IT is not a new paper, it was being discussed back in July by Roger Pielke Sr, but the paper by Compo and Sardeshmukhj was only recently brought to my attention and as an example of the use of the IPCC’s computer models to explain warming without reference to greenhouse gases. That’s right, a peer reviewed paper based on simulation modelling that generates the observed warming of the last half-century but without reference to the ever increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The paper, entitled ‘Oceanic Influences on Recent Continental Warming’, suggests that it is warming of the oceans that has driven warming of the land since the 1970s. But it does not tell us what has warmed the oceans!
The paper concludes: “In summary, our results emphasize the significant role of remote oceanic influences, rather than the direct local effect of anthropogenic radiative forcing [Greenhouse gases] , in the recent continental warming. They suggest that the recent oceanic warming has caused the continents to warm through a different set of mechanisms than usually identified with the global impacts of SST[sea surface temperature] changes. It has increased the humidity of the atmosphere, altered the atmospheric vertical motion and associated cloud fields, and perturbed the longwave and shortwave radiative fluxes at the continental surface.”
Well known Australian sceptic, Bill Kininmonth, has made this point many times: that the tropical oceans are the main source of energy in the form of latent heat in the evaporation of water vapour and as the tropic oceans warm they exchange more energy with the atmosphere; more energy is transported pole ward to warm the middle and high latitude land areas.
So, it seems, the climate modellers are at last catching on.
***************
Oceanic Influences on Recent Continental Warming by Gilbert P. Compo and Prashant D. Sardeshmukh, Climate Dynamics, 2008. http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I’m not a climatologist, although I do know a lot about modern biology and am a whizz at creating Excel models for business.
What I do know is this: all you have to do is tweak parameters in models and you can get whatever result you want.
So the question always is: do the new models actually simulate reality or are they just tools for ‘what if XXX happened?’
jennifer, will you admit that you didn t read the paper?
actually, you didn t even read the abstract, i guess?
here it goes:
Abstract Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. The oceanic influence has occurred through hydrodynamic-radiative teleconnections, primarily by moistening and warming the air over land and increasing the downward longwave radiation at the surface. The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/au9x40l201105273/
now i haven t read the paper either. but the abstract seems to say: something (perhaps anthropogenic) is warming the oceans. the oceans are warming the air and the land.
a guy named counters has made some very good arguments on it, over at Watts.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/23/compo-and-sardeshmukh-oceans-a-main-driver-of-climate-variability-its-the-heat-and-the-humidity/
most important part from the conclusion:
Regardless of whether or not the rapid recent oceanic warming has occurred largely from anthropogenic or natural influences, our study highlights its importance in accounting for the recent observed continental warming.
Patrick J. Michaels was the first to report it at World Climate report.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/12/03/rethinking-observed-warming/#more-351.
I’m friends with Gil Compo. He is not climate “sceptics”.
This is just another case of a non-published non-climate expert misinterpreting or misunderstanding basic science.
Happy to give you Gil’s email address if you want it.
Spin-o-saurus regina
We’ve got a book running to see if we get the full checklist of predictable denialist comments. Rhys already gets me a point – thanks !
I’m friends with Gil Compo. He is not climate “sceptics”.
people looking at the paper, would not come to such a conclusion anyway.
people reading jennifers article would.
Sod,
I read the paper – including the abstract. And yes the authors don’t know what has warmed the oceans. I state this in the above post. What they do say, is that they can get the models to explain warming of the land by the oceans without reference to greenhouse gases. Cheers,
Rhys,
In this instance it seems the models can simulate an aspect of reality – or at least a theory often proposed by meteorologists.
Jennifer
this is a basic exercise in comprehension here, and you aren’t doing too well.
They say
A note I receive just this morning, which relates to the Pacific Ocean and global temperatures:
“The Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched from its warm mode (1977-1998) to its cool mode in 1999 and we’ve had global cooling since. Each time this has happened in the past 100 years we’ve had three decades of cool global climate. We’re switched from the Pacific cool mode to the warm mode in 1977 (The Great Climate Shift) and that ended in 1998 with the switch to the Pacific cool mode. We’re going to have three decades of global cooling, just like we’ve always had when this happens. CO2 has nothing to do with it.”
From THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
“The three peer-reviewed articles show that the Global Climate Models weren’t able to predict climate in 1997. They show that in the next five years, the operators decoupled their models from the ocean and the sun, and converted them into models to support the greenhouse gas catastrophe. They have since restored some solar and ocean effects, but it is a token and a concession to their critics. The GCMs still can’t account for even the little ice age, much less the interglacial warming.”
So lets spell that out. When oceanic and solar effects are decoupled from the Global Catastrophe Muddles we get runaway warming with minimal relevance to reality. But when we decouple CO2 we get a Global Climate Model that does not overheat and is entirely consistent with reality.
Yep. It is what the scepticenti have been saying all along.
I,m sure that in time Dr Roy Spencer’s team will be proved correct on ocean oscillations, perhaps the cool phase PDO is at long last effecting rainfall in Victoria. Time will tell, hopefully neutral is turning to a la nina event as well, only time will tell, but rest assured it will be nature’s own.
Well its about time. What have I been telling everyone for the past two years? And when is my honorary science degree arriving in the mail?
The Compo paper is quite a mixed bag; at first blush it does seem to be a kick in the pants to AGW; the Abstract says;
“Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.”
Key points of this are that there has been warming; problematic. Secondly, the oceans are warming; problematic. The Abstract continues;
“The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences.”
The paper discards the usual suspects, Rossby Waves, Hadley and Walker circulation changes (p5) and looks at increased SST caused increases in SH to explain the increase in continental land temperatures; this alleged increase in SH dovetails nicely with the papers by Dai and Soden, which Compo acknowledges (p10) but not Dessler’s recent effort which purports to have found an increase in ‘q’, atmospheric water vapor levels, SH, using the AIRs instrument; the ocean as a source of SH also overcomes the problem of persistent declines in pan evaporation. So, what warms the oceans? The paper notes;
“Although not a focus of this study, the degree to which the oceans themselves have recently warmed due to increased GHG, other anthropogenic, natural solar and volcanic forcings, or internal multi-decadal climate variations is a matter of active investigation.” (p10)
Earlier, the paper asserts;
“For the planet as a whole, there is little doubt that the inhibition of outgoing longwave radiation by such increases (of CO2) leads to radiative heating of the surface (ie. the greenhouse effect), with the warming subsequently modified by water vapor and other feedbacks (Houghton et al. 2001).”
NOAA observational records going back to the late 1940’s show persistent declines in SH at all atmospheric levels, except the surface; RH is falling; so that basis of the paper is problematic as well. This is a pro-AGW paper consistent with the AGW atmospheric model; it is, however honest enough to state that the AGW model of heating does not apply “locally to each region in Fig 1a” (p3). To that extent its authors are to be congratulated The Tsonis paper exhibits a similar schizophrenia. On the other hand the papers by Ian Smith and Gabriel Vecchi are emphatic in asserting that even if ENSO and PDO are following nominally normal patterns, they are now, in reality, AGW manifestations. Franks, Cayon and White, Quirk and McLean, Spencer, Christy and Douglass and Bob Tisdale would argue differently.
A similar study came out last year
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801175711.htm
In the mid-1970s, a climate shift cooled sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean and warmed the coast of western North America, bringing long-range changes to the northern hemisphere.
After this climate shift waned, an era of frequent El Ninos and rising global temperatures began.
Understanding the mechanisms driving such climate variability is difficult because unraveling causal connections that lead to chaotic climate behavior is complicated.
To simplify this, Tsonis et al. investigate the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation.
By studying the last 100 years of these cycles’ patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times.
Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then. a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability.
The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century.
Title: A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts
Authors: Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, and Sergey Kravtsov: Atmospheric Sciences Group, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2007GL030288, 2007
sorry Cohenite – I didn’t notice you had already mentioned the Tsonis paper.
Rhys Jaggar
“I’m not a climatologist,”
SO you know nothing about climate science then
“although I do know a lot about modern biology”
OK- so you know nothing about climate science then.
“and am a whizz at creating Excel models for business.”
OK- so you know nothing about modeling complex physical systems- and you do not understand the (rather large and profound) difference between a model based on numerical solutions to primitive equations on a space-time grid and empirical economic models.
So what is it that makes you feel that you can provide some insight into climate modeling? (BTW- fully coupled climate models do not run in excel). It would be good if you provided us with some details of your model, including some detail of any verification statistics that you have produced, so we can all judge your supposed expertise.
Sod,
I read the paper – including the abstract. And yes the authors don’t know what has warmed the oceans. I state this in the above post. What they do say, is that they can get the models to explain warming of the land by the oceans without reference to greenhouse gases. Cheers,
why doesn t your “sum up” mention the term anthropogenic at all? david told you above, that your interpretation of the article (AGAIN!) is in contradiction with the views of the author. why do you ignore him?
pathologist No. 9 presents his results:
this person drowned in water. i did not investigate, how it came into water. perhaps another person was involved.
Jennifer sum up:
pathologist can explain death of person without any involvement of another person! the truth is finally catching on! others have made this point multiple times: no person was involved in the drowning of this body!
jennifer “And yes the authors don’t know what has warmed the oceans….”
I think it’s pretty obvious what warmed the oceans, Jen, it’s called the Sun. There is no other source of warming, no matter how the AGW crowd twist physics theory to suit their pseudo-science. As one meteorologist, who has visited this site, and whose name escapes me for the moment, said, the oceans are like a giant hot water bottle. They soak up the energy from the Sun and redistribute that energy. Tsonis et al have observed the effect the different oceanic oscillations have on warming/cooling as they couple and decouple.
The cause of global warming has been right in front of us all along…the oceans. To say the oceans have warmed is just as ridiculous as claiming the globe has warmed, or the atmosphere has warmed. There are exchanges of energy going on all the time, in the oceans in particular. There is no set temperature anywhere in the oceans or in the atmosphere or the land. Everything is in flux and regional temperatures are obviously changing as a result of that.
I don’t know how the IPCC could have been so stupid as to spend nearly 20 years looking for a man-made cause for the warming to the exclusion of looking at other causes.
“The Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched from its warm mode (1977-1998) to its cool mode in 1999 and we’ve had global cooling since.
note without out source. typical, for this “science” blog, with its “evidence-based approach”.
there was NO global cooling since 1999.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/03/05/gisstemp.png
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1999/plot/wti/from:1999/trend:1999
instead, we had the HOTTEST YEARS on record!
Graeme Bird “And when is my honorary science degree arriving in the mail”?
I’ll get right on it as soon as things thaw out up here in Canada. We’re having one of the coldest winters in recent memory, and winter hasn’t even officially started yet.
It’s so cold that politicians have their hands in their own pockets.
cohenite “Earlier, the paper asserts; “For the planet as a whole, there is little doubt that the inhibition of outgoing longwave radiation by such increases (of CO2) leads to radiative heating of the surface…”
If they don’t make such a concession, they’ll never get their paper published, and they’ll lose their funding to boot. Have you been on Roy Spencer’s site lately? He can’t get any of his papers published and he’s forced to write a book to get his information out. The witchhunters are out in full force.
sod “…instead, we had the HOTTEST YEARS on record!”
why don’t you go back to deltoid and stop making a fool of yourself? There were as many warm years in the United States between 1920 and 1950 as between 1990 and the present. In the early 20’s, the Arctic was as warm as it is now, at least in the summer. As of today, Dec 16/08, the Arctic is frozen solid. If you want to wrap yourself in statistical nonsense, that’s up to you. Don’t waste my time with your drivel.
Temperature; 1995-2000;
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1995/to:2000/trend/plot/uah/from:1995/to:2000
2001-current;
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2001/to:2009/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/to:2009
The point about breaking up the temp trend into those sections is that the rate of Pacific equatorial upwelling decreased for 25 years since the early 1970’s, then the trend reversed after 1998 [per McPhaden and Zhang, 2004]; Bob Tisdale has described a strong correlation between ENSO/PDO and temp trends and has shown the step-up effect on temp of the 1998 El Nino; a similar step-up occurred in 1976 when the upwelling depleted and the +ve PDO of the next 30-40 years kicked off; temps since 1998 have gone down and the 1930’s are still the warmest decade.
Jennifer
are you going to acknowledge your incorrect heading for this topic? Modellers have known right from the start the importance of oceans, and all the major models incorporatre oceans in their calculations.
quote An international team of scientists is hoping to shed light on how clouds over the Pacific Ocean are affecting global climate and weather systems.
The clouds, some of which are bigger than the US, reflect sunlight back into space and cool the ocean below.
The team hopes to learn more about the clouds’ properties and if pollution from activities such as mining affect the formation of these systems.
The month-long study will involve more than 200 experts from 10 countries.
A team of 20 climate and cloud experts from the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) are taking part in the expedition, which will be based in Chile.
Hugh Coe, the lead scientist for the British consortium, said the project would help improve the accuracy of climate change models.
“These are some of the largest cloud systems in the world and we know that they must play a very significant role in climate change, yet we know that climate models do not represent them very well,” he explained.
“This campaign is a fantastic opportunity to make cutting-edge measurements in a unique environment and merge them with state-of-the-art climate models.
“We hope to finally hit some of the uncertainties in current climate models on the head.”
unquote
It’s difficult to keep track of the latest graphs, but there’s a lot of stuff out there about falling albedo and reducing cloud cover over the oceans. Specifically, the amount of low level stratocumulus is (was? as I say, difficult to keep up with all the literature) decreasing.
The oceans are warming: even allowing for the jiggery-pokery of the Folland and Parker correction and later efforts, they are getting warmer. A cloudless ocean has an albedo of effectively zero, thick stratocu has an albedo of 40-50. The difference in forcing is well over 100 w/m^2 compared with doubled CO2 forcing of 2 or 3 watts/M^2. If, as I suspect, the amount of cloud actually is decreasing, then one doesn’t have to look far for an explanation of rising SSTs.
Then the question becomes ‘why fewer clouds?’
To answer that then we need studies of internal cloud physics. However, Googling on ‘Nasa ship tracks’ shows what I think is the answer — fewer condensation nuclei.
JF
(manfully resisting the temptation to go all swivelly-eyed and rant on about the Kreigesmarine effect, even though it’s there, look at the SST graphs and see it standing out like a Rottweiller’s gonads…. ahem. Sorry about that. I wasn’t going to mention the Kreigesmarine effect.)
“It’s so cold that politicians have their hands in their own pockets.”
Wow that is cold.
Don’t you love this nutter stuff …
“I think it’s pretty obvious what warmed the oceans, Jen, it’s called the Sun.” LOL
Julian; you may be interested in this piece on the albedo effect of clouds and how slight variations in cloud cover dwarf the alleged forcing effect of CO2; the article is on p 18;
http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/publications/Ram_ILEAPSnewsletter-apr08.pdf
Gordon; I was aware of Spencer’s site and his ‘difficulties’; the treatment he received at the US Senate was revealing; I just find the intensity of the warmer’s belief rather disturbing; anyway, here’s hoping you don’t run out of rum!
There are two very interesting attacks on a simple question I posed here:
1. ‘You are climate change denier’. I am not. And whosoever wrote that is a liar who needs to afford me an apology. I asked a question which deserves an answer. Those who resort to calling those who answer questions ‘deniers’ are deniers themselves. They have no place a weblogs which are PLACES OF DISCUSSION AND DEBATE.
I trust that the liar does not call themselves a scientist. They have a drawn a conclusion without reasonable evidence and without asking the one simple question to gain an answer: ‘Are you rhys a climate change denier?’ ‘No, I am not. I am someone who remains to be convinced that the evidence scientists present is yet sufficient enough to justify the actions they propose. If they are so brilliant they will learn to communicate clearly, logically and in a manner which links evidence to assertions. They have not yet done that to my satisfaction. The ball is in THEIR COURT.’
2. ‘You have no useful contribution to make to a discussion of complex physical systems’. Biological systems are every bit as complex as physical systems and I studied them professionally for 12 years. I trust you make no comments on biology as idiots like you couldn’t possibly understand evolution etc etc etc. Idiots like you fail to understand that extinctions are normal, migrations are normal, mutations are normal and humans are an artefact of recent history. The world was never static, ecosystems were never static and coral reefs grow and die, grow and die. I remain 100% confident that if you have EVER commented on ANYTHING outside your expertise that you will resign your job immediately citing professional misconduct in public in your letter of resignation………..
3. ‘Climate models don’t work in Excel’. I didn’t say they did. I just said that you can make models do what you want by having a sheet with parameters and a model linked to those parameters. It doesn’t tell you what the truth is. I made no implication that these models were false, but I’ve heard 15 years of bullshit from climate modellers whose theories have to modified every time the data doesn’t agree with them. That’s normal science. What ISN’T normal science is claiming that robust investigation of what is going on is the work of a denier and an heretic. And I suggest you learn that lesson VERY QUICKLY.
4. Climatologists, in general, get their money from public sources. If they think that they answer to no-one but climatologists, then I hope they don’t expect bankers to answer to anyone except other bankers. Especially when their money’s gone down the tube as the bankers were criminal……….if you try and get your money back, you never work in climatology again buddy boy……unless your referee for your next appointment wishes to describe you accurately as a bullying hypocrite………..with a recommendation that you not be appointed in the near future until you have learned to engage in a respectful adult way…….
5. I spent a long time ski-ing and mountaineering where you experience, very first hand, the changing seasons and how things change over a few decades. Climate change fanaticists stated that ‘ski-ing would die out’. I pointed out mildly that I skied on stony rubbish in France three years running in the 1980s. No better no worse than what I’ve skied on twenty years on. I might not measure things to one zillionth of a degree but I know a load of cobblers when I hear it. And you folks who spend years focussed on one tiny, tiny, tiny piece of research might like to think about that. It addles your critical faculties. Because you’ve got to bend down to the altar of research funding decisions. Not very scientific that. Bloody corrupt in many countries.
Now I was I believe seeking a couple of apologies and I trust that the moderator of this site will agree that I deserve them…………..
Rhys Jaggar,
“Now I was I believe seeking a couple of apologies and I trust that the moderator of this site will agree that I deserve them”
Not going to get it, not from this lot, you are not.
Why, they treat the hostess worse than they treated you!
Besides, don’t worry about it, when they go ad hom, it means they have no valid counter argument.
Take it easy.
There were as many warm years in the United States between 1920 and 1950 as between 1990 and the present.
we are talking about the globe. it is bigger, than the US.
In the early 20’s, the Arctic was as warm as it is now, at least in the summer.
you have zero evidence, supporting this claim.
“This is the first recorded occurrence of the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route both being open at the same time.”
http://tinyurl.com/6xk9ws
As of today, Dec 16/08, the Arctic is frozen solid.
actually, as of today, the arctic sea ice area is half a million square kilometre below the long term average.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg
Re cohenite:
Nice to see the Daisyworld mentioned — I remember trying to write a programme in BBC Basic on a Beeb (16K memory!) to see if it worked.
This climate science stuff is odd: normally, before declaring the end of the world, one would expect the science to be sorted out. Here we are, 20 years after the apocalypse was declared, and they are just beginng to look closely at clouds. I’ve even seen someone declare that clouds don’t cool things: I can only assume the person concerned has never stood on the NE English coast when a haar drifts in.
Whatever next? I’d look at plankton and diatom populations with an eye on C isotope fractionisation if it were me deciding.
JF
2001-current;
the source quoted by Jennifer did NOT say 2001. it said 1999. this is the usual cherry picking of start dates, used by denialists.
The point about breaking up the temp trend into those sections is that the rate of Pacific equatorial upwelling decreased for 25 years since the early 1970’s, then the trend reversed after 1998
so you admit, that you cherry pick this very special phase and an absurdly short period, to get a minor downward trend? (when using the right dataset, that is..)
temps since 1998 have gone down
ah, thanks, the other cherry pick starting year.
if you get a downward “trend” when starting with 1998, upward, when starting with 1999 or 2000 and downward again in 2001, don t you think that “trend” might actually be the wrong term?
and the 1930’s are still the warmest decade.
i have serious doubts about this!
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1930/to:1939/plot/gistemp/from:1990/to:1999
5. I spent a long time ski-ing and mountaineering where you experience, very first hand, the changing seasons and how things change over a few decades. Climate change fanaticists stated that ’ski-ing would die out’. I pointed out mildly that I skied on stony rubbish in France three years running in the 1980s. No better no worse than what I’ve skied on twenty years on. I might not measure things to one zillionth of a degree but I know a load of cobblers when I hear it. And you folks who spend years focussed on one tiny, tiny, tiny piece of research might like to think about that.
sorry, but what you are saying is simply in contradiction to reality.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215121632.htm
the ski industry is well aware of the climate change that is happening. actually it has become their top topic.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/27/SKI.TMP
you are not, perhaps because they have been MAKING the snow, that you were using last year?
Twenty-five years ago, snow-making machines were unusual in the area. Today, the majority of Sierra winter sports facilities make snow as soon as conditions dictate.
Now lets just get back to some basics here because a few of the gullible wonkers have been suggesting that it was actually CO2 forcing that was warming up the oceans and this is complete bollocks.
The albedo of oceans is only in the order of 5%, the other 95% is absorbed by that ocean. So CO2 can only operate as a forcing influence over 5% of the insolation. Wherever clouds appear over those oceans then a larger portion of insolation will be reflected by those clouds and less will get through to the ocean surface. And only 5% of that smaller amount will be reflected by the ocean and then be available for partial CO2 forcing, partial water vapour forcing or partial cloud forcing.
The greater the albedo, the greater the potential for CO2 or water vapour forcing and the smaller the albedo the smaller the potential for CO2 forcing. Clouds over oceans may increase albedo and therefore increasing potential for CO2 forcing, but as clouds are a great deal higher than sea surface, the actual volume of CO2 in the atmospheric column above the clouds is much less, and therefore much less potent as a forcing agent.
Some 70% of the planetary surface, the oceans, are not condusive to any sort of forcing agent. But the warm-mongers are so fixated by temperature forcings and warming agents that they have completely lost the plot on the far more relevant and significant effects of variations in insolation absorption rates and cooling agents.
Many have chosen to take a one-eyed look at our past two and a half centuries as an addition of “warming agents” but it is far more likely to be a consistent reduction in “cooling agents” that have allowed our oceans to absorb more solar energy. And as “cold” is the natural state of this planet then we need to be thankful for any such temporary shortages of cooling agents.
I built a spreadsheet monthly temperature model which takes out the impact of the main ocean cycles – which I found to be the ENSO, the AMO and the southern Atlantic SSTs (which are important for particularly the southern hemisphere temperatures.)
Others have noted the PDO has an impact but the AMO explains these cycles much better than the PDO and is more closely related to the ocean conveyor belt and, hence, has a more logical reason to be included than the PDO.
The reconstruction does a pretty good job of pulling out these ocean cycle influences but you are still left with a somewhat noisy warming signal but which does rise more consistently with GHGs and CO2.
One question posed by Jennifer is “but what is warming the oceans.” Most of these indices that people use, the ENSO, the AMO etc are already detrended – the warming is already taken out.
There is a slight rise in all the Raw ocean indices data – About 0.035C per decade in the ENSO, about 0.02C per decade in the AMO and about 0.03C per decade in southern ocean temperatures. It seems the oceans are, indeed, warming.
“This climate science stuff is odd: normally, before declaring the end of the world, one would expect the science to be sorted out. Here we are, 20 years after the apocalypse was declared, and they are just beginng to look closely at clouds. I’ve even seen someone declare that clouds don’t cool things: I can only assume the person concerned has never stood on the NE English coast when a haar drifts in.”
They are not just beginning to look closely at clouds, the hardware is only just beginning to be powerful enough to model clouds.
We still don’t know exactly how many cancers start, or how they work in detail, yet doctors still free to warn us about them. Amazing.
“If they are so brilliant they will learn to communicate clearly, logically and in a manner which links evidence to assertions. They have not yet done that to my satisfaction. The ball is in THEIR COURT.’”
It’s the same old problem, “If I can’t understand it, you can’t prove it”.
One question posed by Jennifer is “but what is warming the oceans.”
No one appears to consider that the oceans could be warming from below. We know that the west antarctic ice shelf is melting because of volcanic activity – we also know that part of the greenland ice shelf is melting due to a change in the magma flows under it. We know little about the volcanic activity in the Pacific, recently a NZ team discoverd 100+ active volcanoes in the undersea north of NZ. They’ve also discovered active undersea volcanoes in the arctic.
Who knows what’s happening throughout the rest of the pacific and the other oceans. The surface of the earth was likened to the shell of an egg by Dr Endersbee and all that egg white and yolk is hot magma which no doubt flows with it’s own currents and variability, yet we know nothing about it.
I think sod’s question from the start still stands and has not been addressed.
“land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. ”
Has occured!!
“The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences. ”
may have !!
there’s a difference.
sod, tripe; or if you like, tripe, sod; if you want to be perjorative and use trite terms like “denialists”, then try to be original; but, then originality is hardly to be forthcoming from someone who uses the thoroughly tainted GISS temp record to prove the ’30’s weren’t the hottest; even GISS confesses they were in the US, they were in Iceland and Greenland, Canada, Russia, most of the individual locations in Australia which haven’t been subject to Bom fiddling show that the ’30’s were the hottest; so give me a particular location where the 1930’s weren’t the hottest please.
Speaking of cherry-picking old fruit, coming from someone who revels in the alarmism and end-of-world fire and brimstone of the Hansenites, that is a bit rich, but since you genuflect at the alter of GISS, what about this 37 year trend?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1977/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1977
Bill; you wouldn’t be able to post your figures would you? You have found a century trend in the respective oceans of about 0.3C Per Century, due, you conclude to GHG’s; are the SST rises entirely correlated with CO2 increase over the 20thC, or do they stray anytime? And have you factored in insolation which even IPCC confesses to having an effect of about 0.16C PC?
Thanks for that link to Ramanathan, Cohenite. The assumption that planetary albedo has always been 29% is classic warming delusion. As Remanathan said,
“A global albedo of 32% would plunge the Earth into a climate similar to that of the last ice-age; while an albedo of 27% would be comparable to a seven-fold increase in the CO2 concentration, close to the values required to bring the planet to the warm cretaceous.”
One must assume that he means a 27% albedo would be equivalent to a seven-fold increase in CO2 from 280ppm to 1960ppm. And working back from this figure we find that the climate mafia’s target of restricting CO2 to a doubling (560ppm) will have the same outcome as a drop in planetary albedo of 0.286 of an albedo percentage point, down from 29.000% to 28.714%.
Conversely, an increase in planetary albedo of the same magnitude would completely negate a doubling of CO2.
That variation in albedo of 0.286 of a percentage point represents just under 1% of the 29% total. Yet, the error margin in the satellite scans is put at 29%+/-2%, or 7% of the total.
And when we look at the rise in CO2 emissions to date, we find that the 100ppm increase is only 0.36 of 0.286 or 0.103 of an albedo percentage point or a third of 1% of the 29% total. That is, the total CO2 increase is equivalent to only 5% of the recorded variation in albedo.
Once more for the bimbocenti, CO2 forcing is the climatic equivalent of one third of one tenth of sweet FA.
2. “‘You have no useful contribution to make to a discussion of complex physical systems’. Biological systems are every bit as complex as physical systems and I studied them professionally for 12 years. ”
Fine- did you ever create a mathematical model of these complex systems that you speak of? Verify that model? SO you really know nothing about modeling complex physical systems- just specious statements.
“I trust you make no comments on biology as idiots like you couldn’t possibly understand evolution etc etc etc. Idiots like you fail to understand that extinctions are normal, migrations are normal, mutations are normal and humans are an artefact of recent history. ”
You do not know what I understand about biology- and for someone so touchy about apologies- you are pretty quick to name call. But it is completely true that I do not extend atmospheric science knowledge to commenting on biological research- I’m not that pretentious.
The rest of your post was simply a barely incomprehensible rant- seemingly driven by your views on economics, politics, religion and winter sports. Climate science is widely published and extensively reviewed. SO your claims of a lack of transparency hinge on conspiracy theories related to your world outlook. This thread shows that you guys can’t even work out which papers support your world view and which do not. (all very amusing actually).
But I digress- you haven’t responded to the call to outline what *your* modeling expertise is- describe these models that you built on excel. And please include any verification methods and statistics that you have produced. Unfortunately your time on the slopes just doesn’t cut it. Come on..show us your credentials here.
I went to a doctor once, so might have a go at heart surgery next week…
No relationship between cosmic rays and clouds. More denialist bullshit shot to pieces.
http://www.cicero.uio.no/webnews/index_e.aspx?id=11074 LOL !!
Hey Cohenite and Mottsa – have you got your comments into the next decade’s climate research programme for Australia – which seems to have ignored you guys …
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/science/publications/draft-framework.html
What a fabulous positive vision…. great document …
Hi Jennifer,
RE: The Australian 17/12/08 “Climate Change: 2008 is world’s 10th hottest year”.
I think you need to get on the front foot and attack these activist scientists.
In the above article, it goes on to say “Australia is on track for its 15th warmest year on record”. It also says 2008 was “warmer than all but two years in the previous century, so we are still seeing considerable warming here post-2000”. How can it be the 15th warmest yet be warmer than all but two years in the previous century? The next 12 warmest years were not evenly spread over the last 100 years. The 15 warmest years occurred since 1990. That means 2008 is the coolest year in about the last 15 years!
There has been no analysis of this by the media – the ABC breathlessly repeated the loaded inference that the world is still getting hotter. The more relevant and relative analysis is that this is evidence that its getting cooler. But all the public hears is the “its getting hotter” headline.
I think to beat these activists you need to get an analysis and a press release out as soon as they make these outlandish claims. Get on TV. Get on radio. Then the media will have to run their own analyses and the truth will have to come out. We need someone in the media space, as loud and as often as the activists, putting the real science in peoples’ faces.
What do you think? Why not get out there today in time for the six o’clock news? Shouldn’t this be part of your role as chair of the AEF?
Rick Beikoff
luke; I really enjoy your links; well, the ones that work anyway; your second one doesn’t; the one about future research; if your repost it could you also include the names of those authority figures who have to be bribed and/or genuflected to so a position on the list can be reserved?
As to the cosmic ray link; their study period was 5 years; I can’t be sure but I suspect that would fail our Deltoid acolyte, sod’s cherry-picking criteria; the main point is though, if they are right and there is no correlation between cloud formation and cosmic rays then it still means that clouds are the primary climate factor and something else must be responsible for cloud cover variation.
From Cohenite: “Bill; you wouldn’t be able to post your figures would you? You have found a century trend in the respective oceans of about 0.3C Per Century, due, you conclude to GHG’s; are the SST rises entirely correlated with CO2 increase over the 20thC, or do they stray anytime? And have you factored in insolation which even IPCC confesses to having an effect of about 0.16C PC?”
In general, I think the oceans have warmed by a little more than the trends in the three indices I have mentioned.
It is certainly less that the surface warming (which is itself less than half of the rate that the models predict).
Just as an example, here is the RAW untrended AMO index back to 1856. The scale make the warming increase look like more than it really is. At 0.0235C per decade, it is only about 10% of the model’s predictions for the surface. The Nino 3.4 trend is 0.035C per decade or less than 20% of the predicted surface temp trend.
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/900/trendedamoindexkq9.png
When you take out the ocean indices influence, there is a still noisy global warming trend left over but it is very closely matched by the ln(GHGs) and there is only a little “straying over time”. One has to use the natural log since temperatures rise in a logarithmic relationship to GHGs. The actual warming to date is less than half of the rate predicted by the models.
Here is the warming left over when you pull out the ENSO (+/-0.2C), AMO (+/-0.3C) and the southern Atlantic SSTs (+/-0.2C) influence from the GISS monthly temperature data.
http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/3416/finalgisswarmingkd6.png
Luke, I got about 6 pages into that “Draft Framework” (Daft Frameup) for science priorities and started dry retching. All the standard crap, reliant on Guanno and lesser departmental pond life. It is not so much a plan of action as a rationalisation for criminal misappropriation of public funds. Shot full of errors of fact like reduced rainfall in the SE and totally reliant on spin and speculation for ballast.
Excerpt from the Climate Sceptics Dictionary;
“Climate, generally accepted synonym for Bull$hit, as in ‘climate science, bull$hit science’, as in bull$hitologist, bull$hit modeller, bull$hit crisis, bull$hit change, anthropogenic bull$hit change, etc.
Nice try at a sidestep, Luke, now how about a response on the relative impacts of albedo change vs CO2 forcing, over oceans. Do you accept that potential for radiative forcing is minimal over any surface with albedo of 5%?
Thanks Bill; you are aware a number of ther people have removed ENSO from temp trends to isolate a GHG forcing; Trenberth who got 0.0925CPD; Douglass and Christy who got 0.07CPD, although an earlier Christy and McNider piece got 0.09CPD; both Tilo Reber and Lucia found post 2000 ENSO removed -ve trends; White and Cayon and Tsonis allocate the majority of temp trend to ENSO/PDO and who knows what Compo found; there is a Hazeleger paper on non-CO2 heating of the oceans which modelling shows ocean circulation responsible. Bob Tisdale has also found some interesting correlations between ENSO and SST and GMST; Bob supports the Newman paper which reagrds PDO as the residual of ENSO; Bob has found an accumulation of SST in El Nino dominated periods with consequence for GMST; he has also isolated step-ups in the temp trend which begin the El Nino sequences; a step-up occurred in 1976; another in 1998, which had the effect of almost entirely creating the upward trend in temp in the latter 1/2 of the 20thC; here is his paper; note the link to Warwick Hughe’s analysis of SST from 1860 to the present, which is essentially flat;
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-there-cumulative-enso-climate.html
As to the cosmic ray link; their study period was 5 years; I can’t be sure but I suspect that would fail our Deltoid acolyte, sod’s cherry-picking criteria;
it was reasonable to have doubts about your interpretation. actually it looks, like you don t understand cherry picking or the complains about short time spans for analysis of climate change.
cherry picking means, using the single well chosen data point, that supports your position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking
like starting a temperature trend in 1998, showing that it is decreasing (in certain data sets), ignoring that using either 1997 or 1999 would lead to an increase in trend.
our complains about denialists using short term trends, is a completely different one. 30 years has been chosen to be a period, long enough to distinguish real climate changes from random weather events.
there is no general requirement, for ALL RESEARCH, to use 30 year periods. just (within certain limitations) for research, making claims about climate.
neither of these conditions effects the study about cosmic rays NOT forming clouds.
http://www.cicero.uio.no/webnews/index_e.aspx?id=11074
the period of 5 years seems to have been enforced by the deployment of the MODIS instrument. no cherry picking.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/7969/22037/01025812.pdf?arnumber=1025812
neither would such a study need a longer period. they did not investigate, how cosmic rays influence the climate. instead, they looked at whether it changes clouds. this is a pretty immediate effect, that doesn t require a long term analysis.
“Reduced cosmic rays did not lead to reduced cloud formation, either during the outbreaks or during the days that followed.
if you think that cosmic rays tend to form clouds 6 years LATER, you might want to publish your hypothesis. good luck!
a last nugget from the research (do you spot the major difference to typical denialist “research”?)
This result is in line with most other research in the field. As far as Kristjansson knows, no studies have proved a correlation between reduced cosmic rays and reduced cloud formation.
Cohenite – 2nd link works – I had a problem earlier too. Maybe site issues? It’s so popular. Either try cutting back to home page and come forward or try
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/science/publications/pubs/consultation-draft.pdf
““Reduced cosmic rays did not lead to reduced cloud formation, either during the outbreaks or during the days that followed.
if you think that cosmic rays tend to form clouds 6 years LATER, you might want to publish your hypothesis. good luck!”
Clouds form pretty quickly, and disperse just as quickly. If radiation was a factor, it would be apparent quite soon, as soon as the cosmic rays changed in strength. (which is the claim being made). AGW claims the temperature rise will occur over a period of time that relates to climate variation.
And no side step Mottsa – as usual when confronted with a quality and serious policy document that you were unable to comprehend to you simply resort to a stupid level of abuse and gibberish. Garnaut – huh ??? WTF?
But back to albedo – well I see you’re not quoting a published paper but some opinion.
But why I’m giggling uncontrollably is that clouds can have both cooling (albedo) and warming (greenhouse) effects. When you’ve worked out the balance let us know. LOL.
Jeez you’re getting slow – you used to be at least half worth debating. Time to put your wife on.
sod the cornucopia with his cherries and cosmic rays; let’s wait and see what this decides;
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CLOUD-en.html
BTW I thought this thread was about ENSO as an alternative to AGW for explaining temp trends.
“BTW I thought this thread was about ENSO as an alternative to AGW for explaining temp trends.”
SOD pointed out Jennifer’s mistake in the second post of the thread. Given sound of crickets chirping, I think she realises her mistake.
“crickets chirping”; Will, that would be you, luke and your lovechild, little sod.
“So what effect does the removal of the volcanic signal have on the running trends? The putative acceleration of global warming vanishes.”
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/12/17/recent-temperature-trends-in-context/#more-355
and that’s just the volcanoes we know!
And now all Luke can do is pretend that I don’t understand that clouds can both reflect insolation and capture IR. Give us a break. Pathetic even by your standards. And did I really read you suggesting that I was only quoting unpublished opinion? As if Ramananthan, founding Director of the Centre for Clouds, Chemistry and Climate at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, UC San Diego, was mere “unpublished opinion”?
Pathetic. But we all note how you have carefully avoided the issue. Your mate Sod was claiming that it was CO2 forcing that was warming up the oceans which, in turn, were warming up the land. He was helped along by some carefully selected weasel words by Compo and Sardeshmukhj but wringing serious climate forcing out of 5% albedo, or even a 29% albedo over the upper half volume of the atmospheric column, was always looking seriously suss.
The facts are that if cloud albedo and clear sky albedo averages out to 29% then the oceans below those clouds can only absorb 0.95 of the remaining 71% that gets through, a modest 67.45%, while the clouds and CO2 are left to fight over the forcing potential of the remaining 3.55% of total solar energy.
You turkeys are seriously suggesting that CO2 induced changes in the forcing potential of 3.55% of insolation are going to warm up the worlds oceans (70% of surface area) and deliver significant heat transfers to the continental land masses?
The use of a constant albedo value of 29% in the GCMs is downright criminal because it deliberately ignores reductions in cooling agents that are far more significant and relevant than minor heating agents like CO2.
If you don’t know why this is biggest load of codswallop you’ve ever written you’re more stupid than we thought “The facts are that if cloud albedo and clear sky albedo averages out to 29% then the oceans below those clouds can only absorb 0.95 of the remaining 71% that gets through, a modest 67.45%, while the clouds and CO2 are left to fight over the forcing potential of the remaining 3.55% of total solar energy.”
Try publishing your “theory” ! hahahahahahahaha – I can hardly sit …. oooo it hurts …
Cohenite – why do you put up with him ? Actually Cohers – just tell me you agree with Mottsa ….. hehehehehehehe
“I can hardly sit….oooo it hurts…” That’s more than we need to know luke. But, following on from Rick Beikoff’s post above; Dr Andrew Watkins of the National Climate Centre said on our ABC this morning;
2008 has been the coolest year since 2000 but has been warmer than any year bar 2 in the last century.
That comment sums up AGW.
That comment sums up AGW.
hm. littler sun activity. la ninja. still among the warmest yeas on record.
yes, very good sum-up.
nina. nice one.
Which part can you not understand, Luke? If oceans absorb 95% of insolation regardless of the actual amount of that insolation then it would also apply to residual insolation that has been filtered by clouds. Not hard.
Luke hasn’t figured out yet that a sneer has no traction until it is combined with a grain of substance. At the moment all he dishes up is vacuous rantings that convince no-one.
Mottsa has forgotten half of the energy balance. And try looking up the difference between short wave and long wave. CO2 interacts with short wave does it? What a rank idiot. hehehehehehehe
You clown.
“Try publishing your “theory” ! hahahahahahahaha – I can hardly sit …. oooo it hurts …”
The dumb-Luke epistemology. Only publishing counts. Luke in the real world Peer Review is just a big crock. And the philosophy of Peer Review is an obstruction to science.
The idea is to not choose STUPIDITY as you appear to have done. And instead to choose reason and evidence.