Ph.D. student extracts world-first centuries long seasonal record of El Niños from coral cores
University of New South Wales
Melbourne: Australian scientists have developed an innovative method using cores drilled from coral to produce a world first 400-year long seasonal record of El Niño events, a record that many in the field had described as impossible to extract.
The record published today in Nature Geoscience detects different types of El Niño and shows the nature of El Niño events has changed in recent decades.
This understanding of El Niño events is vital because they produce extreme weather across the globe with particularly profound effects on precipitation and temperature extremes in Australia, South East Asia and the Americas.
The 400-year record revealed a clear change in El Niño types, with an increase of Central Pacific El Niño activity in the late 20th Century and suggested future changes to the strength of Eastern Pacific El Niños.
“We are seeing more El Niños forming in the central Pacific Ocean in recent decades, which is unusual across the past 400 years,” said lead author Dr Mandy Freund.
“There are even some early hints that the much stronger Eastern Pacific El Niños, like those that occurred in 1997/98 and 2015/16 may be growing in intensity.”
This extraordinary result was teased out of information about past climate from coral cores spanning the Pacific Ocean, as part of Dr Freund’s PhD research at the University of Melbourne and the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. It was made possible because coral cores – like tree rings – have centuries-long growth patterns and contain isotopes that can tell us a lot about the climate of the past. However, until now, they had not been used to detect the different types of El Niño events.
This meant El Niño researchers were constrained by what they could say about El Niño behaviour because the instrumental record was too short and it was hard to judge whether recent decadal changes were exceptional.
“By understanding the past, we are better equipped to understand the future, especially in the context of climate change,” said Dr Freund.
“Prior to this research, we did not know how frequently different types of El Niño occurred in past centuries. Now we do,” said co-author from the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes Dr Ben Henley.
The key to unlocking the El Niño record was the understanding that coral records contained enough information to identify seasonal changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean. However, using coral records to reconstruct El Niño history at a seasonal timescale had never been done before and many people working in the field considered it impossible.
It was only after Dr Freund took her innovative approach to a team of climate scientists and coral experts: Dr Ben Henley, Prof David Karoly, Assoc Prof Helen Mcgregor, Assoc Prof Nerilie Abram, and Dr Dietmar Dommenget that they were able to proceed with the idea.
While the approach was considered challenging, leading Australian experts on past corals, Dr Mcgregor and Assoc Prof Abram, said that, while the approach might be unconventional, it was worth a shot.
After carefully refining the technique to reconstruct the signature of El Niño in space and time using new machine learning techniques, the scientists were able to compare recent coral results with the instrumental record. Dr Freund found a strong agreement between the coral cores and recorded events. This confirmation allowed the team to extend the record back in time.
Dr Freund and her team found there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of El Niños forming in the Central Pacific over the past 30 years, compared to all 30 year periods in the past 400 years.
At the same time, the stronger Eastern Pacific El Niños were the most intense El Niño events ever recorded, according to both the 100-year long instrumental record and the 400-year long coral record.
As a result, Australian researchers have produced a world-first seasonal El Niño record extending 400 years and a new methodology that will likely be the basis for future climate research.
It took three years of hard work to achieve the result and now Dr Freund and her team are excited to see how this work can be built upon.
“The El Niño phenomenon is one of the most important features of global climate, and changes to its behaviour have very serious implications for weather patterns and extreme events around the world,” said Dr Henley.
And that centuries-long record opens a door not just to past changes but changes to El Niños in the future as well.
“This gives us an opportunity to more accurately explore how global warming may change El Niños and what this means for future weather and climate extremes,” said Dr Henley.
“Having a better understanding of how different types of El Niños have affected us in the past and present, will mean we are more able to model, predict and plan for future El Niños and their wide-ranging impacts,” said Dr Freund.
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Error: “Ph.D. student…” “now Dr Freund and her team…”
Mandy Freund is a postdoc. See https://research.csiro.au/climatesmartagriculture/our-team/mandy-freund-postdoctoral-fellow/
According to the Oceanic ENSO Index :
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20CPC%20OceanicNinoIndexMonthly1979%20With37monthRunningAverage_FloatingBars.gif
and the UAH global LT temparatures :
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_April_2019_v6.jpg
There seems to be a lag (of some 2 – 3 months) between peaks of strong El Niño episodes and global temperatures.
Seems like climate alarmists always need time reversed causality to push their nonsensical claims.
They also act as they always need to meaninglessly destroy nature in order to “save the planet”.
The objective of this research is clear: to show that El Ninos are not entirely natural events.
tty I ran a tourist operation out of Shute Harbour for some time. We had a 60Ft imitation submarine coral viewing vessel, & a pontoon at Hardy reef, careering to our 500 to 800 passengers each week. A couple of other resorts used our facility at times for their reef trips.
With our operation about 30% of our trips tourists could walk on either very shallow or totally dry reef depending on the time of low tide corresponding with our time out there. The areas that dried regularly are basically dead coral flats.
I hated the days when guests could walk on the reef as it generated extra work, requiring additional crew, & resulted is some minor & occasional moderately serious injury to guests.
I supplied transport, accommodation, food & a dingy to a marine biology PHD student studying the effect of reef walking, hoping that her findings might lead to reef walking being banned to the industry. I was disappointed.
Tourists rarely walked further than a hundred metres either side of our pontoon, not much when you consider that just that one reef has a ring of drying coral 30 miles long, containing a lagoon of 7500 acres. I expected we caused moderate at least derogation.
Not so The researcher found. She could detect no difference in our area to the other 30 miles of drying reef. I was disappointed, but had expected that was the case. Even after a year of regular visits, I could not see any difference at our area to what I had seen on drying coral flats in New Guinea & the Solomons, which saw no mere than a few bare feet a year.
I’m afraid that try as we might, our damage pales into insignificance compared to any major storm, let alone one of the regular cyclones.
I was interested until we got to the point that coral growth indication was like tree rings…. Ah, nice try but we all know how well tree-mometry turned out. ‘Nature trick’ anyone?
Few years back I investigated possibility of Endogenous link to Pacific tectonics and found what appears to be convincing association (correlation is not necessary causation)
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/ENSO.htm
“Endogenous” ?! ?!
What the heck is that? Never heard the word before, hope it’s not rude.
Google: having an internal cause or origin.
Not bad at all, will use it elsewhere e.g. ‘sunspots are not endogenous’/sarc
I only typped ENSO on my hand-held android device.
“After carefully refining the technique to reconstruct the signature of El Niño in space and time using new machine learning techniques, the scientists were able to compare recent coral results with the instrumental record.”
The black box strikes again.
From the SI:
EP El Nino events
1622, 1623, 1637, 1638, 1642, 1653, 1662
1700, 1703, 1719, 1765, 1768, 1783, 1791
1802, 1817, 1823, 1838, 1855, 1868, 1877, 1888, 1896
1902, 1911, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1930, 1940, 1941
1951, 1957, 1963, 1965, 1972, 1982, 1997, 2015
CP El Nino events
1618, 1620, 1641, 1652, 1657, 1667, 1672, 1677, 1682, 1688, 1693
1718, 1730, 1733, 1759, 1769, 1775, 1778, 1779, 1781, 1790, 1799
1801, 1808, 1816, 1832, 1840, 1850, 1853, 1854, 1873, 1884, 1885, 1895
1905, 1913, 1919, 1923, 1929, 1946, 1948
1958, 1968, 1969, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1994
2002, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2014
I assume all the ones after 1950 are instrumental in nature.
Hi RM
Looking at your numbers above I noticed large number of 11ish years gaps between adjacent or next but one early ElNino events. Sunspot cycle comes to mind.
I infer – but am obviously open to correction – that Vuk does not see causation, by coral, of El Ninos, which, themselves, very probably do not cause sun spots.
Auto – aware that correlation is not causation.
“Dr Freund and her team found there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of El Niños forming in the Central Pacific over the past 30 years, compared to all 30 year periods in the past 400 years.“.
Last 30 years – 7: 1991, 1994, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2014
Late 1700s – 7: 1775, 1778, 1779, 1781, 1790, 1799, 1801
OK, so I can squeeze out one more in a recent 30-year period, but their statement does seem to be OTT.
I walked to my mailbox an unprecedented two times yesterday, demolishing my previous record of once per day.
Model your walks, then apply for a grant….. 🙂
And whats a 30 year period anyway? Do they mean they compared the most recent 30 years with all possible previous 30 year periods?
They’ve been slow with coral studies and the AMO reconstruction also–impossibly slow.
And Brutus tells us why..
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224
Written records about El Nino weather events in Peru and Chili by jezuits and missionaries go back to the early 1500s. Their descriptions are very similar to what we observe today which to me suggests that actually the strength of the phenomenon then was similar to what it is now. I take the assertion that current events are stronger with a large pinch of salt.
Theodor Landscheidt developed a decadal El Nino index going back over 400 years, published at:
https://www.john-daly.com/theodor/DecadalEnso.htm
So I do not think that an el Nino index is a first.
It may be the first developed using that particular method.
Of course, if it was not published in the academic literature, it does not exist…..
What, they are deliberately damaging the GBR?
Fine time resolution using isotopic ratios requires very fine linear sampling of such corals. I am surprised corals grow sufficiently in a year or so to permit that.
One usually views El Nino events as warming the atmosphere and produced by changes in deep ocean current mixing. An obvious question is whether recent atmospheric warming somehow influences such deep currents and thus El Ninos.
Figure 3 of the article show that their best method had an r2 value of around 0.5 for their test period (1920-2000). That is their MLR model with all bells and whistles and optimized for best signal detection was explaining only the half of the El Nino signal during the calibration period.
Now extending this 80 years of best case 5 times, back to 1600AD, will decrease the statistical confidence by almost 2 times. That is their signal will explain only the 25% of the data. Remaining 75% will be completely blurred. This is a common mistake in extrapolation of the MLR method beyond its defined range. Mann did it, and many others are persisting doing it.
I cannot see how the conclusions of this paper passed the smell test by a formally educated statistician.
Formally educated statisticians are very rare in climate science.
I’m a “partially educated statistician” myself, and when the latest unprecedentery comes out I usually check for about half a dozen of the most common statistical errors. I usually score. Here is my little list:
1. Do they assume normal distribution without verifying that the data points are really independent and identically distributed?
2. If not, do they assume that Two Sigma = 0.05 (which only applies to normally distributed data)?
3. Do they correct for autocorrelation (climate data being almost always more or less autocorrelated)?
4. If using linear regression for proxy data with uncertain dating, do they correct for regression dilution?
5. If using time-averaged data does the average extend both to the beginning and end of the time period (which is impossible to do in a mathematically correct way)
6. If using smoothed data, is the smoothing algorithm given, and is it reasonable (not that smoothing a time series is ever a good idea)
Two extras for Bayesian statistics
1. Do they state the prior they are using, and is it reasonable?
2. Do they claim that their prior is “uninformative” or “vague” (no such things)
When I see Karoly’s name attached to a paper, my spidey-senses begin to tingle. Don’t laugh, my spidey-senses have correctly predicted the last 2 Florida Hurricanes (Irma and Michael). These tingles involve a psychic element, to be sure, but also looking at the sky, feeling wind on my skin, AND watching the TV weather reports. In one of my mystic visions, I saw the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore blowing away in a fierce storm, but luckily, two intrepid joggers bravely ran after him, caught him in mid-air, pulled him back down onto the ground, and saved his life. After which, I hope they all laughed and enjoyed a good belt of bourbon. I’m sorry to say that my vision ended before I could see the aftermath. Of course, later on, I learned that this had actually happened, only in a different hurricane. Which just goes to show that not only am I psychic, my psychic powers extend to precognition and divination, so I have to be very careful about which year, decade, or century my predictions apply. One thing’s for sure, climate changed warm air is brutal. It will blow me, you and Jim Cantore away so fast – we’ll be gone faster than that Gergis, Karoly, et. al. Southern Hemisphere hockey stick paper with the minor typo. So scary.
Only a few words come to mind after looking at this study’s supplementary data for a few minutes, garbage and pseudoscience.
1. Look at their sample locations. The closest sample they actually have to the Eastern Pacific El Nino pool is Clipperton Island, 10 degrees north of the equator and only a few hundred miles or so outside the NINO 3 zone. They have another sample just off the coast of Central America and another about 15 degrees north, their CP samples are all about 15+ degrees south of the equator, and the rest are from Indonesia and the Indian Ocean.
Typically when I want to reconstruct the environment of an area, I collect samples FROM THAT AREA!
2. They detrended the data, after preprocessing it but before normalizing it, and voila, a hockey stick.
Thus we have the new climate cult science in a nutshell – Yes it’s true that all of the warming for the past 50 years has coincided with ENSO, but we have determined that ENSO has changed due to man.
“when I want to reconstruct the environment of an area, I collect samples FROM THAT AREA!”
But the poor things can’t do that. The water in main East Pacific Nino area is much to cold. No coral reefs can survive there. There are hardly any even in the Galapagos, right on the Equator, except around the quite difficult to access Darwin and Wolf in the far northwest.
I agree that they should have more CP data, but the central pacific islands like Kiritibati or Howland or Kingman Reef aren’t easy to get to either.
Actually I was mistaken, there are two CP sample sites. One being Palmyra Atoll, which I would imagine is much harder to get to than Darwin Isle (or any other site they studied), and the coral reefs of Darwin Isle are said to be thriving.
Furthermore, large dead diploria corals in the Southern Galapagos would be the prefect samples for this study…
I don’t think it occurrs there. I’ve certainly never seen one.
Reminds me of the joke about the man who was looking for his keys under a streetlight two blocks from where he lost them because the light was better there.
One thing that I have learned in my 59 years is that saying never, will often find a way to bite you in the butt.
More Australian garbage. Remember, it is federal election time here in Aus and many parasites are looking for a new injection of taxpayer funds.
“In November 2005, The Nature Conservancy established a new research station on Palmyra to study global warming, the disappearing coral reefs, invasive species, and other environmental concerns”
To get to Darwin you would have to charter a boat from Puerto Ayora 200+ miles away.
Due to the climate wars it appears all ‘science’ connected with what really caused/causes the planet to cyclically warm and cool has been on hold.
Observational paradoxes precede breakthroughs.
We have sufficient unresolved observational paradoxes that Forest Gump could find the breakthroughs.
A key requirement to determine cause is correlation.
There was a massive increase in mid-ocean earthquakes, 300% and 400% (from above the average level of mid-ocean earthquakes prior to 1997) two years before both of the 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 El Niño events.
There was a 200% average increase in mid-ocean earthquakes for the entire 1997 to 2016 warming period.
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/the-correlation-of-seismic-activity-and-recent-global-warming-2016update.pdf
The Correlation of Seismic Activity and Recent Global Warming [1] (CSARGW) demonstrated that increasing seismic activity in the globe’s high geothermal flux areas (HGFA) is strongly correlated with global temperatures (r=0.785) from 1979-2015.
The mechanism driving this correlation is amply documented and well understood by oceanographers and seismologists. Namely, increased seismic activity in the HGFA (i.e., the mid-ocean’s spreading zones) serves as a proxy indicator of higher geothermal flux in these regions.
The HGFA include the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the East Pacific Rise, the West Chile Rise, the Ridges of the Indian Ocean, and the Ridges of the Antarctic/Southern Ocean.
This additional mid-ocean heating causes an acceleration of oceanic overturning and thermobaric convection, resulting in higher ocean temperatures and greater heat transport into the Arctic [2,3]. This manifests itself as an anomaly known as the “Arctic Amplification,” where the Arctic warms to a much greater degree than the rest of the globe (Table 1) [4,5].
Equally important, the HGFA seismic frequencies accurately predicted the unusually powerful 2015/2016 El Niño, one of the strongest on record (Figure 2). As illustrated in CSARGW, jumps in HGFA seismic activity can amplify an El Niño event, a phenomenon referred to as a SIENA or a Seismically Induced El Niño Amplification [1]. Accurately predicting two of these amplified El Niños (i.e., the 2015/2016 event plus the1997/1998 episode) is an important outcome of the HGFA seismicity/temperature relationship.
What causes the earthquakes at the mid-ocean ridges? Hint the mechanism must be able to increase by a factor 200% for 20 years.
Most interesting
Ciao
John
Geology the field of science is asleep. There is an earth changing breakthrough in that field.
The problem is geologist have hidden their paradoxes. Paradoxes should not exist.
This a fun problem as it is solved by old school physical logic. The observations absolutely point to the solution.
There is something fundamentally incorrect concerning our ideas about the earth which also effects our ideas about the atmosphere and CO2.
There are piles of observational paradoxes in that field that have been around for decades. They are missing a force to move the tectonic plates. They are missing a source of water.
The observed changes in mid-ocean seismic activity (200% increase for 20 years all over the planet) are orders of magnitude too large and too fast for all of the current geological mechanisms to explain.
The 200% increase in mid-ocean earthquakes observation is a hard paradox. There is only one mechanism that can cause a sudden increase in mid-ocean earthquakes frequency of 200% average for 20 years and cause the damage on the face of the ridges.
We know that there is no physically possible change in the mantel that can suddenly occur all over the world to cause a 200% increase in mid-ocean earthquake frequency at mid-ocean ridges earth wide.
The assumed energy input from the mantel and core (radioactivity, material phase change, reactions), cannot physically change in that time scale/entire planet and even if they did change could not appreciably change temperatures to affect mid-ocean seismic activity for the entire planet.
It is physical impossible for the current standard geological model (and its assumptions) to explain the sudden and astonishingly large increase and decrease in mid-ocean seismic activity.
Detailed analysis of seismic wave travel in the mantel has shown there are intercrossing tubes in the mantel which reflect waves. This was a recent new discovery.
There is observational evidence along the mid-ocean ridges of structural damage (that was discovered 15 years ago) to the ocean floor near along the ridges that requires concentrated force from thousands of tubes to produce.
https://www.newgeology.us/presentation21.html
Plate Tectonics: too weak to build mountains
“In 2002 it could be said that: “Although the concept of plates moving on Earth’s surface is universally accepted, it is less clear which forces cause that motion. Understanding the mechanism of plate tectonics is one of the most important problems in the geosciences”8. A 2004 paper noted that “considerable debate remains about the driving forces of the tectonic plates and their relative contribution”40. “Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift died in 1926, primarily because no one could suggest an acceptable driving mechanism. In an ironical twist, continental drift (now generalized to plate tectonics) is almost universally accepted, but we still do not understand the driving mechanism in anything other than the most general terms”2.”
“The advent of plate tectonics made the classical mantle convection hypothesis even more untenable. For instance, the supposition that mid-oceanic ridges are the site of upwelling and trenches are that of sinking of the large scale convective flow cannot be valid, because it is now established that actively spreading, oceanic ridges migrate and often collide with trenches”14. “Another difficulty is that if this is currently the main mechanism, the major convection cells would have to have about half the width of the large oceans, with a pattern of motion that would have to be more or less constant over very large areas under the lithosphere. This would fail to explain the relative motion of plates with irregularly shaped margins at the Mid-Atlantic ridge and Carlsberg ridge, and the motion of small plates, such as the Caribbean and the Philippine plates”19.
The driving force of plate movements was initially claimed to be mantle deep convection currents welling up beneath midocean ridges, with downwelling occurring beneath ocean trenches.
Since the existence of layering in the mantle was considered to render whole-mantle convection unlikely, two layer convection models were also proposed. Jeffreys (1 974) argued that convection cannot take place because it is a self-damping process, as described by the Lomnitz law.
Plate tectonicists expected seismic tomography to provide clear evidence of a well-organized convection-cell pattern, but it has actually provided strong evidence against the existence of large, plate-propelling convection cells in the upper mantle (Anderson, Tanimoto, and Zhang, 1992).
Many geologists now think that mantle convection is a result of plate motion rather than its cause and that it is shallow rather than mantle deep (McGeary and Plummer, 1998).
El Nino episode frequency was greater than recently through 1807-1821 in the Dalton Minimum.
https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/Home/historic-el-nino-events
“This gives us an opportunity to more accurately explore how global warming may change El Niños ”
Exactly backassward.
Bullseye.
The 20th. century period of high solar activity put more stored heat into the Pacific ocean, resulting in more powerful El Ninos. Now that solar activity has subsided, powerful El Ninos will continue until that stored heat is exhausted, and then revert to a much lower level.
So, are there more El Ninos because it is warmer, or is it warmer because there are more El Ninos?
Yes.
Neither scenario has aught to do with Earth-ravaging humankind.
‘extreme events around the world,” said Dr Henley.’ They had to add words “extreme” and “world” to get paid.
But if they plug the data into a computer with 6 assumptions they could get by using with extreme and world.
CAGW alarmists refuse to accept the impacts El Nino and La Nina events have global temps, and the effects Grand Solar Maximum/Grand Solar Minimum events and 30-year PDO, AMO, AOO ocean cycles have on the intensities of El Nino and La Nina events.
The Little Ice Age (1280~1820), was the coldest climate event in 12,000 years, and during the LIA, El Nino events were highly likely much weaker than they are now, which had NOTHING to do with CO2, but everything to do with 4 Grand Solar Minima events: Wolf, Spores, Maunder and Dalton.
The strongest Grand Solar Maximum in 11.400 years occurred from 1933~1996, which likely contributed to 20th century strong El Nino events, especially the Super El Nino events in: 1982/83, 1997/98 and 2015/16.
We’re just starting a 50-year Grand Solar Minimum, so it’ll be very interesting to see if El Nino events become weaker and La Nina events become colder.
Moreover, the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans will soon be (or are already in) their respective 30-year ocean cool cycles. It’ll be very interesting to see what effect these cool ocean cycles will have on future El Nino events over the next 30 years.
BTW, the current El Nino was a complete dud, and looks to be quickly moving to a strong La Nina event:
During periods of very low solar activity there will be neither strong El Niño nor strong La Niña. Therefore, the global temperature will change slowly. The meridional jetstream will interfere with the typical ENSO cycle.