“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.
=============================================================
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]
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Bill Illis says:
Interesting comment in the article (double-checked through other sources) that humans produce about 0.5 X 10^21 joules of energy each year. Didn’t realize it was this high.
I’d be interesting in looking at the other sources. (Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be so lazy, but if you’ve already done the search….)
I’m particularly wondering what it means to say that “humans produce…energy.” Are we talking about ambient heat release? Does it simply refer to changes from chemical to some other form of energy, as burning fuels to generate power or process mineral ores? Smelting iron ore or refining bauxite to produce aluminum reverts a large amount of energy back into chemical form. Pumping water or hauling material uphill converts energy into a form potentially recoverable through gravity. Human dealing with energy is a lot more complicated than simply adding heat to the environment.
Kate Forney says:
June 14, 2014 at 7:37 am
“Ever ask a warmist if they would be happy if “global warming” (or whatever the brand du jour is for impending climate catastrophe) were proven false?”
________________________
Actually, I have not. The warmists I’ve encountered have universally exploded in anger with any mention of the subject of climate change, usually within about 30 seconds of them starting their rant.
TAG says:
June 14, 2014 at 7:57 am
It was more than just a little warmer during the Holocene Optimum.
Interglacials tend to hit their thermal peaks early on, then slide toward the next glacial more slowly. A double peak is rare, & usually shows a severe Dryas like cooling in between.
Humanity cannot warm the planet enough to reach Holocene temperature & sea surface levels, even if we burnt all fossil fuels as fast as a globally growing economy could sustain.
Not so fast re: sea level rise. I have brought this up before (and it is part speculation, part based on publically available data). The mixing layer can rise or fall at the top of that layer (essentially the top of the ocean at the skin layer) driven by warming and cooling through out the mixed layer, and also by being pushed and pulled by currents and wind, while the large deep ocean and the thermocline sluggishly do the same thing to the bottom of the mixed layer. Being that the ocean is…how do I put this…humongously, gargantuanly, monstrously… huge, and rather sluggish when sending a piece of its expanded or contracted mixed layer this way or that, it stands to reason we would only see changes as mostly short and long trends, not daily noise.
So what if (the speculation part), since the LIA and its obviously colder SST, we are currently seeing a long term warming recovery trend, measured by the overall top height of the ocean’s mixed layer while the deep ocean layer below the thermocline is essentially at the same height it was during the LIA?
To measure whether or not it is just the mixed layer that is expanding but not the MUCH deeper deep ocean layer under the thermocline, we would need in-situ measuring devices that would sink to the thermocline and back up again to measure its depth, and millions of them spread all throughout the ocean. I don’t see how a satellite would be able to do anything but measure from the top to the bottom of the whole water column.
So instead of sending 2 and possibly 3 failed satellites up (and we all know how that has turned out), we should be sending a BUNCH of mini satellites down.
I suppose it’s the greenhouse gases in the deep ocean that are causing the warming. Good luck with that one.
>> 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.
I was visiting the north shore of Kawai’i and saw the cave mentioned here (site is not mine):
http://abhiking.blogspot.com/2012/03/manini-holo-dry-cave.html
I remember at the time walking in the dry cave and realizing that it was obviously carved out by the sea, and that the sea level is lower now. It was a strange feeling to realize that the sea level we take for granted has varied quite a bit.
“The Models didn’t have the skill we thought they had…”
Not just the Models….
Humans and all other fauna create additional terrestrial enthalpy and, by the ordering which accompanies life, decrease terrestrial entropy. To the latter we add increased entropy as the chemical ordering caused by flora, coal, oil and gas, is oxidised. Gibbs free energy of the atmosphere and the oceans increases.
This in turn modifies the processes which take low entropy SW and convert it to high entropy LW. Of the latter, the -50 deg C CO2 15 micron band has the highest production rate of radiation entropy so the planet adapts to have the highest pCO2 possible, minimising CO2 OLR. This means fauna are encouraged, by the warming.
This is the origin of the GHE, there is none from GHGs! Biofeedback is what distinguishes the interglacial from the glacial.
For the present ~11 K GHE (Hansen got it wrong), the planetary atmosphere adapts to control surface temperature in a narrow range. The same mechanism also explains the Faint Sun Paradox and some aspects of ice ages.
RobertInAz says: June 14, 2014 at 9:18 am
One study at one location does not make the sea level higher 5500 years ago all around the world.
The Gulf of Mexico was 2 meters higher 4-6Kya, as archaeological digs at the shoreline fifty miles inland from the current one show. I have a graph by Fairbridge, 1961, that shows sea level 2-3 meters higher than present four times in the past 6K years. If TinyPic gets their uploading service back up soon I will post it.
Don’t try challenging the Guardian’s view on their site. I tried to comment on the article and it was promptly deleted. Too funny. Articles of faith may never be challenged.
With flooding all but imminent, Why, why have coastal property values not declined. These poor beach-house dwellers are doomed. A consensus of government supported scientists cry shrilly of impending sea-level rise, yet the entire real estate industry is unaware.
WUWT?
AGW Movement – Mission Impossible
Assignment: Find cherries to pick where none exist. Report trend.
This message will self destruct as soon as someone shows some warming.
The philosophical underpinning of the AGWers:
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus
Alan Poirier says:
June 14, 2014 at 10:16 am
Don’t try challenging the Guardian’s view on their site. I tried to comment on the article and it was promptly deleted. Too funny. Articles of faith may never be challenged.
____________________
Say, “Thank you, Dana Nuccitelli”.
A pretty close look at sea level over the past 10K years:
http://i62.tinypic.com/nchybs.jpg
“So thank goodness there are other metrics in the right direction… really, right direction? Wow. How about simply reporting the truth?”
Ah, but the models are the truth, you see. It’s clearly the data that’s wrong.
As a side note: it looks like Greenpeace and other NGO’s are going to get thrown out of India for meddling in false propaganda against the government and the left wing politics of promoting poverty through de-industrializations….go India and now the African continent needs to do the same…one can only hope. I hope someone takes Greenpeace to the Haig someday and tries them for corruption. Keeping people in poverty for your own personal gains/religious beliefs is a crime.
Eric, Anthony,
Yes please DO correct the italics in the OP, as it does make some of the author’s content look as if it comes from the quoted article when it does not. 🙂
“So thank goodness there are other metrics in the right direction”
Yes there are. Like the national debt of every country that buys into this and other progressive ideology. It is directly proportional and catastrophic!!
================================================================
Hmmm….this sounds a bit like Mann ignoring all the things that might effect tree rings other than temperature.
Don’t plate tectonics have anything to do with the size and shape of the “bowl” the oceans lie in?
(PS Is Tuvalu still hanging in there?)
“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.”
“Thankfully.” “Upward trend.” “Right direction.” “Nicely.”
This is disaster they are talking about, right? This is the calamity – the catastrophe – we are all supposed to be SOOO in fear of that we will willingly lay down our computers, energy, heating, technology and civilization for.
Aren’t they supposed to HORRIFIED at the very notion of CAGW? They are not even pretending anymore!
Imagine a newspaper reporting, “Oh good, another car-crash fatality.” That’s exactly what they are doing. “Never mind that data, folks, I’m pleased to inform you that we are still on collision course and we are still all going to die!”
Maybe we should start highlighting their glee.
We can now await a new “Hockey Stick” showing catastrophic sea level rise who’s results and conclusions run against all and are claimed to out mode all past data and evidence.
Pamela Gray says:
June 14, 2014 at 9:57 am
So instead of sending 2 and possibly 3 failed satellites up (and we all know how that has turned out), we should be sending a BUNCH of mini satellites down.
That sounds like ARGO to me. But the warmists claim that ARGO shows the opposite of what you postulate (that the bottom waters have warmed more than the upper 700 meters).
Forget sea level rise or temp data, it is ice cream sales that signify warming or cooling.
Shorter summers slows ice cream sales growth | Business Standard
http://www.business-standard.com/…/shorter-summers-slows-ice-cream-sales-gro...
28 Oct 2013 – Shorter summers slows ice cream sales growth. Players likely to raise prices in January to offset raw material cost increase. Sohini Das | …
Unfortunately, Gregory who is lead author of IPCC’s Chapter 13 on Sea Level Acceleration finds “The reconstructions account for the approximate constancy of the rate of GMSLR during the 20th century, which shows small or no acceleration, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing.” http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1 So sea level acceleration as a counter argument to the pause seems to be of little comfort.