During the warm period, it was widely reported that our climate was dominated by CO2 radiative forcing. Then, as CO2 continued to rise at the same rate, there was a pause which continues today.

What negated the warming? Clearly some other factor had intervened. Something as powerful as CO2 but in the opposite direction. If the unidentified factor could influence our climate to that extent then it, or another unidentified factor may have been responsible for some or all of the observed warming.

Put simply, CO2 is not the all powerful climate control knob after all

Schrödinger's cat

I think you'll find that the pause is over, if it ever existed.

The GISS global average anomaly for 2015 came out today. An anomaly of 0.87C 1998 was 0.63C. 2010 was 0.73C, 2014 was 0.74 and 2015 just came in today at 0.87C. All three show a statistically significant warming relative to 1998.

If you prefer to reduce the cherrypicking by taking 5-year averages

I'm amazed that the increases are so small, given that GISS and NOAA have spent a couple of years re-writing all the datasets to "disappear" the pause and introduce some serious warming. Do you condone people changing all the decades or centuries old raw data downwards? The satellite data shows cooling.

The satellite data shows cooling.

Which proves that the satellite data is bunk.

Cat, there's a T^4 feedback that probably has something to do with stability, but I think it is well known. Also:

This is why the issues raised in this post are never properly admitted or debated

There's the issue of whether the models use to process satellite data have been validated. Martin says they have been 'calibrated' to some extent but he has gone all quiet on whether 'calibrated' means 'validated'. My guess is that it doesn't and that the non-validated satellite numbers should therefore be rejected by anyone who complains about non-validated GCMs. Where do you stand on this dilemma?

It gets so boring to ask EM statistically significant compared to what. The place where I live, the Daily anomaly is about 0.2. An annual anomaly in the same range is risible

EM, do you know how the Daily minima trended? Clive Best has shown that for the UK the only noticeable upward trend is in winter months. Since you are a warmist, you prefer theory to data,but what is the party line explanation?

Diogenes, why should anyone care that "for the UK the only noticeable upward trend is in winter months"? You and Clive clearly think it is important, but I'm, like, "that's cool man, have another beer".

Another thing that gets boring is having to ask the same question again and again. But I've not met a "skeptic" who doesn't seem to think that models can't be trusted and very often the reason is that they are not "validated". But models are everywhere. Sometimes it seems that one can't read about new research without hearing that a model was used somewhere in the process. And I read that the processing of satellite data relies on a model of some type. So my question is, have these models been "validated"? For UAH/RSS It should be an easy question to answer because people here are so sure that they know about models, Simon the clairvoyant even claims to be a modeler, and people will seemingly mention the need for "validation" at any opportunity. And they are so sure that GCMs can't be trusted because they haven't been "validated". So someone tell me whether satellite processing models have been "validated" or forever Shut The Frack Up about either the superior nature of the satellite record or about the unreliability of models.

This thread just passed 333 posts. That's half an anti-Christ.

I think you'll find that the pause is over...

Jan 20, 2016 at 7:01 PM Entropic man

Glad tidings of great joy. Rejoice at that news.

I may have a false memory, but I seem to recall seeing a graph fairly recently which had satellite and balloon data closely matching each other. (Unlike Raff) I have tried to find it but have failed, has anyone else got a link?

Thanks.

SandyS: http://images.remss.com/papers/rsspubs/Mears_JGR_2012_MSU_AMSU_Short_Term_Trends.pdf

Thanks Martin, I'll have plough through it later, bookmarked now.

Raff,

Another thing that gets boring is having to ask the same question again and again.

This is just a suggestion. Normal discussion after the age of about 12 move on from why/prove it/it's my ball and I'm going home to have considered this/but so and so says/think of it this way. Jumping up and down saying answer me! answer me! rarely elicits a response and when it does the answer may be short and rude.

Reading the same story over and over can be just as boring as you'll understand when you're old enough to have children

> > What WE will do as far as emissions is concerned is one of the
> > LEAST uncertain of all climatic considerations.

> Well, then we can predict the future forcings.

That's only 1, roughly.

Earlier in the thread after I posted....

> So it sounds like we need to know what the forcings are going actually going
> to be over the next XX years for these to be useful.

You (Fizziks) said...

"Has anyone got a crystal ball we can borrow?"

So can we predict all the forcings required to make the models track reality before the event, or NOT?

So can we predict all the forcings required to make the models track reality before the event, or NOT?

Since we can't predict precisely what we will do (or what socio-economic factors in future might influence our emissions) then the answer is clearly no. That we can't do so does not mean that we can't make conditional predictions; what are typically called projections. That's why there is why the models consider more than one possible future pathway. This is so trivial, I really have trouble understanding why you can't get this. It's not even all that controversial.

Ratty, Sandy, a "remarkable correlation"? Here's a quote (emphasis mine)

In this work, we evaluate the agreement between MSU and homogenized radiosonde data sets on multiyear (predominantly 5-year) time scales and find that MSU data sets are often more similar to each other than to radiosonde data sets and vice versa. Furthermore, on these times scales the differences between MSU data sets are often not larger than published internal uncertainty estimates for the RSS product alone and therefore may not be statistically significant when the internal uncertainty in each data set is taken into account. Given the data limitations it is concluded that using radiosondes to validate multidecadal-scale trends in MSU data, or vice versa, or trying to use such metrics alone to pick a ‘winner’ is an ill-conditioned approach and has limited utility without one or more of additional independent measurements, or methodological, or physical analysis.

I keep asking because it is a central plank of "skepticism" that GCMs are unvalidated and hence are rubbish and that the satellite record is "the best there is" (or some such). But it is clear that the satellite record is also unvalidated and doesn't match the sparse sonde record (which is supposed to be measuring the same thing). So you should have as little regard for UAH/RSS satellite records as you do for GCMs, yet you use these records to detect a "pause" (except for Simon who rejects all temperature records and instead uses seaweed or has visions of it in dreams or whatever).

The models predict a hot spot in the troposphere. It clearly does not exist. 28 million radiosondes since 1955 cannot be wrong. how do the defenders of the faith answer that?

Sandy S

Mears et al is rather dense, but if you examine the bottom left ftand pair of graphs in Figur3 and Figure 4 you can see that the correlation between the RATPAC radiosonde data and the satellite data is fairly loose.

If you plot them separately you get this pattern.

Note thatb the radiosonde RATPAC data shows a continuing warming trend, while RSS and UAH have flattened.

Radiosonde data has been collected in the same way right along.

The satellites data is changing, due to changing orbits and ageing sensors, plus the possibility that microwave emissions are changing as atmospheric composition changes. This is even before accounting for any temperature change.

Given the choice between RATPAC and RSS as a troposphere temperature record I would go with RATPAC.

Schrödinger's Cat

As mentioned and illustrated in my 3.12pm post, the radiosonde data shows that the troposphere continues to warm. This should answer your question about the tropospheric hot spot

Entropic man
As I haven't looked I can't comment at the moment and at the speed this discussion goes it'll be several pages before I do.

EM - Is that from the Sherwood paper?