Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions
- Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C
- Comes amid mounting evidence run of record temperatures about to end
- The fall, revealed by Nasa satellites, has been caused by the end of El Nino
By David Rose
Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record. According to satellite data, the late 2016 temperatures are returning to the levels they were at after the 1998 El Nino.
The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end. The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Nino – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.
Some scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, have claimed that the recent highs were mainly the result of long-term global warming.
Others have argued that the records were caused by El Nino, a complex natural phenomenon that takes place every few years, and has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions by humans.
The new fall in temperatures suggests they were right.
Big El Ninos always have an immense impact on world weather, triggering higher than normal temperatures over huge swathes of the world. The 2015-16 El Nino was probably the strongest since accurate measurements began, with the water up to 3C warmer than usual.
It has now been replaced by a La Nina event – when the water in the same Pacific region turns colder than normal.
This also has worldwide impacts, driving temperatures down rather than up.
The satellite measurements over land respond quickly to El Nino and La Nina. Temperatures over the sea are also falling, but not as fast, because the sea retains heat for longer.
This means it is possible that by some yardsticks, 2016 will be declared as hot as 2015 or even slightly hotter – because El Nino did not vanish until the middle of the year.
But it is almost certain that next year, large falls will also be measured over the oceans, and by weather station thermometers on the surface of the planet – exactly as happened after the end of the last very strong El Nino in 1998. If so, some experts will be forced to eat their words.
Last year, Dr Schmidt said 2015 would have been a record hot year even without El Nino.
‘The reason why this is such a warm record year is because of the long-term underlying trend, the cumulative effect of the long-term warming trend of our Earth,’ he said. This was ‘mainly caused’ by the emission of greenhouse gases by humans.
Dr Schmidt also denied that there was any ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ in global warming between the 1998 and 2015 El Ninos.
But on its website home page yesterday, Nasa featured a new study which said there was a hiatus in global warming before the recent El Nino, and discussed why this was so. Last night Dr Schmidt had not returned a request for comment.
However, both his own position, and his Nasa division, may be in jeopardy. US President-elect Donald Trump is an avowed climate change sceptic, who once claimed it was a hoax invented by China.
Last week, Mr Trump’s science adviser Bob Walker said he was likely to axe Nasa’s $1.9 billion (about £1.4 billion) climate research budget.
Other experts have also disputed Dr Schmidt’s claims. Professor Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said yesterday: ‘I disagree with Gavin. The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino.’
The slowdown in warming was, she added, real, and all the evidence suggested that since 1998, the rate of global warming has been much slower than predicted by computer models – about 1C per century.
David Whitehouse, a scientist who works with Lord Lawson’s sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the massive fall in temperatures following the end of El Nino meant the warming hiatus or slowdown may be coming back.
‘According to the satellites, the late 2016 temperatures are returning to the levels they were at after the 1998 El Nino.
The data clearly shows El Nino for what it was – a short-term weather event,’ he said.
Is it unclear because you are asserting he is not referring to the global record of land-based temperatures, or is it unclear because he didn’t word it in that manner?
Please add to the posting that it is about RSS Land data.
Styopa writes:
It now seems pretty clear that the study referred to in the Mail on Sunday article is this:
Xiao-Hai Yan, Tim Boyer, Kevin Trenberth, Thomas R. Karl, Shang-Ping Xie, Veronica Nieves, Ka-Kit Tung, Dean Roemmich. The global warming hiatus: Slowdown or redistribution? Earth’s Future, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/2016EF000417
— and that the NASA ‘home page’ note in the Mail story was this: Study Sheds New Insights Into Global Warming Trends
I cannot answer Styopa, because reasons are not clear — but I have asked David Rose on Twitter to let us know which actual articles he was referring to. If/once he lets us know that the Yan et al study was indeed that noted by Nick and others and posted above, then we might ask “why was this link or cite omitted from the Daily Mail story?”
It ,may seem odd or sloppy journalism to not give any clear reference to the Yan et al piece –, but maybe there is a perfectly sensible explanation. I will post David Rose’s answer should he get around to answering my query.
“maybe there is a perfectly sensible explanation. I will post David Rose’s answer should he get around to answering my query.”
Maybe.
But, his past record makes that seem unlikely.
Just read the replies the UKMO gave to his questions, and compare to what he wrote in my links above.
Anthony, I love ya’ man, but the title is misleading.
We don’t need to resort to such misleading sensationalism.
The truth will prevail in the end.
There is no such thing as “global land” temperature.
There’s global temperature, land temperature, and sea temperature.
I evidently agree to your critique as far as this stupid sensationalism is concerned. But you won’t change David Rose, as stupid sensationalism is his main tool.
But on the point ‘There is no such thing as ‘global land” temperature’ I don’t agree.
For the simple reason that for example all UAHx.y temperature series published since years are organised in 8 latitude zones (plus 3 regions: USA48 / 49, AUStralia).
Each of these 8 latitude zones (Global, NH, SH, Tropics, Arctic, Antarctic, NH Extratropics, SH Extratropics) is in turn subdivided in 3 parts (total, land, ocean).
Thus to differenciate each of the 8 land or ocean parts, you have to associate it to the appropriate total, here: “Global land”.
It is not strange if siberian freezing show up in global land temperature. But I don`t like to be fooled by “stupid sensationalism” from either side. I always like to know where data can be found, and what kind of knowledge data can give.
It’s pretty standard terminology…not sure why you and Nick Stokes find it so perplexing. Specifying the land-based temperature readings as “global” avoids any confusion with, say, Northern Hemisphere or Southern Hemisphere land-based temperatures, contiguous 48 United States land-based temperatures, etc, which are also frequently presented.
Well, it has confused WUWT, which makes it just “global temperature” in the headline. But it’s not the global temperature that Monckton was plotting, for example.
The graph that this article is based on appears to be made up, and bears no relationship to the truth. It is attributed to NASA but no URL is provided. The findings it reports are completely different to those reported on NASA’s site, which can be seen at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/. The article is simply more false news.
“Simple more false news”…sigh.
The article is poorly-written and doesn’t include proper references, but your ignorance on the subject is what led you to your false conclusion.
The article’s many references to satellite data would clue even a minimally-aware reader that the graph and data showing the steep decline in temperatures comes from one of two temperature datasets – UAH and RSS – which are based on the data from NASA satellites. Such a reader would also be aware that GISTEMP, which is the NASA data you linked to, does not come from satellites.
Hmm…so you’re talking about this then are you? http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2016/september/Sept_16_tlt_update_bar.png. Still doesn’t really seem to look much like the graph shown above.
No, chris98… You still did not find the right corner 🙂
It is, as you happened to choose UAH6.0beta5 as the example to show, here:
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0beta5.txt
Look at the anomalies in data column 5 (NH Land):
2016 2: 1.34
2016 3: 1.13
2016 4: 0.88
2016 5: 0.50
2016 6: 0.50
2016 7: 0.48
2016 8: 0.55
2016 9: 0.64
2016 10: 0.11
There you can see one of these “steepest drops in global temperature on record”.
Which of course exists, but was carefully cherry-picked out of a record that is not global at all, as many commenters managed to find out.
So, really that first sentence of the article should have read:
“
GlobalNorthern Hemisphere averagetemperaturestemperature anomalies over land have plummeted by more than 1C sincethe middleFebruary of this year. ”With three significant errors in the opening line, it doesn’t inspire much confidence in the rest of the article.
Didn’t I call this outcome? Explain how this happens! or walk away.
“The fall, revealed by Nasa satellites”
There is not this large one-month fall over land for the UAH algorithm, and differences in trends between the last corrected UAH and the oldest version of UAH are huge. Estimates are very sensitive to the algorithm used to convert the real satelitte measurement in a “low level” temperature (which level ? Why did it change from one UAH version to the other ? What are the sensitivities of the RSS or UAH algorithm ? ).
So, NASA satelittes didn’t reveal anything here, because they do not directly measure a atmopheric temperature profile.
Based on how I view the graph accompanying this article (and others covering the same period) the period of continuous warming that began in the mid-1970’s ended about 2002 not 1998 so the line representing the average from 1976 to 1998 does not appear meaningful. If Gavin means that the warm years since 2002 are the result of a long-term warming trend he is probably right. It is a trend that began around 1850. But if he is implying that these recent warm years indicate that there is no hiatus in warming since 2002 then he either needs glasses or some instruction on how to read a graph.
The hiatus is visible inside of the two El Niño peaks (1997/98, 2015/16).
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/161201/xfdneb77.jpg
But actually, it makes… a pause 🙂 due to the high temperature increase during the last 12 months.
Imo the best is to show at the results of work done by e.g. Santer, Bonfils & al. who extracted all ENSO signals (El Niño and La Niña) and all volcano activity sequels out of a troposphere temperature record (here: RSS) and obtained a residual warming of about 0.9 °C / century for the period 1979-2013 (the original was at that time at about 1.2 °C).
However, the site of Roy Spencer says:
The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for November 2016 is +0.45 deg. C, up a little from the October value of +0.41 deg. C.
This contradicts the “steepest drop in global temperature”. Am I missing something?
Yes! The fact namely that UAH and RSS show many different latitude zones and regions. You read only about the Globe.
What about reviewing the comments from bottom to top?
Yes the original post cherry picked the one metric that did show such a steep drop, namely the tropospheric temperature, above land only, from 70ºS-82.5ºN. The more global products don’t show such a drop because they are not so dominated by the N Hemisphere land (currently winter).
The temperature differences caused by El Nino, La Nina and other short term climate events are distractions and do not define the current hiatus. If the temperature record is predictive then the current hiatus will continue until about 2032.
Maybe you feel courageous enough to spring into a pool filled with somewhat colder water, and manage to carefully read this document: https://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-disseminate/1721.1/89054
It’s a bit hard work, but at the end you understand many matters better.
Bindidon, Save us some time and tell us what you want us to understand.
WUWT must issue a clear top-level retraction of this David Rose nonsense.
WUWT is a wonderful website, but failing to issue a clear retraction would be damaging.
Absolutely not:
I have two rules about how I manage my blog.
1. I’m not particularly interested in an opinion from somebody who makes a demand from behind a made up name.
2. The data speaks for itself:
If you can explain why those two datasets, measured by the NASA AQUA satellite, should not be trusted, and that those drops are NOT the steepest in the record, then by all means show me, but put your real name on it.
Anthony Watts
Anthony.
I offer a very sincere apology.
I had not seen the two charts you have provided.
I assumed David Rose had naively reproduced Roy Spencer’s October chart with what would be needed to make 2016 the warmest on record (drawn as a red dotted line).
Your website is the world’s best as far as I’m concerned.
I have seen it daily for 3 years.
I remain much indebted to you for all your hard work and dedication.
Actually David rose did do one small mistake: had he said that this drop is from the RSS MSU LT land only dataset, a lot of this discussion wouldn’t have happened.
Hello WUWT!!!! The above quote explains the global temperatures. I’m not a climate scientist, but I have common sense and a background in modeling, and I’ve been endlessly saying if you can explain what is warming the oceans you explain the atmospheric temperatures above them. It is the amount of radiation reaching the oceans that is important, not atmospheric CO2.
Here is the nonsensical argument for atmospheric CO2.
Problems with above explanation.
1) the oceans are never “calm.”
2) CO2 absorbs two very very narrow ranges, 13 to 18µ. H2O absorbs across the IR Spectrum.
3) H2O absorption of IR most likely results in more evaporation, which is endothermic, and would result in cooling, not warming the oceans.
http://www.randombio.com/spectra.png
Those are good questions, co2islife. I didn’t write the explanation you referred to, but I think I can provide a bit of insight.
1) “Calm water” makes the explanation simpler to visualize, but I don’t think it was intended as a necessary condition.
2) Certainly CO2 is only part of the radiation back into the oceans — and a small part at that. All the GHGs contribute, along with backradiation from the clouds.
3) More heat cannot logically result in an even greater cooling. If I put a heater in my swimming poll, the water will warm up. Yes, the evaporation will increase, causing some cooling, but the NET effect is warmer water. Same idea with radiation from GHGs. There will certainly be more evaporation with backradiation than with no backradiation, but the NET effect will be warmer water,
Ultimately, if you want to understand the warming effect of GHGs (and CO2 in particular) you need to look at the “top of atmosphere” and the radiation leaking to space. While CO2 only affects two bands as you note, those bands are clearly visible in satellite IR spectra. (for example, http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/nimbus-satellite-emissions-infra-red-earth-petty-6-6.jpg). That big dip is CO2. And that dip means less energy escaping and more energy staying (ie warming).
1) There is no argument that CO2 absorbs peaks at 2.7, 4.3 and 15µ
2) The absorption of CO2 is logarithmic, so those peaks exist at 50ppm, and are little changed up to where we are today at 400ppm.
3) Looking down from 3km, you can’t identify those absorption peaks because H20 overwhelms the lower atmosphere. Using MODTRAN the impact of CO2 in the lower 0.1km is immeasurable. All ground measurements are located within the lower 0.1km of the atmosphere. Certainly, none are located above 3km.
4) The reason you see those absorption bands looking down from 70km is because all other GHGs have precipitated out of the atmosphere. Atmospheric Temperatures follow H20 and O3, not CO2. CO2 is a constant 400ppm alll the way up to 80km, and yet over that range temperatures fall and then increase with altitude. That can’t be explained by CO2.
Note, temperature in the troposphere is directly correlated with atmospheric H20. As H20 is reduced, so is temperature. CO2 is a constant throughout the troposhere.
http://www.crisp.nus.edu.sg/~research/tutorial/atmos.gif
Not sure that is correct for a select set of wavelengths that don’t penetrate the oceans. A heater is sending our many wavelengths, and thermalizing the atmosphere. IR between 2.7, 4.3 and 15µ are already being absorbed by the H20 in the atmosphere, making CO2 irrelevant, of what small part of the 15µ band that atmospheric H20 misses, it would only activate the top micro-layer of the water. I would imagine this would be more analogous to blowing dry air across the water than using a heater. Blowing air across a sweaty body will cool it, much like IR at 15µ will likely cause evaporation and cooling, not warming. IR at 15µ BTW is consistent with a black body of temperature -80°C, that (-) isn’t a TYPO.
CO2,
Hot water freezes faster than cold water:
http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/hot-water-freezes-faster-cold-and-now-we-know/
Atomic bomb scientists at Los Alamos during WWII were at a gathering when someone, maybe a wife, made this claim. The room emptied as all the physicists and chemist went back to their apartments to test the claim.
“2) The absorption of CO2 is logarithmic, so those peaks exist at 50ppm, and are little changed up to where we are today at 400ppm.
3) Looking down from 3km, you can’t identify those absorption peaks”
For the impact of CO2, hte better place to look is downward from above the atmosphere (eg 70 km in the MODTRAN model as presented here: http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/)
The logarithmic nature of absorption does certainly limit the impact of increased CO2 levels. MODTRAN suggests that moving from 50 –> 400 ppm CO2 changes the outgoing IR by on the order of 10 W/m^2, which I consider more than a “little change”. Going from 300 –> 400 W/m^2 is on the order of 1 W/m^2. This is, yes, a rather small change, but it would have an impact on temperatures.
This part is pretty straightforward. The real challenges come when you try to figure out how the CO2 changes will in turn change other things (like lapse rate and H2O concentrations). In other words, the raw “1 K per doubling of CO2” is not very much up for debate.. The climate sensitivity which could cause a 3-5 K change per double IS somewhat up for debate.
But here’s the problem with modtran, it isn’t that easy. This is a good example of what I learned with electronics simulators and verifiers, specialized models need good input, and frankly I don’t know modtran well enough, but I was able to emulate increasing water (which I hope emulates increasing rel humidity), and it shuts the optical window down. And the real planet, when rel humidity gets near 100% the outgoing channel closes most of the way down. Because of this, all the linear math adding co2 forcing to the rest of the forcing is wrong.
The total effect is still up for debate, surface temperature night time cooling is strongly regulated by dew points temps.
?w=500
That’s what this means.
“15µ BTW is consistent with a black body of temperature -80°C, that (-) isn’t a TYPO.”
This is sort of true, but mostly misleading. A BB @ur momisugly -80 C will have a peak wavelength of about 15 um. That really has noting to do with CO2 radiating @ur momisugly 15 um. CO2 at any temperature will radiate 15 um IR. Furthermore, CO2 at any temperature above -80 C will radiate MORE 15 um IR than the -80 C BB would.
“Blowing air across a sweaty body will cool it, much like IR at 15µ will likely cause evaporation and cooling, not warming. ”
Everything else being equal, water that receives more 15 um IR will be warmer than water that receives less 15 um IR.
Everything else being equal, warm water evaporates more than cool water.
I can’t see any reasonable scenario where more energy input leads to cooler temperatures.
1) 1/300 is a negligible amount of additional energy.
2) Simply alter the amount of clouds and/or/H20 and you will see CO2 is dwarfed by other factors
3) According to MODTRAN, CO2 has an immeasurable impact on the lower 0.1km of the atmosphere, regardless of its level.
4) The 1W/M^2 is concentrated in the 13 to 18µ range, consistent with a black body temperature of -80°C , and those wavelengths don’t penetrate or warm water. In fact those wavelengths are absorbed by H20 vapor.
“1) 1/300 is a negligible amount of additional energy.”
Depends on your perspective. It corresponds to about 0.3 C. Some consider that non-negligible, especially if CO2 continues to rise and that temperature continues to get larger.
“2) Simply alter the amount of clouds and/or/H20 and you will see CO2 is dwarfed by other factors”
Yes, this is indeed pretty much the crux of the matter! Other factors make a huge difference, too (and please don’t kid yourself that climate scientists don’t know about anything besides CO2).
However, I doubt you have the power to ‘simply alter the amount of clouds and/or/H20’. Lacking specific knowledge of how these other factors operate, the simplest hypothesis is that “everything else remains the same”. And then we get that ~ 0.3 C warming. Some people contend that feedbacks will MAGNIFY the CO2 forcing, causing a bigger rise. Others claim feedbacks don’t really matter. If you have special insights into this matter, then publish a paper about it.
“3) According to MODTRAN, CO2 has an immeasurable impact on the lower 0.1km of the atmosphere, regardless of its level.”
I think you are trying to use MODTRAN in a way it is not intended. The MODTRAN site takes a given temperature profile in the atmosphere and calculates the radiation that would be expected based on the selected atmospheric composition.
As such, changing the CO2 in the lower atmosphere will indeed have little impact on the surface radiation. But here is the thing. If CO2 changes the energy balance at the very top of the atmosphere, it will change the temperatures at the very top. And because the lapse rate is pretty well fixed, this means that this temperature change will cascade on down through the atmosphere. MODTRAN has no way to model how the temperature of the lower atmosphere would change due to radiation imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
“4) The 1W/M^2 is concentrated in the 13 to 18µ range, consistent with a black body temperature of -80°C , and those wavelengths don’t penetrate or warm water. In fact those wavelengths are absorbed by H20 vapor.”
This is basically the same misconception I just addressed in (3). It is immaterial if those wavelengths are also emitted by clouds or H2O gas. If changing CO2 at the top has changed the entire temperature profile then the clouds and water themselves would radiate different amounts of IR to the oceans, and THAT will change the water (and land and air) temperature.
Pinching down the far end of a garden hose impacts the flow & pressure at BOTH ends of the hose. 🙂
Siberian Express headed for the Pacific NW next week, with single digit temperatures F expected in my AO.
But because high Arctic is warmer than usual, ie, -20 F instead of -30, the book cookers will register this as the hottest winter, evah!
Would someone please explain this chart to me? If it is charting what I think it is saying, this is clear “fraud” and undeniable evidence of manipulating the data to match the results. Trump needs to go after these people. In no other field would this be allowed. The laws don’t cease to exist in the Climate “Science” departments of our liberal universities.
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016-01-14-04-18-24.png
“Would someone please explain this chart to me?”
It’s a junk chart from Steven Goddard. I’ve dealt with the maths here. When he describes the adjustments as Average Final minus Average raw, that is not a measure of adjustment at all. They are two different sets of stations. Final is the full set of 1218 stations, where readings for missing stations in a month are estimated. Raw is just the stations that report in that month, which could be about 900 stations. So the difference in those averages is almost entirely because the raw, over time, became a colder group of stations. Not because of adjustments.
I showed that by doing a similar calc in which just the long term means were used in the calculation. It gave a very similar result. The difference is due to the different sets being averaged, not adjustment.
I’ll have to hand it to the climate “scientists” they can somehow greatly complicate a seemingly simple problem. If you take a sample from any dataset its errors should be normally distributed with equal variance, or homoscedastic. It strikes me that all one needs to do is analyze the “adjustments.” Stephen Goddard’s chart clearly demonstrates a bias to the adjustments. There must be a “Final” data set and an “Adjustment” data set. From those two you can get to the Raw if needed, but you don’t need the Raw when all you are concerned with are the “adjustments.” The AGW model is Temp = f(CO2). The real model is Temp = f(solar radiation reaching earth, atmospheric H2O, log(CO2), etc etc etc). The fact that the AGW believers are using Temp=f(CO2) and not Temp= f(logCO2) demonstrates an ignorance of the physics and mathematics necessary to model AGW. By making the model Temp=f(CO2), what will likely happen, and is happening, is that Temp will increase/decrease without much relationship with CO2. The linear behavior of CO2 will continue upward while temperatures will do what they do. Recently the temperatures have “paused.” The linear relationship therefor breaks down. The only way to maintain that linear model is to “adjust” the temperatures upward so that temperatures increase with CO2. The simple questions then become 1) are the “adjustments” heavily skewed towards (+) 2) have the sizes of the “adjustments” been increasing during the pause? Answer those simple questions and you have your answer as to whether or not this is a fraud or not. Does anyone have the “adjustment” datasets?
“they can somehow greatly complicate a seemingly simple problem”
It’s elementary in any science. If you want to measure an effect, you either have to have before and after samples, or you need a rigmarole of controls etc to make the samples comparable. If you want to test Dr Seuss patent treatment for baldness, you can do before/after. But if you just take 100 people who have been treated and 100 different ones who haven’t, the difference is likely not due to treatment at all. You might just have chosen a younger group, say.
And that is what happened here. Adjustments changes are small, but differences in climate, say Dakota/Texas, are huge. If what was included in the raw set had just a few more cold places than hot, that will dominate the difference. And as I say, you can test for that by just subtracting the mean of long term averages. You get the same difference as what SG claims are adjustments.
Adjustments in the US at least do tend to increase the trend. The big one is TOBS, and there is a clear reason for that, explained here. For the rest, it seems to be mainly du to the way stations moved, and in older times, to adjsting in effect for the poorer protection from radiant heat. I looked in detail at adjustments in NH here.
Thanks Nick for this pretty demonstration of how important knowledge can be, and how ill-made some arguments can be when based on wrong assumptions themselves due to bare lack of that knowledge.
It is amazing to see what some people are able to invent.
co2islife says:
“If you take a sample from any dataset its errors should be normally distributed… ”
No. The errors are distributed however the errors are distributed. Yuu may be thinking of the “central limit theorem”, but that is something else.
” The AGW model is Temp = f(CO2)”
No. If this were true, then climate models would all simply slope upward steadily.
It would appear you are attacking a strawman.
marty November 28, 2016 at 4:53 pm
I propose to wait these few days until the November data are there!
The November data are now out and the drop ended and the anomaly rose back up to 0.348.
“the anomaly rose back “
Icy silence from the House Science Committee.
“The new fall in temperatures suggests they were right” is a generalization from specific instances of global temperatures. The problem of how one can generalize from specific instances is the “problem of induction.” This problem has a solution under which the proposition that “the new fall in temperatures suggests they were right” is neither true nor false. Instead, this proposition has a probability of being true. Provided that this probability is conditional there is the possibility of regulating our climate but not otherwise.
In my 10/10/2016 article (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/10/interesting-climate-sensitivity-analysis-do-variations-in-co2-actually-cause-global-significant-warming/), I suggest another possibly important cause of the dramatic uptick in temperature, and perhaps also even of the dramatic El Nino of 2015-16.
Peter L. Ward, a USGS volcanologist, suggested that global warming throughout geologic time has been caused by stratospheric ozone depletion resulting from the release of HCl and HBr by non-explosive, basaltic volcanoes, like the ones in Iceland and Hawai’i. Peter pointed out that Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano underwent the largest basaltic eruption since Laki in 1783 from August, 2014 to February, 2015. Cl and Br emissions from this eruption would have depleted stratospheric ozone and admitted more high-frequency solar UV-B radiation to cause global warming in 2015-16.