By Lubos Motl, The Reference Frame

In the International Journal of Climatology, David Douglass, John Christy, Benjamin Pearson, Fred Singer show, in their article “A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions”, that the previously discussed “fingerprint” predicted by 22 greenhouse-dominated models disagrees with the observed data summarized in 10 datasets.

For larger image go here.

Their figure 1 show where models said “Good bye” to reality. The models and observations are compatible near the surface. However, about 5 kilometers above the surface (where the greenhouse effects starts to become relevant) in the tropical zones, models predict between 2 times and 4 times higher warming trend than what is observed. Above the altitude of 8 kilometers, the theoretical and empirical trends have opposite signs. The insights strongly indicate that the true mechanisms driving the changes of temperature are not understood and the overall effect of greenhouses gases is being overestimated - between 2 times and 4 times - by all existing models. Note that with this reduction, IPCC’s sensitivity between 2 and 4.5 °C gets reduced to the standard 1 °C climate sensitivity which means that the additional greenhouse-induced warming by 2090 will be less than 0.5 °C.