I was aware of this story yesterday, but I didn’t like the original plot, (see at the end of this post) since use of straight line linear trends doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of the observation data. While it is often hard to find any reality in climate models, linear trend lines mask the underlying variance. Today, Dr. Spencer has produced a graph that I feel is representative and very well worth sharing, because it does in fact convey an EPIC FAIL speaking directly to the accuracy of an ensemble of climate models. – Anthony
Dr. Roy Spencer writes:
In response to those who complained in my recent post that linear trends are not a good way to compare the models to observations (even though the modelers have claimed that it’s the long-term behavior of the models we should focus on, not individual years), here are running 5-year averages for the tropical tropospheric temperature, models versus observations (click for full size):
In this case, the models and observations have been plotted so that their respective 1979-2012 trend lines all intersect in 1979, which we believe is the most meaningful way to simultaneously plot the models’ results for comparison to the observations.
In my opinion, the day of reckoning has arrived. The modellers and the IPCC have willingly ignored the evidence for low climate sensitivity for many years, despite the fact that some of us have shown that simply confusing cause and effect when examining cloud and temperature variations can totally mislead you on cloud feedbacks (e.g. Spencer & Braswell, 2010). The discrepancy between models and observations is not a new issue…just one that is becoming more glaring over time.
Read his essay here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/
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Here is the linear plot from Dr. Spencer’s post yesterday. He writes:
Courtesy of John Christy, a comparison between 73 CMIP5 models (archived at the KNMI Climate Explorer website) and observations for the tropical bulk tropospheric temperature (aka “MT”) since 1979 (click for large version):
Rather than a spaghetti plot of the models’ individual years, we just plotted the linear temperature trend from each model and the observations for the period 1979-2012.
Note that the observations (which coincidentally give virtually identical trends) come from two very different observational systems: 4 radiosonde datasets, and 2 satellite datasets (UAH and RSS).
If we restrict the comparison to the 19 models produced by only U.S. research centers, the models are more tightly clustered:
Now, in what universe do the above results not represent an epic failure for the models?
Reno: My dad was a meteorologist and atmospheric physicist. I remember that he told me that at most they were able to predict about 36 hours ahead in those days (80’s) I guess you could add a further 12 hours to that today.LOL
Just one last comment on Dr Spencer’s graphs. Of course the team will say why did he not compare it with say Dr Muller BEST chart or GISS or hadcrut data. He is using his own AMSU satellite data or RSS not valid they will say.Just a beware moment LOL
Janice: Your creative parallel between Roy Spencer’s post and D-Day and the end of WWII are brilliant.
As well –I must add to this that I am deeply ashamed of our president for his political and financial support of savings the world from a what is in fact a witch trial on success. He is either dumb, ignorant or evil…
In the aftermath of the day of reckoning, “organized science” will be in the same bag as “organized religion.”
And on this particular day, June 6th, I don’t think Winston Churchill would mind if I added to the discussion his famous line:
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
di di di daaah
Keep the faith.
Felix
I notice an increasing number of commenters here and at other climate blogs saying some variation of “Let’s go after them.” I’ve been saying that for years. To wit:
These people are criminals. No fate or insult is bad enough for them.
Their promoting of ethanol has caused food riots and starved many poor people.
Their fixation on windmills and solar panels has created energy poverty which has killed many elderly and infirm.
Their ban on DDT has killed some millions of mostly children in Africa and Asia (estimates vary from 20 million to 200 million) yet they have the audacity to say “It’s for the children”.
There should be no compromise. They should have their noses rubbed in the urine they have spilled on the carpet of humanity.
It’s a beautiful carpet, a fine oriental rug. They soil it by their very existence.
Bill Illis wrote;
“or the Radiation Physics is wrong” – exactly, well almost, the radiation does what it wants, following rules that some people understand. What is wrong is the understanding of what the “greenhouse effect” causes.
The “greenhouse” effect only acts to delay the flow of energy through the system. The energy alternates between thermal energy (the absorbed sunlight) and IR light (the emitted energy from the surface) then thermal energy (the warmed gas) then IR light again (attenuated by ~50%) as backradiation. All of this bouncing back and forth (surface – gas – surface – gas, etc etc) simply delays the flow of energy by causing it to make multiple trips at nearly the speed of light.
Given the distances involved this delay amounts to a few tens of milliseconds (a very rough estimate). This delay simply causes the gases in the atmosphere to warm up more quickly after sunrise. This signature of the “GHE” cannot be found in the historical temperature data.
And with the tools currently available it is impossible to observe this delay when the input to the system is “steady state”. It can only be observed when a pulse of energy flows through the system.
A multi-layer optical interference filter (that purple looking coating on most camera lenses) behaves in a similar manner with light “bouncing” (not a real optical design term) back and forth between the glass lens and thin films (almost totally transparent) deposited on the lens. But an interference filter uses constructive and destructive optical interference to actually “trap” more light and reduce reflections. This makes for “crisper” (also not a real optical design term) pictures.
For more information research: “optical delay line”, or the “temporal response of an integrating sphere”. The integrating sphere is an interesting example since in climate ”science” terms it produces 100% radiative forcing back towards the energy source (usually an incandescent light bulb) but the lamp does not get “brighter” and the energy is not “trapped”.
The climate science community has been chasing a chimera for all these decades. Sad really, but some of them will “go down with the ship” rather than admit this error.
For Janice, thanks for remembering those boys back in 44. My father flew his first combat mission (P-51, 8th US ARMY Air Force) a few days after those films were taken. And my Mother’s oldest brother was down there on the sand. They both made it back. We all owe those boys (from all the allied countries) a great deal.
Cheers, Kevin.
@coalsoffire says:
June 6, 2013 at 9:37 am
“I suppose these graphs will grace the cover of the next IPCC report? /sarc”
Yeah, right along with the big headline: OOPS! 🙁
As I’ve always said, models tell you what you tell them to tell you…whether or not you understand what you said. None of the models resembles the real world and that, to me, is really an indictment of the current state of climate science.
Well, the RSS data for May is in and it is .139. Yet another drop during ENSO neutral conditions. Pretty soon Roy won’t be able to fit the model predictions and current temps on the same page.
Yep, all this was out there 10 years ago (as the graph shows), that the radiosonde balloon data and the satellite data were both in agreement, and both were at odds with the HADCRUT and other ground and SST record. It was just about 10 years ago that they attacked the satellites of Spencer and Christy. A small error was detected then, and basically we haven’t heard a lot about the divergence since.
This post is not about actual measruements, but with an extra decade for the modelers to correct their code, it is amazing that NONE of them come close to the actual real-world data.
Once more, arguing that modeling on the fromntier of a science is poor science – because of the use of (in this case many) assumptions mixed in with the actual data.
It is VERY gratifying to see two things:
1. That the divergence has continued to widen
2. That the balloons and satellites still agree with each other
It should be noted that the balloons and satellites do not have a problem with what to do with urban heat islands. And look at how flat the curves are. As they say at CO2 Science, “No warming here!”
Thanks, Dr. Spencer, for bringing this back to everyone’s attention.
Steve Garcia
To paraphrase Buffet, model forecasts tell a little about the future and a lot about the forecaster.
An interesting take on the balloon and satellite data:
In 33 years they show a ~0.25C rise. That is almost exactly the same rate of increase as the rise since 1900 (0.7C) has been.
That pretty much says that the rise began 110 years ago and has stayed the same. No hockey stick.
The bend in the hockey stick shows up in the surface record right about 1990, but it doesn’t show up at all in the satellite and balloon records. There is one 7-year rise starting about 1996, but then it flattens out again, so that the overall trend is still very constant. That looks very much like what one would expect in nature – long term trends with small variability within them.
IBut find it interesting that there are short 2-7 year wavinesses in the satellite and balloon records. No idea if that could mean something. But it looks like some kind of feedback loop is in effect.
I hope everyone will pardon me for focusing on the actual numbers vs the models. [Ironic LOL]
Steve Garcia
@Eustace Cranch June 6, 2013 at 9:49 am:
“Why doesn’t the observed temp line show the recent leveling-off? Just askin.”
Actually, it seems to. There is a 7-year rise starting in 1995 or 1996, then it flattens out for the last 8 years.
Like I just pointed out, the short-period sine curve seem interesting all along, from 1979. It seems like the 1998 high cut out one of the down curves, and then with the next down curve it reestablished itself.
Steve Garcia
But I’m not sure that the satellite data is correct either. How cold does it have to get (coldest May in 40 years most everywhere except Siberia) for us to be normal or below baseline? I wonder why we can’t get a “good” answer on this. Either the baseline period is fabricated or the satellite data is wrong–it simply cannot be “above” the baseline for the NH with the freezing cold we have been having for months now—yet Spencer reports it as “above” baseline. What the heck am I missing —no smart-alec retorts please.
@ur momisugly Bob Tisdale. I say “poo poo” to the whole thing.
@ur momisugly Elizabeth I would say that with temp fiddling by the team even the observed temps are lower. I suggest a FLAT line (unless he is using AMSU and RSS). BTW it now time to really get these XXXXXXX. I think for far too long the skeptic sites have been far too soft on the team. It really is time to get some millionaire to get a legal team together and take these guys to court.
I agree, especially that the temps are still being fiddled with. But it would take a multi millionaire,–a million is not enough.
Sorry to keep commenting, but every time I go back and look at this graph something else jumps out at me…
This time it is the heel of the hockey stick, which in the models occurs at about 1992-3. Prior to that time the trend in the models is not so far from the satellites/balloons.
I will speculate that whatever caused the divergence in the models happened at that time, and I think it is some widely used assumption(s) that have remained in the models ever since. Notice the near-linearity of the composite curve after that point. That, to me, infers a term with a constant within the formulas used since that time – some term that apparently has not been challenged.
(If I had to make a guess that term would relate to either water vapor and its feedbacks or the sensitivity to increases in CO2. It may more likely be the latter, and the differences in the various model outputs would represent the differences in the assumed sensitivity or water vapor)
It would be interesting to see what the second graph would look like if centered on 1993 instead of 1979. With that clear kink in all the models at that time,
I think now I am done seeing things in the chart…LOL
Steve Garcia
The warmists ignore, hide, or try to change data that disproves their theory. (Extreme AGW as opposed to lukewarm AGW.)
Mann attempted to change the recent paleo climate record to eliminate evidence of past cyclic climate change, a period that was warm as current times.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?
… At the political level the emerging debate is about whether the enormous international trust that has been placed in the IPCC was betrayed. The hockey stick story reveals that the IPCC allowed a deeply flawed study to dominate the Third Assessment Report, which suggests the possibility of bias in the Report-writing…
The warmists would if they could hide the disagreement between general circulation models and actual temperatures. As they cannot hide or block the UHA and RSS data which is confirmed by weather balloon measurements they have chosen to ignore it.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT.png
They ignored the fact that the warmist’s predicted tropical tropospheric warming did not occur.
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/Published%20JOC1651.pdf
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions.
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs.
They ignored the fact that global warming was not global. The majority of the warming occurred in the Northern Hemisphere and in high latitudes which matches past cycles of warming and cooling that correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes. The AGW theory predicted that majority of the warming would be in tropics where the most amount of long wave radiation is emitted to space and where there amply water to amplify the CO2 warming.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth
The global atmospheric temperature anomalies of Earth reached a maximum in 1998 which has not been exceeded during the subsequent 10 years (William: 16 years and counting). The global anomalies are calculated from the average of climate effects occurring in the tropical and the extratropical latitude bands. El Niño/La Niña effects in the tropical band are shown to explain the 1998 maximum while variations in the background of the global anomalies largely come from climate effects in the northern extratropics. These effects do not have the signature associated with CO2 climate forcing. (William: This observation indicates something is fundamental incorrect with the IPCC models, likely negative feedback in the tropics due to increased or decreased planetary cloud cover to resist forcing). However, the data show a small underlying positive trend that is consistent with CO2 climate forcing with no-feedback. (William: This indicates a significant portion of the 20th century warming has due to something rather than CO2 forcing.)
They ignored the fact that the planet resists rather than amplifies greenhouse gas forcing changes by increasing or decreasing planetary cloud cover in the tropics thereby reflecting more or less sunlight off into space.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
The warmist have ignored the fact that there are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record that correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes. The warming that has occurred in the past is in the same regions that warmed in the 20th century.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
It appears based on what has happened in the past when there was a solar magnetic cycle slowdown that the planet is about to cool. Perhaps cooling, as opposed to a lack of warming, will end the catastrophic AGW saga.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
“Now, in what universe do the above results not represent an epic failure for the models?”
The universe of self-serving bureaucracies. This universe, which is mostly why democracy itself was invented.
For the most part, the people who continue to believe in AGW really and honestly want there to be a problem. They’d rather be right than realize how they’ve been fooled. They’ve taken an emotional stand. They’ve helped commit fraud, whether theirs or others, the result is the same. They voted us into this mess we’re in. They’d rather us all be in a living hell, than admit they were wrong.
I FORGIVE YOU! OK – now admit you were wrong and let’s stop this nonsense.
Perhaps not mainstream, but Felix’s Churchill quote is incorrect – ‘this is not the end, beginning etc’ it was made after the battle of El Alamein which the Brits with their Commonwealth allies (no US, you guys weren’t that interested) won. Montgomery v. Rommel. First Allied victory in WW2. Cheers from Sydney.
I feel very sorry for Climate Alchemy because the modelling has been incorrect, possibly fraudulent for 32 years now. Manabe and Strickland used as boundary condition SW DOWN = LW UP at the surface, a gross exaggeration, but not dishonest.
In 1972, the first NIMBUS paper disinterred Aarhenius’ claim of black body surface IR which every process engineer and most professional physicists know is wrong – just go to Maxwell’s Equations for proof.
Then we had the adoption of Sagan’s aerosol optical physics by Lacis and Hansen – Sagan got it wrong. Houghton made three serious mistakes, the grey body atmosphere throws it completely – it’s semi-transparent. Then in 1981_Hansen_etal.pdf on the NASA site, they made two serious mistakes.
The first was to claim that CO2 blocks atmospheric window emission between 7 and 14 microns. It doesn’t except for two small bands at ~10 microns. The second was, following Houghton, to claim that lapse rate = GHE. It isn’t – they are completely separate.
Climate Alchemy has to start again without ‘back radiation’. That mistake is from Meteorology – pyrgeometers measure temperature. As for the real answer: the atmosphere is self controlling with CO2 the working fluid. The ice age bistability is cloud physics.
Frank K. and Kevin K. — you are so very welcome. Thanks for letting me know. So glad your dad and uncle made it back. They (even despite the current sad state of the union v. a v. our liberty) would, no-questions-asked, do it again. In a heartbeat. They loved their country too much to not defend her.
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Mario Lento, thank you for your generously kind words.
Re: the Puppet in Chief, he is:
[the following quotes from memory only]
“dumb (“I, uuuh, I’ve been to … 57 states… have 2 or 3 to go, not counting Alaska and Hawaii.” 2008) [AND]
ignorant (watch 2012 (or 2011) video of him at a Buckingham Palace dinner talking right through “God Save the Queen” — later, on video, you can hear him hyuck, hyuck, “… I thought it was like a movie soundtrack or something.”)
[AND]
e-vil (argued vehemently against the Infant Born Alive Act as Illinois state senator (it had already passed previously at the federal level — unanimously).
But, like CO2, for the Democrats, he is “magic” [L. A. Times quote from 2007 or 2008].
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Felix, thank you for the dit-dit-dit daaah of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony — look at that face (Beethoven’s). That is one German (yes, I realize there were many who did not, who lost their lives trying to stop him) who would NOT have joined up with H-t–r. (if I spoke German, I’d write this next in Deutsche, alas…)
Ludwig von Beethoven: “If you tell me one —- more — time that humans cause global climate change, I will take this pencil and smash it through what is left of your BRAIN!”
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Stan Stendera! So glad to “hear” your voice. You’ve been missing… . Hope you and your lovely lady have been and are well. Take care. [and I agree COMPLETELY with your fine list above — You go, greathearted Stan!]
Hi, Evan Thomas in Sydney,
Good point. I do want to say though, on Felix’s behalf, that while Churchill didn’t say those words with regard to the June 6, 1944 invasion, Felix was applying the quote in a parallel fashion (and, in my opinion quite appositely) to the state of the War for Truth in Science (v. a v. AGW).
[@Felix –I forgot to note above, Felix, that (as you likely already knew) the BBC, on the side of right in those days, used the opening notes from Beethoven’s Fifth on its broadcasts during WWII to boost morale, since dit-dit-dit daaah was “V” for victory.
Isn’t music powerful! I enjoyed every second of that audio above. Thanks!]
And, cheers to you, Evan Thomas — from the Pacific Northwest (of the U.S. — and a lot of us DID want to help you Brits, but politicians stopped us…. then, the Japs (that is what I will always call the Imperial Japanese power of WWII — not meaning Japanese people today) gave the world a blessing in disguise and the “sleeping giant” woke up with a loud roar.
Nevertheless, indeed, Mr. Thomas, the world owes its freedom largely to the Brits for not giving in when no one else would help.
Gratefully,
Janice
Eustace Cranch says:
June 6, 2013 at 9:49 am
“Why doesn’t the observed temp line show the recent leveling-off? Just askin.”
Wobble says:
“The blue squares seem to be level since 1998.” And Feet2thefire says:
“Actually, it seems to. There is a 7-year rise starting in 1995 or 1996, then it flattens out for the last 8 years.”
I fear this is because Eustace and the other two are commenting on two different figures. Eustace is referring to the figure with the straight regression lines, which shows no levelling off. ‘Tother two are referring to the figure with the detailed “actual” curves. The latter figure shows, though not very well, the levelling off, but as the former figure lumps together both the latter period with the near level temperatures, and the earlier period with increasing temperatures, the whole regression line shows a continual increase.
It would have been interesting to show the straight line regressions for the observations for the periods 1975 to 1995, and 1996 to 2012. There seems to be a discontinuity at 1995/6
All(ALL) Climate models have failed miserably. If anyway at the IPCC/Obamaville care anything about truth, now would be the time.