Forecast for warming revised downward.
The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years.
It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.
The explanation is that a new kind of computer model using different parameters has been used.
The Met Office stresses that the work is experimental and that it still stands by its longer-term projections.
These forecast significant warming over the course of this century.
The forecasts are all based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000.
The earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.
This would be only slightly higher that the record year of 1998 – in which the Pacific Ocean’s El Nino effect was thought to have added more warming.
If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.
Blog suspicions
An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated.
Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centres are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening over the most recent period.
The most obvious explanation is natural variability – the cycles of changes in solar activity and the movements and temperatures of the oceans.
The forecasts are based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000A Met Office spokesman said “this definitely doesn’t mean any cooling – there’s still a long-term trend of warming compared to the 50s, 60s or 70s.
“Our forecast is still for temperatures that will be close to the record levels of the past few years.
“And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”
The fact that the revised projection was posted on the Met Office website without any notice on December 24 last year has fuelled suspicions among bloggers.
However the Met Office says the data had been published in a spirit of transparency as soon as it became available from the computer that produced it.
Future forcings
It describes the decadal projections as part of an experimental effort launched in 2004 to fill the gap between daily weather forecasts and century-long estimates for climate change.
But this is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.
One aim of attempting to project the climate on this timescale is to be able to rapidly check the accuracy of the models being used.
A paper published last month in the journal Climate Dynamics, authored by scientists from the Met Office and 12 other international research centres, combined different models to produce a forecast for the next decade.
It said: “Decadal climate prediction is immature, and uncertainties in future forcings, model responses to forcings, or initialisation shocks could easily cause large errors in forecasts.”
However the paper concluded that, “in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
Scrutiny of Met Office forecasts and climate science generally is set to increase in the build-up to the publication of the next assessment by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in September.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224
=========================================================
Re: that last paragraph, with the release of the IPCC AR5 leak #2 today, ya think?
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Philip Shehan:
Your post at January 14, 2013 at 7:11 am is – to put it as politely as possible – disingenuous.
You say
Absolutely not!
Your major claim – disputed by D Böehm and myself – has been that global warming IS accelerating.
You have peddled that lie on two threads. That is what we have been discussing.
Now you say, “I have never claimed that examination of the last 17 years shows continued acceleration. It does not.”
YES YOU DID!
Your claim has been that global warming IS accelerating: it was NOT that global warming WAS accelerating.
I could search the threads and quote your pertinent statements but it is not worth the bother (unless, of course, you choose to contend the matter).
Richard
clivebest:
re your curve-fit provided in your link at January 14, 2013 at 8:02 am.
Your curve does NOT indicate what you think because it only assesses “a natural 60 year oscillation”and attributes all other rise to caused by CO2. But if you accept the possibility of recovery from the LIA (which you do) accept, then ALL the rise could be attributed to that.
The most that can be said is that your explanation of the curve is one possible interpretation of it.
Richard
Richard,
I agree with you.
But I think it does kind of put an “upper limit” on the assumption that only AGW is occurring.
The alarmists also claim that there is built up “thermal inertia” hidden in the Oceans. I also looked at that one http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=3729. Temperatures peak at between about 2.5C above pre-industrial levels around 2200. Thereafter they relax slowly back to pre-industrail levels, just in time for the next Ice Age hits us !
clivebest:
In answer to my post at January 14, 2013 at 8:39 am, at January 14, 2013 at 10:10 am you say
Clearly, I misunderstood you, and I apologise.
If I misrepresented you then that was not my intention and I can only hope that my post resulted in your providing useful clarification. Anyway, sorry.
Richard
Shehan says:
“I have never claimed to be an expert on global warming.”
That’s for sure. Good thing, too, for someone who admittedly doesn’t even know who Ben Santer is.
Shehan has painted himself into a corner by insisting that global warming is accelerating. It is not. Even NASA/GISS and the Met Office contradict Shehan, who only has a fabricated John Cook chart as his ‘authority’.
Even though he is brand new to the global warming discussion, Shehan certainly must be aware that global warming is not accelerating. Thus, Shehan is deliberately lying about it. That is what happens to people who take the word of Pseudo-skeptical Pseudo-science: they start lying on behalf of SkS.
Noble cause corruption is still corruption.
Philip Shehan – It may be helpful to put the last few decades in a longer-term context…..
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/hologisp2.png
…..and then to put that into an even longer-term context
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SsVwqCgB-LI/AAAAAAAABKo/U92CnYMmeSU/s1600-h/Vostok-400Kd.jpg
The tiny short term temperature fluctuations that you guys are arguing about don’t seem all that significant.
FWIW, I think the temperature is likely to be at the top of a short term cycle right now …
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/amopdoustemp.jpg?w=960&h=720
(NB. This graph ends in 2000, and is CONUS only.)
… and the visible flattening of the graph over the last decade, following an earlier rise, is just what one would expect at the top of a natural cycle.
Notice how Boehm, the consumate ducker and diver, has yet again failed to explain his clearly deceptive manipulation of time-temperature graphs, one of the many questions he tells me he is “too smart” to answer.
Yet he again claims the graph appearing on the skeptical science is “fabricated.” He has claimed that it is a hand drawn cartoon. Actually it is produced by Robert Way.
[snip. Take the ad hominem attacks on Lord Monckton elsewhere. — mod.]
He is also “too smart” to explain how this graph, which shows temperature data which is the mean of 10 temperature global data sets fitted with a mathematical function, can be any more fabricated than any of the graphs of temperature data from any of these data sets or combinations thereof, or other legitimate data sets fitted by mathematical functions displayed on this site. It is decidedly less fabricated than Boehm’s own deceitfully manipulated graphs.
I realise that in Boehmworld, John Cook is the antichrist and therefore everything in skeptical science is heresy, but that does not justify callling the map fabricated or a cartoon.
But I do not have only this graph as “authority”. I have posted this one many times;
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
Mike, I have no problem whatsoever with your assertion. As I wrote earlier:
Philip Shehan says:
January 13, 2013 at 12:10 am
Thank you Werner.
I don’t at all object to your opinion that the last 160 years should be viewed in the context of the last 600,000.
What I am discussing is the authors interpretation of Figure 1 in the following paper,
Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming
M. Beenstock, Y. Reingewertz, and N. Paldor
which is the subject of a post by Mr Watts on January 3.
My comments relate to that Figure covering the period 1880 -2007.
A couple of the most obtuse individuals I have ever met on any website anywhere simply cannot comprehend that point no matter how often it is repeated.
(Graham W gets it:
Graham W says:
January 14, 2013 at 5:35 am
Philip Shehan: When drawing a straight line through the data from 1880 to 2007, compared to an exponential curve through the same data…Yes, the exponential curve fits the data better than the straight line.)
I have not said that any graph covering any other time period shows acceleration. I have not said the temperature “is” accelerating.
On the contrary:
clivebest says:
January 12, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Philip,
Using IPCC’s new interpretation of calculus – temperatures are now decelerating !!
see here….
Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 3:56 pm
clivebest, Again I don’t see any point of difference between us on the data, or the interpretation over the short time period you mention.
As I wrote earlier:
“Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 7:04 am
clivebest:
I do not disagree with much of what you write. But as I pointed out in my post to Werner it is possible to overinterpret the data by going into too fine a detail…”
Mike Jonas,
Thank you. I have posted each of those graphs on WUWT a number of times in the past. They show that there is no acceleration in global warming — the lie that Shehan keeps flogging. As Doug Huffman said today on another thread:
First ethical rule: If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud. [Huffman’s bolding]
It has been shown numerous times that the false claim that global warming is accelerating is fraudulent. Even the ultra-alarmist Joel Shore posted a graph today showing no acceleration in global warming. Shehan is the only person here perpetuating that fraud. The fact that he continues to lie about global warming “acceleration” tells us all we need to know about Shehan’s lack of ethics. Global warming is not only not accelerating, it has stopped for the past decade and a half. Lying about it will not make it magically resume.
Boehm: As the expert on fraud here, explain why you have presented this doctored graph with totally irrelevant lines flattening the data with respect to the y axis, if not to deceive people lest an undoctored version reveals that the data curves away from the linear fit at both ends?
Boehm’s graph:
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
The unadulterated version:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset
Shehan,
As I have explained to you before, your second link is the same as the first link, except for the re-scaling of the y-axis. Neither one shows any acceleration in global warming. Lying about global warming “acceleration” does not make it true.
Boehm:
Nonsense.
What is the purpose of the totally superfluous series 7 on your chart if not to place an irrelevant horizontal line at 9 units on the y axis when the entire temperature line covers only 1.2 units, if not to “squash” the temperature data so that deviations from the linear fit are also compressed and thus camouflaged.
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
It simply leaps out from the chart to any professional scientist.
Go on. Answer the question you would be asked at any scientific conference or by any journal referee:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?
Answer it, or be exposed as a fraud.
Shehan says:
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
That chart shows unequivocally that there has been no acceleration in global warming. None at all. Why does Shehan keep lying about it? Even NASA/GISS and the Met Office now admit that global warming has stalled.
Once again, Boehm refuses point blank to answer a direct question:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?
.
Shehan is avoiding the central issue as usual: there is no acceleration in the natural global warming trend. None. In fact, the natural warming trend is decelerating.
That is why the BBC has been forced to admit that global warming is ‘static’.
Where is the ‘accelerated’ global warming??
Answer: there is no such thing.
Once again, Boehm refuses point blank to answer a direct question:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?
Just to reinterate, the “anomaly” is from the long term average, not a change from the present. Saying 2017 will be +0.46 is to say almost no change from the present, which is about 0.43, IIRC. Don’t be surprised, but be very worried, if it actually begins to decline below present values, say into the +0.3x range. You won’t like cooling. It is violent and deadly.
Just to reinterate, the “anomaly” is from the long term average, not a change from the present. Saying 2017 will be +0.46 is to say almost no change from the present, which is about 0.43, IIRC. Don’t be surprised, but be very worried, if it actually begins to decline below present values, say into the +0.3x range. You won’t like cooling. It is violent and deadly.
mods- delete if dupe. WordPress is playing footsie games again.
Shehan says:
“What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?”
So long as global warming has stopped, I do not care to waste my time on “series 7 and the horizontal yellow line”. To be honest, I’ve paid no attention to it from the start, and I did not read the link since it would be a time sink. I am only interested in correcting one misconception: the provably false notion that global warming is “accelerating”.
Shehan falsely claims that global warming is accelerating. But his only ‘authority’ is the notoriously unreliable alarmist blog SkS — while the rest of us have posted numerous charts and links from many different sources, showing that there is no “acceleration” of global warming. Readers can decide for themselves who is credible regarding this question.