The “uncertainty monster” strikes again
We’ve been highly critical for some time of the paper in summer 2015 by Karl et al. that claimed “the pause” or hiatus went away once “properly adjusted” ocean surface temperature data was applied to the global surface temperature dataset. Virtually everyone in the climate skeptic community considers Karl et al. little more than a sleight of hand.
No matter, this paper published today in Nature Climate Change by Hedemann et al. not only confirms the existence of “the pause” in global temperature, but suggests a cause, saying “…the hiatus could also have been caused by internal variability in the top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance“.
That’s an important sentence, because it demonstrates that despite many claims to the contrary, CO2 induced forcing of the planetary temperature is not the control knob, and natural variability remains in force.
Also of note, see the offset as designated by the two colored X’s in Figure 1:
Models and observations don’t even begin to match.
The subtle origins of surface-warming hiatuses
Christopher Hedemann, Thorsten Mauritsen, Johann Jungclaus & Jochem Marotzke
AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author
Nature Climate Change (2017) doi:10.1038/nclimate3274
Received 12 July 2016 Accepted 17 March 2017 Published online 17 April 2017
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Earth’s surface warmed more slowly than climate models simulated1. This surface-warming hiatus is attributed by some studies to model errors in external forcing2, 3, 4, while others point to heat rearrangements in the ocean5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10caused by internal variability, the timing of which cannot be predicted by the models1. However, observational analyses disagree about which ocean region is responsible11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Here we show that the hiatus could also have been caused by internal variability in the top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance. Energy budgeting for the ocean surface layer over a 100-member historical ensemble reveals that hiatuses are caused by energy-flux deviations as small as 0.08 W m−2, which can originate at the top of the atmosphere, in the ocean, or both. Budgeting with existing observations cannot constrain the origin of the recent hiatus, because the uncertainty in observations dwarfs the small flux deviations that could cause a hiatus. The sensitivity of these flux deviations to the observational dataset and to energy budget choices helps explain why previous studies conflict, and suggests that the origin of the recent hiatus may never be identified.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3274.html
(paywalled)
From the Introduction:
The surface temperature of the Earth warmed more slowly over the period 1998–2012 than could be expected by examining either most model projections or the long-term warming trend1. Even though some studies now attribute the deviation from the long-term trend to observational biases17, 18, the gap between observations and models persists. The observed trend deviated by as much as −0.17 °C per decade from the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5; ref. 19) ensemble-mean projection1—a gap two to four times the observed trend. The hiatus therefore continues to challenge climate science.
Key excerpts:
…
The coupled climate model MPI-ESM1.1 is forced with CMIP5-prescribed historical forcing from 1850 until 2005, and extended until 2015 with the RCP4.5 scenario (see Methods). When the red line lies above the grey line, at least one ensemble member is experiencing a hiatus, defined as a deviation of more than 0.17 °C per decade below the ensemble mean. This deviation is the same as the gap between the CMIP5 ensemble mean (black cross) and the observed (yellow cross) GMST trends for the period 1998–2012. Contours represent the number of ensemble members in bins of 0.05 °C per decade.
…
From our analysis of observational estimates, we are unable to exclude the TOA anomaly as a possible cause of the recent hiatus. Referencing the observations to an alternative energy budget (rather than that of the large ensemble) could shift the absolute position of the green and yellow crosses in Fig. 3c. However, their relative distance from one another and the size of their error bars would not change.
The role of the TOA and the ocean in each hiatus can be determined by comparing their relative contributions to the flux-divergence anomaly. For hiatuses in the large historical ensemble, the negative (cooling) anomaly is caused entirely by the TOA in 12% of cases and by the ocean in 24% of cases. In the remainder (64%), the negative anomaly is caused by the TOA and ocean acting together (bottom left quadrant of Fig. 3c). TOA variability is therefore involved in 76% of all hiatuses.
…
We conclude that the TOA may have been a source of significant internal variability during the hiatus. Our conclusions are not an artefact of model-generated TOA variability29—the large ensemble produces TOA variability that is similar to that in the observational record (Supplementary Fig. 7). Rather, our conclusions are based on a simple yet robust principle, namely that the Earth’s surface layer has a small heat capacity. The surface temperature can therefore be influenced by small variations in the large yet mutually compensating fluxes that make up this layer’s energy budget. Comparing the small variability in the TOA imbalance with the total TOA imbalance under global warming27, 30 obscures the significance of these small variations for the hiatus.
…
(bold mine)
This is the true dilemma at the heart of the hiatus debate: the variability in ocean heat content alone has no power to explain the hiatus, and the measure that can—the surface-layer flux divergence—is dwarfed by observational uncertainty. While there are attempts to fill the gaps in observations with ocean reanalyses such as ORAS4 (refs 9,23), the resulting data are of questionable integrity during the hiatus14, 21 and, as we show, disagree with the budget based on CERES21 and WOA22. Even if these disagreements could be reconciled, the process of anchoring satellite observations with ocean heat uptake makes the contributions from TOA and ocean difficult to disentangle, because their absolute difference is unknown. Therefore, unless the uncertainty of observational estimates can be considerably reduced, the true origin of the recent hiatus may never be determined.
Code availability.
The MPI-ESM1.1 model version was used to generate the large ensemble and is available at http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/en/science/models/mpi-esm.html. Computer code used in post-processing of raw data has been deposited with the Max Planck Society: http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/faces/viewItemFullPage.jsp?itemId=escidoc:2353695.
Data availability.
Raw data from the large ensemble were generated at the Swiss National Computing Centre (CSCS) and Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) facilities. Derived data have been deposited with the Max Planck Society (http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/faces/viewItemFullPage.jsp?itemId=escidoc:2353695). Supplementary Fig. 7 uses TOA flux reconstructions provided by R Allan40 (http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~sgs01cll/flux) and satellite observations provided by the NASA CERES project31 (http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov). For observational estimates in Fig. 3c, we make use of data provided by the NOAA World Ocean Atlas22(https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT) and by the ECMWF Ocean Reanalysis System 4 (ref. 9; http://icdc.zmaw.de/projekte/easy-init/easy-init-ocean.html).
PDF files
Supplementary Information (3,616 KB)
Note: about 30 mins after publication, some grammatical and spelling errors were corrected, and a subtitle added.
There appear to have been more or less equal length “pauses” starting in the early 1880’s and early 1940’s each followed by periods of warming of similar length as the “pauses.” Would conditions in the TOA cause such a seeming pattern of temperature activity
More likely what we see is a linear rebound from the LIA minimum with the 60-65 year Ocean cycle imposed on it. The minimum phase of the ocean cycle (AMO) cancels the linear increase over a ~10-15 yr period, but on the ocean cycle increasing node, the two trends add to appear as and accleration i(such as 1980-1998).
Is ToA a synonym for solar variation in a society where ‘solar’ is an excommunication offence?
[???? .mod]
WUWT catch up with Tony Heller time from way way back
Good to see that not every scientist is [toeing] the party line! Sometimes I wonder if real scientific inquiry is still possible in the field of climate studies; this helps restore my faith that the battle hasn’t been lost yet.
Mention is made that 0.082 W/sqm can be a significant magnitude at TOA.
Here is an old jpg that I made years ago, showing 0.08 W/sqm. Note how thin it is compared to the range of raw observations.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/toa_problem.jpg
These raw obs were then “adjusted” to derive a preferred value. You can see how fraught with danger that could be.
The main problem, as I keep repeating, is inadequate use of formal error estimates. If these were put on this diagram, you would see that once again, the alleged effect cannot be distinguished from noise. The effect floats around in a large error space, to be fitted into such an interpretation as authors wish for.
Geoff.
+1
@ur momisugly Dr. Svalgaard
I noticed one or two minor changes to the most recent PF data, with the last entry more or less in line. Is the problem fixed, or are you still working on it? Tanks.
No, the problem is still with us. We are waiting for a series of good observing days with a clear sky. There has been a lot of rain and clouds so far this winter. We are not sure that the KDP is the problem, so the fault must lie elsewhere. The electronics is 40+ years old…
It would seem to me that the title of this post is completely inaccurate. There is no way
one can claim that climate models fails using a paper based on climate models. All this
paper claims is that natural variablilty is larger than previously thought. Which makes it harder
to determine the causes of any particular temperature trend over a short period of time than
was previously thought.
What they are actually saying is that the measurements that most reflect the Pause is the southern, ocean, top of atmosphere.
From which you can pretty easily guess, that the places that are not showing the Pause – in other words the places showing warming – are the northern, land, bottom of atmosphere.
Since I’ve been extensively discussing this on my blog – it’s hardly news to me.
http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/2017/03/31/animation-proving-link-between-so2-reducing-areas-and-warming/
http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/2017/04/09/the-cause-of-1970-2000-warming/
The authors claim of deviation between models and observations (1998-1912) can not be right:
:
“The observed trend deviated by as much as −0.17 °C per decade from the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5; ref. 19) ensemble-mean projection1—a gap two to four times the observed trend.”
The average trend 1998-1912 of three global datasets (Gistemp loti, Cowtan and Way, BEST l/o) is 0.12 C/decade.
According to KNMI climate explorer the CMIP rcp4.5 model average global SAT trend 1998-2012 is 0.22 C/decade.
However, the observational datasets are blended SST/land SAT. If models are blended the trend goes down to 0.19 C/decade.
Thats only 0.07 C/ decade difference between models and obs, NOT 0.17
Have the authors slept recent years and completely missed that model-obs comparisons should be made made apples-to-apples??
Also, if one starts the period with the strongest el Nino since 1878 and ends it with a strong la Nina (1998-2012), isn’t quite natural that the observed trend is lower than the model average?
As a contrast the observed GMST trend from 2012 til now is 0.9 C/decade, four times larger than the model average.
Hence, a possible “natural” slowdown between 1998 and 2012 has been more than compensated by a “natural” speed up between 2012 2017
Tke paper is indeed striking. In the beginning they write:
“The surface temperature of the Earth warmed more slowly over the period 1998–2012 than could be expected by examining either most model projections or the long-term warming trend. Even though some studies now attribute the deviation from the long-term trend to observational biases17,18, the gap between observations and models persists. The observed trend deviated by as much as −0.17 ◦C per decade from the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5;ref.19) ensemble-mean projection1—a gap two to four times the observed trend. The hiatus therefore continues to challenge climate science.”
Ref. 18 is Karl et. al (2015) with the title: “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface
warming hiatus” IMO it’s a clear contradicition when they write in the new paper:”the gap between obs. and midels persist.”
And the result of the paper? The last sentence summs it up:
“Therefore, unless the uncertainty of observational estimates can be considerably reduced, the true origin of the recent hiatus may never be determined”
At first they describe the importance to find the origins of the hiatus, they describe the gap to the models and in the end they conclude: No, we can’t!
Isn’t it a declaration of bankruptcy of the climate research as we know it?
Just wondering if a higher lapse rate (cooler upper atmosphere) causes clouds to build higher? How much more energy does a thunderstorm radiate to outer space if it goes to 50K feet instead of 40K feet?
Has Dana Nutty issued a ‘rebuttal’ yet? It’ll come, don’t you worry.
Top down solar effects interact with bottom up oceanic effects.
Who’d have guessed it ?
“Karl-buster paper”
I love it.
Water vapor is the regulator.
You can see it operating on outgoing radiation in this graph of measurements.
Min temps, follow dew point temps, the result of the above chart.
Oh, 97% correlation between min temp and dew point. Didn’t I just see Co2 to temps was around 30%?
One more point. I know some here think I’m a “sky dragon”, far from it, I just have spent 40 years working with EM waves, and a decade studying temperature data, and the temperature series show there is no way a small forcing is raising minimum temperature. It’s not in the temp series as I show above, and it’s not in the actual measured surface radiation, also shown above.
There is no way Co2 is the cause of the modern warm period, I’ve been saying that for 4 or 5 years now, and with my discovery of why in the radiation data last December, there is proof. It’s just sad no one seems to understand how dynamic nonlinear systems work, even when you show it to them, even when they call it a dynamic nonlinear system.
It’s almost like, everyone is having so much fun arguing, they don’t want a final answer on the subject.
CO2 absorbs energy from the surface and so bends the lapse rate to the warm side.
Since the air then cools less quickly with height the rate of convection slows.
Slower convection allows higher humidity to develop at lower levels and higher humidity allows water vapour to condense out at a higher temperature i.e. at a lower height.
Clouds forming at a lower height and higher temperature allows those clouds to reflect and radiate more energy out to space than would otherwise have been the case.
Thus, in a water world, the thermal effects of non condensing gases are countered by the fact that water vapour condenses out at a lower height.
Measurements do show that humidity has increased and so it must follow that clouds are indeed condensing out at lower heights and radiating more to space.
David Evans has a concept of multiple ‘pipes’ whereby radiation can escape to space by other means if one ‘pipe’ is blocked or partially blocked.
I suggested that the above mechanism would be the way it works when an atmosphere has both CO2 and water vapour.
And that’s what I have been showing nonstop for almost 6 months. They operate independently, and water vapor is the regulator. It’s just clouds (well visible ones anyways) are not involved, it’s all clear sky, I’m taking pictures of galaxies while it’s happening.
Oh, and rel humidity is falling.
Like this
Okay, not like that, but like this 🙂 M31, the other is the Horse head Nebula.
The stage is reset for the long-term cycles of AMO and solar to combine for a show. I predict energy demand for heating will rise accordingly.
And because of all of this green nonsense, much of the world is going to be screwed.
….Or at least hold less reliable generating assets and lower grid stability for meeting demand. The greens always blame someone so they can blame the grid operators and call it outdated infrastructure leading to the S-word for stimulus. So in effect we can jump ahead and conclude that climate model error+energy policy failure = excess national debt. And any leader who does not follow this path will be labeled a heartless killer of the frozen masses.
Pretty brilliant strategy, all based on nonsense. But we now have someone, immune to a lot of that kind of nonsense as President, so there is a renewed hope for sane policies at least for a while.
I don’t think the cooling will come that fast in terms of a presidential term or maybe even two terms. We might start hearing calls of a downturn off of a pause. It is more decadal in scale but there should be factual evidence of the downturn going on in the indicators at any rate.
Temps fall like a rock, once the water vapor supporting it leaves (like the end of an El Nino). It’ll depend on the Oceans.
I hope that five years of additional data post-Super El Nino will indicate if the 3 degree C of IPCC model sensitivity is valid or not, Resourceguy.
Well yes, the “brilliant execution of nonsense” is now an ex-President and probably soon to be an author, adjunct professor, advocate, lobbyist, and globalist laureate at large. He will have plenty of money for higher heating bills or beach-side living where once there was only rising seas gloom.
Everyone pushing this trash at the government level, either are collecting money from it, or are so wealthy they just don’t care. The rest fall into Luddites who don’t like modern society, or just don’t know any better than to believe “science”.
The 1960s are the analog years for the coming 2020s and the AMO going negative. There was pretty substantial cooling which continued into the late 1970s. This means the current POTUS could still be around in a 2nd term when it takes off.
In addition, with the solar minimum coming up that will add some downward pressure on temps. Finally, if we experience a La Nina then even more downward influence. It is going to get tough for the AGW backers unless they luck out and get another strong El Nino.
I certainly hope we get SOME beneficial warming (and milder storms) from all this added CO2 and don’t have to settle for just increased crop and forest yields. I’m guessing we have at least one more LIA and upturn before the interglacial ends.
As a scientist what I have never seen in the CMIP5 Climate Model Graphs is one in which the CS values for CO2 include 0.5, 0.8, and 1.0. Those values should also be used and published for model Projection runs as well for comparison purposes. Seems to me the reason they would NOT be used is because they just might fit the observed data much better and then Climate Scientists heads would explode. On the other hand, if they did a lousy job of fitting they data it would give them a bit more ammunition. My bet is the former.
Not to put too sharp a point on this, but the article is published by the Nature group. which you deprecated a few days ago.
The best work of the blogs is in popularizing the best of the peer-reviewed literature, not critiquing the worst or the mediocre..
No matter, this paper published today in Nature Climate Change by Hedemann et al. not only confirms the existence of “the pause” in global temperature, but suggests a cause, saying “…the hiatus could also have been caused by internal variability in the top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance“.
That’s an important sentence, because it demonstrates that despite many claims to the contrary, CO2 induced forcing of the planetary temperature is not the control knob, and natural variability remains in force.
It is amazing to see how quickly a could also can be shifted to an is not when there is some intererest to do so…
Moreover: maybe we should underline that Hedemann et al. mention at the very beginning:
The surface temperature of the Earth warmed more slowly over the period 1998-2012 than could be expected by examining either most model projections or the long-term warming trend.
Warmed more slowly over the period 1998-2012? Let’s have a quick look at UAH6.0:
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170418/kmhhauc7.png
I see no slower warming here, rather some harsh decline!
Here are the linear trends for these three UAH periods, in °C/decade with 2σ error bars:
1979-2016: 0.123 ±0.062
1998-2012: -0.070 ±0.277
1998-2016: 0.049 ±0.180
Source: http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
Recall: if the error bar of an estimate contains the value 0, its p-value is above 0.05, and hence the estimate is not statistically significant. Thus the only really valid estimate is that for 1979-2016.
A detail nearly nobody seems to care about nowadays: the shorter the period you analyse in a time series, the less data points you obtain, and the higher is the uncertainty.
And, as commenter OR perfectly noticed, it is a bit strange to select a period beginning with one of the three most powerful El Nonos we had since 1850, and ending with a nice La Nina:
A pause there has been, no doubt as far as I understand! But to select a harsh decline as the base for a scientific article trying to explain that a hiatus could have happened?
Did those cherries taste good? You are trying to con people who understand the only reason the trend from 1998 is upward is due to El Nino. It is beyond silly for anyone to show such nonsense and expect anything other than laughter. What did it look like before the El Nino?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1998/to:2014.75/plot/uah6/from:1998/to:2014.75/trend
Oh yeah, it was going down. You also appear to be completely ignorant of the fact that the 1998-2001 La Nina completely balances out the 1998 El Nino and eliminates any strong influence on the trend. I hope you enjoyed your cherries because all you managed to accomplish was to prove beyond any doubt you don’t understand either math or science.
Richard M on April 18, 2017 at 11:13 am
The more aggressive I behave, the less I manage to convince.
Seems to be valid 4u2…
I don’t try to change people’s religion. You’ve seen these facts before and here you are repeating the same lies. I know I can’t change your opinion so I have no reason to be nice to you. I can only hope to embarrass you enough that you quit with the obvious lies.
Richard M
It could equally be said that the only reason the warming trend was relatively flat (or in the case of the lower troposphere, downward) between 1998-2012 is because of the large El Nino at the start end. If you want to discount the effect of strong ENSO conditions over relatively short periods like this, then it’s necessary to remove the one at the start too, not just the one at the finish.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1999/to:2014.75/plot/uah6/from:1999/to:2014.75/trend
Waddda yuck, DWR54. [Department of Water Resources?]
It appears the following La Nina pretty much canceled out the effects of the 1998 El Nino on temperature trends. Additionally, the approximately 2002 to 2014 trend is essentially flat. CO2 growth was significant over that period.
It wasn’t the El Nino, or La Niña, at the end of the El Nino the amo went positive, increased dew points from the increase in water vapor in the MY, and that caused the step in temps, min temp follows dew points, and then max temp follows min.
Well, micro, except for a minor decline in the relative humidity (which climate science says shouldn’t change), every thing else is essentially flat for the last 20 years or so.
17-18 years, then the pre amo step down (going back in time).
going back to the 50’s
Go back to 1850, micro, and we can talk about temperatures and trends.
IPCC climate models are bunk. My recent mantra.
The data sucks prior to 1950. The models are wrong, their theory is wrong. Min temp is regulated by water vapor, co2 has little to no effect.
+1, micro
Micro, my simple understanding of GCMs is:
1. CO2’s radiative properties raises global temperatures by a predictable amount based on the increased CO2 concentration in a well-mixed atmosphere.
2. That increase in temperature results in an increase in water vapor in the climate.
3. Water’s radiative properties further raise global temperatures.
4. People guess as to the impacts of/on clouds (whether a feedback or primary driver of climate), land use and whatnot.
5. People guess as to the levels of and impacts of aerosols on the climate.
6. When all the interactions are done, the resulting temperatures are about 3 times the initial CO2 forcing on average across the models.
7. Different GCMs have wildly different properties and assumptions about all of the above.
8. Only the hacked Russian GCM tracks near observations, all in support of the Trump presidency.
Where should I refine my simple understanding?
The big issue with GCMs is they all parameterize the air water boundary, and have code to “correct” the water feedback. That’s why they all run warm. Then, they used aerosols to tune the runs, but as you can see by their results, they are still wrong. What’s wrong with the science, is that co2 RF does not add with water vapor RF, water vapor, as air temps drop in the middle of clear sky nights, runs into dew points, and as rel humidity goes up, out going forcing drops to almost zero. But the transition happens based on air temps. Before it slows the cooling rate or 3 or more times higher. Then drops, that is how transistors are used to turn on and off to regulate a voltage or current, in this case the transmission path from the surface to space acts as a low quality transistor, but in this case the reference is air temp to dew point.
Thanks, micro.
I’ll have to ponder awhile on your response to get the interrelationships straight.
This is what the measured data during this looks like
The flat trend started over a year prior to the 1998 El Nino.
A fact which have been informed of before.
MarkW
“The flat trend started over a year prior to the 1998 El Nino.”
You can stretch it back a couple of years pre 1998, but that’s beacause of the weighting 1998 puts on that end of the trend. Just like 2016 will put a warming influence on this end of the trend for a year or more to come. You have to remove the ENSO influences at both ends to get a better picture of the underlying trend.
In that case, DWR54, one needs remove the La Nina period following the 1998 El Nino.
Additionally, Richard, removing the 1998 El Nino means you start with the depressed La Nina years. Upward trend, anyone?
As a “modeler” of 50-yrs, results of all models produce estimates, NOT “data”. Results generated by models used to interpolate between known observations have some usefulness; results produced by models which extrapolate away from known observations must be treated with utmost caution…
and suggests that the origin of the recent hiatus may never be identified.
That’s probably the best statement to date of humility in the face of multi parameter model uncertainty.
“Well models are no good when used to predict the behavior of a real system that they are not even a crude model of. If you model the earth as a flat disk with an overhead TDC sun shining 24 -7 day and night at a mean distance of 186 million ,miles; it will not come close to emulating a very roughly pseudo spherical planet, that rotates on a tilted axis about once in 24 hours.”
George, are you suggesting they should be similar situations, or not? An object at twice the distance from a quasi-point source of radiation will receive 1/4 the radiation, not 1/2. Furthermore, models simulate a spherical Earth with a 24 hr diurnal cycle and solar radiation that varies with the local sun elevation.
There are certainly many problems with climate models, but I’m unsure what you comment has to do with any of those problems.
This is all pure nonsense. There is water at ever latitude and longitude, which is void of any urban heat island effect and does not need “adjustments.” CO2 is 400ppm everywhere so all they need to do to isolate the impact of CO2 is to measure the temperatures over the oceans and use that data. The land measurements are corrupt.
Of course the global temperature is not a fingerprint of man-made CO2 warming. According to the IPCC that comes from a combination of a tropi-tropo hot spot, which is not evident in the real data, plus stratospheric cooling which demonstrably stopped in 1995: That’s the more important ‘hiatus’!
So there is no fingerprint of man-made warming despite how much actual warming there may be.from all sources.