Validation and the Scientific Organization: Organizing U.S. Climate Modeling (4)
Validation and the Scientific Organization: Organizing U.S. Climate Modeling (4)
This entry is the last I will be writing about organizing U.S. climate modeling, software, and open source communities – for a while. At the end of this entry are links to the blogs/articles in a couple of series. I am going to start by quoting a comment from atmoaggie on the previous entry.
“The difference between all of those (rbr: types of models in a previous comment) and climate models is the ability to study their validity.
I would like to see a climate modeling 10 year forecast of some parameters, such as, maybe, average SST for the month of June 2021. Too specific? How about average global SST for JJA (summer) 2021. Still too specific? Maybe the average global SST for the next 10 years.
I, too, work in modeling. In storm surge modeling, one can very easily tune a model to better match the results for one storm (by adjusting air-sea drag, e.g.) only to find that the model is not useful for forecasting as another parameter or physical calculation is incorrect (the sea floor friction formulation, e.g.)
I bring this up to illustrate what can go wrong when modeling a hindcast, tuning to match observations, and applying that model to forecasts. And climate is far more complex, I think, than tides and TC wind and pressure-forced storm surges.”
I want to bring together two streams of thought that I have pursued over the past few months – validation and the scientific organization. First, I will discuss whether or not climate models can be validated and then argue that the development of a validation plan is at the center of developing a scientific organization.
Validation: As suggested in some of my earlier entries the question about whether or not climate models can be validated is a controversial issue. The controversy lies, first, in philosophy. The formal discussion of whether or not climate models can or cannot be validated often starts with a greatly cited paper by Naomi Oreskes et al. entitled Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences. In fact quoting the first two sentences in the abstract:
“Verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible. This is because natural systems are never closed and because model results are always nonunique.”
Oreskes et al. argues that the performance of the models can be “confirmed” by comparison with observations. However, if the metric of “validation” is a measure of absolute truth, then such absolute validation is not possible. By such a definition little of the science of complex systems, which would include most biological science, medical science, and nuclear weapons management, can stand up to formal validation.
I will return to the stream I started with the quote from atmoaggie, which makes reference to storm surge model (see here for excellent discussion of storm surges Resio and Westerink). The point of the comment is that the storm surge model can be tuned and thereby calibrated based on observations of past storm surges and theory, but the model may still fail in future predictions of storm surges. This points out a weakness in the development of models of natural systems, that the adjustments of the models to represent a historical situation does not assure that model correctly represents the physics of cause and effect. In fact, this is a general problem with modeling of complex natural systems, if you get the answer “right,” then that does not mean you get it right for the right reason. Hence, in the spirit of Oreskes et al. validation is not possible – there is no absolute to be had.
Yet, aren’t storm surge models useful and usable? The same situation is true for weather models and river forecast models, their correctness cannot be assured in any absolute sense, but aren’t they useful and usable? Atmoaggie poses a set of predictions, all of which are reasonable propositions, that may or may not be convincing to him or her. These do not represent a complete set of metrics to evaluate models, and the success or failure of these predictions does not state in any absolute sense whether or not the models have usable information. There are many more elements of model evaluation that determine our level of confidence in the use of models.
It is easy, therefore, to establish that models that cannot be formally validated can be both useful and usable. The results of these models might not be certain, but the degree of confidence that can be attributed to their calculations is very high. This confidence is, in general, established by many forms of model evaluation and additional sources of relevant information, most importantly, observations and basic physical principles.
Validation, verification, evaluation, certification, confirmation, calibration: All of the words in this list have been used in discussions of how to assess the quality of models. For some, there are nuanced differences between the words, but in the general discussion they are all likely to take on the same meaning – some quantitative measure of model quality. The word “validation;” however, is special. Within political or philosophical arguments, the statement “models cannot be validated,” carries a powerful message, especially if one establishes as a principle that the elimination or the reduction of uncertainty is required prior to taking action (see Shearer and Rood). Many scientists take on the mantra that climate models cannot be validated. When I worked at NASA, the culture was that measurements of temperature (for example) could be validated, but that models could not. But if one is talking about temperatures from satellites over a deep layer of the atmosphere, in the spirit of Oreskes et al., can satellite temperature measurements be validated? We can state with stunning confidence that the satellite temperatures are within a certain closeness of a more intuitive or accepted measure of temperature – like a thermometer on a balloon. This is, to me, more calibration than validation, but in my world at NASA, calibration was done in a lab with standards (and that is why we have NIST). At NASA we talked about models being “evaluated.”
Other arguments I have heard about climate modes defying validation are based on to what do we chose to validate against – what is our standard? Suppose that you are interested in how well the model represents the Pacific Ocean, and I am interested in how well it represents the Arctic Ocean. And the scientist down the hall wants to know how well it represents the ice-age cycles, and another wants to know how well it represents the 20th century temperature variability. There is no absolute way to make these choices. More fundamentally, if it is a climate model then how do we measure “climate?”
The list goes on – I have frequently heard arguments of one community making critical remarks about the “science” of other communities. The weather forecast community relies strongly on forecast skill scores, but these measures are by no means unique and for a variety of reasons often only indirectly relevant to the quality of climate models. There is no fundamental reason that an excellent climate model would automatically be an excellent weather forecasting model. The opposite is true as well. Over the years of my career there have been criticisms of climate science by other fields of physics. The gist of their arguments is that they don’t validate models the same way we do, and since we do a good job, they don’t. These arguments make great fuel for political argument and the maintenance of doubt. (Here is an interesting article by Oreskes and Renouf.)
Validation is, therefore, both controversial and important. I pose that validation is at the center of the development of the scientific organization.
Validation and the Scientific Organization: The definition I have posed for the scientific organization is an organization that as a whole functions according to the scientific method. Therefore, if it is a climate modeling organization the model development path, the modeling problems that are being addressed, are determined in a unified way. In that determination, it is required that ways to measure success be identified. This leads to a strategy of evaluation that is determined prior to the development and implementation of model software. With the existence of an evaluation strategy, a group of scientists who are independent of the developers can be formed to serve as the evaluation team.
The development of an evaluation plan requires that a fundamental question be asked? What is the purpose of the model development? What is the application? If the model is being developed to do “science,” then there is no real constraint that balances the interests of one scientific problem versus another. There is little or no way to set up a ladder of priorities.
Again, I will emphasize that to achieve this, and it can be achieved, is a matter of governance and management. It is a process of developing organizational rather than individual goals. It is a myth to imagine that if a group of individuals are each making the “best” scientific decisions, the accumulation of their activities will be the best integrated science. Science and scientists are not immune to the The Tragedy of the Commons. If one wants to achieve scientifically robust results from a unified body of knowledge, then one needs to manage the components of that body of knowledge so that as a whole the scientific method is honored. Enough on that pulpit.
Back to evaluation and validation – Minimally, the arguments about the nuanced meaning of validation and evaluation are a subject about which the climate modeling community needs to develop a standard. By my interpretation, the evaluation of climate models can be structured and quantified as “validation.”
When I was at NASA I had a programmatic requirement to develop a validation plan. And, yes, my friends and colleagues would tell me that that validation was “impossible.” But I am stubborn, and not so smart, so I persisted and still persist with the notion. That old plan can still be found here in Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document for Goddard Earth Observing System Data Assimilation System (GEOS DAS) with a Focus on Version 2.
The software we produced was an amalgam of weather forecasting and climate modeling. For the validation plan the strategy was taken to define a quantitative baseline of model performance for a set of geophysical phenomena. These phenomena were broadly studied and simulated well enough that they described a credibility threshold for system performance. They were chosen to represent the climate system. Important aspects of this validation approach were that it is defined by a specific suite of phenomena, formally separated validation from development, and relied on both quantitative and qualitative analysis.
The validation plan separated "scientific" validation from "systems" validation. It included steps of routine point-by-point monitoring of simulation and observations, formal measures of quality assessment by measure of fit of simulations and observations, and calculation of skill scores to a set of "established forecasts." There was a melding of methodologies of practices of the study of weather and the study of climate. We distinguished the attributes of the scientific validation from the systems validation. The systems validation, focused on the credibility threshold described above, used simulations that were of longer time scales than the established forecasts and brought attention to a wider range of variables important to climate. The scientific validation was a more open-ended process, often requiring novel scientific investigation of new problems. The modeling software system was released for scientific validation and use after a successful systems validation.
The end result of this process was the quantitative description of the modeling system against a standard set of measures over the course of one modeling release to the next. Did it meet the criterion of the absolute validation? No. Did it provide a defensible quantitative foundation for scientific software and its application? Yes.
All told, it does little to base a body of scientific knowledge on the premise that validation is “impossible.” Rather than following such a premise, which immediately devalues the knowledge base, it is more useful to develop a systematic approach to robust, appropriate validation. This stands to represent the complexity of the Earth’s climate and its investigation that serves not only the scientific method, but the communication of that science to other scientists, and to those with a stake in those scientific results. It sets a standard.
r
Open Climate Modeling:
Greening of the Desert
Stickiness and Climate Models
Open Source Communities, What are the Problems?
A Culture of Checking
Organizing U.S. Climate Modeling:
Something New in the Past Decade?
The Scientific Organization
A Science-Organized Community
Validation and the Scientific Organization
Reader Comments
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"...it does little to base a body of scientific knowledge on the premise that validation is "impossible". It is more useful to develop a systematic approach to quantitative descriptions that serve to stand as validation." I could not agree with you more.
Again, thanks.
Thanks for responding in the previous entry, Snowlover123. I don't want to clog the blog with the entire thread, but I did want to address a few items from that response:
I'm not. What I said was that that there has been a consistent drop in OLR at exactly the wavelength bands that GHGs such as CO2 and methane absorb energy. For purposes of this conversation, it doesn't matter what happens in the other bands; what's important is that, regardless of the sun's output or clouds or other forcings, GHGs are causing OLR to decrease at specific wevelengths, and that's the basis of the current observed warming.
Again, no, we wouldn't necessarily notice a decrease in overall OLR. We would, however, notice a decrease in OLR at the wavelengths absorbed by CO2 and methane, etc.--which is, again, precisely what is happening.
This passage has me a bit confused; did you use "increase" where you meant to use "decrease", or vice versa?
You have posted this, and the Hansen vs. observed energy accumulation numbers, before (both here and on ClimatePrediction.net) and as was shown previously, the numbers you've shown are erroneous. There has, in fact, been an incredible amount of heat added to the top layers of the oceans since 2002. I'm not quite sure how Pielke, our favorite "skeptic", misinterpreted those data, though I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it was an honest mistake and that he wasn't simply cherry-picking.
I never mentioned cloud cover at all; I was talking about your dual chart which showed OLR anomalies (at all wavelengths) on the top (in red), and temperature anomalies on the bottom (in blue). The OLR anomalies showed an ever-so-slight increase over the time span of the graphs, while the temperature anomalies showed a very clear, and much steeper, increase. My point is, if OLR at all frequencies is increasing, as you claim, why aren't temperatures decreasing in lockstep? Because, quite clearly, they're not.
Nature Geoscience Article...
This next deals with the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of rapid global warming 55.9 million years ago. During the PETM, temperatures rose by roughly 5.C degrees over a period of about 20,000 years. During that period, there were mass extinctions of certain species, a great increase in sea levels (due to both melted ice and thermal expansion), and even the Arctic warmed enough to support some tropical lifeforms. There is much speculation over what initiated the PETM, though some theories are a sudden release of sea-bottom methane, a change in ocean circulation, the impact of a carbon-rich comet, or extraordinary volcanic activity. At any rate, it took the world many tens of thousands of years to recover.
Nature Geoscience Article...
Validation_!
Validation? Yes, indeed--though perhaps not the validation some were hoping for, or some are supposing. Following is a short version of the facts as outlined in the article:
1) The decade of the 2000s was the warmest on record, even when 2009 and 2010 are excluded. However,
2) Surface temperatures, while warmer than ever, remained fairly level from 1998 through 2008. However,
3) This plateau was due in large part to rapidly rising coal consumption in growing countries such as China (which doubled its use of the fuel just between 2003 and 2007) that threw enough sulfur into the atmosphere to create a cooling effect that virtually cancelled out any additional CO2-induced warming. However,
4) Recognizing the danger to their own people, China began installing scrubbers to remove the sulfur particles. However,
5) While sulfur quickly drops out of the air if it is not replenished, CO2 remains for decades, so the warming from CO2 resumed immediately after China began scrubbing the SO2; this became quite evident in 2009 and, more so, 2010. (This is the same phenomenon that happened back in the 1970s.)
Bottom line: the planet has re-started its inexorable GHG-induced warming, and will almost certainly continue on that way unless we remove all scrubbers and electrostatic precipitators and pump the air chock full of sulfur. But that hardly seems like an attractive alternative... :-\
I'm glad that we can at least agree that global temperatures have leveled off over the last decade or so, even if it doesn't turn out to be a reversal of the longer-term trend. It wasn't that long ago that you appeared to be suggesting that no leveling had occurred at all.
* * *
Added: I hope that you and everyone else here have enjoyed the Fourth of July weekend. It sure seemed to go by fast for me.
Scope of Yellowstone River oil spill may grow
Exxon Mobil Corp. says leak could extend far beyond 10-mile stretch
LAUREL, Montana %u2014 Exxon Mobil Corp. acknowledged under political pressure Monday that the scope of its pipeline leak into the Yellowstone River could extend far beyond a 10-mile stretch of the famed waterway. As the company intensified its cleanup of tens of thousands of gallons of spilled crude, Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. President Gary Pruessing pledged to do "whatever is necessary" to find and mop up oil from the 12-inch pipeline that broke at the bottom of the river over the weekend.
The company earlier had dismissed assertions from state and federal officials that the spill was spread over dozens of miles. That drew sharp criticism from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
On Monday, Pruessing pledged that crews would begin walking the Yellowstone shoreline as soon as the flooding river recedes to look for pooled oil along the banks.
Story: High water hurting Montana fly fishing industry
"We're not limiting the scope of our cleanup to the immediate site," Pruessing said at a news conference along the river near Laurel, as crews mopped up oil in the background. "We are not trying to suggest in any way that that's the limit of exposure."
Underscoring rising anger over the spill among some riverfront property owners, Pruessing was confronted after his news conference by a goat farmer and environmental activist who said his partner was sickened by oil fumes and had to be taken to the emergency room.
"I need to know what we've been exposed to. People are sick now," Mike Scott said. Scott's partner, Alexis Bonogofsky, was diagnosed Monday with acute hydrocarbon exposure after she experienced dizziness, nausea and trouble breathing, he said.
Link
ScienceDaily (July 3, 2011) — Warming of the ocean's subsurface layers will melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets faster than previously thought, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Such melting would increase the sea level more than already projected.The research, based on 19 state-of-the-art climate models, proposes a new mechanism by which global warming will accelerate the melting of the great ice sheets during this century and the next.
The subsurface ocean layers surrounding the polar ice sheets will warm substantially as global warming progresses, the scientists found. In addition to being exposed to warming air, underwater portions of the polar ice sheets and glaciers will be bathed in warming seawater.
The subsurface ocean along the Greenland coast could increase as much as 3.6 °F (2 °C) by 2100.
"To my knowledge, this study is the first to quantify and compare future ocean warming around the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets using an ensemble of models," said lead author Jianjun Yin, a UA assistant professor of geosciences.
Most previous research has focused on how increases in atmospheric temperatures would affect the ice sheets, he said.
"Ocean warming is very important compared to atmospheric warming because water has a much larger heat capacity than air," Yin said. "If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes."
Given a mid-level increase in greenhouse gases, the researchers found the ocean layer about 650 to 1,650 feet (200 to 500 meters) below the surface would warm, on average, about 1.8 °F (1 °C) by 2100.
Along the Greenland coast, that layer would warm twice as much, but along Antarctica would warm less, only 0.9 °F (0.5 °C).
"No one has noticed this discrepancy before -- that the subsurface oceans surrounding Greenland and Antarctica warm very differently," Yin said.
Part of the warming in the North comes from the Gulf Stream carrying warm subtropical waters north. By contrast, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current blocks some of the subtropical warmth from entering the Antarctic's coastal waters.
Even so, the Antarctic ice sheet will be bathed in warming waters, the team writes.
Co-author Jonathan T. Overpeck said, "This does mean that both Greenland and Antarctica are probably going melt faster than the scientific community previously thought."
Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and co-director of UA's Institute of the Environment, said,
Link
ScienceDaily (July 2, 2011) — The Mary river turtle (Elusor macrurus), which is restricted to only one river system in Australia, will suffer from multiple problems if temperatures predicted under climate change are reached, researchers from the University of Queensland have shown.The scientists, who are presenting their work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual conference in Glasgow on 3rd July 2011, incubated turtle eggs at 26, 29 and 32⁰C. Young turtles which developed under the highest temperature showed reduced swimming ability and a preference for shallower waters.
This combination of physiological and behavioural effects can have dual consequences for survival chances. "Deeper water not only provides the young turtles with protection from predators but is also where their food supply is found," explains PhD researcher, Mariana Micheli-Campbell. "Young turtles with poor swimming abilities which linger near the surface are unable to feed and are very likely to get picked off by birds. These results are worrying as climate change predictions for the area suggest that nest temperatures of 32⁰C are likely to be reached in the coming decades."
The Mary river turtle is already listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List and the population has suffered a large decline over the past decades. Some factors known to have affected the population include collection of the eggs for the pet trade and introduced predators such as foxes and dogs. "Whether climate change has already contributed to the decline is not clear," says Ms. Micheli-Campbell. "But these results show it may be a danger to this species in the future."
These findings may be shared by other species of turtle, but the outcome is likely to be more extreme in the Mary River turtle as climatic warming is particularly pronounced for this area and the relatively shallow nests of freshwater turtles are more susceptible to changes in ambient temperature than the deeper nests of sea turtles. Further research is needed to understand the effects of climate change on incubation in other turtles.
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1; from land based monitoring stations?
2; So why the Arctic record melt, let alone the other weather phenomenon.
3; That's a big reach. Did CO2 stop rising?
4; Ya think so, really? How many coal fired power plants have come on line "per week" over the last 10 years?
5; Do you have some kinda proof for that type of validation maneuver ? I don't believe in validation from opinion or conjecture just yet.
It Re-started now!....... What?
Edit: So the Earth is saying Abracadabra!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
That would be the CO2/GHG Spectrum.
It most certainly does matter what happens in the other bands, since if the OLR is increasing in those bands, and it is more than the decrease in OLR in the GHG Spectrum, then we know that the drivers of the current warming are not GHGs.
In order for a forcing to create warming, it must reduce OLR overall, or produce an increase in ISR. With GHGs, it warms the Earth by producing a decrease in OLR, and the Earth warms to equilibriate the amount of OLR escaping to the amount of ISR coming in. This would not produce an increase in OLR, as observed.
Decreasing Cloud Cover increases OLR, but increases the ISR even more, which produces a 17 w/m^2 Energy Imbalance, when all clouds are to be removed.
The study that you linked to, shows a clear decrease in the rate of gain of OHC, since 2002, and even a slight decrease in some datasets.
Because decreasing Cloud Cover produces an increase in ISR as well. This increase in ISR is significantly more, than the increase in OLR. Again, if all Clouds were to be removed, an extra 17 w/m^2 would be added to Earth's Energy Budget.
I note you also did not adress this question that I posed, here:
If Carbon Dioxide is the cause of the late-20th Century Global Warming, why has temperature ignored the continued increase in Carbon Dioxide, and has followed the flatline in Cloud Cover in this past decade?
Give it up Snowlover123 NOAA has out smarted you!
In fact it has gone up so much and so quickly they will have to raise the bar again on both graphs!!
Um... no... if you see the slope from 2002-Present, you can see that the rate of OHC gain according to NOAA has substantially slowed as well. This, again, is consistent with a flatline in Cloud Cover beginning in 2002.
Cyclone, why hasn't OHC gain increased since 2002, at the same slope that it went up in 1982-2001?
Again, it is the Cloud Cover that drives temperatures, not CO2.
This is not what I was talking about at all...
But I will ask you the same question I asked Nea...
If Carbon Dioxide is the cause of the late-20th Century Global Warming, why has temperature ignored the continued increase in Carbon Dioxide, and has followed the flatline in Cloud Cover in this past decade?
Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study
(Reuters) - Smoke belching from Asia's rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulphur's cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday.
The paper raised the prospect of more rapid, pent-up climate change when emerging economies eventually crack down on pollution.
World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show.
The researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and Finland's University of Turku said pollution, and specifically sulphur emissions, from coal-fueled growth in Asia was responsible for the cooling effect.
Sulphur allows water drops or aerosols to form, creating hazy clouds which reflect sunlight back into space.
"Anthropogenic activities that warm and cool the planet largely cancel after 1998, which allows natural variables to play a more significant role," the paper said.
Natural cooling effects included a declining solar cycle after 2002, meaning the sun's output fell.
The study said that the halt in warming had fueled doubts about anthropogenic climate change, where scientists say manmade greenhouse gas emissions are heating the Earth.
"It has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008," said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
A peak in temperatures in 1998 coincided with a strong El Nino weather event, a natural shift which brings warm waters to the surface of the Pacific Ocean every few years.
Subsequent years have still included nine of the top 10 hottest years on record, while the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said 2010 was tied for the record.
A U.N. panel of climate scientists said in 2007 that it was 90 percent certain that humankind was causing global warming.
COAL
Sulphur aerosols may remain in the atmosphere for several years, meaning their cooling effect will gradually abate once smokestack industries clean up.
The study echoed a similar explanation for reduced warming between the 1940s and 1970s, blamed on sulphur emissions before Western economies cleaned up largely to combat acid rain.
"The post 1970 period of warming, which constitutes a significant portion of the increase in global surface temperature since the mid 20th century, is driven by efforts to reduce air pollution," it said.
Sulphur emissions are linked to coal consumption which in China grew more than 100 percent in the decade to 2008, or nearly three times the rate of the previous 10 years, according to data from the energy firm BP.
Other climate scientists broadly supported Monday's study, stressing that over longer time periods rising greenhouse gas emissions would over-ride cooling factors.
"Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced," said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain's Met Office.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-clim ate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20110704
The answer--at least according to a new paper, linked to in comment #6 by Ossqss and discussed by me in #7--is that the warming hasn't "ignored the continued increase in Carbon Dioxide"; it's simply been battling the offsetting ("cooling") effects of the ridiculous amounts of sulfur China began pumping into the atmosphere in earnest around 1999 as that nation's economy took off.
Following is a short version of the facts as outlined in the article, and shown in comment #7:
1) The decade of the 2000s was the warmest on record, even when 2009 and 2010 are excluded. However,
2) Surface temperatures, while warmer than ever, remained fairly level from 1998 through 2008. However,
3) This plateau was due in large part to rapidly rising coal consumption in growing countries such as China (which doubled its use of the fuel just between 2003 and 2007) that threw enough sulfur into the atmosphere to create a cooling effect that virtually cancelled out any additional CO2-induced warming. However,
4) Recognizing the danger to their own people, China began installing scrubbers to remove the sulfur particles. However,
5) While sulfur quickly drops out of the air if it is not replenished, CO2 remains for decades, so the warming from CO2 resumed immediately after China began scrubbing the SO2; this became quite evident in 2009 and, more so, 2010, and now into 2011.
To look at it another way: imagine how much warmer we'd be had China (et al) not given the rest of us nearly a decade's worth of filthy shade.
Bottom line: the planet has re-started its inexorable GHG-induced warming.
Umm... no... the aerosol emissions in Asia were not increasing during that timeframe...
Professor Judith Curry believes that the aerosol hypothesis does not hold to scrutiny, especially, since Global aerosoles were not increasing during this timeframe.
Curry also writes,
Quote:
In summary, the authors have put forward one possible explanation for the lack of warming, but an explanation associated with natural internal variability associated with the ocean oscillations is at least as plausible as the explanation put forward by the authors.
------
The oceans could have halted the warming. Who would have thought.
In the three decades that we were measuring satellites, and since Cloud Cover was the lowest on record in that decade, it can be naturally expected that the 2000s would be the warmest decade. That will change in the coming years, as the Solar Wind decreases, allowing for more GCRs to produce more Cloud Cover, decreasing the temperature.
Again, Aerosoles were not increasing in this timeframe, so this hypothesis is moot.
This hypothesis has so many errors.
Global Temperatures did not increase in 2010, because aerosol production in Asia drastically stopped! The spike occured due to a very strong El Nino.
Global Temperatures in 2011 are not at record highs, as some may want to believe.
Dr. Curry is certainly entitled to her opinion, but people should know that her work has been in the past criticised for its inclusion of invalid data, assertions made with an absence of concrete evidence, basic flaws in her understanding of uncertainty and probability, and errors in simple fact. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean she is wrong in this particular matter, but it certainly should make thinking people pause and consider before giving her hyopthesis full credit.
Snowlover, you listed many assumptions in your comment #22. Instead of delving into and responding to each of them one-by-one--that gets so tiresome to others, I'm sure--I'd instead suggest folks actually read the Kaufmann/Kauppi/Mann/Stock paper, then follow up on each of its many references. If they do so with an open mind, I think they'll see that Dr. Curry has again misunderstood the science behind a well-written paper supporting AGW, perhaps due to her haste to attack its authors while making another pro-pollution political statement.
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we would all be better off if we didn't ship off almost all the industry jobs in America to china (thanks Bill Clinton!!).
now we're out a few million jobs, but we gained a few million entitlement resipients, and we can't even control the problem because you just can't make the chinese government do anything.
I think the world would be better off if America was the major industrial polluter, at least the tax paying Americans would be.
so we all get taxed and regulated to death while our economic rival builds a military machine while we save bait fish, slow oil production, and pretty much hand the world a bigger problem, more difficult to solve.
way to go genius scientists and politicans. somewhere in the world a chinese Budha statue thanks you for the keys to proven prosperity and power.
armchair know-it-alls playing the future of humanity like some sort of game.
Link
Soooo, Dr. Rood, have the climate models been validated? (Read the post a few times looking for some sort of answer to this. Could be I am just missing something.) While maybe not in the empirical sense of forecasting a period and comparing the result against real world observation, then validated by other means? For example, were they correct about the PDO shift? Or, since so many have such confidence in our historical obs, could the modelers have predicted the LIA?
To date, I have not seen a good example of an organized skill score metric for climate models. Truthfully, the same goes for storm surge modeling, though when the next storm comes along and the water surface elevation is high or low and the wind/pressure and/or topobathy data input isn't to blame, the skill is quite simple at that point. The fix isn't so simple, but far simpler than bad input data we don't know is bad input data or physical calculations that were based on poor quality data for a model we haven't any real world observation to compare it to.
Additionally, as you seem to believe that they are useful, when did the climate modeling field cross a line with acceptable physics, parameterization, input data, etc. for you to have any faith in their prognostications? What event in the field made you believe their results?
While you are correct that storm surge models have some utility in forecast mode, they are, at times, little improvement over an experienced researcher with a detailed map of land elevation and bathymetry. (I have worked with both Resio and Westerink, BTW, much moreso with Westerink.)
As another example of useful modeling, try the lower Atchafalaya River forecasts of ~20 feet of flood waters. Towns preparing to evacuate, many private levees built, many dollars spent, media frenzy, many folks moving furniture to higher floors or ground, lots of WUvians watching every water level gauge in the basin, and the crest of the flood waters was more than a week late and less than half the predicted height. Now we know that soil moisture, or lack thereof, had a part to play, but do you not think that the forecast was made and maintained with the best possible data and modeling available? Sure, there was a flood (for some people), but the usefulness of that modeling could be called into question. And this is modeling that presents the opportunity of validation with every flood.
Evidently you don't know how to read graphs. LOL!
YOU BEST LEARN HOW TO READ GRAPHS ALSO! LOL!
Validation and forecasting accuracy in models of climate change
(The scientific community of global climate modellers has surely taken unnecessary risks in raising the stakes so high when depending on forecasts and models that have many weaknesses)
Thanks to R.P. Sr. for the path to that of which Google "admittedly" steers you away from now.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/ new-paper-validation-and-forecasting-accuracy-in-m odels-of-climate-change-by-fildes-and-kourentzes/
That's the problem they don't comprehend it. If they did they wouldn't babble on about how the planet is cooling.NOAA is teaching them but they dare to discount what the teacher tells them. Dr. Rood do you have students like this?
Howdy ATMO, I looked hard at the windows phone with its 6 tab capability (kinda), but decided to wait till we get some offerings that are available with the Intel 3D transistors in them (not just windows phones) :)
Go ahead tell us all what is questionable about NOAA's data about our planets climate/warming?
What about Dr. Roods Data?
Scientists say climate models have to account for previously unnoticed effect Ice sheets simmering in warmer ocean waters could melt much quicker than realized. New research is suggesting that as oceans heat up they could erode away the ice sheets much faster than warmer air alone, and this interaction needs to be accounted for in climate change models.
"Ocean warming is very important compared to atmospheric warming, because water has a much larger heat capacity than air," study researcher Jianjun Yin of the University of Arizona said in a statement. "If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes."
The researchers studied 19 state-of-the-art climate models and saw that subsurface ocean warming could accelerate ice-sheet melting over the next century, resulting in greater sea level rise that could exceed 3 feet (1 meter). Glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt at different rates, though. [In Photos: Glaciers Before and After]
Different strokes for different coasts
Given a midlevel increase in greenhouse gases, the ocean layer about 650 to 1,650 feet (200 to 500 meters) below the surface would warm, on average, about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) by 2100, the researchers found.
The actual warming in different regions could differ significantly, though. They found that temperatures of subsurface oceans along the Greenland coast could increase as much as 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) by 2100, but along Antarctica would warm less, only 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees C).
"No one has noticed this discrepancy before %u2014 that the subsurface oceans surrounding Greenland and Antarctica warm very differently," Yin said. The discrepancy is caused by different currents in the ocean: The Gulf Stream will send warmer waters toward Greenland, while the Antarctic Circumpolar Current blocks some of the warmer waters from reaching Antarctica.
Warmer waters = melting ice
This drastic increase in ocean warming will have a substantial impact on how quickly the polar ice sheets melt, as warmer waters will erode away the ice sheets below the surface. This is on top of increased melting from warmer air in the region. As the glaciers' underwater support structures melt, they lose chunks of ice, which become icebergs.
Link
This sends cooler waters via the gulfstream to Greenland if needed to make more ice.
Comprende?
I couldn't have put it better. No computer models have any acceptable degree of accuracy, so why do we give them any credence?
Read whose graphs? The ones that support your position?
Negative the ones that will make you better understand.
Ok, I will bite.
How big are those pipes? 1, 3, or 6 miles in diameter?
How many do you propose?
How long are they?
I like it, but is it do-able?
Or just another~ blank ?
How about 25,50,100 or 200 feet in diameter and enough of them to span the entire width of the Gulfstream or Yucatan current at a depth of 1,100 feet. If they are 200 feet in diameter we need about 1,020 of them and if they are 100 feet in diameter we need about 2,040 of them and so on.
Nature Geoscience Article...
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