Might the next temperature upswing be delayed until 2010?

Question

The Met Office's Hadley Centre predicted in August that natural climate shifts could offset the anthropogenic warming forcing over the next 2 years and then temperatures would rise sharply.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/10/weather.uknews

Given that the 11-year solar cycle was at a minimum in 2006 and won't reach it's next maximum until around 2011, and that we currently have strong La Niña conditions, this seems reasonable. Are there any other studies, separate from the Hadley one, that predict the same thing?

Answer 1

Yes indeed.  I linked a Met Office study saying the same thing 6 months ago.

"Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday.

Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005.

To make this kind of prediction, researchers at Britain's Met Office -- which deals with meteorology -- made a computer model that takes into account such natural phenomena as the El Nino pattern in the Pacific Ocean and other fluctuations in ocean circulation and heat content."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Though this is probably the same study you're referring to.

It's a bit unfortunate that short-term influences like La Nina will allow deniers to continue to claim that global warming has "stalled" for the next 2 years, but after that point it will be difficult to maintain denial.  The next solar cycle is supposed to be a strong one, so I suspect the Hadley Centre is correct that 2010-2015 will have several record-breaking hot years.

Quite possibly even hot enough for global warming acknowledgers to win our wager:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/0...

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/y...

*edit* Gotta love Kim's answer.  Because we're going to have a couple of relatively cool years (yet still hotter than almost every previous year on record) before breaking the temperature record, that means global warming has stopped.  LOL!  He/she never could understand the difference between weather and climate.

Answer 2

Global warming has raised temperatures one degree over 100+ years.

The El Nino Southern Oscillation changes temperatures a degree or more from year to year, and we're in a strong La Niña cooling influence at the moment.  

So we have a .01 degree upward trend per year for long term climate vs. a 1 or 2 degree downward trend for short term weather.  One outweighs the other by at least 100X in magnitude.  Can anyone really question which one will dominate for the next year or two.

Duh.  Of course the underlying global warming trend will be temporarily masked.  

Fortunately we have 100 year records, so the long term trend is clear and we won't get fooled by short term weather fluctuations.

Edit -

Trotting out the tired "it's the sun" excuse?  Link please?

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content...

"There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection–attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the twentieth century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified."

(Note the additional 3 pages of referenced papers at the end.)

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/...

"blaming the sun for recent global warming is no science-backed position anymore – it is deliberate disinformation. "

Quirin Schiermeier

German Correspondent

Nature

Answer 3

Sure many studies have been done most contradict each other so just use the one you feel like.

The most cited being Imbrie in 1980 showing long term cooling trends beginning 6000yrs ago and lasting for the next 23,000yrs.Then Berger & Loutre determine just the oppsite was true and that warming trends would last another 50,000yrs,I do believe both used orbital variations.

Then there's the Sun spot solar/variations not solar cycles,(Suess) that predicts warming for 202 more years.

There's lots more just use the web sreach.

Answer 4

In the end, isn't this just another SWAG?  We've heard the same things about hurricanes, temperatures, droughts, disease, ad nausium......

This is all we hear - next year it's going to be worse!  Doesn't it get tiring after awhile?

[Edit] Just look at the Vostok Ice Core Samples.  Nothing is different today than it has been over the last 500,000 years.

Answer 5

Let's hope so.

I worry more about the increased rate of AGW when the polar ice caps no longer act as a huge heat sink (it takes 80X more energy to melt ice to water than to raise water 1 degC.  It is known as the Latent Heat of Fusion)