Book: “Climate Models Fail”

Climate Models Fail is Now Free. Copy here.

 

This post has been updated. (May 23, 2016)

With politicians from around the globe meeting in Stockholm this week to negotiate the content of the Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC’s 5^th Assessment Report, this seemed like a good time to release my new book.

Climate Models Fail is now free.

A full-sized cover is available here.

The Free Preview of Climate Models Fail [pdf] includes the Introduction, Table of Contents, and the Closing.  The Closing is also included later in this post.  As you’ll note from the Table of Contents, the book includes many of the model-data comparisons I published as blog posts over the past year.  The text accompanying them has been rewritten, expanded and edited for readability in this book.  And you’ll note there are brand new presentations.

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THE SYNOPSIS OF CLIMATE MODELS FAIL (from the Amazon Kindle webpage):

Climate Models Fail exposes the disturbing fact that climate models being used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report have very little practical value because they cannot simulate critical variables of interest to the public and policymakers. Using easy-to-read graphs, this book compares data (surface temperature, precipitation, and sea ice area) with the computer model simulations. It is very easy to see that the model outputs bear little relationship to the data. In other words, climate models create imaginary climates in virtual worlds that exhibit no similarities to the climate of the world in which we live.

This book was prepared for readers without scientific backgrounds. The terms used by scientists are explained and non-technical “translations” are provided. Introductory sections present basics. There are also numerous hyperlinks to additional background information. The book is well illustrated, with more than 250 color-coded graphs and maps. It is an excellent introduction to global warming and climate change for people who are not well-versed yet want to learn more.

Climate scientists created computer models to determine whether anthropogenic greenhouse gases and other manmade factors could have caused the slight global warming of the past 150 years. In their virtual worlds, the answer is yes — anthropogenic greenhouse gases were the primary cause of the warming in those digital worlds. But, because the modeled worlds differ greatly from Earth, and because the models cannot simulate the natural ocean-atmosphere processes that cause or stop global warming, climate models cannot be used to attribute global warming to human-induced factors.

To support this, numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies are very critical of the climate models. They point to a multitude of failings: improper simulations of temperature, precipitation, volcanic eruptions, sea ice, and natural ocean-atmosphere processes like associated with El Niños, La Niñas and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. An entire chapter discusses examples of those peer-reviewed papers. They expose climate model failures to accurately simulate (hindcast) the processes and metrics crucial to understanding past climate change…and they suggest (some clearly state) that climate models have no value for telling us anything about how climate may change in the future.

Model-data comparisons make up the bulk of this book. Surface temperature, precipitation, and sea ice area data are available to the public in easy-to-use formats via the web, as are the climate model outputs. Climate models show no skill at being able to simulate global surface temperatures since 1880. In recent decades, they drastically overestimated the warming on two continents, and they have extreme difficulty with regional temperatures. 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 with sea ice. At the ends of many model-data comparison chapters, the research papers that are critical of climate models are once again referenced. This supports the model-data presentations and allows readers to refer to the graphs so that they will have a better understanding of the importance of the model failings discussed in the papers.

Interest in global warming was renewed with the cessation of warming. This book includes sections showing how the surface temperatures of ocean basins and regional land areas are behaving during this warming plateau — and which two ocean basins are responsible for it.

Climate Models Fail clearly shows that climate models have little value for the public and policymakers because their number-crunched virtual worlds do not come close to simulating the real world we inhabit.

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IT’S FREE…AND A PURCHASE OPTION

Climate Models Fail is Now Free. Copy here.

Climate Models Fail is also available in Amazon Kindle format   (IMPORTANT: For persons with black & white Kindle Readers, keep in mind the illustrations are in color. ) Price U.S. $9.99

PDF EDITION NOTES

For the .pdf edition, purchase transactions are processed by PayPal. If you do not have PayPal account, simply scroll down past where they ask you to open one. After the transaction is complete, PayPal returns you to the download website, SendOwl, which takes a few seconds. (I know. I bought the first copy.) Or check your email for a link from SendOwl. If you have any problems, please don’t get excited; please leave me a comment at my website Climate Observations. Problems with the pdf edition purchases are easy to remedy.

DON’T FORGET TO SAVE IT TO YOUR HARD DRIVE.

Also note that the illustrations in the pdf edition have been rearranged in the text slightly to reduce the amount of blank space on pages.

If you’d prefer not to purchase through PayPal, the other option is to download the Kindle Reader to your computer or handheld device and purchase Climate Models Fail in Kindle format.

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THE CLOSING FROM CLIMATE MODELS FAIL

Closing – When Will Climate Models Be Credible Tools?

Climate Models Fail illustrated and discussed the many flaws inherent in climate models. These included the fact that they do not properly simulate surface temperatures, precipitation, and sea ice area.

You may be asking yourself, “If the models perform so poorly, how can there be hundreds, if not thousands, of climate studies which show models performing well? “

First, not all climate model-based studies include the model runs stored in the archives that are used by the IPCC. Some papers are based on special model runs that are tuned specifically for a given study, so they are different than the simulations used for the IPCC hindcasts and projections. Second, the CMIP archives include the model outputs from dozens of modeling groups, and some of the modeling groups submit more than one type of model to the CMIP archives. Each model performs some functions well in specific regions — with some models performing better than others. But, that does not mean any of the models simulate all metrics well in all regions…or globally. The modelers understand the strong points of individual models. So, for any particular climate study, they pick and choose from a smorgasbord of climate models and runs. One study about metric “a” in location “a” may include 3 different models, the next study of metric “b” in location “a” may utilize 2 other models, while yet another study of metric “b” in location “b” may be based on a completely different model that wasn’t presented in the other two studies. The climate modeling groups are obviously only going to present their models in favorable lights.

Thankfully, there are scientific research papers that expose climate models’ serious flaws. As presented in Climate Models Fail, those studies found that current climate models (CMIP5) are not able to properly simulate:

• The coupled ocean-atmosphere processes of El Niño and La Niña, the largest contributors to natural variations in global temperature and precipitation on annual, multiyear, and decadal timescales.
• Responses to volcanic eruptions, which can be so powerful that they can even counteract the effects of strong El Niño events.
• Precipitation — globally or regionally — including monsoons.
• Cloud cover.
• Sea surface temperatures.
• Global surface temperatures.
• Sea ice extent.
• Teleconnections, the mechanisms by which a change in a variable in one region of the globe causes a change in another region, even though those regions may be separated by thousands of kilometers.
• Blocking, which is associated with heat waves.
• The influence of El Niños on hurricanes.
• The coupled ocean-atmosphere processes associated with decadal and multidecadal variations in sea surface temperatures, which strongly impact land surface temperatures and precipitation on those same timescales.

According to one of the papers, the current generation of climate models (CMIP5) are worse at simulating past global climate than the previous generation of models (CMIP3); i.e., the models are making giant leaps, but in the wrong direction.

Additionally, I showed quite clearly that the models cannot accurately simulate:

• Polar Amplification.
• Daily maximum and minimum temperatures and the diurnal temperature range.

And I illustrated and discussed why it is of paramount importance for models to accurately simulate the coupled ocean-atmosphere processes that express themselves as:

• Multidecadal variations in the sea surface temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere.
• El Niño and La Niña events — and the multidecadal variations in the dominance of those phases.

I also prepared a blog post that presents step-by-step instructions for creating a model-data comparison graph. That post is linked within Climate Models Fail. Using those instructions, anyone can verify the results presented in this book. [See the post here.]

Climate models have a number of tremendous hurdles to overcome, and the highest are coupled ocean-atmosphere processes. Satellite-enhanced sea surface temperature data reveals that two ocean basins are responsible for the cessation of global warming: the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica and the largest ocean basin on Earth, the Pacific. The fundamental coupled ocean-atmosphere processes that are driving the warming plateau are associated with ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation). Yet, it is well-known that climate models cannot simulate ENSO.

Because El Niño and La Niña processes are the primary causes of the variations in surface temperature and precipitation on annual, multiyear, decadal, and multidecadal bases, and because the instrument temperature record shows that sunlight-fueled El Niño and La Niña processes are the primary causes of the long-term warming of the oceans, ENSO should be an area of intense modeling efforts.

The coupled ocean-atmosphere processes that drive multidecadal variations in sea surface temperatures will be more of a problem. The sea surface temperature record is globally complete only during the satellite era — the last 30 years. Further, the subsurface temperature and salinity records of the oceans are globally complete for only the past decade or so; moreover, the subsurface data are riddled with problems. It will be decades before the climate science community can hope to begin to have a data-based understanding of subsurface ocean “weather” and its interactions with ocean-atmosphere processes.

Growth in climate science has been stunted by the IPCC’s politically-driven addiction to conjectures about anthropogenic climate change. Decades after it began, climate science is still in its infancy. Yet, it is portrayed as a well-established, noble, bastion of solid research, the flawless jewel of Earth sciences that can do no wrong. Worse, climate science has been ruthlessly exploited by environmental groups and politicians and even by many of the scientists themselves.

The primary obstacles for the climate science community in the years and decades to come are: (1) the expectations of government funding agencies, which are obviously tied to political agendas; and (2) the anchoring effect of the fanatical beliefs of those members whose careers and funding skyrocketed as a result of their drum beating for the IPCC.

The people of the world rely on the findings of the climate science community, and in order for climate science to move forward, that community will have to be honest within itself and with the public. Hopefully, that will occur in my lifetime, but I’m not holding my breath.

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YOUTUBE INTRODUCTION

I’ve updated the YouTube “Introduction to Climate Models Fail” to reflect that the book is now for sale. At the same time, I also replaced the word “employed” with “used” (as suggested by many viewers) and corrected one of the years discussed in the video.

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My sincerest thanks to the person who proofread and edited Climate Models Fail. She made it much easier to read. If there are any residual typos, they are my doing.

And my thanks to Josh of Cartoons by Josh for the “Report Card” cover art with all of those bright-red F’s.

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UPDATES

Roger Pielke, Sr. gave Climate Models Fail a tweet (Thanks, Roger):

https://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/382825687104491520

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Bishop Hill also has a quick introduction the failure of the climate models (Thanks, Andrew).

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SUPPLEMENTS TO CLIMATE MODELS FAIL

I published the post Models Fail: Land versus Sea Surface Warming Rates a few days after I published Climate Models Fail.  The graphs in the post were from the book, but the Table and text were not. That method of showing and discussing the models’ failings occurred to me after I published the book.

I’ve decided to make available the additional posts about climate model failings, as they’re posted, as supplements to Climate Models Fail, in .pdf format.

• Supplement 1, which is a reprint of the post Models Fail: Land versus Sea Surface Warming Rates.