It has often been said that “Weather is not climate”, but ultimately it provides the only meaningful way to verify climate models. Did the climate models predict the cold, snowy weather which has been seen across much of the US?
According to NOAA, October was the third coldest on record in the US, with almost every state showing temperatures from one to ten degrees below normal. Some Parts of Colorado received record snowfall during October, starting the first week of the month.
Image from HPRCC – University of Nebraska at Lincoln
With a few days left, it appears that December is headed for a repeat, with temperatures ranging from one to fifteen degrees below normal. (Note that the color scale is different from October, now the greens show more negative departure, even South Texas is at -6F)
Image from HPRCC – University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Temperatures for the rest of the month are forecast by NCEP to be below normal for almost the entire country, so it is unlikely that the map will change much before New Years Day.
So let’s compare the complete Autumn temperatures vs. the forecasts from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. In August, CPC forecast that most of the US would have above normal temperatures from October through December, and perhaps more importantly did did not predict that any areas would have below normal temperatures.
As you can see below, their prediction was largely reversed from what has happened. Most of the country has seen below normal temperatures during the same period.
Image from HPRCC – University of Nebraska at Lincoln
So my question is – if the climate models can’t reliably predict the next three months, what basis do they have to claim their ability to forecast 100 years out? It is well known in the weather modeling community that beyond about three days, the models tend to break down due to chaos.
We have all heard lots of predictions of warmer winters, less snow, animal populations moving north, drought, dying ski resorts, etc. But did anyone in the climate modeling community forecast the cold, snowy start to winter which has occurred. If not, it would appear that their models are not mature enough to base policy decisions on.
On the other side of the pond, The Met Office forecast 2010 to be the warmest year ever, as they last did in 2007. On cue, the weather turned bitter cold immediately after the forecast and it appears that the unusally cold weather will continue at least through mid-January. As in 2007, the Met office 2010 forecast is not getting off to a good start:
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.html
What you all forgetting, is that is your great President and our wannabe great Prime Minister Rudd have solved AGW – just by attending Copenhagen and of course threatening Mother Nature with a Cap and Trade tax. She just had to back down.
kadaka (20:24:20) :
Altoona campus.
What do they offer there? A B.A. in Environmental Studies. (Go ahead and click, enjoy the picture.)
What are they doing to that tree? Is that legal in the US
So many things wrong with this article I hardly know where to begin:
a) you’re looking at weather. Just one day can make a big difference to the view.
Here’s the latest from HPRCC one dat later: http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/maps/current/index.php?action=update_daterange&daterange=Year
b) Notice how they have changed the colour scale to fit.
c) In the article the author says:”So my question is – if the climate models can’t reliably predict the next three months, what basis do they have to claim their ability to forecast 100 years out?” Well climate models aren’t designed to tell you the weather so don’t expect them to. It’s like asking someone who they think will win the League next year and declaring them wrong on the basis of the result of the first match of the season.
d) I thought this site didn’t trust surface stations, so why are you using their data to try to make a point?
I said:
Showing temperature maps that cut off at Canada is a little wierd. Is there a way of having a continuous map?
REPLY: Yes, we can have the USA annex Canada, then NOAA will cover it. – Anthony
You tried that once before and it did not work out so well, though it did result in the US developing a more professional army (see Battle of Lundy Lane). Anyway, we like living in the world’s freest country (Canada)
They’re saying my neck of the woods was +2 from October to December with parts in the +4 range and Mike Mann’s turf in the +6-8 range? What planet are they on? October was FREEZING…it was more like December. And it’s cold here now, too, around 15 below normal and projected to keep those temps for at least the next week.
@ur momisugly kadaka (20:24:20) :
Hold up. I noticed something important. Pennsylvania, see the lower-left spot of warming, stands right out. Where are they getting their readings? See map of Pennsylvania. It looks like the spot is at Altoona, not much else around. What could be causing warming at Altoona? What is at Altoona? Penn State Altoona. That’s right, Michael Mann’s Penn State, Altoona campus.
Yeah, and the part in the west that’s reading +2-4 is Beaver–with another Penn State campus there. I live less than 5 miles from there and I don’t know where Beaver’s station is, but most of that area is rural. Altoona is in the mountains–it gets a lot colder and snowier there than it does here.
@ur momisugly James Chamberlain (12:37:31) :
If you look at the Weather Channel vs. your actual local forecaster’s forecasts, my feeling is that for the past couple of years TWC’s is always a bit higher (1-2 degrees), even for tomorrow or the next 10 days. With, of course the subsequent reality agreeing with the lower, local forecaster’s numbers. I haven’t done a statistical analysis of this yet, although I want to.
I just checked TWC and I think you’re right. TWC is posting temps higher over the next week than the local forecasters. For example, tomorrow TWC says a high of 23. The local stations are saying 20-23. For Thursday TWC is saying 38 (heat wave!)…the local stations range from 32 to 35 and then back to the freezer next week.
Turboblocke (13:52:41) :
“So many things wrong with this article I hardly know where to begin:”
Well…if I may, there are at least 4 things wrong with your reply. Lets take them one-by-one:
a) “you’re looking at weather.” No…the month of October & the month of December properly qualify as climate – short term climate, but climate none the less. The NOAA Climate Prediction Center starts their climate forcasting period at 2 weeks and beyond.
b) “Notice how they have changed the colour scale to fit.” Irrelevant – there was no need to shift the colors but the numbers are what the numbers are, by & large, below normal.
c) “…Well climate models aren’t designed to tell you the weather so don’t expect them to.” No one said the climate models were forecasting *weather* but they were forecasting trends in Temp & Precip for the monthly period which they failed at…which was the point of the article.
d) “I thought this site didn’t trust surface stations, so why are you using their data to try to make a point?” OK, some or most of the surface obs do tend to be biased…*warm*. Are you implying the anomaly charts should be colder???
Next…
Jeff
Richard M (07:53:05) :
Basil (07:19:56): “These trends are compared to the 1971-2000 climate normals.”
Only one more year to go and this *should* change to 1981-2010 … I suspect that could change things a bit.
Yes, but it may take a couple of years after 2010 to develop and publish the new normals. But as you say, it could change things a bit. Here’s an interesting scenario: with the normals then reflecting the warmer 2000-2010 years, but with a very real possibility of temps trending downward, relative to the new normals, we should start seeing lots of blue in the seasonal forecasts, replacing the red/brown that have dominated seasonal forecasts for the past few years.
Anthony,
You may have seen this already, but here’s a link to a current article seemingly debunking the connection between CO2 and temperature on the ground:
http://www.climategate.com/german-physicists-trash-global-warming-theory%22
R Pearse (13:57:42) :
You tried that once before and it did not work out so well, though it did result in the US developing a more professional army (see Battle of Lundy Lane). Anyway, we like living in the world’s freest country (Canada)
Didn’t really try real hard or it could have truthfully been said that Canada was the freest (until recently, anyway).
117 years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions
http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
There are a couple of things I picked up on reading this article:
** In the first illustration, the range in temperature variance is measured by two. In the next illustration, not only are the colors changed, but the variance is measured by three. This may be accidental, since they had to show a greater range of temperature variances, but it provides a bit of a dishonest picture.
** I’ve been following “global warming” online since about 1995. There is one fact that stands out above all others: no “climate scientist” understands the complexity of global climate, and most fail to grasp the number of different variables that affect climate, nor the span of interactions between forcings and feedbacks. Putting all their eggs in the anthropogenic carbon dioxide basket has blinded them to the reality of a hugely complex and chaotic interactive system.
** “Garbage in, Garbage out” takes on a whole new meaning after going through the CRUtape mess.
Jeff L (19:45:02) :
Without revealing your exact location, what city are you close to?
I live in Denver. Have so my entire life. This has been a very cold December.
For what it is worth:
Watched the weather channel tonight, they said we are setting up in the 70 and 77 Winter pattern. Snow likely for Florida panhandle in next 7 days.
Turbo,
The Climate Prediction Center predicted that October through December would be warmer than normal for most of the US. They were wrong, as they are more often than not. – indicating once again that their predictive powers are poor.
Is that difficult to understand? Is it difficult to understand that the US is having an extremely cold autumn?
There are a few large factors “they” don’t consider in the models, (that were supposedly proven useless in the 50’s, before computers and peer review came around.)
The Moon drives the tides in the oceans (that they know) the Moon in it’s declinational (North to South) movement moves the atmosphere around and is the strongest driver of global weather patterns. (this is the problem with the models with handling time scales past 3 days to 20 years)
The answers can be found to both enhance short term, (3 days to monthly) forecasts and climate models out to about 15 years or more, by incorporating the periods of the Lunar declinational atmospheric tides and their resultant effects on the Rossby waves and Jet stream patterns, into the models.
I am offering here for your use, the process to fix these problems. If you look at the “forecast maps” generated by the aft mentioned process, you will see they did much better than the NOAA forecasts in the article above.
Notice also the large spring outbreak of tornadoes coming around the 22nd through 25th of march of 2010, is mentioned, hidden in the middle of this rather lengthy read, (maps of the days mentioned can be found posted on the site, updates under the national maps will be updated 2 months in advance to reflect areas of the states expected to be affected, by this outbreak of severe weather.
Richard Holle
The following text was Originally Posted on another blog: December 13, 2009 11:35 pm;
One of the problems with the current models is the reference time frame is very narrow for initial conditions, and changes with in the past three days, a lot of times, will introduce presistance of inertia, to the medial flows, for several days, consistent with the actual flows, as the Lunar declinational atmospheric tides, make their runs across the equator from one poleward culmination to another.
Then as the tide turns and we have the severe weather bursts at declinational culmination, they get confused, or surprised, as the initial inertial effects reverse for about four days before the sweep to the other pole, that brings back the smooth flows, the models understand.
So that when the Lunar declination went to Maximum North on December 3rd, turbulence and shear introduced into the atmosphere, from the turning tide, (the models do not know about), surprised them with the usual couple of tornadoes. Now (12-13-09) that we are ~20 degrees South Lunar declination, the models have a full buffer, of five days of linear inertial movement, from the Moon’s trip South across the equator (12-09-09) and is slowing it’s movement.
Coming up on the Southern extent culmination, producing a secondary tidal bulge in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing us to the mid point of a 27.32 day declinational cycle (one of the four routine patterns that cycle on an 109.3 day period). This particular one (#1) that started back on Dec 3rd, has incursions of polar air masses that come down from Western Canada, through Montana and the Dakotas, to make up the Northern part of the atmospheric tidal bulge.
So I would expect to see a large invasion of cold dry air sweep almost all the way to the Gulf coast again, then the produced frontal boundary with the interesting weather, that includes change state intense precipitation. Freezing rain, where the warm over runs cold, and snow where the cold undercuts the more sluggish warm air, still moving North East by inertia alone, severe weather to form in that trailing edge of the warm moist mass, that gets over taken from behind by the polar air mass that tries to follow the tidal bulge back to the equator, which for the next 4 of 5 days powers up the cyclonic patterns generated by carolis forces, and finishes out as the Moon approaches the equator again.
Expect the same type of interaction again for a primary bulge production by the passage back North, culminating on 12-30-09, pumping in a solid polar air mass very consistent with the pattern we had on 12-03-09, (the North “lunar declination culmination”)[LDC], then (#2) the next Rossby wave / jet stream regime pattern, comes back into play with much more zonal flow, and air masses invading from the Pacific, (of the two sub types of) phase with lesser amounts of Gulf moisture entrainment in this one, more in the other #4.
The (#3) third 27.32 day pattern with polar air masses invading in from the Minnesota / Great Lakes area and sweeping out through the Eastern sea board, and mostly zonal flow out west, from 01-27-10 till 02-23-10, comes next.
The fourth 27.32 day cycle, that looks very similar to #2 but with much more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, usually has more hail and tornadoes associated with it than Pattern #4, and typically flows up Eastern side of tornado alley. Will be in effect from 02-23-10 through 03-22-10, and should produce the first big surge of severe tornado production, from about March 20th 2010, until about March 26 or later as the Next polar air mass cycle is coming out of western Canada, and should make for steep temperature gradients, and ion content differences.
Richard Holle
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
From a viewpoint of how the assemblage of parts seamlessly fits together,the only thing you have to do, is to watch the (short but seemingly) endless stream of (every 15 minute) infrared and/or vapor satellite photos animated, (after fixing the jumping around of the originals, due to lack of foresight, that they might be useful some day), and synchronized by 27.32 days periods, to see the repeating cycles.
To set up five tiled windows, in the first show day #1 through #27 sequentially, then as they continue on in the same stream, the cycle of the first 27 days continues anew in window #2, synchronized by Lunar declination to #1. Till they spill over into window #3 stepping in phase with the other two, #4 the same idea gives you the four basic patterns of the Rossby wave 109.3 day cycle, of global circulation, that then repeat but seasonally shifted.
In window #5 then would be the first repeat of window #1 in the same phase of the same pattern, and should look a lot like window #1. As the progression through the total series, proceeds, when you get 6558 days into the five stacks, a 6th window opens and the original day #1 in window #1 opens as #1 in window #6. As the series progresses on, real data can be viewed, in the real interactions going on.
This would give you a look into the cyclic pattern that develops from the repetitive interaction of the inner planets, and tidal effects, caused by the Lunar declination, phase, perigee/ apogee cycles.
By adding a sliding ball, vertically moving up and down a +-30 degree scale bar (referenced from the Equator), on the side of each tile space, that shows the plot of the current Lunar declination for the time of each frame. Which will allow you to see the shifts in the Lunar declinational angle’s effects, as the 18.6 Mn signal progresses.
By adding another slide bar of +-30 degrees (with the heliocentric synod conjunction with Earth, as the zero reference), at the top, of each tile you could view each outer planet as we pass them, as color coded discs labeled, J, S,U, N, shifting from left to right. From viewing this progression of the outer planets, the merit of their influences, can then be seen in the additional surges in ion flux as they go by. You can watch the changes in the normal background, of the global circulation driven by the moon and inner planets, affected by the outer planets.
By adding in the surface maps for the past historic temperatures, dew points, precipitation, types, and amounts, as overlays onto the IR/VAPOR photos, the patterns will be abundantly clear to 10 year old school kids. At the same time, generating a good long term forecast, set of analogs to base the models upon.
Once the amount of additional angular momentum, and the process of it’s coming and goings can be clearly seen, it can then be measured, it’s effects calculated, and incorporated into the climate models, as a real quantized feedback. thereby giving us a much better picture, of the interactions, of all of the parts of the puzzle.
All of the necessary data is in the archives, and free to use, to those that have the where with all, to assemble the real truth, be it inconvenient or not. I will probably spend the rest of my life, trying to do it alone, out of my own funds, as I have done so far.
BillD (05:40:57) :
The ensemble mean of model output will always drown out the order of magnitude events and the step-changes they can induce in the actual climate. Add this to initiation error, compounded error propagation and the fudge factors and it is hard to validate model results over any meaningful climate time-frame. The GFS operational model is re-initiated every 6 hours and the skill still drops off precipitously around the 100 hour mark. After 300 hours its no better than a random walk. If you accept Santer’s treatment of the confidence intervals, they fail at points to exclude the null (which actually makes sense to me). The models nevertheless are very useful and can help point the researcher in the proper direction. Treating them with the same reverence as short-term forecast tools is, however, utterly unjustified.
If you bothered to read the lengthy entry above, you will understand that there are four patterns of global circulation that alternate, (as stated above) from ones of high zonal flow to ones of High medial flow.
This is why the weather patterns run warm during the high zonal flow patterns ( September and November 2009) then cold during the alternate months of October, and December2009.
The patterns induced by the Lunar declination run for 27.325 days at a cycle, as this is just short of a month the pattern slews into and out of phase with the “Monthly periods” so data stored “by Month” has problems with this slewed cyclic corruption. It would help if “they” used sets 27.325 days long to plot trends as they would see sets of clean alternating trends in resultant data sets.
“They” could filter for the long term cyclic patterns, to reduce the noise in the composite signal, to the point that low frequency patterns caused by solar cycle shifts in activity, could also be filtered out leaving the residual surges in solar wind flux caused by the outer planets influence. Then when that is found, and defined well enough to filter out.
What would be left should be the CO2 long term forcing, that will probably be very small, but conform well to the CO2ppm increases, in the atmosphere. THEN we would be able to decide rationally what if anything, needs to be done, about carbon foot prints, and suggestions for controls.
Feel free to ask about the other, and or further defining answers, I have found to understand how the weather and climate really works.
Richard Holle
JeffK: climate noun 1 the average weather conditions of a particular region of the world over a long period of time, with regard to temperature, rainfall, air pressure, etc.
weather noun the atmospheric conditions in any area at any time, with regard to sun, cloud, temperature, wind and rain, etc.
HTH
The weather models forecast the weather. The climate models forecast the climate. It’s simple if you know the difference between climate and weather. They are not the same thing.
You may not have noticed that the Oct/Nov/Dec forecast consists of 3 months. Above you only see 2, which have below normal temperatures. If you look at November, which I linked to in my original post, you’ll see that it shows above normal temperatures. Draw your own conclusions.
It’s inconsistant to complain that the surface stations are inaccurate and then try to use their data to try to make a point.
If the author was serious about making a point on the accuracy of the weather forecasting, then he would compare every forecast against the actual results. Just picking one smells like cherry picking.
Turbo,
You seem very confused. A weather forecast is shaped along the lines of “it will snow on Wednesday in Chicago with a temperature of 18 degrees.” By contrast, a climate forecast is structured like “temperatures will be above normal in the midwest over a certain three month period.”
This article is exclusively about climate forecasts from the “Climate Prediction Center.” Do you see any discussion of weather forecasts?
And most human beings don’t need a thermometer to know that it is cold.
Like my blood alchohol level at the moment, I predict withh 100% certainty that North America and all of Europe will have above or below average climate this winter.
Yep! that seems a pretty safe bet. 🙂
Ha! Funny! Mr. Goddard!! What are you doing here?? Lol! Its your old mechanic.
Well…in response to the author here. You need to spend some time understanding the science.
Here’s your homework for you. Show me ONE peer reviewed study that shows clearly that the current WARMING of the globe (not just north america as you like to corner the argument with) isn’t man made/Carbon Dioxide influenced?
Go to http://www.350.org to understand the CLEAR science that has been put forth by the OVERWHELMING majority of climate scientist.
Hint. Why are the polar caps melting (still). Why is Greenlands ice continuing to disappear? Why is much of the anceint ice disappearing on the planet? This isn’t temperature change in just 20-50 years. Its over a period of a 100+ years. Since the beginning of the industrial age.
John are you for real?
john,
Temperatures in the Arctic are running at an average of -30C right now and I can assure you that the Arctic is not melting.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
You might also note that sea level has not risen for the last four years. If the Greenland ice cap is melting at an accelerated pace (as claimed by some) where is the water going?
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
I think the latter would be called a long-range weather forecast. The Insisters won’t consider anything short of ten years to reflect climatic trends (at least when they’re playing defense).
Roger,
I think a long range weather forecast would top out at about two weeks, and would provide specific details of the weather in a particular location – like this one for Chicago.
http://www.accuweather.com/us/il/chicago/60290/forecast-15day.asp?partner=forecastfox&traveler=1&zipchg=1&metric=0
These types of forecasts change dramatically from day to day – due to chaos. Modelers believe that three days is about the limit for any real accuracy.