Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Even worse than we thought ™ – global warming estimates have been raised, just in time for next year’s COP26 conference. But one of high end CMIP6 models, CESM2 (highlighted above), has already been invalidated by a paleo study.
Just how hot will it get this century? Latest climate models suggest it could be worse than we thought
Michael Grose Climate Projections Scientist, CSIRO
Julie Arblaster Associate Professor, Monash University
May 18, 2020 5.58am AESTClimate scientists use mathematical models to project the Earth’s future under a warming world, but a group of the latest modelshave included unexpectedly high values for a measure called “climate sensitivity”.
Climate sensitivity refers to the relationship between changes in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and warming.
The high values are an unwelcome surprise. If they’re right, it means a hotter future than previously expected – warming of up to 7℃ for Australia by 2100 if emissions continue to rise unabated.
Our recent study analyses these climate models (named CMIP6), which were released at the end of last year, and what insights they give for Australia.
These models contain the latest improvements and innovations from some of the world’s leading climate modelling institutes, and will feed into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report in 2021.
But the new climate sensitivity values raise the question of whether previous climate modelling has underestimated potential climate change and its effects, or whether the new models are overdoing things.
If the high estimate is right, this would require the world to make greater and more urgent emission cuts to meet any given warming target.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/just-how-hot-will-it-get-this-century-latest-climate-models-suggest-it-could-be-worse-than-we-thought-137281
A few weeks ago WUWT reported a study which determined CESM2 predictions are incompatible with the fossil record, because CESM2 incorrectly hindcasts temperatures which would have created lifeless tropical deserts during the Early Eocene, a period of high atmospheric CO2 and abundant tropical life.
“Some of the newest models used to make future predictions may be too sensitive to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and thus predict too much warming,” said U-M’s Chris Poulsen, a professor in the U-M Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and one of the study’s three authors. – source Science Daily
CESM2 is a component of high end CMIP6 projections (see the diagram at the top of the page).
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15 May: NoTricksZone: Climate Alarmist Rahmstorf Quietly Concedes Models Are Crap, Running Way Too Hot
By P Gosselin
Stefan Rahmstorf on the IPCC modelling breakdown: Reason to breathe a sigh of relief, new climate models are far too sensitive.
By Die kalte Sonne
(Translated by P. Gosselin)
https://notrickszone.com/2020/05/15/climate-alarmist-rahmstorf-quietly-concedes-models-are-crap-running-way-too-hot/
Climate Alarmist Rahmstorf Quietly Concedes that the sky is blue and the sun might continue to rise in the East. Somebody give that creature some old-fashioned razor blades.
That’s after he consulted his Climate-Messiah Greta, remember the photos of the two together almost embracing a shared vision by side of a waterside; alarmingly strange a ‘scientist’ would want such publicity.
I’m just wondering exactly what the point would possibly be of deferring to an “ensemble mean” out of that lot!
It is most extraordinary that serious people in the climate business are not turning round and saying “now, come on lads, that’s getting ridiculous’
An ensemble mean provides intellectual cover to the individual modeling team, while at the same bringing them all equally into the deception. Everyone has to play along as long as they get included. A piece of action.
Obviously not all of them can be correct (if any are, which none are), but averaging them also gives the veneer of the model credibility as being “sciency stuff” to a naive public.
The real question, Joel, is why the APS plays along.
The average of crap is, unsurprisingly, crap. being average crap doesn’t change it from being crap.
I wonder how many times they had to run each model ,
and with how many sets of fudge factors they had to use.. ooops parameters,
to get such a narrow band of results 😉
Here are two interesting videos concerning the statement from the leading German climate histeric Mr. Rahmstorf: He explains in 2013 in an interview for ZDF (the Nr. 2 state TV-sender in Gernany), that the climate modells can not forecast the climate even on a 10-15-20 years basis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hrx08tInBg
The original interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfojG2lGAtA
Mr. Rahmstorf speaks from 00:41 to 00:59 (in German).
There is a principle in climate science that if a later assessment is worse than what was previously presented as the settled science then the settled scientists were not wrong but even more right than previously thought.
This illogic is part of the settled science that must not be questioned because it is settled.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/25/earth-day-wisdom/
It could’not better said :^)
If at first crying wolf does not work, you are not shouting loud enough.
Rinse, lather ( at the mouth ) and repeat.
One would have thought that politicians would ask questions of the climate modellers following the debacle of the Covid19 models.
The exposed politicians will just use the not-as-bad-as-forecast results as proof the lockdowns worked.
And they may get away with it because the public in naive to the fact that those COVID dire models did incorporate (for most of them) social distancing and lockdowns and a diminishment of R-naught.
We have met the enemy and it’s the models…
I second that.
This is CESM2 model. I had serious problems with CESM1, which overestimated a heat transfer by water evaporattion/condensation from tropical seas by 3%. I wonder if they use the same physics? A cursory glance at the CESM2 web page tells you how to run the model but not what it models. Does anybody know how the model handles water vaporization?
https://judithcurry.com/2013/06/28/open-thread-weekend-23/#comment-338257
My bold:
Shouldn’t ‘scientists’ be running the models to ascertain what might occur rather than starting with the premise that the world will always get warmer, never colder?
This sounds like they are deliberately making the temps higher then trying to work out what the effects would be.
Doesn’t sound very ‘sciencey’ to me
This reminds me that the new US forecast model is worse than the one it just replaced. It is so bad the predictions for some months made in the prior month turn out to be completely the opposite of what actually happens. They issue their final forecast for a month on the 10th of that month.. and even it is wrong most of the time.
So if you can’t predict 30 days out, how can you predict 30 years out?
So, let me get this right, if we raise the ‘climate sensitivity’ in the mathematical model it produces a more extreme result. In other words we mess with the variables in model to find the predicted future which will make an impressive headline. Scary
I find it interesting that in 12 years it’s all over and too late but in 80years time it’s going to be one degree warmer than we thought. Who cares? We’re all dead anyway! If one drowns at sea because the waters over your head it doesn’t matter if it’s one meter over your head or a hundred meters over your head you’re just as dead. The one thing extinction rebellion teaches us it is the absolute futility of trying to do anything on climate change and all these increasingly alarmist claims do is increase the levels of that futility. No wonder the younger generation is stressed and anxious. So rather than add to their stress by impoverishing the global economies participating in what is becoming clearer and clearer an exercise in futility, now is the time to not care and just party. If we are all going to disappear with a climate apocalypse we might as well go out with a smile on our faces.
Futility sets you free! It’s kinda catchy.
In a 1984 sort of way….
“and all these increasingly alarmist claims do is increase the levels of that hilarity. !
Would it not be better to just stay with the Russian INM-CM4 model assuming a terrifying 1.5°C, which also seems to have a fair hindcast?
Or even simpler, do an extrapolation from past century!
Alternatively, kill all termites. Killing those animals will reduce CO₂ emissions and keep the industry going – win win.
Indeed, the latest INM model for CMIP6 is the only one to have a lower ECS than the CMIP5 minimum value. The issue with these hotter models is their increasing net positive feedback from clouds as opposed to net negative in INMCM4-8. The detailed analysis is done by Zelinka et al, paper here:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL085782
My synopsis is https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/climate-models-good-bad-and-ugly/
Un, Carl. termites produce methane, not CO2.
Martin
Well, to be fair, the methane will oxidize quickly and turn into carbon dioxide.
+8 degrees C.
+9 degrees C.
MAYBE +12 degrees C.
The predictions don’t matter because they’ve always been wrong, because climate alarmists don’t care about accurate predictions — they want scary predictions, so the warming number has to rise, otherwise people get bored.
The world is not going to end in 12 years, and the warming will not be +7 degrees.
In fact, the world will end in 10.45 years, with +14.56 degrees warming +/- 5.82 degrees C. (Real science requires at least two decimal places).
+42 C
“42” Now I understand! Thanks!
They might as well be holding an auction: “Do I hear 14C? Going once at 12C… Yes, I now have 15C, thank you sir”
And 5 significant digits look even more impressive.
I think you’ll find the majority are already bored.
Even the moderately intellectually challenged can see the difference between spurious claims and reality, its just that collectively they don’t yell at their political representatives.
But they do vote…
I thought that it was at least three decimal places that makes numbers look ‘sciencey.’ The more decimal places, the more one should bow down to the claim. After all, that’s why calculators return so many digits after the decimal place.
“We need to get some broad based support,to capture the public’s imagination…So we have to offer up scary scenarios,make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…Each of us has to decide what the right balance between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider
And those that followed in the esteem professor’s footsteps continue his work of offering up scary scenarios and simplified, dramatic statements.
Why is it always “worse than we thought”? You know despite the toxic green, a little Victorian ingenuity might be a good thing here. Why not, WOWEE..check this out, it’s so cool! Why all the doom and gloom all the time? I get a lot of it is about selling newspaper headlines, but historically, headlines that bring Good News sell out quicker with bigger views than those always proclaiming bad news.
If you want to start a movement, make people feel GOOD about doing their part, not constantly putting them down for being natural human beings.
I’m so sick of this crapola of fear mongering. Take the Netflix MARS for example, I thought it was going to be a cool show…binged season 1, well Season 2 came along and it’s ALL about the dangers of companies colonizing Mars with an intensive and unequivocal agenda of blaming the oil companies for the reason why we’re looking to Mars to expand. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I ended up watching all of Season 2 in less than a few hours because I skipped the BS, oil companies are the devil and simply segued into the next portion of each that dealt with the story on MARS…..you know, the title of the freaking SHOW?
“Why is it always “worse than we thought”?”
Because that’s the only way to get people’s attention. Every prophecy of doom HAS to be worse than the last, or people rapidly lose interest.
It’s just more proof that the whole thing is a huge scam.
I would love for the whole issue to end up on a sandwich board walking the streets of NYC…..because that is where it is headed.
“Just how hot will it get this century? Latest climate models suggest it could be worse than we thought”
Wrongo, buzzard beak! The Climate Models–aka computer-based-climate-propaganda tools–are worse than YOU thought.
BTW, I just started downloading the outputs of the CMIP6 models, and they are a bad joke.
Stay safe and healthy, all.
Bob
I look forward to your postings on the CMIP6 models’ outputs, Bob. Thanks for all your good work!
Bob,
I am an amateur, but avid fan of WUWT. One of the foundational principals of science use to be that the scientist shares all data, assumptions, algorithms, bad outcomes, etc so that others could examine the body of evidence, replicate the experiment, examine the assumptions etc. This no longer seems to be the case in Climate Science.
Are the 106 or so models available to be examined by those with the requisite expertise? Is the data, algorithms, statistical analysis, whatever goes into the model, available to be examined by interested third parties? Or is each model “proprietary” and the rest of us must take it on faith that the model is based on valid data, valid physics, valid statistical treatment of precision, accuracy, error bars, propagation of error over 30 years, etc?
I know that Michael Mann refuses to share his data and methods for the creation of the hockey stick. I know that Phil Jones in the climate gate emails asked why he should share his data with people who just want to find something wrong with it. Clearly, this is the antithesis of Science.
Are the inner workings of each climate model opaque black bodies as well?
Thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate your time to respond.
Bill Sprague
Bad joke for sure. But I am relieved to see that Andrew Weaver legacy CanESM models remains the most radical and that the Russian INMC models remain the most reflective of reality. I’ll bet all the other usual suspects fall more or less in their traditional positions. Nothing is learned; the flaws persist.
Climate science doesn’t know what world temperature is today within half a degree, and doesn’t know what it was 100 years ago, but they know what it will be 100 years from now.
+1!!!!!!
They don’t just know it, they know it to 5 significant digits with no error bars!
The old joke about the Soviet Union applies here too: where only the future is certain, but the past keeps changing all the time…..
Jeez, Eric, I almost had a panic attack when I saw your headline “+7C by 2100” because yesterday, based on a cooling article here at WATTS, I and my dogs had driven around the block several times in my SUV, you know, to do my part in increasing evil carbon/raising the temperature before we slide into another (Little?) Ice Age? Now we MIGHT perish in a burning hell here on earth? Jenn is going to Mars to escape? Wait a minute…CSIRO? Never mind! The golf course will be green when I get there, eventually. Stay sane (becoming a little harder!) and safe.
I can’t believe this stupid models are still being taken seriously by anyone. As Judith Curry pointed out many years ago, they are “fundamentally flawed”. They have zero predictive capabilities.
I read this from the study, following the link to it. Bolding is mine:
“After midcentury, the two ensembles are significantly different (using a two‐tailed Student’s t test) under SSP5‐85/RCP8.5, especially at the top end, for both 2060–2079 (2.2 to 3.7 °C in CMIP5, 2.1 to 4.6 °C in CMIP6) and 2080–2099 (2.8 to 5.1 °C in CMIP5, 3.5 to 6.5 °C in CMIP6). The timing of the temperature rise appears to be consistent with a previous finding that while there is a group of models with high ECS, their transient climate response (TCR) measure of climate sensitivity, defined as the global mean temperature change for a doubling of CO2 in a 1% per year increasing CO2 experiment, appears to have not increased by as large a margin as the ECS. The different change to TCR compared to ECS suggested that high sensitivity is expressed as higher temperatures mainly at longer timescales. Using the 1850–1900 baseline as an approximation for the preindustrial climate, some models within CMIP6 project changes in global and Australian temperature of over 7 °C before the end of the century, which is unprecedented in CMIP5″.
So, several things:
1) They are using the only projection that we know that cannot possibly happen (not enough fossil fuels in the world to trigger the required level of emissions for RCP8.5 to begin with).
2) They are talking about 7ºC from a 1850 temperatures baseline, not from today’s temperatures.
3) Only the weirdest in the weirdest selection of models that they could find suggests that such a thing could be possible. The 7 degrees does not even represent an agreement of their hottest running models, which is between 3.5 and 6.5 degrees.
Repeated for emphasis:
So, several things:
1) They are using the only projection that we know that cannot possibly happen (not enough fossil fuels in the world to trigger the required level of emissions for RCP8.5 to begin with).
2) They are talking about 7ºC from a 1850 temperatures baseline, not from today’s temperatures.
3) Only the weirdest in the weirdest selection of models that they could find suggests that such a thing could be possible. The 7 degrees does not even represent an agreement of their hottest running models, which is between 3.5 and 6.5 degrees.
Moving the reference period to 1850 – 1900 is a neat trick, there was a a large dip in global temps in the late 1800’s, so they gain (from memory ) another degree , perhaps more, by using that reference period.
The 7 degree claim is specific to Australia. Since the models don’t produce a uniform result across the planet, they can cherry pick the hottest spot and shout about it. Its like claiming your solar array can run 1000 houses but neglecting to mention that its only for about 15 minutes at peak production.
“The 7 degree claim is specific to Australia”
No, the 7 degree claim is about, I quote literally, “global and Australian temperature”. Both things. Global and Australian. Although this is according to only “some models within CMIP6”, and only in the impossible scenario RCP8.5, and only if you use 1850-1900 temperatures as baseline. Which makes any conclusion worthless and invalid, but can produce very nice headers in the newspapers, if alarming is the new nice.
The 7 degree claim is specific to Australia
No, but I see how you could come to that mistaken conclusion. The focus of the quoted article, written by an Australian, is on Australia, but the actual results of the study are for the world as a whole.
So the new models suggest that the acceleration in warming will be even greater than previously thought. As we have warmed less than previously anticipated this coming change must be even more extreme.
1) What triggers the sudden acceleration?
2) What observations have indicated that this sudden acceleration needs to be included in the models?
3) What is preventing the acceleration from happening already?
4) How can we use this counter-acceleration factor to prevent AGW?
5) What did the previous models get wrong that missed the new acceleration?
6) How do we know the old models underestimated the eventual warming when so far they have over-estimated the actual warming?
7) Don’t the new models lower confidence in the models’ ability to reflect reality?
Any other questions occur to you?
2) What observations have indicated that this sudden acceleration needs to be included in the models?
That the old numbers weren’t scary enough to get people to turn over enough money and control to them.
“The high values are an unwelcome surprise.”
Intact male bovid anal dejecta!
This is precisely what they wanted. Crank the hysteria up to 11.
The CMIP6 definitely Needs More Cowbell, to go with all the BullS&^t those cargo cult modeling teams produced. It just keeps getting deeper with each intercomparison ensemble.
CMIP6 Cranks Up the Climate Sensitivity Estimate for COP26
Just in time. Climate Sensitivity — the new Hockey Shtick.
And once again the INM models CM4v8 and new CM5v0 produce an ECS very close to the observational energy budget values. They have published on what they have done for improvements since CMIP5. Bottom line differences to all the others: higher ocean thermal inertia, more accurate precipitation => lower water vapor feedback and lower cloud feedback per the Eschenbach hypothesis.
Yes, why don’t they hype the Russian model that only forecasts a rise of 1.8C by 2100?
That was a rhetorical question. A 1.8C figure is not nearly as scary as a 5.6C figure.
This is just doubling down on stupid. They have to make the scenario as scary as possible in a desperate effort to keep the human-caused climate change narrative going.
They really have no alternative but to exaggerate as much as they can get away with. Otherwise, they are out of a job.
Even worse, it only gets 1.8C with an RCP 8.5 scenario. What does it get with a more realistic emission schedule? This just reinforces my opinion that “Climate Change” is something that is best adapted to.
I cannot pick those models out on the chart above. What were the ECS that they produce?
WS the two on the extreme far right of the chart.
Ah! Thank You
They are 1.9 and 1.8. Which is at least social distance from the Nick Stokes/Judith Curry empirically derived number which was:
The new best estimates using globally-complete surface temperature data, of 1.66°C for ECS and 1.33°C for TCR,
https://judithcurry.com/2018/04/24/impact-of-recent-forcing-and-ocean-heat-uptake-data-on-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity/
Walter
Did you mean Nick Lewis instead of Nick Stokes?
water vapor feedback is likely negative, not positive. Thus lowers the real-world ECS of a doubling of CO2.
This reminds me of an auction, the winning doomsday scenario gets the most money.
That’s the wonder of climate models. They will tell you whatever you want to hear.
You need to program it into them first.
GIGO
“Some of the newest models used to make future predictions may be too sensitive to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and thus predict too much warming,”
Some???
All models and budgets are the sum of the assumptions fed into them. If there is a higher “climate sensitivity” in the model, it is there because the one who built the model put it there deliberately.
This looks to me like a reverse Name That Tune. But instead of bidding a lower number of notes needed to guess the tune, it’s bidding a higher number for climate sensitivity needed to predict disaster.
Another analogy takes place in the winter when one person says that he heard that there was a chance of flurries overnight. The 2nd person chimes in and says that he heard 1 to 3 inches of snow. The 3 says that heard 3 to 6…
But the science is settled.
From 1750 to 2011, CO2 rose from 277 ppmv to 394 ppmv (see https://www.co2levels.org/ ).
During that time period, global temperature increased by 0.85 +/- 0.10 degrees (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity ).
Because of “saturation” effects, warming is not linear with increasing CO2, but logarithmic (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing ).
This means that from 1750 to 2011, warming of 0.85 degrees was proportional to ln(394/277), assuming that ALL of the observed warming was due to increased CO2 and ALL associated feedbacks. Therefore climate sensitivity (the warming on doubling CO2) can be no higher than (0.85)ln2/[ln(394/277)] = 1.67 +/- 0.20 degrees.
Because of the hiatus in warming for the last 20 years, even as CO2 has continued to increase, this must be an upper limit, and is likely to be considerably too high (I calculate around 0.6-0.7 degrees, since the forcing of 3.7 W/m^2 comes from calculations assuming a cloud-free troposphere – and 62% of the Earth is covered by clouds which reduce the absorptive path length to the tropopause; any extra absorption by CO2 below the cloud tops simply reduces the absorption by the cloud particles which act like miniature black bodies with near-total absorption followed by emission of ALL frequencies in the infrared range of interest). This calculation of 1.67 degrees could have been done in 2011.
For Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman’s take on the Scientific Method, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY . Every model predicting more than 1.67 degrees is wrong.
“This means that from 1750 to 2011, warming of 0.85 degrees was proportional to ln(394/277), assuming that ALL of the observed warming was due to increased CO2 and ALL associated feedbacks. Therefore climate sensitivity (the warming on doubling CO2) can be no higher than (0.85)ln2/[ln(394/277)] = 1.67 +/- 0.20 degrees.”
I think it is pretty safe to assume that CO2 did *not* cause all the warming. The IPCC says not all the warming in the Early Twentieth Century was caused by CO2. And since it is no warmer today than in the early 20th century, there is no reason to assume all warming today is from CO2.
So, as you imply, if natural variability is supplying some percentage of the warmth, then the ECS of 1.67 will have to go lower.
You are correct, Roger.
Let’s consider the SB equation. Let’s say the Earth warms 6 degree C to pick an extreme case. That’s 2% on the Kelvin scale. Due to the T^4 of SB, that means 8% more heat is required for warming and 8% more has to be rejected to outer space. CO2 can’t provide enough forcing to do that.
But increased cloud, thus increasing Earth’s albedo certainly can. Every degree C of ocean surface warming attempts to increase the water vapor content of the air immediately above the water by 7%. Convection causes this water vapor to become cloud 2 days later and 200 miles away, which reflect incoming sunlight back into space, and restores the thermal balance of the planet.
The average temperature of the planet is controlled by incoming sunlight, and how much of it is reflected back into space by clouds. The amount of cloud cover is controlled by water evaporation from the surface, the rate of which is controlled by surface temperature.
This is a STRONG negative feedback loop, in my opinion, as opposed to what ClimSci’s often say. It is as if they have determined that the closer a gas pedal is to the floor, the SLOWER a car goes, except they are oblivious to the fact that the cruise control is “ON” and they are making gas pedal observations while going up and down hills….
“water evaporation from the surface, the rate of which is controlled by surface temperature.”
By surface temperature and the state of the air/water boundary layer. Google fish farms, oil warming. Israeli farmers used to warm the ponds by using a molecule-thick layer of oil.
JF
Julian,
yes, reduces evaporative cooling from the pond surface….but an oil layer is not part of the surface temp/cloud feedback loop I am talking about here.
Please just stop with the fraudulent models.
RCP8.5 input, say no more.