Record Year-to-Date Temperatures in the US

[TerryM]

PhilipS said Scott was incorrect on any flat line trend since the late 1990s. He said

"The phrase I bolded is the error/lie/disinformation that has been refuted countless times on this and other forums"

So I pulled up the data for US temperatures in that time frame and we get a flat line. Not sure how that claim he made is a "lie". He certianly provdied zero statistical evidence to the contrary. I was simply showing what the trend was since other posters brought it up.

Actually what Scott said was -" basically flat lined in the 00s."- as was underlined by PhillipS.

This is the phrase that PhillipS was responding to, not-"any flat line trend since the late 1990s" - which your graph was predicated upon.

While I may not have used exactly the language that PhillipS used, Scott was certainly wrong & PhillipS was just as certainly correct.

I don't understand why anyone would post a graph that, if one didn't look at the details, would seem to show PhillipS as being in error & to vindicate Scott, when the truth is so evidently otherwise.

All said, it has been an interesting lesson on just how easily data can be manipulated, especially when the actual words used in the original exchange have been altered to fit the data.

Terry

[The_Global_Warmer]

So let me see if this is correct.

The 00s can be blamed on natural variation like ENSO and Solar. Cool.

But other warm periods like the 30s through early 50s and 80s through early 90s are primary AGW? So we can't have an underlying warm trend amid a substantial natural variation factor driving temps?

Natural variation only moves energy, currently energy is at all time highs.

Most Recent 12-Month Period (Oct - Sep) 1895 - 2012 Average = 53.05 degF

Most Recent 12-Month Period (Oct - Sep) 1895 - 2012 Trend = 0.13 degF / Decade

The graph above shows ossilating natural variables. The Green line basically covers the added energy and subsequent warmth.

natural variables always run the show. But we can attribute certain situations being more or less likely give the Earth's new energy imbalance.

[ORH_wxman]

Actually what Scott said was -"basically flat lined in the 00s."- as was underlined by PhillipS.

This is the phrase that PhillipS was responding to, not-"any flat line trend since the late 1990s" - which your graph was predicated upon.

While I may not have used exactly the language that PhillipS used, Scott was certainly wrong & PhillipS was just as certainly correct.

I don't understand why anyone would post a graph that, if one didn't look at the details, would seem to show PhillipS as being in error & to vindicate Scott, when the truth is so evidently otherwise.

All said, it has been an interesting lesson on just how easily data can be manipulated, especially when the actual words used in the original exchange have been altered to fit the data.

Terry

It has also flat lined if you use it since 2000. You don't just use 2012-year-to-date as the only relevant point of reference. One, because you use linear regression to measure a trend like that (otherwise we say that it has cooled since early 1998 on this planet)....and two, 2012 itself will finish lower than what is depicted as it regresses to the mean some.

[CoastalWx]

Actually what Scott said was -"basically flat lined in the 00s."- as was underlined by PhillipS.

This is the phrase that PhillipS was responding to, not-"any flat line trend since the late 1990s" - which your graph was predicated upon.

While I may not have used exactly the language that PhillipS used, Scott was certainly wrong & PhillipS was just as certainly correct.

I don't understand why anyone would post a graph that, if one didn't look at the details, would seem to show PhillipS as being in error & to vindicate Scott, when the truth is so evidently otherwise.

All said, it has been an interesting lesson on just how easily data can be manipulated, especially when the actual words used in the original exchange have been altered to fit the data.

Terry

It has flatlined since 2000. That's all I was pointing out, nothing otherwise. I don't see what the difficulty is here. Nobody is suggesting a cooling planet or anything like that..lol. Just simply that it flat lined or is very close to steady state ..probably due to natural variation. Why do people get so defensive?

[Isotherm]

It has flatlined since 2000. That's all I was pointing out, nothing otherwise. I don't see what the difficulty is here. Nobody is suggesting a cooling planet or anything like that..lol. Just simply that it flat lined or is very close to steady state ..probably due to natural variation. Why do people get so defensive?

Because they can't handle the truth. Don't say flatlined too loudly or others might catch on.

[nflwxman]

Because they can't handle the truth. Don't say flatlined too loudly or others might catch on.

What truth are you speaking of here exactly there? The fact that there was a flatline due to natural variation since 2000?

[SVT450R]

It has flatlined since 2000. That's all I was pointing out, nothing otherwise. I don't see what the difficulty is here. Nobody is suggesting a cooling planet or anything like that..lol. Just simply that it flat lined or is very close to steady state ..probably due to natural variation. Why do people get so defensive?

+1

[The_Global_Warmer]

It has flatlined since 2000. That's all I was pointing out, nothing otherwise. I don't see what the difficulty is here. Nobody is suggesting a cooling planet or anything like that..lol. Just simply that it flat lined or is very close to steady state ..probably due to natural variation. Why do people get so defensive?

People have used the "flat" line out of context here many times,mostly passerby deniers. Using it in the context of AGW stopping even though evidence like global ice melt on the order of 6-8 trillion tonnes during 2002-2011 and OHC slowing but still rising showing the Earth's energy balance is still way out of wack.

Ironically, the people who do try and misrepresent what the surface temperature record are using the "flat-line" to prove AGW is either severely overblown or not real at all, actually help prove AGW with a flat line of sorts vs any substantial cooling, which should happen in a natural variance.

While hard to pin-down on a year to year basis. We can see a large change from the last warm periopd ending vs now. Of course the late 30s to early 40s is a very short period and skews the data like 1998.

After the 1998 NINO the Earth's energy balance began to change rapidly.

From mid 1998 to mid 2002 the ENSO index was almost perceptually NINA, hence the PDO crashed.

We really have to make sure we factor in the big impact the PDO has and when it was making that impact. Basically from mid 1997 the PDO crashed hard. A huge flip from the recent peak but even from just the average. You can see there were very few negative spikes between 1992-1998 and really outside of late 1990/91 it was mostly positive.

Then after a good recovery in 2003-2006 maybe 2007 the PDO really fell off. You can see in the last 30 years this is as consistent and low as it has been.

Simultaneously as the PDO tanked hard from the 2003 and 2005 peaks straight down into the gutter the Sun had the longest and strongest minimum since the 1910 min. So roughly 100 years and that one wasn't near as long.

The red lines shows where the most recent min flat-lined it self. It was near bottom levels for 3 years and levels equal to or less than of the 1990s solar min bottom levels for 6yrs+.

The solar max has been a complete joke.

And finally we see below how this all played out in terms of OHC and Global Surface Temps. OHC peaks at the end of 03/04 right when the last big upward spike in TSI happened before the sharp plummet to century held lows or longer. OHC stops dead in it's tracks and also responds to the quick large negative solar net flux of energy. But it doesn't go South like it did in the 1960s. It drops sharply and comes back and levels off then slowly picks up. Like the Surface Temperature Chart the OHC chart shows a bit of weird correlation during the 2000s and that is no large dips in the negative range.

CONCLUSION:

OHC in the higher layers 0-700M flat lined but had no large drops. The past four seasonal OHC numbers all set new record highs. This is likely moving up because of the solar incline/max.

The PDO will ossilate in a negative cycle for the next 15 years or so we presume. But there will be neatral and even positive years or couple years. I would expect global temperatures to continue to creep upwards. Slowly gaiining pace as GHG's continue to icrease direct and feedback forcing.

I would expect a .1 to .15C jump by 2020. And from their the PDO and GHG feedbacks like CH4 secretion, Co2 dumping, how the caps are doing.

It's hard to say when but the next rapid jump in temps will be much stronger than the last.

I'd say by 2040, expect .5C of warmth from the flatline of now.

[tacoman25]

Here's an important general point about record warmth in a warming climate:

http://www.realclima.../extremely-hot/

1. How much hotter did global warming make this heat wave?

We have some trouble with framing the question like this, because it tacitly assumes that the same weather situation would have also arisen without global warming, only at a (say) 1 °C lower temperature level. That need not be the case, of course, since weather is highly stochastic and global warming can also affect the circulation patterns of the atmosphere.

But even if we accept the basic premise (and it could be meant in a purely statistical sense, although that is not usually how it is expressed), would an average anthropogenic warming by 1 °C in the relevant location mean that 1 °C is also the amount added to an extreme event? Only in a linear climate system. Imagine a heat wave that pushes temperatures up to 30 °C in a world without global warming. In the same weather situation with global warming, you might expect that this weather then results in a 31 °C heat wave. But that could well be wrong. Possibly in the situation with warming, the soil has dried out over the previous months because of that extra 1 °C. So now you lost evaporative cooling, the incoming sunlight turns into sensible heat rather than a large fraction going into latent heat. That is a non-linear feedback, and not an imagined one. Detailed studies have shown that this may have played an important role during the European heat wave of 2003 (Schär et al. 2004).

The basic phenomenon is familiar to oceanographers: if the mean sea level in one location rises by 30 cm, this does not mean that the high-tide level also rises by 30 cm. In some cases it will be more, due to nonlinear feedback. I.e., a higher water level increases the flow cross-section (think of a tidal inlet) and reduces bottom friction so the tide rolls in faster, reaching a higher peak. The tidal range increases as well as the mean sea level.

Numerous other non-linear mechanisms are possible, which we are only beginning to understand – think of the recent studies that show how changes in snow cover or sea ice cover as a result of global warming affect weather systems. Or think of factors that could affect the stability of particularly strong blocking events. Thus, we’d be very cautious about making an essentially linear, deterministic argument about heat extremes to the public.

In the scientific literature, the influence of global warming on extreme events is therefore usually discussed in terms of probabilities, which is more fitted to stochastic events.

That's a very one-sided look at it. Just as AGW could possibly "add" more than 1C to a particular event, there could easily be others where it plays a smaller role than 1C. There just is no way to quantify that. All the events average out to about 1C warmer than 150 years ago. But as usual, the science is geared towards only wanting to look at possible positive feedbacks that may or may not be a realistic result of AGW.

[tacoman25]

What truth are you speaking of here exactly there? The fact that there was a flatline due to natural variation since 2000?

Add to this the fact most climate scientists were not expecting natural variation to have a prolonged flatlining effect (with the exception of large volcanic eruptions, which have not played a role in recent temp trends). Just read the literature up through the mid 2000s.

[tacoman25]

And you know this how?

It's self-evident. That statement doesn't mention the other side of the coin, that there may be many events where AGW plays a negligible role.

[bluewave]

It's self-evident. That statement doesn't mention the other side of the coin, that there may be many events where AGW plays a negligible role.

But we know that AGW doesn't play a negligible role in the frequency of record warmth.

[nflwxman]

Add to this the fact most climate scientists were not expecting natural variation to have a prolonged flatlining effect (with the exception of large volcanic eruptions, which have not played a role in recent temp trends). Just read the literature up through the mid 2000s.

I haven't heard of this? It would be silly to believe that climate scientists don't think natural variability could cause the trend to flatline for a decade. We have seen it happen prior to 2000. By trend, they mean 30 year running average trend most likely. As that is what climate scientists use.

[tacoman25]

I haven't heard of this? It would be silly to believe that climate scientists don't think natural variability could cause the trend to flatline for a decade. We have seen it happen prior to 2000. By trend, they mean 30 year running average trend most likely. As that is what climate scientists use.

Just one example:

In 1981, James Hansen wrote that:

"variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century..."

He expounds more later...

"When should the CO2 warming rise out of the noise level of natural climate variability? An estimate can be obtained by comparing the predicted warming to the standard deviation, a, of the observed global temperature trend of the past century (50). The standard deviation, which increases from 0. 1°C for 10-year intervals to 0.20C for the full century, is the total variability of global temperature; it thus includes variations due to any known radiative forcing, other variations of the true global temperature due to unidentified causes, and noise due to imperfect measurement of the global temperature. Thus if To is the current 5-year smoothed global temperature, the 5-year smoothed global temperature in 10 years should be in the range To ± 0. 1°C with probability - 70 percent, judging only from variability in the past century. The predicted CO2 warming rises out of the la noise level in the 1980's and the 2a level in the 1990's (Fig. 7). This is independent of the climate model's equilibrium sensitivity for the range of likely values, 1.4° to 5.6°C. Furthermore, it does not depend on the scenario for atmospheric CO2 growth, because the amounts of CO2 do not differ substantially until after year 2000. Volcanic eruptions of the size of Krakatoa or Agung may slow the warming, but barring an unusual coincidence of eruptions, the delay will not exceed several years. Nominal confidence in the CO2 theory will reach - 85 percent when the temperature rises through the lr level and - 98 percent when it exceeds 2u. However, a portion of a may be accounted for in the future from accurate knowledge of some radiative forcings and more precise knowledge of global temperature. We conclude that CO2 warming should rise above the noise level of natural climate variability in this century."

​And in the same paper...

"The general agreement between modeled and observed temperature trends strongly suggests that CO2 and volcanic aerosols are responsible for much of the global temperature variation in the past century."

In other words, the only thing that could slow down CO2-driven temperature rise would be volcanoes, and even that would only slow it for a few years. No comprehension that there were other natural climate cycles which could slow down the warming trend at this point for an extended amount of time.

http://pubs.giss.nas...Hansen_etal.pdf

[tacoman25]

But we know that AGW doesn't play a negligible role in the frequency of record warmth.

That abstract wasn't referring to the frequency of record warmth, it was referring to attribution of events to AGW. It was arguing that just applying the 1C of warming to an event could be selling AGW short, because AGW could cause the event to be warmer in other ways. Well, it all averages out to 1C above 150 years ago, which means that if AGW is affecting some events more than 1C, it's also affecting other events to a lesser degree - which is not acknowledged.

[Snow_Miser]

What truth are you speaking of here exactly there? The fact that there was a flatline due to natural variation since 2000?

And how do you know that this natural variation did not contribute significantly to the late-20th Century Warming?

[nflwxman]

And how do you know that this natural variation did not contribute significantly to the late-20th Century Warming?

There are many papers that remove natural varaiability and isolate the AGW signal. Even skiier did an analysis with ENSO and tsi. For US temperatures its a less clear case. Do you find the Foster (2011) paper to be incorrect?

[ORH_wxman]

There are many papers that remove natural varaiability and isolate the AGW signal. Even skiier did an analysis with ENSO and tsi. For US temperatures its a less clear case. Do you find the Foster (2011) paper to be incorrect?

I found it to have a significant problem. They claim to get rid of the ENSO signal, but an ENSO signal is clearly visible in their modified temperature graph when taking into account the factors. Why?

[tacoman25]

There are many papers that remove natural varaiability and isolate the AGW signal. Even skiier did an analysis with ENSO and tsi. For US temperatures its a less clear case. Do you find the Foster (2011) paper to be incorrect?

There seems to be a trend where you have no response to those who answer your questions. This gives the impression that you either aren't listening or you don't care, but hopefully that's wrong.

[Snow_Miser]

There are many papers that remove natural varaiability and isolate the AGW signal. Even skiier did an analysis with ENSO and tsi. For US temperatures its a less clear case. Do you find the Foster (2011) paper to be incorrect?

I found it to have a problem for a different reason than the point that Will brought up (though his point is valid). The problem I had with the paper is that it dramatically oversimplified the climate system. The authors failed to account for tropospheric ozone changes in response to lightning increases, the authors completely ignored the cloud forcing, and failed to take the multidecadal oceanic oscillations into account.

They only took out a few variables and expect the resulting trend to be the anthropogenic forcing. I have listed multiple variables that still may be within their resulting anthropogenic trend. Thus, one should be skeptical with regard to if they actually took out all of the natural forcings in their trend upward in temperatures over the last 30 years.

[ORH_wxman]

But the WMO chart shows a similar temperature progression factoring in ENSO state changes over the years.

If there was a problem with their analysis, then the recent Nina years wouldn't show a significant rise over the last decade.

They correctly showed in their paper what the ENSO contribution was to each yearly temperature average.

I believe that you could perform the analysis yourself if you download the data and use their formulas.

http://www.realclima...mperature-news/

They find – pretty much in line with the Foster and Rahmstorf analysis – that La Niña conditions have made 2011 a relatively cool year – relatively, because they predict it will still rank amongst the 10 hottest years on record. They further predict it will be the warmest La Niña year on record (those are the blue years in the bar graph above).

That still doesn't explain why there is a residual ENSO signal in the annual temps. There shouldn't be if you truly factored it out. Their temps show a steady rise, but there is still ENSO noise within the rise. That means it has not been factored out...its been muted, but we shouldn't be able to detect ENSO at all.

I suspect that they haven't fully accounted for other areas of the globe as it relates to ENSO which is why we see this.

[bluewave]

That still doesn't explain why there is a residual ENSO signal in the annual temps. There shouldn't be if you truly factored it out. Their temps show a steady rise, but there is still ENSO noise within the rise. That means it has not been factored out...its been muted, but we shouldn't be able to detect ENSO at all.

I suspect that they haven't fully accounted for other areas of the globe as it relates to ENSO which is why we see this.

Maybe they would send you that data and you could ask them more specifically about the point that you bring up.

[nflwxman]

I found it to have a significant problem. They claim to get rid of the ENSO signal, but an ENSO signal is clearly visible in their modified temperature graph when taking into account the factors. Why?

I would image it's because they used a correlation between temperatures and ONI. Unless the correlation has an r-squared value of 0.99, the entire signal could not be filtered out. In a chaotic system, linear regression statistics can only do so much One could claim that it's over simplifying the climate system, but doing this over a period of 30 years, as Foster did in his paper, allows for more confidence in the overall trend.

[nflwxman]

There seems to be a trend where you have no response to those who answer your questions. This gives the impression that you either aren't listening or you don't care, but hopefully that's wrong.

Or I'm sleeping? If I didn't care, I wouldn't be posting on message board with a whooping 10 other active posters on climate change. Eh?

[Snow_Miser]

I would image it's because they used a correlation between temperatures and ONI. Unless the correlation has an r-squared value of 0.99, the entire signal could not be filtered out. In a chaotic system, linear regression statistics can only do so much One could claim that it's over simplifying the climate system, but doing this over a period of 30 years, as Foster did in his paper, allows for more confidence in the overall trend.

You have just admitted that there are other factors still present in their residual trend upward, which they claim is the "true anthropogenic forcing."

[nflwxman]

You have just admitted that there are other factors still present in their residual trend upward, which they claim is the "true anthropogenic forcing."

Well of course there are other natural factors, but that's not what I said. What I said was that the ENSO signal could not be fully removed unless every equivalent ONI reading had the exact same global temperature impact. Read the paper, it discusses the strength of correlation for TSI and ENSO, which are the two most prominent forces on global temperatures annually. What I believe you are doing is hanging your hat on a small uncertainty within the statistical methods to cast doubt (please be mindful, I don't mean anything personally by that)

[PhillipS]

Maybe they would send you that data and you could ask them more specifically about the point that you bring up.

The data and code is available at Tamino's Open Mind site. [source]

[PhillipS]

I found it to have a problem for a different reason than the point that Will brought up (though his point is valid). The problem I had with the paper is that it dramatically oversimplified the climate system. The authors failed to account for tropospheric ozone changes in response to lightning increases, the authors completely ignored the cloud forcing, and failed to take the multidecadal oceanic oscillations into account.

They only took out a few variables and expect the resulting trend to be the anthropogenic forcing. I have listed multiple variables that still may be within their resulting anthropogenic trend. Thus, one should be skeptical with regard to if they actually took out all of the natural forcings in their trend upward in temperatures over the last 30 years.

The global temperature record is a combination of natural and anthropogenic processes overlain on each other and to extract the anthropogenic component one needs to remove the effects of the natural processes. Ideally, scientists could remove all non-anthropogenic components and leave just the AGW effects - but we don't live in an ideal world and scientists have to work with the data they have. In the Foster and Rahmtorf 2011 paper, the authors remove the effect of three non-anthropogenic climate process (ENSO, TSI, and volcanic aerosols) that have been studied enough to understand their effect on global climate and which have at least 30 years of data available.

The resulting plot is still noisy because, as you pointed out, there are other natural processes still present in the data - but that in no way invalidates their analysis. As for attributing the preponderance of the remaining global temperature increase to AGW - well, something caused it and there are no other known climate processes that have that magnitude and trend. The GHE and other anthropogenic processes , such as land use changes, have a mountain of theory and data to support that attribution. Anyone wanting to attribute the increase to other processes would, at the very least, have to show what is blocking the GHE in order for their hypothetical processes to dominate.

As for your listing of hypothetical climate drivers - okay, produce peer-reviewed research quantifying the effect of each and a 30 year global dataset for each and the analysis can be run again to extract their siganls from the global climate record.

Just listing them, "It could be A, or it could be B, or it could be C!" without any supporting research and data is just rhetorical hand-waving, and as such is no more scientific than claiming "It could be Leprechauns, or it could be Unicorns!"

[tacoman25]

Or I'm sleeping? If I didn't care, I wouldn't be posting on message board with a whooping 10 other active posters on climate change. Eh?

Well, for example, you were under the false impression that climate scientists were not surprised by natural variation leading to the current stall/slowdown in temperature rise - that they expected such a thing was possible beforehand. When I pointed out to you that many scientists believed for a long time that volcanic eruptions were the only thing that could slow CO2-driven rise down (and gave James Hansen, the premier AGW scientists out there for many years as a prime example), you had no response.

Just the latest instance.

[ORH_wxman]

I don't disgagree with the premise of the Foster graph...which is that when you try to remove all natural variation, you are left with an anthropogenic signal (I would certainly hope that is what you are left with)...however, in every single large uptick in the graph...there is a positive ENSO event. The only exception seems to be the 1980-1981 period where ENSO was neutral but there is still a large uptick...but all the other large upticks (1983, 1986-1988, 1991-1992, 1995, 1998, 2002-2003, 2005, 2009-2010) are associated with significant positive ENSO events. Many (but not all) of the subsequent downticks are associated with negative ENSO as well.

This illustates that the graph is still quite dependent on distribution of heat throughout the globe due to residual effects of ENSO. In short, either its a coincidence or ENSO really hasn't been filtered out.