Oh this is hilarious. In a “Back To The Future” sort of moment, this press release from the National Center for Atmospheric Research claims they could have forecast “the pause”, if only they had the right tools back then.
Yes, having tools of the future would have made a big difference in these inconvenient moments of history:
“We could have forecast the Challenger Explosion if only we knew O-rings became brittle and shrank in the cold, and we had Richard Feynman working for us to warn us.”
“We could have learned the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor if only we had the electronic wiretapping intelligence gathering capability the NSA has today.”
“We could have predicted the Tacoma Narrows Bridge would collapse back then if only we had the sophisticated computer models of today to model wind loading.”
Yes, saying that having the tools of the future back then would have fixed the problem, is always a big help when you want to do a post-facto CYA for stuff you didn’t actually do back then.
UPDATE: WUWT commenter Louis delivers one of those “I wish I’d said that” moments:
Even if they could have forecast the pause, they wouldn’t have. That would have undercut their dire message that we had to act now because global warming was accelerating and would soon reach a point where it would become irreversible.
Here’s the CYA from NCAR:
Progress on decadal climate prediction
Today’s tools would have foreseen warming slowdown
If today’s tools for multiyear climate forecasting had been available in the 1990s, they would have revealed that a slowdown in global warming was likely on the way, according to new research.
The analysis, led by NCAR’s Gerald Meehl, appears in the journal Nature Climate Change. It highlights the progress being made in decadal climate prediction, in which global models use the observed state of the world’s oceans and their influence on the atmosphere to predict how global climate will evolve over the next few years.
Such decadal forecasts, while still subject to large uncertainties, have emerged as a new area of climate science. This has been facilitated by the rapid growth in computing power available to climate scientists, along with the increased sophistication of global models and the availability of higher-quality observations of the climate system, particularly the ocean.
Although global temperatures remain close to record highs, they have shown little warming trend over the last 15 years, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the “early-2000s hiatus”. Almost all of the heat trapped by additional greenhouse gases during this period has been shown to be going into the deeper layers of the world’s oceans.
The hiatus was not predicted by the average conditions simulated by earlier climate models because they were not configured to predict decade-by-decade variations.
However, to challenge the assumption that no climate model could have foreseen the hiatus, Meehl posed this question: “If we could be transported back to the 1990s with this new decadal prediction capability, a set of current models, and a modern-day supercomputer, could we simulate the hiatus?”
Looking at yesterday’s future with today’s tools
To answer this question, Meehl and colleagues applied contemporary models in a “hindcast” experiment using the new methods for decadal climate prediction. The models were started, or “initialized,” with particular past observed conditions in the climate system. The models then simulated the climate over previous time periods where the outcome is known.
The researchers drew on 16 models from research centers around the world that were assessed in the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For each year from 1960 through 2005, these models simulated the state of the climate system over the subsequent 3-to-7-year period, including whether the global temperature would be warmer or cooler than it was in the preceding 15-year period.
Starting in the late 1990s, the 3-to-7-year forecasts (averaged across each year’s set of models) consistently simulated the leveling of global temperature that was observed after the year 2000. (See image at bottom.) The models also produced the observed pattern of stronger trade winds and cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific. A previous study by Meehl and colleagues related the observed hiatus of globally averaged surface air temperature to this pattern, which is associated with enhanced heat storage in the subsurface Pacific and other parts of the deeper global oceans.
Letting natural variability play out
Although scientists are continuing to analyze all the factors that might be driving the hiatus, the new study suggests that natural decade-to-decade climate variability is largely responsible.
As part of the same study, Meehl and colleagues analyzed a total of 262 model simulations, each starting in the 1800s and continuing to 2100, that were also assessed in the recent IPCC report. Unlike the short-term predictions that were regularly initialized with observations, these long-term “free-running” simulations did not begin with any particular observed climate conditions.
Such free-running simulations are typically averaged together to remove the influence of internal variability that occurs randomly in the models and in the observations. What remains is the climate system’s response to changing conditions such as increasing carbon dioxide.
However, the naturally occurring variability in 10 of those simulations happened, by chance, to line up with the internal variability that actually occurred in the observations. These 10 simulations each showed a hiatus much like what was observed from 2000 to 2013, even down to the details of the unusual state of the Pacific Ocean.
Meehl pointed out that there is no short-term predictive value in these simulations, since one could not have anticipated beforehand which of the simulations’ internal variability would match the observations.
“If we don’t incorporate current conditions, the models can’t tell us how natural variability will evolve over the next few years. However, when we do take into account the observed state of the ocean and atmosphere at the start of a model run, we can get a better idea of what to expect. This is why the new decadal climate predictions show promise,” said Meehl.
Decadal climate prediction could thus be applied to estimate when the hiatus in atmospheric warming may end. For example, the UK Met Office now issues a global forecast at the start of each year that extends out for a decade.
“There are indications from some of the most recent model simulations that the hiatus could end in the next few years,” Meehl added, “though we need to better quantify the reliability of the forecasts produced with this new technique.”
The paper:
Meehl, Gerald A., Haiyan Teng, and Julie M. Arblaster, “Climate model simulations of the observed early-2000s hiatus of global warming,” Nature Climate Change (2014), doi:10.1038/nclimate2357
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I could have made a fortune on Wall Street last month if would have had today’s WSJ then.
Although scientists are continuing to analyze all the factors that might be driving the hiatus, the new study suggests that natural decade-to-decade climate variability is largely responsible.
==============
if natural variability is largely responsible:
1. Why did the IPCC insist that natural variability was low?
2. Why is natural variability not responsible for the warming as well as the hiatus?
3. How can it be that natural variability only works in one direction, to stop warming?
I still say we are doomed!
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk” John v. Neumann
So true.
Sounds like an admission that what they did use for forecasting was crap. (BTW, crap is a technical term used by programmers to describe junk.) How can we trust any of their past work?
So the 10 simulations out of 262 is <5%, while they report 95% confidence in high levels of warming.
Now what did those 10 simulations have to say about warming in the future?
Here are my climate predictions:
1. unadjusted rural temperatures will remain the same or decrease for the next 15 years. 2. adjusted temperatures for the past will continue to decrease, showing an alarming trend in current temperatures.
3. the difference between unadjusted and adjusted temperatures will show a high level of correlation with global warming. a much better correlation than with CO2.
4. climate science will be found to be technically wrong but politically correct.
If one believes that the major ocean cycles are the key natural climate drivers then the 60-70 year historical Pacific and Atlantic Ocean SST anomaly cycle, pole to pole predicts that the SST’s of these oceans have peaked and may now trend to cooling until about 2030/2040 and not peak again to the same 2000/2010 level until 2060/2075 . They previously peaked about 1880 and again 1940/1945 and troughed 1910 and again 1975 .The current pause hence may last for many more decades and not just a decade or two as some now claim. Even if one accepts that the solar cycle is the main driver and not the oceans , a further 2 solar cycle cooling period is indicated by its cycle.
Hind-casting is of only of limited use for complex open chaotic systems, IMHO. Particularly when the model was designed around the very events it was designed to model.
We could construct a model that adequately hind-casts winning lottery numbers with 90% accuracy or better – but still has only a 1% success rate for future numbers – maybe better than a random guess, but not enough so to make solid predictions (though, in this particular case, it would be well worth the gamble – unlike with climate models’ long term predictions).
If a list of past winning lottery numbers counts as a model, I can guarantee 100% accuracy.
For followers who are not from the US, Yogi Berra was a baseball catcher for the New York Yankees in their golden era. Although reviled by the local press because he was not handsome and elegant like Joe DiMaggio, Berra was upbeat, one of the best hitting and most effective catchers of all time, was lietime married to a beautiful and faithful wife and generally got the last laugh on his detractors by living life fully and well.
Although he was ridiculed by by the MSM for being mentally slow and inarticulate, many of his utterances are now recognized for their uncanny kernel of truth, whether due to brilliance or random luck. A few that apply here:
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up some place else.”
“It’s like deja vu all over again.”
“The future ain’t what it use to be.”
“We made too many wrong mistakes.”
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
“All pitchers are liars or crybabies.” -substitute climatologists for pitchers
and of course “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
lifetime married….
10 World Series, 14 pennants, 3-time AL MVP,
The greatest catcher in the history of baseball – #8 – Yogi Berra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#mediaviewer/File:Yogi_Berra_1956.png
Baseball Digest, Sept. 1956
public domain, via:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra
A few more stats for the baseball inclined…..As a catcher, on a team with the likes of Mantle and DiMaggio, he led the team in RBIs for seven consecutive years. During that streak in 1950 he struck out only 12 times in 597 official at bats.
For 5 seasons he had more home runs than strikeouts. Since 1901 this has only occurred 45 times (with 20 HR or more). Berra did it 5 times. And always remained a humble, upbeat, and positive guy, more interested in winning each daily challenge and enjoying life than worrying about the sometimes vicious personal attacks of his critics.
You forgot “I never said most of the things I said”
I love Yogi’s comment about a famous New York restaurant. ” No one goes there anymore, it’s always too crowded”. (Paraphrased).
If you want a reliable decadal climate forecast “ who you going to call”. Certainly not the climate alarmists . The authors of the paper seem to claim that tools did not exist in the 1990,s to predict climate pauses. That is like saying we could not tell time then as modern electronic watches did not exist . Yet the all the records of natural variability factors existed decades if not a half a century before. In their scientific ignorance they belittled the impact of all natural variability factors that they are now embracing because their own global warming science failed to predict pauses…
wow, lots of snark here. drive by snarking. i did find this which is a good post.
“TBH, while in the context of the debate surrounding CAGW this looks post hoc rationalization, in reality it is sort of thing that routinely goes on in science, which is usually and generally self-correcting. Models need to be able to capture the range variability in order to say something useful about what our climate might do, regardless of our impact on it. This can be seen as an attempt to refine and improve modelling which is most definitely needed, since they clearly have to date done a rather poor job of characterizing accurately our climate, especially in terms of being informative for policy-making.”
1. Yes this sort of thing is routine, in fact it is part of the scientific method.
2. yes, they are damned if the models didnt work and damned if they try to improve them.
Steven Mosher
You assert
Please explain the “part of the scientific method” which is a post hoc excuse for model failure.
Richard
Exactly. To paraphrase Feynman: ““Climate scientists don’t make predictions, they make excuses!”
Another great example of “consensus science.”
Please tell me what parameters they improved; or why do these ten models now have better hind casting, and what do they mean for climate sensitivity in the future?
You see, I could have made 100% of the models better just by lowering the climate sensitivity to CO2, and placing in a well known at the time ocean cycle PDO and AMO factor. But common sense is not the goal of the climate science community is it Mr. Mosher.
Learning from past mistakes is a part of the scientific method. But that first requires an admission of being wrong.
Yes this sort of thing is routine, in fact it is part of the scientific method.
Oddly your right but you left out that for YEARS we were told this models worked and that anyone who questioned them was fool at best. And the fact they not proved the models can predict better than flipping a coin but still think that massive changes to peoples lives and the spending of huge amounts of money can be based on them. The ‘missing heat ‘ is a product of models failure and a very anti-science view that their unproven theory’s can very be wrong .
sorry, KNR, I see I largely repeated your observation…. shoulda refreshed!
Re-evaluation and synthesis is part of the scientific method. But it is incongruous behavior from a community which has allowed (or encouraged) its proponents to argue that anyone who at any time doubts their methodologies and/or conclusions can only be motivated by some combination of mental illness, toothless ignorance, greed, or criminal malice.
No, they are simply damned for boldly claiming that their unverified models are sufficiently accurate to justify programs that adversely impact the future of hundreds of millions of people and the way of life of every person on the planet.
This is true only if the scientist says with the initial model “This is my initial model, I think it is correct but since it is unproved, we must wait until proper testing/real life data proves it works before we trust it.”
On the other hand, when the scientists either say or refuse to correct politicians who say “This is my model and it is absolutely correct and you should change the world’s economy because of my model.” – then I get to call them frauds and not scientists and never give them another chance to “fix” the model.
Steven Mosher: 1. Yes this sort of thing is routine, in fact it is part of the scientific method.
2. yes, they are damned if the models didnt work and damned if they try to improve them.
Nobody has been damned. It has simply been pointed out that there is no good reason to believe that the current models constitute an actual improvement in predictive ability. The authors seem unaware of the need for continuous testing against out-of-sample data until “forecasting skill” has been demonstrated.
The snark is in response to a couple of decades of scientists claiming that there was nothing important missing from their models. Now they believe that there is nothing important missing from the current models. Nothing has been demonstrated to have been learned! They merely chose a few of the large number of ways to tweak their models to fit an extant data set after they learned that tweaking was necessary and what the results of the tweaking had to look like. Had they chosen, they could have eliminated CO2 from the models entirely and tweaked to the same result (more properly, somewhere in the midst of the range of results.)
Actually way off point! They never have admitted the models do not work. If your position is that the models work, why are you fiddling with them?
And that is the problem. They want their cake and eat it too. Fiddle with them without admitting they have not worked.
So today’s tools would have, could have, should have, predicted the pause, but today’s tools cannot predict the end of the pause.
So this paper is just more arm waving post hoc bs from the climate kooks.
The AMO & PDO’s have been known for 200+ years (granted we went sure what they were or what was causing them, but they were still known) – The renowned scientists finally recognized them in the late 1990’s and/or figured out what they were.
Our esteemed high priests “we are smarter than everyone else” climate scientists chose to ignore science and are now seeking an excuse for missing what was obvious common scientific sense to us dumb layman.
So we still cant model PDO and AMO, nor do we have the data to even claim with any assurance that the deep ocean is warming (or cooling), nor can we explain why the heat went from collecting in the atmosphere to hiding in the ocean… BUT if we had todays tools back in the 90s wed totally be able to predict a pause!!! PFFFT. This is NOT science…
Just when you thought the excuses could not get any more absurd, they do. Laughable in the real world.. Imagine me telling a client 5 years after I cost him with a bad forecast, I could have forecasted that now. What arrogance. Its astounding
Gerald Meehl, in “On the Waterfront”
And by the way, what is their forecast, not for 2050, but for 2020, 2025, 2030.. I am out with mine and have been out with it since 2007 ( cooling back to where it was in 1978 via satellite)
The schizophrenia, hypocrisy and mendacity of these climate clowns is astounding. The entire adventure has been is is today peddled with the false assertion that natural causes cannot have and do not explain the prior warming. That there’s high certainty in most or all of the warming is human caused.
Now while they continue that chant they are simultaneously attempting to redefine the natural causes which over powered the supposed AGW as also AGW.
“Almost all of the heat trapped by additional greenhouse gases during this period has been shown to be going into the deeper layers of the world’s oceans.”
In science, what does “has been shown” mean? Is that the same as proven, scientifically measured, data demonstrated or anything like evidence?
Or is “has been shown” merely made up crap?
Also, is this claim of robust modern tools and fresh hind-casting intended to bolster the convenient claim that the pause may last just long enough for no one to be held accountable?
If modern climate model tools are trained to support both AGW and the pause life is good?
This way as the length of pause grows to greatly exceed the relatively short (late 70s-late 90s) warming period our climate friends will be saying it was entirely expected while continuing the alarmists mission.
My corporate budgets are always match the final numbers – especially when I do the budget 6 months after the year end!
it is so hilarious, the point is not the pause of course but what surprises me most is they don’t question the meaning of having hindcast past temperatures “well” ignoring such factors.
“However, the naturally occurring variability in 10 of those simulations happened, by chance, to line up with the internal variability that actually occurred in the observations. These 10 simulations each showed a hiatus much like what was observed from 2000 to 2013, even down to the details of the unusual state of the Pacific Ocean.”
“Meehl pointed out that there is no short-term predictive value in these simulations, since one could not have anticipated beforehand which of the simulations’ internal variability would match the observations.”
Why don’t they present the results of the 10 “recreations” and see what these predict in the future and see how they lined up prior to 1950 or do they not show catastrophic warming ahead and thus, no “predictive value.”
Waste public money much?
“There are indications from some of the most recent model simulations that the hiatus could end in the next few years,” Meehl added, “though we need to better quantify the reliability of the forecasts produced with this new technique.”
Do they happen to present summaries of all the “indications” from all of the most recent simulations?
The highlighted “link” appears to me to be an email address.
Just think how much better they would have been able to forecast the record of 2015-2025 based on the knowledge that they gain by 2030! It’s a part of the self-correcting nature of science. It also gives hope that by 2030 a good plan of action for 2015-2025 might be available.
Meanwhile, with flooding again in Kashmir and Pakistan, could someone take an interest in improving the flood control and irrigation infrastructure up there? Phoenix might think along those lines as well. California is having its worst drought in about 100+ years; we shouldn’t have to wait long for the worst flooding since, oh, sometime between 1840 and 1900. Is California preparing for it? Would the line of the “bullet train to nowhere” survive the flooding? Might Californians come up with a plan to recover/replace all those dead and dying fruit and nut orchards?
So the authors are stating:
“Our modern tools are good enough to predict in hindsight, but not good enough to predict in the future.
They can’t forcast the length of the current”pause” even with their”future tools”
By the way by everyone calling it ‘the pause” they have already won the P.R. battle.
If I had a time machine, I coulda killed Hitler!
Considering their prophecies keep coming out wrong, as Hillary would say, “What difference does it make?”