Climate researchers have published a new paper this week in the journal Nature Climate Change that acknowledges there has been a global warming slowdown from 2000-2014. Their research shows a hiatus did indeed occur and continued into the 21st century, contradicting another study last June that said the hiatus was just an artifact that “vanishes when biases in temperature data are corrected.” This is not the first time activists have tried to hide the hiatus by using dodgy methods. –Thomas Richard, The Examiner, 24 February 2016
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An apparent slowing in the rise of global temperatures at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which is not explained by climate models, was referred to as a “hiatus” or a “pause” when first observed several years ago. Climate-change sceptics have used this as evidence that global warming has stopped. But in June last year, a study in Science claimed that the hiatus was just an artefact which vanishes when biases in temperature data are corrected. Now a prominent group of researchers is countering that claim, arguing in Nature Climate Change that even after correcting these biases the slowdown was real.
“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.”
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Ups and downs
The debate revolves in part around statistics on temperature trends. The study1 that questioned the existence of the slowdown corrected known biases in the surface temperature record maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), such as differences in temperature readings from ships and buoys. This effectively increased the warming recorded, and the researchers also extended the record to include 2014, which set a new record high for average temperatures.
That work, led by Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina, calculated the rate of global warming between 1950 and 1999 as being 0.113 °C per decade, similar to the 0.116 °C a decade calculated for 2000–14. This, Karl said, meant that an assessment done by the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 20133 showing that warming had slowed was no longer valid.
Fyfe and his colleagues argue2 that Karl’s approach was biased by a period of relatively flat temperatures that extended from the 1950s into the early 1970s. Greenhouse-gas emissions were lower then, and emissions of industrial pollutants such as sulphate aerosols were cooling the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space. Fyfe says that his calculations show that the planet warmed at 0.170 °C per decade from 1972 to 2001, which is significantly higher than the warming of 0.113 °C per decade he calculates for 2000–14.
Fyfe says that the advantage of this approach is that it takes account of events that affect decadal temperature trends. For instance, researchers have found that climate models underestimated the cooling effect of volcanic eruption and overestimated the heating from solar radiation at the beginning of the twenty-first century4. Other researchers are investigating variability in the Pacific Ocean, including a measure of sea surface temperatures known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)5. All these things can affect the climate, and mask the longer-term warming trend.
Bumps and wiggles
Susan Solomon, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says that Fyfe’s framework helps to put twenty-first-century trends into perspective, and clearly indicates that the rate of warming slowed down at a time when greenhouse-gas emissions were rising dramatically.
–Jeff Tollefson, Nature, 24 February 2016
As long as there are upward slopes the general public will believe warming. They don’t know of the importance of time. relative values, margins of error, and the influence of x-y scales over slope. Nor do they want to know. Nothing much will change until slopes start to descend. We have to be so patient and spend the time while waiting on such things as forcings, researching feed back mechanisms, and more accurate measurement. Oh for a Chrystal ball. 🙂
I contest the frequent modelers’ claims that manmade aerosols cause the global cooling that occurred from ~1940 to 1975. This aerosol data was fabricated to force the climate models to hindcast the global cooling that occurred from 1940 to 1975, and is used to allow a greatly inflated model input value for climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 (ECS).
The climate models cited by the IPCC typically use ECS values far above 1C, which must assume strong positive feedbacks for which there is no evidence. If anything, feedbacks are negative and ECS is less than 1C. This is the key reason why the IPCC’s climate models greatly over-predict global warming, imo.
Some history on this subject follows:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/27/new-paper-global-dimming-and-brightening-a-review/#comment-151040
Allan MacRae (03:23:07) 28/06/2009 [excerpt]
Repeating Hoyt : “In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly.”
___________________________
Here is an email just received from Douglas Hoyt [in 2009 – my comments in square brackets]:
It [aerosol numbers used in climate models] comes from the modelling work of Charlson where total aerosol optical depth is modeled as being proportional to industrial activity.
[For example, the 1992 paper in Science by Charlson, Hansen et al]
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/255/5043/423
or [the 2000 letter report to James Baker from Hansen and Ramaswamy]
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:DjVCJ3s0PeYJ:www-nacip.ucsd.edu/Ltr-Baker.pdf+%22aerosol+optical+depth%22+time+dependence&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
where it says [para 2 of covering letter] “aerosols are not measured with an accuracy that allows determination of even the sign of annual or decadal trends of aerosol climate forcing.”
Let’s turn the question on its head and ask to see the raw measurements of atmospheric transmission that support Charlson.
Hint: There aren’t any, as the statement from the workshop above confirms.
__________________________
IN SUMMARY
There are actual measurements by Hoyt and others that show NO trends in atmospheric aerosols, but volcanic events are clearly evident.
So Charlson, Hansen et al ignored these inconvenient aerosol measurements and “cooked up” (fabricated) aerosol data that forced their climate models to better conform to the global cooling that was observed pre~1975.
Voila! Their models could hindcast (model the past) better using this fabricated aerosol data, and therefore must predict the future with accuracy. (NOT)
That is the evidence of fabrication of the aerosol data used in climate models that (falsely) predict catastrophic humanmade global warming.
And we are going to spend trillions and cripple our Western economies based on this fabrication of false data, this model cooking, this nonsense?
*************************************************
Allan MacRae
September 28, 2015 at 10:34 am
More from Doug Hoyt in 2006:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/02/cooler-heads-at-noaa-coming-around-to-natural-variability/#comments
[excerpt]
Answer: Probably no. Please see Douglas Hoyt’s post below. He is the same D.V. Hoyt who authored/co-authored the four papers referenced below.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=755
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:37 am
Measurements of aerosols did not begin in the 1970s. There were measurements before then, but not so well organized. However, there were a number of pyrheliometric measurements made and it is possible to extract aerosol information from them by the method described in:
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. The apparent atmospheric transmission using the pyrheliometric ratioing techniques. Appl. Optics, 18, 2530-2531.
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occurring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and in other in Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends.
So when MacRae (#321) says: “I suspect that both the climate computer models and the input assumptions are not only inadequate, but in some cases key data is completely fabricated – for example, the alleged aerosol data that forces models to show cooling from ~1940 to ~1975. Isn’t it true that there was little or no quality aerosol data collected during 1940-1975, and the modelers simply invented data to force their models to history-match; then they claimed that their models actually reproduced past climate change quite well; and then they claimed they could therefore understand climate systems well enough to confidently predict future catastrophic warming?”, he close to the truth.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
Re #328
“Are you the same D.V. Hoyt who wrote the three referenced papers?” Yes.
“Can you please briefly describe the pyrheliometric technique, and how the historic data samples are obtained?”
The technique uses pyrheliometers to look at the sun on clear days. Measurements are made at air mass 5, 4, 3, and 2. The ratios 4/5, 3/4, and 2/3 are found and averaged. The number gives a relative measure of atmospheric transmission and is insensitive to water vapor amount, ozone, solar extraterrestrial irradiance changes, etc. It is also insensitive to any changes in the calibration of the instruments. The ratioing minimizes the spurious responses leaving only the responses to aerosols.
I have data for about 30 locations worldwide going back to the turn of the century. Preliminary analysis shows no trend anywhere, except maybe Japan. There is no funding to do complete checks.
The alarmists are all in a panzy?
I wonder what the repercussions of this paper will be? Will the global warming establishment take this lying down, or will they try and vilify and discredit the authors?
If it does not get any play in the newspapers and other main-stream media, then why even address it? They will want to avoid the Streisand effect.
Will the global warming establishment take this lying down
=================
reminds me of the schoolmarm that wouldn’t stand for any hanky panky. If there was any fooling around to be had, she wanted it lying down.
My post of early this morning has apparently disappeared. I’ll shorten it here:
I reject as false the frequent modellers’ claims that manmade aerosols cause the global cooling that occurred from ~1940 to 1975. This aerosol data was fabricated to force the climate models to hindcast the global cooling that occurred from 1940 to 1975, and is used to allow a greatly inflated model input value for climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 (ECS).
The climate models cited by the IPCC typically use ECS values that are inflated far above 1C, which must assume strong positive feedbacks for which there is NO evidence. If anything, feedbacks are negative and ECS is less than 1C. This is one key reason why the IPCC’s climate models greatly over-predict global warming.
Some history on this fabricated aerosol data follows:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/27/new-paper-global-dimming-and-brightening-a-review/#comment-151040
More from Douglas Hoyt in 2006:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/02/cooler-heads-at-noaa-coming-around-to-natural-variability/#comments
Regards to all, Allan
What happens if air with -1°C flows across ice? Nothing, it remains solid.
But what happens if the air has +1°C? The ice will melt and takes the heat from the air, leaving this air colder than before. So, as long as the mean temperature of the air flowing to the arctic was lower than 0°C the ice was stable. But now often this is not so. The icecap at the pole is melting faster and faster, cooling down the air. This is the main reason, that the mean temperature of the globe is not rising so fast as expected.
What will happen when all ice surrounding the pole is molten? The temperature will go up faster than ever.
Please wait for it 10 or 15 years. But then all your arguing will be in vain.
The trend in the temperature is never a straight line. It is the overlay of a straight line and some cycles with different time scales and amplitudes. So it is easy to find times the temperature is just not rising, and some years later this temperature rise is much faster than before. So climate change can not be detected by looking at a timespan of 10 years, the scope must be much longer. Compare the temperature with data 100 years ago.
For heaven’s sake.
So, the current “debate over climate science” is between two camps:
Karl et al, who believe that 66 years of ever increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have had ZERO effect on “global warming” rates,
And the challengers, who back Fyfe’s claim that 66 years of ever increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have had less than ZERO effect on “global warming” rates.
Cool.
Literally.
I would like some help in my preparation of material for my warmy friends and family. At the moment I am met with emotional distress and horror plus some suggestions that maybe I should not be instructing in a green forum any longer. I feel my green credentials are fine as they are based on the facts as I know them and now I have been made aware of the hoax I am also keen to share this as and when appropriate. This site with the sarcasm and occasional clear right wing bias is no good for the group of people I need to talk to so could anyone list some suitable sites/resources/videos useful to factually instruct without judging the green philosophy? Thank you for your help.
Luma-
I feel your communication/ credibility skills could use some work. For example, insulting the integrity of a specific group of people and THEN asking them to help you find more “suitable” people makes you appear to be illogical, irrational, and socially inept all at once. If the people you “need to talk to” are so sensitive to their own personal philosophies that they can’t view/read/or endure any criticisms of them from people who do not share those philosophies, then I highly doubt that you, or anyone else, is going to be able to make much of an impact upon them. Especially considering the fact that you aren’t capable of finding sources that you consider to be “suitable” on your own. No one believes in a “guide” or “instructor” that hasn’t actually made the journey first, themselves.
Ouch.
In fairness to Luma, though, when I first looked around while trying to make up my mind about AGW, I found WUWT confusing, too, precisely because it is so open – science and politics, sense and nonsense all freely intermixed. Climate Audit runs a tighter ship with less scope for political bloviation, but at the same time the discourse tends to be more dry and technical.
I would tell any listeners that they should simply ignore politics – AGW should be evaluated based on truth or untruth, not based on political affinities. Yes, sceptics are conservatives more often than not, but there is absolutely no contradiction between being a sceptic and at the same time supporting environmental protection or free healthcare and education.
actually when you read the “about the author” part i think that most AGW publicity screamers may still learn from him with their massive carbon print.
when you read the critics about “green” solutions” here it are well founded critics. I for example have also a lot of criticism on renewable energy, but am certainly not against the idea (in fact it IS the future energy source we should take), but the way it is done now is really not the way it should be done.
Renewable energy is still in it’s development. It’s not ready yet to replace our current power plants for the energy our civilization requires, that’s a clear cut fact. Even if it would be ready, the power grids are not ready yet for a complete “green energy source”. Simple example of what i mean with this: if all houses here in Belgium would have solar panels and a small windmill and it would all be running, our power grid would blow to pieces each time there is much wind and/or much sun (in 2015 it even did almost happen when we had a very sunny july).
Also when there is no wind, wind turbines do require energy from the power grid in order to keep them going. (this i know from a guy that works for the off shore belgian wind park) These moments are rare but they do occur.
At this very moment renewable energy is still in it’s late infancy and needs more development to be also durable (i call a life span of 20 years for a wind turbine not a durable solution). We’re better off in developing this further instead of “rushing these sources into the power grid”, to find then still some “child diseases” in them, or a power grid that can’t handle the peaks, while a steadier more researched study and pre development of the power grid structure would prevent this.
I see four steps that would make this transition smooth and without problems, but these would only work in a long term planning:
1 first prepare the power grid for these very fluctuating energy sources
2 provide a technology to actually store power for the moments there is not enough power generated
3 while performing steps 1 and 2, develop efficient solar panels and windmills, tidal power plants and biomass electric plants from scratch instead of converting existing power plants into green, but very inefficient power plants.
4 with steps 1,2 and 3 done, build it and the switch to renewable energy would go fine.
finally: make renewable energy accessible for everyone. here in Belgium it’s not interesting anymore to have solar panels: we have to pay for the power they generate in excess so in fact when you try to unload the environment, you got taxed for it, because you distribute your generated power onto the power grid.
so in the actual stages, is it about “saving climate” or is it about “saving wallets”? To me it smells at this moment more like “saving wallets” then saving climate
and finally when you load a climate and energy debate with “left and right politics” you ain’t gonna get nowhere. you have to stay above that paradigm and work with facts.
Think about it this way: all the money spent for this climate debate and to the IPCC is lost money for a non pollutant gas. If all this spent money was used to, for example, clean all the plastic waste in the oceans, our oceans would have been clean again.
then at least one serious environmental issue would have been actively dealt with.
ever thought about that?
What I continue to find compelling (even more so with this latest report confirming the pause in GW – w/ Michael Mann’s name on it ), is that during the period between 1950 – 2014, some 64 years, during which the consensus supports the view that there is a human footprint on global temperature (AGW), we’ve only experienced some 29 years (using 1950 as the starting date) of significant warming. Even then, only some the warming is believed to be caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
29 out of 64 years. Less than 1/2.
And, as CO2 continues to rise, there is less and less GW.
The new paper does not corroborate a pause or hiatus. From the study:
A warming slowdown is thus clear in observations; it is also clear that it has been a ‘slowdown’, not a ‘stop’.