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.
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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.
Dr. Gray, thanks for a great article! I particularly like the fact that you talk about the role that the hydrologic cycle plays in cooling the Earth’s surface; I have *never* seen this addressed properly in a “mainstream” source.
Tom J, the extra heat transport due to the hydrologic cycle is simple: when water evaporates at the surface, it removes heat from the surface, cooling it; when the water vapor then condenses at high altitude, to form clouds or precipitation, it gives up the heat, which gets radiated away to space. In other words, the hydrologic cycle is a separate heat transport mechanism that cools the surface. If the surface warms from some other cause, such as an increase in greenhouse gases, that increases the rate of the hydrologic cycle, which counteracts some of the warming that would otherwise occur; so the impact of a given increase in, say, CO2 is *smaller* when the hydrologic cycle is taken into account.
@joel, 4:53: Well-done. I have a comp. sci. degree, and you have neatly described what happens in any simulation which iterates extensively.
Dr Gray – Please can you clarify this for me: “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. “.
Are you saying that with a doubling of CO2, temperature would increase by about 0.5 deg C and the hydrological cycle would increase by about 2%?
My understanding is that a 1 deg C increase in SST is likely to be accompanied by about 7% increase in the hydrological cycle. That’s a significantly larger hydrological cycle increase than in your numbers if I have understood them correctly. Sources:
1. Wentz et al, Science 13 July 2007: Vol. 317 no. 5835 pp. 233-235 DOI: 10.1126/science.1140746
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5835/233.abstract
“Climate models and satellite observations both indicate that the total amount of water in the atmosphere will increase at a rate of 7% per kelvin of surface warming. However, the climate models predict that global precipitation will increase at a much slower rate of 1 to 3% per kelvin. A recent analysis of satellite observations does not support this prediction of a muted response of precipitation to global warming. Rather, the observations suggest that precipitation and total atmospheric water have increased at about the same rate over the past two decades. “.
2. Science 27 April 2012:Vol. 336 no. 6080 pp. 455-458 DOI: 10.1126/science.1212222
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6080/455
“We show that ocean salinity patterns express an identifiable fingerprint of an intensifying water cycle. Our 50-year observed global surface salinity changes, combined with changes from global climate models, present robust evidence of an intensified global water cycle at a rate of 8 ± 5% per degree of surface warming. This rate is double the response projected by current-generation climate models and suggests that a substantial (16 to 24%) intensification of the global water cycle will occur in a future 2° to 3° warmer world.“.
3. Confirmation by Dr Susan Wijffels on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) “Catalyst” program ..
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3796205.htm
.. “We’re already starting to detect and see big changes in the extreme events. And we’ve only really warmed the Earth by 0.8 of a degree. If we were to warm the Earth by 3 or 4 degrees, the changes in the hydrological cycle could be near 30 percent. I mean, that’s just a huge change, and it’s very hard for us to imagine.“
@ur momisugly Tom J — lol, hopefully, by the time you check back here, a scientist (or someone with lots of science knowledge) will have given you a good answer. Hey, chipmunks are super-cute! Well, after that “compliment,” though, I think I’d grow my beard back too…. er…. if I were a man, I mean! If it’s a ZZ Top kind of beard, don’t get it caught in a fan belt or something!!! (like the Grinch when he’s sewing his costume). No, I’ll look at your hands… THAT is how you can tell a motorhead, heh. Well, that, and once he (or she, not many, but there are a few) starts talking about cars and engines and carburetors and manifolds and… .
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Thanks for acknowledging, Eric Simpson!! I’ve missed your super sense of humor and fun comments. I still chuckle at, “It’s hot as {heck} down here!” lol. I’ll read that Forbes article tomorrow — even an easy read is too much for my tired brain right now.
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Thanks, davidmhoffer. You are so very welcome. Guess I was mistaken! Well, at least you and I (and likely Kevin K, too) agree about the logarithmically dissipating potential effect of CO2. So far, I’ve seen no evidence that CO2 does anything to drive the climate (or “greenhouse”) in any way. I’ll try a bit harder to keep an open mind, though (in case some evidence does show up), after finding out that you whose mind I’ve come to admire think it can do something significant.
Re: Rectifier, a.k.a., wrecktafire, heh — at 10:03pm today:
“@joel, 4:53: Well-done.”
Yes! I’m glad you complimented him, Wreckt, for it reminded me I was going to post this as, I think, highly relevant to this thread (the COMMENT thread is the best part!):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/27/another-uncertainty-for-climate-models-different-results-on-different-computers-using-the-same-code/
Magnificent!
Thank-you Dr. Gray, a present before Christmas!
Thanks for this post. I have just one comment:
Yay !!!
davidmhoffer says: December 10, 2013 at 5:52 pm
Nitpick alert: The point no doubt stands, but 14 km is 14,000 metres. There are 100 cm in a metre, so 10 x 10 cm jars per metre.
Total vertical jar count = 140,000, not 140 million.
Assume instead a square glass jar that is 10 grains on a side. That’s 100 grains in a single layer. Now imagine the jar is 100 grains tall. 10,000 grains in all. Make 99,996 white and just 4 red, same ratio as your example above. Suppose the jar is about 10 cm tall. Now, instantly make all the white grains invisible. What would you see?
Well, you’d see a 10 cm tall jar that is mostly empty, with a fleck of red here and there. You could easily draw a vertical line from the bottom of the jar to the top without hitting any of those red flecks. In fact, you could draw a lot of them.
Now, stack thousands of those jars on top of each other in a tower 14 kilometers high.
You’ll need a stack of 140 million jars. Now try drawing a line from bottom to top without hitting a red grain.
rgb:
Your argument that we should cease “pointless debate” about prediction vs projection fosters unfounded conclusions regarding global warming, including its cause. By logical rule, one cannot logically draw a conclusion from an argument that is an equivocation. To draw such a conclusion is an “equivocation fallacy.”
An “equivocation” is an argument in which a term changes meaning in the midst of this argument. A “fallacious argument” is one in which the conclusion from this argument does not follow from the premises of this argument and from the principles of reasoning. In making an argument, one can head off application of the equivocation fallacy through the use of terms that are “monosemic.” A monosemic term is one that has a single meaning. A “polysemic” term has more than one meaning. For a debater who wishes to avoid application of the equivocation fallacy, the use of monosemic terms has no downside. In the record of our debate, however, I observe that you resolutely resist the use of monosemic terms. Is your purpose to make use of the equivocation fallacy in putting across illicit arguments? If not, what do you hope to accomplish in insisting upon the use of polysemic terms?
In the literature of global warming climatology, a number of terms are polysemic. When these terms are used in making an argument there is the danger of reaching a logically unfounded conclusion. Among these terms are “predict” and “forecast.” These two terms reference a model that: a) has an underlying statistical population and b) has no underlying statistical population.
In the latter type of model, the statistical idea of a “frequency” does not exist. It follows that the idea of a “relative frequency” does not exist. As a relative frequency is the empirical counterpart of a probability, a “probability” has no empirical counterpart thus disappearing as a scientific concept. The ideas of “information” and “logic” disappear as well.
In the former type of model, the statistical idea of a “frequency” exists. It follows that the idea of a “relative frequency” exists. As a relative frequency is the empirical counterpart of a probability, a “probability” exists as a scientific concept. The ideas of “information” and “logic” exist as well.
The IPCC climate models have no underlying statistical population. All of the pathological features of a global warming study identified in the second paragraph above result from this absence. This state of affairs makes it clear that in debating the methodology of a global warming study we should adopt a linguistic convention that distinguishes between the type of model that has an underlying statistical population and the type of model that does not. Don’t you agree?
Try putting in plain English so all can understand.
Thanks… The lay-people
“I’m sure that’s the fat lady I can hear singing, I hope it’s a pop song… .” (Tom Harley at 7:41pm)
It is! #(:))
And we are so DONE with those AGW control freaks.
Us realists choose:
“Freedom! … Freedom!… FREEDOM!!!”
Aretha Franklin
The band is BACK.
CO2 UP — WARMING STOPPED.
AGW: doa
Janice Moore;
I’ve seen no evidence that CO2 does anything to drive the climate (or “greenhouse”) in any way.
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I suggest you read these:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/
The last one is the definitive one, but you might want to read the other two first as a primer.
Keep in mind also that when I say CO2 absolutely does drive the greenhouse effect, I’m speaking of the concentration as a whole. A change in concentration is a different discussion. For example the direct effects of going from 200ppm to 250ppm would be rather different from the effects of going from 400ppm to 450ppm despite both being a change of 50ppm. But then one has to take into account feedback effects. It is quite possible that the sum of all feedback effects is positive at one concentration, and negative at another for example.
So to be more accurate, do I think the GHE of CO2 is real? H3LL YES. Do I think that a change in CO2 of about 2ppm per year starting at a concentration of 400ppm is significant? H3LL NO! I don’t think we can even measure it. I think the sum of the feedbacks is probably very small, likely even negative at this concentration, not to mention that a warmer planet is a more tranquil planet, so any tiny warming we do get is far more likely to be beneficial that harmful,
Right in line with Doctor Gray’s comments, most farmers do not buy the climate change models. We have seen too many dud seasonal forecasts to have faith in longer term predictions. Experience is always a valuable teacher.
Markx;
Total vertical jar count = 140,000, not 140 million.
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OOOOPS! Tx.
Terry Oldberg says:
December 10, 2013 at 10:44 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seriously dude, you’ve dug the hole, climbed in, and you’re pulling the dirt back in on top of your head. Your a smart guy who could contribute to the discussion in a lot of ways, but beating this drum to death constantly and repeatedly is tiresome and useless. Give it a rest before Anthony’s patience wears thin.
Thank you for the suggested reading list, Professor davidmhoffer. You were kind to take the time.
Are the atmospheric cooling effects of CO2 incorporated into these numerical models? There is no question that CO2 has additional radiative modes that convert thermal energy convected (etc.) from the ground into radiation and that the net radiative flux is biased outward i.e. up because the MFP is larger in the upward direction. This effect works down to sea level and therefore cools the troposphere as well at the far upper atmosphere (admitted by the IPCC). A cooling of the upper troposphere must by the lapse rate law (derived from the 1st law and gas law) lead to a cooling of the surface.
The entire debate seems to be grounded on an initial partial physics that considers only radiative to radiative transfers while the thermal/radiative transfers (of energy) are ignored.
What point was Dr Lean making when she mentioned this blog?
The models were never intended to model the climate. I think even the modelers know this. They were intended to promote the notion that CO2 increase would lead to global warming and which warming would require the response of government. A power grab, to put it plainly. The major flaw in this intent is that modeled results are not data. Data is gathered with a thermometer and a limited number of proxies. Models never produce hard data, and produce reliable results only in the simplest of cases and where there are no chaotic unknowables. In any event, the climate models are best known for their failure to demonstrate any useful skill. The reason being there are chaotic unknowables.
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…”.
Dr Gray is in good company…
“Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality”.
Nikola Tesla
Dr. William M. Gray wrote:
“The water-vapor feedback loop, in reality, is weakly negative … 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 … 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.”
I think this is the phenomenon that Willis likened to a planetary refrigerator:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/11/air-conditioning-nairobi-refrigerating-the-planet
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/thunderstorm-refrigerator.jpg
You have described it quantitatively Dr. Gray, and with much more rigor. Brilliant!
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Archer Beggs says:
December 10, 2013 at 4:16 pm
“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.”
Yes, I believe that’s right; see the above links for some mention of it.
Davidmhoffer – are you claiming to the be only person on planet Earth that knows the absolute sign of all the feedbacks and that you and you alone can say with 100% certainty what no scientist in his/her right mind would suggest? That being that the science is settled and despite the observed fact that we are in a cooling effect for nearly two decades, CO2 and CO2 alone is going to lead to dangerous global warming? If so you’d better get your ass onto the IPCC band wagon because you are needed there.
Ole Gavin is as stupid as it gets. What a crass twit, sorry, tweet.
The CO2 Climate sensitivity proposed by Prof. Gray is a significant overestimate. This is because although he has grasped the key nature of the hydrological cycle speeding up as pCO2 increases, he has failed to understand that Climate Alchemy has made a big mistake in its understanding of the physics of OLR.
This is the belief that emission in the H2O bands is from the stratosphere. It is not, coming from about 2.6 km in temperate regions. This means the Tyndall experiment has been fundamentally misunderstood!
davidmhoffer says: December 10, 2013 at 10:51 pm
So to be more accurate, do I think the GHE of CO2 is real? H3LL YES. Do I think that a change in CO2 of about 2ppm per year starting at a concentration of 400ppm is significant? H3LL NO! I don’t think we can even measure it. I think the sum of the feedbacks is probably very small, likely even negative at this concentration, not to mention that a warmer planet is a more tranquil planet, so any tiny warming we do get is far more likely to be beneficial that harmful..
It is interesting to consider that the sinks and feedbacks were supposedly so well balanced for so many years that the atmospheric CO2 level remained at a stable level for decades/centuries.
Then, quite suddenly, a 3% annual increase due to mankind’s emissions has supposedly upset that balance and the atmospheric level is now relentlessly increasing year on year.
It seems to me it must have been a helluva delicate balance to not cope with a 3% fluctuation, …..
……or is the argument perhaps that we are also damaging the biological processes and sinks?
Hal Lewis said it best: “the largest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud” in his long lifetime as a physicist.