From the universities of Kyoto & San Diego comes this old tired catchphrase, along with a polar bear picture to go with the press release.
Is a warmer Arctic a canary of global warming?
CREDIT Kyoto University
Since the 1970s the northern polar region has warmed faster than global averages by a factor or two or more, in a process of ‘Arctic amplification’ which is linked to a drastic reduction in sea ice.
But then how to explain a similar rapid warming that occurred during the early 20th century, when the effects of greenhouse gases were considerably weaker than today? And what can we prove about the period, given the scarcity of usable data and observations prior to the 1950s?
Now scientists from Kyoto University and UC San Diego have discovered that this phenomenon occurred when the warming phase — ‘interdecadal variability mode’ — of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans coincided. The team’s findings appeared recently in the journal PNAS.
“We found that early 20th century sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific and North Atlantic had warmed much more than previously thought,” explains lead author Hiroki Tokinaga of Kyoto.
“Using observations and model simulations, we’ve demonstrated that rising Pacific-Atlantic temperatures were the major driver of rapid Arctic warming in the early 20th century.”
Previous explanations for early Arctic warming have including decreased volcanic aerosols and increased solar radiation, but none of these have been able to simulate observed conditions from the period.
Tokinaga’s team found that when the interdecadal rise in sea surface temperatures was included in simulation calculations, the results properly reflected early Arctic conditions.
“Coupled ocean-atmosphere simulations also support the intensification of Arctic warming,” continues Shang-Ping Xie of UCSD, “which was caused by a concurrent, cold-to-warm phase shift of Pacific and Atlantic interdecadal modes.”
The researchers explain that these new findings can help constrain model climate projections over the Arctic region.
“It is likely that temperatures in the Arctic will continue to rise due to anthropogenic global warming,” concludes Tokinaga. “Our study does not deny this. We are rather suggesting that Arctic warming could accelerate or decelerate due to internal variability of the Pacific and the Atlantic.”
“It is a challenge to accurately predict when the next big swing of multidecadal variability will occur. Careful monitoring is essential, given the enormous impact on the Arctic climate.”
###
The paper “Early 20th-century Arctic warming intensified by Pacific and Atlantic multidecadal variability” appeared 30 May 2017 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, with doi: 10.1073/pnas.1615880114
Pacific North American circulation pattern links external forcing and North American hydroclimatic change over the past millennium
Significance
We have developed a new reconstruction of changes in the wintertime atmospheric circulation over North America based on data distributed across the region. The record spans almost 1,000 years and shows how variation in ocean temperatures, solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gases has affected circulation over this period. We show that the circulation pattern is strongly correlated with fluctuating drought conditions in the western United States. Climate models do a poor job of simulating the reconstructed record of circulation change, and thus may have difficulty predicting future patterns of drought influenced by changing winter storm tracks across this region.
Abstract
Land and sea surface temperatures, precipitation, and storm tracks in North America and the North Pacific are controlled to a large degree by atmospheric variability associated with the Pacific North American (PNA) pattern. The modern instrumental record indicates a trend toward a positive PNA phase in recent decades, which has led to accelerated warming and snowpack decline in northwestern North America. The brevity of the instrumental record, however, limits our understanding of long-term PNA variability and its directional or cyclic patterns. Here we develop a 937-y-long reconstruction of the winter PNA based on a network of annually resolved tree-ring proxy records across North America. The reconstruction is consistent with previous regional records in suggesting that the recent persistent positive PNA pattern is unprecedented over the past millennium, but documents patterns of decadal-scale variability that contrast with previous reconstructions. Our reconstruction shows that PNA has been strongly and consistently correlated with sea surface temperature variation, solar irradiance, and volcanic forcing over the period of record, and played a significant role in translating these forcings into decadal-to-multidecadal hydroclimate variability over North America. Climate model ensembles show limited power to predict multidecadal variation in PNA over the period of our record, raising questions about their potential to project future hydroclimatic change modulated by this circulation pattern.
The paper is paywalled, so I can’t comment on the merits of it, but a couple of things come to mind from what is presented so far in the press release and abstract.
- Do you really need to use a polar bear photo? Won’t the science stand on it’s own merit without the need for something that tugs at peoples heartstrings?
- By the same token, why push the overused “canary in the coal mine” meme? Same argument.
- If the early 20th century Arctic warming was caused by ” this phenomenon occurred when the warming phase — ‘interdecadal variability mode’ — of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans coincided” but in the present you claim “It is likely that temperatures in the Arctic will continue to rise due to anthropogenic global warming,” concludes Tokinaga. “Our study does not deny this. We are rather suggesting that Arctic warming could accelerate or decelerate due to internal variability of the Pacific and the Atlantic.”, is this just throwing a bone to the financing gods? Why couldn’t “‘interdecadal variability mode’ — of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans” be the cause now?
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Lost me at model
Me too +100.
The modern version of soothsaying.
But it was settled science 10 years ago.
“It is a challenge to accurately predict when the next big swing of multidecadal variability will occur. Careful monitoring is essential, given the enormous impact on the Arctic climate.””
“It is a huge investment to accurately predict when the next big swing of multidecadal variability will occur. Careful monitoring is essential by a large well paid (by the tax payer) staff, given the enormous impact on the Arctic climate.”
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
But, did they just tweak their models to prove the null hypothesis?…yet still proclaim CO2 to be evil
Enough with the genuflecting!
“Climate model ensembles show limited power to predict multidecadal variation in PNA over the period of our record, raising questions about their potential to project future hydroclimatic change modulated by this circulation pattern.”
How many times, and in how many ways, must everyone from Dr. Curry on down state the obvious: IPCC climate models are bunk.
“It is likely that temperatures in the Arctic will continue to rise due to anthropogenic global warming,” concludes Tokinaga. “Our study does not deny this. We are rather suggesting that Arctic warming could accelerate or decelerate due to internal variability of the Pacific and the Atlantic.”
“Our study does not deny this.” is the ultimate in weasel wording. How about: “Arctic warming could accelerate or decelerate due to internal variability of the Pacific and the Atlantic.” Acceleration is a lot different than deceleration, at least in the normal, non-climate science world.
If we could take the authors’ at their word, anything could happen. Warm? Cold? No change?
Dave:
“Warm? Cold? No change?”
Warm? Cold? No change? No idea!
Does that help you see where UCSD’s understanding of the science is?
Auto
Not all models are bad. Rejecting all models just because the GDMs are abused is as anti-scientific as anything the warmunists are doing.
Are they using tree rings to estimate precipitation or temperature? Or both? The abstract notes their reconstruction disagrees with other estimates of paleoclimate. Which? Mann’s?
Their main observational input is HADISST2, a larger collection of sea surface temperatures than before. They then match that up with the phases of the PDO and AMO. Then run quite a few models (which had been unsuccessful before due perhaps to fewer observations) and get better agreement with obs.
They continue to ignore actual air temperature observations from weather stations around the Arctic circle. A recent study of those records concluded:
“The Arctic has warmed at the same rate as Europe over the past two centuries. Heretofore, it has been supposed that any global warming would be amplified in the Arctic. This may still be true if urban heat island effects are responsible for part of the observed temperature increase at European stations. However, European and Arctic temperatures have remained closely synchronized for over 200 years during the rapid growth of urban centres.”
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/arctic-warming-unalarming/
Thanks Ron, nice article
And wither the Antarctic? Polar amplification? Colder? Warmer? More land ice? More sea ice? More BS?
The dogma is running off the rails. The more the in-crowd try to explain away the contradictions, the more they just sound like the silly prevaricators they are.
An interesting paper, and well worth a read.
It is probably worth pointing out that it shows that when there were more stations, ie., the period 1930 to 1985, there was if anything cooling, and when the stations dropped out and became less, there was slight warming ie., during the period 1985 to 2010.
This begs the question whether the slight warming post 1985 is a factor of station drop out, rather than due to actual and real change.
See generally (red line 5 year smoothing, blue line, the number of stations returning observational data).
Richard, good point. McKitrick some years ago on a global basis.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/nunavut-is-melting-or-not/
These people need to read WUWT more often……
Maybe they have been ….
..
They did not predict either event…..and go on to predict another
….and go on further to reference lack of snowpack in the NW right after a record snowpack
>>
. . . lack of snowpack in the NW right after a record snowpack
<<
Using warmists’ logic, more or less snow means global warming (Or is that climate change? Disruption? Something-or-other?).
Jim
Hey Jim!…most likely it was Murphy
The day they sent the paper in…it started snowing 🙂
Is this a XIe and Kosaka paper? If so, they also wrote the highly important 2013 paper:
“Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v501/n7467/full/nature12534.html
They seem to be putting out real science. Of course they don’t rule out CO2 effects, but if this paper is as good as the 2013 paper, it will be one we want to pay attention to.
Lead author is Hiroki Tokinaga of Kyoto (!).
“Early 20th-century Arctic warming intensified by Pacific and Atlantic multidecadal variability”, PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1615880114
Xie, S-P is second author.
In a sense they do rule out CO2 effects. The 37-year-long UAH temperature series (from satellites) shows no warming in the Antarctic, almost no warming in the souther extra-tropics, slight warming in the tropics, slightly more warming in the norther extra-troipcs and by far the most warming in the Arctic. If most of the warming in the north is due to ocean oscillations (as I have long held), then the CO2 warming that is left over is triflingly small. Climate sensitivity would be somewhere between essentially zero and one degree C.
If Arctic warming is caused by CO2 having more effect there due to very low levels of water vapor (because it’s very cold) then why no Antarctic warming?
Good question. The polar deserts are the only regions in which CO2 and H2O are at similar low levels.
Bingo, Thomas! Let the CO2 crowd explain that.
Oh, wait a minute! Skeptics must posit and prove scientific alternative theories in scholastic journals, not just ask questions about alarmists’ pseudo-scientific inconsistencies.
It’s good to know their office building will not be shot at and they won’t be fired as heretics. This must have been the reality during the Dark Ages. So it’s a reenactment of historical social norms.
It was a Thursday. 1950. Neither winter nor summer, a day much like any other. Gia, Mother Nature was there. Anthro, owner of the magic molecule was there. “Anthro, so glad you could make it. For the last 10,801 years I have been fighting the ice and I am tired.” “Gia, yes dear Earth mother. I see the ice getting stronger. I can help. I have this nature trick. I can take it from here. Henceforth all warming will be man’s and not yours.”
“It is likely that temperatures in the Arctic will continue to rise due to anthropogenic global warming,” concludes Tokinaga.
Conclusion based on………what?
I wrote a paper blaming Global Warming for a perceived problem, please send me more money so I can write another
+ 1
Based on the desire to get published.
Gibberish. Rubbish.
At least they seem to agree with me that there is no global warming…
Arctic warming is a canard in the gold mine.
Well played.
Air temps are a function of ocean temps. Who would’a thought??
So looking at the Sun and Ocean Cycles vs Temps graph this morning, which peaked 10 yrs or so ago and has a +-60 year period, looks like the PDO+AMO and lower Sun activity is pointing us toward a lot of Arctic ice sometime in the next 20-30 years. Hope I’m around to enjoy it.
I’m delighted that the polsr bear shown is QUITE FAT. We are making progress
I’m too, it looks great, the last time when it appeared in the press it looked terrible
http://www.takepart.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/polar-bear-MAIN2.jpg
sarc/
That is one emaciated bear!
I don’t give a shit about your politics, but give the bear a seal.
That just reminded me of the joke about Kermit applying for a loan using a ceramic elephant as collateral. When the loan officer, Mr. Paddiwack went to get approval, his superior said: “It’s a knick knack, Paddiwack, give the frog a loan.”
It has just come out of the water.
Think how skinny a wet cat looks.
http://growld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/wet-cat-13.jpg
“Our study does not deny this. We are rather suggesting that Arctic warming could accelerate or decelerate due to internal variability of the Pacific and the Atlantic.”
Translation: Please allow us to publish our paper. See? We are playing by your rules.
“If the early 20th century Arctic warming was caused by ”
Except the argument is contribution… not the singular and only cause. About 1/3 of early warming is down to GHGs.
SM, your problem is that your other 2/3 did not magically disappear in 1975 as the IPCC attribution asserts.
Mosher: Such confidence! But based on which facts?
Mr. Mosher, where in your Weed Patch Wanderings was it revealed to you that 1/3 of early 20th Century warming was caused by GHGs? Models? Divination?
We are also told that over 100% of post-1950 warming was human-caused. Models again?
“About 1/3 of early warming is down to GHGs.”
Absolute unprovable twaddle, Mosh
That’s a used car with no darn engine or wheels.!
But during the early part of the 20th century, there were extremely modest increases in the level of CO2..
Your assertion begs the question, why was there cooling post 1940 just when CO2 starting to rise significantly?
At this stage, if CO2 has any significant driving effect on temperatures, how come was there so much cooling during the period 1940 to mid 1970s (The Northern hemisphere cooled some 0.5 degC during this period)?
I guess I’ll add my two cents worth.
>>
About 1/3 of early warming is down to GHGs.
<<
Based on what? Based on models that have no demonstrated skill? There is no GHG signature in the atmosphere. The atmosphere has to warm slightly faster than the surface to indicate a GHG signature. This adjusting the surface temperatures to show warming without adjusting the atmospheric temperatures shows basic ignorance of the physics. (Notice I didn’t say the atmosphere had to be warmer than the surface.)
Jim
Abstract concludes with:
But in presser the author says this:
They showed the climate models can’t project internal variability, so how are they going to be constrained?
Again, the chaotic, non-linear beast raises its head and defeats human attempts to project it’s behavior into the future.
That presser would have been more honest to say, “these new findings add further evidence that the model projections to future Arctic climate are hopelessly flawed.”
Maybe they hope that the new regime will read between the lines and keep funding their research, if the US does grants for Kyoto.
The younger researchers can also claim in future to have been brave pioneers, when Arctic sea ice rebounds despite continued accumulation of plant food in the air.
It looks as if early next month Arctic sea ice will be in the normal range, despite starting out from a low winter maximum, due to slower than usual melting, thanks to colder than average SSTs in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas, from heat loss to space from open water during the winter.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
It’s about time someone published something this obvious. Those of us pushing the ocean cycles as the main driver of climate will now have a paper to reference.
But what is really needed is to understand the drivers of these cycles. It is completely possible they are also the drivers of the various warm periods and cool periods over the past 4,000 years.
Yep. It cements the early 20th century arctic warming as fact.
We very often see comments with a logbook entry or newspaper clipping showing much reduced arctic ice in the early 20th century. While I was looking for one of those, I found this. It’s a survey of old Russian papers showing reduced ice between 1920 and 1940.
Every such bit of evidence chips away at the CO2 narrative. It’s a good thing.
That narrows it down then! Nobel prizes all round, guys…..
Given that the rise in the early 20th century was natural, reset the 1.5 degree to that temp and take our time. NOT A CATASTROPHE!
This amounts to academic positioning to be the cited paper when the AMO declines further and the hunt for excuses heats up. It is imperative for the climate cabal to have a backup excuse plan to explain the continued dangerous threat of global warming when it becomes more obvious in the main metrics that there isn’t any. Call it the dark energy of global warming–You can’t see it or measure it, but it’s there all right and you better think it’s there or be sent to the ideological wilderness.
Unfortunately the only way to get published these days is to repeat the company line of “CO2 caused it”. But at least part of the paper is real science.
I don’t know about the paper being “real science.” Just one of its statements would engender caution: “We are rather suggesting that Arctic warming could accelerate or decelerate …”
Bet the farm on global warming?
I am also heartily sick of the ” canary in the coal mine” meme.
As an Australian, and with the recent South Australian blackouts in mind, I much prefer the expression ” canary in the wind turbine blades”.
I like it. Here in Wyoming, the coal mines were closing down, but the billionaire from Colorado is installing a thousand eagle-killing energy from weather turbines to make up for it. The energy goes to California and the income to Colorado (except a paltry increase in property tax revenue, maybe), so I’m not sure how that works out. Anyway, at the rate we are going, it will be the “canary in the wind turbines blades” soon.
“Arctic warming could accelerate or decelerate due to internal variability of the Pacific and the Atlantic.”
….And whatever it does we’ve got it nailed. If observations don’t support it, no problem, the science has a lot experience fixing ornery data. For example, we used to argue that reports on reduced sea ice in the 20s was wrong and our adjusted temps, BEST and Hadcrut showed much more cooling than originally thought after their adjustments. We are simply adjusting it back to what is was before, because we found this warmy PDO ADO thingy.By the way, now we have cold Pacific AND Atlantic right now, so this warming is different. Its logic Jim, just not as we know it…
Capricious Climate Change is a hallmark of the Anthrofauxscene.
And the Antarctic? Oops, forgot about that pole and fact it isn’t behaving as the ALARMISTs would hope.
“We are not CAGW deniers” is such an obligatory catch-phrase you’d think by now they could just include an acronym at the start of each paper – WANCAGWD – whenever there might be even the slightest chance that the truth would not support the catechism of global warming and thus be denounced as heresy…
It got past the Sierra Club censors with an “R” rating for restricted audiences only because of words like multidecadal variability and warming in the early 20th century.
Notickszone recently drew attention to 15 recent papers attributing some of the arctic climatic changes to natural effects such as the influence of PDO and solar forcing
http://notrickszone.com/2017/05/15/15-new-papers-scientists-abandoning-claims-of-dominant-man-made-influence-on-arctic-climate/
The papers come from reasonably respected sources such as “Nature Climate Change” and the European Geosciences Union and lend some support to the comments above .
Trump appears on the scene and illegal immigration from Mexico drops 70% before inauguration and besieged non-team climate scientists are coming out of bunkers and are trashing the climastrophists creed. There’s a president that should but won’t receive the Nobel Prize.
Peace is in the eye of the (socialist) beholder.