From ETH Zurich: Underestimated future climate change?
25.11.2013 | Fabio Bergamin
New model calculations by ETH researcher Thomas Frölicher show that global warming may continue after a stoppage of CO 2 emissions. We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.
Many scientists believe that global warming will come to an end if, some day, human succeeds in stopping the release of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. It would, indeed, be hotter on Earth than before industrialisation, but nonetheless it would not get even hotter. Climate physicist Thomas Frölicher questions this notion by using model calculations and creates a more pessimistic picture in a study published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change. According to his model calculations, it is very possible that the Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm for hundreds of years even after a complete stop of CO2 emissions, and that temperature levels stabilise at an even higher level at a later stage.
“In the long term, the temperature increase could be 25 per cent greater than assumed today,” says the scientist, who carries out research as an Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation in ETH professor Nicolas Gruber’s group.
A more realistic model
Frölicher and his co-authors from the USA use one of the world’s leading climate models for their calculations, the ESM2M model that was developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton. It represents physical and biogeochemical processes – such as the exchange of greenhouse gases and heat with the oceans – at a far more detailed level than many previous models. “The model is closer to reality,” summarises Frölicher.
In this model, the researchers simulated an Earth on which 1800 gigatons of carbon are emitted instantaneously into the atmosphere. By way of comparison: 1000 gigatons are believed to lead to a global warming of 2 degrees Celsius. Frölicher’s model calculation corresponds to an extremely simplified scenario. In reality, greenhouse gases are released over a period of several decades or centuries. The simulations, however, are well suited to illustrate fundamental principles, explains the climate scientist.
Regional ocean heat uptake is the key
“Much of the CO2 released into the atmosphere and the heat trapped by the CO2 goes into the ocean sooner or later – approximately 90 per cent of the excess heat has been taken up by the ocean over the last 40 years,” explains Frölicher. The regional uptake of heat, however, is crucial. To date, not enough attention has been given to the regional heat uptake of the world’s oceans in climate research. With the help of the ESM2M climate model, the scientists are able to show that a change in ocean heat uptake in the polar regions has a greater effect on the global mean atmospheric temperature than a change near the equator. The researchers use these differences to explain why their calculations contradict a scientific consensus that global atmospheric temperature would remain constant if emission were suddenly stopped.
Frölicher acknowledges that his calculations are based on a single climate model and it should not be ruled out that different results might be obtained if other climate models are used. However, it is evident to him that the magnitude of global warming in the next few centuries is less clear than previously thought. Rather, we should consider that climate change could turn out to be even greater than we have thought until now, says the scientist. “If our results stand up to a repetition with other modern and detailed models, this would mean that global warming considered beyond the end of this century has been significantly underestimated to date.”
A 25 per cent increase in global warming would also mean that humans could release 25 per cent less greenhouse gases to achieve climate goals such as the two-degrees Celsius target. In its assessment report published a few months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC assumes that limiting the global warming to less than two-degrees Celsius will require cumulative CO2 emissions to stay below 1000 gigatons of carbon. Since preindustrial times, humans have already consumed around half of this budget, i.e. 500 gigatons. If Frölicher’s results were correct, the “emissions cake” would be only three-quarters, i.e. 750 gigatons instead of 1000 billion tons of carbon. Thus, limiting the warming to 2 degrees would require keeping future cumulative carbon emission below 250 gigatons of carbon, only half of the already emitted amount of 500 gigatons.
Literature Reference
Frölicher TL, Winton M, Sarmiento JL: Continued global warming after CO2 emissions stoppage. Nature Climate Change, Adavance Online Publication 24 November 2013, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2060
Re: “In the long term, the temperature increase could be 25 per cent greater than ASSUMED TODAY.”
So great are the uncertainties in the global surface temperature record, that nobody knows by how much global surface temperatures have changed since 1850.
http://gst-fiasco.blogspot.co.uk/
For all we know, global surface temperatures could have risen by 0°C since 1850, in which case the surface of the world is warming at rate of 0°C per ~163 years. If that rate were to increase by 25%, it would still be warming at a rate of 0°C per ~163 years.
The uncertainties involved in measuring the overall temperature of the oceans, from surface to sea bed, are no less than those involved in measuring surface temperatures.
Apologies to all at WUWT for endlessly repeating the same point.
A computer program can’t be better than the knowledge by those who writes the modelprogram. Simple as that. Btw One of my exams is systemprogrammer 1971. No matter what I followed it up to present day.
And in order to stop the warming, climate chance, climate disruption, we have sign a climate treaty that hands over huge amount of money and political power to the radical undemocratic UN?
Just when you wonder who else is on crack we get this definitive answer –
The warmists have finally discovered the ocean.
“According to his model calculations, it is very possible that the Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm for hundreds of years even after a complete stop of CO2 emissions.”
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So even if humans completely stopped making any contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere, we are still doomed. In that case, what possible reason is there to cut CO2 emissions? We might as well burn our fossil-fuel candles at both ends and enjoy life while we still can.
Jquip says:
November 25, 2013 at 7:25 pm
In the end it took about 20 years of profit driven motives and capitlistic culling of bad behavers until the ‘proper’ physics got themselves back to the level of some 8-bit plumbers fighting flowers that shot fireballs.
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a very interesting observation. in the real world, when objects are close together, they interact rapidly. so rapidly that if you try and simulate their proper motion, it chews up the entire physics engine leaving no time to simulate the rest of the world, making a realistic physics engine a nonsense.
so, instead of modelling individual interactions you need to settle for modelling time slices, treating the world like frames in a movie, because in the end that is enough to fool the human eye. however, what you quickly find is a loss of precision in the motion of the objects, such that energy and momentum are not preserved. you end up with missing heat.
[+ emphasis]
OOoooohhh; I am impressed. NOT!
Just my opinion, but, with all its conditional verbiage, about the only use for a printed version of this “study” would be in an old fashioned outhouse where it couldn’t clog the plumbing.
Well, the cat’s out of the bag. The new bandwagon for grant-hungry climate researchers (I hesistate to use the word ‘scientists’) is proving their latest deep ocean heat sinks theory, in order to explain away the real world stasis/slight cooling of the past 16+yrs which they failed to predict.
It just goes on and on………..
“The simulations, however, are well suited to illustrate fundamental principles…”
Fundamental principles of what, though? Certainly not climate…
The models have to be right, one of gores brain washed climate reality
Pinheads just told me so, and he proved it by showing ten data points
which they are based on so they must be right. Sceptics are the same
People who said smoking did not cause. Sarc ( al did own a tobacco farm but
No mention of this fact.
Frohlicher needs to cut the long talk and just come out flat-footed and say it: CO2 is magic! At 400 ppm those 400 CO2 molecules impart enough kinetic energy to the remaining 999,600 other molecules comprising air to destroy earth as we know it. And it keeps doing this in spite of changing seasons and day and night–not to mention the vagueries of H2O changing state, moving vast amounts of heat around and generally confounding the whole process.
The half mile thick sheet of ice in the room no one wants to talk about.
*** Billy Liar says:
November 25, 2013 at 5:52 pm
I think I’ve got climate model fatigue. I couldn’t care less what’s happening in the dream world of climate models. Uncannily, they never predict the only thing we know that is almost certain to happen – the next glaciation ***
Indeed — Pippen Kool , what say you about this?
If 25% more warming means additional 0.25 to 0.5 °C to the lack of current warming what’s the heck?
About 2/3 of the released CO2 remains in atmosphere (overall balance since 1750, and yearly releases and concentration rise show this).
Beyond releasing enthalpy of solution of CO2 when dissolved in water (-19.4 KJ/mole at room temperature) the trapped CO2 does not play any role on forcing and warming.
The ETH was once an elite institute, and know they only excrete AGW-propaganda. This is really a pity and shame.
Yet another new climate model from those who already believe in CAGW.
Would anyone really expect the results to produce anything other than Thermageddon?
Oh, and Thermageddon after their expected lifetimes.
One day I would like to see a computer climate model which accurately reflects the geological record, namely that carbon dioxide levels always follow (circa 800 years) changes in temperature. Unfortunately, in climate science you are not allowed to model reality, as this has an undesirable impact on research funding.
Weret hsi study to be accurate it would blow away any justification for reducing CO2 emissions.
Hundreds of years if warming would happen anyway… so the emisssions would now be irrelevant.
So their thinking goes something like this: {Just after some astute observers pointed out that the models which we’ve been using for making our projections were failing miserably (gross OVER-ESTIMATION), we discover [using “new, improved models”] that we we might have been UNDER-ESTIMATING Global Warming all along!}
Right. Without missing a beat. These people live in their own alternate reality.
It pains me that a noble institution such as the ETH should be actively involved in such blatantly unscientific babble. There should be an independent Quality Control Department whose goal would be to coax climate researchers back to reality, away from the model world – where CO2 drives climate.
Last week’s news from the same group:
https://www.ethz.ch/de/news-und-veranstaltungen/eth-news/news/2013/11/wege-aus-der-unsicherheit.html
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2051.html
Summary: even though our short range and medium range prognoses actually suck, we absolutely are right in the long term. After all, we are the Oracles of the future climate!
Keep those R&D Swiss Francs coming our way, so we can get even better at what we do. And on the odd chance that we’re proven wrong – which can only be done from, say 2060 or 2080 – we’ll have been dead for decades by then anyway, so you can’t even hold us responsible!
I love this sentence: “In der Physik sei es oft so, dass ein einzelner Zustand nicht vorhersagbar sei, wohl aber der Durchschnitt.” (roughly: it is often the case in physics that a single state may not be predictable, whereas the average is in fact predictable).
So why don’t they take a hard look at WHY the mean atmospheric surface temperature of this planet has NOT been following the ensemble of the models for the past decade and a half?
Mind-blowing. And they get away with it, too.
Kurt in Switzerland
P.S. The ETH doesn’t do ONLY AGW propaganda (there is plenty of good research ongoing in other fields).
Didn’t ETH also do Pascal?
computer dreams about the warmth, unfortunately nothing like that outside.
The government always wants to ban guns because of their perceived danger. They should really look into banning models as they are far more dangerous. I trust a young kid with a gun more than I do a scientist with a model. The kid will be more responsible. /tongue-in-cheek
“We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought,” says the scientist.
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I cannot rule out the possibility that my granny is a wagon.She hasn’t sprouted wheels just yet, but anything is possible, eh?
Waiting for the day when these model jokers stop behaving like newly minted grad students in love with their models. It is amazing that the bubble of hubris is not burst by exposure to reality. Do a reality check on the selected model and then try to understand why it does not work most of the time.
Nice, alway as i reed the word model i know its totally wrong. A wrong input gives a wrong output. But if you believe your input is wright then you also believe your output is right. Also there is the point of the wrong temperature data witch go’s up by the month. They believe the earth is warming in stet of colling so thats what they are looking at.
Some thing like that happens in Holland right now. Yes is weather but is sent weather climate and climate weather? Ye I now strange but look the climate your in makes the weather. A warm climate gifts a warm weather pattern and a cooler climate o well you see it. That way a warmer climate never could have a rely cold winter.
Oke back to the weather, where looking at winter time now and it becomes colder how much? The weather models don’t know it and are swirling all over the place. Why is that? Why is it so difficult for a model to predict winter? Why for that matter is it difficult to predict every weather other then the usual? There are two re sens.
One: the models look in the past to see correlations, so they look back to warmer situations.
Two: weather people think the earth is warming and snow is a thing from the past.
You see that the model looks back and get wrong signals as input whit the result that the output is wrong to.
Even if the model sees cooling then there is some weather geek who don’t believe that because the world is warming.
Agwers live in a virtual realty totally ignoring the real world and the only thing they believe are the models they make up whit the wrong data they made up to. And even if there is a signal like the pause in warming they don’t understand that because of the models telling different.
We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.
or
We cannot rule in the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.
One gets reaserch money in and helps keep ‘the cause ‘ on track the other does not .
But both are equally ‘valid ‘
Guess which one climate ‘scientists’ would go for.