Month: June 2016

In a new study in Nature Communications by Michael L. Griffiths et al found that ENSO and related hydroclimate phenomena in the western Pacific produce significant changes in global temperature on a centennial scale. The study presents a 2,000-year multiproxy reconstruction of the western Pacific and concludes that there is a

likelihood that century-scale variations in tropical Pacific climate modes can significantly modulate radiatively forced shifts in global temperature.

So maybe it’s not all CO2 after all.

A new study in Nature Climate Change by Beena Balan Sarojini et al concludes that despite their best efforts to do so, researchers cannot find any compelling evidence of anthropogenic fingerprints on regional precipitation. President Obama would do well to read the new study along with the rest of the well-documented science that shows no significant changes in extreme weather due to human influence (see Extreme Weather is Not Increasing). Indeed Sarojini et al conclude that despite

“expectations that significant changes in regional precipitation should have already occurred as a result of human influence on climate, compelling evidence of anthropogenic fingerprints on regional precipitation is obscured by observational and modelling uncertainties and is likely to remain so using current methods for years to come. This is in spite of substantial ongoing improvements in models, new reanalyses and a satellite record that spans over thirty years. If we are to quantify how human-induced climate change is affecting the regional water cycle, we need to consider new ways of identifying the effects of natural and anthropogenic influences on precipitation that take full advantage of our physical expectations.”

The language of so-called scientists here is quite amazing. Despite the fact that they cannot detect any compelling evidence of human caused changes to regional  precipitation, they still insist it “should” have already occurred. But it hasn’t. So perhaps they should be considering the possibility that their “expectations” and models are incorrect.