The annual climate summit opened in Cancun, Mexico this week. A few days earlier, while releasing a new report, Indian Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh emphasized: “It is imperative” that India has “sound, evidence-based assessments on the impacts of climate change.”
Not surprisingly, the report, “Climate Change and India: A sectoral and regional analysis for the 2030s,” claims India will soon be able to forecast the timing and intensity of future monsoons that are so critical to its agricultural base.
Could 250 of India’s top scientists be wrong when they say their computers will soon be able to predict summer monsoon rainfall during the 2030s, based on projected carbon dioxide trends? Do “scenarios” generated by climate models really constitute “sound, evidence-based assessments”? Are attempts to predict monsoons and other climate events any more valid for ten or twenty years in the future, than for a century away?
We do not believe it is yet possible to forecast future monsoons, despite more than two centuries of scientific research, or the claims and efforts of these excellent scientists. The Indian summer monsoonal rainfall remains notoriously unpredictable, because it is determined by the interaction of numerous changing and competing factors, including: ocean currents and temperatures, sea surface temperature and wind conditions in the vast Indian and Western Pacific Ocean, phases of the El Nino Southern Oscillation in the equatorial Pacific, the Eurasian and Himalayan winter snow covers, solar energy output, and even wind direction and speed in the equatorial stratosphere some 30-50 kilometers (19-31 miles) aloft.
Relying on computer climate models has one well-known side effect: Garbage in, gospel out. Current gospel certainly says CO2 rules the climate, but any role played by carbon dioxide in monsoon activity is almost certainly dwarfed by these other, major influences. Computer climate models have simply failed to confirm current climate observations, or project future climatic changes and impacts.
Both Indian and global monsoons have declined in strength and intensity over the last 50 years – and this measurement-based reality largely contradicts climate model “forecasts” and “scenarios” that say monsoonal rainfalls will increase. It is equally well known that climate models have been unable to replicate the decadal to multi-decadal variations of monsoonal rainfalls.
Dr. Fred Kucharski and 21 other climate modelers challenge the alleged CO2-monsoon linkage. Using World Climate Research Programme climate model analyses, they conclude that “the increase of greenhouse gases concentrations has had little impact on the [observed] decadal Indian monsoonal rainfall variability in the twentieth century.” Perhaps the Indian scientists missed their report. No climate models predicted the severe drought conditions for the 2009 Indian monsoon season – followed by the extended wetness of the 2010 season. The inability to foresee this 30-50% precipitation swing in most regions underscores how far we really are from being able to forecast monsoons, for next year, 2030 or the end of the century.
Another recent analysis, by scientists from National Technical University in Athens, found that computer model projections did not agree with actual observations at 55 locations around the world. Computer forecasts for large spatial areas, like the contiguous United States, were even more out of sync with actual observations than is the case with specific locations!
Minister Ramesh says India hopes to offer a “middle ground” and present a less “petulant and obstructionist” perception during climate negotiations in Cancun. But if he believes the new report and claims of imminent forecasting ability will make this happen, we fear he is mistaken. “What-if” scenarios, based on CO2-driven computer models, are hardly a sound basis for negotiations, energy policies, agricultural planning or changed perceptions.
The impotence of current climate models is not surprising. Climate models have not yet gotten even the most basic aspects of annual, decadal or multi-decadal monsoon events correctly.
* A 2009 paper demonstrates that not one of the 24 climate models used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change generated accurate predictions for annual cycles of land surface temperatures or the arrival of seasons outside the tropics for 1954-2000. Accurate predictions of decadal cycles are out of the question.
* A 2008 study found that almost all current climate models overestimated the amount of solar radiation absorbed at Earth’s surface – leading them to forecast more severe regional dryness than will likely be the case. Even more appalling, this computer model error has been documented since 1996, and yet there are still no improvements.
* Drs. Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green found that IPCC forecasting procedures violated 81% of the 89 forecasting and scientific principles they were able to evaluate. These serious errors prove that IPCC climate projections and scenarios are useless for public policy decisions.
As climate scientists, we know computer climate models are very useful for analyzing how Earth’s complex climate system works. However, models available today are simply not ready for prime time, when it comes to predicting future climate, monsoons or droughts. Persistent attempts to use computer climate models to generate “what-if” scenarios are unrealistic, counterproductive and even anti-scientific.
Our understanding of how weather and climate vary from year to year is still very immature, and it will be years (if not decades) before we resolve fundamental questions of how various forces interact to cause those changes.
Computer models still cannot accurately simulate or predict regional phenomena like the Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Even when model outputs agree with certain observations, we cannot be certain that the models did so for the right reasons. Considering the myriad factors that influence and alter weather and climate regimes, it is clear that climate models cannot make meaningful projections about future events, especially if they focus on the single factor of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Science and society will pay a very dear price, if political agendas continue to generate and legitimize false and pretentious computer outputs that have no basis in reality.
How much better it would be if researchers focused on improving our ability to accurately forecast monsoons, droughts and other events just a few weeks or months in advance. That would really give farmers and others a chance to adapt, minimize damages and actually benefit from being better prepared. ________
Willie Soon is a solar physicist and climate scientist at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Madhav Khandekar is a former research scientist from Environment Canada and served as an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s 2007 reports.
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