Computer Tea Leaves, Hocus-Pocus Models Yield “Very Reliable, Robust Signals” For Year 2100, German Scientists Claim

What follows is a press release from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research.

Original article: Bayr, T., D. Dommenget, T. Martin, S. Power, 2014: The eastward shift of the Walker Circulation in response to global warming and its relationship to ENSO variability. Climate Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00382-014-2091-y.

Note that their results are based on climate model simulations, the same kind that have had a 97.4 % failure rate thus far (see chart, above).

Yet these scientists think they are good enough to make predictions for the year 2100. This is what I call classic, very transparent quackery (They couldn’t even get the first 15 years right).

That aside, here is the GEOMAR press release (try not to fall off your chair laughing):

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Will climate change make El Nino a permanent concern?

27 May 2014/Kiel. Currently there are many indications that an El Niño event will be developing in the months ahead. This could become a lasting situation as a result of increasing global warming – even if the observations of the last decade have been showing the opposite trend. This is the result reached by a study conducted by an international team of scientists lead by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research based in Kiel. The results have appeared in the international journal Climate Dynamics.

El Niño, or more correctly El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), is the strongest climate fluctuation on timescales of a few (2-7) years. The phenomena often occurs at Christmas time and got its name from Peruvian fishermen (Span.: El Niño) and involves a strong warming of the Eastern Pacific and is connected to the absence of fish swarms.  Today we know that it involves a coupled system between ocean and atmosphere. The El Niño oceanic component is characterized by the warming of the central and eastern Pacific and the atmospheric Pendant Southern Oscillation, which is a measure for the pressure difference over the Pacific and Indian Ocean. During an El Niño, the area of low pressure that normally lies above the Indonesian region shifts eastwards over the Pacific. This leads to flooding in the eastern Pacific and droughts over northern Australia.

The model studies analyzed by the authors coming from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) , with which the climate projections for the IPCC climate report were calculated, show a general weakening and eastward shifting of atmospheric, equatorial circulation pattern until the year 2100 relative to the mean condition of the years 1950-1979. The pattern resembles a weak but lasting El Niño situation.

The ERA Interim Reanalysis 1979-2012, however, was not able to confirm this trend, but rather it showed an opposite development with a westward shift and strengthening of atmospheric circulation at the equator. “This apparent contradiction can be explained by internal variability in the climate system,” explains the study’s lead author Tobias Bayr of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel. “We believe it is unlikely the models are falsely predicting the development as more than 36 different models and numerous model runs were used for the employed analyses,“ Bayr adds. With the help of the analysis process (Multi-model Ensemble) used for the study, very reliable, robust signals could be extracted from a variety of experiments. “And a clear majority of the models predict we will get a more or less permanent El Niño by the end of this century because of climate warming.”

All observations point to a development of an El Niño in the months ahead. However it remains anyone’s guess on whether or not this El Niño will be the turning point to the trend predicted by the models.

===================================

Stunning BS. Amazing such crap gets published nowadays.

Using models of the sort that have had a 97% failure rate thus far, they pretend being quite sure about the year 2100, and yet turn right around and admit that they can’t predict what will happen next year, writing it’s “anyone’s guess”.

Your tax-euros at work, folks. And they (media and established politicians) wonder why skeptic parties won huge in last weekend’s elections.

 

29 responses to “Computer Tea Leaves, Hocus-Pocus Models Yield “Very Reliable, Robust Signals” For Year 2100, German Scientists Claim”

  1. Ric Werme

    > El Niño, or more correctly El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), is the strongest climate fluctuation on timescales of a few (2-7) years.

    Seven year El Nino? How’d I miss it?

    > “And a clear majority of the models predict we will get a more or less permanent El Niño by the end of this century because of climate warming.”

    My guess is that could only happen if the SSTs warm through the century and the ENSO anomaly remains defined as the SST minus the 20th century average or whatever is used now. Of course, the tropics show little (if any) warming, so maybe not the end of this century….

    > All observations point to a development of an El Niño in the months ahead. However it remains anyone’s guess on whether or not this El Niño will be the turning point to the trend predicted by the models.

    Hey, the first sentence is pretty close to reality. However, given that the models didn’t predict the pause, how can they predict a turning point?

  2. William Connolley

    > How’d I miss it?

    By never looking at the power spectrum of the SOI.

    > they pretend being quite sure about the year 2100

    You made that up. They say no such thing.

    > can’t predict what will happen next year

    Weather. Climate. Learn the difference.

  3. DirkH

    “And they (media and established politicians) wonder why skeptic parties won huge in last weekend’s elections.”

    It takes German newspapers 8 years to lose 20% of readers.
    http://www.bdzv.de/markttrends-und-daten/vertriebsmarkt/artikel/detail/zeitungsauflagen_abonnements_und_einzelverkauf_leicht_ruecklaeufig_leichtes_plus_bei_sonstigen_ve/

    Or 36% in 22 years:
    http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/72084/umfrage/verkaufte-auflage-von-tageszeitungen-in-deutschland/

    Their usefulness as reality distorters must be severely blunted by now – the generation that gets a paper delivered every day is dying out. This is a catastrophy for the SPD who controls most of the dailies via their holding company DVVG.

    1. DirkH

      Background: About the levered influence network of the SPD via their media ownerships; German. Often they don’t have the majority of shares but are the largest minority holder – which suffices for calling the shots.
      http://conservo.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/die-unheimliche-medienmacht-der-spd/
      Of course, they also control the state broadcasters, together with the CDU.

  4. Curious George

    These scientists are good enough to get paid until 2100.

  5. handjive

    Quote:
    “Weather. Climate. Learn the difference.”
    Didn’t get the memo?
    Weather is now Climate is now Weather-

    “A few years ago, talking about weather and climate change in the same breath was a cardinal sin for scientists.

    Now it has become impossible to have a conversation about the weather without discussing wider climate trends, according to researchers who prepared the Australian Climate Commission’s latest report.

    It might even be the case that the mantra chanted after every catastrophic weather event – that it can’t be said to be caused by climate change, but it shows what climate change will do – has become a thing of the past,” said Will Steffen, the report’s lead author and director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute.”

    ”We are talking about a massive amount of additional energy, most of which is being held around the surface layers of the ocean, which is driving the increased evaporation and rainfall,” Professor Steffen said.”

    http://www.theage.com.au/national/climate-change-a-key-factor-in-extreme-weather-experts-say-20130303-2fefv.html

    Isn’t the heat, or energy, going into the deep oceans (4 Hiroshima per second)?
    http://www.npr.org/2013/08/23/214198814/the-consensus-view-kevin-trenberths-take-on-climate-change
    I digress.

    Update:
    Weather is the noise in climate
    https://theconversation.com/time-to-separate-weather-resilience-from-climate-change-25058

    That’s settled.

  6. Graeme No.3

    Curious George:
    “These scientists are good enough to get paid until 2100”

    Didn’t you mean they should be paid in 2100 IF they’re right.

  7. John F. Hultquist

    “we will get a more or less permanent El Niño”

    Right. And I’ve got brown trout swimming in my toilet!
    They don’t seem to know what El Niño is, where the energy to warm the water comes from, where the warm water is stored, why it moves, and where it moves to, and why it doesn’t just stay there. They don’t even know if there will be a 2014-15 El Niño. Klueless in Kiel.

  8. Bob Tisdale

    There are few to no processes of ENSO that are properly simulated by CMIP3 or CMIP5 climate models, so Pierre was correct that the new paper is nothing but “computer tea leaves” and “hocus-pocus models”. Climate model failings regarding ENSO were documented in Guilyardi et al. (2009)…
    http://www.knmi.nl/publications/fulltexts/guilyardi_al_bams09.pdf
    …and in Bellenger et al. (2012):
    http://www.euclipse.eu/Publications/Bellenger_etal_ENSO%20representation%20in%20climate%20models%20from%20CMIP3%20to%20CMIP5.pdf

    The quote, “This apparent contradiction can be explained by internal variability in the climate system,” is laughable. The contradiction can be explained by the fact that climate models are crap.

  9. Stephen Richards

    Willy is the only person I know that thinks the climate is not chaotic. Even that Jap/amer twit Michi knows that climate is chaotic. Weather is climate, climate is weather. One cannot be choatically independent of the other.

    Recent paper: Don’t use Wiki. It’s polluted. We know by whom, eh willy.

    1. William Connolley

      > Weather is climate, climate is weather

      Obviously not. Or we wouldn’t have two words.

      Climate is the statistics of weather. That makes it difference from weather. In a way directly analogous to the way that the average of a random series isn’t the random series.

      Example: if I roll a fair die, you can’t predict whether it will be 1, 2.. 6. If I roll it 100 times, I can give you accurate statistics of the probable numbers of 1, 2…6, and likely error bounds.

      1. DirkH

        William Connolley
        29. Mai 2014 at 15:39 | Permalink | Reply
        “Climate is the statistics of weather. That makes it difference from weather.”

        Not directed to the troll but to other readers: When climate is a moving average of weather, that is just the equivalent of a low pass operation or integration – dampening high frequencies, emphasizing low frequencies.

        For anyone with signal processing background, speaking of a low pass operation as changing the nature of what we’re looking at is simply laughable.

        The troll obviously doesn’t know what he is talking.

        Also, as the climate system is nonlinear, energy is transferred constantly from low to high and from high to low frequencies in its power spectrum.

        Forecasting the low frequencies by ignoring the high frequencies is therefore impossible in any case. (Violation of Shannon theorem in the temporal dimension by the climate models becomes relevant in chaotic (implying also that they are nonlinear) systems)

      2. Ed Caryl

        Climate is variable depending on the time scale. For example:
        Over the last 10 years climate has not changed. Global average temperature has varied but a few tenths of a degree.
        Over the last 100 years climate has warmed by perhaps a degree.
        Over the last 1000 years the climate has cycled from as warm as now, to one or two degrees colder, then back to warm again.
        Over the last 10,000 years the climate has cycled several times over a range of about two degrees, but has trended colder.
        Over the last 100,000 years the climate has cycled over a range of nearly ten degrees and has averaged about five degrees colder than at present.
        Over the last million years, the climate has cycled many times from temperatures ten degrees colder than now to tempertures one or two degrees warmer than now.
        Now talk about climate change…

  10. John F. Hultquist

    I live where it is hot and dry in the high sun season and cold and moist in the low sun season. Another place might have a warm and moist high sun season and a cool and dry low sun season. These patterns constitute climate types and a degree or two either way will not change much. For me to notice a changing climate there will need to be a shift in the pattern, for example, significantly more rainfall in the summer season.
    These climate patterns have been studied for years, frequently using indigenous vegetation as markers because plants seem to integrate these patterns. Using temperature and precipitations, when the techniques became available, to construct the boundaries is easier but confuses the issue. Check out the history of the Köppen-Geiger climate classifications.
    Plants have adapted to these patterns such that some trees can grow with their roots in permanent standing water, others die. Some can prosper where wildfires are common. Some need a cold period for seeds to germinate. Others die in the cold. Consider the differences between Grape vines and Olive trees that handle the same pattern in very different ways. These characteristics imply that most of these patterns have been in place for many thousands of years. A bit of global warming or global cooling hasn’t been a big issue or all plants would be gone.
    I would have mentioned Hocus-Pocus Tea leaves but I don’t know anything about Camellia sinensis.

  11. Sceptical me

    The probability of throwing an unloaded dice and obtaining one is the same whether I throw the dice once or a an hundred times. The probability at each throw remains the same. The probability of returning one in an hundred throws can be calculated, a priori.
    No error bars are required, its a mathematical ‘fact’.

  12. wazsah

    Meanwhile – the SOI is rising + and should do so for at least another week.

    http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/southernoscillationindex/30daysoivalues/

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