7 ms·

Cause of global warming hiatus found deep in the Atlantic Ocean

34 points by aethertap 12y ago

alexyes 12y ago
Not a very scientific approach. The article starts with a conclusion and then tries to leverage the findings to explain it.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  FTFA: "The authors dug up historical data to show that the cooling in the three decades between 1945 to 1975 – which caused people to worry about the start of an Ice Age – was during a cooling phase. (It was thought to have been caused by air pollution.) Earlier records in Central England show the 40- to 70-year cycle goes back centuries, and other records show it has existed for millennia." This is why you can't extrapolate from a cyclical process.
- scott_s 12y ago
  I don't understand your comment - this is a news article. They tend to lead with the most important information, and explain that information as the article goes on. When a news article is about a scientific article, it will tend to start with the conclusion. But I also don't understand your comment when compared to actual scientific articles. The high-level conclusions tend to be in the abstract and the introduction. Scientific papers aren't structured as mysteries, they try to front-load the important lessons up front. Don't confuse articles about science, or papers by scientists explaining their findings, as the scientific process itself.
  - alexyes 12y ago
    Thanks for your point. You're right. My fault
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  The order in which a paper is written does not necessarily reflect the order in which the work was done.
  - byerley 12y ago
    Actually, it does in this case. People seem to forget that in climate science (like cosmology, ect.), you can't use the normal scientific method because you can't really do meaningful experiments, just observations. What you do instead, is look at available information, intuit an explanation, then systematically compare the implications to known results. If all goes well, you might then do a simulation or predict other effects that can be observed. However, the process is very dissimilar to other fields of science.
    - thanatropism 12y ago
      Sounds like climate scientists need to read a lot into the epistemology of economics. (It may well be that "economic science" is an oxymoron, but the work that has been done to try and make it one...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_quasi-experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_quasi-experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_discontinuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_discontinuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_variable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_variable etc. etc.
      - JamesBarney 12y ago
        One problem with all of these approaches is they require more then one subject. Unfortunately we only have one earth, so there is no way to have a natural control without CO2 rising, or an earth where the CO2 rose at a different time.
        ende 12y ago
        We actually do have a positive and a negative control in orbit on either side of the Earth's. Sorta.
guscost 12y ago
> New research from the University of Washington shows that the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. It's acceptable to rush to the conclusion that temperature patterns from the 20th century are driven by anthropogenic influence and declare the matter settled, but when the warming trend doesn't continue I'm supposed to patiently wait for these folks to formulate all manner of alternate hypotheses?
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Ha! But the difference between their modeling and your bull is, they do the math?
  - guscost 12y ago
    http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/9/98038-science-has-only-two-legs/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/9/98038-science-has-only-...
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    You don't need to do the math to point out an inconsistency in reasoning. A few equations and a big computer simulation doesn't mean the rest of us have to turn off our brain when your conclusions seem inconsistent.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- satellitecat 12y ago
  Hey, this tumour stopped growing.. guess I can ignore it now!
3JPLW 12y ago
Here's the actual article: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897 There's also a short review of the state of the literature in this same issue. Well worth a read: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/860.full http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/860.full (I'm not sure how much of this content is limited to ivory towers)
- greenyoda 12y ago
  Without a subscription, you can only read the abstract before hitting the paywall.
phkahler 12y ago
This is the problem as I see it from TFA: >> More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. >> “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus,” said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung First of all, a hypothesis is NOT a theory. Secondly, they have a goal indicative of an agenda - they're looking for a plausible explanation and publishing speculation as "theory". If you don't have data you're just speculating, and by data I don't mean "yeah, volcanoes erupt and emit stuff". You need data that supports your hypothesis, and if you really want to claim a theory, IMHO you need some kind of mathematical model. If all these weekly explanations had data and models to back them, I don't think there would be nearly so many. To me this resembles the folks who blame every weather event on climate change. Even if I accept the premise, they look like fools trying to tie warm, cold, erratic, extreme, and calm, all to the the same cause with nothing but simple high level hand waving. Never mind my views on certain topics, doesn't all that speculation out in the public view damage the perception of science as a whole? That bothers me.
- aethertap 12y ago
  I agree with your points here. The thing that struck me as more interesting about this case is that it seems like it should lead to a more concrete testable prediction, with a deadline. If this is right, we should see a rapid increase in temperatures when the cycle that's currently pumping heat to the bottom of the ocean starts to pump it back up to the top. If it's as they say, then it seems to me like the next oscillation should be much more dramatic (for some measurable definition of dramatic) than the historic ones because most of that "stored warming" will come up in a rush. On the other hand, if we get to the time when the cycle reverses and it's no big deal (after giving it time to get into full swing), perhaps we should reconsider our premises.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    This also makes it much more of an interesting bet as in survival terms it has actual teeth, especially since the cooling period hasn't really cooled but has stayed pretty flat instead. I suggest at least hedging that it might in fact rise, given the loss if it does. Nothing wrong with making some hedge funds after all, honest foundation of the economy and all that. Besides, other than saying that the climate is just too complex to make these predictions, I haven't ever heard a plausible argument against extending the simple observation that a volume of air enclosing an absorbing and emitting solid when exposed to a wideband source of light (the sun being a good example) will trap heat in different amounts dependent on the concentration of the gases in the volume and that CO2 is one of the gases that increases this effect if you start with a mix the same as our atmosphere.
vixin 12y ago
I believe this is cause #31: others cited include http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/30/list-of-excuses-for-the-pause-now-up-to-29/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/30/list-of-excuses-for-th... Main thing is to keep the show (and funding) ticking along nicely. I'm sure it will.
- adventured 12y ago
  They just need to hold out until there's finally - after a few decades - an uptick in temperatures, hurricanes, or tornadoes. The last decade has been such a never-ending embarrassment of wrong predictions, anything would be welcomed to recharge the base at this point. Seems like every global warming proponent I know has lost faith at this point (with faith being the ideal word for it).
FranOntanaya 12y ago
But, doesn't it follow that lower temperatures would mean less ice melting, therefore less cold freshwater added to the ocean?
DennisP 12y ago
I can't believe anyone actually buys into this idea that there's a significant pause. Here's a temperature graph of the past couple decades: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warming-pause/?wpmp_tp=1 http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warm... There's a long-term trend with a lot of variability year to year. We happened to have a big temperature spike in the late 90s. That doesn't mean we had a pause afterwards. Measure from the years just before or just after the spike and it doesn't look like a pause at all.
- gd1 12y ago
  Pause denier!
- Jach 12y ago
  That chart is missing 5 years of data. Please link to the actual data: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ Before you see the data for 2009-2013, maybe you should make a prediction of their values.
  - anon1385 12y ago
    >maybe you should make a prediction of their values. 4 years is a really tiny meaningless sample in terms of climate. However, here is what you asked for up to 1998, with a continuation of the linear trend in red, and a 'pause' in blue (I only have a 'before' graph for HADCRUT4 rather than GISS, but there isn't much difference - GISS and other temp records can be seen at the link). http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg Maybe you would like to make a prediction? Here is what happened: http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg Some 'pause' eh. Source: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-th...
    - sparkie 12y ago
      25 years is also a really tiny meaningless sample in terms of climate. Are we forgetting that we have a solar cycle of 22 years? We can't tell shit from such small periods.
IanDrake 12y ago
Unlike real science, where a scientist would say, "you know what, we thought our model of X showed promise, but we couldn't reproduce our results in reality, so we moved on", climate scientists seems to say "hmmm, reality isn't following our model, where did reality go wrong?"
- satellitecat 12y ago
  If I throw a ball and suddenly it stops, contrary to what I expect, I don't go "oh, I guess the ball just stopped of its own accord, naturally," I go, why the hell did it stop?" and look for reasons. Who knows, maybe it really did just stop naturally, but maybe it was something else (wind.. hit something.. ball burst creating a backwards force..)
nsxwolf 12y ago
Is there really a hiatus, then, regardless of cause? How does that square with every new year being the "hottest on record"? Edit: I ask because as a casual observer, I had always thought this "hiatus" was denier-speak. But now it seems to be being taken seriously in the articles I see.
- satellitecat 12y ago
  It's not that every year lately has been hotter than the last; however, the last 13 or so years are hotter than anything from 20+ years ago. See graphs here: https://www.google.ca/search?q=global+temperatures+annual&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=global+temperatures+annual&tb...
- glenra 12y ago
  Here's the trend for the last ten years - it's flat: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/trend http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/plot/ha... The trend has been flat enough for long enough to falsify all the model predictions that assumed CO2 was the primary driver and nothing else really mattered. Those predictions looked GREAT in the late 1990s but don't work now, so the hunt is on for new explanatory factors. Everybody's got their favorites. The main thing to consider with regard to new years being dubbed "the hottest on record" is selection bias: When a new year looks like it MIGHT be "the hottest on record", that makes for big scary newspaper headlines. Then when it (often) turns out that it actually WASN'T the hottest on record, that's not considered newsworthy. Nor is it newsworthy when the following year is only the 6th or 10th or 12th hottest. If you only see headlines about it when there's been a record or somebody has predicted that there WILL be a record, due to availability bias you are left with the impression that records are happening constantly. (And even when the whole year isn't the hottest, the same dynamic applies to hottest summer, hottest winter, hottest in the northern hemisphere, etc.) Another thing to consider is that although the current trend is essentially flat (and has been for over a dozen years), it's flat at a relatively high level. Since the temperature plateaued but hasn't yet significantly decreased, people can still claim it's a hot decade or invent silly "X of the last Y years" constructions to make it seem like the warming trend hasn't stopped.

34 points by aethertap 12y ago

Not a very scientific approach. The article starts with a conclusion and then tries to leverage the findings to explain it.

happyscrappy 12y ago
FTFA: "The authors dug up historical data to show that the cooling in the three decades between 1945 to 1975 – which caused people to worry about the start of an Ice Age – was during a cooling phase. (It was thought to have been caused by air pollution.) Earlier records in Central England show the 40- to 70-year cycle goes back centuries, and other records show it has existed for millennia." This is why you can't extrapolate from a cyclical process.
scott_s 12y ago
I don't understand your comment - this is a news article. They tend to lead with the most important information, and explain that information as the article goes on. When a news article is about a scientific article, it will tend to start with the conclusion. But I also don't understand your comment when compared to actual scientific articles. The high-level conclusions tend to be in the abstract and the introduction. Scientific papers aren't structured as mysteries, they try to front-load the important lessons up front. Don't confuse articles about science, or papers by scientists explaining their findings, as the scientific process itself.
- alexyes 12y ago
  Thanks for your point. You're right. My fault
yummyfajitas 12y ago
The order in which a paper is written does not necessarily reflect the order in which the work was done.
- byerley 12y ago
  Actually, it does in this case. People seem to forget that in climate science (like cosmology, ect.), you can't use the normal scientific method because you can't really do meaningful experiments, just observations. What you do instead, is look at available information, intuit an explanation, then systematically compare the implications to known results. If all goes well, you might then do a simulation or predict other effects that can be observed. However, the process is very dissimilar to other fields of science.
  - thanatropism 12y ago
    Sounds like climate scientists need to read a lot into the epistemology of economics. (It may well be that "economic science" is an oxymoron, but the work that has been done to try and make it one...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_quasi-experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_quasi-experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_discontinuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_discontinuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_variable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_variable etc. etc.
    - JamesBarney 12y ago
      One problem with all of these approaches is they require more then one subject. Unfortunately we only have one earth, so there is no way to have a natural control without CO2 rising, or an earth where the CO2 rose at a different time.
      - ende 12y ago
        We actually do have a positive and a negative control in orbit on either side of the Earth's. Sorta.

guscost 12y ago

> New research from the University of Washington shows that the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. It's acceptable to rush to the conclusion that temperature patterns from the 20th century are driven by anthropogenic influence and declare the matter settled, but when the warming trend doesn't continue I'm supposed to patiently wait for these folks to formulate all manner of alternate hypotheses?

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Ha! But the difference between their modeling and your bull is, they do the math?
- guscost 12y ago
  http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/9/98038-science-has-only-two-legs/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/9/98038-science-has-only-...
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  You don't need to do the math to point out an inconsistency in reasoning. A few equations and a big computer simulation doesn't mean the rest of us have to turn off our brain when your conclusions seem inconsistent.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
satellitecat 12y ago
Hey, this tumour stopped growing.. guess I can ignore it now!

3JPLW 12y ago

Here's the actual article: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897 There's also a short review of the state of the literature in this same issue. Well worth a read: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/860.full http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/860.full (I'm not sure how much of this content is limited to ivory towers)

greenyoda 12y ago
Without a subscription, you can only read the abstract before hitting the paywall.

phkahler 12y ago

This is the problem as I see it from TFA: >> More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. >> “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus,” said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung First of all, a hypothesis is NOT a theory. Secondly, they have a goal indicative of an agenda - they're looking for a plausible explanation and publishing speculation as "theory". If you don't have data you're just speculating, and by data I don't mean "yeah, volcanoes erupt and emit stuff". You need data that supports your hypothesis, and if you really want to claim a theory, IMHO you need some kind of mathematical model. If all these weekly explanations had data and models to back them, I don't think there would be nearly so many. To me this resembles the folks who blame every weather event on climate change. Even if I accept the premise, they look like fools trying to tie warm, cold, erratic, extreme, and calm, all to the the same cause with nothing but simple high level hand waving. Never mind my views on certain topics, doesn't all that speculation out in the public view damage the perception of science as a whole? That bothers me.

aethertap 12y ago
I agree with your points here. The thing that struck me as more interesting about this case is that it seems like it should lead to a more concrete testable prediction, with a deadline. If this is right, we should see a rapid increase in temperatures when the cycle that's currently pumping heat to the bottom of the ocean starts to pump it back up to the top. If it's as they say, then it seems to me like the next oscillation should be much more dramatic (for some measurable definition of dramatic) than the historic ones because most of that "stored warming" will come up in a rush. On the other hand, if we get to the time when the cycle reverses and it's no big deal (after giving it time to get into full swing), perhaps we should reconsider our premises.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  This also makes it much more of an interesting bet as in survival terms it has actual teeth, especially since the cooling period hasn't really cooled but has stayed pretty flat instead. I suggest at least hedging that it might in fact rise, given the loss if it does. Nothing wrong with making some hedge funds after all, honest foundation of the economy and all that. Besides, other than saying that the climate is just too complex to make these predictions, I haven't ever heard a plausible argument against extending the simple observation that a volume of air enclosing an absorbing and emitting solid when exposed to a wideband source of light (the sun being a good example) will trap heat in different amounts dependent on the concentration of the gases in the volume and that CO2 is one of the gases that increases this effect if you start with a mix the same as our atmosphere.

vixin 12y ago

I believe this is cause #31: others cited include http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/30/list-of-excuses-for-the-pause-now-up-to-29/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/30/list-of-excuses-for-th... Main thing is to keep the show (and funding) ticking along nicely. I'm sure it will.

adventured 12y ago
They just need to hold out until there's finally - after a few decades - an uptick in temperatures, hurricanes, or tornadoes. The last decade has been such a never-ending embarrassment of wrong predictions, anything would be welcomed to recharge the base at this point. Seems like every global warming proponent I know has lost faith at this point (with faith being the ideal word for it).

FranOntanaya 12y ago

But, doesn't it follow that lower temperatures would mean less ice melting, therefore less cold freshwater added to the ocean?

DennisP 12y ago

I can't believe anyone actually buys into this idea that there's a significant pause. Here's a temperature graph of the past couple decades: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warming-pause/?wpmp_tp=1 http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warm... There's a long-term trend with a lot of variability year to year. We happened to have a big temperature spike in the late 90s. That doesn't mean we had a pause afterwards. Measure from the years just before or just after the spike and it doesn't look like a pause at all.

gd1 12y ago
Pause denier!
Jach 12y ago
That chart is missing 5 years of data. Please link to the actual data: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ Before you see the data for 2009-2013, maybe you should make a prediction of their values.
- anon1385 12y ago
  >maybe you should make a prediction of their values. 4 years is a really tiny meaningless sample in terms of climate. However, here is what you asked for up to 1998, with a continuation of the linear trend in red, and a 'pause' in blue (I only have a 'before' graph for HADCRUT4 rather than GISS, but there isn't much difference - GISS and other temp records can be seen at the link). http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg Maybe you would like to make a prediction? Here is what happened: http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg Some 'pause' eh. Source: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-th...
  - sparkie 12y ago
    25 years is also a really tiny meaningless sample in terms of climate. Are we forgetting that we have a solar cycle of 22 years? We can't tell shit from such small periods.

IanDrake 12y ago

Unlike real science, where a scientist would say, "you know what, we thought our model of X showed promise, but we couldn't reproduce our results in reality, so we moved on", climate scientists seems to say "hmmm, reality isn't following our model, where did reality go wrong?"

satellitecat 12y ago
If I throw a ball and suddenly it stops, contrary to what I expect, I don't go "oh, I guess the ball just stopped of its own accord, naturally," I go, why the hell did it stop?" and look for reasons. Who knows, maybe it really did just stop naturally, but maybe it was something else (wind.. hit something.. ball burst creating a backwards force..)

nsxwolf 12y ago

Is there really a hiatus, then, regardless of cause? How does that square with every new year being the "hottest on record"? Edit: I ask because as a casual observer, I had always thought this "hiatus" was denier-speak. But now it seems to be being taken seriously in the articles I see.

satellitecat 12y ago
It's not that every year lately has been hotter than the last; however, the last 13 or so years are hotter than anything from 20+ years ago. See graphs here: https://www.google.ca/search?q=global+temperatures+annual&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=global+temperatures+annual&tb...
glenra 12y ago
Here's the trend for the last ten years - it's flat: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/trend http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/plot/ha... The trend has been flat enough for long enough to falsify all the model predictions that assumed CO2 was the primary driver and nothing else really mattered. Those predictions looked GREAT in the late 1990s but don't work now, so the hunt is on for new explanatory factors. Everybody's got their favorites. The main thing to consider with regard to new years being dubbed "the hottest on record" is selection bias: When a new year looks like it MIGHT be "the hottest on record", that makes for big scary newspaper headlines. Then when it (often) turns out that it actually WASN'T the hottest on record, that's not considered newsworthy. Nor is it newsworthy when the following year is only the 6th or 10th or 12th hottest. If you only see headlines about it when there's been a record or somebody has predicted that there WILL be a record, due to availability bias you are left with the impression that records are happening constantly. (And even when the whole year isn't the hottest, the same dynamic applies to hottest summer, hottest winter, hottest in the northern hemisphere, etc.) Another thing to consider is that although the current trend is essentially flat (and has been for over a dozen years), it's flat at a relatively high level. Since the temperature plateaued but hasn't yet significantly decreased, people can still claim it's a hot decade or invent silly "X of the last Y years" constructions to make it seem like the warming trend hasn't stopped.