Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up

[futurecurrents]

Posted on 12 March 2014 by James Wight

Figure 1: Global ocean heat content 1955-2013. (Source)

The Earth is gaining heat faster than ever
In 2013 the Earth’s oceans accumulated energy at a rate of 12 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second, according to global ocean heat content records from the US National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). This rapid heating in 2013 compares to an average of4 Hiroshima bombs per second since 1998, and 2 bombs per second since records began in 1955.

This is not the usual way to begin an article about global warming observations, but I have chosen to do so because ocean heat content is objectively the most important piece of evidence. The vast majority of heat from global warming goes into the oceans, so oceanheat content is a more reliable indicator of climate than surface or atmospheric temperature. This data shows global warming has accelerated in the last 15 years, contrary to denialist claims that global warming has “slowed”, “paused”, or “stopped” because the upper ocean,atmosphere, and surface have warmed more slowly in recent years. Warming oceans fuel hurricanes, raise sea level, melt sea ice, devastate coral reefs, and force fish to migrate to cooler waters.

Figure 2: Where global warming is going.

Satellite measurements confirm Earth is gathering heat at the rate indicated by ocean heatcontent. This can be expected to continue as atmospheric CO2 is currently at 400 ppm and rising (its highest level in at least 13 million years and well above the estimated safe level of 350 ppm).

 

[futurecurrents]

More evidence of acceleration
Some of the heat also goes into melting ice. The disappearance of Arctic sea ice hasaccelerated dramatically, hitting record low minimum volume in 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, and 2012. At its 2012 minimum, Arctic sea ice volume was a mere 20% of the 1979 minimum volume. In 2013 it was 30% of the 1979 volume, which deniers spun as a “recovery” from 2012, but in reality the trend remains sharply downward. The melt is proceeding much faster than predicted in the models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If the trend is extended forward into the future, the Arctic Ocean in September will soon be entirely liquid.

Figure 3: Fraction of 1979 minimum Arctic sea ice volume remaining at each minimum from 1979 to 2013. (Source)

The disappearance of Arctic sea ice is reducing the northern polar region’s surface reflectivity from very high to very low. This is a feedback that amplifies global warming and threatens to set off a chain reaction of tipping points, including large-scale release of carbon from melting permafrost and collapse of the Greenland ice sheet. Already permafrost is starting to thaw and emit carbon, and ice sheet mass loss is accelerating exponentially.

Several studies found climate scientists have systematically underestimated the impacts of global warming. New results are more than 20 times more likely to be worse than predicted than they are to be better. It appears scientists are overcorrecting in response to the deniers’ accusations of alarmism. One study concluded:

If the intention is to offer true balance in reporting, the scientifically credible ‘‘other side’’ is that, if the consensus estimates such as those from the IPCC are wrong, it is because the physical reality is significantly more ominous than has been widely recognized to date.

 

[futurecurrents]

The surface is still warming
So contrary to what the denialists claim, there is no “slowdown” in global warming and certainly no “pause” or “cooling”, as the Earth continues to accumulate heat faster than ever. It’s true the rate of surface warming appears to have slowed slightly in the last 15 years. However, 2013 was still the 5th warmest year in the 164-year global temperature record, according to the University of York.

Figure 4: Comparison of global surface temperature trends during 1979-1997 and 1998-2013 in the University of York analysis. (Source)

The global temperature during 2013 was 0.54°C above the 1961-1990 average. (Climatologists usually give temperatures as anomalies relative to an average, because they are easier to compare than absolute temperatures.) 2013 also included the warmest September and November, 4th warmest June, 5th warmest July and December, 6th warmest August, 7th warmest January, 8th warmest April, 9th warmest May, and 10th warmest October. If you remove the seasonal cycle, November 2013 was the 6th warmest of all months.

The four warmest years were 2010 (0.63°C), 2005 (0.59°C), 2007 (0.56°C), and 2009 (0.55°C). Every one of the 13 years so far in the 21st century is one of the 14 warmest (the other year being the oft-cherry-picked outlier 1998). The 2010s to date are warmer than the 2000s, the warmest complete decade on record (followed by the 1990s and 1980s). The last year with an annual temperature cooler than average was 1985.

The University of York dataset is a new analysis (too new to have been included in the recent IPCC report) which interpolates temperatures in regions with few weather stations. In particular it covers the Arctic, which is warming faster than the rest of the planet because of the regional amplifying feedback described above. It is considered more accurate than older analyses which do not use interpolation, and reveals the rate of global warming since 1997 has been twice as fast as previously believed, identical to the trend since 1951 and only a quarter less than the trend since 1980.

Figure 5: Global surface temperatures 1850-2013. Blue line shows temperatures corrected to cover the entire globe. Red line shows uncorrected temperatures. (Source)

But you don’t have to trust the University of York. In all analyses, 2010 is the warmest year; 2013 is among the warmest (though its precise ranking varies); there is a warming trendsince 1998; each of the last three decades has been successively warmest on record; and the Earth has warmed ~0.8°C since the preindustrial era. Even a reanalysis by a team of skeptics confirms the warming trend.

 

[futurecurrents]

Temporary factors are masking surface warming
While surface warming may have slowed(a result that looks more significant in datasets excluding the rapid Arctic warming), describing this as a “slowdown” is misleading because its causes are merely temporary.

Ocean cycles
The main cause of slower atmospheric warming is an ocean circulation cycle called the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Ocean cycles periodically redistribute heat within the Earth’s climate system (particularly between the ocean and the atmosphere), and are unrelated to long-term climate change caused by heat entering and leaving the system. This sort of internal variability is the reason climate scientists focus on long-term trends instead of short-term ones, and the total amount of heat building up rather than the rate of surface warming.

The IPO controls the relative frequency of phases in the shorter Southern Oscillation, which alternates between El Niño (warm), La Niña (cool), and neutral. In an El Niño phase, the trade winds slow and the surface of the tropical Pacific Ocean is warmer than usual. The anomalous warmth of 1998 was due to a super El Niño. In a La Niña phase, the trade winds accelerate and warm water is pushed to the western Pacific, bringing cold water to the surface behind it. 2011 and 2012 were cooler than the surrounding years because they occurred during a La Niña. The warmth of 2013 occurred in neutral Southern Oscillationconditions, in contrast to most warm years which tend to occur during an El Niño. Years with comparable Southern Oscillation conditions tend to be getting warmer.

Figure 6: Annual global surface temperatures 1880-2013 from NASA, with El Niño years in red, La Niña in blue, and neutral years in grey. (Source)

Since 2001, the IPO has been in a cool phase (each phase lasts about 20 years) in which trade winds speed up and La Niña prevails. In this way, the IPO is temporarily burying much of the incoming heat from global warming in the depths of the ocean.

Temporary cooling influences
The buildup of heat has continued despite natural influences having had a net negative effect on the amount of heat coming in. The most important natural factor in the last decade has been the 11-year solar cycle, which had an unusually extended minimum during 2005-2010. The cumulative effect of reflective particles emitted by small volcanic eruptions may have contributed another cooling influence. These natural factors have temporarily offset part of the warming that otherwise would have occurred due to human-emitted greenhouse gases.

Another possible reason for slower surface warming is particulate air pollution (which, in contrast to greenhouse gas pollution, temporarily cools the Earth by reflecting sunlight). The amount and effect of these particles is poorly measured at present due to a lack of research funding, but emissions from increasing industrial activity in Asia may be cancelling out reductions from developed countries. This represents yet another potential factor helping to temporarily conceal global warming.

Explaining the apparent slowdown
The rate of surface warming remains within the range of model projections. Climate models were never designed to predict 15-year trends because the timing of ocean cycles is unpredictable. Instead they ran many simulations with random ocean fluctuations, and some of those simulations indeed predicted periods where atmospheric warming appeared to pause while the deep ocean warmed more rapidly.

Furthermore, new climate models are able to explain the surface temperatures observed in recent years by accounting for the observed ocean and solar cycles. Adjusting the surface temperature record to remove all natural factors (oceans, Sun, and volcanoes) again reveals global warming has continued, and if anything accelerated, since 2000.

Figure 7: University of York surface temperature record with natural influences removed. Blue line = 1979-2000 trend. Red line = expected temperatures if 1979-2000 trend extended to present (note actual observed temperatures are mostly above this line). (Source)







http://www.skepticalscience.co...its-speeding-up.html

 

[fan27]

The issue I have with most of these charts is they don't go back far at all. That is like looking at 50 data points on a 5 minute chart of SPY and concluding that the daily trend is up or down.

fan27

 

[Lucrum]

The issue I have with most of these charts is they only go back far at all. That is like looking at 50 data points on a 5 minute chart of SPY and concluding that the daily trend is up or down.

fan27

fagcunts is desperate to keep his narrative alive

 

[futurecurrents]

The issue I have with most of these charts is they don't go back far at all. That is like looking at 50 data points on a 5 minute chart of SPY and concluding that the daily trend is up or down.

fan27

Well this includes model predictions but also shows a long range.

 

[fhl]

This is after they've phonied up the data from a cooling trend to look like warming. ( and call it undeniable, to boot)
I can't tell you how badly i'd like to see these swindlers in prison.

 

[jem]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/05/matt-ridley-in-the-wsj-whatever-happened-to-global-warming/

We know now that it was Mr. Lynas who was wrong. Two years before Mr. Whitehouse’s article, climate scientists were already admitting in emails among themselves that there had been no warming since the late 1990s. “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998,” wrote Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Britain in 2005. He went on: “Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

If the pause lasted 15 years, they conceded, then it would be so significant that it would invalidate the climate-change models upon which policy was being built. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) written in 2008 made this clear: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more.”

Well, the pause has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years—depending on whether you choose the surface temperature record or one of two satellite records of the lower atmosphere. That’s according to a new statisticalcalculation by Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada.



http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/...ate-no-global-warming-for-17-years-11-months/

 

[futurecurrents]

Cherry picking jerm. Cherry picking. Read the above article. The earth is actually warming faster than ever before. That's simply a fact.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/05/matt-ridley-in-the-wsj-whatever-happened-to-global-warming/

We know now that it was Mr. Lynas who was wrong. Two years before Mr. Whitehouse’s article, climate scientists were already admitting in emails among themselves that there had been no warming since the late 1990s. “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998,” wrote Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Britain in 2005. He went on: “Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

If the pause lasted 15 years, they conceded, then it would be so significant that it would invalidate the climate-change models upon which policy was being built. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) written in 2008 made this clear: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more.”

Well, the pause has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years—depending on whether you choose the surface temperature record or one of two satellite records of the lower atmosphere. That’s according to a new statisticalcalculation by Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada.



http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/...ate-no-global-warming-for-17-years-11-months/