CMCC FOUNDATION – EURO-MEDITERRANEAN CENTER ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Less intense mean daily precipitation, more intense and localised extreme events. This is what the future climate scenarios indicate for the Eastern Alps, according to the study “Evaluation and Expected Changes of Summer Precipitation at Convection Permitting Scale with COSMO-CLM over Alpine Space”, published by the CMCC Foundation in the journal Atmosphere. The research is conducted in the context of the European project H2020 EUCP (European Climate Prediction system) and contributes to the work of the international scientific community for the development of climate models that can support decision makers in a proper assessment of extreme events and their evolution considering climate change, with the ultimate goal of limiting its negative impacts on societies and economies.
Climate change adaptation plans and measures existing worldwide are based on future scenarios made available to decision-makers by the world of research. These scenarios currently provide a good representation of extreme events at daily scale, but still have limited predictive capabilities at sub-daily time scale. For some sectors, such as infrastructure, there is insufficient with which to develop adequate climate change adaptation policies: very intense and rapid rainfall, concentrated in small areas and in a few hours, can have strong impacts on infrastructure, causing the overflow of water bodies and flooding, undermining systems and revealing the inability of sewerage to handle large flows of water. Some extreme events can last for a few hours and affect very small areas (in the order of a few kilometres). The need to understand such phenomena is even greater in some specific geographical contexts, such as the Alpine area, where extreme rainfall events – typical of the summer season – can have serious consequences.
“In recent decades there has been an ongoing debate among climatologists about the added value of very high-resolution climate simulations, representing the next generation of the regional climate-models'” explains Paola Mercogliano, director of the REMHI (Regional Models and geo-Hydrological Impacts) division at the CMCC Foundation. “These climate simulations, which are run with regional models at a very high spatial and temporal resolution, have a high computational cost and require significant investments in terms of research time. Given the high costs, the scientific community is questioning whether this is the right way to go to better support climate change adaptation policies. Our study demonstrates the added value of this direction and confirms that it is worth investing in it, especially in areas with complex orography or where uncertainty is still wide, such as the Alps. With these new generation models, we can not only observe what happens at very high resolutions in terms of mean daily precipitation, but we can also make statistical analyses on a sub-daily basis, looking at different hours of the same day. These models will also be able to provide information on the effects of climate change on hourly precipitation: results that would have been unthinkable just two or three years ago.”
The study shows a better representation of precipitation frequency and intensity in very high-resolution simulations (‘convection permitting’) than in lower resolution simulations, especially at sub-daily scale.
“In agreement with existing literature, our preliminary results for the Alpine area in the summer season show a decrease in mean daily precipitation, especially at high altitudes, and localised intensifications of extreme events along the Eastern Alps. It will rain less frequently but more intensely, both on a daily and hourly time scale. Given the increased intensity of these events, it is clear that understanding the distribution of rainfall at hourly scale can bring great added value in our support for decision-makers,” explains Marianna Adinolfi, CMCC researcher and lead author of the paper.
Next generation climate models are developed and applied by the CMCC Foundation in several international projects and contexts. Some examples include the study of urban heatwaves and the evolution of rainfall extremes in support of adaptation policies on an urban scale: all contexts that will benefit from having simulations on hourly scales.
Furthermore, to support adaptation policies, the CMCC created products such as the Climate Scenarios for Italy, which allows visualising in maps the expected climate until the end of the century using high-resolution climate models, and climate services such as Dataclime, which provides customized climate analysis on multiple temporal and spatial scales.
This study was carried out within the Horizon 2020 research project EUCP – European Climate Prediction system, in which the CMCC Foundation participates. The project aims to support the scientific community in the development of high-quality climate data and projections on a European scale to be provided to policy makers, stakeholders and planners to address the challenges and opportunities brought by climate change.
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More information:
Adinolfi, M.; Raffa, M.; Reder, A.; Mercogliano, P. Evaluation and Expected Changes of Summer Precipitation at Convection Permitting Scale with COSMO-CLM over Alpine Space. Atmosphere 2021, 12, 54. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12010054
Oh, goodie, new computer-based propaganda, masquerading as science. What will they think of next?
Regards,
Bob
Continuation, I suppose, by definition of insanity.
The picture of the cow reminded me of my trip to work this morning during which I pass a large pasture full of Black Angus. Today, they were all white from about shoulder high. They didn’t seem to mind, though I don’t like temperatures in the single digits (F).
Classic photo bomb.. Well done cow !
Thats bleaching. Just like the Barrier reef caused by global warming. They will die. Burger time.
I lived in a beautiful valley in Nevada’s Great Basin. One of the local cows was pitifully unattractive compared to the rest. We called her Lulu. The bulls, however, found her beautiful and were constantly after her, to her apparent delight.
Would you call meteorolgy computer-based propaganda or a science?
If I were a person like you Loydo, who really doesn’t comprehend what the scientific method actually entails, I’d be posing your question as well to meteorologists such as Cliff Mass, Anthony Watts, Joe Bastardi.
That way you might get a clue, because they and Bob all know the right answers, as they have regularly demonstrated.
Dont appeal to authority so MANN-like
Another ignorant attention-seeking comment from loy-dumb…… So Sad.
A meteorologist knows he/she is only predicting a few days in advance, at best.
A few months.. a wild guess.
Anything further into the future.. its PROPAGANDA, and almost certainly total BS..
BS comments like the one quoted below, are total nonsense
Sorry muppets, you cannot observe it, until it actually happens.
Spot on, Fred 250 – you cannot observe it until it actually happens. There is the nub of it all. We have no end of climate change adaptation plans and measures earnestly thought out, printed out and ready for action by all our panic-stricken governments and local councils in the democratic Western world.
But what can we actually do in practical terms until we can
positively identify real happenings, real developments. Why not, in fact, leave it to the market, i.e. the insurance companies?? Let the buyers of seaside properties, etc. beware!! It should be none of Governments’ or councils’ business.
I’mwondering–?– why don’t these modelers initiate their predictive models around 1970 and see what they get when they run them out to 2000 or so.
That would seem like the most telling and useful evaluation since they could actually see if the model produces realistic, or at least, somewhere in
the range of believability results.
THAT would be interesting! Flatulent, unverifiable for 40 years models aren’t useful at all.
Depends on whether you are talking about weather or climate models.
Weather models or borderline useful.
Climate models may have once been bout science, but in recent decades have become pure propaganda.
Anything that mentions “climate change projections” is bound to be baseless model-drivel propaganda
Exactly! When models do nothing but show a broad rage of all possible outcomes, it’s only personal bias (expectation bias) that determines what end of the range they’ll choose. That has neither accuracy nor precision. It ain’t science at ll.
I know, I know, good models and evil models.
Actually, YOU DON’T KNOW…
You remain perpetually CLUELESS. !!
All models are wrong on some level. However, some are useful. Climate models have only proven useful for raising money and convincing the gullible laymen that CO2 is evil.
It’s really pointless trying to educate Loydo. He/she’s been trolling this website forever and the only progress she/he’s made is just in making more inane and snarkier comments.
A model is good when it reasonably fits experimental observations with sound physics behind it. Tuning doesn’t work out if the physics behind the model is wrong. Then you have a “bad” model from a scientific point of view. “Good” or “bad or even “evil” is dependent on the goals one wants to achieve. If complete destruction of our economy is the objective, then the climate (or corona) models are “good” for the greens and left, but “evil” for everyone else, since real observations wouldn’t mandate such catastrophic policy changes.
Regardless what it’s called, none of the surveyors in that article make use of eith meteorology or science in general. Models are merely tools often beneficial in designing predictive experiments. Their output is of little use otherwise.
Loydo
Meteorologists are different from climatologists. For one thing, meteorologists understand that their forecasts breakdown as they try to push them into the future. The farther they push them, the worse they get. Climatologists claim, without support, that the farther they push their forecasts, the better they get. So, I would call climatology to be computer-based propaganda.
I used to work for a regional Bell telephone company and part of my job was forecasting different things. Hardware in central offices, budgets, people requirements, etc. One learns pretty quickly that as you begin to walk into the future the more unknowns you encounter. The range of outcomes grows beyond your ability to anticipate what will happen.
Using models only gives you one little input into the possible range of what might happen. No one can predict the future with a computer model. The unknown unknowns are just too abundant. Otherwise, why would we need weather forecasters, financial advisors, stock market gurus, and you name it. All of these have “models” they can use, yet what is the warning, something like “past performance doesn’t predict future returns”! Beware prognosticators, they are not omniscient.
Any CliSci practitioner or modeler that spends his time defending his work rather than trying to falsify it is not a scientist.
Science.
Meteorologists predict the weather a few days in advance based on sound observational evidence.
They use a model to present the data in a simple format. Their predictive power can be measured within a few days.
Meteorologists rise or fall on their ability to predict the weather.
Climate Scientologists write computer code, fiddle with a few known variables, guess at a few unknown variables, assume everything can be parameterised, add in the number of days they have been alive (which could be the reason the models run hot and are getting hotter!), and then take the average of all the models to “get the right answer”.
An answer that can’t be checked for 100 years or more.
Climate Scientologists rise or rise on their ability to baffle illiterates using scary scenarios.
There’s that word again “scenario”.
Not prediction, scenario.
Real science makes measurable predictions.
It doesn’t paint scenarios of possible outcomes if this or that happens.
“Meteorologists rise or fall on their ability to predict the weather.”
Therein lies an important difference. If someone is caught unprepared for rain, they will remember it and find another meteorologist. Climatologists forecast so far in the future that none of us will be around to verify the forecast.
Meteorology…
You are talking weather forecasting.
I would call meteorology a discipline of science that sometimes uses validated models to make predictions over prescribed timeframes, predictions that others may transparently verify. Competing model predictions are compared, and the inaccurate models are either ditched or modified to improve their accuracy.
CliSci models are never validated, nor ditched or modified when their outputs prove inaccurate. The outputs of the many inaccurate, unphysical CliSci (UN IPCC CMIP) models are mashed together to make “projections” that are never accurate. When confronted, IPCC politicians modify near to mid term global temperature model “projections” downward (UN IPCC AR5 “expert” adjustments) despite leaving the long term “hot” “projections” in place. CliSci modelers use demonstratively exaggerated predictions (RCP scenarios) of GHGs as “business as usual” human GHG emissions. Lies all the way down, beginning to end.
Collecting a lot of real, high quality data is very hard work. But computers can take limited amounts of lower quality data and use it to easily and quickly generate large volumes of “data,” which can then be used for additional analysis.
If you were an academic researcher seeking to progress quickly in your career, which is the more attractive option?
Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens didn’t have any inkling about computer models, but his quote about science is pertinent:
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
In <i>Life on the Mississippi</i>
The weather will be worse unless it gets better, or it may stay the same
/s
Following Andy May, I have conducted my own comparison of CMIP6 climate models. I have looked at the annual average temperature from the models hindcasting to 2000 and forecasting to 2030. I have included the much tortured GHCN measured data for reference.
Chart attached here.
An immediate observation is that there is a 2C difference between warmest and coldest. That seems inconsistent with dire consequences resulting from another 0.5C warmer. Surely it comes down to what is the actual temperature that we need to fear.
There is only one model that is based on the physics of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. The other 9 are all based on fairy tales. The Chinese FGOALS looks good but looking under the hood shows it manages the physically impossible.
Can we require these modelers to forecast outcomes in ten, twenty, and perhaps end of century. It would be beneficial to know if the climate was changing in the forecast trajectory. I don’t want to be dead when the world finds out it has been subjected to the greatest scientific fraud ever.
The Global Average Surface Temperature is a meaningless number but, since we are playing the silly game, it would be good if we could all to agree on the current meaningless number. This small number of models give 14C to 16.4C to choose from. GHCN was indicating 14.8C in 2019 but it will be around 14.3C in 2021 – could even be less than 14C average for 2021..
It would also be useful to know the meaningless number that results in a slow poached planet. It has to be more than 16.4C but is 17C, 18C or even 20C? There needs to be agreement on an answer to these silly questions.
Get bloated from too much popcorn ! 🙂
Seriously, Rick..
Calling GHCN “measured”, is tending the truth rather a lot !!
It was once measured, but then tortured, in-filled, “adjusted”, homogenised, …
… and who know what other anti-science adventures it has gone through.
To say it has any meaning now, is stretching the fairy’s tail.
Fred
If you can recommend or provide another global average data set that gives the correct number of 14C then I will replace the GHCN.
The moored buoys, that I regard as the gold standard, have limited coverage and could not be taken as a global number. They do provide a basic test for model validation though over their area of coverage.
“Its the only game in town” seems to apply.
Rick, thank you for presenting the graph of data vs. models in their actual terms, not anomalies. Bravo!
Regards,
Bob
My absolute pleasure –
It is interesting to note that the models produce large annual cycles. So the silliness knows no bounds with these models. Why would a “climate” model ever consider monthly data relevant.
Rick
A perfect model, not that one exists, would be something like a Mandelbrot set where, as one increases the magnification, new patterns emerge. That is to say, while climate is dealing with the big picture, one would have more confidence in it if the known periodicities were reproduced.
From climate perspective, glaciation is what matters and I am getting a better picture of that. Glaciation appears to start when the Tropical Atlantic fails to make the 30C controlled temperature. The linked paper has some good reconstructed temperature data for the tropical oceans:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000PA000506
The Atlantic only gets to 26C meaning it is suffering an energy shortfall. The North Atlantic has a lot of land surface that it supplies heat to and when it goes cold the land starts to accumulate snow. It is downhill from there.
At some stage I will get into the detail of eccentricity impact on the North Atlantic but it will not be a key issue for the current century. If people in Europe cannot heat their homes this year they will die. So energy policy matters now.
What is the UKESM1?
Basically the UK Met – Earth System Model.
It looks like it is just tuned to CO2 as it approximates the GHCN.
Hi Rick, you compared the “global average surface temperature” with the GHCN data, which are land temperatures! IMO you downloaded the “tas” data record of the CMIP6 projections from the KNMI climate explorer. However, you should have used the “Land only” mask to compare apples to apples when it comes to the GHCN dataset. This is very important, the discrepancy in the slopes between the CMIP 6 models and GHCN observations should increase because land warms faster than the oceans due to the limited evaporation over land.
“Less intense mean daily precipitation, more intense and localised extreme events”
The statement is designed to scare people in thinking you can have more frequent and more severe floods and more frequent and more extreme floods.
Unless you provide localised catchment and sub catchment quantitative analysis, the above statement is total BS.
Each location is different.
But I consider the following to be the key concepts that alarmists will not address.
Flooding involves more than rainfall intensity. The catchment size, slope, soil conditions, development and storage all play an important role. These change with time.
Most locations are subject to three storm types.
A. Extremely short, high intensity storms. ( usually upto 20 minutes)
Most housing codes are aimed to protect roofs from these.
The total volume of rainfall will NOT overwhelm local or major drainage systems.
B. Medium length storms with medium intensity ( usually 15 minutes upto several hours)
These storms do not impact individual roofs but may overwhelm local drainage systems.
C. Longer duration storms with lower intensity.( lasting hours to days)
These events provide significant volume of rainfall which can overwhelm major drainage systems.
Each city has its own existing conditions so has existing systems to cater for the three types of storm events.
A doesn’t cause much total damage across a city.
B can cause severe but localised damage
C can cause significant widespread damage.
BUT more frequent and more intense B and C WILL make the average go up.
Additional information
Storage and evaporation in a catchment is very important.
If there has been low average rainfall prior to the more intense storm arriving then the storms impact will be reduced.
Discussing drought is even more complicated.
Simple summary
More droughts and more floods at the same location is total BS
I have read alarmists claims that state things like.
“By 2100 it is very likely that rainfall intensity will change from between -5% to +8%” and “ By 2100 it is very likely evaporation will change by between -4% to +6%”
This is designed to allow them to claim things like more floods to wash crops away but more droughts to reduce growing.
But how can anyone read this sh.t and not say WTF.
Yep, Climate models are basically SKILL-LESS when it comes to rainfall….
and temperature… and,.. well… basically EVERYTHING to do with climate.
All these greenies worrying about extreme rainfall events. You would think they would have noticed it is only the extreme events that fill dams.
Here in Oz, if we had average rainfall every month for the rest of time, we would all die of thirst. Average rainfall puts very little into dams, which will be empty in the dry season.
It is only when we get a couple to a few hundred millimeters of rain in a very short period that farm dams & major storage facilities actually fill, giving us a year or three of secure water supply. My property is still living off the extreme rain that fell last February. Without another “extreme” event it will be dry by the end of this year.
Overall warmer climate means a few % higher rainfall. except the annual variation in most places is half to double its average, so a few percent change will be hard to notice. Might show up over 30 years of annual records /s
Models… models.
How many times dot he models have to be wrong?
As many times as a screwed up sentence.
hint, if you see your typos within about 5-10 minutes, hover over the bottom right of your comment field,
An little star shape should appear, click it and an edit button should appear.
Cheers
I think autocorrect must have kicked in:
“dot he” should have been “dotty” 😉
What a steaming load of unmitigated cow patties. Now these phonies expect us to believe their models are so “highly tuned” they’re capable of predicting specific parts of the day in the future. They’re all just going around congratulating each other on the world’s most precise circle jerk!
Somewhat OT,
Was just wondering how “The Weather Channel” forecast for February in the USA was going ?
From what it predicted versus what is actually happening on the ground Fred, I would say the projection got its plus and minus functions the wrong way round…. 🙂
I should have added, they look like their projection for Mexico looks about right.
They just got the year wrong, that is the projection for February 1921.
a model with hourly projections is modeling weather not climate …
The Alps had wet winters in the 1670s, 1720s, 1910s & from around 1950 to 1990. They had wet summers from around 1550 to 1700; with 1663 being the wettest summer in that period.
The Alps had dry winters from 1850s to 1900; with 1850 being the driest winter. They had dry summers in the 1540s, after 1770, after 1860 & after 1970; with 1540 being the driest summer in that period, which gave Switzerland a legendary summer drought.
Although not an independent actor, generally the North Atlantic Oscillation has significant impact on the amount of rain in the Alps; & more so at higher, than at lower elevations. When there is a differential between sea surface temperatures that is positive by Azores & negative south of Greenland then this dynamic potentiates the Icelandic Low & Atlantic High; the result is an air front that jets heading from the southwest in a northeast direction.
However, the Alps is usually a bit to the south east of that polar-ward jetting air mass & the Alps geological mass causes shuffling in the atmosphere, which is what creates the high pressure over the Alps. This relationship usually creates the gradient of Alps’ precipitation & the more positive the North Atlantic Oscillation cycle then the less precipitation falls. I mention this because the Original Post exclaims models show eastern Alp slopes are their high intensity precipitation risk & that is the side of the Alps farthest from a positive North Atlantic Oscillation generated jet.
In contrast, when there is a negative North Atlantic Oscillation the Icelandic Low & Atlantic High shift westward, since sea surface temperatures are negative by Azores & positive by Greenland. This engenders a relatively weaker air jet that moves toward the pole that is also shunted relatively more southerly & when that air mass gets near the Alps it’s influence is usually so weak that the unique local environmental factors of Alpine thermal winds & Alpine thermal storms are what regulate precipitation.
,
Citation for above synopsis = (2004) “Temperature and precipitation variability in the European Alps since 1500”; by Cast, et al. Free full text available on-line has several precipitation data figures if interested.
I thought climate Scientologists didn’t make predictions, only projections and painted broad stroke scenarios
That way you might get a clue, because they and Bob all know the right answers, as they have regularly demonstrated.
“Less intense mean daily precipitation, more intense and localised extreme events. This is what the future climate scenarios indicate for the Eastern Alps, according to the study:
“Evaluation and Expected Changes of Summer Precipitation at Convection Permitting Scale with COSMO-CLM over Alpine Space”
From the study:
“The climate simulations are presented, with RCP8.5 greenhouse gas scenario.”
Oh dear….
Some random stations in the Swiss Alps.
Cimetta
Cevio
Airolo
Their computer model “studies” show the value of continuing development of their computer models. That is the summary of all the wasted words in this article.