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.
Lord Monckton, thank you for your clear updates — and thank you for being a gentleman, which cannot be said about every contributor to this distinguished site.
Konrad says:
April 10, 2014 at 8:33 pm
.
“Global warming was a global IQ test with results permanently recorded on the Internet.”
I like it!
Hi John
If I’ve understood the graphs correctly the wti trends (from the links you kindly provided) if taken from 2005 show cooling and if taken from 1996 show warming?
Have I interpreted that correctly?
Not a trick question, honest. I’m just not too sure of myself (a good trait I’ve found!).
Jones.
Since the land based datasets are more subject to corruption than the Sat based datasets, what would the WTI bring to the table in terms of a better perspective? UHI, bad station location, lack of coverage all make the Sat record the more dependable. I suppose there is a bit of projection here in the request that the WTI be used. Monckton of Brenchley is accused of using the SAT datasets as being more favorable to the presented opinion just as the troll prefers the WTI be used as one must assume is more favorable to the troll’s position.
Myself, I like the ice core graphs best. Always appropriate in any of these discussions regarding such short term snippets of Climate History to put them in the context of our little break from the geologic ice age we are still in:
http://i.snag.gy/BztF1.jpg
Here we can see this modest warming including it’s recent pause or even slight decline depending on the time period used are just bumps in the road along our inexorable descent back into the return of the full on ice age. Note how our current warming is not as strong as the peaks of the prior warmings and if you line the peaks up they all point to the overall downward trend?
Ah, but believers in the climate religion can see that AGW signal and we should all keep the downtrodden downtrodden or even worse to support this religion which includes burning food for fuel. This is a sad, sad, sad period of science.
But not surprising at all. As most agenda based science isn’t really science anyway whether it comes from religion stating the earth is 6000 years old, or these climate activists staring at graphs and seeing the doom of man caused global warming reminds me of rites divining the future from the spilled entrails of a freshly killed animal. Do these alarmist trolls realize that in the full context of facts there is not a bit of logic to support their positions? The ‘signal’ of AGW is just like seeing a future in spilled animal entrails!
The fallacy being exposed here is correlation is not causation. The ice core graph linked above shows the minor current uptick since the end of the little ice age is part of natural variation, and pales in size, rate, and duration from past natural changes before man could have had any influence whatsoever. As this correlation vs causation continues to disprove the hypothesis I’m not surprised that the ‘facts’ required for the scaremongering come more and more from the “models show” type statements or that ridicules ‘the greater the scientific uncertainty, the more we need to react’ type papers and press releases coming out.
As for people in this thread talking about the El Nino we might get, that might lift their cause for a short time since that will allow the correlation vs causation fallacy to continue to blind their minds. But El Nino’s is one of the most efficient mechanisms the earth has to lose heat to space. Not sure they’ll like the cooling trend that will happen after the El Nino or the resultant flat or decreasing temp graph as we continue with the quiet sun and physical orbital changes that will overwhelm whatever supposed eco-engineering of our climate some of us arrogant humans think we are doing.
Anthony, thanks for letting the trolls linger – it’s very illuminating and entertaining
jones says:
April 10, 2014 at 9:18 pm
Hi John
If I’ve understood the graphs correctly the wti trends (from the links you kindly provided) if taken from 2005 show cooling and if taken from 1996 show warming?
Have I interpreted that correctly?
Not a trick question, honest. I’m just not too sure of myself (a good trait I’ve found!).
Jones.
******************
Yes, over a 9 year period. As is true of any short term trend in a noisy time-series, tho’, trends are volatile and provide marginal value. For example, if you start one year later the trend turns positive.
Hi John,
Thank you kindly.
Jones
Hi John
Did any of the models predict a nine-year cooling trend?
Just one please.
Jones
Jimmy Haigh. says:
April 10, 2014 at 9:18 pm
——————————–
You may like it but a lot of folks don’t 😉
For the climastrologists, activists, journalists and politicians of the Left it is an ugly problem. They cannot erase their record of AGW advocacy, propaganda and vilification of sceptics. And they are all going to be remembered as idiots as the global warming IQ test questions were so very simple –
Q. How much of our planet is covered by ocean?
A. 71%
Q. What is the primary heating mechanism for our oceans?
A. The sun.
Q. What is the primary cooling mechanism for our oceans?
A. Evaporation to the atmosphere.
Q. What is the primary cooling mechanism for the atmosphere?
A. IR radiation to space from radiative gases.
Q. Will adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduce the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability?
A. No.
Q. What is the net effect of radiative gases in our atmosphere?
A. Cooling.
But the AGW fellow travellers feeling like fools is one thing. The elephant in the room is the general public. When they find out how simple the answers were there is going to be trouble. I fear “Mr. Stampy” is going to have a full on trumpeting and stomping frenzy…
Decades of lies, fear, propaganda and vilification of any who dared ask questions. There is a price to be paid.
Konrad;
Q. What is the net effect of radiative gases in our atmosphere?
A. Cooling.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If that were the case, Venus would be cooler than Mercury. But it isn’t. The earth would be cooler than the moon. But it isn’t. Tropical jungles would be cooler on average than deserts, but they aren’t.
What we need is more trolls trying to argue their case, for the debate exposes the weakness of their arguments. What we need less of is abjectly bad and demonstrably unsound science.
davidmhoffer says:
April 10, 2014 at 11:23 pm
————————————
Do Mercury and Venus have oceans? No. The problem at hand is our ocean planet and useless instantaneous radiative flux equations that treat the oceans as a “blackbody” when they are in effect a “selective surface” 5 km deep over 71% of the lithosphere are no good.
David those useless equations show our oceans at -18C in the absence of atmospheric cooling and DWLWIR. Empirical experiment indicates the correct figure would be around 80C.
Are you denying that our radiative atmosphere acts to cool our oceans?
Konrad;
Do Mercury and Venus have oceans?
>>>>>>>>>>>
Your claim is that radiative gasses have a cooling effect. I gave you three examples which falsify this claim, one of which is indeed on a planet with oceans.
Empirical experiment indicates the correct figure would be around 80C.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now you’ve gone completely off the deep end.
To be frank Christopher, I don’t think the “Great Credibility Gap” yawns where you claim it does. If you are skeptical about that, here’s some recent evidence for my assertion:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/09/study-wuwt-near-the-center-of-the-climate-blogosphere/#comment-1609328
davidmhoffer says:
April 11, 2014 at 12:06 am April 11, 2014 at 12:08 am
———————————————————————–
“Your claim is that radiative gasses have a cooling effect. I gave you three examples which falsify this claim, one of which is indeed on a planet with oceans.”
Your examples were off planet or over the 29% land surface of earth and not relevant to my ocean cooling claim.
My claims laid out twice on this thread are very simple –
The sun heats the oceans.
The atmosphere cools the oceans.
Radiative gases cool our atmosphere.
“Now you’ve gone completely off the deep end.”
Excuse me? If our atmosphere can’t radiatively cool itself then how could it cool the oceans? They would become the equivalent of evaporation constrained solar ponds. Temperatures in these can top 90C. Anyone can check for themselves –
http://i40.tinypic.com/27xhuzr.jpg
You have called me a “troll” and claimed debate will expose the weakness of my argument. I am claiming our radiative atmosphere acts to cool our oceans. So please expose the “weakness” of my argument by answering the simple question –
Given 1 bar pressure, does our radiative atmosphere acts to cool our oceans or warm them?
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.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Well that is not exactly true. If one believes the Snowball Earth theory (and I do) 400 million years ago the Earth was a giant snowball and the only thing that saved the planet from remaining a giant ice ball was green house gases emitted by volcanoes, mostly CO2. Since there was no/very little open water CO2 built up in the atmosphere. While the exact concentration of CO2 is not known I’ve read estimates as high a 12-14%. So at vastly higher levels then we see today CO2 can cause warming in our atmosphere. Also, was not run away warming, volcanoes again, a component of the Permian extinction event?
If I am correct in the above, then it is illogical to think CO2 does not cause warming. The question becomes, how much warming does 400-500pm cause as appose to 280pm? Right now I am thinking not much.
On another topic that warmests or going “all in” on a super El Nino. I fear if we do get a super El Nino we will hear lots of “I told you sos” for quite a while.
The first rule of climate science is when the models and reality differ in value it is reality which is in error. So this divergence is not a problem.
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.
So, I took a look at your work. Hell’s teeth, but you’re out of date. What have you been doing for the last 4 years? Don’t answer; my question is rhetorical.
Citing this work
Title: Offerings of KnowledgeToTheMax, Third Edition
Author: Terry Oldberg
Publisher: KnowledgeToTheMax, Los Altos Hills, CA
Publication date: November 14, 2009
Copyright
COPYRIGHT © 2008, 2009 by Terry Oldberg
“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.”
Smoke, mirrors and cherries. One might just as legitimately look at the projections stated by the IPCC in AR3, recorded here …
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/552.htm
Here, the IPCC projected a surface temp change of between 0.27 and 0.4C for the interval 1990-2010, with the scenario that best matched actual forcings, A1F1 predicting a rise of 0.32C. Indistinguishable from observations. The IPCC got it spot on. Gosh.
Secondly I’m sceptical about averaging RSS and UAH. These use the same input data from satellite measurements of the tropospheric temperature but apply different algorithms, and come up with different trends, with UAH markedly higher. Not many people live in the troposphere, and surface measurements for the same period agree far more closely with UAH than RSS.
Also, in the real world, the IPCC AR5 actually defined ‘near-term’ thus
‘Unless otherwise stated, ‘near-term’ change and the projected changes below are for the
period 2016–2035 relative to the reference period 1986–2005.’
So starting any ‘test’ in the single year 2005 has zero validity.
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter11_FINAL.pdf
My drawing attention to http://labs.enigma.io/climate-change-map/ was a bit of a
devil’s advocate move.
If you’re interested in seeing what others from a general population of people
who mostly make well-argued comments (on IT subjects at least & very often general subjects as well) try this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566553
Awww come on moderators! Two hours?!
Are we descending to the level of John Cook’s Sceptical Science here?
What’s the point in defending the lukewarmer position? AGW is a physical impossibility. Bandaid off fast or slow. Those are the only choices. Sure it’s going to embarrass lukewarmers. But it’s going to hit the AGW propagandists harder.
Just tear the damn thing off quick and get it over with.
Buk. Buk. Bukawww!
[Two hours – Yet, are you complaining about chickens? Or eggs?? Mod]
“Jim s” raises the interesting question how much CO2 was in the air in the early climate. He says he has seen values as high as 12-14%. In fact, in the Neoproterozoic era, 750 million years ago, there was at least 30% CO2 in the air, for otherwise the dolomitic limestones could not have precipitated out of the oceans.
“Konrad” says greenhouse gases have a cooling effect. They have a warming effect. It was demonstrated by experiment in 1859. Try to catch up.
“Jones” asks whether any of the models predicted cooling since 2005. A tiny handful of model runs allowed the possibility of the current Pause, but the devastating Fig. 11.25a in IPCC (2013) shows that measured temperature change has now fallen below the 95% confidence interval of the models’ predictions.
“Jones” also asks whether the combined trends on all the major datasets show cooling since 2005 but warming since 1996. Yes: but neither was statistically significant. The warming since 1996 as the mean of all five datasets, for instance, was 0.1 Cº.
“John@EF” continues to whine about my having used the RSS satellite data in another posting, showing – inconveniently from the trolls’ viewpoint – that there has been no global warming for 17 years 8 months. Yet I had already explained a) that RSS is the first dataset to report each month, and I try to prepare the graph within hours so as to be topical, and b) that RSS is the most accurate of the datasets, in that it correctly represents the magnitude of the Great el Niño of 1998, which we know was similar to the two previous Great el Niños of the past 300 years because of the widespread coral bleaching all three events caused.
“John@EF” also says short-run trends are not valuable. Yet in the present head posting we are concerned not with trends in isolation but with comparisons between what the models predict and what has happened in reality. One of those comparisons dates back to 1990. That is plainly long enough. And it is the IPCC itself that has dated its latest predictions from 2005. If “John@EF” says it should not have done so, let him take the matter up with the IPCC secretariat, not with me.
John Mason raises the question whether doing the comparisons based on the terrestrial temperature series rather than the satellite series would have made any real difference. It would not have made much difference: for instance, the combined satellite data series show no global warming at all for 13 years 2 months, while the three combined terrestrial series show no global warming for – er – 13 years 2 months.
Bottom line: whichever dataset one uses, the growing discrepancy between the models’ exaggerated predictions and the far less exciting observed outturn can no longer be concealed, explained away or hidden among the trolls’ complaints about cherry-picking. Like it or not, ever since the inadvertent delegate from Burma first announced that there had been no global warming for 16 years, the world has come to realize that the models were wrong. Even the IPCC realizes they were wrong. That is why it has explicitly abandoned them and slashed its warming forecast for the next 30 years to a rate barely greater than we have seen in the last 30.
If even IPCC’s predicted acceleration in the near-term warming rate is as slow as it now is notwithstanding the record emissions of greenhouse gases over the period, its centennial forecasts, which it has not adjusted downwards, are obvious nonsense. We have now been running the CO2 experiment for long enough to get some idea of whether we are likely to see 3-4 Celsius degrees of warming this century. The answer is No.
Joe Born says:
April 10, 2014 at 8:24 pm: Asks about the “11,944 scientific abstracts “.
If he was to ‘drag his mouse’ over the “11,944 scientific abstracts” then ‘right click’ on the highlighted area, the option to search for that exact phrase will appear.
As it happens, the first link revelled by Google is from Joanne Novas website with full details of what you need to know and a copy of the letter from Lord Monckton.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/monckton-honey-i-shrunk-the-consensus/
Basically, the idea of confidence interval is simple. We have some population and take random samples of a certain size. Each time we compute some statistic and finally determine an interval in which the statistic is found to be in 95 (99) percent of the samples. If we finally consider one random sample, and the statistic lies outside the interval, we may decide that this sample was taken from another population, etc. What could the model be for the IPCC confidence statement? To give them all benefit of the doubt, we may consider a non-AGW world and an AGW-world. From the first we may take random samples of information and determine a sphere in which 95 percent of several statistics are found. In our real world the statistics lie outside this sphere. So we likely live in an AGW-world? As likely all information we have is a biased sample from a non-AGW world.
It would be interesting to get Lord Monckton’s view on the balance between the warming effects and cooling effects of CO2.
Lab experiments show’ the warming effect of CO2 and it fits with the science.
However, as the earth system can only dump heat energy into space via radiation, CO2 must be a major player.
Does anyone have a view or even calculations as to the cooling effect versus heating effect and could any of the possible answers inform the debate about why the earth system regulates its climate so well?
I was pleasantly surprised to hear an Abbott govt. Spokesman arguing with the greens about eliminating the Carbon tax. He said that it is clear the latest IPCC statement exaggerates the scientific data.