COMMENT TO CAMILO MORA ET AL

Written by Professor Albert Parker on November 6, 2013. Posted in Current News

COMMENT TO CAMILO MORA ET AL., THE PROJECTED TIMING OF CLIMATE DEPARTURE FROM RECENT VARIABILITY, NATURE 502:183–187 (10 OCTOBER 2013) DOI:10.1038/NATURE12540:

THE CLIMATE MODELS DO NOT FAIL BECAUSE OF “VARIABILITY” BUT BECAUSE OF THE NEGLECTED MULTI-DECADAL NATURAL OSCILLATIONS AND THE OVERRATED EFFECT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION

Albert Parker

E-mail: [email protected]

If the authors of [1] carefully analyse the reconstructed global land and sea temperature time history since the 1800s (for example GISS [2]), they may certainly realize that the reason why climate models are failing so badly so quickly is not because of the “variability” in the climate, but only because of their wrong assumptions about the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission driving the climate and the neglected natural oscillations. This “inconvenient truth” emerges clearly as soon as the reconstructed global temperatures are compared with the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions not only during the last upwards phase of a quasi-60 years natural oscillation affecting the climate, but also including what happened prior of 1970 and what is happening since 2000 [3-8]. Fitting the data with functions that minimize the error over the full record length and not only a small time window of the recent past it is clear that the theory of exponentially growing temperatures is wrong.

Figure 1 presents the uncorrected GISS land and sea temperatures 1880 to present. Even without considering the “contamination” and the “upwards biasing” issues discussed later, a proper analysis of these global temperature time series offers a different interpretation of the temperature trend as mostly oscillatory [3-8]. The global temperatures have been warming during the period 1970 to 2000, but they have been warming also during the period 1910 to 1940, and during the period 1940 to 1970 the temperatures have been practically flat, as practically flat have been the temperatures since 2000. The data are fitted well with two cosines (from [7]). The first sinusoidal oscillation has a periodicity of 63 years and it is very clear in the data, as discussed in [3-8]. The second sinusoidal oscillation of periodicity 250 years is only a hypothesis that unfortunately the data available do not permit to confirm.

While the recent works [3-8] have pointed out the relevance of the multi decadal natural oscillation of 63 years’ periodicity, they haven’t provided any estimation of the “contamination” and “upwards biasing” error that however is mentioned in the works. If we do consider the temperatures truly measured in some selected location, for example Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, a small city in a less developed area not that far (114 km) from the huge urban heat island of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, or Alice Spring, Northern Territory, Australia, where the only long term nearby station is more than 1000 km apart (1497 km to be precise), we may try a first approximation of the global “contamination” and “upwards biasing” error by comparing the truly measured average temperatures with the GISS reconstructed values in the same locations [8].

Figure 2 presents the GISS reconstructed data January 1880 to June 2013 inclusive of this “contamination” and “upwards biasing” error bar. If we assume as a more realistic global temperature distribution the GISS values corrected with half the error above, then the first cosine of period 63 years has same equation of Figure 1, while the second cosine of period 250 years has much smaller more realistic amplitude than in Figure 1. This amplitude further reduces if rather than half the error the GISS temperatures are corrected with the full error. This latter assumption produces a global trend of very little warming 1880 to present.

The analysis of the GISS data uncorrected or corrected evidences a pattern made of natural oscillations of the climate as known since ever and a significant reduction of the magnitude of the anthropogenic forcing through the changed composition of the atmosphere that in the corrected data set is really minimal.

References

Camilo Mora et al., The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability, Nature 502:183–187 (10 October 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12540
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (2013), GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
A. Parker, “The “present global warming hiatus” is part of a quasi-60 years oscillation in the worldwide average temperatures in the downwards phase”, ESAIJ, accepted paper, in press (2013).
Scafetta, N., “Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles”, Earth-Science Reviews 126:321-357 (2013).

5. Scafetta N., “Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs”, Energy & Environment 24(3-4):455–496 (2013).

6. Scafetta N., “Does the Sun work as a nuclear fusion amplifier of planetary tidal forcing?”, paper presented At the Space Climate Symposium-5 in Oulu, Finland. June 15-19, 2013. people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta-Oulu.pdf

7. A. Parker, “MISMATCH BETWEEN ACCELERATION OF RECONSTRUCTED SEA LEVELS AND GRADIENT OF RECONSTRUCTED TEMPERATURES”, ESAIJ, accepted paper, in press (2013).

8. A. Parker, “WHY GLOBAL WARMING WENT MISSING SINCE THE YEAR 2000”, NLENG, accepted paper, in press (2013).