Slowdown: The braked warming of the last one and a half decades and its reasons
By Dr. Sebastian Lüning und Prof. Fritz Vahrenhholt
(German text translated by P Gosselin)
Stefan Rahmstorf is against the notion of a warming hiatus. In his eyes it doesn’t exist. Instead he prefers to live in his Rahmstorfian world, where every thing is the way it’s supposed to be: warming is galloping along. It’s a strange parallel world that has nothing to do with reality.
The rest of the scientific community, fortunately, see things somewhat more realistically and are busily publishing papers on the reasons for the hiatus or slowdown. The Institute for Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has even issued a press release on the subject:
New Study Reveals the Atmospheric Footprint of the Global Warming Hiatus
The increasing rate of the global mean surface temperature was reduced from 1998 to 2013, known as the global warming hiatus or pause. Great efforts have been devoted to the understanding of the cause. The proposed mechanisms include the internal variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system, the ocean heat uptake and redistribution, among many others. However, the atmospheric footprint of the recent warming hiatus has been less concerned. Both the dynamical and physical processes remain unclear.
In a recent paper published in Scientific Report, LIU Bo and ZHOU Tianjun from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences have investigated the atmospheric anomalous features during the global warming hiatus period (1998-2013). They show evidences that the global mean tropospheric temperature also experienced a hiatus or pause (Fig. 1). To understand the physical processes that dominate the warming hiatus, they decomposed the total temperature trends into components due to processes related to surface albedo, water vapor, cloud, surface turbulent fluxes and atmospheric dynamics. The results demonstrated that the hiatus of near surface temperature warming trend is dominated by the decreasing surface latent heat flux compared with the preceding warming period, while the hiatus of upper tropospheric temperature is dominated by the cloud-related processes. Further analysis indicated that atmospheric dynamics are coupled with surface turbulent heat fluxes over lower troposphere and coupled with cloud processes over upper troposphere.
Figure 1. (a) Global mean temperature anomalies from 1950 to 2015 and (b) linear trends of global mean temperature for near surface (i.e. the lowest atmospheric layer), and the vertical average of the whole (surface to 100hPa), lower (surface to 500hPa), and upper troposphere (500hPa to 100hPa). Red (black) bars are for the warming period. Blue(white) bars are for the hiatus period. (Liu and Zhou, 2017)
As to why the surface latent heat flux, atmospheric dynamics and cloud-related processes showed such large differences between 1983-1998 and 1998-2013, LIU, the first author of the paper, explained, “They are dominated by the Hadley Circulation and Walker Circulation changes associated with the phase transition of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).” According to LIU, the IPO is a robust, recurring pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies at decadal time scale. During a positive phase of IPO, the west Pacific and the mid-latitude North Pacific becomes cooler and the tropical eastern ocean warms, while during a negative phase, the opposite pattern occurs. The IPO has shifted from the positive phase to negative phase since 1998/1999, and this transition has led to the weakening of both Hadley Circulation and Walker Circulation, which served as a hub linking the three processes mentioned above.
“Though the heat capacity of the atmosphere is nearly negligible compared with the ocean”, said ZHOU, the corresponding author of the paper, “understanding the atmospheric footprint is essential to gain a full picture of how internal climate variability such as IPO affects the global climate from the surface to the troposphere. The new findings also provide useful observational metrics for gauging climate model experiments that are designed to understand the mechanism of global warming hiatus”.
Citation: Liu, B. & Zhou, T. Atmospheric footprint of the recent warming slowdown. Sci. Rep. 7, 40947 (2017). http://www.nature.com/articles/srep40947“
In other words: The hiatus was triggered by ocean cycles. This by the way was already discussed in 2012 in our book “Die kalte Sonne” (The Neglected Sun). Perhaps this message will eventually reach Potsdam.
Then on 15 April 2017 yet another paper appeared on the subject. Oka and Watanabe explained in the Geophysical Research Letters how the braked warming had to do with ocean cycles in the Pacific:
The post-2002 global surface warming slowdown caused by the subtropical Southern Ocean heating acceleration
The warming rate of global mean surface temperature slowed down during 1998–2012. Previous studies pointed out role of increasing ocean heat uptake during this global warming slowdown, but its mechanism remains under discussion. Our numerical simulations, in which wind stress anomaly in the equatorial Pacific is imposed from reanalysis data, suggest that subsurface warming in the equatorial Pacific took place during initial phase of the global warming slowdown (1998–2002), as previously reported. It is newly clarified that the Ekman transport from tropics to subtropics is enhanced during the later phase of the slowdown (after 2002) and enhanced subtropical Ekman downwelling causes accelerated heat storage below depth of 700 m in the subtropical Southern Ocean, leading to the post-2002 global warming slowdown. Observational data of ocean temperature also support this scenario. This study provides clear evidence that deeper parts of the Southern Ocean play a critical role in the post-2002 warming slowdown.”
The heating period 1982-2002 is also due to less dimming of the sun-solar brightening. An effect of cleaner air and less cloud cover.
We can see the sun more hours today than 1982.
What heating period ????
The only heating was from the 1998 El Nino, until then, nothing much at all between 1980 and 1997
https://s19.postimg.org/is632i7hv/UAH_land_before_1998_EL_Nino.png
https://s19.postimg.org/y6om3sbjn/RSS_Before_El_Nino.jpg
It surprises me that there is no mention of saturation. Should we not be expecting a reduced rate of warming for this reason alone, possible overlaid on ocean current cycles?
Why should they mention saturation?
The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century’s very, very slight warming was via a solar event. Everything subsequent to that has been the normal natural dissipation of that slight increase in energy that hit this planet.
Another paper that shows directly that yet again the alarmist, relying solely on broken theory, are wrong!
When will the Global Warming cretins get the message?
The planet is not warming up excessively, it is fact just bumping along the lower end of global norms. Current changes to the climate are well within NORMAL NATURAL limits, and the NATURAL rise in CO2 over the decades has done nothing but help make this planet become a slightly more livable place.
No doubt more hypothetical bather will ensue from the usual UN-IPCC advocates over this, as there has been over so many other similar papers on this site. This and the other papers show that these political puppets are not just wrong but utterly and completely irrational in believing that CO2 is a problem.
This and the other papers refute the basic tenet of the UN-IPCC’s message that CO2 is causing dangerous climate change, showing that after more than 30 years none of the catastrophic predictions have come to pass —
No unusual increased deserts,
No unusual increase in sea level rise,
No unusual persistent summer temperatures,
No unusual persistent winter temperatures,
No unusual loss of flora or fauna (except massive numbers of dead birds and bats because the those idiotic windmills green politic advocate insist on).
India and China know this and have more than ramped up their output of CO2 over the decades to make-up for the West’s decline.
There is NO reason to impoverish Western Nation by deindustializing, there is NO reason to limit CO2 emissions. There is no rational reason why ‘fossil’ fuels should not be used to make the energy we now need, it is the cost effective method of industrial power generation.
Does anyone know when the pause will be over? I do not want to miss the second half of the show.
And now it appears we’re in for a moderate El Nino this year. Thus more heat released from the Pacific.
The reason why the phrases “Anti-science”, “Evidence-deniers”, and ”Global Warming Deniers” are used is that the “Anti-science Deniers” ignore demonstrable evidence, and fabricate stories and “facts” that are not true.
.
The claim
“And Japanese Scientists Affirm
Believe It! Global Warming Hiatus Real, Chinese And Japanese Scientists Affirm”
is absurd and illustrates the mindless parroting of denier falsehoods.
.
Japan Meteorological Agency
.
Linux LibreOffice Calc Graph: http://www.durangobill.com/TempPictures/JMAanomalies.png
JMA Graph: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/ann_wld.html
Data Source: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/ann_wld.html
(Default graph shows annual data)
Durango Bill Butler:
Apparently you are unaware of this, but the recently-published scientific papers published in Nature affirming the pause/slowdown in warming usually have the first year of the pause as 1998. Your graphs start in 1890. Yes, the planet has warmed since 1890. Since 1998, though, the warming has not been statistically significant: 0.1 C, or 0.05 C per decade (according to satellite data). Even the IPCC acknowledges there was a pause beginning in 1998. Can we assume you don’t think the IPCC is “Anti-Science Denier”? And can we assume you think it is effective and persuasive to call people names?
Hedemann et al., 2017
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3274.html
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75831381/Hedemann%202017.pdf
“The observed trend deviated by as much as −0.17 ◦C per decade from the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5) ensemble-mean projection—a gap two to four times the observed trend. The hiatus therefore continues to challenge climate science.”
—
Fyfe et al., 2016
http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-hiatus-debate-flares-up-again-1.19414 (press release)
“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.” … Susan Solomon, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says that Fyfe’s framework helps to put twenty-first-century trends into perspective, and clearly indicates that the rate of warming slowed down at a time when greenhouse-gas emissions were rising dramatically.
Or you can have the strange moral conundrum of activism vs. honesty —
… by Stephen Schneider on what underpins alarmist ‘science’
Well Done Sir…….
……..I wonder how many Climate Alarmists know the name of Meurice Strong who pitched the idea of Global Warming to the UN as a way to guilt wealthy Western nations ( Namely the U.S. ) to force their citizens to part with their hard earned money in the name of Worldwide Wealth Distribution?
This is what Climate Realists refer to when we invoke the term ‘Hoax’…
Yep Bill, keep drinking the Kool-Aid and remember these quotes —
1. “Due to global warming, the coming winters in the local regions will become milder.”
Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, University of Potsdam, February 8, 2006
****
2. “Milder winters, drier summers: Climate study shows a need to adapt in Saxony Anhalt.”
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Press Release, January 10, 2010.
****
3. “More heat waves, no snow in the winter… Climate models… over 20 times more precise than the UN IPCC global models. In no other country do we have more precise calculations of climate consequences. They should form the basis for political planning… Temperatures in the wintertime will rise the most… there will be less cold air coming to Central Europe from the east…In the Alps winters will be 2°C warmer already between 2021 and 2050.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, September 2, 2008.
****
4. “The new Germany will be characterized by dry-hot summers and warm-wet winters.”
Wilhelm Gerstengarbe and Peter Werner, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), March 2, 2007
****
5. “Clear climate trends are seen from the computer simulations. Foremost the winter months will be warmer all over Germany. Depending of CO2 emissions, temperatures will rise by up to 4°C, in the Alps by up to 5°C.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 7 Dec 2009.
****
6. “In summer under certain conditions the scientists reckon with a complete melting of the Arctic sea ice. For Europe we expect an increase in drier and warmer summers. Winters on the other hand will be warmer and wetter.”
Erich Roeckner, Max Planck Institute, Hamburg, 29 Sept 2005.
****
7. “The more than ‘unusually ‘warm January weather is yet ‘another extreme event’, ‘a harbinger of the winters that are ahead of us’. … The global temperature will ‘increase every year by 0.2°C’”
Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment,
Die Zeit, 15 Jan 2007
****
8. “Harsh winters likely will be more seldom and precipitation in the wintertime will be heavier everywhere. However, due to the milder temperatures, it’ll fall more often as rain than as snow.”
Online-Atlas of the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, 2010
9. “We’ve mostly had mild winters in which only a few cold months were scattered about, like January 2009. This winter is a cold outlier, but that doesn’t change the picture as a whole. Generally it’s going to get warmer, also in the wintertime.”
Gerhard Müller-Westermeier, German Weather Service (DWD), 26 Jan 2010
****
10. “Winters with strong frost and lots of snow like we had 20 years ago will cease to exist at our latitudes.”
Mojib Latif, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 1 April 2000
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, you keep believing in the ALARMIST message Bill, because as they show, their predictions have never been accurate.
It’s called hubris Bill, the vain belief that human’s have ultimate control over nature, when in fact they have very, very little understanding or control. Nature does that which it will, and mostly all we can do is observe — some in amazement, some in bored ignorance, and others in stupid belief they can control it.
JMA take their global temperature data straight from the highly corrupted NOAA/GHCN surface data… It is a meaningless farce, including the removal of the 1940’s AMO forced peak.
How about we have a look at some graphs from Japan itself.
Unadulterated and unaffected by UHI.!
From 1950 – 1990.
https://s19.postimg.org/6kzq5cxdf/japan1950-1990.png
Then there was a well defined step in the late 1990’s, which was seen in many other Asian regions as well, then
from 1998 to now (updated to March 2017) still essentially DEAD FLAT.
https://s19.postimg.org/v7oagdotv/Japan_post_1998.png
data from http://www.data.jma.go.jp/cpdinfo/temp/list/mon_jpn.html
No wonder the Japanese understand the word HIATUS. !! 🙂
Climate changes everywhere, Pole are displaced. People must be blind or be out of their mind to ignore it. We should strive to harmonious social development, minimisation of global world contraditions. I fisrt saw this idea here – http://planetaryproject.com/planet_project/philosophy/
Please confirm this service)
You can stick your World Government ideas where the sun don’t shine.
The EU and the UN have been shows to be MONUMENTAL FAILURES… TOTALITARIAN hives of corruption.
The best improvement for the world biosphere is to get rid of all the anti-science green agenda crap such as biofuel mandates, wind turbines etc .
Then get off this ANTI-CO2 scam. CO2 provides for ALL LIFE ON EARTH and is currently in low supply.
We also need to make sure that developing countries have access to solid reliable energy supplies. That means coal and gas. That is the best way to bring about equality.
Not the airy-fairy load of crap in the page you linked
I like your first graph, Bill.
It CLEARLY shows the HIATUS from 1998 – 2015, even in the much tampered NOAA/GHCN/JMA global data.
Well Done 🙂
Wild Bill, showing his dishonest reply vividly, since the TOPIC is about a temperature HIATUS,from 1998-2016 time frame.
You chose the 1975-2016 and stupidly, from 1890-2016.
It is clear you have NOTHING to say about the blog post itself.
You Bill, who has the gall to write these words that expose you as a serially dishonest person, for making unprovoked personal attacks,then fail to stay on the TIME FRAME of the topic:
“The reason why the phrases “Anti-science”, “Evidence-deniers”, and ”Global Warming Deniers” are used is that the “Anti-science Deniers” ignore demonstrable evidence, and fabricate stories and “facts” that are not true.”
It is YOU who failed to make an honest reply to the topic, since the topic was about a specific time frame 1998-2016 that you ignored to use one from 1975 and 1890 instead, therefore you never addressed the Hiatus position at all.
Bill Butler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBd85T6aKVI
Or this:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/
Or:
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
etc, etc, etc,
Note the following:
The last millennium 1000AD – 2000AD has been the coldest millennium of the entire current Holocene interglacial.
Each of the notable high points in the Holocene temperature record, (Holocene Climate Optimum – Minoan – Roman – Medieval – Modern), have been progressively colder than the previous high point.
For its first 7-8000 years the early Holocene, including its high point known as the “climate optimum”, have had virtually flat temperatures, an average drop of only ~0.007 °C per millennium.
But the more recent Holocene, since a “tipping point” at around 1000BC, 3000 years ago, has seen temperature fall at about 20 times that earlier rate at about 0.14 °C per millennium.
The Holocene interglacial is already 10 – 11,000 years old and judging from the length of previous interglacial periods, the Holocene epoch should be drawing to its close: in this century, the next century or this millennium.
But the slight beneficial warming at the end of the 20th century to the Modern high point has been transmuted into the “Great Man-made Global Warming Scare”.
The recent warming since the end of the Little Ice Age has been wholly beneficial when compared to the devastating impacts arising from the relatively minor cooling of the Little Ice Age, which include:
• decolonisation of Greenland
• Black death
• French revolution
• the failures of the Inca and Angkor Wat civilisations
• etc., etc.
As global temperatures have already been showing stagnation or cooling over the last nineteen years or more, the world should now fear the real and detrimental effects of cooling, rather than being hysterical about limited, beneficial or probably now non-existent further warming.
Warmer times are times of success and prosperity both for man-kind and the biosphere.
One should think of the Holocene interglacial epoch as a whole with its progressively cooler and cooler warm episodes:
• the Holocene Climate Optimum
• the Minoan warming
• the Roman warming
• the Medieval warm period
• recent modern warming, 1975 – 2000.
For example during the Roman warm period the climate was warmer and wetter so that the Northern Sahara was the breadbasket of the Roman empire.
According to the Ice Core records, each of these successive Holocene warm periods have been cooler than the one previously and a tipping point towards accelerated global cooling occurred at about 1000BC.
The coming end of the present Holocene interglacial will in due course again result in a mile high ice sheet over much of the Northern hemisphere. As the Holocene epoch is already about 11,000 years old, the reversion to a true ice age is almost overdue and would be the real climate catastrophe.
With the present reducing Solar activity, significantly reduced temperatures, at least to the level of another Little Ice Age are predicted for later this century .
Whether the present impending cooling will really lead on to a coming glacial ice age or not is still in question.
This point is more fully illustrated here:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/the-holocene-context-for-anthropogenic-global-warming-2/
I have been looking at longer term history of Arctic sea ice, from biodata etc
I seems that the ONLY time that Arctic sea ice has been higher than current is the last 400-500 (or less) years, essentially during the Little Ice Age.
That means that Arctic Sea Ice extent has been LOWER than current for some 90-95% of the current interglacial.
Briner did a study on Greenland Ice area, which also corroborates this, showing that Greenland ice area has been LESS than current for nearly ALL of the last 8000 years. Matches quite well with the GISP data.
https://s19.postimg.org/ceo16fi7n/Greenland-_Ice-_Sheet-_Briner.jpg
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Bill Butler, never came back to defend his erroneous misleading claims,which is not surprising, as he was properly responded to.
It will be interesting when people like him respond to this solid Second Edition of this report:
On the Existence of a “Tropical Hot Spot”& The Validity of EPA’s CO2
Endangerment Finding
Dr. James P. Wallace III
Dr. John R. Christy
Dr. Joseph S. D’Aleo
April 2017
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/ef-data-research-report-second-editionfinal041717-1.pdf
Appears to be a solid 73 page report.
There are several reasons why that is a poor report that would not make it past competent peer review. Here are three:
1) The report doesn’t adequately address much of the research that found a tropical tropospheric hotspot. This research includes:
“Comparing Tropospheric Warming in Climate Models and Satellite Data”
“Removing Diurnal Cycle Contamination in Satellite-Derived Tropospheric Temperatures: Understanding Tropical Tropospheric Trend Discrepancies”
“Estimating low-frequency variability and trends in atmospheric temperature using ERA-Interim”
“Homogenization of the global radiosonde temperature dataset through combined comparison with reanalysis background series and neighboring stations”
“New estimates of tropical mean temperature trend profiles from zonal mean historical radiosonde and pilot balloon wind shear observations”
“Atmospheric changes through 2012 as shown by iteratively homogenized radiosonde temperature and wind data (IUKv2)”
“Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds”
2) The report states that the hot spot is claimed to be a fingerprint or signature of global warming caused by greenhouse gases (pages 4 and 12). However, this is not an accurate representation of the claims made by the mainstream scientific community. Scientists know that surface warming caused by other factors (such as increased solar activity) would also result in a hot spot. For example, the sun could cause warming of the moist surface air above tropical oceans, leading to a hot spot:
“Comparing tropospheric warming in climate models and satellite data
[…]
Such tropical amplification occurs for any surface warming; it is not a unique signature of greenhouse gas (GHG)-induced warming, as has been incorrectly claimed (Christy 2015).”
3) The report claims that there is no statistically valid evidence showing that rising atmospheric CO2 has caused most of the recent temperature changes (page 71). Yet the report side-steps one of the main fingerprints of CO2-induced global warming: stratospheric cooling. The report only touches on stratospheric temperatures on pages 24 and 25. However, the report presents temperatures at 150 mb (or 150 hPA), as if that was the tropical stratosphere. But that’s likely not the stratosphere; that’s likely the tropopause, as discussed in sources like:
“Tropical Tropopause Layer” [doi:10.1029/2008RG000267]
If you actually look at tropical stratopsheric temperatures (as opposed to the tropopause), then there’s cooling, as AGW theory predicts. For more on this, see:
“Regional and seasonal stratospheric temperature trends in the last decade (2002–2014) from AMSU observations”
“Stratospheric Temperature Trends over 1979–2015 Derived from Combined SSU, MLS, and SABER Satellite Observations”
“Evidence for an earlier greenhouse cooling effect in the stratosphere before 1980 over the Northern Hemisphere”
“Comparing Tropospheric Warming in Climate Models and Satellite Data”
“The JRA-55 Reanalysis: Representation of Atmospheric Circulation and Climate Variability”