... figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996


Since 1880, when reliable temperature records began to be kept across most of the globe, the world has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius.
From the start of 1997 until August 2012, however, figures released last week show the answer is zero: the trend, derived from the aggregate data collected from more than 3,000 worldwide measuring points, has been flat.

‘The new data confirms the existence of a pause in global warming,’ Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science at America’s Georgia Tech university, told me yesterday.

‘Climate models are very complex, but they are imperfect and incomplete. Natural variability [the impact of factors such as long-term temperature cycles in the oceans and the output of the sun] has been shown over the past two decades to have a magnitude that dominates the greenhouse warming effect.

‘It is becoming increasingly apparent that our attribution of warming since 1980 and future projections of climate change needs to consider natural internal variability as a factor of fundamental importance.’

Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who found himself at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ scandal over leaked emails three years ago, would not normally be expected to agree with her. Yet on two important points, he did.

The data does suggest a plateau, he admitted, and without a major El Nino event – the sudden, dramatic warming of the southern Pacific which takes place unpredictably and always has a huge effect on global weather – ‘it could go on for a while’.

Like Prof Curry, Prof Jones also admitted that the climate models were imperfect: ‘We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing.’

meanwhile in the arctic....
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nMQg7Pszm8g/TvEb7k6ESJI/AAAAAAAAMdk/QSUS0sKPMk0/s1600/6a0133f03a1e37970b015435379118970c.png

There should be, but there are other factors that get in the way.
So say you know that in a simple model as you increase the atmospheric CO2 levels the atmosphere absorbs more energy and heats up for the same input. This is well understood. Now let us introduce a liquid that can absorb CO2 and changes it so that it is not in the atmosphere but locked into the liquid, we can call it water. Now I have no idea what the absorption rate is, but I bet others do and have worked it out. This may initially keep the atmospheric CO2 levels lower than expected, but only for so long as eventually the water cannot hold any more CO2.
That simple 4 vector model is probably quite easy to model, trouble is we have billions of vectors, some more important than others and if the initial premise is flawed (not saying it is) then you end up chasing the wrong thing.
More interesting to me is if you have 2 or 3 vectors that have similar affects, say CO2 levels, land use change and cloud cover (missing not studying those), how do you tease out which is having the dominant effect.

There are better reasons not to burn fossil fuel that global temperature change.

Posted By: bot de pailleaggregate global temperatures

What do 'they' mean by that - air temp, or temp of all surface fluids and maybe near-surface solids too? Because the thermal capacity of other-than-air fluids (ocean) not bto mention solids (crust) makes air's capacity totally insignificant. If GHGs are indeed increasing nett heat gain, then why should we assume it will show up in the air? Great scads of heat can be going into deep oceans and crust, and would we even notice? Are we watching out for that, or only concentrating on air temps?

That heat is going into the oceans more than the air, seems a better proposition than

Posted By: SteamyTeaa liquid that can absorb CO2 and changes it so that it is not in the atmosphere but locked into the liquid, we can call it water

because there's no disputing that increased CO2 is in fact in the atmosphere.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: fostertom</cite><blockquote><cite>Posted By: bot de paille</cite>aggregate global temperatures</blockquote>What do 'they' mean by that - air temp, or temp of all surface fluids and maybe near-surface solids too? Because the thermal capacity of other-than-air fluids (ocean) not bto mention solids (crust) makes air's capacity totally insignificant. If GHGs are indeed increasing nett heat gain, then why should we assume it will show up in the air? Great scads of heat can be going into deep oceans and crust, and would we even notice? Are we watching out for that, or only concentrating on air temps?

That heat is going into the oceans more than the air, seems a better proposition than<blockquote><cite>Posted By: SteamyTea</cite>a liquid that can absorb CO2 and changes it so that it is not in the atmosphere but locked into the liquid, we can call it water</blockquote>because there's no disputing that increased CO2 is in fact in the atmosphere.</blockquote>
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"they" are the UK Met Office Hadley Centre and Prof Phil Jones's of the CRU at the Aniverisity of East Anglia, using the Hadcrut4 data set. They released this latest report online a few weeks ago and it has not been reported by the media (suprise suprise)


For several years now there is a real concern among climate scientists that they cannot account for the "missing heat" that was origanaly predicted to show up either in the atmospere, land surface or sea surface. Since it hasnt shown up, they are left with proposing the excuse that it must be hidden in the oceans. This is a theory and is not based on any experiments or observation. It serves only as a get out clause for why their models and predictions are not being realised in the real world.

Except....
The Argo array of 3600 automated ocean measurement floats that were put into service in 2000. They cover the entire globe and take temp measurements from the sea surface down to 2000 meters on a 10 day cycle.

The 2011 Knox and Douglas paper published in the International Journal of Geosciences, which examined 5 studies carried out using data collected from the Agos array, found that 4 of the 5 studies show that from 2003 to 2008 ocean heat content FELL IN TEMPERATURE.

While 5 years is a very short period of study, if we have had 16 years of no surface or atmosphere warming, we MUST see this heat turning up in the oceans NOW. but the Argo network is not seeing it.

Posted By: Gavin_Awhat is it that makes me question the choice of the 5 years that just happen to be at the bottom of the solar sunspot cycle range for that graph?

or for that matter using 1997 as the start point for the 15 year comparison, when 1997-98 was an outlier year where several factors combined to create a peak that was far higher than any previous year on the record.

To put things into a bit of a better context, every year since 2000 has been warmer than any year on record prior to 1997.

http:///forum114/extensions/InlineImages/image.php?AttachmentID=3353" alt="total-solar-irradiance.png" >

Makes me think of this excellent graphic showing how cherry-picking start and end points can be used to argue the opposite of the actual trend:-

tbh though I actually do expect there to be some form of temporary slow down in the warming from the vast expansion of dirty coal plants, and increase in car use in china and India that's got to have been resulting in a significant increase in cooling particulate levels in the atmosphere, similar to what happened in Europe and the US in the 60s and 70s.

At the very least, the increased warming that resulted from the cleaning up of the particulate emissions from USA, Europe and USSR (due to its economic collapse) in the 80s and 90s is going to have slowed or reversed due to the additional particulates from China, India etc.

The IPPC reports certainly never expected such rapid growth in coal plants in China and India when they were being written, so wouldn't have factored these increased particulate emissions into their models.

Fact is though that China and India etc are all going to have to go through the same process as us in terms of cleaning their air up, as they're already suffering from the acid rain impacts and health impacts that led to us cleaning our act up. Once they clean their emissions up (which China at least is already doing rapidly), this temporary reduction in heating will be removed and the true underlying trend will again become apparent... mark my words (as they say in old murder she wrote episodes).

So you like sunspot cycles and climate?

Care to comment on these graphs from the NOAA website? Showing the corrolation between sunspot activity and land surface and sea surface temperatures.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: Gavin_A</cite>tbh though I actually do expect there to be some form of temporary slow down in the warming from the vast expansion of dirty coal plants, and increase in car use in china and India that's got to have been resulting in a significant increase in cooling particulate levels in the atmosphere, similar to what happened in Europe and the US in the 60s and 70s

The IPPC reports certainly never expected such rapid growth in coal plants in China and India when they were being written, so wouldn't have factored these increased particulate emissions into their models.
.</blockquote>

Thats not true, global carbon emission increases to date fall within IPCC predictions made in the late 1990s.

Its very easy to say "I new that was probaly going to happen" after the event

So where are your large quantities of particulate emissions coming from if not from fossil fuel burning??

Posted By: bot de pailleSo where are your large quantities of particulate emissions coming from if not from fossil fuel burning??

fossil fuel burning, but in an unexpectedly large number of new dirty coal plants without the Sulphate scrubbers now required in Europe and the US to remove atmospheric sulphates.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: Gavin_A</cite>

What possible mechanism could there be that linked the actual length of the sunspot cycle from peak to peak with global temperature, and how come the data points aren't spaced as far apart as the actual sunspot cyle lengths they purport to represent?

ie between 1940-1980 there are 8 data points, each purporting to be between 10 and 11 years in length.

or you don't understand the subject or statistics in general enough to know that the person who created that graph did it in order to deliberately mislead people.

</blockquote>

Those graphs come from the NOAA website.

Could it be that between 1940 and 1980 there were 4 solar cycles, and that each data point represents a solar cycle high and low, making 8 data points!

I dont know anything about statistics Gavin, but even I could work that one out...

Posted By: bot de pailleSo Gavin, Im curious now, what is your source, references or special insider knowledge that means you personaly know that when the IPCC made their CO2 predictions in 2000, (during an economic boom) they couldnt fore see or take into account that developing countries like china and india were going to build big, polluting fossil fuel power stations without modern scrubbers on them?

I've read every report since 94, and studied it at university in 96-98, so have a pretty good understanding of what they were predicting in that period.

I've also read a fair few papers over the last few years detailing the rapid rise in particulate emissions from china and india, as well as quite a few papers analysing the impact of particulates on the difference between TSI at the top of the atmosphere and TSI at the surface, and similar methods of working out the influence of particulates on climate.

So I'm not a recognised academic expert in the field, but I also do have a far better than average understanding of the subject.


feel free to find the IPCC data from the 90s predicting the rise in particulate emissions from china and India that we've seen in the last decade though, and I'll happily concede the point.

Here's a graph showing global sulphate emissions, showing clearly that from a low point around 97-2000, sulphate emissions rose sharply from 2000-2005.

This was largely down to a rapid increase in sulphate emissions from east asia, India, Middle East, and international shipping.

I'd be amazed if anyone can find an IPPC prediction from the late 90s showing global sulphate emissions increasing through this period. The assumption at the time by the IPCC was that China, India and the Middle East would increase their energy consumption levels, but would learn the lessons about environmental degradation and health problems from sulphate emissions from the west, and would skip that stage and that any coal plants they developed would be fitted with sulphate scrubbers... or even more optimistically that they'd skip the fossil fuel phase entirely and move straight into the renewables phase.

Plus I don't think anyone (certainly not the IPCC) predicted that actual speed they'd increase their fossil fuel based energy supply at during this period, with their electricity supply pretty much doubling between 2002 and 2007.

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/11/1101/2011/acp-11-1101-2011.pdf

Met Office rebuttal on the misleading article is http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/category/met-office-in-the-media/ & some other great charts here http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/15/1014151/ten-charts-that-make-clear-the-planet-just-keeps-warming/