The following is a draft of the synopsis for Climate Models Fail.
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The new book by Bob Tisdale, Climate Models Fail illustrates and discusses how the climate models being used by the IPCC in their 5th Assessment Report have very limited value, because those models cannot simulate the critical variables of interest to the public and policymakers. Climate Models Fail provides model-data comparisons that show the models’ blatant flaws and presents peer-reviewed papers that are critical of climate models.
Putting aside natural ocean-atmosphere processes without proper investigation, the climate science community — under the direction of the IPCC and government-funding sources — created climate models to determine if anthropogenic greenhouse gases and other manmade factors could have caused the global warming we’ve experienced, and in those number-crunched virtual worlds, the answer is yes.
But there are numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies that are very critical of climate models. They point to a multitude of failings: improper simulations of temperature and precipitation, volcanic eruptions, and natural coupled ocean-atmosphere processes like El Niño and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation to name a few. The findings of a number of those papers are presented in Climate Models Fail.
Most of Climate Models Fail includes model-data comparisons. Surface temperature, precipitation and sea ice area data are available to the public in easy-to-use formats via the web, and so are the CMIP5 (IPCC AR5) climate model outputs of those variables. Climate models show no skill at being able to simulate global surface temperatures since 1880. In recent decades, they drastically overestimate the warming on two continents, and they have extreme difficulty with regional temperatures. Land surface temperatures vary in response to sea surface temperatures and climate models show no skill at being able to simulate sea surface temperatures or coupled-ocean atmosphere processes. Climate models can’t simulate precipitation, and they totally miss the mark for sea ice in one hemisphere.
Interest in climate change was renewed by the recent cessation of global warming. Climate Models Fail includes sections that show which ocean basins and which regions on land are contributing to this warming stoppage.
Climate Models Fail shows that climate models have little value because their number-crunched virtual worlds are far removed from the real world in which we live.
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I’m still hoping to have Climate Models Fail available for sale through Amazon Kindle and in pdf format before the IPCC releases the AR5 “Summary for Policymakers” at the end of the month.
Bob Tisdale - Climate Observations 
Bob, in your first sentence, I think you understate the situation. You might make a stronger statement by saying the primary reason the models have little value is that they don’t represent measured reality — and so they they mislead policy-makers into drawing wrong conclusions. Other than that, it’s a clear outline of what will follow.
Thanks, Gary. A good point. Sometimes I’m too easy on the IPCC.
Bob – to what do you attribute the model failings?
The desire to attribute all change to changes in CO2 levels?
The difficulty in modeling chaotic systems?
Leon0112: You hit the nail right on the head with “The desire to attribute all change to changes in CO2 levels.” That was basically the goal of the IPCC and the government agencies funding the research. As a result, the climate science community never bothered to attempt to realistically determine the natural contribution. Now they’re back-peddling because global warming has stopped.
Some of the “details” like the impacts of ENSO on hurricanes reflect the problems the models have with coupled ocean-atmosphere processes and teleconnections/atmospheric bridges.
So, to some extent, the failure of the climate models represents the failure of the hypothesis that level of CO2 in the atmosphere is the dominant driver of climate change.
Further, we are now seeing climate model research that incorporates the possibility of ENSO and other naturally occurring variability being significant drivers of climate change. This research runs the “risk” of concluding that natural factors collectively are the dominant drivers of climate change.
How unsettling!