How Long Will the Hiatus Period Last?

[skierinvermont]

The figure was from the IPCC AR5 draft...just because its reposted on WUWT doesn't make it invalid. All those graphs that have the color coded like that are from the AR5 draft.

 

http://climatefailfiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ch1-introduction_wg1ar5_sod_ch01_all_final.pdf

 

I wasn't saying that just because it was posted on WUWT it is invalid. However, I've come across enough false and manipulated graphics from WUWt to not trust anything from that site unless I know it from an outside source that they have linked to.

 

Anyways, this is a science forum and we shouldn't be linking anything from WUWT and presenting it as fact. I'm open to discussing things from WUWT, but to establish basic facts we should be linking to scientific sources in major journals or the IPCC.

[chrisf97212]

Anyone care to revise their prediction?

[The_Global_Warmer]

Awesome

[nflwxman]

I did read through the paper and perhaps they are using the Hadcrut3 surface temperature record which shows close to a 0.14 C/decade. They seem to place some of the blame for the "hiatus" on stratospheric aerosals, which is not a new thought in terms of recent increased small-scale volcanic activity.

One big pet peeve I have with the paper is the headline grabbing title "global warming overestimated." In reality, the title is kind of misleading. Global warming does not just mean the surface temperature record to which they exclusively focus on. As explained many times by climatologists, over 90% of additional heat goes into the ocean.

For the record, I'm with Skier on this. I believe there is a high likelihood that the statistical improbabilities that have occurred over the past 5 years (75% ENSO negative with low sun) will begin to see-saw backwards in the coming years (to a more expected 50-60% ENSO negative). I also believe that man made aerosals will begin to decrease over the next decade as China and India become smarter on smog. Due to this I would not be surprised to see another global temperature record between 2016-2020, which an effective statistical end to the "hiatus" by 2018. The only disclaimer I have is if the sun becomes very quiet after this solar maximum. That could obviously create a sizable dent in the 15-20 year trend.

Nah I'm good. Even I might have been too bearish here..might be this year.

[chubbs]

Yeah I'm going to move my prediction forward 15+ years to 2015. In hindsight the hiatus is a minor climate event not much more than natural variation around a rising trendline. One thing I will stick with - when the hiatus ends temperatures will quickly make-up the shortfall

[nflwxman]

Yeah I'm going to move my prediction forward 15+ years to 2015. In hindsight the hiatus is a minor climate event not much more than natural variation around a rising trendline. One thing I will stick with - when the hiatus ends temperatures will quickly make-up the shortfall

Yep.  The deluge of papers suggesting it will last until 2030 were really ignoring the physics of situation.  The ocean's ability to absorb heat does not magically increase as a -PDO phase continues on.  A similar La Nina/-PDO in 2000 and 2013 will not have the same atmospheric temperatures since forcing above is increasing even though the ocean's ability to absorb heat is the same.  If we are truly moving into a positive PDO, temperatures will skyrocket well faster than the "modeled" values of around ~.2 C/Decade for the opposite reason.

[GaWx]

Yep.  The deluge of papers suggesting it will last until 2030 were really ignoring the physics of situation.  The ocean's ability to absorb heat does not magically increase as a -PDO phase continues on.  A similar La Nina/-PDO in 2000 and 2013 will not have the same atmospheric temperatures since forcing above is increasing even though the ocean's ability to absorb heat is the same.  If we are truly moving into a positive PDO, temperatures will skyrocket well faster than the "modeled" values of around ~.2 C/Decade for the opposite reason.

Do you think a major solar minimum could have a major say so in this?

[The_Global_Warmer]

Do you think a major solar minimum could have a major say so in this?

It simply comes down to how much lower incoming insolation is.

The forcing change just from man caused GHG input is like 2.5w/m2.

I'd think the variation in solar output would be like 10% of that or less.

[stadiumwave]

Yep. The deluge of papers suggesting it will last until 2030 were really ignoring the physics of situation. The ocean's ability to absorb heat does not magically increase as a -PDO phase continues on. A similar La Nina/-PDO in 2000 and 2013 will not have the same atmospheric temperatures since forcing above is increasing even though the ocean's ability to absorb heat is the same. If we are truly moving into a positive PDO, temperatures will skyrocket well faster than the "modeled" values of around ~.2 C/Decade for the opposite reason.

Agree on skyrocketing if we are entering +PDO long-term phase. BUT...I don't "think" we are. It appears PDO is headed back to negative territory afyer a strong positive period similar to what happened in the 1950's during the negative -PDO phase. Of course, this positive blip was much stronger than the one during the 1950's which "is" interesting but may end up being close to the same in length.

One would expect the next increase with the next +PDO phase to be a little higher than the 1978-1998 period; although it is worth noting the 1978-1998 period increase wasn't much greater than the 1920-1946 increase during the +PDO phase.

"IF " indeed AMO heads negative & stays that way over the next 20 years & PDO returns & stays mostly negative for another 20 years then I think hiatus will continue or maybe a slow increase over that period. My greatest concern is right after that period. Of course that's in a "business as usual" climate...this isn't one so I don't exactly have high confidence in those predictions.

[Isotherm]

I don't think we can conclusively say that the "hiatus" is over even if global temperatures spike later this year w/ the El Nino. We need to see where we stabilize as we transition out of +ENSO, because in theory, the cool dips / -ENSO periods should gradually become warmer with each successive La Nina event. Additionally, if this El Nino reaches a peak of 1.9c/+2.0c or so, it will be interesting to see if the satellite data responds with an anomaly peak close to 1997-98. If we have a very potent Nino and the global temperature anomaly climax is lower than 1997-98, that could be suggestive that the "hiatus" is continuing (an El Nino of similar magnitude 17 years later than 1997-98 should yield higher global temperature anomalies per the AGW theory). Of course, if the Nino peaks much lower than 1997-98, an apples to apples comparison can't truly be made.

[Snow_Miser]

I don't think we can conclusively say that the "hiatus" is over even if global temperatures spike later this year w/ the El Nino. We need to see where we stabilize as we transition out of +ENSO, because in theory, the cool dips / -ENSO periods should gradually become warmer with each successive La Nina event. Additionally, if this El Nino reaches a peak of 1.9c/+2.0c or so, it will be interesting to see if the satellite data responds with an anomaly peak close to 1997-98. If we have a very potent Nino and the global temperature anomaly climax is lower than 1997-98, that could be suggestive that the "hiatus" is continuing (an El Nino of similar magnitude 17 years later than 1997-98 should yield higher global temperature anomalies per the AGW theory). Of course, if the Nino peaks much lower than 1997-98, an apples to apples comparison can't truly be made.

We saw the highest 0-700 m OHC and the highest 0-2000 m OHC ever on record for the first quarter of 2015. That is where the vast majority of additional energy from the planetary imbalance is going. I think it is safe to say that there currently is no hiatus when we look at Earth's energy budget.

[Jonger]

We saw the highest 0-700 m OHC and the highest 0-2000 m OHC ever on record for the first quarter of 2015. That is where the vast majority of additional energy from the planetary imbalance is going. I think it is safe that there currently is no hiatus when we look at Earth's energy budget.

 

 

on record.... we have never seen anything but a rising OHC on record. We have no idea when the last time we had any sustained period without a rising OHC.

 

The hiatus was never about NO WARMING... It was about a slow warming.

[Snow_Miser]

on record.... we have never seen anything but a rising OHC on record. We have no idea when the last time we had any sustained period without a rising OHC.

That's right. You can thank the persistent energy imbalance for that.

[Jonger]

That's right. You can thank the persistent energy imbalance for that.

 

There has been a persistent energy imbalance for quite a while.

 

We are probably in a period similar to 1940-1980.... just on a higher step. 

 

The real question is why did the earth warm so much between 1910 -1940 with so little co2... Unless you think 20ppm did almost as much warming as the last 100ppm.

 

 

[AvantHiatus]

There has been a persistent energy imbalance for quite a while.

 

We are probably in a period similar to 1940-1980.... just on a higher step. 

 

The real question is why did the earth warm so much between 1910 -1940 with so little co2... Unless you think 20ppm did almost as much warming as the last 100ppm.

 

 

1900-1920 was an unusually cold period, probably the coldest since the Little Ice Age. Heck man, it's probably related to the Titanic sinking.

 

So choosing a low baseline does not prove causation.

[Snow_Miser]

There has been a persistent energy imbalance for quite a while.

We are probably in a period similar to 1940-1980.... just on a higher step.

The real question is why did the earth warm so much between 1910 -1940 with so little co2... Unless you think 20ppm did almost as much warming as the last 100ppm.

Most scientists attribute the early 20th century warming to a combination of factors.

That does not preclude anthropogenic factors being responsible for the majority of the warming from 1950 to now.

https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/papers-on-early-20th-century-warming/

[GaWx]

There has been a persistent energy imbalance for quite a while.

 

We are probably in a period similar to 1940-1980.... just on a higher step. 

 

The real question is why did the earth warm so much between 1910 -1940 with so little co2... Unless you think 20ppm did almost as much warming as the last 100ppm.

 

 

 

 I've been thinking that the late 19th century to ~1910 cooling may very well have been largely due to the solar min in the early 1900's though I think that volcanic activity may have contributed. Consistent with this, I've also been wondering if solar activity that picked up markedly soon after 1910 may have been a primary contributor to 1910-40 warming. To take this further, I've been wondering if a sig. portion of the warming in the late 20th century could have been due to 1950-2000 having been the most active 50 year solar period in at least 350 years and by a good margin.

 

 I'm not saying solar has definitely been a sig. contributor. Rather, I'm being open-minded about it based on the pattern from the late 1800's through 2000. However, I'm running out of patience as I would have expected some cooling by now due to the current weak cycle.

[chrisf97212]

 I've been thinking that the late 19th century to ~1910 cooling may very well have been largely due to the solar min in the early 1900's though I think that volcanic activity may have contributed. Consistent with this, I've also been wondering if solar activity that picked up markedly soon after 1910 may have been a primary contributor to 1910-40 warming. To take this further, I've been wondering if a sig. portion of the warming in the late 20th century could have been due to 1950-2000 having been the most active 50 year solar period in at least 350 years and by a good margin.

 

 I'm not saying solar has definitely been a sig. contributor. Rather, I'm being open-minded about it based on the pattern from the late 1800's through 2000.

 

There's a loose correlation there but I don't know what the mechanism would be.  The change in TSI isn't enough to explain the pre-AGW, but there could be other causes.

[Isotherm]

We saw the highest 0-700 m OHC and the highest 0-2000 m OHC ever on record for the first quarter of 2015. That is where the vast majority of additional energy from the planetary imbalance is going. I think it is safe that there currently is no hiatus when we look at Earth's energy budget.

 

 

 

I'm referring to global temperature anomalies. OHC doesn't really tell us when that warmth will be realized in the troposphere. 1998 had significantly lower OHC, but global temperatures were warmer than they are right now (based upon the satellite data).

[chrisf97212]

We saw the highest 0-700 m OHC and the highest 0-2000 m OHC ever on record for the first quarter of 2015. That is where the vast majority of additional energy from the planetary imbalance is going. I think it is safe that there currently is no hiatus when we look at Earth's energy budget.

 

What did CMIP5 predict for OHC?

[The_Global_Warmer]

I'm referring to global temperature anomalies. OHC doesn't really tell us when that warmth will be realized in the troposphere. 1998 had significantly lower OHC, but global temperatures were warmer than they are right now (based upon the satellite data).

That's because a massive amount of heat was dumped into the LT over a very short period.

Now its just much warmer all the time.

If the same Nino happened this year the same result just on a more grand scale would commence.

[stadiumwave]

I've been thinking that the late 19th century to ~1910 cooling may very well have been largely due to the solar min in the early 1900's though I think that volcanic activity may have contributed. Consistent with this, I've also been wondering if solar activity that picked up markedly soon after 1910 may have been a primary contributor to 1910-40 warming. To take this further, I've been wondering if a sig. portion of the warming in the late 20th century could have been due to 1950-2000 having been the most active 50 year solar period in at least 350 years and by a good margin.

I'm not saying solar has definitely been a sig. contributor. Rather, I'm being open-minded about it based on the pattern from the late 1800's through 2000. However, I'm running out of patience as I would have expected some cooling by now due to the current weak cycle.

There was a study a couple of years ago....I cannot remember who it was by or where I read it...that predicted slight cooling by 2016-17. I don't see it but we'll see.

[chubbs]

When it comes to heat capacity and global warming, the atmosphere is the tail on the ocean dog. With the oceans warming at a rapid rate, the recent brief hiatus in surface temperature rise is insignificant from a climate system standpoint.

[Vandy]

The hiatus was never about NO WARMING... It was about a slow warming.

 

Furthermore, the hiatus pertains to global surface temperatures, not the total heat content in the climate system. That the media has left out that nuance has strengthened the narrative that global warming has stopped. 

[StudentOfClimatology]

In my view, a lot of people talk about the hiatus without knowing what it actually is. I posted this in the other thread..I'd argue that the OHC is largely irrelevant here:

The "hiatus" never had anything to do with OHC, and it's pretty obvious where the heat was/is going.

Energy flows from the atmosphere/sea surface boundary into the deeper oceans via diffusion and kinematic transport. The amount of heat transported to depth is kept in equilibrium by surface winds, which govern both the evaporative cooling process at the sea surface, and vertical overturning within the upper ocean mixing layer(s). When surface winds slow, as they have, the evaporative process will slow at the sea surface, warming the upper oceans as less thermal energy is converted into latent form and released in the upper troposphere. This spikes OHC and warms the planetary surface.

This is the mechanism behind the warming at the surface/oceans, and the absence of warming in the lower troposphere for the last 15 years.

[chubbs]

In my view, a lot of people talk about the hiatus without knowing what it actually is. I posted this in the other thread..I'd argue that the OHC is largely irrelevant here:

 

 The main factor in the hiatus is the partitioning of OHC, not the OHC value itself. With somewhat stronger winds there is more exchange of waters between the deep ocean and the surface waters. Hence more heat is going into the deep ocean. Meanwhile the surface waters are relatively cool due to increased upwelling particularly in the key E Pacific ENSO area. The cool surface waters keep the atmosphere from warming. The continuing rise of OHC during the hiatus just reflects the continued radiative imbalance which is only increasing as the surface warming lags - more heat is coming in than is going out. So as soon as the wind pattern changes, the surface plays catch-up driven by the large radiative forcing.

[chubbs]

Ed Hawkins has a good blog article on the NOAA update including the chart below which compares the NOAA series to HADCRUT. Go to his blog for a discussion of the plot. What is striking to me is the stability in 30-year trend lines since 1980. On a 30-year time scale, the hiatus is virtually undetectable in both series. Why? Because there was rapid warming before the hiatus. So the hiatus can be seen as mainly a regression to the mean. Ten-year trends are heavily influenced by natural variability but AGW dominates in any 30-year trend centered after 1980.

 

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2015/global-temperature-comparisons/#more-3453

 

[nflwxman]

 The main factor in the hiatus is the partitioning of OHC, not the OHC value itself. With somewhat stronger winds there is more exchange of waters between the deep ocean and the surface waters. Hence more heat is going into the deep ocean. Meanwhile the surface waters are relatively cool due to increased upwelling particularly in the key E Pacific ENSO area. The cool surface waters keep the atmosphere from warming. The continuing rise of OHC during the hiatus just reflects the continued radiative imbalance which is only increasing as the surface warming lags - more heat is coming in than is going out. So as soon as the wind pattern changes, the surface plays catch-up driven by the large radiative forcing.

 

 

Nail on the head.  OHC has it's fingerprints on pretty much everything in the climate system.  As shallow waters heat up, so does the atmosphere.  This would happen with ENSO regardless of AGW.  

[StudentOfClimatology]

The main factor in the hiatus is the partitioning of OHC, not the OHC value itself. With somewhat stronger winds there is more exchange of waters between the deep ocean and the surface waters. Hence more heat is going into the deep ocean. Meanwhile the surface waters are relatively cool due to increased upwelling particularly in the key E Pacific ENSO area. The cool surface waters keep the atmosphere from warming. The continuing rise of OHC during the hiatus just reflects the continued radiative imbalance which is only increasing as the surface warming lags - more heat is coming in than is going out. So as soon as the wind pattern changes, the surface plays catch-up driven by the large radiative forcing.

That's what I said, though I'd also argue that OHC is a poor measure to gauge decadal changes in aggregated radiative forcing (the scale that matters regarding the "hiatus") due to the thermal inertia involved.

For example, if we were to magically increase radiative forcing by 3W/m^2 today, the deep oceans/OHC would warm for decades/centuries before fully equilibrating, even if we were to magically reduce this radiative forcing by 0.5W/m^2 sometime during the equilibrative process, because equilibrium is not immediately attainable. The pot/stove analogy is perfect here.

The OHC is something to use for longer term analysis.

[stadiumwave]

Interesting developments in the GOA: