For the National Climate Assessment NASA has produced a model-based prediction of eight degrees Fahrenheit for the continental US by 2100 as the most likely scenario
Story submitted by Ben Bakker
NASA scientists have created a video showing predicted dramatic heating of the continental US between now and the year 2100. The video and prediction show results of models assuming a rise in CO2 to a low of 550 ppm and a high of 800 ppm by 2100. The NASA team states that the 800 ppm value is a more likely scenario. The scenarios based upon their models lead to rises of 4 degrees and 8 degrees Fahrenheit respectively across the contiguous US. Video follows:
The team states that they calibrated 15 different models to the years as a baseline for comparison. They created two videos showing the changes in temperatures and precipitation.
The interesting part is that they chose the years 1970 to 1999 to calibrate the models. Calibrate them to what? Did they assume the co2 rise during that period was the sole factor driving temperatures across the US and calibrate the rise in temperature based on that correspondence? Did they quantify the role of pollution / aerosol reduction during that period? Changes in multi-decadal oscillations on regional climate? Changes in regional humidity? Was it a global or local model calibration? Why did they end the calibration period at 1999? Why start at 1970? With more data available and no contrasting calibrations provided this looks like a search for a high end projection. Perhaps explanations are provided in the research. Questions abound.
This is part of the upcoming National Climate Assessment Report.
Here is a description that accompanies the video:
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The average temperature across the continental U.S. could be 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of the 21st century under a climate scenario in which concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide rise to 800 parts per million. Current concentrations stand at 400 parts per million, and are rising faster than at any time in Earth’s history.
These visualizations — which highlight computer model projections from the draft National Climate Assessment — show how average temperatures could change across the U.S. in the coming decades under two different carbon dioxide emissions scenarios.
Both scenarios project significant warming. A scenario with lower emissions, in which carbon dioxide reaches 550 parts per million by 2100, still projects average warming across the continental U.S. of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The visualizations, which combine the results from 15 global climate models, present projections of temperature changes from 2000 to 2100 compared to the historical average from 1970 -1999. They were produced by the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., in collaboration with NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center and the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, both in Asheville, N.C.
The visualizations show the temperature changes as a 30-year running average. The date seen in the bottom-right corner is the mid-point of the 30-year average being shown.
“These visualizations communicate a picture of the impacts of climate change in a way that words do not,” says Allison Leidner, Ph.D., a scientist who coordinates NASA’s involvement in the National Climate Assessment “When I look at the scenarios for future temperature and precipitation, I really see how dramatically our nation’s climate could change.”
To learn more about the National Climate Assessment, due out in 2014, visit here: http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-d…
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Those temperature data sets are in for more serious adjustments. I think it got about 4 degrees cooler outside while I was watching those videos.
Since their graphs stopped in 1999, do we only need to wait 4 more years to say that the NASA projection has been falsified, since we already have 14 years since 1999 of no statistically significant warming to start off with? 4 more years of no statistically significant warming would be a total of 18…
Of course, if they now say it takes 30 years to invalidate the models, then I guess we would have to wait 16 more years. Probably be significantly colder by then anyway, so I guess I am ok with that.
Of course, all of the models are wrong, because they assume that CO2 is the primary driver of “global temperature”, and that premise is wrong to begin with, so the models can only be correct by complete accident.
Not Always Scientifically Accurate
Brilliant, gives O ammunition to push through whatever he wants, who will argue with NASA, and you cant for at least 15 years. Junk science at its finest.
Sure it will. And freezing temps aren’t a problem for solid-rocket booster seals, and broken-off insulation won’t hurt shuttle wings.
As in all politics, NASA has become Obama’s tool to carry out his climate agenda. Any credibility that they once had is gone. They’ve gone from NASA to NADA!
It’s from NASA so it has to be true.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of stupid does it take to believe that CO2 will ever reach 800ppm? It has taken over 50 years to go from 318 to 400, and although there a blips and bobbles in that record it has not actually begun any kind of rapid swing to the upward direction. Not really. If you use 0 as the baseline instead of 318 the chart does NOT look as scary as people think it does.
And if you can quantify stupid, what kind of stupid does it take to project a cherry-picked stretch of warming off to almost a century ahead, and think that you’ve “done science”? This has absolutely nothing to do with science, it’s bare faced bald propaganda.
And speaking of varieties of stupid, what kind of stupid does it take to swallow this ridiculous scenario, even loaded with weasel words like “could” and “might”? Even the people who created this know it’s a load of crap, they just have to. I find it difficult to believe that anyone smart enough to work at NASA is really this kind of stupid.
Sorry for my liberal use of the word “stupid”, but this whole thing is just plain stupid. There aren’t many other words that describe it so succinctly.
This is why I say, let them keep talking. Their predictions or projections or whatever we’re calling them now are getting increasingly ridiculous, increasingly laughable, decreasingly credible. Eventually they’ll be talking about 20,000 ppm and 100C warming. Then even the densest will realize it’s all a load of garbage.
So the Obama Govt is getting the report they’re paying for.
Obama must be so GREEN at the taxes levied and collected in Europe
Was taking to an S Irish Jeep owner and he pays 1850 euros a year CO2 tax on his Wrangler :O
Now that would kill off sales & lay off employess at the Toledo plant.
EU Fiat loosing money Chrysler making it.
A country that tries to Carbon tax its self into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and pulling himself up by the handle
Corruption
Over 500 million years ago, atmospheric CO2 was at 7000 ppm, and even at that amount, it was still a trace gas, and the world did not end – or maybe it did but we just didn’t get the memo?
izen says:
July 29, 2013 at 3:00 am
In fact given that your post is the closest so far to engage with the NASA report at the scientific level rather than just rejecting it without reason I suspect many here could do with this basic knowledge.
I do understand that many here do not accept that the majority of present scientific research confirms that further warming with rising CO2 is inevitable, but that rejection of mainstream science looks more and more like a faith-based cult if no scientific counter argument is advanced.
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izen, it’s all computer games….
Name one prediction the computer games got right…..
…now that’s faith-based
Simon says:
July 29, 2013 at 12:47 am
Adam Gallon says:
July 29, 2013 at 12:31 am
And they quietly ignore the fact that the 1930s were the hottest years on record for the USA?
Not according to this.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/ncdc-announces-warmest-year-record-contiguous-us
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Adam,
I have to agree with Simon on this one. You mistakenly used “quietly”.
Yawn…The political rhetoric on ACGW is ratcheting up again, is anyone surprised that NASA got involved?
Here we go again . We are unable to get the next week, next season , next year straight in our weather predictions . We totally got the past decade wrong and we again claim that we can predict the next 100 years . The year 2100 is safe as none of us will be around to be accountable for these dreadful forecasts . I suppose that is why it is safe to predict that far ahead.
Is there a link to the description that includes the “…could be 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer …” section? I couldn’t find it when I started from the link given ( http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment ).
I did find a more definitive statement (‘would’ not ‘could’) for the same visualizations:
” In the second scenario, in which carbon dioxide emissions rise to about 800 ppm (roughly double the 2013 level), temperatures would be, on average, 8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than they were at the end of the 20th century. ”
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011200/a011280/index.html
cedarhill
July 29, 2013 at 3:33 am
says:
‘Obama kicked off the drive toward the carbon tax a few days ago. It’s not conincidence the DoD, EPA, NASA and the rest of the alphabets are chiming in to whip up the crisis.’
Very astute. And this is not just for a carbon tax. I think it has scandal control written all over it as well. I wonder how many people know that the IRS scandal reached virtually to the White House last week or the degree to which that scandal tilted (and probably was intended to tilt) the election in 2012. It’s interesting to speculate the level to which our freedom protecting (just kidding) MSM will cover this NASA release compared to the IRS developments.
Oh, and by the way, might I comment to izen’s earlier (July 29, 2013 at 3:00 am) statement that, “rejection of mainstream science looks…like a faith-based cult if no scientific counter argument is advanced.”
Well, izen (for some reason my spell check keeps giving me ‘oxen’), might I suggest to you that the foregoing is, indeed, the counter argument that you seek. But it’s not a scientific counter argument you ask? Precisely.
izen says:
July 29, 2013 at 3:00 am
Mainstream science:
1613: geocentrism
1713: phlogiston
1813: creationism
1913: immobile continents
2013: GIGO climate models
That National Climate Assessment is an incredible monster with over a thousand pages. Its executive summary alone is 23 pages. Eisenhower demanded that anything left on his desk could not be more than one page long and managed the affairs of the United States quite well with that. The monstrously long Assessment gets it all wrong. First, it makes predictions of future global temperature based on projected atmospheric carbon dioxide amount. That is completely wrong because carbon dioxide is not controlling global temperature. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air today is highest ever but it is completely unable to produce the alleged greenhouse effect we are told is warming the world. This is not an exception becuse this “pause” in greenhouse warming has lasted for 15 years. The apologists for warming tell us that such pauses have happened at other times and then show a Mickey Mouse chart of a stepladder of pauses. That is a joke but there was a real pause of warming in the eighties and nineties. It and lasted for 18 years, longer than the present pause that is 15 years old already. You have not heard of it because ground-based temperature curves showed, and some still show, the eighties and nineties as a steady warming called late twentieth century warming. I compared it to satellite temperature values and realized that this warming was a complete fake. I said so in my book [1] when it came out in 2010. Nothing happened for two years. And then, suddenly, GISTEMP, HadCRUT, and NCDC all got rid of that warming and aligned their data for the eighties and nineties with satellites. It was done secretly and no one was told about it. I regard this concerted action as tantamount to an admission that they knew this warming was fake. With this correction, the correct global temperature curve now starts with an 18 year no-warming period in 1979. Add to this the current no-warming zone that covers the twenty-first century and there is only a small window left between the two. This is taken up by the superEl Nino of 1998 and its step warming that follows, leaving no time slot for any greenhouse warming since 1979. This means that we have already had 34 no-greenhouse warming years and are still counting. Ask yourself: how likely is it that any of the years prior to this could have been greenhouse warming years? Not many, I would say, probably close to zero. That is exactly what Miskolczi theory of the saturated greenhouse effect demands. Miskolczi used NOAA database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948 to study the absorption of infrared radiation by thearmosphere over time. And discovered that absorption had been constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time went up by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to air had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. Any and all predictions of future global temperature by the present National Assessment Report are thereby rendered invalid, both observationally and theoretically. Looking at their temperature curve they use to extrapolate their predictions I note that they have not removed the warming of the eighties and nineties, nor do they accurately show the current pause in warming. A tome of wrong and out of date information and worthless predictions is all this report amounts to. It must have cost thousands of dollars, all misdirected by an obsolete theory of warming.
Chuck L says:
July 29, 2013 at 4:44 am
What is so discouraging is that the ignorant public will believe this prediction because the Administration and the complicit media will promote it.
BINGO! The newest, latest, most current, citation will invigorate the drummers pace.
steveta_uk says:
July 29, 2013 at 1:07 am
Love the scary music.
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Bill_W says:
July 29, 2013 at 4:54 am
Interesting. The drought in the US looked worse at 550 ppm than at 800 ppm.
I liked the creepy music.
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The music sounds like Kenny G fighting off his ‘black dogs’ of depression. Now imagine the same video with “March of the Gladiators” or “Strike Up the Band.” Especially as that precipitation forecast for the 800 ppm scenario shows thing improving esp. for the northern tier of states. It’s bad enough they resort to such emotional manipulation, but do they have to be so OBVIOUS?
can skeptics and warmists stop arguing and start betting? that way we can see if they truly think the science is settled.
i would love to wager on this one. any takers?
Where was their model in 70’s when the solar cycle expanded earths atmosphere and dragged skylab down, they never saw that one coming, and are still in denial that the variability in the solar cycle has a dramatic effect on Earths atmosphere, hence climate.
These scientists will be long gone before these predictions matched to the actual climate. There is zero accountability.
Mumble McGuirk says:
July 29, 2013 at 7:49 am
“It’s bad enough they resort to such emotional manipulation, but do they have to be so OBVIOUS?”
__________________________
Will they be so obvious to the millions of US citizens with the untainted view of NASA as the agency that put men on the moon and robots on Mars?