It's been a bad week for Believers

Perhaps you might try some original thoughts instead of tying your post to the reputation of those whose work you are unfamiliar with:

I was curious about what makes a 'top climate scientist':

Source: Working out climate sensitivity from satellite measurements

Son you hitched your wagon to someone 'Mojo' should call a liar but the rest of us would call someone who needs a little 'reality training.' Time to grow up and study Climate Science. There is an excellent book:

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Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis, Volume 1 - The Physical Climate, G. Thomas Farmer, John Cook.​

Bob Wilson

 

Lindzen said hilarious, got it. It is not an adjective that comes up frequently in science papers, but it has obvious media appeal.

Look, how 'bout this: Read enuf of the stuf to form in your mind a cogent question. Then email it to Dr. Richard Lindzen at MIT. Based on my personal experience, a response is likely. Or maybe he's too busy with current high traffic, who knows?

If the question you form also relates to the research of Dr. Kerry Emanuel at MIT, then send it to both. Then you might be in a position to see which is more illuminating.

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Look, this new IPCC AR5 preview emphasizes ocean-heat content increases. AR4 did not. It could mean that the ARGO float-data were immature last time around. It could mean that 'warmists' are now running for cover. One would want to adjudicate that from an impartial source.

I have yet to see a 'coupled model' presenting the observed air-T-increase 'pauses' around 1900, 1960, and now. If the current models can't do it without parameter forcing, heck, just say so! There is a fair chance that better models could evolve therefrom.

I believe that models implicitly treat 'sea-state' variability as something that washes out at the century scale. Could be true, or not. This is really a big deal. Can the ocean can sink energy for centuries, or will the current (or next) cycle lead to faster T increases ? Or slower? I think we have diddly about that. In this way I am unimpressed by the first part of IPCC AR5.

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Perhaps it is clear why Lindzen's hilarious is in itself hilarious to me. Maybe not, but the main thing is that we need to bear down on how the oceans will affect our (obvious and ongoing) activities that increases solar energy trapping by burning fossil-C. I much dislike that the current models don't do oceans good. I much more dislike that others groups want to run the 20th century burn again, based on the questionable presumptions that it will be another great success.

 

I don't know Lindzen from Adam nor have I read the IPCC, any of them. What does make sense is to follow Doug's example and look at the facts and data directly and bring your own conclusion. At least that shows some original content, some reasoned thinking and understanding instead of 'cut-and-paste' nonsense of ad hominem . . . including the quotes from Lindzen that provide no insights.

There is a lot we don't know about the oceans which is why study makes a lot of sense. But it needs to be based on observations and we sure could do with more.

Bob Wilson

 

Lindzen is indeed a climate scientist that has very good credentials. Credentials so good that Al Gore and he fought about whether he belonged in the 98%, gore claimed he agreed with the consensus of catastrophic AGW, while Lindzen said he agreed with the AGW stuff but disagreed with much of the catastrophic and other parts gore was pretending the consesus is about. He has been part of IPCC reports but criticized the summary for policy makers vocally.

Clearly Lindzen's problem with the certainty some in the global warming community have been talking about.

Absolutely. Much of IPCC 4 now has data that changes much of the sumarry for policy makers and changes some of that certainty. In science when the data doesn't fit the models we need to change the models not the data

I believe Lindzen gets some extra notoriety by the vocal way he talks about his skeptism. This is not different than Hansen's notoriety by his exaggeration of possible results. In papers they seem to keep mostly to the science, to the press they stray a great deal.

 

Close enough.

There are no guarantees in life and our species will have to deal with the future reality. The 3 mm/year sea level increase; the summer ice minimums, and; current solar minimum, all suggests a pending a heat spike in the next decade. Even the decadal Pacific cooling simply means when the 'cycle' reverses, we'll see a proper heat spike and accelerated polar melting.

BTW, looking at the decadal Pacific record, I'm reminded that humans have an amazing ability to see patterns in random data. Solar minimum and maximum cycles are well established an easy enough to follow. But the decadal Pacific record, well it hard to call this cyclical:

To me, this looks like curve-fitting to meet a conclusion. At best, just another way to transport surface heat to deeper depths in one small part of the oceans. . . the very thing needed to melt polar ice. Mountain and mole hill comes to mind.

I'm more impressed with global maps:

The reason is skeptics often amplify some small area and make inflated claims about the effect. Meanwhile, ignoring other parts of the whole that show the global view.

Bob Wilson

 

I can't see that spike. In 2000 many were predicting an accelerated heating, some where predicting a deceleration. We got the deceleration. According to the IPCC the spike in 1998 had to do with ENSO. I do not have a good prediction of what ENSO and AMO will do in the coming decade. If they look like the late 90s we should see more heat.

I really don't think any of the models do a good job with ocean oscillations. The key question on the solar cycle is if this new lower number of sunspots is decreasing the rate of warming. There is also the question on how number of suspots relate to ENSO and other ocean oscillations.

 

ENSO and sunspot numbers are two of the longest records going - since about 1750. One would probably guess that correlations have already been looked for. One would be correct

Perfectly findable via google scholar. They have not made a large impact on climate modeling, I believe, for 3 reasons.
(1) correlations not that good,
(2) lack of mechanism (this keeps coming up!),
(3) more ocean heat in recent decades

This non-stationarity thing keeps coming up as well. It seems to inhibit better representations of oceans in coupled models.

There are also long records for AMO (which is emphatically not the same as AMOC; that's thermohaline) and PDO. They may not be quite as long though, for lack of people writing down the needed barometric measurements. That started very early for ENSO because it so strongly affects how sailing ships should sail the Pacific.

 

In the current IPCC summary they talk about ocean heat in the top 75 meters now very close to the heat in air surface temperatures (.11 degrees /decade versus .12 degrees /decade) this suggests to me that ocean heating is simply a slower process than air heating. The sea temperatures simply may lag. This is different than the problem modeling ocean osculations.

Since solar cycles are so long (11 years) it takes a long time to collect new data. The problem of successfully launching satellites to monitor climatic conditions and atmospheric compesition has further hindered this research.

 

Lindzen was a previous IPCC lead author.
Back when the worlds leading climate scientists were involved.
His opinion has the IPCCs stamp of approval as the world leading expert.
Last report was written partially by nonphds, grad students and WWL fund Greenpeace affiliates.
It will be interesting to see who actually wrote this report.

 

149 - interesting to wonder about or interesting enough to download the pdf?

www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/ar5_authors_review_editors_updated.pdf‎

146 - "According to the IPCC the spike in 1998 had to do with ENSO." I really don't know of anyone who doubts that, regardless of affiliations or anything else, so I wouldn't hang it on IPCC (nor, for that matter, on NIPCC). However, earlier El Ninos of similar magnitude during the 'instrumental T era' did not cause similar air-T spikes. On that you could probably find a diversity of viewpoints.

Back in the olden times, El Ninos were rather warm and La Ninas were rather cool. Now, El Ninos set the upward trend and La Ninas are just a tad lower. Did +COC2 do that? Again you could probably find a diversity of viewpoints.

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ENSO has a consistent effect on texas temperatures, and this seems opposite global temperatures.
I was pinning the ENSO on 1998 Heat on IPCC V summary for policy makers, since I did not want to have to site numerous individual studies. I am sure there are some papers that question this as you do. There have not been shown to be a link between ghg and ENSO. If you can find a link you will likely win a large research grant and a great deal of notoriety. The important thing is not the cause of the natural variation that caused the spike in global temperatures in 1998, it is that it was a spike unrelated to ghg. If the spike was caused mostly by ghg, then much higher ghg today would cause expectations of higher temperatures. If this is your thesis you need to find a mechanism (natural variation? perhaps why it is not hotter today). Either way natural variation would need to be invoked.

 

I have seen speculation, but no strong evidence, that increased ocean heat could alter ENSO cycles in terms of intensity or period. It seems an extremely important matter, given ENSO's 'teleconnections' . This jargon for affecting rainfall in W. US and hurricanes in N. Atl., among others.

So the null hypothesis remain that ENSO will behave during 21st century much as it did in 20th.

Empirical studies subtract a consistent ENSO effect on air T over time. Air T back as far as about 1850 are useful, before that the confidence intervals were much wider. The results are as I qualitatively described above.

Something mechanistic would be much more satisfying but I have not seen it.

I could only say that the 1998 +T was unrelated to CO2 (or OHC) if an earlier strong El Nino caused a similar T spike. This is the point I am trying to make.

 

Agree here

Not what I was saying, nor what was clipped from the summary from IPCC V.

The spike in 1998 was much higher than co2 related, and likely the result of natural variation. If it was entirely caused by ghg then sensitivity in the last 15 years is very low or even possibly negative. If you accept the idea that that year had a temperature anomololy related to natural variation, likely having to do with ENSO, then we can try to disengage the volcanic forcings, from solar radiation, from man made ghg forcings, from other natural variations. If everything has to be man made ghg since 1850 or 1880 somthing is severely broke in the model. Choosing individual years with natural anomaly leads to cherry picking mistakes in analysis. This is useful if you are trying to get people to believe your models, but not if we are going to come back to the models at later dates. Given 11 year solar cycles and decent global data only since 1880, it is unlikely that we have seen the biggest global anomalies. In geological time the instrument record is very brief and the proxies don't drill down well to individual years, but we have seen large anomalies in the past.

A not bad first step in trying to remove this natural variation is to average global temperatures 1850-1900 (before much man made ghg), and compare them to temperatures averaged over the last decade. IIRC this is exactly what this summary did to come up with about 0.75 degrees of heat, with attempted averaging out of ocean oscillations for that time period. The trick then is to come up with sensitivity to co2, and time delay for warming to build an accurate model of natural versus man made ghg warming.

 

1998 (better to say 1997-1998) was a sharp air-T excursion, and we know the ENSO well. My simple suggestion is to look for earlier ENSO excursions of similar magnitude, and see how those correspond with air T. I believe that the answer is clear.

A more satisfying analysis would consider all the ENSO and air-T since 1850. One would have to handle the question of leads and lags appropriately. but then you get a model, and it has residuals. Compare the residuals with CO2. Again, I think that this has been done, and I am only trying to clarify my statements.

The brave might take that forward to higher future CO2, but it only 'holds water' if the ENSO cycle continues as it has done.