There Was No Global Warming "Pause", And Ocean Temps Are Literally Going Off The NOAA Charts

[hatrack]

The big climate news last week was NOAA and NASA announcing that 2014 was the hottest year on record, breaking the highs of 2005 and 2010. But the bigger story got buried: Global warming has continued unabated in recent years.

Indeed, it’s not just that there not been a hiatus or pause or even slowdown in surface temperature warming (see below). The oceans, where the vast majority of human-caused global warming heat goes, have seen an acceleration in warming in recent years. As climate expert Prof. John Abraham writes in the UK Guardian, “The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists’ charts.”

Remember, more than 90 percent of human induced planetary warming goes into the oceans, while only 2 percent goes into the atmosphere, so small changes in ocean uptake can have huge impact on surface temperatures. That’s a key reason surface temperatures haven’t appeared to warm as fast as many had expected in the past ten years — although ocean warming has sped up, and sea level rise has accelerated more than we thought , and Arctic sea ice has melted much faster than the models expected, as have the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.



But here’s where the media’s sometimes single-minded focus on one statistic — the hottest year on record — misses the real story from the latest scientific data and analysis. The human-caused rise in surface air temperatures never paused, never even slowed significantly. And that means we are likely headed toward a period of rapid surface temperature warming. Here’s why. Dr. Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, tweeted last week “Is there evidence that there is a significant change of trend from 1998? (Spoiler: No.)” He attached this chart, which uses NASA’s latest data:

:large

The latest NASA temperature data make clear that not only has there been no “pause” in surface temperature warming in the past decade and a half, there hasn’t even been a significant change in trend.

EDIT

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/22/3614256/hottest-year-ocean-warming/

[2naSalit]

1. ...the bigger story got buried

Of course it did. The intent being that burying such confirmation UNTIL it's too f'ing late to do much about it for obvious reasons.

Thanks for posting.

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

[Fred Sanders]

3. Lies, lies and more lies, Fox told me so. You can trust Fox! I am not a scientist, I trust Fox to do my

thinking for me, not those so called "actual scientists" with their fancy charts and graphs and "facts" and when I get to be a U.S. Senator in charge of the Environment I intend to openly say so!

Facts are whatever folks believe they are, Roger Ailes told me that.

So there!

Sen. Inhofe (R-Big Oil)

..............

Great, great post.

[Rex]

4. There will be no stopping of Climate Change. Lust for money will make sure we go extinct first.

It's sad, but it's true.

[CrispyQ]

7. I agree.

As a collective, I think we are going insane. Or maybe we're already there.

[Rex]

16. I have to agree with

Einstein, no idea what we will be fighting with in WWIII, but WWIV it will be sticks and stones. Same thing kind of goes with climate change, but worse because you can't shoot nature or blow up a worldwide extinction. By then nature is already thinking about the next cycle that doesn't include you.

Like the Club, only no human gets to join.

[BlueJazz]

27. "Like the Club, only no human gets to join." Oh Yeah..I LIKE that!

[paleotn]

10. Laissez faire capitalism's end game.....

on an earth that more closely resembles Arrakis, the last two people kill each other over the last barrel of oil.

[tclambert]

14. In the end, there can be only one.

[hatrack]

15. Or barrel of water, in all likelihood

OTOH, we already have the GOP on hand to take on the role of House Harkonnen, so that's already taken care of.

[bvar22]

5. DURec.

I am ashamed of the World we are leaving for our children.

[Hubert Flottz]

6. K&R

Extreme sadness will "trickle down" faster every year, IMHO.

The fat cats just want to be the last humans standing on a big blue cinder. Too bad man can't exceed the forces of greed.

[Mnemosyne]

8. K&R for truth. nt

[tclambert]

9. If a denier wants to do bad trend analysis by starting with 1998,

I say, "Wait, you used that argument last year. This year, shouldn't you start from 1999?" 1998 was an unusual fluctuation upward (due to a really strong El Niño). 1999 was a significant fluctuation downward. If you start your bad trend analysis from 1999, whoa, it looks like it's getting warmer really fast!

With real trend analysis, like the dashed red line in the graph above, you can see it has been steadily getting warmer the whole time. The interesting thing to me is the new record year, 2014, set the record by matching the trend exactly. The next time we see a big fluctuation above the trend line, it may shock the heck out of some people. Personally, I'm rooting for an El Niño. It looks like we're in the beginning of a weak one now.

[daleo]

11. Only scam artists and idiots cherry pick data points in trend analysis

I guess that sums up global warming denialists, nicely.

[tclambert]

13. A lot of people don't know that, though. Math innumeracy makes them easy targets

for hucksters. I remember learning lots of nefarious tricks in statistics class, and then more when I worked in the computer field. One guy used to put a red line across his CPU utilization graphs at an arbitrary point. Executives thought points above that line meant trouble and would agree to upgrades.

Normal people may believe trend analysis of fluctuating data is just picking two dots on the graph and drawing a line between them. Not everybody understands running averages. I suspect the deniers who cherry pick the data understand all that and take advantage of innumeracy for propaganda purposes.

I suggested cherry picking 1999 partly as a joking way of using their cherry picking tactic against them and making it look silly. It's easier than trying to explain running averages to people who don't get math. In that way, I confess I was being a little bit of scam artist. Somehow I feel unrepentant. But if I do evil for a good cause, that averages out to neutral, right?

[mrdmk]

18. Mark Twain beat you to it by fifty years or so

There are three lies in the world, white lies, BLACK lies, and statistics...

You had to take a statistics class, are you OK, are you still the same.

Had to take two classes, lucky for me and others, the professor in the
second class had a sense of humor

[KingCharlemagne]

24. Technical note: I believe credit for the first iteration of this statement may belong to

British PM Disraeli who famously quipped that there are "lies, damned lies and statistics." At least, that was whom Twain himself credited for it. Weirdly, no one can find any trace of it in Disraeli's writings or quoted speeches, so Twain may have been laying off on Disraeli his own sentiment, a clever use of disinformation (or maybe the 19th-century's version of 'trolling'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

[daleo]

19. Math innumeracy is a cultural failing

There is no reason the vast majority can't be taught at least intro statistics. But, it is advantageous to some, to keep people ignorant.

[tclambert]

20. Is it? My impression is a lot of people are hardwired wrong when it comes to statistics

and especially probability. I mean, casinos make money. That can only happen when a whole lot of people don't understand probability. It seems like our natural instincts fail us when it comes to probability and statistics. Ronald Reagan took advantage of that with his folksy anecdotes supposedly representing how things really worked when those stories were often statistical outliers (when they weren't outright fabrications (welfare queen in Chicago driving a Cadillac)).

Maybe people could be trained out of those inherent instincts, though. Some people really resist that, though. I remember a few students insisting certain examples of probability "didn't FEEL right" and therefore couldn't really BE right. And the professor struggled to convince them. It's weird how the human mind works, and it's weird the ways it works incorrectly, too.

[daleo]

21. Probability can be difficult, and counterintuitive

But so is parallel parking, and most people can be trained to do that.

Ok, that was a bit facetious, but a majority of the population should be able to understand basic stats. With matters like global warming, a lot of it is just confirmation bias, in my opinion. People cherry pick the evidence that aligns with their preferences.

It was the same with smoking.

[hopemountain]

12. there will be much suffering and gnashing of teeth nt

[KingCharlemagne]

25. And a lot of garment rending too (especially as it gets warmer :) - nt

[hopemountain]

26. and only tears will rain nt

[oneview]

17. We NEED to do "global dimming" NOW!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

This would buy the world as much time as it needs to increase the effiency of non-carbon sources of energy so that we can actual make the changeover, which as a world we just can't do now, or at least not quickly enough.

It looks like at least there's been an experiment on purposeful global dimming to counteract global warming, paid for by the UK government:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_Particle_Injection_for_Climate_Engineering

Deniers are bad, but "believers" don't help either if all they want to do about Global Warming, really, is to scold the world for not shutting off its energy sources and diving headlong into an ensuing global economic depression, badmouith their fellow human beings, and cheer sardonically for future climate-caused chaos. Cuz we all deserve it, right?

[daleo]

22. Purposely manipulating the weather is a dangerous idea, too

Hell, we can't even figure out how to predict the economy or stock market, which are entirely human processes. I can just imagine our success at running the geophysical, geochemical and biological feedback loops of the entire planet.

[NickB79]

23. You're assuming we'd use the extra time to save ourselves

Whereas the most likely response to "We have 20 years of breathing room thanks to geo-engineering" would be "Cool, now we can burn coal for another 20 years!"

And beyond that, simply reducing planetary warming won't address other problems associated with CO2 emissions, namely ocean acidification.

[Bigmack]

28. As usual for you, GREAT post, hatrack. Thanks nt