From the “department of global roasting” and the UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS, where great ideas like this one are formed at Halloween parties, (yes really, see PR) comes this claim:
UAF model used to estimate Antarctic ice sheet melting
To see how burning up the Earth’s available fossil fuels might affect the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists turned to a computer program developed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. The ice would disappear, they found, and that conclusion is making headlines across the world.
UAF’s Parallel Ice Sheet Model “was the perfect tool to find out whether human emissions are sufficient to render Earth ice free — and unfortunately it turns out that they are,” said Anders Levermann, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Levermann is an author of a paper recently published in the journal Science Advances.
He and the paper’s other authors figured out that burning all available fossil fuels would release about 10,000 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, which could possibly raise the average temperature of the planet by 20 degrees Fahrenheit. One gigaton is one billion tons. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises temperatures because the greenhouse gas traps infrared radiation from sunlight striking the Earth.
The computer program shows that the increased temperatures would melt the Antarctic ice sheet, which is bigger than the United States, has an average thickness of 6,200 feet and contains more than 50 percent of the world’s fresh water. More than half the melting could occur during the first 1,000 years, although the entire study spans 10,000 years. PISM also shows that the melting would push sea levels up by more than 160 feet. Coastlines would retreat, forcing people in places like New York City, London and Paris to move inland.
“The future evolution of the global sea level is mainly determined by the melting of the big ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica,” Levermann said. “If we want to properly protect our cities, we need to know how these ice sheets evolve. Models like PISM are the only chance we have to understand future sea-level rise.”
Andy Aschwanden, a UAF glaciologist who helped develop PISM, said he uses the computer program to study how climate change could affect Greenland’s ice sheet. He said that more than 50 studies have used PISM, including a soon-to-be-published paper that investigates the future of Alaska’s Juneau Icefield.
“Models are testbeds for all sorts of questions, and PISM is what we call a numerical model.” said Aschwanden. “We take our best understanding of the physical processes of the real world, in this case ice sheets, and frame that in the language of mathematics. Then we teach the computer how to come up with solutions to ‘what if’ questions about the processes that this model represents. We did a lot of work under the hood to make this model work.”
Ed Bueler, a UAF associate professor of mathematics, and GI computer programmer Constantine Khroulev, did much of that work. They built the engine of this model from new mathematical equations. Bueler said PISM is designed to solve what-if scenarios for different-sized ice sheets and glaciers over a time period that extends 100,000 years into the future and the past. It considers such factors as ice thickness and temperature, the weight of the ice and how fast the ice flows as gravity slowly pulls it downhill “like pouring honey onto a pancake.”
“The equations are a way to say precisely how the parts of an ice sheet work and how each of these pieces is connected to all the others,” said Bueler. “Once you have the equations, you can make predictions.”
Most programs that handle such a wide range of scenarios over a large time span rely on mathematics so complex that it may take computers years or decades just to answer one problem. Bueler said PISM is complex enough to be accurate but efficient enough to deliver answers in a timely manner to scientists.
PISM also uses the GI’s high-performance computers to get more accurate answers to the wide variety of scenarios. These computers can outperform an average personal computer in processing calculations.
The PISM team posts the computer program and its updates on the Internet so that scientists can use it freely and provide feedback on the program. Levermann learned about the program after one of his graduate students found it on the Internet and showed it to him in 2008.
“Half a year later, I was flying to Fairbanks to discuss the model with Ed,” said Levermann. “That was my first Halloween party in the U.S. In the two following weeks, my two then-Ph.D.-students, Ricarda Winkelmann and Maria Martin, visited Ed, and he explained the model. That started a wonderful long-term collaboration.”
Winkelmann went on to be the lead author on the recent paper published in Science Advances.
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The program begs the question. Increasing CO2 causing warming is hard coded in. The results are totally useless. The reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 affects climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. If CO2 really affected climate then the increase over the past 30 years should have caused an increase in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. The climate sensitivity of CO2 should be related to how changes in CO2 cause the natural lapse rate in the troposphere to change. So in accordance with what has happened over the past 30 years, the climate sensitivity is equal to zero. Hence CO2 has no affect on climate and the program needs to be corrected to show just that.
I’d love to see them run the model BACKWARDS in time to see how accurate it is !! Would give some hilarious results I’m sure…
I may be incorrect here, but if the models predicted a tropospheric hot spot (which of course did not materialize) and thus warmed the upper levels more than the surface, this lowers the lapse rate, no?
Less difference between surface and upper atmosphere = lower lapse rate.
That is my understanding of lapse rate any ways.
From what I understand, the failure of the upper levels to warm falsifies the models…as they demand that this occur.
But you will not here anything about this on the six o’clock news, or from any warmistas, neither.
Maybe they are indeed, as was pointed out elsewhere, too busy looking up the definition of Sandinista.
. .I just created a video game on my trusty old Timex T1000 computer that PROVES beyond a doubt…that if every liberal eco-terrorist in the world stopped lying at the same time for a duration of at least 1 year…the world would be a very happy place indeed .. well, for one year anyways !! !!!!
This is prime example why models should be banned in future predictions. Using models to predict absolutely any stupid idea passes because it’s a model, it’s almost like making things up with no mechanism, no evidence, no scientific method and even no hypothesis. It is avoiding any science and even not showing how they come to these stupid conclusions. Models are good for projections over are a few days or for things not involving the future. This goes down as one of the most ridiculous conclusions from a garbage model ever.
How the hell can Antarctica warm at least 30 c for just summer temperatures to reach around zero at the center. Temperatures even then around a large central area would be more like the north pole now. Even then it would not melt all the ice during the summer. Do they really think people are this stupid? Something like this should never pass for science ever.
10^9 tons of CO2 will not get any where near 10 doublings of CO2 for the 10 c rise. (based on general 1 c per doubling)
400ppm
800ppm (1c)
1600ppm (2c)
3200ppm (3c)
6400ppm (4c)
12800ppm (5c)
Not worth going further than 5 doubling as it’s obvious to anybody 12800 ppm in the atmosphere needs a lot more than 10^9 tons.
Only like a little more than doubling human CO2 emissions since the 19th century, we would only increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere roughly half the time we have done so far.
http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/graphs/co2/carbon-emissions.gif
The model is used to just hide basic scientific ideas like these.
Try ECS = 3°C with polar amplification in the model.
Now, I regard this stuff some kind of catastrophe porn, but who am I to tell their model sucks. I’m just a layman telling continents can’t move.
The problem in Antarctica has been no observed polar amplification.
The average temperature in Antarctica is MINUS 52 degrees F….So it would take 100 degrees of warming to even start the melting process !!! ( give or take 5 degrees )….
But in the real world, the empirical evidence say otherwise
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2662870
Liberals do not live in the real world …PERIOD !!
“UAF’s Parallel Ice Sheet Model”
It’s not a model. The behavior of the system is not known, ipso facto, it can’t be modeled. Most “climate models” are not models at all. Some behaviors are known, some are guessed, and then adjustments/parameters are fiddled with to produce some results that somewhat resemble observations. That is not a model, it is a kluge.
When you see GCM, think Global Circulation Kluges.
UAF has class, as well as science.
We may see more research published by departments of global roasting disguised as atmospheric science and physical geography and climatology in the near future following Obama’s recent EO describing his plan to spend millions hiring professional pathological liars; researchers in John Cook’s and Stephen Lewandowsky’s and Dan Kahan’s field of study; Fooling All of the People All of the Time, known colloquially as brainwashing:
“Adopting the insights of behavioral science will help bring our government into the 21st century in a wide range of ways – from delivering services more efficiently and effectively; to accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy…
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/15/fact-sheet-president-obama-signs-executive-order-white-house-announces
I have developed a sophisticated and robust computer model that projects that there will be free beer tomorrow at a nearby reputable drinking establishment. Anyone here gonna’ dispute that? I used all the buzz words and the parameters were guaranteed accurate by the Alf, the bartender, along with 97% of the waitstaff.
But to the topic… I’m not sure we can burn what’s left of the coal and oil deposits fast enough to affect climate at 1-point-something per doubling. Currently, CO2 has continued its monotonic rise while the satellite temperatures aren’t showing any trend. I’m not encouraged that we can burn enough stuff to stave of the next glaciation, but I do love a challenge!
(Nice little Black tip shark yesterday; just under 3 feet. Fun tussle. Got him back in the water very quickly. Swam off at a nice clip. I do not like to stress fish that are going back into the drink. However, the shark was not as considerate of the rotator cuff in my shoulder… it’s pretty torn up. Ouch, mommy!)
Setting aside for a moment the general failure of these sorts of models, I would think that impacts on CO2 / temperature would be highly consumption rate dependent. If the guzzintas don’t exceed the guzzoutas then CO2 won’t move upward.
Golly, so it won’t even git hot enuff to melt all the ice in the cement pond in Winter?
They are missing one HUGE CRITICAL POINT. The CO2 released into the atmosphere will partition 50 to one into the oceans, maybe a little less with warmer oceans, but huge amounts will dissolve. There is not enough available carbon for us to burn and, with ocean absorption there is only enough CO2 to raise the atmospheric CO2 by 20%. Sorry, Charle, it’s a non-starter and your still fails to make a decent cup of coffee.
But won’t the oceans become acid baths? OMG it’s Worse Than We Thought!
Consensus science from 1965 was that even at levels below the current trajectory of CO2 emissions, temperatures would increase 7 degrees and sea levels would rise 10 feet by the year 2000.
Yes, this was the top end of the range they offered, but when they extrapolated further out into the future, they claimed that both Antarctica and Greenland would melt down by 2200, raising sea level by 200 feet. That clearly averages out to 1 foot per year over the span. They offered no range for this estimate, suggesting it was their best guess.
So now this “scary” model has given us a 10,000 year reprieve. And as a bonus, they won’t have to worry about their kids looking back 30-50 years from now and knowing their parent was a world-class laughingstock, swept up in the climate scam, because they could just say wait another 1,000 years.
I think what it has done is add another made up scare story to the s**t heap of made up scare stories that already included the idiotic one from 1965…which, BTW, was made when global temps were dropping, glaciers were advancing, and Arctic sea ice was thickening rapidly.
“burning all available fossil fuels would release about 10,000 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, which could possibly raise the average temperature of the planet by 20 degrees Fahrenheit.”
That’s the worst case scenario, and even with 20 degrees of warming, it will take 1000 years to melt just half of the Antarctic ice sheet. But we’ll never get that far because we have to reach 2 degrees of warming before we can get to 20, and alarmists assure us we are doomed with only 2 degrees of warming. So does the model confirm our doom at the magical limit of 2 degrees of warming? It would seem like an important question to have answered, unless most scientists don’t really take what alarmists say seriously.
Most of Antarctica is well below 0.0 F even in Summer. Ice does not melt if air gets warmer…only if air gets above the melting point.
I knew I should have signed that 1,000-year lease on prime beach front property.
If this is such a risk, why aren’t the authors endorsing advanced nuclear power and nuclear research–at least as a backup in case “renewable” energy isn’t up to the job?
“If this is such a risk, why aren’t the authors endorsing advanced nuclear power and nuclear research–at least as a backup in case “renewable” energy isn’t up to the job?”
Because, their job is to alarm and obfuscate, not to offer sensible solutions that would help everyone, create a cleaner world, and make us all more prosperous.
I’m just waiting to see any of them show how to calculate the mean temperature of the earth within 1% before listening to their “complex mathematical” models explaining 4th decimal place squiggles ..
So – “PISM also uses the GI’s high-performance computers to get more accurate answers to the wide variety of scenarios. These computers can outperform an average personal computer in processing calculations.”
What the hell does than mean.
Have they confused accuracy with precision. Getting the wrong answer repeatedly to x decimal places isn’t worth a lot. Are they able to predict 5 years and then check that prediction???
More than half the melting could occur during the first 1,000 years, although the entire study spans 10,000 years
AKA Science Fiction
Yep. 80 feet in 1000 years, which is 10 inches per century, 2.5 mm/annum. Mathes rate of sea level rise for the past century pretty well. So. It is but a mindless extrapolation of the current trend, nothing more. One does not need a supercomputer to do that.
In that case we have no chance at all. Happens sometimes.
Shouldn’t the model be titled “PMSL” rather than “PISM”?
Berényi Péter
September 24, 2015 at 11:10 pm
80 feet in 1000 years = 960 inches in 1000 years = ~1 inch per year, ie 10 times the current rate.
You are absolutely right, I have miscalculated. However, it makes even more curious, that no acceleration of sea level rise is detected in more than 22 years, since satellite measurements were started at the end of 1992. In fact, there is a slight deceleration (-83 mm/century squared). And measured rate of sea level rise is 2.98 mm/annum (9.76 feet in 1000 years). Please note GIA correction is subtracted from CU estimate, because it is not actual sea level rise, but increase of ocean basin volume, which is a completely different matter.
Surprisingly, things we don’t really know combine with other things we don’t really know to tell us what we wanted to hear!
I get the feeling that most of us commenting here could say with Victor Meldrew
I DON’T BELIEVE IT
James Bull
“UAF’s Parallel Universe Model … ” there, fixed that for ya. No really, UAF and Potsdam working together? Credibility rating – minus several million.
“The equations are a way to say precisely how the parts of an ice sheet work and how each of these pieces is connected to all the others,” said Bueler. “Once you have the equations, you can make predictions.”
These models only have value if confirmed by real world observations. Unfortunately for the models in the real world the Antarctic is gaining ice and temperatures are NOT rising as predicted.
I expect the usual responses like the ocean ate my heat or the Koch brothers bribed the continental ice sheet. The reality is of course their basic assumption is deeply flawed. They act as if all CO2 released by burning fuel remains in the atmosphere instead of entering the carbon cycle with the rest of the CO2 in the atmosphere. An odd assumption given that human emitted CO2 is a small percentage of total emissions.
‘Science Advances’? There’s an oxymoron if I ever saw one. Or is it irony where the publication founders know that what they publish will be the opposite?
It is intuativly obvious to all but the most ill informed that ice from the deep antarctic will never melt without some masive shift in climate regimes. No amount of manmade CO2 can cause that.
Further to my previous comment; the highest temperature ever recorded at the south pole is -12°C. That ice will never melt as long as the antarctic continent stays were it is.