By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Now that the UAH satellite data are available, we can update the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index, a devastatingly simple measure of how well (or badly) the IPCC’s official predictions of global warming are doing.
The 2013 Fifth Assessment Report backdated the IPCC’s predictions to January 2005. The interval of predictions, equivalent to 0.5[0.3, 0.7] Cº over 30 years or 1.67 [1.0, 2.33] Cº per century, is shown in orange.
By now, as a central estimate, there should have been 0.15 Cº global warming since January 2005, a rate equivalent to 0.5 Cº in 30 years, or 1.67 Cº per century, gathering pace rapidly after 2035 to reach 3.7 Cº over the full century.
However, the trend on the mean of the monthly RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies is, if anything, falling, leading to an over-prediction by the IPCC of 0.17 Cº – a sixth of a Celsius degree – in the 111 months January 2005 to March 2014.
The models’ overshoot over 9 years 3 months is equivalent to more than 1.8 Cº per century.
Though the IPCC has finally realized that the models are unreliable as predictors of global temperature change, and has slashed its 30-year projection from 0.7 [ 0.4, 1.0] Cº in the pre-final draft of the Fifth Assessment Report to 0.5 [0.3, 0.7] Cº in the published final version, it has not cut its centennial-scale prediction, an implausibly hefty 3.7 Cº on business as usual (4.5 Cº if you are Sir David King, 11 Cº and a 10% probability of the Earth not surviving the 21st century if you are Lord Stern).
It is also interesting to compare the IPCC’s original global-warming predictions in the 1990 First Assessment Report with what has happened since. At that time, the IPCC said:
“Based on current model results, we predict [semantic bores, please note the IPCC uses the word “predict”, and, if you don’t like it, whine to ipcc.ch, not in comments here]:
Ø “under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 C° to 0.5 C° per decade). This is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 C° above the present value by 2025 and 3 Cº before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors.”
The IPCC’s best-guess near-term warming prediction in 1990 was equivalent to 2.78 Cº per century.
Real-world temperature change in the 291 months since January 1990 has been spectacularly below what was predicted. There has been just 0.34 Cº global warming, equivalent to a mere 1.39 Cº per century. The IPCC’s overshoot since 1990 amounts to another 0.34 Cº, or more than a third of a degree in 24 years 3 months, equivalent to 1.39 Cº per century. It predicted double the warming that has actually occurred.
Once again, the IPCC’s interval of predictions for global temperature change since 1990 are shown as an orange region. The lower and upper bounds for its 1990 near-term warming estimate were 30% below and 50% above its central estimate, equivalent to 1.94 and 4.17 Cº per century respectively. The real-world outturn, equivalent to just 1.39 Cº per century, is appreciably below the lower bound of the IPCC’s very wide prediction interval.
In 1990 the IPCC’s “Executive Summary” raised the question “how much confidence do we have in our predictions?” It pointed out that there were many uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:
“Nevertheless, … we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change. … There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”
One look at the graph of projection against outturn since 1990 reveals that the IPCC has proven startlingly incapable of predicting the “broad-scale feature” central to the debate about greenhouse gases – the change in global temperature itself.
Here is a question that the legacy media should be addressing to IPCC director Pachauri, if they can distract him from authoring fourteenth-rate bodice-ripping pot-boilers for long enough.
Given global temperature rising for almost 25 years at half the central rate predicted by the IPCC in 1990, given no global warming at all for half the RSS satellite record, and given only 64 (or 0.5%) of 11,944 scientific abstracts published since 1991 stating that most of the global warming since 1950 was manmade, on what legitimate scientific or other rational basis did the IPCC recently increase from 90% to 95-99% its “confidence” that recent warming was mostly manmade? Answer me that.
“There has been just 0.34 Cº global warming, equivalent to a mere 1.39 Cº per century.”
Pretty devastating, and yet not enough to kill the beast. There are only two things that might do that.
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1: Actual cooling. I’d say 5 years if trend breaking , actual cooling ought to do it.
2: Failing that, a well designed survey conducted by a neutral, well respected national firm…Gallup comes to mind…of qualified scientists to determine their true position on CAGW. Every alarmist screed I’ve ever read refers to the supposed “overwhelming consensus.” It’s the beating heart of the alarmist argument. Destroy it, and you’ve altered the debate in a fundamental way.
alleagra
“http://labs.enigma.io/climate-change-map/ (model-free data – I guess) appears to tell a different story for the US at least.”
uh…
It looks like pretty much the same story for the US. Look how flat the graph is since 1997. A slight uptick in 2012, then back down.
Skeptical Science also says “Predictions”. In fact they used it quite a number of times as I noticed too, yet Trenberth swears they have never made any predictions.
Anonymousbot says: April 10, 2014 at 2:55 pm
‘The Greenies at Grist are talking about a new type of science fiction called “climate fiction”. ‘
Heh, not all cli-fi is alarmist. Some is skeptical: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/273983
(This plus Michael Crichton are listed at the wiki cli-fi page, so it’s not a Consensus clean sweep).
Veering back towards topic, as ‘the pause’ continues deep into its second decade and observations are dropping out of the bottom end of model projections, I’m continuously surprised at how modest an impact this has had on the entire social phenomenon of CAGW.
I can’t help thinking that clean air acts might be more responsible for some of the warming since the late 70’s until 2000-ish? Once dirty emissions were as good as we could get the trend then just flat-lined…
Have China and India undergone any regional cooling consistent with their less than pristine industrialisation since the 70″s? If they really did clean up their act would they also undergo some regional warming?
Honestly not a leading question. Just thinking.
Jones
Terry Oldberg says:
April 10, 2014 at 3:21 pm
In his latest article, the author continues in his past practice of drawing logically illicit conclusions from equivocations. That the IPCC is guilty of the same practice does not excuse it. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
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Bold words, prove it.
Because they see their slipping opportunity. The window for acting now is closing so they pretend that it’s worse than we thought. They must think everyone is on psychotic drugs.
It’s a con job, don’t be fooled.
@allegra That is a wonderful graph demonstration, but if we have warmed and then plateaued and even cooled a bit that graphic is almost a mathematical necessity.
What is doesn’t say is the most interesting and what is says is misleading and rather unimportant.
Think of it this way. You’re a struggling student and you are getting some reasonable grades and a lot of bad grades and a few good grades. That is the left side of the graph.
Next you picked up your game and now you are getting average grades but the top marks vs. the bad marks have shifted so top marks are predominating. About 2/3 thru the graph. But now, you have early onset Alzheimer’s and you are beginning to fail. Bad right? But you will still have many reasonable grades, and more top grades than bad, but do you like your future?
That graphic basically says we warmed a while back and now we have plateaued.
This graph was apparently created by a group that wants to convince you of something when the math doesn’t support what they want to say but the image, like the polar bear on a small ice flow, gives implied meaning.
@Bryan
““http://labs.enigma.io/climate-change-map/ (model-free data – I guess) appears to tell a different story for the US at least.”
You get that slight trend if you start from a cooler period, such as the 1960’s. The trend would be quite different if you started from 1950.
“fourteenth-rate bodice-ripping pot-boilers”, I’m not quite sure what that is, but I like it.
It seems that climate predictions are not going too well especially, as someone said, those concerning the future. The UK Met.Office has in fact predicted an even greater temperature rise
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-met-office-global-temperature-standstill-continues/
OK, it’s not the end of 2014 yet, so the prediction of it being 0.3 degree warmer than 2004 still has a chance. But, as one of Murphy’s Laws states ‘That’s not the way to place your bets’.
As for ‘half the years after 2009 are predicted to be hotter than 1998’ I’m afraid that’s bit the dust already.
Apologies from the Met. Office are expected at the end of the year because they are very honourable people.
An interesting and well described post, with the bonus joy of some troll slaying by the Lord, this site is a like a haven from the stench of corruption and misinformation that surrounds me these days.
Thanks John@EF
Bigger thanks to Christopher Monckton
Eliza says:
April 10, 2014 at 3:40 pm
The simple fact there is no warming. Lukewarmers etc. should start reconsidering their position if the cooling trend continues. Also those who believe that CO2 does cause some warming but we don’t know how much should also start reconsidering. As i understood it, during the ice ages CO2 was 3000ppm or more. It would seem that CO2 has absolutely no effect whatever on weather, climate etc.
You may be right. I am always reconsidering my position, which has been that CO2 causes some minuscule warming at current concentrations. But any such warming is too small to measure, and it is swamped by many other effects.
I agree that CO2 has no measurable or quantifiable effect on the weather or climate. I constantly ask anyone like John@EF to post evidence if they have it, but so far, no one has ever posted any such evidence. By now, I suspect the reason is that they have nothing. Nothing but their religious belief.
The entire man-made global warming belief is a religion, because there is no evidence whatever that CO2 emissions are causing any warming. All global warming in the past has been part of a repeated step change, with no correlation to CO2. Currently, China is emitting much more “carbon” than the West, with no discernable effect. But I note that people like John@EF are always silent regarding China, India, Russia, and a hundred other heavy CO2-emitting countries.
The carbon scare is based entirely on belief, not on science. We see that people like John@EF have nothing at all to back their belief. All John@EF has is snark. That gets him nowhere here at the internet’s “Best Science & Technology” site. John@EF needs to post verifiable evidence to support his belief, or get lost. There are religion-oriented blogs for people like him. SkS is a place he should retreat to. Lots of other religious true belivers are there.
MoB ignores where the majority of warming is going – the oceans. The stored ocean heat is going to bite him in the arse during the coming El Nino!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-08/el-nino-likely/5375798
mark in toledo says:
April 10, 2014 at 3:12 pm
John@EF says: April 10, 2014 at 2:51 pm
…
You don’t keep up very well do you John? Lord Monkton’s previous post dealt with the RSS satellite data (the only other satellite based temperature set)…indeed it does show 17 years and 8 months of totally flat temperatures. This is the UAH (actually handled by two well-known skeptical scientists and it shows the least amount of pause of any of the data sets. That happens to be just over 9 years. The average of all 5 most trusted data sets is about 15 years of no warming.
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Believe me, my friends, I absolutely know what each of those timelines represents. The question is this: Why does MoB keep changing which individual temperature data set or combination of data sets to compare??? There’s no valid reason justifying a change.
“The question is this: Why does MoB keep changing which individual temperature data set or combination of data sets to compare???”
Well that is easy. It depends on the time intervals others have used.
Eliza says:
“As i understood it, during the ice ages C02 was 3000ppm or more.”
I believe the high levels of CO2 during ice ages is due to lack of vegetation. Normal vegetation like we have now, would have removed most of it.
I am always taken aback when I see Warmists here trying to defend 17 years of no global surface temperature warming. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way because the Climastrology models told us so. How much longer can you keep denying this discrepancy?
Below is the earliest recognition of the problem that I have found.
Many more temperature standstill quotes up to 2013. I have others for 2014.
M Simon says:
April 10, 2014 at 4:38 pm
“The question is this: Why does MoB keep changing which individual temperature data set or combination of data sets to compare???”
Well that is easy. It depends on the time intervals others have used.
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Well, that makes no sense. In each case we’re talking about timelines inclusive within the satellite era. Explain.
Eliza says:
April 10, 2014 at 3:40 pm
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Eliza,
your are correct, but the problem is that just like AGW believers, lukewarmers have climbed a tree and have no face saving way of getting down.
The basics of our planets climate in terms of net effects is simple –
The atmosphere allows the planet to retain its oceans.
The sun heats the oceans.
The atmosphere cools the oceans.
Radiative gases cool the atmosphere.
That’s all you need to know to understand that AGW is a physical impossibility and that there is no net radiative GHE on this planet. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability. It truly is that simple. And it truly is that embarrassing for lukewarmers who missed it. So they fight on, constantly seeking a “sciencey” sounding excuse for “warming, but far less than the IPCC said”. But at the end of the day, the error in the radiative GHE hypothesis is to far, far too big to be swept under the carpet.
The grievous error lays at the very foundation of the “basic physics” of the “settled science”. They treated our deep transparent oceans as a “blackbody” instead of a “selective coating” 5km deep over 71% of the lithosphere. Climastrologists calculated the temperature of the oceans in the absence of DWLWIR and atmospheric cooling to be -18C. But as empirical experiment shows that figure is in error by around 98C. Remove atmospheric cooling and our oceans would turn into a giant evaporation constrained solar storage pond, with temperatures around 80C. The atmosphere is clearly cooling our oceans and the atmosphere has only one effective cooling mechanism – radiative gases. Climastrologis are not right, they are not even wrong.
It is time for Lukewarmers to reconsider. CO2 doesn’t cause warming and no amount of hand-waving will cover the mistake. The only question for lukewarmers now is whether to pull the bandaid off fast or slow.
” on what legitimate scientific or other rational basis did the IPCC recently increase from 90% to 95-99% its “confidence” that recent warming was mostly manmade?”
That 95% confidence was used In a published letter by 23 professors in The National Post today where you can also find a few comments by me. :
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/04/10/donner-harrison-hoberg-lets-talk-about-climate-change/
Here is something else interesting with the UAH temperatures. The lower stratosphere does appear to warming up now.
A key feature of global warming theory is that the lower stratosphere will cool off as it warms at the surface and the lower atmosphere. But if you look at the stratosphere data, one mostly sees the imprint of volcanoes and ozone depletion from volcanoes in the signal.
Lower stratosphere temps nearly reached Zero anomaly in March after getting step-changed down by the volcanoes. I’ve been waiting for a clear recovery pattern to emerge for the last several years and it now appears to be occurring.
http://s30.postimg.org/5h9be8s7l/Daily_UAH_LT_LS_Volcs_Mar14.png
John@EF asks why I don’t cherry-pick the datasets I use in my temperature analyses. Asked and answered in my earlier comment on this thread. He should stop blubbing and do his own graphs rather than moaning about mine.
Martin says the global warming is hiding in the oceans and is going to come out and say Boo during the forthcoming El Niño. Well,it has been doing that for thousands of years, and one should not try to imply that the fact of an El Niño is somehow evidence of man made warming. In a recent posting I pointed out that an El Niño was overdue (I had expected it in January), and that it would shorten the Pause, but only temporarily.
I am grateful to MikeB for drawing my attention to the failed Wet Office prediction of ten years ago, and to many other kind commenters who have said they enjoy these regular updates on global temperature trend.
Mr Mallett asks which RSS and UAH datasets I use. In each case I use the lower-troposphere dataset. The areas of coverage and methodologies of the two records are sufficiently close that little error arises if one is taking their mean for determining a global trend. Jones at East Anglia does it, and I usually do my best to use the methods the Forces of Darkness use, because that gives them one less thing to argue about.
Mr Oldberg, who does not like what these simple but devastating graphs show, should by now understand that he knows nothing of logic. If he disagrees with the IPCC’s use of the word “prediction” when it is making a prediction, then let him whine to the IPCC about it, not to me.
Big Climate, Big Cholestorol, Big Statins and now Big Flu under the pump-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/lifestyle/health/government-spends-192-million-stockpiling-roche-drug-tamiflu/story-fni0diad-1226880199762
At the risk of catching LewLew’s conspiracy ideation do I sense a pattern emerging from the data with all these professional worryworts and their nanny state empires?
Martin says:
MoB ignores where the majority of warming is going – the oceans.
That is an evidence-free assertion. The ARGO buoy array does not show nearly the warming required to validate that belief. In fact, most areas of the ocean are cooling. It would be astonishing indeed if there was such a violation of the 2nd Law, where heated water was collecting at the bottom of the ocean and staying there, hidden from all scientific instruments.
‘Deep ocean heating’ is a last desperate attempt to salvage something from the litany of failed runaway global warming predictions. It, too, will be debunked in the near future.
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Sandi says:
I believe the high levels of CO2 during ice ages is due to lack of vegetation.
So what? The debate is over the assertion that a rise in CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. As Eliza pointed out, that didn’t happen even when CO2 was many times higher than now.
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John@EF says:
The question is this: Why does MoB keep changing which individual temperature data set or combination of data sets to compare??? There’s no valid reason justifying a change.
John@EF doesn’t pay much attention, does he? Lord Monckton explained exactly why he used that time frame.
The shrinking alarmist clique still believes that “carbon” will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. So they ignore the real world. Their swivel-eyed position gets more ridiculous every day.