People send me stuff. Lance Wallace writes:
Anthony, this short “Perspectives” report in Science seems to me to be worthy of a posting in WUWT. Not only is it a very clear indication of crucial problems with the GCMs, it appears in Science magazine, for years a dogged defender of the faith. I’m including the article (paywalled of course) because I think your readers will be blown away by the figure if you can run it.
The authors ran some extremely simplified CMIP5 GCMs, looking only at how they treated water (precipitation, cloud formation), and found extreme differences from one model to the next, as is evident from the figure.
In the final section titled Back to Basics, they make clear that the problem is a fundamental one of not understanding the coupling between water and general circulation. They specifically state it would be better to go towards numerical weather prediction rather than continue to expand the coverage of the GCMs.
By the way, they picked just two aspects–clouds and precipitation–to concentrate on, but they mention a few others, such as sensitivity and arctic amplification of temperature change. Then there are also aerosols, energy balance, and ocean circulation. I could see more examples of models simplified down to each of these aspects in turn and compared to see how they perform. – Lance Wallace
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Science 31 May 2013:
Vol. 340 no. 6136 pp. 1053-1054
DOI: 10.1126/science.1237554
What Are Climate Models Missing?
Fifty years ago, Joseph Smagorinsky published a landmark paper (1) describing numerical experiments using the primitive equations (a set of fluid equations that describe global atmospheric flows). In so doing, he introduced what later became known as a General Circulation Model (GCM). GCMs have come to provide a compelling framework for coupling the atmospheric circulation to a great variety of processes. Although early GCMs could only consider a small subset of these processes, it was widely appreciated that a more comprehensive treatment was necessary to adequately represent the drivers of the circulation. But how comprehensive this treatment must be was unclear and, as Smagorinsky realized (2), could only be determined through numerical experimentation. These types of experiments have since shown that an adequate description of basic processes like cloud formation, moist convection, and mixing is what climate models miss most.
Full text at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6136/1053.summary (paywalled)
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The figure from the article shows how four different models have wide variances on clouds and precipitation.
on the climate model, even in the simplest model confi guration. Shown are changes in the radiative effects of clouds and in precipitation accompanying a uniform warming (4°C) predicted by four models from Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) for a water planet with prescribed surface temperatures.
Clouds and water are central to our global atmospheric processes, and clearly, these models aren’t doing much better than dartboards at figuring out what the real atmospheric score is.
With wide variances like that, no wonder climate models can’t model reality, from Dr. Roy Spencer’s recent post: STILL Epic Fail: 73 Climate Models vs. Measurements, Running 5-Year Means
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Could reality finally be penetrating the previous impervious Modelosphere?
It’s getting harder and harder for them to defend all this.
Climate models are junk Period, only way to tell future weather is use past Analogs like Joe Bastardi does. History always repeats and weather or climate models are junk more then a week or two out..
Just looking at the precip results from the two left-most models near the equator…shouldn’t that raise red flags? Extreme decreases in precip that close to extreme increases in precip? And one encloses the other in each one (but opposite ways). Is there a rational explanation as to how that’s physically a possibility?
Wonderful. Next SkS will be saying they now know that CO2 is not responsible for climate change, or Global Warming. NOT!
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What happens next?
I have been reading the works of Dr. H. H. Lamb, founder of the CRU, such as “Climatic History and the Future”, and the patterns of climate change of the past million years he and other climate historians present are excellent in explaining current climate. From their works it is easy to determine climate cycles and their magnitudes and trends. The current climate models seem to have been built by totally avoiding establishing a base in past climate change. This is evident in their use of words like “unprecedented” when describing warming that has occurred frequently and in greater magnitude than currently. Much of the current unprecedented warming was “precedented” in the 1930s, 1880’s, in the Medieval Warm Period (850-1350 AD), the Roman and Minoan earlier, and in the granddaddy of them all, the Holocene Climatic Optimum (9000 to 5000 years ago). Not to mention the even-warmer Eemian of 125,000 years ago. Apparently in terms of climate, the only things new under the Sun are a result of ignorance of what has gone before.
Won’t it be a hoot if it turns out 0.0001 did absolutely nothing………….
/snark
We knew this about GCMs years ago and many have posted on the matter here at WUWT. The question is why are these insiders publishing this now. Especially from the Planck Institute? Are they youngsters “putting their foot down” to protect their scientific careers?
Of course someone will be along shortly to explain that these GCMs handle water and clouds just fine.
In your report there is much that is new, and much that is true; but what is new is not true and what is true is not new. Dont know where that quotation is from … but it fits.
If your hypothesis remains unproven, throw it out. Seems to me that we have passed that point. The models are junk. Quit funding them.
I have been saying for a while that there is no crack. There is a tactical retreat into K-12 education globally, coupled with a digital learning and gaming emphasis, so that the next generation will believe this fervently. Because they will have been immersed visually in these MMORPGs that are being designed to create not just a rush but collaboration around battling these so-called threats. I have been working on the Gamification of this and what groups like Institute for the Future are saying when they create these games.
These students will believe fervently with every fibre of their being that the virtual world they will be spending time at in school on top of the environmental projects in the community shows what needs to be changed in the real world.
I keep trying to disprove this as a focus and the declarations of intent just keep mounting. From the companies and leaders in charge and financing education innovation and assessment.
What a phenomenally bad idea.
I am struck by the symmetry shown in the models between the hemispheres.
I would of thought that would of been a fail mark straight away.
Y’know, this probably is old news to cli-fi insiders and journalists who’ve followed the scene closely. But they preferred to keep it in the closet.
What else might lurk there?
It will be interesting to see if NATURE proves similarly pliant. I doubt it.They’ve got more invested in CAGW.
Samuel Johnson (IIRC)
[SNIP over the top, ugly, stupid, and multiple policy violations – do it again and its permanent trollbin for you – Anthony]
models: Fun to look at, terrible at science!!
‘Pshaw to all this temperature stuff anyway’, I was informed over the weekend. Mankind puts ‘all these gases’ into the air and those gases ’cause climate change’. Some are now able to leapfrog right over the ‘global warming’ aspect of the theory. I suspect this is being encouraged due to the recent lack of increased temperatures. Never mind that! Look at that approaching storm!
Thanks, Anthony.
But the Emperor has no clothes, none at all, never mind the hole in his armor.
I was struck by this sentence in the Science article:
“In idealized simulations of a waterworld that neglect complex interactions among land surface, cryosphere, biosphere, and aerosol and chemical processes (see the figure), the key uncertainties associated with the response of clouds and precipitation to global warming are as large as they are in comprehensive Earth System Models.”
In hindsight I suppose it’s not surprising. The real Earth is already 70% of the way to a water world.
Theo Goodwin (June 9, 2013 at 5:21 pm) is right: the IPCC long ago admitted the major uncertainties associated with clouds. But until now I hadn’t realized how badly the models disagree on the best way to get clouds wrong. 🙂
This paper references an earlier article here
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008JCLI1995.1
From that abstract:
“This work uses two climate models to demonstrate that aquaplanets can successfully predict a climate model’s sensitivity to an idealized climate change. For both models, aquaplanet climate sensitivity is similar to that of the realistic configuration.”
If water worlds are easier to simulate than “realistic” Earths, I suppose that means we can get the wrong answer faster and cheaper now. That’s progress, of sorts. 🙂
Theo Goodwin–
I also was thinking perhaps the authors are younger and either brave or foolhardy to put their names to this, but I have now checked them out on Google Scholar and both are very productive and have been around since at least the mid-90s. So that in my mind makes this an event! How did they get past the reviewers?
There is a new editor-in-chief at Science–Bruce Alberts wrote his farewell editorial in this very issue (May 31) after 5 years there. The new editor is Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist. She seems to be mostly involved with subduction, isostasy, and other aspects of the lithosphere. She even has a few publications that seem to be focused on statistics. Could it be that she will require better science for Science?
Allan says (June 9, 2013 at 5:40 pm): “I am struck by the symmetry shown in the models between the hemispheres. I would of thought that would of been a fail mark straight away.”
On a water world, the hemispheres are symmetrical, except for the minor change in distance from the sun for the hemispheres’ respective summers and winters.
This reality stuff is becoming a real threat. We need to find some way of getting rid of it.
“I would of thought that would of been a fail mark straight away.”
Fail mark for “would of”. Surely you have read “would have” often enough to internalise it.