2012 Global Temperatures

[WeatherRusty]

I calculated te forcing over the solar cycle to actually be less than 0.24 w/m^2, and closer to 0.18 w/m^2. The forcing from the sun's irradiance as estimated from Haigh 2003 since the Maunder Minimum had a mean forcing of 0.61 w/m^2. If you multiply this by a factor of 7 or 8, this is substantially larger than the anthropogenic forcing during this timeframe.

Also, when you assume that the temperature response to small solar irradiance changes is around 0.08 K, you are assuming that the earth radiates like a blackbody at around 3.3 w/m^2 for every Degree C. Earth may very well radiate much more than 3.3 w/m^2 for every Degree C.

We have observed a factor the multiplies the irradiance forcing by a factor of 7 or 8. This can not be ignored.

Plancks Law relates the temperature of a black body with the average wavelength of light it emits. The relationship is strictly linear such that wavelength is inversely proportional to the temperature. Therefore, at a given temperature we can calculate the wavelength and vice versa.

Your statement would violate the law. We can say with great confidence that with 1 watt of positive radiative forcing we can expect 0.3K of warming.

The total area beneath the colored lines represents the Stephan-Bolzmann Law.

[ORH_wxman]

That's an interesting plot - thank you for sharing it with us. I just want to make sure I understand it. SInce it shows the rate of temperature rise, and the units are in degrees C/decade - for the Earth to be cooling the line would have to drop down into negative values - is that correct?

So the rate of global warming has recently stabilized at between 0.16 and 0.18 C/decade?

Yes, for the 30 year running temperature change rate...we would have to see it fall below 0 to say we have a 30 year cooling trend. Realistically, the late 2020s would be the earliest we see that if we see it at all...we'd have to drop an extremely unlikely 0.25-0.30C or so over the next 5-7 years to get a negative 30 year trend before the 2020s.

Tonight I may post the values all the way back to the early 20th century to see how it looks.

As for the current values...yes, we've stabilized around 0.16C to 0.17C per decade since the peak in 2003 or 2004. We actually have a slightly lower temperature trend from 1979-present (0.153C per decade) than the current 30 year running mean since the 1979-1981 years were warmer than the subsequent 1982-1985 period assisted slightly by the El Chicon eruption.

[Snow_Miser]

My issue with the paper doesn't concern the mechanism by which heat leaves the oceans (natural oceanic cycles). My issue concerns the heat entering the oceans. I believe his error is in concluding that the source of the heat that is not accounted for by TSI is an unnamed mechanism that amplifies the impact of TSI variations.

He wrote:

We thus conclude that the apparent oceanic flux variations must be the result of a large amount of heat of an external forcing, which periodically enters and leaves the oceans without being amplified by the atmosphere nor by an internal oceanic mode. This implies that the sun affexts climate through a mechanism other than TSI variations.

Anthropogenic forcings account for this "large amount of heat." As there is more heat than can be accounted for from solar forcing, more heat than can be accounted by that forcing is also emitted by the oceans through internal variability. Moreover, beyond this paper, the growing divergence between OHC and global temperatures and TSI demonstrate that the unnamed external forcing is growing more influential relative to solar forcing. That outcome is consistent with the growing atmospheric concentration of CO2.

Finally, although I didn't mention it previously, some of his speculation is implausible. For example, he writes, "The third possibility is that the apparently large amounts of energy entering the oceans are actually fictitious."

Natural ocean cycles are not the reason for why there is 7-8 times the negative forcing than just TSI alone during the downslope of a solar cycle. It is changes in cloud cover that are in sync with the solar forcing, with cosmic rays creating this change in cloud cover that are causing this amplified cooling effect.

Shaviv detrended the data, thus any long term influence from anthropogenic and natural causes would be removed, leaving the 11 year solar cycle by itself.

[The_Global_Warmer]

The vast majority of the energy goes into the oceans. The rest goes to land warming, ice melt, and atmospheric warming. Of the non-ocean portion, the amount going toward ice melting has been increasing. During the 2005-10 period, ice melt accounted for the largest share of the non-ocean portion. The 2005-10 period saw the portion going for ice melting increase by nearly 70% from the larger 1993-2008 timeframe. The portion driving land warming fell by nearly 8%.

The following chart comes from Dr. Hansen's paper:

http://pubs.giss.nas...Hansen_etal.pdf (p.13433/p.13 of the .pdf).

Thanks, I will have to open this paper sometime soon.

2012 will surely blow every other year on record out the door in terms ice melt.

Dr. Hansen's graphs do not include 2011 or 2012, I am sure as time goes on we will continue to see updates.

While I have a very weak grasp on the energy stuff in terms of the numerical definitions and mathematics that come with it. I do understand that ice is not taking up a large portion of the energy budget, nor is it a large positive feedback yet on a global scale.

I have always been very astute or have an ability to put pieces of puzzles together to formulate answers without knowing even close to every last detail of the puzzle in the first place.

In a way it is like taking H5 height and vort maps and extrapolating a surface pressure regime from the H5 maps and being able to do it well because I have looked at thousands of H5 maps and surface pressure layouts and overtime, my brain I guess can use that information to formulate answers in the future based on part of that info already attained. Without every being told what vorticity is, how do heights factor in and so on, but learn it from what I call situational awareness or more or less when it comes to meteorology and climatology spatial, conceptual, and perceptual awareness. Those are my greatest attributes and they happen to work like gold when it comes to atmospheric science, what is more spatial, conceptual, and perceptional than that. The only real numerical part that is important is done by computers.

By no means am I advocating some arrogant pipe dream of course learning physics and math is very important. I am just stating that with things like Climatology, Evolution, philosophy to name a few you can understand a lot of it and put a lot of answers together just from spatial thought and repetition + information overload.

So Don that's why I like you. I read your posts and you have a very numerical and projection based system from prior observations. In theory in a stable climate this method would be super solid, in our climate it's not. You didn't try to manipulate the numerical work to fit your idea's about AGW, you let the numerical work do it's thing and you did what humans do great you adapted with critical thinking. You dug in and realized you needed to adust for the AGW signal which makes our analogs pretty much worthless at times just 10,20, 30 years old, many analogs from the 60s and 70s are way to cold and will not happen even with pressure gradients in place and very similar set ups, we just can't get that cold anymore. It is real and is what it is and you have slowly weeded your way towards a higher understanding and forecasting ability of the climate and seasonal weather.

My point is, with very different backgrounds and levels of proper education we and others, even most of the skeptics like ORH are in near synchronous agreement about this. the issue is we take very tenth and hundredth of a degree so serious it puts us in a position to argue instead of discuss and listen and learn.

If ORH and I debated the health of the ice pack going forwards I think we would actually agree very well, exp in the shorter term. If we debated future arctic and global and USA temp anomaly's we would be in very close agreement. If we only debated GISSTEMP for the arctic, I would have said between 2012-2020 I expect the arctic to be mostly around 2-2.5C until 2015 and if the AMO does make it to negative and cooler N. Atlantic waters then we might drop into the 1.4C range(+/- .4C to 1.0-1.8C) I believe ORH thinks a negative AMO in the 2015-2025 range could knock the arctic down to the peak range Pre-WW2, if I am wrong I am not trying to put words in his mouth. I totally agree with that.

We stop agreeing when I believe strongly that there is a chance albedo feedback pressured by GHG forcing is growing much stronger than natural oscillation in the arctic region, not the globe. I understand most GHG forcing is well diversified but the arctic does have the strongest GHG forcing on the planet, it also has millions of 100M or even more shallow water which happens to lose it's ice cover every single summer now. So a ton of heat is injected, now we know a lot of it goes back to space in October and November, but not all and even if it's not a lot, it can become a lot in arctic winter as a positive feedback with reduced ice cover, we saw this with the Kara/Barents recently with insane temp anomaly's.

No where else on Earth loses 1 million square kilometers of ice and because of it the subsequent open water caused surface temps to be near, slightly below, or in some cases above freezing, compared to the historical -20 to -30C temps. This causes extraordinary temp anomalies. Even with a persistent Northerly flow off the arctic ice sheet last winter and even at lower latitudes solar was blocked big time by consistent SLP's off the Bering Sea region. But there isn't much solar there to be blocked and go well below normal. However on the Kara/Barents side OLR anomaly's were huge and widespread. In the end the Atlantic side even with a -AMO/Neutral. Of course one winter the AMO index reflecting normal or below normal N. Atlantic SSTs, can't reverse decade long trends in Sea Ice or arctic climate. But the bigger thing to me was, but still. The Atlantic side North of the Atlantic Ocean torched big time without abnormally warm AMO reading with 60-70N area running very very warm. The warm was created by the pattern + Ice albedo feedback. Ice has to thicken up quite a bit to stop releasing heat. Open water or ice covered parts of the Arctic Basin, Kare, Laptev, and Barents all had this happen a lot. Only amplified by systems pumping warm air in from the South. On top of that, increased OLR means more GHG amplification feedback even in winter. How many times does GHG's defect radiation back and then while new radiation is entering the system, that radiation is tying to leave and a ton of it escapes but still from the first batch we have plenty stragglers. they get sent back to the Earth, some get uses, most get sent right back to space, but again, we still have a lot of Klingons, and this cycle repeats and get's stronger and stronger and stronger every year after year after year.

So back to the disagreement. I hinged my argument on the lack of a defined mechanism of action for the AMO index.

Which makes me ask is it an index that is governed by solar & GHG forcing for the most part or is it actually The Atlantic Multidecadol Interlude. Yes I know it's index, but isn't it really an interlude between warmer waters that will release more OLR to the atmosphere or cooler waters that will release less OLR but also suck up more energy like a vacuum, like we see in the North Pacific, I have seen a few 4-5 day periods of sunny warm weather and it does warm the ssts, but it's still futile to expect an upheaval of that, and if that cold is displaced by warmer water and then the big yellow ball up there lites it up, it won't matter the cold is still in session in the Pacific(PDO) and the cold shows up towards Indonesia and the Western side of North America in places. Whether it's ocean driven wind circulations or THC water circulations it's real to some extent in the Pacific for sure. The Atlantic is a bit more sketchy because of a few things.

1. outside of just the THC rhealm. Other parts of the Atlantic are warming very fast because of displaced currents I suppose, but maybe it's an air circulation issue.

2. The GHG effect will help warm the Atlantic directly, this may not be a big forcing, but none the less, this will be a positive feedback alway in play, always getting stronger.

3. Possible interactions with Greenland ice mass loss + snow/ice albedo feedback from ice loss in summer, which is possibly having an effect on the regional climate and could be aiding in more and more -NAO's in summer.

The AMO index shot up to 0.417 from slightly negative last winter. Not unheard of but a very large jump none the less. Below is an sst anomaly graph I know everyone is familiar with. This is an issue because Ice/overall warming climate over North America, expecially more warm the further North you go. The incredibly warm water off the NE coast for years now seems to keep slowly warming and expands North with seasons, ocean circulations and patterns. Basically the water along and North of the Gulf Stream has warmed up big time. Is it possible some of this is ciruclar, the Hudson torches a lot, the CA waterways are reaching ice free conditions also warming more than anytime recently going from either near freezing open water or ice covered to 2/3C to 10C in cases. The Baffin is a bit far North but it is also warming slowly, but patterns rule it. Going back to the Beaufort winds could pick up heat from there and dump it into the Hudson or other water ways, or the land, some of it will reach the Atlantic, and some of that heat will be anomalously to much and the Atlantic will warm in response even if it's meager. Clearly the heat box of North America this Spring/Summer had some effects on warming the Atlantic, winds primaryly blow West to East so heat is blown in many cases over the cooler atlantic. Historically land and ocean were cooler so the Atlantic will be warmer. The S.H. Oceans and Pacific are beasts. And are likely far less effected by land.

The entire Hudson Bay is running 8-12C right now, it's supposed to be running 8/9 at max along the western shore's and tapering down to 1-2 maybe 3C in the North Eastern part. The Bay has slowy been warming in summer the last few decades, but like other things, the last 5 years it all changed rather quick. More and more warmth is retained during summer and released in October and November. Not that it is a lot. But parts of the bay have warmed up a ton, in 2010 this happened, exp in November, but I have never seen a Hudson Bay sst chart torch like this summer and the Hudson was a bit slower than recent years out of the gate, but it's weird too.

We can see the Hudson is not being torched very much. The first one is Aug 8th-12th a warm spell that surely helped warm things up.

surface temp anomalies from July 20th to August 12th below.

So the Baffin is also running 7-9C Bay wide, some spots 10C or higher, some W and Far NW spots under 7C, but it's quite amazing that all of these bodies of water around ice that are relatively shallow are typically warmer than normal, 2012 they are quite a bit warmer.

These are reasons I ask if the AMO is being pushed hard by outside forcings that can overwhelm with ease the THC overturning of warm and cool into our atmosphere.

4. What if the AMO losses it's influence on the arctic because the arctic own GHG forced equilibrium after the feedbacks stabalize at all if they do, I dunno, but what if that sytem it self perpetuates it's own heating feedback that the AMO can't stop much at all. So far the PDO seems pretty weak against the arctic and the North Pacifc was very cold last winter and the last while at times, and it did nothing, not a damn bit of difference, ice is in the worst shape it's ever been.

5. So what if the AMO doesn't matter, how much will it warm? How much will the globe warm? Well as long as there is sea ice at all most of the heat goes to that and Glaciers and Spring Snow, so I think even without the AMO there may be a slowing of warming for sure or even flatline.

So adding in the AMO, let's assume the arctic drops .5 to 1.0C from where it is not because the Atlantic side ice gets a bit healthier and places don't torch to much.

The AMO as we have seen goes to a negative phase around 2020 and is in the deepest part by 2030-2035.

By my calcultions, CH4 will likely be in the 2200-2800 PPB range so it's effects could be decently stronger or not very much from now.

Co2 will be roughly 420ppm by 2020 in the arctic region and 415-418 globally and likely around 450-465ppm 2030-2035, those are modest increases, let's assume that it self add's enough global warming for .3 to .4C rise in global temps all things being equal, by then the PDO might be going positive. Either way the Greenhouse Effect should be much stronger than now, strong enough to off-set much cooling. Which is what we already saw in the 1960s-early 80s vs the previous period and we saw in this warm amo vs the one before. Well, we can't assume a linear feedback, the basic physics suggest the warming during the next -AMO cycle will be stronger than the other ones. We have to account for that.

So as I drifted way off course it reminds me why I went on this long rant.

While you have your ideas and I have my jumbled unorganized partial mess I laid on the table, ORH has his, and so on, we really all come to very very very similiar results. I believe this means we could possibly be narrowing the science and kicking off the bad seed's and the non-extremists are conforming onto a possible truth here.

We Shall See...

[Snow_Miser]

Plancks Law relates the temperature of a black body with the average wavelength of light it emits. The relationship is strictly linear such that wavelength is inversely proportional to the temperature. Therefore, at a given temperature we can calculate the wavelength and vice versa.

Your statement would violate the law. We can say with great confidence that with 1 watt of positive radiative forcing we can expect 0.3K of warming.

The total area beneath the colored lines represents the Stephan-Bolzmann Law.

Yes, with a black body my statement would violate that law. However, that's not what I was talking about. Numerous feedbacks could make the climate more insensitive to a radiative forcing than a black body.

[donsutherland1]

Natural ocean cycles are not the reason for why there is 7-8 times the negative forcing than just TSI alone during the downslope of a solar cycle. It is changes in cloud cover that are in sync with the solar forcing, with cosmic rays creating this change in cloud cover that are causing this amplified cooling effect.

Shaviv detrended the data, thus any long term influence from anthropogenic and natural causes would be removed, leaving the 11 year solar cycle by itself.

Smoothing with 3-year moving/running averages, folding the data over the 11-year solar cycle, and removing ENSO does not account for non-ENSO related internal variability and it does not account for anthropogenic forcing. By not accounting for those other factors, the impact of those other factors affects the results. The gap is largely explained by anthropogenic forcing and its measuring almost precisely what one would expect given the radiative forcing of CO2 is not a coincidence.. There's no need to attribute the gap to an unnamed mechanism that amplifies TSI, when an external forcing so closely accounts for that gap.

Now, if the impact of those other variables had been removed, and one found a meaningful gap between TSI and the data, the gap would be interesting and worth exploring. Unfortunately, the effects of those other variables were not removed. A partial removal of variables and smoothing doesn't allow for an "all things being equal" outcome. A partial approach can work well if the removed variables account for most of the exogenous signal. In this case, they don't. Hence, the paper's main contribution is much more limited and its suggestion of solar amplification has not been widely embraced in the climate science literature (and it very likely won't be cited in the next IPCC climate change synthesis paper).

[PhillipS]

Yes, for the 30 year running temperature change rate...we would have to see it fall below 0 to say we have a 30 year cooling trend. Realistically, the late 2020s would be the earliest we see that if we see it at all...we'd have to drop an extremely unlikely 0.25-0.30C or so over the next 5-7 years to get a negative 30 year trend before the 2020s.

Tonight I may post the values all the way back to the early 20th century to see how it looks.

As for the current values...yes, we've stabilized around 0.16C to 0.17C per decade since the peak in 2003 or 2004. We actually have a slightly lower temperature trend from 1979-present (0.153C per decade) than the current 30 year running mean since the 1979-1981 years were warmer than the subsequent 1982-1985 period assisted slightly by the El Chicon eruption.

I appreciate you and the other posters verifying my understanding of your plot. I think it would be great if you extend it back to the early 20th century. Thanks again for sharing it with us.

Looking at your plot, I can't see how anybody can claim with a straight face that global warming has stopped, or that the Earth is cooling. Even your shorter period trend of 0.153 C/decade is a lot closer to the record high rate than it is to zero. Yes, the rate of acceleration of warming has dropped - but not the rate of warming itself so much.

The other point your plot emphasizes is that global warming is on track to reach and exceed the cumulative 2 C threshold that many say will have serious consequences. I find that sobering and alarming, not so much for our generation but for our kids and future generations.

[nflwxman]

Updated NCDC numbers for Global July.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/7

Coming in at the 4th Warmest July. Big difference from the GISS.

[Snow_Miser]

Smoothing with 3-year moving/running averages, folding the data over the 11-year solar cycle, and removing ENSO does not account for non-ENSO related internal variability and it does not account for anthropogenic forcing. By not accounting for those other factors, the impact of those other factors affects the results. The gap is largely explained by anthropogenic forcing and its measuring almost precisely what one would expect given the radiative forcing of CO2 is not a coincidence.. There's no need to attribute the gap to an unnamed mechanism that amplifies TSI, when an external forcing so closely accounts for that gap.

Now, if the impact of those other variables had been removed, and one found a meaningful gap between TSI and the data, the gap would be interesting and worth exploring. Unfortunately, the effects of those other variables were not removed. A partial removal of variables and smoothing doesn't allow for an "all things being equal" outcome. Hence, the paper's main contribution is much more limited and its suggestion of solar amplification has not been widely embraced in the climate science literature (and it very likely won't be cited in the next IPCC climate change synthesis paper).

Detrending the data does account for any forcing that contributed to a long term increase in temperatures over the 20th Century.

Your anthropogenic forcing explanation does not make sense either for the downslope of the solar cycle, as it has been observed that the total negative forcing is 7-8 times larger than with irradiance changes alone, not consistent with your explanation

I also don't buy your ENSO explanation as the reason for why there is seven to eight times the forcing aid irradiance alone on the downslope of a solar cycle.

I don't buy that every single time over the course of many solar cycles, that ENSO somehow managed to make the cooling impact seven to eight times larger than it otherwise would be with irradiance alone.

Secondly, ENSO is not a forcing. It simply redistributes heat throughout the climate system. There is some impact that ENSO has on cloud cover changes, but such effects are poorly understood.

I think while your explanation is remotely possible, it is quite unlikely, as changes in cloud cover have been observed to be in sync with the cosmic ray flux and the solar cycle, this cloud cover changes associated with the CRF explains this discrepency with the total foring during the course of a solar cycle. See the papers I posted a page or so back.

[ORH_wxman]

I appreciate you and the other posters verifying my understanding of your plot. I think it would be great if you extend it back to the early 20th century. Thanks again for sharing it with us.

Looking at your plot, I can't see how anybody can claim with a straight face that global warming has stopped, or that the Earth is cooling. Even your shorter period trend of 0.153 C/decade is a lot closer to the record high rate than it is to zero. Yes, the rate of acceleration of warming has dropped - but not the rate of warming itself so much.

The other point your plot emphasizes is that global warming is on track to reach and exceed the cumulative 2 C threshold that many say will have serious consequences. I find that sobering and alarming, not so much for our generation but for our kids and future generations.

Its actually a longer term trend than the 30 year trend...its a 33 year trend. As noted above, the 1979-1981 period was warmer than the following 3 year period (assisted by El Chicon) which is why including that prior period of 1979-1981 makes the 33 year trend smaller than the 30 year 1982-2010 trend. But the differences are minor...about 0.01C per decade.

If we don't warm for the next 3-4 years, then the 30 year trend will fall to about 0.10-0.11C per decade since we will erase the El Chicon cooler years.

[Snow_Miser]

Updated NCDC numbers for Global July.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/7

Coming in at the 4th Warmest July. Big difference from the GISS.

That is a huge difference... I think HadCRU will tell which one is more in line with reality.

[The_Global_Warmer]

160,000km2 is not very much.

To equate it to something we all know well.

take the the SIA Max-SIA Min and we get roughly 11 million square kilometers. This is the water area that lost it's ice cover. If we filled that space up with Argo floats we would need roughly 69 floats to do that.

I think if 69 argo floats were moving around in the open water left over they would cover a lot of ground, especially on a weekly, monthly, seasonal, and yearly basis and would give back what I would assume would be thousands and thousands of different data points at different location.

Now we also need to recognize large parts of the ocean have very uniformed temps, it's not perfect but it's also not going to miss very much.

The arctic for instance is not represented with Argo floats, but buoys are in the program(ITP'S). A warminista would be like well the Carribean, GOM, and especially the NW Atlantic since it's a region very very very warm. The Hudson Bay, Baffin and so on. It's surely not perfect, the SOO is also warm. I am assuming those places are to shallow for the kind of data we need from the floats. Never the less, we have 3561 floats taking down data right now I think that is amazing and awesome and should be enough for some reliable data.

[nflwxman]

That is a huge difference... I think HadCRU will tell which one is more in line with reality.

In relative terms, UAH seems to match the calculations of NCDC over GISS for July 2012. UAH came in at the 5th warmest July.

[donsutherland1]

Detrending the data does account for any forcing that contributed to a long term increase in temperatures over the 20th Century.

Your anthropogenic forcing explanation does not make sense either for the downslope of the solar cycle, as it has been observed that the total negative forcing is 7-8 times larger than with irradiance changes alone, not consistent with your explanation

I also don't buy your ENSO explanation as the reason for why there is seven to eight times the forcing aid irradiance alone on the downslope of a solar cycle.

I don't buy that every single time over the course of many solar cycles, that ENSO somehow managed to make the cooling impact seven to eight times larger than it otherwise would be with irradiance alone.

Secondly, ENSO is not a forcing. It simply redistributes heat throughout the climate system. There is some impact that ENSO has on cloud cover changes, but such effects are poorly understood.

I think while your explanation is remotely possible, it is quite unlikely, as changes in cloud cover have been observed to be in sync with the cosmic ray flux and the solar cycle, this cloud cover changes associated with the CRF explains this discrepency with the total foring during the course of a solar cycle. See the papers I posted a page or so back.

One need not accept my issues with the paper, namely its failure to compensate for anthropogenic forcing. The post-solar minimum paper by Dr. Hansen revealed the kind of impact on the earth's energy imbalance one would reasonably expect when including anthropogenic forcing. There was only a modest impact on the earth's energy budget, which maintained a significant positive imbalance. There was no amplification of the decline in TSI even remotely close to what one would expect based on the Shaviv paper, which would almost certainly have resulted in a negative imbalance had it occurred.

Hansen wrote:

Earth's energy imbalance during the solar minimum tests the effect of solar variability on climate, including any amplifications that may exist, such as the effect of cosmic rays on clouds. The imbalance during the solar minimum is the net effect of reduced solar irradiance and all other climate forcings...

The strong positive energy imbalance during the solar minimum, and the consistency of the planet's energy imbalance with expectations based on estimated human-made climate forcing, together constitute a smoking gun, a fundamental verification that human-made climate forcing is the dominant forcing driving global climate change. Positive net forcing even during the solar minimum assures that global warming will be continuing on decadal time scales.

Nature's "lab test" exposed the flaws in Shaviv's paper. The unnamed amplification on which he speculated to explain a gap that was largely the result of the anthropogenic forcing, did not materialize. Instead, the impact of the solar minimum was far more modest. More importantly, it was consistent with the direct change in TSI. The failure of this amplification to materialize confirms that the gap was not solar amplification-related, as it is improbable that this solar minimum was unique in that there was no amplification. In short, the gap was mainly the result of a failure to account for anthropogenic forcing. In a way, nature "decided" the solar amplification debate and "ruled" against the Shaviv paper's conclusion.

Whether or not Shaviv will reassess his work in light of the outcome remains to be seen. Should he seek to do so, he should remove anthropogenic forcing and also the PDO (leading driver of internal oceanic variability) from the data. If he takes such an approach, I suspect he will conclude that amplification of TSI is actually quite small. Moreover, his findings would then fit the observed outcome related to the recent solar minimum and would no longer constitute an outlier so to speak.

[Snow_Miser]

160,000km2 is not very much.

To equate it to something we all know well.

take the the SIA Max-SIA Min and we get roughly 11 million square kilometers. This is the water area that lost it's ice cover. If we filled that space up with Argo floats we would need roughly 69 floats to do that.

I think if 69 argo floats were moving around in the open water left over they would cover a lot of ground, especially on a weekly, monthly, seasonal, and yearly basis and would give back what I would assume would be thousands and thousands of different data points at different location.

Now we also need to recognize large parts of the ocean have very uniformed temps, it's not perfect but it's also not going to miss very much.

The arctic for instance is not represented with Argo floats, but buoys are in the program(ITP'S). A warminista would be like well the Carribean, GOM, and especially the NW Atlantic since it's a region very very very warm. The Hudson Bay, Baffin and so on. It's surely not perfect, the SOO is also warm. I am assuming those places are to shallow for the kind of data we need from the floats. Never the less, we have 3561 floats taking down data right now I think that is amazing and awesome and should be enough for some reliable data.

160,000 square kilometers is an enormous amount of space one sensor needs to cover.

[tacoman25]

I appreciate you and the other posters verifying my understanding of your plot. I think it would be great if you extend it back to the early 20th century. Thanks again for sharing it with us.

Looking at your plot, I can't see how anybody can claim with a straight face that global warming has stopped, or that the Earth is cooling. Even your shorter period trend of 0.153 C/decade is a lot closer to the record high rate than it is to zero. Yes, the rate of acceleration of warming has dropped - but not the rate of warming itself so much.

The other point your plot emphasizes is that global warming is on track to reach and exceed the cumulative 2 C threshold that many say will have serious consequences. I find that sobering and alarming, not so much for our generation but for our kids and future generations.

The rate of warming definitely slowed in the 2000s. The stats on this have already been posted recently in this thread. That's what enabled the 30 year mean to level off.

Really, all that graph does is demonstrate the overall temperature trends in a different way. The warming began slowing in the early 2000s, no matter how you look at it. The rate of warming the past 30 years peaked in the late 1980s to late 1990s.

[bluewave]

The rate of warming definitely slowed in the 2000s. The stats on this have already been posted recently in this thread. That's what enabled the 30 year mean to level off.

Really, all that graph does is demonstrate the overall temperature trends in a different way. The warming began slowing in the early 2000s, no matter how you look at it. The rate of warming the past 30 years peaked in the late 1980s to late 1990s.

There doesn't look like much of a change with the 5 data sets averaged out.

[tacoman25]

There doesn't look like much of a change with the 5 data sets averaged out.

Something is wrong with that graph. It shows the average of the 5 datasets in 2011 to have a nearly .2C warmer anomaly than 1998. No way that is correct.

[tacoman25]

The southern Hemisphere has definitely been responsible for the halting of the warming trend going back to 2002...and the overall slowing going back to 2000. Since 2002, the southern hemisphere as a whole on GISS has cooled at about 0.05C per decade while the Northern Hemisphere has been warming at about the same magnitude to produce the net 0 trend since 2002 globally. Back to 2000, the Southern hemisphere sees the cooling trend weaken to 0.03C per decade and the northern hemisphere trend strengthen to about 0.16C per decade giving an average of +0.07C per decade globally since 2000.

[ORH_wxman]

There doesn't look like much of a change with the 5 data sets averaged out.

What time of running temperature mean does that use? It looks like its a longer term mean temp (and not trend) which won't tell us much of anything about the recent slowdown in global temperatures.

GISS/Hadcrut/UAH/RSS all show a flat-line trend (or even slight cooling) in the past ten years. I am not sure what NCDC shows since I don't know where to find their data in quick fashion.

[ORH_wxman]

Nevermind, I know where that graph is from...its the "Adjusted temperature" from Rahmstorf when you remove all the ocean contribution and volcanoes.

Essentially, its the temperature trend when you remove natural variability.

[bluewave]

Something is wrong with that graph. It shows the average of the 5 datasets in 2011 to have a nearly .2C warmer anomaly than 1998. No way that is correct.

Here's how you do the analysis:

http://iopscience.io...44022/fulltext/

http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/04/about-the-lack-of-warming/

[tacoman25]

Nevermind, I know where that graph is from...its the "Adjusted temperature" from Rahmstorf when you remove all the ocean contribution and volcanoes.

Essentially, its the temperature trend when you remove natural variability.

Ah.

Well, since this thread has been discussing how natural variability (PDO, etc) has effected underlying temperature trends, that graph kind of misses the point in this context. The rate of warming has slowed due to natural factors the past decade.

[PhillipS]

The rate of warming definitely slowed in the 2000s. The stats on this have already been posted recently in this thread. That's what enabled the 30 year mean to level off.

Really, all that graph does is demonstrate the overall temperature trends in a different way. The warming began slowing in the early 2000s, no matter how you look at it. The rate of warming the past 30 years peaked in the late 1980s to late 1990s.

I believe that most of us accept that the global temperature record over the past century or more has both a component of natural variability and a component of anthropogenic warming. The relative magnitudes of the various processes involved make it possible for natural variability to offset and mask the steady AGW warming trend for periods that may be short (such as we've seen with volcanic eruptions) or a period of years (as with ENSO in recent years). Since the temperature record is a mix of the various components, the only way to accurately assess the AGW trend is to extract known natural variability and then look at what remains. Do you agree?

Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 is a peer-reviewed study that does just that. What they found is that there has not been any break or reduction in the AGW warming. Here's figure 1 from their paper:

Figure 1: Annual averages of the adjusted data - the global warming signal

If warming due to AGW was diminishing we would expect to see a leveling off on that plot. What some people took for a slowing of the warming was a combination of several years of La Nina and the solar minimum temporarily offsetting the AGW warming.

As TSI heads towards a solar maximum in 2013, the Earth enters an El Nino phase, and AGW forcing continues to increase we are almost certain to see record global temps in coming years. Unless, of course, we see a major volcanic eruption instead.

[The_Global_Warmer]

Nevermind, I know where that graph is from...its the "Adjusted temperature" from Rahmstorf when you remove all the ocean contribution and volcanoes.

Essentially, its the temperature trend when you remove natural variability.

What do you think of that? Like how valid do you think it is in terms of trying to weed out the AGW background signal.

[ORH_wxman]

Ah.

Well, since this thread has been discussing how natural variability (PDO, etc) has effected underlying temperature trends, that graph kind of misses the point in this context.

Yes it does.

We are pretty familiar with the underlying AGW forcing on its own...what we are still trying to assess is just how much impact natural variability has on the climate and we are also still trying to understand the sensitivity of the anthropogenic forcing (at least the short term senisitivity in the case of the next century)...and removing known natural variability factors prevent us from doing that.

There is still disagreement in the science on exactly how much influence the ocean cycles have. Many believe that aerosols were primarily responsible for the 1940s-1970s cooling while others believe the multi-decadal ocean cycles were the primary cause. Getting accurate information on these cycles will help us understand too just how much the 1975-2000 warming was anthropogenic versus natural. There are still conflicting peer reviewed papers on that as well...Don posted one that said almost all of the warming was anthropogenic and I posted one a few months ago that said about 1/3rd of the warming was natural variation.

[The_Global_Warmer]

Nevermind, I know where that graph is from...its the "Adjusted temperature" from Rahmstorf when you remove all the ocean contribution and volcanoes.

Essentially, its the temperature trend when you remove natural variability.

What do you think of that? Like how valid do you think it is in terms of trying to weed out the AGW background signal.

[ORH_wxman]

What do you think of that? Like how valid do you think it is in terms of trying to weed out the AGW background signal.

Its decent...but I do not think its weeding out all natural variation. It weeds out ENSO (or tries to), TSI, and volcanoes. The graph still has an ENSO signal on it though when yo ulook at the warm spikes, and in addition, other ocean cycles like the AMO or north pacific (related to enso) may not be accounted for.

[SVT450R]

The only problem is that in the real world natural variability can't be removed.

[bluewave]

The only problem is that in the real world natural variability can't be removed.

No one wants to remove the natural variability. But You can't say that the earth temperature started rising

any faster in 1998 just because we had a super Nino that year with the temperature spike. The same is true

with the last 4 out of 5 years being Ninas doesn't represent a slowing of the temperature rise. The underlying

steady warming signal is there, but there is an ebb and flow of the ENSO phases riding on top of it.