NASA has conceded that climate models lack the precision required to make climate projections due to the inability to accurately model clouds.
Clouds have the capacity to dramatically influence climate changes in both radiative longwave (the “greenhouse effect”) and shortwave.
Cloud cover domination in longwave radiation
In the longwave, clouds thoroughly dwarf the CO2 climate influence. According to Wong and Minnett (2018):
- The signal in incoming longwave is 200 W/m² for clouds over the course of hours. The signal amounts to 3.7 W/m² for doubled CO2 (560 ppm) after hundreds of years.
- At the ocean surface, clouds generate a radiative signal 8 times greater than tripled CO2 (1120 ppm).
- The absorbed surface radiation for clouds is ~9 W/m². It’s only 0.5 W/m² for tripled CO2 (1120 ppm).
- CO2 can only have an effect on the first 0.01 mm of the ocean. Cloud longwave forcing penetrates 9 times deeper, about 0.09 mm.
Cloud cover domination in shortwave radiation
In its shortwave albedo capacity, cloud cover modulates the amount of solar radiation that warms the ocean. Changes in the Earth’s radiation budget “are caused by changes in tropical mean cloudiness.” (Wielicki et al., 2002).
When cloud cover increases, less shortwave radiation reaches the surface, leading to cooling. When cloud cover decreases – as it has since the 1980s – more solar radiation is absorbed.
The decrease in cloud cover in recent decades can, therefore, explain 1979-2017 warming (Herman et al., 2013, Poprovsky, 2019, Loeb et al., 2018).
IPCC and NASA acknowledge that we can’t model clouds with the requisite accuracy
The IPCC has admitted there is a great deal of “continuing uncertainty” in the sign and magnitude of the cloud influence. Most models indicate positive feedback (more warming), but this “is not well understood” and the IPCC scientists “are not confident that it is realistic.”
NASA has been even more candid about the massive uncertainties associated with cloud climatology.
Some clouds “cool more than they heat” and other clouds “warm more than they cool.”
In some models “clouds decrease the net greenhouse effect, whereas in others they intensify it.”
Because the uncertainties are so pervasive, NASA concludes that “today’s models must be improved by about a hundredfold in accuracy” if we wish to make climate projections.
Uncertainty in the effects of cloud forcing are 20-40 times larger than the projected greenhouse gas warming for the next century
Due to the enormous uncertainties associated with cloud cover changes, the IPCC’s CO2 emission scenarios used to calculate warming are reduced to the realm of nearly evidence-free presumption.
Using the IPCC’s emission scenarios, for example, the projected greenhouse gas-induced warming by 2100 is 3.7°C. Due to cloud forcing errors, the uncertainty in this projection is ±130°C!
“When both the cloud and the forcing uncertainties are allowed to accumulate together, after 5 years the A2 [greenhouse gas-induced] scenario includes a 0.34°C warmer Earth but a ±8.8°C uncertainty. At 10 years this becomes 0.44±15° C and 0.6±27.7°C in 20 years. By 2100, the projection is 3.7±130°C.”
Unless we can model clouds, we cannot model climate with any precision
Due to the dominant influence of cloud cover in facilitating climate change, dramatically improving our woefully insufficient capacity to model clouds is both necessary and fundamental.
Climate science should rise to the challenge rather than continuing to gloss over or even dismiss the profound cloud modeling problem undermining climate projections.
Read more at No Tricks Zone
NASA “We Really Don’t Know Clouds, at All”
Me “Interlacials aren’t what they used to be”.
You might care to consider my humble and very simple offering referenced already above, and again at the end here. Because I want other numerate people, preferably with basic A level/High School physics, to read it, or at least the abstract and conclusions if GCSE maths is the level.
One peripheral and unavoidable conclusion of such a study as I did it is the way the Earth has coped with past events of considerable magnitude, including the ice age warmings. Interglacails of 7Ka are a well measured example of a “step function” response, in geological time scales. Also of massive proportions, 6×10^25 Joules added to the oceans, roughly. What happens? Thermal runaway!*? The end of the World forhumans? Nope. The natural control locks it down within a few degrees of where it started with a new heat balance and a lot more clouds, and rain, and volcanic output…. “Nothing to ese here, keep moving please.”
What can deliver this massive stabilisation of the system? The water vapour. What else is there?
Of course the atmosphere is the smart thermal blanket that maintains planetary heat balance at equilibrium. It does this by hosting water vaour;s various effects that deliver the control by modifying SST to balance solar radiation and geothermal heat inputs, mainly oceanic, conduction and magma. GHE is not a control here, it just changes the temperature gradient. This currently delivers the ice age range, under control of the MIlankovitch 100Ka control for the last 1Ma, and the 41Ka control for 2.5Ma before that, when the Earth was a bit warmer and had a bit more lead in its volcanic pencil, so the shorter sharper 41Ka submarine volcanic maximum event could reach peak interglacial, I suggest.
This control has worked since we had oceans, for warmer and ice age periods. A cloudscreen regulating insolation to keep us comfy, and not an ice lanet, and even civilised from hunter gatherers l as a result of the last interglacial. All thanks to the surface water, and the submarine volcanoes the last 3.5Ma?
Your comment is also insightful as to the realities of the scale of available effects, because, once we had t 2/3 of the planet covered by deep enough surface puddles of the oceans, the risk to the control system was never at the warm end of the range. At the warmer end the surface evaporative and condensative SST cooling plus the variable cloud albedo in the Tropics are massive effects, currently 140W/m^2 on a 10 year average per NASA and demonstrably flat line the “rapidly” rising intergacial peaks, whatever the CO2 is doing , as the evaporative effect grows on a power law (note to Al Gore – what stops the interglacial warmings, Al?).
nb: A far as the clouds: If the natural control is as it appears, less clouds imply that the lower amount of clouds are a response to a reduction in total heat reaching the surface, from either source of heat. A cooling, not a warming, by reducing solar activity or reducing magma entering the oceans. Both are happening, but the tiny short term effect that humans can just detect in a lifetime, possibly, is dominant in the record. Also this current increase is well predicted by three solar cycles that account for all the observed variability up and down this interglacial, per Lüdecke Und Weiss.The change for the decades to 2050 is significant cooling from declines in total solar energy on three known cycles of 1,000, 600 and 300 years. , which perhaps the clouds are already compensating for?
sic: “The Fourier spectrum of a global temperature record G7, composed of high quality temperature proxies worldwide and recent instrumental data demonstrate the dominance of three climate cycles with ~1000 (Eddy cycle), ~460 (not named but frequently reported), and ~190 year periods (De Vries/Suess cycle). These three sines represent the 31-year running mean …. with the remarkable Pearson correlation of 0.84 indicating their importance for climate” QED
BUT… and as you suggest, interglacials are notthe problem, “it’s behind you!”.
The real risk of runaway is during the long term “stable”, also “geologically quiescent”, – apart from the now interglacially ineffectual 41Ka and 23Ka volcanic peaks (BC terminology) glacial part of the ice age cycle. Now only disturbed to the 5Ma temperature limiting point by peak submarine volcano every 100Ka. At this time, the evaporation and clouds tend to zero, and it stops raining so much, as the evaporative response declines on a power law as SSTs approach 273K and it stops altogether in colder latitudes, so what else is left to save the planet?
A: Whatever the submarine volcano “normal” is as an overnight radiator heater to keep the oceans from freezing.
If that doesn’t keep the sea ice down, then sea ice and its strong albedo can grow and further reduce absorbed heat, and we are planet snowball/Hoth. Possibly. Ligh Burning all the fossil fuel on the planet won’t help us then, and clouds can’t be made to form when the water vapour isn’t there. Such realities escape most commentators, because they are not physcists. Anything is possible when you understand nothing, as in the case of politicians, especially American and French politicians, it seems.
THE FUTURE LIES AHEAD: But, becoming toast is demonstrably not a problem, M. La Garde, the AOC of France to Micron’s Gore as far as any grasp of real observed climate science fact goes.
As the Earth continues to cool the interglacial heat impulse to the cooling planet must at some time become inadequate to recover to the very stable water vapour controlled interglacial max of the last 3.5 million years of ice age cycles, back to 5 Ma BP. when it was cooling from the warmest in animal habitable times, but a few degrees more, only.. Peak interglacial has varied because of the way in which the three MIlankovitch cycle effects combine, as well shown by their Fourier series deconvolution and re convolution, I suggest, and this has a direct effect on peak levels of volcanicity at these times, hence the amount of heat deposited in the oceans at interglacials, that also determine the length of the interglacial.
Volcanic warmings must deliver the same cycle but with persistent and increasing ice and lower sea levels each warm spell as the cycles continue. with longer glacial phases but perhaps the same floor temperature? If civilisation survives the next and inevitable glacial stage, as the short term solar cycles turn to cooling, and the long term interglacial volcanic heat dissipates to space, people sitting fishing on the edge of the continental shelf, or trekking from Cairns to the Great Barrier Cliffs, will very correctly be saying “Interlacials aren’t what they used to be”. I try……
Please read this, and tell me which bits are rubbish, on the facts and physics. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3259379
Wonderful article.
I’ve always believed that there are powerful negative feedback mechanisms providing stability. The water vapour, cloud formation is pretty obviously going to limit warming. Cooling is more problematical which probably explains the persistence of ice ages.
Now that the settled science nonsense is collapsing we see the slow climb down of the enablers responsible for the fuel poverty deaths of millions .
This little clique of self affirming IPCC /NASA “scientists ” know the politicians are going to throw them right under the bus as the hoax unravels . The money was good while it lasted and they could partially hide so they just kept pumping out complete garbage . The MSM are happy to hide behind their white coats too .
Lets see how many MSM outhouses print the story that confirms the models are bust and hence the whole rational for the earth has a fever hoax . What is Al Gore going to do without front men to point to ?
The models don’t work because they can’t model natural variables that are the things that actually shape the climate .
The con game is over … well except for the cool-aid drinkers who believe
because it reaffirms their views . eg . population control , one world government and the , eco -anarchist agenda .
Under Obama it probably wasn’t feasible to admit “We Can’t Model Clouds.”
It took NASA this long to figure out figure out they can’t accurately
model clouds ? No chance . They had to have known for at least a decade and kept their mouth shut to ensure they enabled the biggest fraud in history . In confirming the obvious they have reduced the science is “settled models” credibility to zero .
The Liberal communication model is say incredibly stupid things , wait to see the push back and then pretend you were only joking before the climb down and the damage has been done .
Kim Campbell’s stupid comment must have been made after a heavy afternoon of drinking her usual bottle of Gin . Oh … just kidding .
I don’t understand this debate, perhaps I am a bit thick. Because nobody mentions the fact that the greenhouse effect of water vapour is not significant in the control of SST, and hence “climate change” although it may vary the steady value.
I suggest it is clear the fundamental control system of the planet that has kept it inside a narrow range of temperature in the face of all perturbations in solar radiation, asteroids, super volcanoes, etc., since there were oceans, is the negative feedback of evaporative cooling and cloud albedo that cool the 2/3 of the surface that is oceans and also the atmosphere (that also controls land temperatures) and also varies solar insolation by cloud albedo. The total control is currently 140W/m^2. 90 evaporation and condensation, 50 albedo. The best demonstration of this is the way it flat lines the geothermal warming of the 7Ka interglacial events as soon as the oceans start to seriously evaporate (its an accelerating effect with temperature, so strongly non linear). And keeps it that way until the heat of the interglacial event is lost to space and the neo glacial kicks in, varied by the short term noise of three solar cycles.. The effect of evaporation and clouds also maintains the equilibrium when other massive events like asteroids and super volcanoes occur.
The greenhouse effect of water vapour is useful in producing a higher surface temperature, but is not a primary control effect, the dominant effect of water vapour is as the process gas in the smart thermal blanket that keeps the surface temperature at the right level to maintain a precise planetary heat balance in space against perturbations in solar activity, solar winds, asteroids, interglacial warming events and super volcanoes, through varying evaporation and cloud albedo. If that isn’t how the climate system works, how does it? This is a robust system, not some knife edged balance. So why should we worry about the greenhouse effect, that we actually don’t observe happening as advertised by models anyway? The natural control easily takes care of a few W/m^2 and more, either way, by breaking into a sweat. Simples!
Is this wrong?
I rushed this but have to, E&OE.
PS To understand where the 6×10^25 Joules interglacial heat impulse comes from, and why the oceans rose steadily for the whole 7Ka while the younger Dryas tanked back to glacial temperatures, try my w.i.p. prepub paper on SSRN http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3259379
This isn’t settled science it’s set up science . Bought and paid for .
Cloud cover effecting climate more than CO2 … Who knew ?
NASA and the IPCC needed an off ramp to the absurd projections of doom they
have been using to pump the biggest fraud in history .
Cut all funding to the UN/NASA until this shit show is fixed .
Tens of thousands of fuel poverty deaths every year and trillions wasted on a fraud based on the garbage produced by the IPCC/NASA . They are just now figuring out that they can’t accurately measure the or model the effects of clouds ?
What we have here is right out of the Liberal play book . Make incredibly stupid claims and when the guns finally get turned on you its …oh we were just joking , or well the models need to be fixed . The problem is the models
were “fixed ” by crooks to produce an outcome they were paid to produce .
Now that personal liability is going to get attached to this fraud and mass genocide they are going to try and distance themselves for causing it .
The fact that the current convenient excuse , (cloud cover ) errors completely voids the bull shit claims they have been pumping out for over a decade are we going to see that climb down in MSM ? No chance .
The IPCC / NASA have done their job in providing rent seekers cover . Honesty now is about 15 years to late . Just cut the funding to these crooks and jail the ring leaders . Thousands of dead people deserve some justice .
The dirty little secret…
Best laughs… hand held calculators match super-computer models… 12:28, climate model uncertainty (error bars)… 24:25
“Cloud error is 114 times larger than the variable they are trying to detect”
Dr Patrick Frank has presented his paper to 6 Journals, has had 16 reviewers, 13 of which were modelers. The count is 13 to 3 against publication, all 13 modelers voted against it. All 13 critics were incompetent in their reviews, making basic errors in comprehension.
This is what anti-science lefties call “settled science”.