I was recently visiting a friends home and we started talking about “Climate Change” and he said, “I want you to read something out of the 1939 Yearbook of Agriculture”. If you remember your history you will recall that this was the time of the “Dust Bowl” in the southern plains. The 1939 Yearbook of Agriculture talked about this disaster as well as the severe flooding in other parts of the country. In general it was a decade of extremes of many kinds. One very interesting notation made was that there was much speculation at the time that the changes were possibly permanent and that they were influenced by mans activities. There is no doubt the wind erosion was due in large part to poor tillage and agricultural practices but the author was very skeptical about climate behavior being a result of human activity.
A recent report also exhibits some skepticism about many of the most used climate models and their reliability in predicting past climate changes. The authors of this study wonder if these models that do a poor job of predicting past changes can be relied upon to predict future changes. This research was published online in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology.
"The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? "It seems that the answer is no."
Scientists from Rochester, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Virginia compared the climate change "forecasts" from the 22 most widely-cited global circulation models with tropical temperature data collected by surface, satellite and balloon sensors. The models predicted that the lower atmosphere should warm significantly more than it actually did.
"Models are very consistent in forecasting a significant difference between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere between the surface and the stratosphere," said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "The models forecast that the troposphere should be warming more than the surface and that this trend should be especially pronounced in the tropics.
"When we look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than half of what the models forecast."
Wiley-Blackwell (2007, December 12). New Study Increases Concerns About Climate Model Reliability. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 17, 2007, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071211101623.htm
A recent report also exhibits some skepticism about many of the most used climate models and their reliability in predicting past climate changes. The authors of this study wonder if these models that do a poor job of predicting past changes can be relied upon to predict future changes. This research was published online in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology.
"The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? "It seems that the answer is no."
Scientists from Rochester, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Virginia compared the climate change "forecasts" from the 22 most widely-cited global circulation models with tropical temperature data collected by surface, satellite and balloon sensors. The models predicted that the lower atmosphere should warm significantly more than it actually did.
"Models are very consistent in forecasting a significant difference between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere between the surface and the stratosphere," said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "The models forecast that the troposphere should be warming more than the surface and that this trend should be especially pronounced in the tropics.
"When we look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than half of what the models forecast."
Wiley-Blackwell (2007, December 12). New Study Increases Concerns About Climate Model Reliability. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 17, 2007, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071211101623.htm
Dust bowl picture from: A black blizzard over Prowers Co., Colorado, 1937. (Western History Collection, University of Oklahoma)
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