From the University of Melbourne
Scientists narrow global warming range
Australian scientists have narrowed the predicted range of global warming through groundbreaking new research.
Scientists from the University of Melbourne and Victoria University have generated what they say are more reliable projections of global warming estimates at 2100.
The paper, led by Dr Roger Bodman from Victoria University with Professors David Karoly and Peter Rayner from the University of Melbourne and published in Nature Climate Change today, found that exceeding 6 degrees warming was now unlikely while exceeding 2 degrees is very likely for business-as-usual emissions.
This was achieved through a new method combining observations of carbon dioxide and global temperature variations with simple climate model simulations to project future global warming.
Dr Bodman said while continuing to narrow the range even further was possible, significant uncertainty in warming predictions would always remain due to the complexity of climate change drivers. “This study ultimately shows why waiting for certainty will fail as a strategy,” he said. “Some uncertainty will always remain, meaning that we need to manage the risks of warming with the knowledge we have.”
The study found 63% of uncertainty in projected warming was due to single sources – such as climate sensitivity, followed by future behaviour of the carbon cycle and the cooling effect of aerosols – while 37% of uncertainty came from the combination of these sources.
“This means that if any single uncertainty is reduced – even the most important, climate sensitivity – significant uncertainty will remain,” Dr Bodman said.
Professor Karoly said the study reinforced the importance of strong action on climate change.
“Our results reconfirm the need for urgent and substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to avoid exceeding the global warming target of 2 degrees needed to minimise dangerous climate change,” he said.
Dr Bodman is Postgraduate Research Fellow at Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Economic Studies. Professor Karoly and Professor Rayner are from the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate
System Science.
Source: http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/news/scientists-narrow-global-warming-range
Unfortunately, this press release doesn’t give a citation to the paper, a basic failure of reporting. I’ve asked this be corrected – Anthony
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Imbelievable, as Salvatori used to say.
No wanted to be the first break rank but since the Met. Office revised there ’10 year’ forecast, no one wants to be the last idiot still advancing something they all new was wrong several years ago.
This is starting to cave in quicker than I expected. I think we’ve reached ‘tipping point’.
* “Mark the 27th May 2013 in your calender, ladies and gentlemen.
Because today is the day when climate change officially changed from being a science to being a religion.
A science potentially is open to challenge by new data, a religious belief is impervious to any evidence.
Through a sleight of hand Professor Karoly and colleagues and dramatically shifted the goal posts by saying they expect absolutely no warming – none whatsoever – until 2030.
After which temperatures will – for mysterious reasons – suddenly increase by 3 degrees over 50 years.”
.
* Comment from Sean Lamb @ur momisugly theconversation
https://theconversation.com/uncertainty-no-excuse-for-procrastinating-on-climate-change-14634
This Spring has been so cool that my Dawn Redwoods are confused such that most of the “leaves” just haven’t come in yet this year with about half of the tree still bare.
They call these things “living fossils” so I can only assume that the past was warmer than this year.
I love this bit
“Professor Karoly said the study reinforced the importance of strong action on climate change.”
no matter what, it is always proof that stronger controls are necessary 🙂
I find quite curious the name of the algorithm they used: «The Monte Carlo Metropolis–Hastings (MCMH-MAGICC) algorithm». Does this means that Climate Modelling is nothing but a set of lottery outputs obtained from magical data?
If they aren’t addressing any of the “uncertainty” that comes from failure to account any of extensive evidence for some substantial mechanism of solar forcing beyond the very slight an insubstantial variance in solar irradiance then they can’t claim to have eliminated the major sources of uncertainty.
This is in the same class as Nic Lewis’ lowering of the range of climate sensitivities that are likely given the combination measured temperatures and of the IPCC’s estimates of climate forcings. Those forcings do not include any enhanced solar effects, which are clearly indicated by the strong discovered correlations between solar-magnetic activity and climate going back many thousands of years. Include any reasonable estimate for those forcings as indicated by those correlations and the implied range of likely climate sensitivities plunges much further still. Same with the present Aussie paper.
Its useful to see how the IPCC analysis way overestimates future warming even on its own flawed terms, but we really need to get away from those flawed terms.
From the tiny amount of info presented, the message recieved is that since the projected AGW has been REDUCED by >66% for the year 2100, there is even more URGENCY to spend millions to talk about cutting CO2 emissions. Which part of this is GROUND-BREAKING?
It is all in good hands here in Australia. We have a coal fired power station that has funding to research CO2 biological sequestration. They have built a pilot plant that runs flue gas through glass vats full of algae and water. They say that the algae produced from their CO2 can be harvested for feed for livestock. This was shown on national television.
Nobody asked how much(%) of the flue gas was absorbed.
Nobody seemed to notice, visible in the background, thousands of hectares of trees and grass already doing the same job for free. Ground-breaking or Heart-breaking?
“This study ultimately shows why waiting for certainty will fail as a strategy,” he said. “Some uncertainty will always remain, meaning that we need to manage the risks of warming with the knowledge we have.”
Waiting for certainty? Is he insane? No one’s waiting for certainty. Some actual science would be nice, for a start. Show us the human fingerprint on climate, don’t just assume it’s there. And then, how big of a fingerprint is it really? Especially since you can’t even find it. Oh, and don’t get me started on the dumb Precautionary Principle being espoused. It precludes itself.
“This was achieved through a new method combining observations of carbon dioxide…………”
Yup I was observing carbon dioxide the other day until the nurse came and gave me my special medicine and put me back to bed./sarc
David Karoly’s involvement with this paper reminds me of the boxer who won every fight by at least 100 yards.
Another press release at http://www.vu.edu.au/news-events/news/research-narrows-global-warming-range links to http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1903.html
I haven’t checked, but I assume it’s paywalled.
They do have some notes on methodology at http://theconversation.com/uncertainty-no-excuse-for-procrastinating-on-climate-change-14634 :
The 95% confidence interval under the A1B scenario (the track we are on, ignore the other panels) is 1.58C to 7.18C (of global warming versus the usual starting point we refer to for climate sensitivity).
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nclimate1903-f1.jpg
So, far from reducing the uncertainity, they just increased it to ridiculous levels. I don’t know what the point was in publishing this type of huge range. How can there be a consensus with those numbers.
milodonharlani says:
May 28, 2013 at 12:12 pm
“Only two degrees of warming by 2100 instead of six…” Where did you get that? It’s certainly not in the post.
The authors say, “…exceeding 2 degrees is very likely….” WUWY. JP
I equate this to a Doctor telling you, you might be sick or you might not… but take this medicine despite the side effects that will kill you…
The STUPID… It Burns!
Robert Wykoff says:
May 28, 2013 at 12:42 pm
“…endless pleas to stop all civilization…” Do you expect to be taken seriously when you make statements like that? JP
Colin Sanders says:
May 28, 2013 at 1:08 pm
“Maybe I’m not a super smart Scientist or even smart…”
Well, at least you’re right about something. JP
Karoly could remove some uncertainty surrounding his 2012 fiasco, when he co-authored a paper claiming that current temps are the highest in more than 1000 yrs (by a precise 0.09 deg over a momentary MMW). Eviscerated by Steve McIntyre, the paper was withdrawn, with an ongoing promise for re-submission http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/studio/ep-149 Perhaps Karoly could check his dustbin, and update his uni’s website.
I suspect as the “models” get tweaked further and further, the forecast “number” will steadily approach zero, along with public funds to pay for these “studies”. The only question is whether future generations will regard “climate science” as just another charlatan fraud like astrology, phrenology, and economics.
Victoria Uni, Melbourne, used to be closer to what the Americans would call a community college. Then some genius in government decided to make Australians smarter by renaming such places as universities.
Ahh. The squealing panic of the warmists gets louder and louder by the day. Desperate attempts to claim that missing heat is hidden in the oceans, aerosols are masking it, feedbacks less than thought or sensitivity over estimated. They are trying everything they can to achieve the “CO2 causes warming, just less than we thought” soft landing. It won’t work, they have gotten not just the magnitude of CO2s effect wrong but the very sign of its effect wrong. Karoly, like all the other AGW fellow travellers is trapped. The time for a career saving back down was years ago. It is far to late now.
“This study ultimately shows why waiting for certainty will fail as a strategy,” he said.
It sure does. The more we wait, the more certain we become that all of you guys were wrong, and that some of you are crooks.
Waiting is definitely a failing political strategy. Hence the current last ditch effort to get the lock in quick.
I’ve got plenty of popcorn.
The armchair has had an oil change and the cushions were upgraded last week.
I’m now waiting for them to discover “it’s the sun” …
The Eddy Minimum is advancing…
Anything Karoly says should be treated with extreme suspicion, but we can see the back-down from alarm is accelerating. It’s worse than they thought!
Professor Akasofu’s predictions back in 2009 still looks right on the money to me.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/20/dr-syun-akasofu-on-ipccs-forecast-accuracy/
If we manage 1 degree it will be a surprise to me.
Further, I think if you look at what Pachauri and the UK Met Office are saying about no warming for 20, 30 years they seem to be falling in with Akasofu too, and his 60 year cycle giving 25-30 years of cooling to come – and relying on the long term Ice Age Trend to give the long term warming.
Anthony,
I noticed you have the habit of calling each paper that challenges the CAGW orthodoxy “groundbraking”.