Posted on 3/5/2004, 5:12:23 AM by Straight Vermonter
Reference Chase, T.N., Pielke Sr., R.A., Herman, B. and Zeng, X. 2004. Likelihood of rapidly increasing surface temperatures unaccompanied by strong warming in the free troposphere. Climate Research 25: 185-190. Background The authors note that "an important test of model predictive ability and usefulness for impact studies is how well models simulate the observed vertical temperature structure of the troposphere under anthropogenically-induced-change scenarios." Why is this so? It is because one of the most fundamental features of current climate-model simulations is "a larger warming in the free troposphere than at the surface when forced by increasing atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations and the direct effect of sulfate aerosols (IPCC 1996, 2001)." this predicted feature of global warming is not evident in the real world, there is little reason to believe anything else the models predict, including both the cause and (or) magnitude of the observed surface warming.
What was done Chase et al. assessed the likelihood "that such a disparity between model projection and observations could be generated by forcing uncertainties or chance model fluctuations, by comparing all possible 22 yr temperature trends [for the years 1979-2000, which were similarly studied by the IPCC and a special committee of the U.S. National Academy of Science] in a series of climate simulations."
What was learned In the words of the authors, no time, in any model realization, forced or unforced, did any model simulate the presently observed situation of a large and highly significant surface warming accompanied with no warming whatsoever aloft,"ch observations are openly acknowledged to represent the real world in both the IPCC (2001) report and the National Academy Report (2000).
What it means Chase et al. conclude that these "significant errors in the simulations of globally averaged tropospheric temperature structure indicate likely errors in tropospheric water-vapor content and therefore total greenhouse-gas forcing, precipitable water and convectively forced large-scale circulations," noting that "such errors argue for extreme caution in applying simulation results to future climate-change assessment activities and to attribution studies (e.g. Zwiers and Zhang, 2003) and call into question the predictive ability of recent generation model simulations."
References IPCC. 1996. Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995. The Science of Climate Change. Houghton,J.T., Meira Filho, L.G., Callender, B.A., Harris, N., Kattenberg, A. and Maskell, K. (Eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
IPCC. 2001. Third Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001. The Scientific Basis. Houghton, J.T., Ding, Y., Griggs, D.J., Noguer, M., van der Linden, P.J. and Xiaosu, D. (Eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
National Academy Report. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, USA.
Zwiers, F.W. and Zhang, X. 2003. Towards regional-scale climate change detection. Journal of Climate 16: 793-797.
Important info here.
For example, suppose that chemical X is known to be capable of causing disease Y and it is the only specific known cause. Under normal statistical principles, instances of disease Y which are not accompanied by significant exposure to X would constitute evidence against the dangerousness of X (since such instances would indicate a certain background level of disease risk). To a statistical homeopath, however, the reverse is true. Any instance of disease Y for which there is any plausible possibility of exposure to X constitutes proof that X is dangerous, and the more remote the exposure, the stronger the proof. Since almost everyone has some level of exposure to almost everything, this means that as long as researchers don't publish any specific alternative causes of disease Y, all instances can be blamed on X.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.