“…extreme heat events were roughly 20 times more likely in 2008 than in other La Niña years in the 1960s” It is this statement that has made headlines across the country. Headlines you shouldn’t believe.
Guest post submitted by Dr. Cliff Mass University of Washington
Last week the national media was full of stories about how global 
warming has made Texas heat waves TWENTY TIMES more probable. We are talking about hundreds of stories in respected national media outlets (including NY Times, Washington Post, and even the Seattle Times). These stories were all based on an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (DID HUMAN 
INFLUENCE ON CLIMATE MAKE THE 2011 TEXAS DROUGHT MORE PROBABLE? with lead authors David E. Rup and Philip W. Mote of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and some British colleagues…found here…scroll down to page 12).
The trouble is that this study is flawed and weak (and I will explain why) and its scary conclusions are insupportable. This is important story: about the hyping (past) of global warming, about poor research being published, about the media jumping on sexy, scary global warming stories. And most worrisome of all..this is not an isolated incident.
Before I go further, let me stress that I am believe that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases will cause the planet to warm significantly over the next century. The impacts could be both profound and serious. But exaggerating the impact of human-induced warming on what is happening now and in the past only serves to weaken the efforts of the meteorological community to provide information society needs to make rational decisions. If you cry wolf too many times and are proven wrong it is bad for credibility.
So lets consider the Rup/Mote et al. study. Texas had an extraordinary six-month heat wave and drought in 2011…no doubt about it. The question is whether we can ascribe this event to global warming..human or otherwise.
Now to examine this issue, the authors of this article compared temperatures and precipitation for March through August and June through August over Texas between observations (from the National Climatic Data Center) and simulations by the UK Meteorological Office’s Hadley Center Atmospheric General Circulation Model 3P (HadAM3P). This is a global atmospheric climate model typically used to simulate climate. Specially, they ran the climate model many times for the decades of 1960-1970 and 2000-2010. This is called an ensemble. Each ensemble member is started with a slightly different initial state in order to get some handle on the uncertainty of the forecast. Totals of 171, 1464, 522, and 1087 ensemble members were analyzed for 1964, 1967, 1968, and 2008, respectively. Why these used different number of ensemble members for each year is never explained. Furthermore, they selected those specific years because all were La Nina years. The idea was that La Nina/El Nino variability is an important natural sources of climate/weather change and could skew the results, so they wanted to insure that they were comparing apples to oranges. It turns out they forgot some other fruit (more later!)
The following is from figure 8 of their paper, showing a graph of temperature versus precipitation over Texas for March through August for both observations (National Climate Data Center, NCDC, 1895-2011) and the climate model (HadAM3P) ensembles for 1964 and 2008. For both observations and the model, there is a tendency for drier years to be warmer. But there are real warning signs that the climate model is out to lunch (or out to whatever climate models do when they are not doing their job!).
First, the climate model is MUCH warmer and drier than reality…and the observations included the dry/warm conditions of the 1930s. A serious bias. Furthermore, the relationship between temperature and precipitation in the model and observations are VERY different…very different slope, with the model warming up much more quickly as precipitation declines than the observations. Clearly, the model is not simulating Texas climate very well.
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| Rupp, Mote et al., Figure 8 |
With this flawed GCM simulation, the authors should have been hesitant in going further in the analysis, but they decided to use the biased/flawed modeling results to determine whether the chances of heat waves are increasing over Texas.
Their next figure shows a return time analysis of the model temperatures over Texas.
Specifically, using the collection of simulations for each of four years (1964, 1967, 1968, and 2008) they calculated the typical number of years one would have to wait until a certain mean March-August mean temperature occurs. So a mean of 25C would be expected to occur every 1-2 years in a 2008 climate and every 3-4 years for the 60s. 27C is expected to happen every 10 years for the climate of 2008 and perhaps once in 500 years (extrapolating the graph) for a 60s climate.
Furthermore, 100-yr return period MAMJJA and JJA heat events under 1964 conditions (roughly 26.5C) had only 5- and 6-yr return periods, respectively, under 2008 conditions. It is this graph that was the basis of their statement:
“extreme heat events were roughly 20 times more likely in 2008 than in other La Niña years in the 1960s”
It is this statement that has made headlines across the country. Headlines you shouldn’t believe.
Let me explain why.
Now I already have shown you that the model “climate” was way too warm and dry, and its simulated relationship between temperature and precipitation was all wrong. But it is worst than that. Looking at their figure, you can see the average model temperatures (March-August) in 1964 (blue circles) are roughly 24.5C, while the model 2008 temperatures (red circles) are approximately 26.25C…so about 1.75C warmer (give or take .25C for my reading of the graph). (This kind of information SHOULD have been explicitly stated in the paper).
So what is really happening in Texas? How correct was the model? Mark Albright of the University of Washington acquired and plotted the NCDC observations over Texas and plotted the average Texas temperatures for March-June, and July-August (see below) for 1895-2011. In March through May there is a weak upward trend (perhaps .5F, .3C) over the entire period. The trend over June to August is much less. The second figure also shows how anomalous 2011 was…it was an extreme year that was completely outside the envelope of variability of the previous decades. There is no trend consistent with global warming…which slowly increased starting the mid-70s.
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| March-May |
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| June-August |
The bottom line: the actual observations show the temperatures over Texas have warmed by a perhaps a few tenths of a degree C since the mid-1960s, while the GCM model used by Rupp/Mote et al had major warming (1.5-2 C). Clearly, one can not trust the model and the conclusions reached in this paper are unsupportable.
And folks it is even worse than this. There are other modes of natural variability in the atmosphere, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The AMO, which is associated with the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, has a substantial impact on the weather of eastern N. America., including heat waves and droughts. During the mid to late1960s this cycle was in the negative (cool) phase, while in the 2000s it has been in the warm phase (associated with heat waves and droughts over the Midwest)–see graph.
Thus, the authors picked dates that would maximize the warming signal associated with natural variability, irrespective of global warming.
Moral of this Sad Story
This situation is so disappointing on so many levels. It is disappointing the peer review process has allowed this paper to be published in a well known and prestigious journal. I have learned from personal experience that articles noting major global warming effects fly through the review process with only cursory examination, while papers with a more nuanced view of the issue are given a hard time.
It is disappointing that the media distributed these results so widely…with headlines…throughout the nation and world. The faults noted above were easy to find…it appears that media folks don’t evaluate the materials they headline when it comes to science. Sometimes the media go wacky based on materials that are not even published in peer-review journals or are made available in press releases. They need to act more responsibly and secure the resources (e.g., trained science journalists) that have the time to insure the rigor of the materials they spotlight.
This is only one if series of weak global warming scare articles. My own sensitivity to the issue came five years ago when certain folks (including a coauthor of the Texas article) were hyping that global warming was resulting in the rapid loss of the Cascade snowpack (which has not declined in 30 years by the way). These folks think they are doing society a favor by hyping global warming impacts now and in the past. They aren’t. Most of the impacts of global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases are in the future and society will not believe us if you cry wolf now.
This work will only hammer the credibility of the scientific community at a time when society needs to be taking global warming seriously.
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Cliff Mass is a professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington, as well as a frequent television and radio commentator. While we are sometimes on opposite sides of the issue, I have great respect for his work, and I’m honored that he asked for his essay to be published here. Please bookmark his blog Cliff Mass Weather – Anthony
Related articles
- 2011 Texas drought was 20 times more likely due to warming, study says – msnbc.com (blog) (usnews.msnbc.msn.com)
- Global Warming Makes Heat Waves More Likely, Study Finds (nytimes.com)
One thing we can be happy about: the article is open access. And the return tie prediction of 5-6 years is (sort of testable). Though if there is a lot of autocorrelation in the Texas temperature record that might be difficult to test (sic?).
vukcevic says:
July 16, 2012 at 12:57 am
If the AMO is a major factor in the Texas temps, I suggest to keep an eye on the far north Atlantic atmospheric pressure. It is just about to cross into negative territory (see second link below) indicating rapid cooling in the SST in the forthcoming 2-3 decades.
It is a natural oscillation, poorly understood, I’ve done some work but for the moment no interest, the CO2 has favor with academia and the like.
You can find more what is in store for the future of the AMO :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAOn.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAO-SST-ea.htm
Vuk,
From your diagram it would appear that in the AMO negative phase the Hadley cells reduce and the Ferrel cells now run a lot further South. Is that correct?
There are a number of simple typos and simple grammatical errors with words like “the” and “a” left out. Sadly, most are at the beginning and end of the article. Makes it too easy for some to dismiss or not even read since they can just say the person can’t even write correct sentences. Take a few minutes and edit those if you can.
Dr Tim Ball has a pretty interesting theory concerning this year’s heat waves/cold snaps:
http://drtimball.com/2012/current-global-weather-patterns-normal-despite-government-and-media-distortions/
Cold PDO warm AMO supports warmth now like in the 1950s, Have been screaming this message actually on Fox for several years, that the globe starts cooling overall but the south has real problems as the cold PDO causes much less influence of tropical pacific moisture, until atlantic cools. Its why Obama flat out lied last year, given global temps cooling give the dry hot signal for a time when the reversal starts as in the 50s. Texas had been wet during the ramp up of the PDO and then AMO the previous 25 years.
What is amazing to me is people with PHD’s like McKibben, Mann, Cullen, Hansen, Hayhoe, Dessler, North make statements like they do and OBVIOUSLY COULD NOT HAVE LOOKED OR TRULY STUDIED PAST WEATHER AND CLIMATE CYCLE THEORY. They only look at what they look at. How did they defend their phd dissertation, because they sure cant defend this given the knowns of previous cyclical driven events, and what they are saying now. Then they run to the cloak of natural variability how stupid is that? Does that mean if not for their co2 madness we would be in an ice age. And Hansen and his super nino forecasts actually is admitting IT IS THE OCEANS since he knows a warming in the tropical pacific will add energy and heat to the global
picture. So how can he not understand the warm pdo has more enso warm events, and accounts for warming until a balance is reached, then the earths temperature levels off, and now should fall. Simple test, and in any case its way below his trumped up numbers. And the media is vapid. Astounding how they simply buy into it as if nothing is every a challenge
Irene a sign of global warming? 8 majors on the east coast in the 1950s. Hottest ever? Des Moines finally TIED a record in July, it still has not broken one since the 1950s. LGA July 3, 1966 106 for a high , 89 for a low ( before the buildup that made it a famous hot spot relative to areas around it today) Massachusetts state high ONE HUNDRED IN SEVEN… AUG 2 1975.
one can cherry pick for eternity because the orchard is loaded with easy to research examples countering their claims, yet either they are lazy, or know and choose to lie!
I will remind I was on national tv talking about all this with the PDO flip back in 08, and in Sept 10 on FBN, and again in Dec 10, said 2011 would feature a major drought in the southern plains BECAUSE IT LOOKED LIKE THE 1950S, 1954 to be specific. I now that sounds like its tooting my own horn, and I am partly because I cant believe these people have the gall to actually say what they say. Its like they have no ethics, they simply spout out non facts as if they believe their precious ideas allow them to tell all the lies they want, because they know they are right.
THEY TELL US AFTER WHAT HAPPENED ITS BECAUSE OF WHAT THEY SAID IT IS, AND YET WONT MAKE A SPECIFIC FORECAST FOR ANY PERIOD. Their forecast for global temps is busting horribly since the leveling and now slow fall has begun
http://policlimate.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2011.png
btw NCEP is not a right wing think tank. That is their chart
When one has loved the weather since their first memory, its vastly different to someone who comes along, adopts an agenda, and then uses the weather as a way to further it. In a way, its like they are climate pimps, using the weather for their own needs, Its no different than other immoral practices in history where a belief in the ends, justified the means, and shows the rise of soft tyranny in science..as well as in many other things in our country
And while I am attic, it is them, not us, who are the people whose ethical stances should be questioned, given starving people in our nation, and an economy and way of life they seek to handcuff and control
note the spell check changed at it to attic, you get the message. Very frustrating sometime with the auto pilots put on these systems
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rgb “has anyone noticed that there has been an absolute barrage of questionable articles of exactly this sort recently? It’s a bit odd.”
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Gearing up for the Nov election.
Your current analysis of drought is spot on.
BUT!
As a scientist, you must expunge yourself of all notions related to encouraging public advocacy of “rational decisions” regarding future weather and climate warming. The hypothesis has yet to be proven. Any words you use to the affect that public policy needs to address future catastrophy…
“But exaggerating the impact of human-induced warming on what is happening now and in the past only serves to weaken the efforts of the meteorological community to provide information society needs to make rational decisions.”
…leaves your scientific endeavors in virtual fine print while bolding the “sky is falling” quote above, the very thing you wish others would not do.
S.S.D.D. – This is more of the same junk science as Kevin Trenberth’s 2007 Scientific American article claiming that AGW would produce more frequent and more powerful hurricanes (the opposite of which has happened) To refresh everyone’s memory of this Trenberthsty:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=warmer-oceans-stronger-hurricanes
If you haven’t already cancelled your subscriptions to Sci-Am, do it now.
It’s a good point that one can see the inadequacy of the models from the paper’s own data. However, an even stronger conclusion is well justified: there is no evidence that ANY GCM has skill at the regional level; see R. Pielke Sr.’s blog.
“let me stress that I am believe that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases will cause the planet to warm significantly over the next century.”
I’d be interested if you would post your reasons for this belief (specifically what exactly you mean by ‘warm significantly’) and any supporting evidence you have.
terrarious says:
July 16, 2012 at 3:11 am
rgb “has anyone noticed that there has been an absolute barrage of questionable articles of exactly this sort recently? It’s a bit odd.”
Since I too noticed that Australia is copping a similar barrage, I questioned whether these events are part of a far bigger plan, than to be just random publicity by individuals.
Of course it is. It’s about saving the worlds resources for the super rich.
From the AMetSoc paper:
… explaining the causes of specific extreme events in near-real time is severely stretching the current state of the science …
I think it’s been stretched so far it broke.
“Worse” is the comparitive. “Bad”, “worse”, “worst” and “good”, “better”, “best”. Modify the comparitive with “much” or “a little” or “slightly” etc if you like. 😉
“This work will only hammer the credibility of the scientific community at a time when society needs to be taking global warming seriously.”
Good comment, IF global warming were about intellect rather than emotion.
It is not necessary to be right to secure funding and legislation. It is only necessary to convince the money-holders that it is the right thing to do. Which might be an altruistic move or it might be a politically expedient move. Doesn’t matter to the thing getting approval, though a political expediency is easier to undo than one based in purported altruism.
The recent (WUWT) reported poll of Americans’ thoughts about climate change/global warming showed that not much had changed since 2006. People were still waiting to see solid evidence that significant changes were occurring and that they were firmly attached to man’s CO2 output. But people were also still willing to put some TAX dollars towards reducing man’s impact on the environment. Papers like this one will be cited as support that what we are seeing is outside the “normal” envelope, but we really need a series of them to be convincing enough for people to want to open their wallets.
The time for skeptics to worry is when the average Joe wants to spend more of his after-tax dollar on “saving the planet” (and making Al Gore richer). What we really need is for Archibald and Svensmark to be proven right with a couple of years of temperatures going down. By their calculations, this should be happening by 2015, given that there is some lag in cause-and-effect.
Until then debunking like here is essential.
Journalists don’t start off cynical and opportunistic, and don’t always end up that way. They are also sensitive to climbing aboard the wrong bus (in the beginning, before the story is working for them). So there will be those that read (and perhaps report on) the alarming “new” story and then look for the rebuttal … and remember.
At the same time, if the global temperatures don’t start to drop soon, the best we can say as skeptics is that the sensitivity of the world to CO2 is less than that said by the IPCC. The Precautionary Principle will be relevant. In order for the real impact of the eco-green to be avoided, we really need a cooling phase to indicate that nature has the upper hand – and has had it for the last 50 years. And we need it to begin in some populated area, (continue) in Antarctica.
2015, and counting.
We’re in the middle of a brutal heat wave here in Kansas City and so far this year ranks #8 for the hottest summer on record. The hottest summer is 1934, the second hottest is 1936. The third is 1954 (or ’56).
So our hottest summer on record has nothing to do with greenhouse gases, or AGW. It seems to me the 1930’s were pretty dry years, too, which also had nothing to do with AGW.
Jerker Andersson says:
July 16, 2012 at 1:42 am
“If I am not wrong 17 or 30 years is the minimum time that has to be used in order to claim it is climate (and) not weather.”
These numbers (17 & 30) have been used but are meaningless. I think the “17” thing is someone’s idea of minimum necessary years for relevancy in a statistical application. I remember seeing this sense-of-use but did not tag it. Maybe someone did and can post it. The “30” is simply a convention selected for calculating weather related averages, comparing observations to, and calling it “normal” rather than just an “average.” This selection (of 30) was meant to give an adult a numerical marker based on experience from post-child to young adulthood. The 30 year periods have ended in a year with ‘0’, so starting in say 1961 and ending in 1990. Now 1981 to 2010 is used. Examples are here (see left side):
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?id6152
Bill
Could you please explain the physics of how a greenhouse gas, that is .0004 of the atmosphere, which has 1/1000th of the heat capacity of the ocean which supplies the vast majority of the major greenhouse gas, water vapor, which is 400 times that of co2, is going to warm the system. When one takes into account that mans contribution to global co2 according to DOE is only 3-5% which means mans contribution is .00002 to the entire system, and that even TERMITES contribute 2.5 that times of man, it seems a fools errand to go after co2. That is not to say true pollutants should not be looked.
But given this chart, how can co2 be anything more than coincidental in this matter. Please again, could we use more than just “you believe” can you justify how a hang nail ( co2) would be the cause of obesity ( the rise in global temps)
In addition it has a specfic gravity of 1.5 that of air, heats and cools faster than air, and has different radiative property.
We all await the proof, given the actual data
please have a look at this
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/overlayco2.png
and actual temps since PDO flip
http://policlimate.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2011.png
Lissen up to the early bird @ur momisugly 4:18 AM. There is the worm.
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Joe, we are all attic now.
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John F. Hultquist says:
July 16, 2012 at 8:03 am
I think the “17” thing is someone’s idea of minimum necessary years for relevancy in a statistical application. I remember seeing this sense-of-use but did not tag it. Maybe someone did and can post it.
Is this what you were looking for:
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2011/Nov/NR-11-11-03.html
“LIVERMORE, Calif. — In order to separate human-caused global warming from the “noise” of purely natural climate fluctuations, temperature records must be at least 17 years long, according to climate scientists.”
I could be wrong here, but I think the 17 years has something to do with the fact that both RSS and hadsst2 show 15.5 years of no temperature change. I do not recall reading about the 17 years until we were close to the 15 year mark of no change. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/trend
Climate Central’s “TV Mets” program to deliver “Meals, ready to eat” for cash starved media outlets would have a lot of appeal.
Talking Head-flavored MREs?
At least it’s appropriate: “Meals,ready to eat” — two lies for the price of one…
If they continue to release junk “science” reports at this frequency and calibre, there will be no need to release any further CRU emails. The “fat lady” will have already sung, and the “comical Ali” version of climate science will be relegated to history, to be discussed over a glass of wine or two to the theme of, how stupid could they be thinking they could get away with this tripe!
Do we need more evidence of the personal fortitude of George Bush who saved the country from the scourge Warmanism? Like the lone Chinaman facing the tanks in Tiananmen Square with nothing but courage in his heart, will to do right and the principles to oppose the mindless conformity of the Climatists, Bush stood up to the UN, dead and dying Old Europe, a biased media, the superstitious crowd and all of the Leftist purveyors of fear in academia.
Joseph Bastardi said: July 16, 2012 at 8:03 am
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Why are you asking Bill to explain anything? I don’t believe he (or any of them) made a CO2 claim.
I think you’d benefit from revisiting the science of natural carbon cycles because it appears you don’t understand them – maybe someone has a special cycle example on the carbon life of termites … perhaps you’d come to grips with the fact that the human activity of digging-up millions-and-millions of years worth of sequestered carbon deposits and combusting them into the atmosphere is not part of the natural cycle and throws off the natural balance. I find most of your CO2 commentary specious, not reflect well on you.