Essay by Eric Worrall
The oceans swallowed my global warming? Desperate butt covering from alarmists who are facing increasingly embarrassing questions about the failure of the world to end.
14 July 2022 16:41
Factcheck: No, global warming has not ‘paused’ over the past eight years
A decade ago, many in the climate community were fixated on an apparent “pause” in rising global surface temperatures. So many studies were published on the so-called “hiatus” that scientists jokedthat the journal Nature Climate Change should be renamed Nature Hiatus.
However, after a decade or so of slower-than-average warming, rapid temperature rise returned in 2015-16 and global temperatures have since remained quite warm. The last eight years are the warmest eight years since records began in the mid-1800s.
While the hiatus debate generated a lot of useful research on short-term temperature variability, it is clear now that it was a small variation on a relentlessly upward trend in temperatures.
But nearly a decade later, talk of a “pause” has re-emerged among climate sceptics, with columnist Melanie Phillips claiming in the Times this week that, “contrary to the dogma which holds that a rise in carbon dioxide inescapably heats up the atmosphere, global temperature has embarrassingly flatlined for more than seven years even as CO2 levels have risen”.
This falsehood appears to be sourced from a blog post by long-time climate sceptic Christopher Monckton, which claims to highlight the lack of a trend in global temperatures over the past eight years.
In a rebuttal letter to the Times, Prof Richard Betts – head of climate impacts research at the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter – points out that it is “fully expected that there will be peaks of particularly high temperatures followed by a few less hot years before the next new record year”.
In fact, the last eight years have been unusually warm – even warmer than expected given the long-term rate of temperature increases – with global temperatures exceeding 1.2C above pre-industrial levels. The temperature record is replete with short-term periods of slower or more rapid warming than average, driven by natural variability on top of the warming from human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
There is no evidence that the past eight years were in any way unusual and the hype around – and obvious end of – the prior “pause” should provide a cautionary tale about overinterpreting year-to-year variability today.
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Human-emitted greenhouse gases trap extra heat in the atmosphere. While some of this heat warms the Earth’s surface, the vast majority – around of 93% – goes into the oceans. Only 1% or so accumulates in the atmosphere and the remainder ends up warming the land and melting ice.
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Most years set a new record for ocean heat content, reflecting the continued trapping of heat by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The figure below shows that annual OHC estimates between 1950 and present for both the upper 700m (light blue) and 700m-2000m (dark blue) depths of the ocean.
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Read more: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-no-global-warming-has-not-paused-over-the-past-eight-years/
Lord Moncton apparently stirred the hive by publishing a few articles on the growing pause, like this article from three weeks ago.
His article on the last 6 years are entertaining because, where’s the warming? Wasn’t there supposed to be a hockey stick or something? Oh yeah, it disappeared into the ocean depths, allegedly.
The last 172 years, since 1850, temperatures have risen a little. Except for that period between the 1940s to 1970s, when the drop in global temperature triggered climate scientists like Stephen Schneider to suggest we should use nuclear reactors to melt the polar ice, to prevent an ice age. Schneider later claimed he’d made a mistake, and went on to become a global warming activist.
But that context doesn’t stop in 1850.
Looking before 1850, there were notable warm periods during the last few thousand years, like the medieval warm period, Roman Warm Period and Minoan Warm Period, which look suspiciously like our current modern warm period, except back then people didn’t drive automobiles.
Going back further, 9000-5000 years ago, during the Holocene Optimum, the sea level was around 2m higher than today, so it was probably pretty warm back then as well.
20,000 years ago, much of the world was covered by massive ice sheets.
Three million years ago, the world was so warm Antarctica was mostly ice free – until the onset of the Quaternary glaciation, which we are still enduring today. To put the Quaternary Glaciation into context, the Quaternary is one of only five comparable great cold periods which have been identified over the last two billion years.
55 million years ago was the Palaeocene – Eocene thermal maximum, an extremely warm period of such abundance our primate ancestors spread throughout much of the world.
When you take a more complete look at the context, rather than the limited 172 year / 0.0000086% of climate history Carbon Brief seems to want you to focus on, there is nothing unusually warm about today’s global temperatures. Even if further global warming does occur, if those little primate ancestors with walnut size brains could manage to thrive in the Palaeocene – Eocene thermal maximum, I’m pretty sure we could figure out how to cope with a small fraction of the warming they enjoyed.
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Well, it’s always something isn’t it. I still don’t buy that we are causing great harm and heating up the planet with GreenHouse Gases. The number one greenhouse gas is water vapor from what I’ve read. Then we have volcanos that can thrust us into a dark age and an ice age. Things coming out of space and striking the planet. Those are game changers and much more dangerous than C02. IMHO But the climate alarmists are looking for relevance and a pay check, so we should all follow blindly and continue greening our Grid. When you can’t charge your Tesla and your cell phone goes dead, just hope that pocket sized solar battery pack you bought works, and you have a USB cable to charge your phone, maybe. Then you can call somebody who cares or the Police, if their phones aren’t dead.
The Rise and Fall of China’s dynasties may be ascribed to climate change – the climate changes closely approximate the periods of climate change as outlined by author Worrall.
This relationship between temperature and dynastic potency was first drawn by a meteorologist named Zhu Kezhen in a 1972 paper. Zhu was one of the first Chinese PhD graduates of Harvard University and helped lay the foundations of modern meteorology on the mainland (The link at the base of this note will bring up the image belonging to this comment).
In his paper, the last he wrote and considered a classic for its elegant prose and bold conclusions, Zhu drew a graph plotting temperatures in the Yellow River region from 1500BC to 1950. Based on archaeological artefacts and historical documents, the graph charted the rises and falls in temperature.
It showed that there were three extended periods of warm temperatures.
The first coincided with the Shang dynasty (1600BC-1046BC), when the annual average temperature reached as high as 11.3 degrees Celsius. This period saw the emergence of the first comprehensive set of Chinese characters, massive construction of palaces and cities, large-scale farming and the production of systematic astronomical records and sophisticated bronze wares.
The second extended period of warm temperatures lasted more than 700 years, from the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770BC-256BC) to the Western Han dynasty (206BC-9AD), when average temperatures peaked at 10.7 degrees Celsius. In the Eastern Zhou, China’s territory expanded from the Yellow River to Guangdong, Yunnan and Sichuan. There was an enormous bamboo forest along the Yellow River, while the Yangtze River cut through lush rainforest. Slavery was abandoned, iron tools became popular in farming, and Confucius and other scholars established the philosophies that shape Chinese society today. By the time temperatures started to dip, China had built the Great Wall, a national network of roads and conquered Xinjiang, Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea.
A third warm period, when average temperatures peaked at 10.3 degrees, coincided with the Tang dynasty, widely seen as the peak of Chinese civilisation. Some historians estimated China accounted for 60 percent of global gross domestic product during this era. From textiles, ceramics, mining, and shipbuilding to paper making, China led the world in almost every sphere. There was also a spiritual and cultural boom – there were more poets in the Tang than at any time in history. In between these great dynasties, average temperatures plunged and chaos reigned. The Chinese empire retreated and was even driven into the sea by the invading Mongols who established the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). The longest period of relative cold lasted from the end of the Tang to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911.
Now temperatures are on the rise again, matched by scorching economic growth. According to the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, the average annual temperature was 10.3 Celsius from 2001 to 2007 – the same as in the Tang dynasty.
Zhu’s research was based on records which make for interesting comparisons with the present day. Rice could be harvested twice a year to the north of the Yellow River in the Eastern Zhou dynasty, whereas the region is generally dry now. Plum trees were common along the Yellow River.
Source URL (retrieved on Aug 28th 2013, 12:35pm): http://www.scmp.com/article/700638/china-gives-history-lesson-warming
We still do not know what causes warming.
Dr John Christy of the UAH temperature dataset, says that Tropical Tropospheric Temperature (TTT) record indicated that greenhouse warming only accounts for 1/4 of the total warming claimed by the IPCC.
So what causes the rest? Data manipulation by ‘scientists’ may be one reason for the alarmist data.
Another reason may be Chinese industrial dust on northern ice sheets, lowering its albedo and allowing more insolation absorption. But if Chinese industry falters, as appears to be happening, then Chinese emissions will reduce.
So we may end up with less data manipulation, and less Chinese-induced albedo reductions, leading to lower temperatures over the next decade. And do remember that the AMO and PDO oceanic cycles should be in cold mode too, which would add to cooling effects.
Ralph
You can tell how much of a problem The Pause is for the Warmunists, (even though still just a baby Pause at this point), by the knots they tie themselves into trying to Climatesplain it away.CO2 Heat is special, with apparently magical powers according to them. Hilarious.
Several points any article about UAH data should make:
Data begins in 1979, during a global warming trend that began in 1975
There is much less infilling (guessing) than in surface data
The measurements are made in a consistent environment where the greenhouse effect occurs
The rate of warming is slower than in all surface averages.
The rate of warming over the oceans is significantly slower than over land
The global warming is not consistent every year, or in every five-year period.
There were two large heat peaks (in 1998, and in late 2015 / early 2016), caused by El Nino heat releases, which were not caused by CO2 emissions. But they do contribute to the rising linear trend line since 1979.
The 2015 to 2022 period, for one short term example, had a flat global average temperature trend.
This article has a biased focus on the 2015 to 2022 period
without the context of many other important facts about UAH data.
How does 93% of the alleged trapped heat go into the oceans? What is the mechanism?
It doesnt, LWR can only contact the skin layer on the surface of the water increasing vaporation and latent heat. It can’t magically warm 200m to 700m or more of ocean depth despite the alarmists BS. The warming of the oceans are from decreasing global cloud albedo of around 1% per decade, causing more SWR heating the oceans down to 200m depths. At depths the SWR reaches this can be easily mixed in with greater depths in the general ocean circulation, with rising and sinking water.
The Minoan culture thrived from around 2750 BC, as did many other cultures, when the GISP2 series shows Greenland being the coldest for 3450 years, the culture collapsed around 1200 BC at the end of a super solar minimum which began 1250 BC.
With low solar, negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions will increase, driving a warmer AMO, which adds to the direct Greenland warming from the negative NAO conditions. Plus the negative NAO is associated with slower trade winds so El Nino conditions increase, and the Mediterranean Sea also becomes warmer. Crete would have seen harsher winters, and from drought to medicanes in the summers.
3450 years later in the 700’s AD had the warmest northern European summers of the Medieval Warm Period according to Esper et al 2014. 3540 years before 2750 BC was the 8.2kyr event, when there were expansions of village settlements all around the northern hemisphere. An early Harappan expansion, Lepenski Vir in Serbia, and wheat growing and a boatyard at the Isle of Wight England.
As for the Little Ice Age, there should be some colder periods in Greenland then, when Europe was very warm during the first half of the 1500’s, and the very warm 1610’s to 1660’s. Though if we compare GISP2 to a proxy of sea surface temperatures by southeast Greenland, the warmer Oort solar minimum, labeled “Medieval Warm Period” in the post chart, is profound, but the warming during the Maunder and Dalton solar minima are not at all apparent in GISP2.
(note the post GISP2 chart time scale is not linear)
Typo.. 3540 years before 2750 BC should have been 3450 years before 2750 BC.
Why do we rely upon temperature when the most obvious and unbiased measure is sea level rise? There are hundreds of tide gauge records kept by NOAA, that all show the same steady rise of sea level with NO acceleration when CO2 began to be added in quantity after 1950.
Ice and snow don’t melt in response to politics, only to heat input and there’s no additional melt rate from the massive addition of CO2, ergo it’s irrelevant. For example
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750
from the larger records at
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
Also of course, the pause reflects whatever natural phenomena is actually resulting in our planet warming slowly
Increasing igneous rock building in the oceans from volcanic eruptions causes sea levels to rise, even if the global temperatures were the same for 100s of years. Over the recent decades/centuries even new islands have formed and this is of course going to cause sea levels to rise because the igneous rock is displacing the water.
This is not accounted for at all when dealing with rising sea levels.
A bit deceiving that the time scale on the left side of the chart is much more compressed than the periods on the right (Little Ice Age side).