Vaughan Pratt and JCH
Max – you are determined to distort this. [Trenberth's reaction to the recent "lack of warming"]
No distortion necessary. As you both seem to have been a bit confused, let me set you straight.
Observed fact: Since January 2001 the HadCRUT3 globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly has shown a slight cooling trend.
This trend (-0.06°C/decade) is only around one-third of the warming trend seen over the 1990s (+0.18°C/decade), so the “average” temperature of the 2000s is obviously higher than the “average” of the 1990s. (Duh!)
IPCC had forecast a warming of +0.2°C/decade for the first decades of the new century, but this warming did not occur despite the fact that CO2 concentrations reached new record levels.
MetOffice attributed the “lack of warming” to natural variability.
In a leaked e-mail Kevin Trenberth alluded that it is a “travesty” that this lack of warming is unexplained.
In an interview by Richard Harris entitled, “The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat”, Trenberth suggests reasons for this “lack of warming” (a.k.a. “slight cooling”):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
The articles continues:
But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?
Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it’s probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can’t be directly measured at the moment, however.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they’ve been playing during this period,” Trenberth says.
All makes sense to me. Clouds acting as a “natural thermostat” reflecting incoming solar energy “back out into space”.
Roy Spencer would be proud of Trenberth!
(Looks like you guys just didn’t get the word.)
Max