NZ CLIMATE & ENVIROTRUTH No. 186

October 20, 2008, 1:10 am News

NZCLIMATE TRUTH No 186
20 OCTOBER 2008

OCEAN/ATMOSPHERE OSCILLATIONS

It is now firmly established that increases in carbon dioxide have no detectable effect on the climate. Global temperatures are falling. There has been no change of temperature in New Zealand for at least 50 years, so that any changes in glaciers could not possibly be related to temperature. Arctic ice is expanding whatever the recent cover up of this fact may say.  The Antarctic continues to cool whatever may be discovered for small parts by diligent reporters.  All these facts are completely incompatible with the crude computer models. Most people who can resist the incessant propaganda are realising that they have been fooled.

So what is influencing the climate? We are left with the old standbys, the Sun, the volcanoes, and the ocean/atmosphere oscillations. The volcanoes tend to make themselves evident, but are unpredictable at present. Changes in the Sun, such as sunspots are also well known to influence the climate, but they are not entirely predictable.

The importance of ocean/atmosphere oscillations has only been recognised fairly recently, but the more that is discovered the more it appears that their influence is very considerable. It would seem that if we had a good method of predicting their future behaviour we would be well along in forecasting "weather" or even "climate" if these are regarded as different.

There are problems in doing this. One is the unreliability of climate data. I have written in great detail on the difficulties of measuring temperature at any place, and the even greater difficulty of obtaining meaningful  averages. Precipitation and measurement of hurricanes also have great measurement problems.

But there is a difficulty in finding a satisfactory way of characterising the ocean/atmosphere oscillations. At present all of these are "measured" by highly dubious and uncertain parameters.

Let us list the most important ones.

El Niño/ Southern Oscillation  (ENSO)

This oscillation takes place irregularly in the Southern Pacific Ocean and has a major influence on New Zealand. It is measured at present by the difference in air pressure between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia, although "Wikipedia" also claims that it is "defined as sustained sea surface temperature anomalies of magnitude greater than 0.5°C across the central tropical Pacific Ocean. When the condition is met for a period of less than five months, it is classified as El Niño or La Niña conditions; if the anomaly persists for five months or longer, it is classified as an El Niño or La Niña episode".

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) Index is defined in

http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/  as

"the leading principal component of North Pacific monthly sea surface temperature variability (poleward of 20N for the 1900-93 period)"

The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation has only recently been identified, and it has been much studied in New Zealand.

 It is defined at

http://www.ozcoasts.org.au/indicators/climate_change.jsp

as follows

"The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) is similar to El Nino in that it is a change in climate related to sea surface temperatures (SST). However the IPO events tend to last much longer, 20-30 years as opposed to 18 months, and the changes manifest themselves mainly in the northern and southern Pacific with only secondary characteristic seen in the tropics, the opposite to ENSO [5]. What is unclear at this time is how, or if, and to what extent IPO is separate from ENSO. This important as understanding IPO could lead to better long term projection of ENSO events that will directly affect Australian rainfall"

There is a similar oscillation in the Indian ocean, and, in the North Atlantic "Climate Change 2007: page 290, says

"The North Atlantic Oscillation and Northern Annular Mode

“The only teleconnection pattern prominent throughout the year in the NH is the NAO (Barnston and Livezey, 1987). It is primarily a north-south dipole in sea level pressure characterised by simultaneous out-of-phase pressure and height anomalies between temperate and high latitudes over the Atlantic sector "

All of these rather complex indices have been shown to be related to climate and most of them now figure in weather forecasts, particularly in  the region where they are active.

Their contributions to changes in climate are mentioned in "Climate Change 2007" but tend to be marginalized in favour of the carbon dioxide theory.

I have myself shown that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is closely correlated with the temperature oscillation which is evident in many temperature records, including the surface series promoted by the IPCC, at:

http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/GlobalWarmingScam_Gray.pdf

Roy Spencer has recently published the following
Global Warming as a Natural Response to Cloud Changes Associated with the PDO

By Dr. Roy Spencer
at  http://icecap.us/

Research on all of these ocean/atmosphere oscillations is currently very active, and it seems possible that with their more accurate understanding we may go a long way to better forecasting of weather further ahead than is currently possible.

But a hundred years ahead, as "projected" by the IPCC, hardly likely.

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