Is the global warming pause over for good — or will it continue once the current El Nino dies down?
That is the key question raised by Dr David Whitehouse, the GWPF’s science editor, in a new video released today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
The current El Nino is one of the strongest on record. It has elevated global temperatures to a record level.
Many headlines claimed that 2015 was the year the “hiatus” was busted.
But is the pause in global warming really over?
El Ninos are frequently followed by cooler than average periods called La Ninas, so we can probably expect 2016 to be warm with the following two years somewhat cooler.
What does this mean for the global warming “hiatus?”
It means we have to wait for the current exceptional El Nino to end, and the subsequent La Nina, and a few years into ‘normal’ conditions.
Will global temperatures then start to rise again or will they continue to slow down?
Or will they undergo a step rise, as after the 1998 El Nino.
We shall see.
It will be a step down. It will apear so, of course there no real steps.
appear!
My money is on a stepwise down in temperature that will be statistically significant a few years after the ensuing La Nina. That prediction assumes the Pacific blob continues to disappear and the PDO returns negative, as well as the AMO going negative sometime around 2020-2025.
What “Steep Rise” after the 1998 El Niño are you referring to?? the 15 year period from 1999 through 2014 looks pretty stagnant to me
To Bryan: There is a step rise. The only way science advances is if we admit to the facts which may not fit our beliefs.
Bryan A,
Do you see the step rises here?
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
Quite correct, Bryan. I see no post 1998 step. Very kind of dbstealey to provide the graph where you can clearly see the big 1998 spike and then the fabled ‘pause’ thereafter.
“Jake
March 3, 2016 at 10:30 am
To Bryan: There is a step rise. The only way science advances is if we admit to the facts which may not fit our beliefs.”
________________________________________________________________________________
@Jake
There has not been any “Steep Rise” since the 1998 El Niño through 2014 up until the Data was adjusted in 2015
Even dbstealey’s indicated “RISE” is from prior to 1980 until 2014.
But the statement made by Lance was “Or will they undergo a step rise, as after the 1998 El Nino.”
and
again
since the 1998 El Niño there has been no Rise in temperatures indicated in the Data that wouldn’t exist unless accounted for by Adjustments to the data
Absolutely Gerry,
And there are no other pauses like from 1880 to 1910 (nope, no pause there) or from 1940 to 1977 (nope, no pause there either)
Gee, apologies to all, I misread “STEP RISE” as “STEEP RISE”
I understand his point to be compared to the previous pre 1998 el-nino years (1977-1996). Some on here make the case that almost the entire ~0.25 C warming “step” up was due to the 1998 el-nino. Why the heat stayed in the system longer than anticipated and if/when it will leave are interesting questions.
Time will tell and we should know in a decade or so. Patience is a virtue.
Gerry, England says: “Quite correct, Bryan. I see no post 1998 step.”
The sea surface temperature anomalies for more than 50% of the surfaces of the oceans show very clear upward steps in response to the 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 El Ninos:
Also known as Trenberth “big jumps”.
The graph is posted in my monthly sea surface temperature updates:
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/january-2016-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/
Cheers
Bob Tisdale,
The peaks (el nino) and troughs (la nina) and other smaller variations are just fluctuations in the temperature signal, which is smooth. The steps are ilusory. The fluctuation (noise) can be smoothed out by applying a low pass filter.
The steps are illusory.
to: dbstealey March 3, 2016 at 12:03 pm
You ignorant warmist have absolutely no idea of what global temperature does. No one in their right mind will believe your imaginary steps. Just what do you gain from this provocation?
Arno,
Be nice. We’re on the same side. The chart I posted is from Dr. Phil Jones’ data. If you want to be critical of him, be my guest. But if you think I’m a “warmist”, you’re simply wrong.
A valid question Lance. It will be interesting to see what the next five years brings. If a step rise is observed, this skeptic would believe that it strengthens the AGW case.
Having said that, I think those who believe in CAGW hurt the process known as science.
Yes. Especially with solar declining.
The natural variation of LA Nino and LA Nina sums to zero over time… As all natural cycles sum to zero. What’s left is a slow rise due to external forcing.
Co2, methane, aerosols. Punctuated by small dips caused by volcanoes.
Question to Steven: But, aren’t solar cycles natural processes? What caused the increase, and then decrease, in temperature from about 600 to about 1200 AD? That natural process, over the short term of 1-2 centuries, did not “sum to zero” …. and we are certainly concentrating, in the modern era, over the short term (1850ish to present).
Please after the Little Iced Age we expect the temperature to recover and there be a new climate optimum. The cyclical variability ,450k years would indicate some manifestation of increasing temperature after the cold. It would be alarming if the temperature didn’t recover. Given these facts AGW is simply a robust misrepresentation using the projected new climate optimum corrilation to CO2 as a red herring.
Steven
sum to zero they may, but when you have hundreds of natural cycles running over totally different time spans neither you nor anyone else can say how long of time span you need to look at for them to sum to zero nor can you predict when we are at the zero sum point. The facts are that nothing that is happening now is outside of the limits of natural variability or for that matter even close to outside the limits so your summary judgments on what is the truth of what is happening now is just more nonsense. You may be correct but until you can establish that we are at a sum zero point for natural variability you are just spitting in the wind, the only way to show that external forcing is driving the train is for there to be a unprecedented change outside the scope of what can be explained by natural variability. that has yet to happen.
Seven Mosher says:
What’s left is a slow rise due to external forcing. Co2, methane, aerosols.
Care to speculate on what caused identical warming steps, before human industrial emissions were a factor?
“The natural variation of LA Nino and LA Nina sums to zero over time…”
Pure speculation. You should state it is such, not imply that this is factual.
The basic physics of gases, and the lack of a hotspot, says no AGW, but a steady rise from the little ice age. Possibly now over, though that is moot.
Don’t worry. Mosher sums to zero too.
Step rises are defined by historians.
A real “key question” is whether temps might continue rising enough to drag the models back from outside the utter-fail zone. I would bet on “No”.
Steven, over 400,000 years of proxy reconstructions appears to confirm that natural variation may indeed average to 0, but the ceiling is life giving. It’s the floor that kills. You seem to have it bass ackwards.
Punctuated by small dips caused by volcanoes. Yeah sure Steve, couldn’t possibly be anything else …
http://s16.postimg.org/7ik6ylq1f/Tempus_Fugit.png
Steve Mosher
You have nicely articulated the passivist position on climate. Climate is passive, and can only be changed by atmospheric forcing. No mention of the ocean in your creed, I notice.
You are wrong. You forget the heat capacity and chaotic dynamics of the ocean, which provides a source of natural climate change for centuries and millenia even in the absence of any external forcing. You need to go back to school one more time, learn about the work of Mandelbrot, Lorenz, especially Prigogine and his nonlinear thermodynamics.
Link to full sized image removed again …
http://s16.postimg.org/ss7t9g6c4/Tempus_Fugit.jpg
http://models.weatherbell.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2005_thumb.png
El Nino 2006/7 followed by La Nina
El Nino 2009/10 followed by La Nina follows again
El Nino 2015/16 Followed by La Nina???????????
“Or will they undergo a step rise…”
You mean, will the Earth continue to warm, as it has been doing all along?
Probably, And yes, that may allow you to occasionally cherry-pick some noise and pretend there’s been another faux “pause”, while the glaciers melt and the sea level continues to rise and the ocean becomes more acidified and sea ice continues to collapse and animal migration patterns change and growing seasons shift and all the data in the world confirms that the Earth is warming.
…another faux “pause”…
You’re on-board with the latest talking point, eh?
Yes, the earth has been warming since the little ice age. Why should it stop warming at this point in time? Today’s temperatures are not unprecedented in the Holocene. Warm is good!
Glaciers were melting before the industrial age. How is today’s melt different from historical melt.
Sea level rise is not accelerating compared to the pre-industrial rate.
Antarctic sea ice collapsing? Not according to the satellites.
All the “adjusted” data in the world confirms that the earth is warming.
But hey, you need to pick cherries to make cherry pie, right dcpetterson.
You spelled it wrong … it should be deceptorson
dcpetterson I’ve a question or two for you. Would you rather see glaciers growing? The last time they did that on a sustained basis worldwide wasn’t a very pleasant time for most life on earth. What if the sea levels were falling instead of rising? Would that not displace a large number of people as well? I’m thinking of all those folks that inhabit port cities all around the world. They’d have to keep moving closer to the water (something that might qualify them for climate refugee status) or take up a whole new line of work. As far as an acidified ocean goes, have you any idea of the pH for the world’s oceans at this point in time? Here’s a hint: somewhere around 8 to 8.5. That’s a far piece from acid. In fact before they become acidic they’ll have to become neutral. So wouldn’t the phrase ‘ocean neutralization’ be a more accurate description of the process IF it were to be happening? Can you point to any particular period of time when ice upon the sea has not experienced breakups from current and wave actions other than the far, far distant past during an era known as “snowball earth”? You do know that animal migration patters have changed through time, don’t you? That and growing season changes happened long before the first human walked on the planet much less bought an SUV. Do I believe in climate change? Of course, that is the nature of climate – it changes. If it didn’t change we might not have had to climb down out of the trees and learn to walk upright. Just a couple more questions. Why do you believe that the earth’s current temperature is ideal? Or, if it’s not ideal, how much colder would you like it to be?
The acidified oceans is a sad joke.
Talk of sea ice collapsing and glaciers disappearing is nearly 100 years old. A lot of “scientists think….” in papers back then when the CO2 levels were well below the magical 300 let alone the magical 350 ppm.
Remember when scientists were sure that the globe cooled by a degree from the mid 40s to the mid 70s? Some (granted, a lot more with common sense in those days who wouldn’t play along) wanted to extrapolate that short period to 100 years in the future. Then it became obvious that carbon would not be taxed before it began warming again and now that we have statistical techniques and computers (/sarc) it appears that those scientists were wrong about the cooling.
That cooling period has disappeared and the next one will not eventuate no matter what is plotted. Local penguin and polar bear numbers will plummet because their favorite feeding grounds are iced over and it will be due to global warming. Dbstealy’s graph above should be a saw tooth trend, not steps. Mosher pretends that the science is settled and in a way it is. Its pointless to postulate as we have been left with nothing to use as observations.
“Why should it stop warming at this point in time?”
Because warmistas are batting .000 and they have predicted continued warming.
There is not a single dictionary anywhere in publication, past or present, that defines “acidification” as anything other than the process of being converted into an acid.
Since the oceans are not, have never been, and will never become acidic, the term is 100% inappropriate as used by warmista panic-mongers.
dcpetterson,
If you had lived in your grandfather’s time, you would know that CO2 is entirely beneficial. More is better, and there is no downside:
http://www.sealevel.info/ScientificAmerican_1920-11-27_CO2_fertilization.html
LOL- wow
You can feel the mindless panic…
Or will they undergo a step rise
===========
depends who’s thumb is on the scale, er thermometer.
RWturner March 3, 2016 at 10:44 am
It appears you are prepared to bet on the outcome. Could you be specific about exactly what the bet would be and how much you are prepared to wager.
I think you’re seeing the data wrong. It only looks like a step if you start in 1979. If you look at the entire record, it looks more like a steady increase from ~1975 to ~2002, when temperature peaked. The current “end of the pause” is more likely just a pause of the pause. With solar activity taking a dive, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years.
I have for months been commenting that the 2015/16 El Nino will be seen as a dud if there is no long lasting step change in temperature coincident with it. So this post asks the 64 million dollar question.
Obviously it is difficult and foolish to predict the future, but if I was a betting man, my bet would be firmly placed on there being no long last step change in temperature coincident with the current strong El Nino.
In my opinion this El Nino is somewhat different to the 1997/98 El Nino not least with respect to the temperature anomaly starting point. it has not to date produced the same heavy lifting as occurred with the 1997/98 El Nino and it appears to be waning, although that will take time to feed through to the satellite data. My guess is that it is much more likely to be similar to the 2010 El Nino which produced only a short lived spike in temperature and no long lasting step change.
Further to Lance Wallace
I have for months been commenting that the 2015/16 El Nino will be seen as a dud if there is no long lasting step change in temperature coincident with it. So this post asks the 64 million dollar question.
Obviously it is difficult and foolish to predict the future, but if I was a betting man, my bet would be firmly placed on there being no long last step change in temperature coincident with the current strong El Nino.
In my opinion this El Nino is somewhat different to the 1997/98 El Nino not least with respect to the temperature anomaly starting point. it has not to date produced the same heavy lifting as occurred with the 1997/98 El Nino and it appears to be waning, although that will take time to feed through to the satellite data. My guess is that it is much more likely to be similar to the 2010 El Nino which produced only a short lived spike in temperature and no long lasting step change.
The narrator failed to note that 2014 was far from the warmest year in satellite and balloon data, only just barely in the cooked book “surface records”, which are science fiction boiled up by the likes of Gavin and his crony, heavy-thumbed gatekeepers.
” … science fiction boiled up by the likes of Gavin and his crony, heavy-thumbed gatekeepers.”
Amen brother, amen.
Or will they start dropping as various oceanic cycles enter their cold phases and the sun continues to slip into a funk.
As long as it doesn’t slip into disco…
+ lots! 🙂
Auto, admiringly!
worse still – prog rock.
It’s a pity we can’t turn the sun back up to 11…
The last 2 winters were brutal, this mild one has been a very welcome respite. If La Nina leads to cooler temperatures the next couple winters, I’m going to have to move south.
I know, right?
The only vaguely legit pissing and moaning I have ever heard on the subject of “winter is not cold enough” is when people up North complain that it does not seem “Christmas-y enough” when it is warm out.
(There may be a valid gripe that some sorts of plants, fruit trees and flowers have a more bountiful Spring when it is uniformly frigid all Winter, but this is more than made up for by people NOT FREEZING TO DEATH quite as often.)
They ignore that most of the world is not having anything remotely like Winter on December 25th…and people seem to get on with the Holiday season just fine. Just fine indeedy.
We will probably know in time for AR6. The stadium wave paper suggests pausish. The difference in ocean cycles from 1998 suggest pausish. Doesn’t have to be no trend. Just has to be well below the CMIP5 projections to bollox up CAGW models. IPCC wont be able to hide the discrepancy they way they tried in AR5. Essay Hiding the Hiatus.
in time for AR6
==========
are they going to have AR6? After “likely” in AR4 and “very likely” in AR5, is AR6 going to be “very very likely”?
Because once they say “certain” why is there any reason for another AR?
The whole global warming argument is based on the false assumption that the increase in LWIR flux from CO2 (~2 W m^-2) can couple into the ocean. This is impossible once the surface energy transfer processes are understood. The CO2 flux increase is obliterated by the variation in the wind driven surface evaporation. The cooling takes place within a very thin layer at the surface. ~90% of the solar flux is absorbed within the first 10 m layer of the ocean.
The ocean warming assumption is a fraud that started as the first modeling iteration after the original work by Manabe and Wetherald in 1967.
A good place to start is the 1981 Science paper by Hansen et al. Most of the basic fraud had developed by then. The history can be traced back from the references there.
Surface evaporation information is given by Lisan Yu et al (Woods Hole)
References
Hansen, J.; D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind and G. Russell Science 213 957-956 (1981), ‘Climate impact of increasing carbon dioxide’
Yu, L. (2012), http://oaflux.whoi.edu/images2_flux/EV_50a.jpg
Yu, L., J. Climate, 20(21) 5376-5390 (2007), ‘Global variations in oceanic evaporation (1958-2005): The role of the changing wind speed’
Yu, L., Jin, X. and Weller R. A., OAFlux Project Technical Report (OA-2008-01) Jan 2008, ‘Multidecade Global Flux Datasets from the Objectively Analyzed Air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) Project: Latent and Sensible Heat Fluxes, Ocean Evaporation, and Related Surface Meteorological Variables’ (Available at: http://oaflux.whoi.edu/publications.html )
For further discussion see
Clark, R., 2013a, Energy and Environment 24(3, 4) 319-340 (2013) ‘A dynamic coupled thermal reservoir approach to atmospheric energy transfer Part I: Concepts’
Clark, R., 2013b, Energy and Environment 24(3, 4) 341-359 (2013) ‘A dynamic coupled thermal reservoir approach to atmospheric energy transfer Part II: Applications’
(Paywalled unfortunately)
“The whole global warming argument is based on the false assumption that the increase in LWIR flux from CO2 (~2 W m^-2) can couple into the ocean. This is impossible once the surface energy transfer processes are understood. The CO2 flux increase is obliterated by the variation in the wind driven surface evaporation. The cooling takes place within a very thin layer at the surface. ~90% of the solar flux is absorbed within the first 10 m layer of the ocean.”
Sorry, this is just a climate science sceptic myth…..
SO the surface layer of land has solar energy “absorbed within the first 10 m layer”?
So why would land warm either by LWIR?
Because of conduction.
Even wet land will warm downwards via IR because of conduction.
So to with water.
The surface skin Lyr is warmed (more than otherwise) by LWIR and that decreases the deltaT with depth in the surface lyr (not just the skin but with some conduction a little below – and some mixing).
AS transport of heat to the air above is dependent on the Delta being large (heat moves from warm to cold – remember we are still in the ocean here. This is just the 2LoT).
ie the colder the very surface relative to water below then the larger is the heat loss of bulk water to the air above.
Or in other words you need to consider heat transport and not just temperature.
Therefore the bulk ocean temp looses less to the air above by the warming of the ocean skin by down-welling LWIR.
For a fuller explanation see here….
(This is a lead article at J Curry’s Blog remember please)
https://judithcurry.com/2014/05/21/mechanisms-for-warming-of-the-oceans/
R. Clark gave his references; you gave your opinion. Thanx for that.
It doesn’t make it right if its in J Curry’s blog. The summary doesn’t mention conduction and the first time its mentioned in the paper its is about transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere. Its not mentioned again for half a dozen pages!
“Unfortunately, it is difficult to estimate the rate of heat gain by the oceans for any given level of increased back radiation, because (i) the calculation is extremely sensitive to how the air above the ocean reacts as the ocean warms, and (ii) it is very difficult to estimate how the air above the ocean reacts to a warming ocean.”
Strange how not only does the model’s verification depend on a lot of things that are poorly measured and uncertain, but also the debunking that downwelling can’t warm the oceans. The latter is based on the global average ocean heat content that doesn’t show correlation to changes in solar output. To say its a stretch to come to that conclusions based on data that is very uncertain is being polite, especially considering how uneven the warming around the globe has been.
ToneB: Therefore the bulk ocean temp looses less to the air above by the warming of the ocean skin by down-welling LWIR.
When there is ongoing evaporation from the skin, why does the DWLWIR warm the skin instead of increasing the rate of evaporation? For a land analogy, when you increase the flame under a pot of boiling water, what you get is an increased boiling rate, not an increase in temperature; if the water isn’t boiling, you get an increase in temp and evaporation rate. You would expect an increase in DWLWIR to produce either an increased evaporation rate, or an increase in both evaporation rate and temperature. Wouldn’t you?
R. Clark, thank you for the links to oaflux.whoi. If your papers come out from behind the paywall, please let us know.
If it doesnt get cooler, the sun is finished as an explanation of climate change
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/solar/
within C02 going up, and the sun going down…..
what a nice test….
Unfortunately, not a test at all if it doesn’t get cooler from data sets because humans have changed it from doing so with data adjustments.
Raw data shows more warming.
Five more years of crn data and skeptics will have to invent new conspiracies
Oh, like Carl M<ears then?
Steven Mosher
March 3, 2016 at 11:04 am
Where can I access this unadjusted, raw data. What are their origins
“Raw data shows more warming”
You said yourself many times there is no such thing as raw data.
Andrew
The ‘conspiracy’ is that the warming is caused by CO2.
Not with with any of the official data sets and only UAH stays roughly the same. I don’t see any raw data there warmer than before adjustments.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/downloadFigure/figure/erl408263f1
The raw data shows all lower anomalies before adjustments made to them.
Warming (°C/decade) Lag (months)
——-Raw ——-Adjusted MEI AOD TSI
GISS 0.167(25) 0.171(16) 4 7 1
NCDC 0.162(22) 0.175(12) 2 5 1
HadCRU 0.156(25) 0.170(12) 3 6 1
RSS ——-0.149(40) 0.157(13) 5 5 0
UAH ——-0.141(44) 0.141(15) 5 6 0
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022/meta
Five more years of crn data
============
yep, we can be absolutely certain that climate doesn’t change naturally of a scale of 5 years, that there are no longer term or short term cycles to climate, that climate only responds to human forcings. not.
I suspect by raw data he means the UHI effects that don’t need to be corrected and the step up in temperatures at individual sites caused by a switch to AWS that doesn’t need to be corrected.
Seriously Mosh…5 years will prove something?
How about 20…or 30?
A nearly twenty year pause has not proven anything to warmistas. For the rest of us sane folks it has, at the very least, proved how good warmistas seem to be at dreaming up imaginative but false ad hoc explanations for whatever seems inconvenient to them.
Five years?
*rolls the eyes*
https://youtu.be/IWm03wYBTbM
Tempus rerum imperator.
AJB,
Yes, and the past 18 years is a lot of tempus.
Unless you are a warmista…then it is just a tempus in a teapot.
Where is the the spike in carbon (sic) in concert with the hottest year/month/day of 2015?
http://www.csiro.au/greenhouse-gases/GreenhouseGas/data/CapeGrim_CO2_data_download.txt
And the last 4 months they had up showed exactly the opposite of the Warmist story.
The levels were drastically plateaued.
They showed variations only in the decimal points of CO2 ppm.
If a non-human El Nino was responsible for the spike, where does that leave your carbon (sic) claims?
The test has happened.
“Where is the the spike in carbon (sic) in concert with the hottest year/month/day of 2015?”
That needs correction, as the 97% Doomsday Global Warming thesis says that carbon (sic) levels rise prior to the frog boiling heat.
The sun will progress to the minimum.
Cloud cover won’t change.
Co2 will increase and the 30 year trend will be between
1.5 and 2c per century..
By 2020 only skeptical conspiracy theories will survive.
Steven M says:
By 2020 only skeptical conspiracy theories will survive.
The ‘conspiracy’ is the false claim that CO2 is the primary cause of global warming.
Is that your conspiracy, too, Steve? Or do you reject that? I’m not being critical, I’d really like to know.
Mr Mosher, all my hopes are that you are right. We do not need another extended period of lower temperatures. Warm is good, warmer is better. Then perhaps all those damn Yankees will stay put during winter and we can unclog our roadways here in Florida.
And if the sun stopped shining tomorrow, the planet would keep warming because everyone knows carbon (sic) controls the climate.
“Co2 will increase and the 30 year trend will be between 1.5 and 2c per century..”
So, all the windmills & solar panels installed so far, and current carbon (sic) taxes and wealth re-distribution, much yet to be realised, won’t stop future Co2 increases, and consequently extreme weather/climate?
Wait. I think I heard this one before …
“The new scientific study finds that the leading role in the earth’s warming belongs not to carbon dioxide, as long believed, but to an assortment of rare, mostly artificial gases, many never seen in the atmosphere before the 1960’s.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/12/weekinreview/ideas-trends-continued-a-dire-long-range-forecast.html
“By 2020 only skeptical conspiracy theories will survive.”
And the world could end by 2030
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/bob-geldof-the-world-could-end-by-2030-8864186.html
This is not science.
And if it does cool, Mr. Mosher, will you finally admit the truth that you were completely wrong?
We are taking notes and writing down names (figuratively speaking…personally I could not give a tiny rats tuchus what earthshaking pronouncements spew forth from the overheated lips and keyboards of people who aint been right yet.)
Menicholas March 3, 2016 at 1:32 pm
“And if it does cool, Mr. Mosher, will you finally admit the truth that you were completely wrong?
We are taking notes and writing down names…”
Ya, ve hav un dossier on you.
heh heh
If someone claims what was claimed, then in five years, when the opposite occurs, we should all remember it.
How long can this silliness of decade after decade of failed predictions, with no one’s feet held to the fire for being so completely wrong, go on?
The sun will progress to the minimum.
Cloud cover won’t change.
CO2 will increase and the 30 year trend will be between 1.5 and 2c per century.
Well probably, but what predictive skill does a linear trend drawn from a complex, chaotic non-linear system have anyway and what has 30 years got to do with anything physical – terrestrial or solar?
http://s11.postimg.org/o576crwjl/Evolution.png
By 2020 we’ll still be subjected to: the same potty statistics and argument by 6″ ruler, incapable of distinguishing natural variability from any CO2 induced signal; the same non-integrated diffusion misconceptions; the same lack of adequate measurement and evidence of causality; the same name calling and political point scoring.
So it’ll be activist fad politics as usual, ramped up by social needier. Better hope OCO2 eventually sheds some light. But we might not have another fan-fair driven Disney World representation of democracy muddled up with a passing El Nino for left-right oscillatory venom. Or at least that doesn’t seem likely.
Steven M, If you had but a small sense of history, you would know that the last time the sun went through a few cycles with no or nearly no sun spots. History tells us that Europe had a mini ice age, crops failed and many starved to death. Was that because of lack of CO2 or caused by the sun?
Link to full sized image removed again, wish whoever/whatever wouldn’t keep doing that …
http://s11.postimg.org/kll8myttu/Evolution.jpg
Steve
When does the C in CAGW begin in your approximation?
The climate system is a set of coupled oscillators. The atmosphere can warm or cool persistently without any change at all in total energy. Lindzen pointed that out decades ago, and everyone hurries to ignore the obvious implications.
The sun and CO2 are not alternative unique solutions to the problem of a warming climate. Their variations, whether opposed or in concert, won’t test a thing.
exactly. and the critical point about coupled oscillators is that the size of the forcing is not the issue. it is the phase of the forcing.
so it should be no surprise that by concentrating on the size of the forcing, while ignoring the phase of the forcing, climate science models continue to track hot.
for example, the tidal forcing are roughly the same all over the earth. yet in some places the tide changes only a foot or two, while in other places it changes 30 to 50 feet.
same forcing, hugely different result due to harmonic oscillation.
Indeed a nice test! Hey, I agree with Mosher, unprecedented!
Apart from that, the satellite temperatures ±0.3 C and the surface temperatures ±0.5 C (at best) mean all the hoopla about this or that warmest month or warmest year is ignorant nonsense.
And climate models that are predictively valueless mean that any observed warming can’t be physically connected to CO2 in any case. There is no possible test.
It’s all just hand-waving argumentation, vested interest, and gotcha score-keeping.
Mr Mosher,
Why would anybody think that there is one primary driver? There are thousands of potential input variables, there are hundreds of reasonable variables.
Why does anyone think that one variable ( “the sun is finished” ) could be prime; why would anyone think the value of an input characteristic can’t SIGNIFICANTLY change as other characteristics in the system change.
[see pat frank above]
To answer my own question, … because they would have to say “I don’t know” every once in a while, and they don’t have that capacity
(seriously, when was the last time you said “I don’t know”?).
Steven Mosher March 3, 2016 at 9:36 am
>”If it doesnt get cooler, the sun is finished as an explanation of climate change”
What’s your timeframe?
If you expect an immediate atmospheric temperature response to solar change you’re neglecting planetary thermal lag due to the ocean heat sink in particular. There’s a body of literature on this with a number of estimates but Kevin Trenberth in his essay ‘The Role of the Oceans in Climate’ covers almost the entire range when he says the ocean adds “10 – 100 years”. Zhao and Feng found Antarctic temperature lags solar activity by “30 – 40 years” over millennia. Abdussamatov calculates lag by thermodynamic principles near the lower end of Trenberth’s range (14 +/- 6 land+ocean, longer for the ocean in isolation).
Even the GCMs have an oceanic “relaxation time constant” characteristic.
Given the recent Grand Maximum up to about 2005 (e.g. PMOD) is probably the highest solar activity for around 11,000 years (Usoskin) it will be some time before a lagged temperature response is detectable, and then only in neutral El Nino/La Nina conditions. In other words, current solar change from Grand Maximum conditions has only just started, why expect to see a lagged atm response now?
Then how is the current minimal TOA solar change since about 2005 (fraction of 1 W/m-2 in PMOD) detectable as a temperature response at the surface amongst other far greater changes? For example, surface solar radiation (SSR) forcing due to cloudiness changes (Wild et al dimming/brightening) can be in the order of 10 W.m-2/decade regionally over 20 years. Then of course there’s the 60 yr oscillatory component in GMST to play out. The IPCC neglects that completely i.e. the oscillation must be subtracted from GMST to obtain the secular trend (Macias et al and others)
It is too premature to be discounting solar change at this juncture Steven, but come back on this in the 2020s – 2030s sometime.
Steven Mosher: what a nice test….
If solar power diminishes while CO2 increases, CO2 and solar theories might both be tested by the future evolution of mean global temperature. I think the test will take at least 2 decades, as every short-term increase or decrease acquires multiple ad hoc explanations.
Quite happy to go along with that, Steven, because I think that physics works, from experience, don’t you think. I reckon you will agree too whatever the result…..
The entire process of using global surface temperatures from a single year to state anything is severely flawed. The average temperature of the three dimensional object known as the Earth’s surface increased in the El Nino. That is a two dimension measure of a three dimensional object. The total enthalpy of the outermost shell of some reasonable thickness of the three dimensional object did not increase appreciably and may have even decreased. That is a three dimensional measure of a three dimensional object. Further for the purposes of “global warming” it is the one that counts. Perhaps you can use the two dimensional surface over a period of some number of years to say something about the total enthalpy under a reasonable set of assumptions, but one year, warm or cold, does not mean for beans. Sadly, most people do not know what enthalpy is or why it matters.
“That is the key question raised by Dr David Whitehouse”
He doesn’t seem to have an answer. But I was curious about his data set, as shown in the graph above. Axis labels would help? Does anyone know what it is?
Nick,
It shows it as HadCRUT4 in the film. It seems to end in Dec 2015.
How much did OHC drop this last year due to this El Nino?
Unfortunately, I find the Dec 2015, Jan 2016 global temperature maps to be very scary.
They show the “dark place the sun don’t shine” as “extremely” hot
….in their eye-candy colors
and the “hot place in the sun” as “extremely cold”
This is how A/C pumps heat out of a system.
Doing A/C on the globe may not be the best
…with cosmic rays reaching record highs as the sun enters a slumber….
Nobody knows, but at least look at the two different eras regarding ocean surface temperatures to have an idea.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/1998/anomnight.3.2.1998.gif
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2016/anomnight.2.29.2016.gif
Ocean temperatures between 40-60N and 40-60S are considerably colder now than back in 1998 around the same period. Therefore once the cooling form El Nino commences this will do one of three things.
1) Energy dispersing from the strong El Nino warms the oceans between 40-60 especially in the NH. The ocean surface are significantly warmed and energy is redistributed near the surface in mid-polar regions, causing a step up later after the global affect from next La Nina has ended.
2) Energy dispersing from the strong El Nino has little or no affect on ocean between 40-60 especially in the NH due to the mechanism causing this. The energy lost from the strong El Nino is retained considerably less or neutralized by this mechanism. The Tropics therefore cool significantly, but the mid-polar latitudes remain cool due this new change in ocean surface temperatures. Overall global temperatures plummet causing a step down in global temperatures later, after the global affect from La Nina has ended.
3) Something in between.
As that saying goes, attributed to everything from a Danish proverb to Mark Twain and Yogi Berra:
First law of economic forecasting: Give a number or a date, but not both together.
Since most of climatology has been copied from econometrics ( apart from the untested stuff they just made up on their own ) that is probably appropriate.
Quip from R. Lindzen: “God made economists to make weathermen look good.”
So which scientific genius, decided to phase shift those two earth maps, so it is impossible to compare them ??
g
“So which scientific genius, decided to phase shift those two earth maps, so it is impossible to compare them ??”
One who does not want them compared.
I was thinking it was because back in the olden days, maps were centered on where people lived…now they are centered on wherever the most anomalous warming happens to be…even if no one lives there.
Will we really know what will happen after all the adjustments are done? Considering what they have done and will do with the RSS data set, all that we will have left are the balloon data sets and UAH. It may come to the point that after all the data is adjusted, the only way we will be able to tell it has become cooler is by having the ice sheets over North America and Eurasia form again.
Who here still thinks that an industry predicated on Global Warming is going to produce information that doesn’t show Global Warming?
Andrew
Why do we have to ask this question? I thought this was all settled and it’s absolutely going to go up no matter what happens?
From the article: “The current El Nino is one of the strongest on record. It has elevated global temperatures to a record level.”
As compared to what?
Ever notice that none — not one — of the temperature datasets EVER shows a record low year anymore — or even a record low month?
The last time we had a record low month was more than a century ago. We’ve had dozens of record high months since then.
We keep getting record high years, too. Oh, you can argue that it one cherry-picked dataset, 2015 was “only” the SECOND HOTTEST YEAR IN HUMAN HISTORY. As if that’s significantly better. But the fact is, no one — not anyone — has claimed anything even comes close to giving us a new record low.
If the climate was stable, we’ve have just as many record high and record low years and months, and the highs and lows would be happening with the same frequency. There is only one (1) way to interpret this indisputable fact.
The Earth is warming. It is in a very strong long-term warming trend. Cherry-picked short-term noise doesn’t change that. Pretending it’s not happening, and reassuring yourselves that it’s not happening, won’t make the data go away.
Show me the last time any dataset had a new record low. You sure won’t find one more more recent than the last few dozen record highs.
dcpetterson,
SECOND HOTTEST YEAR IN HUMAN HISTORY
Yelling (TYPING IN CAPS) isn’t science.
Andrew
1946/7 1962/31978/9 ?
Globally
Yes, the earth is warming, and if it didn’t but continued cooling down from the Little Ice Age, we would be now heading towards a major glaciation period. However, this interglacial period we have called the Holocene, is not over yet.
Do you even understand how that data set you’re quoting was constructed? Or let me guess, you don’t have any sort of technical degree so you can’t explain it without deferring to your ‘expert’ buddies. Am I right?
dcpetterson, “If the climate was stable, we’ve have just as many record high and record low years and months…”
Very, very basic error. The Holocene data shows the climate varies spontaneously and strongly, and over quite short time-periods. The variation is likely to be self-same over every scale.
Only climate models produce stable simulated climates. Earth produces a variable real climate.
See also my comment above. “Hottest year” or “hottest month” are impossible to know because the temperature data are far from accurate enough to make that distinction. If you’re interested enough to check that out, here you go (0.9 Mb pdf).
You don’t want to go uncritically accepting published climate data, dcp. Doing so is a big mistake.
“Only climate models produce stable simulated climates. Earth produces a variable real climate.”
They don’t actually.
What you see is an ensemble of GCM runs … which smooths out variation.
That’s why the slow-down wasn’t flagged as the -PDO/ENSO was blurred across different time frames in each run.
I’ve seen individual model baseline runs with zero CO2 change, Tonyb. They’re flat.
Pat:
Look pretty squiggly to me.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/what-the-ipcc-models-really-say/
your gcm’s are complete and utter dross. read the comments here.
http://climateaudit.org/2016/02/27/gerry-browning-in-memory-of-professor-heinz-kreiss/#comments
i think it would be a good idea for anthony to ask gerald browning to do a guest post ,possibly with an addendum by craig loehle .
Toneb, those are not baseline climate projections, in which atmospheric CO2 is not changing. Baseline, zero CO2-change projections are flat with random noise jitter.
The constant composition projection here as an example. CO2 stops increasing after 2000. The projection becomes flat.
An amusing coincidence, you picking that particular Realclimate essay. That was where I debated Gavin about the validity of my Skeptic article, A Climate of Belief. He started it, I carried it.
What is your point? per the data that you trust, the earth is warming somewhat … so what?
Do you have a point?
Chicken Little didn’t really have a point either … he thought the sky was falling, and since he couldn’t define the impact he just panicked. Are you any different?
Not knowing what has caused the planet to warm since the LIA might explain not being aware why it stopped warming more than a decade ago and why the current spike in surface temperature measurements is misleading.
Expect new record lows (unfortunately) before the end of the century.
I have observed many new record lows recently, especially as regards the critical thinking skills of warmista panic artists and their bed-wetting disciples.
Good.
The answer is:
Both.
Temperature rise will continue, but be much slower than the alarmists “hope.”
After the Little Ice Age we expect warming. Seriously hope we see continued warming into a climate optimum. The theory of the increase in CO2 causing warning is falsified or lost noise in climate variability.The alternative to warming is frightening.
There is a tendency by trolls and zealots to conflate warming and CAGW. Most of the posters on this site agree that the earth is probably still coming out of the LIA, so it is no big deal or support for CAGW that it is getting warmer. The point at question is why the temperature is getting warmer, natural processes like solar variation or God knows what, or warming being determined largely by anthropogenic GHG’s like CO2.
You put your finger on the problem, Tom Halla. If everyone took your advice, they’d have to abandon the argument.
Can’t have that.
They live for the argument. Their livelihood depends on maintaining it. Their soul-satisfying, self-validating righteousness demands it. Over the last 30 years, we’ve seen a culture of pathology grow up amongst us that has seduced even scientists.
The official warmista doctrine seems to be that all natural variation ceased when humans began to add CO2 to the air in measurable amounts.
If the atmosphere is warming since the LIA, physics demands that the energy must come from somewhere, whether “natural” or not. Where do you think it is coming from? If from the oceans, then the ocean must be cooling. If from ice, then ice must be forming. If from the sun, the sun must be putting in more energy. Perhaps a decrease in albedo is the answer. Please explain where it comes from.
There is a minor little thing called burden of proof. I can observe a cylicity of temperature in Greenland ice core temperature proxies, and conclude there is something going on. It is an ad ignoratium argument to claim that because I do not pretend to know why else there are cycles, the cause of the cycles must be CO2 (or witchcraft, or the turtles farting, or. . . ) . Do not know means do not know.
Increased energy need not come from anywhere, seaice1, because the climate is a system of coupled oscillators that all trade energy back-and-forth.
The atmosphere can warm, or cool, without any increase or decrease in energy inputs at all.
Pat Frank. Please, you have just suggested re-writing the laws of physics. temperature cannot rise without a change in energy.
To be clear “The atmosphere can warm, or cool, without any increase or decrease in energy inputs at all” The atmosphere cannot warm without some energy input to the atmosphere.
It is possible for one part of a system to heat up if another part of the system cools down, so no net input into the system. I am not asking that. I am asking where the energy to heat the atmosphere is coming from, and it must be coming from somewhere.
Tom Halla – “I don’t know” is a possible answer. It just does not give much weight to the argument. If one group says “I have a good explanation that fits the facts,” and another group says “I don’t have any explanation, but I think your explanation is wrong because, er, its natural” I know where I would put my money.
Solar variations alter global cloudiness and the amount of solar energy entering the oceans.
Thus, over time, solar changes shift the balance betweeen El Nino warming and La Nina cooling.
When the sun is active we see upward stepping of global temperatures from one positive 30 year PDO to the next.
It follows that when the sun is less active we will see downward stepping of global temperatures from one negative 30 year PDO to the next.
A pity that it won’t become obvious during my lifetime 🙂
Stephen
The best place to look for any signs cooling (or warming for that matter) in my view is the Hudson Bay area.
Because when climate cooling does take place, this is part of the world where it goes extreme. So any cooling trend there over the next few years. Then expect any globe warming to be short lived.
The best places to look are the North Atlantic ocean and around northern Norway because these areas warm and cool the most between ice ages and inter-glaciers. A steady change in the AMO is always a sign of change in climate.
“because these areas warm and cool the most first ….”
yes, as they are at the moment.
There are two sources of potential warming, solar and geothermal. Geothermal being mostly hidden under an average depth of 12, 000 ft of ocean which covers 70% of our planet of which we know little. Believing that the .04% (four one hundredths of one percent) of our atmosphere which is CO2 is the thermostat for our planet is not logical, particularly when we do not really understand how the oceans store and distribute heat.
Jim:
“Believing that the 0.04% (four one hundredths of one percent) of our atmosphere is the thermostat for our planet is not logical”
Can I put it this way ….
If all the ozone in the atmosphere was compressed into its solid phase, spread evenly over the surface of the planet, it would form a layer almost exactly 4.0 micrometres (microns) thick, and such a layer would be 1/10 the thickness of a human hair.
This quantity of ozone is what prevents the Earth from being sterilised by ultraviolet radiation.
So it’s not the quantity of a substance than matters it’s the effect it has on its environment.
“So it’s not the quantity of a substance than matters”
So wouldn’t reducing the quantity of ozone cause a problem?
Andrew
The difference is that ozone is just about on its own filtering out UV in the range of 200 nm to 300 nm, while CO2 is just one of many absorbers in the IR.
Well, anyway, at least a very junior partner in the IR.
“The difference is that ozone is just about on its own filtering out UV in the range of 200 nm to 300 nm, while CO2 is just one of many absorbers in the IR.”
OK:
H20 precipitates out within ~9 days (is temp dependent in the atmos).
N2 and O2 add up to ~99% of the atmos and are both transparent to IR.
So leaves CO2 and CH4 and O3 basically.
Then 100% – 99% (non GHG’s) = 1%
0.04% (CO2) of 1%
is 4% of the thing that has greatest (none precipitating) GHE in the atmosphere.
That has increased from 2.8% to 4% since the onset of the industrial period.
Toneb,
“OK:H20 precipitates out within ~9 days (is temp dependent in the atmos).N2 and O2 add up to ~99% of the atmos and are both transparent to IR.”
And more is added as the existing precipitates out. Its not like it just goes away. Correlation does not mean causation and even the climate models disprove CO2 as the causal variable since they do a very poor job of forecasting temperature and CO2 continues to increase while temperature does not, so even the correlation becomes poorer all the time, ie the need for adjustments to historical temperatures. Many analyses would indicate CO2 follows temperature. The mosquito in the room gets all of the attention while the herd of elephants is ignored. We are in an interglacial period and have been for what, 18, 000 years, so it’s getting warmer. Warm is better for life, cold is not, generally and historically. AGW is a political, not a scientific, issue. The really effective GHG is water vapor. So we put alcohol in our gas. Burn that and get water vapor. Go figure. The chinks in the armor of AGW theory are monumental. It is all about redistribution of wealth and political power.
True – but this relies on the atmosphere being warm enough to ‘hold’ the moisture.
Jim:
“And more is added as the existing precipitates out.”
Yes indeed – and so the quantity stays the same.
Unless the global temp rises.
It is – so there is an addition due to increased WV too.
CO2 just accumulates (in excess of the Earth’s ability to sink it).
Up from 2.8% of back-radiating gasses to 4% in ~150 years.
“Many analyses would indicate CO2 follows temperature”
Also correct – that is the natural order of things on millennial time scales caused by Earth’s orbital eccentricities (Milankovitch cycles), whereby reduced TSI in the NH (greatest land and therefore greatest sensitivity) allows a build up of snow-pack and a feedback of increased albedo and falling temps …. CO2 is then better sunk into the oceans (at a lag).
It is therefore (sorry the science is empirical and not dependent on GCM’s) the climate thermostat in the Anthropocene – on vastly quicker time scales than natural orbital cycle generated climate change.
“The chinks in the armor of AGW theory are monumental”
Sorry – the chinks in your knowledge are monumental and reading stuff on here won’t teach you anything but the one side … unless people like me occasionally turn up to make you think away from the echo-chamber cheering that is the norm.
Toneb,
Please explain your calculation that back-radiating gases are up from 2.8% of to 4% in ~150 years. CO2 has allegedly grown from 280 to 400 ppm, but thsoe are only 0.028 to 0.04% of the atmosphere. Other GHGs represent even tinier fractions of a percent. Water vapor has not grown from 28,000 to 40,000 ppm in that time. Indeed, over much of the earth it is at lower than 40,000 ppm concentration. During the LIA, H2O levels were only negligibly lower than now.
“Sorry – the chinks in your knowledge are monumental and reading stuff on here won’t teach you anything but the one side … unless people like me occasionally turn up to make you think away from the echo-chamber cheering that is the norm.”
Toneb,
Have you ever heard of the psychological term, projection?
Jim
Repost from longer post here. This is what I think is going on, and what is going to happen:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp3_zpso5dp1gpw.jpg
There are, of course, other El Nino peaks in the actual data record. I’m just highlighting the last two.
“The Wicked Pause is dead!”
Not so much. They just smoothed it out to blend with what came before. Result: the models are more divergent than ever.