Hello

There is no physical reason to say that 2015 will be warmer than 2014 since the interannual variability of global mean temperature is only weakly constrained by the long term warming due to anthropogenic forcing, which is a "slow" change when viewed from this time scale. In 2015, if ENSO switches to a cold event (but neutral conditions is more probable -see IRI forecasts-) and solar constant still decreases till the end of the current cycle 24, we have at least two sources of transient cooling for 2015 vs 2014 -and it is difficult to predict for other possible sources of internal variability-. The switch to cold ENSO could easily provide a -0.1°C signal in global mean temperatures (and solar constant decrease would add few extra hundredths at maximum). So even if all other conditions are constant, this could cool 2015 vs 2014 but it remains of course that it won't change the warming signal related to greenhouse gases increases.  

Vincent

Thanks. But the earth surface is not being warmer every year. Even not consider ENSO and IPO. At least, there are atmospheric internal random variability.

assuming that the heating or freezing parts of our planet is the response of a complex variable systems, I suggest analyse the variation of declination (-8 °) and inclination (-6.6 °) of the planet Earth in the last 115 years. It seems little, but enough to change the climate.

The amount of GHG is increasing rapidly in the atmosphere each day. Therefore, the year 2015 would also be warmer in compare to 2014.

For all those claiming that 2015 will be warmer, what makes you think that climate is a linear system? Honestly! Climate change has been part of earth since the beginning. Imagine if we lived in the middle ages where we had the warming period, everyone would be claiming that is was warming for 150 years because of what, cow and pig dung. With all due respect, IPCC has been wrong about the short term forecasts for the last three out of four years, what makes you think they will be correct this time?

To Akbar:

I like your answer. We do hope everyone here could think of the question in a earth system framework. It is nearly impossible to predict what climate will be in a few years as the earth system is a chaotic system.  Yet, as we know the forcing (CO2 emission, aerosol, land use and land cover change), if we know much more on how this forcing could alter the earth climate system, we can make some prediction, even though the internal variation of the climate is large.

In fact, CO2 concentration affects the climate system through oceanic influences. It is the oceanic influences that leads to the recent continental warming (Compo and Sardeshmukh, 2009).  Yet I don't know the time lag that SST (sea surface temperature) impact on GMST. But we know that SST is hottest on record, while GMST is not. If our understanding is true, our earth climate is changing now. Expecting what will happening  in this year.

Good luck.

Best

I suspect that the current global warming hiatus will continue for few more years to be followed by slight global cooling for about 25 years. Afterwards, global warming will resume in earnest. The NOAA global temperature anomaly (GTA) data (1880 - 2014) can be fitted reasonably well to a linear and a 61-year period cosine functions. The linear part shows a GTA increase of 0.6 C per century (since 1700 - the end of the Little Ice Age) and the cosine function has an amplitude of 0.2 C Since ca. 2005, the cosine function is decreasing to its minimum, hence a slight global cooling for the next 25 years or so. The GTA is poorly correlated with anthropogenic fossil fuel CO2 emissions except for the 1975 - 2000 period.

Hello

There is no physical reason to say that 2015 will be warmer than 2014 since the interannual variability of global mean temperature is only weakly constrained by the long term warming due to anthropogenic forcing, which is a "slow" change when viewed from this time scale. In 2015, if ENSO switches to a cold event (but neutral conditions is more probable -see IRI forecasts-) and solar constant still decreases till the end of the current cycle 24, we have at least two sources of transient cooling for 2015 vs 2014 -and it is difficult to predict for other possible sources of internal variability-. The switch to cold ENSO could easily provide a -0.1°C signal in global mean temperatures (and solar constant decrease would add few extra hundredths at maximum). So even if all other conditions are constant, this could cool 2015 vs 2014 but it remains of course that it won't change the warming signal related to greenhouse gases increases.  

Vincent

2015 even warmer, 2016 warmer than 2015, etc

The CO2 graph is a copy of the temperature graph for the last 10,000 years. CO2 being a greenhouse gas it heats the air & then the ocean evaporates more. What more evidence do you need?

Then we go into the Earth's History to see what happened when the CO2 went high. The extra CO2 that made events unpleasant did not come from exhaling people or other animals, but we are talking big amounts of gas. There is only one source of that : volcanoes.

(Today, there are no huge volcanoes erupting. Instead it is the emissions from all engines that produce the extra CO2. Is anyone going to stop using dirty oil? If lots of people do, then the CO2 will slow down and the warming will slow down)

Too much volcanic activity produced too much CO2 and the rise of temperature contributed to the demise of animals and plants ( we see that happening today on a small scale). Unfortunately, the rise in air/ocean temperature induces the release of methane gas from the bottom of the ocean( this is happening today in the Atlantic). Then, the temperature increase gets bigger. Both gases, being greenhouse gases, can produce a climate chaos of unprecedented events.

Before you "believe" that 2014 was the warmest year on record you should do your scientific duty and study the uncertainty on the "global temperature":

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13/supplemental/page-1

SUMMARY:

the chance of 2014 being

Warmest year on record: 48.0%

One of the five warmest years: 90.4%

One of the 10 warmest years: 99.2%

One of the 20 warmest years: 100.0%

To Harry,

Thanks very much for your answer.  I have gathered and analyze global meteorological observations of temperature, and understand how big the uncertainty it is. 

CO2 is an important forcing of temperature trend, yet might has little implication for prediction inter-annual variation of land surface temperature. SST has imposed a much strong forcing on the variation of land surface temperature. SST is the recorded hottest year in 2014, I believe this. And this winter is very warm, at least in China. I am wandering the relationship between CO2, SST and land surface, and time lag between these relationships.

Bests,

Zhenzhong

Zhenzhong,

short term temperature forecasts are difficult due to the role of internal variability as mentioned before. For 2015 the MetOffice predicts an anomaly of 0.64°C compared to the 1961-1990 average. The 95% confidence interval of the forecast is 0.52-0.76°C and the prediction is based on both climate models and statistical methods. According to this forecast 2015 will be the warmest year on record (anomaly for 2014 was 0.56°C which is lower than the central forecast for 2015). 

For further information:

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2014/climate-forecasts-for-2015/ 

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2014/2015-global-temp-forecast

full of misunderstandings I think, I have writen and documented and detailed described that, and discovered the mechanisms involved

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dimis_Poulos

Planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and in this long time there had been periods that were much, much warmer than it is today (e.g. during the tinme dinosaurs lived on our planet) and also periods that were far colder (ice ages). In other words: it would be strange when the climate would be the same indefinately. This never has been the case. There were also period when CO2 concnetration was much higher than today. Indeed there was a time when no O2 was in the atmosphere... Considering this it is just irrelevant, if 2014 was colder than 2015 and whether 2016 was warmer and how 2017 will be. If it was then still it could be explained by normal variations, but anyway all variations are normal considering that climate is always changing by a big number of different causes.

Climate change is something that bothers us, because we are effected, because we are there to be bothered. It does not effect Planet Earth in any meaningful way as the planet will be there even if Human aren't anymore (although also Planet Earth won't be eternal).

Among many other challenges the scientific mainstream believes that the generation of special gases through the burning of fossil fuels is the driving force for climate change. A few, however, see human contribution little in global warming and some even talk of global cooling. In RG there have been many contributions that put global warming and global cooling as two different processes. What is different is the outcome of very complex processes. The outcome is either warming or cooling, and to make it even more complex both can happen - in different places.... or at differnt times (a specific place can have warmer summers and colder winters....,). How much of this change is contributed by human activies we can discuss and do research about, but it would be strange if only humans have contributed to these changes, or if they would be entirely caused by natural processes - both is very unlikely the case.

Sometimes people think that IPCC does investigate into global warming, but indeed it looks into climate change. The expression global warming is out since many years as it is acknowldeged that it is much more than around temperature change. Global cooling, if it exists is also climate change.

In Germany we can have temperatures in winter of minus 20 degrees Celsius. That is winter and we call this winter weather. Some years winters are mild, other years very harsh, long and very cold. Weather and climate are different things, and the weather is never the same. It changes and also if the sun energy received on January 1 at a particular place would be the same every year (which is not the case as the sender (sun) sends not always the same) it still would result in different weather as the energy received is only one from many, many factors that makes the weather.

I think that the cooling effect due to reduced sun activity (if it exists) moderates anthropogenic warming impacts, the same other natural impacts on the climate would such as volcanic eruptions etc. We should realise that something as complex as climate has many contributing factors that lead to change. To assume that everything is caused by humans or everything by natural causes is far too simplistic. For that reason it is rather difficult to make any precise predictions of the future. So both (processes that contribute to warming and such contributing to cooling) not only can happen, but they do, and they always did. What now is sold as new ideas and change to previous scientific knowledge is actually nothing really new other than that one aspect from an extremely complex process is taken out and displayed as the whole truth.