Those of you who have been following recent discussions/updates concerning global climate probably know what I'm about to present.

Let me say this - I try to remain unbiased in the matter, basing my assertions off science, not politics - which this situation seems to have become nationwide. Bottom line is if one does the research - one will find that there is much, much more to this debate than the media portrays. And by that I mean the following: at the very least, there's sound meteorological evidence to doubt the IPCC's "forecast" for doom and gloom down the road.

Just a brief background on climate:

1) Little Ice age occurred in the mid 1600s-1700s - most probable answer is due to very low solar activity. If one looks back at the sunspot cyles, you'lll note that flares/radiation was essentially nil throughout that period.

2) Earth emerged from the LIA in the 1800s. Global temperatures began rising well before the onset of the industrial evolution in the early 1900s.

3) C02 concentrations and temperatures have risen/fallen significantly in the past - long before humans existed. In fact there's a 400 year lag; temperatures increase first, then C02 about 400 yrs later -- completely opposite of what mainstream anthropogenic warmingista's assert.

4) In the 1940s-70s, global temps cooled slightly, even with an increasing CO2 level. Best explanation for this is natural oceanic cycles -- the PDO (pacific decadel oscillation) was in a cold phase in this time. Will illustrate later with map.

5) The 1980s-90s featured drastic warming - which media suggests is due mostly or wholly to CO2. However, (now here's the new part), since 1998, temps have leveled off, and fallen since 2000 -- the most significant temp drop-off in over a decade happened just this past year -- 2007 to 2008.

How could this be if CO2 is responsible for global warming?

Notice on the graph below -- the light blue line indicative of CO2 concentrations continuing upward. But the pink line is global temps -- steadily downward the past few years. Apparent disconnect between the two.




In the past - CO2 levels would rise after temps - why? - because once the interglacial period begins, all that ice slowly melts, allowing CO2 from the carbon sinks in oceans and over land to diffuse back into the atmospere.

You may ask - now that we're adding CO2 with our industrial activity, how would that effect temps? Well - note the graph below, C02 is far from the main atmospheric gas. In fact it accounts for less than 0.1%:




This next graph depicts CO2 and it's relation with other dominant gases in our atmosphere. Note that water vapor accounts for more than 95% in terms of contribution to the greenhouse effect, while CO2 is less than 1%, and the anthropogenic part of that is even lower, around 0.117%! It's the water vapor that does the warming, not the CO2 IMO.





You be the judge here -- examine the following two graphs.

First one is temperatures VS. CO2 over the past decade. Remember CO2 is the green line going upward.




Now here's temperatures VS. solar activity since 1550:





Which one has a stronger correlation to temp (CO2 or solar)?

It's funny as I've read some articles claiming that "the sun accounts for less than 30% of climate change, and is a small factor in the overall picture."

Really? So you're telling me if we turn off the sun tonight - none of us will know, becuase we're in this hot greenhouse due to the anthropogenic/industrial activity.


Back to the cool period from the 1940s-70s. Below is a graph of the Pacific decadal oscillation. Note it's cold phase in exactly that period. Makes sense to me, as it does thousands of others.




One last comments regarding current climate. I've already shown the graph of temps decreasing rapidly over the couple past year.

We also have something interesting going on w/ the Sun. The present sunspot cycle has been virtually inactive over the past year-15 months -- the weakest it's been for this duration for several decades. We're in cycle 23 right now - note the graph below. Our current sunspot cycle -- depicted by the purple line -- is lower than the past 4 cycles:




As mentioned earlier in the post -- low sunspots cycles have correlated to colder periods in Earth's history. I'm not saying we're headed for an ice age, but I do believe global temps will continue to cool due to the following factors:

1) PDO cold cycle re-emerging (last cold cycle was 40s-70s).
2) Possible weakening solar constant as shown above -- big key -- if the next sunspot cycle is even lower than the current one, it's essentially a lock that global temps will be on the downward slope.
3) Third factor - not as important as the others, but we are beginning to enter the negative cyclic phase of the NAO-AO (as seen from the late 40s-late 70s).

What I'm saying is this -- there is more than reasonable doubt concerning the human-induced global warming theory, which the media continues to push. Please don't get me wrong w/ this post - I'm all for renewable energy sources and green ideas; however, I believe the politics are unfortunately taking the forefront in this debate, which is a shame.

Anyway -- at the very least, global temps look to be leveling off/slowly decreasing from the past couple decades. We've already seen the Earth "turn the corner" with the cooling since 2000-2002, and particularly over the past year. The doomsday warming is based upon climate forecast models which 1) Only know as much as we put into them, 2) Cannot grasp the intricate interactions and processes that transpire in our atmosphere. 3) Co2 is less than 0.1% of the atmosphere, far too miniscule to have a significant impact on global climate. Main drivers here IMO are solar and natural-terrestrial cycles. Water vapor is the primary heat-holding gas - well accepted in the meteorological community.

*Just as an FYI - but even if Al Gore was correct for some strange reason - our climate system has numerous ways to counteract any human induced warming.

1) Increase in temps leads to more water vapor, thus more clouds, thus a negative feedback cycle begins -- cooling the earth due to cloudcover/precipitation.

2) Gulf stream - if the entire northern ice cap melts as predicted by some, the thermohaline circulation of the Atlantic would shut-down, causing the northern hemisphere to cool drastically, thereby plunging us into another ice age.

Outstandind post, Storm. Its so evident if you look at long-term climate changes that warm periods have occurred many times...and that we are right now in a period that SHOULD be warm. Not to say cutting our CO2 emmisions and lowering ise of fossil fuels would be a bad thing. But I think it has virtually nothing to do with how warm or cool the planet is.

Storm -- Nice write-up. Man made global warming is a political issue now and, therefore, science and logic take a back seat to sensationalism, hype, and media frenzy. Amazing how many people fall for it.

Nice write up. No doubt in my mind that Global Warming being caused by CO2 is more political than factual. By the way did all the ice melt at the Arctic this summer, wasn't that predicted earlier in the year?

great post and you should go post this in easterns climate change forum. Its a huge global warming crowd over there.

LOL they'd go into melt dowN! It's always fun reading their posts. What a bunch of egos!

Thank you, Brit!!! I find Eastern to be so pompous I can't stand it.

Better yet - send it to Al Gore. Great research Storm.

Jim -- I know one of the NWS mets at Taunton personally and while he has posted very rarely at Eastern, he tries to stay away from it and some of the mets there like the plague.

Great writeup!! As usual this shows you now your stuff. I think you should e-mail to one of the newspapers and tell them to run a new story on global warming (or lack of it)

Btw. If Gore takes credit for the internet, does Bush get credit for the globale cool down and stopping global warming? LOL

Thanks Storm, that was very informative.

Jim,

Thanks and I agree 100%. As I said in the post I think continued research for renewable energy sources is necessary -- and CO2 levels should be lowered for other reasons, primarily related to our health. Asthma rates have skyrocketed over the past few decades due to poor air quality around cities, not to mention many other health issues. A cleaner environment is important and would benefit us all.

The main point of my post was to refute the sensational hype regarding our "immeninent doom" if we don't change the ways of our life. There is more than enough sound evidence that argues against this.





Thanks Robbbs - I'm also amazed at the number of people falling for it. You know what really gets me - when folks say "Ah, too bad winters will never be what they used to, back in my day in age."



Weatherbowl - interesting you bring that up - will post a graph in a moment.




Thanks RG, probably will post it there too. I check the climate forum and it does get pretty nasty. But believe it or not there are only 2-3 real big human-induced global warming crazies over there - of course they post in every thread.



Thanks Ice! From what I've heard Al Gore turned down his latest invitation to debate climate change with another prominent scientist. Wonder why. Nothing against the guy - I think cleaning up the environment is good. I admire him for that. But IMO the hype is getting to be a bit much.




Thanks Lab and Kelli!

Weatherbowl,

The left image is the northern ice cap a year ago -- summer 2007. The right image is the current appearance of the north pole. One can see we're clearly much more glaciated this year. Looking at the records, we're now in line with 2004/2005 ice wise - so beginning the down turn.

Storm, and Ice...

Do you still have a "good" feeling about the upcoming winter?

Bzimmer,

Let me put it this way - I have a "better" feeling than I did about the past couple winters (which isn't saying much).

But we still have some issues to monitor over the next few months that could swing in a favorable or unfavorable direction. Namely the north pacific signal, ENSO, and Atlantic SST's.

Right now I'm still in summer mode so I probably won't be looking into winter until after Labor Day.

Thanks Storm,

Enjoy the rest of the summer [ which I love ].....and I'll talk to you after Labor Day about the upcoming winter [ which I also love ]

Storm--

I know you are probably tired of reading it already but AWESOME POST!!! I really enjoyed it!

Very interesting stuff Storm. Thanks!

excellent post storm. I agree with you 100%, no one can argue with your post. You did a great job at backing up your points. Keep up the great posts

Sorry to say, and let this be the first time I mention it, that I see signals that point to another lackluster winter coming up. I don't feel good about it at all.

Robbs,

While I know we are still in summer mode and far away from winter can you jus say a bit about your"intuition" for the upcoming winter?

Thanks a lot for the comments guys! It's greatly appreciated.

Robbbs, it's a very mixed picture right now in terms of signals. What we want to see is the complete demise of that cold water sitting off the west coast and in the western ENSO regions. If this occurs - it'd switch us to a positive PDO, which would increase the chances for a weak nino and consequently more sustained troughiness in the Northeast.

However - the bad scenario which I think you're referring to - we develop into a second year La Nina - tend to feature horrible winters in the NYC area.

Neutral ENSO for next winter could be bad if we have a negative PDO, or good (snowy) if we have a positive PDO. On top of that there's the NAO, AO, PNA, EPO, QBO and any other abbreviation you can think of. LOL.

In short -- let's not worry about it at this early stage as TONS CAN CHANGE.

The La Nina Monster devours all east of the Ohio River and north of the Mason Dixon.

Storm -- I don't think we ever did a report card on the various winter outlooks of last winter (or I might have missed it). If I recall correctly, you and I were very similar in that we thought it would be a largely mild winter but with enough snow events to keep many happy and certainly not the doom and gloom outlook of JB for example. As it turned out, that's precisely what happened in the inland burbs, especially further inland. I received 46" here which was not far from my average 50" to 55", and the only thing that kept me from reaching or exceeding the average is that I had no snow after March 1, which is unusual in itself. Where I missed badly was the coastal plain which I expected to receive 20"+ but really got shafted. JB did very well for the season. Who missed badly? Didn't one of the Farmers' Almanacs forecast much above snow? I also think LC had another very off season.

So would this nina look any different than last year's? Hypothetically speaking here of course. I mean let's not forget last winter west milford and the northern part of sussex actually came close to a normal winter snowfall-wise (it wasn't always pretty of course) and New England got buried. Should i book a week in Stowe this winter? Should John start sending transfer applications to U. of Miami?

Robbbs - yes, I had above normal temps with the largest snowfall totals compared to normal over the interior northeast into new england. That idea worked out very well. But as you said -- both of us missed a little on the coastal plain. Thought we'd at least approach the 20s in inches, but we barely made it past 10" in NYC. Overall though I've been pretty pleased with the seasonal outlooks the past couple winters/summers, etc, as you should be too.

I don't think anyone can claim they know at this point. There may or not be any la nina. We'll know much more in a couple months.

Mod/Strong La Nina's actually favor northern New England. Central and southern areas will do better than here but usually they aren't a lot better (particularly southern New England) and are icy with a lot of snow to sleet and rain. Boston got lucky for awhile but once past mid January Boston's winter was lost. You guys in north Jersey got decent snow but that November snow, which amounted to about 25% of the amounts you got if I remember right (and which was pure snow , no sleet), was gone in less than 24 hours. After that it was a lot of sleet mix or changeovers. The problem with the amount of snow that any of us got last year is that I would label it as 'low quality snow". It was watered down with sleet or rain during the events and/or it was gone within 24 hours. A mod/strong La Nina like last year is just a disaster. Both 95/96 and 2002/3 remain stellar years among a bunch of very good ones in our area because they were not only snowy, but the snow was "high quality" and lasted on the ground a long time.

Seems like ages since those excellent winters around here. The stretch from 2000-2006 was excellent w/ the exception of 2001-02 of course. 2005-06 we began to turn the corner towards crappy winters, though.

My house:

2000-01: 41"
2001-02: 4"
2002-03: 52"
2003-04: 44"
2004-05: 50"
2005-06: 35"

2005-06 I'd guess you'd call a "low quality" snowfall winter, as most of the 35" came in one storm that melted in a couple days. The rest was all prior to December 9th. So in reality it's been three years since a good winter in central NJ.

Posted the discussion on Eastern last night and it was well received by virtually everyone. One poster (meteorologist) is a big AGW fan, so we had a bit of back and forth over there (scientific disco - it was surprisingly calm).

Well thats not surprising to me! The numbers and statistics don't lie. Not sure if I'm to tired to think, but what is AGW? If you can come up with statistical graphics like you showed, how come all the media and global warming geeks continue with their CO2 bullshttt? There are many experts that the media interview who also see things similar to you. Maybe your graphs would help them convince main stay America that global warming hype is all a political ploy.

Kelli,

No doubt the graphs would convince them -- only problem is I highly doubt we'll ever see an anti-global warming type show on TV. Bottom line is most of America is lazy -- they let the media feed them false information through the boob tube. I'd bet 90% of them don't bother to research online to see if it's true or not. That's the problem with this day and age; it's turning into a dictatorship. I can think of many other cases -- unrelated to climate -- involving the media BS'ing to the public. But that's off-topic and for another time.

BTW, AGW means anthropogenic global warming -- just a fancy way to say "human induced" or "man made" global warming. Say that to your friends to impress them. LOL.

Thanks Storm, I believe in going green and alternative energy sources, my pool is all solar and I'm looking into a solar fan for my attic. And if money allows within the next year a solar water heater. I'm willing to do my part, but we need more above board reporting with realistic prices for the average family to even consider switching their current electric/heat sources. Don't stop with your data it's very informative.

Problem with the media also is it's all corporation owned. They care about what stories bring in the most ratings. The internet is a much better place to find both sides to a story.

Thanks storm for an interesting read!

Here's an interesting graph regarding the sunspot cycles -- I think this one illustrates the discussion better. I was making reference to the effect of the PDO in terms of 20th century temperature variations -- however one might note how the 1960s featured peak solar constant, yet global temperatures decreased slightly during that time frame. How could this be if solar activity has significant influence? Well here's where the PDO comes into play. I also believe the cold PDO phase of the 1960s-1970s aided in "masking" the effects of a higher solar constant. However, once we saw the reversal to a warm PDO regime by 1994-95, global temperatures skyrocketed as we had two major/favorable factors for warmth -- +PDO and high solar. That's why IMO we began to see such a sharp increase in global temps during the 1920s-50s as not only was the solar increasing but the PDO was also in a positive/warm phase. Once we hit the mid 20th century, temps steadied due to the PDO flip negative.






In terms of the future -- latest sunspot data indicated the sun continues to sleep into early August. Below is the expected sunspot number into 09-10:





Will be interesting to track this - as the trajectory of this cycle's sunspot curve suggests to me that we may continue w/ near-minimum conditions at least through the beginning of 2009, maybe even longer. Some scientists are forecasting Cycle 24 to be stronger than 23, but many are the same ones that forecasted a sharp ramp-up in 2006 (which hasn't happened). Lots of speculation with regards to this. If Cycle 24 is about half of the current one, it'll be interesting to see how global temperatures react.

Don't know where else to post this, but it probably applies best here.

Some "food for thought" -- that latest Aussie ENSO forecast was issued this week. Ensemble members in the +0.2 to +0.8 range for region 3.4 overall through next winter -- what this would imply is warm-neutral/borderline weak el nino conditions. Keeping in mind +0.5 is the threshold for weak el nino

IF this were to verify, it'd have the potential to make a lot of people happy on this board. Please don't interpret this as me forecasting it - as I'm not, simply posting the model. I see many unfavorable factors for next winter so I'm far from jumping on any bandwagon. Not to mention there are plenty other factors besides ENSO. But if this one goes in our favor as the model says, it'll definitely help.

damn I missed it, I will check it out

ok I read the thread. Great job storm.

Thanks RG! It's really appreciated.

Just watched David Archibald's 9 minute presentation and it was excellent. Here's the link. Those of you who want to learn more about the sunspot - global temp connection, and more - I highly recommend it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbAe_g41Zl4

In a nutshell -- the points made:

1)There is a distinct connection between the length of solar cycles and the resultant global temperature decreases. Noting the sunspot cycle average of 10.7 years -- the more amplified / stronger cycles tend to persist for a shorter time period, i.e., 9-10 years, while the colder periods of Earth's history were often preceded by solar cycles of 12-13 years in length.

2) If solar cycle 23 were to be of "average" length -- that is, 10.7 years, we would've seen the onset of cycle 24 spots in January of 2007. This presentation was produced sometime late 2007 -- and at that time Mr. Archibald asserted cycle 23 would be at least 12 years in duration is no spots emerged through the end of year. Well, that has certainly been the case -- in fact here we are, August 2008, with near minimum conditions persisting. Therefore, it appears solar cycle 23 will be at least 12.5-13 years in length, possibly even longer, dependent on when cycle 24 arrives.

3) Solar cycle 4 I believe, lasted 13.7 years, prior to the onset of the Dalton Minimum, which featured drastic global cooling. Mr. Archibald's data suggested that longer sunspot cyles correlate to temperature decreases of 1.5 degrees or greater. He's expecting global temperatures to plummet below the 1940-70s level by 2030, as solar cycle 24 will be significantly less amplified than 23.

My take on this is he has some sound reasoning and data to support his points -- however -- speculation is still speculation, and of course we have other scientists out there with differing opinions, asserting that solar cycle 24 will be just as amplified if not more than 23. However, I'm tending to lean towards Archibald's ideas as solar cycle 23's minimum has lasted quite a bit longer than the past few cycles. This suggests to me at least some cooling in the coming decades. This coupled with the recent reversal to negative of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (and possibly the NAO-AO) seem to point away from continued global warming as forecasted by the IPCC.

Another interesting point in the speech concerning CO2 concentrations -- every 300 ppm increase in CO2 levels stimulates approximately a 15% rise in plant growth. Considering it's a known fact that plants/trees breathe CO2 and exhale 02, I don't believe anyone can argue with that assertion.

Archibald noted on one of his final graphs how miniscule anthropogenic CO2 was in comparison to natural CO2. Completely agree with the notion that human-induced CO2 is simply "adding on" to the current warm phase of Earth by a slight margin, and won't be nearly significant enough to prevent Earth from see-sawing back and forth between interglacial and glacial periods. Al Gore seems to believe that a runway warming effect will occur - as if there's no turning back - IMO this is about the least logical solution.

Anyway -- those are my ideas on the subject. The next 20-30 years will be interesting IMO as it'll answer a lot of questions regarding the anthropogenic CO2 input. Possibilities in my mind:

1) Global temperatures slowly/steadily increase from their current point -- in the face of a PDO reversal and weakening solar constant. This would indicate the human induced CO2 is a big player in atmospheric trends (strong effect).

2) Global temperatures remain steady the next couple decades, with a neg PDO and decreasing solar constant, indicating that anthropogenic factors are strong enough to prevent major cooling (moderate effect).

3) Global temperatures continue decreasing the next few decades due to the factors listed above. This would indicate anthropogenic CO2 is a minimal factor in the grand scheme of things.

Just to illustrate my last post in graphic form -- below is a depiction of the sunspot cycles since the 1700s.

As I noted below, it is true that longer solar cycles have typically preceded periods of decreased activity. If the current cycle 23 continues with near minimum conditions for some time (jury still out when we'll see the onset of cycle 24) -- it wouldn't be surprising if cycle 24 is 50% the amplitude of the current cycle. Should be interesting to track as there's still a myriad of possibilities on the table regarding the progression of the next few decades temperature wise.

Bump for anyone who may have missed the discussion last week.

This is a great slide show on climate factors/forcings. I just skimmed through it for about 10 minutes. Very educational read.

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/article...onForum2008.pdf

I just edited this graph into my original post -- it really speaks volumes IMO in terms of Water Vapor VS CO2 contribution to the greenhouse effect. It's clear in my mind that the miniscule amount of Co2 in our atmosphere has little to do with the fluctuations in global temperature regimes. The anthropogenic Co2 emitted pales in comparison to the abundance of water vapor produced by nature itself.

Just an FYI - August 2008 only had 1 lone sunspot all month! The least recorded sunspots for a 30 day period since 1913! Will be interesting to see how the rest of the year involves in terms of impacts on a weaker Cycle 24 and sensible weather, as discussed earlier.

Here's an article on the record low sunspot month of August 2008! Very interesting stuff here folks. Thus far Cycle 24 has contradicted most predictions of a very active sunspot phase. All the hallmarks of a weaker cycle are being shown -- 1)Delayed onset of sunspot activity, 2)Previous cycle (23) longer than normal, 3)Cycle 24 very slow to start, etc.


http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+History...rticle12823.htm


I'll be monitoring this closely over the next few months, as will many others.

Haven't updated in awhile here. Basically the low solar constant continues with December sunspot smoothed-number finishing at 0.8! Most days featured no sun-spots at all, with handful of 1-2's skewing that average up.

The current solar minimum is now the longest in duration since the 1896-1904 period, as indicated by the graph below. 2004-2008 is denoted by the blue line:




I believe we've already seen the effects of this solar minimum beginning over the past year -- a couple interesting facts A) 7 out of the top 10 coldest days in the U.S. since 2000 occurred in the past couple years, 2 of the top 3 were in 2008.

The combination of a transitioning decadal phase of the PDO to a colder regime (as last seen in the late 40s thru the late 70s), the second year La Nina conditions in the Pacific, and the persistence of this sun spot minimum all argue for a progression downward in terms of global temperatures -- in other wards a continuation of the decline which initialized around December 2007.

Many in the solar community are wondering when last year's sunspot forecast will be updated - as it's become quite apparent Solar Cycle 24 will not reach earlier expectations about 125 sunspot number per month. The second weaker option is a much better bet as depicted on the following image, although that also may be overestimated.

Just goes to show how little understanding we have in terms of solar and atmospheric processess. Lots of scientists likely humbled with this forecast.

At the very least I believe we'll see more in the way of cold records than warm ones over the coming year -- a complete reversal from the 1980-2006 period. Who knows how long the minimum will last - that's anyone's guess right now. Nonetheless with the climate slowly cooling it should be interesting to see the global warming folks grasping at more straws. I'm all for energy efficiency and developing new methods, but the hysteria is a bit much.

Intresting, that would lead me to believe that there will be a decline in the number of Major Hurricanes thoughout the next few years? Due to cooler-than-normal waters?

if the slow solar activity cools the planet, and the pacific, wont that mean more strong la nina's for us or will that no longer be as relevant due to the fact that the whole planet is cooler? (a strong la nina wouldnt hurt our snow chances)