Berkeley Earth – 'record temperature in 2016 appears to come from a strong El Nino'

“2016 witnessed extraordinary warming in the Arctic that is having a significant impact on global temperature measurements”.
Tony, Tony, Tony. What 2016 witnessed was extraordinary cooling effect in the Arctic, as warmer air went there to have its heat radiated into space. Check DMI for the 80 Degree Latitude average temperatures for 2016. Temperatures were above normal in the past winter (some 5 degrees C), but still were around -20C. As the spring and summer came on, they went back to the long term average, and remained that way until the fall, when they dropped below zero C and are now back around -20C again. That is, the heat anomaly radiated into the blackness of space, but managed to inflate the overall global anomaly in the process (i.e. global average temperature for winter was elevated by the “heat wave” last winter in the Arctic). However, the effect was to cool the planet (the heat had to come from somewhere, and was not replenished in the Arctic darkness). Net, net, the planet is venting the El Nino spike via one of the only viable mechanisms it has, moving it to the poles to go right up that cold “chimney”. The big Arctic lows (like the extraordinary one experienced this last week), are sucking warm air up to the pole, and consigning the heat to space (and in the process, building record snow/ice pack on Greenland. That huge storm (below 960 mb), is also crushing and compacting the ice – it’s lowering the extent, but building the volume – look for rapid ice growth, and a average to better ice volume in the next few months.

Arguing about temperatures and climate drivers has become just as emotional as arguing about sports or politics or religion. Very little is said about what we should actually do. This position from Berkeley Earth, “The most effective and economic approach would be to encourage nuclear power, substitution of natural gas for future coal plants, and continued improvement of energy efficiency.”, seems reasonable. What do you think?

2016 was the hottest year on record. So, what?
Well, here is someone that’s alarmed.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html

In my first comment on January 28th I pointed out falsifications present in your global warming data. Now let’s look at erroneous interpretations that your paper is full of. In your opinion, the 2016 El Nino wipes out the ‘…global warming “pause”, which Berkeley Earth had always stressed was not statistically significant…” That is abject nonsense. The first six years of 21st century can easily be interpreted as a pause in satellite views as well as in HadCRUT3, as can be seen in figure 24 of my book. However, if additional data that came after 2008 is used we find a La Nina at year 2008 and a Le Nino in year 2010. And temperature after this is distinctly lower than at the turn of the century. This temperature curve eventually turns upward after 2012. But the two ENSO components in between make it hard to see the true temperature trend which is actually downward, indicating cooling. An ENSO oscillation does not normally contribute to the background warming because El Ninos and La Ninas are created in pairs (pp. 17-21) and effectively restore the original background level after having passed through. In view of this fact we can ignore the trend shown by ENSO peaks/valleys here and simply draw a straight line through from 2002 to 2012. This is the most likely path of the background temperature we cannot see because of ENSO. After 2012 that temperature curve begins to turn up in preparation for creating the 2016 El Nino. But the straight line itself from 2002 to 2012 has a negative slope and this indicates cooling. not warming. That cooling is due to the fact that the warmth at the beginning of the twenty-first century cannot be replenished because its source, the super El Nino of 1998, has left by this time This leaves the straight-line segment from 2002 to 2012 as a pointer to future temperature changes. If you extend it past the 2016 El Nino peak it reaches baseline sometime in the year 2017. This points to further cooling, quite possibly down to the level that existed in the eighties and nineties. But here is what Robert Rohde of Berkeley Earth has to say about it: “The record temperature of 2016 appears to come from a strong El Nino imposed on top of a long-term global warming trend that continues unabated.” First, neither El Ninos nor La Ninas should be used to determine global baseline temperature. That is abject nonsense. Second, that “long-term global warming trend” is nothing of the sort. It is a remnant of warm water, now cooling, that was left behind by the super El Nino of 1998 as I explained. After the 2016 El Nino is over this will become the dominant factor controlling global temperature. Which, in the absence of additional ENSO activity, means that temperatures as low as the eighties and nineties become possible. From there Rohde goes on to comment on Arctic warming and bring in Zeke Housefather’s opinion. It is obvious that neither one knows much about the Arctic but nevertheless are true believers in its greenhouse origins. I solved the Arctic warming problem in 2011 and proved that it was caused by a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the twentieth century [E&E 22(8):1069-1083 (2011)]. Prior to that there was nothing in the Arctic except for slow, linear cooling for 2000 years. It first started in the early 20th century but temporarily halted in mid-century. That halt was a thirty year cool period but it was over by 1970 and warming has been steady since then. The actual warming is caused by the change of the Gulf Stream path across the North Atlantic Ocean. Gulf stream leaves the Gulf of Mexico and turns north through the straits of Florida. It keeps going north, parallel to the east coast, and then turns west into the North Sea as Ben Franklin new. This is what warms the climate of Europe. What the rearrangement of currents did was to redirect part of the Gulf Stream directly into the Arctic Ocean. Spielhagen et al. took an Arctic cruise to check it out. They discovered that warm water was entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic and that its temperature was higher than ever known for the Arctic. That is the source of Arctic warming, not another fairy tale about the greenhouse warming.