From the University of Gothenburg
Climate models are not good enough
Only a few climate models were able to reproduce the observed changes in extreme precipitation in China over the last 50 years. This is the finding of a doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Climate models are the only means to predict future changes in climate and weather.
“It is therefore extremely important that we investigate global climate models’ own performances in simulating extremes with respect to observations, in order to improve our opportunities to predict future weather changes,” says Tinghai Ou from the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Earth Sciences.
Tinghai has analysed the model simulated extreme precipitation in China over the last 50 years.
“The results show that climate models give a poor reflection of the actual changes in extreme precipitation events that took place in China between 1961 and 2000,” he says. “Only half of the 21 analysed climate models analysed were able to reproduce the changes in some regions of China. Few models can well reproduce the nationwide change.”
China is often affected by extreme climate events. Such as, the flooding of 1998 in southern and north-eastern China caused billions of dollars worth of financial losses, and killed more than 3,000 people. And the drought of 2010-11 in southern China affected 35 million people and also caused billions of dollars worth of financial losses.
“Our research findings show that extreme precipitation events have increased in most areas of China since 1961, while the number of dry days – days on which there is less than one millimetre of precipitation – has increase in eastern China but decreased in the western China.”
Cold surges in south-eastern China often cause severe snow, leading to significant devastation. Snow, ice and storms in January and February 2008 resulted in hundreds of deaths. Studies show that the occurrence of cold surges in southeast China significantly decreased from 1961 to 1980, but the levels have remained stable since 1980 despite global warming.
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Let me summarize, Climate models can accurately show the past and they can’t accurately show the future either. However, Climate models are good for shock headlines and demand for more funding.
Climate models not good enough….please send money…
When will they ever get over this tired refrain…
No amount of computing power will ever compensate for
or correct bad data….GIGO…
This reinforces an open secret, namely, AOGCMs are notoriously bad at even hindcasting, especially precipitation, particularly at less than continental scales. As noted here, pp. 12-13, even the IPCC’s AR4 tacitly acknowledged that confidence is low for model projections of temperature at less than continental scales, and is even lower for precipitation — perhaps even at the continental scale. In fact, it didn’t even provide any quantitative estimate of the confidence that should be attached to projections of temperatures at the subcontinental scale. According to the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) :
Reference:
CCSP (2008). Climate Models: An Assessment of Strengths and Limitations. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research [Bader D.C., C. Covey, W.J. Gutowski Jr., I.M. Held, K.E. Kunkel, R.L. Miller, R.T. Tokmakian and M.H. Zhang (Authors)]. Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Washington, D.C., USA, 124 pp.
So… these models can’t predict forwards or backwards. I’m sorry, what are they good for again? Oh, that’s right, funding and money-wasting. Right. Got it.
How about this just have their models predict 1 month out and see how they do.
Well, I am flabbergasted. Still, that rain could be hiding in the deep ocean.
Is climate change cyclic …. or stoichastic/chaotic? If it is cyclic, the predictive value of a hind casting model may have value. If it is stoichastic/chaotic, a perfect hind casting model will prove ineffective.
MtK
Oops! Typos:
stoichasticstochasticMtK
Sorry, I just can’t accept climate modeling any more than driving a VW Beetle to a drag strip and being happy with a 55 mph top end.
I just can’t do it!
Suggestion to the writer of the report: Delete the following word from the last sentence, “despite global warming.”
Again Leroux MPHs explain very logically why ” extreme precipitation events have increased in most areas of China since 1961, while the number of dry days – days on which there is less than one millimetre of precipitation – has increase in eastern China but decreased in the western China.” since any satellite shows Eastern China being on the path of MPHs, thus more powerful MPHs will bring higher pressure/dryer weather on their path while likely advecting more warm air along the reliefs of western China. Another indication that contrary to warming claims, we see in fact the signs of cooling air masses coming from the pole.
Wow. I don’t usually think it is worth testing the hindcasting ability of these models because I just assume that they have all already been ‘trained’ against historic data.
If they do not even fit historic data then where are they coming from??
Previously I would have considered it a bit rude on my part to accuse climastrologers of plucking models out of bodily orifices …
but now…
Few models can well reproduce the nationwide change
=====
what are the odds when you flip a coin………….
The headline could use the addition of some important detail:
Climate models aren’t good enough to hindcast certain parameters at smaller regional scales.
Not exactly something that wasn’t known already, but interesting to see it investigated in this particular region. In particular it is noted that
Just so no one gets the impression that they are saying climate models are useless, or anything remotely along those lines.
We only have 50 years of good data from China! How can we determine if these “extreme” events are more common than before when we don’t know what “normal” variation is?
In the continental US, extreme events are announced OUTSIDE OF the 1930s. It is the same everywhere: we don’t know the style of weather variability within a climatic cycle because we don’t even know what is a climatic cycle. The LIA is treated as an aberration, and so the warming from the LIA is a reversal of an aberration, and not a legitimate part of the climate pattern. Which means that only the post 1945 time is “normal”, and since the CAGW was supposed to start about 1965, latest 1975, the only “normal” weather we have for comparison is the 20 -30 years post WWII.
Of course we have an increase in extreme events. We could easily have had a dearth of extreme events, itself another proof of a warmer world (less equator-pole temperature gradient). Any climatic cycle greater than 30 years will have a pattern different from that 30 years and be “abnormal”.
If you narrow the definition of “normal” to the weather we had last Tuesday, we are in the throes of an unprecedented, unpredictable, threatening heatwave, precipitation variation and, indeed, frightening change in light levels.
We are all doomed.
The illustration from Wikipedia is out of date.
Sorry to be slightly OT but, according to new research recently cited on SkS, AGW is accelerating. Whilst we’ve all been concerning ourselves with absence of atmospheric warming, the AGW signal has appeared strongly in the depths of the oceans. This is fascinating stuff and it will be interesting to see how the models will have to change to accommodate this new reality:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/new-research-confirms-global-warming-has-accelerated.html
My imagination isn’t good enough to come-up with an explanation for the AGW signal to bypass the atmosphere, sea surface and upper oceans and so convincingly manifest itself in the deep oceans. How can man-made CO2 emissions create enough energy to heat the deep oceans without creating an increase of a similar magnitude in the other more commonly used metrics? For this research to have any merit there must be a physical mechanism which explains the heat transport i.e. energy being sucked out of the atmosphere, past the top part of the ocean and then building-up way below. Maybe the subject of a new post?
We have nominated you for the Dragon’s Loyalty
award. Please go here for details.
OK. Let me see if I got this straight. Even on things which actually have happened, the science is not all that particularly well-settled.
Which makes consideration of the thing which have not happened yet………
A bit unsettling.
The models produce what they are programmed to produce. It has been claimed that more than 90% of the climate science is scientifically either not known or badly known. How can they make a model of something they don’t understand?
The oracle in delfi Mk II. ?
Cue Yogi Berra: “Predictions are hard, especially about the future!”
and in this case, about the past as well.
Malcolm says: “My imagination isn’t good enough to come-up with an explanation for the AGW signal to bypass the atmosphere, sea surface and upper oceans and so convincingly manifest itself in the deep oceans. How can man-made CO2 emissions create enough energy to heat the deep oceans without creating an increase of a similar magnitude in the other more commonly used metrics? For this research to have any merit there must be a physical mechanism which explains the heat transport i.e. energy being sucked out of the atmosphere, past the top part of the ocean and then building-up way below. Maybe the subject of a new post?”
It will be new physics if it can happen in reverse. Considering that the temperature of oceans at depths below 700 m are generally only a few degrees C, there aren’t many places on earth that could be warmed by transport of this hypothetical heat. Last I heard, heat doesn’t flow from colder to hotter objects.
I am amused at the logic behind the so-called science relating to deep ocean warming. One of the arguments used for the lack of warming in the lower troposphere is the extra volcanic activity currently being experienced has caused abnormal SO2 and other gases and particles that have in turn reduced the level of longwave radiation reaching the Earth’s surface. If this is correct then there will be a similar increase in volcanic activity under the oceans. I understand that 70% of volcanoes are underwater and the percentage may be higher than that because of their concentration along tectonic plate rift boundaries. So I wonder what happens to all the heat emitted by these extra volcanoes? Surely it would heat up the surrounding water when they are underwater and the surrounding air when they are above ground.
Another in a long list of model failures. The only way CO2 is attributed to global warming is because the models can’t reproduce the current warming without CO2, however they can not reproduce natural cycles either. The models fail to get spatial change correct. Global models fail to capture the Pacific Decadal Oscillation keeping the ocean uniformly warm and they fail to recreate the frequency of El Nino events and thus can not recreate dry and wet periods and locations. Dai’s 2012 drought paper predicted the Sahel would get wetter in the 80’s and the western USA would dry and the exact opposite occurred. My favorite is Johannessen’ 2004 paper Arctic climate change— Observed and modeled temperature and sea ice variability. He argued that the models could only simulate the recent Arctic warming by adding CO2 and sulfates. However in so doing the model turned the peaks of the 1930’s and 40’s with Arctic temperatures as warm as the late 1990’s into cold periods, yet because adding Co2 warmed the last 2 decades, that was proof.
Modeling 1000.
Welcome to my class, please sign the class list before you leave.
First thing I want all you new budding scientists to know is the scientific method.
Here is how it works.
1) you observe the world in some respect
2) you get inspired to have some notion about how an aspect of the world operates
3) you calculate what the results might be based on an assumed model
4) you test the model with an experiment by getting data
5) you then compare the experimental results against the model
6) if the experimental results are different from the model, the model is wrong.
7) change the model, go to 3)
It seems many budding scientists do not know this 900 year old process.
If a climate model can’t reproduce historical events, it is wrong.