Willis Eschenbach wonders about ENSO events and rain

Willis Eschenbach is one of the resident pseudo-scientists at WUWT. Today he decided to tackle ENSO events and precipitation (archived here). As is usual, he went to satellite data to get precipitation, which is probably not the best approach. While the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a worthwhile project, I don't think it was intended to be used in the way Willis has used it.

Wet and dry regions during ENSO events

Willis took issue with a recent paper in Nature Communications from a team led by Michael Griffiths. (Anthony Watts had earlier said the paper was a bombshell. I don't know why. It's an interesting paper, but not what I'd call a bombshell.) The paper itself was about multi-century shifts in weather patterns in the Pacific.  Willis wasn't writing about that. What he wanted to do was dispute the fact that El Niño years tend to be drier and La Niña years tend to be wetter.

El Niño to La Niña years

I said a short while ago that I'd look at what has happened in the past when a La Niña followed a strong El Niño. Well, I have, and here is the result. These are all the strong El Niño's that were followed by a La Niña in recent decades. There were only three of them. In two cases, the following La Niña was a multi-year event as shown in the figure below. The surface temperature data is from GISS NASA. The Nino 3.4 sea surface temperature data is from NOAA and the ENSO years are from BoM.

Bob Tisdale's trick of hiding the data, revisited

I've written previously about the trick Bob Tisdale uses to hide the fact that observed temperatures are now very close to modeled projections. He uses the same trick every time he posts his update to global mean surface temperatures (as archived here). It's an obvious trick, which should fool no-one except people who aren't familiar with charts and disinformer tricks, and those who want to deny global warming. I shouldn't need to repeat what he does, but I will, briefly. The wonder is that Bob keeps repeating his trick, even though he knows it's deceptive for two reasons:

1. Firstly it's deceitful because Bob chops off much of the past two and a half years of data, by plotting a 61 month moving average.
2. Secondly it's wrong because he doesn't let his readers know that the CMIP5 data he's using has only estimated forcings since 2005. The actual forcings had a net effect lower than what the CMIP5 models were based on.

La Niña Watch announced by the Bureau of Meteorology

Although El Niño is still in effect, the latest ENSO wrap-up from the Bureau of Meteorology has put La Niña into watch status. The Bureau says that there's now a 50% chance of a La Niña developing later this year.

The model outlooks are shown below. The average is above the threshold for La Niña but some are dropping below. We're still in autumn which is when modeled projections are especially iffy (a meteorological term meaning things could change):

Anthony Watts sticks his neck out and predicts La Niña

Today Anthony Watts is sticking his neck out and predicting a La Niña later this year (archived here). What he's done is copied and pasted the first four paragraphs and a chart from a Reuters article by Karen Braun, changed the headline and, in defiance of copyright, provided no attribution, just an unlabeled link. That means that unless you notice the link, you might think that Anthony himself was the author (except his writing isn't as good). He's not the author. He has added no original words himself except for a slight word change in the headline. The original headline was:

COLUMN: How much clarity do we have on transition to La Niña? - Braun

Anthony Watts' changed it to:

How Much Global Cooling Will We See On Transition To La Niña?

Karen Braun in her article didn't totally commit to La Niña. Anthony, by leaving out most of her article and changing the headline did. Time will tell if his prediction guess wishful thinking works out.

Conspiracy theorising deniers at WUWT are waiting, hoping for a La Niña

The current El Niño is still going and will continue for a while yet. Science deniers are hoping against hope there will be a La Niña later this year. Anthony Watts has posted an article where he says that one source predicts a La Niña (archived here). I don't know why he wants one. He lives in California, which is suffering extreme drought. A La Niña could well exacerbate the drought. Anyway, you'd think they'd all be very glad of this current El Niño. It may allow them in a few years to start claiming that "it hasn't warmed since 2016".

I won't make a prediction, but here are a couple of charts and some indications from more experienced sources. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology states (archived here):

Based on the 26 El Niño events since 1900, around 50% have been followed by a neutral year, and 40% have been followed by La Niña. International climate models suggest neutral is most likely for the second half of the year. However, La Niña in 2016 cannot be ruled out, and a repeat El Niño appears unlikely.

Below is the latest BoM chart of the model outlook through to the end of the year. The blue shaded area is La Niña territory.

Another cool prediction from the Force X duo from downunder: David Evans and Jo Nova

Today there's another in the current multi-year series from David Evans (archived here). I wonder if Jo's been on his back to produce something, anything at all, so she can fill their coffers. The article doesn't have anything new to add to what's been written in the multiple articles to date. Or not that I can see. This is article 22 in the current series, and there were eight articles in their first series. By my count that makes 30 episodes altogether so far, with precious little to show for it. They are now banking on a La Niña developing later this year or next, so they can drag things on a bit longer. (Their latest prediction is that massive cooling will start in 2017.)

In case you missed it, David Evans and Jo Nova are science deniers from Western Australia who make a living from gullible skeptics. David and Jo claim it's going to get very cold very soon because of an undetectable, mysterious, magical Force X that lives in the sun. I don't know if that's what they really think or if they know it's a big sham and are scammers. (Given they both claim some scientific education, the latter is quite likely. The fact that they have been stringing their fans along for so long without giving them anything much new makes it even more likely.)

To summarise, as I understand David Evans' "theory":

Jim Steele's "yellow journalism" at WUWT, and coastal erosion

Jim Steele is one of those science deniers who can't get his stuff published anywhere except climate conspiracy blogs like WUWT and in his own vanity-published denier book. Today, he wrote an article (archived here) about the collapse of cliffs in his home town Pacifica, in California. Jim could have just written a straight piece about what is contributing to coastal erosion and it might have been an informative article. However, as is usual for Jim Steele, he spoilt his article and further reduced his credibility by using it as a platform to tout his climate science denial. His article was a good example of the techniques of climate science denial. It was peppered with disinformation, twisting and misprepresenting others.

Jim Steele's yellow "journalism"

Jim's article seems to have been little more than a pretext so he could once again imply that climate science is a hoax. He accused two leading science journalists of being "yellow journalists". (Yellow journalism is where facts take a back seat to sensationalism.) Jim  wrote:

The surface compared with the lower troposphere and the Daily Mail's big blooper

Click to enlarge

Another Fail at the Daily Mail, this time with an article by Ryan O'Hare (archived here). The Daily Mail is a tabloid in the UK. Today it's trying to push a denier meme that everyone got it wrong and that 2015 isn't the hottest year on record.

The Daily Mail is wrong as usual. 2015 was the hottest year on record - and by a large margin. I figure the problem the Daily Mail has is that it wants us to think that we all live up in the sky.

As ATTP tweeted:

To solve global warming, everyone must move to the lower troposphere! https://t.co/Lw3H9JR9ue via @MailOnline

— There's Physics (@theresphysics) January 7, 2016

Well - this is not the first and it won't be the last that someone confuses the measures of satellites and surface temperature. Thing is. the Daily Mail is going to have a lot of egg on its face in a few days, when the reports from NASA and NOAA are in, and a bit later when the report from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre is in. (Does a newspaper have a face?)

A curiosity with the lower troposphere record

The other thing is that I have a suspicion there's something not quite right with the satellite records. Look I could be very wrong. I'm not an expert by any means. However it seems to me that there's a break between the satellite and surface record starting some time around 2006. Look at the charts below and tell me what you think. If you've a mathematical and statistical bent, maybe you can tell me if I'm just suffering eye-ball-itis or if there could be something to it.

Why Christopher Monckton is getting nervous about global temperature

Christopher Monckton has been showing signs of nervousness in his latest "it hasn't warmed since xyz" article at WUWT (archived here). He has started emphasising statements like this one: "As ever, a warning about the current el Niño. It is becoming ever more likely that the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will begin to shorten the Pause somewhat, just in time for the Paris climate summit ....". Here are some charts to explain his caution.

What the charts below show are the monthly global temperatures of the lower troposphere (UAH and RSS) and the surface (GISTemp) for the months surrounding the latest strongest El Niños - 1997-1998, 2009-2010 and the year to date 2015. The rectangle on the charts is the period of the El Nino - usually from around April of the first year to March of the second year. I've left the baseline years as reported. It's the shape of the charts that are of interest.

Global Warming and the Pacific: Kevin Trenberth's Perspective

Earlier today, Anthony Watts copied and pasted a press release about a new article from Kevin Trenberth (archived here). Anthony, who didn't even link to the press release, complained he couldn't find the article and asked his readers to tell him where it was. Did he really want that? Or did he just pull out that press release because, for a change, he recognised the name and figured it was sure to rouse the lynch mob? Anthony wrote:

Another excuse for the pause, Trenberth says ‘Internal climate variability masks climate-warming trends’

From the  AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE and the “if warming can’t overcome Nature, is it really there at all?” department.

Stop the presses! Anthony Watts has mentioned the Californian drought - then does a Tisdale

OMG! Anthony Watts has mentioned the Californian drought (archived here). You know, the one plaguing his home state. True, the mention was buried in an article he wrote about El Niño. Still, it's worth celebrating. So what I've done is put together an animation of California drought status, starting in July 2006. I've put in the charts from US Drought Monitor for July and December - that is, two per year in July and December, from 2006 through to the latest chart in July 2015:

To put this momentous event (Anthony mentioning the drought) into perspective, here are some facts and figures from the animation and the US Drought Monitor archives:

Bob Tisdale's ENSO, global warming and the third possibility...

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale has another article about ENSO (archived here).

The third possibility...

This time Bob's asking people for their predictions of when the next El Niño (or La Niña) will happen.  Bob at one point asked what he thinks is a rhetorical question:

DID GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE THE EL NIÑOS OR DID EL NIÑOS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING?

To which Pippen Kool makes the only sensible response and says:

February 15, 2014 at 11:37 am
I select the third possibility. 

ENSO doesn't cause global warming

Bob is still stuck in his groove of "El Niño causes global warming", repeating his mantra:

...for years we’ve been discussing the naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled processes that drive El Niño events and cause long-term warming of global surface temperatures. 

He still hasn't explained why El Niño only started causing "long-term warming" at the same time as CO2 started increasing a lot.  Why didn't El Niño cause any global warming  over the entire Holocene and earlier?  I've illustrated this in the chart below:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Bob has always tried to argue that El Niño raises global surface temperatures (which it does, for a short time) but that La Niña doesn't balance this out.  In today's article he's arguing that La Niña stopped surface temperatures from going up, which is a bit of progress I suppose.

La Niña's cool surface temperatures.  However even La Niña years are getting progressively hotter.  The chart below shows La Niña's short term cooling effect as well as the fact that La Niña years are getting progressively hotter.

Data source: NASA and WMO

Bob Tisdale's hypothesis is that "El Niño causes global warming".  For that to work, greenhouse gases would have to have stopped working.  Not only that, but Bob hasn't explained how ENSO neutral years are warming the world.  Nor has he explained why La Niña years have stopped balancing out El Niño warming.

Bob's hypothesis contradicts everything that is known about ENSO.

I've written a lengthy article about ENSO already (click here).  It has enough references to help you learn about it, so I'll not go into that all over again.


ENSO shifts heat around

Suffice to say that over millenia, the net effect of ENSO on global surface temperatures has been zilch.  On balance, ENSO doesn't warm up the world or cool it down.  What it is is a shifting of heat (and energy) around between the ocean and the atmosphere.  The El Niño Southern Oscillation doesn't add any heat to the earth system nor does it remove heat (or energy) from the system.  If it had there would have to be a mechanism to explain that.  The extra heat would have to come from somewhere.

The only plausible source of extra heat in the past 150 years would be the sun.  But Bob isn't arguing that the sun  is sending more energy to Earth. If he was he'd be wrong. It isn't.  In fact the world is still heating up even though the incoming radiation has dropped a bit.  Bob's trying to argue that ENSO creates energy out of nothing.  It warms the earth by magic, according to Bob Tisdale.

Bob is also trying to provide fake sceptics with an argument for when the surface temperature suddenly shoots up a lot again.  He's saying it will be because of El Niño.  What he isn't pointing out is that if there is a rise in surface temperature with an El Niño in the next few years, it will most likely be above the temperature of the last El Niño year.  It will be hotter.  That's because the entire Earth is getting hotter.  Earth is accumulating more energy as time goes by.  It's accumulating in the oceans and in the atmosphere and on the land surface.

All El Niño does is shift heat from the ocean to the air.  It doesn't add heat.  It's the extra greenhouse gases that are causing heat to build up in the system.  They slow the flow of radiation out from the surface, so Earth is getting hotter.

Bob Tisdale is a greenhouse effect denier.  He denies physics that has been understood for more than a century and a half.  Anthony Watts promotes lots of greenhouse effect deniers on his blog.

From the WUWT comments

Here's a selection of comments from the archived WUWT article.

Jenn Oates tries on the argument from ignorance. He or she doesn't understand the science therefore no-one does, in her or his mind.  Jenn says:

February 15, 2014 at 3:21 am
I predict that the climate will continue to change as it always has, and that we won’t be able to do very much about it, for two reasons: not only because we’re just one puny species on the face of a big planet, but mostly because we really don’t have a comprehensive understanding of what makes global climate systems tick in the first place.
That’s as far as I’ll go. :)

markstoval is a paranoid "climate science is a hoax" conspiracy nutter and says (excerpt):

February 15, 2014 at 3:40 am
Since the temperature data sets are massively fraudulent, I expect to see massive “adjustments” to the measured temperatures regardless of El Niño or La Niña conditions. The blatant fraud that is “climate science” proves that science is totally unworthy of the confidence that many moderns place in it.

Greg is looking for patterns and trying to find some agreement between the conflicting hypotheses of Perennially Puzzled Bob "ENSO" Tisdale and Wondering Willis "emergent phenomena" Eschenbach, and says:

February 15, 2014 at 3:40 amI’ve isolated a 9.3 year variation in Indian Ocean that corresponds to cyclic changes in the lunar declination angle.

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=777

This shows warm water being transported in and out of the tropical portion of the Indian Ocean in a 9.3 year cycle. It seems that Willis’ tropical governor warms up the cooler surface when the warm water moves south, leading to a net warming rather than a neutral displacement of heat.

A more complex pattern seems to exist in Pacific and Atlantic that span both hemispheres. There is an interplay of 9.3 and 8.85

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=754

Now that may come some way to your hypothesis that oceanic variations are behind the warming trend.

dccowboy is none too bright when it comes to climate and says:

February 15, 2014 at 3:50 am
Amusing that the AGW proponents are at all interested in ENSO because, by predicting that El Nino raises global temperatures, they are implicity admiting that CO2 isn’t the ‘driver’ of temperatures they seem to think it is. If CO2 were the overriding ‘driver’ (and if the increase in CO2 drives temperatures higher) wouldn’t it have overcome the effects of both El Nino & La Nina? Still more interesting is the idea that natural processes like ENSO, PDO, AMO have somehow ‘conspired’ to exactly balance the CO2 driven temperature increases for over 17 years. I’m not a betting man, but, I’d be very hesitant to put money on that proposition being true.

Stephen Richards is into making up stuff, on two counts, and says:

February 15, 2014 at 5:53 am
Hansen was forever predicting massive El Niños but they never came .

herkimer thinks there will be global cooling and says:

February 15, 2014 at 8:19 am
In my opinion, a weak El Nino is likely during late 2014 and early 2015 which will not raise global temperatures in any significant way and the pause and subsequent decline in global temperature anomalies will resume there after

kenin swears his oath of allegiance to the scientific illiterati and says:

February 15, 2014 at 8:46 am
I couldn’t care any less about whether or not its nina , nino or even nada; so long as mother nature is in control and not some group of corporations who want to manipulate the oceans and atmosphere. And believe me, they do want to manipulate- that’s why records are kept, so they have something to compare it to. If you want to control something, first you need to understand how it works.

Lets face it… we are such a strange species; look at the crap we waste our time with. Common its weird man; littering the ocean with buoys, cables and watching it closely with satellites…. really for what. Yeah its interesting, I get it, i’m guilty of that too; but! its really all for not. If anything it will be used against us and the earth.

In my next life I want to come back as an elephant. walking the savannas of Africa with my friends and family just being.

Kenin pretty well sums up the denialiati, so I'll leave it there.

Gobbling up or Spitting Out Bob Tisdale's ENSO Leftovers at WUWT

Update: Since I posted this article Bob Tisdale, on WUWT, went a bit overboard in his flattery, comparing me favourably to some of the world's leading climate scientists.  Click here for the article that made Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale laugh.  It's quite short and to the point.  This latest one below is more comprehensive but much, much longer.  (As Bob knows, I'm not able to comment at WUWT even if I wanted to respond to his praise there.)  A tip of the hat to William Connolley at Stoat.

PS I'm just a blogger who's interested in climate science.  Don't be fooled by Bob's effusive compliments (archived here).  I'm not in the same league as the climate scientists at realclimate.org or William Connolley.

Sou Sunday 12 January 2014 7:10 am AEDST

---

Yesterday Anthony Watts posted an article by Bob Tisdale (archived here).  Apparently it's an excerpt from one of his books.  Bob sees himself as something of a (self-taught) expert on El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).  He doesn't acknowledge the scientists who gave him what knowledge he has, but he does castigate them:

As long as the climate science community continues to treat ENSO as noise, they will make little progress in understanding the natural contribution to global warming, and it’s a sizeable contribution. We’ve discussed for years that the climate science community has failed to account for the “leftovers”, the residual warm water, from strong El Niños.

Nowhere does Bob explain what he means by his "leftovers" except for describing them as "residual warm water" from strong El Niños.

What gets me is that Bob Tisdale says that the scientists who taught him all he knows about ENSO "don't know nuffin'" about ENSO.  And he gives them no thanks, not even an acknowledgement, although he got all the material for his "books" he's flogging (at a discount this week only!) from those same scientists.  And they didn't charge him a penny. I admit he tweaked the bits where he decided to reject their science for his own purposes.  He's got a reputation to maintain at WUWT as a fine upstanding greenhouse effect denier after all.

This article has grown - a lot.  Click here to read the rest if you're on the home page.

Callous amusement and display of meteorological ignorance from Anthony Watts

Here is yet another display of ignorance from ex-weather announcer Anthony Watts.

It's also one thing to be a disinformation propagandist but it seems to me to be particularly poor taste to be so insensitive to other people's suffering.

Is it an attempt to distract from the extreme weather in the USA?  It's been the driest year to date on record in California and then there is the horrible fire in Colorado this week and its record-breaking hot weather.

No, Anthony, there is no La Niña

Here is a snapshot of an article from today. (Click any image to enlarge).

For someone who used to earn a crust by announcing weather on television, not to mention blogging about "weather and climate" for the past six and a half years, you'd think some knowledge of weather would have rubbed off.  But no, Anthony says there is currently a La Niña and that it's been in place for two years.

No Anthony, it's been well over a year since the end of the last La Niña   The most recent La Niña started to form in October 2011 and persisted until March 2012.  It was pretty well back to back with another La Niña that started to firm up back in July 2010 and finished in May 2011. Conditions have been ENSO neutral since the 27 March 2012 at the latest.  Here is the official notification of it ending, from the Bureau of Meteorology:

Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

In its latest ENSO wrap-up, the Bureau states:

All atmospheric and oceanic indicators of ENSO have remained neutral (neither El Niño nor La Niña) since mid-2012. While most models suggest that neutral conditions will continue in 2013, it remains possible that a La Niña event could develop later in the year.

The ENSO state is mostly indicated by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI).  From the Bureau again (on the SOI tab):

Sustained positive values of the SOI above +8 may indicate a La Niña event, while sustained negative values below −8 may indicate an El Niño event. Values of between about +8 and −8 generally indicate neutral conditions.

And more here:

The Southern Oscillation Index, or SOI, gives an indication of the development and intensity of El Niño or La Niña events in the Pacific Ocean. The SOI is calculated using the pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin. ...Sustained positive values are indicative of La Niña conditions, and sustained negative values indicative of El Niño conditions.

Here is a chart of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) from the Bureau, going back to 2008:

Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

The closest it came to a La Niña was back in March this year when the SOI briefly rose about +8, but there was no suggestion that one was about to develop.

Why the persistent drought in the USA when it's ENSO neutral?

Source: National Drought Forum Report

Why then is the drought persisting across 44.1% of the contiguous USA?  Well the tweet that Anthony mocked had a link to the NDIS website, which then led to a report released last month on 16 May 2013.  That report  talked a lot about the current drought and how to respond.  But it didn't discuss what is causing the drought.  About the closest it came was this sentence on page 7 of the report:

The Administration is considering the relevance of climate change as it relates to drought, and the corresponding need for adaptation strategies and strategies for protecting fresh water resources.

Obviously anthropogenic global warming.is affecting all weather around the world today.  Researchers have attempted to determine the extent to which it contributed to the drought in Texas.  Peterson et al (2012) is one such study.  In that report there is a section on the drought in Texas, which concludes with:

Hence, while we can provide evidence that the risk of hot and dry conditions has increased, we cannot say that the 2011 Texas drought and heat wave was "extremely unlikely" (in any absolute sense) to have occurred before this recent warming.

The questions of importance include:

• Will extremes of weather get more extreme?  The answer is obviously yes when it comes to heat and precipitation events.
• How will the different climate zones change over time?  Will parts of the USA become more prone to drought or flood?  Probably, is what I gather.

No, Anthony - it's not "variance"

As for Anthony Watts, you'd have thought in his years as a weather announcer he'd have picked up some knowledge of weather and ENSO.  Instead of admitting he was wrong, he writes this:

skSK says:
June 14, 2013 at 11:34 am Your ENSOMETER signals neutral

REPLY: Yes, that’s called “variance”. It changes from week to week. Check the Enso page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/enso/ -Anthony

No, Anthony.  Wrong again.  ENSO is a sustained period, it doesn't "change from week to week" at all.

Finally...but too little too late

Finally, just as I was about to publish this article, I see that Anthony grudgingly admits his mistake, writing:

Anthony Watts says:
June 14, 2013 at 4:17 pm  I’ve changed the headline to more accurately reflect the history.

So here is the new headline, but still with the comment about the "La Niña pattern" and this time trying to pin the extended drought on the absence of El Niño.  Not good enough, Anthony!

Is WUWT on its last legs?

With the spate of idiotic articles lately and his reliance on nincompoops like Monckton (even promoting his nonsense to "sticky" status), and now manufacturing a La Niña as a "reason" for the continued US drought - it looks as if WUWT is on its last legs.  A refuge for the 8% Dismissives.  That's all.