1. "There was a lot of variability going back to 1999, while much of the 1980's and 1990's saw the warm phase."

For those who like looking at numbers, here's the data:
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest

2. Ocean food web thriving, scientists find

Nutrient-rich sea conditions along the Oregon and Washington coasts have led to good runs of chinook salmon and fat crabs
By Winston Ross

The Register-Guard Published: Dec 19, 2008 08:13AM

....Researchers link the good conditions to a pattern of climate variability known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a cycle between cold and warm spells in the ocean that has historically shifted every two or three decades.
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/4502158-35/story.csp

Andrew: As we know the PDO is partially effected by the El Nino event. Since Enso has been in a nuetrel phase, I thought this winter may be colder and it is. In Connecticut it always snows in winter, well except the last three years. It's good to feel those colder days as the Earth becomes warmer. KIPP

Despite a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, we are 'still' setting COLD and SNOW records. Go figure?

Here in southern New Hampshire, we are shoveling out from this weekends dumping of 20+ inches of snow. And with all of this dirty pollution in our atmosphere, the snow is as white and prestine as I have ever seen.

But never mind all of that. The planet is in PERIL!

If you are a global warming alarmist, perhaps you should go plant a therapeutic tree somewhere, providing that the ground isn't frozen.

Skeptics: I use the word lightly.You have not answered any substantial scientific facts that I have brough up this year? Here is part of an article by Chris Colose.
"What are the reasons for the opposition to anthropogenic climate change? Clearly, they cannot arise from any real scientific reasons because the peer-reviewed literature is devoid of any content refuting the underlying physics or expected spatio-temporal patterns associated with increased greenhouse gases. What�s more, CO2 and other greenhouse gases play as much a role in tying together planetary climate as plate tectonics does in geology or evolution in biology. After all, their role in influencing radiative balance is required in explaining the faint young sun, the hothouse climates of the Cretaceous and Eocene, why Venus is so hot, why Mars may have once had liquid water, snowball Earth, the interglacial-glacial cycles, and the 20th century observations. My guess is that there are many people with financial interests in not slowing fossil fuels, but also many people are just scared that there own lifestyle may have to be altered if AGW is correct". Now that's the truth. KIPP

The PDO has switched from positive to negative. How perfectly annoying!

How are we supposed to prove CO2-driven climate change if those darn natural fluctuations keep masking it?

Brett, in the last couple if weeks you seem to have missed posting on more than the usual amount of important new climate science and news. I'd put the key Obama science appointments (Holdren, Lubchenco and Chu) and the CCSP report on U.S. climate impacts at the top of the list, but there were on the order of a dozen key papers as well. Hopefully you'll be able to catch up soon.

Reply: I can only do so much with the limited amount of time that I already have Steve.

BTW Brett,
In case you didn't know my "Underwater Suspension Tunnel"idea can regulate both the PDO and the AMO if needed. It is time we should take full advantage of the cooler waters located in deep western boundry currents such as the Gulfstream and the Kuroshio currents.This cool water is Earths greatest natural resource and we should use it.

As the PDO cool phase adds to the solar cooling infleuence, it seems clear that we are in for a long cool period.

I predict that Hansen and his fudge factoring team will soon begin "Adjusting" global temperatures to factor out the "natural variation" to allow us all to see the clear and present warming trend.

"If the facts don't support the theory, change the facts"

Any bets?

Oops... Hit post before putting in my name.

Chris Colose: The planet is now receiving more energy than it emits back out to space. Such a planetary energy imbalance has been predicted and confirmed. In addition, the oceans are now taking in heat which is where most of the heat from the imbalance goes. Because of the large thermal intertia of the oceans, there is still a measurable amount of warming that is �in the pipeline� which means that even if modern CO2 concentrations were held constant, we would warm up a bit more. The direction of this planetary energy imbalance mentioned is opposite the imbalance that we would expect if modern day global warming was caused by internal variability such as ocean circulation changes, etc. But it would be miselading to say that the heat content change is due to re-radiated IR. The global mean heat content change is the result of changes in *net* radiation reaching the ocean surface, which includes downward re-radiated IR due to CO2, water vapor, clouds, etc., but also includes any increase in the *absorbed* solar radiation at the ocean surface. KIPP

Alec:PDO lags ENSO Caused by fluctuations of air pressure between French Polynesia(Tahiti) and Austrailia. Intersting then is the PDO conversely effecting(How Much?) ENSO to cause an El Nino or La Nina. The NAO is also caused by east-west oscillation motions of the Icelandic Low and the Azores high, it controls the strength and direction of westerly winds and storm tracks across the North Atlantic. Even these oceans are effected by the strong El Nino. Given a year or more.Fun Stuff! KIPP

What really annoys me is that the playstation modelers and the team keep on about the PDO cooling and warming phases but NO-ONE has yet said what causes the warm and cold phases and the change from one to the other and no-one has clearly defined the mechanism.

I've got a better one - blame it on the inability of "greenhouse gases" to drive "climate change," including but not limited to their inability to "warm the oceans."

Rich: Last four years in Faifield county,CT. we have had sparse snow in this region which usually gets four to seven good storms a year. This year is cold because the PD0 is nuetrel, the NAO is nuetrel,ENSO is coming off it's La Nina,The AO isn't through yet, it was a little warm. So natural variations are dominating this cold phase I think we will have all winter. KIPP

D Caldwell | December 22, 2008 4:44 PM --- AGW is right on schedule, if not proceeding faster in the Arctic than anticipated:

http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/17/nasa-another-brutally-hot-year-for-the-siberian-tundra/

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/2008-temperature-summaries-and-spin/

David Benson:Wordpress is full of good articles from Chris Colose.Denialism 1and2.Global Warming1and2.Just type in his name.Really good stuff.Merry Christmas, KIPP

AGW is not Science.Moses thursday is going to part the Atlantic ocean,half cold half hot, just for Christmas. I already set up my tri-pod........
Merry Christmas, KIPP

Hi Kipp,

"In Connecticut it always snows in winter"

Always Kipp? And are we using weather to help explain the climate now?

"So natural variations are dominating this cold phase I think we will have all winter"

Darn those "dominating" natural variations. They are interfering with mans role. I am not sure if we will have a cold phase all winter? Time will tell.

I am surprised that the Pacific Ocean ecosystems can survive all of these oscillating temperatures. I thought temperature swings of a few degrees were devastating to ecosystems which is the reason that AGW is bad?

David Benson: Another brutally hot year for the Siberian tundra. Unfortunately, the greatest warming in 2008 came in the worst possible place for humanity � the Siberian tundra. That�s clear from NASA�s Goddard Institute for Space Studies report on the meteorological year, December 2007 through November 2008:
The remarkably widespread warming in the land of the permafrost permamelt should be the big global warming story because:
The permafrost contains as much carbon as the atmosphere, and it is increasingly not so perma
Siberian tundra contains probably the world�s largest amount of carbon locked away in the permafrost.
As it defrosts, much of the tundra�s carbon would be released as methane, which is twenty times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
�The year 2007 was the warmest on record for the Arctic,� according to NOAA.
NOAA reported that methane levels rose in 2007 for the first time since 1998 (see here).
Scientific analysis suggests the rise in 2007 methane levels came from Arctic wetlands (see here).
While the permafrost warming may well be the biggest story to come out of the annual global temperature reports, needless to say the media have ignored that story as far as I can tell. They have also ignored the now clear evidence that the 2000s are easily the hottest decade in recorded history and instead focused has been almost exclusively on where 2008 ranks among recent years temperature-wise. NASA did weigh in on that with this figure:
So 2008 is warmer than any year last century but the El Ni�o-enhanced 1998, and about 0.1�C warmer than the 1990s as a whole. KIPP

David Benson wrote:
"AGW is right on schedule, if not proceeding faster in the Arctic than anticipated"

David, a brief spell of modest warming in the last few decades proves nothing one way or the other about its cause. Natural fluctuations might be the best explanation of current observations. Just because we currently understand them poorly doesn't mean they don't exist.

You have to fully believe certain temperature proxy studies to take the position that current observations are outside the natural fluctuations in our current interglacial. In order to believe their conclusions, you have to ignore a lot of weaknesses - both in the original proxies chosen and in their statistical processing. Are you really willing to hang your hat on them?

David Benson, one more point.
No need to continually link us to the GISTEMP data. We're all only too aware of its contents.

Some of us remain a bit skeptical (gasp!) that it is a fair representation of the actual global temperature trend - whatever that means.

stephen richards | December 23, 2008 10:06 AM --- I doubt that anyone is yet quite sure.

Kipp, surely you understand that there is no disagreement that green house gasses are essential to life on this planet. Where you and we "skeptics" disagree is the hypothesis that mans contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere is enhancing this or causing an imbalance in the energy budget of the Earth. We Skeptics look at more than the last 100 years of temp data and see things that don?t fit with the AGW hypothesis such as the research that shows that increased CO2 concentrations follow temperature increases. We see things like the medieval warm period and the little Ice Age and see that they too do not fit in the AGW hypothesis. We watch as leading AGW proponents have there work discredited and even admit that they exaggerated. We see other leading proponents making a profit off the AGW agenda. We see Politics taking a leading role in the supposed solutions. We see many other leading scientists who disagree with the media proclaimed consensus. We understand that physics in theory and physics in practice are not always the same. We use critical thinking and question what we are being told and do not just say yes sir as you say sir. We have questions that are not answered. We put two and two together and it does not add up to five and we say, you know this just does not pass the smell test. I guess in your mind this makes us ignorant buffoons who are not intelligent enough to understand the "science" and you are welcome to that opinion. But the history of science is replete with examples of excepted science being proven to be inaccurate. The proof will eventually be discovered but you or I will not live to see it. Two hundred or maybe even five hundred years from now our great, great, great grand children will be able to say for sure who the buffoons of this time in history really were. Good luck with that, and have a great Christmas and New Year, may they both be colder than last.

I'm curious about the scale of this graphic, the graphic does not expand so I cannot read the scale.

Respectfully submitted,
John Robinson

quite frankly, since not a single one of the so-called experts in climate change have not been around for the past 2000 years or so, I would doubt there expertise in such profound ideas such as global warming. What impact does ongoing volcanic eruptions have upon this?

John Robinson: The graphic of Pacific Ocean SSH should be from the NASA Ocean Surface Topography webpage. I don't bother with links here anymore, so you'll have to cut and paste the following website address to your browser. It should answer your question.

sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/jason1-quick-look/

Kipp Albert,

you stated there was no snow in Connecticut the past three winters.

NOAA indicates Hartford, CT received the following snow amounts the past 3 winters.

2005-2006 69.9"
2006-2007 24.0"
2007-2008 47.5"
average = 47.13"

snowfall depth is close to normal since the average depth for Hartford is 48".

"Another brutally hot year for the Siberian tundra. Unfortunately, the greatest warming in 2008 came in the worst possible place for humanity � the Siberian tundra"

The Hansen " Siberian hotspot" saw less than 90 days above freezing -hardly enough to thaw 9 foot plus of frozen tundra. In mid December, the Hansen hotspot averaged -60 deg F for lows.

JP | December 29, 2008 9:24 PM --- Russian scientists have actually gone out there and measured methane release from the tundra turning into 'permamud'. Do recall that summer days are very, very long that far north.