The El Nino phenomena is among the most fascinating yet least understood topics of climate science.
Every few years a wave of heat and surface pressure changes sweeps across regions of the Pacific. It lasts nine months to two years and has a worldwide effect.
Some believe that the frequency of El Ninos is changing as a result of climate change. I have recently heard it said many times that it is the increased frequency of El Nino and the associated La Nina that has resulted in the flatness of the global annual average temperature in the past decade or so. If true it’s an important observation.
Trenberth and Hoar in 1996 said there is a tendency for more frequent El Nino and fewer La Nina since the late 1970’s which they think is linked to decadal changes throughout the Pacific basin due to global warming. They note a non-El Nino warming between 1990-95 “connected to” the El Nino, which they say is unprecedented in the previous 113 years, and suggest it is linked to increases in greenhouse gasses.
Unfortunately we merely observe the damages caused by global warming without doing anything to really stop this threat.
Thanks for dropping by Christina. Could you indicate please, what damages can be demonstrated as “caused by global warming”?
Christina – I’d reply but WordPress for some reason doesn’t like what I’m trying to say. Maybe our host could extract it from the spam bucket.
Apparently my comment also ended up in the spam bucket.
Hmm… search for your usernames didn’t find anything in spam guys, sorry. System got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?
No worries. Thanks for trying anyway.
My main point re David Whitehouse’s post was that there is no trend in ENSO at all for as long as the data exists, apart from the 60 year cycle. So CO2 is not causing changes to ENSO related droughts or floods. Or much warming either, since the actual measurements of 2XCO2 fall around 0.6 or 0.7 C/doubling. Do the sums. Human caused global warming, yes. Dangerous, no.
I’m always looking for more sources on CO2 numbers, empirical measures preferred but any derivation useful. At present 2xCO2 = +0.4°C at surface is most compelling. Could you post your source or email me at Send to Ed. please?
Deficiencies in the Global Climate Models have been demonstrated in their total failure to predict the flat average global temperature trend since about 2001. I graph the average global temperature anomaly data by month as reported by all five agencies and the CO2 level from Mauna Loa. The data are provided by various government agencies and include both surface and satellite measurements.
Use of these sources avoids the delay, bias and de facto censoring of ‘peer review’. I compare the temperatures for validity and average them to avoid bias. The temperature trend has been approximately flat for over a decade while the atmospheric CO2 level has increased by over 25% of the total increase from 1800 to 2001. I wonder how wide this separation between the rising CO2 level and not-rising temperature will need to get for some people to realize that maybe they missed something.
The climate is so insensitive to CO2 that average global temperatures will decline (in response to other factors) in spite of a doubling of CO2.