Prominent climate change denier now admits he was wrong

Met Office in the Media: 14 October 2012

An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’

It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here.

To address some of the points in the article published today:

Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.

Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.

You can see our full response to all of the questions Mr Rose did ask us below:

Hi David,

Here’s a response to your questions. I’ve kept them as concise as possible but the issues you raise require considerable explanation.

Q.1 “First, please confirm that they do indeed reveal no warming trend since 1997.”

The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.

As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.

Q.2 “Second, tell me what this says about the models used by the IPCC and others which have predicted a rise of 0.2 degrees celsius per decade for the 21st century. I accept that there will always be periods when a rising gradient may be interrupted. But this flat period has now gone on for about the same time as the 1980 – 1996 warming.”

The models exhibit large variations in the rate of warming from year to year and over a decade, owing to climate variations such as ENSO, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. So in that sense, such a period is not unexpected. It is not uncommon in the simulations for these periods to last up to 15 years, but longer periods are unlikely.

Q.3 “Finally, do these data suggest that factors other than CO2 – such as multi-decadal oceanic cycles – may exert a greater influence on climate than previously realised?”

We have limited observations on multi-decadal oceanic cycles but we have known for some time that they may act to slow down or accelerate the observed warming trend. In addition, we also know that changes in the surface temperature occur not just due to internal variability, but are also influenced by “external forcings”, such as changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions or aerosol emissions. Combined, several of these factors could account for some or all of the reduced warming trend seen over the last decade – but this is an area of ongoing research.

———–

The below graph which shows years ranked in order of global temperature was not included in the response to Mr Rose, but is useful in this context as it illustrates the point made above that eight of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.



http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/

 

Since the denier morons keep bringing up the global has stopped stupidity, this needs repeating as apparently they don't get it.

From the met office

As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

 

In the long term history of the earth, the average temperature has regularly varied a full 1 degree C during many 100 year periods. This is due to factors such as sun cycles and changes in the axial tilt of the earth. The short-period tilt cycles last 18.6 years and are known as nutation. More information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt#Short_term

The long term axial tilt variation are known as Milankovitch Cycles and are responsible for ice ages.
http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm

Either you can insult everyone in this forum who provides meaningful information or you can actually learn & read the material. Insulting everyone while presenting meaningless charts (when placing in bigger picture context) does make it clear who the total idiot is. Why would I be afraid of a 1 degree C temperature shift over 100 years when this has happened many times in the history of the earth - even before man appeared.

Only in the last 40 years have unsavory people siezed on global cooling (in the 1970s) and global warming (now) as a great way to scam governments and corporations out of money.

 

You're an idiot.

 

I remember being in school in the 70s and all the newcasters & media pushing global cooling was going to end the world by Year 2000. There were predictions that New York City was going to be covered under 400 feet of ice within the next 50 years.

Our teachers forced us to write papers in school on how we would survive the new ice age when our homes were under glaciers.

In the meantime all sorts of foundations and universities were taking in money to study and 'cure' global cooling.

Is this all starting to sound familiar? Yeah.... it's just like the global warming hype today.

 

Ooops!

 

NOT really.

 

So you post a temperature chart for the Northern Hemisphere at a time when termperatures are falling in the Southern Hemisphere. This is also a time when glacial ice is decreasing in the Arctic, and increasing in the Antarctic. No real surprise, this is due to the short term changes in the axial tilt of the earth and has gone through this cycle for millions of years.

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Another Record
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/

 

Explain this chart constructed from 18 site data sets with 2000 years data.



http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/

In the summary "The reason is obvious – they found evidence that temperature variations over the past 2,000 years indicate that the earth’s average temperature bounces around naturally to a larger degree than other paleo-reconstructions indicate, and further, that temperatures about 1,000 years ago were not that dissimilar to today’s temperatures."

I will note that the climate change promoters never provide charts that show the 600AD to 1000AD timeframe in which average global temperature was warmer than today.

 

Tne Northern hemi is used because it has all the data. The ice cores the thermometers etc.

No Antarctica is not growing. It is only shallow sea ice that is. The mass balance of ice overall is decreasing.



I'm sure you think this data is bullshit also.