Guest Opinion by Dr. Tim Ball
Claims that weather forecasts are reasonably accurate up to 48 hours are based on measured results for fair weather. Results for severe weather, which are really what is important for people, are very poor. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a worse record for both. Every prediction/projection since their first Report in 1990 has been wrong, with claims for more severe weather part of that failure. They fail because of fundamental errors in assumptions and mechanics.
Essex and McKitrick identified the challenge of turbulence in building climate models.
Climate research is anything but a routine application of classical theories like fluid mechanics, even though some may be tempted to think it is.
Furthermore, experiment and theory have been struggling since the 19th century, literally for generations, with a complicated behavior of fluids call turbulence.
The experiments are bedeviled by the fact that a turbulent fluid is active on scales smaller than the size of the finest experimental probes. Thus the measurements themselves are not of the actual variables but of some kind of unspecified, instrument-dependent average of the variables, and only one small region of the fluid.
They are talking about turbulence at all scales. Severe weather is large-scale turbulence with basic triggers that convert laminar flow to turbulent flow. This is caused, by the following, among other conditions,
1. Rough terrain, such as the effect of the Rocky Mountains or the Andes on the Westerlies.
2. Transition of surface, such as from land to ocean, like in the Cape Hatteras area.
3. Transition of surface, such as from cool to warm ocean – this is the major driving mechanism in transformation of equatorial depressions to Tropical storms to hurricanes.
4. Different temperatures between air masses.
5. Different convergence and divergence along a Frontal zone.
Figure 1 shows a cross-section of energy balance from Pole to Pole.
Figure 1
It illustrates the average condition at present. Salient features include the areas of surplus and deficit energy and the point of zero energy balance (ZEB). It is different between the Hemispheres, 38N and 40S, because of different land-water ratios. The ZEB is coincident with some important boundaries.
· The snowline (summer and winter).
· The pole ward limit of trees.
· The location of the Circumpolar Vortex (Jet Stream).
· The major air mass boundary – the Polar Front.
Figure 2 shows the Polar Front as a simple division of the atmosphere between cold polar and warm tropical air. The pattern is the same for the Southern Hemisphere. It shows the approximate juxtaposition of the Jet Stream and the Front.
Figure 2
Because of the temperature difference across the Front, sometimes called the Zonal Index, it marks the area of most severe weather. These take the form of mid-latitude cyclones, with associated tornados. Intensity of the storm is directly related to the temperature and moisture contrast across the Front.
The IPCC argue that global warming is inevitable because CO2 levels will continue to rise from human activity. They also claim, warming will be greater in the polar region. If true, then temperature contrast across the Polar Front is lower and energy potential for severe weather reduced.
Figure 1 shows the average position of the ZEB, while Figure 4 shows the average seasonal latitudinal shift in the northern hemisphere, between approximately 35N in winter, and 65°N in summer.
Figure 4
Changes in these latitudes trigger changes in the dynamics created by rotational forces and the area of the surface affected. This is reflected in the changes to the angle of solar incidence variation caused by changing obliquity of the ecliptic (tilt). The Arctic and Antarctic Circles are at 66.5° N and S, the point at which the sun’s rays are tangential at Equinox. But this is only if you accept the angle of tilt as 23.5°. Almanacs list it currently at 23.4° and decreasing at 0.47” per century. The mean position of the ZEB shifts more as the global energy balance changes.
The mid-latitude cyclones that form as wave like patterns and migrate along the Polar Front, are major storm systems that occur more frequently and can impact much larger areas than any other severe weather system. Figure 5 shows a comparison between a mid-latitude cyclone and a hurricane.
Figure 5
A large system can cover up to 5000 km, with damaging winds, heavy rain, snow and freezing rain. Historic records of damage from these storms, is well documented for the US by David Ludlum . Similarly, details of such extreme examples for Europe include the 1588 storm that destroyed the Spanish Armada, well documented by J.A. Kington, and the storm of 1703 that hit England and Europe. Daniel Defoe traveled around England recording the damage in his book The Storm.
Systems are also important in mixing air between the surplus and deficit energy sectors, horizontally and vertically. Intensity of these systems is also defined by the temperature contrast across the Front. In the list of triggers (above) item 5 lists divergence and convergence as mechanism for development. Figure 6 shows the relationship between these and the surface development of the cyclone. As the wave like system develops a low pressure center is formed and a rotational effect is generated. The cold air dictates its momentum, because it is denser and heavier than the warm air. The Warm Front is defined by cold air retreating, and the Cold Front by cold air advancing
Figure 6
The advancing Cold Front acts like a bulldozer pushing already unstable convective cells, cumulonimbus, into extreme instability creating conditions for spawning tornados. Since the cold air is dominant then any decrease in its temperature relative to the warm air is going to have an effect.
An indicator of the difficulty, with turbulence created phenomena, is what happens with mid-latitude cyclones. A full cycle involves four stages.
1. Cyclogenesis, initiation of the wave.
2. Mature Stage with maximum low pressure and wind speeds.
3. Occluded Stage when the Cold Front advances rapidly and lifts the Warm Front above the surface.
4. Frontolysis when a small pool of warm air is trapped above the surface and the surface low pressure dissipates.
Cyclogenesis occurs quite often, but few systems go through the few cycle. An important question is how do you model a system that starts out sub grid size, but may expand to over a few grids?
A shift from Zonal to Meridional Flow in the Rossby Wave pattern of the Circumpolar Vortex will affect all the factors listed (1-5) that trigger mid-latitude cyclones. Development, track and intensity of these cyclones in the North Atlantic was a major focus of H. H. Lamb’s research beginning with his 1950 paper, “Types and spells of weather around the year in the British Isles”. Lamb also knew that a latitudinal shift in the Polar Front results in a change in the Coriolis Effect (creating an apparent force), as it decreases from zero at the Equator to maximum at the Poles.
Essex and McKitrick identified turbulence as a serious challenge for understanding climatology. They spoke to the problem at all levels,
…experiment and theory have been struggling since the 19th century, literally for generations, with a complicated behavior of fluids called turbulence. When a fluid is turbulent, (nearly all fluids are), not only are we unable to provide solutions of Navier – Stokes to confirm the behaviour theoretically, but we are also unable to experimentally measure the conditions in the fluid in such a way that we can fully capture what is going on.
The major factors inducing turbulence in laminar flow, and thereby severe weather, are the rough surface and contact zones of hot and cold air and water. One of the largest contact zones is the Polar Front between cold polar air and warm tropical air. Intensity of severe weather along the Front is a function of the temperature difference between the air masses. The IPCC claim this will decrease with global warming as the polar air warms more than the tropical air. Theoretically this creates fewer storms, but the IPCC are predicting more. So far the evidence of less severe weather seems to support the basic concepts, not the IPCC.
“The IPCC claim this will decrease with global warming as the polar air warms more than the tropical air. ”
So what happened to the hot spot?
WEB POLL
http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/
“Is the InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change right that, on current fossil use ‘projectories’, we are heading for a global warming of four or five degrees by century’s end?
I voted NO!
Do not confuse polar warming amplification with modeled tropical troposphere warming. Different phenomena given different reasons.
Of course, the inconvenient fact that neither is being observed is, well, inconvenient.
At the time of my vote, it was 85%…NO.
According to the Gaurdian, HotWhopper etc, us d*n*ers are a dwindling species. Once again, facts and data trump BS.
“I voted NO!” = conclusive proof you have no clue what science is and how it works
With amount of uncertainty, the fact that 4 degrees is RCP 8.5, with which most scientists disagree, the question is absurd. The science is NOT settled. Have a look at all the underlying parameters that must be TRUE for RCP 8.5 to be achieved.
Well yes if you mean that science is not a vote. So presumably you agree that those who make claims about consensus and 97% of scientists also show that they know nothing about what science is and how it works?
“So presumably you agree that those who make claims about consensus and 97% of scientists also show that they know nothing about what science is and how it works?”
You don’t seem to get it either. A vote from the average Joe (that is, individuals without any expertise in the field) is absurd when compared to 97% 0f peer reviewed published papers by climate scientists presenting data and formulating conclusions consistent AGW
Its like comparing a survey at the football with the advice from medical professionals when deciding on the best cancer treatment
Concerning cancer treatment, I would definitely trust the opinion of the football fans rather than that of “medical professionals”: football fans have no ax to grind and no government funds to be granted for cancer research.
“Concerning cancer treatment, I would definitely trust the opinion of the football fans rather than that of “medical professionals””
Well that says it all doesn’t it, I suppose you are a flat Earther as well
Sure, Earth is a somewhat flattened spheroid, there was no global warming for 18 years despite the (mostly natural) increase in the CO2 concentration, and cancer research is one of the most corrupt areas of the thoroughly corrupt government-funded medical profession. Yes, it does say it all.
“…no global warming for 18 years…”
Only in the blogoshere and the brain dead
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/1029/
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/global-thermometer-still-climbing.html#.VFdU-Wcxgdw
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140121_Temperature2013.pdf
@JoNovice
“…no global warming for 18 years…”
Only in the blogos[p]here and the brain dead
According to the trend calculator by the Kidz @ SkS (who use the Foster and Rahmstorf, 2011 et al calculation methods), there has been statistically no warming for that 18 year period, 1996 to present, in all 5 major global temperature data-sets (forget the HADCRUT4 ‘hybird’, as there is no such thing).
GISSTEMP: 0.107 ±0.147 °C/decade (2σ)
NOAA: 0.083 ±0.142 °C/decade (2σ)
HADCRUT4: 0.088 ±0.134 °C/decade (2σ)
RSS: 0.023 ±0.177 °C/decade (2σ)
UAH: 0.120 ±0.179 °C/decade (2σ)
Can JoNovice please tell us exactly how much of that ~0.1°C/decade temperature increase since 1996 has been caused by man’s CO2 input?
“Can JoNovice please tell us exactly”
Only if you tell me why you chose 1996 to start, the classic cherry picked point always quoted. Lets do the calculations again from almost any other year, my choice is 1999 and lets get the last 15 years.You are so predictable with the memes you regurgitate. It like there’s only one brain between to lot of you
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/from:1999/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1999/to:2014/trend
Only if you tell me why you chose 1996 to start, the classic cherry picked point always quoted
Ummm…..2014 – (minus) 18 = 1996. The START date is NOW!
Do you really want to do 1999? Oakly Doekly. Lets do it!
GISTEMP: 0.099 ±0.184 °C/decade (2σ)
NOAA: 0.066 ±0.172 °C/decade (2σ)
HADCRUT4: 0.073 ±0.159 °C/decade (2σ)
RSS: 0.028 ±0.201 °C/decade (2σ)
UAH: 0.147 ±0.202 °C/decade (2σ)
Mmmmm…..still <0.1°C/decade. It's worse than you thought.
WfT HADCRUT4 hasn’t been updated since January 2014.
Oh, BTW…..it still shows a trend of <0.1°C.
But its not zero. So the last 15 years have been about 1/2 the long term (since 1950) average, and that only surface temperature. Lets see what happens in the next few years, it may even go above the long term average.
Thank you for proving yourself wrong
“Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.13 and 0.22 °C per decade since 1979”
Actually more like 3/4 of the average since 1979. So not really even below the IPCC trend line projection
“The final draft projected warming at 0.4-0.7 Cº over 30 years (green arrows), equivalent to just 0.10-0.23 Cº/decade. Diagram based on IPCC (2013, Fig. 11.25a).”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/01/ipcc-silently-slashes-its-global-warming-predictions-in-the-ar5-final-draft/
“JoNovace November 3, 2014 at 3:27 am
“Can JoNovice please tell us exactly”
Only if you tell me why you chose 1996 to start, the classic cherry picked point always quoted. Lets do the calculations again from almost any other year, my choice is 1999 and lets get the last 15 years.You are so predictable with the memes you regurgitate. It like there’s only one brain between to lot of you”
These alarmists are so predictable!
They talk about cherry picking in a climate system that has large periodical cooling and warming periods and yet base their hypothesis on just a few cherry picked decades of increasing temperature trend (the trend is currently declining from its peak and will continue to decline unless there is a major upswing in temperatures shortly).
If you are going to cherry pick at least do it from a more realistic longer start point.
So JoNovace how have the temperatures changed since the MWP, the Roman Warm Period, and the Holocene Optimum? What does this tell you about the ‘long term’ trend, not just a few decades?
You do realise that, if we looked back at such a short period as the alarmists use in say a thousand years, without actual temperature records, we would have next to no idea what the temperature and trend was in that period.
Mind you the descendants of Mann might look at his ‘hide the decline’ trees and pontificate that we were actually in a declining temperature period. That is how bonkers your hypothesis is at the moment.
We do not have the records for a long enough time period to have any real idea what is happening and the future trend, you need to wait a bit (like a few thousand years) before starting to pontificate your certainty.
Alan
“So JoNovace how have the temperatures changed since the MWP, the Roman Warm Period, and the Holocene Optimum? What does this tell you about the ‘long term’ trend, not just a few decades?”
It doesnt tell us anything about AGW.
“(the trend is currently declining from its peak and will continue to decline unless there is a major upswing in temperatures shortly).”
Is it really?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/from:2011/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2011/to:2014/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:12/from:2011/plot/gistemp/from:2011/to:2014/trend
“…..pontificate that we were actually in a declining temperature period. That is how bonkers your hypothesis is at the moment. ”
I am not as brainy as you guys think you are, I don’t have my own hypothesis plucked out of thin air, I rely on experienced scientist to guide my conclusions
“JoNovace
“…..pontificate that we were actually in a declining temperature period. That is how bonkers your hypothesis is at the moment. ”
I am not as brainy as you guys think you are, I don’t have my own hypothesis plucked out of thin air, I rely on experienced scientist to guide my conclusions”
Ahh so we we have someone who admits that they are just regurgitating someone else’s thoughts and is someone of ‘the Faith’
Well done, very useful!
Perhaps you would like to address my point about the ‘hide the decline’ trees. Mann and others used this paleo record, inter alia, to establish his ‘hockey stick’ As you should know after showing increasing temperatures, in the period from 1960 a period the alarmists are largely basing their AGW hypothesis on the trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures.
They got round this by excising this part of the record and grafting on the actual temperature record. However, even you, in your lack of independent thought, can see that if we looked back at this period from the distant future, without the actual temperature record, you would assume temperatures and the trend were going downwards if you trusted the trees as Mann and his followers have declared they do.
That is why the current hypothesis is bonkers, without actual temperature records for the past, we have no real idea what was happening in such short periods of a few decades a la the period the warmists are currently relying on.
Does that make you think at all or is La La La going off in your brain at the moment?
Alan
“They got round this by …….”
Ah yes, when all other argument fails, fall back on the “worldwide conspiracy” prop. I thought it was about science?
I’m happy to address any referenced data or conclusions you want to present but I’m not interested in third-hand he said, she said.
“It doesnt tell us anything about AGW”.
The point is.. The cause of the 0.4 to 0.6 C warming from 1979 to 2014 (satellites) is indistinguishable from natural variability. If a specific cause could be isolated (i.e. we know all the variables), the IPCC models would be MUCH more accurate. Global temperatures have flattened (1998-2014) during the time Gore and IPCC claim they should be increasing rapidly.
You really are a Novice aren’t you Jo? First you tell me you prefer to use a 15 year period and than you post a WfT graph from 2011 to Jan 2014 (3 years) that still shows <0.1°C warming. What would you say if I told you that HADCRUT4 only shows ~0.8°C increase in global temps since 1850 (164 years)? Yep, that's it, < 1°C in 164 years.
JoNovice, can you tell me what caused Marble Bar in Australia to have 160 consecutive days above 100°F (37.7°C), with most of those above 104°F (40°C) in 1923?
This is a world record that hasn’t even been close to being broken anywhere on this planet, including Death Valley, USA (134 days in 1974).
“….trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures…..”
Tree rings don’t show temperature, what is your source for this? Tree ring may correlate with temperature if other factors are removed.
“1960 a period the alarmists are largely basing their AGW hypothesis on the trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures.”
…but we know the temperatures were rising so this is nonsense. This is why tree rings dont “show temperature” as you put it.
h/t to Steve Goddard for the graph (didn’t realise it was going to show in my post).
Tree rings don’t show temperature, what is your source for this? Tree ring may correlate with temperature if other factors are removed.
Ask M. Mann…. 😉
“What would you say if I told you that HADCRUT4 only shows ~0.8°C increase in global temps since 1850 (164 years)? Yep, that’s it, < 1°C in 164 years."
Hi Bruce, I would say "thats nice, so what"
"JoNovice, can you tell me what caused Marble Bar in Australia to have 160 consecutive days above 100°F (37.7°C)"
I would say it was a hot summer Bruce, what would you say?
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=aus&station=004106&dtype=raw&period=summer&ave_yr=T
You will see that Marble Bar actually has a slight negative long term Summer average temp trend
I would say it was a hot summer Bruce, what would you say? LMAO!!
October to April covers spring, summer and autumn…….let alone summer. Tell me JoNovice, who many days in a year?
Yes its a hot place but it has been also becoming wetter, particularly in summer. Its in the tropics and affected by hurricanes
JoNovace, surface global warming has stalled. There is a hiatus, plateau, pause or whatever you want to call it. It is a dead parrot.
WHAT??????
Tell me the last time Marble Bar had a hurricane?
And since when has it been in the tropics?
I’m sure the locals would like to know of this information.
If you want my honest opinion Jimbo, I would say AGW has ****ing snuffed it. Has met it’s maker and is pushing up the daisies. (daisy’s?)
What you should be looking at is the difference between the IPCC predictions and what was actually observed, not what was actually observed versus the null hypothesis that there was no warming at all.
I would say it was a hot summer Bruce, what would you say?
Oops, forgot to mention, CO2 levels were a lot lower than today. You still haven’t answered my original question BTW, Can JoNovice please tell us exactly how much of that ~0.1°C/decade temperature increase since 1996 has been caused by man’s CO2 input?
“Tell me the last time Marble Bar had a hurricane?”
I dont know how many hundred that is since 1906, maybe you can count them for me
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/cyclones.cgi?region=aus&syear=1906&eyear=2006&cyclone=all&loc=0
And since when has it been in the tropics?
Since Gondwanaland land broke up about 150 million years ago
21°10′12″S 119°44′49″E
Do know what Hiatus actually means? Ill give you clue, it does not mean stop.
OK, you got me on that one JoNovice. Marble Bar is in the tropics…….just.
BTW…..they are called cyclones here in Aus.
BUT……what the hell has that got to do with Marble Bar recording 160 days over 100°F in 1923?
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/cyclones.cgi?region=aus&syear=1922&eyear=1924&loc=0
Do you know how to read and comprehend? Read slower next time. So you disagree with the following climate scientists?
Dr. B. G. Hunt – Climate Dynamics – February 2011, Dr. Gerald A. Meehl – Nature Climate Change – 18th September 2011, Professor Masahiro Watanabe – Geophysical Research Letters – 28 June 2013, Professor Rowan Sutton – Independent – 22 July 2013, Dr. Kevin Trenberth – NPR – 23 August 2013 who all said HIATUS or
Quotes HERE again!
Oh dear, Jo, you’re getting desperate, aren’t you?
I can smell it clear across the Interwebs!
It’s definitely not going your way.
““Tell me the last time Marble Bar had a hurricane?”
I dont know how many hundred that is since 1906, maybe you can count them for me”
Since the average return time for hurricanes is on the order of several decades for coastal locations with a wet tropical climate, and Marble Bar is about 150 km inland in arid Pilbarra the answer is almost certainly zero.
““…no global warming for 18 years…”
Only in the blogoshere and the brain dead”
Indeed hence the dozens of papers that acknowledge it and try to explain it with a wide range of contradictory stances. Oh wait nevermind, its undeniably legit hence the dozen of papers that acknowledge it and try to explain the lack of warming.
JoNovace – sounds a whole lot like Miriam O’Brien…
Who moved the goalpost? Who, who, bah-wah, who?
Sorry, that should be ‘How many days in a year’. (couldn’t see the keyboard properly…..had tears in my eyes)
You’re more patient than I am. I gave him a ZERO credibility score as soon as he said :
“A vote from the average Joe (that is, individuals without any expertise in the field) is absurd when compared to 97% 0f peer reviewed published papers by climate scientists presenting data and formulating conclusions consistent AGW”
I mean really, the average Joe who can read knows that Cook et al 2013 clearly states that their 97% applied ONLY to 33% of the papers in question…a group of papers that can only be produced if the search parameters do NOT include the word “anthropogenic” or the term “mad-made”. 66% of the papers did NOT “formulate conclusions consistent AGW”.
NO now up to 90%.
We’re a dying race…. 😉
Pack your bags. It’s almost over.
Kisses and hugs for everybody.
“Claims that weather forecasts are reasonably accurate up to 48 hours are based on measured results for fair weather. Results for severe weather, which are really what is important for people, are very poor.”
Would you care to present any evidence for this?
Funding has been confirmed for a £97m supercomputer to improve the Met Office’s weather forecasting and climate modelling.
The facility will work 13 times faster than the current system, enabling detailed, UK-wide forecast models with a resolution of 1.5km to be run every single hour, rather than every three.
It will be built in Exeter during 2015 and become operational next September.
The Met Office said it would deliver a “step change” in forecast accuracy.
“It will allow us to add more precision, more detail, more accuracy to our forecasts on all time scales for tomorrow, for the next day, next week, next month and even the next century,” said Met Office chief executive Rob Varley.
As well as running UK-wide and global forecasting models more frequently, the new technology will allow particularly important areas to receive much more detailed assessment.Met Office to build £97m supercomputer, BBC News Science and Environment 28 October 2014
Hmmm – Logic say:
If the new supercomputer makes it possible to add more accuracy to forecasts next week, next month and even next century,
how come that CO2-experts using simple models and relatively ordinary computersystems still tries to make believe they know what will happen the next 30-50 years?
Have they looked at the stars or used magic cards or ball?
The facility will work 13 times faster than the current system
=========
the wrong answer, delivered 13 times faster.
We have a wonderful new computing center in the USA, The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) https://nwsc.ucar.edu/ It’s in Wyoming, but is for the use of the climate modelers down here in Colorado, especially in that hotbed of solving the threat of coal-fired CO2 molecules to our very existence and the existence of our friends, Ursus maritimus. So why did they put this 2-megawatt calculator 100 miles away in the woods of Wyoming? Well, electricity is cheaper there. Colorado mandates that rising percentages of our power comes from “Green” (as in $$$) energy sources, while coal-rich Wyoming has no such constraints. So their electricity is cheaper. We have coal fired electricity running the models that show us how bad production of coal-fired electricity is.
It’s the way it is when a falsified thesis turns to Faith….
The new faith of IPCC: Humans are unvierse’s centre
Falsified? It only takes one nonwhite dot on a white paper to make the paper non-white.
It only takes one part of a thesis proven not sound and/or false/lacking correct figures to prove a thesis falsified. Theories of Science aren’t faith. Facts rules over fiction.
Nora, did you see their announcement of the New ‘ENDGame’ model they are going to run. From the PDF here – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/s/h/ENDGameGOVSci_v2.0.pdf
New Dynamics has served us well over more than a decade: not only have we continued to improve the skill of our large scale forecasts at the rate of 1 day lead time per decade (so for example today’s 3 day forecast is as accurate as the 2 day forecast was 10 years ago) but we have seen the introduction of a very high resolution (1-1/2 km) model over the UK which provides unprecedented levels of detail to our forecasters.
So at this rate they will be able to get a 7 day forecast just a accurate at the 2 day forecast in only 40 more years. Now if they could just get an accurate 2 day forecast they might have something to sell.
Yes I did.
As one who had a Systemprogrammerexam in 1971 I shook my head wondering how it is possible for anyone to believe the programmers of such nonsense to have educated without knowing basic knowledge of writing a system. They lack logic analytic skill if they believe that a faster computer should and could meet up with better forecast IF the parameters used for the algoritms needed will not be better than todays mixing of “historic” values and incomplete (sometimes manipulated) figures of all premisses needed to take into the equations….
As one who written a D-essay in History (master essay but I never took out master in History on paper) I can’t understand how it’s possible for them to continue to lie about disasters in the past. Read for example of a study being presented in Science showing that lack of oxygene many million years ago killed a lot av preanimal species….. That’s like writing and presenting a “new” thesis of what’s been known in geology and archaeology as well as in some parts of Biology at least 100 year.
I do understand that politicians and a lot of the media people never read Theories of Science nor about the help disciplines of Archaeologic analysis. That’s one thing. But that doesn’t explain why IPCC continues to use incomplete non science studies over and over again.
You are asking for ‘evidence’ for this as if you think that someone would have written a paper about it. It has face validity. It snowed in the South East New England, blizzard conditions in some places but the models did not agree on amounts and where or if it would snow until it was snowing. This is not uncommon, asking a forecaster will it be cold enough for snow tonight is not easy for a forecaster, unless it is already happening or there is a belt of snow. Forecasters will give a likelihood of heavy convective rain tomorrow but not precisely where that rain will be, whereas they will forecast that it will be warm and dry everywhere. Forecasts like there is a tornado watch in this box the size of two states,but for actual notification of a tornado, radar is used for real time warning. You just accept that vagueness and inaccuracy of forecasts of bad weather as that is the way it is without thinking about it.
Remember the “forecasts” when the so called scientists ship in december last year was stuck in Antarctic water?
Er…look at forecasts and then see what happens. It’s not actually necessary to have a huge amount of funding and to torture statistics.
The Great Storm of 1987 which we were told categorically was not going to happen the day before it struck.
Crucially the met office were critically dependent on computer models for data having decommissioned the weather ships in the western approaches. Presumably this helped the funding of their shiny new Cray supercomputer.
As we all know computer models always trump real data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987
same thing happened in Oz. It was found that simply forecasting yesterday’s weather today was more accurate than traditional forecasts, so they got rid of the traditional forecasts.
while this is fine for city folks, it is not so fine for mariners. we were crossing from New Caledonia to Oz in a 40 foot yacht. wife and 2 young children aboard when a cyclone developed without warning to the north of us. no mention whatsoever on Ozzie weather.
We were lucky, it stalled just north of us and we escaped under it. Two Ozzie boats were not so lucky and at least one was lost with all hands. Would have been around 1990. One of the boats was rockin robin or something similar. never met them, only heard them on the ham radio. I think the Ozzie’s tried a helicopter rescue but wind and sea conditions were too severe.
So the Fundamental Error is…..?
Trusting the UN at anything is my 2 cents.
You say “but few systems go through the few cycle” I think you mean full cycle
The closer the predictors get to 50\% chance of:
Rain, Snow Clear Skies, Cloudy Skies, Thunderstorms, High Winds, Calm conditions etc.. the more “accurate” they get – yeah right…
None of this matters…the simpsons today just went with fracking causes burning water and this week the new Constantine had a miner burned on the shower with Constantine saying “It’ll be normal with fracking this is a mining town”
Is it just a coincidence or are they intentionally brainwashing people?
See my new ebook essays No Fracking Way, This Rock could Not power the world, and Reserve Reservations for illustrated factual replies. Maybe the Homer Simpson thing was another DUooh.
In the past, the left-wing media would print this kind of rubbish and few but the left-wing “experts” in academia who deliberately kept quiet knew it was trash. Today we have the internet, and almost everyone can find out in a few seconds what trash the left-wing media and “experts” in academia feed us.
This is what’s so crazy about the CAGW hypothesis…
The physics and empirical evidence show warming global temps should actually cause LESS, severe weather incidence and intensity, and even IPCC’s 2013 AR5 report admits severe weather trends have been flat for 50~100 years: hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tornadoes, droughts, floods, thunderstorms, tropical storms, sub-tropical storms, etc.,…
And yet leftist political hacks and CAGW Warmunists still insist severe weather is getting worse and worse….
We’re witnessing the death of science, logic and reason. It makes me sick to my stomach to see such insanity on display..
Considering what we have just witnessed with the CDC and ebola, it seems science has died and rigor mortis is setting in.
Marcrena– Yes, the inept and imbecilic CDC “experts” suggesting we must allow Ebola infected patients and doctors into America to prevent Ebola from infecting Americans is a typical example of science being sacrificed on the altar of Political Correctness and the complete abandonment of known epidemiological protocols….
The Left has gone completely insane…
Yep, it would appear that “stupid is the new normal”!
back of the envelope calculation shows the atmosphere is a carnot cycle engine with a thermodynamic efficiency of about 20%. the IPCC predicted temp rise at the poles reduces this efficiency to about 18%.
the atmosphere cannot do more work if the efficiency is reduced, which means that average wind speeds must fall. the opposite of what the IPCC predicts.
“back of the envelope calculation ” vs peer science, you got me convinced.
Now that the climate gang has reduced peer review to a mutual admiration society, back-of-the-envelope looks pretty good. It was good enough for Fermi when he wanted a quick and dirty estimate.
You worked with Fermi, I don’t believe it. For a start you would have learned something about science if you had.
Fermi’s reputation regarding back-of-the-envelope estimates is quite well known. No need to have worked with Fermi to discover it. You display a high degree of ignorance not knowing that and not being smart enough to check it out before making a fool of yourself in public. So don’t start throwing stones.
“..before making a fool of yourself in public”
If you believe that back of the envelope calculation compare to peer science,
I think on balance you are contributing enough of that for both of us
‘If you believe that back of the envelope calculation compare to peer science…’
Now that’s a straw man! Congratulations; stick around long enough and you might learn something useful.
Oh what do we have here ? It appears we have a new cult troll to play with. And they are already showing their lack of integrity by hijacking a known skeptics handle.
OK, lets play… show us your “science” troll.
Be specific and be clear … or don’t bother playing troll.
Your turn troll….
@ JoNovace
Here was some peer sciencey that you can use for comparison, to wit:
—————-
“Opposition to Parker’s hypothesis on the solar wind was strong. The paper he submitted to the Astrophysical Journal in 1958 was rejected by two reviewers. It was saved by the editor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (who later received the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics).” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind
“Opposition to Parker’s hypothesis on the solar wind was strong”
So tell me if I got it right.
Peer review does not work because the scientific consensus is still that solar wind doesn’t exist despite the evidence from the blogs
or
It does work because his paper was published and the data tested and accepted.
Talk about shooting your own argument in the foot
Where is the personal attack, what I have written is a statement if fact. Which part is not correct and I will gladly retract it.
“Where is the personal attack, what I have written is a statement if fact.”
JoNovace
November 2, 2014 at 10:07 pm
“I voted NO!” = conclusive proof you have no clue what science is and how it works”
2:04am “Well that says it all doesn’t it, I suppose you are a flat Earther as well”
2:19am “…no global warming for 18 years…”
Only in the blogoshere and the brain dead”
3:27am “It like there’s only one brain between to lot of you”
12:28am “You worked with Fermi, I don’t believe it. For a start you would have learned something about science if you had.”
3:46am “The word oxymoron springs to mind”
1:46am “What ignorance and arrogance!!”
That’s how you present FACTS troll. Start retracting, as promised.
Im sorry Lawrence, I admit there is that you are a flat Earther. All the other statements are supported by evidence.
Apology for the poor typing. The first sentence should read “there is no evidence that..”
As an engineer, who indulges in a level of computer modelling, I have been most concerned that young graduate engineers, & not a few recently qualified ones, have very little feel for what comes out the other end of their computers, all too ready to believe the print out, mainly as a result of very little “back of an envelope” calculations being done these days. Too much reliance is made on computers providing “the answer”, they are just a glorified calculator in any case. I fear somebody is going to be killed one day soon as a result!
I’ve included the calculations below. they are simple to check. with the internet we can all do instant peer review.
point out where my calculations are wrong if you dispute my findings.
quite simply the efficiency of the earth’s heat engine is reduced by global warming. this reduced efficiency must cause a reduction in wind speed.
Plainly you have not read and studied the Climategate emails or you would lack the touching faith you express in peer review. The Team very kindly documented their explicit intent to corrupt the process. The sad fact about many fields in modern science (not just Climate “Science”) is that there has been a profound increase in retractions of “peer reviewed” papers. Were peer review as reliable and trustworthy as your posts indicate you believe it to be, there would be no sceptic population happily poking holes in the words of talking heads. Were the talking heads willing to engage in actual scientific discussion – not debate, just discussion – there actually be a consensus.
One of the truly sad realities revealed in the Climategate papers is that the “Team” and the sceptics had (have?) no real disagreements about the problems in climate “science.” The conflict historically is centered on access to limited funding and publication venues, not the science, such as it is. The team secured funding access by creating a “narrative,” in no way scientific, that plays to the peculiar ingrained belief of much of humanity that doom in some exotic form is just around the corner, and that if some portion of humanity could only get its act together and be responsible, the responsible (righteous) people would inherit the earth and all its wealth.
The narrative is religious in character, not scientific. It offers politicians especially, precisely the opportunity they seek to jump on a “righteous” cause and hang on all the way to political office. The narrative also offers media the entertainment and drama values they need to draw viewers and readers. Watch “The Day After Tomorrow” if you doubt this. The film even delineates what is “righteous” belief, and what “sins” of humanity are being “punished.” In short, at present many regions of science, climate “science” not the least, are engaging in science fiction rather than science.
“OK, lets play… show us your “science” troll.
Be specific and be clear …”
You only need to look up the page, but I’m struggling to find anything of worth that you have contributed
Ha Ha, I’m sorry, you seem to have misunderstood. When I say “science” I don’t mean the usual cultist bloviations and personal attacks you’re accustomed to spewing (seen as I “look up the page”), I was referring to some actual proven FACTS that you might like to present, instead of just distracting and attacking people who actually understand the science beyond the CACW sermons you’ve been fed.
Would you like to try again troll ?
CAGW … oops
“…some actual proven FACTS…”
Well is a proven fact that you don’t understand science if you are asking for proven science facts. The word oxymoron springs to mind.
So, no science .. just personal attacks ? Surely you can do better than that, can’t you ?
Sorry it ended up in the wrong spot
Where is the personal attack, what I have written is a statement if fact. Which part is not correct and I will gladly retract it.
Here you are Lawrence, what do you make of this graph
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/enso-global-temp-anom/201213.png
LMAO, really !? So now after we spew personal attacks, deny those personal attacks that are presented in black and white in front of your face, make ANOTHER personal attack in response to those facts, we are NOW going to present a pretty half labeled graph and pretend we are about discussing the science ?
LOL You really are a fun toy aren’t you ?
Please, please don’t stop. Tell us more about your new found religion and how you will save us from ourselves if only we would see the light, er, I mean the heat.
Lawrence, I sorry you struggled to find the link. Here it is for you
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/13
Thread-bombing alert!
“Annual Global Temperatures 1950-2012”??? There was no accurate global data prior to 1979. This data was probably generated by a computer model, and we all know how accurate they are.
Whether I’m a flat earthier a science troll or whatever, doesn’t matter. Let’s look at the facts. Is the Inconvenient Truth, still stuck in ice down under? How many ‘stronger and more frequent hurricanes ‘ have hit the US since 2004? Explain the record ice levels in Antarctica when just the opposite was forecast? Explain why Arctic ice is not only still there, but recovering? Tell me why the Great Lakes froze over last year? Where is all this mysterious heat? Why hasn’t a ‘ dozy ‘ a an el Niño appeared? Jo the point is that you aren’t thinking, you are just rehashing the crap put out by ‘ peer reviewed people ‘ . I wouldn’t call them scientists.
If that’s not enough, the actual math that the IPCC does to correlate temps with co2 isn’t that hard. Do the math yourself. I trust the math and the IPCC is wrong. There is no Hiatuses in the IPCC’s journal, no pause, the heat has to be somewhere and it isn’t.
JoNovace:
Why do take off from Jo Nova”s name? Is this some ploy that you think will work here? Or do you think to discredit Jo Nova somehow?
“Apology for the poor typing.”
No need to apologize. Most of us have already figured out that you probably find a keyboard an intellectual challenge.
NB. This is a statement supported by evidence.
OHH OOOH! Me! Me!
PoNoface, I see a graph that DEMONSTRATES almost ZERO warming for the past 16 years, and no “significant warming” of more than 2 tenths of a degree for almost 20! No one here, that I know of, denies that the globe naturally gets warmer during interglacial periods….just like it always has. Do you deny that?
I also see a graph that doesn’t prove anything at all with regards to anthropogenic cause/effect. That the best you got?
If climate is ultimately an accumulation of weather, and weather is ultimately the result of numerous interactions of fluids and air masses and solar winds and terrain and flora and fauna and volcanoes and clouds and particulates, and on and on, then is it possible, even in principle, to accurately predict what those interactions will do?
If, ultimately, the atmosphere is the result of this air parcel interacting with that air parcel, and each air parcel, in turn, is an interaction of the molecules in the air parcel, and those molecular interactions, in turn, are the result of electron interactions and absorption spectra and, at some level, ultimately subject to the uncertainty principle which holds that we cannot know with precision both the location of a particle and its trajectory, then is it possible, even in principle, to accurately model the interaction?
True, at some level we can model things that exhibit behavior at a macro scale. There are many things in physics that can be usefully and accurately modeled, sometimes with a great deal of precision, or certainly with at least enough precision to be “good enough” for our purposes.
Are GCM’s in that category? Are they “good enough” to provide a reasonably accurate and fundamentally useful picture of how the climate will look 50 or 100 years from now? Or is the very idea of modeling climate, with the multitude of poorly understood interactions, the myriad interactions taking place (ultimately) at a molecular and sub-molecular level, and projected out over a period of many decades — is the very idea a fool’s errand that will run aground against the rocky and unforgiving shores of the uncertainty principle, compounded from those individual molecules across the vastness of the Earth’s space and across the hazy distance of time?
“ultimately subject to the uncertainty principle which holds that we cannot know with precision both the location of a particle and its trajectory, then is it possible, even in principle, to accurately model the interaction?” utter straw-man nonsense. You don’t need to know with precision both the location of and trajectory of every water molecule in a river to model how it will behave during a flood.
No you don’t, but that doesn’t necessarily make the comment a strawman. You give up precision of the river’s behaviour during the flood only because a relatively few major factors controlling the flow of water downhill can be ascertained with a sufficiently high level of accuracy to determine where most of the effects will occur. Even then, you may be in for a surprise or two.
The climate of the earth, on the other hand, is a far more complex and chaotic system. It seems quite reasonable to question whether or not we can know with sufficient precision enough controlling factors to model it with the accuracy needed to predict beyond a low level of confidence what the weather will do hours, days or weeks hence. Do we need to go to the molecular, atomic and quantum levels (which I agree with you is a practical impossibility) to raise our confidence to 90% or 95%. I doubt it. But I suspect we need to go further than is possible now to get a high level of confidence beyond a couple of days or so.
“It seems quite reasonable to question whether or not”
Yes it does, but thats not what you are doing. You are saying it can’t be done and offer no supporting evidence except that your brain told you so. What ignorance and arrogance!!
t can’t be done because it is impossible to do, ….. to ACCURATELY model or predict weather conditions for greater than six (6) to ten (10) days in advance, …… simply because of the “uncertainty principle” that applies to the non-predictive, randomly occurring “emergent phenomena” associated with the different air masses moving across the surface.
A “probability rating” is as close as you can get to “actual”.
Samuel you have missed to point, climate modeling is not trying to predict the weather in the future.
climate models are trying to predict the average of weather. however, you cannot predict the average of a fractal distribution, because it has no meaningful average. the average is local only.
as a result of the non-constant mean, the law of large numbers and central limit theorem do not apply, and the average does not converge, making the long term average physically unpredictable, because there is no long term average on any scales meaningful to human beings.
Once again Fred took the words right off of my fingers and saved me the trouble of typing them. And the Multimodel Mean of the CMIP5 Perturbed Parameter Ensemble (per model) Means is even more Mean-ingless.
is the date displaced forward from 1850. Empirically, this curve almost perfectly interpolates all, let me repeat that, all of HADCRUT4 over the last 164 years. In particular, it does a much better job than the CMIP5 MME mean, which is bad enough both at hindcasting and forecasting that it fails an elementary hypothesis test in both directions, or would if a statistical analysis of the mean and variance of a collection of means of individually failing models had any reason to be subjected to a hypothesis test in the first place.
I’m working on an article for WUWT (and totally jammed teaching and advising this week so I may not finish it “soon”) but I do have two more ideas teed up for future articles. One is to present a direct deconstruction of the CMIP5 MME mean (I present an indirect reconstruction of figure 9.8a in AR5 in the first article) to illustrate the statistical fallacy of alleging that the MME mean means anything whatsoever. The other is to illustrate precisely what happens when one takes an “ensemble” of results computed by solving a chaotic/nonlinear system and then averages them. I have two or three examples of octave/matlab code I’ve written to model simple chaotic systems — much simpler than the climate — and it shouldn’t take me too long to hack them so that they can produce the graphs that illustrate the fallacy of this sort of mean.
The point is this. There is less point in running an ensemble of different chaotic models with different spatiotemporal granularity and different heuristic terms that are supposed to somehow coarse grain average over short-range spatiotemporal scale structure in a way that preserves the integrated nonlinear contribution of all dynamics in the cells and that fail to satisfy elementary detailed balance in the integration dynamics over even remarkably short times and hence have to be equally heuristically renormalized in order to simultaneously preserve energy balance and yet, somehow, leave it unbalanced enough to cause warming than there is in just stating “Gee, we expect the climate to respond to additional radiative forcing due to CO_2 via a function that is logarithmic in the CO_2 concentration”, fitting that function to the climate data models we have (e.g. HADCRUT4, which is fitting it to the actual climate data only in a highly presumptive sense) and then concluding that:
where C is the CO_2 concentration in parts per mission (not date) fits HADCRUT4 amazingly well from 1850 through the present. This is a purely physics-based no feedback (or weak linear feedback) model, and explains roughly 95% of the total variation in the data over the last 164 years. The missing 5% can be picked up with a purely heuristic term — that I do not make the slightest claim for as I do not understand it and cannot predict it using any simple physical model — that adds a very weak sinusoid:
where
This model predicts ~1.6 C of warming per doubling of CO_2, including all (linear) feedbacks. It “explains” the modulatory warming and cooling pattern of the 20th century almost perfectly via the sinusoid, which is (note well) of an amplitude that is just about exactly 10% of the total CO_2-driven modulation (hence my loose assignment of 95% for the explanatory power, depending on how you want to compute averages of a sinusoid). This curve actually has a decent $\chi^2$ given the published error limits of HadCRUT4, which is overwhelmingly not the case for the MME mean as it spends almost all of the first half of the 20th century well outside of the 95% confidence limits of HadCRUT4 as well as most of the 21st century (where it is right at the upper boundary for only 3 out of 15 years and above them for the rest).
This is shooting statistical fish in a barrel, of course, because the MME mean is such a dumb idea that AR5 had to bury the acknowledgement of this fact in a single paragraph of chapter 9 and hope that nobody would notice.
Too bad. I think people are noticing.
rgb
@ JoNovace: November 3, 2014 at 5:03 am
“Samuel you have missed to point, climate modeling is not trying to predict the weather in the future.”
——————
Don’t be talking silly at me, …… it’s highly irritating to say the least.
“Climate modeling” is a means or method that is used to, per se, predict the status of “future climatic conditions”.
And said “climatic conditions”, be those of the present, …. or those of some future date, …. is/are directly responsible for the status of the daily, weekly, monthly and/or yearly weather …. during the aforesaid climate period.
JoNovace, please tells us, ….. just why did you cite this “bar chart” graph of weather related data ……. as your proof of factual evidence of “climate change”, to wit:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/02/ipcc-prediction-of-severe-weather-increase-based-on-fundamental-error/#comment-1778080
One of my first clues that the science was amiss was reading AR4 and trying to figure out how they could be claiming both “polar amplification” and also an increase in severe weather. Just a simple understanding of Stefan-Boltzmann Law and the Ideal Gas Law yields the conclusion that a warmer world is a more tranquil world. The IPCC reasoning being that a system with more energy in it would yield more energetic storms. But, if colder areas warm faster than warmer ones, then the differential between the two is reduced. Severe weather is driven by temperature and pressure differentials, not total energy in the system.
Two charged car batteries hooked up in parallel produce an electric current of exactly zero. Hook up one that is charged and one that isn’t though, and you’ll melt the jumper cables, even though the latter system has 1/2 the stored energy of the former. Same principle.
Two charged car batteries hooked up in parallel produce an electric current of exactly zero. Hook up one that is charged and one that isn’t though, and you’ll melt the jumper cables, even though the latter system has 1/2 the stored energy of the former. Same principle.
Dave, Dave, Dave. You shouldn’t write stuff like this after three glasses of wine. Or three shots of bourbon. Double for both….
I meant the latter example to be two car batteries in series. Same energy (not 1/2) but you’ll melt the jumper cables. In parallel, nothing happens because there’s no differential to cause a current flow.
Probably still got my example wrong, so I’ll just drift off now and see who mocked me about what in the morning.
Actually, that is by far the best time. Well, dropping a hit or two of LSD and smoking a blunt might help even more. And besides, you were right the first time. If you hook up an uncharged and charged battery, current will flow at a rate limited only by the internal resistance of the batteries and the jumper cable, while the charged battery charges the uncharged battery. This can, actually, smoke the cables if one of the “batteries” is a high amperage battery charger or a fully charged car battery and the battery in question is internally shorted (so that it is “permanently” half charged).
Batteries in series simply add their voltages and support a single current, no good reason to smoke anything. Yes, the current against a fixed resistance is higher, but this is an irrelevant example where your first one is dead on the money. It is potential differences that drive currents, and temperature differences that drive (possibly turbulent) convective flow in fluids. Storms are the result of large scale strong convection driven by substantial pressure/temperature differences that create wind flow (for example) that transitions to turbulence, although that is a bit oversimplified. The top article does a decent job of explaining this, though.
I should also note — since Anthony hasn’t yet — that we have almost certainly added one more year to the all time record number of years without a major Atlantic hurricane making landfall in the continental US. We almost got through the year without a major Atlantic hurricane at all, and a rather low number of named tropical storms. I don’t recall the numbers, but I think we are getting close to doubling the previous record of days without a major hurricane hitting the US. That is, we aren’t just out there on the fringe of a normal distribution, we are out there way, way past the reasonable end of the normal.
So go back to your drinking, and I’ll raise a glass o’ homebrew beer to ye meself. Your brain works better that way.
rgb
“Intensity of severe weather along the Front is a function of the temperature difference between the air masses. The IPCC claim this will decrease with global warming as the polar air warms more than the tropical air. Theoretically this creates fewer storms, but the IPCC are predicting more.”
This prediction by the IPCC is probably the single biggest reason that so many forecast meteorologists are skeptical of a global warming crisis. This was such a red flag, that it caused many of us to look deeper into the theory than we might have otherwise. When we looked deeper, it soon became apparent to most that the WHOLE thing was BS.
Anyone reading the first few chapters of any basic meteorology text book would realize that the prediction of more severe weather under a man-made global warming scenario was contrary to everything we know about the atmosphere. AGW scientists got around this by implying that severe weather would increase (in some areas), which is marginally true, as the severe weather zones would shift a little pole-ward, but they simply could not have believed that severe weather would increase overall. Could they?
efficiency = 1-(T_C/T_H)
T_H = 280K (equator)
T_C = 225K (polar)
20% efficiency
5 degrees warming at poles:
T_H = 280K (equator)
T_C = 230K (polar)
18% efficiency
Area matters even more: There is only a little area between the Arctic and Antarctic circles and the poles.
There are many times that area between the tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer (+23.5 to -23.5 degrees). And even more between the two tropics and the 60 north or south.
Net? +1 degree warming between the tropics, or +1 between -45 and +45 means much more heat lost than even 4 or 5 degrees change at the poles.
Ferd
Where exactly do we see the compression stroke ?
Winter fronts depend on the strength of the polar vortex which forms the first high in the stratosphere (1 to 5 mbar). Its strength depends on the decomposition of ozone over the Arctic Circle in the zone of the ozone. Winter Fronts do not depend on the temperature of the troposphere.
Winter Fronts do not depend on the temperature of the troposphere.
==========
then why don’t they happen in summer? the ozone purge is of course the result of cold air descending at the poles, sweeping the ozone towards the equator. this effect is amplified in winter because the poles are colder in winter. the efficiency of the hemispheric heat engine increases in winter and decreases in summer.
You cannot expect an engine to run faster (pump more air) if the efficiency is reduced. it is a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
engines do not consume heat alone. you cannot power them with heat and make them run faster. you cannot put an engine in a hot room and get work out of it. If you could, you could build air-conditioners that cooled rooms and produced electricity as a waste product.
all heat engines require a hot and cold supply. like water running downhill, they produce work from the heat flowing from hot to cold. If you take away the cold supply, the heat no longer flows, and you cannot get any work out of them.
warm the poles more than the equator, the work produced will be reduced, the winds will blow slower.
WUWT should start a crowd source effort to chronicle all of the predictions made by the IPCC since 1990. We could then say that 97% (or whatever) of all of the IPCC predictions have been wrong. The press loves sound bites.
“WUWT should start a crowd source effort to chronicle all of the predictions made by the IPCC since 1990. We could then say that 97% (or whatever) of all of the IPCC predictions have been wrong.”
I’d be happy if you could just find (properly reference of coursen, not just blog myths) one IPCC projection that has proved to be wrong. Here is your chance, put your money where your mouth is and take up the challenge.
I assume that you, like the IPCC itself, would consider a PR release from the World Wildlife Fund as proper reference – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/24/the-scandal-deepens-ipcc-ar4-riddled-with-non-peer-reviewed-wwf-papers/
So a document from the Global Warming is a Pile Foundation would also be acceptable.
Or, like the IPCC’s co-Nobel laureate Al Gore, I could just make something up.
Himalayan glaciers
“I assume that you, like the IPCC itself, would consider a PR release from the World Wildlife Fund as proper reference ”
No sorry, a third hand blog post on WUWT doesn’t cut the mustard and yes the “Himalayan glaciers” exist so what.
A non effort to star, very poor.
Jo Novace, I think the reference was to this –
‘The WGII report (“Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”), chapter 10, page 493,[13] includes this paragraph:
Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).
— WGII p. 493 [13]
There was controversy in India over this statement, and at the start of December 2009 J. Graham Cogley of Trent University, Ontario, described the paragraph as wildly inaccurate.[14] The rates of recession of Himalayan glaciers were exceptional, but their disappearance by 2035 would require a huge acceleration in rate. The first sentence of the IPCC WGII report, including the date of 2035, came from the cited source, “(WWF, 2005)”. This was a March 2005 World Wildlife Fund Nepal Program report,[15] page 29:
In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood [sic] of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”.
— WWF p. 29 [16]’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#Projected_date_of_melting_of_Himalayan_glaciers
Only wiki I know, however the references are there should your enquiring mind want more.
So am I wrong in thinking that its only 2014?
Surely, you jest.
18+ years and counting: No warming while steadily increasing atmospheric CO2. I think that about covers the IPCC prediction(s). Every model is now beyond its error bounds too high. The longer additional warming fails to materialize, the less sensitive CO2 must be, contrary to what the IPCC says. (Oops, another failed prediction, but I won’t bother to document it for you)
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
In case you missed the discussion here about it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/02/icsc-ipcc-focus-on-stopping-global-warming-and-extreme-weather-is-unscientific-and-immoral/#comment-1777711
I case you don’t know what the IPCC models have predicted, you can start with this handy graph helpfully provided by Lord Monckton here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/05/benchmarking-ipccs-warming-predictions/
Of course, you can find the same graph in multiple IPCC sources, which I leave to you to dig up if you care to.
A paragraph in the 938-page 2007 Working Group II report (WGII) included a projection that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. This projection was not included in the final summary for policymakers
Only wiki I know, however the references are there should your enquiring mind want more.
JoNovace have you really been so unobservant that you have not seen the many model projections from the IPCC on how much warmer it was going to be by now? You know the models that ALL failed to show the ‘pause’ that has now lasted over 17 years? You will also no doubt not have noticed the IPCC forecasts of millions of “climate refugees” or “Environmental Refugees”, that have not happened. Then there is the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that would dramatically raise sea levels that hasn’t happend, and of course the ice free Arctic.
“many model projections from the IPCC ”
So you keep saying, just give me some links to the projections and to where they have been debunked (and I don’t mean the Arts Dept of some blog). Surly it cant be that difficult.
JoNovace – you are a classic troll distorting a thread on difficulty of modeling a chaotic system due to the nature of turbulence and chaotic fluid dynamics.
“JoNovace – you are a classic troll distorting a thread on difficulty of modeling a chaotic system”
I think thats a bit harsh Ian. All I asked for was one referenced and substantiated example of where IPCC forecasts have proved incorrect. So far I’m still waiting. Maybe you can help where others can’t or wont.
Jo, the IPCC uses the CMIP-5 computer model projections of warming there models project way more warming then is observed, both at the surface, in the oceans, and in the troposphere, as this graph shows…
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screenhunter_558-aug-30-06-08.jpg
Now if you do not accept this, please produce a graph of the IPCC computer model projections that is anywhere close to the observed warming.
The IPCC models are wrong, and the projections of disaster from warming are all failing to manifest. No increase in hurricanes, droughts, extreme storms, SL rise, etc. is observed. Peer reviewed papers demonstrate this. Multiple peer reviewed papers demonstrate that the IPCC estimated climate sensitivity to CO2 is , likewise, wrong, and way to high. http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html#Sensitivity
On the other hand hundreds of peer reviewed papers demonstrate the benefits of increased CO2. The benefits are known and observed in real world studies, the projected harms fail to manifest and are unobserved in real world studies..
All you have presented is an unreferenced graph, its authenticity is impossible to verify. Give me a source to check
@”JoNovace”:
That graph has been posted on numerous sites. It is a graph showing lots of model predictions vs reality.
No wonder you don’t like it.
The IPCC claims it doesn’t make “predictions,” if I recall correctly.
soylent,
Yes, they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Joe Novice says…”All you have presented is an unreferenced graph, its authenticity is impossible to verify. Give me a source to check.”
———————————————————————————–
Mr. Novice, not everything is controversial. Those are the IPCC climate model runs projecting future warming.
I notice you did not comment on the numerous peer reviewed papers showing a much lower “climate sensitivity” then the IPCC projects.
I notice you did not acknowledge hundreds of peer reviewed studies which demonstrate, both in the lab, and in real world observations, the immense benefits of CO2. (I notice you do not even know the AGW proponent arguments very well. for one example please understand that the IPCC no longer thinks Himalayan glaciers will melt by 1935. They got caught many times in other non peer reviewed catastrophic alarmism, not backed by science.)
Please enter into your browser IPCC CMIP-5 computer model projections, go to images, and you will convince yourself of the veracity of the linked graph. I also suggest you read about IPCC use of non peer reviewed literature.
By the way, what the IPCC did was take the mean of all their wrong in one direction, to warm models, and project the harms such warming would have, to demand tax revenue now. And if the world was so stupid as to allow this fraud to happen, CO2 would continue to increase unabated anyway. It is a multinational con.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zLZvFvWqy8Y/U8REucSDlfI/AAAAAAAAASg/-f_VHXdfaQY/s1600/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
Oops. David A beat me to it.
“That graph has been posted on numerous sites. It is a graph showing lots of model predictions vs reality.”
So its been around the blog-o-shere forever since it was created the the Graphic Art Dept of some blog poster, so what, give me the source so I can verify the data or its just more worthless personal opinion. The global temperature sets used in this graph are just fraudulent irrelevancies and you know it.
JoNovace,
Fraudulent? If that graph is fraudulent, then falsify it. If you can.
But just your personal assertion that it’s fraudulent is not nearly good enough. For one thing, you have no credibility. So go ahead and falsify the graph you labeled ‘fraudulent’. IF you can.
Otherwise, it stands.
Fuggedaboutit.
Good presentation. Unfortunately, majority of the people working with IPCC and people working on IPCC line including the chairman of the IPCC have no knowledge of such meteorological issues. Thus they are living in the hypothetical world.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
The decreasing equatorial-polar temperature gradient is certainly a fundamental flaw to IPCCs predictions. But there’s an even more fundamental flaw. It is that climate is the aggregate of weather over time – its averages, ranges, variabilities, accumulations, and more. After a week weather becomes random (or chaotic), or simply unpredictable. So its aggregate also becomes randome, chaotic, and unpredictable.
So they cannot predict climate any more than they can predict what I’ll be having for dinner 87 days from now, or if it will be snowing on that day.
Jo-who can’t even spell Novice correctly-
It’s authenticity is completely possible to verify. See all those black lined boxes inside the larger gray boxes? They ARE the data sources.You should check them, but I suspect you are either too lazy or too inept to actually do the research yourself.
Hi from Oz. Tim, if the IPCC really cared whether they were scientifically correct or not, they would have stopped doing what they do. However, as a political organisation, they care about achieving their agenda rather than the underlying facts. Unfortunately their audience is global, and every country’s population and its politicians have their own reasons for supporting ( or not) the IPCC’s CAGW fairy story. As far as I know, there is no precedent for such a situation, and I have no idea how this will turn out, other than being damned costly for many of us. I also have no idea about how to fight this modern- day Lysenkoism, except to hope that maybe the next GFC / major recession, which may not be far away judging by recent decisions by the Japanese and EU central bankers, will cause a sea change in the economics of ” renewable energy”, such that that prop at least gets swept away. To summarise, as someone said, don’t attend a gunfight armed with boxing gloves ( or some such). Arguing the science with a political cabal is doing just that, and IMO is a waste of precious time and effort. A different strategy is needed!
Best regards from an old geezer,
Thanks, Dr. Ball, for your insightful article. Where I am from, we understand quite well why severe weather erupts (temperature and pressure differential is the answer for sure) and it doesn’t take much to track how incorrect and panicky our local weather media are most of the time, because it doesn’t take too much to change the situation when it comes to temperature and pressure differential, along with relative humidity.
Why Jetstream is waving? Because are forcing him to stratospheric waves over the polar circle. This solar activity provides the energy for these waves.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_ALL_NH_2014.gif
Because it friendly?
Those who analyze the stratosphere, they must know what happens in the winter over the polar circle. Maybe to ask them?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/
The IPCC seems to have a very high opinion of themselves.. maybe it’s time we asked them for forecasts..
I mean, they have made all manner of predictions decades out, surely it would be a small thing for them to give us all severe storm warnings. They claim to be able to predict them after all, it would only be right for them to share this information and help their fellow humans avoid some of the impending catastrophic events.
I for one would love to see them put everyone else’s money where it can do some good.
Please estimate the hurricane season in the Atlantic.
@JoNovace
You say you would rather trust a specialist like a doctor to tell you what to do.
What would you do if you took your child to the local hospital with a bad cut on one of his fingers? And the doctor there said that cuts can go septic, so it would be best to amputate the whole arm? And you asked for a second opinion, and the doctor’s colleague agreed, and so did all his students?
Then when you got home, you looked at the track record of this doctor, and found that that doctor had a track record of losing 3/4 of his patients, and that the hospital had been a small backwater clinic until this doctor turned up and started prescribing amputations, and that now the hospital was booming with international grants from the World Centre for Amputations.
And that there had been some earlier complaints from the original hospital doctors about unnecessary amputations being prescribed, but that these doctors had been sacked, sued and banned from writing to any medical journals about their concerns….
Geezer….I think I love you. 🙂
The article/essay is a fine essay. Not so much the quibbling that followed.
“JoNovace November 3, 2014 at 3:27 am
“Can JoNovice please tell us exactly”
Only if you tell me why you chose 1996 to start, the classic cherry picked point always quoted. Lets do the calculations again from almost any other year, my choice is 1999 and lets get the last 15 years.You are so predictable with the memes you regurgitate. It like there’s only one brain between to lot of you”
These alarmists are so predictable!
They talk about cherry picking in a climate system that has large periodical cooling and warming periods and yet base their hypothesis on just a few cherry picked decades of increasing temperature trend (the trend is currently declining from its peak and will continue to decline unless there is a major upswing in temperatures shortly).
If you are going to cherry pick at least do it from a more realistic longer start point.
So JoNovace how have the temperatures changed since the MWP, the Roman Warm Period, and the Holocene Optimum? What does this tell you about the ‘long term’ trend, not just a few decades?
You do realise that, if we looked back at such a short period as the alarmists use in say a thousand years, without actual temperature records, we would have next to no idea what the temperature and trend was in that period.
Mind you the descendants of Mann might look at his ‘hide the decline’ trees and pontificate that we were actually in a declining temperature period. That is how bonkers your hypothesis is at the moment.
We do not have the records for a long enough time period to have any real idea what is happening and the future trend, you need to wait a bit (like a few thousand years) before starting to pontificate your certainty.
Alan
Response to earlier post—
JoNovace November 3, 2014 at 3:27 am
Only if you tell me why you chose 1996 to start, the classic cherry picked point always quoted. Lets do the calculations again from almost any other year, my choice is 1999 and lets get the last 15 years.You are so predictable with the memes you regurgitate. It like there’s only one brain between to lot of you—
This is new. Skeptics have often been accused of cherry picking with regard to the year 1998 as a starting point. And indeed there was an El Nino related spike in temperature in that year. Where did the two extra years come from, and why?
Alan…I know right? They ARE predictable. By his 2nd post he’d used 4 of the most popular alarmist propaganda talking points. Consensus, flat earther, 97% of ALL climate scientists/papers, and the “cancer doctor” analogy. And of course, every time actual scientific equations and direct quotes from the “experts” are posted, he resorts to logical fallacies and distraction techniques. He is clearly a new graduate of the program because he hasn’t yet developed any of the subtlety or finesse that comes with experience.
“Graduate” is dubious, and of what program? Certainly not climatology, geology, atmospheric chemistry or any relevant discipline that produces or relies on careful assessments of climatological data.
Regarding cancer doctors, see
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/15/mayo-clinic-finds-massive-fraud-in-cancer-research.aspx
With all of that government money, the whole field REEKS of corrupton- I suppose an analogy can be made with
another “scientific field” here.
JoNovace
“…..pontificate that we were actually in a declining temperature period. That is how bonkers your hypothesis is at the moment. ”
I am not as brainy as you guys think you are, I don’t have my own hypothesis plucked out of thin air, I rely on experienced scientist to guide my conclusions”
Ahh so we we have someone who admits that they are just regurgitating someone else’s thoughts and is someone of ‘the Faith’
Well done, very useful!
Perhaps you would like to address my point about the ‘hide the decline’ trees. Mann and others used this paleo record, inter alia, to establish his ‘hockey stick’ As you should know after showing increasing temperatures, in the period from 1960 a period the alarmists are largely basing their AGW hypothesis on the trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures.
They got round this by excising this part of the record and grafting on the actual temperature record. However, even you, in your lack of independent thought, can see that if we looked back at this period from the distant future, without the actual temperature record, you would assume temperatures and the trend were going downwards if you trusted the trees as Mann and his followers have declared they do.
That is why the current hypothesis is bonkers, without actual temperature records for the past, we have no real idea what was happening in such short periods of a few decades a la the period the warmists are currently relying on.
Does that make you think at all or is La La La going off in your brain at the moment?
Alan
@ Tim Ball –
Your thread title is a little wordy.
How about: “IPCC Based On Fundamental Error” ?
/grin
LMAO , Thanks John.
As far as I know the behavior of solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations including turbulence is an unsolved problem. I think the Clay Institute is still offering a $1,000,000 prize related to properties of solutions to Navier-Stokes.
What? There is still unsettled science in the settled science?
“JoNovace November 3, 2014 at 5:12 am
“They got round this by …….”
Ah yes, when all other argument fails, fall back on the “worldwide conspiracy” prop. I thought it was about science?
I’m happy to address any referenced data or conclusions you want to present but I’m not interested in third-hand he said, she said.”
Those are the FACTS you complete numpty, that is exactly what they did and they don’t deny it.
I know inconvenient facts are something to ignored or ‘adjusted’ in Alarmist land but this is a forum about the real world.
Answer the question, about how warmists looking back from the future, without a temperature record and using Mann’s Paleo trees, would declare temperatures had dropped sharply from 1960 onwards.
Would they be right? How therefore do we know what has been happening with the climate for short periods in the past?
Shows your ‘settled science’ is little more than a guess at the moment.
If you are going to reply, answer the questions rather than just avoiding the matter with your ‘La La La’ replies.
Alan
Alan…I love it when alarmists claim that skeptics think there is some kind of world wide conspiracy involving scientists, and then go on to declare there absolutely is an anti-science world wide conspiracy campaign going on. The hypocrisy is delicious.
On a side note, I LOVE the word “numpty” and wish to adopt it myself. Would that be ok with you? 🙂
Aphan,
‘Numpty’ has been around quite a while. Even Pachauri has used it. So give it back to ’em… doubled and squared!
Also, what you are describing is psychological ‘projection’: imputing their own faults onto others. Alarmists do it all the time. In this case, they are the conspirators, so they try to deflect by accusing scientific skeptics of conspiring — when all we want is scientific veracity.
You are right about ‘jonovace’, too. As James Strom points out, jonovace is simply cherry-picking. It was the arch-Warmist Phil Jones who designated 1997 [in 1999] as the start year to determine if global warming has stopped. But now that global warming has never resumed, the alarmist crowd doesn’t like that year.
They need to take it up with Dr. Jones. Speaking for myself, I’m happy using 1997. My message to ‘jonovace’: tough noogies. You numpties are stuck with that year. Suck it up.
What to expect?
High confidence or low confidence?
No wonder the IPCC switched from prediction to projection.
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_spm.pdf
I think you mean solstice, not equinox. In particular, they are tangent on the longest night of the year at the polar circles, the winter solstice for the hemisphere in question.
At the spring and fall equinox, the points of tangency are the axial poles themselves.
rgb
Let’s assume – hypothetically – that they are right. In that case they should lead by example: Do As I Do, instead of Do As I Say. The first step is obviously no air travel for IPCC or the UN.
JoNovace November 3, 2014 at 5:27 am
“….trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures…..”
Tree rings don’t show temperature, what is your source for this? Tree ring may correlate with temperature if other factors are removed.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seriously? The entire edifice of CAGW is built upon tree ring studies purporting to show temperature since AR4 and earlier! We’ve spent years debunking the work of Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, Phil Jones and many others. Tree rings DEFINED the “hockey stick” in the first place! There have been congressional inquiries into the work of Michael Mann on tree rings showing temperature. Tree ring graphs once adorned the front pages of IPCC and WMO publications as de facto proof of temperature increases. The whole “Hide the Decline” and “Mike’s Nature Trick” debacle from the climategate emails was about tree rings being used to show temperature!
Have we come so far in the debate that late entrants into it from the warmist side no longer are aware what their “science” was founded upon in the first place?
FWIW JoNovace, I agree with you, trees don’t show temperature. A fact which completely guts about 1/2 the CAGW literature out there all on its own.
I suggest, BTW, that you find yourself a new moniker. Trying to trade on Jo Nova’s well known name doesn’t help you one bit.
David, trading on Jo Nova’s well known name, and misspelling the word “novice” are behavior markers that help OTHERS to immediately classify him/her by agenda and intellect. His/her responses have reinforced both. GroupThinkers ALWAYS present subliminal clues about who they are. They can’t help it.
Aphan,
I expect you are correct. But the astounding thing is that s/he spit on tree rings as measuring temperature. On that, I must applaud. Someone from the warmest side of the argument has stated for the record that tree rings don’t measure temperature. That eviscerates the bulk of the alarmist literature, and I must thank JoNovace for taking our side on the matter!
Tim,
I am sorry to say that your “wave” concept is quite outdated. Only Marcel Leroux got it right with his Mobile Polar High concept.
http://twileshare.com/uploads/Leroux-Global-and-Planetary-Change-19931.pdf
Sorry Thierry, Leroux simply gave a different name, mobile polar high (MPH), to a continental Arctic (cA) air mass in the traditional air mass/frontal system climatology. I debated this with him and one of his students, after the book came out. They were also simply extending Lamb’s work on movement of mid latitude cyclones along the Front.
“Almanacs list it currently at 23.4° and decreasing at 0.47” per century. The mean position of the ZEB shifts more as the global energy balance changes.”
Yes, and with a 9.3 year periodicity which, when modulated by an 11 year solar cycle, gives us a harmonic at 60 years.
Thank you for a good, informative article Dr. Ball
. – – As I read through the various comments above; pearls, swine and cast before, come to mind.
It seems to me that many of those who have commented on; – – -I don’t know on what – – are more interested in the up and down movements of temperature (T) than they are in what causes T to vary.
Terms such as Pause, Hiatus, these are unscientific. No one knows the future. These are terms of belief – belief that temps will rise in future.
Science deals in facts. The fact is that there has been no significant rise in temps in about 18 years. Someone says there is a Pause or Hiatus, they are talking belief not science.
Wow! Those exchanges with “JoNovace” were certainly entertaining, but most of you really got sucked in by a REAL novice. I’m an old, retired teacher, so it didn’t take me long to recognize a newly baptized convert in JoNovace. I would bet my little remaining life that this person is either a high school student or college undergraduate recently introduced to “global warming”/”climate change”/AGW/CAGW/ etc., etc., etc. by either a poorly educated, so-called science teacher or a left-wing college climate alarmist. The new semester has been in session just long enough for the new initiate to have been thoroughly indoctrinated and spurred to alarmist levels to want to “save the planet” from global disaster. It’s a re-run of Al Gore. The evidence is quite clear in the complete lack of knowledge of tree-ring temperature proxies, Michael Mann, the 97% consensus nonsense, and numerous other basic elements of the CAGW hypothesis. I am ashamed, as a retired teacher, of what has come of “education”. It seems that the far-left has hijacked our educational system and turned it from encouraging critical thinking to an institution for indoctrination of anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-science propaganda. I think you all gave this person much more real information than he/she received in class and planted seeds of truth that may yet bear fruit.
this person is either a high school student or college undergraduate recently introduced to “global warming”
I bet you are correct. But not a peep out of her (unless I missed it) since I explained the history to her. I’ve always wondered what happens to these poor souls who show up here and get clobbered with the facts. But THIS one is of special interest. If only because she evaluated the claim that tree rings are thermometers as false in a flash of logic. When the claim is made outside of the influence of confirmation bias, even a novice sees it for what it is. Remarkable is it not, that the claim is so obviously false even to someone who has swallowed the CAGW meme hook line and sinker, but hasn’t been exposed to the “story” of how trees are thermometers by the climate science cultists.
Predicting severe weather is like trying to predict the concentration of ingredients at various points in the mixture whilst beating a cake mix.
We know that the combination of various inputs when thoroughly combined give a reasonably predictable outcome eventually, but at various stages of the process, the extreme concentration of some elements, and the extreme lack of other elements at various places in the mix, would not give an accurate representation of the overall mixture, nor if extrapolated out, an accurate prediction of the final result.
Very much like it, actually, because in both cases the rate of physical mixing — basically folding the elements together in discrete unmixed layers to create something like filo dough or Damascus steel — is much larger than the rate of diffusion. There is a lovely demo of the difference, lessee, yeah here:
We do this one in the department here for our intro classes. Hurricanes produce a lovely example of this sort of folding:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/images/isabel091503-1215zb.jpg
This is Isabel, which did notable damage to a friend’s house on the NC coast. Note well the laminar rain bands — the cloud bands spiralling into the center while maintaining their distinct identity as they intermix with the drier air on both sides and get pulled into the center. Lateral movement and diffusive mixing is much slower than the locally coherent flow.
This kind of picture, by the way, persists on all scales where there is a transverse gradient in the wind velocity field (which means that the field has nonzero curl). Because the: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number of the moving fluid passes various thresholds in the vicinity of any sort of inhomogeneity, even the apparently laminar flow within the rain bands is locally turbulent, and the apparently laminar flow within the much smaller scale “eddies” associated with (say) a thunderstorm turns out to be rotational and break up into smaller eddies, prompting the following little poem by L. F. Richardson:
In all of these cases the eddies produce small scale laminar mixing until one descends to a length scale where diffusion proceeds at a comparable rate to the mixing. To compare the situation to that of a truly fractal structure like the Mandelbrot set, where no matter how far you descend you can find fully fractal structure at all length scales, there does exist a scale where microdynamics of the constituent atmospheric and oceanic molecules “blurs” the structures. Really a whole spectrum of scales, as what “wins” depends on the detailed dynamics of the system — diffusive mixing is occurring at the same time that turbulent mixing at the same time that bulk laminar transport is occurring, at all scales, and different things can dominate different length scales in different structures and sub-structures of the motion.
Kolmogorov took the notions of Richardson (who originally proposed a scaling theory to describe “turbulent diffusion” as distinct from molecular diffusion as distinct from reversible laminar mixing) and turned them into a formal scaling theory that works decently but not perfectly to describe the general spectral kinetics of turbulent mixing at “high” Reynolds numbers. A key element of the theory is the so-called Kolmogorov scale.
Energy is typically input into a turbulent system at macroscopic length scales, and undergoes a scaling “cascade” as it generates large scale whorls that transfer energy to smaller whorls, etc, down to the Kolmogorov scale where the energy finally “thermalizes” and mixes at the molecular level. At all larger length scales, energy is not actually either irreversibly lost or truly thermalized, it is just being transferred down to smaller scale rotational flow.
What this means from the point of view of solving PDEs is that one cannot use larger scale kinetics to properly model the transfer of energy and momentum between adjacent cells in the medium. The energy of the system is not in any thermodynamically describable state! It doesn’t have “a temperature” — the temperature field is wound up and varies all the way down to the Kolmogorov scale, with energy stored in meso-scale macroscopic transport of bulk fluid that is commensurate with the variations in energy at the length scale of thermalization due to intermolecular interaction and mixing. Energy can be input into the system and disappear, not appearing as “heat” but rather as the integrated kinetic energy of chunks of fluid with a “bulk” kinetic energy density that changes in highly nontrivial ways as one e.g. adapts an integration stepsize. To put it another way, a cell can easily have zero bulk velocity from the point of view of transport into neighboring cells, so one is tempted to say that the kinetic energy of the cell is “zero” in a computation summing up energy balance over all the cells in a system. But if one divides the cell into (say) 8 pieces (divide all three lengths in half) one might find that all eight pieces have nonzero kinetic energy, which is positive definite! The missing kinetic energy at the larger scale has to be assumed to be “heat” (internal energy we cannot keep track of) but it is still entirely coherent if it is associated with a single rotational vortex that fits in the cell and has a dynamic effect on a neighboring cell that is NOT THERMAL (sorry for shouting, but this is important!).
To put it bluntly, the cell dynamics at a single division of cell size smaller could entirely coherently transfer momentum, energy, and angular momentum to neighboring cells through trivial bulk transport processes and could do things like increase the energy/velocity field averaged over that cell, which is completely impossible to accomplish on the same scale with energy that has been thermalized, as it essentially violates the second law of thermodynamics for “heat” to turn back into coherent motion.
One doesn’t have to wonder why they have to constantly renormalize energy in climate models because large scale cell dynamics almost instantly fails to satisfy sum rules that embody detailed energy balance (or momentum balance, or angular momentum balance, or…). They are integrating at a scale thirty orders of magnitude larger than the spatiotemporal Kolmogorov scale for atmospheric air. There are one hundred divisions of spatiotemporal length scale by two between the 100x100x1 kilometer, five minute steps being used in the better models and the scale where one can safely attribute the loss of bulk transport energies as changing temperature. There is nontrivial, non-Markovian, energy and momentum transfer at all of the scales in between.
This is why it would be quite literally a miracle if the GCMs worked. They are already chaotic at the large length scales they are using! They are already non-integrable in the specific sense that there is a Lyupanov exponent (set) such that any macroscopic value set in phase space will diverge arbitrarily from values reached in the dynamics by arbitrarily small differences in initial conditions. They are nowhere near the length scales where one can reasonably attribute average quantities to cells of that length and expect even qualitative correspondence with the true dynamics.
As is often pointed out on this list (and in papers they refer to), GCMs fail to get lots of named weather/climate phenomena — such as thunderstorms — anywhere near “correct” simply because they are literally invisible at the length scales being treated. To a GCM, a cell with “thunderstorms” is visible only as a different macroscopic average in pressure, density, temperature, humidity. It doesn’t even show up in the cell’s bulk transport velocity, as thunderstorms can easily be moving with the same mean velocity as the surrounding air mass and have zero “mean velocity” by the time you average over all of its internal turbulence. But this is only one of the more flagrant examples of the problem, which persists all the way down to the tiny dust devils produced by gentle zephyrs as they play over a street, to the way humidity tumbles off of a sun-warmed leaf as the dew melts in the morning.
Humans are pretty creative, and it is possible that after a few decades of clever ideas and with fewer than 100 divisions of cell size by a factor of two we will eventually build climate models that “kind of” work. But there are several “stigmata” of working that have yet to be accomplished:
* Demonstrable adaptable stepsize scaling. Models need to be built that compute, divide the stepsize by two, compute again, and compare the results. It would be useful to show that one single model actually converges when its algorithm is subjected to this process, in any meaningful sense of “converges”.
Non-convergence is prima facie evidence that a useful integration scale has not yet been reached. And of course the models have not converged in any useful sense. It isn’t even clear how one could measure convergence in a nonlinear chaotic problem where every tiny alteration produces a completely different outcome. At the very least, one would need to show that the distribution of outcomes is stationary with respect to variation of stepsize/integration scale.
* Detailed balance without help or per-step renormalization. In order for models to function, they will necessarily have to use ad hoc approximation of the internal cell dynamics and the coupling of that dynamics between cells, very likely per stepsize (as there is non-negligible coherent energy distribution on all length scales between the macroscopic (cell size) and the Kolmogorov scale, and even Kolmogorov’s scaling rules are approximations and limiting cases, not general derivable results). At the very least, the dynamics here has to be conservative in a sensible way that neither violates the laws of thermodynamics nor requires renormalization.
After all, here’s the problem. There are three possibilities. The models can either be conservative, they can gain energy, or they can lose energy. That is, the couple Earth-Ocean-Atmosphere system can either remain at the same temperature, or it can warm or it can cool. Empirically, whatever it does it does as a variation of climate it does very slowly, over decades. Warming over decades thus appears as a tiny, tiny energy imbalance per timestep that gradually increases the energy content of the system taken as a whole. Cooling appears as a tiny energy loss per day, month, year (on average) that cumulates to produce lower macroscopically averaged temperature. A stable climate is one that is in perfect balance. Note well, in all three cases, the imbalance per year is small, since empirically temperature oscillates up and down by several times the total change in the mean over a decade over a timescale as short as weeks! It is quite literally lost in the noise at five minute timesteps. No computer ever built could sensibly resolve it.
At least, it couldn’t possibly resolve it if one renormalizes the energy after each timestep!
This is the real joke of the thing. Suppose I’m solving a differential equation for a conservative system, such as a planetary orbit, numerically. I choose a stepsize, not on the basis of what is needed to solve the problem to a given tolerance fifty or a hundred orbital cycles out, but on the basis of what I can afford to compute using paper and an abacus to do all of the arithmetic (which is a pretty good metaphor to the required power for climate science, although it is still orders of magnitude shy of doing it full justice). I don’t have a good algorithm for solving the problem, so I use straight 1st order Euler integration with my fixed enormous stepsize, not e.g. Runge-Kutta 4th-5th order adaptive integration. I have no good feel for what an orbital period is, so I cannot even check for whether or not my timestep is a near-multiple of the orbital period without presumptively solving the problem using the stepsize I’ve got.
I proceed to take a step. Now I do know a couple of things. For example, I think that both the total energy and the total angular momentum of the orbit ought to be constant, and I know their initial values. But when I compare the energy and angular momentum of my new orbit after a single timestep, I find that they are not constant! If I integrate the system forward without correction, I will almost certainly observe not only drift, but a systematic drift due to numerical error, either to higher or lower energy and/or angular momentum. After a few hundred steps, the orbit I’m observing will be nowhere near where it should be, for this simple, deterministic, analytically solvable problem.
I can try — try, note well — to “renormalize” the orbit after each timestep, finding a state that has the right energy and angular momentum “near” the state I end up. But there is actually a whole family of possible solutions that meet that criterion — indeed, they form a kind of hypersurface. I have to choose a particular direction for the renormalization — do I want to project the solution point conserving the new value of r (the same potential energy) by adjusting the kinetic energy and hence velocity until (say) the motion remains in a plane, has the right angular momentum and the right total energy? Or do I want to keep the speed and plane, but adjust r and maybe the direction until the conservation laws are met? The resulting trajectories in the two cases (out of many possibilities) will be completely different and neither of them will probably be particularly close to the true analytic solution. I’m in serious trouble for this absolutely trivial problem.
Now imagine that I add a small nonlinear interaction to the problem — the equivalent of a cubic term that leads to precession of the perihelion — but one that perhaps averages in some way over an interference pattern with random elements in it. I know longer know a priori that the new interaction plus the old interaction still constitute a conservative system in either energy or angular momentum. Indeed, I suspect that the actual solution will experience a deterministic drift to higher or lower energy etc, but I have no way to analytically prove it.
How, exactly, can I even do what I did for the conservative problem?
If I renormalize away my errors per step by assuming conservation, I erase the answer I hope to get. If I renormalize in such a way that energy grows, I will never be able to tell if that is real growth exhibited by the actual solution or a pure accident of the way I renormalized. Ditto if I renormalize in a way that makes the energy diminish.
It takes a very strong human indeed to not pick a renormalization that causes the system to do what his or her prior beliefs say that the system should do, or to pick a renormalization on some other grounds entirely, but when that choice happens to make the system behave the way one expects conclude that this is the “right way to do it” and not examine it too carefully. Especially when the one thing you could do to find out, integrate at a much finer scale with an adaptive stepsize to some tolerance, is literally out of the question.
* And the third critical sign of success. The models have to work! They have to actually exhibit predictive skill. This is the case even for the gravity problem. In this case one might learn something from a failure. One might write a simple one planet one sun model and get a stable numerical solution that corresponds well to the analytic orbit for a while and then diverges no matter what you do!
Analyzing the failure might lead you to learn about many, many things, such as tides, orbital resonances, gravitational waves, dark matter all of which confound even your simple and nearly perfect physical model because it over-idealizes a much messier reality. Things that you would have found almost impossible to correctly include from first principles or check when implemented without the lifeline of empirical evidence to compare to.
At the moment, we lack all three.
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