People send me stuff. Lance Wallace writes:
Anthony, this short “Perspectives” report in Science seems to me to be worthy of a posting in WUWT. Not only is it a very clear indication of crucial problems with the GCMs, it appears in Science magazine, for years a dogged defender of the faith. I’m including the article (paywalled of course) because I think your readers will be blown away by the figure if you can run it.
The authors ran some extremely simplified CMIP5 GCMs, looking only at how they treated water (precipitation, cloud formation), and found extreme differences from one model to the next, as is evident from the figure.
In the final section titled Back to Basics, they make clear that the problem is a fundamental one of not understanding the coupling between water and general circulation. They specifically state it would be better to go towards numerical weather prediction rather than continue to expand the coverage of the GCMs.
By the way, they picked just two aspects–clouds and precipitation–to concentrate on, but they mention a few others, such as sensitivity and arctic amplification of temperature change. Then there are also aerosols, energy balance, and ocean circulation. I could see more examples of models simplified down to each of these aspects in turn and compared to see how they perform. – Lance Wallace
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Science 31 May 2013:
Vol. 340 no. 6136 pp. 1053-1054
DOI: 10.1126/science.1237554
What Are Climate Models Missing?
Fifty years ago, Joseph Smagorinsky published a landmark paper (1) describing numerical experiments using the primitive equations (a set of fluid equations that describe global atmospheric flows). In so doing, he introduced what later became known as a General Circulation Model (GCM). GCMs have come to provide a compelling framework for coupling the atmospheric circulation to a great variety of processes. Although early GCMs could only consider a small subset of these processes, it was widely appreciated that a more comprehensive treatment was necessary to adequately represent the drivers of the circulation. But how comprehensive this treatment must be was unclear and, as Smagorinsky realized (2), could only be determined through numerical experimentation. These types of experiments have since shown that an adequate description of basic processes like cloud formation, moist convection, and mixing is what climate models miss most.
Full text at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6136/1053.summary (paywalled)
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The figure from the article shows how four different models have wide variances on clouds and precipitation.
on the climate model, even in the simplest model confi guration. Shown are changes in the radiative effects of clouds and in precipitation accompanying a uniform warming (4°C) predicted by four models from Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) for a water planet with prescribed surface temperatures.
Clouds and water are central to our global atmospheric processes, and clearly, these models aren’t doing much better than dartboards at figuring out what the real atmospheric score is.
With wide variances like that, no wonder climate models can’t model reality, from Dr. Roy Spencer’s recent post: STILL Epic Fail: 73 Climate Models vs. Measurements, Running 5-Year Means
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All models start with a premise and attempt to codify using data. The difference with climate “science” from all other science is that it is the data that is adjusted not the model.
Every time I see where the tireless and unsung efforts of some poor fellow in the 1930s trudging out read a calibrated thermometer daily or more often only to have someone 80 years later decide that his 1/10th degree reading was off by 2 or 3 degrees is just astounding.
How many more times does this grizzled old engineer who has measured coupled convection and radiation in metallurgical plants around the World have to state the bleedin’ obvious.
The Trenberth energy balance exaggerates lower atmosphere IR energy absorption by up to 6.85 times and there is net zero absorption of ~15 micron CO2 energy. This is then offset in hind casting by using double real low level cloud optical depth. It’s a scam by the ignorant, now supported by the fraudulent and the stupid.
As for the ‘OLR bite’ heating, that is exactly offset by a lower atmosphere process that easy to work out if you have the right physics’ knowledge.
The atmosphere oscillates about the set point OLR = SW IN and there can be no CO2-AGW because that’s the working fluid of the heat engine.
As for ‘back radiation’, a part of climate alchemy that is supposed to explain its anti-science, it does not exist as any competent professional taught Maxwell’s Equations knows from 2nd year degree level. Yet it’s taught as fact in Meteorology and Climate Sciences.
What must be done is for all these curriculae to externally approved so these people can’t continue teaching this new Lysenkoism. Yes, it’s as serious as that because this anti-science is permeating into the rest of science.
In the UK, physics academics are starting to give exercises to students to devise ‘reverse heat engines’ so they can put a ‘back radiation’ collector on car roofs to collect that everlasting power
@juan slayton
Thank you. Each correction gets me closer to perfection. (And Phil’s Law strikes again.)
” jbird says:
June 9, 2013 at 5:29 pm
If your hypothesis remains unproven, throw it out. Seems to me that we have passed that point. The models are junk. Quit funding them.”
No, keep funding them. Every day that passes they make the AGW claims look more and more stupid.
To Master of Puppets I agree with the others about your previous comments. Please don’t let us sink to the level of the Warmists. Logical arguments not death threats will win in the end.
On a lighter note friend of mine put this quote on Facebook this morning, very prophetic!
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”
John F. Kennedy
Sweet! Keep up the good work.
I read MOP’s comment as a metaphor for certain careers, not biological processes. Just as we don’t want to veer too far into the marsh of rhetoric that the alarm crowd as become mired in, I do think that we ought to avoid any extreme tendency to read comments too literally. It is as we can see from the article itself all to easy to accept what our models tell us. The very, very important point in the article is unstated. Science, the process, is working as it should.
“In your report there is much that is new, and much that is true; but what is new is not true and what is true is not new. Dont know where that quotation is from … but it fits.”
It was first used by the historial Macaulay speaking of the British Navy in the reign of Charles II. He said that it was staffed by, as I recall, officers and seamen. Unfortunately the seamen were not officers and the officers… were not seamen. As told many years ago it depended on the pun on ‘seamen’ meaning in the one phrase the crew and in the other phrase professionally qualified men of the sea.
Its been used a lot since. As in during the years leading up to the financial crisis the banks were staffed by prudent men and managers. Unfortunately the prudent were not managers and the managers not prudent…. And so on.
What are the models missing?
Oceans, of course.
And clouds.
And many other things…
But still the figure of Roy is misleading here.
The magnitude of the warming observed and the regions of the planet that warmed in the last 70 years does not match the predictions of the GCMs. The GCM predicted that the majority of the warming should be in the tropics where there is the most amount of long wave radiation emitted to space and where there is ample water to amplify the CO2 forcing warming. The majority of the observed warming was in high latitude regions not in the tropics.
The regions of the planet that have warmed in the past 70 years are the same regions that warmed in the past cyclically. The past cyclic warming correlates with solar magnetic cycle changes. The past cyclic warming cycles have all been followed by cooling phases (sometimes abrupt cooling phases). There is currently a very unusual slowdown of the solar magnetic cycle underway.
We have been told over and over again in the media, that based on agreement of 97% scientists who have been busy pushing the agenda, it is physically impossible for there to now be significant cooling due to a very unusual solar magnetic cycle change. CO2 is the principal driver of climate change now and in the past. Solar changes have a minor affect on planetary climate. There is no discussion or explanation of abrupt climate change in the paleo record. (Glacial/interglacial cycles start and end abruptly. There is cyclic abrupt climate change in the paleo record. That is an observational fact not a theory.)
The current observations support the assertion that we are going to experience the cooling phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle and the initial cooling will be relatively abrupt as compared to the warming experienced. There is now the first observational evidence of cooling in the regions that warmed. The unusual solar magnetic cycle continues.
I am trying to imagine what will be the public’s and media’s response to cooling (same regions that warmed in the recent past will now cool), how the cooling will affect scientific analysis, and how the cooling will affect negotiations concerning climate ‘change’.
I’d include Bill Illis in the first rank.
The models fail because their assumptions are wrong.
First remove the CO2 driver.
Second assume all feedbacks negative.
Thirdly, model in solar variations and full insolation not that assumed by K&T as a quarter of the true figure.
Then try.
Good Lord,- It Works!
There are chinks all over the place.
“In the final section titled Back to Basics, they make clear that the problem is a fundamental one of not understanding the coupling between water and general circulation.”
They’re listening.
Those “missing factors” happen to be the planet’s most potent H2O heat-transport mechanisms. Which dominate all.
“Apart from all other reasons, the parameters of the geoid depend on the distribution of water over the planetary surface.” — Nikolay Sidorenkov
People put faith is these climate models as if they were created by Mr. Spock on an episode of Star Trek.
What people don’t understand is the modelers don’t really know how the climate system works and these models include a great deal of unverified beliefs about how the climate system works. It should be simple to understand this observation about climate models — if you build a model based upon the belief that more CO2 causes warming, then your model will show more CO2 causes more warming.
By coincidence Notrickszone has a presentation from Prof. Murry Salby in Hanburg on climate model failures.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/06/10/murry-salbys-presentation-in-hamburg/
Why do the simulated pictures all look like Jupiter?
“And, so, what is your ACTUAL opinion?”
My actual opinion is of very little value, as I am not a climate modeler. Which climate models do you think hit closest to home? Is it Anthony’s model? Any of the various climate creationist’s models? Oh wait, none of those actually DO unique modeling.
“You are not a stupid person, and so you must have noticed that the levels of intelligence and thoughtfulness”
Half of the posters here doubt the greenhouse effect, a quarter or more seem to think the rise in CO2 is natural. Even the well-spoken ones can’t see clearly enough to see that their snipe positions are mutually exclusive with each other. No, I am not impressed with the dialogue here. It is childishly awful. I once read a thread on Pokemon forums about how these guys just knew that Pokemon were real but just outside of our perception. They ha graphs, complex light equations, data. Someone without any education could probably have believed it if they hasn’t used the work Pokemon. The situation here is similar.
Ryan says:
June 9, 2013 at 7:39 pm
“Mainstream models” = Argument by consensus. Logic FAIL.
“climate science” = Warmist (aka “consensus”) science = Appeal to Authority. Logic FAIL.
“makes you sound like creationists ” = False analogy + Ad hominem. Logic FAIL.
What else have you got, Ryan? Hmmmm?
Once a hot believer in CAGW Lovelock has since changed his mind. Here he is on climate scientists.
This climate war is being fought out in slow motion but gradually reality is smacking these people in the forehead. This year there has certainly been more scepticism in the MSM and carefully phrased doubts by some climate scientists.
“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.”
Richard P. Feynman
“These types of experiments have since shown that an adequate description of basic processes like cloud formation, moist convection, and mixing is what climate models miss most.”
Oh, they only got the effects of H2O on earth wrong – that must be easy to fix! Couldn’t they just leave it out? (sarc)
Sceptics and scepticism does not require models to falsify the CAGW religion. On the subject of religion have you asked John Cook whether he believes in Creationism?