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?
Time to buy diamond mining stocks!
Eehh?
Right!
Why?
Carbon!
~~~~
Climate crazies like Hansen, Mann and Gore are running out of options when it comes to the Global temperature pause and their CO2 forced temperature increase, which has not increased except for this most recent El Nino.
Their options:
1. Admit that CO2 does not drive and has no connection to atmosphere temperatures.
1b. They can save face by claiming that humans have succeeded in halting anthropogenic global temperature increase. Give UNFCCC and IPCC a pat on the back, final pay check and send everybody home, or out to look for a new ponzi scheme job, which ever the case.
2. Blame something else. AH HA, Blame CARBON. They can invent screwy (fabricated) studies showing that “Anthropogenic CARBON” is responsible for forcing global atmospheric temperatures (with sufficient Karlization of course). Then, their piece de resistance, call for the UN and all governments to BAN DIAMONDS.
Effect is that diamond mining stocks go through the roof and we make a billion off their stupidity.
Ha ha
I will bet hard cash that the pause will not continue in the coming years.
Instead, temps will show an undeniable downward trend.
This is just a hunch, based on the track record of warmistas predictions being what it is: They are wrong about every single thing they predict.
Just a hunch, but there it is.
Who will be the den!ers when temps begin to plummet.
Stick around…things are likely to get interestinger and interestinger.
Be more specific. I might be prepared to take your bet.
“I might…”
Be more definite and I will be more specific.
🙂
Looking at Hadcrut4, the temperature has gone up about 0.8C in the last 150 years. If every bit of that warming was caused by the additional 120 ppm which has been added since then, what would be the temperature increase caused by the next 120 ppm? Or, how much CO2 would be required to cause another 0.8 degree increase?
The next 120 ppm ~0.4 c and ~240 ppm for another 0.8 c increase. It is roughly each doubling of CO2 causes the same temperature increase. If for example your looking at this for the best/worst case scenario, then even with this global temperatures wouldn’t rise another 0.8 c until global CO2 levels reached ~645 ppm. With the current rate that wouldn’t occur until year 2112.
Nick Stokes March 3, 2016 at 2:58 pm
Nick – You clearly didn’t read the whole comment. Read the 3rd paragraph which begins “While the temperature increase is …” I make the very point about you accuse me of ignoring. However I also go on to make the point that TOTAL ghg forcing is nearer to 2.5 w/m2 due to e.g. methane etc.
The TOA imbalance is uncertain as you well know so my estimate of 1.5 deg per 2xCO2 is as good as anyone’s at the moment.
I don’t always agree with everything you write, Nick, but I accept you are well-informed and I always make sure I read your comments carefully. Do me the same courtesy, mate.
The forcing to date from CO2 alone is about 1.9 w/m2. The forcing from a doubling of CO2 is reckoned to be around 3.7 w/m2 so we’re about halfway towards the doubling effect (approx 560 ppm). This implies a climate sensitivity of 1.6 deg C per 2xCO2. Given that the “No feedback sensitivity” is generally recognised to be about 1.2 deg C per 2xCO2 it suggests a small positive feedback is contributing to the warming.
Of course, all this assumes that all other positive (e.g. solar) and negative (e.g. aerosol) forcings are in balance
While the temperature increase is, as you say, about 0.8C the climate scientists would insist that all the warming from the current forcing has yet to be realised and even if CO2 concentrations remained at current levels there is a further 0.5 deg increase in the pipeline. No-one has got a firm handle on this, though, and, even if there is a small TOA (Top of the Atmosphere) imbalance, the fact is that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas that has increased in the atmosphere over the past century or so and the total forcing from ALL greenhouse gases is more like 2.5 w/m2 which indicates a lower sensitivity.
Taking everything into account a sensitivity estimate of around 1.5 deg C per 2xCO2 doesn’t seem too wide of the mark.
1.5 c per doubling of CO2 is way too high when the planet shows we half way there and only had ~0.8 c rise.
For 1.5 c to be true that would mean you agree 0.7 c of the 0.8 c warming was down to CO2 only and nothing else.
I disagree, closer to 0.5 c for doubling because it has a negative feedback. I don’t see global temperatures for the rest of the century warming more than now by about 0.3-0.4 c. The worst case scenario at the top end of the limit 0.7 c. The reason for only 0.3-0.4 c warming because of two negative PDO and AMO cycles fitting in this century instead of one last century. This is based on the sun cycle not having any noticeable affect in future.
“This implies a climate sensitivity of 1.6 deg C per 2xCO2. “
That’s not the equilibrium climate sensitivity. It isn’t even the normal definition of transient CS. The CO2 increase creates a flux of 1.9 W/m2, and that goes on adding heat until the temperature rises and increases OLR enough to balance that. We’re nowhere near that balance yet. If CO2 were suddenly fixed, the temperature would go on rising.
Nick Stokes March 3, 2016 at 2:58 pm
Nick – I’ve responded to this further up the thread (in the wrong place – my fault).
I’ve basically told you that you haven’t read my comment properly. I made the very point you accuse me of ignoring in the 3rd paragraph.
“I made the very point you accuse me of ignoring in the 3rd paragraph.”
Yes, apologies, I missed that. It is important. Thanks for making it so clearly there.
Ok – no problem.
@ur momisugly Toneb
Ozone is the result of UV’s interaction with O2. Ozone is the byproduct of that reaction. Ozone has a half life of about 30 minutes.
Less than one hour after sunset, there is no ozone layer above your head. The night sky has no ozone layer, get it?
First “holes in the ozone layer”, then CO2 radiative GHE, aka, AGW.
Say what!?!
Will:
“Ozone is the result of UV’s interaction with O2. Ozone is the byproduct of that reaction. Ozone has a half life of about 30 minutes. ”
Then another O3 molecule in return – the process repeats…….
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/ozone/additional/science-focus/about-ozone/ozone_cycle.shtml
“Less than one hour after sunset, there is no ozone layer above your head. The night sky has no ozone layer, get it? ”
Patently untrue else we’d all fry my friend.
You”re not confusing stratospheric O3 with the surface variety are you?
“First “holes in the ozone layer”, then CO2 radiative GHE, aka, AGW.”
Another WUWT speciality – sky-dragon “sceptics”.
@ur momisugly Toneb
“Patently untrue else we’d all fry my friend.”
We would all fry under a night sky would we? Presumably due to the hot breath of “sky dragons” as the sun doesn’t tend to fry much at night.
“Then another O3 molecule in return – the process repeats…….”
Only in the presence of sunlight. As I said, ozone has a half life of 30 minutes. 1 hour after dark, no ozone layer.
Will:
“Only in the presence of sunlight. As I said, ozone has a half life of 30 minutes. 1 hour after dark, no ozone layer.”
As I said yes, and another O3 molecule is created just as quickly.
Sorry “1 hour after dark, no ozone layer.”” Is patent rubbish. It would be gone forever on the first day!
It has to be replenished as quickly as its destroyed.
Do yourself a favour and learn some science. Try starting at the link I gave prior.
@ur momisugly Toneb
“It would be gone forever on the first day!
It has to be replenished as quickly as its destroyed.”
Arbitrary nonsense.
You’ve missed out the other part: O3 is the result of UV interacting with O2, the O3 thus created is destroyed by the interaction with UV of a different wavelength, if there is no more sunlight the O3 remains.
@ur momisugly Phil
In the absence of sunlight, i.e. UV, O3 has a half life of 30 minutes.
Both warmers and most of the skeptics on WUWT e g Monkton continue to make the same mistake by ignoring the peak in the both the millennial and 60 year cycles which is seen in the RSS temperatures at about 2003. See http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-epistemology-of-climate-forecasting.html
The figure below shows where we are relative to this peak and to the long term cooling trend shown in blue.
The probable coming La Nina will likely drop the temperature anomaly down to minus 0.15 by 2020.
There is no justification for ‘fixing’ the maximum in 2003 or anytime within a century of that. Your blue trend is laughable.
The 2003 maximum corresponds to the solar activity maximum at about 1991 + a delay because of the thermal inertia of the oceans. ” He who laughs last laughs best.” we will see. At least I’m willing to call my shots .What would your estimate of the RSS anomaly at 2020 be.?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QoRTLG14Siw/VdOUiiFaI5I/AAAAAAAAAYM/NxQVb2LMefk/s1600/oulu20158.gif
Here is what the link above says re timing.
“Grandpa says- I’m glad to see that you have developed an early interest in Epistemology. Remember ,I mentioned the 60 year cycle, well, the data shows that the temperature peak in 2003 was close to a peak in both that cycle and the 1000 year cycle. If we are now entering the downslope of the 1000 year cycle then the next peak in the 60 year cycle at about 2063 should be lower than the 2003 peak and the next 60 year peak after that at about 2123 should be lower again, so, by that time ,if the peak is lower, we will be pretty sure that we are on our way to the next little ice age.
That is a long time to wait, but we will get some useful clues a long time before that.Look again at the red curve in Fig 3 – you can see that from the beginning of 2007 to the end of 2009 solar activity dropped to the lowest it has been for a long time. Remember the 12 year delay between the 1991 solar activity peak and the 2003 temperature trend break. , if there is a similar delay in the response to lower solar activity , earth should see a cold spell from 2019 to 2021 when you will be in Middle School.
It should also be noticeably cooler at the coolest part of the 60 year cycle – halfway through the present 60 year cycle at about 2033.
We can watch for these things to happen but meanwhile keep in mind that the overall cyclic trends can be disturbed for a time in some years by the El Nino weather patterns in the Pacific and the associated high temperatures that we see in for example 1998 ,2010 and especially from 2015 on.
Fig 4.”
While I fully agree with your statistical criticism of the OP, It should be noted that 2003 was the point of minimum cloud cover recorded by satellites. Once you remove the 5% decrease in cloud cover responsible for 75% of the observed warming in the Satellite period, there is no statistically significant trend.
Dr Norman Page: The probable coming La Nina will likely drop the temperature anomaly down to minus 0.15 by 2020.
We shall see. Now and again someone writes an actual prediction. What if the “probable” La Nina does not occur, or isn’t “strong”?
Then I will revise my forecasts – what else?
Smart people change their minds when the facts change.
Warmistas never change their minds.
Everyone can draw conclusions from this they see fit.
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.
Yes, that is what we have to do.
Well a few things have happened recently for me:
1. The sharp rise in temps for Feb from UAH. Although expected due to El Nino and only 1 month of data, the huge amount it rose in that one month was surprising and not expected. In all honesty, this has strengthened the AGW case for me. (but not the CAGW case). Waiting to see what happens with La Nina. If there is a “step” increase like in ’98, I may be more inclined to be swayed to a more “warmist” viewpoint. If it drops backs to a business-as-usual range matching the past decade, I’ll remain solidly in the skeptic camp.
2. I see RSS has adjusted it’s data upwards. I had been wondering if such a thing were coming ever since I learned that the guy in charge of RSS was an activist. (after seeing that propaganda video from Yale trying to discredit the satellite data). This makes my stomach turn and only deepens my personal distrust of any data presented by that disgraceful group of the hard-core activists pretending to be scientists. It seems the future of non-biased, clean temperature data is solely in the hands of Spencer and Christy. May be hanging on by a thread. This makes my nervous for what future politics may hold….
Whichever way the wind is blowing, eh?
If I was on such tenuous ground, evidence-wise, I would have to be officially neutral.
Healthy skepticism is the same thing as being neutral, as far as I’m concerned.
Hmmm, if the current temp was all the information that was available to us, I would agree I think.
We have much more to go on than that.
We have the ice core records, the paleo records on CO2 vs temp…and on and on.
Warming now or in five years proves nothing, but that natural variation is a fact and that the temp has always gone up and down on every time scale known.
Menicholas
Let me see if I can do a better job of explaining where I stand in the debate.
On a scale of 1 to 10, if….
1 = denies CO2 has any affect on climate at all
3 = believes CO2 probably has negligible affect on climate
5 = believes CO2 probably has a climate sensitivity of 1-2 deg per doubling of CO2
8 = believes the IPCC reports and that CO2 probably has a sensitivity of >4, and trusts the IPCC’s models
10 = believes that CAGW is absolutely a real problem which can only be solved through draconian measures.
…. the latest data moves me from a 3 to a 4. If the next few years shows the “pause” coming to an end, I’ll move up to a 5, on a scale of 1 to 10.
J S G
“It seems the future of non-biased, clean temperature data is solely in the hands of Spencer and Christy.”
So the world climate “truth” lies with these two does it.
Let me put these 3 points to you if I may…..
1) the world’s climate scientists (except Spencer/Christy) are incompetent.
2) the world’s climate scientists (except Spencer/Christy) are all in on a conspiracy.
3) they know more than you do and Spencer/Christy are doing climate science as diligently as every other climate scientist.
It’s just that they are outliers in having a sat temp database that runs low (for now) and “sceptics” are desperately dependent on UAH (which version”) being right.
Above the rabbit-hole there is one obvious answer.
Strawmanning. You’re in the penalty box…..
Science has proceeded by a continuous process of paradigm shifts.
Was phlogiston a conspiracy?
Was the belief that continents could not move?
Was the belief that doing dissection of corpse with bare hands and then walking into the next room to deliver a baby a conspiracy to kill women?
Etcetera
Etcetera
Etcetera…
“You’re in the penalty box”
Heck.
Is that bad?
Folks, I am pretty sure, let’s say 99%, that temperatures will do this:
http://www.southwestclimatechange.org/figures/temperature_co2_concentrations
Enjoy the warmth. It won’t last. The oceans will run out of fuel just like a battery needing to be recharged. Thank goodness, while we shiver ourselves to death, the oceans will plug into the ever present Sun and get recharged. And it looks like the colder we get, the more our atmosphere allows the full spectrum and strength of solar irradiance to make it to the surface and below. The downside is a battery sitting in its recharging station, can’t be used to keep us warm and our lights lit.
And not a single doomsayer, nor a group of climate catastrophic human breath doomsayers, is saying one GAWD DAMN THING about preparing for the cold. Climate change? They don’t know sickum from **it.
I listened to the video. The narrator got it exactly wrong when he reported that El Nino is not climate change, El Nino is weather. Here are the salient points. It is well established that the ONLY way we experience a significant rapid rise in global temperatures is via ENSO processes that spread warm pools of water out on top of the ocean like an oil slick which releases heat into the atmosphere then felt on land as a rise in temperature. We also know that when the top ocean layer is roiled up by Easterlies and warm pools are concentrated in Western pockets, we are cooler. It is also now very plausibly theorized that there are long periods of time when El Nino’s tend to predominate, and long periods of time when La Nina’s tend to predominate. In fact, no one, not even AGW scientists have dismissed these ENSO processes or have stated they are no longer in force. Finally, the video presentation fails to zoom out to 400,000 years. Proxies become finer scaled in later portions compared to earlier portions (well established artifact issue in ice cores, sediments, etc). The fact that our current proxy sourced warm period looks extended in that trace is plausibly due to that artifact, not that humans are somehow keeping us warm instead of allowing us to fall off the other side of the sharp peak seen in later proxy portions.
Until someone plausibly (without fudge factor tuning) demonstrates that something else can overcome and END the strength of ENSO driven climate producing natural intrinsic weather patterns at short, long, and millennial scales (especially in light of Earth’s Milankovitch Cycles ADDING changes in Solar Insolation), the null hypothesis whereby oceans recharge and discharge solar energy rules.
Quite a fanciful nEl Nino story you have, Pam. Unfortunately mjany are being misled by this gibberish. First, lets get that fairy tale of El Ninos or La Ninas predominating out of the way. There is no record of it. Going back as far as 1850 it has never happened. That is because they are always formed together as my theory proves. Despite that, Hansen imagines the whole of Miocene as being “El Nino-like.” Since you did not bother to read my book either I will have to explain. El Nino is a harmonic oscillation of ocean water from side to side in the Pacific Ocean. To understand this, consider what happens when you blow across the end of a glass tube: you get a note that is determined by the dimensions of the tube, its fundamental note. Trade winds are the equivalent of blowing across the end of a tube and the ocean answers with its own fundamental note: about one oscillation every four-five years. What physically happens is that trade winds push warm water west where it gets dead-ended at the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, the warmest water on the planet. When the pile of water us high enough reverse flow by gravity starts. An El Nino wave forms, crosses the ocean along the equatorial counter-current, and runs ashore in South America. There it spreads out along the coast north and south, and warms the air above it. Warm air rises, joins the westerlies, and we notice that an El Nino has started. And so do the Europeans and the Japanese when the warm air carried by westerlies reaches them. But any wave that runs ashore must also retreat. When the El Nino wave retreats water level behind it can drop half a meter. Cold water from below then wells up and a La Nina has started. As much as the El Nino warmed the atmosphere the La Nina will now cool it and the global mean temperature remains unchanged over time. It is impossible for the El Nino to cause permanent warming that Bob Tisdale imagines it doing. El Nino is a Pacific phenomenon and does not exist in the Atlantic because there is no place for the trades to pile up warm water as there is in the Pacific. Because there are other things besides ENSO going on in the ocean they can temporarily extend or shorten an El Nino period but it cannot be stopped or permanently changed. Yt all came into existence with the closure of the Isthmus of Panama which established the current flow pattern of Pacific currents.
See my recent post here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/02/long-satellite-pauses-ending-now-includes-january-data/
Based on December 1997 to February 1998 jumps, I projected the February UAH to be 0.856 and the RSS February value to be 0.977. The actual results were 0.83 and 0.974 respectively. So nothing unusual is happening as the 1997 and 2015 El Ninos are equally strong.
I agree. There might be further probably modest increases through April.
So the real question is just as the title of this blog post asks: Will the pause continue, or not?
The real question is will the 4000 year cooling trend re-assert itself in my life time, I hope the answer is no!
What it clearly shows is the Earth warms when we have El ninos, and remains stagnant or cools at other times. All of the big upticks are El nino induced, no denying that.
When we see big upticks without an El nino, which we won’t, then we can reassess.
Disgorgement is happening 24/7 right now. A moisture laden warm gift from the ocean. Unfortunately, recharging will have to be substantial to replace what this El Nino has given up. And there is never an equality here. Will it overcharge? Undercharge? Exactly replace what was lost? Only if we fall past neutral and La Nada into an extensive La Nina will we recover. Given that we are at the peak of an interglacial warm period, we will fall off the other side and go into a jagged fall into a deep cold as the Easterly Winds kick up to clear away the equatorial clouds so that the Sun can penetrate full strength to the surface of that all important Pacific Equatorial Band.
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/FULLDISK/GWIR.JPG
Plural of El Niño is Los Niños
Plural of La Niña is Las Niñas.
And the plural of La Nada is …?
☺
This just up at Free Republic;
“Revamped satellite data shows no pause in global warming”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7a1d32e47f7146839c0bcce3128a998b/revamped-satellite-data-shows-no-pause-global-warming
revamped data show this el nino stronger than the 98 event . everybody stopped watching the pea.
That is totally misleading! RSS revised the middle troposphere data and not the lower troposphere data. As my article here said:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/02/long-satellite-pauses-ending-now-includes-january-data/
RSS need 0.88 in February to end the pause. It came in at 0.974. The pause in the lower troposphere is over. It had NOTHING to do with revamped satellite data in the middle troposphere, but that is what many will now think. Mears’ timing could not have been worse!
John Finn,
If you are looking for a bet on forward temps I’m happy to take the other side.
Term:
1. use current version rss satellite.
2. bet once per month starting 2017.
3. take monthly global temp subtract same month year prior. (so jan 2017 – jan2016)
4. if difference > .15 degrees C you win if less I win (alarmist expectation is twice this)
5. bet goes for 10 or more years (your call)
6. payout made monthly
7. will do in any size you want, minimum $1000 per month (post margin in escrow account)
Regards,
David
A “pause” implies a temporary flat period in an ongoing long-term global warming trend.
Right now it is safe to say there was a flat trend between to El Nino temperature peaks.
If global warming continues in future decades, we can look back and say the flat trend WAS a pause.
If global cooling starts in future decades, we can look back and say the flat trend was a transition period between a long-term warming trend, and a new long-term cooling trend.
Sometimes it’s much easier to understand what was really happening by looking back from many decades later, than it was DURING the flat trend … which should completely disappear after arbitrary “adjustments” in the next few years, just like the hot 1930s and the US dust bowl are disappearing (after revisions the dust bowl will eventually be called the snow bowl, and NOAA will claim the 1930s were so cold it snowed every summer in Minnesota).
There may have been have been two pauses, and only one rising trend, since 1940.
Global average surface temperature:
(1) declined from about 1940 to 1975,
(let’s call it a pause)
(2) increased from about 1975 to 2000, and
(3) stayed flat since 2000,
(let’s call it a pause for now)
… all three were happening while atmospheric CO2 levels increased every year … not exactly proving the greenhouse gas theory!.
(1), (2) and (3) mean the correlation of temperature and CO2 has been negative, positive, and near zero, in just one 75-year period.
If our volcanogenic ozone depletion theory of global warming (WUWT: Volcanoes and Ozone: Their Interactive Effect on Climate Change, December 22, 2015) is correct, both the anomalous warmth of 2015 and the current El Nino are products of chlorine (as HCl) released by the Aug, 2014-feb 2015 eruption of Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano, the largest basaltic eruption since Laki in 1783. If so, we should expect a return to “hiatus” conditions after two or three years.
A close look at the temperature record shows that the pause in temperature rise began in 2002.