La Nina and Pacific Decadal Oscillation Cool the Pacific (global warming)

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18012 ^

[chessplayer]

A cool-water anomaly known as La Niña occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean throughout 2007 and early 2008. In April 2008, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that while the La Niña was weakening, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation—a larger-scale, slower-cycling ocean pattern—had shifted to its cool phase.

Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns.

According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

[BelegStrongbow]

Or they can be one true component of how the natural cliamte cycles from warm to cool and back again, something that is really not affected by human activity, no matter how we puff ourselves up as having significance we don’t have (ruining the natural world) and forgetting the significance we really have: souls seeking salvation and eternal life.

[kidd]

According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

Whoa Josh...really sticking your neck out there

[gusopol3]

anybody have a coin?

[Reeses]

Where's the PDO hiding the heat then? If warming exists the thermal energy has to be located somewhere on Earth's surface. This PDO explanation would be a lot more impressive if their computer model computed it before the fact and not after. Why don't we read about the 80 infallible computer models anymore?

[sportutegrl]

. . . "These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming . . . ":

Sounds like the global warmers have been working overtime trying to explain why the predicted global warming catastrophe hasn't occured.

[The Raven]

Suppose he had said

“These natural climate phenomena can sometimes be mistaken for climate change caused by human activities.”

He would have been shot the next day.

[SueRae]

In other words, he is giving us a twenty or thrity year excuse for why we aren’t seeing the globull warming effects?

[BelegStrongbow]

Interesting response. On the one hand, that really shows the effectiveness of martyrdom, in that those who falsely cling to power will eventually have to start killing those who disagree and that this will only motivate those who believe the truth the martyr died for. On the other, it also implies that liberals would actually kill someone able to defend themselves in the real world. In my own opinion, that is one of the defining characteristics of liberals: they have sublimated the notion of death from actual killing to public execution of the dignity and personal honor of the victim.

I would expect endless stories on CNN and MSNBC, et. al., examining the weatherman’s credibility, undermining his authority, demonstrating how he had been corrupted by bad and excessivly conservative associates, etc. That’s how people get killed these days: alive, but utterly deprived of the credibility their actual achievements should have merited.

[chessplayer]

PDO shifts;

1905 - 1946 (41 years) warm
1946 - 1977 (31 years) cool
1977 - 2008 (31 years) warm

Southern hemisphere cooling.
Tropics cooling.
Pacific cooling.
Atlantic temps. showing no signs of warming for last four years.
Sun perhaps heading for a Dalton Minimum.

Things could get interesting. AGW`ers insist the PDO and Atlantic Oscillation have little effect on climate compared to man-made global warming.

[JohnEBoy]

So what he is definitely saying is ... there might be global warming or there might not be, and it might be caused by human activity and it might possibly happen sooner or perhaps much later. Therefore, we MUST spend trillions, NOW to prevent it. See? We are all clear on the concept now, right?

[chessplayer]

“More on the PDO shift cited by NASA”
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/more-on-the-pdo-shift-cited-by-nasa/#respond

[jimfree]

Yes, gravity and orbital dynamics and the earth’s rotation have their influences but they only mask the major impact of the rooster on the sun’s rise each morning.

[Eye On The Left]

If you look at the chart below, you will see that sunspot activity (during solar maxes--the individual peaks) has been relatively high since about 1900 and almost non-existent for the period between about 1650 and 1700. This period is known as the Maunder Minimum or "Little Ice Age".

From BBC News [yr: 2004]:
A new [2004] analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm

______________________________________________

It's really hard to imagine how this little ball of fire could have any impact on our climate at all.

But the main arguments being made for a solar-climate connection is not so much to do with the heat of the Sun but rather with its magnetic cycles. When the Sun is more magnetically active (typically around the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle --we are a few yrs away at the moment), the Sun's magnetic field is better able to deflect away incoming galactic cosmic rays (highly energetic charged particles coming from outside the solar system). The GCRs are thought to help in the formation of low-level cumulus clouds -the type of clouds that BLOCK sunlight and help cool the Earth. So when the Sun's MF is acting up (not like now), less GCRs reach the Earth's atmosphere, less low level sunlight-blocking clouds form, and more sunlight gets through to warm the Earth's surface...naturally. Clouds are basically made up of tiny water droplets. When dust particles in the atmosphere become ionized by incoming GCRs they become very 'attractive' to water molecules, in a purely 'chemical' sense of the word.-Eye On The Left

____________________________________________________

2008: "The Center for Sun-Climate Research at the DNSC investigates the connection between variations in the intensity of cosmic rays and climatic changes on Earth. This field of research has been given the name 'cosmoclimatology'"..."Cosmic ray intensities – and therefore cloudiness – keep changing because the Sun's magnetic field varies in its ability to repel cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy, before they can reach the Earth." :
http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate

____________________________________________________

It's not like ice ages have never happened before. Or that we aren't due for a new one any century now.

Ice ages typically occur about every 100,000 years, a result of 3 periodic earth orbital deviations occurring roughly at the same time. These are: slight periodic changes in the tilt angle of Earth's axis, slight periodic changes in the 'shape' of Earth's orbit (degree of its ellipse) and a slight wobble of the axis itself (this is different than angle change).

Also, if you look very carefully at the graph you posted, you'll see that temperature increases (the blue line) actually PRECEEDED CO2 increases (red line) throughout this entire interval spanning the past 400,000 years. In fact, on average, they precede them by a whopping 800 years! In other words, it looks like temperature increases *caused* the CO2 increases, not vice versa. The lefties are well aware of this problem and have offered up many lame brain explanations for it. Actually, one part does make sense, that being as global temperature increased (naturally) and the oceans warmed, they were less able to contain dissolved CO2 and so it was eventually released into the air (like a warm bottle of soda). The CO2/temp figures used in this graph are based on ice core data from Greenland.

...oh, speaking of lame brains, I don't think Al Gore mentions this difficulty at all in his blockbuster movie. Also, the most important greenhouse gas of all (by a long shot) is water vapor. It actually accounts for between 75-95% of the GH effect --yet another inconvenient truth Gore leaves out of his film.-Eye On The Left

[Egon]

Yes, gravity and orbital dynamics and the earth’s rotation have their influences but they only mask the major impact of the rooster on the sun’s rise each morning.

Heh. Excellent. There's a tagline in there somewhere.

[Thermalseeker]

Why don't we read about the 80 infallible computer models anymore?

Yep, you sure don't see the "hockey stick" graph anymore, do ya?

[Vio24]

"Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same (cooling) phase for 20 to 30 years

" When asked to comment on this latest finding, the head of the UN Commission on Global Warming was quoted as saying "Oh sh*t"

[Pikachu_Dad]

Yep, those two guys did an excellent job debunking that fraud.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[agere_contra]

The CO2/temp figures used in this graph are based on ice core data from Greenland.

I agree with your post, but - minor point - the CO2/temp graph marked "Antarctica Ice Core Data 1" is of course from the Vostok Ice Cores in Antarctica, not from Greenland.

Thank you for the excellent sunspot graph.