INITIAL NOTE: This post has nothing to do with the Kerry Emanuel’s new climate model-based paper, Downscaling CMIP5 climate models shows increased tropical cyclone activity over the 21st century, but feel free to comment about it. The USA Today article here about Kerry Emanuel’s paper has interviews with Judith Curry and Roger Pielke, Jr., both of whom appear a bit skeptical.
We know that climate models cannot simulate the sea surface temperature anomalies of the past 31 years. See here. So why should we have any confidence in a climate model-based study of hurricanes that depends on flawed simulations of sea surface temperatures? We shouldn’t. Also, tropical cyclones are strongly impacted by El Niño and La Niña events, and climate models still can’t simulate El Niños and La Niñas. Kerry Emanuel’s new climate model-based paper is nothing more than computer-aided speculation, using models that can’t simulate fundamental components of the study.
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NOAA announced the formation of Tropical Storm Chantal yesterday. The media reacted with headlines like USAToday’s Tropical Storm Chantal races toward Caribbean. Not to be outdone, WunderGround’s headline reads Tropical Storm Chantal: a Likely Harbinger of an Active Atlantic Hurricane Season.
This a quick look at the sea surface temperature anomalies along Chantal’s past and forecast storm track, using Reynolds OI.v2 sea surface temperature data. It was prepared in anticipation of the typical claims about the influence of global warming on tropical storms and hurricanes. I’ve divided the storm track into two regions shown in red in Figure 1. We’ll call the more southern region the Western Main Development Region. The more northern one will represent the sea surface temperature anomalies off Cuba and the East Coast of Florida. We’ll present the monthly and weekly sea surface temperature anomalies.
Figure 1
As a reminder, warm sea surface temperatures feed tropical storms, not sea surface temperature anomalies. Seasonal sea surface temperatures are obviously warm enough to sustain a tropical storm.
WESTERN MAIN DEVELOPMENT REGION
Figures 2 and 3 present the monthly and weekly sea surface temperature anomalies for the western Main Development Region. We’re using the coordinates of 10N-20N, 75W-50W. Sea surface temperatures in this region are above the base year (1971-2000) values, but they are nowhere close to the highs experienced a couple of years ago.
Figure 2
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Figure 3
OFF CUBA AND EAST COAST OF FLORIDA
Monthly and weekly sea surface temperature anomalies off Cuba and the East Coast of Florida (20N-30N, 80W-70W) are below their respective 1971-2000 averages. See Figures 4 and 5.
Figure 4
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Figure 5
NATURAL WARMING OF THE OCEANS
For four years, I’ve been illustrating and discussing how ocean heat content and satellite-era sea surface temperature data indicate the oceans warmed naturally. That doesn’t stop climate change alarmists from making all sorts of nonsensical claims. If the natural warming of the oceans is new to you, refer to the illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” [42MB].
CLOSING
There’s nothing unusual about the sea surface temperature anomalies of the western Main Development Region in the North Atlantic. There is, however, something unusual about the sea surface temperature anomalies off Cuba and the east coast of Florida. In a world where we’ve been told that greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming, the sea surface temperature anomalies off Cuba and the east coast of Florida are below their 1971-2000 averages.
SOURCE
The Sea Surface Temperature anomaly data used in this post is available through the NOAA NOMADS website:
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
or:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?lite=
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If the oceans have warmed, how could global warming have stopped?
Steven Mosher says:
July 9, 2013 at 8:17 am
“…..very simple. climate studies are an observational science.”
Science is a process. One may have an idea of a cause, a tentative hypothesis regarding some observed phenomenon rooted in some background knowledge – “Physics” as it tends to be called. Hansen, for example, observing the conditions on Venus and noting that we are increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere here on earth was struck with the idea that, Gee, if we filled the atmos with CO2 we could end up with a Venus-like surface temperature. Then, hey, we don’t need 500 C to be a problem, maybe only 5 C would do us all in. This is still science to this point and knowing that CO2 absorbs part of the LWIR end of the spectrum, we have a pretty good hypothesis to begin with. Predictions were then made about the West Highway along the Hudson being underwater by 2003 (15 yrs) and the temperature being up a couple of degrees. This is still scientific.
But science died, not when the predictions turned out to be overly pessimistic, but when, as the best before date approached, they began adjusting temperatures down for the first half of the century and up (although constrained somewhat by satellite data) for the second half to at least salvage part of the predictions. And then, emboldened by the late Dr. Schneider (he of the world is going into a deep freeze in the 1970s) who took up the CAGW cause with the same zeal and encouraged proponents to exaggerate, fiddle with the truth, and hide uncertainty in the science from the public, all pretence at science collapsed. Leading scientists began flattening out the 1930s warm records that still reigned by the century’s end, killing off the LIA, the MWP, the RWP etc. to fashion the hockey stick. Temperature proxies were inverted if it gave the right answer. Professors of the wrong stripe got fired, journals were boycotted and editors given the bum’s rush if they published a ‘contrarian’ paper. Data series were thrown out, the FOIA law was flouted. Whitewash flowed in the streets of East Anglia and State College, PA while Stevenson screens turned grey. The science was settled (scuttled). The Russians have a saying something like ‘gulet tak gulet’ if you’re going to party, then go for it. With the walls breached, the fringy psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, the butchers, bakers and candlestickmakers all saw it as fair game. Hot became cold, dry became wet, ice started flowing away in square Manhattans, and melting in Gigaswimming pools. Springs came early and then late, people began barbecuing in the rain and cold. The Met Office forecasts were perfect but the UK weather was disappointing. Model run “data” became observations……..
At least one effect to be found most commonly in natural and engineering systems was also propounded upside down at the beginning, or it might all have been saved – the idea of the negative feedback. Why with all the complexity and interlocked systems to be found in climate that negative feedback was so rationed out in miniscule quantities by climate scientists. How to explain a variation of only 7 to 10 degrees over more than a billion years in a climate with so little negative feedback and so large positive feedbacks. How can the SST be capped at 31C? How can be go dipping in and out of ice ages. That all by itself is enough to make a thinking person a skeptic. It is still being clung to even though they have had to whittle climate sensitivity down from 4-7C to about 1. Observations, science?
Stephen Mosher july 9 6:06am says
“Put another way his paper is in PNAS because it is science. And all science is a model. The only thing that is not science is shrugging your shoulders and saying, “I don’t know, will never know, its too complex”. Bad science, the worst model, beats shoulder shrugging every day of the week.
The above is ludicrous nonsense. MOSHER, TRY TO THINK!
Admittedly there is a thing called “reality” and then there is our “conception” of reality. (To posit otherwise is to claim that the universe exists only in the imagination of the one person, right now, who is reading this. All others and all the universe itself only seem to exist because the person reading this is the only “real” thing in the universe and he or she imagines all else including what I have just written.) In that sense — that there is a “real” universe which we do not (and cannot) know completely — all our thinking is modeling. We are constantly guessing about what is actually going on “out there”.
But people are extremely bad at this. But some people claim to “model” the world around them rather well.
I got news for you, Mosher, bad models — put into action — are worse than no models at all. Most people would posit that modeling does indeed have a place in climate science — but not the prominent place now given to the ridiculously inept models being fostered on the public by “climate scientists”. The harm that these models that “misrepresentation the world” are doing has the potential to be catastrophic. Formulate policy based on their inept nonsense??? — don’t make me laugh.
If climate modeling had been regulated to obscure journals it would probably be doing more good than harm — but used so prominently in politics — to stifle the development of civilization — as they are being used today — makes them far more harmful than no models at all.
So you are right when you say all things are models and you are right to end saying that shrugging your shoulders and “not modeling” is not a solution. Where you screw up is that middle part where you implicitly imply that — “bad science, the worst model” is better than no model at all.
If climate scientists would present their models and say — we don’t really know but based on the incomplete and inaccurate data we do have this is our best guess as to what may happen but no one with wisdom would take our predictions too seriously — then they would be good scientists doing science. But instead we hear “the science is settled”.
So now do you understand, Mosher — “bad science, the worst model” can actually have devastating effects on real people. Climate scientists need to curb their self-aggrandizing mouths.
Eugene WR Gallun
sceptical says:
If the oceans have warmed, how could global warming have stopped?
Yet another warmist that thinks they have the power to divine the minutia of irreducably complex global systems, despite the fact that correct understanding of verb tense remains beyond their grasp.
BTW, ‘global warming’ was defined, parameterized, and sold to gullible twits like you as a phenomenon of globally averaged surface temperature. This was done over the objections of many of us, who have argued that 3D heat content was the appropriate metric for such a task. You don’t get to switch media ad hoc, simply because the metric of your choice isn’t currently behaving the way your predictions said it would. Accept that your half assed theory has failed. If you want to adance a new theory then start from first principles withthe demonstration of that.
Back on the topic of Chantal…
I’d say you can put a fork in it: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCDAT3+shtml/100837.shtml
Emmanuel has no shame, scruples or science.
Steven Mosher,
Bad models are costing Americans billions of dollars a year in increased insurance premiums.
sceptical says: “If the oceans have warmed, how could global warming have stopped?”
Here’s what I wrote again, which is the basis for your comment:
For four years, I’ve been illustrating and discussing how ocean heat content and satellite-era sea surface temperature data indicate the oceans warmed naturally.
Does it say that the warming of the oceans continues? Nope. It says they warmed (past tense) naturally.
When did the ocean warming stop? Was it 16 years ago? The figures in this post, especially 1 and 2, makes it look like warming has taken place within the last 16 years. Based on the above figures, it appears you would be saying the oceans warming stopped in 2010. Is this when it stopped?
Science is the use of actual observations followed by calculations (data analysis) to see if the actual observations support a proposed hypothesis. If “all science was a model” then organic synthesis” wouldn’t be possible… or at least it wouldn’t be considered “science” under that hazy, ridiculous definition.
Models are not observations. Models are an attempt to MODEL a system which is sufficiently complex that it is impossible to isolate the variables of the complex system to the point where the individual variables can be operated upon and meaningful observations made.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the climate, the models are still pretty darn crude, and don’t handle many of the critically important variables very well at all. You cannot trust the output of a model unless the model is a reasonably good representation of the actual system being modeled. In my opinion, “climate models” do not model the actual climate system very well at all, so their output is representative of not much of anything in reality.
“Good Data” in ———> Good Model = reasonable ASSUMPTIONS out (not “reality” and certainly not “data”, just reasonable assumptions).
Garbage in ———> Good model = Garbage Out
“Good Data” in ———> Garbage model = Garbage Out
Garbage in ————> Garbage model = hideously bad trash out.
Far too much of climate science falls into example 4 above in my opinion. The real data have been manipulated and “homogenzied” to the point where the “data” doesn’t resemble the actual data anymore, and the models don’t account very well for the vast majority of the really important variables, so, as I said in my post above, their output is not representative of much of anything in reality.
“sceptical” – If you are going to advocate for belief in ‘global warming’, perhaps you should figure out what that is first.
Tropical Storm Chantal seems to have fizzled out.
http://portugues.christianpost.com/news/tropical-storm-chantal-enters-fizzles-into-tropical-wave-photo-17429/