Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The UKMO issued their most recent 5-year global temperature forecast about a week ago. See their Decadal forecast press release for 2015. It has been getting a little press recently. The forecast description wasn’t as clear as it could have been, but the UKMO openly displayed the failure of the forecast from 2009 sea surface temperatures.
SUMMARY
The summary includes three bullet points. The first reads:
Averaged over the five-year period 2015-2019, forecast patterns suggest enhanced warming over land, and at high northern latitudes. There is some indication of continued cool conditions in the Southern Ocean, and of a developing cooling in the North Atlantic sub-polar gyre. The latter is potentially important for climate impacts over Europe, America and Africa.
This suggests that the UKMO’s models are capable of regional forecasting, yet at the end of the forecast they openly discuss factors that prevent this.
The second bullet point is:
Averaged over the five-year period 2015-2019, global average temperature is expected to remain high and is likely to be between 0.18°C and 0.46°C above the long-term (1981-2010) average of 14.3°C. This compares with an anomaly of +0.26°C observed in 2010 and 2014, currently the warmest years on record.
In other words, over the next five years, their models forecast that global surfaces may be a little warmer or a little cooler than 2014, as much as 0.2 deg C warmer or as much as 0.08 deg C cooler. [Sarc on.] That narrows it down. [Sarc off.]
Also, that second bullet point is basically the same as the 5-year forecast from 2014. See the WaybackMachine archive here:
Averaged over the five-year period 2014-2018, global average temperature is expected to remain high and is likely to be between 0.17°C and 0.43°C above the long-term (1981-2010) average. This compares with an anomaly of +0.26°C observed in 2010, the warmest year on record.
The final bullet point from the 2015 forecast reads:
Although the forecast generally indicates that global temperatures will remain high, it is not yet possible to predict exactly when the slowdown in surface warming will end.
The phrase “global temperatures will remain high” is curious. It leads one to believe that global surface temperatures might somehow return to “normal”.
Also, remarkably, the UKMO acknowledged in that bullet point (1) that the “slowdown in surface warming” continues and (2) that they still have no idea when the “slowdown” will end.
I suspect in response to that “slowdown in surface warming” statement we might see some flawed arguments that global warming continues, along with some graphs that show long-term (1900 to 2014) and short-term (1998-2014) trends are comparable. See my Figure 1. Similar graphs have appeared around the blogosphere.
My Figure 1
Why is that a flawed argument?
Predictions of gloom and doom are not based on warming rates of 0.06 to 0.08 deg C/decade. The climate models used by the IPCC for their recent 5th Assessment Report simulate much higher warming rates for the short-term. That is, the recent CMIP5 model estimates of short-term (1998-2014) warming and the projections of future global warming initially align with the warming rate from 1975 to present, not from 1900 to present. See the two graphs in my Figure 2.
My Figure 2
THE FORECAST FROM 2009 GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES WAS A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE
Under the heading of Verification, the second paragraph of the 2015 UKMO 5-year forecast reads and includes the following illustration:
The maps in Figure 4 compare observed (A) and forecast (B) surface temperatures (°C) for November 2009 to October 2014 relative to the 1981-2010 long-term average. Forecasts were made starting from November 2009 using the latest system based on HadGEM3. Stippling shows regions where the observed temperatures do not lie within the 5-95% range of the forecast.
Their Figure 4
Just in case you’re having difficulty seeing the differences and the stippling, see Animation 1. I’ve darkened the illustrations to bring out the stippling, which covers most of the globe. That means for much of Earth’s surface the observed global surface temperatures were outside the range of the multiple climate model runs used in the forecast. In other words, the 2009-based forecast was an abysmal failure.
Animation 1
The closing paragraph begins:
The decadal forecast system predicted enhanced warming over high northern latitudes, and cooling in the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic sub-polar gyre. These are in broad agreement with the observations, although there are differences in the precise magnitude and location of anomalies.
“Broad agreement” is an odd phrase to use when stippling indicates the observed temperatures in much of the Southern Ocean and in the high latitudes of the North Atlantic did “not lie within the 5-95% range of the forecast”.
UKMO goes on to explain why the models failed in other regions:
However, the forecast did not predict the cooling in the eastern tropical Pacific associated with the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the cooling over parts of China associated with a negative Arctic Oscillation (AO). This is consistent with the fact that decadal prediction systems are not yet capable of predicting the PDO or the AO for the coming five years.
And the fact that the decadal prediction systems are still not able to predict the Arctic Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (an aftereffect primarily of El Niño and La Niña events) highlights a couple of cold realities: 5-year forecasts from the past that are more successful are based solely on luck, not skill, and all future regional forecasts are basically valueless until the UKMO is capable of forecasting natural variability such as El Niño and La Niña events, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, etc.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Hello Vicky Pope! Earth calling Vicky Pope… we will never forget this:
On a positive note, she did mention the climate “N” word; natural variation.
The rest of it was a prognosis for the planet based on a feeble almost dim-witted diagnosis. Climate scientists could gain considerable credibility if instead of predicting the future they did a much better job of explaining the past.
The disarray in the ‘climate science’ is rather amusing. Latest excuse for the hiccup in the models ‘excellence’ is the volcanoes, but the data shows otherwise:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CRUTEM4.gif
I particularly liked “it’s very difficult to disentangle natural variations from climate change”.
Global or even hemispherical forecasts are next to impossible, the globe is made of regions which often run out of synchronism, thus I concentrate on the CET
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-WS-Fcst.gif
Close enough for government work.
“… it is not yet possible to predict exactly when the slowdown in surface warming will end.”
Nor is it possible to predict that when the slowdown in surface warming ends, what the rate of the new trend will be and whether it is more warming or new cooling.
Although we can say, with 100 percent confidence, that when the slowdown ends the new trend will be either cooling or warming.
Nov 2009
“4 degrees of global warming: regional patterns and timing”
http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/4-degrees-global-warming-regional-patterns-and-timing
Please help me understand why I am seeing an increase in temperature at the rate of .06 +/- in the data sets (figure 1) for the period 1998 to 2014 yet Lord Monckton reports on the pause every month showing temperatures being essentially flat over this period with the same data. What am I missing?
jbutzi: If I remember correctly, the margin of error of temperature measurements is about 0.1 degrees. Thus, statistically, 0.06 is zero. Strictly speaking, as a scientist myself, I’m a bit put off by people saying 0.02 degrees warmer or 0.06 degrees warmer when the instruments we use are not that accurate, even under the best of environments.
Even if the instruments were that accurate they aren’t measuring the proper thing, they measure local temperature not global average temperature abnormalities.
jbutzi: Christopher Monckton presents lower troposphere temperature data, not surface temperature. Similar datasets, but not the same.
Bob, Your figure 2 is confusing as (I assume) it is missing the real data from
2000 onward. Can you add the tan lines from figure 1 to figure 2? Or else I
am missing something.
Surface includes blacktop and tarmac
Bill_W, there are no data in my Figure 2. Those are climate model outputs.
If you look at Paraguay, you will have most of the explanation. No warming at all suddenly becomes rapid warming after, what do they call it, homogenization?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/all-of-paraguays-temperature-record-has-been-tampered-with/#more-12774
Me, I call it scientific fraud. There is just no other word strong enough.
NOAA’s future climate forecasts run about 100% wrong for the last 5 years. I look at their site each month and nearly always they predict the NE north American continent will be unusually warm. This has been their steadfast prediction for years and it hasn’t happened.
This month, they did admit that finally, temperatures are below normal but then, in the next month of March, it will be above normal which I seriously cannot believe.
This entire coming week will see severe cold, snow every day here in Upstate NY.
> This entire coming week will see severe cold, snow every day here in Upstate NY
Hey we must be climate experts. Nasty weather in upstate NY in February.
Seriously, do these people have windows in thier offices?
Run a line through it. Match a curve to it. Overlay a cyclic on it. Weight it. Fudge it. Nothing projects the increases they propose.
…Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick, erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick, rewrite it
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,
Drag and drop it, zip, unzip it,
Lock it, fill it, curl it, find it,
View it, code it, jam, unlock it
Surf it, scroll it, pose it, click it
Cross it, crack it, twitch, update it…
Daft Punk – Technologic
Eustace –
Not my music, really.
But for explorers, do try –
Auto
This is getting hilarious…
Although UKMO hasn’t a clue when the “HIATUS” will end, they are mysteriously confident that global temps will rise over the next 5 years….
Why?
30% of all manmade CO2 emissions since 1750 have been over the last 18.5 years, with no RSS global warming trend to show for it..
Since 1850, there has been a 100% correlation between PDO warm/cool cycles and global warming/cooling trends. There is absolutely no reason to postulate rising CO2 levels will suddenly end this strong correlation during the current PDO cool cycle, which started in 2005:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to:1921/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to:1921/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1921/to:1943/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1921/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1977/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1977/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1977/to:2005/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1977/to:2005/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/trend
The current AMO warm cycle is also winding down, which perhaps explains why Arctic Ice Extents are recovering. I can’t wait to see what happens when the next AMO cool cycle starts around 2020.
The current weak solar cycle peaked in 2014, so starts its slide down from this year to the next solar cycle starting around 2022. This may also have a cooling effect..
This CAGW hypothesis is falling apart like a cheap suit.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/02/german-analysis-current-warm-period-is-no-anthropogenic-product-major-natural-cycles-show-no-signs-of-warming/#sthash.99sK59zk.dpbs Is an interesting analysis, especially the forecast part.
Peter– Thank you for the link.
There certainly seems to be intriguing evidence of 1,000, 230 and 60-year sinusoidal climate cycles, related to solar and ocean cycles.
I find it interesting that both the Little Ice Age recovery and the strongest 63-yr sting (1933~1996) of solar cycles in 11,400 years are basically ignored by the CAGW apologists as possible causes of 20th century warming.
SAMURAI,
My reading is that you’ve rather eloquently explained The Pause. On the basis of past frequency and amplitude of ocean/atmospheric cycles, another two decades of hiatus would not surprise me.
If the same natural cyclic pattern continues, then this cooling trend which started around 2006/07 should end around 2036. The question is will this period be similar to 1946 to 1976, or will this be the one that starts a deeper decline to cooler temps? Will the upcoming solar minimum tip the scales towards a deeper cooling?
There is already around a 2 SD discrepancy between the CMIP5 model projection mean vs. reality (RSS/UAH mean).
A La Niña seems to be forming, which will likely cause a fairly quick drop in global temps over the next two years, causing near 3 SDs of discrepancy. Sunspots will also be falling rapidly for the next 5 years, which will likely add to the cooling, and the PDO cool cycle will be approaching its coolest phase around 2020. The AMO warm cycle peaked in 2007 and will enter its 30-yr cool cycle around 2020:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sub_surf_mon.gif
CAGW doesn’t have a chance. All these cooling factors are all culminating at a point of singularity around 2020. There is also a small possibility of an 80-yr Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) starting from 2022, although the probability of a GSM is falling because the Umbral Magnetic Field (UMF) shows some signs of having bottomed out at 2,000 gauss and its postulated a sustained UMF of 1,500 gauss is required for a GSM to occur.
By 2021, there there will have been 25 years of flat/minuscule/falling global temp trends, and well over 3 SDs of CAGW discrepancy. At that point, scientists (probably outside the climatology field) will have no choice but to start blowing the whistle on CAGW’s utter failure.
Yes, good sword Samourai!
See multi-variable correlation of surface temperature as function of AMO, solar spots, global sea level (GSL), and CO2 concentration:
http://climate.mr-int.ch/images/graphs/regression_ta.png
The calculated green curve fits well with observed data (grey)
The yellow curve is calculated while maintaining CO2 at GSL constant at their original value
The net temperature increase (red) is calculated by the difference between the green and the yellow curve.
More details under: http://climate.mr-int.ch/index.php/en/modelling-uk/correlations-uk/cimate-indicators-uk
It is not possible to make a 5 year forecast without consideration of where we are with regard to the natural millennial solar activity cycle seen in the temperature and other data -see Figs 5-9 at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
It is clear that the earth is just approaching, just at or just past the millennial peak. (Fig 9)
If we look at the neutron count record which, together with the 10Be data ,is the best proxy for solar activity it is clear that solar activity peaked in about 1991. There is a 12 year delay between the driver peak and the global RSS temperature peak which probably occurred in mid 2003 since when the earth has been in a cooling trend see
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend
The sharp drop in solar activity seen at 2005-6 in Fig 13 should result in a noticeable cooling and a steepening of the cooling trend in 2017 -2018.
I expect that within the next 5 years the MET office will have to acknowledge that their forecasting models and methods are useless.
The neutron count record is seen in Fig 14
There is a good chance that the next 2 years will be sufficient to force many to rethink their beliefs.
The vast majority will come up with ad hoc explanations of why the cooling and increasing ice and snow is actually due to warming because of increasing CO2 and why their forecasts will come right at some unspecified time in the future and we must therefore as a matter of urgency reduce anthropogenic CO2 . Their reputations ,grants and jobs depend on it.
It’s time we stopped using highly fudged charts from HADCRUT and GISS.
What long-term surface temperature dataset do you suggest, Olaf?
Why not use the raw, unadjusted data?
Richard M, I’m happy to present raw, unadjusted (ICOADS sea surface temperature) data…at least as raw and unadjusted as it comes. I often do. It’s available from the KNMI Climate Explorer. BUt the ICOADS data have a higher long-term trend. On the other hand, the raw, unadjusted GHCN land surface air temperature data are not available in easy-to-use form.
The neutron count record is seen in Fig 14
So many examples of putting lipstick on a pig! Another related one is a Washington Post article, “No, Climate Models aren’t Exaggerating Global Warming”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/02/04/no-climate-models-didnt-overestimate-global-warming/
and my reply-
“The models the IPCC choose to feature in their first Assessment (1990) and every assessment since have greatly overestimated global warming. The early models, the 1988 Hansen and 1990 IPCC have been falsified at the 95% level using standard statistical procedure. The IPCC Assessment can be faulted for at least two reasons. They choose to feature models that projected great and accelerating global warming when many climate scientists had, in their peer reviewed articles, model projections of modest warming. MIT’s Richard Lindzen’s is just one example. Second, the IPCC scientists claimed that natural variability, the same variability the authors above claim confounds the projections, could be considered noise and ignored because the AGW signal was so much stronger than the noise. Wrong again. The study referred to above is one more example of the bunker mentality and over-reach that creates disrespect for climate science and enables the wrong-headed belief that global warming is a hoax. The key to understanding the less than skillful model projections and changing estimates of global warming by climate scientists who, with few exceptions are no longer promoting catastrophic AGW, is climate sensitivity which I address in the classes I teach and here- https://sites.google.com/site/climatesensitivity/
I am going to purchase a peice of plywood, write numbers between 1 and 20 on it, put on green socks, and then throw 3 darts at it.
I will add up the numbers that the darts hit, divide by 3, and I predict that the resulting number will be the average temperature of the planet over the next 5 years.
Where can I apply for a grant for money to buy the plywood, darts and green socks?
Well, I think my prediction has as good a chance of being right as the UKMO’s.
Green socks. Bwahaha. Everybody knows the socks have to be orange.
It is also well known that one should use 100% cotton socks, or the result will be skewed by the man made fibers.
Piece, not peice.
Please, Mod,, change.
Pretty please?
Wrong, Seadog. You have to adjust the data. Instead of dividing by 3, you must only divide by 2.
Another way to look at this is that the median of the UKMO’s 5-yr forecast increased by 0.015 C from 2014-18 to 2015-2019. All else constant (assuming 2015-18 forecasts remain the same), that means 2019 is forecast to be 0.075 C above 2014, which gives a warming rate of 0.15 C per decade.
Do they get paid money for that?
When they can accurately predict 2 weeks in advance, I will take interest in what they have to say about weather 3 weeks in advance! Don’t think my Grandkids will live long enough to be able to trust in predictions 5 years in advance
Has anyone else noticed the PIOMASS arctic volume anomaly keeps going up and up? Why is this not making news?
The claim that global temperatures will remain high is based on the average temperature of 1981-2010. I wonder how the earth feels about it’s optimum temperature being identified as between 1981-2010.
I know I feel the mid-sixties through the mid-seventies should be used to determine the baseline for global climate simply due to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. As ridiculous as that sounds, it is just as valid as claiming .02 degrees of warming when the margin of error is significantly greater.
“over the next five years, their models forecast that global surfaces may be a little warmer or a little cooler than 2014, as much as 0.2 deg C warmer or as much as 0.08 deg C cooler.” We’ll really notice the massive change. Should I stock up on T-shirts or thermals? Problems problems.
In other words, over the next five years, their models forecast that global surfaces may be a little warmer or a little cooler than 2014,
to be fair to the MET although its dishonest and scientifically worthless approach , the ‘heads you lose tails I win ‘ approach is one normal for climate ‘science’
LOL
In other words, over the next five years, their models forecast that global surfaces may be a little warmer or a little cooler than 2014, as much as 0.2 deg C warmer or as much as 0.08 deg C cooler. [Sarc on.] That narrows it down. [Sarc off.]
That’s a pretty tight prediction.
Let’s see
Over the next five years the sun will reach its minimum.
That’s a least 0.1c lower.
Any one want to bet that the Temps five years from now will be . 1c cooler. I’ll give 2:1 odds.
Won’t any cooling by the Sun be offset by the CO2 climate thermostat control knob?
You’ve found the knob?
Wait, wait, I thought that the sun had nothing to do with it. Is this a “Mosher Anomaly”.
Temperature of what ?
Yes. I’ll take it IF I CONTROL ALL THE DATA.
Can we keep it simple?
Pick the single land station you want to use.
Snapshot the measured temperature right now and we’ll look at the measured temperature in 2020. No adjustments or any fancy calculations or trend lines. Single measurement for a given time of day Feb 5 2015. Single measurement same time of day Feb 5 2020.
That is definitely worth a punt at 100USD at 2:1.
Do they give percentage probabilities on this forecast?
There is a 97% chance they will have to continue to adjust data to get the results they want.
The problem the UKMO has is that the warming of the oceans is nothing to do with ‘back radiation’, a failure to recognise that it is a Radiant Emittance, not a real energy flux.
Instead it’s roughly constant SW thermalisation plus the decrease in flow rate of cold water which started its journey from Antarctica 800 years ago, the time when the Mediaeval Warm Period ended and Antarctic Ice started to increase.
So., to predict that part of present day SSTs down to increased well-mixed GHG, which works by decreasing net surface IR so it warms to increase evaporative heat loss, one must have data about ice and snow formation from the year 1200!
Climate Alchemists really must learn that the basics of their ‘science’ are very badly wrong in terms of the heat transfer part of modelling, and they must also think about all coupled factors, including the thermohaline circulation.