Warming "Hiatus" ends with a "Hockey Stick"

[Ken Fabian]

I never bought into the claim that there has been a Pause or Hiatus in global warming - it looked obvious to me that global warming overlays a lot of variability and that variability in surface temperatures is more than capable of ups and downs lasting as long or longer than a period as short as from 1998 to 2014. I think Ocean heat content shows the change in global heat balance more directly and clearly than surface temperatures and shows much less year to year, decade to decade variability. It never showed any warming Hiatus -

 

 

When known causes of temperature variability were taken into account - most of all ENSO, which was dominated during the 'hiatus' period by cooling La Nina rather than warming el Nino - there was clear and sound reason to expect surface temperatures to show less warming in the post 1998 decade than the decade preceding. If warming from enhanced greenhouse had really stopped then the known conditions were there for significant drop in surface temperature - which didn't happen. That was because of an underlying trend of temperature rise averaging about 0.15 C per decade that didn't pause at all.

 

Surface temperatures going up and down in equal measure (over a sufficient period of time, climate scientist seeming to prefer 30 years or longer) is what no warming looks like. Up with less down is what warming looks like. Up with no down at all is a lot of warming. Up without only more up - which looks like the minimum for many of those people who refuse to accept mainstream climate science to concede that there really is any global warming - is actually very rapid warming. I don't know that continuous warming year on year is likely or even possible - ENSO can change the average surface temperature by 10 times the current warming trend in a single year. ENSO's influence averages out given enough time (say 20 to 30 years). temperature adjusted for the approximate known amount that ENSO skews temperatures one way or the other looks like this (and it pushes temperatures down as much as up) and shows no post 1998 "Pause" or "Hiatus" -

 

 

No Hiatus, no Warming Pause, just variability overlaying a persistent warming trend.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Ken Fabian