CLIMATE MODELS PREDICTED TOO MUCH WARMING Climate models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other climate groups to predict future temperatures have failed miserably predicting climate in recent years, new data show. Scientists overseeing temperature data collected by NASA satellite instruments compared real-world temperatures since 1979 to 73 climate prediction models produced by international government agencies, universities, and other climate groups, including 19 models produced by U.S. agencies, universities, and climate groups. All 73 models predicted substantially more warming than actually occurred, with the mean of the 73 models predicting three times as much warming as actually occurred. John Christy, distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, provided the data. Christy’s colleague Roy Spencer published the data charts on his Web site. “I continue to suspect that the main source of disagreement is that the models’ positive feedbacks are too strong … and possibly of even the wrong sign,” explained Spencer. “The lack of a tropical upper tropospheric hotspot in the observations is the main reason for the disconnect in the above plots, and as I have been pointing out this is probably rooted in differences in water vapor feedback. The models exhibit strongly positive water vapor feedback, which ends up causing a strong upper tropospheric warming response (the ‘hot spot’), while the observation’s lack of a hot spot would be consistent with little water vapor feedback,” Spencer explained. drroyspencer/2013/06/epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-observations-for-tropical-tropospheric-temperature/
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:36:37 +0000