A climate science milestone: a successful 10-year forecast!

Summary:  The gridlock might be breaking in the public policy response to climate change. This gridlock has left us unprepared for even the inevitable repeat of past extreme weather — let alone what new challenges the future will hold for us. Here is the good news plus some simple measures that can decisively break open the policy debate.

The below graph was tweeted yesterday by Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Sciences (click to enlarge). (Yesterday Zeke Hausfather at Carbon Brief posted a similar graph.) This shows surface atmosphere temperatures. It is another step forward in the public policy debate about climate change, in two ways.

(1)  This graph shows a climate model’s demonstration of predictive skill over a short time horizon of roughly ten years. CMIP3 was prepared in 2006-7 for the IPCC’s AR4 report. That’s progress, a milestone — a successful decade-long forecast!  {Note: I start the clock when the model is run, as is done in other fields. Not when the model is initialized. This eliminates concern about “tuning” the model to better match past observations. When it comes to high stakes politics, “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.“}

(2) The graph uses basic statistics, something too rarely seen today in meteorology and climate science. For example, the descriptions of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma were very 19th C, as if modern statistics had not been invented. Compare Schmidt’s graph with Climate Lab Book’s updated version of the signature “spaghetti” graph — Figure 11.25a — from the IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I report (click to enlarge). Edward Tufte (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) weeps every time someone posts a spaghetti graph.

Note how the graphs differ in the display of the difference between observations and CMIP3 model output during 2005-2010. Schmidt’s graph shows that observations are near the ensemble mean. The updated Figure 11.25a shows observations near the bottom of the range of CMIP5 model outputs (Schmidt also provides his graph using CMIP5 model outputs).

Clearing away the underbrush so we can see the big issues.

This is one in a series of recent incremental steps forward in the climate change policy debate. Here are two more examples of clearing away relatively minor issues. Even baby steps add up.

(1) Ocean heat content (OHC) as the best metric of warming.

This was controversial when Roger Pielke Sr. first said it in 2003 (despite his eminent record, Skeptical Science called him a “climate misinformer” – for bogus reasons). Now many climate scientists consider OHC to be the best measure of global warming. Some point to changes in the ocean’s heat content as an explanation for the pause.

Graphs of OHC should convert any remaining deniers of global warming (there are some out there). This shows the increasing OHC of the top 700 meters of the oceans, from NOAA’s OHC page. See here for more information about the increase in OHC.

(2)  The end of the “pause” or “hiatus”.

Global atmospheric temperatures paused during period roughly between the 1998 and 2016 El Ninos, especially according to the contemporaneous records (later adjustments slightly changed the picture). Activists said that the pause was an invention of deniers. To do so they had to conceal the scores of peer-reviewed papers identifying the pause, exploring its causes (there is still no consensus on this), and forecasting when it would end. They were quite successful at this, with the help of their journalist-accomplices.

Now that is behind us. As the below graph shows, atmospheric temperatures appear (tentative) to have resumed their increase, or taken a new stair step up — as described in “Reconciling the signal and noise of atmospheric warming on decadal timescales“, Roger N. Jones and James H. Ricketts, Earth System Dynamics, 8 (1), 2017. Click to enlarge the graph.

What next in the public policy debate about climate change?

Perhaps now we can focus on the important issues. Here are my nominees for the two most important open issues.

(1) Validating climate models as providers of skillful long-term projections.

The key question has always been about future climate change. How will different aspects of weather change, at what rate? Climate models provide these answers. But acceptable standards of accuracy and reliability differ for scientists doing research and leaders making policy decisions affecting billions of people and the course of the global economy. We have limited resources; the list of threats is long (e.g., the oceans are dying). We need hard answers.

There has been astonishingly little work addressing this vital question. See major scientists discussing the need to do so. We have the tools to do so. A multidisciplinary team of experts (e.g., software engineers, statisticians, chemists), adequately funded, could do so in a year. Here is a proposal: Climate scientists can restart the climate policy debate & win: test the models! That post also lists (with links) the major papers in the literature about validation of climate models.

There is a strong literature to draw on about how to test theories and computer models. Let’s use it. This could be a game-changer.

1. Thomas Kuhn tells us what we need to know about climate science.
2. Daniel Davies’ insights about predictions can unlock the climate change debate.
3. Karl Popper explains how to open the deadlocked climate policy debate.
4. Milton Friedman’s advice about restarting the climate policy debate.
5. Paul Krugman talks about economics. Climate scientists can learn from his insights.
6. We must rely on forecasts by computer models. Are they reliable? (Many citations.)
7. Paul Krugman explains how to break the climate policy deadlock.

(2) Modeling forcers of climate change (greenhouse gases, land use).

Climate models forecast climate based on the input of scenarios describing the world. This includes factors such as amounts of the major greenhouse gases there are in the atmosphere. These scenarios have improved in detail and sophistication in each IPCC report, but they remain an inadequate basis for making public policy.

The obvious missing element is a “business as usual” or baseline scenario. AR5 used four scenarios — Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). The worst was RCP8.5 — an ugly scenario of technological stagnation and rapid population growth, in which coal becomes the dominant fuel of the late 21st century (as it was in the late 19th C). Unfortunately, “despite not being explicitly designed as business as usual or mitigation scenarios” RCP8.5 has often been misrepresented as the “business as usual” scenario — becoming the basis for hundreds of predictions about our certain doom from climate change. Only recently have scientists began shifting their attention to more realistic scenarios.

A basecase scenario would provide a useful basis for public policy. Also useful would be a scenario with likely continued progress in energy technology and continued declines in world fertility (e.g., we will get a contraceptive pill for men, eventually). That would show policy-makers and the public the possible rewards for policies that encourage these trends.

Conclusions

Science and public policy both usually advance by baby steps, incremental changes that can accomplish great things over time. But we can do better. Since 2009 my recommendations have been the same about our public policy response to climate change. After three decades of policy gridlock, we should try different approaches.

1. More funding for climate sciences. Many key aspects (e.g., global temperature data collection and analysis) are grossly underfunded compared to their importance.
2. Run government-funded climate research with tighter standards (e.g., posting of data and methods, review by unaffiliated experts), just as we do for biomedical research.
3. Fund a review of the climate forecasting models by a multidisciplinary team of relevant experts who have not been central players in this debate. Include a broader pool of experts than those who have dominated the field, such as geologists, chemists, statisticians and software engineers.
4. We should begin a well-funded conversion to non-carbon-based energy sources, for completion by the second half of the 21st century — justified by both environmental and economic reasons (see these posts for details).
5. Begin more aggressive efforts to prepare for extreme climate. We’re not prepared for repeat of past extreme weather (e.g., a major hurricane hitting NYC), let alone predictable climate change (e.g., sea levels climbing, as they have for thousands of years).
6. The most important one: break the gridlocked public policy by running a fair test of the climate models.

For More Information

For more about the close agreement of short-term climate model temperature forecasts with observations, see “Factcheck: Climate models have not ‘exaggerated’ global warming” by Zeke Hausfather at Carbon Brief. To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change by Roger Pielke Jr. (Prof of Environmental Studies at U of CO-Boulder).

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see all posts about the IPCC, see the keys to understanding climate change and these posts about the politics of climate change…

• Why the campaign to warn people about climate change fail: incompetence.
• Ignoring science to convince the public that we’re doomed by climate change.
• Look at the trends in extreme weather & see the state of the world.
• Focusing on worst case climate futures doesn’t work. It shouldn’t work.
• Paul Krugman shows why the climate campaign failed.
• Manichean paranoia has poisoned the climate debate.
• What you need to know & are not told about hurricanes — About Harvey and Irma.

A fun debunking of a climate propaganda story.

Polar Bears: Outstanding Survivors of Climate Change by Susan J. Crawford. From the publisher…

This book explains why polar bears are thriving despite the recent decline of Arctic sea ice. It describes polar bears’ ecology and conservation issues, providing up-to-date information in an easy to digest format — fully referenced. It is the book giving the science about polar bears that people have been requesting.

Contents — Polar bear & sea ice basics. Feasting and fasting, the life of polar bears. Evolution & climate change. Conservation & protection. Failure of the polar bear predictions. The biggest threat to polar bears. Summary and conclusions.

Susan Crockford is a zoologist with more than 35 years of experience, including published work on the Holocene history of Arctic animals. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia (a “non-remunerated professional zooarcheologist associate”) and co-owner of a private consulting company, Pacific Identifications Inc. See her publications and her website Polar Bear Science. She has also written a novel, Eaten — a polar bear attack thriller.