By Javier
A most remarkable climate phenomenon is taking place under our very noses without anybody paying attention to it.
As nearly everybody knows, the planet is warming. Since its short-term rate of temperature change hasn’t changed much, the warming is essentially accomplished because the planet spends less time cooling than warming. Therefore, periods of cooling have become shorter and result in less cooling.
In the figure below, we can see the top 10 biggest periods of cooling in terms of temperature decrease since 1950. The data used is a 13-month centered average of the monthly HadCRUT 4.6 global dataset found here:
The date given is that of the month of maximum temperature when the cooling started, and the length in months is to the month of minimum temperature when the cooling ended.
Notice how the top four took place before 1975, during the ENSO period dominated by La Niña conditions.
The data for the cooling period that started in 02/2016 (red in the figure) is provisional, as the cooling has not ended as of June 2018. If it continues for a few more months, it could easily make it to the top three.
Figure 1
The most remarkable thing is that every single top cooling period in the list has a reasonable explanation except the current one. Two of them are associated with the major volcanic eruptions of El Chichon and Pinatubo, and seven of them are associated with major La Niña events when the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) reached a standard deviation of -1 (see bottom panel in the figure).
Only the current cooling period remains there unexplained, without a big volcanic eruption and without a major La Niña event.
Climate scientists should be looking for a reason for this most interesting cooling instead of ignoring it.
Why is the planet cooling now?
Everybody can have their own favorite explanation. Personally, I see no other reasonable cause for the cooling but low solar activity.
How about a slight change in albedo? More clouds, more greenery, more ice and snow = less ISR and kewling. Even figure 10 in this 2011 Trenberth paper saw cooling. Trenberth et al 2011jcli24
Or a slight increase in conductivity, U in Q = U A dT. U increases, dT (surf – ToA) decreases = kewler.
I suspect the initial phase of cooling is most likely due to the end of the El Nino and the end of warm water upwelling in the central Pacific. However, the cooling since then and especially since around March 2018 is another matter entirely. We’ve seen a major cooling of the N. Atlantic and a change in the rate of Arctic sea ice melt. Both of these would point to the AMO as the driver of the cooling since March.
The big question is then will this effect continue and what has been driving this drop in the AMO index. I think a lot of people focus too much on ENSO.
Even though the end of 2017 saw a weak La Nina, the AMO index set record highs during a few months. This prevented the La Nina from having much of a cooling effect. Add to that the 2016-17 La Nina probably wan’t even a real La Nina (Nino 1-2 was very warm) and one could argue there’s been low ENSO cooling influence since the 2015-16 Super El Nino. Yet, there has been near record cooling.
My own view is all this is driven by ocean current changes. What is the cause of those changes appears to be the big question.
This article is so dumb, it is embarrassing
for skeptics, and should not have been allowed
here !
The “cooling” from volcanoes is temporary,
as is the “cooling” after an el nino temperature peak,
such as the one in late 2015 / 2016.
Our planet has warmed slightly since 1850.
So what?
Totally harmless.
Eventually that trend will end
and a cooling period will begin,
according to ice core studies.
If the author, afraid to use his real name,
thinks the 1850 Modern Warming has
ended, he is just wild guessing.
If the author thinks there is a cooling
trend merely because today is cooler than the
2015 / 2016 el nino heat peak, then he is
wasting our time with meaningless
data mining.
Standards here should be raised so
data mining is rejected, as
junk science.
I don’t think you read the article closely. The point is NOT that it has cooled. The point is the cooling has been substantial, and I might add, has continued into the NH summer of 2018 when the only influence (according to CliSci) should be a slight ENSO warming.
If CO2 is the dominant influence on the global temperature then it raises a big question. Why this amount of cooling?
“Notice how the top four took place before 1975, during the ENSO period dominated by La Niña conditions.”
I think that I need my vision checked. In the diagram, I only see three before 1975.
1953, 1961, 1969, 1973. That makes the 4 top cooling periods since 1950 taking place before 1975.
I’m not seeing how “top four” is being determined. By length of time, only 1961, 1973, and 1953 are before 1975 in the four furthest to the right. In the graph on the bottom, I am unsure why 1961 is labeled instead of 1960 or 1959, as 1953 is.
By the amount of cooling, obviously.
The labeling in the figure refers to the month and/or year when the cooling started (and thus coincides with the peak in temperature). That date does not always coincide with a peak in MEI (Multivariate El Niño Index) that does not measure global temperature but a set of Pacific Ocean parameters related to ENSO. Sorry if that was not obvious. I was assuming quite a bit of knowledge about ENSO that not everybody might have.
After the solar activity, the parameter with the highest influence in earth temperature is the albedo. But I´m not sure if it is changing.
What is this, a convention of climate phrenologists? Those records only show temperature fluctuated for about 20 years then jumped up about .4 degrees C and fluctuated there for 20 more years. The only thing to find out is why the temperature fluctuations jumped up .4 C around the turn of the century.
dumb question time.
The oceans are a great heaving mass of water.
Water is supposed to be densest at 4C so it sinks but why does it sink ?
The molecules aren’t any different, they are a bit closer together so why does gravity affect the molecules in the heaving mass differently because some are closer together ?
zemlik
I’d suggest that you read up on Archimedes’ Principle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_principle
It is the difference in density that comes from a difference in temperature that causes less-dense fluid to be displaced and pushed up by more-dense fluid.
At a molecular level, hotter molecules are moving faster, colder molecules are moving slower. There will be fewer molecules in a given volume when they are warmer and faster moving. This translates to lower density.
What complicates matters is that it is not temperature alone that can affect density. Salty water is heavier than fresh water at the same temperature, so that it is possible for cool fresh water to be less dense than warm salty water, if the salty water is concentrated sufficiently. This is why warm, concentrated salt water (due to heavy evaporation) will sink into cooler less salty water, or cold fresh water can float on top of warmer salt water.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
We agree it’s cooled since the El Nino. We agree that usually a La Nina follows an El Nino. And we agree, that usually cools the global atmosphere. We lacked getting much of a La Nina but got the cooling.
So ENSO is misfiring. So something else has to cool to give us a lower GMST. It might be the North Atlantic, I don’t know.
If ENSO is misfiring, look for system change. When landing an airplane and a gust trips on the stall warning on for half a second, look for a system change.
Might be the North Atlantic? Look again
for the sake of sanity, this whole argument from both sides has passed tedious and is now the classic unstoppable force meeting the immovable object.
We’re dealing with:
1. very low resolution historical data,
2. based upon proxy formulation that has plenty of criticisms, then
3. coupled with very suspect and sparse land based thermo data tracking from roughly 1850’s?,
4. which have seen plenty of adjustments to the raw data,
5. massive infilling across thousands of kilometers
6. poor site placement,
7. encroaching of UHI,
8. homogenization
9. false proxy data, see Mike’s nature trick
10. pretending we know the values to 1/10th of a degree when the error margin is larger, and that could honestly be compared to the early 1900’s… garbage logic.
At this point anyone who has formed an opinion and dare defend it against the other, will have a much easier time passing through the eye of a needle than legitimately making claim to the real “Earth” temperature.
It’s warmer now than it was in the depths of the LIA. Fact.
CO2 concentrations hadn’t spiked (I used that term loosely all things considered) significantly until 1950s, which saw a cooling until the 70s ish…
now it seems to have warmed, paused, and who knows now (again, all based on imperfect data not fit for genuine application of the scientific method)
So, the official narrative was:
global cooling/Ice age imminent!
wait…
global warming/ runaway GHG ahhhh catastrophe
wait…
Global climate change because things seemed to not have been warming as we thought…
wait..
EXTREME WEATHER!!!!
oh, less severe and consistent tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts, floods worldwide?…
Climate….weirding??
So in reality, for any non-scientific observer, one needs only to look at the most basic realities underlying this concept that man can understand the climate, combine that with the ever changing narrative by the soothsayers, and reach the logical conclusion…
We’re doing all right and there ain’t nothing to worry about anytime soon. We are in one of the most consistent and stable times in human history inhabiting the Earth and we should be daggone thankful!
The temperature does not drop sharply despite the weak solar cycle, because the Earth’s magnetic field is quite strong.
@honest liberty : WHAT YOU SAID — YES
August 15, 2018 7:28 am
JontheTechnologist
@RichDavis
“In other words, nobody has accurately identified the primary cause for the atmosphere’s oscillating temperature?”
PRECISELY; some fools want us to beleave that the small amount of the trace gas CO2 is responsible for damn near everything and there is no-one with anything even close to the answer.
THE ANSWER IS “42”
Here’s some advice for when you’re singing: when trying to reach a high note, imagine that you’re singing a low note. And vice versa – to reach the deep lows, imagine it’s a high. Try it – it works (my cousain a professional singer taught me that).
A lot of the above discussion on ENSO makes the simplistic and wrong asssumption that El Niño brings warming and La Niña cooling of the climate. But the reality is the exact opposite. Has everyone forgotten what Bob Tisdale taught us all so patiently and so often?? El Niño while it’s happening is a warmth phenomenon but its effect on climate is to vent heat and cool the ocean thus the climate. And while La Niña is in progress, Pacific equatorial SSTs are low, but a true La Niña energetically pumps the heat from the preceding El Niño toward the poles, jacking up global temperatures. So the warm El Niño cools the ocean and the cool La Niña warms it.
Please note, however, that the above is true only when the El Niño and La Niña are of the classic type, meaning that the Bjerknes feedback is fully engaged. There are two simple and clear signs of this. The trade winds stop or reverse, and Peruvian upwelling stops. Sometimes a thing happens that looks like an El Niño with mid Pacific equatorial warming but without these two critical ingredients – no stoppage of either trades or Peruvian upwelling. 2016 is a classic example of this. This event is NOT an El Niño of the classic type -there is no engagement of the Bjerknes feedback. Bob Tisdale calls these events El Niño “Modoki” from a Japanese word meaning “different yet the same” (fuelling my conspiracy theory that Bob Tisdale is actually a Japanese oceanographer in disguise with a good-ole boy USA name. Ever seen a climate publication by “Tisdale”? Nor have I.) Thus following “Tisdale”-san I will use the term classic and Modoki El Niños as described above, to refer to ENSO events with and without the engagement of the Bjerknes feedback.
The point is that only the classic El Niño and following La Niña events have a warming effect on climate. Only the ENSO cycle energised by the Bjerknes feedback has the true ENSO effect of pumping a large bolus of warm water poleward, as Willis Essenbach has described in his ENSO pump articles. The Modoki ENSO event by comparison is an utter sham – if you are expecting warming, that is. 2014-2016 is the best example I can think of of the Modoki ENSO. Warming was mid, not east, equatorial Pacific. I checked the trades the entire time and they never really faltered. I checked the Peruvian upwelling also – by tracking the status of the Peruvian anchovy fishery. More upwelling means more anchovies, and vice versa. Despite alarmist predictions of anchovy fishery collapse (which were false and did not happen but did succeed in disrupting fishmeal market trading and sending at least one seafood company into bankruptcy) all that happened was a slight weakening and moving to the south of the Peruvian upwelling. But it never came close to being interrupted and kept going strong, as did the anchovy fishery, causing the Peruvian fishery management agency INARP to make at least one abrupt mid-season upward adjustment of an overly conservative anchovy quota.
So going back to your Bob Tisdale and Willis Essenbach ENSO essentials, what is the implication of the 2016 El Niño being of the Modoki, not classic, type? It means that it is not really an El Niño at all in the true sense. And, more importantly, it means that the thing that followed the El Niño that people are calling a “La Niña” is also not real, or at best a Modoki La Niña. And more important still, this means that the 2014-2018 ENSO-like event will NOT pump warm water poleward and will NOT cause an up step in global temperatures, as previous and real classic ENSO events – notably 1998-1999, did. What has happened is that the mid Pacific equatorial heat that built up in 2016 is just being slowly dissipated to space, not pumped poleward. If anything, the result will be cooling, not warming. In conclusion, my hypothesis is that classic (Bjerknes driven) ENSO events warm the planet and Modoki events cool it.
Finally here is some historic evidence to back up this interpretation. Here are the years of the biggest, classic type ENSO (el Niño followed by La Niña) events in the last couple of centuries, from Wikipedia:
1790–93, 1828, 1876–78, 1891, 1925–26, 1972–73, 1982–83, 1997–98
I would interpret that as follows:
1790-1828: warming period containing at least two classic ENSO events
1828-1876: 50 year interval with no ENSO event, cooling.
1876-1925: period with 3 major ENSOs, warming
1926-1972: 40+ year interval with no ENSO, cooling
1972-1998: 30 year period with three massive ENSO classic events, warming
1998-2018: no classic ENSO events, Modoki ones only, static or cooling.
Note that the huge classic 1972 El Niño interrupted the Peruvian upwelling so completely that it caused the catastrophic collapse of the Peruvian anchovy fishery (together with unmanaged overfishing). The fishery is now well managed but has never fully recovered from that event.
That’s what it’s about.
That’s an interesting interpretation, Phil, and I agree with most of it. However it is my understanding that an increase in poleward heat transport results in planet cooling, as the poles are efficient refrigerators for the planet. Nearly all heat transported during the winter pole night is lost to space.
Most scientists believe most of the heat transported from the subtropics to the poles is through the atmosphere, while most of the heat transported from the tropics to the subtropics is through the ocean. Within that heat engine conception of climate I contemplate El Niño as a shorting when the amount of heat to be transported by the tropical oceans exceeds capacity, and the built up of sea surface heat is dealt with by shooting it to the tropical atmosphere. This may or may not engage the Bjerkness compensation depending on conditions.
This hypothesis of mine has the advantage of explaining why there was no El Niño activity during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, as a warmer planet has a flatter equator-to-pole temperature gradient that can cope with the smaller amount of heat to be transported.
The interpretation then is the opposite. Periods of warming result in more frequent El Niño events to deal with increased heat while the gradient adjusts, and not the opposite. I don’t think ENSO affects planetary temperature changes, but it is a reaction to them, and mainly a reaction to changes in the temperature gradient and the expansion and contraction of the tropical bands.
Thanks for replying – I admire your energy and patience making it this far in a thread full of vexing questions. There is of course some ocean heat transport between all latitudes from equator to poles, in the form of the THC (thermo haline circulation). Some maths would show how the significance and rate of this compared to atmospheric circulation, but in general I would be very surprised if an atmospheric process carried anything like the heat of an ocean current.
And there is the chicken-and-egg question of ENSO and global temperatures. Bob Tisdale used to get a lot of stick for arguing that the big ENSO events (classic, not Modoki) moves so much heat poleward that the whole global temperature took a step up of a few tenths of a degree C. However after 1983 and 1999 this clearly seems to have happened. The point is often made that ENSO can’t create energy, only redistribute it. A physicist might make that argument about any process in the universe. Wim Rost makes I believe a correct point when he points to all the deep cold in the ocean – kms deep of near zero water even at the tropics. Just a little vertical mixing from this can drag down temperatures anywhere on earth, like a cold hand from below. It’s nice when a very complex situation can be reduced to a single factor. For climate if I had to choose one (apart from the sun) I would choose oceanic vertical mixing. The ocean is the overwhelmingly dominant thermal fact on the earth’s surface. Anyway I’m rambling now so I’ll stop.
Yes, there is some heat transport by the ocean at all latitudes, and more importantly in the Northern Hemisphere, but heat transport is hugely dominated by the atmosphere except in the tropical areas.
http://www.climate.be/textbook/images/image(15).png
[This image thing doesn’t work because of the parenthesis. Copy the entire line into your browser to see it.]
This is a typical image of latitudinal heat transport in PetaWatts. Google “poleward heat transport” to get many more showing the same.
I disagree with Bob Tisdale that global temperature increases during El Niño events in steps. It just looks that way in the graphs. The increase takes place due to the energy imbalance, but appears discontinuous because the way we measure it and the way the heat is moved around by the system. If properly measured and averaged for the global oceans it would look differently. As we measure temperature at the air surface we see the realization of the increase in temperature after big La Niña events end, for example in 2000-2001. Then we “see” the warming that has been taking place for several years but the movement around of the heat was disguising.
I agree with Wim Rost and you that the deep cold of the ocean is a very important factor and that a small increase in vertical mixing could take us back to the Little Ice Age in a moment. As the planet cools, the equator-to-pole temperature gradient steeps, the wind increases, and the vertical mixing increases, further cooling the planet. Only the increase in solar activity at the end of the LIA saved us from a feedback that led to glacial inception. The LIA saw the biggest storms in 6000 years.
http://www.climate.be/textbook/images/image(15).png
Thanks!
Thanks!
Not just ignoring it but also publishing models and predictions of near term warming instead. The voltage level of political climate science is set quite high.
Hello Javier
A very interesting blog post.
The main issue you point at, as it seem to be at the moment, and the way you go by to explain and explore it, plus the questions you raise, offer a very interesting
view point to consider under the circumstances.
And I understand too I think, the proposition that your explanation given
is as valid, or could be as valid as any other….aka in the spirit of the main
issue must at least has to let be, with no much challenge.
I think I understand this point too.
But you see, even in such a circumstance, I got to argue against your favored
given explanation….really sorry.
You see, simply the Sun explanation offered for, in the point you raise, the signature of
a major cooling, is the only one that could not possibly be a valid one.
Sun explanation for no warming, less warming or even for a warming reduction is one thing, and the Sun to explain a major cooling is entirely a different
matter, especially when RF still increasing constantly.
Sorry but, from my point of view, your explanation is one that ends up
to be shown as a non valid one, by the very condition you try to bring up
and explore in this interesting work of yours.
It actually, the cooling you do consider, under the given circumstances,
it clearly auto invalidates the Sun explanation.
cheers
You are wrong, it is the meridional jet stream that disturbs the constant winds along the equator during low solar activity. These winds are necessary for the ENSO cycle to not be disturbed. None La Niña means cooling in the long term.
eh??????
Factors governing the strength and frequency of stratospheric ozone intrusions over the Pacific‐North American region are considered for their role in modulating tropospheric ozone on interannual timescales. The strength of the association between two major modes of climate variability—the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Northern Annular Mode (NAM)—and the amount of ozone contained in stratospheric intrusions are tested in the context of two mechanisms that modulate stratosphere‐to‐troposphere transport (STT) of ozone: (StratVarO3) the winter season buildup of ozone abundances in the lowermost stratosphere (LMS) and (JetVar) Pacific jet and wave breaking variability during spring. In essence, StratVarO3 corresponds to variability in the amount of ozone per intrusion, while JetVar governs the frequency of intrusions. The resulting analysis, based on two different reanalysis products, suggests that StratVarO3 is more important than JetVar for driving interannual variations in STT of ozone over the Pacific‐North American region. In particular, the abundance of ozone in the LMS at the end of winter is shown to be a robust indicator of the amount of ozone that will be contained in stratospheric intrusions during the ensuing spring. Additionally, it is shown that the overall strength of the winter season stratospheric NAM is a useful predictor of ozone intrusion strength. The results also suggest a nuanced relationship between the phase of ENSO and STT of ozone. While ENSO‐related jet variability is associated with STT variability, it is wave breaking frequency rather than typical ENSO teleconnection patterns that is responsible for the ENSO‐STT relationship.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2017JD026890
We’ve been in a 2-year period of mostly La Niña following a super El Niño that ended in 2016 when the cooling began. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/ssta_c.gif
So time for – La Niña.
Very weak La Niña compared to 1999.
http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_v5.php
In the period of low solar activity, there are actually more clouds above the oceans. The reason for this is the lazy jetstream, which forms the upper lows above the oceans.
That is why there are heat waves on the continents. However, the surface of the oceans is cooled.
As a result, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is reduced, which has a similar effect to the strong La Niña.
Cloud cover in the south-eastern Pacific.
According to ice core records, the last millennium 1000AD – 2000AD has been the coldest millennium of our current Holocene interglacial. This point is more fully illustrated with ice core records on a millennial basis back to the Eemian period here:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/holocene-context-for-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming/
Our current, warm, congenial Holocene interglacial, although cooler than the Eemian interglacial 120,000 years ago, has been the enabler of mankind’s civilisation for the last 10,000 years, spanning from mankind’s earliest farming to the most recent technologies.
Viewing the current Holocene interglacial on a millennial basis is rational. Sadly it seems that, driven by the need to continually support the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis / religion Climate Alarmists irrationally examine the temperature record at much too fine a scale, weather event by weather event, month by month, or year by year.
From the broader perspective, each of the notable high points in the current 11,000 year Holocene temperature record, (Holocene Climate Optimum – Minoan – Roman – Medieval – Modern), have been progressively colder than every previous high point.
Greenland ice core records show that for its first 7-8000 years, the early Holocene, had virtually flat temperatures, including its early high point known as the “climate optimum”. But the more recent Holocene, since a “tipping point” at around 1000BC, 3000 years ago, has seen temperature fall at about 20 times its earlier rate.
The Holocene interglacial is already 10 – 11,000 years old and just judging from the length of previous interglacial periods, the Holocene epoch should be drawing to its close: in this century, the next century or this millennium.
Nonetheless, the slight and truly beneficial warming at the end of the 20th century to a Modern high point has been converted by Climate alarmists into their “Great Man-made Global Warming Catastrophe”.
The recent warming since the end of the Little Ice Age has been wholly beneficial when compared to the devastating impacts arising from the minor cooling of the Little Ice Age.
As global temperatures, after their short spurt at the end of the last century, are showing stagnation or cooling for the last twenty years. The world should now fear the real and detrimental effects of cooling, rather than being hysterical about limited, beneficial or probably now non-existent further warming.
Warmer times are times of success and prosperity for man-kind and for the biosphere.
But the coming end of the present Holocene interglacial will eventually again result in a mile high ice sheet over much of the Northern hemisphere.
The reversion to Ice Age conditions will be the real climate catastrophe.
With the present reducing Solar activity, significantly reduced temperatures, at least to the level of another Little Ice Age are predicted quite soon this century.
Whether the present impending cooling will really lead on to a new glacial ice age or not is still in question.
As an interested layman, I would say that the betting is more heavily weighted towards a catastrophically cooling world rather than one that will be overheating because of the comparatively minor CO2 emissions from mankind.
Coronal holes, normally not facing the earth, let high energetic particles (sun wind) stream towards earth, causing less clouds and stronger back radiation TOA.
The result may be a hot, dry summer in the Northern Hemisphere and stronger cooling on the winter-side of the globe?
Have a look at thr x-ray pictures of the sun.
https://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/2018/08/09/woher-kommt-die-duerre-und-waerme-des-sommers-2018/
One way to avoid the graph distortion of urban heat islands and the removal of rural stations would be to group similar performing stations together according to temperature or other characteristic and compare/contrast them. Note the differences between N and S Hemispheres, for instance, urban and rural, tropical and polar., big swing and little swing. You would have to include unadjusted data sets as well. And where are the detailed Holocene graphs (last 12,000 yrs) ? PS, you have to present the spaghetti charts in sequence, not in a miserable heap without different added and inherent filters distorting the data.