I received a number of emails about the newly published Guemas et al (2013) paper titled “Retrospective prediction of the global warming slowdown in the past decade”. It’s paywalled. The abstract is here. It reads:
Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period1. To explain such a pause, an increase in ocean heat uptake below the superficial ocean layer2, 3 has been proposed to overcompensate for the Earth’s heat storage. Contributions have also been suggested from the deep prolonged solar minimum4, the stratospheric water vapour5, the stratospheric6 and tropospheric aerosols7. However, a robust attribution of this warming slowdown has not been achievable up to now. Here we show successful retrospective predictions of this warming slowdown up to 5 years ahead, the analysis of which allows us to attribute the onset of this slowdown to an increase in ocean heat uptake. Sensitivity experiments accounting only for the external radiative forcings do not reproduce the slowdown. The top-of-atmosphere net energy input remained in the [0.5–1] W m−2 interval during the past decade, which is successfully captured by our predictions. Most of this excess energy was absorbed in the top 700 m of the ocean at the onset of the warming pause, 65% of it in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Our results hence point at the key role of the ocean heat uptake in the recent warming slowdown. The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions.
Not too surprisingly ClimateProgress has a post New Study: When You Account For The Oceans, Global Warming Continues Apace about the paper.
The abstract suggests that the tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are responsible for 65% of warming of global ocean heat content for the depths of 0-700 meters since 2000. However, the much-adjusted NODC ocean heat content data for the tropical Pacific (Figure 1) shows a decline in ocean heat content since 2000, and the ocean heat content for the Atlantic (Figure 2) has been flat since 2005.
Figure 1
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Figure 2
The abstract also mentions a new-found ability to predict slowdowns in warming. But the warming of tropical Pacific ocean heat content is dependent on the 3-year La Niña events of 1954-57, 1973-76 and 1998-01 and on the freakish 1995/96 La Niña, Figure 3. And the warming of sea surface temperatures for the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific oceans, Figure 4, depends on strong El Niño events.
Figure 3
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Figure 4
CLOSING
Can Guemas et al (2013) can predict 3-year La Niñas and freakish La Niñas like the one in 1995/96? Can they predict strong El Niño events, like those in 1986/87/88, 1997/97 1997/98 and 2009/10? Both are unlikely—the specialized ENSO forecast models have difficulty projecting beyond the springtime predictability barrier every year.
FURTHER READING
For further information about the problems with ocean heat content data, refer to the post Is Ocean Heat Content Data All It’s Stacked Up to Be?
And for further information about the natural warming of the global oceans, see “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge.”
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Well having proven the model capability to their satisfacton by ‘retrospectively predicting’ – they should now predict the future 24 – 36 months using the same model and assumptions and parameterizations. Should be simple for climate modelers. Then they are providing something testable.
At last, I have found an idea for a new business.
RoHa’s Retrospective Prediction Company.
Retrospective predictions GUARANTEED 100% accurate !!!
I’m going to make a mint!
“The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions.”
++++++
Translation: In retrospect, all of our models were wrong. But looking back, we think we know why they were wrong. Actually, they were not wrong, the heat must be somewhere… though. Our bet is that it’s definitely hiding though. We are going to find it in the oceans, but we need more funding. So even though the oceans are not warming per the exist measurements, we think they are hiding away from the temperature sensing devices.
A “retrospective prediction”?
I am sure that now, after it has happened, they can “retrospectively predict” all the mockery falling on their heads and really wish they had not used that phrase.
Eugene WR Gallun
I can predict retrospectively the winner of last weekend’s Grand National.
I assume this pesky excess heat is the same as Trenberth’s “hidden heat”? Derived from his massive exaggeration of back radiation returning to the surface? Which should have been noticeable where I’m typing this, even if it didn’t actually render the place uninhabitable?
As Bob points out, “65% excess heat going into the tropical Pacific and Atlantic” doesn’t square with the NODC figure 1. This is consistent with my observations. The prevailing wind here (60% probability) is off the tropical Pacific. The sea and adjacent land has been noticeably cooler for several years. Hottest period I recall was mid 1990s.
“Retrospective prediction” ?
Is that like the family dog saying “sorry” BEFORE she steals a sandwich off the table?
(To give her her due, in other respects she is smarter than some of these “climate scientists”.)
“Retrospective predictions” says it all. And they tell us the science is settled!
The retrospective ideology lies paralal with the counter balance of equinoxtic and barry diagnosis?
Therefore for decades the enhanced figures if I may say so, gives out to the socio-economic relevance they are talking so much about? Decadal climate figures lies in conjunction with planetary cooling or for such matter galactic alignment which gives us a more true figure looking at the 20 year anomalities?
I would rather go for ODCL and HHICC which to my mind have the correlation more accurate and continuity looks more realistic if compared via relevance as a basis for this matter.
rEP. iicv and Govt riip would be of great help?
Yogi Berra must have known some climate scientists when he said, “Predicting is difficult, especially the future”.
I think what this paper means is that they modelled various scenarios and concluded that the most likely destination for the energy that hasn’t gone into warming the atmosphere is the oceans. I don’t think they tested various options, just modelled them.
So the obvious question is, can they prove it from ocean temperature changes? We might think it logical for them to confirm their paper’s hypothesis against real data. But if the NODC graphs above represent reality then such a step would have been problematic for them so they skipped it and went straight for publication. Did it sneak in before the IPCC deadline?
Mario Lento says:
April 8, 2013 at 10:42 pm
The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions.”
++++++
Translation: In retrospect, all of our models were wrong. But looking back, we think we know why they were wrong. Actually, they were not wrong, the heat must be somewhere… though. Our bet is that it’s definitely hiding though. We are going to find it in the oceans, but we need more funding. So even though the oceans are not warming per the exist measurements, we think they are hiding away from the temperature sensing devices.
*
Maybe the giant crabs ate all the warming.
I think ‘Retrospective Prediction’ is the most suited and correct word given to the weather past forecasters. So far I think if you will count on fingers then chances are rare that even 20 actual forecast of weather or any forecast related to nature have taken place.
What is probably meant by “retrospective prediction” is actually “calibration” or “validation”. Of course you easily fudge models to do this by introducing fudge factors that are never mentioned.
The mod snips my descriptive word for this so I’ll try a new one:
More model flagellation – without not much I suspect to back up the claim.
So the global warming is now in the ocean?
Is this saying that the “downwelling IR” caused by an increase in greenhouse gases is not heating the atmosphere but the ocean?
How does that work if IR radiation does not penetrate seawater below a depth of 1m?
This sounds like total BS to me?
Even if this was true how is this measurable, the Ocean contains 4000 times more heat (energy) than the atmosphere?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/06/energy-content-the-heat-is-on-atmosphere-vs-ocean/
So if 3c of warming was expected in the atmosphere, then if all this “energy” is going into the ocean, a temp rise of 3/4000 C would be expected.
If only the top 700m of ocean is considered then the rise would still be to small to be measurable?
In his student days, Isaac Asimov wrote, as a joke, a bogus scientific paper, that was utter nonsense but couched in such obscure and arcane terms that it sounded plausible. In simple terms, his results discussed substances that dissolved so fast that they dissolved BEFORE they were added to the water. The paper was read by a number of professors before one twigged to the absurdity.
This ‘retrospective prediction’ paper sounds like it is on the same level.
Jim G says:
So if the increase in ocean heat retention in the last 15 years is the cause of the recent cooling (or flatlining), does that mean that the previous warming was caused by the oceans liberating their heat content and thus not a result of anthropogenic CO2?
Doesn’t even require that the oceans were liberating their heat content, only that they slowed their heat uptake.
“Global warming” has now entered the bait and switch phase of operation. Define “globa warming” as surface temp increase, when surface temp is increasing. Redefine “global warming” as ocean temp increase when surface temp stalls. Convenient given that ocean temps are effectively unknown for the period more than 10 years ago, and remain effectively unknow for the 50% of the ocean more than 2000m deep. Too, the sort of heat involved in “global warming” theory translates to infinitessimal changes in temp of the mass of the world’s oceans. Lots of places to hide the heat when you don’t want to see it (the past) and find it when you do (the present).
“Global warming” degenerates from a political fantasy to an ad hoc fallacy…
Any chance they can tell me who will win the Grand National last Saturday ;>)
Well, clearly the climate models will need to be corrected to account for this heat going into the oceans. Let’s see what their scary projections look like after that.
Hint: It’s going to be a lot easier for them to get the heat into the oceans than to get it back out.
Clue, the big T couldn’t find the heat, WE know it’s there [so] invent retrospective predictions an infallible method for finding anything!!
I think what they mean is that they start the model from some past state and it comes up with the current state. Sort of like regression testing but in reverse. Given that a) they can’t have known a past state with certainty and b) ditto the current state, I find it hard to believe anything else they might say.
Not to mention the inconvenient fact that the oceans haven’t been heating up.
But my $64k questions are: if the oceans are absorbing this extra heat, then why now, what is the mechanism, and why given that the ‘science is settled’ did none of the preceding models forecast this?
Try having a casino pay out on a ‘retrospective prediction.’
Let me know if you succeed.
I begin to wonder if some researchers actually understand what they’ve written or said.
The paper appears to avoiding “PDO” and “ENSO” and instead describe their effects without calling their names.
If PDO/AMO/ENSO are now capable of stopping warming, they must have been a main contributor to post 1976 warming as well. Avoiding the attribution allows to continue to ignore this consequence.
The history of denial went on for years with the invention of non-existent aerosol cooling to fill the gaps, and when this blew up recently, with the extremely silly Rahmstorf/Tamino paper, falsely assuming that (longterm) ENSO temperature effects are proportional to the ENSO index.
“The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions.”
So AFTER the climate models have failed, and AFTER their dire predictions have not come true, we’ll be able to predict their failure? Oh, THANK YOU, Captain Hindsight!
This is not a “retrospective” but a “proper” future prediction. As the Globe warms under AGW we will get more air turbulence affecting flights.
“Flights across the North Atlantic could get a lot bumpier in the future if the climate changes as scientists expect.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22063340
The longer the temperature standstill continues the more computer generated danger scenarios will be presented based on “forward” as well as “rearward” predictions to frighten us all.