The Rest of the Cherries: 140 decades of Climate Models vs. Observations
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Since one of the criticisms of our recent Remote Sensing paper was that we cherry-picked the climate models we chose to compare the satellite observations of climate variations to, here are all 140 10-year periods from all 14 climate models’ 20th Century runs we analyzed (click to see the full res. version):
As you can see, the observations of the Earth (in blue, CERES radiative energy budget versus HadCRUT3 surface temperature variations) are outside the range of climate model behavior, at least over the span of time lags we believe are most related to feedbacks, which in turn determine the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. (See Lindzen & Choi, 2011 for more about time lags).
Now, at ZERO time lag, there are a few decades from a few models (less than 10% of them) which exceed the satellite measurements. So, would you then say that the satellite measurements are “not inconsistent” with the models? I wouldn’t.
Especially since the IPCC’s best estimate of future warming (about 3 deg C.) from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is almost exactly the AVERAGE response of ALL of the climate models. Note that the average of all 140 model decades (dashed black line in the above graph) is pretty darn far from the satellite data.
So, even with all of 140 cherries picked, we still see evidence there is something wrong with the IPCC models in general. And I believe the problem is they are too sensitive, and thus are predicting too much future global warming.
David and Leo,
Thanks for your replies. Now there is criticism of Spener’s “one-layer ocean model”. Am I right in thinking that Spencer is not trying to duplicate the IPCC climate models, but he is showing how far off the models are in relation to Spencer’s observations?
DCA;
Pretty much. CERES is an experiment to measure a number of things including outbound LW radiation from earth. What he’s done ought not to be that hard to understand. The blue line in the graph above represents the actual LW escaping from earth. The spaghetti what the models themselves predict, and the black line is their average. Since the models under estimate the amount of energy lost to space, they by default over estimate the termperature of the earth both now and in the future.
That’s the end of the argument if you think about it.
WHY this happens to be true is more complicated. Crticisms like “he’s just modeling ENSO” or “he’s used a one layer model” are all silly when you get right down to it. If the theory is that CO2 retains LW that would otherwise escape to space.mo model is going to get it right if their assumptions are wrong.
davidmhoffer says: @ur momisugly September 27, 2011 at 8:49 am
“DCA;
Pretty much. CERES is an experiment to measure a number of things including outbound LW radiation from earth. What he’s done ought not to be that hard to understand. The blue line in the graph above represents the actual LW escaping from earth. The spaghetti what the models themselves predict, and the black line is their average. Since the models under estimate the amount of energy lost to space, they by default over estimate the temperature of the earth both now and in the future.
That’s the end of the argument if you think about it….”
Very nicely explained.
It also takes care of the question of Trenberth’s missing heat that is not shown by the ARGO buoys.
That makes not one but two pieces of experimental data that disprove the climate models.