> How many years have to go by until we can establish a trend?

How many years have to go by until we can establish a trend?

Posted at: 2015-03-12 
According to the latest IPCC report, temperatures can stay flat until 2035, and the models will still be consistent with observations. BigGryph will be here posting that the last 40 years are the warmest on record, therefore global warming is ongoing.

Joe Romm has bet Thomas Fuller that 2010s will be warmer than 2000s by at least .15 degrees. At this point, it looks like he is going to lose that bet. More evidence that predicted levels of catastrophic warming are unlikely, and instead global warming will be less than 2C.

The period from January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. I'll say that again ... the WARMEST decade since records began in the 1800s. Now, if you break down that decade into individual years and look at the average temperature per year, you find they aren't all that different from one another.

So, the question is, have temperatures really paused? Or will the next decade be warmer than the last one? And how do you know until you take the data?

What you are arguing seems to be that, because temperatures look pretty much the same over the past 15 years, that must mean there is no warming. But that's simply stating what the data says for 15 years. It isn't stating what the trend is.

So let me tell you what that trend is: 2001-2010 was warmer than 1991-2000, which was warmer than 1981-1990, which was warmer than 1971-1980, which was warmer than 1961-1970, which was warmer than 1951-1960, which was not as warm as 1941-1950 but warmer than 1931-1940, which was warmer than 1921-30, which was warmer than 1911-1920, which was warmer than 1901-1910.

Now I'm sorry. You can talk about the 'pause' all you want. You can look at 15 years of data with your tinted-spectacles, look at it in isolation, and convince yourself temperatures have stopped rising. The decadal averages tell the trend is upwards and has been, pretty much, for the last century.

The question you should ask is what level of delusion and rigid adherence to a belief irrespective of evidence is required to base an opinion on 15 years worth of data whilst ignoring more than 100 years of data to the contrary?

The answer to your question then is simple. Average the data over 10 year periods.

As you can see from the link in the question, short term trends are referred to a lot by the IPCC. It is only people with contrary views that aren't allowed to use trends of that length to make a point.

The current pause is interesting. Partly for the number of people who deny it is happening. It is only the "deniers" that don't deny it! Originally, we were told that Greenhouse Gases were the big problem. It was just that no-one knew then whether the affect of blocking the sun's rays would outweigh the emission back from earth.

Then it morphed into Global Warming. The science was now sure that absorbing return infra red was the big problem. It would heat the atmosphere. Now the atmosphere is not warming. Has that bit of science stopped? The atmospheric waming certainly has. The theory cannot be right if it does not fit the facts.

To those who say that "cherry-picking" 1998 is a problem let's pick some time later. Temperature is going down from 2002.

If "energy balance" is the critical factor now then presumably it always has been? So what was the energy balance like when the Hansens of this world were promoting global surface temperature anomalies as the key figure?

Some of us have been pointing out thet temperature is a bad index anyway, Energy is much better. For instance, if you keep the energy constant and change the humidity the temperature changes. Nothing to do with CO2.



30 years is nothing compared to the Earths age .

1000 years might be a trend but there would be warming and cooling during that time .

If you go back 70 years the newspapers would show a

warming and cooling by decades .

f you are a warmie and the observations agree with you, one afternoon. If they don't agree, even after 15 years, never.

Seriously, H H Lamb, the traitor who started all this nonsense of Global Warming changed his mind after one hot summer so much for AGW science.

At first his view was that global cooling would lead within 10,000 years to a future ice age and he was known as “the ice man”, but over a period including the UK's exceptional drought and heat wave of 1975–76 he changed to predicting that global warming could have serious effects within a century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H_H_Lamb

When you say "trend" I assume you are talking about a climate trend. And I believe we are most interested in the trend for global surface temperatures. I don't usually reference alarmist climate scientists but I do make exceptions. This is from a study by Ben Santer:

"Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.10...

So when it comes specifically to extracting the anthropogenic signal out of noise in a temperature time series, Santer et al feel that 17 years is the minimum.

Right now, there is global temperature data up to August, 2013. That means 17 years is a start date of September, 1996. This is the Wood for Trees graph for HadCRUT4: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut...

That's a trend of 0.048C +/-0.117C/decade. It's statistically indistinguishable from zero and 75% lower than the IPCC predicted mean trend of 0.2C/decade. http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.ph...

I guess that's simply hard to swallow for some around here.

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@Elizabeth: "The question you should ask is what level of delusion and rigid adherence to a belief irrespective of evidence is required to base an opinion on 15 years worth of data whilst ignoring more than 100 years of data to the contrary?"

Did you read my answer? Did you read the very last sentence?

It's 30 years for something to be "true" climate, at least in part because there are known factors, such as sunspot cycles, ENSO, and PDO, that take years to decades to complete a full cycle. If you don't have a full cycle of one of those factors, then you can make it appear to be warming or cooling simply by starting at a peak and ending in a trough.

Because they are less variable, ocean temperatures are a more reliable indicator of global heat content, and I believe those have been rising fairly steadily.

there HAS been warming, it's the RATE of warming that has decreased, and only for LAND temperatures. Most of the heating energy is in the oceans.

WUWT is really good at twisting facts.

if you want to be taken seriously, read and quote serious studies and papers.

Warming has continued. Air temperature rises have been lower only if you choose an extreme 97/98 El Nino peak as your starting point. That is simply deliberate data manipulation and you know it because it has been pointed out to you repeatedly.

The evidence is clear that the energy balance for the planet has been +ve without any interruption and gaining a steadily increasing quantity of heat from solar radiation. There in no place for that heat to go but to add to the planets 'HEAT'. All you need to do is look at the evidence. A nice summary of real science is available from the most august body the IPCC. Your reference to a denier blog says why you have a problem.

15 years of record-setting high temperatures is a trend.

>>. Everyone knows it takes 20...no 30 years to establish a climate trend." <<

No, everyone knows that the temperature signal is multidecadal - and those are not the same thing.

If you are referring to statistiscal significance, that is a function of degrees of freedom and is a statistical measure of the confidence that a sample population (n) is a reliable estimate of the true population (N).

Deniers should stop asking questions about scientific concepts that they cannot define and do not understand.

Alarmist: "Yes, there is NO pause. And anyway the pause, which doesn't exist, has only been going on for the past 15 years. Everyone knows it takes 20...no 30 years to establish a climate trend."

Well, we are half way there now. I'm wondering how long they will say it takes to establish a trend if we get to 30 years of no warming.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/30/to-the-ipcc-forget-about-30-years/#more-94886

Frank: Your bully tactic does not work. According to Y!A guidlines, you MUST respond to the question, not just demean and bully. Of course, if that is the limit of your knowledge, I guess we won't report you. However, in the future, please attempt to be more intellectual and don't look so foolish.

In answer to the question, if it is regarding the global temperature I would think a decade should be enough. Anyway that temperature 'trend' should correspond to the CO2 level in some fashion, if we are to believe the 'saviors of the earth's' theory.

There's an old saying: The more lies one tells the more one has to lie.

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/...

It only took 11 yrs of warming for them to pronounce global warming is real and dangerous.

It depends on how old they are, long enough for them to retire and get their pensions I suppose.

You completely misrepresent reality. Or perhaps you aren't educated enough to understand it.

Either way, we're laughing at your ignorance.