Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
In lagged responses to the 2015-16 El Niño, there have recently been sizable upticks in the lower troposphere temperature data from both RSS and UAH, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
The following is a quick update on the global temperature responses to the strong 1997/98 and 2015/16 El Niño events. It’s in a slightly different format than the update in January. If global temperatures respond to the 2015/16 El Niño as they had for the 1997/98 El Niño, we should expect to see a couple of additional upticks this year in lower troposphere and surface temperature anomalies.
PRELIMINARY NOTES
The illustrated temperature anomalies are as provided by the suppliers, but for comparison purposes, I’ve shifted them, normalizing them to the average of the first 12 months of the respective 2-year periods. In the following graphs, I’ve included the data from the individual suppliers and their averages. The lower troposphere temperature data run through February 2016 and the surface temperature data run through January 2016.
LOWER TROPOSPHERE TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES
Data Sources: RSS here and UAH (version 6.0, beta 5) here. (RSS so far has not updated their lower troposphere data to version 4.)
As shown in Figure 2, the responses of the lower troposphere temperature data to the 2015/2016 El Niño are similar to the responses to the 1997/98 event.
Figure 2
LAND + OCEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES
Data Sources: NASA/GISS LOTI here, NOAA/NCEI here, and UKMO HADCRUT4 here.
Due to the differences in the three surface temperature datasets, there’s a lot of visual noise in the comparison shown in Figure 3. But if we concentrate on the bold, solid average curves, the responses of the surface temperature data to the 2015/2016 El Niño are similar to the responses to the 1997/98 event. Also see the discussion of uncertainties later in the post.
Figure 3
With a maximum of 2 years of data and with the data normalized, we would not expect to see the impacts of the “Karlization” of the NOAA ERSST.v4 “pause-buster” sea surface temperature data.
COMPARISON OF LOWER TROPOSPHERE AND SURFACE TEMPERATURE AVERAGES
You’ll note the scale of the y-axis in Figures 2 and 3 are different. Figure 4 includes the averages of the lower troposphere and surface temperature datasets, to put them in perspective.
Figure 4
THE LOWER TROPOSPHERE SHOWS A GREATER RESPONSE THAN THE SURFACE TO THE EL NIÑOS
In response to an El Niño, only a portion of the temporary upticks in global surface temperatures are a direct result of the warming of the eastern tropical Pacific (caused by the warm subsurface waters of the western tropical Pacific being shifted to the surface of the eastern tropical Pacific). Elsewhere around the globe, due to changes in atmospheric circulation caused by the El Niño, Earth’s surfaces warm and cool relative to their “normal” seasonal conditions, but more of the global surfaces warm than cool, so global surface temperatures rise. There are also long-lasting responses to strong El Niños (Trenberth “big jumps”), when the leftover warm waters from the El Niño are redistributed around the surfaces of the global oceans.
On the other hand, the rises in lower troposphere temperatures in response to an El Niño are caused in two ways: first, by the increases in surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific and around the globe. Second, an El Niño releases a monumental amount of heat from the tropical Pacific to the atmosphere, primarily through evaporation. That additional warm and moist air rises into the colder atmosphere, cooling as it rises higher, and when the moisture condenses and form clouds, that heat from the tropical Pacific is released to the atmosphere…thus the additional warming of the lower troposphere.
THE UNCERTAINTIES OF THE DATA
THE UK Met Office is the only global temperature supplier to provide uncertainties on the same webpage as their monthly data (format here). For those interested, Figure 5 includes the evolutions of the HADCRUT4-based global surface temperature anomaly responses to the 1997/98 and 2015/16 El Niños, with the lower and upper bounds (columns 11 and 12) of the 95% confidence intervals of the combined effects of all the measurement and sampling, bias and coverage uncertainties. The top graph is the monthly data, and in the lower graph, I’ve smoothed the data with a 3-month running-mean filter to minimize some of the weather noise.
Figure 5
FOR THOSE NEW TO DISCUSSIONS OF EL NIÑO EVENTS
I discussed in detail the naturally occurring and naturally fueled processes that cause El Niño events (and their long-term aftereffects) in Chapter 3.7 of my recently published free ebook On Global Warming and the Illusion of Control (25 MB). For those wanting even more detail, see my earlier ebook Who Turned on the Heat? – The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit: El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Who Turned on the Heat? only costs $5.00 (US).
CLOSING
As noted in the opening, if global temperatures respond to the 2015/16 El Niño as they had for the 1997/98 El Niño, we might expect to see a couple of additional upticks this year in the lower troposphere and surface temperature anomalies.
Will the evolutions of global temperatures this year mimic 1998?
One wild card is The Blob, which was the primary cause of the “record” surface temperatures in 2014. (See GENERAL DISCUSSION 2 – On the Claims of Record-High Global Surface Temperatures in 2014 of my ebook On Global Warming and the Illusion of Control.) The Blob continues to dissipate rapidly, but it might reemerge in 2016. See the post here. IF (big if) The Blob continues to dissipate and doesn’t reappear later in the year, and IF (big if) it doesn’t have any long-term effects on the North Pacific, then its disappearance could suppress some of the additional El Niño-related warming in 2016. We just have to grab some popcorn and watch…better stock up, this is gonna take a while.
Thank you for the update.
However it does not look as if your Figure 2 is correct. The red line at month 14 should be higher than the blue line at month 16 as your Figure 1 clearly shows.
They are normalized to different periods.
Thank you! So in other words, the red line is offset by the difference between the 1997 average and the 2015 average. Is that correct?
So, if they are normalized, then the units are wrong on the plot.
I call that a lie.
” then the units are wrong on the plot”
No, the units are not affected by the normalization, which is clearly stated on the plot. It is a perfectly normal procedure which helps here to make the comparison.
Here is an analogous plot of RSS (more here), starting in July, but without normalization:
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/3/1998_1.png
blob says: “So, if they are normalized, then the units are wrong on the plot.
I call that a lie.”
The units are correct. They are degrees C. Other than shifting the data, they are as posted at their respective websites.
They were normalized so that we can compare the evolutions of the global temperature responses to the El Nino events. I believe the text of the post is quite clear about that. Under the heading of PRELIMINARY NOTES, I wrote:
“The illustrated temperature anomalies are as provided by the suppliers, but for comparison purposes, I’ve shifted them, normalizing them to the average of the first 12 months of the respective 2-year periods.”
I see a pattern that has NOTHING to do with CO2. Imagine that.
The effect of CO2 would have to do with the amount of “normalizing them to the average of the first 12 months of the respective 2-year periods”, which I think is between 0.1 and 0.2 C, eyeballing the graphs.
No, that would be a warming effect, with no indication whatsoever its anything to do with CO2.
eyeball the graphs a bit closer and overlay the significant el nino’s over it. You will see at each powerfull el nino a step rise. With the AMO still in a high just over the top mode we might see a last step rise with this El nino, but that depends on the blob as well. if the blob reappears then we will see a step rise, if not…
things may get very interesting.
point is a regional warming of an ocean is not the same as a so called “global CO2 induced warming”.
Even with the clear step changes observed here at the belgian RMI they are not jumping into conclusions. The reason is simple: in their last climate report they also noticed an increase in sunshine hours and an increase in sunshine strength that corresponds to the step change. their conclusion is that besices CO2 induced warming other factors are at play as well (however as they are governement sponsored they have to sing the CO2 meme as well but in between the lines you notice that they found other events as well: a clearer sky, less clouds more sun that hits the surface.
the documents themselves are in french or in dutch so i ain’t gonna provide a straight link here but if you understand french or dutch then i gladly will provide it.
i honestly follow the RMI reports closely because besides the obligated CO2 meme they still keep a window of doubt, especially because they do mention the parameters that may cast doubt on the theory and publish them in their annual reports….
when you see temperature rise, mean sunshine hours rise and mean sunshine strength rise, then it’s easy to connect the dots of what is causing the warmer then average climate….
Re: your comment about the blob. IF the blob develops from migrated brought-to-the-surface El Nino warm water with a lag of +years following a strong El Nino, might the blob reappear some years from now following this strong El Nino too? And might this be the fine scale normal behavior of the peak of an interglacial warm period? In light of gross scale reconstructions of previous peaks over the past 400,000 years that may be affected by increasing with time degradation of ice, tree, and fossil growth “rings”, we may be seeing what that peak is really like. Finally, I wonder if the last dying breath of the interglacial warm peak is an abnormally long lived huge North Pacific blob causing an abnormally long lived blocking high of the West Coast that brings a loop of Arctic-cold polar jet stream air down over the area we now know is the typical place of North America glacial ice sheet advance.
hmmmmm.
Interesting thought Janice;
I was going back through the daily atmospheric wind plots and the northern hemisphere has essentially been in a La Niña atmospheric pattern now for 11 months. Blocking high and polar jet forced deep over the north east American Continent. Some of those regions have had three winters with over 6-12 feet of snow. This is unusual for the recent history, but not unusual if it were building up two miles of glacial ice. The only thing missing was a 2-4 deg C drop in average temperature which would allow the great lakes to freeze over and ice to last well into, if not thru, the summer months.
What I am patiently waiting to see is if the lack of a step GAT increase prior to this El Niño is followed by a step decrease in GAT as the next La Niña builds.
IF your line of thinking is correct and we see a step decrease in GAT (maybe even if it is only hemispheric) It will identify the recent past as just a normal variation in earths temperature control mechanism.
Definitely food for thought..
Bill
And your thought about the Blob being a late bloom of the previous large El Niño… Has got my wheels turning.. The hows and whys this could be possible, knowing how little we do about the length of cycles and potential causation, has got my mind in gear.
As always, thought provoking..
An Excellent post by Bob followed by things that make you go Hmmmmmm..
And I am sure Janice thinks so too. LOL!! By the way, if she is lurking here, Janice log in! I have a BEAUTIFUL engagement ring on my finger!
I am so ashamed! Pam… Congratulations!
Lucky man. Another beautiful, intelligent woman has slipped through my fingers.
Congrats Pamela! ( and the lucky guy of course).
I think there is roughly a 6 to 8 year lag based on Bob Tisdale, WE and others who post here on ocean and atmospheric cycles. Multi-variate and multidimensional but the big Pacific gyre looks to have about a 15 year+- cycle, but many smaller shorter ones.
Love all the graphics having a visual brain. Someday, (maybe never) I’d love to pull all those graphics together. There are so many intriguing cycles that may or may not mean anything. But I think of them as a sin (sic) of things to come. 😉
+1… I have had similar thoughts that this could be the effects of a peak point in the Warm trend.The JG/U tree ring study is an important tool for me in deciphering some of the patterns. The question is will there be a rapid, 2 to 4 years, drop into a cold trend in the next several years. My best guess was that the El Nino was going to peak back in the last summer. The reason for my error in thinking that, could be due to not knowing enough of the details, and not considering how long that much heat would take to leave the system. Otherwise, I did very well with many of my thoughts/forecasts otherwise. Now I am curious if my thoughts will get back on track with the changes now that the El Nino is winding down.
Give that the current El Niño isn’t getting warm water to the South American coast, will that mean there won’t be much warm water geting redistributed around the world? It will be as interesting watching this El Niño fade as it has been watching it grow.
Ric, the oceanic currents that peel off of El Nino territory are of interest. Some of these are surface currents and some are subsurface. Due to complicated mixing action, land barriers and ocean rivers, some currents submerge for part of their route. Meaning now you see it, now you don’t…till later.
http://oceanmotion.org/html/background/patterns-of-circulation.htm
“THE LOWER TROPOSPHERE SHOWS A GREATER RESPONSE THAN THE SURFACE TO THE EL NIÑOS”
The response is particularly marked for very strong ENSO events, like the 1997/98 event.
Which partly explains why there are large trend differences between the surface and satellite records when starting the trend from 97/98. It’s just a massive anomaly (espec. satellite) to begin the analysis with – generally a no-no if you want to obtain a clear signal from a short period
There a difference in timing.
The 1997-98 El Niño peaked in mid-December while the 2015-16 El Niño peaked in mid-November. So, there should be a 1 month difference in the timing of the peak temperature impacts (February, March etc.)
One cycle doesn’t establish a pattern. One could also see a pattern in the temperature curves. Right now it looks as if the peaks are temporally matched (1st large peak in Feb, matched –> expect a second in April?), but I don’t think that pattern is established either.
The strong 82/83 el Nino peaked in December, like 97/98, but the temp peak was in March (83) instead of April (98). Don’t think we should expect a month to month match in the curves.
Good post! The pattern looks much too similar in the two cycles to be random, or the result of something that produces a smooth rise, as CO2 is alleged to. Perhaps someone can determine why the possible sloshing of water in the Pacific is relatively symetrical in result.
Earths Rotation and gravitational pull are pretty much a constant.. Thus the flows they create will be fairly regular unless they are acted upon by an outside force.
Perhaps you should inform yourself about the motion of the moon relative to the earth before making such ill-informed generalisations.
The difference between perigee and apogee is about 5% , that is about 15% in the tide raising force of the moon. There are three different lunar cycles : synodic, draconic and anomalistic. The all have different periods and interact on multi-annual timescales: decadal in fact.
The alignment of the solar and lunar tides makes a notable difference every 15 days and also on these longer periods.
Last year the perigee full moon happened very close to the spring equinox when the solar and lunar tidal forces were acting together. This also happened at the time of the 97/98 El Nino.
Coincidence, possibly. But tidal forces are far from being constant.
Also the the 18y exceptional high tide that coincided with Hurricane Sandy around NY was just such a variation. It was a major factor in the flooding.
I have seen this term “sloshing” used by others, and I know it is more of a caricature than a scientific term; but is the change in mean sea-level in the western and eastern Pacific Ocean measureable over time as an el Nino progresses, and how much is due to the change in trade winds and how much is due to the increase in water temperature? Perhaps if we could measure and then model all this “sloshing around,” we could give account for the blob.
Bob, what is this “*Anaomlies normalised to…” thing about. You have marked an asterisk but not said anywhere what it means.
Nomalisation usually refers to some scaling, what exactly have you done here ?
thanks.
Thank you for this fine post. Never fully realized how much more muted the surface response is than TLT to ninos. Quite the reverse of their normal relationship.
A strong TLT response is also what we should expect from greenhouse radiative warming, but instead we see a stronger surface thermometer response and a muted TLT response.
After all, radiatively warmed water will evaporate more and radiatively warmed air will rise. Seemingly the effect should be equal throughout the troposphere.
Here is what the Aqua satellite sees for actual SST in the Nino 3.4 area. Really hasn’t changed much in the last month. Not an impressive amount of convection as revealed by clouds. In fact there has been sparse cloud cover all year and clouds have seemed to form over cold patches.
The LACK of mid tropo warming is one of the main reasons to doubt that the recent rise was anything to do with GHG. It was a clear “finger-print” prediction of climate models which failed to materialise.
There is still no observable, attributable GHG effect. Despite all the efforts to find one.
When someone finds an explanation for the early 20th c. rise that does not account for the late 20th c. rise we may have something worthy of discussion.
Both RSS and UAH have products that address the mid troposphere.
I have never understood why the middle was singled out for a predicted hot spot. Water is much reduced there as it is surface concentrated and the well mixed CO2 has long since gobbled up all the light except for weak incremental radiation in the “wings”.
Greg – “The LACK of mid tropo warming is one of the main reasons to doubt that the recent rise was anything to do with GHG.”
No, the hotspot is not an anticipated effect of GHG warming alone – it is an expected effect from surface warming no matter what the cause.
John Christy: “Yes, the hot spot is expected via the traditional view that the lapse rate feedback operates on both short and long time scales….it [the hot spot] is broader than just the enhanced greenhouse effect because any thermal forcing should elicit a response such as the “expected” hot spot.”
http://www.climatedialogue.org/the-missing-tropical-hot-spot/#comment-754
So, if there is no hotspot (that’s not certain – different products have different results), the flaw is in the modeling of heat transfer in the atmosphere, not an indicator (“fingerprint”) of GHG signature specifically.
I would say there is a lot of action happening along the equatorial band. This is precipitable water in the atmosphere. Now that is moist air! Evaporation much???? Oh yeh. And all that evaporation is the ocean disgorging solar energy it soaked up when the air was not so ladened with water vapor.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/global2/main.html
Thanks for the cool link, but my eyes see no more vapor potential in the Pacific than the Indian Ocean. All that potential seems not to be translating into clouds, releasing latency of vaporization. Just sayin’ this nino seems more about sensible than latent heat so far. The ITCZ is generally poorly defined everywhere.
Definitely evaporating going on, but thermometers, microwave sounders, and our noses can’t measure latent energy.
Pamela,
Thank you for the link.
Been monitoring it on nullschool SSTA for a three months and the equatorial central pacific warm patch’s drift west has begun fading fast lately. I give it ~6 weeks and it’ll be an unremarkable remnant on SSTA.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-155.86,0.30,536
What it looked like 1 month ago on 8th Feb 2016:
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/02/08/0000Z/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-155.86,0.30,536
I love the nullschool graphics….
Wow. Thanks so much for those links. What my eyes saw was a constructive NH flow in February at about 10 North, with the exception of a feedback flow at about 5 North from the central Pacific to Peru.The SH was disorganized. In March the situation changed and an SH countercurrent developed in Indonesia at about 10 south pointed back to the central Pacific, but thereafter became disorganized.
The weird thing is that the nino is supposed to be a relaxation back from Indonesia. Your currents show the reverse. Maybe the relaxation was earlier and what we see is a failing reaction wave off South America marking the death knell.
CHALLENGE QUESTION: WHEN WILL GLOBAL COOLING START?
I am saying it is not a “Pause”, it is a Plateau, and naturally-caused global cooling will start soon.
Bragging rights to whoever gets it right.
Ladies and germs – faites vos jeux!
Regards to all, Allan
_______________________________
This post on SC24 is interesting:
http://notrickszone.com/2016/02/10/solar-report-january-2016-current-solar-cycle-quietest-in-almost-200-years-as-triple-whammy-approaches/#sthash.tRQqXhWz.IVP32gMG.dpbs
Question: When will global cooling start?
In 2002 we wrote that global cooling would start by 2020 to 2030.
We now say global cooling will start before 2020, probably by 2017.
[Definition: The commencement of global cooling is deemed to start when the Lower Tropospheric (LT) temperature anomaly as measured by UAH satellite data starts to decline below the +0.2C anomaly and the trend then declines further.]
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
In 2002 we wrote that global cooling would start by 2020 to 2030.
Who wrote it and can you provide a link. I’ve seen lots of predictions of imminent global cooling and most have them have now failed. I’m pretty sure the one you refer to will as well but I’ d just read the prediction and the justification for it.
John Finn – from your comments, I suspect you are a troll, but in any case her is the answer to your request:
On September 1, 2002, the Calgary Herald published my article that stated:
“If [as I believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
Full article at:
http://climateaudit.org/2006/07/19/whitfield-subcommittee-edward-wegman-testimony/
Oh I see – because I question your statement and the justification for it I’m a troll?
I suspect you’re spouting the sort of nonsense that David Archibald and Theodor Landscheidt are noted for but I’m happy to give you a fair hearing. I’ve read the CA post and there’s nothing in it that would force me to change my mind, This, for example , is an odd statement
we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.
Do you mean by 2020 or by 2030 or are you just giving yourself “wriggle room”? On what do you base this prediction. Solar activity has been in decline since 1991 why do we need to wait until 2030? If solar activity is the driver why are the oceans continuing to gain energy?
It appears that increased CO2 is only a minor contributor to global warming.
Appears to who? I’m not convinced AGW will be a problem but I can’t be sure.
We cannot know with any certainty that the MWP globally was warmer than to-day. We know that some regions probably were. Conclusions about the LIA are mixed. CET, the longest thermometer record shows no warming between 1800 and 1900 and very little between 1700 and 1800.
Recent, more reliable, solar reconstructions show that solar activity was just as high during the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries as it was in the latter half of the 20th century and as Leif Svalgaard correctly points out, even if your descriptions of the MWP and LIA are correct on a global scale there no correlation with solar activity.
I don’t think I would count Leif’s solar fabrications as reliable.
Bias confirmation, and agenda driven.. yes.
He has made sure his most recent fabrications have no LIA or MWP in them… ..
…that was his aim.. stated many years ago. He just needed to find ways of doing it.
AndyG55 March 6, 2016 at 12:54 pm
I don’t think I would count Leif’s solar fabrications as reliable.
Wouldn’t you? Ok I’ll ignore the research of someone with over 40 years experience as a prominent solar physicist and take note of the musings of some random, obscure blogger. Though I have to say the Leif does provide some compelling lines of evidence to support the ‘new’ reconstruction. Strangely, many “warmers” are also reluctant to adopt the Svalgaard et al reconstructions since it rather blows a hole in their detection and attribution studies and, in particular, their explanation for early 20th century warming.
Bias confirmation, and agenda driven.. yes.
Don’t be silly.
He has made sure his most recent fabrications have no LIA or MWP in them… ..
What’s Leif’s research got to do with the LIA or MWP?
…that was his aim.. stated many years ago. He just needed to find ways of doing it.
You’ll presumably have a link to support this. I’ve followed much of what LS has written and I don’t recall him mentioning anything about getting rid of the MWP or LIA.
Perhaps I should expand on this comment
Leif Svalgaard doesn’t imply that there wasn’t an LIA or MWP. He simply makes the valid point that the variation in solar activity cannot explain the warm/cold of those 2 periods. He makes the comment
Variation in Solar Output is a Factor of Ten too Small to Account for The Little Ice Age
He’s right.
Yawn, I’m not going to bother finding links where Leif said the then solar construct was wrong.. BEFORE he started adjusting it to get rid of the smaller values during the LIA and level them out with the Grand solar maximum of the latter half of last century.
Anyone who has watched him over several years, KNOWS where is coming from, and his intended end point.
“variation in Solar Output is a Factor of Ten too Small to Account for The Little Ice Age”.
You are going to look pretty silly when the temperatures start to drop.. probably later this year.
Just because HE (meaning Leif, in his own mind) doesn’t know how, doesn’t mean diddly squat.
Just as we see the likes of Jones, Hansen, Schmidt, Karl continually adjusting the surface temps to CREATE trends… and now Mears finding reasons to increase the tiny trend in RSS…
….at the other end we have Leif DELIBERATELY trying to flatten the solar record so that it can’t be used to account for the small warming we have had (thankfully) out of the LIA.
I’m not going to look silly at all. Temperatures will probably fall because the recent El Nino will have faded. As for any long term (decadal or more) cooling – I don’t think so.
Ah I see. Leif is simply looking at the amount of solar energy (TSI) which he (and many thousands of other solar physicists) recognise lacks sufficient variation to explain any more than 0.1 degree change in temperature. Opposed to that view, we have you (and a couple of dozen crackpots) who apparently believe that some mystical, as yet undiscovered, force exists which provides energy equivalent to around ten times that of TSI variation.
It’s a tough one. I can’t make up my mind who to believe.
BTW, even without more recent (and more correct) reconstructions, TSI still can’t explain 20th century temperature increases. TSI rose in the early years of the 20th century – as did global temperatures. After about 1945 global temperatures started to fall but TSI kept increasing. The most active cycle on record is SC19 which peaked in the late 1950s. Solar activity has been in decline since 1991 – temperatures haven’t. Solar activity is similar to what it was about a century ago. Temperatures are almost a degree higher.
Allan, first off, i represent being called a “germ”… This should be it!!! Once the el nino turns into la nina the temps should go “over the falls”. This is a very interesting time for all those “solar warmists” out there who have been waiting for the downside of solar cycle 24. Either way (cooling or no) this should tell us a little something about the role of the sun…
“represent” should read “resent”… (wink!)
Allan,
Here’s an article of yours published in Ice Cap back in September 2008: http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/is_this_the_beginning_of_global_cooling/
In it you state that “In 2007-8, the PDO turned cold again, so we can expect several decades of naturally-caused global cooling.”
You wrote that more then 7 years ago now, during which time both the satellite and surface data sets have all shown continued warming. For instance, the warming reported in RSS satellite data since September 2008 is +0.15 C/dec: http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:2008.67/plot/rss/from:2008.67/trend
UAH V6.5 beta is even faster, at +0.23C/dec.
Just wondering what makes you confident that this latest forecast of cooling will fare any better than your 2008 prediction?
Careful, DW, you’ll be accused of being a troll.
DWR54 “PauseBuster” – I suggest your comment is disingenuous, since your alleged warming trend is caused by a natural El Nino event that will probably reverse itself over the next year or so.
Dr Norman Page (herein) suggests that global cooling has already started, and he may be correct.
Global temperature data is messy, especially when El Nino warming and La Nina cooling is involved. We will only know when the “Pause” (or Plateau) has ended when we can look back at many years of UAH satellite temperature data.
I suggest that the cooling trend from ~1940 to ~1975, which occurred despite increasing atmospheric CO2, is an adequate disproof of AGW theory in that it proves that atmospheric sensitivity to CO2 (ECS) is near-zero, much too low to cause dangerous global warming.
Finally, your appeals to authority are ill-conceived. The global warming alarmists, including the IPCC, have a negative predictive track record, since every one of their scary predictions has failed to materialize. Why does anyone listen to these misguided fanatics?
David Sanger. Your statement is false, ignorant and foolish – this must be troll week on wattsup..
IN fact, my predictive track record is excellent – all eight predictions made in our 2002 PEGG have now proven correct, as discussed below.
I have only one remaining prediction, and that was my 2002 prediction for imminent natural global cooling. I hope to be wrong about that prediction, because humanity suffers in a cooling world.
Here is my (our) predictive track record, from an article that Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson and I published in 2002 in the PEGG. It is now available at:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
Our eight-point Rebuttal includes predictions that have all materialized in those countries in Western Europe that have adopted the full measure of global warming mania. My country, Canada, was foolish enough to sign the Kyoto Protocol, but then wise enough to ignore it.
[2002 article in “quotation marks”, followed by current commentary.]
1. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.” NO net global warming has occurred for more than 18 years despite increasing atmospheric CO2.
2. “Kyoto focuses primarily on reducing CO2, a relatively harmless gas, and does nothing to control real air pollution like NOx, SOx, and particulates, or serious pollutants in water and soil.” Note the extreme pollution of air, water and soil that still occurs in China and the Former Soviet Union.
3. “Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity.” Since the start of global warming mania, about 50 million children below the age of five have died from contaminated water.
4. “Kyoto will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and damage the Canadian economy – the U.S., Canada’s biggest trading partner, will not ratify Kyoto, and developing countries are exempt.” Canada signed Kyoto but then most provinces wisely ignored it – the exception being now-depressed Ontario, where government adopted ineffective “green energy” schemes, drove up energy costs, and drove out manufacturing jobs.
5. “Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution.” Note the huge manufacturing growth and extremely polluted air in industrial regions of China.
6. “Kyoto’s CO2 credit trading scheme punishes the most energy efficient countries and rewards the most wasteful. Due to the strange rules of Kyoto, Canada will pay the Former Soviet Union billions of dollars per year for CO2 credits.” Our government did not pay the FSU, but other governments did, bribing them to sign Kyoto.
7. “Kyoto will be ineffective – even assuming the overstated pro-Kyoto science is correct, Kyoto will reduce projected warming insignificantly, and it would take as many as 40 such treaties to stop alleged global warming.” IF one believed the false climate models, one would conclude that we must cease using fossil fuels.
8. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.” Governments that adopted “green energy” schemes such as wind and solar power are finding these schemes are not green and produce little useful energy. Their energy costs are soaring and these governments are in retreat, dropping their green energy subsidies as fast as they politically can.
IN SUMMARY:
All the above predictions that we made in 2002 have proven correct in those states that fully adopted the Kyoto Accord, whereas none of the global warming alarmists’ scary warming projections have materialized.
Allan MacRae
March 7, 2016 at 2:32 am
“DWR54 “PauseBuster” – I suggest your comment is disingenuous, since your alleged warming trend is caused by a natural El Nino event that will probably reverse itself over the next year or so.”
______________
It’s not an “alleged” warming trend Allan. Every global data set we have, whether surface or satellite, shows rapid warming since September 2008, which is the month in which your Ice Cap global cooling prediction was made.
Therefore how is it disingenuous to ask you what makes you feel any of your other cooling predictions will be better than that one?
DWR – as I stated before, I hope to be wrong about imminent global cooling, As to the commencement date, whether cooling started in 2005, 2009, 2017 or later, scientists will be debating this point even after we have several decades more satellite data, because Earth temperature data is messy, as I said above.
Questions:
1. Do you care to make any prediction about future warming or cooling, or do you just snipe from the bushes?
2. Do you really believe that the surface temperature data is credible, and if so, which dataset?
3. What is your real name?
Regards, Allan
For the record, I believe the following is true.
Presentation of Evidence Suggesting Temperature Drives Atmospheric CO2 more than CO2 Drives Temperature
September 4, 2015
By Allan MacRae
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA, up to 50,000 in the UK and several million worldwide.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When misinformed politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
Allan MacRae, Calgary, June 12, 2015
Allan.The global cooling trend has already started. The La Nina anomaly is a temporary aberration.
The peak of the millennial temperature cycle was about 2003 corresponding with the millennial peak in solar activity in about 1991.We might have a little more warming through April. I expect the 2020 RSS anomaly to be about minus 0.15 by about 2020.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QoRTLG14Siw/VdOUiiFaI5I/AAAAAAAAAYM/NxQVb2LMefk/s1600/oulu20158.gif
For more detail see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-epistemology-of-climate-forecasting.html
plus links.
Obviously I meant El Nino anomaly in first comment – sorry.
So were the 2008 and 2011 La Ninas. If you want to filter out the ENSO effect then do it properly. However, if you do I think you might find you’re left with warming. ENSO can explain short term effects over say, 12 years, but it cannot explain the long term trend.
John .The 2008 and 2011 La Ninas are roughly balanced out by the 2010 El Nino all three of which are included in the blue regression curve. The ENSO effect clearly doesn’t explain the long term but the 1000 and 60 year periodicities allow us to make reasonable predictions. Right now the ENSO effect doesn’t explain anything because we don’t understand it- we simply observe it.
In general we don’t need to ” understand ” any of this to make useful predictions – merely to observe quasi – repetitive regularities in the data . The Babylonians didn’t need to know Kepler’s laws to predict Lunar Eclipses.
I think I agree with a comment on another thread by Leif Svalgaard relating to the blue trend line.
Why? The greatest schoolboy error of the establishment is to ignore the millennial cycle and to project ahead linearly in a cyclic system.
Why?
Well for a start, for some reason known only to yourself, you’ve chosen to end the trend plot in Jan 2015. Why have you done this when another 13 months data is available? Secondly the trend period is very short i.e. less than 12 years which leads to the fact that the trend is nowhere near being statistically significant.
John – the reason is blatantly obvious – I’m illustrating the cooling millennial trend in blue , clearly the 1998,2010 and 2015 + El Ninos are temporary deviations from the trends.
Dr Norman Page March 5, 2016 at 1:59 pm
I’ve responded to this about 4 comments higher in the thread.
Excellent summary. Thank you Bob Tisdale. I found the Met Office degree of uncertainty of 0.2 – 0.3 C most interesting
“THE UK Met Office is the only global temperature supplier to provide uncertainties on the same webpage as their monthly data (format here). ”
IF you are interested in uncertainty, then you have to look a little deeper than the SAME webpage,
RSS has it data on FTP.
here are the uncertainties
ftp://ftp.remss.com/msu/data/uncertainty/
NO skeptic dares to discuss the stated uncertainty in Satellite products.
its huge.
Primarily because of all the uncertainty in the adjustments that they have to do
NO skeptic dares to discuss the stated uncertainty in Satellite products. its huge.
Not nearly as “huge” as the way out of tolerance surface station network.
(Hey, did you notice this skeptic ‘daring’ to discuss it?)
db…
You didnt discuss it. You made a fact free claim.
The stated uncertainties of the satellite data are far larger than the surface data.
The “out of tolerance” surface data MATCHES the CRN data within a few hundreths
Tell me. When RSS uses a GCM to “correct” the data , why do you put faith in that?
tell me. When “bad stations” MATCH CRN… why do you disbelieve them?
OR
When the difference between UAH 5.6 and version 6 is huge… which do you believe?
When the difference between RSS version 3 and 4 is Huge which do you believe?
When the data PRODUCER , RSS, tells you their uncertainties are larger than the surface
why do you disbelieve them? Especially if you use their data to “prove” a pause?
Steven,
I replied to your comment. That’s ‘discussing’ it.
And re: the ‘pause’, so you’re on board with the new talking point: the pause never happened?
“New” talking point?
I’ve never been on board with the notion of a pause for as long as people have been using the term n this context, no matter what others (any others) have said. The “pause” was never a statistically significant event.
I also don’t agree with the notion that the ‘pause’ has ended. Partly because I didn’t think it was justified statistically in the first place, but mostly because the new warm ‘trend’ in RSS v3 resulting from the last month’s anomaly, is likewise not in the least statistically significant. I have no idea why people engage in absolute claims when the uncertainty interval is larger than any trend or supposed deviation from trend. It’s never stacked up statistically.
The consistent message from me has been that the period (from 97/98) is too short to claim anything – when one’s view is restricted to the surface/lower trop temperature record. Even now, the trend since 1997/98 (per the TLT record) could be flat, cooling, or warming. There’s simply not enough data to make a confident reckoning. You need longer time frames before statistical uncertainty resolves to a signal (or lack of one)
“…The consistent message from me has been that the period (from 97/98) is too short to claim anything …”
Well that wasn’t/isn’t the consistent message from climate scientists.
“…Tell me. When RSS uses a GCM to “correct” the data , why do you put faith in that?…”
You love to spout this. It’s part of the diurnal adjustment RSS uses. UAH uses other methods.
As the RSS folks stated when they published on their Monte-Carlo simulation-based uncertainly estimates (can you provide something comparable for all of the other temperature sets? TIA!), it’s important to have multiple independent sets analyzing the data. We have that with RSS and UAH. They don’t always agree but historically have been close and still too low for what they should be relative to the surface readings.
” We have that with RSS and UAH.”
They need to use different approaches, the more similar the approach the less faith to have in them.
” They don’t always agree but historically have been close and still too low for what they should be relative to the surface readings.”
Speaking of similar approaches, it’s more likely the surface processing is too high, or too polluted with non Co2 warming, or both.
“Well that wasn’t/isn’t the consistent message from climate scientists.”
There was/is a range of views on the alleged pause. You’d think that would generate interest, but for some it inspired only derision as they clutched their preferred view tighter. A bit of grip-loosening all round would be healthy.
“The “out of tolerance” surface data MATCHES the CRN data within a few hundredths”
Yes and a great job they did with their data matching.
You are no mathematician or engineer, we know that..
….. but there is NO WAY that three different systems can give the results shown on the link below.
It is absolute evidence of DATA MATCHING. (which is just another type of fraud.)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2005&endyear=2016&month=12
barry says:
The “pause” was never a statistically significant event.
That shows that ‘barry’ doesn’t have a clue about what’s being discussed.
Lets look at the two graphs…
Firstly the satellite data against USCRN
http://s19.postimg.org/8lgilst2r/USA_January.png
See how they are close, but with lots of discrepancies.. That’s what you expect from different measuring systems
Now look at the stuff Mosh is trying to sell (for salesman he is, part of the Dodgy Bros)
http://s19.postimg.org/4mwmotrn7/too_perfect.png
Basically no difference anywhere. WAY TOO PERFECT.
It was done by people wanting to make them match, but without the knowledge to create enough differences.
The key is to legally bind climate reporting institutions to publish raw data and there own margins of uncertainty with every report. Those that know how can then calculate there own margins of uncertainty. I am sure that there will be different ways of doing this. Big ask??
Mush, you are delusional, as always !
Steve, how huge is huge? The link is not very helpful to a layperson.
Those are the GISS uncertainties.
“The stated uncertainties of the satellite data are far larger than the surface data.”
Just another fact free claim. Call me when you actually want to discuss it.
gymnosperm
All the best estimate trends and their respective >95% uncertainty margins can be found here: http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
As an example, the trend in HadCRUT4 since 1979 is stated as 0.166 ±0.038 °C/decade (2σ); whereas in RSS since 1979 the trend is 0.126 ±0.063 °C/decade (2σ). The closer you get to the present, the wider the satellite uncertainty is, relative to the surface data.
For instance, since 1998 the trend in HadCRUT4 is 0.107 ±0.111 °C/decade (2σ), which is getting very close to statistical significance. On the other hand the trend in RSS since 1998 is 0.002 ±0.185 °C/decade (2σ)!
Note that the HadCRUT4 uncertainty precludes any trend cooler than -0.004 C/dec since 1998; whereas the uncertainty in RSS allows for a warming of up to 0.187 C/dec, which incorporates the best estimate trend reported by HadCRUT4.
Thanks for the link. Agree that within this context Mosher’s statement is correct. However, considerations beyond the scope of the data, for example % of planet sampled, culling of unsavory sites, etc. add layers of uncertainty this sort of analysis does not consider.
DWR54 unfortunately a bit apples-to-oranges. You mention HadCRUT4 and RSS…well, here’s the HadCRUT4 paper http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/HadCRUT4_accepted.pdf . The only mention of Monte-Carlo simulations being used to estimate uncertainty is in the references…referring to RSS. HadCRUT4’s estimates of uncertainty are mostly based on the integration of bias errors, mostly taken from the results of past papers – some with their own flaws – and assumptions. I mean (good Lord!) one of the “most significant” changes from HadCRUT3 to HadCRUT4 was “refinements to the bias adjustments” from the mid 1940s to the end of the 1960s thanks to “new bias adjustments” applied to sea-surface temperature data from 1945-1970. Really? We’re making data from 70 years ago more accurate now? Come on.
Michael Jankowski
I appreciate that the methods used to calculate the surface and satellite data set error margins may differ. Even so, the ‘scale’ of the error in all of the surface data sets is estimated to be much smaller than it is in either of the satellite data sets.
Whether this is justified or not I’m not qualified to say; but there appears to have been little in the way of controversy over this in the past. I’ve always thought that the exaggerated response of the satellites compared to surface data when it comes to ENSO fluctuations might be something that would make the satellite error margins bigger anyway. Not sure if that’s the case.
The question is whether the satellite response to Enso is exaggerated or real. The surface data defines a spherical plane distorted by surface topography at about the elevation of the human nose. This distorted sphere is sampled very unevenly. Satellite TLT samples a profile from the surface to the lower stratosphere that is statistically weighted to a median of some 11000 feet. TLT sampling is far more even.
They are completely different animals. TLT also “exaggerates” volcanos compared with the surface. They can both be right.
oh no, I see a hockey stick. We are all doomed to fry very soon, and it’s all our fault. Well, that’s what the scientist said. Just wait for the news to report this.
Wait for it, I can see the Guardian headlines … end of the pause … CO2 back on track to disaster … give generously or we’re all gunna die.
Bob
To see a return of The Blob we will have to see a return of the persistent blocking that help to form it. Because l noticed it was when this blocking broke down, it was only then that The Blob began to disappear.
As l posted some months ago l saw The Blob as a sign of climate cooling should it become a persistent feature. As it tends to drive cold Polar air down across North America. Right where the ice sheets formed during the last ice age. This is why l see what’s happens to the climate in the Hudson Bay area is a key sign to changes in future climate.
taxed, The Blob has only relaxed at the surface. In the two years that it existed, it created a pocket of warmer-than-normal waters there to depth:
The question is, where and when will all of that warm water appear at the surface?
Bob
Looking at the Jet stream for the coming week, then it looks like eastern asia is shaping up for a other cold weather event. As its looking like there will Arctic air will flow down across this area, leading to a powerful Jet stream flowing over the western Pacific. Which is likely to aid further cooling of the western Pacific. One to watch l think.
Sorry l mean “As its looking like Arctic air will flow down across this area.”
OK, I’ll bite – I’ll try to answer the question as to when (significant and noticeable) global cooling will begin. I’ve written somewhere on this blog in another response post that I believe there are several distinct temperature cycles, some or all of which are governed by the sunspot cycle. The sunspot cycle may in turn be affected or even governed by planetary effects. Anyway, looking back at northeast U.S. storminess, I detected in both historical and anecdotal data a circa-65 year cycle…maybe a 60-70 year cycle. Others have certainly seen this too. Another cycle seems to be a 200 year cycle. And then there is the longer period cycle…perhaps 800 years…which is more significant and leads to LIA- and MWP-scale temperature troughs and peaks respectively. I tried to relate these cycles to the sunspot cycle by grouping 6 consecutive cycle together to constitute one complete short-term 65 year cycle (11 x 6 = 66). Of course, these sunspot cycle are not exactly 11 years, so there is some elasticity in the length of this short-term cycle (which I named after Dr. David Ludlum, whose works I used.) I wondered (and still do) if one group of 3 cycles in which there are 2 “odd” cycles and only 1 “even” one constituted a warm 30 or 35 year period…which would be preceded and followed by a 30-35 year period of 3 sunspot cycles dominated by (2) even cycles, which would be slightly cooler. One can trace these alternating periods well back in time (in northeastern U.S. storm cycles). My other thought was that 3 groups of 3 cycles…say it was the 3 groups dominated by 2 odd sunspot cycles…would constitute the warm 100 year period of the 200 year cycle. And then the longer-period 800 (or maybe even 900) year period cycle may or may not be part of this same hypothesis. The 200 year cycle seems to be conveniently operating on the century years, from 1600-1800 (1600-1700 cool, 1700-1800 warm), 1800-2000 (1800-1900 cool, and 1900-2000 warm). The shortest term 70 year cycle is 1910-1940 (warm), 1940-1975 (cool), and 1975-2010 (warm) .Anyway, getting back to the original question, it appears to me that the peaks of all these cycles have phased together in the latter part of the 20th century and the 2000-2010 period. They probably did the same thing at the peaks of other Warm Periods. We seemed to have entered a new sunspot cycle around 2010, and the 2010-2040 (or 2045) period will be of the cooler 3-sunspot-cycle variety. The peak of the 200 year cycle was around 2000 and will wane to a trough through 2100, and of course the longer-period 800 year cycle will remain at (or just after) peak for another half-century to century. So, without further ado, if you buy into this, then global temperatures will remain plateau-ish for the next 30-50 years, or maybe even drop slightly, as the cool part of the 65 year cycle is offset by the waning but still warm 200 year cycle through 2045, after which the warm-effect 35 year sunspot cycle will compete with a downward trend of the 200 year cycle from 2045 to 2080, and the overwhelming 800 year cycle remains in force, or perhaps just past its peak. From this hypothesis, I would forecast that significant global cooling (absent other forcings, e,g, vulcanism) will begin after 2070-2080, say 2075 for convenience sake, but perhaps beginning / becoming noticeable in the 2050-2070 timeframe. One thing to remember, though, is that cooling events seem to begin abruptly; perhaps cooling will be pretty pronounced once it begins after 2050 or 2060. I might be around til 2030 or even 2040, but if anybody’s around in 2070, please get a hold of a psychic and let me know what’s happening! One thing I forecast with more confidence: this GHG warming scam will remain with us until global temperatures cool significantly. The taxes and other burdens imposed will be around for a long, long time. They will be very difficult to remove.
Reading text on the computer is difficult when someone doesn’t break up text into smaller paragraphs.
And it doesn’t help when what’s been written is a steaming pile of “cyclomanic” twaddle.
John Finn,
‘Twaddle’? That’s your argument? At least he made some points. You made none, and contradicted nothing, so you lose.
emsnews, I agree, there are plenty of places for paragraph breaks there.
ROFLMAO
Can you add me to your psychxxxx mailing list? I’ve had similar thoughts. Oh well. 😉
(I think 2030 for a small bit of cooling as the current crop of hot air politicos will have emptied the coffers by then and our kids will be back to horse farming … or maybe electric tractors … No, probably refined cooking oils from fast food places turned into bio-diesel – ah … the smell of French Fries in the early morning frost when the tractors fire up …)
Lack of paragraphs? Small issue. Completely devoid of physics, let alone the mathematics available to anyone on the internet interested in solar energy W/m2 available from TSI variations as well as narrow portions of the spectrum and those variations. Maybe the writer is referring to a galactic hypothesis related to cloud seeding by subatomic particles, which is equally a far stretch from possible as a driver of Earth’s temperature trend.
Let me make an observation.
If an El Nino is nothing more than moving a pool of hot water from one place to another, how does that alter the global average temperature?
And if it’s just exchanging surface water for subsurface water how does that increase GAT?
When I looked at the derivative of daily temperature change for the continents, they did not track each other, my assumption is pool of warm water move, with alters the amount of warmed humidified air moving into mainly the major northern hemisphere ‘ s continents and getting recorded by land based stations, where it might have cool at sea.
But my process does no infilling or homogenization, the very process that’s suppose to properly assign every where a temperature. And if we’re just shuffling pools of water around, how does that change temps?
Nice thought, crossed my mind too. It could be due to poor mesurement siting or lack of them. Eg. Sometimes the blob of heat is not near the thermometer. Get my drift?
” Nice thought, crossed my mind too. It could be due to poor mesurement siting or lack of them. Eg. Sometimes the blob of heat is not near the thermometer. Get my drift?”
I think that basically explains the surface series, but only because of the way the data is processed.
But satellites (at least UAH) measures the globe relatively equally. RSS measures equally but does some of it’s calculations based on models.
macha says: “It could be due to poor mesurement siting or lack of them. Eg. Sometimes the blob of heat is not near the thermometer. Get my drift?”
ENSO is a well-studied, very-well-documented natural phenomenon. There has been an array of moored buoys sampling sea surface and subsurface ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific since the early 1990s called the TAO Project:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/proj_over/proj_over.html
Since the early 1980s, satellites have been used to supplement the in situ sampling of sea surface temperatures.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.noaa.oisst.v2.html
ENSO events appear in satellite-based sea level anomalies:
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/latestdata/archive/
ETC.
Cheers
micro6500 says: “If an El Nino is nothing more than moving a pool of hot water from one place to another, how does that alter the global average temperature?”
You may have missed the discussion in the post. Under the heading of THE LOWER TROPOSPHERE SHOWS A GREATER RESPONSE THAN THE SURFACE TO THE EL NIÑOS, the first paragraph begins:
“In response to an El Niño, only a portion of the temporary upticks in global surface temperatures are a direct result of the warming of the eastern tropical Pacific (caused by the warm subsurface waters of the western tropical Pacific being shifted to the surface of the eastern tropical Pacific).”
Phrased differently: Before the El Nino, the warm waters in the western tropical Pacific were below the surface (to depths of 300 meters). If they’re below the surface, they’re not included in the surface temperature record. During and after the El Nino, those warm subsurface waters have been brought to the surface, and are now included in the surface temperature record.
ENSO basics:
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/an-illustrated-introduction-to-the-basic-processes-that-drive-el-nino-and-la-nina-events/
Thanks Bob. I did miss it.
The way I process land based surface data (derivative of day to day changes) detects some large swings in daily min temp (while max doesn’t hardly change) that only show up in one or two regions and no others, and then another region will change and others won’t then. These changes have to be coming from changes in the oceans surface temps. And this El Nino pushed the jet stream, changing the storm track across the US. This allowed the Midwest to have more days of tropical air out of the gulf, and less polar air out of Canada. That’s why our winter in NE Ohio was so warm this year. Just moving the jet stream east or west will change the average temp, at least of the US.
That said, with an El Nino’s ability to tap into deep pools of warm water, can one presume the opposite happens from time to time (maybe as part of a La Nina)?
The oceans are awash in currents. And they flow like ribbons. Some twirl like a rhythmic gymnast’s baton ribbon. Some meander more like a kite’s ribbon stream. Some of these currents dip beneath the surface then reemerge somewhere else. Some currents get mixed together with other currents then get separated out somewhere else, totally changed. Some currents start out as currents, disappear, and never reemerge. Where those waters go is anybody’s guess. What I do know is this, when water is sped up thus churned up, evaporation is diminished. When waters are allowed to relax, thus layer up with warm submerged water rising to the surface, evaporation increases.
So here is an area of research that likely has never been done for the oceans, but is done all the time for the atmosphere. I think it is possible that ocean gyres have oscillations that speed up and slow down over multiple years or possibly decades. Gyres have higher sea level surfaces in the middle than on the sides. If these gyres slow down or speed up, the center height may change (to high and pointed or lower and flattened), much like the height of the Arctic pressure systems do. I speculate that when flattened, evaporation, and possibly teleconnections to atmospheric blocking systems prevail. When more pointed, cold, stormy weather prevails. Because oceanic gyres are so large, their influence is likely decadel at the very least, possibly even on a century scale. I think these changes may be useful in terms of weather pattern variability.
Alas, with all the focus on CO2, ocean measurements continue to take a back seat.
Interesting thoughts Pamela. I have been thinking about this since ~2008.
Here is a post from 2012. I am not saying I am correct – just that there are many possibilities for explaining these lags of CO2 after temperature, and deep ocean currents may be part of the cause.
Best, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/13/do-latest-solar-studies-confirm-upcoming-global-cooling/#comment-891335
In 2008, I wrote that atmospheric CO2 lagged atmospheric temperature T by ~9 months on a short-time-cycle (~3- 4 years – between major El Nino’s?).
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
I also noted that CO2 lags temperature by ~800 years from ice core data, on a much longer time cycle..
I postulated that there could be one or more intermediate (between 9 months and 800 years) cycles where CO2 lags temperature.
The late Ernst Beck had already discussed intermediate lags, and thought the CO2-after-T lag was 5 years.
This post, by inference, suggests we should be looking for a CO2-after-T lag of about 9 years, similar to the period of one sunspot cycle. We have adequate CO2 data at Mauna Loa back to ~1958, so perhaps someone has the time to look for this postulated lag.
Perhaps other longer intermediate CO2-after-T lags also exist – if we have any quality CO2 data to permit analysis (pre-1958, we would probably have to use Beck’s data compilation, which has been treated with inadequate respect, imo).
Regards, Allan
______________________________________
Here is some of the discussion from 2008:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/17/the-co2-temperature-link/
______________________________________
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer…”
– W. B. Yeats
There is more to El Nino that just temperature. Looking at the UAH satellite lower tropospheric temperatures from across the globe, excluding the polar regions, there is a maximum in the annual temperature increment at about October 1997 marking an El Nino event. This maximum is followed about six months later by a maximum in the average temperature for the 13 months spanned by the annual increments.
Comparison with the annual rate for the CO2 concentration for stations across the globe, reveals a clear maximum in this rate which corresponds with or near the time of the 13 month maximum in the temperature. If the IPCC claim that CO2 causes global warming was correct, then the CO2 maximum rate of change should precede or correspond to the maximum in the temperature rate of change. That is, the El Nino event exposes the gross deception that has been practised by the IPCC over many decades.
Furthermore the results suggest that the average temperature for the Land component of the Tropics zone controls the rate of change of the CO2 concentration across most of the globe leading to the possibility that the CO2 change could be of biogenic origin.
The El Nino signal is well above the noise level for the changes in both satellite temperature and ground station CO2 concentration so the above results are plainly apparent from graphical inspection of the time series. In order to obtain statistical measures for the proposed conclusions, it is necessary to use generalised linear regression with a first-order autoregressive model for the time series. It is common for this model to be applicable for data from natural events and the Durbin-Watson test showed this to be the case in comparing the annual increment for each of the Scripps Institute atmospheric CO2 concentration for Mauna Loa and the UAH satellite lower tropospheric temperature. For the CO2 vs Tropics temperature annual increments, the Durbin-Watson factor was 0.26, vs the Tropics – Land component it was 0.41 and for the Tropics – Ocean component it was 0.25, implying a positive autocorrelation for each of the time series.
After estimation of the autocorrelation for each pair of time series and transformation of the variables according to the first-order autoregressive model, the results for Mauna Loa were
(i) CO2 increment vs Tropics temperature increment: correlation 0.05 with a probability of 28% that the correlation is zero,
(ii) CO2 increment vs Tropics – Land temperature increment: correlation 0.13 with a probability of 0.7% that the correlation is zero, and
(iii) CO2 increment vs Tropics – Ocean temperature increment: correlation 0.03 with a probability of 55% that the correlation is zero.
Cross-correlation of the transformed series gave a maximum of about 0.45 for the correlation with the CO2 lagging the temperature by eight months.
Based on the above propositions and the fact that the February temperature has shown a sudden spike confirming that an El Nino event is in progress, it is predicted that there could be a corresponding spike in the rate of change of CO2 concentration in about six months time.
Thank you Bevan, very interesting.
This may be helpful:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/15/voxs-david-roberts-consilience-or-just-plain-silliness/comment-page-1/#comment-2098864
This is the dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship I was referring to above.
See my 2008 paper at:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
or this plot:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah/from:1959/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
There are several observations about this striking dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship:
1. The dCO2/dt vs. temperature correlation is remarkably strong for a natural global phenomenon.
2. The integral (of dCO2/dt) is atmospheric CO2, and it LAGS temperature by about 9 months in the modern data record. CO2 also LAGS temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record. Thus CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales. Thus the global warming hypothesis assumes that the future is causing the past. Thus the CAGW hypothesis fails.
3. This close dCO2/dt vs temperature relationship indicates that temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
4. The dCO2/dt vs. temperature correlation is the only detailed signal I have found in the data – there is NO evidence that CO2 LEADS temperature or that increasing atmospheric CO2 significantly increases global temperature.
5. Furthermore, global temperature declined from ~1940-1975, increased from ~1975-2000, and has stayed flat (or cooled slightly) since ~2000, all while atmospheric CO2 increased; so the correlation of temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2 has been NEGATIVE, Positive, and Near-Zero. I suggest Near-Zero is the correct estimate of the sensitivity (ECS) of global temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2. There is and never had been a manmade global warming crisis – there is no credible evidence to support this failed hypothesis.
6. With few exceptions including some on this blog, nobody (especially the global warming alarmists) wants to acknowledge the LAG of CO2 after temperature – apparently this LAG of CO2 after temperature contradicts deeply-held beliefs about global warming dogma.
7. While basic physics may suggest that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the overwhelming observational evidence indicates that the impact of increasing CO2 on global temperature is so small as to be insignificant.
8. In summary, observational evidence strongly indicates that the manmade global warming crisis does not exist.
9. Finally, atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high; in fact, it is dangerously low for the survival of terrestrial carbon-based life on Earth. Plants evolved with about 2000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, or about 5 times current CO2 concentrations.
10. In one of the next global Ice Ages, atmospheric CO2 will approach about 150ppm, a concentration at which terrestrial photosynthesis will slow and cease – and that will be the extinction event for all terrestrial life on this planet.
11. More atmospheric CO2 is highly beneficial to all carbon-based life on Earth. Therefore, CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
12. As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on this planet, I feel the duty to advocate on our behalf. I should point out that I am not prejudiced against other life forms. They might be very nice, but I do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. 🙂
Regards to all, Allan