Observed global mean surface air temperature (GMST) hasn't risen for past 15 years but is still overestimated over previous decades-Geophysical Research Letters, 2/10/15

2/10/15, "The recent global warming hiatus: What is the role of Pacific variability?" Geophysical Research Letters, AGU, H. Douville^*, A. Voldoire and O. Geoffroy, DOI: 10.1002/2014GL062775. published online 2/10/15

"Abstract"

"The observed global mean surface air temperature (GMST) has not risen over the last 15 years, spurring outbreaks of skepticism regarding the nature of global warming and challenging the upper range transient response of the current-generation global climate models. Recent numerical studies have, however, tempered the relevance of the observed pause in global warming by highlighting the key role of tropical Pacific internal variability. Here we first show that many climate models overestimate the influence of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation on GMST, thereby shedding doubt on their ability to capture the tropical Pacific contribution to the hiatus. Moreover, we highlight that model results can be quite sensitive to the experimental design. We argue that overriding the surface wind stress is more suitable than nudging the sea surface temperature for controlling the tropical Pacific ocean heat uptake and, thereby, the multidecadal variability of GMST. Using the former technique, our model captures several aspects of the recent climate evolution, including the weaker slowdown of global warming over land and the transition toward a negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Yet the observed global warming is still overestimated not only over the recent 1998–2012 hiatus period but also over former decades, thereby suggesting that the model might be too sensitive to the prescribed radiative forcings."

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Among comments to above at WUWT:

2/11/15, "Recent Paper Ends Abstract with “…Model Might Be Too Sensitive to the Prescribed Radiative Forcings”," Bob Tisdale

"William R

February 11, 2015 at 9:00 am 

 

I have always found the term “hiatus” troubling, same with “pause”. This implies that they know that warming will resume, but it’s just a temporary halt. We as skeptics should not accept this implied inevitability as a given. It could very well be a “plateau”. It would be more precise to recognize the flat trend without assuming we know what is coming next. But it’s nice to see that more are at least admitting that the flat trend exists.

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 luysii 
February 11, 2015 at 9:10 am 

Calling it a pause or a hiatus gives away the semantic game, essentially conceding the argument to the global warming crowd. It is logically indefensible. It is far more correct to say that warming has essentially stopped at this time.
  

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Robert of Ottawa 
February 11, 2015 at 10:54 am 

But it’s nice to see that more are at least admitting that the flat trend exists. I’m sure the authors will soon be denounced as “flat-earthers”"




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