From the world of Claimatology™, comes this smackdown from Nature.
“The dramatic warming predicted after 2008 has yet to arrive.”
An article published today in Nature laments the dismal failure of climate models to predict climate a mere 5 years into the future, much less a century from now.
- “It’s fair to say that the real world warmed even less than our forecast suggested,” [modeller] Smith says. “We don’t really understand at the moment why that is.” “
- “Although I have nothing against this endeavour as a research opportunity, the papers so far have mostly served as a ‘disproof of concept’,” says Gavin Schmidt. Schmidt says that these efforts are “a little misguided”. He argues that it is difficult to attribute success or failure to any particular parameter because the inherent unpredictability of weather and climate is built into both the Earth system and the models. “It doesn’t suggest any solutions,” he says.
- “Because the climate does not usually change drastically from one year to the next, the model is bound to start off predicting conditions that are close to reality. But that effect quickly wears off as the real climate evolves. If this is the source of the models’ accuracy, that advantage fades quickly after a few years.”
- “Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says that it could be a decade or more before this research really begins to pay off in terms of predictive power, and even then climate scientists will be limited in what they can say about the future.”
Limited in what they can say about the future?
Since when? Somebody please tell Jim Hansen he can’t say “the oceans will boil“.
The Nature article is here: http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-forecast-for-2018-is-cloudy-with-record-heat-1.13344
h/t to the Hockey Schtick.
“Because the climate does not usually change drastically from one year to the next, the model isbound to start off predicting conditions that are close to reality. But that effect quickly wears off as the real climate evolves. If this is the source of the models’ accuracy, that advantage fades quickly after a few years.”
Clearly there is “climate” and then there is “real climate” ….and of course “real climate” will determine the models accuracy ..no “ifs” about it …..I am astounded this is just now dawning as possibilities in their minds …
Wow.
If you can’t hit the broad side of a barn at 25 feet, you aren’t going to hit the target at 100 meters.
I think it’s high time, and in fact well past due, that the employers (that means us, the taxpayers) of these climate warriors send them notifications on paper colored in an appropriate shade of pink:
“You’re services are no longer required.” (Assuming they ever were.)
“Due to a restructuring…”
“Your position has been eliminated.” (I’m quite familiar with that one.)
“Due to a ‘right-sizing’ initiative…”
“Due to the elimination of your department.”
“You have a scheduled meeting with human resources at 4:00pm on Friday.”
Jeremy says:
July 11, 2013 at 6:59 am
“The FAILURE is also with the UN IPCC, Western Governments, media and NGO’s like Sierra, WWF and Greenpeace. These organizations are no longer trustworthy to present science in a balanced unbiased manner – they appear to be governed by agendas and self interest (money) and have completely lost any sense of moral compass. The FAILURE is with THEM.”
Since 1972 the NGO’s work for the UN (Maurice Strong, Earth Summit in Rio). They are funded by the EU. (with the exception of Greenpeace)
You can’t say they failed when they do what they were paid to do. And arguably successfully; the entirety of EU societies has successfully been transformed into communitarians – to a point where even people considering themselves as rightwingers talk like Lenin and don’t even notice.
http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/european-commission-using-taxpayers%E2%80%99-money-to-fund-groups-that-lobby-for-larger-eu-budgets-and-
He he…,
does this mean they are going back to the Scientific Method way of doing research?
“Because the climate does not usually change drastically from one year to the next, the model is bound to start off predicting conditions that are close to reality. But that effect quickly wears off as the real climate evolves. If this is the source of the models’ accuracy, that advantage fades quickly after a few years.”
Whoever wrote that cannot think straight. Climate is defined as the 30 year average of weather. A 30 year moving average can by definition NEVER change “drastically” from year to year.
It’s too late. We have runaway greenhouse political science policy effects now.
To paraphrase from the movie “Cool Hand Luke”: What we got here is… failure to prognosticate.
Smith’s team used its standard climate model, but broke the mould by borrowing ideas from the way meteorologists forecast the weekly weather.
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ROTFL…and got the same results………fail
Reblogged this on Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations and commented:
The “Nature” article that accompanies this post by Anthony Watts is remarkable.
“It’s fair to say that the real world warmed even less than our forecast suggested,” [modeller] Smith says. “We don’t really understand at the moment why that is.” “
Because your models are rubbish, perhaps? Nah! Couldn’t be that.
Climate science falsely believes that for any given combination of forcings there is only 1 equilibrium temperature for the earth and only 1 path that will reach equilibrium.
The spaghetti graph of the climate models are telling us quite the opposite. The models show that for any single combination of forcings there are a many possible future temperatures. This range of possible futures shows us that there is inherent variability in climate that is independent of the forcings.
The models are deliver a message that is absolutely clear, Weather is chaotic and the average of weather (climate) will vary naturally over time as a result of this chaos. It will not converge on a single mean because chaotic systems can be better understood as having many means, one for each attractor.
For example, daily temperature has a mean, but this mean varies wildly over the period of a year, and varies even more of the period of the ice ages. Trying to analyze this in terms of a single mean results in statistical nonsense. Which is why the climate models are failing to model reality.
The chaotic model of weather and climate tells us that a single mean cannot be resolved mathematically. It is the mathematical equivalent of the N body problem in orbital mechanics and quantum mechanics. The best that can be done is to place bounds around the problem.
The climate models show us a glimpse of these bounds. The top of the spaghetti graph is the upper limit and the bottom of the spaghetti graph is the lower limit, and what will actually happen is that real temperatures are likely to be found within the bounds. But exactly where can only be predicted by a throw of the dice.
For all intents and purposes, a chaotic system is a bounded system where chance determines the true answer within bounds. Physically this may well not be the case, but mathematically this is as close as we can get to the real answer because we cannot solve the N body problem. It results in an infinitely long series expansion.
The best we can do is to round off the infinite series both up and down, and say that the answer lies somewhere between these bounds. Where exactly cannot be predicted to any better accuracy than is given by a throw of the dice or a toss of the coin.
The primary tone of the climate scientists responding in this article is one of suspended disbelief (denial) that their strongly held position cannot be verified by the work they do. It has to be a very disheartening feeling. My thoughts are with them as they adjust to this new reality. I am awaiting the next Nature article on the next stage of grief – the pain and the guilt – for what their unsubstantiated beliefs have wrought on the world.
Because the N body problem is intractable, climate science would be much better off to stop talking about the ensemble mean. It will simply make them look foolish because chaos almost always guarantees that reality will diverge from the ensemble.
Instead, Climate Science should drop the ensemble mean and replace it with upper and lower bounds, representing the inherent uncertainty in the system. Put two lines on the temperature chart. One high and one low, and say that the real answer lies somewhere in between.
And then be honest about this. The answer is no more likely to be found in the middle, 1/2 way between the limits, than it is to be found anywhere else between the limits. Stop pretending that the real answer lies in the middle. It may, but chaos tells us the middle (ensemble mean) is not more likely than any other answer within the bounds.
for example, take any infinite series:
1.23456…..
Now round this series off high and low.
1.2345
1.2346
Where does the true answer lie? We know the missing information is 6….., but climate science does not. Instead they are trying to pretend that the real answer is:
1.23455
The ensemble mean is the extra 5 at the end, but the real answer is 6….. However it could just as easily be 1… or 9…. So we might as well toss a coin because the average is no more likely to be correct than any other possibility.
Jeremy@6:59:
Jeremy is correct.
It is a poor craftsman that blames his tools.
Since “Nature” can always be expected to put the best face possible on the AGW case (such as it is), this article constitutes a muted bombshell. It does several things that tell me those who have made their scientific “bones” on AGW theory are worried that “the party may be nearing its end” and are hedging their bets while trying to preserve funding:
1) AGW based climate models have failed in their predictions to an abysmal degree and the truth of that is being acknowledged.
2) No one knows why the models have failed (note: they fish around for possible reasons EXCEPT THE OBVIOUS; that AGW’s “positive feedback” theory is wrong).
3) Much more work must be done (and money spent) to research the problem and improve the models. That will take decades.
The article closes with a modest proposal I will paraphrase as, “Maybe if we put all the different climate models together in a kind of voting system they can tell us something worth knowing”.
“I wouldn’t be keen to bet on that at the moment,” Smith says, “but I do think we’re going to make some good progress within a few years.”
SOME GOOD PROGRESS WITHIN A FEW YEARS? (Just keep those taxpayer $ billions coming, boys and girls.)
“Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says that it could be a adecade or more before this research really begins to pay off in terms of predictive power, and even then climate scientists will be limited in what they can say about the future.”
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Call me jaded but ………..
“a decade or more”……. I’ll take that to mean his retirement begins in about 14 yrs.
The nature article is throwing the near-term projections under the bus. The article implies that the long-term projections are ok though.
“These near-term forecasts stand in sharp contrast to the generic projections that climate modellers typically produce, which look many decades ahead and don’t represent the actual climate at any given time. “
Chuck L says:
July 11, 2013 at 7:30 am :
I agree. who can trust them now. They threw their lot in with the Warmists, Thereby alienating any skeptics. Skeptics no longer trust their publication.
Now, they’ve bitten the Warmists hand and they’ll be ostracized by them too .
Who will read their rag now? Not me.
Although I like watching them backpedal.
The truth outs itself, given time.
Tom J says:
July 11, 2013 at 7:58 am
Tom – at the very least, the whole climate industrial complex ™ needs to restructured and streamlined for efficiency. So many tax dollars (that we really don’t have) utterly wasted on dubious research projects and inefficient facilities. For example, why would anyone in their right mind maintain a very expensive branch of NASA GSFC in downtown New York City???
Meanwhile, the uninformed public, relying on a headline here, a paragraph there, continue to have their point of view controlled by the same high priests of climate – Trenberth, Schmidt, Hansen, Mann, etc. All the major news outlets invariably quote the same handful of climate zealots over and over and over. The media will occasionally run a story that is counter to the CAGW meme, but they always include a quote from one of the high priests of climate to minimize any damage to the CAGW doctrine.
Jeremy says:
July 11, 2013 at 6:59 am
Well said Sir!
I would like to put a question to the Wet Office’s Julia Slingo & Vick Pope. Just how many people have o die on our un-gritted roads de to failed snow forecasts, how many elderly people have to have to freeze to death because they cannot afford to heat their homes, please, put a number on it before you sit up & think “maybe we’ve got it wrong?” What is it? 10, 100, 500, 1000, 5000? Do tell me!
Oh, my, what next? People will wake up and realize 400PPM of an innocuous gas has nothing to do with the temperature of the remaining 1,000,000PPM (close enough)?
David Borth says: “I am awaiting the next Nature article on the next stage of grief – the pain and the guilt – for what their unsubstantiated beliefs have wrought on the world.”
While I agree that there are quite a few well intentioned but merely misguided climate scientists out there, the more vocal ones, e.g. the ‘Team’, are ‘True Believers’ and will simply take a bounce and rationalize their way to the next catastrophe.