RollingThunder
Gold Member
- Mar 22, 2010
- 4,818
- 525
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Get your imaginary 'pause' off me, you damn delusional deniers
(Slight homage to 'The Planet of the Apes')
After further scientific study, it turns out that there has been no "pause" or "hiatus" or "flattening" in the rising temperature trend known as global warming. In fact, global warming is still accelerating in response to the rapidly rising CO2 levels. The apparent 'pause' in the rate of increase in (just) surface air temperatures, that the deniers and some of the media have tried to turn into a refutation of anthropogenic global warming, has been debunked before in several different ways, such as:
* pointing out the statistical deceit of cherry-picking the unusually hot, super-El Niño year of 1998 as a start point for a trend analysis.
* pointing out that satellite and ground based instrumentation show that the Earth is still receiving more energy from the sun than is being radiated away into space so that extra heat energy is warming something up somewhere on Earth.
* pointing out the fact that surface air temperatures only represent about 3% of the energy the Earth receives from the Sun and the oceans have always been absorbing at least 90% of the extra heat energy the Earth is retaining.
* citing research showing that the oceans have been warming faster and at greater depths in the last decade or two.
* showing that after the strongest El Niño on record in 1998, which pulled a lot of warmer water to the surface, the Pacific has been dominated by La Niña events that pull cooler water to the surface and transfer warmer water to the depths. There have been no really strong El Niño events since 1998.
* the warming trend was slightly offset by a prolonged solar minimum that reduced the amount of solar heating the Earth was receiving.
* warming was also slightly reduced by increased volcanic and industrial particulate emissions in the stratosphere that reflect incoming solar energy back into space and produce a cooling effect.
Now some new recently published research indicates that even the apparent slowdown in surface air temperatures, that was suggested by the existing surface air temperature records, is just a result of a lack of data about the sharp increase in temperatures in the Arctic where temperatures have been going up faster than anyplace else on Earth. New analysis of temperature increases in the Arctic and other places combined with existing satellite temperature records shows that the rate of even the surface air temperature part of the overall global warming has continued at about the same rate over the last 16 years as it had been in the previous two decades. At the same time, there has been an increase in the rate of warming of the oceans, which have always been absorbing about 90% of the extra heat energy that the Earth has been retaining due to the increased CO2 levels mankind has produced in the atmosphere. Now this extra heat has penetrated the deeper ocean waters. The oceans are warming, the land is warming, the air is warming, the polar ice and mountain glaciers are melting, the permafrost is melting, climate patterns are changing - global warming continues unabated, and will inevitably only get worse in the years (and decades and centuries) to come. There is, however, still a chance to mitigate the severity of some of the eventual negative effects of AGW/CC if the world quickly takes the necessary steps to restrict carbon emissions, and then works hard at figuring out cheap ways to draw down atmospheric CO2 levels to something livable.
Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
A new study fills in the gaps missed by the Met Office, and finds the warming 'pause' is barely a speed bump
The Guardian
Dana Nuccitelli
13 November 2013
(excerpts)
A new paper published in The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society fills in the gaps in the UK Met Office HadCRUT4 surface temperature data set, and finds that the global surface warming since 1997 has happened more than twice as fast as the HadCRUT4 estimate. The study, authored by Kevin Cowtan from the University of York and Robert Way from the University of Ottawa, notes that the Met Office data set only covers about 84 percent of the Earth's surface. There are large gaps in its coverage, mainly in the Arctic, Antarctica, and Africa, where temperature monitoring stations are relatively scarce. In their paper, Cowtan & Way apply a statistical method known as "kriging" to fill in the gaps between surface measurements, but they do so for both land and oceans. In a second approach, they also take advantage of the near-global coverage of satellite observations, combining the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) satellite temperature measurements with the available surface data to fill in the gaps with a 'hybrid' temperature data set. Both of their new surface temperature data sets show significantly more warming over the past 16 years than HadCRUT4. This is mainly due to HadCRUT4 missing accelerated Arctic warming, especially since 1997.
Cowtan & Way investigate the claim of a global surface warming 'pause' over the past 16 years by examining the trends from 1997 through 2012. While HadCRUT4 only estimates the surface warming trend at 0.046°C per decade during that time, and NASA puts it at 0.080°C per decade, the new kriging and hybrid data sets estimate the trend during this time at 0.11 and 0.12°C per decade, respectively. These results indicate that the slowed warming of average global surface temperature is not as significant as previously believed. Surface warming has slowed somewhat, in large part due to more overall global warming being transferred to the oceans over the past decade. However, these sorts of temporary surface warming slowdowns (and speed-ups) occur on a regular basis due to short-term natural influences. The results of this study also have bearing on some recent research. For example, correcting for the recent cool bias indicates that global surface temperatures are not as far from the average of climate model projections as we previously thought, and certainly fall within the range of individual climate model temperature simulations. The perceived recent slowdown of global surface temperatures remains an interesting scientific question. It appears to be due to some combination of internal factors (more global warming going into the oceans), external factors (relatively low solar activity and high volcanic activity), and an underestimate of the actual global surface warming. How much each factor is contributing is being investigated by extensive scientific research, but the Cowtan & Way paper suggests the latter explanation is a significant contributor.
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
(Slight homage to 'The Planet of the Apes')
After further scientific study, it turns out that there has been no "pause" or "hiatus" or "flattening" in the rising temperature trend known as global warming. In fact, global warming is still accelerating in response to the rapidly rising CO2 levels. The apparent 'pause' in the rate of increase in (just) surface air temperatures, that the deniers and some of the media have tried to turn into a refutation of anthropogenic global warming, has been debunked before in several different ways, such as:
* pointing out the statistical deceit of cherry-picking the unusually hot, super-El Niño year of 1998 as a start point for a trend analysis.
* pointing out that satellite and ground based instrumentation show that the Earth is still receiving more energy from the sun than is being radiated away into space so that extra heat energy is warming something up somewhere on Earth.
* pointing out the fact that surface air temperatures only represent about 3% of the energy the Earth receives from the Sun and the oceans have always been absorbing at least 90% of the extra heat energy the Earth is retaining.
* citing research showing that the oceans have been warming faster and at greater depths in the last decade or two.
* showing that after the strongest El Niño on record in 1998, which pulled a lot of warmer water to the surface, the Pacific has been dominated by La Niña events that pull cooler water to the surface and transfer warmer water to the depths. There have been no really strong El Niño events since 1998.
* the warming trend was slightly offset by a prolonged solar minimum that reduced the amount of solar heating the Earth was receiving.
* warming was also slightly reduced by increased volcanic and industrial particulate emissions in the stratosphere that reflect incoming solar energy back into space and produce a cooling effect.
Now some new recently published research indicates that even the apparent slowdown in surface air temperatures, that was suggested by the existing surface air temperature records, is just a result of a lack of data about the sharp increase in temperatures in the Arctic where temperatures have been going up faster than anyplace else on Earth. New analysis of temperature increases in the Arctic and other places combined with existing satellite temperature records shows that the rate of even the surface air temperature part of the overall global warming has continued at about the same rate over the last 16 years as it had been in the previous two decades. At the same time, there has been an increase in the rate of warming of the oceans, which have always been absorbing about 90% of the extra heat energy that the Earth has been retaining due to the increased CO2 levels mankind has produced in the atmosphere. Now this extra heat has penetrated the deeper ocean waters. The oceans are warming, the land is warming, the air is warming, the polar ice and mountain glaciers are melting, the permafrost is melting, climate patterns are changing - global warming continues unabated, and will inevitably only get worse in the years (and decades and centuries) to come. There is, however, still a chance to mitigate the severity of some of the eventual negative effects of AGW/CC if the world quickly takes the necessary steps to restrict carbon emissions, and then works hard at figuring out cheap ways to draw down atmospheric CO2 levels to something livable.
Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
A new study fills in the gaps missed by the Met Office, and finds the warming 'pause' is barely a speed bump
The Guardian
Dana Nuccitelli
13 November 2013
(excerpts)
A new paper published in The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society fills in the gaps in the UK Met Office HadCRUT4 surface temperature data set, and finds that the global surface warming since 1997 has happened more than twice as fast as the HadCRUT4 estimate. The study, authored by Kevin Cowtan from the University of York and Robert Way from the University of Ottawa, notes that the Met Office data set only covers about 84 percent of the Earth's surface. There are large gaps in its coverage, mainly in the Arctic, Antarctica, and Africa, where temperature monitoring stations are relatively scarce. In their paper, Cowtan & Way apply a statistical method known as "kriging" to fill in the gaps between surface measurements, but they do so for both land and oceans. In a second approach, they also take advantage of the near-global coverage of satellite observations, combining the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) satellite temperature measurements with the available surface data to fill in the gaps with a 'hybrid' temperature data set. Both of their new surface temperature data sets show significantly more warming over the past 16 years than HadCRUT4. This is mainly due to HadCRUT4 missing accelerated Arctic warming, especially since 1997.
Cowtan & Way investigate the claim of a global surface warming 'pause' over the past 16 years by examining the trends from 1997 through 2012. While HadCRUT4 only estimates the surface warming trend at 0.046°C per decade during that time, and NASA puts it at 0.080°C per decade, the new kriging and hybrid data sets estimate the trend during this time at 0.11 and 0.12°C per decade, respectively. These results indicate that the slowed warming of average global surface temperature is not as significant as previously believed. Surface warming has slowed somewhat, in large part due to more overall global warming being transferred to the oceans over the past decade. However, these sorts of temporary surface warming slowdowns (and speed-ups) occur on a regular basis due to short-term natural influences. The results of this study also have bearing on some recent research. For example, correcting for the recent cool bias indicates that global surface temperatures are not as far from the average of climate model projections as we previously thought, and certainly fall within the range of individual climate model temperature simulations. The perceived recent slowdown of global surface temperatures remains an interesting scientific question. It appears to be due to some combination of internal factors (more global warming going into the oceans), external factors (relatively low solar activity and high volcanic activity), and an underestimate of the actual global surface warming. How much each factor is contributing is being investigated by extensive scientific research, but the Cowtan & Way paper suggests the latter explanation is a significant contributor.
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)