The new open thread on climate science for a new year, and a new decade – perhaps the Soaring Twenties? What precisely will be soaring is yet to be decided though.
Two things will almost certainly go up – CO2 emissions and temperatures:
As 2019 wraps up, what can we look forward to in 2020?
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) December 22, 2019
More of the same, plus a little bit more… pic.twitter.com/nmMP6riIjZ
But maybe also ambition, determination, and changes that will lead to reduced emissions in future? Fingers crossed.
Approximately half the deniers of sea ice graphs will say you’re not allowed to present graphs that don’t go to zero (because it makes them feel uncomfortable), and the other half says you’re not allowed to present graphs that DO go to zero (because it makes them feel uncomfortable). At no point within sea ice science there seems to be any room for rationality and rational analysis. It’s all about their feelings, and right now they are feeling jolly uncomfortable!
When magpies become sirens you’ll know…[fill in the blank].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHzs-mlDXMY
Weaktor,
Words have meanings. The meaning supplied by Webster for hiatus is as follows:
an interruption in time or continuity : break
especially : a period when something (such as a program or activity) is suspended or interrupted
Was the warming interrupted? No. It continued to warm. The instantaneous, year-on-year rate of the change of lower atmospheric or surface temperature may have been slightly lower in this interval. However, warming continued, the oceans continued to accumulate (lots of) energy. Ice continued to melt.
The proper term for this is a “fluctuation”. The interval from 2000-2014 does not represent a pause or hiatus any more than the period since 2014 represents an acceleration.
In physical systems, fluctuations can be interesting. They can tell us things like where energy is going and via what pathways. That is why scientists study them–not because they represent a fundamental shift in the dynamics of the system.
Featuring in news headlines, both GISTEMP and NOAA have posted for December 2019 (although the NOAA webpage is currently acting a little strange and denying any reporting post-February, so here is the GISTEMP numbers).
December 2019 came in at +1.11ºC, the second-highest anomaly of the year after March, the 2019 anomalies ranging from +0.86ºC to +1.18ºC.
December 2019 is the 2nd hottest December in the GISTEMP record (the re-analyses ERA5 & JRA-55 both put Dec 2019 as the top hottest December), in GISTEMP sitting behind the El-Niño-boosted Dec 2015 which managed +1.16ºC, the two of them 2015 & 2019 quite ahead of other Decembers – 2017 (+0.95ºC), 2018 (+0.92ºC), 2016 (+0.86ºC), 2014 (+0.80ºC), and 2006 (+0.79ºC), 2003 (+0.75ºC) and 2013 (+0.70ºC). Thus the hottest six Decembers on the GISTEMP record were also the last six years.
In GISTEMP, December 2019 sits in 9th place in the all-month anomaly record.
So the callendar year 2019 comes in as expected as the 2nd-placed warmest-year in the GISTEMP record behind the El-Niño-boosted 2016. The top-10 looks like this:-
2016 … … +1.02ºC
2019 … … +0.98ºC
2017 … … +0.93ºC
2015 … … +0.90ºC
2018 … … +0.85ºC
2014 … … +0.75ºC
2010 … … +0.72ºC
2013 … … +0.69ºC
2005 … … +0.68ºC
2007 … … +0.66ºC
Victor @293 shows his lack of understanding and double standards. He says “Tamino’s response is in a non-peer reviewed blog post. The study (claiming there was a pause) he attempts to refute was published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal, Nature.”
In reality the Fyfe paper is but one paper, so should be viewed with caution at this stage. Victor doesn’t understand that. As long as the paper plays to his preconceived beliefs he will accept it at face value. There appears to be a consensus that there was no pause, and its unlikely to be overturned by this one new paper. And the paper does appear to have very obvious flaws.
Victor clearly by implication places the validity of a peer reviewed paper above Taminos opinion. But Victor routinely states his opinion ignoring what various specific peer reviewed papers say, and Victor has has nothing like the expertise of Tamino. This is plainly a double standard by Victor.
RE Victor @293
Yet Tamino’s conclusions are supported by these two peer reviewed papers with just as well known climate scientists as authors, which obviously Victor fails to mention even though Tamino himself references these papers in his discussion.
Niamh Cahill, Stefan Rahmstorf, and Andrew C. Parnell, Change points of global temperature
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/084002/meta
Grant Foster and John Abraham, Lack of evidence for a slowdown in global temperature
https://usclivar.org/sites/default/files/documents/2015/Variations2015Summer-1_0.pdf#page=6
No surprise as Victor regularly is deceptive in his posts. For example he stated earlier:
The next two years may just be outliers? Well he states this when in addition to those two years we have data for 2017, 2018, and 2019, for which these non-el Nino years have temperatures well above his 1998 thru 2014 period. Those two years are most certainly not outliers and Victor well knows this yet he makes the egregious statement anyway. Victor is not only ignorant, he is regularly dishonest in his discourse.
Victor is just so full of it and full of himself.
John Pollack @292 is correct, as we know from years of Victor’s repeated claims of non-correlation of CO2 levels to warming that no matter how many times he has been shown there is clear correlation he continues to ignore those far more expert than him. He is just so much smarter than the experts.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0327.1?af=R
New Research Paper: “Ideology and the Narrative of Climate Skepticism”
(Only scanned the abstract so far, and it does not look like anything particularly new, but the full article is free to read, so thought it was worth posting it). Victor should read it because it will help with his lack of self awareness problem.
Victor, have a look at this new research paper, its free to read. No sign of any slowdown in ocean heat content, and this heat content drives a lot of atmospheric conditions of concern:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7.pdf
“Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019”
—————————
Killian, the following research shows what we are up against in terms of improving the ability of soils to sequester more carbon:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019JG005266?af=R
“Soil carbon loss with warming: New evidence from carbon‐degrading enzymes..”
So expectations do need to be realistic. As I have always said.
#290, b fagan–
Thanks for the elaborating comment. Actually, though, the case is a little different for South Carolina, 2018, than for Georgia. Production here was not too bad in 2018, coming in at ~54,000 tons–a nice income rebound for the farmers. Not sure exactly why that reality was so different in adjacent states, though I have a vague notion it may be hurricane-related. Like this, perhaps:
https://site.extension.uga.edu/peaches/2018/10/hurricane-michael-peach-tree-damage-and-subsequent-phytophthora-root-rot/
Michael wasn’t that big a deal in SC, passing mostly to our north and west. But then again, October seems rather late in the peach season to me, so can that be the whole story? Surely Georgia should have got a lot of harvest in by the time Michael came calling?
Anyway, we’ll see about 2019. Forecast calls for a big cooldown, with the jet stream looping far to the south after all this madly warm weather most of eastern North America has been seeing lately. It may help with the chill requirements, if it lasts for a bit, and is certainly early enough that it shouldn’t damage buds. Fingers crossed.
P.S. Speaking of Michael, I recently had occasion to drive highway 90 between Tallahassee and Pensacola. You could tell easily where the center of Michael had passed by a sudden switch from the dead and broken trees leaning first north, then abruptly south.
Victor, #293–
Whatever.
With the past five years having been the warmest in the entire instrumental record, and the past decade having been correspondingly ditto, the pause is clearly now a thing of the past, whatever else it may or may not have been.
https://beta.nbcnews.com/science/environment/past-decade-was-warmest-ever-recorded-nasa-finds-n1116321
#210. Thanks again Gavin. In the meantime I also got this when I asked about changes in the stations used
“Initially, we just used hourly METARs, than added one-minute observations,
ocean temperatures, and mesonets.” …
One more naive question if I may. A recent report by Cheng & al. (Record setting ocean warmth continued in 2019) concludes that the ocean warming for the period 1987 – 2019 is around .58 Wm-2 yr-1 and the oceans are supposed to absorb 90% of the excess heat caused by the GHGs. According to the IPCC the radiating forcing increased from roughly 1.25 Wm-2 in 1980 to 2.29 Wm-2 in 2011. Why is the ocean heat value so low ?
Don’t see this very often:
Daily CO2
Jan. 14, 2020: 412.38 ppm
Jan. 14, 2019: 413.45 ppm
Hoping to live long enough to see weekly or monthly numbers like this. I don’t know if I am going to make it.
MIke
FrozenEarth,
Yeah, graphs can either be misleading to those who only glance or they can waste most of their area based on whether their y-axis scale goes to zero or not.
Or, you can do the clear and concise thing via those jagged lots-of-nothing-lies-here parallel zig-zag-zig lines.
Always go to zero but leave out the data void. Alternatively, show both graphs, a seriously compressed y-axis one to visually show the entire scope and an expanded y-axis one to show detail.
I’m amazed at how smart people don’t bother doing things easily, concisely, and clearly. Like when I programmed, I always translated my predecessor’s code into something readable and understandable at a glance. How else can good work be done?
I always said the secret to my success was that I wasn’t smart enough to comprehend spaghetti code. And my definition was brtual: the minimum number of commands in the most efficient, non-duplicating format and with rigid indenting and name choices (I’d even match name-lengths so actions on a group would visually line up and become near-instataneous to modify). My peers weren’t smart enough either, but apparently they thought they were as brilliant as Victor. A month later they’d give up and I’d spend an hour or two scrubbing off the goop, revealing the underlying logic. When every command has purpose and all variables are clear and it’s all presented logically a program essentially turns into quite readable text. Add a couple minutes making the logic match the specs and, Next!
OK, first I must apologize to Tamino. I was referring to the blog post cited in the comment to which I was responding. If he’s published something similar in peer reviewed journals then my disdain was misplaced. However: my original point was, very simply, that “denialists” are not the only ones to claim the hiatus was real. The paper I cited, by Fyffe et al., was offered as evidence that at least some prominent climate scientists concur. I’m well aware that other climate scientists, such as Tamino, do not. As I quoted earlier, “you pays your money and you takes your choice.”
306 CCHolley: Victor is just so full of it and full of himself.
John Pollack @292 is correct, as we know from years of Victor’s repeated claims of non-correlation of CO2 levels to warming that no matter how many times he has been shown there is clear correlation he continues to ignore those far more expert than him. He is just so much smarter than the experts.
V: Where, exactly have I been “shown there is clear correlation”? I’d love to see that evidence. All I’ve seen are excuses for an absence of correlation: natural variability, volcanic eruptions (or lack of same), industrial aerosols (which I refuted here some time ago), etc. Reasons for lack of correlation do NOT a correlation make, sorry. Nor does a seriously misleading scattergram, as exposed in the blog post I cited.
Look, it’s really simple — 1910 – 1940: steep rise in temperature while CO2 levels are too low to make much difference (clearly NO correlation); 1940-1979: steep drop in temperature, followed by leveling off, while CO2 levels are rapidly increasing (clearly NO correlation); 1979-1998: steep rise in both temperature and CO2 levels (the ONLY period where correlation is evident); 1998-early 2015: significant leveling or slowdown in temperature rise (as widely reported in the c.s. literature) while CO2 levels continue to soar (clearly NO correlation); 2015 to present: five years of temperature rise. So what you are telling me is that the rise in temperatures over the last 5 years somehow magically produces a long-term correlation while the last 120 years shows none?
308 nigelj says:
Victor, have a look at this new research paper, its free to read. No sign of any slowdown in ocean heat content, and this heat content drives a lot of atmospheric conditions of concern:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7.pdf
“Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019”
V: You forget, nigel, that transfer of atmospheric heat to the oceans takes decades. From Skeptical Science:
“The reason the planet takes several decades to respond to increased CO2 is the thermal inertia of the oceans. Consider a saucepan of water placed on a gas stove. Although the flame has a temperature measured in hundreds of degrees C, the water takes a few minutes to reach boiling point. This simple analogy explains climate lag. The mass of the oceans is around 500 times that of the atmosphere. The time that it takes to warm up is measured in decades.” https://skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html
Due to the delay cited above, which can last as long as 40 years, it makes sense to attribute the current ocean warming to the intense runup in atmospheric temperatures experienced during the period 1979-1998. Since this runup was followed by a pause, we can expect a consequent pause in ocean temperatures in the near future.
V 315: Where, exactly have I been “shown there is clear correlation”?
BPL: Here:
http://bartonlevenson.com/Correlation.html
Do the freaking math, Victor. I’ve told you many times that correlation is a number, the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. If it winds up either significantly positive or significantly negative, there is a correlation, no matter how you feel about it or how many fluctuations you find. Do the freaking math!
Victor, again.
[Sighs, again.]
#315:
In places too numerous to cite. BPL has done his own straightforward correlation analyses, and you’ve been pointed to multiple sources, including peer-reviewed ones, which identify that correlation. Hell, your own cite, that Grumbine piece, presented a correlation analysis of variance. Not the fault of anyone pointing to such evidence that you. just. refuse. to. see.
Taking note of relatively high-frequency sources of variance is not an “excuse”–which is your excuse!–but simple recognition of the physical realities. It’s supposed to be the sin of so-called ‘alarmists’ that we think only CO2 affects temps, but the fact is that it is people like you who try to impose that as an unacknowledged precondition.
#316:
No, you’re misinterpreting this. You’re thinking that the 40-year delay cited is a delay in transmission of energy. It’s not; it’s a delay in equilibrating ocean temperature–in other words, it’s the differential between the time that the ocean temperature, not energy, takes to ‘catch up’ to the atmospheric temperature. Both air and water are absorbing energy the whole time–and in fact, the ocean is absorbing by far the greatest proportion of that energy.
If your interpretation were correct, the consequence would be that the atmosphere would be superheated by now. Think about it: you’re requiring that a body with a far less mass and a smaller specific heat store all the energy required to heat another mass far greater in both respects, for 40 years.
For (purely illustrative) example, let’s say Willis’s ‘tiny fraction’ is 1%, and let’s ignore the specific heat issue altogether. That means that if we’re seeing 0.1 C warming in the oceans in 2020, your model would imply 40 x 100 x 0.1 C = 400 C warming of the atmosphere, too.
Clearly, “fail.”
My previous comment should probably have noted that what I said there was implicit–well, actually pretty explicit–in the paper Nigel already posted.
And you don’t have to read very far, either; just check out the graph on ocean heat content evolution on page 2 (Figure 1). Clearly, OHC has been increasing probably since 1960, and unequivocally since 1987 (which is where the authors place a breakpoint in linear trend).
This description, from the second-last paragraph, of the partitioning of incoming energy due to RF forcings also worth noting:
obn asks an interesting question in #311:
That’s the same paper Nigel referred to, and which I discussed just above.
The paper says:
That’s a fair dollop of rather confusing words, but to contextualize and simplify as best I can, the 0.58 Wm-2 yr-1 obn references was for warming of the topmost 2000 meters of the ocean “averaged over the Earth’s surface” and for the period 1987-2019. The IPCC estimate is for the surface of the Earth, period, as I understand it; obviously, the forcing will be less, averaged over depth.
It’s kind of a weird way to do it, though, because the unit used remains a 2-d one: Wm-2 (yr−1). (Or, I’ve misunderstood this. But even if I have, I remain sure that the comparison asked about is not apples-to-apples.)
Consider the second half of that, too, where the paper continues:
To my, mind, it suggests that I was right above, in that the full-depth analysis shows a value–0.38 ± 0.08 W m−2–yet smaller again. (And shouldn’t that be “Wm-2 yr-1” once again, for consistent units? Or am I missing something else?)
With respect to the claim that there was neither a pause nor a slowdown in temperature rise during the 16 year period from 1998 through 2015, please direct your attention to the first graph displayed in Gavin Schmidt’s most recent post:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/01/one-more-data-point/
Is it really possible for anyone to miss the stark difference between the steep runup from 1979-1998 compared with the modest increase during the following 16 years?
Or would you rather do the math? 1979 lines up very close to minus .2C; 1998 lies close to .6 — a rise of approx. .8 degrees. The high point reached just prior to the 2015 El Nino looks close to .7 degrees. Thus, as should be clear, the temperature anomaly rose by close to .8 degrees from 1979 to 1998, but only by roughly .1 degree over the following 16 years. A considerable difference, no? Does that represent a slowdown? How could anyone claim otherwise? Yet we now see that claim reiterated over and over on these pages, reassuring us that the “pause” was some sort of myth.
[Response: Ahem. OLS trend 1979-1998: 0.142ºC/dec. 1998-2015: 0.166ºC/dec. You should take your eyeball back to the store for a refund. – gavin]
Weaktor: “Where, exactly have I been “shown there is clear correlation”?”
There’s a little statistical measure that can measure correlation. It’s called the correlation coefficient–ever heard of it? It’s pretty simple: two series of data get plugged in, and you get back a number between -1 and 1. 1 indicates perfect correlation. -1 indicates anticorrelation. 0 equals no correlation. When I plug in CO2 yearly averages with average annual temperature anomalies, I get 0.97. Moreover, in addition to the correlation, there is a clear mechanism whereby CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere.
Seriously, dude, a bright grade school student can do this in Excel. How is it that you can come back here repeatedly and ask the same stupid questions while pretending no one has ever shown you any evidence.
Is it that you have no shame, or do you have some sort of issue with forming long-term memories. Really, I’d like to know. It will make a difference in how good I feel laughing at you.
#320 Kevin McKinney
Thanks for highlighting the fact that the .58 Wm-2 applies to the top 2000m of the oceans. As the average depth is around 3700m, with the excess temperature decreasing with depth, we are still below the IPCC value for the global forcing. So there is still something I do not get.
obn @311,
You ask why the power required to raise OHC 1987-2019 is given as +0.58Wm^-2 averaged over the Earth’s surface (this value taken from Cheng et al 2020) while the values for climate forcing given by IPCC you say are 1.25Wm^-2 in 1980 and +2.25Wm^-2 in 2011, these being far larger values.
The reason for the difference is that a climate forcing will have converted into a global temperature rise when it reaches equilibrium. Part-way through such a warming, the climate forcing will be equal to the imbalance in global energy (the OHC representing perhaps 90% of this imbalance) plus the part forcing that has resulted in the warming achieved to-date.
So are these values from Cheng et al & from IPCC reasonable?
If we take the average climate forcing for the period 1987-2019 to be 1.95Wm^-2 (this the 2003 value from IPCC AR5 AII), and from Cheng et al Fig 2 we obtain total OHC over the period 1987-2019 to be ~350ZJ over 32 years = +0.68Wm^-2. Taking this as 90% of the global energy imbalance would make the imbalance 0.76WM^-2. This would leave (1.95Wm^-2 – 0.76Wm^-2 =) +1.19Wm^-2 of the forcing disappered from the imbalance being responsible for the warming achieved in 2003 which totals the +0.62ºC anomaly plus +0.21ºC warming of the anomaly-base relative to 1880-99 = +0.83ºC, or an equivalent of an ECS= +2.6ºC which is not an unreasonable value.
About Eyeballs; Victor’s #321,
Back a ways, when Victor was talking about eyeballing data, I asked him a question which made him shut up about the subject for a while. (Of course he didn’t answer.)
So here we are again.
Victor, if two people eyeball, and disagree about seeing a trend, or how steep the trend is, how do we decide which is “correct”?
Should we put it to a vote? 51 say “it’s going up” and 49 say “it’s flat”. Does that mean it’s going up?
Should we get 1,000 random people together and have them put down their opinions, and then do a statistical analysis of the data… no, wait, you don’t trust statistical analysis, so we should get another thousand people to eyeball that data, but then… hmmm, this could go on forever, I think.
Anyone want to bet whether Victor answers this?
#323–
You’re welcome, obn.
But one or both of us is still confused. You said further:
The full-depth case was the second thing I quoted from the paper:
Having got the methodological stuff out of the way, they continue:
So, as I highlighted previously–thanks for that word!–the more depth, the less the mean RF equivalent. (I.e., the heat is ‘diluted’ throughout more mass.) But maybe I’m misinterpreting this; MAR, no dummy, has a completely different take on this, as you probably will have seen. (Though if he is correct–and he may be–then I don’t understand why the full-ocean versus top-layer forcings are different.)
[Goes away and thinks hard/looks stuff up for a while.]
I still don’t understand this very fully, and I need to move on. But let me note a few things.
Firstly, the IPCC RF values you cited. Here’s the IPCC definition of “radiative forcing”:
This doesn’t include everything that is affecting temperature:
So the RF in this sense is *not* a direct measure of the energy delta even at TOA. It’s an “index” of the climate-forcing ability of a particular factor.
Confusingly, there is a more fundamental usage:
That would appear to be the usage you have in mind.
Secondly, there’s climate sensitivity to consider. From the same article as above:
So, there’s about a 20% loss between forcing and resultant temperature change.
Thirdly, thinking about the units involved, the authors relate zetajoules with watts per square meter. That doesn’t seem too problematic initially, as the area is assumed to be fixed at the surface area of Earth. But joules are a unit of work/heat, equivalent not to watts, but watt-hours. So it would seem that there is a tacit time parameter in the calculations somewhere. Is it the full timespan for the full-depth analysis, as the wording seems to hint?
Quite possibly, but I can’t say I’m sure.
My takeaway pro tem?
One really can’t expect the OHC RF equivalents given in the paper to line up all that closely with the IPCC forcings noted. Despite the same units, they aren’t the same thing, and are related in an indirect, even tangential, fashion–one that could stand a lot more musing and investigation, to be sure, at least in terms of my understanding of the issues involved.
#324 MA Rodger,
Thanks!
@321 (vic) “Or would you rather do the math? 1979 lines up very close to minus .2C; 1998 lies close to .6”
Vic…are you REALLY suggesting that the way to test for a rise between 2 values in a long series is to subtract the end point from the start point and ignore all the other intervening points (let alone all the prior and subsequent ones as well)???
Uh, that is equally as valid a procedure as your “eyeball” so-called non-correlations.
Deniers often tried this tack about a decade or two back as I remember, but I haven’t seen anyone being that statistically ignorant for quite a while. Not even in the denier community as it was so stupid even most deniers realized it.
Victor @321 the issue of the pause (hiatus, slowdown) is about definitions, and the scientists definition is different from the one the public use. This is where the confusion comes from, and it confused me for a while. Neither are wrong but they are talking about slightly different things.
When scientists say pause / hiatus / slowdown they are NOT referring to the temperature wobbles or flat periods or less steep periods in the graph you referred to. They mean has global warming actually ‘stopped’ as a force? Is something weird happening that we didn’t expect?
When the public think pause or slowdown, they naturally think land surface temperatures trend line that is flat or not as steep.
Now there is a change visible in a land surface temperature around 2002 – 2010 approximately. You can see this by eye where the trend over that period is not quite as steep as the previous 20 years, for example. However it was a small difference, and temperatures were not “flat”. The IPCC have said you can expect slowdowns in temperature trends, like this from time to time due to natural variability adding to things. No scientist denies this mild slowdown in surface temperatures. There are others earlier in the record clearly visible as short wobbles of a few years .
At one stage the flatter slope of the surface temperatures looked a bit longer than expected so it had scientists scratching their heads, because there was no obvious reason with natural variability. They wondered if global warming itself had paused, ie stopped. But they figured out warming hadn’t stopped and the key to this was in ocean energy trend. Briefly put those trends were robust, the earths system was still gaining energy post 1998, just that surface temperature growth was not quite as steep as a bit more energy went into the oceans. This is why scientists say “no pause”. They are not saying land surface temperatures weren’t slightly less steep over that period.
Temperatures from 2015 – 2019 are all very high, certainly higher than around 2002 – 2008. This is not due to el nino alone, and el nino finished in 2015 – 2016 anyway.
RE. Victor @316
LOL. The current rate of warming of the oceans which is quite linear started about 1985, which would be only about six years after the start of the intense run-up in atmospheric temperatures, not forty. How could that be with Victor’s silly postulation? Well, of course it takes up to forty years so it could have started earlier, but then would not the ocean heat content ramped up over time rather than such a linear start? And if so, shouldn’t the oceans have also started their cooling trend six years after the start of the pause? Logic is not one of Victor’s strengths.
Not to mention that it isn’t the atmosphere that warms the oceans. Sure heat can flow into the oceans from the atmosphere as it does in times of la Ninas, but it also flows out of the oceans into the atmosphere as it does in times of el Ninos. This is a case of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, heat flows from hot to cold so if the ocean surface temperature is warmer than the air, then it warms the air, if it is colder, it absorbs the heat from the air. But, and this is a BIG but, the oceans aren’t generally warmed by the atmosphere, they are almost entirely warmed by the sun and also by the back radiation from the greenhouse gases. Victor’s claim that the rise in ocean temperature can be explained by the run-up in atmospheric temperatures is pure hogwash. The atmosphere is almost entirely warmed by the earth’s surfaces, both land and sea. Not vice versa.
What the forty year temperature lag is about is that unlike the land surfaces the heat absorbed at the surface of the water can be carried to the depths through mixing before it has a chance to be released to the atmosphere. On the other hand, the heat absorbed at the land surface can only be conducted into the surface whereas it cannot go very deep before the heat is conducted and radiated back into the atmosphere. This, and the fact that water has a much greater heat capacity than the atmosphere, meaning it holds more heat at a given temperature, makes the oceans good at storing heat. Heat that after a delay of up to forty years will eventually get into the atmosphere through the warmer water surface temperatures.
Alas, Victor is sooo brilliant he can invent his own science to explain things.
RE. Victor @315
ROTFLMAO
Re 308 arrogant damned fool said Killian, the following research shows what we are up against in terms of improving the ability of soils to sequester more carbon:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019JG005266?af=R
“Soil carbon loss with warming: New evidence from carbon‐degrading enzymes..”
Guess what? More than 40 years ago a few books were written about how to sequester carbon in soil faster than Nature does by enhancing what Nature does. Tell me, at what point have scientists EVER been ahead of #TEK practitioners and #permaculture practitioners in understanding ecosystem functions and management?
Hint: Never.
Just like the breathless paper/comments from Australian scientists a few years ago that, OMG! There’s microbes down there! And they’re IMPORTANT! (good christ…), you are here trying to say your asinine calls to do nothing, or as little as possible, are backed up by a paper that says warmer soils lose carbon faster? Hey, dummy, look at any desert. Every one of them was once green.
Now, do you think climate change is going to deplete soils of carbon faster than deserts already do? Rhetorical question. No, it is not. Yet, we know how to GROW the carbon content of soils in desert regions.
So expectations do need to be realistic.
No, anklebiter, they need to be informed, as they are and always have been, long before your silly ass arrived on the scene.
As I have always said.
Because you know so much? Stop talking and learn about drylands regenerative practices and water management.
For the non-idiots reading anklebiter’s tripe, presenting himself as somehow more knowledgeable than experts in soil management, please look into the following:
mulch
swales
bio-char
Brad Lancaster (Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond)
Permaculture A Designers Manual
Dr. Elaine Ingham (soil carbon pathways)
Etc.
By continuously adding carbon to the soil in a wide variety of ways, we build soils by orders of magnitude faster than Nature can, and orders of magnitude faster than Nature can deplete them. By covering soils we keep the temperatures of the soil signficantly cooler than the air. Have you ever dug into desert sands? It’s cool under there, even in the desert (which is why life burrows in the desert.) By not tilling, all the arbon from roots – a mass equal to the plant life above ground – becomes soil carbon and provide pathways for water infilitration. By actively adding enriched carbon (bio-char, tera preta) to the soils, we create spaces that will be rich for growing food for thousands of years. (See: Tere Preta, Amazon.)
And, finally, all over the world people have been greening the deserts for years.
So, ignore the anklebiter I am responding to, who, rather than learning anything, spends his time here pretending he knows things when all he does is regurgitate what we, et al., tell him. Want a laugh? Go back and read his positions from three years ago and see how he continually updates them to match… what we tell him. And when he claims to be counseling his betters in regenerative matters, know you have stumbled upon a foolish person.
re 246 Leigh Reeves said Hi everyone,
This will be my last post as I do not think this is the right group for me to participate. I was recommended to this website by an acquaintance whom suggested that I could do some initial conversation with some professional climatologists in preparation for a Philosophy of Science doctoral study. Sadly, I am not convinced that the people either participating in or operating this website have any concept of how to engage in a mutually respectful rational dialog.
You are seeking your feeback in the wrong spaces, I’d wager.
1. The Forced Responses and Unforced Variations threads are more the domain of visitors with the blog owners, all scientists, relatively rarely dipping their toes in.
2. In the past year or so, the owners seem to have given up on those two threads for productive discussions and let them be overrun by the formerly banned issue of nuclear power and by denialists and their combatants.
3. If you stick around, limit yourself to the comment sections of the blog owners direct posts. You will have better luck there.
I am surprised because this website is meant to be one of the best for climate change discussion. I see a lot of people throwing insults and deriding other people’s intelligence for making innocent errors, or even just for asking a question out of curiosity. In a properly functioning rational discourse both sides should attempt to understand the perspectives of others, even if one wholeheartedly disagrees. I really am extremely disappointed with this.
As a scientist myself (I am a Geographical Information Systems specialist) I cannot reconcile my understanding of professional inquiry with what I am seeing here.
Yours sincerely.
Leigh Reeves.
V 315: Where, exactly have I been “shown there is clear correlation”?
BPL: Here:
http://bartonlevenson.com/Correlation.html
Do the freaking math, Victor. I’ve told you many times that correlation is a number, the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. If it winds up either significantly positive or significantly negative, there is a correlation, no matter how you feel about it or how many fluctuations you find. Do the freaking math!
V: Both your scattergram and that offered by MARodger closely resemble the one by Grumbine analyzed on the blog post I’ve already cited, which you have apparently not yet read: http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/10/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-8-tale.html I urge you to read it, as all three of you have fallen victim to the same error.
Yes, in purely statistical terms there IS indeed a correlation between the temp. and CO2 data. However, the correlation is misleading because it does not include any dates, thus ignoring the history of the relationship. As I indicated in my analysis of Grumbine’s scattergram, the diagonal signalling correlation begins roughly at the 335 ppm level for CO2 — which corresponds to the year 1980. And it ends at roughly the 370 ppm level, corresponding with 1998. Prior to 1980 and after 1998, there is no sign of correlation. Doing “the freaking math” doesn’t help since the math is based on the same (misleading) data displayed in the scattergram. All your “correlation” proves is that both temperatures and CO2 levels rose steeply between the late 70’s and late 90’s, roughly 20 years, which we already knew and no one contests. Once the dates are added, the ABSENCE of any long-term correlation becomes clear.
Moral of the story: math and science are not the same thing. Mathematical results are meaningful scientifically ONLY if they are subject to diligent critical analysis, based on the study of all relevant parameters.
Hansen 2019 review at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2020/20200115_Temperature2019.pdf
“Cooling or absence of warming southeast of Greenland and in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is associated with and likely a consequence of injection of freshwater in the upper ocean layers as a result of increasing melt of ice shelves and the ice sheets. If the melting rate continues to increase, the associated regional cooling will increase and may put a damper on (slow the rate of) global warming.That relative cooling effect, if it occurs, would be no cause for celebration, as it would imply an increased heat flux into the ocean, an increased warming rate within the ocean that further increases the melt of ice shelves, and an accelerating rate of sea level rise”
sidd
Weaktor: “V: You forget, nigel, that transfer of atmospheric heat to the oceans takes decades.”
Jesus Murphy, would you at least learn to read for content and in context. Yes, it takes decades for the planet to come into full equilibrium once its energy balance is changed. This doesn’t mean that the ocean’s don’t start to warm for decades.
Weaktor, I am sure there are several of the regulars here that would be more than happy to sit down with you and give you a tutorial on the basics of climate change and data analysis, but first you would have to unlearn all the stupid you already know.
obn @323 I’m going to tackle your question from a different angle, and welcome the real experts that frequent this site to step in and say where I’ve gotten this wrong.
The climate forcing refers to the extra radiation downwelling to the surface due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. As you noted, only a fraction of this excess is going into long-term heat storage, mostly into the ocean.
The majority of the excess causes the surface to heat up more than it would have otherwise. This results in short-term shedding of excess heat by re-radiating it back into outer space, or upwelling. This can happen directly from near the surface as the air gains extra heat, or through meteorological processes such as thunderstorms that lift the heated air to higher levels where it can be more easily radiated back into space.
In the distant future, when the climate has again reached equilibrium, there will be zero excess heat going into the ocean, on the average. The surface will be hotter than it is now. The climate forcing will be accommodated by the stronger upwelling heat radiation from that surface, in balance with the increased blocking of that stronger upwelling by a stronger greenhouse effect.
Berkeley Earth has reported for December with an anomaly of +1.05ºC, the second-highest anomaly of the year after March (as per GISTEMP & NOAA, HadCRUT gave December as highest anomaly of the year), the 2019 BEST anomalies ranging from +0.82ºC to +1.13ºC.
December 2019 is the 2nd hottest December in the BEST record, sitting behind the El-Niño-boosted Dec 2015 (as per GISTEMP, NOAA & HadCRUT) which in BEST managed +1.08ºC, the two of them 2015 & 2019 quite ahead of other Decembers – 2017 (+0.89ºC), 2016 (+0.88ºC), 2018 (+0.85ºC), 2006 (+0.79ºC), 2005 (+0.75ºC), 2003 (+0.73ºC) and 2014 (+0.73ºC) – this not unsimilar to GISTEMP, NOAA & HadCRUT.
In BEST, December 2019 sits in 9th place in the all-month anomaly record (9th in GISTEMP, 8th in NOAA, 6th in HadCRUT).
So for the callendar year 2019, BEST puts it as the 2nd warmest-year on record behind the El-Niño-boosted 2016, as per both GISTEMP & NOAA while in HadCRUT 2019 sits 3rd place, just behind 2015 and ahead of 2017. The top-10 warmest BEST years looks like this:-
2016 … … +0.97ºC
2019 … … +0.92ºC
2017 … … +0.85ºC
2015 … … +0.83ºC
2018 … … +0.79ºC
2010 … … +0.70ºC
2014 … … +0.69ºC
2005 … … +0.67ºC
2009 … … +0.63ºC
2007 … … +0.63ºC
From the data at https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v4/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
using the annual mean for each year (JAN-DEC), and grouping into calendar decades (1880-89 etc), I get
Decade….Average…Delta
———-….———…———
1880……..-20.0………0.0
1890……..-22.6……..-2.6
1900……..-30.8……..-8.2
1910……..-32.4……..-1.6
1920……..-23.8………8.6
1930……..-12.2……..11.6
1940……….4.5……..16.7
1950………-4.7……..-9.2
1960………-2.9………1.8
1970……….3.4………6.3
1980………24.4……..21.0
1990………38.3……..13.9
2000………59.0……..20.7
2010………80.7……..21.7
You’re more than welcome to check my arithmetic.
All the data is used, nothing is thrown out. Whatever you care to define as a hiatus or pause early this century is included without prejudice. Now, if that data contains a hiatus or pause, as you define it, that would matter a whit for policy, explain why, without hemming, hawing, and evading the question. If your answer does not follow a tight chain of logic, I’ll won’t even finish reading it. (Hint: the failure of anyone to do this to date does not encourage spending much time on your attempt to answer.)
I’m a baby boomer. My children have never known anything but living in the hottest decade ever measured with thermometers.
Whoa, jump back. There goes that goalpost again!
Weaktor: “Yes, in purely statistical terms there IS indeed a correlation between the temp. and CO2 data. However, the correlation is misleading because it does not include any dates,…”
OK, I suppose that this is progress, but holy forking shirtballs it’s slow!
Mathematically, what you are proposing is a change-point analysis–which is designed to show if the behavior of the system has changed significantly in two intervals. Tamino has performed such change-point analyses many times and the only change point for which there is significant evidence is ~1975–about the time catalytic converters come into use so they have to get rid of the sulfur in gasoline and they start passing other environmental regulations.
Weaktor, if you describe the “trend” with a single line, your model has at least 4 parameters–slope, intercept and two parameters describing noise about this mean trend. Split the data, and now your number of parameters doubles–you will likely get a better fit, but it’s mostly just the increase in fitting parameters unless the data is significant evidence. What you are proposing is breaking the data into 3 intervals!
What is more, you’ve done no real analysis to justify this claim. You’ve merely picked a point or two out of noisy data that disagree with the model due to noise fluctuations.
So, lack of shame or head injury?
Re: OHC and radiative imbalance
I think this is a real discrepancy, and part of the answer may lie in unmeasured heat transfer into ocean depth below 2Km.
sidd
#337 #326 #324 MA Rodger, Kevin McKinney ,John Pollack
Many thanks. I am slowly drawing a picture that will, I hope make sense. I am guessing that the sensitivity is key here
325 zebra sez:
Victor, if two people eyeball, and disagree about seeing a trend, or how steep the trend is, how do we decide which is “correct”?
Should we put it to a vote? 51 say “it’s going up” and 49 say “it’s flat”. Does that mean it’s going up?
Should we get 1,000 random people together and have them put down their opinions, and then do a statistical analysis of the data… no, wait, you don’t trust statistical analysis, so we should get another thousand people to eyeball that data, but then… hmmm, this could go on forever, I think.
Anyone want to bet whether Victor answers this?
V: I’ll take that bet. Oops, you lose.
Before I answer, let me request your vote: Eyeballing that first graph on Gavin’s latest post ( https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/01/one-more-data-point/ ), which period do YOU see as representing the steepest trend, 1979-1998 or 1998-early 2015 (prior to the El Nino)? Don’t worry about whether or not I’ve cherry-picked the end points, just vote on the basis of what you see with your own two eyeballs.
Now to answer your question: Science, contrary to what you might think, is fundamentally about observation. And, in the context of scientific research, almost all the observation is done, either directly or indirectly, with those “eyeballs” you so disparagingly dismiss.
When Faraday observed those “lines of force” he’s now famous for, I doubt whether he felt the need to take a vote among his colleagues to confirm his observations. When Robert Brown observed what is now known as “Brownian motion,” I doubt whether he felt the need to take a vote among his colleagues before describing these motions as random. And when Edmund Hubble eyeballed the now famous scattergram correlating galactic distance with speed of recession I doubt he felt the need to call for a vote to confirm. When disagreements arise as to the meaning of any such observation, what is called for is additional research, not the taking of a vote.
As for statistics, it can be a useful tool for the analysis of data, yes, but no, it cannot and should not be used as some sort of oracle for settling disputes over the meaning of evidence as it can be too easily manipulated to produce some desired result. As so clearly illustrated by Anscombe’s Quartet, “the correlation coefficient, as a summary statistic, cannot replace visual examination of the data.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_and_dependence
Killian @332 waves his arms furiously,and churns out a whole forest of straw people, and says ignore the peer reviewed science because “we know better.”
I’m simply saying that as soils warm they release soil carbon, backed up by several peer reviewed papers. Yes of course there are ways to improve how soils sequester carbon using regenerative farming and rotational grazing, and we have some peer reviewed evidence to back them up. But the quantities sequestered are not massive, and are up against the problem that warming soils acts against this plan to improve how soils sequester carbon.
Goodness only knows what deserts have to do with the issue. Yes they could be greened with better irrigation, but its a separate issue and a massive task to scale up.
So we need to be realistic about what can be achieved with sequestering soil carbon, and not get sucked in by claims from people like Alan Savory making huge claims about how much carbon can be sequestered .
Peer reviewed evidence by Nordborg says holistic management (using regenerative agriculture etc) can sequester 10% extra soil carbon but this declines to about 2% eventually after about 50 years as soils warm. However its still a useful number and wedge measure, and is probably a bit conservative.
Not sure where Killian thinks I’ve changed my views to match what he says. Hes wrong. I’ve always had much the same views on regenerative farming and how bad climate change can get etcetera. Although when the facts change I do change my mind to accommodate the facts, unlike some people here.
Victor (@334) says
“Moral of the story: math and science are not the same thing. Mathematical results are meaningful scientifically ONLY if they are subject to diligent critical analysis, based on the study of all relevant parameters.”
He is absolutely right that one should study all relevant parameters. Of course, he doesn’t DO that. He bemoans pointing to the 2016 temperature peak influenced by El Niño, but then starts his “hiatus” in 1998, ignoring THAT El Niño and the intervening La Niña years. He points out (like it’s news?) the mid century cooling, but refuses to acknowledge the impact of another parameter: sulfates. And those are just the instances that come immediately to mind.
With analysis like this you get to dismiss gravity because birds and airplanes fly.
Ban discussion of nuclear power? Its the height of arrogance. People here are supposed to be open minded. We should consider all options on their merits.
Victor, Tamino’s post predated the latest two papers that I linked to. Yes, a previous paper did suggest a slowdown (not a pause) but this has since been corrected. Michael Mann was a co-author on one of the later papers I linked to (via an article).
There was no pause or slowdown, statistically speaking. I realise that deniers need this myth to continue so that they have something they can point to so as to somehow counter the evidence but having not real alternative evidence has never stopped them before. I’m sure many will continue to believe in “the hiatus” long after it is barely remembered.
Does anyone else’s mobile search suggestions avoid realclimate.org like the plague? Lots of denieresque suggestions, such as “RealClearPolitics”, and once cornered it goes with “realclimate reliable” and other stuff one would search for dirt on RC.
Kevin McKinney @326,
The conversion of ZJ ΔOHC into a Wm^-2 of global warming runs something like:-
(1) .. .. .. Divide the ZJ (J*10^21) by the number of seconds in the time period (so ZJ*10^21/8766/3600/no-of-years) to give J/s = watts totalled over the planet surface.
(2) .. .. .. Divide by the area of the planet surface (510*10^12 sq m) to give Wm^-2.
So the ΔOHC you cite (1960-2019) = 370 ZJ = 0.3896 Wm^-2, a value in the same units as climate forcing and with ΔOHC accounting for the bulk of planetary warming energy.
The climate boundary is taken as the tropopause so climate forcing is measured/calculated there. It is also the direct effect and so does not include the additional energy imbalance from the feedbacks caused by the warming, feedbacks which have to be of diminishing strength – if they weren’t the warming would of the run-away type.
Of course, when calculating the resulting climate effect of a Forcing using the Energy Imbalance (obtained by measuring TOA radiation or ΔOHC) to subtract from the Forcing to obtain the Forcing-yet-to-act; such a calculation assumes it is okay to use what is actually a simple ‘still-heating-up’ calculation. In other words, the energy still being sucked into the climate to heat up some ocean depth or whatever is simplistically equivalent to a remaining Forcing. But if the imbalance in the warmer climate is, say, melting ice which results in a reduced planetary albedo, then it is not a simple ‘heating-up’ calculation. And maybe this is also the case with the sequence of global warming, initially with warmer continents and the oceans lagging behind. There could be a whole new calculation when the ocean temperatures start to catch up the land temperatures and the proper climate equilibrium situation begins to appear with, say, warmer ocean clouds.
I’d suggest burried in such considerations you’d find why denialists such as Nick Lewis (and perhaps here we should include Roy Spencer’s 1D modelling as well) find it so easy to calculate low values for ECS using these simple energy balance methods. And with the CMIP6 models now coming up with ECS=4ºC, we may see some non-denialist attention to sort the issue out properly.
Nigelj @ 285
Of course nigelj. Anything that might help someone understand climate change.
I consider Victor a lost cause because he is too set in his world view to change his mind. That would mean his world view has been wrong. For some people admitting they have been wrong about their world view is so devastating to their mental state it’s just too distressing to consider. Those people don’t make good scientists or engineers since you have to have an open mind to be either. As an engineer I know that any engineer that can’t admit when he’s wrong is a danger to the public.
So I don’t post to convince Victor. I post because usually I have to do some research and learn something new, it makes me think about the subject, and because I hope to say something that might help those reading these blogs who are really searching for the truth about climate change to understand it better. I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on climate change but sometimes I think someone that is not an expert can relate better to those that are also not experts. Just my 2 cents.