An Honest Climate Debate

Satellite Data Show No Warming Before 1997. Changes Since Not Related to CO2 February 20, 2009

Satellite Data Show No Warming Before 1997. Changes Since Not Related to CO2

By Arno Arrak

Posted on ICECAP

A full analysis of satellite-measured lower tropospheric temperatures indicates that none of the global temperature variations from 1978 to 2008 can be attributed to the effect of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The record shows global climate oscillations with a period of three to five years and a peak-to-peak amplitude of 0.4 to 0.5 degrees Celsius about a common, fixed mean temperature that lasted from 1978 to 1997. Since this mean
temperature did not change for twenty years the late twentieth century warming touted by IPCC and others simply did not happen. The cause of these newly discovered climate oscillations is large-scale periodic movement of ocean waters from shore to shore, part of the El Nino � Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system. It is accompanied by a massive, periodic transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere and back again which was previously
unsuspected and which is detectable even in land-based records. This major atmospheric phenomenon is missing from all IPCC Global Circulation Models (GCMs) and thereby invalidates conclusions drawn from their climate models. Satellite records show that this oscillatory period ended with a giant warming peak known as the “super El Nino of 1998.”

This unusual peak does not belong to the oscillatory ENSO system but interrupts it and could well be of cosmogenic origin. After it subsided the interrupted ENSO oscillation continued. But it had been energized from that warm peak and in three years the global temperature rose to a plateau 0.2 degrees above previous peaks. The expected climate downturn that should have followed failed to occur and temperature stayed up there for six years. It lasted from 2001 to 2007. This “twenty first century high,” together with the warming peak that preceded it, accounts for recent accelerated loss of arctic ice. Contrary to carbon dioxide theory the world temperature did not increase but stayed the same during this period. The period ended with a climate downturn in 2007.

Carbon dioxide cannot explain the lack of warming in the eighties and nineties, nor any of the abrupt warmings that followed, nor the stasis of the twenty first century high, nor the temperature downturn that followed it in 2007 and bottomed out in 2008. A direct comparison of these satellite data with ground-based measurements is also possible. Comparing satellite (UAH MSU LT) and land-based (HadCRUT3) data for the eighties and nineties gives HadCRUT3 a warming trend of 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade (one degree per century) while lower tropospheric satellite data show no warming at all. This is compounded by the fact that satellite measurements of midtropospheric temperature show a long-term cooling effect for this period. Looking for sources
of error in ground-based data one is led to the usual suspect, the urban heat island effect.

Fatal computer errors in IPCC climate models derive from the fact that none of the abrupt warmings and coolings on the record, especially since 1998, can be attributed to the greenhouse effect. Hence, all IPCC models purporting to predict (project??) climate a hundred years into the future are invalid and their predictions/projections must be discarded. To summarize: existing theory used by the IPCC can neither explain the observed climate nor predict the future. Carbon dioxide warming has been shown to be non-existent in the eighties and nineties, and the warming since 1998 is not carbonaceous in origin. It follows that Quijotic carbon dioxide policies like the Kyoto Protocol and the cap-and-trade laws should be abandoned. See post here.