SUMMARY Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here. While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.
[heritage.org]

Cli-Sci 2024-02-06
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CliSci # 403

Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models

Dr. Roy Spencer wrote for The Heritage Foundation “Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy.” [See graph] Spencer explains that the warming that has occurred over that last 50 year is due to an imbalance of 0.6 W/m2 of average energy flows into and out of the climate system. This is about ¼ of a percent of the 220 W/m2 natural energy flows. The accuracy of this energy flow is about 1 %, or four times larger than the imbalance. Much of the warming could be cause by natural climate change. Climate models blame the entire imbalance on burning fossil fuels, but this can’t be demonstrated by science. Numerous studies show that the trend of the measurements are strongly biased high due to the urban heat island effect, so the real discrepancy is likely greater than shown.

The climate models would are adjusted or tuned to produce long-term climate charge without changing greenhouse gases (GHG), assuming that all climate change is unnatural. Without tuning and with constant GHG, the model’s temperature would drift over time becoming warmer or cooler. With historical GHG the models produce warming rates which vary by a factor of three, from 1.8 °C to 5.6 °C in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Despite the tuning, most models don’t conserve energy. Spencer says “Energy conservation should be a necessary requirement of any model used for energy policy decisions.”

The average summer temperature trend simulated by 36 climate models of the 12-state U.S. Corn Belt region for 1973-2022 is 4.0 times the observed temperature trend [graph]. The observations or measured warming is 0.13 °C/decade. The most extreme model produces 7.1 times too much warming. CO2 fertilization and warming has contributed to global food production increasing faster than population growth in the past 60 years.

Satellites have been measuring the global lower atmosphere temperature since 1979.