The Global Warming Policy Foundation | 27 Aug 2014
In popular science journalism the latest is always the best. With all the explanations for the “pause” in global surface temperatures since 1997 – there are now over 30 of them – it is always the most recently published one that is the “answer.” This time it’s the Atlantic Ocean that’s to blame. A paper published in Science says that a 30-year periodicity warms and cools the world by sequestering heat below the ocean’s surface and then releasing it. You don’t have to look very deeply at the science to realise that, despite the headlines, no one has come up with an answer to the “pause.” –David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 August 2014
The “pause” in global warming may last another decade before surface temperatures start rising again, according to scientists who say heat is being stored in the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. A new study, published in the journal Science, suggests that a natural cycle of ocean currents has caused the phenomenon by drawing heat from shallow waters down almost a mile into the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. The cycle naturally produces periods of roughly 30 years in which heat is stored near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to warmer temperatures, followed by roughly 30 years in which it is stored in the depths, causing cooler surface temperatures, it suggests. –Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2014
Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth’s surface. At first this was a blip, then a trend, then a puzzle for the climate science community. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus,” said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. –Hannah Hickey, The University of Washington, 21 August 2014
The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research. A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy. Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 3 November 2013
The American Meteorological Society has released updated polling results of their membership which shows only 52% agree with the so-called “consensus” that global warming is mostly man-made. The poll finds “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.” —The Hockey Schtick, 24 August 2014
1) Global Warming ‘Pause’ Could Last For 30 Years – The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2014
2) Reminder: Global Warming ‘Pause’ May Last For 20 More Years And Arctic Sea Ice Has Started To Recover – Mail on Sunday, 3 November 2013
3) David Whitehouse: The (Latest) Answer To The ‘Pause’ – The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 August 2014
4) 39 Guesses About The Global Warming ‘Pause’ (And Counting) – The Hockey Schtick, 24 August 2014
5) Climate Nonsensus: Only Half Of U.S. Meteorologists Think Global Warming Is Man-Made – The Hockey Schtick, 24 August 2014
6) And Finally: Tampering With Climate Data Is Not A New Problem – Real Science, 26 August 2014
1) Global Warming ‘Pause’ Could Last For 30 Years
The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2014
Emily Gosden
The “pause” in global warming may last another decade before surface temperatures start rising again, according to scientists who say heat is being stored in the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.
Global average surface temperatures rose rapidly from the 1970s but have been relatively stable since the late 1990s, in a trend that has been seized upon by climate sceptics who question the science of man-made warming.
Climate change scientists have proposed more than a dozen theories to explain the “hiatus”, which they say is a “distraction” from the widespread consensus on global warming.
A new study, published in the journal Science, suggests that a natural cycle of ocean currents has caused the phenomenon by drawing heat from shallow waters down almost a mile into the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.
The cycle naturally produces periods of roughly 30 years in which heat is stored near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to warmer temperatures, followed by roughly 30 years in which it is stored in the depths, causing cooler surface temperatures, it suggests.
Rising surface temperatures in the last three decades of the 20th century were roughly half caused by man-made global warming and half by the ocean currents keeping more heat near the surface, it finds.
When the ocean cycle reversed around the turn of the century, drawing heat down into the depths, this served to counteract the effects of man-made global warming.
“When the internal variability that is responsible for the current hiatus switches sign, as it inevitably will, another episode of accelerated global warming should ensue,” the study concludes.
Prof Ka-Kit Tung of the University of Washington, one of the report’s authors, said: “Historically the cool period lasted 20 to 35 years. The current period already lasted 15 years, so roughly there [are] 10 more years to go.”
2) Reminder: Global Warming ‘Pause’ May Last For 20 More Years And Arctic Sea Ice Has Started To Recover
Mail on Sunday, 3 November 2013
David Rose
The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research.
A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy.
Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases.
The research comes amid mounting evidence that the computer models on which the IPCC based the gloomy forecasts of a rapidly warming planet in its latest report, published in September, are diverging widely from reality.
The graph shown above, based on a version published by Dr Ed Hawkins of Reading University on his blog, Climate Lab Book, reveals that actual temperatures are now below the predictions made by almost all the 138 models on which the IPCC relies.
The pause means there has been no statistically significant increase in world average surface temperatures since the beginning of 1997, despite the models’ projection of a steeply rising trend.
According to Dr Hawkins, the divergence is now so great that the world’s climate is cooler than what the models collectively predicted with ‘five to 95 per cent certainty’.
Curry and Wyatt say they have identified a climatic ‘stadium wave’ – the phenomenon known in Britain as a Mexican wave, in which the crowd at a stadium stand and sit so that a wave seems to circle the audience.
In similar fashion, a number of cycles in the temperature of air and oceans, and the level of Arctic ice, take place across the Northern hemisphere over decades.
Curry and Wyatt say there is evidence of this going back at least 300 years.
According to Curry and Wyatt, the theory may explain both the warming pause and why the computer models did not forecast it.
It also means that a large proportion of the warming that did occur in the years before the pause was due not to greenhouse gas emissions, but to the same cyclical wave.
3) David Whitehouse: The (Latest) Answer To The ‘Pause’
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 August 2014
In popular science journalism the latest is always the best. With all the explanations for the “pause” in global surface temperatures since 1997 – there are now over 30 of them – it is always the most recently published one that is the “answer.”
This time it’s the Atlantic Ocean that’s to blame. A paper published in Science says that a 30-year periodicity warms and cools the world by sequestering heat below the ocean’s surface and then releasing it.
The paper concerned is not an impressive one. It starts off assuming the answer it seeks and finds it! Since the emphasis is on the Atlantic take a look at their data for surface temperature and ocean heat content (OHC.) As you can see OHC is declining, as the surface temperature remains static. Incidentally, a few error bars on the graphs would have been illuminating and would have altered a false impression given by the graphs data’s precision.
The OHC data comes from the Argo array that has been in place for about a decade. When talking to people about Argo I have heard many comments about how it is obviously showing a global increase in OHC over that period but this is something that is not entirely born out by the data, and will be the subject of a future post.
Before the Atlantic it was the Pacific storing heat beneath the waves and taking it away from the atmosphere. Some scientists were quite confident that it was at the root of most of the “pause” and some still are despite the recent attention on the Atlantic Ocean. Even the authors of the recent Science paper say they are “not downplaying the role of the Pacific.” So there you have it. It is the Atlantic that is the cause of the “pause,” and it is the Pacific that is the cause of the “pause” as well. I’m glad that’s clear.
For those who are impressed with some of the media’s reports that the “pause” has its best explanation to date there are two papers, here and here, published in Nature Climate Change at the same time that say it is, most definitely, due to the Pacific.
The language of science journalism is interesting here. Note that the “pause” has been “seized” upon by “climate change sceptics and puzzled scientists,” and that the “pause” happened after “decades of rapid warming.” (Note to Editor: recent warming started around 1980. The 80s hardly saw “rapid warming” and the warming had stopped by the later half of the 90s.)
You don’t have to look very deeply at the science to realise that, despite the headlines, no one has come up with an answer to the “pause.” Some place their faith that there is a major driver – the Atlantic or the Pacific for instance – that can explain most of it. Others admit that there will not be any one cause for the “pause” and that it is likely to be the result of a patchwork of influences. If so then they have to explain why such a patchwork has for 17 years kept the global surface temperature statistically flat in the face of rising greenhouse gas concentrations – surely one of the most remarkable balancing acts in the history of science.
For many the proof of what is causing the “pause” will not be forthcoming until it goes away and what is expected to be accelerated global warming resumes. But since whatever the culprit is would have been a very significant contributor to the pre “pause” warming in the 80s and 90s, one wonders how swift will be that acceleration?
Feedback: [email protected]
See also: David Whitehouse: The Global Warming Standstill
4) 39 Guesses About The Global Warming ‘Pause’ (And Counting)
The Hockey Schtick, 24 August 2014
An updated list of at least 29 32 36 38 39 excuses for the 18 year ‘pause’ in global warming, including recent scientific papers, media quotes, blogs, and related debunkings:
1) Low solar activity
2) Oceans ate the global warming [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]
3) Chinese coal use [debunked]
4) Montreal Protocol
5) What ‘pause’? [debunked] [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]
6) Volcanic aerosols [debunked]
7) Stratospheric Water Vapor
8) Faster Pacific trade winds [debunked]
9) Stadium Waves
10) ‘Coincidence!’
11) Pine aerosols
12) It’s “not so unusual” and “no more than natural variability”
13) “Scientists looking at the wrong ‘lousy’ data” http://
14) Cold nights getting colder in Northern Hemisphere
15) We forgot to cherry-pick models in tune with natural variability [debunked]
16) Negative phase of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation
17) AMOC ocean oscillation
18) “Global brightening” has stopped
19) “Ahistorical media”
20) “It’s the hottest decade ever” Decadal averages used to hide the ‘pause’[debunked]
21) Few El Ninos since 1999
22) Temperature variations fall “roughly in the middle of the AR4 model results”
23) “Not scientifically relevant”
24) The wrong type of El Ninos
25) Slower trade winds [debunked]
26) The climate is less sensitive to CO2 than previously thought [see also]
27) PDO and AMO natural cycles and here
28) ENSO
29) Solar cycle driven ocean temperature variations
30) Warming Atlantic caused cooling Pacific [paper] [debunked by Trenberth & Wunsch]
31) “Experts simply do not know, and bad luck is one reason”
32) IPCC climate models are too complex, natural variability more important
33) NAO & PDO
34) Solar cycles
35) Scientists forgot “to look at our models and observations and ask questions”
36) The models really do explain the “pause” [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]
37) As soon as the sun, the weather and volcanoes – all natural factors – allow, the world will start warming again. Who knew?
38) Trenberth’s “missing heat” is hiding in the Atlantic, not Pacific as Trenberth claimed [debunked] [Dr. Curry’s take] [Author: “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus”]
39) ”Slowdown” due to “a delayed rebound effect from 1991 Mount Pinatubo aerosols and deep prolonged solar minimum”
5) Climate Nonsensus: Only Half Of U.S. Meteorologists Think Global Warming Is Man-Made
The Hockey Schtick, 24 August 2014
The American Meteorological Society has released updated polling results of their membership [26.3% response rate] which shows only 52% agree with the so-called “consensus” that global warming is mostly man-made. The poll finds “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.”
In a must-read post today by Dr. Judith Curry, she explains why the IPCC attribution claim with 95% confidence that climate change is mostly man-made fails the most basic principles of logic, is unsupportable, that the IPCC and the Gavin’s of the world are the parties who are “making things up.” Therefore, the meteorologists in this poll who likewise claim to know that most climate change is man-made also fail basic logical analysis and thus this opinion is more political than scientific. The AMS poll confirms that opinions on AGW are to a significant degree driven by political views rather than science.
7) And Finally: Tampering With Climate Data Is Not A New Problem
Real Science, 26 August 2014
Steven Goddard
In 1907, the US Weather Bureau discussed tampering with meteorological data.
They described it as a crime, and said that it was up to the “independent press” (i.e. bloggers) to repress all “cheats and hoaxes” and “defend the truth and the best interests of the whole nation as against the self-interest of a few”
