Even on business as usual, there will be <1° Kelvin warming this century
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Curiouser and curiouser. As one delves into the leaden, multi-thousand-page text of the IPCC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, which reads like a conversation between modelers about the merits of their models rather than a serious climate assessment, it is evident that they have lost the thread of the calculation. There are some revealing inconsistencies. Let us expose a few of them.
The IPCC has slashed its central near-term prediction of global warming from 0.28 K/decade in 1990 via 0.23 K/decade in the first draft of IPCC (2013) to 0.17 K/decade in the published draft. Therefore, the biggest surprise to honest climate researchers reading the report is why the long-term or equilibrium climate sensitivity has not been slashed as well.
In 1990, the IPCC said equilibrium climate sensitivity would be 3 [1.5, 4.5] K. In 2007, its estimates were 3.3 [2.0, 4.5] K. In 2013 it reverted to the 1990 interval [1.5, 4.5] K per CO2 doubling. However, in a curt, one-line footnote, it abandoned any attempt to provide a central estimate of climate sensitivity – the key quantity in the entire debate about the climate. The footnote says models cannot agree.
Frankly, I was suspicious about what that footnote might be hiding. So, since my feet are not yet fit to walk on, I have spent a quiet weekend doing some research. The results were spectacular.
Climate sensitivity is the product of three quantities:
Ø The CO2 radiative forcing, generally thought to be in the region of 5.35 times the logarithm of the proportionate concentration change – thus, 3.71 Watts per square meter;
Ø The Planck or instantaneous or zero-feedback sensitivity parameter, which is usually taken as 0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter; and
Ø The system gain or overall feedback multiplier, which allows for the effect of temperature feedbacks. The system gain is 1 where there are no feedbacks or they sum to zero.
In the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, the implicit system gain was 2.81. The direct warming from a CO2 doubling is 3.71 times 0.31, or rather less than 1.2 K. Multiply this zero-feedback warming by the system gain and the harmless 1.2 K direct CO2-driven warming becomes a more thrilling (but still probably harmless) 3.3 K.
That was then. However, on rootling through chapter 9, which is yet another meaningless expatiation on how well the useless models are working, there lies buried an interesting graph that quietly revises the feedback sum sharply downward.
In 2007, the feedback sum implicit in the IPCC’s central estimate of climate sensitivity was 2.06 Watts per square meter per Kelvin, close enough to the implicit sum f = 1.91 W m–2 K–1 (water vapor +1.8, lapse rate –0.84, surface albedo +0.26, cloud +0.69) given in Soden & Held (2006), and shown as a blue dot in the “TOTAL” column in the IPCC’s 2013 feedback graph (fig. 1):
Figure 1. Estimates of the principal positive (above the line) and negative (below it) temperature feedbacks. The total feedback sum, which excludes the Planck “feedback”, has been cut from 2 to 1.5 Watts per square meter per Kelvin since 2007.
Note in passing that the IPCC wrongly characterizes the Planck or zero-feedback climate-sensitivity parameter as itself being a feedback, when it is in truth part of the reference-frame within which the climate lives and moves and has its being. It is thus better and more clearly expressed as 0.31 Kelvin of warming per Watt per square meter of direct forcing than as a negative “feedback” of –3.2 Watts per square meter per Kelvin.
At least the IPCC has had the sense not to attempt to add the Planck “feedback” to the real feedbacks in the graph, which shows the 2013 central estimate of each feedback in red flanked by multi-colored outliers and, alongside it, the 2007 central estimate shown in blue.
Look at the TOTAL column on the right. The IPCC’s old feedback sum was 1.91 Watts per square meter per Kelvin (in practice, the value used in the CMIP3 model ensemble was 2.06). In 2013, however, the value of the feedback sum fell to 1.5 Watts per square meter per Kelvin.
That fall in value has a disproportionately large effect on final climate sensitivity. For the equation by which individual feedbacks are mutually amplified to give the system gain G is as follows:
(1)
where g, the closed-loop gain, is the product of the Planck sensitivity parameter λ0 = 0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter and the feedback sum f = 1.5 Watts per square meter per Kelvin. The unitless overall system gain G was thus 2.81 in 2007 but is just 1.88 now.
And just look what effect that reduction in the temperature feedbacks has on final climate sensitivity. With f = 2.06 and consequently G = 2.81, as in 2007, equilibrium sensitivity after all feedbacks have acted was then thought to be 3.26 K. Now, however, it is just 2.2 K. As reality begins to dawn even in the halls of Marxist academe, the reduction of one-quarter in the feedback sum has dropped equilibrium climate sensitivity by fully one-third.
Now we can discern why that curious footnote dismissed the notion of determining a central estimate of climate sensitivity. For the new central estimate, if they had dared to admit it, would have been just 2.2 K per CO2 doubling. No ifs, no buts. All the other values that are used to determine climate sensitivity remain unaltered, so there is no wriggle-room for the usual suspects.
One should point out in passing that equation (1), the Bode equation, is of general application to dynamical systems in which, if there is no physical constraint on the loop gain exceeding unity, the system response will become one of attenuation or reversal rather than amplification at loop-gain values g > 1. The climate, however, is obviously not that kind of dynamical system. The loop gain can exceed unity, but there is no physical reality corresponding to the requirement in the equation that feedbacks that had been amplifying the system response would suddenly diminish it as soon as the loop gain exceeded 1. The Bode equation, then, is the wrong equation. For this and other reasons, temperature feedbacks in the climate system are very likely to sum to net-zero.
The cut the IPCC has now made in the feedback sum is attributable chiefly to Roy Spencer’s dazzling paper of 2011 showing the cloud feedback to be negative, not strongly positive as the IPCC had previously imagined.
But, as they say on the shopping channels, “There’s More!!!” The IPCC, to try to keep the funds flowing, has invented what it calls “Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5” as its business-as-usual case.
On that pathway (one is not allowed to call it a “scenario”, apparently), the prediction is that CO2 concentration will rise from 400 to 936 ppmv; that including projected increases in CH4 and N2O concentration one can make that 1313 ppmv CO2 equivalent; and that the resultant anthropogenic forcing of 7.3 Watts per square meter, combined with an implicit transient climate-sensitivity parameter of 0.5 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, will warm the world 3.7 K by 2100 (at a mean rate equivalent to 0.44 K per decade, or more than twice as fast on average as the maximum supra-decadal rate of 0.2 K/decade in the instrumental record to date) and a swingeing 8 K by 2300 (fig. 2). Can They not see the howling implausibility of these absurdly fanciful predictions?
Let us examine the IPCC’s “funding-as-usual” case in a little more detail.
Figure 2. Projected global warming to 2300 on four “pathways”. The business-as-usual “pathway” is shown in red. Source: IPCC (2013), fig. 12.5.
First, the CO2 forcing. From 400 ppmv today to 936 ppmv in 2100 is frankly implausible even if the world, as it should, abandons all CO2 targets altogether. There has been very little growth in the annual rate of CO2 increase: it is little more than 2 ppmv a year at present. Even if we supposed this would rise linearly to 4 ppmv a year by 2100, there would be only 655 ppmv CO2 in the air by then. So let us generously call it 700 ppmv. That gives us our CO2 radiative forcing by the IPCC’s own method: it is 5.35 ln(700/400) = 3 Watts per square meter.
We also need to allow for the non-CO2 greenhouse gases. For a decade, the IPCC has been trying to pretend that CO2 accounts for as small a fraction of total anthropogenic warming as 70%. However, it admits in its 2013 report that the true current fraction is 83%. One reason for this large discrepancy is that once Gazputin had repaired the methane pipeline from Siberia to Europe the rate of increase in methane concentration slowed dramatically in around the year 2000 (fig. 3). So we shall use 83%, rather than 70%, as the CO2 fraction.
Figure 3. Observed methane concentration (black) compared with projections from the first four IPCC Assessment Reports. This graph, which appeared in the pre-final draft, was removed from the final draft lest it give ammunition to skeptics (as Germany and Hungary put it). Its removal, of course, gave ammunition to skeptics.
Now we can put together a business-as-usual warming case that is a realistic reflection of the IPCC’s own methods and data but without the naughty bits. The business-as-usual warming to be expected by 2100 is as follows:
3.0 Watts per square meter CO2 forcing
x 6/5 (the reciprocal of 83%) to allow for non-CO2 anthropogenic forcings
x 0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter for the Planck parameter
x 1.88 for the system gain on the basis of the new, lower feedback sum.
The answer is not 8 K. It is just 2.1 K. That is all.
Even this is too high to be realistic. Here is my best estimate. There will be 600 ppmv CO2 in the air by 2100, giving a CO2 forcing of 2.2 Watts per square meter. CO2 will represent 90% of all anthropogenic influences. The feedback sum will be zero. So:
2.2 Watts per square meter CO2 forcing from now to 2100
x 10/9 to allow for non-CO2 anthropogenic forcings
x 0.31 for the Planck sensitivity parameter
x 1 for the system gain.
That gives my best estimate of expected anthropogenic global warming from now to 2100: three-quarters of a Celsius degree. The end of the world may be at hand, but if it is it won’t have anything much to do with our paltry influence on the climate.
Your mission, gentle reader, should you choose to accept it, is to let me know in comments your own best estimate of global warming by 2100 compared with the present. The Lord Monckton Foundation will archive your predictions. Our descendants 85 years hence will be able to amuse themselves comparing them with what happened in the real world.
Nothing random about it. It directly addresses a key point of Monkton’s article and comments.
I am not a troll who is trying to create trouble. I am asking an honest question.
To put it bluntly, does anybody here think that they can solve two coupled sets of Navier-Stokes equations on a spinning, tipped, globe in an eccentric orbit around a variable star against a background of varying atmospheric chemistry and unpredictable volcanic events in their heads?
If you give Richards Betts at the UK Met off a super, super, hyper- billion billion processor computer he will solve it for you. Alledgedly. :))
Robert, Love your posts. If I was young again and starting out on my now defunct physics adventure, I would fly to Duke to be taught by you.
Pamela Gray says:
June 9, 2014 at 11:12 am
As prevailing winds are from the west, PDO phase does naturally affect continental climate when the warm water is on the eastern side of the Pacific.
Arctic sea ice melts when there is warm water in the Bering Sea, which IMO occurs when the warm pool is in EastPac, including off the coast of southern Alaska. That’s what happened during the 1910s-40s & 1980s to 2010s.
Dr Norman Page says:
June 9, 2014 at 10:31 am
Monckton and RGB You are both saying that the IPCC models are useless for forecasting . Surely it is time to quit talking about models at all
*
Exactly. It is time to stop predicting and start adapting through real risk management. That would automatically demand cheaper, reliable energy.
Professor Brown asks what quasi-periodicities are. Quasi-periodicities are somewhat irregular near-periodicities that may arise in both ordered and chaotic dynamical systems (and that may be difficult to tell apart, especially where the system is weakly chaotic). Mathematically, they are often studied by reference to winding numbers such as the golden mean, which is useful because among the irrationals on the interval [0, 1] it is maximally distant from any rational fraction, or the silver mean sqrt(2) – 1. For quite a good discussion, see Glazier and Libchaber, 1988.
May I suggest to my noble Lord that he learns how to use the SI units properly? I am sure that he will agree that when he reads a piece of English prose in which the words ‘they’ ‘there’ and ‘they’re’ are confused that he suspects that the writer is uneducated in the use of English. Scientists think the same about the misuse of scientific units.
I
t detracts from the message.
It’s a fascinating that chaos seems always presumed to be the end of the line for analysis. Suppose chaos brings us into a regime where steady-state properties of a system become independent of its past. Do exact differentials, entropy and thermodynamics come to mind? BotE calculation: 3.7*(70/240)=1.1K. 70K is the tropospheric differential and 240 W/m2 tropospheric dissipation, i.e. the work required to keep the system from relapsing into isothermal equilibrium. A better approximation follows from differentiation of the Carnot Equation which describes the thermal dissipation of a thermodynamic system operating between two isothermal boundaries given its free energy input flux. Two terms appear, one depending on the temperature dependence of the flux, the other on changes of boundary temperatures. The former leads to CAGW. The latter caps the catastrophe at 1.4K.
“Twenty-first-century theoretical physics is coming out of the chaos revolution. It will
be about complexity and its principal tool will be the computer. Its final expression remains
to be found. Thermodynamics, as a vital part of theoretical physics, will partake in the
transformation.” – Michel Baranger
RGB You do not have to solve the physics problems to predict the future. Hence the Babylonians and others were able to predict eclipses without knowing Keplers laws,. See Figs 3,4,5,6,at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2013/10/commonsense-climate-science-and.html
On fig4 there is a peak at 10000? ,9000, 8000,7000 5000? 2000 1000 and at the present. Resonances and beat frequencies come and go in this sort of natural time series. Looking at Fig 4 and 3 together it is very reasonable to suggest that the trends from 1000 – 2000 in Fig 3 will more or less repeat from 2000 – 3000. and that the recent temperature peak was a peak on both the 1000 year quasi periodicity and the 60 year quasi periodicity seen in Figs 5 and 6
I call them quasi-periodicities for obvious reasons- the phases of the different climate driver processes will never exactly repeat in the real world so the temperature peaks will drift over time
I submit that for the present time the key uncertainty is the exact timing of the 1000 year quasi periodic peak. The neutron count would suggest that we are probably just past the peak. – see Fig 9.
Pamela Gray says: “Bob, correct me if I am wrong.”
I have no need to correct you.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
June 9, 2014 at 10:01 am
“In truth, no prediction will be reliable, but I’d be prepared to bet quite a large sum, for the sake of my heirs, that this century’s global warming will indeed be closer to 2 K than to 8 K, even if there be no more nonsense about curbing ‘carbon emissions’”.
I’ll interpret that to encompass cooling as -1 K is closer to 2 K than it is to 8 K.
At least the title of this post has some value. Sorry, my Lordship, but the rest [is] just an exercise in futility.
Feedback…the subject
We use it in engineering (Osc/Amps/Engines to name a few). Most of that is fast feedback – part seconds and within a limited boundary.
The planet we live in is self regulating,in that it supports life as we know it. It is slow in terms of performance. Latency and can overshoot (not that this planet regards over/undershoot)
Evidence from geology shows us past severe changes which have nothing man made related. That would be the ice ages. Ice ages mean that feedback from this planets systems (ocean/land) has not controlled what we might think is within range. Thats our comfort zone..not this planets performance zone.
The case is that if you cannot describe this planets behaviour completely either now or historically, no amount of modelling by any computer will.
I suspect we will slowly freeze to death? Temp change for next 100 yrs….zero!
I predict only -1 C of global cooling by 2100, thanks to a human contribution of +2C. That’s right, the solar lull will TRY to initiate “the big one,” but humanity will wise up in time to dot the great white north with coal-burning soot-production plants, enough to forestall, barely, the descent into the next glacial period. (Does that make me an optimist?)
The contribution of human CO2 emissions will be approximately +0.25C.
One note on the king’s English. To use the conspiratorial “we” Lord Monckton could have written: “Let us examine a few of [AR5’s revealing inconsistencies],” because we can all examine together. But I don’t think the conspiratorial “we” (or “us”) works with the sentence Chris actually wrote: “Let us expose a few of them,” because only he is doing the exposing (and a very nice job of it).
That leaves the royal “we,” which I don’t think was intended, the co-author “we” (no co-authors), or the parasitical “we,” (me and my parasites). Personally I am a fan of the conspiratorial “we,” but it requires careful attention, not to inadvertently flop into one of the other categories.
Let me “fix” the above for you.
As a real engineer who has actually worked with real systems and operations that actually do affect lives and property, I have found competency, honesty, and morality to be the most valued characteristic of peers and a deep respect for facts, truth, logic. Corruption on the scale suggested by Monckton has actually decimated virtually ALL science since the various disciplines rely on cross pollination of research to support and verify everything they do.
As a real engineer who has actually worked with real climate “scientists” and their political-propaganda-bureaucratic self-funding systems and operations that actually do affect lives and property around the world, I have found competency, honesty, and morality to be the least valued characteristic of these people and their peers in academia-political-power; and have found none even a shallow regard for facts, truth, logic.
Do you personally realize how credible Monckton’s claim of science corruption is?
Do you personally realize how un-credible the complete lack of evidence in your so-called “scientific” claims supporting their CAGW claims of “science” are?
I predict zero net warming as a product of A) solar induced cooling and B) warming induced by increased human activity to make up for the poverty-inducing policies and tax changes from the ongoing science and policy scam. I’m more concerned about meteor strikes as evidenced from the geologic record and organized non-planning for on-site nuclear waste.
Dr Norman Page says:
June 9, 2014 at 12:11 pm (replying to)
And thus the most important question about such apparent cycles:
Assuming the past four 66-68 year short-period cycles (of unknown drivers) continue for a while,
and
Assuming the past 900-1000 long-period cycles (also of unknown drivers) continue for the next 240 years
Only one question need be asked to determine the global average temperature anomalies in 2100:
Is today’s Modern Warming Peak of 2000-2010 the actual local maximum of the 900 year long-term cycle since the MWP?
Or is the 2000-2010 peak only a local rise-and-pause period (like the 1945 rise) towards the actual Modern Warming Peak coming 2060, then dropping towards a subsequent Future Ice Age in 2400?
I confidently predict that, in the year 2100, Earth will either be a little warmer, or a little cooler than it is now, but will be just fine. I also predict that by 2100, people won’t remember the original justification for the ever increasing carbon tax they pay.
CO2 be buggered, there is not one known change of climate in the last 600 million years that has been driven by CO2. To the contrary there are several changes where CO2 is going up while temperature is falling and vice versa and there are several major climate changes that happened while CO2 remained unchanged. Where there are parallels, CO2 always lags temperature by 11 months to 200+ years. The interglacial temperature change is matched by a 100ppm change in CO2 due to solubility of CO2 in water, however, if one puts that on a scale relative to the entire CO2 range (say 0 to 8000 ppm) then that solubility effect pails to nothing. It is only the scale used in the likes of Gore’s comparison (and Vostok data) that makes the two look comparable.
If we wish to gaze into the future a far more reliable method is to look at history. There is no guarantee of course that history will repeat itself (but it has to be a hell of a lot better than stuffing around with CO2 sensitivities.
Now looking at Dahl-Jensen et al Greenland Ice Sheet reconstructions we can see that there is a roughly 1000 year periodicity between the Minoan, Roman, Medieval and Modern warm periods.
The main drop in temperatures occurs in the first 200 years after the peak with drops of 2, 1.6, & 1.6°C. There is also in the Greenland data an intermediate warm peak at 1600 years ago that appears not to be global and that had a 300 year drop of 1.8°C.
If we apply that to the present and assume;
1 the pattern will repeat (well at least the 200 year drop to the next “Not So Little Ice Age”)
2. that the pending solar minimum (repeat of Maunder or Dalton) heralds the end of the current warm period.
3 the global drop appears to be 72% of the Greenland drop
Then we arrive at a guesstimate global anomaly of -1.15°C by the year ~2200 and half that by 2100
The same pattern would suggest that the next warm period would be in about 1000 year time and would be -0.4°C compared to today.
While the peaks from the said warm periods follow a very linear trend, ice core data show the drop off back into the ice age is rapid for the first 20,000 years and then gradually descends through the next 80,000 years reaching bottom just before the start of the next interglacial.
The idea that climate is literally a chaotic dynamical system seems far-fetched to me. After all, there seems to be some limit to climate fluctuations over very long timescales. Chaotic attractor, maybe. This would fit in with properties of weak solutions to Navier-Stokes (for whatever they may be worth).
My prediction: All but elitists will live in dark, cold hovels, These wretches (formerly known collectively as “The West”) will be growing food in their yards and alleyways, scraping a minimal diet. Life expectancy is 40 years.
The temperature will be the same as today’s. The elitists will attribute this to the fact that the majority live in dark, cold hovels.
They will continually congratulate themselves, up there in the palace on the hill.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
“Professor Brown is, of course, right that the climate is unpredictable because it is a complex, non-linear, chaotic object..”
Lend me your eyes and ears for a day and I could show you the planetary ordering of solar activity behind, a) the highly irregular 150-250yr cold stadial like periods through the last 6.5kyrs such as the LIA and Dark Ages, b) exactly which solar cycles are effected through each solar grand minimum, and the timing of every cycle maximum, c) short term ordering of solar activity from inter-annual down to weekly scales that is directly effecting atmospheric circulation patterns and mid latitude land temperature deviations at these scales.
This solar minimum is relatively short, and will be recovering from SC26 onwards. But with the worst of the short term cold effects for the N. hemisphere temperate zone coming very soon, from late 2015 through to 2024. For the long term, my findings show that we are heading back into a LIA sequence through the next 200yrs, with deep and protracted solar grand minimums starting from the 2090’s, and around 2200 AD.
Given that this century will have just over one solar grand minimum occurring in it, I would think it should end cooler than it started.
Am I missing something? I thought the scientific method worked like this; You propose a hypothesis (co2 drives temperatures) then you collect data to see if it matches the hypothesis. Only then, if the data matches the hypothesis, do you call it a theory. Once it is a theory, other scientists run tests to see if it holds up. We have people spending energy to disprove a hypothesis that hasn’t even been affirmed by the data.
Based on everything I have read my best guess would be…………….-0.03 by 2100. I will give 10 to 1 odds we do not get more than 1 degree Celsius longer term warming by 2100!
The pseudonymous “Mike B” would like me to use SI units correctly, but fails to provide a single instance in which the units were incorrect. If he is complaining about the degree symbol that appears alongside the word “Kelvin” in the strapline, when it is self-evident that in the three dozen subsequent references to Kelvin there is no degree symbol, then he should have been able to conclude that this single instance was a misprint that arose in the process of formatting the page for the posting. Don’t pick nits.
While I have no little sympathy for “Quondam” in his desire to constrain chaotic dynamical systems and render them predictable to a sufficient precision, unfortunately matters are not yet that simple. The difficulty to be overcome is a fundamental one. In a chaotic object, even the smallest perturbation in the initial value of any relevant variable can cause a radical bifurcation in the evolution of the object, rendering prediction unattainable except in the presence of highly precise initial data that will never be available in the climate system.
Mr Ard describes the head posting as an exercise in futility but does not say why. That is mere yah-boo.
Mr Rawls says I had used the conspiratorial “we”. No, I had used the royal “we” 🙂
Mr Leman does not like the glancing implication in the head posting that the small faction that drives the climate scare does so for wealth and influence. However, he appears unable to challenge any of the mathematical discussion. He also whines that I have not published anything peer-reviewed. I now have several papers to my credit, two of them in one of the longest-standing and most prestigious journals in the world, where publication is by invitation only, and a further major paper has just been accepted for publication in a respected journal. I have no idea whether Mr Leman has ever published anything in the reviewed journals about the climate. Nor do I care: for the strength of what one says on a scientific argument is derived not from reputation nor from a publication record but from the intrinsic merit of the argument itself – and Mr Leman, but not addressing the argument at all, does himself no favors and me no damage. Has Al Gore ever published anything on the climate in a reviewed journal?
Besides, as Mr Cook has rightly pointed out, there is indeed widespread evidence of corruption in climate science. Read the Climategate emails; look at the numerous official attempts to cover up that corruption; see the IPCC’s refusal to correct its errors when its reviewers request it to do so; look at the media’s reluctance to inform their readers of any fact about the climate that might suggest the climate scare is misconceived. Mr Leman is guilty of the ultimate intellectual sin: the unthinking adoption of an unevidenced, aprioristic, preconceived position and an unwillingness or inability to provide any argument whatsoever for it.
[snip – off topic, derogatory -mod]