Von Storch on the models again

In a post at Klimazwiebel, Von Storch and Zorita have expanded onf the views they put forward in the discusion paper I mentioned the other day.

We want here to set straight some misinterpretations that may have arisen in the blogosphere, e.g. Bishophill, and may also have been present in the review processes by Nature as well.

The main result is that climate models run under realistic scenarios (for the recent past) have some difficulty in simulating the observed trends of the last 15 years, and that are not able to simulate a continuing trend of the observed magnitude for a total of 20 years or more. This main result does not imply that the anthropogenic greenhouse gases have not been the most important cause for the warming observed during the second half of the 20th century. That greenhouse gases have been responsible for, at least, part or even most of the observed warming, is not only based on the results of climate simulations, but can be derived from basic physical principles, and thus it is not really debated. It is important to stress that there is to date no realistic alternative explanation for the warming observed in the last 50 years. The effect of greenhouse gases is not only in the trend in global mean near-surface temperature, but has been also identified in the spatial pattern of the observed warming and in other variables, such as stratospheric temperature, sea-level pressure and others.

Although von Storch and Zorita talk of misinterpretations, I'm not sure there is any great difference between what they say here and what I concluded last week. At the time I said that the models are falsified - they run too hot. A model that had a slower rate of warming would not be. So a claim that part of the observed warming is anthropogenic is still scientifically tenable. How big a part is manmade is, given the failure of the models, anyone's guess.

I'm not, however, convinced that the only plausible explanation for the warming of the last 50 years is greenhouse gases. As I mentioned the other day, the IPCC looks set to conclude that there was a Medieval Warm Period. Last time I heard Rob Wilson discuss the matter, he said that the climate models couldn't even get the MWP in the right historical position, let alone explain its apparently large magnitude.

So once again I find myself returning to the point I make so often. The unknown unknowns are a big problem. Scientists would do themselves a favour if they recognised it.

[Comments will be tightly edited for relevance and tone]

Von Storch: models are falsified

Roddy Campbell points us to this discussion paper by Hans von Storch et al, which looks at the divergence between climate models and observations:

In recent years, the increase in near-surface global annual mean temperatures has emerged as considerably smaller than many had expected. We investigate whether this can be explained by contemporary climate change scenarios. In contrast to earlier analyses for a ten-year period that indicated consistency between models and observations at the 5% confidence level, we find that the continued warming stagnation over fifteen years, from 1998 -2012, is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level. Of the possible causes of the inconsistency, the underestimation of internal natural climate variability on decadal time scales is a plausible candidate, but the influence of unaccounted external forcing factors or an overestimation of the model sensitivity to elevated greenhouse gas concentrations cannot be ruled out. The first cause would have little impact of the expectations of longer term anthropogenic climate change, but the second and particularly the third would.

That seems quite important to me. Note also that "the heat's all in the deep oceans" doesn't seem to be on the table as an explanation.

Von Storch on the pause

Hans von Storch, interviewed in Spiegel, is well worth a read this morning:

Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I'm driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle, I can't simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I'll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.

von Storch on the inquiries

P Gosselin has a must-read post - a translation of an interview Hans von Storch gave to Handelsblatt. The take-home quote is this one, IMHO

We have to take a critical view of what happened. Nothing ought to be swept under the rug. Some of the inquests – like in Great Britain - failed at this. They blew an opportunity to re-establish trust.

Yup. Read the rest too.

Von Storch fixes the IPCC

In his presentation to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Hans von Storch outlines a number of issues with the IPCC and suggests possible solutions. I thought these were pretty interesting, particularly the bit where he discusses dealing with dissent - I've added emphasis to the "ouch" bit.

Click to read more ...

Climate panel in crisis

This is a translation of an article in the Norwegian newspaper Forskning. The original article was by Bjørnar Kjensli and the machine translation was tidied and corrected by readers Messenger and Geir Hasnes.


A German climate researcher says that people are beginning to lose faith in climate research, pointing to the IPPC as one of the main causes. Norwegian IPCC veterans disagree about what the organization should do about it.

Click to read more ...

Big Oil forgets to bribe McKitrick

Hans von Storch reports that Edinburgh University's Tom Crowley has been doing some auditing himself, writing to Ross McKitrick to find out how much loot the Canadian is receiving from Big Oil.

Unfortunately it appears that the well-organised denier movement forgot to fund one of the most prominent sceptics of all.

Which prompts a question:

Are the Hockey Team conspiracy theorists?

Discuss.

Hans von Storch says Nature invented quotes

Everybody's favourite environmental journal, Nature, seems to have got itself into hot water. Hans von Storch reports on his Die Klimazwiebel blog that the quotes attributed to him in Quirin Schiermeier's article (see previous posting) did not form part of the interview between the two men.

Quirin Schiermeier quotes me with "You need to be very circumspect about the added value of downscaling to regional impacts," agrees Hans von Storch in this week's issue of nature. And: he cautions, "planners should handle them with kid gloves. Whenever possible, they'd rather wait with spending big money on adaptation projects until there is more certainty about the things to come." I have not spoken with Mr Schiermeier about regional modelling, at least not recently; the term "kid gloves" is unknown to me, not part of my vocabulary. I have asked him for evidence that I have said these sentences to whom.

Nature's reputation was already looking rather damaged, what with the "denialists" editorial and all. This kind of thing is hardly going to help.

An interesting take on a climate poll

The Von Storch & Bray annual poll of opinion among climatologists is always interesting. Here's an new and interesting take on it by Joseph Bast:

Thirty-five percent [of climatologists] responded “very much” when asked the following question: “How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?” On a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all” and 7 being “very much,” 83 percent answered 5, 6, or 7. Only 1 percent said “not at all” and only 11 percent answered 1, 2, or 3. Answers to the question “How convinced are you that climate change poses a very serious and dangerous threat to humanity?” were similar.

However, the Bray and von Storch survey also reveals that very few of these scientists trust climate models — which form the basis of claims that human activity could have a dangerous effect on the global climate. Fewer than 3 or 4 percent said they “strongly agree” that computer models produce reliable predictions of future temperatures, precipitation, or other weather events. More scientists rated climate models “very poor” than “very good” on a long list of important matters, including the ability to model temperatures, precipitation, sea level, and extreme weather events.

Given that the reliability of the predictions from climate models is the chief evidence for the global warming hypothesis, this is, as Bast notes, a very surprising set of opinions for climatologists to hold.

Hans von Storch interview

English translation here:

It appears from the so-called CRU-Mails that the cartel has sinned against a basic scientific principle namely the principle of transparency. Science should be practiced openly. All published results should in principle be verifiable, should be open to criticism, also to criticism from people who are not well-meaning. That is something a scientist must accept, that people who are not well-meaning scrutinize him.

The e-mails from CRU indicate that there have been attempts to keep people from publishing
by contacting authors or publishers, that one lead author of the IPPC has at the least  expressed the thought of keeping certain persons out of the whole process and lastly, and possibly the worst, that the data on which their research is based has not been put into the open for verification. This is not acceptable.

Quote of the day

Hat tip to Hans von Storch for pointing out this comment in the emails. It was sent by paleoclimatologist Ed Cook to the CRU's Keith Briffa, outlining his opinions on the current (2003) state of knowledge of past temperatures:

The results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).

Read that carefully people. We know a fair bit about the temperatures in the last 100 years, but only for the extra-tropics. Before that, we know nothing. Nothing.

Nothing.

Read the whole email. It's astonishing.

Update on Dec 7, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Aidey in the comments points out that I've got the nuance of this post wrong. What Aidey points out is that what Cook is saying is that we understand short-term variability (<100 years) but not long-term (>100years). What does this mean about our understanding of the much-disputed medieval warm period though?

The antidote to RealClimate

Climatologists Hans von Storch and Eduardo Zorita have started a new blog. Welcome to the blogosphere, gentlemen.

Is the game up for the climate junk scientists?

I posted a while back about the failure of climate scientists to archive their data or to release it on request - a scandal which has been carefully documented by Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit blog.  Another post on the same subject developed a very interesting comments thread with contributions from McIntyre and Maxine Clarke, the executive editor of Nature - one of the journals who have failed to enforce their own policies on data availability.

Over this weekend there have been a couple of developments which suggest that change is afoot. The first was a comment left by the eminent climate scientists, Hans von Storch and Eduardo Zorita, on Nature's Climate Feedback blog

Another important aspect [of McIntyre's contributions to the climate debate was] his insistence on free availability of data, for independent tests of (not only) important findings published in the literature. It is indeed a scandal that such important data sets, and their processing prior to analysis, is not open to independent scrutiny. The reluctance of institutions and journals to support such requests is disappointing.

[My emphasis] 

For two such prominent scientists leave comments of this kind on this particular blog can only be seen as a pretty stern criticism of Nature's stance on the issue, and we should certainly applaud their integrity in doing so, particularly as they seem to disagree with many of McIntyre's scientific arguments.

The second development looks to me as if it could be dynamite though. In a story entitled "Lies, all lies, but who do you tell?" the Sunday Times Science Correspondent Anjana Ahuja does a pretty good job of covering the issue of replication of scientific papers, and gives us the reactions of the management at Nature.

[Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature] is considering whether some studies, especially ones that make headlines, should be replicated before going to press.

Science operates on an assumption of honesty – raw data are rarely scrutinised by either institutions or journals, and academics are encouraged to work independently. Rogue researchers feed off this culture of trust: busy superiors and colleagues often sign off research papers and grant applications without reading them. Fame ensues and grants and citations roll in.

And so it becomes hard to “out” a suspect. Do you snitch to your head of department, for example? To your vice-chancellor? Might he or she wish to conceal an issue that could make the institution look culpable? If the person moves and you divulge your suspicions to his new employer, can you be sued?

If Nature actually go through with this and enforce the policy of replication before publication, it will be a big step forward for the integrity of science in general and of climate science in particular, although I'm sure it won't be the end of the story. For a start one might well ask the question of "who will do the replication?" Someone in the same closed clique is not going to give us the same assurance as someone who is of a diametrically different opinion. And it should also be pointed out that the new policy does not absolve scientists of the duty to make their data and code available. Different researchers may bring different criticisms to bear, and while it is obviously impractical to demand that everyone should have a shot at a paper pre-publication, it remains vital that they are able to do so after the event.

But all this notwithstanding it looks as though there may have been a welcome shift in the position of Nature on the issue. I'm sure everyone who cares about science, whether believers in global warming or not, will recognise that this can only help the search for the truth. Let's hope that this embarrasses the other culprits into making similar changes.

And while we're about it, we might also note that pretty much the whole story has been played out on blogs. Well done the blogosphere.