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
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Re: that last paragraph, with the release of the IPCC AR5 leak #2 today, ya think?
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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.
——
So the old model was wrong. What part of having to discard entirely every climate model ever produced are these people not understanding?
PDO is now negative and Solar activity below average, AMO is still positive. That means only 2 out of 3 natural drivers negative was already sufficient to stop warming. 2 natural drivers negative and 1 positive is just as strong as all man made contributions combined.
Between 1980-1998, when all 3 natural drivers were positive, the same logic implies that those natural drivers have generated most of the warming.
The second to last paragraph states:
“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”.”
50% chance of going up to my mind is not a prediction of continued rise. They could just of stupidly wrote “global temperature is predicted to continue to fall, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of being below the current observed record”
But then thats not alarmism.
“And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”
Has BBC succumbed to cyclomania infection?
Why are there natural cycles?
Where do the come from?
How long do they last?
Some of the ideas are shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NV.htm
Serious formatting problems.
The parapraph under the heading “Future Forcings” is repeated, and a second copy of the paragraph headed “Blog Sucspicions” is intermingled with it, including a duplicate of the “Global Annual Temperature” graph.
Temp still flat, of course.
Love the two decimal points
“…global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
And, equally, a 50% chance of NOT exceeding the current observed record. So UKMO spends £82.3 million a year to come up with a prediction no better than a coin toss?
“…. global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record …’
Exactly the same odd as flipping a coin.
FFS!
he 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.
In other words the new model invalidates the old one, as 0.28 is already outside of the previous model minimum lower range of 0.36?
As always, the error in forecasting of their models is blamed on “natural variation”, even though they cannot explain what natural variation is responsible. With all of the natural variation data being available, they are unable to isolate and quantized the cause for a lack of warming. So, really, claiming that their long term models are still correct and that natural variation is the culprit for decadal error is no more than hand waving. And let’s not forget that Trenberth told us that AGW would easily overpower any elements of natural variation. Furthermore, if they cannot account for the effects of natural variation after the fact, it is highly doubtful that their models are complete enough to be accurately predictive.
So, they have moved from one extreme to another. The system is incompletely characterized and unwieldy. Its behavior is notably chaotic. That is to say bounded with intermediate behavior modeled as a stochastic process. It cannot legitimately be described as either “static” or constant. It is also not monotonic.
Static. What happened to “Catestrophic??
I guess we need to generate a new terminology:
“Cat-e-static”: Missing heat stored in the deep trenches of the ocean, ready to strike the moment funding is cut, to our worthless, yet essential, forecasting models.
The other issue is that they displayed only 5 years of their 10 years forecast, just as their projected curve was heading down.
I would bet that the missing 5 years show an unconvenient drop.
“It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43C 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.”
—————————————————————–
So all that is needed to avert disaster is to use a computer model that says everything is going to be okay…
I posted this last week on another track
It looks like the Met Office have changed their previous decadal forecast of 0.8C by 2020 to that shown below but their forecast for 2013 seems at the high end of their decadal forecast. They are using different base periods or averages which confuse the issue . The decadal forecast seems to say that the global temperatures will be flat but the annual forecast calls for significant or record warming in 2013 ? Confusing what?
Latest MET Office decadal forecast dated December 24,2012
Global average temperature is expected to remain between 0.28 °C and 0.59 °C (90% confidence range) above the long-term (1971-2000) average during the period 2013-2017, with values most likely to be about 0.43 °C higher than average ).
Latest MET Office annual 2013 forecast dated December20,2012
20 December 2012 – 2013 is expected to be between 0.43 °C and 0.71 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a best estimate of around 0.57 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
James Fosser said on January 8, 2013 at 1:30 pm:
Available money, of course. If it’s not there for the asking at all, then asking loudly and desperately doesn’t make it magically available, so there’s no point in issuing these loud desperate reports like the UK Met Office does, so they don’t.
Seriously, the last time the Zimbabwean Met Office pursued a funding drive to obtain a supercomputer for their forecasts, they got enough to obtain a used HP 15C. With manual.
But they had to wait until the next fiscal year to ask for batteries.
Scute says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:40 pm
No, it is not. Read the text:
See the image (fie on WordPress):
[ http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65157000/jpg/_65157024_65157023.jpg ]
According to that we’re about 0.35, so the projected range 0.28-0.59 says we could have cooling. If we go to 0.43, that’s 0.08 in 4 years, or 0.10 C° per decade.
Oops – 0.20 C° per decade.
have omitted all CAGW alarmists’ comments:
8 Jan: Daily Mail: ‘Global warming is NOT as bad as feared’: Met Office under fire as it claims Earth’s temperature is rising more slowly than first thought (and could even have stalled)
Earlier forecasts predicted a much steeper rise in global temperatures
But latest figures from Met Office show slower rise than previously warned
Figures raise questions about the true danger posed by greenhouse gasses
By Sam Webb and Lewis Smith
These figures are the latest development to pour doubt on green campaigners’ claims about danger posed by greenhouse gasses.
Dr David Whitehouse science editor of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which was set up by climate change skeptic Lord Lawson, was scathing about the Met Office u-turn.
He said: ‘We are at the point where the temperature standstill is becoming the dominant feature of the post-1980 warming, and as such cannot be dismissed as being unimportant even when viewed over 30 years.
‘It is time that the scientific community in general and the IPCC in particular acknowledged the reality of the global temperature standstill and the very real challenge it implies for our understanding of climate change and estimates of its future effects.
‘It is a demonstration that the science is not settled and that there are great uncertainties in our understanding of the real world effects of the greenhouse when effect combined with anthropogenic and natural factors.”…
But last year James Lovelock, a pioneer of the environmental movement and author of The Gaia Hypothesis, which raised questions about the dangers of global warming, unexpectedly revised his own views.
He said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.
‘That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.
‘The climate is doing its usual tricks.
‘There’s nothing much really happening yet.
‘We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.html
But, but we have been noting how inaccurate the Met office is in predicting the weather for a while now. I suppose this statement that that temps will not rise as fast as first thought will mean an inevitable world wide heatwave.
Bob Tisdale has done a great comparison of the old and new graphs.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/figure-1.gif
They are really on the ropes here. First they denied that it was static. Now they admit it was static for 20 years but still insist that AGW has been in full swing for 20 years. Well if it has been in full swing then it is clearly a very weak process because its effects are wiped out over a 20 year period by other, “less significant” (!?) factors.
Can someone please explain how “natural variability” can be enough to completely offset the increasing CO2 forcing for 2 decades, yet can’t be enough to explain the warming?
Surely, if cyclic natural effects can be enough to negate the warming effect all that CO2 “should be having”, (regardless of whether or not we know all the mechanisms) then, by definition, it can be enough to cause that warming in the first place?
Yet we’re told “it must be CO2 because it can’t be explained by natural variability”. In which case, how can natural variability explain the stand-still?
Can we now have all those “green” taxes back please.
I’ve sometimes wondered if there is some solar component (UV for just throwing out an example) that maybe heats the oceans in some way we don’t yet understand. Or maybe there is some kind of reaction to the salt water or the plankton in the water that reacts to something in the sun changing that can cause warming or cooling in some way.
Maybe these are dumb ideas… 🙂