Guest post by Dr. Tim Ball
In a comment on the WUWT article about the abject failure of UKMO weather forecasts, “Slingo Pretends She Knows Why It’s Been So Wet!”, Doug Huffman wrote, “Each forecast must be accompanied by the appropriate retro-cast record of previous casts” (January 6, 2013 at 7:06 am). I pointed out years ago that Environment Canada (EC) publishes such information. They expose a similar horrendous story of absolute failure. This likely indicates why it is not done by others, but provides adequate justification for significantly reducing the role of the agency.
Both EC and UKMO predictions fail. The failure parallels Richard Feynman’s comment.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
If your prediction (forecast) is wrong; your science is wrong. Unlike the IPCC, they cannot avoid the problem by calling them projections, not predictions. They can and do avoid accountability.
Initially I thought EC was admirable for publishing results. Now I realize it only shows arrogance and sense of unaccountability: we fail, but you must listen, act, and keep paying. It underscores the hypocrisy of what they do. More important, it shows why they and all national weather agencies must be proscribed. It is time to reduce all national weather offices to data collection agencies. When bureaucrats do research it is political by default. The objective rapidly becomes job preservation; perpetuate and expand rather than solve the problem.
EC is a prime example of why Maurice Strong set up the IPCC through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and member national weather agencies. EC participated and actively promoted the failed work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from the start. An Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM) of EC chaired the founding meeting of the IPCC in Villach Austria in 1985. It continues, as they sent a large delegation to the recent Doha conference on climate change. Their web site promotes IPCC work as the basis for all policy on energy and environment. They brag about their role as a world class regulator. All this despite the fact their own evidence shows the complete inadequacy of their work.
They display their failures on maps. Pick any map or period and it shows how a coin toss would achieve better or at least comparable results. Here is their caption for the maps.
” The upper panel shows the seasonal air temperature or precipitation anomaly forecasts. The forecast are presented in 3 categories: below normal, near normal and above normal. The lower panel illustrates the skill (percent correct) associated to the forecast.”
The maps are for temperature and precipitation for 12, 6 and 1-3 months.
Everyone knows that regional weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable, especially beyond 48 hours. This fact weakened the credibility of the IPCC predictions with the public from the start. Some supporters of the IPCC position tried to counteract the problem by saying that climate forecasts were different from weather forecasts. It is a false argument. Climate is the average of the weather, so if the weather science is wrong the climate science is wrong.
Some experts acknowledge that regional climate forecasts are no better than short term weather forecasts. New Scientist reports that Tim Palmer, a leading climate modeler at the European Centre for Medium – Range Weather Forecasts in Reading England saying, “I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.” In an attempt to claim some benefit, we’re told, “…he does not doubt that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done a good job alerting the world to the problem of global climate change. But he and his fellow climate scientists are acutely aware that the IPCC’s predictions of how the global change will affect local climates are little more than guesswork. The IPCC have deliberately misled the world about the nature, cause and threat of climate change and deceived about the accuracy of their predictions (projections), for a political agenda.
Some claim the failures are due to limited computer capacity. It makes no difference. The real problems are inadequate data, lack of understanding of most major mechanisms, incorrect assumptions, and a determination to prove instead of falsify the AGW hypothesis.
Einstein’s definition, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” applies. However, EC do the same thing over and over with results that indicate failure yet fail to make adjustments as the scientific method requires. What is more amazing and unacceptable is they use public money, are essentially unaccountable yet demand the public and politicians change their energy and economic policies. On their web site, they state; “The Government of Canada supports an aggressive approach to climate change that achieves real environmental and economic benefits for all Canadians.” They could begin by reducing EC to data collection. Their failures are more than enough to justify termination in any other endeavour. Another is their involvement and political promotion of well documented IPCC corruption.
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oldfossil:
At January 9, 2013 at 9:53 am you write
If you “liked Richard Telford’s suggested solution” then your dabbling was inadequate and you failed to read my explanation (at January 8, 2013 at 4:32 am) of why Telford’s nonsense it is NOT a solution.
Please note that Telford mentioned but evaded addressing my rebuttal (at January 8, 2013 at 4:32 am) of his nonsense.
Richard
Joel: “Do you think that the problem of determining the seasonal cycle is also an initial value problem? ”
Me: Yes it is if you use a climate model! Please look at the differential equations, Joel!! If you are not qualified to do that, please let us know. It really demonstrates that you know very little about basic mathematical physics and numerical methods.
Now, you do have external solar/planetary boundary conditions that will ensure that a time-marched numerical solution will behave “something like” the four seasons. But there is NO demonstrated predictive skill with the current crop of models for getting the magnitude and spatial variations of the climate right even a few years after being initialized. Then there are the numerical issues of error growth and nonlinear instability…
Joel: “What evidence do you have to support your view in light of the evidence to the contrary, i.e., the evidence I have talked about above that the predictions that the models make for future warming are not sensitive to the initial conditions (whereas the predictions of the weather, say, a few weeks out or of the climate fluctuations over the next few years are seen to be sensitive to these initial conditions)?”
You can certainly develop a simplified numerical model of the ocean and atmosphere that shows little sensitivity to initial conditions. That doesn’t make it a boundary value problem, because a boundary value problem in time assumes that you know the future, and you don’t – ESPECIALLY AT THE LAND AND OCEAN BOUNDARIES!
By the way, if the solutions are insensitive to initial conditions, why don’t you ask your modeling friends to initialize their models with an atmospheric temperature of 50 K. Or 5000 K. Let’s see how that goes…
Joel: “I am really puzzled why these simple notions are so controversial to you guys. It is not as if saying that the predictions are not extremely sensitive to initial conditions means that the predictions are necessarily accurate. It just means that the response is not inherently unpredictable in the way that things that depend sensitively on the initial conditions are.”
Me: It is my contention that if the models do not represent the system accurately (through poor numerics and/or physical modeling), then the solutions are of little use (outside of being pure money-wasting academic exercises). I’m glad you admit here that the predictions are not accurate.
Again – My thesis still holds (regardless of Joel Shore’s protests) – namely, that the current climate models are formulated and solved as initial value problems. If they are or aren’t sensitive to initial conditions depends on the models/numerical formulations in question.
For those who would like to look at the governing equations for a typical climate model, please see this (very good!) documentation for the CAM5 model from NCAR:
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/cesm1.1/cam/docs/…/cam5_desc.pdf
There’s even a whole section on initial conditions (just for Joel Shore :)!
(This is in stark contrast to the ridiculously inadequate documentation of codes like NASA/GISS Model E).
When modeling weather or climate, “initial conditions” do not only exist in the model’s first iteration. Each subsequent iteration essentially re-initializes using the prior results as the new initial condition. Any inaccuracy in initial conditions is thus propagated forward with a compounding effect. That is why models become progressively less accurate over time until they are no more accurate than a random walk. All models function within the preset constraints of the model’s boundary conditions. Not all “boundary conditions” are created equal. Some like The Second Law have a very low degree of freedom. Others, like albedo, lapse rates, clouds, ocean heat capacity are educated guesses at best (biased towards positive feedback) with substantial error bars. Thus weather and climate models can be ‘tuned’ to backcast beautifully, and yet lose any meaningful predictive value as the number of models runs pile up over time. If error propagation were random, the compounding effect would offset by self-canceling members within the set, and your model ensembles might be accurate for a pretty good long run. Not surprisingly, in climate models the output errors are predominantly in direction of increasing temperature because the models are built to presume this result. The ‘tipping points’ or ‘runaway warming’ scenarios in these models merely reflect compounded error propagation in the positive direction. Once the scenario appears sufficiently catastrophic, its time to turn off the computer and declare victory.
Frank K. says:
The question in regard to chaotic behavior is how the system behaves for SMALL perturbations to the initial conditions, not arbitarily large ones. Systems that are not chaotic can still have multiple basins of attraction (and hence hysteresis) or even regions of instability.
That is not what I said. I said: “It is not as if saying that the predictions are not extremely sensitive to initial conditions means that the predictions are necessarily accurate.” My point is simply that one could still claim that the models’ predictions of future warming are inaccurate without clinging to the incorrect and demonstrably wrong notion that the predictions of this future warming shows extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. I did not say this claim of inaccuracy would be correct…but it would at least have the virtue of being not so obviously wrong. The problem with the “AGW skeptic” movement is that there often seems to be the strategy of throwing as much mud as possible and hoping that some of it sticks, rather than actually picking your battles, restricting arguments to issues where there is at least some genuine uncertainty, to at least maintain some credibility.
And, here lies the gist of the whole disagreement: Yes, the models take initial conditions but the point is that some things are very sensitive to those initial conditions and other things are not but are instead sensitive to the “boundary values”, i.e., the radiative forcings. And, it is easy to see which is which simply by experimenting with the model. The seasonal cycle and the response of the climate system over multidecadal scales to increases in greenhouse gases are two things that are not very sensitive to the initial conditions.
Look, there is plenty of discussion of this both on blogs of actual climate scientists ( http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=1257 ) and in the scientific literature ( http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~mat/predict/ic.pdf ). That latter paper is particularly nice because it deals with the fact that there are some questions about climate (such as the evolution of climate on time scales of months to a few years, e.g., ENSO and the like) that are dominated by the initial conditions and there are other questions (like the evolution of climate in response to a significant change in greenhouse gas concentrations) that are not but are instead dominated by the boundary conditions (i.e., the radiative forcing).
“My point is simply that one could still claim that the models predictions of future warming are inaccurate without clinging to the incorrect and demonstrably wrong notion that the predictions of this future warming shows extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.”
OK. To summarize Joel – it may be true that future predictions of “warming” using a particular climate model may be insensitive to the initial conditions. I can agree with that. However, the amount of warming (or cooling) may be quite inaccurate. I agree with that as well. It is the latter that disturbs me the most about warmists’ fanatical insistence and certainty on catastrophic global warming.
And it’s unfortunate that Collins, in the paper you link to above, repeats the misnomer “boundary value problem” to describe Lorenz’s predictability problem of the second kind (Lorenz never uses the term “boundary value problem” in his 1975 report).
And, so – again – my thesis stands, namely that climate models, as formulated, are solved as INITIAL VALUE PROBLEMS. It is mathematically incorrect to state otherwise.
joeldshore says:
January 9, 2013 at 12:07 pm
“No…The models are not verified in terms of what they models show”
“And, the answer is that certain things do show such sensitivity to the initial conditions and other things (like the seasonal cycle or the basic global temperature response of the climate over long enough periods of time to a significant radiative forcing due to increasing greenhouse gases) do not show such sensitivity.”
================================
Let me see if I understand you: When a climate model incorporates AGW theory into a properly conceived set of algorithms, the model demonstrates the premise that anthropogenic CO2 contributes to warming. Is this what you mean to say?
Richard;
Thx for those posts. The “boundary problem” argument indeed assumes the mechanisms are given, known. No “boundary” analysis will either reveal or test them.
Frank, you keep mangling the link. I did a Bing search and found the paper. Note you can paste the link directly into WordPress, the comments here, without having to fiddle with html tags:
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/cesm1.0/cam/docs/description/cam5_desc.pdf
Frank K. says:
Nobody has claimed that the models are not run by starting them with certain initial conditions. The point is that certain things turn out not to be very sensitive to those initial conditions and hence the claim that the effect of changes in radiative forcings can’t be predicted for the same reason that you can’t predict the weather weeks in advance (or can’t predict if this particular spring will be above or below average in some particular region) is incorrect. That is what people mean when they say it is a boundary-value problem: that the results are dominated by the radiative forcings.
mpainter says:
First of all, I think it is a mischaracterization to say that the models are incorporating “AGW theory”. They are simply incorporating the known laws of radiative physics and the known radiative properties of components of the atmosphere such as CO2. But, the larger point is that we are not talking about demonstrating or not demonstrating that premise. What we are talking about is addressing the question of whether or not the predictions that the models make regarding the effect of increases in greenhouse gases are or are not very sensitive to the initial conditions. And, the answer, verified by actually perturbing the initial conditions a little bit in the model and running it again, are that the basic predictions are not sensitive to the initial conditions.
garymount says:
January 11, 2013 at 2:20 am
Hi garymount – I have checked my html for my last several entries and they have been correct, but somehow it gets mangled by wordpress. Glad you were able to find the link.
Brian H says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:54 pm
“Thx for those posts. The boundary problem argument indeed assumes the mechanisms are given, known. No boundary analysis will either reveal or test them.”
Yes – for some bizarre reason, people Richard Telford and Joel Shore insist on the misnomer “boundary value problem” when the governing differential equations, as documented by the code authors themselves, reveal otherwise. Unfortunately, this mischaracterization is rife in some of the climate literature, but I suppose they feel free to make up names even if they’re wrong.
Joel Shore @ur momisugly 4:55 am
======================
You risk appearing as deliberately evasive. So let’s get to the point I raised.
I note your claim that the AGW theory is not incorporated into the GCM’s. Those of the climate modeling confraternity might be surprised to learn that.
For the record, please re-iterate that claim.
Environment Canada supplies the raw weather data to The Weather Network to use in their various media presentations. One thing that has always annoyed me about their presentations is their excessive use of the term ‘NORMAL’ as in degrees above or below normal. Normal is merely that day’s average temperature from the years where and if accurate records exists. As Anthony has pointed out, the temperature record has been tortured with more than enough revision and often with a particular goal in mind that its effective use has become somewhat subjective. The use of the word ‘normal’ has become a distraction and a prop in an attempt to sometimes show trends where none exist.
“That is what people mean when they say it is a boundary-value problem: that the results are dominated by the radiative forcings.”
This is incorrect terminology (from a strict mathematical definition) and it is unfortunate that some in the climate science community have adopted it. Moreover, the results of certain models may be dominated by radiative forcings, but that is only because the models have been formulated that way.
Again – all GCMs are solved as INITIAL VALUE PROBLEMS. To suggest otherwise is clearly incorrect (or an attempt to be deliberately misleading). [sigh]
mpainter says:
I think I stated what I meant clearly in that original post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/08/wrong-prediction-wrong-science-unless-its-government-climate-science/#comment-1195400 and don’t know how to state it more clearly. There is no special “AGW theory” to incorporate into the climate models. They simply incorporate what is known regarding the radiative behavior of greenhouse gases (and aerosols and …) and the laws of radiative transfer…and, of course, laws of convective transport and the like. (And, there are, of course, various approximations and parametrizations, most notably involving clouds, since these can’t be well-resolved at the resolution of the models.)
That increases in greenhouse gases lead to significant warming is a prediction of the models, that is, it is something that emerges from the models given the physics that goes into them.
Frank K. says:
Fine…Maybe it is slightly sloppy from a strict mathematical point-of-view. But, it makes the important point which has to be made, which is that there is a difference in what aspects of the problem dominate the results when you look at different things. For the seasonal cycle and the long-term response to increases in greenhouse gases, the boundary conditions dominate…and there is not great sensitivity of this to initial conditions. Therefore, statements like “We can’t predict the weather 2 weeks in advance, how can we possibly predict what happens to the climate a century from now?” or “We can’t predict whether this spring will be cooler or warmer than average in some regions, so how can we possibly predict what happens to the climate a century from now?” are misleading because they ignore this difference.
What does that mean? Are you saying that you think that the Earth’s climate is insensitive to the (top-of-the-atmosphere) radiative forcings?
“Fine. Maybe it is slightly sloppy from a strict mathematical point-of-view. But, it makes the important point which has to be made, which is that there is a difference in what aspects of the problem dominate the results when you look at different things.”
I’m glad, Joel, that you finally wish to use the correct terminology (and no it is NOT “slightly sloppy” – it is flat out wrong). Of course, mangling correct mathematical terminology in a sloppy manner like this is not unknown to climate science.
And, yes, boundary conditions can dominate an initial value problem if you formulate them to do so. You still need to prescribe the boundary conditions as functions of time, however. Some are well known (such as incoming solar radiation which controls the seasonal cycles) – and some not so much (albedo, surface absorption, cloud processes, interaction with the biosphere, etc.). Albedo, for example, is a function of the solution (and hence an unknown function of time).
“What does that mean? Are you saying that you think that the Earth’s climate is insensitive to the (top-of-the-atmosphere) radiative forcings?”
No, but the interaction of the greenhouse effect with other processes (clouds, atmospheric dynamics, ocean circulation) is not so simple, such that the formulation and coupling of these various processes in the GCM will have a definite impact on the solutions, and more importantly the magnitude of the response of, say, global SAT (among other parameters) to increases in CO2. And this has everything to do with models predicting a small amount of warming versus catastrophic warming. And catastrophic global warming is what the misguided (and highly compensated) scientists like Hansen and Trenberth are trying to peddle, like snake oil, to our society.
mpainter says:
January 8, 2013 at 10:51 am
Tim Ball says: January 8, 2013 at 9:23 am
The important difference between the two sectors is accountability
==========================
mpainter says: With your finger you have touched the nub of the problem. Even elected officials are not held fully accountable.
====================================================
Me: I’m reminded of what Al Gore said when he was caught violating campaign laws by (I think it was) making fund raising calls from the White House phone, “There was no controlling legal authority.”
Whatever political leanings you may have and if the candidate leans the same way, only vote for those who have their own internal “legal authority”. Integrity matters.
joeldshore says:
January 11, 2013 at 12:01 pm
There is no special “AGW theory” to incorporate into the climate models.
================================
But in fact, climate models are AGW theory elaborated into algorithms.
Frank K.:
Thankyou for your excellent post at January 11, 2013 at 1:03 pm which details the issue I have repeatedly stated in this thread first at January 8, 2013 at 4:32 am.
To provide emphasis to them, I copy this selection of your important points.
and
Richard
Frank K. First, I want to remind you how this whole discussion started. Richard Telford quoted TIm Ball noted that the following statement by Tim Ball was not correct:
Richard then went on to explain:
And, in fact, Richard was right in this. One could nitpick about how one wants to discuss these two issues…in terms of boundary conditions vs initial conditions or in terms of predictability of the first and second kind. The fact remains that Tim Ball’s argument was completely bogus.
Of course climate is an initial value problem. If it is 43 in Toronto today as compared to 10, this will make all the difference in determining if the average temperature will be warmer or colder in Toronto Canada during the summer months as opposed to January. The initial temperature today is much more important in determining seasonal averages than the known changing of the seasons.
Gail COmbs, would you like to make a wager as to whether the average temperature in Smithers is higher in July 2013 or January 2013? I’ll wager on July being higher no matter the forecast for the next 5 days and no matter the initial conditions today.
REPLY: wagers can only be conducting on WUWT by two persons both with verifiable names displayed on the blog. You’ll have to upgrade from anonymous coward status to qualify – Anthony
joeldshore says:
January 11, 2013 at 12:01 pm
There is no special “AGW theory” to incorporate into the climate models.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Joel, for the sake of expediency you flatly assert that there is no Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, simply to win a point in an argument. Not a smart move.
Your fellows in the movement might dispute such a sweeping negation of their beliefs, because here you have put all of the precious eggs into one basket: the failed climate models.
You risk being branded as a “revisionist”, and worse.
mpainter says:
You are misunderstanding or misrepresenting what I said. What I have said is that the models incorporate the known physics and what emerges from the models is the prediction that there will be significant rises in global temperature from an increase in non-condensable greenhouse gases. I did not say that there is no theory of AGW…but what I am saying is that this theory is formulated / supported on the basis of both empirical evidence and evidence from climate models, which are mathematical representations of what we know about the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, … and their interactions.
Your claim is that for all ~20 major climate models that are out there, AGW theory is somehow put into them rather than that support for it emerges from them. So, why don’t you give us specific examples of things that are put into the climate models that you classify as “incorporat[ing] AGW theory” into the models?
To give you a concrete analogy: Let’s take consider numerical weather forecasting models (which are close relatives to climate models). These models exhibit chaos, that is, extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, such that slightly perturbed initial conditions leads to very different weather predictions when you run the model out for a few weeks. However, I would not say that “chaos theory is incorporated into the models”. Rather, what I would say is simply that the understood physics is put into the models and what emerges supports chaos theory.