Note: two events at AGU13 this morning dovetail in with this essay. The first, a slide from Dr. Judith Lean which says: “There are no operational forecasts of global climate change”.
The second was a tweet by Dr. Gavin Schmidt, attending Lenny Smith’s lecture (which I couldn’t due to needing to file a radio news report from the AGU press room) that said:
Smith: usefulness of climate models for mitigation 'as good as it gets', usefulness for adaptation? Not so much #AGU13
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) December 10, 2013
With those events in mind, this essay from Dr. William Gray (of hurricane forecasting fame) is prescient.
Guest essay by Dr. William M. Gray
My 60-year experience in meteorology has led me to develop a profound disrespect for the philosophy and science behind numerical climate modeling. The simulations that have been directed at determining the influence of a doubling of CO2 on Earth’s temperature have been made with flawed and oversimplified internal physical assumptions. These modeling scenarios have shown a near uniformity in CO2 doubling causing a warming of 2-5oC (4-9oF). There is no physical way, however, that an atmospheric doubling of the very small amount of background CO2 gas would ever be able to bring about such large global temperature increases.
It is no surprise that the global temperature in recent decades has not been rising as the climate models have predicted. Reliable long-range climate modeling is not possible and may never be possible. It is in our nation’s best interest that this mode of prophecy be exposed for its inherent futility. Belief in these climate model predictions has had a profound deleterious influence on our country’s (and foreign) governmental policies on the environment and energy.
The still-strong—but false—belief that skillful long-range climate prediction is possible is thus a dangerous idea. The results of the climate models have helped foster the current political clamor for greatly reducing fossil fuel use even though electricity generation costs from wind and solar are typically three to five times higher than generation from fossil fuels. The excuse for this clamor for renewable energy is to a large extent the strongly expressed views of the five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which are based on the large (and unrealistic) catastrophic global warming projections from climate models.
The pervasive influence of these IPCC reports (from 1990 to 2013) derives from the near-universal lack of climate knowledge among the general population. Overly biased and sensational media reports have been able to brainwash a high percentage of the public. A very similar lack of sophisticated climate knowledge exists among our top government officials, environmentalists, and most of the world’s prestigious scientists. Holding a high government position or having excelled in a non-climate scientific specialty does not automatically confer a superior understanding of climate.
Lack of climate understanding, however, has not prevented our government leaders and others from using the public’s fear of detrimental climate change as a political or social tool to further some of their other desired goals. Climate modeling output lends an air of authority that is not warranted by the unrealistic model input physics and the overly simplified and inadequate numerical techniques. (Model grids cannot resolve cumulus convective elements, for example.) It is impossible for climate models to predict the globe’s future climate for at least three basic reasons.
One, decadal and century-scale deep-ocean circulation changes (likely related to long time-scale ocean salinity variations), such as the global Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) and Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC), are very difficult to measure and are not yet well-enough understood to be included realistically in the climate models. The last century-and-a-half global warming of ~0.6oC appears to be a result of the general slowdown of the oceans’ MOC over this period. The number of multidecadal up-and-down global mean temperature changes appears also to have been driven by the multidecadal MOC. Models do not yet incorporate this fundamental physical component.
Two, the very large climate modeling overestimates of global warming are primarily a result of the assumed positive water-vapor feedback processes (about 2oC extra global warming with a CO2 doubling in most models). Models assume any upper tropospheric warming also brings about upper tropospheric water-vapor increase as well, because they assume atmospheric relative humidity (RH) remains quasi-constant. But measurements and theoretical considerations of deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convective clouds indicate any increase of CO2 and its associated increase in global rainfall would lead to a reduction of upper tropospheric RH and a consequent enhancement (not curtailment) of Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) to space.
The water-vapor feedback loop, in reality, is weakly negative, not strongly positive as nearly all the model CO2 doubling simulations indicate. The climate models are not able to resolve or correctly parameterize the fundamentally important climate forcing influences of the deep penetrating cumulonimbus (Cb) convection elements. This is a fundamental deficiency.
Three, the CO2 global warming question has so far been treated from a “radiation only” perspective. Disregarding water-vapor feedback changes, it has been assumed a doubling of CO2 will cause a blockage of Outgoing Long-wave Radiation (OLR) of 3.7 Wm-2. To compensate for this blockage without feedback, it has been assumed an enhanced global warming of about 1oC would be required for counterbalance. But global energy budget considerations indicate only about half (0.5oC, not 1oC) of the 3.7 Wm-2 OLR blockage of CO2 should be expected to be expended for temperature compensation. The other half of the compensation for the 3.7 Wm-2 OLR blockage will come from the extra energy that must be utilized for surface evaporation (~1.85 Wm-2) to sustain the needed increase of the global hydrologic cycle by about 2 percent.
Earth experiences a unique climate because of its 70 percent water surface and its continuously functioning hydrologic cycle. The stronger the globe’s hydrologic cycle, the greater the globe’s cooling potential. All the global energy used for surface evaporation and tropospheric condensation warming is lost to space through OLR flux.
Thus, with zero water-vapor feedback we should expect a doubling of CO2 to cause no more than about 0.5oC (not 1oC) of global warming and the rest of the compensation to come from enhanced surface evaporation, atmospheric condensation warming, and enhanced OLR to space. If there is a small negative water-vapor feedback of only -0.1 to -0.3oC (as I believe to be the case), then a doubling of CO2 should be expected to cause a global warming of no more than about 0.2-0.4oC. Such a small temperature change should be of little societal concern during the remainder of this century.
It is the height of foolishness for the United States or any foreign government to base any energy or environmental policy decisions on the results of long-range numerical climate model predictions, or of the recommendations emanating from the biased, politically driven reports of the IPCC.
###
William M. Gray, Ph.D. (gray@atmos.colostate.edu) is professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
Reblogged this on makeaneffort and commented:
Extremely Important read from WUWT…
William M. Gray, Ph.D. … is professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Colorado State University
——————
Thanks to Dr Gray! I hope he doesn’t lose his job for daring to speak such heresy though.
Thanks, William.
Isn’t that the same formula to calculate the number of exo-planetary alien species?
The formula is useful for xenomorph mitigation. Xenomorph adaptation no so much.
I cannot recommend N. N. Taleb too highly on forecasting. Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes and lots of technical papers.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/
There is no physical way that an atmospheric doubling of the very small amount of background CO2 gas would ever be able to bring about such large global temperature increases.
My take on CO2 is that there is no actual evidence that CO2 does… anything!
Well, beyond being plant food. What the warmists have is a theoretical model on CO2, but zero empirical evidence supporting their model. The Economist reported: “The mismatch between rising greenhouse gas emissions and not-rising temperatures [15 year ‘pause’] is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now.” And now, as time has unfolded, ALL the climate models have failed… miserably. CO2 has not been doing of late what it was supposed to do.
But it’s not just the last 15 years, it’s … throughout history.
First, take a look at this key 3 1/2 minute video that exposes the false claims of Al Gore on CO2. For years people have just gone along and accepted as fact the disingenuous deceptions of Gore and the ipcc on CO2. To counter this we need to look more closely at the evidence.
Going back hundreds of thousands of years we can see in ice core samples that temperatures rise or fall, and then CO2 follows. Changes in CO2 result as an effect of temperature change. Yet there is no evidence at all that CO2 is also a cause of temperature change. What the Chicken Littles want us to believe is that CO2 could be both a cause and an effect of temperature change. Sure, that’s possible (if improbable), but the fact is that there’s no evidence for that. None.
And if we go back even further, hundreds of millions of years, we again see no evidence that CO2 affected temperatures. From Larry Bell: “Fossil records reveal that atmospheric CO2 levels around 600 million years ago were about 7,000 parts per million (ppm), compared with 379 ppm in 2005. Then approximately 480 million years ago those levels gradually dropped to 4,000 ppm over about 100 million years, while average temperatures remained at a steady 72 degrees. They then jumped rapidly to 4,500 ppm and guess what! Temperatures dove to an estimated average similar to today, even though the CO2 level was around twelve times higher than now. Yes, as CO2 went up, temperatures plummeted.” Even ice ages occurred at these high CO2 levels!
And looking at recent history, it’s the same thing, no evidence on CO2! Since 1850 or so we have been recovering from the Little Ice Age with mild warming (we have had only 0.7°C of warming). Now look at this woodfortrees graph. What we see is a near identical rate of temperature change during the first (low CO2) and second half (high CO2) of the 20th century. In recent times, with much higher CO2, the rate of temperature change is practically the same as before. Where is the signal for CO2? CO2 appears to be doing nothing, zilch. C3 presents more on this here.
If we look at the evidence, or the lack thereof, for CO2 affecting temperatures, maybe it’s time we start to take a more serious look at this alternative theoretical model on CO2 that maintains that CO2 does not markedly affect climate temperatures beyond ~ 200 ppm, or seriously consider that the feedbacks are not what the warmists say they are. This seems more in line with the actual evidence!
Schmidt: “Smith: usefulness of climate models for mitigation ‘as good as it gets’, usefulness for adaptation? Not so much “
To which I will note:
A) ‘as good as it gets’ is not anywhere close to good enough, and
B) You don’t need models for adaptation, dumbass. By definition. Adaptation is: change made in response to new or modified circumstances. You don’t need models for that. You need observations.
These are the ‘greatest minds’ in climate science.
Instead of trying fruitlessly to look into the future with pointless models that have zero skill temporally and even less spatially, $#!^can the whole lot of them and spend the billions saved on fixing problems that you can witness by simply looking around.
Freaking witch doctors.
“… Reliable long-range climate modeling is not possible and may never be possible. It is in our nation’s best interest that this mode of prophecy be exposed for its inherent futility. …”
Exactly! This is a major point and thanks for making it in such a wonderful essay.
I’m going out on a limb here, but this essay may be the best here at WUWT in months. Damn good.
Doug Huffman’s recommendations are excellent. Interestingly, Peter Gleick’s brother James wrote a book on Chaos Theory that goes on at length about how difficult it is to model chaotic systems such as weather. And how sensitive the models are to initial conditions.
Both Taleb’s books and James Gleick’s book would be good books to review for this website. They relate a bit about why Dr. Gray’s comments are so true.
What can I say?
Humor me. I believe this answers a question I’ve been wondering about. It sounds like he’s saying that water vapor acts as a refrigerant in the atmosphere with changes of state from liquid to vapor absorbing heat at the surface and then back to liquid releasing heat in the troposphere. Is this right? I ask this because I’ve wondered why I haven’t heard it mentioned.
What can I say?
But now I think I can say something, ahhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhh, ahhhhhh.
Give me 10 minutes please.
Somebody better tell China …
China Releases Blueprint for Adapting to Climate Change
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/12/10/china-issues-blueprint-to-help-minimize-effects-of-global-warming-and-climate-change/?KEYWORDS=china+climate
Here is a simple truth. The IPCC graphs many model runs then gives some sort of average. This is dishonest and shows no skill. What if sceptics did the same thing??? We could have warmer, average and cooler and we would be right no matter what the weather OR climate does.!!! This is my take on things, but if I am wrong then please accept my apologies.
The climate models are climate models. The actual climate is something else.
Speed says:
December 10, 2013 at 4:22 pm
Somebody better tell China …
– – – – – – – –
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/12/09/why-chinas-renewables-industry-is-headed-for-collapse/
Thank you Dr. Gray for a very clear explanation.
So is Dr. Judith Lean’s statement, “There are no operational forecasts of global climate change” a result of learning from the erroneous forecasts that she made in her 2009 peer-reviewed paper, ‘How will Earth’s surface temperature change in future decades?’, where she said: “From 2009 to 2014, projected rises in anthropogenic influences and solar irradiance will increase global surface temperature 0.15 ± 0.03C, at a rate 50% greater than predicted by IPCC.” ?
Not only has global surface temperature not gone up within the error bounds of her forecast, all the global surface temp data sets have gone down over the period of her forecast. And both of the satellite data sets have gone down by nearly as much as the increase that she predicted. http://bit.ly/18l0h85
Back in 2009, after a decade of no warming, they were so sure that the warming ‘in the pipeline’ would re-emerge, they were confidently predicting a soon rapid rise in global surface temperature, especially since humans continued to produce CO2 at increasing rates. But alas, their models with exaggerated ghg effects & missing natural variability effects, failed them. How many more years of failed predictions will it take for them to admit that CO2 is a minor factor in climate?
One of the best things on WUWT for some time.
I can just hear the frustrated stamp of tiny feet of the similarly minded. The response from the Climate Establishment will either be to ignore it completely (“beneath my dignity to respond”), or come out with both barrels blazing (Spanish Inquisition style).
Dr. Gray’s conclusion ought to be the last word on this multi-decadal fiasco. I am curious as to what Dr. Gray attributes the dearth of hurricanes this year – is it from low solar activity?
I disagree with the statement shown in the slide: “forecasting climate and weather are fundamentally different”. The climate we observe daily results exclusively from previous periods of daily weather. Get the daily weather forecasts right for the right reasons, and useful climate predictions will follow.
This of course means the same general drivers that influence daily weather dictate “climate” in the long run. That driver is NOT “climate change”. That is circular thinking. Would it be worth something to know what really drives extreme weather and climate change? There is someone who knows, someone who makes a living at long-range forecasting, someone who uses astrophysical knowledge with a proper understanding of the physics involved, a man who from my experience, makes very good 30 day forecasts regularly.
The scientist I speak of believes as Dr. Gray – that numerical weather and climate models are junk. They’re junk because they don’t work. They don’t work because they operate on wrong assumptions. The person I speak of is Piers Corbyn from weatheraction.com. If I could influence you to do anything today, it would be to go to his site and purchase a few months of USA forecasts for a few bucks. Find out how many snowmageddons he says we’ll get this month and why.
You might learn something, unless your name is Willis….
Gavin Schmidt says models are “as good as it gets?”
Hmmm….
Mark and two Cats says:
December 10, 2013 at 3:55 pm
A ‘professor emeritus’ is already retired. However, it is obvious that the dangers you mention are real, because it is generally only the retired who are willing to say these kinds of things that go against the orthodox party line.
Anybody who has bothered to study the progagation of errors in mathematical analyses understands the complete waste of time such complicated models are. It is amazing that most scientists appear to be unfamilar with this problem, or just do not want to face it. Understandable.
I first came across this in the medical lab when we were using a formula to calculate LDL without directly measuring it. A simple formula, it seemed, just the Friedwald equation:
LDL = Total Cholesterol – HDL Cholesterol – (Trigylcerides/5)
It worked OK up to a value of 400 for Trigycerides. The book never said why it didn’t work above 400. When I took a course in design of experiments, I studied propagation of error on the side.
With addition, roughly, (my memory is long gone), the final error in your LDL is the sum of the errors in all your measurements, roughly speaking. Turns out that the measurement of TG is inaccurate enuf so that above 400 the error is high enough to make meaningless the LDL calculation.
I think I am the only person I have meet in the clinical lab who was even aware of this.
Now, imagine summing 30 values, or squaring them, or multiplying them. The error in your calcuations becomes very large. Dividing, as I recall, tends to reduce the error.
So, complicated models, unless every variable (x1,x2,x3) and parameter (that constant in front of the variable, eg 3.2×1) is known with great precision, are worthless. And, let’s not even talk about interaction of your variables. A simple model:
y = x1 + x2 + x3
becomes, when you account for interactions:
y = x1 + x2 + x3 + x1*x2 + x1*x3 + x2*x3 + x1*x2*x3
And, this model is woefully simply. We assume here the different variables are simply additive.
What if the real relationships is:
y = x1^(x2*x3) * x2^3
and so on.
That would make the entire effort appear for what it is. A farce.
We live in a world of numerical idiots. That would be OK if the idiots just realized they were idiots.
That slide is the key point to the whole debate. Specifically: “after two weeks forecast error saturates …. to climatology”
Santer’s 17 years? P’shah. It’s 2 weeks. It’s absurd of course, but make them defend it — it is the science. The problem here is that, of course, the stochastic issues are not wholly accounted for after a 2 week period. Simply look at any of the quasicyclic issues such as the PDO. It is true that there is such nonsense after 2 weeks that there is no longer any worth in weather prediction; the error bands are just too broad.
This is first order goalpost games. eg. We don’t ‘forecast’ because it’s ‘deterministic.’ But it cannot be refuted because ‘weather’ is ‘too noisy’ after 2 weeks. Take that for consideration. The 11 year solar cycles are ‘weather’ and whatever the temperature does in response, it can neither validate nor refute the ‘deterministic climate equations.’ Indeed, nothing can. By definition, the errors are so strong that they can no longer tease the stochastic effects from the deterministic ones after 2 weeks time.
If ever you needed the definition of Cargo Cult Science — this is it. The argument made in the slide is that climate is indistinguishable from weather on climatological time scales. That it has always been thus. And yet the statements are that what we cannot find in the data, has been proven by our inability to find it, or find it’s refutation, or even find out what haystack the Stevenson screen is in.
Carry that slide with you everywhere and use it as the first cudgel in argument. The climastrologists need to strongly refute the statements contained within that one little image, or admit that climatology has thus far been pseudoscience pushed by the same sort of cranks that go in for over-unity magnet engines. Pure Jonestown Cult religious fanaticism.
Anthony — can you get any transcript or indication of what Lenny Smith’s lecture consisted of? A stark contrast between Lenny Smith and Dr. Judith Lean.