Bishop Hill Making fog
Dec 11, 2013 Climate: MetOffice 
Readers may remember Nic Lewis's paper demonstrating a major flaw in the UKCP09 climate predictions. In brief summary, the predictions are a weighted average of a series of virtual climates produced by the HadCM3 climate model, the weight each one gets being determined by how well it matches the observations. Nic discovered that the HadCM3 model was incapable of producing virtual climates that match the real-world climate as regards two key parameters - the climate sensitivity and the aerosol forcing. This obviously meant that the average produced is meaningless.
Nic's paper had a response from Julia Slingo which acknowledged that HadCM3 could not produce low-sensitivity/low aerosol forcing climates, explaining that this was an emergent property of the model. Nic noted that she was therefore implicitly accepting his core argument and I mentioned this in a blog post about the related UK Climate Change Risk Assessment.
Shortly afterwards I had an email from a press officer at the Met Office:
I noticed in your recent blog a line about UKCP09, as follows: “Unfortunately the UKCCRA is based on the UKCP09 climate predictions, which the Met Office has acknowledged contain a major flaw.”
The highlighted section is not accurate – no such acknowledgement has been made by the Met Office (unless you can point me to any evidence to the contrary which you think supports your statement). Could you please remove this reference from your blog?
This was a bit of a surprise to tell the truth. It was pretty hard to imagine how the Met Office could argue that the predictions were sound while acknowledging that the HadCM3 model behind it couldn't generate realistic climates. I therefore replied, trying to get some clarification of precisely what their position was:
As I understand it, the Met Office does not dispute that low CS/low aerosol forcing combinations are not possible with HADCM3. This is most likely the way the real climate system is, at least according to the current observational evidence. As the UKCP09 predictions are supposed to be a probabilistic combination of all possible CS/aerosol combinations, the fact that the model cannot sample the most likely combination is indisputably a major flaw. Prof Slingo has observed that this feature is an emergent property of the model, but this is only to recognise how the problem arose, not to dispute that it is an error. She has also stated that this feature does not create a bias, but I fail to see how she can conclude this without actually correcting the error and finding out what effect it has on the results.
I am happy to add a note to either of both of the BH postings clarifying the Met Office's position, but I would need to be clear what this is. Are you saying that it is possible to create a valid probabilistic forecast without sampling the full CS/aerosol parameter space and, in particular, without sampling the combinations of parameters that is most likely according to observations? I assume not. If the case is simply that the flaw doesn't create a bias (and is therefore not "major") then I would ask how you have reached this conclusion.
However, the reply the following day was evasive on these questions:
From your reply below it’s clear you make a few leaps of judgement to make your conclusion, and these aren’t leaps that the Met Office, or for that matter the IPCC, would necessarily agree with. Certainly they don’t justify the concept that we have acknowledged a flaw, let alone a major one – this is very much your own language and, as such, this should not be attributed to us in the way that you have.
I understand your argument here is based on Nic Lewis’s comment piece and so I note here that Nic himself has made it clear he did no claim there was an error in HadCM3 - in a response to an article on our blog, he said: “I didn’t claim that the HadCM3 model contained an error.” You can see this here (first comment).
Again, this reinforces the point that your statement is very much your own judgement call – not ours and, it seems, not Nic Lewis’s.
As a final point, HadCM3 was not the only model used for UKCP09.
With all this in mind, I’d appreciate if you removed the comment in question or reword it to something which more accurately reflects the situation.
Readers will note the complete absence of any attempt to answer my questions. Moreover, while the criticism had been carefully aimed at the UKCP09 predictions, here the Met Office was insinuating that I had implied a flaw in the underlying HadCM3 model (the argument is more that HadCM3 is unsuitable rather than that it is flawed per se). So this was an distraction by the Met Office. Readers might also like to read the rest of the Nic Lewis comment cited by the Met Office, which reveals a naked falsehood in the report they issued on climate sensitivity.
Similarly, the point about other models being used in UKCP09 was not the kind of thing you would have found in an honest response, as my reply made clear.
Thanks for your email, which arrived too late in the day for me to deal with before I went away on holiday. As I have indicated before, I am happy to make clear the Met Office’s position if you will make clear to me what that position is.
You note Nic Lewis’s comments about HadCM3, but I have been careful to say only that the UKCP09 predictions are flawed. Regarding HadCM3 we therefore appear to be in agreement and my blog posts are correct.
I note also your comments with regard to the use of other computer models in the UKCP09 project. I fear that you may have misinterpreted what your colleagues are telling you. As I understand it, the use of other computer models in UKCP09 is peripheral to the predictions, since they are only used in error estimates. Their use therefore does not in any way mitigate the problems caused by the structural rigidities in HadCM3.
I asked for clarification of the Met Office’s position in my previous email, but you have not responded to the question I asked. I therefore ask again: Are you saying that it is possible to create a valid probabilistic forecast without sampling the full CS/aerosol forcing space and, in particular, without sampling the combinations of those factors that are most likely according to recent observationally-based estimates? (For the avoidance of doubt, I am referring to values in (say) the ranges 1.25–2.25°C for climate sensitivity and -0.4 to -1.1 W/m2 for total effective aerosol forcing.) It appears to me that such a position is untenable and the UKCP09 predictions are therefore flawed. Your silence on the issue seems to represent a tacit admission that I am correct. You cannot say that I am wrong while simultaneously refusing to say why.
In a similar vein, I might ask why the Met Office has failed to withdraw its July paper when the vast majority of the problems Lewis identified in it have gone unanswered.
The Met Office cannot simply try to brush these problems under the carpet by refusing to acknowledge them. Should it do so it will undoubtedly be severely criticised and I therefore urge you and your colleagues to withdraw the UKCP09 predictions and the July briefing paper on your own initiative.
That was sent at the end of October but despite my sending reminders no reply was forthcoming. At the start of December I therefore wrote once more, indicating that I would publish the correspondence and let people draw their own conclusions. This finally elicited a response:
Sorry it has taken a while to respond, we do tend to get very busy in the winter months and I have to prioritise operational work, as I’m sure you’ll understand. With regards to our email exchanges, we appear to be going round in circles, so I thought I’d recap on how we got here.
As you’ll recall, this started when I asked you to change the following line in one of your blogs:
“Unfortunately the UKCCRA is based on the UKCP09 climate predictions, which the Met Office has acknowledged contain a major flaw.”
As I’ve said before, you are entitled to your own opinions but it’s inaccurate and misleading to ascribe your own opinions to someone else – which is what you have done in the highlighted line above. The Met Office has not said anything along the lines above, and that alone is enough to say that it is factually inaccurate.
In response, you’ve asked me numerous questions which don’t have any relevance to this straightforward request. Besides that, I understand Met Office scientists have spent a considerable amount of time over recent years dealing with similar inquiries from your correspondents, Doug Keenan and Nic Lewis in particular. In fact, Nic Lewis was here for an afternoon a few weeks ago and, as I understand, there has already been a robust, open and constructive conversation about many of the issues you raise. I think that is the appropriate forum for those discussions.
Having made my points as clear as I can, I’d once again ask you to remove or change the highlighted statement above and any other similar statements on the grounds that they are inaccurate and misleading. I think we’ve probably exhausted our respective positions, so I’d suggest that unless you have anything new to add, we bring a close to this particular line of correspondence.
If anyone is any the clearer for this response, they are cleverer than I am! Slingo has certainly admitted that the HadCM3 model can't do what it needed to do for the UKCP09 process. This is undoubtedly a major flaw. Ergo she has acknowledged the flaw.
Tiring of the word games, I decided that I would publish the correspondence anyway, but asked one last question:
Can you just give me one more detail please. You say that you think that my questions re whether the inability of HadCM3 to simulate realistic climates is irrelevant. Is this your personal opinion or the opinion of Met Office scientists (or perhaps just a corporate position)?
But unfortunately, this elicited an equally obscure reply:
We need to clarify here, as I wouldn’t want you to misunderstand or use my words out of context.
I said (as you can see in the email below): “...you’ve asked me numerous questions which don’t have any relevance to this straightforward request” [bolded for emphasis]. So to make it absolutely clear, I’m saying that your questions are not relevant to my specific request – which is on a point of fact, namely that you assert the Met Office has said something which it has not. I’ve gone into the details of why that is the case and why it’s misleading to ascribe your own opinions to someone else.
I don’t doubt that your questions do have relevant contexts and, as I understand, these issues have already been discussed at length between people more directly involved.
As I’ve said, my point is specific and on a point of fact. I am acting in my capacity as a press officer to point out factual inaccuracies and reasonably request that those inaccuracies are corrected.
To this I signed off as follows, copying Julia Slingo:
I have asserted that the Met Office has acknowledged that there is a flaw in UKCP09. I say this because Prof Slingo has acknowledged that HadCM3 cannot simulate low climate sensitivity, low aerosol forcing climates, which are the ones that observations suggest are most likely. She says that this is an emergent property of the model.
You have not disputed that she has made this acknowledgement. I therefore assume that you are disputing that HadCM3's inability to simulate these kinds of climates means that the UKCP09 projections are flawed. This is, as your scientific colleagues no doubt realise, is a completely absurd and entirely indefensible position. It is hard to believe that anyone within the Met Office would seriously suggest that a weighted average of climates excluding those most like the real climate has any usefulness as a predictive tool. As if to confirm this conclusion, you have signally failed to answer my questions on the matter.
I assume then that your real objection is that your colleagues are embarrassed by this public airing of their errors. That really is too bad. I reiterate what I said in my earlier email: the duty of the Met Office is to withdraw the UKCP09 predictions of your own volition as soon as possible. To allow both public and private sectors to continue to spend on the basis of erroneous predictions would represent a serious breach of the Met Office's duties towards the public.
I will add a note to my earlier post as follows:
The Met Office have acknowledged Nic's points about the flaw in the UKCP09 predictions but ask me to make it clear that they deny that they have acknowledged a flaw. I don't know what they mean either.
Bishop Hill
In response to comments by Richard Betts, Nic Lewis writes as follows:
Fig. S2 of Harris 2013 shows nicely that the HadCM3 PPE can't generate low ECS, low aerosol forcing combinations. Aerosol forcing is about 0.3 W/m2 more negative than ΔQ_noghg, so the AR5 best estimate of aerosol forcing (-0.9 W/m2) corresponds to ΔQ_noghg = -0.6 W/m2. The only place where the
HadCM3 PPE gets close to the AR5 best estimate of aerosol forcing, let alone below it, is at ECS > 3 C.
The small diamonds show the effect of perturbing the aerosol module parameters, the big diamonds being the default settings. Most of the variation in aerosol forcing comes from perturbing the main atmospheric model parameters, which also changes HadCM3's ECS. The dotted lines are meant to show uncertainty bounds, but I think they are wrong - they should all converge at low ECS.
;)
Reader Comments (128)
One of the prime weapons of the Climate Jihadis is the abuse of language. Which, for me, should be a capital offence. War is peace.
If your model can't describe what you can see outside the windows, close the curtains.
They are either too stupid to understand what you are saying, or are lying. Take your pick. I know what anyone reading that correspondence will think. Pure Corporate ass-covering. Also a sign that you are damaging their 'brand'.
It really is going to take someone suing them to get things to change.
I think the note you've added to your earlier post hits the nail on the head.
Bishop Hill-
You obviously don't understand....
It is not a "flaw", but rather a" feature"!
That is what they teach us at University.
later.......
Magic tricks generally FAIL if the person to be tricked is aware and watching.
I kind-of see their point in here though... They want to not be on-record on a couple of points you are raising, and they don't feel like being forced on-record by an erroneous attribution. (If I am mistaken, could it not be seen as you taking the occasion of the misattribution to try to get the sort of confirmation/admission you initially desired..?)
I believe this sort of worm and hook tactic exists plentifully no? (and has been used by activists-- "You don't believe in killing children and the elderly? Then tell me yes or no on [Policy Option A]...") I think they know there is a pickle there, but perhaps it is their right to not be forced into a response on those terms.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious semantic squirming by our publicly-funded Met Office.
The pillars supporting the Climate Temple are wonky, full of cracks, out of alignment, and you wouldn't want to perch a kennel on top of them let alone an edifice dedicated to the gods of fear, confusion, shrieking for advantage, lost causes, and more taxes. But from highest priest to humblest acolyte, they are all so committed to their great cause, that they cannot make sense of, let alone respond coherently to, the highlighting of flaws. Why would anyone want to do that, they must ask in those rare moments when their attention is distracted from interpreting their scrolls (computer-generated of course), or participating in global ceremonials that would turn a Druid green with envy.
Salamano
They have acknowledged that the model can't do what it needs to. The unavoidable conclusion is that the predictions are flawed. They have a duty to the public to withdraw the predictions.
You're getting very good at this Andrew; almost McIntyresque politeness, patience, precision and persistence.
Don't let the Met Office get away with their silly distracting semantic games. It's like all that nonsense about prediction (when they're right), projection (when they're wrong), hindcasts and forecasts.
As you say, readers can draw their own conclusions. It just makes them look foolish in my opinion (but what other options do they have?!).
I can see why they are upset
You say that they have "acknolwedged a major flaw" which implies they have actively said something to that effect. More accurate would be to say that Julia Slingo has accepted arguments that show the predictions are flawed. No doubt the word 'major' is contentious all on its own.
dancing on a pin-head? maybe
"For Heavens Sake keep muddying the waters! Under no circumstances issue something clear (or withdraw anything) or that dreadful David Rose will write about it in the daily Mail!"
A model can contain no error and still be very flawed.
If I said that T(today)=T(yesterday) I can write all the model in one line of code without any error whatsoever. Still it is a very flawed model -probably, not as flawed as the MO's though.
to clarify my careless wording, wehn I said "I can see why they are upset" I meant I understand their position, not that I think the Bishop has behaved incorrectly
I'm trying to weigh up in my mind, which is worse, the BBC or the Met Office. Neither will admit the truth and both are heavily into propaganda and newspeak. Both are meant to serve the public, but neither do.
This is indeed a silly word game; probably Slingo herself ordered the press officer to contact you to ask for the removal of the "major flaw". The press officer has no idea what's it all about so he/she can't answer all your follow up questions and he/she doesn't want to bother Slingo with it. In a sense the press officer is right. When you write that "MO acknowledges this as a major flaw" it's almost similar as being cited. And they didn't literally say it or write it. It's your interpretation of what they said/wrote.
What were the exact words Slingo was using in her exchange with Nic Lewis?
Marcel
Seems a bit unfair to the poor press officer. His biggest technical decision of the day is probably whether to use the red pen or the blue pen. Stop confusing him with facts you meany.
The issue is a serious scientific one with very important consequences. It is outrageous that the Met Office management should instruct their press officer to tell you to remove your comments and stop asking questions. The resulting evasive tactics border on farce and do not do the Met Office any good at all. It makes them look incompetent and lacking in scientific integrity. It doesn't do their credibility much good, either.
The posts above are accurate. Jullia Slingo has admitted a flaw, but the MET OFFICE haven't officially admitted that flaw. If they were to do so it would/will be a mighty crack in their edifice that could be quoted by those horrid deniers, and the MET would look like the religious lunatics, incompetents or 'I was only following orders' that they all are*.
This cannot be allowed to happen (yet). And so the standard bureaucratic word games begin.
When in hole, stop digging.
* If you work at the MET and are not one of these, then stand up and be counted for heaven's sake.
SR
"It really is going to take someone suing them to get things to change."
Or for them to sue someone. The fact that they haven't accused Bish of libel implies rather strongly that they know he's right. The last thing they would want is to be cross-examined in open court.
"an emergent property of the model"; oh cowpoo!
Jamesp
It'll only happen when some company loses a vast amount of money due to CC legislation and realises it's not worth taking it anymore.
They'll never sue anyone themselves. The consequences are too dire.
Surely Dr. Richard Betts provide a simple answer here?
Does the Met Office model agree with reality or not- Yes or No?
in climate science , you can know that an hypothesis is nonsense but go on with it because you don't have anything else.
I find it both remarkable and disheartening that this government functionary, Jullia Slingo, can not and will not answer your questions.
From her replies, she give the air of someone who because of her position, feels that she is above mere mortals, and she demands that you obey her 'request' to remove comments from your blog.
Stick to your guns Bish.
Dec 11, 2013 at 12:53 PM | Unregistered CommenterDon Keiller
Naughty, Naughty Don. You know that Richard is a reasonable, honest broker for the UK Met off ;)
@Shortly afterwards I had an email from a press officer at the Met Office ...
Press officer? Fell at the first hurdle, didn't they.
Since we are approaching Christmas, the word Pantomime might be appropriate.
According to Wiki
" Modern pantomime includes songs, slapstick comedy and dancing, employs gender-crossing actors, and combines topical humour with a story loosely based on a well-known fairy tale"
Fairy Tale = CAGW. Slapstick Comedy = Met Office modelling and emailed comments, dancing = avoid uncomfortable questions, Topical Humour = Met Office pretending to have scientists working in it..
I think a Met Pantomime adequately describes the Met Office's "science"!
I hope David Rose picks this up. Headlines in a high circulation newspaper may prompt a response from Met Office management.
Come now - you know how modern 'management' works...
A problem is not a problem - its a 'challenge' and an 'opportunity'...
Bishop, you said,
Your link to the "response" is a list of questions from Slingo to Lewis. I did track down the response you probably meant to refer to and it says:
(My bold in both). So this says that they disagree about a fundamental bias. Can you point to where they agree that there is a fundamental flaw?
Note also that your "low aerosol forcing" seems the opposite of Slingo's "strongly negative aerosol forcing". Do you think they are the same?
And you emphasize that "this was an emergent property of the model" where "this" is presumably the low-sensitivity/low aerosol forcing, but Slingo says that it is the relationship between aerosol forcing and ECS that is an emergent property.
It is difficult to reconcile your reporting of this exchange with the actual words. Are you sure it is not you who is "making fog"?
I am reminded of when Prince Charming asks Pinocchio where Shrek is.
http://vimeo.com/18313704
When dealing with these drones, you have to keep the challenges and responses short. Or as a bulleted list.
Otherwise, they will take issue with the least relevant point, and ignore the more substantive stuff.
The Press Officer is clearly correct and I don't understand why you got involved in a semantic feud rather than just change the post. Slingo assuredly did not admit any flaw and still doesn't! The high aerosols are, she says, an emergent feature of the model which means the model does exactly what they programmed it to do. I don't think anyone from the MO agrees that a low aerosol scenario is most likely and unless they do so then this is just your opinion. Of course it is a possibility and also (imo) the most likely one but the MO have not yet made their minds up about it. Some day they will probably be forced to stop avoiding the blindingly obvious but that day isn't here yet.
However, if it is truly an emergent feature then they must have tuned their model so that if there is any unexpected cooling, then that is put down to aerosols. That argument (the Hansen Handwave) is valid only because the aerosol error bars are so wide you can fit an elephant in them. However it does give the lie to any argument that the models are not tuned to past temperature. Of course skeptics knew this all along. Some lukewarmers swallowed the lie though (another sematics feud because it all depends only on how you define 'tuned').
I will try to explain the situation to JamesG and Chandra very shortly.
"It is an emergent feature of the model" is not and cannot be an answer to "The model is incapable of (this or that)".
Flammable Ford Pintos and now Tesla Model T's have always been doing exactly as built, that is, their ability to catch fire is an emergent feature of both models.
None in their right mind would consider the matter closed by such an observation. Those cars have major flaws.
Likewise if the MetOffice model(s) cannot do something, then it just cannot do it, it is flawed, and the flaw is major because what cannot be modeled is likely actually happening right now in the real world: the reason/excuse "why" is immaterial to the criticism and provides no answer.
We stand after months and months with the original observation about the model(s) being flawed, still unchallenged. It is perfectly reasonable to opine then that it is the MetOffice that cannot stand the truth, and the judgement expressed at the time has not been invalidated by anything at all.
Change the wording to:
“Unfortunately the UKCCRA is based on the UKCP09 climate predictions, which contain a major flaw; a feature that the Met Office has acknowledged exists, and for which they have provided no justification.”
and see if he's happy.
Dec 11, 2013 at 11:51 AM | Unregistered CommenterMarcel Crok
"The press officer has no idea what's it all about so he/she can't answer all your follow up questions and he/she doesn't want to bother Slingo with it."
I disagree, I think the wording and phrasing of the replies are pure Slingo, also bringing others who've challenged her directly into the argument is another piece of evidence. We have an angry Slingo on our hands, keep the statisticians away she doesn't like them.
When temperatures were rising rapidly, climate scientists produced models programmed to give a large temperature increase for a CO2 increase. They used aerosols as the means of cooling in the models to provide a sort of brake so that they could fine tune the model to match observation. They didn't believe that anything else mattered so the models were pretty weak on natural drivers such as the sun, clouds, oceans, in fact all the real drivers that actually control our climate.
The natural factors are now in a non-warming or even cooling phase, but the modelled temperatures are still roaring away in line with increasing CO2. The aerosol cooling is now running flat out to try to bring the model temperatures down.
Their flawed belief system does not allow them to chuck away the relationship between CO2 and temperature so they have the two main drivers running flat out in opposite directions, yet still the models show too much warming. This is the scenario that exists in the model, but not in the reality of the current climate, where warming is not happening and aerosols are not running at huge levels.
Their model is just wrong and not fit for purpose. That is the scandal in layman's terms.
This approach works by admitting all the technical proofs that AGW is a scam, but then denying that it is a scam.
The assumption is that, because the proofs are technical, no politician or non-technical person will read them, and the Met Office can then rely on their bald statement that 'AGW is true and a great danger' to stand as adequate justification for them to have a large budget.
A defence needs to be crafted for this fraud as soon as possible, because if the Met Office can get it to work, then assuredly DECC will use the same tactics to push their plans to collapse the country's infrastructure...
She should go into politics: she's a natural with that kind of ability to avoid answering questions. Or maybe she's already in politics....
Nice to see they are finding simple and plain discussion of their obvious flaws annoying.
That itself is a step forward.
Anderson, T.L., R.J. Charlson, S.E. Schwartz, R. Knutti, O. Bucher, H. Rhode, and J. Heitzenberg (2003) Climate forcing by aerosols – a hazy picture. Science, 300, 1103-1104.
This really does seem to be as purile as Slingo agreeing, describing and explaining the origin of the flaw, but because she didn't use the word "flaw".
"Your Honour, I took a knife and stabbed him in the back".
"So, you admit to the murder".
"I have not admitted to murder and demand you withdraw that claim"
Every winter a massive proportion of Met Office resource is assigned to David Viner's team to try and find out what all that white stuff is!
I think Geronimo is dead right: this has Slingo's fingerprints all over it.
But we have to consider what happens when clever, ambitious people – as Sligo clearly is – are forced to recognise that they are utterly wrong. La Slingo, much like Phil Jones in fact, was lauded and handsomely rewarded for her sterling efforts to counter what we were constantly assured was the gravest threat mankind had ever faced. As a result, she was the recipient not just of immense and unthinking government support but of unswerving support from the massed ranks of the New Establishment. In the circumstances, she can hardly be blamed if her head began to swell. Apparent omniscience can warp even the most level-headed.
I don't doubt that, like the maddest of witches, she will do down defiant to the last. But I fear she is in for an excruciatingly painful readjustment.
omnologos (2:19), please forgive my pointing out a little linguistic difficulty. "very shortly" is usually understood to mean "very soon" (rather than "now", this minute). So I was expecting a subsequent explanatory post until I realised that you meant (for example) "very easily". Perhaps a witheringly dismissive "in short order" might have got your meaning across less ambiguously. Yours, simon
Thank you simon - should've used "briefly". Another false friend for the list (not you ;-))
....and every year they come out of the blue, a complete surprise, clouded in mystery!
omnologos (5:24) thank you. I had never before come across the term "false friend" (except in the literal sense). Reminds me of the old joke "if bilingual refers to someone who is fluent in two languages, what do you call someone who speaks only one?". I know the answer :(