The new IPCC paper will be released shortly.
It has been leaked....
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/15/the-state-of-climate-science-fluxed-up/
As for the state of climate science, this summary by Rose of the IPCC situation is worth sharing:
âA REFLECTION OF EVIDENCE FROM NEW STUDIESâ⦠THE IPCC CHANGES ITS STORY
What they say: âThe rate of warming since 1951 [has been] 0.12C per decade.â
What this means: In their last hugely influential report in 2007, the IPCC claimed the world was warming at 0.2C per decade. Here they admit there has been a massive cut in the speed of global warming â although itâs buried in a section on the recent warming âpauseâ. The true figure, it now turns out, is not only just over half what they thought â itâs below their lowest previous estimate.
What they say: âSurface temperature reconstructions show multi-decadal intervals during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950-1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th Century.â
What this means: As recently as October 2012, in an earlier draft of this report, the IPCC was adamant that the world is warmer than at any time for at least 1,300 years. Their new inclusion of the âMedieval Warm Periodâ â long before the Industrial Revolution and its associated fossil fuel burning â is a concession that its earlier statement is highly questionable.
What they say: âModels do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 â 15 years.â
What this means: The âmodelsâ are computer forecasts, which the IPCC admits failed to âsee⦠a reduction in the warming trendâ. In fact, there has been no statistically significant warming at all for almost 17 years â as first reported by this newspaper last October, when the Met Office tried to deny this âpauseâ existed.In its 2012 draft, the IPCC didnât mention it either. Now it not only accepts it is real, it admits that its climate models totally failed to predict it.
What they say: âThere is medium confidence that this difference between models and observations is to a substantial degree caused by unpredictable climate variability, with possible contributions from inadequacies in the solar, volcanic, and aerosol forcings used by the models and, in some models, from too strong a response to increasing greenhouse-gas forcing.â
What this means: The IPCC knows the pause is real, but has no idea what is causing it. It could be natural climate variability, the sun, volcanoes â and crucially, that the computers have been allowed to give too much weight to the effect carbon dioxide emissions (greenhouse gases) have on temperature change.
What they say: âClimate models now include more cloud and aerosol processes, but there remains low confidence in the representation and quantification of these processes in models.â
What this means: Its models donât accurately forecast the impact of fundamental aspects of the atmosphere â clouds, smoke and dust.
What they say: âMost models simulate a small decreasing trend in Antarctic sea ice extent, in contrast to the small increasing trend in observations⦠There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the small observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent.â
What this means: The models said Antarctic ice would decrease. Itâs actually increased, and the IPCC doesnât know why.
What they say: âECS is likely in the range 1.5C to 4.5C⦠The lower limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2C in the [2007 report], reflecting the evidence from new studies.â
What this means: ECS â âequilibrium climate sensitivityâ â is an estimate of how much the world will warm every time carbon dioxide levels double. A high value means weâre heading for disaster. Many recent studies say that previous IPCC claims, derived from the computer models, have been way too high. It looks as if theyâre starting to take notice, and so are scaling down their estimate for the first time.
Rose also mentions the new paper from Nic Lewis taking the Met office climate model to task for having an ECS of 4.6C, which is greater than even the IPCC is claiming:
Lewisâs paper is scathing about the âfuture warmingâ document issued by the Met Office in July, which purported to explain why the current 16-year global warming âpauseâ is unimportant, and does not mean the ECS is lower than previously thought.
Lewis says the document made misleading claims about other scientistsâ work â for example, misrepresenting important details of a study by a team that included Lewis and 14 other IPCC experts. The teamâs paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience in May, said the best estimate of the ECS was 2C or less â well under half the Met Office estimate.
He also gives evidence that another key Met Office model is inherently skewed. The result is that it will always produce high values for CO2-induced warming, no matter how its control knobs are tweaked, because its computation of the cooling effect of smoke and dust pollution â what scientists call âaerosol forcingâ â is simply incompatible with the real world.
This has serious implications, because the Met Officeâs HadCM3 model is used to determine the Governmentâs climate projections, which influence policy.
Mr Lewis concludes that the Met Office modelling is âfundamentally unsatisfactory, because it effectively rules out from the start the possibility that both aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity are modestâ. Yet this, he writes, âis the combination that recent observations supportâ.
We live in interesting times.
Read Roseâs article here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...cts-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html#ixzz2exAZ99b9
