“The Models didn’t have the skill we thought they had…”
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian, a prominent green UK daily newspaper, reports that scientists have given up on surface temperature as a measure of global warming:
Stephen Briggs from the European Space Agency’s Directorate of Earth Observation says that sea surface temperature data is the worst indicator of global climate that can be used, describing it as “lousy”.
“It is like looking at the last hair on the tail of a dog and trying to decide what breed it is,” he said on Friday at the Royal Society in London.
“The models don’t have the skill we thought they had. That’s the problem,” admits Peter Jan van Leeuwen, director of the National Centre of Earth Observation at the University of Reading.
Obviously if the surface temperature was still rising, as it was in the 90s, instead of inconveniently contradicting model predictions, then it would still be considered a valid climate metric.
Thankfully however, climate scientists have not yet run out of metrics which show an upward trend. The new measure of global warming is to be sea level rise – presumably because it is still moving in the right direction, and because it ties in nicely with the “deep ocean heating” narrative.
The inconvenient fact that sea level was around 6 metres higher during the Eemian Interglacial, and around 2 metres higher during the Holocene Optimum, 5500 years ago, was not mentioned in the Guardian article.
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/ericg/kap_paper.pdf
The European Union is supportive of the effort to find climate metrics which point in the right direction – The Esa Climate Change Initiative (CCI) is a €75m programme, active since 2009, to produce a “trustworthy” set of ECV (Essential Climate Variable) data that can be accessed by all.
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The guardian story is here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/13/pause-global-warming-data-sea-level-rises
[note: there was an error in HTML coding that made the entire article look like a quote when that was not intended, that has been fixed – mod]
In completely unrelated news, NOAA has just released its first decade of average US surface temperature data, from a network of new weather stations established specifically to avoid urban heat island effect and other effects that skewed previous data. Bottom line: US average surface temps DECLINED by 0.4 degrees F over the last decade.
Here’s how you can have fun with this: tell your globaloney-gourmet friends and relatives about this new data, but just say the average temps “changed” instead of “declined”. And be sure to mention that 0.4 degrees is:
1. Pretty insignificant
2. Probably within the margin of error
3. Cannot be projected out linearly with any confidence
After they scold you about how stupid you are, and how this conclusively means 4 degrees F hotter per century and we are all doomed to fry, casually mention that they must have misunderstood, because you never said “increase”… and in fact it is a 0.4 degree DECREASE.
My experiences with this little gambit revealed that I have some friends and family that are potential Tour de France champions… as long as they would be allowed to ride the bike facing backwards, and back-pedal!!
@Nicole Bresht
Ho! It’s a thread massacre over there! The ‘Grauniad’ censors have had to cut out whole comment threads, some of which which had been up & posted for over 24/24, in order to restore the AGW-order and calm their collective cognitive dissonances. Sad to see some of my best work go down the memory hole… appears the Wayback Machine doesn’t record Guardian comments.
No entity more censorious than an illiberal northern rag with an ideological axe to grind! What?
Pamela Gray says: June 15, 2014 at 10:22 am
… could it be an extended positive AO that dries up rivers and streams making it easier for them to freeze, leading to ice dams?
It often rains at the high altitudes but not always
rayvandune, do you have a link to your NOAA announcement?
So, measuring the Earth’s temperature is not an indication of it’s….. temperature..
I’m gob smacked. These people must be on some pretty bizarre medication!!
Day By Day says:
Insult to birds Eugene. Are you not keeping up with the research?
http://tinyurl.com/n5wqy4y
They are as smart as children which is more than I can say for the climate Scientists (at least the one ones in the mythical consensus)
DbD – You should be as skeptical about this Wonders of Animal Cognition stuff as I assume you are about (C)AGW. Think about it. Kids are talking by the age of 7; what kind of propositional knowledge do you think a crow has? Notice also that in the article they trot out the usual guff about tool using (a perennial favorite in this area) – but it’s just not true that a tool is a tool is a tool. Nor is it impossible for animals to learn to use “tools” by response-reinforcement learning.
There really should be at least one skeptical Website devoted to this nonsense (er, business) just as there are sites that play this role for AGW.
steverichards1984 says:
June 15, 2014 at 1:02 am
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The oceanic crust is also much thiner to its continental crust counterpart, but of course, it is made of different material with different heat transfer properties.
I have several times posed the question ‘what if the planet’s oceans were drained, how warm would it be if one were standing on the floor of the dry sea bed?’
Richard Verney. Do you mean the air pressure increase to make up for the loss of water or the temperature of the sea bed?
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 14, 2014 at 1:23 pm
The sun supplies 340 W/m2 to the earth at top-of-atmosphere, which is about 5.5E+24 joules/year. This is no less than 10,000 times the human-produced energy. Of this, about 240 W/m2 actually makes it into the system, with the rest reflected into space.
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Willis
Is the 100 W/m2 of solar reflected at TOA, or is it reflected at cloud height and/or off the surface?
Since if this is reflected below TOA, then some of the 100 W/m2 of reflected solar finds its way into the system since the atmosphere is not 100% transparent, nor are the underside of clouds (consider solar reflected from the surface hiting the underside of clouds where the clouds will absorp much of it).
The atmosphere gets warmed not solely by the absorption of incoming solar, but also by the absorption of reflected solar. In my view K&T err in this regard.
K & T suggest that 23 W/m2 of solar is reflected from the surface, but does not suggest that any of that reflected solar is absorbed by the atmosphere on its way out.
K & T suggest that 79 W/m2 of solar is reflected from the upper surface of the clouds but does not suggest that any of that reflected solar is absorbed by the atmosphere on its way out.
I would suggest that some part of this reflected solar is absorbed on its way out, and is therefore within the system. Percentagewise less will be absorbed of the solar reflected from the top of clouds but it will depend upon cloud formation and cloud height etc.
Overall, it is likely that we are talking of about 6 to 9 W/m2 of reflected solar additionally absorbed by the atmosphere. Not a huge amount, but then again, not insignificant either.
Andyj says:
June 15, 2014 at 1:11 p
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I am postulating only upon thermal energy from the Earth.
Of course, if there were no oceans the world would be a very different place. I am ignoring the effects of this, ie., the effect on the hydrological cycle etc. Likewise, I am ignoring the effect of atmospheric pressure (average depth of the ocean circa 4,500m and deepest nearly 12,000 metres) which of course would be significant.
Essentially, if you could stand on the sea bed (free of the sea), would it be like going down a coal mine, or not? When going down a coal mine, the additional air pressure explains only a very small part of the additional heat.
If it would be, are the oceans effectively sitting on a hotplate which help prevents the deep ocean from freezing and helps powering the thermohaline circulation?
oceans can’t freeze at the bottom. It’s because seawater is at its densest at about 1.2 °C (2000 m). It can only freeze at the surface, about -2.5 °C.
Richard, you said: “the additional air pressure explains only a very small part of the additional heat.”.
Really?
Adding pressure is fairy linear to the temperature increase below the troposphere.
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/slides/climate/atmprofile.gif
Actually, it would be damned hot!!!
The pressure of the oceans do many strange things down there. Lakes of methane and rivers of CO2. Sea creatures wading through temperatures of 500C water that does not boil and yes, I do expect heat retention with occasional releases… What does Bob call it? lol
For what its worth. Look at the troubles with another so called science where things have really gotten bad with replication due to hidden methods and data.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/jun/10/physics-envy-do-hard-sciences-hold-the-solution-to-the-replication-crisis-in-psychology
If someone is accused of murder could they be found guilty on proxy evidence such as ‘models’/animations or real evidence such a photos or DNA? This is of course rhetorical..How would the prosecution sound if they said we have a clear signal that the defendant is guilty but there are still some uncertainties. Would that be a safe conviction?
Matt
1) “If it is true that 90% of the ocean’s volume is below 3000 feet, then isn’t most of the ocean below 4C, the temperature at which water shrinks in volume when heated? If so, how does a rising ocean indicate climate change in the deep ocean?”
It’s true the ocean’s ave. temperature is 3.5 C but if heated its density is almost constant until 10 C. The ocean’s thermocline is from surface to 700 m deep in the tropics. This is where most thermal expansion occurs.
2) “Why is the tropical deep ocean cold, anyway? Don’t tell me it is because the sun isn’t warming it, dig a 10000 foot deep hole in Sri Lanka and tell me how cold it is. Perhaps it is because the effects of the global currents past ice exceed the effects of top down diffusion? Wouldn’t you have to allege that surface waters were themselves heating in order to diffuse more heat to the depths?”
Because below the thermocline, heat transfers mainly by conduction and thermohaline circulation. Very slow processes compared to convection.
3) “Even if it was true that the deep ocean is warming, isn’t a more plausible explanation warmer water that was at the surface 800 years ago being carried to the depths by those currents and diffusing horizontally and up.”
No accurate direct measurements of deep ocean temperature changes. The changes are too small and hardly detectable. Speculations abound in the absence of observations. Like tales of sea monsters hiding in the deep.
Very poorly expressed! How on earth can the models “lack the skill”? Models cannot possess skill, but they can, and in all cases they do, lack accuracy, suitability, etc.
It’s the modellers which lack the skill, and also they lack the common sense to recognise their ineptitude!
Andyj says:
June 15, 2014 at 2:25 pm
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Atmospheric Lapse Rate is often taken to be about 6.4degC per km. The Geothermal Gradiaent of the Continental Crust is often taken to be 25degC per km. I am sure you will accept that that is quite a difference, and therefore borehole temperatures are not explained mainly by atmospheric temperature. In short, the rock at 2 km depth is hot to touch.
The question being posed is if the ocean was drained, would the sea bed be hot to touch?
If one were to make a borehole in Continental Crust to a depth of 4,500 metres (average depth of the ocean), the borehole temperature (and the rock) would be more than 100degC warmer than the surface (not bathed in sunlight) rock.
So the question being posed is would the floor of the sea bed be similarly warm, and if not why not?.
sorry but I don’t know how to do proper links. Scroll up to the top of this tread and look at a comment by Bill Illis. His comment is extraordinary and at the same time “basic”. Humanity itself is changing the signature of the planet, that is “our own biomass”. Blessed Be The L-rd.
My (DEVELOPING) personal belief is that quite contrary to the Sun, the Stars, the Galactic Cosmic Gamma Bursts having an effect on US, it is quite contrary that we ALL TOGETHER are in fact influencing our Environment, to wit WE are influencing Solar Cycles, the occurence of SEP’s, Solar Flares, CME’s and a host of events that are now shown clearly to be DIRECTLY effecting our own weather.
I know this is a stretch, guys, and I can’t stick around for the debate (if anyone cares) but as said, I believe maybe, prayer, on the local and global level, might be influencing the outcomes here.
OK? Do you get it?
We are individually insignificant against even the smallest measure of electromagnetic disturbances of our biosphere…yet that same biosphere seems incredibly sensitive to exactly the same influences, at the same frequency levels in which we live and have consciousness. We MAY be more “powerful”, in the day-to-day, than we know.
Just sayin’
oh yes, also: –
“the sheep look up”…
when we look at a Star, are we seeing it, Right Now? In which Time?
The speed of an electron, the magnetic spin of an electron, stretched out ‘linearly’, would put it in Andromeda (our closest neighboring galaxy, in about one second, far above ‘light speed’.) That’s a fact. So much for that thing…”light speed”.
I believe in the Big Picture, we’ll accept the Stars talk, and Influence Us, and more…and far more important, We INFLUENCE THEM.
The Universe, (ultimately), is a Moral Creation. We’re just ‘doing our best’…………. 🙁
The models are fake but accurate.
@richard
“So the question being posed is would the floor of the sea bed be similarly warm, and if not why not?”
Sea floor is cold at 3 C. Remove the water and it will be warmed by sunlight. The surface is warmed by solar radiation. Geothermal heat is negligible at surface, except in volcanic regions, but increases with depth.
Bit of a typo in the article
“The Models didn’t have the skill we thought they had…”
Should that not be “Modlers”?
•Keith Willshaw
“History indicates that the onset of cold periods is more disruptive. The end of the Roman and Mediaeval warm periods produced catastrophic upheavals and famines as did the lttle ice age of the 17th century”
A report done for the Pentagon back in 2003 seemed to agree
By 2020, after a decade of cooling, Europe’s climate becomes “more like Siberia’s.”
•“Mega-droughts” hit southern China and northern Europe around 2010 and last 10 years.
•In the United States, agricultural areas suffer from soil loss due to higher winds and drier climate, but the country survives the economic disruption without catastrophic losses.
•Widespread famine in China triggers chaos, and “a cold and hungry China peers jealously” at Russia’s energy resources.
If the alarmists are looking for better metrics to prove that only warming lies ahead , their black swan will come when temperatures are only going down . Winter temperatures have been cooling since 1998 both globally and regionally and these colder winters are bringing the spring and summer temperatures down as well, causing the annual temperatures to pause for17 years. The next 20-30years ahead will be a major embarrassment for the warmists as the winter continue to cool.
“Thankfully however, climate scientists have not yet run out of metrics which show an upward trend. The new measure of global warming is to be sea level rise – presumably because it is still moving in the right direction, and because it ties in nicely with the “deep ocean heating” narrative.”
So, it is about picking and choosing metrics and maintaining narratives. I thought it was about science.
Stunning admission.
Temperature is good enough to measure past climatic events, see the 8.2 k event, or Younger Dryas, not to talk about LIA and MWP but is not good enough for CAGW which should be a warming much more rapid then past climate variations?
I am confused. Was not this fast global warming the reason why all those species would die not having time to adapt?
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
What is that global warming without warming?