Yesterday on WUWT, a post from Luboš Motl told us how climate science has been proposed as a vehicle for wealth redistribution by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber who is the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the main German government’s climate protection adviser. Interestingly it has been discovered that he co-authored a paper critical of Global Climate Models (GCM’s) in 2001. The paper and list of co-authors is below.
Global Climate Models Violate Scaling of the Observed Atmospheric Variability (link to PDF here)
R. B. Govindan,1,2 Dmitry Vyushin,1,2 Armin Bunde,2,* Stephen Brenner,3
Shlomo Havlin,1 and Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber4
1Minerva Center and Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
2Institut für Theoretische Physik III, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 16, 35392 Giessen, Germany
3Department of Geography, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
4Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, D-14412 Potsdam, Germany
(Received 1 November 2001; revised manuscript received 22 April 2002; published 21 June 2002)
Abstract:
We test the scaling performance of seven leading global climate models by using detrended fluctuation
analysis. We analyze temperature records of six representative sites around the globe simulated by the
models, for two different scenarios: (i) with greenhouse gas forcing only and (ii) with greenhouse gas
plus aerosol forcing. We find that the simulated records for both scenarios fail to reproduce the universal
scaling behavior of the observed records and display wide performance differences. The deviations
from the scaling behavior are more pronounced in the first scenario, where also the trends are clearly
overestimated.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.028501 PACS numbers: 92.60.Wc, 02.70.Hm, 64.60.Ak, 92.70.Gt
In the conclusion the authors write:
To summarize, we have presented evidence that
AOGCMs fail to reproduce the universal scaling behavior
observed in the real temperature records. Moreover, the
models display wide differences in scaling for different
sites. When comparing the two scenarios, our results
suggest that the second scenario (CO2 plus aerosols)
exhibits better performance regarding the values of the
scaling exponents as well as the trends. The effect of
aerosols not only decreases the trends but also modifies
the fluctuations, to more closely resemble the real data.
This confirms in a way independent of the evaluations
made so far [5] that the incorporation of aerosols is
necessary to approach reality.
It is possible that the lack of long-term persistence is due
to the fact that certain forcings such as volcanic eruptions
or solar fluctuations have not been incorporated in the models.
However, we cannot rule out that systematic model
deficiencies (such as the use of equivalent CO2 forcing to
account for all other greenhouse gases or inaccurate spatial
and temporal distributions of sulphate emissions) prevent
the AOGCMs from correctly simulating the natural variability
of the atmosphere. Since the models underestimate
the long-range persistence of the atmosphere and overestimate
the trends, our analysis suggests that the anticipated
global warming is also overestimated by the models.
Oddly, though by his own peer reviewed admission, GCM’s don’t fully represent reality, and “global warming is also overestimated by the models”, that doesn’t stop Schellnhuber from using the conclusions of GCM’s to create his own alternate world reality where the industrialized nations have to pay carbon reparations to poorer ones.
h/t to Steve Mosher
Joel
Nice thoughtful posts. I suspect you would enjoy ‘Chill’ by Peter Taylor. My review of in an ecology magazine is here;
http://www.harmlesssky.org/
tonyb
[I had left this unapproved. I can’t believe someone else approved it before I got back to it. Subtle anti-German, and anti-semitic rhetoric in the same post. I “know you didn’t mean it” but it was there. ~ charles the moderator]
Joel 15:18:00
I’m speaking fairly specifically of the accumulating body of evidence showing that the IPCC’s conception of the greenhouse effect of CO2 is exaggerated.
Poisonallee, I think the water vapor feedback is variable, and poisonallee, I don’t think you got the joke…..well, you did talk about ‘hypothetical’. Maybe I don’t get the joke.
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Joel 15:18:00
Of course the feedback of water in all its phases is going to be more complex than imagined today. It’s going to be complex enough to get around Leif’s objections that there isn’t enough energy in the cosmic ray effect to change climate as it does, nor, more precisely, enough correlations in the suggested causations.
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Carbon Credits are running out… OMG! What next???
First Peak Oil, now Peak Carbon Credits!?
What to do… What to do… I know – lets raise taxes so that everyone can have enough carbon credits.
(Runs shrieking into the night…)
Guys, I think we can safely apply the requisite discounts to anyone who can say, as Joel Shore appears to me to have, that
‘I know the latest science’.
Hubris, then nemesis….
Joel Shore (15:18:00) :
kim says:
Please, get with the latest science…
Kim, how could you!
You fed the troll. Now it will be following everyone around for days looking for more… and asking if you want your mind washed… (Just say no and keep an eye on the bucket and squeegee… 😉
“Co-authored”?
If an actor acts, then surely an author auths, and that should be “co-authed”. But it might be easier to say “co-wrote”.
Oops, it looks like I’ve claimed to know the latest science. Honest, I know nahzing. Nahzing much at all. ‘Ducks the squeegee’.
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Schellnhuber’s recommendation for a “one size fits all” carbon credit allowance won’t fit Al Gore.
How will big Al fit into the tiny Schellnhubers allowance?
TonyB: Thanks. I’ll try to have a look at “Chill” the next time I am in Barnes & Noble.
For the past few years a majority of scientist have woken up and switched from an AGW position to that of real scientist questioning the science behind AGW. I have NEVER seen or heard of scientist turning from “skeptic” to AGWier… I guess in this case… money talks.
Strange.
Joel Shore seems to imagine that real greenhouses chiefly lose heat by conduction: see above post.
I would have thought any competent physicist, well in fact any schoolboy with an elementary scientific education, would know that whether they use glass or plastic, real greenhouses retain heat by blocking convective action with their transparent barrier so the warm air does not escape upwards. Losses due to conduction or radiation are insignificant by comparison.
What odd ideas some people have.
Kindest Regards.
“Joel Shore (13:04:03) :
And, hence, he might not find the statement “GCM’s don’t fully represent reality” to be sufficient reason to completely ignore them (along with all of the other evidence for a significant sensitivity of the climate system to CO2).”
You appear [snip] believe creating fire breaks in forests and fire prone areas (Almost all of Australia) is, like, a bad thing.
Joel Shore (14:00:17) :
“Following up on my previous post, here is a paper by many of the same authors as the original Schellnhuber 2002 paper (although not including Schellnhuber himself) in which they demonstrate how the inclusion of volcanic forcing makes the scaling performance of the climate models considerably better (in agreeing with observations):”
Joel, as a Lukewarmer I am in agreement with much of what you say. Thanks
for the reference to this paper ( I think I linked to the original 2002 paper in a previous thread, but nevermind)
Let’s stipulate that this paper that you site is correct. Let’s stipulate that by including volcanic forcing you get a better fit? Agreed? And a better fit means “more truthful” or more skillful or more representative.
Now, I’ll ask you a question or two. They are simple questions and let’s have simple answers. yes or no.
1. Do you think it makes sense to do an ensemble average of GCMs that
include volcanic forcing with those that don’t include volcanic forcing?
2. Would you ever base policy on a study that averaged runs from GCMs
that used volcanic forcing with runs from GCMs that did not?
3. Would you reject a projection based on the average of models where only
some of the models including volcanic forcing?
I wish to distance myself from the one comment that suggested Mr Shore’s views are based on anything other than honest belief in the correctness of the science as he interprets it. And I don’t mean “as he interprets it” rudely, merely as a matter of fact.
Having crossed friendly swords with Mr Shore a number of times I would welcome his analysis of the position put forward by Mr/Mrs/ Miss/ Ms/Dr/Professor Latif as summarised in an article in New Scientist and referenced in various places on this site over the last couple of days (I would add a link if I only I knew how).
How can the apparent current global cooling and potential further cooling for a decade or more be reconciled with the AGW hypothesis? I know it can be reconciled by saying that there are “natural” forces that we naughty people have not yet overridden but that we will override in time. That is a logical position as a matter of argument. What I want to know is how, if at all, the current cooling and potential future cooling is consistent with the results of those few of the numerous computer models that are relied upon by the IPCC in its 2007 report as justifying a conclusion that catastrophic consequences will follow from continued increased in atmospheric CO2.
To a simple non-scientist like me, global warming requires global warming. Global cooling is not global warming. Global cooling in the face of conditions that cause global warming suggests that we would be even colder were it not for the warming alleviating the cooling. How much colder would we be? Where is the model that tells us to expect cooling to mask the warming? Where is the model that tells us catastrophe will be delayed by “natural” coldness? When will the catastrophe now strike? Or is the true position that so much is unknown about the effects on the world’s climate that any hypothesis or, if you wish, theory is little more than a guess?
Remy of GoRemy.com has a brilliant video talking about cap and trade that explains how Cap and Trade works on the tax side.
I say that it is incumbant upon him to explain why he has changed his opinion, and I am surprised that no one in authority has yet done so.
“Personally, I think that the issue of fairness in how the world deals with the issue of controlling CO2 emissions is a difficult one. ”
I don’t see any difficulty when there isn’t the slightest need to control CO2. The true difficulty is when real pollution is ignored to chase this chimera. The effect of any cap and trade legislation in the West (brilliant video by the way John B) would be to drive jobs offshore to places with far slacker clean air regulation than in developed countries.
As far as I can see, every single victory for the green industrial complex (mercury filled light bulbs which cause fits and can poison people and the environment, ethanol in cars which pushes the price of food out of the reach of poor people and creates shortages, windmills which kill birds and bats and causes sickness in people living nearby) has been an environmental disaster. Interesting, isn’t it. I think the answer is simply that the radical greens are far more interested in repressing and controlling people than in any actual effect on the environment.
We have an acronym in modern greek for those who change positions like weather vanes, OFA (opos fyssaei o anemos), as the wind blows ( would be AWB in english), which is a spoof from UFO. UFO has entered the modern argot to mean somebody out of touch with reality. OFA is not so bad, they change with the currents.
Yes you are quite correct.
Dr. Latif simply voiced what has been widely known for some time: that the model forecasts are diverging from observed temperatures so fast that little credence can be given to their predictions.
He ascribes this to the effect of the reversal of the NOA. so that natural variation is overriding the effects of CO2.
Quite correctly Dr. Latif then pointed out what amounts to AGW heresy, that if natural causes such as the NOA can produce cooling at the moment then how much did they contribute to the recent warming? He also says he doesn’t know.
In short the models did not predict the current cooling trend, cannot foretell how long it will last or how deep it will be, or even, and with the advantage of hindsight, say how much of the recent warming was due to natural causes rather than CO2.
In short the models have no predictive or analylitic power, you would do as well with a set of Tarot cards.
And although this problem is becoming increasingly acknowledged among climate scientist of the AGW persuasion many console themselves with the idea that warming will return with a vengeance once the current cool phase ends.
Not so. As Dr. Pielke and others have pointed out for that to happen the oceans would have to store up increasing amounts of energy in the form of heat from the supposed imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation produced by CO2 during this cool phase.
But they are not, rather as ARGO shows the oceans are cooling not warming so there is no heat in the pipeline to emerge when this cool phase ends.
It short it is reasonable to presume that the rise in atmospheric CO2 has had little or no effect on global temperatures nor will it do so.
Kindest Regards.
a jones 7:46:26
Excellent summary. I’m amused by Latif’s statement that if the climatologists don’t ask these hard questions, others will. Heh, heh; others have.
I almost said ‘Others have, clueboy’, but I thought I’d make life a little easier for the moderators.
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a jones:
You are of course correct. And, in this case, it is not odd ideas that I have, but rather the odd way my brain communicates with my fingers. I meant “convection” and typed “conduction”. In terms of letters, I got 8 out of 10 correct…Nobody’s perfect!
steven mosher says:
My short answers would be:
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No
My longer answer would be that it is certainly worth investigating whether the GCMs that include volcanic forcing give significantly different projections than those that don’t. However, I suspect that the answer to this question would be “no”. And, since we can’t predict future volcanic eruptions, including them has to be done in some guesstimation way anyway.
FatBigot says:
Well, I would separate those two questions into the actual part and the hypothetical part. In terms of the actual “apparent current global cooling,” I think it is clear that such supposed cooling ignores the fact that there are huge error bars on trends over periods of less than or little more than a decade. And, in fact, runs with climate models confirm that occasional periods with such trends are to be expected in a generally warming climate (see, e.g., http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/what-the-ipcc-models-really-say/ ). [At the risk of being repetitive, I always like to use the analogy to the seasonal cycle and the fact that in a city like here in Rochester that experiences a very strong seasonal temperature cycle, it is not unusual to find periods of time of a week or so in the spring or fall where the temperature trend is the opposite of what is expected due to the seasonal cycle.]
As for the hypothetical question, if over the next decade or so, temperature trends are such that there really is cooling for a long enough period of time that the trend is statistically-significant, then I agree that this would pose a challenge to our current understanding of AGW. Like what happens with other theories when faced with apparent contradictory evidence, some scientists will no doubt abandon the theory (or, more precisely, lower their estimates of the climate sensitivity) and other scientists will attempt to reconcile the current theory with the data (e.g., by proposing that the aerosol cooling effect is offsetting a large part of the GHG effect).
Of course, our understanding of AGW is based on a lot more than just current temperature trends. It is, for example, based on the temperature difference and estimated difference in forcings between the last glacial maximum and now. So, any new competing hypotheses will (at least eventually) also have to explain this empirical data in addition to the current temperature trends.
However, to my mind, this all remains very hypothetical because I still think that it is most likely that the planet will continue to warm over the next decade. I think the supposed cooling that we’ve seen over the past several years is mainly the result of the recent quite strong La Nina (and, for trend calculations that go back to 1998, the very strong El Nino that occurred then). The fact that the global temperature trend that one gets depends strongly on what data set one looks at (NASA GISS, HadCrut, or satellites), whereas the trend over longer periods of time (such as the full 3 decades of satellite data) do not, lends further credence to this notion.
Hi Joel
Good to see you over here again. You’ll be setting WUWT as your home page before you know it 🙂
You said;
“Of course, our understanding of AGW is based on a lot more than just current temperature trends. It is, for example, based on the temperature difference and estimated difference in forcings between the last glacial maximum and now. So, any new competing hypotheses will (at least eventually) also have to explain this empirical data in addition to the current temperature trends.”
I appreciate you were being simplistic, but to broaden it out you obviously know that our understanding of AGW is based on a lot of hypothetical data.
When you parse temperatures, sea level rises etc etc that go back some 150 years or more, to hundredths of a degree or mm, this must surely be in the hope (rather than certainty) that we had accurate data back then that can be parsed and sliced so minutely and therefore has some scientific validity.
Do not certain things worry you about much of this data;
* The notion that 20 stations comprise our 1850 global temperature data and they have changed in numbers and locations ever since? (don’t get me started on whether a GT has any meaning)
* That our global sea level (AArgghh!) is based on highly extrapolated (i.e. non existent) data back to 1700 that relies on three northern European tide gauges?
* That SST were measured in a very haphazard way over a tiny portion of the globes water surface and only highly specific local ones should be given any credence?
* That ice melts and re-freezes with monotonous regularity in the arctic and that current events are not out of the ordinary?
Is there not a scintilla of doubt in your mind that relying on -at best- often highly dubious if not actually meaningless information, is not a sensible way to run a railroad?
Ps That 8 out of 10 letters reference was the first time I have seen you make a joke, keep it up!
PPs Don’t tell Flanagan, but I quite like him posting here as well 🙂
Best regards
tonyb