New paper finds climate models are getting worse rather than better
Via the Hockey Schtick: A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds that the latest climate models are performing even worse than the earlier generations of climate models in predicting
“…both the mean surface air temperature as well as the frequency of extreme monthly mean temperature events due to climate warming.”
The author hypothesizes the reasons for this are that attempts in the latest generation of models to reproduce observed changes in Arctic sea ice are causing “significant and widening discrepancy between the modeled and observed warming rates outside of the Arctic,” i.e. they have improved Arctic simulation at the expense of poorly simulating the rest of the globe. The paper adds to hundreds of other peer-reviewed papers demonstrating the abject failure of climate models.
The paper:
Emerging selection bias in large-scale climate change simulations
Kyle L. Swanson
Abstract:
Climate change simulations are the output of enormously complicated models containing resolved and parameterized physical processes ranging in scale from microns to the size of the Earth itself. Given this complexity, the application of subjective criteria in model development is inevitable. Here we show one danger of the use of such criteria in the construction of these simulations, namely the apparent emergence of a selection bias between generations of these simulations.
Earlier generation ensembles of model simulations are shown to possess sufficient diversity to capture recent observed shifts in both the mean surface air temperature as well as the frequency of extreme monthly mean temperature events due to climate warming. However, current generation ensembles of model simulations are statistically inconsistent with these observed shifts, despite a marked reduction in the spread among ensemble members that by itself suggests convergence towards some common solution.
This convergence indicates the possibility of a selection bias based upon warming rate. It is hypothesized that this bias is driven by the desire to more accurately capture the observed recent acceleration of warming in the Arctic and corresponding decline in Arctic sea ice. However, this convergence is difficult to justify given the significant and widening discrepancy between the modeled and observed warming rates outside of the Arctic.
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Hilarious – they’re curve fitting a few natural variations, poorly, then claiming the models validate their theory.
The weather models were really a model way of siphoning tax dollars to alarmists. Now we see desperate sandbagging.
And of the actual 0.12-0.16 C increase between 1990 and 2012, how much of it has occurred since 1998?
None? Really?
It was all between 1990 and 1998 you say? Really? Wow. That is really different from what I was told was going to happen.
Are the modelers, for all their apparent skill, just projecting the 1990-1998 rise with a ruler and sending an invoice? And all the rest is noise? Maybe they should tilt the ruler down a bit to the lower right.
What is that sound, anyway? Is that someone riffling wads of $100’s?
Now, THAT’S an “inconvenient truth”……..
Arctic,” i.e. they have improved Arctic simulation at the expense of poorly simulating the rest of the globe.
LOL
The summer Arctic ice melt isn’t caused by atmospheric warming. As the Arctic is an ocean, there are no surface air temperature measurements. The claimed Arctic warming is extrapolation from nearby and not so nearby land stations.
Much of the “Arctic warming” is only because of how reduced sea ice cover is handled — for those melted-out places they compare SST (melted) with ice temperature (unmelted) which is usually a few degrees offset for ordinary thermodynamic reasons, but on their charts it’s magically 4 degrees warmer all of a sudden! You see that in the Arctic anomaly charts with the huge “warming signal” right at the ice edge, but it’s just the usual apples & oranges nonsense.
Today’s climate models have more “please factor”, that is, the authors when they submit their papers, fold their hands, scrunch their eyes, and think “please please please please” will the temperatures go up at last. More “please”s of late. 🙂
… that the latest climate models are performing even worse than the earlier generations of climate models in predicting…
Isn’t that what they should do? /sarc
What do they expect when there had been no warming for the last sixteen years?
No surprise. That’s what happens when “scientists”, or purported scientists, unlike real scientists, lead with the Conclusions and not the Data.
Trenberth and pretty much all of the warmist posters here are supremely guilty of this, and have that part of the brain that can assimilate this concept missing.
Just wait and see ……
They cannot significantly correct the models until they get rid of their primary assumption, ie that CO2 is the main climate driver.
Lesson number one in grand funding. You will be more likely to get a follow on grant if your first study shows that things are much more urgent than all previous studies have shown. The projection down on the important axis of the urgent/important space need not be considered but orientation of the vector of your grant should be parallel to that of some social hysteria of the moment to guarantee the follow-on.
The Arctic is IPCC-considered a “smoking gun”, with the observations there a harbinger of the globe. If, as some think, including me, there is much more regional than global to what’s going on, this creates a fundamental error if the Arctic looks any different from the rest of the world – either warming or cooling. It is not an error that can be fixed without revising all of the prior profiles and projections which would then knock down the upper end Scenarios. Which is the entire threat base for CAGW politics and energy strategy.
What a pickle.
The real worry in my mind is that no one or very few skeptical sites including this one, are not emphasizing enough, is that there is NO global warming currently so that all the scary stories, extreme events, ice melting, predictions, models and AGW stories in the media etc are all BS cheers
If the computer models are inconsistent with global temps (ignoring other parameters like precipitation patterns), then there’s a simple and obvious solution to the problem.
(Regular WUWT readers already know the answer, but we’ll pause for newer readers to ponder the question…)
“Adjust” the global temperature readings! Again.
Surely, if you have a model and tuning it to more accurately reflect one observed feature makes it worse at recreating other observed features, that tells you that there’s something fundamentally wrong with your model rather than just a tuning problem?
They have an out you know. All they have to admit to is that after a certain point, CO2’s effect as a greenhouse gas diminishes greatly, and that point is now reached; and this is why the warming stopped. But then, if they admitted this, then they would be denying their basic premise. Hmmmm, there are other greenhouse gases to pick on, surely. How about methane or nitrous oxide… do I hear a bid for ozone?
We’ve been illustrating and discussing for a couple of years how poorly climate models simulate, by categories:
1. Sea surface temperatures:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/category/model-data-comparison-sst/
2. Land-ocean surface temperatures:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/category/model-data-lost/
3. Land surface air temperatures:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/category/model-data-comparison-lsat/
4. Precipitation:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/category/model-data-comparison-precipitation/
Nice of Swanson to note it as well.
If they modeled ocean oscillations they could get back on track. The AMO has led to the loss of sea ice while the PDO-ENSO was responsible for the warming. Note “was”, the temperature is now cooling since the PDO went negative.
Why does this not surprise me?
I’ve looked at 2nd diff of CO2 , where a constant represents an quadratic increase. This is probably quite realistic since a quadratic is similar to an exponential and a paper a couple of years ago found quadratic may be a better representation.
Now since it is temperature that drives rate of change of CO2 by oceanic out-gassing I plotted this up with d/dt(SST)
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=233
Now that kind of fast response time puts a serious question mark over the idea that CO2 remains in the ocean for 100’s if not 1000’s of years , which is the basis of current thinking in climatology.
Despite residence times derived from post war C14 decay times indicating a 1/e residence of about 5 years.
There’s just so much of the basic theory that does not match observation (or at least did not match until they changed the observations to fit ) it really is not a mystery that nothing works.
So if you created a reasonable model that more accurately described the behavior of the majority of the globe, and then had to add unknown heat to ocean currents to melt the Arctic (to match observations), then you might be on the verge of some actual science. The next logical question might follow logically.
Or not.
One can only hope for so much.
Hmmmm, there are other greenhouse gases to pick on, surely. How about methane or nitrous oxide… do I hear a bid for ozone?
—————
Only one gas is taxable, and that is CO2.. No other emission fits the bill.. They have been back filling global warming from day one with LOL shenanigans, and they know it..
So dont think for a second that this is about doom or warming, because its not.. Its about working with the only thing that will work, and that is of course bribery.. There is no plan B.. its CO2 or back to chaining themselves to trees or carping on about the ozone layer..
Lets face it there is no money in simply opposing everything.. Big green has gotten so big that they need to tap into our tax base in order to continue to grow..
There is great pressure on these NEW AGE SOCIAL science GURU”S that call themselves climate scientists.. They have to make sure to fund the politics that they represent.. The snake has eaten its own tail, a perfect circle.
“….indicates the possibility of a selection bias…”
Rhoda R says:
May 16, 2013 at 3:47 pm
They cannot significantly correct the models until they get rid of their primary assumption, ie that CO2 is the main climate driver.
Rhoda has this right. I would expect that, by now, the hockey team, safe from prying eyes and on their home laptop, would have tried a model with CO2 having a vanishingly small effect. Has anyone tried this? Perhaps it would be a poor representation of reality but it would have sure showed some prediction skill over the past couple of decades simply by having a lower slope.
Holy sh!t Batman, as if boiling oceans wasn’t enough, Mount Everest is melting:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/mount-everest-melting-climate-change_n_3285971.html
Huffington Post too, not Comedy Central, ooooh errrr …. !!!
It happens.