Arctic sea ice, a potential marker of global warming, experienced a shift in the late 1990s called the Arctic Shift. Initially, the 1980s and 1990s saw moderate declines in September Arctic sea-ice extent (SIE).
However, after the 1997 climate shift, a rapid decline set in, leading to "consensus" concerns about a potential ice-free Arctic.
Computer models predicted this outcome by 2040, triggering much public anxiety.
More recent research now suggests that 60% of the September SIE decline since 1979 may be due to atmospheric circulation changes. Additionally, persistent Arctic summer cloud cover has mitigated the ice-albedo feedback, slowing the decline since 2007 unexpectedly and contrary to predictions.
Thus, despite the approved consensus narrative, uncertainty persists among climate researchers regarding the natural climate shift influence versus the human influence on overall sea ice change and what direction Arctic sea ice will take in the future.
And then the unexpected recovery of sea ice in 2013 truly challenged the alarmist predictions. With the original 7-year pause now extending to 17 years that means there was only a 10% probability of that taking place.
This implies that past sea ice predictions were 90% inaccurate, in turn raising significant concerns about climate model reliability.
In June 2023, promoting more anxiety, global headlines warned of ice-free Arctic summers by the 2030s, irrespective of emission reduction efforts, based on a a new peer-reviewed study.
Unfortunately, this study relied on data only up to 2019, ignoring available 2020-22 data. Model projections for 2021 and 2022 significantly differed from observed data, prompting scrutiny and questions as to why the study was approved for publication in the first place.
Clearly, policymakers and the public grapple with challenges when relying on inaccurate computer model projections. Studies that are produced by flawed computer model predictions pose serious potential consequences that highlight the need for thorough evaluation and transparency in climate research. (source of information for above & video)
Why "Infamous"? Because no one has ever located this climate unicorn.
The hotspot is an essential claim of climate change doomsday beliefs - the belief that it exists and persists in the mid-troposphere. Combine that with the IPCC's experts reliance on climate models' pseudo-science which predict that increases of atmospheric trace greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc.) are the cause of the hotspot.
Many doomsday climate scientists believe that an atmospheric hotspot exists, and for some, it is indicative of an Earth rapidly warming to become a Venus-like oven, thus leading to our planet's oceans boiling.
Hence, for the gullible politicians and journalists, a fake climate crisis posing as an existential threat.
But new peer-reviewed research from a NOAA climate scientist team confirms what doomsday skeptics have been reporting for years: that the climate model's tropical hotspot is non-existent. Recent articles about this new NOAA temperature research can be found here, here and here.
(click on to enlarge)
This NOAA team of scientists corroborate the findings of the UAH satellite dataset record for the mid-troposphere over the tropics. (Also corroborating the UAH lower troposphere temperature records.)
To put an empirical point on it, the satellite observations show that the tropical mid-troposphere has been cooling since August 2012 (see chart) even with the El Niño temperature spikes of 2015-16 and 2018-19.
Stated another way, that is over 10 years with no significant warming and no permanent hotspot.
Confirmation of the satellite data can be found at this NOAA site of surface tropical temperatures for the Hawaiian region, which has also been cooling, since October 2012.
Conclusion: The 'expert' computer climate change models have dangerously overstated how much warming would be the result of trace greenhouse gases. These egregious climate warming predictions cascade into even more dangerous errors about the ultimate impacts of climate change.
And let it be known that computer models for the climate are not alone when it comes to bad predictions: some of the worst predictions are realized almost on a daily basis from computer models used for COVID deaths, short-term weather forecasting, economic forecasting, or stock market performance.
This simple truth is why policymakers should never rely on computer model outputs. Computer models are great for research but not for correctly predicting the future.
Additional prior climate model charts and links to past posts on failed predictions.
Note: Source for UAH mid-troposphere data. Excel used to plot data points and calculate trend.
Biden and the Democrats' newest legislation is chockful of handouts for their green energy cronies donors that will have a "significant" impact on global warming, or so say the Democrats.
But when this legislation is analyzed by experts, using the UN's own climate models, the CO2 emission reductions will only - in a best case scenario - reduce total global temperatures an immeasurable 0.0002°C by the year 2100 (77 years from now); and, the more likely worst case scenario will reduce global temps by a ludicrously small amount - 0.000006°C.
This column chart plots these expected temperature reductions on a per year basis versus actual per year temperature changes for recent periods, including the per year change over the last 77 years.
And for even all the politicians who refuse to do the due diligence of analyzing their own legislation - and instead rely on bogus claims from lobbyists - it should be wildly obvious that their giveaways of taxpayer monies for "green" energy efforts will do zilch for the climate.
Unfortunately, this gigantic flush of $400 billion in taxpayer monies for such a miniscule real return on climate change is only the beginning for the Democrat climate cult.
This article points out that the crazies need at least 1,200,000,000,000,000 in taxpayer dollars or ONE QUADRILLION TWO HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS in order to be on a very speculative path to their utopian climate. That amount is 13 times larger than the entire global GDP.
In a prior article, information was provided confirming that the young Democrat Congressperson, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, should not be in the climate-doomsday prediction business.
Unfortunately, she is not alone in her uncritical acceptance of a cult-like claim that the world will end soon, due to 'devastating' global warming from human CO2 emissions. This cult includes Joe Biden, along with most of the globe's left-wing power brokers, the wealthy elites, celebrities and partisan journalists.
Biden et al share the same necessary traits that produces a gullibility for cultish doomsday stories: namely, the total disdain of actual empirical evidence in combination with an extraordinary blind faith in the elites' experts - aka, the expertocracy.
And just like the experts' recent infamously wrong Covid infection/lockdown models, the climate expertocracy loves their own climate models, despite the models' continuous failure to predict global temperatures accurately.
Case in point, the climate RCP8.5 scenario pathway was generated by computer models (specifically, the CMIP5 model) that the expertocracy relies on for their climate-porn fearmongering.
The climate-porn takes many forms in their scary stories of highly speculative climate change impacts, with the end result always being that any global warming is an existential threat to all species, including humanity.
This absurdly wrong but highly favored scenario for global warming is plotted in the accompanying chart. Note the RCP8.5 model's linear trend versus reality, the HadCrut5.0 gold-standard of actual global temperature observations.
While the RCP8.5 scenario predicts nothing but an accelerating warming trend for the 21st century, the HC5 observation dataset plot in contrast reveals that the globe has experienced a cooling trend for almost 8 years since August 2014. (And NOAA's global temp dataset has been on a cooling trend since March 2014 through end of June 2022.)
By the way, this is not the only cooling trend in the 21st century. The HC5 dataset has recorded at least six separate occasions since 1999 (representing 40% of the months) when there was a rolling 36-month cooling trend of multiple months. In contrast, the climate expert modeled RCP8.5 scenario produced zero periods of a 36-month cooling tend.
Back to the August 2014-May 2022 cooling span.
Another characteristic of the modeled RCP8.5 scenario over the 94 months ending May 2022 is that it exhibits a monthly average anomaly change of +0.00271°C versus the HC5 average monthly anomaly change of only +0.00029°C. That is a 9 times per month larger outcome for the modeled scenario than the HC5's real world result.
If those average monthly changes for both were to continue for the next 100 years, the RCP8.5 result would hypothetically be 2.9°C degrees higher than the HC5.
Yet, despite the above empirical science clearly indicating the incapacity of the RCP8.5 model to produce a reasonable representation of either global warming or global cooling trends, the uniformed elites continue to base future policy decisions on this model. This is especially true for the president of the United States and the vast majority of Democrats in Congress.
Why they continue to rely on obviously faulty computer models for climate/energy policy - or Covid policy for that matter - beggars belief.
An aside. Defenders of climate model output often fall back on the rationale that the models worked almost to perfection to predict past temperatures. Well, of course they did, due to the simple fact that the programmers knew in advance what the past temperatures were. But when the the models have to predict an uncertain future they do not fare well.
Case in point is the RCP8.5, which was introduced in 2013 and predicted past temps amazingly well. But by late 2014, the model results were starting to deviate consistently from actual observations. That explains why in reality we have an actual cooling trend from Sept 2014 to May 2022 while the RCP8.5 predicted the exact opposite.
Note: RC8.5 model scenario dataset; HC5 dataset. Excel used to calculate and plot linear trends.
In the real world, climate model simulations have been self-debunking over recent decades due to the constant prediction failures.
And the latest embarrassing example of model prediction failure is very relevant to the doomsday Arctic meltdown myth that the anti-science 'climate emergency' cult pushes.
A new peer-reviewed study by a group of researchers set out to determine the accuracy of top-tier climate model predictions of Arctic warming rates versus the actual Arctic warming rate. Their research involved the output of the same 36 climate models used for the UN's IPCC work.
This chart is a snapshot of their work, which visually portrays the computer climate model simulations over a 138-year period, from 1880 to 2017, and how they consistently overestimate how fast the Arctic is warming since around 1950.
Per the study's findings: "...the model-estimated rate of secular warming (the solid red line) increased quite sharply across the 138-year period, rising from a value of around 0 °C per decade at the beginning of the record to a value of 0.35 °C per decade at the end. Observations, in contrast, started off with a higher warming rate than that of the models (a rate of 0.13 °C per decade; the solid black line), but dipped below the rate of warming predicted by the models around the middle of the record, thereafter experiencing a lower rate of warming relative to the models through the end of the record. By the end of the record, the model-predicted secular rate of warming was 67% higher than that determined from observations (0.21 °C). Thus, the figure shows an increasing disparity between modelled and observed warming rates that starts around the middle of the record and grows to 0.14 °C per decade by the mid-2010s."
"Huang et al. state the obvious, that "anthropogenically induced secular warming has been overestimated by the CMIP5 GCMs during the most recent warming period, and the overestimation is aggravated with time." What is more, given the error bars shown on the figure, in the very near future the observed warming rate will likely soon fall outside the significance levels of the ensemble model mean, removing any remaining credibility left in the model projections of future Arctic warming."
Based on the well documented abundance of failures of even the most sophisticated climate models, it should now be considered criminal malfeasance or malpractice that any politician or bureaucrat utilizes said models for setting policies. While doomsday climate-crisis cultists propagandize using the untenable and unreliable model projections, those that represent the public should be employing more sober analysis and commonsense for policy development and implementation, if any.
A terse synopsis: Climate models can't predict squat.
This NASA climate model chart certainly confirms why expert computer climate simulations are held in such contempt and ridiculed; and also why they should not be utilized for policy work performed by politicians and bureaucrats.
The failure of climate models at what they were originally intended to accomplish has forced the major climate research agencies into a constant state of both "upgrading" their wildly expensive climate models and "correcting" past actual temperature measurements.
This particular model was instrumental in starting the egregious and shrill propaganda war against economic growth and prosperity way back in 1988. It's creation has led to the point where today teenage doomsday cult personalities are provided top-level platforms to fear-rant - by those who should know better - to rail against the bountiful wonders of modern civilization.
This NASA model has had a long history being wrong, and when correct at specific periods, it's due more to blind luck of the natural temporary El Niño global warming phenomenon, which is not sustainable over lengthy time spans.
The model chart presents three simulated global temperature scenarios that portray the end result of growing greenhouse gas emissions, with the focus on fossil fuel CO2 emissions. The scenarios developed by NASA include:
Scenario 'A': The business-as-usual (BAU) scenario that represented total emissions growing without any constraints.
Scenario 'B': Representing the reduction of total emissions by moderate amounts.
Scenario 'C': Representing a scenario that had global emissions being maintained in the future at year 2000 levels.
As the observed NASA and HadCRUT global temperature plots on the chart reveal, the observed temperatures are not anywhere close to NASA's BAU scenario 'A'. Yet, as can be seen below, it's continued to be business-as-usual for a very long time, at least since the 1988 introduction of this model to the public.
Sources: 2019 BP Energy Statistical Review & NOAA CO2 ppm levels
This December 2019 article lays out the essentials of past greenhouse gas growth and the continuing growth of CO2, which shows no signs of a permanent global curtailment.
In summary, this NASA/GISS model was never an effective tool for climate change prediction, let alone establishing a realistic national or global policymaker climate strategy. And over the decades since 1988, all the later generations of climate models have been no better as they also way over estimate the warming impact of greenhouse emissions.
Prior climate model postings. Additional climate model charts.
Climate change predictions by alarmist scientists and activist 'doomers' have been absolutely atrocious. Possibly (being generous), there has been limited 'accuracy' here and there, but remains sufficiently insufficient to demonstrate even a minuscule level of actual, consistent reliability.
The constant litany stream from politicos, media sources and celebrities of failed climate catastrophe predictions is wide and deep and seemingly knows no bounds.
And this article provides a brief summary of where we are headed, if these bureaucratic-loving and power hungry politicians produce policies and regulations based on the proven failed prediction capabilities of the "experts." Needless to say, it's not going to be very pretty if they are successful.
The good news is that these establishment elites self-identify as liars since no truthful person would ever repeat anti-scientific, imbecilic doomsday trash, such as the end of humanity within a generation.
The bad news is that the USA's Democratic Party embraces the lies and is eagerly pushing the climate anti-science alarmism on a daily basis as the 2020 election edges closer.
Blatant significant dishonesty to mislead voters is a risky electoral strategy yet, unfortunately, now appears to be a go-to favored method for most Democrats on a host of important issues.
A few days ago, we discussed Japan's cooling winter temperature trend and now it's Germany's turn. If Italy also develops a similar cooling trend, it will be the new #ClimateChange Axis, so to speak.
As usual, we are beating a dead horse - climate expert predictions that are based on the trace gas CO2 are worthless.
No climate or energy policy should ever be based on computer models that are focused on human emission of carbon dioxide. These models cannot simulate natural climate cycle variation at all and thus make for incredibly lousy prediction outputs.
Just another case of those stubborn facts getting in the way of pseudo science by simulation.
Maybe politicians and establishment types should quit believing computer models that are poor replicates of reality and often riddled with forecasting methodology errors.
Scientists investigated whether the expert climate change prediction that growing CO2 emissions, and the subsequent atmospheric increase of CO2, would cause an increase in the frequency and severity of large flooding.
The island nation of Fiji was chosen to validate the expert prediction due to a Fiji locality having 12 centuries decades of flood climate records.
And the result of this peer-reviewed investigative research of the supposed relationship between CO2 and flooding?
Even with a long-term record stretching across 12 centuries decades, the scientists were unable to find any validation of expert and climate model predictions that CO2 greenhouse gas warming produces an outcome of increased severe flooding.
The empirical CO2-warming and flooding relationship appears to be zero.
"...real scientists engaged in real research have used sound statistical methods to investigate this topic; and what they typically find does not bode well for climate alarmists.....performed a series of statistical analyses on these data, seeking to determine "whether the data set can reveal the degree to which islands in the Pacific are already seeing the impact of global climate change on the risk of severe flooding." Results of the analysis revealed that despite a persistent warming trend of ~0.18°C per decade over the past seven decades, there has been no consistent trend in flooding. Consequently, McAneney et al. matter-of-factly attest that they were "unable to detect any influence of global warming at this tropical location on either the frequency or the height of major flooding." What is more, they add that their study demonstrates "the difficulty of achieving statistical significance in terms of attribution of extreme weather even with relatively long data sets.""
Just another example of failed predictions based on the CO2-centric anthropogenic catastrophic global warming hypothesis.
Does the empirical evidence support the belief that human CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere will directly cause an increase in forest fires from global warming?
As the above plots show, whether it's the U.S. national forests or the state owned properties in fire-prone California, the number of fires incidents has significantly declined starting with the 1980s. This has taken place during 50 years of the largest growth of atmospheric CO2 levels - the largest possibly for millions of years.
The chart plots are from the recent extensive peer-reviewed study published by forestry researchers.
"Both USFS and Cal Fire protected lands had the lowest number of fires in the early record but ignitions began to increase in the1960s and peaked between 1970 and 1990, subsequently declining on both USFS and Cal Fire lands. ... Major fires are dependent on the juxtaposition of such weather events with anthropogenic ignitions. Future fire regimes will be less affected by global warming than by other global changes, in particular population growth, because over 95% of ignitions are due to humans. As populations increase we expect a greater chance of ignitions during severe fire weather conditions."
In addition, the subject of forest fire devastation was recently re-analyzed using entirely different data. And further back, 'C3' and others have published multiple examinations of the available empirical evidence - here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
Prediction FactCheck Verdict: Fail
The expert and climate model predictions of CO2 and global warming wreaking fire havoc upon forested areas is absolutely without convincing empirical evidence. All facts point to an overall improvement in the count and extent of forest fire destruction since the peak destruction experienced during the early decades of the 20th century.
Additional fire and other weather phenomenon charts, failed-prediction articles, and peer-reviewed articles.
Note: Decade-end atmospheric CO2 levels superimposed on graphs from the 2017 Keely & Syphard study.
China must not have gotten the climate model memo that all hailstorms were ordered to be more severe and to produce a greater amount of damage.
Those "expert" climate models tell us what is supposed to happen in the world's climate due to the impact of human-induced global warming. Yet it seems that the models as climate soothsayers of severe weather events are essentially worthless.
Case in point, a new peer-reviewed study has examined the factual evidence regarding the increased frequency and increased intensity of hail storms that CO2-centric, global warming climate models predict; and the study has found the predictions to be without merit.
"A test of this model-based hypothesis was recently performed by Ni et al. (2017) for China. Using data from 2,254 locations that they obtained from the Chinese National Meteorological Information Center, the eight researchers examined trends in both the occurrence of hail days (frequency) and the mean size of hail (intensity) over the period 1980-2015"..."Ni et al. conclude that these observational changes "imply a weakened [frequency and] intensity of hailstorms in China in recent decades." And that finding does not bode well for climate models, which predict that just the opposite should be occurring."
The study's graphs depict that over the last 35 years the large-sized hail stones that wreak the most havoc on property and agriculture have been trending smaller, not larger across all recorded storms from the reporting 2,254 weather stations.
In addition, during the same extended period, the proportion of all hail storms that produce the extremely large stones has been clearly trending down.
Earlier this year, a comparison was done using the GISS global temperature observations dataset versus an earlier version of the NASA/GISS computer climate model output, as of 2015 year-end. That comparison can be viewed here.
It is now 4 months later with the current powerful El Niño producing some very high global temperature averages.
So, how does the GISS dataset, as of March 31, 2016, compare against a newer climate model, specifically, the IPCC's modern CMIP5 model using the supposed business-as-usual greenhouse gas scenario (RCP8.5)?
The adjacent chart tells the story, but we add some more content below:
The current El Niño appears to have peaked (maybe not, though) with a strong and rapid rising of GISS global anomalies over the 6-month period ending in March
The 6-month surge in anomalies placed the Feb. and Mar. observations above the modeloutput
Despite this huge 6-month surge, the GISS linear trend is still well below the model's simulated linear trend since 1988
Despite this huge 6-month surge, the 3-year (36-month) simple GISS moving anomaly average remains well below what the CMIP5 climate model produces for the same 3-year period
The sharp uptick of the blue GISS 3-year moving average, after 2012, reveals the power of this recent El Niño on global temperatures
The 2013 to mid-2016 slow build-up of the current El Niño peak reveals its contribution to warming as the arithmetic mean of the anomalies stepped up considerably (see on the chart: the black dashed lines represent the anomaly arithmetic means for the periods 2000-2012 and 2013-2016/March - note the shift up)
The stall (i.e. the 'Pause', the 'Hiatus') in significant global warming can be seen, both in the 3-year GISS moving average and in the underlying anomalies during the 2000s, prior to the 2013 uptick that leads into the powerful El Niño
The December 2012 anomaly was only 0.05 degree higher than the December 1999 anomaly - that meager five one-hundredths increase is indicative of the lengthy 'Pause' that occurred
Speaking of the current El Niño (and prior El Niños and La Niñas): "What goes up up must.....?"
The advanced climate model output clearly misses all the big extremes and wide variations of observed global temperatures, including this El Niño's recent incredible burst of warming
Per the official NOAA definition of the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), it has now been 48 periods (a period being 3 months) since the last La Niña ended in early 2012
Since the beginning of 1988 (339 months thru March 2016), 23% of the 3-month periods have been a La Niña condition versus 24% for El Niño conditions
At 13 periods in length, this El Niño is rather long-in-the-tooth compared to most since January 1988
After a strong and long El Niño, it is common for the ONI Index to reverse directions, sometimes dramatically (i.e. a strong La Niña)
Summary:
Whether its the old NASA computer model simulations or the newer variety of IPCC climate models, Hansen's 1988 prediction of rapidly accelerating and dangerous global warming from human CO2, and other greenhouse gases, has done poorly in comparison to actual observed temps.
Although the recent spike in global temperatures from the current El Niño may provide some AGW alarmist bragging rights ("see, that clock is accurate"), it is highly probable the recent 6-month surge is a very temporary spike, entirely due to the natural ENSO phenomenon that climate models are incapable of predicting.
In fact, when viewing the future projections from the CMIP5 model, one sees the exact same pattern as above - a monotonous upward saw-tooth pattern of small ups and downs, completely unlike the chaotic conditions of real-world climate that is produced by all the conflicting natural feedback forces.
And the reversal from the current temp spike could well lead to another 'Pause' in any significant warming. If that happens, it will build on the growing consensus that climate models can't accurately predict squat, and should not be relied upon by policymakers for any reason - good for research but really terrible for reality-based policy.
Note: James Hansen's 1988 testimony took place in June 1998; this comparison used January 1988 as the starting point. The RCP8.5 scenario is considered by the majority of scientists seeking global warming research grants as the business-as-usual scenario. The climate model anomaly output for the CMIP5 RCP8.5 was adjusted to match the January 1988 anomaly for the NASA/GISS global dataset. Both the RCP8.5 and GISS dataset anomalies used in above chart were calculated by KNMI using the 1981-2010 span as the baseline. Both the model and observed datasets were downloaded after the baseline was chosen. Excel was used to plot chart and calculate all figures, including the linear trends and 3-year moving averages.
Climate change and global warming scientists seeking grants for continuing research use computer model simulations to fabricate justify why they need more budget monies from the government - it is a constant doomsday whining that inflicts (and impacts) the entire science community.
The latest simulated calamity that is being tossed around as a doomsday scenario has the oceans being depleted of oxygen because of CO2, thus making marine life impossible.
As with all computer climate simulations, this is junk science that policymakers and the public have no need for. It's a disaster-distraction used to pretend that "scientists", with just a little more money (but always turns out being a whole lot more), will be able to quantify doomsday from natural climate reality - not very likely.
“Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change."
Objectively, this certainly appears to be just another case of ever money-desperate climate science sucking the oxygen out of all other scientific endeavors.
Because, if it ain't ocean acidification that will kill of marine life, then for sure it's gotta be the speculative oxygen starvation that does the job, donchaknow!
“We need comprehensive and sustained observations of what’s going on in the ocean to compare with what we’re learning from our models and to understand the full impact of a changing climate,” Long said. (One of the authors of this study essentially stating they need more money for their research.)
Below are some article comments from readers of this WUWT article
"Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change"
All said.
Scientists know that a warming climate can be expected to gradually sap oceans of oxygen, leaving fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life struggling to breathe.
This is absolute rubbish N. Atlantic temperature in degrees C
Year ………. Feb ………. Aug 1860 ……….18.7 ………. 23.0 2014 ……….18.8 ………. 23.7
Ocean temperature from February to August in 2014 goes up by nearly 5C: fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life are all breathing fine.
Ocean August temperature from 1860 -2014 (154 years) changed by 0.7C
Guess all the oceans died during the Medieval Warm Period and the rest of the 95% of the earth’s history when temps were higher.
Or perhaps the Mesozoic era, a 150 million year period, when the entire Earth – including the oceans – was packed with the most bountiful megafauna to ever exist on the planet
O2 from ocean based photosynthesis is estimated to be around 50% of total O2 production. More CO2 in the water means more biomass which means more O2. Good thing, considering we need O2 just like plants need CO2.
"The pattern caused by climate change also became evident in the model runs around 2030"
So in other words. Their model that was program to show CAGW causing oxygen depletion, shows oxygen depletion. Wow! That is about as scientifically important as the fact that turning on my oven causes it to heat up.
A model will do what it is program to do. The important thing is does the model react the way the real world does. Did they verify any of their model output with actual real word data? If not they should be forced to pay back all the money they got and have their degrees revoked.
Sigh – good thing we are still well within the natural variation that already happened since the end of the last full on ice age (we are still in an ice age). It’s been warmer, quite a bit warmer, 5 times since then.
Everything survived and we are still swamped by past natural variation. Only hubris in the guise of models creates the panic to drive political change or simply grant money.
More garbage from people that have never taken an oceanography course or picture the ocean as, “it’s just there” and refuse to believe that it is a dynamic environment we do not understand! We know more about the moon than we do about the ocean. So to “conclude” that lower O2 levels will become detectable in….wait for it….yep 20 years time is absolute rubbish.
Why is every doom and gloom prediction on a 20 year scale? Has anyone ever asked that question? Maybe they should.
Nope, they can't predict squat. It is with '97%' certainty that any climate model prediction will be wrong within 3 to 5 years.
Tip: Always bet against a climate model/simulation - the odds be with you.
Why do they always fail? As they say, read the whole thing in Real Clear Science.
And which groups of people really like to embrace the doomsday alarmist predictions from climate models?
Hmmm...the list is large: green crony capitalists; politicians on the green cronies donor payroll; scientists paid by government funded green research grants; journalists addicted to doomsday headlines; green environmental organizations feeding on the wallets of the gullible; and, of course, guilt-ridden celebrities who are massive CO2 polluters (take your pick, they come in all stripes and flavors).
Even with the strong surge in global temperatures from the current El Niño and from the surge of 2015 global warming exaggeration and fabrication (here, here and here), there remains the strange case of establishment climate science models failing to meet expected outcomes.
Case in point. This chart replicates the famous climate model output presented to Congress and the world in 1988 by James Hansen, the then chief climatologist of the NASA/GISS climate research unit. (Here is an image of the original chart.)
The climate model predicted annual temperature changes would follow the bright green curve if greenhouse gases (GHGs) were not curtailed. GHGs include: CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride - the latter 3 are known as fluorinated greenhouse gases.
The orange curve represents the predicted annual temperature changes if the GHG growth rate were reduced over time.
The chart's cyan (aqua) curve datapoints are the predicted annual temperature changes if GHGs were curtailed by governmental polices and regulations so that year 2000 and beyond had a net growth rate equal to zero.
From the Hansen 1998 testimony, there is this statement:
"We have considered cases ranging from business as usual [BAU], which is scenario A, to draconian emission cuts, scenario C, which would totally eliminate net trace gas growth by year 2000."
From the 1988 Hansen peer-reviewed article that supports his testimony, there is this statement:
"We define three trace gas scenarios to provide an indication of how the predicted climate trend depends upon trace gas growth rates. Scenario 'A' [chart's green curve] assumes that growth rates of trace gas emissions typical of the 1970s and 1980s will continue indefinitely; the assumed annual growth averages about 1.5% of current emissions, so the net greenhouse forcing increases exponentially. Scenario 'B' [chart's orange curve] has decreasing trace gas growth rates, such that the annual increase of the greenhouse climate forcing remains approximately constant at the present level. Scenario 'C' [chart's cyan curve] drastically reduces trace gas growth between 1990 and 2000 such that the greenhouse climate forcing ceases to increase after 2000."
So.....since NASA's top climate expert's testimony, what has happened with the GHG growth and growth rates?
From a recent U.S. EPA report on non-CO2 greenhouse gases, there is the following:
"Global non-CO2 emissions are projected to increase significantly between 2005 and 2030 unless further actions are taken to reduce emissions...total emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases have nonetheless increased."
From the latest IPCC AR5 climate report, we know the following about GHGs (a synopsis here):
"Total anthropogenic GHG emissions have continued to increase over 1970 to 2010 with larger absolute decadal increases toward the end of this period. Despite a growing number of climate change mitigation policies, annual GHG emissions grew on average by 1.0 gigatonne carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2eq) (2.2 %) per year from 2000 to 2010 compared to 0.4 GtCO2eq (1.3 %) per year from 1970 to 2000. Total anthropogenic GHG emissions were the highest in human history from 2000 to 2010 and reached 49 (±4.5) GtCO2eq/yr in 2010.".....
In addition, the combination of CO2 fossil fuels emissions and CO2 emissions from deforestation, forest fires and peat burning have grown from 72% of all GHG emissions in 1970 to 76% of all GHG emissions.
Regarding fossil fuel CO2 emissions, specifically (CO2 data here): NASA and Hansen's 'BAU' Scenario A was proposed at a time when CO2 emissions were growing: since 1972, the 15 years ending 1987 the world emitted 285 billion tonnes of CO2. This represents a CO2 average growth rate of 2.2% per year for those 15 years prior to Hansen's 1988 testimony.
In contrast, for the 15 years ending 2014, the world has emitted a total of 467 billion tonnes - that is growth some 1.6 times greater than Hansen's 'BAU'. This represents a CO2 average growth rate of 2.9% per year for the period since 1999.
Without any doubt, both empirically and objectively, NASA's Hansen's projected GHG emissions for 'Scenario A' has easily been exceeded since his testimony in 1988. To state otherwise is a falsehood, categorically.
Now, back to the above chart.
For the year 2015, NASA's model predictions had temperature change for all 3 scenarios declining. Of course, we now know the exact opposite took place with the sharp increase in 2015 global temps.
It is important to note that since the 1988 testimony, the NASA climate predictions have very rarely been correct regarding annual temperature changes. (NASA is not an exception, though - all climate computer models and experts suffer the same level of failure.)
For what it's worth, the chart also shows the 2016 predictions: there is continuing decline for Scenarios B & C, but a sharp spike up for Scenario A to a record calendar year anomaly level.
While global warming alarmists are celebrating 2015 as the "warmest" year ever, the climate model failures clearly point to the absurdity of focusing on peak or trough moments as indicators of informed expertise. Peaks happen and troughs happen, in weather and climate, but pointing to either as scientific proof of computer simulations is not science.
Taking that to heart, the accompanying chart has 3-year average plots of highly adjusted observed temperatures from the NASA and UK climate agencies - the 3-year averages remove the focus from peaks/troughs.
As can be seen, 3-year averages of the GISS and HC4 datasets depict the last 3-year average increase due to the El Niño conditions, and those questionable man-made factors.
Be that as it may, the GISS and HC4 averages still remain closer to the realm of NASA's Scenario C range. As a reminder, the Scenario C predictions are a result of net zero GHG emissions simulated to have started in year 2000, which is yet another galaxy away from reality.
In conclusion, some relevant takeaways on climate models:
1. At this point, now close to 3 decades after NASA's testimony, one can safely surmise that expert climate models can't predict squat. The climate is a chaotic complex that defies even the most sophisticated and powerful forecasting tools.
2. GHG emissions have far surpassed the 1988 "world-will-soon-end" BAU construct - a construct that many alarmists still believe. Yet the predicted positive feedback from BAU has not occurred and thus runaway global warming is, without question, AWOL.
3. The climate models are still absolutely unable to discern either the amount or rate of global warming/cooling that is due to natural forces. The models were designed to purposefully rely on greenhouse gas forcings as their major causal factor, while diminishing natural climate impacts. It's no wonder that climate models remain on a fail path.
4. Based on the model outputs from 1960 to the present, policymakers and the public would be better served by rejecting the alarmist scenarios A and B; instead, moving forward, base all adaption and mitigation policies on Scenario 'C', which would likely produce better outcomes with superior allocation of scarce resources.
The climate models definitely have their important place in the climate researcher's toolbox. They are best suited to advance science's better understanding of our world, but their climate predictions, forecasts and prognostications should never be relied on - they are unreliable and inaccurate.
Update h/t: Video of climate scientist making the same point about climate model failure before a congressional committee on Feb 2, 2016:
Notes: NASA/GISS 2015 temperature dataset and HC4 2015 dataset. Excel was use to calculate chart's 3-month averages from their respective monthly datasets.
The climate doomsday-cult promoters at the Huffington Post and Climate Nexus did their usual thing, trying to convince the American public that Hurricane Joaquin was the result of global warming.
Of course, when the alarmists uttered these claims, they were based on the hurricane computer models that forecast Joaquin's path would strike the East Coast of the U.S. Fortunately for the coastal residents, the climate change doomsters were wrong, spectacularly.
Instead, as the adjacent chart clearly documents, those ocean waters have cooled since 1940, not warmed as predicted. Another case of 'those stubborn facts'.
In summary, the empirical evidence again confirms that climate simulations and computer models are very suspect regarding their capabilities at both short and long-term predictions/forecasts. Governing elites, bureaucrats and the public should absolutely not base any expensive policy-making decisions on these research tools.
The Pope's climate doomsday encyclical has generated a lot of controversy; and has probably doomed him to be eventually nominated for the Catholic 'hall of shame' for fear mongering anti-science.
Of course, it's not completely the Pope's fault for his ignorance. The Pope's gatekeepers and advisers can take much of the credit for making sure he did not hear about the actual climate science empirical evidence.
One climate doomsday scenario (among many) that continues to have no basis in climate science reality is the infamous prediction that Gaia will soon have a Venus-like atmosphere and boiling oceans...because of humans fossil fuel use. You can rest assured that Pope Francis was made aware of the potentiality of this fringe calamity.
It's a calamity that has long been pushed by the world's leading climate science alarmists.
NASA's former top climate expert, James Hansen, has been in the past a principal proponent of this particular doomsday prophecy. And of course, he provided the dramatic testimony to Congress in the summer of 1988 that really initiated the fear mongering in the U.S. regarding catastrophic global warming and climate change disasters - like turning Earth into Venus.
Unfortunately for the Pope, James Hansen and other hysterical climate doomsday soothsayers, the real world empirical evidence clearly shows that the world's climate is self-correcting and not prone to those scary predicted tipping points and runaway disasters from growing atmospheric CO2 levels.
Case in point: The Tropics (20S to 20N latitudes) - A Venus Doomsday?
The above chart plot reveals a tropical climate, as measured by satellites, experiencing a very slight cooling trend (blue curve) over the last 20 years. In contrast, the IPCC's latest climate model (CMIP5/RCP4.5) curve (green line) predicted a significant warming trend during that same 20-year period.
Going back even further, the red chart plot depicts an 83-month period of exceptional warming right after the Hansen testimony of 1988. In contrast, the IPCC climate models predicted a significant cooling trend for the Tropics for those 83 months - an abysmal failure, represented by a 7 degree trend difference between reality and prediction.
Needless to say, although we will, both the consensus climate experts and climate models have been spectacularly wrong in their doomsday projections for the Tropics, which means that human CO2 causing Venus-like conditions for Gaia has no basis in climate science reality.
It's unfortunate that this pope fell victim to his own gullibility and the anti-science machinations of his court jesters advisers. But there is good news for the Catholic masses: you can now also comfortably ignore this encyclical since it was produced from the irrational passion of fear versus the known rational, empirical climate science.
Political expedience, and a craving to please, truly corrupts scientists and the science they produce...in an era when science fraud is on an exponential rise, one would think that climate agencies would be more careful with their scientific integrity...especially in a year of a major climate conference...did NOAA just provide a new Climategate-effort of science deception?...similar to what sunk Copenhagen2009?.....
(click on graph to enlarge)
The past several days has seen much written about the new revision of the NOAA global temperature dataset - a revision that supposedly eliminates the global warming 'pause' or if you prefer, the 'hiatus'.
The revision has received withering scrutiny, with multiple significant criticisms being leveled. Clearly, as the critics point out, this revision is not based on any known physical science principles, nor on any new empirical evidence, but instead on a political agenda that demands "scientists" find more global warming, pronto, for the Paris 2015 climate elite bureaucrats hookup extravaganza.
By utilizing questionable adjustments based on even more questionable assumptions, NOAA managed to produce an entirely fabricated increase in the global warming trend from 1998 to 2012. Theirs is not a real global warming event, it is essentially nothing more than statistical flimflam.
Per the critics, several key failings include:
The complete ignoring of the world's best climate measurement technologies - satellites and the Argo ocean-float array system - likely ignored because both technologies show little if any warming in their respective realms.
The authors provided a statistical significance level of a remarkably lame .10 - so lame it pretty much alone indicates this study's claims have the lasting robustness of toilet paper after flushing.
This study significantly lowered sea surface temperatures, specifically from 1998-2000. This lowering had the immediate impact of making the temperature rise from 2000-2012 appear much larger than it really was.
Study used Arctic land temperatures to manufacture rising Arctic sea temperatures - conveniently ignoring that regional sea temperatures are almost always zero (0°C) since sea ice stretches across the area for a majority of a given year.
In a rather bizarre manner that non-biased scientists would not employ, this study massively adjusted up the ocean buoy temperature measurements in order to match the ship records of engine water intake temperature; yet the buoys were designed to measure surrounding sea temperatures, and the engine intakes were not. Scientists familiar with this issue agree that the ship engine enhanced temperature measurements should have been adjusted down instead.
Despite all the ludicrous adjustment machinations this newest NOAA revision relies on, the per century global warming trend fabricated (for the 1998 to 2012 period) remains well below even the IPCC's average climate model projections.
Relevant to that last point, is the above chart. It's a comparison of warming trends during the 15-year periods ending 2012 (see blue rectangles) and 1997 (see red circles).
Using climate agency temperature anomalies that were reported as of the end of 2012, one can clearly see the dramatic drop in global warming rates from the earlier 1983-1997 period versus the period ending 2012.
Did it still warm from 1998 to 2012?
Yes, it did. But it was at a fraction of the warming trend of the previous 15 years - a definitive slowdown versus the prior warming trend.
And as the chart reveals, the CMIP models (the RCP 4.5 scenarios) expected significantly more warming than observed during 1998-2012 period. Objectively, the models predicted an accelerating warming rate, which actually failed to happen, as the empirical evidence proves.
Because of this decline ('pause'?) in global warming trends, NOAA felt compelled to simply fabricate more warming in a rather feeble attempt to make global warming seem more of a existential threat that might even scare an anti-capitalism Pope into embarrassing fear-mongering.
Unfortunately for the "scientists" at NOAA, despite all their really lame statistical shenanigans, the revised NOAA temperature trend for the 15-year period ending 2012 is still a quite tepid 0.9°C per century - indeed, the descriptor 'lukewarm' readily comes to mind.
The updated NASA/Hansen climate model chart with the latest GISS and HadCRUT4 observations remains a testament to abject climate model failure by the anointed "experts"...chart includes updated GHG growth trends from IPCC AR5...not surprisingly, climate reality is very unkind to the CO2-centric computer simulation predictions...one could fairly surmise from the actual performance of models and experts that they can't predict squat...just say'n.....
(click on chart to enlarge)
No matter how many years go by, the trend towards ever worse climate model predictions continues.
Case in point: The NASA/Hansen climate model that was used by climate experts to convince the politicians, the media and pubic that the world was at severe risk for massive global warming if greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were not drastically cut.
This model's predictions came to the forefront when NASA's James Hansen provided testimony to the U.S. Senate in 1988. As it was discovered much later, the Hansen testimony was stage-crafted for maximum fear-mongering impact, which should have been the first clue that there was a credibility issue regarding the climate model.
Before diving into the details, a short glance at the accompanying chart provides the critical policymaker insight:
Essentially, the NASA model predicted temperatures would follow the bright green curve if GHGs were not curtailed. The cyan (aqua) curve datapoints are the predicted temperatures if GHGs were curtailed. Greenhouse gases have continued their accelerated growth, yet the observed temperatures (the green and pink circles) closely match the cyan curve. Simply, the model's predictions have been spectacularly wrong, worsening by the year.
The following provides more details:
The newly published 2014 IPCC AR5 summary report bemoaned the recent significant growth increase of GHGs. The IPCC established the per year growth, prior to 2000, to be at a 1.3% rate. The IPCC AR5 reports that GHG growth has now jumped to 2.2% per year through 2010 (see more details here).
[Editor: Speaking to CO2 emissions more specifically, using the 1999 year-end global CO2 emission level as the base year, CO2 emissions have grown at an average 3.0% per year pace as of the end of 2013. That's 14 years of exceptional growth. In contrast, the 14 years of CO2 growth prior to 1988 is only 1.8% per year (read below as to why prior to 1988).]
To say that GHGs have exceeded the 'business-as-usual" (BAU) scenario would be an understatement - according to the IPCC AR5, a 70% increase has taken place, on a per year basis.
Of course, the BAU scenario was made famous by during that 1988 U.S. Senate hearing.
Per Hansen: "We have considered cases ranging from business as usual, which is scenario A, to draconian emission cuts, scenario C, which would totally eliminate net trace gas growth by year 2000."
In a peer-reviewed article supporting his testimony, he stated that the 1970s and 1980s had an approximate annual growth average of 1.5% (prior to 1988). This was the paper's BAU 'Scenario A' that he spoke of in his testimony. In his written Senate statement, he included an appendix that verifies the ~1.5% BAU estimate for GHGs, plus a chart that depicted the scenarios A, B and C.
That chart is replicated above, with Scenario 'A' being the green curve; the 'B' scenario is the orange curve; and the cyan curve is the 'C' scenario, which represents the 'draconian' emission cuts Hansen states are required to minimize potential global warming.
As stated previously, the IPCC has confirmed the rapid, continuing growth of GHGs since the end of 1999, which per the NASA climate model, should have produced global warming equal to the bright green curve on the chart.
Instead, climate reality and natural climatic forces intruded - real world temperatures since 1988 resemble the cyan temperature curve of "draconian" emission cuts that Hansen's testimony implied would necessarily make global warming safe by end of 2014.
As it turns out, some 25+ years later at the end of 2014, we currently have achieved that implied 'safe' global warming that the climate modelers and experts predicted would not happen unless there were forced gigantic emission cuts.
Objectively, the empirical evidence leads to a couple of reality-based, undeniable and incontrovertible conclusions: policymakers should not rely on the unreliable climate models - they're egregiously wrong and not getting much better; and, climate experts truly do not understand the natural forces dominating the climate system.
Notes: This updated NASA/Hansen chart now uses the current HC4 and GISS V3 datasets, as of 12/31/14. Instead of plotting individual year datapoints for observed temperatures, plotted 3-year (36-month averages ending in December): this reflects an expectation that models can't predict accurately every annual period, but over longer 3-year periods the model and observation trends should better match. Starting in 1960, both GISS and HC4 3-year averages were offset to start at zero (0.0°C) anomaly. To reduce the clutter on chart, only 'even' year observed 3-year temperature datapoints were plotted. The small insert chart is data from IPCC AR5 summary report. The green, orange and cyan Hansen model plots came from this climate-doomsday site.
We've said it before...climate models can't predict squat...current scenarios of global climate temperatures and level of temp change already reveal a massive failure...policymakers and taxpayers should completely disregard the virtual computer simulations of climate doomsday proposed by UN's IPCC.....
(click on graph to enlarge)
This is not brain surgery. This is not rocket science. This is not nuclear physics.
This is climate science fact versus climate science fiction (i.e. computer model simulations).
Climate science fiction: For the last 10 year-period, the UN's IPCC climate models predicted greenhouse global warming equaling a per century trend of 1.7°C.
Climate fact: The globe warmed at only a +0.2°C/century trend. In other words, global warming has stalled, paused, or if one prefers, in a hiatus condition.
Simply put, the computer simulations programmed by CAGW alarmists produced virtual global warming 8 times greater than climate reality.
This spectacular failure by models (developed by the "consensus" experts) is well documented. And as of this date, there are over 50+excuses reasons by these "experts" as to why their billion-dollar climate simulations have turned out to be worthless for policymakers.
Article source for above climate model predictions.
In front of cameras, a hot and sweaty James Hansen of NASA gave his famous global warmingEOTWAWKItestimony...lucky for the rest of us, this climate "expert" was spectacularly wrong.....
(click on graph to enlarge)
During a hot June 1988, NASA's James Hansen provided a provocative, stage-crafted testimony to the U.S. Senate.
His message? The world of 1988 was the hottest ever, since the 1800's, and it was due to humans' fossil fuel CO2 emissions; and more importantly, global warming would continue its upward path, rapidly getting worse and then becoming a threat to civilization unless CO2 emissions were constrained - i.e. reduced significantly.
Why his EOTWAWKI message? Because the modern crystal ball - his computer climate model simulations - told him so.
This chart plots the global temperatures using the most advanced, costly climate measuring technology provided to the scientific community by the American taxpayer. The empirical measurement evidence over the last 26.5 years since his testimony tells a different story than what Hansen predicted.
What do the satellites say? This state-of-the-art measurement technology ignores crystal ball predictions by experts and instead objectively reports that over the last 18 years "global warming" has been a non-issue. Despite record amounts of greenhouse gases being spewed into the atmosphere, global warming has not accelerated and has not become a threat.
How bad were Hansen's computer model predictions?
In his testimony, he spoke of causation between global warming and CO2 emissions - the more CO2 released, the greater and faster temps will rise. Yet, over the last 18 years, the world has experienced a very tiny cooling trend, per the satellites. And the "causation"? Well...ahem...calculating the statistical correlation between global temperatures and CO2 ppm levels over the last 18 years produces a negative correlation, with a r2 of 0.0004.
Dr. Hansen does deserve credit however. The first 8.5 years after his testimony, satellites measured the global warming trend at a +1.22°C increase by 2100AD. And the r2 for temperatures and CO2 was 0.21 (note to climatologists of alarmism persuasion: one does not want to make predictions of catastrophe with this statistical attribute level).
The conclusion? The end of the global warming 'EOTWAWKI' as we know it, no? Damn those stubborn facts!
Note. Excel used to plot datasets and 36-month (3 year) averages; plus used to calculate R2 and linear trends. RSS temperature dataset and CO2 dataset. Global temperatures as of end of December 2014.
The consistent failure of the IPCC's climate models is widely recognized by the scientific experts...the models inability to predict future climate scenarios accurately is partly a result of thousands of key failures, including their being unable to simulate the asymmetry of ENSO....
Besides the current crop of IPCC climate models failing due to their being CO2-centric, the models also suffer failure from the thousands of sub-simulations they are required to perform.
It is known that there exists a major asymmetry of the El Niños versus the La Niñas. If climate models can't accurately simulate this asymmetric relationship it makes for poor global climate predictions.
Scientists published a recent study to determine the success of modeling the ENSO asymmetry - the results were not encouraging.
===> "With respect to their findings, Zhang and Sun report the following: (1) "the underestimate of observed positive ENSO asymmetry measured by skewness is still a common problem in CMIP5 coupled models," (2) "all the models are also found to have a weaker ENSO asymmetry than observations," (3) "CMIP5 coupled models have a significant cold bias in the mean sea surface temperature," (4-6) "biases in zonal wind stress, precipitation and subsurface temperatures ... are also too symmetrical with respect to ENSO phases," (7) "sea surface temperature warm anomalies over the far eastern Pacific are found to be weaker in the coupled models than in observations," (8) "most models also have a weaker subsurface temperature warm anomaly over the eastern Pacific," (9) "most models have a weaker precipitation asymmetry over the eastern Pacific," (10) "most AMIP models have a stronger time-mean zonal wind over the equatorial central and eastern Pacific," and (11) they "underestimate the observed positive skewness of zonal winds in the central Pacific.""
Conclusion: The multi-billion $$ climate models have proven time and again that they are incapable of predicting future climate with any level of accuracy. Policymakers would be best served by completely ignoring the computer simulations as they poorly match the empirical observations of the global and regional climates. However, the models still hold value for the researchers, but that is their only benefit.
Another IPCC climate model prediction fails the ultimate test...it's confirmed that the computer simulations of increased flooding did not materialize...and human CO2 emissions do not cause more and bigger floods.....
(click on image for source)
The supposed extreme climate change caused by human CO2 emissions is not producing the predicted increase of intensity and frequency of regional flooding.
A new study conducted by experts comes to an unsettling truth: the consensus climate science of the IPCC, CAGW alarmists and computer models has been spectacularly wrong.
"In a massive review of the subject conducted by a team of seventeen researchers hailing from eleven different countries, i.e., Kundzewicz et al. (2013), we learn the following: (1) "no gauge-based evidence has been found for a climate-driven, globally widespread change in the magnitude/frequency of floods during the last decades," (2) "there is low confidence in projections of changes in fluvial floods, due to limited evidence and because the causes of regional changes are complex," (3) "considerable uncertainty remains in the projections of changes in flood magnitude and frequency," (4) increases in global flood disaster losses reported over the last few decades "may be attributed to improvements in reporting, population increase and urbanization in flood-prone areas, increase of property value and degraded awareness about natural risks (due to less natural lifestyle)," (5) "the linkages between enhanced greenhouse forcing and flood phenomena are highly complex and, up to the present, it has not been possible to describe the connections well, either by empirical analysis or by the use of models," and (6) "the problem of flood losses is mostly about what we do on or to the landscape," which they say "will be the case for decades to come.""
The IPCC's climate models have been noteworthy for their unfettered pattern of prediction failure, misleading policymakers and taxpayers alike regarding global warming...predictably, the pattern of failure continues in 2014.....
(click on graph to enlarge)
Multi-billions have been invested into climate science, with a special emphasis on climate models.
Despite the massive expenditures, the climate models utilized by the IPCC continue to be ginormous failures for the purpose of prediction.
The adjacent chart depicts this continuing pattern of failure by comparing the 3-year average of observed temperatures (HadCRUT4) versus the output of state-of-the-art CMIP5 models. The dataset plots reflect the most current values through June 2014.
The chart is also a testament to the unmitigated disaster of basing computer models almost exclusively on the influence of trace atmospheric gas CO2 instead of the natural climate cycles and oscillations that dominate the world of climate reality.
The frigid tropical hotspot continues to be a massive embarrassment to the CAGW faithful, and more importantly, the climate modelers...their prediction of a runaway tipping point in the atmosphere that would produce Venus-like temperatures is a classic example of herd-style failure by the consensus algorithms....
(click on chart to enlarge)
Two recent studies demonstrate the absolute futility of policymakers listening to climate modelers (and their billion dollar climate models) who continually predict climate calamities - a prediction record with zero successes.
The first peer reviewed study determines that today's climate models will never be able to predict the climate. Essentially, climate models assume linear climate relationships yet the real-world climate is non-linear and chaotic - defying intermediate and long-term predictive "expertise" with predictable regularity.
The second study clearly documents the abysmal prediction failure foisted on the public and politicians by the climate modelers. The climate models have long predicted a tropical hotspot in the atmosphere due to CO2 emissions; but actual scientific research reveals that the feared, mythical, runaway "tipping point" hotspot remains non-existent.
The hotspot tipping point, per the climate modelers, is supposedly in the process of turning Earth's atmosphere into a Venus replica, making Earth uninhabitable. But is that realistically happening?
The adjacent chart provides the indisputable, empirical evidence to answer that question unequivocally - NO!
The chart's red column is the Venus atmosphere's temperature at the 10km altitude. A conservative estimated temperature is still an incredibly hot 350°C.
In contrast, the chart's dark blueish columns show the Earth's atmosphere at the same altitude is an incredibly frigid temperature of minus 75C degrees. Yes, our tropical atmosphere is some 425 degrees colder.
Ahem....what freaking Venus-like tropical hotspot?! IT DOES NOT EXIST.
Of course, the climate moderlers stuck-on-stupid-Venus, don't mention this amazingly obvious climate fact. Instead, they focus on how Earth's tropical atomosphere is "accelerating" towards a Venus-like hotspot tipping point.
Accelerating? Barely creeping at a glacial pace would be more accurate.
Examine the chart closely. Since the beginning of the 1980's, humanity has poured some 860 billion CO2 tonnes into the atmosphere; atmospheric CO2 levels keep climbing (see yellow boxes); yet, the average tropical atmospheric temperature has essentially not budged (see red dotted baseline) over 3+ decades of modern consumer/industrial human emissions.
The solution to climate science reality and better policy? 'TRUST NO ONE CLIMATE MODEL' should be stamped on every CO2-centric climate model prediction and report that is handed to politicians and policymakers.
Then this type of anti-science insanity preached by the climate modelers would finally be D.O.A., never again to poison a public scientific debate with "runaway" catastrophic climate absurdities.
Note: Source of approximate 10km Venus temperature; source of approximate Earth's troposphere temperature; source of approximate tropical latitude troposphere temperatures; source of lower tropical atmosphere temperature change since 1979; source of total CO2 emission tonnes since 1979; source of peak CO2 ppm levels for each decade.
The huge failure of "expert" climate science goes all the way back to the IPCC's genesis: its 1990 predictions provide the 99.9% proof that their global warming fear-mongering is without scientific merit.....
(click on chart to enlarge)
Climate reality and actual evidence-based science has completely eviscerated the global warming claims of the IPCC's "scientists" and those in the "consensus" choir.
Recent climate change predictions produced by the latest bleeding-edge computer models have proven to be spectacularly wrong.
Longer-term proof that the IPCC (and its climate-doomsday religion acolytes) is provided by the original "expert" predictions that were first published back in 1990. That proof is clearly obvious from the accompanying chart.
Simply stated: the IPCC predicted that if human emissions of CO2 kept growing in a business-as-usual (BAU) manner, the world would experience a high likelihood of global warming acceleration - to a per century rate of 2.8°C.
Instead, as the chart depicts, global warming since 1990 has achieved only a 1.4°C per century rate, per the global-wide 24/7 measurements of satellites. Yet the BAU growth of human emission tonnes actually accelerated to a 13.2% annual rate for the 10 years ending 2013. Those are the stubborn facts that are indisputable, unequivocal and irrefutable.
This cataclysmic failure of orthodoxy, green religion-based, climate-science-doomsday predictions is now being referred to as one of science's biggest mysteries - a confirmation of 99.9% proof one could surmise, and the public reportedly agrees with.
And let's not forget the proof that the doomsday climate scientists are confirming their own spectacular prediction failures with the recent plethora of excuses.
What happens when you compare the empirical evidence of climate reality versus the predictions of government-funded climate models?.....how do you spell Q-U-A-C-K....
(click on chart to enlarge)
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to recognize the global warming prediction quackery that constantly flows from the taxpayer-funded, government sanctioned, computer climate models.
The adjacent chart, produced by a non-rocket scientist, is yet more proof of the quack climate model "science" that policymakers have been forced to rely on. Charitably, policymakers would make better decisions if instead they relied on flipping a coin or a visit to their local astrologer with a crystal ball.
The chart specifically compares state-of-the-art climate model temperature output for the U.S. corn belt region versus NOAA's climate network system (USHCN).
Simply put, climate models don't do reality, since forever.
Amazingly, over the shorter term, the global warming predictions for the U.S. breadbasket have been even worse, in fact, astoundingly atrocious - instead of warming, growing areas have cooled considerably.
Solution: Until climate models are verified as being capable of somewhat accurate forecasts (predictions, scenarios, etc.), policymakers and taxpayers should completely ignore any climate simulation output that is a result of today's computer models. This should also apply to mainstream journalists, but, let's be honest here, they're too incredibly lazy and gullible to distinguish between empirical evidence and agenda-driven prediction fantasies, no?
Ahhh.....those stubborn facts. The "consensus" climate science "experts" have been constantly bedeviled by the empirical climate reality, such as this...
(click on chart to enlarge)
NOAA's empirical evidence does not lie, nor deny. Over the last 205 months (Feb. 1, 1997 thru Feb. 28, 2014), the continental U.S. has cooled at a per century rate of -0.96°C.
This has taken place despite the assurance of almost every taxpayer-funded climate scientist that the exact opposite would happen.
They told us that their powerful and sophisticated computer climate models could accurately predict what future climate conditions we would experience.
Except they were spectacularly wrong from day one; and yet, they kept spending multi-billions of taxpayer funds by throwing it down this failed climate research rabbit hole.
Why were the "experts" and the computer simulations so, so wrong?
From a recent essay about this gigantic and embarrassing failure by government scientists, we learn:
"Realities about climate models are much more prosaic. They don’t and can’t work because data, knowledge of atmospheric, oceanographic, and extraterrestrial mechanisms, and computer capacity are all totally inadequate. Computer climate models are a waste of time and money...Inadequacies are confirmed by the complete failure of all forecasts, predictions, projections, prognostications, or whatever they call them."
Over the past decade, the public and policymakers have come to realize just how atrocious climate models are at predictions, forecasting and future climate scenarios.
Honestly, it's a wonder anyone still listens to any of the conventional, "consensus" climate modelers at this point, especially the modeling "experts" at NASA.
This chart depicts the famous global warming predictions made by NASA's chief climate scientist in 1988 at a hearing before the U.S. Senate.
NASA's James Hansen declared that if the world did not change its way, and kept emitting CO2 in the 'business-as-usual' (BAU) manner, global warming would skyrocket, threatening all of civilization. This is the 'Scenario A' plot on the chart.
Well.....not only has the world matched the 'BAU' growth of the 15 years prior to the 1988 testimony, we have increased the CO2 emission tonnes growth from 1.8% per year to 2.2% (the 15 years prior to 2013). To put those numbers into context, from 1972 through 1987, humans emitted 302 billion tonnes of CO2; in contrast, from 1998 through 2012 humans produced 461 billion tonnes.
Yet, despite the NASA "expertise" and the gigantic growth of human CO2 emissions, actual global temperatures over the past 25 years have closely matched Hansen's 'Scenario C', which he predicted would take place if CO2 emissions had been limited to year 2000 levels.....didn't happen.
Unexpectedly (i.e. not predicted), global temperatures flat-lined and CO2 emissions continued on their merry, amazing growth path, unabated.
Regarding climate reality, the lack of global warming was not a prediction that climate models were programmed to produce. The models do not rely on natural climate change or natural climate warming and cooling attributes. It is not in the models' software "DNA" because human climate experts really don't understand the chaotic nature of Earth's climate, nor comprehend the true power of nature.
Recently, the world's major climate agencies published their year-end empirical datasets for global temperatures.
How does actual climate reality compare with the IPCC's 2013 proclamation that their "extremely likely" predictions of global temperatures? With 95% certainty, embarrassingly bad. (click on chart to enlarge)
The chart on the left is a plot of the IPCC's RCP4.5 model output versus the climate reality, as represented by the UK's HadCRUT4 global monthly temperature dataset. The bright red and blue curves are simple 3-year moving averages that visually removes all the monthly gyrations.
It is clear that the IPCC's state-of-the-art 2013 climate models start diverging from climate reality around the 1995 period. And the divergence continues to widen to the point where one could conclude that any future output will be extremely unlikely to be of any value to policymakers.
Put another way, these billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded super-computer model simulations have performed atrociously, and are entirely worthless at predicting future climate scenarios.
How did this happen?
While the IPCC's associated climate "experts" are going through their own set of mental gyrations to explain the abysmal climate model and AGW hypothesis performances, two scientists explain how this failure was produced - article number one and article number two.
If you are curious as to the 'whys' of IPCC climate consensus failure, these articles are a must read. For those short on time, though, in a nutshell a compiled summary of reasons for failure:
cloud ignorance
ocean ignorance
solar/cosmic ignorance
natural climate variability ignorance
chaos ignorance
de-emphasis of large uncertainty
dogmatic co2-AGW orthodoxy
herd consensus
hubris
financial/security incentives
political agendas
Until the above are adequately addressed and fixed, the probability that climate models will predict with accuracy that policymakers can actually rely on is extremely unlikely, with 99.9% certainty.
In this recent article, Bob Tisdale deconstructs the irrational and anti-science claims of a new global warming study produced by a couple of prominent climate reality deniers.
Parsing through Tisdale's analysis makes it clear that alarmists remain grasping at straws, while cherry-picking evidence that is easily refuted with updated empirical measurements.
As part of his analysis, he shows the adjacent chart comparing the state-of-the-art IPCC climate models versus climate reality. As observed, the computer simulations are not up to the task of accurately predicting global temperatures, whether being in the past or modern eras.
Essentially, as Tisdale notes, the CO2-centric models are failed prediction tools and actually contradict the hypothesis that human CO2 emissions are a major factor in the modern era's past global warming, which, btw, stalled more than a decade ago.
Simply put, the IPCC's climate models and experts are unable to predict cloud formation and coverage, which makes accurately predicting climate conditions an impossible task.
As a result, the models have huge problems with predicting actual polar sea ice coverage and albedo characteristics - a continuing major fail that shreds the IPCC's creditability as a reliable source for climate fearmongering prognostications.
This latest study confirms that the state-of-the-art climate models have proven to be no better at predicting Arctic clouds and sea ice than their grossly inaccurate predecessors.
And as these plots (source) of polar sea ice indicate, the global sea ice area and extent exhibit an increasing trend that is the polar opposite of the IPCC's those fabled "expert" predictions.(bad pun intended)
The abysmal failure of climate models as tools to predict future climate is well documented.
The vast, multi-billion expenditure on tools that can't accurately predict may indeed further needed climate research, but as for model outputs being a sound foundation for policymakers, they're worthless.
This new study confirms that conclusion. Since policymakers need to thoughtfully plan for changes in future precipitation levels, this peer reviewed research makes it clear computer simulations are inappropriate and misleading tools to base policy on.
This top plot of satellite global temperatures is scientifically unequivocal (click on to enlarge):
The actual empirical evidence from state-of-the-art measurement technology reveals a global warming spike during the late 1990's (due to the Super El Nino), but after that, essentially zilch.
Thus, for the last 20 years (240 months) the global warming trend of +0.52°C by 2100AD is 'climate insignificant' - a trend that climate scientists certainly don't get excited about.
And when one examines the last 17-years, the satellite global temperature trend becomes slightly less than zero (i.e. global cooling). As a prominent climate alarmist scientist determined recently in a peer reviewed paper:
“There is a lot of noise in the climate system and it is quite possible that the noise can mask the effects of man-made carbon dioxide for a period of time. However if the slope is zero for 17 years, then we cannot blame noise any more but we have to face the facts that we humans do not affect the climate to any great extent.”
The bottom plot of global temperatures confirms the atrocious climate predictions of the IPCC "expert" climate models. This is irrefutable evidence that the consensus climate models can't predict squat and should not be relied upon by policymakers.
Finally, it is well established that Obama and his administration are serial pathological liars (sounds harsh but it is undeniable). This is not only true in the health care and Obamacare policy arena, but is also a common denominator in their climate change alarmist claims.
As recently as November 1, 2013, the Obama administration clearly stated significant lies about current climate change, which have no basis in scientific reality.
First, a generic wind stress definition is in order.
Ocean
surface roughness (i.e., turbulence) as measured by satellite technology, is
referred to as 'wind stress' in climate models. In plain-speak, it is sea surface turbulence, obviously
driven by wind speed and direction, in addition to being impacted by atmospheric density/pressures, sea surface
temperatures, sea buoyancy and currents. Wind stress affects the air-sea heat exchange,
as well as the mixing of carbon/heat stored in the deeper parts of oceans. Wind
stress also has impacts on cloud cover, ocean current circulations and sea ice
movement/volumes.
In essence, wind stress is a powerful and critical elemental
influence on the world's climate. Thus, to forecast future climate conditions
with any sort of accuracy, it is absolutely necessary to be able to accurately simulate
wind stress.
As this latest peer reviewed scientific research reveals,
all climate "experts" and the IPCC's climate models remain unable to
accurately simulate wind stress on their massively expensive, sophisticated,
complex computer models.
(Hmmm...did we mention climate models can't predict squat yet?)
National, regional and local politicians/policymakers, and those unelected bureaucrats, rely on the IPCC's climate models (and other similar simulations) to justify and make plans for vast expenditures of taxpayers' dollars to vanquish climate change.
Unfortunately, as this peer reviewed article finds, the latest climate models are absolutely worthless in regards to rational policy-making and expenditures for future weather/climate.
Intuitively, one would expect that after the gargantuan, multi-billion dollar sums that climate modellers spent, their sophisticated computer simulations would now, at minimum, accurately forecast the impacts of incredibly large weather phenomenon that occur regularly, such as the east Asian monsoons. Not so, as this scientific research clearly documents.
More often than not, the biggest, baddest, most complex and expensive models have a long history at abysmal prediction skill.
Objectively, the models
remain good tools for climate researchers to learn from, but they really
can't predict squat when it comes to future climate reality, and should never be used for that purpose.
Climate Audit provides a clear summation of the significant issue of a global warming hiatus ('pause') since 1998, which the IPCC has failed to address, and will likely continue to evade and deny.
Plus, the article then delivers a devastating critique/audit of the climate models' inability to replicate the actual temperature trend since 1979.
The analysis by Climate Audit is both brutal and forthright, clearly articulating 'those stubborn facts' of real world climate science: summary - computer climate models can't predict squat.
As well documented across the entire web, the IPCC climate models have at least a '97%' success at complete prediction failure.
A new study adds to the IPCC "expert" misery by determining that the models are not very good at simulating the real-world carbon cycle.
Just to be clear, an accurate modeling of the carbon cycle is fundamental - if that can't be accomplished then the billion dollar climate models are worthless as prediction tools for climate change.
The taxpayer-funded, billion-dollar black holes known as 'climate models' have been unable to predict squat when it comes to future climate conditions - as with global temperatures, the same holds true for the newer IPCC models predicting Antarctic sea ice extent.....it's the 'same old, same old'
Untold resources have been spent by government bureaucrats in an attempt to improve the dismal performance of the CMIP3 computer climate models. After billions being spent on these IPCC CMIP-class of models one would expect that they would have a confirmed capability to accurately predict Antarctic sea ice reality.
At least that's what 5 climate scientists expected. Wrong.
"The authors write that "Phase 5 of CMIP (CMIP5) will provide the model output that will form the basis of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]," and they therefore thought it important to determine how well these models represent reality...examined "the annual cycle and trends in Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) for 18 models used in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project that were run with historical forcing for the 1850s to 2005."...report that (1) "the majority of models have too small of an SIE at the minimum in February," that (2) "several of the models have less than two-thirds of the observed SIE at the September maximum," that (3) "in contrast to the satellite data, which exhibit a slight increase in SIE, the mean SIE of the models over 1979-2005 shows a decrease in each month," that (4) "the models have very large differences in SIE over 1860-2005," and that (5) "the negative SIE trends in most of the model runs over 1979-2005 are a continuation of an earlier decline, suggesting that the processes responsible for the observed increase over the last 30 years are not being simulated correctly." [John Turner, Thomas Bracegirdle, Tony Phillips, Gareth Marshall, Scott Hosking 2013: Journal of Climate]
Computer model simulations of complex, chaotic systems often are massive failures producing worthless prediction output.....all the climate models used by the IPCC and the major climate research agencies are no different - with that said, there are times when a simpler and more elegant model approach can produce superior results despite the chaos at hand, and for a fraction of the cost
(click on graphs to enlarge)
Above are plots of several climate models updated with the most current HadCRUT and/or NASA-GISS global temperature observations. As noted in previous 'C3' posts, the traditional, wildly expensive climate agency computer models have done an absolute abysmal job at forecasting climate change and global warming.
Charts 2, 3 and 4 reveal the massive forecasting failure that the billion-dollar climate simulations have delivered. In the face of consistent, very predictable growth in CO2 emissions over the 21st century, each of these models predicted a huge increase in global temperatures, which turned out to be the opposite of climate reality.
Chart #2 deserves special note. This is the NASA/James Hansen model of global temperatures that has been used since 1988 to effectively frighten the public. In 1988, James Hansen predicted that if human CO2 emissions growth continued in a "business as usual" manner then we would face runaway global warming - this outcome is depicted by the bright green curve labeled 'Scenario A' on Chart #2.
When Hansen made this prediction, the human CO2 emissions "business as usual" growth amounted to an approximate 32% increase over the prior 15 years to 1988. In contrast, the 15 years prior to 2013 saw CO2 emissions grow by about 41% - a significantly robust increase over Hansen's "business as usual" scenario.
Yet the actual plotted global temperature results on Chart #2, through June 2013, reveal that global warming has died and world temperatures are well below the NASA "business as usual" scenario. In fact, the actual temperatures are practically below the NASA model's 'Scenario C' (the cyan/aqua curve on chart) that assumes CO2 emissions had been reduced to year 2000 levels.
As the actual, objective empirical evidence clearly documents, the consensus "expert" models are severely flawed.
However, not all models are created equal and the one that produces the best global temperature predictions is also the one that is the most elegant, simplest and least costly. That model's superior performance is shown in Chart #1 (click on to enlarge).
This model was developed by Duke University scientist, Nicola Scafetta. This model's description and results are explained here and here. Needless to say, this model's continuing success is a product of non-consensus thinking, which the IPCC's climate "experts" reject because Scafetta's model is not based on the very obviously crippled CO2-AGW hypothesis.
And that's why the mainstream science/environmental "journalists" have not made this model's success widely known since it inconveniently, and embarrassingly, establishes that all their previous extreme global warming forecast articles per the consensus "experts" were wrong.
Note: If you desire to produce your own Excel chart to compare against Chart #4, download CMIP3 and HadCRUT3 data from here. For 'C3' Excel charts/graphs, this link has the vast majority of datasets used at our site.
For decades, the mainstream journalists have dutifully reported hysterical alarmism generated by a minority of scientists dedicated to the concept of human CO2-caused catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW)...this style of sensationalist, tabloid "climate science" journalism however is dependent on either a condition of stuck-on-stupid mentality or a highly biased, politically motivated political agenda, not on scientific empirical evidence
Read here. Adjacent is a chart that depicts the output of climate alarmism of catastrophic global warming scientists, versus scientific reality. Per this empirical evidence, the experts and their wildly expensive, souped-up CAGW spreadsheet models obviously can't predict squat.
Despite this well documented, spectacular and long known failure of the "consensus," "expert" climate models, the stuck-on-stupid tabloid press is just now coming to grips with their own spectacular stupidity (gullibility?).
It would benefit all Americans, and the rest of the world's populace, if everyone just simply ignored the mainstream press in regards to any type of science reporting - if that were to happen, incredibly wasteful dumb policies would not be implemented by an even stupider class of individuals - the politicians.
The ultimate test for the IPCC's catastrophic AGW hypothesis is the existence of the predicted "hotspot" that is a sign of a positive feedback loop for accelerating global warming - newest data show that even after record setting human CO2 emissions the "hotspot" failed to materialize
Per the IPCC's global warming hypothesis, at the very top of the troposphere, above the equator region, is the location (12km, 200hPa @ 20°N - 20°S) that triggers a positive climate feedback, which produces the mythical runaway, tipping point of accelerated, dangerous global warming, which of course is unequivocal and irrefutable, except when it isn't.
This location is often referred to as the tropical "hotspot," supposedly an artifact of modern industrial/consumer human CO2 emissions.
The high climate sensitivity programmed into the IPCC's climate models is entirely dependent of this hotspot of positive feedback - with the hotspot, climate models predict a scary global warming range that spans from 2°C to 6°C.
If there is no tropical upper troposphere hotspot, then there is no positive feedback, and thus, no climate change crisis as predicted by the IPCC. If there is no hotspot, then the IPCC hypothesis of CO2 caused global warming (AGW) is essentially proven false.
Based on accepted physics, without the positive feedback triggered by the hotspot, surface global temperatures from a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 will increase by some +0.5° to 1.5°C. That is the range climate models predict (depending on the given climate model) if the "hotspot" does not exist.
The IPCC's gold-standard for upper troposphere data is the UK's HadAT2 dataset that represents high altitude balloon/radiosonde measurements. These balloons provide a higher resolution of the atmospheric layer temperatures than current satellites can provide. Over time, approximately 28+ million radiosonde measurements have taken place.
A few days ago (2/19/2013), the HadAT2 was finally updated through December 31, 2012 - the previous update of dataset was through 12/31/2011. The above chart plots the latest AT2 dataset and concurrent, well-mixed atmospheric CO2 levels over the last 17 years. (Why 17?)
Conclusions from the chart:
#1.The IPCC's tropical "hotspot" does not exist.
#2. Atmospheric CO2 levels over 350ppm do not cause a hotspot to occur.
#3. The climate sensitivity to CO2 is lower than expert assumptions.
#4. Temporary natural El Nino events do cause a spike in upper troposphere temperatures but then return to a lower temperature state (no positive feedback loop).
#5. The IPCC, its experts and climate models have been wrong about the mythical hotspot since the UN created the IPCC (1988).
#6. The continuing abysmal failure of climate models is likely associated with the lack of the mythical, hypothesized hotspot.
#7. The AGW hypothesis of tipping point, climate positive feedback is proven false after decades of zero empirical evidence supporting it.
#8. Despite all empirical evidence, IPCC scientists and bureaucrats will keep pushing the hotspot, positive feedback hypothesis in order to continue their lucrative taxpayer funding.
Recently, a new 2012 study by Stephen Po-Chedley and Qiang Fu found:
"It is demonstrated that even with historical SSTs as a boundary
condition, most atmospheric models exhibit excessive tropical upper
tropospheric warming relative to the lower-middle troposphere as
compared with satellite-borne microwave sounding unit measurements. It
is also shown that the results from CMIP5 coupled atmosphere–ocean GCMs
are similar to findings from CMIP3 coupled GCMs. The apparent
model-observational difference for tropical upper tropospheric warming
represents an important problem..."
Previous studies have documented the tropical hotspot problem (source for all quotes here):
"Climate models and theoretical expectations have predicted that the
upper troposphere should be warming faster than the surface.
Surprisingly, direct temperature observations from radiosonde and
satellite data have often not shown this expected trend." Sherwood et al 2008.
"On multi-decadal timescales, tropospheric amplification of surface
warming is a robust feature of model simulations, but occurs in only one
observational dataset." Other observations show weak or even negative amplification.” Santer et al 2005
“A recent report of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) identified a ‘potentially serious inconsistency’ between modelled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates.” Santer et al 2008
“Model results and observed temperature
trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being
separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In
layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than
observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs.” Douglass et al 2007
Update, per a reader's email: First, from the 2nd order draft of the IPCC's AR5, and second, from a comment at Judith Curry's 'Climate Etc.' blog:
"Section 9.4.1.3.2, p. 9-26, lines 31-33: "In Summary, there is a high confidence (robust evidence although only medium agreement) that most, though not all, CMIP3 and CMIP5 models overestimate the warming trend in the tropical troposphere during the satellite period 197902011. The cause of this bias remains elusive.""
"However my working hypothesis is that Santer would have continued to ignore these demonstrations, were it not for the Fu (2011, GRL) paper, which included Syukuro Manabe (godfather of CO2-climate modeling) as co-author also showing disagreement between models and measured temperatures...However, once the Fu 2011 paper came out, it became “establishment” that there was in fact a significant disagreement between models and measured temps. So now after the Fu 2011 paper we have (Thorne, 2011 [JGR], Po-Chedley (2012), Seidel (2012) and Santer (2012) all agreeing that models and measurements for tropical troposphere temperaures cannot be reconciled."
Note 1: A simple
hotspot explanation summarized from this article: Increasing CO2 levels causes atmosphere to warm;
then atmosphere causes Earth's surface to warm; warming of oceans cause
evaporation; increased evaporation leads to more water vapor in the
upper troposphere; water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas that warms
the atmosphere even more (positive water vapor feedback); the Earth's surface warms
even more; and then auto 'repeat and rinse' until Earth's oceans boil, per an "expert."
Note 2: A scientist discusses the IPCC hotspot issue and dismantles a lame pro-hotspot argument (geesh, talk about alarmists' "scientific" mis-truths).
Note 3: The catastrophic global warming alarmists, be they "scientists" or political hacks, are very alarmed that the "hotspot" never materialized. To cover up this major failure of the AGW hypothesis, they usually attempt excited hand-waving to distract the gullible, including: the disingenuous, circular logic claim that it must exist because the models predict it, thus the measurements must be wrong; or the amazing claim that the hotspot exists but it just doesn't reveal itself to humans (really, trust us, it's hiding).
Billions upon billions have been poured into climate research and the infamous climate computer models - after those untold billions, the newest CMIP5 climate models are still unable to predict global temperatures with any accuracy
Computer models, in general, are essentially worthless as policy tools when the number of variables and complexity of the relationships are beyond easy human comprehension.
Complex, mind-boggling multivariate models more often than not produce a huge surplus of garbage output (see chart) that confuses both policymakers and the public, resulting in poor policy choices and failed implementation strategies and tactics.
Combine that typical outcome with the well known phenomenon of garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) that is inherent to all computer simultations and the likely result is a manifesto for a big fail.
Some recent public examples of computer complex simulation fiascoes include: computer models causing a 2-year delay in finding the black box from Air France Flight 474; the hysterical computer projections about potential bird flu deaths; the abysmal computer prediction regarding Obama's "stimulus" affect on unemployment; and, of course, the Federal Reserve's 2007 econometric model prediction that completely missed the soon-to-be 'Great Recession' - and don't forget the recent gargantuan fail of these type of "expert" computer models.
So it should come as no surprise that computer attempts at predicting outcomes for the incredibly complex, chaotic world's climate are bound to fail.
To that point, it has been recently observed that past climate model forecasts have been spectacular failures due to bad assumptions and a fanatical blind loyalty to a very weak (lame?) AGW hypothesis. And as the above chart indicates, the newest CMIP5 climate simulations appear to be not much better.
Thus, it is a safe bet that proposing trillion-dollar climate solutions based on the outputs of these new models will prove to be another common sense (no computer needed) predictable disaster. However, that will again be in hindsight for the political elites and mainstream journalists.
Simply stated, the Obama Administration and leading Democrats refuse to be honest with the American public - the empirical evidence and climate scientists now confirm that real global warming and climate change will be significantly less than predicted, making the politician lies even more troubling
As previously discussed, the consensus regarding future global warming and climate change has fallen apart.
Essentially, the climate research agencies programmed their computer models with an extremely high sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 levels. As a result, these computer climate simulations predicted outlandishly high future temperatures.
These alarmist, catastrophic temperature simulations were portrayed to the public by the mainstream media, the United Nations and Obama's big government advocates as gospel truth, when in fact they were nothing more than hypothetical speculations with no empirical foundation.
The above two charts provide further proof that computer model simulations were spectacularly wrong.
The IPCC chart on the left has a mauve curve that represents future temperatures if CO2 emissions were held constant at 2000 levels. This chart also has two red lines of actual observed HadCRUT global temperature trends (red lines) when projected out to 2100AD.
Clearly, observed temperature trends are predicting a future temp that resembles the IPCC projection if CO2 was held constant - the actual trends are multiple times below the "runaway" and "accelerating" global warming that Obama and the IPCC still push.
The second chart on the right plots the IPCC's different CO2 scenarios that the world may follow. A close examination of this chart reveals that actual CO2 emissions continue to follow the 'business as usual' scenario (A1F1), which the IPCC and Obama state is the cause of "runaway" global warming and climate change.
Since the "runaway" and "accelerating" scenarios have been ginormous scientific failures, as previously discussed, AGW scientists and alarmists/advocates are having to seriously re-think the basic assumptions of catastrophic global warming.
As is usually the case though, the now proven bad, anti-science is not stopping Obama and his Democrat comrades in their attempts to perpetrate a new tax Americans on carbon usage.
Via the IPCC's gold-standard temperature dataset, it has become undisputed fact that global warming isn't - experts and pundits alike are searching for the reasons why and how this gross prediction failure took place, with most concurring (even the NY Times) that climate models' sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 levels was severely exaggerated - go figure
Multiple outlets, including the NY Times, have recently written about new research that is finding climate models' programmed sensitivity to CO2 levels being pegged too high. Sample articles explaining the underlying problem with climate sensitivity research can be found here, here , here, here, and here.
The adjacent chart points to the serious problem with the original high sensitivity estimates from the IPCC and others. (The gold-standard HadCRUT global and CET temperature datasets are plotted.)
In the case of the IPCC, they published a flat-out fear-mongering sensitivity that in computer simulations would produce a temperature increase of +6.4°C (pink line) by 2100AD, if CO2 emissions were not stabilized. This incredibly high computer output was designed to scare policymakers and the mainstream media into action.
And, there are even higher published estimates of sensitivity, which will never happen in the real-world, but are touted as potential realistic threats (climate science gospel) to the gullible with deep pockets and a pennant for government intrusion. Case in point:
“...one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action..." quote from climate modeler, AGW proponent James Annan
As a reminder, this description of a scientist's behavior comports with the incredible level of climate scientist fraud, deception and falsehoods revealed by the embarrassing publication of the Climategate emails. Venal, corrupt anti-science attitudes continue to run blatant and deep in the climate science community.
Back to the chart...in reality, CO2 emissions have not stabilized, they are growing in a 'business as usual' manner yet the impact on global temperatures has been minimal. As the chart depicts, over the last 15 years global warming is increasing at a 0.17°C per century rate, a sliver-fraction of the IPCC absurd sensitivity simulated outcome. Other straight red lines on the chart tell the same story - the IPCC's climate sensitivity produces temperature predictions out-of-touch with this real-world empirical observational evidence.
"But the point stands, that the IPCC’s sensitivity estimate cannot
readily be reconciled with forcing estimates and observational data. All
the recent literature that approaches the question from this angle
comes up with similar answers. By failing to meet this problem head-on,
the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle." quote from climate modeler, AGW proponent James Annan
The same story holds true for the chart's plot of Central England Temperatures (CET) (green curve and lines). Over the last 15-years, the CET century trend is a surprisingly minus 3.8°C. That is a significant cooling trend (in contrast, the last 15 years has the U.S. at a minus 0.94°C trend) that should not happen in a high sensitivity, tipping-point type of warming world.
Conclusions:
#1. There is no scientific consensus about the correct climate sensitivity to CO2 levels.
#2. A scientific consensus is building though regarding the IPCC and other climate model agencies having exaggerated the sensitivity in the past, and a need to lower the models' said sensitivity to better match reality.
#3. Past real-world global warming (see jagged red chart curve) is not dangerous, nor accelerating - instead, it is presently flat with an equal possibility of becoming a cooling trend, or resuming its non-alarming warming trend
#4. CO2 levels would appear to have a weak influence on both global and regional temperatures.
#5. The spectacular documented failure of climate agency computer models is likely due to the erroneous (i.e., overly high) sensitivity parameters,
#6. 100% of climate scientists would agree that the current empirical evidence does not support the proclaimed runaway, tipping point acceleration that was supposedly taking place. ;-)
Taxpayers have spent billions on CO2-driven climate model "science," which the empirical evidence now suggests was like pouring money down a rat-hole....the abysmal prediction failure of CO2-centric models is simply fact - are there actual scientific models that can replace this current wasteland of biased AGW climate research?
As major mainstreamnewsoutlets are starting to report, global warming has essentially disappeared, replaced with a slight cooling trend in recent years. Taxpayer-funded climate scientists are finally being forced to go on record stating the obvious - their global warming predictions were incorrect.
Their favorite euphemism to describe what is happening is that global warming is at a "standstill." Even the most infamous climate reality denier has started using that terminology to describe a decade of non-existent warming - he can't quite yet bring himself to say global cooling.
Three of the above charts (top-left, top-right and bottom-left) represent the state-of-the-art models used by the "consensus" climate experts. As seen, all three have been spectacularly wrong through the end of 2012.
These three models (World Climate Research Programme, NASA-GISS and the IPCC) are CO2-centric climate models - global warming and climate change are primarily driven by levels of atmospheric CO2. As a result, they have long predicted dangerous and accelerating global warming for Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land surfaces - and it bears repeating, they have been spectacularly wrong.
The majority of scientists now agree that these "consensus" science models are flawed (at least 97% of scientists would agree ;-) and are incapable of accurately predicting global temperatures. Thus, newer models based on non-CO2 drivers of climate are starting to see the light of day, so-to-speak.
One such newer model is represented by the bottom-right chart above. This model appears to have better global temperature prediction capabilities, which also happens to verify that CO2 is not the principal climate driver, as scientists on the taxpayer dole claim (and misrepresent).
The atmospheric humidity levels that NOAA researchers publish continue to trend lower than climate model predictions - however, the mythical runaway global warming that catastrophic global warming (CAGW) alarmists promulgate requires atmospheric humidity to increase
The IPCC's CAGW hypothesis necessitates that troposphere humidity increases as levels of atmospheric CO2 increase. Simply stated (this is not rocket science):
*First CO2 levels increase, thus *Atmospheric warming increases, thus *Earth's surface warms, thus *Earth surface water evaporates, thus *Atmosphere humidity increases, thus *Atmosphere water vapor increases (i.e. greenhouse gas), thus *Atmosphere warms further, thus *Earth's surface warms even more, thus *More Earth's water evaporates into atmosphere, thus *A positive feedback loop established, and continues
For the above climate "tipping point" to initiate, the atmosphere humidity has to absolutely increase, which the above chart of empirical evidence reveals it has not.
In fact, as seen, the atmospheric humidity is decreasing over time while CO2 levels increase - the exact opposite of all climate model and "consensus" expert predictions.
And, as noted before, atmospheric temperatures remain flat to slightly cooling over the last 15 years despite the large increase in CO2 levels - again, the exact opposite of model predictions.
Additional greenhouse, climate and temperature charts.
The recent evidence is overwhelming that climate models are completely ineffective at predicting global temperatures, and newer research confirms they have serious problems properly simulating major component/regions of the globe's environment
(click image to enlarge)
Read here. New research on the accuracy of climate models regarding the modeling of the Southern Ocean region reveals major issues.
The Weijer et al. team identified the following concerns:
"The nine researchers state that "the CCSM4 has varying degrees of accuracy in the simulation of the climate of the Southern Ocean when compared with observations," some of which we list as follows: (1) "the seasonally ice-covered regions are mildly colder (ΔSST > -2°C) than observations," (2) "sea ice extent is significantly larger than observed," (3) "north of the seasonal ice edge, there is a strong (-4°C < ΔSST < -1°C) cold bias in the entire Pacific sector south of 50°S and in the western Australian-Antarctic Basin," (4) "positive biases (1° < ΔSST < 4°C) are found in the Indian and Atlantic sectors of the Southern Ocean," (5) "significant differences are found in the Indian and Pacific sectors north of the ACC, with the CCSM4 model being too cold (< -2°C) and fresh (<-0.3 psu)," (6) "AABW adjacent to the Antarctic continent is too dense," (7) "North Atlantic Deep Water is too salty (>0.2 psu)," (8) "in the Indian and Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean, north of 50°S and below 3000 meters, the too-salty AABW penetrates northward, resulting in a denser-than-observed abyssal ocean in CCSM4," (9) "the model underestimates the depth of the deep winter mixed layers in the Indian and eastern Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean north of the ACC," (10) "in the southern Tasman Sea and along the eastern Indian Ocean boundary ... the model mixed layer depth is deeper than observed by more than 400 meters," (11) "in all sectors of the Southern Ocean, Model CFC-11 concentrations in the lower thermocline and intermediate waters are lower than observed," (12) "model CFC-11 concentrations in the deep ocean (below 2000 meters) are lower than observed in the basins adjacent to the Antarctic continent," (13) "model surface CFC-11 concentrations are higher than observed," (14) "the production of overflow waters in the Ross Sea is too low by about a factor of 2 relative to the limited observations," (15) "the depth at which the product water settles was also shown to be too shallow by about a factor of 2," (16) "the subtropical gyre of the South Atlantic is too strong by almost a factor of 2, associated with a strong bias in the wind stress," (17) the mean position of the BMC is too far south in the CCSM4," and (18) "the model variability in the position of the BMC is significantly less than observations."
[Wilbert Weijer, Bernadette M. Sloyan, Mathew E. Maltrud, Nicole Jeffery, Matthew W. Hecht, Corinne A. Hartin, Erik van Sebille, Ilana Wainer, Laura Landrum 2012: Journal of Climate]
Conclusions: The IPCC climate models can't simulate the reality of observed climate conditions. Climate models and computer simulations are incapable of producing credible climate predictions and forecasts due to the lack of understanding that scientists have about all the interactions within the climate system.
