Thursday, May 16, 2019

Anomalies from GISS Are Looking Large

Today NASA GISS published their temperature measurements for April. I've been following them for a long time, and lately every month now I'm struck by how high they're getting. A temperature 1°C above the 1951-1980 baseline used to be almost unthinkable. Now they're showing up more and more. The land anomalies are lately about 1.3°C -- that's 2.3°F! -- since, basically, 1965 (average of the baseline limits). And there's no sign of the warming stopping.


Yes, temperatures are up because we're currently in an El Nino. Roy Spencer thinks half of all warming last century was due to El Ninos, even though the average MEI over that period is -0.03, which is just a tad La Nina-ish. 

10 comments:

Victor Venema said...

People who think El Ninos warm the Earth need to explain why the Earth is not glowing like a hot sun. Even if the Earth were only six thousand years old, no idea where Spencer stands on that, it would be freaking hot.

Layzej said...

Roy Spencer thinks half of all warming last century was due to El Ninos,

Yes. It's the half that's above the linear trend line. 8P

Spencer says: "The IPCC is quite sure that nature is responsible for less than half of the warming since the mid-1900s"

Then concludes:

"If global warming is only 50% as large as is predicted by the IPCC (which would make it only 20% of the problem..."

But the second doesn't follow from the first. "Nature is responsible for less than half" doesn't imply "global warming is not responsible for any more than half". That is either an epic logic fail or a clever shell game.

In fact, it is likely that global warming is responsible for more than all of the warming and natural factors are responsible for cooling. If global warming is only 50% as large as is predicted by the IPCC, then it would be responsible for only a bit more than 50% of the warming.

David in Cal said...

Layzej -- why do you think natural factors are probably responsible for cooling. It seems to me that the planet has been generally warming since the end of the Little Ice Age, so I would think natural factors are probably responsible for some amount of warming.

Cheers

Layzej said...

Hi DiC,

Temperature measurements only go back as far as 1850. How do you know what global temperatures looked like during the LIA except by one of the hockey stick graphs that you don't 'believe' in?

What do you think was the cause of the LIA?

David in Cal said...

People were alive during the LIA and recorded conditions existing. The history of the Norse settlements in Greenland provides evidence.

I have no idea what caused the LIA to begin or what caused it to end.

Cheers

Layzej said...

So the LIA may have been limited to the north Atlantic?

David in Cal said...

This article says the LIA was global. Little Ice Age was global:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141119204521.htm

Cheers

David Appell said...

David, that study looked at one peat bog in South America.

This much more comprehensive study did not find a global LIA:

"There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age...."

-- "Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia," PAGES 2k Consortium, Nature Geosciences, April 21, 2013
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html

Layzej said...

Hi DiC,

Your article says that the LIA was caused by reduced solar output. It also says that the countervailing effect of reduced solar activity is present now. They're right. Solar activity has been waning since the middle of the last century.

So based on your evidence it looks like natural factors are currently responsible for cooling?

Layzej said...

Hi DiC,

Incidentally, the link you provided doesn't really give evidence that there has been warming since the LIA. It only shows that there were two cold spots during the late 1600's/early 1700's..

The recorded measurements indicate that warming was fairly flat by the end of the 1800's. Click the link. I've used a 60 year running mean to get rid of decadal oscillations to give a clearer picture of the long term changes.