Bob Tisdale is confused, miffed and bewildered by record hot seas at WUWT

Update - see below - plus there's also an addendum with a map showing all the places which broke new heat records in 2014.


The record heat is causing much confusion at WUWT. Bob Tisdale in the comments invited me to write an article about his latest protest at the record hot 2014 (archived here). Well, not exactly invited, what he suggested was that rooter come here to make his points about Bob Tisdales article - twice - here and here. (Both times he finished in passive-aggressive fashion in the style of Willis Eschenbach, writing through gritted teeth "have a good day" after calling rooter a "troll".

Bob Tisdale scores a 0/3 FAIL in a quiz on global surface temperatures

Brandon R. Gates has been commenting here and at WUWT lately. Yesterday he put three questions to Bob Tisdale, whose answers gives us more insight into how Bob operates (or doesn't). And since Bob himself suggested something about HotWhopper, let's take him up on his offer - except that I'll do my best not to misrepresent him. In fact I'll paste Bob's answers to the questions in full, thereby removing that risk altogether. Here goes.

Bob Tisdale is in a tizz over record hot seas

Update - I've added a bit on trends and anomalies, highlighting Bob's deception - just in case a stray arrives from WUWT. Sou 15 Dec 14.


Bob Tisdale has got himself into a real tizz over the record hot seas. He's posted several articles about how the seas are only getting hotter because they are getting hotter. Six just in the last week at WUWT, would you believe! It's not that they are getting hotter from global warming. They just happen to be getting hotter. Bob seems to think it's got nothing to do with global warming. It's just warming.

Bob's article had the rather long title: "The Nonsensical “Just What AGW predicts” and Other Claims By Alarmists about “Record-High” Global Sea Surface Temperatures in 2014"

Be warned - this article is a bit long-ish. While it's too, too easy to ridicule Bob's stupid greenhouse effect denial, that's not what made this article long. What happened was that I got sidetracked down various other sea surface temperature pathways.

Bob Tisdale does a Wondering Willis - it's "mind blowing" that a science blog wrote about WUWT

Remember when Wondering Willis wrote that scathing piece about Anthony Watts and WUWT, saying that Anthony couldn't tell good science from pseudo-science crap even if he had a year to think about it?  His article was one long insult to Anthony and WUWT.

Now Bob Tisdale has done the same (archived here). In another full-on insult to WUWT, Bob writes how he finds it unbelievable that any proper science site would take the least bit of notice of the nonsense that goes on at Anthony Watts' blog.

What that tells you is that now two of the most prolific writers at WUWT have a fairly realistic picture of WUWT's place in the world. Both Willis Eschenbach and Bob Tisdale view Anthony Watts in the same way as most other people do. Anthony Watts runs a fringe blog that is not to be taken seriously by anyone, let alone by anyone who knows anything about climate science.

When two of Anthony's staunchest allies come out with this sort of thing, you see that they realise that WUWT is just another inconsequential blog that happens to attract a lot of people - but not the type of audience anyone would want to boast about.

Slaying the ocean dragons at WUWT

Greenhouse effect denier Bob Tisdale has branched out into slaying dragons in the ocean (archived here).

Bob has one skill, if you can call it that. It's taking data collected by the scientists he despises and plotting charts and then disputing the science the data demonstrate. He tries to do this in a manner that hides global warming but lately he's not had much success. It's a bit hard to hide this sort of warming:

Data source: HADSST

Bob does his best to hide the warming, usually by showing surface temperature changes in parts of the ocean that haven't warmed as much as others.

More "the seas got hotter because they got hotter" from Bob Tisdale at WUWT

Greenhouse effect denier, Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale, has written another article claiming that the seas got hotter because they got hotter (archived here). He's tried this non-argument before and didn't get hammered for it - except for here:)  Here's an image of some of the seas that got hotter this year, courtesy NOAA:

Unusually warm temperatures dominate three areas of the North Pacific: the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska and an area off Southern California. The darker the red, the further above average the sea surface temperature. NOAA researchers are tracking the temperatures and their implications for marine life. Source: NOAA

There's not a lot you can say about a long and tedious Tisdale article that explains that the sea surface got hotter because the sea surface got hotter. That is, the sea surface in the North Pacific got hotter - plus the sea surface over the equatorial Pacific got hotter. We already know that warming in both areas took place. In any case, it's not just the Pacific that's anomalously warm. Here is a snapshot of sea surface temperature anomalies for October, from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre.

Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre

So, for something different let's take this paragraph from today's WUWT article and break it down. Bob wrote:

If the manmade greenhouse gas-forced climate models used by the IPCC cannot explain the 24-year absence of warming of the surface in the North Pacific, it can’t be claimed that the weather-related warming there in 2013 and 2014 were caused by manmade greenhouse gases. That little bit of common sense eludes alarmists.

The unfunny at WUWT and Australia's hottest spring on record

Bob Tisdale, who is known more for his rejection of the greenhouse effect and his tedious, long-winded articles about sea surface temperature, has been trying his hand at comedy lately. Today he's got an article that tries to be funny (archived here). It shows what deniers have been reduced to, now that 2014 is shaping up as one of the hottest years on record. Bob doesn't go so far as trying for an original comedy routine. He's gone around some denier blogs and picked what I presume is the best of the best. Which is not a glowing tribute to the denialati.

This is a fairly boring non-article about a fairly boring WUWT non-article. If you're on the home page and click "Read more", don't say I didn't warn you. As a taster - one thing Bob did was highlight the fact that Australia has just had its hottest spring and hottest November on record.

Why did the water in the kettle boil? Because it got hot!

WUWT has been really, really quiet since the fiasco with Tim Ball's latest conspiracy blurb and the response. Usually there are anything from three to eight articles a day. There have only been three articles in the past three days, including the fiasco article.

There's one by Willis Eschenbach about a buoy and temperatures. It's too trivial to archive. There's another by "Bob Tisdale", about an article on Ed Hawkins' blog by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh. "Bob's" article isn't worth reading, either, though if you want to do so it's archived here. The article on Ed Hawkin's blog is worth reading.

Dr. van Oldenborgh's article is explaining how there is more energy being stored on earth than is coming in from the sun. He writes how most of it is being accumulated in the ocean.

"Bob" on the other hand doesn't want his readers to hear about that. He's gone off on some tropospheric tangent. He's also gone down the route that deniers go down, foolishly writing:

As we can see, yes, the oceans to depths of 2000 meters (about 1.25 miles) have warmed according to the NODC data, but note the warming rate. It is only +0.03 deg C/decade. That’s read 3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade, which is a very tiny warming rate. It would be even tinier if we had data for the oceans from the surface to the ocean floor.

"Bob" doesn't mention the enormous heat capacity of the ocean. Just tosses around words like "miniscule" to describe ocean warming, which demonstrates his ignorance or his deceit. Or a mix of the two. Globally, the oceans are now probably as hot as they've been at least since the beginning of civilisation - and it won't stop as long as we insist on turning up the heat. The oceans absorb more than 90% of the extra energy that's being built up in the system. It won't take much for the surface to get quite a bit warmer. Here's a chart I did a while back on the ocean heat content:

Data Source: NOAA

You might recall that scientists have figured out that the oceans in the southern hemisphere have been warming faster - which doesn't show in the above.

There are some interesting charts in Dr. van Oldenborgh's article. He's plotted anomalies of surface temperatures against CO2, putting in the years. Go over and have a look. And while you're there you might think of something worthwhile to add to the comments, to let them know it's not just deniers reading the article :)

"Bob's" circular thinking

"Bob" is getting his excuses lined up for the next bout of global warming, writing:

Global surface temperatures in 2014 are very likely to be at record high levels in 2014. We are going to see that framed in many ways in months to come. However, we understand the reason for those record high levels to be the unusual warming of the eastern North Pacific. 

That's a bit like claiming that the water in the kettle boiled because it got hotter. It didn't boil because you put it on the stove and lit the gas.

From the WUWT comments

There aren't a lot of comments. I'll just pick out two as typical:

Neillusion is very sure what is not causing this very rapid rise in temperatures;

November 29, 2014 at 5:32 am
It is a change, a change from warming to ‘no change’ in temp that has three possible future trends, to start warming again, to stay even, or to start cooling. Until it is known why it warmed in the first place (and was cooling before that), no-one knows which of the three futures it’s gonna be. The only thing I’m personally sure of is that the ‘why’ has nothing to do with CO2

david smith, for some inexplicable reason, thinks that we here will be annoyed about what he thinks is virtually undetectable warming, that has been detected:

November 29, 2014 at 5:02 am
Thank you Bob. Informative as always.
The essential message from this post is (quite correctly) that we have absolutely nothing to worry about, the ocean ‘warming’ is virtually undetectable, and the models have been useless.
They’ll be annoyed over at Hot Whopper. 

Bob Tisdale gets into a spot of hot water

Today Perennially Puzzled "Bob Tisdale" is puzzling over sea level. He's branching out a bit from his normal sea surface temperature, or SST for those "in the know" like "Bob" :) - but not too far. And, for a change, he's decided to prove that it's not ENSO that's causing global sea levels to rise, sort of. He doesn't go quite as far as admitting that melting ice and thermal expansion of water from the hotter oceans or changing salinity have anything to do with sea level change, let alone that it's got anything to do with human activity. But it's a small step in the right direction.

Of course, he didn't admit to that.

The spot of hot water "Bob" got into (archived here) is near the Philippines. He wrote about "The region east of the Philippines" and said:

For months, I’ve wanted to plot the data for that region, so that I could get a rough idea of its contribution to the global rate of sea level rise.

Nervous or stupid laughter from WUWT as their anticipated ice age cometh fades

Some people laugh nervously when they get scared. Some people become hysterical when stress becomes too great to bear. That's what seems to be happening at WUWT today.

There's nothing of substance at WUWT since the article I wrote on earlier, about the extra hot seas. There is one new article (archived here), which got a much larger than normal response - 497 comments so far. It seems to be providing a release from the pent up anxiety, knowing about the record heat that's being observed lately. The new article was by Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale, who seems to be pushing the idea that it won't get hotter or drier or wetter with global warming because it's just models.

Bob put up a chart from the IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report, which showed the risk levels in different parts of the world and the potential for risk reduction.

It looks to me that the chart is of marginal utility, being more illustrative than predictive.  I say that from a parochial perspective because the chart doesn't list the three biggest hazards we face in the region in which I live, which are extreme heat, wildfire and water shortages (and associated threats to agricultural production and health).

Here's the diagram for what it's worth. It's Figure 2.4 from the recently released IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report - Longer report. Unlike Bob Tisdale, I've added the caption. Click the chart for a larger version:

Figure 2.4: Representative key risks for each region, including the potential for risk reduction through adaptation and mitigation, as well as limits to adaptation. Identification of key risks was based on expert judgment using the following specific criteria: large magnitude, high probability or irreversibility of impacts; timing of impacts; persistent vulnerability or exposure contributing to risks; or limited potential to reduce risks through adaptation or mitigation. Risk levels are assessed as very low, low, medium, high, or very high for three timeframes: the present, near term (here, for 2030-2040), and long term (here, for 2080–2100). For the near term, projected levels of global mean temperature increase do not diverge substantially across different emission scenarios. For the long term, risk levels are presented for two possible futures (2 °C and 4 °C global mean temperature increase above pre-industrial levels). For each time frame, risk levels are indicated for a continuation of current adaptation and assuming high levels of current or future adaptation. Risk levels are not necessarily comparable, especially across regions. {WGII SPM Assessment Box SPM.2 Table 1} Source: IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report - Longer report.

The chart shows a map of the world, with risks for nine regional areas, being six inhabited continents, the oceans, the polar regions and small islands. It purports to show the risk level for the present, the near term (2030-2040) and the long term, for two scenarios, 2°C and 4°C. As well as that it shows the potential for additional adaptation to reduce the risk.

So the diagram is quite clever, fitting a lot into the one chart. But it is very much simplified, which is why I say it's of marginal practical use. It is more illustrative than pragmatic. To get a better appreciation of the main risks to each region and the potential to adapt or not, or to act to reduce the various risks, you'll need to read the report itself - and the more detailed reports.

Nervous or stupid?

Bob Tisdale at WUWT is making light of the chart. That could be because it makes him very nervous so he jokes to reduce the stress. Or it could be because he is too stupid to realise that it should make him very nervous or at the very least, it should prompt him to act. If one takes his article at face value, it's because he's too stupid. He wrote:

The map resembles the planet Earth, where most of us reside. The continents are in the right places, and so are the oceans. But we know that’s not the Earth. The risks illustrated are based on climate models, and we know that climate models used by the IPCC for their reports are not based on Earth’s actual climate, as it has existed in the past, or as it exists now. The maps output by climate models may resemble our Earth, but they’re fantasy maps of a fantasy world. They create nothing more than an illusion…an illusion that is intended to make it look like bad things will happen in the future if we all do not agree to reduce our carbon footprints.

Bob's intelligent enough to understand what the diagram represents, but too thick to understand that the diagram is based, not just on models of future climate but on expert knowledge of past climate plus the current and potential economic, social and physical status of each region. He adds:

We need a name for the imaginary planet simulated by climate models—a planet that looks like Earth, but is not Earth. I’ll propose the climate-modeled planet be called TurnsToCrap. No matter how the modelers present the product of their endeavors, they show the planet TurnsToCrap.

So far his article has 497 responses, which must be a record not just for an article by Bob Tisdale, but for WUWT itself for this year. It's rare these days to get so many comments from the WUWT denialati. It comes across as an hysterical release of pent up nervousness.

The deniers have had a lot to get anxious about this past few weeks, with a swathe of announcements of record high temperatures shattering their dreams of an ice age to cometh.

From the WUWT comments

Most of the 497 comments are one-liners, with the deniers vying with each other to make the silliest remark. I've scanned some of them and few are genuinely funny. Most would not win a prize at a comedy festival. Quite a few did pick up on the fact that the future is grim if we don't reduce emissions. And there were a fair few who made an obligatory reference to "algore". Here's a small sample, you can read the rest here:

Resourceguy

November 14, 2014 at 11:32 am
Planet X, Y or Z, depending on the excuse needed.

Red Dust

November 14, 2014 at 11:34 am
Reblogged this on Scratch Living and commented:
I know a good name for the imaginary planet simulated climate models for the IPCC, “Paycheck” or “Easy Grants”.

Matthew R Marler

November 14, 2014 at 11:35 am
Good contributions above. Here are mine:
Simulistan,
Compustan,
Silicastan,
Democratic Republic of Alarm.

Mike Bryant

November 14, 2014 at 12:14 pm
Fear Sphere

Scott Wilmot Bennett  

November 14, 2014 at 4:46 pm
Terror Sphere
Terra Fear

steven strittmatter

November 14, 2014 at 12:30 pm
Algore-an. (As in a great disturbance in The Farce)

Jtom referred to the glaringly obvious about WUWT in general and this thread in particular. It could be that he intended it as an insult to career scientists rather than as an insult to his fellow WUWT illiterati. That would be if he was too incompetent to know he was incompetent:

November 14, 2014 at 7:57 pm
This might help explain the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which says stupid people are too stupid to realize they’re stupid:

DAVID DUNNING: Well, my specialty is decision-making. How well do people make the decisions they have to make in life? And I became very interested in judgments about the self, simply because, well, people tend to say things, whether it be in everyday life or in the lab, that just couldn’t possibly be true. And I became fascinated with that. Not just that people said these positive things about themselves, but they really, really believed them. Which led to my observation: if you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent.

ERROL MORRIS: Why not?

DAVID DUNNING: If you knew it, you’d say, “Wait a minute. The decision I just made does not make much sense. I had better go and get some independent advice.” But when you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is. In logical reasoning, in parenting, in management, problem solving, the skills you use to produce the right answer are exactly the same skills you use to evaluate the answer. And so we went on to see if this could possibly be true in many other areas. And to our astonishment, it was very, very true. 

WUWT wants your best paranoid conspiracy theory about the IPCC

WUWT has had three articles in the past 24 hours, protesting the latest reports from the IPCC. These IPCC reports are not new material. What they are is a Synthesis Report, combining the reports of the three working groups. And a Summary for Policymakers of that Synthesis Report.

You can download the reports from the IPCC website.

As well as a summary from the media reports (archived here), Anthony Watts has got utter nutters from the piddly and incestuous "climate science coalitions". He has a "press release" quoting Tom Harris (who gets his climate science from the Bible) and Bob Carter (who warns about an ice age comething) apparently claiming that the IPCC reports are "unscientific and immoral" (archived here).  Is that the best they can do? Seriously? I can't imagine the "press release" will be used anywhere except denier blogs that only pander to deniers and don't care how weird they look to the rest of the world.

Anthony Watts has also got "Bob Tisdale" calling for WUWT readers to post their best conspiracy theory about the IPCC (archived here).

About the IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). This was when conservative parties were in government. Ronald Reagan was US President and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister in the UK. Bob Hawke was the Prime Minister of Australia, but I doubt he would have had much say in this matter compared to the United States and Britain.

The IPCC itself employs only a very small staff. It's reports are prepared through a collaboration of thousands of scientists throughout the world, who volunteer their time to do so. Mostly this is unpaid out-of-hours work, because most of them would have to continue in their main job at the same time. The authors of the IPCC reports are experts in their respective fields. They review the latest scientific research and report on it. They judge the relevance, importance and accuracy of the research that has been published in scientific journals. There are also authors who write about policies, technology and actions taken to adapt to and mitigate global warming. This is based on information from a variety of sources, including industry peak bodies, government agencies and other reputable sources from around the world. Everything in the IPCC reports is heavily referenced so readers can verify the information.

IPCC reports are arguably the most comprehensive reports of any produced in the world today - by a long way. And the most scrutinised.

The IPCC has a well-defined structure. It also has a small secretariat to assist in coordinating its activities.  It is subject to the members of the UN and WMO, which span the spectrum of government structures, ideologies and political persuasions. The WMO currently has 185 member states and 6 territories. The UN currently has 193 member states. If the majority of governments wanted to do so, they could disband the IPCC. They don't.

What deniers think the IPCC is...

WUWT does odd things from time to time as if it wants to show how nutty its readers are. You may recall the "Denialism Saved Me" thread from last year, which was featured at HotWhopper here and here and here.

Human influence on the Californian drought

A much more acute situation

Daniel Swain and Noah Diffenbaugh and colleagues have been looking at the current drought in California to see if global warming has played a part. Earlier this year, their work was reported by Stanford:

The current drought is different from many of California's previous droughts. For example, the state's last major dry spell occurred in the early 1990s and was characterized by below-average amounts of rain and snowfall for several years.

"That's what we typically think of when we think of drought – a few years when precipitation is below normal. We don't conceptualize that the precipitation would just shut off," Swain said. "That's what's so remarkable about this drought. It's not a multi-year drought that's getting progressively worse as the years go by. It's that it has barely rained at all this year. That's a much more acute situation in a lot of ways."

Source: US Drought Monitor
(Click image to enlarge it.)

Three times more likely now than before industrialisation

Daniel Swain coined the term "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" or Triple R, to describe the large region of high atmospheric pressure that's preventing rains from getting to California and is causing the current drought. Results from their work have recently been published in a special supplement to this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). It turns out that the conditions causing the current drought are three times more likely to occur with global warming than without.

310,000 people are wrong and Bob Tisdale is right?

Last weekend, all around the world people gathered to urge action on climate. In New York City the gathering was estimated at 310,000. You can read more in the New York Times, where it got a front page spread.

The climate action rallies got under the skin of WUWT. So far there have been five different articles about them.

Today at wattsupwiththat, Perennially Puzzled "Bob Tisdale" decides that all these hundreds of thousands of people have their priorities skewed. Why? Because he looked up a UN survey.

Bob's headline was like something from The Onion:

More Than 310 Thousand People with Skewed Priorities Flood New York

Front-lines communities are out front at the NYC #PeopleClimate March pic.twitter.com/WuwBCJSHRH
— TckTckTck (@tcktcktck) September 21, 2014

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale morphs into PCT Bob Tisdale

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale is known for his "magical sunlight-fueled" oceans causing global warming. Until today I'd not seen his much of his paranoid conspiracy theorist (PCT) side.

He's decided that NASA is plotting to make the world hotter. Plotting charts at least. He wrote:

In June 2014, the 1998-2013 trend was 0.062 deg C/decade, and a few months later, it jumped up to 0.066 deg C/decade.

The old short-term trend must not have been high enough. GISS must not like it that the UKMO’s HADCRUT4 data is catching up with them during this period. Can’t have that.

It has been said before. It will be said again. The adjustments always seem to add to global warming.

He adds a bit so he only looks half nuts and not quite completely nuts, writing:

PS: Yes, I realize we’re discussing a trends presented in thousandths of a deg C/decade. But these small changes keep coming and they add up.

And he's worried, so he's anxious that deniers are given a "reason" just in case 2014 becomes the hottest year on record without his El Nino to help him out. Bob wrote:

With the adjustments, 2014 has a better chance of matching or breaking records.
That explains it. 

About GISTemp data

If you want to know what adjustments GISS has made, look no further than the GISS adjustment page - here. Or for adjustments to December 2011, you can read them on this page. And if you want to know how the GISTemp analysis is conducted, the latest and very complete description was prepared by James Hansen back in 2010. You can access it and other related papers on the GISS website here.

GISS uses the NOAA/NCDC GHCN V3 data. These data are updated daily, as described here. The ReadMe file states:

The GHCNM v3 is reprocessed on a daily basis, which means as a part of that reprocessing, the dataset is reconstructed from all original sources. The advantage to this process is when source datasets are corrected and/or updated the inclusion into GHCNM v3 is seemless.  The following sources (more fully described in section 2.2.1) have the following overwrite precedance (sic) within the daily reprocessing of GHCNM v3 (e.g. source K overwrites source P) - G,0-9,U,P,K,C,M,J,N,W,Z

That means that the data are expected to change. Yes, even going way back in time.

If you still have questions, GISS has provided an FAQ page here.

The difference is miniscule

Let's compare previous GISTemp data with the latest to see just what Bob is complaining about. Click the chart to enlarge it.

Data source: NASA GISS

The above chart is comparing the annual data to April 2014 (from my records as reported in May 2014) with the annual data to June 2014 (from Bob's WayBack Machine records) and August 2014 (as just reported this September).  The period covered is 1880 to 2013.

The first thing you'll probably notice is that there is very little difference between the three versions.

The next thing you might notice is that the trend in the current version is indeed higher than in the April version (click the chart to enlarge it). It's steeper by 0.0001 degrees Celsius a year. But you might also notice that the latest version has the same slope as Bob's June version that he is complaining so strongly about.  The trends for the period 1880 to 2014 are:

• April 2014 version - 0.0065
• June 2014 version = 0.0066
• August 2014 version = 0.0066.

Seriously? Bob Tisdale is complaining? In fact, Bob had to cherry pick his time period to get a difference in slope between his June 2014 version and this latest data. Here is the period that Bob selected - it's from 1998, a very hot year. Again, click the chart to enlarge it.

Data source: NASA GISS

The trends for the period 1998 to 2013 are:

• April 2014 version - 0.0060
• June 2014 version = 0.0062
• August 2014 version = 0.0066.

One thing I noticed is that going by the address link, it looks as if Bob's June version was a snapshot taken on 8 July. A few days later, on 14 July, GISTemp added in the missing May data from China and wrote:

July 14, 2014: The missing China May 2014 reports became available and are now part of our analysis. That correction increased the global May 2014 anomaly by a statistically insignificant 0.002 C.

That doesn't affect the above charts though. They are full year averages so they only go to 2013.

Oh No El Nino (so far)!

I think that Bob is getting very concerned because 2014 is shaping up as another hot year without the help of his sunlight-fueled El Nino. Not the hottest on record. If you compare the average temperatures from January to August in any year, 2014 is the fourth hottest for that period, after 2010, 1998 and 2007 in that order.

So far, looking at GISTemp, there have been two months this year that were the hottest for the month, namely August and May. January was the fourth hottest January. February was relatively cool. March was the third hottest March. May was the hottest May by a very long way. June was the third hottest June. July was relatively cool. August was the hottest August, just pipping August 2011.

GISTemp vs HadCRUT4

This article wouldn't be complete without comparing the two main global surface data series. I've plotted GISTemp with HadCRUT4, adjusting HadCRUT4 to make the baselines the same - 1951-1980. Click the chart to enlarge it so you can see the trend differences.

Data sources: NASA GISS and UK Met Office Hadley Centre

They are not all that different in the early years but since the 1970s, GISTemp is mostly above HadCRUT4. The trends are slightly different. I haven't tested for significance.

• HadCRUT4 = 0.0063
• GISTemp = 0.0066

The difference is most likely in their coverage of the polar regions. Perhaps someone can comment on that. (Eg Cowtan and Way's analysis.)

From the WUWT comments

Given the conspiratorial mutterings of Bob Tisdale, WUWT fans responded in kind.

Unmentionable meekly asks:

September 15, 2014 at 10:07 am
Gee, I wonder why the adjustments never go down in any year?

 Jim G goes into a full-on paranoid conspiracy fantasy, including unemployment, wars, the media and of course the US government:

 September 15, 2014 at 10:32 amThey do adjust previous years downward to make the temperature trend look more upward. We have the worst bunch of liars running the US government that I have seen in my lifetime, by far. Inflation calculations have been adjusted to make inflation look small when by 1980’s standards it would presently be about 9.5%, unemployment/underemployment is much higher than reported due to all the folks no longer in the employment numbers, the propaganda outlets (news reports) do not tell us that most of the new job formation is part-time, low wage McJobs, GDP calculations ahve been changed and include items like government spending that make it look better and the list goes on and on. Benghazi, IRS, Fast and Furious, etc., etc.

The media outlets are heavily responsible for the lack of informed citizens in our country and unfortunately there are few to hold them accountable. Even Fox News falls down on the job not reporting the full story ie the effects of the fed’s open market operations on the markets or the rules of engagement which cause even conservatives to oppose troops on the ground when the goal of war should be to win, decisively, and it is not, and has not been since WWII.

dp subscribes to the conspiracy theory that it's all about money. Talk about projection!

September 15, 2014 at 12:30 pm
If they went down I’d suspect criminal intent. They go up because that is what is needed to attract government money.

Michael D proposes that scientists hide the incline:

September 15, 2014 at 10:23 am
Looks like its gone up about 0.07 deg C in 15 years. So many half a degree per century ? If they would plot this on a linear graph with absolute zero as the X-axis that would put it in perspective.

John Coleman, denier weather journalist is sad, not at Bob's desperate cherry pick, but because scientists report the science in a frank and fearless manner instead of hiding it from the public. He calls for a denialist media blitz to try to swamp facts under a pile of disinformation:

September 15, 2014 at 10:35 am
I am deeply saddened that our tax funded federal agencies, NOAA, NWS, NASA, are totally involved in the Climate Change scare campaign. Small and large actions are constantly building a federal foundation under this bad science. We mere citizens have little power to battle back. Thanks to all the great scientific minds that display the truth in posts and comments here on WUWT. I know many of you are posting on other websites as well. I really think the time has come to organize into a active, coordinated blitz email, letters, posts and cyber invasions on selected sites. Otherwise, I fear I will die among losers.

policycritic thinks a denier disinformation blitz attack is a grand idea and asks for addresses.

September 15, 2014 at 11:10 am
John, do you have a list of names to hit up? Emailing into the maw gets any effort deleted by hirelings, who are do-as-you’re-tolders hired to cull cranks and those who should be ignored. It’s a waste of time and resources. An email directed to a specific person should make it by the first cut. Since you are far closer to the biz and an insider, perhaps you could expand on this comment by saying who should be contacted by email and letter, and have Anthony put it up as a headline post.

I would be more than happy to write, but I am not going to waste two to three hours to have it deleted by a minimum-wager whose success depends upon pleasing the boss. I DO know that physical letters carry enormous weight; the logic is that someone must [really] give a damn to take the time. A well-written physical letter carries the weigh of 10,000 letter/opinions. The non-smoking sections in airplanes came about as a result of three letters.

J Lais is a gullible fake sceptic and asks the expert disinformers a question:

September 15, 2014 at 11:00 am
Are these adjustments cumulative in any sense? Ponzi schemes collapse under the weight of the constantly increasing payout required to keep the scheme afloat. Can they keep these small adjustments up forever, or could they reach a point where the departure from reality is too large to hide. Is there any way they are sowing the seeds of their own exposure and downfall? Can they tweak the satellite record or is that safe from manipulation?

Pamela Gray used to pretend (sometimes) to be educated. She's just another disinformer as shown by the fact that today she's pretending to be a conspiracy theorist of the paranoid kind.

September 15, 2014 at 8:30 pm
It used to be done with white-out and a straight edge. Now all you have to do is delete and re-enter the value you want, hit print and voilà! Global Warming!

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale surfs the surface at Florida Keys

Update: For the benefit of new WUWT visitors, I wasn't banned from WUWT for troll behaviour. I was banned for being a "clueless female eco-nut", because of an innocuous tweet. (In four years I only made about 30 comments at WUWT, mostly polite and on topic.) Click here to read about it. I'm not alone. WUWT is intolerant of anyone who accepts science.

Also, don't fall for the typical paranoid conspiracy ideation you may have read at WUWT. 7DaBrooklynKnight7 has never been banned, and what he, not I, suggested was his parting comment is not lost forever, it was moved to where super-silly comments often go - to the HotWhoppery :)

Unlike WUWT, I rarely disappear comments completely and have had to ban very, very few people, and only then for extreme behaviour. Click here for the comment policy. (Also unlike WUWT, and the shameless double standards of it's various anonymice like the "Bob Tisdale's" of the world, I respect people's right to privacy and prefer to focus on the science.)

Sou 28 October 2014

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Perennially puzzled "Bob Tisdale" is a one trick pony. His trick is sea surface temperature. Or so he pretends. He's no climate expert. He's not a climate scientist. He's best known at WUWT for his dabbles in ENSO.

Today "Bob Tisdale" wrote an article at WUWT (archived here) that he claims disproves practically everything in a recent paper about coral reefs. Not just any corals, the paper was specifically about corals in Florida Keys. Thing is, Bob Tisdale didn't bother reading the paper much less try to understand it.

Bob has no excuse for not reading the paper. It's open access and you can read it here. The title of the paper is:

A Century of Ocean Warming on Florida Keys Coral Reefs: Historic In Situ Observations

It was reporting research done by scientists at the US Geological Survey and elsewhere with a team led by Florida-based marine biologist Ilsa Kuffner.

Bob wasn't interested in the paper. He wasn't interested in the fact that it was a report based on in situ observations. He probably isn't at all familiar with the reefs around Florida Keys. Just the same he took it on himself to decide that the research should have instead been about:

One Hundred and Forty Three Years of Gridded Sea Surface Temperature off the Coast of Florida using HadISST

Deniers toss out direct measurements, preferring homogenised estimates

Bob didn't want the scientists to use site-specific data, or temperature under the sea surface where the corals are. Data painstakingly collected from specific locations over decades, using thermometers, calibrated data loggers and precision thermographs.  Data carefully analysed by qualified experts over weeks or months. Without filling in gaps in data, and where the researchers discarded the small amount of data that couldn't be corroborated.

That sounds like just what deniers clamour for, doesn't it. You'd think they'd be singing the praises of the researchers. Recall their horror at gaps in climate data being infilled by estimates based on surrounding regions. Recall the perennial protests from deniers at climate data being homogenised to correct for calibration errors, station moves, breaks in the data.

Not this time though. Nope. This time they want massaged, combined, "manipulated" data estimated from multiple sources. Bob Tisdale didn't want a bar of actual direct observations using thermometers and precise measuring instruments on site. Instead Bob trotted off to KNMI Climate Explorer and got different data. He preferred gridded data estimated from combining observations from ships, from buoys, from satellites, with data gaps filled by interpolation. He wasn't interested in the temperature changes of the coral reefs themselves. He was only interested in the temperature of the thin skin of the sea surface - averaged over a wide area well beyond the corals the scientists were researching. Yet leaving out some of the area that the researchers did cover.

Bob spent a few minutes plotting HadISST surface temperatures of the ocean far afield. He then triumphantly pronounced the months of dedicated detailed scientific research about coral reefs in Florida Keys was dead in the sea water (so to speak).

But it's Bob who is wrong and woefully so.

(This article is very long. If you're on the home page click the read more to see what the paper is about and the reaction of the fake sceptics and resident pseudo-science disinformer, Bob Tisdale, at WUWT.)

James Risbey and co: Another perspective on surface temperature observations and climate models

The new Risbey paper that so puzzled Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale and caused them to make public fools of themselves yet again, was not an evaluation of climate models. It wasn't an evaluation of model's ability to emulate ENSO. The research was answering the following question:

How well have climate model projections tracked the actual evolution of global mean surface air temperature?

Their answer was:

These tests show that climate models have provided good estimates of 15-year trends, including for recent periods and for Pacific spatial trend patterns.

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale gets it wrong again

Bob Tisdale writing at WUWT (archived here) gets so much wrong in his article about the Risbey paper that it would take several articles to demolish every item. I'm not about to go to all that trouble. Let me just list a few things he got wrong:

• Bob confuses weather and climate. He mistakes climate models for weather forecasts.
• Bob is a greenhouse effect denier and rejects the conservation of energy. He thinks global warming is caused by El Niño. He has never come up with an explanation of where the energy comes from nor why he thinks El Niño has suddenly decided to cause global warming when it never did in hundreds of thousands of years before.
• Bob mistakenly thinks the Risbey paper was an evaluation of CMIP5 models. It wasn't. It said nothing about the worth of the models nor about their ability to model ENSO.
• Bob misunderstands the way "best" and "worst" are used in the paper.
• Bob misunderstands the way the researchers did the study. He thinks they selected four "models" and he and Anthony Watts made a big point of that. But they were mistaken. I describe below how the research team selected subsets of model runs for consecutive fifteen year windows.
• Bob confuses replication of the research with checking arithmetic. He mistakenly thinks the work cannot be replicated. It can. All the information needed to do so is provided in the paper itself. You don't even have to start from scratch. The research team tells you which models have SST data to compare with Niño 3.4. It will take a lot of work, particularly downloading all the model runs from the publicly available data (http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/). The observations are readily available to the public as well, including GISTemp, HadCRUT4 and Cowtan and Way. Niño 3.4 values can be got from NOAA, sea surface temperature data from HadISST.
• plus he makes lots more errors, some of which I describe below.

If I had to pick one mistake out of all the mistakes Bob made, apart from not understanding basic thermodynamics and conservation of energy, perhaps Bob's biggest mistake is that he thinks CMIP5 climate models are designed to model day to day and year to year real world weather for the next several centuries. They aren't. That's an impossible task. It would mean being able to accurately predict not only random weather fluctuations but also every action that could affect weather. Such as how many aeroplanes are going to be flying where and when. Where and when the next volcanic eruption will be and how energetic it will be and what will be the composition of the stuff that blows out of it. How the sun will vary over time. Plus being able to find a computer of a size, and people to code, every single possible present and future interaction between the air, the land, animals, plants, the oceans, the ice, clouds, rivers, lakes, trees, the sun and outer space.  Humans are good and computers are powerful, but not that good and not that powerful. It's not just random fluctuations and disturbances in nature. We also affect the weather. Scientists model climate with those big computer models, not day to day weather.

I've written more below about the difference between models that are used to make weather forecasts and models used for climate projections - with some examples and links to further reading.

Climate models and natural internal variability - if in phase it's pure chance

Before talking about any of the hows and whys of Bob Tisdale getting it wrong, let me follow up my article from a couple of days ago and talk more about the Risbey paper itself and climate models in general. If you want to read more about climate models, I recommend the article by Scott K. Johnson at Ars Technica.

The abstract and opening paragraph of Risbey14 is important to understand if you are wanting to know what the paper is about. In particular these sentences:

Some studies and the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report suggest that the recent 15-year period (1998–2012) provides evidence that models are overestimating current temperature evolution. Such comparisons are not evidence against model trends because they represent only one realization where the decadal natural variability component of the model climate is generally not in phase with observations.

Climate vs weather

The bit I put in bold italics is what this paper is all about. Some people wrongly think that climate models designed to make long term projections should also reflect natural internal variability happening at exactly the same time as it happens in reality. Why they have that expectation is anyone's guess. As you know, even weather forecasts that are primed with the most recent weather observations can only predict weather a few days out at most before chance takes over and they head off in all sorts of random different directions. Climate models that don't have recent observations plugged in, but rely on physics, will include natural variability but that random natural variability will only occasionally be in sync with reality and then purely by chance. It's the effects of long term forcings like increasing greenhouse gases that are evident in climate projections and that's what we are most interested in from them. In other words, long term climate models are for projections of climate not weather.

How realistic are climate model projections?

The Risbey paper was looking to see if climate model projections were overestimating warming or not. It took a different approach to that taken by other studies. Other studies have looked at the question from different angles. Stephan Lewandowsky has explained three previous approaches in his article about the Risbey paper. You can read about them there, there is no need for me to repeat them here.

I will repeat the following from Stephan's article though, because it's a point that science deniers ignore. Observations remain within the envelope of climate model projections. As Stephan showed, this is illustrated by a chart from a paper by Doug Smith in Nature Climate Change last year.

Source: Smith13 via ShapingTomorrowsWorld

The chart above shows three things. First that the overall trend is up. It's getting hotter. Secondly observations are within the envelope of model projections. Thirdly that over time temperature goes up and down and doesn't go up at a steady pace. The bottom part of the chart is the trend per decade. It goes up and down but has mostly been in positive territory since 1970.

Predicting weather and climate

The Risbey paper sets the scene by describing the difference between a climate forecast and a climate projection, then the difference between weather variability and climate. It describes a climate forecast as attempting to take account of the correct phase of natural internal climate variations whereas climate projections do not.

Apart from any practical considerations, there are good reasons for this distinction. For climate projections looking ahead from decades to centuries, it doesn't matter much when natural internal climate variations come and go on a year to year basis. The interest is in the long term overall picture. For the next several decades and centuries, the interest will be in how much surface temperatures will rise, how quickly ice will melt, how soon and by how much seas will rise and where they will rise the most etc.

Even for projections over decades, we are most interested in regional climate change. Not interannual fluctuations such as ENSO variations so much as long term changes in the patterns of rainfall and temperature. ENSO affects weather. It will happen without climate change. The more important questions for the long term are things like: Will a region be getting wetter or drier? Will it be subject to more or less drought? Will the annual pattern of precipitation change, which will affect agricultural production, water supply management, flood control measures?

Climate models aren't yet able to be relied upon for projecting regional patterns of climate change with great accuracy but they can provide a guide.

The point is different models are adapted and used for different purposes. There are models used to predict short term weather. Some forecasts are fully automated (computer-generated) and others have human input. They are only useful for looking ahead seven to ten days. They are good for guiding decisions on whether to pack an umbrella, plant a crop, be alert for floods or scheduling construction tasks.

There are models that are constructed or adapted to make medium term weather forecasts, like those used by the Bureau of Meteorology to predict ENSO looking out over a few weeks to months. They are useful for making farm management decisions, utility companies making decisions on water storages (store or release water from dams), putting in a rainwater tank if it looks as if the next few months will be dry etc. They are forecasting weather not climate.

Then there are models adapted or constructed for longer term regional outlooks and models developed to look at the world as a whole.

Energy moves around between the surface, the ocean and the atmosphere

Climate models are used for more than just surface temperature. It's surface temperature that probably gets most attention in the media and on denier blogs. The world as a whole is warming up very quickly. Different parts of the system heat up at different times at different rates. Sometimes the air heats up more quickly than others. Different depths in the oceans heat up at different rates at different times too. Ice melts, but not at a steady pace. All that is because all these different parts of the system are connected. Heat flows between them. Anyone who goes swimming will have experienced the patches of warm water and patches of cold water in lakes, rivers and the sea. Just as heat is uneven on a small scale, it's uneven on a large scale.

I know some of you will be wondering why I'm taking readers back to climate kindergarten. Well if you read some of the comments to the previous article you can guess why. And if you manage to wade through even a part of Bob Tisdale's article at WUWT and the comments beneath, you'll get an even better appreciation.

CMIP5 projections are based on climate models not weather forecasts

All that is a prelude to the Risbey paper. It was looking at whether or not the recent global surface temperature trends are any different to what can reasonably be expected from model projections, given natural internal variability in the climate.

So the first thing to understand is that the CMIP5 climate model projections used by the IPCC will not generally model internal variability in phase with that observed over the model run. They do include internal variability but it's a stochastic property. It's purely a matter of chance when any model will show an El Niño spike or a La Niña dip in temperature for example. Whether a particular spike or dip lines up with what happens is pure chance. Sometimes a model run will be in phase with the natural variability observed and other times it won't. It's not important. Over time the natural internal variability cancels out. It's the long term trends that are of interest here, not whether an El Niño or La Niña happens at a particular time.

The Risbey approach

I call it the Risbey approach because James Risbey from Australia's CSIRO was the lead author. However I believe it was Stephan Lewandowsky who came up with the idea to take a look. Stephan thought it would be interesting to see what would be the effect on observations if the modeled natural internal variation was in phase with those observed.

Recall the point about climate models incorporating internal natural variation, but not necessarily in sync with when it happens in reality.  So what the team did was to look at windows of fifteen year periods and scan for model runs that were most closely aligned with observations, taking ENSO as the main measure of internal natural variability.

From the perspective of interannual internal variability, the factor that affects surface temperature as much or perhaps more than any other is ENSO. El Niño warms the atmosphere and La Niña has a cooling effect on the atmosphere. What happens is that heat is shifted between the ocean and the air. If there was no global warming trend, the surface temperature would go up and down with ENSO, leaving a long term trend of zero. (I've written a long article about ENSO, which includes references to good authorative sources.)

This brings us to the opening paragraph of the Risbey paper. On a short time frame, to see if models are reasonable, one needs to look at models that forecast. In other words, models that include natural internal variation that is in phase with what actually happens. Short to medium term forecast models do this by initialising them with the most recent observations or incorporating of the latest observations.  Most climate projection models are independent of recent observations. They are based on physics not live readings of what is happening. So if they happen to be in phase with internal natural variability at any time, it will only be by chance.

If you want to allow for natural internal variability and compare models with observations, one way you can do that is to look at model runs that happen to have a period of natural internal variability in phase with observations for the period of interest. That's what the Risbey team did.

Risbey14 looked at individual model runs and compared them with observations. For each fifteen year period they selected the model runs that were in phase with real world observations in relation to ENSO. They started with 1950 to 1964, then 1951 to 1965, then 1952 to 1966 etc. After selecting the models most closely aligned with ENSO phases observed for one fifteen year period, they moved up a year and looked at the next fifteen year period and so on. As well as that they were able to select, for each fifteen year period, the models that were most out of phase with ENSO.

Here is a conceptual visualisation of what they did:

Don't take too much notice of the actual data. It's a composite CMIP5 with GISTemp. And I'm not suggesting they eyeballed like that. They didn't. The above is just to get across the concept of what was done. In practice, the researchers selected model runs on the basis of their similarity in timing with real world observations of Niño 3.4 and related spatial patterns of sea surface temperature in the Pacific. [Correction: Stephan Lewandowsky has advised that during the selection phase they didn't look at the spatial patterns beyond Niño 3.4, which makes sense in the context of Figure 5 discussed below.] The image above is just so you get the idea that they looked at fifteen year periods starting with the period from 1950 to 1964.

The meaning of "Best" and "Worst"

That leads me to the discussion of "best" and "worst" that you may have read about and that Bob Tisdale got so wrong.

The research was not evaluating models. There is labeling on Figure 5 in the paper, which uses the words "best" and "worst". However there is no suggestion that the four "best" models are in any way superior to the four "worst" models in terms of what they are designed to do, which is future projections of climate. The word "best" denoted the subset of model runs in any fifteen year period that were most in phase with observations for ENSO. Conversely the word "worst" denoted the model runs that were least in phase with ENSO observations.

The paper compares the spatial pattern of temperature variation for the period 1998 to 2012. It compares models most in phase with the ENSO regime with observations as below. The real world observations are on the right: (click to view larger size)

Source: Figure 5 Risbey14

It also compares models most out of phase with the ENSO regime with observations:

Source: Figure 5 Risbey14

The point being made was that the model runs most in phase with the real world ENSO observations had a "PDO-like" spatial pattern of cooling in the east Pacific. Look at the above charts close to the equator near South America.  In the top left hand chart, while not as cool, the overall pattern is closer to the observations on the right. In the bottom chart, the warming is smudged all over and it doesn't show the cooler east Pacific. Figure 5 showed that the model runs most out of phase showed a "more uniform El Niño-like warming in the Pacific".

Bob Tisdale was thrown by the word "best" and "worst". He also seemed to think the climate model runs should have been identical to the real world. He's wrong because he doesn't understand what CMIP5 climate models are for or how they work. As the paper states, when you select only the model runs in phase for the period, you get much closer spatial similarity, not just a closer match for the surface temperature as a whole. When you lump all the climate model runs together, the multi-model trends average out the internal variability. Models will cancel out the effect of each other when you lump them all together, because on shorter time scales, it's only by chance that some have internal variability in phase with the real world.

When it comes to "best" and "worst", the paper was only referring to the extent to which selected model runs were in phase with the real world. There is no suggestion in the paper that any one model was any better as a model than any other. The research was not an evaluation of climate models. In fact, different models were in and out of phase in different fifteen year windows. Just because by pure chance a model run was in phase with ENSO over a particular time period did not mean that same model run was in phase with ENSO in other time periods.

Models will go in and out of phase with the real world over time. That randomness is intrinsic to climate models. The models are designed to respond to forcings like increasing greenhouse gases and changes in solar radiation. They exhibit internal variation too, because the physics is built in. But it won't generally be at exactly the same time as it happens in the real world. (If there were long term models that could do that, then most weather bureaus would be out of business.)

Now, if you have a large enough sample, then in any fifteen year period some model runs will line up pretty well with natural fluctuations in the real world. Just by chance. So if you want to see a short period of time, like say the last fifteen years, you can see if any model runs line up with ENSO over that period and if they do, how close are they overall to global surface temperature observations.

That's probably the nuts and bolts of the paper. Comparing all model runs for a short period like the last few years won't tell you a whole lot about whether the models are realistic or not. That's because individual model runs won't necessarily be in sync with the real world in regard to natural variability. They are expected to reflect the dominant climate forcings but not the exact timing of ENSO for example.

By looking just at model runs that just happen to be in sync (by chance), you can see how much they vary from the real world observations. This study showed that once you allow for the fact that models won't be in phase with natural variability, then the models are even closer to real world observations. I'll finish with the two figures showing trends, that Stephan had in his article. The one on the left is from the "in-phase" model runs compared with observations. The one on the right is those least "in-phase" compared with observations. As always, click to enlarge.

Source: Risbey14 via Shaping Tomorrow's World

Further reading:

• For another perspective, with links to related papers, Dana Nuccitelli has an article on the subject at the UK Guardian.
• Here's the link again to Stephan Lewandowsky's article, which also has links to related papers.
• I wrote previously about Gavin Schmidt's paper on this topic, taking a different approach.
• Watch this space for more.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to James Risbey for answering my naive questions so promptly. Thanks to Stephan Lewandowsky for describing the work so well. Any mistakes in this article are mine. It wasn't checked by any of the paper's authors before publication. Since then, I've made one correction, thanks to Stephan L. And thanks to all those who made available a copy of the paper so I could write this article - RN, AS, JR and SL.

Note: updated with more links to WUWT. Sou 11:14 pm 24 July 2014

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James S. Risbey, Stephan Lewandowsky, Clothilde Langlais, Didier P. Monselesan, Terence J. O’Kane & Naomi Oreskes. "Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase." Nature Climate Change (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2310

No fatal blunder: Matching climate models with ENSO matches observations.

Update 2: I've now written the promised article. You can read it here. And you can click here to see the previous HotWhopper article on the subject.

Update: The devastating rebuttal is out (archived here). It is, as expected, not devastating at all, unless you were under the mistaken impression that Bob Tisdale understood climate models and global warming. If that were the case - be devastated. It's not a rebuttal either. All it is is Bob Tisdale missing the point and contradicting himself a few times in the process. He seems to think that the authors are dividing models into "good" and "bad". By my reading, he's missing the point. What the authors were doing is providing further evidence that the so-called "pause" is the result of natural variation (see below).

Anthony's own promised rebuttal hasn't appeared. I wonder if he was hoping that Bob Tisdale would let him appear as joint author? You can read the archived WUWT article here if you want to. I've got other things to do so won't be able to rebut Bob's rebuttal for a while yet (see PS below).

While I'm away, if anyone can send me a copy of the paper I'd be grateful (sou at hotwhopper.com). I've emailed the authors, which is a bit hit and miss and/or it may be a while before they see my request. Got it now, thanks.

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We're waiting for pseudo-science journalist Anthony Watts to write his "denier-blog-peer-reviewed" rebuttal to the new Risbey & co paper, describing the fatal blunder they think they've discovered. In the meantime, here is what looks to be the essence of the paper as described by Stephan Lewandowsky. (I'm not as clever as Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale because I don't have a clue what the fatal blunder could be.)

First the abstract to the paper in Nature Climate Change (my paras):

The question of how climate model projections have tracked the actual evolution of global mean surface air temperature is important in establishing the credibility of their projections. Some studies and the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report suggest that the recent 15-year period (1998–2012) provides evidence that models are overestimating current temperature evolution. Such comparisons are not evidence against model trends because they represent only one realization where the decadal natural variability component of the model climate is generally not in phase with observations.

We present a more appropriate test of models where only those models with natural variability (represented by El Niño/Southern Oscillation) largely in phase with observations are selected from multi-model ensembles for comparison with observations. These tests show that climate models have provided good estimates of 15-year trends, including for recent periods and for Pacific spatial trend patterns.

Stephan described how in order to compare models to observations, they "must be brought into phase with the oceans. In particular, the models must be synchronized with El Niño – La Niña". He described three approaches to doing this, which have already been published, including one that I've written about here. He then goes on to describe this new analysis:

The fourth approach was used in a paper by James Risbey, myself, and colleagues from CSIRO in Australia and at Harvard which appeared in Nature Climate Change today.

This new approach did not specify any of the observed outcomes and left the existing model projections from the CMIP5 ensemble untouched. Instead, we select only those climate models (or model runs) that happened to be synchronized with the observed El Niño - La Niña preference in any given 15-year period. In other words, we selected those models whose projected internal natural variability happened to coincide with the state of the Earth’s oceans at any given point since the 1950’s. We then looked at the models’ predicted global mean surface temperature for the same time period.

For comparison, we also looked at output from those models that were furthest from the observed El Niño - La Niña trends.

The results are shown in the figure below, showing the Cowtan and Way data (in red) against model output (they don't differ qualitatively for the other temperature data sets):

Stephan posted these charts - click to see them enlarged:

He wrote:

The data represent decadal trends within overlapping 15-year windows that are centered on the plotted year. The left panel shows the models (in blue) whose internal natural variability was maximally synchronized with the Earth’s oceans at any point, whereas the right panel shows the models (in gray) that were maximally out of phase with the Earth.

The conclusion is fairly obvious: When the models are synchronized with the oceans, they do a great job. Not only do they reproduce global warming trends during the last 50 years, as shown in the figure, but they also handle the spatial pattern of sea surface temperatures (the figure for that is available in the article).

In sum, we now have four converging lines of evidence that highlight the predictive power of climate models.

You can read Stephan Lewandowsky's full article here - it's worth it.

Now what problems Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale think they have found is still a mystery, which we will unravel in due course. I can't fathom what it could be.

I wonder if they both think that all climate models should mimic natural variability in synchronisation with what is observed? That would be an unrealistic expectation, though it would be nice to have. It would also suggest that they don't understand climate models. My favourite description of models is provided by Scott K. Johnson at Ars Technica.

I'll add to this article once Anthony has written his devastating rebuttal :) Meanwhile, try to get your head around what Anthony finds "of interest". His brain is positively addled with conspiratorial ideation. He added this to his earlier article, where the paper describes the contributions from the various authors:

of interest is this:

Contributions
J.S.R. and S.L. conceived the study and initial experimental design. All authors contributed to experiment design and interpretation. S.L. provided analysis of models and observations. C.L. and D.P.M. analysed Niño3.4 in models. J.S.R. wrote the paper and all authors edited the text.

And this will amuse:

The rebuttal will be posted here shortly.

PS I've now got two three copies of the paper - thank you very much RN and AS and JR. I'm on the road today, and won't get a chance to sit down and write about Bob's ramblings before tomorrow. Same goes for comments. I'll be able to delete dumb comments, but won't have time to repost them to the HotWhoppery until tomorrow. (That last is just in case any little mouse thinks of playing while the cat's away ...)

Sou 11:24 am AEST 21 July 2014

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James S. Risbey, Stephan Lewandowsky, Clothilde Langlais, Didier P. Monselesan, Terence J. O’Kane & Naomi Oreskes. "Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase." Nature Climate Change (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2310