Climate slowdown means extreme rates of warming 'not as likely'

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

It looks like the morning for follow-ups and updates.....and this is no exception. It looks as though the more they take time to examine the data and realistic numbers that exist...as opposed to what pops out of computer models? The more the data is uncertain for outcomes and trends?

Transient nature

Climate sensitivity looks to see what would happen if we doubled concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and let the Earth's oceans and ice sheets respond to it over several thousand years.

Transient climate response is much shorter term calculation again based on a doubling of CO2.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that the short-term temperature rise would most likely be 1-3C (1.8-5.4F).

But in this new analysis, by only including the temperatures from the last decade, the projected range would be 0.9-2.0C.

Source

Now that is interesting to see. It's also not the first source I've seen the 0.9c figure. NASA also has a climate data center/project which produced the same figures for specifics in the same general context. I'd say this is turning out to be a little more complex than first imagined or programmed into those computers to develop models on. Of course....this article also notes the extreme complexity of the Earth's overall climatology as well as Ocean currents.

Then again, it's a complex system overall. I included a couple things here for context and eye candy.



^^ The first is a NASA animation showing water vapor around the world. Alone, it's interesting, but not terribly helpful.



^^^ This helps put the first one into a bit of perspective for meaning and relation to real world activity. The connection (or lack of one, in some regions) further shows the complexity of what they're just starting the process of understanding.

....and of course, finally, the greatest example of near mind boggling complexity of patterns within and over top of other patterns, all interacting and changing through different layers of depth, just to add to it all.

Lololol...

They got caught in a lie and can't sustain it.

I never take anything too seriously that starts with "Scientists say....."

With a planetary system as old as ours and humanity just a blip in the whole timescale, any measurement in a fluctuation should only be speculative at best.

Originally posted by pianopraze
Lololol...

They got caught in a lie and can't sustain it.

I wonder if they'll make Al Gore give back all the money he earned while perpetuating this fraud.

I doubt it!!

The melting of the north pole is absorbing and dampening the warming. The glaciers are warming enough to not refreeze the moisture and the icebergs are traveling out to cancel the effect of the warming in the sea. This is working great, until the glaciers are gone and when that happens all hell will break loose. in the northern hemisphere. Maybe everyone will have to move down to the southern hemisphere. I think we have interferred with the natural chemistry of the earth which effects the currents. More violent weather will be in the shortterm with the mixing of the cold and warm fronts. Maybe this violent weather will be ending soon, the north pole ice will be leaving in a couple of years they say. Then we can get our nice warm weather back. I'm looking forward to nicer weather in a few years. It'll all be over soon for many of us.

This makes me angry.

I have been patiently waiting for the climate in Pennsylvania to support citrus trees and banana plants in my backyard, and my being able to walk into the backyard in my shorts to pick some for breakfast on Christmas morning.

Now they tell me that all this will happen after I am long gone?

What will they say in an eon when they figure out that all of our CO2 prevented an ice age?

Here is what one of the authors of the study says:

Dr Alexander Otto, from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Recent observations suggest the expected rate of warming in response to rising greenhouse gas levels, or ‘Transient Climate Response,’ is likely to lie within the range of current climate models, but not at the high end of this range. However, with current emissions trends, this would lead to very high temperatures to the end of the 21st century.

“The eventual long-term warming after stabilization remains rather uncertain, but for most policy decisions, the transient response over the next 50-100 years is what matters.”

www.leeds.ac.uk...

reply to post by butcherguy


I'm just as disappointed as you are. I mean, all the science that I took in college stating that plants suck up CO2 and then spit out O2. I almost thought they lied and instead were trying to push that CO2 would really heat up the atmosphere, then cool it down and kill all the plants and then us.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Woo Hoo!

We did it!

Keep it up, folks!

We focused our attention on global warming and it slowed down!

Now, what's next?

icecap.us...

From 18,000 to about 10,000 years ago, temperatures warmed and cooled as much as 20F in a single century. Virtually all of the warming from the last Ice Age to recent times occurred abruptly in a very short period of time about 10,000 years ago at rates of tens of degrees per century. It didn’t rise slowly over 18,000 years and to calculate an average over that whole period would not even be considered by any real scientist! Thus, Hardy’s conclusion that temperatures over that time period rose “"less than 0.0003 degrees per year” is totally absurd. And to conclude that warming since 1850 has occurred at “a rate 41 times faster than the preindustrial warming” is so ridiculous (just look at Fig. 3) that it is hard to imagine any real scientist reaching such a conclusion

Thanks for the Post Wrabbit: I am still on the fence especially about the climate models that have been used to make all the dire forecast. Climate change is a fact no one can argue that; welcome to Earth and any other planet with a sun.

In another development China has told the EU and their carbon tax scheme to "piss off" in a direct formal diplomatic way. China 'will not accept' carbon tax on EU flights: Until China, India, and the countries of Africa all agree to get on the ban wagon, all the hand wringing will be for not.

You and I have both posted in threads where the air pollution is so bad in China the kids wear mask and are kept inside because of the air quality. However there seems to be more and more papers being published by respected (not caught changing data to make a predetermined outcome) which are trying to get a better handle on what was Earth's past and what the future might be. I figure in a few years with more data we will be able to improve our models that will more reflect real world circumstances. It's complicated to say the least.....

QUOTE: The world's second largest economy "will not accept any unilateral and compulsory market measures", Yan Mingchi, deputy director-general of the legal and regulation department at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told an aviation forum in Beijing Friday, the China Daily newspaper reported.

He said "airlines in developing countries should be provided with financial and technological support in their efforts at coping with the effects of climate change".

The European Commission said Friday eight Chinese and two Indian airlines face fines totalling 2.4 million euros ($3.1 million) for not paying for their greenhouse gas emissions on flights within the bloc. END QUOTE:

Read more at: phys.org...

No one yet has shown where all the fines and money taken from companies to include the population has decreased the temperature one iota. The philosophy is charge so much no one can afford to do anything. Close all the coal fired power plants is the US and Europe while China builds their dirty (no EPA scrubbers) more and more every year. The world is the world made up of many different parts. To have a myopic view misses the big picture and accomplishes very little if anything..

I agree that models are insufficient to be relied on, but it's not just the models that're worried, it's 97% of climate scientists and others who understand the impacts on earth's ecosystems.

You can't bury what's happening under complexity theory.

Did you know the human body is complex? Well, it may be complex, but if I put a bullet into it traveling at 850mph, all that complexity does no good to stop the damage that will occur.

There's no question that Co2 is a (relatively) small contributer to the greenhouse effect, compared to water vapor. However, to put this into perspective, the estimated effect from Co2 on the greenhouse effect is about 10%. Seems small, but without a greenhouse effect, earth would be about 59*F cooler. 10% is about 5.9*F. If we double Co2, will the effect be greater than 5.9*F?

Obviously, how the greenhouses gases interact and contribute is very complex. Doubling Co2 does not automatically mean that it'll contribute 11.8*F. In fact, it may not contribute at all, depending on how wrong we're about it. It might even lessen, if there's a negative feedback!

Overall, most climate scientists feel the temperature will go up. When you consider all of the unknowns and potential feedbacks, it's a very dangerous gamble. We do have the capability to reduce our Co2 emissions, although we can't eliminate them. This might reduce some of the anxieties. And I haven't touched ocean acidification which could spell doom to coral reefs and other marine life.

Bottom line, we're polluting our ecosystems with runoff and pumping gases into our atmosphere. This is a global experiment. We shouldn't assume it'll have no consequence. There're studies performed that have estimated the death tolls due to coal power plants. They estimated that between 1995 and 2005 about 200,000 people died in the US alone. World-wide, it's in the millions.

Cheney famously said that even if there was only a 3% chance that Saddam Hussein had WMD it was still reason enough to attack. Even the military has admitted in various documents that the CHANCE for something bad to happen is enough to act, especially considering we're not talking about just any chance, we're talking about human civilization. Should we risk our future? So there's a 1% chance an asteroid will strike Earth. Should we spend $25 billion to deflect it? Or is that too much?

Just wanted to make things clear from the somewhat misleading thread title. The conclusion is that the projections are still within most previous projections, just not within some of the more recent extreme projections, and that longer range projections are still on target:

"The most extreme projections are looking less likely than before."

The authors calculate that over the coming decades global average temperatures will warm about 20% more slowly than expected.

But when it comes to the longer term picture, the authors say their work is consistent with previous estimates. The IPCC said that climate sensitivity was in the range of 2.0-4.5C.

and it concludes with:

"We would expect a single decade to jump around a bit but the overall trend is independent of it, and people should be exactly as concerned as before about what climate change is doing," said Dr Otto.

Is there any succour in these findings for climate sceptics who say the slowdown over the past 14 years means the global warming is not real?

"None. No comfort whatsoever," he said.

Just wanted to point that out before all the deniers start claiming this as some sort of proof of anything...

reply to post by 727Sky


I think you and I largely agree on much of this. Is climate change occurring? Well, of course it is, right? We live on a dynamic planet that is constantly in flux and various states of change. Where I sit today was formed, in part, by massive glaciers that covered a fair portion of North America in 'recent' times, in terms of geologic records.

You mention pollution, and here we agree 110%, without question. The focus has been on Global Warming and Carbon schemes ....and that's sexy, profitable and immensely powerful for the systems envisioned to control and regulate the whole scam. As it does nothing to stop or reduce anything. It just redistributes cost and burden for the pollution across those who don't pollute with the carbon credit market. (and a commission paid to every transaction..of course!)

...all the while, pollution grows. If it's not global, it would seem not to matter though, and that's the WORST legacy and tragedy of the faulty (IMO) focus on global warming as if Man is a direct cause/effect. Who focuses on pollution in Shanghai air quality when there is the whole planet to focus on, after all?

Of course..people continue to die in Shanghai or Beijing or Mexico City from air so thick, you can literally taste it and feel substance to it some days.


Personally. I believe we need to take a BIG step back from the science of projections and predictions to regain focus on that "Think globally, act locally". Of course, local isn't sexy. Local will piss off big business who exist among the local communities (currently fixated on images of the globe ...not the chemical discharge pipes into a local river, for instance). If we take care of the pollution we can SEE in the physical world around us? I'll bet the larger issues take care of themselves .....at least where Man has ever had any direct impact on the larger picture here.

* This is by far not the only story or scientific paper in recent years to suggest this very hypothesis about cooling, not warming or warming on such a dramatically lower level as to fall within statistical anomaly as we know it to be across history. "Settled Science" my fuzzy white tail. The only thing settled is that nothing is settled enough for irreversible action, IMO.

Then why are the oceans warming and growing more acidic?
Hmmm?

M.

reply to post by redtic

Just wanted to make things clear from the somewhat misleading thread title.

Allow me to clarify...I didn't choose the title and the thread carries what the BBC report chose to title their article. I believe contact information for the BBC World Service appears at the bottom of their page, if you'd like to pursue inaccuracies with their science staff.

The conclusion is that the projections are still within most previous projections, just not within some of the more recent extreme projections, and that longer range projections are still on target:

We're reading that quite differently. The main point would seem to be that expected numbers as tabulated in the mid to late 1990's simply haven't happened. Trend lines haven't simply slowed but frozen or even, run the other direction in some subtle movement. Depends on where and which data set...but that IS the whole problem. When the "science" can be radically different on such a minor thing as which data set is being used? It's not science. It's speculative and predictive. Science is repeatable by independent outsiders...who may actually LOOK to destroy the conclusions. Science, when accepted and accurate to the best of all knowledge....can stand up to that. "Climate Science" can't stand up to basic scrutiny. Of course, things like the Email scandals that have shown fabrication of data...haven't helped. Have they?

Just wanted to point that out before all the deniers start claiming this as some sort of proof of anything...

Thank you for your contribution. It might mean a bit more if you brought your OWN data vs. attacking other's by opinion alone...but every addition to the thread has it's own value, to be sure.

Originally posted by Moshpet
Then why are the oceans warming and growing more acidic?

Hmmm?

M.

They are? Please show where this is recorded with data? I'm not simply being picky on this one. "Ocean level rise" and ocean temperature rise are areas that are 100% provable as true or false...and should be without much trouble at all. Acidic levels, likewise, should be demonstrably true or false. Are we talking measurement to a local, regional or ocean size sample or global average?

These are the problems of climate debate. Unsourced and unsupported statements are free and plentiful. Even the "experts" like Gore make them, freely and frequently. Much like the doom and gloom predictions of "By 2010, if we don't xxxx....then xxxx will happen" as seen and stated in the 90's. None of those predictions have actually happened...which calls into question, the value of any of them.

reply to post by Moshpet


Volcanic vents are found to infuse the water with large helpings of carbon dioxide, or CO2, which turns seawater acidic. These vents were only discovered recently and I personally doubt 2% (probably closer to .005%) are known in the ocean depths.

Volcanic activity has been and is a proven effect on the weather in very dramatic ways. I doubt I need to go and post all the mini ice ages or summers without summer you can find for yourself because some (1) volcano popped it's lid in the past.There are several volcanoes going off all the time but for the last ?? years there appears to be more IMO.

Yes there is a proven link between acidic ocean levels and atmospheric Co2 levels; not arguing that. What I will argue is one cause will not paint the whole picture.

Humans like simple hang you hat on them type answers. Again it is not one simple cause and effect.

I think you and I largely agree on much of this.

You could be a brother from another mother!!