On occasion, comments posted on WUWT are backed up with data or graphs from the commenter, and are so germane that they merit their own post for discussion. This is one of those cases. Bill Illis has done a couple of guest posts on WUWT, the most recent about the “Trade Winds Drive the ENSO“. In the comments about the story on “When you can’t believe the model” he posted a significant comment on his work with NASA GISS model E (Global Climate Model) backed up with his own research graphs. For those brave enough to slog through it, here is the manual for Model E. I thought Bill’s comments were worth sharing. – Anthony
Image above is from my stock imagery and for illustration only, not from Bill Illis.
Guest Comments by Bill Illis
Awhile ago, I pulled apart the components of GISS’s Model-E and then extended the forecast it would have provided from 2003 (the end date of the data provided by GISS) to 2013, ten years.
The model would be off by about 0.15C in the first five years.
The more detailed version of this extension is here:
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The simpler version is below.
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Another way to look at is they have huge GHG temperature impacts built in (no way to get to +3.0C without it) but they need to build in almost as big negative temperature impacts from other sources to keep the hindcast close to the actual temperatures we have seen so far.
One could conclude they are just plugging the big negative numbers into the hindcast after the fact to make it work.
Which is close to the point Leland Teschler was trying to make in this article. (seen here)
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Without a large uptick in temperatures in the next few years, the modelers really have to go back to the drawing board (or they need to discover another “negative forcing” to keep the models on track to reality).
At first I thought Bill had the model running on some system, but I see he’s mainly “modeling the model.” It would be a lot more interesting if we had the model runs stretched out to 2013 or even model runs started with recent conditions to give it a fresh start.
The former condition would run into the problems Anna noted, the latter would reult in projections/forecasts within error bars and be dismissed on RealClimate.
Perhaps another thing to do, which would require being able to compile and run the model, is to include a “reality check” – a new forcing that reflects observed vs modeled results. If that could be approximated into the future, that could be a big help with keeping the model from drifting into fanatasy.
The plot of the reality check could provide a lot of guidance as to where the errors are in the model. An Electrical Engineering analogy is that negative feedback used in an amplifier to make it more linear can show where the open loop error is. (In practice, we know that already – various non linearities in transistors and tube/valves are the main culprits and negative feedback is a trivial way to improve things. Other solutions tend to run hotter or have complicated fitlers.)
Ah well, maybe by the time the Obama’s stimulus package cranks up, the new Great Climate Shift (the PDO is adequate explanation) will provide enough guidance to come up with an accurate GHG forcing approximation. (Or an accurate model!)
Frank K,
The data comes from a page GISS put up for Model E (and I have to give GISS a big thumbs up on this one since it is relatively easy to use compared to some of the other climate model sites I’ve been to.)
I didn’t run any models or use the code, I just downloaded the info from the site.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelE/transient/climsim.html
GCM/AGW models were never about describing reality. They have always been about selling an idea to a very particular group of ‘buyers’- policy makers. The models, and their promoters, have done an excellent job in the regard. That these ‘buyers’ are the same people who destroyed our economy and financial system by believing financial models is not coincidental.
How much warming is being caused by the burning of 10 billion tons of hydro-carbons plus heat generated by other power sources and is this being taken into account in the models? Also how much warming is coming from solar heating due to soot from these coal plants? Thanks
“I was at my home at 14.00 August 11, 2008, and my outside temperature registered 91°F . Then it started to cloud up and by 16.30 there was a thunder shower. The temperature dropped to 71°F . Where did all the heat go? It went 5.5 miles up, where the temperature is usually about –55°F (as trans-Atlantic pilots like to report) and subsequently out into space, carried there by the powerful heat carrying capability of liquid water when it turns into vapor and consumes 972 Btus per pound and then back into liquid, releasing that latent heat of vaporization into space as thermal radiation. This happens almost every day in the summer in the temperate zones and all the time in the tropics, and it’s not taken into account in the AGW computer models, because models can’t model rain, clouds, lightning, storms and hurricanes very well at all, because it’s too complicated and chaotic. AGW computer models also don’t model ocean current oscillations, which are major factors in effecting the Earth’s heat balance. This is why myopic atmospheric science projections are getting so far away from the observed global temperatures, since the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to it’s cold phase in late 2006.”
From http://ccd4e.org/drpierre_latour_and_jeff_temple/
Off topic sort of but I just saw where Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said on thursday that they were going to tackle climate change ,global warming was what it use to be, by this summer .What a waste of money and time.How do you tackle something that is natural and runs in cycles.This is nothing more than socialism at its finnest having control on the American public.Next they will telling us we have to turn heat dowm in winter and raise our air conditioner up or we will be charged for excessive use.The days of horse and buggy just may return too.
IMHO, when all is said and done, modelers will have succeeded in accurately predicting the past. Many models now predicting an El NINO, by July. We shall see.
TomVonk (04:45:46) :
You are right and I am surprised that Tsonis is not more frequently analysed on blogs dedicated to the climate because I am convinced that he is on the right track .
For me the surprise is why the modelers/climatologists are not going full speed ahead on this type of models.
I know that they cannot be solving coupled differential equations of any type in GCM. I think they think they are because they are using mean values for everything within their grid volumes. The mean is the first moment of any solution of a system, no? If the real equations were linear and well behaved and a perturbation expansion of the solution made sense their method would have worked, imho. It is the high probability that the true (unknown) solutions are highly divergent that clobbers the models.
anna v,
I’ll have to look more into the paper by Tsonis et al. But until I do, can you translate the abstract a bit for me? What is meant by a “synchronous state?” Could this be something like sinusoidal oscillations, which are periodically disrupted and reform about different base states and perhaps with different amplitudes? Or are the “synchronous states” completely chaotic?
In my research on bidecadal oscillations, I’ve encountered Tsonis before:
J.B. Elsner and A.A. Tsonis, 1991: Do bidecadal oscillations exist in the global temperature record? Nature. 353, 551-553.
Their answer was “no,” and I believe that their conclusions were based on weak support and with longer data (since 1991) are easily refuted.
But your link to Tsonis has me curious, so I will try to see what, if any, connection there might be to this new way of modeling, and that “older” paper with Elsner.
Basil
To Werner Weber: I can tell you exactly why no one in the US agw movement, and certainly not Dr. Hansen, is too concerned with the Chinese coal trains. Chinese trains have absolutely nothing to do with setting up a new command and control regime combined with confiscatory energy tax policies here in the US.
That’s all this game is really about, and anything else is just window dressing. The lack of concern about the Chinese situation is as good a proof of that as anything.
Also: “US considers a National Climate Service.”
Whatchya wanna bet it’s going to be managed and staffed by purely political
appointees, who will of course make sure that the right “message” is conveyed to the public? We wouldn’t want anybody upsetting the “consensus” now, would we?
Frank Mosher, IMHO, when all is said and done, modelers will have succeeded in accurately predicting the past.
With all due respect, the “modelers” have not yet even accurately predicted the past!
Great article Mr. Illis.
Watts up with the word ‘germane’
REPLY: ??
Allen63 (02:59:05) :
It could be truth that AGW is offsetting declining temperatures.
If that werre the case, then Hansen et al should be singing the praises of CO2.
“It’s mindboggling that there are intelligent people out there that don’t see how stupid this is.”
I think the same thing every time I see how much some people pay for modern art. It’s incredibly easy for intelligent people to deceive themselves in a way that wouldn’t occur to a child.
terry46 (05:54:47) The days of horse and buggy just may return too.
[sigh] Lets hope not…..
Every time I see one of the tree huggers pining [horrible pun intended] for the ‘good old days’, when things were ‘natural’, I know they have never been around any real quantity of horses….
Every winter the horse shows visit south Florida…and for those three months, truck load after truck load of stable sweepings are found dumped in odd corners of the countryside as waste haulers look for ways to avoid the tipping fees. Multiply that by several million and you begin to see one of the results of where many of the greens plans could lead us.
I have been a profesional environmentalist for 40 years…clean air, water, soil etc. MATTER to me…but I haven’t gone stark raving crazy in the process!
Just another rant from the swamp….cdl [rant over]
wws wrote:
‘Whatchya wanna bet it’s going to be managed and staffed by purely political
appointees, who will of course make sure that the right “message” is conveyed to the public? We wouldn’t want anybody upsetting the “consensus” now, would we?’
AGW is one tactic in a political war whose goal is a centralized command and control economy. The goal is clear — and the strategy is the utilization of fear.
Remember, the elites will always have a large carbon footprint and enjoy the finer things in life. Prez Obama is flying all over America and Canada for photo ops while “Nancy with the laughing eyes” flys a 757 to Rome to meet with the Pope.
Our Prez tells corporations to limit salaries to $500,000 and get rid of the corporate jets while he jets around on AF1 eating expensive Wago beef. A US national Climate Service will create another constituency group who will vote for elitist politicians.
I am sorry to get off topic.
Kohl Piersen (02:48:31) asked:
“I am very interested in this. Where exactly does GISS Model E fit in the galaxy of climate models?
Is it so different from others that these problems woudl be unique to it?”
Can anyone answer or point to references (whatever). I really would like to know whether a single model can be considered representative, and where this one fits into the scheme of things. Is it better? worse? than others etc etc
Craig D. Lattig (07:22:15) :
terry46 (05:54:47) The days of horse and buggy just may return too.
[sigh] Lets hope not… truck load after truck load of stable sweepings are found dumped in odd corners of the countryside as waste haulers look for ways to avoid the tipping fees. Multiply that by several million and you begin to see one of the results of where many of the greens plans could lead us.
Up to our necks in horsecr*p.
At least we’d know who to blame. They’d be the ones using their horses to push the cart.
I found the code in Hansens program to calculate temperature…
T = 58 + 5 * Log2(CO2/260)
The other 50,000 lines are there to make it look impressive
Bill,
The models using exagerated anthropogenic aerosol cooling to counter the amount of predicted anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming and prevent a runaway greenhouse effect is nothing new. But your suggestion that volcanic aerosols should be eliminated from the equasion is beyond ridiculous in my view. I’m also bothered by the limited ocean circulation calculations you used. There needs to be a separate calculation for each individual ocean circulation, not just 3 of them. And you need to show different data for each, not a cumulative number. But nevertheless, you are definately on the right track considering you are including ocean circulation at all.
Some day soon, we should shift strategy and start thanking/congratulating Gore and his minions for stopping global warming.
Someone like Harry Reid just might fall for it. Would that be fun or what? Imagine Hanson’s shock if Reid called a press conference to claim credit for the end of global warming.
But timing is everything and the moment is not now.
vukcevic (03:02:33) : “‘US considers a national climate service Programme would merge climate-change data from multiple agencies.'”
So there will be no way for anyone to check up on what the climate is really doing, just one data set with as many “homogenizations,” and “corrections” as they want.
Fortunately nature works outside models: Chaiten volcano is erupting now and (as local paper say) throwing out 20 m3/sec instead of 9 m3/sec (expected)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNewsMolt/idUKTRE51I77H20090220
Werner Weber:”then with all the sulfur dioxide gone from the atmosphere….
Model E would predict an unprecedented raise of global temperatures”
It would be exactly the contrary, SO2 is the seed of cloud formation.
Using modeler’s own linear approximations for forecasting, 0.15 deg positive bias error / 5 years = 0.03 deg/year over 100 years is 3 deg/Century. Using their own circular logic this entirely disproves their own theory. >grin<