If you’ve read many of my past posts, you may remember that the main reason I (and many other meteorologists) disagree with the computer model forecasts of how much warming will occur due to an increase in CO2 is because of how those models handle water vapor. In this post written over a year ago, I included the following statement from the IPCC:

“Water vapour feedback continues to be the most consistently important feedback accounting for the large warming predicted by general circulation models in response to a doubling of CO2. Water vapour feedback acting alone approximately doubles the warming from what it would be for fixed water vapour (Cess et al., 1990; Hall and Manabe, 1999; Schneider et al., 1999; Held and Soden, 2000). Furthermore, water vapour feedback acts to amplify other feedbacks in models, such as cloud feedback and ice albedo feedback. If cloud feedback is strongly positive, the water vapour feedback can lead to 3.5 times as much warming as would be the case if water vapour concentration were held fixed (Hall and Manabe, 1999).”

Now, a new study published in the May 8 Science Daily, admits that when computer models have tried to simulate the climate in the Antarctic over the past 100 years, those simulations have been too warm . The reason given is: “The error appeared to be caused by models overestimating the amount of water vapor in the Antarctic atmosphere.” In fact, the models over estimated the amount of warming by a factor of exactly 3.5 (at least that IPCC forecast was correct). The simulation was for 1.4 degree F warming and it has turned out to be just 0.4F.

See larger image here

The authors add that “model projections of future Antarctic climate may be unreliable.” No kidding! They also state that “computer models are accurately simulating climate for the other six continents.” Oh really? How many models have forecast there would be no warming from 1998-2008? I’ll bet it is all because of how they handle that darned water vapor.  Read Craig’s full blog here.

When Maine officials tried to warn residents of the dangers of this winter’s near-record snowpack, Big Media slanted the story, hampering efforts to warn folks of the danger. “This winters [sic] near-record snowfall has created a flood potential that is above normal,” began a news advisory released by the Maine River Flow Advisor Commission on March 6th.

“Statewide water content readings from this week’s snow survey are some of the highest since 1969, the ‘snow season’ of record, and in some locations higher than the record.” In case there was any doubt, the banner headline on the release reads: “Spring Flood Potential Elevated Due to Near-Record Snowfall.”

However, the lead in the Associated Press story in the next day’s edition of the major regional daily, the Boston Globe, downplayed the threat posed by the snowpack, referring to it as just “above-average,” and shifting the emphasis to concern about an approaching storm.  “The National Weather Service says weekend rain could cause some flooding of streets and small streams.”

Why did the AP and the Globe de-emphasize Maine officials’ snowpack warning, especially when doing so endangered the property and safety of the public they are supposed to serve?

The Globe is owned by the New York Times Company. Both the Times and the Associated Press are heavily invested in the myth of Global Warming, or—as I like to call it—Global Warning. Record snowpack means higher than normal amounts of snow, colder than usual temperatures, or both. None of which readily fits into the MSM’s chosen story line that mankind is giving Mother Nature a fever. Big Media’s Global Warning bias has largely remained in the realm of theory; now it has begun to endanger people’s lives and property in real time. The AP and the Globe had the choice of reporting a truly inconvenient truth—for them—or of perpetuating Global Warning, of facilitating officials’ efforts to protect the public or advancing their ideological agenda. Why are we not surprised by the decision they made? Read more here.

William Tate is a former award-winning broadcast journalist and the author of the new book, A Time Like This.

South African snow adventurer Correne Erasmus-Coetzer has been forced to abandon her dream of becoming the first African woman to cross the icy continent of Greenland on foot.  The dream came to an end this week when the expedition of nine men and women came up against a ferocious wind and snow storm, and rapidly dwindling food supplies, as they approached the quarter-way mark of their 550km slog from the east to west coast of Greenland, across the Arctic Circle. Erasmus-Coetzer was hoping to create awareness about global warming and raise money for the Durban-based Wilderness Leadership School.

In a satellite phone message posted on her on expedition website, a disappointed Coetzer said the future of the journey had been in the balance for several days, but a decision was taken on Wednesday to turn back. Erasmus-Coetzer said the conditions in Greenland were worse than anything she had experienced during previous expeditions to the North and the South Poles.

It was a bit like “walking in milk” she said, explaining that the sky was full of snow and this made it impossible to distinguish between the horizon and the sky.For nearly three days the expedition had been snowed-in by icy, gale-force winds which tore against their tents.
Read more here.

This was the second adventurer, an Australian, that had to abandon their trip through Greenland due to cold and snow this week. See this tale.

And now yet a third tale of a failed expedition here. May 3rd: Friday night we have had contact with Greenland. The expedition Circle 66 is caught in extreme bad weather, Petoraq wind with a speed of 120 km’s per hour and a big amount of snow drift . Also eight of the twelve team members have caught a virus (throwing up). Because of this the expedition leader decided to cancel the trip. All team member were brought to the base with helicopters where they started the expedition. We are all very touched by this decision, but the risk to stay on the ice
was too big. Everybody is safe at moment and is doing well considering the circumstances.”

The heat from the sun varies over a number of interlinked and overlapping cycles but the main one is the cycle of 11 years or so. That solar cycle can last from about 9.5 years to about 13.6 years and appears to be linked to the gravitational effects of the planets of the solar system combining to affect the sun’s magnetic field which seems then to influence the amount of heat generated and incidentally affects the number of sunspots.

It is clear that temperatures have varied so much over the past 1000 years that there have been substantial effects on human societies so disruption caused by weather and climate is by no means unusual. Many civilisations have fallen as a result of entirely natural changes in climate. Interestingly, they often blamed themselves for offending the Gods, nature or the planet (that sounds familiar!). It is necessary to note that those disruptive changes have occurred quite quickly. A decade or two is quite enough to see changes that result in considerable hardship.

The point I need to make here is that on the basis of historical evidence from weather and solar cycle records the largest single factor influencing global temperature, whatever it might be at any time, is variations in the input of heat from the sun. It is clear from the historical record that warmer weather accompanies short solar cycles and cooler weather accompanies longer solar cycles. Although I refer to weather the fact is that weather over time constitutes climate so for present purposes they are the same. During the recent warming the cycle lengths were less than 10 years so that meant we were getting more heat from the sun whatever the alarmists say about Total Solar Irradiance (a flawed and incomplete concept).

So far, the current solar cycle (number 23) is into the 12th year in length and may go to the full 13.6 years for known astronomical reasons. The very fact that it is longer than the previous two cycles suggests we are getting less solar energy already and, surprise, surprise, it is now being accepted by alarmists that warming has stalled and the planet may be cooling for the next 10 years at least. All they can do now is bleat that the underlying man made warming signal is still there but they cannot prove that to be the case nor can they demonstrate the scale of it in relation to natural causes.  Read more on how Dr. Wilde believes the sun through ENSO and not CO2 produce the climate changes over the last millenium here.

There are several global climate models (GCMs) produced by many different groups. There are a half dozen from the USA, some from the UK Met Office, a well known one from Australia, and so on. GCMs are a truly global effort. These GCMs are of course referenced by the IPCC, and each version is known to the creators of the other versions. Much is made of the fact that these various GCMs show rough agreement with each other. People have the sense that, since so many “different” GCMs agree, we should have more confidence that what they say is true. Today I will discuss why this view is false.

Now, each climate model, as a result of the many approximations that must be made, has, if you like, hundreds (even thousands) of knobs that can be dialed to and fro. Each twist of the dial produces a difference in the output. Tweaking these dials, then, is a necessary part of the model building process. The models are tuned so that they, as closely as possible, first are able to produce climate that looks like the past, already observed, climate. Much time is spent tuning and tweaking the models so that they can, at least roughly, reproduce past climate. Thus, the fact that all the GCMs can roughly represent the past climate is again not as interesting as it first seemed. They better had, or nobody would seriously consider the model as a contender.

Reproducing past data is a necessary but not sufficient condition that the models can predict future data. Thus, it is also not at all clear how these tweakings affect the accuracy in predicting new data, which is data that was not used in any way to build the models, that is, future data. Read more on Dr. Briggs discusssion on the climate models and then be sure to read through the comments where he gets into a lively ‘discussion’ with Gavin Schmidt, Craig Loehle and Dr. Douglass and others.

Dr. William M. Briggs specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review