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.
Eh, let’s not give up the fight. Because we are still here, we know the climate is bounded. Experience tells us the climate will change. That is, the goalposts will move. Even though we can’t accurately predict the weather more than 5 days out, we still make useful predictions. Is there not some value in predicting where the goalposts will be in 50 years? If only there wasn’t the scare-the-rubes-and-collect-some-rent crowd out there co-opting the effort. In civilized society scamming the public is the epitome of evil. If you are doing it, stop right now!!
Leonard Lane – Sir, don’t blame me for sending Willis a small provocation – or for not knowing his health issues. I hope he is doing well. I sent that because Willis didn’t really show me last year in a WUWT post on this subject that he even attempted to understand what Piers Corbyn has been saying all these years before Willis dismissed out of hand what Corbyn says and does.
I have as much contempt for those who won’t even look at Corbyn’s contributions as I do for those who sell or repeat the carbon dioxide climate connection BS in the first place.
dp says:
December 11, 2013 at 12:43 am
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?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I said no such thing and I resent the implication that I did. Your statement however implies that you don’t understand what I did say, and you’d benefit from reading it again and actually thinking about it before shooting off your mouth.
Mindert Eiting: “Because the climate models failed in their prediction, they can be saved by the unexpected event that all heat disappeared into the deep ocean.”
That doesn’t “save” the climate models, because they aren’t modeling it. If they were, their predictions would not have been falsified.
“Unexpected means that this heat flow occurs perhaps once in every million years.”
And how do you know this?
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 3.7 is at TOA. At the surface it will be much more, ~9 W/m2.
Thanks Dr. Gray.
These IPCC models are not only futile but detrimental to mankind, specially the poor and underdeveloped.
***
davidmhoffer says:
December 10, 2013 at 9:46 pm
You’ve no idea how much work keeping one going actually is until you try and do it. How Anth_ny keeps up is quite beyond me.
***
I agree. Parsing WUWT & some other blogs requires (for me) heavy mental processing, and my meager brain runs out by early afternoon. Need a sleep period to regain mental integrity for such blogs.
IgI: no professional scientist or engineer can accept 33 K GHEv (it’s really ~11K once you add the 43% more thermalised SW energy for no clouds or ice).
Nor that the Earth emits real IR energy as if an isolated black body in Space (Meteorology and Climate Alchemy teach that a pyrgeometer outputs a real energy flux when it’s potential energy to absolute zero).
Nor that you can apply Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation at ToA.
Nor that you can offset the increased heating from the resultant perpetual motion machine by double real low level optical depth (and that Physics is wrong too).
Nor that H2O IR is emitted from the stratosphere (its spectral temperature is ~ -1.5 deg. C, about 2.6 km in temperate climates): this disproves the present interpretation of Tyndall’s experiment!
Apart from that, the models are fine and should predict a CO2 climate sensitivity of < 0.1 K!
in baseball a hitters average = his climate………his individuals at bats = weather…………..WHICH is in control of the other…..does his average determine the outcome of his next at bat OR does the outcome of that at bat impact his average……the point is simple the climate has NO CONTROL over the weather.
Excellent! Thank you, Dr Gray.
I wish the UK Chief Scientific Advisor would read the article. He would learn a great deal.
Peter Donis: I could have written something about immunization strategies, but thought this would suffice.
Nor can AlecM change the laws of physics.
Joel says:December 10, 2013 at 4:53 pm
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. …
…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.
——————-
“He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool – shun him. He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple – teach him. He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep – wake him. He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise – follow him.”-Proverbs
Mindert Eiting says:
December 11, 2013 at 5:58 am
“My prediction is conditional and its failure does not mean that I am a liar (how dare you).”
The case is not the same with the CAGW crowd. They have repeatedly told us sceptics that “the science is settled!”, that “the time for discussion is over!” and that “this is just simple high school physics!”
Well, no. Not so much…
If I just predict that to the best of my knowledge the bathtub will overflow — and then it does not, well, I am just mistaken and not a liar. On the other hand, if I claim to have positive, unerring, settled, indisputable knowledge that the bathtub will overflow — and then it does not, well, then I am a liar.
CAGW is a lie.
Thank You, Dr Grey!
I’m forwarding your essay to my WA state representatives on the “Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup”. Anyone interested in the climate machinations that Gov. Inslee is attempting to implement in the state of Washington can find more info here:
http://www.governor.wa.gov/issues/economy/climateWorkgroup/default.aspx
There is a public hearing this Friday from 2 – 5pm at the state capitol in Olympia, to “….hear the publics views on the workgroups draft report and potential policies and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Washington state”. Agenda here:
http://www.governor.wa.gov/issues/economy/climateWorkgroup/documents/Agenda_20131213.pdf
As expected, the ‘public hearing’ has been gerrymandered to effectively minimize the public input. Two panels of ‘experts’ (lobbyists) will consume a significant part of the time allotted and the remaining time will be distributed to individuals through a lottery system. This effectively minimizes the potential for true individuals to speak and gives organized teams of ‘individuals’ higher odds that one of their people will be selected to deliver the team message.
A supplemental economic analysis document was added to the last meetings summary. It is enlightening to read the adverse effects that various carbon tax and ‘clean/alternate’ energy proposals will have on economic conditions in Washington state.
http://www.governor.wa.gov/issues/economy/climateWorkgroup/documents/SupplementalEconomicAnalysis_20131209.pdf
MtK
Dang it! Fat finger typo’d ‘Dr. Grey’ instead of Dr. Gray!
^%$#*&#!!!
Mac the {Knight in Shining Armor},
Well, how’s it going in that crazy office today? I hope you had a good lunch. Boy, I really feel for you. Not only working with dimbulbs but you live in Environaziland (I live here, too — IT IS HORRIBLE).
In case you did not see it, I tried to encourage you a little here (Dec. 6, at 6:36pm on that thread):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/06/filter-bubbles-and-the-climate-wars/#comment-1493892
Take care and well, just…… just wad up your coat and scream into it, or something. Arrrrrrrgh!
Janice
Well, looks like even if you embed it within a compound word, the moderation alarm still goes off. FYI: “Environa-zi-land” (withouth the hyphens) is a trigger word, now — unless it was the word “s-cream?” “Arrr–rrgh?” “co-a-t?” (shrug)
@ur momisugly Tom J — I am easily misunderstood (likely mostly my fault) here on WUWT. I sure hope I didn’t offend you above. Re: mechanics’ hands — those hands with those impossible-to-remove traces of engine grease (or ookumpucky, or whatever, heh), just like the calloused hands of a commercial fisherman or a carpenter or other craftsperson or laborer or like the soil-stained hands of a farmer, are hands to be proud of. They are the most beautiful hands in the world.
Wait a minute, I thought it was the formula to calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen Swallow (European)?
IgI: I have used standard physics.
The IPCC ‘consensus’ is based on 13 mistakes in physics, 3 of them s elementary as t be embarrassing.
How we got here is interesting. Thus Physics itself is also to blame by its persistent belief that the atmosphere is a grey body absorber/emitter. It is not, being semi-transparent to IR.
This is probably the single biggest mistake. Engineers like me don’t make such mistakes because we have to get it right.
Dr Jack Barrett has a PhD in Physical Chemistry. He has written around 70 papers and 10 text books on various aspects of the chemistry and spectroscopy of small molecules. Jack is a noted sceptic of CAGW and has long been a thorn in the side of the IPCC. However, like many responsible sceptics he is continually exasperated by certain less informed sceptics. In response to your point about the insignificance of CO2 in the atmosphere, Jack might suggest the following ‘experiments’
1. Try 400 ppmv of arsenic oxide with a mug of tea or, perhaps, a safer option
2. Take a jug containing a litre of water. The water is transparent to visible radiation. But then add a few drops of milk and stir. This is equivalent of diluting the milk by a factor of about 5000, i.e. the milk ‘concentration’ is 500 ppmv. Is there any visible effect?
The second ‘experiment’ is highly relevant. Just as the milk in the water changes the transparency of the liquid to visible radiation, CO2 alters the transparency of the atmosphere to LWIR (at certain wavelengths).
If you doubt the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere, check out this Climate Audit post by Steve McIntyre.
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/08/sir-john-houghton-on-the-enhanced-greenhouse-effect/
Scroll down to Fig 3, i.e. the emission spectrum graph. Underneath the graph, Steve has written
Janice Moore
December 11, 2013 at 1:05 pm
‘@ur momisugly Tom J — I am easily misunderstood (likely mostly my fault) here on WUWT. I sure hope I didn’t offend you above.’
Dear Janice,
I certainly hope you get my rather late reply to your statement above. No, no, no, I am most decidedly not offended in the least by anything you’ve said, kiddo. I may be a motorhead but my occupation, before I went on disability, was as a commercial artist. So, my hands are set up a little more for delicate, precision work, although I’ve dropped a few transmissions, changed clutches, pulled a cylinder head, tuned ’em, and changed a fair amount of oil in my time. Unfortunately my oil changing days on my 1989 Alfa Romeo Milano are over. I still tinker with it though.
No need to apologize since there’s nothing to apologize for. Know of a nice 426 Hemi for sale?
John Finn: the effect of the ‘CO2 bite’, 1.2 K Climate Sensitivity without feedback (and there is none) assumes that there is no bypass mechanism: there is.
to Terry Oldberg : please stop trying to defend the indefensible, Climate models are no go good for any play on words you may try to use. They amount to this ‘garbage in garbage out’.