by Jill and David Archer
Technical Note: We have changed the contact email for the blog to reduce the amount of unsolicited email. If you want to contact us at the blog, please use contact-at-realclimate.org.
The answer is blowing in the wind: The warming went into the deep end
There has been an unusual surge of interest in the climate sensitivity based on the last decade’s worth of temperature measurements, and a lengthy story in the Economist tries to argue that the climate sensitivity may be lower than previously estimated. I think its conclusion is somewhat misguided because it missed some important pieces of information (also see skepticalscience’s take on this story here).
The ocean heat content and the global mean sea level height have marched on.
While the Economist referred to some unpublished work, it missed a new paper by Balmaseda et al. (2013) which provides a more in-depth insight. Balmaseda et al suggest that the recent years may not have much effect on the climate sensitivity after all, and according to their analysis, it is the winds blowing over the oceans that may be responsible for the ‘slow-down’ presented in the Economist.
References
- M.A. Balmaseda, K.E. Trenberth, and E. Källén, "Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content", Geophysical Research Letters, pp. n/a-n/a, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/grl.50382
The PAGES-2k synthesis
Guest commentary by Darrell Kaufman (N. Arizona U.)
In a major step forward in proxy data synthesis, the PAst Global Changes (PAGES) 2k Consortium has just published a suite of continental scale reconstructions of temperature for the past two millennia in Nature Geoscience. More information about the study and its implications are available at the FAQ on the PAGES website and the datasets themselves are available at NOAA Paleoclimate.
The main conclusion of the study is that the most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the 19th century, and which was followed by a warming trend in the 20th C. The 20th century in the reconstructions ranks as the warmest or nearly the warmest century in all regions except Antarctica. During the last 30-year period in the reconstructions (1971-2000 CE), the average reconstructed temperature among all of the regions was likely higher than anytime in at least ~1400 years. Interestingly, temperatures did not fluctuate uniformly among all regions at multi-decadal to centennial scales. For example, there were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age. Cool 30-year periods between the years 830 and 1910 CE were particularly pronounced during times of weak solar activity and strong tropical volcanic eruptions and especially if both phenomena often occurred simultaneously.
More »
References
- M. Ahmed, K.J. Anchukaitis, A. Asrat, H.P. Borgaonkar, M. Braida, B.M. Buckley, U. Büntgen, B.M. Chase, D.A. Christie, E.R. Cook, M.A.J. Curran, H.F. Diaz, J. Esper, Z. Fan, N.P. Gaire, Q. Ge, J. Gergis, J.F. González-Rouco, H. Goosse, S.W. Grab, N. Graham, R. Graham, M. Grosjean, S.T. Hanhijärvi, D.S. Kaufman, T. Kiefer, K. Kimura, A.A. Korhola, P.J. Krusic, A. Lara, A. Lézine, F.C. Ljungqvist, A.M. Lorrey, J. Luterbacher, V. Masson-Delmotte, D. McCarroll, J.R. McConnell, N.P. McKay, M.S. Morales, A.D. Moy, R. Mulvaney, I.A. Mundo, T. Nakatsuka, D.J. Nash, R. Neukom, S.E. Nicholson, H. Oerter, J.G. Palmer, S.J. Phipps, M.R. Prieto, A. Rivera, M. Sano, M. Severi, T.M. Shanahan, X. Shao, F. Shi, M. Sigl, J.E. Smerdon, O.N. Solomina, E.J. Steig, B. Stenni, M. Thamban, V. Trouet, C.S. Turney, M. Umer, T. van Ommen, D. Verschuren, A.E. Viau, R. Villalba, B.M. Vinther, L. von Gunten, S. Wagner, E.R. Wahl, H. Wanner, J.P. Werner, J.W. White, K. Yasue, and E. Zorita, "Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia", Nature Geoscience, vol. 6, pp. 339-346, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1797
Ice hockey
Eric Steig
It is well known that ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula have collapsed on several occasions in the last couple of decades, that ice shelves in West Antarctica are thinning rapidly, and that the large outlet glaciers that drain the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) are accelerating. The rapid drainage of the WAIS into the ocean is a major contributor to sea level rise (around 10% of the total, at the moment).
All of these observations match the response, predicted in the late 1970s by glaciologist John Mercer, of the Antarctic to anthropogenic global warming. As such, they are frequently taken as harbingers of greater future sea level rise to come. Are they?
Two papers published this week in Nature Geoscience provide new information that helps to address this question. One of the studies (led by me) says “probably”, while another (Abram et al.) gives a more definitive “yes”. More »
