And so it starts - the walking back

From Andrew Revkin writing at the New York Times:

Global Study of Monsoons Finds Ocean Variations Have Driven Recent Shifts
The seasonal rains called monsoons matter enormously to human affairs, from the Indian subcontinent to the American Southwest. Getting a better understanding of the forces that will shape these features of the climate system in coming decades is a big research priority, but also a very tough challenge given the many factors in play.

In a study published in this week�s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers analyzing monsoon patterns around the Northern Hemisphere since the 1970s conclude that there has been a substantial intensification of summer monsoon rainfall and circulation. The researchers say natural variations in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans appear to be the main force behind the shift. Climate models have tended to project a different result.

Emphasis mine -- so the actual measurement does not match the models. Heretic!!! Burn him!!! Some more:

I distributed the abstract and a news release from the University of Hawaii, where the lead author, Bin Wang, is chairman of the department of meteorology.

Here�s an excerpt from the release:

Current theory predicts that the Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon circulation should weaken under anthropogenic global warming.

Wang and his colleagues, however, found that over the past 30 years, the summer monsoon circulation, as well as the Hadley and Walker circulations, have all substantially intensified.

This intensification has resulted in significantly greater global summer monsoon rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere than predicted from greenhouse-gas-induced warming alone: namely a 9.5% increase, compared to the anthropogenic predicted contribution of 2.6% per degree of global warming.

Revkin solicits input from several in the pro-CAGW camp. The most lucid is Kevin Trenberth who says this:

Indeed regionally, interannual and decadal variability is still dominant in the climate record and will be for a long time. The whole idea of regional climate prediction that has come to the fore mainly because of need/demand is not based on sound science owing to fundamental predictability issues.

In other words: Regional climate prediction (it would be nice to have) is not based on sound science owing to fundamental predictability issues. As the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warmists slowly step back from the proselytizing and find something else to look at...