A Look At Climate Models: “Obviously Do Not Represent The Physics”…”Not At All Capable”

Models still remain “crude statistical tools”…”not at all capable of reliably informing the world’s decision makers”

What Do The Current Climate Models Really Do?

By Die kalte Sonne, Frank Bosse
(Translated/edited by P. Gosselin)

A recent article describes the performance of upcoming models, made possible by an improvement in computing power over current high performance computers: the “exaflop” generation, i.e. 1 exaflop =10 to the power of 18 = 1 trillion floating point operations per second. They should then also make local climate calculations possible, primarily through a narrower grid and stored physics where today parameterization is still required.

That is pie in the sky, much more interesting are the statements about the models so far in the article.

Tim Palmer, Oxford professor puts it this way:

A highly nonlinear system where you have biases which are bigger than the signals you’re trying to predict is really a recipe for unreliability.”

Many of the laws and physical equations of the climate system are known, it’s just that people haven’t been able to implement them, for computational time reasons. Björn Stevens of Hamburg’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) puts it this way:

We were somehow forbidden to use this understanding by the limits of computation.”

And further:

People sometimes forget how far away some of the fundamental processes in our existing models are from our physical understanding.”

This in no way refers to only local phenomena. Stevens describes it this way:

When we finally succeed in physically describing the pattern of atmospheric deep convection over the warm tropical seas in models, we can understand more deeply how this then shapes large waves in the atmosphere, guides the winds, and affects the extratropics.”

After all, we keep hearing that the models represent “the physics.” They obviously do not, even for large scale phenomena. These are very frank words about the current models.

In the light of what may one day be possible, they seem to be rather crude statistical tools than representations of reality. Thus the article describes at the end the goal of modeling with the help of “exascale computing”. A real image of the real terrestrial climate system, a “digital twin” is to be created. What we have today is characterized by Bjorn Stevens as:

…that the world’s decision makers will have to rely on climate models in the same way that farmers have to rely on weather reports, but that change will require a concerted – and expensive – effort to create some kind of common climate model infrastructure.”

What have we not been told about the performance of climate models! And now it turns out that so far they are not at all capable of reliably informing “the world’s decision makers.” In fact, they are far from it.

In this context it is also understandable that the last state report of the IPCC just for the first time did NOT refer to the many models that were created especially for it, called CMIP6 family. Rather, the IPCC obtained the most important core information, “How sensitive is our climate system to CO2 increase?” from one paper that combined various estimates without using models.

This one paper unfortunately contained some flaws and could also be updated, Lewis (2022) reduced the most likely value assumed by IPCC AR6 significantly, by over 30%.

Thus, in climate science, much remains in flux and (as is always the case in science) nothing is set in stone. I wonder if this will also find its way into our media at some point? Or to the frightened ones, who are convinced they are the “last generation” before a climate collapse, informed by just these media and as they pretend: “The science”? Or was it instead of science, such works as “Hothouse Earth” and “Climate-Endgame“?

Let us remain optimists!




11 responses to “A Look At Climate Models: “Obviously Do Not Represent The Physics”…”Not At All Capable””

  1. CO2isLife

    In any real science those results would lead to the Null being rejected. In climate science they just go back and adjust the data to try to make the model work. Problem is, they are trying to model CO2 to Temperature as a linear relationship, it isn’t, it shows a log decay. Climate models will never accurately model the climate as long as they model Temp = f(CO2), the real model is Temp = f(log(CO2)

  2. CO2isLife

    Anyone can test the CO2 drives temperature theory. Simply choose locations that are controlled for the Urban Heat Island Effect and Water Vapor. That location is Antarctica and other hot and cold deserts. When you choose the right location, you find there is no warming at all, even if CO2 increases by 25% or more.
    Here is the RSS Data.
    https://images.remss.com/msu/graphics/TLT_v40/plots/RSS_TS_channel_TLT_Southern%20Polar_Land_And_Sea_v04_0.png

    How can CO2 increase by 25% and it cause no warming if CO2 is the main driver of temperature?

    On the other hand, where there is water vapor, there is warmth.
    http://images.remss.com/figures/climate/temperature_and_vapor_trop20_V4.png

    1. Richard Greene

      Due to the temperature inversion there, greenhouse gases cool Antarctica rather than heating Antarctica

      Other than Antarctica, and when there is a temporary temperature inversion over the Arctic, CO2 has the largest warming effect when water vapor is low, because CO2 competes with water vapor in the greenhouse effect.

      Methane has even more absorption frequencies overlapping with water vapor absorption frequencies.

      The expected pattern and timing of greenhouse gas warming is in the coldest nations, during the coldest six months of the year, and at the colder portion of the day (TMIN) — the low water vapor locations and low water vapor timing).

      Water vapor is dependent on the temperature of the troposphere, so water vapor levels must be higher in the tropics than in the Arctic.

  3. Richard Greene

    When model predictions were repeatedly challenged by John Christy, Ph.D., the Climate Howlers, specifically Zeke H., replied with a few fixes that made the models appear to be reasonable:

    He replaced the ECS prediction with the TCS prediction
    He replaced RCP 8.5 with the more reasonable RCP 4.5

    The result was a TCS prediction for 70 years in the future that was similar to the global warming rate from 1975 to 2022, using CMIP6 models. Zeke then declared the models to be accurate, and Climate Howlers cited his “paper” like trained parrots So never mind the unreasonable ECS and RCP 8.5 400 year prediction that the IPCC ALWAYS publicizes.

    There are no real climate models, actually. They are just computer games programmed to scare people, except the Russian INM model that might be trying to be accurate. Humans do not have enough detailed knowledge about climate science to construct a model of the climate of our planet. So if a so-called model seems to be accurate, like the Russian INM model, that is just a lucky guess.

    The assumption that detailed, correct knowledge of climate change science would allow anyone to predict the long=term climate is speculation. Predicting the long-term future climate might be as impossible as predicting whether it will rain in London six months from today.

    The average climate model prediction represents the consensus of mainstream climate scientists. The consensus is obviously wrong, has been wrong for 40 years, and the least inaccurate Russian INM model gets only 1% of the attention when it should be getting 99% of the attention. Why? Because accurate predictions are not a goal for climate models — scaring people is their goal, and they do that well.

  4. rah

    Where are the hotspots over the tropics? Based on the physics these models are supposedly based on, permanent hotspots in the mid to upper troposphere MUST be there! But they aren’t!

    1. Richard Greene

      Hotspots are allegedly the result of a large water vapor positive feedback to tropsphere warming … that seems to exist ONLY in leftist imaginations.

      1. rah

        Joe Bastardi posted on twitter the 500 mb and the exact opposite is happening.

        https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjAHsBYXEBwHF2j?format=png&name=medium

  5. AlexS

    “Many of the laws and physical equations of the climate system are known, it’s just that people haven’t been able to implement them, for computational time reasons.”

    Ridiculous. Please explain the year 1540 for climate in Europe.

  6. pochas94

    Climate models enable stupid rich people to remove our freedoms.

    1. Richard Greene

      Concise, great wisdom in that short sentence

  7. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #531 – Watts Up With That?

    […] A Look At Climate Models: “Obviously Do Not Represent The Physics”…”Not At A… […]

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