Recently the Chief of the met office went on UK TV to say:
“OUR SHORT TERM FORECASTS ARE AMONG THE BEST IN THE WORLD.” (see video here)
Yesterday, the UK Met Office had to make a rare mea culpa, saying they had botched their own recent snow forecast, it is useful to point out that they aren’t the only one with egg on their faces.
In early October, the Arctic Oscillation (AO) took an unexpected dip into deeply negative territory, which led to the sixth snowiest October on record in the Northern Hemisphere and the snowiest on record in the US. If you look at the 14 day forecast at the bottom of the graph below, you can see that the dip caught NOAA forecasters off guard.
Source: NOAA Arctic Oscillation Forecast
According to Rutgers University Snow Lab, October, 2009 was the snowiest on record in the US.
| Contiguous United States | ||||
| Month | Rank | Area | Departure | Mean |
| 12-2009 | 1/44 | 4161 | 1292 | 2869 |
| 11-2009 | 39/44 | 585 | -512 | 1097 |
| 10-2009 | 1/42 | 538 | 385 | 153 |
| 9-2009 | 5/41 | 21 | 13 | 8 |
| 8-2009 | 12-41/41 | 0 | -5 | 5 |
| 7-2009 | 24-40/40 | 0 | -17 | 17 |
| 6-2009 | 32-42/42 | 0 | -64 | 64 |
| 5-2009 | 37/43 | 34 | -151 | 185 |
| 4-2009 | 17/43 | 859 | 106 | 753 |
| 3-2009 | 23/43 | 1964 | -18 | 1983 |
| 2-2009 | 17/43 | 3172 | 110 | 3062 |
| 1-2009 | 15/43 | 3696 | 185 | 3511 |
Source: Rutgers University Snow Lab
The director of NCAR captured the moment perfectly in this East Anglia Email – dated October 12.
From: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>To: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider <shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Myles Allen <allen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, peter stott <peter.stott@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “Philip D. Jones” <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Benjamin Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, James Hansen <jhansen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global
energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained
from the author.)
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1048&filename=1255352257.txt
Once again, this begs the question – if the GCMs can’t forecast the AO two weeks in advance, how can they possible forecast snow and cold 70 years in advance? University of Colorado professor Mark Williams used climate models in 2008 to come up with a remarkable prediction (below) in a year when Aspen broke their snowfall record.
Study: Climate change may force skiers uphill
From the From the Associated Press
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
DENVER — A study of two Rocky Mountain ski resorts says climate change will mean shorter seasons and less snow on lower slopes.
The study by two Colorado researchers says Aspen Mountain in Colorado and Park City in Utah will see dramatic changes even with a reduction in carbon emissions, which fuel climate change.
University of Colorado-Boulder geography professor Mark Williams said Monday that the resorts should be in fairly good shape the next 25 years, but after that there will be less snowpack — or no snow at all — at the base areas, and the season will be shorter because snow will accumulate later and melt earlier.
If carbon emissions increase, the average temperature at Park City will be 10.4 degrees warmer by 2100, and there likely will be no snowpack, according to the study. Skiing at Aspen, with an average temperature 8.6 degrees higher than now, will be marginal.
Since the first of October, Colorado is averaging two to eight degrees below normal, as is most of the US:
Source : NOAA High Plains Regional Climate Center
In December 2009, Colorado averaged three to fifteen degrees below normal, once again correlating with a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation
Source : NOAA High Plains Regional Climate Center
Climate models are iterative through time, which means once they go off in the weeds they can not recover. If AO trends can not be forecast more than a few days in advance, it would seem problematic to make any sort of meaningful long-term climate projections using GCMs.
Paul Vaughan (13:34:47) :
This is why it is important to analyze relationships between residuals and other variables.
Still does not detract from the correlation being spurious to begin with. Any spurious correlation can be ‘dressed up’ to look more significant by adding suitable other extraneous variables. And when the dressed-up version falters, just add some more conditioning variables, etc, ad infinitum.
anna v (12:31:24) :
Momentum is never conserved just because of bulk. And why do you keep bringing up a laser, as synchronized polarization. No such thing in the process I’m speaking of. Your right, this is not a one photon for one photon process, split between multiple lower energy states, but the original momentum will be preserved in the closed system. Referencing mostly from “Physics of the atom, Wehr & Richards”, rather old but these core physics processes have never changed.
Leif Svalgaard (14:24:31) “[…] spurious correlation […]”
It is well-known & accepted that celestial factors affect EOP.
Anthony,
I think we should send dart boards to: Jones, Mann, Briffa, etc. –
It should help them take some of the load off of Harry –
While improving the forecasting –
We may also consider sending some trained monkeys along to manage the boards.
Paul Vaughan (15:26:09) :
It is well-known & accepted that celestial factors affect EOP.
The spurious correlation is with aa-index….
Anna,
From the graph you linked, it looks to me like at 20% of absorbed IR is reasonable for CO2.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/atmospheric_spectral_absorption.png?w=509&h=411
Note that a lot of IR frequencies are not absorbed by any atmospheric gases, but as far as absorbed IR goes, CO2 takes up a fairly large percentage.
Leif Svalgaard (17:41:04) “The spurious correlation is with aa-index….”
It’s not aa index.
I acknowledge that I need to explain f(aa) better – I’ve drafted some notes.
My instinct (in part based on what I’ve learned from you) is that I’ve isolated a decadal variation in the rate of change of the magnitude of year-to-year variations after removing solar variation at Schwabe & Hale timescales (which leaves modulation occurring at the Earth end).
There was a paper to which you linked some months ago that gave me ideas about how to isolate the signal. The authors were using techniques I’d never seen before. I’ll see if I can dig out the link.
Steve Goddard (17:50:07)
with a peak value of 15 microns, and shoulders at 13.6- 16.2 – that is around 6%-8% of atmospheric energy. C02 doesn’t absorb normal temperature radiation
of course, c02 absorbs some SW radiation, so that doesn’t reach the surface. 20% of the entire incoming-outgoing radiation sum is an ambitious figure
P Wilson,
IR stands for infrared, not “incoming radiation.”
wayne (10:51:21) :
Steve Goddard (09:48:43) :
CO2 absorbs something like 20% of LW radiation emitted from the surface
Here’s an atmospheric absorption spectrum, the large notch at ~700 wavenumber is due to CO2. …
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Modtran-dry.gif
What? Impossible I think. You (or the GCM you are quoting) speak as if a CO2 molecule can keep absorbing and absorbing and absorbing heat over and over again. A CO2 molecule, or conglomerate of molecules, can only absorb once per band.
Not true, if it absorbs a 15μm photon it gets promoted from the ground state v=0 to the first excited state, that state can absorb a second photon to v=2. However collisions (~10 times/nsec) with other molecules deactivate the excited states so fast that this is exceptionally unlikely.
Once excited in a band it must re-radiate at some point. If prompted by another photon of that same frequency both photons will leave with the same direction as the later photon, always toward space.
This is stimulated emission, the principle of a laser, it requires a population inversion which you wouldn’t have in the atmosphere.
If you disagree please show to me the science behind this while conserving the momentum of this LW radiation. Seems you can only heat that way ONCE (may be 20% from cold state) not 20% of the earth’s heat output!
Your understanding of how photons interact with molecules is confused, after absorbing a photon the molecule will undergo many vibrations and rotations before emitting a photon, so there will be no relationship between the direction of the incoming and outgoing photons.
Steve Goddard (17:50:07) :
Have you considered the ratio of H2O to Co2 ? Co2 maybe from 5% to 25%, so that would make the contribution much smaller than the graph 20% ?
Phil. (21:14:09) :
Here’s an atmospheric absorption spectrum, the large notch at ~700 wavenumber is due to CO2. …
That doesn’t look right. You could just be imprecise in your wording. Here is what the solar spectrum looks like at the Earth’s surface: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png
The percentages of incoming radiation absorbed by various gases look like this: http://www.leif.org/research/Erl71.png
wayne (15:03:50) :
anna v (12:31:24) :
Momentum is never conserved just because of bulk.
When sunshine hits you, that is lots of photons with momentum, what happens to their momentum? If we followed each individual molecule of your skin that absorbed a photon, it will take up its momentum and change its original direction according to where it was when it was hit. This happens statistically to all hit molecules and finally ends up in increasing temperature even before the decay of the absorbed photons. Statistically, the photons hitting you from the sun will have the same direction and all those little momenta will add to giving you an impulse so small that you do not stumble when you walk, unlike the wind. Friction with the ground dissipates it 🙂 back into photons. That is what is meant by bulk.
And why do you keep bringing up a laser, as synchronized polarization. No such thing in the process I’m speaking of.
Well, you were imagining a coherent propagation of the momentum coming from the molecule that had absorbed a photon when hit by a second photon, that is induced emission and in bulk it is a laser and would have a direction. As it is not a laser situation, as you agree, the bulk behavior is random statistically and the radiation pressure ( seeing all those IR photons as a front, that is what the momentum of the individual ones is) of these infrared photons is too small to have an observable effect.
anna,
Whatever the exact amount of absorption is, I was just trying to make the point that CO2 is a very important greenhouse gas – particularly the first few ten parts per million.
Steve Goddard (20:08:26)
I know what IR radiation is. Its long and shortwave radiation – for the earth, that is incoming and outgoing radiation. c02 is 2.7 and 4.3 microns (incoming shortwave) and 15 microns (longwave – outgoing). For the climate, longwave radiation is the issue, which is 6-8% of available radiation at the 15 micron peak
Phil. (21:14:09) :
anna v (12:31:24) :
Taken me too light but I’m not going further. Phil knows not of the tie to my comments weeks ago. No big deal. Thanks for your help.
(Pamela Gray 17:58:43)
Therefore, if short term extremes are missed, most assuredly, long term extremes will be missed. Why? They arise from one and the same chaotic process. Short term weather prediction is the same as long term weather prediction. Be good at it on the one hand, you will be good at it on the other hand. Otherwise you will suck at both. End of argument.
This just isn’t true and anyone who has long term forecast for more decade would know this. There are bigger players in pattern trends that gobble up the smaller areal regional extremes. Which then allows the semi permanent teleconnections to end up coming back to their preferred – accepted pattern state.
And the state of the AO this winter has not been as big a surprise as most like to suggest. Not when you considered the strong likelihood of a western based negative NAO state. Which tends to go hand and hand with a – AO.
And for the record. The reason I mentioned more than decade above deals with how one was taught early on. The CPC did not even give out official long rage forecasts when I started doing this in 1994. They were called experimental long range forecasts.
So you had to research and understand the atmospheric feedback waves by themself (which today is called the GWO), since models were unable to do this accurately from far out. So the early pioneers of this craft were not raised on model outlooks. Hence not model huggers….sort of like relying upon a calculator to do simple math. Bad habits equal bad forecasts.
P Wilson,
Infrared is longwave radiation.
“Its wavelength is longer (and the frequency lower) than that of visible light”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared
Steve Goddard (06:39:33)
Shortwave is between 0.1 and 5 microns – infrared between 0.7 and 300 microns – so there is no exact cut off between IR and shortwave – they do overlap.
Leif Svalgaard (22:05:06) :
Phil. (21:14:09) :
Here’s an atmospheric absorption spectrum, the large notch at ~700 wavenumber is due to CO2. …
That doesn’t look right. You could just be imprecise in your wording. Here is what the solar spectrum looks like at the Earth’s surface: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png
The percentages of incoming radiation absorbed by various gases look like this: http://www.leif.org/research/Erl71.png
It’s the outgoing radiation Leif not the incoming.
Phil. (12:00:50) :
Phil. (21:14:09) :
“Here’s an atmospheric absorption spectrum, the large notch at ~700 wavenumber is due to CO2. …”
Me: That doesn’t look right. You could just be imprecise in your wording.
It’s the outgoing radiation Leif not the incoming.
So the emission spectrum, not absorption spectrum …
Further to Paul Vaughan (18:28:27) & Re: Leif Svalgaard (17:41:04)
Found the paper:
Le Mouel, J.-L.; Courtillot, V; Blanter, E.; & Shnirman, M. (2008). Evidence for a solar signature in 20th-century temperature data from the USA and Europe. C. R. Geoscience xxx.
http://www.pensee-unique.fr/courtillot3.pdf
I applied the simple method to monthly aa, then found the decadal-timescale rate of change of the resulting curve.
My instinct is that something as simple as a decadal-timescale antipodal-contrast oscillation could produce a curve like the one I’ve isolated, but you’re the expert on secular variations (at the Earth end) that might survive removal efforts. Where can I find the revised aa index series you recommend? (I’m using NOAA data.) Repeating the analysis on a better series might produce valuable insight into your rationale for the adjustments.
Paul Vaughan (00:24:34) :
Le Mouel, J.-L.; Courtillot, etc
Those folks are regarded by the community as being somewhat ‘on the fringe’. Constantly looking to correlate anything with anything, with little regard for the physics or for the data quality.
The paper cited uses the high-frequency part of data from Eskdalemuir. That particular station has problems with its data, as explained in http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf (see section A4.1 para 53 ff).
Where can I find the revised aa index series you recommend? (I’m using NOAA data.) Repeating the analysis on a better series might produce valuable insight into your rationale for the adjustments.
My criticism of the aa-index relates to it long-term [secular] change [ibid section 5.3 para 34] and not to its variability. My proposed correction would make little or no difference for your type of analysis. To first order, the correction is simply to add 3 nT to all values before 1957. [ibid, Figure 14].
Paul Vaughan (00:24:34) :
Le Mouel, J.-L.; Courtillot, etc
I have to confess that I have often served as peer-reviewer on their papers [and the one you cited was rejected both by me and by the other reviewer – but then the authors just go down the list of journals to one with less stringent quality control – eventually you find one that accepts you paper].