The weather for 2016

[shunyadragon]

I will follow the temperature and other weather patterns for 2016 as I did for 2015. My prediction is 2016 will be a cooler and closer to a more normal year than 2015. El Nino will dissipate and not influence the weather in 2016. Hurricane numbers and patterns will be closer to normal. Drought may still be a problem in some regions,

[sylas]

My guesstimate:

2016 will be even hotter than 2015. That's a big call; because 2015 was a huge spike in temperatures; generally we'd expect things to cool down a bit after a big spike. I do expect a cool down; but I think it may well be in 2017 rather than 2016. El Nino generally seems to have a slightly delayed effect on global temperatures; which means that even as the current El Nino fades, its effects should continue well into 2016... which means 2016 is very likely to be another hot year (mean global anomaly).

Hurricanes: a harder call. El Nino is generally associated with more pacific hurricanes and less atlantic hurricanes: and so it was in 2015. But 2016... I dunno. Regressing back towards the mean is usually a good betting tactic; the problem is that the mean is shifting under our feet. Under duress; I'd expect 2016 to see above average hurricane activity in the Pacific (though maybe not quite as much as 2015) and a generally unexceptional year in the Atlantic.

No offense, but I had to snicker a little at your concluding "prediction": 'Drought may still be a problem in some regions". That's a safe bet for just about any year. :-) For my part on drought... I dunno.

[shunyadragon]

My guesstimate:

2016 will be even hotter than 2015. That's a big call; because 2015 was a huge spike in temperatures; generally we'd expect things to cool down a bit after a big spike. I do expect a cool down; but I think it may well be in 2017 rather than 2016. El Nino generally seems to have a slightly delayed effect on global temperatures; which means that even as the current El Nino fades, its effects should continue well into 2016... which means 2016 is very likely to be another hot year (mean global anomaly).

Hurricanes: a harder call. El Nino is generally associated with more pacific hurricanes and less atlantic hurricanes: and so it was in 2015. But 2016... I dunno. Regressing back towards the mean is usually a good betting tactic; the problem is that the mean is shifting under our feet. Under duress; I'd expect 2016 to see above average hurricane activity in the Pacific (though maybe not quite as much as 2015) and a generally unexceptional year in the Atlantic.

No offense, but I had to snicker a little at your concluding "prediction": 'Drought may still be a problem in some regions". That's a safe bet for just about any year. :-) For my part on drought... I dunno.

Good post!!!

[rogue06]

My guesstimate:

2016 will be even hotter than 2015. That's a big call; because 2015 was a huge spike in temperatures; generally we'd expect things to cool down a bit after a big spike. I do expect a cool down; but I think it may well be in 2017 rather than 2016. El Nino generally seems to have a slightly delayed effect on global temperatures; which means that even as the current El Nino fades, its effects should continue well into 2016... which means 2016 is very likely to be another hot year (mean global anomaly).

Hurricanes: a harder call. El Nino is generally associated with more pacific hurricanes and less atlantic hurricanes: and so it was in 2015. But 2016... I dunno. Regressing back towards the mean is usually a good betting tactic; the problem is that the mean is shifting under our feet. Under duress; I'd expect 2016 to see above average hurricane activity in the Pacific (though maybe not quite as much as 2015) and a generally unexceptional year in the Atlantic.

No offense, but I had to snicker a little at your concluding "prediction": 'Drought may still be a problem in some regions". That's a safe bet for just about any year. :-) For my part on drought... I dunno.

Sylas, perhaps you could explain something that really troubles me about these claims.

Several of those who support global warming readily concede that there has been a decade long lull in increasing temperatures^[1] but at the same time we keep hearing how each year was either the hottest year or near the record. They both cannot be true.











1. This lull was actually predicted by several supporters of global warming. I remember one saying that it would be as a result of the melting ice pouring into the North Atlantic and effecting the Gulf Stream.

[HMS_Beagle]

Sylas, perhaps you could explain something that really troubles me about these claims.

Several of those who support global warming readily concede that there has been a decade long lull in increasing temperatures^[1] but at the same time we keep hearing how each year was either the hottest year or near the record. They both cannot be true.

Sure it can. The "lull" was in reference to the 1998 anomalously hot year. 2009 surpassed that, 2014 surpassed 2009, 2015 surpassed 2014.

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[rogue06]

Sure it can. The "lull" was in reference to the 1998 anomalously hot year. 2009 surpassed that, 2014 surpassed 2009, 2015 surpassed 2014.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]12590[/ATTACH]

The lull is described as a decade long.

[JonF]

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the lull is in temperatures measured by satellites, and that the temperatures obtained are not particularly indicative of global tendencies.

The measures that are constantly increasing are many, and much in agreement.

[sylas]

Sylas, perhaps you could explain something that really troubles me about these claims.

Several of those who support global warming readily concede that there has been a decade long lull in increasing temperatures^[1] but at the same time we keep hearing how each year was either the hottest year or near the record. They both cannot be true.

The "lull" is a misnomer. At no point during the supposed lull was there ever any statistically credible case for warming having slowed much at all. The one thing which stuck out in the short term record (as HMS_Beagle notes) was that 1998 was a massive spike in temperatures. That came with a big El Nino. We've just now had the same thing in 2015.

Various different people have being said a range of different things about trends. You'll easily get "conflict" by looking at different things said by different people. Here are some key points:

• 1998 was a record hot year at the time, blowing previous records out of the water
• After 1998 temperatures dropped again in 1999 and 2000, and came back up again in 2001 to just a little below the new record mark set in 1998.
• As the decade followed, temperatures remained higher; so that any year from 2001 onwards was hotter than any year from 1997 back.
• New records continued to be set, particularly in 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2014. The margins were small; below individual measurement uncertainty, so those four years rank in different orders in different sets. Be that as it may, yes, the surface temperature measurements show a number of new hottest ever years as temperatures have continued to rise.
• Taking a short term trends in the data gives you very little statistical significance. The lull, such as it was, doesn't show up well in any statistical analysis. We often heard people trying to take a cautious approach say that there was "no statistically significant warming" for certain short time periods. They could equally have said "no statistically significant lull". But anyhoo, yes, picking the hot year as a start point and ignoring uncertainties suggested some sort of slow down. I'd call it an instance of "regression to the mean"; reflecting not so much a slow down as an indication that 1998 was really hot.

Statistically, yes, you can easily have a slow down while still getting new record hot years, particularly with the records in any of 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2014 having such small margins, and particularly with the putative slow down having really low statistical significance. Note that the "lull" wasn't a time of cooling; it was at best a time of reduced warming; and mostly an artifact of short term variations.

1. This lull was actually predicted by several supporters of global warming. I remember one saying that it would be as a result of the melting ice pouring into the North Atlantic and effecting the Gulf Stream.

Woah. Check your references. That looks like a bit like Keenlyside et al 2008 (journal ref). They predicted a real lull -- which didn't happen.

Temperatures continued to rise; and there were good reasons given by critics at the time for why their methodology was unlikely to give useful results. Their results were most likely (and this was pointed out at the time) a consequence of the way they tried to force their model with historical data; a technical problem. If you had another reference in mind, I'd love to see it.

Their prediction was falsified almost immediately. They predicted numbers based on ten year averages, at five year intervals. (That is, av of 1996-2005, then 2001-2010, then 2006-2015.) This is a simple way to avoid too much influence of short term effects -- and if you try this you won't see a lull. These numbers rise steadily all through recent decades. The numbers they gave as a prediction for the decade of 2001-2010 would have required a major cooling to get down to the prediction, but of course 2010 set a new record high individual year.

I've had fun looking back at my posts in the new TheologyWeb relating to the so-called lull. See, for example, this post in July 2014.

[rogue06]

Thanks.

[shunyadragon]

The lull is described as a decade long.

Look at the graph closely again, the suposed lull was ~2000 to ~2009-10. In reality it was a misnomer as sylas pointed out.

[shunyadragon]

My guesstimate:

2016 will be even hotter than 2015. That's a big call; because 2015 was a huge spike in temperatures; generally we'd expect things to cool down a bit after a big spike. I do expect a cool down; but I think it may well be in 2017 rather than 2016. El Nino generally seems to have a slightly delayed effect on global temperatures; which means that even as the current El Nino fades, its effects should continue well into 2016... which means 2016 is very likely to be another hot year (mean global anomaly).

Hurricanes: a harder call. El Nino is generally associated with more pacific hurricanes and less atlantic hurricanes: and so it was in 2015. But 2016... I dunno. Regressing back towards the mean is usually a good betting tactic; the problem is that the mean is shifting under our feet. Under duress; I'd expect 2016 to see above average hurricane activity in the Pacific (though maybe not quite as much as 2015) and a generally unexceptional year in the Atlantic.

No offense, but I had to snicker a little at your concluding "prediction": 'Drought may still be a problem in some regions". That's a safe bet for just about any year. :-) For my part on drought... I dunno.

Though I agree with most of what you predict here, our disagreement concerns the temperature trends for 2016 as opposed to 2015. I still predict a lower average for 2016 than 2015, but if the existence persists and effects of el nino persist than you may be correct. I still go for a lower average, therefore our informal bet is on.

[shunyadragon]

No offense, but I had to snicker a little at your concluding "prediction": 'Drought may still be a problem in some regions". That's a safe bet for just about any year. :-) For my part on drought... I dunno.

One clarification here is I predict, above average drought in some regions, and not just the normal pattern of drought.

As far as tropical storms and hurricanes, some due predict more severe storms as a part of the changes due to climate change. I am still a cautious skeptic on this prediction. Our northeaster that raked the Mid Atlantic and parts of the South is a record breaker, and in reality was what people now call a winter tropical storm.

[TheLurch]

Though I agree with most of what you predict here, our disagreement concerns the temperature trends for 2016 as opposed to 2015. I still predict a lower average for 2016 than 2015, but if the existence persists and effects of el nino persist than you may be correct. I still go for a lower average, therefore our informal bet is on.

The way I had it explained is that, right now, the El Niño is heating the air over the tropics. That warm air will gradually spread, even as a fading El Niño continues to heat the air directly above it. The net results is warming that, while not as intense over the actual site of the ocean changes, is far more widespread. Thus, you typically get an even higher global temperature as El Niño fades out.

Of course, since we're dealing with an artificial timing (the calendar year), the precise timing of these events relative to January 1 matters. But, in this case, the El Niño was still at full strength on January 1, so this scenario is highly probable.

[Poor Debater]

Sylas, perhaps you could explain something that really troubles me about these claims.

Several of those who support global warming readily concede that there has been a decade long lull in increasing temperatures^[1] but at the same time we keep hearing how each year was either the hottest year or near the record. They both cannot be true.

Actually they can both be true, if "lull" refers to a change in trend, and "hottest on record" refers to absolute value.

As it happens, however, while there was a change in trend, it was never statistically significant by any measure. Thus the "lull" was weather. "Hottest year on record" would have occurred even without El Niño, and is therefore climate.

[shunyadragon]

Actually they can both be true, if "lull" refers to a change in trend, and "hottest on record" refers to absolute value.

As it happens, however, while there was a change in trend, it was never statistically significant by any measure. Thus the "lull" was weather. "Hottest year on record" would have occurred even without El Niño, and is therefore climate.

This not clear, and needs explanation. This thread and the previous thread refer to the weather records for each year. The collective weather over years determines the climate and climate change in trends over time.

You cannot claim the hottest year on record would have occurred without the El Niño. It may have, but the hotter years do follow a tend with El Niño, and the trend is that El Niños appear to be getting stronger. The lull would be part of the climate record, but not long enough to establish a long term trend. The records in different locations and regions would be sufficient to define the climate for each area or region. If you take into the weather records over the past thousand or more years, than you would have sufficient weather records to demonstrate the human influence on global climate change.