Writing in Science, Met Office researchers project that at least half of the years between 2009 and 2014 are likely to exceed existing records.
However, the Hadley Centre researchers said that the influence of natural climatic variations were likely to dampen the effects of emissions from human activities between now and 2009.
But over the decade as a whole, they project the global average temperature in 2014 to be 0.3C warmer than 2004.
Currently, 1998 is the warmest year on record, when the global mean surface temperature was 14.54C (58.17F).
BBC August 2007: Ten-year climate model unveiled
Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year as a result of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.
Mr Jarraud told the BBC that the effect was likely to continue into the summer, depressing temperatures globally by a fraction of a degree.
This would mean that temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.
A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked and the earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than predicted.
Experts at the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for forecasting in Exeter said the world could expect another record temperature within five years or less, probably associated with another episode of El Nino.
(Unmolested version)
BBC April 2008: Global temperatures ‘to decrease’
The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
BBC 1 May 2008: Next decade ‘may see no warming’
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The trick, Paul, is to say that the models individually may be wrong but the ‘model ensemble’, that is the models collectively, can not be wrong so long as the obs. temps. fall within the error bars of the ‘model ensemble’. Incredible.
Add to that, proteus, that the error bars on the model ensembles are huge, “floor to ceiling”, and encompass all manner of futures including a cooling Earth.
It has been a fascinating debate on Climate Audit on this. A couple of AGW proponents have paraded their “gotcha” on a certain paper (critical of models) by Douglass; they say the paper has a technical flaw in its error bars.
But by doing this they have inadvertently let a cat out of the bag: that the “correct” error bars on the models are huge.
What use are such models as a guide to major changes in public and economic policy for decades to come? This is the bigger question. The AGW proponents don’t seem to want to face this, and keep returning to that technical flaw in that one obscure paper.
Braddles, yes, I’ve been following that discussion as well. I also chanced reading some of the responses to Pielke Jnr at Prometheus:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001413global_cooling_consi.html
The some of the responses will make you chuckle and very angry.
Statistical induction is a wonderful tool, developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by people such as Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and Ronald Fisher. It resolved David Hume’s 18th century criticism of induction.
Alas, with the advent of computers and statistical packages, many kinds of ‘scientists’ dabble in cookbook statistics, without a sound background, either in statistics, or even in basic logic. The result is a ‘scientific’ literature riddled with dodgy conclusions, because the referees lack the insight to spot them. Most referees do not even ask to look at the raw data.
How about a return to the medieval university’s first year trivium of logic, grammar, and rhetoric? Logic for clear thinking, grammar for clear expression, and rhetoric because poachers make the best gamekeepers.
The navier model used was never proved as is now proven by their predictions not even being close !and as yet there still is no evidence of c02 having anything to do with any weather cycles and at the end of the day no one not even the geedy greens can change weather cycles thats why it is a scam for taxes!
The navier model used was never proved as is now proven by their predictions not even being close !and as yet there still is no evidence of c02 having anything to do with any weather cycles and at the end of the day no one not even the geedy greens can change weather cycles thats why it is a scam for taxes!
“But by doing this they have inadvertently let a cat out of the bag: that the “correct” error bars on the models are huge.”
Yes that reflect the uncertainty that is inherent in any model. In using an ensemble of different models over thousands of runs the idea is that they will, over all, have less error.
However they are all computer models and can only give an idea of what may happen. The ONLY people that seize on them as arbiters of truth are skeptics. Scientists use them as tools only, not prediction devices.
The fundamental science that AGW is based on has not changed. We are still producing billions of tons of CO2 and now methane is rising again. Both these gases are greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases still trap heat from the sun. Either way when the natural systems that are depressing global temperatures go away then we will remain with the underlying fundamentals that no amount of computer model bashing can make go away.
The year 1998, that you skeptics like to crow about , was an exceptionally hot year. Did this upswing in temperatures prove global warming? No! Similarly a cold spell does not disprove it.
Declaring global warming over now is like removing fire equipment from a building because there has not a fire this year. The potential for a fire still remains.
Ender, just remember that nobody has actually proven that there is a greeenhouse gas effect in the atmosphere of planet earth. As I recall, the prize for any person able to prove this still stands at $150,000. Should be easy pickings for any climate scientist worth his or her salt. But as yet nobody has come forward with a proof.
It is an assertiion, that is all.
PP
Ender,
Come to think of it, why don’t you provide the proof of the earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect and collect the money yourself?
PP
Ender stated, “However they are all computer models and can only give an idea of what may happen. The ONLY people that seize on them as arbiters of truth are skeptics.”
Ender, you’re joking, right? The entire catastrophic anthropogenic global warming house of cards is built on nothing more than highly uncertain computer models. The only real, incontrovertible data we have is that in the past century, global temperatures have increased around .75 deg C, and CO2 concentrations have increased about 100 ppm. Even if we make the assumption that all the CO2 increases were caused by mankind and all the temperature increases were caused by CO2 increases, then simple physics tells us that the next 100 ppm increase in CO2 concentrations will cause less than another .75 deg C increase in temperature. (Look up Beer’s law sometime.) Any temperature increase beyond this is only possible in the fevered imagination of a computer modeler by assuming large, heretofore unseen, nonlinear, positive feedbacks.
ender; I wandered where you slunk off to; the last time we “communicated” was when you expressed disbelieve about Svensgard and Friis-Christensen’s work on cosmic rays; Spencer’s work on clouds has, of course come along. What remains of interest to me, however, is that the mechanism of CO2 induced atmospheric warming simply doesn’t work; Weart’s Real Climate piece, “A Saturated Gassy Argument” never addressed the operation of Wien’s Law and Beer’s Law which, along with Stefan Boltzman, means that any ‘heating’ properties of CO2 are rapidly diminished. But most of all the CO2 heating model is predicated on Arrhenius’s wild atmospheric ideas, which have been demolished by Ferenc Miskolczi’s realistic, finite, semi-transparent model which preserves radiative equilibrium; something which occurs at high altitudes in any event due to the divergence of Maxwellian and Planck temperatures. Whatever ‘heating’ is occuring isn’t because of CO2.
Love these unreferenced theoretical discussions. Pity the increase in longwave is about what theory would expect. How inconvenient for deniers.
creep; what’s unreferenced or theoretical about Weart, Miskolczi, Beer, Wien etc? As to the increase in longwave; measured by NASAGISS perhaps? As to the theory; pity about the troposphere divergence from cooling predictions; and the current surface cooling; and the cooling ocean; and Antarctica expanding; big pity about the people going hungry because of diversion of crops to ethanol; nonone who supports AGW has anything to be smug about, creep.
Pirate Pete – “Ender, just remember that nobody has actually proven that there is a greeenhouse gas effect in the atmosphere of planet earth.”
How warm is it where you are? Is it -50 or so? Does the temperature go from -50 to 50 from night to day? Thats the greenhouse effect at work.
Keith – “The entire catastrophic anthropogenic global warming house of cards is built on nothing more than highly uncertain computer models”
Yes the catastrophic scenerios are from computer models and they probably are wrong. The point is how do you know they are wrong? What if they are correct? To return to the analogy, if a simulation of a fire in a building only burns out one floor do you remove all fire fighting equipment in the other floors because the computer told you that it would be only one floor. No, what you do is put fire fighting equipment in all floors because the potential always exists for the whole building to burn down.
cohenite – “Wien’s Law and Beer’s Law” does not apply for greenhouse warming – it is mainly for visible light that CO2 is transparent to. Using this law you would conclude that nitrogen has the same absorption properties as CO2 which is wrong. The dipole property of the CO2 molecule is different the the symmetric molecule of N2. The dipole moment is what transfers the energy from long wave photons to the surrounding molecules. N2 being symmetrical does not do this.
HITRAN has the latest research on absorption and you can play around with it to your hearts content.
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/hitran/
cohenite – “big pity about the people going hungry because of diversion of crops to ethanol”
BTW ethanol is not supported by ANY green groups. It is the product of shifty greedy people intent on lining their own pockets by appealing the status-quo that there is a way to keep driving Hummers forever.
Along with the Canadian Tar Sands it should be shut down immediately however there are too many vested interests now. Lots of people are making a lot of money with no result either to peak oil or global warming.
The biggest supporters of ethanol are conservative creeps, such as yourself, wishing to keep their massive cars by green washing them, not greenies.
cohenite – “Ferenc Miskolczi’s realistic, finite, semi-transparent model which preserves radiative equilibrium”
Actually no it doesn’t as this work is at odds with all the other published work and observations. The author is yet to reconcile them. Also from the abstract:
“realistic finite semi-transparent atmospheric model”
and
“Simulation results show that the Earth maintains a controlled greenhouse effect with a global average optical depth kept close to this critical value.”
You and others have spent posts and posts railing against computer models and how inaccurate they are yet here you are quoting one as an authority. This is a theoretical study only – nothing else.
HITRAN by contrast the compendium of actual spectroscopic observations over a long time period. It incorporates REAL observations and measurements.
cohenite – “Ferenc Miskolczi’s realistic, finite, semi-transparent model which preserves radiative equilibrium”
Obviously he just adjusted the parameters of the model to get the result that he wanted.
Sorry, just throwing your arguments against computer models right back at you.
cohenite ….
I can also make tedious lists – so let’s stick the point eh?
Looking up.
Essentially Philipona has measured the increment in longwave over a reasonable time period and it’s about what you’d expect from theory.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003GL018765.shtml
And looking down spectral windows changing
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
So I’m inclined to think that the longwave bit of the greenhouse story is working.
I’d be looking at climate sensitivity, clouds and decadal oscillations if you want to throw stones at greenhouses.
Ender – “Yes the catastrophic scenerios are from computer models and they probably are wrong. The point is how do you know they are wrong? What if they are correct? To return to the analogy, if a simulation of a fire in a building only burns out one floor do you remove all fire fighting equipment in the other floors because the computer told you that it would be only one floor. No, what you do is put fire fighting equipment in all floors because the potential always exists for the whole building to burn down.”
And how do you know they are correct? What if they are wrong? To return to the analogy, if a simulation of an engine falling off an airplane hitting the roof of a house shows that it would fall right through and potentially harm someone within, do you ignore this potential risk? No, you build the roofs of houses with steel I-beam frames with graphite composite panels sandwiched with layers of Kevlar — just because of the potential for harm. Of course, no one now can afford a house, and you have destroyed the house-building industry, but it’s worth it to avoid the potential for harm. (Substitute “energy” for “a house” and “economy” for “house-building industry” in the previous sentence if you’re having trouble with the metaphor.)
Ender: “Along with the Canadian Tar Sands it should be shut down immediately/”.
Yeh, you and who’s army?
Sorry creep, I have been busy and couldn’t respond immediately. Had a look at your papers; The Philipona one shows radiative forcing from GHG’s to be 3 times less than from cloud flux; Spencer’s work shows that the ipcc model presumption that GHG force clouds is problematic and a strong case can be made that the forcing is from cloud flux; a paper by Krump and Pollard looks at this property of clouds as an explanation for prior hot periods an extinctions. In respect of Philipona, you should look at another paper of his with Ruckstuhl emphasising radiative forcing and H2O feedback a la Spencer.
The second paper by Harries on the hydrological paper should be read in conjunction with this one;
http:www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008431.shtml
by Ferguson and Veizer, which confirms it is H2O in conjunction with solar variation which sets the tone; which means it is the oceans and not humans and especially not CO2.
Speaking of CO2; yeah ender, do you have to be so nasty; I don’t drive a hummer and if you think you can absolve the AGW crowd from negative ramifications from their ideology by blaming them on human nature than that only adds to your hypocrisy; if you guys want to own the high moral ground you can own the dirt as well. As to CO2; I know about HITRAN; very useful, but I don’t understand your comment that CO2 is transparent to visible light, so what? Wien and Beer apply to wavelengths that CO2 is sensitive to; given that CO2 saturation is inevitable and its effect miniscule.
In regard to Miskolczi his work has been picked up by Stephen Schwartz in a paper on climate lapse periods which negates the delay of AGW models as a necessary precursor to warming. And by the way stop using Pascal’s wager as a justification for AGW.
Cohenite –
keep on cloud free longwavefor a moment – the point of your greenhouse basics – Philipona’s work shows the cloud free longwave amounts are about right. Clouds effects in GCMs are another major issue (and important)
Yes I’m aware of Philipona’s other papers. Worth a read and you should see Realclimate’s take on his water vapour feedback paper as it is not quite what you may think re Spencer. Ground effect. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=212
Spencer has yet to demonstrate any global effect of his tropical MJO work. Looking the cloud data presentations here – good luck to him !! http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/
creep; thanks, but that raypierre paper is out of date; he theorises that the AGW mechanism will cause tropospheric warming; RSS and UAH data consistently show this not to be the case; and, as I have referred to the Miskolczi paper, raypierre’s notion of the troposphere acting as a unit is simply wrong; the Aqua satellite data is veriying this.
creep; thanks for the joel norris link; haven’t got time now, but I will look at his papers.
James Annan has a journal accepted response to Schwartz too http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/comment_on_schwartz.pdf Just FYI
creep; just read your link;
“In fact the principal physical mechanism which leads us to believe that not all committed GHG warming has yet been experienced, and a substantial amount remains “in the pipeline”, is the warming of the deep ocean (Hansen)”
That will come as a surprise to ARGO which is finding the opposite; the fact is, outside NASAGISS, no temps anywhere are going anywhere except down; so when they say “20thC temp increases are strong and linear” and that “climate sensitivity lies in the range of 2-4.5C” they are occupying a diminished data pool. The thing about Schwartz, is that right now he is right, and all the predictions are for cooling for the next 5-10 years.
Tamino’s latest effort on the CET data is interesting; I think he jumps the shark; he resorts to, when defending his base period methodology, to the old chestnut that temps fluctuate greatly between night and day. This encapsulates the problem; one side of the ‘debate’ is doing a Groucho; who are you going to believe, my model or your own eyes?
“and all the predictions are for cooling for the next 5-10 years” – now why would you believe them? What’s our success with seasonal forecasting past 6 months.
creep; my point exactly; so, tell me again, why are we giving ipcc all the money and power in the world, and why isn’t gore back in the has-been museum?
“Ender, just remember that nobody has actually proven that there is a greeenhouse gas effect in the atmosphere of planet earth.”
That basic, well understood and factual science can be questioned and not contradicted by the sceptics is amazing. Can someone from the ‘sceptic’ side just stand up for once and state that “CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it’s a fact” so we get no more of this nonsense on this forum? Even if you argue that the effects will not be to the extent predicted by the IPCC, the ‘greenhouse’ effect is a fact.
sjt; Stefan’s Law shows that the surface temp of the earth should be about -16.6C; the surface temp is actually about +14C; no argument there; the whole point of this debate is that the AGW mechanism of CO2 cannot do that.
Cohenite – the IPCC’s job is to sift, collate, analyse, review and report back. That’s all. How else might we get an international assessment on such a complex issue – let the Heartland Institute write it perhaps?
To be an IPCC chapter author or participate in a serious manner on the working groups is a major imposition not a great lurk.
Gore is really irrelevant to the main debate – a celebrity, an activist and a smallish part of the issue. He probably serious believes he’s doing a good job. And I don’t get my advice from Al.
Anyway for all we know the temperature trend might suddenly get back on the AGW track. Is so all this discussion will be blog bit detritus. The next 10 years are critical.
What could be done with the IPCC is to widen it’s scope to include the impact of all climate variation on society – ENSO, AMO, PDO, SAM etc. It’s not like climatic conditions have zero impact on society – i.e. droughts, floods, hurricanes, heatwaves and cold outbreaks – and on an increasing crowded planet – food and water security whose fate is intertwined with climate is increasing critical. That’s why we should invest in climate science.
creep; gore set the ball rolling and he was the essential conduit between the bureaucracy of the ipcc and the general population; gore gave the msm a big coathanger to hang the slogans and catchcries and images on; who can ever forget the forlorn polar bear on the shrinking ice-berg; too bad it was mostly hyperbole, posing and half-baked modelling. As to the ipcc; I think it’s a reasonable bet, given the continual contradictions, inconsistencies and the astronomically increasing cost of the AGW economic measures, that the ipcc would not be set up today. I don’t think the ipcc should have the primary role it has today, let alone any increase in power; as I say its influence has been egregious; only today in my region one council has announced that it will be placing a large impost on any future developments to accommodate future AGW caused expense and damage; the council refers to the ipcc predictions about sea-level rise to justify this; as a lawyer I think it’s time to consider a class action against this sort of nonsense.
As to pessimissm generally, I refer to Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist”; noone has gainsayed Lomborg’s conclusions about the healthy state of the ark.
It’s one thing to be prudent about the future and anticipate problems, especially those under our control; in this respect I think pollution issues are under our control and more should be done to deal with polluting aspects of fossil fuels;
but I don’t think the weather is under our control; taking the energy limiting measures that AGW exigencies demand will mean that humanity will have to face future climate problems with one hand tied behind our back.
creep; an addendum to above; both Anthony Watts at his “A Tale of Two Thermometers” and Steve McIntyre at his ‘Raobcore Adjustments” post deal with further adjustments by ipcc proxies to the temp data; honestly, I wouldn’t let ipcc organise a dog fight.
Cohenite – do you consider, in your opinion, that it’s the fault of the IPCC lead authors & contributing scientists or the attendant bureaucracy and associated governments.
Certainly Gore and msm haven’t influenced my own thinking.
Do you think there is a globally organised conspiracy against the IPCC?
creep; “Do I think there is a globally organised conspiracy against the ipcc?” NO; there may be a globally organised conspiracy by the ipcc; but I doubt that too; I just think there are a lot of like minded pro-AGW people distorting the transparency of the debate; the recent bbc fuss is a good example; then there is the wikipedia censorship issue; Bob Carter did a good piece on msm bias; and then there was the oreskes consensus and Benny Piesner gerfuffle; and in Australia the abc and fairfax view is terrible.
That might have to do me tonight; I’ve just been at tamino’s, trying to understand his description of the difference between a sliding weighting function, a guassian weighting function and his running polynomial Stavitzky-Golay filter; I think I’m going to die.