Global surface warming continues without pause contrary to denier claims

There's another new paper out in Nature Climate Change today that discusses the recent trends on global surface temperature. It's by a rash of notable authors: John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka, Neil C. Swart. Anthony Watts heralded the paper (archived here), which is unusual because he normally scoffs at the findings of most of these authors. He referred to an article in the Examiner newspaper, which claims that this paper contradicted "another study last June" that stated that the "the hiatus was just an artifact that “vanishes when biases in temperature data are corrected.”

Well it doesn't contradict it. Needless to say Anthony and the Examiner was comparing apples and oranges.

The new paper, Fyfe16, discussed the reality of the slowdown. There was no "hiatus" or stopping of global warming, contrary to Anthony Watts' headline. The rise in global surface temperatures slowed down earlier this century compared to the rate of rise from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. As Jeff Tollefson of Nature wrote about the lead author: "Fyfe uses the term “slowdown” rather than “hiatus” and stresses that it does not in any way undermine global-warming theory."

Jim Steele brings the Arctic to Antarctica

There's a very odd article at WUWT by Jim Steele about Antarctic sea ice (archived here, latest here). He started off the article saying he'd just read a new paper about Arctic sea ice. The paper, by Neil Swart and colleagues was published in Nature at the end of January.

The introduction to the paper sets the scene:

Internal climate variability can mask or enhance human-induced sea-ice loss on timescales ranging from years to decades. It must be properly accounted for when considering observations, understanding projections and evaluating models.

The scientists were looking at trends in Arctic sea ice in recent years. What they were looking at in particular was the extent to which internal climate variability can affect the trend. That is, how much of the ups and downs in Arctic sea ice could come from internal variability compared to the underlying decline from enhanced greenhouse warming.

The main message from the paper, I think, is that Arctic sea ice decline is not necessarily underestimated by climate models. The recent big dips of 2007 and 2012 could be natural variability. It's difficult to tell.