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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Even the models that projected nearer to observations were still too warm! This really is climate nuttiness of the year (2013). Up is down, black is white, cold is hot.
This must explain the temperature standstill. Their track record so far is abysmal, dismiss this garbage as co2 has been FAR higher in the past with no oven temps. We are still here for goodness sakes.
Ice-Trapped ‘Scientists’ says:
December 31, 2013 at 11:36 am
4ºC of warming? You say it like it’s a bad thing.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If the other option is 4ºC of cooling then I will take the warming thank you very much.
When you consider we have already cooled from the Holocene Optimum by about 2.5 to 3.0ºC. Another drop of 4ºC would put the earth in glaciation territory Graph
According to the Warmist the poles are the most like to see the temperature rise (Willis’s tropical thermostat and all that.)
Here are the temperatures we have had during the Holocene, GRAPH, annotated with the civilizations that flourished.
This shows the earth has cooled about as much as they say the earth is going to warm.
Too bad most people don’t take even one course in geology. If they had they would see CAGW is a tempest in a tea pot and would also have an appreciation of just how much power the earth’s processes command compared to us puny humans.
Have climate modellers ever thought to start with the answer and work out the formula and the values of the variables back from that ? At least one part of the model would be right …
Steven Mosher
“Looking at the charts and tables its appears they used CMIP 3 models and for observations they used MERRA. Of all the reannalysis data (MERRA is a model not observations) I’ve looked at MERRA is the sketchiest.”
Why do people rush to criticise Mr. Mosher when they disagree with him but not thank him, as they should, when he makes a really useful observation?
Publish fairy tales or perish.
One failure follows another. Prof Chris Turney is the climate scientist stuck in sea ice in Antarctica. He used the models to navigate his way through. Prof Steven Sherwood is at the same university. What can I say?
So the IPCC have failed. They should now be disbanded as their models underestimate future warming. What a bloody joke this is, they must take people for utter, gullible fools. The more they fail the more certain they are, you will hot see this in ANY other scientific field.
PS if the good professor found much lower climate sensitivity he would have made the necessary corrections until the desired results were obtained. Observations are king.
Michael Moon says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 11:51 am
….When updraughts rise only a few kilometres they reduce total cloud cover because they pull more vapour away from the higher cloud forming regions.” I hate it when my vapor pulls away from the higher regions.
Does this make any sense whatsoever? How could it even be measured with any accuracy?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
To put it in layman’s terms he is talking of FOG (not the kind found in this guy’s brain)
You still get reflection and incoming solar energy absorption by H2O and you still get latent heat of evaporation. Also when the fog or low lying clouds ‘burns away’ later in the day, what happens? The water vapor heads back up.
I do not care where the clouds are, it is still cooler under cloud cover than it is under the direct sun. These guys really need to get out of their air conditioned ivory towers and do field work.
Of course the biggest lie is linking CO2 to water in such a way that CO2 is the driver and H2O is the feedback. As Dr. Ball said …but now a flea on a hair on the tail was wagging the dog.
“If you still don’t believe climate models cannot be trusted to predict the future, then watch the following video of a presentation made with humor added by leading expert modeler Prof. Christopher Essex earlier this year. Absolutely worth viewing!”
titled
Believing Six Impossible Things before Breakfast, and Climate Models.
Flydlbee says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 12:46 pm
…2. The vast majority if clouds and rain are frontal, not thermal, in origin
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Anthony or another weatherman, correct me here if I am wrong.
What is happening is the water vapor is evaporated and you get warm moist air but no clouds (think hot muggy summer days) This, combined with the rising of the hot air, results in a low-pressure area. That warm moist air then hits cold dry air (high pressure) and condenses. That forms your front.
More of an explanation HERE @ur momisugly Weather Wiz for Kids.
“When updraughts rise only a few kilometres they reduce total cloud cover because they pull more vapour away from the higher cloud forming regions.”
I don’t where the authors of this paper live, but here in the UK clouds tend to start about 1km up and rain mostly comes from the lowest few km. Are they assuming the only kind of cloud is a thunderstorm?
they said it,
“in climate research and modeling we should recognise that we are dealing with a complex non linear chaotic signature and therefore that long-term prediction of future climatic states is not possible”
Ipcc 2001 section 4.2.2.2 page 774
peter says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Huffington has posted this story, over 1300 comments….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And how many of those commenting are PAID?
That’s classic cointelpro.
It’s pure, perfectly timed counter-propaganda, to soften the media-impact of the russian ship of fools which is actually trapped in “unprecedented, caused by CAGW” antarctic sea ice.
You can expect to see the media-blitz over the climate models being too optimistic to be withdrawn the very day when the Akademik Shokalskiy disappears from the headlines.
Mark my words.
M. Nichopolis says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 1:33 pm
… because the MSM has been looking a lot like Pravda the last 10-20 years or so…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I caught the MSM deliberately lying in 1971, a year after the Kent State shootings. The actual reason for the riots, town law meaning no vote for adult students there on the G.I. bill, was also covered-up the year before.
My boy friend, going to college on the G.I. bill at that time was 27 and NOT in anyway living with Mommy and Daddy as this law assumed. Yet no where on the internet is this referenced. I only know because of friends who lived through it.
Gunga Din,
I am having the same problem. One of my comments was there waiting for moderation, then it disappeared completely and then it was back waiting for moderation.
The waiting for moderation seems to show up with no rhyme nor reason too. Sometimes on short one liners and yet not on a longer comment with links.
In some cases I have had comments disappear entirely, booted into the ether never to be seen again.
This is a recent problem and in no way reflects on WUWT, Anthony or his really great moderators. I bring it up only because the problem lets others think WUWT is censoring comments. I saw this very accusation made just yesterday.
– Happy New Year to all of you.
Robert Bissett says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 1:34 pm
“How is the opposition to climate change alarmism doing at the end of 2013?”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I will see your one poll and raise you another. How Americans see global warming — in 8 charts (from this spring)
This one is the real killer:
Seems people are not as naive as I and the MSM believe if these polling numbers are close to reality. As I have said before once your eyes are opened you do not go back to sleep. “one-third of the public believed climate scientists who say global warming is real make their conclusions based on money and politics.” means those people got off the couch and did some research and had their eyes opened.
So a great big thanks to Anthony for helping open those eyes.
…..
An added note:
If you divide people by political belief (a really bad move) “The Left”, or so the elite hope are believers in CAGW. However these are the same people who hate GMOs and figured out Monsanto’s puppet, Michael Taylor is influencing the US government. link These are also the people who do not trust Big Pharma or vaccines. Therefore they most certainly do not trust scientists especially those attached to big corporations. Whether this distrust will spread to university scientists is where the question is. The Achilles heel of CAGW is linking these universities and scientists to money grubbing corporations in the rank and files mind.
Poll Wars? I’ll raise your poll with this:
The study, conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, found a remarkable 75% of Americans support “regulating carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas) as a pollutant.”
63 percent of Americans support “signing an international treaty that requires the United States to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by the year 2050“! From April, 2012
WUWT is appreciated; I read almost every post. I’m not questioning the anti-CAGW position. My problem is I almost never encounter, in person, another who shares my skepticism about CAGW. I wonder where that 35% who question climate science is? It seems most trust the MSM and they do not trust the internet. Maybe sometime during 2014 we will see a poll where 35% becomes 65%. Does that solve the problem? Does not trusting climate scientists’ motivation equate to throwing our rascal representatives out of office? And does it make any difference since climate change is not the real issue? We could win the battle, but loose the war. UN Agenda 21 is moving forward. Most of the state I live in, Idaho, will be preserved as a wild life corridor. The rest will be highly regulated. Check the map before assuming your state is exempt; it isn’t. The NWO is progressing just fine. Middle Eastern countries are toppling like dominoes. CAFTA-DR is well on the way to connecting Canada to Mexico with a transportation corridor (CANAMEX), a four lane freeway, one of several in the nation. Two branches of which go through Idaho; one an eighth of mile from where I sit. Then on to the tip of Mexico and into Central America. Apparently a de facto Western Hemisphere Union is the goal. The laws are on the books; all settled. EPA declares CO2 a pollutant and the court sez it’s legal. With a stroke of the pen they have seized regulatory control of transportation, industry and a lot more. They don’t give a fig what happens with the climate change debate or polls. This is sounding like a rant. Sorry, I’ll stop. In twelve years I’ll be eighty and won’t remember all this anyway!
jakee308 says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 4:02 pm
Is there a climate model that can predict from past data the weather and trends that occurred immediately…
All the arguments about the validity of data from the past and how to interpolate it is unimportant until a model can be developed that is proven to accurately model the climate from known data. Until that happens all the rest can’t be proven. That’s where the money should be spent.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There is no possibility of a model ever predicting anything useful beyond a short time period. As Doctor R.G. Brown has been at pains to point out we are looking at a chaotic system with ‘Strange Attractors’
More on Strange Attractors: http://www.stsci.edu/~lbradley/seminar/attractors.html
More information on the climate models from Dr. Brown. link
eyesonu says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 6:31 pm
….Is it incompetence or fraud?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I think Dr. Sherwood just answered the question and gave us proof.
Peter Miller says: @ur momisugly January 1, 2014 at 4:41 am
…Far too many sceptics confuse AGW with CAGW…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not here. AGW has been throughly looked at and dissected. Here are the 77 posts just on the Urban Heat Island effect: link from Ric Werme’s guide.
So what he’s saying is their assumptions are worse than we thought.
“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.
It is safe to make climate predictions 100 and 200 years ahead . The good Professor will not be around to be held accountable for his theories .My advise for the Professor is to make predictions for 3,5, 10, 20 years ahead based on his theories and then issue a paper on how well he did before anyone will take his theories to be credible. It is foolish to issue dire warnings to the public to solve a problem that has not existed for 17 years now and may not exist at all based on a unproven and unvalidated theory of his .
Gail Combs says:
January 1, 2014 at 5:12 am
Michael Moon says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 11:51 am
….When updraughts rise only a few kilometres they reduce total cloud cover because they pull more vapour away from the higher cloud forming regions.” I hate it when my vapor pulls away from the higher regions.
Does this make any sense whatsoever? How could it even be measured with any accuracy?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Gail,
Yes it does.
What I think is meant is that convection, if only making it up to the mid-troposphere, will there, because of entrainment of the surrounding air at that level into the cloud, cause the WV available, to condense onto the cloud droplets. It is a sort of natural cloud seeding.
And:
“Gail Combs says:
January 1, 2014 at 5:29 am
Flydlbee says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 12:46 pm
…2. The vast majority if clouds and rain are frontal, not thermal, in origin
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Anthony or another weatherman, correct me here if I am wrong.
What is happening is the water vapor is evaporated and you get warm moist air but no clouds (think hot muggy summer days) This, combined with the rising of the hot air, results in a low-pressure area. That warm moist air then hits cold dry air (high pressure) and condenses. That forms your front.”
It is true as far mid-latitudes are concerned, as rain bearing (thick) cloud goes but doubtful world-wide – however, convective cloud (cumulus and Cb) do leave a lot of debris. That is Stratocumulus, this often sitting just below an inversion layer and can be very persistent. Often in with high pressure areas of the UK can be under it for days on end. This type of cloud probably causes most radiative cooling.
Frontal cloud formation is a complex process and can result from one process or several. In essence air needs to rise. It’s not convection so heating at the bottom doesn’t do it. The key is the jet-stream which is basically the thermal contrast between cold air to the N (usually in NH) and warm to the S, that is at it’s greatest at jet level (~30000ft). Now the jet can act as a “sucker” or a “blower”, depending on curvature and relative strength or orientation of the surface feature that will be formed into the “Low”. Yes, the surface feature is a juxtaposition of warm/moist against cold/dry. When this “weakness” is positioned in the right place relative to the jet “suck” action the central pressure will drop and the low “picked up” by the jet and carried along, deepening all the time. Now if other processes come into play there will be further deepening, even explosive development. One is warm air advection. The warm air mass will be forced to glide over the colder (less dense) this releases the LH of condensation and more energy goes into rising/deepening. Another process is PVA (+ve vorticity advection). Imagine air as flowing through this jet as like water in a fast flowing stream. Towards the banks, it will slow (frictional contact). So you have a velocity gradient there. Imagine putting a straight stick across this velocity gradient – what happens to it? It spins. That is vorticity – the want to spin. There is another way to do it as well by putting a bend in the stream. Cyclonic vorticity enduces air to rise. There is though a flip-side –ve vorticity and this induces anticyclonic spin, making the air want to sink. Where the weakness at the surface is in relation to these zones is crucial in how much they deepen to Lows and how much uplift/thick cloud/rain comes from them. Also though, there can be areas of instability in the Fronts induced by this rapid uplift and, in effect, cause showers/thunderstorms to become embedded in them.. The greatest PV is available in the Stratosphere, and when this is “pulled down” into the Low (by a very strong Jet ~200kt) – the Low goes bang.
The Low will fill in turn when it spins to the left out of the “development” area and then we have a “cold” Low where cold air is at the core and aloft wind flow from warm to cold and turn right by Coriolis. This will end when the core is warmed out.
In contrast Hurricane/typhoons are heated from the bottom and have a warm core.
Sorry for making your eyes glaze over – but you did ask Gail!
This is great.
They have ‘proven’ that the models great fit to the 20th century temperature data (something that is impossible for a truly accurate model by the way) is in fact incorrect. .
They should insist that the models should be rerun over the 20th century using their new ‘proven’ parameters. We will find then that the models will be miles off at the start of this century, running far to hot and with the divergence from reality since then, should be easily enough to put them out of their error bars and they will have falsified themselves.
Great result! Go to it Doc you complete nitwit. Have these people got even half a brain?
Alan
TB says:
“Sorry for making your eyes glaze over…”
That’s the problem with some folks. They nit-pick endlessly over minutia, while avoiding facing the central question: is catastrophic AGW a valid hypothesis?
The answer, of course, is that CAGW is not even a hypothesis; it is merely a weak conjecture.
A hypothesis must be testable. CAGW is not. And CAGW is certainly not a theory, since a theory is capable of making repeated, accurate predictions. CAGW has never made accurate predictions.
I would be able to tolerate TB’s excruciatingly tedious lectures if he would only acknowledge that there is NO scientific evidence supporting the CAGW conjecture; no testable, measurable evidence exists.
But TB is a True Believer, therefore he does not need any scientific evidence. A witch doctor’s acolyte never does. Belief is sufficient.
But it would be refreshing if TB would either admit that there is no evidence for CAGW — or even admit that he takes CAGW entirely on religious faith. Because based on his comments, that is TB’s position.
It is sad for the lonely TB, because it appears that he has never converted a single reader to his anti-science belief. My own effort is due to having to constantly point out that CAGW is not science, it is merely a religious belief, instigated and led by a relatively small clique of self-serving scientist-witch doctors, who financially benefit from promoting the CAGW scare.
WUWT is a real science site. People do not like chameleons here: fakirs who pontificate on science, but who never man up and discuss the central issue in the entire debate: is there any empirical scientific evidence supporting the CAGW conjecture? Avoiding that discussion is simple cowardice.
Like Kevin Darlington, above, I want to know the source of the powerful graph at the beginning of this post. The persuasiveness of the chart depends on there being some connection between the models shown and the main body of alarmist thought. If I show this chart to a warmist friend and he says, “Those aren’t official model computations, they were cooked up by skeptics to make the models look bad,” what can I say? Please, when showing such charts in the future, include references, or — better — a pointer to a web page detailing the provenance of the model predictions.
The paper claims that lower atmospheric levels are drying out (or something like that anyway) and higher levels are hydrating.
Here is the NCEP reanalysis data for various atmospheric levels which shows the complete opposite. (Some people don’t like NCEP reanalysis but if you compare it to the other datasets, it is virtually identical. Its just that NCEP covers a longer time-frame and the long time-frames don’t allow cherry-picking start dates etc which Trenberth, Dessler, Willet and the IPCC are famous for. This is important because the ENSO has a huge cyclical impact on these values which allows the cherries to show up in climate science papers).
http://s24.postimg.org/p7hlt2i79/Water_Vapor_by_Atmos_Lev_1948_to_Nov_2013.png