Guest Post by Werner Brozek, Excerpts from Barry and Edited by Just The Facts
At Dr. Roy Spencer’s site, regular commenter Barry posted seven very interesting comments, begining here, with respect to the requirements for the UAH pause to resume. He has graciously allowed me to use whatever I wished in this blog post. Everything that appears below is from him until you see the statement “Written by Barry.” below:
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Since the el Nino rose last year there have been many predictions here that a la Nina would form shortly afterwards and once again return the trend since 1998 to a flat line or cooling. I decided to check the change in trend from 1998 to each month past the el Nino peak (determined by warmest month last year in UAHv6 data).
My prediction is that for each month added past the el Nino peak the trend will be ever so slightly warmer, also when including December and January values in UAHv6 TLT data.
The warmest month of last year was February in the UAH dataset. I’ll start with that as the benchmark and see how the trend evolved from 1998 to then, with each successive month of cooler temps.
Feb 2016: 0.011 /decade
Mar 2016: 0.020 /decade
Apr 2016: 0.028 /decade
May 2016: 0.034 /decade
Jun 2016: 0.036 /decade
Jul 2016: 0.038 /decade
Aug 2016: 0.041 /decade
Sep 2016: 0.045 /decade
Oct 2016: 0.047 /decade
Nov 2016: 0.050 /decade
Dec 2016: 0.050 /decade (higher to 4 decimal places than Nov)
Jan 2017: 0.054 /decade
Even with la Nina conditions over the last few months, the trend has increased slightly month by month since the peak in Feb last year.
Testing to see how cool Feb would need to be to make the trend flatline….
-5C
You read right – not -0.5, but -5C.
What would the trend since 1998 be if 2017 annual was the same as January 2017 (0.30)?
0.063C /decade – warmer than current trend.
What would the annual anomaly of 2017 need to be to get a flatline trend since 1998?
-0.16
How likely is it that 2017 would have an annual anomaly of -0.16C?
Coolest years post 1998:
2008: -0.10
2000: -0.02
Before 1998 there were 8 years of average annual anomaly less than -0.16. Starting from the most recent year where this was so:
1993: -0.20
1992: -0.28
1989: -0.21
1986: -0.22
1985: -0.36
1984: -0.24
1982: -0.30
1989: -0.21
ENSO conditions relevant to the above were:
2008 – nina
2000 – nina
1993 – neutral
1992 – nino
1989 – nina
1986 – nino
1985 – nina
1984 – nina
1982 – nino
1989 – nina
With predictions of a ENSO-neutral or Nino 2017, that would make it unlikely that the annual anomaly would go as low as -0.16C, and thus unlikely that the trend since 1998 would flatten.
I tested another line of inquiry.
For 30-year averages, every year where this can be achieved in the UAH 6.0 data, each year added (and one dropped off the beginning to keep the averages 30-year only), the 30-year average has gone up.
For this to fail to happen due to the 2017, the annual anomaly for that year would have to be < 0.05C.
Just possible, but very unlikely, I think.
————-
Written by Barry
In the sections below, we will present you with the latest facts. The information will be presented in two sections and an appendix. The first section will show for how long there has been no statistically significant warming on several data sets. The second section will show how 2017 compares with 2016, the warmest year so far, and the warmest months on record so far. The appendix will illustrate sections 1 and 2 in a different way. Graphs and a table will be used to illustrate the data.
Section 1
For this analysis, data was retrieved from Nick Stokes’ Trendviewer available on his website. This analysis indicates for how long there has not been statistically significant warming according to Nick’s criteria. Data go to their latest update for each set. In every case, note that the lower error bar is negative so a slope of 0 cannot be ruled out from the month indicated.
On several different data sets, there has been no statistically significant warming for between 0 and 23 years according to Nick’s criteria. Cl stands for the confidence limits at the 95% level.
The details for several sets are below.
For UAH6.0: Since November 1993: Cl from -0.009 to 1.784
This is 23 years and 2 months.
For RSS: Since July 1994: Cl from -0.005 to 1.768 This is 22 years and 6 months.
For Hadcrut4.5: The warming is statistically significant for all periods above four years.
For Hadsst3: Since March 1997: Cl from -0.003 to 2.102 This is 19 years and 9 months.
For GISS: The warming is statistically significant for all periods above three years.
Section 2
This section shows data about 2017 and other information in the form of a table. The table shows the five data sources along the top and other places so they should be visible at all times. The sources are UAH, RSS, Hadcrut4, Hadsst3, and GISS.
Down the column, are the following:
1. 16ra: This is the final ranking for 2016 on each data set. On all data sets, 2016 set a new record. How statistically significant the records were was covered in an earlier post here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/26/warmest-ten-years-on-record-now-includes-all-december-data/
2. 16a: Here I give the average anomaly for 2016.
3. mon: This is the month where that particular data set showed the highest anomaly. The months are identified by the first three letters of the month and the last two numbers of the year.
4. ano: This is the anomaly of the month just above.
5. sig: This the first month for which warming is not statistically significant according to Nick’s criteria. The first three letters of the month are followed by the last two numbers of the year.
6. sy/m: This is the years and months for row 5.
7. Jan: This is the January 2017 anomaly for that particular data set if available.
8. rnk: This is the 2017 rank for each particular data set assuming the January anomaly stays that way all year. Since the January GISS and HadCRUT4.5 are not out yet, I ranked the December anomaly in ( ).
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.16ra | 1st | 1st | 1st | 1st | 1st |
| 2.16a | 0.504 | 0.574 | 0.773 | 0.614 | 0.99 |
| 3.mon | Feb16 | Feb16 | Feb16 | Jan16 | Feb16 |
| 4.ano | 0.830 | 0.996 | 1.070 | 0.732 | 1.35 |
| 5.sig | Nov93 | Jul94 | Mar97 | ||
| 6.sy/m | 23/2 | 22/6 | 19/9 | ||
| 7.Jan | 0.300 | 0.409 | 0.488 | ||
| 8.rnk | 4th | 4th | (3rd) | 3rd | (3rd) |
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
If you wish to verify all of the latest anomalies, go to the following:
For UAH, version 6.0beta5 was used.
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/tltglhmam_6.0.txt
For RSS, see: ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_3.txt
For Hadcrut4, see: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/time_series/HadCRUT.4.5.0.0.monthly_ns_avg.txt
For Hadsst3, see: https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadSST3-gl.dat
For GISS, see:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
To see all points since January 2016 in the form of a graph, see the WFT graph below.
As you can see, all lines have been offset so they all start at the same place in January 2016. This makes it easy to compare January 2016 with the latest anomaly.
The thick double line is the WTI which shows the average of RSS, UAH, HadCRUT4.5 and GISS.
Appendix
In this part, we are summarizing data for each set separately.
UAH6.0beta5
For UAH: There is no statistically significant warming since November 1993: Cl from -0.009 to 1.784. (This is using version 6.0 according to Nick’s program.)
The UAH January anomaly is 0.300. This would rank in fourth place if it stayed this way. 2016 was the warmest year at 0.504. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 2016 when it reached 0.830.
RSS
For RSS: There is no statistically significant warming since July 1994: Cl from -0.005 to 1.768.
The RSS January anomaly is 0.409. This would rank in fourth place if it stayed this way. 2016 was the warmest year at 0.574. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 2016 when it reached 0.996.
Hadcrut4.5
For Hadcrut4.5: The warming is significant for all periods above four years.
The Hadcrut4.5 average anomaly for 2016 was 0.773. This set a new record. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 2016 when it reached 1.070.
Hadsst3
For Hadsst3: There is no statistically significant warming since March 1997: Cl from -0.003 to 2.102.
The Hadsst3 January anomaly is 0.488. This would rank third if it stayed this way. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2016 when it reached 0.732.
GISS
For GISS: The warming is significant for all periods above three years.
The GISS average anomaly for 2016 is 0.99. This set a new record. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 2016 when it reached 1.35.
Conclusion
Do you think UAH will ever have a pause of over 18 years again? Why or why not?
GISS Update:
GISS for January came in at 0.92. This is the third warmest January GISS on record. It is below the 0.98 average for 2016 so it would rank second if the anomaly stayed this way for 2017. A short and weak La Nina seems to have had little affect on GISS so far.
“A short and weak La Nina seems to have had little affect on GISS so far.”
Yeah, the “real’ weather has little affect on GISS. GISS has a human thumb on the scale making things look hotter than they are as demonstrated by the chart below. Gavin systematically adjusts the temps higher continuously, so it’s not a surprise that La Nina had little affect on his chart. His chart does not represent reality. The satellites are the only charts that can be depended on to be uncontaminated.
The trends shown here are those of the mean samples (60 months), not the monthly values. Using the monthly data only, the GISS trend is much less steep and the satellite trend (UAH is used in your chart) is clearly warming since 1997 (+0.06 C/dec): http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/gistemp/from:1997/offset:-0.43/plot/gistemp/from:1997/trend/offset:-0.43/plot/uah6/from:1997/plot/uah6/from:1997/trend
(Note: GISS is offset by -0.43, which is its average anomaly value over the UAH reference period, 1981-2010.)
A mean of 60 does not affect the slope. However where an old graph ends is important as well as adjustments that have been made since the old data was graphed.
Werner Brozek
“A mean of 60 does not affect the slope.”
It does if you ask WfTs to find the trend of the mean samples, as the above poster did. Check it for yourself using any data set on WfTs.
Take UAH, for example, starting Jan 1997 to the present: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1997/plot/uah6/from:1997/trend
The slope on the monthly data is equal to 0.06 per decade.
Here’s the same data with a running centred mean of 60 months, but with the linear trend still based on the monthly values (0.06 C/dec), which is the correct way to show the data: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1997/mean:60/plot/uah6/from:1997/trend
And here’s what the above poster did by instead plotting the trend of the 60 month averages: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1997/mean:60/plot/uah6/from:1997/mean:60/trend
Compare the two and you can see right away that the trend of the 60-month averages is distinctly different from the true trend, the one you reported on above, which is found from the raw monthly data: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1997/mean:60/plot/uah6/from:1997/mean:60/trend/plot/uah6/from:1997/plot/uah6/from:1997/trend
Thank you for correcting me! I did your versions 1 and 2 and found no difference without realizing a different version would yield a difference.
No problem Walter. It’s a tricky one! Always enjoy reading your posts.
That’s Werner, not ‘Walter’! Sorry!
It’s not a pause, warming stopped in the in around 2000. Calling it a pause at this state is abuse of language
Ugh what was that I just typed :{
Warming stopped, it did not pause. The term pause is simply propaganda.
Mark,
“The term pause is simply propaganda.”
“Pause” is the term used by climate scientists in the peer-reviewed literature ((less often, “hiatus”) during the past decade. They get to choose the appropriate language. Not activists.
The attempt by activists to conceal the large literature about the “pause” from the public shows their contempt for climate science.
Editor.. My favored approach for the science is to just note the difference in trends. There is no benefit
to labeling a period as a pause, hiatus, slowdown, etc tec.. same goes for periods where the trend became steeper.
Of course thats hard to do.
I note there are always short time periods through out the record where the local trend is lower than the long term trend, or higher than the long term trend or even close to zero. There is nothing unprecedented in this, nothing requiring attention or barrells of ink. These short periods are expected, but not predictable. Some folks may decide that these short periods need explanation.. and there will always be multiple theories to explain transient episodes in the march toward a warmer world. There must be a multitude of theories to explain these episodes because the theories are underdetermined by the data. Pausology won’t advance until we have a good collection of “pauses” to examine. As for now, it’s most a sideshow and every clown shows up to perform.
“The term pause is simply propaganda.”
Of course it is. “Pause” clearly implies that future warming is a certainty. Reminiscent of the contemptible claim that “the science is settled”. Editor of the Fabius here says that “pause” is the term used by climate scientists in the pal, er, peer reviewed literature. Well who’d u thunk?
I prefer the term ‘stasis’.
The OED gives :pause….a temporary stop”, so I have to agree that halt or stop is more appropriate. A pause has a certainty of continuance once the stop stops! Can anyone predict the future?
I prefer quit….
Steven
Laudable of you to press for use of common terms and to de-emphasise mundane events.
But then, why spoil it all by the phrase “March towards a warmer world”?
Nobody knows where the world is heading. We both know we can cherry pack a past date and then claim we are marching to a cooler world than that.
Keep to objective science. There is an overabundance of prose rendolent with belief values.
Cheers. Geoff
A pause is a stop that has ended. That does not mean it ended with a resumption of some previous behavior, it just means it isn’t stopped any longer.
But the stopped state could be replaced by a cooling phase or a warming phase. The word pause in itself does not imply a resumption of some previous behavior or trend; it just isn’t stopped any longer.
And if it is still stopped, then it is a stop, and not a pause. It may never move again. We won’t know until that happens.
G
Is the “march towards a warmer climate” anything like the “march towards desertification” in California?
Steven Mosher
February 19, 2017 at 12:14 pm
The so-called Pause lasted about as long as the alleged warming which preceded it from 1977 to 1996. The Pause endured from 1997 to 2016. The spurious warming cycle was preceded by the long cooling cycle from the 1940s until 1977, so if there is an outlier trend, it’s the supposed late 20th century warming, which is nearly indistinguishable from the longer early 20th century warming, which preceded the mid-century (modern) cooling.
Pause is a hold on a linear progression, like playing an AVI file. It is not applicable to a non linear progression like earth’s non linear climatic systems.
You may be right. But if “pause” is good enough for a man of letters like Lord Monckton, it is good enough for me.
Werner – MOB (Monckton of Brenchley) would point out that you have made an appeal to authority. link
A rose by any other name….
Is something wrong with that?
Yeah, commie, but MoB might also point out that if you’re going to appeal to an authority it might as well be him!
One day a long time ago, I decided to try and get a section into wikipedia global warming covering the various predictions. I started with temperature and tried to find the least objectionable way to say the temperature had stopped warming.
I hit on the word “pause”, which in a tape mechanism, means the mechanism had stopped but the motor continues running. As this concept suggested a temporary stay rather than a permanent stop, I though it was the most likely to be accepted.
Of course it was not. But the extremely hostile reaction from the editors convinced me that despite it being a pretty simple thing which any sceptic could if they wanted dismiss as “the effect of noise”, the alarmists absolutely hated it. That clearly showed it had huge propaganda value, so I decided to ensure that as many people as possible started talking about it and for the next few year I used the phrase in any conversation I was able (with the result there were many a livid alarmist responses).
The whole point about the “pause” is that from a scientific view, it’s a fairly benign thing that we expect to happen quite often. Scientifically – when you accept natural variation exists – it is just one of those things you expect.
But from the eco-activist view, from the view of those who deny natural warming exists, it was intolerable to hear the phrase. That is because they were desperate to keep the message going out about “never ending warming” … and all that propaganda value could be undone, by simply referring to the fact we are currently in “the pause”.
In other words, it really only exists in the minds of alarmists for whom it has become the anti-thesis of “never ending warming”.
Again, I do wish I could simply “Like” some of these comments. I have been saying this for years – the pause is great propaganda for the sceptic side, but otherwise not deeply significant.
Of much more moment is the lack of a tropospheric “hot-spot” and the sheer difference between the IPCC projections and the actual temperature record.
Like many sceptics, I’m not so much hostile to the idea of climate change, or even man-made climate change, but rather to the pretensions of infallibility of the alarmists, backed up by their almost willful addiction to pseudoscience.
The GHG warming theory predicts steady and steadily increasing warming. Which makes natural variability, never mind a pause, a problem, because it means at times the climate system loses more heat than it gains from GHG warming. Therefore you would have to propose that GHG warming causes warming on average over extended periods. A rather dubious proposition IMO, requiring an explanation of why the climate accumulates heat at times and not at other times. Ocean cycles might do this, but our understanding of them is poor. You could also argue, it is sampling noise, but each monthly figure comprises many thousands of data points, and I have a hard time believing noise would be significant.
I tried to add the word theory to have a wiki paragraph so it would read “Global warming theory” and was the comment was constantly editied out by W. Connelly until he banned me. Even Einstein only rates a “Theory of Relativity”.
I use ‘plateau’
I used to use “plateau”, but now that I know the use of “pause” causes stomach ulcers in the alarmist community, I will use pause as much as I can.
The temperature had been climbing for a while. It got tired and paused to refresh. Now it has begun climbing again. It does not appear to have been taking artificial stimulants.
It has actually been going down since February. So we have pauses of only a year and a half which are not really worth mentioning.
Werner: “…[temperature] going down since February.”
But now it looks like another El Niño is developing. Didn’t some Climatastrophist prophet predict this as prelude to the apocalypse?
In any case, whenever the climbing temperature finally reaches the summit of the interglacial, I hope the downslope isn’t a precipice.
Who knows? Did you see:
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino34.png
It jumps by about 1.4 in 6 days, then drops by about 0.4 in
about 2 days. What will happen over the next 4 days?
I don’t even wish I could tell you. But I’ll probably be watching more closely than before.
The above graphic gets updated every 6 hours and clicking it gives the latest update. (Over the hours from 12 to 18, it dropped from 0.364 to 0.309.)
That’s very helpful Werner. Much thanks.
@ Werner:
Niño 3.4 SST anomaly has plummeted from about 0.8 to zero, while 1+2 has dropped from about 1.0 to 0.7.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino34.png
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino12.png
Joe Bastardi claims a 1+2 anomaly higher than 3.4 anomaly is a sure forecast of an upcoming El Niño. By that criterion an El Niño is still a sure thing. Do you agree?
Stupid WordPress has cached the Feb 19 3.4 chart. Click for latest.
I have no clue! Ask Bob Tisdale when he has his next post.
Using the word “Pause” indicates knowledge of that is going to happen next. I don’t think anyone has that knowledge.
You are walking along a mountain trail. You round a corner and suddenly see the trail has washed away, leaving a sheer drop of thousands of feet. Do you pause?
NO… you “stop”. (were you to “pause” you would then commence to walk off the cliff)
The “you” in my analogy is Temperature, plodding along a trail up a mountain. The trail sometimes dips, then rises, but the general direction is uphill toward the summit.
Temperature encounters some natural forcing that blocks its path. It pauses its uphill plod to consider its options. The trail has switchbacks. Temperature looks up and sees that it can bypass the washout. It paces about seeking another route, then clambers up suddenly and resumes its plodding course toward the summit.
Just then, up above, a dam breaks!
Using the word “Pause” indicates knowledge of that is going to happen next. I don’t think anyone has that knowledge.
It refers to the past, not the future. In the satellite record there was warming until 1997. ‘The pause since 1998’ had been one of the most common talking points in the general debate on global climate change over the last few years.
Since we persist in taking these things out to hundredth’s of a degree and hang on every month, I would suggest we revisit this Feb 19th, 2022 and see where we are.
So what are poor mortals to think? There has been a stop in warming and its still going on, or it is a pause and it will hot up again? Either way, does it justify the warmists’ alarms?
Nothing could justify the alarmists claims.
We just don’t live in their universe. It’s like Star Wars. We don’t have artificial gravity or FTL drive, we can’t make a light saber, and you’re never going to meet a Wookie.
Likewise, we can’t calculate the climate decades ahead using computer simulations. We just don’t know enough.
Even if we do enter a period of catastrophic warming, (hard as it may be to believe), this will be purely coincidence, because they have *no way of knowing*!
The more and more data that comes out about the ground measurements, the less credible the main source of the IPCC Data is.
?w=894&h=680
Climate “Science” on Trial; Cherry Picking Locations to Manufacture Warming
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/18/a-tale-of-two-cities-cherry-picking-locations-to-manufacture-warming/
It is worth nothing that the Satellite data hasn’t been implicated by the NOAA Whistleblower and Climategate emails. This gap is guaranteed to grow is the IPCC continues to focus on CO2.
The first part of the article is based on UAHv6 data.
The book cookers at NASA, NOAA and HadCRU may never allow another “pause”. RSS may now join the anti-scientific c0nspiracy. UAH, if it’s able to stay open, will IMO not only show a temperature flatline but cooling in coming years.
The first part of the article is based on UAHv6 data. For a flatline to emerge in the coming years we’d need to see temps like they were in the 1990s. 1993 was the last time we saw the kind of temps needed to produce a flatline into the future.
Just to clarify something. That is only true if the pause is to resume this year, right? So if we give it two years, the drop does not have to be quite as much. Correct?
I was replying to the notion of “coming years.” Temps would have to proceed as they did in the (early) 90s for a flatline/negative slope to emerge and to continue. By contrast, a flatline would not emerge or continue if temps were much like those of the 2000s
More detail than that is a lengthier post, with much supposition about individual years. Too much work for too much speculation.
If temps return to where they were in the 2000s (and stay there) then the hiatus would have returned EVEN THOUGH TREND LINES WOULD INDICATE OTHERWISE (!)
Excellent point! Perhaps we need new definitions.
Playing with a fixed length decade long record is a joke. As you move forward in time, you go into a lower period at the beginning, and so the continual rise is without meaning (lower at the beginning raises the slope as does increasing at the end of a decade record). Go from a fixed start, say 1998 with increasing number of years and you go up a little, down a little, but trending flat. The term pause may mean before going up again, or it could also mean before going down. It is just a statement that it stopped going up in general, and putting more meaning than that is not useful.
The El Niño impact is over now but we have had a mild La Niña afterward and this has not fully made its way through the monthly temperature numbers yet. There is still another 0.1C or so to come from the La Niña. March or April will be the low point, then stabilize for several months.
Even if it drops to 0.2 for the rest of the year, the slope since 1998 will be no lower at the end of 2017.
We have some possibilities:
In former temperature records we saw a certain influence of the AMO. According to this, we should see a decline. But we do not see it yet.
1. CO2 ha an effect and adds a certain amount of warming, so the temps will stay like this or go up a bit.
2. The ocean is a big heat bufffer, so it needs some time for the heat to come down.
3. A number of EL Ninos have added additional heat to the climate system, so we need also some time to get rid of the heat. This can be seen with the warmer Arctis and Antarctis this year.
4. Dr David Evans suspects that there is a delay of about 10-14 years from the sunspot number to an effect on global temperature. It depends on the magnetic cycle of the sun which is reversing about every 11 years. As we have now SSC 24, its effects will be seen 10-14 years later. According to this, we will see now the effect of the SSC 23, which went down starting from 2003. 2003+14=2017. If not this year, then next year we should see a decline, even overruling CO2 and El Nino. And the effect of SSN 24 should make it really cold around 2030.
What I not think is that we will have an accelerated temperature rise in the long run.
What I think, all four effects described above have a certain influence. So we will have the pause of 18 years again. And in the long run, it will be a flat summit in the temperature graphs, when we will see the decline because of:
AMO down
El Nino heat down
SS cycles down
I just hope CO2 will have a small warming effect.
That may well be the case. But unfortunately it does not help Trump’s cause right now.
We skeptics should not despair bc of some El Ninos. Even with them the warming is not alarming or dangerous. A good communication and an insight in all records would show there is no problem with a mild warming.
But a good communication is a problem for Trump. Sometimes he should just keep his big trap shut… ;-).
And too much success for Trump is also not so good for him. Small problems will help him to stay on the carpet. Otherwise he will start to hoover and fly away…
The biggest impact from the AMO is in the Arctic (and adjacent regions) due to loss of sea ice. This impact is highest during the NH winter months since that is when the temperature difference between open water and ice is the highest.
This was the reason 2016 winter months were higher than 1998 but not the summer months. The same factors are still in place and will remain in place until the AMO goes negative and sea ice returns. That is probably still 5-8 years away.
This also works against the mild La Nina conditions in the global anomaly data. This is clear when one looks at the north polar anomaly data (~ 1 C) vs. the tropics (~ 0 C).
From #4 above:
“4. Dr David Evans suspects that there is a delay of about 10-14 years from the sunspot number to an effect on global temperature. It depends on the magnetic cycle of the sun which is reversing about every 11 years. As we have now SSC 24, its effects will be seen 10-14 years later. According to this, we will see now the effect of the SSC 23, which went down starting from 2003. 2003+14=2017.”
The grandkids are here today so there’s limited time for research – how / what properties make this happen? Such a considerable lag time.
Dr Evans doesn’t know, he just found out an statistical connection with sunspot and global temp later.
Temperature is going up and down with sunspots, but sometimes temp raises earlier than supspots.
So sunspots can’t be the cause – but maybe for a temp swing later.
The idea is like following:
Sunspot numbers are fluctuating – the magnetic field of the suns switches about every 11 years – 11 years later the sun releases rays and solar wind – according to that fluctuation – solar wind protects earth more or less from cosmic rays – less cosmic rays few clouds / more rays more clouds.
less sunspots > less solar wind > more cosmic rays > Cosmic rays make seeds for clouds (Svensmark) > More clouds > makes earth colder.
Latest research from CERN re cloud nucleation from galactic cosmic rays:
…the relatively weak dependence on ion concentrations indicates that for the processes studied variations in cosmic ray intensity do not significantly affect climate via nucleation in the present-day atmosphere.
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/107269/1/Global%20atmospheric%20particle%20formation.pdf
GCR and temp variations correlate pretty well until 1981, whereupon they sharply diverge.
” CO2 has an effect…adds a certain amount of warming. And in the words of Dr. Martin Hertzberg:
“ In comparison to water in all of its forms, the effect of the carbon dioxide increase over the last century on the temperature of the earth is about as significant as a few farts in a hurricane!”
Read the full article in carbon-sense.com.
Testing to see how cool Feb would need to be to make the trend flatline….
-5C
You read right – not -0.5, but -5C.
This is a modestly worthwhile variation on Lord Monckton’s game. But it is too soon to know whether the 2015/2016 el Nino produced a step increase in temperature as the 1997/1998 el Nino did.
Correlation is not causation. It is just as likely the AMO going positive led to the increase. We just didn’t see it in the noisy data due to the active ENSO years from 1997-2001. That is why it looked like a step increase but could just as easily have been due to a slow decrease in the ice.
If my alternative view is right we shouldn’t see any step increase this time since the sea ice appears to have bottomed out.
Richard, the step rise also follows the solar cycle. i’m never in favor of alleged correlations based on one instance which is what people do when they allude to the step up as being caused by the ’98 el nino. (not a one of us should be in favor of that) It should be interesting to see what follows the recent el nino as we are now headed toward a solar min (following a weak solar max). Will there be another step rise or will temps follow the sun?
BTW, always enjoy your comments. (whatever you got, i think alot of us need)…
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/TSI-est-of-climate-sensitivity2.gif
Personally, I think this is one of big misconceptions. The warming from the 97-98 El Niño quickly went away… not completely, but a lot of it… the 98-01 La Niña… long and deep. It was the back-to-back El Niño events in the early 21st century that form the step up.
There is no observable that portends cooling. It’s just not there. For how long? Looks to me like for a very long time.
I don’t think UAH provides much that is useful in terms of the surface of the earth. GISS and NOAA and BEST are far more relevant. But in terms of your question, I can’t imagine an 18-year warming pause for the rest of this century in OHC data, surface data, satellite data.
JCH,
But do you concede that some investigation would be called for if satellite TLTdata continued to diverge monthly from the land sets? In your opinion how many degrees C of divergence might you call instrumental or method noise and how much a real difference arising from two different attempts land and aloft to measure a similar property?
Assuming that integrating under the curve is a possible means to identify total heat flow, you would find that not to be the case.
If every subsequent el Nino was followed by a ‘step’ upwards in temperature, would you begin to believe that el Ninos were the cause of global warming?
We’ve been having El Ninos for millenia. Why did El Nino’s only start causing global warming 100 years ago?
Yep, you figured out the point.
There was a nice commentary in yesterday’s American Thinker by Dennis T. Avery, called Democrats Real Global Warming Fraud Revealed.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/democrats_real_global_warming_fraud_revealed.html
Avery cited the December 2016 Cern Bulletin about the latest results from the CLOUD experiments which are producing clouds in the laboratory. So I looked up that Cern Bulletin. They have found:
(1) Cosmic rays are responsible for about 1/3 of the ions that seed clouds.
(2) There is a normal process within the upper atmosphere that is responsible for much of cloud formation. This process does not involve anthropogenic sources.
(3) Sulfur does not seed clouds unless ammonia or organic compounds are present.
One of the exciting aspects of these CLOUD studies is that they could lead to greatly improved methods for seeding clouds, perhaps to alleviate droughts. The other exciting aspect is that the cloud theory is presenting a very strong alternative to the carbon-dioxide-based global warning hypothesis. Clouds cool the earth by reflecting sunlight back into outer space. Anything that creates clouds tends to cool. The absence of clouds results in warming. Here’s the relevant summary from the Cern Bulletin:
Thanks to CLOUD’s unique controlled environment, scientists can now understand precisely how new particles form in the atmosphere and grow to seed cloud droplets. In the latest work, published in Science, researchers built a global model of aerosol formation using extensive laboratory-measured nucleation rates involving sulphuric acid, ammonia, ions and organic compounds. Although sulphuric acid has long been known to be important for nucleation, the results show for the first time that observed concentrations of particles throughout the atmosphere can be explained only if additional molecules – organic compounds or ammonia – participate in nucleation. The results also show that ionisation of the atmosphere by cosmic rays accounts for nearly one-third of all particles formed, although small changes in cosmic rays over the solar cycle do not affect aerosols enough to influence today’s polluted climate significantly.
Early this year, CLOUD reported in Nature the discovery that aerosol particles can form in the atmosphere purely from organic vapours produced naturally by the biosphere (CERN Courier July/August 2016 p11). In a separate modelling paper published recently in PNAS, CLOUD shows that such pure biogenic nucleation was the dominant source of particles in the pristine pre-industrial atmosphere. By raising the baseline aerosol state, this process significantly reduces the estimated aerosol radiative forcing from anthropogenic activities and, in turn, reduces modelled climate sensitivities.
“This is a huge step for atmospheric science,” says lead-author Ken Carslaw of the University of Leeds, UK. “It’s vital that we build climate models on experimental measurements and sound understanding, otherwise we cannot rely on them to predict the future. Eventually, when these processes get implemented in climate models, we will have much more confidence in aerosol effects on climate. Already, results from CLOUD suggest that estimates of high climate sensitivity may have to be revised downwards.”
It has been 45 years since I studied World Climatology at school and a lot of things have changed in that time including a substantial shift of heavy industry from Western Europe to Asia. I’ve often wondered what implact this has had on cloud formation over these respective regions and in turn what impact if any this has had on surface temperatures?….
HR,
Thank you for this.
From what I have read in CERN publications so far, I infer that the standard of the work is so high that it gladdens the heart of this retired scientist. This is how thorough our research used to be.
I lament the poor standard of much climate research and I hope that the CERN work shall continue to be productive, repeatable and credible.
Geoff
Thank you for the summary and especially the comment about induced cloud formation. Inducing clouds is the first step to inducing precipitation. I had a brainstorm thought a week ago that needed man induced precipitation, but I hadn’t thought about man-induced precipitation being a near term possibility.
My brainstorm:
Sea level rise has been occurring since the LIA (little ice age). We are building cities on the seashore, so it would be great if geo-engineering could be used to stop the sea level rise.
There are 4 places I can think of to sequester water for millennia (or longer):
– Greenland ice sheets
– Antarctica’s ice sheets
– Deserts that were formally oceans and can still hold water if water could be brought to them
– Aquifer’s that have been slowly drained over the last few hundred years by wells.
==
Your comment obviously leads to:
If CERN’s CLOUD experiment eventually leads to large amounts of man-induced rain/snow causing water/ice to accumulate in any of those areas, it will be one of the most successful applications of science in history.
Thanks for the Avery link–great article–and the CERN info.
http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/66876
Interesting, but if a line can’t be drawn from temps to CO2 it’s all rather moot.
Interesting observation Nicholas. As an engineer, if anyone came to a presentation claiming increasing X is significantly linked to increase in Y and the data shows a frequent lack of correlation for extended periods up to 18 years without a plausible explanation (for the lack of correlation) , the presenter would be laughed out of the room and possibly dismissed. No wonder “they” concocted a temperature adjustment to eliminate the pause, they knew their claims were in jeopardy.
All global temp data sets currently have a positive slope, including UAHv6. I strongly doubt Roy Spencer and John Christy are trying to eliminate the ‘pause’.
With reduced Solar Output for the next ten years, of course there will be a new pause. Based on Solar EUV, as indicated by the actual energy reaching the Earth’s surface, i.e., the Solar Flux, we can expect the Earth’s Oceans to cool.
Solar Flux at 75 for ten years will produce a decrease in World temperatures of 0.1 C/2.5 years.
This is exactly the kind of prediction that prompted my remarks in the OP. Good to have something to refer to on this very thread when people ask why any bother was taken.
A new El Nino is in the offing, so possibly we are entering one of Mandelbrot’s “Joseph” periods where El Ninos are frequent and a few are strong. Now with regard to confidence intervals, on what statistical basis are these (Nick’s) calculated? If the answer is on the basis of assumed normal distribution based on some thirty year period, then I doubt it has much inferential power.
On my last blog post here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/26/warmest-ten-years-on-record-now-includes-all-december-data/
Nick Stokes had a number of comments. In case he does not weigh in here, you may find answers there.
I see. They are based on Student’s t, which is to say from a sample drawn from a normal population with unknown population parameters that have to be estimated from the sample. Now, I suppose this represents a tradition in climate science, and was undoubtedly behind Hansen’s 1988 claim about 95% certainty of human caused warming, but tradition does not mean it is correct.
A number of commentators to this site will speak about climate variation having fat tails–fat in comparison to normal expectations, suggesting something non-normal about climate signals. I would put this differently–that climate seems like gaussian noise run through an integrator or two integrators, or even more in parallel. It behaves like a random walk with apparent trends and occasional persistence. Now people can make confidence intervals any way they please, but when observations exceed, or fail to exceed certain expectations, and the intervals aren’t based on a credible foundation, then what should one conclude?
Indeed. Student’s t is based on an assumption of independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) Gaussian variates. It is pure folly to apply it here.
What we can see there was a temperature decline from 2002 to 2015.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2015/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2015/trend
Even 2015 there was already a pre-start of the big 2016 El Nino. So a lot of heat was pumped into the climate system. Maybe we need another two or three years to get rid of the excess heat and we will see the decline again.
Or… we will have another El Nino…
BTW, are there any records of an influence of Solar cycles or AMO to El Ninos?
The first part of the article was concerned with the most popular and enduring claim about temp trends since 1998.
You can find negative slopes for smaller time periods throughout any of the global temp records.
As a side note, the only change to flat/negative slope that is different from previous warming to statistical significance in the instrumental records is the mid-20th century. That’s a ‘true’ pause. IE, the uncertainty envelopes don’t overlap with previous and subsequent multidecadal warming periods. They are distinct, even with the 95% uncertainty.
Johannes, you made an excellent post earlier (which was closed for replying) which contained the following:
All good.
You may be interested there is another step at the very beginning, please see:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/13/solar-cycle-mystery-solved/
For those interested in the could, see the work by Svensmark and Shaviv on this:
http://www.thegwpf.com/henrik-svensmark-cosmic-rays-and-clouds-anno-2016/
Preprint paper is here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51188502/CCN_Svensmark_PhysicsLettersA.pdf
And earlier on WattsUpWithThat
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/25/svensmark-publishes-solar-activity-has-a-direct-impact-on-earths-cloud-cover/
I just thought you might be interested in the link between the Gas Giant planets and the solar cycle. It’s a long way from Gas Giants to terrestrial climate !
Nothing is really “closed for replying”. If three steps have been used, then just scroll UP to the first “reply” button that you see. Then click that and reply there.
Please help me out, how does one do tests for statistical significance on data that is time phased and clearly sticky (I.e. not random)?
Look at ARMA or ARIMA models to analyse time sequences of an auto-correlated signal (the next data point depending on the current and therefore also on the previous) and noise.
There’s an online app that calculates the uncertainty for you. It doesn’t yet include UAHv6 satellite data, but probably will when the methods are published (soon).
http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
Linear regression type is ARMA (1,1) to account for autocorrelation.
I’ll repeat what I said last month. The only proper way to measure the global trend is using ENSO neutral conditions. If we look at the data going back to 1997 and only plot the ENSO neutral months the trend is about .01 C/decade. IOW, the pause is still very much in play.
Keep in mind this eliminates most of the months before 2001 and after 2015. So, it may not be right to call it a 20 year pause. We really need a good years worth of ENSO neutral conditions to see where we are.
Whilst we’ve not yet plunged into a deep La Nina and may even appear to be coming out of the recent small La Nina into El Nino, the simple fact remains that most large or long El Ninos are followed by a substantial La Nina period. It’s also true that strong La Ninas tend to happen in Autumn/winter. But perhaps because of the timing of the 2016 El Nino, the winter La Nina did not have time to develop and it was smaller than expected. If however La Nina like or neutral conditions hang around in 2017, it may herald a larger La Nina peak developing as we approach Xmas.
However …mother nature does not like doing anything predictable.
So what we have is a series that is supposed to illustrate the warming of the planet. In the first half of this series we have two unrelated cooling events, volcanic eruptions El Chichón and Pinatubo. In the second half of the series we have two unrelated warming events, big El Niño 1998 and 2016.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_January_2017_v6.jpg
Now if by chance the two warming events would have taken place in the first half of the series and the two cooling events would have taken place in the second half, would we be looking at the same warming trend? The answer is clearly no. The warming trend has been affected by processes that we know are unrelated to global warming.
In the same line, discussing about the pause ignoring that at the end is a big El Niño that skews the mathematical analysis is meaningless.
Since there has been no La Niña (or barely depending on dataset) after 2016 El Niño, the question is how the temperatures at one side of El Niño relate with the temperatures at the other side. We will have to wait at least three years for that, but if temperatures at both sides are at the same level, what the mathematical analysis says is irrelevant. There would have been no warming in the world since about 2003. We have to ignore EL Niño, La Niña and volcanic eruptions to analyze the real warming trend.
Javier on February 19, 2017 at 9:38 am
We have to ignore EL Niño, La Niña and volcanic eruptions to analyze the real warming trend.
I can’t imagine a commenter Javier ignoring anything of the work done in 2014 by Santer, Bonfils & alii.
What you write exactly reflects what they did, with as result for RSS3.3 TLT a residual warming of 0.086 °C / decade, i.e. 70% of RSS’ trend in 2014 (0.124 °C / decade).
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170219/dfeergne.jpg
But there are so many many people who generally do not trust in such results…
Bindidon,
I can see why they are not trusted. Look at 1992-93 in that graph. There is a big jump in the residuals that suggests abrupt warming. Where is it coming from? We have a strong Pinatubo cooling at the time and the end of an El Niño. So the mathematical adjustment has turned two coolings into a strong warming because the observed cooling was not as intense as expected. Turning a cooling into a warming, what is there not to trust?
And then clearly there is a breakpoint in the trend at 1998. The left side is warming and the right side is cooling. It is quite obvious so any breakpoint analysis should pick it. Yet the authors just do a straight line through it. Again, what is there not to trust?
If I were to do this I would just take out the data for volcanic eruptions and big El Niño/La Niña periods as if it was lacking. Whatever warming has taken place should reflect in what is left. No fuzzy adjustments as if we knew how to subtract an El Niño. We don’t.
Javier on February 19, 2017 at 3:44 pm
1. I can see why they are not trusted. Look at 1992-93 in that graph. There is a big jump in the residuals that suggests abrupt warming. Where is it coming from?
This answer is incredibly disappointing. Simply because here you leave science and move to supposition.
It is impossible for me to believe that you did not understand that when you
– (1) remove ENSO warming & cooling represented in plot B resp. C out of the data which led to plot A, the result can’t contain either anymore, and that when you
– (2) remove volcano cooling represented in plot E out of the data which led to plot D, the result can’t contain that cooling anymore!
Thus there is some evidence that the residuals very well might show a warming spot where there has been cooling before. You seem to accept results only when they show cooling.
Where are we here Javier? My lady was a non science teacher but she immediately understood that. So there must be some evidence that you very well understood the whole chart from A to F, but refute it for rather ‘political’ reasons…
2. And then clearly there is a breakpoint in the trend at 1998.
No: there are no breakpoint in trends, that’s unscientific nonsense. There is a breakpoint in the data, what you can see in WFT’s RSS3.3 TLT plot below when computing and plotting the subtrends for the two periods before and after the breakpoint in the original data:
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170220/c2tqhprb.png
Do you really suppose that “the authors just do a straight line through it” in order to manipulate? Didn’t hey just draw the linear estimate to show how 0.086 °C / decade looks like? Does Roy Spencer show the 1998-20xx trends in each of his UAH monthly charts?
3. If I were to do this I would just take out the data for volcanic eruptions and big El Niño/La Niña periods as if it was lacking.
This is exactly what they did (like Foster and Rahmstorf did in 2011 with surface data).
I apologise, Javier: I have some little doubt about your real ability to do the same job…
Santer and Bonfils didn’t seem to have published their code, but feel free to download Foster/Rahmstorf’s R stuff and to redo their experiment!
I would enjoy that 🙂
Curse me for a blind fool, but what I see in plot “f” is a recovery from the cooling period of the 40’s to 70’s followed by a return to approximate equilibrium. If the Warmists need their “I told you so” moment so they can ride off into the sunset, it would be the slight overshoot into warming territory in the 90’s. Other than that the whole thing has been a fantastic waste of time and a disgusting waste of money.
John Harmsworth on February 19, 2017 at 6:21 pm
Curse me for a blind fool…
Certainly I won’t!
… but what I see in plot “f” is a recovery from the cooling period of the 40’s to 70’s followed by a return to approximate equilibrium.
I agree. But it is other peoples’ job to discover what the recovery is due to, and they do the job, that’s all. The rest is nothing else than noise generated by media campaigns financed by those interested in.
Other than that the whole thing has been a fantastic waste of time and a disgusting waste of money.
I do not aagree at all. Please compare the costs of getting out of this ridiculous burning of fossile stuff with e.g.
– the hundreds of billions of $ spent worldwide yearly by arms build-up;
– the hundreds of billions of $ spent for space activities (moon landings etc etc; even trips to Mars are in preparation).
Bindidon,
I am not interested in the least in your opinion about me. We are discussing estimations and decisions on how to process data. There is little science in that. More like a numerological procedure within a predetermined set of rules. That the final outcome has any relationship with reality is by all means not given.
“Thus there is some evidence that the residuals very well might show a warming spot where there has been cooling before.”
I have no doubt that the residuals can show warming when there was cooling, as they are a simple mathematical calculation, so a change of sign is possible. However there is no evidence whatsoever that a significant global warming increment took place in 1992-93 and was turned into cooling by the volcanic eruption and the decaying El Niño. In fact it does not make any sense that the world would experience a significant warming like the one proposed by the residuals with the upper atmosphere full of sulphates and with an El Niño ending. It is a lot more probable that we are seeing an artifact of the procedure, and the volcanic cooling affected the El Niño. If ENSO and volcanic are not independent then their added subtraction will give rise precisely to the type of artifact we are contemplating. The spike in residual warming when both coincide.
The existence of a breakpoint in the residuals time series trend determination is quite obvious.
“Do you really suppose that “the authors just do a straight line through it” in order to manipulate?”
I don’t like suppositions. I just point that they ignored a quite obvious result of their analysis. That the trend is negative since 1998. If I had been a referee of that article you can be certain I would have raised that point.
“If I were to do this I would just take out the data for volcanic eruptions and big El Niño/La Niña periods as if it was lacking.
This is exactly what they did”
No. That is not what they did. They performed a subtraction that requires certain assumptions to be correct, for example the mentioned one about the independence of ENSO signal and volcanic signal to be subtracted.
What I just proposed was the opposite. Take into consideration only temperature data for periods when it is known that ENSO signal and volcanic signal are small. In other words data from periods where the noise is known to be small to boost the signal to noise ratio of the analysis.
“feel free to download Foster/Rahmstorf’s R stuff and to redo their experiment!”
Why would I want to do that? I do not believe they made a mistake in their calculations. I believe their calculations are based on unwarranted assumptions and therefore are not to be trusted to represent global warming rate better than the source.
“I would enjoy that”
I care for that as little as I care about your opinion of me.
In the same line, discussing about the pause ignoring that at the end is a big El Niño that skews the mathematical analysis is meaningless.
By the same token, is it meaningless if the trend starts in 1998 – the largest el Nino of the 20th century?
Of course. 1998 is also a bad year because it was a big El Niño. No doubt about it. 2002-2014 gives a better idea of what has been going on lately. A lot less warming than from the early 80’s to the late 90’s. When we get 2017-2022 we will see how the warming is continuing… or not.
Well, that remark obliterates the meaningfulness of thousands and thousands of comments and articles over the past 6 years or so!
Don’t tell the US Congress. They relied on testimony about temp trends since 1998. 😉
“Don’t tell the US Congress.”
I won’t unless asked.
Barry, there has been at least one post here at wuwt in support of javier on that. (it was kind of a rebuttal to MoB) There is some division over whether the pause begins in ’98 or ’02. i think it’s best to go with ’02 because some of these loti data sets don’t show as significant an amount of warming in ’98 (as compared with, say, the satellite data). Plus, it can be argued that ’98 is a cherry pick…
Actually, it started in 1996, not 1998.
Plus, it can be argued that ’98 is a cherry pick…
That has long been argued. Same applies to 2002. If things continue to get warmer, a new year further ahead is eventually chosen, wherever you find a flat trend. That is cherry-picking.
Javier, a large volcanic eruption (like Pinatubo) is certainly a one-off cooling event. But I wouldn’t categorize an El Nino as a warming event in the same way – not even if it were in isolation from La Ninas (which you seem to have ignored). El Ninos just temporarily redistribute the in situ heat and are overlayed on the longer trend, they don’t warm like a volcano cools.
Tony, I do not ignore Las Niñas. I said very clearly above:
“If I were to do this I would just take out the data for volcanic eruptions and big El Niño/La Niña periods as if it was lacking.”
However you are incorrect, because if you are determining surface temperatures, or lower tropospheric temperatures, an El Niño is a source of heat and a La Niña is a sink of heat. As ENSO has not been linked convincingly to climate change and is considered by IPCC as interannual variability, it has to be considered as a source of noise that masks the signal. When the noise is so big and irregularly distributed, it affects the trend, and therefore the mathematically calculated trend is not the global warming trend. Since 2015 the trend is being risen artificially by the noise from ENSO.
And to further Javier’s statement, the trend of ENSO neutral months is completely flat since 1997. No possibility of cherry picking when El Nino and La Nina events are ignored.
As far as the data goes it appears the only warming that we have seen in the satellite era occurred at the switch from the negative AMO to a positive AMO.
And to further Javier’s statement, the trend of ENSO neutral months is completely flat since 1997. No possibility of cherry picking when El Nino and La Nina events are ignored.
I’m guessing this is done by simply removing ENSO years from the record. This gives about 9 years of data, total. The statistical significance of a 9 year trend in global surface data is far larger than any trend that arises. You’ve lost half your information.
It’s still cherry-picking. For example, why start in 1997, and not 1981, or 2010? If the answer is, “that gives us the longest period with a flat trend,” then you’re selecting on that basis, without any physical underpinning or statistical analysis of the uncertainty (which if you included, results in no firm claim at all, cooling, flat, warming or otherwise).
You get an actual pause (statistically significant) if you choose the period from about 1940 to 1970. That’s a solid trend change on firm statistical basis.
Why do people still give credence to temp data they know has been “adjusted” constantly changed?
You can jiggle the numbers all you want…but what you find today….will be totally different in the future
…waste of time
It’s just a cultural/political food fight at this point
Most of the adjustments would never have been produced if there were no political customer,
(There is not much food to throw, so they have to pick it up off the floor, re-serve it, and then throw it again.)
The algorithm for this is simple.
Repeat indefinitely:
1) Lower older global temperatures.
2) Increase recent global temperatures.
3) Scare the sheeple by projecting the ‘increasing’ trend for decades into the future.
noaaprogrammer on February 19, 2017 at 11:35 am
1) Lower older global temperatures.
2) Increase recent global temperatures.
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170220/nmeysg4i.jpg
If you were right with your supposition, noaaprogrammer, then I’m sure the GISTEMP people would have left their homogenised data exactly at the original GHCN station level… but they didn’t.
And NOAA didn’t as well: their final trends are a tick below those of GISTEMP.
The first part of the OP (by me) is based UAHv6 global temp data. This dataset is run by Roy Spencer and John Christy. Their general views are very much in line with WUWT.
All datasets undergo review and improvement. I chose to work with UAH because it is the global temp dataset considered most valid by skeptics.
I am increasingly irritated, as a lay-person, by the use of acronyms, such as — in this case — “UAH”. WTF IS “UAH”?
It may be obvious to 100% of yr expert-level readers, but it’s a “read-no-further” put-off to people like me, who are eager to learn & understand.
Could authors please make one top–of-article clarification.
p.S. Glancing above, what do I see? ENSO, IOW….. Less jargon, please.
P.P.S. UAH = University of Alabama Huntsville perhaps? If author had complied with my request, “UAH (Uni.Al.Hunts)” up-front wd have sufficed.
Putting search term “UAH dataset” in google gives you reference that explains everything in simple and clear language as very first result, and it takes about 10 sec.
Some amount of effort on part of reader is assumed when reading about science matters.
With the vast readership here, it makes sense, as in any reporting, to identify the first use of such. It would take 10 seconds and save hundreds of others 10 seconds and their frustration
If you don’t know what UAH means, you would certainly not know to google ‘uah dataset’. ‘UAH pause’ is oft mentioned in the article ‘n’ title but does not return any 10 second revelation of the meaning in google. Those writing articles are expected to know and write for the audience intended.
Udar that works fine for UAH. Try ENSO and you get wedding rings, a winery, a bar in Portland, Oregon, along with El Nino Southern Oscillation. While I don’t agree that it’s a “read no further” Ross does have a point. Most style manuals for news writers require an even more strict usage of abbreviations. For example if I wanted to write a news story about an action by my state’s wildlife agency I’d have to use its full title followed by its abbreviation in parenthesis in the first sentence that referred to it. It would look like this, “Agents from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) are investigating the killing of two bald eagles in as many days.” From that point on I’d be free to use ‘TWRA’. It’s certainly true that this isn’t a major news outlet but it is open to the public and it does disseminate information therefore making that information as accessible to as many visitors as possible is worth some consideration. I well remember inquiring about sources of information about solar cycles and receiving the terse reply, “Google is your friend,” from an acknowledged authority. Frankly, Google ain’t my friend. It’s the friend of advertisers and the others who pay them and I’m the commodity they sell. So yeah, there are plenty of experts here and that’s why some of us come here to learn. A small gesture of consideration for we lesser mortals does not diminish anyone’s stature.
Just have this website provide an easily assessable link to a glossary of abbreviations in alphabetical order along with the words that they stand for and a brief explanation, and/or another link to an in-depth explanation.
That’s a fair point, Udar.
Werner copied some posts of mine (with permission) from Dr Spencer’s site. I was speaking to a home audience then and the acronyms were understood. I had no idea when I posted that the remarks would eventually get posted here. Werner could have altered my remarks to clarify, but I imagine he wanted to preserve their integrity (thereby heading off any complaints about fiddling with the original).
Adding word “climate” or “AGW” or “climate change” or “global warming” to either UAH, ENSO or anything else produces correct explanation. The “art” of google search is not that complicated, really.
We can argue how much effort the author need to put into explaining terminology – but given that terms like UAH , RSS, GISS and ENSO are used in virtually every article on the site, so adding explanation to them (and it would have to be added to every one of them) would be a pain for authors and for readers who know what those acronyms mean. And it would become annoying really fast even for newbies after first few articles.
Again, it is my opinion that requiring some minimal effort on reader to understand what is written is ok.
I do agree that adding acronyms section to WUWT would be helpful.
WTF does WTF mean? /s
BTW what’s an acronym? I’ll look it up. 🙂
Well WFT is WoodForTrees. That’s what you meant to ask, right? For other acronyms see the glossaries, here:
http://www.sealevel.info/resources.html#references
IMO, DCD is the best, overall. But some of the others are useful, too — even mine.
What the Fudge
A complaint which comes up from time to time.
WUWT : Main Menu : Reference Pages : Glossary
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Fair enough. I could have written UAH (University of Alabama in Huntsville).
But would that have helped without also mentioning that the UAH data set is one of two main global satellite data sets?
Almost everyone makes some assumptions about their audience. However one exception is Bob Tisdale whose latest article is here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/23/december-2016-global-surface-landocean-and-lower-troposphere-temperature-anomaly-update-with-a-look-at-the-year-end-annual-results/
If you are brand new, I would highly recommend that you read his post. It goes into detail about how various data sets come up with their numbers.
The science is settled and the consensus is clear: we don’t know 🙂
I’m not an educated man so my opinions are barely valid. However, I utterly fail to understand how Co2, a trace gas, of which man contributes something like 0.0004ppm of the entire atmosphere, can overcome the influences of atmospheric water vapour and, moreover, the entire contents of every ocean, sea, lake and river.
Under any other conditions, in any other environment, medical, business, engineering etc. man-made atmospheric Co2 would be dismissed as inconsequential.
So the planet is warming, big deal. There is a reason for it, of course there is, so how about trying to find that rather than pinning it on a single trace gas and hoping to get away with conning the world with an entirely wacky theory that’s never been proven empirically.
The number of 0.0004 ppm is not valid.
Man has contributed something more than 100 ppm CO2 to the original amount of about less than 300 ppm. Natural CO2 plays some role in atmospheric processes.
Lab research indicates that this could add some tenths of a °C to the global average. But as you said – there are a lot other things are going on.
But during discussion with others we cannot dismiss CO2 completely – it’s just here and its increasing.
@Johannes Herbst
“Man has contributed something more than 100 ppm CO2 to the original amount of about less than 300 ppm.”
In the meantime, how much has nature contributed to atmospheric Co2?
100 years ago atmospheric Co2 was around 280ppm. At 200ppm plant life struggles to survive. At 150ppm, meaningful (to man) plant life dies. The planet was within 80ppm of suffering the beginnings of extinction.
According to climate alarmists, man is adding around 2ppm every year to atmospheric Co2 (to the best of my understanding) so over the last 100 years, man should have added around 200ppm. You maintain it’s 100ppm……so where’s the extra 100ppm gone?
“Lab research indicates that this could add some tenths of a °C to the global average. But as you said – there are a lot other things are going on.”
Lab research frequently tells us a lot of nonsense. Did lab research, or computer predictions anticipate the planet would green by 14%? Two continents the size of mainland USA worth of extra vegetation, 70% of it thanks to increased atmospheric Co2 (NASA study).
Where, in the portfolio of anticipated natural disasters at the hands of increased atmospheric Co2, far less man made Co2, is there anything approaching a 14% increase over the last 30 years of that study? Sea levels? Nope. Hurricanes? Nope. Droughts? Nope. Tornadoes? Nope. Ocean acidification? Nope etc. etc. etc.
There is not one single, credible, empirical study that proves increased Co2 causes climate change. After 30 years, there should be hundreds, if not thousands, but there are none. Why not? But there is now considerable evidence that increased atmospheric Co2 is providing observable benefits to mankind.
Simple conclusion: If anyone believes Co2 is harmful in any way, or that it is responsible for climate change, they ought to have their head examined.
That 2 ppm is relatively recently. A hundred years ago it would have been almost zero. Few planes and cars were around then.
And what about the rest of the debate I proposed. As usual, an alarmist will nit pick a single item from an entire argument and focus on that.
What about the 14%. Nothing you mob have ever predicted, which have never occurred over the past 40 years, has come close to that.
But no. You entirely ignore the real point and zero in on an inconsequential detail thereby shooting yourself in the foot.
You simply can’t ignore the observed scientific reality that, despite your hysterical proclamations, have never materialised. You utterly failed to predict that the benefits of increased atmospheric Co2 would outweigh any possible downsides by a huge margin.
You have been so obsessed with grubbing around looking for minute detail to prove your insane hypothesis, the reality has utterly passed you by. And yet you still ignore what’s staring you in the face.
Get over yourself. Face the facts and accept reality.
Hot Scot,
It can be calculated which amount of CO2 we add to the atmosphere. This makes a certain increase per year. half of this is collected from the ocean and the biomass.
Even if nature contributes something, it collects it also. We have the figures.
“I’m not an educated man so my opinions are barely valid.”
If you vote, your opinions are valid; educated or not.
@Phil’s Dad,
thank you for that, but I am a dummy and can only present what is obvious to me. My opinions may be valid, but they are frequently wrong. In this case, however, I’m entirely convinced they are right.
Man made Co2 is not the cause of climate change, nor is Co2 the principle cause of climate change; to believe that is to consign oneself to the flat earth society.
The concept is entirely illogical. And I have heard all the comparisons with viruses and bacteria, but Co2 does not reproduce itself like viruses and bacteria. It is a benign, beneficial, trace gas the planet has been starved of through its accidental, but natural sequestration over millennia.
The planet would die without it and if I believed in God I might suggest that humankind was put on this planet to rectify the situation, burn fossil fuels, thereby releasing Co2 to save the planet.
But I don’t believe in God so I believe it’s just a happy coincidence man might have contributed to saving the planet by not allowing Co2 to drop below 280ppm, where it was 100 years ago.
HotScot
“I am a dummy… My opinions… are frequently wrong.”
Same. People like us should probably be cautious about expressing our opinions too vehemently and clinging to them too desperately.
HotScot on February 19, 2017 at 4:47 pm
… it’s just a happy coincidence man might have contributed to saving the planet by not allowing Co2 to drop below 280ppm…
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170220/l4b6u5av.png
Perfect, efficient mankind work indeed 🙂
It seems reasonable that if CO2 has some effect, that we should see a bit of warming every now and then, given the amount we’ve added to the atmosphere. The temperature does not need to fall to previous levels to become another pause. Every delay reduces the chances of dangerous warming. Whether we will see another pause or resume the old one or see another rapid rise is a matter for those with a crystal ball.
The limiting factor in whether we can detect a CO2 signal in the climate data are the natural variations over the same time period. If the natural variations are say 10 times greater than the CO2 signal, then we will need thousands of years of very accurate global records to tease that signal out of the noise.
The annual variation in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa is about 10 parts per million, very regular. CO2 increase since 1960 is 88 parts per million. The signal is 8 times larger than the variation.
Monthly atmospheric CO2 index
Annual atmospheric CO2 index
The largest annual variation in the HadCRUt4 global surface temp index is less than 0.4C. Variation is stochastic, unlike CO2 variation. 20th century trend for HadCRUr is 0.63C. Trend from 1900 to present is 0.78C. The latter signal is twice that of the largest annual variations.
HadCRUT4 annual data
The pause (or not) has been a good talking point, but in my opinion over rated. The much stronger point is the divergence between what climate models predicted and what has transpired. There are a number of simple graphical ways to portray this, most starkly in the tropical troposphere, something even Santer’s new (and erroneous) stratospheric corrections paper could not disappear. Christy’s Feb 2016 congressional testimony chart.
That the models demonstrably run hot calls their sensitity into question, and that is the heart of the matter.
Yes that’s the point. But It’s easier to show folks a flat graph, than a slightly inclining one. Therefore we skeptics are clinging to the pause…
I wish people would stop crediting CO2 with an ability to warm the planet in any detectable way. Such mention somehow keeps the idea afloat.
It does not in any way add up if you consider the wide range of factors affecting ‘warmth’. To pick out CO2 as having any effect that matters or could matter, is just nuts. I will celebrate extra plant growth and wait for the brainy ones to home in on and quantify the real effectors in climate, if that is even possible. It is yet to be established that CO2 rises before temp, let alone cause any rise – some even suggest it cools. Lots of other much more impressive mechanisms, volcanic eruptions – gases released & particulate circumnavigation, solar system geometry, sun variance/spots/magnetics, ice cover, cloud cover, extra solar system high energy radiation, ocean activity, subsea floor activity, forest coverage, forest fires, ozone, none CO2 coal emissions, oil emissions, aircraft fuel, animal farts, warmist excitement, Al Gore’s jet, Michael Mann’s bald spot. I liked the way they named the scientist that falsified the data in Jupiter ascending, Mann.
CO2 has an ability to warm the planet. Recognizing reality is usually regarded as a good thing.
It’s ability to warm is small, probably only a few tenths of a degree, but it is there.
Atmospheric large semi-permanent pressure systems and jet streams do not turn on a dime. It takes months post-elNino onset before temperatures peak and large weather pattern systems are fully affected. It takes months post-peak temperatures before those pressure systems return to a semblance of a previous state. Predictions of temperature trends (up, down, stagnant) are fraught with unknowable chaos. I wouldn’t touch what amounts to weather predictions with a 10 foot pole with acid on the end.
I can say this, we are at/near the wonderful peak of an interglacial. These present discussions on minutia are invisible in the 800,000 oscillation, even when brought to a finer scale. Can’t see the hockey stick (unless you use that trick). So enjoy the interglacial, even if it gets warmer. Our great-great-great grandbabies are the ones who may have to struggle to keep their children warm.
The trend has been downwards for the last 5 to 10K years. I believe the peak of the interglacial was probably somewhere between the Holocene Maximum and the Minoan Warm Period.
@ Latitude – “Why do people still give credence to temp data they know has been “adjusted” constantly changed?”
Totally agree. It’s mystifying why we continue to see a series of articles based on these discredited stats. Or why Dr Curry is still referred to as a skeptic, albeit lukewarm, when she writes (recently) about human-induced climate change and has so far, refrained from elucidating what part of the changing climate is due to man.
..take out the damn adjustments…and there’s no global warming at all
Which makes all these exercises look stupid
The raw global temp data has a warming trend quite similar to the adjusted sets.
“The raw global temp data has a warming trend quite similar to the adjusted sets.”
How is that possible when the temperature data from all over the world, before adjustments, shows the 1930’s as being as hot or hotter than today. That “raw” data obviously isn’t the original data. Maybe you are just talking about the satellite era, from 1979, to the present.
Hansen’s 1999 chart shows the 1930’s as being 0.5C hotter than 1998, which makes it hotter than 2016, too.
So the real trend has been a downtrend from the hot 1930’s to today. We need to get 0.5C hotter than today to even match the 1930’s. We are NOT in a warming trend. Not yet.
That’s not global data, it’s USA only.
TA on February 19, 2017 at 7:15 pm
How is that possible when the temperature data from all over the world, before adjustments, shows the 1930’s as being as hot or hotter than today.
You can repeat such statements as often as you want, TA. That won’t make them true.
Have a look at Japans Met Agency, known to have by far the “coolest” surface temperatures (nearer to UAH than to GISTEMP):
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/map/temp_map.html
Here is what you see there when selecting “annual” and moving to 1934, 1998 and 2016:
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170220/ha3d58jk.png
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170220/3d7qt42k.png
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170220/47jqruly.png
All the time you are confounding in parallel:
– (1) CONUS with the world;
– (2) ‘https://realclimatescience.com’ with ‘real climate science’.
The “pause” or whatever you want to call it doesn’t matter. The failure of every GCM to predict observations does matter. The ACGW hypothesis is disproven. Back to the drawing board.
Never in the history of mankind has so much been wasted on a non existent problem for no reward whatever.
Jim – I would say “is being wasted”. Should temps stabilise and cool, how many years before the carbon tax laws will be scrapped? I would say at least 20, on average. Not in my lifetime.
This is CAGW inventor James Hansen’s 1981 GAT projections under different ‘scenarios’ which is almost indistinguishable from the IPCC’s 2014 ‘scenarios’ (back in 1981 he apparently assumed ‘peak oil’).
So far the satellite and radiosonde linear temperature trend is ~1.2C per century a bit below the non-fossil no growth line.
Pause or no pause if the diagram represented the model flight path of Hansen’s solar-powered passenger jumbo by now during the inaugural flight (packed with merry climate change™ practitioners and hangers-on) of up in the cockpit red lights would be flashing and buzzers blaring but it’s worse than that.
Hansen’s ‘Spruce Goose’ looks like belly-flopping.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/UAHt.gif
50% chance 2017 will break the 2016 record.
Hopefully.
I hope so too. We had non-stop snow, sub-zero temps, and ice in the Northwest this year. We need a warm spring and summer to balance this.
Wow. Good prediction. How many times did you flip a dime to get to your conclusion?
☺
Dang. 60 year old eyes cannot see emoticons that small.
Control and mouse wheel helps
And equally, a 50% chance it won’t.
But I hope it does, up in North Yorkshire we could really do with a bit of Global Warming.
Too bad we can’t split reality and test your claim.
How do you calculate that, Steve? My guesstimate is lower.
That’s how stupid this whole thing is. Mosher hopes he’s right about a bad thing (the world getting warmer), so he can be right. I hope he’s right about a good thing (the world getting warmer) because a slightly warmer world would be a wonderful thing. Despite our wishes it doesn’t matter because CO2 does sweet bugger all!
So you are predicting another massive El Nino.
Very good .
It always gets me when some local bio event is claimed to be caused by global warming without presenting the record of local temperature .
“Do you think UAH will ever have a pause of over 18 years again? Why or why not?”
Anyone answering that is basically claiming to own a crystal ball. It will be what it is. It might “resume” it might not resume. My belief is that chances are greater that it will NOT resume than the chances that it will because overall, climate is generally not stable on multi-decadal scales. Climate almost always is in a process of warming or cooling. So the chances are better that it will either cool or warm than it they are that climate will remain flat.
Anyone answering that is basically claiming to own a crystal ball.
I tend to agree, but one could posit some likelihood based on statistics.
When I wrote my post, I was basing it on the many predictions I’ve read hither and yon. Mainly, that a la Nina following the recent el Nino was a dead cert, and that it would ‘extend the pause’ in short order.
Doesn’t look like there is going to be a La Nina. Looks like “La Nada” conditions and current forecasts are for another El Nino condition but since the western Pacific warm pool has not recharged to any significant degree, it shouldn’t be a powerful one. Also note that an El Nino event is actually a COOLING event. Yes, the atmosphere warms but only because the ocean is dumping heat. It takes a La Nina event to recharge the western Pacific warm pool with warm water.
Most people are interested in how ENSO events affect surface/troposphere temps. El Ninos cause warming, la Ninas the opposite. It was within this context, where most interest is focused, that I investigated the predictions I’d been reading.
This is not directly related to this post but it does relate to the idea that climate, long term weather, is warmer or at least “different” than it was a hundred or so years ago,
I noticed that the movie “Groundhog Day” is on TV today where I live.
“Groundhog Day” with the idea that a rodent seeing his shadow could forecast 6 more weeks of winter (or the end of winter weather) goes back a long way.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/short-history-groundhog-day-180958018/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day
http://www.groundhog.org/about/history/
Point being, if early springs and late end of winters were the norm way back then, why all the fuss about them now? The superstition/tradition/excuse to party would have never caught on.
(Maybe if Punxsutawney Phil came out and, instead of looking to get a tan, chewed on a tree ring instead he’d have won a Nobel Prize!)
” JCH February 19, 2017 at 8:52 am
There is no observable that portends cooling [or warming]. It’s just not there.”
–
So much wisdom. JCH is right. The future can never be observed. Then he spoils it by saying
“Looks to me like for a very long time.”
–
Werner “Do you think UAH will ever have a pause of over 18 years again? Why or why not?”
–
There are now 2 pauses to consider.
The first, for 18+ years has gone due to the new El Nino.
The second 18 months, dates from the new El Nino but runs at a higher temperature then the previous one.
A pause by definition can only start in the present and extend into the past*.
Because we have a high point to go back to it is very likely that we are going to have a new pause for quite a while.
If we have more La Nina’s first than El Nino’s of comparable value in the next 18 years we will certainly have a pause of 18 plus years in that time.
See SM above – 50% chance]
In fact it would take only take 15 years to reach it because as the pause lengthens it goes backwards in time through the El Nino peak.
The interesting thing then is whether the original pause can “return”.
It would take a La Nina bigger than the recent El Nino to do so.
12 months of 0.5C lower than the current average.
Or two extra La Nina’s of equal value to the 2016 values. before an El Nino.
If it does of course the ramifications are enormous.
The pause would then extend for 36 years if it happens in 15 years and well over 20 years if it happens in the next 12 months.
I do not expect the 20 year pause to return in the next 12 months. As for what happens in 15 years, will it still be an issue then for those who are still alive at that time?
Werner, why measure the trend from 1997 or 1999?
Because these periods show no or very few warming.
We defined the pause as the longest period of time that we can go back from the present month and have a slight negative slope. We do not have a negative slope for any period of time above a few years right now. However the lowest slope is from December 1997 for any period above 18 years.
That was meant to be: why NOT measure the trend from 1997 or 1999?
“We do not have a negative slope for any period of time above a few years right now.”
You answered it anyway.
The ‘pause’ is utterly inconsequential and to focus on it detracts from any meaningful debate on whether Co2, never mind man made Co2 has any detrimental/beneficial effect on climate change.
To the best of my knowledge, no meaningful study has ever empirically proven that Co2 does actually cause global temperatures to rise.
That is the basis of the alarmist’s position, but that single fact has never been proven by observational studies. If it were the case we would be awash with incontrovertible, reliable, peer-reviewed studies which demonstrate that single fact alone.
Do we have any? No. After 40 years, millions of scientific man hours and billions of £/$ there should be hundreds, if not thousands, but there are none.
Just ask the leftist green crackpots for that single piece of evidence and they crumble. They make innumerable excuses, present data that ‘points’ to Co2 as the culprit, they bluster, stall and divert the subject, but never come up with the evidence.
So where’s the effing debate?
There is some truth this. However if you were to say that there has been no statistically significant warming at the 95% level for 23 years, many eyes might glaze over. But a “pause” of 19 years is much more straight forward.
The ‘pause’ is utterly inconsequential and to focus on it detracts from any meaningful debate on whether Co2
Maybe so, but the OP was based on thousands of comments and articles, here and elsewhere, on the topic. The ‘pause’ was of great consequence (and still is) to many people in the climate debate. The topic even reached the US Congress.
Barry, really appreciate your comment over at dr roy’s “fan mail”. Nobody should tolerate that kind of abuse. In fact, i only weighed in years ago at his site to take on some of that abuse. Always loved his posts, eventually began reading the comment section which i found surprisingly worthy. Eventually still, i realised that he had quite a problem with abusive posters. One day i got fed up with it and decided to take some of these guys out and, henceforth, “fonzie” was born. Cleared things up for a while, too! (kind of like having a cat around a house full of mice) It’s good to see he’s blocking people more now. He’s still enamored toward that “democracy thing” though. Blogs are monarchies and bloggers need not be fair. We can always leave, but a blogger has to put up with the nonsense day in and day out. AND that’s not healthy. (it’s probably morally wrong as well) i think dr roy would do well to follow anthony watts’ model of intolerance, especially since he lacks moderation. He’s also not doing his readers any favors by allowing personal insults toward himself as it can be quite the grotesque spectacle. Dr Roy deserves better than that (and so do we)…
Maybe trend lines are not the way to go in determining the pause… Warming essentially stopped circa 2002. Let’s suppose that temps get back to ’02 levels and stay there indefinitely. The trend line (because of the el nino) would be higher, but temps would be right back where they were when warming stopped. One could then objectively say that the pause is back if temps are still no higher than they were in ’02. (i guess what i’m saying is that by using trend lines we’re getting a little too “heady” about the pause) This very issue keeps popping up a number of times. Bottom line being that temps are right back where they were before the el nino (and right back where they were in ’02 as well)…
Barry, would you like to have a similar post next month? Only if you enjoy it and are interested, would you be willing to do what we published for UAH for RSS after the February RSS numbers are out?
Possibly. See reply at Dr Spencer’s.
Thank you! It will be interesting to see how different RSS will be.
What kind of evidence would convince you HotScot? Give me an example.
Werner,
you miss the point. The discussion is about Co2’s effect on warming, irrespective of the pause.
If alarmists can’t produce empirical evidence of Co2’s warming effect on the atmosphere, which they can’t, the discussion is a non-starter. The ‘pause’ in climate change is as big a mystery as it ever was.
Werner,
sorry, this discussion is about the pause but the general, global discussion is about Co2’s effect on atmospheric warming, for which there is no empirical evidence.
Damn, I wish I were a scientist then I could express myself better.
I agree. The former long pause along with steadily rising CO₂ levels indicated that the affect of CO₂ was relatively small if any.
effect…
Trends for individual locations are analysed. That’s what makes up the global average. Most individual locations show long-term warming (ie, since 1900/1950), some show cooling. The longer the time-period, the fewer places show flat or cooling trends. Compare 1900-2013 with 1950-2014.
If you’re interested in specific locations there are databases online with long-term weather station data.
This is a good place to start:
https://climateaudit.org/station-data/
Global raw is pretty much the same long-term trend as adjusted. No data thrown away, no adjustment.
But how would you do it, exactly? You’ve got a few thousand trends from raw data. Now what?
I’m not sure what you’re asking for. You don’t like averaging?
If I compute the stats for a single location, then I’ve learned something about that location and learned nothing about the global average.
If I compute the stats for a large number of locations, spread around the globe, then I learn a little about the global average.
If I do the last exercise many times with different subsets of all the data, each spread around the globe, I corroborate or invalidate my first attempt (with a few hundred stations, corroboration occurs each time).
Far as I can make out you seem to think that stats for one specific location will have something to say about global. That makes no sense. No one expects uniformity. You can’t extrapolate from a single sample.
The earth has been warming since the last ice age, so “record temperatures” would be expected even without human involvement. The question is: How much warming is human caused and how much is natural variation. The natural warming is confirmed by a steady (non-accelerating) sea level rise.
Who knows? Highly paid climate “scientists” certainly don’t know all of the factors which affect climate and the relationships and feedbacks between them.
We shall see, but my money is still on a sharp drop in the not too distant future.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temps_zpsf4ek0h4a.jpg
I have a beef with the headline “How Imminent is the UAH Pause? (Now Includes Some January Data)”. It implies that January data for UAH is incomplete, which it is not.
Sorry! What I meant was that of the five data sets for which I give data, I did not have January data for all of them. HadCRUT4.5 is still not in and GISS was not in when I sent it off.
For future posts, if I say it includes January and February data, it means that for some data sets (like the satellite data sets) the February data is in, but most of the others will only have January data.
Here is a comment I made on FB last week. It has to do with the recent uptick in ENSO temps. This is related to my speculation of a solar influence which drives ENSO region changes which I came upon 3 years ago this month. ….”.”I should have taken a look back at the data which I have used in determining ENSO region changes over the last several years. Right there in front of me my data source show what should be a warm spike occurring now. If my supposition is correct, then this should extend into March at the latest before declining, {before} heading back to negative conditions. Also, the regions should stay negative at least until around Sept/October of this year, before another warm spike sets in. Now this should be very interesting as it should either verify or disprove my entire contention on the matter of having some ability to forecast future ENSO conditions”..”
So this will be of interest for me. This is a go, no go moment for my idea.
Aye, a bit of local knowledge helps. The monthly satellite data are reported within a few days of the month ending. GISS and NOAA take 2-3 weeks, and the UK Met Office takes about a month or more. UAH is usually out of the gate first.
I wonder if ‘probability’ applies to a chaotic system…at all!
One of the characteristics of such a system is although it is deterministic, it is so sensitive tat the past is simply no real guide to the future.
Just because it happened that way earlier.
More akin to throwing two dice and coming up with 13, 15, 16, 17…
Weather is random. Climate (average weather) is much less chaotic.. We’re all familiar with this on an intuitive/experiential level – Summer/Winter. If we exclude our knowledge of the physics, the past is an excellent guide to the future regarding seasonal differences.
chaos is not random
the statistics of random distributions do not apply.
chaos is not linear: the mathematics of linear systems do not apply.
My point is simple, ClimbIt CyanTits are using the wrong analytical tools to make predictions that cannot be made
Then I’ve misunderstood you. What of the ‘system’ is chaotic? I thought you meant weather.
If you mean weather, how is it that we can measure the difference between Winter and Summer statistically, even if we lived perpetually underground and only received the temperature data from the surface?
If not weather, what is chaotic?
As far as I’m concerned it’s the ocean warming the atmosphere. That’s why we see these periodic spikes in atmospheric warming. Oscillations and mini-oscillations. Spikes in warming fairly quickly dissipate over the following year. Like it did in 2016 (as observed by satellite data). The steep fall in surface air temperature in 2016 tells me that the GHG effect is not nearly as efficient at keeping heat as I’m told it is. Measuring the air temperature (a secondary effect) and expecting to find a trend is surely deluded. Climatologists need to start measuring the ocean. It’s currents and heat transfers, and heat gradients. Start looking at the cause, rather than obsessing over the side effect. Maybe then, climatologists might be able to explain or predict something.
RSS + UAH5
Climatologists need to start measuring the ocean. It’s currents and heat transfers, and heat gradients.
That’s been going on for decades. Salinity, pressure, sea level and a host of other factors, too.
As far as I’m concerned it’s the ocean warming the atmosphere.
Would you then expect to see that reflected in lower ocean temps over time as the heat is transferred out, or higher ocean temps over time concurrent with the warming?
“For Hadsst3: There is no statistically significant warming since March 1997: Cl from -0.003 to 2.102.”
Look at the 95% confidence interval. It says the period is so short and the data is so noisy and autocorrelated that you CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE between NO WARMING and the AMOUNT OF WARMING AOGCMs predict. It doesn’t say no warming.
The absence of statistically significant warming does not demonstrate the absence of warming. Idiocy.
Exactly, Frank.
Yes, when uncertainty in the trend is factored the discrepancy is mitigated. The error bounds in observed temps overlap with the models.
At the same time, because few cared to factor – or cared to understand – the uncertainty, they agreed that the pause was over just because the mean trend had a slight positive slope from early 2016 onwards. While I always thought the analysis is incomplete without it, I credit the consistency – uncertainty just isn’t factored.
Once 2016 became the warmest year in all global temp records, however, statistical uncertainty became a subject of much interest. Perhaps this interest will one day be applied to trends as well as annual anomaly differences.
That is true. However climate scientists have come up with certain rules regarding significances and I am merely applying them. I did not make the rules.
Werner: You aren’t following the rules, you are abusing them! My favorite description of statistics is “Getting Meaning from Data”. You are deliberately trying to mislead readers about the meaning of the data.
If I want to make the scientific claim that the planet IS warming in a journal article (but not necessarily for policymakers or the public), I need to show that the 2.5-97.5% confidence interval for the warming trend is greater than zero. If it is warming and I can’t prove it, I’m making a Type II error, a false negative. That is common in science; I suspect sometime is true but I can’t demonstrate it beyond a reasonable doubt. In that case, I scientifically won’t be able to draw any conclusion about warming – so I’m expected to shut up about the subject of warming in scientific forums (or at least present the situation clearly).
However, YOU aren’t trying to prove the planet is warming. You are trying to prove that there is NO WARMING or perhaps NEGLIGIBLE WARMING. To prove no warming, the 2.5-97.5% confidence interval for the trend must be less than zero. That probably hasn’t happened in the last two centuries for any period longer than 10 years. To prove negligible warming, you need to pick a warming trend that you can justify as being negligible (perhaps half or less of what the IPCC predicts), and show that the 2.5-97.5% confidence interval is less than this value. You can come close to doing this for a few cherry-picked periods, but cherry-picking isn’t allowed in statistics. In any analysis, 5% of the results will generally like outside the 2.5-97.5% confidence interval! Statistics isn’t valid when you cherry-pick – which is exactly what you are doing by choosing specific periods. So you should also shut up about no warming and negligible warming in scientific forums. WUWT is supposed to be a scientific forum. That way, neither of us will be making scientific claims without reasonable confidence we are right.
In the phony world you have created, I’m allowed to claim that it is NOT cooling, simply because I can demonstrate the absence of statistically significant cooling. You can claim that it is NOT warming, simply because you can demonstrate the absence of statistically significant warming. However, a situation where it is NOT WARMING and NOT COOLING at the same time is a LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY. (The temperature certainly isn’t staying the same!)
The CENTRAL ESTIMATE from all but a few of these regressions is that it is warming. Any statement that implies or suggests the opposite is deception. It is your responsibility to be sure than no reader ends up with the misleading impression that our planet is cooling or remaining at a constant temperature. For short periods, temperature is so variable that we can say for CERTAIN what is happening. It is your job to ensure that no reader is misled! MEANING from data, not misapplied rules!
The burden of proof in science lies with the person making the claim – he has to provide statistically significant evidence in support of his contention. The ABSENCE of statistically significant evidence doesn’t demonstrate anything at all. It simply means as a scientist that I am expected to shut up about any claims that lack appropriate evidence – or discuss the subject clearly so that everyone understands the data. I can discuss central estimates and confidence intervals in the discussion section of my paper, but I can’t make any statements in the abstract that might mislead someone who only reads the abstract.
So what do I do when I suspect something is true, but my data is not statistically significant. I get more data. Repeat the experiment. In the case of global warming, LOOK AT A LONGER PERIOD OF TIME.
In GW, we have the fairly insane situation that we can’t prove that it has been warming for the 18 years since the 1998 El Nino, we can’t prove that is was warming for the 18 years before that El Nino, but we can prove that is has been warming for the last 36 years! And the central trend for all three period is nearly the SAME! And most people believe warming in these two period was dramatically different. Speaking scientifically, it is your obligation to make this situation clear to readers – to make sure they come away from your articles with the correct meaning. The absence of statistically significant warming does not demonstrate the absence of warming!
(Don’t try saying that you are only claiming the “absence of statistically significant warming”. Where is the 2.5-97.5% confidence interval that backs up this statement. A least squares linear regression implies that there is a linear relationship between two variables and that the deviations from this relationship represent noise, not another relationship. If you randomly redistributed this noise and re-analyze, you expect the central estimate for the trend to fall within your first confidence interval 95% of the time. (For temperature, we have auto-correlated noise.) You haven’t done that. If you try, you won’t get the answer you want.
My section 1 gives numbers for three of the data sets using numbers from Nick Stokes’ site. He had some trouble posting things this time, but he had many comments last time here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/26/warmest-ten-years-on-record-now-includes-all-december-data/
If your concerns are not addressed there, please raise them with my post next month and hopefully Nick will be able to respond.
Frank,
To prove no warming, the 2.5-97.5% confidence interval for the trend must be less than zero. That probably hasn’t happened in the last two centuries for any period longer than 10 years.
HadCRUt4 30-yr trend:
1874 – 1914 : -0.063 C/decade (+/- 0.046)
HadCRUt4 52-yr trend:
1863 – 1914: -0.037 C/decade (+/- 0.033)
Trends beginning mid 1990s or later all fail statistical significance, as you say. Regardless of which dataset is used.
“Conclusion
Do you think UAH will ever have a pause of over 18 years again? Why or why not?”
___________________________________________
There’ll be a lot of UAH pauses lesser / more than 18 year’s again – if acknowledged / convincing contemporary green belivers is the next question.
Regular sine wave/s + positive trend = occasional ‘pauses’, or steps each higher than the last. Eg,
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/11/the-magical-mystery-climate-index-luis-salas-nails-it/
You could convince the greenies that there is cyclicity, but would that convince them that there isn’t a trend?
Barry, it would cut the rate of warming in half. In other words, instead of it being .6C warming from, say, 1970 – 2000, it would be .6C warming from 1940 – 2000. Further, ipcc models don’t allow for such oscillations. It’s all about warming…
http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-906721.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=
We already have regular fluctuations and long-term cycles. These have already produced short-term pauses, lots of them, if you pick your start and end points carefully. We already have a long-term pause (multidecadal) in the middle of the 20th century. Are you saying that if we took those away the trend would be twice as high?
Barry, no exactly sure what you’re getting at here… if you go about a dozen comments above, you can see that bart has a graph of hadcrut4gl detrended (which presumably shows the oscillating cycle). What i am saying is that in order to find/calculate the underlying trend, you need to go from peak to peak. Bart took out the trend, so we can see that peak to peak warming without the trend is zero. What we have in reality is peak to peak warming of .6C. (temps being flat from 1940-1970 and rising .6C from 1970-2000) That would be .1C/decade of warming, not warming of .2C/decade that you would get by just looking at the upside of the cycle…
afonzarelli,
no exactly sure what you’re getting at here
You said the trend would be half as much if you “convince the greenies that there is cyclicity.” That’s what i made out of your comment anyway – you weren’t more specific so i took it to refer to the last thing I said.
You’ve clarified since.
I agree that natural cycles tend to cancel out over the long term, but disagree that an apparent natural cycle has been shown in Bart’s graph, and hence that there is a definite problem with the start/end points. Also, you are using simple subtraction to discern a trend rate, if i’m reading you right. That’s not statistically legitimate.
This deserves a longer conversation. I’m rushing off to work.
Yes, i agree that bart’s graph could be termed an “apparent” cycle, as many have contested it. (that’s why i used the word “presumably” myself) i’m more interested in your second point here. “…using simple subtraction to discern a trend rate… …That’s not statistically legitimate.” So… assuming that the cycle as depicted by bart is real (for the sake of argument), why is it not legit to subtract from peak to peak? Looking at the data using other data sets the warming peak to peak would be more like .4C. It’s also been noted that peak to peak from 1880 to 1940 only produces .2C. So the trend appears to be increasing (but arguably not by much). You would be the first i’ve come across to dispute this particular point, so i’d be glad to hear what you have to say. Feel free to enumerate on your first point (“…disagree that an ‘apparent’ natural cycle has been shown…”) as your take on that would be nice, too. But, i’m really more interested in your second point. (thanx)…
“You could convince the greenies that there is cyclicity, but would that convince them that there isn’t a trend?”
There is definitely a trend. The problem is, it extends back well before rising CO2 could have been its causative agent. It is merely the recovery from the LIA. We don’t know what caused the LIA. We don’t know what ended it. But, we do know it was not anthropogenically sourced CO2.
Bart, andy may did an interesting piece a while back that examined the slopes of past cycling and compared it to the recent cycle. From that he calculated the anthro component as being no more than about 25% of recent warming. Ironically, the more the gate keepers adjust away mid twentieth century cooling, the greater the similarity there exists between that period and the recent pause. (if there were anthro warming, we might expect to see a difference between the two periods)…
Barry, i wrote out a reply to you late last night that appears to have disappeared into cyberspace. i don’t really feel like composing another in light of that. You might say that i’m “punting”… ☺ (it’s carnival time here in new orleans, so i think i’ll just pour me a drink instead) You might want to elaborate on this point:
“Also, you are using simple subtraction to discern a trend rate… …That’s not statistically legitimate.”
(thanx)…
HA! My comment finally showed up. A day late (and if it’s anything like me) a dollar short…
afonzarelli,
I’ll answer you with a graphic.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/to:2011/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/to:2011/trend
I chose the period from peak el Nino of 1998 to the el Nino of 2010/11.
Even though temps for 1998 were warmer than for 2010/11, the slope is still positive. Largely because of the cool years following 1998. Ignoring the cool years throws out data that affects the trend. The less information you have, the less reliable your trend estimate. Your method throws out most of the data available for a given period.
Have a read on how trends are calculated and what they represent. To put it in a simple way, it calculates a straight line through data where the sum of differences between every data point and the trend slope is smallest. (That’s not a perfect description, but one that most can understand).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_trend_estimation#Fitting_a_trend:_least-squares
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression
Barry – A linear, least squares regression is not magic. It doesn’t “know” if the data have cyclic components. If your data set exhibits fractional periods of a strong short term cyclic phenomenon, it is ill suited for determining the long term trend. Fonzie was recommending a way to discern the long term behavior. His recommendation is a better method than naively applying a least squares regression.
Bartemis, his approach cannot possibly discern cyclicity because it uses only two points (2 peaks), not any kind of fit to data. He discards the majority of the information between the points. The only way you could get less information is if you chose one point instead of two. This is rudimentary stuff.
Not so. In the first place, he isn’t trying to discern “cyclicity”, he is trying to suppress it so as to discern the long term trend. In the second, the use of the entire series is implicit, as he is viewing the entire series, and picking out the local maxima to use for estimating the long term trend.
A better way would be to perform a general nonlinear regression including cyclical harmonics, but that is a complicated process that would take a lot more time and yield only minor improvement. What he has suggested is much better than naively performing a linear regression on data with cyclical components.
You should not so readily dismiss the evidence of your eyes. Too many young researchers tend to imbue numerical estimation methods with unwarranted reverence. But, a canned routine cannot think. It gives you exactly the answer you are telling it, whether realizing it or not, to tell you. A conscious, rational person can take in the entire spread of data and make logical inferences about it. A robust analysis always considers sanity checks on the results of numerical algorithms against the visual evidence of the plotted data.
Bart, i might add that not only was i not trying to discern cyclicality, i was merely assuming that there is a cycle for the sake of argument. Peak to peak, trough to trough or any comparison of the data 60 years apart gives us a nice ball park figure. If there is indeed a cycle, we can rest assured that the underlying trend from 1940 to 1970 is greater than zero. And, also, that the underlying trend from 1970 to 2000 is less than .2C/ decade. The “happy median” between the downside and the upside of the cycle would be .1C/ decade for the entire cycle (assuming there is no increase in the underlying trend over time). Even if the trend were increasing over time, we can infer that it hasn’t been increasing by much given the numbers involved…
As an aside, Bart, keep an eye on the federal reserve going forward… The WSJ had a big headline this past week that the fed plans on rigorously raising rates. This could be Trump’s worst nightmare and it should be interesting to see how he handles it. (how much does the billionaire president actually know or not know about economics?) My biggest curiosity is who he’ll pick to replace yellen when her term is up early next year. That would be THE most revealing thing about “Trumpanomics”…
Bartemis, fonzarelli,
Here is how I would work out a trend from 1940 to 2000.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:2001/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:2001/trend
Trend is 0.33C/decade
What fonzarelli seems to be doing is taking two points (peak to peak) and ignoring all the other data. If I take ‘peak to peak’ as an average of the 3 years around 1940 and 2000, this is what the data looks like.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1939/to:1942/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1999/to:2002
We’ve removed 90% of the data. Now we subtract the difference and divide by 6 to get a decadal ‘trend.’
I think this is a far more naive way to estimate a trend than linear regression. And, as I showed above, you can get spurious results from using so little data.
I agree completely that using “their” language of a “pause”, only reinforces the propaganda of c02 driven warming. A peak of a natural warming period, or average of a natural warming cycle is much more appropriate. With this, I imply that as has been the reality for the 20th century, temps have occilated from warm to cool (relative to a time series), and this will continue, predictions on when cooling starts are varied, and there is solid evidence 2000 may have been the year, but it’s not easy to predict. The idea that 120 ppm, the difference between arbitrary “safe” levels, and very questionable background volcanic sensors, smoothed just like cherry picked ice core samples by a 70 year smoothing average, when c02 reading’s can change up to 600ppm in a single day, no matter where the measure it drives climate is ludicrous. Thus using the term pause implies it will again warm and keep warming as again function of c02, not good to play their games. An unaltered record of the 20th C and 21st, show 15 to about 35 year periods of warming again cooling…..cooling during very large increases in man made c02, completely destroyed any idea that co2 levels, in any way over idea natural causes.
Please – CO2 (C-Oh-2), not C02 (C-zero-2) or Co2.
Werner, I think we are seeing a decoupling from the usual ENSO indices as an explanation for global temperatures. The COLD BLOBS in the temperate zones of the NH and SH are cooling the atmosphere in the absence of a deeper La Nina. Rain in California is usually coupled with a significant La Nina. Now, just as the HOT BLOB brought California a deep drought and it was in existence for a couple of years before the 2016 EL NINO, we have the COLD BLOB giving us a La Nina -type torrential rains in California. The Pacific is not developing a western warm pool of any significance, so there won’t be a piling up of warm water eastwards along the equator for another El Nino particularly soon.
I was wondering about that myself. The first half of 2016 seemed to follow the script, but not the last half. For example, the June anomaly for UAH of 0.337 was not beaten until December at 0.243.
People are beginning to make El Nino forecasts for this year. E.g. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml
ENSO effect on global temps is not the only influence, but it is the most dominant for year-to-year variation (absent a massive volcanic eruption every 3 to 4 years).
I don’t see any decoupling. Strong el Nino followed by weak la Nina (or no la Nina – depends which index you use) is reflected in the monthly global averages of the past year or so. Temps got cooler following el Nino, as they did after every el Nino. Bottomed out less deeply owing to non/weak la Nina, as different from the strong la Nina following 1998 el Nino, but similar to other years where Nino was followed by weak/non la Nina.
Other factors play a small part but the dominant term is still ENSO.
If one agrees, as many here do, that there should be some warming from GHG increase (however small), then recent monthly temps don’t seem to be unusual in the context of ENSO variation.
One could demonstrate that recent anomalies are unusual WRT to ENSO evolution by comparing all post-Nino variation in monthly global temps. There are about 9 el Nino events for the satellite period, and 17 since 1950 to compare with surface records.
Well it’s cooler now than during the Holocene optimum during the Minoan warm period….. So it seems natural variations are still the rule and not the exception….. Hmm.
Holocene optimum is a result of orbital variation. It was the peak of the thousand-years Milankovich cycles.
If orbital variation dominated global temps at all times, then the globe should have cooled since 1900. But influence of orbital variation over a century is exceedingly small. Other factors dominate over centennial periods.
“Barry,
“You could convince the greenies that there is cyclicity, but would that convince them that there isn’t a trend?”
__________________________________________
no chance convincing greenies of common sense or reasonable discussion.
Let God sort them out.
(God’s to dang slow…☺)
Oops, “too dang slow” (He is)…