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Comments 51301 to 51350:

  1. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Reach New Record
    YubeDude, Look for "Greenhouse Gas Concentrations" news in Previous article.
  2. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    I think the World Bank President doth protest too much in his repeated assurances that the World Bank is doing its part in working to curb the likelihood of 2100 temperature exceeding 2°C above those of 1850. The Bank is certainly not doing enough nor does it have appropriate policies. The latter should include the proviso that financial assistance will only be provided to countries which implement verifiable measures to reduce CO2 emissions. Such a policy would presumably obviate the present Bank practice of funding production and use of fossil fuels to produce energy. The findings of the report tell us little we did not know before and in the case of predicted rise in average global sea level rise (SLR of 0.5 – 1.0m by 2100) are a major, dangerous underestimation, likely to engender complacency, lack of planning and inertia rather than timely action. Given that rising sea level is primarily caused by the magnitude of mass loss of land based ice and thermal expansion of seawater, it must be assumed the authors are either unaware of present accelerating ice loss, or assume that it is magically going to slow for the rest of this century.
  3. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Reach New Record
    news release link???
  4. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    The World Bank? Don't trust 'em; they're a bunch of warmist watermelons.
  5. Radiative Balance, Feedback, and Runaway Warming
    Hi Chris- It's a very illuminating post, but a very simplified model compared to the earth. Methane has chemical reducing effects as well as greenhouse effects. According to Isaksen, these chemical effects (which can be very strongly non-linear) can lead to very strong positive feedback, from the production of ozone, secondary CO2, stratospheric water vapor, and increased atmospheric lifetime of methane due to exhaustion of the hydroxyl radical oxidation mechanism. It would be interesting (and probably necessary) to apply your modeling to Isaksen's atmospheric chemistry change results, to come to any conclusions about true runaway greenhouse effects, I think. I think Isaksen and his team have uncovered the explanation for the severity of some past mass extinction events - the atmospheric chemistry effects of methane. These chemical effects change the chemical composition of the atmosphere, in the direction of a primordial reducing atmosphere, with a stronger greenhouse effect. One such probable severe near runaway greenhouse event, a mere 250 million years ago (only a few percent of the age of the earth), the End Permian, killed on the order of 90% of species then existing. And the sun, according to the standard model of stellar evolution, is a couple of percent hotter now. Strong atmospheric chemistry feedback to climate warming from Arctic methane emissions
    The magnitude and feedbacks of future methane release from the Arctic region are unknown. Despite limited documentation of potential future releases associated with thawing permafrost and degassing methane hydrates, the large potential for future methane releases calls for improved understanding of the interaction of a changing climate with processes in the Arctic and chemical feedbacks in the atmosphere. Here we apply a “state of the art” atmospheric chemistry transport model to show that large emissions of CH4 would likely have an unexpectedly large impact on the chemical composition of the atmosphere and on radiative forcing (RF). The indirect contribution to RF of additional methane emission is particularly important. It is shown that if global methane emissions were to increase by factors of 2.5 and 5.2 above current emissions, the indirect contributions to RF would be about 250% and 400%, respectively, of the RF that can be attributed to directly emitted methane alone. Assuming several hypothetical scenarios of CH4 release associated with permafrost thaw, shallow marine hydrate degassing, and submarine landslides, we find a strong positive feedback on RF through atmospheric chemistry. In particular, the impact of CH4 is enhanced through increase of its lifetime, and of atmospheric abundances of ozone, stratospheric water vapor, and CO2 as a result of atmospheric chemical processes. Despite uncertainties in emission scenarios, our results provide a better understanding of the feedbacks in the atmospheric chemistry that would amplify climate warming.
    Hansen's runaway greenhouse still seems plausible to me. If there had not been past mass extinctions apparently due to massive releases of methane from the hydrates, a true runaway greenhouse would look unlikely. As it is, with methane release from the hydrates (and probable atmospheric chemistry effects) looking like a plausible explanation for several past mass extinction events, a true runaway greenhouse still looks quite possible to me. The sun is hotter, now. Let your modelling approach the complexity of the major feedbacks present in the actual atmosphere of the earth, and I'll admit that you are entitled to make conclusions based on your modelling. At a minimum, you need curves for ozone and nitrous oxide, I think. Keep in mind that the reducing effects of methane on the oceans could plausibly produce large amounts of nitrous oxide. As it is, you've left out the atmospheric (and oceanic) chemistry effects of methane. The atmospheric chemistry effects of methane are very likely important, and its oceanic chemistry effects may be important. You could do us all a service by using Isaksen's paper as a guide, and including his stuff in your modelling.
  6. 2012 SkS Bi-Weekly News Roundup #3
    There is something surreal about this weeks news. Every story concerns a real climate impact being felt by ordinary folk. The second story from the top talks about the reasons - CO2 concentrations. Only the top story, about delegates meeting at an ultra modern resort in the Middle East, in a bubble of comfort, seems divorced from the real world.
  7. Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    Snorbett General comment, based on my limited understanding of climate modelling. Basically you are trying to package up the known physics into rules, then let the rulesplay out. If in the playing out, it ain't quite right, you know some part of what you have put into the package doesn't match reality. If you have nothing better, you parametrerize. But it is always better to plug in more physics if you can. So this statement is probably not quite right: 'I understand, in general terms, how the models work; qualitatively they work the same way that the parameterized models commonly used in calculation of flow in pipes work. That is construct a model that contains the appropriate factors, then conduct measurements to define values for the various parameters included with the term for each important factor.' Climate models aren't quite like flow in pipes models - they operate in 4 dimensions for a start - 3 of space plus time. They model a mix of broad physics and some parametrised aspects. Then let the consequences of these interconnections play out. So although the model contains 'factors' - based on physics - for small scale interconnections in the system, importantly, if you have captured the basic physics correctly, this constrains how much the 'factors' can influence things. Your 'factors' have to produce results that obey the Laws of Thermodynamics for example at each scale. 'My question is how did the modelers find values for the concentrations and particle size distributions of the particles in the air between 1945 and 1975? These parameters, among others, are critical as Composer99 noted, if one is to calculate the albedo change attributable to particle concentrations.' One can make reasonable estimates of what the types of sources were for particles based on existing technologies - lots of coal fires for example. Also, the extra knowledge we might seek to add from the past isn't confined tojust drivers like aerosols. It can also include things like any issues with the temperature record we are comparing the models against. Both can (and certainly do) have errors. So researchers need to be looking for errors/inaccuracies in both the model conclusions, and the historical evidence. For example, the recent update to the HadSST sea surface temperature record include corrections for an observed bias in the data, strongest during WWII, as a result of the mix of nations that were involved in measuring sea surface temperatures changing significantly during that period. Different nations used different sampling methods on their ships, each with it's own bias. If the proprtion of nations involved in SST sampling didn't change, no problemo. But during WWII, there was a huge change - problemo.They have ven been able to date the major shift reversing the change to the nearest month - Aug 1945. Similarly the record of land temperatures strongly shows that the warming in the 30's particularly wasn't a GLOBAL warming. It was focussed very much in the high northern hemisphere. Possibly primarily in the atlantic sector of the Arctic. And including the possibility that some of it may have been an atrefact of the growth of the number of meteorological stations in the Arctic from virtually none, to a moderate number by the 1950's. Its possible that someof the warming was an artefact of the station coverage during that period. So when we look at how well models capture the warming back then and into the 50's-70's, we have to include the possibility that the 'cooling' in the 50's to 70's wasn't as pronounced because the warming in the 30's/40's may not have been as great.
  8. Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    Perseus "Let's hope the IPCC accept this evidence to upgrade their level of confidence. " Lets also hope they accept the evidence since the last report to upgrade their use of language to forestall the deliberate obfuscators. How does anyone write something that is responsible & accurate while at the same time trying to prevent the obfuscators from cherry-picking it to say that black is white?
  9. It's El Niño
    Bob, 1) Regarding your first point: The sea surface temperature is of course strongly influenced by ENSO and interdecadal variability. Now when you are taking the ensemble mean of CMIP3/5 models, you are effectively averaging out all the internal variability, so the ensemble mean is just the expected response due to external forcing (e.g. solar, GHG, aerosol etc). You are comparing data with a particular realization of internal variability to data with internal variability filtered out. You are effectively comparing apples to oranges, so of course they look different. To actually make a sensible analysis, you will at the very least have to look into internal variability of each model run, which entail comparing a large number individual model runs. To answer your question, a far more plausible explanation is internal variability (e.g. PDO). 2) Regarding your second point, (i) What scaling and time shifting have you applied to the NINO3.4 data? (ii) You said " According to numerous peer-reviewed papers, surface temperatures respond proportionally to El Niño and La Niña events, but it’s obvious they do not." Can you provide references?
  10. There is no consensus
    SB, context is everything. How are current conditions similar to Cambrian conditions in terms of major forcings/feedbacks (solar output, Milankovitch cycling, continental position, general circulation, biosphere, carbon cycle, etc.)? C99 - either shenanigans or simply unfamiliar with the history and literature of the theory. Looks like a job for Richard Alley.
  11. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    (-snip-).
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Please familiarize yourself with this site's Comments Policy; additionally, please read the Big Picture post.

    Finally, commenting at Skeptical Science works best if you first limit the scope of your comment to that of the thread on which you post your comment and then follow up on those threads to see what respondents have said in response to you. There are quite literally thousands of threads here at SkS; if you do not engage with the intent to enter into a dialogue to discuss the OPs of the threads on which you place comments, you invite moderation of your comments.

    Off-topic snipped.

  12. There is no consensus
    Well, I'm calling shenanigans.
  13. There is no consensus
    97 is one good number but not so absolute as 100 of the theologians. They are 100 percent sure of god. And they are scientists too. All the same, their over confidence will not bring such a creature to real existence. (-snip-). According the data one real scientist only can decide that the information about climate is still scarce and there are many unknown components. (-snip-).
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Please familiarize yourself with this site's Comments Policy; additionally, please read the Big Picture post.

    Finally, commenting at Skeptical Science works best if you first limit the scope of your comment to that of the thread on which you post your comment and then follow up on those threads to see what respondents have said in response to you. There are quite literally thousands of threads here at SkS; if you do not engage with the intent to enter into a dialogue to discuss the OPs of the threads on which you place comments, you invite moderation of your comments.

    Off-topic and ideology snipped.

  14. It's not bad
    setit-bagain doesn't appear to be down with that whole "read the body of literature" thing. My life would be much happier if I never had to see that goofy Harris & Mann chart-picture-thing again.
  15. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    From setit-bagain's comment:
    Before 10 000 years the ice is at least 3000 kilometers south than today. That means average retreating of ice with 300 meters per year. We can speak about accelerated global warming only if the ice retreating is faster than 300 meters per year
    ... wait, what? Care to provide some sources for this? In addition I note two rather glaring errors in the Harris & Mann drawing: - "Nomanic Time"? - "Grecian Empire"? Are there any sources justifying this terminology? In addition, the Harris & Mann drawing lists its sources as: Global temperature chart was complied by Climatologist Cliff Harris that combined the following resources: "Climate and the Affairs of Men" by Dr. Iben Browing. "Climate...The Key to Understanding Business Cycles...The Raymond H. Wheeler Papers. By Michael Zahorchak Weather Science Foundation Papers in Crystal Lake, Illinois. [Bold & italics original.] Those don't look like credible sources from the expert literature to me. I fear, setit-bagain, that you have been badly misled.
  16. It's not bad
    And a further addition in addition to falseness - during HCO global temperatures were quite possibly warmer than today and definitely warmer in parts of the globe. However the transition to warm and cold was very slow compared to today's rate of change. Rate of change is what matter, not the absolute temperature.
  17. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    setit-bagain, do you accept the greenhouse gas theory?
  18. It's not bad
    setit-bagain: Assuming your comment survives moderation (it may not as it appears to be little more than baseless sloganeering) the simple fact is that your claim is unequivocally false. See here, or of course the IPCC AR4 (Working Group 1, §6.6) for summaries of the evidence. In addition, please substantiate your claims, with reference to the peer-reviewed literature that (a) there is a predicted apocalypse widely accepted among climate scientists, and (b) that even if this prediction is accepted, that it is false. Finally, your claim is, in and of itself, quite vague, so for a productive discussion please come up with a list of specific "fundamental errors" you feel exist, with substantiation in the literature to support your claims, and bring them up on the pertinent threads.
  19. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    setit-bagain, you are sadly falling victim of "misinformation" (to call it politely). To check out the truth of greenland, see Greenland used to be green. Your 3000 year "reconstruction" has problems compared to any published science (eg see here but for all detail see Ch6 of IPCC Ar4 report. For starters, LIA was not that cold, and MWP was cooler than today. The provenance of the drawing (it couldnt be called a graph) appears to be "climatologist" Cliff Harris. His background is insurance law and has no science publications. Get the correct data before jumping to conclusions. If it doesnt come from peer-reviewed science, then chances are someone is trying to mislead you - usually because proposed action is incompatible with political beliefs.
  20. It's not bad
    A thousand years ago climate is warmer than today. But we can not see in that period any traces of the predicted apocalypse connected to warming. It means that in calculations and models of climatologists is lurking fundamental err.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Please familiarize yourself with this site's Comments Policy; additionally, please read the Big Picture post.

    Finally, commenting at Skeptical Science works best if you first limit the scope of your comment to that of the thread on which you post your comment and then follow up on those threads to see what respondents have said in response to you. There are quite literally thousands of threads here at SkS; if you do not engage with the intent to enter into a dialogue to discuss the OPs of the threads on which you place comments, you invite moderation of your comments.

    Note that your first statement is an unsupported assertion. When making assertions counter to that which is the understood state of the science, it is customary here to then also furnish a link to a reputable source which supports your assertion.

  21. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Also the coin has another side. According historical point of view your scheme is about this morning toward noon but not about yesterday or the day before. A thousand years ago Greenland is really green. There are farms and orchards. Today we can find there only polar grass. And according only by this fact all turmoil about accelerated global warming is meaningless. About average the problem is almost the same. Before 10 000 years the ice is at least 3000 kilometers south than today. That means average retreating of ice with 300 meters per year. We can speak about accelerated global warming only if the ice retreating is faster than 300 meters per year. Cheers.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Please familiarize yourself with this site's Comments Policy; additionally, please read the Big Picture post.

    Finally, commenting at Skeptical Science works best if you first limit the scope of your comment to that of the thread on which you post your comment and then follow up on those threads to see what respondents have said in response to you. There are quite literally thousands of threads here at SkS; if you do not engage with the intent to enter into a dialogue to discuss the OPs of the threads on which you place comments, you invite moderation of your comments.

    Off-topic stricken out.

  22. It's El Niño

    KR, Philippe Chantreau, Rob Painting, Sphaerica, et al.: The basis of this discussion appears to have been this video that appeared on the WUWT-TV webcast. Since some of you have not watched the video, you would have missed the bases for it. Therefore, let’s start with satellite-era sea surface temperature data and let me then ask you to explain the following:

    The East Pacific Ocean (90S-90N, 180-80W) has not warmed since the start of the satellite-based Reynolds OI.v2 sea surface temperature dataset, yet the multi-model mean of the CMIP3 (IPCC AR4) and CMIP5 (IPCC AR5) simulations of sea surface temperatures say, if they were warmed by anthropogenic forcings, they should have warmed approximately 0.42 to 0.44 deg C. Why hasn’t the East Pacific warmed?

    The detrended sea surface temperature anomalies for the Rest of the World (90S-90N, 80W-180) diverge significantly from scaled NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies in 4 places. Other than those four-multiyear periods, the detrended sea surface temperature anomalies for the Rest of the World mimic the scaled ENSO index. The first and third divergences are caused by the eruptions or El Chichon and Mount Pinatubo. Why does the detrended data diverge from the ENSO index during the 1988/89 and 1998/99/00/01 La Niñas? According to numerous peer-reviewed papers, surface temperatures respond proportionally to El Niño and La Niña events, but it’s obvious they do not.

    I’ve answered those two questions in the video. Can you answer those questions? The data is available in an easy to use form through the KNMI Climate Explorer. Feel free to confirm my results in the above graphs.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] To reiterate Ian's questions, so the dialogue can proceed:

    1) Do you have a link to the specific dataset(s)?

    2) Is the NINO3.4 data processed in anyway? and if so, how?

  23. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    It's like hitting the emergency brake without letting go off the gas pedal. We have to prepare as individuals and heads of families for a future that will include partial or full social collapse.
  24. It's El Niño
    Oh, that's an interesting analysis Sphaerica. The next step would be to take the difference between NINO and SST, and do an automated breakpoint analysis on it. That might give an objective test of whether Nina breakpoints are better than Nino breakpoints, and whether either is really reflected by the data. A more rudimentary test would be to compare the AIC between a linear detrend and both sets of piecewise constant offsets. Tamino's post 'Steps' covers the methods.
  25. Cornelius Breadbasket at 07:57 AM on 22 November 2012
    Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    michael Fair point. This site describes the science in 'Basic', 'Intermediate' and 'Advanced'. I wonder if it may be a good model for the IPCC?
  26. It's El Niño
    Do we get to see where all our extra energy is coming from in Kayell's Part 2, or will that be left as an exercise for the reader? Put another way, how is ENSO creating all the extra energy we're seeing? How long can ENSO continue raising the global temperature? If as we've seen the ocean stubbornly continues to warm during the period Kayell is describing, where's the energy source? Or is there a disproportionate increasingly refrigerated cool patch in the E. Pacific we've missed? A simple question with an answer readily to hand, surely?
  27. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    These “scientific geniuses” make it sound like the 0.8 degrees we have already had is just fine. Do I really need to list the numerous adverse, extreme weather events we have suffered already? And it’s not just heat waves. We already have unprecedented melting of the Arctic. We have seen the evidence of the Greenland ice sheet melting. We have the evidence of the Iceland ice cap melting. We have the evidence of warming along the Antarctic Peninsula and the resultant collapse of the Larsen ice shelves and rapid melting of the glaciers they once buttressed. All with 0.8 degrees! Who ever said more warming is safe for civilization? If Jim Young Kim is going to “hold warming below 2 C” what will he hold onto? What is the magic brake lever he will grab? "Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, “climatically important” amounts of carbon dioxide and other compounds emitted today would continue to influence the atmosphere for thousands of years, Caldeira said." (in 2011) "The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 [2009] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Let’s keep whistling past that old graveyard and accept the report from an organization that continues to fund coal power plants in those same poor regions they talk about in their report. As the climate spirals further away from manageable our response seems to get wackier.
  28. It's El Niño
    Kayell, FIrst off, I should say I appreciate you putting together the summary. I have a few questions regarding the data. 1) Do you have a link to the specific dataset(s)? 2) Is the NINO3.4 data processed in anyway? and if so, how?
  29. We're heading into an ice age
    Nonsense. You forget about the most important forcing present today, the previously-sequestered, anthropogenically-derived fossil-fuel CO2 slug we are injecting back into the carbon cycle. This forcing simply wasn't present at previous interglacial/glacial transitions. But then, actual scientists have already looked into this (as opposed to semimythical cycles); let's examine the facts, shall we: The oceans have been absorbing an extra 2 Hiroshima-bombs-worth of energy, PER SECOND, since 1960. That warming continues to this day, unabated. Per Tzedakis et al 2012
    “glacial inception would require CO2 concentrations below preindustrial levels of 280 ppmv”
    (for reference, we are at about 391 right now…and climbing). Earlier, Tyrrell et al 2007 examined this, concluding that we have already skipped the next glacial epoch. Furthermore, Tyrrell concludes that if we continue our present fossil fuel consumption,
    "Our research shows why atmospheric CO2 will not return to pre-industrial levels after we stop burning fossil fuels. It shows that it if we use up all known fossil fuels it doesn't matter at what rate we burn them. The result would be the same if we burned them at present rates or at more moderate rates; we would still get the same eventual ice-age-prevention result."
    and
    "Burning all recoverable fossil fuels could lead to avoidance of the next five ice ages."
    So no glacial epochs the next million years… Facts, like tiggers, are wonderful things, for those who have them.
  30. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    "Is 1998 actually the hottest year on record?" In the contiguous US 1998 is the warmest year on record. The trend since then, however, has been down. 2012 is almost certainly to be the "new" warmest year on record in the US. Nevertheless, the 1998 record high annual temperature will have to be broken by almost two full °F for the downward trend to be broken. This seems unlikely. But, who knows, 1917 is the coldest year on record and it was replaced by the warmest in just four years. The average annual temperature went up 3.7°F from 1917 through 1921.
  31. It's El Niño
    Kayell, Well, you got me to thinking, and I realized that Tisdale is so close to being right, but he got the most important parts wrong. See, El Niño events confuse everyone because they raise observed atmospheric temperatures, so people think that means "ah ha! warming!" But in reality, the planet sheds more heat during El Niño events, because the warmer atmosphere emits more radiation. It's sort of like a bathtub overflowing. What matters more is La Niña events, where the atmosphere is cool, but this means that the planet doesn't radiate heat well (it's basically trapped in the ocean), so this must be what is really causing global warming (or, rather, a lack of global cooling, as Jo Nova likes to say). So I broke the temperatures up at large La Niña events, and used that to "detrend" the global temperatures. Let's take a look (I helped you out by adding blue vertical bars where I broke the temperature record... the original temperature record is in green, while red is the "detrended" temperatures): Of course I didn't rescale the ENSO and Global Temperatures to match, a step you performed but seemingly failed to mention. Still... Hmmm. My graph looks closer than yours, using Tisdale's method. So I must be right!!! La Niña is causing global warming!!!! Or is it pirates? Hang on. If I can find a graph of pirate populations, I'm sure I can make pirates the cause of global warming. [This climate science stuff is so easy! Anyone can do it!]
  32. We're heading into an ice age
    The isotope proxies for temperature and glacial ice volume correlate with the Earth’s orbital variations, but the correlations are far from perfect. The “internal” climate drivers of glacial-ice area, oceanic circulation, and water vapor transport interact to cause the large 100,000-year spikes and other noise variation in the long-term records of Vostok ice and ocean sediments. One such driver is the loss of northern perennial polar ocean sea ice due to CO2 warming. That ice may be gone by 2020 according to a simple extrapolation. There is a plausible connection between its loss and the initiation of the last ice age 120,000 years ago, and the next ice age may likewise begin in the next decade – because of our current warming. I am working on it, so stay tuned.
  33. It's El Niño
    Here is PART 1: Like I said, Tisdale's version of the ENSO argument is pretty straightforward. It is NOT based on some foregone conclusion about the cause of global warming. It is a direct result of an inevitable conclusion arrived at AFTER looking at the real-world observational data at hand, an explanation derived from what we actually see happening in the Earth system as time passes, AND on what we know about the ENSO process and how it is observed to work, both in the Pacific and globally, rather than from a theoretical construct of assumed physical net effects on the complex planetary climate system as a whole. The argument follows the scientific method thus: I (or Bob) start out by observing a curious and, quite frankly, striking similarity between the NINO3.4 and the global SSTA curves over the last 30+ years (well, even much further back than this, but Tisdale's argument was always mainly based on data from the satellite era). This is certainly no new discovery. I think we can all agree on that the primary global temperature swings up and down, the large short-term variations in global temperature, are driven by the ENSO's mighty oceanic fluctuations in the East Pacific (where the NINO3.4 resides) and their worldwide impact being propagated partly by ocean currents, partly by atmospheric teleconnections. The global temperature goes up when NINO3.4 goes up (El Niño). And the global temperature goes down when the NINO3.4 goes down (La Niña). What happens then if we 'detrend' the global SSTA since 1981 and scale it against the NINO3.4? That is, we take away the obvious upward trend in the global to see how close the fit with NINO really is. This is only out of curiosity. Scientific curiosity. No one is yet suggesting or claiming anything. We just want to take a closer look at how the different data relates to one another. So yes, I'm 'manipulating' the global curve, no need to remind me. Here is the result: Quite an astounding fit. And it will surprise no one. We know why the fit is so good. You will notice the global imprints in 1982-83/84 of the El Chichón eruption and especially in the wake of the powerful Pinatubo eruption, ~1992-95. Other than that you will see some 'extra' global heat (extra, that is, relative to a 'normal' (proportional) global response to the NINO signal) piling up during the first directly following La Niña year after a few of the El Niño's along the composite plot. But this extra heat always seems to be dissipated again shortly after this first following La Niña - the global soon after back on level with NINO. So far, so good. What's next? Yup, that significant global upward trend that I got rid of. It's there, after all. But where does it come from? How do we follow its progression? Where do we look? What do we look for? I will let you in on a little secret. When I 'detrended' the global SSTA curve in the graph above, I didn't use a statistical tool to remove a general upward trend. All I did was to pull it down at two (2) short sections: two datapoints in the last half of 1987 (July and November) and one datapoint in the beginning of 1999 (January). Why those two intervals specifically? This will become apparent as we move along (in Part 2). Bear this in mind ... There is another way of showing the exact same thing, only WITHOUT removing the long term trend from the global SSTA: (The NINO3.4 is here alligned with the global curve between 1981 and 1987/88.) (The NINO3.4 is here alligned with the global curve between 1988 and 1997/98.) (The NINO3.4 is here alligned with the global curve between 1998 and 2012.) Here is a more detailed look at the last 'level', the stretch since 1996, without volcanic impact, across the global upward shift occuring through 1998, and all the way down past the El Niño of 2009/10 and the following La Niña 2010/11: (The two red squares mark the conspicuous piling up of extra heat globally during the transitions between the particular ENSO events of El Niño 1997/98 and La Niña 1998/99 and El Niño 2009/10 and La Niña 2010/11. The first is followed by a raised global level in mean SSTA relative to the NINO3.4 curve. The second one isn't. At least, not yet.) What can we conclude from all this? Not much as of yet. Except this: Global SSTA follow and mimic the major up and down temperature swings (El Niños and La Niñas) of the East Tropical Pacific on interannual time scales. AND, they also seem to follow the TREND in NINO3.4 rather slavishly over the last 30-31 years, that is, barring two (2) specific instances of marked and sudden global upward shifts relative to NINO. That is, along virtually the entire record there is no need for an explanation of the evolution of the global curve besides the well-known relationship between it and the East Tropical Pacific - the already mentioned short-term variations, the primary ups and downs. Here there simply is no extra global warming trend outside of this close relationship, no increasing divergence between the two. But then there are the upward shifts. The only places where the global curve diverge permanently from the NINO curve. There are only (and by that I mean ONLY) two cases between 1981 and 2012 where the extra heat piled up globally after an El Niño and during the transition to the first following La Niña is never fully made up for before the ENSO pendulum turns and the heat comes in again, both in the NINO3.4 region and globally. This is during and after the second and final peak of the 1986/87/88 El Niño, on the NINO way down towards the bottom of the very deep La Niña of 1988/89, and during and especially after the peak of the 1997/98 El Niño, on the NINO way down towards the bottom of the deep La Niña of 1998/99. This can be illustrated like this: (Bear with me on the Norwegian labelling. 'Trinn' is simply 'Level'. 'Ekstra varme globalt' means 'Extra heat globally'. Notice that here the pink curve is NINO3.4 and the black one is the global.) Just give this a moment's thought. All we're doing is looking at the data. I'm just stating what the data at hand is telling us. There simply IS no steadily increasing divergence between NINO3.4 and global SSTA between late 1981 and late summer/early autumn of 2012. The ENTIRE global rise above the NINO3.4 occurs at two specific instances. Not at any other time. In my world, then these two 'specific instances' are the ones up for closer inspection. THEY need an explanation. Not the rest of the graph. We've found something interesting at specific points in the data record and we want to check them out a bit more closely. We follow the scientific method and ask ourselves: How do these sudden and marked global upward shifts come to be? Seeing how extremely influential the ENSO processes are on the regular global temperature amplitudes, it would be a strange scientific approach to all of a sudden exclude ENSO from any further involvement in the ensuing investigation, as a possible factor also in the distinct upward shifts. By all means, it hasn't yet been shown to be the case. But it would be wise to at least follow that lead. To see if something out of the ordinary might have occured in those two particular cases.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Images inserted for readability, hopefully without mistakes. It would be best if the subsequent parts have the images in-line (there is advice on HTML formatting for SkS posts here). However I would recommend that you do not proceed onto part 2 until we have had a chance to digest part 1 and for relevant questions to be answered. Please can everybody respond to this post in a calm and scientific manner.
  34. Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project
    Peter Hadfield AKA potholer54 has a good video on that. "Meet the Scientists" => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMtiyHzUiP4
  35. Models are unreliable
    On another thread, Snorbert Zangox asked:
    I wonder why, if that works so well, that the models cannot reproduce the past 16 years of temperatures not following carbon dioxide concentrations.
    This one's easy. They can. This is the output from a very simple 2-box model. I wrote it in R in ~20 lines of code. All it does is find the response function which matches forcing to temperature over the past 130 years, with an additional term to account for the substantial impact of ENSO on temperatures. Red is model, blue is GISTEMP. You can see that the model also shows similar 1998 peak with a higher trend before and lower trend after. Why? Because there have been more La Ninas over the past few years, and the difference between an El Nino and La Nina is roughtly equivalent to 15 years of warming (see for example this article). The model reproduces reality very well indeed. Now, since the ENSO cycle is chaotic, we can't predict when a run of La Ninas or El Ninos will occur, so this couldn't be predicted in advance. But if you look in the model runs for real climate models which reproduce ENSO well, you see exactly this sort of behaviour. The models predict it will happen from time to time, but not when. There is a second aspect to your question, which you reveal in the 16 year figure. I guess you are referring to the viral '16 years of no warming' story. Ask yourself the following two questions: 'Why do this stories always HadCRUT and not GISTEMP?' and 'Why does no-one ever show a comparison of the gridded data?' Now look at this image which shows the change in temperature between the beginning and the end of the period from various sources. Which datasets have the best coverage? What is going on in the regions omitted in the HadCRUT data? You should now understand why HadCRUT shows less warming that GISTEMP over this period.
    I also wonder, admittedly without having thoroughly read the papers, whether we are using an elaborate logical scheme that is circular.
    No, because we are talking about completely different models. If a climate model was being used to determine the aerosol forcing, you would have a potential case, however we are talking about completely different models. Atmospheric chemistry models are used to describe the behaviour of gasses in the atmosphere and are based on physics and chemistry which is observed in the laboratory. The results are combined with radar, IR, microwave and optical measurements to determine the state of the atmosphere - so far everything is empirical. This empirical data is tested against economic variables to determine how well the atomspheric chemistry is predicted by industrial activity. The robust agreement provides a basis for reconstructing atmospheric data from industrial activity before the observation period. The chain of inference is linear, not circular. Furthermore, no climate models are involved. (There appear to be several other approaches. Some involve climate models as a consistency check.)
  36. Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    Cornelius, Originally scientists received complaints that their reports were to numerical and that was hard for non-scientists to understand. "very likely", "likely" and other terms were specifically defined in the IPCC report so that the numbers could be removed. If people now do not understand the well defined terms, how can that be addressed?
  37. Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    Good news, Snorb! It's actually only Wednesday, not Thursday! You have all day!
  38. Snorbert Zangox at 22:23 PM on 21 November 2012
    Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    Kevin C and scaddenp It is early morning on Thanksgiving Day here in the US of A, so I have little time to pursue this in detail, but shall do that over the next few days. Kevin C wrote one can estimate fine particle emissions from fuel use data with sensitivity to geographical variations. (-snip-) (-snip-).
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Off-topic snipped.

    [KC] Model discussion belongs on this thread where I have addressed your question.

  39. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    "Thus, given that uncertainty remains about the full nature and scale of impacts, there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible. A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur—the heat must be turned down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can make that happen." From report, I would put that 2C considering it is all model based and the models so far have underpredicted well almost everything. Also doesn't include the permafrost feedbacks recently reproted, nor the facts that it uses a Climate sensitivity of 3C when appears that CS is higher as reproted by Trenbeth and from Pliocene extrapolations. New York already needs to have a planned relocation. Also uses models with far to optimistic carbon sinks, when the sinks are declining and going to keep doing so and the models in the report don't seem to have the loss sulphates effect (warming) or a full realisation of the lagged warming in the ocean (which I suspect is about to return to the surface through the AMOC circulation dynamics). So an optimistic report overall considering the new papers out since September. Then considering the shifts in mean already being seen to say the Russian heat will become a yearly event at 4C is missing the mean shift reality as it will be an 1:5 year occurance at 2C as the mean will have shifted well to the right by then. Then add in the faster tropical expansion, faster dessertification, more rain and geater extremes being seen than in these models and this wake up report is still painting an optimistic future. And as said above Dr. Anderson clearly says 2C is inevitable and 4C hardto avoid, to stay below 2C we need at most a peak 400ppm and 350ppm by 2100 and even that is only a 1:3 chance ish of being below 2C if the Pliocene data is right, 350ppm, 3-5C hotter! Paradigm shift anyone? Who has considered making room available in their homes for climate migrants yet? Stop flying, leave the car in garage whenever possible, turn the thermastat down and wear longjohns, give up on the modile phone, make gifts for christmas rather than consume more, use less energy willingly? Or is it going to be same old same old, replace what we have with "green bling" (PV panels have a very large environmental impact look up tri-nitrofloride and exactly how they made),when at peak 400ppm needed there isn't any carbon to be spending on such things anyway in an objective assessment. But if this is all doom and gloom, then get over your self, it just means living creatively and with ~90% less power, sharing, creating new employments, a new economic paradigm, a truly fair political system that cares for the masses not exploits them (the disparity between the poor and rich is rhe highest it is has ever been), and so on. This requires a gentle transformation with no enemies at all, to create a truly sustainable, vibrant and equitable world. Energetic engagement is a good cure for depression I find, and I find my depression only stems from thinking that no else will do it, but this situation cuts through all known previous possibilities and the choice is everyone together or no one at all, so fighting is futile and thus all that is left is coming together with purpose. And if you now feel that the time of change is now then change for then those around you will be more likely to change in greater and greater numbers as the reality crystalises in the collective consciousness of the world that global warming is the most serious threatening event to human civilization we have faced and at a time when life on earth is amidst a mass extinction event also caused by us (what does happen to the toxins produced by making PV panels????) We also plough billions into the wars for resources yet shouldn't we putting all our resources (everyone included) into the real war, the war to keep global warming within our adaptative capabilities, and not the wars to secure oil and inequitable wealth? Shoudln't we be planning for mass migrations, New York needs relocating as does, Tokyo, Lagos etc....?? Can't we make a problem into solution, with natural building materials and salvage, New York could be re-built elsewhere (albeit without highrises), and create a productive carbon sequestering prodcutive eco-system within its boundaries and lock tonnes of carbon into the walls of its buildings and how much active employment is that? Can't we all to come together, forget judgemental predjudices (Muslims, Christians, racial groups etc), willingly stop excessive consumption, care that we are all humans, and share any excesses willingly? And if all that seems like impossible rhetoric then maybe but the choice here is at last try or global warming will definately be unpleasant and all inclusive, and how foolish would we feel then, knowing we were pre-warned and did nothing or the wrong thing trying to maintain the power addiction we have?
  40. Cornelius Breadbasket at 19:29 PM on 21 November 2012
    Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    What I mean is "very likely" is scientific jargon, and misleading in the wrong hands.
  41. Cornelius Breadbasket at 19:27 PM on 21 November 2012
    Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    dana1981 @ 7. There is a difference between intelligent and educated ;)
  42. Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW
    And here's another one: link. I've plugged this at Real Climate, but it has received no attention, probably because it's by econometricians and published in a stats journal. But it is a completely empirical approach.
  43. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    jimb @ 1, That talk is a "must listen". I have just sat through all 59 minutes of it and can confirm it has cleared the fog from my understanding of where we are and where we are likely to be by 2050. It is a real wake-up call to those of us who already see AGW as a threat to our future. Although Dr. Anderson finishes on an optimistic note, I was not comforted. If all countries achieve the CO2 targets they are aiming at, we are headed for the diabolical future of at least 4oC warmer world, at which level it looks bad for organised human society. (Sorry about the layout - it looks as though sub /sub and sup /sup tags are not working ...) Good thing I am already on anti-depressants ...
  44. Climate's changed before
    JasonB @ 330, I have followed both your links with great interest. I am not a scientist, but my reading comprehension may be just about up to the task of understanding the pdf, if I filter it through enough red wine. The subd_zone.htm page is fascinating and, boy, has it expanded my vocabulary! Ultramafic, diapirs, amphiboles: I'm just dying to casually drop a few of those into a conversation some time. "8-)
  45. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    Will Mankind wake up before it is too late?
    From polls recently, it seems about half of us are awake and the other half have hit the snooze button on their alarms. That half are being wooed back to sleep by voices soothingly whispering "Don't worry - there is plenty of time, and anyway the alarm is a hoax." Will enough people wake up to tip the balance in favour of effective action, before it is too late? Just because we did it with CFCs and DDT does not mean much, because the cause and effect in each case was close enough in time for the problem to be visible to even the sleepiest. Not enough people live near the Arctic to see what is happening here and now and the voices of those that do see it are being drowned by the sound of snoring. AGW cause and effect are so far apart in time that the sleepyheads cannot see the problem. We continue to advocate change to avoid a future hazard, not one that is clear to the misinformed. Will mankind wake up? Yes. Before it is too late? I doubt it. Our species will get the future it deserves, one way or the other.
  46. Climate's changed before
    Doug H, Completely off-topic for this post, but related to the subject of Richard Alley's video: I recently came across research that showed that some subducting plates may make it all the way down to the bottom of the mantle, literally scraping along and piling up on the core, thousands of km down, because rock is such a poor conductor of heat that they take a really long time to melt. I found this image of plates plunging deep within the earth to be quite fascinating, although I can't remember where I read it now. I just did a quick search and turned up this paper: http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ahutko/Publications/HLGR_Nature_2006.pdf Look at figure 4 in particular. As Richard Alley's song indicates, and this page confirms, the volcanoes above subduction zones are not actually emitting the melted plate (as I had assumed) but rather magma that has melted due to the water being carried down by the melting plate.
  47. Climate's changed before
    JasonB:
    Three other witnesses aren't sure what they saw and even disagree with each other on what happened, but all agree it couldn't have been murder because that would require the state to raise taxes to employ a police force and one objects strenuously to the 97 others being so certain of what they witnessed.
    Touché.
  48. Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank
    I listened to Dr. Kevin Anderson's talk, "Real Clothes for the Emperor" and he seemed quite convinced that restricting the temperature rise to 2 degrees C was pretty well impossible. He seemed to make some good points. His presentation is available in many places, including here; http://climatesoscanada.org/blog/2012/11/19/watch-kevin-anderson-real-clothes-for-the-emperor-nov-6-2012-lecture-at-bristol-university/ My appologies for the clumsy link.
  49. Climate's changed before
    JasonB @ 327, That is an extraordinary piece of teaching. A 3 minute video I will remember for a long time. I've even emailed the link to my family, so they can all enjoy it. If only science had been this much fun at school, my career path would have been very different. Thanks for posting it.
  50. Climate's changed before
    Composer99: You are right, initially I took the large gap before the last two paragraphs as a "quote delimiter" but afterwards it occurred to me that it might still be part of the quote and checking the page at the URL given confirms this. Sorry Bill. Looking at what was written on that page, someone has clearly gone to a lot of effort to put together an argument that a little more effort on research would have told them was attacking a strawman. Even a cursory examination of the IPCC reports shows that mainstream science is well aware that "other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming" because it even quantifies those other factors in the attribution analysis! That mistake then leads to the erroneous conclusion that all that's required to disprove AGW is to show that other factors must have also influenced climate in the past. The underlying logic is the same as "Lightning has caused fires long before man came along, therefore arson doesn't exist". Or, "murder doesn't exist because people have died of natural causes in the past", used by the defence in a murder trial where the accused was seen by 97 witnesses standing over the body of the victim with a bloody knife in his hand shouting "I'm glad I killed the bastard!". (Apologies to BlackAdder...) (Three other witnesses aren't sure what they saw and even disagree with each other on what happened, but all agree it couldn't have been murder because that would require the state to raise taxes to employ a police force and one objects strenuously to the 97 others being so certain of what they witnessed.) Doug H: If you liked the talk, be sure to check out Ring of Fire. :-) It's hard to reconcile the reality of a funny, geeky climate scientist with the portrayal of them by commentors on sites like WUWT and Climate, Etc.

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