord Monckton. In 2018 therefore the 1998 peak
will vanish and by the end of 2018 we shall certainly see a relative
downtrend, whatever might otherwise happen. The 1998 event was
itself unusual, however many factors now point towards a cooling
over the next 30+ years. Frankly I’d rather have the warming, AND
more CO2 in the atmosphere for our great friends ….. The Plants !
The CO2 at the slopes of Mauna Loa continues to rise, and for me
the only thing which that might indicate is some overdue eruption
might take place sooner, rather than later. Signs look ominous ?
… and I might add, please stop foisting your
CO2 fantasies on the rest of the World !
read more….
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/
Here’s another graph for you Nick;
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh154/crocko05/Past%20400000%20year%20temps_zpsmqmty7yo.jpg
When using a 1961-1990 global mean temperature(*), only 20% of the past 400,000 years rises above that average …. with the current ‘unprecedented’ modern warm period being the LOWEST.
(*) Which raises another question:
Where in the peer-reviewed literature does it state what the global mean temperature should?
Oops, should be?
Bruce C has asked an important question. Previous warm periods used to be called climate optima, for good reason.
According to the IPCC the rise of the mean global temperature (as BruceC said, what does this number mean. It is not a temperature) from 1950 up today is determined by CO2, but if you look closer to the data, you see no rise between 1950 and 1976 and the rise of 0.18°C in 1976 is determined by the pacific global shift, which has nothing to do with CO2. So there is no rise between 1950 and 1986 for 36 years.
They are throwing the ball in the right direction. But they are overthrowing it.
The same old Gish Gallop. The “pause” that never was. It gets old after a while.
Same old Harry,who fails to provide a counterpoint to the post or the many comments in reaction.
H. Twinotter,
You are such a clueless imbecile it’s hard to imagine you eating without a bib. The gov’t spends millions every year to maintain the two satellites that accurately measure global temperature. But you don’t like their data, so your reaction is the same as usual:
http://www.moonbattery.com/kathleen-backus.jpg
(Please use only one screen name. Pick this one or ‘Svante Callendar’, and stick with it. -mod.)
[Comment deleted. Identity thief post. ~mod.]
M. Palmer,
Yes, and a mercury thermometer measures the expansion of an element, not temperature.
Yep, Harry. Much like the “linear trend” that has no meaning. Do you suppose Monkton might be quietly pulling your leg with the r^2 value quoted on those graphs, regardless of any “pause”?
After all, what has a straight line drawn over a time series of some aspect of a chaotic non-linear system got to do with anything? What does it tell you about natural variability and therefore the existence or otherwise of net CO2 induced warming? Does this inappropriate “trend” of yours have any predictive skill? If you were actually interested in warming/cooling you’d look at the signal directly, not the damned temperature over some indeterminate period via the contortions of wholly inappropriate linear regression.
That is, the evolving rate of change in context. For example:
http://s11.postimg.org/t2gkaercx/Rss_Rates.png
Those are annual signals derived from monthly anomalies over the entire RSS record. Using simple, time-honoured statistical norms like standard error, this is what it shows:
Northern Polar: +0.269 ±0.394 °C/decade – NOT SIGNIFICANT
Northern Mid Latitudes: +0.183 ±0.207 °C/decade – NOT SIGNIFICANT
Tropics: +0.117 ±0.185 °C/decade – NOT SIGNIFICANT
Southern Mid Latitudes: +0.065 ±0.132 °C/decade – NOT SIGNIFICANT
Southern Polar: +0.004 ±0.286 °C/decade – NOT SIGNIFICANT
If you mash it all together globally you get: 0.126 ±0.113 °C/decade. But it’s blatantly autocorrelated like some drunk at a lamppost. We start and end at the top of short warming spurts. You can draw straight lines anywhere you like; any “trend” is still NOT SIGNIFICANT in its own context.
The clue is in the terminology, Harry. Linear trends have no meaning in non-linear time series. Period.
If there is net CO2 induced warming it clearly cannot be discriminated from natural variation. If you can’t measure it, you can’t quantify it. If you can’t quantify it it’s not science and must remain conjecture – ECS, TCR and all the rest (regardless of meaningless confidence intervals).
Conjecture that’s unfortunately not idle, still costing billions of dollars per annum; distorting political discourse at every level and having a detrimental effect on collective human psyche. To which this entire thread bears testament.
Linear-regression trends have their limitations, but they are a reasonable method of getting some idea of whether a stochastic dataset such as global temperature has been trending upward, downward or not at all over any sufficiently long period of interest. They are used here because they are standard methodology in the documents of the IPCC and in the analyses that appear in the reviewed journals. The absence of any linear trend over as long a period as getting on for 19 years, when a rising trend is expected, does cast some doubt upon the scientific basis (if any) for the exaggerated predictions made by the modelers.
The monthly global temperature data are not strongly auto-correlated; nor, over a sufficiently long period (>15 years) are they much influenced by the occasional outliers caused by el Nino/la Nina events.
Finally, when a linear trend on a stochastic dataset is zero the correlation coefficient is also likely to be at or close to zero. Sure enough, the r^2 on the RSS data for the last 18 years 8 months is close to zero, as expected.
The fact is that these monthly exposes of the discrepancy between prediction and observation are the one serious wound that skepticism has inflicted on the South Sea Bubble that is the global warming scam. The sheer number of papers attempting to explain away the Pause, and the sheer number of tamperings with the terrestrial data to try to get rid of it, show how worried the true-believers are. And they are worried because, in these monthly columns, I use their own data and their own methods.
“The monthly global temperature data are not strongly auto-correlated”
Maybe, but the evolving rate of warming/cooling clearly is. And that is what we’re interested in.
AJB.
You would sound more convincing if you drop the rhetorical questions.
Someone should calculate the confidence interval of this so-called trend line sometime.
I don’t know whether Harry has ever flown in a Twin Otter, but it is time that he put up or shut up. His allegation that the head posting is a Gish gallop implies that it contains a rapid succession of statements of apparent fact that are actually false. Which of the facts in the head posting does the pseudonymous Twit Otter challenge, and on what basis?
Lord Mad Monk.
I am glad you provided a definition of a Gish Gallop, you helped prove my point.
HT,
What is it about “put up or shut up” that has you baffled? You have been challenged by someone who has forgotten more than you will ever learn about this subject, so it’s no wonder you avoid the challenge.
Go back to the peanut gallery where you belong.
Harry is galloping with only twin legs.
This horse will not win a race to the truth,
against a thoroughbred stallion like the
Viscount of Veritas.
Harry is a frequent contributor
to the Warmista Trolling Website,
Hotwhopper run by the professional
whinger, Miriam O’Brien (a.k.a.
Sou from Bundangawoolarangeera).
Miriam is a person who has conducted some
longtime vendetta against WUWT, and maybe
A.W. will not allow even this short explanation
to pollute his blog. However I think we should all
be aware that the vast majority of her postings
are highly critical of ANYTHING written on WUWT,
and in particular A.W. himself.
Google Search for his Posts on Miriam’s Trollsite
( I found about 30 pages of fatuous arguments )
Go away “white kitty”, you are wasting your
time in here, and take all your sock puppets
with you please. Thank you.
Climate Change Chronicle.
So you are stalking me? That makes you, Smokey and that Vlad person.
Honestly bud, you need to get out more 🙂
CCC,
Hairy can only troll because he has no credible facts.
for me it’s simple
The current El nino will shorten the pause as it now is. but seen the fact a strong cold kelvin wave is forming this will be followed by a La nina for sure which will give an equilibrium in the long run.
some are missing the point and mix “how long can you go back in time in the data whilest having a zero trend” with cherry picking: the first will make the pause shift in length making it shorter or longer as the data comes in
cherry picking would just give a fixed start date and not a shifting one. and the trend then would change as new data would follow.
especially important when considdering the greenhouse warming theory: we would have to see the troposphere warming up faster then the surface, while the opposite seems to happen. that means CAGW theory is blatantly flawed.
but i am sure the pause will resume and lengthen when this el nino turns into a la nina which would balance out the current spike we will see.
Folks, the science is settled, and we – the anti-CAGWs – won. It’s not a matter of science, and hasn’t been, for a very long time, if it ever was. It’s a matter of influencing public perception for political purposes, and in that arena, to put the most optimistic possible face on it, we have a long, hard fight ahead. Much as I am loath to diminish the sincere hard work of those who continue to make the scientific case, I fear that at this point it is doing little more than legitimizing the delusion that the CAGWs have one.
Dav09.
Arguing a Conspiracy Theory is not very helpful.
Is you definition of “won” the fact that many heads of government signed the COP21 treaty? If so, it is a strange usage of the word “won”.
Harry Twinotter:
Only you has suggested a “conspiracy theory”. A bandwagon is not a conspiracy, and a coincidence of interests usually has a more powerful effect than a group of conspirators.
But you warmunists like to imagine conspiracy theories because it avoids needing to think (warmunists would be realists if thinking were not hard for them to do).
The Chinese defeated the AGW-scare in 2009 at the CoP in Copenhagen. It was then decided that there would not be a binding Treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. This defeat for the warmunists was confirmed by the so-called ‘Treaty’ that was adopted in Paris in December 2015 and which binds nobody to anything.
Richard
Well that’s broadly correct Dave09.
original article (in German) :
http://www.nzz.ch/klimapolitik-verteilt-das-weltvermoegen-neu-1.8373227
For the record, Edenhofer was co-chair of the IPCC’s Working Group III, and was a lead author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007 which controversially concluded, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
As such, this man is a huge player in advancing this theory, and he has now made it quite clear – as folks on the realist side of this debate have been saying for years – that this is actually an international economic scheme designed to redistribute wealth.
—
As recent as last year :
original article
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm
And Harry. this is NOT “Conspiracy Theory”,
it is however “Conspiracy Fact”, or Fraud actually.
Conniving with others to deliberately mislead the
Public and Politicians, and cause some to suffer
a loss and others to make a gain, as a result of
deception. These are Criminal Acts.
You want to associate yourself with people who condone
Criminal Acts? Then eventually you may be cited as an
accessory before and after the fact. This is no joke.
Climate Change Chronicle:
Thanks for the info about Edenhofer, et al. I didn’t know that . . . and that’s the point I was trying to make. Just about everyone capable of being convinced by the scientific argument has been convinced by now, and there aren’t enough of us to make any difference, anyway. Very many more are capable of understanding the facts you cite, and very few of them know those facts exist. We will gain far more ground in the fight against the warmunists – to pinch Richard’s humorously apt term – by publicizing such facts than by endlessly rehashing a debate that has long been conceded by anyone honest.
Climate Change Chronicler.
“You want to associate yourself with people who condone
Criminal Acts? Then eventually you may be cited as an
accessory before and after the fact. This is no joke.”
If you are the new attack dog on this forum, they are paying you too much.
Question: Why only show average ocean temperature increase for the first 1,900 meters when on average the ocean is 6,400 meters deep?
Answer: Because the ocean between 1,900 meters and 6,400 meters is barely warming at all. So if you average the top 29% with the bottom 71% to REALLY see how much the ocean is warming overall, the numbers are only 1/3 as scary… as if a few hundredths of degrees is even scary at all.
To be fair, the ARGO bathythermographs are not capable of going to greater depths than 2 km. The pressures below that depth would compromise their ballasting system, requiring a very much greater expense than the $1 million each that the buoys now cost.
Regarding this:
“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 8 months since May 1997”
I just noticed that this says “surface temperature”. What’s up with saying that about the satellite-measured lower troposphere, about half of which by mass is 2 km or more above sea level? The weighting curve peaks a little more than 2 km above sea level. See Figure 1 in http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature
My bad. I meant lower troposphere.
how can they claim you cherry picked if you go back any further than 1997, you’ll run into the rise after the coldest point of 1983. These discussions need to include the big chill that apparently took place from the 30’s to 83, eh?
Today’s climate models do not “predict” but rather “project.” Unlike a “projection,” a “prediction” is an example of a proposition. That a “prediction” is a proposition ties a model that makes predictions to logic. That a “projection” is not a proposition divorces a model that makes propositions from logic. In persistently conflating projections with predictions Monckton of Brenchley has thus far proved incapable of owning up to his own mistakes.
Oops: In typing “divorces a model that makes propositions from logic” I should have typed “divorces a model that makes projections from logic.”
Mr Oldberg’s usual waffle has come too late to disrupt this thread. The IPCC, in its 1990 First Assessment Report, plainly uses the words “We predict …”. If Mr Oldberg thibnks the IPCC should have used a different word for the sake of some obscure and pointless semantic quibble, then let him take the matter up with the IPCC, which will pay no attention.
Terry, you have been protesting too much this difference between projection and prediction on every thread that comes up with this. Initially, I thought it was because you were an over-educated, nice, but gullible fellow with an inflated view of himself, talking down to the plebes. IPCC used to use prediction until they were all failing so miserably that someone in the establishment advised they use ‘projection’ to extricate themselves from this pickle. You are a longtime IPCC mogul aren’t you? You seem to take possession of the idea. I suppose if I use the term Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, you would be quick to correct me and explain it’s Climate Change (what else could one do when CAGW stopped). Now Climate Change has also stopped. There is a fearful new term trying to form in your minds that you are all resisting strenuously these days.