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.
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Frank Slojkowski says:
July 11, 2013 at 11:33 am
May I suggest that they re-run their models with the code that implements the assumed effects of CO2 and its related postive feedback inactive. I’ll bet they would then come a lot closer to matching the real masured data.
_________________
It’s been done already. One of Hansens models assumed no change in CO2 after the year 2000.
Oddly enough, that one comes pretty close to reality, certainly much closer than models that used increases in CO2.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/even-with-his-most-recent-cheat-hansen-cant-get-above-scenario-c/
Inparticular:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/screenhunter_258-may-16-05-57.jpg?w=640&h=503
It all implies that marginal CO2 increases have little, if any marginal effect.
While the TSI trends were still rising well up until 2000s (in fact the turning point of a 4 decades trend since 1964 solar minima to downward TSI trend slope is March 2006 when using Solanki TSI reconstruction data) if they did the modeling in 2005 they likely haven’t had idea about the forthcoming rapid solar activity trends decline which can be now seen both with sunspot number and TSI.
One likely can hardly imagine they coud know it then and incorporate it in their models, especially when we consider the alarmists usually have not much clue about the solar activity variability climate influence, and quite often they even believe the solar activity didn’t rise since 1960s (-which is patently false: for example the 1964-1994 TSI trend using Solanki TSI reconstruction data is +0.146 W/m^2 per decade and the 1964-2002 TSI trend is still + 0.046 W/m^2 per decade – while, moreover, the TSI series comparison shows the satelite TSI series, especially the ACRIM -well agreeing with SORCE-TIM, would likely give even slightly steeper TSI trend slopes), and they sometimes don’t include the solar forcing in their considerations at all.
Now they wonder why the surface temperature anomalies don’t rise with the rising CO2 content in the atmosphere, are baffled with this “mystery” (and their “global warming cargo cult” is apparently still expecting the cargo arrival: ”The dramatic warming predicted after 2008 has yet to arrive.”) and even the more than decade long warming stall should ring the bell and rise a Kremlin size red flag they don’t much care and instead are not much reluctant produce various more or less absurd explanations why it is so while still keeping their petty CO2 hypothesis up – except go back and reconsider the solar activity variability influence.
It’s funny. But the reason for their failure is not just the declining solar activity at rates now comparable to the rates leading to Dalton minimum (and the now significant downward slope TSI trends they rarely consider and never incorporate in their models), it is also the fact that ocean in fact never can be significantly heated by a GHE (even if the GHE would be enhanced by the rising CO2 concentration in the air). That’s because water is relatively extremely opaque to mid-IR spectras at which the atmosphere radiates, so the mid-IR cannot significantly penetrate the ocean and heat it anywhere under like tenth of milimeter ocean surface skin (where almost only what the mid-IR backradiation enhances there is the water evaporation taking considerable latent heat with, transporting it then up to the atmosphere). This results in ocean loosing heat now considerably faster than the solar radiation (the solar spectra unlike the mid-IR spectra penetrate the ocean well, million times better than mid-IR spectra) replenishes it throughout the epipelagic zone and while the ocean’s immense heat content upwelling (warmer water relatively rapidly upwells vertically due to its lower density and has of course no need of ocean currents to transport it on the surface) still more or less offsets the decline in the solar heating of the ocean surface layer, it will not take long to the point when the ocean surface temperature anomaly starts to decline significantly and with it inevitably also the surface air temperature anomaly. This result could be now deemed inevitable, because further significant decline in solar activity is now sure at least for the rest of the current solar cycle, which means until 2020s and highly likely for whole the current Hale solar cycle SC24-25, which means until 2030s. By then the surface temperature anomalies decline would be well in the realm of statisticaly significant decline, while the CO2 content in the atmosphere will be still very significantly rising and so the resulting very significant CO2/surface temperature anomaly anticorrelation will eventually end the CAGW hype as one the biggest scientific blunders in the history.
Scott Basinger says:
I’m having a hard time reconciling the following statement in the article with “the science is settled”.
“It’s fair to say that the real world warmed even less than our forecast suggested,” Smith says. “We don’t really understand at the moment why that is.”
Oh, it gets better than that. Read the sidebar, which says this …
It is one of the biggest mysteries in climate science: humans are pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere today than ever before, yet global temperatures have not risen much in more than a decade. That trend does not undermine the idea that greenhouse gases will eventually push global temperatures into uncharted territory, but it does have scientists puzzled.
… and then follows up a couple of paragraphs later with this:
But scientists cannot yet fully explain the recent trends, and the larger question is whether the lack of warming today portends less warming in the future.
So, the failure of their predictions does not undermine their predictions, but apparently it does raise the larger question of whether their predictions are wrong.
These guys can’t do science to save their lives, but are becoming masters of cognitive dissonance to save their jobs …
Rod Everson says: July 11, 2013 at 7:32 am “From the paper: “Another challenge stems from the fact that each model has its own equilibrium state — the climate that it generates naturally if left on its own. By plugging in actual values for the ocean and atmosphere, researchers pull the model away from its natural state. When the model starts to run forward in time, it immediately begins to drift back to its preferred climate, which can introduce additional complications.”
It (the model) begins to drift back to its preferred climate? Does that mean what it sounds like it means? Because it sure sounds like it means that regardless of the initial inputs, the model is going to end up “drifting” to a preordained (“preferred”) climate prediction. Preferred by the modeler, no doubt.
–This comment from Rod gets to what I have tried to express in a comment in another WUWT post I think yesterday about modeling.
You either get a runaway model, or one that does not run away.
we have been told that there are tipping points and that the climate will run away to Armageddon. This is because as far as we know up to this point in history, there is some overall governor function operating.
The fact that we are here across time incalculable indicates that either this atmosphere is incredibly lucky for us, or there is some ultimate governing parameter that keeps various influences from running a huge positive feedback loop to oblivion.
I think models thus have to begin with the concept that behavior will be in some range. Then, proceed to add pieces of variability within that overall behavior.
For the AGW Cult, the cause has been to show the opposite: that we have been fortunate ever since – I don’t know – either the dawn of the planet, the dawn of man, or the end of the most recent genuine ice age – but our good fortune has run out, and we are about to see the runaway climate behavior.
You can walk a tight rope or balance beam for a while, but you eventually fall off. AGW says the hospitable climate has been a tightrope walk but we are abt to suffer the inevitable loss of balance, as swaying one direction wildly to catch balance throws us wildly in the other, to the eventual fall.
The root of the problem is the semantic confusion between “predictions” and “projections”
Predictions are descriptions of the future from which appropriate actions can be chosen with considerations of the uncertainties in the description.
Projections are descriptions of the future which can be used, retrospectively, to assess the understanding of the systems that were used in the making of that projection.
You can’t make a policy on a projection. You can only refine your knowledge of the uncertainties in the predictions from evaluation of a projection.
But many people in positions of responsibility make policies on the basis of IPCC projections.
Inevitably, the argument is about the models’ predictions of global average temperature. Averages can hide a multitude of errors. Temperature is not climate. What climates do the models predict for particular regions? What would these models predict for the future for the case where GH gasses are held constant? Do they stabilize or diverge in the long term? Do the long term future seasonal weather forecasts have features that we know and expect such as blocking highs, jet streams, hurricanes?
“Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says that it could be a decade or more”, much much more indeed there is no time limit as to ‘when ‘ it could be so he can always claim his ‘going ‘ to be right . No sceince in this of course but it matches the approach seen in relgion very well.
” laments the dismal failure of climate models to predict climate a mere 5 years into the future, much less a century from now.”
Aren’t they ONLY really lamenting the ability of climate models to make near term forecasts?
It really wouldn’t be that hard if these folks let go of their obsession that CO2 is the control knob of climate and that the Sun does nothing. And realized the ocean wags the atmosphere, not the other way around.
A very simple climate model:
Climate Modeling: Ocean Oscillations + Solar Activity R²=.96
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-modeling-ocean-oscillations.html
I look forward to Bob Tisdale’s excoriation of (my bold):
I admit I didn’t read the paper but from the summary of the main points it almost sounds like some of them are blaming the failure of the climate models on the weather.
Does that sound right to those of you who have read it?
I have no idea why anyone is getting excited about this paper. It’s claiming that decadal forecasts don’t work. Really? Not much of a shock. It says nothing about longer term forecasting. The underlying assumption here is that the IPCC modelling is still solid.
Reading the article and some of the responses about how the Scientists don’t know, I once again compare this situation to another one. There are also stock market experts who following some points of view, don’t know anymore than the rest of us, or more than something like an S & P 500 index mutual fund whose return they frequently cannot match. One perhaps rational investing choice is to admit the experts don’t know much and go with index funds. This is betting your money based on the assumption that the experts don’t know much. We in the United States have bet our money on the assumption that some Climate Scientists have that knowledge, that they don’t seem to be able to demonstrate they in fact have. Perhaps it’s time we switch to a more neutral position of not knowing. I acknowedge there are weather related Scientists and others that can give useful short term forecasts that businesses find valuable, and that medium term forecasts will improve as the Science improves over time.
Pauline Kael, New Yorker Magazine film critic, once supposedly said she didn’t understand how Nixon won the election, since she didn’t know a single person who voted for him.
“The failure of these models is a mystery. I don’t know a single colleague who disbelieves them.”
Trenberth says “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”.
Is he advocating the muzzling of climate scientists? /sarc
DirkH says: “…Maybe warmism has served its purpose and the powers that be are preparing to use a different tool in the future.”
Jawohl.
Right on, Theo.
I wonder where we would be if climate science HADN’T been derailed for 30+ years.
Is it just me, or isn’t this a huge bombshell???
Let me clarify the “We don’t really understand” statement:
The models are right, obviously. That is beyond question.
So we do know what the climate will do.
But the climate isn’t yet doing what we know it will do.
We don’t really understand at the moment why that is.
Atheok said, “It’s just amazing the intellectual power of these (in)famous climate scientists.”
Hasn’t it been blazingly obvious to most people that self-selected climate “scientists” are second- or third-rate intellects? I’d go even further and say that all eco-loons are in possession of sub-par intellects. How else could they so fervently believe all the green nonsense?
Wait a dog-gone minute! Isn’t he science settled?
Pat Frank says:
July 11, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Thanks,Pat. I always benefit from reading your comments.
That’s because Obama caused the seas to recede and effectively stopped AGW in its tracks
Nature has just smacked head first with reality. We told ya so.