Reader Markx writes:
The title says it all here: “…Retrospective prediction…” indeed. How could a researcher keep a straight face and write such a title? (Maybe a subversive element at work?)
Retrospective prediction of the global warming slowdown in the past decade
Virginie Guemas, Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, Isabel Andreu-Burillo
& Muhammad Asif
The Abstract:
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.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1863.html
Meanwhile, reality continues to be a bitch:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but air doesn’t warm water. Rather, water warms air. Sunlight warms water.
So are they proposing that there was some previously undiscovered solar mechanism that increased heat into the oceans? Or some previously undiscovered atmospheric mechanism that alters evaporation/convection thus to prevent the oceans from releasing heat to air.
Oh. Wait. They still rely on the undiscovered mechanism whereby greenhouse gasses will warm the atmosphere, which will in turn warm the oceans.
Peter J. says:
May 14, 2013 at 6:30 am
Actually, global warming has not slowed down, it continues at a fairly steady pace as indicated by the heat increase rates going down to the 2000 meter level based on data collected by NOAA in the NODC and the WOD. ref. Levitus et al 2012
What nonsense. At what point did the heat decide that instead of heating the air it would heat, apparently by magic the deep oceans?
Your video is grade-school level pseudo-scientific propaganda. Pure bilge of the sort only an idiot would be impressed with.
“So let me get this right. The models didn’t work so they “modified” them so they would explain certain anomolies without knowing whether they would explain futre data without further “modifications” and then they claim that this proves that their models worked in the first place. Is that right?”
Thats basically what you have to do when you cannot control the experimental conditions.
It’s pretty simple.
Suppose you have a model of car braking. You model predicts that if you slam on the brakes
at 72 MPH your stopping distance will be 102 ft.
You go to the test, you record the data and when you look at the data you find that the
the stopping distance was 105 feet. You examine the actual vehicle speed and find out
that the driver hit the brakes at 74 mph. So you re run the model using 74 mph instead of 72.
your answer comes out at 105.
What they are doing is standard practice in any large physical simulation where parameters
have uncertainty and where experiments cannot be controlled with exactitude.
Our cucumber distilling machine has sprung a leak: please send $millions.
Riddle me this:
Why do we continue to show the pre-2013 AR Scenarios? should we not show them, at least, paled-out, and only solid AFTER 2013?
For the Scenarios to have “truth”, we have to
1) have temps to go from where we are now to where the Scenario shows them to be in 2100, and
2) show a mechanism for the temps to rocket up from now to get there.
As far as I know, there are no climatological scenarios in which sudden acceleration happens. If that were the case, we would not have huge certainty OR specific Scenarios, but a broad band within which any up-or-down motion could happen. The future would be a crap shoot, and the scientific interconnections involved in climatology, pure chaos theory.
We know what happened between 1988 and 2013. The Scenarios as shown between those dates are all wrong except for the one, if there is one, that is identical to what actually happened, or, being generous, included what actually happened.
Scenario A has no meaning going forward if there is no mechanism or internal variability that allows the end position in 2100 to be reached from where we are today.
Why are we still showing and talking about Scenarios that do not include the last 25 years of actual events?
I predict that this paper will be discussed a month ago in this post.
Good posts by AlecM and Astley. History will record the “Global Warming” story as one of political activism mixed with scientific corruption by a clueless media.
Methodical temperature measurements on a global basis do not exist at the surface even today. The USCRN is a good start. Satellites are ok since 1979. Argo is a good start for the oceans.
Only a few well maintained surface thermometers are needed to show that there has been no significant warming in the industrial era. There is no real evidence that the 20th century was warmer than the 19th, based on the few good surface thermometers. The evidence that the 20th century was warmer using proxy and anecdotal photos of glacial retreats is not evidence of CO2 causation. Recorded history shows that climates vary on the century and millenial scales due to natural causes.
Basic accounting shows that fossil fuel burning only increases the carbon cycle fluxes by 3 percent, that amount is easily absorbed by biological sinks.
More proof that the globe is not warming is found at the four good Antarctic science stations, Vostok, Halley, Davis and Amundsen-Scott. All show zero warming since 1957. If the alarmists saw any warming at those stations, they would be screaming “look at that data” 24 hours a day.
Moving the goalposts again
In retrospect, I predicted that Y2K wouldn’t be a big deal.
@Steven Mosher on May 14, 2013 at 8:02 am
Actually the analogy to CAGW is more like:
The model predicts the car would stop in 105 feet when brakes are applied at 75mph. The government claims this is too dangerous and threatens to impose a dangerous car usage tax.
Finally some measures the stopping distance and it’s 50 feet and condidered perfectly safe.
Scientists rework the model, claim their model predicted 50feet all along, and concludes the car is even more dangerous now because it’s “worse than we thought”
“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.”
I think the “socio-economic relevance” is the clincher here. These people simply cannot stop themselves. They cannot just do science. They have to do science that saves the world. And to do science that saves the world your science must always show that the world needs to be saved.
As we get rid of religion in the world, we also throw out any easy access to meaning in life. So now we have people who are in desperate need of some substitute meaning manufacturing causes and emergencies that allows them to give themselves an artificial injection of the stuff.
Retroactive predictions are all that these climate models are good for. Not much use to anyone. The sign of a good theory is the ability to make predictions that are later observed. The IPCC’s climate
predictionsprojections have failed time and again. The theory has failed – it’s time to throw the theory in the garbage can of pseudoscience. It’s time honest Climastrologists came out.Bruce Cobb says:
May 14, 2013 at 7:48 am
It’s not my video actually. It was done by the National Academy of Sciences.
Two key factors are apparently involved in the increased heat transport to the deep oceans.
1. The PDO, a natural climate variable, is now negative.
2. There has been an increase in the tropical zonal winds which causes evaporative cooling and increases saline density, which causes more heat to sink deeper in the ocean.
Ooops. I meant to use the strike tag for “predictions”
Sooooo, one presumes there will be new model outputs that do not show catastrophic warming? Thought not.
Their new modeling
The question is WHY there would have been an increase in ocean heat uptake, and if this paper were a theory of the why they would tout it in the abstract. Apparently they are just assuming an unexplained increase in ocean heat uptake (that is, they are just modeling Trenberth’s widely asserted assumption) and pretending that simply modeling the obvious implications of the assumption is adding something.
“Yay. Trenberth is right: if more heat is removed by the oceans, the surface doesn’t get as hot.” But nothing about whether this actually happened. The infinite sycophancy of a batch of rent-seeking second-tier third world graduate students, eager to climb the lowest rung of the global warming gravy train, as mindless as bacteria following food.
Nature should be renamed Nurture.
Let’s review:
They could not deny the pause.
They rejiggered the models to show the pause that happened.
Because the models now show the pause that happened, they claim the models have predicative power.
If people in the financial services tried pulling this, saying their models would have predicted what the markets did do so they and their models should be trusted, after “tuning” the models to show what was already known to have happened, several government agencies would be investigating them for possible fraud and related.
But this is Climate Science, no harm, no foul. It’s not like billions are being stolen, with the elderly and vulnerable rendered so poor they freeze to death in winter from being unable to afford heating, right?
Question: What assumptions are still in the models? Did they figure this temporary pause would end after another year or two, and then we’re right back to the warming, so everyone needs to keep working to lower those “carbon emissions” or we will really suffer after this brief respite?
@Steven Mosher May 14, 2013 at 8:02 am
So what you’re saying is that if the output of a model is off, you can go back and see if the inputs were different from what you assumed, and if they were, you can change the inputs to what they really were and see if the new outputs match reality.
If they couldn’t get the inputs right before, how are we to know if they’ll get them right this time around?
Steven Mosher says:
May 14, 2013 at 8:02 am
““So let me get this right. The models didn’t work so they “modified” them so they would explain certain anomolies without knowing whether they would explain futre data without further “modifications” and then they claim that this proves that their models worked in the first place. Is that right?”
Thats basically what you have to do when you cannot control the experimental conditions.
It’s pretty simple.”
The problem is that these people might have trained a hundred models, then tested the hundred models on the validation period, and eliminated 99 of them. Meaning that de facto the validation period has been used for selection, i.e. training as well.
I didn’t read the paper. If they are honest they show the results of all their model candidates before pruning, during the training period as well as during the validation period.
An interesting observation is: If model B beats model A during the training period, does it also beat it during the validation period.
I don’t think they publish something like that, and am convinced all their models are useless junk anyway, but that is what I would demand from a model comparison.
From the charts I see they use “ensemble means”. So these are mathematical numpties. Averaging several runs of a simulation of a chaotic system is a sign of mental ineptitude. Of course, it is also the Gold Standard of climate science.
The editor of Nature has gone off his trolley completely.
Bad analogy Steven Mosher,
Suppose you have a model of car braking. Your model predicts that if you slam on the brakes at 72 MPH your stopping distance will be 102 feet in the SM1. It’s been widely publicized and claimed that the SM1 vehicle based on your modeling results will stop in 150 feet from 100 mph.
You go to the test facility; you find that the stopping distance is 155 feet from 74 mph. You examine the model and realize you had used static friction where sliding friction ought to have been. Correcting the model it indeed comes out to 155 feet. Now, where’s the new stopping distance for 100 mph? Is it necessarily accurate?
Now that “Ocean heat uptake” has been corrected what is the new outcome for 2100? Has it changed the uncertainty? Do we know (and can predict) the variations in “ocean heat uptake”? What is the long term destination of this energy? Will it continue transferring towards the abyss where for all practical purposes it would be lost forever without noticable effect? Is this a feedback to warming or some cyclic behavior? Etc. etc. etc.
If you needed any proof that “climate science” is a pseudo science, the 21-st century equivalent of Lysenkoism, than this is it.
Alec Rawls says:
May 14, 2013 at 9:29 am
Well done, you’ve highlighted how the AGW team rolls. This can also be seen from Dana1981 who states: “Guemas et al. (2013) adds to the growing body of evidence that the slowed global surface warming over the past 10–15 years can in large part be explained by an increase in ocean heat storage.” http://www.skepticalscience.com/guemas-attribute-slowed-surface-warming-to-oceans.html
The team is highly skilled in the art of climate cellular division; and starting with an assumed cell no less.
Peter J:
Thanks for giving a link to the “lines of evidence” video we all paid for. I would like to comment on this.
1. I don’t think many people would argue with the basic premise that the globe has been warming over the last century. Indeed, that information probably constitutes the consensus we all hear about, but doesn’t go any further.
2. New data, as in a prolonged pause in warming (to the direct contradiction of your comment) has caused a re-think about the nature of the warming, and this has resulted in many scientists seeing natural variations as the major driver in temperature increases in the last half of the 20th century. Peer reviewed study after study in the last decade have shown that only about half of the warming has been cause by CO2. Land use changes have a role to play, too.
3. The video did not put the current warming into perspective. The rise in temp over the last century MUST be shown with reference to the Little Ice Age, which supposedly ended at the end of the nineteenth century. Plus, there was no mention that rising CO2 levels have historically followed increases in temperature.
4. If the video was meant to be an honest depiction of current science, the canard of CO2 causing extreme weather would have been addressed.
In brief, it seems to me that the video was organized to deliver a message out of context. If it is used to counter skeptical climate positions, it is nothing more than a straw man. We all agree on most of the basics, but the catastrophic stuff is where you have run off the tracks.
By comparing the average of a number of their model runs to a reference temperature curve, they are implying that the Earth’s average temperature behaves like the average of the average global temperatures of several of their modelled virtual Earths.
Hey, hussah! We have one that just fell into a glaciation and two with boiling oceans and seventeen that are in between, average them all and you get… Earth! Nobel price!