SCIENCE PROVED RIGHT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change models predict remarkably accurate results; Analysis of climate change modelling for past 15 years reveal accurate forecasts of rising global temperatures

Duncan Clark, March 27, 2013 (UK Guardian via The Raw Story)

“Forecasts of global temperature rises over the past 15 years have proved remarkably accurate, new analysis of scientists’ modelling of climate change shows…The debate around the accuracy of climate modelling and forecasting has been especially intense recently…[But the new research] should give a boost to confidence in scientific predictions of climate change.

“The paper…explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since…The forecast, published in 1999 by Myles Allen and colleagues at Oxford University, was one of the first to combine complex computer simulations of the climate system with adjustments based on historical observations to produce both a most likely global mean warming and a range of uncertainty. It predicted that the decade ending in December 2012 would be a quarter of degree warmer than the decade ending in August 1996 – and this proved almost precisely correct.”

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“The study is the first of its kind because reviewing a climate forecast meaningfully requires at least 15 years of observations to compare against. Assessments based on shorter periods are prone to being misleading due to natural short-term variability in the climate.

“The new research also found that, compared to the forecast, the early years of the new millennium were somewhat warmer than expected. More recently the temperature has matched the level forecasted very closely, but the relative slow-down in warming since the early years of the early 2000s has caused many commentators to assume that warming is now less severe than predicted. The paper shows this is not true…”

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