Is the claim serious science?
By Arnd Bernaerts
The last IPCC-Report 2007 claims that there are important differences between weather and climate[1], by saying that:
A common confusion between weather and climate arises when scientists are asked how they can predict climate 50 years from now when they cannot predict the weather a few weeks from now. The chaotic nature of weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days.
- Projecting changes in climate (i.e., long-term average weather) due to changes in atmospheric composition or other factors is a very different and much more manageable issue.
- As an analogy, while it is impossible to predict the age at which any particular man will die, we can say with high confidence that the average age of death for men in industrialised countries is about 75.
The text is from the section FAQ 1.2[2]: “What is the Relationship between Climate Change and Weather?”, and obviously intended to create the impression that ‘climate science’ is more reliable than weather forecasting. That is utterly nonsense, and can only pass undetected as long as it is presented in a terminology which is meaningless. The terms and explanation given do not meet the lowest academic standards, which shall be discussed to show the superficiality of the text (cited above).
According FAQ 1.2, as throughout the scientific literature, “Climate is generally defined as average weather”. The problem starts with the search for a sufficient definition on “weather”. All scientific glossaries are very constraint on offering one. The IPCC Glossary does not offer any explanation, while other glossaries usually provide only very general description, like this three:
- ___ Weather is a short-term phenomenon, describing atmosphere,
ocean and land conditions hourly or daily. - ___ Weather is not constant. It is dynamic and always changing.
- ___ Weather is the day-to-day state of the atmosphere, and its
short-term (minutes to weeks) variation.
One of the rare exception is the very comprehensive Glossary of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). After a brief explanation of weather as: “The state of the atmosphere, mainly with respect to its effects upon life and human activities”, (full text in box below), the weather issue is broken down to:
- The “present weather” table consists of 100 possible conditions,
- with 10 possibilities for “past weather”, while
- Popularly, weather is thought of in terms of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, visibility, and wind.
Even if the AMS-Glossary is silent on “future weather”, the nonsense get a face. If the “weather” consists of 100 possible conditions, how can “past weather” consist only of 10 conditions? Who is making the selection? Who decides over the period of time, whether data are used over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years? What are the “10 possibilities for past weather”? Which mix of data represents the past weather or the future weather? The extreme shortcoming of the explanation is revealed by the reference to “popularly weather”, which may reflect the layman’s version reasonably, but not necessarily. If AMS Glossary actually says that popular weather exist –presumably- of five conditions, past weather consists of 10 conditions and present weather consists of 100 conditions it seems that this is nonsense talking. There is no such thing as small, medium, and big weather, with few, several, or many dynamo-physical atmospheric elements. Weather is either weather, or it is statistics on weather components. This lack of reasoning should by now be clear if the FAQ-1.2 states: “it is the statistics of changes in weather over time that identify climate change.” The sentence is faulty in many respect, and it is silly to speak about “statistics of change in weather”. This intervention might become clearer by discussing the two IPCC examples (above) about the difference between weather and climate.
EXAMPLE 1: IPCC is saying that projecting changes in long-term average weather (e.g. climate) is a much more manageable issue than to predict weather for longer than a few days.
COMMENT: Yes, if it is not said what ‘weather’ is, it is much easier to speak about future climate (average weather), by ignoring 90% or 99% of the ‘100 possible conditions of the present weather’. As only few conditions and components of the weather, are not WEATHER, the way the scientific community is using the words: weather, climate, average weather, statistical weather, climate change, etc, undermines a fruitful discussion, and as these terms are highly emotional in the layman’s sphere, it is reckless and irresponsible as well.
EXAMPLE 2: As statistic is a useful tool to predict the probable life span of a human being, in analogy, statistical weather (e.g. average weather, or climate), can be predicted either, at least much better than a weather forecast for a couple of days.
COMMENT: This is a piece of stunning naivety. It is already astonishing that the usually indicated time difference between weather and climate, which is – according definition- ranging from months to millions of years (the classical period is 30 years), is ignored. While the life time for every human being is short and finite, an unlimited time span from few months to millions of years, is something for fairy tales, but hardly serious in science. An ‘average weather’ from 200’000 to 100’000 BC, or likewise, between the year 2100 and 3000, is little more than an image, and has little to do with science. Beside from the point that ‘weather’ is not reasonably defined, who is defining the time period involved, and selects the weather components? With regard to the IPCC’s analogy only one thing can be said with certainty: Climate can not die.
The reasoning of the authors of the FAQ 1.2 on a difference between weather and climate, is an annoyance. It is a reckless attempt to misguide the general public and politics to believe that science is better and more reliable in climatology than in weather forecasting. At best it is wishful thinking, as the author’s reasoning produced empty terms and inconsequent explanations. It is particularly unfortunate that the discussed material is not the remote opinion of a few scientist, but obviously have the backing of vast majority of the scientific community, as none of the 500 Lead Authors and 2000 Expert Reviewers of the IPCC Report seem to have cared about the text. Atmospheric science should ensure that it defines and works with sufficient terms and definitions.
| EXTRACT from:
AMS (American Meteorological Society) Glossary of Meteorology. http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/preface2 From the electronic version of the second edition of the Glossary with more than 12,000 terms. Visited on 1st July 2010. |
| weather—The state of the atmosphere, mainly with respect to its effects upon life and human activities.
As distinguished from climate, weather consists of the short-term (minutes to days) variations in the atmosphere. Popularly, weather is thought of in terms of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, visibility, and wind. 2. As used in the taking of surface weather observations, a category of individual and combined atmospheric phenomena that must be drawn upon to describe the local atmospheric activity at the time of observation. Listed weather types include tornado, waterspout, funnel cloud, thunderstorm and severe storm, liquid precipitation (drizzle, rain, rain showers), freezing precipitation (freezing drizzle, freezing rain), and frozen precipitation (snow, snow pellets, snow grains, hail, ice pellets, ice crystals). These elements, with the exception of the first three, are denoted by a letter code in the observation. With the METAR code, reporting weather also includes an intensity qualifier (light, moderate, or heavy) or proximity qualifier. The weather used in synoptic weather observations and marine weather observations is reported in two categories, “present weather” and “past weather.” The “present weather” table consists of 100 possible conditions, with 10 possibilities for “past weather”; both are encoded numerically. Another method, which has the advantage of being independent of language, is the recording of weather types using symbols. There are 100 symbols that identify with the numeric codes of the synoptic observation. 3. To undergo change due to exposure to the atmosphere. |
[1] IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt,
M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
[2] FAQ 1.2 /2007/ WG1 at : http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-2.html
the Air Vent 
Comparing the average life span of humans with climate is disingenuous. Of course it is easy to predict a single aspect that has predefined boundaries. What they are trying with climate is to predict the “behavoir” of man to a degree of certainity that has not existed before.
We know in 200 years everyone living today will be dead. But the real question is how will they have lived. Even on average, that is not a “settled” science.
“As an analogy, while it is impossible to predict the age at which any particular man will die, we can say with high confidence that the average age of death for men in industrialised countries is about 75.”
But in the case of men in indistrialized nations, we are counting the number of years they are alive and nothing else, then calculating the average. By nothing else, I mean you don’t adjust people’s ages while they are alive or after they are dead, to make your average more “correct”. And you don’t need much metadata to give meaning to the number. You just need to know when dude was born and when he died.
1 = 1 year. You count 1 or you count 0 every year for each man. That is as close to an absolute measurement is I can think of. Is Climate calculated this way? HA I don’t think so. There is no analagous relationship here, other than both use math. 😉 Bad analogy.
Andrew
Approximates the duration of the cycle of the PDO. Also, the wunnerful one hoss shay disintegrates at fourscore and five. The recent squaring of the survival curve demonstrates that.
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Arnd;
Your reasoning is pretty good, but your English grammar …
Get a native speaker to give it a once-over before you publish, if possible.
“A common confusion between weather and climate arises when scientists are asked how they can predict climate 50 years from now when they cannot predict the weather a few weeks from now. The chaotic nature of weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days.”
Just what is the Team’s track record on predicting climate????
BWAHAHA !!!
Its curious that they use life expectancy for an analogy. In the UK life expectancy has steadily risen from 71.1 years in 1960 to 79.9 years in 2008. It was about 40 in the 16th, 17th, 18th century and began its steady rise in the 19th century.
Hmm, that pattern sounds familiar.
I doubt that they could predict life expectancy 100 or 200 years in the future.
Every time an alarmist scientist speaks out it becomes even more clear that they are functional idiots.
Whether the weather be hot, or whether the weather be cold, I’ll weather the weather whatever the weather, whether I like it or not. 🙂
I can accept the definition of climate as an average (of some type) of weather. What I don’t understand is how they generate the average from the models. Is there a single magic number that they put in that has the model relax to the climate 50 years from now or do they simply make the model evolve through 50 years of weather and take the average. If it’s the later, there’s nothing to see here since the accumulated errors will make the results nonsense.
Aside from the analogy being horrible (I mean really…)
I find it hard to believe that our current climate models are purely linear in nature. If they aren’t linear, then they better be considering the possibility of chaos. Remember, chaos theory isn’t something magical. It is just the study of non-linear systems of equations. The reason why they seem so magical is because they are extremely hard to solve. So most of our mathematical work over the last thousand years deals with either solving linear systems of equations or making non-linear systems linear.
-Lehrbuch der meteorologie By Julius von Hann (1906)
#11 – translation by google
Textbook of meteorology By Julius von Hann (1906)
I am *almost* able to read the original. 🙂
#9 —Paul Linsay said
July 19, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I can accept the definition of climate as an average (of some type) of weather.
RE: Every layman has an individual understanding of what weather and climate is. So it is ‘natural’ that you accept a definition of climate as average weather. The question here is, whether science as a trained academic discipline, should use a layman’s term.
#9__Paul Linsay said
July 19, 2010 at 4:31 pm
What I don’t understand is how they generate the average from the models.
RE: It do not understand it either, put personally I have great doubts. But here is something on “average” when in addition to the case case discussed above (climate = average weather), WMO, IPCC and others offer also the explanation that:
“in a more rigorously way, Climate is the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time”.
It seems that they do not know what they are talking about, but happy to hide their lack of understanding behind a smoke screen, respectively by hilarious logic. They refer to ‘statistical description’ not saying that such data are at maximum available only for the brief time period from about 1750 to 2010, and only with regard to some of the numerous weather components. A fundamental knowledge is ignored: Statistics are the science of making effective use of numerical data.
Actually the sentence is fundamentally false. At least it should have been said that it refers to weather data. Instead a distinction to average weather (climate) is drawn by stating that “in a more rigorously way, Climate is statistics”, which, without additional information, is not only absolute meaningless, but is objectively a mean to misguide the general public and politics.
The relevant WMO site:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/understanding_climate.php
RE: #12:
Many thanks Jeff, here is a rough translation of the first paragraph, #11, to emphasise the nice sentence: “The weather is not a mean atmospheric state, but the total impression,….”
#11_translation of the first paragraph
“The weather in general.
At any time, all meteorological elements individually for itself, each which we have discussed before, provide by a simultaneous effectiveness what we call the “weather”. The weather is not a mean atmospheric state, but the total impression, or the complete effect that occur simultaneously as an atmospheric phenomena at a given moment.”
With regards to Example 2)
We can “estimate” the average age a man will die currently because we have current statistics of deaths. Real data allows an informed decision. However, the average age may not often be right!
Secondly, the IPCC make predictions about the future state of the climate from models, not based on statistics, and any projections of the human lifespan in 100 years would also be merely speculation.
Saying we can predict the current life span for the current moment, is like saying we can estimate the climate for the current moment. It doesnt say anything about the accuracy of forecast lifespan or death 100 years from now!
I predict the average lifespan will approach 85 as a limit. As public health has improved, the survival curve squares out to approximately that figure. Then, the shay collapses.
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“As an analogy, while it is impossible to predict the age at which any particular man will die, we can say with high confidence that the average age of death for men in industrialised countries is about 75.”
I am outraged by this. The author who chose this analogy is illiterate. We know with high confidence the average age of death for men only because we know the age of millions and millions of men who died in the past.
For this analogy to be valid climate modeling has to be based on observations of climate on many Earth-like planets.
A valid analogy is predicting how average age of death will change in 100 years. There is no “high confidence” for that.
Arnd and Jeff,
Roger Pielke sr commented on this garbage in the IPCC report back in May 2007, see
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/wg1-ipcc-chapter-1-more-scientifically-erroneous-statements/
Pielke says that the IPCC claim that
“Projecting changes in climate due to changes in greenhouse gases 50 years from now is a very different and much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now”
is absurd and scientifically unsupportable. He and you are right.
#20, Arnd has a different opinion than my own. His may be more correct. I’m not informed enough on several climate issues to have and exert a strong opinion.
My nuanced view is that it seems pretty obvious to me that from what we know long term ‘average’ climate change has a reduced requirement than predicting the huge variance in daily weather. The variance is anticipated to be averaged out. However, in my view, the unknown and poorly understood will eventually wreak havoc with the models. I’ve had too many of my own ‘brilliant’ ideas turned to rubbish to accept the unconfirmed.
Climaotology desperately needs a little feedback. Arnd, if I interpret correctly, expects a more structured approach than is being articulated by climate science.
#20 “it seems pretty obvious to me that from what we know long term ‘average’ climate change has a reduced requirement than predicting the huge variance in daily weather. The variance is anticipated to be averaged out.”
Says who? There are plenty of distributions that have a definite average but an infinite variance, for example, the Lorentz distribution, L(x) = a/(b + x^2). I’ve rarely dealt with a physical system that was Gaussian beyond about three sigma. Everything has long tails. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levy_flights.
A second point is that climate may have (probably does have) multiple states, the one you’re in being determined by history. Switching from one state to another is caused by some exogenous change, e.g., Solar dynamics, a flip in the earth’s magnetic field,… Each state is going to have different properties. Some are hard to reach from where we are, others only take a small tickle to flip the switch. How do you predict that?
#20, PaulM said July 20, 2010 at 8:20 am, Arnd and Jeff,
Roger Pielke sr commented on this garbage in the IPCC report back in May 2007, see
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/wg1-ipcc-chapter-1-more-scientifically-erroneous-statements/
I have discussed Roger Pielke Sr earlier discussion on “climate definition” (2005), here:
http://www.whatisclimate.com/b211-what-is-climate-com-roger-pielke-research-group-2005.html
and here
http://www.whatisclimate.com/c330-roger-pielke-sr-calls-recognition-equivalence-global-warming-climate-change-erroneous.html
and will come back on the cited posting(above, 2007) later today, ditto to #21 –Jeff Id
#21, Jeff Id said, July 20, 2010 at 8:48 am
”Arnd, if I interpret correctly, expects a more structured approach than is being articulated by climate science.”
Thanks Jeff for the fine challenge! Do I expect a more structured approach? It could be, but not necessarily, as I regard the climate definition as a problem which has much more aspects than one. I will try to present them briefly, with reference to the background of my climate work as summarized at the AIR VENT, “Reader Background” (#13), which could be dated back: “…from my early days at sea I was convinced that the oceans are the ruler of climate” here: https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/reader-background/#comment-25987
1) A workable, explanatory definition.
It is a minimum requirement for science to work and communicate with reasonable terms and definitions. E.g. AMS Glossary offers 12’000 terms and explanations, but is not able to provide any reasonable on weather and climate.
2) Weather and average weather (climate) are layman words and highly emotional.
The word are extremely sensible for any individual. Every person can say something about it. Reuters reported recently (May 14) : “Weather-obsessed Britons will spend six months of their lives discussing rain, sun and all things related to the climate, according to a survey on Friday. The findings appear to confirm the traditional adage that the weather is indeed the favorite topic of conversation amongst Britons, beating sport, jobs, or their love lives.” http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64D2HO20100514 . As far as science is using the terms in the same way as lay persons it is grossly misleading.
3) The issue is a physical-dynamical subject.
Science avoids to demonstrates that this is reflected when using weather and climate. As one can write a lot in this respect, here is an example:
The other day WUWT (16 July 2010) run a posting about a research by the University of Technology Sydney, which claimed in the press release that a: “new research indicates that the interactions of microscopic organisms around a particular organic material may alter the chemical properties of the ocean and ultimately influence global climate by affecting cloud formation in the atmosphere.”
The problem is that they link the research to ‘global climate’ without knowing what an “affected cloud formation” will have on the average weather (climate), or not may have, within the bunch of weather components, and with regard to any time periods and regions. Instead of saying that possible cloud formation in the atmosphere is presumably a bit better understood, it needs to be pompous with ‘global climate’, although without any proven facts on how the ‘average weather’ is effected, presumably even not with regard to ‘the weather’ on a daily basis.
4) “structured approach”
It is presumably difficult to offer a scientifically sound terminology, which is distinct from the layman’s meaning. Nevertheless there are options as long as one would consider certain aspects of the atmospheric system, for example by making a distinction between what drives the weather and what not:
____Pro-Weather: humid air, low air pressure, ocean space; and
____Anti-Weather: dry air, high air pressure, continental space.
5) Considering and reflecting the relevant dimensions of the atmospheric system.
Not all what is fundamentally important is necessarily determining the fate of weather. The sun is such a case. It does not go without the sun, but the sun and e.g. volcanic eruption may influence for a period of time the weather, but are not the ultimate force that runs the weather. During the last million years the global temperature has been highly stable in the narrow band of little more than 5°C. The noon gets the same sun ray as the Earth, but has a daily temperature range of 300°C.
6) Water is what matters.
As it is all about water, and the source of atmospheric water (completely replaced in less than 14 days) comes from the oceans and seas, it would be rectified to say: “Climate (in the layman’s sense of average weather) is the continuation of the oceans by other means”, whereby there are a high number of ‘means’, of which the most important are: water and heat.
7) Anthropogenic ‘climate change’.
The most serious threat will come from the oceans, as they have an average temperature of only 4°C, and there is nothing to correct any human caused changes in the marine environment. The oceans run their business according their own rules.
7) Did our forefathers had a better understanding, although they were not scientists?
____ Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519): “Water is the driver of nature”.
____ Johann-Wolfgang v. Goethe, (1749-1832), Everything comes from water. Everything is maintained through water. Ocean, give us your eternal power.
It is hoped that the brief summary provides a basic idea what made me work on the subject, and considered for dealing with “climate”, and sincerely apology for any shortcomings and too superficial explanations.
#20, PaulM said July 20, 2010 at 8:20 am, Arnd and Jeff,
Roger Pielke sr commented on this garbage in the IPCC report back in May 2007,
Roger Pielke’s Sr. remarks are well analysed and clearly presented, remembering that the ‘butterfly effect” seem to have been particularly liked by big politics in the early 1990, when almost 200 political leaders nod with content, and signed many documents at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, including the UNFCCC.
Nevertheless his uncritical use of the basic terminology (weather, climate, climate system) does not distinguish him in earnest, to my understanding, from his IPCC colleagues. See the reference at #23, although he is special, because he is favouring “ocean heat content” as a more reliable GW indicator. A brief comment to a RP-Sr paper, “A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system”(11/2008), http://www.whatisclimate.com/b212-need-to-talk-about-2009.html remarks:
“We have great doubt that anyone can correctly assess the heat content and changes of the oceans with any reasonable accuracy. But we believe that the short and long-term status of the atmosphere, usually described as weather and/or climate is determined by the oceans and seas, due to its constant supply of heat and water in the atmosphere.”
#20 PaulM said; Pielke says that the IPCC claim that “Projecting changes in climate due to changes in greenhouse gases 50 years from now is a very different and much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now”
RE: see the example 3) at #24; and Comment to EXAMPLE 1 in the posting above. The claim is speculation.
Climate – the divergence from the optimal global mean temperature.
Weather – what you have to live in.
(This post contributes to global warming – so please recycle it).
#26 Really nice. haha.