From the University of New South Wales and Dr. Steven Sherwood:
“Climate sceptics like to criticise climate models for getting things wrong, and we are the first to admit they are not perfect,” said Sherwood. “But what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by the models which predict less warming, not those that predict more.”
Yeah…right:
![CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/cmip5-73-models-vs-obs-20n-20s-mt-5-yr-means11.png?quality=75)
Cloud mystery solved: Global temperatures to rise at least 4°C by 2100
Cloud impact on climate sensitivity unveiled
Global average temperatures will rise at least 4°C by 2100 and potentially more than 8°C by 2200 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced according to new research published in Nature. Scientists found global climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than most previous estimates.
The research also appears to solve one of the great unknowns of climate sensitivity, the role of cloud formation and whether this will have a positive or negative effect on global warming.
“Our research has shown climate models indicating a low temperature response to a doubling of carbon dioxide from preindustrial times are not reproducing the correct processes that lead to cloud formation,” said lead author from the University of New South Wales’ Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science Prof Steven Sherwood.
“When the processes are correct in the climate models the level of climate sensitivity is far higher. Previously, estimates of the sensitivity of global temperature to a doubling of carbon dioxide ranged from 1.5°C to 5°C. This new research takes away the lower end of climate sensitivity estimates, meaning that global average temperatures will increase by 3°C to 5°C with a doubling of carbon dioxide.”
The key to this narrower but much higher estimate can be found in the real world observations around the role of water vapour in cloud formation.
Observations show when water vapour is taken up by the atmosphere through evaporation, the updraughts can either rise to 15 km to form clouds that produce heavy rains or rise just a few kilometres before returning to the surface without forming rain clouds.
When updraughts rise only a few kilometres they reduce total cloud cover because they pull more vapour away from the higher cloud forming regions.
However water vapour is not pulled away from cloud forming regions when only deep 15km updraughts are present.
The researchers found climate models that show a low global temperature response to carbon dioxide do not include enough of this lower-level water vapour process. Instead they simulate nearly all updraughts as rising to 15 km and forming clouds.
When only the deeper updraughts are present in climate models, more clouds form and there is an increased reflection of sunlight. Consequently the global climate in these models becomes less sensitive in its response to atmospheric carbon dioxide.
However, real world observations show this behaviour is wrong.
When the processes in climate models are corrected to match the observations in the real world, the models produce cycles that take water vapour to a wider range of heights in the atmosphere, causing fewer clouds to form as the climate warms.
This increases the amount of sunlight and heat entering the atmosphere and, as a result, increases the sensitivity of our climate to carbon dioxide or any other perturbation.
The result is that when water vapour processes are correctly represented, the sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide – which will occur in the next 50 years – means we can expect a temperature increase of at least 4°C by 2100.
“Climate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong, and we are the first to admit they are not perfect, but what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by those models which predict less warming, not those that predict more,” said Prof. Sherwood.
“Rises in global average temperatures of this magnitude will have profound impacts on the world and the economies of many countries if we don’t urgently start to curb our emissions.
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Doc1; These people are sick.
Doc2; Let some blood out of them.
Doc1. OK, did that. 20% of them died and the rest are still sick.
Doc2; Well, obviously you didn’t let enough blood out of them.
Doc1; OK, I let more blood out. Now half of them are dead and the rest are still sick.
Doc2; Wow, this disease is worse than I thought. Double the bloodletting.
Doc1; Uhm…there’s this other doctor, and he’s not letting the blood out of his patients, and they’re getting better…
Doc2; The disease is just talking a pause. The symptoms are just hiding. Somewhere that doctors can’t find them. But since no blood was let out of them, it means that they are actually getting sicker. When the diseases stops pausing, it will be even worse. Triple the blood letting.
The real solution is more money……
Climate scientists don’t even remotely know what they don’t know about climate science. Yet they build a model, plug all sorts of information in it and then use it to base all of their predictions on. How frigging amazing is that for nonsense?
He just added a fudge factor to grab a headline, period, knowing that even the likes of the faux Marcott 2013 hockey stick now famously passes peer review.
Here they present an argument that makes a crucial appeal to empirical evidence yet they provide no empirical evidence whatsoever. What children they are. What children Nature’s editors are.
Sorry, folks, but if you are going to claim that you understand cloud behavior as it bears on albedo then you must present well confirmed physical hypotheses which explain the claim and you must present the empirical evidence that makes them well-confirmed. Until you have those things, do not publish your weak as Pajamas Boy claims.
davidmhoffer says:
December 31, 2013 at 12:22 pm
*
David – you have a way with words! That not only sums it up perfectly, but captures the foolishness and the arrogance of today’s “climate scientists” and their blinkered approach. Brilliant.
sarc on/ For people who are not up to date, with climate models GIGO does NOT mean garbage in, garbage out. It means garbage in, gospel out. sarc off/
“But what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by the models which predict less warming, not those that predict more.”
So if we remove from the figure at the top of the post all of the ‘wrong’ models…….
That makes it so much easier to demonstrate that models != reality. Thanks for the clarification.
davidmhoffer says:
December 31, 2013 at 12:22 pm
>>>>>
Thread winner!
I am not a climate scientist, I am a mere glider pilot, so of course I don’t know anything about thermals, but two things strike me as odd;-
1, If thermals form clouds then they will go all the way to the tropopause to form a rainstorm unless something stops them. If an inversion stops them, they will dissipate without interacting with the air above the inversion – they will not “draw water vapour” out of the air above the inversion, that is utter nonsense.
2. The vast majority if clouds and rain are frontal, not thermal, in origin.
I really do not understand what this man is talking about.
Yes, When i was young, a long time ago, and learning my trade in Natural Philosophy we used to call this the fiddle factor: denoted as F double dash.
A happy new year to all at WUWT and its readers.
Kindest Regards
Somewhat OT, but the ENSO meter has moved massive neutral.
As in “where has our heat gone?”
Can somebody help me to understand, is this what the averaged satellite datasets is plotting?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1978/plot/rss/from:1978/plot/uah/mean:60/plot/rss/mean:60
Happy new year everyone (its already 2014 here in Oz).
C’mon Willis, rip into the pile of cr@pola!
Shocking, if you go searching for the mistakes that would go in a particular direction, you find the mistakes that go in that direction. You didn’t go looking for any mistakes in the other direction, so you didn’t find any.
So, if you go looking for model problems that could bias them low, you find some and you remove them, the models warm more. You perhaps fail to realize that it is not the effect of the problems you find that determines the bias in one direction or another, it is the sum of *all* problems, including the ones you haven’t even contemplated, much less identified.
So sure, if you try hard enough you can find a model problem that actually reduces the amount they warm, and if you correct *only* that model problem, they’d warm more.
The more sensible thing to do would be to look for a method to determine whether the total bias due to model problems is in one direction or another, regardless of the source of the bias. In this regard the weak rate of warming in the last few decades-and more recently the absence of a warming trend entirely-compared to models illustrates that, even if this cloud problem is biasing models low, the remaining biases must add up to a *high* bias in their sensitivity estimates.
Me thinks Sherwood is lost in the forest, because he can’t see it for the trees.
It’s downright embarrassing that these climate idiots, Sherwood has form and Turney was an unknown until he got stuck in ice, are Australians. It is unsurprising that the Sydney Morning Herald printed the rubbish and are unlikely to print the inevitable retraction/correction just as they fail to report Turneys Antarctic fiasco. In this they are ably assisted by the public broadcaster, the ABC. It’s been a bad week for warmists here as the front page of the Australian newspaper yesterday carried an op-ed by one of the PM’s chief advisors that the CC fraud is collapsing and a news article linking Green policies to job losses and increased power charges. The Antarctic circus is icing but some in the media are trying to ignore it.
Happy New Year to all at WUWT. 2014 is shaping to be the year of the skeptic.
Stepping back from the trees for a moment to look at the forest…
If we proceed on the assumption that this paper is correct (not that I am, but let’s just suppose for a moment) it is actually a devastating blow to the climate models. If the models closest to reality are in fact incorrect about cloud modelling, and fixing that portion of them forces their results even further from reality, it means that something else is wrong with the models, or perhaps (more likely) several other things.
What this paper (if correct) shows is that the models are even worse than we previously supposed.
This paper joins an ever growing list of peer review literature that has ceased trying to prove the models wrong, and instead tries to explain why they are wrong, with ever increasing contortions to preserve the CAGW memoplex at the same time.
Lars P. No, that is global lower troposphere, the plot above is tropical mid-troposphere.
timetochooseagain says:
December 31, 2013 at 12:59 pm
Lars P. No, that is global lower troposphere, the plot above is tropical mid-troposphere.
Thanks!
Climate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong, and we are the first to admit they are not perfect”
Yeah, when we are caught out we admit it.
“…mistakes are being made by the
modelsmodellers.” [Fixed]This isn’t “horseshoes.” The mainstream climate projection modellers have it wrong. Adjusting wrong doesn’t fix a broken model.
Anthony
I despair with the drivel and rubbish these people come out with I really can’t be bothered being polite with them anymore. I’ve just seen a post on UK Sci Weather that says the reason that ‘ship of fools’ is stuck in ice is because of AGW with more fresh water due the Antarctic ice cap melting.
Well all know that ice melts faster on land than the ocean where it’s impervious to melting especially the further it freezes outwards. How you and other have the patience is beyond me . Personally I think the bulk of AGW’s like the journalist on that shipping are &*cking Idiots and there is no other way to deal with them now. The gloves are going to have to come of very soon as no ones is giving an inch an intrenched ideological warfare looks on the cards as these fanatics just won’t accept any truth that is laid before them. Some of the responses and comments you hear to real situations make one want to do a Ben Sanity Clause .
Honestly I want to tell them just to shut the *&ck up. They are a public health hazard
Ok, so his Excellency wnats do double the climate sensitivity. Hey let him. This will just make reality even more inconvenient for the excellencies of climate science. We don’t lose anything; they were idiots anyway.
We’re already a seventh of the way to 2100 without any warming, so when the rise finally starts, it’s gonna be really steep.