So here is numbnuts temperature plot – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/from:2001/trend -
Here is Roy Spencers – http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_current.gif – although he doesn’t seem to have updated his graph.
The peaks and troughs are mostly ENSO – the fast response due to energy moving between the ocean and atmosphere. There is a pretty solid correspondence between ENSO and global temperature variability. 80% explanatory power in the tropics I have read.
The graphs are pretty much the same. So for the global dataset – we can say that temp. peaked in 1998? As a result of the 1997/98 ‘dragon-king’ in the 1998-2001 climate shift?
Just as an aside – less snow in Britian? – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8615789.stm -
‘Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature. We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic. We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activity has declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK and Europe could experience more cold winters than during recent decades.’ – http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024001 -
The cold winters are a result of UV – which changes much more than TSI.
This is the SORCE data on TSI – we are close to peak and we can project a decline over the next several years. – http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif -
Here is Claus Wolter’s Multi-variate ENSO Index. – http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif -
The other correspondence to make is the dominance of La Niña to 1976, El Niño to 1998 and La Niña since. Slow change in the energy dynamic associated with cloud changes as the decadal modes switch between cold upwelling dominant and cold upwelling suppressed.
So enough mouthing – are they going to take my bet? 50 quatloos each year that the 1998 peak monthly temperature is not exceeded for the rest of the decade and 50 quatloos that this decade will be cooler than the last.