A new study suggesting government scientists were right to adjust the global warming “pause” out of the global temperature record also shows the warmed up data shows less warming than most climate models predicted.
A study by University of California-Berkeley climate scientist Zeke Hausfather claims National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists were correct in adjusting temperature readings taken from buoys upwards, nearly doubling the ocean warming trend to 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade for the past 18 years.
NOAA’s adjustments effectively erased the “pause” in global warming from the temperature record, and was sharply criticized by some scientists. Hausfather’s study “looked at three independent, separate sets of data,” he said.
“They all agree with the new NOAA record,” Hausfather told ThinkProgress.
But even the increased warming trend is still well below what was predicted by most climate models.
“The importance of a ‘pause’ in global warming is a curiosity,” Chip Knappenberger, a climate scientist with the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The real issue is why the overall rate of warming over the past several decades is so much lower than climate model expectations,” said Knappenberger, who co-authored a book on the huge discrepancies between climate models and real world observations. The book is called “Lukewarming: The New Climate Science that Changes Everything.”
Hausfather noted as much in a recent Twitter conversation with Knappenberger in December, noting climate models diverged from surface temperature observations over the last three decades.
@PCKnappenberger @ed_hawkins @richardabetts @ClimateAudit @DavidRoseUK Both are useful, and trends do highlight some divergences. pic.twitter.com/g1Jqrn4RS9
— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) December 20, 2016
Hausfather did note, however, climate models will more closely match observations once 2016 data is included, but last year’s record warmth was driven by an incredibly strong El Nino warming event.
@PCKnappenberger @ed_hawkins @richardabetts @ClimateAudit @DavidRoseUK Here is what it will (very likely) look like at the end of 2016: pic.twitter.com/eN3LbgNUHk
— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) December 20, 2016
ThinkProgress and other liberal outlets hailed Hausfather’s study as more proof human activities are warming the world faster than previously thought. But the study is not without its critics.
Meteorologist Anthony Watts noted Hausfather’s study only goes up to 2015, when El Nino pumped up ocean temperatures. Including 2016 data, Watts said it would show a lower warming trend as La Nina cooling took over.
“Personally, it looks like ignoring the most current data available for 2016, which has been cooling compared to 2015, invalidates the claim right out of the gate,” Watts wrote on his blog Watts Up With That.
Dr. David Whitehouse, the science editor of the UK-based Global Warming Policy Forum, made a similar case, adding Hausfather’s study covers a time dominated by strong, naturally-occurring warming and cooling events.
“One also has to be aware of the structure in the temperature data of the past 20-years or so as it is dominated not by long-term warming but by natural inter-annual events that are much stronger,” Whitehouse wrote.
“There is the very strong 1998 El Nino that elevates temperatures, the much cooler La Nina years of 1999 and 2000, the El Ninos of 2010 and 2015 as well as smaller El Ninos and La Nina effects,” he wrote.
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