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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Disharmony in paradise for Team WUWT?

Sou | 3:07 AM Go to the first of 4 comments. Add a comment

From today, in response to a paper that Anthony Watts reported on WUWT.  The paper suggests a reduction in tropical cyclones later this century (between 2070 and 2100):

lsvalgaard says:
August 19, 2013 at 6:11 am  When the models confirm one’s beliefs they are good, when they do not, they are no good…
REPLY: Unfair Leif, that’s from the abstract, simply reproduced, and not a personal opinion or belief about models. – Anthony
Is there some disharmony brewing among team WUWT?


Here's the abstract:
Changes in tropical cyclone (TC) frequency under anthropogenic climate change are examined for thirteen global models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), using the OWZP TC detection method developed by the authors in earlier papers. The method detects large-scale conditions within which TCs form. It was developed and tuned in atmospheric reanalysis data, and then applied without change to the climate models to ensure model and detector independence. Changes in TC frequency are determined by comparing TC detections in the CMIP5 historical runs (1970—2000) with high emission scenario (representative concentration pathway 8.5) future runs (2070—2100).
A number of the models project increases in frequency of higher latitude tropical cyclones in the late 21st century. Inspection reveals these high latitude systems were subtropical in origin and are thus eliminated from the analysis using an objective classification technique.
TC detections in eight of the thirteen models reproduce observed TC formation numbers and geographic distributions reasonably well, with annual numbers within ±50% of observed. TC detections in the remaining five models are particularly low in number (9—27% of observed). The eight models with a reasonable TC climatology all project decreases in global TC frequency varying between 3 and 15 %. Large inter-model and inter-basin variations in magnitude and sign are present, with the greatest variations in the Northern Hemisphere basins. These results are consistent with results from earlier generation climate models, and thus confirm the robustness of coupled model projections of globally-reduced TC frequency.
K. J. Tory, S. S. Chand, J. L. McBride, H. Ye, and R. A. Dare, Projected changes in late 21st century tropical cyclone frequency in thirteen coupled climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5, Journal of Climate 2013 ; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00010.1

4 comments:

  1. Wait, that paper seems to endorse what I understand is the emerging consensus on hurricanes in a warming world. Decreasing frequency, but increasing proportion of "major" storms (which this paper did not examine).

    I think you can class this one as a major fail, because Tony doesn't understand how the science is changing on this topic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Leif hasn't been the most consistent "team member" - if by team member you mean people who contribute to the echo chamber of denial without any thought. A big example is on sun's influence (or not) on climate. Here's a quote:
    "If you are saying that solar activity has decreased since the late 1950s, then we have common ground. And since temperatures have increased, it should be clear to even the most rabid solar enthusiast tha the Sun is not a major driver of climate."

    You can find it here:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/02/do-solar-scientists-still-think-that-recent-warming-is-too-large-to-explain-by-solar-activity/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I agree.

      Leif is a member of the WUWT inner circle (see the photo I linked to above) but seems to be becoming more vocal in recent months, combating the denier waffle.

      Mostly he just sticks to solar stuff though, which is his own research area.

      What's interesting is that he's starting to have a go at WUWT nonsense on more general topics.

      Delete

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