Almost five years ago, the "pause" was ten years long?

Question

Let's go back a bit in time and see what climate scientists were saying about the pause and climate models and future temperatures.

From AMS (2009):

"Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate." http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf

From Science Magazine (2009):

"Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and “we expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,” the Hadley Centre group write."

"And that resumption could come as a bit of a jolt, says Adam Scaife of the group, as the temperature catches up with the greenhouse gases added during the pause."

"Our prediction is that if past is prologue, the solar component will turn around and lead to rapid warming in the next 5 years."

My summary:

- AMS indicates pauses of 10 years are common but 15 years creates a "discrepancy"
- Pauses as long as 15 years are rare (fits well with point #1)
- Warming will continue by 2014
- Warming from 2009-2014 could be "rapid" and could "come as a bit of a jolt"

The basic message back in 2009 was that they acknowledged a 10 year pause, it wasn't unusual because in climate models there are commonly 10 year natural variations and that warming would resume shortly and likely with a vengeance.

How is that message different now when substituting in 15 years instead of 10? What happened to the discrepancy or rareness of the pause or the expected "jolt" of warming?

Answer 1

Is that statement even true.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2009/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2000/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2009/trend



It depends what you mean by "pause." There was a slight drop in the slope. Only a slight drop in the slope.



Anyways, a "pause' is going on almost all the time.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_1024.gif







Global warming clearly did not stop in its tracks.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2009/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2000/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2009/trend




- Pauses as long as 15 years are rare >



So, the models are wrong. What else is new.



Wage Slave



< A 15 year pause is "un-deny-able.">



Wrong! Check my links.

Answer 2

You touched a nerve, Mike. Liberals hate it when you bring up their past predictions. As I recall, most AGW boosters were still claiming the earth was still warming five years ago. A 15 year pause is "un-deny-able."



I see a baseless argument, a great straw man rebuttal, and a couple of saturation bombings of the usual links. Alarmists love to put words in our mouths. It's true that if you start from 1998, the temperature trend goes down slightly. But the same is true if you start from 1996 or 2001 as well. Supporting graphs can be found in this link:



http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/13/lindzen-libeled-by-nuccitelli/



The alarmists are rapidly running out of time. Even now cracks are appearing in the wall of opinion. The very left leaning Sidney Morning Herald actually published a scathing attack on the politics of global warming. It was an editorial one would expect in the Wall Street Journal or Forbes. The author is even allowed to attack the beloved "consensus," the alarmist trump card. He says, "At last, there is recognition not just that there are at least two sides to every story, but that when sophisticates seek to shut down debate, it amounts to an attack on the public interest."



http://www.smh.com.au/comment/game-finally-up-for-carboncrats-20140113-30qqo.html#ixzz2qMRlr4Wx



The general public has become skeptical after 15 years of no warming. This "crisis" is dead.



Edit: two TD's, but no rebuttal. It's all true...

Answer 3

Since statistical significance is a direct function of sample size – and you lose one degree of freedom for every (n-1) parameters you need to estimate – so for a 10-year period, you lose 10% of your sample depth and your results can swing wildly because of just one or a few data points. As a result, the already arbitrary .95 significance level really isn’t much help, and the difference between .9 and .95 is anybody’s fcking guess.



>>AMS indicates pauses of 10 years are common but 15 years creates a "discrepancy"<<



A “discrepancy” in what? The article is referencing the warming rate.



>>- Pauses as long as 15 years are rare (fits well with point #1) <<



Are they rarer than having every year since 1976 fall above the empirical mean?



If global temperature varies normally around a stationary mean, in the long-run there should be an equal number of values above and below the mean. It’s like flipping a coin. So, the probability of getting 37 consecutive values above the mean is: (½ [1] * ½[2] *…* ½[36] * ½[37]) – which is a really small number.

Answer 4

Well, that question wasn't slanted at all :/



Climate change deniers LOOOVE 1998. It was the hottest year on record, so for many years there wasn't a hotter year. If you start counting at 1998, it doesn't look like much as changed at all.



But that's cherry picking your data and is entirely incorrect. 8 of the 10 hottest years since 1850 have all occurred since 2000. There's no denying that the 2000-2010 decade is the hottest decade on record. There is no "pause". There was just a huge bump up in 1998, and more normal increase in the long term average since then.

Answer 5

Discrepancy in the language of AGW simply means there is more to learn. Science for them can never be wrong it's simply a matter of new data changing our current understanding. The problem is their understanding never changes.

Answer 6

You sing a lot of different lyrics, but you keep singing them using the same tune.



1. HadCRUT3 is surface temperature data.

2. Earth consists of more than just its surface.

3. The surface temperatures have still risen over this period of time, only at a reduced rate of warming.

4. The oceans have warmed over this period at a faster rate than it has prior to then. This is a strong indication that the planet's warming has continued and without any pause.

5. You did not personally say, this time, that a pause in surface temperatures even exist over this time period. Why did not you now show the discrepancy in this statement? I thought you lived to point out discrepancies.

6. The Arctic sea ice volume continues its long term downward trend. The world's glaciers continue their trend of a state of decline. The biological migration continues to higher latitudes and altitudes that did not support them before due to it being too cold to sustain them before. Does any of this look like a pause in the warming to you?

Answer 7

The average temperature of the troposphere last month was a full half degree warmer then five years ago. Lets be silly and look at the change in just the troposphere in just five years (yes, that's silly but the question is silly).



In the past five years, based on the satellite record, the lower atmosphere has been warming at a rate of 10 degrees per century. Seriously, based on your chosen period, it's been a fully degree per decade: 10 degrees per century.

Answer 8

It is not a pause, it is the top of a peak, we are on our way down.