The Principles Of Climate Forecasting

  1. Climate models are useless
  2. No one can predict the weather more than a few days out
  3. Anyone who says they can is not using any legitimate principles of science

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12 Responses to The Principles Of Climate Forecasting

  1. QV says:

    Kim Jong-un deals with inaccurate weather forecasters:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27792721

  2. Andy Oz says:

    The only Soothsayers worth listening to.
    http://www.soothsayers.net/

  3. ralphcramdo says:

    A few days? Most instances 12 hours out is max.

    • Gail Combs says:

      you can get about 48 to 72 hours before chaos takes over again.

      You can also predict the earth is not, over the next several thousand years going to see really high temperatures (outside of D-O events) since the solar insolation does not return to high levels. According to Lisiecki and Raymo the Milankovitch Cycle low point will continue for 65 thousand years.

      The extension of an interglacial such as the Holocene beyond the typical bounds of half-precession age has only happened once in the past million years or so, and that was during MIS-11:

      Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA community members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with 18O values below 3.6o/oo for 20 kyr, from 398-418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6o/oo for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398-418 ka as from 250-650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘double precession-cycle’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.” Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005, http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/Lisiecki_Raymo_2005_Pal.pdf

      Which essentially quashed Berger and Loutre’s 2002 modeling – ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/engels/Stanley/Textbook_update/Science_297/Berger-02.pdf, if you have been paying attention to the Quaternary science literature.

      The famous astronomer Fred Hoyle (1999, Cambridge Conference Network) probably stated it best:

      “This is why the past million years has been essentially a continuing ice-age, broken occasionally by short-lived interglacials. It is also why those who have engaged in lurid talk over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth’s temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both demented and dangerous. The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age.”

      Can we predict the weather or climate? No because it is a chaotic system. But we can place bets and the betting is weighed heavily towards cold, maybe even return to glaciation and not hot.

      For what it is worth the threshold between a warm stable climate and a cold stable climate seems to be near the current solar insolation values. Wild swings in the climate happen during the transition…. Not good.

      In looking for a graph of MIS 11, I find that William McClenney anticipated me with his May 29th essay Glacial Inception: the climatic ‘madhouse’

    • _Jim says:

      They can do well for forecasting large-scale ‘synoptic’ (large) features, like troughs, cold fronts, ridges etc, and have done a fairly good job in Tejas this year, but on a morning like we had today even the NWS says the ‘model’ guidance is weak … here is an example:

      – – –

      LATEST SURFACE ANALYSIS AND RADAR DATA INDICATE … THE COLD FRONT IS ACTUALLY STILL ACROSS CENTRAL OKLAHOMA AND WILL HEAD SOUTH INTO NORTH TEXAS BY THIS AFTERNOON. WHILE MODEL GUIDANCE GENERALLY HANDLES THIS WELL…IT HAS DONE A POOR JOB MODELING THIS MORNINGS CONVECTIVE ACTIVITY AND ITS IMPACTS ON THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT.

      WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THIS AFTERNOON…

      SINCE THE GUIDANCE DOESNT HAVE A GOOD HANDLE ON THE MESOSCALE SURFACE HIGH OVER THE NORTHERN HALF OF THE CWA OR THE OUTFLOW BOUNDARY…WE WILL HAVE TO CLOSELY MONITOR THE LOCATION OF BOTH THROUGH THE DAY.


      – – – – – –

  4. Jason Calley says:

    Long range weather forecasting is like designing a doughnut where the central hole is bigger than the diameter of the doughnut. So-called “climate science” is then claiming that if you eat enough of them, the doughnuts are still nourishing.

    • Colorado Wellington says:

      Climate science adopted the scientific approach of the 1960s Soviet space program that was superior to the American efforts in its long term goals. For an extended stay in space, Soviet scientists developed a nutrition pill to be consumed by the cosmonauts before takeoff providing all water, calories, proteins, essential elements and vitamins for 6 months. By 1970 the researchers managed to decrease the pill’s diameter to 2.9 meters *).
      ———-
      *) Source: Radio Yerevan, November 7, 1970

  5. Colorado Wellington says:

    1. Climate models are useless but if we get enough of them we obtain superior results by averaging them

    2. No one can predict the weather a few days out but the further out into the future the better the forecast becomes by simply using the average of the models

    3. Anyone who says they can’t is not using the scientific principle of programming the desired outcome into the models

    There, fixed it for you.

  6. Andy DC says:

    During March 2013, the Government and schools were all shut down for an impending overnight blizzard here in the DC area. We ended up receiving a half inch of snow.

    Just yesterday morning there was a sudden downpour, 4-5 inches of rain in the Maryland suburbs of DC where I live Several water rescues took place due to massive flash flooding. This event was not even mentioned in the local forecast.

    These are classic cases of 6 hour forecasts that totally busted. Using all the weather models and supercomputers that money could ever buy. And we are supposed to believe they know what the weather is going to be like 50-100 years from now?

  7. Principles of Climate Forecasting
    1. Climate Models are Useless.
    2. Another forecasting method must be used.
    3. There are natural quasi periodicities in the temperature record .
    4 These can be used to make perfectly reasonable forecasts of future climate. see eg
    http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2013/10/commonsense-climate-science-and.html
    5 Here are the conclusions of the above link.
    “In earlier posts on this site http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com at 4/02/13 and 1/22/13
    I have combined the PDO, ,Millennial cycle and neutron trends to estimate the timing and extent of the coming cooling in both the Northern Hemisphere and Globally.
    Here are the conclusions of those posts.
    1/22/13 (NH)
    1) The millennial peak is sharp – perhaps 18 years +/-. We have now had 16 years since 1997 with no net warming – and so might expect a sharp drop in a year or two – 2014/16 -with a net cooling by 2035 of about 0.35.Within that time frame however there could well be some exceptional years with NH temperatures +/- 0.25 degrees colder than that.
    2) The cooling gradient might be fairly steep down to the Oort minimum equivalent which would occur about 2100. (about 1100 on Fig 5) ( Fig 3 here) with a total cooling in 2100 from the present estimated at about 1.2 +/-
    3) From 2100 on through the Wolf and Sporer minima equivalents with intervening highs to the Maunder Minimum equivalent which could occur from about 2600 – 2700 a further net cooling of about 0.7 degrees could occur for a total drop of 1.9 +/- degrees
    4)The time frame for the significant cooling in 2014 – 16 is strengthened by recent developments already seen in solar activity. With a time lag of about 12 years between the solar driver proxy and climate we should see the effects of the sharp drop in the Ap Index which took place in 2004/5 in 2016-17.
    4/02/13 ( Global)
    1 Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
    2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
    3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
    4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
    5 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
    6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
    7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
    8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields .
    9 Warning !! There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent – with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
    How confident should one be in these above predictions? The pattern method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigor for the uninitiated and in relation to the IPCC climate models are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up.This is where scientific judgment comes in – some people are better at pattern recognition and meaningful correlation than others. A past record of successful forecasting such as indicated above is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure – say 65/35 for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that certainty drops rapidly. I am sure, however, that it will prove closer to reality than anything put out by the IPCC, Met Office or the NASA group. In any case this is a Bayesian type forecast- in that it can easily be amended on an ongoing basis as the Temperature and Solar data accumulate. If there is not a 0.15 – 0.20. drop in Global SSTs by 2018 -20 I would need to re-evaluate.

  8. Bruce of Newcastle says:

    Actually if the ensemble modellers ever included the ~60 year cycle plus overall solar forcing of cloud coverage and jet stream variability I think their models would do a whole lot better. They might then actually be quite useful.

    But unfortunately if they did that their model-derived ECS would be very low, probably around 0.5 C/doubling. And that would kill the climate industry deader than diplodocus.

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