The head of the UN IPCC is sounding like a salesman who is worried about the quality of his product:
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century. "One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents," he told Reuters, adding "are there natural factors compensating?" for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.
So, Pachauri has noticed that the natural 'El Nino' driven record year for instrumentally measured 'global average temperature' remains as 1998. We are now in 2008, Rather than admit to the possibility that ever increasing CO2 emissions don't seem to be pushing up global temperatures, he is looking for another excuse.
Read more on Pielke Jr's excellent Prometheus blog.
John, I haven't heard of solar wind interacting with wind... Got any more info?
As far as I was aware, the magnetic field of the Earth is affected by solar wind. Wouldn't have thought the atmosphere was dense enough at that altitude to be affected by solar wind.
Yes, that's the problem. People often see a correlation, but they need a process to really show that the two things are linked.
El Nino and La Nina are like day and night. Do you have problems with people talking about day and night? I think it's a false dichotomy, but there are worse ones than El Nino and la Nina
Mr T, solar particle flow and solar magnetism means solar winds and there's some very plausible theories that say that the solar winds interact with Earth's winds, particularly at the poles.
I believe there's quite a few papers around on the subject but I've never explored them too deeply because I understand that most are vague when it comes to a mechanism (and I think that a lot of climate variability can be explained without them).
There's even a paper by a couple of Russians that talks about abnormalities in Antarctic winds about 3 months prior to El Nino events. (I have a problem with this because El Nino and La Nina are two ends of the one scale and there's sudden switch, so anyone who talks only in terms of an El Nino "event" bother me.)
Oh, and Mr T, don't be too smart - I actually stay with the ALP devout when in Perth - we just don't discuss politics but, I do KNOW 🙂
Mr T,
as climate modellers cannot model climate, by definition, then their modelling must be the climate of the world of OZ.
We have no data for that world. Well not us mining and engineering types who are responsible for the material ecumbrances enhancing your lifestyle.
John, so what is the process by which solar particle flow affects climate? Got any papers? Sounds intriguing. And what about the magnetic field? How does that affect climate? Any papers?
I would have thought the movement of the sun would affect the TSI as it moves further away, we get less.
I think all the effects are still being debated. That's where the argument currently stands. It's "How much warming can we expect?" The climate modellers are using as much information (including TSI) as they can to try and determine what sort of warming we can expect. You may not like the models, but you are certainly free to create your own and try and give an answer. You may question whether they include enough data or factors, so again make your own and give a better answer.