Good news!

"The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research.
A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... cover.html

Got to love science.

Further information on this paper

Discussion at Judith Curry's blog http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/10/the-stadium-wave/

Full Paper http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013 ... m-wave.pdf

Citation: M.G. Wyatt and J.A. Curry, “Role for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century,” (Climate Dynamics, 2013).

I will have a look at it now.

Robert Tulip wrote:Further information on this paper

Discussion at Judith Curry's blog http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/10/the-stadium-wave/

Full Paper http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013 ... m-wave.pdf

Citation: M.G. Wyatt and J.A. Curry, “Role for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century,” (Climate Dynamics, 2013).

I will have a look at it now.

Good find.

I predict you will want to interpret the data differently.

Again, without being a climatologist, and I'm not sure if you yourself are one, I'd say it all comes down to the reliability of the models.
Climate science is highly complex because it deals with a chaotic systems.

ant wrote:I predict you will want to interpret the data differently.

Your prophetic skills are truly uncanny ant. How do you do it? In this case you have got it right. I do differ in nuance from the denialists at the Daily Mail.

Firstly, the statement that "the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover" is a triumph of hope and commerce over evidence and ethics. The summer ice volume showed a reversion to mean in 2013 after the alarming record collapse of 2012, and the 2013 figure is nothing but a dead cat bounce. The Arctic is on track to be ice free within a decade, producing extremely dangerous feedback loops, as has already happened with Hurricane Sandy, which was caused by the melted Arctic shifting the latitude of the jet stream.

The even bigger question is the suggestion that "The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s." I have read about half of Curry et al's paper, and will read to the end. The disturbing thing it seems to show is that we should expect, in the absence of anthropogenic CO2 forcing, a roughly 60 year oscillation in global average temperature, what they somewhat confusingly call a stadium wave. Their Figure 3 (page 53) suggests this wave function reached a minimum in 1955 and a maximum in about 1985. So absent human emissions, there would have been a small downward oscillation in global average temperature since 1985.

But that is not what happened. Temperature rose alarmingly to 1998, and has since been on a high plateau. So even if this plateau continues for another decade or two, due to the countervailing force of this planetary climate oscillation, the model suggests we are storing up tectonic-style pressure for a massive upward spike in temperature when the natural cycle turns again. It is an extremely dangerous prospect to have complacency about stable high temperature for a decade or so, if this is likely to be followed by a sudden four degree average rise. Since our global emission increase is accelerating, that prognosis looks likely.

The sensible policy response is to immediately commission a Manhattan-Apollo type of global research and development project to find commercial energy sources that will compete in a free market against fossil fuels, in recognition that climate change is the primary medium term security threat to human existence.

This is an interesting study to be sure, but it probably means very little in the grand scheme of things. One study is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the emerging and constantly evolving climate science field.

Also, I'm just a climate novice, if that, but I feel I do have some sense of what constitutes a credible news source. We've seen Daily Mail stuff posted on BT before. Let's say I'm not very impressed. The Daily Mail's take on the study is grossly inaccurate as far as I can tell. The headline of a "possible 'pause' for 20 years" is really no better than tabloid level journalism. This is probably not the best source for science news.

Also, as Robert says, the "news" that the Arctic sea ice has "already started to recover" is absurdly misleading. Here's a chart from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). To say ice levels are recovering is to not look at the big picture or, in this case, not even the last twenty years.



NOAA: "Sea ice area is now significantly below the level of the 1980s and earlier."

"Poisoning the Well" is a very knee-jerk reaction reading from a source that is diametrically opposed to your particular leanings.
The Daily Mail provided the actual source that is to my knowledge a genuine scientific examination of climate change.
Let's not kill the messenger and toss his message without fair consideration.

One study is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the emerging and constantly evolving climate science field.

I agree 100% with what you've said above.

At what point would you say arctic sea ice is beginning to recover?
Can you never make such a claim because of the decrease over the last 30 years?
It seems at some point in time, if this current "pause" continues, we'd have to say that a recovery is in progress.
That type of prognostication would need to be matched with models that are interpreting data in accordance with "recovery" indications. To continue to claim, "yeah, but the bigger picture of the past means more than this recovery that apparently in progress" would become suspect.

Climatology is highly complex. The models that are just that, models and not accurate foreseers of the future.
I know that's something that kills Robert, but it's true.

ant wrote:At what point would you say arctic sea ice is beginning to recover?
Can you never make such a claim because of the decrease over the last 30 years?
It seems at some point in time, if this current "pause" continues, we'd have to say that a recovery is in progress.

I really don't think you can say that. It's too complex. Consider trying to gauge other complex systems based on the progress of a chart. Stocks, for example. If a stock flatlines after dropping for a while, that isn't an indication of what will come next. It could be a plateau for some reason yet unknown. Perhaps there's a "reserve" in place keeping it from falling lower. Then when the reserve is used up, it plummets again.

To gauge what will happen, you need feet on the ground figuring out cause and effect. Only when we have a strong understanding of the mechanisms involved can we predict where the chart will go. Looking at the history of the chart alone doesn't tell us anything.

To gauge what will happen, you need feet on the ground figuring out cause and effect

To establish cause and effect with any certainty in chaotic systems is far fetched to say the least.
Does the butterfly effect cooperate with establishing cause and effect?
I have no idea. I'm a vagabond, not a climatologist.

ant wrote:

To gauge what will happen, you need feet on the ground figuring out cause and effect

To establish cause and effect with any certainty in chaotic systems is far fetched to say the least.
Does the butterfly effect cooperate with establishing cause and effect?
I have no idea. I'm a vagabond, not a climatologist.

Chaotic systems are unpredictable in detail but predictable in aggregate. So we can make accurate scientific predictions. The earth is a chaotic system. But we can make many simple accurate predictions of the future - that orbital mechanics of the day and the year will continue on the same basis as they have since the origin of the solar system, that the equator will continue to be hotter than the poles, etc.

Within this framework of simple scientific prediction, one topic is the temperature. Astronomers have calculated that a planet at earth's distance would be much colder if there was no CO2 in the atmosphere trapping the heat like a blanket. CO2 is called a greenhouse gas because it allows light in but does not allow heat out, like the glass roof of a greenhouse.

By this simple physical calculation, scientists can predict how much temperature will rise when we try the global experiment of adding CO2 to the air. We can't tell how long it will take to achieve equilibrium, since we are making changes every year that in previous epochs such as the Permian took millions of years to kill almost all life. But scientists know that the last time CO2 was at its current level, the sea was many meters higher.

We don't know if it will take decades or centuries to achieve higher sea levels, but the cause and effect mechanism of the prediction is still clear. Change initial conditions and the system changes. The size of the ocean is a main factor making the exact path chaotic and unpredictable, but the end result of adding CO2 at our current rate of more than thirty billion tonnes a year would at best be a hotter world with no polar ice and seas ninety meters higher, and at worst a runaway greenhouse effect with the seas boiling dry and earth made sterile, as depicted by NASA space scientist James Hansen in his excellent book Storms of My Grandchildren. That is the big gamble that big oil is playing with our future.