Once again we have a report detailing the overestimation of the computer models to forecast temperatures. In an e-mail from the American Geophysical Union they write:

Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, concludes a new study. The findings can help scientists improve computer models and determine if the southernmost continent will warm significantly this century, a major research question because of Antarctica’s potential impact on global sea-level rise.

“We can now compare computer simulations with observations of actual climate
trends in Antarctica,” says Andrew Monaghan of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., lead author of the study. “This is showing us that, over the past century, most of Antarctica has not undergone the fairly dramatic warming that has affected the rest of the globe. The challenges of studying climate in this remote environment make it difficult to say what the future holds for Antarctica’s climate.”

Monaghan and his colleagues at NCAR and Ohio State University, in Columbus,
published their findings last month in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

The authors compared recently constructed temperature data sets from Antarctica, based on data from ice cores and ground weather stations, to twentieth century simulations from computer models used by scientists to simulate global climate. While the observed Antarctic temperatures rose by about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past century, the climate models simulated increases in Antarctic temperatures during the same period of 0.75 degrees C (1.4 degrees F). The error appeared to be caused by models overestimating the amount of water vapor in the Antarctic atmosphere, the new study concludes.

What is the reason for the overestimation? Economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University has a theory:

Most governments now regard climate change as inevitable and want detailed local forecasts to help them prepare and adapt. Economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, New York, who dropped by on Tuesday after meeting Gordon Brown, said there would be “a lot of interest among politicians in investing the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary, if scientists can promise answers to key questions on water supply, droughts, health and – the current hot topic – future food supply.”

Sachs suggested that modellers have in the past soft-pedalled on the uncertainties in their models, in order to make their case that climate change was real.

The scientists admit that they have to improve their global models and turn long-term projections into detailed forecasts useful to governments.

Basically what the scientists are doing is starting with a conclusion, that made made global climate change is real, they then work backwards to find calculations that support the theory. Not good science!

And for the quote of the week:

Climate change has become the new orthodoxy for our times. It is the moral fable that justifies new limits and restrictions for our shiny 21st century. It provides, in a post-tradition world, a new internalised framework for individuals to govern their behaviour in the name of reducing their carbon footprint.

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Features, Global Warming