We recently presented and discussed modeled and observed global surface temperatures in absolute terms. See the post On the Elusive Absolute Global Mean Surface Temperature – A Model-Data Comparison. The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here. Yesterday, Willis Eschenbach at WUWT furnished EXCEL spreadsheets that included the outputs of climate model simulations of global surface temperatures in absolute terms. See Willis’s post CMIP5 Model Temperature Results in Excel.
Hot on the heels of those two posts comes a discussion at RealClimate of modeled absolute global surface temperatures, authored by Gavin Schmidt, the head of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS). Gavin’s post is Absolute temperatures and relative anomalies. Please read it in its entirety. I believe you’ll find it interesting. (Thanks, Gavin.)
Here are two quotes from it to get the discussion here rolling. First, Gavin Schmidt wrote (my boldface):
Second, the absolute value of the global mean temperature in a free-running coupled climate model is an emergent property of the simulation. It therefore has a spread of values across the multi-model ensemble. Showing the models’ anomalies then makes the coherence of the transient responses clearer. However, the variations in the averages of the model GMT values are quite wide, and indeed, are larger than the changes seen over the last century, and so whether this matters needs to be assessed.
Second quote (my boldface):
Most scientific discussions implicitly assume that these differences aren’t important i.e. the changes in temperature are robust to errors in the base GMT value, which is true, and perhaps more importantly, are focussed on the change of temperature anyway, since that is what impacts will be tied to. To be clear, no particular absolute global temperature provides a risk to society, it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters.
See, I told you you’d find Gavin’s post interesting.
Enjoy your holidays.
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Merry Christmas to all!!
Cheers!!
Merry Christmas, Bob. Thank you for all your hard work.
Yes. Merry Christmas and many thanks for the wonderful work you’re doing, Bob.
and the same back to you and everyone here.
Backtrack all he wants, Gavin Schmidt has blood on his hands.
Steady on.
It’s Christmas.
“blood on his hands.”
Agreed. I also think that anytime you read his name you should cross yourself and say a Hail Mary.
Magic spells don’t work.
It works better than your ‘back radiation’. 🙂
What matters most “is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to”…
Aaahhhhh……I see now. Because if we have become used to negative 20 during January in the High Rockies….well then, negative 2 is just too damned warm!!!
Except it would be more like -19.2 instead of -20 🙂
“what we’ve been used to” limits one to the experience of one’s lifetime.
Which, from a the perspective of geophysical events and timelines, is an absurdly small interval.
Probably why it is used.
Merry Christmas
(and for Blackadder fans, Messy Kweznuz!)
Which is a bit of a problem if regional temperatures depend, in an any way, on rainfall.
Does this imply the models can’t replicate precipitation – thus can’t replicate cloud cover – but somehow are reasonable in predicting global mean temperature?
Curious.
Yes, anomalies are good for downplaying lack of knowledge.
“Does this imply the models can’t replicate precipitation – thus can’t replicate cloud cover – but somehow are reasonable in predicting global mean temperature?”
Some models do well om one and poorly on the other. That’s pretty well known to anyone who has actually looked at the data.
They also have unnatural regional temps, but since it’s all mashed into a global average, most would never know that.
“Some models do well om one and poorly on the other.”
Accidents happen !!
I shall meditate on the data…
Actually, climate models do very poorly regarding rainfall, and in general are unable to reproduce it with any fidelity at all. That’s pretty well known to anyone who has actually looked at the data. See e.g. Koutsoyiannis, A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data.
w.
Mosher writes “Some models do well om one and poorly on the other. That’s pretty well known to anyone who has actually looked at the data.”
Only a diehard believer would see that as being anything other than a fit.
Gavin is hoping to keep his job when there is the house cleaning after the change in the US administration.
It will be interesting to see if the start of significant global cooling will occur prior to the change in the US administration.
It would be interesting to compare the degree of backtracking with the years remaining to reitrement age for certain climate scientists.
Do have the faintest idea, whatsoever, how hard it is to fire a GS employee?
He doesn’t have to be fired to be removed as head of GISS. For example, he could be laterally promoted to Head of Structural Anomaly Counts (sometimes referred to as crack counters) in the Office of Basement Studies in some choice location like North Dakota.
typically you promote them to where they can do the least harm.
You defund the entire organization as being less than useless, ie, for being harmful to the public.
Since firing one is so arduous, they are usually transferred to a dept known to others as a “Turkey farm.”
Sounds right. Gavin may find a rapid change in income is not a good thing either.
Their house of cards is falling apart. Arctic sea ice extent is growing and will continue growing for the next 20 to 30 years. Antarctic sea ice is growing even during the southern summer. Satellites and radiosone data showing cooling, not warming. All this is happening despite increases in CO2. To top it all off, satellite observation of CO2 does not even show large emissions of the usual suspects. And then there is the blockbuster revelation about acidification. It is all falling apart. All they have left is the propaganda and the lies.
Nice reply, Alan. Smart guys like Gavin And Trenberth see the writing on the wall today for where Earth’s temps are headed, and are positioning themselves accordingly. Just like they did 20 or so years ago.
They should be fired (IMAO)..
… However, the variations in the averages of the model GMT values are quite wide, and indeed, are larger than the changes seen over the last century, and so whether this matters needs to be assessed.
And the biased, politically motivated “adjustments”, “infilling”, “homogenization”, and all the rest produce a band that is even wider. It would help if we could trust the honesty of these government minions pretending to be scientists. If I could, I would fire every one of them right down to the guy who has to clean the restrooms. I would start fresh with new people and a mandate to get honest data —- and to be honest about all the problems associated with whatever data we come up with.
A Christmas message to the readers here — May God bless you and yours. ~ Mark
Indeed. The restrooms cleaning statistics are probably hockeysticked too.
…no particular absolute global temperature provides a risk to society…
Er… there is a HUGE amount of credibility invested in precise temperature figures – starting with Stern. Almost ALL the ‘anti-global-warming’ proposals are stated (and funded) with a justification of the need to hold the temperature down to a particular figure – the unstated belief being that ‘pre-industrial’ climate temperatures are the ‘right’ ones.
This sentence alone completely undercuts the entire warmist manifesto.
I assume that it will be altered, or modified in some way before very long….
The sentence or the manifesto???
I would like to see a follow-up on Gavin’s comment. There will be a reaction amongst the cultists. Schmidt is sure to be drummed from the ranks.
No it’s not. I was used to being younger, now I am used to being older. Italy was used to “all roads lead to Rome”, now not so much. What matters is getting used to change without using fear of change to do harm or manipulate others.
In terms of temperature, the issue is how will increasing temperatures change regional eco-systems and in turn affect people living there. The answer is nobody knows. For now get used to change, because it may be sometime before we gain control over earths climate and eco-systems.
We will never gain control over earth’s climate and eco-systems, unless we create a nuclear winter maybe. I think we can be better stewards to the eco-system, but control is a pipe dream. IMHO
I think the lack of any substantial effects from the hundreds of massive oil fires during Iraq’s invasion and war on Kuwait put a pretty large stake into the heart of the “nuclear winter” theories.
Have you ever heard of the acronym “EMP”. Nuclear weapons destroy cities while EMP’s “turn-off” all electronics. IMO, the primary target of nuclear weapons would be large hydro-electric facilities, military depots and maybe capital cities.
Absolutely. The present climate obsession is among other things, a Babylonian delusion of titanic magnitude. It’ll be very messy when it topples.
“the issue is how will increasing” OR DECREASING “temperatures change regional eco-systems …” Nobody knows the direction of change either.
And “they” are assuming change is bad.
Well, “in terms of temperature” the real issue is whether “we, the people” are having any discernable effect, because if not, then we simply must prepare to adjust to whatever happens.
Humans are constantly underestimating the resiliancy of “ecosystems”. In my opinion the whole concept of “ecosystems” is a crock, unless you are talking about a fully closed system, which is a fantasy. Indeed, even if certain ecological characteristics of an area disappear (and most often they just regenerate, not disappear) others soon appear in their place. Some of the most industrial places on earth 100 years ago are now “protected” because of their “ecological value”. A small example: we have a disused quarry near our house. It’s now protected despite being extensively mined with no regard for environmental issues from the mid-1800s. According to the environmentalists, the endangered ecological communities are to be admired for their resilliance, being able to fully regenerate since the quarry closed in the 1980s. However in the same paragraph they proslethise to us how we must carefully protect this “fragile” environment. Both can not be true.
Sounds to me like he is hedging his bets…
Dodgy:
I was having a debate with a chap and I stopped him with a few innocent questions:
1/. Ok, what then is the target average temperature for the earth?
2/. Who are the angels among us who decide that?
3/. If it waivers, who adjudicates the man made response?
4/. What if the guys at say, 40 degrees latitude don’t like the “orders from headquarters”?
It was fun to watch the sputtering.
I asked those questions on a modestly trafficked blog years ago when climate issues were hot. Never did get an answer.
Gavin writes, “However, the variations in the averages of the model GMT values are quite wide, and indeed, are larger than the changes seen over the last century, and so whether this matters needs to be assessed.”
Translation: CAGW models are completely screwed, are far from reflecting reality and have ZERO predictive skill. However, we’ll keep “adjusting” climate data to keep this old hag plodding along to assure that I, and many others, have jobs for as long as possible…
Merry Christmas!
Change course slowly and others won’t notice you were originally headed in the wrong direction.
Happy Holidays!
….no one will notice
I see a warming of around !°F.
Nice! I wonder if Gavin has seen that…
Obviously, thermometers stop working properly under the influence of alcohol.
The only way you get global warming…..is on a graph in 1/10th and 1/100th degree
It makes research design so much more “flexible” when the effect you wish to “prove” is an order of magnitude or two below the accuracy of your data. But then again, humans have always had a lot of fun finding patterns in random data… like the pictures the ancients found in the constellations. They will always see what they’re looking for until we start making them either do it for free or pay for the search themselves.
I love that, Latitude, I just wish there were a similar graph in degrees c! It would be so great to send to your local Member of Parliament, here in the UK.
A plea I have made before:
Can anyone replicate this in degrees c? Pretty please, it is Xmas!
You should have shown the chart in degrees Rankine instead.
Why not use Kelvin with a range of 0 to 1000? Or 0 to 1,000,000?
It makes sense to use equipment that is designed to show the normal day to day variability of temperatures in most parts of the world. ie a standard alcohol based weather temperature thermometer.
“WE’RE GONNA DIE! WE’RE GONNA DIE!” –“Big Al” Gore
Who was taking the alcohol ??
No longer having Hansen as his boss is gradually having an effect, apparently. Now, if they will next take a look at all the adjustment shenanigans and start to question all forms of warming bias, there may be hope yet. Either way, a nice Christmas present and a potential New Year’s resolution. 🙂
I have to agree, Hansen would never have let anyone under him admit that climate has a sensitive dependency on initial conditions; that pretty much means that any chance of making predictions over any timescale greater than trivial is about nil.
Sorry but Gavin got the job because Dr Doom knew he be a ‘safe pair’ of hands to carry on his work in the same , dam the facts all that matters is the message , way . And another one who is basically all in on AGW that can only look forward to nothing but a worse future should ‘the cause ‘ fall.
Some physical properties and phenomena that are dependent on *** absolute *** temperature:
(1) Specific heat, viscosity, thermal conductivity of all substances (air, water, solids…).
(2) Humidity, condensation/evaporation of water.
(3) Thermal radiation heat transfer (depends on Tabsolute^4) and related physical properties.
(4) Melting, freezing, boiling point of all liquids (e.g. water).
(5) Chemical reactions and combustion processes.
Other than these (and some others I’m sure I missed), absolute temperature doesn’t matter…
Yes, as a first approximation, just to guide policymakers on how to ruin a country.
Except that in this case, absolute global mean temperature is not considered as an actual procedural-instrumental measurement of reality, but only “emerges from the models”. So, don’t pay any attention to actual temperature measurements, but only this artifact of the models (absolute global mean temperature) versus that artifact of the models (anomalies from some arbitrarily chosen base-line)?
Help! The fog-machines are overwhelming.
bingo.
Have you been spending your time at the old ladies home again , Steve ?
Gavin appears to be trying to turn AGW debate into a cultural thing. It’s not about temperatures, it is about what we have become accustomed to.
Hadn’t you noticed as climatology became a social science?
Exactly. This is a great example of post-modern touchy-feely science. If you feel consumerism and industrialization are bad, then science should reflect that. If you feel we’re living within a rape culture environment, science should reflect that as well. And so on …
” To be clear, no particular absolute global temperature provides a risk to society, it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters. ”
So what is this change that we need to be concerned with? I lived the first 40 years of my life in the State of Maine where very nearly, the average day time highs tracked the average daytime lows in Phoenix, AZ. I now line in Phoenix. The change in temperature was roughly 35 degrees F for summer highs and 55 degrees F for winter lows. Granted, that is not a world wide change, but I don’t think a 3 degree shift in temperature is going to be a crisis for most people on Earth or the animals and plants that survive here. I think the pseudo scientists believe the Earth’s ecology is far more fragile than reality. It appears that “reality,” to them, is about as transparent as their methods and data are to us.
Exactly! The absolute global temperature is no risk but the change from what “we’re used to” is? WTF?
Serious question for Gavin: Used to over what time frame? The last 12,000 years? 6000? 2000? 150?
After this year’s el-Nino petered out I’m thinking they are all in duck and cover mode for next year’s la-Nina.
What change in temperature?
:->
More to the point, change FROM what?
The change in global average of the annual average of the measured local daily average, donchano! Now if we could only figure out the significance of “average temperature” …
What a Christmas gift to Gavin! Today’s enhanced RC daily click rate should be good for quite a few bragging rights, but oh, what an interesting site… the very next post let’s me understand that Antarctic sea ice increases don’t matter because Polar Bears don’t care and there’s even a handy link to Tamino’s site for even morre twisty- turnies as proof.
Today’s enhanced RC traffic will be short-lived and this is an off-peak day for blogging.
So, we’ll only quadruple their daily visitation rate, then?
Merry Christmas Bob and many thanks for the information and insights you provide.
“it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters.”
I have done some analysis of the temperature change trends in the 42 models in the dataset. The results are interesting.
So the models are estimating monthly global mean temperatures backwards to 1861 and forwards to 2101, a period of 240 years. It seems that the CHIP5 models include 145 years of history to 2005, and 95 years of projections from 2006 onward.
Over the entire time series, the average model has a warming trend of 1.26C per century. This compares to UAH global trend of 1.38C, measured by satellites since 1979.
However, the average model over the same period as UAH shows a rate of +2.15C/cent. Moreover, for the 30 years from 2006 to 2035, the warming rate is projected at 2.28C. These estimates are in contrast to the 145 years of history in the models, where the trend shows as 0.41C per century.
Clearly, the CHIP5 models are programmed for the future to warm more than 5 times the rate as the past.
One wonders what is the evidence for such an increase in projected temperatures.
M.M.’s hockey stick. There’s the evidence.
CMIP, not CHIP. Though I think CHIMP is more appropriate.
As in a monkey and a dart board? Very true.
Or an infinite number of monkeys coding an infinite number of computer models. Eventually one of them will come up with 6×9=42.
This is what we need. Finally, our Christmas Gift: No More Anomalies!
@Oatley
…
1/. Ok, what then is the target average temperature for the earth?
2/. Who are the angels among us who decide that?
3/. If it waivers, who adjudicates the man made response?
4/. What if the guys at say, 40 degrees latitude don’t like the “orders from headquarters”?
He wasn’t a true disciple of the warmist church, then. The correct answers for these questions, as approved by the IPCC, are:
1 – The ‘pre-industrial temperature’ – defined to be 0.75 degC less than today, whatever today is.
2 – This is decided by Al Gore, with advice from Mike Mann, Phil Smith,William Connolley and Tamino.
3 – The correct response is specified by Lord Stern, taking advice from lead authors of the IPCC Report.
4 – If anyone doesn’t like this, their heads will be removed explosively. See 10:10.
Dodgy, it seems like your sarcasm switch is stuck even worst than mine!
@RonC
…Clearly, the CHIP5 models are programmed for the future to warm more than 5 times the rate as the past.
One wonders what is the evidence for such an increase in projected temperatures….
Simple.
1 – Temperatures were predicted to increase rapidly.
2 – They haven’t, so the heat must be hiding somewhere.
3 – When this hidden heat comes out from behind the sofa, everything will get hotter much faster.
This advance on current thermodynamics theory is brought to you courtesy of Greenpeace….
It doesn’t have to come out; The sofa, much like the ice caps will melt down and let it out.
Darn, I must have missed the “Behind the Sofa” paper… but I’m sure it passed “peer review.”
Was the 2 degree tipping point just thrown under the bus?
Ouch!
If it was thrown under a bus, it has now become the 2-deg speed bump.
I thought this chap Heller over at stevengoddard.wordpress.com has been beating the drum on absolute temps rather than anomalies all along and got the thumbs down from Mosher & Co. A slow movement towards absolutes as the 6th January approaches & 114th Congress commences with Inhofe in ascendancy.
wrong.
1. At berkeley we work in absolute temperature.
2. given hellers average approach, he must use anomalies or he will get the wrong answer.
Whether you use anomalies is tied to your METHOD.
Some methods, like Hellers, REQUIRE anomalies.
Other methods, like ours, do NOT require anomalies.
Simply: if you want to average temperatures like heller does, you first must create anomalies otherwise
you will get a biasedd result. However, if you want to estimate the temperature field, then you dont use anomalies.
How does BEST differ from the followings?
Another problem arises if people try and combine the (uncertain) absolute values with the (less uncertain) anomalies to create a seemingly precise absolute temperature time series. Recently a WMO press release seemed to suggest that the 2014 temperatures were 14.00ºC plus the 0.57ºC anomaly. Given the different uncertainties though, adding these two numbers is misleading – since the errors on 14.57ºC would be ±0.5ºC as well, making the a bit of a mockery of the last couple of significant figures. – See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/12/absolute-temperatures-and-relative-anomalies/#.dpuf
wrong.
You cannot get a field from point sources unless…. and then you’ll have to use….