New Jason Satellite Indicates 23-Year Global Cooling by Dennis T. Avery
The Bear on May 09 2008 at 8:24 am | Filed under: Global Warming
DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and is the Director for the Center for Global Food Issues.
Now it’s not just the sunspots that predict a 23-year global cooling. The new Jason oceanographic satellite shows that 2007 was a “cool” La Nina year - but Jason also says something more important is at work: The much larger and more persistent Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has turned into its cool phase, telling us to expect moderately lower global temperatures until 2030 or so.
For the past century at least, global temperatures have tended to mirror the 20-to 30-year warmings and coolings of the north-central Pacific Ocean. We don’t know just why, but the pattern of the last century is clear: the earth warmed from about 1915 to1940, while the PDO was also warming (1925 to 46). The earth cooled from 1940 to 1975, while the PDO was cooling (1946 to 1977). The strong global warming from 1976 to 1998 was accompanied by a strong and almost-constant warming of the north-central Pacific. Ancient tree rings in Baja California and Mexico show there have been 11 such PDO shifts since 1650, averaging 23 years on length.
Researchers discovered the PDO only recently - in 1996 - while searching for the reason salmon numbers had declined sharply in the Columbia River after 1977. The salmon catch record for the past 100 years gave the answer - shifting Pacific Ocean currents.
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the earth warmed from about 1915 to1940, while the PDO was also warming (1925 to 46). The earth cooled from 1940 to 1975, while the PDO was cooling (1946 to 1977).
In both examples, the PDO cooled AFTER the earth cooling, and warmed AFTER the earth warming. So, how does this support PDO as a cause of temerature rise and fall? Wouldn’t it be more logical to assume this to be some indicator lagging even the ocean temperature shifts? And then, one would draw from that, the cause of the ocean temperature shifts was either direct, and immediate in effect, or longer term, though less demonstrable, and would have had to come even earlier. The point being, PDO causes nothing, at least, nothing we can see here. The driver, in order to be a driver, has to come first.