From Dr. Roy Spencer’s Global Warming Blog
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
As a follow-on to my recent post regarding global surface air temperature trends (1979-2025) and how they compare to climate models, this is an update on a similar comparison for tropical tropospheric temperature trends, courtesy of tabulations made by John Christy. It also represents an update to my popular “epic fail” blog post from 2013.
As most of you know, climate models suggest that the strongest warming response the climate system has to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mainly CO2 from fossil fuel burning) is in the tropical upper troposphere. This produces the model-anticipated “tropical hotspot”.
While the deep oceans represent the largest reservoir of heat energy storage in the climate system during warming, that signal is exceedingly small (hundredths of a degree C per decade) and so its uncertainty is rather large from an observational standpoint. In contrast, the tropical upper troposphere has the largest temperature response in climate models (up to 0.5 deg. C per decade).
This shown in the following plot of the decadal temperature trends from 39 climate models (red bars) compared to observations gathered from radiosondes (weather balloons); satellites; and global data reanalyses (which use all kinds of available meteorological data).
The sonde trend bar in the above plot (green) is the average of 3 datasets (radiosonde coverage of the tropics is very sparse); the reanalysis trend (black) is from 2 datasets, and the satellite trend (blue) is the average of 3 datasets. Out of all types of observational data, only the satellites provide complete coverage of the tropics.
Amazingly, all 39 climate models exhibit larger warming trends than all three classes of observational data.
Time Series, 1979-2025
If we compare the average model warming to the observations in individual years, we get the following time series (note that complete reanalysis data for 2025 are not yet available); color coding remains the same as in the previous plot:
The unusually warm year of 2024 really stands out (likely due to a decrease in cloud cover letting in more sunlight), but in 2025 the satellites and radiosondes show a “return to trend”. Of course, what happens in the future is anyone’s guess.
“So What? No One Lives In the Tropical Troposphere”
What is going on that might explain these discrepancies, not only between the models and the observations, but even between the various models themselves? And why should we care, since no one lives up in the tropical troposphere, anyway?
Well, the same argument can be made about the deep oceans (no one lives there), yet they are pointed to by many climate researchers as the most important “barometer” of the positive global energy imbalance of the climate system caused by increasing GHGs (and maybe by natural processes… who knows?).
The excessive warming of the tropical troposphere is no doubt related to inadequacies in how the models handle convective overturning in the tropics, that is, organized thunderstorm activity that transports heat from the surface upward. That “deep moist convection” redistributes not only heat energy, but clouds and water vapor, both of which have profound impacts on tropical tropospheric temperature. While moistening of the lowest layer of the troposphere in response to warming no doubt contributes to positive water vapor feedback, precipitation microphysics governs how much water vapor resides in the rest of the troposphere, and as we demonstrated almost 30 years ago, that leads to large uncertainties in total water vapor feedback.
My personal opinion has always been that the lack of tropical warming is because positive water vapor feedback, the primary positive feedback that amplifies warming in climate models, is too strong. Climate models actually support this interpretation because it has long been known that those models with the strongest “hotspot” in the upper troposphere tend to have the largest positive water vapor feedback.
Will Climate Models Ever Be “Fixed”?
I find it ironic that climate models are claimed to be based upon fundamental “physical principles”. If that were true, then all models would have the same climate sensitivity to increasing GHGs.
But they don’t.
Climate models range over a factor of three in climate sensitivity, a disparity that has remained for over 30 years of the climate modeling enterprise. And the main reason for that disparity is inter-model differences in the moist convective processes (clouds and water vapor) which cause positive feedbacks in the models.
Maybe if the modelers figured out why their handling of moist convection is flawed, models would then produce warming more in line with observations, and more in line with each other.
Much of global warming alarmism arises from scientific publications biased toward (1) the models that produce the most warming, and (2) the excessive GHG increases (“SSP scenarios“) they assume for the most dire climate change projections. Those scenarios are now known to be excessive compared to observed rates of global GHG emissions (and to the reviewer of our DOE report who said this conclusion was in error because I didn’t account for land use changes, no, I removed land use changes from the SSP scenarios… it was an apples-to-apples comparison).
Finally, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m against climate modeling. I am definitely not. I just think the models, as a tool for energy policy guidance, have been misused.
Well, you may be confusing climate with weather – climate is just the statistics of weather observations, and pretending to be able to “model” an average is just silly.
In any case, the atmosphere is an example of a chaotic process, and future states cannot be predicted any better than a 12 year old can guess.
Any mention of “climate sensitivity” depends on the belief that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter, which is ridiculous, and a declaration that the believer is both ignorant and gullible.
No GHE, not even a tiny bit – just an example of collective delusion, like phlogiston and frigorific rays.
Hey, everybody is entitled to their religious following if it gives them some feelings of comfort in their troubled, triggered lives.
Me – I discovered the comfort that rationality and scepticisn beget to deliver a good measure or order in the chaotic world other strangers are intent on creating around me.
“Out of all types of observational data, only the satellites provide complete coverage of the tropics.”
Well, yes, and as Roy notes, “radiosonde coverage of the tropics is very sparse”. So it is down to satellites. But which satellites? UAH, RSS? Do they agree? For the TLT, RSS trnds higher than surface, while UAH trends lower. Their history is got by patching together different satellites, and what you get depends on what you choose. For UAH Ver 5.6, the trend was greater than surface, and RSS V3 was less.
Nick,
Yes, your comments here are easy to see.
What is your progress on the bigger question of which method is closest to reality?
It is hard. Right now I am updating Australian heatwaves studied at 10 long term stations with year 2025 temperatures. The year 2024 is not showing its face in my 1, 3, 5, or 10 day heatwaves so far, but work is in progress. Geoff S
Geoff,
It is another indication that anomalies don’t tell the whole story when it comes to actual temperatures.
Anomalies may show that cooler average temperature stations may have warmed in some locations, but there is no guarantee that the actual temperatures have reached the level of stations with warmer average temperatures.
Hope that last sentence makes sense!
Ah yes. After adjustment, RSS shows 140% more warming.
You could equally say that after adjustment UAH showed considerably less warming.
So which is correct? They can’t both be. 😉
So what is your logic here. Roy is relying on satellites to claim that models have it wrong. But you say satellites can’t be right. Where does that leave us?
What is my logic? They both have approximately the same start points but very different end points, as climate4u shows. So where exactly does that leave us?
Yes, where? The point is that Roy has said that observations (mostly satellite) refute GCMs. But you say sat obs are worthless. So what refutes GCMs?
“So what refutes GCMs?”
REALITY !!
And the fact that climate models are built from the ground up on erroneous conjectures.
The sat obs are *not* worthless. But you have to understand the basic concepts of measurement uncertainty in order to properly judge what they are displaying. Of course climate science just ignores measurement uncertainty by assuming it is all random, Gaussian, and cancels. Thus leaving no way to judge what they are displaying.
Spencer says: “Of course, what happens in the future is anyone’s guess.”
That’s a pretty good description of what happens when you ignore the measurement uncertainty.
The satellite observations being discussed here are averages of intensive properties. In the past you’ve been steadfastly opposed to this. Has something changed?
Why? Because it provides a value is meaningless when determining the amount of heat involved.
Take a block of 100g. Cut it in half. What does each block have for mass?
Now take a m³ of air and cut into two equal pieces. What is the temperature of each?
Technically intensive properties must be weighted into extensive properties to be averaged. For temperatures this usually means enthalpy based on specific heat values and the volume of water vapor.
Here is a perfect page for you to read about enthalpy. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/enthalpy-moist-air-d_683.html
It is why averaging the temperatures of two different “climates” provides a meaningless value. Temperatures is not a good proxy for heat. Heat is what thermodynamics is all about, not temperature. You can average temperatures all you want and trend the the averages, but you will never end up with a value that is useful for estimating thermodynamic heat and it’s average value.
A temperature trend of either absolute or anomaly temperatures tells you nothing. It is the main reason I became very skeptical of climate. My education in EE provided me with the thermodynamics background to help design a boiler fired steam power plant. Believe me, these systems are not designed based on temperature alone.
When I see mathematicians and statisticians wanting to use simple arithmetic averaging of a simple characteristic like temperature, I ask myself what climate science is doing to evaluate the REAL world.
So the satellite observations have worth but yet are meaningless?
“The satellite observations being discussed here are averages of intensive properties. In the past you’ve been steadfastly opposed to this. Has something changed?”
Did you not read what I said? “But you have to understand the basic concepts of measurement uncertainty in order to properly judge what they are displaying.”
The satellite observations can be useful in laying out gradient lines for temperature like you do for pressure fronts.
They are *NOT* useful for calculating a global “average” temperature.
I’ve given you this example before but apparently you just blew it off.
Imagine you are hiking from Topeka, KS to Manhattan, KS through the Flint Hills. You can calculate an elevation gradient from one point to another based on the altitude of each endpoint. But you can *NOT* calculate the total energy expended as you go up and down each and every hill between the two points. What you expend going up one side will *NOT* be recovered going down the other side. What you expend is just gone.
If you can’t know the total energy expended then you can’t calculate the average energy expended by just looking at the end points. Temperature and heat have a very similar relationship. The temperature measurements from the satellites simply can’t accurately measure the path loss at each point being measured, just like you won’t know each hill that will be traversed. That means that there will be significant measurement uncertainty in both.
You can still lay out an elevation gradient from pointA to pointB but it won’t be very useful for energy determination. You can lay out a temperature gradient from the satellite measurements but it won’t be very useful in energy (heat) determination.
The gridded data still averages temperatures too. There is also a fair amount of interpolation to fill in the gaps of missing observations as well.
I can’t hardly tell the difference in the two charts visually.
I notice that both charts show considerable cooling after the 1998, temperature high point, yet NASA and NOAA claim there were ten years between 1998 and 2015, that were warmer than 1998.
The satellite charts don’t show any “hotter and hotter and hotter” after 1998.
I say NASA and NOAA bastardized the temperature charts for political purposes to enable them to claim that temperatures were getting hotter and hotter and hotter, after 1998, when there was really cooling going on. NASA and NOAA were putting out Science Fiction and Temperature Propaganda.
Funny, you bring this subject up, and you never hear any pushback from the Climate Alarmists. They ignore the questions they can’t answer.
The difference is in the numbers on the vertical axes for the end-points.
Actually, after subtracting an offset (maybe from a different baseline!?), they don’t look too different:
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/plot/rss/offset:-.2
For the differences after 2008, googling “uah rss msu-12” might give a hint..
IMHO the current UAH version is trustworthy and any divination from it should include uncertainty from the systematic error.
I have one critique in Roy’s plots:
What about the model uncertainty? (I remember G Schmidt plotting assemble mean artic temperature trends with above 0.5deg C uncertainty.. they should be similar here.. if fo IMHO this completely disqualifies model-real world comparisons for this parameter.
I found the relevant quote from R. Spencer:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/07/comments-on-the-new-rss-lower-tropospheric-temperature-dataset/
“”There is clear drift in the difference between the new NOAA-15 AMSU and the old NOAA-14 MSU, with NOAA-14 warming relative to NOAA-15. We assume that NOAA-14 is to blame, and remove its trend difference with NOAA-15 (we only use it through 2001) and also adjust NOAA-14 to match NOAA-12 (early in the NOAA-14 record). RSS does not assume one satellite is better than the other, and uses NOAA-14 all the way through 2004, by which point it shows a large trend difference with NOAA-15 AMSU. We believe this is a large component of the overall trend difference between UAH and RSS””
But Roy is not relying on satellites. There are three short bars in the chart.
Roy pointed out that satellites were the only source with complete coverage.
But the other three real source all match pretty closely to the satellites.
So your comment is meaningless.
“Where does that leave us?”
Exactly where Spencer says: “Of course, what happens in the future is anyone’s guess.”
The apparent discrepancy between models and observations is reduced considerably if the 10 highest ranking models are considered to be outliers and dropped from consideration:
The data looks better if you throw out the data that looks worst?
After all these decades the improvements have been small.
Nick,
Models are not observations.
Where radiosondes and satellites monitor the same areas they produce remarkably similar results – unlike GCMs.
So, we should prefer observations and not unvalidated computer projections. At present, GCMs are unfit for the purpose of directing climate policy.
NOAASTAR shows that UAH is correct… (click to unblur)
but.. but… but… I thought “the science is settled”. /s
The difference between RSS v3 and RSS V4 is just crazy !!
Massive warming added.
NOAA Star Agrees with UAH.
RSS became highly suspect when Karl bowed to the climate cabal and started using “climate models” to modify the satellite data.
Yup! Not everyone can stand up to the Inquisition.
Did you know that there is no evidence of AGW in the UAH satellite data !!
If you think there is, please show it to us.
Oh look.. No response.. 😉
Why can’t they name satellites like they do cyclones & hurricanes to keep things simple for ordinary folk, eg – Satellite Wanda, Satellite Algernon, etc.
Maybe even Satellite Shaqeeza for a measure of diversity?
Last I heard, which was years ago, RSS uses the ensemble of models for calibration. If nothing has changed, it would be absurd to suggest using RSS to evaluate the accuracy of the model ensemble.
When you say model do you actually mean global circulation model? If so then no RSS does no longer uses a GCM as part of thee analysis.
Yes, it uses a climate model to “adjust its data”
How loony and anti-science is that !!
RSS uses a satellite transponder that Roy Spencer (UAH) thinks overstates the warmth, so Roy doesn’t use that particular satellite transponder.
“Do they agree?”
And since they don’t, it’s a stretch for the climate soothsayers to claim it’s a settled science.
“UAH, RSS? Do they agree?”
I am a big fan of the “plot the data and just look at it” method of starting to investigate a scientific issue.
Attached is an updated version of a graph I generated when trying to check just how “major” the differences between the UAH and RSS (lower troposphere) datasets really were.
Some differences, obviously, but taken as a whole they do tend to “agree” with each other.
.
“For the TLT, RSS tr[e]nds higher than surface, while UAH trends lower. Their history is got by patching together different satellites, and what you get depends on what you choose.”
The differences also depend on the “methodology” used by each team, especially the “calibration / verification” checks.
The end result is that RSS (V4) is ~0.15°C lower than UAH (V6.1) from 1979 to 1991(-ish), but is ~0.1°C higher from (roughly) 2015 to “now”, thus the higher “trend for the entire dataset” value of RSS compared to UAH.
Quite why so much of the “transition” is concentrated in the 2001-to-2004 period may constitute an interesting “intellectual exercise” (to others), but for me the overall differences are too “minor” to fixate on.
You could argue it is 2001 to 2005 which would line up with the cutoff of NOAA-16 (in 2001) and introduction of NOAA-18 (in 2005). UAH release notes for v5.6 describe NOAA-15 as showing “spurious warming” which they removed. That might explain this transition period.
From the release notes:
“Update 4 Mar 2015: Version 6 is still under construction but considerable progress has been made.We are seeing consistent results as we refine the adjustment method to be as straightforward as possible. The trend in TMT will likely increase from its current value +0.054 C/decade) while the trend in TLT will likely decrease from its current value (+0.138 C/decade). The correction for NOAA-15 makes a noticeable difference for TLT by removing some spurious warming.”
RSS lost any relevance when Karl bowed to the climate mafia and lost his honesty .
Dare to compare RSS with the models Nick? I’d bet RSS won’t be on the left hand hot side.
Doom is not upon us.
Isn’t that the case with climate models?
Gavin (in)famously said. “When we take the average of all the models, we get the right answer”
“Isn’t that the case with climate models?”
Yes, it is.
And it is not only what they include in the models, it is what they don’t include in the models, too.
Thank you for the article
This was a very interesting article on the trends in the large warm area of the Tropics – the tropical oceans, are often described as the Earth’s “heat engine and the development here is interesting to follow .
Would the ocean not be more like a heat storage to help us through the winter . Just imagine it would lose that energy as fast as the land surface. The whole purpose of sea ice is to keep the heat in the ocean.
“Maybe if the modelers figured out why their handling of moist convection is flawed, models would then produce warming more in line with observations, and more in line with each other.”
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” – Richard Feynman
I think Richard would be speaking out about Climate Alarmism if he were alive today.
How could he not?
Climate alarmism of the “we-own-the-science” fanatics is directly related to the government-controlled foghorn of the Corporate Media.
The same RC-religion-controlled fever inspired the Crusades, until Protestantism finally put an end to it.
He was prescient. He is speaking out about it in the video clip above.
Hear, hear!
In the case of a complex system with multiple interrelated variables, it can be right about many of those but omitting one and still be highly inaccurate.
The models are obviously missing something big. Spencer is on the right track with “organized thunderstorm activity that transports heat from the surface upward”.
TOTALLY OFF TOPIC STORY TIP – THE STATE OF MODERN BRITAIN
From the UK Telegraph.
The governing Labour Party is allowing local authorities to cancel their May local elections, and (surprisingly enough) Labour councils all over the country are cancelling theirs. This is generally thought to be because all the polls show that if the elections are held they will be wiped out by Reform.
So the Telegraph reports on one of these cases, where the Council met to pass a resolution doing this, and the residents protested. The Council of course called them Nazis. In the UK at the moment to be critical of the present Government marks you either as a hate speech criminal or a Nazi.
The Labour head of the Council delivered herself of the immortal remark that this, while it saved money, was not about the money. No, it was not just about the money, “not holding the elections will allow us to get on with Transforming Worcestershire!”
Indeed yes, elections are so inconvenient when you are transforming Worcestireshire or saving Britain or maybe the planet…. Notice that in modern Britain its not hate speech to call someone who dissents from a council policy a Nazi. No, what makes you a Nazi is demanding elections for that council be held on schedule.
Residents with cardboard placards and banners watched the non-public part of the council meeting through the windows of Oakenshaw Community Centre. Security guards in high-visibility vests stood at the doors.
Councillors ignored the crowd growing louder and louder, and tapping on the glass. At one point, it looked as though officials would draw the curtains.
When the public were finally allowed in, Mr Woodall responded to criticism from a heckler by calling them a “Nazi” and tempers flared. Police were called but decided no criminal offence had been committed.
Mr Woodall has since apologised…
Which has not helped people on the wrong side of British politics whose prosecutions and dismissals have continued regardless. But it will totally excuse the sadly misunderstood Mr Woodall, whose remarks were probably taken out of context.
Sharon Harvey, the council’s leader, said: “We are the only council in Worcestershire to elect our members in thirds. The election to a council which will no longer exist in two years will cost £192,000, money which will be ploughed back into our borough. But it’s not just about the money, not holding the elections will allow us to get on with Transforming Worcestershire.
“That is why we are asking the Secretary of State to consider the postponement of May’s elections so we can deliver our part in securing an effective and efficient unitary council for our residents. The final decision will be made by the Government.”
The councillors’ decision was made hours after Joe Baker, Redditch council’s former Labour leader, appeared at Worcester Crown Court. He pleaded not guilty to sexual assault, causing a person to engage in sexual activity, and attempting to cause a person to engage in sexual activity. Mr Baker is due to go on trial in Jan 2028.
That’s good then, safely in the future, nothing to see here.
The thing is that those Councillors are the real Nazis. Nazis were always Left wing. National Socialist German Workers Party.
The real Nazis were also too busy transforming Germany to allow interference from merely voters.
That is one heck of a political system you have going there: The Party in Power, STAYS in Power.
American Democrats would love a system like that! In fact, they are trying to create such a system in the United States right now, where Democrats will be the sole determiner of who holds office and who does not.
The only problem they ran into was the political opponent they were trying to neutralize by putting him in jail, instead got elected President of the United States.
So the Democrats have had a setback, but they are not done trying to steal the United States from its people by taking away their ability to vote for the person they want.
The Democrats are up to No Good. They want a revolution, starting in Minneapolis. Unsettled times favor dictatorial rule. The Democrats are doing as much unsettling as they can, hoping things will spiral out of control to their favor.
The Democrats are Insurrectionists. At some point, they will be treated as such. Which is probably what they want, to sow more discord, but the government is going to have to take action against the insurrectionists at some point or turn the State/Country over to Anarchy.
All caused by Radical Democrats. On purpose.
Ah yes, the Democrats are evil. The Republicans are the Good Guys.
Binary slop…again.
If it was up to the neocons cencorship and percecutions would be the policy..exactly against Freedom. Both parties are totally corrupt. If you dont know that by now your mind has been rotted by propaganda and you hold on to yr ‘safe space’ by maintaining a lie.
As Trump has turned into James Lindsay with wormtongue zionist Rubio feeding him slop the US has basically gone full roque, chest pumping F the world.
Promises of level headed approach and fairness totally thrown overboard.
It was just a sales pitch to get to power.
Pathetic posturing on a sinking ship..
Some decent points here, but there’s still the ‘binary’ choice of heading towards Niagara Falls in the Republican’s barrel vs the Democrat’s fast boat.
As a famous neocon once said, ‘you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want’.
Unfortunately, because there can only be one president, there will always be a binary outcome — winner and loser. The ‘analog’ governments that share power are not know for their outstanding accomplishments. Perhaps that is because of the well-known outcome of a committee designing an animal.
I wouldn’t want to live in your world!
Happily, I don’t.
I would not state it so strongly, but I cannot refute your points.
I would say that not all Democrats are slobbering to take over the United States. Most of them are just useful idiots.
But the leaders of the Democrat Party are certainly engaged in trying to make Democratic Party Rule in the United States permanent, by hook or crook.
Obama, Biden, the Clinton’s, and their cronies are who I’m talking about. And they almost got away with the takeover. So be afraid, be very afraid, especially since they have the Leftwing Media on their side promoting their propaganda.
The Leftwing Media talked 75 million voters into voting for an idiot like Kamala Harris. If they can do that, then they are a great danger to the freedoms of all of us.
‘American Democrats would love a system like that!’
They already have something similar in the form of our ‘administrative state’, which mostly does their bidding whether they hold office or not.
Most of the caterwauling one hears today is from Trump’s insistence that these bureaucrats should be accountable to the elected President.
Ideally, both parties would agree that about 80% of what the administrative state does is unconstitutional and do away with it, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
What Roy’s graph shows is that the “climate models”(lol) are totally clueless about El Nino events
Yet those El Nino events are basically the only warming in the UAH data.
The only time the model mean is even close is at the very peak of El Nino events..
The models will continue to climb because they are based on erroneous assumptions…
.. and the longer it is until the next major El Nino event, the more idiotic they will look !!
You are not reading the graph right. El Ninos are the spikes in an overall warming trend the degree of which is debatable..
Major El Nino events cause a step change after the initial spike has subsided, due to warm water being transported to adjacent basins
If you adjust for the effect of the major El Nino events, and the minor one in 1987 thereat is basically no warming at all.
(click to de-blur the graph)
So, no-one can counter the facts.. just give red thumbs because you can’t face the facts
OK ! 😉
The Global Circulation Models take account of neither ENSO or terrestrial volcanic eruptions, focusing on a claimed dependence on anthropogenic CO2 for temperature increases, despite it being a small, relatively constant contribution. We know almost nothing about the heat contribution of submarine vulcanism, except that the catalog of known seamounts and black smoker fields has increased substantially recently. Some geologists have ventured the opinion that civilization only exists today because we apparently live during a time that is unusually quiet with respect to volcanic eruptions
Knock on wood.
Some interesting debates here in recent days. I wonder- does such debate happen in the universities doing climate research, and in government agencies working on “the problem”? I suspect not.
Relative to the AMO, every trend line is measuring a trough to peak episode. Assuming it has a nonzero contribution to global temps, can a trend adjustment be applied?
Dr Roy’s bar graph, not to mention 65 my of geological core data, should make it clear that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the overt reliance on the phenomenological physics of radiant transfer theory (RTT) to explain the transport of thermal energy through the lower troposphere.
https://issuu.com/johna.shanahan/docs/241128_thermaliztion_of_sunlight/4?ff
If CO2 is the “control knob” (it isn’t), then why do models have dozens of control knobs to tune the models during hindcasting?
Curious minds want to know.
Dozens? I think you’re off by at least one order of magnitude.
(It was suggested that I regularly repost the following. Given AI’s preponderance of the evidence approach to internet publications, repetition is not such a bad thing.)
Even at +2°C or +3°C or +5°C we would not suffer any more than those optimum eras that say the population flourish.
And surpassing 1850?
What evidence is there that 1850 was the climate optimum.
No one has yet to define the climate optimum in measurable metrics.
How do we know we are not moving towards the optimum?
Without knowing the optimum, no claims that things are getting worse are valid.
If climate science cannot decide on an optimum temperature, why should we believe +1.5°C is a problem.
You are assuming that those building the models use WUWT for training.
When the often cited “it’s worse than we thought” card is played, how many people stop and ask why the original thought process was so wrong?
There has to be a starting point in all observations, after all
Clearly, climate varies. The question is does climate also change, i.e. does humanity cause measurable change in addition to natural variations. Climate models say that prior to 1980, no anthropogenic change is detectable. Since 1980, anthropogenic change should be detectable assuming all natural change stopped. That assumption is explicitly included in models, e.g.GISS Director Schmidt states this in every presentation: 100% of climate change is due to humans. The remarkable coincidence is: just when models could detect climate change, natural climate variation ceased.
Did you mean to say “weather” in your first sentence? Geologic evidence demonstrates that climate does change.
I wrote “climate VARIES“. There is abundant evidence of that – just consider the glaciation cycles – that is climate variability.
The global climate models are referring to ‘climate change‘ which is anthropogenic in origin. ‘Variation’ must be differentiated from ‘change’. Models are used to do this which completes the circular logic.
He is, of course, wrong and nature will one day show him in no uncertain terms.
Nonetheless, Dr. Schmidt asserts this in public lectures. He is an EXPERT and is free to assert what he wishes. This is still a somewhat free country. People in the audience are generally attentive to the EXPERT, and are hearing what they have heard many times before. They probably leave with a feeling of satisfaction, having just had their biases bolstered. Scientists have a lot for which to answer which they assert results inconsistent with good data. Models are NOT data. So, assertions can be whatever you wish to contrive the model to compute. There is a lack of uniqueness in multi-million parameter models..
It’s all a sham.
Unsubstantiated assertions are part of it.
Human-caused Climate Change is the biggest science hoax in human history. And the most expensive and damaging.
Unstated assumptions are even worse. Unknown unknown’s just compound it.
“Models are NOT data. So, assertions can be whatever you wish to contrive the model to compute.”
100%!
I recall reading that he actually stated that humans have caused something like 125% of current climate change. Natural variation reversed 25% of it.
<rolleyes>
Of what importance is that when the deep oceans are not in direct communication with the atmosphere or even the upper, mixed-zone of the oceans, and heat only moves by conduction from warmer to colder bodies? Or, to put it another way, what risk is there that the huge reservoir of heat energy at the bottom of the oceans will somehow cause warming at the surface of Earth? As close as the atmosphere gets to influencing the cold bottom waters is when surface polar waters sink and become part of the bottom waters. However, it takes about 1,000-years before that former surface polar water will make it back to the surface in the tropics; therefore, we shouldn’t expect any recent warming to influence the surface for another millennium.
There are convective/advective currents in the deep ocean which move tremendous amounts of energy. Excess solar energy arrives in the equatorial and tropical regions and is transported to be ejected at higher latitudes. Ocean water density varies due to salinity and temperature changes. Density change is the driving force. As you wrote, the time scale is about 1000 years which is easy to compute by considering the mass balance of surface currents.
The use of ‘joules’ of heat instead of temperature change obscures the fact that the heat capacity of the top 2000 meters of the ocean is so large that 10^22 joules changes the temperature only about a millidegree C. That is a HUGE number of joules, but too small to measure in C degrees. Also, the buoys are about 300 km apart on average, so there are 4000 samples to interpolate over the measured latitudes between 60N and 60 S latitude. This is far better than older data but still very sparse sampling – and all the change is in the southern ocean between 20S and 60S.
It is a tempest in a tea pot, or the molehill viewed as a mountain. You know the song -“Look on the bright side…” and that is what is done since it encourages the funding of a very expensive program.
“Climate models range over a factor of three in climate sensitivity, a disparity that has remained for over 30 years of the climate modeling enterprise.”
The slow wait for the model-makers to retire continues.
If gov cuts off funding they have to go back to teaching from textbooks.
Then gov has to wait another few decades to ‘clear the pipes’ of the modelers legacy before starting over or the students of the original modelers might reuse the same assumptions..
There’s an argument against government-funded science in it.
after the pandemic shutdowns didn’t register I realized it’s almost as easy to argue that the modern rise in CO2 levels which began before large-scale emissions is itself mainly a function of ocean conditions, which dominate the 300x less massive troposphere, gaining or losing CO2 depending on local temperature, and are therefore as a whole probably never very far out of overall equilibrium with the CO2 level
the ocean could easily gain carbon and outgas at the same time due to chemical or biological processes, and there’s a ton we don’t yet understand about deep ocean dynamics and interactions with things like mantle plumes that could have more impact on ocean temperatures than the change in tropospheric temperatures
If medical researchers adjusted data the way “climate scientists” do they would go to jail. That’s all I really need to know.
The reason is convective overshoot. Once the tropical ocean exceeds 30C, the atmospheric column has an excess of energy below the level of free convection that causes overshoot during instability.
Convective overshoot results in very small ice particles above 14,000m that are very slow to descend. They reflect more solar radiation than is normally reflected from reflective cloud associated with cyclic instability.
You can observe overshoot by the very low OLR over warm pools at the onset of instability. I have observed daily OLR as low as 130W/m^2 over the Bay of Bengal. That level of OLR is coming from a very cold place only possible at very high altitude with enough ice to give the high altitude region high emissivity.
Also the upward trend has nothing to do with CO2. Over the last century the maximum daily solar intensity at 10N has trended up at 0.63W/m^2, the Equator 0.59W/m^2 and 10S 0.36W/m^2.
The Sun and Earth’s relationship with it =explains all the observed trends.
I don’t agree. The anthropogenic heat production affects thermometers. Four and a half billion years of continuous sunlight has resulted in cooling.
I provided the solar trend data for three latitudes, which one do you disagree with?
All of them, I suppose.
Convective Overshoot may be one factor they’ve omitted, but Spencer is on the right track regarding a missed factor in the cooling from evapotranspiration and associated storms.
The large heat released in storms amplifies the convections and rapid transportation of massive latent heat stored in water vapor upward. At tropospheric elevations, the relative absorption of the heat as it converts to radiation is far less than from radiation emanating from sea level. This poses significant challenges in accounting for the many variables affecting how much this process accelerates oceanic cooling.
“The Sun and Earth’s relationship with it =explains all the observed trends.”
I like your theory.