Back around 2007 I posted a section in Wikipedia Global Warming talk page titled “The Pause”. In this I pointed to the lack of warming since AR3 and the growing number of articles referring to the lack of warming. (I was told there was no pause)
Since then, the “pause” has become accepted terminology to describe the fifteen years or more years without significant warming in the global surface temperature. But sooner or later we are likely to see a significant up or downward movement. This will lead to disputes as to whether the “pause” has ended. Therefore I foresee that we need a definition of the pause.
My original basis for asserting that there was “a pause” was that the warming predicted in AR3 had not occurred. AR3 gave a prediction of warming between 1.4 and 5.8C between 1990 and 2100. This is shown in the above graph (last updated at end of 2009 around Climategate) This is equivalent to limits of between 0.127C and 0.527C per decade. AR3 definition gives a prediction starting in 1990 so a strict test of whether the surface temperature is within this range would be the trend starting from 1990 with the average temperature in that year.
However, I personally feel that predictions should not start in the past. Therefore I much prefer a definition starting in the year AR3 was published (2001), this also happens to be the start of the “millennium” and as the above graph shows, there was little change in the following years, so I do not think this favours either cooling or warming.
A Definition of the Pause
The pause, implies a trend close to no trend, but how close? Above 0.13C/decade, the trend would be within the IPCC prediction and so considered “warming”. No trend would certainly be a “Pause”. Therefore I think the simplest place to change from “warmign” to “pause” would be at the half-way point of 0.064C/decade. (1.4/220) Therefore:
- A trend higher that 0.065C/decade should be considered warming
- Less than 0.064C/decade would be a pause
- But below -0.064C/decade would be cooling
Just in case it is relevant, I will recount the reason why I started using the phrase “the pause”. Having tried to edit Wikipedia global warming article (first as a believer and latterly as a skeptic) I realised that it was extremely difficult to get anything in which even vaguely suggested global warming wasn’t a massive “happening now” problem.
However, I had begun to see people talk about the lack of warming and I thought anyone writing a school essay would be asked to “put both sides” so would need this material.
The reason I chose the word “pause” is because better and more accurate words like “stopped” or anything implying and end, would never ever have been considered by the editors on wkipedia.
I was using the concept of a tape recorder – which is paused before the action continues. This I hoped would remove the implication of “warming being at an end”. Despite a wealth of evidence that there was a pause and that it was being actively discussed in reputable sources my edit was summarily and quite falsely dismissed. (It wasn’t long after I decided it was pointless trying to edit wikipedia and it was best just to let the editors have their biased articles as I think that way people are more likely to view them as the propaganda they are.)