The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has been loudly trumpeting its latest paper on Atlantic ocean overturning circulation today, claiming there’s been an “exceptional twentieth-century slowdown“. The authors, who include Stefan Rahmstorf and Michael E. Mann, even suggest that the “possible cause of the weakening is climate change“.
Some sites, like Climate Central here, have been unable to contain their glee over the news of the potential climate-change induced oceanic shifts being served up by the PIK. For example the site called the findings “dramatic” and writes (my emphasis):
If the climate relationships identified by the researchers, led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, hold true, growing melt rates in Greenland ‘might lead to further weakening of the AMOC within a decade or two, and possibly even more permanent shutdown’ of key components of it, the scientists warn in their paper.”
The “new” weakening Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
Credit: Nature Climate Change.
Spiegel and the FAZ pour cold water on paper
Fortunately other media sources have been somewhat more critical and report that there’s skepticism on the paper – coming from warmist circles, no less.
Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) here for example writes that Rahmstorf is puzzled that a part of the north Atlantic has cooled over the last 100 years: “The cooling was stronger than what most computer models calculated it would be,” the FAZ reports. Models wrong again!
The FAZ then writes that, “An independent expert assesses the estimation skeptically”, adding:
Climate scientist Martin Visbeck of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel sees Rahmstorf’s assertion of the results critically: ‘The study’s focus on the sub-polar part of the Atlantic and the spectral analysis are interesting,’ he says. But there are other AMOC assessments that point to a completely other development. The paper does not offer any strong indication of the development of the AMOC during the past fifty years.”
When a warmist dismisses another warmists’s science, then you know it’s likely pretty slipshod.
Der Spiegel reports that the study is lacking
German flagship online news weekly Der Spiegel echoed the FAZ, quoting Michael Hofstätter of the Austrian national weather service: the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna. Spiegel writes that Hofstätter also “rates the Rahmstorf study with skepticism“.
Spiegel reminds its readers: “Most studies are assuming that the current is in fact stronger.” Spiegel continues:
The temperature fluctuations could also be a ‘temporary natural variation,’ Hofstätter told the online service of the ORF. The measurements covered a time period that was too short to allow concrete forecasts.”
Other websites censored reports of skepticism and uncertainty
For example the end-of-climate conspiracy theorists at German alarmist site Klimaretter of course could not be bothered to mention the study is disputed even by fellow warmist scientists.
Dr. Mann blocks critic at Twitter
Michael Mann also did not want to hear any non-alarmist opinion as well. At Facebook he blocked fair comments left by Jaime Jessop, who kept a screen-shot:
https://twitter.com/Balinteractive/status/580295354484178944
Overall the latest paper by Rahmstorf and Mann did not even survive birth.
Anthony Watts has lots more here.
[…] – See more at: Dead At Birth! German Warmist Scientists Slap Down Rahmstorf/Mann AMOC Paper: “Offers No Strong In… […]
I wonder about a temperature anomaly graph. As an anomaly is defined as a deviation from average, the average anomaly should be a zero. This is clearly not the case. What base period did the authors use?
That’s Mann’s idea of mannish behavior.
FAZ, Spiegel, Helmholtz NOT beating the alarmist drum?
Endtimes, endtimes!
That can only mean one thing: Warmism is no longer the guarantee for a life in luxury. THE MONEY RAN OUT!
These are calculating fellows. A number of climate scientists have been suffering depression over the “pause” although they and their shrinks attribute it to people not responding to their alarm. These guys have been agonizing over the recent cooling and this is a way to get some skin in the cooling game. They are tentative about it now, but if the cooling persists for a few decades, they can point to this “ground breaking” paper that foresaw all this. I noted on WUWT that the cost of admission into the cooling game was throwing away his hockey stick. The paper states that there hasn’t been such a cool spot since 900AD which is an admission that the MWP did exist after all. His hockey stick now has a blade on both ends.
Reminds me of the old saying: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive.” Then can try, but claiming 4 decades of no warming proves warming isn’t going to fool those who saw Gore’s AIT as children by the time 2030 or 2040 come around.
This may interest, another study of the very recent trend of the AMOC reviewed at the GWPF.
“NASA Study Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing (2010)
Date: 23/03/15
NASA News
PASADENA, Calif.– 25 March 2010: New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.
The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are reported in the March 25 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
The Atlantic overturning circulation is a system of currents, including the Gulf Stream, that bring warm surface waters from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic. There, in the seas surrounding Greenland, the water cools, sinks to great depths and changes direction. What was once warm surface water heading north turns into cold deep water going south. This overturning is one part of the vast conveyor belt of ocean currents that move heat around the globe.”
More at http://www.thegwpf.com/reminder-nasa-study-finds-atlantic-conveyor-belt-not-slowing-2010/
What else can Mann do to preserve his hockey stick? Ah! Yes, turn it upside down and voila a new discovery. “Simples”.