Nature: AMO will stop warming until 2020

In this dose of peer-reviewed literature about the climate, we look into Nature.
Noel Keenlyside et al. (from Kiel, Germany)
wrote an article called "Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector." Yes, I mean Kiel where Max Planck was born.

They look at the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) influencing the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). The Gulf Stream is the part of the MOC along the East Coast of the U.S., mostly driven by Western winds (i.e. directly by the rotation of Earth). Its extension towards Europe, the North Atlantic Drift, is also supported by thermohaline circulation.
MOC: Warm water flows from the equator to the North and returns at depth in the ocean. The intensity of this circulation depends on the AMO phase. See a detailed picture of Atlantic currents.

The oscillation is a slow quasiperiodic pattern that usually switches into the opposite regime after 60-70 years. It is a slower process than PDO we discussed a few days ago. Because only sea surface temperatures are available for previous decades, they use them to reconstruct the temperatures inside the ocean. The results are incorporated as a new term in their otherwise "conventional" computer model. With this new term, (validation) skill is improved markedly.
Commercial: Prof Roy Spencer: More carbon dioxide, please
Their conclusion? The predictions for a foreseeable future change dramatically. The MOC will weaken to its long-term mean. The Atlantic Ocean, Europe, and America will cool down slightly in the next decade while the Pacific Ocean won't change. In plain English, the AGW hoax may take timeout till 2018.

Their choice of words is a testimony of the political correctness. For example, in Richard Black's article in the BBC, Keenlyside says:
One message from our study is that in the short term, you can see changes in the global mean temperature that you might not expect given the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
If you wonder what this sentence means, it means "Our models, if correct, imply that the IPCC projections for the next 15-20 years are incorrect." Recall the words that are being used when a controversial published article disagrees with a detail of a skeptic's theory: we typically read about one last nail in the coffin of an oil industry stooge. ;-) But when 2,500 hacks are proved wrong in a completely essential aspect of their paper - the projection of temperatures for the whole next decade -, a very different language must be chosen, right?

Even though 1/3 of the people who live today are said to see no more global warming in their lifetime - a problem that is often claimed to be one of the most urgent problems of the current world - and despite the disagreement of their paper with the frantically promoted hysteria about the "settled" catastrophic science, Richard Black writes:
The projection does not come as a surprise to climate scientists, though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea that the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon.
Wow. So the refutation of a prediction of a dangerous warming by the world's top 2,500 scientists ;-) "does not come as a surprise". Note that with no global warming since 1998, the paper predicts 20 years of no warming.

Recall that Al Gore has predicted global destruction in less than 8 years from now. To make you even more certain that scientific papers can have no impact whatsoever on the religious dogmas of the climate debate, Richard Black quotes a Richard Wood from the Hadley Centre:
[Wood] emphasises that even if the Kiel model proves correct, it is not an indication that the longer-term climate projections of the IPCC and many other institutions are wrong.
So a paper showing that a decade of predictions is completely wrong because it has neglected some very important dynamics doesn't even "indicate" that there "might" be something wrong with the projection of the IPCC "and many other institutions" in the long run. Wow. What an amazing [expletive] this Wood is. This is the kind of people who are reviewing articles about climate change to guarantee that "heresies" can't occur. This particular Wood was the reviewer of Keenlyside et al.

The whole validation of all existing climate models is (or should be) mostly based on the data from the previous decades or centuries. If an effect that is argued to be as strong as the greenhouse effect has been neglected while it has the power to change 60-70 years of the temperature dynamics, it implies the existence of a critical flaw in the whole picture. At this moment, no one can really know for sure what will happen with the AMO in 50 years or so. If we add a term whose absolute values is equal to the strength of the greenhouse effect, a term that can exist for 60-70 years, we can get different results for 60-70 years, can't we?

And there might be many other such terms; note that no paper so far has even properly combined the effects of ENSO, PDO, and AMO. Scientists might be ultimately allowed to study these sinful, mostly irrelevant (!!!) terms but they are not allowed to touch the greatness of the holy anthropomorphic God of global warming who is and who must be forever above all of them. ;-)

Amen.

Se pospone la catástrofe

Ya saben ustedes que cada cinco años, por cada cien mil moléculas de aire, la viciosa humanidad añade aproximadamente una de CO2.

Y que esta molécula y otras más de lo mismo que poco a poco iremos añadiendo —aunque son invisibles, inodoras y tóxicamente inofensivas— producirán tal efecto de calentamiento que acabarán destruyéndonos, no sólo a nosotros sino al planeta entero. Algunos, psicólogos del clima, ya lo notan. Dicen que se está volviendo loco.

Pues bien ...

Llevamos ya diez años en los que la temperatura media global no aumenta y esta semana la revista Nature publica un artículo de investigadores alemanes en el que se dice que en la próxima década es posible que tampoco.

La acción del mar, cuya circulación es aún una gran desconocida, puede ser mucho más relevante en los próximos diez años, o veinte, que las moléculas de CO2 que añadamos.

El artículo de Nature, titulado asépticamente "Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector", se refiere a la posibilidad de que el Atlántico Norte se enfríe debido a una ralentización de la corriente del Golfo o de lo que, en jerga científica, se llama MOC (Meridian Overturning Circulation). Ya veremos.

De todas formas, el disimulado título no ha logrado que a la comunidad "negacionista" pase desapercibido el artículo, en el interior del cual se habla de la implicación de la evolución oceánica en la tendencia de la temperatura global, poniendo en entredicho las prisas que nos meten en descarbonizar el mundo.

Pongo arriba la evolución de la temperatura desde Enero de 1990 hasta el pasado Marzo en la troposfera, la capa baja de la atmósfera (de unos 10 km de espesor) en la cual se desarrolla el clima.

Abajo pongo un índice de la supuesta fuerza de la circulación termohalina (THC) (que es otra manera de referirse a lo mismo, MOC) (ver aquí: corrientes oceánicas). Se observa que la tendencia ascendente que se manifiesta desde 1970, y que ha coincidido con el calentamiento que siguió al enfriamiento anterior, puede cambiar a la baja en las próximas décadas y, por lo tanto, provocar de nuevo un enfriamiento.

ref.: N. S. Keenlyside et al., 2008, Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector, Nature, 1 de Mayo, 2008.

figura de arriba en Roy W. Spencer: Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat , interesante artículo que comentaré otro día.

figura de abajo en Jeff Knight et al., A signature of persistent natural thermohaline circulation cycles in observed climate, 2005, Geophysical Research Letters, VOL. 32, L20708, doi:10.1029/2005GL024233, 2005

Tropical troposphere: not warming

This is the graph of the day, discussed at Climate Audit.



The three complicated colorful lines are the temperature data for the tropical troposphere - where the warming should be most rapid - according to RSS MSU, UAH MSU, and CRU: they seem to almost fully agree with each other. In terms of words, there has been no warming over there since 1980.

The thick, light blue line is the approximate average theoretical prediction by the garden-variety greenhouse models. Note that the IPCC predicts a warming of nearly 3 °C per century on the surface which should mean almost 5 °C for the hot spot in the tropical troposphere.

Compare the wiggly curves with the thick, light blue line. Al Gore should now ask his favorite question: Did they ever fit together? Most ridiculous thing I ever heard. The relationship is very complicated, but there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature of the tropical troposphere doesn't give a damn. :-)

Because Ross McKitrick proposed to quantify his T3 carbon tax according to the wiggly curves, it seems that the tax would still be zero.

Ghiacci marini antartici in ottima forma

23 aprile 2008: ore 10:52. Si avvicina ai 7 milioni di kmq l'estensione dei ghiacci marini antartici, che corrisponde a quasi +2 milioni in più rispetto alla norma. Davvero in ottima forma la banchisa antartica. In discesa più netta invece la banchisa artica, che si attesta su un deficit di circa -0,7 milioni di kmq. Il bilancio globale dei ghiacci polari rimane comunque notevolmente positivo. image courtesy: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

Sempre ottima la situazione dei ghiacci polari marini

15 aprile 2008: ore 19:49.
Continua a mantenersi abbondantemente sopra la media storica trentennale la superficie totale dei ghiacci marini polari. È naturalmente l'area antartica a fare la parte del leone, con un surplus di circa 1,5 milioni di kmq, mentre l'area artica si mantiene su di un deficit molto contenuto di circa 0,5 milioni di kmq. Nel diagramma potete vedere l'evoluzione delle anomalie nell'estensione dei ghiacci marini polari negli ultimi 14 anni. image courtesy: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

British Antarctic Survey: evidence against AGW

Joseph D'Aleo has informed me about this rather fascinating page written by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and describing the impact of the Antarctic data on the climate change
debate:Climate change: our view (BAS)
The page was created in December 2007, the month when William Connolley, an official of the Green Party who contributes to RealClimate.ORG, left the BAS.

It seems likely that the page was written by several people. It begins with some well-known as well as less well-known facts about the Antarctic climate. It continues with the shocker to be discussed below and finally it ends up with some generic IPCC newspeak saying that we are pretty sure that climate change is man-made.

What is the shocker? Well, it is a paragraph in the middle of the page - search for "As part" - that pretty much says the opposite thing. Let me copy it in its entirety.
As part of the work undertaken for the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC [13], about 20 different climate models were run with historical changes to natural and anthropogenic forcing factors to simulate the climate of the 20th century. The simulated changes in Antarctic surface temperatures over the second half of the 20th century vary greatly from model to model with no single model reproducing exactly the observed pattern of change. However, when results from all models are averaged, the resulting pattern of change bears some resemblance to that observed, with greatest warming in the Peninsula region and little change elsewhere [20]. This result suggests that some of the observed change may have an anthropogenic origin, but the lack of a clear and consistent response to changed forcing between models also suggests that much of the observed change in temperatures may be due to natural variability. The IPCC model experiments fail to reproduce some of the observed features, notably the rapid warming of the lower atmosphere. These differences between modelled and observed changes could be used to argue against attributing change to anthropogenic forcing but some caution is called for as the models used may not adequately represent all of the complex processes that determine temperatures in the polar regions
.Boldface added by TRF. Once again, they compared the observed data against 20 models. Those models generated a lot of incoherent predictions that can be called noise once the following observation is taken into account. Even though the models have arguably had different values of the CO2 sensitivity and other things, neither of them was close enough to reality. Their average was doing better - although many of the characteristic fingerprints still come out incorrectly. While this may indicate that some portion of the climate change is man-made, the bulk of the observed changes - and the bulk of the predicted changes and their detailed structure - have nothing to do with the quantities in which the models differed, such as the overall CO2 climate sensitivity. The latter seems to be uncorrelated to the observed change.

The final paragraphs were either added by a partisan or by a person who wanted his or her colleagues to appreciate the fact that the British Antarctic Survey is largely paid from the climate hysteria funds. These paragraphs selectively mention two phenomena - the strengthening westerlies that seem to agree with the models (unlike most other quantities) and the collapse of the 12,000-years-old Larsen-B ice shelf in 2002 - and even though these two phenomena cannot be used as evidence of the man-made origin of climate change, they are being used in this manner anyway.

I would guess that the arguments of the BAS fellows about the wording of this document had to be unusually violent because the text seems to be a result of a classic clash between scientific integrity and political manipulation of science. And despite Connolley's partisanship and ignorance concerning the latent heat of ice, I am actually not 100% certain where he was standing in this BAS civil war.

And that's the memo.

Analisi dettagliata della situazione dei ghiacci marini artici e antartici.

Ridotto a circa 0,3 mil di kmq il deficit della banchisa artica. Addirittura sopra il milione di kmq il surplus di quella antartica. Erano anni che non si avevano dati così favorevoli.


Aldo Meschiari: 02-04-2008 ore 11:01

Finalmente una buona notizia dai ghiacci marini polari.
Possiamo veder chiaramente dal primo grafico qui riportato come fosse dal 2001 e dal 2003 che non si raggiungevano questi risultati: infatti il mese di marzo 2008 ha chiuso con una anomalia positiva di circa 1 milione di kmq. Stiamo naturalmente parlando della superficie, e non dello spessore che purtroppo in Artico ha subito negli ultimi anni consistenti perdite. Ma pur sempre di una notizia si tratta: strano che i Media non ne diano spazio.


Nel secondo pannello possiamo vedere i due diagrammi che rappresentano il trend degli ultimi trenta anni, cioè dal 1979 quando iniziarono le misurazioni satellitari, della banchisa artica (a sinistra) e di quella antartica (a destra). Evidente il trend negativo dell'artico, che perde circa il 2,8% ogni decennio. Ma altrettanto esplicito il trend positivo dell'antartico, con una crescita del 4,2% per decennio. Naturalmente questi sono dati riferiti al mese di marzo.

Nel terzo pannello vogliamo analizzare più da vicino la situazione artica.
Nella prima carta abbiamo l'estensione, nella seconda la concentrazione, con in blu le zone in deficit ed in rosso quelle in surplus, nella terza anomalie nella concentrazione, e nella quarta il trend. Il colore blu, segno di deficit, non appare più così dominante come nei precedenti mesi, mentre il rosso, segno di surplus, comincia a guadagnare terreno.
Anzi il deficit della concertazione si riduce a 0,3 milioni di kmq, che è davvero un dato promettente, se pensiamo che solo pochi mesi fa avevamo superato i -3 milioni di kmq! Altra notizia passata sotto silenzio.
Nel quarto pannello passiamo invece ad analizzare la situazione antartica.
La serie di carte è la stessa, ma riferita naturalmente all'emisfero australe.
Appare evidente, soprattutto nella terza carta, come il colore rosso, segno di surplus, sia dominante. E quindi nel mese di febbraio i ghiacci marini antartici hanno fatto misurare un aumento rispetto alle medie di ben 1,2 mil di kmq! Una dato davvero incoraggiante.

Certo tale situazione positiva va presa con il giusto equilibrio. Non possiamo assolutamente parlare di inversione di tendenza per l'artico, che anzi pagherà ancora a lungo e soprattutto in estate la forte diminuzione dello spessore e concentrazione dei ghiacci marini. Però credo sia scientificamente doveroso riportare i dati positivi del marzo 2008, senza eccessivi entusiasmi, ma neppure senza ideologiche svalutazioni.