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Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann, Oct 12, 2009:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Kevin Trenberth to Tom Wigley, Oct 14, 2009
Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where
energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not
close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is
happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as
we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin
Leo Tolstoy
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
Phil Jones
“We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.” -
Phil Jones to Michael Mann Feb 21, 2005:
The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick.
Leave it to you to delete as appropriate !
Cheers
Phil
PS I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data.
Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
Tom Wigley to Phil Jones Sep 27, 2009:
If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know).
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
then this would be significant for the global mean — but
we'd still have to explain the land blip.
I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity
plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip,
but we are still left with "why the blip".
Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol
effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced
ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling
in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols.
The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from
MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can
get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal
solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987
(and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s
makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it
currently is not) — but not really enough.
So ... why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem?
(SH/NH data also attached.)
This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I'd
appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have.
Tom.
Tim Osborn to Michael Mann and Ian Macadam , Oct 5, 1999:
Dear Mike and Ian
Keith has asked me to send you a timeseries for the IPCC multi-proxy
reconstruction figure, to replace the one you currently have. The data are
attached to this e-mail. They go from 1402 to 1995, although we usually
stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that
is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use. I haven't put a 40-yr
smoothing through them - I thought it best if you were to do this to ensure
the same filter was used for all curves.
Keith Briffa:
Briffa:
For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually
>warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming
>is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth
>was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global
>mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of
>years as Mike appears to and I contend that that there is strong evidence
>for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that
>require explanation and that could represent part of the current or future
>background variability of our climate. I think the Venice meeting will be
>a good place to air these isssues.
Climate Wrap-Ups
by Nicolai Skjoldby
Temperatures
Temperatures were very high in January 2010:
UAH temperatures for January: +0,72, nearing record high at 1998 el Nino warming, see also Spencer here. 37-month average on the rising from around +0,2, but still below the 2002-2007 level of almost +0,3.
As Spencer notes, warming is greatest in the tropics, where El Nino conditions persist, see below.
However, the polar regions does not show significant warming: The Antarctic still does not show any signs of warming with no peak in January-February, and 37-month anomaly around 0,0. In the Arctic there is a peak similar to peaks in 2006, 2003, 1997, 1995, 1986, 1985, 1981 and 1980. 37-month trend is at the level of 2002-2009 period.
Other temperature indices show similar patterns, see RSS, HadCRU3, NDCD and GISS temperarures.
Indices
SOI index dropped fast in beginning of February to very low -24, indicating warming.
and El Nino continues to be high, with last weekly value 1,21, also indicating warming.
The AO winter index has been record low this winter:
Negative AO and NAO indices are associated with cold and snowy in the US and Europe:
Forecast
Most models forecast continued warm El Nino conditions, moving to neutral conditions for the period February-June 2010. The 3-month period from June-August is predicted to be neutral.
Interpretation
All temperature measures show very high values in end January beginning february. At the same time we have a persistant El Nino event and SOI-index that has been negative since October 2009 and took a sharp decline to very low level in February 2010. Under such conditions, warming would be expected.
At the same time, some local areas in the Northern Hemisphere has experienced extreme cold during this winter.
Spencer interprets the unusual globally warm conditions, compared with unusual cold in some NH areas this way:
the atmospheric general circulation this winter has become unusually land-locked, allowing cold air masses to intensify over the major Northern Hemispheric land masses more than usual. Note this ALSO means that not as much cold air is flowing over and cooling the ocean surface compared to normal.
So where are we heading? It will be interesting to follow global temperatures and ENSO indices during the next half year. We predict that as the El Nino event gradually recedes, and at some point will be replaced by La Nina conditions, global temperatures will also continue the decline they started around 1998-2002.
Last changed: 24th February, 2010 at 17:39:05
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Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann, Oct 12, 2009:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Kevin Trenberth to Tom Wigley, Oct 14, 2009
Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where
energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not
close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is
happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as
we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin
Leo Tolstoy
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
Phil Jones
“We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.” -
Phil Jones to Michael Mann Feb 21, 2005:
The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick.
Leave it to you to delete as appropriate !
Cheers
Phil
PS I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data.
Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
Tom Wigley to Phil Jones Sep 27, 2009:
If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know).
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
then this would be significant for the global mean — but
we'd still have to explain the land blip.
I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity
plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip,
but we are still left with "why the blip".
Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol
effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced
ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling
in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols.
The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from
MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can
get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal
solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987
(and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s
makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it
currently is not) — but not really enough.
So ... why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem?
(SH/NH data also attached.)
This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I'd
appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have.
Tom.
Tim Osborn to Michael Mann and Ian Macadam , Oct 5, 1999:
Dear Mike and Ian
Keith has asked me to send you a timeseries for the IPCC multi-proxy
reconstruction figure, to replace the one you currently have. The data are
attached to this e-mail. They go from 1402 to 1995, although we usually
stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that
is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use. I haven't put a 40-yr
smoothing through them - I thought it best if you were to do this to ensure
the same filter was used for all curves.
Keith Briffa:
Briffa:
> For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually
>warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming
>is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth
>was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global
>mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of
>years as Mike appears to and I contend that that there is strong evidence
>for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that
>require explanation and that could represent part of the current or future
>background variability of our climate. I think the Venice meeting will be
>a good place to air these isssues.
