Articles Tagged "Roger Andrews"

Before proceeding, credit where credit is due. The concept of a relationship between the sun and ENSO events isn’t new. It’s been discussed at least twice on this blog (here and here) and in detail by Theodor Landscheidt (here).The connection between ENSO events and warming isn’t new either. Three years ago Bob Tisdale (here) showed how ENSO events caused periodic upward shifts in the SST record that explained all of the recent global warming. Also not new, thanks to our host, is the theory that the oceans periodically release stored heat to the air (here). So a h/t to these gentlemen and to any others I may have omitted.

What follows is my attempt to condense these hypotheses into a narrative that uses observational data to illustrate how the solar cycle, ENSO events and the release of stored ocean heat, and not man-made greenhouse gases, combined to cause the recent global warming, which began, incidentally, in 1976.

ENSO Events and Solar Cycles


Figure 1 plots the Niño3.4 Index since 1960 (the Bivariate ENSO, Multivariate ENSO and Oceanic Niño Indices give essentially the same results). I’ve used the commonly-accepted +/-0.5C threshold to define individual Niño and Niña events and the zero crossover to define Niños and Niñas that transition directly into each other, and the duration of each event is shown by the red and blue vertical stripes.

Figure 1: ENSO Events Defined by Niño3.4 Index (Niños red, Niñas blue)