Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

What is it? Short answer -- Just one variable in the Earth's climate change equation.

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.

Source:



The "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO) is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability. While the two climate oscillations have similar spatial climate fingerprints, they have very different behavior in time. Fisheries scientist Steven Hare coined the term "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO) in 1996 while researching connections between Alaska salmon production cycles and Pacific climate (his dissertation topic with advisor Robert Francis). Two main characteristics distinguish PDO from El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO): first, 20th century PDO "events" persisted for 20-to-30 years, while typical ENSO events persisted for 6 to 18 months; second, the climatic fingerprints of the PDO are most visible in the North Pacific/North American sector, while secondary signatures exist in the tropics - the opposite is true for ENSO. Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: "cool" PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while "warm" PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990's. Shoshiro Minobe has shown that 20th century PDO fluctuations were most energetic in two general periodicities, one from 15-to-25 years, and the other from 50-to-70 years.

There is a tracked Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) Index defined as the leading principal component of North Pacific monthly sea surface temperature variability (poleward of 20N for the 1900-93 period). Digital values of the PDO index are available from Nate Mantua's anonymous ftp directory.

Coincidence?

The PDO Index switched negative at about the same time the sun's geomagnetic averaged planetary index(AP) dropped off in October 2005 and has stayed more or less negative since then. Is it just a coincidence that the PDO Index went negative about the same time as the sun's geomagnetic averaged planetary index dropped. Curious.


The folks that track the PDO Index are located here.

Is the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) the next to shift? And what about the ... ?? Settled science my ass.

Climate Change

Predictions of environmental doom have been with us for a long long time, as the Washington Policy Center reminds us:

•“...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

• By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

• The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

• “By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

When I was in College in the 70s, we were all going to die because of global cooling. Then it started getting warmer and we are all going to die because of global warming. See a pattern? When it was getting cooler, we were all going to freeze into little itty bitty ice cubes. Then it got warmer and we were all going to toast brown on all side because of global warming. Then we finally recognized that we had to change the lingo and call it climate change, because we couldn't tell if we were going to die because we were all going to freeze, or toast.

Learning from our missteps ...

Now we call it climate change, run around like our hair is on fire, and try and convince people that whatever the natural forces effecting planet does, we are all going to die. Easier this way, since you just have to yell 'we are all going to die' and not worry about the details.

As the endless winter drags on, don't you feel better that it's covered by climate change?

If You Are Under 40 or So

Without talking about my age, you probably missed all the fun of the 70s, Democrat President Jimmy Carter in his cardigan sweaters sitting by a fireplace, he called them fireside chats. And what did he say? Well stupid things like the world will be out of oil by the year 2000, completely out, all the wells run dry. The other was the mullahs are nice people and the hostages will be released soon. Here is a short film to help you relive the other 70s scare ... global cooling, the coming ice age, and yes we are all going to die.

Yes this is all true, it is not a hoax. So when you see Ted Turner, arms waving and eyes glowing wildly, just remember, the last time it was ice, this time it's warming, so I think I will wait for the next ice age. How about you?




It's a generation thing with liberals, but sometimes they have to change the tactics, but the message never changes, we'll all die unless we pay more taxes stays the same.

Yeah the part about Democrat President Jimmy Carter giving Iran to the mullahs and them starting worldwide terrorism, it's all true. Jimmy showed the way, elect a Democrat.

References and more here.

UPDATE: Oh goody, Democrat President Jimmy Carter says he will endorse Obama --- Hehehe, Jimmy Carter, the worst President in US history, he ran the table on interest rates, 22% the all time high, gas lines so long you waited for hours to get your five gallon ration, and doom and gloom across the land. It's a coveted endorsement, the prodigy should love, because you vote for this shuck and jive act and you will get Jimmy Crater II. Yes, Crater as in huge hole.

Anecdotal Evidence

Notice how it's a one-way street? An ice chip falls off of Antarctica and we are all going to melt because of global warming. Polar bears will drown. The winter of 2007-08 is one for the record books, erased 100 years of warming in one season, we are all going to freeze. I know the friends I have in the north all think that :0)

While icebergs are breaking apart , polar bears drowning and killing seals, winter in America (and most of the rest of the flat earth world according to Al Gore), threatens to continue into April. It hysterical, hysterically funny that so many ignorant people lack the basic skills in math, science and chemistry to cal BS to the lies. If you consider empirical evidence like minuscule amounts of crumbling ice in the Antarctic(Do you know how big the Antarctic is or how much ice crumbles off each year?), you also must consider the huge number of press reports worldwide about the brutal winter this year that erased 100 years of "warming" in one season! Yeah, I know, technically, it's an anomaly, but when every out of the ordinary weather event from severe hurricanes to who knows what is hyped as 'due to global warming', fair is fair right.

N.H. snowfall now 3rd in all-time list - USATODAY.com:

Today's snow has moved New Hampshire up a notch in the list of all-time snowy winters, making this the snowiest winter in 135 years.

The National Weather Service says that as of 7 a.m., an inch of snow had fallen in Concord from the latest storm. That inch moved the state into third place for all-time snowfall, at 113.4 inches. It hasn't snowed this much since the winter of 1872-73.

While seals continue dying and the polar bears continue drowning at sea, in the Arctic due to AGW-created melting ice, seal hunters in Canada have slightly different a different problem.

Thick ice hinders Canada's controversial seal hunt:

Canada's annual seal hunt, which the government promised would be more humane this year, cranked up slowly on Friday because of thick ice.

The government is allowing hunters to kill up to 275,000 young harp seals on the ice floes off Eastern Canada, but only three had been reported killed on the first morning of the hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

"It's a very slow start," said Phil Jenkins, spokesman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, noting that sealing boats were finding it difficult to get to the herds because of thick ice.

Polar bears are fairing no better. The ice is so thick in the Arctic that the polar bears can no longer break through to get to the seals.

Iceland fears bears that go with the floe

The ice has proved a headache for fishermen, who have been unable to put to sea, but it is what comes with pack ice that has caused most concern: polar bears.

People living around the fjord of Dyrafjördur, which last week was almost filled with the ice, were keeping an eye on the sea, conscious that the bears live on the pack ice that covers much of the Arctic ocean.

Now polar bears have taken to living on the pack ice so they can reach the thinner sections and open water so they still get dinner. Polar bears are really good swimmers, going up to a 100 miles in a single swim.

---

Fair is fair, global warming I am officially declaring over, killed off by the winter freeze of 2007-08. It's been one hell of a winter all around the globe.

Icy Blue Hood On Mars

The north of Mars is getting cold. It's winter and that brings temperatures as low as -140^o C. The most flamboyant sign of the season is a giant icy cloud hanging over the martian north pole--the North Polar Hood.

Amateur astronomer Dan Petersen of Racine, Wisconsin, took the picture on Oct. 7th using his 10-inch backyard telescope. The electric blue color of the Hood is a sign that many ice crystals in the cloud are tiny--smaller than the wavelength of light. Sunlight scattered from sub-wavelength particles looks blue; local examples include cigarette smoke, noctilucent clouds and a New England sky.

Recent photos hint that the Hood is in motion possibly in response to warm dusty air wafting up from temperate latitudes. To monitor developments, point your telescope at the bright red star--make that red planet--high in the eastern sky at dawn.