Global warming has paused
We still need to study nature’s contribution to trend
Published Saturday, September 27, 2008
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Stumble It!Recent studies by the Hadley Climate Research Center (UK), the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Alabama Huntsville show clearly that the rising trend of global average temperature stopped in 2000-2001. Further, NASA data shows that warming in the southern hemisphere has stopped, and that ocean temperatures also have stopped rising.
The global average temperature had been rising until about 2000-2001. The International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and many scientists hypothesize rising temperatures were mostly caused by the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide (CO2), and they predicted further temperature increases after 2000. It was natural to assume that CO2 was responsible for the rise, because CO2 molecules in the atmosphere tend to reflect back the infrared radiation to the ground, preventing cooling (the greenhouse effect) and also because CO2 concentrations have been rapidly increasing since 1946. But, this hypothesis on the cause of global warming is just one of several.
Unfortunately, many scientists appear to forget that weather and climate also are controlled by nature, as we witness weather changes every day and climate changes in longer terms. During the last several years, I have suggested that it is important to identify the natural effects and subtract them from the temperature changes. Only then can we be sure of the man-made contributions. This suggestion brought me the dubious honor of being designated “Alaska’s most famous climate change skeptic.”
The stopping of the rise in global average temperature after 2000-2001 indicates that the hypothesis and prediction made by the IPCC need serious revision. I have been suggesting during the last several years that there are at least two natural components that cause long-term climate changes.
The first is the recovery (namely, warming) from the Little Ice Age, which occured approximately 1800-1850. The other is what we call the multi-decadal oscillation. In the recent past, this component had a positive gradient (warming) from 1910 to 1940, a negative gradient (cooling — many Fairbanksans remember the very cold winters in the 1960s) from 1940 to 1975, and then again a positive gradient (warming — many Fairbanksans have enjoyed the comfortable winters of the last few decades or so) from 1975 to about 2000. The multi-decadal oscillation peaked around 2000, and a negative trend began at that time.
The second component has a large amplitude and can overwhelm the first, and I believe that this is the reason for the stopping of the temperature rise. Since CO2 has only a positive effect, the new trend indicates that natural changes are greater than the CO2 effect, as I have stated during the last several years.
Future changes in global temperature depend on the combination of both the recovery from the Little Ice Age (positive) and the multi-decadal oscillation (both positive and negative). We have an urgent need to learn more about these natural changes to aid us in predicting future changes.
Syun-Ichi Akasofu is a former director of the Geophysical Institute and the International Arctic Research Center, both on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Community Discussion
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Makes sense to me but a better headline would be: "Global Warming has stopped and may or may not start again in the next fifty years."
There are many things that influence climate in nature. To take credit for one or two things you know so much about means little to me. Do you know of two winters and two summers in your analysis? The fact is here in the Koyukuk we are stuck with warm weather late into fall every year, so what made it any different since your readings. When I see confused animals and plants that is not a good thing in our natural world, so put that in your book.
dood, they already found these holes in their dogma. They changed it to "global climate change". keep up with the times.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
They say it stopped 6-7 years ago?
So whats next?
An ice age AGAIN?
Oh wait!
Global Climate Change!
No wait!
World Ice Warming?
No Wait!
The world changes and so does life.
5th-6th grade science will teach even the most hard-nosed person that.
Come on EPA, DEQ WHO, and everybody else.
I'm very curios and excited to see what the NEXT BIG THING is!
Peace
So there's hope for us yet!
Yes folks the "GLOBAL WARMING" crowd has changed it "TUNE" now that the data actually shows that there has been no recent "GLOBAL WARMING"....
In addition, although the PARASITES of the WORLD who have wanted to TAX free people for their use of energy (if not for their very existence - including breathing - remember we all exhale Carbon Dioxide- - ) have now changed their "GLOBAL WARMING" cry to one that alleges that there is GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE".... Well, ther truth is that there is ALWAYS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE!!!! There will always be global climate change. When the sun rises the local earth heats... The water heats, and cools, more slowly.... Now the nuts want to ascribe the alleged "Global Climate Change" (*SEE HOW THEY CHANGED THEIR TUNE TO A MORE AMBIGUOUS WORDING SO THAT THEY CAN CLAIM TO BE CORRECT WHEN ALL OF THEIR HERETOFORE HELD CLAIMS HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO BE BUNK!!!)
Yes indeed, the Democrat Party leadership will "COOK UP" a new claim so that they can seek to justify a FURTHER TAX on freedom loving peoples of the world.
TYPICAL WASHINGTON POLITICIANS.
Right on Andrew!!
Maybe next will be "Global Parasites?"
Peace
So why is the Arctic sea ice melting faster and faster?
I think it's kind of like summer in Alaska, we get less sunlight after June 21st, but temps get warmer for a few months, level off, then drop. The earth retains the heat and slowly loses it. Otherwise, temps would be directly proportional to sunlight. Kind of like the world's warming cycles. I guess Sarah was right after all!
Go Sarah!
This seems pretty reasonable. Akasofu is saying there are at least two natural elements that need to be factored into our understanding of man-made climate change. I doubt any climate scientist would disagree. His strongest claim is that the IPCC understanding and predictions "need serious revision." Akasofu does not rule out the role of CO2 in rising global temperatures. Two other points: One, it's unclear what Akasofu means by "recovery" from the Little Ice Age. My sense is that scientists have a pretty good handle on the outside forces in climate, such as changes in solar radiation, and the inside forces, such as feedback mechanisms that cause a warming planet to continue warming (the idea implied by a "rebound"). Two, the ability of a natural oscillation to overwhelm a man-made warming trend does not prove that it is the greater influence on climate. Natural variability in the Arctic has been on the order of several degrees over decades, and although I haven't tracked the numbers as closely as Akasofu, it seems plausible that a naturally occurring decadal shift could overwhelm the man-made warming trend. But a naturally occurring shift toward warmer temperatures would also distort the man-made warming trend. The important thing is to subtract out the natural trend -- its ups and its downs -- to be able to see the man-made trend. That's what scientists have done, and the underlying trend -- an increase of about 1.3 degrees F over the last 100 years -- is the warming they're blaming mostly on human activities.
New research into astrophysics has shown a direct correlation between solar flare activity and global climate change. The so called greenhouse gases may not even be the largest factor in global climate change.
I'm glad I didn't jump on the global warming bandwagon.
sniffles,
since ten years there is no statistically significant rising of the globally averaged near-surface temperature, even the atmospheric CO2 concentrations has increased. This is a fact as documented by Dr. Akasofu, one of the greatest living geophysicists. Perhaps, he will be awarded in near future by the Nobel Prize in Physics for his fundamental discoveries in upper air physics. Only the eco-fascists of UAF are still chatting about global warming. Their motivations for beating the drum of disastrous Global Warming can be related to the following facts, as stated by Warren Meyer in his booklet "A Skeptical Layman’s Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming" (AGW):
"Climate research, once a sleepy academic backwater, is now a multi-billion dollar industry. This boom in spending is because of fears of AGW, and should AGW theory be discredited, this funding will quickly dry up. So funding for climate researchers exists only as long as climate researchers beat the drum that AGW is a large threat. It strikes me that this is at least as large an incentive for bias as that of any Exxon-funded skeptic. Here’s another way to look at it: If AGW theory is proven correct, the likely political response might cut Shell’s revenues by 20-30%, at most. If AGW theory is proven incorrect, then university climate research funding might be cut by 100%. Directionally, all the incentives in academia are to inflate global warming projections. No one is going to make the news, or even continue to get funding, if they argue that warming will only be a degree or two in the next century. The guys that get the fame and the grants are those pushing the numbers higher and higher."
This is the true background of the Global Warming hysteria. It is based on junk science and is comparable with the Nazi propaganda machinery controlled by Joseph Goebbels.
How primitive some of these UAF nuts are can be described the best by the fact that they are considered as Nobel laureates because the were involved in the propaganda pamphlet of the IPCC. The facts are that the Nobel Peace Prize of 2007 was awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC. The latter is an organization. None of its members can be named a Nobel Laureate.
According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." I wonder what Nobel's will has to do with the propaganda of Al Gore and the IPCC.
In contrast to the Nobel Prizes for disciplines like physics and chemistry that are presented by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Peace Price is a political award presented by the Storting, the Norwegian Parliament. The members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee are politicians. This is the reason why even terrorists like Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat were awarded.
I love how people who are not scientists think researchers are in on some scheme to get themselves funded, as if they weren't in the field out of curiousity and would not move onto something else if they found their tests didn't bear out their hypothesis.
Isanova -- as a professional scientist, I can assure you that funding is a primary driving force behind the direction of science. Science, particularly, institutional science, will follow the money. [Not me, of course. I'm self-employed]
For instance: The Spotted Owl scandal. This was a hoax perpetrated by (an un-named), tenured prof. at the Univ. of Nevada, Reno. He needed grant money to publish something creative. He had been studying a desert sub-species of Spotted Owl in Arizona, but could not show that it was threatened, therefore, as an opponenent of development, he tried to show that deforestation was threatening the Northern Spotted Owl with extinction. Turns out, clear-cuts caused a boom in Forest Rats and mice, which in turn, caused a boom in all raptors that predate on little fuzzy critters. This scandal was investigated and blown wide open by PBS Frontline.... "The Forest Wars".
Sometimes people are motivated by greed, but by and large the scientific method accepts being disproven just as much as when you are proven right. Somehow I don't think all the world's scientists are lying to themselves because they are afraid of losing thier job
Did anyone stop to think about how many species were eradicated when the bearing land bridge was covered with water and how many poor mice and other tundra dwellers lost their lives. Where were the picket holders then? Why did no one stop to take up there cause? When all we would have had to do was through a plug in the butt of all the prehistoric bovines and that would have solved the whole problem!.
OH THE HUMANITY!
Isanova,
as I mentioned before, Dr. Akasofu is one of the greatest living geophysicists (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syun-Ichi_A... ). He has written more than 500 scientific papers and ten books. His list of honors and awards is very impressive.
I am still thankful for global warming!!!!
Saves me money on fuel oil!
Because the poles and Greenland are still frozen.
We are only in the tail end of the last age.
I guess Al Gore is going to need to find another job.
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