CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
If you're referring to seasonal changes you're right. Summer is warmer than winter outside the tropics. Over the longer term (decades) the world is warming everywhere in a way that it hasn't done before.
They did? That news must have been suppressed where I live because these predictions of an ice-free Arctic this year are new to me. Do you recall where you heard them?
Days are getting shorter in the Arctic and the Sun is lower in the sky, so the Arctic is cooling and sea-ice is forming. It happens every year about this time; it's to do with Earth's axial tilt with respect to its orbital plane.
For ice to melt, heat has to be introduced from somewhere. Since the Arctic has lost a great deal of ice over the last few decades it must have accumulated a great deal of heat. The only viable explanation for that is AGW (and in fact the loss of Arctic ice was predicted by AGW). 2007 may not have seen a particularly large loss of ice volume but it was preconditioned for a large ice extent response to particular weather conditions.
That's a damn' lie.
I have, and they're not.
They'll be assuming it comes up every day. Their model incorporates the solar cycle because it's intended for projections on that timescale, but it treats the next solar cycle as being just like any other. Which is to say, not very influential.
I followed this story back in 2007, when the short-term projection by a team of modellers at the Met Office was first announced ("Strap me," I thought, "That's bold. These are young scientists whose careers stretch way ahead of 2014, and they're putting their names to this. Big cojones.")
No assumptions about the upcoming solar cycle are made other than it will be normal. If you check you'll find this is true.
I say there's a weak connection. Since the solar cycle was identified people have been searching for a climate signal, and it's been a long history of failure. Recent claims to have found such a signal have yet to stand the test of time. If there were a strong connection the signal would have been found long ago. There have been 23 solar cycles to find it in, after all, and even without reference to solar cycle, a regular 10-11 year climate cycle would be part of farmers' lore from way back - but it isn't.
Quite. That's where the search for the solar cycle's climate signal has always fallen down. There's an hypothesised causation, but no obvious correlation.
Far from discounting ENSO I'm looking forward to the next sustained El Nino, which will put '98 in deep shade. Not because I enjoy an El Nino but because you guys will have to explain it away.
Expect away. A sustained El Nino will occur in the next two-to-seven years; I suggest you start preparing your excuses.
That's a model example of non sequitur.
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