Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
After many false starts, thanks to Steven Mosher and Derecho64 I was able to access the forcings used by the CCSM3 climate model. This is an important model because its successor, the CESM3 model, is going to be used in the laughably named “CIM-EARTH Project.” Anyhow, just as new telescopes have “first light” when they are first used, so here I’ll provide the first light from the CCSM3 ozone forcings. These are the forcings used by the CCSM3 model in their hindcast of the 20th Century (called the “20C3M” simulations in the trade). How well did they do with the hindcast? Not all that well … but that’s a future story. This story is about ozone concentrations. Figure 1 shows the concentration at the highest-altitude of the 18 atmospheric levels, concentrations that were used as one of the forcings for the 20C3M climate model runs.
Figure 1. Ozone concentration at about 36 km altitude (23 mi), used as input to the CCSM3 20th century (20C3M) simulations.
There are so many things wrong with using that “data” as an input to a climate model that I scarcely know where to start.
First, the provenance. Is this historical data, some kind of record of observations? Nope. Turns out that this is the output of a separate ozone model. So instead of being observations, it’s like a Hollywood movie that’s “based on a true story”, yeah, right … and even then only for part of the time.
Second, what’s up with the strange sub-annual ups and downs (darker sections) in the annual cycle? They start out in the upper part of the annual swing, and then they change to the lower part after about 1970. Nor is this the only altitude level with this kind of oddity. There are 18 levels, and most of them show this strangeness in different forms. Figure 2 shows their claimed ozone concentrations from about half that altitude:
Figure 2. Ozone concentration at about 19 km altitude (12 mi), used as input to the CCSM3 20th century simulations.
Again you can see the sub-annual cycles, but this time only post-1970. Before that, it goes up and down in a regular annual variation, as we would expect. After that, we see the strange mid-year variation. Most other altitude levels show similar oddities. Again, it appears that the modelers are not applying the famous “eyeball test”.
Third, how on earth can they justify using this kind of manufactured, obviously and ridiculously incorrect “data” as input to a climate model? If you are trying to hindcast the 20th century, using that kind of hockeystick nonsense as input to your climate model is not scientific in any sense, and at least gives the appearance that you are cooking the books to get a desired outcome.
Anyhow, that’s not why I wanted to access the forcings. I wanted to compare them to the output of the model, to see if (like the GISS model) it is functionally equivalent to a trivially simple single-line equation. I’m working on that, these things take time. I just posted this up because it was so bizarre and … well … so hockeystick-like.
More results as they occur,
w.
So these are the stratospheric ozone levels that are supposed to account for the “goldilocks” effect in explaining TLS temperatures?
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
Just enough to offset the monotonic increase in tropospheric ghgs.
Ri–i-i-i-i-ght.
Talk about “biasing the model” to get what you want.
This has been one of my several CONSISTENT THEMES. Ozone is FORMED by high UV. It does not “protect” us from UV.
The ozone “holes” in at the poles are due to the lower amount of UV they recieve. (Lots of SPF 50 sold in Alaska, NOT! Unless you climb mountains…)
Since we have very sparse info on Ozone prior to WWII anything prior to WWII is speculation.
Alas, thanks again Willis!
Speaking of holes ozone, data and others – maybe this best sums up reasoning that underpins CLIM-EARTH’s methodology.
Instead of trying to predict and model the future; why don’t we measure it well for one hundred years … then consider modeling it. We have plenty to fight over just in deciding what and how to measure it. Hopefully one hundred years will get the short term cyclic stuff bounded – then we can work on the trends.
Is there any direct observational evidence that the Antarctic ozone ‘hole’ was absent before 1975? I mean measurements not involving computer models. I can’t say I’ve seen any, though I’m happy to be proven wrong.
I would LOVE someone to do a in-depth dissection of each of the 20 or so GCMs that the IPCC refer to (as the Holy Gospel) and look at the inputs and data (like O3 discussed above for example) and then we can all see how wrong these models actually are.
The great (re-)discovery of Climate Science: If you control the Garbage In, you get your preferred Garbage Out.
Nice, the entire first 2/3 of the “data” set is purely made and represents a time for which no ongoing measurements exist; and the rest only reflects gradually developing measurement techniques and wishful thinking?
That is appaling science….
How in blazes do they pretend to have ozone data that is in any way relevant back to 1880? Are they hoping that the public will think that we were watching it way back then?
I love the idea that they assume the hole is not usual as we have never seen the Antarctic without one.
Sounds like true-to-form science to me. I know that for a guy like you Willis you don’t have a pre-formed conclusion, but wheres the fun in actually finding a conclusion when starting with on is so much easier? LOL. I love watching you work. I’m glad you help us sort this data mess out. Go get em!
Just wait until you get to aerosols…
Looks to me like we have the famous 60-year cycle once again. It was dropping in 1970, until around 2000, and then it started rising again, and probably will for 30-odd years.
Looks like the same happens to the temperature, except it is inverted.
That’s the problem when you start measuring something over time, and assume that it was all perfectly static before you started. You quickly discover (if you are bright enough) that assumption is the mother of all stuff-ups. CAGW is just the biggest of those stuff-ups to date, is all.
So let’s use the out put from one model – that can’t be verified – to feed into a second model – and verify it
FAIL
Wild guess in wild guess out.
Bizarre. I agree Willis, they are cooking the books. But to what tune?
The oscillation leads me to believe the model that generated this data is marginally stable, i.e., there iis a pole at z = 1.
Mark
Someone please tell me where my thinking is faulty here:
An oxygen molecule (O2) in the atmosphere absorbs UV light which splits it into free-radical Oxygen (O) which happily combines with O2 molecules to form ozone (O3). Thus creating an ozone layer at the top of the atmosphere.
Ozone is slightly better at absorbing UV than O2 – but absorption bands are widened by increasing concentration – so with O2 being 20% of our atmosphere in the >10km of the atmosphere below the ozone layer then . . .
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the ozone hole thing is utter bullshit. Almost all of the UV will be absorbed by oxygen before it reaches ground level with or without an ozone layer.
Silly me, when I taught Middle School Science one year, we learned than when conducting an experiment, you could only adjust one factor/variable in the experiment in order to ensure a valid experiment.
Either you start with actual data or you use the same average of the actual data to fill in the missing years with the caveat that the data for the missing years is suspect. Instead they made up data readings that are completely out of the actual range.
So any model that uses this data is automatically invalid before 1970 just for that reason alone. And this is only one small layer of the onion.
How does one get a job like this and what sort of personal ethics must you put aside in order to do this day after day.
MattN said on May 9, 2011 at 5:32 pm:
Nah, just appalling. ☺
Sadly it is painfully clear what this ozone graph represents. It does not represent ozone levels fluctuating with the quantity of UV at the top of the atmosphere, nor from volcanic gases. This graph represents the fantasy of CFCs depleting the ozone layer and the rebound after they were banned.
The Montreal Protocol could be seen as a test run for the AGW hoax. Possibly the AGW scammers wanted to include a piece of their first successful scam for luck.
Thank you Willis, is this another climax of climatology?The team keep chirping thats ,its worse than we thought, and every time you and others expose their work to the light its seems they are correct.Their grasp of the scientific method and integrety is worse than we thought. while I hold to the never attribute to malice what incompetence will cover, this models all the way down theology is an awful lot of incompetence to accept, especially when its funded by my taxes. I await your deeper analysis but suspect you have summed it up already.
Where do these people get off spreading this garbage around? It is as though the wilder the claim, the more likely it is to pass peer review. Instead of the Library Stacks, we can find more science in the checkout lane at Safeway. It seems that any science of worth is done by aging ‘old school’ thinkers who actually DO think. What the hell is going to happen when we start croaking en masse? Woe be to the droning druids of the future science. To quote Pete Townshend, “hope I die before I get old”..because watching “science” like this absolute crap….no, data-less flagellation…and it’s policy outcome (pigheaded pols) in action is agonizing, insulting, and frightening.
Thanks again, Willis, for your tireless efforts to expose this garbage for what it is. One can only hope that the leader of some funding committee gets fiercely fed up and pulls the plug. I said Hope. Only.
I thin Konrad’s got the underlying assumption the model’s incorporating, but what about the funky mid year fluctuations. Perhaps this is the hemispheric concentration of man-made CFC working inside the assumption?
Willis, here is the real data, which begins in late 1978.
http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/n7toms/nim7toms.html
Everything before that date is speculation, largely based on the work of good ol”Susan Solomon.