Observations Now Inconsistent with Climate Model Predictions for 25 (going on 35) Years
Question: How long will the fantasy that climate models are reliable indicators of the earth’s climate evolution persist in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
Answer: Probably for as long as there is a crusade against fossil fuels.
Without the exaggerated alarm conjured from overly pessimistic climate model projections of climate change from carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuels—coal, oil, gas—would regain their image as the celebrated agents of prosperity that they are, rather than being labeled as pernicious agents of our destruction.
Just how credible are these climate models?
In two words, “they’re not.”
Everyone has read that over the past 10-15 years, most climate models’ forecasts of the rate of global warming have been wrong. Most predicted a hefty warming of the earth’s average surface temperature to have taken place, while there was no significant change in the real world.
But very few people know that the same situation has persisted for 25, going on 35 years, or that over the past 50-60 years (since the middle of the 20th century), the same models expected about 33 percent more warming to have taken place than was observed.
We can blame the lack of public awareness of this scientific farce squarely on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the Summary for Policymakers, the most-read section of its brand new Fifth Assessment Report (released back in late September), the IPCC had this to say about climate model performance:
Climate models have improved since the [Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007]. Models reproduce observed continental-scale surface temperature patterns and trends over many decades, including the more rapid warming since the mid-20th century and the cooling immediately following large volcanic eruptions (very high confidence).
Followed immediately by this:
The long-term climate model simulations show a trend in global-mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2012 that agrees with the observed trend (very high confidence). There are, however, differences between simulated and observed trends over periods as short as 10 to 15 years (e.g., 1998 to 2012).
All in all, a rather glowing assessment.
Glowing, but not so hot.
We’ve calculated the trend in the global average surface temperature simulated to have occurred starting in every year since 1950 and ending in 2012 for every* run of every climate model used in the new IPCC report. In Figure 1, below, we compare the average (and spread) of these 106 model runs with the observed trend during each of the same periods.
In every single case, the observed trend lies below the model average trend. For the trends of length 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 27 years, the observed trend lies outside (below) the range which includes 95 percent of all model runs (indicated by red in Figure 1). In statistics, this means that the observed trend is inconsistent with the collection of model trends. For trends of length 10, 11, 12, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34 years, the observed trend lies outside (below) the range encompassing 90 percent of all model trends (indicated in yellow in Figure 1). We call this marginally inconsistent with the models. For trends of length 13, 14, 15, and all lengths greater than 34 years, the observed trend is consistent with the collection of model trends (indicated by green in Figure 1), although it lies pretty far out in the low end of model projections in every case.
For what it’s worth, this same IPCC report has verbal descriptors of their published probability figures. When they say something has a 90 percent probability, it is “virtually likely” (whatever the heck that means!), and a 95 percent probability is “extremely likely.” So, analogously, one could apply those same words to our 90 and 95 percent probabilities of model failure over certain lengths of time. But because English is our primary language, we’re stating that the models are “marginally inconsistent” and “clearly inconsistent” with reality in these periods.
This hardly seems to fit the IPCC description that “[m]odels reproduce observed continental-scale surface temperature patterns and trends over many decades” or is grounds for having “very high confidence” that the “model simulations show a trend in global-mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2012 that agrees with the observed trend.”
And things aren’t going to get better anytime soon (if ever). In fact, they are about to get much worse.
That’s because the longer global temperatures just sort of plod along without rising much (new research suggests that such a period may extend for another 20 years or so), the more established (and entrenched) the observed/model mismatch becomes.
In Figure 1, above, our analysis ended with the last full year of available data, 2012. With three-quarters of 2013 already in the books, we can make a pretty good guess as to what the global average temperature anomaly is going to be at years’ end, and perform the same analysis we described above, but ending in the year 2013 instead of 2012. By the looks of things, 2013 is going to continue the string of years (going on 17 now) during which there has been virtually no change in the global average temperature and thus making the model performance even worse.
Figure 2, below, gives the updated result.
For data ending in the year 2013, the category of marginal inconsistency extends out to 37 years and is now flirting with lengths exceeding 50 years, and trends of lengths 11-28, 31, 33, and 34 (!) are clearly inconsistent with the climate model simulations.
In other words, over the past third of a century—the period with the greatest amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions—the behavior of the real world (i.e., reality) falls far below the average expectation of climate models and, in fact, is clearly inconsistent with the range of model results. Less than 2.5 percent of model runs show that global warming is really global luke warming to the degree that real-world observations indicate.
Basically, the models don’t work.
This reality ought to be enough to stop the anti-fossil fuel (via carbon dioxide emission restrictions) crusaders in their tracks.
But thus far, it hasn’t, aided in part by the obfuscations of the United Nations (through the IPCC reports) and our own federal government (via reports such as the National Assessment of Climate Change).
If the people currently in charge of these organizations can’t face reality, then it is high time to replace them with others who can.
………………………………….
* We should say, every run that was available through the Climate Explorer website. Climate Explorer had 106 individual model runs, while the IPCC states it has 113 (we have been unable to identify the other 7 runs). The difference should have minimal impacts on our analysis.
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To authors
Are you not effectively comparing the 2nd order derivative of two temperature chronologies (model vs observed) at different resolutions (dt = 35, 25, 10…); and aren’t you effectively performing a smooth first. Furthermore, these are stochastic datasets with structural components (e.g. drift/cyclicity). In such datasets you don’t know whether you’re trends (proxy to 2nd order derivative, each centered at time t) are controlled by the purely stochastic or structural component (and if so by how much). This doesn’t seem right.
Write it up as a short paper and submit it to a journal.
Or have you done this already?
Paul Mathews
I doubt it would see the light of day.
Tom J says @ur momisugly November 5, 2013 at 7:20 pm
So sad to be brought up in a system that causes one to be scared of the climate on a day when we’re really supposed to be scared of demons, ghouls, vampires, zombies – you know, our representatives in Washington.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And here I have always thought they were parasites.
I got interested in the subject and took a quick look at the US Government’s parasites and “Creative Statistics”
I calculated the USA at ~25% several years ago but I included, state and local employees, welfare recipients, lawyers, accountants, and regulatory compliance officers and technicians, all of whose jobs are directly linked to the government.
After reading “GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC REPORTS: THINGS YOU’VE SUSPECTED BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK!”
Despite all the MSM reports the actual unemployment rate was ~22% in 2009 and has steadily risen to ~ 23% Link
So my next question was, Is the USA government cheating… Again?
GDP is SUPPOSED to measure “The sum of all goods and services sold” Alternate Gross Domestic Product Chart At least that is what we are told but it doesn’t . Not the way the US Government does the statistics.
So we can fix our declining GDP by the Government hiring EVERYONE. This will cause GDP to skyrocket. (chortle, snort)
No Wonder the politicians have zero problem with the Climate Models. It is business as usual for them!
JBear
The “skeptics” cannot explain why the surface temps warmed. The “skeptics” cannot explain why the deep oceans have continued to warm.
In science one only need disprove a hypothesis in order to falsify it. There is no need to find an alternative.
The “skeptics” don’t want to consider ocean Ph changes.
This is a red herring, a smoke screen if you will. Ocean pH is highly buffered by a number of acid-base systems. Changes in ocean pH must be put into context. For almost 3.5 billions years the Earth’s atmospheric composition varied wildly but ocean pH remained constant. For example during the Cambrian when there was an explosion of hard bodies creature with calcareous exoskeletons atmospheric CO2 was two orders of magnitude greater than today.
The scientists acknowledge the pause is mysterious but have found several mechanisms that could account for…
That’s essentially arm waving and was not part of their original hypothesis as expressed in the models.
Did I miss any thing?
Yeah, a coherent scientific argument.
JBear says: @ur momisugly November 5, 2013 at 10:19 pm
…. The “skeptics” cannot explain why the surface temps warmed….
>>>>>>>>>>>>
We DO NOT HAVE TO! It is called the Null hypothesis. It is up to Climastrologists to prove it is not business as usual. (natural)
Here is what they have to refute: GRAPH of five million years of temperature change based on work by Lisiecki and Raymo (L. E. Lisiecki and M. E. Raymo (2005) – A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ18O records, Paleoceanography 20, 2003) link published on line in 2005.
This graph shows a gradual COOLING over the last five million years including the present AND an increase in the oscillation with the last half million years having the widest and LOWEST temperature swings. The swings increased from ~ 2°C to ~ 8°C
This Graph of 65 million years shows even more cooling. LINK (Vostok)
Oscillation and abrupt changes in climate are the rule. We are VERY lucky the Holocene has been so benign.
Abrupt Climate Change:
Richard B. Alley of the U.Penn. was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, chaired the National Research Council on Abrupt Climate Change. for well over a decade and in 1999 was invited to testify about climate change by Vice President Al Gore. In 2002, the NAS (alley chair) published a book “Abrupt Climate Change”
From the opening paragraph in the executive summary:
If they can not at this time explain D-O and Heninrich (and Bond) Events they don’t have a leg to stand on because you first have to RULE OUT natural causes.
Climastrologists want to try and scare us with a couple tenths of a degree per decade? Why don’t they just say BOO!
It is cold that kills and the “tipping point” of ~ 9°C to rapid glaciation worries me a heck of a lot more than a maximum rise of at MOST 2°C especially since we are in a Glacial Age with ‘Rapid Cycles’
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/trend
So, what does the actual data tells us:
1. CO2/GHG cannot be the cause of the observed warming. CO2/GHG warms the planet by warming the atmosphere. This warming of the atmosphere then warms the surface as a result of the lapse rate. As a result the surface cannot warm faster than the atmosphere due to CO2/GHG, which is contradicted by observation. When observations contradict theory, the theory is wrong.
2. The accuracy of the satellites is better than the surface records due to the smaller absolute error between the signals, and the accuracy of the satellites is increasing (convergence) while the accuracy of the surface records is decreasing (divergence).
Oh, there’s that sweet and sexy teeeaaaabaggerrrr! Janice makes my heart go race. Here’s you a happy Halloween!!!!! ‘n a haunted cave in to the opposition. 😉
http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd74/sunbeamfireking/BHC5.jpg
Oh, and for Smokey, can’t say I never gave you anything!
http://policelink.monster.com/nfs/policelink/product_photos/0000/6031/Troll_Spary_max192w.JPG?1202766315
Been here four years and I’m still a troll!
[Snip. Completely off topic. — Mod.]
JBear,
Fact-checking wouldn’t hurt you. Approximately 95% of Cato’s operating budget is from private, individual donors, people like you, but, unlike you, people who rightfully fear their government, especially when it is in the knowledge business, such as being the sole provider of global warming research funding. Our private percent is probably the highest for the top ten think tanks.
Would you prefer instead that we ran our Institute on money expropriated from people with the threat of a gun?
@Aussie Bear (11:49pm 11/5) — yes, indeed. Great information (and list v. a v. Jimbo’s comment, too) and an excellent argument.
Its worse then that, its dead jim. It worse then that its dead jim, its dead jim.
Cane someone make something fun of it?
Gents, not only did the models stay outside reality’s track, but the model gonzos have the past 30 years of over exuberance to assist them to put it closer to the track. They have, indeed, tweaked them with aerols (you got to be careful printing this word) and even itty bitty volcanoes, or fish eggs would be boiling by now. Just when they thought they were getting the things properly tuned without touching sacred CO2 climate sensitivity, Nature went and bent the temps over. Sheesh whats a model gonzo to do.
Mosher’s entreaty in the RGB thread; Yeah they did lousy on temperatures but consider the forecasting prowess of the models for ocean salinity! Man, talk about casting about. Maybe the next tack is to forecast only ocean salinity and build a scare story around that. The Hadley wether-weather, climate and sash and door company seemingly prides itself on coming last in the Arctic ice minimums sweepstakes each year by about -40% below reality guided by their models on a computer that takes up about an acre of ground and heats the whole damn shire. I don’t think there is a cure for it before the grave.
Key point- the data points used BEFORE a model is constructed are not predictions- they are postdictions. Its a poor model indeed that cant predict what it is programmed to already know.
“””””…..Curious George says:
November 5, 2013 at 2:47 pm
They should get their physics right. The latent heat of water evaporation is temperature-dependent……”””””
IZZit any different (significantly) from the value at the standard boiling point ( 539 calorie per gram ??) plus one calorie per gram for each degree below the standard boiling point ??
I’ve always used that as a simple rule, but never checked the tabulated values.
So for example, latent heat at 50 deg C would be 539 + 50 , or 589 cal/gram, basically, what it takes to heat the water to boiling, and then evaporate it.
“””””…..Gail Combs says:
November 6, 2013 at 2:35 am
Tom J says @ur momisugly November 5, 2013 at 7:20 pm
So sad to be brought up in a system that causes one to be scared of the climate on a day when we’re really supposed to be scared of demons, ghouls, vampires, zombies – you know, our representatives in Washington.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And here I have always thought they were parasites.
I got interested in the subject and took a quick look at the US Government’s parasites and “Creative Statistics”
Too Many Government Workers?…….””””””
ALL government workers, should be made exempt from income taxes; and of course have their “government” (aka “taxpayer”) wages and salaries reduced by their computed taxes (on pay).
If I hand the store owner ten dollars for seven dollars worth of some merchandise, and then immediately take three dollars of that back, out of his hand, he really didn’t sell me his goods for ten dollars, nor did I get a three dollar discount..
So then all those government workers; excuse me, that’s employees, would understand that THEY are NOT taxpayers; they are tax consumers. (whether necessary or not. Didn’t the Federal government give 800,000 unnecessary federal workers, a fully paid vacation recently ?
Well you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Is a “virtual” image “real” , or is it “imaginary”, as in “does not exist.”
And to ME, “virtually ” (adverb) means “like virtual” (adjective). I detest use of the word “virtually”, which has come to mean the exact opposite of what it really means; OED notwithstanding !
Same as “sophisticated”. Look up “sophistry” in OED. Then you’ll understand, why I say; “People who think they are sophisticated, usually are !”
And while we are at it; “I’ll be with you momentarily.” means, I will be with you FOR a moment. It does not mean, “I will be with you IN a moment .” for that, we simply say; “I will be with you soon.”
I would I think give serious thought to abandoning the scientifically meaningless “multi-model mean” and start narrowing the family of considered models to ones whose results best match the data.
Who knows? It may be that the surviving models are doing something right. It’s also possible that they got lucky, but given enough time, the luck aspect will also sort itself out,
It’s possible that by throwing out models from inclusion, a loss of so-called confidence will occur. But the way it’s being used, “confidence” doesn’t mean anything connected with its conventional usage.
Yukon Jack’s latest is a riot: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/11/06/global-warming-cargo-cult/
[SNIP – A valid email address is required here, fake ones don’t cut it – mod]
I just wanted to add my thanks to Berenyi Peter above for his link to the paper :”The Observed Hemispheric Symmetry in Reflected Shortwave Irradiance”. It really made me think. At this point, I can’t even imagine why we might expect albedo for both hemispheres to be ~ equal. Fascinating stuff.
http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:1482060:15/component/escidoc:1703066/JCli-26-2013-468.pdf
Cheers, 🙂
When they say something has a 90 percent probability, it is “virtually likely” (whatever the heck that means!)
Uh. It is very likey.
No, it clearly means “almost likely, but not quite”!
george e. smith says: @ur momisugly November 6, 2013 at 12:35 pm
“””””…..Gail Combs says:
Too Many Government Workers?…….””””””
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ALL government workers, should be made exempt from income taxes; and of course have their “government” (aka “taxpayer”) wages and salaries reduced by their computed taxes (on pay).
…So then all those government workers; excuse me, that’s employees, would understand that THEY are NOT taxpayers; they are tax consumers.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
EXACTLY!
Parasites not producers.
It is a complete farce to include their salaries in the GDP because they produce nothing except the regulations (and enforcement) that strangles the actual producers.
You could have a country that is 100% government employees with a great GDP that is until it collapses, like the USSR.
JBear says:
November 5, 2013 at 10:19 pm
So, all of this is a fancy way of saying the models projected warming and the surface temp did warm, but so much this last decade. The “skeptics” cannot explain why the surface temps warmed. The “skeptics” cannot explain why the deep oceans have continued to warm.
Nor can climate scientists explain our recent temperature changes. That’s why 97% of climate model simulation fail. And, as others have indicated, it is not the job of skeptics to proposed other theories. All that is required is show proposed theories do not explain the data or other theories explain it better.
To this end skeptics actually have presented theories associated with ocean cycles that explain the recent warming much better than CO2 emissions. Note the changes in the direction of temperature correlates almost perfectly with the PDO.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to:1910/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1910/to:1944/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1944/to:1975/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:2005/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/to/trend
The slight warming is perfectly explained by a random walk in the strength of the PDO phases. A theory based on CO2 should see constant warming.