COLUMBIA, Mo. – The world’s oceans cover more than 72 percent of the earth’s surface, impact a major part of the carbon cycle, and contribute to variability in global climate and weather patterns. However, accurately predicting the condition of the ocean is limited by current methods. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have applied complex statistical models to increase the accuracy of ocean forecasting that can influence the ways in which forecasters predict long-range events such as El Nińo and the lower levels of the ocean food chain—one of the world’s largest ecosystems.
“The ocean really is the most important part of the world’s environmental system because of its potential to store carbon and heat, but also because of its ability to influence major atmospheric weather events such as droughts, hurricanes and tornados,” said Chris Wikle, professor of statistics in the MU College of Arts and Science. “At the same time, it is essential in producing a food chain that is a critical part of the world’s fisheries.”
The vastness of the world’s oceans makes predicting its changes a daunting task for oceanographers and climate scientists. Scientists must use direct observations from a limited network of ocean buoys and ships combined with satellite images of various qualities to create physical and biological models of the ocean. Wikle and Ralph Milliff, a senior research associate at the University of Colorado, adopted a statistical “Bayesian hierarchical model” that allows them to combine various sources of information as well as previous scientific knowledge. Their method helped improve the prediction of sea surface temperature extremes and wind fields over the ocean, which impact important features such as the frequency of tornadoes in tornado alley and the distribution of plankton in coastal regions—a critical first stage of the ocean food chain.
“Nate Silver of The New York Times combined various sources of information to understand and better predict the uncertainty associated with elections,” Wikle said. “So much like that, we developed more sophisticated statistical methods to combine various sources of data—satellite images, data from ocean buoys and ships, and scientific experience—to better understand the atmosphere over the ocean and the ocean itself. This led to models that help to better predict the state of the Mediterranean Sea, and the long-lead time prediction of El Nińo and La Nińa. Missouri, like most of the world, is affected by El Nińo and La Nińa (through droughts, floods and tornadoes) and the lowest levels of the food chain affect us all through its effect on Marine fisheries.”
El Nińo is a band of warm ocean water temperatures that periodically develops off the western coast of South America and can cause climatic changes across the Pacific Ocean and the U.S. La Nińa is the counterpart that also affects atmospheric changes throughout the country. Wikle and his fellow researchers feel that, through better statistical methods and models currently in development, a greater understanding of these phenomena and their associated impacts will help forecasters better predict potentially catastrophic events, which will likely be increasingly important as our climate changes.
Wikle’s study, “Uncertainty management in coupled physical-biological lower trophic level ocean ecosystem models,” was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and was published in Oceanography and Statistical Science.
“Wikle and Ralph Milliff, a senior research associate at the University of Colorado, adopted a statistical “Bayesian hierarchical model” that allows them to combine various sources of information as well as previous scientific knowledge.”
Use of Bayesian reasoning makes sense only in a highly ramified context. For example, you can use it at Vegas to improve your betting. At Vegas, all the unknowns are totally known, unless the game is “crooked.” As regards the oceans, the number of reasonably well-confirmed physical hypotheses which describe phenomena such as ENSO is pretty much zero. Our knowledge of the oceans is a context whose place on the scale of relative ramification is close to zero. Even the known unknowns are mostly unknown.
“…will help forecasters better predict potentially catastrophic events, which will likely be increasingly important as our climate changes.”
Ah, there it is! I knew there had to be a “climate change” connection in there somewhere. All is right with the world. Government-funded “science” at its finest.
Steven Mosher says:
March 22, 2014 at 1:31 pm
“NO THEY CANNOT !!!!!!!!!!!
############## ”
Mosher is shouting again. The strain of watching Mother Nature in action again controlling the climate is getting to him.
More settled science from Warmistas.
Scientists from Boulder also report the “warning” that CO2 passes 400 ppm again. http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_25397460/boulder-scientists-report-record-early-high-co2-readings
When models can forecast with any accuracy whether it will rain in two days time, I may start to have some faith in them.
“The world’s oceans …………………………contribute to the variability in global climate and weather patterns.” Well, yes they do, but more importantly they contribute to the stability of the global climate. El Nino is nothing more nor less that the releasing of stored energy into the atmosphere thus giving that energy access to the upper atmosphere and beyond. It’s an amazingly stable system especially considering the fact that 97 % of scientists think that it isn’t.
Mac the Knife says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:11 pm
As the climate models from 30 years ago to the present generation have failed to predict the ensuing decades of natural climate variability, it is axiomatic that ‘new’ models may be able to do better. When your batting average is ZERO, improvement should be achievable.
Divination by examining steaming chicken guts may do ‘better’.
Voodoo ‘casting dem bones’ may do ‘better’.
Noting increases in wooly worms and acorn nut yields may do better.
A tarot card reading may do better.
The Farmers Almanac has done better.
Jennifer Maharosy recently requested of our Minister for the Environment to have the Bureau of Meteorology explain why they have such a poor record of predictions. They use models whereas our more accurate long range forecasters use historical data and observation. The Farmers Almanac is a similar beast and proves that history is a better predictor than computers.
As Dr Phil says ” The best predictor of future actions is past performance”.
off to Yokohama!
23 March: Guardian: Robin McKie: Global warming to hit Asia hardest, warns new report on climate change
Flooding, famine and rising sea levels will put hundreds of millions at risk in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions
The report – Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability – makes it clear that for the first half of this century countries such as the UK will avoid the worst impacts of climate change, triggered by rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. By contrast, people living in developing countries in low latitudes, particularly those along the coast of Asia, will suffer the most, especially those living in crowded cities.
A final draft of the report, seen by the Observer, will be debated by a panel of scientists set up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this week at a meeting in Yokohama, Japan, and will form a key part of the IPCC’s fifth assessment report on global warming, whose other sections will be published later this year…
The report makes grim reading…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/22/global-warming-hit-asia-hardest
23 March: Guardian: Nick Cohen: The climate change deniers have won
All of which is a long way of saying that the global warming deniers have won. And please, can I have no emails from bed-wetting kidults blubbing that you can’t call us “global warming deniers ” because “denier” makes us sound like “Holocaust deniers”, and that means you are comparing us to Nazis? The evidence for man-made global warming is as final as the evidence of Auschwitz. No other word will do…
… The movement was in the grip of “cognitive dissonance”, a condition first defined by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in the 1950s . They examined a cult that had attached itself to a Chicago housewife called Dorothy Martin. She convinced her followers to resign from their jobs and sell their possessions because a great flood was to engulf the earth on 21 December 1954. They would be the only survivors. Aliens in a flying saucer would swoop down and save the chosen few.
When 21 December came and went, and the Earth carried on as before, the group did not despair. Martin announced that the aliens had sent her a message saying that they had decided at the last minute not to flood the planet after all. Her followers believed her. They had given up so much for their faith that they would believe anything rather than admit their sacrifices had been pointless.
Climate change deniers are as committed….
I could write about the environment every week. No editor would stop me. But the task feels as hopeless as arguing against growing old. Whatever you do or say, it is going to happen. How can you persuade countries to accept huge reductions in their living standards to limit (not stop) the rise in temperatures? How can you persuade the human race to put the future ahead of the present?
The American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Eril M Conway BLAH BLAH BLAH…
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/22/climate-change-deniers-have-won-global-warming
Dr Burns says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:28 pm
“When models can forecast with any accuracy whether it will rain in two days time, I may start to have some faith in them.”
Funny you mention that. On those rare occasions when they forecast rain for where I live, (Phoenix) the actual rain arrives from 12-24 hours later than they forecast. Apparently the NWS models weight the winds to the high end, and they so far, haven’t adjusted for it.
Dave says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:31 pm
“The world’s oceans …………………………contribute to the variability in global climate and weather patterns.” Well, yes they do, but more importantly they contribute to the stability of the global climate
=======
Of course, the land areas change faster
Statistics are the wrong tool for time-series data or spatial data, because statisticians inevitably rely on “averages”, which introduces errors into the analysis due to aliasing. So I don’t trust any statistician in this field at all, since it is all time-series or spatial data to start with…
Reblogged this on sainsfilteknologi and commented:
New Statistical Model
Steve Chaos theory dictates that models are and will always be incapable of telling us what the weather or climate will be in the future. Do you disagree with that theory and why. The financial firms gave up on models to predict the stock market twenty years ago just for that reason. presently you cannot model the the thermal dynamics in a pot of boiling water how on earth do you think you can model climate? I am personally tired of spending billion of tax dollars on the fools errand call climate modeling, if you climate people can find private funding for your fools errand fine just quit bilking the taxpayer.
Also do not think that I against weather models I am not, but at least I understand their usefulness is only about a week out and accuracy is only within hours, and they still cannot tell me what amount of rain I may or may not receive with any degree of accuracy, yet they are the best thing going. I also understand the Chaos theory will limted those models to never being accurate further out than few days or hours, even if the computer speed and ability to calculate was infinite. So as far as long range forecast forget it, we can look at trends and make some predictions but dice might do just as well. As to climate about all we can say it will not be what it is today. Will a model help in that, I am certain it won’t
Steve your belief in climate models is like my wish that human may sometime be able to faster than the speed of light but I fear your wish and mine will come up against the hard reality of physics, and neither are achievable.
Yet Steve what the hell do I know about it I only been repair, hooking up and operating computer and network for the last thirty five years and have seen a lot for promos but most of it has been bust. After when I first started AI was going to rule. Funny we still have people writing all the code yet still pretty much line by line.
22 March: CNBC: Javier E. David: Smart homes aim for consumers’ wallets as energy costs soar
A brutal winter has left many feeling the pain of soaring utility bills. Yet a new University of Michigan study suggests households have been slow to adopt cost-saving measures, even as most fret about paying more for home energy than gasoline…
The survey, from the university’s Energy Institute, showed that respondents expected their utility bills would rise by 30 percent in the next five years, a far steeper rate than the 15 percent jump they expect to see for gas. But the increase would have to hit about 50 percent for them to make major changes, the survey found…
***People with lower incomes were the most likely to adjust their habits, he added.
The findings underscore why there’s growing buzz surrounding smart homes, the space where top shelf technology converges with energy efficiency. The industry is considered a major growth area in the wake of Google’s $3.2 billion deal for Nest Labs…
“It’s part of a greater awareness of climate change and using less energy for that reason,” said Roy Johnson, CEO of EcoFactor, a smart technology company that provides software to utilities and companies such as Comcast – the parent company of CNBC…
Honeywell, which manufactures thermostats that automatically adjust temperatures, and Siemens, which manufactures a “smart grid” that utilizes solar panels to generate electricity, and feeding unused energy back into the utility grid, are just two of the names at the forefront of the smart home push…
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101514623
21 March: Opinion: Time to rein in the climate change carbon baggers
Why are World Economic Forum, IMF and World Bank being so obstinate in maintaining an increasingly discredited position?
By Michelle Stirling-Anosh, special to the Vancouver Sun
(Michelle Stirling-Anosh is the communications manager of Friends of Science.)
Even NASA and the IPCC have acknowledged there has been a 16-plus year natural pause in global warming. Climate expert Roger Pielke presented evidence of no trend in extreme weather events to the U.S. senate committee on environment and public works in July…
But that hasn’t stopped organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund from continuing to raise fears of catastrophic global warming.
According to its website, the World Bank is heavily invested in low-carbon projects for the Third World, while the IMF is touting the benefits of carbon taxes even as the carbon markets in Europe have collapsed completely, to the point that Germany has gone back to building over 20 coal plants because the carbon risk of increased taxes to investors is now considered negligible…
All this makes one wonder why the World Economic Forum, IMF and World Bank are being so obstinate in maintaining an increasingly discredited position.
So many roads lead to Chicago, climate change, carbon and Lagarde’s tenure at Baker and McKenzie, a Chicago law firm recognized “as one of the first global law firms to establish a climate-change practice.” U.S. President Barack Obama spent over six years as a board member of the Joyce Foundation that financed the founding of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which eventually collapsed. The Joyce Foundation also funds TIDES and other ENGOs that loudly proclaim climate terror despite no scientific evidence…
In a power-point presentation from 2007, Baker McKenzie gave us an example: a Chinese plant sells its emissions credits; a private fund and the World Bank buy them, then resell them through “the IM process” and the World Bank, raising “$1.2 billion in 23 minutes.”
By contrast, the Financial Conduct Authority of the U.K. reported in September that not a single ordinary investor has made any money in carbon credits. Ordinary investors are not able to sell or trade carbon credits once acquired…
It’s time we all stopped being suckers for climate scare.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Opinion+Time+rein+climate+change+carbon+baggers/9646666/story.html
I hope for the best with this. Having lived in ‘Tornado Alley’ my whole life, we still have the occasional tornado watch issued 1/2 an hour before the tornadoes start forming.
Most the time we get a few hours but, sometimes, they couldn’t predict darkness when the sun goes down.
El Niño and la Niña, please, instead of the El Nińo and La Nińa in the blogpost. The Spanish language deserves some respect, surely?
It sounds as though they used Bayesian parameter estimation. It suffers from the availability of uninformative prior probability density functions (PDFs) that are of infinite number. Each of these functions generates a different posterior PDF.. A consequence is for the non-contradiction to be violated. Non-contradiction is one of the three classical laws of thought.
Coulda woulda shoulda…..
My apologies to Willie for this!
Mama,
Don’t let your babies grow up to be climate schemers,
They’ll drive you poor, going to school,
Learning BS(MS &PHDs) and playing with their tools.
They’ll cover you in Sh!t, and not worry one bit.
After they’re exposed, they’ll show up at home,
Hiding in the basement, hoping to be left all alone….
Sorry, was in a hurry…:)~ (I am not a poet but I know it)
LOL:
22 March:The Ecologist: Sam Fankhauser: Financial markets should get serious on climate policy
The number of climate change laws on the statue books of the world’s leading economies grew from less than 40 in 1997 to almost 500 at the end of 2013.
Most leading countries now have legal provisions on renewable energy, energy efficiency, carbon pricing, land use change, transport emissions, adaptation to climate risks and low-carbon research and development.
These efforts do not yet add up to a credible global response that will limit the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius – the objective of international climate negotiations…
In other words, unless we find a cheap way to capture and store carbon, two-thirds of the fossil fuel reserves of coal, oil and gas majors will have to remain under ground…
Climate laws are driven by … other climate laws
A tentative finding from the analysis of the 500 climate laws so far is that one of the most powerful drivers of climate legislation is the number of climate laws passed elsewhere.
There appears to be a strong element of peer pressure and intergovernmental knowledge exchange. If this is confirmed, it would point towards a self-reinforcing cycle.
The more climate change laws are passed – and the current pace is one new law per country every 18-20 months – the more ready policymakers become to take further action. The financial sector would do well to take note.
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2326237/financial_markets_should_get_serious_on_climate_policy.html
(Sam Fankhauser is Co-Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics. He is a Director at Vivid Economics and a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change. His research is funded the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and the UK Economic and Social Research Council, ESRC).
Nicholas Tesdorf
That was not Mosher shouting. It was Stephen Richards. Mosh was parodying it with his line about ‘settled science from skeptics’.
“because of its ability to influence major atmospheric weather events such as droughts, hurricanes and tornados…”
Captain Obvious says (1) “droughts” are not weather events, (2) the ocean that spawns hurricanes is not distinct from the ocean that does not spawn hurricanes, (3) most tornadoes are born, live, and die hundreds if not thousands of miles downwind of any ocean, and (4) tornadoes are decidedly LOCAL events, not even ‘regional’ and certainly not significant in the ‘global’ climate.
“Wikle and his fellow researchers feel that, through better statistical methods and models currently in development…”
Why are they wasting everyone’s time with a press release about something in development?
Wickle is heavy on statistics but apparently has done no climate research. We don’t need any statistics to analyze current climate problems, especially the origin and meaning of the current 17 year sessation of warming.
My translation is “Bob Tisdale is right. We need to do a better job of modelling oceans and other sources of natural variability if we are going to have a prayer of actually predicting something.”
tom says:
March 22, 2014 at 4:36 pm
El Niño and la Niña, please, instead of the El Nińo and La Nińa in the blogpost. The Spanish language deserves some respect, surely?
I, nor my computer speak it. If I were to relocate to a Spanish speaking locale, I would adjust accordingly. WWIII starting us in the face and you worry about an effing ~.