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Temporary global cooling imminent

Brian-M

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Brian-M
Joined
Jul 22, 2008
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A recent article in New Scientist claims that global temperatures could fall for the next decade or two.

Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase.
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Is this likely to happen, or is it just being put out there for the sake of controversy? And what impact is this likely to have among global-warming deniers?
 
of course the Earth will cool for 5-10 years. anyone who claims that Gobal Warming would be constant and without flctuation is an idiot.
 
Brian-M said:
Is this likely to happen, or is it just being put out there for the sake of controversy?
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It's still extremely contentious but it seems to be based on some science so who knows.

Brian-M said:
And what impact is this likely to have among global-warming deniers?
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The deniers have been making this claim for years now. If it pans out they’ll look at it as confirmation.
 
Suspending the laws of physics again?? :rolleyes:

NAO ENSO etc are NOT drivers - they just move or bury heat in deeper ocean or shift rainfall patterns/ocean currents which affect local climates ( on a large scale mind you )

TANSTAAFL

NAO changes may indeed spawn changes in the Sahel for instance and allow variations in the Arctic ice cover.....does not in any way change the ongoing energy accumulation due to increased GHG.

Just one more cyclic overlay on the main driver......US.
 
macdoc said:
NAO ENSO etc are NOT drivers
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Who said they were?

macdoc said:
- they just move or bury heat in deeper ocean or shift rainfall patterns/ocean currents which affect local climates ( on a large scale mind you )
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Sure and if they move heat in and out of deep storage over thirty year cycle then we'll get exactly the effect the NS paper is talking about.

macdoc said:
TANSTAAFL
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Who said lunch was free?

macdoc said:
NAO changes may indeed spawn changes in the Sahel for instance and allow variations in the Arctic ice cover.....does not in any way change the ongoing energy accumulation due to increased GHG.
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But they might perhaps increase natural variation. If so then that effect must be incorporated into future AGW models and those models that based their sensitivity equations on the last 30 years might need a bit a tweak.

macdoc said:
Just one more cyclic overlay on the main driver......US.
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That’s the point of the article.
 
macdoc said:
Suspending the laws of physics again?? :rolleyes:

NAO ENSO etc are NOT drivers - they just move or bury heat in deeper ocean or shift rainfall patterns/ocean currents which affect local climates ( on a large scale mind you )

TANSTAAFL

NAO changes may indeed spawn changes in the Sahel for instance and allow variations in the Arctic ice cover.....does not in any way change the ongoing energy accumulation due to increased GHG.

Just one more cyclic overlay on the main driver......US.
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Just some random thoughts...

Hot objects radiate heat away at a faster rate... so if the movement of heat away from an area is interrupted, causing "hot spots", this could cause more heat to be radiated into space from these areas causing a slight lowering of average global temperatures. Ice cover and cloud cover reflect incoming solar radiation, having a cooling effect on the globe, so whether phenonemon affecting these could have effects on global temperature. "Burying heat" lower in the ocean will affect surface measurements of global temperature too.

It's not necessarily junk science.
 
Presumably there's an 'up' phase of the cycle predicted in one or two decades time. Have they commented on the severity of that?
 
Didn't say it was junk science - just clarifying what it is not.....it is NOT any meaningful cessation of energy gain due to GHG increases....

Your position is true for whatever region you care to name - there WILL be local variations that introduce noise into the trend line over short periods.
It does not suspend the GHG physics...it can overlay positive or negative.
Magnifying the underlying energy gain or mitigating it for a while.
 
The guy who's theory this is was on Radio 4 this morning debating it with a Met Office climate scientist, who seems to think that the model he's using doesn't take into account all necessary variables (particularly deep-ocean temperatures, I think). The Met Office models (which, apparently, are calibrated to previous patterns and do apparently include all these variables) don't predict any cooling.

I don't really know who's right, but just wanted to point out that this is certainly a contentious finding. It's also worth noting that the guy who predicts the cooling does say that it is only temporary, and that the consequences for climate change discourse will be dire if anyone reads his prediction (or even concludes from the measurements, should his theory prove correct) and surmises that climate change is not happening etc. In other words - he's not a climate-change denier; quite the opposite. He went to great lengths to say in the interview that if he's right, the tone of the public discourse will need to shift to take account of the cooling but still acknowledging that climate change and warming is real and dangerous.
 
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It’s fairly well accepted that they NAO can superimpose a cyclical warming/cooling trend on top of the underplaying trend. While not large, no more then about +/- 0.1 sine wave, if you cherry pick end points that’s enough to cover part of the underlying warming trend of just under 0.2 deg per decade for a decade or so.

No doubt the politicos will be pushing this line to their minions in the hopes if they can just get people to believe hard enough that underplaying trend will disappear.
 
sphenisc said:
Presumably there's an 'up' phase of the cycle predicted in one or two decades time. Have they commented on the severity of that?
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If the hypothesis is correct then we've just come out of an 'up' phase that started in the mid to late 70's.

Presumably the next up phase will be worse.
 
parky76 said:
of course the Earth will cool for 5-10 years. anyone who claims that Gobal Warming would be constant and without flctuation is an idiot.
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What do you mean "of course"? Can you show me a model from, say 12 months ago which predicts this cooling?
 
lionking said:
What do you mean "of course"? Can you show me a model from, say 12 months ago which predicts this cooling?
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'Predicts' or 'allows for'? The first is unlikely, the second is much more possible.
 
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