Understanding multi-decadal global warming rate changes
INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
A long-standing mystery is that, despite the persistently increased greenhouse gases emissions throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the globally-averaged surface temperature has shown distinct multi-decadal fluctuations since 1900, including two weak global warming slowdowns in the mid-twentieth century and early twenty-first century and two strong global warming accelerations in the early and late twentieth century. The multi-decadal global warming rate changes are primarily attributed to multiple ocean surface temperature changes, according to research by Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and It is the net impact of multiple ocean surface temperature changes, rather than a single ocean basin change, that plays a main driver for the multi-decadal global warming accelerations and slowdowns. Understanding and quantifying the respective role of individual ocean basin in the multi-decadal global warming accelerations and slowdowns, under the forcing of the sustained increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, could help achieve a more accurate estimate of the future global warming rate to better meet the global warming target of the Paris Conference reached in December 2015–no more than 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
The new finding of the importance of multiple ocean surface temperature changes to the multi-decadal global warming accelerations and slowdowns is supported by a set of computer modeling experiments, in which observed sea surface temperature changes are specified in individual ocean basins, separately. The results are published in “Distinct global warming rates tied to multiple ocean surface temperature changes”, in the June 12 online issue of Nature Climate Change.

“Our results identify multiple ocean surface temperature change as a major driver for global mean surface temperature changes on multi-decadal timescales. The paramount importance of multiple ocean basins in determining the global warming rates provides a new insight to improving global and regional climate projections.” states the corresponding author Gang Huang from Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
“The results elucidate the relative contributions of individual ocean surface temperature changes to the multi-decadal global warming rate changes, and could help improve our understanding of global warming fluctuations under steadily increased emissions of atmospheric greenhouse gases.” says Jing-Jia Luo, the corresponding author of the study and climate scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia. “It reveals a fact that we need to explore climate change in a more global perspective. This could stimulate an integrated strategy and coordinated effort toward understanding the causes of regional ocean changes.”
“Our study provides a novel perspective for understanding and projecting individual ocean basin’s impacts on global warming,” explains co-author Dr. Shuai-Lei Yao from CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics. “While the tropical Pacific was generally regarded as a key contributor to the multi-decadal global warming rate changes, other ocean basins, including the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic and the Southern Ocean, also exert important effects. ”
The paper: https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3304.html
Distinct global warming rates tied to multiple ocean surface temperature changes
Shuai-Lei Yao, Jing-Jia Luo, Gang Huang & Pengfei Wang
Abstract:
The globally averaged surface temperature has shown distinct multi-decadal fluctuations since 19001, 2, 3, 4, characterized by two weak slowdowns in the mid-twentieth century and early twenty-first century and two strong accelerations in the early and late twentieth century. While the recent global warming (GW) hiatus has been particularly ascribed to the eastern Pacific cooling5,6, causes of the cooling in the mid-twentieth century and distinct intensity differences between the slowdowns and accelerations remain unclear7, 8. Here, our model experiments with multiple ocean sea surface temperature (SST) forcing reveal that, although the Pacific SSTs play essential roles in the GW rates, SST changes in other basins also exert vital influences. The mid-twentieth-century cooling results from the SST cooling in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic, which is partly offset by the Southern Ocean warming. During the recent hiatus, the tropical Pacific-induced strong cooling is largely compensated by warming effects of other oceans. In contrast, during the acceleration periods, ubiquitous SST warming across all the oceans acts jointly to exaggerate the GW. Multi-model simulations with separated radiative forcing suggest diverse causes of the SST changes in multiple oceans during the GW acceleration and slowdown periods. Our results highlight the importance of multiple oceans on the multi-decadal GW rates.
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What is with this websites owner? Can you not yet cut the propaganda? Haven’t you already made enough millions from the Heritage Institute that you can’t cut this shite that you personally don’t even believe?
For all you deniers out there the planet just recorded its highest ever temperature of 53.5C in Pakistan. India is going thru a terrible heat wave. We also just recorded 33C at 5000 meters in the Himalayas. I believe that is an altitude higher than any mtn in N. America.
[??? .mod]
Mark,
So make the case/cause/coincidence/connection between 53.5 C and 0.4% CO2
Or not.
Or visit realclimate for real data on India/Pakistan temps.
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/06/more-heatwave-lies-as-funding-dies/
Mark – you are confusing weather and climate.
Firstly 53.5c is not the highest world temperature recorded.
http://www.pmd.gov.pk/FFD/cp/pmaxtemp.asp
Secondly for 13th June the highest temperature was 47.5c.
Maybe cutting down all that tropical forest where the indian tiger used to live has something to do with this ??????
So yes it would be man made.
80.96° S, 67.87° E✕ -68.6 °C
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=101.51,-83.27,1332/loc=67.869,-80.964
Surface ocean cooling (latitude 40 to 60) continues. This is the same region of the planet that has cyclically warmed and cooled, in the past, correlating with solar cycle changes.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.6.12.2017.gif
The current cooling correlates with the sudden disappearance of solar coronal holes (Ap, month average, has dropped from 11.7 to 5). The solar wind bursts create a space charge differential in the ionosphere which in turn causes an electric current to flow from high latitude regions (40 to 60 degrees latitude) to the equatorial region. The electric current flow is believed to change cloud properties and cloud lifetimes which in turn causes warming or cooling both locations.
See section 5a) Modulation of the global electrical circuit in this review paper, by solar wind bursts and the process electroscavenging.
http://gacc.nifc.gov/sacc/predictive/SOLAR_WEATHER-CLIMATE_STUDIES/GEC-Solar%20Effects%20on%20Global%20Electric%20Circuit%20on%20clouds%20and%20climate%20Tinsley%202007.pdf
Surface ocean cooling (latitude 40 to 60) continues. This is the same region of the planet that has cyclically warmed and cooled, in the past, correlating with solar cycle changes.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.6.12.2017.gif
Maybe they’re looking a little too hard for cause-and-effect relationships. Some things are just random natural variability.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2985439
“Our results identify multiple ocean surface temperature change as a major driver for global mean surface temperature changes on multi-decadal timescales.”
One graph showing the AMO already finds ocean surface temperature change as a major driver for global surface temperature changes on multi-decadal timescales. This one is real not assumptions from a unverified model.
http://s772.photobucket.com/user/SciMattG/media/RSS%20Global_v_RemovedAMO2_zpsssrgab0r.png
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/RSS%20Global_v_RemovedAMO2_zpsssrgab0r.png
Ahhh! Ain’t that cute!!!!!! Too bad Human Caused Globall Warmining is proved, yet again, still, to be a blatant lie. Humans are not causing the “climate” to “change” and can not stop the “climate” from “changing”. Period. Full Stop. And yet they keep spewing the lies of their fake religion. Just like the [pruned]. Funny how that works.
10 years ago Compo et al found the oceans accounted for most of the warming in the models. So 10 years ago AGW hinged on ocean heating from CO2.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf
Abstract
Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.
Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. The oceanic influence has occurred through hydrodynamic-radiative teleconnections, primarily by moistening and warming the air over land and increasing the downward longwave radiation at the surface. The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences.
In the CBC agitprop file, Nicole Mortillaro tells us of potential water shortage in Iqaluit…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/iqaluit-will-run-out-of-water-1.4156559
The lead is dire:
“Iqaluit may face a water shortage within five years, owing to shifting seasons, faster warming in the Arctic than anywhere on Earth and a growing population.”
But the reality is:
“… the average consumption of water in Iqaluit was roughly 350 litres per person per day. That’s much higher than the average Canadian consumption of approximately 250 litres. And in Rankin Inlet the number is astonishingly high: 950 litres per day.
It’s not that people in Iqaluit or Rankin Inlet are water wasters: before the water even makes it into a residence, much of it has leaked or bled out. The problem is aging pipes that crack and leak in the harsh climate.”
So cracked pipes do not make a story but if you add “climate change”, then you get a peer reviewed paper and a sure CBC promote!
We badly need a comprehensive paper that –
1. Shows the observed changes in Surface Sea Temperature SST and at some deeper levels –
2. for scales of water from tiny lakes, to single ocean observation stations to basins to whole oceans, to global –
3. with mechanisms to show which processes can heat and cool the water at the rates and scales detailed in 1. and 2. above, for periods of global warming as well as relative global cooling –
4. leading to rejection of some proposed heat control processes and hopefully, the retention of one process that applies at all rates and scales –
5. or, lacking a single process at 4. , a simple combination of processes able to account for all change.
…………………………
If there has already been a publication that does this, a reference would be nice.
…………………………
There has been too much speculation to date. People should not claim for example, that downwelling IR radiation is a source of ocean heating if it is a physical impossibility to create the scale and rate of observed change. Try to replace speculation with good data and credible deduction.
………………………..
Many papers to date have been too fragmented, in that they address non-representative volumes of water, or study areas, with limited consideration of all possible processes.
……………………….
It is a no-brainer that oceans are involved in climate change. The question is how much, all of it, some of it, insignificant amounts?
Geoff.
Having watched a BBC programme on the formation of planets and their evolution it is SO clear the CO2 as the cause of anything is plain wrong. Let me explain why. Not enough energy in the air to change planetary ocean systems by 12 degrees K or so. Clearly air temperature average is driven largely by ocean temperature, which is driven by larger forces than tiny greenhouse effects , times some dreamed up multiplier. MOST IMPORTANT, the actual planet has NEVER worked like that since there were PLANTS.
We already understand the atmosphere is mostly a consequence of the must larger effects that control it. The Sun and the Ocean. And Ocean variability primarily controls long term atmospheric temperature variation, humidity and the CO2 content of the atmosphere, given the Sun’s relative consistency, and the fact there is a balance between heat in and heat out. There is another heat source, however.
But first let’s nail CO2 and AGW as a dominat cause of climate change. We KNOW the majority effect on CO2 is, of course, plants. Plants provided the major reduction in CO2 from 95% of the atmosphere to trace levels at <0.1%, in the initial "decarbonistion" of the planet's atmosphere, from a CO2 rich volcanic atmosphere to an oxygen and nitrogen rich atmosphere. The plants really went for it. Only enough trace levels of CO2 left to maintain plant (and human) life when plants finally ceased to grow, so first responding actively and massively to the high levels of CO2, and then to their rapidly declining levels. That's a serious long term control mechanism.
Interestingly, Venus never got the plants, maybe because water never condensed to support plants, so it's stuck at 95% CO2 + water vapour plus some serious volcanoes, and no plates (tectonic).
*** It seems very obvious the change to slightly higher trace levels of CO2 from industrialisation will almost certainly be absorbed by increased vegetation, as it always has been, the natural regulator.
Who in climate science explains why this established mechanism would suddenly stop working? It's Lovelock's organic and physical interaction to produce Gaia. Worked for Billions of years. But not any more, per Mann et al. The sky is falling! Nonsense promoted only for profit and fame. Nothing wrong with conservation and being nice to our environment. Denying the real, and in fact very obvious science facts for your own profit and ego is despicable.
So where are the serious smoking guns that CAN drive us from ice ages to short interglacials, still warm enough in the absolute cold of space to support life??
As suggested by others here, I did some numbers and geology. There are a lot more potential drivers under the oceans where the serious heat is, generated by the internal radioactivity and graviational energy of the Sun's variable effect on the Earth's mobile 7Km thick tectonic basalt crust, and the radioactive heat generation of the core itself. 30% gravitational change occurs pa during a Milankovitch eccentricity extreme. The Sun exerts a gravitational force 200 times the Moon on the Earth………
See Jupiter's gravtational effeect on Io for what gravity can do to what would otherwise be a very cold rock.
And, what keeps the planet at stable ice age temperature most of the time, and kicks off the occasional 12 degree rise into a short interglacial, on a consistent 100K year periodicity between pretty repeatable limits? Hot stuff in cold space, perhaps?
Trace Level CO2 is, SeElf Evidently, a Trendy Fake Science Distraction From the Dominant Causes of climate change: I suggest it is clear the plants will eat all the CO2 leaving enough for survival, and adjust to the amount, as they always have. CO2 is simply not able to create the extremes and poiitive feedback hypothesised. The atmosphere is controlled by the oceans and the rocks long term, and shorter term by the Sun, not contolling.
Finally what climate scientists should do is look where the serious potential sources of change are. Not get fixated on what cannot and clearly never has caused global warmin.
what climate scientists should focus on is the Oceans, and what happens under them to change their temperatures. THat requires huge amounts of heat to change the equilibrium condition 12 degrees or so across the planet, but still keep it warm enough to avoid becoming Hoth during ice ages. Where does this heat come from, at the Milankovitch cycle's period, that correlates with the effects and can also produce substantial internal energy changes in the planet's structure, as well as annual solar radiance extremes, but the same net radiant enrgy. It's underneath you! (And the Plant's ate all the CO2).
Just saying.
As the famous last line of the Prisoner should have been "I'm over here!". This is all about real physics and enrgy. Climate scientists are as busy proving what is in reality daft and too weak to account for the physical effects of climate change as renewablists are in promoting what is too weak and intermittent to deliver anything they claim for their so called solutions, in reality to non existent problems.
Real science is in trouble because it got involved with, and allowed itself to be exploited by, extremists, politics and big money. Phlogiston and the fake Science Inquisition rules. The Sun orbits the Earth again. Until climate scientists raise thei gaze and their game, and start looking in more technically credible places for answers, they will never make their models work, because they simply can't. As witt renewables promoted in ther name of of CO2 related AGW, there just isn't enough energy. Get over it. Save us all a fortune and jeopardising a properous future for all the people of our plante with your clearly flawed beliefs. CPhys, CEng, MBA
E&OE Typos excepted. Sensible comment to improve and develop this approach very welcome. Here are some numbers to check relative heat contents and enrgy transfer from magma release for yourself. Peer review on the facts and laws of physics welcome. No unprovabe fake science beliefs please.
No idea how to paste a table into this user hostile UI so hope this good enough format.
WORK IN PROGRESS: GLOBAL HEAT ENERGY NUMBERS
ITEM : Total Mass Kg : S.Heat KJ/Kg Deg K : Planetary Heat Capacity
J/Deg K
Water 1.4×10^21 4.18 5.85×19^24
"Rock" 5.9×10^24 0.84 4.72×10^27
Air 5.1×10^18 1.01 5.65×10^21
Quantity of Magma at 1,000 Degree Delta to deliver 1 degree Ocean heating (i)
M Kg = 5.8×10^24/1,000 Deg x 1×10^3 J/DegKg(SH)
M= 5.8 x 10^18 Kg of Magma per degree K
Quantity to raise Oceans 12 Degrees K 5.8 x 12 x 10^18 = 70 x 10^18 Kg, 70 x 10^15 Tonnes
(i) This assumes Basalt has a SH of 1KJ/KG, this can vary quite a lot with temperature as the rock structure changes. But I needed a working number. It doesn't change the big picture.
A quick check says Mount Fuji contains 3.8×10^11 tonnes, mainly basalt. It is only one ice age old, so has risen in that time. Similar things have happened at sea. But my hypothesis needs a LOT of Mount Fujis, 2 x10^4 in a few hundred years, plus evidence of Milankovitch related cyclic variation in Volcanic activity. Japans would have that on land, with 10% of the worlds volcanoes, those on land I assume.
Free to share but © Brian RL Catt June 2017 for publishing or academic record discovery purposes. Please quote this line with any repost.
They don’t have enough sensors to measure the heat content of the oceans to that degree of accuracy.
What this really boils down to is clouds, and there is no model that can deal with them.
It is reassuring that they have confirmed what every meteorology textbook since the beginning of the last century has taught: the surface warms the air.

SST (red) leads, AT (green) follows.
Latent and sensible heat fluxes, ocean/atmosphere, from Singh et al (2005). Sensible heat is the kind thermometers measure. Areas of negative flux (where the atmosphere is warmer than the ocean) are very rare.