Bishop Hill Diary dates: Slingalongajulia edition
Aug 12, 2014 Climate: MetOffice Diary dates Julia Slingo is giving a public lecture at the Institute of Physics in London next month on the subject of climate models.
Taking the planet into uncharted territory: What climate models can tell us about the future
Climate change is arguably one of the greatest challenges that human civilisation will face in the 21st century. With the rise in carbon emissions continuing unabated and the evidence for human-induced climate change stacking up, the need to take action to mitigate future climate change grows. So what are these climate models on that so much of our decision-making rests?
Dame Julia’s lecture will examine how fundamental physics has shaped our understanding of the climate system, and how over the course of her career as a climate scientist, this has been encapsulated in climate models.
She will discuss how climate models act as the laboratory for climate science enabling us to understand how the climate system works; and explain how climate models allow us to look forward in time, and examine the potential impacts of climate change on lives and livelihoods around the world.
Finally, nothing is certain in science, and handling and communicating uncertainty is a major challenge for climate science. Dame Julia will conclude her lecture by discussing how this can be addressed within a risk-based approach to action on climate change.
Details:
Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London W1B 1NT
on Tuesday 2 September 2014.
Registration from: 6.00 p.m.
Lecture begins: 6.30 p.m.
Welcome: Dr Frances Saunders, President of the Institute of Physics
Expected conclusion: 8.00 p.m. followed by refreshments
Registration here.
Reader Comments (65)
This Lady obviously does not understand models. They represent the bias of the programer. This is why ALL climate models are wrong.
There is no Q&A on the agenda.
If you want to make a point best take banners.
No Q & A ? Of course there isn't, she wouldn't risk that would she?
Richard Drake and Latimer Alder will have their work cut out.
Is the climate computable? rgbatduke
Wasn't it Dame Joolia who famously admitted that the climate is 'a chaotic system'..?
So - one assumes that the Met Office have some 'chaotic models'....
Martin A: And The Global Climate Model clique feedback loop by Dr Brown earlier in May. Was that the piece you were asking Rhoda about by the way? I tried :)
meltemian:
Even with a Q&A it wouldn't be trivial to get anything substantive across. But I admit I assumed there was one and I was looking forward to what members of the IoP might come up with, given their pretty decent statement in 2010 (from vague memory). I'm happy to be going anyway, to form a view of Dr Slingo in person and to see what the current line is on the evidence - or lack of it - for high sensitivity. As Science of Doom put it to Martin A four days ago on what's become an interesting Bishop Hill discussion thread, "the evidence is weak as it relies on GCMs." (Quoted out of context but I think fairly.)
Expect a report back of some sort.
socialists in opposition have Q&A, catered to them.
Socialists IN CHARGE never do Q&A.
remember: DOUBLE STANDARDS. It's what defines our establishment
There is a chapter in 'Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science' called 'Global Climate Models and Their Limitations'. Their limitations are many and the chapter highlights them in areas such as: forecasting, computational issues, chaos problems, CO2 forcing, regional projections, seasonal projections, downscaling, core equation simplifications, aerosols, precipitation, monsoons, temperatures, mid and upper troposphere, oceans, sea ice, soil moisture, biological processes, permafrost, teleconnections, blocking, tropical cyclones, storm tracks and jet streams. All of these topics reveal model limitations, many of them severe. The editors of this chapter, Lupo and Kininmonth, make this general observation
It seems hard to escape the conclusion that policy makers have been led into giving far too much credence to climate models. Computers have proven useful in weather forecasting tasks, but these are not the same as climate forecasting where the models remain novelties of endless interest to researchers and programmers, not least as a means to raise grants for bigger and better ones, as well as for researching the implications of the model predictions if they were to be taken at face value in any number of fields (this latter activity being the biggest one captured by the IPCC). The rest of us will be doing well, in the politeness stakes, if we can refrain from laughing when such models are treated with reverence as a guide to what the future will bring. As is pointed out in the chapter, the simplest* of forecast models do better, often much better, than the GCMs.
*Green, Armstrong, and Soon tested the simple forecast of 'no change' with the forecasts from IPCC warming trends, and found the latter to be much poorer. This encouraged them to propose the forecast model that 'annual global mean temperatures will be within 0.5C of the 1988 figure for the next 100 years'. Cheap and cheerful, and doing pretty well so far I'd say. I also note that Scafetta's more complex forecasting model, one which probably requires a decent programmable calculator to run it, is also looking good to date. Yet the policy-makers seem bewitched by the less impressive model results.
The simple models are for temperature only, because temperature is what the IPCC emphasised to stir up fear and a rush to policy-making. Now that temperatures are failing to follow their alarumified trajectories, their leaders naturally, like any slick salesman would, are turning to other features of their 'product'. Like storminess, or floods, or even the all-purpose 'increased variability', or sea levels, or whatever looks good at the moment for disturbing us with. But they are on thinner and thinner ice as they distance themselves from their USP of global warming - see this review of floods for example. Perhaps they are merely marking time as best they can while waiting (and perhaps, like Climategate Jones, hoping) for global mean temperatures to rise dramatically? Then, of course, they will rediscover their importance.
John: Thanks. As I was saying, not easy to fit that, or any reasonable subset, in a concise but convincing question!
Richard, I'd not fret about killer questions. Gentle ones that encourage her to enlarge further on her perspective would be good. It is her lecture after all, and it is her views that it should inform us about - not those of the audience members! A report back would be much appreciated!
John, not fretting, just explaining :) I only go to a small subset of climate-related events, based on gut instinct I guess, and I wanted to sign up for this right away, without imagining I'd be asking anything. And I agree - mainly! - about the gentle, open-ended approach in any case. If I got the chance to talk to Dr Slingo in person I would probably ask her about RG Brown's suggestion in May for someone to write an open-source, generic software component for ‘stable, rescalable quadrature over the tessera’ that could then be reused in all future GCMs to enable what he calls adaptive convergence. Which could go a long way to show us if these mega-complex creations are getting anywhere close to reality. So I could potentially be helping the Met to raise more money - but for something truly worthwhile.
Mike J
Return of the Clangers
I share your trepidation, though. That £5m budget will almost certainly be spent on CGI rather than the wool, meccano and papier maché that gave the original its character. Children simply don't care about jerky animation, wobbly sets and visible strings - can you visualise Bagpuss or Ivor the Engine 're-imagined'? I can, but I'd rather not.
I preferred my weather forecasts with stick-on symbols, too!
jamesp
Yes, it was the £5m budget that worried me. The trouble is that the BBC, like the Met Office (just to make sure we don't get too far off topic!), has forgotten how to do simple.
Just forecasting the weather or creating a children's programme out of knitted animals isn't "sexy" enough any more and nobody involved is going to make big bucks doing it.
It may well be what the supposed target audience wants but who cares about that any more?
It is perhaps the lack of the cliamte obsessed to critically examine their track record in reference to reality that is most striking.
Instead of admitting that the climatocracy has gotten it wrong on temps, rain, storms, polar bears, slr, Arctic ice, Antarctic ice, etc. etc. etc. and then discussing how they intend to move forward, it seems the good Dame is giong to just in effect yell louder.