The "Pause" - A Review of Its Significance and Importance to Climate Science 77

[rconnor]

----------Introduction---------
A comparison of recent temperature trends in isolation of earlier data, say 1998-present, to long(er)-term temperature trends, say 1970-present, reveals that more recent temperature trends are lower than long-term temperature trends. This has led many, including many prominent climate scientists, to refer to the recent period as a “pause”, “hiatus” or “slowdown”. While in isolation of any other context besides two temperature trends, the term “pause” or “hiatus” may be quasi-accurate, much more context is required to determine whether these terms are statistically and, more importantly, physically accurate.

It should be noted that most times when these terms are used by climate scientists, they keep the quotation marks to indicate the mention-form of the word and are not implying an actual physical pause or hiatus in climate change. The subsequent research into the physical mechanism behind the “pause” has continually demonstrated that it is not indicative of a pause in climate change nor does it suggest a drastic reduction in our estimates of climate sensitivity. However, this fact appears to be lost on many who see the “pause” as some kind of death-blow to the anthropogenic climate change theory or to the relevancy of climate change models.

While this subject has been discussed repeatedly in these forums, it has never been the focus but rather used as a jet-pack style argument to change the conversation from the subject at hand to the “pause” (“Well that can’t be right because the Earth hasn’t warmed in X years!”). Revisiting past threads, I cannot find an example of where someone attempted to defend the “pause” as a valid argument against anthropogenic climate change. It is brought up, debunked and then not defended (and then gets brought up again 5 posts later). The hope is to discuss the scientific literature surrounding the “pause” to help readers understand why the “pause” is simply not a valid argument. While some points have been discussed (usually by me) before, this post does contain new research as well as 2014 and 2015 temperature data, which shed even more light on the topic. The post will be split into three parts: 1) the introduction (and a brief discussion on satellite versus surface station temperature data sets), 2) Does the “pause” suggest that climate change is not due to anthropogenic CO2? and 3) Does the “pause” suggest that climate models are deeply flawed?

------Why I Will Be Using Ground-Based Temperature Data Sets-------
Prior to going into the meat of the discussion, I feel it necessary to discuss why I will be using ground-based temperature data sets and not satellite data sets. Perhaps one of the most hypocritical and confused (or purposefully misleading) arguments on many “skeptic” blogs is the disdain for all ground-based temperature data sets and the promotion of satellite temperature data sets. The main contention with ground-based temperature data sets is that they do not include raw data and require homogenization techniques to produce their end result. While I am not here (in this thread) to discuss the validity of such techniques, it is crucial to understand that satellite temperature data sets go through a much more involved and complex set of calculations, adjustments and homogenizations to get from their raw data to their end product. Both what they measure and where they measure it are very important and highlights the deep confusion (or purposeful misdirection) of “skeptic” arguments that ground-based temperatures are rubbish and satellite-based temperatures are “better”.

[ul][li]Satellites measure radiances in different wavelength bands, not temperature. These measurements are mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature (Uddstrom 1988). Satellite data is closer to paleoclimate temperature reconstructions than modern ground-based temperature data in this way.[/li]
[li]Satellite record is constructed from a series of satellites, meaning the data is not fully homogeneous (Christy et al, 1998). Various homogenization techniques are required to create the record. (RSS information)[/li]
[li]Satellites have to infer the temperature at various altitudes by attempting to mathematically remove the influence of other layers and other interference (RSS information). This is a very difficult thing to do and the methods have gone through multiple challenges and revisions. (Mears and Wentz 2005, Mears et al 2011, Fu et al 2004)[/li]
[li]Satellites do not measure surface temperatures. The closest to “surface” temperatures they get are TLT which is an loose combination of the atmosphere centered roughly around 5 km. It is also not even a direct measurement channel (which themselves are not measuring temperature directly) but a mathematically adjustment of other channels. Furthermore, due to the amount of adjustments involved, TLT has constantly required revisions to correct errors and biases (Christy et al 1998, Fu et al 2005).[/li]
[li]See the discussion on Satellite data sets in IPCC Report (section 3.4.1.2)[/li]
[li]Satellite data and the large amount of homogenization and adjustments required to turn the raw data into useful temperature data are still being question to this day. Unlike ground-based adjustments which lead to trivial changes in trends (from the infamous Karl et al 2015), recent research shows that corrections of perhaps 30% are required for satellite data (Weng et al 2013 .[/li][/ul]

None of this is meant to say the satellite temperature data is “wrong” but it very clearly highlights the deep-set confusion in the “skeptic” camp about temperature data sets. If one finds themselves dismissing ground-based temperature data sets because they require homogenization or adjustments while claiming satellite temperature data sets are superior have simply been lead astray by “skeptics” or are trying to lead others astray. Furthermore, it clearly demonstrates that any attempt to compare satellite data (which measures the troposphere) to the surface temperature output of models is completely misguided (*cough*John Christy *cough*). It is for these reasons that I will use ground-based data in the rest of the post.

Again, I would like to state that I do not wish this to be a focal point of this discussion. I am merely outline why I will be using ground-based temperature data sets and my justification for that as, undoubtedly, someone would claim I should be using satellite temperature datasets. In fact, I appear to be in pretty good company; Carl Mears, one of the chief researchers of RSS (and the same Mears from all the papers above), stated:

My particular dataset (RSS tropospheric temperatures from MSU/AMSU satellites) show less warming than would be expected when compared to the surface temperatures. All datasets contain errors. In this case, I would trust the surface data a little more because the difference between the long term trends in the various surface datasets (NOAA, NASA GISS, HADCRUT, Berkeley etc) are closer to each other than the long term trends from the different satellite datasets. This suggests that the satellite datasets contain more “structural uncertainty” than the surface dataset

If this is a topic of interest to people, perhaps starting your own thread would be advisable as I will not be responding to comments on temperature data sets on this thread. Now, onto the actual discussion…

 

[snarkysparky]

We do have many laws already limiting our freedoms solely for the purpose of law enforcement. These laws do leave one a little bitter but in the grand scheme of things they are a net positive.

Ex: Open alcohol container laws for motor vehicles. Certainly we would all agree that the presence of an open alcohol beverage does not imply with certainty that a driver is drinking in the vehicle. This law is simply a compromise against our freedoms that we accept for the good of society. The licensing of remote control aircraft is also likely similar.

rconner

To me it is amazing the number of people who don't get that an individual OR a corporation is always at base a self interested party. As a society we expect some social sharing from individuals whether or not they actually comply, but corporations are by nature evil satanic beasts who seek only to feed off resources and grow themselves for their investors. Wait... Before the beatings begin I recognize that they help organize society and provide efficiency of production and quality of life. But these have become byproducts of their main purpose which is why I label them so.

My definition: That which seeks to divide life against itself is evil and that which encourages cooperation is the good.

I have heard there was a time when corporations had some social consciousness but that was before my time here and certainly it isn't true today. Why do I say so... Well we had this phase where capitalism became a religion and an end to be sought after without other regards. That phase solidified the destructive aspect of capitalism into mainstream acceptance.

Rant off:

I just marvel at people who want less government without thinking about what that would really entail. I know several who fantasize about a tiny government and they imagine their guns or special skills or common intelligence would let them prosper in that environment while most others die off. I never point out the fallacy to them because of how embarrassing and silly they would have to feel after.

Summary of this rant= As long as we have society we will have government and as long as society grows more dense WILL have more government and MORE intrusions on what we can do.

You can believe me or not but don't forget it is inevitable.

 

[IRstuff]

I think history has shown pretty clearly that lack of laws or lack of enforcement results in a myriad of bad situations from pure anarchy to a multitude of different types of dictatorships.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[JNieman]

There's a reason Theodore Roosevelt had to start the EPA. It wasn't because the free market was doing a good job at taking care of our natural resources.

 

[IRstuff]

If someone else wants to risk death by not wearing seat belts, I would probably accept that as natural selection, as long as there is no added cost to society. An instant fatality does not cost much, but someone on life support does impact insurance rates and access hospital resources and possibly loss of productivity. I don't see seat belt laws as protecting idiots from being stupid, but more of protecting the rest of us from the consequences of their stupid actions.

The recent news about smog in Beijing is a perfect example of where lack of government control has resulted in loss of health and loss of livelihoods for the general populace because the "few" have profited from not protecting the environment. So, yes, these will all result in loss of freedom, but that's the price of protecting us from those that would rather extract every iota of profit by not protecting the environment.

The unfortunate thing about climate change is that it's not instantaneous. If it were to happen on the timescale of BP oil spill there would hardly be any argument. The question then is whether there's any real way to recover. The BP oil spill, which was highly localized, still has ramifications on the environment, after billions spent on cleanup and restitution

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[rconnor]

I would like to steer us back to the topic of climate change science. ornerynorsk you stated:

[Anthropogenic] causation has not been proven corrollary to warming. It just hasn't.

Despite your protests, jhardy1’s response to this statement was appropriate. He likened this blind rejection of science with other blind rejections of science. If you want to distances your position from that of other science rejectionists, then you must support your viewpoint. You cannot just say the science is wrong, you have to demonstrate why. The quality of your evidence to support your viewpoint that the science is wrong can then be weighed against the quality of evidence that supports the science.

Note that I have done the latter a few times in this thread (15 Dec 15 15:37 and, more substantially, 14 Oct 15 21:24) and others (see here at 5 Mar 14 18:24 for examples and references or here at 1 Apr 14 18:14). The multiple lines of evidence that point to anthropogenic CO2, the fact that observed changes align with the predictions from Arrhenius in 1896, the consistency with paleoclimate and the inability for any other competing theories to do anywhere close to as good a job of explaining current and past climate changes all adds weight to the anthropogenic CO2 theory. This is consistent with any other realm of science.

One of the major points in my post at 15 Dec 15 15:37 is that while a theory gaining support is very difficult, a theory losing support is very easy – all it takes is one conclusive paper. Despite the billion, if not trillion, dollar interest in finding such a flaw in the theory, none is present. This is most telling. I’ve spent most of my time here shooting down such attempts and showing why they are not conclusive at all (this post focuses on the two main ones, the “pause” and “models are wrong”). If you have another silver bullet, please present it. This is open to anyone (I just ask to do a little searching on past posts prior to make sure it hasn’t already been addressed).

You cannot just say the science hasn’t demonstrated the correlation between anthropogenic CO2 emissions and climate change, you must demonstrate why – especially when there is just so much evidence to the contrary.

 

[ornerynorsk]

There is a teapot in orbit around the sun, between earth and mars. Prove me wrong.

You folks seem to be fixated on only CO2, and anthropogenic CO2, at that. What if it's not? Have the "what if's" of alternate causes been reasonably exhausted? I don't believe they have.

It sickens me when a narrow minded group of otherwise intelligent people are ready and eager to sell our collective souls lock, stock, and barrel to a cause that is built on such a loose foundation. Once you give something up to the powers-that-be, you do realize that you never get it back. It is bought back only through the warfare and blood of successive generations, if at all, and the number possessing a spine and a will to use to it falls with each generation.

"So, yes, these will all result in loss of freedom". And you will deserve every iota of that loss, sir. Big Brother awaits you, embrace him and offer willingly your final shred of self respect. There'd better be damned good evidence before we accept further surrender of the precious few liberties we have remaining.

Furthermore, why no discussion of the potential benefits of warming? Why all doom and gloom?

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[rconnor]

There is a teapot in orbit around the sun, between earth and mars. Prove me wrong.

Russell’s teapot demonstrates that it is impossible to either prove or disprove an epiphenomena (something with no observable physical effects) and highlights the absurdity of being asked to disprove them. Climate change is not epiphenomenal, it has physical and observable consequences. The anthropogenic CO2 theory is not an appeal to an epiphenomena as it is a theory of the physical mechanism behind climate change. It makes predictions that can be compared against observations. Therefore I’m not asking you to disprove a Russellian teapot, I’m asking you to provide evidence as to why you disagree with a physical theory. Given how obviously wrong it is to you, it should be very easy.

Either:
(1) Provide evidence to disprove the anthropogenic CO2 theory (and note I’ve already discussed a few) or,
(2) Provide evidence to support a counter theory (and note I’ve already discussed a few).

a cause that is built on such a loose foundation.

See above. All I’m asking for is you to support statements such as this. If you cannot, then you have no rational basis for believing it. Russell would frown upon that.

Furthermore, why no discussion of the potential benefits of warming? Why all doom and gloom?

The positive and negative physical consequences of global warming are discussed in AR5 WGII. Here’s the SPM. The reason why it sounds negative is because the aggregate is very negative, but it does discuss the positives as well. This appeal to the positives is simply another attempt to ignore the net impact (which is very negative).

 

[cranky108]

I may be incorrect, but I thought Nixon created the EPA.

As for green house gases, I think I read that water vapor was a stronger green house gas than CO2. And most power plants, even ones that don't burn FF's release water vapor.
Are we so sure that going after CO2 is the real issue? Has the level of water vapor in the sky increased over time?

 

[IRstuff]

If it's so easy to lay the blame on something else, it should be trivial for Heartland to divert a few of its millions in funding from oil producers to pay some of these alleged money-grubbing scientists to scientifically prove, or at least, cast great doubt on the subject. Yet, there's dead air on the subject.

As for water vapor, see:

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...s-co2-isnt-the-most-important-greenhouse-gas/

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[seaaggie]

rconnor,
We need your educated eye on this report:

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/agu-poster-watts-website-release.pdf

One of the conclusions...
"We believe the NOAA/NCDC homogenization adjustment causes well sited stations to be adjusted upwards to match the trends of poorly sited stations."

Thanks

 

[rb1957]

oh dear ! I'm not taking bets that he'll say "they're right". I'm sure it'll be a long and involved (and passing interesting) reply to say "no, the NOAA adjustments are correct, and these warmists are picking on a few odd looking (but correct) instances"

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[Supertester]

A short thumbnail sketch of humanity in 2015 (~10,000 years after we crawled out from under the last ice sheets)

Fellow "scientists", we are a very fine group of humans in a very unique period of Earths existence. We can communicate now using electrons, we can use the Earths resources in ways no one has ever done. All of these capabilities in the last "few hundred years". As scientists we create forward thinking goods and services using our current level of education or what passes for "education".

We really don't know as much as we should. Our paradigm is a Human paradigm. The earth has a very different perspective on its' existence. We have learned of some of earths history, but we really need to know much more. It appears we are so forward focused, growth at all costs, that we are ignoring the teachings of earths history. But, give us time and we will slowly come to the realization that the human species is just a blip on the timeline of a very precious and unique planet out there. The water planet. We really should expect water to control us rather than we humans thinking we can control water, water vapour, ICE, and the temperatures that water likes to exist in.

We are enjoying a unique 12K year run of really - really good stable climate. It has likely never happened before if we can believe the Greenland ice core data. This period is over due for change, probably for the worse. Wild shifts in temperature are supposed to happen at various times, apparently it is normal for Earth. And ladies and gentlemen, this all happened before -- without humans even being in the picture.

Our task is to guide our fellow men to ride-out this approaching Ice-age with a degree of respect for humanity. It's coming for sure, but we don't know when or how fast it will come, but it will come. It is very difficult to work with this time frame, so I suppose this current Climate-change debate is to be expected. To say climate-change is natural, organic, and non-human fired is not popular right now, but we hope it will not stay that way, once we really have to scramble to save populations from its effects on our fragile existence here.

What have non-human life forms done to survive climate change? How have they survived the past 100K years and the many ice-ages that occupied that period. Living underwater and in caves seem like a history lesson, but we must stop acting like spoiled children and get on with inventing affordable ways to survive the next 10,000 years without turning into fossils. I do not think politicians should be making these decisions, instead, global humanity should be on the same page, with well educated scientist holding the book. The difficulty is getting a consensus in this electronic communications day and age.

 

[rb1957]

see George Carlin's "save the planet" sketch.

I can sort of see the intelligent designer (in whatever form you perceive him, non-gender specific, to be) scratching his (non-gender specific) head thinking ... "well that didn't work out the way I expected".

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[rconnor]

Seaaggie,

I’ve been instructed to not post on this topic anymore but seeing as your question was addressed to me, I’ll sneak in this comment to redirect you to a much better pair of eyes than mine. See Victor Venema’s blog post for a rundown.

Make sure to read the comments which contains a well-tempered (for a climate change blog comment section) discussion conversation between co-author Evan Jones and others. Well, there’s a few jabs thrown, especially at the beginning, but there’s a lot of very good points brought up to which Jones attempts to address (with a level of success that is no doubt dependant on your viewpoint going into it).

 

[lacajun]

These graphs have been interesting to me. I have not done research on the entry at Wikipedia but I'm sure y'all have. How do these graphs relate to climate change? Geologic Temperature Record

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[Panther140]

The idea of controlling the earth's climate with something as simple as stopping human contribution to the carbon cycle is so small-minded that it is almost adorable. Please provide me with a list of all contributing sources of CO2, and quantify their contributions. If you only include the CO2 contributions of humans, you are not competent to discuss this subject. If you accomplish that feat, provide me with a accurate data on the speed of carbon cycle across the world. I am also going to need you to tell me what exactly IS the correct temperature for the earth to stay at indefinitely, and how we maintain that temperature across the globe even throughout the changes in our orbital cycle.

The earth's climate has changed drastically for its entire existence. Governments know that they can tap into this perpetual cycle of warming and cooling, turn the trends into fear stimuli, and associate them with whatever cause gains them the most power.

https://www.climate.gov/sites/defau...teqa_hottest_ocean_temp_610.png?itok=DRHNrr3d

"It is still uncertain where all the carbon dioxide came from and what the exact sequence of events was. Scientists have considered the drying up of large inland seas, volcanic activity, thawing permafrost, release of methane from warming ocean sediments, huge wildfires, and even—briefly—a comet.

Like nothing we’ve ever seen
Earth’s hottest periods—the Hadean, the late Neoproterozoic, the PETM—occurred before humans existed. Those ancient climates would have been like nothing our species has ever seen.

Modern human civilization, with its permanent agriculture and settlements, has developed over just the past 10,000 years or so. The period has generally been one of low temperatures and relative global (if not regional) climate stability."

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hottest-earths-ever-been

To accomplish what the warm-mongorers want, we would need to constrain earth's orbit around the sun to be perfectly circular, avoid axial tilt at all costs, control atmospheric makeup to comply with government-approved quantities, seize control of ocean currents, and much much more.

Controlling, or even influencing our climate would require near omnipotence and omniscience. Coincidentally, omnipotence and omniscience are the holy grail of political pursuits.

 

[IRstuff]

How is all of that relevant; the Earth's surface temperature was thousands of degrees 4.5 billion years ago. So what? That does not mean that we're not impacting the climate or the atmosphere. By your argument, we should likewise discount the KT extinction as a externally caused event for the same reason, but we know otherwise.

Your chart shows changes that are occurring on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands of years. We're ostensibly seeing climate change in less than 1000 years, so by your data, this is a substantial outlier and is unprecedented.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[GregLocock]

Tracking temperature transients in the prehistoric record is tricky, but if you can accept HADCET as a proxy you'll see that the rise and plateau trajectory since 1880 is unexceptional in rate and amplitude, since similar rises have been seen before 1880. If such events occur two or more times in 400 years it seems unlikely to me that the twentieth century one is something new.

However be aware that there is no robust method to break a signal into straight line segments, the most reliable method is just to use a moving average. The averaging period of the ma will be a choice,perhaps the simplest method is to run your chosen analysis across all possible options from say eleven years to 101,any less is weather,any more leaves you with too few independent data points.

Using that you might use the population of 11 year ma to define rate,and perhaps 51 year to establish amplitude. Or you could do some funky wavelet analysis. Then see if the post 1850-1880 figures are outliers.

One thing to watch for is the possible AMO supercycle, over the course of decades the big gradients are probably due to that more than trivial amounts of relatively insignificant greenhouse gases.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[Panther140]

IRstuff, those are smoothed trend lines. Not only that, this thread is about the "pause". So are you suggesting that this "pause" is unprecedented? Is this pause concerning you? Please research the cause for the little ice age. If you are using the past 1000 years as the basis for what governments should forcefully mandate as the correct temperature for earth, you should at LEAST understand the factors within that pathetically small sample of time. Alarmists are making the claims. Alarmists are aligning with the claims to be used as basis for destructive changes to our societal structure. Therefore, the burden of proof lies on alarmists.

What I am suggesting is that the global warming alarmists have not sufficiently defined anything which is objectively a problem, let alone that is reasonably within our control. They cannot even begin to find root cause, and then actually find a practical solution to their claimed problem. It is possible that atmospheric carbon contents are not going to doom the world, and that they are actually quite necessary to life as we know it. I am also suggesting that we contribute very small amounts of atmospheric carbon, relative to the major sources of CO2. Acquaint yourself with the carbon cycle. Also consider the fact that our industries are much cleaner than they used to be. We do not need MORE regulation on them. There is a point of diminishing returns for these legislation. We have passed that point and are now to the point of destructive regulation. Innovations are quelled, government targets businesses in a manner to accommodate their political self interest and the interests of their biggest donors/lenders.

What the global warming alarmists fail to do sufficiently is define the problem, find their role in it, acquire the authority to do set regulations for the weather on earth, and even consider abstaining from ineffective solutions that are worse than the problem. This scared herd of alarmists has more destructive potential than anything that they plan to destroy in their mission to control the world's weather.

Refer to my signature and entertain me by taking one second to question these big claims that are perseverated throughout the media without supporting information other than regurgitated buzz words. Propaganda.

"Formal education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." ~ Joseph Stalin

 

[IRstuff]

"Refer to my signature and entertain me by taking one second to question these big claims that are perseverated throughout the media without supporting information other than regurgitated buzz words. Propaganda. "

Yes, point taken, you've described your position exactly.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529