New Jet Propulsion Lab Analysis of Global Climate Model: Simulations of Arctic Ice Are 'Rather Poor'

More evidence that computer climate models are unable to produce accurate simulations of climate reality - the models can't do the Arctic

Read here. The Arctic polar region is dominated by ice and water. One would expect any taxpayer funded computer model worth its salt would be able to accurately predict the climate of this simple ice and water region, no? 

Well...as is the case with any computer climate model simulation, peer reviewed research finds the global climate models are also worthless for accurately predicting the Arctic climate, let alone the entire global climate.

"Specifically, he writes that (1) "Zhang and Walsh (2006) noted that even though the CMIP3 models capture the negative trend in sea ice area, the inter-model scatter is large," that (2) "Stroeve et al. (2007) show that few models exhibit negative trends that are comparable to observations," and that (3) "Eisenman et al. (2007) conclude that the results of current CMIP3 models cannot be relied upon for credible projections of sea ice behavior."...analysis demonstrates that "the skill of the CMIP3 models (as a group) in simulation of observed Arctic sea ice motion, Fram Strait export, extent, and thickness between 1979 and 2008 seems rather poor."..."...and that "the spatial pattern of Arctic sea ice thickness, a large-scale slowly varying climatic feature of the ice cover, is not reproduced in a majority of the models." Consequently, he writes that "the models will not get the main features of natural sea ice variability that may be dominating recent sea ice extent declines..." [R. Kwok 2011: Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans]

Additional polar-glacier-sea-ice, failed-prediction and peer-reveiwed postings.