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You are here: Home / Climate Science / 2022 updates to the temperature records

2022 updates to the temperature records

13 Jan 2023 by Gavin 123 Comments

Another January, another annual data point.

As in years past, the annual rollout of the GISTEMP, NOAA, HadCRUT and Berkeley Earth analyses of the surface temperature record have brought forth many stories about the long term trends and specific events of 2022 – mostly focused on the impacts of the (ongoing) La Niña event and the litany of weather extremes (UK and elsewhere having record years, intense rainfall and flooding, Hurricane Ian, etc. etc.).

But there are a few things that don’t get covered much in the mainstream stories, and so we can dig into them a bit here.

What influence does ENSO really have?

It’s well known (among readers here, I assume), that ENSO influences the interannual variability of the climate system and the annual mean temperatures. El Niño events enhance global warming (as in 1998, 2010, 2016 etc.) and La Niña events (2011, 2018, 2021, 2022 etc.) impart a slight cooling.

GISTEMP anomalies (w.r.t. late 19th C) coded for ENSO state in the early spring.

Consequently, a line drawn from an El Niño year to a subsequent La Niña year will almost always show a cooling – a fact well known to the climate disinformers (though they are not so quick to show the uncertainties in such cherry picks!). For instance, the trends from 2016 to 2022 are -0.12±0.37ºC/dec but with such large uncertainties, the calculation is meaningless. Far more predictive are the long term trends which are consistently (now) above 0.2ºC/dec (and with much smaller uncertainties ±0.02ºC/dec for the last 40 years).

It’s worth exploring quantitatively what the impact is, and this is something I’ve been looking at for a while. It’s easy enough correlate the detrended annual anomalies with the ENSO index (maximum correlation is for the early spring values), and then use that regression to estimate the specific impact for any year, and to estimate an ENSO-corrected time series.

Correlation of detrended annual anomalies and spring ENSO indexGISTEMP and and ENSO-corrected version of the time series
a) Correlation between an ENSO index (in Feb/Mar) and the detrended annual anomaly. b) An ENSO-corrected version of the GISTEMP record.

The surface temperature records are becoming more coherent

Back in 2013/2014, the differences between the surface indices (HadCRUT3, NOAA v3 and GISTEMP v3) contributed to the initial confusion related to the ‘pause’, which was seemingly evident in HadCRUT3, but not so much in the other records (see this discussion from 2015). Since then all of the series have adopted improved SST homogenization, and HadCRUT5 adopted a similar interpolation across the pole as was used in the GISTEMP products. From next month onwards, NOAA will move to v5.1 which will now incorporate Arctic buoy data (a great innovation) and also provide a spatially complete record. The consequence is that the surface instrument records will be far more coherent than they have ever been. Some differences remain pre-WW2 (lots of SST inhomogeneities to deal with) and in the 19th C (where data sparsity is a real challenge).

Four surface-station based estimate of global warming since 1880.

The structural uncertainty in satellite records is large

While the surface-based records are becoming more consistent, the various satellite records are as far apart as ever. The differences between the RSS and UAH TLT records are much larger than the spread in the surface records (indeed, they span those trends), making any claims of greater precision somewhat dubious. Similarly, the difference in the versions of the AIRS records (v6 vs. v7) of ground temperature anomalies produce quite distinct trends (in the case of AIRS v6, Nov 2022 was exceptionally cold, which was not seen in other records).

1979 trends in surface and satellite records showing a coherent warming in all records, but substantial differences between AIRS and MSU TLT versions.
Differences between surface, MSU TLT and AIRS ground temperature records.

When will we reach 1.5ºC above the pre-industrial?

This was a very common question in the press interviews this week. It has a few distinct components – what is the ‘pre-industrial’ period that’s being referenced, what is the uncertainty in that baseline, and what are the differences in the long term records since then?

The latest IPCC report discusses this issue in some depth, but the basic notion is that since the impacts that are expected at 1.5ºC are derived in large part from the CMIP model simulations that have a nominal baseline of ~1850, ‘pre-industrial’ temperatures are usually assumed to be some kind of mid-19th Century average. This isn’t a universally accepted notion – Hawkins et al (2017) for instance, suggest we should use a baseline from the 18th Century – but it is one that easier to operationalise.

The baseline of 1880-1900 can be calculated for all the long temperature series, and with respect to that 2022 (or the last five years) is between 1.1 and 1.3ºC warmer (with Berkeley Earth showing the most warming). For the series that go back to 1850, the difference between 1850-1900 and 1880-1900 is 0.01 to 0.03ºC, so probably negligible for this purpose.

Linear trends since 1996 are robustly just over 0.2ºC/decade in all series, so that suggests between one and two decades are required to have the mean climate exceed 1.5ºC, that is around 2032 to 2042. The first specific year that breaches this threshold will come earlier and will likely be associated with a big El Niño. Assuming something like 2016 (a +0.11ºC effect), that implies you might see the excedence some 5 years earlier – say 2027 to 2037 (depending a little on the time-series you are following).

2023 is starting the year with a mild La Niña, which is being forecast to switch to neutral conditions by mid-year. Should we see signs of an El Niño developing towards the end of the year, that will heavily favor 2024 to be a new record, though not one that is likely to exceed 1.5ºC however you calculate it.

[Aside: In contrast to my reasoning here, the last decadal outlook from the the UK MetOffice/WMO suggested that 2024 has a 50-50 chance of exceeding 1.5ºC, some 5 or so years early than I’d suggest, and that an individual year might reach 1.7ºC above the PI in the next five years! I don’t know why this is different – it could be a larger variance associated with ENSO in their models, it could be a higher present day baseline (but I don’t think so), or a faster warming rate than the linear trend (which could relate to stronger forcings, or higher effective sensitivity). Any insight on this would be welcome!]

References

  1. E. Hawkins, P. Ortega, E. Suckling, A. Schurer, G. Hegerl, P. Jones, M. Joshi, T.J. Osborn, V. Masson-Delmotte, J. Mignot, P. Thorne, and G.J. van Oldenborgh, "Estimating Changes in Global Temperature since the Preindustrial Period", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 98, pp. 1841-1856, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0007.1

Filed Under: Climate Science, El Nino, Featured Story, In the News, Instrumental Record, statistics Tagged With: AIRS, Berkeley Earth, GISTEMP, HadCRUT, NOAA NCEI, RSS, UAH

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123 Responses to "2022 updates to the temperature records"

  1. marcel says

    14 Jan 2023 at 6:23 AM

    Well, I am of the conviction that we ARE already at +1,5°C. The AR6 SPM has a nice picture showing a +1,5°C warming, offset by a ~-0,4°C cooling from sulphur oxide, giving the observed value of ~+1,1°C.

    Reply
  2. Slioch says

    14 Jan 2023 at 7:17 AM

    Whilst an El Nino event obviously causes a positive spike in global average surface temperatures, this is due to heat being transferred from the Pacific ocean to the atmosphere: ie it is a redistribution of energy rather than an increase in the total energy of the atmosphere/oceans/land surface.
    Is there any estimate of how, if at all, an El Nino effects that overall energy budget?
    For example, if the surface waters of parts of the Pacific (and the atmosphere), are warmer than normal during an El Nino it would be expected that they would radiate more energy to space, thus causing an overall decrease in energy. However, I suspect that changes in clouds may have a larger impact.
    Do we know what that is?

    Reply
    • macias shurly says

      15 Jan 2023 at 10:14 PM

      @Slioch says: – ” …during an El Nino it would be expected that they would radiate more energy to space, thus causing an overall decrease in energy. However, I suspect that changes in clouds may have a larger impact.Do we know what that is? ”

      ms: — I suspect the same. La Nina years can be ~0.5°C cooler as they push & hide large amounts of energy into the western Pacific, while El Nino years release more energy stored in the Pacific Ocean.

      The Earth Energy Imbalance @ Top Of Atmosphere (EEI @ TOA) was close to zero W/m² (neither warming nor cooling) in 2010, also a very hot El Nino year, while in 2012, a strong El Nina year, the EEI was increased again to almost 1.5W/m².

      El Nino years thus moderate the increase in global warming and are therefore more advantageous for the earth’s climate in the long term. This is IMO due to the generally higher relative humidity (RH) of El Ninos. In the graph of the Met Office for RH you can recognize the El Nino years 1998, 2010, 2016 by the maximum peaks.

      https://climate.metoffice.cloud/dashfigs/humidity_RH.png

      https://pub.mdpi-res.com/atmosphere/atmosphere-12-01297/article_deploy/html/images/atmosphere-12-01297-g004.png?1634310863

      I am convinced that the falling trend in RH (with a slight increase in absolute humidity) is primarily due to the steady accumulated loss of evaporative landscapes, the desertification & land use change and this is therefore also responsible for a declining cloud albedo, which @ TOA is responsible for much of the increasing EEI & global warming trend. I have described this in more detail on my website.

      https://climateprotectionhardware.wordpress.com/

      Reply
    • Wolfgang says

      18 Jan 2023 at 4:00 PM

      Have you heard of the exotic but interesting hypothesis that some of the global warming is generated by the undersea volcanoes, the “ring of fire” under the Pacific Ocean, and brought to the ocean surface from time to time by the El Nino?
      That the decline in cloud cover has caused some of the global warming according to CERES measurements has been noted recently, but the cause of the decline in cloud cover is as yet unclear as far as I know. It could be an amplification effect of the greenhouse effect, but has not yet been so predicted by climate models.

      Reply
      • jgnfld says

        19 Jan 2023 at 10:15 AM

        The TOTAL heat flow from the Earth to the surface works out to about .08 watts per square meter averaged across the globe. The total heat flow coming down from above is about 1380 watts per square meter.

        This is a factor of about 17,000 to 1. Upwelling land heat is essentially rounding error in terms of what the Sun contributes and is highly unlikely to be a causal factor here.

        Reply
        • Kevin McKinney says

          19 Jan 2023 at 4:32 PM

          Particularly since (AFAICT) there’s absolutely no reason to think that there is any increasing trend in the upward heat flux from said undersea volcanoes.

          Reply
        • Barton Paul Levenson says

          20 Jan 2023 at 7:15 AM

          jgn,

          Because the world catches sunlight on its cross-sectional area (π R^2) but has the total area of a sphere (4 π R^2), the incoming solar flux density is only 1361.5 / 4 = 340 W m^-2. Also, 29.4% of that is reflected away by the Earth’s clouds, ice, and a bit by the surface, so the flux density absorbed by the climate system is only 240 W m^-2. But your objection was correct in essence; the solar heating is overwhelming compared to the geothermal heating.

          Reply
      • Barton Paul Levenson says

        20 Jan 2023 at 7:12 AM

        The “undersea volcanoes” hypothesis flounders on the radioisotope analysis of the new carbon dioxide, which clearly indicates that it’s coming from fossil fuels and not from volcanoes.

        Also, there’s no reason to think undersea volcanoes are now suddenly increasing their output all over the world. This is a hypothesis of desperation by the deniers.

        Reply
        • Carbomontanus says

          8 Feb 2023 at 6:30 AM

          Levenson

          How can you discriminate volcanic CO2 from fossile fuels, when most of the volcanic CO2 comes from heating of fossile carbonates, that are indeed due to fossile bio?

          It seems that levenson is teaching boldly above and beyond his personal experience and competition here again.

          That is not edeucating, it is stupidifying!

          It is flattening the earth and peoples understanding again.

          Reply
  3. Jan says

    14 Jan 2023 at 7:39 AM

    Hello Gavin, i go with Hansen that 1.4-1.5 will be reached very soon, as the EEI is now at extremely high levels and our SOx emissions are decreasing significantly.

    Here is the latest Hansen post on the matter: https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-temperature-in-2022?e=176c11ab68

    And what is very impressive and underlying the above is that we have now record levels of heat accumulation in the western Pacific Ocean (actually its out of the charts now), so the stage is set for an extreme El-NIno or more El-NIno’s the coming years: : https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/wwv/gif/wwva_std_w.gif

    Further we have record increases in methane levels (2022 will be similar or even higher than 2021), Arctic sea ice nearly vanished end of summer over its entire area, snow cover becoming also increasingly vulnerable, with marine heatwaves forming all over the place now.

    My personal guess is that we reach a warming till 2030 with your above-used baseline of about 1.6-1.8 °C (Arctic sea ice in summer is the elephant in the room) in at least one year with no significant cooling afterward.

    But most scary: after the next temperature jump things will get really ugly on our planet as we will be confronted with an even steeper non-linear increase in extreme events than what we observe after the last temperature jump in 2016 far exceeding what we thought possible (the first events we already have today)…

    All the best

    Jan

    Reply
    • Solar Jim says

      16 Jan 2023 at 12:51 PM

      RE Gavin’s: “or a faster warming rate than the linear trend (which could relate to stronger forcings, or higher effective sensitivity). Any insight on this would be welcome!]

      and Jan’s: “Hello Gavin, i go with Hansen that 1.4-1.5 will be reached very soon, as the EEI is now at extremely high levels”

      For Gavin I would include “all of the above” and more (eg. biosphere “response”), including heat flux trend is not linear (the rate is increasing). For Jan, thanks for classifying current (approx. 1.2 Watt/m2) heat flux into the “Earth system” as extreme. However, with increasing Radiative Forcing (now exceeding 4W/m2), due to record annual emissions, that flux (which lags RF) is increasing at approx. 0.5 Watt/m2.

      Mother Earth has an elevated temperature (due to some disease factor) and is going into critical.

      Reply
      • Solar Jim says

        20 Jan 2023 at 3:33 PM

        My EEI heat flux “increasing at approx. 0.5 Watt/m2” is per decade (Hansen et al. submitted paper). I apologize for the omission. This is occurring over the entire surface of the planet, so multiply by that surface area (5.1 x 10 to the 14th power) for total present heating.

        Reply
  4. Martin Bush says

    14 Jan 2023 at 9:50 AM

    Hello Gavin. Is there a solid evidence-based explanation for the approx flatline over the period 1950-1975? I have been searching for some time but never found one.

    Reply
    • William Owens says

      14 Jan 2023 at 11:21 AM

      In the context of major contributor (not claiming sole cause)
      For a starter, review the aerosol pollution record and the direct & the indirect cooling radiative forcings
      Of course, that pollution has come on varying degrees of control in regulatory jurisdictions over time
      So after a rapid rise in the period noted, there has been a reduction in slope, then plateau, and in recent decade or so and decline
      So masking and now reducing masking of warming from the positive GHG radiative forcing
      Summary in IPCC AR6 WG1 Figure 2.10

      Reply
      • Carbomontanus says

        14 Jan 2023 at 5:29 PM

        William Owens

        No, I would not call that ” a plateau” and decline after 2016. It is within the natural noise, the ENSO.

        Look at the longer run. that is supposed to be the climate.

        One can see better if one accepts and assumes those major causes and features, and that is what it is about.

        If you are to secure and to serve data and hope that it will stand and be valid, you better look out for such things. regardless of dicipline.

        I can use my own experience from other diciplines here and follow it, because I am aquainted to such things in empirical servography and oscilloscopy analogue signals which it is based on.

        Also know a bit about free handed drawing having to represent something that ought to be reality.. And of optical illusions., & wishful thinkings..

        Novum organum and idolæ mentis by Francis Bacon, for instance, on pensum first.

        And perhaps Der Spieler, The Gambler, Dostojevski on wishful thinking and what it may come to cost.

        Reply
    • Barton Paul Levenson says

      16 Jan 2023 at 7:21 AM

      MB: Hello Gavin. Is there a solid evidence-based explanation for the approx flatline over the period 1950-1975? I have been searching for some time but never found one.

      BPL: Try here:

      https://bartonlevenson.com/GreatStasis.html

      Reply
    • S.B. Ripman says

      19 Jan 2023 at 12:51 AM

      People can look at. a graph and see different things. You see a “flatline over the period 1950-75.” Others may see an unusual surge in global temps during the period 1939-52. There were of course some rather significant developments during ’39-52, including major war and disruption in the global economy. A strong El Nino in ’41-42 may have been a factor as well.

      Reply
  5. Carbomontanus says

    14 Jan 2023 at 1:28 PM

    This is readable Dr. Schmidt.
    I wonder what I could read more closely out of Fig 1 with Nino and Nina and Neutral.

    Reply
  6. John Ransley says

    14 Jan 2023 at 8:15 PM

    Jan
    “My personal guess is that we reach a warming till 2030 with your above-used baseline of about 1.6-1.8 °C (Arctic sea ice in summer is the elephant in the room) in at least one year with no significant cooling afterward.’

    Not quite sure what that means: “we WON’T reach a warming till 2030”?

    Reply
  7. John Ransley says

    15 Jan 2023 at 12:10 AM

    Behind the paywall, there is a 2600 word article in Murdoch’s Weekend Australian of 14-15Jan23 by their in-house skeptical journalist Graeme Lloyd headlined “Weather ‘extremism’ fans fear in politics of climate”. The Murdoch papers are shunned by Australians concerned about climate change but with a large claimed national daily readership and an agenda to sow doubt about climate change their influence is concerning. In his latest effort Lloyd references concerns by “US climate scientist Judith Curry” that “psychological injury” is being caused to children by “apocalyptic” climate change rhetoric. As well as Curry, Lloyd quotes “fellow US climate scientist John Christy” and “Australian scientist Jennifer Marohasy” rehearsing their claims about the effect of urban heat islands and BOM methodology on surface temperature data analyses: the usual suspects making the usual claims.

    On La Nina Lloyd makes the reasonable point that consecutive La Nina events are “relatively common”—half of all past Australian events since1900—but goes on to argue that three La Nina events in a row—four times since 1900 including the present one—are “less common”, implying three-in-a-row is also normal and natural.

    Lloyd also writes: “The takeaway is that natural variability continues to play its role in climate against a background warming trend. According to BoM, the background heating from climate change has elevated average Australian temperatures by more than 1.47C since 1910. This compares with a global average increase reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of 1.07C since the industrial revolution.

    I understand continental interiors warm faster than the global average. And also that the poles are warming faster. But perhaps when summarising this research for mainstream media consumption its worth pointing out that warming where many people live has already reached 1.5C. Because it’s not widely understood.
    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/explosion-of-extreme-weather-mentions-fans-fear-in-politics-of-climate/news-story/248494e7f41ba2d70512acafe4c31992 ($)

    Reply
    • b fagan says

      15 Jan 2023 at 8:50 PM

      John Ransley, it’s interesting to see what the denial media/pundit industry always leaves out. So when Judith Curry acts concerned about The Kids these days – she never reflects on the distinct possibility that kids would feel a bit safer about the future if they didn’t see that a good many adults are actively promoting a do-nothing approach that will make climate impacts far worse than if the adults in charge were all working to address the problem together. No reason a “conservative” approach to actually fixing climate change wouldn’t have worked if it had ever been pushed by conservatives rather than the deny/delay/distract approach that became the preferred option.

      And the same crowd acted the same for the pandemic – wailing and moaning about the harm done to The Kids from being held out of school – yet their preferred agenda of just rushing herd immunity by infection would have tended to make a lot more of those children lose parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents than actually did suffer that traumatic, permanent loss. But you would never find a comparison of the impact on a child from loss of adult family members vs loss of in-person schooling for a year or two.

      It would be useful if schools started aggressively teaching critical thinking to students, and devoted a semester to critical examination of the kinds of “science” that gets promoted in Murdoch opinion columns.

      Reply
  8. Wolfgang says

    15 Jan 2023 at 9:01 AM

    You write: “For instance, the trends from 2016 to 2022 are -0.12±0.37ºC/dec but with such large uncertainties, the calculation is meaningless.”
    Okay, but how large or small are the uncertainties in the data shown here in the graphs “GISTEMP anomalies (w.r.t. late 19th C) ….” and “Four surface-station based estimate of global warming since 1880” ?
    Because the older measurements were made with glass thermometers and 3 readings per day, the uncertainties here should be greater than the measurements made in the last 40 years or so, which were made with electronic thermometers and data taken continuously in the minute and hour range.

    [Response: The uncertainties in the annual means clearly increase as you go back farther in time, but the dominant uncertainty is spatial coverage, not instrument error or change. See here for more explanation. – gavin]

    Reply
    • Keith Woollard says

      16 Jan 2023 at 3:03 AM

      People weren’t quite as stupid in the olden days as you might imagine. Three readings a day does not mean they have to be lucky to catch the min/max temp.. Glass thermometers will still record min max. There are however a couple of issues with the change to electrical sensors
      1) In locations that only took readings 2 or 3 times a day, there is a strong chance that the afternoon max may be missed or reduced
      2) Glass thermometers have a natural high cut filter. Electrical ones do not. WMO guidelines say that electrical readings should be averaged over some minutes. This does not always happen, and never happens in Australia.. The hot part of the day is much more variable than the low and so the effect of using non-filtered readings is to increase the recorded temperatures compared with glass. On a typical hot day in Perth, this discrepancy can be greater than 1 degree

      The largest source of uncertainty in the older data however is the huge area (70%) of extremely poor sampling pre-ARGO

      Reply
    • Wolfgang says

      18 Jan 2023 at 3:37 PM

      Thanks, Gavin
      But when the GISTEMP data have uncertainties from 0.05 °C for the last 50 years and then change to 0.15 °C until 1880, as NASA writes, why you write her in this Blog that there uncertainties of ±0.37ºC/dec ?

      [Response: The first two numbers are the uncertainties in the estimate of a single annual mean number (in the last decade and in the late 19th C). The 0.37 is the uncertainty of the trend over the short and noisy period of the last 8 years. – gavin]

      Reply
      • Keith Woollard says

        18 Jan 2023 at 9:16 PM

        Gavin – “noisy period of the last 8 years”

        This is based on what? newspaper headlines? Here is a plot of the Hadcrut4 standard deviation and variance on a lagging 8 year basis:-

        https://photos.app.goo.gl/SjEDzWWPbgTzVjfb7

        and for comparison, here is an ngram of “climeate extremes”
        https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=climate+extremes&year_start=1850&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0#

        Reply
      • Wolfgang says

        19 Jan 2023 at 8:32 AM

        Gavin, sorry, but I didn’t understand why the uncertainty over an 8 year period is 0.37 and over a 50 year period is 0.1. Every data point has an uncertainty. If that uncertainty is 0.1 for each data point over the last 50 years, then it should be the same for the last 8 years.
        James Hansen in his June 2021 blog shows a hiatus from 2016 to 2020/2021. And the data series from the various official measurements at woodfortrees/interactive show a slight decrease from 2016 to 2021, which is clear with the additional plot of the linear trend.

        [Response: The uncertainty in a trend is given by the deviations from the line, not the uncertainty in the individual years. Basically, this goes up if the line is not a good fit – and given the interannual ups and downs, linear fits over short periods are very uncertain. Note to that the 0.05ºC uncertainty in a year is not even the same unit as the uncertainty in the trend (ºC/dec).- gavin]

        Reply
  9. Steve Johnston says

    15 Jan 2023 at 5:03 PM

    The sun is the same temp every year. The earth is the same size every year. I suspect that if we could actually measure every cubic meter of the planet we would find the planet’s temperature steadily rising with little variation.

    [Response: I don’t think so. ENSO and other chaotic elements of the climate system are the dominant cause of the interannual variability, not spatial sampling. – gavin]

    Reply
  10. jacob l says

    15 Jan 2023 at 5:30 PM

    I was thinking about temperature change and sampling.
    it’s worth mentioning sea level rise.
    while year to year variability is greater than rise, within 3 years that’s not the case.
    For surface temperatures it’s closer to 18 years.

    Reply
  11. colin summerhayes says

    16 Jan 2023 at 5:18 AM

    It might be wise to start posting both the average global land and ocean temperatures separately so that we can compare them with the overall global average. I think I’m correct in saying that the land average is close to 1.9C while the ocean average is close to 0.85C. Since most of use live on land, surely the land average is the one people should be thinking about?

    [Response: We show that here, and you are roughly right, the last 5 years compared to the late 19th C, have land warming by 1.8ºC and ocean by 0.8ºC. But note the Paris Agreement limits are defined as the global mean, so they aren’t really comparable to the land-only numbers. – gavin]

    Reply
    • Carbomontanus says

      19 Jan 2023 at 4:58 PM

      @ c summerhayes

      Really?

      I never felt it that way, but I often felt that regional trends that are long enough to be reliable and clearly different from each other would be useful.

      Such as Eurasia east and west of Ural, the eastern arctic and the western arctic that are clearly different, the southern and the northern Europe, eastern and western and southern north america and so on. Then the Australians will also believe us.

      And this could also be given physical explainations so we can see and follow it for ourselves.

      Also the main oceanic areas, “the seven seas” could be treated that way.

      Climatic zones are allready well defined so it can be understood from anxient on. Regional predictions would follow up that well known tradition. Köppens climate categories in the old teachbooks of physical geography.

      Yes Hr schmidt, 2 very fameous Köppens indicators wild oak and apple are coming over the hill right here, from southwest to northeast., so I can see for myself, The january isoterm on the map is clearly mooving to northeast here. IPCC has got a point.

      And all that rain….. even in winter…. we can forget skiing and even skating….. and I had to secure the cellar- pumps that run and work more and more often..

      For people to plan for the future, such rather regional aspects are important.

      Make it practical and urgent practical for people where they live…..Then they will believe it and tell their children..

      Reply
  12. Paul Pukite (@whut) says

    19 Jan 2023 at 1:35 AM

    Besides ENSO, many researchers have also observed a correlation of global T variability to the AMO time-series, and this is just not the multi-decadal part of AMO. This brings up the question of whether some combination of AMO and ENSO would work better as a variability compensation since AMO and ENSO are not correlated with one another.

    The most convenient way to observe the correlation is to use the online WoodForTrees graph plotter, choosing AMO and HADCRUT4 for example (with a bit of detrending of the latter)

    https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1920/mean:6/scale:0.8/to:2022/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1920/offset:0.3/detrend:0.8/mean:6/to:2022

    Is AMO a real oscillation? I say yes, as it is straightforward to model AMO via a Laplace’s Tidal Equations approach

    Reply
  13. Victor says

    19 Jan 2023 at 2:47 AM

    MB: Hello Gavin. Is there a solid evidence-based explanation for the approx flatline over the period 1950-1975? I have been searching for some time but never found one.

    BPL: Try here:

    https://bartonlevenson.com/GreatStasis.html

    V: We’ve been over this before, Bart. First of all, as you know, I’ve already demonstrated the weakness of the industrial aerosol explanation we see so often. If such aerosols had a significant cooling effect as claimed, then we’d expect to see evidence of underlying warming during the period in question in regions where industrial activity was absent or minimal. Only, as I’ve demonstrated with several specific examples, we don’t.

    Moreover, if the additional factors you list were so important, then why would they suddenly de-activate during the period from the late 70’s through the late 90’s when temperatures shot up so dramatically?

    Finally, the misleading nature of the scattergram you present in the link you provided ( https://bartonlevenson.com/CO218502019.html ) was made clear in a blog post I presented some time ago: http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/10/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-8-tale.html

    As your scattergram is essentially the same as the one I analyzed in that post, the problem is the same as the one I revealed in that post, which I urge you once again to study.

    Reply
    • CCHolley says

      19 Jan 2023 at 4:53 PM

      Victor says: If such aerosols had a significant cooling effect as claimed, then we’d expect to see evidence of underlying warming during the period in question in regions where industrial activity was absent or minimal. Only, as I’ve demonstrated with several specific examples, we don’t.

      The effect of aerosols on global temperatures was discussed in the past in great detail on this forum. References were made to peer reviewed studies that show that what Victor states here is an assumption made by someone not versed in the science. But of course, once again, Victor, the musicologist with no formal training in science, claims superior knowledge to those experts even after all this was explained in great detail. Typical Victor, rinse, lather, repeat.

      Reply
      • Ray Ladbury says

        20 Jan 2023 at 1:03 PM

        I think you mean “blather, rinse, repeat.”

        Reply
    • nigelj says

      19 Jan 2023 at 9:06 PM

      Oh please, not this idiotic nonsense from Victor YET AGAIN. If its not bore hole material by now, what is? Why doesn’t this website enforce its own rules? We all need a shakeup at times.

      Reply
  14. Kevin McKinney says

    19 Jan 2023 at 4:12 PM

    V: We’ve been over this before…

    KDM: Indeed we have.

    V: …I’ve already demonstrated the weakness of the industrial aerosol explanation we see so often. If such aerosols had a significant cooling effect as claimed, then we’d expect to see evidence of underlying warming during the period in question in regions where industrial activity was absent or minimal.

    KDM: And we’ve pointed out to you that aerosols are not so precisely co-located as all that–tropospheric aerosols get ‘smeared’ over thousands of kilometers. See:

    https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/trop.aer/

    Still less is the net warming (or cooling) effect; circulation is after all mostly a hemispheric affair.

    V: Moreover, if the additional factors you list were so important, then why would they suddenly de-activate during the period from the late 70’s through the late 90’s when temperatures shot up so dramatically?

    KDM: Because from the 70s, the positive forcing from GHGs increasingly outpaced the negative forcing of sulphates. (Presumably this was partially due to the contemporaneous adoption of sulphate scrubbers, which inhibited the growth of aerosol emissions, but not those of GHGs. Aerosol emissions continued to grow more or less linearly, barring a couple of years in the 80s, but GHG emissions accelerated, in your word, “dramatically.”)

    See:

    https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/

    Maybe you’d like to make a note of all this, so we don’t have to go over it yet again, some time in the indefinite future?

    Reply
  15. Victor says

    20 Jan 2023 at 2:08 AM

    First I’d like to clear up the notion that I am simply a “musicologist” with no scientific training. Not true. On my high school graduation I was presented with the Bausch + Lomb award for excellence in science. In addition I earned perfect scores (100%) on all the NY State regents math exams, earning a full college scholarship as a result. As both an undergraduate and graduate student I studied perception psychology and linguistics, with extensive studies in anthropology, including training in basic statistical methods. In addition I’ve done a considerable amount of research in semiotics, culminating in a paper published in the flagship journal Semiotica. Additionally I’ve done a considerable amount of independent study in the philosophy of science, leading me to fully appreciate the importance of critical thinking, a skill that seems seriously lacking in these threads.. I have a long list of peer reviewed publications and have functioned from time to time myself as a peer reviewer.

    In response to Kevin McKinney:

    To refresh your memory, a presentation of 10 temperature graphs from 10 different remote regions can be found here: ( http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2021/03/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-10.html ) In every case we see no evidence of warming from ca. 1940 through the mid to late 70’s. This makes it impossible to argue that the expected warming trend had been negated during this period by the presence of industrial aerosols, since such a trend would have been evident in regions where little to no aerosol emissions had occurred. Unlike the wide distribution of CO2, aerosols quickly dissipate, as noted in the following paper:

    “The distribution of anthropogenic aerosols’ climate effects depends on the geographic distribution of the aerosols themselves. Yet many scientific and policy discussions ignore the role of emission location when evaluating aerosols’ climate impacts. . . This suggests that climate accounting should differentiate between aerosols emitted from different countries and that aerosol emissions’ evolving geographic distribution will impact the global-scale magnitude and spatial distribution of climate change. . . Aerosols’ heterogeneous spatial distribution is recognized to influence their overall climate impact relative to more homogeneous climate forcers, like carbon dioxide.” (Divergent global-scale temperature effects from identical aerosols emitted in different regions, as published in Nature, August 2018)

    KDM: . . . from the 70s, the positive forcing from GHGs increasingly outpaced the negative forcing of sulphates. (Presumably this was partially due to the contemporaneous adoption of sulphate scrubbers, which inhibited the growth of aerosol emissions, but not those of GHGs. Aerosol emissions continued to grow more or less linearly, barring a couple of years in the 80s, but GHG emissions accelerated, in your word, “dramatically.”)

    V: That was a typo and if you look again at my blog post you’ll see that it was corrected. It was temperatures that accelerated dramatically, not CO2 levels, which rose at a more or less steady pace from ca. 1950 through the 21st century. It’s thus difficult to argue that the accelerating temperature rise during the last 20 years of the previous century was due to accelerating CO2 levels, as there was no such acceleration. As to the effect of sulphate scrubbers, no such scrubbers were mandated in China, yet we see essentially the same temperature upsurge in East Asia as elsewhere.

    Reply
    • nigelj says

      20 Jan 2023 at 9:15 PM

      Victor,

      “Unlike the wide distribution of CO2, aerosols quickly dissipate, as noted in the following paper…..”

      I assume you understand that the wind can carry aerosols long distances and even if they are dispersed so they are at low concentrations they can still have some cooling effect. Single volcanic eruptions can cool wide areas of the planet. There could be other additional reasons for the flat temperatures mid last century including ocean cycles.

      “It was temperatures that accelerated dramatically, not CO2 levels, which rose at a more or less steady pace from ca. 1950 through the 21st century.”

      Although the graph of the Mauna Loa CO2 levels is roughly linear looking over time (it has a slight curve), actual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increased over time, (about 320 ppm in 1960 to about 420pppm now) and higher concentrations have a larger warming effect. Hence the acceleration of warming after about 1970 (coupled with the fact that aerosols were being reduced around that time). Victor still cant seem to understand all that and he clearly never will, or doesn’t want to. Because then his theory comes crashing down and that can be painful for the ego..

      Reply
      • Ray Ladbury says

        21 Jan 2023 at 11:00 AM

        Yes, that and the fact that aerosols were emitted continually prior to the 70s. It used to be that the Sun in Los Angeles was yellow or red at noon!

        Reply
      • Victor says

        21 Jan 2023 at 11:24 AM

        What is there in “all that” do you insist I must learn to understand?

        That “the wind can carry aerosols long distances and even if they are dispersed so they are at low concentrations they can still have some cooling effect”? Low concentrations have low effects, so what is your point?

        “Single volcanic eruptions can cool wide areas of the planet”? True, but so what? Volcanic eruptions spew aerosols high up in the troposphere, which enables them to spread over a wide area, whereas industrial aerosols are emitted at ground level.

        “There could be other additional reasons for the flat temperatures including ocean cycles. “? Yes of course. Ocean cycles are part of the natural variation that’s the most likely cause of the cooling trend.

        ” , , , actual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increased over time, (about 320 ppm in 1960 to about 420pppm now) and higher concentrations have a larger warming effect.”?

        But the higher CO2 concentrations were largely due to increased industrial activity, which would have produced increased aerosol emissions. While efforts to reduce aerosol pollution were enacted in Europe and the USA, no such efforts were made in China or India, yet temperature increase in these regions was comparable to the worldwide increase during that period (late 70’s to late 90’s).

        “Victor still cant seem to understand all that and he clearly never will, or doesn’t want to. Because then his theory comes crashing down and that can be painful for the ego..”

        I have no theory, nigel. You’re the one promoting a theory, not me. What’s more I have no ego engagement in this issue whatsoever, which is why I never get all worked up over these discussions and see no need to make offensive remarks.

        As you should be able to see, nigel (but will refuse to, obviously), there is no “all that” there, just a set of dubious assumptions with no evidence to back them up.

        Reply
        • Kevin McKinney says

          21 Jan 2023 at 4:53 PM

          Reiterating again:

          V: We’ve been over this before…

          KDM: Indeed we have.

          And have… and have…

          Reply
        • Kevin McKinney says

          21 Jan 2023 at 5:05 PM

          As a hopefully interesting (and hopefully non-tendentious) comment, it interesting to note Fig. 2 in the Persad & Caldeira (2018) paper Victor cited, and which I discussed a little elsewhere.

          https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05838-6

          In 7 of the 8 cases considered, aerosol emissions–simulated ones, obviously–ended up causing a *warming* trend in some region in the opposite hemisphere. (Emissions from Western Europe were the exception, possibly because that is the most northerly region considered. Mute Arctic warming, and you mute global warming, too? India is at the opposite end of the spectrum; its aerosol emissions barely managed to nudge the globe in a cooling direction at all–just -0.02 C.)

          The very inhomogenous trends and their global scale also offers some food for thought.

          Reply
        • nigelj says

          21 Jan 2023 at 7:24 PM

          Victor,

          “Low concentrations (of aerosols) have low effects, so what is your point?”

          The point is even low concentrations of aerosols well away from their source could explain the flat temperatures last century in isolated locations around the planet, because it wouldn’t take many aerosols to mask the weak warming from low concentrations of CO2 mid last century.

          And even if aerosols were not entirely responsible, aerosols are known to cause cooling from numerous lines of evidence, so must have had at least SOME effect even well away from their source. That much is simple logic. I suspect ocean cycles probably ADDED to the cooling effect of aerosols.

          “But the higher CO2 concentrations were largely due to increased industrial activity, which would have produced increased aerosol emissions.”

          No. Because by the 1970s industry was fitting sulphate aerosol scrubbers to remove aerosols.. Hence why warming became obvious after the 1970s along with the effect of higher CO2 concentrations.

          “I have no theory, nigel.”

          Your theory, or proposition if you prefer that word, is that aerosols are not to blame for cooling mid last century.

          “and see no need to make offensive remarks.”

          You are polite. So you get points for politeness, but no points from me for your pontifications on the science of this particular issue.

          Reply
        • Carbomontanus says

          22 Jan 2023 at 4:59 AM

          @ victor

          Where did you have your holy victorious progressive inauguration and learnings- trainings of chosmology and systematic geopysics physical and political geography, & sphaerical geometry from?

          Try and be honest now, looki back into yousrself and betray it to us.

          That may help you a lot in your performance.

          I might be able to help you then if you can tell that. .

          Reply
        • CCHolley says

          22 Jan 2023 at 8:29 PM

          What is there in “all that” do you insist I must learn to understand?

          There has been significant discourse on aerosols on these RealClimate discussion threads in the past. But Victor either failed to read the responses and linked peer reviewed papers or completely failed to understand them. Typical behavior of Victor is to completely ignore the information and evidence presented and then after some time return to RealClimate and regurgitate his silliness.

          So once again we are compelled to repeat the information. Unfortunately this is oh so tiresome and boorish. But that’s life with our dear Victor, a musicologist with no formal training in the physical sciences.

          Anyway, in brief, the effect of aerosols on climate goes far beyond the direct radiative effects which Victor appears to be fixated on.

          Aerosols have a huge effect on clouds. They promote their formation increasing cloud coverage, make clouds more reflective increasing the amount of sunlight reflected by the clouds, and increase cloud lifetimes. These effects all increase cooling and extend the regional effect of the aerosols.

          Furthermore, the reflection of sunlight by aerosols and clouds have a significant effect on vertical temperature gradients and temperature gradients drive atmospheric circulation. Therefore, aerosols can and do effect the distribution of the reduced temperatures well beyond their areas of actual spacial coverage, even globally.

          This is why general circulation models are used to show how aerosols effect global temperatures. And studies using these models clearly show that SO2 emissions from North America and Europe during the period of 1958-1980 likely had a significant global effect on temperatures.

          In addition, one of the major lines of evidence that aerosols masked warming is that during the period of 1958-1980, night time temperatures continued to rise, which is exactly what would be expected with increasing greenhouse gas levels restricting heat loss to space. Natural variation nor ocean cycles can account for this nighttime warming. This is real evidence and not assumptive.

          Some references:

          Impact of global dimming and brightening on global warming
          https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028031

          Local and remote mean and extreme temperature response to regional aerosol emissions reductions
          https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/20/3009/2020/

          Reply
    • Paul Pukite (@whut) says

      21 Jan 2023 at 9:34 AM

      Victor Grauer should consider just signing with his real name from now on. I asked ChatGPT something like what paper did Victor write in Semiotica https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/semi.1993.94.3-4.233/html

      Reply
    • Kevin McKinney says

      21 Jan 2023 at 4:48 PM

      V: “…since such a trend would have been evident in regions where little to no aerosol emissions had occurred.”

      Nope. That is merely reiterating what you had previously stated. Let me reiterate my first response:

      …aerosols are not so precisely co-located as all that–tropospheric aerosols get ‘smeared’ over thousands of kilometers. See:

      https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/trop.aer/

      Still less is the net warming (or cooling) effect; circulation is after all mostly a hemispheric affair.

      (Others have made essentially the same points both on this thread and previously.)

      V: That was a typo…

      You misunderstand; I was saying in my own voice–other than your quoted word, “dramatically”–that GHG concentration forcing growth accelerated post-1970. Those wishing to corroborate that may do so at the following link, given in my previous comment as well.

      https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/

      The GHG forcings graphed for CMIP5, CMIP6, and also Hansen (2011) all show a marked acceleration between ~1970 & ~1990. (I’d embed images of these graphs here, if I could.) If you look at those graphs you’ll find that you are incorrect in asserting that “CO2 levels… rose at a more or less steady pace from ca. 1950 through the 21st century…”

      V: “As to the effect of sulphate scrubbers, no such scrubbers were mandated in China, yet we see essentially the same temperature upsurge…”

      Yet another reiteration of the same fallacy. You attempt to support your assertion by quoting a few words from Persad & Caldeira (2018), but you seem not to have absorbed the content of the paper as a whole very deeply. The first “result” reported is:

      Our simulations reveal substantial inequality in the global-mean temperature response to identical total annual aerosol emissions in each region…

      The second result:

      There are also important regional distinctions in the degree to which the temperature changes due to aerosol emissions are likely to be concentrated in the emitting region versus being felt globally…

      Given the numerous other factors impacting regional temperature evolution, it’s no surprise that attempts to connect regional aerosol and temperature trends are not straightforward.

      Instructive, in that regard, is a quarter of an hour spent playing with GISTEMP mapping, setting the time period for “the last 20 years of the previous century.”

      Reply
      • Kevin McKinney says

        21 Jan 2023 at 4:49 PM

        The GISTEMP mapping tool link, for convenience:

        https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

        Reply
      • Victor says

        23 Jan 2023 at 2:01 AM

        V: “…since such a trend would have been evident in regions where little to no aerosol emissions had occurred.”

        Kevin: Nope. That is merely reiterating what you had previously stated. Let me reiterate my first response:

        …aerosols are not so precisely co-located as all that–tropospheric aerosols get ‘smeared’ over thousands of kilometers. See:

        https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/trop.aer/

        V: Clearly that would depend on how high up in the troposphere the aerosols originated. Volcanic aerosols can spread widely, industrial aerosols, originating at or near ground level, do not. As should be obvious.

        K: Still less is the net warming (or cooling) effect; circulation is after all mostly a hemispheric affair.

        V: Irrelevant.

        K: You attempt to support your assertion by quoting a few words from Persad & Caldeira (2018), but you seem not to have absorbed the content of the paper as a whole very deeply.

        V: First of all, this is an extremely complex paper in which all sorts of factors are considered using a variety of different methods. Secondly it is based on more or less contemporary conditions — very different from those in effect during the period in question. Finally, regardless of what you think you may have found here or there in this paper, the conclusion, as stated at the outset of the “Discussion” section is unequivocal:

        “These results demonstrate that geographic location substantially influences the cooling potential of a given aerosol emission. Crucially, countries that historically have or presently do account for the majority of anthropogenic aerosol emissions—Europe, the U.S., and China—are the regions whose emissions have the largest cooling potential.”

        Reply
        • Ray Ladbury says

          24 Jan 2023 at 9:38 AM

          Weaktor,
          Do me a favor and look up the logical fallacy of special pleading…

          Reply
          • Victor says

            29 Jan 2023 at 1:33 PM

            I didn’t need to look up “special pleading,” thank you Ray. I know very well what it entails.

            When a rising temperature is expected according to one’s theory, yet no rising temperature is apparent, one then claims that the expected rise must have been masked by the emission of certain aerosols which just happen to be produced by the same process supposedly responsible for the expected (but nonexistent) temperature rise, THAT is special pleading.

            When the evidence reveals no sign of the expected warming in regions where the presence of such aerosols was either minimal or non existent, yet one insists nonetheless that even trace quantities of aerosols would have the same cooling effect as in regions where the aerosols originated, THAT is special pleading.

            When one insists that a long-term correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures exists, despite the fact that the ONLY correlation apparent according to the evidence was limited to a single 20 year period, THAT is special pleading.

          • Ray Ladbury says

            30 Jan 2023 at 9:07 AM

            Ah, so it is clear that you aren’t even to the level of understanding logical fallacies yet–you fail at even basic logic. You posit that the theory posits that the temperature must rise monotonically. It does not. It says that all other things being equal–that is, ceteris paribus–the temperature will rise. But ceteris ain’t paribus. We know that aerosols can block sunlight–whether those aerosols are anthropogenic or volcanic in origin. We know solar irradiance fluctuates. We know the ENSO modulates cloud cover and this changes the planet’s albedo. We also know that there are other influences at play that influence the temperature year to year and month to month. However, Tamino showed quite convincingly that if you correct the temperature record for the influence of the first three factors above, you get much closer to a monotonic rise.

            So, the entire premise of your statement–indeed of your entire output here at RC–is false, so your conclusion is irrelevant. BASIC LOGIC!!!

          • John Pollack says

            30 Jan 2023 at 10:43 AM

            Special pleading is probably an understatement.

            V: When one insists that a long-term correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures exists, despite the fact that the ONLY correlation apparent according to the evidence was limited to a single 20 year period, THAT is special pleading.

            J: When one has to reject the long-established mathematical definition of correlation in order to insist that a particular 20 year period chosen ex post facto represents the only “apparent” correlation in a long-running time series exhibiting very strong (above 0.8) correlation, and do it despite repeated corrections… I leave it to the reader to decide whether this is special pleading, errant and obdurate misuse of a simple statistical technique in the service of one’s hypothesis, or deliberate and serial promotion of a blatant falsehood.

            For the most recent detailed discussion of this issue, I refer anyone unfamiliar with it, and lots of time on their hands to the Dec. 2021 archives, especially the latter postings.

          • Barton Paul Levenson says

            31 Jan 2023 at 7:45 AM

            V: When a rising temperature is expected according to one’s theory, yet no rising temperature is apparent, one then claims that the expected rise must have been masked by the emission of certain aerosols which just happen to be produced by the same process supposedly responsible for the expected (but nonexistent) temperature rise, THAT is special pleading.

            No, it is not. It is a testable hypothesis. I tested it and it works. So your analysis is, as usual, wrong.

            https://bartonlevenson.com/GreatStasis.html

            Your analysis also contains a straw man fallacy. No climate scientist ever, anywhere, said that CO2 is the only thing that affects temperature. But that is implied in your example.

          • Barton Paul Levenson says

            31 Jan 2023 at 7:48 AM

            V: When one insists that a long-term correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures exists, despite the fact that the ONLY correlation apparent according to the evidence was limited to a single 20 year period, THAT is special pleading.

            BPL: That’s a lie and you know it, Victor. I’ve demonstrated it to you many, many times, yet you keep posting it. Stop lying, Victor.

          • John Pollack says

            3 Feb 2023 at 9:47 AM

            V: “the long-established mathematical definition of correlation” must be tempered by critical thinking, if not simple common sense… etc.

            J: This is a repeat of the December 2021 discussion. Common sense says that there is a very strong long term correlation between CO2 levels and global surface temperature. In general, low CO2 and low temperatures are found together, high CO2 and high temperatures. Manipulations of the definition of “correlation” don’t change that. Looking at incomplete subsets of the data don’t change it. Introducing more noise in the data by oversampling doesn’t change it.

            Why do temperatures remain high and continue to increase if not CO2? You still haven’t answered.

        • Kevin McKinney says

          28 Jan 2023 at 2:27 PM

          And what does “cooling potential” mean in Persad et al? You don’t explain it, Victor, but Persad et al do. And it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with your contention.

          (I’d suggest anyone in doubt read the paper as linked above, because Victor is selling a pig in a poke here.)

          Reply
          • Victor says

            2 Feb 2023 at 2:06 AM

            “We know that aerosols can block sunlight–whether those aerosols are anthropogenic or volcanic in origin. We know solar irradiance fluctuates. We know the ENSO modulates cloud cover and this changes the planet’s albedo. We also know that there are other influences at play that influence the temperature year to year and month to month.”

            Special pleading.

            “Tamino showed quite convincingly that if you correct the temperature record for the influence of the first three factors above, you get much closer to a monotonic rise.”

            Special pleading. If the data doesn’t support your theory, feel free to “correct” the data. Why not?

            “When one has to reject the long-established mathematical definition of correlation in order to insist that a particular 20 year period chosen ex post facto represents the only “apparent” correlation in a long-running time series exhibiting very strong (above 0.8) correlation, and do it despite repeated corrections… I leave it to the reader to decide whether this is special pleading, errant and obdurate misuse of a simple statistical technique in the service of one’s hypothesis, or deliberate and serial promotion of a blatant falsehood.”

            “the long-established mathematical definition of correlation” must be tempered by critical thinking, if not simple common sense. As demonstrated by Anscombe’s quartet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet), the math can be deceptive — as it certainly is in this case. A visual analysis of the scattergrams provided by certain “experts” posting here makes it clear that, once the timing is taken into consideration, then regardless of the math, there is no long term correlation between temperature and CO2 levels. To fall back on “the math” while ignoring the temporal distribution of the data is – yes – special pleading.

          • Barton Paul Levenson says

            3 Feb 2023 at 9:18 AM

            “We know that aerosols can block sunlight–whether those aerosols are anthropogenic or volcanic in origin. We know solar irradiance fluctuates. We know the ENSO modulates cloud cover and this changes the planet’s albedo. We also know that there are other influences at play that influence the temperature year to year and month to month.”

            V: Special pleading.

            BPL: No, Victor, not “special pleading.” You don’t understand what “special pleading” means. It’s like someone saying a cake is made of flour, water, eggs, sugar, butter, and baking powder, and you insisting that if flour alone can’t account for the cake, the other ingredients listed are “special pleading.”

            Don’t use words if you don’t understand what they mean.

    • jgnfld says

      22 Jan 2023 at 5:07 PM

      Victor states his life experience is such that it is “including training in basic statistical methods.”!!!

      Since he has clearly on scores if not hundreds of occasions has shown he has not one single clue what a correlation even is in any formal geometric or algebraic sense, I question the value of his life experience. He may have been given relevant experiences but he clearly has not benefited from them.

      Reply
    • Ray Ladbury says

      23 Jan 2023 at 9:01 AM

      Weaktor says he had “training in basic statistical methods.”

      Blink, blink, blink.

      Hmm, guess it didn’t take.

      Reply
      • Victor says

        26 Jan 2023 at 1:44 AM

        Statistics won’t do you much good, Ray, if you can’t add 2 + 2.

        Reply
        • Carbomontanus says

          28 Jan 2023 at 2:54 AM

          Hr. V. Grauer,

          You must also know how to draw the square root of the summa summarum and to suggest that first, …. else you learnt no statistics. and betray that you are just a bluff from the side of the Progressive Party with P..

          Reply
        • Ray Ladbury says

          28 Jan 2023 at 8:50 AM

          So you are saying your innumeracy extends to basic arithmetic, and that is why you are a statistical idiot?

          Reply
        • Kevin McKinney says

          28 Jan 2023 at 2:28 PM

          “If.”

          Reply
  16. Victor says

    23 Jan 2023 at 4:19 PM

    nigelj says

    Victor,

    “Low concentrations (of aerosols) have low effects, so what is your point?”

    The point is even low concentrations of aerosols well away from their source could explain the flat temperatures last century in isolated locations around the planet, because it wouldn’t take many aerosols to mask the weak warming from low concentrations of CO2 mid last century.

    And even if aerosols were not entirely responsible, aerosols are known to cause cooling from numerous lines of evidence, so must have had at least SOME effect even well away from their source. That much is simple logic. I suspect ocean cycles probably ADDED to the cooling effect of aerosols.

    V: These are assumptions, nigel, based on wishful thinking. Whereas I’ve provided evidence. According to the EVIDENCE, there is NO sign of an underlying warming trend during the period in question in regions where little to no industrial activity took place. If you want to argue otherwise you need to provide us with evidence. Science is based on evidence, not assumptions.

    “But the higher CO2 concentrations were largely due to increased industrial activity, which would have produced increased aerosol emissions.”

    nigel;: No. Because by the 1970s industry was fitting sulphate aerosol scrubbers to remove aerosols.. Hence why warming became obvious after the 1970s along with the effect of higher CO2 concentrations.

    V: According to the EVIDENCE, no such scrubbers were employed in China or India, or indeed anywhere else except the USA and Europe. Thus, in most parts of the world, aerosol production would have risen along with the rise in industrial activity that produced CO2 emissions. Yet, according to the EVIDENCE, the rise in aerosols in these regions failed to produce any discernable cooling effect. Temperatures rose in these regions at roughly the same rate as it did worldwide.

    “I have no theory, nigel.”

    nigel: Your theory, or proposition if you prefer that word, is that aerosols are not to blame for cooling mid last century.

    V: The notion that “aerosols are not to blame for cooling mid last century” is YOUR theory. Based on assumptions, NOT evidence. I have no theory to explain what happened during that period, but I do see the glaring weaknesses in yours. The critical assessment of a theory is not a theory, but simply a critique.

    Reply
    • Victor says

      24 Jan 2023 at 1:12 AM

      Correction. Nigel’s theory is that aerosols ARE to blame for the cooling. Sorry for the mix-up.

      Reply
    • nigelj says

      27 Jan 2023 at 8:51 PM

      Victor.

      The ‘evidence’ you quoted comprises some locations mid last century that were isolated from aerosol sources but still had flat temperatures. However you haven’t convinced us that aerosols cant spread widely and have a cooling effect on those locations. The paper you quoted does not say aerosols dont spread widely form their source. It only says some aerosols don’t ( originating in India for example).

      Aerosols spread widely because of the way the global circulatory system and winds work. And read the comment up the page by CCHolley which has specific research on how aerosols behave.. Plenty of evidence there. You haven’t shown any errors in the material he quotes.

      You are well educated, but you persist with some strange ideas about things. There are elements of anthropogenic warming theory that deserve some healthy scepticism, but you are missing those, and focusing on things like the explanations for flat temperatures, and correlations of warming and CO2 last century, that are not contentious or suspicious looking to me. Even the hard core degree qualified denialists dont make a big issue about those things, because explanations are obvious and sufficient, and simple maths tests show a good correlation. For gods sake investigate some other issue and move on.

      Reply
  17. nigelj says

    23 Jan 2023 at 5:48 PM

    Victor has suggested up the page (paraphrasing) that aerosols can’t explain the flat period of temperatures mid last century on the basis that some locations far distant from any aerosol source still show flat temperatures, and that aerosols would stay close to their source, so something else must be responsible for the flat temperatures. He used the following paper to argue this:

    Divergent global-scale temperature effects from identical aerosols emitted in different regions

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05838-6

    And he referred particularly to this quote back up the page: “Aerosols’ heterogeneous spatial distribution is recognized to influence their overall climate impact relative to more homogeneous climate forcers, like carbon dioxide”

    However he failed to mention this quote from the study “In other words, regions like Western Europe, Indonesia, and (to a slightly lesser extent) the United States strongly export the climate impacts of their (aerosol)emissions, while regions like India more strongly experience the cooling effects of their own (aerosol) emissions.” (The coloured maps show this quite well).

    This suggests to me that Victor may have missed reading a part of the study, and that aerosols do frequently spread quite widely from their source on air currents, and still have cooling effects on locations that are distant from the source.

    Reply
  18. Don Williams says

    24 Jan 2023 at 3:17 PM

    As a newcomer — and Without taking a side in this argument — does anyone have any estimates for the uncertainty in the cited aerosol models? E.g, how spatially dense was the collected data that was input to the models, what was the uncertainty in the measurements, effects of interpolation and resulting uncertainty in the computed temperature effects.

    Reply
    • Don Williams says

      26 Jan 2023 at 11:43 PM

      PS I had checked “START HERE” for info on this subject. This 2007 article from New Scientist seemed the most relevant:
      Climate myths: The cooling after 1940 shows CO2 does not cause warming | New Scientist

      However, Fig SPM-2 of the article shows Radiative Forcing from CO2 to be 1.66 (1.49 to 1.83) W/m3. However, the Total Direct Effect for Aerosol ranged from -0.9 to -0.1 and for Cloud Albedo Effect it ranges from -1.8 to -0.3. That is a lot of uncertainty –from Major influence to No Influence
      If there is a latter peer-reviewed article in a reputable journal that settles the matter, then perhaps it could be added to the START HERE list for citation.

      Reply
      • Don Williams says

        30 Jan 2023 at 2:51 PM

        PPS Quote from the 2007 New Scientist article:

        “Then there is the question of how all the different aerosols affect clouds. Climate scientists acknowledge that the aerosol issue is one of the key uncertainties in their understanding.”

        Reply
  19. macias shurly says

    29 Jan 2023 at 1:52 PM

    @Gavin says: – ” What influence does ENSO really have?

    It’s well known (among readers here, I assume), that ENSO influences the interannual variability of the climate system and the annual mean temperatures. El Niño events enhance global warming (as in 1998, 2010, 2016 etc.) and La Niña events (2011, 2018, 2021, 2022 etc.) impart a slight cooling. ”

    ms: — Sorry Gavin – it’s the other way around. El Nino years mitigate the increase in global warming & EEI and are therefore far more beneficial to humanity and the galloping warming Earth climate in the long term.

    https://pub.mdpi-res.com/atmosphere/atmosphere-12-01297/article_deploy/html/images/atmosphere-12-01297-g004.png?1634310863

    La Nina years can be ~0.5°C cooler than El Nino years because they channel large amounts of energy into the ocean depths in the western Pacific, El Nino years are characterized by the better release of the stored energy in the Pacific Energy through the higher SST, LW-up-surface, evaporation & cloud albedo.

    Since the Pacific, at 165 million km², is larger than all land areas combined, an El Nino usually transports significantly more water vapor (~3400km³) into the atmosphere than a La Nina.

    So your sentence is only correct if you replace “global warming” with “temperature increase on the surface” – because it’s not the same.

    It is widely unknown (among readers here I assume) that an El Nino year (eg. 1998, 2010, 2016) ALWAYS increases relative & absolute humidity (~ +0.5% and ~ +0.2g/Kg respectively).

    https://climate.metoffice.cloud/humidity.html

    However, according to the common opinion of the climate community present here, this increases the GHE –
    …and the knowledge that global warming is slowed down with higher GHE through water vapor is probably suitable for the climate experts present here … to finally fall into a crisis of a deep climate coma.

    Most people here will probably not wake up from this coma – before they realize that the earth is a water-cooled planet and that the real climate (lol) above all needs a lot of water and evaporation on the (land) surface to fight & slow down global warming.

    However, these findings also fundamentally relativize the importance of the individual climate gases H2O, CO2, CH4,… the doubling of the CO2 concentrations, for example, has a much smaller influence on the earth’s climate than many “climate experts” here assume.

    The temperature differences between El Nino & La Nina of ~ 0.5°C can also be observed in the atmosphere between the troposphere and stratosphere.

    https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadat/images/update_images/global_upper_air.png

    The graph shows that many climate scientists confuse the loss of evaporation with higher GHG concentrations.
    They argue that a cooling lower stratosphere and rising temperatures in the lower troposphere are caused by higher concentrations of CO2 — far from it… — it’s the globally falling relative humidity, desertification and the loss of evaporative landscapes that is to blame.

    Reply
    • Carbomontanus says

      30 Jan 2023 at 5:31 AM

      Have you ever heard of Phase- shift, genosse Schürle?

      You, the flat earthers and desert walkers, seem also to ignore 70.8 of the earth global surfrace with fierche and white evaporative interaction between air and water. Subtract antarktis and Grønland and it will be even much more.

      And that the dry, desert winds from your locations are drying up the oceans nextby,….. that are really huge however, …. and getting warmer and warmer.

      When all the waters are flying in the air due to fierce winds the roaring fourties and the fierceful fifties,…, how can it then be about “evapo- transpiration” more or less when temperature and clausius clappeyron rules that all ?

      The weather maps and models on the net now show even white snow in southern California and even south of that,… and 3-4 meters of packed snow uphill,….. so how can it be about “evapottranspiration” in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and in Las Vegas and in Central valley?

      When one can go skiing from Dallas in Thexas all the way to Basel and even to Paris,…what about that?

      Just because the Orcs and the Puttlers cannot so easily drive Troika anymore.

      Reply
      • JCM says

        30 Jan 2023 at 9:13 PM

        “clausius clappeyron rules that all”

        here is one of the greatest simplifying assumptions….

        A narrow and deeply restrictive perspective conceived to force a positive feedback greenhouse enhancement hypothesis.

        what happens when the moist air cools? does the water simply disappear according to clausius clap?

        Of course not, it condenses in one form or another, to liquid and solids.

        What of the duration of these condensate in atmosphere?

        What are the governing factors of total quantity of water, i.e.: vapor, solid, and liquid in the air at any given time? Certainly not only temperature.

        clausius-clap reveals nothing of reality with the maximum vapor potential logic. A crutch with no bearing. [clausius, not to be dismissed, however].

        what of the relevance of maximum potential vapor concepts, when considered in relation to the rarely 100% relative humidity? In fact, the latter variable indeed declining in bulk.

        What are the governing factors of the liquid and solid proportion of atmospheric water?

        Is the condensate maintained for long periods as microdrop translucent haze, or coalesced rapidly onto larger precipitation nuclei, transmitting vast latent energy and creating bright reflective, and simultaneously radiating surfaces?

        A water cycling effect.

        The vast variable water in air is governed by far more than temperature CO2 feedback effects, and is deeply coupled to hydro-biological process. Such process extends far beyond the continents.

        The simplifying assumptions lead us astray. The omitted factors largely independent of forced CO2 response, with profound climate effects.

        Reply
        • JCM says

          2 Feb 2023 at 12:37 PM

          World Wetlands Day is celebrated each year on February 2 to raise awareness about wetlands. This day also marks the anniversary of the Convention on Wetlands, which was adopted as an international treaty in 1971.

          Nearly 90% of the world’s wetlands have been degraded since the 1700s. Practically 100% of the ecosystem function of wetlands has been terminated in the developed envelopes.

          This is coincident with 5 billion hectares of ecosystem pillaging and soil desiccation over the past couple centuries..

          The transformational climate effects of ecosystems, including fungi, microflora, microfauna, and stable soil organics remains unmeasured, except for carbon cycle accounting.

          For the atmosphericists: displacement of hygroscopic biotic aerosols with fine mineral hydrophobic dust micronuclei aloft. In surface budgets, profound change to energy partitioning and net radiation.

          Reply
          • Carbomontanus says

            3 Feb 2023 at 6:38 AM

            He is deiscdussing the dirts, the mosses, and the weeds.

            And aviation

    • JCM says

      30 Jan 2023 at 10:33 AM

      Free inquiry is frowned upon in climate science, as there appears to be a sort of unspoken terms of reference, or charter, under which the entire discipline operates. This imposes certain high-level requirements, assumptions, constraints, and descriptions. Any deviation from the charter will be met with hostility. The charter dictates that the goal is the elimination of excess greenhouse gas emission. While we can all agree this is a sensible goal, the unintended consequence is that it inhibits and constricts discovery of the nature of the Earth system, including the human interactions. Therefore, the lifeblood of of the scientific endeavor is eroded, having been reduced to a set of narrow beliefs and simplifying assumptions.

      Reply
      • Barton Paul Levenson says

        31 Jan 2023 at 9:43 AM

        JCM: Free inquiry is frowned upon in climate science

        BPL: Since you started off with a lie, I didn’t bother to read the rest of your post.

        Reply
        • macias shurly says

          6 Feb 2023 at 7:53 AM

          @bpl

          MUÄhähä – said the sheep, who could not even read.

          Reply
      • Ray Ladbury says

        31 Jan 2023 at 12:06 PM

        And thank you for positing your bullshit anti-science screed. Now how about some evidence:
        1) that free inquiry is frowned upon in climate science. Certainly if that were true, you’d expect a negative reaction from the national societies of related fields–physics, statistics, meteorology… Last I looked, not one dissents from the consensus.
        2) Where are these “high-level requirements…constraints… published?
        3) Where is this charter? I’ve never seen it.

        I am hoping you can provide some actual evidence as otherwise I’ll have to conclude that you are merely an anti-science moron!

        Reply
        • Keith Woollard says

          2 Feb 2023 at 8:53 PM

          Evidence that free enquiry is frowned upon…….

          “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

          [Response: Yawn. https://www.realclimate.org/images//rc_clip1.png – gavin]

          Reply
          • Keith Woollard says

            3 Feb 2023 at 12:48 AM

            Re: Gavin’s response.
            I didn’t include this reference to try and show that they actually achieved anything or followed through on what was suggested. I included it back up what JCM had said regarding the attitude of those involved

            And while you are there Gavin, it seems you missed my previous comment as you responded to the one before and after.. Admitting simple mistakes goes a long way toward building trust

        • Ray Ladbury says

          3 Feb 2023 at 9:34 AM

          Uh, Keith, you are aware that the fact that the work was discussed despite the reservations of the scientific community utterly and completely undermines the point JCM (and you) were trying to make, don’t you? Please tell me that you are not so dim that you think that consideration of a point of view demands it be respected when it is utter crap.

          Reply
      • Steven Emmerson says

        31 Jan 2023 at 1:59 PM

        Assertions without evidence.

        Reply
      • Carbomontanus says

        31 Jan 2023 at 2:01 PM

        I havent got that impression Dr JCM

        But it may depend on ones frames of reference and what one is looking for.

        The rumors of politicians havinhg stolen our science and made it political came up by Margaret Tratcher in her relations to the soviet union and to Gorbatschov.

        A lot of earlier “science” was ruled out and eradicated on theirv side then, and carriers broken. SIC!

        The very “sort of unspoken terms ofr reference, or charter, under which the entire dicipline operates” was dramatically changed then.

        Maggie Tratcher was a facultary chemist of Robert Boyles school, and suddenly began to rule Great Britain, its labour unions, and the very world as a chemical laboratory. The Iron Lady, they called her.

        She ruled out ADVLTERARE goldmaking by Robert Boyles method, The Sceptical Chemist.

        Reply
      • Willard says

        1 Feb 2023 at 6:35 PM

        Well, done:

        https://climateball.net/but-debate-me

        Reply
      • JCM says

        2 Feb 2023 at 2:20 AM

        frowny frowning frowners. frownage.

        Reply
      • macias shurly says

        6 Feb 2023 at 9:28 AM

        @JCM says: – ” …a set of narrow beliefs and simplifying assumptions. ”

        ms: — Free and autonomous thinking has become more difficult since the installation of the Internet. The structures of human thinking are subsequently manipulated & adapted to the industrialization that is actually taking place by the voice of “big brother”. The result can be seen everywhere – and also here in the forum. Clear and sharp thinking is on the decline.

        Happy slaves are the most implacable enemies of revolution – and you will hear their Free and autonomous thinking has become more difficult since the installation of the Internet. The structures of human thinking are subsequently manipulated & adapted to the industrialization that is actually taking place by the voice of “big brother”. The result can be seen everywhere – and also here in the forum. Clear and sharp thinking is on the decline.

        Happy slaves are the most implacable enemies of revolution – and you will hear their stupid, muffled murmurs (see below) whenever/wherever you even put the words freedom, autonomy and fact-based logic in your mouth.

        Reply
        • Ray Ladbury says

          7 Feb 2023 at 3:06 PM

          Great! Now compare yourselves to Galileo.

          Reply
        • Carbomontanus says

          8 Feb 2023 at 4:49 AM

          Are you psycho- analyzing yourself now Genosse Schürle?

          Albert Einstein, (another infameous jew), once said that “To the extent that anything is physical it aint not certain. And to the extent that anything is certain, it aint not physical.

          There you have your brilliant clearness and sharp thinking in a nutshell, pointed at and laid out, by another quite dirty and shabby jew. No wonder really why they hated them.

          “Also schloss er messerscharf dass, nichts seinn kann, was nicht sein darf!”

          SANN.

          look over your central stimulants Genosse. However orthodox and traditional, They may be unhealthy and quite misleading also.

          ..

          Reply
    • Carbomontanus says

      31 Jan 2023 at 7:24 AM

      Still anotherb error of yours, Genosse…

      The earth being a water- cooled planet…..

      Not even Venus has ever been a water- cooled planet

      The pyrometric temperatures on venus atop of its atmosphere directly in the solstice at .7 AU from the sun with sun in Zenith is – 40 celsius, beat that!

      And at ground level rather steady 460 celsius. There is water enougyh all the way in bound chemicalo or dissolved chemical form a vaste lot of H2SO4 that is SO3 + H2O, as if there is not water enough?

      Water has not got a cooling effect. That rumor is old folklore and supersticion by the desert walkers and flat earthers, the Besserwissers.

      Water has got a series of thermo- static effrects by its especially high enthalpies in all of its transcitional behaviours. And that is the advantage of water wherever occuring, but it may also be dis- advantages, for instance your performing in the rains without a para-pluie.

      At 37 celsius for instance with 100% air moisture, you are doomed deasd because all that exess of water has got no chilling effect at all.

      Thus are the flat earthers and desert walkers beliefs, nothinjg but old supersticions repeated..

      Reply
      • macias shurly says

        3 Feb 2023 at 10:04 AM

        @carbonito

        As long as I have my feet on the ground and can drink a beer and have not given up my soup spoon – I am a water-cooled part of the earth’s surface.

        As a manufacturer of water-cooled LED technology, I am a world champion when it comes to efficiency – the same applies to water-cooled PV-T modules.
        And you are a Norwegian, overheated climate frog and sick moron who should hurry to the next workshop with your homemade LSD-UFO to check the cooling water and the controls.

        Reply
        • Carbomontanus says

          4 Feb 2023 at 7:12 AM

          Perhaps reduce and even resign on the central stimulants, Genosse.

          Das Pervitin ist nicht der-art gesund unde hilft kaum auf Dauer, ,verstehen Sie?

          See what happened to the hittlers and what happens to the puttlers in our days.

          Reply
        • Kevin McKinney says

          4 Feb 2023 at 9:24 AM

          The gratuitous insults add nothing of substance–though neither, come to think of it, did the first or second paragraphs.

          Reply
    • Barton Paul Levenson says

      31 Jan 2023 at 7:47 AM

      ms: Sorry Gavin – it’s the other way around. El Nino years mitigate the increase in global warming & EEI and are therefore far more beneficial to humanity and the galloping warming Earth climate in the long term.

      BPL: El Nino has NO EFFECT ON THE TREND AT ALL. You are as statistically illiterate as your are illiterate about climate science.

      Reply
      • macias shurly says

        3 Feb 2023 at 9:09 AM

        @bpl says: – ” El Nino has NO EFFECT ON THE TREND AT ALL. ”

        https://bartonlevenson.com/GreatStasis.html

        The great inventor of ZigZag curves and banana literature – Levenson – says there: –

        *** Other factors known to have effects on Earth’s temperature are sunlight, volcanic aerosols, aerosols from pollution, heat cycles between the atmosphere and the ocean (such as El Niño), variations…….***

        ms: — You tell us about a shit in green in the morning – and a bunch of red in the evening.
        Are you maybe a red-green blind sheep that likes to fuck itself in the foot?
        Levenson fucks himself – still the best.

        Reply
        • Barton Paul Levenson says

          4 Feb 2023 at 8:37 AM

          @bpl says: – ” El Nino has NO EFFECT ON THE TREND AT ALL. ”

          https://bartonlevenson.com/GreatStasis.html

          ms: The great inventor of ZigZag curves and banana literature – Levenson – says there: –
          *** Other factors known to have effects on Earth’s temperature are sunlight, volcanic aerosols, aerosols from pollution, heat cycles between the atmosphere and the ocean (such as El Niño), variations…….***
          ms: — You tell us about a shit in green in the morning – and a bunch of red in the evening.
          Are you maybe a red-green blind sheep that likes to fuck itself in the foot?
          Levenson fucks himself – still the best.

          BPL: ms once again reveals his complete scientific illiteracy. I said El Nino had no effect on the TREND. Obviously it has a great effect on an individual year’s TEMPERATURE. The TREND of the temperature and the TEMPERATURE are not the same thing, dumbass.

          Reply
          • macias shurly says

            6 Feb 2023 at 10:40 AM

            @bpl

            If you tie a sheep’s feet together (so it doesn’t spread dirty habits and stupidity) and force its eyes open – with a bit of luck and a little persuasion it might be able to see

            !!! THAT EL NINO HAS OBVIOUSLY AN INFLUENCE ON EEI AND THE TREND. !!!

            https://pub.mdpi-res.com/atmosphere/atmosphere-12-01297/article_deploy/html/images/atmosphere-12-01297-g004.png?1634310863

            LOW EEI + HIGHER TEMPERATURES = BETTER COOLING (LESS WARMING) OF THE EARTH:

            Only the sheep can’t explain it at all…

          • Barton Paul Levenson says

            7 Feb 2023 at 6:54 AM

            ms: !!! THAT EL NINO HAS OBVIOUSLY AN INFLUENCE ON EEI AND THE TREND. !!!

            BPL: Except that it doesn’t. The “O” in “ENSO” stands for “Oscillation.” An oscillation goes up and down, but it does not affect the trend.

            If it does, it will be very simple for you to demonstrate using regression analysis. Looking forward to your report.

          • Carbomontanus says

            8 Feb 2023 at 2:49 AM

            Hr Levenson

            It is not that easy Especially it that oscillation changes the material propertiets of its field, , which is actually most often the case and called dispersion, then steady oscillation or noise in the system may have a steady effect on other “trends” also. And it may be positive or negative.

            The effectrs are normally so small that they are hidden in the noisy system and ignored also by classical science because they hate dirty and noisy materials and “unlinear” systems.

            I would not call it an oscillation either, because I reserve that conscept for more “harmonic ” and clean tones , waves and swingings- rotations . And rather call it a rumble or a splashing or sloshing .in order to be aware of the difference..

            Something as irregular and unpredictable as the ENSO is not an oscillation to my conscepts. And its mooving both positive and negative does not rule out possible interference with eventual trends.

            You should see or hear the difference between rytmic and un- rytmic noises or alarming sounds in the engines and in your car also, where ENSO is a typical un- rytmic noise. Because they have different causes. Mechanic vs viscous. . If viscous, the field parameters itself and the field- endconditions are not constant and stable

            Which may indeed have its influence on other trends.

            Quite in general, whenever that word cyclings or cycles are suggested in the climate dispute, there is Surrealism propagating and teaching.

            Because the sea serpent does not cycle.
            The sea- serpent rumbles sneezes, splashes and sloshes..

            Flat earthers blind believers and landcrabs, desert walkers are selling their visionary learnings and archetyps from another world..

        • Kevin McKinney says

          4 Feb 2023 at 9:15 AM

          Uh, dude–“NO EFFECT ON THE TREND” is not the same as “effects on Earth’s temperature.”

          You might want to think about what words mean.

          Or just think, period.

          Reply
  20. Victor says

    30 Jan 2023 at 2:10 AM

    nigelj: However [Victor] failed to mention this quote from the study “In other words, regions like Western Europe, Indonesia, and (to a slightly lesser extent) the United States strongly export the climate impacts of their (aerosol)emissions, while regions like India more strongly experience the cooling effects of their own (aerosol) emissions.” (The coloured maps show this quite well).

    I don’t accept for a minute that aerosol pollution originating in highly industrialized areas would have been strong enough to mask the expected warming that failed to materialize in regions with little or no industrial development during the period ca. 1940-1979. While the paper in question refers to “strongly exported . . . climate impacts” from highly industrialized areas, the notion that such impacts would be comparable to the cooling effects we see in such source areas strikes me as absurd. As should be clear, the initial sentence of the abstract says it all: “The distribution of anthropogenic aerosols’ climate effects depends on the geographic distribution of the aerosols themselves.” Contrary to nigel’s assumption, this does not mean that the dissemination of aerosols in certain remote regions could possibly produce cooling effects comparable to those recorded in the regions where such aerosols originated.

    In order to go into greater depth in researching this issue I decided to examine the temperature records of some of the least polluted places in the world. And since I managed to find a website that identified seven such places that’s where I decided to look. The website is titled “The 7 cities with the cleanest air in the world.” ( https://airly.org/en/the-7-cities-with-the-cleanest-air-in-the-world-ranking/ )

    The list begins with the cleanest city, Zurich. Here’s a graph representing its climate history since, roughly, 1955: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/23561-TAVG-Raw.png
    From that year to 1980 we see NO warming trend.

    Next on the list is Reykjavík. Here’s a graph of Icelandic temperature history, including Reykjavík among some other cities, represented by the green line: http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/iceland_temperatures_8.png
    Throughout Iceland, including Reykjavik, we see a clear downward trend from ca. 1930 through 1980.

    Next up: Launceston, Australia. Here’s the graph: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/151767-TAVG-Raw.png

    No warming trend from 1940-1980 (and beyond).

    Continuing down the list: Honolulu: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/169973-TAVG-Raw.png

    We see a steep dip from 1940-1950 followed by a rise that levels off from roughly 1960 to 1980. At no point does the temperature rise above or even close to the 1940 level.

    Next: Bergen. http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/157188-TAVG-Raw.pdf

    No significant trend until the late 1990’s.

    Next is Wollongong, Australia — unfortunately I was unable to find a graph for that city.

    Finally: Trondheim, Norway. http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/19012-TAVG-Raw.png

    From ca. 1840 through ca. 1980 there’s a slight downward trend.

    In none of the discussions describing conditions in any of these places is there any mention of pollution originating anywhere other than local sources.

    Reply
    • Victor says

      30 Jan 2023 at 2:17 AM

      Correction: the downward trend in the Trondheim graph begins in 1940, NOT 1840.

      Reply
    • nigelj says

      30 Jan 2023 at 5:40 PM

      Victor,

      “I don’t accept for a minute that aerosol pollution originating in highly industrialized areas would have been strong enough to mask the expected warming that failed to materialize in regions with little or no industrial development during the period ca. 1940-1979”

      And I and others have already explained why it wouldn’t take a high concentration of aerosols to create a cooling effect in random locations around the world, because back in the 1940 – 1970 period (approximately) anthropogenic warming was very modest because C02 concentrations were modest.

      And CCHolly has posted relevant science above on the effects of Aerosols spread widely and thinly that you are ignoring. Do you think we cant all see this?

      “The website is titled “The 7 cities with the cleanest air in the world.”

      The list includes cities with flat or falling periods of temperatures around 1940 – 1970 (approximately). Victor is arguing that because pollution is low , aerosols cant explain the flat temperatures. But the low levels of pollution are for 2022! There is nothing to suggest there weren’t higher levels of aerosols in the past especially around 1945 – 1980.. Its well known that aerosol pollution decreased in the 1980s.

      Not your best work Victor.

      Reply
    • Dan says

      31 Jan 2023 at 5:03 AM

      Then you are a blatant science denier. Peer-reviewed studies have made it clear that particulate pollution from the 1940s through the 1970s were the dominant force in reducing global temperatures. I know because I studied them as part of my job.

      Reply
    • Ray Ladbury says

      31 Jan 2023 at 12:01 PM

      Weaktor:
      “I don’t accept for a minute…”
      “…the notion…strikes me as absurd…”

      1) Your incredulity does not count as scientific evidence.
      2) You have demonstrated repeatedly that you are incapable of gauging statistical trends
      3) Your entire approach is based on your flawed understanding
      4) Given where you are pulling these arguments from I sure hope you don’t get hemorrhoids

      Reply
      • Kevin McKinney says

        2 Feb 2023 at 7:29 AM

        1) Your incredulity does not count as scientific evidence.

        True. But he’s trying to reduce his (selective) oversupply.

        So far, apparently without success.

        Reply
  21. Mike Roberts says

    30 Jan 2023 at 11:52 PM

    Perhaps the UK Met Office have factored in an accelerated transition to renewables, meaning significantly less aerosols, for their higher likelihood of reaching 1.5C in the coming years?

    Reply
  22. Victor says

    2 Feb 2023 at 12:29 PM

    nigelj: And I and others have already explained why it wouldn’t take a high concentration of aerosols to create a cooling effect in random locations around the world, because back in the 1940 – 1970 period (approximately) anthropogenic warming was very modest because C02 concentrations were modest.

    V: Co2 concentrations were indeed modest from the outset of the 20th century through ca. 1940, a period which saw a considerable rise in global temperatures. From the ’40’s on, however, CO2 levels rose steadily, as indicated in the following graph: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/atmospheric-concentration-of-co2-ppm-1/image_large

    Reply
    • Ray Ladbury says

      3 Feb 2023 at 9:42 AM

      Uh, dude, you do realize that forcing due to CO2 increases logarithmically. So it is the multiple that matters, not the absolute value.

      Weaktor, that is your problem–you insist on your own silly-assed, straw-man theory, which bears zero resemblance to the actual theory of Earth’s climate.

      So, congratulations, Weaktor. We know YOUR model is wrong. However, even George Box would have dismissed your model–and probably you as well–as useless.

      Reply
  23. Don Williams says

    2 Feb 2023 at 8:27 PM

    1) I repeat the request I made 9 days ago:
    “As a newcomer — and Without taking a side in this argument — does anyone have any estimates for the uncertainty in the cited aerosol models? E.g, how spatially dense was the collected data that was input to the models, what was the uncertainty in the measurements, effects of interpolation and resulting uncertainty in the computed temperature effects.” I am referring to the topic under debate — aerosol effects on global temperature in the 1940-1970 timeframe.

    2) As I noted, the closest reference on this subject I found in the START HERE list was the New Scientist article of 2007 which noted a wide range of uncertainty re aerosol effects in 1940-1970. The GAW-WDCA (World Data Centre on Aerosols) database only seems to goes back to 1970 for aerosol data.

    3) What data on aerosols and cloud formation was collected in the 1940-1970 period, how complete was it and what is the resulting uncertainty in estimates for temperature effects in that period? Sulfates in the stratosphere is sometimes cited as an important factor but as most of you know, the altitude of the stratosphere varies from roughly 9 km in the Arctic to 17 km near the equator. and is relatively unchanging compared to the troposphere. In contrast, Material in the troposphere is subject to a lot of constant random effects from weather, including being removed by precipitation.

    Reply
  24. Victor says

    3 Feb 2023 at 4:37 PM

    Some more instances of special pleading:

    The Vostok ice core records reveal a clear correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels, leading Al Gore to claim this as evidence that CO2 drives warming. On closer examination, however, it was determined that the CO2 levels followed temperature by hundreds of years, demonstrating that it was temperature changes that drove CO2 levels, not the other way ’round, Faced by this clear reversal of their cause and effect claims some ingenious climate scientists floated a theory by which some sort of complicated feedback mechanism placed CO2 back in the driver’s seat, a highly speculative hypothesis supported by exactly NO evidence.

    A paper dating from 2016, published in the prestigious journal Nature, reported a surprising drop in the rate of sea level rise. From the abstract:

    “Global mean sea level rise estimated from satellite altimetry provides a strong constraint on climate variability and change and is expected to accelerate as the rates of both ocean warming and cryospheric [i.e., glacial] mass loss increase over time. In stark contrast to this expectation however, current altimeter products show the rate of sea level rise to have decreased from the first to second decades of the altimeter era.”

    As reported above, the raw evidence is clear enough. The rate of sea level rise appears to have decreased, strongly suggesting that rapidly accelerating CO2 emissions have had little or nothing to do with sea level.

    Yet consider the very next sentence: “Here, a combined analysis of altimeter data and specially designed climate model simulations shows the 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo to likely have masked the acceleration that would have otherwise occurred.” We are expected to accept a highly speculative theory, based on simulations rather than facts, through which a volcanic eruption that occurred back in 1991 masked a sea level rise detected 25 years later.

    A result in line with expectations would have been uncritically accepted, with no need to look for some additional factor that might complicate, and possibly negate, the desired conclusion. But since the result was contrary to expectations, it then became necessary to cast about for some additional factor that might have distorted the evidence.

    The notorious “hiatus,” or “pause” in the rise of global temperatures since the end of the 20th century has been a thorn in the flesh of a great many “experts.” Attempts to explain it away have included solar activity, a diversion of heat into the oceans, industrial aerosols, volcanic aerosols, slower trade winds, a warming in the Atlantic that (for some reason) caused a cooling of the Pacific, etc., etc. A group of prominent climate change advocates decided to investigate the matter in greater depth, and discovered, no doubt to their surprise, that the hiatus was real after all. From the abstract of their paper, “Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown”:

    It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a
    reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is
    unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims. (https://courses.eas.ualberta.ca/eas570/warming_slowdown.pdf)

    As recent reports of sustained, record-breaking, outbursts of extreme cold and snowfall throughout much of North America accumulated, climate change alarmists have been hard pressed to explain how “global heating” could have produced such an extremely cold and stormy winter. Never fear. As has so often been the case (see above), there has always been room for special pleading, no matter how absurd it might seem. The following all too typical, article, titled “How Can a Warming World Give Us Colder Winters?” is a perfect example. The “explanation” is far too complex and convoluted to go over here, but the gist is as follows: All that alarmingly warming arctic air is weakening something called the “polar vortex,” causing all that ice cold arctic air to spill out into the continent below. If you find the previous sentence just a tad confusing, you are not alone.

    Reply
    • Barton Paul Levenson says

      4 Feb 2023 at 8:38 AM

      V: CO2 levels followed temperature by hundreds of years, demonstrating that it was temperature changes that drove CO2 levels, not the other way ’round,

      BPL: No, Victor. It demonstrates that CO2 CAN follow temperature, not that it HAS TO follow temperature. Do you understand the difference?

      Reply
      • Victor says

        4 Feb 2023 at 1:33 PM

        Can you distinguish the word “drove” from “drive,” Bart? Obviously, today’s CO2 levels are largely driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Hardly anyone claims otherwise.

        Reply
        • nigelj says

          4 Feb 2023 at 8:08 PM

          Victor misses the point of what BPL is saying. Not unusual though.

          Reply
          • Victor says

            5 Feb 2023 at 5:00 PM

            So what IS his point, nigel? Please enlighten me.

        • Carbomontanus says

          5 Feb 2023 at 5:00 AM

          Hr Victor

          There is a vaste lot of processes where A causes B, but at the same time, B also causes A.

          Example 1. The chicken causes the eg. But at the same time, the eg also causes the chicken. Because, they are inter- connected and rather extensions and parts of one and the same phaenomenon.
          But, what is mostly forgotten then is the rooster. Take the rooster away from it and the very phaenomenon will vanish.

          Example 2, the water causes the vapour, , but at the same time, the vapour also causes the water. meaning, it is inter- connected and in dynamic balance.

          Moral: what causes what? does the horse cause the waggon or does the waggon cause the horse? Invent another waggon and the very horses disappear from the streets. As if the horsewaggon did cause the horses and not vice versa.

          This may all be a bit above you in the grades you see, I can understand that.

          Reply
          • Victor says

            7 Feb 2023 at 1:26 AM

            The horse pulls the wagon, Carbo. The wagon does NOT pull the horse — not in the real world nor the world of math.

    • nigelj says

      4 Feb 2023 at 8:43 PM

      Victor. You haven’t shown any flaws in the science behind the so called “special pleading” issues of Vostoc ice cores, sea level rises and falls, and snowfalls. All you have shown is your own empty incredulity, and smooth talking sophistry.

      Reply
  25. John Pollack says

    4 Feb 2023 at 12:45 AM

    Are you going to give us the rest of the references, or did whomever you copied from already omit them?

    I’m wondering if this sort of thing would be considered acceptable in music. For example: “I’m going to play you a pleasing medley taken from four songs. I’ll give you the names of some of the songs, but for most you will have to guess who wrote them, or where to find the original music.”

    Reply
  26. Don Williams says

    7 Feb 2023 at 1:19 PM

    I am still trying to understand this long running argument between Victor and his critics re the temperature anomaly of 1950-1970. My understanding is that aerosol data was not collected to any degree in the 1950-1970 period and so its role in cooling temperatures is speculation. Hence, I don’t see a way to resolve the argument conclusively.

    I checked the AR6 report of IPCC WG 1.. Aerosol data collection dates from around 1980 (Table 6.5, p.843 and Table 6.6 p 847) because the cooling effect of aerosols was not suspected until circa 1970. There is large uncertainty in the estimate for aerosol ERF (p. 308 ) although detailed observations in the last 30 years suggest it is declining. The sulphate data from ice cores has limited precision and spatial coverage.

    The high ERF in 1950-1970 and subsequent decline is assessed merely as “more likely than not” (p.311-312) which is not much more certain than flipping a coin. (Probablility 51 to 100%). If the probability merely exceeded 65% then uncertainty would have been assessed as “likely” — p.4

    WG1 appears to agree with VIctor that aerosols , unlike CO2, have highly heterogeneous effects both temporally and spatially (p. 851). Are there detailed weather records for 100 percent of the Earth’s surface in 1950-1970?

    If I am wrong — if there is a definitive finding for this matter — then why not cite it instead of providing a prolonged barrage of mere ad hominems?

    Reply
    • Barton Paul Levenson says

      8 Feb 2023 at 6:52 AM

      The ad hominems are because we have often tried to use logic and evidence on Victor in the past without success. The long years of trying to get through to him were very wearing. You weren’t here, so you wouldn’t know.

      Reply

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