and if so will it be a pause buster, that alarmist's are hoping for.

Do you think El Nino and La Ninas should discounted in the temperature trend or included as part of AGW?

I think this really hits at he heart of the matter. Both the warmers and the skeptics use the PDO to justify their position. We tend to know that the PDO itself has an effect of 0.6 degrees, which really starts becoming problematic when we are looking at an overall 0.8 degree rise over the last 100 years, or a 0.08 degree per decade rise.

Looking at the cycle of the PDO at about 60 years, I would expect that we may have an El nino, but it will be small and the El ninos will be less prevalent for the next 20 years.

I will agree with Antarcticice, though. If a strong El Nino is present, then the year that has the El nino will be one of the warmest years on record, if not the warmest year. Of course, when dealing with a records like this, you are reducing the data to a non-parametric rank test. This is even less telling that a linear regression. Even a logarithmic rise in temps would be shown in a rank test. Rank tests ONLY show direction and NOT amount.

Of course, the warmers know this, but love the response they get from the "warmest". This is where they must be challenged though. If they were simply claiming warming because of CO2, I would agree with them. If they were making the more substantial claim of linear warming, I would want linear regression as evidence, and I would agree with them. They, however, have been making claims of exponential warming. The past 100 years only shows a 0.8 degree increase, whereas their claims are for more than 4 times that amount in 86 years. 114 out of 117 climate models are overestimating. This calls their exponential claims into serious question.

SImple truth is that if you take the PDO and a linear warming trend of around 0.08 degree per decade, you get a model that outperforms most all of their extremely complex overparameterized models. Unfortunately, Occam's razor cannot cut through the political bias of people.

Marquise,

So I am understanding you correctly, You are saying that turtles who have been around since the dinosaurs are dying out because of heat. We are allowing bacteria to grow that will destroy 90% of life. We are reaching a "tipping point". AND that mountain men burning woods caused large amounts of warming.

I say don't worry so much, The little green aliens are soon going to sprinkle the earth with magical pixie dust from rainbowland and all will be well.

I do not have an opinion at this point.

Haw. Sorry I am not more opinionated on the matter, but I thought you might appreciate a neutral opinion from another non-scientist. This is a very good question for someone like me because it directly addresses an issue related to global warming and despite the responses being of varying opinions, the discussion so far is mostly on topic and provided some very good resources, links and opinions about what may happen and why.

PDO is an area of interest to me as it is to many people on the periphery of understanding how weather systems operate and the impact that has on climate. It does seem to me that a stronger El Nino would indicate that the oceans have been absorbing more heat and a portion of that heat is being released, as the warmers have said. While ocean currents cycle through warm and cold periods, it certainly seems to me as if more frequent and stronger El Nino and La Nina events would occur as temperatures search for equilibrium and that in turn would increase variability in the air temperatures, with most evidence indicating a long term increase in global averages with...an increase in the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events? (this is one of the factors I need to learn more about, thanks for bringing it up.)

Of course, the debatable point is how much mankind is influencing this.

I have been reading that some scientists are predicting a huge El Nino for next Winter (if 'huge el nino' is not a contradiction in terms.' 8^) ).

Here on the West Coast we've had two or three dry years in a row. We're told now that we're having a serious drought. It just seems like whenever that happens (every decade or so) it's followed by one of the wettest years on record, with flooding, roads washing out, landslides in new housing developments, houses disappearing into sinkholes, all that stuff.

Also, though I totally understand global warming is happening, based on actual evidence and numbers, I think over time it's making California cooler and wetter!

if you need to ask this it's clear you've never been to Australia.

* ENSO cycle has a much stronger influence on Australian climate than annual weather systems.

* ENSO cycle is what determines whether or not we'll have rain or drought.

* Any climate change affecting Peru dictates the weather in Australia

so of course you need to factor it in. It's likely this year will be another el Nino and not a la Nina this year.

If you think CO2 is the only or main culprit in climate change it's clear you've never studied climate change or actually read much about it. Most carbon dioxide has been absorbed into the oceans where it becomes carbolic acid. This is the ocean acidification. The oceans have pretty much reached maximum capacity in terms of how much heat they can absorb without the noticable temperature being affected too much. Although, having said that there are some species of turtles which are unable to have males because the gestation of males is dependent on cooler sand than the females. So when most reptiles and turtles hatch, they have females on top and the eggs further below are supposed to be males. But in the past few years there have been no male hatchlings of a couple of turtle species. The ocean acidification due to carbolic acid means that crustacean shells are 30% thinner and weaker and less calcified than they were 200 years ago.

The loss of ice cover means less heat is radiated, and more heat is absorbed. As the Arctic has been melting 2 things have happened: less heat is reflected back into space and continues to heat up the Earth (a tipping point), and peat land has been exposed releasing pretty vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Which as you know is far more potent than CO2 until it begins to break down.

Then you have the issue of methane-producing bacteria being able to flourish as a result of human activity (especially oil wells). These are the same bacteria which have previously rendered 90% of all life on Earth extinct 250 million years ago.

Don't you think we should be learning from the "little warm" that took place in the Middle Ages in mountainous regions where people lived, cut trees and relied heavily on fire and combustion? They actually changed the local weather systems to the point where the mountain ice retreated by 5m. What makes you think this time as we change the entire globe's climate the affect will be any less severe?

Its hard to imagine a strong El-Nino this far into a PDO cool phase, especially just following a sigificant El-Nino a few years ago. Statistically we should have a La-Nina soon, and possibly a strong one. Sea surface temperatures clearly show they are cooling, I would say a La-Nina but the Pacific sea surface tenperatures seem to be in a strange equilibrium.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3...

http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomal...

I think I read that there's a 66% chance that there will be one.

I didn't read how strong it would be.

"Do you think El Nino and La Ninas should discounted in the temperature trend or included as part of AGW?

I certainly think they should be identified.

If there is a particularly strong one, that should be noted.

If there is a climate / ocean change such that they stop happening, that should be noted.

Clearly the more information we have, the better off we are.

1998 was the best example recently.

It produced a very warm year.

It was an anomaly - not anywhere near the same as the preceding, or following, year.

And it sure would be nice if the west coast got lots or rain / snow next winter.

All of us that are worried about the climate would be ecstatic.

Edit: Kano, "Why do you think it will be a strong one, with the PDO negative I think a weak one is more likely"

It would seem that such is a minority opinion.

From a somewhat less credible source.

Here in Calif, we sure hope so.

https://www.google.com/#q=2014+el+nino

antarcticice "When it does, (the PDO shifts) denial is done!"

I don't think so.

Unless all of the deniers come out of it medium-well done.

Edit again: I can already hear it.

"2015 was the hottest year ever, and it's been cooling since then." :)

I love the people who keep saying hottest since records were kept while ignoring the fact that our temperature data only goes back to the end of a cool period called the Little Ice Age.

I heard on my local news program that it looks like we might have a very strong El Nino, maybe as strong as the one in 1998 that set the last highest temperature record without using rounding like they have done a few times since 1998.

I really wouldn't know if we will get an El Ninyo but it is really instructive when Antarcticice gets so many thumbs up from his fellow cultists. What is lost on the cultists is that it has increased in temperature in the last century about the same as it did the previous century based on reliable proxies. It if were cooling, we would hear the same load of crap from them except their arguments would change slightly. They have a pseudo-scientific mindset that climate was stable and wouldn't change without human influence. They think a degree of warming in a century proves their theory. Their failed models are better evidence of the falsifiability of their theory which at best is highly exaggerated.

Hmmm "a pause buster" interesting how deniers try to play the El Nino card when they themselves use it to try and push 1998 as the start of that very claimed 'pause', you often try to claim this is also linked to the peak of the solar cycle although 1998 was nowhere near the peak of that solar cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-...

If you bothered to look at the long term temperature data you would see it has been slowly climbing for a hundred years in that time we have had many El Nino's and many La Nina's, that has not stopped the slow rise, warmer peak years co-inside with El Nino's as do cooler years like 2008 co-inside with La Nina's but that doesn't change the fact that while deniers claim a 'pause' that cooler year of 2008 was in fact warmer than the record warm year of 1995, which at the time was the record warmest year.

Do you do any research before making silly comments like these

"Why do you think it will be a strong one, with the PDO negative I think a weak one is more likely"

The PDO has been in a negative phase since 2005 and through 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO.sv...

the two warmest years in the modern record.

Years where La Nina also happens are our cooler years like 2008, but the PDO is clearly not have the effect it had back in the 1940's-1970's, and for the record we have had half a dozen El Nino's since 2005, the strongest of those in 2010.

As you seem to want to play the PDO card, have you thought what temperatures will do when the PDO inevitably shifts out of it's negative phase, I doubt it. While it has lasted as long as 30 years (with a small break ~1960) it more often lasts around ten years, in which case we are not that far from it's next shift.

When it does, denial is done!

Peg posts info from NOAA of the estimates for what may to happen with El Nino this year, In Australia our Met Bureau also take a strong interest in the shifts of ENSO as like the U.S. it has a strong influence on our weather, it's shifts linked to droughts and floods here, They estimate the chances of a shift to El Nino at above 70%, but as Peg says predicting ENSO is not a long range possibility.

Unless of course you are a denier expert climatologists (i.e. insurance salesman)

Hopefully you remember this guy as you only posted him a couple of questions ago

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/index...

He claims to be able to predict ENSO 5 years into the future, something no real scientist would claim.

http://www.longrangeweather.com/Article/...

(perhaps it's time for you to pretend that previous question was one of your 'jokes')

Edit: " I have looked at the long term data 0.8C in 150yrs (hardly signicant)"

Oh dear here we go again, if you had looked (which you didn't) you might have noticed that almost 0.6c or that 0.8c has happened since 1970 that is not 150 years but just 50, and chainting the old denier line of 0.8c is not much dosn't wash either a glacial period (which deniers keep reminding would be very bad) is ~an 8c drop in temp, or arond 10% in value of what you are trying to call "hardly signicant" or is that "hardly significant"

"PDO 2005 to present yes, and we have not had a strong El Nino in that time"

well actually we did have a fairly strong one in 2010, but even without another event like the 1998 event, we have had two more years that where warmer than 1998, because CO2 is now having more of an influence than it used to, 17 years and 6 months ago, or whatever ridiculous date range you are using today.

The best guess right now is that we will have an El Nino later this year, and currently it looks to be a strong one.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/an...

However, ENSO forecasting is not terribly reliable at present, though.

http://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/cl...

If there is a strong El Nino either this year or next year will almost certainly be the warmest year on record.

EDIT: That heat content anomaly is the largest on record.

and if so will it be a pause buster, that alarmist's are hoping for.

Do you think El Nino and La Ninas should discounted in the temperature trend or included as part of AGW?

I shall have to think about that.