Guest post by David Middleton
Cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean have thrown earth’s surface into what may be an unprecedented warming spurt, following a global warming slowdown that lasted about 15 years.
While El Niño is being blamed for an outbreak of floods, storms and unseasonable temperatures across the planet, a much slower-moving cycle of the Pacific Ocean has also been playing a role in record-breaking warmth. The recent effects of both ocean cycles are being amplified by climate change.
A 2014 flip was detected in the sluggish and elusive ocean cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, which also goes by other names, including the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. Despite uncertainty about the fundamental nature of the PDO, leading scientists link its 2014 phase change to a rapid rise in global surface temperatures.
The effects of the PDO on global warming can be likened to a staircase, with warming leveling off for periods, typically of more than a decade, and then bursting upward.
“It seems to me quite likely that we have taken the next step up to a new level,” said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The 2014 flip from the cool PDO phase to the warm phase, which vaguely resembles a long and drawn out El Niño event, contributed to record-breaking surface temperatures across the planet in 2014.
[…]
Cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean have thrown earth’s surface into what may be an unprecedented warming spurt, following a global warming slowdown that lasted about 15 years.
“Unprecedented warming spurt”… When? Where?
A 2014 flip was detected in the sluggish and elusive ocean cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO
Firstly, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation doesn’t drive anything; so it could not be “playing a role in record-breaking warmth.” The PDO, particularly its long-term behavior is a response to, not a cause of warming and cooling cycles (quasi-periodic fluctuations). The late 20th century warming phase was coincident with PDO phase reversals. It flipped from negative to positive in 1976-77 and then flipped back to negative in 1997-98. Is there any indication that it has flipped from its cool to its warm phase as it did in “The 1976-77 Climate Shift of the Pacific Ocean“? My short answer is, “No.”
The long term signal of the PDO as indicated by the 10 year mean and band pass filter is clearly still cool. Large swings of short duration are not uncommon. The current upswing is very similar to the strong El Niño of 1957-58, which occurred in the middle of a PDO cool phase. While it is possible that the PDO has begun to flip, it will be several years before we will know if this is a genuine phase shift or just strong El Niño
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To me, the article resembles a request for a grant/loan extension of 15 years from some college student who is experimenting in bedroom singularities.
Keeping the dream alive one hysterical claim at a time. These guys generate more noise than Seattle’s 12th Man (Seattle Seahawks Football Fans for the newly arrived women and orphans – notoriously and strategically noisey).
Get a grip people. A researcher (going for his PhD?) investigating the cause of variation in salmon harvests discovered the PDO in 1996. He was not a climate researcher. He was a fish expert.
Since his work, the “climatologists” have been spinning theories to account for this pattern. Without much success. Just computer boys crunching numbers. Makes you wonder what else might be discovered with less money spent on computer models and more time spent researching real world problems, like fish harvests.
Regarding “Firstly, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation doesn’t drive anything”:
Dr. Roy Spencer, a skeptic of AGW being great, seems to say that PDO (not ruling out something else natural that PDO correlates well with) is a major driver of global temperature, and explains much of the warming during times the world warmed rapidly, and lack of warming when the world did not warm rapidly.
I think the issue is whether or not PDO is making a transition from a cooling phase to a warming phase. The various oscillations are noisy, and some of them may be resonances responding to other things as opposed to being fully self-sustaining oscillations. One question is whether a recent uptick of some PDO index is some sort of short term noise to be followed by PDO returning to favoring lack of warming for another decade or more, or if PDO is flipping towards warming-favoring for real.
Another question is how to define the PDO – I think it is poorly defined. I have heard of it having two components with different periods – and I see this as one of a few signs that PDO is not yet either fully defined or understood.
One thing that comes to my mind is that The Blob seems to have contributed to a high value of PDO indices. The Blob seems to me as one of the many random multi-year weather events that happen all the time.
The PDO is a very useful metric. It correlates with a lot of other phenomena, including Mantua’s salmon harvest observations.
It just isn’t an actual change in oceanic circulation and/or major weather systems like the AMO and ENSO. It is an statistically derived index of temperature patterns.
It is an indicator, not a driver.
PDO killed the ENSO spike.
The year to year PNA has been mostly positive for several winters. But as stated, it would be entirely premature to say anything about a “decadal” oscillation.
CO 2 AGW theory is dead. D. E. A. D. dead.
We ‘re all just waiting around now for the political regime change to occur. Woe be to those still-believer scientists who refuse to accept the obvious when the political winds change.
I am confused about El Ninos. They were defined since the mid 1400’s by the Spanish Fleet as warming of the Pacific linked to West Coast rain. So if we study basin discharge of Southern California, say Hansen Dam records that go back to 1933, we can see episodes of high discharge culturally called El Ninos all that time. Yet, only 1998 was linked to global warming in the record. Nothing in 1969, in 1983, or 2004. Massive flooding here is Socal, and no global warming. Why is it that a singular event of 1998 is used to define a link of El Nino’s to global warming since there are no other correlations, if we use basin discharge data? Are El Ninos now not supposed to be linked to rainfall? Anything anyone comes up with year to year? ENSO’s are now El Nino’s? I thought ENSOs were models. It also appears that El Ninos are now being redefined by other means that are ambiguous and subject to debate. Basin discharge is discharge but the ocean is big and the numbers are unclear. For basin discharge and its impact on the inhabitants here, no El Nino since 1933 is linked to warming, and up to 1969 event, the discharge amounts were a third of present El Ninos. Any ideas? If someone says “1998 warmed because of the El Nino, it was sooooo big”, okay, show me another El Nino where this occurred. Some say, oh lookit, 2010 was an El Nino year and the temp went up. Oh really? There was no rain here. Furthermore, there is no positive ENSO to El Nino correlation at all, if you base El Ninos on basin discharge data. Are extremely wet winters here with massive flooding supposed to be due to something else? If so, what else?
Donald Kasper I suggest you go to Bob Tisdale’s fine blog and find one of his ENSO primers. You will find everything answered if you are willing to invest some time.
Here is the link:
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/
I think PDO has flipped. ( but from rising positive level to declining positive level).. The positive level has been dropping for 3 months in a row . As the impact of 2015/2016 El NINO diminishes , PDO will probably return to the negative mode later this year, in my opinion. The 1940-1980 cool cycle started with the PDO going negative in 1944 and stayed cool until PDO went positive again in 1976.
http://research.jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
The key to PDO is its pattern . A negative pattern which means more colder water in eastern side of the Pacific than in the western or central Pacific , seems to change the weather patterns over much of North America especially the west half).
The PDO has been shown previously to modulate winter precipitation in the US as well as summer drought and stream flow in the conterminous US (McCabe et al 2004)
I think during the next 1-2 decades , both PDO and AMO will again be negative like 1895-1915 and also 1965-1975 when Northern Hemisphere and especially North America had some very cold years
Article by McCabe et al called” Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multi-decadal drought frequency in United States”
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/12/4136.full.pdf
The oceans contain 1,000x the energy of the atmosphere. CO2 does nothing to warm the ocean. You could transfer all the heat in the atmosphere to the ocean and it wouldn’t do diddly. Explain what warm the oceans and you explain the global temperatures.
No blob this year.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/cdas-sflux_ssta_global_1.png
There’s that word again…”unprecedented”…. Just 14 months ago we had some other “unprecedented” weather: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/11/18/analysis-coldest-november-morning-in-u-s-since-1976-all-50-states-freeze/
But that probably didn’t make it into their “anomaly” list.
In 1979, there was an article in newspapers titled something like “Prediction: Warming until 2009 then cooling…”. From my recollection of that article, they said that their proxy data suggested that there could be 30 to 50 years of cooling.
I believe that article because they based their assumption on a pattern that they saw from their proxies. I guess it remains to be seen if they are right or if the PDO did flip to a warm phase. My money is on the 1979 article….
” leading scientists link its 2014 phase change to a rapid rise in global surface temperatures.”
It should happen any time now as I haven’t seen parts of the yard that have been buried in snow since November. Despite several periods of warm weather. I predict about June or July.
I quote:
“A 2014 flip was detected in the sluggish and elusive ocean cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, which also goes by other names, including the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. Despite uncertainty about the fundamental nature of the PDO, leading scientists link its 2014 phase change to a rapid rise in global surface temperatures.”
Why bother with such nebulous stuff that nobody understands?