Global-Warming Slowdown Due to Pacific Winds, Study Shows

By Alex Morales Feb 9, 2014 1:00 PM ET

In a recent article, see reference list, England et al [1], have suggested that the recent stalling of global warming, over the last 15 plus years (or since the 21st century started) can be explained by the intensification of the Pacific trade winds. The strong circulation due to these winds has caused the penetration of the heat deep into the ocean with the cooler water from deep inside the ocean being forced to the surface (and the warmer surface water being simultaneously pushed into the depths of the oceans), giving rise to the pause in the global warming, or the lack of any significant uptick in the global temperatures, even as greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase. This article has prompted a lot of discussion [2-4], including the following Bloomberg News (Bloomberg Sustainability). http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-09/global-warming-slowdown-dueto-pacific-winds-study-shows.html#comment-1243320266 I posted a comment today (on Feb 13, 2014) calling attention to my scribd.com articles [5, 6] which prompted a response and then I and got into a discussion with Mark Schaeffer. (From other comments, I gathered that Mark is now publishing a book on Climate Science.) Anyway, during this exchange, I came across the following discussion between one with the screen name Bodhisattva and another with the name VendicarDecarian0. Vendicar posts the temperature-time data from NASA GISS for the years 2008 to 2013 and asks Where is the cooling? The discussion of the global average temperature-time data prepared in what follows here use the data posted by Vendicar; see the exchange below.
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Bodhisattva 9 hours ago EVIDENCE IS BEFORE YOUR EYES, MORON! I got a guy who keeps claiming I'm not posting any evidence. Well there's the article above, for starters: The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.10.2 degree Celsius, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming observed since 2001, the researchers wrote. Theyre led by Matthew England, a professor of oceanography at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Then there's this: http://www.livescience.com/432... Then there's the fact that the Antarctic has set multiple new 'coldest temperature ever measured' records (which those who are determined to save the myth that humans are now more powerful than nature refuse to allow to become 'official', of course, and yet they were still measured and are still out there) and the attempts by the liars to rewrite history and eliminate the hottest temperature ever measured by historic revisionism since nature would not cooperate and give them a newer 'hottest ever'.

VendicarDecarian0 7 hours ago

Bodhisattva

The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.10.2 degree Celsius" - BogBoy Where is this cooling again? I just don't see it... NASA GISS 2008 to present J-D 2008 14.49 2009 14.60 2010 14.67 2011 14.55
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2012 14.58 2013 14.61 Where is it, BogBoy?

Please also see my exchange with Mark Schaeffer which is interesting since Mark says what matters is what we are going to do about all this the trends have been studied for decades. (I tried to say that we can still learn and the idea of a work function that I have proposed also appears in the T-t data that Vendicar has posted, as we will see below.) My general comment about the article on the effect of Pacific trade winds was to call attention to the article posted at scribd.com and Mark joined with his comments.

vlaxmanan 7 hours ago (as of 10:43 PM on Feb 13, 2014) Here's my take - it too lies buried like the heat in the ocean. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2068... Planning a formal submission to the same journal. :)

Mark Schaffer vlaxmanan 5 hours ago Get back to us when it passes peer review

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vlaxmanan Mark Schaffer 4 hours ago Sure. Did you see the link? That pretty much is the submission with some changes for the journal. The main message is in the figure with the five parallels. That is already posted now on the internet and in some other posts like this on. Thanks

Mark Schaffer vlaxmanan 4 hours ago Have you reviewed the main literature on the subject going back John Tyndall and Joseph Fourier? What about Svante Arrhenius?

vlaxmanan Mark Schaffer 3 hours ago Yes, Mark, but why the question? It is NOT really relevant to what is being done here, which is to analyze the global average temperature observations and deduce mathematical trends - not why, but what is happening. Anyway, you will make a great peer-reviewer looks like, so just leave your comments here for me on what I have done. :)

Mark Schaffer vlaxmanan 2 hours ago

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The trend has been looked at for decades and analyzed by thousands of researchers. The globe is warming because of the basic physics of GHG's. The only relevant question is what does humanity do about this?

vlaxmanan Mark Schaffer 2 hours ago I posted another comment to above but don't see it here. May be it will appear. BTW, I have NO interest in the politics of this subject of global warming. Want to stay clear from it and focus on what the climate data are telling us. I don't even want to venture into climate modeling, just analyzing data is all I am doing.

The point of calling attention to this is that we have to keep an open mind and study the data, like I tried to do, in spite of many decades of scholarship and several thousand articles on this topic in the peer-reviewed literature. Even so, I truly believe that the movement of the temperature data along parallels, as shown in the scribd.documents (see links below) and the idea of a work function should be of great interest to climate scientists and indeed climate models of the future should be able to explain why we observe such a movement. Now, heres what we find from the NASA GISS data for 2008 to 2013, posted by Vendicar.
1. http://www.scribd.com/doc/206892158/THE-REPORTED-GLOBAL-WARMING-HIATUS-IS-NEITHERA-RECENT-NOR-A-TEMPORARY-ONE

2. http://www.scribd.com/doc/206581016/ON-THE-GENERALIZATION-OF-EINSTEIN%E2%80%99SIDEA-OF-THE-PHOTOELECTRIC-WORK-FUNCTION-EXAMPLE-FROM-SCANDINAVIAN-CLIMATE-DATA

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The following is the extract from my Microsoft Excel file on this analysis.
Line I Line II slope 0.09 0.03 NASA GISS 2008 to present intercept -166.23 -45.78 Vendicar data is copied and pasted in column A and is then reentered in col. C and col. D Line I Line II Time t Temp T 2008 to 2011 to Col. E and Col F are years deg C 2010 2013 calculations performed to Col. A Col. C Col D. Col. E Col. F 2007 14.4 14.43 graph lines I and II along with 2008 14.49 2008 14.49 14.49 14.46 the T-t data in cols. C and D. 2009 14.60 2009 14.60 14.58 14.49 The graphs are presented in 2010 14.67 2010 14.67 14.67 14.52 Figures 1 and 2 in what 2011 14.55 2011 14.55 14.76 14.55 follows here. Note that slope 2012 14.58 2012 14.58 14.85 14.58 of line I is steeper at 0.09 deg 2013 14.61 2013 14.61 14.94 14.61 C per year. The slope of line II 2014 15.03 14.64 is shallower, only 0.03 deg C 2008 to 2010 2 0.06 per year. 2011 to 2013 2 0.18

14.68 14.66 14.64 14.62 14.60 14.58 14.56 14.54 14.52 14.50 14.48 14.46 14.44 2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Figure 1: Graph of temperature-time data for 2008 to 2013. Time t is plotted on the horizontal axis and global average temperature T on the vertical axis. A simple joining of the data points by line segments is illustrated. Temperature went up from 2008 to 2010 and then dropped and is now increasing at a slower rate. This can be illustrated with the following two slopes in Figure 2. After this analysis was posted yesterday, I had a chance to revisit the NASA
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website and obtained the following values today (February 14, 2014) for the global average temperatures for the years 2008 to 2013. (2013, 14.82), (2012, 14.76), (2011, 14.78), (2010,14.93), (2009, 14.79) and (2008, 14.65). There is a difference in the values but the general methodology does not change (or the overall conclusions).

14.72
14.68 14.64 14.60 14.56 14.52 14.48 14.44 2007 2008 2009 2010

II

2011

2012

2013

2014

Figure 2: The line joining 2008 to 2010, has the equation T = A + Bt = 0.09t - 166.23 with the slope B being obtained from the two data points (2008, 14.49) and (2010, 14.67). The line joining 2011 to 2013 has the equation, T = 0.03t - 45.78. Both the slopes here are higher than B = 0.018 we get from the analysis of the full NCDC data. For example, for the 36 year period from 1976 to 2012 (consider T values for 1976 and 2013), we get T = 0.0181t - 21.86. I have shown there are five such parallels with the slope B = 0.018 if we look at various time periods from 1880-2013; see links to scribd documents that I have uploaded.

The idea of a work function is obvious here as well; see also the discussion in Refs. [5, 6]. One could postulate a movement along parallels, with a fixed slope B and each data point then has its own value of A or the work function. This is illustrated in Figure 3, with the slope B = 0.09, the value for the period of 2008-2010 which serves as the basis for comparison. Now, we can impose parallels through the data for 2011 and 2013. Since B = 0.09, we can determine the nonzero intercept A from the (T, t) values and the equation T = A + Bt. The parallel through 2011 has the equation T = 0.09t 166.44 and the parallel through 2013 has the equation T = 0.09t 166.56. This is illustrated in Figure 3.
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14.85 14.80 14.75 14.70 14.65 14.60

14.55
14.50 14.45 14.40 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Figure 3: The alternative view of the idea of a work function and movement of the temperature-time data along parallels is illustrated here. One could postulate a movement along parallels, with a fixed slope B, defined by the response of the earths climate system between 2008 to 2010 data. This yields the same solid line I, T = 0.09t 166.23, with the slope B = 0.09 deg C per year. The changing value of the nonzero intercept A from the initial value of A = 166.23 for 2008-2010, to A = - 166.44 for 2011 and to A = - 166.56 has actually reduced the global average temperature T to below the values it would have reached in 2013, had the climate system continued to operate along line I. Hence, there has indeed been a stalling of the global warming and the idea of the work function captures this complexity in a simple way. Many complex factors are responsible for the perceived hiatus in the global warming as many climate scientists are now trying to understand, with the England et al analysis being the latest in this series of various explanations, which have also been noted by critics, see references cited. The idea of a global cooling has also been discussed extensively by Easterbrook [7, 8]. After this analysis was posted, I also had a chance to revisit the NASA website and obtained the following values for the global average temperatures for the years 2008 to 2013. (2013, 14.82), (2012, 14.76), (2011, 14.78), (2010,14.93), (2009, 14.79) and (2008, 14.65).
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REFERENCES 1. England, M., et al, Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus, Nature Climate Change (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2106 2. Marc Morano, New Paper find excuse #8 for the pause in global warming: Strengthening of Pacific trade winds, Climate Depot, February 9, 2014, http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/02/09/new-paper-finds-excuse-8for-the-pause-in-global-warming-pacific-trade-winds/ 3. Anthony Watts, The Reason for the pause in global warming, excuse #37 in a series: trade winds, February 9,2014, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/10/the-reason-for-the-pause-inglobal-warming-excuse-37-in-a-series-trade-winds/ 4. Tisdale, B., Quick comments on England et al (2014), Posted on Feb 10, 2014, http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/quick-comments-on-england-et-al-2014/ 5. V. Laxmanan, The Reported Global Warming Hiatus is Neither a Recent Nor a Temporary One, http://www.scribd.com/doc/206892158/THE-REPORTEDGLOBAL-WARMING-HIATUS-IS-NEITHER-A-RECENT-NOR-A-TEMPORARY-ONE

6. V. Laxmanan, On the Generalization of Einsteins Idea of the Photoelectric Work Function: Example From Scandinavian Climate Data,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/206581016/ON-THE-GENERALIZATION-OFEINSTEIN%E2%80%99S-IDEA-OF-THE-PHOTOELECTRIC-WORK-FUNCTIONEXAMPLE-FROM-SCANDINAVIAN-CLIMATE-DATA

7. Easterbrook, D. J., Setting the record straight on cause of pause in global warming, January 21, 2014, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/setting-therecord-straight-on-the-cause-of-pause-in-global-warming/

8. Easterbrook, D. J., Global Cooling is Here, Global Rsearch, November 2, 2008, http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-cooling-is-here/10783

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BODHISATTVA RESPONDS WITH A THOUSANDS OF YEARS QUESTION

vlaxmanan an hour ago (as of 3:03 am on Feb 14, 2014) See also http://vlaxmanan.wordpress.com... Bodhisattva and Vendicar (for short) going viral soon!

Bodhisattva vlaxmanan an hour ago

I never noticed if you responded regarding my inquiry about how far back those parallels you seem to think are relevant go. Would you think that perhaps they are a relatively new thing or something that goes back thousands of years? I did not see your question so far, Bodhi (for short, ok ;) ). First of all, glad to see that you did look at my article and have seen those parallels that I found. Now, here's a somewhat philosophical answer, and I also urge you to see the post made at scribd where I made both Bodhi and Vendicar famous - by discussing the NASA GISS 2008-2013 data posted by Vendicar.
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To get back to topic, once we accept the existence of these parallels, as I have shown, by using actual (x, y) pairs for the entire range (1880-2013), then we get into what happened with quantum physics in the 20th century. Planck came up with idea of an energy quantum in 1900. Five years later, in 1905, Einstein applied it to light and photoelectricity. Then Millikan tested Einstein's idea experimentally and showed that the value of h is same as the value of h deduced by Planck (using blackbody radiation data). In the interim this whole quantum thing went "viral" as we would say today. Bohr applied it to describe the hydrogen spectrum and was widely successful. Then Compton applied it. Then others like de Broglie jumped in and wave-particle duality was born. Then the electron was shown to be a wave, by none other than J. J. Thomson's son. Father showed electron is a particle and son showed electron is a wave. In all of this the same h was used and that is my point. Millikan's experiments were done with a limited range of light frequencies, using ordinary visible light. But, physicists had no trouble applying to all kind of frequencies (like Bohr for hydrogen spectrum) and Compton (for X-ray much higher frequency than visible light). Nobody in physics would B*tch about the value of h and if it applies for the other frequencies,, like we would find financial analysts or economists arguing, or climate scientists arguing. It all becomes a matter of philosophy. I have shown now that there are five parallels for the years 1880-2013. If you accept that and the idea of a work function, the answer is YES to what you asked - yes, they extend to thousands of years, since we are dealing with a fundamental property of the earth's climate system. But, the intercept has been changing over time. How do we resolve that? Now, take the alternative. See what I did with 2008-2013 data to make your and Vendicar famous. Again, in Figure 3, after discussing the way we look at data now, I have shown that there is a system of parallels. The slope is higher than what I had deduced by looking at 1880-2013 data. But, let's forget that and accept the general theory. Then, what will we see in the near future?

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Here I will stick my neck out. What we are going to see, if the slope that I deduced for 2008-2013 data is correct, is data falling all around these parallels. We will soon find new (x, y) pairs that will match the (x, y) pairs for 2008 to 2010, which is where I started. Or if the old slope that I got from 1880-2013 analysis (of the NCDC data, not the NASA GISS data which we are discussing here) is valid, see Figure 4, we will find new (x, y) pairs that match that slope. The data for the first half of the 21st century will be bound by these parallels. And, now, thanks for giving me the chance to say it. May be you will make me famous too, like I made you famous, Bodhi. Cheers! ;)
14.80 14.75 14.70 14.65 14.60 14.55 14.50 14.45 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016

Figure 4: The alternative view of the idea of a work function and movement of the temperature-time data along parallels is illustrated here. Now, the slope B is taken as the slope deduced earlier (from the NCDC data) which yields B ~ 0.018 degrees Celsius per year. For the 36-year period from 1976 to 2012, it was shown that T = 0.65 C and B = 0.0181 C/year. The parallel through 2012 shown here has the slope B = 0.018. Quite remarkably, we see a very good fit to the data for the years 2011 to 2013. Also, the data for 2008 falls very close to the extrapolation of this line. Next, we add the parallel through the 2010 data point (the hottest or warmest year on record). It is clear now that something happened between 2008 to 2010 to move the climate system from the lower parallel to the upper parallel. It then returned to the lower parallel between 2010 and 2011. This viewpoint would be consistent with the quantum revolution in physics, discussed briefly above. I have to revisit the NASA GISS data again within the context of the present discussion.
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