Trenberth debunks himself: The oceans didn't eat the global warming 'missing heat'

Trenberth vs. Trenberth

Kevin "it's a travesty!" Trenberth has published a new paper today in the Journal of Climate, which shows that the rate of change of global ocean heat content has decreased since ~2001, contradicting his prior claim that the 'pause' of global warming can be explained by an increase in the rate of ocean 'missing heat' uptake. 

Fig 5 from Trenberth's new paper showing the rate of change in global ocean heat content decreased since ~2001 throughout the 'pause'

Trenberth's new paper claims the Sun is responsible for 15% of climate change on decadal timescales, but his analysis conveniently ignores hundreds of peer-reviewed published papers finding solar amplification mechanisms including via clouds and ENSO that alone can account for 95% of climate change over the past 400 years. 

Related: 

Dr. Judith Curry demolishes claim that the oceans 'ate the global warming' & 'missing heat' excuse for the 'pause' in global warming.

The global oceans have warmed only 0.09C over the past 55 years, which in turn could only warm the atmosphere by a maximum of an additional 0.09C due to the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics.

Alarmist becomes skeptic on climate models: Trenberth admits new paper 'undermines the confidence in models...& so why should we trust their future projections?"

RealClimate admits doubling CO2 could only heat the oceans 0.002ºC at most

Full paper available at link at top of post

Journal of Climate 2014 ; e-View

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00294.1

Earth’s Energy Imbalance

Kevin E. Trenberth,¹ John T. Fasullo,¹ and Magdalena A. Balmaseda²

¹ National Center for Atmospheric Research,³ Boulder, CO 80307

² European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, Shinfield Park, Reading RG2 9AX, UK.

Abstract

Climate change from increased greenhouse gases arises from a global energy imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA). TOA measurements of radiation from space can track changes over time but lack absolute accuracy. An inventory of energy storage changes shows that over 90% of the imbalance is manifested as a rise in ocean heat content (OHC). We use ORAS4 ocean reanalysis data and other OHC estimated rates of change to compare with model-based estimates of TOA energy imbalance (from CCSM4), and with TOA satellite measurements for the year 2000 onwards. Most ocean-only OHC analyses extend to only 700 m depth, have large discrepancies among the rates of change of OHC, and do not resolve interannual variability adequately to capture ENSO and volcanic eruption effects, all aspects that are improved with assimilation of multi-variate data. ORAS4 rates-of-change of OHC quantitatively agree with the radiative forcing estimates of impacts of the 3 major volcanic eruptions since 1960 (Mt. Agung 1963, El Chichón 1982, and Mt. Pinatubo 1991). The natural variability of the energy imbalance is substantial from month-to-month associated with cloud and weather variations, and interannually mainly associated with ENSO, while the Sun affects 15% of the climate change signal on decadal timescales. All estimates (OHC and TOA) show that over the past decade the energy imbalance ranges between about 0.5 and 1 W m^-2. By using the full-depth ocean, there is a better overall accounting for energy, but discrepancies remain at interannual timescales between OHC and TOA-based estimates, notably in 2008-09.

AGW believers refuse to admit the 'missing' heat was lost to space, claim it sank to bottom of ocean

The Mann-made global warming true believers continue their daily crusade to convince us that the 'missing' global warming has sunk to the bottom of the ocean, undetected by observations, instead of admitting the observations show the missing heat has been lost to space.

Satellite and radiosonde observations show outgoing infrared radiation to space has increased over the past 62 years, the opposite of AGW model predictions of "heat trapping" by greenhouse gases causing a decrease of outgoing radiation.

Reblogged from The Climate Skeptics Party, Australia:

England Passes Wind and Discovers Heat at Bottom.

Rebuttal By Anthony Cox 2/11/14

You have to pinch yourself to see if you are awake when you read the lengths believers in man made global warming (AGW) go to avoid accepting evidence against their belief.

Matthew England is an academic and fervent believer in AGW. He has written a new paper which supposedly shows that increasing trade winds are responsible for the hiatus in temperature increase.

According to England increased Trade wind speeds are causing the “missing heat” to be carried down to the ocean bottom. Apparently when the Trade winds resume their normal speed the heat will spring out of the ocean and AGW will continue with a vengeance.

(see The warming is hiding in the bottom of the ocean. Someday it will pop out and say BOO!)

Seriously, that’s what his paper says.

The hiatus in temperature, that is temperature has stopped, is a complete contradiction to AGW. Lord Monckton shows this in his usual elegant fashion:

Even Skeptical Science has warmed to the idea:

So there it is, temperature as measured by the most reliable of the temperature indices from satellites shows temperature flat for over 17 years, which according to Ben Santer, a leading pro-AGW scientist, makes it climatically significant.

Santer says this:

Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature

The converse of this of course is that 17 years is also sufficient to identify NO human effects on climate.

This 17 year threshold obviously explains why England 2 years ago denied there was a “pause” in the temperature trend.

But he’s now on board and he accepts that the temperature has stopped rising.

But like Trenberth before him he cannot face this fundamental contradiction of AGW. Trenberth in the infamous emails said:

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

And like England now Trenberth also headed for the winds to explain how the pesky heat sunk to the bottom of the ocean. For Trenberth the “missing heat” was moved to the ocean bottom by “surface wind variability”.

In one of the AGW debate’s greatest ripostes Roy Spencer provided a graph showing that wind variability had actually declined:




Trenberth’s mechanism for the transfer of heat to the bottom of the ocean was contradicted by the reality of the data and that is as good a symbol of the AGW debate as possible: theory and assumptions defeated by reality.

This graph also defeats England’s paper, but there are further dimensions to how wrong his paper is.

In 2006 another of the leading AGW scientists, Gabriel Vecchi wrote a paper which concluded the Trade winds were not strengthening but weakening. Vecchi said:

The vast loop of winds that drives climate and ocean behavior across the tropical Pacific has weakened by 3.5% since the mid-1800s, and it may weaken another 10% by 2100.

This is a profound contradiction to England’s conclusions. In fact Vecchi concluded every aspect of the climate system was weakening including the Walker Circulation the World’s greatest energy movement system. Astoundingly, the ABC, just as they reported England as gospel this time, also reported Vecchi in 2006!

But even Vecchi’s conclusions, contrary though they may be to England, are not certain with other research showing the Walker Circulation is not weakening.

To complete this totally confusing picture about winds leading Australian researcher, Michael Roderick, has published research showing global winds are declining in a process termed “Stilling”.

The final nail in the coffin to England’s confusing paper is strong evidence that the radiation that both England and Trenberth claim to be wind-driven to the ocean bottom doesn’t exist. NOAA records show Outgoing Long-wave Radiation is increasing:




Slide from one of Dr. van Andel's lectures [Figure added by the Hockey Schtick]

There it is. That heat which England and Trenberth and all the rest think is at the bottom of the ocean has left the planet. It’s a pity the climate scientists couldn’t leave too and leave the rest of us alone.

Also published today from Terra Daily:

Is global warming hiding underwater?

by Staff Writers Paris (ESA) Feb 11, 2014



Global monthly mean sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies relative to a 1961-90 climatology from satellites (ATSRs: Along-Track Scanning Radiometers) and in-situ records (HadSST3). Black lines: the 100-member HadSST3 ensemble. Red lines: ATSR-based night-time subsurface temperature at 0.2 m depth (SST0.2m) estimates from the ATSR Reprocessing for Climate (ARC) project. Retrievals based on three spectral channels (D3, solid line) are more accurate than retrievals based on only two (D2, dotted line). Contributions of the three different ATSR missions to the curve shown are indicated at the bottom. The in-situ and satellite records were collocated within 5+ 5 degree monthly grid boxes: only those where both datasets had data for the same month were used in the comparison. (Adapted from Merchant et al. 2012.)

Satellite observations of global sea-surface temperature show that a 30-year upward trend has slowed down within the last 15 years. Climate scientists say this is not the end of global warming, but the result of a rearrangement in the energy flow of the climate system and, in particular, how the ocean stores heat.

Like flying thermometers, some satellites carry instruments that provide a global view of the surface temperature of oceans and seas. Measuring the sea-surface temperature is important for improving weather and ocean forecasting and climate change research.

Satellite and local readings show that sea-surface temperature has been rising rapidly since the 1970s, in line with the overall warming of our planet. But this increase has significantly slowed in the last 15 years.

In contrast, other variables such as increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, rising sea levels and declining Arctic sea ice have not experienced the same reduction in trend and therefore demonstrate that Earth's climate continues to change.

Scientists have speculated that one of the causes of this 'plateau' in sea-surface temperature could be a change in the exchange of ocean water between warm, surface waters and cold, deep waters below 700 m - as if the warming is 'hiding' underwater. Temperature measurements at this depth cover a relatively short period.

But the warm water won't hide below the surface forever: scientists believe that it may re-emerge later or affect other climate indicators, such as sea level or ocean circulation.

ESA's Climate Change Initiative, or CCI, responds to the need for continuous data on the energy budget in our climate system to understand better the slowing increase in sea-surface temperature. Satellite readings enable the detection of real trends in climate.

"We can observe changes in sea-surface temperature from the 19th century onwards using millions of measurements gathered by voluntary observers at sea and by buoys that drift around the oceans," said Nick Rayner from the Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK.

"CCI is developing sea-surface temperature information from satellites that provides an independent assessment of these changes over the last few decades."

Science leader for this project, Chris Merchant, says, "When comparing changes in global average sea-surface temperature from these two sources, we see they provide a consistent picture since 1996, when the most reliable satellite measurements began.

"We are now working on applying our methods to earlier satellites, in order to extend reliable satellite-based information back into the 1980s."

Nick Rayner adds: "That will allow us to combine, with increased confidence, the sea-surface temperature information from satellites with measurements gathered in the ocean, to build a better, more complete picture of past changes."

These topics, among others, were discussed this week during the CCI's Collocation Meeting at ESA's Centre for Earth Observation in Frascati, Italy.

ESA began monitoring sea-surface temperature in 1991 with the first Along-Track Scanning Radiometer on the ERS-1 satellite, followed by instruments on ERS-2 and Envisat.

ESA will continue observations of sea-surface temperature with the upcoming Sentinel-3 mission, being developed for Europe's Copernicus programme.

Related:

NBC News: Problems with climate models are 'bad news for the climate research community' 'could erode trust in climate science' 'downplay natural variability'

New paper finds excuse #8 for the 'pause' in global warming: Pacific trade winds

Claim: Warming of 0.09°C over the past 55 years is 'slowly but steadily cooking the world’s oceans'

Skeptical Science thinks 0.09°C ocean warming since 1957 can't fit on a graph

Yes, the ocean has warmed; no, it’s not ‘global warming’ And warm water does not sink

Dr. Noor van Andel: The data does not agree with the theory of greenhouse gas induced global warming

Global Wind excuse — monkey-modeling shows global warming theory is Still Not Wrong

New excuse #54 for the "pause" in global warming: 'Global quasi-stationary waves' from natural ocean oscillations

A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change by Kevin "it's a travesty!" Trenberth, et al, finds excuse #54 for the 18+ year "pause" in global warming: "Global quasi-stationary waves in the upper troposphere" due to the negative phase of the natural Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO]. 

According to the authors, 

"The Recent Pause In The Rise Of Global Mean Temperatures Are Examined Seasonally. For 1999 To 2012, The Hiatus In Surface Warming Is Mainly Evident In The Central And Eastern Pacific. It Is Manifested As Strong Anomalous Easterly Trade Winds, Distinctive Sea-Level Pressure Patterns, And Large Rainfall Anomalies In The Pacific, Which Resemble The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)."

By Using [lots of fudge factors in a climate] Model, The Large Negative Anomalous Latent Heating Associated With The Observed Deficit In Central Tropical Pacific Rainfall Is Shown To Be Mainly Responsible For The Global Quasi-Stationary Waves In The Upper Troposphere. The Wave Patterns In Turn Created Persistent Regional Climate Anomalies, Increasing The Odds Of Cold Winters In Europe. Hence, Tropical Pacific Forcing Of The Atmosphere Such As That Associated With A Negative Phase Of The PDO Produces Many Of The Pronounced Atmospheric Circulation Anomalies Observed Globally During The Hiatus."

In the conclusion, the authors state,

"These have been recognized as a dominant mode of natural interannual variability associated with ENSO, but here we focused on the inter-decadal variability that has become strongly evident recently through its manifestation as a pause in the rise of global mean temperatures. Accompanying the recent negative phase of the PDO has been striking changes in tropical and subtropical winds and ocean currents, with profound effects on OHC and sea level. Some of these aspects appear to be unique to the past decade and raise questions about whether natural internal variability itself is being altered by climate change."

It's a travesty to now claim, as Trenberth et al now appear to say, that natural variability itself is no longer natural and "being altered by" AGW! Such are the depths to which the AGW religion has sunk.

Side question: Do Trenberth et al Think That Capitalizing Every Single Word In Their Abstract Makes It Look More Definitive And Sciencey?

Full paper:

Seasonal aspects of the recent pause in surface warming

• Kevin E. Trenberth,
• John T. Fasullo,
• Grant Branstator
• & Adam S. Phillips

• Affiliations
• Contributions
• Corresponding author

Nature Climate Change 4, 911–916 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2341

Factors involved in the recent pause in the rise of global mean temperatures are examined seasonally. For 1999 to 2012, the hiatus in surface warming is mainly evident in the central and eastern Pacific. It is manifested as strong anomalous easterly trade winds, distinctive sea-level pressure patterns, and large rainfall anomalies in the Pacific, which resemble the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). These features are accompanied by upper tropospheric teleconnection wave patterns that extend throughout the Pacific, to polar regions, and into the Atlantic. The extratropical features are particularly strong during winter. By using an idealized heating to force a comprehensive atmospheric model, the large negative anomalous latent heating associated with the observed deficit in central tropical Pacific rainfall is shown to be mainly responsible for the global quasi-stationary waves in the upper troposphere. The wave patterns in turn created persistent regional climate anomalies, increasing the odds of cold winters in Europe. Hence, tropical Pacific forcing of the atmosphere such as that associated with a negative phase of the PDO produces many of the pronounced atmospheric circulation anomalies observed globally during the hiatus.

Climategate: What the e-mail really means

From Climategate: What e-mail really means

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," said Kevin Trenberth, one of the world's preeminent climate scientists and lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports.

Trenberth's statement is compelling on its own, but the subsequent discussion is even more illuminating. Later in the same e-mail thread, fellow climate scientist Tom Wigley replies that he does not agree with Trenberth's assertion. Trenberth then responds to Wigley, clarifying and expounding upon his earlier claims: "How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"

Read more at the link above

Climate Models Without a 'Greenhouse Effect'

Several posts have demonstrated that the Earth's climate can be physically described without any need to invent a 'greenhouse effect' caused by 'heat-trapping' 'greenhouse gases' that 'back-radiate' from the colder atmosphere to heat the hotter Earth surface in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Five published Earth energy budgets which roughly agree and do not incorporate 'greenhouse gases' at all were shown in the post Earth Energy Budgets without Greenhouse Gases, including one from the NASA Langley Research Center. A peer-reviewed paper by Ozawa et al published in Reviews of Geophysics also develops an Earth energy budget and climate model that does not incorporate a 'greenhouse effect' from 'greenhouse gases.' This is in remarkable contrast to the Earth energy budget of Kevin Trenberth used by the IPCC, which claims that 'greenhouse gases' heat the Earth by 324 Wm-2 compared to only 168 Wm-2 directly from the Sun! Thus, we have at least 6 published Earth energy budgets stating the contribution to the Earth surface temperature from 'greenhouse gases' is zero, compared to the IPCC/Trenberth budget claiming 'greenhouse gases' heat the Earth almost twice as much as direct sunlight and in violation of the 2nd law. Kevin "missing heat" Trenberth's energy budget is indeed, in his own words, "a travesty." The reason Trenberth's budget has "missing heat" is because it never existed in the first place, since 'greenhouse gases' cannot provide added energy to warm the Earth; only the Sun and geothermal energy sources can add heat to the Earth's surface.

Ozawa et al Earth energy & entropy budgets

For fans of the real 2nd law of thermodynamics, see Fig. 3 in the paper which shows heat only flows one way from the hotter Earth to colder atmosphere. The paper discusses the 2nd law in the context of maximum entropy production, which also explains why the so-called 'fingerprint' of AGW - the "hot spot" - won't occur.

Reviews of Geophysics, 41, 4 / 1018 2003 doi:10.1029/2002RG000113

THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS AND THE GLOBAL CLIMATE SYSTEM: A REVIEW OF THE MAXIMUM ENTROPY PRODUCTION PRINCIPLE

Hisashi Ozawa, Atsumu Ohmura, Ralph D. Lorenz & Toni Pujol

Abstract: The long-term mean properties of the global climate system and those of turbulent fluid systems are reviewed from a thermodynamic viewpoint. Two general expressions are derived for a rate of entropy production due to thermal and viscous dissipation (turbulent dissipation) in a fluid system. It is shown with these expressions that maximum entropy production in the Earth's climate system suggested by Paltridge, as well as maximum transport properties of heat or momentum in a turbulent system suggested by Malkus and Busse, correspond to a state in which the rate of entropy production due to the turbulent dissipation is at a maximum. Entropy production due to absorption of solar radiation in the climate system is found to be irrelevant to the maximized properties associated with turbulence. The hypothesis of maximum entropy production also seems to be applicable to the planetary atmospheres of Mars and Titan and perhaps to mantle convection. Lorenz's conjecture on maximum generation of available potential energy is shown to be akin to this hypothesis with a few minor approximations. A possible mechanism by which turbulent fluid systems adjust themselves to the states of maximum entropy production is presented as a self-feedback mechanism for the generation of available potential energy. These results tend to support the hypothesis of maximum entropy production that underlies a wide variety of nonlinear fluid systems, including our planet as well as other planets and stars.

Chaos theory explains why weather & climate cannot be predicted beyond 3 weeks

According to the originator of chaos theory, Edward Lorenz, you must know all the current conditions of the atmosphere, everywhere within it, to predict what the atmosphere will be doing in the distant future. In addition, one must know all the current conditions throughout the oceans as well, since the oceans control the atmosphere. “In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long-range forecasting would seem to be nonexistent,” Lorenz concluded. So even if the molecules in the air all interacted nonrandomly, in a totally cause-and-effect (deterministic) manner, you still couldn’t predict with certainty what they would do or what the weather would be."

Lorenz "was studying the equations that describe the atmosphere, trying to figure out how well math could be used to forecast the weather. He found that even if you had all the right equations for describing changes in the atmosphere, you couldn’t predict the weather very far into the future."

"When Lorenz ran [a crude weather model] using the rounded numbers, he found dramatic differences from the forecast using the full six-digit data. He had discovered the key concept behind chaos: sensitive dependence on initial conditions."

"In the years that followed, Lorenz worked out the implications for the weather. In the 1963 paper, he had not been able to calculate just how far the limit to accurate long-range forecasting would be. “Conceivably it could be a few days or a few centuries,” he wrote. But by 1969 he had pinned down the limit to something like three weeks. Of course, reaching even that theoretical limit would require readings from stations placed much too close together to be feasible."

Kevin Trenberth agrees with Lorenz that the initial starting conditions are unknown because "the observing system is inadequate," ergo the climate model projections are indeed a "travesty":

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. [not the models, of course] Our observing system is inadequate. - Kevin Trenberth, Climategate I email

Related: New paper finds the same climate model produces different results when run on different computers

Born half a century ago, chaos theory languished for years before taking the sciences by storm

By Tom Siegfried

SCIENCE NEWS  Web edition: September 16, 2013

Predicting the impact of a scientific discovery is a lot like predicting the weather. You never know what obscure paper in the scientific literature (or small disturbance in the atmosphere) will eventually produce a deluge of new research (or rain).

One such paper appeared 50 years ago in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. Its title, “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow,” did not excite anybody. And its author, Edward Lorenz, was shy and not predisposed to seeking publicity. But in the decades that followed, that paper spawned a cyclone of scientific activity impacting fields ranging from meteorology and mathematics to astronomy, geology, neuroscience and medicine.

In short, that paper created chaos.

Actually, Lorenz did not use the term chaos in his 1963 paper, but he captured the idea that now goes by that name. He was studying the equations that describe the atmosphere, trying to figure out how well math could be used to forecast the weather. He found that even if you had all the right equations for describing changes in the atmosphere, you couldn’t predict the weather very far into the future.

“Two states differing by imperceptible amounts may eventually evolve into two considerably different states,” he wrote. “If, then, there is any error whatever in observing the present state — and in any real system such errors seem inevitable — an acceptable prediction of an instantaneous state in the distant future may well be impossible.”

In other words, you have to know all the current conditions of the atmosphere, everywhere within it, to predict what the atmosphere will be doing in the distant future. “In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long-range forecasting would seem to be nonexistent,” Lorenz concluded. So even if the molecules in the air all interacted nonrandomly, in a totally cause-and-effect (deterministic) manner, you still couldn’t predict with certainty what they would do or what the weather would be.

This insight into the weather came to be known as the “butterfly effect,” the suggestion that flapping wings in one locale can cause an atmospheric calamity far away. Originally, Lorenz attributed such flapping power to seagulls. “One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull’s wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever,” Lorenz said when lecturing on his new paper in 1963.

Butterflies became the protagonists of chaos theory only much later. That switch came from the title given to a lecture Lorenz delivered in 1972: "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”

In the beginning, the flapping of wings was actually just the rounding of numbers. Lorenz, a meteorology professor at MIT, had been entering atmospheric readings by hand into a computer to run some forecasting programs. He was using a printout of the data on which numbers had been truncated from their original accuracy (.506127, for instance, had been rounded to .506). When Lorenz ran the program using the rounded numbers, he found dramatic differences from the forecast using the full six-digit data. He had discovered the key concept behind chaos: sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

In the years that followed, Lorenz worked out the implications for the weather. In the 1963 paper, he had not been able to calculate just how far the limit to accurate long-range forecasting would be. “Conceivably it could be a few days or a few centuries,” he wrote. But by 1969 he had pinned down the limit to something like three weeks. Of course, reaching even that theoretical limit would require readings from stations placed much too close together to be feasible.

In the years following his 1972 talk (at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), the butterfly effect idea seeped into both scientific and popular culture. By the mid-1970s the term chaos was adopted to signify the effects of sensitive dependence on starting conditions. Chaos was found in everything from the forces generating earthquakes to the time interval between heartbeats. Astronomers detected evidence that planetary orbits embody chaos, rendering the far future of the solar system unpredictable. Neuroscientists implicated chaos (or lack thereof) in problems afflicting signaling among brain cells.

As for butterflies in Brazil causing tornadoes in Texas, Lorenz did not actually answer the question posed in the title of his 1972 talk.

He did point out that if a butterfly could cause a tornado, it’s also possible that the right flapping could also prevent a tornado. Shortly before his death in 2008, Lorenz still said he didn’t really know whether a butterfly’s disturbance of the air could be magnified into a tornado.

Nevertheless the idea that small differences today can make big differences tomorrow is sound and is now well-established in science and widely recognized by the public. And that 1963 paper, referenced only three times in the following 10 years outside of the island of meteorology, has now been cited more than 11,000 times, by researchers on every scientific continent.

CITATIONS

E.N. Lorenz. Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow. J. Atmos. Sci. Vol. 20, March 1963, p. 130. doi: 10.1175/1520-0469(1963)0202.0.CO;2. [Go to]

E.N. Lorenz. Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas. American Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting, Washington D.C., December 29, 1972. Available online: [Go to]

SUGGESTED READING

B. Bower. Ratio for a good life exposed as 'nonsense'. Science News. Vol. 184, September 7, 2013. p. 5. [Go to]

New paper finds the same climate model produces different results when run on different computers

Updated list of 63 excuses for the 18-26 year 'pause' in global warming

"If you can't explain the 'pause', you can't explain the cause"

RSS satellite data showing the 18 year 'pause' of global warming

An updated list of at least 29 32 36 38 39 41 51 52 63 excuses for the 18-26 year statistically significant 'pause' in global warming, including recent scientific papers, media quotes, blogs, and related debunkings: 

1) Low solar activity

2) Oceans ate the global warming [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]

3) Chinese coal use [debunked]

4) Montreal Protocol

5) What ‘pause’? [debunked] [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]

6) Volcanic aerosols [debunked]

7) Stratospheric Water Vapor

8) Faster Pacific trade winds [debunked]

9) Stadium Waves

10) ‘Coincidence!’

11) Pine aerosols

12) It's "not so unusual" and "no more than natural variability"

13) "Scientists looking at the wrong 'lousy' data" http://

14) Cold nights getting colder in Northern Hemisphere

15) We forgot to cherry-pick models in tune with natural variability [debunked]

16) Negative phase of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation

17) AMOC ocean oscillation

18) "Global brightening" has stopped

19) "Ahistorical media"

20) "It's the hottest decade ever" Decadal averages used to hide the 'pause' [debunked]

21) Few El Ninos since 1999

22) Temperature variations fall "roughly in the middle of the AR4 model results"

23) "Not scientifically relevant"

24) The wrong type of El Ninos

25) Slower trade winds [debunked]

26) The climate is less sensitive to CO2 than previously thought [see also]

27) PDO and AMO natural cycles and here

28) ENSO

29) Solar cycle driven ocean temperature variations

30) Warming Atlantic caused cooling Pacific [paper] [debunked by Trenberth & Wunsch]

31) "Experts simply do not know, and bad luck is one reason"

32) IPCC climate models are too complex, natural variability more important

33) NAO & PDO

34) Solar cycles

35) Scientists forgot "to look at our models and observations and ask questions"

36) The models really do explain the "pause" [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]

37) As soon as the sun, the weather and volcanoes – all natural factors – allow, the world will start warming again. Who knew?

38) Trenberth's "missing heat" is hiding in the Atlantic, not Pacific as Trenberth claimed
[debunked] [Dr. Curry's take] [Author: “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus”]

39) "Slowdown" due to "a delayed rebound effect from 1991 Mount Pinatubo aerosols and deep prolonged solar minimum"

40) The "pause" is "probably just barely statistically significant" with 95% confidence:

The "slowdown" is "probably just barely statistically significant" and not "meaningful in terms of the public discourse about climate change"

41) Internal variability, because Chinese aerosols can either warm or cool the climate:

The "recent hiatus in global warming is mainly caused by internal variability of the climate" because "anthropogenic aerosol emissions from Europe and North America towards China and India between 1996 and 2010 has surprisingly warmed rather than cooled the global climate." 

[Before this new paper, anthropogenic aerosols were thought to cool the climate or to have minimal effects on climate, but as of now, they "surprisingly warm" the climate] 

42) Trenberth's 'missing heat' really is missing and is not "supported by the data itself" in the "real ocean":

"it is not clear to me, actually, that an accelerated warming of some...layer of the ocean ... is robustly supported by the data itself. Until we clear up whether there has been some kind of accelerated warming at depth in the real ocean, I think these results serve as interesting hypotheses about why the rate of surface warming has slowed-down, but we still lack a definitive answer on this topic." [Josh Willis]

43) Ocean Variability:

"After some intense work by of the community, there is general agreement that the main driver [of climate the "pause"] is ocean variability. That's actually quite impressive progress."

44) The data showing the missing heat going into the oceans is robust and not robust:

" I think the findings that the heat is going into the Atlantic and Southern Ocean’s is probably pretty robust. However, I will defer to people like Josh Willis who know the data better than I do."-Andrew Dessler. Debunked by Josh Willis, who Dessler says "knows the data better than I do," says in the very same NYT article that "it is not clear to me, actually, that an accelerated warming of some...layer of the ocean ... is robustly supported by the data itself" - Josh Willis

45) We don't have a theory that fits all of the data:

"Ultimately, the challenge is to come up with the parsimonious theory [of the 'pause'] that fits all of the data" [Andrew Dessler]

46) We don't have enough data of natural climate cycles lasting 60-70 years to determine if the "pause" is due to such natural cycles:

"If the cycle has a period of 60-70 years, that means we have one or two cycles of observations. And I don’t think you can much about a cycle with just 1-2 cycles: e.g., what the actual period of the variability is, how regular it is, etc. You really need dozens of cycles to determine what the actual underlying variability looks like. In fact, I don’t think we even know if it IS a cycle." [Andrew Dessler]

47) Could be pure internal [natural] variability or increased CO2 or both

"this brings up what to me is the real question: how much of the hiatus is pure internal variability and how much is a forced response (from loading the atmosphere with carbon). This paper seems to implicitly take the position that it’s purely internal variability, which I’m not sure is true and might lead to a very different interpretation of the data and estimate of the future." [Andrew Dessler]

48) Its either in the Atlantic or Pacific, but definitely not a statistical fluke:

It's the Atlantic, not Pacific, and "the hiatus in the warming...should not be dismissed as a statistical fluke" [John Michael Wallace]

49) The other papers with excuses for the "pause" are not "science done right":

" If the science is done right, the calculated uncertainty takes account of this background variation. But none of these papers, Tung, or Trenberth, does that. Overlain on top of this natural behavior is the small, and often shaky, observing systems, both atmosphere and ocean where the shifting places and times and technologies must also produce a change even if none actually occurred. The “hiatus” is likely real, but so what? The fuss is mainly about normal behavior of the climate system." [Carl Wunsch]

50) The observational data we have is inadequate, but we ignore uncertainty to publish anyway:

"The central problem of climate science is to ask what you do and say when your data are, by almost any standard, inadequate? If I spend three years analyzing my data, and the only defensible inference is that “the data are inadequate to answer the question,” how do you publish? How do you get your grant renewed? A common answer is to distort the calculation of the uncertainty, or ignore it all together, and proclaim an exciting story that the New York Times will pick up...How many such stories have been withdrawn years later when enough adequate data became available?"

51) If our models could time-travel back in time, “we could have forecast ‘the pause’ – if we had the tools of the future back then” [NCAR press release]

[Time-traveling, back-to-the-future models debunked] [debunked] ["pause" due to natural variability]

52) 'Unusual climate anomaly' of unprecedented deceleration of a secular warming trend

53) Competition" with two natural ocean oscillations

54) 'Global quasi-stationary waves' from natural ocean oscillations

55) Reduced warming in North Atlantic subpolar gyre

56) Satellites underestimate cooling from volcanic aerosols

57) Increase in mid- and upper level clouds

58) Colder eastern Pacific and reduced heat loss in other oceans

59) A "zoo of short-term trends"

60) IPCC Synthesis Report excuses for the "pause": volcanoes, solar activity, possible redistribution of heat:

61) Climate Policies?!

62) "Global warming causes no global warming"

63) Global warming will speed up after a "pause" due to "change of fundamental understanding about how greenhouse warming comes about"

52 excuses to blow your carbon diet

Additional related comments from climate scientists about the "pause"

1) My University screwed up the press release & didn't let me stop them from claiming my paper shows the "hiatus will last another decade or two." [Dessler]

2) "This [the 'pause'] is not an existential threat to the mainstream theory of climate." [Andrew Dessler]

3) "In a few years, as we get to understand this [the 'pause'] more, skeptics will move on (just like they dropped arguments about the hockey stick and about the surface station record) to their next reason not to believe climate science." [Andrew Dessler]

4)  "if you try really hard to mangle the data, and cherry pick very skillfully, you can make a case" for the "pause"

5) Michael Asten from Monash University’s School of Earth ­Atmosphere and Environment said that, while opinions on causes differed, the existence of the pause was settled. “Only activists dare claim the pause in global temperature does not exist,” Professor Asten said
and a roundup of climate scientists talking about no warming, from Jimbo at WUWT, and via Andrew Bolt's Herald Sun blog

Jimbo on Watts Up With That rounds up the climate scientists confessing to this lack of warming:

Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005

“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”

Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009

‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’

Dr. Judith L. Lean – Geophysical Research Letters – 15 Aug 2009
“…This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming…”

Dr. Kevin Trenberth – CRU emails – 12 Oct. 2009

“Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…..The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

Dr. Mojib Latif – Spiegel – 19th November 2009

“At present, however, the warming is taking a break,"……."There can be no argument about that.”

Dr. Jochem Marotzke – Spiegel – 19th November 2009

“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community.... We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”

Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010

“I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend.”

Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010

[Q] B – “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”

[A] “Yes, but only just”.

Prof. Shaowu Wang et al – Advances in Climate Change Research – 2010

“…The decade of 1999-2008 is still the warmest of the last 30 years, though the global temperature increment is near zero;…”

Dr. Robert K. Kaufmann – PNAS – 2nd June 2011

“…..it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008…..”

Dr. Gerald A. Meehl – Nature Climate Change – 18th September 2011

“There have been decades, such as 2000–2009, when the observed globally averaged surface-temperature time series shows little increase or even a slightly negative trend1 (a hiatus period)….”

Met Office Blog – Dave Britton (10:48:21) – 14 October 2012

“We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.”

Dr. James Hansen – NASA GISS – 15 January 2013

“The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.”

Dr. Virginie Guemas – Nature Climate Change – 7 April 2013

“…Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period…”

Dr. Hans von Storch – Spiegel – 20 June 2013

“…the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero….If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models….”

Professor Masahiro Watanabe – Geophysical Research Letters – 28 June 2013

“The weakening of k commonly found in GCMs seems to be an inevitable response of the climate system to global warming, suggesting the recovery from hiatus in coming decades.”

Professor Rowan Sutton – Independent – 22 July 2013
“Some people call it a slow-down, some call it a hiatus, some people call it a pause. The global average surface temperature has not increased substantially over the last 10 to 15 years.”

And, no, they never saw this coming:



UPDATE: Oh, did they forget to mention the planet wouldn’t actually warm for a while? Their bad: 

Scientists have long been aware that climate change would not happen at a fixed rate and could include periods where temperatures remain stable for 10 to 20 years, but admitted they had failed to explain this to the public in the past.

Prof Rowan Sutton, Director of Climate Research at the University of Reading, said: “Within the field we have taken for granted that there will be variations in the rate of warming, it is totally accepted and is no surprise ...[it] would correct to say that wasn’t the message that we communicated more widely and that probably is a failing.”

UPDATE: C3 has updated the Wayne's World list of excuses for the "pause":

Related:

Climate Depot Analysis: ‘There have been at least 10 separate explanations for the standstill in global warming’ – 1) Low Solar Activity; 2) Oceans Ate Warming; 3) Chinese Coal Use; 4) Montreal Protocol; 5) Readjusted past temps to claim ‘pause’ never existed 6) Volcanoes 7) Decline in Water Vapor 8) Pacific trade winds 9) ‘Coincidence’ 10) ‘Stadium Waves’

‘Warming Interrruptus’ – Causes for The Pause

Quotable Global Warming Hiatus Quotes

UN IPCC Reviewer Dr. Vincent Gray: IPCC climate models are incapable of determining effect of greenhouse gases on climate

A new paper from SPPI and climatologist Dr. Vincent Gray:

For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here.

[Illustrations, footnotes and references available in PDF version]

Excerpts:

The Climate is a heat engine. Energy input is mainly short wave radiation from the sun. Energy output is mainly long wave radiation from every surface on the earth and from every level in the atmosphere, including clouds and aerosols.

The density of the atmosphere falls with height from reduced gravity and it cools adiabatically. This fall of temperature with height is called the Lapse Rate. The return of latent heat by clouds causes a decrease in this rate. In addition, there are effects from convection, radiation loss and latitude. Figure 2 shows only the adiabatic and moisture effects.

...

The surface of the earth and every level of the atmosphere radiates energy according to the Stefan Boltzmann Law, dependent on emissivity multiplied by the fourth power of the absolute temperature. The lapse rate means that the radiated energy from the atmosphere falls very rapidly with height, so that most of it comes from close to the surface.

Radiation from the surface is upwards, but from the atmosphere it is in all directions, so that half of this radiated energy returns to the surface. By land, the amount returned depends on local albedo, but there is evidence that this is very low over the ocean where most is reflected.

PART 2 — THE UNREAL CLIMATE

An alternative view of the climate has recently arisen from the environmental movement, which believes human activity can be shown to cause all changes in the climate – natural causes being merely responsible for “variability”. 

As there was no evidence to support this theory, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organisation and The United Nations Environment Programme in 1988 to assess scientific evidence and formulate response programmes. It has supplied four major Reports and several minor ones, and is currently engaged on its fifth Report. 

THE UNREAL GREENHOUSE: THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

The unreal Climate theory is referred to as “The Greenhouse Effect”. It is based on a false theory of the action of a greenhouse by Fourier, who speculated that a greenhouse was heated by reflection of infrared radiation from the soil from the glass of the greenhouse. This false theory is used to justify a similar behaviour in the atmosphere.

Fourier1-10 (1768-1839) made major contributions to the theory of heat flow in solids and to the mathematical simulation of irregular behaviour, but he lived before the discoveries of the mechanical equivalent of heat and the nature of radiation in the later part of the nineteen century. 

He believed the earth was heated by the ether but needed extra heat to explain the difference between the tropics and the poles.His friend de Saussure11,12 had invented a Hot Box which was a small insulated greenhouse which could be heated by the sun’s rays. Fourier4,6,7thought that when the sun’s rays were changed into non-luminous heat (infrared) when they meet the surface, the infrared rays could not leave the hot box because they were unable to pass through the glass window the box, and so were concentrated inside the box....

The First IPCC Report 35 (1990) presented what it called “the Greenhouse Effect” in this simplified diagram on page XIV of the Policymakers Summary.

This model has hardly anything in common with the Real Climate.

Its assumptions include the following:

 The earth is flat.

 The earth does not rotate.

 The sun shines all day and all night with equal intensity.

 Energy interchange in the climate is entirely by radiation. 

 Conduction, convection and latent heat transfer do not happen.

 Energy flow parameters are constants with no variability.

 Energy flow is "balanced" with input equal to output.

 Air movements, wind, rain, hurricanes are ignored.

 Chaos has been abolished.

 Change in this system is entirely caused by increasing human-induced trace gases in the

atmosphere.

 The earth is dead: there are no living organisms, no trees, animals, birds or people.

The energy imbalance of the earth is probably positive, but also extremely uncertain, so that the IPCC Climate model, as shown by Figure7 and also by the recent update (Figure 8), is quite incapable of giving guidance on the possible role of greenhouse gases in modifying the climate. 

Kevin Trenberth himself has correctly summarized the situation with the remark he made amongst the Climategate Emails; that the models are a “Travesty”.

On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote: 

“Hi Tom How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are nowhere close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty! Kevin”


Who could disagree with him?