For some time now I have been saying that the alleged pause in global warming isn't really a pause at all. For example:
Since then; as we know, 2014 HAS actually set a new record for the hottest year on record ... and early indications make 2015 a credible prospect for a yet another new record. Any uptick in year to year variation is on top of the steady global warming that continues as before; so we keep getting new record hottest years from time to time.
I mentioned the ocean in the extract quoted above; this is unambiguous evidence of ongoing warming. The ocean shows a lot less year to year natural variability than the atmosphere. For the ocean to keep heating up in the way we are measuring there has to be a steady excess of energy being taken in by the Earth -- that is, warming. You can't really overstate the importance of this measurement; the ocean is by far the major player that takes up heat as the world warms; it takes a heck of an excess of energy to maintain the warming we observe. It's a measurement that confirms the planet is continuing to warm up, and a powerful indicator that the slow down seen in surface temperatures is just short term variation in the highly variable atmospheric temperature record. It's misleading to even call it a "slow down", really. There's no good evidence of an actual change in the long term warming rate; what we are seeing is just short term variation that occurs on top of the long term patterns being driven by an increasingly stronger greenhouse effect. That's not just presumption; it's a hypothesis strongly supported by empirical evidence and basic thermodynamic physics.
So: I'm posting this new thread because the news outlets are reporting a recent paper: Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations and Northern Hemisphere temperatures in Science, Vol. 347 no. 6225 pp. 988-991, Feb 27 2015. Basically, the paper states that "the AMO and PMO are found to explain a large proportion of internal variability in Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures". That's Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation; natural somewhat chaotic variations in the ocean surface temperature. They are "oscillations"; they do not give "trend". The message of the paper is any "slow down" is likely to be followed by a "speed up". We may be seeing the start of that already; but being chaotic it's not easy to predict these decadal scale switches.
The paper is getting a lot of press because it's a message that needs to be heard in the faux-debate of the public sphere; but in the world of science, this new paper is totally unsurprising and not particularly significant, IMO. It's a useful piece in the work of science but hardly ground breaking.
Here's the recent global temperature anomaly record from NASA. with a couple of trend lines added in.
GISS.jpg
Orange line is the trend 1975-1998; green line is the trend 1975-2015
Adding the most recent 17 years makes very little difference to the trend. What you CAN see is that 1998 was a stand out hot year. The so-called "pause" is really the years following this bump; the series is basically returning to the same underlying trend we've had all along after that bump in 1998. That is, there was a "speed up", and the "slow down" is really just maintaining unusually high temperatures for a while as the underlying trend catches up.
As we continue on deeper into the 21st century, we'll continue to have random variations up and down around the underlying warming trend. The warming trend will continue; there's no credible doubt on that whatsoever. The proof lies in the oceans; they continue to soak up that extra heat Earth is absorbing as it continues to heat up -- this is a measurement, not an assumption.
Cheers -- sylas
Originally posted by sylas, Aug 7 2014, debunking in the thread Still No Global Warming For 17 Years 10 Months
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I mentioned the ocean in the extract quoted above; this is unambiguous evidence of ongoing warming. The ocean shows a lot less year to year natural variability than the atmosphere. For the ocean to keep heating up in the way we are measuring there has to be a steady excess of energy being taken in by the Earth -- that is, warming. You can't really overstate the importance of this measurement; the ocean is by far the major player that takes up heat as the world warms; it takes a heck of an excess of energy to maintain the warming we observe. It's a measurement that confirms the planet is continuing to warm up, and a powerful indicator that the slow down seen in surface temperatures is just short term variation in the highly variable atmospheric temperature record. It's misleading to even call it a "slow down", really. There's no good evidence of an actual change in the long term warming rate; what we are seeing is just short term variation that occurs on top of the long term patterns being driven by an increasingly stronger greenhouse effect. That's not just presumption; it's a hypothesis strongly supported by empirical evidence and basic thermodynamic physics.
So: I'm posting this new thread because the news outlets are reporting a recent paper: Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations and Northern Hemisphere temperatures in Science, Vol. 347 no. 6225 pp. 988-991, Feb 27 2015. Basically, the paper states that "the AMO and PMO are found to explain a large proportion of internal variability in Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures". That's Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation; natural somewhat chaotic variations in the ocean surface temperature. They are "oscillations"; they do not give "trend". The message of the paper is any "slow down" is likely to be followed by a "speed up". We may be seeing the start of that already; but being chaotic it's not easy to predict these decadal scale switches.
The paper is getting a lot of press because it's a message that needs to be heard in the faux-debate of the public sphere; but in the world of science, this new paper is totally unsurprising and not particularly significant, IMO. It's a useful piece in the work of science but hardly ground breaking.
Here's the recent global temperature anomaly record from NASA. with a couple of trend lines added in.
GISS.jpg
Orange line is the trend 1975-1998; green line is the trend 1975-2015
Adding the most recent 17 years makes very little difference to the trend. What you CAN see is that 1998 was a stand out hot year. The so-called "pause" is really the years following this bump; the series is basically returning to the same underlying trend we've had all along after that bump in 1998. That is, there was a "speed up", and the "slow down" is really just maintaining unusually high temperatures for a while as the underlying trend catches up.
As we continue on deeper into the 21st century, we'll continue to have random variations up and down around the underlying warming trend. The warming trend will continue; there's no credible doubt on that whatsoever. The proof lies in the oceans; they continue to soak up that extra heat Earth is absorbing as it continues to heat up -- this is a measurement, not an assumption.
Cheers -- sylas
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