Bishop Hill England, oh England
Feb 14, 2014 Climate: Oceans Environmentalists have been getting very excited by a paper by England et al. which claims to have unearthed the reasons for the pause. Anthony Watts covered it a few days ago.
The paper is published in Nature Climate Change:
Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing. Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake. The extra uptake has come about through increased subduction in the Pacific shallow overturning cells, enhancing heat convergence in the equatorial thermocline. At the same time, the accelerated trade winds have increased equatorial upwelling in the central and eastern Pacific, lowering sea surface temperature there, which drives further cooling in other regions. The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2 °C, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming observed since 2001. This hiatus could persist for much of the present decade if the trade wind trends continue, however rapid warming is expected to resume once the anomalous wind trends abate.
Now, as Carl Wunsch points out, just because it's published by Nature, doesn't mean a paper is wrong, but in this case it turns out that there are indeed one or two problems with the results. Following a Guardian article hyping the story, Nic Lewis wrote to explain what was wrong. His contribution never appeared, so I'm reproducing it here.
Sir
May I point out an units error in your article "Global warming 'pause' caused by spike in speed of trade winds" (Guardian 10 February 2014) and a fundamental flaw in the research by Matthew England et al. that it highlights? A cooling effect of between 0.1C and 0.2C equates to 0.2F to 0.4F, not 32.2F and 32.4F – it is temperature changes that are referred to, not actual temperatures. [BH note: the article has now been corrected]
Matthew England's paper claims to show that the hiatus in global surface temperature since around 2001 is due to strengthening Pacific trade winds causing increased heat uptake by the global ocean, concentrated in the top 300 m and occurring mainly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. But his study uses model-based ocean temperature "reanalyses", not measurements. A recent study by Lyman and Johnson of the US Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory shows, using actual measurements of sub-surface ocean temperatures (infilling data gaps using a representative mean), that ocean heat uptake has actually fallen heavily from around 2002, whether measured down to 100 m, 300 m, 700 m or 1800 m. Indeed, they show an exceptionally large 90% fall in the heat content trend for the top 300 m between the decades 1993–2002 and 2002–2011. Several other observational datasets for the more often cited top 700 m ocean heat content also show a substantial reduction in heat uptake between those periods. So, unfortunately, ocean temperature measurements completely contradict Matthew England's neat explanation for the warming hiatus.
Reader Comments (89)
And then Anthony uncovered a paper from a few years back associating the cessation with slower trade winds.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/10/seven-years-ago-we-were-told-the-opposite-of-what-the-new-matthew-england-paper-says-slower-not-faster-trade-winds-caused-the-pause/
Bob Tisdale responded to the England paper. Needless to say, whenever someone treads on his territory, they come off second best. Trying to reinvent ENSO. Mut try harder.
It is very difficult to heat water by blowing hot air over the surface. Solar radiation is much more effective at heating water.
Yes Jeremy. The climate is changing every few years.
In 2006 the Pacific circulation including the trade winds were weakening exactly as the models predicted www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/walker.shtml
Further weakening was expected for the future in a 2010 review www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n6/full/ngeo868.html
Then in 2011 "...the long-term trends of indices representing the North Atlantic Oscillation, the tropical Pacific Walker Circulation, and the Pacific–North American pattern are weak or non-existent over the full period of record." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/abstract
All it takes is patience, and a suitable paper will pop up, somewhere.
"...rapid warming is expected to resume..." writes England.
Does he mean "...please, please, resume or our gravy train will come off the rails"?
Applying Occam's razor leads to a certain conclusion....
.... they make it up as they go along.
Is this the paper Nic mentions ?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rog.20022/pdf
In a larger sense, none of these explanations which include sub-components of the earth, like oceans, Arctic sea, trade winds, etc, are convincing as part of an explanation for the reduction in the rate of temperature rise from those predicted, because none of them were part of the explanation that predicted the temperature rise. The so-called enhanced greenhouse effect increases global average temperatures by way of increasing global average temperatures.
Does anyone remember scientists giving examples of factors that would decrease global average temperatures the same way. Sure they talked about E Nino and volcanoes but those would only produce changes lasting for a year, or few years. Even here, volcanoes are considered to be outside the climate system, just as humans are. What factors inside the system can rearrange things to produce temperature trends?
ENSO! ENSO! ENSO!
El Nino Southerm Oscillation.
It is a NATURAL event whos strength varies and has been known about for hundreds of years. Blaming trade winds is spurious and displays ignorance beyond imagination.
Full explanation of ENSO please see Bob Tisdale's various blogs.
I think it might be this one.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/OHCA_1950_2011_final.pdf
To achieve quality in complicated systems (and scientific calculations and models predicting climate count as a complicated system) quality has to be built in.
For decades it's been recognised that you cannot achieve quality by starting with a buggy, crappy system and correcting each error that you find. It's software developer folklore, supported by observation, that the more errors you have found and corrected, the greater is the best estimate for the number of remaining undetected errors.
Climate Science's discovery of reasons why the predicted warming halted equates to the developer of some crappy software finding bugs and stating that, now that the bugs have been corrected, the software can be relied on. It's a fallacy.
(The Therac-25 was a software controlled radiation therapy machine . Its makers honestly believed that they were ensuring the quality of the software by correcting each bug as it was found. Eventually it injured patients because of undetected software errors. http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf )
The "data" comes from a model?
Goodness - what a surprise, and is that a verified model? - you might well ask... verified using actual observations? pfff... this is bare faced p*ss taking on an epic scale.
Commenters have already pointed out elsewhere, the trade winds have oscillating patterns strongly linked to phenomena like ENSO, AMO, etc.. Looks as if climate science has just caught up with that long-standing knowledge.
Reminded me of that excellent Josh cartoon where a group of climate alchemists are standing in front of a giant "climate computer" looking at a tiny control labelled "CO2" and one pops up saying "Hey, I've found one called "Oceans"".
Another paper in Nature huh?
With thanks and due acknowledgment [excellent blog btw] to, Bob Tidsdale says:
And he then goes on to say:
And from here:
A reanalysis (thinks...... groan) of computer models which don't work anyway - what's the point of it, other than to confirm alarmist bias?
To achieve dimensional quality in a motor vehicle, quality has to be built in, and every feature located relative to reference points - datums - in x, y and z. Just as in Martin A's description of crooked software, adjustments made without relation to the datums result in clashes, contradictions and malfunctions - sawing the legs of the chair.
Climatographers are choosing their datums as they go along, concealing the fact that their models - even if they fully incorporated the laws of physics and even if they had fully defined initial conditions - cannot simulate a complex chaotic system. Rent-seeking charlatans; latter-day priests pretending to read the portents in the temple; too corrupt to admit the limits of their knowledge.
From that article:
By how much have the oceans warmed? 0.1°C? 0.01°C? Or, perhaps 0.001°C? Do these people actually believe what they are saying? Perhaps the oceans and atmosphere are taking it in turns; “Your turn, now…”Comments have been stopped – possibly because most seem to be too far along the sceptical line than The Groan are comfortable with?
When the data don't fit the theory then all you have is an unsubstantiated theory. It seems this does not matter, any excuse for things not being as predicted will do, the units gaff was funny and rather telling.
Morph -
The Lyman and Johnson paper to which Nic referred may be found here.
Edit: Should have read further in the comments, I see Doug McNeall has already given the link.
Being a computer programmer (20+years)
I still can't believe the idiot's still do not understand "GIGO", Garbage In Garbage Out
Being something of a pedant here.
One shouldn't call the stop in global warming a hiatus or a pause; that per-supposes that it will start getting warm again, and we don't know this. Better to say global warming has stopped or plateaued.
"plateaued"
Indeed Nick but some now think we've just started to roll down the other side of 'warming' towards global cooling.
I don't normally take part in the "climate" part of the discussions here but can someone remind me of when we/they switched from "global warming hasn't stopped" to arguing about why it stopped/paused/plateaued/hid ?
Maybe I'm behind the times, but it seems like just last week.
Of course, if anyone listened to the Biased Broadcasting Company's Jeremy Vine show today you know that it's all sorted. The warmists have declared that it's all down to CC caused by Man. there was no counter to this argument on the show and the main speaker (I think his name was John Birch for E3-something or other) was allowed free rein.
This guy was talking about the Jet Stream moving south while Vine thought he was talking about the Gulf Stream, he is so thick!!
I've written a steaming letter to Vine and told him what I think.
Kellydown, it was.
Is this true:
because that's where I thought the missing heat was hiding? Or is it even deeper?
@kellydown
..I don't normally take part in the "climate" part of the discussions here but can someone remind me of when we/they switched from "global warming hasn't stopped" to arguing about why it stopped/paused/plateaued/hid ?..
They never stopped. You will also find arguments asserting that global warming has, in fact, continued exactly as predicted, and it's just that the observations are wrong.
Environmentalists have no difficulty whatsoever presenting several mutually contradictory concepts one after the other in an attempt to get you to fund them. Rather like a car salesman who can seamlessly switch between extolling the high speed and performance of a car you like to stressing its low MPG and low running cost when you say you prefer to save money.... Some of them are actually able to hold these contradictory beliefs in their heads at the same time - see the quote below:
...To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink - the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....
George Orwell
To paraphrase a another post on another thread:
"The heat is hiding in the ocean depths along with climate science's integrity"
Kellydown: global warming is so last Wednesday! Don’t worry; the next scare is building – get set for Global Cooling caused by…. well, guess who?
(Please insert your own dramatic pauses and apocryphal voices for this.)
@SandyS
...because that's where I thought the missing heat was hiding? Or is it even deeper?...
Is there a depth which we haven't got any measurements for?
That's where it's hiding, then...
Well the missing heat can *only* be hiding in the deep ocean or in the magic forest.
Personally, I think that it wouldn't do to underestimate the importance of the England paper – even if it is founded on poor data.
As Nic correctly points out, from the observed data, the total global ocean heat flux shows a peak around 2001-2005 depending on which dataset one takes. TOA radiative measurements show a peak in net radiative incoming flux somewhere around 1997-2000, driven largely by SW changes in net albedo. Modern MSL data from satellite altimetry (or indeed from tide gauge data) shows a peak in its derivative function around 2001-2003, which should also be a proxy for net heat flux going into the ocean. (Using gravimetric data from GRACE, we can rule out the possibility that the peak in MSL derivative was caused by mass addition – it is a peak clearly driven by thermosteric expansion. There is a useful presentation here by Nerem: http://conference2011.wcrp-climate.org/orals/B3/Nerem_B3.pdf)
So there is a consistent story from three data sources which says that the net incoming flux hit a peak and has since been decreasing overall for about a decade. This is not compatible with increasing forcing from GHGs and flat or declining tropospheric temperature – a mini paradox, if you will.
The mini-paradox becomes a major paradox when we consider the historical behavior of MSL from tide-guage data. The derivative function of the MSL data shows a dominant and remarkably consistent quasi-60 year cycle. It shows dominant peaks around 1750, 1810, 1870’s and 1940s. (See Jevrejeva 2008.) In other words, the modern peak in the MSL data came in right on time relative to previous recorded oscillatory cycles which date back to 1700. Using the modern peak for calibration, which we know relates to a peak in incoming net flux, we can very reasonably infer that the previous peaks were also due to peaks in net heat flux. The paradox is that these dates for peak incoming flux correspond closely to peaks in the multidecadal oscillations of surface temperature. This is a major bust. This is exactly pi radians out of phase with what we would expect if these cycles were caused by an unforced redistribution of internal heat. (High surface temperatures should induce an increase in outgoing radiation which translates into a decrease in net incoming radiation.) I think that we are therefore led to the inevitable conclusion that these are forced climate oscillations, which means that we have to look for a new flux forcing to explain them, since the current selection box does not have any forcings of the correct frequencies.
I now return to the work of Matthew England. His work adds an important piece to the jigsaw puzzle, even if he himself is failing to appreciate the implications. We saw from Kosaka and Xie 2013 that a large chunk of the late 20th century heating as well as the modern temperature hiatus could be captured by the simple expedient of prescribing sea surface temperatures in a small area of the eastern Pacific. Those temperatures are in reality controlled by ENSO events which are in turn controlled by equatorial trade wind strength and direction. England’s work confirms at least in skeletal form that controlling the wind stress tensor in the same area gives a similar result, even if he is wrong on some of the details.
The question it leaves is: what then controls the equatorial trade winds? The answer was actually known more than 40 years ago when science was still relatively unsullied, but it will not be accepted easily by mainstream climate science today, since the answer makes not one but two major breaches in fundamental assumptions of climate science.
The first part of the answer is that the climate oscillations are triggered by gravitationally forced changes in the angular velocity of the solid Earth. These changes transmit a (non-radiative) momentum flux into the hydrosphere and atmosphere via frictional torque and conservation of angular momentum. These changes explain the fluctuations in trade winds and, just as importantly, the latitudinal meanderings of the jet streams. Before anyone starts calling for the men in white coats, I would suggest that you have a look at this 1976 paper: http://gji.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/3/555.full.pdf and this: http://gji.oxfordjournals.org/content/64/1/67.full.pdf . For the excellent correlation apparent in the higher frequency data between Earth’s rotation velocity, atmospheric angular momentum and ENSO events, you might also try this paper: http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/17186/1/99-0613.pdf .
So it seems that England has probably confirmed that the multidecadal oscillations are driven by atmospheric tides which are driven by a non-radiative orbital forcing. He just hasn’t realised yet that what he has done is to demonstrate that the GCMs are all missing a massively important piece of physics which was considered small enough to be neglected on energetic grounds.
The story doesn’t end there. The orbital forcing is a triggering and control mechanism, but it is “energetically deficient” to explain the full amplitude of the climate oscillations. On my sums the trough-to-peak transfer of energy via momentum flux and friction amounts to something less than 2*10^22 joules during the 60-year cycles. The amplification factor comes from the cloud response to the change in phase of the orbital forcing, which is why we note the dominant effect of SW changes in the radiative signature. This is a feedback mechanism of sorts, but it is not a “temperature dependent” feedback mechanism; it does not correlate simply with global surface temperature, but rather with the phase of orbital forcing. This post is already too long for me to try to explain how that works.
I am hoping if I live long enough to try to get some of this stuff down in more detail in an article for Lucia, but I do keep getting distracted, not to mention beaten up by my wife for wasting time on that climate change rubbish instead of doing something useful.
The ocean's are absorbing *less* heat over the last few decades? Where oh where can the missing heat have gone?? I know - the atmosphere!
Let's hope that happens soon. Most people in this country would welcome a nice spring and a "barbecue summer!"
sandyS (1:57 PM) asked whether Nic Lewis' statement about the recent Lyman & Johnson paper is true.
I don't see the information directly in the paper. Table I shows that the OHC rates for 1983-2011 are higher than those for 2004-2011, for all depth ranges at which both figures are provided. Somebody with a really good magnifying glass might be able to deduce the trends for those periods from Figure 4. Certainly from figure 4(b) it appears that the current OHC trend for 0-300m is quite small compared with earlier values.
I couldn't find any Supplemental Information at the JClimate site. So I'm guessing that Nic obtained the values underlying figure 4 from the authors, in order to make his comparisons.
Martin A
'Climate Science's discovery of reasons why the predicted warming halted equates to the developer of some crappy software finding bugs and stating that, now that the bugs have been corrected, the software can be relied on. It's a fallacy'.
I was once at software package presentation. It went very well until the very end when the presenter said '..and it's guaranteed bug free'. Instantly from the audience came a question. 'Is it just the first bug that's free? Or are they all free?'
Paul_K,
Thanks for the comment and the links. I'll go read those papers as I await your post at Lucia's.
Paul K
thank you and your wife for the time you spent on your post at 2:35pm
looks very interesting
the chances of the sciencelitebrigade taking any notice is somewhat moot
if it cant be blamed on CO2 it is not worthy of the noble scientists in our Met Office and universities wasting their time on it
but as we all know science doesnt give a fig what the space cadets think
so find the time and go for it
and Bish this might be something that deserves wider airing subject as always to the caveat that we must be sceptical of any new theory
Being something of a pedant here.
One shouldn't call the stop in global warming a hiatus or a pause; that per-supposes that it will start getting warm again, and we don't know this. Better to say global warming has stopped or plateaued.
Feb 14, 2014 at 1:07 PM | nick good
=============================================
"Cessation" is the word I use - until further notice.
Oh, I know that one. We in the drilling industry have always known that we're responsible for everything from earthquakes to obesity.
Unless of course, we're drilling for third world water as part of some patronising first world charity (been there, done that), or drilling for ice samples in Antarctica, or drilling for taxpayer-funded geothermal power (done that too).
Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for...
Can those who believe that CAGW exists not see the implication: if a factor that can upend your predictions is not captured in your model, then your model is... [self censor kicks in]... not fit for purpose. Give it up - you CAN'T be right!
Why would transporting energy from the ocean to the atmosphere cool the atmosphere? Ignoring temperatures for the moment, what does this energy transport do to the balance of energy in the Earth/Sun system? Are we balanced, gaining, or losing energy?
There's still a vocal minority of "orthodox" believers, led by the celebrated, peer-reviewed, time-travelling, Dr Who impersonator, Nuccitelli of the Climate SS - who spend their time reassuring each other that there has been no pause at all.
Since they seem to be drifting ever further away from the mainstream of climate science - I think we should call them "Rebels Without a Pause".
They can be safely viewed here - but try to avoid putting your fingers through the bars, they bite.
I've given up on the pause.
The global average temperature record HAdCRUt4 is the only one still showing 1998 as warmest. The other metrics show continued energy uptake. The energy imbalance continues.
The forecasts expect El Nino conditions later this year.
http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/currentinfo/SST_table.html
My own informal forecast is for that El Nino to drive a new record global temperature to be set in 2015. Where will the pause be then?
Paul_K
Thank you very much for your most interesting comments.
'So there is a consistent story from three data sources which says that the net incoming flux hit a peak and has since been decreasing overall for about a decade. This is not compatible with increasing forcing from GHGs and flat or declining tropospheric temperature – a mini paradox, if you will.'
Yes, I had reached exactly the same conclusion. Whatever the source of the natural variability at work, it alters total forcing - presumably via changing cloud extent, position and/or properties - rather than just altering heat uptake by the ocean, and is not a feedback. And there certainly appears to be a quasi-cyclical effect. Your theories as to its source are very interesting; I will read the papers you cite.
Nic
HaroldW
' So I'm guessing that Nic obtained the values underlying figure 4 from the authors, in order to make his comparisons.'
You are correct.
Do
We continue to gain energy at about 0.6W/m^2/year, about 3*10^22 watts.
Most of this is going into increasing ocean heat content and atent heat of fusion as 500 cubic kilometres/year melt off the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Convert the resulting thermal expansion and volume increase into sea level rise and you get the current annual sea level rise. The bookkeeping matches.
Climate science just gets better and better, I wouldn't be surprised if one day they'll be able to predict things before they happen.
Paul_K
Thanks, very interesting papers, tying in trade winds, polar sea ice changes and glacier changes etc. Is it in the models?
I suspect when Phase 2 of the Green Party totalitarian purge occurs it will be books and papers and pdf's will not be safe. (Apologies for conflating 2 stories).
"I don't normally take part in the "climate" part of the discussions here but can someone remind me of when we/they switched from "global warming hasn't stopped" to arguing about why it stopped/paused/plateaued/hid ?</I>
In the case of Professor England, we can pin it down to some period between Dec 10th 2012 and this month.
On the first date he was very clear:
- "And so anybody out there lying that the IPCC projections are overstatements or that the observations haven't kept pace with the projections is completely offline with this. The analysis is very clear that the IPCC projections are coming true." -
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3650773.htm
Now, 14 months later, he has reconsidered (and backdated it):
- "Lead author Professor Matthew England, a climate scientist and oceanographer at the University of New South Wales, says since 2001 global surface temperatures have remained steady despite an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases." -
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/02/10/3941061.htm
(Bold emphasis mine. I think it was Andrew Bolt who discovered the change of heart.)
Perhaps this gives some clue as to how long his new study took?
EM
I said this on another thread: the value of 0.6W/m2 from the TOA measurements has an error of 0.4 W/m2 which is very close to the value stated and really is saying that the errors have the same order of magnitude as the result.
Or in order words: the result is effectively zero and should have been stated as such. Errors are a dark art and you often have to look at magnitude to get a feeling of how good a reported value is. If it were 0.6 W/m2 with an error of 0.02 W/m2 then that would be decent and believable in the context of the measuring equipment. You'd then have to check the calibration of the equipment of course but in general that would be significant.
But right now we don't have robust data to say that there is any change in net radiation. We have a discrepancy, an interesting value, but it's hard to tell what it is. Assuming it is caused by a theoretical mechanism lacking robust scientific characterisation, as AGW is, then it's an interestine theoretical notion. That's all.
But not necessarily a reality.