![ipcc[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ipcc1.jpg?quality=83)
Guest Essay by Barry Brill
The timing couldn’t be worse.
On 23-26 September, scores of representatives of the world’s Environment Ministries are scheduled to meet in Stockholm to wordsmith the final draft of the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the key WG1 (physical science) portion of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).
The draft SPM, sent to governments on 2 August, is a 22-page condensation of 14 chapters comprising 1,914 pages of material discussing scientific papers that were published between 2006 and 15 March 2013.
This SPM is (or could be) a document of world-shaking importance. As Bloomberg points out – “it is designed to be used by ministers working to devise by 2015 a global treaty to curb climate change”.
The timetable for the global treaty was deferred at the Durban COP because developing countries (particularly China and India) felt that the 2013 SPM was an indispensable input to the negotiations. Governments need an authoritative up-to-date assessment of both the extent and the causes of the climate change threat, present and future.
But the SPM has been sidelined by momentous climate change events that occurred after its March cut-off date – and even after the date the draft was circulated.
Climate sensitivity
The “extent of warming” issue turns on how sensitive the planet is to increasing CO2 concentrations. Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) was crudely estimated by Charney in 1979 at 3.0 ±1.5°C and that range remained more-or-less constant through all four previous IPCC reports.
During 2012, several groups of researchers noted that recent data and modern diagnostics now showed that the 30-year old 3°C mid-point had been grossly over-stated. Peer-reviewed journal papers included:
• Ring et al: estimates of climate sensitivity ranged from 1.5 to 2.0°C.
• Van Hateren: millennium-scale sensitivity found to be 2.0 ±0.3°C.
• Aldrin et al: the 90% credible interval ranges from 1.2°C to 3.5°C, with a mean of 2°C
This, of course, led to great dissension and became the major challenge faced by the lead authors of WG1. Although we don’t yet know how they finally reacted, a leaked copy of the SPM draft suggests that they mainly held to the longstanding orthodoxy.
In January 2013, the British media reported that the UK Met Office was projecting a 20-year standstill in global warming by 2017. This ‘pause’ had not been predicted by climate models. In February, IPCC chairman Pachauri admitted that the temperature data had already been flat for 17 years, while opining that a standstill of 30 years would be required to rebut the previous consensus.
Both “cause” and “extent” issues are heavily dependent on the validity of climate simulations by the contemporary Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), as are all IPCC projections of future planetary temperatures and their impacts. Serious scientific doubts about either ECS-related inputs or the accuracy of temperature outputs would be fatal to the credibility of the AR5.
After the March cut-off date for WG1 papers, the following 2013 papers have strongly reinforced concerns regarding the exaggeration of climate sensitivity:
• Otto et al: the best estimate of sensitivity is 30% below the CMIP5 multimodel mean.
• Forster et al: analysis of CMIP5 shows that 2/3 are above the Otto ‘likely’ range.
• Masters: median estimate of ECS is 1.98°C.
• Lewis: improved methodology shows the mode and median to be 1.6K
In congressional testimony, Judith Curry cited the Hawkins graph depicting observed trends below 90% of CMIP5 projections, and notes that warming may not resume until mid-century. James Hansen attributes the ‘hiatus’ to a combination of natural variability and lower sensitivity but predicts “temperature will rise significantly in the next few years with the nex El Nino phase.”
Temperature standstill
The temperature standstill has been apparent in the data for many years, but the tribalism of climate science rendered it unmentionable until the public disclosures of early 2013. Once spoken, it demanded an explanation – and it then became clear there was a great dearth of research on the subject. By the time researchers were ready to fill this gap, the draft SPM had already been dispatched.
During August 2013, a flood of highly influential papers have appeared:
• von Storch & Zorita[1] found that observed temperatures 1998-2012 were not consistent with 23 tested CMIP3 and CMIP5 models, even at the 2% confidence level. The inconsistency increases rapidly with trend length and a 20-year trend (ie to 2017) would lie outside the ensemble of all model-simulated trends.
• von Storch & Zorita (the same paper) concludes that ‘natural’ internal variability and/or external forcing has probably offset the anthropogenic warming during the standstill. Overestimated sensitivity may also have contributed.
• Tung & Zhou[2] reported that the “underlying net anthropogenic warming rate has been steady since 1910 at 0.07-0.08°C/decade, with superimposed AMO-related ups and downs ..”. The sharply increased CO2 concentrations of recent decades has not caused warming to accelerate, as was predicted by the models.
• Yu Kosaka & Shang-Ping Zie[3] plausibly found that climate models have vastly under-estimated natural variation. La-Nina-like cooling in the Eastern Pacific throughout the 21st century (since the PDO turned negative) has conquered the projected greenhouse warming. The 0.68°C warming trend during 1975-98 (when the PDO was positive) would have been[4] 0.4°C natural and only 0.28°C anthropogenic.
• Katz et al[5] says the critical uncertainty measures used by the IPCC are “out of date by well over a decade”. Modern statistical techniques could improve assessments “dramatically”.
• Fyfe Gillett & Zwiers[6] focused on the extraordinary gap between the temperature simulations of 37 CIMP5 models and the observed outcomes. Due to a ‘combination of errors’, the models have overestimated warming by 100% over the past 20 years and by 400% over the past 15 years.
Come the revolution…
These new papers devastate the IPCC orthodoxy that current and future global temperatures are mostly driven by greenhouse gas emissions, and will reach dangerous levels later this century. On the other hand, all older papers are blindsided by their apparent failure to take account of the recent data (standstill).
The IPCC’s 2001 report cautioned[7]: In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles.
The “dangerous anthropogenic global warming” (DAGW) hypothesis is based on a clear difference between CMIP5 runs with natural plus anthropogenic forcing, versus natural variability only. That difference now disappears when ensembles are adjusted to reflect current empirical data. It is quite conceivable that natural variabilty (including natural forcing) has historically dwarfed anthropogenic effects and will persistently do so in future.
In his seminal 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn persuasively argued that science does not progress through the linear accumulation of knowledge but undergoes periodic revolutions or ‘paradigm shifts’.
In Kuhn’s view, no evidence that is incompatible with the current paradigm will be entertained during long periods of normal science. However, as anomalous results build up, science eventually reaches a crisis which drives the necessary acceptance of a new paradigm, which subsumes both the old and new results into a new framework. Kuhn calls this transformative point, revolutionary science.
2013 is ushering in a long-delayed revolution in climate science. A new paradigm is demanded which recognizes that AGW is but one non-determinative component in a ‘non-linear chaotic system’.
Dealing to the paradigm shift
All of this leaves the IPCC in a terrible bind regarding its September meeting. Should it:
• rubber-stamp a SPM that has been overtaken by events?
• add a major caveat to the state of play in March 2013, promising an addendum will be issued to cover post-cut-off papers? or
• adjourn the meeting to accomodate a crash program to re-write both the WG1 Technical Report and the consequent SPM?
The business as usual course is the worst option. With tense international negotiations riding on this document, it is far better that it be delayed than wrong – or indefensible. No government can make far-reaching policy decisions on the basis of a report which is widely believed to be obsolete before it is released.
An interim report suffers from a similar credibility deficit. Already[8], Environment departments from the USA and the European Union have formally sought more clarity on the “warming hiatus” and have asked the IPCC to include full information in the SPM.
“The recent slowing of the temperature trend is currently a key issue, yet it has not been adequately addressed in the SPM,” said the EU.
Although the draft says the trend has tapered off, the implications are unclear – causing the US to comment “a bunch of numbers are [left] up in the air without a concrete conclusion.”
Several countries, including China, seek information on the heat uptake of the oceans or other natural variances which might have depressed climate change data.
The draft SPM apparently fails to mention[9] that 30-year warming trends have declined each year since peaking in 2003. Or that the latest 10-year period (2003-12) is the coolest decade[10] since satellite records began in 1979.
WG1 has a track record of ignoring inconvenient research on grounds that it is ‘isolated’ or published in obscure journals. That can hardly be the fate of the August papers. All but one have been accepted by Nature Climate Change. Several of the authors are active contributors to IPCC reports, with Zwiers a current vice-chairman of WG1 and Fyfe a review editor.
Revolutionary climate science is under way. The question now is whether the IPCC is up to the challenge.
[1] http://www.academia.edu/4210419/Can_climate_models_explain_the_recent_stagnation_in_global_warming
[2] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/22/1212471110.short
[3] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html
[4] See http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling
[5] http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1980.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309
[6] http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309
[7] 14.2.2.2 WG1 TAR IPCC
[8] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-29/global-warming-slowdown-data-sought-in-un-climate-report.html
[9] http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/08/if-warmists-would-only-tell-the-truth
[10] http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
Jan Kjetil Andersen says:
September 2, 2013 at 9:13 am
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Jan
Thanks your comments. I fired from the gut, rather than checking the data. Always a bad habit!
My gut was telling me that there would be more water vapour in a 100km column of air. At around 25kg, I accept your point that an increase of around 0.41kg/decade is not miniscule.
Of course, there are many studies into the humidity issue such as Miskolczi’s detailed 2010 paper and there appears to much conflicting views on it and many question the accuracy of the measurements data sets (no surprise there then since it appears that in Climate Science there are numerous data sets but almost none are fit for purpose!).
Barry may also have noticed that his home country just had the warmest winter ever recorded. If there was no such thing as global warming, the probability of that occurring would be 1 in 150.
On the issue of the ‘Pause’ and how the IPCC may address this important issue, I make the following observation.:
Recently, it has been suggested by the warmists that model runs do produce pauses, the precise duration of which they are less candid about. The warmists argue that since model runs produce pauses, there is nothing wrong with the theory, nor with the models.
However, like most things, the devil is in the detail. It is important to consider when the model run pause occurs, and at what level of CO2 forcing exists in the model at that time.
If CO2 drives temperature it is easier to have a 17 year pause in temperature rise when CO2 levels in the model are say 310 to 330 ppm than it is to have a similar pause when CO2 levels are say 380 to 400ppm.
Of course, this all goes to the strength of CO2 forcing verses the forcing from natural variation.
The IPCC accepts that CO2 did not contribute substantially to the 1920s to 1940s warming when CO2 levels were only about 300ppm. At this stage, they accepted that natural variation was dominant. However, everything changed by the time we get to the late 1970s and the warming that ensued through to the late 1990s. At this stage, the IPCC argue that natural variation no longer had the capability to explain the warming and by this stage CO2 was now the dominant player.
What had changed between the 1920s-1940s and the 1970s-1990s? The only changes of note were (i) CO2 levels had risen to around 330 rising through to ~370pm, and (ii) there was cleaner air in cities due to better pollution control but whether there was a significant difference in global aerosols is moot since although by the 1990s there were better pollution controls there was also much more industrial activity than there was back in the 1920s-1940s and further the developing nations were beginning to come on stream and they were not applying the same pollution standards.
The upshot of the above is that the IPCC were essentially concluding that by the time CO2 levels reached about 330ppm (approx CO2 level in the late 1970s), the CO2 forcing dominated natural variability. Accordingly, by the time CO2 levels reached ~330ppm one would no longer expect to see a pause in the rise in global temperatures which MUST follow from the so called basic physics of an ever increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The only explanation for the pause is that CO2 cannot even at 380 to 400ppm dominate natural variability, and natural variability still remains king. The problem with this is that the IPCC can now no longer assert that natural variation could not explain the 1970s-1990s warming. They can no longer assert that the only cause of that warming is CO2 since by then we had reached a stage (ie., a level of CO2 in the atmosphere) where CO2 was the dominant player.
It will be interesting to see how the IPCC address the pause since it is not only relevant to what is happening today, but is fundamental to what happened during the late 1970s-late 1990s and the reason for attributing CO2 as being the cause (or the predominant cause) of that warming.
PS I attach a plot of the accumulated CO2 emissions – see
http://s1136.photobucket.com/user/Bartemis/media/emissions.jpg.html?sort=3&o=6#/user/Bartemis/media/emissions.jpg.html?sort=3&o=6&_suid=13781862256430152521980639523T6
There are a number of useful CO2 plots. Have a look at them.
Simon:
Your post at September 2, 2013 at 11:14 pm says in total
Don’t be silly.
Using your illogical reasoning, I have noticed that my height has just had its highest value ever recorded. If there was no such thing as me growing, the probability of that occurring would be 1 in 68.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
September 2, 2013 at 1:21 pm
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Richard
i do not wish to get involved in this debate, especially since issues of semantics are often just a side track. When commenting on blogs, people inevitably do not give the same care to language as a lawyer would when drafting some legal advice, or interpreting contracts or laws etc. People often comment in a hurry, and this inevitably has an impact on both the way they may express themselves, and also the way in which they may interpret someone else’s comments. I much prefer to stick to the science.
Whilst I consider that your comment taken as a whole was clear (and a useful exposition of the principles involved), I do see that the wording “…the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature.” is unfortunate and could lead to confusion.
I am a keen supporter of your comments and always look out for your views, but in this case, I consider that you are over reacting. Let us not be too critical of each other, on a personal basis, and let’s stick to the science. I consider it would be very unfortunate if we drive people who hold differing views, from those held by ourselves, away from this site because of an over aggressive attitude when responding to them. This site would become poorer were that too happen, and more prone to group think.
I know I have no real business stepping into this argument, but this is just my view for what it is worth. i am not intending to be critical, merely constructive.
jorgekafkazar says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:20 pm
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Perhaps also of significance, an El Nino is a natural, not a CO2 forced event.
So Hansen is in effect suggesting that the next rise in temperatures will not be that caused by CO2 forcings, but rather the result of natural variation.
Whilst not directly on topic, but relevant to past climate and whether we are today seeing anything unprecedented see the attached article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2408825/Melting-ice-reveals-1-700-year-old-woolly-jumper–experts-say-come.html
“…Scientists believe global warming is leading to an increasing number of archaeological discoveries in cold and icy regions.
Melting snow has recently revealed a remarkably intact woolly jumper likely worn by a fashion-conscious reindeer hunter some 1,700 years ago….
‘Due to global warming, rapid melting of snow patches and glaciers is taking place in the mountains of Norway as in other parts of the world, and hundreds of archaeological finds emerge from the ice each year.’…”
So 1700 years ago (approx around the RWP) the conditions in Northern Europe were warmer with less ice than today.
Now of course these may not be global events, but we know as fact that large areas of Northern Europe were warmer than today in the MWP, the Roman Warm Period and Minoan Warm Period (additional to that of the Holocene optimum) and this raises the issue as to how this occurred and what caused the warming (even if it was confined to large areas of Northern Europe as opposed to being truly global – it is difficult to ascertain the global distribution due to the lack of land area in the Southern Hemisphere and there is less archaelogical evidence left behind by those who klived in the Southern Hemisphere)?
What is the IPCC’s take on all of this? What does this say about the potential forcings associated with natural variation?
These questions need to be answered if one is to properly deal with the 17 – 22 year pause in global temperature anomaly rise (depending upon data set), and of course, it has a knock on effect in relation to the 20th century warming generally.
richard verney:
re your comment to me at September 3, 2013 at 12:10 am which concludes
Thankyou. I appreciate that.
I have read your view and considered it. However, although I value your thoughts, I do not agree.
Please note that I had dropped the matter until Jan Kjetil Andersen and davidmhoffer raised it again. I then interposed to say why I am convinced that Jan Kjetil Andersen deliberately misrepresented me: my post explaining that is at September 2, 2013 at 1:21 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/31/can-the-ipcc-do-revolutionary-science/#comment-1406214
That post also said I would not interact with him until he retracted and it explained why.
Subsequently, Jan Kjetil Andersen posted an excuse but not a retraction. His post is at September 2, 2013 at 3:03 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/31/can-the-ipcc-do-revolutionary-science/#comment-1406260
I ignored that excuse because I saw no point in pursuing the matter.
I hope this answer demonstrates that I appreciate your comment, I have read it, and I have explained my thoughts about the matter.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
Don’t be silly.
Using your illogical reasoning, I have noticed that my height has just had its highest value ever recorded. If there was no such thing as me growing, the probability of that occurring would be 1 in 68.
My apologies Richard. I wasn’t aware that surface air temperatures followed a sigmoidal height function.
Simon:
re your reply to me at September 3, 2013 at 2:20 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/31/can-the-ipcc-do-revolutionary-science/#comment-1406558
Thankyou for your apology to me which I accept.
Please accept my apology to you which your post I am replying informs me is needed. I wasn’t aware that you suffer a brain disfunction.
Richard
Izen says:
“The measurable warming of the climate also helped to strengthen the scientific consensus behind AGW and is why it is no longer regarded in science as a hypothesis, but as a theory.”
One would think for such a well established “theory” there would be volumes of material published is physics or thermodynamic textbooks. But what one finds is maybe 2 paragraphs of supplemental material explaining the “greenhouse effect”.
Ahrennius believed the earth’s atmosphere acted like a “hotbox”, or greenhouse. It does not.
Science is not conducted by “consensus”, but by the well established tenets of the scientific method. “Consensus” is a political term, not a scientific one.
And while you are at it, you might want to explain the 30 year cooling period from the 1940’s to the 1970’s when CO2 values were exploding. As Feynman stated:
“No matter how smart a person is, no matter how elegant their hypothesis, if it does not agree with experimentation, it is wrong.”
The whole AGW movement is what Richard Feynman described as “Cargo Cult Science”. Feynman stated:
“There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in “cargo cult science.” It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.”
“Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.”
“In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another”
Is the “science” of AGW conducted in any way shape or form in the manner Feynman describes above? No. It’s all about “hiding the decline”, hiding data, hiding emails, etc.
One more Feynman quote:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool”