Global Warming Slowdown: The View from Space
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Since the slowdown in surface warming over the last 15 years has been a popular topic recently, I thought I would show results for the lower tropospheric temperature (LT) compared to climate models calculated over the same atmospheric layers the satellites sense.
Courtesy of John Christy, and based upon data from the KNMI Climate Explorer, below is a comparison of 44 climate models versus the UAH and RSS satellite observations for global lower tropospheric temperature variations, for the period 1979-2012 from the satellites, and for 1975 – 2025 for the models:
Clearly, there is increasing divergence over the years between the satellite observations (UAH, RSS) and the models. The reasons for the disagreement are not obvious, since there are at least a few possibilities:
Read the rest here at Dr. Spencer’s blog: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/
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“If Trenberth is correct …..”. With no sarc tag. Ha ha, you rascal.
What’s the lonely model there at the bottom? The gee-all-this-is-nonsense-we-admit-it model?
(Yes, I clicked the link.)
The models may range from “BAU” cases (upper curves) to “drastic emission curbing” cases (e.g., emission rate fixed at the level of 2000; lower curves). Am I right?
There are 44 climate models? Don’t these people have anything better to do?
Roha: They have to spend all that money on something. There’s only a limited number of conferences in exotic locations to go to.
Could it be that the models are calibrated to pre 1975 data that has been massively adjusted downwards, thus creating a false trend. This would almost certainly produce just the effect we are seeing is if the models were reasonable in other ways.
last line, is = even ! typo sorry
Roy Spencer says,
Additional evidence for lower climate sensitivity in the above plot is the observed response to the 1991 Pinatubo eruption: the temporary temperature dip in 1992-93, and subsequent recovery, is weaker in the observations than in the models. This is exactly what would be predicted with lower climate sensitivity.
The Pinatubo response is IMO the best single piece of evidence we have that the CO2 sensitivity in the models is 2 to 3 times too high.
I await the next major volcanic eruption with interest.
“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably!” /from Climategate e-mails/
Reblogged this on sainsfilteknologi.
How come a model attributing most late 20th century warming to the sun isn’t included? It’s the only one that would work.
“The reasons for the disagreement are not obvious, since there are at least a few possibilities … ”
Dr Spencer is being too kind, we know why there is extreme divergence and worse than we thought, it’s the bl88dy cheating, isn’t it ? 😉
The standard response to the recent lack of atmospheric warming seems to be that global warming hasn’t paused, because the ocean heat content continues to rise. That may be true, but what about the possibility that the signal in the ocean lags behind the air, because change in the oceans is slower?
“Clearly, there is increasing divergence over the years”
That’s a bit of an understatement really isn’t it? Because the only reason these models show any point of convergence with reality is because the climtae modellers are at least forced to start off from the same point as reality.
Truth is that as soon as 1 year went by the models diverged from measurements. Most of those models have never been on trend from year 1. It has simply become more obvious over time that even the longer term trends in the models are wrong.
I’m guessing that the two models that do seem to be on trend are part of a group of models based on the function f(whatever the satellites say the climate is + a hockey stick after todays date).
RoHa says:
April 17, 2013 at 10:36 pm
There are 44 climate models? Don’t these people have anything better to do?
Correction: There are 44 failed climate models. And no, their full-time job is money grubbing.
Can someone put a vertical line on this graph, delineating the forecasting from the hindcasting. I am presuming that where the graphs mimic those ups and downs in the ’80s is all hindcasting.
.
I’m guessing that the two models that do seem to be on trend are part of a group of models based on the function f(whatever the satellites say the climate is + a hockey stick after todays date).
lol
If the models are diverging from reality then CHANGE THE MODELS. If this means changing the theory of GHE then all well and good. That theory was ribbish anyway, it violates the laws of thermodynamics and that is enough for me.
The Earth/Gaia must have its own natural thermostat. Whether it be white cloud tops, Trenberth’s explanation of deep ocean burial, or whatever, it does not matter.
The impact of CO2 on our planet’s climate has been grossly exaggerated by alarmists. Whether this was done deliberately or not will be up to history to judge. Computer climate models clearly suffer from a mix of one or more of the following: a) GIGO, b) pre-determined conclusions, c) an inability to model either climate ‘chaos’ or as yet unknown factors affecting climate, d) input data manipulation, and e) Mannian style statistical analysis..
The problem is the Global Warming Gravy Train has now become so huge and far too many politicians have signed up to solving the non-problem of CAGW that it will take many years to dismantle this pointless, expensive industry of public deception.
To paraphrase a great man’s comments: “Never in the field of human scientific endeavour have so many been duped by so few.”
In normal science, when your prognostications don’t match your observations it is surely traditional to go back to the drawing board and revise your assumptions about the processes in play until there is a match, which reconciles observed data and model up to the present and then subsequently has skill in predicting the future.
How can these people, 44 different groups of people for chrissake, sleep at night knowing that their efforts continue to bear rotten fruit? When on average they are wrong by a factor of at least 2, and in some cases up to 4 or 5? In private enterprise, that’s enough to get you fired: but it seems in the peculiar post-normal world of climatology it only signals the need for more funds to be thrown at the problem and Nobel prizes to be awarded for commitment to erroneous science in the face of overwhelming evidence.
If one is allowed to paraphrase, it’s a travesty, that’s what it is!
To put this in perspective, Dr Spencer needs to provide us with more information on the 44 models.
In particular, we need to know what assumptions (especially those relating to climate sensitivity, and those pertaining to future emission scenarios) were programmed into the models showing the most divergence, and those showing the least divergence from reality.
Whilst all models diverged from reality at an early stage, there are 2 models which are closer to reality, namely the bottom red plot and the bottom greeny/grey plot. The greeny/grey plot as from 2012 shows a sharp upward trend compared to that of the bottom red plot, although by about 2025, these again meet.
I am particularly intrigued to know the assumptions behind those 2 models. If they both assume the scenario C position (ie., an immediate halt to further CO2 emissions), then since this did not occur, it would apppear that CO2 has little effect on temperature, ie., whether man emits it or not.
If the models which are running hot have a high sensitivity to CO2, then given the divergence, it would appear that CO2 sensitivity is small.
It is clear from the above that we do not understand the physics of the atmosphere and the oceans, and/or we are unable to model the physics such tjhat all models are for all practical purposes useless. All 44 models are wrong and their only use is to demonstarte to us our lack of knowledge and understanding is such that we are very far from being in a position to predict what will occur in the coming decades let alone a century out.
As others have said, it should be back to the drawing board both with the underlying GHE conjecture, and with the modelling thereof. In any other scientific discipline it would be.
ralfellis says:
April 18, 2013 at 1:31 am
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None of these models came into existence before 1980, so it follows that pre 1980 plots are hindcast. Whether that was part of the validation process, I do not know.
It would be interesting to know the date when each model first saw the light of day, since I suspect that it was not before the late 1980s (at the earliest with some seeing the light of day for the first time in the 1990s). In which case, right from the get go, the hindcasting was poor and nearly all models were demonstarting that they were programmed hot. This shoudl have been sufficient to have strangled them at birth. .
In approx 30 years about 0.3 Deg C ??
The lack of warming for 16 years is only one of the fundamental issues with the extreme AGW hypothesis. If an idea, a theory is repeated enough, it is natural to assume that the theory is fundamentally correct (i.e. In the case of this problem that the scientific question is what is the sensitivity to the forcing as opposed to the magnitude of the forcing itself without feedbacks). What has been ignored is there are multiple periods in the paleo record when planetary temperature does not correlate with atmospheric CO2. How can that be physically possible? What is the physical explanation for past periods when there was no correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and planetary temperature?
For example, the following is the Greenland Ice Sheet temperature Vs atmospheric CO2 for the last 11,000 years, determined by the analysis of ice cores. The analysis shows the Greenland Ice sheet gradually becomes colder and experiences the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) warming and cooling cycles (1450 year cycle plus or minus 500 years) and atmospheric CO2 gradually increases.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
As the Greenland Ice sheet observed temperature is over 1000s of years, it appears that it is not possible to explain the lack of correlation with changes in prevailing winds or ocean currents. The Greenland Ice Sheet temperature is not disconnected from planetary temperature. Greenland is a large land mass, the ice cores where taken in the center of the Greenland far from the coast.
The complete lack of correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature is not limited to the current interglacial, the Holocene. There are periods in the geological record where there are ice epochs of millions of years when atmospheric CO2 was high and periods of millions of years when atmospheric CO2 has low and the planet was warm.
The observational data and basic high level analysis indicates that there may be something fundamental that has been missed, perhaps an assumption about atmospheric processes/conditions, that is in correct.
The AGW theory predicted – this is a fundamental logical pillar of the theory, if the ‘prediction’ does not occur the theory is invalid at a mechanism level – that the AGW warming should be the greatest in the tropics as this is the region on the planet where there is the largest amount of long wave radiation reflected off in to space. As the lower atmosphere is saturated due to the overlap of water vapour and CO2, the ‘theory’ predicted that there would be tropical tropospheric warming at roughly 10 km above the surface of the planet. The tropospheric warming at roughly 10 km would in turn warm the tropics by long wave radiation.
There has been no tropical warming in the 20th century and there has been no tropical tropospheric warming at roughly 10 km. These two observations are logically connected. For there to be warming in the tropics, there would have needed to be tropical tropospheric warming. The fact there was not warming in the tropics supports the assertion that the lack of tropical tropospheric warming is not a measurement issue. The warming that has occurred in the 20th century is in high latitude regions.
It is interesting that that there are cycles of past warming in high latitude regions (1450 years plus or minus 500 years, Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle) followed by cooling in high latitude regions in the paleo record. The D-O cycle is clearly evident in the Greenland sheet core temperature analysis.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data.
http://www.johnstonanalytics.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/LindzenChoi2011.235213033.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000- 2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. An earlier study (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) was subject to significant criticisms. The present paper is an expansion of the earlier paper where the various criticisms are taken into account. … … We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. …. …The heart of the global warming issue is so-called greenhouse warming. This refers to the fact that the earth balances the heat received from the sun (mostly in the visible spectrum) by radiating in the infrared portion of the spectrum back to space. Gases that are relatively transparent to visible light but strongly absorbent in the infrared (greenhouse gases) interfere with the cooling of the planet, forcing it to become warmer in order to emit sufficient infrared radiation to balance the net incoming sunlight (Lindzen, 1999). By net incoming sunlight, we mean that portion of the sun’s radiation that is not reflected back to space by clouds, aerosols and the earth’s surface. … …. However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1C (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of well mixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5C to 5C and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds. Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth….
Comments:
1. A lack of correlation between atmospheric CO2 and planetary temperature does not valid the Dragon Slayers’ train of thought. It seems that line of thought is off page. The ‘laws’ of physics still apply. It appears or let’s assume, to develop a straw man hypothesis, that there is a fundamental assumption about the atmosphere which is not correct which explains what appears to be observed saturation of the mechanism. Perhaps a clue to what is in correct is there needs to be a mechanism explanation for the post 1996 reduction in planetary clouds. (i.e The cloud anomaly also needs an explanation. Perhaps the mechanism explanation for the reduction in planetary clouds can explain both anomalies.)
2. It appears negative feedback primarily in the tropics cannot explain the lack of warming in the tropics and the lack of tropical tropospheric warming. The forcing should have occurred, the warming would be reduced due to an increase in clouds in the tropics. There is however no warming in tropics. It appears the warming in the 20th century was caused by a reduction in planetary clouds rather than forcing from CO2.
All 44 models are actually dead on accurate. Michael Mann found a skillful tree in Siberia to prove it.